To Know Who I Am

Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to my beta reader, ubiquirk, my Brit-picker, Saracen77, my alpha readers, Bluedolfyn and Willow_Kat, and all those lovely people who have left reviews.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize and I'm not making any money from this. If you think otherwise, there's this nice room in St. Mungo's for you.

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Chapter 18

Celia looked at Severus, who still looked deeply disturbed. Willow and Kennedy appeared sympathetic. Harry looked as though he were going to run from her again, and Xander and Spike … well, they just seemed mystified.

“I’m sorry,” Spike said, “but for those of us who have no idea what the bloody hell you’re talking about, what’s the big deal with riddles?”

“Not riddles,” Willow answered, “Riddle. Tom Riddle. As in He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?”

“Oh, Voldemort,” Xander said.

Severus hissed as pain flared in his Mark.

Willow kicked her lifelong friend under the table.

“Sorry,” Xander said, adding a muttered, “ow.”

Spike snickered. “So the uppity Slayer’s Daddy was the Big Bad dark wizard of England?” He chuckled again as he lit a cigarette. “That’s just perfect.”

Celia’s head was swimming, or was that the room?

“It doesn’t matter,” Kennedy said firmly.

Celia shot her an incredulous look.

“No, really. How is it different than having your Slayer powers come from that whole demonic infusion thing the Shadow Men did?”

“I shouldn’t be here,” Celia snapped. Then the impact of what she’d just said hit her. “Oh, Goddess, I shouldn’t be anywhere near here! Those dreams, they were a trap all along, weren’t they?”

“No,” Lorne said. “No trap.”

“Then why can’t I know who this child is I’m supposed to protect? Why did I have to spend all this time thinking I was looking out for a Potential Slayer? Why can’t I describe this woman to anyone from Hogwarts?”

“You know I never get all the answers, Celie-kins,” he said. “All I know is you’ll find out when it’s time for you to find out. The main thing is that you need to be here.”

“Why?” Willow asked. “Lorne, if she’s his daughter, then she’s all they really need!”

“But not if they don’t know that.”

That brought Celia – and everyone, apparently – up short.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked. “Isn’t that why they came after her? Looking for ‘the girl from an ancient line’?”

“They don’t know what ‘ancient line’ she’s from,” Lorne pointed out. “They don’t know she’s the current Heir of …”

“But I can’t be,” she interrupted. Severus, Harry, and Willow looked at her like she’d lost it. Maybe she had. “No, seriously, Slytherin’s Heir is a Parselmouth, and I’m not. So there’s got to be someone else. A sibling or a cousin or something. You can’t tell me my mother’s the only one he raped. Guy like him, anything bad he did, he did lots.”

The demon shook his head. “You’re it, babe. There might have been potential others, but your aura’s coming up only child. But you’re right that you should have inherited that. There’s a very good reason for that little quirk.”

“Which I’m sure you’re going to explain in nice little words for the rest of us any time now, right?” Xander asked.

“It seems it’s time for you to remember a few things,” Lorne said, not exactly answering. He placed his hand on her shoulder, steadying her as a shock rippled through her, snapping her head backward. In a corner of her mind, a very small door flew open, and images, sounds, and smells flooded her.

~ ~ ~

When the demon put his hand on her, Celia’s eyes widened and her head snapped back. Severus tensed to respond, but Willow motioned him to wait. Reluctantly, he did. He could already tell that any action he might have taken would have been blocked by the thick blanket of magic that had formed around him, apparently having sensed his aggression towards the demon. When he subsided, it did as well.

Then she began to speak, uttering little fragments of what she seemed to be seeing. “That’s who the snake-man was … why is there ink? … wait … who’s … no!” At this she flung up her right arm as if to block something.

Severus considered holding her still, then thought better of it and simply moved his chair back a few inches.

She continued speaking. “No, you don’t understand …you didn’t see … you can’t hurt him … please, you have to help him …” She reached over and grabbed Severus’ left shoulder.

That pulse of energy that had flowed between them since that first night had become so familiar he barely noticed it any longer, but now it flared to a painful intensity.

