In Memory of Sigmund Freud

by Delphi

Summary:

Severus Snape spends his first summer holiday away from teaching cloistered at a remote house in strange company, not least his own.

Notes:

Written for the 2009 Snapely Holidays exchange on IJ and LJ. The title of this story is taken from that of a W.H. Auden poem; unnamed quotations herein are taken from Auden's "A New Age" and "Roman Wall Blues" respectively.

Long after the summer of 1982, it would occur to him that had Minerva McGonagall issued her invitation on any other day and at any other moment, he would have assuredly declined. Furthermore, he would wonder if there weren't just enough slyness mixed in with her sensibility for her to be aware of this fact. But no, he supposed even she could not have suspected that on the evening of the Leaving Feast, he was idly weighing the merits of various methods of self-murder as he picked over his roast dinner.

Circumstances had conspired and he was on the other side of the looking glass again. Never mind the dodgy physics of the metaphor; that was the only way to describe the inside-out and backwards wrongness of marking final exams rather than sitting them, of looking out across the Great Hall from the raised dais of the head table, of finding himself twenty-two years old and still alive. His mother had written last week from his grandfather's house in Lancashire asking for money. He had heard through channels he was no longer supposed to have that Igor Karkaroff had been released from Azkaban.

"Pardon me?" he finally said, ceasing his study of the sharpness of his knife and using it to dissect a Yorkshire pudding instead.

Professor McGonagal—Minerva, he reminded himself for the thousandth time—did not bat an eye at the lengthy pause. She merely cut a pearl onion in half with geometric precision and ate a portion before repeating herself. "I said if you haven't any other plans, you should come stay the summer."

"With you," he said, rather blankly.

One of her eyebrows arched sharply, and her mouth moved for an instant as though it wished to say something like, 'No, with the Deputy Head of Magical Transportation.' Then it relented, softening. "With me. I have a house near Portree. There's enough space that we'd have no trouble staying out of each other's way."

He stared stupidly at her for several seconds and then narrowed his eyes in suspicion. He did not, of course, have plans for the summer. The past month had been spent in a state of mingled hope and dread as he waited for the headmaster to dismiss him from this farce of a position, but there had been no meeting, not even a note, only a memorandum from Minerva reminding him to submit next year's curriculum changes for approval. All future plans had hinged upon his being sacked, and now he was due to vacate the castle within two days and had not given the slightest thought to where he was going to go.

The house at Spinner's End? His mother had left the property to him, claiming she hadn't the patience to deal with any more Muggles, estate agents least of all. It was available and it was free, but the thought of going back to that place did away with the remains of his appetite. He thought fleetingly about trying to contact Lucius, but even he knew how stupid an idea that was. He wouldn't be able to afford a room at the Leaky Cauldron all summer, but perhaps the Hog's Head....

"I don't know," he said.

It was not a "no" and she knew it. "The sea air will do you good. You're looking peaky." Her voice had an air of finality, as though the matter were settled.

Severus did not reply. He returned his attention to his plate and was pushing cold roast beef around through a pool of congealed gravy when the headmaster turned and murmured in his ear: "I do hope you'll relax this summer, Severus. You ought not to feel as though you need to run yourself ragged visiting distant relatives and old friends. Be selfish."

His hand clenched around his knife, but he did not reply to that either.

After dinner, he saw his students back to the dormitories and left them to their packing and squabbling and juvenile dramatics. He walked through the corridors in search of stragglers and then went outside. The night air was brisk, holding just sharp enough a chill to make him hunch his shoulders and jam his hands down in the pockets of his robes. He circled the castle restlessly and without a destination in mind until he came to the base of Gryffindor Tower, and there he halted, looking up.

Every window was lit up, and shadows darted around in the golden glow. The squawking chatter was barely muffled by the walls. He ignored it, standing instead in the middle of another night long ago. The autumn of his first year at Hogwarts. September...or was it October? He couldn't recall, but he remembered gathering up pebbles from the base of the tower to toss at the window of the first year girls' dormitory. Missing. Cursing. Throwing them again, with the aid of his wand this time, and the way the light spilled out when the window opened. The way she smiled when he cast a lumos and she saw that it was him.

Now, he considered the logistics of climbing to the top of the tower and leaping off. It seemed a lot of inconvenience for so uncomfortable a death, but there was a certain poetic justice to it that appealed to him. He was beginning to suspect, however, that he was incapable of suicide. He did not know whether to credit his maternal line, Slytherins nearly all, or the centuries of Snapes who had stubbornly scraped through life just long enough to breed more penniless, witless, mundane progeny. Snakes and cockroaches respectively and Severus as their sole heir.

Besides. He supposed they would make Filch clean up the mess, and the pragmatic reality of that was not nearly as satisfying as the fantasy of Albus Dumbledore being forced to get his hands dirty for once.

He went back to his rooms and put the kettle on. The noise from the dormitories had quieted, which indicated some mess or mischief too awful to even shriek over. He had no inclination to investigate. Instead, he paced restlessly until his tea was ready and then changed into his nightclothes. He sat up reading in bed for hours until the physical need for sleep finally overcame his mind's insistence on staying awake. He had already warned the students that there would be no alternate transportation if they did not see themselves off on time in the morning, and he stayed in bed skimming over fragile sleep until well past nine o'clock.

Summer: the word flitted through his mind as the annoyance of warm, bright sunlight finally urged him out of bed. The castle was as quiet as a tomb.

He did not see much of Minerva in the days to follow, and when they passed in the corridor, no further mention was made of her invitation. But he stayed, feeling too weary to do anything else, and wondered if this was the headmaster's way of keeping tabs on him over the holidays. He stayed past Saturday, when Dumbledore made his cheerful farewells, and he stayed past Sunday, when the rest of the teachers left in staggered ones and twos throughout the day on broomstick or on foot, heading to town or to the train station. He stayed until it was only her in her office and him in the dungeons; Filch scraping chewing gum from under the tables in the Great Hall and Hagrid digging trenches in the gardens for purposes Severus was too apathetic to inquire after.

He stayed, and eventually a note fluttered out of his fireplace on Tuesday evening. It landed on his mantel and unfolded itself gracefully. It read, in a hand he remembered all too well from red-inked essays: "The last of the acceptance letters are finished. We'll leave at three p.m. tomorrow. Bring a hat and cloak. -MM"

Severus read the note twice before throwing it in the fire out of habit. Then he looked around his borrowed rooms, chewing his lip in indecision. Finally, he dragged his trunk out from under the bed and began to pack.

---

The morning of their departure began well enough, which should have been his first indication that things could only get worse. His concern that they would be flying was blessedly laid to rest when Minerva came down to the entrance hall with a full four trunks marching on unnerving little feet behind her. Severus did not own a broom and the school stock was abysmal. Besides, his nose had a tendency to run on trips over ten miles. It was a ridiculous method of long-range transportation, if you asked him.

Minerva caught him staring and mistook it. "Two of those are books," she said, a touch defensively.

"I don't presume to judge." He levitated his own trunk, which certainly contained more paper than clothing.

They set out on foot along the carriageway towards the train station. Severus had to steal multiple sideways glances at Minerva before realising what seemed different about her. He had never seen her out of her teaching robes before. That was to say—his mind abruptly stuttered—in clothing other than her teaching robes. She wore some sort of long tweed skirt and blouse under her travelling cloak, and her hair was tied in a braid rather than a bun.

He tried to get a better look at her boots, which had little buttons running up the sides, and nearly tripped over his own feet in the process. Heat flooded his face as he briefly stumbled, and Minerva looked over at him but made no comment. That was, in essence, the entire reason they got on most of the time. She was very good at not saying things. In the whole of the last year, she hadn't once made mention of the obvious fact that he had been her student, which put her miles ahead of the rest of the staff in the mental tally he was keeping. She did not correct his grammar, as Binns did. She did not eulogise his dead schoolmates in his presence, like a certain headmaster.

She had treated him as a colleague from the first, even if she sometimes gave him an arch look that resonated in his mind as a scolding, "Mr. Snape," which was why he presently made a resolution to stop lagging behind her like an awkward schoolboy and pretend he had in fact been the recipient of a social invitation before.

The train arrived promptly at twenty past the hour. Severus pretended to be fixing the latch on his trunk when Minerva handed over two tickets; he wasn't certain if it would be gauche to offer to reimburse her. He worried about this all through the time it took for them to get to their car and stow their trunks and choose their seats. Finally, he decided that as she was in charge of the payroll, she could simply dock the travel costs from his September pay if she saw fit.

"We'll be embarking from Kyle of Lochalsh," Minerva said, settling in across from him and taking a slim book from the pocket of her cloak. "It shouldn't be more than an hour."

But of course it was.

They were hardly ten minutes into the journey, passing rough terrain and the odd stone cottage, when the train abruptly screeched to a stop. Severus lurched forward with the force of it, and Minerva looked up, startled, and stopped him in mid-tumble with a firm hand on his chest. He fell back into his seat with a muffled grunt and covered his discomfort with an indignant glare out the window. "Don't tell me we have to wait for them to scrape a Muggle off the windscreen."

She gave him a censuring look.

"Or a cow," he amended.

Minerva sniffed and cocked her head. "I believe that's Ernie Prang I hear cursing. Another Knight Bus shortcut gone ahoo."

He settled back with an impatient sigh, staring out at a range of scrubby hills and trying not to imagine that he could feel the heat lingering on his chest. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had touched him, even inadvertently.

They set off again in a few minutes but then ended up idling at the Inverness station for nearly two hours while the idiot engineer inspected the non-existent damage and had a tea break. Minerva read on placidly while Severus got up and paced the length of the car twenty-seven and a half times, riffled through his satchel and his trunk, and finally went looking for the canteen. He inched his way through an interminable queue to buy a packet of biscuits and cup of tea and did not need to sample either to know that the former were stale and the latter was weak.

He returned to the car and sat down again across from Minerva. She lowered her book and looked at him with an expression he could not decipher.

"What?" he asked, tearing into the biscuit packet.

She raised her eyebrows further. Expectant?

Severus took several seconds to parse the situation. He looked from the cup in one hand to the biscuits in the other, to Minerva, and back around again. Then he frowned and tentatively extended both hands.

Minerva smiled warmly and took the tea and biscuits. "Why, Severus. How thoughtful of you."

He glowered and stood up, stalking back to the canteen; he wasn't exactly desperate to replace the meagre snack, but he'd rather she didn't see him blushing. He had just secured another cup of tea for himself when the train was revived. The cup jumped in his hand, splattering tea all over his sleeve. That it was stone cold would prove to be the last pleasant surprise of the day.

They arrived in Kyle of Lochalsh just in time to see the ferry pulling away.

"Rot," Minerva cursed crisply and then sighed, snapping her fingers for her trunks to follow her away from the pier. "Well, there's nothing to be done for it. We'll have dinner here and take the later crossing."

The village was, he supposed, what others would call charming. It reminded him a little of Hogsmeade, although the population was mixed magical and Muggle. The narrow thoroughfare was familiar, as was the string of white plaster houses and shops pointing towards the shore. Only the water was different—oceanic rather than lacustrine—grey and lapping lazily at the shore. The air smelled strongly of brine and wet rocks.

