Have This Dance

A/N: My thanks to Ferporcel, Arynwy, Docmara, and Annie Talbot for shining various lights through various darknesses. As always, a low obeisance to my beta, Anastasia (TimeTurnerForSale), with wishes for safe travels.

4: Have This Dance

"I suppose you want to know what this is about."

"Hardly," he replied, removing his gloves, and the headmistress looked up sharply, the words she'd been seeking dying in her throat. He regarded her steadily, a grim smirk playing on his features as the door swung shut. "But I rather suspect that you do."

-------------------------

The castle was oddly hushed as Severus and Minerva climbed unspeaking up the stairs. The low, flickering torchlight did little to dispel the darkness, seeming rather to deepen the shadows in cornered places where the injured had fallen and the fallen had lain.

A corner, a corridor, another, more stairs. A slanting passage. Midway between two distant torches, a conjunction of corners, and a door.

That door.

Severus stopped walking. Through the door, up the stairs, to the tower... He swallowed, hard.

Minerva hesitated mid-step. "You've not been back. I'd forgotten."

His voice impossibly low, his face immobile, unreadable. "I have not."

His words a precise ambiguity of confirmation and censure; between those possibilities, Minerva stood, at a loss. Before she could decide if decision was necessary, Severus was walking again.

At the far end of the passageway, a patch of wavering mist obscured a portrait. Severus paused and cocked an eyebrow at Minerva.

"Longbottom," she replied, her voice a thin whisper of itself.

"... Longbottom?"

She nodded. "We think so. The portrait used to mark the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room."

"Ah."

They continued down the corridor, their steps somewhat slower than before.

Behind them, the mist turned slowly, spiraling inward around itself then roiling outward, motions repeating as though it were endlessly working up the courage to ask the portrait to dance.

----

The firelight glowing on the walls of the headmistress' office warred with a thin, persistent patch of moonlight on the worn stone floor. Laying his gloves on his valise, Severus accepted a steaming mug from a house-elf and curled his hands around its warmth. Echoes of other nights from other days whispered from the empty arches, a soft hush rushing, cresting in his mind, crashing, and finally slowly receding, until he found himself hearing only the soft, rasping snores of the portraits ranged above.

He looked up, but the topmost rows were lost in shadow.

"Albus?"

At the sound of his voice, Minerva froze.

"Good evening, Severus," came the response. "I trust you had a pleasant journey?"

The corner of Severus' mouth twitched involuntarily. "Tonight's?" he inquired, dryly. "Or were you speaking more figuratively?"

Albus chuckled distantly. "A fine night for flying."

A choked sound from Severus' throat. "It is."

"It always is, in the Highlands, Severus," Albus said, his voice a scratch on faded parchment.

Fairly certain that there was more going on in this conversation than she would ever understand, Minerva sniffed, not knowing what else, if anything, to do.

Severus' eyes searched the high shadows for a moment longer, then he sat by the small fire, turning his attention Minerva. "So tell me," he said, stretching his legs out before the fire, some tightness around his eyes vanishing as the muscles in his back finally realigned, "who it is that's dying."

Minerva blinked and reached for the armrest of her chair. She smoothed her robes and sat weakly. "How did you know?"

A satisfied intelligence flickered in his eyes. "It seemed the likeliest explanation for your summons."

"I did not call you here for your potions brewing expertise, Severus," she said, a touch more sharply than she intended. "We do have a Healer on staff, and a new Potions master."

"Of course. So it's Slughorn who's ill, then."

"Yes."

"And has he been ailing for long?"

"Longer than he admitted, of course."

"Of course," Severus said again.

Her eyes sparked sharply behind her spectacles. "Nor did I ask you here for verbal fencing." She did not add, "young man," but he heard it nonetheless.

Once a teacher... he thought, a strange smile quirking on his face for a moment.

Minerva saw it and softened slightly. She eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, then ventured, "Horace's replacement is capable enough, but he is not half the Potions master you are, Severus. If you would but say the word – "

"No. I have no wish to return to teaching," he said flatly.

She nodded. "Very well." Straightening in her chair and adjusting her robes, she stated, "You are aware that Hermione Granger is on staff here?"

"Yes," he said, his eyes flicking to the valise before returning to Minerva.

Minerva followed his glance. "Oh, good. Then you are aware of her research."

Severus raised his eyebrow at her deduction.

"Really, Severus, I have known you for nearly fifty years."

