Shadows || A Severus Snape Fanfiction

Chapter 25 - Awakening

Asha's stomach dropped. She'd just been thrown from an aeroplane of ignorance and was plummeting towards the cold, hard truth. Blood drained from her face. She forgot how to breathe.

"Five years!" Snape hissed incredulously.

"When... what... how..." Asha's lips moved but made no sound.

"How is that possible?" Snape growled, taking several furious steps towards Dumbledore, "that would make her, what, twenty? Twenty-one? Impossible. Look at her."

"No, Severus," said Dumbledore, "You look at her."

So Severus did. He looked at her. Truly looked at her. And what he saw made his skin crawl.

The girl appeared exactly as she always had. But even in her uncharacteristically volatile state, it was clear as day that Asha was not fifteen. In fact, she didn't even look like an adolescent. Her face was narrow with defined cheekbones, void of puppy fat. Her eyes were older than Severus remembered; they seemed to possess a depth and perceptiveness he had not seen before.

He scanned her body. Her womanly curves were made subtle by her tall, slim figure... but they were there. He watched as Asha turned away from his scrutinising gaze and grasped the edge of a bookcase with a shaky hand. Even in her current near-hysterical state, the girl moved with a controlled grace that no adolescent could possess. How could he have been so blind? How had everyone been so blind?  Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by Asha, who turned to Albus and spoke in an unexpectedly composed manner.

"They were from just before I came to Hogwarts, weren't they? The memories you wiped," she said. With an unknown source of internal strength, Asha had pushed away her fear and pulled her scrambled thoughts together. The thing was, it all made sense. She had been so tall when she first arrived, she had always felt out of place with the other students, and the period of her life between Cole's death and her arrival and Hogwarts had always been a vague blur that she had put down to shock.

"Not wiped, Asha," replied Dumbledore with a twinkle in his eyes, "if I had merely obliviated them, you would not be in the state you are now. They are still within the confines of your mind, I only blocked your access of them. I always intended to return your memories to you - that was essential. I just hadn't planned on it being this soon."

He brought a hand to his bearded chin and pressed the knuckle of his forefinger to his lips. His gaze was on Asha, but she could tell his mind was deep in matters far more complex than what was directly in front of him.

"Will you give them to me?" Asha asked quietly. She would fight for those memories if she had to. Even if Dumbledore had had a good reason for it, that didn't change the fact that he had stolen a quarter of her life from her.

Severus wasn't fooled by Asha's calm voice. When Dumbledore didn't look like he was going to respond, Severus saw Asha's eyes flash dangerously as she subtly placed a hand in her pocket, no doubt tightening her fingers around her wand. He felt a surge of pride and protectiveness over the girl. Before she could do anything stupid, Severus let loose the anger that he had been holding back.

Asha was just about to ask the most terrifying and pressing question of all - Why had he taken her memories? - when Snape rounded on Dumbledore: "How could you use such dangerous and experimental magic on a student!?" he snarled with a rage he didn't bother to suppress. "If this is what I think it is, her mind has been at risk for weeks! She is as close as she can be to remembering and severing the connections, Albus!"

Totally unperturbed by Snape's confrontation, Dumbledore whispered to himself: "Yes, let us waste no more time."

He walked briskly over to a blank section of wall and began murmuring incantations under his breath. At the same time, he held his wand between his thumb and forefinger and performed a series of complex movements. Severus and Asha watched him with a similar intensity and suspicion.