Phoenix Song

Phoenix Tears, Chapter Twenty-Three : Phoenix Song

DISCLAIMER : The characters and many of the situations described in this story are the property of the incomparable J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this story, which exists as a work of tribute.

I want once again to thank my lovely and highly intelligent betas for their invaluable help! Thanks, LAxo and WriterMerrin.

"Snape! Don't die! You can't! Not now! Not now!"

Dimly, the words penetrated through the blinding white fog that blanketed Severus' brain. Granger, he thought. He felt her hands on his chest and fought to open his eyes and look at her. He wanted to see her.

As he left behind the oblivion into which he had sunk, the pain rushed back.

"Granger," he groaned, squinting up at her as she knelt beside him. The odd raspy sound of his own voice helped to propel him back to consciousness. "You're babbling."

"Oh my god," she gasped. "Don't ever...I thought..."

"Blood-Replenishing . . . Potion."

She froze for a second, then whirled towards the table and scrabbled among the bottles.

"How many of these have you already had? No, no, don't answer that!"

Granger spun back towards him with an open phial in hand. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth, and she pressed the bottle to his mouth, tilting it carefully. With difficulty, Severus managed to swallow.

He felt the extra surge of blood as it expanded through his capillary system and, from the sudden widening of Granger's eyes, knew that the quantity of blood pouring from the gaping wound in his neck increased dramatically. Her eyes flew back to his.

"What next?" she asked urgently.

"I need . . . you . . . to . . . heal . . . the wound." It was difficult to talk.

"But why didn't the antidote..." she broke off abruptly, pressing her lips and eyes tightly shut. "I'm sorry," she continued, opening her eyes once more. They glistened with tears. "Just tell me what to do, I'll ask questions later."

"Phoenix . . . song . . ."

Granger blanched. The sudden white edge to her skin made the sooty smudges and singe marks that dirtied her face stand out clearly.

"But you never..."

"I can . . . show . . . you."

She nodded; her eyes were huge in her strained face.

"The trick . . ." Severus broke off and tried to swallow. An enormous tear bulged at the edge of Granger's eyelash, but she blinked it away.

"Yes?" she breathed, urgent to know more.

". . . Strengthening . . ."

Before Severus managed to finish the instruction, Granger had a bottle of Strengthening Solution pressed to his mouth. He swallowed it down.

"Antivenom?" she asked.

He shook his head minutely in reply. He gave the Strengthening Solution a couple of seconds to work, then he tried again.

"The trick is that you have to mean it." His voice was still scratchy and hoarse, but the Strengthening Solution gave him the means to speak through the agony that wracked his body. "You have to vibrate the flesh with your song, tune to it and feel its pain. Though the body has been violently rent in two, you have to believe in its wholeness more than it believes in its separation."

Granger looked terrified, but she nodded obediently.

"It might not work," he warned gently.

"But you'll let me try?"

Severus had never heard her sound so bleak. He nodded.

"Do you have a wand?" he asked.

"I have three, but I don't trust any of them." Granger fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a handful of wands. "I have Bellatrix's wand, my own...which doesn't really work for me now that I've got it back, and that of an unknown Death Eater."

The pain was pushing back up against the rather temporary defences of the drug.

"Use mine," Severus managed, gesturing slightly with his wand arm so that Granger would realise the wand was tucked into his sleeve.

Wide-eyed, she pulled it free. The length of it looked ungainly in proportion to her body.

"Look at me," he instructed. As Hermione Granger stared into his eyes, he called up the memory of him healing the wound she'd received from Dolohov. He concentrated on the details of the wand movement and the odd leaps of the angular melody. He heard Granger humming along.

"Whenever you're ready," he ground out. The pain was once again reaching an unbearable peak.

Softly, tentatively, Granger began to sing. At first, her voice was too weak to be effective, but after the first repeat she became more confident. She sucked in a deeper breath and sang louder. Severus felt his body tremble. On the next round through, she got it, and furthermore, she realised it. He felt her confidence grow, and he felt the music respond to her.

