Hogwarts: A History

If you recognize it, it's not mine but is JK Rowling's.

And a special thanks to Juno Magic for the name of the Latin magical rite!

44. HOGWARTS: A HISTORY

She walked beside him, her strides a little too long to keep up with his pace, her heart fluttering wildly. She'd been so strained, worrying about his reaction to her decision to withdraw as a student, but now, oh god, now, well, she must be losing her mind, that was all.

The moment of terror...and wasn't that ridiculous, after all, as if he'd send her off when he'd told her he'd tear the castle apart stone by stone to find her if she didn't return to their bed...yet still, for a moment it had seemed so real, so heartbreaking...

Stop it.

The moment of ridiculous terror had passed only to be replaced by a need to reassure herself that he was really there, and really hers. And now they were going to the dungeon together, not to caress and nibble and reassure, but for her to drive a wedge, and she didn't think she could stand it, and yet...

The mere act of walking tantalized her, as each movement of her thighs seemed to brush a subtle ache to life. And it was worse because he was beside her, and she couldn't allow herself to look at his face, but if she let him draw a little ahead, his shoulders filled her vision and she remembered those shoulders, remembered their lean grace as muscle and sinew moved beneath angel white skin and –

She caught her lower lip with her teeth and stifled a moan.

They were crossing the Entrance Hall now, and he seemed to have lost track of her all together as he slipped into his usual mode and glided across the marble floor with his robes billowing...god how she loved that billow...and now they were in the dungeons, and he suddenly realized she'd fallen behind because he paused briefly for her to catch up, and he was scowling.

Scowling!

He'd worked himself into a snit just knowing she had something to tell him that he wasn't going to like. Just wait until he actually heard!

His long, strong fingers closed over her upper arm. They passed three doorways and then, finally, the shallow alcove where a shimmering, silvery-white marble snake twined itself around a woman's body as she appeared to writhe in pain, and the wall opened and they were inside their quarters alone.

Oh, god.

Now she had to tell him.

She opened her mouth not even knowing what words would come out and...

Suddenly.

She knew. Something inside her kicked into gear, and it was just as if she were speaking to Harry and Ron. She stood straighter and said, "It's in Hogwarts: A History, you see. The thing I need to talk to you about."

She watched hopefully for his eyes to glaze over as theirs always did, but instead, his narrowed. "Indeed?"

"Yes, well... yes. Indeed." She gathered her wits and plunged forward. "You recall that when we first discussed our, erm, marriage, I referred to the precedent set on page 734, the second footnote, to explain why we could..."

His eyes were even narrower, if that was possible.

"Get married," she finished lamely. This wasn't going well. Perhaps it had been a mistake to approach him the way she would Harry and Ron. She fought not to wither under his gaze and finally said, "The thing about using Hogwarts: A History in an argument is you can use it to prove anything. Anything at all."

"Rather like the Bible?" he asked with the slightest of sneers.

"Exactly! Because first, it's so long just about anything you can imagine ever happening was recorded in it, and second, because..." She felt the corner of her mouth curling into a smirk and decided to allow that bit of cheek to show. "Because nobody ever bothers to check and see if you're telling the truth or making it all up."

"My dear Miss Granger," he murmured thoughtfully, "how positively Slytherin of you."

"Well, if you insist." She smoothed her robes, avoiding his eyes, then glanced up at him from beneath her lashes. "The thing is, the precedent didn't precisely allow marriage between a teacher and student."

"What precisely did it do?"

"Well, it's rather complicated. In 1543 a certain Professor Gwynvard...who taught Potions, as a matter of fact, isn't that interesting?...was smitten with one of his students. This was in the first decade after coeducational classes were allowed, by the way. Initially Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were female and Gryffindor and Slytherin were..."

"I know that, Miss Granger. Please continue with your tale, and see if you can speed it up to the point where it actually becomes relevant?"

"Well, Professor Gwynvard was smitten with one of his female students, not realizing, of course, that she had brewed and slipped him a love potion." She paused and shot him a look intended to flatter. "Clearly the standard for Potions professors hasn't always been as high as it is now, or he never would have been tricked into..."

"Miss Granger. Continue."

"Yes, of course, where was I? Well, the potion worked well, a bit too well, as he ended up holding her captive in his quarters for thirty-seven days. For some reason...and some blame some sort of Confundus Charm...nobody noticed she was missing, and if the Headmaster at the time hadn't grown suspicious when Professor Gwynvard stopped showing up to meals, who knows how it might have ended?"

