I'm so, so sorry it's been so long since I updated! It's been a rough few weeks for various reasons that I won't bore you with, but I got there in the end! There is a sequel, but it's not finished yet...if there's enough interest, I'll try and get it completed. Let me know if you're interested :-) Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Erytheia Snape had been staying at Hogwarts for just over two weeks when it first happened.

After that night, the people Erytheia had come to know as Sirius, Lupin, Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle had all been taken to one of the strangest places she had ever seen in her life other than Hogwarts, St Mungo's Hospital. Of course Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle had been taken to the secure wing straight away and she hadn't seen them later and she dearly hoped that she never would again. But she had been permitted to follow her father as he had accompanied Lupin and Sirius up to the emergencies department where a team of medical wizards and witches fussed over them for several hours, particularly Sirius who had turned the colour of wet chalk.

Erytheia didn't think she would ever forget it…she had never seen so much blood in all her life. Neither had Ariadne, judging by the haunted look on her face as she'd watched Sirius being taken into a private room. It had taken several cups of tea and much reassurance from her father before her aunt had eventually stopped sobbing for long enough for her to be introduced. Erytheia had often heard her father talking about his sister but, as Ariadne hadn't been on speaking terms with her family for over twelve years, Erytheia had never expected to meet her. But she was grateful for the chance. She just wished that it had come under better circumstances.

Sirius had remained at St Mungo's for a week, and Erytheia had accompanied her father, her aunt and Lupin every day when they'd gone to visit him. Although she'd been wary of him at the manor house, she soon came to realise that there was no more harm in him than there was in a teddy bear, so how Malfoy could ever have believed that he had hurt her father was beyond her. Plus, Sirius was also great fun to be around. He made her laugh with his outrageous stories about the things that he and Buckbeak had gotten up to while they'd been on the run from the Ministry, about his days at Hogwarts with the other Marauders, and he even told her about Harry. Erytheia had very much liked the sound of him. It seemed they both had the same stubborn disregard for rules, especially if they didn't make sense to them personally; a love for adventure; a habit of getting into trouble; being too curious for their own good, not to mention independent streaks a mile wide. She looked forward to meeting him as soon as Sirius was allowed to bring him back to Hogwarts.

And she couldn't understand why people were so afraid of Lupin, even knowing that he was a werewolf. She found him fascinating and she nagged him constantly about every gory detail of his transformations until even Sirius had begun to roll his eyes. Lupin didn't have quite the raucous, mischievous sense of humour that Sirius had, but she still liked being around him, albeit for different reasons. He had taken her on a guided tour around Hogwarts showing her everything from the topmost Astronomy Tower to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, at every step answering all her questions with the inexhaustible patience of the teacher he had once been. And there had been many questions, because Erytheia had never seen a place like Hogwarts in all her life. She thought it was the most wonderful, exciting, strange and frightening experience she had ever had and she wished more than anything that she hadn't been born a Squib so that she might have had the chance to go to school here instead of having to go to the stuffy, run-down, cash-starved Muggle comprehensive school she attended.

She thought that it might have been something of a relief to her father, too, to no longer have to hide the fact that he had a daughter. He introduced her to the other teachers with a warm pride that touched her deeply, and he almost seemed anxious for her to see as much of the castle as she wanted to, to experience as much of Hogwarts and its people as she could before she needed to go home. And she had taken full advantage.

As well as the good things, though, her first experiences in the magical world had led her to appreciate her father's reasons for wanting to protect her now more than ever, having come face to face with the evil that had touched him so long ago…the evil that had robbed her of her mother and put those dark shadows beneath his eyes.

Her mother was on her mind as she sat by the edge of the lake on a particularly beautiful early September morning, skipping stones across the glassy surface of the water. She knew that her mother had grown up in Romania, but she had also spent a long time here with her father, and she wondered if her mother had ever sat here, at this spot…if she had ever skipped stones like this…if she had ever seen Hogwarts and marvelled at it the way Erytheia did…

And if she had been in any pain when she had died…terrific, incredible pain such as that which had touched Erytheia at the manor house…

For the first time, she had experienced just a taste of how different her life might have been had her mother lived. She had never yearned for her father's or grandparents' abilities, nor had she ever experienced a burning desire to see the world her father lived in. He had always told her how dull it was, how much he hated it, how tediously dim-witted the students were, how much he preferred to be there, in her world, with her. She understood that now too. She understood his fear, his deep resentment of the magical world that had robbed not only his daughter of her mother, but also himself of a dearly loved wife. No wonder he had always seemed so lonely…lonely in a way that she was far too young yet to fully appreciate. He needed her within his world far more than even he realised, especially now.

And she needed him more than ever now too.

