By Fire, From Ash

by genegonewilder

Young adult Severus is finding it difficult to adjust to life post-war, in part due to the fact that the rumors about his Death Eater status seem to have spread far and wide, but also because his own self-loathing outweighs anything anyone could throw at him. With his new teaching position at Hogwarts, he hopes to just move on, but a woman stands as a blazing reminder of his past.

4. Return to Ash

—Author's Note—

Hello, really quick I just wanted to say my thanks for the kind reviews and such!

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"How much time have we got left
It's killing us, but carries us on"

B.R.M.C. - Returning

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Chapter 4 – Return to Ash

A chill crept through the open great oak doors of the entrance hall. He pulled his cloak tighter around him as he stepped through, sighing with weary compliance as he took up his post just outside at the bottom of the stone steps, waving his wand over them as he went to clean up the many muddy tracks caked coldly to the smooth surfaces.

The last week of September had brought with it a chilly rain that had left the grounds moist and blown down a colorful display of leaves from the changing trees, giving October a very seasonally appropriate start as it deadened the last bits of summer. A solitary small student now looked to be lumbering up the path to the castle with at least half of these leaves stuck in what looked like huge leafy discs of red and yellow to the bottoms of his shoes.

"Summers," Severus called with accusatory sharpness, "just what do you think you're doing—bringing in half the forest?"

"Sir—help," he pleaded, hopping as fast as his awkwardly shaped shoes could take him up to the professor. "They—a-a sixth-year cast some jinx on my shoes and I can't get all this stuff off."

"Then remove... your shoes."

"But—sir—"

Severus raised his eyebrows. The boy continued gawking, but eventually complied, leaving his cumbersome shoes within enough distance that he could teeter to the first stone step on socked feet.

"Whoever it was, I will see them pass by and make sure that they remove their jinx and return these to you," he said, though with an air that it sounded like more work than he was hoping for. "And do be careful not to slip on those socks—Professor McGonagall has already had to escort one student to the hospital wing with a broken nose for slipping on mud."

The boy picked his way up the steps with much more care, walking almost as though he still had his jinxed shoes on as he weirdly danced through the doors. Once he was gone, Severus turned and picked his own way through the muddy grass towards the side of the steps behind a large bush so that he could watch in the shadows and not have to look so conspicuously like a lowly doorman.

It was McGonagall that had elected him for this job, practically shouting his name across the entrance hall as he walked by as if he was the student in trouble for trekking in mud and causing the kerfuffle to break out. At least there didn't seem to be too many students still out as the early evening brought with it lower temperatures and dinner, which he had not gotten a chance to even sniff at yet given the interruption.

"Deserting your post? You traitor."

He glanced over his shoulder around the other side of the large bush then turned back with a roll of his eyes. "I can see anyone walking by perfectly fine from here. Odd—I didn't see you step out."

"That is odd," Freya said, coming to stand next to him with one hand holding her chin in contemplation. "I wonder how I got out here? I could have sworn I was just at dinner, noticing a very empty seat next to me and about to cut into a lovely grapefruit."

"Perhaps you should have stayed there," he offered with sour sweetness.

"Now, why would I do that when my lovely colleague here is putting up the good fight against such dangerous forces as muddy floors?"

"McGonagall told you that, did she?" He finally looked down at her, annoyed as she nodded. "She's already at dinner? But she's making me stand out here."

Freya offered him a consolatory grimace, but looked amused. "Probably shouldn't have given her Quidditch captain detention. She's quite competitive."

"Yes, well, so am I," he said with a glance towards the Quidditch pitch far in the distance where his own House team was currently practicing in their allotted time that he had signed them up for.

"Good luck trying to win that," she said with not much faith. "McGonagall will put you in the mud herself." He scoffed, but she continued with a change of subject before he could voice his thoughts on the deputy headmistress. "Actually, I'm out here because I wanted to talk to you."

"You can talk to me literally any other time of the day."

She tilted her head back in exasperation. "Yes, I could, technically speaking. But I mean actually talk and not get ignored because you're obliterating a muffin with a breadknife or reading so seriously you just snap at me."

He narrowed his eyes, remembering he wanted to finish a particular book later that night and craving dinner, barely taking in her intent to get his attention away from the path he was staring lazily at. His eyes strayed a quick glance in her direction. "What do you want?"

Apparently what she had to say was deemed, by her at least, more important than the dangers of mud, because she stepped right in front of him to say her piece. "I wanted to know if you've gotten any mail recently. Perhaps from old friends...?"

His eyes snapped down at hers at once, looking slandered. "Excuse me?"

She raised her brows in confusion at his reaction. "Old professors...?"

"Oh." He relaxed at once, realizing he wasn't being accused of conspiring with 'old friends'. There was only one professor that he would count as being on friendly terms with that wasn't at the school—though, none of his old professors at the school would be sending him letters even if they weren't. Slughorn wasn't exactly a friend either, and it was odd hearing him referred to as such, but he wasn't sure what else he would categorize him as now. "Yes, I believe I got something a few days ago..."

She nodded up at him, imploringly. "Yes, and...?"

He looked back down with vague indifference, shrugging and shaking his head.

"Severus," she said, drawing out his name and quietly clapping her hands together under her chin, "did you read the letter?"

He made her wait another moment before he shook his head again, just as disinterested.

Her head tilted to one side and she scrunched up her face in a pained smile. "Did you throw it directly into the fire, or did you just stuff it in a drawer?"

"The fire," he said with a mild smirk, looking over her own head of fiery hair towards the path to check that nobody was there. The letter, with its beautifully penned signature and broken gaudy wax seal, had been stuffed in a bottom drawer of his desk after he had finished reading it, but it was more fun to annoy her. She sighed heavily and dropped her arms, but he continued before she could complain, "I don't need to read it to know what it is, Slughorn exclusively sends letters to invite people to parties."

"Correct, he does! So...?"

As much as he was enjoying being painfully unhelpful, he had to end the charade there, dragging his gaze back down to her with disdain. "You can't be serious."

"Five galleons," she shot at him, and smiled brightly at his incredulous look. "I knew you'd say no, so I came prepared."

"You're bribing me to go to a party?" She nodded resolutely, patting the pocket of her robes which to his disbelief actually jingled. "You're serious? Ah, and this is why you didn't want to do it in front of anyone—shady business, bribery."

"It's not that shady."

"You're right, it isn't." He turned up his nose, but he was peering around the bush like a particularly shady individual before his next words. "And it isn't that much money either. I could get five times that for a single potion on the black market."

Her jaw dropped indignantly. "Wh- You-! Just what have you been getting into the past few years?"

"Holidaying in Tahiti."

"At fifty galleons a pop, you better have been."

"And what about you? I don't recall ever reading that phoenixes spit gold. Or is that money you don't spend on housing since you can just live in a tree?"

"I'm doing fine for myself, thank you very much," she said with a haughty air, twirling her hair around her finger.

It was his turn to look surprised. "Don't tell me you... charge?"

"Well, I do have to have self-respect, don't look at me like that." She was ducking her head, avoiding his eyes as she mumbled, "Not for anything that heals or save lives, though, just the feathers."

"How positively—"

"Don't."

"—noble of you," he spoke over her with a sneer. She was grimacing up at him and her fingers seemed to be twisting her lock of hair more out of annoyance now. He looked the long singled-out strand up and down, wondering if it hurt or if sensation didn't travel between forms like that. Another idea came to him then. "Alright... I'll go. For one of those."

"One of what?" Her fingers let go of the twist and it unraveled.

"A feather. And the five galleons, as well."

She wasn't standing quite close enough to him to laugh directly in his face, but then again, her laugh was so loud it not only hit him but bounced off the stone walls behind and around him, echoing out into the grounds as he blinked in mild annoyance. Her expression dropped to a stony straight mask in one beat of his jostled heart. "Absolutely not."

"Fine. Have fun at your party."

"Wait—Okay, alright, you can have one."

"What was that about self-respect...?"

"Ugh, stop being so difficult! Just the one, alright?"

"And you wouldn't happen to be lying, just pretending to agree to give me one so that I'll go?"

"Me? Lie? Never."

He stared down into her wide golden eyes, blinking innocently up at him. His mouth pulled into a tight smile and she returned one of her own right back at him.

He couldn't fathom why this was being brought up with such importance. There were plenty of holidays and celebrations throughout the year, and he had zero plans for any of them, except to keep it that way. He did not feel like celebrating or being merry, and besides, Slughorn's letter had noted the date of the party not even on Halloween day, though he advertised it as a party for such in his writing. Apparently it was something to do with the Hogwarts staff having too much staffing to do on actual Halloween night, what with the students trying to get into mischief, which, in his memory of being a student, was accurate, but he didn't really care if he missed 'celebrating Halloween' to monitor the halls. What was he going to do—carve a bloody pumpkin?

Either his guard-bird was getting sick of being cooped up in the library watching him like a hawk, or she was trying to push him into socializing like it was charity work, both of these aggravated him equally for different reasons.

Before he could make up his mind, the sounds of laughing voices carried from further down the pathway, and they both turned their attention to see a group of students as they passed. He scrutinized them, but they looked to be fourth-year girls, not a roving gang of jinxing sixth-years, though they did point at the jinxed shoes at the bottom of the steps with interest. Freya, closer to the pathway with a better view around the stone banister, suddenly stepped out of the hiding space and called out to them.

"Oi! Are those yours? Where do you think you're going with them?"

The group of girls all seemed to have been startled by her appearance, as he heard multiple gasps. "Professor! We were, err, just looking."

"Alright... Actually, what are those- shoes?" Freya, hands on her hips, turned her question towards her shadowy hidden colleague.

