Tuesday 18th November 1981

Severus' Flat, 16:00

Chryssie stared unseeingly up at the ceiling. She had been doing a lot of That. In fact, it had been the only thing she'd been doing. Not always the same ceiling, mind you. Severus had managed to get her out of bed today and now she was on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling above that. Not that it was much different. More cracks, the neighbour above had dropped numerous, heavy things above them. Chryssie was never sire what they were doing up there, nor did she want to find out. She didn't really care anymore anyway. Why should she?

Her parents. Gone. Lily. Gone. James. Gone. They were all gone. No longer here. Her family. None of them... None of them were left. She was the only one.

No, wait. That wasn't right. She wasn't the only one. There was Harry and Rylli. Her little nephew and niece. They were still here. But not here. With Petunia. And there was Petunia. But did she count? She hadn't wanted to be counted for years now, happy enough to be a Dursley. And that was who Dumbledore placed Harry and Rylli with?

Why couldn't she feel anything? Except for that first cry of shock when... when the news was delivered, she had felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a little flicker of something. Nothing.

She should have felt something more, shouldn't she have? She should be feeling something right now. Except she wasn't. And she couldn't even muster up the energy to worry about that. Which was also a problem. The lack of energy. But she could only focus on one problem at a time so it was being ignored for the meantime. And yes, she saw the irony in being too tired to deal with being tired. She was grieving, not stupid.

It wasn't even like her emotions were swirling beneath the surface just itching to get out. It would almost be better if that were the case. Ag least that way she could try and figure out a way to trigger them. No. It wasn't like that at all. She couldn't cry. She couldn't shout. She couldn't wail. Nothing. There was just nothing there to let it out. Nothing. She couldn't make anything. Which was the weirdest feeling. It didn't feel right. It was uncomfortable. She wanted it to go away. Except it wasn't going away. Leaving her with this weird feeling floating about inside of her.

She didn't like this feeling. Or lack of feeling. Whatever you wanted to call it. It didn't matter, all that mattered was that she didn't like it yet she couldn't do anything about it. What was she even supposed to do? She didn't know. And she was a Ravenclaw. She was supposed to know things. She just didn't know this.

And she was tired. So tired. Did that count as an emotion? Because she felt a lot of That. Though, tired wasn't really the right word for it. It was more than tiredness. It was like she didn't have the energy for anything. Even the idea of sitting up properly seemed like too much. Everything was too much. Too much.

Tears welled in her eyes. She hated feeling like This. Or not feeling like this. Oh, did it really matter? She hated whatever this was and she couldn't just snap herself out of it. That wasn't going to happen. Not when she had no energy.

Maybe that was the problem, she had no energy for emotions rather than not being able to feel them. That sounded better than being this emotionless zombie thing. Anything sounded better than being an emotionless zombie thing. She didn't like being an emotionless zombie thing.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to shout. She wanted to wail and moan. She wanted to do all those things. She wanted to be able to process everything. Desperately. But she couldn't. Physically couldn't. And she also didn't want to feel them. Because feeling them meant that she would have to acknowledge what caused them and she wasn't ready for that yet. She wasn't. But she was at the same time.

Oh. Chryssie turned around and buried her face in her pillow. She couldn't even scream out her frustration. It was like she had forgotten how.


Laboratory, 17:00

Severus was a master of pushing his emotions down. Always had been. He could hold up a blank face like his life depended on it. Which it had. Since he was quite young. You needed to be able to not react when one Tobias Snake was on one of his many rampages. Reacting just meant that he got more annoyed. More angry. And that was never a good thing. Not when you were a scrawny, little child and couldn't fight back.

Except sometimes he had. Unintentionally. Accidental magic tended to happen under very emotional situations, after all. And being kicked at and shouted at was definitely an emotional situation. It had lashed out a few times, pushing Tobias away when he really, really needed to escape. Which he always managed to do. But on the long run it had never helped. Accidental magic was fleeting. Tobias Snape's temper was not. You just got hurt more that way.

So, he had learned to not react. To keep his emotions under control. To show nothing. Because nothing wouldn't get you into trouble. It kept you safe. In the shadows. He liked the shadows. Shadows were safe. Shadows meant that you could watch people without them knowing. And people not knowing about you was always a good thing in his books.

