Part Third: The Hart Subvertant, Chapter 34

Chapter 34:

A man could get used to being kissed, nuzzled, and nibbled within five minutes of waking up in the morning. Given that Severus had now had the pleasant experience of waking up beside his lover for the last four mornings – which was, of course, four more times than he ever had previously – the experience was definitely beginning to grow on him.

On the morning of their third day at Snape Hall, Severus awoke with his chest to Emily's back, one arm loosely draped around her waist – which was becoming his accustomed way of sleeping. He nestled closer to her and kissed her shoulder.

"Mmmm... good morning, beautiful." She rolled over and kissed him tenderly.

He slanted a quizzical look at her. "'Good morning, beautiful'? It's far too early in the morning for sarcasm." He sat up, raked his hands through his hair, and rubbed the corners of his eyes.

Emily gave him a very oh please sort of look. "I had something like four or five orgasms with you yesterday – so now you have to understand that to me, you are the most gorgeous man alive. Now, do please kindly get used to it and stop questioning my judgment." She was then distracted by nuzzling the back of his neck.

"I've heard myself described as a greasy git with an abnormally large nose a great deal more frequently than I've been called beautiful, my dear," he explained, leaning back into her caresses. Yes, Severus could see himself quite getting into this nuzzling habit of hers. He was now becoming more accustomed to the novel idea that he could simply assume that he was wanted and desired; that if he was in bed or on the sofa beside this lovely woman, she would want to touch him, want to be in his arms. It helped that she was about as sentimental or self-conscious about her fond attentions as a wolf with her mate.

"There's nothing abnormal about your nose. It's the reason you have such a gorgeous voice, you know – it you went to the plastic surgeon's and did something to it, your voice wouldn't be as resonant and sonorous as it is. Think of it as the Stradivarius of noses." She leaned forward put a kiss on the side of that distinctive feature. "And besides, have any of those people spouting such vile epithets ever slept with you?"

Severus gave a horrific shudder in spite of the profusion of nuzzling being showered upon him. "Bloody hell no."

"Then screw them, what do they know," she said, airily refuting and discrediting every barb and insult from the Marauders of the world and their ilk with a lazy wave of her hand. "I clearly have more expert knowledge of the beauties of your person than they do, and thus my opinion trumps theirs. And if they try to say any different, they can all pucker up and kiss my happy pointy-eared arse." She gave his neck a final nuzzle, then stretched luxuriously. "Do you want first shower?"

He turned around and kissed her, at length. "All right."

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Severus brushed the sheet aside and reached for his dressing gown, which was lying on a chair beside the bed. Emily's eyes were drawn to his naked back and arms – yes, he hadn't been anything to sneeze at before, but several months of intensive combat training had certainly agreed with him physically. His back was elegantly cut and defined, his arms corded with wiry muscle, the sort of whipcord-lean athlete conditioned for sustained endurance rather than power. He would always be thin, not much to him – but what there was, was perfect. He just looked good. Positively edible. She traced a caressing hand over his shoulder with a sigh.

He glanced back at her as he pulled on his robe. "What, what is it?"

"Mmmmm, that back and those arms. You look fantastic, darling. You make me wish I could paint."

He looked back at her, startled. Apparently this novel idea that someone thought he looked fantastic was just as unsettling to poor Professor Snape as the discovery that the stranger taking tea with him appreciated his sense of humour. Then, he lowered his eyes and blushed like a drunken house-elf.

"Er, thank you," he muttered. "It... it's never hurt to look at you either." As he kissed her once more and headed off into the bathroom for a shower, Emily resolved to pay him more compliments – the way he reacted to them was frankly adorable.

As the water started up in the bathroom, she took the pillow he had lain upon for much of the last three days and buried her nose in it, taking a deep breath of the scent of him. Oh, bloody hell, why even try to pretend, every damn thing he'd done of late was endearing. Since they had been at Snape Hall, it had become hard to shake her arms from around his neck.

He came off as so harsh and autocratic with students, so shrewd and jaded in his dealings with the Order of the Phoenix – but put him in bed with a woman who adored him, who was disinclined to disparage him in any way, and the experience just seemed so unexpected and so new to him. He could still be surprised by kindness or affectionate gestures from her, and he was so taken aback by compliments – something in his manner put her in mind of a feral creature finally grown tame enough to allow itself to be petted. This was the side of him with which she had initially become enamoured – who he was when out from under every obligation and antagonist – and now she wished she could keep every worry and stress out of his life, just so she could enjoy it forever.

As a lover... Emily stretched luxuriously in bed with a long sigh. By the Mother, how had she ever managed to stay away from him during the school year. If she'd known then what she knew now, she would have staged a raid on the Slytherin dungeons and carried him off the first night she'd arrived at Hogwarts. He wasn't some smug, practiced Lothario like some men she had known before, but no one could have hoped to rival his raw lust, his kind of purity and intensity. She couldn't have imagined thinking of anyone else while the focus of the blistering wealth of his attention.

While she knew that he'd had at least one lover before, there was nonetheless something so virginal about him, somehow, as though he was now venturing out into territory where he had never been before. He may have had the depth and subtlety of a thirty-five-year-old man, but every now and then, he would regard her with something of pure, adolescent wonder in his eyes. When she thought of him as an orphaned teenage boy, cast aside by this Bella wench and completely alone in the world – she couldn't have imagined anything more heartbreaking.

Well, at least the chances of that happening again were pretty damned slight if she had anything to say about it, thanks.

But now he was out of the bathroom, towelling his wet hair and wrapped in his grey dressing gown, smelling of shaving lotion, toothpaste, and soap. He paused before the mirrored dresser top and took up a comb, then began dragging it through his hair. He always yanked at it so fiercely, scowling as though each tangle was there just to spite him – Emily couldn't watch this performance for more than a minute before she had to get up, take the comb from him, and tidy it for him, lest he tear his own hair out by the roots. He was doing it again this morning, so she got up and approached him from behind – "Oh, give me that, silly thing. You'll be bald by forty with the way you're going." Her hands were deft, and a moment later, she had his hair neatly combed and put a little kiss on his cheek. "There you go."

"Thank you." He pulled her into a soft, flannel-dressing-gown embrace, keen black eyes studying their reflection in the mirror, perhaps admiring the sight of himself looking so well-coiffed. Or perhaps he was enjoying the sight of his skyclad lover in his arms – the look on his face was very much one of This one is mine and I'm not sharing. "I'm feeling ambitious this morning – let's actually leave the bedroom and go have breakfast downstairs."

"Whatever you like, dear," she said, and kissed him.

He chuckled, shaking his head. "I can't believe I just heard you say that."

She laughed, and kissed him again. "Well, yes, don't get too used to it. But breakfast downstairs sounds lovely."

"All right. I'll tell the elves to get the dining room ready for us."

She nodded, and then disappeared into the steamy bathroom.

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While Emily showered, Severus got dressed and went down into the kitchens to supervise the elves as they got the smaller dining room ready to receive the master of the house and his guest. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that his initial misgivings about allowing Cecile to accompany them had proved unfounded, and the elf was already making herself helpful in the kitchens, and had already begun instructing Philomela and the other elves as to the various dietary and environmental requirements of her Mistress – "With a Faerie about you can never NEVER be putting iron on the table or anywhere near her, that is burning to them, but china and silver, that is all right. And no sugar in the cream for porridge, she is not liking that, it gives her hands the fidgets."

Now Cecile and Philomela were in the kitchen preparing breakfast while Danceny gave the long oak table a quick polishing, then put the long benches that usually flanked the table against the walls and brought out two wooden armchairs, and Towrie whisked all through the place with a pushbroom. Cecile traipsed in and out with candelabra, china plates, silverware place settings, teacups and two steaming pots, and a loosely arranged bowl of Scottish primroses and fragrant white roses. When she finished setting the table, Cecile turned to Severus with a little curtsy. "Breakfast is nearly ready, Mr. Professor, sir," she said. "Be you needing anything else?"

"No, this is fine. Thank you."

The Selkies had started up on the beach again while the elves worked, filling the air with muffled, crystalline warbling – and the rain had started up again as well. It had misted slightly in the early morning, but now the sky was pale grey, and fat droplets were splattering the dining room windows with monotonous regularity. And as always with Snape Hall, with heavy rains came the inevitable drips in the roof.

A new leak had begun in the dining room ceiling just above the easternmost window – Severus pointed his hand at it, and intoned "Constructivus Reparo," then silently spoke a word. The leak stopped, but he knew from long experience that it would only be a matter of time before the old roofing wore through again, or a new leak started in place of this one. He paced through the dining room, taking a long, appraising look at the roof, and aiming Reparo spells at worrisome cracks in the plaster. While Emily didn't seem the sort to hold him in disdain because his manor's roof was leaky, he didn't want to be bothered with that sort of thing while he had company, especially not when he was currently entertaining his lover.

He paused as that thought occurred to him, then turned to pensively gaze out one of the windows, replaying those words to himself – Miss Emily Swain, who is my lover.

