NOTE

Warning for crude language, self harm scars, and references to sexual assault.


3. nocturnal

Care of Magical Creatures involved digging around in piles of Hagrid's compost for beetles. It was a task for which Fay should have rolled up her sleeves, but of course she couldn't do that. Lucy was too busy being afraid of the strange half-turkey half-iguana hybrids, who pecked at the beetles with their beaks, to pay much attention to Fay's strange behaviour. Once the class was over Fay used scourgify to clean off her robes. She suffered through her Defence class, taught by a distracted Slughorn, and by dinner her head was aching a little and she was in want of a warm bath.

She managed to eat enough at dinner, motivated by an aversion to taking the bitter Wolfsbane potion on an empty stomach. Dennis did not return any of her determined looks towards the Gryffindor table.

After a half hour's solitary study in the library she went down to the dungeons and knocked on the door of Snape's office.

"Enter," he said.

She opened the door and stepped in. The office was dark and rather musty, and on Snape's desk sat some new weird thing floating in a jar of green fluid.

"Good evening," Snape said, when he saw her.

"Sir."

Snape stood from his desk and crossed the room to a narrow black door. He unlocked it with a mutter and a wave of his hand, and it swung open to reveal a circular room, only large enough for brewing. One silver cauldron sat upon a tall stone table, bathed directly in the pale waxing moonlight which streamed through the mullioned window. Faint blue smoke curled from the cauldron. Fay swallowed.

A goblet sat beside the cauldron and Snape dipped it below the silver lip before offering it to Fay. A single drop of clear potion ran down the side. She stared at it as it rolled and landed on the second knuckle of Snape's pale index finger. Her gaze floated emptily to his black sleeve.

"Miss Green."

Tightening her jaw, she took the goblet and turned to the wall to drink it. She did so quickly, in seven bitter mouthfuls. A monstrous chill fermented in her belly, the sharp unpleasant taste coating her mouth and throat. The aftertaste would linger for quite some time.

She turned, a look of disgust on her face, and held out the goblet. "Thank you," she muttered.

"You're welcome," Snape said, with a hint of sarcasm. He took the goblet and set it down, and once Fay stepped back he shut and locked the black door.

He did not look at her as he went back to his desk. "The same time tomorrow," he said, to the shrunken floating specimen.

"Yes sir."

Only when she turned to leave the office, her footsteps soft against the stone floor, did Snape look up at her for a moment. Then the door closed, and he was alone.

As Fay climbed the dungeon stairs, she thought she might see if one of her roommates had something sweet she could erase the aftertaste with. All summer she'd used her mother's soft ginger cookies to get by. Yesterday evening she'd been so miserable she'd tolerated the bitterness all night. But tonight she would make an effort to be gentle with herself.

She crossed the entrance hall, watched by the sentinel stone nights, and then walked through the dark opening which led to the Slytherin common room. Rather conspicuous in the barren dungeon hung a tapestry of a pure white unicorn, surrounded by tangling vines and flowers of green, blue and purple. A thread of silver twisted around its long sharp horn, and glittered in the light of the torch in the sconce on the opposite wall. Fay stopped in front of the tapestry, and the unicorn slowly blinked her grey eyes.

"Griselda," Fay whispered.

The tapestry fluttered aside to reveal the doorway to the common room, and Fay stepped down into the warm firelight.

The gossiping had already begun; sixth and seventh year girls sprawled on the dark leather couches, conversing in their drawling London accents. Ruby Burke, Fay's fifth roommate, was among them, and she cast Fay a brief glance before looking away. She treated both Fay Green and Isobel Blackwood the same. Neither of them was one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, and though Ruby was not outwardly hostile towards them, she did not try to hide her petty prejudice.

The younger students had been banished to the long ebony tables on the colder end of the common room. Rather than a second fireplace, windows looking over the dark waters of the black lake dominated the wall. Most of the students–some of whom, last night, had been thrown screaming from the rocks into the cold water by the older boys–were bent muttering over thick textbooks and long scrolls of parchment. Essays for Snape, no doubt. The first of the term.

