Chapter Text
The walk down to his quarters in the dungeons left Severus entirely too much time to stew in his own thoughts and feelings—chief among them anger. At the Headmaster, yes, for a myriad of offenses—but also at himself.
The more he thought about it, the more inexcusable his failure to recognize the imposter seemed. Both when he had worn Filch’s face, and Black’s.
The signs had been there since the moment of Moody’s death—the disappearance of the caretaker’s awful bloody cat. The state of disrepair which the castle’s portraits, now that he looked, had been slowly falling into—it was common knowledge that it was Filch who touched up their paint regularly. The ending of the relationship between Filch and Pince, which had been a poorly kept secret among the faculty for years.
The fact was, Severus had simply overlooked him. Because he was a squib, because he did not believe that any wizard with pride would want to take on his role. Because he had not seen him the way that he saw the mages around him—as potential threats, or allies, or simply agents—but instead as a sort of unimportant fixture of the castle, there long before Severus had even arrived as a child.
He had not even attempted to legilimize him, too accustomed to his habit of respecting the mental privacy of those who did not appear to him as potential threats. True, Crouch had likely been wearing the same amulet which he had worn as Moody, but even that would have aroused his suspicions. But no, Severus had treated Filch with as much suspicion and caution as he reserved for inanimate objects.
Not only had he overlooked him—he had handed Mary Elizabeth over to him for her detentions. If he had used that opportunity to hurt or abduct her, Severus would have been to blame. All because he could not stand to be alone in a room with her, to risk remembering things which he was trying his best to forget.
He had thought himself foolish, before, for pushing aside the problem of the girl’s feelings for him, for believing it insignificant in the face of preparing her for what was to come. Now, he found he was furious with himself for exactly the opposite: for allowing his discomfort, his concern for restoring some manner of propriety to their relationship, to interfere with his duty to her. He should have taken her detentions on himself. He should not have allowed Filch, or anyone, to be alone with her without even the most cursory of attempts to verify their identity with legilimency.
Not only that, he had allowed Crouch into the office with himself and Mary Elizabeth, despite knowing that he would likely be in disguise. Regardless of his surprisingly accurate impersonation of Black, Severus should have realized how inherently suspicious it was for anyone to come begging entrance to his office in that moment, particularly with a story which conveniently required Severus to turn his back on them.
Still, he could make up for his failures. If the bloody Headmaster wasn’t going to figure out why the school’s wards had failed to keep out not only Crouch but also Quirrell, when he was possessed by the Dark Lord, then Severus would have to take Mary Elizabeth’s safety entirely into his own hands.
The fact was that he could have recognized that either of them—Filch, or Black—was an impostor, had he simply attempted to legilimize them on sight. But he hadn’t, because Severus liked to believe that he had principles. That he was different than the Dark Lord (whose most aggravating trait, in Severus’s eyes, was his utter disregard for mental privacy—well, that and the sadism). He didn’t go around legilimizing others without permission, except in the case of the Headmaster—he wouldn’t know half of what the old goat was scheming if he didn’t simply slip into his mind and find out for himself.
(Well, also, in Black’s case, he simply hadn’t wanted to deal with the attack which would come when the other wizard, who was a practiced occlumens, recognized his mental probe, and had been caught off guard by Crouch’s ability to impersonate him.)
Regardless, Severus had told Mary Elizabeth over and over throughout the year to disregard her principles if her life was on the line, and praise the Dark, she had listened. If she hadn’t, they might both have died tonight. So it was time that Severus took his own advice. From now on, at the very least, any new person in the castle—or outside of it, if he saw them in contact with Mary Elizabeth—would be subtly probed by his legilimency. Enough to make sure they were who they claimed to be, they weren’t possessed, and they weren’t plotting the girl’s death.
And if he found another threat in their midst, well… If the old goat wouldn’t handle it, Severus would, with or without his permission. He could ask forgiveness after the fact. Dumbledore, after all, was all about forgiveness.
As for Mary Elizabeth being ‘in love’ with him, as the Headmaster had so indelicately pointed out—what did it fucking matter? She needed him. Would need him, now, more than ever. Not only had the Dark Lord returned—not only had she been abducted, tortured, and forced to watch her friend die—but she had also killed a human being.
