Bothari returned from the soccer lesson to find Professor Snape setting out a roll of parchment, a pot of ink and a quill pen. Bothari knew that people in the Time of Isolation used to write books on paper, or sometimes even parchment, like this, instead of electronic book-disks. Nowadays, only Vor wrote on paper, and then only on special occasions. But he was fairly sure that even in the Time of Isolation, people who knew how to write hadn't written everything on parchment, the way Earth wizards apparently did. There couldn't be enough Earth grass to graze enough sheep for it.

'We need to draw up a schedule of who looks after our guest when,' Snape announced. 'You may wish to make yourself a drink before we start. This could take some time to decide.' Snape himself already had a mug of tea in front of him, and Cheiron had a mug of water.

Bothari was about to make himself a coffee when something occurred to him. 'What about General Skywalker?'

Snape sighed. 'All right, if he's awake, ask him if he wants another drink. He's perfectly capable of levitating the mug for himself while we get on with this.'

'No. He should be here.' He remembered the way that, when Elena was a baby, Lady Vorkosigan used to get indignant on his behalf about the way that paediatricians reporting on the baby's progress talked past him, preferring to talk to Lady Vorkosigan, or Mistress Hysopi. He remembered what Cheiron kept saying about life on the Rock working by agreement and consent, not by hierarchy and rules. It wasn't right to make decisions about what they were going to do to Skywalker without asking him.

'Because, of course, the dread tyrant of the galaxy isn't going to take kindly to having boundaries placed on his behaviour,' retorted Snape. 'If we don't want to live in fear of him Force-choking us every time he doesn't get his own way, he needs to learn his place, as soon as possible.'

'Yes – and if you're willing to have him here, his place is that of one of the three people sharing this house,' said Cheiron. 'Konstantine is quite right. So – if Anakin is still asleep, or doesn't feel ready to take part in this discussion right now, we can discuss possibilities, but wait until he's awake before drawing up an agreement. If he is awake – have you tested yet whether he's able to sit up in the float-chair?'

'Not yet,' Bothari admitted. 'He probably can.'

'Well, can you ask him if he feels up to coming downstairs, if he hasn't had enough excitement for one day? If not – well, I can make it up the stairs, and I'll see what I can do about getting down. If I can't manage, I can always ask Severus to levitate me.'

'We aren't supposed to be taking him out of bed more than necessary,' protested Snape. 'Apart from anything else, he's still attached to an IV.'

'There's a holder for it that straps to his chest,' Bothari reminded him. 'And Dr Durona says he doesn't really need it twenty-six – twenty-four hours a day,' he corrected himself (after years on the Rock, he still wasn't used to its too-short days). 'It's just so that he doesn't starve.'

'Oh, very well, if you insist on being so stubborn,' sighed Snape, but there was a glint of a smile in his eyes that said, Well done for standing up to me. It was like the way Admiral Vorkosigan had sometimes looked at him – not so much when Bothari beat him in sparring practice, because they both knew they were both good at that, but when Bothari occasionally argued with him instead of just carrying out orders.

Skywalker was awake, and didn't object to Snape levitating him into the float-chair for the journey downstairs, but he didn't ask any questions, except technical ones about the antigrav technology in the chair, which neither Bothari nor Snape knew much about.

'We've got the manual,' Bothari offered, then remembered that it wasn't in a script that Skywalker knew how to read, and added, 'I'll read it to you, later, if you like.' He wasn't fluent in Roman script himself, but he could get by.

'Perhaps I should read it,' offered Snape. 'If you really need a bedtime story.' His tone was gently mocking, as if reading an electronics manual for fun was weird – but then, he got the same way about Bothari reading the Imperial Service Regulations every evening before bed, as if that was completely different from Snape settling down with with some ancient book on magic or herbs.

'Good afternoon,' called Cheiron, as they approached. 'No, I'm not another housemate, just a nosy neighbour. My name is Cheiron Son of Cronos, and I'm a friend of Severus and Konstantine. I hope I can be your friend too, Mr Skywalker – or Anakin, whichever you prefer.'

'Anakin,' murmured Skywalker.

'Is there anything you'd like to ask me?'

'Where I come from, Chiron is the name of a planet, not a person. It has people who look – much like you. But – I have never seen a male Chironian before. Nor a Chironian with uncloven hooves, and no horns.'

'I'm a centaur, and we're native to Earth – the same planet Severus comes from, though I'm from long before his time. In my day, centaur stallions heavily outnumbered mares – or at least, we would have done if we didn't die as a result of getting drunk and picking fights with humans and losing. The ones who managed not to behave like that were the ones whose descendants were still around by Severus's time.'

'You are dead, too?'

'Yes, I'm dead and in the afterlife, like you. I've been here a long time, so I generally help new arrivals settle in. Speaking of which, can I get you something to drink?'

'Can I have caf?'

Bothari glanced at Cheiron. 'Should he?'

'I don't think it'll do any harm,' said Cheiron. 'Would you like cream and sugar? You need plenty of energy, to heal.'

Anakin glanced down at the nutrient bag strapped to his chest and the tube plugged into the stump of his left arm. Eventually he said quietly, 'Yes. I suppose I do.'