“What’s … I don’t understand … a cup? … and that’s … is that him? … ink, everywhere … how can you have two faces?” She released her grip on his shoulder slightly, then let her hand fall back to the table. Suddenly, her face twisted into an expression of utter disgust and horror. Leaning forward and standing slightly, she reached out as if to grab something in front of her, yelling, “No, you can’t! That’s just a …” She sat back hard into her chair and closed her eyes, a sickly green light briefly illuminating her face. “… baby.”

For a long few seconds, she breathed shallowly, her eyes still closed. Then she pushed back from the table, leaned over, and vomited into a bucket that hadn’t been there before. The demon was holding her hair back from her face, and Severus had the vague feeling that was something he ought to be doing, if he could have moved at all. Much of what she’d said made little sense, but that last … that called up memories he had long hoped were put to rest. Memories he did not want to associate with her at all.

He took his eyes off her briefly and saw that the others were staring at her with varying degrees of horror and concern written plainly on their faces. Willow and Potter in particular looked dumbstruck. Potter made sense. Willow ? He turned his attention back to Celia, his lover, the Dark Lord’s daughter, for Merlin’s sake, and had no idea what to do for her.

The demon jerked his chin at the glass of Firewhisky she had tried to decline earlier, and Severus passed it to him. Celia straightened, accepted the glass, and swirled a bit of the liquid around in her mouth before spitting it into the bucket as well, then took a proper swallow. She Vanished the bucket and turned back toward the table, setting the glass down carefully. Placing both hands on the flat surface, she spread her fingers wide and pressed them into the tabletop, as though steadying them would still her mind.

“What … the fuck was that, Lorne?” she demanded, her eyes not leaving her hands on the table, her mouth a grim line.

“That, my dear, was every time the spell binding your powers flickered and finally broke.”

Understanding dawned across her features. This did not lighten her expression in the least.

“So it was keyed to his death. Those were all the times he – or some part of him – died. That … that explains all the objects.”

Her color was returning. Her expression shifted subtly to one he knew well. She was focusing on the problem to be solved. Good.

“So Willow’s spell didn’t have anything to do with it then?” Xander asked. “It was some cosmic coincidence that her magic showed up at the same time as she got all Slayer-fied?”

“You believe in coincidence now?” The demon’s tone was chiding.

“Well, sometimes,” Willow said. “But … that would seem to be kind of pushing it. Considering, you know, nobody really thinks it was a coincidence that the big ol’ Collapse of Sunnydale happened on the same day as the Battle of Hogwarts. Just … if it wasn’t coincidence, we don’t really know what it was.”

Celia finally looked up, taking in the expressions of everyone around the table. When her eyes at last met Severus’, his breath caught. That way she had of searching his face was so very like the Dark Lord – how could he not have seen it before? – and yet so completely opposite. Even when he had enraged her at Christmas, she had stopped short of attempting to invade his mind. He couldn’t tell what she made of him now, for her expression remained unchanged until she turned to face the demon once again.

“Flickered?” she asked. “Remember? I’ve seen all that before?”

It was Willow who answered first. “You were saying a lot of those same things when we found you, Celia.”

“Yeah, um, that was kind of spooky,” Kennedy added with a shudder.

“Nice to not be the only one creeped-out for a change,” Harris muttered.

“You saw each of those events as they happened,” Lorne said. “Every time the spell blinked, you saw it.”

“You mean …” The color drained from her face again. “Lorne, that last … I was barely a year old. And that one … was like I was in his head.” She shook her own head violently, then shifted in her seat, bringing her feet up onto the chair so that she could hug her knees. “I can’t think about that right now.”

“Look at the other end of the timeline then,” the demon suggested.

Severus shared the relief he saw on her face. The implications of what she’d just said were staggering. She experienced the mind of the Dark Lord while he was attempting to kill Potter? When she was an infant herself? She was … there somehow?

“That one’s different, too,” she said. “Maybe because that’s when the spell broke completely? It starts out like most of the others, like I’m watching a movie or something. But then after the first couple of seconds, Harry kills him, and then it’s like I’m there, right in the middle of it all.”

“What happens?” the demon asked, motioning to the others to be quiet.

