The First Time Is the Hardest

A/N: Thanks to the usual suspects: Luna305 and Anastasia. A special thanks to Karelia for her sharp eyes and gentle quill. *blows kiss*

His only coherent thought was, Mine.

Hermione wasn't thinking at all.

Lips together, gently, softly, then crashing, demanding, hands in hair, pulling, hot breath, hands searing invisible brands, marking, burning, acid fire, raging defiant, furious, angry, into a sweeping, a falling, drowning in the waters of a thousand silent, rippling, shadowing waves...

"Breathe – " Hermione gasped. Her neck arched, head bowing to his shoulder, her shoulders rising, falling, each breath a miracle, a reconnection. "I need to breathe."

"Yes, Hermione, by all means, please, keep breathing." A low rasping chuckle in her ear as he buried his face in the hair.

She gripped his collar as though it were her last connection to sanity, his hands firm behind her shoulders, pressing, arms strong, wrapping, lower, claiming, and she – he, disappearing into the dark, hot night that was her mouth on his neck, his head fallen back, an offering, her mouth a blessing, a question, an answer, forgiveness, delirium, wonder, awe.

"Breathe, Hermione. Breathe," his breath ragged, her soft lips brushing, gentle, caressing up his neck, her face resting beside his ear

His hands. Grasping her hair, supporting her head, stroking, tracing one long curl to the end. One strong arm around her waist; one hand pressed, sated, on her hip.

Breathing. Silence.

Then, quietly –

"Severus?"

Firelight reflecting in the absolute blackness of his eyes. "Yes?" Still playing with her hair.

"Why?"

A low throaty rumble. "Do you ever run out of questions?"

"Not so far."

"I had no choice."

Her eyes glowed. "We all have choices."

He kissed her temple, gently, through her hair. "And I've made mine."

"Hm... Good."

A very, very slightly cocked eyebrow and a sideways look. Still lazily twirling the curl around his finger. "Good?"

She trailed her hand down his buttons. So soft. "Very," she said, sounding determined.

His mouth twitched. "Indeed."

They sat in silence for a while longer. Finally, she sat up, snagging her hair as she moved. She extricated her hair from his hand and traced the outline of his eyebrow, touched the corner of his eye, with a light finger. He's seen too much.

He closed his eyes, exhaling fully as he felt her hair leave his fingers. "Work?"

She tilted her lips in regret. "Work."

He watched at her from underneath his eyelashes as she stood, twisted her tumbled hair into its usual knot, and returned to her table. Of all of the masters he had served, including himself, Hermione might just prove to be the most ruthless.

After a moment, he followed her to the table.

She was taking an overlong time to arrange her notes. "May I speak plainly?"

"Of course. I am master enough of my responses to appreciate the delicacy and, ah... urgency of the situation."

She smiled skeptically but couldn't help checking her watch.

"I see you take my meaning."

Hermione blushed furiously.

"Delightful..." He smirked. "Now. If you would be so kind as to summarize our... predicament."

"Ambiguous git," she muttered.

"Arithmancy, Miss Granger."

"As you wish, Professor." She began, "We have the first two figured out – the first blow to you is related to Voldemort's diary Horcrux by the life stage of Childhood, by the aspect of powerlessness. The two deaths involved were Moaning Myrtle and, almost, Ginny, both children. The second blow was your taking the Dark Mark, because of - " She didn't look at him. "Yes, well, for several reasons, all tied to Fatherhood and power. The deaths involved in making and destroying the ring Horcrux were Voldemort's patriarchal line and, of course, Dumbledore."

She stopped.

Don't flinch, Hermione. Not now.

She drew a deep breath. "Right, then. Moving on. The third Horcrux, the locket, is related to your Vow to Lily – or your self-inflicted compulsion. The stage of life represented is Motherhood, and the aspect – I'm not sure yet – that will take some more work; a bit of a piggy-back with the compulsion riding on the Vow like that...." She made a few notations. "Assuming that this follows pattern – a rather large assumption," she said suddenly, eyes going wide. She shuffled her parchments, as if she feared a large smoking hole had appeared in one of them that was about to ignite and consume her hands.

