"Call me Cissi," the woman said.

"I'm Sev." He pulled out a high stool and took a seat along the counter. The two of them, he and Cissi, were alone in the kitchen. Of all the rooms he had thus far encountered in Gryffindor House, the kitchen was perhaps the least impersonal because it was the least organized. Even as he watched, Cissi's delicate, trembling hand sent a few ounces of orange juice over the side of her glass and onto the counter. She looked around for something to wipe it up and, failing to find anything nearby, chose to ignore it and continued with her breakfast.

"Won't you have something?" she asked. She slid her plate of scrambled eggs and toast onto the counter and climbed atop another stool. Only one remained between them.

"I'm waiting for my Mum," he explained, with invisible chagrin. Finding himself alone with Cissi seemed a stroke of good luck. Mentioning Eileen made him sound so . . . juvenile. Ah, well. "She's in the clothing closet, picking out some things."

"Ah," Cissi said with a nod. A false-diamond stud in her nose glistened. Sev stared at the jewel, fascinated by the way it complemented her platinum hair and fair complexion. She looked as though she had never seen the sun. Which made the vegetation-green bruise on her cheekbone all the more obvious. Beauty made all the difference in the world, thought Sev. He reflected upon Eileen, with her scrawny face full of fear, and contrasted it with Cissi's cool eye and the bruise which sat in almost elegant repose like a streak of verdure rouge on her cheek. Here was a woman who wore her violence well.

What a truly terrible talent.

"There was nothing there for me," he continued slowly, coming out of this grim reverie. He set his bony elbow on the counter and, angling his body toward her, propped his face in his hand to watch her eat. "Not unless I wanted to cross dress, anyway."

Cissi hmmed a quiet laugh. The chill standoffishness of her manner appeared to thaw and left Sev feeling as though he had discovered a window in a well-guarded wall.

"No," she agreed after she swallowed. "They stock donations for male children, but . . . well, I suppose you're a bit bigger than the average male child."

She flicked her eyes over him as she spoke. Ordinarily, he would have recoiled, ducked his head and hidden his coarse features and large nose beneath the blanket of his hair. Somehow, being here, surrounded by women whose lives were just as fucked up as his, changed things. For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt on equal footing with a beautiful woman.

He hardly noticed the sad expression which flitted across her face following her statement.

"I like your nose ring," he told her. He wanted to pay her a compliment, but anything more overt, more physical, might have been too much. Equal footing or not, he was all too aware of being the only man in the house. He feared being mistaken for the enemy.

Cissi was eating her eggs again, but she smiled a thanks and gave the diamond a self-conscious twist.

"Got it when I was your age," she informed him.

"My age?" He snorted. She barely looked nineteen. "How old are you?"

"I shouldn't like to say." She sipped her orange juice, and again he noted how her hand trembled upon her wrist.

"Come on, now. You can't be much older than I am."

"Not much, no. You'd be surprised, though. What a few years can do to you."

His grin died.

"Not that surprised," he said, rushing the words. Now he ducked his head. Clearing his throat, he came back up, broke the curtain of hair as though surfacing for air. "Still. Not too late to the turn the ship around, yeah? We're here, aren't we? You and me? And my mum?"

He added the last three words for the same reason he had complimented her nose ring.

"I am," she said. Heaving a deep sigh, she watched her fork shake for a moment before setting it on her plate amidst the remaining, cold eggs. "My son isn't, though—is he?"

"You have a son?"

"Somewhere," she said. "I lost him."

Sev didn't know what to say. He watched Cissi fold her hands on the countertop and mash them together in an attempt to still them.

"I'm an addict, Sev." She did not look at him. She looked at her hands as though waiting for them to spring into motion, ready to quell them. "Heroin. Child services took my son away six months ago. He's four years old. I haven't seen him since. I'll never see him again if I don't get clean. But it's been six months, Sev, and I'm not clean. And my boyfriend, my—"

She took a deep breath and finally turned to look at him.

