TWENTY-TWO
(Saturday Night.)

The potions classroom was dark and smelled of potions, mostly, in the way that a place that has been devoted solely to one activity for a thousand years is wont to do, although there was a hint of mildew wafting in the breeze that tickled the hem of her skirt and just a soupçon of something that smelled like desperation.

A shadow passed behind her. "And you call this a love potion?"

"I... do?" There was a potion before her, glowing like a traffic light in the murky darkness. Stop, it rather seemed to be warning her.

"Your effort is sorely lacking. List the ingredients of this love potion." The words skittered up the flesh of her arms and further up the back of her neck. Still he hovered just in the corner of her eye. Just out of sight.

Her head seemed all muzzy. "Er... peppermint... rose thorns... powdered... stevia roots?"

"Incorrect."

"Orris root?"

"With the addition of Bicorn horn and Mandrake root you have cured the common cold. You have not, I regret to inform you, captured your beloved's heart."

"Haven't I? Bloody hell."

"Detention." The word was barely a whisper against her ear, but it held promises.

"What, for that?" She shook her head, but couldn't seem to shake her brains back to normal. They seemed to have gone all Hartley's on her and only sloshed mushily around in her skull. "None of this is making any damn sense."

The voice, though it was the same voice, changed. It was elsewhere. Distant. Echoing. "You cursed."

"I'm a grown woman. I can bloody well curse if I want to." That didn't exactly reconcile with the fact that she seemed to have been squeezed into an ill-fitting schoolgirl uniform. She was afraid if she took a deep breath, more than half of the buttons would give notice. And since when had the skirt's hemline been cut up to there?

"You. Have. Been. Cursed." The voice sounded closer, and the careful enunciation sounded more annoyed than seductive, now.

Oh. That made sense. Somewhat. Well, not at all, really. "Then why am I brewing love potions?"

"Love potions? What love potion?"

She pointed to the potion glowing crimson on the table. "That one. Obviously." Somewhat alarmingly, the dungeon seemed to be dissolving around her.

"Miss Hibbins, listen carefully. You have been cursed. Possibly poisoned. Can you tell us what happened?"

She shook her head. Her brains wobbled a bit but held their shape. "I was at the wedding."

"You're still at the wedding." That was Tonks' voice now. "Such at it is, at this point."

"George?" Ernestine hazarded.

"No, I'm the real me."

Ernestine wondered briefly how she'd gotten into her dream. Dream. She closed her eyes and sighed. "There were fireworks."

"Still are. Last I saw, Ibister was being chased off by a sparkling cartwheel thingy across the lawn. Serves the blighter right."

"'n' I ate something."

"Here?" Ernestine opened her eyes to see Tonks' face screwed up in concern and disbelief and Snape hovering just behind her. Had to be the real Snape, because neither of the twins had quite managed to get that expression just right. Besides, they wouldn't be asking about what she ate.

"That was quite remarkably stupid," Snape added, perhaps unnecessarily.

She ran a hand through her hair and a few yellow feathers shook free. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."

"What'd you eat?" Tonks asked.

Ernestine could feel her face growing as hot as the love potion she had been brewing. "Don't ask. It would appear to be over now, in any case."

Tonks's eyes narrowed. "Is that good or bad?"

She groaned and got herself to her feet. "Please don't ask." She looked around. Things appeared to have devolved even further into chaos since the last time she remembered being conscious. The twins were suspiciously nowhere in sight. "Well, I suppose that about wraps it up for this party." In a flash of yellow feathers, she changed into a canary and flew off.

Tonks looked at Snape. "D'you ever think maybe we should have stayed here and sent the twins to handle Moldybritches and his lot?"

Snape nodded wearily. "The thought had occurred."

She sighed and gazed at the devastation they'd wrought. No Madam Bones to swoop in and clean everything up, either. "I don't know about you, but I'm too tired to even..."

"Let's leave the rest to fend for themselves."

Something caught her eye. "Is that my mum over there?"

Snape caught her arm. "Think."

Tonks thought. "Y'know, I think we should leave the rest to fend for themselves, Sev."

He snorted. "Well said."

"Besides, we have a curry to murder."

"For want of a better target." Snape looked somewhat dubious. He hadn't wanted to stop for takeaway on the way home, but Tonks had prevailed. He now carried the brown paper bag as if it was filled with live Acromantulas.

Tonks nudged him. "Take me to your dungeon."

Someone had decorated the dungeons.

There were hearts and paper bells and pastel streamers and garlands of little cupids that sang obnoxious songs and shot tiny little heart-tipped arrows at anyone that approached. No doubt the arrows were somehow adulterated. Best to avoid them.

Someone had also cleaned up the detritus from his frenzied potions-making and the house elves knew better. Moreover, said someone had done a more than proper job.

"The Headmaster has been busy," Snape observed.

"Dumbledore?" Tonks asked.

Snape incinerated a garland of the cupids. Their tiny, overdramatic screams before they vanished in a puff of fuchsia and green sparks were almost delightful. "Trust me. I know his work."

Tonks watched this all. "Right. So, curry?"