“There’s this shadow. It shoots over the battlefield, and it kind of stops over the lake, then plunges down through the water into a silver room. It lands in a large puddle of ink and stops.”

Severus shuddered. No one had reported anything like that, but then, most were otherwise occupied, including Potter, who had quickly come under attack by enraged Death Eaters no longer constrained by the Dark Lord’s orders that only he would kill the Boy Who Lived.

“Anything about that seem familiar?” the demon asked.

“That’s what I’ve been sensing under the lake,” she replied, absolute certainty steadying her voice. “So, something, some part of him is in there. In the Chamber of Secrets.”

“Drawn to what was left of the diary,” Potter spoke up. “He still has that Horcrux, then? All this time, and he hasn’t really been dead?”

Severus had not seen fear like that on Potter’s face in years. Nor had he felt such himself in that time.

“No, he’s good and dead,” the demon answered. “If any part of him were still alive, Celia here wouldn’t have any magic at all. That wasn’t a piece of his soul in that pool of ink. The shadow wasn’t either. More like an echo.”

“But it’s more than that, now, isn’t it?” Celia asked.

“When one door closes, another opens,” the demon said, looking at her intently. “Anything about that spot feel familiar?”

Severus watched as she considered it and saw the moment she came to a conclusion. She looked intently at Willow and then at Harris.

“Another Hellmouth.”

The demon nodded, then added, “It’s not active yet, not really mature. But they can sense it, and they plan to use it. If they succeed, not only will your Daddy be back, there’ll be a fully functioning Hellmouth at Hogwarts.”

Her eyes flashed fire and she snapped, “My Dad was Nathan Reese. What’s-his-face was just … just … an unintentional sperm donor.”

“Isn’t that more or less what I tried to tell you when you came asking about your birth parents before?”

She visibly deflated.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“A Hellmouth at Hogwarts?” Harris interjected. “Wouldn’t that kind of make Sunnydale look like Nice and Normal Regional High? Will, can you even imagine if everyone at Sunnydale had been doing magic? All the time?”

Willow looked bleak.

As well she might. Severus did not want to contemplate the effects of such a nexus of Dark power, drawing on the magic of the school itself, the creatures of the Forbidden Forest, the teachers, and the students. It would feed on those energies, warp them, and radiate that Dark distortion, infecting everyone and everything.

“How do we defuse that?” Celia asked sharply. “I mean, hello, ticking time bomb, no matter what else these whack-jobs have in mind!”

“It’s all of a piece, Reesie-cup. The same key that can open it can lock it for good.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she visibly pulled her knees in more tightly, causing Severus to wonder what she was considering. “Just me, or all three?”

“That I don’t know.”

These limits on the demon’s foreknowledge were rather frustrating, but what was she asking? A chill ran down his spine.

“So, what, I’m some sort of Wizarding Princess Leia? Great.”

“Actually,” Harris said, “that doesn’t quite fit. I mean, Harry here isn’t your twin brother, and the Emperor would be You Know Who, not Vader. Actually, a better parallel for Vader would be …”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” she said, pointing a warning finger at him and stemming the tide of incomprehensible babble, then turned back to the demon, splaying her hands in supplication. “Can you at least give me a time frame? Are they constrained to a certain date, or do they have a deadline, anything?”

“When would you do a spell like that?”

Willow answered. “She wouldn’t do a spell like that. Nobody worth bringing back deserves to be put through that, and anyone who isn’t worth it … well … obviously. But, um, since we’re well past the six-month deadline, I’d have to say I’d go with the anniversary.”

“Got it in one,” the demon said with a nod.

As the thought formed in Severus’ mind, Celia spoke it. “They tipped their hand awfully early, then, don’t you think?”

“Well, I don’t think they were planning on you finding their little spy device, silly!”

“Not me,” she snorted, “a house-elf found it. I friggin’ wore it around for weeks.” She grew thoughtful again. “So we have a little under two months to figure out how to de-link these two, defuse a Hellmouth-to-be, and deal with whatever else they’re going to try in the mean time, all the while keeping them in the dark about exactly what I am. That about right?”