"My abuser," she corrected frankly, "doesn't want to get clean. Not right now. Probably never. Probably he'll die before he wants that. You, Sev—you have no idea what it's like. You're here with your mum. I'm here alone, and I'm totally lost. Lucius—my abuser—for all his faults, he's . . . Well, he's a bit like the needle, I suppose. He's what I know."

Sev opened his mouth to speak, but his throat was dry. Cissi cleared hers and wound down:

"Get ready for a rough time," she advised. "New faces, new rules, and their damned progress interviews. Not to mention sharing rooms with strangers—"

"Oh, I've got my own room right now," he interposed, with an internal Thank whatever god may be.

"That won't last," she said. She picked up her plate and went to rake the leftovers into the trash. "Mmph—bit nauseous now."

"You all right?" He swiveled on his stool to follow her motion. She moved elegantly despite the shakes.

"It's just a part of it," she assured him. "It's an improvement, actually. For a while, I couldn't keep anything down. Small mercies, I suppose."

Sev swallowed.

"You and I," he said, "we could be friends, you know? Help each other out a bit. With the adjustment, I mean. We're the youngest ones here, I reckon."

Cissi turned around, plate gleaming but for a few streaks of uncooked egg white, and beamed a smile at him. She was directly beneath the bars of fluorescent lighting. For the first time Sev noticed the shadows beneath her eyes. Now he could see it, those few years of age.

"Thanks," she said. A genuine warmth entered her tone. Even so, something in her eyes seemed to pity his naivety. "I could use a friend."

Cissi went upstairs, and soon after Eileen found Sev in the kitchen. He looked up to greet her, aware of the slight color which flooded his pallor. With his recent discovery of Cissi, he felt as though his mother had only barely missed catching him at something, as ridiculous as the notion was. He opened his mouth to bid her a good morning and smooth away any lingering awkwardness on his part, but he clapped his mouth closed when he saw Minerva come in behind her.

"And here, as you've no doubt deduced for yourself, is the kitchen," the older woman informed Eileen in her curt, clipped tone. "We stock the refrigerator weekly. The shopping list is there under the magnet. I'll ask you to record any item you notice running low, or it won't be bought. Also, there in the back—here, round the corner—this is where the keep the donated food. Canned and dry goods, mostly. We use these to prepare boxes for women who cannot come to the shelter but still find they require our services. You are, however, welcome to anything in the cupboard as well."

Sev slid off his stool to step around the corner and check out the cupboard with Eileen. The cupboard was looking a bit bare. He saw rows up on rows of canned green beans, a box of powdered milk packets, and varied cereals, most of which were probably stale by now.

Minerva shut the cupboard and gestured further down the brief corridor.

"There, you see, the laundry—" She stopped in the process of breezing her long, wiry length past the washer and dryer. Looking at Sev, she recalled, "Which reminds me—I'll dash over to our storage facilities this afternoon and see if we have anything there for you, Sev. If we don't, we will simply have to dip into our funds a bit. Write down your sizes and bring them to my office, if you will."

"Sure." He had never felt more like a charity case in his life.

"Now, here . . ." Minerva reached the end of the corridor and stood beside the door. Its four panes, uncurtained, cast a harsh light over her severe face. Beside the window, on the wall, was a rotary phone of exceedingly ancient appearance. "Here is the residential telephone. We are not permitted to answer it, Delores and I. It is only for residents. Now, this is rather important."

She faced them full-on and pointed her finger at Sev's chest to gain his full attention. Quite effective.

"You must not confirm or deny the presence of any person residing in the shelter," she emphasized.

"Er . . ?" prompted Eileen, with a glance toward Sev, pleading for support.

"What I mean to say," Minerva explained patiently, "is that, should the telephone ring, the polite thing to do, of course, would be to answer it—and to record a message, if necessary."

She tapped her bony hand on a corkboard filled with thumbtacks and hung beneath the telephone.

"But in that process, should the caller ask to speak with a woman, you must not say that the woman is here or that she is not here. You can only—" And she tapped the board again. "—take the message."

