(A/N: Wow! The Royal Wedding! Amazing! Oh, and to add to the amazingness of it, I have here my LONGEST chapter ever *applause for WonderWhiteRabbit* Let me know what you think! WonderWhiteRabbit hopping off.)

Chapter 15: Memory Constancy

Snape's breath rasped in his throat as he drew in air, gobbling up its purity in the hopes that it would cleanse him of his nightmare. He sat in bed, his sheets and nightclothes tangled into a dark sweating knot that rendered the one undistinguishable from the other. He let his body shiver uncontrollably. He let his hands clasp his arms with painful drags of nail through skin. He let his mind consume him as the nightmare played out, despite his waking gaze.

It had been years ago since that last occurrence...but the muggle girl, only just made aware of her magical abilities, looked at him with sober eyes knowing that the magic ability that she had been gifted with had also gifted her with the promise of death. The Dark Lord had used that tactic to much horror; Voldemort would pick out muggle borns or half-bloods and send out death eaters to kill them before they could even realise the world that is magic. He would stop their dreams before they had even begun. It had worked for some time; no new muggle borns attended Hogwarts for a full year before the Order had figured out a way of safe passage for the many that awaited entrance to the school.

Severus, fresh out of school himself, had been let loose like a raving dog from its chain and set upon the girl's household. That was the night he had found out...he didn't want to think about it.

He wouldn't think about it.

He would not allow himself to think about it!

But the memory pressed itself further against his mind and Severus had never learnt how to block himself from himself: that was the night that he had found out that Lily was pregnant with James Potter's son. He hadn't cared that he was reckless and angry. He hadn't cared that he left his sign upon every surface within the muggle girl's house. He hadn't cared that his whole body was taken over by the darkness that engulfed him and ensued through his magic and his wand to wreck havoc upon the house. All that had been left had been the sniffling girl, sitting in a corner.

He had wondered many a time afterwards, when his mind had cleared and the truth of his actions had disintegrated the red burning fortress that divided him from his emotions, what house would the girl have been in?

She had stuck her chin up at him as the house, burning with the physical attributes of his anger, fell about her. She had been crying, but she looked to him with dry eyes, the blueness of youth still prevailing in their irises.

"Rise to death! Know that this is what magic is!" he had commanded her.

She had stood, whether out of fear of his further wrath or pride of her own, he never waited to find out. Instead, her movements only made him angrier and with an evil green flash that left him panting, the girl was dead.

He supposed now she would have been in Gryffindor. But even a good Slytherin knew when the game was up.

Blue eyes still stared at him through his open eyelids, but the shivers were receding. He could feel the scratches he had made along his arms slowly protest with drops of blood. Blood. That was all anything was ever about. Something so uncontrollable as blood! He roared, his hands flying to his head and tugging at his hair in a state of absolute and complete helplessness.

Helpless. Inadequate. Useless.

But he wouldn't be like that for long. No. He may not be able to change the way Potter looked at him. Nor could he change how good Potter was at Occlumency unless the boy tried. But there was someone who he could help.

Ginny Weasley. She saw more in him that anyone had since Dumbledore realised his emotional state so many years ago...when he pleaded for Dumbledore's help to stop Voldemort from killing Lily...and even then Dumbledore had been ruthless, smashing his heart again and again until not even the bedraggled flesh left over from his childhood heartache was visible beneath the minced meat.

Now he had someone who was soft. Who was pulling that minced flesh into a tube of some semblance of shape. Who was pulling and pushing him together. Who was allowing him to feel again. For surely he was allowed to feel more than just the anguish of his own heart? Surely he could not be held liable for all the pain in the past.

No, he would not think that he was innocent. He was guilty. And he was paying dearly for all the wrong that he had done. But what about the wrong that the world had done to him? He had not asked the Sorting Hat, so many years ago, to put him in Slytherin. The Hat had seen his feelings for Lily, had seen his need and desire to be with her, but he had also seen others before him, not just Potter and Black but others before their time too, and known that their minds had already conceived a perception about him. And the hat had known...yes, there was no doubt in Severus' mind that the hat had known...that Severus would need the cunning that Slytherin would teach him, that Severus would need the strength gained from enmity and careful regard, and that Severus would need to overcome those things in order to earn his rightful place in Gryffindor beside his beloved Lily.