They had supper in a little fish and chip shop, and Severus recovered his appetite enough to put away two portions of haddock. The hot, greasy batter and generous supply of chips settled his stomach after the close quarters of the train. The stuff the house-elves magicked together at the school never sat entirely well with him, but he had a tendency to forget that until the next time he tasted real food.

Minerva smiled smugly, making short work of a piece of salmon. "The sea air is a wonderful restorative."

"I've never been before." He briefly wondered why he'd bothered to lie. He had in fact been to the seaside once, brought along on a holiday to Blackpool with the Evanses the summer before he and Lily started Hogwarts.

"I think you'll find it suits you."

Severus wasn't certain what to make of that but decided it didn't sound entirely insulting. He looked out the window at the water. Even with a relatively clear sky above, it seemed dark and cold. He thought about Blackpool. The crowds, and the noise, and the feeling of sand squelching between his toes and water lapping around his ankles. He remembered shivering uncontrollably—unpleasantly naked in the bathing costume Mr. and Mrs. Evans had bought him—staying stubbornly in the shallows even as Lily tried to urge him in further, even as his feet turned bone-white and numb.

"If you say so," he said.

Minerva set her plate aside and took a sip of her tea. "I do. Now tell me, how did you find your first year of teaching?"

He sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. "You haven't lured me all the way out here to subject me to a job evaluation, have you?"

She glanced up briefly in an apparent appeal for patience from the ceiling. "I have 'lured' you out here so that you might have a pleasant holiday, Severus, and so that I might have one too. To that end, I intend to occasionally subject you to conversation. You're free to change the subject."

"Ah," he said, slightly mollified. "Do you..." Here he paused, searching for something, anything, of depth or substance. "...come here often?"

It was feeble, but she smiled that well-amused, genuine smile he had never seen from her when he was a student. "As a matter of fact, this used to be a pub..."

He drank the rest of his tea as she regaled him with tales of her own early summers off from Hogwarts and the annual glass of whisky she would have at the Siren and Flipper as she waited for the ferry: the Quidditch riots, the red cap infestations, and the seal-wife's curse that finally shut the place down for good. The new owners had apparently had to pay for an exorcism. They stayed for pudding, a perfectly serviceable berry crumble, and then set out when the evening ferry docked.

It was a short crossing, and Severus stood on deck letting the cold spray spatter him and hardly feeling it as he looked out at the opposite shore. He had always rather liked the idea of islands. For all the time he had spent thinking about Azkaban and mulling over the prospects of incarceration and freedom, there was nevertheless something comforting about being surrounded by the clear boundaries of water on all sides. Insulated—straight from the Latin. Separate, safe, as though he were the only one in the world who knew how to apparate or fly and the sea could hold at bay all his enemies.

"Severus?"

Minerva tapped him, and he realised he had been staring blankly at the approaching harbour for several minutes. He shook the fog from his head and her hand from his shoulder and went to retrieve his trunk. They disembarked a short time later.

"Is anyone watching?" Minerva asked from the corner of her mouth as they made their way down the gangplank.

He glanced around surreptitiously at the slow shuffle of travellers. "No."

She grasped him firmly by the elbow. "Hold on to your trunk."

The familiar white-noise prickle of apparition began where she touched him and quickly spread. The chatter and grind of the ship faded away, and for a moment he could hear nothing at all—that terrifying and absolute silence—and then the thump and rasp of his own heartbeat and breathing returned, as did the sound of the sea.

He looked around. Before him was a large, two-storey house built of grey brick with one tall chimney at either end. Behind him, a stone's throw away, the ground dropped suddenly in a steep cliff, against which the sea was rhythmically hurling itself. It was quiet beneath the grating of the surf, and the only neighbours he could see were a trio of shaggy highland cows in a field to the east.

"Welcome to Taigh a Creag," Minerva said. The pride was evident in her voice as she looked around at the garden, and the cliffs, and the cove below.

"Family home?" he asked politely.

She nodded and proceeded up the walkway, gesturing for him to follow. "I used to rent to a couple who summered abroad, but they left three years ago on account of the war."

"Is that what we're calling it now?" he muttered under his breath.

She glanced back at him as she opened the front door.

"A war," he clarified.

It seemed she meant to reply to that, and sharply too, but then she turned as if a sound had caught her attention. Her shoulders stiffened, and Severus reached for his wand, looking past her into the house.

There, holding a wand levelled at Severus's head, was Auror Alastor Moody.

---

The world froze. It took an achingly long fraction of a second for Severus's wand to whip up in response, and in that breathless moment the situation made terrible, brilliant sense. Dumbledore had set him up to be arrested—of course he had. He had sent Severus away to distance the school from scandal, and Minerva had been in on it. Severus was going to disappear, dragged off to Azkaban without so much as a trial, and Dumbledore and his cronies would let out a small sigh of relief, and the world would move on in its neat and tidy way without him.

His mind had leapt to this foregone conclusion long before he realised something was wrong with this picture. An inconsistency niggled at him, insistently enough that he let his gaze flicker down for the span of half a breath. Moody was wearing nothing but a nightshirt and dressing gown. He was swaying where he stood, and his face was—almost impossibly—even more battered than it had been when Severus had last seen him in early November. A patch covered one of his eyes, and there was something about his legs that made Severus want to glance down again, but he didn't dare. In the hand not intent on a hex, Moody was holding a steel flask, and Severus could smell the reek of liquor from five paces away.

"Tsk." Minerva clucked her tongue severely and stepped between them. Time resumed its proper measure. "Not in my house, Moody. Put it away. You too, Severus."

Neither of them budged. Severus had no intention of ruling out betrayal on her part, but there was something in the tone of her voice that precluded hexing her in the back just yet.

"Am I going to have to ask you twice?" she asked, crossing her arms.

From where he was standing, Severus could see the tips of her fingers brushing her wand. The set of her shoulders vouched for her confidence that she could take at least one of them down. He carefully lowered his wand by a scant degree. Moody followed suit, and inch by inch they disarmed.

"I had heard," Severus said, his hand in his pocket still clutching his wand, "that you were dead."

Moody's scarred face twisted up. "Do I look dead to you, boy?"

Severus's gaze swept over him again. He realised now what had caught his attention about the man's legs. One was bare and the other was a carved wooden monstrosity. He cocked his head to one side. "Do you want me to answer that?"

He did not wholly intend to smirk. His cheek, rather, twitched reflexively in the discomfort anyone would feel faced with an Auror; a well-built man in his nightclothes; a cripple. Proper caution gave him leave to stare, which covered his reluctant fascination.

Moody snarled, breaking his gaze and glaring at Minerva. "He's not staying here."

Minerva sniffed, seemingly unperturbed by his fervour. "This is my home, and I may host whomever I wish. If you don't like it, you're perfectly free to leave—as I seem to remember you saying you intended to. Pearly informed me she packed your bags for you three days ago."

There was something about the way Moody's shoulders sagged and then tensed at this that caught Severus's attention. A small presence in the back of his head that was always on the lookout for such things whispered: weakness.

"I'm not leaving you alone with a Death Eater," Moody growled, his eye narrowing to a slit.

Severus drew in a sharp breath. He glanced at Minerva, his hand clenching around his wand. He had never figured out exactly how much she was aware of, and up until this moment he had preferred it that way. His testimony had been a private affair: only him, Dumbledore, and Auror Scrimgeour alone in a very small, dim, hot room for three eighteen-hour sessions. He had not been allowed to attend any of the trials.

Minerva did not so much as flinch; however, that might merely have been impressive corsetry. "Then you're welcome to stay and chaperon," she said crisply. Then her voice softened just a little. "It's nice to see you out of your room at any rate."

Moody's shoulders hunched again at that, and Severus became aware of how heavily the man was leaning on the sideboard. He wondered what exactly had happened to him. Rumour was that Bellatrix had not gone in without a fight, but he knew no more than that. She and the brothers Lestrange had been arrested last winter, when Dumbledore still had him confined to the grounds and had cancelled his subscription to the Daily Prophet.

"I've got my eye on you, boy," Moody muttered sullenly.

Severus inclined his head, looking from the dark narrowed eye to the patch. He made no comment. This time, however, his smirk was deliberate.

It was several tense moments before Moody turned with a "hmph" and limped back down the corridor. Severus could hear his laboured breathing for several long seconds to follow. Then a door slammed hard enough to rattle the paintings on the wall.

Minerva turned to face him and breathed out a soft, exasperated puff of air. "I'm sorry, Severus. I was under the impression he'd be gone before we arrived. He's been recuperating here these last few months, and I'm afraid bed rest hasn't done much for his temper."

"I wasn't aware you two knew each other." He noted that his heart was pounding, but he heard rather than felt it. He touched his chest absently.

It disturbed him that he was not more thoroughly disturbed. A year ago, being at the end of an Auror's wand would have plucked the nerve that screamed run, run, run, and Severus would have thrummed in the key of it for hours afterwards, for days, for weeks, sleeping little, eating less, locked in perpetual watchfulness. Now, however, he only felt weary, the threat of exposure and arrest hardly warranting more emotion than the inconveniences of spilt tea and missed ferries. There was, he decided, something seriously wrong with him.

"Distant cousins," Minerva was saying. "And we were at school together."

His thoughts had not consciously turned speculative, but she seemed to catch some shadow of it on his face.

"Moody is a confirmed bachelor," she added firmly.

With the better part of his mind still mired in the surreality of what had just occurred, he very nearly made an offhand comment about her reputation as an incurable spinster. He stopped himself just before the words left his tongue, however, dimly aware that it would be unwelcome and suspecting he might have missed something significant. Those last two words had seemed to hold a certain weight that he wasn't up to deciphering just now. He settled for a noncommittal hum.

"I do hope you won't let this put you off," Minerva said. "I promise, no harm will come to you under this roof. Moody is merely...well, Moody is my concern, not yours."

He fidgeted, realising that he was still standing out on the front step. A wet leaf had blown in onto the runner and another was plastered to his boot. The wind gusted at his back, pushing his hair into his eyes.

"You'll at least have to stay the night," Minerva insisted.

He hesitated, running an impatient hand through his hair and thinking about the alternatives. Sleeping at the ferry terminal. Finding his way to Portree. Risking an apparation over water and splinching himself. He shrugged. "Yes. I suppose so."

"Good." She nodded decisively. "That's that, then."

He stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him. The house was warm and smelled of fresh-baked bread and black tea. He looked around. It was clean and well-kept and furnished in the understated and unimpressive way that consorting with Lucius had taught him meant money. He cast a wary glance down the east corridor.

"Would you care for a nightcap?" Minerva asked, sending her trunks marching.

He shook his head. "It's been a long day. I think I should turn in."

She paused, and for a moment he thought she looked disappointed. Then she nodded smartly and shepherded him upstairs with a hand on his elbow. "Of course. I had Pearly prepare a room for you."

The room she led him to was at the western end of the house. It was a spacious suite dominated by a large four-poster bed. In the small sitting area, the fireplace was lit and the curtains drawn against the sunset. A desk and chair sat in one corner beneath a painting of a grazing pony, and a large bathtub claimed another behind a folding screen. The walls were white and the bed curtains were a rusty red.

"There's a bell beside the bed." Minerva said. "Ring for Pearly if you want anything in the night."

He nodded, and she relinquished his arm with a squeeze.

"Pleasant dreams, Severus."