"Why is that, exactly?" Sev wondered with furrowed brow.

"Because to go into a shelter is often to go into hiding," Minerva stated, turning her eyes to the boy. "Many abusers will stop at nothing to find that which they have—lost. To tell an abuser where his wife is not can be just as damaging as to tell him where she is . . . in a roundabout way, of course."

"Process of elimination," Sev summed up deftly.

Minerva's eyes flashed, and she barely suppressed a smile of satisfaction.

"Precisely," she said. "That said, I recommend that any resident expecting a call awaits it, here, at the proper time. Well. I'll leave you to your breakfast, then."

Minerva swept past them, leading the way back into the kitchen. Before she could disappear and return to her office and Delores' supervision, Sev called out a final inquiry.

"How would they have the number?" he asked curiously. "Somebody who was looking, I mean."

Behind him, Eileen opened the refrigerator. He felt the wave of cool air emanating from it, heard her rifling busy through its contents. This would be the first time in years she prepared a breakfast without that feeling of walking on egg shells, he supposed.

"Often, they will have got it from a trusted acquaintance or family member," Minerva answered him. "Or sometimes from the resident in question."

"The resident in—" Sev's insides went cold, as though his skin had opened and let in the icy wave from the refrigerator. "You don't mean to say some of these women actually call their abusers?"

"That is precisely what I mean to say."

"Why the—why would they do that?"

"Why is always the hardest question to answer."

Her smile was thin. Her sharp eyes wandered in the direction of the refrigerator door, behind which Eileen was busy retrieving a can of cream to mix into an omelet. Sev followed her gaze. From his position, he could find Eileen's face behind the door. Though she gave no sign of having heard the tail-end of his conversation with Minerva, he rather thought she avoided looking at him.

When he turned his eyes back to the doorway again, Minerva had gone.

Their first full day in Gryffindor House continued in the same vein. More rules and regulations. More acquaintances—though none so pleasant as Cissi, Sev was sure. He certainly missed her at dinnertime when, upon the entry of another resident with a toddler in tow, Cissi rose from her seat with a repeat of the sad expression she had displayed at breakfast, laid a gentle hand on Sev's shoulder, and excused herself.

A couple more women came in after the first one. As Sev sat beside his mother in the drab little dining area off the kitchen, the room was transformed into a hotbed of sexual tension. He did not speak, yet perceived he was the catalyst in the change.

"Is there supposed to be men here?" asked Merope in timid mistrust. Her son, the aforementioned toddler, was wholly unconcerned, busily banging a fork over the table's edge. Merope had a low voice, hoarse from little use. She also lisped, turning supposed into schupposed. The left side of her lip was puffy, and her cheekbone a deep burgundy interposed with a short line of heavy black stitching. Sev studied her in his periphery—he was good at that—and thought of Frankenstein and other monsters.

"That's no man, Merope," contradicted Katie, a woman of surprisingly sturdy, athletic appearance, suppressing a laugh at the very notion when she perused Sev gangly form. "That's a boy. Don't be so easily spooked."

"That's a big boy," Merope remarked doubtfully, narrowing her swollen eye at him.

"There are big boys and small boys and in-between boys."

"My Sev is an excellent boy," Eileen supplied, in her soft-spoken way.

"Mum, please," he muttered into his fist. He could have crawled beneath the table. He was suddenly glad Cissi had gone.

"Well, you are," she insisted helpfully.

He looked around at their faces. He wanted to throw up his hands, shout I mean you no harm! What a goddamned silly situation. As if he had any less right to be there than they had. The worst thing about the reserve directed at him was its effect upon Eileen. Every reluctant word, every look askance, would drive right into his mother. He knew her. She had the thinnest skin of any creature in existence and would be looking for a way out by the end of dinner.

"I'm seventeen," he stated coolly, taking up his fork once more. At the same time, he nonchalantly tucked his hair behind his ear, displaying the marred skin where the kettle had caught him. Probably not all that impressive to this lot, but it ought to put them on the same page.

