Author's Note: Hey all! Thanks for all the reviews Janeth! I don't know if you're my only reader right now or if you're just the only one who reviews but I definitely love you for it! Don't apologize for spelling Freddie's name wrong in the reviews, it didn't bother me – I know English isn't your first language. That makes it all the more special to me that you're reading this and you love it enough to leave me a comment for almost every chapter, it makes me so happy and keeps me writing! Tonight I'm posting two chapters for you so be sure you read Chapter 59 before this one. Thanks and enjoy!

~RPP

They appeared together in the darkened sitting room of Spinner's End. Ziggy immediately jumped down and began to groom himself while Freddie quickly whipped out her wand and lit a fire in the fireplace, providing light for them to see by. Ada turned in a circle, a look of amazement on her face and for the first time Freddie felt a flicker of embarrassment at the place she'd come to call home. She remembered visiting Ada's parent's house – it had been full of brightly-colored knickknacks, comfortable furniture, and constantly smelled of home-cooked meals, particularly the fresh bread her mother Laura baked every morning from scratch...compared to that Spinner's End felt small and dark and gloomy all of a sudden.

"Sorry it's so-" Freddie gestured vaguely, unable to think of a suitable word. "Neither of us really spends that much time here. I did clean before you-"

"Are you kidding? Freddie this is amazing! It's like living in a bibliothèque!" Ada declared, her emerald eyes glowing with pleasure. "All these books! Can I look at them?"

"Of course," she said with a sigh of relief, pleased that her friend liked it here. Ada immediately darted to the nearest bookshelf and began to peruse the titles while Freddie sat back on the couch to get Ada's things out of her bag.

"Oh I've never even heard of some of these!" the younger girl said, practically glowing with excitement. "Do you think – would Professor Snape mind terribly if I-"

"You can read any of them you want to," Freddie assured her. "Just put them back when you're done."

"I will," Ada promised, pulling a couple of books off the shelf. "I'll put them back in the exact places, I'll remember." Freddie knew that she would – with Ada's photographic memory she would remember the exact order of the titles now that she'd read them, something Freddie still struggled with occasionally when she took one of Snape's books off the shelf. He'd never gotten mad at her for putting a book back in the wrong spot, but she'd noticed him on more than one occasion silently putting the books back in what he considered to be the proper order.

"You know you can call him Severus?" Freddie asked with a grin. "He was never even your professor."

"I know," Ada said, her face blushing briefly. "It's just the way we were introduced, when I first met you, the both of you, I was so young you know? And so I've always thought of him as that. And I was just at Hogwarts a few months ago, not a Hogwarts student but still a student so it was appropriate for me to address him as 'professor'. I guess I'm still just realizing I'm not a student anymore."

"You'll get used to it," she chuckled.

"Is – is he here?" she asked, finally turning away from the books to look around again. "Hey – there are no doors!"

"Leave it to you to notice the books before you noticed that, Adalene," Freddie said with a smirk and she flicked her wand at one of the bookcases, revealing the entrance to the kitchen. "Kitchen is there." She flicked her wand at another bookcase, revealing the stairs. "Bedrooms and bathroom upstairs."

"Ooh là là!" Ada declared, eyes wide. "C'est incroyable! I have always wanted to live in a place with hidden rooms! That was one of my favorite parts about Hogwarts was getting to explore the castle and find all sorts of secret passages, hidden rooms. Je l'adore!"

"I love it too," Freddie agreed. "Would you like me to give you a quick tour?"

"Yes please!" she said eagerly.

Ada grabbed her trunk and Freddie led the way up the staircase. She'd walked up it so many times she no longer noticed them so she was surprised when Ada stopped to examine the pictures on the wall. Pictures of Snape as a child with his mother. There used to be bare spots on the wall where, presumably, pictures of his Muggle father had once hung. Snape never mentioned them and when Freddie asked, after a year of officially living together, if she could hang some pictures of Ziggy there he had told her to do what she liked. 'It's your home now, too,' he'd told her.

"Is that Snape as a baby?" Ada asked, mystified. "And his mum?"

"Uh-huh."

"They look so sad."

