Alice kept her eyes shut, blinking to adjust her vision to the blinding light that overwhelmed her. The brightness was clue enough: she was no longer in the storeroom. When she finally opened her eyes and allowed them to adjust, she realized she was no longer at the castle, either.
Her head resting on a pillow, she slowly turned her gaze to examine the room—its light-colored walls and antique furniture. Then, she spotted a familiar figure. Blurry at first, but unmistakable. Severus Snape sat in a nearby armchair, a book held loosely in his hand. He had barely turned the first page, not truly reading, his thoughts visibly elsewhere. His focus hung in suspension.
Suddenly, noticing her open eyes, he rushed to her side. His face betrayed no immediate expression, though she seemed to be regaining awareness of her surroundings and what had happened.
"Alice..." he murmured, his voice tinged with both surprise and an undercurrent of sorrow. She hesitated for a moment before grabbing the collar of his shirt without warning. Her bandaged arm trembled under the strain, but her grip was firm and resolute.
"You lied to me," she whispered, her face twisted in an expression of disappointment, pain, and something that bordered on disgust. She looked at him as though she no longer recognized him, as if every fiber of her trust had been shattered.
Severus, stunned, gently grasped her hand, trying to loosen her grip. "Alice, what happened to you?"
"You’re with them. Again." The words hit like a slap. His face turned ashen, and a chill ran through him. A thousand questions swirled in his mind, but none seemed to address the weight of her accusation.
"I’m doing this for Dumbledore... Alice, I swear, it’s not for them." His voice was weak, almost pleading, and he had not hesitated for a moment to share this precious truth with her.
Alice was speechless, the silence between them growing heavy. She hadn’t truly considered why he might have chosen to fall back into the clutches of darkness. She hadn’t wanted to think about it, focusing instead on the essential fact: he had broken their promise.
Her eyes lowered, and she took a deep breath. In the end, the reason didn’t matter. The truth was clear. He had betrayed her, abandoned what they had vowed together.
Yes, the side he was on mattered. She couldn’t ignore that or deny the small flicker of relief she felt upon hearing that he wasn’t with the enemy. But that glimmer of relief was drowned in a sea of disappointment.
She knew, deep down, that he had lied to her. That what he had told her was only a half-truth, an excuse. But that wasn’t what hurt her the most. It wasn’t the fact that he had hidden behind words to justify his actions. What struck her, what truly pained her, was that he hadn’t had the courage to tell her the truth—that he had left her in the dark, likely hoping she wouldn’t notice.
The silence between them grew heavier. Alice felt a painful knot form in her throat, but she swallowed it down. She didn’t even know what hurt more: his betrayal or the fact that he had chosen to remain silent.
“To hell with Dumbledore!” she said, her voice quiet but sharp as a crack of thunder in the stillness. “Whether it’s for good or evil, you went back... You promised me, Severus. The only thing I asked of you…” Her voice faltered, but her eyes stayed locked on his, searching for answers.
“You don’t understand, Alice. There was no other path, not after… everything I’ve already destroyed. I thought that by serving a greater cause, I might...” He trailed off, struggling to find the words, his voice breaking under the weight of his despair.
“A noble sacrifice?” she interrupted, her tone sharp and accusatory. “Do you think breaking your promise, diving back into darkness, and becoming this... puppet will fix anything?” Her words cut through the air like a blade. “You can’t atone for your mistakes by destroying what’s left of the good in you!”
Her eyes, filled with pain and fury, bore into him, leaving him exposed. Each word felt like a wound carving deeper into his being, but he couldn’t deny that he deserved it.
She looked at him, and suddenly, a sense of loss deeper than anything she had ever known washed over her. Severus Snape had changed. The man she had known—the one who still had a spark of hope, of conviction—was gone. The look he now gave her was that of a man consumed by regret, lost in an abyss of remorse with no end in sight.
“You weren’t there anymore…” he murmured, his voice choked with a pain she couldn’t ignore. “Alice… I thought you were gone for good. I had lost all hope of your return.”
