Six: Christmas 2009

Anti-Litigation Charm: Nothing you recognize belongs to me. All characters are property of JK Rowling. If they did belong to me, Severus Snape would be alive and well and sipping cocoa in his nightshirt right now, reading his favourite book and enjoying the Christmas holidays.

"I'm afraid we'll lose her."

Severus Snape looked down at his wife, his face stony. His heart was breaking. He was completely helpless. Inwardly, he cursed the gods for finally giving him a chance to love this brave, beautiful woman, only to take her away from him in such a callous manner.

No. For once in your miserable life, stop cursing the gods for something you've done. This is all your doing, Severus Tobias Snape.

His guilt crushed him. It was his fault, of course. He told himself he had only wanted to fly, to take her with him on a night flight around the grounds, to make sure everything was well.

It was a lie. He flew because he loved it, and he loved flying with Hermione. He knew she was afraid, and flying with him was the ultimate gesture of her love and trust for him. When she flew, she was telling him, I love you. You are worthy. You are trusted. You are whole and safe and not a coward. She never said those things aloud, but the fact that she would go with him, when she was so obviously terrified, made those things perfectly clear to him.

Hermione had been flushed and warm when they returned, and they both thought it was the usual excitement of flying. Two days later, Hermione was coughing constantly and running a fever that left her joints and muscles aching, like the Muggle flu.

Poppy had been livid. "Severus, it's below freezing out there! You may have the constitution of a brass centaur, but Hermione's a woman. And you, young lady," she turned on Hermione like a fighter turning on a fresh opponent, "need to show a little common sense as well! If the Headmaster decided to jump off a bridge, would you follow him?"

"Fuck's sake, Poppy, I'm not a first-year," Severus had grumbled. "I'd never do anything to hurt my wife." He decided to use the only Slytherin tactic available to him and put Poppy on the back foot. Severus was embarrassed and, in spite of his words to the contrary, did feel like a first-year caught doing something stupid.

"I know that! Just... just don't drag her out in this weather for a quick flit around the grounds, you great pillock," Poppy muttered, bundling Hermione under mountains of blankets.

Hermione, too, had looked properly chagrined, and taken the Pepper-up Potion and fever-reducing philter, but it had been too little too late. By the third day, Hermione was lapsing into increasingly higher fevers, deeper coughing and choking episodes, and by the morning of December Twenty-second, she was drowning in her own fluids and unable to breathe without magical respiration.

She had been burning with a fever for most of the past two days, and her body was exhausted and burned out from it. She was thrashing around, delirious, crying out her husband's name over and over almost the entire time. Her face was flushed and dry, her lips chapped and covered with fever blisters.

Her moans and cries were pitiful to hear; Severus could hardly bear it. She wept in her delirium, begging him to return, pleading with him not to leave, praying for him to come back. It was tearing his heart apart, and he spoke to her constantly, reassuring her that he was there, that he would never leave her, that he loved her with all his heart and would never abandon her. In the quiet hours, he would place his face next to hers, and he would sing to her. This calmed her somewhat, but all too soon the fever nightmares and the delirium would return.

Severus sat by her side, never leaving her, even when Poppy ordered him to. "My place is by her side," he had told Poppy grimly. "Hermione needs me more than the bloody school. What if she wakes up and I'm not here? She has nightmares, you know. I know how to soothe her." He had pretended not to see the looks passing between Poppy and Minerva. He held his head high as they whispered of 'devotion' and 'love' and 'bravery'. He burned. They had no right to pry, to sympathise, to try to understand him.

He didn't deserve it after what he'd done.

This was personal. This was between his Hermione and himself and his own crushing knowledge that, if not for him, she wouldn't be dying of this horrific fever.

For hours she had tossed and turned and moaned and called for him. Then suddenly she had calmed, and a look of peace swept across her fever-wracked visage for the first time in almost a week. She smiled in her sleep. Her rasping, dragging breathing had eased, until the room was quiet.

Severus watched her until her face swam in his vision. Poppy entered the room and was shocked at the exhaustion and fear on his face. She recovered and scolded, "Severus, you must take care of yourself. She'll need you when she awakens. How will she feel to wake up only to find you've made yourself ill?"

He ignored it. She wasn't going to waken. He gathered her in his arms and wept for his sweet, lost girl.

-o0o-

Hermione was peaceful, content, safe. She was with her Black-Eyed Angel now.

In the waning night it was cold, and Hermione knew her time with him was at hand. She could sense his sadness.