He recognized the impulse for what it was – a delaying tactic. Her logic is perfect, and she knows it.

Finding no gaping holes in her logic, Hermione continued in her best recitation voice, "Assuming that the fissuring of your soul follows the pattern of the creation of the Horcruxes, we can use your memories of what caused the fissures to understand Voldemort's Horcruxes. In so doing..." she took a deep breath, but her voice did not steady, "...we may be able to understand how to destroy them and who among the Order members is likely to be..." She could not finish. The lives of her friends were about to bleed through her quill.

He quietly finished for her, "Whose lives will be required to satisfy the Horcrux Indemnities, and in what order."

Her quill remained poised over the parchment, but it did not move.

"The first time is the hardest, Hermione."

"I always do my best work, Severus," – but the doubt in her voice was unmistakable.

"This time is different, I know."

"Severus... what if I fail? What if I succeed? I -" She faltered and choked, "Either way, my friends are going to die."

"But not necessarily in vain, Hermione. Not necessarily in vain. That is your choice, your gift." Very softly, he spoke the next words: "You can't save them, Hermione. But you can give their deaths meaning."

She shook her head, eyes wide with a growing panic. "I don't think I can do this.... This kind of courage has always been Harry's. Dumbledore's." She looked at him. "Yours."

"You have the power to change the meaning of their deaths. Only you can give them that gift. Since you were eleven years old, I've been watching your mind work, watching it grow. Watching it fulfill its every initial promise, and demand ever greater challenges. You're the only one left whose mind is agile enough, fast enough, subtle enough for this. Your mind is one of our greatest weapons, Hermione – a weapon for justice, a weapon of mercy. You can do this. You've been preparing for it since the day you were born."

She closed her eyes, nodded once, quickly.

Moving to stand behind her, placing hands on her shoulders, he murmured, "This will hurt, Hermione. This will hurt as much as anything you ever do. You can do it. And I'm right here."

She nodded. Her face like marble, she put her quill to parchment and started working, Severus a wall of strength at her back.

After setting up the initial formula, she muttered, "Severus."

"The symbols?"

"It's time. I need them now. List them. I'll figure how it fits and work it into the formula."

He began, "Isis - the mother - "

"Lily." She started working the formula.

Without pause, Severus continued, " - hiding her son, Horus, protecting him until he is of age -"

"Harry, the blood magic, her legacy of protection ending yesterday evening." She consulted an earlier note and worked in a symbol containing the body of a lion and the head of a hawk, Horus, differenced by an eagle's head, for Gryffindor.

" – to battle with Set, the serpent, the usurper - "

"We know who that is," she muttered and drew the symbol that writhed and coiled even as she shaped it.

" – who split Osiris into seven pieces and their inversions, making fourteen, and hiding them along the banks of the Nile, corrupting, trading fertility for..."

"Immortality." She paused. "Is Osiris James, then?" She shook her head. "That doesn't work at all."

"Hermione, this is magic, not maths. Think. The mapping is not literal - not one to one. Consider Osiris a metaphor, for fatherhood, for the sun, for the fire that brings life. If you prefer, life itself."

Aloud, she muttered, "How sexist," but inside, she thought, He still can't say "James Potter." No need to push this; she could work with it. Again she bent to her parchment.

"And Anubis. The black jackal - " a hitch in his voice – "the faithful companion of Isis. The first Potions master. Associated with death, with stasis, with wrapping the soul of the deceased. Associated with the underworld whose gates he guards, the guardian of lost souls – and thus the protector of orphans. Or, if you prefer," he continued, "the greasy git of the dungeons."

Still focused, her tone oddly distant, she said, "I don't. Not the label, anyway. The git himself is... interesting."

She worked in the "guardian" aspect of Anubis. They watched the formula run, hot, cold, liquid, its intensity beginning its transformation from ultraviolet to infrared. The changes were slow, subtle, and inexorable.

