All in all, only the ingredients cabinet at the side of the room proved this was the same room he had taken classes in for the last year and a few weeks. The rest of the desks had been transfigured into filled bookcases, and there was even the scupltured head of some random guy sitting on a table next to the girl's chair. Sevreus stared in something very much akin to horror at the changes. "You will be changing all of this back, right?"

She looked around the room, as if wondering if something was out of place. Then she smiled at him, "Of course. But don't you like my psychologist's office?"

"This is supposed to be the Potions Classroom!" he informed her, feeling oddly affronted.

She waved off this argument, "So we'll hold the next session somewhere else if this bothers you."

"It does!" he told her, more vehemently than he expected.

She blinked back at him, somewhat startled, then a wide grin split her face, and she waved toward the couch, "Take a seat, Severus, I think we've already tapped into Professor Snape." She glanced over at Fletcher, who had taken his offered chair, and was watching the proceedings with mild interest. "I'm going to cast my brother's cone of silence spell now, so we can speak privately."

He frowned but nodded his acknowledgement. Katryna pulled out her wand, and spoke two words that Severus tentatively translated as 'Silence Barrier'.

"Auror Fletcher is a nasty fiend with a checkered past and an unhealthy obssession with girls underwear," Katryna told him with a serious expression and not a flicker of any of the emotions Severus would expect from such a statement. He tried not to let his astonishment show, but wasn't at all sure he succeeded when she burst into a wide grin. "Just checking to see if the cone worked," she explained, glancing at the Auror, who was looking disgruntled, but not at all furious, as he would have been if he had heard her matter-of-fact toned slander.

She reached over and turned away a mirror that she had evidently been using to monitor Fletcher's reaction as she spoke. She gave him a smile, "If I can see him, he can see me, and I'd rather not risk that he knows how to read lips." Severus blinked, not having even considered that possibility. He studied the layout of the furniture and noted that it was Katryna's chair and not his couch turned away from the Auror.

"Mind if I remove my shoes?" he asked her, seemingly out of the blue.

She looked a little surprised, but made a go-ahead gesture, "Sure."

He sat on the couch, and bent over - conveniently hiding his face and, more importantly, his lips from the Auror's line of sight - to untie his laces. "Is the cone of silence to protect my words or yours?" he asked.

She raised an eyebrow. "Well, you can hardly get in more trouble, can you? Between the whole Death Eater thing and attacking Matty Groves the other day, your reputation can't get any blacker."

He slowly removed his first shoe. "That's not true. What if I told you I have killed someone?"

"Have you?"

He shrugged, as he pulled the lacings of his other shoe loose. "Not that I remember."

She frowned thoughtfully. "Well, that's Professor Snape's problem, not yours."

He shook his head, pulling off the second shoe. "If I get my memories back, then I am Professor Snape again, and it is my problem."

Katryna leaned back in her chair, and regarded him with an unreadable expression on her face as he sat up. "Do you want your memories back, Sev?"

What was it with people spontaneously calling him Sev? He had not invited her to do so. Sev was reserved for Harry. And maybe Uncle Albus and Ron, though Ron seemed to prefer Matty even when alone. "I haven't really thought about it, and my name is Severus."

She blushed, ever so faintly. "Oh, sorry. We'll just work on getting you past your parents deaths for now, then. I understand you were in fourth year when it happened."

Severus nodded, "That's what the Headmaster implied."

"Do you know how?"

He shook his head. "No. And I haven't asked."

"Well, that's probably the first step, then."

Find how they died? Was the girl crazy? He didn't want to think about mere fact, nevermind how they came to be in that condition!

"Ok, hypnosis is a common method for age regression. Granted, it's usually used to access repressed memories from when a subject was younger, but I think it can work to get repressed memories from when you were older. The memories are there, somewhere, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to pop out with Harris's name."

Severus shook his head violently. "No! I am not going to try to remember that!" He realized he had stood and clenched his fists, and that Fletcher was watching him with his wand drawn. Severus forced the fear and anger down, and returned to his seat on the couch.

"You need to know what happened in order to accept it," Katryna pointed out reasonably.

Severus just glared at her. "It won't work and I don't want to know."

She sighed. "If that's what you think, then you're right. It won't work without your cooperation." She appeared to be mentally debating her options. "There are two other things we could try."

"What?" he asked, warily.

"The first is Veritasereum, though I haven't any available right now. I'll need to badger Valr again for that."

"That's a restricted substance," Severus told her, fairly sure she already knew that.

She rolled her eyes. "Of course it is. But neither Valr, I, nor you are above bending rules, I'm sure."

He flicked his eyes toward the Auror, who had put away his wand, but was still watching them intently. "But he might figure it out if he saw me drinking it. Then you and your brother would be in serious trouble."

She frowned. "You're probably right. Blast. That just leaves ice-breaking."

"Ice-breaking?" Severus repeated, wondering if this was some sort of winter sport and how that could possibly be of any use. Tension relief?

"Yes. We sit and talk, and get comfortable with each other until you're ready to trust me."

Severus snorted. "Like that'll happen."

"Why wouldn't it?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"You're Weasley's cousin, aren't you?" he gave her the first excuse he thought of.

