2

The bloom, Hermione thought, was most definitely off the rose.

Whatever fantasies she might have once harboured about the supposed joys of freedom to do research without being nagged to "get out once in a while and have some fun," had undoubtedly been crushed by the stacks of useless documents obscuring her work table. She was bored to tears and bloody frustrated. If she had to do one more pointless reference search, she thought, pushing her papers aside to glare at the wizard across the room, she was certain to go mad.

Years in his classroom monitoring volatile cauldrons and dodging dicey spells had left her with a reflexive compliance to what had always been his exacting requirements. And as Snape couldn't seem to help but slip back into the teacher role, and Hermione was still training herself not to flinch when he leaned over to peruse her notes, they might well be making their way through the books in the library, but they were getting nowhere in terms of their fundamental objective. None of their reading or calculations was bringing them one jot closer to determining the source of the world-wide disruption or generating a solution that would stop the escalating disasters in their tracks.

And anyway, she thought, he wasn't meant to be her supervisor; they were supposed to be partners. Not that you could tell from how he bullied his way in and took charge--instructing her in the ways of research and process. He had probably never worked with a partner, she grumbled to herself. If he had done, she wondered where he'd buried the body.

The sigh that escaped her sounded suspiciously like a groan of exasperation.

"What is it now, Granger?" Snape muttered from behind the tower of books on his worktable.

"This is ridiculous," she said.

"Ridiculous?" he echoed, his head still buried in a large volume with a binding that looked awfully like Hippogriff skin.

"We're not getting anywhere by staying in here," she said. "And no clever remarks about me and libraries." She glared at him, snickering from behind his book. "For Merlin's sake," she snapped, "would you put that down?"

He raised an eyebrow and looked up as his book struck the tabletop with a soft thump. He didn't exactly look eager to listen, she thought, but at least he wasn't flinging insults. If she were honest, she'd have to admit that while he'd been impossible to engage as a colleague, he'd not been rude or hurtful towards her. In fact, apart from being unbearably bossy, mordantly sarcastic, and more than smart enough to keep her on her toes, the man across from her now bore only slight resemblance to the sharp-tongued wizard she'd known at Hogwarts.

Even his physical appearance had changed. No longer gaunt and grey, his features had softened just enough to emphasise chiselled cheekbones and a sharp jaw line. His black hair still looked slick, but he wore it pulled back these days, though wisps often slipped from the queue that held it. She'd become irksomely fascinated by those tendrils of hair, delicate bits of him escaping confinement--briefly liberated until he'd push them into place when they dared disrupt his concentration.

She wondered how his year as Headmaster at Hogwarts or his near death had changed him. Merlin knew that her months on the run had altered her in ways she'd not appreciated until long after the war. Her experience at Malfoy Manor had shaken her more profoundly than any of the other times her life had been at risk, shaken her more than she'd let on; she supposed that Snape's near death by snake hadn't been the first time his life had been in danger, directly or not. She couldn't imagine what that must have been like--day after day, month after month.

It wasn't as if she'd ever know, she thought. He'd not given her leave to broach any but the most superficial conversation over the last few weeks. Instead, he adopted a variation of his Professorial stance and attacked the dossier they had been assigned with a tight-lipped, single-minded focus.

It was not only frustrating; it was getting them nowhere. Hermione had imagined that in Snape, she would finally find a research partner with whom she could wrestle difficult ideas until they came into focus. No more coddling a lab or project partner and doing all the work, or so she'd hoped. Working with someone for whom scholarly process was valued would be a dream.

If only he would talk with her instead of at her. She wished he would trust her to follow her own train of thought, to present her tentative hypotheses and conclusions. Instead, he set out the path just as he would in the classroom, expecting her to follow his lead and dismissing her efforts to engage in more collaborative dialogue. If that approach were gleaning results, she thought, she might consider swallowing her pride and continue on without speaking up. But as they hit dead-end after dead-end, Hermione couldn't stay silent despite Snape's tendency to dismiss her and return to his own line of study. Still, the reports from the outside mounted, worsening by the day. She couldn't sit back and let him continue to direct a program that had them wandering in circles.

She had, in short, had enough.

"We need to get out of here," she said.

"And where, precisely, do you propose we go, Miss Granger?" His arms were crossed, challenge in his eyes.

"This is hardly news to you," she snapped. "I've said for ages now that we should visit the node that Master Wu examined. None of this bibliographical research is getting us anywhere. I think we need to do a site investigation."