"Who knows how it did end, is more the question," he snapped.

"Oh, I do, of course. It seems he was unable to tear himself away from her for longer than a few hours at a time. Time to teach classes, perhaps, but even then he frequently disappeared into his quarters between classes and didn't emerge again until his students were gathered for the following class. He'd always emerge from his office as if nothing were wrong, but it became more and more obvious that the man was hiding something in his rooms and..."

"This was all in a single footnote?"

"Cross-referenced, of course. So, as I was saying, he simply kept her captive so that she was at his mercy, night and day..."

"Miss Granger, are you blushing?"

"Am I?"

"Indeed."

"Well, yes, then. It was discovered that he was holding a student captive in his quarters and they were forced to marry to save her reputation and his life. Um, she had seven brothers." She held very still, stood very straight, raised her chin very high, and waited.

"Go on," he said, exasperated.

"That's it."

"That's it? That's what you had to tell me that was going to upset me?" And before she could answer, he glared at her, "And what exactly did that have to do with us getting married?"

"I told you. It was a precedent."

"I think you made the whole thing up."

"Oh, no. This was all in Hogwarts: A History. In this case I made nothing up."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "And why, other than the prolonged tedium of actually listening to this story, was it supposed to upset me?"

"Today when I met with Professor McGonagall, I withdrew from my remaining classes."

He raised his face from his hand and stared at her.

"I'm going to have to set up in your private lab for my research and private studies, but as long as you give me notice I can have it cleared out for your brewing and you'll never know I've been there, and I'll be revising for my N.E.W.T.s with faculty members giving me private tutelage, and... I suppose that's it." She realized her breathing was shallow and her pulse ragged as she waited for his reaction.

"And how much fucking notice am I supposed to give you before I can use my own personal fucking potions lab?" he snarled. "Anything else you want to spring on me, other than the fact that you just negated any reason you had for entering this ridiculous marriage? And what about me? You owed me, Miss Granger. You at least owed me to finish the year as planned so that the sacrifice I made wasn't for nothing!"

"Get out."

"What did you say?"

"Get out!" She pointed to the wall where the door would open, her hand trembling with rage, until she clenched her fist to stop the tingles, to stop the magic that threatened to erupt.

"Don't you dare tell me to get out of my own..."

"Then I will," she spat, sweeping around him and almost made it...almost made it to the door, but he grabbed her arm and yanked her back. She whirled at him and hissed, "Let go of me, Severus Snape, before I hex your bollocks off!"

He released her arm as if it had stung him, and his eyes jerked between her face and her arm, between rage and embarrassment. "I shouldn't have..."

"What? You shouldn't have grabbed me? You shouldn't have called our marriage ridiculous? You shouldn't have turned my loss into yours? Tell me, Professor Snape, which of those things you shouldn't have done, and after you say, 'all of them,' let me give you another list!" She blinked back tears and drew on her rage to burn them away. "You think I don't know what I did? You think I don't know that I let them win? That they stopped teaching me so that I'd finally tire of it and stop coming to class? That I let all those people sending owls win? And for what? For a 'travesty' of a marriage..."

"I didn't say..."

"...that even you say is ridiculous? How stupid do you think I feel, being the only one for whom...for whom..." She couldn't say the words, couldn't finish.

"For whom what?" he demanded.

For whom it's real, she couldn't say, couldn't let herself say, but the words threatened to tumble from her lips, anyway.

"If you know all this, then why in fucking hell did you do it?" he growled.

She finally turned her face up to his and said, "I can't fight everyone. I can't fight that many fights."

"I would have helped you," he ground out.

"But this fight isn't worth it, it isn't worth the pain and it isn't worth the hours sitting in classrooms where I'm learning nothing when I could be studying something real and important on my own, and researching for the Order, and for Harry, and be here for you...and..."

She thought her legs were going to give out on her. She dropped into the small chintz reading chair, the only piece of furniture that was hers, but it felt alien to her, the vestige of another Hermione, another lifetime. She gripped the arms until her knuckles shone white through her skin. She stared at them, at the faded cabbage roses and soft green leaves and tried to bring back the comforting image of her old room, her window seat, her own bed.... And felt cold, and empty, because the memory brought her no comfort.

She realized she was biting her knuckle only a half-moment before he pulled it away from her mouth. She was surprised to see blood, to see that the knuckle that had been white was now smeared with blood, because she didn't feel it, didn't even feel a twinge of pain.

