AN~ As always, my thanks to all those who continue to read and comment. Your suggestions, corrections, jokes, and support mean the world to this writer! For now, this is the final chapter, although based on some reader feedback I've been sketching out this story from Minerva's POV. If I can get it into a happy place, I'll post it. Happy reading!

Nothing further was said as they finished their meal.

Throwing a bill on the bar to cover the tab, Severus steered Minerva towards the back exit. She was blisteringly hot under his palm, and his skin itched with the need to touch, to claim. His cock was rock hard in his jeans, making clear its position in the great shag-or-not-to-shag debate.

The wave of cold, damp air of the ginnel hit them both with a bracing smack, a relief after the humid confines of the pub. Rain was still coming down in buckets, and Severus carefully guided them to a sheltered spot large enough to Apparate. Just as he pulled Minerva into his arms to begin the spin, a dishevelled man appeared from around the corner, fag dangling from his mouth and tucking himself back into his beer-stained trousers.

Fuck, he thought numbly. Shifting his movement into the only thing that he could come up with, he pushed Minerva against the bricks, slanting his mouth over hers in one smooth swoop.

She tasted like the antiseptic tang of gin as her tongue met his in a wild thrust, responding with an intensity that only served to ratchet up his arousal further. Her fingers roughly threaded through his hair and she moaned, the sound a carnal counterpoint to the tap of rain.

"Christ, get a room, mate…" Severus heard the man grumble as he re-entered the pub.

He was lost to sensation as Minerva melted into him, all soft curves and heat. One of her legs wrapped wantonly around his thigh, the pressure bliss to his questing erection.

"Severus, please," she moaned, and in response, he yanked them into nothingness.

The spun wildly into his kitchen, Severus hitting the corner of the table with a painful thud. As he tried to gather his balance, sobriety suddenly loomed, and he pulled back from Minerva.

She was impossibly beautiful in the dim half-light of the dingy room, and so out place in the miserable hovel that was his childhood house that it was almost comical. In the space of a heartbeat, all of his doubts flooded back, cooling his ardour.

Feeling his sudden reserve, Minerva dropped her hands, leaning against the oaken surface as she took in his expression. "Severus…" she began again, swallowing hard. "Can we not continue?"

"Do you really think that it is a good idea?" he asked, voice gone raspy with need and nerves.

"Believe it or not, this was not in my plan, but… yes. I think that this could be a good idea. Lord knows both of us need it." She looked down briefly, a desolate hint of sorrow appearing. "For a variety of reasons, nothing can ever happen when we are at Hogwarts. But we aren't in the Castle right now, are we?" A mocking tilt touched her lips as the spectre of their roles solidified between them. "And school's not in session. Can we just be a woman and a man for a little while?"

"Minerva…"

"Please. I need someone I can trust, and I do trust you…"

Trust... her words rippled through the tumult of his thoughts, and abruptly, he decided. "On your head be it," Severus whispered, leaning down to kiss her once more.

He tried to be gentle, to hold back some of the titanic need that was leaking out his pores like water, but she was having none of it.

"Don't," she begged, "…don't be careful. I don't want to be worshipped. I want to be fucked. More, please…"

The darkness in her voice tore through his restraint, and Severus gave a low growl that Minerva echoed. Even as she yielded to him, her hands began to work the buckle of his belt. With a metallic clink, she got it unfastened and greedily reached for his zipper. Even in the dark, he could see her smirk.

"Easy now," he gasped, pushing her hand away so that he could do it himself. "Or it will be over before it begins. Take off that bloody jumper while I do this. I want to see your tits."

She laughed, peeling off the garment with ease and pushing her trousers to the floor to join his. "Faster, boyo…"

Her breasts were utter magnificence in black lace, and if her arse was half as lovely, Severus knew that he'd be the luckiest man in Britain that night. He turned her then, tugging her against his chest and grinding his cock into her lush backside as he sucked and kissed her neck. She groaned loudly, bracing herself on the table and moving her hips in rhythm with his.

Breath hitching, he cupped her the generous handful of her breasts before squeezing them hard, one hand sliding down her to her hip.

"Yes," she exclaimed when he found the source of her heat, dipping his fingers into her wetness. Bucking and shuddering, she arched up like a cat in heat.

Needing to feel her skin on his, he removed his hands long enough to divest himself of his own jumper, undid the catch of her bra, and then returned to his ministrations. Wrenching her knickers to one side, he sunk his fingers into her, pumping repeatedly.

"Oh," she cried out, nails biting into his thigh as she gripped him. "Yes, just like that…"

Twisting at a hard nipple, he ground his body into her, nipping at her earlobe. With a wail, her internal muscles clenched around his fingers, and he stroked her until the shuddering stopped.

Breathing heavily, she glanced over her naked shoulder at him, flexing her hips invitingly. Understanding the look as permission, he pulled down her knickers roughly and pushed her torso onto the table so that only her arse was sticking up in blatant invitation. Letting his weight pin her to the wood, he nudged her legs apart.

"Yes?" he questioned, words nearly lost in the haze of lust.