Except this mask he was used to putting up, hiding behind, it wasn't working anymore. Not the way it was supposed to anyway. There were cracks. And not fine ones that could be fixed over time. No, these cracks were deep ones that risked the integrity of it. The ones that let whole pieces of his mask fall away, exposing the soft skin underneath. Soft skin that wasn't protected. That wasn't ready. He wasn't ready.

It needed to be kept up for longer. He needed to stay behind it. Because of me didn't he didn't know what would happen. He didn't want to deal with his emotions. He was never good at things like that. Everyone knew that. They even teased him about it.

He was the one who was supposed to be in control. Especially now when everyone was, rightfully, freaking out. He wasn't supposed to be freaking out. Even if he wanted to.

No. No he didn't. He didn't want to freak out. He didn't want to lose control. He didn't. He couldn't. There was too much at stake here. They - he - couldn't make any mistakes.

Something had to be done. It had to. This wasn't right. It wasn't right that Harry and Amaryllis were living with Petunia. With Petunia of all people. Didn't Dumbledore know how bad an idea that was? It was the worst idea. What was even worse that they hadn't been able to persuade him otherwise! Chryssie was their blood if they needed that!

Ah, there it was. Anger coming through. Wasn't it always like that? It was always so easy to feel anger. Let it take control of you. And then you weren't in control. It was why he always tried to keep a hold of his emotions. Make sure he ruled them instead of the other way around. Anger was for those who didn't have a goal in mind and felt like they could do nothing except rage. Which, ironically, is how he felt right now.

Which was counterproductive. He knew that raging would get you nowhere. Raging made you impulsive. Prone to mistakes. And no one would take you seriously. And he needed to be taken seriously. Desperately.

He picked up the law book again and started frantically flipping through the pages. No. Wait. He paused, holding a single page between thumb and finger. No frantic anything. That wouldn't help. He took a deep breath. And then another one. And then a final one for good measure. Okay. He was good.

The next page was turned more slowly.


Wednesday 17th November 1981

Marauder Flat, 10:00

Marlene buried her head in her hands, shaking slightly. She hated this. She hated this. She hated this. Had she mentioned that she hated this. There were much stronger words that she could probably use but she just didn't have it in her to think of them at the moment. She didn't have it in her to do much of anything right now. Despite the fact that she very much needed to be doing something. Something that she didn't even know how to go about doing. Argh. None of this was making any sense.

She was worried about Sirius. No, that was too weak a word but she couldn't think of a better one right now. And then there was James and Lily. They were... They were dead. Dead. Gone. And she hadn't been able to grieve for them. She felt like she couldn't. Which was horrible but the emotions, they just wouldn't come. Not for them. Not right now.

Not when all of her emotions were currently tied to Sirius and what he had done. Or not done. Because no one actually knew what happened except for Sirius and Peter and neither of them had been questioned or anything. Well, Peter couldn't because they said he was dead. Dead. Another one dead. No, Marlene couldn't think of that either.

Tears welled in her eyes and she stubbornly wiped them away. No. No tears. She wouldn't let them happen. Not yet.

Sirius. What had Sirius done? Obviously, he hadn't betrayed James and Lily. There was just no way. That was something that Sirius would never do. Could never do. Then why did everyone think this? Well, not everyone but unfortunately the people who knew this couldn't help. Not really anyway. Remus and Dora and Chryssie and Severus. None of them could make their voices be heard. And even if they did, they wouldn't be listened to. A muggleborn. A werewolf (though that wasn't known). A child of a bloodtraitor. A half-blood Slytherin. No one important enough to listen to.

Dumbledore should be listening to them; except he wasn't either. He wasn't! The last person Marlene expected something like that from. She thought that he was different. He was supposed to be different. Except he wasn't after all. That hurt. That really hurt. Except hurt got her nowhere, was going to get her nowhere so she pushed it into anger instead. Anger at least felt productive.

Yet Dumbledore didn't believe her. Didn't believe any of them. Said that James had told him himself that Sirius was their secret keeper. And it was only the secret keeper who could have betrayed them. But that couldn't have been right. Sirius wouldn't have ever, ever betrayed James and Lily. Never.

She slammed her hands down with such force that her palms stung. Right. That was it. They had to do something.


Longbottom Manor, 14:00

Alice watched worriedly as Frank walked across the room. She was worried about him. Had been for days now. Ever since... well, ever since they got the news.