They stood by the Black Lake, the moon's twin shining on its still surface. They were naked, their hands lazily exploring one another. She was so cold, but she was loath to admit it, lest he leave. She shivered uncontrollably, and his arms could not warm her enough. She buried her face against his neck, needing the soothing scent of him, but in the cold, she could smell nothing.

"I must go soon," he smiled sadly down at her. He was so pale and soft and beautiful. "I will be sorry to go."

Hermione looked up at him in panic, and threw her arms around him. "No! You promised you would never let me go!"

"I won't, my little, little girl."

Hermione gasped when she saw his face. He was crying. It was the sadden countenance she'd ever seen. "I wanted you, but I have been denied. But I will return and take what is mine."

The cloud covered the moon, and its twin disappeared in the lake. The world became dark, colder, and she felt his arms slide from hers. This was the end. This was it.

She tried to hold him. "Not yet, please!" she sobbed. "I'm not ready to let you go! They didn't let me say goodbye! You were getting better!" She wailed her loss and sadness; her grief would never be abated.

Cold lips touched her forehead, and she felt the mighty rush of his wings as they lifted him from the ground. She could see the tears glistening on his face, and knew that he, too, was denied the chance to say goodbye.

-o0o-

Hermione was quiet in his arms, and he rocked her and sang to her, his tears dropping from his nose down onto her gown.

"She loves it when you sing to her."

Severus looked up and gasped in shock. Half hidden in the shadows, a figure stood sentinel. Slowly, he walked into the light. Severus closed his eyes and opened them slowly. He was looking at himself.

The man who stood before him was indeed his doppelganger, if there was such a thing. Severus thought it odd to see his own naked body, shining in the darkened room, his skin pearly and luminescent, his black hair glossy and blue in the light. The wings that rested against the angel's back were like a cormorant's – blackly iridescent, and his eyes were like hematite, shining, silvery black.

"It is time for her to come with me. I love her." The angel's voice was Severus' own, but a thousand-fold more beautiful, more melodious. It was sensual, silken.

He was Severus Snape, as perfection, as innocence, as Severus had always wished himself to be. He was indescribably beautiful. And still Severus could form no words to answer. He was as enthralled as Hermione had been, at his own perfect, beautiful incarnation.

The angel smiled at his twin. "Let me take her. She's sleeping and you cannot wake her. She is mine now." Severus heard his own voice, beautiful and augmented. "You do not deserve her. You are unworthy of her."

Severus' hand shook as he raised his wand. He hissed, "She doesn't belong to you." He clutched the peacefully sleeping woman to him.

His angel smiled at Severus beatifically. "But you summoned me, Severus. You brought me to life." He reached for Hermione. "I have no pain to share with her. No ugliness, no cowardice, no guilt, no evil, no remorse, no sadness. No sins to atone. No scars to hide. No Dark Mark to fade," he smiled, and held out his hands, palms up, revealing a perfect, unblemished forearm. Severus felt a sudden yearning in his heart as he looked at the angel. He was as beautiful as the sun.

The angel gave him a look of pity and understanding. "Give her to me, and she will be cherished and loved with the tenderest of passions. I can take her places you have never been."

Severus felt the pain of his own life and knew his angel told the truth. He looked down into the face of his Hermione, and thought, He's right. What have I ever given her but the leftovers of a badly lived life?. He thought of how she loved him, without condition, without strings, how she had come to him and his bed with desire and acceptance.

Did he covet her? Yes. Did he love her enough to let her go with a free heart? The greedy selfishness that was part of his personality reared its ugly head. "No."

The angel looked amused, but there was a glint of anger behind the perfect beauty."No? You would deny me?" The angel's smile was replaced by a grimace. "You brought me here, Prince of Pride."

Severus looked at the angel, and his hold on Hermione tightened. "What? What do you mean?"

Suddenly the angel changed. He was still beautiful, but there was a fluttering, a blurring around the lines of his body. "You sang me to life. You sang me to come and take what is yours."

"No!"

The angel's smile grew malicious. "Really? You sang me to your mother. You sang me to Lily. Look where that got them. They belong to me now."

"Severus, I just wanted-" Minerva enter the room and froze, a look of horror and revulsion on her face. "Gods, Severus! What is this?"

The angel ignored her. He was becoming angy. "You cast the spell to summon me, Prince of Pride. Foolish little man, to think you could hold any power over me!"

Minerva gasped. "Severus, how- why have summoned this...this demon?"

Severus also ignored her. He was devastated. His mother had taught him the song.

"The song is a fairy tale. It's a child's nursery rhyme!" Severus' mind reeled in horror. How many times had he sung the song for Hermione, who so loved to hear him sing?