Her voice soared out, enveloping him, comforting him. His heart seemed to swell, and the pain in his body was pulled from him, leaving nothing but a thin golden thread of regret...that his current pleasure was but a temporary state. Severus felt the music, not only in his flesh, which vibrated in perfect consonance with Hermione's song, but also in his bones, which melted towards her like soft wax.

His throat, he realised suddenly as he stared up into her eyes, really was melting. His skin was moving, his tendons were knitting back into each other, and they sang with the joy of their wholeness; his body resonated delight.

With the sharp edge of rueful self-deprecation, Severus reflected that his own desire was so attuned to this particular woman that it was no surprise that his body moved at her command. No doubt she could have just bossed his neck back together or healed it by the force of her determined will alone.

He felt suspended in time...cut off from his surroundings and yet desperately trying to hold onto the present moment as it slipped, inexorably, away. When Granger finally stopped singing, he felt its loss like an ache.

Gradually, the room around her eyes came into focus, but still he stared at her.

"Did it work?" Granger spoke in a whisper.

The pain, he realised suddenly, was gone, though his body felt weak and exhausted. Slowly, almost apprehensively, he reached a tentative hand up to his throat. The skin beneath his fingers was smooth and firm. He pressed against it hard, poking at it. It gave like skin: pliable, warm and real under his attack. It felt completely normal.

"It . . ." Severus paused, clearing his throat. "It worked," he said finally. His voice was back to normal, too.

At his words, Granger's lower lip trembled. The tear that had threatened earlier broke ranks and ran down her face, forging a trail through the dirt and dust.

"What's this?" he asked gently, reaching up with his near hand and wiping away her tear with the ball of his thumb. "Phoenix tears?"

With a sob, Granger buried her head by his side and wept into the heavily soiled fabric of his robes. Severus let himself thread his hand through the curls at the back of her head and rubbed gently against her skull behind her ears.

He almost made a quip about her evident delight at his return from death's door, but bit it back at the thought of what she must have endured through the last few hours. He waited until her tears eased up before he ventured to speak.

"I'm sorry," he said at last. "I'm sorry about Potter."

Granger's head shot up. Her face was a mess of tears and dirt; she was streaked with his blood.

"He didn't die," she said firmly.

Severus' eyebrows shot together in confusion. "But he's..."

"...a Horcrux, I know. Or, at least, he was a Horcrux." Granger took a deep breath and then pressed onward. "Dumbledore lied to you," she explained. "That's why he closed his eyes."

It took a moment for Severus to piece together the inferences of her statement.

"So, you saw the memories?" It meant that she knew about Lily. He felt his heart twist a little at the thought.

"I didn't want to," she replied quickly, evidently concerned about his reaction. "Dumbledore and Harry insisted."

"I complied them with you in mind," he replied. "I never had much expectation that Potter would believe me, but I thought you might."

Granger blinked at him for a moment. For a second, he thought she might start crying again.

"So," he prompted. "Dumbledore lied to me. You're right: he closed his eyes; I was too distraught at the time to notice. Potter thought he had to die, but he didn't?"

"Voldemort had to kill him, but then Ron and I kept his body alive using Artificial Breathing and Chest-Compression Charms. Harry himself did something about his soul...he claims he went to King's Cross Station and talked to Dumbledore." Granger wrinkled her nose: clearly this was a far-too-fanciful explanation for her liking. "Anyway, he lived through the experience."

"So then Potter killed Voldemort."

"Yes...after pretending to be dead for awhile and then jumping out from behind his Invisibility Cloak."

"Sounds like a riot," remarked Severus dryly.

Granger sucked in a breath that was half gasp, half snort of laughter. "It was, actually. You'll never guess which curse Harry used," she challenged.

Severus raised one eyebrow. "The Entrail-Expelling Curse?"

"No!"

The way that her unexpected smile pulled against her tear-swollen face was heartbreaking.

"A Trip Jinx?"

"No!"

"I give up."

"Guess again."

"Hmmm," Severus ran one finger along his lower lip. "Avada Kedavra?"