He hesitated. "Indeed."

A moment passed between them – a shared, resonant silence. Too many memories, too many of them sharp. Too many to ignore; too strong to voice... and then the vacuum of twenty two years caught them both in its trap, and she looked away.

"I misspoke, Severus. I apologize."

"No need."

A soft voice from above. "I have often marveled at how a single fact may contain within it both the whole truth and its utter absence."

Neither witch nor wizard looked up.

"Why tonight, Minerva?" he asked finally.

Minerva hesitated. "She has changed, Severus. You would not recognize her."

"Perhaps not," he said, too dryly, and Minerva shot a sharp, appraising look at him before asking, "You've heard, then?"

"I encountered her briefly, several years ago, and have since had occasion to reflect."

Minerva's voice dropped to a dry whisper. "She can no longer see ghosts, Severus."

He straightened in his chair. "None?"

Minerva shook her head.

"The misty patches in the corridors?"

Again, she shook her head.

He frowned. "And the poltergeist?"

Minerva's eyebrows raised. "Peeves? She hexed him out of the Great Hall this morning. No, Severus," Minerva sighed, "I had already considered that possibility. Her magic is unimpaired."

He nodded, resuming his inquiry. "And this is a recent development?"

Minerva pursed her lips and said nothing.

His features sharpened. "How long, Minerva?"

"It depends. I don't believe she has ever been able to see the mists; she's always walked through them. The rest have fallen from her sight one by one, and there seems to be no reason or pattern to the order. The Bloody Baron was the last one, but tonight..." Her voice trailed off.

For a moment, the only sound was the gentle snoring of the portraits. Then Severus said again, "I see."

"Do you, Severus? Do you know why she cannot see them?"

"No. I do not know; perhaps the answer cannot be known."

At that, Minerva glanced reflexively at Dumbledore's portrait. The former headmaster was smiling vaguely, gazing out over the windswept grounds.

Severus continued, "But I do know it is crucial that some attempt be made."

Minerva's hands trembled, and she forced them still.

"Tell me," he said, shifting again in his chair, his body accustoming to it as though he had never left. "Are there many Weasleys at the school?"

Minerva shook her head. "Percy's youngest was the last; she left last year."

"Ravenclaw?"

"Slytherin."

"Ah."

"So no, we seem to be between Weasley generations for the time being."

"I trust that William's children inherited his academic talent?"

Minerva looked briefly troubled then shook her head. "He and Fleur have no children. I believe they thought it unwise, after..."

"Yes, of course." He paused for a moment. "And Potter?"

"Three. Girls. All in Gryffindor, of course. His youngest also finished last year."

The small, green-eyed whining one, the distracting thought floated briefly in his mind.

"Why do you ask?"

But he held up a hand. "Minerva, I must ask you. Of the children of her classmates and friends – of those who were connected with the Order – have any of them undertaken N.E.W.T.-level study in Arithmancy?"

"Potter's eldest did receive an Outstanding O.W.L. in the subject, but elected not to continue," she began, her voice dropping as she ran through her memories.

Severus watched her face carefully, waiting.

Slowly, first the suspicion and then the realization appeared on her face. Then she nodded, eyes piercing, trying to read his face, to guess his line of reasoning.

"Perhaps," he began, "having their godmother as a teacher would have proved too awkward..." He let the sentence hang.

"She is not godmother to any of them. She and Harry do not speak."

Something in his gaze flashed before he dropped it to his hands and examined the edge of his fingernail very intently.

Minerva did not need to see his eyes to know they were moving rapidly as he calculated... "Severus, will you tell me what's going on?"

His fingers stopped moving, and he turned his head very slowly to look at her, a fall of hair obscuring half of his face, reflecting the dying flames. "Why?"

"For pity's sake, Severus! You are no less exasperating at sixty than –"

"Why do she and Potter not speak?" His voice remained low, but the potent force behind the question took Minerva aback.

Minerva sighed. "You know he married Ginny Weasley?"

Severus nodded.

"Hermione returned the wedding invitation unopened. To the best of my knowledge, she has not spoken to any of the Weasleys for over twenty years."

Severus turned back to the fire and watched the embers gleam as a gust of wind swept overhead. Deliberate infliction of pain on those close to her, inability to perceive the dead, and now, with Slughorn dying...

He had the shape of it now, if not its measure.

He'd expected something like this. But it was worse than he'd thought.