Sᴘᴇʟʟᴄʀᴏssᴇᴅ. Severus x OC

Dᴇʟɪᴄᴀᴛᴇ

"You. Swore. To it."

Snape grit his teeth, swooping towards Nymphadora. She jerked her wrist from his grip, her lips pressed in a disbelieving frown. She held her folded arms, eyeing the door she desperately desired to slam and leave the dour potions master to sulk in alone. He was livid. Oh, beyond furious.

Tonks could say the same. She tired of his manipulations. All of it.

"I cannot protect her forever, and you know it. Professor, you can clearly see she re---"

Snape put up his hand. He closed his eyes, lowering his jaw. "Don't."

Closing her eyes, she paused. She opened them again, her soft tone defiant. "She recalls."

"Then remind her of alternative things. Remind her of," his jaw hardened, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. He shifted his attention away from her, calming his frustrations. "Of your broomstick outings. Of Hogsmeade weekends. Your silly games or gossip. Your homework and Quidditch thrills."

"How long can I keep her from the Dark Arts? Every day, I see it. I know it."

A silence.

". . . Then you have failed the first step as an Auror."

"No, I do not defend lies. I cannot protect that which calls to her."

"Do protect her over the holiday break, Miss Tonks. For I cannot."

"You don't know what drove her to do it, do you?"

Snape looked into the mirror that had he permanently hung in his potions classroom. The mirror he hung because of her. The mirror that in which he wanted Miss Elkuna to see herself, now. The mirror in which he could see her at all angles, and protect her even when she might not know she needed it.

Fresh redness seeped into the nooks of her eyes. She contained herself, blinking. Tonks's wand protruded from her sleeve, tight in her grasp. Not out of fear, but a sort of lament. A sort of connection to the magic she could never exert to save her best friend from despair.

"It is an emotion in which Legilimency fails me."

And so, the master of the Dark Arts too succumbed then. Magic cannot answer everything.

Tonks held the door's edge. She held a cool gaze at the Potions Master. "You cannot protect her forever. I hope you can accept that.

"History repeats itself."

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"My lovely flower . . ."

"My lovely flower . . ."

Mharii absentmindedly scanned the array of sugar quills. In the quiet of the nook, she dipped down, examining a Holiday-themed Weird Sisters tapestry plastered on the wall beneath. Complete with the lead singer's signature. Her eyes drifted about the description of the product, her mind finding the words lost to all perception. "Meus flos . . ." she twirled her tongue in an unnatural manner. "Meus flos ama---" she murmured, pausing. She rolled up the tapestry and added it to her basket. She shut her eyes.

Pity she didn't use a Pensieve at the time. Pity that self-inflicted legilimency only showed what the memory made of itself. In the same way that unfortunately, a St. Mungo's physican cannot use Legilimency to revive a dementia patient's memories. What decays, or fades with time, becomes itself wholly.

"Meus flos amabilis," she managed in whisper, drawing her fingers across other products at the mercy to her rumination. "My lovely flower."