Ten: In which links are forged

Ten: In which links are forged

Several weeks of experiment had brought them to the point where they knew exactly how to incorporate Severus' potion into the folding, twisting and refolding of the metal as it was shaped; they knew precisely the wording and tonality of the spells they needed to employ; they knew when silence would be essential, and when one voice or a blending of voices and powers would be required. The forge was ready. Coal was stockpiled; herbs and other substances stood ready in jars and boxes waiting to be added to the flames; the floor was swept; the piles of scrap from their earlier, unsuccessful attempts had been taken out. The new iron lay waiting, simple and bare, like an unwritten page, with coils of gleaming gold, silver and copper next to it, waiting to be bound in, bent into runes at the heart of every link. Flasks of the potion gleamed iridescent in the shadows.

Hermione, Severus and the smith sat outside taking the air while they had the chance. Hermione was stretched out on her stomach, her chin on her arms, watching an intrepid beetle trundle through the grass forest. Her feet swung to and fro above her. The men sat on the bench as usual, Severus with his head back and eyes apparently closed, though now and then the sun caught a glint from under his lashes as he followed the tick-tock sway of Hermione's trainers. Smith seemed absorbed in a study of the scuffed ground between his toes. None of them felt a need to break the silence.

Wood pigeons cooed somewhere nearby.

The forge fires crackled.

Smith went to tend them, then resumed his position as if he had never moved.

Severus' chest rose and fell beneath his folded arms.

Tick-tock went Hermione's shoes. Tick...

The roar of an engine made them all look up. Elland's Range Rover swept through the gateway, ushered in by the Aurors who stood permanent guard.

The car drew to a halt on the verge, and Elland stepped down. In grey Armani, a silk tie and highly-polished shoes, he presented an image of understated elegance, but with every uneven pace he took towards the three now standing at the forge doorway, he changed. By the seventh step, they were watching not Elland the prosperous entrepreneur, but Wayland, smith to the gods, bulking large and bare-chested, clad in leather breeches and boots, his energy and power undiminished by the twisted leg that seemed like to buckle under him. It was a surprise that there was no clap of thunder when he and Smith clasped forearms.

"Brother," said Smith.

"This will be a work worthy of our efforts," Wayland replied. He turned to regard Hermione and Severus. "Are they fit?" he asked.

"They are."

"You know what is in store for you?" Elland demanded. "Are you ready?"

Severus gave a tight jerk of his head. Hermione looked from Elland to Smith and back again.

"I'm not ready," she said. "I don't think I ever could be ready for this. But I am committed to it."

A touch on her arm detained her at the threshold. For the first time in weeks, she looked up at Severus unguardedly. Since their evening together, she had attempted to behave as though nothing had happened, but she was no actress, and he knew she was holding back. He had withdrawn in response, and though they had continued with their work, their easy complicity had faded fast. For her part, it had made Hermione profoundly unhappy, but she was steadfast in her refusal to give in to Aphrodite's whims, however painful she found it. Seeing the renewed bitterness of the lines etched into his face, she wondered for the first time whether she had, in protecting herself, been unfair to him. He was not a man who made friends easily, after all.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"No. I never have been – not for anything." His mouth twisted. "But why change the habits of a lifetime?"

"Even the bad habits?"

"What do you mean, Granger?"

They were interrupted by the whoosh of the bellows. Hermione held out her hand. "Well, here goes." He took her arm in a warrior's handshake. "Here goes," he agreed.

*

Here went, indeed. It was the work of gods, tireless and unending. Wayland and the Smith laboured relentlessly, eyes and teeth flashing in the hot firelight, sweaty skin glistening like copper and bronze. The two mortals kept up as best they could. After three days, Hermione wondered whether this undertaking would kill her. After seven, she was sure it would.

She lay on the pallet, clawing her way back from sleep, the abstract patterns of light and dark gradually resolving into the figures of the smiths at work. The iron screamed a white hot glare, and she was grateful when something black intervened before her eyes.

A hand appeared in front of her face, holding a small phial.

"Here you are, Granger – you'll be needing this." Severus' voice was rough with exhaustion and overuse. He shook the phial a little to draw her attention.