Despite Dumbledore’s suspicions, Mary Elizabeth was no Riddle. By now, Severus was fairly certain he understood what she was and was not capable of.
Killing? Yes, apparently, if she was pushed to extremes and defending herself. But she didn’t enjoy it any more than she had enjoyed hurting Pettigrew; she wasn’t vicious. (Nor was she cold, except to those she found presumptuous and overbearing, such as the Headmaster.)
In the aftermath, in the moments in his office before he had finally lost his grip on consciousness, she had been terrified and lost, overwhelmed by the enormity of what she had done. He would need to speak to her about it soon, to make sure she wasn’t left to cope with it alone.
If anything, Dumbledore’s comment, meant to urge him to consider the appropriateness of their relationship, had had the exact opposite effect. Seeing the Headmaster waste his time with such a pointless fucking question, after they’d only just been discussing the Dark Lord’s return, had driven in just how unimportant the entire thing was.
Who gave a rat’s arse if his silly goddaughter fancied him? What did it matter if, through an accident of mind magic, he had witnessed her in a compromising position and had an unintentional physical reaction to the memory, born of Zabini’s secondhand lust and the intensity of the part-incubus’s senses, when he had not even known it was her?
They had bigger problems to worry about. Tonight had put that very firmly in perspective, and Severus resolved himself to only focus, from now on, on things that actually mattered. Like, for instance, making sure that Mary Elizabeth was not only prepared to fight, if she must, but also that she did not throw herself in another lake in the aftermath of the trauma she had experienced.
Severus knew already that this responsibility would fall solely on him—if for no other reason, then because no one else knew, or could know, the truth of what had happened in his office tonight. Not Minerva, nor Black, nor even the girl’s friends—in fact, her lessons with Zabini might need to end if she was not proficient enough in occlumency to keep it from him.
Not that Severus believed any of them would purposefully share her secret, but this was something too big, too dangerous, to entrust in anyone who didn’t absolutely need to know—and besides the pair of them, nobody did. If the Ministry got wind of what she had done, with the Minister out to discredit her account of the night’s events? When the bodies from the graveyard had not been discovered, and they had no proof but Mary Elizabeth’s word that they had been killed by Crouch?
She would go to Azkaban. Even at her age, even as the Heir to a Noble House, if the Ministry wanted to make an example of her, they would.
She could tell nobody.
Severus would have to impress this upon her. And then, whatever emotions she went through in the aftermath—however she coped, or failed to cope, or acted out—he would handle it. He would guide her through this, because if he didn’t, no one would.
But that could wait until the morning. Tonight, he was going to go straight to bed, take a Dreamless Sleep, and pass the fuck out.
By the time Severus reached the dungeons, he was barely walking under his own power. He stopped at his office first, to collect the remaining vials of his Cruciatus remedy from his desk, before walking from there to his quarters, the door to which was just down the hall. But as he reached said door, his foot was stopped abruptly by something unseen on the ground, tripping him—something that promptly yelped and scrambled across the floor, limbs momentarily appearing out of thin air before disappearing again as he caught himself on the wall.
“Mary Elizabeth,” he muttered tiredly. Looking around to confirm there was no one in sight, he snatched the invisibility cloak from her, revealing a girl crouched on the stone floor of the corridor, looking almost like a wild animal, wavy black hair frizzed up around her head, eyes red and bleary. “Were you sleeping?” On the floor? Outside his rooms?
“I was watching for you on the map,” she mumbled, climbing to her feet, a sheet of parchment clutched in her hand. “I guess I fell asleep.”
Just then, Severus’s ears picked up the sound of voices. Acting without thinking, he opened the door, grasped Mary Elizabeth by the back of her robes, and dragged her inside, shutting the door behind them.
Only then, at the girl’s startled gasp, did he remember that this was his personal quarters, not his bloody office, and that if the Aurors were coming to interrogate or arrest him, despite Dumbledore’s efforts, it would look far worse if they discovered Mary Elizabeth in his rooms with him. He turned abruptly, using again the spell to allow him to see through his door, ready to shove her towards the second exit, the one leading to the Slytherin tunnels—but it was only Peeves, seemingly in the middle of fleeing from the Bloody Baron.
Severus’s racing heart slowly settled, and he ended the spell, turned back to the girl, still frozen in shock. As she was right to be—even if the Aurors were not coming for him (yet), and even if he had recently resolved to worry less about the optics of their situation, he still should not have his underage, female student in his private rooms in the early hours of the morning.