But he had earned his place much too late.

Severus felt himself falling back into the blackness of despair. He was not one for depression, but when it overtook him, there was no stopping its force.

Except...what was that buzzing sound?

Snapping his eyes open, Snape stared at the pocket of his robes that hung ungainly over his chair. It was moving ever so slightly with each buzzing sound. It took his mind a second to return to reality, the blue eyes of the long dead muggle girl fading fast into memory as he snapped to his feat and dug out the vibrating quill from his pocket.

He dropped to his knees, not bothering with the sharp pain against his cold skin, and pointed the quill carefully on the stone floor.

"I like fluffy things?" the quill wrote out. He stared as the words melted into the stone. She was unsure of herself – otherwise why the question mark? And she was scared – otherwise why the slant in her normally straight writing?

Steadying his own hand against the shivers running down his arm, he wrote back: "...As long as they're pink."

Then he stood up and flourished his wand, his icecold nightclothes vanishing from his skin. For a few seconds he stood in his secret room, baring to the world his pale skin pulled tightly around muscle and bone, the whiter scars standing out stark in the flickers of candlelight in the room, his ribs – each one clear as if he were a skeleton – rising and falling in the cool air, his toes clenching and unclenching in time with his fingers as he slowly made his body relax. And then, when his body was just a limp puppet standing as though hung from strings, he let his mind go too...and he felt everything. He forced all his walls down, not letting a single one stay, not hiding a thing from himself. He felt the love he had for Lily. He felt the betrayal he felt in himself. He felt the anger and hurt and pain. He felt the hunger for revenge and the need for forgiveness. He felt unequivocal sadness.

And then he felt hope. In Dumbledore. In Harry. In Ginny. And then, forcefully, for himself.

With another flourish of his wand, he had robed himself and the armour was back up over his mind, each fortress's walls strengthened by age-old mortar and chiselled rock.

Without a backward glance, Snape left the room and headed for the seventh floor where he knew Ginny would be waiting for him.

...

Ginny didn't know what to do. She had tossed and turned in her bed, but no other remedy came to mind. It had been how long? A week? Two weeks? And she still had not explained. Not apologised properly. For her actions. For what she had done. For what she had...dare she think it...stolen.

For surely she had stolen Snape's abilities? Why else had she not been able to feel the absolute bliss of nothingness when she had kissed her professor while he had been passed out? And then she felt butterflies again in her stomach, things that she shooed away impatiently; butterflies had no right to flutter benignly around when really she felt like she needed dragons instead. Now she stood outside the blank wall on the seventh floor, trying to come up with her very unstructured plan.

But she had no time to think, nor react as a hand came swiftly up to her mouth, smothering her sudden need to cry. But the cry never issued further than an intake of breath. For there it was. Through that single touch of five tough fingers along her mouth, she felt it again.

The bliss that was nothingness.

The bliss that was the touch of Severus Snape.

...

"Shhh!" shushed Severus insistently, although his reprimand was slightly useless as the girl had already kept quiet the moment he touched her. He felt the aura about her disappear, quieted like her voice by his touch. That aura...he would have to speak to her about magic control, but not now.

He dragged her unresisting legs into an alcove in the wall behind a suite of armour just before footsteps echoed softly against the walls, accompanied by soft whispers.

"Three of hearts, again!" Proffessor Trelawney, her mouth muffled by long wispy scarves, was talking to herself as she sorted through a pack of cards with bent up corners, their constant use obvious. "It can only mean three of three. Obviously The Chosen One and his two companions. Another must be Dumbledore and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and then an unknown companion. And then...another three? Who will fulfil the triangle and choose the direction of top and end?" she reshuffled the cards, still mumbling to herself, as she stepped around the corner.