"You've cut your hand again," she mumbled, attempting to sit up. He hauled her upright by the arm, collapsing to sit down next to her.

She took the phial and downed the contents. The potion flowed cool and invigorating down her throat, bringing her to full wakefulness. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, then accepted the flask of water he held out.

"If you give me a minute, I'll find that pot of salve."

"Don't bother – it's just a scratch."

"It's considerably more than that, and must hurt like blazes. You'll use the salve, or ..."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll make sure the gangrene fairy pays a visit. How long have I been asleep?"

"What?" His eyes were closing. "About six hours. There's some food somewhere, I think."

Hermione scooted over to allow him to topple onto the pillow, asleep before he made contact. She smeared his unresisting hand with ointment, then found herself some bread and cheese. She had, she knew, only a few minutes before she was needed. A few minutes in which she floated in a kind of bubble, isolated by the constant noise of the work, the bellows, the fire ... A few minutes during which she allowed herself to study Severus' sleeping face. So sad, she thought, that even now he looked guarded and closed off. And it was her fault. For a couple of hours one evening, he had been her friend, until she'd panicked and thrown it back at him.

"Eat up, lass, we need you now!" said Smith from somewhere far away.

She looked at the almost-untouched sandwich and put it back on the plate, which she placed where Severus could reach it easily when he woke. She got up stiffly. Time to add her own blend of magic and expertise to the link being forged.

*

Old habits die hard. Even exhaustion could not keep Severus from sleeping nervously and waking easily. He jumped from uneasy dreams roiling in darkness to a vision of chthonian toil backlit by the furnace, voices whispering in the black transforming into rhythmic hammer blows. Above all was the chant of Hermione's voice as she implanted another layer of protection Charms alongside the precious ensorcelled wires that would be stretched and twisted into an ideography of power to lie unseen, embedded in the magic he himself had already forged into the iron in the potion he had created. Human magic, created from intellect and passion and toil, blended with the gods' power to protect the castle for another thousand years.

Each time he woke, the thought of what they were doing took Severus like a blow to the heart. Until this point, his mistakes and achievements had seemed important, and both recognition and blame had mattered to him. It all seemed less significant now. In a hundred years, the war would be a short chapter in the history of wizarding Britain. In two hundred, nobody but a few scholars would remember who had mended the walls and made the new gates. But even when Hermione and he were long dead, their magic would still be coursing like blood, alive, a benediction.

He sat up and scrubbed at his face. Poetry in a hell-hole. Bad poetry in a hell-hole. He was going loopy. Granger's sandwich, one small bite missing, sent him a siren song. Ravenous, he devoured it. He groaned his way to his feet, heading for the simple comfort of a pee.

Granger looked up and smiled at him through her chanting.

*

Hermione would never remember finishing the last chain link.

Severus would never forget.

She was on autopilot by then, flirting with physical and magical exhaustion, pouring everything she had into the work. Had he not known that he was doing the same, Severus would have been furious with the smiths for letting her. But he knew it was not a case of 'letting' or otherwise. She gave of herself freely, as he did, for the love of the work and of the school and of ... there were other motivations there, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to examine them. She could have walked away at any time. Nobody held her prisoner. Nobody but her own stubborn will.

He was standing ready when the last charm was laid, but in his own fog of exhaustion not sufficiently alert to prevent what happened.

Her tongs and pliers slipped from her fingers as she exhaled the last syllable of the Charm. Smith flicked the tools away, but Hermione swayed, and her hand came down on the glowing metal. When she snatched it away, twists of wire clung to her skin, hissing and smoking. Severus caught her as she staggered back, but she clutched at his arm and the metal burnt into his flesh too. He remembered both of them screaming. He remembered Elland seizing his arm and plunging it into icy water while Smith dealt with Hermione's injury. He remembered cool wine – the wine Smith had given them before – running past his lips and over his tongue.

And then he remembered waking on the pallet, stinking and sweaty, with a faceful of sleeping Hermione's filthy hair, before drifting off again.

