One Day at a Time

The Three Broomsticks

It was mid afternoon and I was standing at the entrance to Hogwarts along with Hagrid, Sprout and Flitwick. We had decided to make an excursion to the Three Broomsticks, and we were waiting for McGonagall to join us, as she had said she was going to. It was a rather nice day: there were a few lazy wisps of white clouds on the horizon, and otherwise there was nothing but the sun's strong beams shining down. When it hit the leaves of the trees it caused portions of them to appear a shade of lighter, giving them a speckled, glowing appearance that changed whenever a light breeze blew by. I turned back to the castle entrance to see McGonagall briskly striding towards us, and she gave us one of her slight, tight-lipped smiles.

"Ready to go?" Hagrid said heartily.

"Let's wait just a bit longer," McGonagall said before adding, "I convinced Severus to join us. He should be along shortly."

I raised my eyebrows but managed to restrain myself from making any comments. Like asking, for example, why anybody would want Snape to come in the first place. It seemed to me that if effort was going to be put into convincing someone to do something, it would've been better served convincing Snape and his cold, sarcastic demeanor to stay as far away from us as possible. The others in the group didn't say anything either, but instead made cheerful acquiescing sounds. Snape didn't keep us waiting long, at least. Only a few minutes after McGonagall had arrived, he swept up to us and curtly nodded in response to the generic greetings of the other professors. My first thought was that, unsurprisingly, Snape had the standard unpleasant look on his face. My second thought was that I did not believe I had ever seen him outdoors and the sickly pallor of his skin in the sunlight seemed to second my thought.

I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but when people are in a large group they tend to split up into pairs for the walk there. To my great dismay, McGonagall started talking to Sprout, and Hagrid to Flitwick, so that at the back of the group I was stuck walking silently next to Snape. I glared slightly at the back of McGonagall's head—if she was going to invite Snape the least she could do is be the one to chat with him.

"It's a nice day," I started, falsely cheery.

"I suppose it is," he drawled in a neutral tone.

I searched my mind for a topic of conversation that he might respond favorably to, before settling on the Slytherin Quidditch team. "So what do you think about the Quidditch teams this year?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, and his eyes flicked in my direction. Hey, he's actually acknowledging my presence instead of pretending he's walking next to a collection of air molecules! Who knew he had manners, I sarcastically thought.

"You knew those people who fly around on brooms and throw balls at each other?" I said, the sarcastic tone from my thoughts leaking into my spoken words. "Which team do you think is going to do better than the other ones."

He was silent and at first I thought he had decided to simply ignore my existence altogether, before I realized he was simply thinking. "Well of course I hope the Slytherin team wins," he started. "Gryffindor has won in other years, though, even when Slytherin had a stronger team than it does now."

His voice and manner had yet to become cold or sarcastic, so as far as I was concerned I had hit upon a conversational gold mine. "Does the Ravenclaw team still always take the defensive approach? I remember when I was here that was their strategy, and I heard that they had been doing that for decades."

"For the most part they still do that." He paused. "I'd forgotten you went to Hogwarts."

I mentally rolled my eyes; another part of me found it funny that he had forgotten, even though we were both Slytherins. "Yes, I did," I said, an amused smile tugging at the corners of my lips. "We were there at the same time, although I doubt you remember that, either."

He was silent again for a brief second. "No, I'm afraid I met too many during my years there to remember them all." How diplomatic. A true Slytherin. "I don't remember any Colburns. Or at least--" his brow creased faintly as he gave me a slightly longer, more intense look "I don't remember you. There was a Colburn that was Prefect. And later Headboy."

I felt my lips reflexively purse. Great. So that's what he remembers. Now I'll just be "Colburn's sister." In a slightly annoyed tone I replied,"Yes, Deneb was Prefect and Headboy."

I saw Snape looking intently at my face again, and after our eyes first met I looked away, assuming he was trying to see the family resemblance. Deneb and I looked faintly similar: our hair was the same color of chestnut brown, and our eyes were identical shades of light blue. "Older or younger brother?" he inquired, and I swore he sounded amused.

"Older." I curtly replied. He looked me in the eyes and I felt rather exposed again, but just for a second, because at that point we had all arrived at The Three Broomsticks. I made a point of not sitting next to Snape—I already had to suffer sitting next to him at meal times at Hogwarts.

The waitress came to our table and started pleasantly chatting with Hagrid and Flitwick while simultaneously taking our orders. She left and by the time she returned with our drinks, our group had moved on from small talk to a much more depressing and unwelcome conversation: the rise of the Dark Lord.

"It's horrendous," Sprout shook her head. "And even though Hogwarts is safe—or at least feels safe—there's always the feeling elsewhere that you never know who might be a Death Eater. Or worse: what if someone you know has been put under the Imperius curse?"

