Adsum

A/N: The chapter title alludes to the service for the ordination of priests and translates to "Present" or, less formally, "I'm here."

38: Adsum

He slipped the ring onto her finger, and it shrank snugly, nestling home.

For the first time since the rise of Voldemort, the Sorting Hat relaxed.

From his place on the wall, Dumbledore looked with tired eyes through ancient glass. The distant branches of the Forbidden Forest, dark against an eternal field of midnight blue, seemed hungry for the stars.

The tree-tops reminded him of broomsticks.

And the pennants on a long-ago Quidditch pitch, where he had once protected the young man prophesied to stand against the Darkness – him, and his father before him.

He had done his best to hold the castle and its students fast against Darkness.

Had Tom played Quidditch for Slytherin?

He couldn't remember.

He was so tired...

And then Severus... he hadn't played Quidditch, although he was a brilliant flyer.

Hermione couldn't bear to fly.

Dumbledore frowned, his wrinkles deep in his pale skin, disappearing into the curves of his long beard.

No. He could only have done as he had done.

And yet the castle had wanted Hermione.

Something must have shifted. He didn't know how, or when. He didn't like it.

But he couldn't know that between them, he and Tom had divided the world; couldn't know that the castle held them equally culpable, equally dangerous, equally wrong.

He couldn't know the foundations had cracked; he was part of the crack.

He only knew he was tired.

He would sleep for a while. Maybe a century? When he awoke, Hermione would hang near Minerva, and he would know no peace until they had reasoned him into a corner.

Maybe two centuries.

With a last look toward the darkened Quidditch pitch, he spared a thought for Harry before closing his eyes.

Within moments, he was snoring.

---

Hermione held her hands before her, looking at the ring on her finger.

A fire crackled on the hearth, gleaming red and gold on yellow metal and a blood-red stone.

She exhaled softly and flicked her wand at the flames. They changed to blue, their light leeching the color from the ring. She would examine it in the sun tomorrow, but now, for now, the brightness hurt her eyes.

"Severus," she whispered.

In answer, he moved to stand behind her, his arms enfolding her, his hands closing around hers, warm in the pale darkness of her trademark fire.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

For a long time she said nothing, and he stood, his breath soft and even on her hair.

Finally, she murmured, "I'm not ready."

"I know," he said. "I know."

"-ryone says that, initially." The Baron drifted through the wall mid-word. "It's best if you don't lose that feeling." He glanced at Severus. "Has the castle spoken to her yet?"

Severus shook his head.

Still leaning against Severus' chest, Hermione looked at the Baron through slitted eyes. "Is there some sort of curse on the Head's position that causes people speak around you rather than directly to you?"

The Baron spared her a diffident look. "Rest assured, Headmistress, that when no one addresses you directly, all is as well with the school as may be possible."

She nodded. "What do you mean by 'spoken'?" She was reluctant to give up her place in Severus' arms.

The Baron gestured to the stone columns that ran up the walls, aligning into perfect arches above. "The castle makes itself known to each new headmaster or headmistress in some way."

Hermione chuckled. "It's been speaking to me in some way for years, I think. It feels... quieter, somehow."

"If you concentrate, you should be able to sense those Unforgiveables you cast this week," the Baron said quietly.

She closed her eyes and heard, dimly, Severus' Imperio and her own Avada Kedavra. She nodded. "I hear."

"'Hear'?"

Hermione opened her eyes. "Yes. I heard them."

The ghost raised a gloved hand to his face and smoothed his moustache. "Odd."

"In what way?"

"Usually it's visual." He continued tracing his moustache with a gloved finger. "Perhaps not surprising, in your case, given the blindness... yes, I think so."

"Have you any idea why I couldn't see any of you?"

He nodded, bobbing in the air. "You returned for your final year as a student changed. We seem to glow to live eyes; you took on something similar to dead ones."

"I... I glow?" Hermione stepped out of Severus' arms as though afraid to contaminate him.

