Chapter 28

A/N: My thanks to beaweasley2 and Clairvoyant, my wonderful alpha and beta team, as well as to nagandsev for being a fantastic 'admin'. I own nothing that you recognise from the Harry Potter universe – wish I did!

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Chapter 28

They were sitting together again on the floor; Hermione curled up on his lap, her shoulder tucked under his arm, and her head rested on his shoulder. Snape's breathing was deep and slow. Is he asleep? She twisted around a little. He grunted and squeezed her closer to his body without opening his eyes. She snuggled closer, her fingers tracing idle patterns on his thigh. She felt his long fingers gently stroking her shoulder and upper arm in return.

The room was becoming hotter. She watched the dust motes swirl and eddy in the light of the sconces on the walls. The distant rumble of the volcano was a constant presence. Hermione knew that there were hours between the various pyroclastic flows that destroyed the city, but she had no means of knowing what time it was or how much time had passed since the last surge had blown through.

Her attention returned again to the old papyrus curled up in her lap. She had read it and reread it a hundred times, but to no avail. She took pride in her ability to decode hidden meanings, and she knew that there was something significant in what had been left hidden underneath the floor in Snape's bathroom.

A sudden memory came into her mind: Snape had told her about his house before when they had been walking through the city on their way to Marcella's party. The previous owner of the house, the man who had become obsessed by the idea of cheating death... What had Severus said to her about him? She shifted slightly in his embrace as she wracked her brains.

She pictured herself walking through the city with him, trying to keep up with his long, confident strides. Severus had spoken a little about him.... She tried to cudgel her sluggish mind into remembering.... The man had been rich, a successful merchant. He had become obsessed with becoming immortal... He'd invested thousands in hack cures and false magic... He had tried Egyptian enchantments.

She frowned at the carefully copied extract, her free hand tracing the flowing script with a cautious finger, the papyrus rough under her touch. She paused her motion on a symbol that she recognised from somewhere... Something was nagging just beyond her recall. A thought rose unbidden in her head. What if he had not bought false magic – but invested in the real thing? Her mind was suddenly clear. Had this man become Sabazios? If so, he would not have been the first magical person who had used the Dark Arts to make himself more powerful. He could not have been a god – after all, she had been able to kill him. All Sabazios' talk about children, his concern for his own safety, his ambitions to leave Pompeii and go to Rome, surely that was the ambition of a Roman, not a deity. Her head swam with the implications of her theory. It was possible. It was possible.

But just as soon as this extraordinary revelation swept through her, it was followed by the depressing realisation that, whether it was true or not, it really didn't matter.

Sabazios was dead, and whatever had mutated him or given him additional powers was not evident in the subterranean bathroom. There was nothing here that could help them to get away. Her eyes skimmed the room again, noting the stone bench, the old goblet on the floor underneath it, the neat stack of linen towels by the bath itself, and the sandy earth breaking through to the surface of the broken mosaic on the floor. Nothing. Nothing they could use. They were trapped with no means of escape.

Hot tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. Just when she had found him... just when they had found each other.

This is so bloody unfair.

She tossed the parchment away from her and watched it skitter across the mosaic and come to rest near its centre. She remembered her experience of using Fiendfyre and shuddered. It was not something that she could repeat again, even if she had the energy to try. She was terrified of being swept into the Dark. She remembered how the Fiendfyre had made her feel, how lost she had become in it. Whatever Sabazios had done to turn himself into the thing that he had become, it wasn't worth it. She would rather die as she was. No one could truly cheat death.

Cheating death... She looked down at the Horcrux around her neck, marvelling at the sense of calm and peace that it brought.

"What are you thinking about?" Severus asked softly.

She loved the way his voice rumbled in his chest. Lying cradled in his arms, she could feel him speak to her as well as hear it. Gently, she moved his hand to her breast again, encouraging him to touch the glass of his mother's old perfume phial. "This," she said simply.

He stroked the delicate ridges and patterns of the old bottle lightly, and she smiled as he did so.

"It's not evil, you know," she said, sounding more defensive than she'd meant to.

His fingers stilled, but then began to move carefully again. "No. I know." His voice sounded stilted and roughened and not just because of the ash in the air. "But I don't know what it is."

"When I wore Voldemort's Horcrux, it made me think terrible things."

"Yes."

"But this is different. I feel... connected to you somehow." She frowned, trying to puzzle it out. "I felt it even when I wasn't wearing it. Can you feel it, too?"