When they both surfaced, it was plain they were branded for life. Hermione's palm showed a pattern of silver scars, well-healed and flexible. Severus' flesh bore runes for protection, scrawled haphazardly across the mark on the inside of his left forearm, reminding him of nothing so much as his own jagged scribble on a poor essay: "Complete rubbish – try again."

*

From the shadows, unseen by all, a pair of pensive sapphire eyes observed.

*

Hermione pulled her head out of the bucket of cold water.

"Merlin! That feels good!" she said, sitting back on her heels. "You should try it." She gathered her pony tail in her hands and squeezed the excess water out.

"You resemble an Old English Sheepdog that's just come out of a river, Granger. I'd hate to put you to shame by ending up looking like a wet Borzoi."

She laughed.

"You don't have the right profile for it. Pass the sandwiches."

Since the primary magical content of the gates was in the panels, the struts and bindings which would fix them together, while still complex enough, at least allowed a little time to catch one's breath. Hermione and Severus chose by mutual and unspoken accord to remain silent on the topic of their accident. The presence of the scars, and their significance, needed no discussion – or at least not for now. The moment was best dealt with in the traditional English manner by avoiding the issue altogether.

"Horrible sandwiches, Granger," he said, guzzling another one.

"Everything is stale. Everything. I've lost track of how long we've been in here, but all the freshness charms are fading." She gingerly raised the top of her sandwich and peered inside. "Well, if this doesn't help us develop a healthy immune system, nothing will. Good job I'm famished."

"Only one more day, Smith says."

"Does it feel like the end of term to you? You know – when there's a whole summer ahead, full of possibilities and no timetable to follow?"

He nodded, his eyes creasing.

"I really, really need a bath."

"Yes, Granger, you really, really do."

"Good job you smell even worse, then, or I'd have to be embarrassed."

*

McGonagall was ready to pounce when they finally emerged, blinking, into the daylight. Elland gave her no chance to waylay them, instead bundling them almost bodily into his car with a shout of "See you on Monday!" before they roared off, leaving the Headmistress to spit out a faceful of dust. Severus glanced back and caught sight of her livid face. Payment would undoubtedly be extracted later. He shrugged.

"Where are we going?" he enquired mildly.

"White Horse Inn, Woolstone," Elland replied. "I think we could all do with a decent pint."

"Drop me off here, would you? I've something I have to see to."

Hermione looked out of the window so he wouldn't see her disappointment.

"I'll meet you there in a couple of hours," he added. Elland stopped the Range Rover, and Severus climbed out onto the lonely verge. Nothing more than a bee nosing at the heather animated the landscape. He raised a hand to them and Disapparated.

He really had no very accurate idea how long he had been absent from Aphrodite's side, though he had warned her that the work could take some time, and she no doubt had other fish to fry, but it troubled him that her temple was deserted when he got there. Oh, the fattest and laziest of the swans waddled over to beg for a titbit and be enchanted by the novelty of an elderly cheese sandwich, but other than that, not a creature was to be seen. Severus wondered whether it was at long last his turn to feel the goddess' displeasure. Intending without much hope of success to avert some of it, he conjured a parchment and quill and wrote a brief note. His prose was at the gentlest of times notable chiefly for its bluntness, so he gathered a posy of flowers and put them into a vase, which he used to weight the paper against the breeze. He looked around. Nothing was there that drew him to linger, so he Disapparated once again, heading for his own bathroom, some plain soap and – experiencing a sudden lightness of spirit – Ian Dury and the Blockheads at Herculean volume.

Two tanksful of hot water, three bars of soap and a whole bottle of shampoo later, he finally felt clean. He estimated by the length of the beard he scraped off his face that they had been shut in the smithy for a good month – no wonder McGonagall had looked furious. Amazing how the time flies when you're having fun, he thought wryly as he wiped the last traces of foam from round his ears. He leaned towards the mirror. Strange to see his features emerge from all the grime and hair: he looked younger, despite the dark circles under his eyes.

A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it

Going on 40 - no electric shocks

rapped Ian Dury from downstairs.