Fay passed quietly, and went down the cold spiral staircase to the girls' dormitory. She shivered as she walked around and around, holding the bannister of cold grey stone. Her room was at the end of the seventh-year hallway, and from behind it she could hear the gloomy strains of Isobel's favourite piano music, and the sound of Lucy whining.

Fay sighed quietly, and opened the door.

The room was wide and round, five four-poster beds with thick green velvet drapes. On the windowsill sat Isobel's record player, the black vinyl spinning. The window behind it looked out into the shallows of the lake, letting in an eerie light.

Fay knew the record by heart by now. All the girls did. Eight Nocturnes by Vsevolod Velimirovich, no. 987 - no.994.

The music was the subject of the present banter.

"For Salazar's sake, Isobel, turn it off. Fay, don't you agree? It's horrendous…" Lucy was on her feet, brushing her hair angrily as she pleaded with Isobel, who sat by the record player with a reverent expression on her face. Lucy's blue eyes were full of genuine fatigue.

Fay shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, come on. It's depressing."

"That's the point, isn't it Issie?" Sadie said, reclining on her bed in a white nightdress, nibbling on chocolates she'd nicked from the great hall in a serviette. "She likes depressing music. Especially when it's written by ancient, sexy vampires."

"I don't give a tinker's curse about Vse… Vse… Oh, fuck it."

"Vsevolod," Isobel said archly.

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Yes, such a moanable name. Have fun letting him shove his undead prick up your cunt."

Two pink roses bloomed on Isobel's pale, high cheekbones.

"Don't be vile, Malfoy," Sadie said with a giggle.

"Sadie," Fay said, her voice low and exhausted compared with the others. She eyed the chocolates on the white serviette. "Could I have one of those?"

"By all means. Save me from eating them all."

She took two of the chocolates and put them both in her mouth at once. They melted quickly, smooth and dark and sweet. The taste almost completely vanquished that of the Wolfsbane potion, and Fay was glad to realise that chocolate worked much better than sweet ginger. She would rely on it from now on.

Lucy groaned in defeat as the music reached a mournful climax, and she sat down in front of the vanity, staring into the mirror and giving her long pale hair another few strokes with her horsehair brush. "How was the library?"

"Peaceful," Fay said.

Lucy raised her eyebrows. "You're so strange, Green."

"Thank you. I'm going to have a bath."

From the trunk at the foot of her bed Fay retrieved her pyjamas, dressing gown, and a fresh pair of knickers.

"You could use the prefect's bathroom, you know," Lucy said. "I'll give you the password."

"Someone could walk in."

"It would do you good if someone did!"

Fay slipped into the bathroom and closed the door.

The piano music was muffled by the wood, but she actually found it quite comforting. She'd never minded it so much as Lucy, and there was something in the sadness of it that she could almost appreciate.

Fay shook her head at her own thoughts, and made sure the door was doubly locked with a sticking charm before undressing.

She didn't study the scars, but she couldn't keep from seeing them. There were the ones on her chest, three deep lines from her collarbone to her breast, left by the harsh claws of Fenrir Greyback. Then the narrower ones, from her own claws, on her belly and thighs. On her forearms, the thin white slashes of sectumsempra.

And, of course, on her neck, in the softness just before the lean muscle sloped into her shoulder… the bite.

Not to mention the bruises covering her hips and her ribs.

She thought of the small room Snape used to brew and store the Wolfsbane. So secret, so private. It had to be kept that way out of necessity; just like the scars.

The bath filled slowly with warm water, and she used two drops of Isobel's lavender essence, hoping it might help her sleep. She lowered herself into the water slowly, the warmth easing her skin. She sank deeper until the surface tickled her chin, and the bite mark tingled unpleasantly underwater. Little spiders, crawling over her neck. She hissed and shut her eyes. But after a bit the lavender helped soothe it.

Fay took a long time in the bath. Resting.