He supposed it worked. Nobody mentioned him again, in any case, except to ask him to pass the salt. He finished his meal, took his plate into the kitchen, rinsed it out, and tromped up the staircase. With a backward glance to make sure his mother and the other women remained below, he slowly traversed the hall, peering down at the crack beneath each door. Finally, he saw one with a sliver of light peeking from beneath it.

Sev cleared his throat softly, extended his hand—took it back, raked his hair back from his face, extended it again, and knocked.

"C-Cissi?" he spoke, keeping his voice low so it would not carry downstairs.

A moment of silence. He waited, raking his eyes over the door as though its white face were hers and would tell him something.

"Is that you, Sev?" she responded at last.

He smirked.

"Do I sound like a middle-aged woman?" he shot back. "Who else could it be?"

The doorknob rattled. Cissi opened the door and stood there, leaning in the sliver with her hip against the frame. He could not see much in the small space of the open door and did not want to appear to pry, so he kept his eyes on her face. A difficult task, because she had taken off her long-sleeved knit top and wore only a white camisole.

Enormous, mottled bruises in the bends of her arms. Easier to look only at her face now.

"What is it?" she asked him.

"You seemed—downstairs just now, at dinner," he stammered with a tip of his head toward the staircase. "You seemed upset."

"I'm all right," she assured him. She looked at the inches of floor between them for a moment—such few inches, reflected Sev, who could feel her body heat as surely as he had felt the cold in the kitchen that morning—and she heaved a sigh. "I got a bit sick, and—and the baby reminded me of my boy. My Draco . . . Six months is a long time for a child. He'll be bigger, stronger . . . he'll know more. What if—what if the things he's learned has sort of—sort of pushed me out, you know? What if he's forgotten me?"

She murmured this last bit as though speaking to herself. Sev, awash with a momentary tenderness which both scorned and embraced the hormones he could feel raging when he looked at Cissi, closed one of the inches between them. He stooped slightly to bring his face in alignment.

"He couldn't forget you," he said.

She looked up at him. Perhaps her eyes asked for more, or perhaps he was being foolish.

"Couldn't possibly," he continued. "There's—well, there's something a bit special about you. You know? Something . . . indefinable."

He wanted to reach out and touch her face, brush the bluish bruise on her cheekbone. He restrained himself.

"I've only just met you," he stated in a somewhat more buoyant tone, striving to break the awkwardness he feared he'd instilled in the conversation, "and I think you're memorable enough."

Cissi smiled and shook her head, pleased despite herself.

"Just you wait," she told him, but he was keenly aware of the pleasure bubbling in her voice. "All these women, coming and going . . . Give it a month, and I'll be one more blur in your mind."

"Leaving so soon?"

Cissi's parted mouth worked silently for a moment. She appeared startled, fumbling for words.

"Of course not," she replied. She glanced over her shoulder into the room, where he could not see. "I—I'd better turn in, Sev. The shakes, you know, and—well, it's all so wearisome. I know it's early, but—"

"No, no," he interrupted, backing off. "Please, I didn't mean to keep you."

She nodded, gave him another sweet, sad smile, and began to close the door. He caught her at the last moment.

"Cissi, I—?"

She peeked around the door and raised her white-blond eyebrows.

"Meet again in the morning?" he suggested. "For breakfast, I mean?"

"Sure," she agreed.

10:00 the next morning. Perhaps Sev was overeager. He had been waiting for two hours. A few women had already breakfasted—none of them the woman for whom he waited. At the newest footstep upon the creaking stair, Sev glanced around and was ashamed when another pang of disappointment shot through his stomach.

"Morning, my love," greeted Eileen. She entered the kitchen while fastening the last few straggling strands of hair up in the loose bun she wore at the nape of her neck. "You're up early, then. I knocked to wake you before I showered, and you didn't answer."

"I couldn't sleep," he dodged. True enough.

"Word is . . ." Eileen dropped her voice to a pointless whisper and leaned in as she reached around him to examine a box of cereal. Sev had occupied himself reading and rereading its contents during the long wait. "One of the ladies left in the night. She hasn't come back."