He wrapped a towel firmly round his waist, because he never felt comfortable about the idea of his gran seeing him naked, and crossed the hall to his bedroom. He turned back at the doorway and held up his arm to the portrait. "Look, Gran – I got a new scar! What do you think?" he said.

*

Hermione was sitting at a table in the pub garden when Severus strolled up. She, too, looked freshly washed and pretty in jeans and a flowery blouse.

"You were quick," he said, glancing at his watch.

"Well, I was travelling in a godmobile," she answered.

He took the place opposite her and leaned his arms on the weathered wood.

"Nice place," he commented.

"Mmmmm." She picked at some lichen. "Severus, I –"

Smith plonked four pints of bitter down in front of them and inserted himself next to Hermione. Elland took the remaining seat as he dropped a selection of crisps and peanuts onto the middle of the table. They all raised their glasses.

"What shall we drink to?" asked Elland.

"To teamwork," suggested Smith.

"To surviving it," added Severus.

"Let's just drink, shall we?" said Hermione. She took a long, long pull at her beer and put the glass back down with a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God!" she said devoutly.

"You're welcome," replied both of them. And once she'd started laughing, she found it very hard to stop.

They were deep into a game of cribbage when the peace of the summer evening was broken by the roar of motorbikes. Severus scowled as a posse of Harleys drew into the pub car park. The riders dismounted and strolled proprietorially into the garden, stripping off helmets, gauntlets and leather jackets as they came. The scowl darkened as two of the newcomers made straight for their table and squashed in next to Hermione and Severus himself. He laid down his cards and made sure he could get to his wand in its concealed holster. Then he realised that Hermione looked anything but perturbed. In fact she was grinning at the great, hairy goon next to her and actually asking after his health.

"This is Severus," she said, gesturing with her hand of cards. "He and I have been working together. Cheer up, Severus! These are friends. This –," she elbowed the bearded oik, "– is Nobby. That's Haggis next to you, and over there are Gizmo, Hangdog, Pike and Julian."

"Julian?"

"He hasn't got a proper name yet," said Haggis. "And at this rate, he's going to be stuck with 'Julian' for the rest of his life. He's a bit hopeless, really, but what can you expect from someone who left school at fifteen to be a bricklayer? We've been trying to get him to raise his sights a bit."

"And what do you do?" enquired Severus of the tattooed Leviathan.

"I'm a pastry chef," said Haggis proudly.

"Yeah, he makes a mean chocolate eclair," said Nobby. "I run a software business. What about you, Severus?"

"I ... was ... a teacher. Now I'm a sort of ... security consultant, I suppose."

"Is that what Hermione's been helping you guys with?" said the one Hermione had pointed out as Hangdog, leaning over Nobby's shoulder to offer a meaty paw. "Cool. You want to have a drive, Hermione? I brought your helmet."

"Maybe tomorrow, okay? I've already had too much beer, and I'm knackered."

"You'll be fit tomorrow, though? We thought we'd have a sorta solstice party, seeing as you missed the real one."

"Wasn't the same without you guys," said Nobby wistfully.

"What about you, Severus?" Haggis boomed. "You got any plans?"

"Granger, I had no idea," said Severus, covering his astonishment, "that you kept such ... enlightened ... company."

"Hermione here is in a state of major budditude with the chapter," said Pike. He offered his spliff to Severus and was unoffended to have it turned down. "She is beyond the outer reaches of the uber-cool."

"You'd never guess that Pike's the youngest Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature there's ever been at Oxford, would you?" giggled Hermione.

"It certainly doesn't show," he agreed drily.

"Well, Severus? Do you have any plans?" Smith asked him. There was more weight to the words than their meaning warranted, he felt.

"Not that I'm aware of," said Severus, sidestepping the challenge.

"Good – then it's your round."

Gods: 1 – Slytherins: 0

*

Severus woke because someone was kicking the sole of his foot. Repeatedly. He deduced from this that the someone was an irritating person and withdrew his foot. Toe-prodding resumed when the irritating person located his ribs.

"Go away, Granger," he growled.

"I'm going for a walk. Do you want to come?" She sounded perky. Yes, definitely an irritating person.

"What time is it?"

"Sunday."

