In Need

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The next morning, Severus felt better. He wanted to see Megan, but she was out running when he arrived at breakfast. As he strode to the great hall, he looked out a window across the grounds and was amused to see Firenze, the centaur professor of divination, trotting along next to her. Severus didn’t realize at the time the mutual benefits each got that made them decide to start running together - Firenze liked to have the time with Megan to discuss nature, and Megan, while she enjoyed the conversation, was especially glad to be able to have someone who was faster than her (and who didn’t get tired) to use as a pacer.

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Hermione had been studying later than usual the night before. She had recently decided which school she wanted to attend for advanced training when she finished at Hogwarts, and they only took the top students. She wanted to secure her place with them, so was pushing herself harder than ever. Because she was head girl and had her own room, there was no one to let her know that she had overslept and was about to miss breakfast.


The first thing she noticed before she opened her eyes, was that something was tapping persistently on her face. Thinking it was Crookshanks asking for attention, she brushed the intrusion away, only to be jolted awake when she felt him still curled up on heet. et. She opened her eyes and screamed when she saw a garishly colored head with mismatched button eyes looking down at her. An arm made out of rope with an attached hand made out of modeling clay and twigs reached out to tap her on the face again.


“Ronald Weasley!” she screeched at the top of her lungs. “You are NOT to send your golem up here to fetch me!”


Sounds of Ron and Harry laughing hysterically were put on hold as they yelled up to her that they were hungry andget get a move on. She joined them in a moment, having done a quick scourgifying spell to clean up, and they headed down to breakfast, golems in tow.


“You know, you really shouldn’t be doing that with them,” she said as Ron and Harry took her golem from her and made all three dance down the corridor in a conga line. “They’re only supposed to be for class. You better hope Professor Waters doesn’t see you.”


“Aw, she wouldn’t care,” protested Ron, “I bet she’d think it’s funny. Just look at them!”


The golems were now doing a pretty good bunny hop, and were starting to draw stares and giggles from the other students.


They heard a throat clearing behind them, and there was Professor Waters in her running clothes, towering over them and not looking amused at all. “Potter, Weasley, Granger - five points each from Gryffindor for misuse of class materials. Your golems are not toys - they need to be kept intact for serious work.”


“See!” hissed Hermione to the boys, who were looking sheepish and collecting the now stationary golems. “I told you!”


“Oh well,” said Harry as Megan walked away, “she couldn’t have been too mad - she took the smallest amount of points each that she could have.”


Severus watched Megan enter the great hall. She smiled at him as she approached the table and sat in her usual place next to Professor Sprout. She stared at her plate for a moment, clapped her hand over her mouth, then got up and slipped through the door off to the side that led to the kitchens.

Concerned that something was wrong, Severus followed her and found her just inside the doorway doubled over with laughter.


“Dancing golems” seemed to be the only coherent words he could get out of her for a few minutes.


When she finally settled down enough to tell the whole story, he rolled his eyes and said, “Now I see the purpose of all our effort in teaching them magic. Such talented children will go far in the world.”


They agreed to meet later that evening. Severus was about to lean in to finally give her the kiss that he had been dying to give her last night, when a house elf interrupted them. Scowling, Severus held the door open for Megan and they re-entered the great hall, finished breakfast next to each other, and left for classes.


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Later that evg, tg, they were training and both of them hoped that the evening would hold more after they finished their work. They sat by the fire in Severus’ quarters as he cast the imperius spell at her repeatedly with no effect. It was tiring to both of them, and he let his mind start to wander gently toward hers, asking to be let in. She saw him looking intently at her and was intrigued at being able to make such a connection with someone. She felt him move gently through her thoughts as she let him in, and he began brushing across some of her memories. It was a strange feeling to have the warmth of his presence inside her mind, contributing his reactions to her own that happened with each memory he saw.


He discovered a memory that seemed resistant to be examined. He gave Megan a curious look and started to draw away when he saw her tense up - but then something caught his attention. Pressing forward, he tried to go deeper into that memory, Megan now looking aghast at him struggled to push him out, but his own shock gave him a mechanical resolve to determine whether he really saw…


“No,” he said, as he looked through her frightened eyes at a pair of boots and cape. “No…”


Seemingly impossibly, he shifted her view upward... up a long set of black robes, past a pair of long hands, up to a masked face whose hood was down, revealing long black hair... As much as he wanted it not to be, there was no denying that it was definitely him.


The impact of Megan’s memory of the day that her parents were killed crashed over him as he her her terror, and his own anguished reaction came out of him, uncontrolled.


Megan felt him still inside her mind in that terrible memory, and felt his reaction to it swelling so horribly within her that she thought her head might burst. He was living his own pain inside of her memory and nothing she was doing could get him out of it. They wbothboth shocked from seeing him there, and tried to grasp what it meant to them now. Even though his opening of that memory really only took a few seconds, the pain of it seemed to stretch out indefinitely.

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Momentarily stunned by what he had just seen, Severus snapped himself back to attention and saw Megan crumpled into a heap in front of her chair. Shaking, he picked her up and swifcarrcarried her to the infirmary. She had awakened by the time they reached the examining area, and, for the second time in her life, had become inconsolable. She covered her face with her hands and was sobbing as if her heart was breaking. To hear her cry like that made Severus feel like his own heart was breaking and that his stomach had turned to cold lead within him.


“Poppy!” he shouted hoarsely, laying Megan down on a bed, “Come quickly!”


Madame Pomfrey emerged from her private quarters, rubbing her eyes.


“Severus, what on earth…” and she gasped when she saw Megan. “What happened?” she demanded.


“She has had a rather bad shock. I suppose I could have given her a potion to relax her, but I wanted you to check her to be sure there is nothing more serious. Besides,” he added stiffly, “I don’t think she’ll be wanting anything from me.”


