"We're locked in," said Snape.

"You're having me on," Harriet said.

Snape could give the impression of rolling his eyes while staring down his nose. "You're right. I'm making it all up because I enjoy spending my nights trapped in a closet."

Harriet didn't have that talent, so she rolled her eyes outright.

"Well, I don't," she said, edging past him to the not-a-door part of the wall. Snape pressed himself against the opposite wall, like he didn't even want his hem to touch her. That was fine with her.

She banged on the wall a few times, yelling, "OY!" and "SIRIUS! RON! WAKE UP!"

Of course, nothing happened and nobody came. She wasn't actually surprised. Snape wouldn't really be wrong about something like this.

Just wrong about taking half-heard prophecies to Voldemort that get my parents killed, she thought viciously.

"So? What do we do now?" she asked bitterly.

"Wait till someone notices we're missing, then makes the connection." Snape sounded like he preferred not to put his trust in the idiots in this house but knew he had little choice. "Black knows about the Cupboard; hopefully he has the brains to realize where we've gone."

"Sirius is plenty clever," Harriet said, annoyed.

Snape's expression didn't change, but it conveyed a complete lack of faith in her judgment.

She glared at the wall. There wasn't anything to look at on it, only the dull woodwork in front of her nose. That whorl looked like a bug-eyed chicken.

And as she watched, the grains morphed into something with a long face and sharp teeth.

She leaned away. Architectural dementia.

Snape was shuffling around on her periphery. When she glanced over-

He was laying his outer robe on the floor, that big one that puffed him up like a bat. Without it, in just a long black robe that honestly looked like a nightshirt, he was ridiculously skinny. Looking at the curve of his spine, you'd think he'd been stuck at the Dursleys with Dudley on his new diet.

Without looking at her, Snape was pushing his robe across the floor, making sure it took up as much space as possible. The cupboard was quite small enough for it to work.

She gingerly lifted her foot and nudged the cloak all the way up against her half of the wall. Then she sat and tucked her knees up, without looking directly at him. But from the corner of her eye, she could see him doing the same: sitting and not looking at her.

He was making himself very small in the attempt, something she never would've expected. The knot on his wrist could've cut glass.

She tried to listen for the clank of the pipes in the walls (she'd heard them in the room she was sharing with Ginny), or for the creaking of the stairs as anyone went up or down (Remus, as if patrolling), or Kreacher muttering as he flitted through the house. But the cupboard might have been a hundred miles from anything.

The silence crawled through her.

Not even the telly going, or Aunt Petunia clacking dishes in the kitchen sink, or Dudley's Gameboy buzzing at him because he keeps losing-

"Where's the light coming from?" she asked, risking a full glance at Snape, who had his eyes closed and his head resting back against the wall.

It wasn't lamp-light or spell-light; it was grey and uniform, almost peeling the shadows away. If she looked at Snape too long, it made her dizzy. There should be shadows under his eyes, in the hollow of his cheeks; his crow-black hair should gleam and when he tilted his head, he should hide half his face. But in that flat, faded light, he was blocks of grey and black, like a sketch left unfinished.

She remembered his chair vacant at the staff table as sleet battered the windows of the Great Hall, and Dumbledore's grave silence at the empty seat beside him. Her scar had stung those nights, jolting her awake as the things she'd thought she'd seen in her dreams had fallen apart like spiderwebs.

The skin along her arms prickled.

She was suddenly glad she wasn't in here alone. She hadn't been alone in a cupboard in a long time, and she didn't want to start that up again.

Even if she had to be stuck in here with Snape, who'd told Voldemort that. . .

He opened his eyes. "What?" he asked, tiredly.

She looked away, hoping her thoughts hadn't shown on her face. Then she frowned. Snape usually didn't need things repeated for him. "The light. Where's it coming from?"

"Part of the room design." He closed his eyes again, but he no longer looked as . . . relaxed. No, that wasn't the word for it, though she didn't know what was. The line of his shoulders against the wall was tense, now, the way it hadn't been before.