His fingers maintained their hypnotic rhythm. She flushed as she felt her body respond to his touch; the tiny hairs on her skin were rising and her breath becoming shorter in her chest. The room was becoming hotter, wasn't it?

"I'm sorry that I brought you to this place." His voice was a whisper and she could not see his expression. "I have condemned you to die here with me."

"Don't be," she whispered back. "I'm glad I came here."

*********************

Harry fought to keep the excitement from breaking through his voice. "Change! It's all about change! Listen, everyone, I've got an idea." Nervously, he ran his fingers through his hair, as was his habit when thinking something through. There was an expectant silence, and Harry quailed for a moment under the regard of everyone in the room. Even Ron had looked up from his Quidditch diagrams.

Harry cleared his throat. His last idea had been a spectacular failure, so why did he feel so strongly that this one would work? His gaze lingered on Hermione for a moment, slowly taking in her comatose body, her pale face, her sunken cheeks, and her curiously lifeless hair. His heart clenched for a moment in his chest, then seemed to expand again as he took a deep breath and turned to look at Vector sitting behind the headmaster's desk.

"Okay, first of all, I think I know why the blood magic didn't work before, why it didn't have any effect on the runes in the portrait," he began. "I think... I think it was because Hermione didn't do it herself...because she didn't put her blood on the mosaic."

Vector was staring hard at him, brow furrowed as she sought to keep up with his reasoning.

"I'm sorry, what?" interrupted Helen Granger. "You took some of my daughter's blood...?"

Harry nodded. "Erm, yes.... Well... Anyway, I wiped it on the portrait, and nothing happened. But then, nothing should have happened – she didn't change it! You need to have intent behind any spell, and Hermione is asleep, so it couldn't have worked!"

Harry's head was buzzing. Is this how Hermione feels most of the time? he wondered briefly to himself.

He turned around to face the portrait again, staring at the runes on the floor of the room where Snape and Hermione sat entwined with each other.

"Septima, do you remember our conversation in your rooms? You were talking about the Book of Thoth and how the portrait is a reflection of something that is happening somewhere else. Have you worked out where yet?"

The American Arithmancer blushed a little and frowned. She shook her head, casting an embarrassed look around the room. "The numbers just don't add up, Harry." Her deep Massachusetts drawl was thickened by tiredness. "They keep indicating that the point of origin is right here."

"Here?" Flitwick's voice was sharp, and he moved quickly to the desk, rising to his tiptoes to look over Vector's equations. Vector pushed the parchment closer to him so he could see more easily. For a moment, Flitwick scanned the figures, his finger running lightly down Vector's scrappy notation, nodding as he moved from line to line. When he reached the bottom of the page, he looked up at Harry. "Arithmancy isn't my field, Harry, but... I cannot find anything wrong with Septima's calculations," he said.

Vector rolled her eyes and pushed herself backwards in her chair. Harry noticed that her hands were trembling, and he wondered how long it had been since she had had a drink. "Well, where does that leave us?" she asked with a hint of asperity. "My calculations are correct, but that still leaves us without any answers. You said that you had an idea, Harry?"

"Right. Yes. Okay... That might help, actually." Harry looked again at Ron, who was still staring at him, the playbook still held loosely in his hand. "Right."

"Harry, what is it, love?" Ginny said, pressing closer to his side. Gratefully, he slipped his arm around her waist.

"Yeah, come on, mate!" Ron said encouragingly. "What's your idea?"

The atmosphere was tense with anticipation.

Harry opened his mouth to speak. "Right, then. Septima was telling me before about asymptotes," he began. At Helen and Poppy's blank faces, he struggled to explain again about how the lifelines in the runes surrounding the portraits were aligned so that they did not touch – thereby, describing a lifeline that was not able to come to an end because the two strands were being forcibly kept apart.

Vector rolled her eyes a couple of times at Harry's simplified explanations, but she didn't intervene.

Harry paused for breath. None had shouted him down yet. Emboldened, he continued. "Look at the runes on the floor, Septima – they are the same ones as before, aren't they?"

Vector nodded slowly, as if she were trying to catch up with his reasoning. Harry ploughed on, "Okay, well, I was thinking about something that Ron said a little while ago. He's learning ways to make the other side do what you want – what did you call it, mate? 'Oppositional plays'? Well, if we can change the runes in the portrait to something that shows the lines in the equations meeting... then maybe it will force whatever is keeping Hermione prisoner to react to it because it'll feel uncomfortable or something... And it'll... do something... maybe release her or force her into waking up... or something...?"