Severus knew better than to believe the ramblings of the woman – not while she was in that state at least. If she were really foretelling the future, the Seer within would take over and everyone would lose their impression of her as the dim-witted, tea-leaves muddled woman that she is now.

But Ginny didn't know that. She didn't know that it was Trelawney who Snape had overheard so many years ago in the Hogs Head. She didn't know that it was Snape who had taken the information that he had heard to the Dark Lord. She didn't know that it was because of this information that Lily and James Potter had died. She didn't know that it was his fault that Harry Potter was who he was because of him. No, not completely because of him, but partially at least.

Slowly he lowered his hand. He felt the girl against his chest shiver. So she was finally scared of his touch, was she?

But then she turned around, her eyes once more with that shine in them. It was a shine of relief. A shine of discovery.

"I didn't steal it from you!" she blurted suddenly.

He didn't know what she was talking about. Steal it? Steal what? He let his face show a semblance of the confusion he felt on the inside, hoping that she would recognise it and answer the unspoken question.

She did see his confusion, but she chose not to speak there, in the alcove hidden only by the suit of armour. Instead she stepped back into the corridor and glared at him. He took his queue and closed his eyes, a slight growl showing his displeasure. But then he felt a tugging at his sleeve and he opened his eyes to see her pulling him towards the wall which now had a large door in its midst. He noticed that she didn't touch his skin, her hand curling around his thin wrist where the material of his robe draped over it.

She stepped through the door and Severus was pleased to see the room had created the Window Watching Room that he was most familiar with, its ten different walls portraying a different scene through the windows.

Finally letting go of his wrist, Ginny stepped to an ornate two-seater bench that overlooked one of the larger windows. Severus, his face impassive against the turmoil burning inside him, took the remaining seat next to her.

His body still smelt of her, where he had pushed her against him in the alcove. He had a fine red hair stuck in the crook of his arm, its dazzling colour standing stark against the black of his robe. And his hand tingled where he had touched her skin. Why was it feeling like that? Was it something in him making it like that? Or was it something from her side?

"Sir," Ginny whispered eventually. He looked to her. Her head was bowed, but he could still make out a flush creeping up along her neck.

"Miss Weasley?" enquired Snape, his voice dulled from its normal growl.

"There is something you need to see," and she looked to the window in front of them.

Severus could see that this was the Gryffindor common room, clearly distinguishable by its red and gold hangings. He could also tell that this was one of the girl's rooms. He was surprised that the castle would allow him to see into those rooms – normally the castle, its actions set by the old magic that made it, would not allow males into the female dorms. He supposed because it was given by Ginny's permission, the Castle would show him this small insight into the girl's dorms.

There was Ginny, in her four-poster bed, tossing and turning while the rest of her schoolmates slept peacefully. Eventually abandoning the thought of sleep, she pulled herself out of bed and slipped on her daywear that had been piled in a heap by her feet. Once clothed she went down to the common room, not surprised to see her twin brothers still up and whispering insistently to each other in a corner. She took a seat by the fire and watched it for some time. The flames seemed to be making her sleepy because she was not aware when, without warning, a letter shot out of the fireplace.

The letter, a piece of parchment folded three times, zoomed out of the fireplace and landed delicately on Ginny's unsuspecting lap. She had managed to control the yelp she had wanted to issue, but her eyes were still large in surprise.

Turning the letter over, she saw a neat scrawl etched into the paper, naming "Ginny Weasley" the recipient of the letter. She opened it slowly and then stared for a moment at the words written there. Snape could not see what it said – obviously the Room thought that he did not Need to see it, or maybe it was Ginny who didn't want him to.