Then again, he probably shouldn’t be covering up his underage, female student’s use of an Unforgivable curse to kill a man while his back was turned either. Severus snorted to himself, and the girl frowned at him in confusion. He was too bloody tired to care anymore, and they’d already committed one Azkaban-worthy offense tonight. A potential scandal seemed positively quaint in comparison.
Well, why not allow her in his rooms? They needed to speak, after all, and as exhausted as he was, this might be the best time and place for this particular conversation. The longer she had to think about it alone, the worse off he suspected she would be, and his quarters were even more heavily warded than his office. If the Aurors came, there would be time for her to sneak out the side exit before they made it through the door. No one knew, or would know, she was here—it would be as if the conversation had never happened. Yes, if they were going to speak of what she had done, it might as well be now.
Although, perhaps she would be better off getting some rest, given that she had drifted off on the floor of the corridor waiting for him, and that she was far less accustomed than himself to going without sleep. Part of him doubted she would leave him alone so easily, given how she had clung to him before, but he would at least give her the option.
“As you can see, I am still here,” he informed her. “I will not be going to the Dark Lord tonight—or any other night, in point of fact. Will you return to your own room now?” Mary Elizabeth frowned, not moving, still shooting wide-eyed glances around his sitting room, and he sighed. “I thought as much. Well, then, stop gaping and sit down.”
Turning towards his sofa, Severus caught a glimpse of his liquor cabinet, and it occurred to him that, if he could not be unconscious as quickly as he would like, he could, at least, have a drink. Powers knew he needed one. Most of the time, he tried to avoid excessive drinking, given his family history, but if there was ever a night for it…
Reaching for his firewhiskey, he paused for a moment, hand hovering over the bottle, as it occurred to him to wonder whether he still cared enough to refrain from drinking in front of his student. He decided that he didn’t. In for a penny and all, so he uncorked the bottle and poured several fingers of Ogden’s into a tumbler.
“Should you be drinking?” the girl asked from behind him. “After everything…”
“The Dark Lord has returned. We should all be drinking.”
There was a pause as she considered this, and then she asked, “Can I have some, then?”
Severus snorted. “No.” He might be fool enough to bring a teenage girl who believed herself infatuated with him into his private quarters in the middle of the night, and even to drink in front of her, but he was not quite fool enough to provide her alcohol as well. The last thing he needed right now was a repeat of the Yule Ball incident.
Besides, it was best not to ingest alcohol so soon after suffering the Cruciatus. Which would not stop him, of course, but he would not see her young brain damaged any further than it already might have been.
But he did need to have a conversation with her before he was actually incoherent from the combination of the curse after-effects, alcohol, and sheer exhaustion, so Severus sat down on his sofa with a heavy sigh. Mary Elizabeth was sitting in his armchair off to an angle from him, her hands on her knees—as proper as always, even after everything. She opened her mouth, but he stopped her.
“You may ask whatever questions you have, but only in this moment. It is safe to speak openly here—though if there comes a knock on the door, or if I tell you to, you will leave through the door in the corner without question and take the tunnels back to your room.
“After tonight, we will never speak of this again. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
Waiting for her to say whatever had been important enough to camp out in front of his living quarters for, Severus took a long pull of his firewhiskey. Finally, she asked, “Did you get in trouble? For what I told Dumbledore you did?”
He huffed out an amused breath at her phrasing, like he was a schoolboy who had been called up to the Headmaster’s office to be given a scolding, rather than an alleged murderer many times over. It surprised him, a little, that this was her concern, and not the fact that the bloody war had just restarted, but if it was worrying her…
“Not with the Headmaster. As with Quirrell, I was acting in defense of a student. The DLE may be another story, but Dumbledore is doing his utmost to deflect suspicion away from me. He cannot afford to lose me, particularly at this moment.” And yet, even as he said it, he felt a twinge of doubt. If he could not spy, then he was no longer as irreplaceable as he had once believed himself.
“We will likely both need to speak to the Aurors tomorrow. Ask Black to be present,” though he hated to say it, “and they will likely be too intimidated by his family name to question you too intensely. He was an Auror once—he won’t let them overstep their bounds.” Then he paused, and added, “You will tell them exactly what you told Dumbledore tonight.”