"A first year had an unfortunate incident." He reluctantly revealed himself, coming to stand by her side and giving the girls another start. "I believe he's currently walking around the castle in socks, looking for the counter-jinx to—"

One of the girls suddenly shrieked, pointing at them. "What were you two doing behind a bush?"

Both professors gaped at the girl, glanced at each other in mutual disgust, and then rounded dangerous glares back at the accuser, who was being shushed by her giggling friends.

"Detention," he said with certainty.

"No, surely not," said Freya, waving this away. "Five points from Ravenclaw for letting your clever brain run amuck, however."

"I can issue detention for whatever I deem fit," he argued, irritated at his judgement being challenged in front of students.

"Not over this though—A rude comment?"

"A rude comment to a professor," he hissed, turning more towards Freya than the students gathered on the steps, waiting to see if their friend would get detention or not.

She met his stance as well, directing her authoritative pose on him now. "Excuse me? Two professors."

"Even more reason to give her detention."

"You're being way too harsh—"

"Five points is not enough for the disrespect—"

"You can't just give everyone detention; you'll never leave the dungeons—"

"Err—Professors?"

They both whipped their heads back to the small group, who were now staring between the pair of them with raised brows on their young faces. "Can we... can we go?"

Severus opened his mouth but Freya beat him to it, "Yes, of course—five points from Ravenclaw and that's all—"

"Ten," he countered, "ten points from Ravenclaw, and think before you speak next time if you're going to be representing that House."

The fourth-year girls jogged up the steps with a mix of groaning and giggling, apparently unimpressed with this punishment. He clenched his jaw, wishing he had taken more points, and turning back to Freya to blame her for this. But she was looking after the girls with similar distaste.

"Good you got in that extra five, I felt too bad to do it myself," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I swear—they think we're like their older siblings, not teachers."

"Don't speak for me," he said a bit too defensively, "my students usually respect me."

She raised her hands indignantly. "Are you blaming me? You were the one hiding in a bush."

"You just had to follow me around."

"Alright then, I'll shout into your brain from halfway across the school next time," she said with annoyance. "Now get back in there, you scandalous creep, I'm not done." And he was shooed back behind the bush against his wishes, looking over his shoulder to make sure no more students were nearby.

"What?" He conspicuously positioned himself completely out of view of the path, folding his arms and leaning against the castle wall a good few feet away from her, but she merely walked closer to him anyway, apparently not taking the hint.

As if they had not been interrupted, she smiled brightly, but he recognized it as her dangerously fake one with no warmth in her eyes. "You cannot honestly tell me you don't want an excuse to get away from students for an evening."

"Yes, about that," he drawled, looking up to the tops of the bush where the leaves were browned from all the months of sun, "as hard I'm sure it is for you to imagine, I do not wish to be around anyone" —he looked pointedly at her— "not just students."

She sighed in exasperation, jumping back into her pleading tone. "Oh, come on. Don't you want to see all your..."

He raised his brows, eyes squinted.

"All your... old potion's professors?" She grimaced at her own lame ending.

"Ah, yes," he said nodding with fake reverence, "all one of them. Splendid idea."

"Well... Well, Flitwick likes you just fine. And McGonagall-"

"Put me out here like I'm the new caretaker," he interjected harshly. He had his doubts about Flitwick as well, but he didn't exactly want to go down the list of people who regarded him with varying degrees of disdain and grade them individually.

"More like a Halloween decoration, honestly," she said, tilting her head and looking him up and down. At his confused (and annoyed) expression, she supplied, "You look like a vampire."

"Thank you," he enunciated, voice politely dripping with venom, "I have never before been compared to a vampire, not once in my life."

She looked utterly perplexed by this, and he knew she was about to say something extremely annoying in response to his sarcasm. "That's weird—have you been hanging around a bunch of incredibly stupid individuals?"

"Just the one, lately."

She flashed another smile at him, seemingly unperturbed at being the idiot in the room—or grounds.

He supposed she didn't have much to be defensive of. He had found, in between grading and reading, if he talked to her, for instance, about something that he was researching, she was plenty intelligent. It was a shame, really, about her personality.

His tongue slid across the back of his teeth as he deliberated. "Is the feather still on the table, or are you willing to admit to that lie?"

"Not willing to admit to that lie just yet, no," she said with a sly smile, brushing her hair to the front of her shoulder and taunting him with a faint momentary materialization of a single golden feather. "As far as illicit activities, however, how do you feel about-"

"What?" His shoulders hunched ever so slightly.

She blinked, surprised out of her smile. "What—huh? I'm talking about your black market potion selling, and bribery—and I was going to say gambling. How about taking some risk and leaving it a toss-up whether I'll actually give you a feather after the party? What did you think I was talking about?"

He stared into the bush behind her, blank-faced. "Nothing. Alright, sounds fair."

"Really?" For the first time in the conversation, her whole face shown with genuine enthusiasm, leaning in to look him in the eye as if she could hardly believe it.

His lip curled and he leaned back against the castle more. "I'll... think about it."

"That's good enough for me," she said cheerily, apparently having not expected much. "You've got loads of time to think about it, anyway. Well, I'll let you get back to your post. Enjoy!"

He gave one dismissive nod of his head as she waved, watching her go... right to the wall next to him, where she leaned her back against it as well, hands clasped over her robes in waiting. He stared at her from the corners of narrowing eyes as she craned her neck to look round at the path, checking for students. After a moment of this, the corners of her mouth finally twitched under his gaze, and, not taking her eyes off the bush straight ahead, she whispered with amusement, "I can't actually leave you out here alone in the cold, it's too sad. I promise I won't invite you to anymore parties though."

He blinked languidly, holding the muscles in his face back from smiling even in disdain. He wanted to make a comment about how he was most definitely not cold, but he knew it would just goad her into teasing him. In any case, if she was going to stand vigil with him as the last of the students came in for dinner, he wasn't about to have a repeat of the fourth-year girls. Pushing himself away from the wall, he asked casually, "Not planning any early Christmas parties?"

She scoffed behind him, following his lead out to the bottom of the steps to stand closer to the path, "Me? Severus, it's barely October."

"And yet, here we are, setting up for Halloween," he said with irony, stowing his hands in the pockets of his robes under his cloak. "Why not try for Easter?"

"Ooh—So sorry, I can't, I have plans," she winced apologetically at his side.

"Secret organization party?"

Her eyebrows raised and she cast a glance around, but the only students were far in the distance, coming back from the Quidditch pitch. "I don't think you can get into those, even as a plus-one."

"And I am devastated by this, truly." He kept his eyes down the path so that he would not have to deal with knowing if she believed him fully on that. "Gobstones party?"

"Is that even a thing?"

"I assure you, to some people, it is," he said looking back at her with a weary expression, though more for himself as she would not understand. She laughed heartily anyway, and his brow furrowed. He had run out of imagined parties to be harassed about, and they lapsed into a mostly comfortable silence.

Eventually, the Slytherin Quidditch team had made their way within earshot, and at once got an earful about their thoroughly caked shoes, not being allowed to set a single muddy foot on the stone steps without cleaning themselves up first. Unfortunately, the culprit of the sticky shoes was also found among the team, and Severus pulled the guilty beater aside to issue a warning about McGonagall being out for vengeance... so he had better only be jinxing first years well out of view. He briefly spoke to Wells in passing, and then they all headed in for dinner at last.

The Wells boy had been doing mostly fine since their incident at the start of the school-year. Severus had spoken with him only once more, and only in half-privacy, pulling him aside in the hall before breakfast one morning to check on the status of his letter writing. The boy had been distant and mumbly, but it was hard to tell if this was because of anything to do with his personal life, or just embarrassment at being called out by his professor in front of his group of friends. Severus hadn't thought much of the incident, until much later when it became apparent that showing any kind of attention publicly to the boy had been a mistake, as now his whole group of friends, most of them with questionable parents themselves, had gotten it in their heads to also want special attention from him—or what they thought was special, assuming in their minds some other kind of conversations taking place between him and Wells. He had been able to keep them at bay, however, with the help of Wells' apparent unenthusiasm to share the truth of his own incident.

All in all, in between trying to keep students from blurting out unwanted information about their imbecilic ideas on Dark Arts to him every chance they could corner him alone, and his own troubles with trying to study the Dark Arts in the staff library without being tailed by Freya, he was leaning towards believing Slughorn that teachers did indeed need some time to themselves away from the castle, though he wasn't sure the old professor would really understand his current woes. He had been teaching during the war, but had he dealt with the same things the new potion's teacher was going through, post-war? As October went on, Severus found that he might actually want to have a conversation with Slughorn—however stilted by lies and masked realities it may be.

As for his party companion—for he was sure that Freya would be showing up to his office door the night of the party, ready to glue herself to his side the whole night unless he could perform the world's first human unsticking counter-charm—she had been her usual cheery obnoxious self consistently ever since reading him the riot act in his own office during the first week of school. There had been a brief couple of days afterward where she had kept staring at him during meals with wide-eyes, and he had assumed she was waiting for him to get back at her for her callous speech. He didn't have a single thing to fire back with, however, because the woman hadn't been the least bit wrong, and he wasn't in the habit of arguing with redheads when they screamed at him for being an absolute mess, because he was finding, by his statistics, they tended to be correct. He was simply trying to ignore the whole incident and correct his behavior before he could be called out again. He made sure to attend breakfasts regularly once he had his sleep schedule on track, to keep up appearances of not being a dungeon-crawling ghost of a human being, though he still felt capable of winning that title should a tourney ever open up.

Into October, though, this was all old news. With over a month of school under everyone's belts, things had settled into familiarity, and the only events that garnered interest now were the impending slew of seasonal holidays in the coming months, the more important (to some) season starting in November (Quidditch), and news from the outside world, though the students cared less for this than the staff. There was nothing overly terrible to note, however, at least nothing that was new to them. The occasional attack, arrest, acquittal, death—or death sentence—the usual affair. Sequestered as they were in Hogwarts, with much to do and constantly occupied minds, they could usually forget about the morning paper by lunchtime.

