Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter NOR any of his friends NEITHER any of his enemies. It's hard to admit, but when I'm done with them all, I have to return them to Joanne K. Rowling in an original wrapping and unharmed. I make no money, I mean no harm.

Patchwork
Thirsty

Ginny was really, really hard trying to learn. She had Potions the first thing in the morning, and although it was their second lesson that year, Snape would no doubt expect them to know everything up to chapter five - maybe even all of the chapters, since the seventh year's textbook didn't seem to follow any actual course. There was just a plenty of brewing instructions, some of them even with diagrams to follow! Ginny sighed.

The common room was too noisy, Ginny decided. There was a pair of fifth years playing chess with a group of mates whooping whenever the pieces fought and cheering to the winner of the duel, some younger boys where playing Exploding Snap and a couple of sixth years was having a loud row, yelling at each other from the staircases to their respective dormitories - they, too, had an encouranging audience. It was quite impossible to concentrate in the general uproar. Escaping to the dormitory wouldn't help much, for Ginny's roommates were probably thoroughly gossipping. Luckily, she kept the invisibility cloak in an inner pocket of her robes and the Marauder's Map in her bag. She packed her Potions textbook and slipped out of the common room.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," she whispered once in a quiet corridor. The map filled itself with lines and moving dots. Ginny quickly searched it for Filch and Mrs. Norris, knowing the teachers would be mostly in their offices as it was still early in the evening. Filch, too, was in his office, his dot nearly blending with that of his cat. Ginny tapped the map briskly.

"Mischief managed," she whispered. "Robert?" she called as she was putting the now-folded map away. The boy stepped out of his hiding place behind an armour, eyes wide. Ginny smiled at him.

"And your friend, too. Elizabeth, is it?" The girl was rather plump, but not ugly. It was clear from her tanned skin she was used to spend a lot of time outside, and Ginny briefly thought she was probably a good friend for Robert. Then she noticed she was holding a book.

"Do you know my name?" Elizabeth piped uncertainly. She pressed the book to her abdomen with both her arms and stood so close to Robert their shoulders brushed now and then as the children were breathing.

"Sure," Ginny smiled. She was cheating - she had read the name on the map, but there was no need to explain that to the children. "What are the two of you doing here?"

"It was too noisy in there," Robert nodded in the general direction of the Gryffindor common room. "There's a little alcove here with a window and, well, we were just talking there. Are you looking for a quiet place yourself?" Ginny nodded and peeked behind the armour. There was just enough light coming through the window to spoil one's eyes reading, which had been, Ginny suspected, what the children had been doing here.

"I know about a quiet place where we can read or talk," she said impulsively. The two looked at her expectantly. "Come." Ginny led them down the nearest stairs, along a long corridor and up another stairs to the entrance to the Room of Requirement. The path had changed at least three times the year before that and again over the summer, but Ginny had learned to find her way instinctively. Or maybe the castle itself was helping her - sometimes she surely felt as if being shown the right way.

Robert and Elizabeth stared as Ginny paced the long corridor three times up and down. Just when they were ready to voice their doubts, the door appeared and the children gasped in surprise. Ginny bowed them inside.

"Welcome to the Room of Requirement," she said formally. "It will become whatever you will need, just pass the place where the door is three times and concentrate." There were two brightly lit desks standing a good distance apart in the room. Ginny headed to the smaller one and took out her Potions textbook again.

"Let's stay here till seven," she said. "We'll have enough time to get back to the common room before curfew." She glanced at the grandfather's clock standing next to the door. "If you need anything, just think of it and then try to find it on one of the shelves," she instructed before settling down with her book. Robert and Elizabeth started talking in hushed voices and Ginny tuned them out.

"Magic is the most important part of any brewing," she read in a soft voice to better remember the lesson. "It is, however..."

"It is, however, possible to brew some of the simpliest potions without the talent," Snape lectured his two older students. "They will not be as potent as if brewed properly and may easily become a mere broth if the brewer makes any mistake." He noticed Neville glancing at him and frowned.

"Mr. Longobottom, you would do better to mind your own cauldron," he scolded and bent to inspect the contents of said cauldron. "It is nearly adequate. Have you been practicing?"

"Sure, brewing tea every morning," Neville replied lightly. A corner of Snape's mouth twitched and Neville winked at Hermione, whose jaw had fallen wide open at his statement.

"Close your mouth, Miss Granger, you do not want to swallow anything. I can assure you that the ink you are using is not digestible," Snape barked. Neville supressed a chuckle and looked down into his cauldron. The liquid was slowly simmering, as it was supposed to do, but its colour was a little more yellow than...

