warnings: a ton of tension at the end, blood
word count: 3041

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"But please Professor, we were just having fun! No harm in that," begged a student followed by Cesira, who gave him an arched brow.

"I know that Weasley, but some rules cannot be broken. Though I found what you did in potions... amusing. Come on, chop chop!"

That had been the theme of the dinner, everyone kept asking details in how the Weasley twins managed to sneak an enchanted quill on the most feared teacher's desk in the school, covering him in a bright pink liquid that apparently took hours to wash off.
Snape didn't say much on the matter, obviously, but their detention was to echoe in the centuries.

A silky serpentine voice came rattling from a corner of the far end of the west floor they were inspecting.

"Come out dunderheads, I know you're hiding."

Cesira quickly muttered a nox and pushed the gingerhead twins toward the stairs that would take them to their common room.

"Fly boys, I'll cover up."

One of them grinned at her before climbing the tricky stairs.

"Wicked."

Cesira turned around and a blinding light made her squint her lonely eye, raising her hand to lower his wand.

"I don't want to become completely blind Snape," she growled, taking a step back.

"Who were they." he asked, though it didn't sound like a question at all.

His onyx eyes were shining like dead stars still hanging on the midnight sky.

"It doesn't matter, I saw to it."

The wizard lowered his wand to his feet, rays of blueish light crawling to his harsh features from beneath, embracing him in a sinister aura.
If he could be any more sinister than he already was.

His hooked nose inched from her face, his breath as quiet as always, yet his stare had written the fatal Unforgivable Curse on it. Carved in his irises.

"Don't. Lie. To. Me." he whispered in a most gravelly monotone voice which came to her ears as merely understandable.

Cesira dared to dance around the pit of fire for the umpteenth time, putting her secrets on the line.
She grasped his wand, pointing it against her forehead.
He could cast any spell. Any.

She breathed through. Snape was unfazed.

"Take a look for yourself."

She could feel his presence penetrating her mind, but before he could search for his answer, they heard stifled noises and lots of hushing along with laughter.

"Insufferable witch." venom trickled down his chin as he started lunging toward the suspicious noise, when Filch came warning them that he heard someone in the east towers.

Snape sighed and pinched his nose, his fist choking his wand in a death grip that made his veins stand out.

Not that Cesira was looking at them.

"I have an idea Snape."

"Oh Merlin, spare me."

She rolled her eyes. "Let's split, I go east you go west. The one who catches more dunderheads wins."

The wizard frowned lightly, beating his own ramping smirk from emerging on his lips.

"Why is everything a childish game to you Blyde?"

Cesira crossed her arms in utter disbelief, patiently waiting for him to recognize he wanted to play too.

"I won't merge with this foolishness of yours."

She shrugged.

Boring.

"Fine by me, know that it's still pending. The winner takes it all." she set light to her wand, walking backwards to the east.

"All is permitted, you could even torture me if you win."

She knew he would do it without blinking twice, he could fool even Albus with his professional demeanor, but she could see through his right arm sleeve.
He had the mark on his skin. That was an eternal token of pure, untamable evil.
Nothing could ever change that.

Snape watched her run away to her silly adventure, his mind lurching toward the very words she so blatantly let loose, now dangling in front of him.
Torture her? Why would he commit such brutal violence on someone he despised for sheer academic rivalry?
Perhaps, there was something more that pushed her to assume such obnoxious things about him.
Some invisible ribbon tied to the strangely blurred memories he had about her.

He would never tell her how sorry he felt for ravishing her mind, seeing all the cries and bloodsheds hammering at an alarming speed at every single breath she let out.
Maybe he'd invite her over to drink something and offer her his apology, knowing to be worthless of forgiveness.
His apologies had an infamous tradition for coming too late.

"I would never." he confessed into the silent night, strutting west.

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"Ah! You're the fifth," Cesira urged a boy to go straight to his common room.

She had spent the last hour playing hide and seek with teenagers, finding it to be a harmless yet enjoyable hunt.
She wouldn't get bored easily away from preying on dangerous wizards if that was how teachers spent their nights at Hogwarts.

She never snooped past curfew as a student, there was so much to study for and Hazel and Francis...

When she made sure the east wing was cleared she headed to the dungeons, hoping to find Snape on the loser's side.

Unfortunately, when they crossed each other's paths, they were at a draw.

"How many?"

He rolled his eyes. "Five."

"We're even." She scoffed and motioned for her chambers, brushing her shoulder against his chest.

She shivered, fighting the urge to brush off her robes.

"Not so fast Blyde-"

"What now?"

Before he could make his leap of faith to redeem himself, a noise came from not so far away.
They stared into each other.

"I'll go fetch him, you need to rest."

Snape started heading for the last dunderhead of the shift, when the insufferable witch sprinted past him like a cheetah running after its lunch.

"You wish!"

Snape sighed in annoyance, resisting the urge to pinch his nose one more time.

"How I loathe babysitting."

