Darkness had fallen over the castle and I quietly crept through the hallways. Even if I would have seen a student out of bed, I wasn't sure if I would have tried to catch them. There was one thing and one thing alone I craved tonight, and it was not justice. Up, up, up I went, spiralling closer to the sky as I climbed the tallest tower in Hogwarts: the Astronomy Tower. I had to go slowly, and rest every once and a while, for my lungs got tighter with each step, but I knew that once I finished the climb and reached the top I would feel better. As I ascended the air grew cooler and fresher until I finally spied the door. The chilly air seeped in from the cracks under the door and I opened it slowly and quietly. The cold intensified, but I had dressed warmly and so I was not bothered too much by this. The stars were shining brightly in the blackness overhead. There was something oddly comforting about those little specks of light in a sea of ebony. Maybe it was because they gave me hope. But most of all it was because here I could be anyone under these stars. I could be myself without fearing someone would discover what was slowly sapping the life from me, or scorn me for the past, for my part in the prophecy. My stomach clenched when I thought of it, for I had still not told Harry of my part in the prophecy. Not wanting to further complicate my life, I pushed this thought away, and allowed myself to become lost in the stars above. And after a little while, as I leaned on the railing and looked up into the beautiful beyond, I let out a breath I had not realized I had been holding these past number of days.

     This was where I talked to Lily. Maybe she couldn't hear me, maybe she could, but either way it felt good to sometimes acknowledge that she had existed, that she was still there in my heart. Tonight I had a lot on my mind, and it burst forth in a rush from my mouth as I poured out my secrets to the universe, to my Lily who at times appeared to have known me far better than I ever did. I told her how Albus had been telling me that I needed to let her go. He said that it had been fifteen years. To me it felt like a minute, and yet a lifetime. I whispered up to her that I was still fearful of my past, that it would again come back to ruin what I had so carefully built. I told her how I was still afraid to tell Draco and Harry about my illness. How much it scared me to know that that life-taking spider web was spinning its way across my lungs. I whispered aloud my fear that Harry was slipping away from me. The past few days he had been very quiet. I hoped he would be able to confide in me.

    "I'm terrified Lily," I whispered once again as I leaned against the railing, the steam from my breath erupting in the cold air. "What will it be like? To die. Will I see you again? I don't know anymore. Even if there is something after this, then why should I be allowed a place in it? Albus says I've more than made up for what I did, that it''s only me still holding up the blame." I exhaled carefully. "I just wish I could stop thinking about it."

       An owl swooped in and out of the trees in the forbidden forest. The cold wind tousled my hair as it ran past.

     "I have to tell him about it," I muttered, thinking of the day I overheard the prophecy. "All I've done is make excuses, and delay and delude myself into thinking I don't need to tell him. Harry will find out one way or another, and I'd prefer it to be from me."

      The chill was starting to creep into my bones, and I could feel my joints aching very slightly from the numerous times I had had the cruciatus cast upon me, but this did not deter me in the least.

     "I miss you still," I said, the kind of longing I had felt for so many years briefly intensifying. I was about to open my mouth to continue talking when I heard footsteps.

     I stood stock still as the sound of the door handle jiggling met my ears. I whirled around, and the person that I saw looked equally surprised to find me up here.

     "Hello," Laura said nervously, biting her lip from where she stood on the little landing outside the door.

     "Hello yourself," I replied slowly.

     "I was just ... taking a walk and -" Laura said, voice overlapping with mine as I tried to explain I had seen a student in the vicinity. We had been slightly awkward around each other since Albus and Minerva's decision to play matchmaker, and had pretty much agreed to ignore the whole incident and go on as normal. But we still couldn't really forget it completely.

     We stopped once we realized we were both trying to say something we were not doing.

     "Were you up here with someone?" Laura asked hesitantly as she lingered in the doorway, looking as though she really thought she should go.  "I heard someone talking. Maybe it was my imagination ..."

