Part Third: The Hart Subvertant, Chapter 36

Chapter 36:

The mood was sombre that morning as Severus and Emily made their way back up to the castle from the beach. Breakfast was an almost silent affair, despite the elves' usual marvellous cooking, and afterward they went out to finish work on the garden, tensely discussing the Dementor attack on Harry Potter.

"Do you think Lucius or You-Know-Who was responsible?" Emily asked, giving voice to both their suspicions.

"Lucius – no, he doesn't have that much influence with them, and doesn't work directly with the Department of Law Enforcement. He'd have to get someone in the executive office to do it for him, either through persuasion, or blackmail, or more likely through Imperio... I won't rule him out, but he's not the likeliest party. As for the Dark Lord, there were supposed to be protections in place for Potter so long as he resides under the same roof as his own blood kin. I've never been privy to any of the specifics regarding that – Albus and I thought it was better for me not to know, in the off-chance that I was ever exposed by the Death Eaters, and... interrogated."

She nodded. "I understand."

"For now, I'll assume that the Dark Lord found some way to get Dementors around the Potter boy's magical protections, until a more likely suspect appears. Potter is in Albus's hands as far as the expulsion, although I don't doubt that Arthur Weasley will be doing everything he can to protect the boy as well. To be perfectly honest, and please don't breathe a word of this to Minerva or Albus, but I've wondered here and there if it might have been better for that boy to have remained outside of Wizard society in general and be raised as a Muggle, rather than attend Hogwarts. It's bad enough having him in class without having to spend every second worrying if some enemy is trying to do away with him yet again."

Emily watched his grim profile with concern. "Yes, I know, love. You don't have to tell me how you feel about Harry Potter." Severus's personality conflicts with Harry Potter and his friends in Gryffindor House were the stuff of Hogwarts legend, even to a foreign visiting professor far on the outskirts of campus politics.

"He's just his arrogant bad seed of a father over again, is the problem," Severus muttered darkly. "Not only that, but he's already even more famous than worthy people like Albus due to the incident in 1981, and the worst part is, he's already completely spoiled by the fame. He works at nothing, he has no interests other than Quidditch, he has all the intellectual curiosity and ambition of your average garden slug, and he disrupts my classes every day with that endless, all-important rivalry of his with Malfoy. It doesn't even occur to either of them that the other people in the class might be there for something other than to witness the disagreements between a couple of spoiled and undisciplined schoolboys. Before Potter arrived at Hogwarts, I never thought I'd see the day when my Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff classes seemed positively restful by comparison to the classes with my own House."

She remained quiet and sympathetic; although her own impressions of Harry Potter had been much more favourable than she knew Severus's to be, she let him get his grievances off his chest without opposition. "Well, hopefully this coming school year will be less of an ordeal for you than the last one," she said. "At least now you'll only have to deal with Mr. Potter and the Death Eaters, instead of Mr. Potter, the Death Eaters, and that pox of a Faery magic professor you can't stand."

That provoked a sardonic, one-cornered smirk from him. "So you really have decided to stay, then? Just can't deny your calling as the faculty advisor of SPEW?"

"Oh yes, I'm staying – I'll let Albus know the first time we get a spare minute back at school. There's a wonderful faculty at Hogwarts, it's such an honour to work with all of them." Her look let him know which member of the faculty she most admired.

Severus put his pruning shears aside, then drew her close into his arms, letting his cheek rest against the side of her forehead. "It's Saturday, isn't it," he said, after a long, silent, tender moment, then took his watch out of his pocket, and clicked it open. "Yes, they won't be more than starting to gather about now. How would you like to go into town for a bit? I have a few friends there I'd like you to meet."

"I'd love to," she replied.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The two of them then put the gardening shears and rakes away in a shed and headed back into the castle through the kitchen door. Philomela, Towrie, and Danceny were all engaged in various tasks in the kitchen when they came in, and Emily noticed that Philomela was nervously looking from Towrie to Danceny, speaking to them both in an agitated whisper – "Who is polishing it, then? Remember Mistress Snape was always saying, "Never never never be polishing in the tower library?" Who is cleaning in there?" She wrung her hands in front of her.

Emily couldn't watch this go on for more than a few seconds without speaking up – "Philomela, if you're talking about the silver in the tower library, please don't trouble the other elves about that. I couldn't sleep the other night and went for a walk around the castle, and it just occurred to me that the silver needed polishing, and I didn't have anything else to do." She bent down over her already securely tied bootlace and tied it again, her cheeks flaming.

Severus turned toward Philomela, his brows furrowing. "Philomela, come here," he said, waving the matronly elf toward him, then sank to one knee to speak to her. "Mistress Snape – my mother Mistress Snape – told you not to polish anything in the tower library?"

Philomela looked up at him with big, uncertain eyes. “Yes, sir. She is telling us since you is a little boy, ‘Do not be polishing the silver in the tower library ever, no matter how tarnished it is. Leave it be.’” She finished up with a guileless shrug.

Emily remembered Severus's painful admission that his father had sold some of the rarest volumes and best antiques in the family's library to finance his investments – and then it came to her in an instant's painful lucidity why Mrs. Snape would order the house elves to allow her silver to remain tarnished. She suddenly became extremely interested in retying her other bootlace as well.

Peripherally, she saw Severus glance downward, his lips pressing together, while Philomela watched his face with some anxiety, no doubt wondering if she had done something wrong.

But finally, he looked at the elf and nodded. "From here on in, feel free to polish that silver, and all the silver in the house, as often as it needs it," he said quietly. "All of it. Is that clear?"

Philomela dropped a meek curtsy. "Yes, Master Severus."

"Good." He straightened up, then moved to Emily's side and took her hand. "We'll be going out for a few hours this afternoon. Don't bother preparing lunch, we'll be eating out."