"No! E...e...ex..." Granger was choking on slightly hysterical laughter and couldn't form the words, but Severus knew Potter well enough to extrapolate from the first letter.

"Expelliarmus?" he asked, honestly incredulous. Granger could only nod. She was clutching at her side, and an entirely different form of tear was running down her face.

"Ye gods." Severus shook his head, staring off into the distance.

So, Potter isn't dead. It was a little odd to acknowledge how relieved he felt at the thought.

Granger's laughter stopped as abruptly as it had arrived.

"Lots of people died," she said guiltily.

She looked appalled at herself for having laughed in such circumstances; Severus felt a pang of regret. Would the dead begrudge your laughter? he wondered. He felt the words hover on the tip of his tongue, but couldn't bring himself to say them. They felt trite and foolish.

"Who?" he asked instead.

"Fred. Tonks. Remus."

There were others, too; the list was longer than was bearable. Good people had died...ordinary, innocent people...and yet he, Severus Tobias Snape, had cheated death.

Severus felt guilty and desperate and panicked and grateful. And it only happened because Granger had saved him twice over. Once with the Portkey, which had given him access to the medicines that prolonged his death agonies; once because she'd come after him and sung him back together.

The silence that followed the naming of names was awkward.

"After such a litany, I feel we need a toast."

Granger looked relieved at his suggestion. Severus picked up his own wand and felt the tingle of his magic wash over him. He Summoned the bottle of Firewhisky from the mantelpiece and conjured two clean glasses. He poured them each a bare finger of the smoky amber liquid and settled the bottle down on the floor.

"To those who sacrificed their lives to remove evil from the world," he declared, raising his glass.

"And so that those who remain don't ever forget the cost with which the victory was won," added Granger.

They both drank.

"Snape?" she asked, after a moment, running one finger along the seam of the couch. She still knelt there, her whisky cradled against her face, and one elbow propped beside his hip. "Why didn't the antivenom work?"

"Don't be stupid," he replied dismissively. "Of course it worked. If it hadn't, I'd be dead."

"Then why," she persisted, "didn't the wound heal?"

"The antivenom wouldn't heal the wound; it just neutralises the poison."

"Yes, but..." Granger broke off to yawn...a huge, jaw-cracking mouthful of air that displayed her tonsils and the back of her teeth.

"You," he informed her, seizing the opportunity readily, for the conversation had made him distinctly uncomfortable, "need to get some sleep."

"Agreed," she replied, staring down at her blood-soaked hands. "Though first, I'm going to clean up."

Reaching into an inner pocket, she pulled out her battered, pale-pink handbag. The remnants of some rather intricate beadwork clung to the sides. Opening it, Granger inserted her arm to the shoulder before extricating a large wooden bowl and a couple of flannels.

"May I?" she asked, her hand hovering over his wand.

Bemused, Severus nodded, then watched as Granger filled the bowl with a conjured stream of warm, soapy water and proceeded to wash her hands and face.

"I think you'd be better served by a shower," he remarked dryly. "I do have one upstairs."

"Eventually," she replied. "Right now I'm so filthy that I'd make the entire house dirty in the process of getting to the shower."

Granger conjured an entire pile of fluffy, pale blue towels and thoroughly dried her hands and face.

"Right," she said, turning her attention to him. "I'm afraid these robes have had it."

Severus was forced to agree.

"If you would be kind enough to return my wand, I'll summon something clean to wear."

Sheepishly, Granger handed it back. Severus was utterly and completely exhausted, and still covered in copious quantities of dried blood, but under it all, he felt well. He felt tempted to stand up, but the moment he tried, Granger pushed him back down.

"Don't even think about it," she warned. "You may feel healed, but your body's going to need a little time to get used to the idea."

He knew she was right. Even the mere effort of thinking about standing up had left his legs trembling. He didn't feel like admitting it, however, so he ignored her, extending his wand and Summoning a complete new change of clothes...exactly the same as those he always wore. They landed, neatly folded, on the end of the coffee table.

When he next looked at Granger, she had risen to her feet. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her colour was slightly heightened.

