Valley of the Shadow, Act II

Nobody answered the door when the rapper knocked. And there was a continued non-answering even when the woman's voice shouted through it, "There's no point pretending you're not in, I can hear you rowing!"

It was, perhaps, more surprising that no one answered when her husband's voice rose in alarm, advising her in the most urgent tones not to try an unlocking spell, and then broke off in an astonished, "Oh."

When a plate flew by her head to smash against the doorframe, however, and her yelp mingled with the strange susurration and the man's startled bellow, the noises from the kitchen did stop, and the three residents (one rather shorter and not in fact a resident) came out into the sitting room.

"What," Lily said flatly, in a tone that declared she would have had her hands on her hips if they weren't occupied, "on Earth."

"An excellent question," drawled Severus, his eyebrow up as he eyeballed the three entrants. "Allow me to return it you back again, with interest."

"Let him out!" she demanded, as her husband flailed and strained against the very affectionate iron maiden of black bryony coiled tight around him.

"I can't," Severus said, a concentrated shot of instant cheer chasing at least half the storms and stress from his milky brow and leaving it somewhat less curdled. "I'm not surprised you assume a ward that ignored you was mine, but that one was, in fact, Evan's."

Without showing any signs of appreciation for this very magnanimous olive branch, Lily looked expectantly at said prettier redhead, who waved at her while continuing to crunch on his carrot and contemplate the pros and cons of very pale versus very dark backdrops for very fair skin.

After it became clear that he was not going to be let out of answering no matter how long he ignored her in favor of the carrot (a pity, as it was a quite good one, very sweet and juicy for what was, when you got right down to it, a root), Ev advised James, "I shouldn't bite down on the tuber-thing. It's got all saponins in, don't you know, quite toxic. Mind you, it's probably the best one to struggle against; I think it's used in bruise balm and that, isn't it, Severus?"

He was rewarded by Spike, leaning against the kitchen's doorframe, looking entertained behind the critical surprised-and-disappointed-in-you expression he was aiming at Lily, and leaning against the kitchen's doorframe. "Not as a simple, and certainly not as a living plant. I rather think he'd like to know why you've decided you simply must break into our flat," he went on to translate. So straightforward, their Naj. "With an infant. So should I, for that matter."

Lily pulled a letter out of what looked like a purse but was probably, if she was anything like Narcissa (which, of course she wasn't, except that Aunt Dru said all new mothers overprepared, especially after the first time they were caught short) a nearly-overstuffed-even-with-magic diaper bag. "Your mother," she said, still with that hands-on-her-hips scowl, "sent me this. It says, 'You may as well not have bothered,' and that's it." She didn't have to demand out loud that he explain.

Evan glanced at Severus, whose eyes had taken on a hooded, calculating look. Turning it into a frown of annoyance, he said, "Evidently she thinks I couldn't possibly think to do anything nice for her without your na—guidance, on my own."

Garbled, sarcastic noises came from the cage of vines, but Evan was already speaking cheerfully over them. "Which is nonsense, of course," he told Lily, "he's got me," and took another bite of carrot.

"Yes, but what on Earth—"

"Well, it was only just Lammas," Severus said vaguely, shrugging.

Jumping in before he could try to go more specific and get that uncomfortable look he got when he was doing more than presenting the truth at a funny angle, Evan told him, "I suppose she thinks walking the land's no good when you don't live there."

"I'm still the heir to it, insomuch as the term can be applied," Severus said irritably. "The house is hers outright, magically speaking. If a witch buys the house and signs the deed and lives in it, ownership passes down through the blood, doesn't it?"

"Well, yes, but she owns it now, not you, and you don't live there, and you hate the place, Spike," Evan said reasonably. "I'm not a magical law expert, and neither is she. She may think, under the circs, more harm than good. Might even be right, for all I know."

"But if done with good and protective intentions," Severus argued crossly, a gleeful glint in his eye, "then not wanting to live in the place shouldn't—"

"Well, but, Spike, there's not wanting to live in the place and there's not wanting to be anywhere near it, ever, don't you—"

"I never said that!"

"You didn't exactly have to, you know."

"A-HEM," Lily pronounced, jiggling the baby.

"Oh, yes, how rude," Evan said brightly, and caught Severus turning slightly pink trying not to choke with laughter as he didn't specify further. "This is Linkin, who's house elf to my family."

The wizened little scrap of a holy terror at his elbow tipped his hat disapprovingly at Lily. That was probably when she noticed that it had been made out of what looked like a mixing bowl, because she blinked.

"Linkin," Evan continued, letting his eyes harden a little and turn his amiable smile bland, "already knows who you both are, of course."

Severus looked as if he wanted to send a menacing and what you look like in the direction of the vine-monster, but since he seemed to be stepping on his own foot (effectively, if not actually), Ev went on, "But I'm afraid I can't introduce you to this little beggar, Linkin, as I haven't yet been formally introduced m'self."

"We called him Harry," she said shortly. Before Evan could ask her why she'd cursed the boy to school nicknames like Botheration and Shagpot and Curly, and quite possibly Louse if any of his roommates turned out witty enough to think up a pest/hair pun of the sort Spike could blurt out in his sleep, she went on, "Now will you let James out?"