"It's meant to be disorientating," he went on.

"Is this normal?" Her arms tightened around her knees. "Like - was your house like this?"

"No." It was hard to tell in the uniform grey, but she thought he'd tensed up again. "Only wealthy pure-bloods have these resources."

"What, like an evil architect?"

"These spells require a specialization, yes."

"But is it normal?"

"In certain circles."

"What circles?" she grit out. She knew Ron's family didn't have anything like this - but what about Asteria's? They weren't wealthy now, but if they'd once had house-elves and a castle then they had been rich at some point; and if you didn't have to keep a nice house to have a punishment cupboard. . .

Had Sirius been locked up in here?

("Abomination of my flesh!" his mother's portrait had screamed at him.)

"Pure-blood families who keep to the old ways," Snape said tiredly. "Surely you've had enough time in this house to get an idea of what Black's family was like."

Sirius had never been well-behaved; the only Gryffindor in a family of Slytherins, he'd said. He'd run away from home at sixteen; he'd told her so himself.

(How old had he been, the first time they trapped him in here? How long had they kept him in? Had he gone hungry? Had he begged to be let out?)

She felt sick thinking of Sirius and suddenly angry at Snape's exhausted emptiness. Her voice hardened. "Like the kind who supported Voldemort?"

Snape didn't flinch; he went very still.

"In the beginning," he said, slowly. "Yes. Then they saw what he really intended."

He was staring straight ahead, but not like he was looking at the wall. His voice was distant, hollowed out.

She suddenly wanted to grab a piece of his hair, or his collar, and shake him.

"I reckon a lot of people got a nasty wake-up call," she said coldly. It was hard to force the words out past the fist in her throat.

Being stuck in this cupboard was reminding her of the days, the weeks, the months, after he'd told her what he'd told Voldemort. She'd been angry, and she'd been empty. Could you be both at the same time? The anger should've meant she wasn't empty, shouldn't it?

She felt it again now, that anger burning in her chest. It radiated from her heart into her throat, overpowering her mind until she couldn't think of anything but how fucking angry she was - over a thousand things, but especially what Snape had told her -

And then she'd turn a corner in her mind and suddenly it had all been gone, all that filling anger, and she was empty. Just. . . gone.

She didn't know which state she preferred. She could think through the emptiness when she couldn't think through the anger. . . but in the emptiness, nothing made much of a difference.

Time had slipped by her in dollops. The emptiness piled higher as the days clumped into weeks.

It had been like that for so long, the sudden burn of the anger here, now, was as disorienting as the grey light that bled the shadows away in this fucking cupboard. There was probably something metaphorical in that light and her emptiness, but she wasn't very good at metaphorical.

"You're the reason my parents are dead," she said, and her tongue felt raw.

Snape opened his eyes. For just a moment, she saw on his face an immense, immeasurable sadness.

It made her angrier, and then it was gone, and something inside her felt shaken.

"Yes," he said. "I am."

There was no emotion in it, just a statement of fact, or maybe an admission.

The silence around the cupboard pounded against her ears.

"Why? Why'd you-" do it, why'd you tell me, why "Why?"

In his eyes some inner light burned dim and faraway.

"Telling you will only make it worse," he said, a warning, not a denial.

Her fingers tightened in the robe he'd laid down against the dust. "Tell me anyway!"

"You think the person I am now is bad?" He sounded only tired, as if he hadn't slept in years. "You have no notion of the person I have been."

The cupboard seemed to be spinning around her. If she closed her eyes, it didn't stop. "So you did it because you wanted them to die?"

"There was no name attached - only the circumstance. I can't say I thought beyond anything but the possible benefit to myself. In those days, we'd do anything for his notice."

She'd never heard Snape sound so empty.

She wasn't empty anymore. Something was filling her up, something like. . .

"Why?" she whispered.

"There is no explaining it," Snape said after a long pause. Something echoed in his voice, like that feeling she was brimful of now, almost spilling over. "Not to someone like -"

He stopped, turned his head to the side. His black hair swung down over his cheek, creating the only shadow in the room.

