Gwen caught her reflection in her mother’s looking glass as she prepared to apparate outside the Hogwart’s grounds. It caught her by surprise. She was a lot darker than she remembered being, but spending most of her time out of doors for the last three months had done that. Her hair had already passed the length it had been pre-Draco’s hair cut. What startled her most was her eyes, something she rarely had the opportunity to gaze into. She was looking into someone so much older, with more experience and knowledge than she truly thought she possessed. She dropped what she was doing to get a closer look at herself.
She finally understood the mirror dream, if only for a single moment. She was looking at someone she didn’t know. She knew it was her own reflection, but she did not see herself in the reflection at all. She saw a stranger staring out of eyes that looked so damned familiar. She saw with some amount of discomfort that she didn’t look much like her father anymore, nor even her mother. She was taking on very fey qualities that they LeFey line did not own. She was looking more unsellie and that unsettled her more than anything Mage could tell her now.
She tore herself away from the queer image presenting itself for her inspection. She had read “The Sorcerer’s Stone.” She didn’t want to waste away before a mirror that could do nothing more than show you things you didn’t rightly understand.
Within moments she was trouncing across the grounds towards the castle that had become home. School was just now starting and students were strewn across the lawn, enjoying some after lesson fresh air while the weather still supported such action. But no one noticed Gwen, whether because she was so concentrated on Graves that she did not notice them, or because she was hiding herself without realizing.
Graves however, was nowhere to be found.
Several professors looked up in surprise from their paperwork, to find Guenivere sticking her head through a door, giving the room a good looking over and promptly removing her head to continue the search. Only one professor stopped her dead in her tracks by standing immediately and casting an immobularus spell on her legs.
The professor in question of course was Snape and he whisked her into the room with another spell, sitting her at a desk with no word as to his sudden desire to have her at his rapt attention. She sat looking at him with stormy eyes and it was no surprise to him that the words flowing steadily from her mouth were words you would only imagine a sailor using.
He set his wand on the desk before her and sat calmly on the nearest chair. “When you are quite finished Guenivere I have some things I’d like to ask you.” He said in his softest possible tone.
His soft words stopped the flow instantly, damming forever a diatribe of nastiness she would never have the gumption to utter again. Snape spoke immediately, not wanting to spoil this window of opportunity. “I am unaware of what has prompted your return but I feel the timing too perfect to be believed.”
“What timing?” She asked cautiously. She hadn’t really been keeping up on what was going on in the wizarding world, other than what Harry wrote her and she supposed that Graves had never included details about Hogwarts business because he didn’t want to worry her needlessly.
Snape smiled grimly. “I have discovered one of your old friends haunting our fine old castle here. I would’ve killed him on the spot except that he was speaking to Dumbledore and I thought murdering him in front of the headmaster was just poor show.”
“Which old friend?” Gwen intoned carefully, fully aware that her face had gone white and that beads of sweat were now popping up along her brow line.
“A former pupil whom I had thought dead. I suppose of course you knew all along that he was here. It seemed only logical. You certainly do have a talent for picking the most impossible beaus.”
“You don’t mean to say Corwin Graves?” She asked, treading a very thin line.
“I do indeed. You might tell him that should I find him again I will not be so quick to contain my temper or my wand.”
The thin line she had been walking suddenly gave way beneath her. “Contain your temper?” She huffed. “You have never bothered to before. Why start now?”
Snape looked at her surprised. She had taken many liberties in speaking her mind before now, but never while she was being held captive by a man that she knew had been a death eater. He snatched his wand hastily from the desk and released her legs. “You are free to go.” He spoke, dripping acid slowly down her spine with his tone. He turned away from her, hoping that she would leave without further incident. He couldn’t take much more before he snapped.
She stood and glared at him, her eyes flashing with the soul burning embers that her temper rekindled. Severus had never seen her temper fully unleashed. He had only ever seen tiny bits of weak anger being lashed out. “You might have realized Severus that I don’t deal well with anger, and threats on my friend’s life anger me beyond measure. I don’t believe it should be Graves who treads carefully. I believe it should be you.”
He grabbed her wrist with his free hand, twisting it cruelly and raising his voice. “I don’t take to threats Ms. LeFey and I suggest you not make them in my classroom.”
He released her, realizing just exactly what he had done. She stumbled back, rubbing her bruised wrist and feeling somehow that she had failed him and what was worse that he had failed her.