Alas, Babylon

Summary: Above and below, before and after.

A/N: My thanks to FerPorcel, Anastasia, Indigofeathers, and Melenka, for their assistance with this chapter. My profound thanks to Enigmatized for the several-hour layover in Atlanta, during which much of this took shape the old-fashioned way – on actual paper.

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

The two drifted slowly through the ceiling.

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

On the Astronomy Tower, Neville and the wee ghost paused in their flight.

Neville eyed the widening crack in the tower floor. "You're sure that wasn't there before?"

Rolling her eyes at him, the smaller ghost nodded.

Something about her manner caught him off guard, and he looked at her more closely, then shook off the echo of a memory. "Come on, then." He took her hand.

As they swept through deeply angled sunlight toward the Head's Tower, their progress was so swift they seemed at times to disappear.

"Excuse me, Professor," Neville said.

Minerva's portrait opened one sleepy eye, which widened as she recognized the figure before her. Her hand raised from Hecate's back, and she glanced down at the cat in her lap then back at the speaker. She sat a little straighter, disturbing the sleeping cat, who turned to blink balefully at Neville as he hovered at eye level.

Searching her way out of sleep, Minerva peered skeptically at the earnest eyes of the tall ghost floating before her, trying to piece together the presence of the cat on her lap, her mother's ottoman, and Neville Longbottom. The three should not exist at the same time, unless...

She glanced at her hand. No ring. Of course.

"Professor, I'm sorry to disturb your sleep, but I had to speak with you. It's about Hermione."

Neville's open face was turned upward, looking seriously at the headmistress' portrait.

"Longbottom?" she mumbled vaguely.

Neville waited patiently, still holding the smaller ghost's hand.

"I believe you will find that the confusion lessens, in time," said Dumbledore's voice from its place near the ceiling.

Glancing up, Minerva saw only the limits of her portrait frame. She straightened slightly, turning an echo of her former piercing stare toward Neville. "Aren't you supposed to be a mist?"

Neville glanced the question at the smaller ghost, who nodded.

"I trust you can explain yourself?" Minerva inquired, sounding as though she were weighing how many house points to deduct for Neville's unexpected transformation.

Neville shook his head. "I can't, actually – although I think it has something to do with her," Neville nodded toward the small ghost, who had retreated slightly behind him. "But that's not why I woke you."

Minerva's eyes grew clearer, and she focused on Neville. "You wished to speak with me about..."

"Hermione. She's not herself. Not who she should be, anyway."

The tiny ghost floated next to him, anchored by her hand in his, looking up calmly.

"What do you mean 'who she should be'?" Minerva's brow pinched slightly.

"Well, she isn't – she's turned out..." Neville searched for the right word. "Wrong. She's turned into – well, into Professor Snape." He glanced at the little ghost for confirmation, but she merely smiled at him. "Oh, of course; you couldn't know." A small smile for her, then he turned back to Minerva's portrait. "She has, hasn't she?"

Minerva turned troubled eyes back to Hecate; again, Dumbledore's voce intervened. "That resemblance has not gone unremarked."

"How do you know about her..." Minerva searched for the right word. Finally, she concluded, "... her personality?"

Neville gestured toward the tiny ghost, who was drifting toward the bookcases. "She told me."

"She 'told' you? But she doesn't speak!" Minerva looked over her glasses at the small ghost, who floated downward to examine something on a low shelf. "As far as I know, she never has... I never even knew her name," she mused.

Neville shrugged. "She can speak; I think she just chooses not to. It's not easy. Anyway, she wrote it for me."

Dumbledore arched his eyebrows. "Ghosts can't write, Mr. Longbottom."

"I know most can't, sir. I can't do it – I can't even hold a quill, but..."

"Even should they have that rare talent, they freeze the ink," Dumbledore stated mildly, as the Bloody Baron drifted in through a high arch.

"I can write, Dumbledore," the Baron said. "But those few of us who can generally prefer not to."

"Prefer?" Minerva tilted her head up to try to see the Baron, but the angle was impossible.

"There is always a last letter that goes unanswered... for eternity."

Dumbledore said nothing, but the quality of his silence changed.

Neville floated backwards a bit to look up toward Dumbledore's portrait. "So what's she hiding, then?"

Dumbledore's gaze sharpened.

"She must be hiding something, something painful, to have grown so stunted."

"Stunted?" Dumbledore repeated, as though he'd never heard the word.

"It's simple Herbology, sir," Neville explained earnestly. "Something grows in the dark, something that's not supposed to, it turns out wrong. And if Hermione's acting like Professor Snape, it's just wrong. And it has to be because his example was all she had. She always did that, modeled herself on the best examples, just the way plants grow toward the light. And if he was her only source of light – a bad one, as lights go – well, he hid himself in the dungeons, hiding his secret allegiance to you, sir, down there in the darkness. Literally." Had Neville required air, he would have paused for breath. His brow furrowed. "So she must be hiding something – something big, something dangerous – or she wouldn't be acting like him. So what is it?"

The portraits said nothing.

"The war is over, isn't it?"

"It is," Dumbledore said firmly.

"Well..." A serious determination shone in Neville's translucent face. "Then who's she protecting?"