Then they took their leave and started down toward Nornsay Village. Emily immediately started in with blithe questions as to who they were going to meet, thinking it would be tactful to turn the subject at hand well away from the purposeful neglect of his mother's heirloom silver. "I've been curious ever since our tea in town the other day about the friend who competes in international competitions. Will he be there today?"

"Yes, most likely he will be," Severus replied, letting his fingers entwine with hers as they made their way down the path. "I couldn't possibly leave home without giving Will the chance to give me a thorough humbling over a chessboard."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The Narwhal Publick House, located at the intersection of Arbour Alley and Oceanic Alley was Nornsay Village's most popular pub. The carved sign outside featured a sleek grey whale with a long twisted horn against a blue background. Indoors, clean glassware hung above a polished wooden bar, and all manner of local folk sat about on barstools and high-backed booths.

A small group of people were already gathered around three tables at the pub's front, upon each of which was a wooden chess set of alternating dark and light wood. One of them, an elderly, round-cheeked fellow with curly grey eyebrows, broke into a broad smile when he saw Severus and Emily come into the pub. "Ha! As I live and breathe, it's the peedie beuy! Beuy, I'm fair blide to see yeh!" He rose from his seat to meet them, casting an approving eye over Emily's arm linked with Severus's. "And I see you've brought a friend."

"Hello, Pete." Severus greeted him with a handshake.

A freckled, redheaded fellow holding court behind the centre chessboard stood up to shake Severus's hand as well. "Ah, yeah, Martha had told me ye were takin' tea with a lady friend in the village the other day," he said, nodding toward a young woman at an adjacent table, who Emily recognised as the teashop waitress from their previous trip into town. "I was hopin' we'd merit an introduction."

Severus gave a silent chuckle, and actually grinned back. "I suppose there was no way that word wouldn't get out in this village that I'd been seen taking tea with a lady, was there?"

"Nae on yer life, me beuy," interjected a slight, very elderly woman with long white braids, and the assembled company laughed merrily.

Severus went to the white-haired woman's side and gently took her hand in his. "Hello, Margaret, it's good to see you."

Margaret smiled, her clear blue eyes not quite focusing on his face before her – and Emily noticed the white cane propped against her knee. "It's good to hear yer voice. Get yersel' a pint and come have a game, and don't be long about the introductions."

"Yes, I suppose introductions are in order, aren't they." Severus drew Emily forward to meet everyone. "Pete, Will, Margaret, Martha, this is my good friend Emily Swain, who also teaches at Hogwarts. Emily, this is Peter Atkine, William Erlendsson, and Margaret Omshad, three of the founding members of the Nornsay Village Chess Society, and you remember Martha Erlendsson, Will's oldest daughter. I also expect we'll get a few more members turning up this afternoon as well. So, what are we all drinking? Pints of stout all 'round? Emily?”

"I'd love one, thank you. I haven't had a good dark beer in forever."

Will Erlendsson got up and followed Severus to the bar, and Pete Atkine came forward to shake Emily's hand. "And she's one of the Fair Folk come back to Orkney, nae less. So you taught at Hogwarts, then? What subject?"

"It was an elective session of Defence Against the Dark Arts, with a heavy emphasis on Faery magic."

Margaret Omshad's face lit up with interest upon hearing this exchange. "One of the Fair Folk, is she? Oh, come sit beside me, me dear. Me sight's gone now, so if ye don't mind, I see folk with me hands these days," she said, holding out a transparently slender, age-spotted hand before her. Emily took a seat on the bench beside Margaret, then took her hand and lifted it to her cheek.

"Aye, one of the Folk indeed." Margaret murmured, tracing the outline of Emily's ear with her fingertips, then the high arch of her eyebrow and curve of her cheekbone, and then breaking into a bright smile. "My great-great-grandmother was a sidhe, one of the ones who stayed... they said she sang as sweet as a honeybird, and danced like an angel. Are you a sidhe yourself, me dear?" she asked, patting Emily's hand.

"No, I'm a faun. My father is a Wizard from the Lake District, but my mother is a faun from the Third Kingdom."

"So it was, so it was. There were a lot of Fae settling in Wizard Orkney back in the day, it seemed. The tales say some of the Folk would settle on little skerries where there was fresh water, and use their combined magics to hide the whole island from sight, so that no humans could find their villages, and maybe raid them, use iron against them," Margaret said, nodding. "But there were others who weren't so standoffish. They would trade with humans, and sometimes they'd marry with us. They say you always knew a house with a Faery bride, because the husband would put on a new bronze door handle."

Will and Severus returned a moment later with a round of pints for the group, and Severus took the seat opposite Margaret at the chessboard, handing pints across the table. "Ah, then we're well fortified," Margaret said, with a long pull from her glass, then turned back to Severus. "Ready, then, me beuy?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," he muttered, sipping from his own pint, and moving his queen's pawn forward two spaces. "Pawn to D4."

"Ah, you're still a fan of the queen's gambit declined, I see," Margaret said, moving her black queen's pawn forward two spaces.

"Why meddle with a good idea," Severus murmured, moving out another pawn and calling out its position to Margaret. His eyebrows went up as he saw her response. "The Chigorin Defence – well, that's a departure for you."

"Something I've been working on with Will," Margaret replied, grinning. She nodded in Emily's direction. "The beuy here started playing with us when he was just eight years old, you should have seen him. Not an instant's whining or fidgeting out of him, I never saw such a lad. So serious, such an old soul."

"He was our youngest player for a decade," Will Erlendsson said, opening a game with Pete Atkine at the table to Emily's right. "I'd loan him a book – big thick ones, too, like the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings – and he'd have absorbed it in days."