She sighed. "Yes. And Malfoy's as well. You can't honestly say I'm like the one and completely disregard the other."

"That works both ways."

She nodded easily, and even smiled as if he had discovered some profound truth, and she was proud of him for it, "Yes, yes it does."

"So you are like Weasley," he accused.

"And like Draco," she agreed.

Severus regarded her through narrowed, suspiscious eyes for a long moment. For the first time, he considered telling her the truth, because, if she was doing the same, then she, perhaps, could understand just exactly what he was dealing with between Matty and Severus. But she was a Slytherin and openly admitted to both a Death Eater grandmother and being like Draco. "You can't be like both," he finally denied. "They're complete opposites."

She sighed, and let the subject drop. "Have you been sleeping well lately?"

"Just fine," he lied.

She took the pencil from behind her ear, and made a little note in her notebook, then bit at the eraser. "Eating all right?"

"Fine," he told her, wondering if he should make some remark her own eating habits if she found a pencil tasty. He decided against it.

"What's your favorite color?"

He blinked, and answered truthfully in his surprise at the question, "Blue."

She looked at him sharply. "Blue?" she repeated.

He shrugged. "Black's a close second, especially in conjuction with the blue."

She rolled her eyes, and he wasn't sure if she suspected him of facetiousness or not. She continued with the random questions, marking down the answers, presumably, in her notebook. If this was supposed to make him trust her, it wasn't working at all. Finally, growing annoyed with the pointlessness of the exercise, he told her, "I think you need to work on your couch-side manner, Doctor."

She blinked once, then smirked. "No doubt." She closed the notebook, tucked the pencil back behind her ear, and put the notebook on the floor at her feet. "So."

He lifted a brow. "So."

"We'll meet again in a week. In the meantime, I'm going to do some more research on 'ice-breaking' and you are going to figure out how your parents died."

"I'll do no such thing!" he denied.

"Two weeks, then, and I'll keep badgering you until it's better to ask someone than to keep seeing me." Then she gave him a sweet smile. Severus was quickly growing to fear that smile.

"And people call me evil," he complained, feeling very unfairly judged. Katryna just laughed, evil witch that she was.

"Uh-uh-uh," she chastised, "You're letting your good side show." Severus fought a valiant battle to keep the reaction from his face. Let her be teasing, let her be teasing, he silently begged whatever higher beings might be listening. It was, perhaps, the first time in his life that he would be thankful if someone had. The alternative was just too frightening.

"Ha!" he forced out, but couldn't continue the derision without overdoing it.

Katryna gave him a sidelong glance. "Everyone has a good side," she told him, seriously now.

Keeping the relief from his face was almost as hard as keeping back the alarm. Optimism, just idealistic optimism. He raised a cynical eyebrow, on familiar territory again. "Even Voldemort?"

She made a face. "Mmm, why must you people always jump immediately to the extreme cases?"

"Us people? Who am I in the company of?"

"Slytherins!" she said as if the House name was a curse or an exasperating child. Severus couldn't quite figure out which.

"You're a Slytherin," he pointed out, wondering why keep reminding her of things she obviously already knew.

"Raised by a Gryffindor right along side the Slytherin," she qualified her House loyalties. "Spent as much time with the Weasleys as with Grandmother."

"And you haven't developed split personalities?" his tongue asked without the permission of his brain. He mentally winced at the faint emphasis on the 'you'.

She grinned, thankfully not reading anything into the question. "Nah. Just found the overlap." She paused briefly, then shifted the conversation, obviously trying to be subtle, but it seemed glaringly obvious to him. "I'm guessing both your parents got Sorted into Slytherin?"

"O'course, though Dad swears up, down, and sideways that Mum should've been Ravenclaw. She openly admits that the only way she did get Slytherin was by begging and pleading with the hat so that her parents wouldn't kill her."

She laughed. "Hat wanted to put my brother Jansten into Gryffindor, but he threatened to intentionally lose as many points as he possibly could if it put him anywhere but Slytherin. And it didn't really know where to put me. I picked Slytherin to even out the family. We already had three in Gryffindor, one in Ravenclaw, one in Hufflepuff, and two in Slytherin. Besides, I'm Dad's favorite, and he'd've been disappointed otherwise."

"Snapes are always Slytherin. It didn't really consider anywhere else for me, though Evan insisted I was a closet Ravenclaw."

Katryna grinned. "Who's Evan?"

"My best friend before the time warp thing. Evan Rosier. You probably never heard of him."

She shrugged, "Might've heard Gran mention it, but I don't really remember."

Why would a Death Eater know Evan? Severus decided Katryna was just remembering wrong. Evan was a good kid. He never even helped Severus in his pranks against Potter, Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew.

"Mum and Dad work at the ministry, so Gran used to babysit me when I was little. Well, once I got out of diapers and ate normal food, and stopped all that annoying baby stuff that Gran didn't want to deal with again. Before that, our house elf took care of me during the day."