Hermione breathed. "That's all the formula will accept for the moment. There's still something missing, but this has to resolve first." Shifting in her chair, she commented, "I always thought Anubis was unfairly represented in most modern versions. After all, he did help Isis find and reassemble the pieces of the... oh, wait. Isis... but that's Lily. But..." The parallel was hitting too close to home.

"Part of my function regarding the Horcruxes is fulfilled. I know what and where they are, Hermione."

She turned in her chair and gaped at him. "All of them?!"

"All. Potter was not the only one who was privy to Dumbledore's work, and I have since had time to think. Finish this one first."

"But - "

Wistfully, he cautioned, "One at a time, Hermione." The small triangle of his white shirt stood out starkly against the otherwise unrelieved black of his shadowy form. "One at a time."

She sighed. She did not want to watch the ink swirling on the parchment. "There's a symbol I've yet to add."

"Soon. Are you ready, Hermione?"

She nodded, determined. But her expression was devoid of any of the light that usually accompanied her intellectual work.

Severus turned his head, curtaining his face behind his hair so she could not see him wince. He had brought her to this point, brutally. Even so, casting a shadow over the usual light in Hermione's face was not anywhere close to the worst crime he had ever committed. Relatively speaking, it should not have registered at all. But -

His left forearm prickled - an early warning, as he was in favor. An hour, probably. Maybe a little more.

Her voice brought him back to himself. "You do know what the next symbol is, Severus?"

"Yes," he said, mustering a mirthless chuckle. "I was going to ask if you did. The later form of Anubis, from the period of Greek influence."

"When his aspects – well – bonded with those of Hermes, founder of alchemy, and was renamed Hermanubis. I figured that out while you were destroying the kitchen."

"You begin to see, then. Why I - " he couldn't finish aloud, but his mind raced. Why I destroyed your innocence... used you... tested you... pushed you to see if you'd break. I have to, to protect him. Them. He swallowed. To protect you. I had to sacrifice you to protect you.

The silence stretched between them, her knowing eyes deepening to a shade almost as dark as his own.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Severus."

"Many." His eyes held hers with an intensity almost as profound as that moving on the parchment behind her. "You can finish it now?" It was a challenge.

She returned his gaze with utter composure. "This part of it, yes." With meticulous precision, she added the alchemical figure representing Hermanubis, but inflected it with the caduceus, the symbol of Hermes in his healer aspect.

The formulae swirled into tight, efficient spirals; with less energy expended for greater result, isolated areas began to stabilize.

With an air of finality, she set down her quill.

His eyes widened as her meaning dawned on him. Hermes. She had never imposed her will on events before; in one Arithmantic gesture she had demonstrated not only her acceptance of all he had forced upon her in the last hours, but committed herself to seeing it – all of it – through to the end. Not just as a member of the Order of the Phoenix – they were all sworn to stand by Harry Potter against Voldemort. That would have been enough – more than should be asked of the slight figure before him, no matter how astonishing her mind.

But Hermione, with the last inflection of the symbol representing their combined efforts, had voluntarily committed herself to an additional end: his liberation.

"Your move, Severus," she said quietly.

Severus could not tear his eyes from the parchment. Hermione, what have you done?

"Did I remind you of someone, just now?" She smiled wistfully.

He could not find his voice. Her gift rivaled Lily's. No response seemed possible.

"This formula will work," she said quietly.

"Given time." His eyes were haunted.

He expects to die. He expects to see his name on the list when I'm done. Last, perhaps, but there just the same.

They watched as the ink eddied. Its progress was hypnotic. And inevitable.

A note on sources: All of the references to Egyptian myth and their Greek development, including Anubis being the guardian of orphans and the blending of Anubis with Hermes, are accurate, gleaned from many excellent websites. I took the liberty of making Anubis a Potions master, of course ;) - but he did invent embalming fluid and other funerary unguents.