Cesira looked behind her much to her surprise, glancing at the dungeon bat running after her, his cloak floating and possibly slowing him down.
He wasn't exactly running, he just leveled up his usual walk.

For a split, fleeting moment, Cesira laughed like she did when running under the snowflakes with her friends in the courtyard.
For a second that vanished in a flapping of wings, she felt as if nothing truly bad ever happened to her.

She jinxed Snape, glueing his shoes to the floor and disappeared from his sight in a wink above a genuine smirk.

The dunderhead was a seventh year Gryffindor, one of those big buff boys with little to nothing in their hormonal brains.
She had to deal with a lot of them arrogant teens.

"Game's over boy, off you go." She gestured him to follow a shortcut to his towers, but he sneered, checking her out.

"You can't tell me what to do."

Cesira raised an eyebrow, leaning against a column. How often male students assumed she represented no real threat due to her sex.

"Funny. You just earned a detention. Do I have to escort you or you're big enough to know your way back?"

The boy scoffed and dared to take a step forward, stopping at the icy stare she gave him as a warning.
He didn't back down, though.

"Or what? You can't do anything to me."

Cesira arched an eyebrow, thinking about his detention.

"We'll see about that big boy."

He was wasting her time, yet before she could obligate him to piss off with a harsher hand, she heard swift steps coming behind her.
She smiled. Again.

"You don't frighten me, witch."

She chuckled. "Fine. I'll take that. I can't scare you. But he can."

The boy immediately backed down as he saw a tall shadow emerging from the darkness of the corridor, and he looked far from magnanimous.

"Good evening Mr. King."

"Oh dear, we're in trouble." she cooed gloomily, enjoying the show.

The dunderhead shied away as soon as Snape strood up to him, running to his common room as thirty points were taken from his house.

The man turned to her, curling his sallow lips in an invisible grin. Cesira straightened up from the column and hinted at his shoes.

"No hard feelings for that, I had to."

"Six."

She gaped. "What? I caught him first."

"I rescued you."

Cesira let out a high and cold laugh, shaking her head as some fair locks shielded her mauled face.

"You? Saving someone? Merlin, you're hilarious sometimes."

Death Eaters never knew mercy nor decency, they did something to her friends they could never take away.
Never.
Not even dying at her own hands could fix her baleful memories.

Snape restrained his breath at the insult, his oath to Dumbledore looming in a distance. He didn't utter a word and invited Cesira to his quarters, keeping the door open for her.
The witch looked at him for an excruciating time, he couldn't penetrate her mind to know what she was up to. He was an observant man, and he felt the natural repulsion coming from the woman to be the son of a much more serious matter.
It wasn't academic rivalry. Not with the look she always had when talking to him.
He was used to being silently cursed under hateful stares, but hers had something deeper, darker to it.

Cesira entered his personal office, giving no attention to the long cupboard running along the circular walls guarding potions and old books, nor his heavy desk with parchments scattered on every corner.

That was it, her minor revenge had come to its deadline.

"Firewhiskey?"

"Lovely."

Snape turned his back to her to prepare his treat for the guest, Cesira had little time to act.
She silently took out her wand, the unbearable silence growing louder every second she wasted lingering.
Her foot scratched the floor.
Snape slowly raised his head, still unable to see her.

It happened in the blink of an eye: he
drew out his wand and whipped around, but Cesira came heavily prepared. She disharmed him and wasted no time hissing the spell.

"Legilimens!"

Everything turned white, flashbacks streamed franctically before her.
A boy with a hooked nose being followed by some Gryffindors, a young Snape hanging in the air from his ankle as boys chanted 'Snivellus'.
That wasn't what she was looking for.
She saw a gingerhead girl slapping him in the face, the word Mudblood dangling from his venomous lips.
Yes, that was the trail.

She marched in said direction, assisting meetings in a cool parlor with hundreds of Death Eaters listening to Voldemort explain his disgusting plans.
Then she saw Snape torturing muggleborns, her own teachers who disappeared during the war, brewing highly fatal potions for his Lord and then she found them: the battles.

Flames, explosions, cries.
She recognized people from the Order fighting and dying. The rage ramped up, galloping directly at her heart.
She heard her own shrieking cry shredding the heavy air in a distance as she saw her friends being dragged away.

The night.

Before she could nurture the memory of that fatal event, she was shut out of his mind.

"Enough!" he bellowed in a mere whisper.

"Enough." his tongue hissed on the end of the word, his teeth grinned as a snake showing its fangs.

She was expelled from his head too quickly, she burned to make it as slow and as painful as possible much like he did to her. But she failed.

Because I'm weak. And I can't beat him.

Her wand rested vigilant in her hand, the pending ghost of silence rattling their ground. Snape was leaning against a cupboard, his lower teeth bared. His chest showed some sign of agitation from the siege, but nothing she dreamed of causing him.

No one dared to take a step.

"Don't you ever use legilimancy on me again for your own sick, twisted need to crush innocent people." she drew out raging words, displaying them naked under his eyes.

