There was something in his confidence...it coaxes a shred of my dismay to fall to the eroded bedrock within me; eyes lift, craning upward with effort. Mini me treads water, leering from those dank corners of my subconscious, looking to the ‘could-be’ emperor and instantly doubting his appearance as genuine; her fresh theories stroke my alarm, ‘a skin-changer?’ I scan, searching for support. Her appalling suggestion might hold weight had his expression bore any sign of abhorrence toward me. No matter the form ‘they’ took; none of ‘them’ were capable of concealing the animosity woven into the netting of their demented souls.

Only…Severus.

The echo of his namesake brings a dim, dejected face gleaming to the front…tediously…I push it aside. Only he gazed upon their world with unhampered eyes. Basking in the privilege found from a lover within the topmost rank of that world. I sluggishly haul my focus from his memory, trading imaginary for reality. I trace his checkered pelt, from stocky, painted pillars -- to the square line of his chiseled jaw.  This creature wasn’t a skin-changer. Ears skim forward, tuning in when he breaks the silence once more; absorbing the tone in his jargon more so than the words themselves. Intuitively and with a trembling desire to understand, I reach for magic – for the power to translate his speech into a recognizable form – but rather than the familiarity of sterling warmth coming to meet my effort, I’m met with a cool, empty space.

A vacant hollow where light once abide.

My fractured, panicking focus abandons him for a fraction of a moment; darting toward my neckline in search of that sterling pedant. But I didn’t need to see to conclude with sunk hope…that it is gone. I’d lost the gift. ‘That isn’t all you’ve misplaced,’ my subconscious flags a larger problem, drawing my overworked fixation. I explore those inner caverns, meticulously seeking rims in hopes of finding…anything…a spark, a sign.
But there was nothing. Just emptiness and the echoing thereafter.

It couldn’t be…my grasp on personal resolve weakens…my ace, my magic…is gone. All of it.

Optics surge up, returning to the present and the unknown entity. Unable to rely on unnatural means to produce answers, I dip into my shallow vocabulary; passing the terminology he presented across a filter gathered over the course of a year. (Before obtaining the gift to understand, I became adept toward puzzling sentences and gestures together.)

The bleached monarch had asked a question and the bottom half of his sentence ushers relief in the form of recognition. “No,” though the simple sound is easily spoke, (considering it was one I’d learnt in those early weeks,) the tone cracks, openly revealing those hairline fractures in my personality, “I-I am…” brows tumble, scrunching, “chassé,” anguish bubbles, mounting in strength…and not just because I didn’t know the word in his tongue for ‘hunted.’ There are other words which could become an accurate substitute, “f-followed-d,” an unhelpful waver injects, wobbling until the word breaks off. I groan and lean back, pinions readjust – following the cues of my body. Binary eyes scan for unfavorable signals, “who,” I relay, slowly, pulling from that memory bank before exhaustion can sink deeper into these bones, “are you?”