He did not bother to tell her that he never dreamed. He only nodded and thought he muttered a goodnight, watching as she proceeded to what he took to be her own bedroom opposite his down the long corridor. Poised just outside, she turned around to look at him, and he quickly shut the door. For several moments he stood there, staring at a small crack in the plaster on the wall, and then he forced himself to move, crossing the room and dragging his trunk with him. His hands were shaking, and the simple act of undressing took several minutes. He did not bother with his nightshirt, settling for stripping down to his singlet and drawers. He left his trunk unpacked and crawled into bed. The sheets were cold and smooth, and he stretched out with a quiet groan before stowing his wand under one of the pillows in case that lunatic Moody tried anything. He breathed.

"You shouldn't be here," a soft voice said.

It was a familiar voice. His hands abruptly stilled. He slowly turned his head and found a ghost sitting at the edge of the bed. He thought he recognised her. Her face was long and so was her hair, and when Severus drew a breath, he caught the faint, false scent of strawberries. He closed his eyes tightly.

"No," he said. "Absolutely not. I am done with today. Piss off."

He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, and when he opened them again, she was gone. He looked out through the bed curtains to be certain and then closed them. He lay back, fidgeting restlessly, finally flipping over onto his stomach and pulling a pillow over his head. His face pressed into the mattress, and he breathed in the mundane reassurance of cotton and laundry power. His breathing grew shallow and his limbs heavy. He did not sink into restfulness but felt rather as if he were looking down on himself: tired and thin and alone in someone else's bed.

The house made soft, strange sounds as it settled. He listened to the whispers of it, to the crackle of the fire and to the quiet creep of a house-elf's footsteps in the corridor. Outside, an owl hooted, and Severus thought he could hear the faint pounding of the surf beyond it, but it might have been the throb of an impending headache.

In time, he slept.

---

Severus awoke far too early the next morning. Someone—he hoped it was only the house-elf—had been in without him hearing to open the curtains, and dawn was spearing in through the windows. He sat up, and his chest tightened when he saw the figure sitting at the desk. Her back was to him, and her long hair was the colour of fire.

"Lily?" His voice was a parched croak. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

Then the figure turned and he saw that the grey of her skin was not from the early morning pallor, and the colour of her hair was no more than the red glow of the sunrise. The ghost raised an eyebrow and he breathed out hard. Something hurt inside his head. He looked away.

"You shouldn't be here," she said flatly.

He decided to ignore her; he was in no mood to be haunted. His neck complained at the awkward position in which he'd slept. He climbed out of bed, wincing. The ghost looked him over, and he snatched his robe up off the floor, holding it in front of him. "Piss off. I'm having a bath."

"So have a bath." She rested her chin in her hands in a familiar pose and looked back out the window.

"I would appreciate a little privacy."

She rolled her eyes. "And what would I want to look at you for? I have a boyfriend, you know."

"Bully for him," Severus muttered, dragging his trunk with him behind the folding screen. He filled up the tub and climbed in, trying to ignore the sound of the ghost softly humming. The tune struck a chord in his memory but he could not immediately place it, and he blocked out the sound by running the hot tap until the water turned his skin bright red from the arms down. The soft-bristled scrub brush stung as he made quick work of lathering up and rinsing.

The humming had ceased and the ghost was gone by the time he dressed and emerged from behind the screen. He looked out the window by the desk and saw the silhouettes of what he took to be fishing boats bobbing on the water in front of the rising sun. There were crows on the lawn and gulls lazily circling overhead. He opened the latch and took a deep breath of the cold salt air to clear his head before heading downstairs.

A pair of double doors that had been shut last night now stood open, and Minerva sat inside the dining room at the head of a long table.

She smiled. "Good morning, Severus. I hope you slept well."

He gave a faint hum and scanned the available spread, focusing in on the teapot.

"Don't hover," Minerva chided. She poured him a cup and then added a soft-boiled egg and a sticky bun to an adjacent place setting.

Severus moved it all across the table and sat facing the door. He picked up the cup and took a long, welcome swallow of tea; it was strong and bitter. "Will Auror Moody be joining us?"

Minerva shook her head, and he saw her lips purse disapprovingly. "Moody is...indisposed."

Indisposed. That was the word his mother would use when his father had only managed to crawl home as far as the back step after the pub had closed or thrown him out. It was always better, mind you, than when the man actually made it as far as the sofa, because then Severus didn't have to mind every footstep and clink of his spoon. He would creep outside after breakfast and step over his father's prone, snoring body, sometimes daring a kick before dashing through the gate and down the alleyway.

"I see," he said, his lip curling.

Minerva did not add further commentary. She merely cut the top off her egg and watched with what seemed like amusement as he conscientiously picked the currants out of his bun and placed them in a pile at the edge of the plate.

"I'm going to go see my aunt today over in Drumuie," she eventually said, once he had tucked in.

"Fine." He chewed on a piece of bun and shrugged. "I don't expect to be entertained."

"I'm aware of that," she said wryly. "I was going to say, you should feel free to get your bearings today. There's a pleasant trail along the shore, and it's only a mile and a half to town if you head west."

There seemed no question that he would be staying. He considered at least opening up the argument but decided that one cup of tea was not sufficient for that sort of undertaking. Instead he merely nodded, and he stood up politely when she rose from the table.

She favoured him with a warm smile. "You can do for yourself for lunch, I hope. You should try Purdy's if you go into town—otherwise, the kitchen is next door. Dinner is at seven."

As it happened, he did not in fact go into town or leave the house at all. He returned to his room after breakfast and crawled back into bed. He closed his eyes but did not sleep, drowning in the midst of slow-moving thoughts for nearly two hours. He surfaced when he heard the front door, and he watched from his window as Minerva launched a broomstick from the lawn.

He went out and ambled down the corridor, testing which doors were locked and seeing what lay behind those that weren't. Bedrooms and baths were counted and windows eyed to gauge which could be climbed out of in a pinch. Severus fingered a pile of Sickles and Knuts that had been emptied out of a pocket onto the hall table. He picked up a tiny jade vase and wondered how much it was worth. At the end of the corridor, he put his hand on the doorknob to Minerva's room, keeping an ear out for the as yet unseen house-elf. He could hear the ghost singing somewhere else in the house, that same infectious tune she'd been humming earlier.

To his mild surprise, the door opened. He looked inside, immediately catching a waft of whatever faint fruit and flower scent usually clung to Minerva's clothing. It was inviting, and for a moment he had the almost irresistible urge to go in and sit on the plush bed, to riffle through the drawers and browse the shelves. He refrained, however, uncertain he wouldn't be caught.

Get his bearings—that was what she'd said. He shut the door softly and continued his investigation downstairs.

He started at the far end of the house this time, hearing a grinding snore coming from the farthest room. It abruptly stopped when he paused in front of the door. Severus held still for several long moments before it began again and he could sneak away. He passed another spare bedroom and a pair of large airy sitting rooms before striking gold at the other end of the corridor.

Here was another familiar scent, identifiable before he even opened the door: paper and glue and vellum. The library was roughly the same size as his bedroom overhead and lined with built-in shelves that were stuffed to groaning with books and periodicals and scrolls. A cursory glance revealed that they were arranged according to Howsham's Rules of Cataloguing. He browsed through the fiction section for a few minutes but saw nothing he recognised, and then sidled over to the A1400s, picking out a new-looking biography of John Dee that he remembered Flitwick going on about. He sat down on a comfortable chaise and skimmed the introduction.

Hours passed, marked only by the sunlight and shadows creeping across the floor and the house-elf—a small pink female—briefly appearing with a pitcher of chilled pumpkin juice. By chapter three, Severus had lain back, sprawling comfortably along the length of the chaise. By chapter seven, the book was lazily propped up against his chest. By chapter ten, his index finger was wedged between the pages, marking his place as he lightly dozed in a late afternoon sunbeam.

He woke when he heard the door. His shoulders tensed until he heard Minerva's voice. She called for the house-elf and exchanged words with the squeaky-voiced creature. He closed his eyes and followed the precise click of her low-heeled boots down to the far end of the house, where she knocked on a door, presumably Moody's. Moody shouted something, and she replied sharply. Then the door opened and shut. He warily braced himself for raised voices, but the conversation that ensued was too muffled for him to make out.

A few minutes later, the footsteps returned—still only one set—coming towards the library. He stayed as he was, lying comfortably with his eyes shut, in the hopes that she would leave him alone.

The door opened.

"Severus?" Minerva's voice was barely above a whisper.

He kept his breathing slow and soft and did not reply.

She came in, approaching on quiet feet until her shadow fell over him, turning the dark red light shining through his eyelids to true black. He caught that sweet scent again and held very still as she stood over him in silence for what seemed like a full minute. Then he felt a near-insubstantial stirring of air, and he flinched minutely. She smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen over his face. Her hand was cool and soft.

His breathing stopped.

He heard a rustle of cloth and then the faint sound of one hard surface scuffing against another as she collected the pitcher and glass from the table beside him. The door clicked softly shut behind her.

He stayed in the library until nearly seven o'clock. Then, when he heard the sounds of the table being laid, he ventured back out to the dining room. The aromas made his stomach audibly groan, and he realised that he'd never had lunch. There were three places set, and as he entered, the house-elf placed a large fish pie each on two of them.

Severus sat down and eyed the empty space. "Auror Moody is still indisposed?"

She was apparently annoyed enough to take the low road. "Moody will join us when he can be bothered to dress for dinner."

He snorted, then regretted it when she eyed him critically.

"Speaking of which, you packed more than your teaching robes, surely?"

He frowned. His teaching robes were in fact his only robes. "Not exactly."

She clucked her tongue. "The salt will ruin those if you so much as look at the shore."

She paused then, her mouth moving uncertainly for a moment. Then she nodded once, resolutely. "I have some old things in the attic. You can borrow a few robes for the summer."

Severus attempted to protest, but she was already changing the subject.

"Now, did Matthew Bones do as abysmally in your class as he did mine? I swear, if that boy paid half as much attention to lessons as he does to the female half of the student body..."

They lingered over hot drinks after dinner and complained about the duller students—he more virulently than she, perhaps, although she smiled ruefully behind her cup—and discussed the Dee biography, and Filius's ridiculous sixteen-step process for lending out books, and whether there would be funds to renovate the school library next year.

Afterwards, as they left the dining room, Minerva took his arm and he found himself awkwardly escorting her to her room. He lingered on the threshold, wiping his damp palms on his robes. She looked at him expectantly, and he stared blankly back for several embarrassing moments before realising she must be waiting for him to say goodnight.

He managed a small bow. "Goodnight, Minerva."

She smiled. Queerly, perhaps, but maybe that was a trick of the light. "Goodnight, Severus."

He walked quickly down the corridor, letting out a hard breath when he heard the door shut behind him. He detested feeling clumsy.

The ghost was sitting at the desk again, parting her hair with an insubstantial comb—the cheap plastic kind that you bought at a chemist's. He glowered at her. "Go away."

"No," she said calmly. "You shouldn't be here."

He frowned, sighing in exasperation. "Oh, don't tell me. This was your room and you died in here and now you wish it to be eternally preserved in a shrine to your memory."

She paused in her combing, and there was something secretive and sympathetic in the way she smiled at him. Something that made his heartbeat quicken. "Something like that."

He indulged his curiosity. "What of?"

"Pardon?"

"What did you die of?"