"Sorry?" His spine stiffened without his volition. He whipped around to look at her.

"Bit scary, isn't it?" Her eyes were wide as she sat down beside him. "Sev, do you think we're safe here?"

He wanted to leap up immediately and go in search of Cissi. At the same time, he saw his mother's eyes drift toward the short corridor, at the end of which sat the ominous telephone. He hardly knew what to do with himself.

"Mum, I—Mum, wait a minute. Yes, of course we're safe here. Who on earth would be looking for us? Aside from—Listen, please don't—do anything. Hear me?"

"Do anything? Whatever do you mean?"

"Just—here, have some cereal." He dragged a bowl from the cabinet, clanked it noisily in front of her, and rattled some corn flakes into it.

"Where are you going?"

"To see Minerva—about the clothes, you know. I smell like a dead thing." He sort of did, really, but how on earth could he launder what he wore without a spare?

Hurriedly, he scribbled his shirt and trouser sizes onto a napkin. A half minute later, he was rapping his knuckles on the door to Minerva's office. He would have burst in without waiting, had he wished to see Delores. Minerva did not seem the type to trifle with. The moment her clipped voice reached his ears, beckoning him to enter, he was within the small confines of her office.

"Severus," she greeted him. "What on earth can be so pressing at this time of day? Unless, of course, you've realized it's a Monday and you've yet to register for school."

Hardly.

"What makes you think it's pressing?" he retorted.

"You knocked firmly enough."

"Oh." He was fidgety. Doing his best to calm his motions, he pulled out a chair and slapped the napkin down on her desk. "My sizes. Like you asked."

"Ah, yes." She pulled them toward her, eyeing him. Her tone was dubious when she asked, "Was that all, then?"

His feet fidgeted, but that was okay. She couldn't see his feet.

Eyes like that, she can see right through me, he corrected himself.

"Actually, I was a bit concerned," he said. "Is—is it true, is a woman missing? Only, you see, I talked to Cissi after dinner last night, and I thought I might see her by now. I haven't."

"Cissi," Minerva echoed. "Narcissa Black. This was her second stay in Gryffindor House. Do you know the average number of times a woman will leave her abuser before she leaves for good?"

He shook his head, somber.

"Seven. Seven times. Of course, I cannot claim to know whether Narcissa has made other attempts, but she has been with us twice."

"You mean . . ." Sev shook his head. "No, she couldn't possibly have gone back to him. She was determined to get clean, to get her son back. She couldn't have."

"She did it once already." Minerva's eye was dry and steely, like her voice, like all of her. "You've a difficult path ahead of you, Severus. Finding your feet will be a struggle. You will have to fight. This is not the time to form friendships. This is the time to form character. I shall get you into school."

He hadn't the heart to argue with her. Slowly, quietly, he left the chair, left the office, and ambled into the kitchen once more. Eileen was where he had left her, hunched over the bowl of cereal. Sev looked into the bowl and was struck by how many soggy flakes were left. A suspicious amount, he thought.

"Mum," he said. "Please don't phone Dad. All right? Just give us a chance."

Her spoon clattered into her bowl. She went even paler than usual. Like a deer caught in headlights, she stared at him.

"I hadn't even considered it, Sev," she breathed. Her eyes were full of transparent shame.

During the course of that week, he kept often to the kitchen, like a watchdog guarding the telephone. When Monday came around again, he was forced to give up the post. Minerva had registered him, quite against his will, as a student in attendance at Hogwarts High.

There, the real trouble started. There, violence found him again.

A/N:

I realize that, were I following the books at all, Merope would not be here with her infant son, but I couldn't resist making her a resident. I've pretty much abandoned all canon credibility, anyway.

I'd like to ask once again for you to please forgive all typos and errors. I'm working on some original stuff, and if I waited to post until I really had the time to sit down and edit it hard, I'd probably never update. Writing fic and non-fic at the same time makes me feel guilty.

As always, thanks for reading.