Everything he had ever done to protect her, everything her mother had done, all the sacrifices they had made, and it had all been for nothing. The dark forces that her mother died to save her from had found her at last. She knew that they would use her to hurt her father who had betrayed them not once now, but twice. And there was no hiding from them anymore.

But it was too late to worry about it now.

She sighed as she picked up another tide-smoothed stone and ran her finger over its silky wet surface before angling it towards the water. It skipped once, twice, three times, casting ripples in its wake over the golden surface of the lake that mirrored the fire of the rising sun above the dark, brooding silhouettes of the mist-draped mountains.

Then it boomeranged around in a wide arc and began to skip back towards the shore, landing with a heavy thud beside her.

She only realised that her mouth was hanging open when her throat began to feel dry. She closed it, licked her lips and stared down at the stone. She swallowed thickly and looked around, half expecting Sirius, Ariadne, Lupin or even her father to leap out from behind a tree and exclaim, 'A-ha! Gotcha!'

But no one did.

'Sirius?' she called. 'Ha ha, Sirius. Come on, you can come out now. Hey, that wasn't funny! Remus?'

But still no one came. Her voice echoed back to her from the valley walls.

She shook her head in disbelief. It couldn't be. It was ridiculous. Maybe the stones and the very water around the lake were magical too. Maybe it was just a game that the landscape liked to play on Squibs and Muggles to scare them off from the ramshackle ruin that they would see if they were to happen across Hogwarts. She could see it, yes, but that's only because her father was there. Because she'd been brought here by others.

She'd eaten too much for breakfast, perhaps. Too much eating could do that to you. Wasn't that what Mr Scrooge said to Mr Marley's ghost in A Christmas Carol? She remembered reading that a while ago…a bit of undigested beef…made you hallucinate.

But she hadn't had any beef.

There was nothing else for it. She picked up the stone again and scratched her initials into the slime that slicked its surface. She stood up, angled the stone to the water, and threw it. It skipped again, in ever decreasing arcs. Once…twice…three times. Then skittered around in a semi circle and skipped once, twice, three times back towards her, hitting her squarely in the thigh.

'Ow!' she exclaimed, rubbing her leg. She fell back down onto the grassy slope, picked up the stone and threw it over-arm into the water where it landed with a deep, echoing plop. It didn't return to her again. 'Shit,' she murmured, staring into the water as the cascading ripples finally stopped. 'Sirius, I swear, if that's you, I'll…' But she couldn't think of anything strong enough to do to him. Besides, she wasn't so sure it was him anyway. It didn't seem his style somehow. He'd have been only too happy to claim the credit.

She sat and gazed at the lake for a while, still expecting the stone to come hurtling back towards her. Perhaps there was some sort of magical creature in the lake that was playing games with her. She wanted to throw another stone, just to see one more time, but she was half-afraid that if she did, nothing strange would happen again and she knew that if it didn't, then she'd be disappointed. At least now she had the fluttering of excitement stirring within her and she wasn't ready to let that feeling die off just yet. So, she picked herself up, brushed the bits of grass from her jeans and ran back up the slope towards the castle.

'Dad!' she panted as she practically fell through the doorway to his chambers.

Snape was sitting in his armchair beside the roaring fire - which was necessary down in the damp chill of the dungeons even in summer. He put down the book he had been reading and the cup of steaming Elderflower tea.

'Ah, Eryl. So nice of you to knock.'

'Sorry, but there's something…something just happened and I…'

'Calm yourself, Eryl. Is everything alright?'

She nodded just to reassure him that Hogwarts wasn't under attack and that aliens hadn't just landed on the Quidditch Pitch. She was powerless for a while to do anything but nod as she wheezed and panted, bent over with a stitch in her side, trying to catch her breath. Snape just sat there, smiling patiently, while he conjured her up a glass of pumpkin juice and a cauldron cake.

'What's that?' she asked, her nose crinkling as she looked apprehensively at the orange liquid.

'Pumpkin juice,' he replied. 'Try it. It's good for you.'

Her nose was still crinkled as she sniffed the glass, then took an apprehensive sip. In two more seconds, she had drained the glass and was asking for a refill. Snape obliged.

'Feeling better?'

She nodded.

'Good. Now then...what is wrong?'

'Nothing really, I suppose...I feel a bit silly now.'

Her father sighed. 'Something must have prompted you to come rushing up here. What was it? '

She thought about the skipping stone, and the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that it hadn't really happened. Just her imagination...

'You'll think I'm making things up. It doesn't matter...I shouldn't have bothered you.'

Snape shifted onto the edge of his seat and patted his daughter affectionately on the back of her hand. 'Eryl, dearheart, I have never given you cause to think I would doubt anything you say. You have never kept things from me before. Has something changed?'

'No...but I - '

'Then there is no reason not to tell me now. Is there?'

She rolled her eyes, took a bite of the cauldron cake to give her a few seconds more, then replied, 'Alright. But you'd better not laugh.'