Bloody hell, he had a lover, and they now seemed to have interacted enough together and spent enough nights sleeping beside one another to fairly begin to call this association a relationship.

He had a relationship. With his (witty, clever, amazingly randy) new lover.

It seemed that his universe was not only being disturbed, it was actually still expanding.

Well then. What now to do with this totally unexpected new development, now that there was the possibility that he might not be facing life as a perpetual bachelor, the way he had always assumed. Severus had spent an entire school year feeling slighted that Emily's romantic attentions to him had ended after that first night, but now that those romantic attentions were his again... Well, he just hadn't ever counted on that. He had been so certain that she had dismissed him that he never had any plan for what he would do if it turned out that she hadn't. He had only wanted her attention again, to be taken seriously, to have his wishes respectfully considered, and to continue the sexual relationship begun that first night. And now, he had everything he had ever wanted of her, given joyously and ungrudgingly. Not only that, but... he'd had lovers, he wasn't completely inexperienced, but this was something completely unlike any relationship he had ever had before. The sensation of lying over and inside a woman who was perfectly ecstatic to have him there, who had no ulterior motives in bed other than to have a lot of ragingly good sex, was a wholly new sensation. And somehow he didn't think that sort of response could be feigned, especially by someone who had grudgingly admitted she just wasn't cut out to be a spy.

There just didn't seem to be anything of Bel – other women's sort of deviousness in her. It had only been three days now, so there wasn't too much precedent to go by, but he realised now that in all the time he had known her, he had never once gotten even a whiff of the old anticipatory dread, no sense that she was biding her time until he was dependent enough to swallow the latest indignity or betrayal she had dreamed up without complaint. No, she seemed to have three moods: crackling antagonism, total uninvolvement, or (yesmyloveyou'rewonderfulpleaseyes) this. She was just the most affectionate and spontaneously hedonistic lover imaginable; no past encounter with a woman had ever felt this unforced, this unselfconscious. With her, there was no time for worry – he was simply too caught up in enjoying himself.

He could no more have kept himself from being made happy during these last few days with her than a plant could have resisted warming in sunlight. The only thing he was worried about now, truthfully, was how long this could last.

Then the arched doors opened behind him to admit someone into the dining room, someone fair-haired, smiling, and happy to see him. Wearing one of her diaphanous little black spidersilk gowns with a cashmere schoolgirl cardigan over it, which she no doubt thought made the outfit look less provocative. She put her arms around him and kissed his cheek, then turned toward the raining windows as well.

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When Emily had emerged from the shower, there was a little note propped on the night table:

Emily –

Breakfast will be served in the family dining room – just meet me downstairs when you're ready.

The family dining room is in the main wing, behind the first set of doors off the entrance foyer, through the main hall, and to your right. If you reach the kitchens you've gone too far, and if you reach the ballroom with all the chandeliers, go through the two sets of doors to the right.

What do you say about doing a bit of rockpooling this afternoon?

– S

She then made her way downstairs, retracing her steps from the first day down corridors, through the dragon-fresco chamber, and into what Severus called the main hall in his note. In times past, she figured it had most likely been called the mead hall – Gwydion had one or two rather similar chambers where he met with Fianna officers. A long, monumental table of carved dark wood surrounded by massive carved chairs dominated the room, which was dimly lit by pale, rainy-day sunlight from enormous north-facing gothic windows. Giant bronze chandeliers hung from vast wooden beams overhead, all looking as though they hadn't been lit in years.

There was another set of heavily carved double doors on the northeast wall, and Emily reflexively hesitated a second over the heavy twisted metal door handle – in a world where a common type of forged metal was so dangerous to her, she had to be careful of every bit of metal she touched – but these door handles were forged from heavy bronze, cool and inert under her hand as she pulled the heavy door open.

Severus was standing in front of one of the great northern windows when she came into the dining room, watching the rain patter heavily against the diamond-paned glass, and wearing one of those impeccable white shirts of his, this one in soft linen, with black trousers and a smartly cut black linen waistcoat. The man just didn't know how to look less than elegant and dramatic.

She went to his side and wrapped her arms around him, stood on tiptoe to kiss the sharp edge of his cheekbone, then turned toward the windows. "Coming down in buckets, isn't it," she remarked.

"Yes, it's disappointing," he said. "I thought we would go down to the beach today, but now it looks as though we'll have to wait until this lets up. The beach is so rocky that footing can be treacherous when it's wet."

She nestled against his side, letting her cheek fall onto his shoulder. His arm encircled her waist, and he put a soft kiss on top of her head.

"We could play hide and seek," she said, with an impish grin. Severus laughed softly, his arm tightening around her.

"You know, I haven't left the western wings of this house in five years," he said, crossing to the table and pulling a chair out for her. "Perhaps we would take lanterns and wander through the rest of it, and count how many lizards run across the walls in the ruined bit." He took the seat at the head of the table at her right hand.

Breakfast consisted of the really thick, unrefined sort of Scottish porridge, with fresh berries and unsweetened cream, plus a pan of baked apples. "Cecile made certain there was some herb tea for you," he said, pouring her out a cup.

"Thank you, dear," she said, smiling. "Yes, let's go explore some more of the house. It's been three days, and so far I've only seen the entrance hall, some corridors, this dining room, and the dim interior of one of the master bedroom suites. Not that I'm complaining, mind." She gave him a little, sidelong, very knowing smile, which made him glance down at his porridge bowl with a smirk.

"I'm glad you like it," he said quietly. "I've never had a lot of good memories of this house, until now. It's so far out of the way that I spent a lot of time bored and alone when I was younger – the winters are really quite depressing. And my father could be rather moody at times."

His father was one of the most profoundly horrible men I've ever met. Believe me, when compared to Snape Senior, my dear little Cousin Severus seems a perfect lamb, Lucius had said.

Emily smiled sidelong at him. "Well. Let's give you some good memories of this house while we're here, then. In which I will do my best to keep you from being bored and alone."

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After breakfast, Severus led Emily through an east-facing door into the cavernous stone kitchens, with walls of untreated stone and a brick fireplace that took up an entire wall, the sort of place where medieval servants would have huddled for warmth and companionship through the long dark of an Orkney night. Cecile was standing in front of a huge stone basin washing the breakfast dishes with Philomela, but she excused herself when she saw Emily and bounced up to her with a big grin – "Mistress! Be you liking your breakfast? Philomela is showing me new things to cook all the time – there will be fish pie for lunch and lamb cassoulet for supper."

"Yes, breakfast was lovely. How are you enjoying your stay?"

"Oh, it is very nice, I has a room all to myself, it is the biggest room I is ever having, with windows! The days here is very long, so first I helps Philomela clean, and then in the evening I is walking and walking the grounds – there is so many BIG trees by this castle, and there is a little white-roses garden with walls, too, and I is sometimes watching the great big HUGE fishes sometimes jumping right up out of the sea! And there is birds, and seals, and sometimes the seals is singing!"

Severus approached the two of them with an oil lantern in hand, then handed a second one to Emily. "The huge fishes actually aren't fishes at all – they're called whales, and they breathe air, like we do. When they leap out of the water, that's called breaching. The singing seals are called Selkies, and they spend the summer here as part of a long migration that they complete every year. In winter, they'll go farther south, where it's warm." He turned toward Emily and took her hand. "Well, then, are we ready?"

Cecile listened to this lesson with big eyes, clearly pleased that the stern Mr. Professor had taken the time to explain it to her. "Thank you, Mr. Professor sir." The elf excused herself with a polite curtsy and went back to the dishes, while Emily followed her host out into the castle.

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He first led her through the small dining room where they had breakfasted – "Let's see – this smaller dining room is where the family probably ate every day, but when they were entertaining, it was probably turned into a preparation room. Pages would be running back and forth with food and such. This was the main dining hall, here," Emily's host said, leading her through the massive mead hall she had discovered earlier.

As they passed through the hall, Severus glanced at the rain pelting down on the great northern windows with a rather pained look, his eyes raking over the ceiling with concern – then indicated the grand dining table with a little grimace. "The table supposedly seats fifty, though we've never thrown a party for that many people that I can recall."

"Perhaps you will someday," Emily said, smiling.

Severus chuckled grimly. "Not bloody likely. And through here, we have the ballroom." He led her through another set of double doors into a large and airy L-shaped chamber with a floor of dusty green marble, with dingy but elegantly crafted stained-glass windows to the north and west. A line of chandeliers made up of cobwebbed and age-darkened crystal prisms hung from the slightly domed and heavily carved stone ceiling. "We think this used to be an armoury, where visiting pages would sleep and have their meals while looking after their lords' arms and horse tack, but in about the eighteenth century, the stained glass and marble flooring and chandeliers were put in, and it became the ballroom. Although we might as well turn it into an armoury again for all the entertaining I do – I think the last great ball we had in here was for my grandparents' wedding, in about 1908."

The sound of dripping came from their right, and Severus stalked up to one of the ornate windows, scowling. A second later, he sealed a leak in a windowpane with a pass of his hand and a muttered incantation, then returned, still scowling. "Everything leaks in heavy rains," he muttered – and from the look on his face, and the acid tinge of embarrassment suddenly apparent in his scent, it was obvious that those leaks were the source of a great deal of frustration to him.