"You interrupt the first decent night's sleep I've had since nineteen seventy-nine and you can't even tell me the time?"

She waited.

He sat bolt upright in what seemed to be a heap of furs. "What happened to Saturday?"

"It'll dribble back into your consciousness in a while. So – are you coming for a walk?"

Severus started to throw back the covers, realised he was naked, and burrowed back under, pretending he hadn't heard the snigger.

"I'll wait outside, then, shall I?" She stepped over the snoring forms of Haggis and Pike and flung the door open, letting in a truly offensive amount of morning sunlight.

She didn't seem to mind that he kept her waiting for a long time. He found her propped against the trunk of a horse chestnut, a book perched on her knees and a large sun-hat cast onto the grass by her feet. Slightly scruffy jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt that she had obviously pilfered from one of the lads suited her well. The air around was full of birdsong, and though it was sunny, there was a hint of damp chill that suggested rain was on the way. Severus found the contrast with the hot breeze and silence of Aphrodite's palace rather pleasing. His note and posy had been removed, so he had left another short letter and departed without further ado. Hermione shrank her book, stuffed it into her back pocket, and crammed her hat onto her head.

"Hi," she said. "Come on, then."

They didn't speak again until they were seated on the hillside below the White Horse. Approaching rain clouds scudding in from the south had chased away the sightseers, so that all the company they had was that of a few bees working the flowers of a wild rose entwined with a fence further down. Hermione sat a short distance away, her arms wrapped round her drawn-up knees, her face visible only when the wind flapped the brim of her hat. Severus leaned back on his elbows to admire the view, then plucked a stem of grass and lay down to chew it contemplatively while he stared at the clouds.

"It's been a strange year," she said suddenly.

He grunted.

"I don't think I'm going to pass my advanced studies programme. I haven't even spoken to Vector since Christmas, and Flitwick gave up on me around March."

"Do you mind?" He was genuinely curious.

"Oddly, no." She sighed. "I always used to think passing exams was the best way of showing I was a proper witch, you know? A proper anything, for that matter – I remember how disappointed Mum was when I got a B on something once when I was nine."

Severus recalled the desperate little girl sitting next to Potter, itching to prove she was top of the class before class even started.

"And now?"

"I've made more mistakes in my work this year than I ever thought possible. I've had to go back and re-do everything I've started. I've worked my socks off and still barely scratched the surface of my discipline. I've discovered I've got to use so much more than just my brain to get where I want to."

"And?"

She skewed round to look at him cloud-watching.

"And I love it."

"A vocation is a thing of passion, Granger."

She hesitated then rushed forward.

"I've seen that in you, too, these last weeks," she said tentatively. "In the work, I mean."

"What does that cloud remind you of?" he said, pointing.

"Your big nose, avoidance-boy."

"Aren't you supposed to show a certain degree of respect and awe towards a former teacher?"

"You're not in that category any more. Not for a long time. Particularly not after that rendition of 'Stairway to Heaven' yesterday."

"You were asleep."

"Through that?"

They fell silent again. The first few drops of rain fell. A petal dropped from the dog-rose.

"Do you aim to carry on working with Smith?" Severus asked at last.

"If I've met his standards. If he'll have me. This was never intended to be a permanent arrangement." The rain began to fall faster. Hermione raised her face to it, the drops making her eyelashes flutter.

"We're getting cold and wet, Granger."

"Call yourself a Yorkshireman?"

"I'm not a bloody penguin, though."

"Sissy."

"Harridan."

They slithered off down the grassy slope. A slender hand plucked a blossom of the English dog-rose and raised it to bask in the goddess' warm breath.

