"Freddie! Come on Freddie, wake up, I can't move you!" Someone was shaking her violently. "Wake up! They're gone!"
Freddie felt very ill as she opened her eyes to see the blue sky and the sun shining above her. Ada's face immediately replaced the sky, her skin paler than she'd ever seen it, making her freckles stand out in stark contrast.
"Freddie? Come on, Freddie, you're alright now. Get up."
Freddie groaned as her friend helped her into a sitting position. She felt like she was going to puke and she was shivering uncontrollably. She felt like she'd been dumped in the Black Lake in the middle of December. Ziggy was circling her, meowing loudly, his fur still puffed out.
"God you're soaked with sweat and you're freezing. I don't know what to do, I don't have any chocolate, we need to get back to the house," Ada was saying. "I'm terrified they're going to come back, I don't know how long my Patronus will last."
"Chocolate," Freddie managed to croak, feeling blindly for the purse at her side but her whole body was numb.
"In your purse?" Ada realized and quickly knelt to open Freddie's bag. She stuck her wand in and said "Accio chocolate."
A chocolate frog zoomed out of the bag and Freddie noticed Ada's hands were trembling as she opened it. She dropped the package once but quickly snatched it up again. When she managed to open it she kept a death grip on the frog so it wouldnt jump away and shoved it into Freddie's mouth.
"Eat that, it'll make you better, right? Mon dieu I can't believe that, I've never seen a real dementor before,C'était affreux. Je ne peux pas croire que c'est arrivé, Je ne peux pas croire qu'ils étaient ici!."
Ada continued rambling in French as Freddie bit the chocolate frog in half. She pulled half out of her mouth and held it out to Ada, her hand shaking.
"Y-you should eat this," Freddie told her, chewing slowly. Already she could feel some warmth coming back to her body but she was still shivering.
"Non, je vais bien," Ada said, shaking her head. "Tu en as plus besoin que moi."
"You need it too," she said stubbornly. "I'm not going to swallow this until you take it."
"Bien," Ada said, rolling her eyes and popping the other half of the frog into her mouth. As she chewed Freddie saw some of the color come back into her face. "We should go. Can you walk?"
"Hang on," Freddie said. She closed her eyes to concentrate and raised her wand. She had to focus extra hard on her happy memory of Snape, fighting against the image of his dead body and the feeling of despair that was still shimmering right below the surface of her mind. She focused on his voice as if she could hear him in her head – I love you Winifred. I am proud of you. I want you with me. Stay.
"Expecto Patronum," Freddie said and as her shimmering kneazle Patronus burst forth from the tip of her wand she let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. The Patronus looked around expectantly, then looked to her. "Go to Hogwarts, get Severus. Tell him: Ada and I were attacked by dementors outside Spinner's End."
The shimmering kneazle bowed its head in understanding, then vanished.
"Did that – wha – does that work?" Ada asked, bewildered.
"Severus told me they can be used to relay a message like that, but I've never tried it," she said, still shaking as she tried to get to her feet. Ada came to help her up and Freddie put one arm over her shoulders, leaning heavily on her friend, feeling like she might fall at any moment.
"Can you walk back to the house?" Ada asked.
"I don't think I can, I don't think I can Apparate either. I feel so weak and I'm so cold, I don't understand...Do you think you can you Apparate us both?"
"I can try," she said shakily. "I don't feel 100% myself, but... you'll forgive me if I splinch you, won't you?"
"Of course."
"Alright. Wait – come on, Ziggy," Ada said and the kneazle jumped onto her shoulder, seeming to sense that Freddie was too weak to carry him. "Bien. Hang on, Freddie."
In the blink of an eye they were back in the sitting room at Spinner's End. Apparating had made Freddie's nausea much worse and she immediately slumped to the floor, shaking and trying not to vomit.
"Mon dieu, Freddie!" Ada exclaimed, kneeling beside her. "What can I do? Is there any chocolate in the kitchen?"
"D-don't know," she said, wiping the sweat from her forehead. "I don't th-think so. Just w-wait with me. Severus is on the way."
Ada sat down beside her and put one arm around her. With her other hand she reached out and took one of Freddie's hands in hers. Ziggy crawled into her lap and began to purr, but his whiskers still twitched in distress. Slowly Freddie realized she could feel the warmth of her friend's embrace, could feel the warmth of her beloved kneazle sitting in her lap. The love of her friends was helping more than the chocolate frog had.