He set the bag down upon a table that he at least trusted to be perfectly clean – the Headmaster might be possessed by of a puckish sense of humor, but he was professional, after all – and stepped back to let Tonks descend upon it like some sort of brightly-colored carrion bird.

"Mwmfoommthahgoo." He chose to interpret that as a thank-you. She had already managed to wedge a samosa in her mouth. "I think the last thing I ate was a celery stick this morning, or something like three days ago, depending on how you're counting. Why don't you eat something?"

"I'm waiting to see if that kills you, first."

"The curry?"

He nodded absently. "It could, of course, claim to be acting in self-defense. You did announce you intended to murder it."

"Snape, I think you've gone barmy. Possibly from lack of food." Her eyes narrowed as if to announce to the world that she was expending the effort to think. "Haven't you ever had Indian food before? Try it. It's good."

"I've had Indian food. I enjoy curry. I am merely concerned that you chose to patronize the most disreputable-looking takeaway shop in all of London."

"Oh, I eat there all the time."

Snape looked the food over again, weighing his health and safety concerns. It did smell delicious. Tonks did not appear to be in any immediate danger of expiration. He was hungry.

"Well, Pants?"

"Pass that last samosa."

Tonks watched him eat with amusement for a moment before opening a new container and tucking in. They ate in oddly companionable silence for a time before Tonks rested her head on one hand and looked almost quizzically at him. "Who'd've thought a week ago that we'd find ourselves here? Eating curry in the dungeons?"

Snape sighed, though it was more for the food than the oddly melancholic question. The elation was fading. Reality was setting in for her. It was inevitable. "Has it only been a week? It feels like a dozen years or more."

She laughed a little. "Last week you would have rather dined upon live cockroaches-"

"Deceased and covered in dark chocolate, preferably, but I concede your general point."

"And now here we are eating curry-"

"Dubious curry," he felt the need to point out, not that his stomach was complaining.

"And enjoying a little victory celebration after having routed Death Eaters and Ministry bureaucrats alike."

"About that." Snape took a bite and waited until he had her full attention. Had he really eaten so much? Well, he was fairly confident now that he would survive the experience. "While I do not doubt that our efforts tonight will – in time – prove to have been sufficient to repeal this execrable law..."

Tonks nodded. "It won't be tonight. Even I am not so dunderheaded that I could have overlooked that." To the best of his knowledge, he hadn't implied she was. Recently.

"There is something you should know about me, Piskie."

Tonks raised an eyebrow.

"I am not, in fact, a pureblood wizard."

"Bollocks!" Her jaw dropped, but she got it working again soon enough. "Shouldn't you have mentioned that sooner? You could have avoided this whole marriage thing."

"And ended up in Azkaban. I can't deny being a pureblood without publicly admitting to having conspired with Lucius Malfoy to forge certain papers half a lifetime ago. Reality notwithstanding, according to the Ministry records, I am a pureblood."

"Dumbledore knew."

"Of course." He'd used it as leverage.

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Until this morning you were an Auror." He grinned tightly. "Now that you're my wife, I believe spousal privilege protects my confession."

"Just means I can't be compelled to testify. I could still volunteer." Tonks pushed aside an empty curry container. "As it happens I have something of a confession of my own."

"Oh?"

She seemed to straighten her shoulders. "Back when I was your student... I..." she floundered.

He was intrigued. "Spit it out, Miss Tonks. Where has that Gryffindor bravery gone?"

"...I wasn't in Gryffindor."

Snape dropped his fork. "What."

There was no hint of repentance in Tonks' mischievous expression. She held up both hands like claws. "Grr rah rah... go Badgers?"

"Hufflepuff."

"Yessir."

"You never saw fit to mention that?"

She shrugged. "Seemed impolite to correct a professor. Figured you might eventually notice at some point that I wore Hufflepuff colors and took class with Hufflepuffs and only ever really sat with Hufflepuffs."

"All those Gryffindor house points..."

"Hufflepuff thanks you. Won us House Cup my very first year."

"Are you certain you weren't inadvertently miss-sorted?" She'd once seemed the epitome of all that was grating about Gryffindors, but now he was wondering if she oughtn't to have been put into Slytherin, the devious little witch.

"Would've thought you'd be glad to find out you hadn't married a Gryffindor, Sarks."

"Hufflepuff is not an improvement. Couldn't you at least have been in Ravenclaw?"

She merely shook her head and rose. "Well, now that that's over with, should we clean this up?"

Snape took his cue from her and vanished the detritus of their meal. There were certain unavoidable obligations still incumbent upon them. He had neither the need nor the desire to remind her of that. She knew it as well as he did. "What's next, Nymphadora?"

She drew her wand on him. "Care for a duel?"

Ah, clever witch. They likely only needed to sufficiently raise their heart rate for a quarter of an hour or so. In all likelihood, their participation in the battle earlier had already met the day's obligation.

"That is, if you're not too exhausted to raise your wand." Tonks taunted.

A memory tugged at Snape. He pushed the tables and benches to the edges of the room with a flick of his wand and then lifted it in salute.

FIN(ally)

Thank you all!