"What makes you think there's anything there to inspect, Granger?" he asked. "Wu went to the closest Ley lines to Hogwarts and proceeded to act entirely... insane."

"Who said he was insane? The written report sounds--odd, I'll give you that," she said. "But isn't it a bit strange that nobody thought to include a Pensieve memory of his examination?" she added. "Didn't the other teams get memories along with their field reports?"

Snape sifted through a pile of parchments on his left, pausing to scan a thick packet. "The other teams don't have field reports to peruse," he said. "It would seem that the other dossiers are primarily theoretical. Ours is the only one that includes description of a trip outside a library or Ministry office.

Hermione felt her heartbeat accelerate. "Give me that--" She reached for the parchments. Now both his eyebrows were raised as he dangled the packet out of reach, and she wondered why he felt it necessary to treat her like a child. "Please--may I see the list of leads the others are following?" He smirked, handing over the pages. She snatched it from his hand. "If you ever do that again, Snape," she murmured, "I'll certainly make you sorry you did."

"Is that right?" he murmured.

She glanced at him, startled, and flushed at the gleam in his eye. He enjoyed that...?

"Indeed." Their eyes met for a moment, the colour warming her cheeks before she tore her gaze away to stare blankly at the pages.

Dammit, Hermione. Focus.

She forced her eyes down to the parchment, distractedly reading the list of hypotheses other teams of Unspeakables were investigating. "Unreasonably speculative, wildly unlikely, just... absurd," she muttered as she willed her heartbeat to slow and the blood to leave her cheeks "What a bloody waste of time," she said. "This was the best they could come up with?"

"It's not as if what we've got is any better, Granger," he retorted.

"Isn't that what I just said? That's why we have to get out of here."

"And again, I ask...for what purpose, precisely?"

"I don't know for what purpose, Snape. But we're getting nowhere in here, and it wouldn't hurt to get out, clear our minds a bit."

He was silent and she braced for the biting remark that would dismiss her and return them to the fruitless meandering that had occupied them for weeks. Instead, he pursed his lips and huffed shortly.

"Fine, Granger. Let's go." He smirked at her gobsmacked expression and she scowled.

"Let's go," she agreed. "To Wilmington. To the Oracle."

The figure was stunning. More than two hundred feet tall, carved into the slope of the brilliantly green hill, the outline of the gigantic man stood with staves in each hand planted firmly in the ground.

They Apparated into a grove across the valley facing the hill, the white outline of the ancient man brilliant in the midday sun. The air was still nippy, but the promise of spring was clear in the light and the tentative blooms. Snape could feel the earth's vibration through the soles of his feet and the song of the figure calling to him, beckoning him closer.

She was right.

"Are those wands?" she whispered. He felt her sway as she stood alongside him and reached his hand out to steady her.

"I should say so," he breathed. He didn't move to release her arm, and its warmth grounded him as he adjusted to the power of the current.

They made their way towards the figure carved into the rock, the energy flow growing more focused, sharper, as they approached. At the bottom of the hill, they sat, as if at the feet of the giant.

"Will you read the account again?" Snape murmured, loath to shatter the aura that cloaked the hillside.

Hermione retrieved the oft-read parchment from her bag. It wasn't much, he thought, but the sparse report was all they had to start with. But as the page unrolled, it began to shake. If paper were sentient, he realised, he would have believed it excited to be unfurling in the open air of this place. Black ink rose from the page in a swirl, a chain of letters, words taking new shape, until a shallow bowl lay motionless on the grass between them. The runes etched along its border and the mists churning in the basin were achingly familiar.

"A Pensieve," she gasped.

"Not of a sort I've ever encountered," he muttered. But visual and magical examination of the bowl revealed it to be just as it seemed: A Pensieve basin for display of one specific memory. A rarity.

"How do we activate it?" she asked.

"Don't know," he replied.

As if this were permission to charge forward like an unwary Erumpent, she reached for it--impulsive, reckless, Gryffindor...-- and he leaned forward to grasp it as well--who knows what traps could still be lurking there...steadying the bowl while keeping a sharp eye on her for evidence of cloaked jinxes or curses.

He so hated when she was right.

Their touch set the mist to purposeful motion, and the misty figure of a man rose from the vapour.

An elderly wizard, walking stick in hand, stands at the edge of the giant. He doesn't speak at all, only walks around the site, periodically crouching to bring his hands into contact with the soil.

Hands buried in the earth, head bowed to his chest, Master Wu is crying.