"Oh, what does that matter? Murder. Suicide. Consumption." She pouted at the expression on his face, although he suspected it was affected. "Don't worry—they washed the sheets."

She seemed slightly amused, and he could not be certain she wasn't teasing him. He snorted and then went behind the screen where his trunk still lay and changed into his nightshirt. He stood there quietly for a few moments, hesitating, picking at a loose thread on the sleeve. Then, he could not help but ask: "What is it like? Being dead."

She did not immediately reply, and at first he thought she might have vanished again. He looked around the edge of the screen, but she was still there at the desk. She turned and looked at him.

"It's like..." She paused, her voice growing soft, almost dreamy. "Have you ever stayed up into the small hours? Not for any occasion—not for New Year's Eve or to meet your lover at the window—but just because you've lost track of time and you've gone past tired into wide awake again?"

He nodded, and her form briefly dimmed and then crackled, as if her ghost-light were flickering in a breeze.

"That's what it's like," she said. "Like you know you should be sleeping but you aren't."

He nodded as though that had been exactly what he suspected, and he put out the lamp, and he got into bed.

"Go away," he said again, and he lay awake in the darkness until he was sure she had.

---

The remainder of the week passed in careful, quiet accord. A pile of clothes—freshly laundered but carrying the underlying scent of something that had sat in the attic for years—appeared outside Severus's door, and he tried on a few plain robes before judging them slightly too long but otherwise acceptable. He and Minerva took breakfast together each morning, after which he would cloister himself in the library while she ventured out with binoculars or net for birding or bug hunting, or else she gardened in her wide-brimmed hat and disarming trousers. From time to time he let himself be cajoled outside, squinting when the sunlight broke through the clouds, and was led along the green fields and rocky shore with Minerva pointing out a sooty shearwater or making him hold a jar while she captured a pearl-bordered fritillary.

Moody stayed out of sight, at least during the day. He took all his meals in his room, and little could be heard from behind the door save the near-constant buzz of snoring and the occasional familiar, startling crash of breaking glass. Severus wondered exactly how much liquor he had hoarded away in there; Minerva, lips pursed, certainly did not seem to be replenishing his supply.

Sometimes in the night, he would wake to hear the crooked, dragging clomp of Moody moving around downstairs, and hear him drunkenly muttering—to the house-elf or the ghost, perhaps, or just as likely to no one at all. A few times, an owl appeared at the window, carrying a letter with Moody's name on it, but no one ever came to call.

On Monday morning, Minerva tented her fingers over her bowl of porridge. "I need to take Moody to an appointment in London. I don't suppose you'd be interested in helping—"

"I would sooner eat glass."

"—yes, that's what I thought. We should be back for dinner, provided he doesn't curse a healer again."

Severus hummed noncommittally and added more brown sugar to his bowl.

That afternoon, he took advantage of the empty house. When he was certain the house-elf was in the kitchen and the ghost was not following him, he had another look around the place, this time indulging his urge to trespass. He climbed up to the attic and looked through trunks full of old clothes, quietly peering at sleeping portraits, one eye on his own sallow reflection in a bronze mirror. He was still considering whether that candelabrum was pure silver when he uncovered a box full of photograph albums.

He chose one at random and flipped through it until a certain face caught his attention. Minerva had not changed very much in the twenty or thirty years since the photograph was taken. The streak of grey was absent from her hair here, and she wore a different set of spectacles, violet-framed ones set at an angle, but otherwise she looked the same as she had over breakfast. Not pretty, really—he suspected she would have a haughty sniff for that word—but certainly handsome. Sharp-eyed behind her spectacles. Smiling as if she knew better but just couldn't help herself. In the photograph, she turned to the man beside her and began straightening his tie. He was tall and gawky, with brown hair and black freckles, and he kissed her cheek.

Severus took the photograph out of its setting and turned it over. Andrew and Minerva, Portree, 1951. It was Minerva's handwriting. There were more pictures of the two of them together. Dancing in a hall, swimming in the ocean, opening Christmas presents beneath a tall fir tree in a sitting room that—he realised—was just downstairs. Then, abruptly, there were no more photographs of Andrew and the album took up at Hogwarts.

He browsed further, but not even the novelty of a clean-shaven Flitwick or a slightly thinner Slughorn were enough to make him return to the school. He shut the album with a puff of dust and left the attic. He went into Minerva's bedroom next, quietly locking the door behind him. He walked past the couch and chairs and sat down on the bed. Then he lay back. The mattress was noticeably more comfortable than his own. He looked over the stack of books and journals on the bedside table and then opened the drawer.

There were two recent pieces of correspondence. He didn't recognise the name on the first, but the second was from Professor Sprout. He read both, scanning for his name and finding nothing. He opened a small jewellery box containing a plain gold band, a pair of emerald earrings, and a string of pearls. He toyed with the last, liking the way the pearls felt sliding between his fingers and pooling in his palm. He was not going to take them, of course; he wasn't an idiot. But he wished for a moment that he could.

Severus did not think of himself as a thief any more than he thought of himself as a teacher, but he had admittedly gone through a phase at school in which things had developed a knack for wandering into his pocket. There was only one reason for not stealing, after all: a fear of getting caught, be it by the law, or one's peers, or one's god. But the reasons in favour of it were too many to count: greed, selfishness, malice. Boredom, longing, an urge to remember, an urge to be someone else. Sometimes it almost seemed an act of synecdochical magic, sympathetic magic; a little piece of a person, like a worthless stone taken away from the shore as a souvenir. Among his prized possessions was a coral bracelet Lily had bought on that trip to Blackpool. Most days, he half-managed to convince himself that she had given it to him.

Downstairs, he sneaked into the pantry across from the kitchen and pilfered some shortbread. He ate it in there and then wiped the crumbs from his borrowed robes before proceeding to the real mystery: Moody's room.

He stopped outside the door, taking his wand out of his pocket. He swept for spells and was unsurprised to find a vicious four-pronged hex on the lock. Disarming it took more patience than skill. Fifteen minutes later, he had unravelled it to its root, at which point a simple alohomora finished it.

The door swung open. The room was stuffy and dark inside, and it reeked of the sickly-sweet mingling of sweat and liquor and rotting food. For a moment, Severus was home in the house at Spinner's End, in the room where his father had died. A short, involuntary sound slipped from his throat as he touched the damp wallpaper. Then he shook his head hard. He stepped over an abandoned plate of last night's supper and walked towards the glint of glass in the open wardrobe. Sitting on top of a mud-stained robe were the contents of a sizable liquor cabinet.

He picked up a bottle at random. Whisky—half-empty. It was one of several, and he doubted Moody would ever notice it was missing. He slipped it into his pocket and carefully continued his circuit of the room, picking his way over scattered clothing and crumpled pieces of parchment.

A sudden high-pitched whistle made him jump. He spun around, casting about wildly until his sights fell upon a spinning sneakoscope half-hidden under a pile of rustling paper. He shot a silencing spell at it. It quieted, though it continued to spin. He investigated the papers: foolscap torn into pieces and scrawled over in a shaky, crooked hand. Dates and times. Records of owls passing the house. Records of nurses' comings and goings at what Severus assumed was St. Mungo's. The word "vigilance" appeared several times, traced over and underlined until it was almost illegible.

He picked up a small, pulpy notebook with most of its pages torn out. It held more of the same scrawling, and a folded-up newspaper clipping fell out from between the last page and the back cover as he flipped through. He stooped to pick it up and then unfolded it. It was from the Daily Prophet—the Sunday edition, which printed the front page photograph in colour. Moody, looking more like he had the first time Severus had met him, was standing tall and impressively smug in front of a set of broken-in doors, flanked by two broadly-built redheaded men who looked to be identical twins.

Severus replaced the clipping and set the seemingly random mess back exactly how he'd found it. In the corridor, he reconstructed the hex on the lock and then proceeded back to the pantry for more shortbread before taking the whisky up to his room.

There, he sat on his bed and unscrewed the cap from the bottle. The barley-warm and spirit-sharp scent of the stuff invited a taste, and he put the mouth of the bottle to his lips and attempted a slow sip. It was just as terrible as he remembered. He managed to swallow it, but barely. He grimaced and dug out his handkerchief to try to scrape the lingering taste off his tongue. Loathsome stuff. He replaced the cap and hid the bottle away under the bed, where he promptly forgot about it until that night.

It was nearly midnight and Severus was still awake when he heard the curious tapping noise coming from downstairs. Minerva and Moody had returned earlier in the evening, and he and Minerva had once again enjoyed a quiet, private dinner before retiring. Now he rolled over, listening hard as he tried to place that maddening, hollow tap-tap-tap of wood against wood.

He finally got to his feet, picking up his wand and lighting it. He crept out into the corridor and down the stairs, feeling for the edge of each step with his bare toes. The sound grew louder and closer. What the bloody hell was that?

THWACK!

He found out when a stout walking stick hit him in the back of the knees. A startled grunt was all he could manage as he fell forward, hitting the runner with a thump. He scrambled over onto his back, a hex on his lips, but a booted foot stomped hard on his wrist, pinning it, grinding down until he relinquished his wand, which was immediately kicked across the floor. The walking stick jabbed him in the chest.

"Not a sound out of you," Moody whispered between laboured breaths.

The pain in his wrist made his jaw clench. The lumos had flickered out, and he could not see where his wand had landed. He lay very still. For several seconds, it hurt to breathe.

"Did you have a good look around my room today?"

Bugger. After a very brief internal argument, Severus opted for denial. "What the hell are you talking about?"

The walking stick jabbed him again, this time in the throat. "Don't play stupid with me, laddie. What did you tell them?"

"Who?" Now he could feel his heart pounding, and for a moment he pondered the novelty of it.

"Your little Death Eater friends." Moody sounded as if he had run a marathon, but at that moment the rough panting in the dark sounded more menacing than weak, especially when coupled with the blunt tip of the walking stick pressing into the soft hollow under Severus's trachea.

"I'm not a Death Eater. Not anymore," Severus muttered low. Strictly speaking, no one was.

"Once a traitor, always a traitor," Moody rasped. He gave the walking stick another jab. "What did you tell them?"

Severus held out, morbidly curious as to whether Moody was going to choke him. Kick him. Hit him. His pulse quickened. "Nothing."

He knew he should confess to taking the bottle. Owning up to a small crime was always a useful distraction from a larger one, and in this case, it was practically the whole of his transgression anyhow. But he didn't. He stared up defiantly in the dark, waiting for the blow to land. When it didn't, he groaned in frustration and aimed a hard kick at what he was fairly certain was the man's good leg.

His foot connected cleanly. Moody let out a shocked grunt and promptly toppled over. Severus tried to roll out of the way, but he was too slow and they collided. The wind was knocked out of him in a violent wheeze. They grappled, pushing, jabbing elbows and knees. Severus flushed suddenly hot over a cold rush of adrenaline. His shoves faltered as his hips gave a jerk. Moody took advantage of his lapse and pushed the iron bar of his arm across Severus's throat.

They lay frozen like that for several moments, Moody's breath hot against his cheek, the weight of him almost crushing. Severus's leg was jammed between Moody's, so close that he could tell exactly where flesh ended and the prosthetic began, and he thought he could feel, against his hip...

He swallowed hard.

"Pervert!" he snarled in a whisper, and he shoved Moody off him.