Her heart was beating in her throat. "Don't you owe me?"

The only sound was the breath he took in, so quiet she would have missed it if there had been anything else to hear.

"Someone who is profoundly good cannot understand that kind of hatred. Can you? Have you ever hated the world so much that it didn't matter what you did, as long as you destroyed something?"

She felt cold and sick. She shook her head. It was all she could do.

"You have never hated anyone like that. Not even - the Dark Lord. Have you?"

"I do hate him," she said, surprised by this. "Of course I hate him, he killed my parents! And - you told him-"

Snape closed his eyes for a second longer than a blink. Some tension left him, like he'd been waiting for this, and it had finally come.

"Would you ever join him?" he asked. "If he offered you power, and you saw a chance through it to destroy him - would you take it?"

"Of course I bloody wouldn't," she said, half angry, half bewildered. "He killed my parents."

"You love them more than you hate him. That's. . . its own protection. You can't remember them, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that . . . knowledge. When you looked into the Mirror of Erised, you didn't see the Dark Lord dead at your feet. You saw your family. When alone, you didn't want power or revenge, you wanted. . . them. It makes all the difference."

Harriet blinked.

Then the wall behind her gave way, and she toppled backwards into the shadowed hall at Remus' and Sirius' feet.

"Holly-berry!" Sirius hauled her up and squashed her in a hug. "Shit! Are you all right? Are you - the fucking hell?"

Snape was emerging from the cupboard like a ghost in a Gothic mystery, his robe all over dust. Sirius just kept holding onto Harriet, gaping at Snape.

"What- were you-"

"Your cupboard attacked," Snape said icily, sounding exactly like his old self. "Someone should put a sign up over it."

Then before any of them could recover, he stepped into the open bedroom and snapped the door shut behind him.

"That-" Sirius finally let go of Harriet. "Bastard! That's Reg's room!"

He raised his fist to pound on the door, but Remus grabbed his wrist.

"We are not rowing with Snape in the middle of the night," he said firmly. "We are not waking the whole house. We're going to ask Harriet if she's all right, and then we're going to try and get some sleep."

"Are you all right?" Sirius asked her, putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her about. "You didn't say. How'd you wind up in there with that greasy fucker? Ow!"

Remus retracted his wand from where he'd jabbed it into Sirius' side. "I repeat, we are not waking the whole house. Harriet - how are you?"

"I'm fine." The lie was the bloody easiest thing she'd done all day. "Just a little dusty. And thirsty. I was going for a drink of water when I - ran into him and tripped into the wall. He tried to help me out of it and we both got pulled in."

That was the truth, at least. And Remus was right: there'd be no Snape-and-Sirius row tonight if she could help it. Right now she might help Remus stuff them both in the cupboard if they started up.

"Fucking thing," Sirius muttered, glaring at it. "This place needs a fucking architect to take it apart."

"Since we don't have one, we'll follow Severus' helpful suggestion and put a sign over it. And if Fred and George wind up inside," Remus said, "it'll serve them right. Come on - let's get Harriet her drink."

To keep an eye on me, Harriet thought, though she couldn't fault them. She had been held hostage by two nutters and now a cupboard.

All that stuff Snape had said was bundled up in the back of her mind. She thought there was a lot to go through - to figure out.

But first, she really was thirsty.

Severus leaned back against the door and passed a trembling hand over his face. His skin was clammy and he was shaking all over.

This house was a waking nightmare. And Dumbledore wanted him to convalesce here.

He looked around Reg's derelict memorial of a bedroom and laughed.

Ghosts, everywhere he looked.

He and Black had something else in common, then.

Unlike Black, however, he didn't have to stay here.

A pass of his wand cleared the dust from his robes. He'd need to be somewhat presentable, where he was going.

Narcissa hated it when guests weren't presentable.

"Harry, you look awful," Ginny said. She put her hand on Harriet's forehead, as if testing for fever. "Merlin's pants, did you sleep at all?"