The image hung in the air--a suspended, frozen memory. The elderly wizard had entered the massive figure, tapping into the node itself and its portal to the magical currents that ran deep beneath the earth. It seemed, Severus thought, if his supposition was correct, that Master Wu had been given instruction by something--someone, from within the magical enclosure.

What, in Merlin's name, are we getting ourselves into?

"We should go in," Hermione whispered. "We have to go..."

He nodded, wishing for once for a bit less cunning, and a bit more bluster. Cunning had only ever got him tangled in other wizards' intrigue, anyhow. She was beside him in an instant, thankfully interrupting his rumination, and they scaled the incline, pushing against the wall of energy that rose in the chalky border of the giant. As they neared the boundary separating them from the source of the power, he raised both hands--the energies felt like an invisible wall. Hermione watched and did the same.

It was like touching a wand that had distinctly not chosen you in Ollivander's shop, he thought. And which was showing a rather violent distaste for your touch.

Unlike the wands, though, the magic flowing along the boundary line wasn't rejecting him--them, he amended. It was just--ragged. Instinct pushed him into the frayed current, at first meeting resistance and then...

--tumbling onto the grass, Hermione fallen upslope slightly, inside the pulsating boundary.

It was no wonder Master Wu didn't speak, Snape thought. He, himself, could barely move. Later, he'd not remember making his way to the belly of the giant, only that Hermione was already there, eyes closed, sitting cross-legged with her fingers threaded through the tall grasses. Facing her, he adopted her pose, trying to remember how to meditate. Restless thoughts soon caught the rhythm of Hermione's breathing; his slowed to match hers as the minutes passed. Gradually, his mind stilled, rocking in the current of the magic flowing around them, above, and below.

He could see it more clearly now. The streams weren't random currents of magic. They were distinct, each with a tone and texture of its own. Every one a strain of unique melody--or what was formerly melody, he realised abruptly. What once must have been like a symphony was discordant, notes colliding into one another instead of blending in harmony; rhythms grown irregular and staccato where once they had been smooth, legato.

Each song held its own tragedy, rhythms broken with malice--shredded by the vicious magics of a wizard intent only on dominance. Wrapped in the tenor of the magic, Snape felt each jagged cry, gasping with pain as the building blocks of their world showed him their injury.

Indeed, Riddle had torn them to shreds as surely as he'd done his own soul. And despite knowing this for months now, until this moment, it hadn't touched him, not like this haunting, soulful howl of despair. The pain felt so old, he thought. As if the songs had begun to splinter long ago. He was flooded with an awareness of it and its fear and chaos distracted him. Notes spilled over one another as if panicked, their sharp edges drawing blood.

Here was the key to the cacophony that had risen to cloak the world. The elements themselves were in shreds; unstable, depleted and unable to balance themselves.

He could sink into despair here, he thought, his own hopelessness finding purchase in the shards of sound. But another melodic thread was there too, its strains growing stronger even as Snape mourned alongside the spirits he'd hoped to save. It sang to him and he felt its rising voice, its determined insistence that however broken, they would find the means to heal the torn soul of their world. He reached for it; he could hardly help himself. The touch of its magic to his was a balm, a surge of hope in an ocean of fear. Like a lullaby.

Soon, it was only the strains of that melody--hers--he recognised with a start--that held him, only her. How had he worked so many months alongside her without actually hearing her voice? The crystalline tones softened his armour, and he gave himself over to the resonant sound and the warmth that suffused him. It felt like being given a vital ingredient he hadn't noticed was missing, blending and balancing with components long familiar.

Emerging together from the heart of the earth, he savoured the connection between them, if only for this moment. He opened his eyes and she was there, and he saw that she also felt the alchemical streams of magic combining and the agony of elements unjustly fragmented.

The broken heart of the world. And his own, too.

The bond shimmered in the air, singing its need. No compulsion, this. Sensitive to coercive magic, Severus welcomed the sensation. This was a gift not oft received, and he would treat it with the reverence it deserved.

She leaned towards him, her body a whisper away. Every cell of him screamed to bridge the space between them, to stroke her with hands and lips and breath as surely as he had her magic. But the echoes of fraying song pulled him back; memories of broken promises a knot in his gut. Who knew what damage he could do to her, and to the gossamer bond shimmering between them, were he to permit himself to have this and allow their magics to blend.