This time Ev did step on Spike's foot, because the jaw had moved preparatory to the mouth opening. Which seemed to him likely to result in something inflammatory, and he was the only one in the room who didn't go about with an instant-boil charm attached to either his temper or his sneer or both. Therefore, when someone asked, "Will he behave himself," which was the question that needed asking, it wasn't in the threatening, sullen, rather snide tone he was sure Severus would have given it, but a conspiratorial, even playful one.

Lily heaved a huge, exasperated sigh, and the vine-monster muttered sulkily. Spike had said using the roots, which could cause rashes and welts just on skin contact, for the pointy, poky nails in his weedy trap was on the sadistic side, but Ev had wanted to make sure that anyone who broke in was strongly discouraged from making wand motions, and Potter's bad grace was making him feel thoroughly justified.

Severus shrugged at Evan, and started to say something. He considered, stopped, and gave Ev a you-do-it nod.

Evan gave him sad eyes.

Severus folded his arms, amused.

Evan heaved a sigh just as loud as Lily's, but in a mournful key. "Severus thinks you should be informed," he said, in a regretful tone, "that any magic done with ill-intent in this flat will set off his wards." He gave them a beat to correctly interpret his tone as meaning he would rather have let them find this out themselves, and then, in an aggrieved tone, falsely countered the impression by complaining, "I'm sure that Potter was mumbling that he agreed, there, Spike, and of course he'd keep his word. They didn't need telling, I really do think. It's very nearly rude of you."

"I thought it was polite," Severus said mildly, with a bland expression that made promises Evan was quite looking forward to. "Taking historical precedent into account."

"Yes, yes, all right, nobody's attacking anybody, are they Jamie."

Mumble-sulk.

"There you are, then," Lily declared, fixing Evan with a gimlet stare that wasn't quite like either Severus or Mrs. Snape's. She'd probably got it from her own mother.

"Father," Severus murmured quietly in his ear. "He's a judge."

Evan was surprised by how surprised he was (not by Spike following his thoughts, that wasn't surprising at all), and wondered if he ought to put it aside to think about later. The Blacks really couldn't be said to be typical in any way, when you thought about it, but then again, he couldn't, just at the moment, think of any men other than Spike who he'd have described as sharp. Of course, Lucius meant to be, and a quite high proportion of Slytherins were dangerous under the right circumstances, but it wasn't quite the same thing. Maybe that was why Lily had been able to tolerate Severus's spikiness long enough to get to know him, if his glints and angles felt familiar.

Well, in either case, Spike deserved a reward for being brilliant, so Evan just rubbed shoulders with him while reaching for his wand, instead of kissing him in front of people. This was much better taken than kissing him would have been: Severus clearly understood that the restraint was his reward and was having trouble keeping from laughing again. Which, considering he'd been hunkered down in a wall-eyed and steaming… something or other. Evan hadn't even understood it this time, which was worrying. But in any case, he'd been in that alarming state not ten minutes ago, so the shift was well nigh miraculous.

Ev was even going to call it miraculous with half Spike's favorite people in the same room with him and also a James Potter who'd been tied up for him by his intended, with a spell set into place for his especial benefit two years before their intentions had been agreed upon out loud. That was how worrying the something-or-other had been.

When Evan had lowered his wand and the lady's-seal (he did like that name for it, mostly because Spike thought it was either stupidly and thoughtlessly silly or a delightfully disturbing name for a plant whose every part was poison) had un-grown back into the threshold, Potter shook himself off and, without preamble, demanded, "Why were you throwing plates at my wife?"

"James," Lily groaned, obviously mortified.

"No one was throwing anything at Evans," Ev said soothingly, just to make Spike's mouth quirk. "Oh, er, Lily, I mean, of course."

"That's Mrs. Potter, to you," Potter growled.

Evan opened his eyes rather wide, and asked, "I thought you'd told me to call you Lily, Lily?"

"That's right," she said, glaring at her boor. "I did."

This deflated him, but only momentarily. Then he was rounding on Spike again. "Well?!"

"I didn't throw anything at anybody," Severus said irritably. He paused, turned his eyes up to the ceiling in a parody of recollection, and amended, "Today."

"There was a dish or something, it nearly hit her!" Potter looked around, and pointed to the plate. He blinked, and said, "But I heard it smash."

"Spike charmed them to be self-repairing," Evan said smugly. Since Spike hadn't done anything he needed to be humiliated for yet, he refrained from snuggling at his arm the way he wanted to, but it took some effort.

Judging from Spike's pained what-did-I-do expression, his tone had been humiliation enough anyway.

"Well, somebody threw it!"

Linkin cleared his throat. "Linkin is apologizing to Lily Potter. Master Evan is not allowing Linkin to hit Master Spike, and Linkin was not aware that Master Evan is receiving guests."

As usual, Master Spike's masterful face twitched. Ev was quite sure Linkin did it on purpose, since he hadn't actually met Spike when he was young enough that Linkin would properly have called him Master Severus. Spike came back, though, with an irritated, "It looked awfully like aiming right for me, considering you were ordered not to hit."

"Linkin is knowing Master Spike is good at dodging," Linkin said with dignity.

