Tayet

Summary: A phoenix, a problem, and an insight.

A/N: My thanks to the lovely trio Luna305, Mama Ariadne, and Anastasia, as always, and to Melenka for the Walking Shadow mix. A special thanks to emmacrew, who figured out what baby phoenixes eat.

Between them on the table, in a circle of ashes, sat a tiny, ugly, featherless bird. It opened its eyes and emitted one pure, perfect note.

An otter the color of winter starlight appeared on the table, peering curiously.

A jackal, only a little darker, put its paws on the table and sniffed. For the first time in its existence, it wagged its tail.

Then it blushed.

Oh…

Then Severus was in her mind. “Don’t move…”

“That’s a…”

“A phoenix, yes.”

Hermione’s otter extended a curious, translucent paw toward the tiny phoenix. The phoenix tilted its head sideways and blinked, rustling its wings. The otter wiggled its paws in imitation, then looked up at Hermione.

“…is it Fawkes?” Hermione asked, scarcely daring to breathe.

A new note sounded, and in their minds they heard a voice like a single drop of water: “Tayet.”

The voice was music, and female. They glanced at each other and looked again at the baby phoenix. Tayet.

The jackal, still blushing faintly from its undignified wagging, leaned in for a closer sniff, and Tayet extended her neck to touch her beak to its nose. She sang another note, and the jackal drew back a fraction.

Woman, man, otter and jackal watched as Tayet took her first, tiny step. Blinking at the jackal, she tilted her head. A small pearly tear formed in the corner of her eye, and she touched it smoothly to the jackal’s nose. The blush disappeared.

The jackal seemed to think for a moment. Then, very seriously, it wagged its tail again.

Tayet sang another note that sounded, somehow, like amused laughter.

Lovely, Severus thought, with only a trace of his usual irony. The bird was definitely female.

Tayet looked at him as if to say “What did you expect?” She nestled down into the ashes, closed her eyes, and fell asleep. After a moment, the patronuses faded out.

Severus’ eyed glittered as he looked at the sleeping phoenix. He didn’t dare look at Hermione. The word on the parchment - “You.” A problem in a word; in a word, a problem. He exhaled carefully. He did not sigh. He was damn sure not going to start now.

He exhaled again. No. Definitely not going to sigh.

“Well…” Hermione began.

And now it starts. He dropped his head. Just like Lily.

She drew a breath, and gave a shaky laugh. “Well. Perhaps I am going to die because your psyche has more buttons than your frock coat after all.”

He did not look at her, and did not return the laugh. Yes, you are going to die. Just like Lily. And for the same reasons.

He suddenly reached for his lapels and ripped his coat open, off. Buttons scattered to the floor.

Hermione jumped.

Sitting at the table, in a white linen shirt, he bowed his head into his hands.

She watched a button roll away, spiral almost lazily, and drop, finally, to the floor. Keeping her voice low, even, she said, “I was implicated anyway, Severus. Ron and I talked about it a lot, last year. The chances of all three of us surviving were never good. We never mentioned it to Harry, but… ”

He looked up. Weasley. Again, a flash of jealousy. Just like with Lily… His face hardened as he tried to shove the jealousy aside.

Hermione watched the subtle changes on his face. “Severus,” she said carefully.

He turned away from her, his face half in shadow.

“Severus, before, what I said… I always mean what I say.”

Her words echoed in his mind. “I love you.” He could not speak. All he could think, all he could see, all he could taste, was, Just like Lily. And, No.

Finally, Hermione stood.

“I’m not Lily, Severus.”

His body went tense. She heard it, the friction of cloth on cloth.

He said nothing.

“I’m not,” she said simply. “And I’m not going to let you… us… either one of us die.”

He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, going to stand at the window. Eyes hard, he saw her reflection in the glass. “As if you” - he drawled the last word, a knife, twisting it - “have that kind of power.” He closed his eyes against the wave of self-hatred that broke and ran, running, chill, cold, rising between the pieces of his soul.