"Do you call this orange, Mr. Longbottom?" Neville stared at the slowly circulating surface.

"No, sir," he admited. He dared not look up. He had discovered ten minutes into the lesson that Snape's best menacing glare hadn't intimidated him any more - instead, he'd found it amusing. Although it was more pleasant to brew a potion while having great time, it didn't help him to acquire abilities he had never learned, and knowing that Snape actually wanted him to succeed, he felt strangely responsible.

It was, indeed, a very odd feeling. As much as he cared for his friends, he usually felt the least among them. With the only exception of Luna. He had felt responsible for Luna - in a way. One very different from the way he felt responsible for not hurting Snape right now.

"Why, pray tell, is your potion less orange and more yellow than it should be?" Neville consulted his textbook briefly, feeling hot rising to his cheeks. The fact was he had no idea how he had achieved a colour so close to the desired one.

"I don't know, sir," he said quietly. Snape didn't comment at that and simply picked up where he had left his lecture.

"Among those simple potions that can be brewed by a Muggle belong strengthening potions based on common herbs, healing lotions or aphrodisiacs, which are sometimes incorrectly presented as love potions. True love potions, actually, require the brewer to use a significant magical additive. Some textbook list poisons as well, but that is incorrect. The non-magically brewed poison is usually poisonous because of the poisonous components but the venom lacks any magical dimension." Snape stopped at his desk and briefly consulted his notes. "How come it is possible to brew a magical potion without a magical additive?" he asked all of the sudden. Hermione looked panicky. Snape hadn't assigned any textbook for their course and she hadn't had the opportunity to learn all the chapters in advance. She didn't know the answer and felt oddly inadequate because of it.

Draco watched as Hermione anxiously bit her lower lip. He didn't know the answer, either, and he was trying in vain to think of something. His brain seemed to have grown inoperable over the last year, when he hadn't been required to do much thinking.

"But there is a magical additive," Neville said from his cauldron, carefully stirring the thickening liquid. "A lot of them, actually. The herbs and other ingredients are natural source of magical energy." Snape swept over his workplace, took the stirring rod from him and examined the potion. Neville hadn't managed to correct the colour, which meant the potion would have a slight side effect of causing nausea, but it's thickness suggested it would have the desired effect as well.

"Correct. You will write me an essay debating the possible mistakes you made brewing this potion and how would each influence the result." Neville blinked. "Clear your place."

Snape took a tray with various herbs from a side table and placed it before Hermione and Draco.

"Most of the healing potions we use are a result of centuries of research, thousands of experiments and an uncountable amount of small changes. These herbs are the ingredients that bear the magical energy able to heal. Not all of them are strong enough to allow non-magical brewing, though. Your assignment is to decide which of them are and in what form. The usual Muggle way to brew a healing potion is to simply make a tea. Are you familiar with any magic-detecting charm?" Hermione and Draco both nodded. "Very well. Set to work, then. I expect you to write a two-feet parchment on your proceedings and discoveries each. Two feet," Snape stressed with a pointed look at Hermione. The girl blushed.

Turning to Neville, Snape noted with a wave of annoyance she had grown up into a prettier girl he would have expected seven years ago.

Mrs. Norris slipped into a dark narrow passage between a wall and a row of heavy curtains to evade a group of second years who were on their way to one of the bathrooms. She ran through the passage and emerged just under the stairs, only to disappear in a fake wall on the other side. No human even knew about this other staircase - it was so small and dark. The tiny windows on each turning were dirty and never let through any light. That hinted even the house elves were ignorant of this secret, and Mrs. Norris liked that. She despised of the creatures, especially because she was forbidden to hunt them.

She mounted all the way to the toppest floor. She had used to run up that staircase in her days, but the time had taken its toll on her and in order to sustain her dignity - and keep her breath - she had to slow down over the years.

There was a trapdoor leading to an even higher floor. Mrs. Norris could sense the space between the ceiling and the roof, she had been, however, unable to gain access to that space. No matter how hard she had tried in the past, the trapdoor had remained frustratingly closed. She hissed at the offensive thing and slipped into the main corridor.

There were students coming her way. Mrs. Norris kept to the wall to avoid them. There had been days in which she had preferred meeting the students in the open, feeling her superioty that - unbeknownst to her - Filch's position had ensured for her. As she grew older, she had lost the interest in terrifying the students. Instead, she chose to keep distance.