He couldn't do it, not to her. No matter how much he wanted to wrap himself in her magic, to hold her close until he could remember how it felt to be unbroken. It was only the power of her magic, he thought, and the tenacious soul beneath that might put this right. But the melodies that had scarcely carried him through endless days of fear and pain had worn too thin. Only the sharp edges of his mind remained, and an endurance that he'd built over decades.

One more moment, just one to hold on to and then he would go. They'd learned what they needed--they could untangle the rest back at the Ministry. Later, after he'd tucked his memory of her into some sacred, hidden corner, and she would be safe from the razor's edge he had never learned to blunt. Despite his resolve, he almost reached for her still, but pulled himself away wearing the most austere expression he could summon. With a mumbled word of parting--something sufficiently distant, he hoped--he rose to cross beyond the shimmering magic of the node on trembling legs.

He would do no harm. That was the best he could hope for.

The library was bitingly cold, no matter how much she stoked the hearth.

Wrapped in layers of clothing, wool blanket around her shoulders, Hermione curled on the library couch, a slender book, Gifts of the Animagi, doing little more than keeping her hands from totally stiffening in the cold.

What rubbish.

The weeks since their visit to the Oracle had been awkward. Even now, she couldn't understand how she could emerge from the node with such energy and clarity of purpose, while he had chosen to turn and walk away. Had she misinterpreted the meaning of his magic, raw and reaching for her, and the absolute rightness and renewed strength that filled her when their magics had blended?

At the time, she thought, she'd been so sure of what the Oracle had shown her. But now her memories of that morning were only an uncertain guide.

Once through the enchanted barrier, she'd ridden the heavy air to the giant's centre, positioning herself cross-legged to wait. Her eyes had closed as she dug her hands into the lush grass. The rhythms of the elements tumbled, in free-fall, their centre, shattered. She'd felt the ribbons of magic, let them carry her as they flowed like coarse rivers of smoke. She'd nearly missed it when they began to change, so caught up was she in their ethereal dance.

The translucent currents swirling in the cradle of the earth resembled refugees from early Transfiguration classes. Ghostlike creatures--wounded and frantic in their need to find and hold their shapes. Instead, they had become ragged streams of water and light without a centre.

She'd never felt such pain. Not even in the worst days of the war. Not even when she felt nothing but the sharp point of a knife at her throat and then the searing of the Cruciatus. No, this wasn't just her pain; it was the crippled heartbeat of a world.

He had to be there somewhere, where had he gone? She didn't think she could bear more of it alone. The currents and their shapes, they must be the key, she thought. Though how, she couldn't say. He found her first, his spirit a burst of magic like a cry in the night when she reached for him. The echoes of what he'd felt clanged in the ether when their magics twined together. Sound? Maybe he didn't see the mists, she thought. Could he see the creatures struggling to take shape? Did he understand what the ethereal animals needed them to know?

As the surge of their magic found one another, the tumultuous currents gentled. The creatures of mist sighed in relief. And then, the voice of an old man, weary, cut through the white noise of flowing magic. She couldn't speak--only sink into the rhythmic movement of the magic, like rolling waves finally at peace after a storm.

As a ring with neither beginning nor end, there is no Yin without Yang, no dark without light--day without night. Heal the broken vessels; reunite shards scattered in the winds. Fur and fin, scale and mail, feather and flesh circle until the fire time when Heaven and Earth heal in the unity of cauldron and fire.

Saturated by the energy of the currents, the Oracle's words ringing in her ears, she surfaced from the pool of interlocking energies. He was there, looking as stunned and overwhelmed as she. The link between them was palpable now, a shimmering, vital energy that had not been evident before. It felt... not new. Not old, it just... was. Like something ever-present but overlooked. And alongside this recognition was another as well. A dormant flame had relit inside of her--a long-neglected ember, stoked and warming her again. She'd not noticed its absence--how absurd, how blind.

She looked at Snape, his hair fallen loose from its tie, wind-reddened face lending him an unaccustomed aura of health. Had she been blind to the power of those eyes, she wondered. What had kept her from sinking into the liquid velvet of his voice or from reaching for the steely edge of his intellect when she was too tangled in thought? She thirsted for him. How had she not noticed that she was parched?

She had to touch him, to whisper her new knowledge into his skin, to remember the calming rush of equilibrium when their magics blended. He was silent but for ragged breathing barely audible in the wind. Even with eyes shut, she could feel his body singing to her, calling her to move closer, to affirm their link and anchor the magics.