"Protecting?" Minerva echoed faintly.

"Hermione never lied to get out of trouble, at school." Neville smiled faintly. "She'd only lie to protect someone else."

Minerva looked at him sharply.

"The troll. First year." Neville's smile deepened with the memory. "She was protecting Ron and..." his face fell. "Ron. He died. I remember hearing that, I think?"

Minerva nodded.

He nodded thoughtfully. "So," he began quietly. "It has to be Harry."

The portraits were silent.

"Or maybe everyone."

Minerva blinked. "Your reasoning?"

"It's what Professor Snape did – lived a lie to protect Harry – to protect us all." He glanced up, almost apologetically. "I had a long time to think about that, while I was waiting for ..." He seemed to grow more solid for a moment. "Did she... what happened to Luna, Professor? I... I never heard."

"Miss Lovegood completed her education at Beauxbatons," Minerva stated. "She's an only child, and her father thought it safer, during the war."

Neville's face was alight. "She survived, then?"

Minerva nodded.

"Oh," Neville said, and something on his face made them all look away. "Oh," he said again, his voice hollow. "Right," he said finally, and mustered his focus back to the portraits. "So what do we do about Hermione?" His voice was firm, his gaze still open.

"It is our choices that make us who we are," Dumbledore intoned sadly.

Minerva's shoulders sagged.

"I'm sorry, sir," Neville countered, "that may be true, but it's not good enough. The war's over; she shouldn't lie forever. That's not life. That's not even death, not as we know it. And I'm sorry, but ..." he gestured behind him toward the little ghost, "... haven't enough of us died already?"

The little ghost did not hear him; she had floated to a rapt halt before the high shelf where the Sorting Hat rested.

She reached for the Hat with a tentative, wistful finger. She had heard about the Sorting on the train, but... she sighed, drifting backwards, her finger still extended.

The Hat opened one eye and looked at her.

She blinked.

It opened another and blinked back.

Her mouth fell into a small o of surprise, and the Hat screwed its wrinkled brim into a moldy, moth-eaten smile.

Her hand flew to her mouth and she dissolved into a blurry fit of silent giggling.

The portraits were silent as they watched her.

"She never even got to be Sorted, did she?" Neville asked quietly.

Before either portrait could answer, a low shudder arose from the foundations of the castle, forcing wide ancient cracks gone too long unnoticed. The tremors shot upwards, and towers trembled outward from their bases. Dust fell from splintering cracks that rose through columns and staircases to etch themselves across entire walls, shifting pebbles and mortar and block after heavy block.

Deep in the kitchens, the house-elves' ears flapped frantically; in classrooms and corridors, portraits clung to swaying frames; in the Head's Tower, the Sorting Hat fell off its shelf.

And the shuddering reached higher, through turret and tower to the angled rooftops, where slates clattered, skittering downward, falling as the castle strove to keep itself upright.

And as the castle was wrenched from shifting layers of uncertain stones, every pennant snapped once in the wind then fell, and for a moment an expectant hush fell over the grounds.

----

And as he drove her beyond the last shred of reason, Hermione thrust her bloody hand into the fabric of time, her fingers tangling in the dropped threads of their lives. She closed her fist around them, and pulled.

Hard.

----

She did not know what she had done, only that it had been before her, and that she had had to do it.

Her wrists clamped firmly in Severus' hands, she wrenched her hand around and managed to reach his palm with one finger, then another.

Slowly, he became aware that she was trying to hold his hand. Trying and, within the immutable limits his grip was imposing on her, succeeding.

And although the storm roaring through his body was untamable, his skin was suddenly, intensely aflame with awareness wherever it touched hers.

Which was everywhere.

Forcing his will into his hands, he unclamped her wrists and eased his weight back to his forearms, threading her seeking fingers with his own.

Softly. Gently.

She could feel his heart pounding within his chest, and closed her eyes to listen.

At first she could not separate the sound from her own breathing, her own heartbeat, the low, dragging sweep of the blanket on the sheets.

She knew she could hear it if she lay still enough.

As she quieted, Severus drew her arms into her body, enfolding her aching shoulders in his warmth, his hands cradling her head against his shoulder.

"I want to hear your heartbeat," she whispered, her breath on his neck sending sparks dancing across his skin.

He nodded, his lips at her temple.

And as the warmth of his breath infused the small, bloody mark at her hairline, diluting it, she finally heard his heart beating heavily, warmly, in perfect rhythm; a low, aching endurance against the outer limits of her soul; endlessly hungry, endlessly patient in an endless void of time, and her soul opened, and her hand closed within his, and her eyes were washed clean of blood by the slow, simple fact of his breath on her eyelashes.

Make a wish.

And as she closed her eyes and curled small and tight against his skin in the shadows, the Darkness she had held denied within her bled away to lurk in the recesses of the shadowed ceiling.

And she exhaled softly, and Severus heard her, and, closing his eyes, rested his lips gently on her forehead.

----

And as inward cracks melted back to solid stone, as far underground molten iron flowed into solid shape, re-anchoring the castle to a single, primal certainty, far above, the constant wind touched each pennant gently, a single caress beckoning them, bearing them upwards to wave, bright slashes of colour against the thin winter sky.