"He read everything. Every week he'd be carrying around some new book half of us had never heard of – I never saw such a bookworm. His mum would be doing her shopping, and there would be her boy coming along behind her, walking along with his nose buried in a book, walking into things," Pete Atkine chortled, tamping down and then lighting a long clay pipe.

"She was such a pretty woman, Mrs. Snape," Martha Erlendsson murmured in Severus's direction. "She had the most beautiful eyes and hands you could imagine. And she was so nice to talk to when I'd see her at the library."

"Oh, yes, the beuy's mother was just a dear creature, she was," Margaret said, again nodding toward Emily. "She served on the library committee for years, used to read books to the children every weekend. I would take my grandchildren down, but I'd really have gone just to listen for myself. She did different voices for every character – really held those children spellbound, and their parents too."

A faint smile appeared on Severus's face as he contemplated his next move. "Yes, Mother loved her Sundays at the library," he said quietly.

His game with Margaret went on for some time, and Emily soon became lost in the highly complex interplay of the game. Severus and the other chess players seemed to know a tremendous amount of arcane terminology that they threw around with ease, and they all seemed to know everything about each others' characteristic styles of play, and each others' families as well. Emily had to struggle to make sense of the lingo they used, but she was thoroughly enjoying the cosy gossip, especially when it turned to the topic of Severus's youth. She was not at all surprised to hear that as a boy, he had been known in the village for his quiet precocity and cleverness.

He finally pinned Margaret down to a knight, a bishop, and a castle in endgame, whereas he had retained his queen, a bishop, and both castles. Margaret managed to elude him for some time until he pinned her king down with the castles, then mated with his black-square bishop. "And so I am defeated," Margaret said, smiling and shaking her head. "Good game, me beuy, well fought."

Severus got up and shook his opponent's hand across the table. "Well, you opened with a new defence. I'm sure if you used Tarrasch like usual, we would have been here for another hour."

Margaret then turned toward Emily. "Fancy a game, my love?"

"Oh, I don't know," she replied, abashed. "I'm a rank beginner, and everyone here really seems to know what they're doing."

"Nonsense, if you never play, you'll never learn," Margaret said, waving her into the opposite chair Severus had just vacated. "Severus, sit beside her and let's have a bit of coaching, then."

Emily sat down with a bright, apprehensive smile, but much of her nervousness abated when Severus drew up a seat close beside her, and leaned over her with his arm loosely draped over the back of her chair. "Should I play the queen's gambit declined?" she asked, turning toward him.

"If you like," he replied, nodding, and Emily moved her queen's pawn out two spaces, and Severus called the move's coordinates to Margaret.

Emily leaned back in her seat, taking another sip from her pint. "So, were there a lot of Fae settlements in this area in the past?" she asked Margaret.

"Aye, Orkney used to be home to lots of the

Folk, or so the stories go," Margaret said, countering this time with what Severus told Emily was the Slav Defence. "The Howans of Hurtisgarth was a Faery place, supposed to have been lousy with Fae, they say. Until one day, the village looked up and most of them were gone. Just vanished overnight, they say. But that was during the Black Death, and villages in the mainland were just turning up empty, but for the corpses. Never found any bodies in the Faery woods, though – they were just gone. Even the ones who'd married humans, sometimes they left their families, or they'd be gone with their spouses and children with them. No one knows what happened." She turned toward Emily – "Do you know any history from that time, then, me love?"

"I've heard that the Black Plague caused a lot of trouble for the Fae at that time," she replied quietly. "I couldn't speak for them as to why some decided to leave and some didn't, but the Continent and the British mainland could be dangerous back then, if you were an Arcadian."

"Aye, I see," Margaret said, nodding. " 'Twas a time of great distrust and hysteria, as no one knew where the sickness was coming from. Jewish folks and gypsies often became scapegoats during that time, as well – anyone who was different was suspect. But my great-granddame told me stories about how when the sickness was worst in the Mainland here in Orkney, when all the doctors had got scared and run away, some of the Faeries started appearing from their hidden villages, and they'd go among the sick and nurse them – they didn't get the Plague, so they were the only folk who could safely lend a hand, and they had medicines no one else did. Folks said it was like a host of angels had been sent from heaven."

As that game progressed, Margaret continued telling her all about the local Faery folklore for some time – all the while annexing Emily's pawns, a bishop, and then a castle at a disturbing rate, while Emily herself had only a couple of pawns and a knight to show for her efforts. But as Emily watched Margaret's finely wrinkled face across the chessboard, somehow she didn't mind that this gentle, wise, completely blind witch was absolutely hammering her at chess. She would have let herself lose many, many games to this opponent, if only to keep listening to her stories.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

There were many people Emily knew who would have found the Narwhal very old-fashioned, rustic, unsophisticated, and profoundly dull. But Emily had spent many pleasant hours in pubs much like it, full of local people with thick provincial accents, talking about weather, gardens, homemaking, families, farming, the sea; who required little more for their entertainment than a comfortable, well-lit place to drink a pint and talk to each other, to play games and tell stories, and perhaps listen to local musicians playing traditional music. Not only that, but there were none of those uncomfortable moments when people's eyes got as far as her ears, and then stopped; no, for these people, to be a Faerie among them was to instantly acquire a subtle touch of romance, to become a reminder of fascinating tales from long ago. The members of the Chess Society seemed happy that their bachelor friend Severus had found himself a nice young lady, and were in their own gentle way trying to make her feel welcome, and she found herself warming to them in return, especially Margaret Omshad.

But the best part of her whole visit was the constant presence of her witty, dark-eyed lover beside her. She knew him to be a very private man, and as such would never be inclined toward public displays of affection – he did no more than hold her hand over the table that evening. But nonetheless, his way of doing so was so fraught with quiet devotion that she found the gesture intensely satisfying. Somehow she would rather demurely hold his hand than have anyone else spend his entire evening making much of her.