“I’d say that about sums it up.”

“Lovely.”

Severus found himself already looking beyond the fairly challenging set of objectives she’d just outlined. She clearly hadn’t thought of it yet, but it would be equally important to keep the Ministry ignorant of her parentage. Those with lingering Death Eater sympathies would look at a Vampire Slayer who was descended from the Dark Lord as some sort of cosmic proof that their agenda had not been inherently evil. The rest would want her in Azkaban merely for existing. That she’d just admitted not fifteen minutes ago to casting at least one Unforgivable on Muggles would simply provide a convenient excuse to do so, not that he believed anyone at this table would divulge that.

He shot a look at Potter, whose expression was caught between horror and the sort of look he used to get just prior to haring off and trying to get himself killed in his school days. A quick look into his mind showed a maelstrom of ideas as to how they might entrap the new Death Eaters, but fortunately nothing of betraying Celia to the Ministry.

Potter scowled as he realized what Severus had done.

Severus turned his attention back to his lover, satisfied for the moment that Potter was not immediately planning to pose a problem.

“So, back to your little trip down Repressed Memory Lane,” Harris asked her. “Did you see anything else? Maybe anything that would tell us something we could, oh, I don’t know, use, as opposed to just adding more funtabulously impossible problems?”

“I … that’s … I mean, it’s important to me, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the rest of it.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” the demon suggested firmly. “Someone thought you ought to see all that right now, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s still a few blanks to fill in.”

Severus caught the quick, almost apologetic glance she threw in his direction, and he rubbed his shoulder absently. She closed her eyes and began to describe what she had seen.

“It’s like I’m really there,” she said, “because there’s someone behind me. I can’t see him, but I know he’s one of the ones wearing a mask and black robes. I don’t know how I know it, but he’s going to do something to the boy, to Harry. Some sort of revenge. I think maybe he has a gun because I don’t understand wands yet.”

“What do you do?” Willow asked intently.

Warming to her tale, Celia continued, “Nothing yet. Before I can do anything, there’s another one in a mask and robes. But he’s turning. He’s unarmed, and he’s putting himself in the line of fire. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I know he’s not like the others, and he shouldn’t die.”

Severus closed his eyes, remembering with her, now adding the rest of what had happened that day. He could smell the ozone from crackling spells and the coppery tang of blood. So much blood.

“I do the only thing I can think of, and I try to knock the weapon away as it reaches over my shoulder. I can’t turn, but I grab at it and shove it up, away.” She drew a ragged breath. “It was so hard to move, even a little, and the light … the spell … still hit, just on the shoulder instead of the chest. Then the one behind me is gone, I don’t know where, and the one who was hit falls to the ground. I try to move him, to look at the wound, but my hand goes right through him, and I wonder how that could happen.

“Then a woman comes. She has her wand out, and I still don’t understand, but I get that she means to hurt the man on the ground. She’s furious. Her face is almost as red as her hair. She’s calling him a traitor, and she’s right, but she has it backwards because she didn’t see. I try to tell her over and over, ‘Don’t hurt him. You don’t understand – he’s good. You have to help him.’ I can tell she doesn’t hear me, and I don’t know what else to do, so I yell it louder and louder. And then she looks like maybe she does hear, maybe even sees me. She reaches toward me, through me … and then it all fades.” She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Whoever she was, whatever she did, obviously it worked out.” She touched Severus’ shoulder briefly, then took his hand. Her fingers were chilled, but her grip was firm. He opened his eyes and drank in the sight of her, not caring for the moment who was watching or what they thought.

“It was Molly Weasley,” he said softly. “The mother of the Weasleys you met in Diagon Alley. She believed she saw what happened. She made them tend my wounds and later testified on my behalf.” He did not add that this had been against his wishes. He had not expected to survive, much less felt that he deserved to walk free. Another set of memories he would have preferred not to revisit.

She nodded hesitantly and squeezed his hand. The innocent gesture left him feeling oddly torn between being reassured and further disturbed.