At that, as he had expected, the girl’s eyes sharpened. “You used a compulsion on me.”
“Yes.” He might have even Obliviated her, or used the Imperius, but in the state he’d been in, a strong compulsion had been all he could safely manage. In fact, “And if you do not promise to do as I say when you speak to the Aurors, I will do whatever else is necessary to ensure your compliance.”
There was a flash of surprise, of hurt, in her expression—she was not used to him threatening her. But she needed to understand how serious the situation was, and that doing other than exactly as he said was not an option. He would get her through this intact, whether she wanted him to or not.
“What if they check my wand?” she asked.
“Then you will tell them that I cast the Killing Curse, and used a compulsion to ensure that you would lie for me.”
Her jaw tightened. “And what will happen to you, if I do that?”
“I will be arrested and tried. They might be lenient, as it was self-defense, but on the other hand, my record is not exactly spotless.” With another huff of breath, too quiet to count as laughter, Severus swallowed the remains of his drink.
“I won’t let you go to Azkaban,” Mary Elizabeth insisted, staring at him almost angrily. “I can break your compulsion if I have to. I’ll tell the truth.”
Severus set his empty glass down on the coffee table before meeting her eyes. “The truth is that I killed Barty Crouch Jr. in my office tonight,” he told her, “with the Killing Curse, with your wand, in self defense, then covered it up using the curse Sectumsempra. Any other truth, you need to forget. In fact…”
But she immediately knew what he was going to say, and flinched backwards, raising her wand. “No! I won’t let you Obliviate me.”
He grit his teeth. In all other circumstances, he would avoid using nonconsensual mind magic against a student, but if she did not leave him any other option… “Listen to me, Mary Elizabeth. With the right representation—your friend Mrs. Tonks, perhaps—I may have a chance, but if it comes down to it, I will go to Azkaban, and you will let me, whether you want to or not. I do not wish to Obliviate you against your will, but I will do anything that is necessary to stop you from ruining your own life, do you understand? You do not belong in Azkaban.”
“Neither do you!”
With a weary sigh, Severus filled his glass again and drained it in one long pull to keep himself from saying anything too graphic for her young ears. “I had earned myself a place in Azkaban a dozen times over by the end of the first war, Anipsiá. I was spared that fate, primarily so that I could act to right my wrongs by working to stop the Dark Lord and to protect you. If you will not allow me to do so, there is hardly a point.”
“But I killed him, not you. I used the Unforgivable, even though you told me to use any other spell if I could.”
“You cast it in defense of my life,” he snapped, his temper fraying slightly as the haze of the firewhiskey added to the exhaustion of his day.
Mary Elizabeth wasn’t listening, though. Staring down at her wand, which now rested loosely across both of her hands, she said, “You told me before that the Killing Curse wouldn’t work, unless you meant it. Unless you really wanted to kill someone, and thought they were… worthless.”
“More or less,” Severus said. “I would say the mindset required is a lack of concern for the victim’s life. A belief that they do not matter—that you are above them.” Not that that was likely to make her feel any better, but he’d never been very good at comforting falsehoods, even when he wasn’t dead on his feet and slightly intoxicated—speaking of which, he grabbed the bottle from the table and poured himself another. Fuck it all.
“I didn’t care about his life,” Mary Elizabeth admitted. “I cared about yours. I just wanted to make him stop. And… I was kind of pissed off that he thought he deserved to kill you. If it were the Dark Lord or Bellatrix or someone… But he was just… some guy you went to school with.”
“Well, there you have it.” Severus had always thought of the mindset required for the spell as superior, thinking of oneself as a god and others as tools to be discarded, but he supposed that the mindset she described could work just as well. It was instrumental, eliminating a human life as if it were an obstacle. Still, he found himself amused at the idea of Mary Elizabeth killing a man out of sheer offense that he had the gall to threaten him.
“I don’t think I feel bad,” she said after a moment. “But I feel kind of bad that I don’t feel bad. Is that normal?”
“Yes.”
She hummed quietly, as though processing this. “How old were you?” she asked, and he looked up in surprise. “The first time you killed someone.”
“Just shy of eighteen,” he answered, keeping all emotion out of his voice. “Yule of 1977—my Marking ceremony. The Dark Lord liked to have his new recruits kill to prove their loyalty.”
