The Dreams of Dying Men

A/N: As always, my thanks to docmara, my psych!beta, and Anastasia, for her finely-honed camera work and exacting sense of flow. A special thanks to Indigofeathers, arynwy and annietalbot – they know why.

7: The Dreams of Dying Men

"Did Ginevra Weasley take a N.E.W.T. in Arithmancy?"

-------------------------

"Ginny?" Minerva blinked. "Yes – yes, she did. I had quite forgotten."

Severus nodded and gestured to close the connection.

William – no children. Charles – deceased. Percival – multiple; youngest, female, same age as Potter's. Fred, George – both deceased. Ronald – deceased. Ginevra – three girls.

More Floo powder.

"Minerva."

"Severus, reall–"

"Which is the eldest Weasley grandchild – the name?"

Minerva's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Tell me."

She regarded him sternly for a long moment. "Lily. Lily Potter."

A bitter taste in his mouth. "And this Potter took an O.W.L. in Arithmancy?"

"Yes, as I told you."

"The others –"

"They did not as much as start in the subject."

"Tell me why."

Minerva hesitated.

"Minerva."

Minerva looked at him, a look he could not read. "Hermione terrorized the poor child, as you did the child's father. The comparison did not go unremarked amongst the staff and older students. She was ever an apt pupil, Severus. "

His eyes narrowed, but Minerva held up her hand. "You had your reasons, Severus, and your burdens."

"She has her burdens, too," he said quietly. "Worse, I think, than mine."

Minerva looked up, startled.

"May I?" He gestured toward the Floo.

She disappeared from the flames to allow him to come through.

A few moments later, he was seated before the headmistress' desk.

"I assume there is some connection between your question about Ginny's N.E.W.T.s and Hermione's..." Minerva searched for the right word.

"The word you're seeking is 'paradox,' Minerva."

"Paradox?" Her eyes widened a fraction, and she felt weakly for the chain at her neck.

He nodded. "I shall explain, of course; the seriousness of the situation requires it, but I have a few questions first, if I may... ?"

She pursed her lips – she would have preferred that the explanation precede further questions, but, nonetheless, she gestured for him to ask.

"After the final battle, did the Unspeakables test everyone's wands?"

The headmistress nodded. "Of course. It was necessary, for their report to the Minister."

"Everyone's?"

"Except for Hermione's."

He raised an eyebrow.

"It was broken," Minerva supplied.

Another eyebrow – that detail had not been in any of the accounts. "Do you have any idea how?"

Minerva gave a small shrug. "She said she fell, right at the end."

"Perhaps," he agreed. "Can you tell me what happened in the final moments, Minerva?"

Minerva paled slightly. In the weeks following the battle, they had all spoken of nothing else, but, one by one, they had found it easier to let the memories lie. "Surely you remember, Severus?"

He returned her gaze calmly. "I was rather occupied at the time," he said dryly, "as you may recall."

He had revealed his allegiance right at the end, turning on Voldemort and killing his mortal body, ensuring that the final confrontation take place within Harry's mind. Lucius and Bellatrix had reacted as he'd expected them to, turning on him with savage fury. The only real surprise was that he had survived.

"I didn't see the duel, Severus. My attention was –"

"On Potter."

Minerva found herself braced, but realized there was neither accusation nor bitterness in his tone. Relaxing, she nodded. "After Ron Weasley fell, I am not certain of the details." Glancing down, she said quietly, "Their backs were to me."

"And how did Mr. Weasley die?" he asked quietly.

Minerva looked at her hands, resting on her desk, as though they did not belong to her and she wasn't quite sure what they were. When she spoke, her voice was tight. "Is this necessary, Severus?"

He answered simply, "Yes," but there was something in his tone she had ever heard in it before. It was not compassionate, exactly, but it held a kind of acknowledgment nonetheless – they all had their memories, and none of them were easy.

She nodded her own acknowledgment. "It was a Slicing spell."

"Sectumsempra?"

She nodded again, still looking at her hands. "Voldemort intended, I think, that Harry's best friend die slowly." She swallowed. "Which he did."