Snape quickly regained his wand, Cesira swiftly bent her knees, preparing an aggressive stance.

"Are you innocent, Cesira?"

She felt her neck vein pounding in a hammering ache, the frightening sensation of him subtly knowing what she did all those years after the war.
He was playing with her, luring her into admitting her sins.

"That is rich coming from a Death Eater, Severus."

He still didn't recall that night, she could sense it. For him she was someone who fought on the other side, the right side. Someone who had the right to question him, despise him even, but not only for his former allegiance.

"I was one. Not anymore. Dumbledore trusts me."

Her eye filled with tears, the remembrance of those innocent people being beastly tortured, the potions he made to poison victims into madness, the word he called that beautiful girl.
He could never stop being one of them.

"Liar! How dare you speak his name having his mark on your skin!"

"Ask him. Ask him where my loyalties lie."

She shook her head, a strange kind of shivering crawling down her neck and diving into her lungs, grasping her heart in prodded claws.

Snape frowned at the sight oh her eye suddenly circled by a black shade, her skin losing all its color, a grey veil covering her pupil.
As if something possessed her.

"Stupefy!"

Cesira hit the hard stone wall, the tickling shiver fading away in an instant.
She bent toward her wand but quickly her periphery sunk into black, a heavy, crushing weight pinning her against the wall.
She looked up his onyx eyes, both her wrists secured in a tight grip that would certainly leave her bruises, the tip of his wand inches deep into her neck.

"The war is over, and so are my strings tying me to the Dark Lord. I no longer believe in his cause."

Cesira shook her head, pushing her heel against the wall to pry him away from her body, being able to feel his heart beating and his clothed body blend into hers.
It was suffocating. His bitter scent of endless rainy days and insurmountable grief.

"You don't understand," she hissed, a trail of blood running down her mouth. "you took everything from me."

Snape kicked her leg hard to deceive her from wiggling away, but she never stopped fighting for freedom.

"I never met you during the war."

Cesira laughed with her eye closed, raising her chin higher.
She remembered him of Bellatrix Lestrange in that state, vacant of any trace of rationality.

"I didn't, did I?"

He tried entering her mind, but even if he was fuming for her attack, he respected her never wanting him to intrude her privacy. He knew he hurt her in doing so.
More than he thought.
Thus he stayed away.

Cesira was shoved another time against the surface.

"Speak your mind, witch!"

The door pried open with a loud noise, showing none other than Penny Beechwood with her wand pointed at the two of them.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?! Stu-"

"Expelliarmus." Snape acted smarter than his apprentice and disharmed her, whipping his wand to lock the door.

"Help me heal her."

Penny was sure she stepped into a nightmare: Cesira half conscious with her tutor crushing her against the wall, his faintly distraught face with a hint of what she could label as fear.

"W-"

Penny took several steps backwards as he lunged in her direction, dragging Cesira by her collar.

"Questions. Later."

The youngest in the room widened her frightened eyes, darting a look at his wand secured in his hand and ready to cast.

"I'll take the Wiggenweld Potion."

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A whole month passed by since that accident in his quarters, Cesira and Severus never uttered a word to each other since, if not when found in professional situations that required communicating through open mouths.

She was ashamed for her reckless behaviour, it felt like she rushed something that belonged to another chapter of her life there. It felt violating. It felt wrong.
Dumbledore was nowhere in sight, no one knew how to reach to him, not even Minerva.
Snape always kept a watchful eye on her since that night, ensuring she was her insufferable self and not the demonic beast he saw taking a hold of her before she could strike and, he was sure of it, kill him.

Cesira tried not thinking about the shivering feeling and the distant, ghostly voice she seldom heard coming from within.
She tortured herself in the silent spaces of the days if Voldemort was somehow trying to get inside her veins.
But he was gone, and never really met her.

Penny went on desperately trying to make them talk, she couldn't stand seeing his tutor lingering in the shadows to spy on her, nor the witch avoiding everyone when lessons were over.

Until...

"Read."

Cesira raised her head from her plate, Snape was standing beside her chair after smashing a copy of The Daily Prophet under her nose.

A new You-Know-Who?
A strange power wanders the Wizarding World.
Albus Dumbledore is on a quest to find out more.

"It doesn't concern me."

"Yes it does."

She kept reading until she found a letter of someone witnessing a cold blood murder of a Death Eater in Sussex.
Her heart dropped down all the way to the dungeons.
She was sure to be invisible to stranger eyes, no one ever saw her doing what she did.
There was a description of a masked figure and the fear that Death Eaters could avenge the kills, nothing more.

She realised that Hogwarts was the safest place to hide in plain sight, not doing something to catch the Ministry's attention.
So far, no one knew.
But if the presence within her made her do things she would never do, she would be expelled.

She couldn't do it alone. And the worst part was that there was only one person who knew about her state.

Cesira looked at Severus in the eyes, never believing that she was to say something like that to him.

"I need your help."