The next day Sophia was sitting at a table in the library looking over some Astronomy notes when a paper airplane suddenly flew over her head, its wings flapping magically, and landed softly on her book in front of her. She looked around, but nobody was looking her way as if they had just sent it to her; only Madelin Wood, sitting not far away, was looking up from her work because she had just noticed it flying by. She opened up the paper and looked at both sides, but it was completely blank. Then she saw letters starting to appear at the top of one side, as if written by an invisible hand. Once finished, the writing read,

"Hello, Sophia."

She felt her heart jump immediately, for she recognized the handwriting at once. She turned around again, and then she saw him: Snape was sitting at a table not far away with his back turned to her, but he had nothing in front of him but a piece of parchment he was evidently writing on, and was now sitting still as if waiting for something.

Sophia realized quickly that he must have sent her one of a pair of twin parchments. They had used these to write notes to each other all the time when they were younger. She got a quill out of her bag and wrote back a message on her parchment:

"Severus? What brings you to talk to me all of the sudden?"

The words that gradually appeared beneath it in response said, "Well, I'm not really talking to you. We're actually writing back and forth to each other."

"Don't be smart," she wrote back, a smirk spreading across her mouth.

There was a moment in which nothing appeared back for a while, and then he wrote, "But in all seriousness, I hope there's no hard feelings now about us growing apart."

"You mean about you abandoning me?" she wrote.

"People change. I simply no longer related to you and found friends I fit in with better."

"Speaking of which, I saw how quickly your new friends came to your aid in the library the other day," she wrote back before he could continue.

A moment's hesitation. "Surely you remember that I prefer to take care of myself. But it's sweet of you to be concerned. Actually, the point of this exchange is my concern for you. More specifically, about the people you're befriending. I understand you and Black have become close."

Sophia's brow narrowed as she read this, and she wrote, "What about him?"

"I know we haven't spoken in a long time, but I feel it would be very disloyal if I didn't warn you about him and that group," he wrote back. "They aren't what they seem. Lupin, especially, is not exactly the gentleman he appears to be."

"Lupin? Why does he have anything to do with this? What are you talking about?"

"You know that he is absent from school very often?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that. People used to talk about it like it made him some kind of weirdo."

"Nobody has ever been clever enough to piece together his secret. But if you pay attention to the days he is always gone, they are always during the full moon."

Sophia's eyes ran across this sentence, and when she was done reading it she immediately burst into a short fit of laughter, making several students look up at her like she was a lunatic. She turned in her seat and met gazes with Snape for a moment, but he wasn't laughing. She turned back to the paper.

"You're not joking," she wrote, the shock now spreading through her.

"No. I am the only one who knows about him besides his friends and the staff."

"But how did you find out?"

Once again there was an expectant pause, and then his text starting appearing again.

"I found out when I was almost attacked by Lupin last year," appeared the writing, and Sophia's eyes became wider with each sentence he wrote. "When he transforms he sneaks down a tunnel under the Whomping Willow which leads to that shack in Hogsmeade that nobody goes into. I guess all of this was built for his convenience. I went down that tunnel once and almost made it to the shack, not knowing what I would find. I could have been seriously hurt or killed if Potter didn't get down there at the last minute and stop me because he was afraid of getting in trouble."

Sophia felt like cold water was spreading through her body, all the way to the tips of her fingers, making writing feel different for her, almost difficult. "What do you mean? Why would he get in trouble if Remus attacked you? How did you find your way down there in the first place?"

He took longer than ever to write his answer this time, and she turned for a second to look at his back. But then the words came in black, horribly infallible and true.

"I was tricked. Black put me up to it."

"You're lying!" she shouted out loud, standing up and looking straight at him. Every single head around them turned toward them with alarmed faces.

He just looked back at her calmly and said, "I'm sorry, Sophie."

Breathing heavily, she just stared at him a moment and shook her head. Then she grabbed the piece of twin parchment from the table, crumbled it into a ball and threw it at him; it hit his shoulder and fell to the floor.

"Fuck you, Severus," she said in a dark, low voice.

With that, she grabbed her things and quickly walked out of the library, followed by many eyes. Snape got up from his seat and left with an almost pleased expression on his face to go to a different part of the library, acting as if nothing in the world was wrong. Some students were now laughing, but they mellowed down when they say Madam Pince coming their way to investigate the raised voices.

The only person not staring in the direction of Sophia leaving with a look of utter confusion on her face was Madelin Wood. She was looking at the discarded piece of paper Sophia had thrown at Snape that was now sitting still and forgotten on the floor, and she got up and went over to it.. As everyone distractedly conversed with each other about what could have just happened, she picked it up and put it in her pocket before anyone else could see it and also become curious.