"My parents both worked at home," Severus returned, suspecting that Katryna had figured out the art of 'ice-breaking' and wondering if it was really wise to be telling her this. "They didn't have to work at all, we have enough in Gringotts without needing to, but Mum said she'd go mad if she didn't have something to do, so she taught ettiquette lessons to the young sons and daughters of other purebloods. Dad taught the older sons and occassional daughter some things that Hogwarts just doesn't cover, though he only teaches during the summer because he won't take any new students who haven't done well in first year Charms. Damian Goyle was horribly disappointed last summer when Dad refused to accept him because his grades weren't up to his standards."

Katryna grinned. "What about you? Did you meet his qualifications?"

"Are you kidding? My dad taught me the first year Charms syllabus by the time I was five, and I was taking his class with the eleven and twelve year olds when I was six. Nepotism rules."

"How'd youu learn Charms without a wand?"

Severus blinked. "Who said I didn't have a wand?"

"Ollivander doesn't sell them to kids under eleven."

"Roderick's on Knockturn does. Look's like a run-down pub, but it's a wand shop. Got my first one there when I was two, I'm told. Got a real Ollivander's one just before Hogwarts, of course. Roderick wands work well enough as an illegal underage training wand, but Ollivanders is the best and that's what both Dad and I considered my first real wand. Still have the Roderick one in my dresser at home, though, to use during the summer lessons, since the Ministry can't tell when a Roderick wand is used. That's their biggest selling point."

"Really?" Katryna sounded intrigued. "Is it still there?"

Severus opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had almost forgotten about the time warp thing. With a pained expression, he answered, "It was, as of 1968."

She managed to look both sympathetic and disappointed.

"With a Malfoy as a mother, I'm sure your dad had one. If he didn't give you and your brothers one, it's either because it's gone, or because he was scared of your mother."

She snorted. "Could be either of those. Don't get me wrong, I adore my dad, but Mum is a Gryffindor. She's afraid of Knockturn Alley and firmly believes everything in it is related to dark magic. He'd never dare suggest bringing a toddler in there."

"She's not far wrong, really. My mum won't set foot in there either. Says it 'isn't proper'. O'course, that doesn't stop Dad from going and picking up stuff for her while he's there."

Katryna smirked. "Hypocrisy. Gotta love it." The conversation fell into a lull after that, until Katryna spoke again. "So your mum teaches ettiquette and your dad teaches charms. No wonder you ended up a professor."

"I didn't say he taught charms. I said kids had to pass charms to take his class. He taught hexes and curses. Nothing Unforgivable, of course."

"Of course," she repeated drily.

"Kids are magically incapable of casting those, you know, otherwise they might have been on the curriculum."

She started to nod, then froze, frowned, and gave him a hard look. "Then how did you miss the Auror with the Killing Curse, if you can't cast it?"

"I'm thirty-nine, magically speaking. I am quite capable of casting Unforgivables."

For the first time in his acquaintance with Katryna, she looked mildly intimidated, but that quickly passed. "Really? You're still thirty-nine in magical abilities?"

"According to one of the other Death Eaters, yes."

"Wow. That is so wicked. I'm gonna need to pump Gran to see if she knows anything else about what happened to you."

"I'd appreciate it," Severus drawled.

Katyrna laughed, "Yeah, I bet you would. So you'll come to the next session with the knowledge of how your parents died?"

His lifting mood abuptly plummeted again. "You are a manipulative little witch, aren't you?" he growled, letting her know this was not a compliment.

She only smiled that sweet smile again. "Of course. See you in two weeks?"

"You can't even guarantee that she'll know anything!"

Katryna lifted a white-blond eyebrow, reminding him again of Malfoy. And by extention, reminding him that her grandmother was a Malfoy. He wondred briefly if she had done that on purpose. "If anyone outside of the Inner Circle can ferret it out, my grandmother can." Of course she could. The woman was Lucius's aunt, after all.

"Fine. Two weeks."

"And you'll find out how your parents died?"

"Yes," he all but hissed.

She smiled brightly. "Great!" Then she set about transfiguring her office back into a potions classroom. Severus stalked out the door, and heard Fletcher keeping a close tail on him. He didn't slow or lessen his scowl until he reached 'Severus's Cell', where Severus theoretically spent the night. He slammed the door in Fletcher's face, and turned himself into Matty. As he looked into the room's mirror to check that the transformation was complete, he felt the frustration and anger melt out of him and he reset his mind into Matty-mode.

Ignoring the mirror's protests that his hair was mussed, he climbed onto the chair beside the fireplace, picked up the floo powder jar from the mantle, and took out a pinch. He returned the jar to it's spot (indicated by a dust free circle), then jumped off the chair and tossed the pinch into the fire. "Headmaster's office!" he cried out and stepped through. The Hogwarts internal floo network was a little different, and a lot faster, than the general floo network that connected much of England together. Instead of passing by lots of different grates, one was brought directly to the one sought, so he stepped out into the Headmaster's office with little worry that he might have hit the wrong fireplace.

What he wasn't expecting to see was that the Headmaster was in conference with Flitwick, Sprout, McGonagall, and someone he didn't recognize. "Oh! Sorry, Uncle Albus! I didn't mean to interrupt!" he exclaimed when they all turned to stare at him.