     "No," I muttered, the moonlight casting long shadows behind the both of us. I glanced over my shoulder at the starry sky  before returning my gaze to her.

    "Were you talking to yourself?" She didn't sound as though she were accusing me, but was merely curious. She took a few hesitant steps through the doorway so that she was fully in the tower room. "It's alright, I won't judge you," she added.

    "I certainly was not," I scoffed in response to her question, for it was entirely true, in a sense. I wasn't talking to myself, per say. She looked at me, clearly saying with her eyes that she knew there was something more. She was far cleverer than I gave her credit for. 

    "Who were you really talking to then?" she asked, a fascinated light crossing her face, as though I were some sort of puzzle she was trying to put together. She was a Ravenclaw, after all.

    I raised an eyebrow and answered with a question. "Well ... what are you doing up here?"

    "I'll answer your question if you answer mine."

     I rolled my eyes in irritation and turned away from her to lean on the railing once more. Hopefully she would just leave. Though in some ways, I did not wish to be alone in the tower again. Sometimes company was alright, and I thought she saw that, as she walked carefully over to where I was standing, dainty hands gracing the railing a few feet from me.

     "I'm a mild insomniac, and when I was a student I used to sneak up here when I couldn't sleep," Laura told me softly, taking a sidelong glance at me, her eyes wide in the moonlight. There were deep shadows under her eyes, the moonlight making the rest of her face pale. "That's part of why I'm up here tonight."

     I didn't say anything, but tucked the information away for later as I marvelled at her determination. Usually when I scowled at someone and turned my back to them people left, but for some reason she didn't. I briefly wondered what the other part was that made her come up here, but quashed the urge to ask.

          I wasn't sure why I was saying it. Maybe it had something to do with the way her wavy brown hair fluttered in the moonlight and her eyes, her eyes stared deep into my soul.

     "I was talking to someone who died a long time ago," I said softly. "And I'm not crazy." I was being defensive again. It was always hard not to be.

     "Well, even if you were crazy I would be too then," she said with a chuckle. There was an almost undetectable bitter edge to it. "I do plenty of talking to people who aren't here anymore."

     I looked at her curiously, but she did not elaborate, and instead seemed lost in the shadows of the moonlight that danced over the cold lake.

    "Do you ever wish you could be a bird?" she asked abruptly, unaware that I was studying her intently.

     "I have never thought about it, to be honest."

    "When I was young I used to dream about flying through the night air and over the ocean, when the moon was out. I always had the strangest longing to follow the reflection of the moon over the water, on and on, as though it would take me to some untouched land." She gave slight sigh, a whimsical look on her face. "I sometimes still dream of it."

I had to admit it was a fanciful thought, just oneself, the ocean air and the glimmer of the water.

       "I think we all want that sometimes," I muttered back, thinking that I would very much love to give up my problems and worries to follow moonbeams and stars.

      Laura continued to stare out at the sky, and I wondered who she had to talk to that was gone. I did, and yet didn't want to ask, for she had been kind enough not to ask who precisely I had been talking to, so I took one last look at the stars and said that I was departing. I wished to stay longer, for a kind of peace had fallen over me, but I knew that Minerva was bound to be her usual self and stop me from drinking too many cups of coffee tomorrow morning. She hated coffee and always nagged so badly it was often worth being horrendously tired. But maybe, just maybe, the part of me that wanted to leave was scared by how much I was comforted by Laura being there.

      "Goodbye then," Laura called to me as I left.

     Her voice echoed in my ears as I slowly descended, down, down, down from the tower and to the dungeons. I stumbled through the secret door into my quarters, coughing forcefully into my handkerchief. I fell, wheezing onto the rug and simply sat there for a few moments. After that I slowly crept into my bed, my tired body sinking into the softness. I didn't let myself think of blood or of Lethifolds, or the darkness I felt I had fallen into. Instead I thought of stars, and towers and moonbeams and the colour of honey. And in spite of it all, I almost smiled.  