"No," Harriet muttered. In the muted light - were there any lights in this godforsaken house that worked properly? - she glared blearily at her jumper, which was lying on the bed, requiring pulling on. What was the point of being a witch if you had to pull on your jumpers with your own two hands?

"I don't think that's going to fit," said Ginny as Harriet got her head stuck in the sleeve. "C'mere - you can't go see Hermione if you can't see anything."

At least Harriet made it downstairs to the kitchen without winding up in the Carnivorous Cupboard again. Small mercies. Some of it might have had to do with Ginny's hand on her elbow.

Remus, who was nursing a steaming cup in the gloomy kitchen, gave her a long, considering look but didn't say anything insensitive like, "You look like death warmed over." Fred and George, however, were happy to fill in the gap left by Remus' manners.

"And not warmed over well," said Fred.

"Like Sirius Black, Escaped Convict, tried to cook you."

(Sirius could not even heat up takeaway leftovers. He'd tried, and now the kitchen smelled like scorched curry.)

Harriet made a rude, if tired, gesture and put her head down on the table. Then she regretted it when her forehead got stuck in some of Sirius' spilled curry. Ginny rubbed her back and only laughed at her silently.

"Sorry, Holly-berry," Sirius grimaced as he wiped curry off her forehead.

"Once we've all eaten," Remus told her, "Tonks and I will be ready to take you to St. Mungo's."

"This combining of our objectives feels so organized," Tonks said, pulling out the chair next to Harriet and swinging her leg over the seat. Her long hair was Weasley red today.

"Should've put Moony in charge ages ago," Sirius said, but there was something not-quite-all-there about his smile.

Snape had not come down to the kitchen. Harriet was glad. She had no idea how she'd react if she saw him. Her head felt like a goldfish bowl, everything sort of sloshing around.

"When you looked into the Mirror of Erised, you didn't see the Dark Lord dead at your feet. You saw your family. When alone, you didn't want power or revenge, you wanted. . . them. It makes all the difference."

She forked a fried egg between her teeth and chewed. At least, she thought it was an egg. It might've been toast.

"Have you ever hated the world so much that it didn't matter what you did, as long as you destroyed something?"

"That's salt, Holly-berry." Sirius navigated the shaker out of her reach and put her juice glass in her hand.

"You think the person I am now is bad? You have no notion of the person I have been."

"I'm done," she said, dropping the final broken crust on her plate.

"Let's go, then," said Remus. Maybe it was her sleep-deprived goldfish-bowl imagination, but she thought he was watching her very carefully.

"Say hi to Hermione for us," Ron said, the way he always did whenever Harriet had gone to visit her.

Harriet nodded and squeezed his shoulder.

"Give her our love," Mrs. Weasley said, wrapping Harriet in a hug.

Tonks tip-toed exaggeratedly past Mrs. Black's portrait; Remus moved with grace and without sound. Harriet tried not to run into anything.

Then they were out on the street, under the bleached London sky. Tonks was dressed like she was heading to a heavy metal concert; Remus was wearing a button-down with the sleeves rolled up, and Harriet had let Ginny pick out a flowered dress. She dragged off her jumper and tied it around her waist; Number Twelve had been like an icebox inside, but out on the street the oppressive heat lingered, cooking up from the pavement.

"Tube's this way," Tonks said, and ambled off. Some time in their careful trip out the front door, she'd changed her hair to a messy black like Harriet's.

"Moody's spent a long time in hospital, hasn't he?" Harriet asked Remus as they trekked down the sidewalk.

"I think the Healers were mostly worried that he'd do himself an injury if they let him go," he said dryly.

"He's been enjoying himself, really," Tonks said. "So many people to suspect of attempted assassination. Turned out to be right about someone being after him, though," she added.

They clicked past the turnstile into the tube station; Remus handed Harriet an Oyster card he'd pre-purchased; and they piled into the train with a clump of bleary-eyed morning commuters. The crowd of people made the carriage unbearably stuffy. But as Remus reached up to grip the pole over his head, Harriet felt a tuft of cool air, almost like magic.