He pulled her to her feet and led her into the bathroom where he held her hand under the icy running water and then, with a soft incantation, healed it. He touched his fingertip to hers as if testing, then closed his hand around her fist.

"It's my loss because I wasn't able to stop it from happening," he finally said. "It was your primary reason for this marriage..."

"I suppose protecting me doesn't count?" she snapped. "I prefer to think my desire to survive to the ripe age of nineteen might not take second place to attending classes."

"But there were others who could keep you safe if you hadn't wanted to stay in school."

It was as if a fist squeezed closed around her heart, this truth of his. If she hadn't been so determined she could have...could have gone to Romania, maybe? The fist clenched and twisted and the ache in her heart brought a gasp to her lips. "And you...you wouldn't have even more to hide from the Dark Lord."

"Fucking hell, that's not what this is about."

"Then it should be!" She jerked away from him and tossed her head, trying to toss her hair out of her face. "Whether or not I'm in classes means nothing, nothing! We have six weeks, less than that, and you're angry because I won't be spending hour upon hour sitting in a classroom where I no longer belong, just to prove I can?"

"Stand still," he snapped, and she did despite her desire to move away...just to prove she could. But at the first touch of his hands on her hair, at the tug on her scalp when he twisted it, at the demand for her wand...which she handed him as obediently as a stupid girl...she felt relief course through her. All she truly wanted to do was sink back against him until the tension eased from her body.

But she didn't. She stood stiff and straight and...

"And you told me that preposterous story from Hogwarts: A History, because?"

She ducked her face, her cheeks burning. "I don't remember."

"You're an abysmal liar."

"I don't remember why I thought it would make things better!" Now all she wanted to do was yank her wand free and hide behind her hair again.

He stood near the door, his eyes sullen as he studied her, and now all she wanted to do was smooth his hair out of his eyes and...

What was wrong with her?

"Because he... kept her in his rooms, close by, and...."

"Don't tell me that you thought I'd be so overcome by your constant presence, I'd be glad you left your classes?"

And that was when she felt the small lurch in her chest, a small ache that swelled and threatened to consume her from the inside. "I was looking for a silver lining for me, not you! And yes, being here in our quarters with you only a few steps away...it suddenly made me feel light inside, and relieved and..." She stormed past him and through the door, her hands clenched to still their trembling, their tingling, and could only manage to hurl a vicious, "Oh, sod off!" at him as she passed.

This time, he didn't grab her arm...he lunged in front of her and blocked her way, and she froze.

"Move," she said.

"Please," he said, and for some reason he seemed almost uneasy. "Just... please?"

He reached for her hand and she wanted to pull it away, but something about the way he was moving so carefully, his eyes linked with hers in such a strange way, and so she allowed him to take her hand, and to stroke her fingertips with his. The surge almost knocked her off her feet.

She gasped.

His indrawn breath was a loud hiss.

"What is happening?" she breathed.

"You're controlling it," he answered and raised her fingertips to his lips, and the jolt went to her core.

"This...this is control?" she whimpered. "I don't feel it."

"Your emotions are all over the place, but your magic is..." again, he brushed his lips, across her fingertips, and this time she saw the flicker of response in his eyes as he held her tight against his body, "...controlled, for now. But you need to release it, and there's nothing around here I desire to see broken...."

"What do I do?" She hated her voice, the way it quavered, but it was as if his voicing what was happening to her made it all the more real and more difficult to handle.

"You can absorb it..."

"How?"

"...by remaining still, by deep breathing, by clearing your mind...."

She pushed her hand to his mouth. "Do it again."

"No," he said. "I can't. I'm going to release you, and you're going to..."

"I don't want you to release me."

"Miss Granger! This is important!" He dropped her hand and stepped away from her.

She felt the surge of frustration and rage and wanted him back, damn him, not five feet away watching her as if she were a teakettle coming to boil.

His voice calm and deep and velvet, he said, "Deep breaths now..."

She turned her back on him. Took a deep breath, and then another. Thought about Professor Binns and a quill scratching and... felt the wicked smile curving her lips into a smirk.

She gave him a glance over her shoulder, still smirking. "All right. You can touch me now."

He let out a deep sigh. "No, Miss Granger, I cannot."

"Oh, really?" She turned slowly and offered her hands. "Do it."

Eyes narrowed, he drew closer and then took one in his hands and touched her fingertips.