"Well then – " He led her out another elegant pair of doors in the southernmost wall of the ballroom, out into the great main entrance hall. "And here of course is the foyer, which Milady claims resembles a certain Muggle cathedral – "

"It does! I'll take you there and you can see for yourself – then you'll have to eat your words, you'll see."

"A likely story," he scoffed indulgently, leading her along the wide gallery to another set of great doors. "This leads to the oldest wing in the castle – you'll want to be careful here. Stay on the stone galleries and don't go out onto any of the wooden flooring, because some of it is rotten and could crumble at any time, and I don't want you to get unceremoniously dumped into the cellar."

With that, he threw open one of the doors, and offering her his arm, led her onto another wide gallery overlooking what was left of an Orcadian wizard earl's thousand-year-old fortress.

The air here was alive with scents: fresh air, rainwater, rotten wood, ancient stone. "This part of the castle was originally a hunting lodge, but as they spent more time here, they added more floors to it. The livestock lived in the bottom floor, and the human inhabitants lived above them," Severus said, leading her up a second stone staircase at the end of the gallery.

Everything Emily knew about architecture had come from one class taken at Cambridge, and now, as they made their way through the bones of a castle that was still being completed in William the Conqueror's time, she was racking her memory for everything she could recall about castle building. Here and there fitful sunlight shone through holes in the roof, and Emily leaned over the stone gallery railing, craning upward to see falling raindrops silhouetted in grey light. Much of the flooring had fallen through here, leaving giant exposed wooden beams and crossbeams visible. The stone walls were often elaborately carved with round-centred crosses, and the patterns incised the crosses' surfaces were elaborate scrolls of leaves and vines, and occasionally that of a chalice. The patterns seemed oddly familiar.

Emily had wandered a few paces away from Severus as she took in this ornamentation, the lantern held at eye level in front of her. A moment later, she turned a corner, and gasped, taking several steps backward – for around that corner she had come upon a transparent woman with long braids, in what looked like early Renaissance garb, sitting at a transparent spinning wheel in a shadowy corner, her foot silently working a treadle as she spun a long skein of silvery thread. The ghost neither paused in her work nor looked up.

A moment later, Emily felt Severus's comforting presence behind her, his arm around her waist. "Don't worry, it's just the spinning woman, one of the ghosts," he murmured. "They are four or five of them inhabiting the castle, but they're all harmless. Most of them stay in this wing."

"What are the others like?" She leaned back into his warm solidity, calming herself – there were no ghosts in the Faerielands, so despite her residency at Hogwarts, it still gave her a turn to come upon an unfamiliar ghost in gloomy surroundings. Unperturbed, unseeing, the ghost continued her work.

"Let's see – there's a ghost in the main library who can't be seen, only felt... sometimes he'll get books out, or turn pages in the dictionaries on stands, or tidy up. You never see him, but now and then you'll feel a chill, and smell his pipe tobacco, and see the books have been moved or the lamps trimmed. And on nights when the Northern Lights are visible, there's a young man in medieval knight's garb who appears on the highest turret walk, just looking up at the sky."

"Really – have you ever spoken to any of them?" she asked, with a delicious shudder.

"No, none of them answer when spoken to. They used to frighten me when I was a boy – you couldn't have made me come into this wing at night, or when it was raining like this – but now I doubt if they're even aware of us." He seemed to enjoy playing protector as his shivering companion huddled against him, and drew her closer into his arms. "I asked the Bloody Baron about ghosts like them when I was in school – he calls them repeaters, people who died suddenly and who don't realise they're dead, and just continue to do what they did in life. Professor Binns is a particularly erudite and well-spoken version of this sort of ghost, I believe."

"And they're all in this wing?" Emily asked, resolving to stay out of the oldest wing at night.

"Except for the library ghost and the one upstairs in the eastern part of the central wing – there's a nursery with a haunted cradle. Sometimes you can see the outline of an elderly woman in medieval garb putting a phantom infant to bed, and hear her singing to it in what I think is Old English as she rocks it to sleep. Those two really aren't very frightening. My mother used to like them quite a bit – she thought the singing was rather pleasant."

Emily glanced up at him – it was the first time she had ever heard him mention his mother in conversation. Other than the time he had confided the circumstances of his mother's death to her up on the turret walk at Hogwarts, she had never before heard him mention his mother at all. "Well, what with the Plague going on around that time, I can imagine there were a few castle inhabitants who might have died suddenly," she said.

"Actually, we're so isolated up here that I think the Plague passed the Isle of Wyre over entirely," her companion replied thoughtfully. "That went on before Apparition was created, I believe, and the waters and winds are so treacherous that most Orcadians never did much travelling. I believe we had some outbreaks of plague on the bigger islands in the mainland, but I haven't read enough Muggle history to be sure."

Severus glanced down at her, his arm tightening around her waist. "Come on, I'll show you the east wings, they're a little less gloomy."

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They continued to explore the castle that morning and into the early afternoon.

Emily thought that from above, Snape Hall would look rather like a capital letter E, with towers at the western cliff for its top, and the eleventh-century citadel as its middle crossbar. The great west towers had no doubt once been used to house knights and squires, who watched for invaders arriving by land or by sea from its turret walk, and who lived in the lower floors; the staterooms where she and Severus were currently, ahem, spending time together had probably been officers' quarters or barracks. The western part of the central wing held the vast entrance hall, kitchens, dining halls, and ballroom, and had no doubt been where the Snapes had received and entertained guests.

The eastern half of the central wing was dominated by another large entrance hall, not as majestic in scale as the first, but still impressive. Whereas the other hall was a place for a large crowd of noble guests to assemble before being led into the grand mead hall, the second hall was a large sitting room, full of massive antique furniture of handsomely carved dark oak, and with a great hearth of green marble that looked as though it hadn't been lit in years. In all, it was a very pleasant room, even if it was only dimly lit and the upholstery and rugs were shabby. It was instantly apparent to Emily that with new upholstery and a thorough scouring, with a good blaze in the hearth and a lot of oil lamps, this room could be both impressive and cosy.

A sound of dripping was readily apparent the moment they came in, however, and Severus scowled deeply, stalking forward and aiming his wand at the roof – "Constructivus Reparo" – and the leak stopped. He then took a moment to run a critical eye over the two-storey high, many-paned windows, running a hand along the windowsills to check for dampness.

"This happens every time it rains. There's just no way around it, alas," he grumbled when he rejoined Emily.

Adjacent to the main sitting room was an equally spacious, shabby, and cosy drawing room, with elegant writing desks and easy chairs for reading, and glass double doors that opened onto a wide stone terrace that would have been a lovely place to have breakfast on a sunnier morning. Two comfortable chairs were set on either side of a handsome antique chessboard of black and white marble before the hearth, and much of the walls were lined with tall bookshelves, full to bursting with books bound in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries behind etched glass doors. Emily spent several pleasant minutes browsing through the titles – Joyce, Shaw, Poe, Hawthorne, the complete works of Shakespeare and Marlowe, Jane Austen, each of the Brontë sisters, and Ann Radcliffe, and any number of well-regarded Wizarding writers as well, including Buckminster Swain's Ars Alchymia, a Biography of Nicholas Flamel.

"I should have known better than to bring you into a roomful of books, now I'll never hear from you again," Severus said, joining her in front of the bookcases.

"This is all wonderful, darling, really," Emily said, her eyes skimming over titles. "The rain only makes it cosier."

"Well, I can't claim I put it together myself, everything in here used to be in my grandmother Octavia Prince's drawing room. This room was almost bare before, so when she left all her things to me I just cleared this room out and recreated the way hers looked, because I'd always liked it," he said. He nodded toward the bookshelves – "Those were all her books, there. We already had some of the same works in the library here, but I couldn't stand to part with any of them because she made notes in some of the margins. I know it's sentimental... " He let the sentence trail off.

Emily nestled against his side again. "I couldn't stand to give away any of my grandmother's books either," she said softly.

"As it turns out, we've ended up with three different libraries in this house, oddly enough." He offered her his arm and escorted her out of the drawing room and across the hall, to a long, high chamber lined floor to ceiling with dark wood bookshelves perhaps half full with bound volumes, and here and there a great dictionary or magical grimoire on a stand. As far as furniture, though, there was only a single expansive sofa and overstuffed ottoman, and a small side table, upon which sat an oil lamp. Otherwise, the room was entirely bare, although there were many squares and rectangles of darker wood on the hardwood floor marking where other bits of furniture had once been.

The upper floors of the east central wing were given over to several rather cramped bedrooms with what could only be described as dark, old-fashioned, and ugly flocked wallpaper, each with a plain single bedstead, washstand, and dresser of carved dark oak. In one of the bedrooms there had obviously been a leak that had gone undetected for some time, and a scent of powdery mildew reached Emily's nose when the door was opened. Severus let fly a few Reparo and Impervius spells, then firmly closed the door, resolving to send the elves to attend to that later.

