Trapped

Summary: Fireflies are caught, Severus is ensnared, everyone is trapped, and Tayet is hungry.

A/N: A million thanks to Luna305 for the lively canon debate and to Anastasia for providing confirmation. :)

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

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The door creaked as she entered the walled garden. He looked up.

In the dark, clutching a jar of fireflies, with the wind dusting his hair across his pale face, he looked, to Hermione, impossibly young.

"Patronuses can't lie."

The defensive mask started to slip back into place, but she placed her hand on his cheek and said, "No."

He stared at her blankly for a moment, both hands on the jar between them, then a shift in the way he was holding his head and he nodded.

Apologetically.

Hermione's lips twisted slightly. Good enough.

"You were speaking of patronuses," he said after a moment.

"Did you call yours?"

"No."

"Neither did I. Have you figured that out yet, Severus?" she said, smiling slightly, wistfully, her fingers losing a battle with the breeze as she tried to keep his hair out of his eyes.

"I presume you have."

"Of course," she ran her fingers more deeply into his hair and held it away from his face.

"And it has something to do with hope."

"More than that."

Bugger. He wasn't sure where this conversation was leading, and he wasn't sure if he was a passenger or if he was tied to the tracks somewhere ahead of its onrushing progress. Either way, he wasn't happy.

"They could not have appeared if we didn't believe there was a workaround to the Indemnities. Or to ours, at least. The rest – " she shook her hair out her face. "I don't know yet. Ours was the one we were working on at the time."

Ours. "You have decided it's both of us, then?"

"It has to be. If it were just one or the other, the formula would have resolved right away. I had to add... him... " She felt her cheeks flush, but did not move away.

"James," he said, quietly.

Her eyes searched his face. He brought his hand up to cover hers, and leaned his cheek into her palm, looking at her.

"So what is it," he said, drawing her hand to his mouth, "this 'more than hope' you speak of?" He breathed the words into her hand and rested his lips against her palm. "Love, I suppose?" A hint of a self-mocking shadow in his tone.

"Well... um..." her heart was beating faster. Hearing that word in his voice was doing all sorts of interesting and unpredictable things to gravity. I could just... "Well... no, actually. I mean, yes, that's more, but no, it's not what I was..."

His eyes sparkled at her in the light from the fireflies he held between them, then he could not help himself. He threw back his head and laughed, helplessly, a gentle celebration of her confusion. "Just tell me, Hermione." His tone grew calmer, but no less gentle. "Tell me."

"Faith... I think." She glanced at him, wary, anticipating his cynicism.

"Faith." He repeated. Faith, which ran counter to everything he trusted, up to the point at which the impossible happened. Beyond that, he had nothing.

No one did.

"The patronuses were visible evidence of faith. Proof. Of faith. It's a paradox. It's impossible. But - " she shrugged. "But there you are. We can believe in the impossible because we already have done."

"So, all we have to do is do the impossible, then?" - his tone still held an echo of his laughter.

"Yes." She sounded both serious and undaunted.

"Or die trying?" – gently, that note of laughter persisting, deepening.

"Well, yes, that's self-evident," she said, drawn into his voice, her heart warming in counterpoint to the mist that was rising beyond the garden walls.

"Yes, it is, isn't it," he breathed, brushing his lips once more on her palm, parting, opening... tasting... Salt.

Her breath caught, and, still holding the erratically flashing jar, he reached around her and drew her closer to him.

"And this, Hermione? Is this self-evident?" he said, tilting his face to hers, close enough for breath, his lips a shadow's width away from hers.

"What?" she whispered.

"This."

His lips on hers, a glow – open, warm, soft, brief – real – present – a gift. Asking nothing.

Signifying everything.

She opened her eyes and ran her thumb along his cheekbone, his hand still covering hers. "Severus. I'll find a solution. I will - "

"Tomorrow, Hermione. Tomorrow is time enough for everything."

It wasn't a lie, exactly. Not as long as tomorrow was still the truth.

She opened her mouth. He thought for a moment she was going to argue. He waited.

"Tomorrow," she agreed, and she kissed him.

A low melody arose from the kitchen. Phineas Nigellus appeared in Mrs. Black's portrait frame. He looked at her questioningly. She put a finger on her lips and shook her head.

"I think," she said, quietly, "that they've awakened the phoenix."

"Phoenix?" he mouthed.

She nodded.

"A new one?" he whispered, eyes widening.

She nodded. "I think so."

Phineas Nigellus had not experienced shock in several centuries, so it took him a moment to identify it. Then he nodded. "I'll inform Albus. If that dratted old cat isn't in there," he muttered.

Phineas Nigellus was gone before Mrs. Black could wave him to silence.

She went back to listening. Tayet's first song – slow, mournful, peaceful; a promise of rest – loosened something in her heart she'd held tight since hearing the news of her younger son.

"My baby," she said softly. "My baby."

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Dumbledore listened with peaceful eyes.

Then he closed them and went back to sleep.

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The mist was rising, but it did not spill over the garden wall. The wards were keeping it out. Which meant –

"Hermione," Severus breathed. "In the house. Now."

They slipped into the shadows and into the house.

"Upstairs."

Hermione nodded and swiftly gathered Tayet in her hands.