Despite his years of experience assimilating new and frequently disturbing knowledge about people, it seemed strange to him that Celia could look the same as she had when they had arrived, if a bit overwhelmed. How could the Dark Lord’s daughter be the same woman who littered his sitting room with half-drunk cups of over-brewed coffee? How could the woman who chewed on her quill whilst marking, trying to find the right way to explain why a student’s idiotic answer was wrong, have come from that sociopathic megalomaniac?

“How?” she asked, turning back to the demon. “I mean, I get how I could see it, I guess, but how was I actually there? It’s not like I can do astral projection, Lorne, ‘cause seriously, I’ve tried it, and I can’t.”

“Your life debt,” the demon answered. “The death of your father summoned your awareness as the spell binding your powers ended, just like it did all those other times. Only this time, it was stronger. So when Mr. I-Play-For-the-Good-Guys-But-Nobody-Knows-That was in danger, that pinged your life debt. You were already halfway there, and your spirit was able to manifest just strongly enough to act.”

“That must be when you passed out at school,” Willow said. “When they sent you to the hospital.”

Celia shook her head. He wondered whether she was rejecting the explanation specifically or everything that had been revealed thus far.

“And the last?” she asked. “Which was really the first, I guess. ‘Cause the stuff in the middle didn’t seem as important.”

The demon looked sympathetic. “Like you said, you were just a baby, same as Harry-kins, here. You were a bit more than a year old, but the binding spell was about a month less than a year.”

“So I saw it through his eyes. No,” she corrected herself, “more than that. I felt it. I’ve never felt such fear and loathing and hatred.” She shuddered, and Severus squeezed the hand that still held his, unsure what else to do. “That means I felt it then, doesn’t it?”

The demon nodded.

“And I could feel his intent. That’s why I’ve always been able to cast it, right from the first time, isn’t it? I didn’t feel emotions anything like that,” she said weakly, “but I tapped straight into the exact degree of intent because I learned from the fucking master.”

Her expression was so completely filled with despair that Severus would have sworn he could actually feel it. He could certainly understand it. He had stolen only the rarest of glimpses of the Dark Lord’s mind. Any more would have been suicidal. Even from those few, however, he well knew what a twisted and sickening landscape it presented.

She buried her face in her knees, still not releasing his hand.

“That’s why you asked her about it,” Willow said. “How she knew what the Killing Curse looks like when it rebounds.”

“She’d already seen what it looks like when it rebounds off a living being,” Kennedy added in a far quieter tone than Severus had ever heard her use. “Yeah, it was for a totally different reason, but she already knew what to look for.”

“That’s also why you’re not a Parselmouth and Harry here is,” the demon said, lifting her chin to look at her. “Your father didn’t transfer some of his own power to him. Part of you was there, and what got transferred was yours.”

She swallowed some more Firewhisky, then looked around Severus to Potter and said, “Um, you can keep it, ‘kay?”

“Er, yeah,” Potter said, quickly taking a large gulp of whatever he was drinking.

Celia turned back and stared at the table in front of her. Was she replaying the visions she had just seen? Or simply too overwhelmed to think or speak any further? The demon touched her shoulder, and she flinched.

“You’re not him,” the demon said. “Don’t make his mistake and start hating half of what you are.”

“How can I not?” she asked bitterly.

“Hate the things he did,” Willow supplied. “That’s not the same as hating him.”

“I don’t think I can make that distinction right now,” Celia muttered.

“Well, I think it’s just fine if you hate him,” the vampire said. “What’s not to hate? You’re certainly good at it. Oh, hey, I wonder if that’s where you got it from!” He held his hand to his face in an obviously exaggerated expression of surprise.

“You do realize that hating you doesn’t actually require being evil, right?” Harris asked. “Pretty much it just requires breathing. Or not, in some cases.”

“Cut it out, you two,” Willow snapped with a look that suggested the two of them might find themselves painfully hexed once they left the boundaries of the Anti-Aggression Charms.

“There’s one more thing you need to hear, Celie-cakes, and then you’d better get some rest while I get to the specifics of everyone else’s readings,” the demon said. “You’ll find the rest of what you need on the island that isn’t an island.”

“Is it a requirement for all Seers to leave people floundering to discern what you actually mean?” Severus demanded, restraining himself from actually baring his teeth and snarling.