Snape sketched out a timetable which involved him and Bothari each taking an eight-hour break (amended to nine hours when Cheiron insisted that they each needed eight hours of sleep plus at least half an hour to wake up in the morning and settle to sleep at night). Snape planned to take the night shift, getting up in time for them to have supper together, spending the night brewing potions and checking on Skywalker's health every fifteen minutes, having breakfast with his housemates, and going to bed mid-morning. 'I will also prepare the following day's lunch and leave it in the fridge, as Konstantine's culinary skills are about what you'd expect from a planet whose main contribution to galactic cuisine was maple mead,' he concluded.

He was trying to be friendly, trying to lighten the mood, and so Bothari, instead of getting indignant on behalf of his planet, muttered, 'Never tried rat bars, have you?' and Skywalker added, 'I doubt they taste as bad as Vitapaste.'

'Perhaps we should collect the most noxious meal substitutes known to the multiverse for a taste comparison sometime,' agreed Snape, with almost a smile. 'Now, Skywalker's care plan says he is supposed to have an hour of bacta therapy per day, so I can lower him into the tank from 8.30 to 9.30 a.m., and levitate him back onto the bed to be washed and given a fresh set of dressings.'

Bothari tried not to flinch at the word 'therapy'. He knew that it could mean a lot of things and that most of them were to do with recovery rather than being tortured, even if some of them weren't exactly pleasant. Think about helping Lord Miles go through his physiotherapy exercises when he was a toddler! Think about Lieutenant Koudelka having to re-learn how to do everything after his prosthetic nerve system was implanted! Think about talking to Cheiron about stuff, and learning all those eye-movement, finger-tapping drills for coping with remembering all the bad things!

'Do you think working a fifteen-hour day each, every day, is a good idea?' said Cheiron gently to Snape. 'Can you think of anyone you'd like to ask to come and take over sometimes, so that you can take breaks?'

'I'll be mostly brewing, cooking or reading,' said Snape. 'Compared with patrolling Hogwarts, having only one Dark wizard to keep an eye on is a rest cure.'

'Are you both going to set aside times for having a social life?' Cheiron went on. 'It isn't too difficult for whoever is doing the day shift to go out and see a friend for an hour or so, but Severus, if you're going to work all night and be asleep for most of the day, can you think of a way not to be too isolated?'

'I'm hardly a social butterfly when the option is open to me,' retorted Snape. 'I'm looking forward to having the peace to work on my own without being expected to interact with people. I'm more worried about what having nine hours of Darth Vader's undiluted company is going to do to Konstantine.'

'I can manage,' said Bothari, wondering whether he could. At the moment, General Skywalker wasn't being very … Vaderish, but if he did decide to be – it could be like Admiral Vorrutyer all over again. Only worse, because at least Vorrutyer had had his duties to keep him busy some of the time. No, don't think about that, not now…

'It won't be exactly undiluted,' said Cheiron. 'Rowan and some of her sisters are planning to call in every day to check on Anakin's progress, and, Anakin, if you're comfortable with the idea, I'd like to come to visit you each day, as well as spending some time with Konstantine and with Severus. I've been on the Rock longer than anyone, so I should be able to answer most of your questions. I don't know whether you're okay with being alone in my presence, or whether you'd prefer to have someone else by as well?'

'No. I trust the shape of your presence,' said Skywalker solemnly. 'And, Konstantine – I am not reading your thoughts, but I can feel your anxiety. Do you fear that I will try to turn you back to the Dark Side?'

It was no use lying. 'Yes, but – it's not just that. I might go back there anyway, the way I did this morning.'

Skywalker looked towards Cheiron now. '"If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will," – that is what Master Yoda always used to say. Is he right? Are we beyond redemption? Can we never escape?'

'It depends what you mean by escape,' Cheiron said. 'Your past experiences won't go away. The person your experiences and choices have shaped you to be won't change overnight. But that doesn't mean you can't make good choices. You have made right choices sometimes, after all.'

Cheiron sounded like Lady Vorkosigan now. A conversation, years ago, in the family cemetery over the lake at Vorkosigan Surleau:

'You're asking me to be your conscience. Make your judgments for you. But you are a whole man. I've seen you make right choices, under the most absolute stress.'

'But I can't remember them. Can't remember how I did it.'

At least Skywalker hadn't had his memories erased. But on the other hand, he didn't have a friend like Cordelia Vorkosigan to remember for him that he could be an honourable man. He had died before he and Luke had had a chance to get to be friends like that. Which meant he needed Bothari and Snape and Cheiron to be that friend to him. But there should be some way of giving Skywalker the memory of Lady Vorkosigan, too. And of giving him the memory of living on, knowing you'd done bad things and couldn't change the past, but just doing the best you could anyway. Maybe he shouldn't have let Skywalker read his mind directly, earlier. But maybe there was another way.

'It's not right,' he said. 'We've seen vids about General Skywalker and his family, but he hasn't seen vids of us. He doesn't know any reason to trust us, if he doesn't read our minds.' He turned to Snape. 'You said Cheiron showed you Lord Miles's memories of me. Could – could Cheiron make copies of my memories, so General Skywalker could watch them like a holovid?'

