Aurora stepped out of the floo into the receiving hall of Prince Manor, emerald flames dying behind her as she brushed the last clinging ash from her dark robes. The silence hit her first — not the comforting kind that spoke of peaceful solitude, but a taut, oppressive quiet that seemed to press against her eardrums like glass stretched to its breaking point.
Eileen was waiting in the doorway to the main hall, her silhouette framed by the pale afternoon light filtering through tall windows. Her face lit with visible relief at the sight of Aurora, but the deep shadows under her eyes betrayed weeks of sleepless nights. Her graying hair was pinned back as neatly as ever, not a strand out of place, but her hands betrayed her composure as they twisted nervously in the folds of her burgundy shawl.
"Aurora." Her voice cracked just slightly on the name, years of practiced composure fracturing. "Thank Merlin you've come."
Aurora set her leather satchel down on the polished marble floor and crossed the space between them, embracing Eileen tightly. The older woman felt frailer than she remembered, as if worry had worn her down to her very bones. "I came as soon as I received your letter. My mistress departed for France yesterday for a week of business, so she won't even notice I've slipped away."
She pulled back, studying Eileen with a careful, assessing gaze — not quite a healer's eye, but the practiced observation of someone who had spent years tending to others' needs. The woman looked utterly frayed, caught somewhere between overwhelming worry and bone-deep exhaustion.
"Where is he?" Aurora asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.
Eileen's tired gaze flickered toward the narrow stairwell that led to the manor's lower levels, her expression growing even more strained. "In the laboratory. Always that damned laboratory." Her voice faltered, and for a moment she looked far older than her years. "Aurora, I cannot reach him anymore. He listens when I speak, he nods at all the right moments, and then he simply goes back below ground. He doesn't eat unless I force a tray into his hands. He doesn't sleep — I hear him moving about at all hours. He doesn't… he doesn't live anymore."
Aurora's jaw set with determination, her dark eyes growing sharp and resolute. "Then perhaps he needs someone who won't simply nod and accept his silence. Don't worry yourself further, Madam Prince. He won't get rid of me so easily — not when he's in this state."
The stairwell smelled faintly of char and parchment, with an underlying metallic tang that made Aurora's nose wrinkle. As she descended the narrow stone steps, the air thickened around her like invisible syrup — ancient runes hummed along the weathered walls, their soft blue glow pulsing in rhythm with protective wards that Severus had painstakingly etched himself during his first week here.
The laboratory sprawled before her like some mad scholar's dream, a hybrid of sterile hospital and forgotten tomb. Precarious towers of books rose from every available surface — some bound in cracked dragon leather that whispered when touched, others gleaming with modern Muggle laminate that looked almost alien in the candlelit space. They teetered on workbenches scarred by years of spilled potions and experimental burns. A sleek Muggle microscope whirred softly in the corner, its chrome frame incongruously inscribed with delicate runes that sparked silver when Aurora's gaze lingered too long. Sheets of parchment sprawled across every remaining inch of space like fallen leaves, covered in Severus's sharp, uncompromising handwriting — notes that seemed to grow more frantic and cramped toward the margins.
And there he was, exactly where she'd expected to find him.
Severus hunched over the microscope like a gargoyle protecting its perch, his lank black hair spilling forward like a curtain designed to hide his face from the world. His ink-stained fingers, pale as bone in the lamplight, trembled slightly as they adjusted the focus with obsessive precision. The scratching of his quill had stopped, but he didn't acknowledge her presence until Aurora deliberately cleared her throat, the sound echoing off the stone walls.
"Merlin's beard, Severus," she said, settling her hands firmly on her hips in a gesture that brooked no argument, "do you even remember what sunlight looks like? Or food, for that matter?"
His head lifted slowly, reluctantly, as if the simple act caused him physical pain. Deep shadows carved his angular face even sharper than usual, exhaustion hollowing the cheeks of a seventeen-year-old boy who should never have had to carry himself like a man already bearing the weight of the world. Dark circles rimmed his eyes like bruises, but those black depths still held their familiar spark of sardonic intelligence. His pale lips curled into the faintest approximation of a smirk.
"The sun is irrelevant to my current research," he said, his voice dry as autumn leaves. "The blood samples, however, are not."
Aurora snorted, crossing her arms as she surveyed the chaos surrounding him. "You sound like a vampire already, lurking down here in the dark. Should I be worried you'll start hissing at garlic next?"
That almost earned her a smirk from him. She moved to his desk with deliberate curiosity, her fingers trailing across the surface before she began flipping through his scattered notes and parchments. At first, she'd meant to tease him further about his obsessive work habits — but her playful jest died in her throat when her eyes caught the meticulous precision of his writing, the intricate sketches of cellular structures rendered with an artist's attention to detail, and the dense margin notes that drew startling parallels between ancient magical runes and the double helix diagrams he'd clearly borrowed from advanced Muggle genetics texts.
The sheer scope of his research made her breath catch. Equations bridged the gap between magical theory and hard science, while carefully annotated observations suggested experiments that pushed the boundaries of both disciplines.
She whistled low, the sound cutting through the heavy silence of the room. "This isn't madness." She turned to look at him fully, her expression shifting from surprise to something approaching awe. "This is… revolutionary. If you can actually do this — if you can make this work — you won't just fight Voldemort. You'll fundamentally change the world."
Severus's gaze remained flat and steady, unblinking as it met hers. "That is the point."