As Harry stumbled into silence, the others were continuing to watch him, as if they were waiting for more. After a few seconds, he felt Ginny squeeze his arm at the same time as Poppy emitted a quiet 'ffft' of irritation and went back to casting her diagnostic spells over Hermione's body.

"What's the matter?" asked Helen Granger sharply, looking from Flitwick's and Vector's skeptical expressions to Harry. "Isn't it worth a try?"

"How will transfiguring the appearance of the portrait change the essence of the thing behind it, whatever it is?" Poppy challenged as she read the latest diagnostic spells on Hermione's condition, which hung in shimmering runes over the unconscious woman's chest.

Filius, too, lifted his hands in a gesture of defeat. "Harry... Helen," he began sorrowfully, "Poppy's right. Look how many spells we tried to get the portrait off the walls, Harry. It was completely unaffected. What on Earth makes you think that we can transfigure it?"

"I think that Harry is right," Ginny said staunchly. "It can't hurt to try, anyway, can it?" She pulled out her wand from its sheath in her robes. Harry shot her a grateful smile. He would never get over how lucky he was to have her supporting him.

Vector, too, perhaps still smarting from Filius checking her calculations, began to nod her head in agreement. "It is worth a shot, Headmaster," she argued. "But it will take all of us to do it. The Arithmantic numbers indicate that considerable power is at play here. If I am right, then something right here is responsible for this whole situation, so we might just make something happen." She grabbed the piece of parchment she was working on, rose to her feet and walked over towards the painting, drawing her wand as she did so.

Harry looked at his best friend, and Ron was instantly on his feet, pulling his wand out from the inside of his robes. Ron's face was set in a stubborn cast. Harry drew his own wand and watched Filius and Poppy expectantly.

Filius was at his side quickly, his wand in hand.

Poppy emitted a disparaging noise through her teeth but banished the diagnostic numbers over Hermione's chest and pointed her wand at the portrait.

"Here," Vector said, flourishing her wand so that the parchment in her hand hovered before them all in clear view. "These are what the runes should look like if we are to resolve the asymptote."

Harry was so nervous his heart had begun to thump erratically in his chest, but his wand hand was strong and unerring as he pointed it at the picture before them. He stared at the symbols, trying to commit them to his memory so that he could picture them as he cast the spell. Beside him, the others were doing the same.

"Right," he said. "On the count of three, we all need to visualise these runes, and then we use Mutare Signa Maxima, right, Professor?" Harry shot a look at his old Charms professor for confirmation.

Flitwick smiled and nodded.

Harry ran his hand through his hair one more time and checked the image of the runes on the parchment.

"Okay," he said. "One... Two... Three..."

*********************

Snape felt the change in the atmosphere before Hermione. For a moment, he was disorientated. The air in the room had become even thicker since they had last spoken. It was now hot in the claustrophobic bathroom, and he was sweating freely in his clothing. From above them, he could still hear the sound of the volcano, its dull elemental roar accompanied by a faint shivering in the ground, which he could feel throughout his torso. He had become so used to the dull rumble that it had lulled him into a sort of stupor.

He breathed in and out again, wondering what had stirred him from his daze. Experimentally, he flexed his arms a little and moved his neck, reaching into himself as he did so, to try and gauge whether his magical strength was returning.

He felt a little better, but without food and some medical help, he doubted whether he would be strong enough to move the collapsed stonework outside the door or to Apparate them out of there... certainly not far enough away from their subterranean hiding place for them to survive the volcano, anyway. Fuck it, he thought. Fuck it all. He probably had enough in him for a substantial wandless Stupefy curse so that she would be unconscious when the end finally came. He shut his eyes again.

Until then...

He was cradling her in his arms, breathing in the smell of her body and trying to commit to his memory all the sensations that wrapping his arms around her brought... when his skin began to prickle and he tasted something faintly metallic in his mouth, under his tongue.

Magic!

Immediately, his eyes snapped open, and his body tensed, ready to react.

A faint, thin blue mist had appeared over the broken mosaic on the floor. It swirled and danced over the image of the fractured, grinning skeleton. As Snape watched, he saw the mist gradually thicken and spread across the image on the mosaic to flow gently and surely over the surface of the shattered floor, its progress gentle and exploratory.