Potter stared, and asked Evan, "Why is your house elf throwing plates at your flatmate?"

"You might ask him," Severus noted, without intonation. "He's in the room with you. Available to be asked."

"James Potter is knowing how to deal with elves properly," Linkin disapproved of the (recently-)grubby, radical liberal and his nasty, nihilistic, new wave notions. Evan just barely managed not to laugh out loud at both of them.

"Pity he doesn't care to do anything else properly," Spike said—apparently on reflex, because he looked embarrassed even before Lily was rounding on him.

"That is the outside of enough," she said sternly, and shoved the baby at him. He stared down at it, his face gone rather beaky with dismay, but apparently he couldn't stop himself holding it properly and carefully no matter how much reluctance he wanted to convey in front of its father.

"Lily, are you mad?" Potter yelped. "Don't—"

The baby smacked its lips in its sleep and blew a wet spit-bubble. Potter went over all soppy and coo-faced, and put his arm around Lily. Severus made the This Is Unsanitary moue, but aside from a resigned sigh, he didn't do anything much. Evan, in lieu of snickering or even rolling his eyes at either of them, took a bite of his carrot.

Maybe the crunch shook Potter out of his reverie, because he looked at Evan again and demanded, "Well?"

"It's really not any of your business, you know," he said mildly. Crunch.

"It is when one almost hits my wife, who's holding my baby!"

"Yes," Evan explained patiently, "but you weren't invited, you didn't call ahead, you weren't, in fact, expected in any way, and no one even let you in. It's take what you get, under those conditions, and be happy it's not large, hungry dogs or whatnot."

"And in any case," Severus put in, because he had no self control around Potter, which was, to be fair and in Ev's opinion, not really his fault, "that would, under other circumstances, have made it your business only to the extent Lily considered it ought to be."

Potter was opening his mouth to be incensed at him, but before he could quite marshal his lungs, Lily had already said, quite cheerfully, "Well, that's true. But I only broke in because I heard shouting and crashing, Sev. Can't it be a little bit my business? I was even sort of worried about the right thing."

She gave him a winsome look, and Evan did not stab her with the painting knife in his pocket. Even though palette knives, even the pointier kind used for actually painting, were more like spatulas and it wouldn't really have hurt her much.

And he wouldn't have stabbed her hard. He'd just have poked her, repeatedly, with an aggrieved expression, in the face. As one does.

"What," Spike drawled, leaning Evan's way a little. This didn't actually make him feel better much because he hadn't been worried, exactly. It was just that she was taking liberties and no one was going to take her to task for it. That she'd taken them because she knew no one would. That didn't bother him when Narcissa did it, as he might have admitted in private, if pressed. "Do you want points? You're asking the wrong person, then; I'm the only one here who never had a school badge."

"Harry hasn't," Evan pointed out languidly, leaning into him back.

"He will, though," Potter gloated, and floated the baby away from Severus, who didn't protest in any way whatsoever, or even look like he wanted to. Which was interesting, as he'd never tried to browbeat and ridicule Lucius about being too proud and fussy to be a hands-on da and had very nearly perfected the art of reading potions journals with Draco sitting on him, and yet was always prompt, not to say emphatic, about handing The Blob back to Narcissa. Ev had thought that was a character judgment, but now he'd have to consider it might it mean something else. "Who'll be the next Head Boy, then? You will! You will!"

The baby startled awake, and looked ready to start crying in astonishment, but evidently Potter rubbing its—er, his nose with one finger and poking his chin and cooing at him was familiar enough to be reassuring. Ugh. The crow he gave was cute enough, but if he started wailing, Evan was going to slap a sleeping charm on him. Ev didn't need a migraine almost as much as he didn't need Spike to get one, with the way he'd been acting even without.

"I believe the next Head Boy will be Mr. Temperus Mistlethwait, of Hufflepuff," Severus volunteered dryly. "Professor Slughorn says he is, quote, neither the most scintillating, comma, aha, comma, nor the most well-connected lad in his year, but sound and, comma, pause for wink, finger-wag, and term of patronization, unlikely to result in explosions. Unquote."

Lily laughed, and if it wasn't quite a giggle it had those sorts of young-girl overtones. It wasn't half enough to make Evan forgive her entirely for the eye-batting, since he now had a horrible suspicion that she was the only reason Spike was susceptible to his tragedy eyes, ugh ugh ugh.

Well. Spike wasn't susceptible, as such. Evan couldn't use them to get things he was asking for, the way people whose partners had less active left eyebrows could use puppy eyes. But properly applied they usually had a good effect on Spike's mood, and sometimes on Evan's immediate future. Considering that Severus was impatient when other people tried it on with him and scornful when he saw big eyes really working on other people, Ev had always felt that was a bit special.

He seemed, however, to be taking their little exchange better than Potter, who was glaring again. Severus had on his oh-for-Salazar's-sake-what-did-I-do-NOW expression, and his shoulders were tensing, and he seemed to be regretting giving up the baby-shield even if did mean Potter's hands were full.

"Well!" he said brightly, or at least, as brightly as he could over the yawn he was affecting. "Now we've got your mail sorted, Lily, I'm sure you'll want to get back to where your changing table is."