At the end of the eastern wing, he threw open the door to a cosy, round chamber with a high ceiling, obviously the interior of a small tower. "This is perhaps my favourite room in the castle – my mother's library."

The walls of this chamber were lined with books as well, all of which looked as though someone had really read them to bits or gotten them second-hand, then patched the covers with Spellotape. Amidst the bookshelves were a dainty chaise and armchairs covered with faded flowered chintz, a small Victorian writing desk, and a child's desk with a tiny chair beside it. Emily bent over the little desk, noting that someone had scratched the name Severus into it with a pocketknife. She traced the childish letters with one finger, smiling.

She turned toward the other writing desk – noting that it was of a very delicate and subtly ornamented style, no doubt intended for an upper-class lady. There were several pieces of tarnished but weighty and highly detailed silver on the desktop – an inkwell, a magnifying glass, and pen stand – all done in a swirling Art Nouveau sort of motif, and looking as though they hadn't been touched in years. For a single long moment she pictured the desk set all shiny and sparkling after a good thorough polishing.

"This was your schoolroom, when you were a boy?" she asked, turning toward her host.

"Yes, this used to be the wing where we lived," Severus told her. "The western wing was off limits to me. For years, my father kept all the staterooms in constant readiness for very important guests, who we actually ended up entertaining only two or three times. Not long after I inherited the place I ended up taking over the best stateroom in the castle – only to then be appalled by the amount of firewood I ended up going through in the winter."

Emily nodded, chuckling a little. Coming from such a temperate climate herself, where the chill of the coldest winter nights could be negated by closing the windows and adding more blankets to her bed, she had never had to worry about staying warm until she experienced her first Scottish winter. But this far north, she realised, life would be miserable unless one had firewood and a good roof overhead. And the inverse of the twenty-hour summer days they had lately been having would be endless nights, where one would need candles and lamp oil all day long. "I'd imagine your trips home for the Christmas holidays could be a bit dreary, without any sunlight."

He sighed. "Half the time I just end up staying at Hogwarts over the Christmas holidays, although I don't know which is worse, twenty-four hours of pitch-black dark outside or Albus's attempts at Christmas cheer."

Emily gave a little, commiserating laugh, wrapping her arms around his waist and snuggling her head on his shoulder. Severus raised her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly.

"Come on, there's only the northeastern wing left."

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The northeasternmost and final chamber to the castle was a single large hall three storeys high, ornamented with several stained glass windows. This part of the castle looked to have been built at a later date than the rest of the structure – perhaps the fourteenth or fifteenth century, she thought. There were many more Anglo-Saxon crosses cut into the stone carvings on the walls, often ornamented with more carved vines and leaves.

"It's a chapel," Emily said, coming forward for a closer view of the cross – a very Celtic and faintly pagan cross, now that she looked closer. As she wandered further into the room, she noticed an elaborate stone cross centred on the far wall, and then off to one side, a small alcove with stone shelves for candles, surrounding a smaller stained glass depiction of a sweet-faced, dark-haired woman in a blue mantle, with a nimbus of golden light around her head – the Christian Virgin Mary. She approached this image, bowed to Her, and then bent her head over her clasped hands.

"Emily?" Severus approached her from behind.

Sssh, she murmured, and went back to her devotions. After a minute or two, she turned to her companion and smiled.

"Sorry to disturb you," he said, looking a bit uncomfortable. "I've read about your religion, but I don't claim to be an expert. I'm curious – when did you start praying to Christian religious figures?"

"You didn't disturb me, it's all right. My religion allows me to pray to any goddess or gods because they're all a part of Her," Emily said, studying the image before her. "The Virgin Mary is the Christian personification of pure, selfless mother love – I can easily imagine Her as a part of my Goddess."

"Well, I've no doubt that the family didn't use this chapel much after it was built – it was probably put in to keep up appearances for those who might have persecuted us once for having a lot of witches and wizards in the family," her host said, with an ironic shrug. "I'll not pretend that the Snapes have ever produced any saints or any sort of clergy. We've never tended to be very observant, sorry."

She looked at him curiously. "Why are you sorry?" she asked.

"Well, I do realise I'm talking to someone who believes she does magic by the will of her Goddess, who fights under the banner of a Goddess, and who adheres to a military code of honour and rules of engagement all formed by religious convictions," her companion observed wryly. "The closest analogues we have in this world to the Order of the Morrigan were perhaps the Knights Templar, or the Order of Hospitalers."

"Yes, I know. But why do you have to apologise to me because I'm religious and you aren't? It doesn't make me better than you," she said, shrugging.

"Well, there are those who would say a holy warrior had rather more claim to virtue than a former Death Eater," Severus said darkly.

"And there are those who would say that a bloke who spends all his time trying to overthrow Voldemort and cure iron burns has more claim to virtue than someone who had an affair with a married bloke, too," she pointed out, a little testily.

Peripherally, she could feel his eyes on the side of her face. He started to speak, but then seemed to think better of what he had been about to say, and fell silent. Finally he insisted: "But it wasn't really adultery for you. You're not married and he is – if anyone disregarded an oath, it was him."

"Yes, that's the sophist's argument, but I can't really buy it. I went to his wedding, I witnessed their vows and believed them to be sacred, and accepted their hospitality that day. That creates a promise from me to respect their commitment – and I didn't. Of course he was doing everything in his power to persuade me to disregard that commitment, but that still doesn't excuse me." She turned toward him with a bitter little laugh – "I have to admit, my dear, perhaps I've been so snappish with you ever since I joined the Order because I've felt rather inferior to you for some time."

Severus was silent for a very long moment, perhaps too surprised by the painful honesty of her answer to speak. "Don't – I don't want you to feel inferior to me," he said quietly, and that was the end of that. "Is there anything you can do to be reconciled? I know some faiths have a sacrament where one can confess one's faults and be forgiven... "

Emily shook her head. "No, it doesn't work like that for us. We don't have clergy proper – if I want to confess myself to a friend or authority figure and ask advice, I can do that of course, but no one can offer me sacramental forgiveness if I repent and do penance or what have you. I'll have to work that out for myself, and hope that in time, She'll forgive me."

"What are you going to do?" he asked quietly.

"No offence, dear, but that's between Her and me," she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

"Fair enough," Severus replied, then glanced at his watch. "We should probably head back for lunch. Cecile will be despondent if we miss her fish pie."

"What do you want to do after lunch? There's still the option of hide and seek," Emily pointed out, smirking.

"I've got an idea," Severus murmured. "Do you play chess?"

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Lunch was just as good as breakfast. Cecile and Philomela had been preparing the pie all morning – the lightest of whole-wheat phyllo dough wrapped around an incredibly delicate blend of local shell- and fin-fish, served with fresh greens. Afterward, Severus ignited a blaze in the drawing room with a few Incendio spells, and then he and Emily took up positions on the opposing sides of the chessboard before the hearth. Cecile whisked in and made sure both combatants were well supplied with hot tea.

"So... shall we put a little wager on the outcome?" Emily asked her opponent, rolling her queen between her fingers.

"What do you have in mind?" he asked in his silkiest voice.

"Winner gets to be on top?"

"My dear, if I bed you without going through the full repertoire of positions, I feel deprived." He said it in that tone that she affectionately called insufferably cocky, and he would have called gently smug; a tone of infinite expertise on the subject of bedding the lady he was addressing. He had, after all, been her lover for all of four days.

"Oh, Severus. You're such a beast. I adore you."

"Bloody right you do," he said with mock severity, openly playing the queen's gambit decline, moving his white queen's pawn forward two spaces.

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He had her in checkmate in ten moves.

They played again. This time checkmate only took eight moves.

"Hmm, it appears that compared to you, I'm not very good at chess," Emily said, with a rather sulky swig from her teacup.

"You seem rather a beginner," Severus observed tactfully.

"I know how all the pieces move," she said, shrugging. "Is there more to it than that?"

He just looked at her for a long moment, studiously keeping his expression neutral, then started returning her black pieces back to their opening positions.

"All right, you think that's the silliest question you've ever heard, I get it."

Severus shrugged. "I didn't say a damn thing."

"You didn't have to," she retorted, pouting. "You might have told me you were some sort of learned grand master who was going to wipe the floor with me."

"Just like you could have told me you were some kind of Master-At-Arms before your first bout with me?" he asked, returning his white pieces back to their proper opening stances.

"I gave you two hours' worth of training before I wiped the floor with you," she pointed out.

"All right then, I shall return the favour. This is called the queen's gambit declined." He moved his white queen's pawn two spaces forward. "It's probably the most popular chess opening. The reason for that is, it allows you to start from a very strong and easily defensible position. Now, tell me what you would do to counter it."

He leaned his chin on his hand as he waited for her reply, a lock of black hair falling almost into his eyes.

The fire crackled in the grate, and the rain plashed mightily against the windows all that afternoon – and despite a valiant effort and close attention to everything Severus told her about chess, he still had an uncanny ability to pin her king in impossible predicaments all across the chessboard no matter how she tried to hide. He was especially good at launching long-range attacks from far across the board – his queen or bishops were always coming from about six spaces away to put her in check, or else a knight would be popping up in the most disconcerting place imaginable.