The pull was overwhelming; she knew better than to succumb completely, they should understand it before allowing whatever this was to so utterly draw them in. And yet, would it hurt to touch her hands to his just for a moment? She gasped as he looked at her--hunger and adoration in equal measure radiated from him. His breathing was shallow now, and his eyes dilated... he seemed frozen, and so was she, waiting, hoping for him to confirm what she knew. Leaning towards him, her heartbeat raced in response to the whisper of motion as he moved at last.

She shivered, remembering, just as she had on the hillside that morning months before. The same wizard whose magic had ignited a flame in her that she'd feared permanently extinguished, whose eyes had pored over her like a treasure lost but never forgotten, had risen from the lush ground as if eager to leave a bad job behind.

Speechless, she watched him stand and walk back through the enchanted border without a glance in her direction. Shocked, she was helpless to respond as he nodded curtly at the boundary line, saying only, "I believe we are done here, Miss Granger."

It had been hours before she could bring herself to follow.

She hadn't cried since that day when her tears had fallen unchecked, absorbed by the earth whose own injury made hers feel insignificant by comparison. But she often felt the rushing feeling that presaged tears, pushing it back ruthlessly every time. They had a job to do, and she'd be damned if she'd let that man derail her work.

Weeks passed, and the experience of that day lay heavy and unspoken between them. Hermione might have thought it a particularly vivid dream but for their discussions confirming that Master Wu had, in their opinion, indeed pinpointed the source of the magical disruption. They debated the relevance of the partial Animagus forms he had taken and the misty animal shapes Hermione witnessed struggling in the magical current. They analysed the esoteric words of the Oracle, but the tension between them made it difficult to explore its possible connotations. They couldn't begin to address the fact that Wu had transformed into what Hermione surmised were the animal shapes she saw struggling to form beneath the surface. Isolated from the outside and from one another, they spun in circles.

The concrete evidence of what Voldemort had broken gave them little insight as to how to repair it. Escalating news from the outside, after a day or two of inexplicable calm, along with their own unspoken need splintered them, too...Snape absorbed in researching Chinese philosophy and literature in an attempt to discern what the Oracle meant; she, attempting the transformation that had stymied her since the days after her break with Ron. One never knew, she thought. Maybe if she could achieve the animagus transformation, though it would be merely a fraction of Master Wu's feat at the node, the Oracle's words might make more sense.

Their days were filled with research, in library and lab, and practice--primarily, Hermione reflected, alone. She became increasingly frustrated and intermittently frantic as the weeks passed without any progress making the Animagus shift. At least in Transfiguration class her snuffboxes had had tails even when she'd just been a beginner.

Snape, on the other hand, grew calmer, even eerily serene as time went by. Maybe she should take a turn with his materials and he could try to liberate his animal self from confinement, she thought with a snort, earning a quizzical look from the wizard. They'd never spoken of it, but they shared an implicit understanding that for him, changing into a doe would be a last resort.

Maybe it was a side effect of his newfound calm, or perhaps something about the new "evidence" he began to insist she read, but in recent days, Snape had begun to suggest, and then insist, that the reasons for her difficulty making the shift lay in her isolation. Despite their working partnership, she acknowledged, they went about their tasks in relative solitude. Hermione, for her part, couldn't bear to work more closely with him and resisted his newfound desire for proximity. But her irritability only escalated as she continually failed to achieve the transformation, and her temper grew shorter and more unpredictable as the weeks passed.

But why she should also be freezing cold despite the summer air outside, she wondered as she pulled the blanket more closely around her, was a mystery. Right after their trip to the Oracle, she'd been so hot. But the fire that had warmed her in the node seemed to have burned out--only sharp sparks popping now and again to remind her. Perhaps a trip somewhere warmer and wetter was in order. How could she be expected to transform into her Otter form in a cold, dry stone room? Was it any wonder she'd had no success at all?

Hermione bounded to her feet, blanket discarded on the sofa. Without a glance at Severus...whose head was buried, as usual, inside some book that was too big to be allowed, even by her generous standards--she flounced from the room. Honestly, he probably wouldn't even notice she'd gone.

Dark eyes followed her from behind an illuminated copy of the I Ching, and he smiled. His research was yielding good results, though she was still resistant to hearing him out. The labyrinth of philosophy and theory that he'd been studying was, at long last, making a shadowy sort of sense.

At the very least, he thought, it gave him a yen to get out of the library and take a stroll outside.

Lakes were nice this time of year. Perhaps he'd take a walk near one of his old favourites.