Margins

A/N: My thanks, as always, to my bevy of beautiful alpha- and beta-readers. This chapter owes much to the enthusiasm and careful reading of Anastasia, Annie Talbot, Lady Karelia, Machshefa, Melenka, Mundungus, and Demetrios's fan club on LJ. I am particularly indebted to Machshefa's gentle psych!betaing, Melenka's keen eye for the details and absurdity of history, and RichardGloucester's providing the inscription on the Elizabethan medal.

19: Margins

She disappeared through the kitchen; Mimi padded after her, still tracking the bowl with her luminous eyes.

Very softly, "Goodnight, Doctor Granger."

-----

Hermione shut her door with her foot and leaned back against it, closing her eyes.

What a day.

She stood there for a moment, feeling a bit calmer for being alone.

"Meee?"

She opened one eye and looked down at Mimi, who was perched on her hind legs, her front paws hovering in the air as she craned her neck toward the bowl.

"Silly thing," Hermione chided her softly. "It's chocolate, and some people think that's not good for kittens..."

"Meee," Mimi countered.

"Ever the optimist." She chuckled.

Mimi stretched a paw toward the bowl. "Meee!"

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "That's not terribly persuasive..." Realizing she sounded a bit like Professor Snape, she smiled ruefully and went to sit on the bed.

She would think about him later.

She had a bit of a negotiation with Mimi regarding the ownership of the ice cream and achieved détente by wiggling her stockinged toes to distract the determined ball of black.

As Mimi clamped teeth and claws onto her foot, which was more amusing than painful, Hermione focused on enjoying the heady counterpoint between brandy and chocolate.

The sound of her spoon in the empty bowl brought Mimi's head up from behind her toes, looking so hopeful that Hermione couldn't help but laugh. "All right, then. Give me a moment to..."

Mimi clambered eagerly over the squashy duvet, and Hermione blocked her with an arm.

"Just a moment, greedy thing..." She Transfigured the melted ice cream into vanilla and set the bowl down on the floor. "There."

Mimi leapt down and her face disappeared into the bowl, looking so much like she was using a Pensieve that Hermione chuckled despite the heavy feeling in her heart. She swirled the last bit of brandy in the snifter and closed her eyes as her own thoughts began to drift to the surface of her mind.

Ron... Her heart gave a pang, but it wasn't as sharp as she'd feared – more that of an old ache that had at last been given a chance to start healing. Poor Ron...

She took a sip of brandy and leaned her head back against the wall. Must do something about getting a real bed one of these days... she thought idly, mashing her pillows into better position with her elbows. Worry about that later.

For a while, she focused only on her breathing, which seemed to flow in time with the rhythm of a swirling cloak in the long-ago Potions classroom.

She shifted on the bed. It was disgraceful, she told herself firmly, to fantasize about Professor Snape under the circumstances.

Ron...

She knew she'd miss him, and the prospect of an indefinite period without his steady companionship was sinking in heavily despite her certainty that she'd done right by them both, but...

His voice.

... but somehow all she could see was Professor Snape's eyes, snapping and vital; all she could hear was his voice, low and dangerous in the classroom; all she could feel, his hands in her hair, his breath on her skin, his touch, his...

Stop it.

She focused on her breathing again.

But...

"Meee." A soft thump as Mimi hopped onto the bed and curled into a ball at her hip.

She set the empty snifter on the floor next to the bed and curled around the kitten, her hand seeking the soft fur behind Mimi's ear.

Mimi's purr deepened.

However comforting it was to cuddle a kitten after a break-up, Mimi's purr wasn't at all the reason for the softly knowing smile that played on Hermione's lips as she drifted toward sleep.

Her smile was as old as time. Athena, could she have seen it, would have recognized it instantly.

---

From the kitchen, Severus heard the bowl touch the floor and, a few minutes later, the snifter.

A new box of cereal stood open on the table, a few bits of cereal having spelled variations on "Iz for kitteh? Bole myn? Want! Waaaannnnt!" then "Toez! Kil!" then "Ooo" then, briefly, "Handz" and "Seepy" before "Prrrrzzzz."

He'd told himself he was guarding her, but from what, he couldn't have said.

When he realized the kitten was fully asleep, he swept the cereal into his hand and, pouring a brandy for himself, he went into the living room.

He stretched out in the armchair by the window, crossed his ankles, and leaned his head back on the tufted leather.

