Pomona remembered the last time she had worn a pearl hairpin to a ball.
Severus had needed a dance partner. Because he had devoted himself to experiments and had such an odd temper, he had few friends, let alone female friends, so he had asked Albus to introduce him to one.
She had only gone after receiving Albus's permission. She could actually have stayed later, but she had still returned to school before the midnight bells rang, ending that enchanting night too soon.
She wanted to return to that ball. Though she had still been surrounded by people she disliked, she had had a dance partner who was ugly but adorable. And even afterward, even if Severus had held another woman in his heart, at least his body had never betrayed her.
She had had enough!
She had once mocked those people at balls, intoxicated by dreams and unwilling to wake. Now she wanted to leave this place and not become one of them. Napoleon's empire no longer existed in her own era. The governor's post he had promised Severus might be a joke in the eyes of the Death Eaters—and what sort of place would this governor rule over? Some little island inhabited entirely by primitives?
Even if Severus no longer wanted her, she deserved it. Some mistakes could not be made even once. However miserable Josephine was now would be her own fate someday.
She walked through the opera house corridors. A soprano's voice drifted from one of the boxes, sounding beautiful, but she felt nothing.
She wanted to find a door and push it open as she had last time, with another world connected beyond it.
But she suspected that opening these doors might reveal scenes she should not see. Besides being a place for socializing, the