Once she was clean she rose from the water, dried herself, and dressed in the steamy air, drying her hair with her wand and moving it over her shoulders to hide her neck. She looked into the mirror briefly. Being clean and feeling clean, she'd discovered, were quite different sensations. One attainable, and one quite unreachable.

Protected just enough by her pyjamas, her dressing gown, and her long thick hair, she stepped out of the bathroom.

Ruby had come into the bedroom, and turned up her nose at Fay's dressing gown. It had been her mothers before it was hers. It was a bit worn, a soft quilt fabric, embroidered with small white starflowers. It reminded Fay of before. When her house still felt something like home. She'd shut the dressing gown away in the depths of her bedroom wardrobe after Johnny had first touched her, as though to keep it pure, to keep it protected. Now it hugged her gently. It loved her.

Fay stood with good posture under Ruby's judgemental gaze.

"Well," Lucy declared. "Now we're all here… I have something very important to reveal to you girls."

"You've been shagging Blaise Zabini," Isobel grumbled.

Lucy appeared, for a moment, on the edge of rage. But the shock on the faces of Sadie and Ruby was enough to satisfy her, and to save Isobel from a tongue-thrashing. Fay kept her expression neutral. She had already known, of course. She had smelt it last night, and it had kept her from sleeping.

"Lucy!" Ruby cried. "Why didn't you say? How long has this been going on? Blackwood, turn off that horrendous music!"

Isobel obeyed and Lucy took centre stage, shifting her smooth white-blonde hair from one shoulder to the other.

"Well… our families holiday in the same part of France…"

"Ooh!" Sadie giggled.

Fay sat down on her bed and pulled on her long grey socks while Lucy recounted the month of 'intense' shagging in the seaside caves of the Côte d'Azur.

"I can't describe how completely I need him to take me… It's absolutely awful. But how did you know, Isobel?"

"It's obvious. You look at him like you want to produce his heirs."

Fay was unable to hide the uncomfortable look on her face, and Sadie noticed it.

"So, what did Hagrid's horrors turn out to be today?"

Fay looked at Sadie gratefully. "Some cross between an iguana and a turkey."

Sadie barely had time to furrow her eyebrows before Lucy's head rolled back and she groaned, "That's it exactly… I want to be stuffed like a Christmas turkey…"

Isobel wrinkled her nose. "Oh, Lucy, that's vile."

Fay smirked. "No, it's foul."

There was a moment of silence–of the five of them, Fay had the quickest mind–and then Isobel and Sadie both laughed. "Foul! Fowl! Ha!"

For a moment Fay felt… normal.

Lucy scowled. "You're obscene, Green."

"That rhymed."

"Oh, fuck off."

Isobel removed the Velimirovich record from her turntable and slipped it lovingly into its sleeve before closing the dust cover. "Isn't Blaise a bit young for you, Lucy? What with your crippling Electra Complex?"

Lucy's face, which up till now had been almost histrionically expressive, became suddenly quite still. A wave of tension rolled into the room and lingered as in a tide pool. Fay suppressed a shiver.

Lucy stood from her chair, picked up her hairbrush from the vanity, and threw it at the record player, making Isobel gasp.

The hairbrush missed its mark, but the ice in Lucy's eyes had the intended effect. "Go fuck your vampire, Blackwood," she snarled. And then she stormed from the room, leaving the door open behind her.

Ruby went out after her without a backward glance, and slammed the door.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"Isobel!" Sadie whispered. "I've never known you to be so insensitive! You know her father's in Azkaban! To imply that poor Lucy's fallen victim to such a thing as… as… daddy issues? Obviously she was shagging Zabini in an effort to escape all that. Her mother probably didn't see the sun or the beach even once! Had to be dragged to France by a relative, no doubt."

"Excuse me if I don't care," Isobel retorted. But it was clear as she pulled her bed curtains closed that she regretted what she'd said.

Sadie sighed and looked at Fay, her frown softening a bit. "You and I have to actually catch up sometime. I'd like to hear what you got up to over the summer. After the battle, it felt like… everyone was scattered to the winds. Lucy wants to ignore it, but… I can't. And I don't think you can either."

