Until Death do Part

A hot wetness rained hungry kisses on her inner thigh. Breath, like fire, stirred the cinnamon curls covering her sex. Onyx eyes looked up from between her legs, burning into her own with searing heat.

Groaning in her sleep, Hermione woke with a start to find the sun high, blazing down through a chink in the trees above. There was enough warmth to make her uncomfortable, wrapped tight in her woolen cloak, and she tried to blame the heat she felt on the sun. She failed miserably.

Hermione was chagrined to find it almost noon; she should've resumed her journey hours ago, but couldn't be blamed, really. After a sleep too short the night before, heavy spellworking, fear, worry, and a five mile walk on legs unused to so much exercise, her body demanded much-needed rest. Making up for her late start, she preformed a quick cleansing spell, had an equally quick call of nature, then grabbed a cheese sandwich from her provisions, munching on it while continuing north. The day remained blessedly uneventful, Hermione's only complaint was that a couple of rocky hills further slowed her progress. By nightfall, she'd managed nine painstaking miles.

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That same morning, while Hermione dreamed heatedly of her Potions Master, the lead player in those dreams woke much less pleasantly. Circumstances had caught up with Severus: waking feverish and weak, he began his now stumbling walk behind Bob only by the grace of his iron determination. Focusing on the white furry beast ahead of him, every ounce of concentration was required solely to continue putting one aching foot down in front of the other.

Bob himself was not at his best and brightest. Even for a unicorn, two nights with little sleep will take its toll. He worried over his pet. Bob knew, as much as he'd like to keep the man, such creatures did not fair well in the dark forest. He was trying his best to herd his human friend out of the wood as quickly as possible. It was a slow process with such a frail creature. Today, he had a new worry--his friend smelled of illness and was too tired to share in the cheerful games that made their previous mornings so enjoyable. Sleepy and preoccupied, it was little wonder that the unicorn led them forward without his usual care.

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At Hogwarts, a gray-haired wizard watching a clock hand wept openly in frustration and despair as it swept unrelentingly from "In Transit" to "Deadly Peril."

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In Muggle adventure movies, battles are lengthy affairs littered with give and take actions, almost like a perverse ballet. In fact, those skirmishes are carefully choreographed, often leaving time for witty discourse and snarling bravado. Only when the audience is on the edge of its seat do those efforts condense themselves into a final outcome. In life, deadly struggles are usually as quick as they are callous. There is no grace or wit in them, and they herald devastating results with little ceremony. Adversaries muddle through as best they can, hoping the Fates leave them standing, and their opponent dead.

Bob and Severus had managed a slow march of three miles by the time Hermione woke, still fourteen miles away. At noon they found a small spring, at which they took a welcome drink while resting. Eventually, refusing to give into exhaustion, Severus pulled himself to his taxed feet and the two companions continued southward. After one more excruciating mile, disaster struck.

Hidden high in a tree leaning over the trail, a dark-robed figure watched the pair with covetous eyes. Swarthy, pocked skin covered a misshapen face like dried up bracken. Long fingered, skeletal hands hung from the sleeves of her tattered robes. The hands were armed with equally long, wickedly pointed nails. Her hair was a filthy black mess that nearly cocooned her, draping around and down her back, reaching almost to her heels like a tangled black shroud. Her eyes were empty red pits, showing no intelligence or emotion--save ferocity. Watching the pair approach, she drooled in anticipation. The creature was a Black Annis Hag. Loosely regarded as human, and rather dense, hags made up for their lack of brains by being unspeakably vicious. They were fast, inhumanly strong, and resistant to magic. The Black Annis variety was also cannibalistic, liking nothing better than the opportunity to dine on their human cousins. She continued to drool.

The fight, though it may have seemed a stretched eternity, was brief and brutal. The hag waited until they'd barely passed beneath her before flinging herself from her perch, landing on her feet directly behind Severus. He tried to spin, but before he came half 'round, she scored his shoulder and back with poisonous slashes from her claws, tossing him aside. The hag turned to face the furious unicorn as Bob drove his horn deep into her belly. It was not enough to kill her, and as they writhed together, she clawed at the unicorn with both hands.

Quiet rage filled Severus' mind as he clambered to his feet, raising a palm at the black frenzied form, intoning a dark and solemn "Avada Kedavra." The spell struck the hag squarely, ripping her from the unicorn's horn and away from him--but not before a desperate dying swipe of her clawed hand slashed across the unicorn's throat.

Staggering to Bob's prone form, Severus dropped to his knees beside his friend, only to find liquid silver flowing from the loyal creature's neck in a stream. He tried desperately to heal his fallen friend, but without his wand it was a pointless (if impassioned) endeavor. Severus did manage to stopper the animal's pain, though he could not halt his death.

Bob nickered at him softly, trying to raise his heavy head to look at Severus with a chagrined expression, as if to say "Looks like this cock-up is my fault."

"Hush, now, dear one," Severus murmured. "It's quite alright, I'm here with you. Nothing shall ever harm you again, my friend." Severus sat where he could draw the dying beast's head to his lap. Quieted, Bob sighed as Severus stroked his head and neck, his fingers leaving wet, quicksilver trails through the soft white hair. Tears ran silently down his face, falling to mix with the shimmering blood. Severus wept for the first time in his adult life--quietly, unashamedly. He continued to murmur soft words of affection, stroking the silken neck, long after the flesh beneath his hands turned still and cold.