When she peered up at him, he smiled faintly, pulling on that long scar. It made her want to grin, for what felt like the first time in ages.

Harriet had visited St. Mungo's so often since Hermione had been checked in that he welcome witches would probably have known her by now even if she hadn't been Harriet Potter. The commissary staff would save treacle tart for her on Sundays, and all the long-term staff had long since got the urge for autographs out of their systems and now asked after her marks. The mint-green walls mixed with the lime-green Healers' robes were still an eyesore, though.

Nobody knew about yesterday's abduction; it was clear from the way they smiled and waved as if nothing were wrong. Remus was given a wide, wary berth that he pretended not to notice. Tonks, however, was greeted like a regular.

"Glad to see you coming under your own power, for a change," Healer Chaiprasit said to her as he hurried past with a stack of scrolls. "Morning, Harriet."

"You're not wrong, but you're still a tosser!" Tonks called after him.

Remus acted as if this were all a normal way of conducting oneself in a hospital. Harriet supposed that after living with Sirius for so long, yelling public insults at hospital staff was rather lowkey.

"We'll be back when Moody's ready to be released," he said, pausing outside the long term ward. "Ask Hermione if we can come in and say hello, will you?"

"Will do," she said, and pushed past the swinging doors.

The long-term ward was divided into two sections: one for long-term spell damage that required constant monitoring, and one for non-magical effects of spell damage. Hermione was in the second group: the damage that had resulted from Voldemort's attack had all been attributed to oxygen deprivation. She could have been in a Muggle hospital but for the fact that it affected her magical control. Lights went haywire; glass exploded; wood and metal melted. She couldn't be at home with her parents, either, until it went back under control.

She was sitting with Healer Johnson at a round wooden table, transfiguring a plastic cup. Or trying to. As Harriet tread down the row of beds (piled with quilts, personalized pillow cases, and bedsheets from home), her hand shook and the plastic cup collapsed into gelatinous goo.

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with your access," said Healer Johnson as Hermione threw her wand down. Since the injury, her frustration had come out in uncharacteristic ways. She'd always had a temper, but she was prone to breaking and throwing things now when she couldn't make things work. She'd had never had a problem making things work, before. "Only with the final movement."

"I have the power but not the-" Hermione struggled to form the word. "The-" Her expression twisted as she couldn't get it out.

"Combustion," Harriet said, stepping up to the table and dropping a hand on the back of her chair.

"-control," Hermione said. She scowled up at Harriet, but it wasn't real anymore. "The power but not the control."

"And as the control is related to motor movements, that's to be expected. Hi, Harry," said Healer Johnson, with a brief smile. She was Angelina's older sister, though Harriet hadn't figured it out until she'd said, "Angelina says you're the best flyer she's ever worked with." Apart from the occasional likeness of expression, they didn't look much alike - Angelina towered; Healer Johnson was hardly taller than Harriet; and unlike Angelina favoring long braids, she wore her hair in a downy cloud. But being in her ward was exactly like being on the Quidditch team with Angelina the few times she'd been in charge. Oliver had been prone to displays of emotion, wailing and gnashing of teeth; Angelina told you what she wanted and you did it. This was a valuable trait in Hermione's doctor, who had to be able to keep her in line. As a patient, Hermione was more than a little rebellious. She seemed to take it as a personal challenge to get better and get out, and she went after recovery the same way she tackled Transfigurations homework. At school, this resulted in five scrolls of parchment with footnotes; in hospital, the healers told her she couldn't expect results overnight and she should stop overreaching.

Hermione didn't take well to being told to slow down.

"Hi, Melanie," Harriet said. "How long's it been since the last break out attempt?"

Hermione huffed. "I never tried to - break out."

"I heard they found you scaling the wall with blueprints hanging out of your pockets," Harriet said as she hooked her ankle around the leg of a chair to pull it out.

"I only went to the - the -" Hermione made a furious noise as she couldn't make herself say the word.

"Communist party," Harriet said.

"Commissary."