“Well,” said Madame Pomfrey after doing a brief diagnostic charm over Megan, “it looks like what she most needs is a good cry and some sleep. I’ll keep her here in case she needs anything, but she’ll be fine. What about you though?” she asked turning to Severus and eyeing him narrowly, “You’re shaking like a leaf.”


“I require no assistance. But if I may suggest a dreamless sleeping potion for her tonight…” he trailed off.


His mind raced with things that he wished he could say to Megan. Someone had finally come along in his life who liked him, God only knows why, for who he was. He noted bitterly that opening one’s heart to the pleasurable feelings it can experience did not, at this moment, seem worth the unbearable pain of grief and loss. He had carried his own hurt for so long that he barely noticed it anymore.


He regarded his self-loathing as appropriate and at least some small proof that he was not a total monster. After all, he reasoned, what kind of person could do the things he had done as a death eater and then feel fine about it? All of the other death eaters apparently could, but his own soul had eventually stirred persistently enough to pull him out of it. The immature hurt and anger of youth that had originally led him on that dark path was later supplanted by deeper feelings and truths, and he turned back to the only other person he had ever trusted and who had ever truly cared for him - Dumbledore.


Despite the serious danger of remaining among the death eaters as a spy, he felt a certain kind of peace for having made his choice, and it sustained him in the delicate balancing act of trying to appear to participate in a war without actually hurting anyone.


Severus could stand his own hurt, but he could not stand Megan’s - especially not when he was its cause. She had entered his dark and brooding existence as a bright point of light and warmth that had gradually spread to encompass him in more ways than, he sensed, he was even entirely aware of. While Dumbledore’s friendship was like a shelter to him, Megan’s friendship had been like finding a part of himself that was whole and untainted. With her, he admitted, he was happy.


Severus reached out a hand toward her shoulder, but then withdrew it and instead wordlessly turned on his heel and went to Dumbledore’s office, his black cloak swirling behind him, and his black eyes like a storm ready to descend. He was in there for more than two hours, and someone standing outside the door would have, from time to time, been able to hear raised voices.


When Severus finally came out of the office, he went back to his own quarters in the dungeons and began to pack.


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When Megan woke up the next morning, she opened her eyes slowly and looked around. She remembered the evening before and slowly sat up on the edge of the bed, resting her feet on the floor. Her head throbbed, and she drank one of the potions that Poppy had thoughtfully left on the nightstand to relieve it.


The look of horror in Severus’ eyes when he went into that memory had cut her to the quick and added a new element of grief to what had happened that terrible day. His history as a death eater was old news to her, it had just never occurred to her that he would have played any part of the day when her parents were killed. Neither Severus nor Megan had made the connection to the other’s part on that day until it was revealed in that brief flash of memory and comprehension last night.


Dully, she got up and put on her freshly cleaned robe, which was draped over the chair next to her bed. Her feet feeling nearly as heavy as her heart, she made her way through the castle to the gargoyle which guarded the entrance to Dumbledore’s office. Fortunately it was a Sunday morning and most of the students were sleeping in. She looked frightful, felt worse than frightful, and right now wanted to talk to one person only. When she came to the entrance, she wearily told the password to the gargoyle. “Marshmallow Peeps.”


The gargoyle eyed her questioningly. “Why did he give you his own private password?”


“Marshmallow Peeps,” Megan repeated, looking at the gargoyle with dull eyes, tired of it asking her that every time - especially since she didn’t know any other password to give it.


The passage opened up and Megan rode the spiral stairs to the landing. She opened the door to the office and shuffled slowly over to Fawkes’ perch and gently rubbed his beautiful head. He looked up at her with his sweet large eyes and cooed at her. She then turned toward Dumbledore and shuffled over to him. She sank to her knees in front of his chair, folded her arms on his lap, laid her head onto them, and had another cry.


They sat like that for severinutinutes, his eyes full of concern and tenderness, and he waited quietly for her to finish. She was surprised to be crying two days in a row, but each time addressed a different part of her experience. The tears that came now were fresh and sharp, unlike the dull shockwave of last night’s overwhelming experience. Her tears last night had been from reliving the horror of her parents’ death and her own apparently narrow escape. Today’s tears were for the pain that had been so suddenly thrown into the feelings she had for Severus. She cared for him so much, and was afraid that he would distance himself from her now.


“Has he been here?” she asked into Dumbledore’s lap, her voice muffled.


“Yes, he was here last night after he left you in the infirmary.”


“How was he?”


Dumbledore shook his head. “You both had quite a shock, my dear. To say that he was rattled would be a gross understatement.”


Megan sniffled wetly and absentmindedly wiped her eyes and nose on Dumbledore’s robe. She said, “Sorry - I’m not quite myself this morning.”


“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Dumbledore. “I find you to be exactly as you should be. Would you like my hankie?”


“No, thanks.”


Megan was now sitting up facing him. She sighed and crossed her legs and began twisting her hair into a plait as she thought about how to approach Severus.


“I don’t know what I’m going to say to him. I almost want to skip breakfast and avoid the whole thing,” she said as her stomach growled hungrily.


“You don’t need to skip breakfast. You won’t see him there.”


Rolling her eyes, she asked, “What, is he hiding out down in his dungeons? You have to be kidding me. The man faces death eaters and Voldemort himself without flinching but he’s hiding from a run-in with me?”


She finished her braid and stood up, stretching. “Well, I guess I’ll go talk to him then and see how he’s doing.”


Dumbledore replied gravely, looking deep into her blue eyes with his own, “He’s gone, Megan. He left last night.”


Stunned, she let it sink in.


Her mouth dry, she asked Dumbledore, “What do you mean ‘he left?’ Where did he go?”


“Durmstrang.”


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