Judges

A/N: Special thanks to Hypnobarb, who generously agreed to assist in invaluable ways. :blows kiss: You're a dear. Thanks are also due my friends and betas Anastasia, Melenka, Annie Talbot, Machshefa, and Indigofeathers. I am especially indebted to Ana for one particular moment in the second scene.

Summary: Some ideas are light; some are dark. All of them are important.

Where it had lain, it had left a small spot of blood.

She looked at them solemnly and nodded.

Poppy vacated her chair and handed her quill to the little ghost. "Sit, child, and write. Quickly, now – I've only a few minutes before I have to sit with Professor Slughorn."

The wee ghost nodded and dipped the quill.

"I made a wish. I was sitting outside Professor Granger's door and she was sad, and so I made a wish. I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

"Don't be ridiculous, child. Who could you hurt with a wish?"

The little ghost just kept writing. "The other tall one – one of the other ghosts. His hand was bleeding, and I thought the dandelion seed might have done it. I couldn't find it – it wasn't with the others in the corridor. I looked everywhere, and I found it with Neville afterwards. He was just re-forming."

"And you think the seed did it?"

"Strange things used to happen around me before. Why not now?"

Poppy smiled indulgently. "Were you Muggleborn?"

The little ghost nodded.

"That's just uncontrolled magic – before you came to Hogwarts and learned how to..."

"She wasn't even Sorted," Neville interrupted softly.

But the little ghost was still writing. "But it brought Neville back, didn't it?"

The Healer threw a startled glance toward Neville.

"The seed definitely brought me back from... from where I was." He closed his eyes. He'd never had the courage to approach Luna, and, over time, he'd faded into that single, endless regret.

"Did you know her before?" Poppy's voice brought him out of his reverie.

Neville shook his head. "I saw her on the train, just before the lights went out and the Death Eaters –"

The little ghost's eyes grew wide, and she tried to write something, but the ink was freezing.

"I'm sorry," Neville apologised, putting his hand on her arm. "I don't like to remember it either."

He watched as the wee ghost closed her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them, the ink flowed smoothly again, and Poppy's brow furrowed.

"How did you do that?" the Healer asked.

But the small ghost just shrugged and continued writing. "I thought the professor might be lonely. She can't see me. And it brought me a friend, too."

"You wished for her to have a friend?"

The little ghost took on the faintest pink tinge.

"What is it, child?"

"A..." Her hand hesitated, and she glanced up at Neville.

"You can tell Madam Pomfrey anything. She's good at keeping secrets."

"A boyfriend." Then, very quickly, she scribbled, "But for me just a friend." She underlined the word "just," and the pink tinge deepened.

Neville laughed and ruffled her hair. "It's okay. Someday I'll tell you about my..." He took a slow breath. "... about another one of my friends. You remind me of her, a little."

Poppy's mind was racing. She was no metaphysicist, but even she knew that a ghost, once faded to mist, did not resubstantiate. Could not. It was an elemental principle, no less certain than the singular efficacy of a singular-use Charm. Certainly beyond the power of a wish. Except... the strange little thing had just unfrozen her ink by force of will. And if she'd never had even a speck of training... Strange.

The dragon perched on the wee ghost's head and started nuzzling her hair. Her eyes crinkled with delight, and she set down the quill.

Neville gestured to the Healer, and they withdrew to the door. "It's as I said, Madam Pomfrey," he began, softly enough that the smaller ghost couldn't hear. "I don't think she knows what's supposed to be possible and what isn't."

"Well, no, but..." The Healer raised her hands helplessly, then let them fall. "Ghosts can't bleed, Longbottom – not real blood. And he was miles away from the Professor's tower when it happened. I can't explain it." She frowned. "An ordinary wish on an ordinary dandelion... still... the seeds do fly...."

Neville considered this. "Is the blood real?"

Poppy nodded.

"Then could the seed maybe have come in contact with something else before reaching him?"

The Healer's gesture seemed to encompass the entire castle. "Of course – an infinite number of things."

"Well, then, Professor Snape would be able to tell, wouldn't he?"

Poppy nodded. "I'll speak to him – if you and she would find him and ask him to join me in Professor Slughorn's..." Her voice trailed off.

Neville waited respectfully for her to finish, but she remained silent. "Madam Pomfrey?"

The intensity of her gaze startled him. "Find him. Tell him I need to speak with him. Hurry. And bring that seed."

The little ghost slipped the seed into her pocket and clasped Neville's hand.

A moment later, the Hospital Wing stood empty, its beds filled with moonlight.

---

Resting her fingertips lightly in the crook of his elbow, but not taking her eyes off the door, she nodded, and, as one, they descended the stair.

A bolt of pain shot through his hip with every step.

He didn't wince.

But a slight shift in his stance as they reached the bottom stair betrayed him. In the deep silence of the abandoned Entrance Hall, a small creak of leather.

Hermione leaned her head toward his slightly and murmured, "Your hip?"

He nodded shortly, his eyes forward.

"I'm sorry," she said, her focus shifting from the doors to his face.

Don't break now. His voice a smooth, heavy hand deep within her: "Don't be. I enjoyed it."

Her brow furrowed, and he saw her gaze shift inward.

No! "As did you, if you would but admit it, Professor." He turned the last word over in his mouth, a soft hush of steel.

She said nothing.

A hint of the former Potions Master cracked into his tone. "Which you had better do sooner rather than later."

A startled glance upward. "Why?"