"What did you think?" he asked, after they had made their good-byes and started back up the road to Snape Hall, arm in arm. "I know most people wouldn't find sitting around and watching people play chess to be very exciting, but I do hope you didn't find it too horribly dull."

"Oh no, I had a wonderful time – everyone wanted to know where I was from and what I taught, and I loved how Margaret kept telling me all the local folktales. And I can't imagine how Margaret manages to play like that while just being told where all the pieces are."

"Yes, her sight had been failing for decades, so she trained herself to keep the coordinates straight in her mind and play from memory rather than give the game up."

"That's amazing. I had a lovely time, dear, it reminded me very much of home," she said. "You know, you get a trace of an Orcadian accent back in your voice around people like that."

That provoked another of those little sidelong grins – she did absolutely adore that look. "The same thing happened to you in the Mushroom Circle. Suddenly your accent got more pronounced, and you came all over Goodmistress this and 'pon my troth the other."

"That's how we really talk at home! The colloquialisms haven't changed much since the Renaissance, really."

Severus laughed softly. "I suppose it was everyone's day to gossip at the pub. The town doesn't get a lot of newcomers, so everyone had to trot out all their old stories for you."

"Oh, don't worry, dear, I thought it was charming. I loved the way all the chess players talked about you – they were like a bunch of aunts and uncles who couldn't wait to tell their nephew's girlfriend all about what he was like when he was a little boy." She turned to him with a grin – "Let me guess, they've been asking you if there was a nice girl in the picture since you were about twenty or so."

"Earlier," he said, with a dire shake of his head.

"Can I ask you something?" Emily then asked him, after a moment's pensive pause.

"Of course, what is it?"

"I was just curious if there were ever any Faeries in your family, perhaps some time ago," Emily said. "Margaret told me that you could always tell a house with a Faery bride, because the husband would put in a bronze door handle, and I've noticed that Snape Hall is full of bronze fixtures. There's barely an iron door handle or bit of wrought iron in the place, except for some of the newer window panes. All throughout the house, everything is made of wood, bronze, brass, silver, and copper."

Severus paused for a very long moment, thinking. "Truthfully, I don't know," he said. "I've never done any real genealogical research on the family, that was more the sort of thing my grandmother was interested in. But I still have all her old papers in my vault at Gringotts, land charters and birth certificates and obituary clippings and such. Perhaps one day we'll have to go through all that and see if there was, just for curiosity's sake."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The elves had supper waiting for them upon their return to the castle late that afternoon. Afterward, Emily asked if it would be all right if she spent a few hours that evening continuing her restoration work on some of the crumbling volumes from the main library, if he didn't mind. "Just for my own amusement, dearest. I like working on books, and I miss helping out in my father's library since I've been away. Plus I'd like to do something for you, since you've been such a gracious host while I've been here."

"If you like, but you don't have to do anything to thank me," he replied, pausing in the castle's dim foyer for a moment's embrace, and a single long kiss. "I just wish we had another week to ourselves."

"I know exactly what you mean."

Some time later, the two of them were again comfortably settled in the large main library upstairs, Emily on a folding camp chair and table hunted up from the east wing, with castor oil, adhesives, some soft rags, and a stack of leather-bound books with deteriorated binding in front of her. She noticed that the ghost had been busy dusting and tidying up since she had last been there, and was now slyly stacking one or two volumes that needed restoration at her right hand whenever her attention was diverted. Severus had examined some of the volumes she had already gone over with a look of genuine pleasure in his eyes, and then quietly thanked her for her efforts. Now he was ensconced on the library sofa with a crystal glass and decanter of fine whiskey beside him, and a leather-bound volume open in his lap.

Emily had been at her task for an hour or two before she noticed that the whiskey was disappearing at a much steadier rate than the pages were turning, and his head was beginning to droop, and his expression becoming more and more sullen. She then finished her work on the volume before her and put it aside, then got up and joined him on the library sofa, turning her full attention to him. "Darling? Are you all right?"

"Fine," he muttered, in a voice that said nothing was fine, that everything was very dark indeed, but that he was in absolutely no kind of mood to talk about it.

"I wish you'd tell me what's bothering you," she whispered, laying her hand on his shoulder.

"Tell you what's bothering me? You mean other than the fact that we now have to go back to informing on the Death Eaters?" he snarled, without taking his eyes off his book.

"Well yes, I sort of assumed about that one. But if there's anything else – well, it's not Sunday as yet, and it's still just you and me." She put a soft kiss on his cheek.

He grimaced, eyes still averted from her. "You probably noticed this evening that while everyone had so many kind things to say about my mother, no one said a single word about my father, didn't you," he muttered. "And if you know the same Malfoy family I do, I don't doubt that you heard a great deal more about him than ’he was a tough customer.’ "

"I heard that he was very cruel to you and your mother," she admitted quietly.

"And you've already figured out why Mother told the elves never to polish the silver in her library – it was because she knew that if my father thought it was anything more than a lot of valueless old junk, he would have sold it to finance his latest idiotic investment scheme." He picked up the whiskey glass on the table beside him, and took a long swallow.

"Then it was a pretty clever tactic on her part to let it get tarnished and sit there in plain sight."

He turned a filthy look down into his whiskey glass. "You're going to think I'm horrible for saying this, but I'm not at all sorry the old bastard died before I ever met you. Actually, I've more than once considered how much both my own and my mother's lives would have been improved if he'd met up with some kind of hideous accident while I was still in the womb," he growled. "He wouldn't let me or my mother enjoy anything while he was alive, and he would have been awful to you from the first. I'm certain he would have let you know that he thought your people in general and you in particular were beneath contempt, and thrown things at you for laughing too much, but he would have thought it was his inalienable right to lose all your money buying shares that end up worthless. I can't even describe how glad I am that he's not here."