"I have homework," Fay said.

"Then… perhaps this weekend?"

Fay nodded, then closed her bed curtains and rested on her stomach, scrawling out the introduction and first paragraph of a Defence essay on the torture practises of Emeric the Evil.

There were plenty of grammatical mistakes and not a few ink blots by the time she set down her quill. Shoulders and elbows aching, she flicked her wand to cast a tempus. It was half past ten o'clock.

Blowing on the parchment to dry the ink, she rolled it up into a scroll and set it and the two heavy library books in the corner of the bed. She was exhausted, and wasn't going to open the bed curtains and risk necessary niceties for anything.

Fay tried to sleep for an hour or so.

Lying there, feeling heavy, she kept thinking about the letter her mother had sent her that morning. She'd burned it, but now she wished she hadn't.

The deeply concerned eyes of the headmistress and Madam Pomfrey seemed to stare at her from inside her own head. "You were sexually abused by your stepfather for the duration of the summer holidays, and your mother was unaware of this?"

Fay tried to focus on the familiarity of her dressing gown. The softness of the pillow. The fact that Johnny was not going to come in here and–

Giving up, she threw off the blankets and opened the bed curtains quietly.

The other four beds were closed, and she shut her own curtains behind her, so if the others woke they would think she was still sleeping. Stepping into her slippers and tiptoeing across the bedroom floor, she opened the door softly and stepped out into the cold hallway.

Lucy was the only person in the common room. She knew the trick with the bed curtains too, then. She was sitting in front of the fireplace in a beautiful pale blue silk dressing gown, crying into a sodden white handkerchief.

She turned her head sharply when Fay stepped into the firelight. "Oh, it's you…" Then another sob shook her body. "I've had the worst summer of anyone in the world!"

Fay stayed quiet for a long moment. She could not fault Lucy for believing this was true. Even if it was not.

"I'm sorry about what Isobel said."

"Please," Lucy sighed, getting her tears under control as she dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. "Neither of you will ever understand."

Isobel Blackwood was a pureblood, but her family wasn't very prominent in wizarding society. They lived in Edinburgh, far from London. Though she was still posh by anyone's standards, she didn't belong to the Aristocracy that Lucy, Sadie and Ruby did. Fay was the lowest on the chain. She came from the outskirts of Hull, a small city in the north. Both her parents had magical blood, but only her mother was still living, and Fay's upbringing had been undeniably working class. Given this, Lucy couldn't help but judge. And she didn't even know about Fay's new muggle stepfather.

Lucy was still trembling a little with tears, but had ceased her sobbing.

Fay had planned to sit up in the common room a while, until she grew tired enough to attempt to sleep again. But now that Lucy was here, filling the air with her Blaise-corrupted scent and her unfamiliar kind of misery, Fay knew she would not stay.

She couldn't go back to bed. Then it would be clear that she was avoiding Lucy's company. Perhaps she'd walk around the school for a little while. It wouldn't be the first time, and she'd never been caught before. Quietly, she started towards the common room entrance.

"Off to roam the corridors?" Lucy said. Her face looked very sad, and distant, trained into constant composure.

"Think so," Fay said.

"At least you don't need to worry about having points deducted if Snape finds you. Everyone knows you're his pet."

"I only put a bit of effort in at potions."

Lucy snorted, and looked back towards the fire. "Just don't run into Peeves."

It may have been the most considerate thing to come out of Lucy's mouth in recent memory, and Fay lingered for a moment before turning and leaving the common room, brushing past the tapestry and walking up towards the towers.


Fay wandered her way into the upper corridors of Hogwarts. Calm dark mazes of snoozing portraits and tapestries, and closed classroom doors.

She had no need for a light. One interesting side effect of her condition.

She crossed paths with no one. The only person she saw was a ghost, floating vaguely near the entrance to the astronomy tower stairs, muttering to themselves.

As peaceful as the corridors were, Fay wished to be asleep. To have the deep, dark, innocent sleep of a child.