"Quite right," Potter agreed, giving him a grateful look.

"No," Lily insisted stubbornly. "I want to know why your elf is chucking things at Sev." It wasn't quite a glare she leveled down at Linkin, but it was a rather forbidding look. Ev knew where she'd gotten that one from, and it wasn't one of her parents. Especially with her green eyes it was obvious, even without the glasses and black hair: that was pure Tartan.

"Master Spike is stopping Linkin from obeying Master Evan's orders," Linkin explained, and what he shot Spike's way was a glare.

Potter blinked. Dubiously, he asked, "Can he do that?"

Severus appeared to consider this question, and then to consider how to answer it, and his considered response was one of his vicious, face-splitting shark grins.

Evan sighed internally, and shot him a plaintive not helpful, Naj look. Severus's eyebrows went up a bit, coolly, and his chin joined in with them—or, rather, out—to express his complete lack of interest in being helpful at this juncture. Evan shouldn't have expected anything remotely resembling rationality of him with Potter in their parlor, really. And he certainly hadn't been rational earlier.

Out loud, he answered carelessly, "Oh, well, not really stopping him, you know. There were disagreements on matters of detail I hadn't covered, and since I was in the other room at the beginning and couldn't tell Linkin I didn't care, it got a bit heated."

Severus's mulish face told Evan that telling Linkin he was perfectly happy for Spike's judgment to prevail would not, in fact, have helped. That was new information. Huh.

Lily was also looking at the mule, and got a funny look of her own. She said to them both, very politely, "Excuse me just a moment," and brushed past them to go into their kitchen.

They heard her say, "Oh. Oh, dear," and so Potter whipped his wand out and was holding it on Spike (who folded his arms and looked affronted), and started backing around the room and past them to join her, clutching the baby defensively. Naturally, the baby got scared and started to cry.

"Don't look at me like that," Spike scowled at Evan. "As far as I can make out, he was born insane. It's not my fault."

"I wasn't looking at you like anything," Evan said mildly.

"Yes you were. It is not my fault that our flat has currently been afflicted with an air-raid si—I mean, a banshee. If anything, it's Lily's fault for being vague when she ought to have known very well how Potter would react."

Evan could have gone back in time with him and got into why Lily and her husband had barged into their flat in the first place. After he'd got Severus to shout his nerves out they would have eventually got 'round to making peace by blaming it on Ev's dad for making Joining His Schoolmate's Club a Family Institution. This, being both externally aimed and inarguable, was always a satisfactory conclusion.

Now was not the time, though, not with an audience. So he just said, "Well, that's true."

Potter, who'd nearly got to them by now, looked at them suspiciously, and silently demanded they let him pass into the kitchen. They looked at each other and did, Evan shrugging and Severus rolling his eyes expressively. This was so much more than Potter had any right to expect, even after Linkin had worn Severus down, that Ev considered taking his temperature.

But then, Severus had always had the abysmal habit of bending over as far backwards to look good for Evans as he could without actually committing suicide, so there was that.

What Potter found Lily oh-dearing at in the kitchen, of course, was a confusion of trunks: open, half-packed, re-packed, some packed tight with whipcrack precision, some all in a jumble.

Evan probably shouldn't have asked Linkin to help. He'd known Severus would hate and resent it. However, when he'd come back into the kitchen over fifteen minutes after leaving it to find Severus staring blindly at the very same perfectly unremarkable shelf full of perfectly undisturbed teacups and tins Evan had left him opening and ready to tackle, he'd felt desperate measures were called for.

He hadn't really thought that just because Severus seemed to have no ideas of his own about where to put anything he'd be amenable to anyone else's ideas. In retrospect, when Spike was offered elf-help but continued to look lost instead of immediately scoffing, Ev should have taken that as a completely bad sign. Not a hopeful one at all, even in the practical sense.

At least Spike hadn't agreed to let him help with the kitchen. He would have known the world was ending, possibly in less than an hour, if Spike had let him near the teapots, much less the tins of tea and herbs and spices.

Having a shouting match with Linkin had got Severus out of that wall-eyed fit, it was true, but Evan wasn't sure that two people working each other into bouts of hysteria in his flat was much better than one person sinking into a catatonic stupor. It was enough to make him very nearly pleased Evans had come around.

Torn between habitual suspicion and what Evan assumed was an extra-large heap of puzzlement because they weren't keeping the packing a secret from him, Potter asked Ev, "Where are you going?"

Severus very very belatedly shot Evan an alarmed look, alarming him in turn. He tilted his head quizzically, and said, "I know it goes against the grain to give the man information for the asking, Spike, but this is hardly a secret, is it? I mean, how could it possibly be?"

Severus just went on looking mulish, now with additional rattled. Ev was sure it just looked like a scowl to Potter, at least. He wanted, badly, to get a reassuring grip over Spike's knobby wrist, but in this company it would be an unforgettable, if not quite unforgivable, embarrassment.

Answering for him would also be an embarrassment, but Evan thought (he couldn't quite tell, knowing better and seeing clearer as he did) that this looked, from the outside, quite like a Sodding Snape Mood. And it had been far from unknown, at school, for Severus to lapse into a fit of the glowering uncivilized sulks and refuse to speak to people who were annoying him.