"Yes," she managed to gasp, hand reaching back to free him from his pants.

Sliding between her wet thighs, he thrust into her with a single hard stroke. Minerva tightened almost convulsively around him, and Severus moaned, bucking raggedly before gripping her hips and driving into her mercilessly from behind.

Neither held back their cries, the sound of flesh meeting flesh filling the tiny kitchen as he pounded into her. Balls growing tight, Severus tried to hold back, but his release seemed to be coming at him like a train. Shifting his stance slightly, he thrust into her even deeper, bottoming out.

Her walls squeezed him yet again, and with a roar, he climaxed violently, the universe shrieking down to the pleasure pulsing from his cock.

Somehow, Severus managed to stumble into one of the chairs before he collapsed, Minerva a dead weight in his lap. He had barely regained his breath when he realised that what he thought was sweat sliding down his chest was her silent tears.

He froze.

"Minerva," he whispered, fear making her voice shake. "Did I hurt you..?"

"No," she sniffed, burying her head in his should. "I'm fine. I just…" With a gasp, she started to sob.

For an endless minute, he was utterly flummoxed and intensely uncomfortable. The urge to flee was strong; dealing with emotions had never been a skill of his, and doing so while bare arsed... Finally, his brain clicked on with a feeble shiver, and he awkwardly reached for the first piece of clothing he could get.

It was his jumper, and snagging it from the floor, he pulled it over Minerva's head. "Arms up," he ordered softly, and she obeyed.

Thankfully, his boxers were still sitting mid-thigh, and so it only took a moment of squirming to get them back into place. Severus felt better once they were no longer naked, and flicked a heating charm over the both of them, hand starting to stroke Min's back in what he hoped was a comforting manner.

After a couple of minutes, she took a deep breath, body relaxing. "Thank you."

"Was I the first since...?"

"Yes," she answered, cutting him off and wiping at the tears on her cheeks.

"What happened?" he pressed. "There is grief, and then there is this…"

The red hand had circled the kitchen clock three times before she answered.

"You know that Elphinstone Urquart wasn't just my husband, but he had been my supervisor when I worked for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement?"

"I had heard something to that effect, yes." He shifted in the hard wooden chair, pulling her closer. She wasn't the only one who needed comfort. "He must have been the one to tell you about the gremlin."

"Yes, that was him." She sighed. "He was far older than I, and truly a gentlemen from another time. He fell in love with me when we worked together. About a year into my tenure, he proposed. I was flattered, but I was in love with someone else, and said no."

"Your tractor friend?"

"Mmmm, exactly. But it was more than that. Had I married Phin, I would have had to give up my career; a woman could only work at the Ministry as long as she was single, and add to that the scandal of having married my boss? That would be grounds for immediate sacking. Had I loved him... well, that would have been another matter, I suppose. The consequences might have been worth it. But I didn't, and thankfully he took the rejection gracefully and did not press the issue. Unfortunately, there was another woman in the Department that was in love with him, and hated me enough to try and get rid of me. When I was promoted six months later, she started the rumour that I had been sleeping with not just Phin to get ahead, but the Department Head as well."

"The rumours were believed?"

"They had enough basis in fact that it looked terrible. For one thing, Phin had no ability to hide his emotions, and tried to defend me at every turn. The writing on the wall was clear: I could either leave the Ministry or wait to get fired and take Phin and the Department Head with me."

"Let me guess, Urquart was a Hufflepuff?"

She chuckled weakly at the sally. "Yes, bless him."

"And so you came to Hogwarts…"

"Albus swooped in to rescue me, and before I knew it, I was living in my very own ivory tower." Her cool fingers traced an idle pattern on his arm. "Have you ever noticed that we are all misfits and strays? Scandals, one and all… Filius is a half-blood in more than one way, Pomona and Rolanda celebrate a love that dares not to speak its name, Sybil is a drunk, you have your…"

"Penchant for the Dark Arts?" he commented dryly.

"Yes, that."

"It's a trait that I have noticed. Alas, rescue comes with strings."

"It does that," Minerva agreed. "He's my best friend, and I've never questioned Albus' intent, but..."

"…you have questioned his methods," Severus finished acidly.

"Exactly." Min stopped, and Severus could feel her tense. "After the Potters, and You-Know-Who… died, I did some digging. I didn't like the answers that I had been given, and went to Phin for some help. In part, it was because of you; some of Albus' actions concerning you smacked of outright manipulation, and it wasn't something I could stomach."

"I imagine that the conversation went well."

She snorted. "Oh yes, very. Albus and I had a massive row about that and several other things, and Phin was there to pick up the pieces. I knew that if I left Hogwarts, I would lose all of the protections that had allowed me to be successful in the academic realm; when Phin proposed again, I accepted it as a way to hedge my bets. No longer being part of the Ministry had changed the equation, and Phin's family has quite a lot of power in the right circles."

"That's a very Slytherin way to play things."

"I did care about him. It wasn't as cold as all that, or entirely self-serving. Moreover, in the wake of You-Know-Who's defeat, I was tired of being alone… I wanted to try and be part of something else. To build a different sort of life. And so Phin and I married."