"Is that what Mummy told poor Sevvie?" The angel mocked in a horrible, baby-talking way that was grotesquely obscene, a moue of pity on the perfect face. His brows rushed together in malicious joy. "The spell is to summon me, to capture what you covet most!

"You foolish mortal!" The angel spat with contempt. "Greedy, covetous, spiteful, cowardly man! You have never deserved the happiness you stole from this lovely woman, and now she's mine." He smiled happily at Severus. "And you, in your vain pride, have given her to me."

"NO!" Severus bellowed, raising his wand, drawing magic to him. He threw everything at it; spells, charms, hexes, curses - nothing affected the angel.

From across the room, Minerva shouted to Severus. "Don't listen to him, Severus! You didn't do this!"

"Didn't he, mortal?" The angel replied, with an ugly laugh. "From the time you were a child, Severus Snape, you wanted what you could never have! Your Muggle father, drunk, useless – his blood flows in your veins! Sullen, ungrateful child, chip on your shoulder visible to the naked eye! Trying to keep your mother to yourself, selfish, stupid enough to think you could keep her safe from Tobias Snape!"

The angel's voice was dripping with cold sing-song contempt. "Singing to Mummy to chase the frights away – where did it get her? She was only too happy to come to me, to escape YOU!"

Severus felt each word like a hammer blow, and his grip on Hermione loosened. He had been those things as a child; he had no friends, he had been proud of his magical abilities, wanted to show them off to Lily...

The angel read his thoughts. "Ah, yes, the fair Lily! Well, we all know how well you did with her! That's common knowledge all over the Wizarding world, isn't it Snivellus?'

To Severus' horror, the angel's countenance changed temporarily into that of Lily, then back. "Singing me to a woman who never loved you! Telling an innocent boy that you loved his mother so much you were willing to die for her! Liar! How could she love you, Severus, when she could have me? You never loved her, Prince of Lies! You only coveted her! If you had loved her purely, perfectly, she wouldn't have died!"

Hermione stirred, and her eyes fluttered open. In her confusion, she saw her husband, well, alive, in all his imperfections. She turned and saw the angel, heard his words, the chilling derision in his voice.

"You weren't even capable of loving those who protected you, were you, Severus?" Now the angel shifted and became Albus Dumbledore, looking down on the man who'd taken his life. "Ah, but you were being so noble, weren't you, Severus? It's easy to be noble when you can kill and justify getting away with it, isn't it?"

Severus lowered his head and wept in shame. "Albus, no!" he sobbed for the only man who had ever tried to love him like a father. Flawed and tunnel-visioned as he was, Albus had loved him, in his own way, and Severus had repaid that love by raising his wand and....

Minerva, her hand to her mouth, cried, "Don't listen to this, Severus. This-whatever it is, is lying to you!"

"Am I? Ask him! Tell your so-called friend, Severus! Tell her the truth! You coveted Lily, but not enough to truly love her! You cared for Albus Dumbledore, but not enough to save him! You played everyone against the other, the Master Spy, the Death Eater, the one who betrayed everything and everyone he touched!"

Sobbing with grief, Severus nodded, and Hermione felt his tears drop on her hand. "It's true. I didn't love Lily enough to save her. I k-killed Albus! Oh, gods!" His shame warped into him like molten lead, burning and purifying, but he felt too tarnished and worthless to be worth saving.

"Stop this! Tom Riddle killed Lily Potter, Severus, not you!" Minerva cried. "Albus was dying! This-this thing, Severus! He's using your own guilt against you."

The angel roared, "I'm using the truth to take what it mine!" The angel turned toward Minerva. "He sang me to her!" He pointed to Hermione. "I am here to take what he covets most. His vanity, his selfishness, his greed has sung me here. Your arrogance, Severus Snape, has brought me your bride!"

Severus looked down at Hermione, who watched him with confused, exhausted eyes. "Severus," she croaked, hoarsely. She was shaking her head, trying to tell him something.

"I love you," he whispered, brokenly.

"He covets you, my love," the angel said, and once more he was perfection. Hermione looked at the Black-Eyed Angel, and saw the beauty he projected, and shook her head again. Fear replaced confusion in her eyes.

The angel smiled. Once again, his voice was glossy, velvety. "My beautiful Hermione, my perfection. Come with me and I will give you an eternity of pleasure. Severus can only give you the ragged remains of himself. Look at me, Hermione." The angel's voice was so silky, so seductive, he made everyone in the room, including Severus, shiver in pleasure. "I give you my beauty, my passion, my body for your desire. Come to me, my love." It was wonderful, and truly horrible to witness. Hermione looked at him wordlessly, then back to Severus.

