Two weeks had passed, and the classes with the three, sometimes four young ones had gone well. Alice felt that they had all progressed to some extent, which was excellent news for her challenge with her Potion colleague and for her self-confidence. Maybe she was meant to be a teacher after all?
“Was your exam this morning?” she asked.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione had come to report on the evaluation that indeed took place that morning. The three youngsters looked quite tired; they must have studied late the night before, she assumed.
“It wasn’t an easy assessment, I must admit. Professor Snape chose to evaluate us on some rather complex potions, but I think I managed pretty well…” Hermione said.
“If you did ‘pretty well,’ how should we feel about this exam?” Harry asked.
“It stinks, I tell you!” Ron declared, making a face.
“That’s a bit vulgar, young Weasley… Besides, I’m sure you all did just fine! No worries… In the last few lessons, you’ve all been very attentive, and honestly, if I had access to the grading for the House Cup, I would have given you points for your rapid progress!”
“She’s exaggerating, Harry, I think she’s lying and we’re toast…” Ron whispered.
“Of course not!” Alice retorted.
“Well, excuse me, professor, but I have other studying to do…” said Hermione, heading towards the exit.
“Maybe you should go study with her, Ron…” Harry suggested, nodding towards the door.
“Oh, come on, studying right after a big exam? What a pleasure! I’d rather stay here…” He crossed his arms and headed for a chair to sit down.
Hermione, who understood where Harry was going with this suggestion, turned around and grabbed her friend by the arm, pulling him out of the room.
“No! Save me, help, not that…” He grimaced, pleading with his faithful friend, who simply waved goodbye.
“Good luck studying, you two!” Alice said, smiling, amused by the trio's dynamic.
She began to tidy up the few books she had left on her desk.
“You said you’d tell me what happened in more detail after the exam…” Harry began rather abruptly.
She stopped what she was doing, stood still for a moment, then with a flick of her wand, closed the door.
“That’s true… But I’m sorry to disappoint you; I don’t have much to share…”
“I’m not disappointed; I’m not expecting an epic tale. I just want to know what happened to you…”
Alice studied the young man for a moment. It was early; they had really only known each other for two weeks, and the story of her accident was a part of her she preferred to keep buried deep inside. But it was Harry, the son of her beloved Lily, Harry, the little one she cherished, her godson.
Alice had never truly understood religion. She hadn’t been raised that way, and despite Lily’s many attempts to explain it to her, she saw no point in it. The concept of baptism and godparenting completely escaped her. When Lily had asked her to be the godmother halfway through her pregnancy, Alice had accepted out of friendship, but it wasn’t until after the birth that she grasped the importance of this role.
But meeting him, that fragile and innocent little being, Harry… There was no need for a blood connection to love a child like her own.
“Sorry, maybe this isn’t a topic you want to discuss after all.”
She would tell him… what he needed to know…
“I don’t like thinking about it, indeed, but I have to get over it…”
She went to sit down and invited Harry to do the same.
“I was with you; we had a normal afternoon, well, normal, more or less… You didn’t want to take your nap, and you had become a sort of little furious goblin…”
She paused for a moment and teased Harry about his little self.
“I struggled to get you to sleep, but when the silence finally settled… I heard noise in my garden. My honking daffodils were quite agitated, and I slowly felt all my anti-intrusion spells fading and ultimately breaking. So I went on alert, cast a few spells around your cradle to keep you safe, and alerted the Order…”
“They didn’t arrive in time?”
She shook her head.
“The man entered, and we fought; it lasted a good long while. I recognized him pretty quickly. He was a man whose dubious dealings we had pinned down a few days earlier…” She paused. “Bacus Brinbox. He was a Death Eater undercover, but I had finally found enough evidence to charge him… Except he had managed to escape…”
“He wanted revenge…”
“That’s low, yes. I don’t know how, but he ended up with my personal address and came to pay me a visit… He eventually got the upper hand on me, and…”
Alice stopped. She hadn’t realized until then that an important part of this story rested on a character who didn’t want to be mentioned. Indeed, after finally discussing it, Severus had told her he didn’t want to be mentioned. She tried to make him see reason, but he was adamant, and now she had to find a way to divert the story.