He downed the last of the whiskey in one curt shot, then started to reach for the decanter again, but Emily put her hand over his. "I wish you wouldn't, love." After a long, recalcitrant moment, he let her take the whiskey glass out of his hand and put it aside. "I think you'll like my father," she said, stroking his hair. "And he'll like you."

"Even with... ?" He seized his left forearm in a painful grip.

"I won't tell him about that, and you don't have to either. Do you think my father's going to volunteer to you that he was strongly in favour of pacifying You-Know-Who? Da made his own mistakes during that time. If it ever comes out, he won't be quick to judge."

"Emily, my old cronies tried to have your father killed because he wouldn't join them. Somehow I doubt he'll be very happy about seeing his beloved youngest daughter with a former Death Eater, supposedly reformed or not." He stared gloomily toward the windows.

"Severus, that is past, it's over. There's more to you than the outcome of some plea bargain with the Ministry, and my family will see that."

"Just wait until we get back to Hogwarts, and you'll see how very over all of it isn't." He leaned his head morosely on his hand. "Lady Swain-Tumnus," he muttered, ironically drawing out every syllable. "Whereas I'm the lord of nothing but an old ruin with a roof like Swiss cheese."

"Oh, just stop it, right now," she interjected. "I wouldn't let anyone say all these vile things about you, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let you say them about yourself. There are all kinds of highly respected knights and Druids who didn't come from the nobility – and besides, did anyone ever tell you what Dorien's father did for a living?"

"No, what?"

"He was a peasant vegetable farmer in the Grassy Wastes, way up north in the Sixth Kingdom, where there isn't much of anything but grass and rabbits – and his son was put in command of a platoon, and then ended up becoming influential at a royal Court. So honestly, don't let the fact that some people put Lady in front of my name worry you. I'm positively notorious for not letting anyone tell me who I can and can't have for friends – or for my officers, for that matter."

His gaze flicked in her direction with a great deal of scepticism. "To hear you tell it, your great-uncle is just the member of your family who happens to rule a kingdom."

"And I'm looking forward to when I can introduce you to him, and tell him all about how you just decided one day to get together with a couple of doctors and create a potion to heal iron burns, because he'll be terribly impressed by that," she replied, smiling.

"It still doesn't work fast enough," he said, still too deep into his stubborn funk of pessimism to admit to anything besides the complete wreck of the universe. "I need to find a way to make it work more efficiently."

"Darling, you saw what I looked like after the Molly incident. And you had me healed up from third- and second-degree iron burns to clean new skin, without any infection, in six days. Look." She raised her skirt to bare her left thigh, and showed him where her grievous iron burn had been. Only smears of newer skin showed where her flesh had been blistered and blackened. "And we've been going through all those athletic ups and downs in bed and it doesn't even hurt. You do realise what an accomplishment that is."

"I wanted something that would heal iron burns the way ordinary Healing Potion works on simple burns," he said, running a gentle hand over her thigh. "Better yet, I'd like to find some way to inoculate Faeries so that they don't have any reaction to iron at all. It isn't at all healthy to live in an environment where you might come in contact with a wildly toxic substance just as a part of everyday life."

"I couldn't agree more – I still remember burning my hand so badly after just picking up a cup that I couldn't even hold a pen for days."

"You know, of course, that the whole business with the wrought-iron teacup wasn't an accident, my dear," he pointed out. "It's always been Lucius's habit to collect hair and blood from as many of his guests as he can, so as to have power over them in case he needs it for any reason. Those bloody napkins are still probably hidden away at Malfeasant, in case he ever wants to find you, or affect you by means of sympathetic magic."

Emily froze as any number of memories recurred to her – the bloody napkins at the dinner, the bloodstained sheet after Lucius had bitten her, the blood she had left on the carpet after staggering in following the attack on Molly, and that tiny, intensely worrisome moment of blood magic he had worked on her during their last tryst together. "I... I didn't know that," she said quietly. "Do you think he knows I'm here with you now?"

"I doubt it," Severus said, shaking his head. "Both Hogwarts and Snape Hall are entirely warded against that sort of magic, so Lucius would have had to know to work a Locatus spell on you while you were in the village, and if he had, the first thing he would have done would be to send you a letter at Hogwarts, to see how fast you responded. If Lucius had written you, Albus would have forwarded it to you here in an eyeblink, so if we haven't heard anything, I don't think there's anything to worry about. We do know that he doesn't seem to have interfered magically with Cecile in any way, so no matter how he feels about me, it does appear that Lucius still trusts you to some extent." From the absolutely furious scowl he then directed down at the floor, it looked as though Malfoys' stubborn regard for her was an irritant on the level of one Sirius Black and Harry Potter.

"Well, whatever that bastard Malfoy thinks of me, I think I'll throw a party on the day he's sentenced to life in prison," Emily insisted, for while she may not have been able to deny what he had said, she could at least point to her own less than reciprocal regard for Malfoy by means of reassurance.

"Believe me, I'll be the first to arrive to that little soirée, but at the rate he's going, it's more likely that Lucius will end up Minister of Magic in the next few years," her companion declared, with a wry twist of his mouth. "Nothing he does seems to ever make any dent in his popularity, no matter who he threatens or injures – he just spends some money, kisses a few hands, gives some empty reassurances, and he's back in everyone's good graces. He threatened half the Hogwarts governors into temporarily removing Dumbledore from the Headmaster's position in 1993, and do you know what happened afterward? Nothing. All of the governors and their wives still turned up to that New Year's Eve ball Narcissa organised at the Ministry. They're just a lot of lumpen idiots with their heads in the sand, to a one. Why I spend an ounce of effort trying to protect these people and their imbecilic offspring, I have no idea."