“No, don’t put that on me, please,” she said, her voice trembling, fractured by emotion. “It wasn’t supposed to stop with me, Severus. You should have kept going. Found something—a reason, a hope, a passion… Anything to keep you alive that wasn’t this fire of regret and guilt.”
He looked away, unable to face the brutal truth in her words. She was right, of course. But back then, he hadn’t seen another way. He had believed it was all over, that without her, there was no light left to guide his path.
"When you were gone," he began softly, "there was no promise anymore... only me and this mission. I had nothing left." His voice faltered, and he closed his eyes as if to shield himself from the weight of his own words. "But every day since your awakening, I curse myself for giving up. I shouldn’t have… But there was no way back, Alice. Nothing."
She remained still, absorbing the confession, her heart clenched by the shared pain she could hear in every word. The sadness in his eyes mirrored her own—a sadness complicated and rooted in a past they both wished they could rewrite. A thousand reasons burned within her—a thousand reasons to despise the attack, to hate the Death Eater who had infiltrated her home, to curse the long, forced slumber that had kept her from everything. But the cruelest, the most poignant reason of all, was the lost time that had taken them so far apart, despite their having become indispensable to one another.
She cursed those lost years, the chasm that had widened between them, and the impossible choices Severus had been forced to make without her to guide him, without her to anchor him to another path. Every decision he had made now haunted her as much as it haunted him. She saw the abyss in his eyes and sensed how he had let himself slip into it, alone, with no one to pull him back—again.
Her thoughts drifted to the constant, looming danger he faced. Voldemort. A name that resonated like an absolute threat, a dark wizard whose very existence was a curse. And Severus… Her Severus was within reach of his wand. The thought terrified her more than anything. She knew that playing a double game with the Dark Lord was like walking a tightrope over blades—one misstep, and he would be condemned.
She shuddered, her heart heavy, her fists still gripping his shirt tightly. "And what if he had killed you, Severus? The moment you stepped back into that world… You could have—"
Severus felt something stir within him, a brutal and unexpected wave of emotion. He had watched Alice's hatred of him transform into a visceral fear—for his life. And yet, it wasn’t the reaction he had feared nor a painful regret that overtook him. No, it was a deep, simmering anger that surged instead. A violent irritation born of his own torment and this confrontation he hadn’t anticipated.
With a sudden, sharp movement, he seized his wand and cast a precise spell, sealing the room to ensure no one could overhear their exchange. "Hypocrite!" he spat, his voice rumbling with fury. "You dare lecture me about dangerous choices?" His trembling hand reached into his pocket, pulling out a piece of parchment that he threw in front of her. "You’re the first to throw yourself into the jaws of the wolf! And you have the audacity to blame me for taking risks?"
Severus had spent the night watching over her, and a piece of paper had caught his attention. It must have fallen from Alice’s pocket when Mrs. Weasley had changed her clothes. Whatever the case, the wizard had read what was written on it and had been waiting for an explanation ever since.
“It wasn’t the same,” she murmured, her voice wavering between shame and frustration.
“Not the same?” Severus repeated, his anger growing. “You knew exactly what you were doing, Alice. Lucius Malfoy, a man who’s never hesitated to betray anyone who didn’t serve his own interests. And you went to him alone, without telling anyone, thinking you could reason with a snake! And that’s different?”
She lifted her head, her eyes meeting his, shining with both defiance and remorse. “He’s my brother… I thought I could change something! I thought he’d listen to me, that there was still a part of him that… that—”
“That was loyal to you? That cared about you?” Severus cut her off, his tone sharp. “And that’s how you nearly ended up dead, cut down by his wand. But of course, I’m the one who needs to justify my dangerous choices.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but he didn’t give her the chance.
