Chapter 10

She's in the midst of shouting at Harry when Severus marches into the room as if he'd never been gone.

Bags packed, letters of resignation and explanation piled neatly by the door, Harry's Floo call, asking to come through, had interrupted a last look around the flat which had been her home with Severus for seven mostly blissful years.

She's got her back to the door, so when Harry cuts himself short mid-argument, for a confused moment she thinks he might have taken her point after all.

But then his voice rushes over her, and it's all she can do to stay standing right where she is.

"Where are you going?" Severus asks as if he hadn't been the one who'd sent her off to begin with. "We've got work to do."

She turns. He's in the same clothes he'd been wearing last night. Rumpled and unshaven but with eyes more animated than they'd been in ages.

Her mouth is dry, and her heart is pounding.

He's here.

He's home.

But his warnings and his guilt, and most of all his abandonment of her...of them...suffocate her, and she can't pretend they don't.

"I thought you weren't coming back." Her voice wavers only a little.

She'd be fooling herself to think she could hide her feelings from him. Still, she's proud that she's refrained thus far from throwing herself at him, howling out both her rage and her relief.

His eyes flick from the cases stacked by the door to the closed down look of the flat. For a moment he looks uncertain, then remorseful.

"I wasn't going to," he says. "Which would have been a terrible mistake."

She nods. No argument there.

"All this was to bring back to Kelton." It's not a question.

"To you. For us. Yes."

He looks flummoxed.

"You always did have a far better internal compass than I."

He glances down as if remembering something, and moves towards her with that combination of eagerness and hesitation that never fails to warm her.

All at once it feels real. Substantial. He's really here. Home.

And then he reaches out his arm. Not to grasp her hand or gather her into his embrace. No, he's holding out his hand, palm up, fist closed tight.

"What is it?" She's confused.

He releases his fingers. Slowly, as if the item cradled in the palm of his hand is volatile. As indeed it is.

It takes her a moment to recognise it.

At first it just looks like a cracked rock etched with faint lines as if a child had got hold of it and tried to make a talisman of the hauntingly dark stone. But the familiar symbol...the Peverell coat of arms...finally burrows its way through the mass of bewildered thoughts, and she gasps.

What is Severus doing with the Resurrection Stone? And did he...

She looks up at him again, eyes wide.

"If I am not mistaken," he says, his face lit with excitement, "I believe I may have discovered the ingredient we have been missing all along."

**

He explains in a rush.

The tangle of ideas and emotion is so unlike him that she hesitates at first to take it at face value. For as much as Severus has finally opened his heart to her, he's always given over bits of himself only after some inscrutable inner process of vetting and grooming...each piece ultimately worn smooth, a silken thread unsullied by knots or kinks in the fibre.

It is more often she whose thoughts and feelings twist together until she can't possibly distinguish where one ends and the other begins. She's often argued that he limits himself by working so hard to separate his ideas from the energy animating them. Surely, she suggests, well-grounded emotion enhances judgment rather than hampers it. Most of the time, at least.

He would only shrug and nod, telling her she is undoubtedly right, but that these are the only tracking methods he knows and so he does what he can.

But now he is a tangled mess. Energised and bursting with words and ideas that tumble over themselves in a way she's long been familiar with in herself. Never in him, though.

"Severus, slow down," she says, laughing despite herself.

"We have to hurry," he answers her, the look in his eyes wistful as if he'd rather take his time than rush off to the lab.

In all honesty, she'd prefer to throw him into the shower, followed closely by a nap. From the look of it, he'd not slept any more than she last night, which is to say, not at all.

"We don't. Severus, nothing has changed. The victims of the Faux Dementor attackers are still at St Mungo's, and the culprits are still at large."

"No. Hermione." He strokes her hair with one hand and his eyes crinkle despite his exhaustion. "I have. Changed, I mean. And I can't wait. I have to know. I have to make sure it doesn't fade away."

She still doesn't understand what he's trying to hold on to, what he means to do, or why he's so sure this time it will work. Despite calculation after calculation, every ingredient combination they've tried thus far has failed. Not one of them has been successful in bringing back the lost hearts of the victims sitting in the Janus Thickey Ward. None of them has even approximated the potion they believe he, too, needs to be whole again.

"Okay," she murmurs. "We'll go now."