"It feels like the First War again—like we never won it, that we're just going back to its beginning. And that war was so horrible," Hagrid's voice cracked on the last word. "I mean—just the first thing I think of is always all those deaths, ending with Lily and James Potter."

Did this really have to be what our conversation centered on? When somebody died I generally put it out of my mind relatively quickly. I didn't want to think about death, or it's affects on others and how horrible it was. But they continued talking:

"Lily and James Potter," Flitwick sighed. "They were such a sweet couple. James wasn't exactly the most well-behaved student," he laughed reminiscently "But Lily was so kind, so caring. I still can't believe they were murdered—just—murdered!"

Before I knew what I was doing I abruptly stood up and pushed my unfinished Butterbeer away from me. "I'm feeling a bit light-headed from the stuffiness in here," I brusquely made up an excuse. "I'm going to go out and get some fresh air. Don't worry about waiting for me," and I started to stride out without waiting for another word.

From behind me, though, I heard someone stand up and Snape's voice say "I'm going to accompany her." I started walking faster, dreading that he might catch up with me. Snape was unpleasant, and I thought the situation was already unpleasant enough. Alas, he did, and after giving him a sidelong glance I set about to ignoring him. I didn't know where I was going, but my quick footsteps seemed to be taking me in the direction of the Shrieking Shack, and Snape was still next to me.

"I'm not actually feeling light-headed," I finally snapped at him. "I'm not some ill, frail woman who needs to be accompanied everywhere."

"Why'd you actually leave then?" he stated in a flat voice, one which was lacking his normal haughty self-confidence.

"Because I don't want to think about Lily and James Potter being murdered," I stated, crossing my arms as a wind blew down our path. "What about you."

He seemed immersed in his own thoughts and he said the word "Same," only in a rather odd manner. As soon as he started the "s" sound it seemed as though he wanted to swallow the word and it was only dragged out of him by the force of the word's own momentum. Regaining his normal composure he quickly added "It was too stuffy in there, anyway--no ventilation. Absolutely unbearable, I wanted to get outside."

I nodded. I was still walking, leading the way to nowhere. We had just passed the Shrieking Shack and left the village, walking up a large hill with a winding trail. The trail continued for quite some time and we walked in silence, both seemingly immersed in our own thoughts. Finally, after who knows how long, I got tired of walking and simply announced "I'm going to sit," not particularly caring what Snape thought or if he was also going to stop. I plopped down on a stretch of wild grass and to my surprise, he followed suit. (Although I suppose I wouldn't have used the word "plopped" to describe him sitting down.)

The blue on the horizon was becoming paler and paler, starting to take on an orange tint, while the sky directly above our heads was a royal blue. The horizon went from a pale orange tint to a magnificent blazing combination of reds, oranges and yellows. It looked as if the air and the earth itself were catching fire. Slowly it faded, and became a serene dark blue, an ocean putting out the fire. I glanced at Snape out of the corner of my eye but I couldn't see his face--his head was at such an angle that I could only see his greasy black hair and his large nose in profile.

"Do you want to go back to Hogwarts?" I ventured; I had already finished my train of thought.

His head jerked at the sound of my voice as though coming out of a reverie and he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "You can go back if you want to."

I opened my mouth to say something and then realized I had nothing to say. Instead I looked up at the sky. Stars were starting to appear, although not very many; they were drowned out by the light of the almost-full moon. I'm not quite sure why I decided to stay sitting next to a man I strongly disliked—I suppose it seemed the polite thing, the right thing to do. Besides, he was really only annoying when he opened his mouth, and for now he was silent.

My first class of the next day was, to my great unhappiness, 6th year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. Normally I liked teaching this class, but what I didn't like was having my mind drift back to the professors' conversation yesterday every time my eyes landed on Harry. I was quite happy when the class was over and I turned my back on the class to shuffle papers, listening to the sound of the students leaving and hoping I wouldn't have to see Harry for another couple of days. I could tell there was somebody standing behind me, though, so I turned around to face them. The face I saw caused my jaw to drop in shock. The man had chestnut colored hair and light blue eyes, eyes which bulged unnaturally out of sunken eye sockets. His face was gaunt, and his high cheekbones protruded abnormally, matching with the boniness of his frame; his robes hung loosely on him, almost as if he were a skeleton. I stood, shocked, looking at this ghost, this Inferi, without saying anything until my mouth blurted out the first sentence I could think of:

"You look like hell, Tarazet."

"Fifteen years in Azkaban would've done that to you, too, Liseli."

…

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; just borrowing Rowling's settings and characters.

A/N: So having read the Deathly Hallows, I bet all of you can figure out what Snape was thinking about. Anyways, I wanted to give a big thank you to Mywaychan and Jenz127 for reviewing; updates should be coming approximately every half week. Reviews are always greatly appreciated!