Freddie didn't know what to say to that. She shifted uncomfortably as Ada ran her fingers along the picture frame that held a photo of a sullen-faced 3-year-old Snape sitting on the lap of his mother, a thin-faced, tired-looking woman with lanky black hair. With a start Freddie realized that she didn't even know the woman's name.

"Aw and baby Ziggy too," Ada said, quickly moving on to one of the photos Freddie had put up – a picture of Ziggy when he was only a few months old, one of her classmates had taken it in the Slytherin Common Room. And the next one. "Hey, I took this one!" It was a picture of Ziggy that Ada had taken when Freddie visited her one Christmas. The kneazle was sitting atop the snow-covered woodpile out back of the Leroux's house, wearing a green scarf of Ada's the girl had shrunk and wrapped around his neck.

"I love that photo," Freddie said fondly. "I have another you took of him in my office at work."

"There are no pictures of you," Ada observed. "I'll have to take some while I'm here."

"You know I don't like having my picture taken," she said, ducking her head in embarrassment.

"C'est comme ça," Ada said smugly. "I'll be taking your picture whether you like it or not."

Freddie scowled slightly and Ada rolled her eyes and laughed.

"Come on, I'm supposed to be showing you your room," she said, trudging up the rest of the stairs.

"Are there any hidden doors up here?" Ada asked curiously as they reached the landing.

"Not up here, no," Freddie chuckled. "That's the bathroom there. That's mine and Severus' room. And this'll be yours."

She opened the door for Ada and the girl carried her trunk inside, smiling as she looked around. The room still looked much the same as it had after Freddie redecorated when she first came to live with Snape. It was a simple room with three gray walls and one black, a single window which she'd purchased black velvet curtains for, a dresser, a small writing desk, and a four poster bed that she'd put fresh linens on this morning and covered with a light blue quilt she'd bought specifically for her friend.

"You have electricity!" Ada beamed as she flipped on the lamp on the bedside table. "I didn't even realize – with all the hidden rooms and everything, I didn't realize this was a Muggle house!"

"Yeah, it was – he inherited it," she said awkwardly.

"Is he Muggleborn like me?" she asked, eyes wide.

"Er, no. Half-blood. His mum was a witch. Not many people know that he's half-blood and he'd prefer to keep it that way."

"Why? Is he ashamed of being half-blood?" Ada asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"No, no, no! Nothing like that!" Freddie said hastily. "It's..." She took a deep breath and sighed. "Remember how I said I had to tell you something, something I couldn't put in a letter?"

"Yeah?"

How to start? She wondered. Dumbledore had given her permission and so had Snape to divulge to Ada about his role as a spy – at least as much as any other Order member knew. Freddie sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the picture on the wall – it was a copy of her Invisibility Antidote recipe that had been published in Apothecary Now all those years ago, along with a photo of her and Snape standing behind a cauldron with steam rising in spirals from it. He had his hand on her shoulder in the photograph and when she caught his eye the Snape in the picture gave her a little crooked smile and she reflexively smiled back.

"Freddie? What is it?" Ada asked softly, sitting beside her on the bed.

"You've asked me before...about Severus' role in the Order, about where he went the night that the Dark Lord..." She found it hard to continue but Ada nodded, silently encouraging. "I had to wait until I knew for sure that he was okay with it, that Dumbledore was okay with me telling you... Severus is a spy. For Dumbledore."

"A spy? What do you mean?"

"He's...part of the Dark Lord's inner circle," she said softly, absently rubbing her own left wrist where Snape's Dark Mark was branded on his arm.

"He's a Death Eater?!" she hissed, shocked. "An actual-"

"Yes, but Ada he's on our side you have to understand. I trust him completely, Dumbledore trusts him – he's Dumbledore's man through and through. The things he's done, the things he's had to go through, you can't even imagine!"

"But Freddie...how? How can anyone spy on You-Know-Who and not get caught? From what I've heard, what I've read, he kills anyone who shows even the slightest hint of betrayal or – or reluctance or..."

For a moment the face of Regulus Black swam in her memory. Freddie closed her eyes and pushed it away.

"Occlumency," she told Ada quietly. "He's the most skilled Occlumens probably in the whole world."

"Well he'd have to be! My God, Freddie..."