It helped as well that Severus had his own personal distraction in Freya. She was better than gobstones, and filled him with slightly less dread than the game itself; and if he was being honest, he was glad she had a reliable off switch so that she could be tolerable enough to be around, otherwise he would have broken down from the oppressive silence of being alone with his thoughts long ago. The incessant woman was like a waking Sleeping Draught, able to lead him down a rabbit hole of conversation at a moment's notice, just as he had first approached her for. He had been right about her; as he found out, he had been right about a lot of things. Chiefly, that she absolutely would not, under any circumstances, leave him be.

When he had first realized she was going to be following him around and had been fine to play along with this charade set down by Dumbledore seemingly as a rule of him being under thumb, he had not realized just how many days were in a week, a month. He had been forced to get used to this constant attention very quickly, realizing after the first time he went for a walk on the grounds to clear his head and spotted a red and gold bird flying high above, he would only get alone time in his dungeons behind a locked door. This wasn't so bad though, as he did in fact spend plenty of time in the dungeons. Also, his guard seemed to have gotten bored very quickly with constantly keeping an eye on him and his leash had gotten longer, so that at first, he would only spot her checking his location before disappearing from view, and now he didn't even notice if she was still checking on him, but assumed by her cryptic knowing remarks every now and then that she was.

Mostly he just saw her sit at the same booth seat table on the top floor of the research library, quietly doing her work or reading. Every time he walked back up the spiraling stairs in the room, carrying texts and archives on his current topic of interest, she seemed to alternate her task. Grading, writing in her planner, or reading—though this last one wasn't at all close to his version, consisting of his scholarly pursuits. He had been appalled one day to find that she was reading not research, but a fiction novel, with some garish cover containing a witch in extravagant robes that alternated between looking around her tiny painted landscape, and holding her wand into the air in what appeared to be an act that caused her extreme anguish.

"What... is that?" He punctuated his ejected question by dropping down his heavy stack of reading material with a bang as he sat down.

But she only held a finger up to silence him, keeping her darting eyes on the pages before her. "Shut up."

"Sorry?" The only times that she told him to shut up were when he was harassing her particularly well with phoenix lore quotes, but never for silence or concentration.

After a moment, she sighed and put her book down, but she did not look up at him, instead massaging her temples and blocking half her face from his view. "Listen, I have work to do, alright? I can't be at your beck and call every time you want me around, Severus."

Normally it would have sounded perfectly sweetly sarcastic, but from what he could see of her face, her mouth remained a thin line and her delivery was off. He wasn't at all sure what to make of this, and simply cracked on with his own more important reading. It wasn't until he was halfway through a detailed experiment document that he heard another sound from her. His concentration broken by the mere sound of another human in the vicinity, he glanced up. He was so shocked by what he saw, he almost choked on his inhale of breath, coughing into his hand as his head came fully up.

She looked up at the sound and their eyes met, only hers were filled with tears and he was looking like he might invent a way to Disparate on Hogwarts grounds in a singular stroke of genius and desperate need, horrified. She drew in a great breath, and then she broke down in sobs and he could only listen.

"She—she—Princess Deidra's whole family—and she's reunited with them—and—and—it's just brilliant, isn't it?" Her left hand was waving around as she spoke, but her right was fumbling in the pocket of her robes, and what he saw her pull out finally made his chest relax as everything, for the most part, clicked into place. She sniffed, squeezing her eyes shut, and as she did, a tear fell into the small glass vial she held to her cheek.

He could make sense of it, sure enough, but he didn't exactly find that sense comforting whatsoever, and he continued to openly stare in horror.

After a minute of this, he finally swallowed, and said shallowly, "Why... why don't you just read the morning paper?"

This was apparently not the correct thing to say, as she waved her free hand at him in a weepy rage, her voice sounding much too loud for the library and much too strange from her normal warm tones. "Because it's bloody awful, you insensitive git! It's depressing! I just want to read about" —she was interrupted by a sob and she shed more tears into the vial— "anything else."

"O—... okay—"

"There's people dying all over the world, Severus!"

He nodded mechanically, his face contorted as if he was hearing about death for the first time and the whole concept sounded barking mad and abominable.

She looked down at her tear-catcher, noticing that its tiny container was mostly full. She gave one last sniff, blinking the last of the moisture back into her eyes, and seemed to melt back to normal, although he could see her hand was shaking even as she snapped and disappeared the vial into thin air. She looked back at him with a mild expression. "Sorry. Tough times and all that." And she shoved her fiction novel to the side, bringing forward a stack of yet to be graded papers instead.

He only witnessed her do this once more in the next two weeks of October, thankfully, and the second time he did not interrupt her. He found she cried much more quietly without being stoked into speech, and apart from being too scared to look up from the paper he was grading, he found this reserved muted ordeal to be almost worse in some way. It didn't trigger anything in chest like her voice sometimes did, feeling like an outside force was being cast upon him, but instead his chest momentarily twinged all on its own. She carried on perfectly happy afterwards when they both had finished their work and were leaving the library, parting ways on the third floor as she went to her chambers and he to the dungeons. He had his own interpretation of this, and apart from the very unkind thoughts that having a savior complex was a disease of the mind, or that this was the price for meddling so much into wizard affairs, he was mostly concerned with the question of why she would do something like that in front of someone. She didn't seem to care a single lick that he was in the room, feet from her, either time. She hadn't even acted startled or disgruntled when he came up the steps the first time. Perhaps if he had tears with magical healing properties that needed to be delivered at a moment's notice, he wouldn't think of it was emotional or embarrassing either—only it definitely was because she needed to be emotional to do it, and he definitely would. He didn't dare ever ask her about it though, however many questions he had, or however casually she shrugged and smiled.

In a way, it was entertaining to try and contort his mind into understanding that this was the famed phoenix; the creature that saved people during the war, cried on their wounds, sang strength into them, took killing curses meant for them, only to be spotted back in action above a hide-out months later like some great fiery annoyance—and she was also the type of person to not eat the peel of her apple, crinkling her nose in distaste as she went at it with a dainty almost doll-sized knife some mornings. It almost made his head hurt to compare between the deadly serious enraged voices of Death Eaters who had had the misfortune of being spotted by her, and her own voice as it gently chided schoolchildren for trying to charm their hair different colors only to wind up bald, but it was oddly amusing to him. Especially her tiny fruit knife, because he knew several different flaying spells that would work so much better, but he enjoyed staying silent.

On the Saturday morning of the party, however, she was eating a plum when he took his seat to her right, and she beamed at him with barely contained excitement. He, slightly less enthusiastic than her eleven-out-of-ten, simply tucked in to some toast with a sleepy nod, wishing he had slept a couple more hours if he was going to be up late, but his body was adamantly not breaking schedule now that it had been achieved.

The day proceeded as normal minus the detentions he sometimes gave on weekends. He had specifically moved Dayna McGowen, who had exploded her and her neighbor's cauldrons earlier in the week, to next week, giving her ample time to get a new one in the mail so that he could have her break it in sorting out frogspawn from newt spawn on Monday. He was halfway through brewing two different potions, locked away in his office, when he checked the clock to prepare a countdown of no less than forty-five minutes of steep time and realized he had absolutely no idea when he should be leaving the castle.

Slughorn had written specifically vague instructions on the time, Severus knew, because the man liked everyone to arrive one by one, dazed and confused, while he shepherded them in, the only one in the room who knew what was going on. But his instructions did state an exact address, some place in Hogsmeade Village that sounded like an event hosting spot, but was tucked in a neighborhood near a forest. He would have a bit of a ways to walk, but it would be nice to get out for once. Enjoy the peace and quiet of nature. Alone, for sure...

Several hours later, as he hesitantly opened his office door half expecting his guard to already be there waiting with a knowing smile on her face, he was surprised to find that he was quite alone. And as he made his way out of the castle into the faded evening light, passing by a couple other staff and ignoring their curious glances in his direction as they probably wondered why he was going the same way, he felt even more alone. It wasn't until, as he cut away to a smaller footpath through trees but going, he knew, to the same place as the main road, that he was certain he actually had privacy. And that was when, of course, a sound he had not heard in quite some time cracked behind him and he turned around to see Freya standing there on the path, smiling mildly, as if she had been walking through the forest the whole time.

"And here I thought I might get a moment of peace," he said, turning back to continue walking. "Cutting it a bit close, aren't you?"

She jogged to catch up to his side, matching his pace. "Sorry, didn't know what to wear."

His feet took a wrong step in the dirt as he did a double take back at her, but she was only wearing her regular casual robes of brown with a matching cowl overtop. "Were we supposed to wear something in particular?"

She quirked a brow at his minor panic. "No, I don't think so. I just did my hair," she smoothed a hand over the long loose braid drawn over her shoulder, "and I have these."

He had to stop as she stopped, holding one foot up for inspection and slightly lifting the hem of her robes, showing enough ankle to make a Victorian priest cry—or just any normal person for that matter, because the socks she had on were an abhorrent purple and orange with little embroidered black bats and golden pumpkins.

"That's... dressed up for you, is it?"

"Says the man wearing the same thing he does every day."

He glanced down at his all-black cloak, robes, and button-down shirt underneath. "It's fine—" But apparently it was not fine, because at the sound of a snap, he suddenly also had an uncomfortable red and gold necktie around his collar, and when he looked up in exasperation, Freya's pointed finger was the culprit. "Brilliant color choice for the Head of Slytherin," he sneered, wondering how long she had been waiting to do that.

"Hang on, let me just—" She held up her fingers, but he was cringing away from the line of fire, worried he would show up to the party without eyebrows.