He skittered back, stumbling up to his feet. Moody made no attempt to grab him. He took another step back and then turned and made for the stairs. The ghost was hovering on the landing, watching with a look of idle curiosity on her face. He stormed up the steps and walked right through her, ignoring the pathetic sound of Moody trying and failing to right himself below.

"Stay away," he growled to both of them as he reached his room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Inside, he leaned against the wall, listening for further sounds on the stairs and thinking, madly, about that television show that Lily had liked. His mouth was dry and his prick was pulsing heavily. When several minutes passed with no sound of pursuit, he wedged the desk chair under the door and climbed back into bed. He was still half-hard and, with the dim realisation that it had been months since he'd had the urge, he got his hand in his pants and pulled himself off quickly and quietly, hips straining and grip urgent. Spending was almost painful—a rough, insistent surge that left him gasping as he wiped his hand off on the sheets.

He fell asleep within minutes.

In the morning, he crept downstairs just after dawn. Minerva was not yet up, although he could smell breakfast starting in the kitchen. He straightened the rug and retrieved his wand from under the decorative table in the corner. He paused there, head cocked, hearing in the distance the sound of Moody snoring in his room. His hand clenched around his wand and, shoulders hunched, he slunk back upstairs to wash and dress.

---

Minerva knew.

That was his first, coldly certain thought when she deviated from their usual evening routine and invited him into her room after dinner that night. The day had dragged on, long and cautious, breeding thoughts that were best left on the side of a mountain to die. Severus had largely kept to his corner of the house and Moody, mercifully, to his. The ghost had been annoyed with his strategic seclusion, however, letting him know several times that he breathed too loudly, and he had eventually gone outside to escape her.

He had walked around the perimeter of the house, occasionally pausing to wipe condensation from a window with his sleeve and peer into the now-familiar rooms from the outside. Then, travelling in expanding circles around the property, he'd skirted the edges of the cliffs, looking down at the obscenely churning sea foam and deciding that falling would take almost as interminably long as drinking oneself to death.

Dinner proved uneventful. Lamb and potatoes and veg, and lemon curd for afters. He and Minerva talked about the weather (poor and would continue to be so), and the merits of poetry (multitudinous in her view, limited in his) and bronze cauldrons (vice versa), and the best brands of red ink (Braggley's, indubitably). The tension between his shoulders had begun to ratchet loose by the time he escorted her upstairs, but when they arrived at her door, she did not let go of his arm. Rather, she gently squeezed it and drew him closer.

"Why don't you come in, Severus?" Her voice was low. It did not sound like a request.

That was when it occurred to him that Moody had informed on him. Of course he had—why wouldn't he? Severus certainly would have done the same had their positions been reversed. Tastefully edited, of course.

"I don't..."

She was already drawing him inside, however. The curtains over the windows were closed, and the bed-curtains were open. The lamps were not lit, but the fireplace was, bathing the room in a ruddy glow. It was very warm, almost unbearably so. She smiled, which did not entirely reassure him, and gestured to the narrow sofa. "Sit."

He remained standing. If she was putting him out, she might as well hurry up and say so. Maybe he would be able to make the last ferry crossing and get a room for the night on the mainland. Otherwise, it would be a cold, damp walk to Portree. The prospect was an annoyance, but after a brief prodding of the ache in his throat, he realised that what bothered him, oddly and just for a moment, was the prospect of Minerva thinking him a common criminal.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, I won't bite. Sit."

He sat, perching warily at the very edge of the sofa.

She went over to the writing desk where a tray sat with a carafe and two glasses. She poured some sort of amber liquor into both glasses and came to join him, sitting down quite close beside him. He noticed suddenly, better than he had been able to at the table, that she was wearing a smart set of robes. They were dark green, and well-fitted, and looked as though they would be soft to the touch.

He took the offered glass. She drank, and so did he. He had expected it to be brandy, but it was something sweeter and bitterer, with a sour aftertaste to it. It burned his throat, but he gulped down the entire glass anyway.

"I'm sure you've become aware," she said, "that as Hogwarts professors, we have to be quite careful about our reputations."

Yes, she most definitely knew.

"Look—" he began, but she interrupted him, her voice insistent, as if she had been storing this up for quite a while. Which was rather insulting. Well-earned, perhaps, but insulting.

"One might think that a summer away gives one leave to live as a private citizen..."

He mentally prepared his own defence. Moody was a drunk. Moody was mad. Really, whom was she going to believe? He paused, not certain he knew the answer to that.

"...but we must still remember that our duties to the school come first, and we must exercise proper discretion."

It was, he could not help but reflect as she took off her spectacles and leaned in inordinately close, one of the strangest tellings-off he had ever received.

"We can comport ourselves like adults, can't we, Severus?" she said, and he felt the touch of her breath against his lips.

He rolled his eyes and made to reply. That was when she kissed him.

Severus froze. His eyes remained open, and he stared in shock at the dark flutter of her eyelashes a scarce inch away. Her lips were soft and warm, and her chest was pressing into his, and a wave of heat shuddered through him. He blinked, and his mouth shaped a faint "oh" against hers.

She drew back. Her cheeks were slightly pink and her eyes were bright. "Am I mistaken?" she asked, a note he could not identify in her voice.

Stunned, and not entirely understanding the question, he nonetheless decided it would be wise to shake his head.

She kissed him again, and so inured was he to strangeness that for a moment, all he could set his mind to was cataloguing the flavour of the liqueur on her lips: oranges, yes, and perhaps aniseed, and something more deeply herbal. Her hand touched his cheek, and he startled for a second, but she pushed herself more firmly into the kiss and his hand found her waist and then her hip. He waited for her to pull back and reprimand him (Mr. Snape!) but she stroked his hip in turn, his side, his chest.

He had been kissed before. Several times, in fact. He might be a 22-year-old virgin, but he was not completely inexperienced. He thought briefly of her: the summer they were twelve and the taste and scent of sweet strawberry lip-gloss. He had not, however, really kissed anyone since his school days, and never like this. Then, it had been stolen, awkward kisses behind the greenhouses, or in the cupboard off the common room on a dare. Never with intent. Never with a woman pressing him back, half atop him, her weight exhilarating and her mouth hot. Rosehips, he thought then. That was what Minerva's hair smelled like, and he remembered walking in the garden with her, half-heartedly complimenting the sodden roses, and she'd said she only kept them for the rosehips....

The tip of her tongue flickered against his lips, and his hips jerked, his prick hardening with embarrassing alacrity. She had to feel it. He thought oh-so-briefly back to last night, rough carpet beneath his bare legs and the sound of panting in the dark. But she wasn't pulling back. She wasn't drawing away.

He caught on. It had heretofore never really bothered him that he had never got around to having sex. He'd had other things on his mind, obviously. But now he flushed hot all over, and his hands were clumsy and nearly shaking with hunger as they crept up the narrow curve of her waist, feeling first the firmness of her ribcage and then the soft handful—

His hips jumped again. Oh God.

She kissed his chin, and his jaw, and his neck. He'd had no idea that would make him break out in gooseflesh all over, but it did. He cupped her breasts, fascinated by the way they fit against his palms, feeling her nipples harden through the soft, thin fabric of her robes. He was desperate to see them bare but did not dare stop touching her in case a moment's pause brought the proceedings to an end.

It was her who braved buttons first, and he stared in lustful incomprehension that her hands could be so steady and graceful as she opened his robes when his own were cold and crude. She paused, tracing the two darkening bruises that had lain just under his high collar.

"Tsk. How in the world did you manage to do this to yourself?"

He merely shook his head and summoned enough wits to croak, "Accident," before kissing her again.

Thankfully, she did not inquire further. Her tongue teased over the crease of his lips as her hands slid under his singlet. His skin felt raw under her touch, sensitive and almost sore, as if his epidermis had been peeled away along with his clothing. He arched up into the sweet, painful touch, grasping at her back and drawing her nearer, kissing her until he could scarcely breathe.

A faint, tight noise slipped from his throat as her caress moved lower. She tugged at the leg of his drawers and he lifted his hips almost on reflex, and then she had his prick in her hand.

He breathed out hard, hardly able to look down lest he spend on the spot. Her soft, pale skin against the lewd red flush of his own. The flex of her fingers and his embarrassing twitches. He squeezed his eyes shut. Her touch was lighter than he was accustomed to, the rhythm of her strokes slower, but the amazing novelty of someone else's hand there yanked him inexorably towards the edge of his restraint. He bit down on his lip, trying to hold back, too embarrassed to even put a warning into words.

It was over in mere minutes. He sucked in a shaky breath, a low groan straining from his chest as his hands clutched at her robes and his hips moved of their own accord, rocking through a hard shiver. His cheeks burned.

Minerva, however, did not say a word. She only took his hand and put it under the skirt of her robes. He opened his eyes, looking past the humiliating sight of his own spent prick and the spurt of seed slowly dripping down his bare stomach, to the silky sheen of black stockings as he pulled her robes up.

He touched the expanse of smooth, warm skin above the edge of her stockings, feeling the heat practically pouring from where her thighs met. He tentatively stroked her quim through the sticky-soaked fabric of her knickers, spurred on when she voiced a throaty moan. His fingers crept under the edge of cloth just for a moment, and his prick made a valiant attempt at reviving.

Dissatisfied with such a tease of a touch, he slipped his whole hand down the front of her knickers. The heat of it was incredible and the scent heady, and Minerva guided his fingers against her before simply rocking her hips against the whole of his hand. He watched her face as her eyelids fluttered half-shut and her lips parted. Her breathing was slow and deep, tinged with soft moans, and when she came she grabbed his wrist and pushed him harder against herself, her thighs tightening and her whole body trembling.

When she released him, he awkwardly pulled his drawers up and got his robes mostly closed. His fingers were sticky, and he had the strong urge to taste them but restrained himself in case it was an oddity. Minerva, her robes still gathered around her knees and her cheeks still pink, calmly pinned up a lock of her hair that had escaped its knot in all the excitement.

"Go wash up and we'll have another drink," she said, her voice slightly husky.

He stood, and a quiet presence in the back of his mind absently noted that those were the exact words Milton Mulciber had said to him that night in London after they had committed their first murder. He returned to his room and washed up, and fixed his robes, and smoothed his mussed hair. Then he returned to Minerva and they sat side by side on the sofa, their arms touching, drinking bittersweet liqueur and talking idly of astronomy and digestifs.

His footsteps were slightly unsteady as he made his way to bed much later that night. He had never been drunk before but suspected this might be it now. It was vaguely unpleasant—something he had not realised until he first tried to stand—and he did not see the appeal. He noisily scraped back the desk chair and sat down, opening drawers until he found a piece of paper and an envelope.

"What are you doing?" the ghost asked, sitting primly at the edge of the bed with her ankles crossed.

"None of your business," Severus said. He stared at the blank paper, quill hovering, until a drop of ink fell and marred it. It occurred to him that they probably did not allow prisoners post in Azkaban.

He rose unsteadily again and went to his trunk instead, and he took out several coins from where they were hidden in the lining. He fixed them to the inside of the envelope and sealed it, and he clumsily addressed it over the bumps and ridges of the money. Then he stumbled down the stairs and out across the damp lawn to the shed, whereupon he dispatched Minerva's owl to Lancashire.