It was an older girl and two of the youngest children. Mrs. Norris recognised the small girl - she had met her the other night wandering through the castle. She hadn't seemed hostile as most of the other students did, and Mrs. Norris crept forward to have a better look at her. The movement, however subtle, caught the girl's eyes.

"Hello, Mrs. Norris," she said pleasantly. Mrs. Norris took a step backwards, but went on gazing at the girl, who was now crouching down with one hand, palm upwards, stretching towards her. She hissed but moved a little closer to sniff at the offered palm. It was empty and clear and Mrs. Norris hissed again, albeit not in an unfriendly way. She backed away and slipped into the shadows, marking the girl in her mind as a rare curiosity.

"She's not very friendly, is she?" Elizabeth asked rather bashfully, seeing Ginny staring at her obviously in shock.

"That was about as friendly as she could ever get!"

As his three students filed out of his classroom, already talking about Astronomy, Snape decided to have a coffee in the staff room. It was a quiet alternative to his own rooms this late, as he couldn't suppose anybody would be there after dinner, and it would allow him the benefit of a walk through the corridors when it wasn't his patrol night without seeming to be patrolling voluntarily... too obviously.

As it turned out, the staff room wasn't deserted. Snape frowned at Tisha who was sitting at a desk working through a pile of books.

"Don't you have an office?" Snape asked while scrutinising the Muggle coffee-machine. It seemed innocent enough and he wondered whether Tisha had managed to get a cup of coffee out of it.

"I brought it up here after the lunch and then found it easier to finish the work here than to mark pages in eight different volumes." Snape pressed one of the buttons on the machine and it produced a loud buzzing sound and a thin stream of light brown liquid which filled nearly all of the bottom of the cup standing in front of the machine.

"It's completely and utterly out of order," Tisha said from her desk. "I'll take it back to my office later."

"So sad. No good coffee for Muggles," Snape mused as he refilled the staff pot and poured himself a cup.

"I can always ask Dobby. Actually, I believe he would be offended if I managed without him." Snape leisurily strolled behind her and peeked onto her notepad, which happened to be a Muggle thing.

"What's this?" he queried, purposely sounding repulsed.

"Muggle beletry. I always wanted to make notes on some of them and finally I have an excuse." Tisha softly laughed as she dipped her quill.

"I die of thirst beside the fountain, I'm hot as fire, I'm shaking tooth on tooth," Snape read aloud. "Who wrote it, some lunatic?"

"Oh, Severus, you have no sense for art!" Tisha cried, trying to sound horrified and failing. She followed his movements with her merry eyes as she recited the rest of the stanza, concluding with a forceful, "Warmly welcomed, always turned away."

"Oh, really?" Snape muttered.

"Francois Villon," Tisha supplied happily. "A French medieval poet. Very famous."

"A criminal, if I recall correctly."

"You do." Tisha cocked her head. "Have you studied Muggle poetry?" she asked curiously.

"I would not call it studying. I was, at a time, interested in some pieces." Snape left his cup next to the unhelpful coffee-machine and headed for the door.

"Have a nice night," Tisha called after his retreating figure.

"Likewise," he uttered before closing the door behind himself. He took a roundabout way towards the dungeons, sweeping the first happy couple of the year out of a quiet corner and back to their respective common rooms. He arrived back to his living room about half past nine and found it already occupied.

"I thought you had Astronomy." Neville raised his eyebrows at the displeased tone and set aside the book he had been reading.

"I decided to drop it and concentrate on the Potions. It's a nice hobby, but I need the O.W.L. more. Is anything the matter?"

"Nothing." Snape sat into his armchair and stared moodily into the fire. "Any luck with your reading?"

"Well, I was looking at effects of substituting certain rare herbs with more common ones. It seems fascinating." Neville picked up his book and found a passage he believed to be extremely interesting.

"Don't try to run before you learn to walk," Snape drawled as if it pleased him.

"What is the matter, Severus?" Neville barked.

"You are unusually impatient tonight," Snape observed, his mood lifting. "Is anything the matter?" Neville sighed and returned to reading. They sat in silence for five minutes.

"You don't turn pages," Snape said calmly. "I assume the reading is too difficult for you."

"You assume wrongly." Neville dropped the book and stared at Snape's profile until the Potions Master gave in and looked at him.

"So?"

"The fourth of September. A year ago, we figured out where Harry, Ron and Hermione had gone." There was no need to clarify who was the other one. As a member of the Order of the Phoenix, Snape knew. What he didn't know, though, was what to say, so he remained silent.