Sometimes even to people he quite liked who were annoying him by breathing within a five hundred feet of him. Quite often, in these cases, for no reason anyone could discern. Anyone, at least, who didn't know about his headaches, or how he got when nearly-anyone stepped or sat too close to him, or what Avery had done in the bathroom that morning or what amusing little trick Mulciber had tried to play overnight.

So if Evan did the talking this time, he didn't think anyone would realize that he was doing it because Severus had, just from seeing the trunks again, gone every bit as glue-mouthed as if someone had used his own tongue-sticking hex on him.

He therefore answered himself, carelessly, "Not a chance. You know Sluggy's probably already trumpeting it."

Severus looked dubious.

"No?" Ev blinked.

Severus worked his jaw a little. Ev would have floated him over a glass of water if they'd been alone. A little roughly, as if it had been years rather than minutes since he'd last spoken, he said, "He won't want anyone under the impression he's more available, for anything, than he is normally. Less, if possible. These are uncertain times, and he's not…"

"Brave?" Potter suggested, with a bit of a look-who's-talking expression Evan was mildly tempted to hex him for.

Spike pursed his lips in consideration. "Steadfast," he decided. Looking at Evans, he added, "All water. He's constant in his way, but his way is to waver with the currents, and when he meets with obstacles he doesn't tackle them but slides past and leaves them behind."

"So, a total coward," Potter concluded, drawing the baby closer as if to protect it from contamination.

Severus's eyes flashed, but his tone was perfectly level when he said, "A politician, and one of the most successful ones that there is, I believe, behind the veil of Secrecy. You're not expected to understand or respect his methods, but you should be thanking every god, star, saint, and ancestor you can think of that two particular Slytherins have less ambition than an oyster, and of the two he's foremost."

"Who's the other one?" Potter asked warily. Evan was rather curious himself.

Spike's eyebrows went up coolly. "It doesn't matter, as neither has any," he pointed out.

"Oysters make pearls," Lily mentioned, apropos, in Evan's opinion, of very little. Spike's colorful analogies were often quite random. She was studying the ceiling, however, very studiously indeed, and if she wasn't quite smiling she was dimpling conspicuously. "Shiny, lovely, pretty, pretty pearls."

Spike's face lit up, which annoyed Evan no end. "Yes," he agreed as if suddenly enjoying himself. "But oysters make pearls only because some sand's got in to irritate them, in order to be comfortable."

"What do you think would happen, then," Lily asked the ceiling, "if one of these unambitious Slytherins got lumbered with their own sort of grain of sand? A gadfly, sort of thing?"

Spike folded his arms and looked cross, annoyed. "The one who first called himself a gadfly was Socrates," he said, sounding, for some reason, rather insulted. "Anyone fit to even aspire to that name should be wise enough to know who needs stinging and in whose defense the stings and arrows ought to be turned."

"Slings and arrows," Lily said in a correcting tone.

Severus's You Have Insulted Me annoyed look turned into the You Have Ruined My Pun And I Do Not Expect You To Be Dim one. She giggled.

Evan, rather to his own horror, found himself exchanging a glance of mutual dreary resignation with Potter. At least Potter looked instantly appalled as well, though, which was cheering.

Being an active Gryffish sort, Potter decided to try and make everyone who'd noticed forget it by repeating his question loudly. "So where are you going? And what has it got to do with the Slug?"

"It's a musical instrument," Spike said pedantically, sliding Evan a halp look.

"…What?"

"A slughorn. It's a wind instrument. A bit like a trumpet, a bit like an oboe, and a bit like a reductor curse."

"…What?" This time it was Lily blinking.

"You point it at something and play on it," Severus explained, less condescendingly than he would usually have done (Evan gritted his teeth), "and the thing blows up. Very handy on the battlefield, which is probably why they were outlawed in the Goblin Treaty of 1635. Concluding the rebellion after the Wand Ban of '31, of course. Banning wizards from using specific enchanted weapons is hardly equivalent to banning goblins from using wands, but I suppose it allowed the goblins to save face. And reduced property damage, naturally, which is quite important to goblins, since they have forges rather than mending spells. You can get quite a lot more damage done over the length of a song, I should think, than by having to cast a spell over and over again. It's a matter of not pausing so often, of being able to do a continuous sweep rather than having to aim at each individual target."

"You're making that up," Potter accused.

Spike looked offended again. "It's in your textbook," he said, not quite snapping but definitely annoyed, "if you've kept it or, indeed, ever bothered to open it. Even muggles know about them—well," he amended, "the ones who read. Admittedly, muggles think they're a made-up instrument and don't know why they were only ever mentioned in the context of battle. Chatterton and Browning were both mercifully obscure on that point, and just glided over the things in passing."

Thus having been given enough time to think, Evan slung a friendly arm around Spike's shoulders and commented, "I doubt you'll be able to convince anyone to call him Oboe, Spike."

He could feel the tight trapezoid relax under his elbow as Severus put on a very serious frown and asked, slightly anxiously, "Tuba?" Hastily, he scrambled, "Wait, no, that could go very badly indeed. Say, then, Cello?"

