Daughter of Loss

Sara ran up the stairs, all the way back to the library, kicking herself mentally. How could she be so stupid! She knew he knew about her mum and she had to go and confirm it. Dang it, dang it, dang it! He would be watching her constantly. Lovely.

“Sara! Where have you been?” called Simone, as Sara turned into the hall in front of the library.

Crap, now what.

“Oh, I was um, going to the bathroom, yeah.” Sara said, stumbling as she was trying to think of an appropriate excuse for just leaving the library and sprinting up the stairs from the dungeons.

“Oh, well, I didn’t find anything else, but we have a whole year. Let’s go down to lunch.” Simone said as she shifted the weight of her bag and tilted her head in the direction of the Great Hall.

“Sure Simone,” she said before she whispered to Elizabeth, “I got rid of it,”

Elizabeth nodded in understanding and they both ran to catch up with Simone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Quite frankly, lunch was not much different than breakfast had been for anyone. Everyone was still getting used to being at school and most of the upper years had homework out at lunch, trying to finish what they had all summer to do.

“Good afternoon Severus!” called Gregory Cullen. Snape rolled his eyes and turned to face that mocking man with his mocking smile.

“What do you want Gregory?” he asked, quite annoyed. He always used every chance he could to call him “Severus” since he had never been able to when he was a student.

“Oh nothing, just wondering what sort of tortures you have planned for our new first years. You always have something terrible planned. Why, you scared the daylights out of me on my first day,” he reminisced. “Great show of Gryffindor bravery” thought Snape inwardly has he smirked to himself.

Just then, the three Slytherin girls waltzed in, laughing about something or another.

“Just like Lily,” thought Severus, “It was always so easy for her to make friends quickly”
“Severus, Severus, Earth to Severus,” called McGonagall while she waved her hand in front of his face. Snape jumped and looked up like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Here,” she said as she shoved a stack of papers into his hands. “Student schedules, go hand them out to all the Slytherins,” she said, apparently annoyed.

“Yes ma’am,” Snape uttered under his breath as he got up and made his way to the Slytherin table on the farthest left of the Great Hall. He nonchalantly shoved the papers to the unsuspecting upper years who were sitting around acting like dunderheads and laughing over something they found apparently very amusing. He made his way down the table with ease until he got to the end where Simone and her new friends were plotting something.

Elizabeth was the first to notice that Snape was getting closer to their side of the table and started tugging on Sara’s shirt sleeve a little too frantically. Sara looked up and shut up immediately, engaging Simone in some conversation about Quidditch. Elizabeth sat in her seat, trying to regain composure; she was still afraid of Snape, she had heard some sixth years talk about how much they were glad they didn’t have to be in his class anymore and how they thought he was a vampire. Elizabeth found the idea of an evil vampire teaching her in a damp, dark dungeon classroom not highly appealing to her.

“Oh, good afternoon Professor Snape,” said Sara acting very relaxed and talking as if he was an old friend as she smiled a huge, ear to ear smile.

“Good afternoon Miss. Tyler, Miss. Darcy, and Miss…” he drew a blank, what was he supposed to call her?

“Miss. Barber is fine for now Professor,” Simone said, cheerful enough.

“Alright then, Miss. Barber.” It pained him to call her that but he would do it seeing as how he didn’t have any other ideas of what to call her. “Here are your schedules for the year and I will see you tomorrow,” he stated, looking briefly at Simone, before turning on his heel and striding down the aisle the two tables made, his cloak billowing behind him.

“I wonder how he does the cloak thing?” asked Elizabeth, highly intrigued at the thought of billowing robes.

“I don’t know but I wish I could do that,” said Simone, looking in awe at how utterly cool it looked.

“Maybe it’s hereditary,” said Sara, although Simone only saw it as something he inherited, not that she had.

After eating lunch, the girls headed back to their dorm room to look over their schedule and look over the books that they would need and plotted some more, little known to them what tomorrow would be like.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The dream came again this night too.

Simone was walking down a dungeon hallway, just as before. She wasn’t as scared this time, she knew what was coming. She entered the first room and saw, just as she had before, the Potters standing there. She left that room and entered the other room but the scene was slightly different. This time, it seemed as if Lily and “The Mystery Man” didn’t see her. Lily looked like she was in her teens and was talking to the man that was still hidden behind a shadow. Then, the mystery man handed Lily a small box. She opened it and it held Simone’s locket. Her face lit up and the mystery man then started to put it on her. She picked it up and looked at it before turning around and kissing the man. Simone fingered her own necklace, the real one, not the dream one. The scene in front of her was perfect, like it was right out of a fairy tale. Her parents had to have been in love she just knew it.

Simone woke up, not scared this time, but with this feeling of warmth and comfort. She fell asleep once more and stayed that way until that morning.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Simone woke up in a haze. The warm and fuzzy feeling hadn’t left but it was time to get up. She rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom to get ready. She had to admit, she was nervous. Today was her first day of classes, the first day of judgment, and the day of her first potion’s class.