"You've been playing for a long time, haven't you," Emily observed, sometime after her fifth or sixth crushing, head-scratching defeat.

"Yes, since I was about eight. We have a chess club in town led up by a nationally ranked grandmaster, and I'd been taking lessons from him for years."

"And I never would have noticed," she replied with sarcastic brightness.

"Well, you're the one who suggested we play for sexual favours, so my competitive instincts might be rather more cutthroat than usual," Severus pointed out. He bent over the board with a deliciously evil little smirk, then moved his right castle three spaces, effectively pinning Emily's king's only escape route from the queen who had him in check. "And at the rate you're going, it looks as though I'll be on top for quite some time. Checkmate."

Emily surveyed the board in dismay. "Bloody hell," she said, flinging back in her chair. "I've been had by a ruddy great chess shark."

"You haven't been had as well as you'll be had later, my dear." He leaned across the table, took her hand, and brought it to his lips. "At luck would have it, we have a few hours before supper, so would you like to make good on your wager now, or later?"

Her gaze met his across the table with a diabolical little grin. "Now works for me... but only if you promise to be utterly demanding and insufferable about it."

His eyes gleamed. "That can be arranged. How about this – why don't you go upstairs, put on that appalling little black frock you wore the night you showed up at my quarters to ask for a bit of emergency potion-making, and we'll let matters go from there... ?"

She sighed. "Yes... that can be arranged."

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Not long afterward, Severus knocked lightly on their bedroom door, and heard a seductive warble of Come in, darling... He smirked to himself as he slid into the room.

All the heavy velvet drapes were drawn, leaving the room suggestively dim; the only light came from a single shaded candle. His lover was waiting for him, draped over his bed and lazily brushing her dandelion-floss hair with a silver-backed brush. Sweet Merlin, he'd forgotten how appalling that lacy little spidersilk frock really was, and that afternoon she had left off the evening cloak but had recalled his idle remark about developing a fetish for black suspendered stockings. Yes, those legs really needed to join that quim and those lips on the controlled substances list.

She looked up with a mischievous smile when she saw him, and set the brush aside on the night table. Oh, how could he have ever thought that twinkly, insinuating little smile was insolent or offensive. Bloody hell, he had never seen a facial expression with so full of shameless allure or erotic possibility in his life.

"So, my victorious drawing room warrior. It appears that I've been had, and now I am to be had for quite some time." She beckoned him closer to her with a lazy gesture of her slender hand.

"And does that meet with your approval, my dear?"

She sighed. "I can hardly wait."

Severus Snape never thought he would see the day when he had a lascivious Faerie lying on his bed, wearing what amounted to some black silk and lace erotica of the highest order. It was a scenario straight out of one of his most fantastical teenage erotic reveries, in which the good Faerie arrived to offer the clever hero his heart's desire once he had out-foxed or out-riddled her. Or perhaps this was really the scenario in which the evil Faerie appeared to tempt the hero from his quest – but he didn't see any reason whatsoever why he should resist. If one had to pass up such temptation as this, the quest couldn't have been that important anyway.

Then he had just crossed the bedroom floor and seized her, taking another of those long, selfish, callbox-ish kisses of her, and felt her arms twine around his neck as she returned it with equal ardour. Why not, she had expressly stipulated that he was to be demanding and insufferable about this, and one couldn't disappoint a lady. Yes, you absurd, impossible, maddeningly fuckable female – I can think of something I wouldn't mind having.

A moment later they had just fallen on each other, and she was dragging his shirt and waistcoat off his bare shoulders. He had slipped a hand under her diaphanous skirt and felt quivering thighflesh above her stocking top, cursing every instant he had wasted when he could have been shamelessly molesting her all through the school year, and also discovered that while she had remembered his fondness for gartered stockings, she had left off any sort of knickers. Probably for the best, that – at this point he'd have just torn them off her again, and a lady probably wouldn't appreciate the wholesale destruction of all her lingerie.

Then she had his trousers open and that shameless little hand was closing around his cock – damn, how could she always touch him in exactly the way he found most arousing – and then, oh fuck all the foreplay, you want this as much as I do and we both know it. Come here, you, I want you now.

He laid her on the bed and in the space of another heartbeat was sheathed inside the impossible luxury of her flesh, both still half-dressed, and just let himself take her selfishly, which in this instance meant that he was going to keep her there for a very long time. Their first days together had been blindingly intense, but now he was beginning to take the most pleasure in prolonging lovemaking, not rushing toward immediate gratification, but taking a long, languorous time to build toward it. Or at least he was starting to appreciate delayed gratification – Emily didn't seem to be able to subdue her reaction to him much at this moment. She had been meltingly ready for him a minute after he put the first kiss on her shoulder, responding to him without reserve or calculation. All of her mystery, her mythology, her secrets, eagerly straining against him in bed – yes, you're mine, you want me –

And then she had thrown her head back on the pillow with a long gasp, her body arching harder onto him as she came, and he urged her into climax but held himself back, not wishing for this to be over just yet. He was starting to adore watching her face as she came, seeing that ecstasy playing out in her expressions, and it was also exquisite agony to feel his own aching lust so deep inside her during her orgasm, and then to start again, bringing the tension in her to crisis for a second time – sweet Merlin, it was almost too good to be real.

There was just something so utterly natural about this. All of the women he had slept with previously seemed to take it as a given that sex was something taboo and shameful, a vice to be indulged in secret, and considered themselves quite the scandalous femme fatales indeed for pursuing him and enjoying him in various guest bedrooms. Severus had soon tired of being the means of some girl's rebellion against her parents, when all he really wanted was pleasure and affection. Now, with his lover clamouring under him like some wild-eyed little nymph writhing beneath her satyr beloved, her hands clutching the small of his back so as to fit herself even closer to him as her second orgasm neared and his own wild excitement mounted – suddenly all that vice and corruption seemed very far away.

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There are few experiences more rewarding than to have all one's lustful and depraved appetites sated, only to then go downstairs to a hearty supper of lamb cassoulet and lots of red wine. Evening found the elves drawing heavy velvet drapes against the gloomy late-night sunshine in preparation for sleep, and Severus and Emily comfortably ensconced on one of the shabby, overstuffed sofas in the east wing's sitting room before another comfortable blaze, each with a book and a glass of smooth old Scotch whiskey within easy reach. The rains continued for hours, and the weather grew cooler and the winds sharper as the far north summer sun dropped lower on the horizon.

For several quiet, comfortable hours, there was nothing but companionable silence, and occasionally the sound of pages turning. Emily couldn't have imagined anything cosier or more relaxing – it was so pleasant to have someone with whom she could just be quiet, who didn't require a constant audience reinforcing his over-inflated opinion of himself. She glanced at her companion, admiring his black, etched silhouette in the firelight. He had his book – one of his ubiquitous crumbling leather-bound tomes – open on the arm of the sofa, and was bending over it with such a thoughtful expression that it was impossible for her to resist the temptation to kiss his cheek.

"What was that for?" he asked, glancing in her direction.

"Oh, nothing. I just felt like kissing you." She went back to her reading.

"Nothing wrong with that." He smiled faintly, and turned another page.

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At perhaps midnight, Emily put her book aside and lay down on the sofa, pillowing her head on Severus's knee.

"Do you want to go up to bed?" he asked, stroking her tousled hair.

"No, this is fine. Stay up and read as long as you like." Within moments, she was asleep. Severus indulged himself with a long moment of gazing at her peaceful profile before he fell to reading again.

Within a quarter hour, though, he felt his own eyelids start to droop. Something about listening to her quiet, regular breathing was immensely relaxing, and the woman did make sleeping look absolutely luscious, like the goddess Nepenthe on her shadowed bower. He put his book aside and gently nudged his companion.

"Come on, young lady," he murmured, as he helped her up off the sofa. "Time for bed."

He steered her out of the east wing and up the tower steps, and led her into what he was coming to think of as their room. She undressed drowsily and got under the bedclothes, and when he joined her there, she settled cosily down into her now-accustomed place in the nook of his shoulder.

"Emily?"

"Yes, love?"

"I hate to ask, but won't he start to miss you soon?"

She shook her head, one arm wrapping around him. "Don't worry. If Albus needs us I'm sure he'll just send us an owl posthaste."

"I wasn't talking about Albus," he said, after a long pause – but she had already closed her eyes and her breathing was deep and regular, asleep.

It was amazing, he thought, holding her close against his side – when Malfoy was out of her sight, he really was out of her mind. She hadn't brought him up even once since he had persuaded her to put down her bag and refuse to go to him five days earlier. Even when they had discussed the circumstances of her relationship with him in the chapel earlier that day, she had talked in terms of abstracts, of concepts and ethics, rather than discussing a single person.

You never really cared for him, he thought.

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The next morning she greeted him with "Good morning, beautiful," yet again.

"Oh come off it, not this again."

"Come off it yourself, darling – if I had one delivered by owl post, could you let yourself accept a compliment?" Severus just averted his eyes again – the Head of Slytherin House still didn't seem quite used to waking up to such things being said to him.