"No, I don't want—" With another snap, his tie changed to green and silver.

"Oh, no, you look like an overgrown student—"

"The color is not the—" It changed to a muted grey now and he whipped out his wand in anger, but Freya was holding up a hand imploringly. The tie was changed to a pure black, but it didn't matter as he was already pointing his wand with the intention of vanishing it from ever disgracing his attire again.

"Wait, wait! Hold on, just let me look," she pleaded, stepping up and hovering a hand over his wand arm. She didn't touch him, but he hesitated, remaining still while he was inspected—most of him anyway, as he still rolled his eyes with much movement. "Hm..." She tapped a single finger on the tie and at first when he looked, he couldn't see a difference, but then realized that the black was more muted, matching his faded fabrics that he hadn't noticed were so faded till just then. She stepped back to get a better view of the full effect. "You're really best suited in black, aren't you? Oh, but now you look like you're going to a funeral... Alright, I give up, you can get rid of it."

He lowered his wand, adjusting the knot at his neck to make it slightly more livable. "It's fine."

"What—after all that? You like it?"

"Well, it's better than your own fashion choices," he said, casting a disdainful look down at her ankles as they turned to continue on their way.

This path was less traveled, meant to give those who chose to walk a place to do so while carriages were in use, and the vegetation at the edge hadn't been so bitten back by the cold autumn nights as to neaten the path into a straight corridor under the canopy of trees. The whole effect, in the withering light of the evening that shown through the bare trees onto the ground blanketed in rich red and orange, set the image of the season better than any decorations inside the castle could have, though its floating jack-o-lanterns and real bats were indeed charming.

This season, he felt, was perfectly matched to his preferred attire, black tie or no. Despite the fervent excitement of schoolchildren and the colorful display of nature, this was a season dampened in decay, ushering in the need for a ceremony of shedding old dried things, crumpling them up, and giving them back into the earth. It felt right to dress for the occasion of the world around them going out like a light for the end of the year.

In contrast, to his left, the phoenix woman looked to match the season in a different way, embodying the very bright leaves and brown trees. It was odd—he always thought of phoenixes as creatures so full of life that they could not be contained by a simple death, bursting from the ashes with some essence of magic that ran powerfully deep. Perhaps it was just because he had always looked at the birds like they were hoarding their wealth of life, and he was greedy to take it just like any foolish wizard who wished to toy around with fundamentals of life itself. But she didn't hoard her magic, and she didn't seem any less at home with the cycle of life and death than the nature around them.

He caught sight of purple and orange as he glanced at her, and his internal musings suddenly fell flat. She noticed his glare and smiled serenely.

"Do you get that," he nodded down at her socks, indicating her horrid sense of fashion, "from Dumbledore?"

"From Albus? Oh, perhaps. He is always wearing quite colorful robes himself. He ought to be wearing something spectacular tonight."

There was a sinking feeling in his shoulders at the knowledge that the headmaster would be showing up as well, but hopefully his plan to avoid all interaction besides Slughorn would succeed. He had not even thought about this possibility, and it now seemed odd that he was the one with the phoenix by his side while Dumbledore would show up without his own pet.

"Are you..." He paused, trying to find his words, but also feeling odd being the one to initiate conversation. He always seemed to be unnerved when she lapsed into silence, like a live wire was nearby and he should address it, but only cautiously. He tried again, "Ah... What is he to you? A father?"

She raised her brows and then lowered them almost as quickly in a deep frown. "Albus? Err... no," she replied without sounding the least bit sure herself.

It was his turn to raise his brows at her, as he asked a second question, "Then perhaps...? Something else?"

She coughed loudly raising her hands to both cover her mouth and as if to fend off his implication. "Severus, good lord, stop. Go back to being quiet again, it's still a lovely evening out."

He eyed her reaction with interest, smirking at being on the opposite side of this table for once. "Too old, perhaps? But I thought you were a hundred?"

"Nearly a hundred—and yes he's too—oh, I don't even want to talk about this, just drop it," she said, waving him off. Her hands went to her braid, anxiously flipping the tiny end. "Phoenix years."

"Phoenix years, right," he said, nodding as if the cryptic answer made any more sense the times it was repeated. "Well, if he's too old... how about that Gryffindor pervert—I mean, Prefect—boy, then?"

She made another choking sound but this time she sounded like she was laughing, though pained. "STOP! Stop right there—no, no, no. Adamson is a student, and he's just-"

"He's getting a bit creative with his brown-nosing, isn't he?"

"He's..." She looked for a moment to be reaching for kind words for her student that had been continually trying to get her attention since the beginning of the school-year, but she apparently could not find any. "Well, he's an incessant little creep, sure, but he's—well, he's just a boy. And he hasn't done anything aside from annoy me in the halls. I'm sure it'll be fine."

Severus refrained from voicing his opinion that he would look into testing if she was impervious to Love Potions if he was in her shoes, but it was only October, after all. Maybe the boy would forget about her and go actually date someone he had a chance with (that wasn't a teacher and was his own age). He quietly doubted it, though. Teenaged boys could be very stupid about that sort of thing.

"Why must you talk about the most embarrassing things right now before something so fun?" She was walking with her head tilted back, eyes on the branches overhead that passed by in varying degrees of bare or coated in yellow, and he wasn't sure if she actually was embarrassed, as she looked perfectly contented.

"Would you rather I talk about the fascinating history of the Imperius Curse?" He answered her look of skepticism with a shrewd smile.

"Severus," she said sighed wearily, shaking her head, "you can go on about it if you want, I don't mind, but... would you—let's just try to have some fun tonight, alright? Happy Halloween and all that." Her grin looked a little too mean and forced for her suggestion, as if imitating a jack-o-lantern.

His own smile faded completely, and he looked back to the path ahead, stepping on the fallen leaves a bit harder than before. He had the distinct feeling that his original suspicions about her intentions of coercing him into going to this party were very much in line, and he was about to be dragged into tedious conversation with a whole slew of people that still eyed him warily, plus whatever strangers Slughorn had undoubtedly invited. He kept his fascinating history facts of curses to himself, and they hardly spoke the rest of the trek into town.

The address led them to one side of Hogsmeade, passed its own festive decorations and adornments on High Street, and down a street that ran adjacent to a forest, where shops petered out into converted homes and finally cottages, with only a few scattered public buildings left in sight. It looked like they were going to a neighborhood, when a left turn showed that the short road ended at a park with a large pavilion in the middle and the forest encircling the whole area. Normally it looked to be an open building with only pillars holding up a wood roof, but now it was decorated with great colorful sheets between these, giving the effect of a very sturdy tent with a promisingly cozy interior if the large chimney sticking out the top was any indication to go by. There were what looked like floating strings of lights from the building all the way to the trees yards away, decorations everywhere, and, most notably, an exceptional amount more people than he had anticipated.

They had come to a stop at the end of the road, just outside of stepping foot into the grass, and as he looked to his side, he noticed with much surprise Freya seemed to be mirroring his trepidation. She glanced back at him and her eyebrows knit together. "You don't... happen to have any other party invitations we could just leave for, do you?"

"Are you—You dragged me here," he hissed with exasperation, trying to keep his voice down as a group of three passed by into the gathering.

"I didn't think there would be this many people! I thought it was just going to be Hogwarts staff!" She gave one last alarmed scan of the park before turning back to him, sizing him up, and scuttling behind him as she ushered him forward with a wave of her hand. "Yes, well, go on then."

He turned around in confusion to look at her. "What? You go!"

"No, but—you're taller, so I can just hide back here."

"You—This was your idea!"

"Listen, Severus, one of us has to take one for the team, and you're better at blending into a crowd, so just—" She made the shooing gesture at him again, cozying up to his side as if ready to follow, but he fully stepped away from her, leaving her to look panicked at being exposed. "Wait—!"

She caught up to him as he headed off along the outer ring of the clearing, wedging herself between him and the trees so that she was out of the line of sight from the main gathering. So much for a brave bird. His plans for socialization had involved melting into the shadows when Freya would inevitably (or so he had been thinking) run off to chat with whoever, or else sticking behind her and following her lead so that he wouldn't have to bother. He had not been expecting the exact opposite, and now greatly wondered if she spent all her time in the library to guard him or because she actually was just that socially distant—phoenixes and mountaintops and all that. He refrained from applying the same conclusions to himself, or from wondering if he had the same social presence as a frosty peak of granite.

He led them around towards the back of the pavilion, feeling distinctly like he was casing a place for danger, which he did feel a tiny bit as he recognized more than one Ministry of Magic official in the crowd. He wished he could shove Freya between them and use her as she was using him as a human shield, even though he had no real reason to fear beyond old anxieties and he was perfectly capable of defending himself.

Around the back of the yard, there was more decorative lawn work, and he quickly identified a picnic table half concealed behind a hedge, darting for it with forced casualness.

"Ahh, I see your game," said Freya, scooting onto the bench beside him. He had positioned himself at the far end of the bench, on the side of the table that he could face the back opening of the tent-looking sheets, but just as importantly, the table was full of food. Or, had been full of food. Apparently his guess that the party would be later in the evening may have been incorrect, because the platters of pumpkin muffins, little cakes, and finger foods looked to have been picked through already. Freya did not seem to mind this, however, grabbing up what looked like a miniature candied apple on a stick. "Perfect, you're a master at this. Skulk around in the shadows, look shady as all hell, and go straight for the food."

"Shut up. And stop touching me," he said with distracted disgust, twitching his elbow to ward off her too-close seating position, but his eyes remained on the people milling about. He heard the recognizable sound of Slughorn's booming laugh from inside the tent, joined by several others, and sighed. Well, perhaps this would work out. If the party had already been going on for a while, he ought to be able to catch Slughorn once people started leaving, hopefully sometime before it was too far into the night, and maybe he could even make it back to the castle in time for some light reading before bed. In the meantime, however, that left him with nothing to do.