It was exhausting, being awake.

At the end of the sixth floor corridor, Fay's nostrils flared and she had no time to hide or flatten herself against the wall before someone rounded the corner at a swift stride. With a muffled gasp, she felt the abrupt collision of their bodies, her forearm pressed in defence against their chest. For a brief moment her mouth was open, and she caught an overwhelming gust of the person's scent.

Snape.

"Hello sir," she said, coughing softly.

Snape made no sound as he stepped back, almost pushing her off of him. As though she were some strange cat who had jumped up and clung to his robes with its claws. A torch on the wall blazed to life and bathed them both in firelight. Snape's face was pale and irritated, his eyebrows pinched together above his hooked nose.

"How did you know?"

Fay swallowed and kept her lips in a firm line.

Erm… the truth is, sir… I can smell you.

"I can see in the dark," she said. Which was also a truth, but a slightly less weird one.

Snape showed no reaction to this news. "It was a rhetorical question," he bit out.

"Oh."

"Why are you roaming the corridors at this hour?"

Fay wondered why Snape was walking in the dark. Perhaps in his mind it was a necessary element of the whole 'prowling' thing. Or maybe he had sensitive eyesight and preferred the gloom.

His charcoal eyes stared at her, awaiting her reply.

Fay crossed her arms, defying the truth. "I was bored."

Snape was silent.

There was something distinctly awkward about this. It was not at all a normal exchange between Snape and a miscreant student. And Fay was certain that this was because of what Snape knew. About her.

She shifted unconsciously, now hugging herself more than crossing her arms. Her eyes, though, maintained a cold flicker of aloofness. "When's my detention, sir?"

Snape's lip curled in annoyance. "I'm not giving you detention."

"That's ridiculous. I deserve it."

"Seventh years ought to be permitted midnight strolls, provided they have no mischievous motives."

His voice was so measured and monotone. It infuriated her. "And what makes you so certain I have none of those?"

"Miss Green–"

"You'd have given any other student detention, sir."

"This is absurd," Snape snapped. "I am the professor. I will decide whether or not you receive detention. For this, you will not. Do I make myself clear?"

His voice had risen beyond the volume he usually allowed, and the lasting damage to his throat caused a certain strain and hoarseness. Still, his voice was loud and commanding enough to make the girl step back.

Fay's eyes widened, and her shoulders hunched in instinctive deference. "Sir."

She realised then that she'd been hugging herself, and angrily shoved her fists in the pockets of her dressing gown.

Snape felt… guilty.

There was a pause, in which he swallowed, feeling the slight tenderness in his throat. Miss Green was staring at the flagstones.

"Tell the truth," Snape said, more quietly.

Fay's eyes darted up, her expression harsh and suspicious. "Sorry?"

Snape gave a long-suffering sigh, but when he spoke his tone was patient. "Why are you out of bed?"

He knew the answer, of course. But she had to say it.

"Couldn't sleep." Fay shrugged, but to Snape the confession sounded like a hidden plea.

"Follow me."

The single torch went out, and Snape walked with long fluid strides down the shadowy corridor, Fay following behind. She was impressed by the sharpness of his eyesight. Before her turning she'd have never been able to navigate these corridors and staircases so smoothly in the darkness. Then again, Snape had been doing this for a long time.

She had to hurry to keep up with him, and her heart was hammering uncomfortably by the time they reached his office.

A fire burned on the hearth. The floating specimen from earlier was no longer on his desk, but had joined the others on the shelves surrounding the dark window. Snape strode to a wide black cabinet and opened it.

Fay wanted to leave. She wanted to sleep. She couldn't stop glancing at the door which hid the silver cauldron of Wolfsbane–the way a schoolgirl can't stop glancing at an attractive boy. But the acrobatics going on in Fay's stomach were of a decidedly more dangerous variety. A high-wire walk rather than a flirtatious trapeze act.

She could smell the Wolfsbane from behind the door, a sharp and acrid scent, with a low earthy note underneath. She could smell Snape: old leather shoes, dusty books, ink, and some kind of sharp warm alcohol.