Melanie was smiling, but in a way that Hermione, preoccupied with her own defense, didn't notice. Harriet caught her subtle wink, though.

"I didn't know we were expecting you today, Harry," she said.

"You weren't," Harriet admitted. "But I got a special escort. Remus," she said, in response to Hermione's curious look.

"Moody?" Hermione asked, because she was still as sharp as ever. She just had trouble making things on the outside work.

"Headed home."

Hermione nodded, but a light in her eye dimmed. Mad Eye Moody got to go home, but she was still trapped in here. Sirius probably could have related.

"Here." Melanie pulled a wooden box from beneath the table. "I want you to draw how that makes you feel. Both of you," she added calmly, ignoring Hermione's contemptuous snort. Harriet had never seen anything ruffle her, not even when Hermione shattered the lights.

"Cool. I love coloring," Harriet said. The box was full of colored construction paper, water-colors, and crayons. They looked like the kind of Muggle school supplies you could buy anywhere; she wondered if Melanie had bought them herself. The younger Healers tended to be more into Muggle things and methods. Art therapy was already a rather Muggle idea, though Hermione always scoffed at it like she'd been told to consult her tea leaves.

She took up a black crayon with an air of extreme sufferance - exactly like she'd act when Lavender and Parvati were consulting their complex star charts - and started drawing a very uninspired circle on some beige paper. Harriet felt more ambitious since Asteria had been teaching her to draw all through the spring.

"There," Hermione said shortly, pushing her paper across the table. It was, in fact, just a black circle on beige.

"Is that the Black Spot?" Harriet asked.

Hermione glared at her, but more playfully than anything, and knocked her foot against Harriet's ankle.

"Remus wants to know if he can come say hi," Harriet said as she sketched out a long, dark room.

"Yes," said Hermione, looking away, then mushing her lips together when Melanie slid a sheet of blue paper and a white crayon toward her.

"I thought I was supposed to draw what I felt," she said a little waspishly.

"You seem to have accomplished that," Melanie said with an almost invisible smile. She held up the Black Spot. "What shall we call this? A Critique of Long Term Medical Isolation?"

Hermione snorted, but she was hiding a smile as she bent over her blue paper.

Severus woke to a crown-moulded ceiling streaked with golden light. The room smelled faintly of powder, not of dust, and there was no muttered invective coming from the floor; it could not, then, be Grimmauld Place.

Paper rustled next to him, at which point he became aware that the bed he was occupying was supporting than one occupant. It was certainly big enough. Even before he turned his head, though, he caught a whiff of lilac and knew.

What happened, he wanted to ask.

"Ugh," he said instead.

"I'd say 'good morning'," Narcissa murmured, not looking up from her letter, "but for you, I can't imagine what's good about it."

He wished for the energy to pull the pillow from under his head and over his face. Maybe he could convince her to smother him.

"Well, you're not dead, so I suppose you'll get better," she said. The light gleamed on her long, flaxen braid; her dressing-gown matched the frosted blue brocade on the walls behind her. It was all nauseatingly perfect. "What have you been doing to yourself, my decrepit turtledove?"

Not enough, he thought.

"Trying to die," he said.

Narcissa hummed idly as she skimmed her letter. "Draco really is an excellent correspondent. He certainly didn't get it from Lucius' side of the family. Or mine, for that matter. Can you imagine Bella writing a letter? I don't think she ever did in her life. And the other one was so grim and dry."

It was hard to imagine someone grim and dry producing the chaotic, merry stormcloud of Nymphadora Tonks; but then it was difficult to imagine how ruthless, icy Narcissa had produced the clingy puppy Draco. Or insufferable prat James Potter contributing to the existence of the sarcastic but undeniably good-hearted Harriet.

He could still remember her face in the cupboard far too well. He'd shown up on Narcissa's front step last night to "report" to the Dark Lord, really hoping that some retribution would allow him peace, even if only in unconsciousness.

The problem with seeking peace through unconsciousness was that you weren't bloody awake to enjoy it. And now that he was awake, his self-loathing was set to outdo itself, and it was barely half past nine in the morning.