'Konstantine, no!' exclaimed Snape, horrified. 'I mean, yes, it's possible, if channelling thoughts like that is something that Muggles can do and not just wizards, but – haven't you already suffered enough with people stealing parts of your memory? And besides, memories are private! Skywalker is just going to have to learn to respect boundaries.'

'I think it's hard for anything to be very private, here,' said Cheiron. 'After all, Severus, if you had had time to read Muggle science fiction, you could have read most of the Vorkosigan books from Shards of Honor up until Memory. If Miles Vorkosigan had developed an interest in the Harry Potter stories as well as Star Wars and Vorthalia the Bold, Konstantine might have had to sit through those. I'm sure there were still legends about creatures like me by your time, even among Muggles who had no idea that we were real. And, as Konstantine says, both of you have watched Star Wars films.

'Also, don't forget that I use a modified version of Pensieve technology that copies memories instead of cutting and pasting them. If Konstantine chooses to copy and broadcast any memories, it won't leave gaps in his mind, and it won't be physically painful – though as I'm sure you all know, looking back over some memories can be emotionally painful, and sharing them with other people can be risky.

'So, Konstantine, if you want to go over your memories and choose some to share, you're welcome to do so, but you might want to see the recordings we've already got, from Cordelia and from Miles. If you could look over those, you can decide whether you want to show any of them to the group, and whether there's anything you want to add.

'Severus, there aren't a lot of potions needed at the moment that really require your skill to brew them. So – this isn't a demand, but just a question – instead of spending most of each night brewing, would you be interested in doing some spellwork to see if you can modify a Pensieve into something like a screen that the four of us could watch memories on together?'

'Fine, I clearly don't need rest!' retorted Snape. 'Just think of me as a house-elf; just because I'm dead is no reason why I should be allowed to rest in peace, is it?' His voice was huffy, but Bothari could see the glint of excitement in his dark eyes. How long had it been since Snape had worked on something new? Like Lord Miles, he was far too creative and energetic to want each day to be safely predictable.

'I'm sorry, that was unfair,' said Cheiron. 'I didn't mean to put pressure on you, when you've already been landed with a lot of extra work. We can just sit the Pensieve on the dinner table for a user to view the memories in the normal way.'

'No, it's not a problem,' said Snape hastily. 'You keep telling me that I'm ruining my health spending too much time brewing. I haven't done much Transfiguration work for years. When do I start?'

'There's no hurry,' said Cheiron. 'First of all, I'd like to spend some time giving Konstantine a chance to go through the memories relating to him, so it's likely to take at least a week or two to sort that out. In the meantime, if you want to take the night shift this evening, would it help you to rest for now, and start a bit later this evening?'

Snape glanced warily at Skywalker, and then at Bothari, who offered, 'I can do until midnight. I've been sleeping well, lately,' he added. He knew that Snape worried about him, and – well, in the past, when he'd been settling in, he might have offered to do extra work just because he was too agitated to sleep.

Skywalker yawned.

'How are you feeling?' Cheiron asked. Skywalker looked blank. 'Are you tired?'

'I – suppose so. Why? Why am I tired, now?'

'Because you're healing and it takes a lot of energy. Because until they finish growing, you have child-sized heart and lungs powering an adult-sized body. And because you have twenty-three years of sleep deprivation to make up for,' said Cheiron firmly. 'You're going to need a lot of rest for quite a while yet. Do you want to go back to bed?'

'Yes. I will retire to rest now.'

'So, I'd better stay awake long enough to levitate you onto the bed, before I turn in,' said Snape.

'That's very helpful of you, but please get some rest soon,' said Cheiron. 'And if I go to fetch my Pensieve now, Konstantine, do you want to start reviewing memories this evening?'

Yes, he did – and yet he didn't. It had been bad enough getting his own memories back, as fresh and sharp as if they had only just happened, rather than faded from being taken out and looked at again and again. Finding out how he looked through someone else's memories – someone who had been an enemy, at the point where they first met – was going to be even tougher. And yet – Lady Vorkosigan was someone who liked him a lot more than he liked himself, and so it was easier to feel that he wasn't too bad, when he was with her.

He mostly didn't let himself think about how he missed the friends he'd left behind when he died. Dying was harder than seeing a friend die, because you lost everyone at once. Watching the memories of some of the best friends he had ever had was just going to bring it all back.

But he didn't want to miss it for anything.

Author's note: Sorry for the long delay - this chapter has been really hard work to write! I'm sorry if it's too turgid and exposition-heavy - the first draft was even more so, before PDB11 helped me edit it a bit. This took considerable patience on his part, considering that he isn't a fan of either Harry Potter or Star Wars to start with!

I am also indebted to excessivelyperky for being a tireless Snape advocate and pointing out when Snape's needs are in danger of being overlooked just because he is more nearly sane than his housemates.

Anakin is the character I know the least well, and I realise I may frequently not be getting him right. So I could really do with some constructive criticism about him - or about any of the characters, or anything that feels not quite right in their voice or the way they respond to situations.