Her exhaustion was so deep that the moment he handed her a small vial of purple potion–"This will ensure a minimum of six hours, with no dreams"–she uncorked it at once, and swallowed it in one go.

Snape made a useless sound in the back of his throat, but the warning was incomplete and came too late. Fay's eyes dulled slightly as she realised her mistake, and the next moment she fell fast asleep.

Her body slumped towards the floor and Snape caught her, lunging forward on instinct. One arm wrapped around her waist and the other behind her shoulder blades.

Snape stood there with the girl's limp weight in his arms, and huffed in shock and frustration. Had she really been so desperate for sleep that she'd forgotten to use common sense? Now she was completely vulnerable, only kept from the hard cold floor by his strength.

Snape looked down at her face. It suddenly felt too close. As though the moon had drifted too near the earth, challenging its natural orbit.

With an indistinct mutter, Snape picked her up and walked her to the chair on the subordinate side of his desk, in which many a student had sat and suffered his criticism over the years. Her head rolled back against the cracked leather and brass upholstery pins.

Sleep made her face soft and relaxed, and her body seemed smaller somehow, without all of the tension and resistance it held during the day. Her breath showed in the slow rise and fall of her chest. Snape stared at her as though expecting her to wake. But the vial of dreamless sleep had fallen to the flagstones empty. She would not stir again until morning.

Now was the sort of moment in which Snape usually relied upon Lily's voice. But she did not speak, leaving him in the thick, thorny silence.

Fay's hair had shifted as she fell, and now with her head to one side the bite mark was fully exposed. It almost shimmered in the firelight. White, pearly-grey and partly silver, from the powder that had been used to seal it.

Snape stared at it for a moment before averting his eyes. He had scars of his own. He certainly did. But nothing quite like this one.

It seemed private. As private as the most intimate part of a woman's body.

He looked instead at her dressing gown. Which proved to be an error in itself.

For whatever reason–the lateness of the hour, the impression of the firelight–it reminded him of his mother's.

The distant echo of the music sounded in his mind. The music his mother had played in the late evenings, after he'd been sent to bed. "I Fall In Love Too Easily," or "Dancing on the Ceiling." Old, soft muggle jazz. It would play peacefully for a few minutes, sometimes half an hour, before it was no longer loud enough to drown out the threatening voice of his father. Or the mysterious silence of his father, and the muffled whimpers of his mother, on the other side of the wall.

Snape would lay in bed and wait for silence. For the music to stop. For the sound of rain on the roof. Then he would creep into the kitchen to see if his mother was there. She always was, sitting at the table with her legs crossed, staring at her hand. The small crease of skin where one knee bent over the other. The pale blue veins. Snape would stand in the doorway until she noticed him–which only ever took a second or two–and then she would offer him a kiss on the head and a glass of milk before sending him back to bed.

She was always wearing that dressing gown.

To Snape, it had seemed to contain the secrets of what went on between his parents in the night. Like strands of hair sewn into the lining. Answers he would never see.

Only when he'd grown older had he understood; been able to imagine. Then the dressing gown became the ugliest thing in the world.

Disentangling himself from his noxious musings, Snape paused and thought rationally for a moment. Aside from the quilt stitching and the thickness of the fabric, Miss Green's dressing gown held no similarity to his mother's. The white-flower pattern was entirely different.

Something inside of him clicked back into place.

The situation had seemed an impossible one, but now the way ahead was clear. Snape simply had to deliver Miss Green to her dormitory.

He glanced at the teeth-shaped scar on her neck and waved his wand over it, casting a concealment charm. It would hide the mark for a few hours, but Snape carefully put her hair back over it, just in case.

Picking her up, he carried her as a knight carries a damsel up the stairs, across the entrance hall, and down towards the Slytherin common room. He reached the tapestry. The torch burned with a small flame and the vines of the unicorn's garden seemed to twist slowly in the semidarkness.

"Griselda," he intoned.