"What do you know of these Greengrass girls, Severus?" Narcissa asked, apropos of her letter.

Severus briefly considered whether discussing Draco's love life was more or less appealing than wallowing in misery. He couldn't decide, but Narcissa kept talking.

"Draco has encountered them at his cousins' house in Switzerland. Should I be keeping an eye on this?"

"I find it hard to believe that you aren't." He knew she had spies everywhere. She would definitely have some pointed at her son when he was abroad.

"Well, you know. I meant figuratively."

When he made only a vague noise, she finally looked up from her letter. Her eyes looked like a winter sky. "Severus, don't be recalcitrant. I know it suits you, but you know these girls from school. I know them only through my superb network of spies. It's an entirely different kind of bias."

So he would be talking about Draco's love life. He should've stayed at Grimmauld Place and reflected on the nature of life's transience in Regulus' room.

"One is in Draco's year at school," he said, resigned. "She's ambitious and bright enough not to do anything stupid. There's an older sister who was married recently, to an idiot, from what I could gather. The younger sister is terrified of everything. And the youngest of all isn't Hogwarts age yet."

Narcissa hmm'd. Severus managed to raise his hand and rub his eyes. They felt like pincushions.

"What happened?" he asked tiredly.

"After you showed up at the door, or after you spoke to the Dark Lord?"

"I remember speaking to him. I don't remember how the. . . conversation ended."

"He called me when he felt he'd run out of things to say. I collected you and brought you along here, to keep an eye on you. I was rather afraid you might die on me in the night. Quite ghoulish of you."

"I do beg your pardon. I'll plan it better, next time."

"Oh, Severus, I know you planned it exactly as you intended. You always do this." Sighing, she tucked the letter into its envelope. "After Reg disappeared, you were the same way."

He stared out the window. From the first floor, all he could see were the waving tops of trees against a boundless blue sky.

"Breakfast," Narcissa said. "I'll have Nitty bring it. You're allergic to sunlight, I know, and the Dark Lord never seems to eat."

"He feasts on the souls of the damned, probably," Severus muttered, watching a bluebird flit past.

"Then you gave him a three-course meal last night." He could feel her attention grazing the side of his face. "What did you talk about?"

"My failures. . ."

"This is good news, Severus - I am pleased to know there is someone out there working against me, besides that old fool and his lackeys - but you know you should have been there. We could have had Harriet Potter in our grasp right now, if only we had been as enterprising as those fools."

"His enemies. . ."

"And now she is sequestered with Dumbledore's piddling Order. . . Severus, if only you had managed to get to her before Sirius Black. . ."

"The girl."

"As ever, then." Narcissa reached for the tasseled velvet pull next to her bed and rang the breakfast bell. As she did, she triggered a brief scrambling spell; not enough to cause suspicion, but enough for them to talk without being heard. "It's a good thing Rita Skeeter is no longer out there causing trouble, or I might not have needed to worry that I'd ever see you again, last night."

"A good thing indeed," he said quietly, remembering Narcissa's promise this last winter; remembering the night he had stepped into this house and she'd whispered, "It is fulfilled, Severus."

Skeeter had skirted too close to a truth that Severus would not need to bring directly before the Dark Lord to receive punishment for. He could hide anything in his own mind, but not the minds of others.

Narcissa had taken care of Skeeter. And the Dark Lord would never know from himself the truth he had told Harriet.

Narcissa tucked a piece of his hair off his forehead, clearing his eyesight of one black bar. "You must be careful, my friend. We cannot lose you yet."

"I have no intention of going anywhere yet. I know how to tread the line."

"And that's its own worry," she said. "Believe me."

just laventadorn things: taking a fun, wacky trope like two people being locked in a closet together and angsting the hell out of it, ahahaha

but that's everything i write so

i'm exhausted, why do i write such heavy stuff 1000% of the time?

so harriet and hermione colored with crayons, and narcissa tucked snape up in bed. i'm gonna go pass out now. i love you all. you are amazing, and you give me strength.