"NO!" Evan burst out indignantly, squeezing Severus possessively before he could catch himself. Blasphemy! There was one cello in Slytherin, and it was private.

"I could see Tuba Lard catching on," Potter said dryly, after looking at Evan as though he were mental and then visibly deciding that Evan was mental and it therefore wasn't important and he, Potter, probably didn't want to know. Which he certainly wouldn't have, and Ev would have had to obliviate him anyway, so well done Potter. "And I can also see no one's answered the question I asked ten minutes ago."

"Oh, two, Jamie, at most," Lily said sedately, looking as if she wanted to take her baby back but felt everyone was safer as things stood. It was nice to see she'd grown a little sense.

"Felt like fifteen," Potter muttered.

Evan didn't have to look at Spike to know he was sneering. Probably magnificently. "Well, it's like this, coz," he said benignly. "Before Severus here was able to work on the werewolf-curse problem practically, he was already looking at it from a theory point of view. Only that lab of his took up really all his time, don't you know. He was writing a whacking great paper on the thing—"

"For IAMB," Severus explained to Lily. "Lycanthropy and vampirism both affect humans exclusively, and both have so far proven completely impossible to shake, or, as it were, cure, and—"

"And that European potions guild," Evan rolled his eyes tolerantly, cutting in because nobody wanted them all five, or six counting the baby, to be in Ev and Spike's flat together all night, and Spike wasn't trying Potter's patience deliberately this time, "makes quite a lot of demands of a bloke before they let him in, apparently."

"Because they have standards," Severus said, as-ever disgusted with the British one.

"But surely you don't have to completely pack up your flat just to go do some research, Sev!" Lily exclaimed.

Severus just stood there, abruptly radiating misery again, so Evan squeezed him as subtly as he could (which was, he flattered himself, quite subtly) and explained, "Well, it's the 'some,' d'you see. We're taking a busman's holiday so Severus can get the physical, er—"

"Data," Spike said shortly, with an irritated sigh.

"Not a real word, I'm sure of it. But after that, he says he's going to need to really bury himself in the best library we've got. And that's the one at Hogwarts."

Lily's face changed. She looked from Severus to Linkin to the trunks, and she looked as if she suddenly understood something that was very bad indeed. "You're moving back to Hogwarts?" she asked in an odd tone, a bit tight.

"I'll be helping Slughorn out a bit, so as not to be a leech," Severus muttered, starting to slide behind his hair.

"And what about you?" she asked Evan. It was a calm tone, but there was something ringing behind it, he wasn't sure what. It must have rung alarm bells for Severus, though, because he started to straighten and go all tight again.

"Oh, I'll go home," he said carelessly. Which was true, either in an upside down and sidewise sort of way or a deep one, although not both at once. "Set up a suite in Rosier Hall, be quite undisturbed." Also true. "Just like when I was a kid, just you and me, Linkin, eh?"

Not true in the slightest, and Linkin didn't try to answer except with a very slight little bow. He wouldn't have minded lying to her; he'd been the elf for a Slytherin family since he was an erkling. He might, however, have been justly worried about making Spike's face twitch.

"It's been convenient living close to the Alley," he rattled on jovially, "but there's always apparition, and—"

He staggered back, not sure for a moment what had just happened. Something very sharp and intense and unpleasant and disorienting, just below his eye.

"Lils!" Severus stormed, wrapping strong and steady and snake-quick around Ev's back and arms.

Oh. She'd slapped him.

He blinked and touched the warm spot on his face, confused.

Now she was shouting at him—or, at least, storming just as furiously as Spike. Her face had gone a blotchy red, but it was skin red, which was really somewhere between dull flamingo and bright salmon pink. What you wanted for that was a mix of mostly Maddar lake and flake white, with just a pinprick of blue, probably pthalo, and touches of yellows here and there. Or, if you were feeling lazy, you could use antique white instead of the yellow and the flake, although there wouldn't be as much control that way.

You probably couldn't stop it looking dreadful with her hair, though, whatever you did. Not Titianesque at all. Not even on Titian's worst day. Maybe on Titian's worst day when he was thirteenish.

What she was actually saying, or shouting, or hissing—she didn't have the knack of saying things in a low and calm voice with a whole world's worth of danger behind it, like Ev's Spike, which only went to show that there was such a thing as Native Quality even if two people more or less grew up together, which of course was no reflection on her and nothing to do with her blood whatever Narcissa or Reg might say, it was just you could only have one golden snitch in a game and the game was over because Ev had caught him, careful and secure like other people seemed too stupid to be, not to mention blind—

What she was actually raging was, "How COULD you? HOW could you let him GO BACK THERE AND LEAVE HIM THERE? I thought you were DECENT! I thought you were a HUMAN BEING, you SOCIOPATH!"

"FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, LILY," Severus out-roared her, "SHUT IT!" He'd got between her and Ev somehow, at some point—Ev wasn't very clear on this—and was holding her back with one long hand held splayed outward and open at the end of his long arm, keeping the distance between them.

Potter, Ev noticed vaguely, looked as if he wanted popcorn. He frowned when Spike told his wife to shut up, but then he looked at Spike's open, unthreatening hand, and looked at Lily's furious face. For all his disapproving talk about Slughorn, he just started bouncing the newly re-activated air-raid banshee soothingly and rubbing noses with it and cooing by way of choosing the better part of valor.