"You have but a few moments to admit to yourself what and who you are, Hermione, and that the Darkness you carry within you can be your ally; that its ruthlessness and your logic may – may – keep you out of Azkaban tonight. I have seen more than one duel decided before it began." His eyes darkened with a shadow of memory, and anger seemed to rise palpably from his skin.

"Harry."

He nodded. "He was in no way prepared."

"No more was I," she countered

"For the singular moment, you were, but overall, no," he agreed, "which was to your advantage, as I've told you. Had you intimated even with your posture that you were prepared to do what you ultimately did, you would have been killed instantly."

"So your analogy between tonight and Godric's Hollow fails, then."

"No."

"No? You said we weren't prepared."

"Weasley was."

"But I was the one who..."

"Logic alone is insufficient – you must admit who you are. Weasley used you that night, Hermione." And thank Merlin he did. "And you let him."

"So what you're saying..."

"Is this." He grasped her hand and brought it to his hip, turning her suddenly against the sharp stone column at the base of the stairs.

Her hand retreated as far as his grip would allow, and her eyes flew wildly to his face. "What are you doing?"

He leaned slightly into the pressure of her hand, trapping it between their bodies. The bruise on his hip warmed with a slow, deep ache.

"You have never seized power consciously, and, in a few moments, you will have to. Weasley handed it to you, blade first. As do I, now." He leaned further into her hand. "Which of us would you cut, Hermione? Yourself, or me?"

Rage flared in her eyes. "Them."

He leaned down to her neck, his hair brushing her cheek. "Wrong answer, Miss Granger. If it comes to it, who are you willing to sacrifice to guarantee your future?"

She had no answer.

His voice deepened to a growl at her throat, and he moved his hip more insistently into her hand. "Who?"

She was losing the power to think.

As he intended.

He felt her fingers flex against his hip as she struggled against what her inevitable answer must be, and he leaned into that pressure, allowing a small groan to thread through his lips, against her ear. "Who? Tell me, Hermione. Who?"

An image of moonlight on black silk invaded her mind, and she heard herself in memory crying out, "I can't!"

And Ron's voice, "You can."

And her own: "But..."

Ron's: "Finish the dream."

"Who?" Severus demanded softly at her ear.

"Everyone," she hissed.

"Do it," Severus said, his hand falling away from hers, his body hers for the sacrifice.

Even as her fingers tightened to dig deeply into the wound she had made, her free hand flew to the back of his neck and she grasped his hair, seizing his lips with her own, and she drove her fingers against the leather, clenching against where the bruise must be.

"Yes." His voice a low, moan of silence and relief as the pain flared, shooting from his hip to send a blinding whiteness behind his eyes. He tangled his fingers in her hair, easing himself through the first sharpness, riding it, his neck arching backwards, his eyes falling closed.

And she watched him surrender, and a low, dark light grew in her eyes. He was hers, hers as surely as Ron's soul had been hers for the breaking, for the using, his sacrifice a blade in her hands, the only blade with the power to force the last relic of Voldemort's soul out of Harry's scar.

Hers, the hand on the blade.

It cut her, and she would bleed forever...

Hers, the courage to drive it home.

Her own soul screaming, driving her blind as she buried the shard of Ron's soul deep into Harry's being, the final remnant of Voldemort's soul bleeding outward from his scar into the oily night...

Hers, the light that would be ever-tarnished with Darkness – a legacy she had accepted blindly and buried in the place beneath her dreams, but not now, no, not now...

As she watched her former professor's long, lean body shudder in the darkness before her, she knew again that strange burst of exaltation that had come when she had committed, irrevocably, to the Darkness that was their only hope of victory.

Finally, he inhaled, and, feeling her fingers moving against his raw awareness in keen, delicate threat, he knew she wanted nothing, nothing more than to send him again in a spiraling fall of shattering reason...

Mastering his mind, he exhaled and saw the Darkness in her eyes. Later. He would follow her to Azkaban, if necessary.

And his eyes glinted in a grave, unholy dance. "I trust you perceive my point?"

"As if you need to ask," she said, trailing a finger over his hip in a slow, reluctant farewell.

He chuckled darkly, easing himself upright. "Remember this," he breathed, his lips against her forehead as if in benediction. "Remember this when they ask where your loyalties lie."

---

From where he hung in the air by the castle's massive cornerstone, the sad-eyed ghost saw a group of black-robed figures working their way slowly up the path toward the great door. He drifted around the base of the castle, nearly invisible in the moonlight.

They had come before, he knew. Sometimes they were absent for years, sometimes for centuries.

Their brief visits always boded strangely for the living. They never altered anything for the castle or for its permanent residents – the ghosts, the portraits, and the Sorting Hat. The living remembered the visits, or not, but never for long. But they whose substance was memory – of mind, intent, or soul – they remembered forever.

They always knew of their visits, knew the same way they had known when the castle had shifted, however slightly, only a few hours before.

The ghost glanced up at the Astronomy Tower and squinted into the moonlight. Yes, the angle it made against the sky was different – not markedly; not to a casual observer – but the Astronomy professor would nonetheless return from holiday to find that her instruments required recalibration.

He returned his gaze to the black-robed figures.

They had reached the door, and he watched them stamp the snow from their boots. He drifted to float in the air behind them, his blood falling silently into their footprints.

The door opened before any of them could knock.

Stepping out of the shadows and full into the moonlight, a small figure – graceful, proud – stood alone.

As one, the group of black-robed figures stilled, balanced – the ghost could almost feel their eyes locking onto her.

The air around them tanged with a sharp, metallic tension.

He could almost taste it.

Her voice was low, calm and even in the midnight air.

"Welcome to Hogwarts."