Nothing.

He arched an eyebrow, clearly surprised. "Well done."

She tossed her head.

He reached with his other hand, cupped the back of her neck and drew her close to press his lips against her temple. "And when did you get so good at control?"

"When I realized that not controlling meant you wouldn't touch me," she said. "Now, sit down and reward me."

She pushed him down into his chair, and with only the slightest of scowls, he pulled her into his lap. He stroked the nape of her neck, his fingers toying with wisps of hair that refused to be contained, and she arched her neck and drew in a sharp breath in response. "So you're taking over my private laboratory," he accused.

"Only when you're not using it."

"If you're in it, I won't be using it, so that's handled very neatly, isn't it?"

She glared at him, but it didn't stop her from nestling more comfortably into his arms. "I need you to help me with the Pensieve." And when his body tensed as if he were about to do it right that moment, she added quickly, "After lunch," and settled herself more firmly in his lap as if her weight alone would pin him there.

He sighed as if mildly put out, but as his cheek caressed her temple with a soft rasp, she felt it safe to assume he didn't really mind staying put a while longer. "And what happened to Potions Professor Gwynvard and his scheming bride?"

"It's not recorded. They were forced to marry, but beyond that, nothing. It's rather sad, really. I don't know if they were a great love match and filled the dungeons with the sounds of their shagging all hours of the day and night..."

He snorted, and the hot breath danced down her ear and neck and made her shiver.

"Or if he'd spent thirty-seven days torturing her, and their marriage gave him leave to punish her for the rest of their lives."

His hand stopped on her neck.

"It seems wrong, somehow, that the only time a teacher and student are recorded as marrying, it was left open ended, as if it isn't important enough to merit telling the rest of their story."

"Perhaps it's better that way, if the truth is anywhere near your more dire suggestion."

She looked at him and her lips parted, and her breath quickened the way it did when something she didn't understand suddenly clicked into place. She remembered the painful meeting with Professor McGonagall and the older witch's brusque reassurance, and felt its correlation flare to life deep within her. "It is, isn't it? It's truly better this way, because this means..." She angled her face so that their lips almost...but not quite...met.

Finally he asked, "Better because...?"

"Because our story will be the one people remember." She felt him tense in her arms. "Because our story will have a happy ending," she continued firmly. "Because years from now, perhaps decades from now, when people look back at us they'll realize that all the things they thought and said were wrong. Because we are writing our own story, Professor. And I won't allow it to end any other way."

"You believe this." It was a statement, a strained statement, but a statement.

"Yes."

"It's romantic nonsense."

"Yes."

"I never thought you to be the kind of witch who believed in nonsense. Next you'll be asking Sybill to read your tea leaves."

She drew back and glared at him. "Take that back."

He angled his face away from her, but she took his chin and pulled it back.

She wasn't smiling any more, and she couldn't let this pass. "Do you think I like having people feel free to tell me to my face that my marriage is a travesty and inconvenient and ridiculous? Perhaps it's all of those things, but it's the only one I have, and..."

This time she was the one to turn her face away.

"I happen to like it." She forced the sadness down and drew deep to find the determination to bring strength to her voice so she could continue. "And if I happen to have been stuck with the biggest horse's arse in the wizarding world, I'll just have to make do, won't I? It's not like I haven't had to deal with horse's arses before. I mean," and now she smirked directly into his astounded face, "look at Ron and Harry."

His eyes narrowed and her heart pounded. He gave a tendril of hair on her nape a sharp tug and said, "You'll pay for that, Miss Granger."

But this time, when she kissed him, it lasted a very long time, and he didn't seem to mind, not at all.

XX

"Merlin's fucking ghost, block me out, Miss Granger!" he snapped, as her eyes widened and threatened to swallow him whole. "Do you realize what a delicate manoeuvre this is?"

She blinked rapidly and finally her eyes occluded him. "Sorry," she muttered, embarrassed.

"All right, let's try this again. Which memory do you want to retrieve?"

"I think I should start with when we were here, right before we entered the Floo and..."

"Don't tell me. Just pull it forward."

She nodded. "All right. I've got it, I think..."

He murmured the brief incantation and with a touch of his wand to her temple, drew out the long, quivering silver thread. A quick flick of the wrist and it flowed into the Pensieve.

"Have you ever used one before?" he asked. At the shake of her head, he said, "Then bend forward, put your head in the dish. Before we go further I want to make sure we pulled the memory you intended."