*

McGonagall had clearly been working on her tirade for weeks, embroidering it with each passing day that they had been locked in the forge behind impenetrable wards. Severus was impressed with her stamina as she reeled off complaint upon reproach, castigating them for their shortcomings, the lack of information, the state they had been in when they finally emerged, and, as though it were adding insult to injury, that they returned fresh as daisies after a mere weekend away. After a while, he noticed that she was repeating herself and relying more on rhythm than content to provide variety. Such a Gryffindor, using all the weapons in the first attack, with nothing left to fall back on. Any Slytherin worth the name, even Voldemort after his ego outgrew his wit, would have had a far juicier set of insults to draw upon. And Severus, long accustomed to tuning out other people's ranting, paid it little mind. Hermione was wincing from time to time, though, and clearly wanting to be out of the target area. Smith, of course, let it all wash over him. He waited until Minerva ran out of steam, turned on the bluff charm, patted her on the bottom and told her to run along as they had work to be getting on with. Severus knew he would forever prize the memory of her expression, caught between schoolgirl giggle and outraged Vestal. In fact, he decided, he was going to stick that one in his Pensieve collection as soon as he got home.

Two weeks, the smith said. Two more weeks of hard slog, and the gates would be ready. But they had to get started.

Each wing of the gate would bear two panels, each panel being a composite of seven single layers of swirling abstract design, which would be sandwiched together, held nine-thirteenths of an inch apart by the struts containing Severus' potion and Hermione's charmed runes, and set into a deep frame containing blocks of granite hewn from the bedrock beneath the castle. All the binding, welding and riveting required concentration, muscle power, a mastery of yet more complex charms and incantations, and some damn fine ale in the late evening when they shut the forge doors against the increasing thrum of magic from within. The gates were huge, and finally Hermione understood why the forge had needed to be such a great barn of a building. She supposed they would have to knock down the walls to get them out.

Two weeks and three days later, Severus and Hermione together completed the last weld.

"Well, that's it, then," she said. She stood and looked down at the panel she was standing on. "I hope nobody minds the Jackson Pollock aesthetic." Then she burst into tears. "Oh shit."

Severus handed her a dirty rag to wipe her eyes with.

"The only solution is to start thinking about the next project, Granger," he said. "Give me a couple of hours, and I'll meet you at the pub to brainstorm. Can I have my rag back, please?"

Severus left her to Smith's plain comfort and went to pay his now customarily brief visit to Aphrodite's isle. He left another note on the table, fed the swan its sandwich and Apparated home to wash and tell his Gran they had finished. Honestly, sometimes he could swear she listened to him. Aphrodite's continued absence made him more nervous with every passing day. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Gran always looked less disapproving, though, when he talked about Granger, so he hurried to get changed. Hideous retribution would catch up with him in her own sweet time, whether he enjoyed himself or sat and fretted with a tin hat on his head, so he chose to go and spend the evening drinking beer and baiting Granger. Talking of which ... He stopped by his desk to grab the notes for their paper in refutation of Brightwall and Murgatroyd – between the research on the original enchantments in Hogwarts' walls and the observations they'd made as a side-effect of eating stale cheese, he and Hermione already knew far more about the half-life of spells than those two buffoons.

*

The inauguration party was a sober affair. The British Isles had rolled out some typical August weather for this Friday the thirteenth, and the attendees huddled under a bizarre selection of umbrellas, parasols and hats, Scottish drizzle having the peculiar characteristic of being impervious to Impervious Charms. Smith, having a sense of the dramatic, had swathed the new gates in cloth-of-gold, which hung drably under the sunless sky. Shacklebolt was attempting to give an inspiring speech, and McGonagall looked very much as though she wanted to gag him and get on with the tea and hot cocoa that were waiting in the Great Hall. Hermione, Severus and the smith stood to one side behind a strong Notice-Me-Not Charm, Smith letting the rain cluster in his curly hair and beard while the other two huddled under a huge black umbrella Transfigured from Severus' cloak. Elland, they presumed, was canoodling in greenhouse three with Sprout. Shacklebolt droned on.

"Doesn't he ever tire of his own voice?" said Aphrodite from behind them. "That's the dullest thing I've heard since Demosthenes."

Hermione squeaked in surprise and turned round to glare at the goddess who, as usual, looked perfect. Severus stiffened as Aphrodite reached out and ran her finger down his cheek, though she did not come any closer to him.

"Dear Severus," she murmured. "I've so enjoyed your letters. Still pretty, then, Miss Granger?" She raised her eyebrows haughtily and didn't wait for an answer. "Husband," she said to the smith, in a curiously formal tone.

He bowed slightly to her.

