Yes, I'm sure she had a few choice words for Albus in private -- he'd probably blame it on endorphins running rampant and clouding his judgment and sense of humor! LOL!She did try to give him the best, and most objective yet sensitive, advice that she could. Naturally, she knows more about Poppy's side of things and so forth -- though not everything -- and she does feel stuck in the middle, in a way. She cares about them both, but really isn't sure of the wisdom of them being together, yet she doesn't want to make things harder for them if they could have a happy future together. Yes, Severus will put thought into what is an appropriate way to woo Poppy, and he'll do his best -- and without waking her up at 4:40 in the morning with his latest potion! And yes, he'll have that necessary conversation with Hermione . . .Thanks for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Yes, he does still have one really big secret, one that he's afraid to even consider telling her, but you're right that he doesn't want to have any lies come between them, and he thinks he'd feel he'd lied to her if he didn't tell her about Gareth at a point where it was natural for him to mention it. He definitely wants to have his relationship with her be "right" and to have it very different from all the other relationships he'd had before the war.Thanks! I do hope that I manage to do some writing soon. I really want to get back to Charming the Scottish Garden, too, and write more of Draco's Heart, as well, but my Muse ain't cooperating! Nor is RL, actually.

Thanks! It is nice to write Severus & Gareth's conversations.

Do you remember "An Unsentimental Arithmancer" and Albus's gift to Gertrude and Malcolm? That's how they communicate. Glad you enjoyed it! It was an important conversation for them both.

I'm glad you're enjoying their name game and having fun catching up!Thanks for the review!

I had to go back and skim the chapter to remember it -- oh, my, my my! *blush* Glad you enjoyed it!Thanks!

Yes, Severus is just discovering what it's like to have friends to whom he can talk about things, and how it can be to have one or two special people in his life with whom he can have some intimate banter, and sharing conversations about things he never would have considered before.Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the review!

I have had close to zero writing time lately, and very little inspiration, but I do hope to write more on CSG! If I can only entice my Muse back from wherever she's flown off to!I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter -- and that you're looking forward to the next one. "A Spree" was also one of my faves in that fic, and I sweated over it!Thanks very much!

I hope your Muse comes back soon, I'm always looking forward to the next chapter but this one more because I love Malcolm and I hope you'll write about that detention he and Albus got! LOL

That little detention will get some page time at some point!

Oh, you'll get to see who she wants him to meet with! He won't be happy about it -- which is why Minerva's being a bit cagey about who it is.Suzie is very taken with him -- and has come to have an appreciation for Potions as a result. Glad you enjoyed the start to his afternoon off with Poppy!Thank you!

Thanks! Glad you liked it. As to what happens, tune in next week, same bat channel, same bat time -- well, not exactly, but I'm feeling nostalgic today! haha! But it will be a part of the fic, so you'll see the development of his relationships. :-)

Yes, that CERTAINLY would have been less than perfect! haha!Thanks for reviewing!

Yeah, Minerva had thought it was a really bad idea for Albus to be springing so many things on Severus in one evening! And of course, Albus hasn't a clue that Severus is mightily jealous of Quin, since Minerva never told him precisely why Severus had been upset that night after seeing Quin drop Poppy at the gates after their date. Severus is working very hard on being at his best with Poppy, despite the fact that he still has a hard time doing that. He knows how cruddy he felt a) when she wanted to take a break from their relationship, and b) when he saw her with Quin and realized that they were likely being more than just old buddies. I think his not wanting to have any lies between them springs partly from his desire to have a good relationship with her and being at his best with her, and partly from his desire to distance himself with the person he had to be for so long, when he had to hide so much from others and could never really be close to anyone. And when he was forced to be completely honest, it had been with Dumbledore, and he'd experienced it as much as punishment as anything. With Poppy, he feels differently, naturally.Thank you for taking the time to review! I'm glad it brought something nice to you at the end of a hard day!

Ah, the Snoopy dance! I'm glad it inspired you to Snoopy dance! :DI'm glad you enjoyed that! Thanks for the review!

As you will see, you're not the only one who thinks he wasn't imagining it!The ton of bricks has thunked him right on the head, and you're right, he's still got some disbelief!Thanks for the review! Glad you enjoyed the chapter. :)

Thanks, HD! I am glad you enjoyed the lemon -- it's in the fic for a variety of reasons, but one of them is so that ADMM'ers like yourself do get a taste of RaM!ADMM in LVS. I'm glad that you liked Severus's reaction at the end there. LOL. Poor guy -- he comes from Helena, having decided that they shouldn't engage in anything of the warm & physical nature only to be confronted by Albus in one of Minerva's old robes and some evidence of earlier hanky-panky! haha!I'm sure that Minerva is mindful of Albus's feelings & position, but she's also spent most of the last 40 years catering to his feelings and his position, just in a different role. I think she's a little bit impatient with him because she actually does spend a lot more time and energy on him than when their roles were reversed, and he knows very well that she still puts their relationship ahead of other social pleasures (such as the witches' holiday). And she certainly did give him a good "playtime" that night, didn't she? LOL! I am sure you're right that he didn't mind being her plaything for a while!Thanks for the review, and I'm glad that the chapter could help redeem an otherwise crappy week!