---

He kept to himself in the days to follow. The rain pattered down ceaselessly, making him feel grey and restless—and he did not wish to be indiscreet anyhow. Meals were slightly muted affairs; he could not look across the table at her and not think of what they had done. He blushed often, which annoyed him, and he tried to distract himself but found he didn't have the concentration to keep his mind on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. He spent most of his hours drifting aimlessly through the house with an unread book in hand, looking out at the sea from the fogged-up windows or idly snacking on whatever he lifted from the kitchen without really tasting any of it.

Sometimes he spied Minerva reading in the library or pinning butterflies in the sitting room that displayed her collection. He would linger and watch her then, admiring the set of her mouth as she reacted to a story, or be struck still, captivated by her neat ways with a killing jar. He was endlessly fascinated by the calm, almost peaceful look that fixed upon her face as she watched the butterfly's wings slow and then still; the gentleness of her hands as she lifted the delicate creature out and slid the steel pin through its vulnerable thorax.

It was the early afternoon and he was considering a proper lunch when he passed by that sitting room and heard a sound that gave him pause. He took a few more uncertain steps and surreptitiously looked around the corner. The door was ajar and Minerva sat inside in the wingback chair with an open newspaper in her lap. She was softly weeping, one hand held over her mouth.

Severus stopped where he was, hovering awkwardly, neither wishing to pass by and be seen nor be heard retreating. He leaned over just a little, however, stealing a better look. He watched with guilty interest as her shoulders trembled like butterfly wings and her hand clenched impotently. He stood there, listening to the odd, uneven cadence of her sniffles; they went on for several minutes, her face growing redder and redder and her tears streaming freely.

Then, almost abruptly, she seemed to decide enough was enough. She drew herself up with a deep breath. Her shoulders squared and her mouth firmed. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and dried her eyes, then blew her nose. Almost resolutely, she folded the newspaper and set it aside. He could not say exactly why this surprised him, but it did. He was not one of nature's weepers, and his primary exposure to the phenomenon was through his mother, who could cry without end when the black mood took her—wailing and sobbing until exhaustion finally dragged her down, her eyes glassy and lined with shadows for days or weeks to follow.

Suddenly as uncomfortable with Minerva's recovery as he'd been by her weeping, Severus took a step back. His boot squeaked on the floor.

"Hello?" Minerva called out.

He hesitated and then judged that she did not sound uncertain enough for him to make a clean escape. With a sigh, he stepped forward and looked into the room again. She was only now replacing her spectacles, but she had composed herself admirably in the space of mere seconds. He stepped through the doorway, hands shoved uncomfortably into his pockets.

She looked at him tiredly, her mouth wan. "Severus. What are you up to?"

"I was wondering..." He hesitated, reaching for a reason to keep the subject away from whatever had set her to weeping. "...if you wanted to go for a stroll."

Minerva looked doubtfully at the rain-soaked window, and then she laughed, softly—more at her herself, it seemed, than at him. Or so he chose to believe. "We have been penned up, haven't we. And you haven't even been to town yet, for goodness' sake! Let me take you to lunch."

That did sound marginally better than wading through the mud in borrowed wellies looking for eagles. "All right," he said.

To his relief, they did not venture out in the rain at all. Instead, they flooed in to a tea room on the Portree public network, and Severus—very charitably, he thought—made no comment on the overly embroidered decor and overwhelming scent of lavender. He was wary that Minerva's spirits might be fragile, and he dreaded a public scene. She seemed to brighten swiftly once out of the house, however, and proved loquacious over sandwiches and cake. She smiled at the hard patter of rain on the roof and declared it cosy.

When they were both quite full, they darted across the wet street to a little second-hand bookshop. It was dusty and dim inside, but dry. There was scarcely room to breathe in the aisles, and though they were the only customers, they collided constantly and had to turn sideways to squeeze past one another. Over two hours mysteriously vanished as they browsed, picking through the double-stacked shelves or digging through teetering stacks.

"Och, I've been looking for this one," Minerva remarked several times, and Severus would hum without bothering to look over, thoroughly engaged in flipping to the last page of several mystery novels to determine if they were worth reading.

They apparated back to the house with their purchases in tow, and once inside, Minerva all but dragged him up to her room. Their books lay abandoned in a mutual heap on the desk as she and he tumbled onto the bed together. They did not pause to fully undress, their robes hiked up and underthings flung over the side of the bed a moment before her legs wrapped around him. Her hair was damp from the rain as he ran his fingers through it, and her lips tasted of lemon tea.

Afterwards, he lay with his head on her breast, trying not to fidget as she stroked the back of his neck. She was silent for a long while, and then she sighed and said, softly, "I just keep thinking of that poor little baby—James and Lily's boy—all alone with his aunt and uncle. He'll be two this month."

He felt like he had been kicked in the gut. "Shut up," he said, low and hard.

She stiffened beneath him, and her hand stilled. When she spoke, her voice was not angry; rather, it was frighteningly calm. "Use the words or use that tone of voice, but I'll not abide with both."

His shoulders stiffened and he pushed himself off her. He got to his feet and began to look for his clothes. She did not stop him.

Downstairs, he strode angrily into the kitchen, feeling hungry—or at least that's what he supposed the gnawing feeling in his gut indicated. He poked around in the pantry and cupboards, slamming doors, finding nothing that tempted him. That was when he stumbled upon the second unexpected sight of the day: his own name in the bin. That was to say, the torn-up remains of an envelope that was unmistakably addressed to a Severus Snape.

He pulled several bits of paper out and inspected them. That was his mother's handwriting, and the return address was his grandfather's house where she had been living ever since his father died. He dug through the rubbish, gathering up every torn piece he could find, but whatever had come inside was nowhere to be found. It did not take any great feat of logic to guess who was responsible. His fists clenched, and he stalked off down the corridor. He hammered at Moody's door and then kicked it for good measure, not caring if the rattle could be heard from upstairs.

A thump-and-drag sound heralded Moody's approach. The lock clicked and the door opened. "Help you with something, Snape?"

Severus shoved the tattered envelope in his face. "You stole my letter."

Moody did not try to deny it, smirking unrepentantly. "And here I thought we had an agreement. What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. Isn't that how it is?"

The heat rose up in him, making his face flush and his chest tighten. He gritted his teeth. "Give it back."

Thump. Drag. Moody took another step forward, pushing into Severus's personal space. "Make me," he said.

He meant to go for his wand, but the anger that rushed through him was too hot and too quick for that. His fist lifted before he could give thought to the action, and he threw a punch instead. Something in his hand gave an alarming crunch as it made contact with Moody's cheekbone. The man rocked back but managed to stay upright by grabbing Severus's collar. They slammed together, Moody snarling viciously as he sniffed him.

Severus trembled.

"I swear to God, you faithless bastard," Moody murmured low in his ear. "You hurt her and there won't be enough left of you to send to Azkaban."

Severus tried and failed to wrangle free of his grip. His hand was beginning to throb. He bared his teeth. "Let's consider this, shall we? Which of us is more likely to hurt her—her pardoned colleague or the drunken lunatic living in his own filth on her charity?"

The punch hit him squarely in the abdomen. He went down hard, dragging Moody with him. They struck at each other brutally, teeth gnashing. The back of his head slammed against the floor. Red stars burst before his eyes, and his hand throbbed in the same shade as he yanked at Moody's robes. He could not say exactly when they stopped trying to kill each other and started trying to get off, or if they ever really ceased the former. All he knew was that he felt that blunt hardness against his hip, felt his own humiliating response, and he spat out an angry, "Poofter!"

Then Moody growled, "Takes one..." and grabbed him by the stones so hard he teared up.

Moody was no gentler grinding against him than he'd been trying to break his ribs, and Severus clutched at him so roughly he half-expected another patchwork piece to come off in his hands. They tore at each other's robes, panting and cursing, their bodies burning up where they met. Severus never shut his eyes, never even blinked, but somehow he failed to grasp exactly how one touch led to another.

Teeth closing around his throat.

A thick, dripping prick in his hand.

Fingers prying his thighs apart.

Somehow he ended up coming with Moody's hand viciously pulling at him. His lip was bitten bloody, the dull copper taste flooding his mouth. Somehow he let Moody shove him down, his hair gripped painfully tight, until his mouth was mere centimetres away from Moody's prick. It pushed at his lips, hot and insistent as the man roughly stroked himself off. A tang of salt. Somehow Severus was opening his mouth for it, or maybe the hand twisted up in his hair had forced a gasp out of him. Either way, Moody's strokes quickened as he rubbed the head of his prick over Severus's lips and wheezed a fervent "Bastard!" before spending in two hard spurts into his mouth, and somehow Severus let him.

The wet mess slid over Severus's tongue, bitter and unpleasant. He spat it right back at him. It hit Moody on the chest and dripped down the front of his shirt. For several long, stuttering moments he expected the man to hit him; his cheeks burned just waiting for it. But Moody only looked at him, one side of his gnarled face twisted up more than usual. They stared silently at each other, their mingled breathing heavy and sharp-edged in the suddenly unbearable quiet of the room.

Severus staggered to his feet, limping nearly as badly as Moody. He tried to put himself to rights, his hands cold and uncoordinated. His robes were missing a button, but he was not about to hang about to find it. Neither of them said a word, Moody still seated on the floor, his false leg jutting out at an uncomfortable angle. Severus put his back to him warily, reaching for the door.

He heard rummaging behind him, and before he could turn to look, something soft hit him in the back of the head. It bounced to the floor with the dry sound of crumpled paper. He spun around with a glare and then eyed the piece of parchment with suspicion. Cautiously, he picked it up and backed away, making a rude gesture at Moody half a second before slamming the door. He did not loiter long in the corridor, forcing his uncoordinated feet into motion.

His body began to hum as he made his way back upstairs, a dozen little hurts singing softly in the same key. The tender feeling of new bruises forming, that was achingly familiar, and he savoured it. The pulse of his sore knuckles. The hot throbbing of his lip. He paused outside his room, smoothing out the piece of parchment against the wall and squinting at his mother's narrow, spidery handwriting.

Through the door, he could dimly hear the ghost humming. He thought, suddenly, of Lily's pink bedroom. Sitting on the frilly bedspread with the white door open to the kitchen where Mrs. Evans was making tea. It was summer, and the electric fan was plugged in, and Lily was singing along off-key to the chorus on the wireless. That was where he knew the song from.

"I love you," his mother's letter said. "When can you send more money?"

---

The next morning, Moody graced them with his presence at breakfast.

He limped into the dining room just after half-seven, letting the door hit the wall behind him, and Severus looked up sharply. Moody had indeed dressed for the table. He was wearing a clean rust-coloured robe and black boots that had been shined to a high gloss. He had shaved, and his hair was marginally combed, and he had done an admirable job of reducing the swelling on his broken cheekbone. He did not appear to miss Severus's brief, guilty start, and smirked with a mixture of satisfaction and contempt that suggested he had just had the pleasure of killing Severus's dog.

"Don't mind, do you?" he asked Minerva, clomping up to the table.

She smiled broadly and got up to pull out a chair for him. "Not at all. It's wonderful to see you up and about."

Moody ignored the chair, making his way around the edge of the table and choosing a seat facing the door instead. The seat that was, in fact, immediately to Severus's right. That left Severus awkwardly positioned between the two, and when Minerva poured the tea for all three of them, it felt wholly perverse. His stomach gave a sudden clench, and he lost all interest in what lay on his plate. He continued to eat mechanically, refusing to give Moody the satisfaction of seeing anything amiss.