He whipped his head to the right, jumping at the chance to finally get his admonishing out. "I cannot believe—" But though his mouth remained open, it went silent. Freya, looking like she was about to shove an entire pumpkin creampuff into her own mouth, widened her eyes under his stare till they resembled the golden plates of the Great Hall. "That has eggs in it."

Looking to be as filled with deepest guilt as the pastry was undoubtedly filled with various animal products, she slowly took a giant bite, covering her mouth afterward to speak thickly behind her fingers, "Please don't judge me, I'm nervous."

"Absolute monster."

"It's not a" —she swallowed— "a strict rule, okay! I just don't like to do it. It's personal preference."

"Do as you wish... cannibal."

"Oh, go stuff yourself," she said with a light smack on his arm. "Like you're one to judge when you're always asking me to pass you the roast quail at dinner—and you never even eat it!"

"Speaking of," he leaned forward, eyeing a pot of beef stew down the table, "would you mind?"

She scoffed, stuffing the whole tiny candied apple into her mouth now. "'et it yerself."

"That's not very polite," he said with delicate emphasis.

"We're outside—doesn't count. You can get up and walk around."

"That makes... no sense. Just pass it, I have to sit here and wait for—wh—" He yanked his right hand up from the bench as Freya scooted over far too close. "Excuse—" She inched in further till she leaned against his arm, reaching over him to grab a cookie from a tin and fixing him with a devilish grin as her face passed by close to his.

He hopped off the end of the bench, standing up at once. "Fine, fine. I'll get it myself." But he didn't go for any of the food, instead casting around for any nearby wine as he resolved to never sit on a bench near the irritating woman again—chairs only. Spotting a dedicated serving table with as many drinks as he could imagine by the nearest entrance, he sighed in relief. "Would you—"

She looked up at him, raising her brows at his cut off question and sudden silence. "Hm?"

"Nothing," he muttered darkly, already turning and stalking off to get an entire goblet of wine. She could get her own damn drink; it had just been habitual politeness that had overcome him in his distracted state, the infectious lively air of the party all around just barely but not quite reaching his own mood.

However, when he had finished waiting behind a group of what looked like several old Quidditch players, each with a differently broken nose and a different preference for alcoholic beverage, he found that he would not have to worry about seating arrangements with Freya anymore that night, as she was walking away from the picnic table at the side of Albus Dumbledore, chatting merrily. He was supremely glad he had not bothered to get her anything to drink. He stood abandoned on the spot by the liquor table, sipping his wine, when it was suddenly sopped down his chin as he was grabbed from behind around the shoulders.

"Severus, m'boy! You made it!"

What had been that one rule of wizarding self-defense again—never leave your back exposed? He had stood himself perfectly in front of one of the slits in the tent sheets, and was now being dragged by Slughorn through this over the threshold into the interior of the pavilion, sputtering and shaking his wet hand off while his other desperately held his sticky wine glass upright.

"Oh dear, oh dear, look at this—and all over that sharp tie of yours," Slughorn chuckled, pulling out his wand and cleaning his former student up with a quick, thankfully inconspicuous, wave of his wand. "No worries, happens to me all the time when I get into it."

"I—I am not drunk," he said indignantly, not even sure if he had swallowed one mouthful of wine before being accosted. He was being led over to the center of the blanketed room, towards a group of people, and he was very much wishing Slughorn's arms were not quite so meaty and domineering.

"Well, why aren't you! Have another," he tapped his wand and re-filled the glass with a dark reddish-brown liquid that did not look to be wine, but something much stronger. "Come, come, now, I believe everyone is almost all here..."

The crowd indeed seemed to be growing larger even as Slughorn released him and cleared his way through to the very middle of the room. Severus took the opportunity to melt towards the back of the crowd, sniffing at his glass and then setting it down on an empty table when the fumes, smelling of nothing but straight alcohol, burned his nose so bad his eyes watered.

"Albus Dumbledore! My dear man!"

He looked up passed the shoulders of people to see Slughorn going over to hug the tall headmaster, rolling his eyes at the display and Slughorn's overly loud voice, obviously just announcing his connections even though he had been in the man's employ until recently, so it really wasn't that impressive.

"And look at this—Why, I've got a basket of fruit with your name on it, my dear."

Even with bright red hair as she had, he couldn't see Freya through the crowd, shorter than the wizards standing between them as she was, and he childishly made plans to mock her height when next he saw her.

Slughorn bustled around, shaking hands and speaking far too loud for casual conversation in the enclosed space, and Severus was just starting to wonder if he should make his way back out of the tent when, turning to his left, he nearly jumped out of his boots.

Freya made no attempt to cover her mouth as she snickered at him, standing just a foot behind him somehow though he was sure she had just been across the room and he hadn't heard her approach. There was plenty of noise in the room, but still, the woman needed a bell or something. He sighed, aggrieved, when his attempt to turn back to the center of the room fully sent his heart into shock, twitching the opposite direction now as he caught sight of Dumbledore standing on his other side, grinning coolly at him.

Great. Wonderful. He was having such a good time at this party, surrounded on both sides by Albus Dumbledore and his pet, and Slughorn looking like he might have just gathered everyone in to stand like wax figures in his museum as opposed to any kind of actual reason.

As if just to further incense him, Freya leaned in on his left and seemed, bizarrely, to be sniffing him. "You smell like wine," she whispered, "did you fall in the punch bowl? I was wondering where you went."

This was just icing to complete the cake, and finally he gave in to the chaos of everything around him and ceased to care, staring dully straight ahead as he waited for things to carry on without him. Thankfully Slughorn was not in fact just pulling a cruel joke on them all, and the man walked away from the witch he had been talking to, still with a light chuckle in his voice as he called to the open room: "Yes, yes, I think that ought to do for now! Listen here!"

The great bald man wiped a hand over his brow, apparently sweating from how much he had imbibed despite the chilly air that crept in from the dark outside, but looking quite luxuriously pleased with himself, as always when he was hosting an event where he could rub elbows. "Now, now. Dear friends, and those whom I think of as family," he began, speaking with all the tones of someone about to ordain a wedding, "we are gathered here today—oho! But not for that." He chortled merrily at his own joke, accompanied by people who must truly be intoxicated to the point of laughing along despite the lame content. "No, no, today I have gathered you, as I wrote in my letter—to celebrate!" He paused to let a few people hoot merrily. "Ah, but to celebrate what you might ask? Hmm?" He placed his hands behind his back, beginning to make a slow pacing circle around the clear area he had to address the crowd. "Not just Halloween—no—though, then again, of course that too!"

Severus was losing focus on this ridiculous routine, and his attention slipped down to his left, where Freya answered his look with an amused roll of her eyes. She briefly turned her back to the orator to hide while she made a gesture like she would be downing her drink if she had one in hand. The corner of his mouth twitched as he watched her.

"To celebrate... the ending of a long and dreadful time in all our lives."

His head slowly turned back up.

Slughorn's face was no longer grinning jovially, and his bushy mustache seemed to be drooping off his face as he frowned, brows furrowed. The room went quiet, though a few murmured their acknowledgement. He continued on.

"Ah, but why now, so late, you might be wondering?" A puff of laughter seemed to escape him then, but it was without joy. "All of you, you know me, I would never skimp at a reason to be merry—ah, but I could not at that time, I simply could not. The answer is plain my friends—I was overcome by grief. What a vast and terrible thing it is, to lose such vibrant young lives in the midst of what should have been no less than the greatest relief to our hearts that were hardened during so many years of turmoil."

The pavilion suddenly sounded dampened by more than just sheets of fabric as his own pulse thudded behind his ears, and he oddly remembered the day he had been dragged into the Ministry to stand trial, with two dementors at his side; only, surely the chill against his back was from the open entryways, not the two people standing like guards on either side of him. He still felt just as locked in place, completely trapped and without breath, as he had then.

"Losing Lily and James Potter—ah, my apologies," Slughorn cleared his throat, as his voice had broken. "Sent them wedding gifts when I heard the news, you know... but they couldn't have a—a proper celebration, of course, such dark times as they were... But I did attend the funeral..." The man looked to be lost in thought for a moment, before he gave a great shuddering breath and went on, "But it wouldn't do—no, it absolutely wouldn't—to not celebrate what they gave their lives for, so that we may live in peace. In their honor, and the many fallen with them, I invite you all to a toast!" His voice carried through the room with booming sentiment, and the crowd answered the ending to his speech with hearty agreement as everyone found a drink.

Severus greatly wished he had not abandoned the drink he had been given, feeling like he could down the whole noxious glass in one go.

He could not stay in the room any longer, stumbling back on wobbly legs as he ducked behind Freya and pushed his way through the crowd out into the welcoming cold night air and sudden too-loud chorus of insects. All of their chirping was drowned out by the sound of many people cheering in unison behind him, sounding like they were in a different world beneath the roof. Gulping in the soothing chilly air, trying to refill lungs that felt like they would never work properly again, he found this did nothing to stop his shaking. He felt cold inside and out now, and the smoke from the pavilion, compiled by the fireplace and various pipes of many wizards, lingered on his clothes, making him feel like he was perhaps being burned alive so hot that his senses could not comprehend, only feeling numb and frozen. He vaguely realized he was holding on to the rough wooden edge of a picnic table so tightly that he could feel tiny splinters, and his mind focused on the sensation rather than anything else.

"S... Severus...?"

His teeth clicked together so tightly he was surprised he hadn't bit his cheek open. "Stay... the hell... away from me."

"Severus!"

He wheeled around at this very different voice, looking into not Freya's face, though she was standing there, too, looking stricken, but Slughorn's.