"She didn't have to come with me," Neville mumbled.

"Neither of you had to leave the school," Snape offered.

"She wasn't old enough to join in the war."

"Some say she wasn't sane enough." Neville looked up sharply at that, but didn't say anything, and Snape continued, "Neither of you were old enough to fight in a war. Not you, not Miss Lovegood, certainly, not Weasley, not even Potter - despite the fact that he had no way to avoid it. It was her choice."

"It wasn't her choice to die!" Neville jumped up and started pacing the room.

It was her fault, was the only reply that came in Snape's mind, and he checked himself in time and didn't say it. He watched Neville stopping at the fireplace, one hand grasping at the mantelpiece, his arm shielding his face from Snape's prying eyes. Snape waited.

It had been him - although they hadn't recognised him then - who had accidentally disturbed them during a rather passionate date outside the smallest Hogwarts greenhouse. Luna had seemed unusually concentrated at the time and Neville had been flushed, red and out of breath. The topic had never been brought up since, but Snape suspected their relationship had moved somewhere more comfortable before the night when Luna Lovegood had been taken a prisoner of Voldemort. The result od that had been quite predictable: the little the poor girl had known had been forced out of her and then Bellatrix Lestrange had been given a free hand with the young witch. The extreme pain of Cruciatus had caused Luna's muscles to spasm so violently her neck had been broken after a mercifully short time. Her dead body had been left on the Grimmauld Place, which was as close as the Dark Lord could guess at the Order's headquaters' whereabouts.

"I presume it must have been very hard for you, to find her dead," Snape said when Neville refused to budge.

"I was glad," Neville whispered.

"I beg your pardon?" slipped out of Snape's mouth in shock.

"I was glad," Neville repeated, more loudly this time. "I was glad she was dead, that she wasn't like my parents, that she was gone for good." A sound threateningly resembling a sob escaped Neville's throat and his fingers squeezed the mantelpiece so hard his knuckles turned white. Snape contemplated this. He hadn't seen what had become of the Longbottoms, but their fate sounded horribly enough to understand.

Neville stared in the fire, but all he could see was the expression on Luna's dead face. It had been a mask of horror and a picture of madness: if she had survived, she would have been gone forever, anyway. She would have joined his parents in the Mungo's ward for mentally ill and she would have lived for years, reminding him of a mistake he had made.

He hadn't noticed the movement, but suddenly there was a thin, long-fingered hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. He dared not turn and look at Snape, who stood beside him mutely until Neville removed his hand from the mantelpiece.

"I shouldn't have let her come with me."

"As I remember Miss Lovegood," Snape said, letting go of Neville's shoulder, "there was no force in the world to stop her from that." Neville laughed shortly. A glass flew in his hand and he accepted it without hesitation.

"To Looney," he raised the glass, turning slightly. The alcohol tasted almost as bitter as his toast.

Once again, the Hogsmeade grew silent. Blaise looked out of the window in the general direction of the Hogwarts castle. He could only make out an outline of something that could have been one of the towers, but it made him feel better anyway. He shut the window and checked both the door to the shop and the back door.

Ginny was sitting in his kitchen, nursing a cup of tea.

"Are you going to tell me how you got in here?" Blaise asked. Ginny shook her head and smiled. He bent to kiss her on the cheek, which she allowed, but she drew away before he could kiss her mouth.

She had been like that since the end of the war.

Blaise poured himself a cup of tea, resignated to an hour or two of her excruciating company. It was a torture, sometimes, to have her so near and yet so distant, but it was better than being alone.

"Have you had a nice day?" Ginny shrugged and then suprised Blaise with a rare smile.

"I should go," she said before Blaise finished his tea. He noticed she had barely touched her own.

"Ginny?" He wanted to say she didn't have to come if it was too much trouble, but the truth was he didn't dare saying anything like that. He wanted to ask her to stay, yet he knew she wouldn't. He wanted to tell her how much he cared for her, but the words never found their way out of his mouth, so in the end he simply hugged her and let her go for the night.

"I'm so glad I have you so close," she said before disappearing under the stairs.

"I have never been further," Blaise answered bitterly.

A/N: The verses are from Villon's Ballade, also known as "I die of thirst beside the fountain". A fine piece of poetry, if you ask me, although I prefer the Czech translation to the English one (I simply like Czech rhyming rules better ;)).

If anyone is rereading this, I had to move the place of Neville and Luna's date Snape interrupted because I messed up on the continuity. Luckily it was an easy fix.