:)

Hiya,

!RaM ended at the Sorting, except for the epilogue, which was Minerva's b'day, so the detention was not in RaM. It would be in the as-yet unwritten RaM sequel! LOL! If I ever write it.As for Poppy, it goes back to what she expressed to her sister and to Minerva -- and even to Severus on at least one occasion -- obviously, she doesn't want to know it if he has a tryst with someone, but she doesn't want to demand it of him because, among other things previously written in various conversations and introspective musings, she's aware that he hasn't been with many witches and has had a really severely restricted social life since he left the Death Eaters, so she doesn't want to have him feel guilty if he has sex with others just to have some fun, even though she really doesn't want him to, or to know about it. If she did demand it of him, and he couldn't manage it, it would likely end their relationship, which she doesn't want. On the other hand, while she could live with him having single trysts at this point in their relationship (as long as she didn't know about it -- she'd rather believe that he wasn't), she couldn't deal with him having an affair. And as she says, it's at this point in their relationship that she doesn't want him to feel tied to being sexually exclusive with her. Obviously, if they were to continue to see each other and become even more serious about each other, the sexual trysts would also be something that she would have to have him understand she couldn't deal with. So, no affairs, but trysts were okay. She's actually very, very glad that he has promised not to even have sex with someone else while they're together. She really is pretty fine about him having been with Gareth that way. She'll have more questions, and so on, but it doesn't bother her. She is a bit hurt and disappointed that she wasn't the first one he had sex with in his new life, and it kind of burst an ideal she had, but she can deal with that. If she thought that he was having an on-going sexual relationship with Gareth, on the other hand, she would not have been happy about that. She's still getting over her surprise, too, that Severus would have had any kind of intimate physical contact with another wizard. She wouldn't have been as surprised if it had been a female friend he'd had sex with, but she probably would have been more jealous and worried that it meant that the relationship with the other witch amounted to an affair.As for how I'm doing personally, I'm okay, not as stressed as I was a couple months ago, but still too distracted and too busy to write very much. I can see that the stress will be going back up shortly, though, so even the meagre writing time I've had recently is bound to shrink again. Thank you for reviewing! I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter!

He didn't have a lot of emotional or psychological room before to truly care and to begin giving to others, but now that he's been given a second chance at life and he had so much love and support up through his ordeal with Nagini and the DL, he's giving himself a chance, too, and he's finding room to grow. It's kind of like Hagrid said way back at the beginning of the fic, “Besides all that, Perfesser, yer a great wizard, and th’ most important thing about bein’ a great wizard, is havin’ a great heart. All great wizards got great hearts. Jest gotta give it room t’ grow, that’s all. Jest give it some room.”I'm glad you found it a fun chapter! Many thanks for your review!

I think you were away when I posted, off doing fun RL stuff, so that's probably why you missed it! :-)Glad you liked the name of the chapter. It was a fun one. lolYeah, I'd say that Hermione's own hurt feelings are coloring the way she views Severus's actions, and she's being far more suspicious of him than she probably would have been before the entire non-dating conversation. Severus is actually being somewhat forebearing -- at least partly because he feels a bit guilty about breaking things off with her and having a fling with Poppy instead. Which, as we know, didn't exactly end with Severus feeling very good, either. Poor guy!But he didn't have a terrible time at the Three Broomsticks, so that's a good thing!Thanks for the review!

She's 22, so she is closer to his age, though in the other direction. In a coming chapter, Minerva will make an observation to Severus that I think would have held true even if he were to attempt a relationship with Helena, and it's one I agree with, myself. (I don't always agree with my characters' opinions on things, despite some people who seem to think that everything that flows through their minds or emerges in their dialogue is a reflection of my own beliefs in a very literal sense. It'd be kind of difficult to have conflicts and a variety of characters in the fic if that were the case. LOL!)I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter and like Helena and Severus together! I think they could make a nice, fun, and exciting couple, myself.Thanks for reviewing!

He has, indeed discovered some new things about himself, and one of them will hit him like a ton of bricks when he realizes it. ;)Thanks for the review!

*grin* I'm very glad! Thanks for the review! I'm happy you enjoyed it. :)

Yes, and as she says, she knows it's not her fault, and she knows that Viktor wouldn't have blamed her, but it doesn't help the way she feels about it. Fortunately, Severus was a good ear for her -- unexpectedly, but when he's not just thinking about himself and his own misery (lol!), he's got more ability to relate to people than he realizes himself.The Dementor's Kiss would be a truly horrifying fate for him, and for her to have witnessed!Thanks for reviewing. :)

Gareth teases him about drinking beer a couple times, too, even when he's the one who brought the beer -- Gareth is becoming something of an influence on him. ;) I think that Severus would take gin to be a girly drink -- unless, of course, it was mixed with bitter lemon, which he took to so readily! LOL! But he'd probably prefer his bitter lemon with vodka . . . He is making progress! Thanks for the review.

Yes, and Albus was touching a sore spot without realizing it -- he thinks a match between Severus and Poppy would be lovely, but he hasn't a clue that they've had a fling and now Severus is feeling rejected and bitter about. He simply took Severus's reaction to mean that Severus might be interested in her -- since he was adamant that Poppy wouldn't be interested in him but he didn't say he was uninterested in her, which has always been his reaction to every other witch Albus has mentioned now and in the past conversation on the same topic.

Very glad you enjoyed it! Thanks. :)