'I promise.'

'Well, I was sitting down by the lake thinking about mum, and I…started throwing stones across the water and - '

'Ah,' Snape nodded, anticipating her. 'It is a squid.'

'Sorry?'

'What you saw in the lake was a Giant Squid. It's nothing to be afraid of, he won't hurt you. All the same, I shouldn't go provoking him if I were you.'

'No, that's not it. I know a bloody tentacle when I see it, Dad.'

'Language, Eryl.'

'Sorry. But it wasn't anything I saw, it was something that happened. I was throwing stones across the lake and…well…it turned around and came back to me. Landed right beside me in the grass. Like a boomerang.'

'Like a what?'

'Oh, it doesn't matter. It's like a bent piece of wood that Aborigine Muggles use for hunting. Anyway, this stone just turned around on the water and came back to me. I thought I was seeing things, so I threw it again, and it came back again, only this time it hit me in the leg. Really hurt, too.'

Snape sucked in a long, slow breath, steepling his fingers beneath his chin as he turned away from her towards the leaded glass window. He couldn't see the lake from there, just the crimson smudges of cloud veiling the rising sun as it climbed through the azure sky. After a while, his hands moved to cover his face as he rubbed his eyes and turned back to her.

'Has anything strange like that ever happened to you before?'

'No. At least, I don't think so.'

'Mmm…' Concern was furrowing his brow.

'Is something wrong? You look worried.'

'No...not really. At least... Would you be willing to try something?'

'Like what?'

Snape pushed up from his chair and glided across to his desk, his long robes billowing out behind him. He unlocked his bottom drawer with his wand and pulled out a small, hand-carved statuette of a dog. A Labrador, Eryl thought. He put it onto the desk, then handed his wand to her.

'Now point the wand towards the ornament. No, not like that...like this. Okay?

'I think so.'

'Now I want you to say, very clearly, "Accio Fenrir." Can you do that for me?'

'Alright, though I do feel really silly now.'

'There is no need to feel like that. Please, just say the words.'

She shrugged. 'Accio Fenrir.'

The small wooden dog shot across the room into her hand as though it were tied there by a piece of elastic.

'Oh my God!' she gasped, sitting up straight, gripping the statue as though she had never seen anything like it before. 'What just happened? Did I do that?'

'Yes,' said Snape, pushing the drawer closed, avoiding her eyes. 'You did.'

'Really? I made it come to me like that? You're not humouring me, are you?'

'No, Eryl, I'm not.' He didn't seem to be even one tenth as excited by this as Erytheia was. He actually seemed depressed. He came back to his chair beside the fire and sighed, leaning forward, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

'What's wrong, Dad? Isn't that what was supposed to happen?'

'Yes. It did exactly what it was supposed to do.'

'So why do you look as though someone's just died?

When he looked up at her, his skin seemed to have turned an even whiter shade of pale. His eyes were like the entrances to two dark, bottomless chasms; colourless, empty, devoid of any feeling that might once have lived there. Except, possibly, unfathomable, heart-rending grief.

'That ornament belonged to your mother. She bought it because it reminded her of a dog she had when she was small, Fenrir. She loved him dearly and she heartbroken when he died.' Snape closed his eyes and sucked in another shuddering breath before continuing. 'I have tried so very hard to protect you, Eryl. Your mother and I, we talked for days when we found out that we were expecting you. We'd already made such terrible mistakes and all we wanted was to make sure that you never suffered for them.'

'I know that,' she murmured, fidgeting with the wooden dog, running her fingers over the knots and the cracks in the varnished coating. She didn't much like hearing about her mother. Not like this. For some reason, she felt a heaviness bearing down on the centre of her chest when she heard her father speak of her - a weight that made her want to cry, even though she wasn't entirely sure of the reason for it.

'We prayed and prayed that you would be born without magic so that we could hide you in the Muggle world where the Dark Lord would never be able to find you. And it seemed as though our prayers were answered.'

'I know, Dad. Please don't… I don't like to hear about this, you know I don't.'

'I'm sorry, Eryl. I'm not telling you this to upset you. I'm telling you because now it seems as though we were wrong.'

'In what way?'

'We were wrong to believe that you had no magic. Wrong to think that we could keep you from this world; wrong to believe that we could hide you and that no-one would ever find out. Keeping you out of this world, refusing to share everything with you left you alone and unable to defend yourself when they eventually found you, as they were always bound to do. It is my fault. I convinced your mother than it was the right thing to do, to hide you with my parents. Maybe she'd still be alive if I hadn't...'

Erytheia looked up when she heard her father's voice trailing off. Silent tears had burst in his dark eyes and his hands were clasped together in his lap as though he didn't know what else to do with them. He looked so small, somehow. Vulnerable. And very lonely.