“If I don’t, we do.” Hermione watched his reflection. His white shirt reflected in the window glass, lending his pale skin a strange luminescence. So broken, and so beautiful... “Something made Tayet, after all. Or have you forgotten that miracle already?”

He scoffed, “Miracles are for fools and madmen. You no more know where she came from, or why, than I do.”

Hermione was quiet for a moment. Then - “Why did you choose me for this?”

The cold ran free from his soul, gathered again, poised to break.

No. But the wave was too powerful. “You were the logical choice. Your mind sees patterns, breaks, inconsistencies. Your questions. Your rogue talent for Arithmancy.”

“Professor Sinistra would have served you as well in that area.”

“She is not a member of the Order.”

“You are a spy, Severus. You could have worked around that to get the information you needed.”

The wave was gathering in strength, speeding straight at Hermione.

“There was an element of expediency in my choice - time being of the essence.”

“What you mean is that you could overcome my defenses more easily.”

He turned then, to look at her, eyes hard, and the wave broke. “I didn’t have to. You volunteered.” Just like Lily.

She acknowledged the cold wave in silence. Then, very quietly, she said, “You gave me little choice.”

His voice matched hers. “We all have choices, Miss Granger.” Lily had a choice, too.

“‘Miss Granger’?!”

Her shout rang in the kitchen. Tayet let out a sleepy note of complaint.

Her voice dropping, closing the distance between them, she hissed, “You might as well call me a Mudblood - it’s what you did to her. Oh yes, I saw that memory too, Severus. I know exactly what you’re doing. And why. And I think it’s pathetic.” Inches from his face, she stopped. “Harry was right. You are a coward.”

His clenched his fist.

She looked him steadily in the eye. “Yes, Severus, be afraid of Harry. Be afraid of me. Be afraid of Tayet. Because we’re one and the same. The power that saved Harry Potter is the same power that killed Albus Dumbledore. It’s called ‘hope.’”

A muscle jumped in his cheek.

“It’s also called ‘yours’.”

He felt her words like a slap, but his face remained impassive.

She turned her back on him and looked at the sleeping phoenix. “Be afraid of it if you want to. It will probably make little enough difference, in the end.”

Thoughts shaking, she reached her mind for the comfort of Tayet’s existence. Hello, little one. Ignoring Severus, she Transfigured a parchment into the kind of perch Dumbledore had had for Fawkes, cupped her hands around the ashes and the sleeping bird, and set them carefully on the stand. What’s this? Feathers, already? “Hm.”

Something in her tone pierced the competing echoes of her words in his mind. Bent over the stand, her hair twisted to lie over one shoulder, her eyes gleaming, she was completely absorbed in thought.

“How quickly do phoenixes come to full maturity?” she asked, as though her previous words had not happened.

She is ruthless... “Fawkes would go from chick to adult in a few days.”

“Ah…” And her face was alight again, from something internal, something he could neither see nor perceive.

“Hermione, I - ”

“Not now. I’m thinking.”

“Yes, now,” he insisted, reaching for her arm.

She sidestepped his hand, saying firmly, “No, Severus. I need to think. And quickly. We don’t have much time.” Returning to the table and reaching for her quill, she said, “If you wish to be useful in the meantime, you might figure out what a baby phoenix eats.”

His response was as automatic as though she were a professor and he her student. “Fireflies. They eat fireflies."

“Then I suggest you find some.”

He was dismissed.

A few minutes later, Severus Snape, sans frock coat, was standing in the back garden of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, angrily waving fireflies into a jar with his wand.

Seeing his own sacrifice confirmed had been no shock. Seeing hers… "You"? Damned ambiguous pronoun.

Hermione had received the indication of her death with an aplomb almost equal to, if less sardonic than, his own. Practical. Pragmatic, even.

Ruthless.

He could not be as pragmatic about hers.

A peremptory wave of his wand, and several fireflies zoomed into the jar.