       ***

      A few days passed by. I was really not quite sure how many, as everything seemed to have gone by in a haze. I couldn't settle down to a book, and I couldn't even pay attention to marking papers. What I mostly found myself doing today was staring into empty space, and so it was quite a relief when Harry came in and sat down at the table, where I had been trying to mark papers but was instead failing miserably. He looked mildly puzzled about something.

     "Dad?" he asked after our initial hellos.

     "Yes?" My heart started to beat fast. What if he had noticed something was wrong with me? What if he had seen the blood spots on the white cuffs that protruded from my black sleeves? I had done my best to get all of the spots off, but sometimes they were missed.

     "What do you know about women?" Harry said in a rush, sounding anxious.

     I could have laughed with relief. Harry probably fancied someone, but I wouldn't bother him about it. I was sure I would find out soon enough without him telling me.

    Hang on ... what do I know about women? I wondered rather incredulously.

      "Well ..." I said, stalling for a moment and trying to think of something intelligent. "They ... er, cry ... more than men."

    That is all you could come up with Severus? Merlin you're hopeless.

     "Yeah, they do," Harry muttered darkly. "Out of curiosity, er ... is there is any way to ask a girl out without sounding like an idiot?"

      "I suppose so," I replied.

     Harry looked a little elated, and upon his reply pretended to sound nonchalant. "How?"

       "I have no idea." My response was quite automatic.

      "You ... don't?" Harry asked, the look upon his face priceless. It was as though he had expected me to have infinite amounts of experience in this field. Harry was funny sometimes, for, having missed the chance to have a stable guardian as a child, his lack of experience having one made him much more likely to think I was utterly perfect in certain areas. It was a little funny, I must admit. Childlike belief, was what some called it, and how it still shone from Harry on occasion, after all he had been through, was a mystery I didn't think I would ever fully understand.

      "I haven't asked anybody out in my life, actually," I admitted a little dully.

      "Have you at least gone on a date before?" Harry looked at me with a very incredulous expression as he fidgeted in his chair.

     "Well ... Lucius Malfoy set me up a number of times over the years." I scowled a little. "I'm quite sure that trying to find me a woman was his hobby. He ignored the fact that I am not interested in the least in Death Eaters. Some even made Bellatrix Lestrange seem sane."

    Harry stared at me for a moment. He was quite obviously surprised.

     "Trust me, if you were as disliked as I during your school days you wouldn't have had many girlfriends either," I told him patiently. Alright, so maybe it didn't help that I was a hopeless case what with being too busy falling for Lily, but I really wasn't going to tell Harry such a thing. Imagine that conversation ... "By the way Harry, your mother was really attractive and I have always wanted nothing more than to snog her". I likely would need to take him to mind healer after that one.

     "Dad, are you okay?" Harry asked, undoubtedly noticing the glazed expression on my face.

     "Perfectly fine."

     "I'm hopeless," said Harry suddenly, looking blue. "How can I ever be with a nice girl if I don't know the first thing about them?"

     "So, what's Hermione then?" I asked. "You know Hermione, and other girls can't be that different from her. Even if she is much smarter than majority of them."

    "That's right," cried Harry. "Hermione's a girl!"

     I rolled my eyes, recalling Hermione mentioning to me during her visit in the summer that both Harry and Ron had made a similar but brief revelation in their fourth year. I was happy to have lit the lantern again for him to illuminate that fact. "Just go by what you know about her, and I'm sure she'd be happy to answer questions about what girls look for in a man. Mind you, if she finds Draco appealing, maybe not."

     Harry snickered a bit at my joke and then said, "Thanks Dad, you're brilliant!"

     Yes ... yes I am!

     Just then there was a knock on the door to my office, which, thanks to magic, I could hear inside my quarters. I excused myself and went out into my office to answer the door.

     "Hello Hagrid, what can I do for you?" I asked curiously.

     "Yer cat showed up at my hut a while ago," Hagrid told me. "He's got a friend, and I think yeh should see this professor."