Severus scowled, his mind racing as fast as his exhausted state allowed. He knew Dark Magic well, having studied it for most of his life, and he was willing to stake his life on his instincts. This was not sorcery, nor maleficium. The signature from the odd mist had no taint that he would associate with Dark Magic. He watched it, fascinated by the strange phantasm, craning his neck carefully to follow the progress of the pale blue tendrils as they seemed to be exploring the fabric of the floor in front of them.

Gently, he shook Hermione in his arms. She stirred and grumbled in her sleep before reluctantly opening her eyes and, on seeing the blue vapour, starting awake in surprise against his chest.

"Shhhhh...," he whispered quietly in her ear. "It's alright, I think...."

Fingers of the mist reached around individual tiles, and as Snape watched, silently and utterly still, the tesserae began to move, reforming and sealing the mosaic back on the newly levelled floor. As the individual tiles moved, the mist seemed to thicken again, and it obscured the image on the floor. Severus watched, entranced, as the magic swirled and eddied about them, caressing their limbs and filling him with an absurd sense of hope.

"What is it...?" Hermione breathed, her hands clutching at his chest and leg defensively as she watched the mist advance over their lower limbs.

"I don't know," he admitted honestly. "Can't you sense it?"

Hermione's head shook quickly under his chin. "I can't sense anything like that," she whispered. "I've never been any good at Divination...."

He snorted quietly, even though she had not been making a joke.

"I don't think it is Dark," he mused as the questing tendrils spread further across the room towards them. "It feels benign... almost... familiar..." His voice drifted into confusion and silence.

A finger of magic began to move tentatively towards Hermione's chest, and Severus reflexively tightened his grip on her as she shivered. Beguiled by the enchantment before them, Severus saw the mist lap about their bodies, climb slowly around them, then enter his mother's perfume bottle and set it glowing with a gentle blue flame. Hermione grabbed at the phial with a small cry of alarm, and Snape placed his hand over hers. The bottle was quite cool, but there was a slight tingle underneath his fingers.

The faint thrill under his hand spoke intriguingly to him of metamorphmagic enchantment.

*********************

"Well...? Is it working?" Helen Granger could not see clearly through the wand light. She screwed up her eyes and fought the rising surge of worry that threatened to overwhelm her.

In front of her, she could see the outline of the six witches and wizards, their bodies tense and their wands drawn, emitting different coloured streams of magic as they chanted the incantation. Helen's breath caught. She had rarely witnessed magic. Hermione and Ron had always been very circumspect about using magic around their house in Melbourne. Ever since she and her husband had emerged from their fog of adjusted memories to find their daughter's face, anxious and contrite hovering over her, her vinewood wand poised over their heads.

It seemed that the room around the wizards had grown darker and warmer.

Helen moved to the right, trying to see past Poppy's shoulder to the portrait. The glow from the combined spells was almost blinding. As she moved to see, her eyes narrowed to try to filter out the glare, she knocked her knee against Hermione's makeshift bed. Immediately, she looked down at her daughter and cried out in alarm as she saw a blue glow emanating from her chest, just as it had done in that Naples' hospital a few days earlier.

Wrapped up in their spell casting, none of the wizards seemed to hear her initial cry of alarm. Fearing that if she disturbed them, the magic would be spoiled, Helen sat down abruptly on her chair by Hermione's bedside and grabbed her hand. Fumbling, she placed her other hand on her daughter's forehead. It was very hot to the touch. Her chest was rising and falling as before, but now her breath was coming more shallowly. Helen stared at the bluish glow that was emanating from the centre of her daughter's chest, and she suddenly realised that it was coming almost directly from the old antique perfume bottle that Hermione was so fond of and wore all the time.

*********************

As gently as it had begun, the mist began to retreat. After her initial panic, she had accepted Severus' comment that the blue mist was benign and sat still as it had washed softly over her. It had felt cool and soothing on her overheated flesh, and as it retreated, she had felt an odd sense of loss.

She watched in quiet fascination as the vapour slowly retracted back into the mosaic, the mist gradually clearing, revealing the floor... remade.

"Severus!" Hermione scrambled off his lap and to her knees, staring at the design.

In place of the grinning skeleton, its hands clutching a jar and a wand, was a startling new image.

A portrait.

Of a dark haired man with a large aquiline nose and a baleful expression.