Her throat tightened at his tone — not defiance, not triumph or excitement at the magnitude of his discovery, but something infinitely colder and more resigned. "And it will destroy you in the process, if you let it."
Aurora set the notes down carefully, her decision crystallizing in her mind like a potion reaching the perfect temperature.
"I'll help you."
Severus blinked slowly, as if the words hadn't quite penetrated the fog of exhaustion that seemed to perpetually surround him. "Help me?"
"Yes." She folded her arms across her chest, chin lifted in determination as she waited for the inevitable scowl that would darken his features. "I'll write to my mistress immediately. She's a half-blood healer — brilliant, really — and she knows both Muggle medicine and magical healing better than anyone I've encountered. If anyone can point us toward angles you haven't considered, approaches you might have overlooked in your current state, it's her. She'll provide guidance, detailed instructions, alternative methodologies, and I'll bring everything here to assist your research."
Severus tilted his head slightly, dark eyes glinting with suspicion as they searched her face. "But?"
Aurora's lips curved into a knowing smirk. "But you'll earn it first. Two full days off. Completely off — no brewing, no research, no lurking in this dungeon laboratory. Before I send so much as a single word to her."
He froze entirely, the suggestion so unexpected it rendered him momentarily speechless. "Two—"
"And after that," Aurora pressed on relentlessly, her voice brooking no argument, "we establish a proper schedule. Regular meals that consist of more than stale bread and whatever you can grab between experiments. Adequate rest — actual sleep in an actual bed. Or I pull out entirely, and I'll make certain both Eileen and Arcturus know exactly how you're driving yourself straight into an early grave."
His eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, and she could practically see the indignation radiating from him. "You presume to dictate the pace of my work?"
"No," Aurora replied, her voice remaining as calm and immovable as ancient stone. "I'm dictating the pace of your survival. A dead Severus saves no one, helps no one, and certainly won't be developing any miraculous cures."
A long, tense silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken challenges and stubborn wills. Then, quietly, with the faintest curl of disdain touching his voice: "You would actually blackmail me with your assistance?"
Aurora's grin widened, sharp-edged and utterly shameless. "Absolutely. Without hesitation. Because that's what true friends are for."
The tension broke with a breath of laughter, almost unwilling, from Severus—a sound so rare it seemed to surprise even him. Aurora eased into the worn leather chair opposite his desk, the familiar creak of old wood filling the momentary silence as she shook her head with fond exasperation.
"Do you remember Ilvermorny?" she asked lightly, her voice carrying the warmth of shared memory. "When you used to snap at me for hovering in the lab like some sort of persistent ghost?"
Severus arched a brow, the ghost of amusement flickering across his sharp features. "You were a menace. Always knocking over vials and disrupting my concentration with your incessant chatter."
"And yet," she said, leaning forward with a smug smile that hadn't changed in all these years, "you never threw me out. Not once, despite all your theatrical threats."
The corner of his mouth twitched in what someone generous might call the beginning of a smile. "You were... tolerable company."
"Liar," Aurora said, but her eyes softened with understanding, seeing through his carefully constructed walls as she always had. "You let me stay because you knew I'd badger you into eating, into breathing, into remembering you were human. Just like now."
He didn't argue, couldn't really, because they both knew she was right.
Aurora tapped the desk with her knuckles, the sound sharp and decisive. "Evie and Kiera are coming in a few days—they're already planning to drag you out of this dungeon whether you cooperate or not. Alessandro will follow after his family duties are finished. On that day, you will keep your schedule completely clear. No brewing, no grading, no brooding. No questions asked. You're coming with us."
He started to protest, his mouth opening with what was undoubtedly a list of responsibilities and excuses, but she cut him off with a glare so sharp and unforgiving it might have rivaled his own legendary classroom stare.
Aurora leaned back in her chair, her voice gentler now but no less firm. "You're not alone, Severus. Not then, not now, not ever. Whether you like it or not, whether you fight it or embrace it, you've got me. You've got us."
Something flickered in his dark eyes—the bone-deep exhaustion he carried like a cloak, the crushing weight of expectation and responsibility, and beneath it all, like a candle flame in the darkness, the faintest thread of relief.
"I know," he said softly, the words barely above a whisper but carrying the weight of years of friendship and unspoken gratitude.
Aurora smiled, satisfied with this small victory, knowing that sometimes the greatest battles were won not with grand gestures, but with quiet persistence and the stubborn refusal to let someone you cared about disappear into their own shadows.
When she left him to rest, Severus remained at the bench a moment longer, his fingers drumming silently against the worn wood. The laboratory felt different in her absence—quieter, but not empty in the way it had been before. He placed his hand lightly on his notes, feeling the slight texture of ink against parchment, staring at the intersection of rune-script and Muggle diagrams that represented weeks of painstaking work.
Two days, he thought, the words echoing in his mind with a mixture of frustration and reluctant acceptance. A waste of time. But still… perhaps necessary. The admission came grudgingly, even to himself.
He had promised her he would rest, and Severus Snape was not a man who broke his word lightly. The weight of that promise settled over him like an unfamiliar cloak. Though his mind whispered of planning, of the dozen tasks that awaited his attention, of the urgency that had driven him these past weeks, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, something inside him eased. The constant tension in his shoulders lessened, his breathing deepened slightly.
Aurora was right, he realized with a start that was both uncomfortable and oddly comforting. He was not alone.
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