Into thy Hands

A/N: Thanks, as always, to Anastasia and Melenka, and to someone who inspired one of the moments in this chapter. (I can't say which, of course.) Thanks also to FerPorcel for being a voice in the, hm, darkness. *waves*

12: Into thy Hands

But as they descended into the deep, warm shadows of the sleeping castle, he was struggling not to choke on the sound of his pounding heart.

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When the hands were finished, the dragon's tiny head lay unmoving on top of the glistening powder.

It was almost as though it was sleeping.

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Silent portraits measured their progress down several flights of stairs, the swirling mists wavering gently to mark their passage. Still wrapped in Severus' cloak, the numb soles of her bare feet beginning to prickle with the return of warmth, Hermione blinked slowly as her eyes adjusted to the dim torchlight after the glare of moonlight above. When she automatically turned toward the corridor leading back to her tower, a slight pressure from Severus' hand on her shoulder prevented her, guiding her instead through a narrow archway toward an angled staircase.

"Where are we going?" she murmured, her low voice echoing in the vaulted passageway.

Severus' jaw clenched involuntarily as her voice surrounded him in the warm darkness. The Dark stasis spell he had cast to prevent further violation of Slughorn's death had left him raw, and, in the close confines of the stairway, the lingering taint of whatever Hermione had done called to him, a soft caress on an old wound.

If he had allowed her to touch him... he breathed carefully, staring deliberately at the stairs in front of him as they descended.

"Where are we going?" she repeated.

"To the Potions classroom," he said, more curtly than he intended.

The tingling in Hermione's feet sharpened, and she flinched, losing her balance. Unable to reach for the banister through the restraining folds of heavy silk, she leaned instinctively toward Severus.

His hand moved to grip her elbow through the cloak.

As soon as she regained her stability, he released his hold, and she sank to sit on the stairs. "My feet," she said, pain raising her voice to a higher pitch as she shrugged half out of the cloak to release her hands. Rubbing her feet, she felt a prickling in her eyes, and she blinked rapidly. Ridiculous, she thought, but the dampness on her cheeks betrayed her.

Severus stood on the stairs, not moving. If he knew she was crying, he gave no sign.

"I'll be fine in a minute," Hermione said, pain warring with embarrassment as her circulation improved. "Just go on."

Severus said nothing. His eyes were tracking the movement of her hands on her feet and legs as she massaged warmth back into her skin, the thin white cloth of her nightgown a ripple of amber in the torchlight.

"Go on," she insisted, glaring up at him.

He would remember, later, how she looked in that moment: the way her small pale form appeared in relief against the darkness of his cloak; the fall of her hair a tangled memory of the wind above; in her eyes only the small anger of a moment. A minor anger, innocent of history.

She was forbidden.

And she was beautiful.

Bloody hell.

"Go on," she was saying.

The echo of her voice faded in the stair, a pleading descant from which words were soon lost.

Severus' shoulders sagged, and he leaned wearily against the vaulting walls. He closed his eyes for a long moment, and sank stiffly the rest of the way to a stair.

Hermione's hands stopped moving as she watched the play of something in his mind flicker almost imperceptibly on his features, a thin sheen visible on his skin, then a tightening at the corner of his eyes before he bent to sit, reaching behind him for purchase on a higher stair.

When he opened his eyes, she was looking at him quizzically.

"Why the Potions classroom?" she asked.

"Your window is broken," he said quietly, "my chambers are inappropriate, and there is nowhere else in the castle we may converse freely."

She had raised an eyebrow at "inappropriate"; the other joined it at "freely." "Freely?" she repeated. "What are you hiding now?"

He ignored her barb. "Not me, Hermione. You."

"I?" She started to rise to her feet in protest, but the pins and needles kept her down. "What have I to hide?"

He regarded her evenly.

She drew herself straighter and returned his gaze for a moment, but could not quite summon its usual impassive force.

He laughed quietly; a short rumble, without humour. "I invented that look, Hermione. It won't work on me. Not in private."

She drew her legs to her and held them.

In the silence that rested between them, he watched the torchlight on her hair, and she felt the stones beneath her feet, tracing an unconscious circle on her knee with a slow fingertip.

He watched that, too.

Finally, in a tired voice, she asked, "Why do you want to know?"

His eyes flickered once in calculation. "Curiosity."

She snorted, and shot him a look that was pure younger Hermione. "Tell me another."

"It's the truth."

"You're curious," she said flatly.

"Yes."

"Why?"

He rolled her question around in his mind. Why, indeed? Why not simply allow her unrestrained access to the horrors she was reaching for, why not let her test her theory on Slughorn's defenseless soul, and return home, away from the vault of grim memory that was what Hogwarts Castle was for him – was, and always would be?

The torchlight threw shadows on the wall, seeming to bring the stairs closer, then to draw them farther away, disclosing then concealing their secrets with indifferent flickering that knew no pattern.

Why?

Despite what he had told Minerva and Poppy, his control was not perfect, nor had it ever been. He may have long since abandoned the impulses that had first brought him to the Dark Arts; the mark on his arm but a faded reminder of a fealty he had long-ago foresworn, but...

But...

He had turned against the Dark Lord and sworn service to Dumbledore's Order – service to, but never faith in. No; he knew too well the lover's voice of Darkness, a midnight whisper, begging for violation.

A thin sheen of perspiration spread over his palms.

Innocence only shielded the innocent.

And he knew that tonight the Darkness would speak with Hermione's voice.