But... but this is the portrait that I fell through from my dig! She looked about her at the room, at its dimensions. Is this the house I was excavating in modern times? But... but... there was no ceiling on that house - which means that ...!

As she looked on, in mute amazement, she saw words appear under the image as the last of the blue mist dissipated.

"Invenisti, anima mea," it read. As she looked on in shock at the new image, she saw Snape's translation spell take effect, and the inscription rearranged itself into English.

"You have found my soul, " it read.

Her mind racing, she clutched her pendent in her hand and spun around to meet the equally flabbergasted stare of her companion as Snape pushed himself to his knees beside her.

*********************

With a collective sigh, the fiery wand light in the headmaster's office died away.

"Did it work?" Ron said breathlessly.

"I bloody hope so! Look at her!" Helen's voice shook with emotion.

Harry twisted around at Helen's words, and his heart stuttered as he saw Hermione's body contorted and glowing. Almost as soon as he laid eyes on her, however, the light died and Hermione slumped backwards to the bed.

"Hey!" shouted Ginny. "What's happening!"

Harry turned around again and followed Ginny's outstretched finger to the mosaic portrait on the wall.

For a few moments, Harry couldn't see what she meant. He stared dumbly at the dark mosaic picture, blinking away the residual wand light and trying for a few seconds to work out what had changed.

What he saw, when his vision cleared, shocked him to the core.

*********************

Hermione couldn't help it. She let out an almighty "Whoop!" of relief and excitement and grabbed him, bearing him to the ground with the force of her momentum.

She landed with enough impetus to crush the breath out of him, and for a moment, they both froze as she looked down on him, giddy with joy and grinning like an idiot.

"Severus!" she said breathlessly. "We can get home! We can get home! That's the portrait I came through in the beginning!"

They both stared at each other as the implication of her words sank in.

Home, she thought. She stared down into his dark, turbulent eyes. He had not expected to survive this. He had told her so on many occasions. Now that had changed. Her heart swelled with the thought of it. As he lay beneath her, in the filthy dust and ash from the eruption, she was forcibly reminded of another time when he had lain on the ground beneath her, covered in dust and squalor....

Well, this time, she thought with a fierce joy, there's going to be a different ending.

She dipped her head slightly, meaning to kiss him again–

–But suddenly, he sneezed violently, pushing himself up onto his elbows and dislodging her onto the floor beside him. He stood up and wafted the ash flakes in the air away from him, and then he held out his hand as she laughed and allowed him to haul her to her feet.

"Well? Don't just stand there, Granger – come on!" he snapped roughly. "Can you open the portal or not? You told me that you had found a way!"

Hermione laughed again as he glowered at her, and then she sobered. Of course, he was right; they weren't safe yet. Who knew when the next pyroclastic surge would come through?

She looked him over speculatively.

"I need some blood," she said to him. "Are you bleeding anywhere?"

"Right now? No. So sorry to disappoint you," he answered her with a sardonic twist to his mouth.

"Never mind," she said distractedly, grabbing the old goblet off the floor and flourishing it at him. "We can use this!"

His eyebrows lifted as he watched her sweep up the metal cup from the floor and search for a rough or sharp edge on it. She became dimly aware that the sounds from the volcano were getting louder.

"We need to be bleeding. I grazed my hand when I fell up the steps, and the blood made the portrait move," she explained, chafing her hand against the base of the goblet.

"Granger," Severus said, his voice raised to be heard over the increasing rumble from outside.

"What?" she said distractedly, still trying to break the skin on her hand.

"Are you a witch or not?" he said in some exasperation.

She looked up. He stood facing her and holding his palm upwards. As she watched, a thin line of blood appeared on his palm. The ground beneath their feet had begun to tremble.

"Oh, yes. Sorry. I thought... But I was never particularly good at wandless magic, you see. There was no need to learn how to perfect it for my job. Harry learned how to do it, I think – when he did his Auror training," she babbled, feeling silly. He rolled his eyes and held out his hand. Without a thought, she offered him her own hand and winced slightly as she felt a hot slicing sensation cut across her palm.

"What now?" he asked, almost shouting now over the sound of the eruption outside.

She shot a terrified look towards the door.

"Well, when the portrait moved before, I was thinking hard about getting home, and I had my cut hand on the face of it, so I suppose we just have to..."

"Less blather, more action!" Snape grabbed her roughly and pulled her to the floor, smudging her cut hand onto the mosaic next to his own. She became aware of the warmth radiating through the floor and how much it was now juddering under her hands. The next surge! she thought in a panic, It's coming!