He supposed, now that he considered it, that he had only been a little over three years older than she was now. She seemed much younger, somehow. Or maybe it was just difficult for him to believe that he himself had ever been so young.
“Who was it?” she asked, surprising him again. He hadn’t thought she would want to know.
“My father.” She glanced up at him in surprise. “It was no hardship to take his life. Our childhoods were not unalike, I fear, but I would wager Tobias Snape was worse than your Dursleys.” At that, she only nodded, seeming to take him at his word.
“Did it…” She trailed off. “I read some of Hermione’s notes from one of the books you let her read. On horcruxes. They said that killing someone splits your soul apart, and that’s how you make a horcrux.”
Severus laughed out loud at that. “Sounds like something the old goat would say. The act of killing to make a horcrux is because the sacrifice a human life is needed in order to appease the right Powers, to catalyze the ritual to split one’s soul. Don’t worry: you certainly would have noticed had you performed such a ritual. Your soul is still in one piece.”
She didn’t look convinced, still looking down at her wand, her hands. Finally, she said, “But am I… tainted, somehow? I feel like I must be. Like someone could look at my magic and know what I did.”
“Your magic is… incrementally Darker, as a result of using a very Dark curse,” Severus admitted. “But not so much as it was after you emerged from the Chamber of Secrets two years ago, and the change is not irreversible. You should still be able to cast a Patronus, for instance.”
“That’s not really what I meant,” she said, and he sighed. He knew it wasn’t, really. When she said she felt ‘tainted,’ that was a statement about her image of herself, not the polarization of her magic. Of course, even that was rooted in some sense in Light propaganda—the idea that Dark magic and violence, even used in self-defense, was inherently corrupting on a spiritual level.
He suspected that she was asking him not just because he was the only person who knew what had really happened in his office, but also because he was something of an expert on being tainted. Well, if that was what she needed…
“Did you enjoy killing him?” he asked, and her head immediately shot up, her eyebrows furrowing in shock. Before she could respond, he asked, “Do you have any desire to go out and find someone else to kill, just for the hell of it?”
“Of course not!”
“You’ll be fine. The very fact that you are disturbed over taking the life of a man who delivered you to the hands of the Dark Lord, who had someone you cared about at wandpoint and was quite likely about to kill them, when you had almost no other option, tells me that you are hardly a born killer. You can rest assured that you are a ‘good person,’ if you believe in such things.” Severus didn’t, but Mary Elizabeth seemed to, and anyway, by the standards of most people who put stock in such things, she was. “You are no Bellatrix—much as your hair resembles hers at the moment.”
“Hey!” Her hands flew up, dropping her wand to the side as she ineffectively tried to smooth down the riot of curls that had escaped her braid while she slept, and he laughed out loud at the sight.
Okay, he might have had enough of that firewhiskey, at least while she was still here. It wouldn’t do to forget himself—this year had taught him the importance of caution when it came to this girl. There was a difference between not allowing her feelings to damage their relationship and throwing away all semblance of boundaries. It would be best to get her out of his rooms before the exhaustion of the day and the liquor caught up with him.
“Now, if you are convinced that you are not the next Dark Lady of Britain, let us return to an earlier subject. The Aurors. If and when you speak to them, what will you tell them?”
She shot him another stubborn look, but then bit her lip and said, “You’re not going to let me tell them the truth, are you?”
“I am not.” Then, feeling the need to reassure her: “Dumbledore will do his best to prevent them from checking the spells on your wand, and if they request it anyway, you can and should ask Black to kick up a fuss about it on your behalf. Use the Potter and Black names, call in Mrs. Tonks. And, if that does not work, I would recommend you break down in tears and tell them that I was only trying to save your life. I do not wish to go to Azkaban, if there is any other option.”
After all, she would need him.
She seemed to think this over, still chewing on her lower lip. “Do you really think that will work?”
I don’t know. “Yes,” he said calmly, looking her in the eyes, trying his best to feign confidence (and sobriety). Now that Crouch’s potion had worn off, he was able to reach out with his mind magic, to find the compulsion in her mind and strengthen it, putting as much force behind it as he could. Influencing her to agree with him, to think it was her own decision. She did not seem to notice. (He felt a twinge of guilt at this, pushed it aside.)