She'd handled the Weasley boy rather well, all things considered – especially given his own unwelcome presence... and then the thought came unbidden that had he been absent she'd have played it no other way.

He lifted the brandy and inhaled, enjoying its scent... sharp, smooth, smoky... he wondered how it would combine with the taste of her...

He swallowed and shifted in the chair, his thumb playing along the thin edge of the snifter, enjoying the round smooth weight of it in his palm, testing its size and shape against his memory of her naked breasts as she held the kitten...

Mmm. Indeed.

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, and he closed his eyes, swirling the brandy deliberately, imagining the feel of her skin in the motion of liquid in crystal, her personality, her mind, her honesty contained within...

We require the anti-venin.

He blinked, and, with his eyes open, the snifter was just a snifter once more.

His hand felt empty.

---

"'Imagine me and you... I do'... Mmhmm... first, a chart..."

From somewhere near the back corner of the Archive, an oddly muted, slightly twangy guitar, accompanied by the shelves in an oddly bouncy drumbeat.

Demetrios gestured, and an ancient parchment naval chart the size of Speakers' Corner appeared on the magically expanded floor.

"Now for some water..."

An enormous wave broke from the center of the chart, rose halfway to the ceiling, and crashed into the rocky coast, sending spray in every direction.

"Oh, dear... a tad enthusiastic of me..." Demetrios laughed as the drumbeats were subsumed by syncopated splashing. "Mmhm... 'Ease my mind'... "

The water settled to lap curiously at the blank parchment margins.

"Hm... not quite accurate... 'Imagine how the world could be...'" He gestured, and a banner unfurled in the blank space, reading "Heyre be Monstyrs."

"Oh, my word, yes; so much more historical..." He clasped his hands together and surveyed the results of his labors: a to-scale replica of the English Channel over which hovered dozens of miniature galleons and several ships flying the cross of St. George.

A small figure on the English flagship was waving frantically.

"Mmmm?" Demetrios leaned closer to the ship, cupping his ear.

"Thou dast, o freakish spectre, o'erlarge? This battle was settled lo, these ages past!" came a tiny voice from the aft deck.

"Of course I dare, my little sir... I thought perhaps you might enjoy joining the refrain."

"Sing? In this dread battle?"

At Demetrios's placid nod, the figure grumbled, "As our Queen commands."

Chuckling quietly, Demetrios bobbed with anticipation. "Excellent..." He gestured, and the miniature Navy Royal scattered to positions of historical significance on several nearby shelves, one of which gave an emphatic bounce to mark the beginning of the musical bridge.

"I say," the small voice protested as the flagship teetered precariously on its keel on an overstuffed file box, "this perch be most unnatural!"

Demetrios hummed distractedly. "Mmm? Do ready your fleet, my little lord. Your entrance is coming..."

"¡Válganos Diós!" came a wail from one of the galleons as they took position in the water.

"Relax, Señor... this was all over a long time ago, and it can't hurt you if you're not real, you know..."

If there was further protest from the Spaniards, Demetrios ignored it, turning his face toward the ceiling. "Now... once without the storm, and once with, I think..." He lazily gestured several stormclouds onto the horizon. "Oh, yes... 'So happy together...'"

"Have you no sense of irony, sirrah?" came the slightly tinny, miniature voice of Sir Francis Drake.

Demetrios laughed. "Merely curiosity, my lord... 'Baby, the skies'll be blue...'"

Bobbing contentedly, Demetrios watched with rapt attention as the Spanish Armada sailed with clear skies and favorable winds, avoiding the English fire-ships and skirting the blank spaces at the edges of the chart.

No sooner had the fleet made open parchment than the surface rippled alarmingly. The "Monstyrs" banner changed to read, "Told thee."

The Kraken arose from the parchment's depths and swallowed the entire fleet.

From atop the collected works of Gilbert and Sullivan, Elizabeth's Navy lifted its collective voice: "Ba ba ba ba!"

"Oh, dear... mmm... 'No matter how they toss the dice...'"

Demetrios spotted a flash of pink near the shore and swooped in for a closer look.

---

However daft the business with the coin sounded, Severus found himself as committed as he knew the unruly witch to be to the... plan? A gamble was hardly a plan.

We need the anti-venin, and I should be the one to brew it.

He blinked again, but he knew it was true.