Hermione and Severus exchanged a glance, wondering what was going on, but any further words were forestalled by a whoosh of fabric and a chorus of "Ooohs" and "Aaahs" as the gate was finally revealed.

Against the steely sky, the traceries of wrought iron looked like black lace, and the abstract patterns Hermione thought she knew so well, superimposed on one another, resolved into vast representations of the emblems of the four houses, Gryffindor and Slytherin above, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff below – each animal rendered in a flowing and naturalistic style. Hermione's mouth fell open. She looked up at Severus to see a stunned expression on his face.

"You fraud!" Hermione said to the smith.

"It's not over yet," he grinned, his eyes sparkling with mirth. "Look."

McGonagall raised her wand and the gates swung smoothly open on their massive hinges. At forty-five degrees, they stopped. Another chorus of gasps and chatter broke out. Hermione clutched at Severus' arm; he covered her fingers with his own and stared, speechless. The left-hand panel of the gate, seen from this angle, was a single, immense portrait of Severus Snape and Hermione Granger, he holding a phial, she her hammer and tongs. The other panel bore the likeness of the smith and of his wife, hand in hand – just as they were standing when the two mortals finally managed to tear their eyes away from the thing they had helped to craft. The goddess, taller than her husband, looked down into his eyes.

"I understand now," she said. "You were always telling me. Not with your words, because frankly you're no poet, and not with your actions, because you have all the romance of a plank, but in everything you ever made." She kissed him on the lips. Then she smiled a little impishly. "Sorry, Severus," she said. "I am rather fond of you, but I think you have learned what I can teach you." She handed him a single wild rose. "Remember – take what is freely given, and never doubt that it is yours."

He frowned.

"This is yours, Hermione," said the smith. He pulled a ruined chain link from his pocket. "There's a lot of symbolism in chains," he added. "Especially when the link isn't closed."

Hermione moved away from Severus' side and took the link in both hands, fitting her scarred palm over the absent runes. "I – you're leaving, aren't you? Before you go, I want to ask something of your wife, if I may?" Her voice trembled, but she steadied it with an effort. "Goddess, would you please remove the compulsion you set upon me? I've put everything I have into fighting it, and I can't rid myself of it." She raised her chin defiantly. "Will you release me?"

"What compulsion?" said Aphrodite, sounding honestly puzzled. "You threw off the one I ..."

"Not that one! This one!" Hermione snapped. "This one that's making me love Severus! Merlin knows he doesn't want it, and I ... I wouldn't want to inflict ... I mean, he's my friend, I hope, and ..."

Aphrodite was laughing and clapping her hands delightedly in a manner Hermione found disgustingly gleeful.

"This is no doing of mine!"

A blush as hot as a furnace rose up Hermione's cheeks as she looked in horror at the goddess. Resolutely avoiding Severus' eyes, she turned in desperation to the smith. "You?"

He, too, was laughing. "None of my doing," he said. "I never gave you any trinkets, did I? And anyway, who says he doesn't want it?"

Severus seemed acutely embarrassed. But beneath the lowering black brows, his dark eyes showed traces of a hopeful kind of softness that was new to Hermione. His knuckles were white around the handle of the umbrella. She glanced at the rose in his other hand and the heavy iron in hers.

"Freely given ...?" he murmured.

"Never doubt," she replied. She launched herself at him, clonking him hard on the shoulder with her lump of metal.

"Subtle, Granger," he mumbled, his lips glued to hers.

A ray of light pierced the clouds, followed by another, then another until the clouds were suddenly driven away.

"That's a bit cheesy even for you, Wayland," called Hephaestus. Wayland, his arm round the plump waist of a mildly disarranged Professor Sprout, grinned back.

"It's who you know, Brother, it's who you know. I called in a favour from Lugh."

Hermione and Severus broke apart briefly. Sunlight sparkled in the raindrops that clung to the gate. The effect was dazzling.

Severus came close to cracking a smile, and then, rather to everyone's surprise, started to whistle a jaunty tune through his teeth. Hermione didn't recognise it, but it didn't matter.

Bring me sunshine, in your smile...

*