The two of them glared at each other, Lily nearly panting with emotion and Severus taking long and extremely deep breaths, calming down, for the purpose of, while Potter bounced his spawn and Evan touched his own two cheeks in turn. He wanted to see if one was hotter than the other.

It was, so he drifted past Potter into the living room, summoning his paintbox and a canvas-on-easel and a portrait-sized mirror, and started to do a profile study. It was quite rare to get the chance to see what a real handprint on a person's face looked like, after all; it would be wrong and remiss of him to let it fade without seeing how the colors flushed and faded, and how the marks stretched as he changed expressions.

It wasn't really very hand-print-like. There weren't any finger-marks, like there were in the fanciful, childish illustrations one usually saw them in, and it wasn't crisply defined, either. He could nearly tell where the knobby joints were where the first two sets of proximal phalanges and metacarpi met—or should that be the last two sets? He was sure it had been the base of her index finger that had made the biggest, reddest splotch. It would stop being interesting if it bruised; he'd seen bruises on skin many times before.

Of course, Spike's skin had a completely different tone than his; it was usually lighter, and it was also usually a bit yellowed because of the soap he used that he swore protected him from all but the worst cauldron splashes. And despite being sallow-under-that-influence it didn't go gold the way Ev's could when he was very, very careful about using proper anti-sunburn potions, and it was also never as pink. It could have an almost blue tint in places, that could make you think of the deep shadows in glaciers even though of course it wasn't anything like that really, and was probably exactly what all those medieval painters had been thinking of when they churned out all those dreadful pictures of pious green people that had made Evan think for years that muggles were actually a different species, quite often with gold plates growing up from their shoulders in a bony growth. Which he'd thought must be rather heavy and cumbersome, not to mention awkward when one wanted to shake one's head and making pillows rather useless.

But he'd seen bruises on other people, too, if less frequently.

"What?" Potter asked, eying him.

"Hm?" Evan replied, his voice sounding faraway even to himself.

"You were glaring at me."

He blinked, and then blinked more deliberately a couple of time and let his eyes widen just a touch. "Oh, was I?" He checked his painting to make sure Potter hadn't got into it by accident while his thoughts and, apparently, eyes were wandering to the wellspring of bruising.

Rats.

Evans and Spike were hissing at each other like geese, very quietly. Spike had a good neck for that, but Ev wasn't going to do a caricature or even a cartoon, even with swans instead of geese, because that wasn't one of the things Spike had a sense of humor about. He always took things like that personally. Quite understandable, even if Ev was a little hurt that Severus couldn't remember to make an exception of him. But one thing that you had to accept about Severus was that no matter how hard he tried to be nothing but silver-green (silver-teal?), there were some times when he just really couldn't keep his head.

"Wasn't I just in the sitting room?" Evan asked, with a sense that it was rather late to be asking it, and briefly not entirely sure who he was asking.

"Yes, you were," Spike said levelly from just above his ear. Mmm.

"Are they still in there?"

"Regrettably."

Evan sighed with disappointment, regretting it, too. Here he was magically (really magically?) snugged up on-if-not-in bed with his Spike, and he couldn't even curl in for a beautiful nap, let alone really take advantage. Not when they had an infestation of something that resembled 'guests' closely enough that they were inevitably going to be hospitable whether even courtesy really required it of them or not.

And he was all warm, too, with wiry arms steady and close around him, like a fortified turret, and Spike's throat bare and smooth-soft and smelling of deep woods and dark spices and lush heather and home against his face, long, strong fingers gently cupping the other side of it and an uncompromising kiss rooted warm and unmoving into his brow.

Mournfully, not really trying to start anything, just to make his feelings plain and a bit because he almost couldn't help it, he dipped his head to get the knob of Spike's collarbone against his lips and sucked, the soft hunter-green collar of Spike's soft Sod Everything Including Cliché And Decorum; I Am Not Leaving This Flat Today shirt rubbing his nose. Spike was never what anyone west of Italy and north of Spain would call handsome (the parochial twits), but for Evan's two knuts he was gorgeous in the dark, pure colors he wouldn't wear in public, especially when he'd tied the black curtains back for work and was letting all the life and proud bones in his face show.

And if no one agreed with Ev, that was because their tastes were uneducated and unrefined, and it also meant they mostly didn't alarm Spike by making overtures he tended not to even recognize, much less know how to handle.

Spike stroked his hair. He must have been serious about it, too; he'd taken Ev's hair-ribbon out so that what had formerly been a decently neat-enough club was waving all over both their shoulders.

After a moment he said, still in that level tone, "You could have been a sociopath, I think, or something like it. If nothing had interfered with the nothing," his voice was very briefly savage before settling again, "that was all you had in that cavern by yourself with just the elf. If you hadn't learned that other people were real. I don't think you would have been like Rabastan and that lot; you have to care in twisted ways to be like them. You didn't care at all about anything when I met you, you didn't know how. Maybe you were one, then, or headed that way. Maybe you would have taken their example to find some way to feel. But, in fact, you grew in another direction, and are very, very far from it."

