The Girl with the Stone

Angel

Chapter two: Angel

She was floating, somewhere warm and light, and someone else was there. The woman was pretty with long red hair and green eyes, wide with fear. She was screaming something, but there was no sound. There was a flash of green light, two flashes and a sharp pain, and she was bathed in darkness again.
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Dove jerked into an upright position, gasping for air and in pain. She'd had this dream before, and every time it ended the same way. It took Dove a few moments before she realized she wasn't on her cot, but instead on an extremely comfortable bed in a room of a dozen other identical beds. The memories from the day before flooded her and made her head hurt with the light coming from the windows.

"How do you feel?" A deep voice to her left asked gently. She jumped and looked over to the man beside the bed. It was the one who stopped Uncle Vernon. He had greasy shoulder length black hair, sallow skin, a lanky build, and in the too bright light and his billowing robes he looked like an angel. Dove stared at him in fascination and awe. He cleared his throat and she looked away. Freaks didn't look at people directly, their betters. "I asked you a question, Dove."

"How do you know my name?" She asked before flinching. Freaks didn't ask questions either. Her angel did not hit her, but instead sat on the edge of her bed.

"Let's do a tradeoff." He said. "I'll answer your question if you answer mine. Does that sound fair?"

It did sound fair, fairer than anyone had ever been to her before, but she wasn't positive she should tell the truth. Freaks shouldn't complain as they deserved what they got, and he'd already been so kind she didn't want to ruin it. Dove looked around for any sign of what she should do.

"Just answer honestly," her angel said as though reading her mind.

"My back and head hurts," she admitted quietly.

He nodded his head, having expected this answer, and rummaged through his robes to pull out her glasses and a glass vial. She put the glasses on, but didn't know what to do with the other. "Drink it," he told her. "It will help with the pain."

She hesitantly did as he asked and immediately felt the relief. "You haven't answered my question."

"Well spotted." He replied with a smirk. "I know your name because I knew your mother."

Dove straightened, never having heard anything even remotely polite about her parents. And even what she did hear was scarce. Her parents died in a car crash where she got her strange scar, her father was a drunken bum. That was all. She didn't even know what they looked like or their names. She didn't even know her own name until she went to school. "Really?"

He nodded. "We were friends and we went to school together."

She whispered, "What was her name?"

"Lily." He whispered back.

"What's your name?"

"My name is Severus Snape."

"Where are we, Severus Snape?"

The man tilted his head to the side at the young girl who looked and acted so much like Her. She too was always so curious about everything. "Hogwarts," he said the word just as he had those twenty odd years ago. He watched her cross her arms and suck in her bottom lip, just as She used to when he had exasperated her.

"Are you coy on purpose or do you honestly refuse to tell me what's going on?"

"Where does an eleven-year-old learn the word 'coy'?"

"Where does an adult learn to be so obstinate?"

"I'm an adult, it's in the job description." He replied, rather amused. Coy? Obstinate? He wasn't sure whether he should laugh or be impressed. He almost chose to laugh because of how serious her face was. "Hogwarts was the school your parents and I went to for special people."