Either way, the words had a great effect on the sitting Ginny. She jumped to her feet and, time too much of the essence, she summoned a cloak from upstairs, it trailing after her in the air as she ran out of the common room and into the dark corridors of Hogwarts. As the portrait of the Fat Lady swung shut, she grabbed the cloak that whipped past the closing. She put it on and then ran for a secret passageway. Snape watched as she ran through the corridors on silent feet, unhindered by stalking ghost, spying painting or prowling teacher. She reached the stairs leading to the main entrance, her chest rising and falling and her eyes bright with her plight through the castle. Snape saw that the staircase was lined on either side by small lighted fairies. With recognition, Snape realised that this was the night that Snape had found Ginny on the stairs of Hogwarts, when he had returned with the large knock on the back of his head and blood oozing slowly down his neck.

He turned slightly in his seat to see the girl out of the corner of his eye. She wanted him to see this moment in time. She wanted him to understand her actions. She wanted him to, what? Tell her it was ok? That she had reacted bravely despite the circumstances? That she was a good Gryffindor, true to its title? He would not do any of that. She had been stupid and arrogant. She had reacted exactly like a Gryffindor and he wouldn't be surprised if it eventually killed her. She needed to learn how to think before jumping straight into action.

Perhaps she knew this already though, since as he watched her in both the Room of Requirement and through the window that the Room provided, he saw the one pacing insistently and the other scowling at her actions. She knew then that she had acted wrong. That she had made a mistake. And now, through watching the event again, she wished she could change the silly little girl before her.

Snape was good at reading people. Gryffindors especially; their thoughts played as clearly upon their faces as if Ginny were another window that he could look through. But there was something else under her scowl that she gave to herself. It took him another second to see it; embarrassment. She was embarrassed by her actions and showing them to Snape was taking all the courage she had. He turned back to the window as he saw movement; he had arrived through the front doors.

He saw for the first time, Ginny's reaction when she had placed eyes upon him. It was an unmistakable look of relief, filled with a longing look of hope. As he watched himself walk up the stairs and lose his temper at the girl, he couldn't help but feel a little heat around his own collar; he hadn't reacted at all like a grown up. Then again, she had goaded him.

"FOR GOD'S SAKE, SEVERUS – YOU'RE BLOODY WELL BLEEDING!" Ginny's voice rang through the window. Snape wondered if it was the use of his first name that had stopped him or if it was the sheer tone of voice she had used with him. It was a desperate tone. A longing tone. He watched as the fairies along the staircase fell silent, each one tilting their heads to see the couple on the staircase better.

He looked to the current Ginny in the Room, her lips were pulled into a tight line and she was looking at him in a very obvious way.

"You deserved to be yelled at, Sir," she said through those tight lips. Severus found he couldn't quite look away from them.

"We all need something to snap us out of it in the end," he consented with a small nod of his head. He still stared at Ginny. She didn't look away. The window carried on its projections despite no longer having the full attention of its audience.

"Yes, Sir," she agreed. "Finding that something...that is always the difficult part."

"I disagree. Once you have found that something...it is what you do with that found knowledge that changes the course of one's path."

Ginny stared at him hard, her eyes shimmering in the starlit roof of the Room. He was enthralled by her. Whether it was the unknown aura that surrounded her and affected him more than others, or if it was the likeness that she held with Lily, or if it was the promise of care that showed through those shining eye...Severus could only guess at.

There was a noise from the window; Ginny had fallen over backwards, a chair lay sprawled on its side, the sound echoing in the room. He watched as Ginny ran from the room, the two potions on the table left untouched. She ran out of the dungeons and into the entrance hall. Without a second thought, she ran into the hall and towards a board that lined the hall's back wall. Seemingly running straight through a solid wall, Ginny disappeared behind the board, reappearing in a short tunnel that then lead her outside into the grounds. She ran, her legs flying through the air, feet touching down with hard thuds against the cold ground only to propel her forwards faster and faster. She hurtled through tall grass, past the greenhouses, past Hagrid's hut, ignoring the howls from Fang as the big dog watched her disappear into the Forbidden Forest.

The window went blank.

"What did you do?" he asked eventually.

"I ran away. Or, tried to rather. I was...quite unsuccessful. All that I managed to do was get lost. And then I was really angry with myself. Eventually I found myself in a clearing of some kind. There were centaurs all around me. Two of them got into a fight about my future. One wanted to take me back to the castle. Another wanted to punish me for coming into their territory. Eventually they agreed that I was too young to be punished and I was lead by a Palamino out of the Forest."