“I can only tell her what I tell her, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dangerous,” the demon replied. “The rest she’ll figure out when the time comes.”

“Then I believe it is time to go,” he said. She was in no shape to Apparate on her own. “Potter, will you assist Mr. Harris in his return to Hogsmeade?”

“Of course.”

Kennedy, he noticed, was already pulling out her wallet to settle the bar bill, even as the demon began speaking to the vampire. That would be one less thing for Celia to concern herself with.

He stood and, using the hand she still held, gently pulled her up as well. “Are you ready to leave?”

“I don’t think I can ...”

“I know,” he murmured. “I’ll take care of it.” As he turned her empty glass into a Portkey, he noticed Potter looking at them. Unlike earlier, this look was one of sympathy, though Severus could not be sure its exact object.

Celia said no more but meekly followed as he led her back to the doorway. That was almost more disturbing to him than everything they had heard tonight. Once they were in the entryway, he guided her to stop and put her arms around him. At least her physical strength seemed intact.

“We will not be going by way of Hogsmeade,” he said to Willow, who had followed them out.

“No, of course not,” she replied, holding up her hands. “Just … this is the stuff that shut her down the first time. Keep an eye on her? You know how to reach us if you need to.”

He nodded brusquely and promptly activated the Portkey that would bring them directly to his rooms.

~ ~ ~

The spinning sensation took a bit longer to subside than usual. Probably because of the Firewhisky. That was okay. It was a welcome distraction. The Potion Severus gave her once they arrived slowed her racing thoughts, but as this just made them easier to see, she wasn’t sure this was an improvement. That they were standing in his sitting room still wearing Muggle clothing added a level of surrealism that she thought might cause her to start laughing hysterically and never stop if she paid it enough attention.

Instead, she focused on the fact he was still holding her. That was nice. Comforting. He still wasn’t scared of her. Of course, that might just be because of this bizarre link between them. Thoughts of Spike answering only to her flashed through her mind, and she pulled away.

“I … um … I need a bath,” she said, knowing that sounded lame.

Severus nodded and turned to the fireplace, reaching for the Floo powder.

Right. Got to tell Minerva something, I guess.

She thought of asking him not to. Wondered if he would comply, just because she said so. She fled to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

There’s a Hellmouth-wannabe on the school grounds that we still don’t know how to shut down, and I actually considered asking Severus not to report in? Maybe there really is evil in me.

It took her a long time to actually get into the tub. First she desperately needed to brush her teeth. The taste of vomit was gone, but Firewhisky didn’t taste all that much better. Then she brushed out her hair, wondering as she did which side she got it from. It certainly snarled up enough to be evil. She tamped down the hysterical laughter that tried to follow that thought.

Her eyes and nose seemed normal enough. Then again, he had looked pretty normal when he’d come out of that book. Horcrux. Whatever.

“You don’t look any different than you did this morning or any other time,” the mirror said with a sniff. “I can’t imagine why you’re bothering to look so closely now. You don’t even have your Cosmetic Potions out.”

With a huff, she turned away, stripped, and climbed into the tub, automatically turning on the taps. Once in, she didn’t feel like actually bathing. She watched patterns in the bubbles, then found herself staring at the scar on her wrist that would soon disappear. It struck her as oddly ironic that if Spike had bitten her, the scar would remain. One of the few things that would permanently scar a Slayer. She wondered if her blood would have that fixating effect on all vampires or if it was because he’d been Marked. Wondered what effect the rest of her had on anyone else who was Marked.

Poor judgment. He said the first time was poor judgment, like he didn’t even know why he’d done it. Like maybe he wasn’t under his own control maybe?

But that couldn’t be it, could it? He’d pushed her away after that first time. He couldn’t have done that if something about her was forcing him to want to be with her, could he? Except he had years of experience resisting … his control. Maybe that’s what that had been all about. Suddenly, every kiss, every caress, every backhanded compliment seemed tainted.