"But our students aren't all like their parents," Emily pointed out softly. "Nearly all of them are loyal to Dumbledore, and remember how popular Cedric was. I do honestly believe that if we ask our students for their support, they would give it."

"Forgive me, but I'm not as optimistic about them as you are. I know I've been criticised for calling them lack-witted dunderheads and such in class, but that's hardly the worst I could accuse our students of, believe me. Every time those little bastards look at me as though I'm annoying them for trying to teach them how to counteract poison in class, I just want to slap them senseless. Do I need to wheel in the purple suffocated corpse of some poor bastard who drank cyanide with his tea because he ran afoul of the Death Eaters somehow? Then will they believe me when I say antidotes are important?"

His voice had hoarsened, and he turned away from her and coughed. "Look at everything you were teaching them during the school year – all of it was incredibly useful and would have direct applications in an actual Dark Wizard attack, but I had to sign I don't know how many drop slips for your class for students who withdrew because the martial arts curriculum was too exhausting. When they were laughing during your physical pre-emption demonstration that day it took every bit of willpower I had not to stake them out somewhere for the fecking acromantulas in the forest."

She was silent, just listening, and letting him vent as much as he needed.

"I probably shouldn't have taken this time away from the Order, because now I'm finding it damned hard to go back to it. I've an awful feeling now that this won't end well for either of us. It was different when the only person I had to worry about was myself, because if I died, it would all simply be over." He fell silent, but he didn't need to tell her what he was loath to leave behind now.

"Darling, I made it through three years of war at home, and that was without you there to advise me, you know. To be honest, now that I know what kind of strategist you are, I almost wish you had been."

Severus turned a grave look at her. "Emily – you aren't really aware of the rate at which the bodies of innocent people pile up around the Dark Lord. Iron burns and Crucios notwithstanding, you've still managed to stay clear of the worst of it so far. During his first rise, the ranks of the Order would be slowly thinning from one meeting to the next. Cedric Diggory's death was not some terrible fluke of circumstances. There's worse to come."

"I know that," she whispered.

"You couldn't have known what kind of position you would be putting yourself into when you became an Order informant, and I still think Albus should have detailed more of the group's history to you before accepting your help. For example, he didn't mention that one of the consequences of trying to play both sides of the fence is that no one completely trusts or supports you on either side of the fence. Sirius Black undermines my efforts on behalf of the Order more than some of the Death Eaters ever have."

"I don't doubt it," Emily replied, nodding grimly. "Black's not endeared himself to me one bit. I'd have no scruples about Stunning him and stuffing him in the nearest broom cupboard if he endangered you in any way."

"You'd best do it when no Gryffindors were around, or you'll risk becoming their latest red herring villain. To our current crop of Gryffindors, you see, a villain is anyone who isn't pathetically impressed by the empty straw men they think are heroes," he pointed out, scowling like a thundercloud.

"Yes, the students don't realise how complex loyalties can be," she said, sighing. "I still wish Mr. and Mrs. Parkinson and Draco Malfoy had been born almost anywhere else in the world, because without Lucius and You-Know-Who's influence, their lives might have been so different." Her eyes lingered on Severus's grim profile, wishing with all her heart that circumstances in his life had been different as well.

"Not a day goes by when I don't wish for the same for Evan Rosier." The pain in his voice when he spoke his friend's name made tears of sympathy start in Emily's eyes. "I'm sorry, but Death Eater or no, Evan was not evil, he wasn't even approaching evil – just because one accepts an ugly magical brand on one's arm and puts on a mask and makes all the appropriate noises at the Dark Lord's latest bloody pep rally does not automatically remove all moral compass from a man's mind and spirit. Mundungus Bloody Fletcher commits more crimes on a weekly basis than Evan ever did in his life – all he wanted was to keep his family's fortune and make his wife admire him, and he was worried about me. I'll never forget the way he acted when he went to his first meeting, a few months after I'd been inducted – he was so nervous and scared, and hiding it so badly. ‘Lina wants me to look into this fellow's group, and someone's got to make sure that cousin of yours doesn't end up taking the mickey out of you all the time,’ he said... "

His voice hoarsened again and broke, and then his head inclined into his hands. For one long moment, Emily sat beside him frozen with shock, hardly able to imagine the depth of sorrow that would cause such a dedicated stoic as Severus Snape to grieve like this. Then she drew him tight into her arms, cradling his head on her shoulder. "No, we're going to see this through to the end, and when it's over, you're going to be happy again, love."

"I don't know, I never have been, I'm... it's just too damned late... ." he said, his voice barely audible.

"No, it isn't," she whispered. "When this is all over, you'll be safe with those who love you."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Some time later, Emily finally coaxed him upstairs and into bed. Severus slept unusually late the next morning, probably due to the quantity of whiskey he drank the previous evening, and Emily again awoke very early due to the dose of caffeine she had taken. She hunted up some willow bark potion and Muggle aspirin for him, which she left on the night table next to the carafe of water, silently wishing she had a bit of Catherine's hangover powder for him.

Then she showered and dressed, taking her things into the bathroom in the next stateroom over so as not to disturb his sleep, and then hunted up both her Wizard camera and Muggle camera, and rolls of film from her trunk. She slung both cameras around her neck, went out onto the tower walk with her old school broomstick, and lifted off over the castle. From that vantage point, she then spent an hour taking photographs of Snape Hall, exterior views from every direction, and concentrating on the Anglo-Saxon wing. She also photographed some of the interiors as well: the great main foyer, the mead hall, the frescoes, and also the inside of the Anglo-Saxon wing, concentrating on the details of the stonework and carving. Although Emily was only faintly aware of the process by which a homeowner would apply for maintenance grants or estate tax relief for a historic castle, she imagined that a substantial amount of documentation would probably be required, and wanted to be prepared if Snape Hall turned out to be qualified for such benefits.