“And?”
“And in the end, I kicked his butt, but the scoundrel cast an unforgivable…”
“Ava…” Harry suggested.
“Exactly. I don’t know by what miracle, but the spell I… casted rebounded on his spell, and it didn’t kill me…”
“It didn’t kill you, but…” Harry began. “And then, what happened to the guy?”
“A member of the Order arrived just in time to put him out of commission…”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“I’m relieved he’s no longer around, indeed.”
“Thank you for telling me this, Alice…”
“It’s normal; you needed to know…”
“Oh no! I forgot about Umbridge’s detention! Sorry, Alice, I have to run!”
“She moved them? What a pest!”
Harry, who had rushed to the exit, suddenly turned around, surprised by the tone his godmother used.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t talk like that! Goodbye, Harry, have a good rest of the day!”
The young boy waved goodbye and quickly left. Alice remained frozen for a moment, the memories of that cursed day rising abruptly to the surface. She saw Bacus Brinbox again, his cold face, the violence of their duel, the crashing spells exploding around them. Her breath became shorter, her chest compressed under a suffocating anxiety. She trembled, unable to control her body, as if the weight of the past was overwhelming her once more.
The room seemed to shrink, the air suddenly becoming rarer, each breath a struggle. Her heart raced wildly, echoing in her ears. She knew this was just an echo of the trauma, but the fear, irrational and relentless, settled in, keeping her trapped in this devouring memory.
She suddenly stood up as if to force herself to leave this moment of distress and headed for the dungeons. She would not allow herself to sink into that abyss for another moment.
In his dungeons, Severus was seated at his desk, focused on grading, or rather evaluating the various potions prepared that morning.
He was nearly finished, and to his great pleasure, had nothing else to do afterward. However, this pleasure was short-lived, as he realized that the last three potions were those at the heart of the challenge with Alice McGarden.
And ironically, it was at that precise moment that she knocked on the door. He knew it; he had come to recognize her dynamic knocks against the old wood, worn down for at least ten times their age.
“Come in… Alice.”
“I’m delighted to see that my visits still enchant you, Sev.”
“I’m not a fan of visits, whatever they may be. Sorry to break it to you; you’re nothing unique.”
“And the potions, my dear? Have you finished grading them?” she said, ignoring Severus’s sharp remark.
“I was getting to it before your noisy arrival.”
“Oh… Sorry, go ahead, I’ll sit down… over there, in that corner.”
She pointed to a table and sat down, much to Severus’s surprise, who hadn’t expected her to be so calm so quickly. Yet she remained seated, silently.
Alice’s heart was still racing, and she took this moment of calm to relax. Surprisingly, she found it easier to do so in the castle’s dark and cold corners, here she managed to regain a certain peace. Perhaps an important element playing into this inner calm was the person she was with at that moment.
She gazed out the window at the wonders beneath the lake, so absorbed by the underwater life that she didn’t realize Severus took much longer to grade those three vials than he normally would have. It wasn’t the difficulty of the task; no, they would have been graded in five minutes if Severus hadn’t repeatedly looked up to observe her in her corner.
He hadn’t noticed that over the past two weeks, she had regained her color and lost that defeated look. She sat upright in her chair and smiled faintly as a fish swam by the glass. How long had it been since he had seen her so peaceful?
When he finally finished, he hesitated to disturb her. He couldn’t help but observe her, feeling almost like a voyeur, capturing every moment of happiness in this woman he had missed so much. He ran a hand over his face and lowered his head, trying to regain his composure.
“Well…”
“Well?” she replied softly, turning to him, her eyes sparkling.