"Home... home...," Snape was muttering.

Oh, shit! Yes, home... home...! she thought frantically, willing herself to think about her modern life. She pictured her family, her friends, and the hot heat from the sun in Italy.

She tasted the unmistakeable metallic tang of magic in the air competing with the swirling heat of the ash and dust around her. It's working! she thought, Home... home! Her hands slowly began to sink into the mosaic.

***

Bloody hell, it's working! The mosaic floor was melting, shifting. Severus felt himself begin to fall slowly forwards. He twisted his body around to look at Hermione, to share with her a smile of unrestrained hope and elation, when, with a rending bellow, the door of the bathroom exploded inwards.

A surge! he thought. Fuck! A surge!

Hermione was between him and the door, and to his horror, he saw her absorb most of the shock wave of the explosion. It picked her up and flung her past him across the room, sending her scudding along the rough floor until her body struck the side of the bath with a sickening crack, and she lay unmoving on the floor before the basin.

Snape shouted, trying to move towards her, to pull himself away from the mosaic that he was gradually being sucked into. But it was as if he were in quicksand; he could not wrench himself away. He sank further into the floor, jerking his body in vain, shouting spells and curses to try to get away – but it was no use.

He felt his body turning and twisting about as he sank deeper into the portrait. He seemed to be falling through a tunnel feet first, its sheer walls moving swiftly past him as he fought for control over his wildly contorting body. Panic rose in him. He had to get out! It was all for nothing if he couldn't save her! She couldn't even do wandless magic! She would die without him – and it was his fault she was there in the first place! His fingers scrabbled for purchase on the tesserae around him, but they swept through the glass tiles as if they were as insubstantial as mist. He thrashed and twisted more violently, desperate to escape. His throat closed in terror, and he shouted out in fear and anger.

His last view of her, before darkness swept over him and he was swept further away from her, was of her small body, crumpled and alone in the maelstrom of the last pyroclastic flow.

*********************

Harry felt as if his hair were standing on end.

Snape was gone from the portrait, and only Hermione remained in the darkened room, curled up on the floor, pieces of broken masonry and brick around and about her.

Everyone started talking at once.

"Where the hell has he gone?" Ron's voice was confused and strained with worry.

"What's happening, Harry?" Ginny asked. "Have we made it worse?"

"I'm not sure...," Filius began.

"What's...?" started Vector.

"Potter!" snorted Pomfrey disparagingly.

Harry spun about. "Poppy?" he asked, but the Matron already had her wand before her, casting diagnostic spells. She began counting out values as she worked.

"She's so still again," said Helen quietly.

"But where the hell is he, for Merlin's sake?" Ron repeated, staring at the portrait.

"Her temperature has risen, and her vital signs are falling." Poppy said tersely.

"Harry. He's not there," said Ron again.

"But the runes have shifted," Vector said. "The transfiguration was a success. Look, you can see the variables have modulated."

"Perhaps if we talked to the Ministry Aurors," suggested Filius, looking guiltily towards the entrance staircase.

"Harry!" Ron practically shouted, grabbing his arm and shaking him. "Can't you see? He's... Not... Bloody... There...!"

"I know that, mate! What the hell are you on about, Ron?" Harry barked back, stressed and frustrated.

Ron's face was flushed. "Harry, what if he isn't in there anymore because he's... here?"

***

Severus awoke in darkness, cold and alone.

It was the darkness of his recent waking dreams, full of claustrophobic awareness, grit, and chill air. His heart thumped painfully in his chest. Where the hell am I? How can I get back to Hermione?

It appeared that he was lying down on some sort of hard surface. His body felt sluggish and unresponsive, as if he were immersed in some sort of liquid. Experimentally, he tried to lift his head and was shocked when his forehead connected harshly with a rough stone ceiling of some sort. He moved his arms to the side and quickly found that he could touch the walls of whatever was containing him. The action exhausted him, and he let his head fall backwards again onto the stone beneath him. He took some deep shuddering breaths and fought the wave of panic that threatened to overwhelm him.

He was trapped.

His hands fluttered back to his sides. As his right hand reached his thigh, his fingers ran across something that skittered almost out of his reach.

His wand! But... How? He had seen Fiducius disappear with it... blink out of existence....