Still staring at her wrist, she wondered what it would take to remove all of his genes. Magic should be able to do that, shouldn’t it? Just remove all the ones that came from him and replace them with duplicates of the ones she had from her mother. There had to be a spell that could do that. Except, if it were that easy to play around with genes, she wouldn’t have to wait three generations for her hybrids to show the magical traits she was breeding them for.

Besides, she needed those genes. They had to have something to do with why Lorne thought she could use her blood to fix this. Well, fix Severus and Harry. He hadn’t said whether it had anything to do with the Hellmouth part.

“Do not even think it,” Severus said from the doorway.

She looked up at him wearily. His face was the stony mask it had been this morning, but his voice carried an emotion she didn’t associate with him. Fear.

“What? Oh. I’m not,” she said, belatedly realizing how it looked to him as she sat in the tub contemplating her wrist. She let her hand sink back into the water and gazed back at the bubbles.

The next thing she knew, he was sliding into the tub beside her.

“You have been in here for almost a half hour and have not even washed your hair yet,” he said.

“I was thinking,” she said. “Just not about what I guess it looked like.”

She gave him a sad smile as he poured some of her shampoo into his hand and motioned for her to wet her hair. Normally she found it amusing that he so enjoyed washing her hair. Now she wondered why he did. Could anything be more out of character for this man? His fingertips massaging her scalp should be soothing, but instead they seemed to wind her nerves tighter with every stroke. Was this something he’d done with other women? It wasn’t as if she could ask. She’d sound jealous or something. But it suddenly seemed critically important to know whether it was something he already liked doing or just something he did because something about her made him like it. Or think he liked it. Or something.

It was going to be a very short trip to crazy-land if she kept thinking like this.

“What were you thinking, then?” he asked.

“It’s all so insane,” she said. “And ironic. If I really had been Muggle-born, he and others like him would have called me Mudblood. But this … this is what it really means to have tainted blood in your veins.”

His hands stilled and slipped from her hair into the water. “You are not tainted,” he said, a strained note to his voice. “And do not ever use that word in my presence again.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, but his face predictably told her very little. His eyes, however, were alight with anger and something else she couldn’t identify.

Ducking under the water to rinse the suds from her hair, she wondered briefly what that was about. When she surfaced, he was just stepping back out of the tub and picking up his wand to Summon towels, his nightshirt, and her nightgown. She swallowed.

How am I supposed to sleep? With him? Or at all? And did I just piss him off? Why?

She sat under the plain water tap for a minute to get the last bits of shampoo out of her hair and buy a little time to think. It didn’t do her much good. Finally she drained the tub and got out, stepping straight into the sneakers she’d worn earlier and casting a Drying Charm on herself before shrugging into her nightgown.

“You know, dearie, your hair will be like straw if you …”

“Shut up,” she snapped at the mirror, gathering the rest of her clothes, heading into the bedroom, and closing the bathroom door as firmly behind her as she could without actually slamming it.

Once she’d put her clothes on the chair where she had been leaving laundry for the house-elves, she walked over to where Severus stood fussing with something in his wardrobe. At least there was one thing she could fix tonight.

“Severus, I’m sorry,” she said. “I … I guess I thought it would be okay to use that word in that context. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

He shot her a look from the corner of his eye and resumed straightening one of his robes where it hung.

“For most wizards it most likely would be,” he replied. “My aversion to that word is … stronger than most.” He closed the wardrobe and turned to face her. “Your apology is unnecessary.”

Well, I thought I knew how to fix at least this one thing. Now what?

“What is it you want to ask?” His tone didn’t actually invite any questions.

“Do you think this is real?” she blurted, instantly wishing she could take it back and say something … subtler. Smarter. Or just anything else at all.

“You have seen that your life debt to me was fulfilled,” he bit out, crossing his arms over his chest. “If you wish to recant your little declaration, kindly do not try to evade responsibility for it.”

“Wait … what?” It took her a few seconds to process what he’d said. “No, I mean … you. Not me. Or because of me. Or something.” She took a steadying breath. “You saw what happened to Spike. And now we know why. How can we know for sure you’re not under some sort of weird interaction between me and your Mark?”

He appeared startled, an expression she rarely caught on his face. Obviously he hadn’t thought of that possibility, though it was just as obvious he’d considered the reverse.