Out of the kitchen, into the dark hall. Past Mrs. Black's sleeping portrait. Up the stairs. Another flight. Another.

Down a low-ceilinged hallway, a pause at a section of exposed brick chimney, his wand out, a muttered word, an opening.

Hermione whispered, "Accio Lily's book." The book flew into her free hand as thought it had been waiting for her summons.

They were inside. The bricks wove themselves shut.

A flame. A lamp. Hermione's eyes were wide but not panicked. "Dementors again."

"Breeding."

"Do you think they're here particularly?"

"I'm not sure. Best not to take the chance." His mind was racing. Assessing. Considering.

He looked at Tayet. "I suspect she changes things somewhat."

Hermione instinctively held Tayet more closely. "The wards?"

"Possibly. The birth of a new phoenix isn't exactly the kind of variable one plans for when constructing defenses. And the emotion involved was..." He looked at Hermione, her eyes alert, calm, focused, yet still, somehow, warm...

"... extreme," she finished for him. "But the Secret... ?"

"... will hide the exact location, yes. But Dementors are hunters. They will have sensed the emotional flare. They know that there is something in the area; something in them scents a feast. They will not stop looking now."

"But the Secret will hold?"

"Probably." He sounded worried.

"Severus... How much danger are we really in?"

"You and Tayet? A fair amount. Random Dementors don't care about the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. They care about food. And - "

"What?"

"The Dark Lord, Hermione. Any change in concentration, any heightening of Dark activity, and he will notice. His attention will be drawn toward Grimmauld Place. The area. And I - "

"Will he order you to investigate?"

Severus nodded. "One of us, definitely. Probably myself."

"How much time?"

He shrugged.

"Oh, dear." Placing Tayet on another hastily Transfigured stand, Hermione stood and stroked the phoenix gently. "What is this place?" she asked, after a moment.

"A bolt-hole. Hidden physically and magically. Most of the old wizarding houses have them. Malfoy Manor has at least six, that I know of."

She looked around. The room was small, the wood bare, the roof beams and back of the chimney exposed. There were no windows. A few trunks, a cracked mirror, a hat stand. A tin box hanging from a beam, suspended by string the color of rust; an alcove on each side of the chimney, separated from the main area by dark curtains whose ends dragged the floor.

"I would have thought wizards would Apparate rather than hide," she mused.

He leaned back against the chimney. "Children, Hermione."

"Side-Along-Apparition works for..."

"Not if there are several." He closed his eyes. He'd seen entire families die when Disapparation could have saved some of them. Their instinct was always to stay together. It was always fatal.

"Oh... she said, sitting down on the edge of a trunk. She looked at him, at the look on his face. "Oh."

He said nothing for some time.

"You didn't fully answer my question. How much danger are you in?" she asked.

He looked at her through hooded eyes. A great deal. "Almost none."

"Because you're safe - from them," she gestured vaguely downwards.

That explanation would do. "As much as anyone can be."

"That's good. I mean, it's horrible, of course, but it's good... right now, anyway."

"At the moment it is convenient," he said.

Adjusting herself on the trunk, she muttered, "I would hardly call this convenient."

"More so than the alternative, Hermione. Much more so than the alternative."

She looked at him curiously. "Where do you go when someone comes here?"

He answered calmly. "To his side."

"Oh."

"It's the safest place for me, Hermione. And for now my safety is paramount."

"So why didn't you?"

"Disapparate?"

She nodded.

He closed his eyes, still leaning on the chimney. He'd known what she'd meant, of course. But how to answer, when his reaction had been instinctive?

Hm. Honestly. "I couldn't leave you, Hermione." Against his conscious will, his reflexes had been retuned – he should have Disapparated first and thought later. Dangerous.

But something bigger was forming in his mind. His eyes flicked back and forth as though he were reading the air. "Hermione," he began.

"Yes?"

"Why didn't they Disapparate?"

"Who?"

"Lily and... and James."

She looked at him and her eyes grew wide. "They only had Harry."

"Exactly. So why?"

She thought. "Anti-Apparition Charms?"

"They could have dropped those in an instant, and fled, and lived. It would have been James' first instinct, being pureblood."

"They had to have been trapped." Hermione thought hard for a moment. There was something she half-remembered... something from The Daily Prophet... last summer. "Amelia Bones."

"Hm." He turned that thought over in his mind.

"Everyone said Voldemort must have killed her personally... the way he killed... um... yes. Right. Anyway. There was no way out. Muggles call it..."

"A locked-room mystery."

Of course he would know the phrase. "Why didn't Madam Bones Disapparate? Everyone said she was extremely powerful - surely she could have dropped her own Anti-Apparition Charms."

He nodded. "Easily."

They looked at each other, and they knew.

Voldemort was using a trapping spell, something unknown to the general wizarding population, who thus had no defense against it. Something only he knew?

Now they knew that he knew, and he didn't know that they did.

And what they didn't know, they could find out. And use.

Very slowly, they smiled. The smiles were nearly identical. Equally dangerous, equally not nice.

Not because they had an answer, but because they knew they'd found the right question.

One of them, at least.

At that moment, another one of those questions woke up and let forth a piercing, plaintive cry.

She was hungry. And her feathers itched.