"Not any longer."

She stared at him, baffled.

He smiled, amused at her discomfiture. "Did you think live ones were the only ones who can see souls? Yours has been leaking out around you for years. Its brightness was quite unbearable at times."

Severus softly mentioned a few dates.

The Baron looked at him quizzically. "Yes... it was at its worst right around then. How the devil did you know?"

"It would follow that the intensity would abate somewhat as each work appeared in print..."

"Ah," the Baron intoned. "Confession is good for the soul."

"Still here," Hermione muttered. "I assume I no longer glow?"

"No. I believe I speak for all of us – well, all but one, perhaps – when I express relief that your soul has returned quite sensibly to its usual space. You were quite troublesome. Hurt our eyes. Badly. All we could see, when you were present."

"And none of us could see you at all," Minerva added sadly from her frame. "My dear... I am sorry."

Hermione nodded once toward her former Head of House. Something about the set of her jaw told Minerva that she was not forgiven – but would be eventually.

Hermione was already turning to the Baron. "It... the soul has a 'usual space'?"

"Of course. We usually can't see them at all." At the look on her face, he sighed dramatically. "Do not ask me where that space is, Headmistress. We've no more idea than you do, really."

"All but one of you, you said?" Severus inquired quietly. "The little one, I presume?"

The Baron nodded in affirmation. "For some reason she did not find the professor's – pardon, the headmistress' – unseemly luminescence as painful as the rest of us."

"Interesting," Severus mused.

"She breaks our rules as well, Severus. It's our hope that she learns better as a student."

"A student?" Hermione repeated.

"She was Sorted into Hufflepuff earlier today. Did you not know?"

Hermione shook her head.

The Baron suppressed a sigh of irritation. Heads of School were usually faster to pick up on the possibilities of the connection. Still, he supposed, she had had a rather eventful few hours. "Concentrate..."

Hermione did, and in her mind she heard the little ghost's name and House as clearly as if the Sorting Hat had spoken to her.

She glanced at it in its usual spot on the shelf.

It winked at her.

"Ah." She smiled, nodding decisively. "We'll have to see about getting her a wand then."

"Given that she can do the impossible without one?" Severus drawled mildly, a look that was part admiration and part pride growing on his face. There could be no doubt who the little one reminded him of.

Minerva's lips quirked into a smile.

"Baron," Severus said, "do ghosts sleep?"

"Of course not," said the Baron with a look of mild contempt.

"I can't begin to tell you how pleased I am to hear it," Severus replied. "Who knows what wonders she might work in her sleep."

Hermione chuckled. "We shall see that she gets a wand, but I shall personally see to it that her impossible abilities are not trained out of her."

Something in Severus' eyes grew intent as she spoke, but only the Baron saw it.

Hermione walked to the desk, trailing her fingers over its surface as though touching it risked some disrespect. Her fingers brushed a deep scoring on its edge where one of her predecessors must have clutched the carved wood in a moment of extreme distress. "I wonder the house-elves never polished that out," she mused.

"They tried," the Baron said, "but were unsuccessful."

"So many shadows," Hermione murmured.

"Indeed," the Baron confirmed.

Hermione looked at the massive chair, but could not bring herself to sit. "I'll need to speak to Harry," she said quietly.

"In the morning, Hermione. In the morning."

Hermione looked up. A shaft of moonlight illuminated Severus' pale skin, and she thought she saw something in his dark eyes.

The Baron coughed politely and indicated a door Hermione had never seen before. "Your private chambers are through there, Headmistress." He bowed formally and withdrew.

As soon as he left, Severus drew himself straight, still looking at Hermione with an intensity she couldn't quite place.

"What is it?" she asked, still trailing her fingers over the gouges on the desktop.

"Did you say 'we'?"

Her fingers froze on the desk, and she found herself examining the shadows they made in the moonlight.

Finally, she whispered, "Yes."