When she was finished taking pictures, she did a long, slow fly-over of the castle and all its grounds – the cliffs and the rocky beach below, the barnacle-encrusted rock pinnacles – getting buffeted about by the wild sea breezes, her cloak, skirts, and hair blowing in all directions. Dammit, it was all just so magnificent in its austerity and isolation; and just so heartbreakingly beautiful and neglected. Perhaps she might have annoyed Severus with her desire to step in and just take care of everything that was wrong with the castle for him: the leaky roof, the tarnish, the crumbling library. Her first instinct, upon seeing his worries about the house, had been to try to solve the castle's every problem for him, just so she could see some of his perpetual cares taken off his shoulders. She had made herself back off after convincing him to finally accept her consulting fee and put it toward the repairs, realising that she was going to have to learn to respect his pride and independence in much the same way he had learned to respect hers. He had stopped pushing her for more personal information and gotten comfortable with the idea of allowing her to open up to him at her own pace, so likewise she would have to rein in her desire to set everything right for him like some "fairy godmother" out of a Muggle tale, and respect his need to do it for himself.

But something about this beautiful, lonely place caught in her heart like a fishhook. She couldn't help but imagine how splendid it would all be with a snug new roof, with the books all restored and many new volumes in the library, with the worn upholstery replaced and the great halls all spotless and brightly lit, with gardens lovingly tended, and perhaps a few more merry house elves stirring bubbling pots on the stove, arranging roses from the garden, and squealing Wheee! on the upper staircases... what a home it would be.

For a moment she imagined their life together... both of them teaching at Hogwarts during the school year, then celebrating the Arcadians' winter solstice and the wizards' Christmas together at Snape Hall, his traditional celebrations overlapping into hers... she would find him exactly what he most wanted for a Christmas gift, small or large, whatever it might be, and then help the elves cook up a splendid feast in the kitchen... there would be great blazes in the hearths and snow falling outside. At night they would join the ghost watching the Northern Lights blazing in the skies above, and then make love and hold each other all night under the eiderdowns. During the summer holidays she would take him to visit her family in Arcadia, introduce him to Gwydion and Dahlia as one of the driving forces behind the cure for iron burns, listen to him talking about fencing and Arcadian politics with her mother and the Blakes, talking about Faery magic and history with her father, who would be so impressed with his daughter's new love, who was a human natural adept like himself. Then she would show him everything she loved about her native land, its cities, its countryside, its forests, wine and cuisine, music, festivals, and theatre, the diverse peoples that made Arcadia what it was... she couldn't have imagined anything she would like more.

It simply felt as though the castle needed someone to love it and care for it just as much as Severus had needed a companion to love him, and she now felt as though she could fulfil everything that had previously been missing in his life just as surely as he was beginning to fulfil what had been missing in hers. At that moment, it just seemed damned bloody inconvenient that a violent dictator had ever arisen to threaten her lover's world, and drag the two of them away from each other.

But now she spotted a dark figure out on the flagstone terrace outside the smaller dining room, waving to her, and pointed the broomstick down toward him.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

"Good morning, dear – how are you feeling?" she asked, dismounting from her broomstick.

"A touch of a hangover, but otherwise, I'm all right." He indicated the cameras around her neck – "Went up for a bit of aerial photography, then?"

"Yes, I wanted some shots of the castle, and I think I got some rather nice ones, too. I'll have to order up a second set for you when I have them developed." She followed him into the dining room, put the cameras aside on a table, then propped the broomstick against the wall, and finally put her arms around his neck. "You had me worried last night," she said, kissing his cheek.

He sighed. "I suppose I was in rather an unusually low mood."

"Well, in light of everything that's been going on, my dear, I'd say you're allowed. I think I'd be even more worried about you if you didn't get a bit drunk and angry once in a while, just to blow off steam. Do you feel any better?"

Severus shrugged, raking a hand through his windblown hair. "I don't think I'll truly feel better until all this is over and I'm either dead or retired, but a decent night's sleep and a good breakfast will do for now."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

After breakfast, Emily took Cecile aside and told her that they would be returning to Hogwarts by noon that day, and let her know to get packed and be ready. "Can I be packing your bag for you, Mistress?" the elf asked, with a curtsy.

"No, don't worry, I'll do it myself. Just be ready to go by about ten minutes to noon."

Then she followed Severus upstairs, and together they almost silently packed up their things for their return. When they were both finished, Emily put on her black embroidered cloak, and set her trunk by the door. "Ready to go, love?"

Severus set his bag next to hers by the door, but then crossed back to her and unfastened her cloak's silver clasp, letting it fall onto the chair beside the bed. Then he glanced past her and extended a hand at the heavy velvet draperies, closing them with a gesture and an inaudible word.

"One more hour?" he asked, outlining her cheek with delicate fingertips.

She sighed. "Yes. Please."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Not long afterward, the chair beside the bed was covered with the black travelling clothes of two people, and the scene was that of some days previous – everything beyond the walls of that room forgotten.

Severus had wondered earlier if perhaps he shouldn't have taken this week away from the Order, perhaps shouldn't have let himself flirt with the idea of what it might be to just be a teacher enjoying his summer holidays and starting a new relationship with a woman – and now he was letting himself cling to that blissful illusion up until the very last instant.

As before, during his first night with her, he had never felt so laid bare, so naked. Now, lying deep in her arms, he was forcing himself to take this slowly, draw it out for as long as he could, even as his skin prickled with excitement and his breath came in shallow rasps. She was cradling his dark head in her arms, both utterly lost in long feeling kisses that seemed to take hours as their bodies rocked together. Gods, how can you want me so much, no one could pretend this, what the hell could you possibly find so exciting about me... but then he realised he didn't care in the slightest, just so long as she felt this way tomorrow, and the next day.