“Look at the state you’re in! You could have died if…” Severus trailed off, his voice betraying the emotions he was struggling to contain. He gripped Alice’s hand firmly in his, his piercing gaze searching hers. “Don’t lecture me, Alice, about what I do, when your own actions are no different…”
He drew a deep breath, trying to rein in the anger and fear burning within him. “This is exactly why I didn’t tell you. Because someone dives into the abyss, and you… you follow them like a fool, incapable of recognizing lost causes!”
Alice remained still, her heart aching from his words but unable to look away. Silent tears streamed down her face, filled with sadness, frustration, and a seemingly endless pain. “You’re not a lost cause…” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I had the right to know, Severus… I can help you, like before… You don’t have to fight alone.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, shaken by the intensity of her words and the sincerity he saw in her. But when he opened them again, they were filled with a cold determination and a painful resolve.
“Alice… Please, not this time.” His voice was almost a whisper, a mix of pleading and authority. “Let me do this alone…”
She squeezed his hand as if the gesture alone could anchor him, could keep him from slipping away. "I don’t want to lose you, Severus… not again."
Pulling gently on the collar of his shirt, she drew him closer. She wrapped her arms around him, and to her surprise, he didn’t push her away. More unexpectedly, he returned the embrace. Resting his head against the curve of her neck, he felt a sense of calm wash over him.
A part of him loathed this. He didn’t want to grow more attached, didn’t want his feelings for Alice to deepen any further. But he knew it was already too late. Alice had mattered to him for years—his closest, dearest friend, though she had become far more than that in his heart. He wanted to hold her tighter still, to keep her near, close enough to feel the rhythm of her heartbeat against his.
“This isn’t what you want…” she murmured softly, her hand moving to rest on his head, stroking his hair with tender affection. “You don’t want to be alone.”
He remained silent, lost in thought, his mind a storm of conflict.
“Severus,” she pressed, her tone more resolute now.
His gaze dropped, and his chest tightened at the thought of surrendering to this truth. “But I don’t want you to be caught up in this…”
Alice drew in a trembling breath, as if weighing every word with great care. "I’m already caught up, Severus. I’ve been part of this war long before you were. I carry the weight of my family, my choices, my mistakes, and my losses. I’ve been fighting all my life, and that won’t simply stop because you’d rather I stay out of harm’s way."
Her voice wavered slightly, but her resolve only grew. "Just as I must accept your place in this fight… your role, even alongside him, you must accept mine."
Severus slowly raised his eyes to hers, his expression a tempest of emotions he couldn’t untangle. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. His dark, intense gaze searched hers desperately, as if seeking answers he couldn’t find within himself.
Alice’s hand moved to his face, her touch as soft as her expression. "If you want to fight, then let’s fight… together. But don’t ask me to stay away. You know I can’t."
He closed his eyes, unable to summon a reply. In that suspended moment, words felt irrelevant, their hearts speaking instead through the silence between them. He pulled her closer, her warmth grounding him, filling the void that had haunted him for so long.
It was a connection he had thought lost forever, yet here it was, alive and growing, stronger than it had ever been.
“We should move forward, together,” she whispered gently. “Please…”
"Together…" he murmured in return. The word was barely audible, but it carried an immense weight. An unfamiliar warmth spread through him—a feeling he hadn't experienced in years. He lifted his gaze to Alice, taking in every detail of her face, every shade of emotion etched in her expression. In that moment, he realized something that had long eluded his analytical mind: the bond he shared with her was far deeper than he had ever allowed himself to comprehend.
He had no time to delve further into this revelation. A knock at the door shattered the quiet intimacy of the moment. Severus stiffened, abruptly pulling away. A faint flush crept into his cheeks, as though he'd been caught in the act of something forbidden. Forbidden… by whom? The thought was absurd, yet he couldn't shake it.
He exhaled slowly, gathering his composure, then moved toward the door. Before opening it, he glanced over his shoulder, seeking Alice's unspoken reassurance.
She gave a small, encouraging nod, her lips curling into a gentle, comforting smile.
Buoyed by her silent support, he turned the handle and opened the door.