She looked at him, her eyebrows knitted in a frown, but finally did as ordered. It only took her two minutes, maybe three, but it gave him ample time to stare at her cheek, her ear, and her neck....

She raised her head and glared at him. "I forgot you were pissed."

"I was overjoyed and in a celebratory spirit, as I recall."

"Indeed."

"I take it that was the correct memory?" At her curt nod, he continued, "Then pull up the next one."

She closed her eyes and finally nodded again. Again, the incantation. Again, the silvery thread, much longer this time. Again, the flick into the Pensieve, which now had a shimmering surface that flowed from edge to edge.

Alarmed, she clutched his hand. "I don't like this."

"What?"

"They're gone...where my memories were, I now just have... fuzziness. As if once upon a time a long time ago I was married, but the details are gone." Her hand tightened on his. "I don't like it."

"After you use the Pensieve we'll return them. They won't be harmed. In fact, they'll be sharper once you've viewed them again."

Her smile was tremulous. "I'm sure I'll be fine." She adjusted her quill, ink and parchment on the lab table in front of her. The whiteboard floated beside her, ready for new notes. Ever the efficient researcher, she suddenly appeared all business.

Except for her wretched, horrid hair tumbling this way and that. He wondered at the effect of hair and Pensieves and allowed himself the perverse pleasure of twisting it back into a severe knot on the back of her neck. "Accio hair comb," he said, and waited until the comb flew through the door and slapped into the palm of his free hand.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were attempting to control me through controlling my hair," she said primly. "It won't work, even if you do eventually tame my hair to your submission."

"Ah, but it never hurts to keep trying," he replied silkily into her ear and enjoyed her small frisson of pleasure. "And now," he said, straightening to his full height, "fifth-year Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff await my shining presence."

But as he began to turn away, he caught the slightest tremble of her hand, which she quickly stilled by clutching the edge of the table. Fuck, what was she thinking? What was he missing? "Miss Granger, are you quite all right?"

"Yes," she said resolutely. "Just gathering my thoughts."

"I'm beginning to think you've given defending our...situation...a higher priority than preparing for Hallowe'en." There, he'd said it. He examined her face for guilt, for anger, or for, possibly, hurt.

The eyes she turned on him were hard. "I am not a romantic ninny, Professor, and I can assure you that my interest in our vows has everything to do with Hallowe'en."

He drew back. He should be reassured. And he was. To an extent. "What are you withholding from me?"

She gave him a dismissive wave. "Nothing. I have various hypotheses. If something comes of any of them, you'll be the first to know."

Then before he could recognize her intent, she leaned up and kissed him full on the lips. Fully, sumptuously and...

She pulled away and her smile was...it was almost coquettish. His Miss Granger, a coquette?

"If you wanted me to kiss you before you left the room, you needn't have hovered. You should have just said." And with another of those saucy kinds of smiles, she once again waved him on. "You have Ravenclaws to humiliate and Hufflepuffs to bring to tears. Stop acting like a lovesick schoolboy and go do your job."

He felt his cheeks burn but refused to rise to her bait.

"Indeed," he snapped, and whirled away from her with a billow of robes that he certainly hoped she appreciated.

XX

A few steps away, she'd said, as if he could simply stroll from his classroom, through his office and through their quarters all the way to the laboratory. But to do so he'd be forced to leave a room full of idiots behind to melt cauldrons, if he was lucky, and blow up the dungeons if he was not.

When she'd been in the storeroom, it had been a simple enough matter to check in, but not in his...his...private lab.

It was an interminable two hours later before he could return.

The whiteboard was now covered with writing, and the parchment displayed almost two feet of precisely formed notes.

Miss Granger, however, was slumped across the table, asleep and threatening to slide from the lab stool. Upon his entering the lab, however, she sat up quickly, almost falling backward. He lunged forward, but she grabbed the edge of the table and averted disaster.

She rubbed her forehead. "That thing needs a pause button."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"A way to pause it in mid-memory so that after I pull out to make a note, I can return at the same place I left," she grumbled. "I must admit that as much as I enjoyed seeing you yank Professor Dumbledore out of the Floo by the robes...it grew tiresome seeing you shove me through. You seemed to take great satisfaction from both acts, by the way."

He leaned over her shoulder to see what she'd written on the parchment, but she turned it over.

She was certainly writing a lot of things down that she didn't want him to see.