There was no reason that the addition of one more crying First Year to the vast annals of his teaching years should have awakened in him a kind of resolve bordering on... well, not faith, exactly. More like conviction.

He reviewed the components of the not-quite plan.

Item: The Coin. A vestigial artifact of a fickle, and, of course, entirely mythological goddess (Caveat: the existence of the coin did not prove that of Athena, about which Demetrios could be no more sure than he...). Proven to work because it had already done.

He frowned. That sort of proof did not satisfy...

Item: The Anti-venin. More accurately, a theory regarding transporting the essence of a potion backward in time... based on an experiment gone explosively awry a dim century before.

He batted aside a Nobel Prize or two and kept thinking.

Conundrum: Possession. The intentional possession of a child – for what was her intention but possession? – ignoring that both body and soul were technically Hermione's to do with as she saw fit. No, not soul; spirit. Much more comfortable.... Still. A skidge too close to the Imperius Curse for his liking.

He scowled, a scowl etched deeply into his spirit through long practice.

The whole thing was daft. Worse than daft.

It was mad.

It should be criminal – but the young Miss Granger would, presumably, be safe in her older spirit's hands.

It should be dangerous – but he was already dead, a hair's breadth from a permanent choice; what did he have to lose?

Her.

The scent of her hair filled his mind, and, briefly, he lost himself in the memory.

For her Amortentia to have pointed to him since the night he'd delivered the sword...

The implications were terrifying.

He summoned his mental discipline and forced himself to continue his examination of the problem.

It should be... it should be what?

It didn't matter. It couldn't work.

Could it?

If it did, or could, or might, he stood to gain...

Her.

The coin was the same on both sides.

Too damned ambiguous. Whether he meant Hermione or Athena's wisdom, he couldn't say.

He mentally added Demetrios to the list and downed the rest of his brandy in a single swallow.

He settled more deeply in the chair.

In order to try, they'd need the potion; he'd be the one to brew it, and for that, he'd need ingredients and a lab.

He folded his hands in his lap and absently twisted a small, tarnished silver ring around his little finger.

The ring was terribly worn, but it still bore a faint tracery of the initials E.J.P.

His mother's middle name had been "Joy."

That irony had never ceased to sting.

He'd kept it in his pocket throughout his short life; when it had ended up on his pinky, he didn't know. Sometime after his death, he supposed...

He snorted, clenching his jaw.

Mad, the lot of them.

But his fingers continued toying with the ring, smoothing it around his finger, and slowly, his jaw relaxed.

They were all mad. Himself included.

This didn't bother him nearly as much as it should have.

Which was unsettling.

---

As Demetrios watched, an impossibly small Spanish sailor swam for shore, a single rose clamped in his teeth a tiny beacon of pink in the gathering storm.

A lone archer arose atop a cliff and notched an arrow, aiming at the spot of pink on the darkening water.

Demetrios spotted the archer and shook his head. "Oh, dear. Mmmm. Perhaps a different locale..." He tilted his head. "Scotland, I think." He fluttered his ghostly fingers.

The shelves stopped bobbing, drawing themselves upwards as the coastline reshaped itself tectonically.

"Oh, islands, of course! How silly of me..."

Demetrios's afterthought slammed the Orkneys into the shelves containing the "City-states: Italian" collection, toppling a box marked "Pisa" onto a fragile-looking cloth tagged, "Turino."

"Oh, dear." Demetrios righted Pisa.

As the Spanish Armada popped to the surface near Aberdeen, the disappointed Kraken sank sullenly back into the blank parchment. The disconsolate banner changed to read, "Wyn somme, lose somme."

"Let's take it from the top."

As the Archive provided the opening chords, Sir Francis Drake peered down over the rail of his flagship. "The breath of God sings most mysteriously."

"Once more, with feeling, Francis..."

---

She'd cried in his classroom.

He found that strangely... strangely what?

Comforting.

And he found that profoundly problematic.

What had she seen?

He raised his hand toward the window.

His troubled outline melting against the darkness; his invisible ring seeming to glint in the streetlight.

He exhaled carefully, dropping his hands to his lap.

It couldn't work.

He sat twisting his ring in Hermione's living room and waited for morning.

---

Margin Notes:

12. "The breath of God" – from the medal Elizabeth I had minted after the defeat of the Armada. The inscription translates to, God breathed, and they were scattered. The blackbird seems, temporarily, to be a seagull.

~ A.