"What happened next?"

"It turns out that Phin wasn't entirely truthful. He asked me to marry him because was dying from a curse that he had been hit with some years earlier; it was slowly destroying his nervous system, and he was terrified of being alone."

Severus felt a brief flare of sympathy for the dead man. Merlin knew he'd been on the receiving end of enough of the Dark Arts to have an idea how that sort of damage would feel, both mentally and physically.

"When he confessed to lying about his health, I was utterly furious—had he come to me with the truth from the start, I would have likely still said yes—and I was also heartbroken that I was going to lose him so quickly. I had come to love him, you see. Perhaps not in the way that he loved me, but he was my husband, and I meant my vows when I said them."

A siren wailed in the distance, the noise an eerie soundtrack to Minerva's tale. She took a deep breath, a chill racing through her frame. "His death wasn't an accident. Two days before that Venomous Tentacula ate him, Phin had lost the power of speech. He wanted to die before he became a nothing better than a vegetable."

Linking his fingers through Minerva's, Severus squeezed her hand. "That's a reaction I can understand."

She nodded. "My father preached that suicide was a mortal sin, but in a case like this? I don't see how it can be. Enduring that level of suffering without succour is the true sin… still, his death made me mad. There was nothing I could do: what would be, would be.

Words turning increasingly bitter, she went on. "And now it's happening again. Albus is hiding something important from me; I will be expected to play a role, but nothing deeper than that. It doesn't matter if I follow the rules, or break them. It doesn't matter if I play the game or ignore it completely. In the end, I will be used and discarded all the same."

The brutal statement was a nihilistic sentiment that had occurred to him more than once in his miserable life, and Severus took his time in choosing his next words.

"I have to believe that what I do has some power, has some greater meaning. If I don't… it would break me, Minerva. Utterly and completely. You know what I have done." Slowly, he turned his right arm over, the pale shadows of his Dark Mark visible even in the murky light. "But the Dark Lord isn't dead. It's not over. Frankly, I'm not even sure that it's begun. But I will not go gently into the night. Not this time around. I hope… I hope that you will feel the same. I don't just need an ally. I need a friend."

Tentatively, her fingers traced the skull and snake.

"You are sure? He is alive?"

"Very. The Mark is getting darker."

"And this is this what Albus is hiding all this time?"

"In part." Severus glanced away, staring a piece of curling wallpaper for a long moment. "There is something else, something I don't know about. From what I've pieced together, he's looking for cursed objects. I assume that they have to do with the Dark Lord, but I could be wrong."

Her hand gently squeezed his in return. "I will be your friend, Severus, as well as ally. Between the two of us, we should be able to dig up some answers. And if not," she said, dark humour entering her voice. "…then we will make Albus Dumbledore's life a living hell until he gives in."

"An excellent plan."

She shivered again; the warming charm had started to fail in the face of the evening's relentless chill. "Now what?"

Severus carefully pushed Minerva to her feet. Gingerly, he rose as well, his bad knee popping. "We go to bed. The night is young yet, and if you are amenable..?"

A ghost of her former smile appeared. "I am that, especially if a shower can be worked in."

With faux-seriousness, he motioned towards the stairs, "Chivalry compels me to warn you, it's a small shower, and I don't have much hot water. We will have to share."

"I suppose I will endure the hardship of economy if I must."

Some of the humour left him, and he caught her arm. "Minerva, you were right… this can't ever happen again. It's too dangerous for the both of us. If anyone were to find out..."

"I know." She touched his chest again, and the simple affection in the gesture both warmed and pained him. Severus knew that his coffee would taste more bitter than usual come the dawn. It had been so long since anyone had cared.. "Tomorrow, we will continue with the driving lessons, and in two weeks, we will begin your Animagi lessons."

"So mote it be," he vowed softly, understanding what hadn't been said. Hand in hand, they went upstairs together.

14 September 1987

One of the lake-facing windows of the Gryffindor Tower popped open, and after a second, a beaky, blue-black raven shot out, wings flapping furiously as he took his first flight. A tabby hopped onto the window ledge, yowling dire warnings as the bird streaked into the sunset.

Cloistered in another tower, Albus Dumbledore watched the swirl of memories in his Pensive. The answer had to be in there somewhere. Tapping his fingers impatiently, he reached for a different vial of recollections. He would find Tom's Horcruxes...

Far away, in a cupboard under the stairs of a perfectly horrid suburban house, Harry James Potter curled into a tight ball, fighting off tears. Uncle Vernon's bellow shook dust onto his coverlet, and he buried his face deeper into his pillow. He didn't know why his teacher's hair—how was he supposed to know that she had a wig?!—had suddenly turned blue during the maths lesson. Just because she'd been yelling at him when it had happened didn't mean that it was his fault!

In the darkest part of an ancient Romanian forest, a man—now turned into something far more wicked than a mere mortal—drank deeply from the corpse of a freshly killed unicorn.

The voice of a wizard long thought to be dead shivered through the wood.

"Quirrell… will you serve me?"

"Yes, Master."