She's forgotten that Harry is there, hanging back by the hearth, pretending not to listen. He's evidently depleted what's left of his restraint, because he's blocking the Floo, eyes fixed on Severus.

"Did you use it?"

Hermione doesn't have to ask what it is.

She's not sure she wants to know the answer.

Severus isn't looking at Harry. He's looking at her, his eyes soft.

"I had no need." Is all he says.

And somehow, that's all he needs to say.

The lab is largely as he left it. Rows of vials line the shelves; cauldrons lie empty on the workbench, ready to be put to work.

Only the sunlight streaming in through the narrow windows marks the passage of time since the last day...the last night...he spent here. No more a weak winter light; instead, the warmer sun of springtime pours in, softening the edges of the long shadows the torches throw against the walls.

Hermione's face is shadowed, too. More so than when she found him only a handful of days ago. More even than when he sent her home last night.

He knows how much he's hurt her, but it's all knotted up with a misery so old that he believed it part of himself.

No more.

They work in silence. They know the base elements of the potion by rote from the repetitive rhythm of attempt and failure.

Here first, the Blind Watcher's eye, to fortify and strengthen. Then five clockwise stirs before adding Primrose and then three drops of Hyacinth nectar just as the potion turns a sickly aubergine.

They anticipate the critical moment as if it were measured by the shifting angle of the sun in the sky. Ten stirs widdershins and the potion lightens to a pale lilac. Four more and it turns ashy grey. And then, in the blink of an eye, pinpricks of light seem to burst from within the cauldron before it fades again to grey.

Hermione looks up from her stirring and pauses.

"Thirty seconds," she whispers.

He nods and removes a white pouch from his pocket. The stone, clean and polished by the pristine cloth, sits awaiting its fate.

"Fifteen seconds," Hermione whispers, and Severus holds his breath.

He walks around the bench so that he's standing next to her and brings the stone to the edge of the cauldron, counting.

"Five, four, three, two, and..."

He drops the stone ever so gently into the belly of the cauldron. It slips beneath the surface with barely a sound.

The potion makes a soft whooshing noise.

They wait.

"Nothing," she whispers.

"Not yet," he says, eyes fixed on the surface of the potion.

"But what..."

He shakes his head and reaches for her hand.

He would have liked to watch the potion, to see it shift from its dead ashy grey as the first strands of silver light stream in long ribbons from the cauldron. But her hand is in his and she's so close he can feel her breathing. Her skin is pale, and her eyes are puffy. Cropped hair lies obediently against her head, and he wishes there were wildly exuberant spirals bursting out instead.

He can't bear to tear his eyes away from her and so he gives up trying.

**

It's no less brilliant now that it's cool, but it's a good deal... mistier. Vibrantly silver, it swirls around inside the cauldron, giving no indication whatsoever as to how it might be bottled. Or administered, for that matter.

It won't respond to efforts to pour it, nor to attempts to siphon it into a flask.

Hermione leans over the mouth of the cauldron, peering inside, and for the first time, he's grateful she's cut her hair.

"Severus," she says.

"Hmm?"

"Do you think it's meant to be inhaled?"

He'll blame it on lack of sleep. Otherwise it would never have taken either of them so long to come up with it.

He peers into the cauldron.

"I'd say that's an excellent hypothesis." He's mesmerised by the swirling ribbons of silver.

"Then perhaps you should try it."

Indeed.

"We haven't calculated a dosage," he says, but he knows he's stalling. According to their Arithmetic calculations, this potion will, at the very least, do no harm.

"Severus," she whispers.

He hears her. He knows.

"All right." It will do no harm. But what will it do?

She barely moves away from the mouth of the cauldron as if she might be able to share the experience with him if she stays close enough.

"Hermione..." He gestures to the basin. "I believe I need to..." He eyes the maw of the cauldron.

"Right." She nods. "I'll be right here."

He can feel her beside him, even when he can't see anything but the silvery tendrils that fold in on each other and then over and around again.

Who knew how brilliant memory would look when infused with heart and soul and will?

It smells like an infusion of Gorse wrapped in the wintergreen scent of Germolene and the flowery fragrance of Hyacynth. Smells like love, he thinks. And it gives him a sense like the summer air rushing through the trees when there are no obligations waiting for you, only forests to explore and warmth filling your lungs with life.