In moments like these, it could be so difficult to force himself to hold his emotions in reserve and not be that stupid teenage boy who threw his entire heart and mind at the first woman who went to bed with him, who had based all of his self-worth on whether she loved him or not. But here, in the darkened isolation of their bed, in this rapture of prolonged intimacy, her affection for him achingly apparent in every kiss, every touch... he wanted to race ahead into You're mine, I need you, promise me you'll never leave me, but he remained silent, and let his physical responses say what he was feeling. He could now admit to himself that he had thought of her as his own ever since the first time they kissed, but now, under all this encouragement, he knew he was becoming a bit obsessed... but somehow she seemed to be getting obsessively devoted to him in exactly the same manner. Neither of them had ever seemed able to exercise much caution or restraint where the other was concerned; from the first, they could pass from a single kiss to superheated lust in moments, and now, neither of them wanted to stop.

Everything in him wanted to just violently assert his claim to her and force her to recognise it, wanted to hold her down on the bed, gasping Tell me you want me, tell me you love me. Promise you'll always go to bed with me, me and no one else, ever – somehow at this moment, as the arousal built between them, he could easily imagine her answering in kind, pledging everything he wanted and more. But he made himself hold back from demanding such reassurances so soon – they had time, time for him to make her want to make such promises to him of her own accord, without prompting.

But now he could sense that he had again brought her beyond any hope of holding back; her breath caught sharply in her throat and her hands clamped down on the small of his back to hold him inside her, her hips starting to jerk beneath his in an involuntary rhythm, pressing up to him with the instinctual greed of a woman nearing orgasm. A second later, she had thrown her head back onto the pillow with a sharp little cry, and he was urging her on into climax with every bit of energy he had. When her spasms began to subside, he abandoned restraint and just let himself have her, pounding her into the mattress for his own pleasure, finding that impossible peak of arousal and rushing past it with a groan. Then all the breath and tension in his body was gone, and he collapsed over her, exhausted and enfolding.

"Why do we have to go back," she lamented, burying her face in his neck. "I don't ever want to leave."

"Neither do I," he whispered, his arms tightening around her.

"Oh, love," she gasped. "I just want to stay here with you."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

But then it was quarter to noon, and both Severus and Emily were dressed and tidying their pillow-rumpled hair. Somehow the scene reminded Emily of nothing so much as the moment of quiet resignation at the end of her honeymoon, when she knew that one of the most idyllic moments of her life had passed from the blissful present to memory. She glanced around that handsome, austere bedroom, and fervently hoped that it would not be long before they returned.

They met Cecile and the other three elves in the great main foyer. Cecile wore one of her neat little black pillowcase frocks with a lace-edged tea towel shawl around her shoulders, with her pillowcase satchel in her hand. She bid all the other elves good-bye, shaking Towrie's hand and then Danceny's a bit more shyly, but Emily noticed that Cecile and the housekeeper gave each other a brief, affectionate hug, rather like a middle-aged aunt bidding farewell to a favourite niece. "Thanks-you for all your recipes, Philomela, I is hoping to cook them soon."

"You is welcome, Cecile." Philomela then dropped a polite curtsy to Emily. "Good-bye, Miss Professor."

"Good-bye, all of you," Emily said, sinking to one knee to shake the elves' hands. "Thank you very much for your hospitality."

The three travellers then took their bags and made their way down the steps to the beach, down to the promontory landing that marked the end of Snape Hall's anti-Apparition security wards. Emily paused for a moment at the rail, drawing her camera out of her trunk for a few last photographs of the beach, then turned in Severus's direction, framing him in the camera's viewfinder. "Stay right there, darling – "

Severus's expression clouded, and he turned away from her. "Emily, I don't like having my picture taken."

She lowered the camera. "Please, just one? I won't show it to anyone," she promised.

He paused, considering. "How about one of us together, then. And I'd like a print of it too, if you don't mind."

"All right." She turned to Cecile and called her over – "Cecile, would you mind taking a picture of us?"

Cecile scurried up, eager to be helpful as always. "Sure I will, but I is not knowing how. What am I to be doing?"

Emily gave Cecile a quick lesson on how to use a camera, and then Cecile backed up to get both of them in the picture, against the backdrop of the rocky beach below. "So I am putting the two of you in the middle of the looking box, then pushing the button?"

"Exactly." Emily turned toward Severus, took his arm, and leaned against his side, just a casual pose of a woman and her lover at the beach, and then turned back to Cecile. "All right, go ahead."

The camera clicked, and Emily kissed his cheek in gratitude. "Thanks for putting up with that, love."

"Well... " He shrugged. "Hopefully it won't turn out to be too atrocious."

She grinned at him. "I don't see how it could, with such a good-looking subject."

"Flatterer," he muttered, dropping his eyes toward the ground.

"It's only flattery when it's insincere."

Cecile had apparently noticed at this point that when her Mistress and Mr. Professor stood this close to each other and talked in that tone of voice, it might be tactful to give the two of them some time alone together, because she then quietly piped up: "Mistress, can I be taking the bags on ahead to Hogwarts?"

"Yes, dear, that would be fine, go ahead. Thank you." A second later, Cecile and the luggage disappeared in the usual puff of grey smoke.

Once they were alone, Severus took Emily's hand and drew her out to the edge of the landing. It had apparently occurred to him that this beach was the best setting imaginable to give his lover a very long, slow, and tender last kiss before they had to leave such blissful peace behind, because he embraced her, and did exactly that. Afterward, Emily lingered at the promontory railing, reluctant to let him out of her arms, and wistfully watching the waves crashing before them.

"What is it?" Her companion's hand stroked blowing fair hair away from her eyes.

"I just don't want our holiday together to be over." She let her head fall onto his shoulder.

"Our first holiday together," he said. "There will be others."

A moment later, they had both vanished with a crack of Apparition.