"Now, now, now! Is that any way to speak to a lady checking in on you?"

His face twitched as his gaping mouth tried to make contact with his brain to deal with this situation, but it was failing miserably. His eyes slid to Freya's, pinning every ounce of blame for this night onto her, with her idiotic mindless expression. She looked in panic back at Slughorn, seemingly spurred into feeble action.

"Err—Perhaps we should just leave him be—"

"No, no, you were quite right with what you said, I see now," Slughorn waved away her attempts, barely looking at her as he kept his eyes resolutely determined on his former pupil. "I'll talk to him myself."

The disruption of his breathing suddenly vanished, and he felt a cold stillness wash over him. His eyes moved between the two of them, Freya looking even more worried than before at his reaction, and he let go of the table he was clinging to, standing up perfectly straight with his mind clear and sharp. "Do share," he said with icy calm, "what exactly it was that she said?"

"My boy, she said that you've been out of sorts for months, and I can understand why completely," he nodded sagely, his copious neck bulging out over his cravat. "Lily's death would undoubtedly have-"

"Don't—" His delicate composure cracked at once.

"—affected you deeply, being a close friend—oh, I'm sure even after your teenaged falling out, don't think I've forgotten—but surely you two made-up after graduating, close as you were."

"I—" He felt wobbly again, like he might actually faint, eyes cast down to the ground, scoping out a good place for his face to land and hopefully just knock him out of his misery.

"But, goodness, Severus! To speak to a friend like that, and a lady so kind as Freya here." Slughorn gestured to his side, but the woman was feet away already, looking like she might be trying to sink into the night itself despite her obvious brightly colored appearance. The man noticed her absence and looked around at her retreating stance, eyeing the two of them back and forth. "My word," he said, and he actually chuckled, slightly drunkenly, "history repeating, is it?"

Severus found his mind enough to look up in absolute disgust, but Slughorn went on.

"Why, I saw you two in the back of the room there, and I must say... that sight alone nearly choked me up from my speech—my goodness! I thought I was seeing a ghost—or perhaps two! Well, her back was turned, but still, from behind, that hair..."

His eyes were like flint daggers as he slowly leveled his gaze back to the withdrawing woman, and by the look on her face, she would have perhaps liked to borrow one to chop off all her hair and cut and run from this accused relation to a dead friend. She stared back at him, horrified.

"I'm... leaving," he whispered quietly, his voice unnaturally brittle.

"But—oh, my—Severus!" Slughorn seemed shocked at being completely ignored.

But he had already turned on his heel and was marching directly for the woods, not even caring where he was going, just knowing that he was through.

After barely a few yards, he had pulled his wand out to silence the sound his feet made crunching through the leaves, finding it altogether extremely loud and obnoxious and making him feel like a troll lumbering through the trees. Even with the only sound being insects and the rustling of his layered fabrics, the party sounds dying out far behind him, he still felt ungraceful. His body had stopped shaking, but his limbs still felt weakened, like he had run too far the previous day and was now in a state of dormant recovery. If only his mind mended in the same way as muscles.

Not that he cared much to mend it. He was fine to stumble around in the dark, feeling as hollow and barren as the leafless trees around him.

He never should have been so foolish as to let himself be led here. Slughorn didn't have answers for him, and if he did, he should have known no information would be worth it given that the man would inevitably bring her up. She had been one of his favorite students after all. It was that phoenix woman—she had tricked him with smiles and bribes, probably knowing the whole time what Slughorn's intentions were. Hell, she probably set this whole thing up.

He clicked his teeth together, not from the cold, though it was encroaching in on him, eating through his clothes, but out of a feeling of possessed anger.

They were nothing alike. Nothing. Not in hair color, or personality, or strength of character.

And especially not in life because one of them was dead while the other got to merrily live her immortal life, over and over, while good brave young people remained dead and gone.

"There's people dying all over the world!"

They certainly were, and crying would never bring them back.

He had blamed Dumbledore for not helping enough, for letting her die even under his immeasurable influence and power, but he had never gotten a chance to extend his grudge to the phoenix. He had thought the creature of a lesser mind, only an extension of Dumbledore's power, but now he knew she had her own mind capable of being blamed for carelessness, didn't she?

He bit down hard on his tongue, holding it between his teeth to concentrate on the single sharp spot of sensation in his numb body.

It felt so freeing to blame their imbecilic smiling faces than have to scrap the barrel for any trace of guilt he had not already thrown at himself. There was nothing left for him to turn to but malice. He told himself this, but even as he tried to hold onto that hatred, it was slipping from his fingers as much as the heat from his body. It was if he didn't have enough substance to even hold onto anything, though he suddenly found that he desperately needed something to hold on to, because he was starting to shake again, and not from the cold.

He held his chest taut, taking breaths only in quick little doses as his eyes stared unfocused at his ghostly breath before his face, and willing the feeling behind his eyes to cease. He just needed someone to blame, someone to cast his eyes on with deepest loathing, someone that wasn't his pathetic self.

But as he heard the sound of gently crunched leaves behind him, he found actually that he would rather be completely alone, forever if possible. He didn't even have it in him to be mad, because he had done this himself, too.

"Go... away."

The sound of more leaves crinkled, gathering closer to him, and he turned, staring with dull shock.

"Is this better?"

His arms hung limply at his sides, no strength to even hide how defeated he felt. "You look... hideous."

"Ah, well," she ran her fingers through her now jet-black hair, holding it out for inspection with a grimace, "you look pretty bad yourself."

"Not nearly as bad as you."

She looked back at him, bristling as if actually offended underneath her show of concern for his well-being. "Yes, well—"

"It doesn't suit you at all."

She blinked slowly, closing her mouth and reopening it to try again, but he continued.

"You look like a disowned member of the Black family tree, or like some back-alley witch trying to hide her identity from client to—"

"Alright, Severus, alright! I'll change it back!" She tapped her wand to her head, and achieved a new look of exploding flames that lingered in a fiery ball over the top of her head. She stood in stunned silence, wand held in place, blinking. "This is fine."

"That suits you better," he offered dimly.

"It won't suit the forest when I burn the whole place down," she said, pocketing her wand and smoothing her free hand from her crown to the tips of her hair, leaving behind her usual color, now with less real fire.

"That might not be so bad," he said listlessly, turning back to face the woods around him, as if seeing them for the first time and contemplating their usefulness at relieving his pent-up emotions. He had, apparently, walked himself into a tiny clearing, ringed and scattered with waist-high bushes.

He didn't know whether Freya just didn't happen to care about this particular forest, or she was holding in admonishing him for wishing for such violence, but she remained quiet behind him, letting his words go without comment. He half wished she would launch into some idiotic rambling that he could scathingly attack her for, but he felt even his waking Sleeping Draught wouldn't help in this case. This wasn't a fire to be put out or glass to keep from breaking—he already felt plenty put out and broken. It was a few minutes before she spoke.

"I'm sorry..."

"Oh?" He rounded on her immediately, feeling the tiny flare of rage he was searching for. "Are you? And what good is an apology?"

She stared at him in horrified surprised, seemingly unsure what she had said wrong. "I—… For telling Slughorn, I mean..."

His little spark of anger died in an instant and he slowly turned away again, not even willing to acknowledge his mistake in thinking she was offering condolences.

There was a clearing of the throat and attempts to speak behind him and he inwardly sighed in preparation for whatever was coming.

"I know you don't... want to talk to me about this, Severus. I really only came to get you," she explained with wooden cadence, "but I truly do think you should at least talk to Slughorn—"

"No."

She paused, but she hadn't given up yet. "If anyone is going to understand, it seems like—"

"Understand? Him?" Her face was weary when he turned back, perhaps not even believing there was a point to her attempts given his current expression of blind apathy. "He doesn't understand anything." There was an implied note that nobody else would either, but he wasn't feeling quite so outwardly dramatic to share his every thought. It was hard enough focusing on any words.

Silence crept back to the clearing. When next she spoke, it was a barely audible whisper, as if she hated having to say the words. "He... said you didn't attend the funeral."

The weight of his wand in his pocket called to his mind, and with an eerily blank stillness, he imaged drawing it on her for daring to speak this into existence. His eyes felt heavy again, and he strained them against the feeling. When he looked at her, he was almost, insanely, gleeful. "Is that... a joke?"

She winced back at him in a familiar way, looking like she might cry as she sucked in her lower lip. It was painful to watch, because it was his own feeling in his chest that could not be let out, and he dully remembered what she was and what powers she had. But just her crying wouldn't force anything on him, and if she so dared do anything else—he absolutely would pull his wand.

"Severus, it's... grieving is supposed to be—"

"Shut up."

She looked like she might listen, but he knew her better than that by now, and this was not the library where she would comply with silence. Her face screwed up, looking to be concocting some harebrained scheme to fire back with. "I could take—… You should at the very least visit her grave..."

And he did laugh at that, because it was so preposterously insane. Slughorn at least had the excuse of ignorance, but she knew better than that. She knew the whole story. The sharp bark of sound left his lungs more like a choked sob.

"You... You really think so, do you? That's what you think?" He stepped towards her for the first time, as if remembering he had legs, but they were stiff and he felt like a mannequin. As he grew nearer, his voice quieted to barely a whisper. "You think... I... could just walk up to her grave? Lay some flowers? Have a cry?" His face fell as he stared down into the shimmering wet gold eyes. He felt like he was crying without his body actually performing the action itself as he stared, transfixed, hearing her breath hitch and feeling the twinge in his own chest. It felt like his ribcage might be caving in on itself. His voice hardly sounded like his own anymore, the air merely being squeezed from his lungs through his lips.

"I killed her..."

"No—you didn't—"

"Yes, I did..."

"You didn't! It was just—it was him—and you made a mistake!"