Evan breathed until his throat hurt a little less, crushing his eyes into Severus's neck. If anyone knew him, Severus did. But then, he'd heard Severus admit, right out loud, to bias. To having given up on even being able to evaluate Evan with the same cool, devastating, value-neutral accuracy he turned on other people as a matter of course.

"I know you think," Severus went on, running long, slow strokes down his back, "that it's something in your blood and bone, something you were born with. I can understand why you think that, because your father doesn't put on much more of an appearance of giving a damn about anything than you do, in your public face. I suppose it's easiest to think he can't care, beyond a distant sort of warmth."

Evan bit him. Not hard enough to break skin, nowhere near it, but hard enough to express his opinion.

"And maybe he can't," Severus said, trying to make it sound as if he were just continuing uninterrupted rather than making a concession, but Ev could hear the smile in his voice. "But Ev, wizards are pig-ignorant in some areas, and if we weren't, you'd know that dumping a child on a nanny without even other little monsters to play with and faffing off for months at a time is just as bad for it as beating it, in the long run. Love them all you like, know they were forced to be parents against their will, were never meant for it, know it's a bit of a miracle that they found a way to care about you and like you and be proud instead of resenting that you were forced on them, but know, too, that the way they did find did something to you. The something may have been 'nothing,' but a 'nothing' like that—a person has to grow strong in unusual ways to survive it. Ways other people don't have to discover, and can't understand. When they try to understand what they're seeing, Ev, they just don't have the context to see it clear. And that's just as well, when you think about it."

Evan felt that his mind was sort of sliding around this. Not smoothly, the way Spike had described Slughorn, but as if it were some complex, faceted metal structure in a room of mirrors and he a beam of light, glancing off it and away from it, over and over.

He knew one thing, though. Spike had told him something once, written it into his skin, and he'd never had the words to say back—not the same feeling, because it was different and he knew it, and not what he felt in return. Or in reply, rather, because it wasn't a trade. Had never had the words, anyway. But he knew that whatever strength he had, it wasn't from inside him.

Pressing his eyes close again, he lifted his hand up and traced seven runes into the back of Severus's neck, that part of him that was very safe, very hidden, because his soap, in a side effect he hadn't tried very hard to get rid of made him look a bit like he didn't use any, and no one ever really let their eyes linger on his hair. Teiwaz, Raido, Ehwaz, Laguz, Laguz, Isa, Sol.

He felt Severus silently repeat the word, felt him mouth, "Trellis," in frowning thought. What Severus said out loud a moment later, though, because he always understood the important things when he wasn't driving himself into a frenzy of hysteria or depression (which, admittedly, was rare), was, "Hearth," and he tucked a kiss behind Evan's ear. "You were cold, when I met you," he said without moving away, very low, humming through Evan's bones. "That's over. Has been for years."

"Can I get you to admit she's a harpy?" Ev asked his neck, feeling sleepy and hopeful even though he knew perfectly well what the answer was.

And, of course, Severus did laugh silently, for just a breath or two, and say, "No."

"Pleeeeaasssse?"

"Ev, you agree with her. You'll be quite pleased about her attitude, when you're feeling better and you've considered it properly, I believe. If you thought what you made her think, you wouldn't stop at a slap. You punched me in the face for playing Quidditch."

"You didn't warn me you were joining and it was a Gryffindor game and they beat the stuffing out of you," he said sulkily. (It didn't occur to him to remind Severus that this incident had been five years ago, or propose to him that it might be unfair to suggest that one might, as an adult, do the same sorts of things one had thought perfectly reasonable in one's fourth year due to being an idiot fourth-year newly saturated in unaccustomed hormones.)

"And then you punched me. Also screamed down the Quidditch pitch. And nearly strangled someone with thorny vines. Which grew out of your skin. And which I strongly suspect to have been poisonous. Just because he was momentarily, as anyone might have expected a team captain to be after a game in which his Seeker did not appear to be playing Quidditch and, indeed, let the snitch escape him—"

"No, I didn't," Ev informed it smugly, snugging it tighter.

"Er, yes, Ev, you did, we won on points because Reg and I were brilliant, thankyouverymuch and all credit due to the beaters although not particularly to Avery in my possibly somewhat biased opinion, but Potter caught it. Because Gamp was, as I say, more interested in the Cup than in a reserve player's personal short-term welfare as regarding bumps and bruises and other matters the Pomfrey could clear up with half a wand-wave. Glass houses, Venusian."

"But I can get you to be handfast with me," he declared, rubbing his nose in, this time sounding more confident than he felt. Even though they'd settled this already. It wasn't done yet.

Spike hesitated, but it was a teasing sort of pause, and his hand never slowed or quickened on Evan's back. "Oh," he said in a resigned sort of tone, "most likely. At least, I wouldn't put it past you."

"Yay," Evan said drowsily, too peaceful to smile, and landed suction-first on his collarbone again, arms snaking around his back. They had very nice pillowcases, even if Spike did occasionally have a Northern fit and whinge on about the ponciness of the thread count and fibre length and the impact of Egyptian cotton on local textile whatyoumaycallems. Soft.

"I'd repeat that in a tone of incredulity," mused Severus meditatively, "but I really can't bring myself to utter the syllable."