Severus sat back and rested his forehead on his hand. The fact that he had invented that spell could be problematic now. He studied the pattern of the stones on the floor.

Minerva's voice brought him back to the present. "From where I lay, I could see very little. Hermione seemed torn between aiding Ronald and standing with Harry, then Harry seemed to falter..."

Severus nodded. This meshed with the other accounts he'd heard and read during his trial and in the back issues of the Daily Prophet he'd collected after his release.

The headmistress was still looking at her hands.

"And?" he asked quietly.

"And Harry did not fall. He straightened, and it was over."

It hadn't been, for him, and might never be, for Granger. "And Miss Granger?"

"I couldn't see her afterward. According to the Ministry, she was found crouched on the ground, unharmed, with her wand broken beside her."

"By the Unspeakables."

Minerva nodded.

"So you did not see her go down?"

"No, Severus. I was watching Harry."

He nodded once and was silent for a long time. "So, after the battle... ?"

"You don't remember?"

The look he shot her was pointed.

Her face colored slightly, and her hands raised to hover a few inches above her desk. "Of course, you couldn't... the Aurors... I apologize."

He nodded, whether to accept the apology or for her to continue she wasn't certain.

Drawing a deep breath, she went on. "The Unspeakables arrived, and we were all taken to St. Mungo's."

"Together, or separately?"

"Together, although I believe all of us who... who remained... we were all contacted individually, afterwards."

"Was anyone singled out for particular attention?"

She nodded. "Harry, of course. Myself. Arthur, Mad-Eye, and, I believe, Bill Weasley."

"Granger?"

"Naturally. Other than Harry, she was the last one fighting on our side."

Another pointed look.

Minerva fell silent for a moment. "I don't see the purpose of this, Severus. The Unspeakables must have questioned you as well."

"They did not."

Minerva's eyebrows shot up. "I would have thought..."

"Perhaps I made them uncomfortable," he said easily.

Minerva's eyebrows rose even higher. "I am certain, Severus, that I would not wish to meet any wizard who would discomfit the Unspeakables. More likely it was just a question of jurisdiction."

"Quite," he said blandly.

The fact of his trial and imprisonment weighed in the air between them, standing alone in silent, isolated contrast to the round of celebration and honors the others had – well, not enjoyed, certainly, but, facing Severus, Minerva couldn't bring herself even to think the word "endured."

No words could bridge her Order of Merlin and his trial, nor cross a cold northern sea to pierce the walls of Azkaban.

Her reason insisted that this was all in the past, just history, but in her very bones she understood that the present had drawn it forward and it would also always be now. After a time, during which there was no sound save the wind at the windows, she remembered how their conversation had begun, and asked, "What was the reason for your question about Miss Weasley? Why should her N.E.W.T.s matter?"

"Ah." He shifted in his seat. "Granger was Arithmancy professor during her last year, yes?"

Minerva nodded. "She handled the awkwardness of teaching her former schoolmates exceptionally well." The corner of her mouth twitched. The wizard sitting before her had not done half as well.

If he was aware of her comparison, he did not show it. "Do you not find it interesting, Minerva, that Granger's public aversion to the Weasley family seemed to start with the wedding?"

Minerva tried to assess his meaning. "Severus, there was never any indication that Hermione and Harry were in any way –"

He cut her off with a look. "I have no interest in adolescent romance, Minerva." One aspect of teaching he decidedly did not miss. "I'm speaking of Horcruxes."

"Professor Granger's research."

He nodded, and she felt suddenly colder.

His next question did nothing to ease the chill. "Did anyone ever question Harry as to how he killed the Dark Lord?"

"Of course. We all did."

"And his answer?"

"He said that Albus had told him something about love, about choices."

He brushed love and choices aside with an impatient gesture. "The explanation he gave in his memoirs is irrelevant, Minerva. I refer to how he explained it to the rest of you."

She sniffed. "That is how he explained it to us, Severus. Sitting in that very chair, in fact."

"Love," he said blandly.

She nodded. "He said that's what it felt like, that Albus had been right."

