Breath

A/N: Thanks, as always, to my divine beta, Anastasia, and to the online coven (Indy, Jen, Min, Fer, Mara and Annie) and Melenka for holding my howling writing self together.

As the shadows lengthened, hours dissolving distinction into uniformly blended twilight, he found himself staring at her hand, still resting in the air off the edge of the mattress.

He had no idea how his hand had come to be holding it.

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

"Natural causes, you say?"

Poppy nodded to the Minister of Magic, whose head was sitting complacently in the green flames.

"Board of Governors notified?"

"Yes."

"Right. Well, then – all seems in order. No need to come through, then." He paused. "A shame. Fine woman, McGonagall."

Poppy's throat was too tight to speak.

----

Severus' mind was not working properly. Every time he attempted to start to reason his way around the fact of his hand around Hermione's, it slid off its course into an endless space of empty, twilit blue, in which there was no gravity, no sound, and nothing – impossibly, perfectly nothing – to hold onto.

Except for her hand, held impossibly in his.

He had no idea what he should do – what he would do – when Hermione woke up.

His eyes – fathomless, opaque – the very eyes that had held the world in dissembling trust, had held its future in the mundane fact that they'd been born illegibly black – his eyes were open, unguarded, determined and lost.

His eyes darkened with the inevitable end into which they were both falling. It would fall to Hermione, in the end.

He eyed the curtains, which had begun, softly, to glow. The moon was rising.

"My window is broken."

The moonlight on the Tower... the shape of Minerva's soul...

And an idea took imperfect shape in his mind, and, as he exhaled, its perfection dawned clear.

He bowed his head, and his hair brushed his shoulders as it fell forward.

----

"Bleeding?"

The Bloody Baron nodded. "Actual blood, Madam Pomfrey. Not this..." He gestured to the silvery splashes of blood on his doublet. "Red."

Poppy was at a loss, but she returned to the hospital wing, where all of the castle's ghosts had assembled. As she approached, they backed away from a solitary figure hovering slightly over one of the beds. Wordlessly, it held its hand out to her.

It was still bleeding.

No one saw the look of surprise appear on the face of the tiny ghost at the back of the crowd; no one saw her flit urgently out of the infirmary; no eyes marked her progress back along the red spattered trail.

It ended at an archway marking a downward stair.

She hovered for a moment, then flew downward, her pale eyes disappearing almost entirely as she moved between pools of flickering torchlight.

Her search for the seed would take her most of the night.

She even braved the library, with its whispering ceiling.

But just before dawn, she found herself hovering next to the portrait that had once marked the entrance to the Ravenclaw Common Room.

And found herself staring directly into the misty, translucent eyes of a tall young man.

"Hello," he said politely, although he sounded a little bit confused. His head and arms were coalescing out of the pool of mist that had marked his only presence for almost twenty-two years.

She backed up quickly.

"Please don't be scared," he said, and she raised one hand in a small wave of greeting. "I'm Neville. Neville Longbottom."

"I – " she whispered, her breath blowing her body backwards into the wall.

Neville reached for her hand and pulled her back out of the wall.

"Talking's tricky, isn't it?" He smiled kindly. "Didn't think I'd get the knack of it, initially." He looked at her closely. "I think I remember you. From the train?" He paused. "And... after?"

She nodded, and released his hand.

She looked down to see that she was holding the small seed. Her eyes widened.

"That yours?" Neville asked.

She nodded.

"Thought it might be."

She smiled at him shyly.

"Do you like Herbology?"

She nodded.

"It was always my favorite subject, in school," he said.

She tilted her head at him.

"You didn't get to take regular classes, did you?"

She shook her head and started to whisper something, but shut her mouth as she started once again to drift backwards.

He laughed and caught her hand.

"It's okay. I've got you."

She laughed then – a dim echo of a laugh, as though a faraway church bell pealed sparkling off of a snow-covered hillside.

Neville smiled down at the little ghost next to him. His feet had appeared, and he stretched.

"So. It's been a while since I was really here, I suspect."

She nodded, her eyes alight.

"Care to give me a tour? I bet you've found all the best places in the castle by now."