Lily and James. They were... They were gone. Gone. Murdered. Just like that. In an instant. On evening they were there and by nightfall they were gone. Gone.

They were supposed to be safe. They were supposed to be safe.

But they hadn't been. They had been betrayed in the worst way possible and they had paid for it. Dearly. Alice didn't understand. She wasn't sure if she wanted to understand.

And it didn't help that Frank wasn't talking to her. He wasn't doing a lot of talking at all. In fact, she didn't think that he'd said a single word to Neville today. Not one. And that was odd because he always talked to Neville. Always said good morning to him and asked how his day was going even though Neville couldn't reply yet. He wasn't that big of a talker. Like his father, apparently. But still Frank did it. Said it was only polite and how else were they supposed to teach Neville manners if they didn't model them themselves? Alice found it adorable. She loved hearing the exchange.

Except she didn't hear it today because Frank had decided not to say a word! He was grieving. She understood that. She really did. But this, this wasn't the way to go about it, was it? This wasn't normal. He had to talk. She had to make him talk. But how was she supposed to do that? She didn't want another argument. There had been enough of those.

"She was always kind to me," she said quietly.

Was it bad that that was all she could come up with? Of course, she had liked Lily. Of course, she was having trouble wrapping her head around the fact that she was gone (she was gone) but that didn't make her brain work any faster.

Frank nodded. "Lily was always kind."

His voice broke on those words and he clammed up again.

Dammit, she hadn't meant for that to happen. She had wanted him to talk. Maybe even about the Potters even if it wasn't about his feelings about them. Any sort of talking would be good at this point. And, well, Lily had been nice to her, hadn't she? She'd been incredibly nice. Kind even. She just wished that both of those things didn't sound flat when you said them out loud. They were wonderful traits to have, after all. Everyone should have them. And Lily seemed to have them in spades.

Alice sighed and shook her head. That sounded so wooden, even as simple thoughts. Maybe this was why Frank wasn't talking, because she couldn't relate to what he was going through.

Let's be honest, as friendly as she was with Lily, she wasn't the closest with her. Nor was she with James. He was Frank's friend. Almost family. And Frank and James had wanted to make all four of them get closer together but the War had stopped that, hadn't it? Like it had stopped a lot of things. Being Aurors, fighting, going into hiding. None of those things by themselves were conducive to getting closer to someone.

None of this stopped the weird feeling of something being missing now. It was weird and she didn't really know how to describe it. Just that something was missing and she didn't like it. Like she had been set adrift and she had no clue what direction she was going never mind which way she was supposed to be going.

What were she and Frank supposed to do now? Did this mean it was safe? Could they get back to their old lives? What even was their old life? Did that even exist anymore? It couldn't possibly. Everything had changed. Where would they even fit in? Would they fit in? She liked fitting in. Fitting in was good. Fitting in was safe.

Except that hadn't satisfied her before going into hiding. Standing out, being on the forefront had felt good. Empowering. But it was different when you were directly affected by the aftermath, wasn't it? She hated to even think it but she wanted to go back to fitting in.

Alice pushed her feelings aside; they weren't important right now. Frank was what was important right now. Frank and his feelings and how he was processing all of this. None of which she knew the answer too. How awful was that? She was his wife and she really had no idea how he was coping. She didn't even know how to help him cope! It wasn't like her mother had taught her this!


Dursley Home, 19:30

Harry didn't cry anymore. What was the point? Aunt Tuna and Uncle Vern (though it was mostly Aunt Tuna) came to check on him, made sure he was dry, checked if he wanted to eat and if he wasn't any of those things, they just told him off and left him. He didn't like being told off. He wanted to be held and hugged and kissed. But not by them. He wanted hugs and kisses from mummy and daddy. But mummy and daddy never came. They never came no matter how hard he cried. That just got him told off again. Which he didn't like. So, he stopped crying.

Crying made your face feel funny and your neck feel sore. Which was nearly enough for him to start crying again. But he couldn't. Didn't really have the energy for it anyway. He didn't have the energy for much at all.

His eyes fluttered shut and he put his thumb in his mouth. It didn't feel right. He normally sucked on the ear of his toy doggie or wolfie. Or even the pokey stick things on his Prongs. But none of them were here.

He snuggled a bit and the tears did come. But they were quiet. He had to be quiet.

Eventually, he fell asleep.