      "Is it urgent?" I asked, not really wishing to go anywhere.

       "Well," Hagrid began, looking like it was something I would want to know, so I went inside to get my cloak.

        Harry asked if he could come with me, and I said yes. Hagrid didn't object to this so I decided that Munkastrap couldn't be too worse for wear. Although, Munkastrap, being a magically bred cat, was quite a bit more clever than any muggle breed. Though I had no idea what Hagrid had meant about him having a friend.

      I soon found this out however, when we arrived at Hagrid's hut and stood around the fire. What I saw before me explained where Munk had been going to these days, and why he had looked so smug on each occasion he had actually decided to come visit me.

     A sleek orange tabby was sitting next to him on a blanket of Hagrid's.

     "You rascal," I said in amazement as Munk smugly licked his paws. Yes. And to top it all there was a litter of kittens all lying in a bunch beside the tabby. I was not surprised that Munk had stayed with the Tabby, as magical cats often mated for life.

     "Even Munk has a girl," Harry muttered incredulously. He seemed to be feeling quite sorry for himself. But then again, what with Hermione and Draco together, and Ron Weasley corresponding with a witch he'd met in Ottery St Catchpole that went to another smaller school nearby, I couldn't quite blame him.

     "Rather Munkastrap having a pile of offspring than you though," I said through my teeth.

      Harry nodded very vigorously and Hagrid chortled.

     "She was layin' in the snow outside, so I brought her in and she had her kittens," Hagrid informed me. "Yer cat wanted to come in too, so I let him."

    That could not have been very long ago. I kneeled down to look at the kittens, and the mother hissed. Munk made a weird but comforting yowling noise at her and she calmed down, looking far more relaxed. I could only assume that he had told her that she could trust me. I looked down at the tiny balls of mewling fur. It was a little bit difficult to discern how many, as they were all cuddled together.

     "One, two, three ... four ..." - I paused for a minute - "no, five," I added as a tiny grey one yawned beneath two others.

     "Three girls, two boys," Hagrid proudly announced. "Little, aren' they?"

      There were three orange ones, with varying degrees of white on them. There was a soft grey one with the same white spot on its nose as Munk. The last was as black as Munkatrap was, though lacking his markings. This one had white paws as well, like the mother. In quiet but delighted surprise at this turn of the events, I gently stroked the black one, and it nuzzled my finger blindly. Harry bent down too and examined a chubby little orange one that was curled up in a perfect ball.

    "Thank you Hagrid for informing me," I said. "Do you think the female belongs to anybody?"

    "No, I've seen her wanderin' the grounds for a long time," Hagrid said. "I've asked up at the school and she isn't one of the students' cats. She sometimes comes ter visit me. She trusts me, so I think it migh' be better if the kittens say here ‘til they're grown."

     "I quite agree," I said. "You know far more about animals than I do. Unless you find otherwise, if the mother is a stray, I suppose that once they are big enough I shall see if I can find people to adopt the kittens."

     "Sounds good ter me."

      I was personally a bit surprised that Hagrid had actually taken a liking to the kittens, as they did not sting, spit fire, belch slime or sport tentacles. By the look on Harry's face, he thought the same.

     "Are we going to keep any of them?" Harry asked, now admiring the smallest one, which was the grey. He seemed to have taken a liking to it, and he let its tiny mouth explore the tip of his finger.

    "We'll see," I replied.

    "Hagrid, can I come by tomorrow to see them?"

     Hagrid beamed beneath his beard. "I'd love ter have yeh Harry."

     "Well, thank you Hagrid," I said, suddenly feeling tired. "I shall be going now then."

    "Alright, you can come ter visit them anytime too," he offered.

     I nodded in thanks and gave Munk a good scratch on the back (he seemed to want to stay with his mate for the moment) and departed, Harry following close behind and talking my ear off about a group of ducklings his class had ended up taking care of back when he was in primary school. According to him the teacher trusted him enough to let him play gently with the ducks before school when everyone was outside playing. He liked that.