"Why did you do it?"

"You didn't see? What I did to you?"

Yes, he had seen. She had kissed him. She had forced her lips upon him. But whatever she had been expecting that night when she had kissed him, it hadn't happened. He felt himself squirm inside, boiling anger bubbling through his veins at the cheek of this girl. She had forced herself on him! She had, what, sexually harassed him? Who would believe it? That a girl would willingly fling herself onto him? It was beyond hilarious!

But that very fact made it all the more painful for Severus. He wanted to grab her by the hair and pull her head back, and then whisper over her whimpers what he would do to her now that she had taken advantage of him. All the trust that he had in her...it vanished. She was just like all the others; she wanted to use him. To take what she needed and then leave him bare and forgotten like everyone else. Who was Severus Snape? He was Spy. He had no allies. He had no one who cared. The less people thought of him the better. The more inconspicuous he was, the better. What had this girl done for him? All she had done was create another scar on his body. One along the back of his head and another deeper one that cut through his anger, the wound fresh in his black heart.

He had thought...no, there was the problem: he hadn't thought. He had leapt forwards like a Gryffindor. He had one aim in life: look after Lily's son. And now he had strayed from that aim. He had created a side-line for himself, only resulting in him losing his way. He had not accomplished his original goal of getting to know Ginny: to get to know Harry through Ginny. Instead he had lost himself in the girl itself, instead of being impassive. What happened? How did it happen?

He had felt. He had been selfish. He had seen a possibility that had not been there. His demented heart had fooled his mind. In his need to feel, to feel anything, he had created something that wasn't there. Ginny, care for him? For the Prince of Darkness? For the Slytherin Snake? No. As per usual, people only wanted him because they needed him.

Ginny realised nothing that the Potion's Master was thinking. His face was blank. His eyes were a closed doorway, blacker than the deepest night and darker than the depths of the ocean, where light was a foreign idea that it had not experienced.

Inside, Snape was becoming cold. The ice drifting down through him slowly, sinking through his veins and into his fingertips. He suppressed a shiver as the ice consumed his heart, freezing any more ideas of emotions before they could begin to grow. He killed off the tendrils that had already grown with a frost akin to the Antarctic. He would not do that to himself again. He would not put himself through that pain again; the pain of unrequited emotions. The only good those feelings were, was when it was anger against sadness. Fear against rage. There was no good for friendship against love. No use for longing against dismissal. No use for any of those.

And Dumbledore had put him up to it. He felt the ice clench tighter inside him, freezing his mind into a solid mass of spikes, sending each spike harder and harder into himself as he chastised himself for his mistake. Stupid. That was what he was. He thought he knew. He thought he had a hold of himself enough to know when he was being duped. When he was being fooled. And yet once more he only accomplished duping himself. Simply because he was a fool to himself. Lie to everyone else, that was easy enough, but when one started lying to oneself...that was when you knew. That was when warning bells should start ringing so loudly in ones ears that they drowned out the lies one wanted to say to oneself. But sometimes the lies were just so tantalizing. Were just so...innocent.

"I'm sorry," Ginny said eventually. "I know I shouldn't have done it. I wish now that I hadn't. I thought...I thought that I had stolen something from you."

"My dignity would be one thing, what would the others be?" drawled Snape. He wanted to move away from her. To put as much distance between them as possible. But he had frozen himself over so much that even his limbs were now stuck in place, only his lips moving a fraction of an inch in the effort to speak.

"Y-y-your dignity?" she asked incredulously. For some reason she was angry. He didn't understand her reaction. Surely she realised what she had done to him? What she had put him through? She was playing dumb. His insides screamed at him to wrench her aside and cause her unbearable pain. Play dumb with him huh? She would reap the reward that was so obviously hers after playing him for so long. She would not win this game.