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Albus finally received a response to the owl sent off to China. It had managed to find the surly Asian Potions Master, but the scroll the owl returned with offered no hope. The wizard had studied Hermione's account minutely, and his answering letter explained exactly how the Draught of Dreamless Sleep had been turned into a teleportation potion. The science involved would have interested any student of potions, but that hardy made up for being unable to discover where such a potion teleported one. Giving up on deciphering the dissertation further, Dumbledore returned to the grandfather clock with heavy, slow steps. His own Potion Master's hand was again in motion. Albus' breath caught as the hand crept slowly through "Dead" and ended in "Despair." Albus drew a ragged breath. He was loath to imagine what horrendous circumstances could turn his stoic friend to despair, but at least the boy was alive.

"Live, my boy, live," he whispered. "All is never lost, not while life and love await you. Live and give Hermione a chance to reach you."

With a heavy heart, but unquenchable hope, Albus Dumbledore left his office to continue keeping up appearances in the Great Hall.

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Eventually, the living, when facing the dead, must make a choice. They either carry on to face blind destiny, or they lie down beside the fallen--joining them in death. There was only one thought which finally convinced Severus to lay Bob's cold head upon the muddy ground gently (oh so gently), and take action. He abhorred the thought of the hideous body of the hag lying anywhere near his beautiful fallen comrade. Dragging the loathsome thing farther away, he wanted to tear her body apart with his bare hands--fling raw, bloody pieces of her to the four winds--tear her black heart from her chest and crush it in his trembling fist. He did none of these things. He knew of more important work to accomplish this day, and had only so much failing energy to manage it. Severus settled for repeating the same charm used on the Redcap, staring coldly at the burning hag until her body was reduced to dusty ash.

Returning to Bob's still form, he considered his options. He refused to leave his friend's body to be ravaged by passing beasts, but his magic was now completely drained. With gentle hands, he arranged the unicorn as if kneeling, horn touching the earth to which he would return. With slow, staggering steps, using the very last of his strength, and all his formidable will, he doggedly gathered stones and built a cairn for his friend's repose. The humble task, done with hands and sweat (rather than impersonal wand waving), claimed the remains of the day and left him spent and numb. Uncaring of his own safety, having no thought for whether he lived or died, Severus lay down next to the cairn, and placing a hand upon the cold stones, drifted into unconsciousness.

Only four miles now remained between where Hermione slept wearily and where Severus slept as if dead.

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Hermione woke the next morning from a night filled with disquieting dreams--dreams in which Severus wandered broken and bloody and her Headmaster's voice kept telling her to "hurry, hurry!"

She rose quickly, and without further ado, continued down the trail--almost running in her fear.

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Four miles away, Severus woke delirious. The untreated slashes of the hag's poisoned nails were quickly destroying the last of his defenses. He patted the stones he lay against absently, not quite recalling why they were dear to him. Uncertain where he was or what he was doing, the habit of walking south turned him automatically in that direction. Stumbling forward on shaking legs, he would fall, lie a moment, and then hoist himself back to his feet to shamble forward and eventually fall again. His eyes were glazed with fever, his hair a muddy tangle. Dried blood from his own wounds mixed with the dried silver of Bob's, covering much of his naked body. The skin of his knees became broken and bruised from his inability to stay upright.

A voice inside his head endlessly repeated a command to "Go on! Go on!" So he did, not even understanding why.

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Less than an hour had passed when Hermione rounded a bend in the path, only to see the object of her worry walking towards her on unsteady legs. The relief of finding Severus, and the horror of his bedraggled appearance, left her standing in the middle of the trail, mouth agape in shock, still invisible in Harry's cloak.

Severus walked directly into her.

On any other day (and in any other condition), had Severus run into an invisible person (no matter how curvy), he'd have hexed first and asked questions later. Fate was smiling upon Hermione, for when Severus ran into her, he simply put his hands on her invisible shoulders and blinked at the empty air between them uncomprehendingly. He wasn't panicked, for the situation seemed oddly familiar. Why? He sniffed, and a feminine smell reached his nose, a scent reminiscent of oranges and ginger. It was sweet, yet hotly spicy. He knew that smell...he knew these curves.

With the final thread of his will, he drew himself up, flung the invisibility cloak from Hermione's still gaping form, and intoned in his best wicked professor voice, "Miss Granger, that will be twenty points from Gryffindor for behavior unbecoming a student." He then collapsed unconscious at her feet.

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Giving up all pretense of normality, Albus Dumbledore sat in a comfy, overstuffed chair he'd conjured before the grandfather clock. While he watched in stony silence, Hermione's hand spun from "Asleep," returning to "Rescue Mission." Severus' hand had made slow procession from "Despair" to "Asleep," then on to "Deathly Ill." Mid-morning, Albus suffered a momentary panic when Severus' hand turned to "Collapsed," until noticing Hermione's "Rescue Mission" designation had disappeared, to be replaced with "Nursing."

"Well done, Miss Granger." He smiled for the first time in days and the blue sparkle bloomed in his eyes. "Well done, indeed."

Albus pried his eyes from the clock face (it was a bit like getting addicted to a Muggle soap opera), leaving for the staffroom to spread the hopeful news.