"You do believe me, don't you?" she asked anxiously. "That he's on our side? That he's not a, not a bad man not really."

"Freddie, of course I believe you! You're my best friend, I love you more than anyone in the world, of course I believe you. And if you say Dumbledore trusts him 100% then so do I, I mean Dumbledore, his word is gospel to me. He's Dumbledore. I just... mon dieu, what you must go through every time he walks out the door!"

Freddie felt tears prick at her eyes and a strangled sob caught in the back of her throat.

"What I go through? That's nothing," she said, shaking her head. "Nothing compared to what he goes through, every time that he calls, every time that damned Mark burns... That first night, the night Diggory died, when the Mark burned for the first time in 13 years...it was awful to see, to watch him go through that, I've never seen him in so much pain. And he couldn't Disapparate right away, not like the others who went to Him right away so his Mark burned for longer, it seemed like hours." She felt sick just thinking about it and she clenched her fists against her thighs. "He had to wait, wait until Dumbledore told him to go, til he knew what was going on, and when he finally did go...that's when you found me out on the grounds that night, I knew where he'd gone, what was going to happen to him, what might happen to him..." She had to take several deep breaths and she was pushing her Occlumency to its limits trying to keep her emotions in check. "I wanted to tell you so badly, I was so...so terrified for him."

"What did happen to him?" Ada asked softly.

"He was tortured," she answered, her voice barely a whisper. "The Cruciatus Curse, for hours. I only caught a glimpse of his pain through our Legilimency link but my god..." She felt like she might vomit and tried to push the feeling down. "He didn't even give Severus a chance to defend himself at first. Just straight torture and an assault on his mind, trying to determine where his loyalties truly lie, tearing through his memories with such aggression, I can't even describe..." Freddie shook her head.

"He really is an amazing Occlumens then. I can't imagine."

Freddie looked up to see Ada's face was completely drained of all color and for a moment her friend looked terrified. Seeing Freddie's eyes on her Ada quickly tried to clear her expression, no doubt relying on her own Occlumency, but she was still white as a sheet. Freddie reached out and took her hand, squeezing it.

"So you see why everything has to be so secretive. People can't know about his blood status. They can't know about...about me, most of the Order doesn't even know about us, our...relationship. The fewer people who know the better because there might be people out there who would use me to get to him somehow, torture me, kill me even..."

"Putain de merde," Ada said weakly and the sound of her friend swearing actually brought a ghost of a smile to Freddie's lips. For a moment she was reminded of that time so long ago when they'd first met, sitting in the courtyard of the Enchanted Garden, trying to convince Ada to teach her how to curse in French. How young she'd been then, how young they'd both been, really.

"I can't believe you've been going through this all alone, Freddie," Ada said softly, drawing her out of the memory. "I wish you could've told me sooner."

"So do I," she admitted, squeezing her hand. "I haven't been able to talk to anyone about this except for, well, Dumbledore I guess and that's just... awkward." Ada let out a shaky laugh. "And Severus, well, I don't have to tell him how worried I am. He knows. He's just as worried about me. He didn't want me to join the Order. He kept threatening to tie me up somewhere and keep me until this is over-" Freddie scowled as she said it. "-as if anyone could know when this will be over, it's barely even begun. Or threatened to ship me off somewhere. He begged Dumbledore to put me in protective custody, to send me away and not tell anyone not even him where I am. As if that would work," she scoffed. "As if I wouldn't find my way back to him the moment Dumbledore's back was turned."

"Imbécile," Ada snorted.

"Me or him?"

"Him! Not wanting you to join, ha! You're in danger whether you do or not, yes? So why not fight back? That is how I feel and I'm not dating a Death Eater," she said with a teasing smirk. "I am in danger just because I'm Muggleborn so why not do something about it, try to stop it. And Snape, worrying about you in danger when the things you're doing so far aren't even that dangerous, when he's the one out there doing the most dangerous thing of all..."

"Exactly! I'm so scared I'm going to lose him, Ada, and I don't know what I'd do, I really don't... I want to help him any way that I can. Whatever I can do for him, for the Order, for Dumbledore, whatever they ask of me... I'm ready."

"Me too, Freddie," Ada said determinedly, squeezing her hand tight. "I'm right here with you."