But, as much cold as he put into himself, the room reacting and creating a frost that left their breath hanging in the air, so did the anger reverberate off of Ginny Weasley. The heat coming off of her was obvious from the warm waves rushing towards him, trying to break through his ice. Trying to melt away his cold exterior.

"This has nothing to do with your dignity!" Ginny spat, her body shaking with her anger. "You're so selfish! Oh woe is me I'm Severus Snape, I've got no friends or anyone to care for me," Ginny imitated his deep voice, mocking him with her gestures.

"How dare you!" spat Snape, leaping to his feet as if burned by her very words. Ginny stood up too and took a hard step towards him, her body visibly shaking in her anger.

"I dare very easily, Professor Snape!" she pointed a finger at him accusingly. "All you ever do is be a bitter old man, keeping your thoughts to yourself and your feelings locked in a casket somewhere in the depths of your heart. All you ever do is give snide remarks. All you ever do is push people away! And now here is someone, me," she pointed to herself, "if you hadn't noticed! And for once someone is trying to be on your side! You said that you wanted to help me, well I've wanted to help you too! And I know that all I've ever done is give you grief because I'm some happy-go-lucky Gryffindor, but I think that I know more about you than you've let anyone know about since Dumbledore! I want to help protect you, dammit!"

The room was sweltering. Even Severus could feel himself sweating in its heat. The girl had some anger management issues that she would have to deal with, Severus found himself thinking. Other than that thought, his brain was slightly stunned. No one had spoken to him like that for a long time.

As his mind turned to a forgotten memory, all of the windows in the Room of Requirement shifted to mirror the image in his mind. The room thought that Ginny needed to see the memory, but Severus was too focused inside himself to notice the change in the room. Ginny, however, took an intake of breathe.

The windows, each at a different angle, all showed an old classroom, its use forgotten by the cobwebs hanging in various corners and crevices. Snape was in the middle of the room, tables and chairs pushed away from him in a wide circle. From the doorway strode a red-headed girl, her face scowling in a fashion that would make even Severus cower. Which the little Severus in the room did, taking a few steps back until he hit the edge of his table-chair-strewn circle.

"Sev! Why did you do it?" the girl yelled, not stopping her hard steps until she was inches away from him, her hand poking into his chest.

"I was protecting myself!" said the young Severus, still cowering although his voice rang true.

"You don't protect yourself by using a hex! You use a counter-curse or jinx!"

"Counter-curse, please," the little Severus rolled his eyes. "That's just a misnomer to make them more acceptable by the Wizarding world. They're just normal curses or jinxes that – " the girl cut him off.

"I don't want to hear about your little theories! The point is, Peter is in hospital because of you!"

"Then he shouldn't have bitten off more than he can chew! If you want to blame anyone, blame that stupid Potter and Black! They're the ones who goaded the stupid prick to try to curse me!"

"Oh no you don't!" the girl said, jabbing her finger yet again into Severus's chest, although Ginny noticed Severus stood up taller this time. "Don't you dare try and blame this one on Potter!"

"Why do you do that?" the whispered intent behind the words was not lost on the girl or on Ginny. Looking at the little boy, Ginny saw a shadow of what the man would become. Sadly, she also saw the shadow of what the boy could become, but that had gotten lost somewhere between the past and the present.

"What?"

"Protect him."

"I-I-I don't protect him!" spluttered the girl, before saying more boldly, "I'm here to protect you!"

The windows rippled to another image, but they showed nothing in particular. Ginny looked into the present Severus Snape's face. He was whiter than usual and his black liquid eyes seemed to shine with a hidden emotion. Ginny was scared, her heart was beating wildly, but she did as any Gryffindor would do; she stood her ground.

"You will not repeat what you have seen to anyone," whispered Snape, in much the same tone of voice he had used on the girl.

"No, sir," Ginny nodded her head.

"You will return to your commonroom now," Snape turned his back on the girl, his face as pale as a ghost and stared at one of the empty windows.