He inhales deeply, relishing the rich scent, feeling it rush through his blood, winding around each cell in his body.

Gradually, his breathing slows.

The ribbons of mist work their way through his veins and into the magical ether that forms the links between heart, mind, and spirit. Narrow fingers find each abandoned tangle of grief and every knotty snarl of frozen memory. Carefully, they nudge here and stroke there until the knots begin to loosen, moving in time with the rhythm of the mist.

On and on they flow. Vibrant and strong, the light they shed illumines hidden corners and then leaves them, still shadowed, but with an echo of shape to the darkness.

With a delicate touch, they weave gossamer webs between ragged strands of hope and loss and memory, and build bridges where once only chasms had stood.

The potion does its work , running through his blood, flowing through his body. Repairing. Reviving.

Nourishing.

He opens his eyes.

The room seems full, even though the figures filling it are translucent. They radiate one from the other in spiral formation, each one a link in a chain twisting around itself as sinuously as the ribbons of smoke and air overflowing from the cauldron.

But they aren't emerging from the potion; they pour from his skin to take their places in a circle around him.

There, in the centre, stands his mother. Her eyes as shadowed as they ever were, but when she looks at him, they are soft, and he sighs with relief he hadn't known he'd needed. And just beyond, his father, as greasy as ever, arms crossed as if he'd been dragged to the party against his will. Severus suppresses a smile. He recognises that expression from the one in his own mirror and for once feels more compassion than resentment towards his father for his mulishness.

He hadn't ever considered how many there are...the multitude of others who have done so much more than merely brush against him over his more than forty years of life. Muggles and wizards alike, the silvery glow around each showing him more clearly than words that each of these people has meant something to him.

He presses his hand to his chest and fills his lungs with air. Despite their insubstantiality, he's sure the souls filling the room rustle as they drift closer to him. There's a cluster of children to his left, and right behind them, a teacher, Mr Maples...his name had been Maples...who had found Severus clever and worth an extra nod and word of encouragement. The man catches his eye, and, startled, Severus smiles at him, hoping the depth of his gratitude is evident from the expression on his face.

He closes his eyes for a moment, remembering, and when he opens them again, she's right there.

Lily, hovering at the edge of the work bench, watching him.

She looks just as she had when he'd spotted her leaving Hogwarts for the last time. Of course that day she hadn't smiled at him as she does now...not with an exuberant grin bursting with youth and innocence, but a peaceful one whose edges are tinged with absolution.

Severus blinks, and Lily's face melts, until it becomes Dumbledore's, his blue eyes warm and appreciative the way they had so often been when the old wizard had watched over Potter, and then in the space of a heartbeat, it morphs into his own. It's the face he sees every day in the glass, but for the unfamiliar expression.

He brushes away the water blurring his vision to look more closely before he notices the figure standing beside him.

He wishes someone had told him that forgiveness tastes of salt and the sea, its colour the deep auburn of Hermione's hair saturated in sunlight.

~~**~~

"How do you feel?" she asks once she's sure his eyes are on her and not trained on a scene she is too far away to share.

He pauses, as if he can't find words. So she just steps closer and brushes her fingertips across his damp cheeks before breathing a kiss onto his lips. It's just the whisper of a touch, but like a spark bursting into flame, he deepens the kiss, cradling the back of her head and drawing her closer and closer.

There's something different in how he's touching her now, less desperate and more insistent. She can hardly think beyond the immediacy of him, right here, showing her something there might never be words enough to tell.

"Better, then?" she murmurs when they pause for air.

"So much more than better," he replies. There's a gleam in his eye, and she shivers in anticipation.

"What was it like?"

He shakes his head. "I can't..." His eyes are devouring her, and she can hardly breathe. "It's like discovering that everything you'd thought you lost has been right here all along."

He's looking at her as if she is what had been lost, when really, she thinks, it's been him from the start. Lost long before he was taken, she admits at last. Lost to his own history and the yawning maw of regret and grief he'd refused to release.

"You're found," she says, as much to herself as to him.

And all at once, in the wake of her relief, waves of fear and hurt and rage accumulated over weeks and months, and even years come barrelling in, flooding her with roiling heat and an ocean of tears.

~~**~~