He had not chosen the password. The unicorn had. Each year before the arrival of the students, Snape would descend into the corridor and wait respectfully. The password would appear briefly in the slowly writhing vines, and the unicorn would blink her solemn grey eyes at him before looking away.

Griselda was the name of a countrywoman in an old German myth, wed to a noble husband who manipulated and abused her. When her husband demanded that their two young children be put to death, Griselda surrendered them to his will–tearfully, but obediently. When he divorced her on false grounds, she submitted and returned to the humble homestead of her father. After ten years, when the nobleman requested her services in preparing his wedding to another woman, Griselda travelled on foot to his manor. The ending was comedic in the traditional sense. The young bride and her brother were revealed to be Griselda's children, whom the husband had sent away rather than murdered. It had all been an elaborate trick to test Griselda's loyalty–and she passed, with flying colours. The nobleman married her again, and the story ended there. In the middle ages, Griselda had been hailed for her patience and submission. Seen as a model wife.

The influence of the story upon the marriage traditions of the Sacred Twenty-Eight was not a small one, and Snape saw the password for what it was: a ridiculously desperate reminder of the old values in this time of disarray and quiet chaos among the pureblood Aristocracy. Whether this reminder was particularly comforting to the young ladies to which the story was relevant, Snape preferred not to guess.

Snape had a few words he'd have liked to say to the unicorn. But he kept his lips sealed as the tapestry shifted aside, revealing the entrance to the Slytherin common room.

Lucy Malfoy was still seated on the couch before the fireplace, and a look of complete shock entered her face when she saw her head of house carrying Fay Green, unconscious, in his arms.

She stood up, a princess in her pale blue dressing gown. "Professor! Is she alright?"

There was a certain tone of voice in which Snape had always addressed Narcissa Malfoy. He now adopted the same tone in the presence of her daughter. "Knocked out by a powerful sleeping draught. I'm afraid you'll have to help her back to her room."

Lucy looked dumbstruck.

"Mobilicorpus should do it, Miss Malfoy."

"Of course, sir."

The corner of Snape's mouth twitched at the honorific. Once Lucy Malfoy left Hogwarts and Snape was no longer her teacher, she would never have reason to call him 'Sir' again. In fact, it would become improper.

Lucy raised her wand, and Miss Green's weight lessened in Snape's arms. Gently he released her so that she hovered in the air like a cold white candle, her slippered feet a few inches from the floor. Lucy looked at Snape suspiciously as she took her floating friend's limp elbow.

"Good night, Professor," Lucy said.

"Miss Malfoy," Snape intoned.

Lucy stared at him for a moment longer before turning and slowly guiding Miss Green's sleeping form down the stairs.

Snape lingered for a moment, relieved that he'd had the foresight to conceal the bite mark before leaving his office. Miss Green would have to explain herself to Miss Malfoy tomorrow, but no matter. That would be proper punishment for her careless behaviour tonight.

He stared at the fire for a moment. He didn't like this room. It reminded him too much of his own time as a student. The wincing whispers of sectumsempra behind bedcurtains tightly closed. The late night conversations with Avery and Mulciber and Malfoy. His gradual and irreversible indoctrination.

Calm moonlight floated on the surface of the black lake outside the windows.

Snape turned and, with a sweep of his black robe, a flutter of the tapestry, was gone.


NOTE

The cauldron in which the Wolfsbane is brewed is silver, because werewolf bites are healed using silver in the world of HP. (I love the idea of silver being helpful to werewolves rather than fatal).

In my mind, the tapestry which leads to the Slytherin common room looks something like "The Unicorn Rests in a Garden," which I've always been drawn to.

"I Fall In Love Too Easily" and "Dancing on the Ceiling" by Chet Baker are a couple of my favourite old jazz tunes. They're so soft and soothing.

The Griselda myth is real. She's often referred to as "Patient Griselda," but Margaret Atwood wrote a lovely story called "Impatient Griselda," which makes me smile.

Thank you for reading! I treasure each one of your reviews.