Ginny realised it immediately; the room was still showing the inside of Snape's mind. He had emptied his mind of all thought, and as such the windows showed empty rooms and corridors. Gently, Ginny stepped around to the front of Snape so that once again she was looking into his cold face and even colder eyes.

"Sir," Ginny said tentatively, but after he did not react she took a breath and carried on. "Sir, I don't know what I saw just then. I don't know why the room thinks I need to know things that I obviously shouldn't. But sir, please trust me? I won't tell anyone what I saw."

"I trust you, Miss Weasley, to follow instructions."

Ginny huffed and put her hands on her hips. All of a sudden, Severus could feel that aura again, emanating off of her slowly. He felt a shiver down his back and, after a second, realised that it was not of fear, but of pleasure. He liked that power. It had something to it...something special about it. He recognised it from another person that he had known who had also had that power in apparent abundance. He felt his masked emotions melt slowly off of his face, sadness coating each age-old line. As Ginny watched his facade fade before her, her expressions grew more tender. Was that pity he saw in her eyes? Or was it something not so demeaning as that?

"Sir..." she raised her hand slowly to his face but did not touch his skin. He found he wanted to push his head against that hand, feel it against his skin, bask in the glow that he now realised was not pity, but worry. Concern. For him. For the Snake of Slytherin.

She held her hand there, inviting him, but he did not move. He would not allow himself to be engulfed in that false security again. One wrong move on his part and she would be gone from his life and he would be empty once more. Why put oneself through that pain when already he had endured it?

Eventually Ginny dropped her hand.

"I thought that I had stolen it from you, Sir," Ginny said as she looked at the floor. "I thought that I had stolen your magic."

Severus raised an eyebrow.

"You ran away because you thought that you had stolen my magic?"

"Yes, Sir. I thought that I was a-a-oh I don't know. A thief! A danger to everyone around me!"

"You are a danger to me," said Severus, causing her to snap her head upwards to look him in the eye. "The reason," continued Snape, "why the Dark Lord injured me was because he could not find you in my mind. He searched harder than I have ever felt him within my mind, but the memories of you he could not find. It was as if I didn't have those memories. I knew about them, but I didn't know all of them. As if someone had told me the tale and I had merely pieced the parts together. And yet, because no one had told me the story, the Dark Lord could not find the memory."

Ginny took an intake of breath.

"So you got hurt because of me?" she asked slowly.

"Yes," said Snape simply, not missing the obvious shame displayed on her face.

"But how did it happen?" she asked eventually.

"How indeed," Snape drawled. "If I knew the answer, I would have given it to the Dark Lord. It would have saved me much...embarrassment."

"I'm sorry. This is all my fault!" the martyr in her kicked in and Snape smirked at her words. Typical, he mused.

"Then what are you going to do about it?" asked Snape dryly. "If you say it is your fault, then you must fix what you have done."

"I don't...I don't know how...how to fix it..." she stumbled upon her words as her thoughts raged in her mind.

"You need to learn control of your power. That is a first. Occlumensy can help. I offered to teach you in the early mornings. We will start tomorrow morning."

Ginny bobbed her head in thanks and gave him a small smile. She recognised the dismissal and was only happy to oblige.

Snape watched her as she leapt through a window and ran the corridors of Hogwarts at night, her red hair whipping behind her. The windows in the Room of Requirement split so that he was looking at that very same red hair on two different people. He didn't know if the image displayed before him was one of his memories, or one that the room had picked up from the very history of the castle.

Lily and Ginny ran side by side in alternating windows. The looks on their faces fierce with determination as they ran with a purpose firmly glued in their minds.

Even through time and space, Severus could feel the same aura emanating through the windows from both girls. He imagined a red glow about them as they whipped up to the Gryffindor tower and through the portrait hole.

(A/N: And so? Your thoughts, please. I, unlike the fabulous Severus, cannot perform Legilimens and as such rely heavily on the spoken word to see what is in your mind. Or I could use the mystical Room of Requirement but it is such a temperamental thing that it might just show the inside of MY mind and then the story's ending would be such a let down, no? WonderWhiteRabbit hopping off.)