His room is cold, even with five other boys sleeping soundly. Winter is never kind to the dungeons of Hogwarts, but then, Severus cannot remember a time when winter was ever kind. Mostly he remembers cracks between the floorboards, and wind howling in through chinks in the wall. He remembers his mother casting warming spells, whispering lest she wake his father. He remembers curling up by the stove, in a blanket. He remembers the stones beneath his bare feet when he first arrived at Hogwarts, afraid to put on his shoes out of class lest he wear them thin. He learned his mother's spells by heart, next to the Dark ones his father drilled him in, but tonight the cold comes from inside. Tonight he nearly died, and he still feels frozen, though the beast is long since gone -- no, not gone. Just away from him.

He nearly died, he thinks, and almost wishes he let Dumbledore obliviate him. The thought of losing a memory, letting another muck around in his mind -- but he keeps seeing Lupin twist and change, his face elongating, fingers stretching into claws, stretching for Severus. There's a handprint on his chest from Potter pulling him backwards.

In the morning he will dress and go to breakfast and wish for the 1,711th time that Sirius Black had never come to Hogwarts, though perhaps with a little more fervor than the day before.

Now, he is too cold to sleep, and too scared of what he'd see if he closed his eyes. Not just the wolf, though that is burned in his mind, but later, too. Dumbledore ushering Black, Potter and Pettigrew from his office, and turning to Severus, serious and angry and. One month's detention for being out of bed after dark, and for sneaking off the grounds. One month's detention, and his word that he won't reveal Lupin for a beast, and Sirius Black is still there in the morning to torture him.

One month's detention, because he's a poor, ugly Slytherin with parents who won't write in outrage and demand Black's expulsion.

He's shaking, and cold, all the warming spells in the world won't make a difference. He pulls out a calendar from under his pillow, and exes out another day. 423 to go, and then not even Dumbledore can make him see Black. 423 days, and he's free of Black forever. Black, who saw him 6 years ago on the Hogwarts Express, and wouldn't share a seat even then, before the world was divided by red and green. Black, who teased him and tormented him and ripped him to pieces, who shoved him against the broom shed and beat him with fists, anything as elegant as a wand forgotten. Black, who licked away the blood, and kissed him and Black, who whispered in his ear yesterday afternoon, who pressed a warm hand to Severus's back and murmured a time and a place and he wakes suddenly, startles, and ink pours over his calendar, drenching the days in blue.

He dresses, and he goes to breakfast, and doesn't look across the room, doesn't search for laughing eyes and soft, messy hair, and a grin that was never meant for him, and he's cold.