"But I want to be the dog! You can be the car. You like Muggle cars, remember your motorcycle?" Lucy whined.

"You should share. Sharing is good for you," Sirius told her as if he'd have been more than willing to share with her.

"I am an only child. I didn't have to learn how to share."

Dinah laughed, probably thinking that they looked like a couple of children arguing like this for the past five minutes. "You could always flip a Knut for it," she joked, rolling between her fingers the small silver thimble she had chosen as her own piece.

"I call heads!" Lucy shouted, before Sirius had a chance. Dinah flicked a Knut into the air and it landed back down on the table. Tails up.

"Ha!"

"You are going to pay for that later," Lucy said through clenched teeth. She grudgingly picked up the little silver car; "It doesn't even have a backseat like other cars."

"It's an old car," Dinah explained, stuffing the Knut back into her robes with an amused expression. "Now, I'm going to be the banker since neither of you has played before. That puts me in charge of the money." She started handing out some strange, colorful pieces of rectangular paper with numbers on them.

"This is what Muggles use as money? And they use it to play a game? That doesn't seem right."

"No, no," Dinah said with a giggle. "This isn't real money. It's play money."

Lucy smiled; glad her friend wasn't afraid to laugh at her anymore. It was nice to see that her emotional issues didn't seem to be affecting her relationships too much. "Okay, well what do we do now?"

"Well, we all start by putting our pieces on the 'Go' space here. Then we roll the dice and move the number of spaces that they indicate."

Lucy threw the dice and got a four and a two. She moved her little car six spaces, landing on The Angel Islington. "That sounds pretty."

"That's a place," Dinah said, "All of these things are either places or roads. When you land on a space you can look at the price at the bottom there and decide if you want to buy it or not."

"Hmm. It's doesn't seem expensive. I think I'll buy it," Lucy handed Dinah the money and the game continued on that way for the next couple hours, Dinah patiently explaining the rules as needed…and sometimes playing referee.

Finally Sirius said, "Is this a never ending game or what? Do Muggles really play this long?"

Dinah frowned and glanced at the clock on the wall; "You know, it is getting late. I'm sorry, I didn't even think about it since I was so busy teaching you. Usually my family plays the game in that we set aside two hours and if nobody wins by then we just stop and whoever has the most money at that time is the winner."

"That's all right," said Lucy, "He's just a sore loser." She looked over at his significantly smaller pile of money, "Looks like you win, Dinah."

Dinah shrugged, "Well, you both did really well anyway. This was fun."

Lucy nodded, "I think so. Perhaps we can play another Muggle game sometime. What about that one with the colorful dots on it? That looks fun; we should play that next time."

"Oh, did you see that on my game shelf?" Dinah flushed slightly, "It's one I've had since I was a child. It could be interesting to play as adults. Although who knows, maybe I could trick Severus into it."

"I confess I snooped around a little bit. Just things that were readily visible. I didn't go through your drawers or anything."

"Oh, I'm not worried about it. I'm totally nosy in other people's places, too," Dinah grinned, and then yawned, "But I think I'm ready to turn in."

They put the game away and then Dinah bid them good-night before heading upstairs to her room.

"Good day?" Sirius asked as they climbed into bed.

"Mostly," Lucy yawned, even though she had napped earlier.

"Just mostly?

"Yeah, I had fun decorating with Dinah and all but I feel bad about what happened with her and Severus."

He pulled her down onto the bed with him; "That's not your fault or your problem."

"I know," she said, snuggling, "but I still feel bad. On top of that I've been looking for my mother's ring all day and haven't found it yet." She looked up at him, "You haven't seen it, have you?"

"Oh, I meant to tell you before I left," he got up and went to where he had left his robes. "I found Dora batting it around this morning and stuffed it in my pocket before I left."

"Oh, good! I was starting to worry," Lucy put the ring on and thought for a moment, "That's odd, though. Dora doesn't usually go for things that don't roll well."

Sirius just shrugged and got back into bed, seeming to want to leave the subject. "You know," he said with that gleam in his eye she knew well, "The room below us is empty and your family will be here soon…"

"So what are you suggesting?" Lucy said, smiling.

"Oh, nothing," he said, rolling them over.

Lucy laughed. One thing he would never have to worry about. He made her laugh more than anyone else…except maybe the twins.

Dinah stepped into the bedroom and looked at Severus's simple, black bag sitting by the dresser on the left. Kneeling in front of it, she touched the leather and ran her hand along its smooth surface. It seemed clean enough. What kind of strange experiment was it that the Weasley twins had exploded in his room? Well, it didn't matter. He wouldn't be sleeping here again, anyway.

Pushing those thoughts aside for the moment, to preserve her sanity, Dinah crawled into bed. Using her wand to extinguish the light in the room, she pulled the covers up to her chin and stared at the black ceiling. The bed was warm, but she felt cold inside. She knew that she wouldn't leave Severus yet, but the question of whether this relationship would ever go anywhere still plagued her.

She wasn't sure how well she'd be able to deal with this kind of abandonment a second time.

With that distressing thought, she managed to fall asleep.

Dinah wasn't sure what woke her up in the middle of the night, but the next thing she knew she found herself staring up at the ceiling again, wondering what time it was. As she stared she began to feel like there was another presence in the room. Something breathing beside her.

She took her wand from the nightstand next to her and whispered, "Lumos."

Slowly shifting onto her right side, she could just make out the shape of Severus sleeping beside her. Her breath caught in her throat but she forced herself not to make a sound so she didn't wake him.

He had come back!

She just stared for a long time, warm joy welling up in her as her lips curved into a smile. She recognized his sleeping form from the few other times they had slept in the same bed, but still it always amazed her how peaceful looking he was when asleep. The hard, stern Severus she knew during the day visibly softened when at rest. It was a beautiful sight.

She wasn't sure why he had come back, but the point was that he had. And with the other room the way it was he must have figured his things had been moved here. All of her worries about breaking up with him and where the relationship might go drifted from her mind. If he was able to work through his issues and actually come back then there had to be more hope for the two of them than she had ever imagined.
Her smile widened and the tears she fought back this time were ones of joy. "You came back," she whispered, moving forward and gently wrapping her arms around his wait, resting her head on his chest. She could feel his breath in her hair and his heart beating underneath her, rhythmically. And then his arms tightened only slightly around her.

"Dinah."

She gasped and looked up, but the light of her wand revealed that he was quite clearly still asleep. Still asleep, and yet he had whispered her name.

Not Lily. Dinah.

Dinah sighed, more content than she'd ever felt, and extinguished her wand before closing her eyes. "I love you, Severus," she whispered, and knew that it was true.