With the mental contact, he could feel that she was not deceiving him, that the compulsion had settled deeply into her mind and taken root, when she finally nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I don’t like it, but—if you won’t give me another choice—”
“I won’t,” he said, feeling relieved down to his bones at her agreement. “Now, any further questions, or will you leave me to drink in peace?”
But she hesitated, shifting in her seat, and he sighed. Best to get them all out of the way tonight, so he waited, trying not to seem too impatient, until she asked, “Are you angry with me?”
Severus had to fight the urge to laugh. She had killed someone with an Unforgivable mere hours before, the Dark Lord was back, and she was sitting here worrying herself over whether he was angry with her. “For?” he asked, wondering which of her many actions tonight she was referring to.
Shifting guiltily in the chair, she said, “Running to you in front of everyone like that after I came back. Letting Dumbledore find out that I care about you. Thinking he was going to send you back to spying when he wasn’t and threatening him. I don’t know, everything. Making it so you can’t spy again in the first place. Using the Killing Curse instead of another option, so now we have to worry about the Aurors and everything.”
Not for the first time, Severus found himself thinking, Powers save me from insecure teenage girls. “No, I do not blame you for actions taken when you had just been taken captive and tortured multiple times in one night. Although I must point out that I made my vow to Dumbledore when you were just an infant, and that, had the Headmaster and I deemed it possible for me to return to my position as a spy, it would not be up to you to stop me.”
“But you made a vow to me, too,” she pointed out. “You said you’d protect me. You can’t do that if you’re dead.”
“You will not be safe so long as the Dark Lord is alive—spying, were I able, would be part of protecting you, in the long run. And I can hardly protect you when you are too busy trying to misguidedly keep me from danger.”
He was not angry, per se, but he was baffled by her sudden show of protectiveness earlier in the night. It would have been endearing had it not been so ridiculous: a fourteen-year-old girl turning her wand on Albus Dumbledore on his behalf. Severus could not remember the last time anyone had attempted to protect him, and in truth, he had absolutely no idea how to react to it.
“‘Misguidedly’?” she repeated testily, glaring at him like a small, angry cat. It was actually rather endearing. He’d probably drank too much already. “Who, exactly, saved your life tonight?”
“Point taken,” he said after a moment, raising his glass to her in a mockery of a toast. Underneath his sarcasm, he felt slightly discomfited, knowing that he owed his survival to the girl whose protection was meant to be his responsibility. He supposed he could add that to his list of ways he had failed her. “I am sorry that you had to—that I did not keep my vow to protect you.”
At first, he wasn’t sure what the noise Mary Elizabeth made was meant to signify, but after examining her face, he realized it was frustration. “That’s not—I don’t care about that.”
“About what?” he asked. She said nothing in response; was now, in fact, staring down at her hands in contemplation, as though working up the nerve to—to do what? “Mary Elizabeth?”
Still, she didn’t speak for a long moment, until finally, she seemed to force herself to look up at him and said, “I wasn’t being truthful, when I said that you needed to stay alive because you vowed to protect me. That’s not why.” He opened his mouth to say something—he wasn’t sure what, just that he needed to stop her before she said anything more—but she barreled on. “The truth is that I don’t want you to die, whether or not you’re protecting me. Because I care about you. You’re important to me.”
Severus let out a breath, a sort of nervous laugh, and looked away, unable to bear her staring at him with such earnestness. This was a bad idea. This, all of it, bringing her in here. “You’ve had a long night, and endured a great deal of trauma,” he told her. “You ought to go to bed.”
“No, you ought to listen to me,” she snapped, so sharply that he was taken aback. “I wanted to tell you before I went into the maze, but I—I hesitated, and you ran away.”
He had. Maybe he should now, too, before she said something they’d both regret (Do you know what she dreams of you doing to her at night?)—but he just didn’t have the energy to care anymore. So he just sat there, staring into his glass, as Mary Elizabeth continued her confession.
“And then in the graveyard,” she said, “I was thinking that if I survived, I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore. I was going to tell you. So I’m telling you now: you are very, very important to me. I care about you more than—more than anything. And… what Crouch said, in your office…” Her voice wavered, and when he looked up, she was blushing. He quickly looked down again.
“Mary Elizabeth,” he said quietly. Warningly.