Emily wrapped her arms around him and nestled her cheek against his. "Oh thou doubting Thomas, what further proof can I offer you? All right, how about this. Do you remember that... interval the other day when I spent some time with my head about at the level of your beltline?"

He closed his eyes and shivered for a single long moment. "Yes... that was rather memorable."

"Did you at any point doubt my ardour or enthusiasm for the proceedings?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Then good morning, oh my superlatively beautiful, enchanting, brilliant, and fuckable one," she whispered into his ear, caressing every syllable with her tongue.

He laughed softly, and kissed her. "By the time we get back to Hogwarts, the Great Hall won't be big enough to contain the size of my head. You've been warned."

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Emily got into the shower first that morning, and when Severus came out of the bathroom, towelling his wet hair, he found her dressed in canvas fencing knickers and a cotton jersey, lacing up a pair of trainers.

"All right, you got to trounce me all day yesterday at chess. Now I want to do something where I can trounce you." She took a leather fencing glove from behind her back and threw it at his feet.

"Ah, you'd like to go a few touches, then? Did you bring equipment?"

"Yes, for both of us. Is there a big empty room with a wooden floor somewhere?"

"Yes, there's a room in the east wing that fits that description nicely."

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Cecile brought out another hearty breakfast that morning, cheddar scones and thick-cut bacon and pots of piping hot tea, accompanied by more excited reports of her explorations of the woods around the castle. The elf kept refilling the scone basket and bacon platter at such an enthusiastic rate that Severus said later that with Cecile around, they would have to make a daily habit of these fencing sessions if he wanted to keep fitting into his robes.

An hour later, they were both in a long, narrow, almost entirely bare chamber in the east wing, doing preliminary stretches and drills in preparation for an afternoon's competitive fencing session. Emily had taken up a position close to one of the corners of the room, using one of the north windowsills as a barre as she ran through any number of increasingly difficult stretches. When she was finished, she paused, and ran a thoughtful, curious hand along the north-facing windowsill, then touched the wall to her right, which was also covered with dark, old-fashioned wallpaper.

Severus was watching her curiously as she went about this investigation. "What is it?"

"Hmmm... just noticed something. It seemed to me when you were showing me around yesterday that this room and the two next to it to the east were probably one big room with a fireplace at either end at one point, I'm thinking," she told him, running her hand further along the wall. "See, the north and west walls are all stone and wood, and this east wall is all prefab and plaster. So, someone decided to break a bigger space into this room and the two bedrooms next to it at some point, probably within the last century, right?"

"Yes, that would have been my great-grandfather. He put about seven new bedrooms into this wing – turned it into a sort of dormitory in anticipation of the huge brood of children he never had, because his wife died when their first child was just a baby. This space here was to have been the family schoolroom, I believe. Why, what are you thinking?"

"Oh, nothing, don't worry about it." It probably wasn't the height of politeness to tell one's host about how she would allocate the space in his home if it belonged to her, so she was prepared to abandon her idea unspoken.

Severus glanced from her to the wall. "No, tell me."

Emily picked up her fencing mask and tucked it under her arm. "Well, all right, it's just an idle thought. If this was my house, I'd knock out all the prefab walls and take down the wallpaper, and then just have one big room with wood-panelled walls and two fireplaces at either end of it, and make it into a giant study or saloon or map room like it probably was originally. Or maybe I'd just take all the furniture out, put in some athletic flooring and armament racks, and make a nice indoor fencing studio out of it, so I could keep up on my training even when it was too cold and wet to go outside."

"That's a wonderful idea, in theory," Severus said, with a little, ironic, twist of one corner of his mouth. "However, unless you've got a construction crew in your pocket, it'll have to wait until I've replaced the roof, alas. With an old house of this size there's always some improvement that could be made to it... " His only response was an offhanded shrug, but his scent took a turn toward the acid – clearly, Snape Hall's condition was a source of much aggravation for him, and had been for a very long time.

"Of course, dear," she replied, then slipped on her fencing mask and assumed en garde position, motioning for him to join her. "Ready?"

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They spent most of that morning and afternoon in a series of bouts that were a combination of coaching sessions and combat. "Nice work, darling, I can tell you've been practicing dodges. Have I ever told you how good your form is? If you were a squire in one of my bladework classes at home, I'd be dragging you up in front of the class for demonstrations."

"I still have yet to score a single point from you, oh thou ruddy great flatterer." He feinted to her right shoulder, then disengaged and lunged forward in a low-line attack, retreating with an annoyed scowl as she anticipated the attack and solidly parried.

"You will, one day. Just keep trying."

"Just how much of this new complimentary attitude about my performance on the fencing strip is due to my performance elsewhere?" he asked wryly. An instant later, he noticed her point coming at his left shoulder and dropped it out of the way with a practiced dexterity that filled his coach's heart with pride.

"Good! And no, you didn't start impressing me as a fencer just because we started sleeping together."

"Oh, really." Clearly, her opponent wasn't buying a word of it.

"No, I always thought you were talented. The only thing that's different now, is that I feel like I can actually tell you about it." She grinned at him through the fencing mask – "If you really want to make this interesting, we could always wager for sexual favours."

"Not on your life – I only gamble when the odds are in my favour, thanks."

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After several hours spent wearing themselves out with fencing, they went upstairs to their bedroom and shared a very long hot shower, scrubbing away several hours' worth of sweat and exertion and enjoying the lubricious qualities of each other's overheated flesh, well slicked with soapsuds. As always, competition of any kind brought out the dominant alpha wolf in him, and the desire to remind her that he now considered her to be his, no matter how often she trounced him in combat or was sharked by him at chess. After so many months of a cold, touch-me-not attitude from him, Emily thought there was nothing more thrilling than to feel him confidently laying claim to whatever he wanted of her, the more demanding, the better. Before long he had her spread against the wall and was taking her from behind, very slowly and deliberately, one hand stroking between her thighs and one curving around her breasts. He was devouring her shoulder, the back of her neck, and then she craned her lips back to him, and he devoured them too as the steam wreathed around them.

They took a languorous time about towelling each other off in bed afterwards, and then Emily again took Severus's comb away from him and detangled his hair, whereupon he took the comb back and did the same for her. Then he put a hand inside his robe and kneaded his right shoulder for a moment before turning to her with a pained expression – "Emily... er, my shoulder has been hurting again. If you have five minutes, would you mind... "

She only laughed. Then she laid him on his stomach. "Of course I can. Lie down," she said soothingly, drawing the dressing gown off his shoulders and tucking the bedclothes up to his waist.

"I do beg your pardon for the blinding glare off my pallid skin, but I never claimed to be the outdoorsy sort who spends all his time on the Quidditch pitch," Severus muttered, as he settled down on the pillow, resting his dark head on his crossed arms. "I'm afraid I'll never be much of an athlete."

"Not much of an athlete my arse, just because you aren't built like some huge rugby player or a Quidditch Beater doesn't mean you can't be a fine athlete – it's just a matter of finding a sport that suits you," Emily chided, reclining next to him and beginning to gently knead his shoulders. "I've always said that you were a genius for the spatial aspect of sword combat, my dear, and you've got the perfect build for a fencer or dagger fighter as well, so I'll have no more of this not much of an athlete shite, thanks."

"'Perfect build for a fencer' – what do you mean?" he asked, craning back to look at her.

"Tall, thin, with long arms and legs – that gives you the advantage of a long reach and a small target area," Emily said, shrugging. "Honestly, love, if you ever get the chance to see the Fianna working out, you'll note that except for the pookas and trolls, Faery soldiers are all built like you. The Orcs are the ones built like rugby linemen, and even they think twice before attacking us, so I'll hear no more aspersions cast on your athletic ability, silly thing. If the Sirius Blacks of the world ever give you a hard time again, just throw down a glove and challenge him to a nice bout of fencing, because what with all the training you did with me, you could probably take him apart in about five minutes."

Severus relaxed, picturing himself in a bout with the clumsy, inexperienced Sirius Black – the big gorilla would probably fall for a few feints to the chest in a second, then it would be a simple matter of a tight disengage and thrust, or a swift, brutal beat to his opponent's foil and a hard lunge. He imagined landing a good satisfying hit to Black's sternum and knocking the wind out of him... he smirked a little into the pillow, just imagining it.

Emily glanced down at him and chuckled. "I see you like that idea."

"Yes, I do. Rather a lot, now that I think of it."

His lover just laughed merrily, and put a soft kiss between his shoulder blades. She continued what she was doing to his shoulders and back, which felt incredible. As before in the fencing studio at Hogwarts, she just sank her fingers gently into his sore muscles and kneaded him like bread dough, until he felt ancient knots of tension breaking up and uncoiling. After about an hour, her hands showed no signs of tiring, and he would have sworn that his shoulders were sitting about two inches lower than usual.

He had meant to thank her, but he was asleep.