He was no longer looking down at her. Severus was watching the angel in rapt wonder, and something like lust flushed his face, making him look as feverish as Hermione. Still groggy and confused, Hermione looked up at her husband. She was afraid, desperately afraid for him.

Minerva whispered harshly, warningly, "Severus, I don't know what you are seeing, boy, but I'm seeing an abomination. Wh-"

"Be quiet, Minerva!" Severus said, and slowly stood to face the angel. "Yes, I see it now, angel. I understand." He was watching the angel with fiery eyes, and the angel smiled as seductively at Severus as he had Hermione.

"You see now, don't you Severus?" he purred. "How could someone so full of love and purity want you, when she will have me for eternity? I am perfection," he smiled, radiating breathtaking beauty. "I am everything you wish to be, aren't I? For once in your life, tell the truth, Severus. Am I not everything -"

"I covet? Yes, Angel, you are everything I want!" Severus rushed forward and wrapped his arms around the angel in an obscene parody of a lover's hold. Realisation dawned, and the angel tried to break free. Panic marred the perfect features.

In a strong, beautiful voice, Severus sang to the angel:

"Take my hand, little one, I am the Prince of Pride, the Black-Eyed Angel who watches o'er you desires you for his bride-"

The angel began to struggle against the beautiful music being sung to him, and Severus willed his heart to desire the angel with all his being, He looked into the hematite eyes of the perfect version of himself, and desired to be him with all his might. They wrestled together in a terrible, beautiful embrace.

"I'll wrap you in a cloak of stars, I'll fly you through the night, the Black-Eyed Angel will capture you in his flight-"

The angel fought him openly now, snarling, its shape shifting. The perfection that Severus wanted so badly was fading into something more incidious, more horrible, an abomination of hideousness. Severus held onto him, eyes closed, singing his love and desire to the angel, to destroy what he coveted most. Absolution, perfection, purity.

"You are my heart, my life, my soul, my love will shield you from the storm, the Black-Eyed Angel who watches o'er you will keep you safe from harm-"

The creature changed. Gone was the Black-Eyed Angel that had tried to take his wife. In Severus' arms was a demon so heinous, the women in the room recoiled in horror. With his eyes shut, Severus only saw the perfect angel, the man he wanted so much to be – beautiful, pure, perfect, and sang his longing.

"I'll wipe away every tear you cry, your every thought will be my command, I hold the heart of the Black-Eyed Angel in my hand!"

With a deafening, screaming cry of rage and agony, the creature blew apart in a million particles of light and magic, knocking Severus off his feet, unconscious. He fell to the floor, limp, ghastly white, his eyes open and unseeing.

Hermione cried out, her scream thin and shrill with terror, "Severus! NO!" Feebly she tried to rise, but in her weakness she was unable to rise from her bed. As she reached for her unconscious husband, gasping for breath, the world crashed down upon her and she was gone, her body limp, and at peace.

It was moments later that Severus awoke with a start, moving even as he regained consciousness. Seeing Hermione's limp, prone body, peaceful and cool, his heart constricted. It was for nothing. He had banished this...this Black-Eyed Angel and lost Hermione to him anyway. It was all for nothing.

With a tormented cry he gathered his wife in his arms, apologizing, pleading with her to forgive him.

Minerva had fled when Severus fainted and rushed to find Poppy. As the two older women ran into the room, they were met with a heartbreaking sight: Severus, tenderly holding the broken, peaceful body of his wife, softly singing a song of farewell. Tears poured from his eyes, and he rocked her gently as he sang. His eyes were glazed and out of focus, and Minerva was frightened for him.

Poppy, seeing Mistress Snape cool and pale for the first time in almost a week, all but tore Hermione from Severus' arms. "Leave me with my wife!" he growled, like an animal protecting its young. "Don't touch her – you have no right!" Tears poured down his face and he sobbed like a brokenhearted child.

Poppy ran her wand over Hermione's body with a shaking hand. She did it again. And again. She stood up and put her hands over her mouth. Severus held Hermione closer.

"My good girl," he said, rubbing his throat. It felt as if it were bleeding. "My sweet, good girl." He rocked her, his heart breaking, and breaking...and broken.

"Severus," Poppy said, through tears. "Severus." He looked up at her, still rubbing his aching throat. Madam Pomfrey knelt beside the Headmaster, and took her own handkerchief from her pocket. She tenderly wiped the tears from his eyes. "Severus, I need you to let Hermione go."

He lay his still wife on the bed and lay against her cooling breast, as he had lain so many nights after love, hearing her strong and... steady... heartbeat.

He jerked upright, and looked down at his wife.