Could we be more pathetic? Both jumping for the first possible reason to believe the other doesn’t really feel what they say they do? Or not so much say, but … yeah.

“Whilst I have no doubt your demon friend left out many things he could have told us,” he replied after a long moment, “some of which I sincerely hope he discussed with the others after our departure, do you truly believe he would have omitted something that important?” Severus asked, sounding only slightly less angry than before.

“What, like not telling me three years ago who my biological parents are? Yeah, if he thought the timing wasn’t right, he definitely wouldn’t.” Of course, then there were the other hints he’d made about their relationship. Would he have dropped those if there wasn’t anything real between them in the first place? She didn’t know Lorne well enough to know. But … it hadn’t sounded like a warning.

“I suppose we will know for certain if and when the Mark is successfully removed.”

She supposed he had a point. “And in the meantime? Do we just … act like nothing’s changed?”

“Nothing has changed,” he pointed out, “except what we know. The facts are as they always were.”

She rolled her eyes. “So you’re still okay with climbing into bed with me, now that you know my … biological father is … was … him?”

His eyes narrowed. “I was rather expecting to do so, but it appears you disagree.”

“Well, no.” It was getting a little chilly just standing there, and the idea of snuggling up next to him … even if she’d never ever use the word snuggling anywhere near his hearing … was very comforting. If there was just some way to leave all this other crap to deal with later. Not erase it exactly. Just stick it somewhere else until she needed to handle it.

“Then what do you suggest?” he asked, exasperated. “Do you plan to sleep on the sofa? Because Minerva will have both our heads to decorate the main gates if you return to your cottage, especially tonight!”

“That’s … thanks so much for that image, Severus. I wasn’t going to have enough nightmares tonight,” she snapped. “No, I don’t want to sleep on the sofa, and before you get any huffier, I don’t want you to either!” Looking back to the bed, something caught her eye and an idea struck. “What if … could we maybe close the curtains around the bed?”

“What in Merlin’s name for? The Warming Charm is functioning adequately.”

She wasn’t so sure about that, though it might just be her own nerves, but that wasn’t the point. “Just … I don’t know, to leave all this other stuff out here. I know it wouldn’t really do anything, but … it’d feel like kind of a … a boundary.” Biting her lip, she added, “That sounded a lot less stupid in my head.”

Severus looked at her, probably trying to decide whether she’d completely lost it. Slowly, he uncrossed his arms and picked up his wand, releasing all the curtains from where they were fastened to the bedposts at once.

A knot of tension at the base of her neck eased.

“Thank you.”

He didn’t reply but simply parted the curtains on his side of the bed and sat to remove his slippers.

Walking around to her side, she scuffled out of her sneakers and climbed in as well. It was definitely different, having the curtains closed. Darker, for one thing. The light from the candles on the walls barely peeped through the lines where the curtains met. Sliding under the covers carefully, she reached out to find him, not sure if she should be surprised when she found his shoulder and realized he was facing her. She scooted closer, and he put his arms around her.

“Thank you,” she said again. “I know it’s silly, but now I feel like we can be just us in here.”

He still didn’t say anything, but unless she was imagining things, his grip on her tightened slightly. As she drifted to sleep, she decided that was a good thing.

---

A/N 1: The lyrics Celia sings at the beginning are from "I Disappear" by Metallica.
A/N 2: The lyrics Lorne sings are from "The Reflex" by Duran Duran.
A/N 3: The Madonna song referenced is "Like a Prayer." Sorry, I couldn't resist the Klan/DE comparison, which relates to the controversial video, not the song itself. As to the significance Celia thinks she sees in the artist herself, well ... I'll leave that to your imagination for the moment.
A/N 4: My thoughts on how life-debts work in the Potterverse have been heavily influenced by a couple of particular fics: Of Debts and Debt Collection by Anastasia and A Walking Shadow by Ariadne. I've seen similar ideas elsewhere since, but I know these are the first two places I encountered them, so I wanted to make sure to give credit for the inspiration. (Come to think of it, the stairway destruction in chapter 5 probably owes something to Of Debts as well!)