"And so I was." Albus' voice floated down from near the ceiling. "It was love. In the end, the power of love was stronger in Harry than the fragment of Voldemort's soul."

Severus turned slightly in his chair. "And choice factors in how, Albus?"

"Isn't it obvious, Severus? That he chose love?"

"That's not victory, Albus. That's a coin toss."

A hint of Albus' robes rustling as he opened his hands. "Such moments are rare, but such moments can change the course of the world."

"Or prevent change," Severus said dryly.

"A matter of perspective."

Severus eyed the portrait. "So you loaded the dice, that last year with Potter?"

"I did my very best to do so, yes."

Severus frowned and rubbed a finger along his eyebrow. Finally, he spoke quietly. "Albus, magical theory and practical spell-craft both require that the destruction of a Horcrux involve a sacrifice."

"Yes." The voice from the wall was calm.

"A sacrifice?" Minerva asked, startled. Like most of the Order, her awareness of the Dark Arts had been purely for Defense purposes; what you could not counter, you avoided. It was the cornerstone of the Hogwarts Dark Arts curriculum.

Severus frowned, and Albus continued, "The sacrifice was Ronald Weasley, naturally. It was his death that gave Harry the wherewithal to force the last of Voldemort out of his scar."

Severus' frown deepened.

"Whether you believe it or no, Severus, it was love."

"Indeed, Albus; I've no doubt. But did none of you ever think to ask whose?" Again, his voice held no inflection of bitterness, just emptiness.

Albus replied patiently, "The answer is obvious, Severus: Harry's."

Severus' eyes glittered in the lowering sun.

Minerva interjected, "Severus, what are you implying?"

"Not implying, Minerva; stating. Despite appearances, it wasn't Potter. Professor Granger's research reveals that he did not kill Voldemort."

Only the sound of Minerva's ring clanking on her desk as she dropped her hands broke the shocked silence.

"What?" Dumbledore's quiet whisper carried within it some tangible memory of his former power.

It was not a threat Dumbledore had used often, but it lingered in Severus' memory, and something within him snapped.

He rose and strode to the window, something of the old, cutting bite seeping into his tone. "Potter was not the one. Granger's identification of the Horcrux spell as a three-part process proves it."

"Severus," Minerva protested weakly, "I fail to see what her research has to do with what happened so long ago. Ronald Weasley's sacrifice gave Harry the power to choose love, thus destroying the Horcrux in his scar. Harry has said so; Albus has confirmed it."

He snorted, turning back to face them. "Potter confirmed Albus' theory, you mean, using the very words Albus had given him to 'explain' something that he doesn't remember himself, and would not have the words to explain if he did." His cloak rippled to stillness around him, obscuring the dying light. "Albus was wrong."

A small clink as Albus removed his spectacles and placed them on the small table in his portrait. "And in which aspect of Professor Granger's theory do you find proof of my alleged errancy, Severus?"

Severus smiled thinly. "In the fact that she has one."

----

In his windowless chambers far below the headmistress' tower, the dying Horace Slughorn chuckled in his sleep.

Sitting vigil by his bedside, Poppy glanced over and smiled sadly. What do dying men dream? she wondered, reaching over to smooth his blanket. This was not the easiest part of her profession, but it could be a peaceful one. Far better dreams dreamed in stillness and peace than amidst the confusion and battle of twenty-two years ago.

She glanced up as the Bloody Baron drifted through the wall, halfway through a sentence. "–lieve you for dinner, Madam Pomfrey."

She nodded and stood, smoothing her robes.

----

Hermione clamped her quill sideways in her teeth and reached up to twist her hair viciously into the knot it kept escaping. She was half-way through her introduction, and the words on the page would not behave properly.

The little ghost regarded her seriously. When the teacher got mad at her hair, it was time to leave for a while.

She lowered herself carefully through many floors of deserted classrooms and corridors, coming to rest in a set of rooms that had always been empty to float in front of a mantel that held a small black dragon statue.

She liked to visit the dragon. She extended a careful fingertip and ran it down its back.

It unfurled its wings and blinked at her.

It was almost as though it could see her.