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Severus awoke an hour or two later in an unusually good mood – something about wearing himself out in physical competition, a combined hot shower and intense session of lovemaking, and a thorough back massage followed by a long stressless nap was indescribably relaxing. He stretched and sat up, finding himself alone in the bedroom. Someone had refilled the bedside carafe with cool water, and left his flannel dressing gown neatly folded on the chair beside the bed.

He got up, got dressed and combed his hair, then went in search of Emily, which in a castle the size of Snape Hall, could take some time. After a bit of searching, he noticed the table in the small dining room was already set for dinner, with a freshly polished silver candelabra with new wax candles, two place settings and wineglasses, and heard her answering his calls from the kitchen.

The air was full of the scent of some rich meat cooking as he came into the kitchen, and there were several boxes from the local grocer's on the butcher block preparation table. Severus glanced over the groceries, noting at least a dozen boxes of wax tapers, bottles of French and Californian wine, British and Irish beer, Grand Marnier orange liqueur, a French cognac and an excellent twenty-five-year-old single-malt Scotch, bunches of aromatic fresh herbs, a bag of whole-wheat flour, two or three tiny wheels of cheese, a basket of mushrooms, and a jar of Seville blood-orange marmalade. A large bunch of asparagus and a mess of field greens were in colanders in the sink, dewy with fresh washing, a bottle of champagne was chilling in a bucket of ice water, and a long loaf of crisp wheat baguette lay on a cutting board on the table. He caught a strong scent of garlic as he approached her – she had been mincing cloves of fresh garlic as he came in.

Emily looked up from her work with the bright smile he was becoming used to seeing when she greeted him. She was barefoot, damp loose hair, no makeup; wearing a soft black spidersilk skirt and one of those pintucked, Victorian-lingerie camisoles of lacy white cotton... Merlin's beard, if she ever wanted to pry him off of her, she kept putting on exactly the wrong clothes for it. "There you are. How are you? Did you sleep well?" she asked as he approached her.

"Yes, I'm feeling much better," he said, putting a light kiss on her bare shoulder. "Oh, bloody hell, don't tell me you cook, too. Where are the elves?"

"I had the elves working on something after lunch today, and when they finished I told them to just have their suppers and take the rest of the night off, and I'd get our supper myself."

"Really – what did you have the elves working on?"

She smiled sidelong at him; a delicious little I-have-a-surprise-for-you kind of smile. "Don't worry, you'll find out later."

"I know better than to try to wheedle information out of a Faerie, so I'll wait till later then," he said, his arch tone belied by the lazy kisses he kept putting on her shoulder and the back of her neck. "I see you ordered up some provisions from town."

"Mmm-hmm. I sent Cecile out this morning."

"What's the Scotch for?"

"You, of course. I was going to serve champagne with the appetiser, but if you'd prefer a finger of Scotch I'll pour one for you."

"Champagne with the appetiser, eh? What's for supper?"

"We're starting with local Orcadian smoked loch trout with dill créme fraiche on toasted wheat baguette with spring greens and a glass of champagne – or Scotch if you're from Orkney – then proceeding on to duckling a l'orange with garlic potatoes and asparagus with parsley butter and a glass of American red zinfandel, then for dessert it's Brie and English cheddar with a snifter of something," she replied, with the pert, demure air of a maitre d' listing the evening's specials.

"Well – someone was feeling ambitious tonight," he murmured, putting another little kiss on her shoulder.

"Oh no, this is easy. At home if you want smoked trout and roast duck, most of the time you'd have to go out and catch, gut, filet, and smoke the fish, and then shoot, pluck, and dress the duck," she told him. "So you see, to just order an exact number of pounds of pre-butchered meat up from the market feels positively decadent."

"I see." She was mincing the garlic with such slow and deliberate care that Severus impatiently took the knife out of her hand and took over. "Here, let me do that. At the rate you're going we'll be here all night."

Emily stepped aside with a giggle. "Yes, sir. I see that while one can take Professor Snape out of his Potions classroom, one can't take the Potions Master out of Professor Snape."

"Bloody right you can't. Pour me a Scotch, you."

She turned away from him with another merry giggle, and a second later a cut-crystal glass of smooth old whiskey appeared in front of him. Then he heard a champagne cork pop, and his companion poured herself a glass of Veuve Cliquot.

Severus finished mincing the garlic into a very fine and precise purée in minutes, then started on the parsley and the dill. "Roast duck and garlic potatoes – am I sensing a theme from our third date this evening?"

"Oh yes – duck and potatoes is my favourite supper and I could eat it every night. It was terribly suave of you to ask the elves to serve that for our dinner the other night, darling," she warbled, sipping wine and beginning to slice the bread.

Terribly suave of him – oh yes, all he had done was ask the house-elves to send up a supper that a Faerie wouldn't find toxic in any way. Apparently one of the elves knew what her favourite supper was, probably Cecile – but why disabuse her of the charming notion that it was a deliberate kindness on his part. "Just trying to be a good host, my dear," he replied limpidly.

Dinner preparations continued apace – Emily put the asparagus on the stove to steam, then drained the potatoes and mashed them up with liberal amounts of chopped parsley and garlic, butter, hot milk, black pepper and salt. She then removed the roast duckling from the oven and put it on a platter, then scraped off the rich drippings from the roasting pan with splashes of cognac and Grand Marnier, finally pouring the whole savoury lot into a saucepan. The resulting gravy was then thickened with dollops of marmalade and sprinkles of wheat flour.

"Anything I can do?" Severus asked.

"Let's see... you can put a cover on the duck so it'll stay hot, toast the baguette, and start putting things on the table," his companion replied cheerily. "Oh, and go ahead and light the candles."

Not long afterward, they were both comfortably ensconced at the dinner table, with a glass in hand and a steaming hot supper before them. The rain was still pouring down outside, but somehow anything outside the oasis of light and warmth around the supper table seemed completely irrelevant.

Peripherally, Severus could see his companion watching him curiously, and he realised that he must have been taking a long moment to contemplate the scene in front of him before taking his seat. "Darling? What is it?"

"Oh... I've just never had anyone cook supper for me who wasn't my mother, or a house-elf," he muttered.

Emily grinned at him. "Get used to new experiences," she said, clinking her glass against his. "Cheers."

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The first course of loch trout and spring greens was excellent, whether one was enjoying it with champagne or Scotch. The second course of duck, potatoes, and asparagus accompanied by the a l'orange sauce and a rich red wine was so good Severus could scarcely believe it was food for humans or Faeries, and he told the cook so. Emily blushed.

After the appetiser and main course, his hostess brought out a platter of cheese, baguette, and more whiskey for him, and a snifter of cognac for herself. She also brought out some heavy, academic-looking books – English Architecture, Revised Edition; A Historical Overview of English Architecture; Dictionary of Architectural Terms. Severus felt the smallest frisson of the taboo at the idea of reading at the table, as his father had always impressed upon him that anyone who would read at the dinner table was the height of all that was unforgivably uncouth, and as such, even reading the Daily Prophet at breakfast during the school year filled him with a fleeting defensiveness. For his lover to bring out some books to share with him at the end of supper now felt like a wonderfully conspiratorial indulgence. She threw one of them open to a page heading entitled Anglo-Saxon Architecture.

"Here, I wanted to show you something," Emily said, downing the last of her cognac.

"Where did you get the books?"

"These are all just some old textbooks from a long-ago survey class I took at Cambridge. I sent Cecile back to Hogwarts and told her to bring back anything with the word Architecture in the title," she explained. "See, look at this diagram, here – look familiar? This is the construction style of most of the northern wing of Snape Hall. Once you get into the uppermost floors, it gets more Norman, but the lower part is all Anglo-Saxon, see?"

Severus glanced over the text beside the diagram of stonework corners – "This says this building style was used between the ninth and tenth centuries, so that sounds about right – "

Just then, a sound of dripping sounded to their right – a section of roofing had apparently worn through in the heavy rain, sending a fat drop of water onto the floor. A thin shower of intermittent drips followed, beginning to pool on the stone floor. Emily took the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket, got up, and put the bucket under the drip.

"There we go." She returned to her seat and bent over the book again. "You were right, earlier – this place could use a new roof," she remarked idly, glancing up at the drip.

"Yes, it really could," he said, perhaps more rudely than he intended. "Shall I get out my wand and Transfigure one up for you right now, then?"

"No, silly – you call up the contractors and get a bunch of construction wizards out here with lumber and roofing materials and have them Transfigure one up for you. That's the way it's usually done, as far as I understood it the last time I was here."

"The only thing wrong with that plan is that I'd have to somehow get a pile of Galleons to pay them with, you see," he sarcastically pointed out.

"Well, yes, they'll probably not do it as a public service." Peripherally, he could see her watching him closely, perhaps wondering what she had said to bring such a churlish reaction out of him.

"And I'm a Potions Master at a public school, my dear."

Her expression clouded. "Oh – there's no income from tenants, or... "

"All of which barely bring in enough to pay for their maintenance. Can we talk about something else, please?"

She glanced again at the drip puddling in the bucket – and suddenly her face lit up, and she turned back to him smiling hugely. "I've just had an idea."

"Then I suppose we must needs hear it then," he replied. The words would have been blisteringly sarcastic when addressed to anyone else, but somehow for her he found himself making an effort to soften them.