"Yes," he said, and his voice found its strength again as he swallowed, his eyes going blank once more. "I did. I made a mistake... and got her killed. And there's nothing you, or anyone, can do about that."

When he pushed passed her to leave, he wasn't sure which of them was more unstable from the small impact, barely catching his feet as he stumbled forward back the way he had come.

There were no more thoughts left to form in his mind, and he wandered in the direction of the party, thinking he could hear the noise in the distance to orient himself and pick his way back to the village and beyond, unnoticed. Apparently, however, someone had put a tracking charm on him when he wasn't looking, because he was attracting all sorts of unwanted individuals. This newest intruder was much less graceful in the crashing leaves, blundering his way towards him so that he thought he might turn back and see an actual walrus gaining on him. No walrus could pull off a velvet waistcoat quite like Slughorn though.

"No," he said simply, before the older man could catch his breath and get a word in.

"Now see—"

"I'm going."

"—here, Severus! Stop this at once, come now!"

He considered simply Apparating as close as he could to the grounds, but he could easily just be followed, and leading whatever this hopefully brief conversation was going to be out from the dark of the forest where it belonged didn't seem like a good option. He continued marching on.

"Oh, no you don't!" Slughorn said, catching up to his side with difficulty. "Did you think I was going to give up that easily? Why, m'boy, I don't want to, but I will jinx you if I must."

His brow furrowed at being so talked down to—as if he was a child and wouldn't draw his own wand to defend himself—or attack. He had perhaps done too thorough a job making himself seem innocent as he worked over the man for years for information. With his lip still curled in disgust, he finally came to a stop and spoke. "What? What could you possibly have to say?"

A thick finger was wagged at him as Slughorn drew up in front of him. "Oho, doubting your old professor, are you? I've only been out of the job for a few scant months!"

His face drew taut with irritation. He didn't have time to fool around with this, he just wanted to go back, and besides, he almost relished the opportunity to reveal what he truly thought of the man. He would savor the look on his face. "It's a wonder you were ever a professor in the first place. You're a bumbling old idiot who can't even tell when he's being-"

"Played?" Slughorn set his knuckles on his hips, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "My boy, really, do you think me that daft? Dumbledore told me the minute after you first approached me."

He stared, but he had already figured as much, given that he had never revealed information on the headmaster himself.

"And I waved him off, because I know you better than that—of my own House, you were. A good student."

He felt the hollow feeling in his chest expand just slightly. "You are a fool if you think that."

"Now—"

"You don't know anything. Only the bare minimum from Dumbledore, which is nothing at all. So stop talking."

He thought this would be the end of it, but the man spoke on just as he was turning to leave again.

"It's you who knows very little, I'm afraid. Very little indeed... Not that it matters now, and I can't be revealing things..."

He thought for a moment he was being played, in that way Slughorn sometimes did to incite questions from people so that he could answer and feel important, but the man was looking at the ground lost in his own thoughts, not waiting expectantly for a question into this. He looked up as he caught Severus staring at him, and continued in his gruff voice.

"You can't understand what I've done, and I'm sure I don't know all you have either—don't want to know! But trust me when I say I do know the look of a guilty conscious when I see it. I do." He hung his bald head again, looking suddenly weepy as he did during his speech, but up close it was worse to see. "I am not quite so blind yet, old as I am... I should be at home, enjoying my retirement, for goodness sake..." More leaves were crunched underfoot as he suddenly stepped up to him, smacking a big hand on Severus's skinny arm and giving it a little shake that made him wobble in his stunned silence. "But you—m'boy, you are so young—ah, but you're not a boy anymore, are you? You're a man, and you carry the weight of the actions of one. Better than I could, even... so young though, truly..." His watery little eyes wandered away before snapping back to Severus's black ones with urgency, tightening his grip on his arm. "You shouldn't be holding it in as you are, Severus. You must be getting on with your life, you need to grieve, and then go live—for her, for Lily—"

He shook the hand off his arm immediately, stepping back as if the taboo name caused him physical pain, but Slughorn would not let him run off so easily.

"Lily would not have wanted this for—"

"How dare you say what she would have wanted!" He wasn't running away now, his hands clenched into fists so tight he would have to pry them apart if he went for his wand. "You don't know! You can't know anything, because she's dead!"

Slughorn fixed him with a sad miserable expression. "Oh, I can know. Because she was a good woman, Lily. And a good friend to you. Good people with hearts like hers do not carry grudges beyond the grave."

"That's not up for you to decide, now is it—"

"Severus!" And suddenly his voice had boomed through the forest, his next words carrying the strength of deep lungs though not quite as loud as his shout. "She did not die so young for you to be the one trapped forever like a ghost in your youth—behaving so childishly! You are a man, now, act like one!"

But he felt diminished in that moment, not like a man at all as he was compressed under the weight of his old professor's impactful words and hard stare. Slughorn's momentary harshness abated, and he delicately approached once more, placing both hands on his former student's shoulders as he was allowed. "Do you remember what I taught you...? Must have been sixth year... We do not make antidotes to heal, m'boy, that is a different branch of magic that revitalizes blood loss and closes wounds. We make them to stop the damage that's being done currently, cleanse the poison from the veins. Face it, Severus. Be brave like she was. Face that guilt first and foremost, let yourself feel that pain—and then you can heal."

Hadn't something like this been said to him before in a much less gentle way? Dumbledore could never hope to achieve the meaningfulness of that moment, however, as his mind brought up thoughts of fathers who loved their children unconditionally, even when they were hopelessly wrong creatures. He almost choked on the unbidden thoughts, scattering them away with fast blinks of his eyes, but he must have been failing miserably to control the rest of his face, because Slughorn patted his arms knowingly. He was just widening his arms to pull him in when Severus backed away with a start, and the man's arms fell to his plump sides. Slughorn gave a quick curt nod, but he seemed to understand. He had said his piece, and there was nothing else he could do here, turning with one last hopeful pained smile cast over his shoulder as he made his way back towards the park.

Whether from the chill bite of the air or his own feeling of cracked ice, he wasn't sure, but his legs shook as he went on through the trees, trying to force his brain to concentrate on how to get him back to the castle so he could throw himself into his bedchamber and lock the world away behind thick stone walls. His mind was asunder though, and he could only think of the brief fleeting warmth of hands gripping his shoulders, wishing he could have absorbed an ounce of that strength he had felt. He was not nearly so strong, never truly had been, and never would be. He felt like he had been softened into a damp clay. There was no need to find relief in biting his tongue anymore, as his eyes were stinging quite enough to occupy him as he desperately tried not to break down completely. He couldn't, he just couldn't. Whatever Slughorn had said to him, to open that floodgate into the swiftly flowing undercurrent of his deepest regret would be devastating. He could only condemn himself to the shallow uneven breathing and tight constrictions of the chest as he grabbed from tree to tree to carry him on. The sounds of the bustling village were unrelenting, however, and as he got near enough to see through the trees where he needed to go to get back on the footpath to the castle, he realized it was too crowded, and he was trapped in the woods.

He turned back, wandering deeper in, when, eventually, a dim light caught his eye. Of course, he knew he was being watched the whole time, but it didn't make him want to address it, and he walked straight passed the large red feather floating down among the leaves and making them look dull in comparison as it glowed with a brightness that didn't require the light of day. Another one popped in front of his path almost at once, sticking straight up from the ground, and he was forced to look more closely, because he had seen this image before. A solitary feather, shining in the dark of a forest at night, that would transport him to where it was bewitched to travel if he would just reach down and take it. Was he being offered mercy—a fast track to the castle? He bent down low, feeling like he might topple over if he did not take his time with this task. His fingertips were just being illuminated by the warm glow when he suddenly yanked his whole arm back as if burned, feeling like he was snapping out of a deep possession that would have led him to an early grave. His heart thudded in his chest, remembering Freya's last words moments before. He suspected it wasn't his own grave that this feather would have taken him.

The feather seemed to understand his hesitance, and while it was abandoned feet away by his hastily backtracking steps, its third replica snapped in a spark of flame at his feet once more. He looked up wildly into the trees.

"Stop it! I'm not going!"

He hated the sound of his own voice, weak and petulant, and wished he had chosen better words even in his sudden blind panic so that he didn't sound like such a child as Slughorn had accused him. A fourth feather popped into place against a tree beside his head, and he turned to it with clenched teeth. The tip had been cut off, bearing no trace of blood from the body it was taken, and he wondered if the phoenix was actually sitting somewhere snipping her own feathers off even as he ignored her. She could ruin her whole beautiful plumage for all he cared.

"Why would you—even think—I—" He was still shaken, and the thought that he had been so close to setting foot on that gravesite was unmanageable.

Another feather popped dangerously under his chin, and he looked down at it tucked into the front of his robes, swatting it off in fear and stumbling backward. He whipped his wand out in a blind rage, almost forgetting to cast something that would normally be so harmless, but the jet of water from his wand tip was so sharp it looked to have not only disintegrated the feather into a sad brown, but cut it in half.

"Enough!" He pivoted around, wand out, madly looking for her, because he really was furious now. The strong emotion was almost too much for his state, but he would find relief in getting at least a hit in on her. But she was nowhere to be found. He tried to speak again, attempting to perhaps lure her out from the trees that his eyes were casting about searchingly through, but he sounded desperate even in his own ears.

"Do you really think... that I... would ever set foot there?"

He strafed to his left, and he imagined the sleepy little cottage town in his mind, similar, but far from Hogsmeade.

"Me? When you know what I did?"

He whipped his head around to look behind him, knowing her tactics, but there was nothing aside from the soft sound of his own hair brushing against his cheeks, not even a feather.

He steadied himself, straightening up and lowering his wand. This was too frustrating, and the image of a perfectly lovely little cottage with its upper corner blown to bits was blinking behind his eyes even as he tried to clear them.