Finally, he spoke. "I don't know why."

She stared at him, her face openly blank. "You don't know," she repeated.

"No."

"You."

He scowled, and the corner of her lips twitched.

She made a choking sound that would have been laughter had she remembered how. "The world as I know it may just have ended." She shook her hair back from her face and looked around them, at walls of stone and stairs stretching to shadow in both directions. Then her eyes deadened, and, her voice dropping, she said, "I wonder how I'd even know if it did."

The hairs on the back of his neck rose. All senses alert, very quietly, he asked, "If the world as you knew it ended?"

She nodded once, looking down.

He shifted slightly, his muscles tensing in response to some instinct he had no wish to examine. "The same way you knew before."

Her hands clenched her nightgown, and she looked at him through her hair, her eyes calculating, measuring unimaginable distances, real and unreal.

For a fleeting moment, he thought she was going to lean in toward him, and the taste of her mouth filled his imagination.

He gripped the rough stone edge of the stair behind him.

For another, he thought she would flee, and his grip tightened to the point of pain as he fought the urge to spring.

But although she held his gaze, she only nodded, and he exhaled slowly, forcing his hand to release its death grip on the stone.

They sat for a long moment, alive in the half-light, the sharp taste of their unspoken understanding acrid on the air.

Finally, she spoke softly. "I killed him."

He didn't move.

"You knew."

He nodded.

"You knew it wasn't Harry." She watched him carefully.

"Yes. Not then; after."

Her brow furrowed slightly in question, and he answered, "Your research."

"Ah," she said, almost sadly. "That obvious, was it?"

"No."

"No? Oh... okay, then."

In the flickering shadows before his eyes, her face grew calmer, seemingly younger.

"He – Ron – we had agreed... if... " Her voice trailed off for a moment, and she watched the torchlight moving Severus' shadow on the stairs below. Her throat closing with unshed tears, her words slipped out between them. "I broke his soul," she whispered.

Severus' heart thudded in his throat.

Her hand balled in a fist of fabric. "I didn't want to," she said, her other hand tangling in her hair. A single, panicked word: "I –"

Very quietly: "I know."

"You don't know. You can't."

"I do."

"No."

Harshly, "Yes."

Her hand twisting her hair, pulling, stretching the skin on her forehead.

The air seemed to grow closer, warmer, and then a nearby torch gave a sudden dance as she turned on him, her voice sharp. "Why are you doing this to me?"

An answering anger lit in his own eyes, but his voice was calm. "For the same reason I've done most things."

"Because no one else will stoop that low?"

"No."

A skeptical look.

"Because no one else can reach that high."

Her hand stopped twisting in her hair.

"I rather suspect you know something about that," he breathed. "Hermione."

Of its own volition, his hand moved slowly, reaching up to untangle her fingers from her hair, ensnaring them in his own.

At the touch of his skin, her eyes darkened, and closed. Warm, she thought, so warm... A vast, aching darkness opened empty within her, and she traced his palm, her finger moving with the silent, slow terror of a child's touch on a toy in the shadows of an empty room.

Yes, he thought, lost in the motion of her touch, his breath shallow, his heart the only sound. "Dangerous," he breathed.

All her being centred on that one touch.

"Hermione, we can't," he said, his eyes growing heavy, tracing the curve of her neck where her smooth skin met...

"We can," she said, eyes still closed, voice low.

As he bowed his head to touch his lips to her neck, he felt the heat of her words through his hair:

"You know you want to."

And his hands raked up her arms, clenching on her shoulders, roughly into her hair, pulling her head backward to the stone wall behind her as he leaned over her, and through slitted eyes she saw his falling hair block the torchlight, his breath rasping hot on her throat, his body a heavy, welcome amnesia.

"You should not have been alone," he murmured at her neck, her head heavy in his hands.

"You were." Her hands smooth on his neck, a rough grasp at his collar, the stone edges of the stairs a slash on her side, digging painfully into his hip...

He flung himself backward, the air a sudden chill on their newly warm skin.

"I was a fully trained adult, Hermione." His eyes flashed coldly.

"Seeking vengeance on yourself for a penance you yourself exacted!" she countered, pushing herself upright with cold, angry hands. "You asked to be hated, Severus. You damn near begged for it! Whereas I..." She faltered suddenly.

For an instant they sat, breathing heavily.

"... did exactly the same thing, for exactly as long," he finished for her.

"Longer," she spat, and then her tears flowed in earnest.

For an undying lifetime he sat with her silently.

Finally, spent, she stood and reached for his cloak, pulling it up to her shoulders, burying her hands in its folds. "I'm cold."

"I know." Trying not to touch her skin, he wrapped the cloak more tightly around her. "I know."

She leaned instinctively into his warmth, and, reluctantly, he held her.

Her hair brushed his neck.

He closed his eyes.

In the deep, scarred places in his heart, he felt as though he'd been stabbed, as though a piece of something, something that didn't belong, had been jammed into an old wound, wedging it open, forcing it to bleed.

He wondered if that was how Potter had felt when she'd taken a piece of his best friend's soul and shoved it into his scar.

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The flower stem that the little ghost had left resting on Slughorn's unmoving chest turned brown and shriveled to straw.

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On its shelf in Minerva's office, the Sorting Hat skittered a few inches sideways. Had it known how to Apparate to Hogsmeade, it would have.

As it was, it curled its brim over its eyes, and prayed for morning.