The two drifted up the corridor.

----

He awoke to the feel of another hand covering his own, to the feeling of a softness brushing his forehead, to the sight of a lock of hair moving against a field of black as Hermione knelt in front of him to look into his eyes.

Her face was solemn, pinched, but strong; the shadows under eyes lending her an otherworldly air.

"Thank you," she said quietly, giving his hand a faint pressure before drawing her own away.

The air that replaced the warmth of her hand seemed chillier than it actually was, and he ran his hand through his hair to erase the feeling.

Hermione bent to put her shoes on.

"Did you... did you sleep well?" he asked, somewhat dazed.

A curt nod before turning to him. "I have to go back."

He exhaled. "I know."

"I've put the kettle on for you. I'll just be – " Her eyes flew around the room a little wildly, and she brushed her hair behind her ear.

Grace.

"Thank you," she said again, and left the room.

He sat stunned by her exit for a moment, then followed, delaying only long enough to kill the flame under the kettle.

By the time he reached the garden, she was gone.

A moment later, he was outside the gates, just in time to see the corner of her black cloak rippling through the castle doors.

He ran.

----

His cloak snapping around his booted ankles, he reached the Entrance Hall and turned for the stair that led to Slughorn's chambers.

"Professor Snape." A voice from before.

He whipped around and was brought up short by the sight of Neville Longbottom. His eyes widened.

Neville and the tiny ghost hovered at the bottom of the Grand Staircase.

"If you're looking for Hermione, sir, I think she was going to the library."

"Longbottom, isn't it?"

The taller ghost nodded.

"Thank you." Severus' footsteps echoed up the stair.

Neville turned to the tiny ghost. "A 'thank you' from Snape, but not as much as a 'hello' from Hermione?"

The small ghost regarded him sadly, and shook her head.

Tugging on his hand, she pulled him through the floor, through the dungeon chambers, into the room where the dragon had lived.

A small stack of parchment stood on a desk long-unused. Reaching for the quill, she began to write in a careful, precise hand.

"How do you do that?" Neville asked, reaching for another quill. His hand slipped through the table.

The ghost shrugged, and concentrated on writing. She can't see us.

Neville frowned.

The quill scratched as the tiny ghost continued.

I think he likes her.

Neville's eyes grew wide. "Professor Snape likes Hermione?"

He was a teacher?

Neville nodded. "Scared me silly."

The tiny ghost looked amused, but then her face grew serious and she went back to writing.

The scratching of her quill continued for some time, then she set it down and drifted over to the mantel. The house-elves had replaced the dragon in its usual position, but its eyes were still filmed over with grey.

She sighed, and ran a careful finger down its back.

Neville's eyes grew wide as he read the brief story of the last twenty-two years in the small ghost's eleven-year-old hand.

When he reached the account of that morning in the Great Hall, he inhaled sharply, and the little ghost turned around, hovering by the statue of the dragon.

"We have to go see the headmistress' portrait," he said quietly. "Now."

The tiny ghost nodded, and took Neville's hand.

The two drifted slowly through the ceiling.

----

Poppy sat in a wooden chair by the fire in the Head's office.

Try as she might, she had been unable to stanch the ghost's bleeding, and had finally given up just after dawn, leaving the ghost to the ministrations of its fellows, including one of her predecessors, who had had no more luck with ghostly bandages than she had had with solid ones.

"I don't understand it, Minerva."

"A vexing problem," Minerva agreed calmly, stroking Hecate.

Hecate arched her back and kneaded Minerva's lap, turning suddenly to butt her head against the former Headmistress' chin.

Minerva chuckled. "That used to give me the worst headache, Hecate." Gathering the cat close to her chest, she stroked its whiskers with her knuckle. "You were always a great one for driving me to distraction."

Poppy sighed. Whatever was amok in the castle was no longer Minerva's problem, and she closed her eyes.

"Do you have the ring?" Minerva asked.

Poppy nodded, her hand moving automatically to her pocket. The ring lay heavily within her robes.

"Minerva, do you have any idea who –"

"No more than I did when you asked me this morning. Someone with larger fingers than I have. Had?" Minerva eyed her hands, into which Hecate promptly thrust her head.