She had never seen her father cry. Never, not in nearly fifteen years. Not at anniversaries or birthdays or Christmas. Not even when they visited her mother's grave. A searing pain lanced through her heart as she moved from her chair to sit beside him and wrapped her arms around him.

For a moment, he stayed where he was, rigid, his breathing ragged, but then she felt him leaning into her.

'I'm sorry, Eryl,' he whispered. 'I let you down. I let your mother down. I should have asked Dumbledore for help sooner...'

'You did everything you could, Dad.'

'I miss her, Eryl. I miss her so much.'

'I know you do. She would be proud of you, I'm sure she would. And you still have me. I love you, Daddy.'

His arms tightened around her waist. 'I love you too, Eryl.'

She held on tightly to her father for as long as he seemed to need her to. It had been a long time since she had hugged him like this and now she felt guilty that she had never been more demonstrative with her feelings towards him. He seemed so aloof sometimes, so…hard. Although she had never doubted that he loved her, she had never particularly felt the need to hug him or kiss him or reassure him that she loved him too. Perhaps that had been wrong, too.

'Your mother always said you were special,' he said, smiling. 'She was more right than she knew.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't know what triggered it. Perhaps it was the Crucia…' He couldn't bring himself to say it. He screwed his eyes tightly closed and shuddered as the image faded away. 'Perhaps it was the curse Malfoy used. Perhaps it was the thoughts of your mother, or the strength of your desire to remain here. Dumbledore will know more about that than I. But it would seem as though you are not quite as for non-magical as your mother and I thought you were.'

'Really?' The excitation in her voice was unmistakable. Snape only wished that he could share it.

'It would seem so, Eryl. Perhaps we should try something else.'

'Okay!' she exclaimed eagerly. 'Like what? Can I use that Accio spell again?'

'No, you can clearly do that, though we still should keep it simple. My wand is, of course, not designed for you. The wand chooses the wizard...or witch. I shall need to take you to get your own in time.'

'I'm a witch? Wow,' she chuckled. 'Jonathon will think that's hysterical. He's been telling me I look like a witch ever since I started wearing eyeliner.'

Snape raised an eyebrow. 'Jonathon?'

'He's a friend from school.'

'Ah. I see. And was it him that encouraged you to change your hair?'

'Oh, that,' she said, running her hand over her dark ponytail. 'No, I asked Nanna to do that for me. I had to nag her for ages because she knew you wouldn't like it, but she just did it for me with her wand. You can change it back if you hate it that much.'

'No, I…I do not hate it exactly. If you prefer it though, I suppose I shall have to live with it.'

Erytheia grinned at his awkwardness. 'Thank you. I'll probably get bored of it in a while anyway. And Jonathan is just a friend, Dad. No need to look at me like that.'

He was still frowning as he bundled up some old parchment into a metal bin and put it in the centre of the stone floor.

'Now, Eryl, listen. You need to point the wand directly at the parchments and say "Incendio". Say it once, without the wand first.'

'Incendio,' she repeated.

'Good,' Snape smiled. 'Now point the wand at the base of the parchment and say it again.'

She nodded, raised the wand and said, 'Incendio!'

Nothing but a few blue sparks spat from the end of the wand for a while and then, just when she was about to lower it in disappointment, a beam of light shot towards the bin which instantly burst into flames.

'Oh, wow!' she exclaimed, 'I can't believe it! I did it!'

'Evanesco,' said Snape, waving his hand over the flames. The bin and its burning contents disappeared. 'You certainly appear to have potential. Your mother would be so proud of you.'

'Can I try something else?'

'One thing at a time. I think perhaps we need to speak to Dumbledore first. Perhaps we can see about getting you enrolled here for next term.'

'Really? You can do that? I can stay here?'

'I can't promise anything until I speak to Dumbledore, and you'll have to undergo some tests to try and assess the strength of your magic, but I'll do my best. You would have much catching up to do, of course, but I am willing to tutor you. I'm sure that some of the other teachers would be, too. It would be wonderful to have you here, I admit. And it would also be safer now, under the circumstances.'

Erytheia's smile couldn't possibly have grown any larger.

'Can we go see Professor Dumbledore now? Oh, Sirius is going to think this is great! And Remus! Aunt Ari will be so surprised when she sees what I can do!'

Snape smiled at her. 'I'm sure she will. Yes, I see no reason why we shouldn't see him now.'

She was still grinning as she followed Snape out of his office and into the corridor. He watched her with a bemused, affectionate and very proud expression on his once sallow face. Whether it was Erytheia or whether it was the breakdown of a barrier within himself that had caused it he didn't know, but when he caught sight of his reflection in one of the windows along the corridor, he could have sworn that for the first time in more than fifteen years he had some colour in his cheeks and light within his eyes.