"You think I could ever show my face—..." His voice gave out, his breath feeling like it was being sucked into the cold night.

"I'm the one that put her in that grave, and you expect me dare set foot there?"

The image of an entirely different town came to mind, with a grinning red-haired little girl and childish secret meetings that felt so important back then and summer air that was nowhere to be found in this cold, damp forest.

His face crumpled instantly, but he bit back his tears. He was not allowed to cry over something that he had caused. He had ignored every warning, thrown her every word of advice into the dirt, and she had gotten tossed down in with it as he failed to listen.

"I... I..." He could barely keep from sobbing, swallowing thickly to no avail against the all-encompassing anguish. "I-I'm sorry..."

But what good was an apology? What good were tears? His own cynical tenets flashed through his mind back at him. None of it would accomplish anything to undo what had been done. It was him that was no good.

And then he felt it, dripping into his chest like he had been stabbed in the heart and the blood was now spreading with a liquid flow out from one point, and he gasped, gripping the front of his shirt, clutching his tie. There was nothing physical he could grab to make it stop, however, as the phoenix song was only inside him. He could feel his squirming heart struggle beneath the skin, shaking against his fist, and he fell to his knees like a dead weight.

"Please don't—I can't—" But the tears were already pooling in his eyes, and his voice was so soft he wasn't sure even Freya could hear him now as he doubled over, his vision blurring.

It was no use, he knew. He had heard it before, and felt it then, too, even in his addled state at the time. It was his own grief brought to song, a low painful music, somehow harsh and scathing but warm at the same time. It wasn't a feeling of being done to him, but a choir singing for him—displaying his grief as he could not—vivid, horrible, tangible in every part of him.

His body shook as he watched the tears fall onto the leaves, an indistinguishable mess to his blind eyes as his hair fell around his face, blocking out any chance of letting in what little light existed in the trees. He could no longer speak, but he was still begging for it to stop in his mind, even as he broke down from holding his chest back as it became too painful to try and contain his waves of sobs.

He did not know how long he stayed hunched there on the ground, as if cradling the warm lament in his arms while it shielded him from the world outside his thoughts and the cold air. By the time he began shakily collecting himself, he felt like an odd stiff but still-warm corpse, freshly dead.

Wiping his entire face off with the sleeve of his robe, he stared dully at the ground in front of him. His wand had fallen from his hands somewhere at his side, but he wasn't sure he could yet turn his neck to look for it. Patting blindly at the leaves, he managed to find it and return it to his pocket without moving his deadened gaze an inch.

Then something brightly flashed before his stare, and he would have scrambled away if he had any strength, but all he could muster was a choked, "No." But the feather sticking out of the ground vanished in a puff of flame, and he frowned. It returned again, this time the spark that brought it jumping to life.

He watched with distant fascination as a tiny flame stretched and drew itself into a little flickering castle, attached to the very end of the feather like a candle, and then it went out, leaving only the soft glow.

He blinked. So he was being shown mercy, after all. He wondered if any of the feathers had ever led anywhere but there, remembering her words to him from weeks ago about how she would not leave him out in the cold because it was just too sad. He found he didn't have the mind to deal with working out whatever it was that Freya Fawkes was thinking, or how sad he must look. He watched his shaking hand reach out, as if not even his own, barely conscious of the fact that he should probably stand up first and make himself presentable so he wasn't transporting to the Hogwarts grounds looking a disheveled mess. This need not have been a worry though, it seemed, as when his hand made contact and he was suddenly engulfed in too-hot rushing air that blasted all trace of chill from his clothes, he opened his eyes to see not the grounds, but the side of his bed in the dungeons. Looking around, there was a fire already lit in the fireplace opposite the foot of his bed, burning with slightly more red flames and noticeably more sparks. He picked himself up off the floor with extreme effort, noticing, when he looked down, that the feather he had been holding was gone.

He stayed with the covers pulled up to his ears all of Sunday, only tiredly padding down to his office to brew up something for Monday morning to somewhat revitalize him so that he could sleep in as much as he wanted, straight through breakfast, but hopefully not look completely dead for classes.

All other meals in the Great Hall were skipped after that as well, and he spent three days stealing down to Hogsmeade at odd hours to grab a bite to eat from a seedy pub, feeling like he was reliving his summer—and especially August—all over again. Reckless, raw, and dazed.

It was most of the way through the week when he finally accepted that his avoidance was doing him more harm than good, no longer relieving him from the stress of having to face her, but making him more stressed out from the fear of when it would happen. It didn't have to happen in front of anyone else though. He crept up to the research library, feeling similarly as he had the first time he had stood at this door, staring at the 'STAFF ONLY' sign and steeling himself.

He boldly made his way straight for the usual table, taking a sharp turn passed a long row of bookshelves and coming into the oval clearing with casual importance. Freya looked up as he placed his hand on his regular chair, second from the booth to keep the space between them distanced.

It was her expression that he had most been dreading. He didn't want to see it, whatever mix of pity, concern, or caring it was, but something else entirely different caught his attention. His eyes slipped to just above hers, towards her brow, and she seemed able to tell where he was looking, snapping shut her surprised mouth and making a face as she patted the newest addition of a fringe to her hairstyle. "Is it weird?"

He stared in silence, momentarily unsure if he was about to be blamed, even jokingly, for this, or if he even was to blame.

She sighed comically, pushing her fingers through her hair as she often did, only now it scattered shorter strands into an elegant messiness. "Just say 'no' and sit down, will you? I'm not looking for fashion advice."

The muscles around his face twitched and relaxed, and he finally pulled his chair out- but there was something waiting for him on the table. Sitting slowly, he inspected the thin brown wrapping paper, folded in a long flat rectangle and tied with red twine. "What's this?"

She barely looked up from her paper, merely raising her brows indifferently. "Hm... I wonder..."

He eyed her, then the parcel. Clearing his throat, he said with tentative sarcasm, "Have you... taken up extra work as a post owl?"

She tapped down her quill, looking up at him with a tight smile that, despite looking specifically peeved, loosened his chest. "Why don't you just open it?"

The corners of his lips curled as he glanced at her. In one motion, he took out his wand and vanished the wrapping fully without even touching it.

"Severus! You didn't even open it, that doesn't count! Oh, I bet you're real fun on Christmas, aren't you?"

But he was staring down at the red feather laying with innocent stillness on the polished wood, barely listening. There was no reason for his heart to panic though, as his eyes traced down to its point—this one was carved into the elegant intricate tip of a quill.

"It's... not a tail feather," he said quietly.

She was watching him fully now, her work forgotten. She seemed hesitant herself to hazard her next remark, but her voice slipped into the familiar tone at the end. "Well... I don't remember ever saying it would be, just that I agreed to give you a feather. Guess that's what you get for gambling."

When he glanced at her with deadpan half-lidded disbelief, she smiled with full brightness, showing teeth like the obnoxious imp she was. The last of his misgivings about whatever expression he had been expecting from her died out, and his own face cracked into a grin and he laughed his quiet laugh.

It was pushed out from his lungs and sucked back in just as quickly, and he immediately went still, staring down at the table blankly again. He could just see her own frozen posture from the corner of his vision, and he tried to unthaw the reaction his body had just had from daring to flex this emotion too soon after such a raw re-opening of wounds. His mind raced, trying to sort out if he was still able to laugh, or if this would shatter the calm stillness that had overtaken him. He settled for coughing dryly into his hand and busying himself with getting out his own papers and things, leaving his old quill where it was stuffed into the bottom. When he straightened, the sound of a thick glass object hit the table to his left.

"I got you ink as well," she said offhandedly. "I know you normally grade in black, but, well, it's a red feather, so..."

He gently pushed the little inkwell back towards her. "I'll still to black, thanks."

Not looking put-out, she scooped it back up into her bag. "More for me, then."

"It does look... odd, however," he said as he held up his new quill, only hesitating a fraction before he touched it. The main colorful plume felt just slightly warm between his fingers, but the actual quill was room temperature when he pinched it, testing out the feel of waving it in tight little circles hovered above the parchment. Mostly, it was just gaudy and unmatching to his style.

"Yes, you do look like quite a prat, don't you?" To his surprise, Freya was looking at him with undisguised disgust.

He raised his brows. "Are you referring to the addition of the pen, or just your thoughts in general?"

"Both, in equal measure."

Curiously, he looked from her disgruntled face, to where she was staring at the quill in his hand. He waved it around, watching her eyes follow it. He held it over his black inkwell and watched her eye practically twitch. The corners of his mouth stretched into a devilish grin, and he dipped it in excessively deep, pulling it out dripping wet in a solid inch and half of jet black at the point. She bared her teeth in a grimace.

"Very lovely gift," he said with much pleasure, "thank you ever so much."

"Mm... mhm," she said tersely, nodding with her fingers pressed over now tightly shut lips and staring down at her paper like she couldn't bear to watch any longer. She just managed to peek up at him, and he was about to taunt her more, when her expression softened. Inspecting the image of him, she spoke with her hand still over her mouth so that her words were slightly mumbled. "It suits you."

His hand stopped just as he was about to place an inky finger print on the fine red feather. He glanced down at it, unsure of this conclusion. It still looked much too bright and excessive for his tastes, but then again, he would most likely only be using it in this library anyway...

"Your hair looks nice," he muttered back, and leaned forward over his work before he could catch the look of her reaction. A moment passed before he finally heard a reply from Freya, her voice sounding a bit higher than normal despite her biting remark, and he kept his head down, smirking behind his sheet of hair.

"I meant it suits you as a prat."

---

_— *** —_

"It's a moment we carry alone
With a cause there's a cure for the soul
But, oh, how it's taken its toll
Oh, how it's taken its toll"

B.R.M.C. - The Toll