She took in a loud breath, but to his relief, she let that topic drop. Still, her voice was sharp when she said, “I’ll keep my promise, but I won’t let you go to Azkaban, if I have to spend the whole Potter fortune to stop it. And really, I’m not sorry that I blew your cover. Not if it means that you won’t have to go back. I don’t think I could stand it if something happened to you. Okay?”
When he chanced another quick look at her, she was staring at him once again with that expression of arresting openness that would have made him want to run as far as possible in the opposite direction if he weren’t so bloody tired. He supposed he ought to be grateful—at least she had heeded his warning, hadn’t flat out said that she thought herself in love with him. There was some degree of plausible deniability left, some room for him to pretend to believe that she meant something else. That Crouch’s comment had been him misconstruing a single odd, meaningless dream, taking it out of context to have another weapon against them both.
The coward’s way out, yes, but he did not have the energy—or, honestly, the motivation—to address it head on now. Nor did he know what to say to her instead.
He could not respond in kind, of course—could not tell her that he cared for her too, no matter that it was true (although not in the same way that he knew she meant it). He certainly could not tell her that it meant something to him, the fact that she valued his life. That she had tried to protect him from the Headmaster, whether or not it had been necessary. That she had wanted to go to Azkaban in his place, before he had put a stop to that. No, he could not say those things—to do so would be to encourage this, and they were treading in dangerous enough waters as it was.
Yet he could not bring himself to shut her down either, the way he had intended to do after viewing Zabini’s memory. Finally, the only thing he could think to say was, echoing her dumbly, “Okay.”
She nodded decisively, as though they had just made some sort of agreement. Later, he would probably regret his response—wonder what he had done by accepting her feelings, even in this oblique way. Tonight, though, he was too damn tired. Instead, he raised an eyebrow and asked, “Satisfied?”
He could see on her face that she was not. The way she looked at him—unashamed, eyes burning, as though in the extremes she had been pushed to tonight, she had transcended all teenage insecurity for a sense of utter certainty—he feared for a moment that she might take it further, might try to kiss him right here and now.
Before tonight, he would not have dreamed she would be so bold, but, well, something had changed between them. The secret they shared, the night they had endured, and the things she had said to him just now, alone in his private quarters in the middle of the night. It was as though they had crossed a line, behind which lay a mere professor-student relationship (or something that could pass for it, if not examined too closely).
He was not sure what lay on the other side; he was only sure they could not go back.
Still, there were some lines he could not cross. Not ever. If she kissed him, he would stop her. Obviously. But she did not. She only stared straight at him with those earnest green eyes, and then gave the slightest movement of her head, one that he understood to be a reluctant nod.
“In that case, get back to your room before I take points for being out after curfew,” he said. A transparent attempt to bring them back to safer waters, to pretend that nothing had changed, but he could not be blamed for trying. “Leave through the side door, and take care not to be seen—assuming you haven’t revised your stance on whether you’d like me to go to Azkaban,” he added under his breath.
Mary Elizabeth stood, looking far more composed than the wild, panicked girl he’d found outside his door. Gathering her invisibility cloak, she said, “Thank you. For everything, I mean.” To his relief, she didn’t seem to expect a response, throwing the cloak over her head and disappearing before he could say a word.
Just as his door handle turned by itself, though, he remembered to call out after her, “Anipsiá? Who was it that killed Barty Crouch Jr.?”
“…You did.”
“Correct. When you open that door, take the truth and bury it. Leave it here, with me, and never speak of it again. Do you hear me?”
“I do. Goodnight, Theíos.”
Then she was gone, the door opening and closing as though under its own power as she slipped out of his room like—well, not like a ghost, they just went through the walls, but something to that effect.
Severus drained the rest of his glass and stretched out on his sofa, suddenly feeling too lacking in energy to even move to his bed to sleep. As unconsciousness rapidly overtook him, a memory, hazy as a dream, floated across his mind.
Something warm and soft beneath his head, a gentle hand cradling his cheek. Wide, concerned green eyes and wisps of dark hair hovering over him, an almost unsettling innocence to the face given the streaks of bright red blood adorning the pale skin. And, above all, a feeling of peace and warmth, as though the sun had, for the first time in years, broken through the clouds to hold him in its light.
Then it was gone, replaced by the blackness of sleep. By the time he awoke, it had faded completely from his mind.