"You've got this big lovely thousand-year-old ancestral castle and can't fix all the leaks because there's not enough money. I've got this annoying pile of money I hardly ever use sitting in a vault, and they won't let me in my family's ancestral home because their father went to stay with the Faeries and never came back. So why don't we take some of my pile of money and put a new roof on Snape Hall?"

He stared at her for a very long moment, then muttered, "No."

Emily shrugged. "Why not?"

"Listen to you go on – "Why not." The very idea is impossible."

"It's not impossible. Severus – listen. I've got the inheritance from my grandmother, because my mother's never going to live anywhere other than Arcadia and has no Earthly use for it, and I've got what my father gave me. And, most of the bloody time, I live in a place where I can't spend either pounds or Galleons, and have to pay a solicitor to oversee all of it for me in my absence. So why can't I do something with it if I like? What good does it do anyone for it to just sit there in a vault doing nothing?"

"It's not doing nothing at Gringotts, my dear – last I heard, their compound interest rates were quite good."

"Compound interest. Yes. More money sitting in a vault that I have no use for, because we use the barter system for everything at home."

"I am not having this conversation with you," he growled warningly.

"Dammit, yes, you are – don't look at me like you're about to take an even hundred points from Gryffindor. You've been having this conversation with me for the last ten minutes, and I'm not finished with it yet."

"And what am I supposed to give you in exchange for that kind of money?"

"Well, last I checked, you still haven't deposited the cheque I gave you for the potions consulting in May – "

Severus turned toward the windows, pained. "Emily, I was never going to ask you for anything in return for that. Let's just call it pro bono work performed out of ordinary decency and put it to rest. Though the figure on that cheque was flattering, I must admit."

"Then why did you keep on for all those weeks about how you were going to bill me?"

"Is it so hard to believe that I was rather enjoying the way you treated me when you were feeling grateful?"

"No, it isn't," she said, laying her hand over his. "How about this – in return, you can let me stay here with you sometimes."

"I'd do that anyway," he replied, shrugging. "Look, if you're really determined to pursue this, I promise I'll talk to you about it in five years, no sooner. And I don't promise to do anything more than talk about it then."

"Oh yes – five years of more water damage to the roof and the walls and the flooring every time it rains. And this being Scotland, it will rain."

"Thank you ever so much for reminding me," he said, with just a second's severe warning look.

Emily glanced down at her glass, abashed, but was not yet finished making her case. "Truthfully, though, how do you know I'll even be around in five years?" she asked quietly. "What if we never get a chance to have that talk about it?"

He pulled his hand out from under hers in a fury. "Fine – all the more reason for us to not talk about this," he snapped, the old anger flooding back. "Since you think you'll have met someone else by then, it seems – "

"Actually, I was thinking more in terms of what if some great big fecking Orc kills me before then, but I thought it would be too depressing to ask, How do you know I'll still be alive in five years, over dinner," she flashed back, eyes blazing. "But you seem to think it's more likely that I'll up and flit off with someone else. Thanks, I really appreciate that. So much for trying to be fecking tactful – you know, it wasn't all that long ago that I was known to a whole lot of people as someone's very faithful and devoted wife." She pushed back from the table with a clatter of silverware against china, then started for the door.

Severus shoved his own chair back, snarling: "Dammit, would you wait a second before you – "

"No, you're right. Forget it. It's stupid for people like us to make plans for the future. Fuck it. You could die tomorrow and so could I."

"Where the hell are you going?" he demanded.

"Bugger off, you," she snapped back, and left the room, slamming the heavy door behind her with a resounding THUD.

A second later, he stood up and pursued her out into the great main hall –

To find that the hall was entirely deserted.

"Well – that's mature!" he shouted. "Always with you, it's Obscure yourself and leave, isn't it – if you wanted some time by yourself, you can always try saying so, you know!"

Silence.

After a moment, he turned on his heel and stalked back to the dining room table, and resumed his seat. He then sloshed a good big shot of whiskey into his glass, and pulled one of Emily's architecture books toward him, rather huffily settling in for a good long read.

If she wanted to talk, she could bloody well come to him and apologise.

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Soon the hour had dragged to eleven-fifteen by the great clock above the hearth, and no one had said a word. Severus had been poring over architecture books for an hour and could barely remember any of what he had just read.

He looked up from the book, and snapped: "You know – I really hate it when you do this. No, scratch that – I absolutely despise when you do this, and I would like it noted that I have never, not once, since I learned how to use the same sort of magic, done it to you," to the air in general.

No answer.

At midnight, he pushed the book aside and shouted – "If I've never told you this before, allow me to emphasise that I think it's profoundly alienating to disappear when you're in the middle of a conversation with someone. Your habit of vanishing at tactless moments is not your most attractive quality and never has been."

No response.

He glared up at the still-dripping ceiling with a look of such concentrated fury that the less brave of the water droplets may have decided to remain outside rather than face the Professor when he was in a temper like this. "Women," he growled.

At one a.m., Severus got up, and called out: "All right, I'm tired and I'm going to bed. You can join me if you want to," to the otherwise empty room. "If you haven't already packed up and left," he muttered as he climbed the stairs to the western tower.

But once he reached the bedroom, he found the pillow already occupied by a tousled red-gold head, a bare shoulder, and an arm banded with violet, red, and black tattoos. Fast asleep, with a sulky little frown still creasing her features. She also looked as though she'd been crying.

Damn.

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He undressed and slid into bed beside her, keeping his back to her. A moment later, she silently wrapped herself around him from behind.

"I bloody hate it when you ignore me," he growled, but allowed himself to be enfolded.

"I bloody hate it when you snap at me. And I wasn't at all wild about that assumption about how I'm going to leave at first opportunity, either."

"It bears repeating that you won't," he said bitterly. "I could stand hearing that a few times before I got tired of it."

"Severus – as I reckon time, we've been together for five days. How can you already be faulting me for not being committed enough?"

"Because of the impression made by how evasive you've been the two terms previous."

"During which I thought you despised me." She threaded her fingers through his. "And I've been with you every hour since you told me how you really felt. Do you still feel like I don't pay enough attention to you?"

"Well – " He flung back against the pillow with a long sigh. "No. Not since the day at Hogsmeade Station. But I'll never have your undivided attention, will I? You're an Order informant, which means you have to carry on at least some semblance of a relationship with Malfoy. By the third week of September, when your assignment ends, you've already told me you'll leave for home as fast as you can. Counting the days, as I recall."

"That was the original plan before, yes. But when the assignment is over, all it means is that I'm free to do what I like after that. I can go back to Cambridge, or I can stay here, or do something else entirely."

"So I'm the wrench in the works then," he snapped, pulling away from her with an accusing look.

"More like – you're an unexpected but very bloody welcome new development. And can't leave for home right away unless the Orc situation is such that Gwydion needs me back immediately, truth be told."

He rolled over in bed and stared at her. "Why? What's going on?"

"I got a message from home just before the Third Task."

"I remember. Mind telling me what it said?" he asked, with a touch of the old sinister eyebrow.

"Grainné Robinett died. Jayson's mother. Just didn't wake up one morning."

"And that means what?" he asked, his brow knitting.

"After Jayson died... her health started to fail. She wasn't a young woman, but she was healthy enough until... and then she just started fading. Jayson had two older brothers – Steifan and Richert. And, now... "

"They blame you for both their mother's and brother's deaths, and given what savoury characters we all know the Robinett lads to be – the King fears for your safety if you come back too soon."

"Exactly. So I can't go home again. At least not right away. Gwydion told me to stay in the Second World until he summons me back."

"So, what are you going to do?" he asked bluntly, in a voice that was bracing for disappointment.

"Do something interesting, hopefully while continuing to see you – if you're still interested," she replied. "I was thinking of maybe asking for my old lecturing job at Cambridge back, and getting another tiny flat there. Then you could come down and stay with me on weekends. I'd like to get to strut my intellectual stuff in front of you occasionally, just to show off. And I'd had this rather nice image of us cooking dinner and getting horribly in each other's way in my tiny kitchen, and then just having wild passionate sex in every room in the place. I know it's silly, but I was having a marvellous time imagining it."

Silence.

"Severus?"

"That... sounds all right," he said, very softly. "But can you keep a secret?"

She laughed. "I'm a Faerie, dear."

"Right – silly question. Dumbledore is going to try to hire you for next year, if you haven't gone back to Arcadia by September." He rolled over in a soft rustle of faded linen sheets. "You'll stay at Hogwarts if he asks, won't you?"

"Well... it is fun to get to teach fencing, and magic," she said. "And it probably does the students good to see a few part-humans on the staff."

"Does that mean you'll stay, then?"

"Yes," she said, brushing her lips over his cheek.

"But it won't be because of Dumbledore, will it?"

"No."

"It'll be because you want to be with me, don't you?" he whispered hoarsely.

Her fingers entwined with his on the pillow.

"Silly wizard – of course I want to be with you," she whispered. "I'm really looking forward to the day when you can take that a bit for granted."