He realized she was staring up at him, and her expression was difficult to read.

"I take it you've learned something?"

"I think so." She was staring at him. Definitely staring. "Several things, actually."

"For example?"

She tapped a book he recognized from his own library. "I used a translation charm to see what our wizarding vows involved."

"The wizarding vows were never in question."

"Yes, well, clearly you and Professor Dumbledore didn't think they were."

"And you found...?"

"They were strangely devoid of anything at all... well, about marriage. Nothing about hearts, souls or fidelity. They sounded almost like a business arrangement, for all that they were pretty enough at the time when I didn't understand the words."

"Chant is like that. He must have used the Matrimonium Salutis Rei Publicae Causa. It would be a marriage union entered into for political purposes or sometimes for purposes of combining magics for the betterment of the community."

"I see."

"Albus was performing damage control to the best of his ability. You can hardly expect him to have chosen a more traditional vow for us."

She shook her head. "Please, I understand your point." She raised her hand. "So the only sinister aspect of our marriage from the wizarding side is the magic in our rings."

"It would seem so. You're saying you found a sinister aspect of the Muggle vows?"

"No. Not that." Now she was avoiding his eyes, and he was fucking tempted to use Legilimens to get to the bottom of it all without further nonsense.

But she seemed to gather her wits and raised her chin. "First off," and with this she shot him a defiant look, "I took no vow to obey."

His legs threatened to buckle under him, but he managed, barely, to maintain his stance with merely a steadying hand on the table. The relief...such relief coursing through him....

A soft smile quirked the corners of her lips. "Even when compelled by magic...and he was obviously Confunded...Father Gadbury knew not to have me take vows I couldn't keep. His eyes positively twinkled when he got to that word, and substituted 'cherish' instead."

"So Albus wasn't the only pragmatist presiding that night?"

She gave a wry shrug. "Evidently not. I vowed to love, honour and cherish you, much as you did me. And even that...you were concerned that you vowed to love me, Professor, but whatever it is between us, it predates our vows." She broke off and to his amazement, hid her face behind her hands. "This is going to be so embarrassing."

"Fucking hell, Miss Granger, after all that's happened between us you've actually managed to find something fresh to embarrass you?"

She studied her ink stained fingertips. "Professor, have you noticed anything special...well, unusual...I mean..."

She was mortified, absolutely mortified, and he found the entire spectacle of a mortified Miss Granger quite fascinating to observe.

"When we kiss?" she finally blurted.

The kisses. Fuck. They had to actually discuss this? He cleared his throat.

"You have," she said, clearly relieved.

How could he not?

"I think I've discovered why, though it's really rather silly. No, silly is too silly a word," she babbled on. "Preposterous is more like it. Something that Lavender would come up with, or Parvati or..."

"What exactly are you nattering on about?"

"In my confirmation classes Father Gadbury..."

He didn't even bother to stifle his disdain.

"You needn't scoff," she said with a glare. "I'm just attempting to explain what he said."

"Pray, do continue."

"In the Early Church it was believed that when you kissed during the exchange of the Peace, it was a Holy Kiss."

"No wonder you're such a romantic," he sneered. "Even your Muggle religion is filled with foolish romanticism."

"The Holy Kiss as Father Gadbury expressed it means," she continued resolutely, "that souls are kissing."

"Oh fucking bloody hell, you aren't trying to tell me..."

"The picture Colin took of us...the silver strands. When we kissed. Silver is the colour of the Spirit. Our souls...our spirits...somehow connected, possibly even joined, at that moment."

She clenched her hands shut, and he realized how much dignity it was costing her, this ludicrous discussion. He bit back a half dozen retorts and instead waited for her to continue.

"But it clearly started before then. I can't explain why such a thing would happen, but it did happen, and it happened before we married." She raised her eyes to his and it felt as if his heart stumbled. "I felt it the very first time we kissed, didn't you?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You claim that by Sealing me, you caused our souls..."

"No, I don't think so. I don't think it could have anything to do with human vows...Muggle or wizard. This is something more elemental. I don't believe anything we did or said caused it to happen. I believe...oh, god, I'm saying I believe as if I really and truly believe it, when it's preposterous, totally preposterous..."

She broke off and dug her hands into her hair, bringing it all tumbling down. The hair comb hit the stone floor with a clatter.

"But, I believe..." she said slowly, resolutely, "that what happened between us was always going to happen between us.

"Our souls were waiting for us to kiss."