He had feared, when she had worked the equation that would result in Molly Weasley’s name, when she had inflected the symbol of their joint working with that of the healer, that by imposing her will on events she would become trapped in the web that was drawing them all inexorably toward the end.

A rather rapid end, if Phineas Nigellus could be believed.

Another imperious wave. More fireflies.

Severus suspected that Phineas Nigellus had reported Dumbledore’s message accurately enough. “…if you hadn’t murdered him, he’d have to fire you.”

Out of nowhere, he chuckled. True, on both counts. Even if she loathed him after what he’d just said. He sobered instantly.

One week. He did some rapid figuring. The dark of the moon, then. The death of the old moon; the birth of a new.

Bloody metaphors. The former Potions master had worked for Dumbledore for too many years, in too many capacities, not to know a metaphor when he saw one. And the birth of a new phoenix was a great bloody metaphor, a cacophony of hope exploding the measured cadence of despair.

He scowled.

Metaphors depended on hope for their existence, for their effect. Troublesome. Chaotic. Created in the hope of being decoded later, they were questions asked in blind faith - faith that they’d even reach an ear, never mind find an answer. And the damned things didn’t have answers. They just spawned more questions.

Neither subtle science, nor exact art. Bloody riddles. Enigmas. Guessing games.

Logic didn’t apply.

He snorted. He preferred knowledge, even when it cut. You could count on pain to be real.

A light wind brushed his hair in his eyes as he looked through the rippled glass window at Hermione, bending over her work, at the curve of her cheek. He squinted, and her image blurred before him.

What in blazes was she up to now?

A firefly crawled out of the jar and onto his finger. He tipped it back in and flicked the jar closed with his wand.

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

Confronted with the imminence of her own mortality, Hermione was grimly making a to-do list.

1. Tayet. (Name? Check Lily’s book?)

2. Tell Minerva. – Hogwarts.

3. Find cup. Transfig. (Minerva.) – Hogwarts.

4. Tell Molly. (Minerva; Hermione?) (Family? Molly’s dec.)

She closed her eyes briefly.

5. How to destroy: Research.

5. How to kill your friends: Research. How to die: Research. She rested her head in her hand.

How to kill him... She groaned.

Tayet sang a low gentle note.

Hermione looked up to see the phoenix watching her.

The birth of a phoenix could not be just a coincidence. And patronuses did not just appear unbidden. Unless…

Unless…

Unless there was a way around the Indemnity sacrifices - at least theirs - and unless…

… unless they both already believed it was possible.

Only that would explain the spontaneous appearance of both patronuses. Only something so profound as to circumvent the need for conscious memory, for the willing of happiness, for the focusing of a spell… No, they had just – appeared.

It was impossible. But it had happened anyway.

Love? Hermione considered. More than that. Hope. No… even more. She closed her eyes to better hear her thoughts. Passion, desperation, sacrifice. Two names on a parchment. “You.” Yes, well. Love, hope, faith. “Do not mistake Dumbledore’s faith for stupidity.” Dumbledore. Fawkes. Phoenixes. Faith. Belief in the unseen. Unknown. In the impossible.

She shook her head. There was something there, but it was still just a hazy shape in a foe glass. She would find a way around it. She would bloody well create one if she had to.

Hermione looked out at the dim, hazy white shape in the garden.

Tayet cocked her head and whistled, two low throaty notes.

Even as her heart tightened, Hermione couldn’t help smiling. “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”

Tayet trilled at Hermione, and, apparently satisfied, tucked her beak back under her wing. Growing feathers was tiring. She didn’t have much time.

Her plumage ranged the dark end of the spectrum. Dark green. Indigo. Purple. Midnight.

Apt, Hermione thought, rising to join Severus in the garden.

Severus. A problem in a word; in a word, a problem.

Sources: The thinking behind chapter owes a great deal to the kindness and inestimable wisdom of Fr. Andrew Greeley. He is a constant source of encouragement and inspiration.