"What is it?" he demanded suspiciously.

"I, er, need to wash the blood from your neck and shoulders," she replied, staring intently at a spot about a foot to the right of his face.

"What is this, Granger? Retribution?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"When I sung your body back together, you had to take your clothes off. Now you've sung me back together you want to level the playing field entirely?"

Granger snorted. "If you'd taken your clothes off before the snake bit you, you wouldn't have destroyed a perfectly good set of robes."

The corner of Severus' mouth twitched, but he managed to cover it with a sneer. With a gesture of his wand and a murmured charm, he sent the top half of his clothing...robes, jacket, waistcoat and shirt...wriggling undone and out from under his body to fly across the room and fold itself neatly on the floor.

"Don't throw them away," he warned, "there are things I require in the pockets." In order to cover his embarrassment, he changed the topic entirely. "Please tell me someone killed the snake," he remarked. Every nerve ending was standing to attention. He wondered if she would notice that the Dark Mark was gone.

"Certainly," she responded cheekily. "Someone killed the snake."

"Potter?" he asked, insistent on distraction as Granger ran a warm, wet flannel over one shoulder and across his chest.

"Worse." She threaded a hand into his hair and pulled it out of the way in order to wipe up the side of his neck. "Neville."

Severus' eyes were pressed closed, and he tried to focus on the memory of Neville Longbottom. It wasn't helping. Every fibre of his treacherous body leaned in to her touch. Trust Granger to have read up on magical medicine enough to know not to Scourgify or Tergeo newly-healed skin. Couldn't she have left this till later?

"Snape?" The teasing tone was gone from Granger's voice. She sounded completely serious.

"What now?" He didn't dare open his eyes.

He felt her bare hand run across his neck. He shivered.

"I think you need to see this," she replied.

Only when she removed her hands did he open his eyes. His shoulder was wet, and a lone rivulet dripped down over his chest and over onto the couch. He watched Granger take up Bellatrix's wand, grimace, and then conjure a hand mirror. She held it out to him.

Severus took the mirror and tilted it. He glimpsed a flash of his pale chest, of his shoulder...now mostly clean of the blood that had coated it, and then his neck. He stared at it and, after a minute, raised his other hand to let the tips of his fingers trail over the newly-healed skin.

There was a scar, but you had to look carefully to find it: thin as the edge of a piece of paper, the tiny lines traced two three-pointed puncture marks. Even his fingertips could barely feel it.

"Snape?" Granger hovered anxiously.

Slowly, Severus dragged his eyes from the sight in the mirror and turned them towards her. What does she want? he wondered. Surely she can see the results of her work as clearly as I can?

The visible results of her completely successful attempt to sing his body left him shaken. Was it her or me? he wondered. Was the incredible degree of completeness testament to her magical prowess or to the undeniable physical responses her very presence called from his body? Had it helped that she used his wand? Did it help that he'd previously used the same technique on her?

So many questions, and no scientific method with which to sort through the possible answers.

"Is everything okay?"

"Everything is as it should be."

She let out a breath of relief, then smiled tentatively.

"Right, I'll just finish up here then," she said briskly.

Granger did her best to make short work of washing the rest of his body. To Severus it was both far too long and not long enough. He sat through it with gritted teeth and clenched hands. At one point, she had run one hand right up into his hair and clucked her tongue reprovingly: dried blood stuck the thin strands together into clumps. With his heart in his throat, Severus had thought Granger might wash it...that her thin fingers might massage his scalp. When she spelled it clean, the wave of mingled relief and disappointment left him slightly nauseous.

By the time she was done, he was clean and dry, the couch had been Scourgified, and he'd dressed himself in his usual garb. Granger was packing things away, sorting the empty potion bottles from the full and arranging them in neat rows on the coffee table.

"What's this?" she asked suddenly, holding up a bottle of thick black liquid and tilting it against the light.