Poppy eyed the portrait and sighed again. The headmistress had grown so frail in her final months that that left just about everyone.

"And Horace?" Minerva asked, rubbing Hecate's ears.

"No change."

"The Board of Governors?"

"Arriving this afternoon. The Minister," Poppy frowned, "is staying in London." A moment's silence spoke eloquently of Poppy's opinion of the current Minister. "I took the liberty of notifying Harry Potter. Like as not, he'll be Minister for the new Head of School; he should be here."

"Capable, as always, Poppy," Dumbledore's voice floated down from the ceiling.

Poppy glanced up.

From her position nearly two stories below Albus' portrait, it was difficult to be sure, but his eyes did not seem to be twinkling.

His gaze swept the treetops of the forest. They had stilled overnight, but were once again starting to wave in the wind.

----

Hermione was standing in the window, looking out over the forest.

Severus' stride caught when he saw her.

"Hermione," he said.

She turned her head to looked at him, but said nothing.

He fought the urge to move to her side, and scowled. "What am I going to do with you," he muttered.

"I don't know, Severus. What are you going to do with me?"

Her tone was inexplicably icy, and he went still, his eyes growing wary.

"You saw what I did – what I tried to do. I couldn't stop it" She turned back to the cold windowpane. "She was my teacher, my Head of House... I worked for her for over twenty years. Whatever else, I respected her, Severus – tremendously – yet it didn't matter. I couldn't stop it."

"No more could you be expected to."

Her hand clenched in a fist at her side. "I –"

"It's the way of Darkness, Hermione. Individual personality, connections – none of them matter. It will be satisfied."

She stared unmoving at the distant trees. "Perhaps I should let it, then."

"That is an option, of course," he said, moving to stand beside her at the window. "Is that your choice?"

Something hard crossed her face, and her eyes went flat for a moment. "Do I really have a choice, Severus? Given what must be done to Horace, and..." She closed her eyes, unable to speak further.

His tone was stern. "A choice, certainly. You can gamble on your strength, kill him, and let events play as they will. Or you could refuse the task before you, leave the castle and not return, and live alone, as safe as any can be from their own legacies."

Short, brittle laughter preceded her response. "Or a compromise – kill him, serve my time in prison, and retreat to a hermitage somewhere in the wilds of England, perhaps with a cat for company."

He did not move. The truth had long-since lost the power to hurt him.

"Or do cats have souls, I wonder?" She shook her head, the lightness of her tone completely at odds with the panic rising in her eyes.

"Hermione," he said quietly.

"Best not to risk it? The cat, I mean," she said, the edge in her voice rising.

"Stop," he said.

"So, okay, not the best idea..."

He reached out and took her shoulders roughly. "Look at me, Hermione."

She turned to him.

Only her eyes betrayed her.

He held her gaze with his own until she sagged, leaning against the window ledge.

"I couldn't stop it, Severus. I couldn't stop myself."

"No," he agreed quietly. "You couldn't. Which brings us back to the original problem."

Hermione's hand flexed as though she were gripping her wand. "Of course," she said, summoning the mask with which her students and colleagues were familiar. "Horace." Only the tension around her eyes betrayed her knowledge of the chasm that lay before her. Straightening her shoulders under his hands, thereby dislodging them, she tilted her chin and looked at him dispassionately. "So is it best that we... well... before? Or after?"

Her courage and despair shot deep into Severus body, and he closed his eyes briefly. Oh, Hermione. His voice as heavy as if the stones of the castle itself were resting on his chest, he answered simply, "Before."

Her eyes widened slightly, but her manner remained clinical. "Where shall we go, then?"

"You would perhaps be more comfortable in your own chambers?" he asked quietly.

Her eyes flashed, and she shoved her hair roughly behind her ear.

"Very well," he said smoothly. "Mine, then."

With one deliberate finger, he took the lock of hair she had just captured and released it to trail down her neck, tracing its curve slowly until it brushed her collar.

Her breath caught as her skin strained for the air where his hand had been but a moment before.

He turned and led her out of the library.