Minerva cut open a soft-boiled egg, and her foot brushed his under the table as she crossed her legs. Severus's elbow bumped against Moody's as they both reached for the bacon. Moody speared the last piece, and it took all of Severus's self-control not to stab him with his fork.

Conversation was sparse and forced. Yes, it was raining again. Yes, the garden would appreciate it even if he didn't. No, he didn't want another piece of toast. The sound of Minerva delicately sipping her tea and Moody boorishly chewing on a fatty rasher made his jaw tighten and his teeth grind. He felt, suddenly, as he once had on those rare days when his father had been off from work. Tobias Snape had, for most of his son's memory, left the house at four-thirty every morning for the early shift, and holidays were no exception. Only shutdown at the mill had ever kept him home, and then, later, the all too frequent sick days.

His father's presence at the breakfast table had always been an anomaly, as if the man were a visitor in his own home. Those mornings inevitably led to arguments before the eggs got cold, and to violence before noon. Why couldn't she put together a decent meal when all she did was sit on her arse all day listening to the wireless? She sat on her arse?—here they were bleeding money and he was taking a day off, and helping himself to a third piece of bacon, no less. That's how it would start, and it wouldn't end until some bit of crockery had been broken, until his mother was crying in her room and his father had stomped off to the pub, until Severus had been screamed at or smacked by both sides.

Upon reflection, the only thing his parents had ever agreed on was the fact that he had ruined both their lives. In all fairness, that did seem to be the case, although in Severus's opinion they had taken their fair share of vengeance by the time he was seven years old. His father, contrary to all appearances, hadn't been stupid. He had been at university when he and Severus's mother had met, and if contraception charms weren't quite so unreliable, he would have become an engineer. He would have drawn a salary instead of a wage, and if he and Severus's mother had been foolish enough to stay together, they would have lived on the hill instead of in the gutter, in a warm, red-bricked house like the Evanses.

Instead, there had been a hasty wedding, and five months later there had been Severus. His father had left school to work at the mill, and they had dragged on at a level of squalor somewhere just above abject up until the man died of cirrhosis seventeen years later.

"Excuse me," he said as soon as he had managed to clear half his plate.

"Not leaving already, are you, laddie?" Moody said, taking out his steel flask and adding a splash of something to his tea before slurping it. "That'd be rude."

"Don't be a silly ass," Minerva said primly, narrowing her eyes at Moody. Then she looked to Severus. "Are you feeling all right?"

He nodded silently, standing up and sidling past Minerva out of the dining room. Moody chuckled behind him, and he scowled. On principle, he refused to be driven to his bedroom, and so he retreated to the library instead. There, he paced the room restlessly. His fingers curled around his wand, itching to throw a hex, but he suspected Minerva would not appreciate him setting her books on fire. He had a headache, he decided, and drew the curtains and sat down in the dark. He scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands until he saw stars and then lay down.

It was some time before Minerva looked in on him. He heard her approach and turned over, putting his back to the door. She stood in the doorway for several moments and then came in and opened the curtains back up to let in a narrow gap of light. He considered playing dead but did not have the energy for it. Instead, he sighed and heaved himself to his feet. He did not look at her but stomped over to a shelf and feigned interest in a row of old textbooks.

Minerva approached and browsed an adjacent shelf while he scanned the titles. "I will wager a guess," she said, "that you and Moody haven't patched things up."

His shoulders stiffened as he looked at her askance. He trod carefully, taking down a book and pretending to be engrossed by the cover. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

She arched a sceptical eyebrow. "I was born at night, not last night. You've been quarrelling."

His shoulders sagged infinitesimally. "Ah," he said. That was putting it rather mildly. "I don't take kindly to people pointing wands at me."

Minerva regarded him probingly, her gaze too sharp. "I would say he's harmless...but, well, we're neither of us idiots."

Severus snorted.

"However," she continued, "I don't think he's a danger to anyone but himself at the moment. I wouldn't have him here if I thought otherwise."

He traced the row of stitching along the spine, following the cursive curves of an unfamiliar name. In his mind, there was a looking glass world adjacent to this one, and in that library next door, Minerva was saying the same thing to Moody about him. He idly wondered if Minerva and Moody were screwing in that world, or if Moody's confirmed bachelorhood withstood reflection.

She brushed past him and looked over the stack of yesterday's purchases, which were still waiting to be shelved. She drew out a slim paperback and examined it, flipping through the pages thoughtfully.

"Would you read a little?" she asked as she sat down on the chaise.

He blinked in incomprehension.

She patted the spot beside her. "Sit."

Still puzzled, Severus approached. He sat down at the edge of the chaise while she reclined. His gaze slid slowly over her, tracing the long, slim lines of her body. She handed him the book. He wet his lips and glanced away from her for a moment to look at the cover. It was Muggle—printed on cheap, grainy paper, the original price reckoned in pence—and he wrinkled his nose.

She tapped her toe impatiently against the foot of the chaise. "Do go on."

"...do you want the introduction?" he asked as he opened the book to the first page, uncertain of exactly what he was being called upon to do.

She reached over and flipped open the book in his hands, stopping at a random page. Then she reclined again. "Right there is fine."

Severus frowned, skimming over the nonsense words before reading them aloud. "So an age ended and its last deliverer died in bed, grown idle and unhappy," he read. He stopped and cleared his throat. "They were safe: the sudden shadow of a giant's enormous calf would fall no more at dusk across their lawns outside."

His frown deepened. Twaddle.

"Keep going," Minerva said. "You have a lovely voice."

His cheeks warmed. He cleared his throat again. "They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt a sterile dragon lingered to a natural death, but in a year the spoor had vanished from the heath; a kobold's knocking in the mountain petered out."

He turned the book around and examined the cover again. "Muggle or wizard?" he inquired.

Minerva had closed her eyes, and now she heaved a sigh and nudged him with her foot. "Muggle, I believe. Some of them do have ears, you know."

"Only the sculptors and the poets were half sad..." he read, daring to put his hand on her ankle. "...and the pert retinue from the magician's house grumbled and went elsewhere. The vanished powers were glad," here he stumbled, "to be invisible and free."

Minerva shifted, putting her feet in his lap.

Severus wet his lips again. His thumb brushed back and forth on the ivory page. Invisible and free, he thought, shivering for an instant, though he could not say why. He felt slightly drunk, as if things were at once sweetly hazy and terrifyingly clear.

"Without remorse struck down the sons who strayed in their course," he read, "and ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad."

He fell silent for several moments and then turned the page and began the next poem. He read on for some time, his tongue losing some of its clumsiness. The words were mostly nonsense, but he eventually caught on to the rhythm of it. His headache began to ease some, retreating to lurk as a faint pressure behind his eyes. He read until his mouth was dry and his voice began to weaken. When he finally faltered, Minerva took the book from him and laid it carefully aside. She drew him down for a kiss.

They took their time, unbuttoning each other's robes inch by inch—fingertips stealing inside as they kissed—and almost idly moving against each other. He fumbled with the clasps and ties of her underthings, stroking cloth more often than skin, but even that meagre contact made him so hard he feared he would embarrass himself.

She urged him onto his back, and her mouth took a meandering path down his chest and stomach, and his fingers dug into the side of the chaise when she tasted him. She touched the smudgy bruises that had risen up on his thighs in the shape of four fingers, but this time she did not inquire. He was grateful for that and carefully ascribed no thoughts to her on the subject, no curiosity, no betrayal. She did not ask, yes, and she did not laugh later when, nearly trembling with eagerness, he put his mouth to her and finally sated his own curiosity. She tasted like the sea, and he briefly wondered if Moody could hear her low, soft moans that washed over him like the grasping surf.

When they were both spent, they lay together with half-buttoned robes, watching the room lighten and darken as the clouds drifted across the sun. Severus was thirsty, and his jaw was sore, but he was in no mood to get up. He stayed where he was, his cheek pillowed on Minerva's warm breast as she stroked his hair. As he watched, eyes heavy-lidded, the ghost drifted through one of the bookcases and stood looking back at him for several long moments.

"Leave me alone," Severus tiredly murmured.

Minerva lifted her head with a hum of inquiry. She looked to the bookcase in question and yawned behind her hand, and then she looked at Severus with a faint frown.

"Not you," he said, and he closed his eyes.

---

The ocean lapped at his ankles. The water was cold enough that he felt the chill of it through his boots. He crouched down, the bottom of his robes getting soaked, and put his hand in the water. His fingertips combed through the pebbly sand until the sharp edge of a shell caught his index finger. He jerked his hand back and then held his finger up, examining it in the moonlight. He prodded and squeezed, but no blood came. He put his fingertip in his mouth nonetheless, and beneath the salt, the seawater held a metallic tang.

As if annoyed by the intrusion, the little waves came more briskly, spitting cold spray at him. He looked out across the water, watching the moonbeams ripple across its surface. Drowning would be a terrible way to die, he thought. Even worse than falling. He imagined the struggle of it: his slow-moving limbs fighting to the last, his half-blinded eyes losing sight of the surface. The way he would hold his breath until his respiratory system overrode his will and forced him to suck in a desperate gasp. The deathly chill of water in his lungs and the frantic, undignified spasms to expel it that would be his last actions on this earth.

No. In Severus's opinion, anyone with the ability to load his pockets full of stones and wade out unresisting under the waves was certainly apathetic enough to continue living.

His wet fingertips began to freeze in the night air. Now that would be nearly painless. Freezing to death, that was to say. There would be discomfort at first, he supposed. A little stinging and the ravages of violent shivering. But then his body would fall asleep from the outside in. Skin, then blood, then organs. Numbness. Quiet. He suspected it would be like bleeding to death without the unnerving mess. Like falling asleep.

He straightened up again and tucked his hands into his sleeves. He turned and climbed the steep path back to the house, the ends of his robes dragging heavily as he looked up at the clear sky and traced imaginary lines between the constellations with his eyes. The rain had tapered off as July wore on, and Severus found, absurdly, that he missed it. He had grown accustomed to the sound—the steady tapping on the windows and roof setting the pace to his day—and now the silence was almost unbearable. He could not sleep with so much quiet, too aware of the wet, raw sound of his heart beating in his chest. He had taken to pacing the corridors at night, making no effort to be quiet, half-hoping that Minerva would wake and talk him into a nightcap, but she proved a sound sleeper.

The house was stifling when he went back inside. He paused in the entranceway, trying to decide if it was worth going to the kitchen to pester the house-elf into making him some hot milk, or if sleep was destined to elude him. That was when he noticed that Moody's door was ajar. He thought little of it at first, supposing—if he thought about it at all—that Moody had dragged himself out for a bath. But something stalled him, and he stood there for a while, watching, waiting, hearing nothing.

His curiosity got the better of him, although it did not stop him from taking out his wand in case this proved to be another trap.

He walked quietly down the corridor towards the room. When he was a stone's throw away from the door, he caught the now-familiar sound of snoring from within, softer than usual. Cautiously, he continued on and peeked around the doorframe into the room. The curtains were open and the silver moonlight shone in, making the array of broken glass on the floor glitter like a field of stars. The windows were open as well, and his re-acquaintance with the brisk night air made his nipples pucker and gooseflesh spring up along his arms. The salt breeze did not entirely dispel the distillery reek that hung over the room.

