"Severus?" 

The dark-eyed man stood in the doorway looking at his once-dead mother with disbelief and disappointment visible for a brief moment before his walls came up and his stoic mask was in its place. 

"It's good to see that you're awake, Madam Pince. Poppy, you know where to find me should you need anything." He nodded curtly at the medi-witch, the librarian and the headmistress before swiftly turning on his heel and striding out of the hospital wing. 

His feet carried him up to the astronomy tower where he sat down and just looked at the stars that were beginning to show as the night was beginning to fall over Hogwarts Castle. Soon he would have to be attending dinner in the great hall.

The light blue of the sky began to fade into a darker blue and shades of pink and orange appeared as the sun went down and made space for the starry full moon night ahead of the brooding potions master. The castle grounds were silent. Not even a bird's cry was to be heard and everything seemed so peaceful. The man's mind however was everything but peaceful. He was still trying to process the information he had just got privy to.

Apparently, his mother had faked her own death at the hands of her abusive muggle husband when her son was just a little more than seventeen years of age. It was Severus who found her lifeless body lying in the kitchen, all bloodied and beaten. To him, it looked as if Tobias had come home drunk out of his mind, which usually made him very aggressive. 

Severus remembered the day he came home after his sixth school year at Hogwarts. Other than before his mother hadn't come to collect him from the station and young Severus was glad that he had taken his apparition course as soon as he was allowed to. So he at least got home apparating into the small backyard so none of the muggle neighbours would see him appear out of thin air. 

He recalled setting foot in the house feeling an odd sense of dread. The whole house was eerily silent and his mother didn't come to see who just entered her home. Severus stepped into the house searching every room for his mother until he found her lying on the tiled kitchen floor. It was a similar situation to the one he'd have a little more than 5 years after that when he found his childhood friend dead in the centre of her baby boy's room. Severus, a usually strong young man who never cried, sunk down to the floor and took a hold of his mother with tears streaming down his sallow pale face.

Shaking his head, Severus freed himself from those horrid memories. It really troubled his mind that all this was fake. How did she manage to fool him like that? How could she live all those years that close to him without ever saying a word or anything? She never appeared to like him much all the years he knew her as the librarian of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He never showed emotions openly but contemplating that had a single tear rolling down his cheek. All the heartbreak, all the sadness and grief was for a foolish reason, for something that didn't even happen.
How could his mother let him destroy his own life, going on about her days when he clearly needed guidance?

More tears were streaming down his face before he slightly angrily brushed them away. He saw that the sun had already set, so he stood and went to the great hall. He really didn't care that he was extremely late for dinner and just marched into the hall through the teachers' entrance. He got many weird looks, but it didn't bother him more than usual, and so he just began eating.

"Severus, are you okay?" asked Minerva sitting to his left expecting him to give a crude, snide and sarcastic answer, but it never came. 

Instead, the younger man looked at her briefly before saying: "I will be," and turning away again, but not fast enough for her not to notice his red-rimmed eyes that showed her that he really wasn't going to be okay all on his own. She knew him and she knew that he never cried, and he clearly did not so long ago.

Right after having eaten a few bites of his beef steak he put his cutlery away and left the great hall going to the dungeons and into his private library locking himself away in there.

An hour later Hermione knocked on that door. 

"Severus, open up please," begged his apprentice to which he begrudgingly opened the door. 

"Yes?" 

"We hadn't finished talking about the business with the two little monsters here before... You know." 

"There's a free room next to the kitchen. If you want you can take that one and give those two to me. I'll put them to bed." 

Hermione had never heard him sound that tired and worn out. With a sceptic look, she helped him get the boys changed for bed before going to the room Severus assigned her. Just before she closed her door for the night she paused.

"Thank you, Severus. It really means a lot to me. And remember, if you ever need someone to talk to..." She left that last sentence unfinished because she knew that he knew what she wanted to say. 

He turned giving her a small and sad but sincere smile: "Thank you. I wish you a good night." 

"Good night to you, too, Severus," and on that note, she closed her door changing into her nightclothes and going to bed falling fast asleep only minutes later.

It was the same nightmare, always the same one. Hermione dreaded falling asleep each and every day, but she couldn't do anything about it. In the middle of her usual dream, a male voice awakened her. It sounded like a muffled cry and intrigued she stood up to investigate. The cry got louder the more she neared his bedroom.

Without thinking twice about it, she entered and found him thrashing and sweating in his bed obviously in the throes of a terrible nightmare that would leave him emotionally drained. She went over to him trying to wake him up. 

"Severus, it's just a dream. You need to wake up." His cries of anguish started to cease when she brushed some wayward sweaty strands of inky black hair behind his ear.

 "Why did you have to take her? Why did you do that to her and me?" was what he repeated over and over again like some mantra. 

Hermione sat down next to where he was lying and took him into her arms finally getting him to settle down and falling into a rather uneasy sleep but at least he wasn't crying any more and so Hermione relaxed again, falling into a light slumber shortly after.