The last thing Severus wants to think about is people from home. While it is a remote comfort to know that the war does, someday, actually end, he never feels entirely at ease about it. He assumes it's because he's just not there himself. (In reality it's because he will die before then, and never actually know.) Idiots, and young women who deserve better than this awful prison.

I thought she was at my pod when I woke up prompts him to think of his own feelings, and what Potter said, and Lupin's text before--

"Shit."

Severus stops walking.

He turns away from Darcy, wand in hand, and makes a graceful movement with it, saying "Expecto Patronum" quietly. Two silver deer appear through swirls of silver light. "Kate Bishop, Remus Lupin," he commands them, and immediately they both turn away and bound away, unhindered by physical constructs.

In the exact same direction. Completely in time with each other.