Severus stepped over the shards of glass and stopped by the bedside, sneering down at where a sleeping Moody lay on top of the covers with a pillow over his head. A sudden anger rose in him, not at what had passed between them before, but at how peacefully the man slept now. How stupidly, with his door open, and his wards disabled, and his defences laid down as carelessly as a misplaced set of keys.

"Pathetic," he whispered, and the snoring paused for a split second before taking up again.

He stood there for several moments, watching the man's chest rise and fall. He was tempted to leave some sort of sign, a calling card to let Moody know that he had been there. There was a part of him that took a bitter satisfaction in this disappointment and wished nothing more than to rub Moody's face in the fact that he had strolled right in while the great man himself slept on unawares. He hesitated, however. There was another part of him, the part of him that insisted on living, that whispered that this kind of baiting would only escalate the game. A third, weaker and stranger part was intrigued by the prospect.

There was a brief rustling in the direction of the desk, and the sneakoscope flashed red, but then it faded.

"You're pathetic," he whispered again, and this time Moody rolled over with a groan and reached for him, catching his sleeve by pure drunk luck.

"Mph. Come back to bed," Moody slurred as he yanked him down.

"Oof!" Severus was pulled off balance and landed on the mattress.

"Shh," Moody hushed and then clumsily kissed him.

Severus went stock-still at the unexpected heat of a gentle mouth against his jaw. His chin tilted up in protest. Moody found his lips on the second pass nevertheless, kissing him slowly and thoroughly. The smell of gin washed over him, making his chest clench up tight. That was what his father had drunk at home, and the juniper bitterness of it was as familiar as the gritty smoke of the mill. The rough brush of an evening beard. A pat on his shoulder. There's a good lad.

He tried to pull away but didn't want to fall backwards off the bed. That was the only reason he didn't move when Moody pulled his robes open, and warm hands slipped under his singlet and began to stroke his chest and back. They were callused, hard as horn, but they were gentle and surprisingly careful considering their owner's inebriated state. One ventured down the back of his drawers, and Severus held his breath as his arse was fondled and squeezed.

His eyes screwed shut in defeat as his prick began to rouse. Moody was not coordinated enough to get either of their drawers down properly, but he made a valiant effort as they moved together with aching slowness. Severus let his own hands creep down, helping bare them the rest of the way.

"Christ," Moody muttered brokenly, mouthing at his neck. His breath made Severus shiver when it met wet skin. "Jesus Christ, my leg..."

He couldn't help but look. Moody had at least had the wits to take his prosthetic off before passing out, and Severus's hand hesitantly moved to trace the line of a solid thigh down to where the skin grew rough in a scaly patch of scar tissue. The muscle twitched under his touch. He wondered if it hurt, or if—worse—it was simply gone.

Moody pushed harder against him, rolling him onto his back. He fumbled at Severus's prick, making faint noises under his breath as they frotted against each other. Severus obligingly spread his legs, the mere action of it dirty and thrilling. He swallowed down a moan as his prick rubbed against Moody's furred belly. The weight atop him was nearly crushing. The sensation made his head swim, and he clutched first at the headboard and then, finding no purchase, grasped Moody's shoulders and drove up against him.

"Gideon..." Moody whispered, desperately tender, a second before spilling between Severus's thighs.

The wet spurt against his stones set Severus off before he could fully register anything more than a soft breath in his ear. A low sound slipped from his throat, and his fingertips dug brutally into Moody's flesh. They both strained, then shuddered, and then Moody collapsed fully on top of him.

Within a handful of breaths, the snoring had resumed.

Scowling, shaking, Severus gave Moody a hard shove and rolled him off. Moody landed on his back, and the snoring increased in volume. Severus patted blindly across the bed, recovering his clothing, and then unsteadily stood up. He stepped crookedly away from the bed, stubbing his toe on something hard that skittered halfway across the floor with a faint "clang." He stifled a curse and squinted into the gloom, taking a few steps and bending down to examine what he'd hit. The cold steel warmed quickly in his hand, and its contents gave a faint slosh. His fingers curled tightly around it.

He went out into the corridor and successfully fought the urge to slam the door behind him. He stiffly climbed the stairs, his legs feeling like lead. His robes were still cold and wet, but he did not bother to undress aside from kicking off his boots before crawling into bed.

In the morning, his own stench made him wrinkle his nose. His robes were stiff with salt, and his stomach was covered in the remnants of dried semen. He itched.

He opened his eyes. There was an odd sound coming from outside. That was what had woken him, he slowly came to realise. He blearily peeked out through the bed curtains. The sun was up but barely. He stiffly proceeded over to the window and squinted out at the sea and then at the little yard directly below his window. Moody was outside, his skin a sickly grey in the natural light. There was a large collection of half-empty bottles arranged on the grass beside him, and he seemed to be attempting to use a spade both for its intended purpose and as a crutch, to limited success.

As Severus watched in bafflement, Moody awkwardly lowered himself to the ground until he was sitting. He tried to continue digging from that position but quickly gave up. Then he drew his wand and attempted to blast the dirt out, which as any young boy could have told him, only achieved a small dust storm. When the clods had cleared, Severus saw that Moody was doggedly digging with his hands.

It was a lengthy process, but Severus could not be budged. He watched Moody's large hands clawing at the clay, and traced the focused set of the man's brow with his eyes, and followed the path of the wind as it whipped Moody's unruly iron-grey hair about his face. He watched until Moody, sweating and likely cursing to himself, had cleared out a hole at least two feet deep. Moody set the bottles into the little makeshift grave and then began filling it back in. The burial seemed to take the last of the man's energy, but Severus continued to watch—hardly blinking—as Moody struggled several times to get back on his feet before finally managing it.

A line of verse flittered through his mind. When I'm a veteran with only one eye, I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

His gaze hungrily devoured the broad lines of Moody's back, the muscles in his arms, the black dirt on his hands. He wanted suddenly to go downstairs. To be in the entranceway when Moody came back in and see for himself that peculiar look of determination up close.

"You're a poofter," the ghost announced from just over his shoulder.

"You're dead," he retorted.

He did not go downstairs, not then. He bathed instead, washing all traces of last night from him, and he stuffed yesterday's robe into the bottom of the hamper. Only when he was clean and dressed did he go down to the breakfast table, where he and Moody proceeded to carefully ignore each other under Minerva's exasperated gaze.

---

The winds blew strong as summer neared its end, as though the sky wished to sweep them off the face of the earth and be done with it. The battering force of it against his body was unbearable; the sound of it was worse. Day and night, it gusted and shrieked, setting Severus's teeth on edge. Not content with filling every waking moment, the noise followed him into sleep, and he woke up each morning with his heart pounding and his jaw clenched. Going outside was unthinkable, and the house suddenly seemed far too small for three.

He and Minerva whiled away lazy hours in her bed, the windows shut tight and the wireless on in an attempt to drown out the dreadful clamour. In the dimly lit world within the bed curtains, he lay between her thighs and touched her, licked her, teased her as long as she could stand it. She combed her fingers through his hair, and when it was her turn, she touched him everywhere, boldly, shamelessly, leaving him exhausted and spent until not even the howling wind could keep him awake.

The corridors shrank, no longer wide enough to admit both him and Moody. Every time they passed, their shoulders would bump, and one of them would snap an insult and the other would snap his teeth, and the fight would be taken into the nearest room with a locking door. They grappled in the kitchen on top of the table, in the sitting room with Minerva's butterflies looking down on them, in the pantry up against the shelves. Half the time they barely got their robes up, and that at least dulled the bruises, the bite-marks, the scratches.

On the library floor, spent and panting, they rolled off each other and put a foot of distance between them. Severus whipped his robes closed, still trying to catch his breath. He touched his wrists, the red marks around them very slowly fading. He rubbed his eyes and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Moody, unapologetically bared from throat to knee, fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a small bronze case. He flipped it open and removed one slim hand-rolled cigarette. He lit it off his wand and took a deep drag. The smoke left his lips as three perfectly formed rings.

Severus glared over at him. "You shouldn't smoke in here. It isn't good for the books."

A snort was the only reply he received. Moody took another drag and then a third. Then he nudged Severus with his elbow.

Severus glanced over again. Moody didn't look at him, seeming to hesitate for several seconds, and then he offered the cigarette between thumb and forefinger. Severus stared in incomprehension and then shrugged and took it. He put his lips to the damp tip and inhaled. The smoke singed his throat and swirled slowly through him. They lay there for some time, looking up at the ceiling and blindly passing the cigarette back and forth until it burned down to Moody's fingertips with a hiss.

It was a Sunday when they all left. Autumn was looming, and the term was due to start in a week. Minerva had the year ahead planned down to the day in a satchel full of books and schedules, calendars and class lists. Severus had a vague plan to repeat what he had done last year, only with less misery on his part and more on his students'.

"Tsk," Minerva said. "You don't mean that."

"Of course I do," he replied, locking his trunk.

Moody was the first to depart. In the early, cold hours of the morning, he limped out onto the lawn, leaning heavily on his broom. Minerva went out to see him off, and Severus hung back in the doorway, huffing on his hands to warm them. He felt like a voyeur as he watched them say their goodbyes.

"Make sure you stop every few miles to rest," Minerva was saying.

"For God's sake, woman," Moody snapped, "I'm not a bloody invalid."

Minerva fastened his trunk to his broom for him, batting away his hands when he tried to stop her. "I didn't say you were. It's a long trip for anyone—I certainly wouldn't do it all in one go and neither would Severus—so don't think you have to go proving you're better than us mere mortals."

Moody rolled his eye and kissed her cheek and muttered something that sounded like "Harridan." Then he mounted his broom—teetering for a moment—and kicked off. He rose up over the house, circling once to gain momentum, and then set off east into the sun. Severus squinted, blinded by the glare. He suspected Moody didn't look back. He went back inside and wandered through every room of the house. The ghost trailed after him and lay down beside him on the unwashed sheets in the dingy grey of Moody's room.

"Goodbye, Sev," she said softly as he closed his eyes.

It was a few hours later when Minerva came in to wake him. The morning had more firmly ensconced itself, and the wind was just starting to gather its strength for one last push. He and Minerva set out into the weather and took the ferry to Kyle of Lochalsh, where they had breakfast at the little fish and chip shop. Severus put away a full Scottish, remembering that it would be some time before he had real food again. He lingered over his last piece of toast, sopping up the leftover yolk and Worcestershire sauce until Minerva took out her pocket watch and gave him an impatient look.

The train came a few minutes early and they were waiting for it. They boarded, and found their car, and stowed their trunks, and chose their seats. Minerva took off her hat and gloves and slid into the seat across from him. She pulled a book from her cloak pocket and gave him a small, brief smile. "I had a lovely holiday, Severus," she said, and then she opened her book.

Severus looked at her for several minutes, and he knew she must have felt it, but she gave no indication, nor did she once glance up from her reading. Finally, he reached into his satchel as the train started up, and his fingers brushed first against the soft pulpy pages of a Muggle-printed paperback and then the cool steel of the flask secreted at the bottom of the bag. His fingertips lingered against them both, and then he pulled out a slim leather-bound hardcover—a mystery novel in which it turned out that all the suspects were guilty—and he settled back in his seat to read as the train hurtled him back to Hogwarts.