"Careful," he warned, holding out his palm. Granger passed it to him at once. The bottle was cold to the touch and it seemed to pulse slightly in his hand. He couldn't help the slight grimace of distaste that twisted at his mouth. "The last time the Dark Lord fell," he explained, "the Dark Mark faded, but it never completely disappeared. This time, it was different. I felt a searing pain, and when I pulled back my sleeve, this liquid was bubbling from my arm. It burnt like acid. I managed to siphon it off into one of the empty bottles I had to hand, but ultimately, I think, it would be best to destroy it."

"I saw that the Dark Mark was gone," she stated.

He nodded, not looking at her. "You can still see where it was." Impulsively, he pulled back the sleeve of his robes, unbuttoned the wrist of his jacket and shirt, and pulled them back too. He stared down at the pale skin of his inner arm. Where the Dark Mark had been, the skin was slightly different. It wasn't really the colour, but more that the texture of the skin itself had changed. If he tilted his arm against the light, he could just make it out.

"That's how you knew we had won?"

Severus nodded. He looked across at Granger where she was perched by the coffee table. Her efforts to wash her face had only emphasised the dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was a bushy mess, snarled and knotted up behind her head; it was still as filthy as her clothes.

"Enough," he said suddenly. "You need to shower and then you need to sleep. Go upstairs. There are only three rooms: a bathroom and two bedrooms. I suggest you sleep in the larger room, which is where I normally sleep. The other room has been host to a variety of different people, most recently Wormtail and Draco. Go!"

Pointing his wand at the bookshelf that concealed the staircase, he jogged the spine of Machiavelli's The Prince, and it swung open.

Obediently, she collected her bag and one of her several wands and disappeared up the stairs. Severus found himself listening to her movements, mapping her location by the familiar creaks and groans of the aging house. He tried, and failed, not to imagine her naked in his shower; he wondered how he was going to fall asleep thinking of her in his bed.

He need not have worried on that front. Twenty minutes later, Granger was back in his living room. She was dressed in stripy pyjamas and a decidedly un-sexy terry-towelling dressing gown. Her hair...clean and dry...was neatly plaited down her back, and she held a couple of pillows and the coverlet from his bed bundled in front of her.

"Snape?" she asked tentatively, hovering just inside the doorway.

"Granger?" he replied wearily.

Pursing her lips, Granger walked to the armchair and dumped her pile of bedclothes. Extricating a pillow, she performed Geminio on the blanket and brought them over to him.

"Lift up," she ordered and proceeded to arrange the pillow under his head. Then she spread the blanket over him.

"What are you doing, Granger?" he asked reprovingly.

"I...er, if it's all right with you, I thought I might sleep down here. . . . It's just that I haven't slept by myself since those few nights at my parents' house almost a year ago, and I don't think tonight is a good time to try it. I'll transfigure the armchair...I promise not to bother you."

"Do make yourself at home." He meant it, but he pronounced the words with his customary sarcasm.

Granger looked unaccountably relieved. Abruptly, she sat down on the near edge of the coffee table.

"Also," she began a little nervously, "I wanted to show you this."

With fumbling fingers, she undid the top button of her pyjama top and pulled the collar aside and down to reveal her shoulder.

"Look," she said unnecessarily, for Severus couldn't have looked elsewhere if he'd tried.

The scar he'd given her was still there...but only barely. Rather than the thick, ropy line of angry red that she'd had at first, or even the faded, lumpy scar he'd seen the night of Slughorn's party, nothing but a thin, silvery line remained. As he watched, she ran the tips of her fingers over it wonderingly.

"It wasn't like this before," she added.

Snape's mind spun. He'd never seen anything like it. Had she done that? Had he done it, somehow? He didn't know.

"Well," he managed finally, "it's an improvement on the original."

"I didn't mind it before," remarked Granger, twisting her neck to look down at her own shoulder.

"Go to sleep," he said.

To his inordinate relief, she did as she was told, re-buttoning her top and moving away from him and over to the chair. She transfigured it into a chaise longue, switched off the overhead light, and made herself comfortable.

Lying there, watching her in the dim light that seeped through the grimy windows, it took Severus a long time to follow her into sleep.