His fingers scrabbled around it, and awkwardly, still fighting the mysterious and debilitating lassitude in his muscles, he brought the wand up to his chest. "Lumos," he whispered and was shocked at how thin and cracked his voice sounded.

The wand flickered and sputtered, and then a very thin and pale light emerged from its tip. Snape felt the pull of his magic as it was dragged from his core.

Blinking, his eyes adjusting slowly to the faint light, he saw a dark stone ceiling and, to his sides more stone, the tiny crystals within the black granite of the walls and ceiling sparkling as they reflected the wand light.

He knew then where he was, and the knowledge almost caused his heart to stop.

He was in a tomb.

***

"What?" Harry said stupidly looking at his friend as if he had gone mad.

Ron's jaw was set stubbornly. "He's here, Harry – I know it! It makes sense. If her body is here, but her mind, or whatever, is in that portrait... then I'm betting his was, too. But somehow, we've brought him back, Harry; that's why he's not in the portrait anymore."

Harry opened his mouth to argue, to tell his friend that he was barking mad, but Ron grabbed his arm and shook him. "Harry, trust me! Look at her! She's dying! What if I'm right? Snape might know how to get her back! We need to fetch him here to try to get her back.... Or at the very least," he added with a grumble, letting go of Harry's arm, "we should ask him what the hell he was doing trapping her in that portrait with him in the first place... or sticking his tongue down her throat."

Harry looked about him at the others in the room. They stared back at him with a mixture of expressions from sorrowful confusion to bafflement. "Well, if he's here... where the hell would he be?" Harry asked, still trying to come to terms with the situation.

Ron's eyebrows lifted. "Where do you think, Harry?" he replied, exasperated. "He'll be where we put him – eleven years ago."

In his tomb, Harry thought with sudden insight. Oh, Merlin.

They were at the top of the staircase now, and Harry became aware of faint shouting noises from below.

Shit!

"It's the Aurors, Filius!" he said urgently. "I think they are at the bottom of the stairs!" He looked at Ron. "We can't go out this way."

Ron smiled like a shark. "No problem," he said and pulled a small glasses case out of his pocket. Harry watched as he opened it and pulled out a tiny broomstick. He shook it once in his hand, and his grin widened even further as it grew in his hand to a normal size.

"Come on," Ron said. "We'll take the more scenic route. Filius, do you mind if we open one of your windows?"

***

Concentrating again, drawing on his waning magical powers, Severus cast another levitation spell.

The lid of the tomb raised itself a fraction of an inch, letting a sharp shard of light and a gust of fresh air flood into the coffin. The lid wavered as Snape willed it to fall to the side – but he was exhausted, and his concentration slipped. The lid slammed down again, and he was plunged once more into darkness.

***

Harry held on tightly to Ron as they flew from the tower window of the headmaster's office. The wind whipped his hair away from his face. The grounds of the castle sped past below them as Ron directed his broom with the practiced ease of a Quidditch professional, banking and swerving expertly as they approached the small island where Dumbledore's and Snape's tombs lay.

Ron brought his broom to a slewing halt by the side of the great granite coffin.

Harry climbed off and drew his wand gingerly, pointing it towards the lid.

He looked at Ron briefly, who also had his wand in his hand.

"Together?" he asked his friend. If they were wrong, this was going to be horrible.

Ron nodded. "Together, mate. Always."

Harry smiled, raised his wand and prepared to say the incantation.

*********************

Dimly, she became aware again. She was lying on the gritty floor before the great stone bath, her cheek pressed into the ground. For a few moments, she was disorientated. Something was wrong... different.... It was another moment before she realised what it was.

The shaking and juddering in the room had ceased, and it was inexplicably quiet. Why can't I hear Vesuvius? she thought suddenly. What the hell is happening?

Hermione's eyes fluttered open as she heard a faint, but unmistakeable, chuckle.

"Ah, my dear girl. Very well done. Very well done indeed. I trust that you are well?"

On the floor before her she could see a pair of high heeled, purple, buckled boots.

**********************

A/N2: Well, since the last chapter, Ravenclaw House has picked up 100 points, with Gryffindor storming along on 275 points but Slytherin is way out in front with 400 points. In addition, some people made suggestions that were certainly point-worthy but didn't nominate a House - so I'm going to allocate those points to Hufflepuff (just to balance things up and because I can). If you think you know what's going on, please let me know in a review. The winning House will be revealed next week, along with the penultimate chapter of this story.