The flames in the fireplace turned green and Snape stepped out, a frantic expression on his face.
"Winifred!" he said, falling to his knees on the floor beside her, taking her free hand in his. "What happened?"
"Dementors, sir," Ada told him when Freddie couldn't speak. "Down by the old mill. We were walking...they came out of nowhere."
"Dementors? Here?"
"Yes sir. Freddie couldn't cast her Patronus, I don't know what happened, I had to – I've never managed before, but I did."
"What do you mean she couldn't cast her Patronus? She sent it to me," he said and with his free hand dug into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a large bar of Honeydukes chocolate. "She said dementors but I couldn't believe it. I grabbed this from my desk."
He let go of Freddie's hand long enough to open the chocolate. He broke off a piece and pressed it to her lips.
"Eat this," he commanded her softly and her lips parted of their own accord. As she chewed he broke off another piece and held it out to Ada. "You too, Miss Leroux."
"Thank you s- Severus," Ada said, sliding her arm from around Freddie to accept the chocolate. She missed the warmth of Ada's body instantly and she shivered at the sudden cold. Immediately Snape took her place, drawing Freddie into his arms. Ziggy jumped from her lap as Snape lifted her up and sat on the couch with her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her as tightly as he could manage. She put her arms around him, trying to draw as much heat and comfort from his body as she could. Ada got to her feet slowly and hesitated.
"You can sit...Ada," Snape said and gestured to the other end of the couch. "And tell me what happened."
"We were walking down by the river," Ada began slowly and Ziggy jumped into her lap. She began to pet him absently. "Ziggy and Lunette were with us – that's my owl."
"I am aware."
"Right, well, we noticed Lunette had flown off and...it got cloudy all of a sudden and cold, really cold. I didn't know what was happening at first. Freddie sort of froze and then...we saw them. She grabbed me and put me behind her and she raised her wand, but nothing happened. She tried a bunch of times and then she fell... I-I've never cast a corporeal Patronus before, but when she fell I jumped in front of her. I just knew I had to do something and, well, I thought about her, her friendship, talking and laughing, that time we spent the Christmas holidays together, the day she won the Potions Championship and I was so happy for her," Ada said with a small smile on her face. "And when I cast the charm this time it worked! My Patronus is a fox and she chased the dementors away. But Freddie, well...fainted, I guess." Snape tightened his arms around her. "It took me a couple of minutes to wake her up. I gave her a chocolate frog from her purse and she sent her Patronus to you, but she was still really weak and she hasn't stopped shivering or sweating. I had to Apparate us both back here by myself."
"It was horrible," Freddie said, finding her voice at last and pulling her face back from where she'd had it buried in Snape's chest. "The dementors...I've never gotten that close to one before. When Cecil and Millicent dragged me to Azkaban I never even saw them, this, this was..." She started shaking again as she remembered Daniel's voice in her head and the images she'd seen in her mind. Snape shifted her off his lap but kept one arm around her as he broke off another piece of chocolate and gave it to her. She chewed it and swallowed before trying to continue. "I heard D-Daniel's voice in my head like before and then...then I saw..."
She felt Snape try to penetrate her Occlumency. She hadn't been expecting it and she flinched. Her mind felt weak from the dementors. He hesitated.
"Do you want to show me?" he murmured softly. She nodded and he gave her another piece of chocolate to chew on as she lowered her mental shield.
All her terror and despair came flooding back as Snape reviewed first the memory of the dementor attack and then what she'd heard and seen in her mind's eye as she tried and failed to cast her Patronus Charm. When he withdrew from the memory his face was pale and she knew he'd felt her terror as if it had been his own. He quickly schooled his expression, but he broke off a piece of chocolate for himself nonetheless.
"Was that real?" she asked him. "What I saw, when I saw Daniel like...like that, was that a real memory?"
"I don't know," he answered softly. "...Probably."
And then, because he was still in her mind, their consciousnesses linked by Legilimency, she saw just a glimpse of what he was thinking about. A split-second image in his mind of the skeleton they had uncovered in the forest 3 years ago...a skeleton with the sternum and ribs missing. Snape blocked her out, but not quick enough. She leapt from the sofa, ran to the kitchen, and emptied the contents of her stomach into the sink.