Exodus

A/N: I am indebted to Neville for part of this chapter; he will not leave me alone, even when I should be sleeping. My thanks to Indigofeathers and Annie Talbot, for betaing, and, in advance, to FerPorcel, for translating. (Have fun with this one, Fer.)

And, as always, my humble gratitude to Anastasia, my partner in dark architecture. She took the day off from beta duty, but, as ever, her words inform every shadow and stone.

A special thanks to Indigofeathers for recommending the music that has provided the soundtrack for Chapters 23 (Within Temptation's "Our Solemn Hour") and 24 (Within Temptation's "What Have You Done?" [Harry and Neville] and Nightwish's "Ghost Love Score" [Hermione and Severus]). Damn, woman.

Summary: Forward through time, beneath her dreams, beyond her name.

It didn't matter.

She didn't have anywhere to be.

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

"Harry?"

Neville's pale form refracted the torchlight outside Slughorn's chambers into a bright haze, and Harry paused, blinking at the sudden change from the hushed shadows inside.

"Neville?" Harry said, his eyes widening. "Is it you?"

Neville nodded. "It seems that I'm back now." He cocked Harry a crooked smile. "You're older."

Harry nodded, still unable to believe he was seeing his old friend. "Yeah." He returned Neville's smile. "Yeah, I am."

Neville's smile widened, and he said, "Awkward, isn't it."

Harry nodded again, shivering a little bit as Neville drifted into place next to him.

"Whoops. Sorry about that." Neville adjusted his distance. "Better?"

"Yeah... thanks." Harry pushed his glasses up farther on his nose, raking his hair back. "And yeah. Awkward."

"It's okay, Harry. It's not so bad, really." Neville's glance fell upon Harry's scar.

"Why does everyone keep doing that today?" Harry muttered.

"Sorry," Neville replied easily. "I just wondered if it was still there."

"It is," Harry replied, more irritably than he'd intended.

Neville drifted backward a bit.

Harry frowned. "Sorry."

Neville laughed. "Lot of apologising we're doing."

Harry laughed too, but uncomfortably. "I just feel like... I don't know. Like I should apologise for living, or something."

"Ridiculous, isn't it?" Neville nodded. There was no censure in his tone, just acceptance. "So, you and Ginny... ?"

Harry nodded, and the two moved up the corridor, Harry enthusiastically describing his family, Neville listening only a little wistfully.

When they arrived at the passage that marked the most direct route back to the Entrance Hall, Harry paused and shook his head.

Neville glanced up the rejected passage. "Yeah, we probably shouldn't go that way."

Harry's response was a measuring glance.

The ghost's face was unclouded, as open in death as it had been in life, and Harry frowned.

"Harry?" Neville asked quietly.

Harry walked a few more paces, slowly, then stopped and leaned against the wall. "Neville, do you have any idea what happened to Hermione?"

Neville paused and hovered, looking at the man his friend had become. "Well... not all of it, no. I mean, I was already dead, wasn't I?"

Harry looked sharply at him.

"Before the war ended, I mean," Neville explained.

Harry shook his head. "I don't follow. She seemed all right, after."

"Did she?"

"Well, she was quieter, maybe, but..." Harry opened his hands vaguely. "She was Head Girl, and studying, as always, and I think she started teaching, really, before we finished." He shrugged, then continued, "Gin was really hurt about the wedding."

Neville looked at him blankly.

"She didn't come. Sent the invitation back. Gin was really upset."

Neville drew in a breath, angling himself awkwardly in the air. He righted himself, but his expression remained troubled. "Ginny wasn't the only one," he said quietly.

Harry looked at him for a moment then nodded. "No. We couldn't figure out what we'd done."

Neville tilted his head, bobbing slightly. "Harry," he said seriously, "I don't think you did anything."

"What do you mean?"

"I think she did. Hermione, I mean. During the war."

Harry shook his head. "She would have told us. We were her best friends."

Neville looked at him, confused.

"Me and Gin. The three of us were always together."

"Four."

The word was out before Neville could stop it, and a shadow fell across Harry's face.

"Sorry," Neville said softly.

Harry nodded and looked at the wall, where tiny inclusions were reflecting the torchlight. He watched the light play on the stone for a while before responding. "It's okay. It's just – even though it's been so many years, it's still there." Still staring at the stone, he murmured, "You'd think I'd be used to his being gone by now."

Neville said nothing, drifting slightly in a breath of air that stirred in the corridor.

Harry shook his head. "Even if she has some big, dark secret, that doesn't explain what she's doing with Snape."

To Harry's astonishment, Neville laughed, and Harry's eyes flew to his former school friend's face.

"It's disgusting."

Neville just smiled, shaking his head slightly.

"It's sick, I tell you," Harry insisted. "And her a teacher now. What does she think she's doing?"

Neville only smiled, gesturing to the nearly empty halls. "It's the hols, Harry."

"Her behavior is reprehensible," Harry stated flatly.

"They like each other. It's normal."

"It's not," Harry objected. "You haven't seen them." He hesitated only a moment before confiding, "She was bleeding, Neville."

"I know. I passed them on my way to find you." Neville looked at Harry, and the smile left his face as he realized his former friend was really troubled. "Sure, it is a little strange to see Professor Snape with Hermione, but Harry, he's not her teacher any more. She's at least forty years old. What's the problem?"

"He murdered Dumbledore."

"He served his time, Harry, and besides, his punishment was shameful." Neville shook his head. "Shameful. He didn't deserve it."

Harry's eyes blazed. "He deserved worse."

Neville sighed. Knowing it was probably hopeless he tried again. "They like each other, Harry. Other than age, there's no difference between them" – he gestured toward the other passageway – "and you and Ginny."

Harry drew himself to full height, his eyes gleaming dangerously. "There's every difference in the world. When I kiss my wife, she doesn't bleed." With that, he turned and stalked up the corridor.

After a few moments, Neville drifted thoughtfully after him.

---

The Bloody Baron hovered in Slughorn's chambers, floating idly in the current left by the closing door.

He'd never liked the Potter boy, but he could not fault the boy's sense of duty.

If there was a right thing to do, the Potter boy would do it.

Boy?

He bobbed pensively.

Well, they were all children, these live ones.

Still...

There had been nothing particularly inspired about Potter's brief expression of thanks to the professor's inert form, but he couldn't fault him.

The Bloody Baron came to stillness by the side of Horace's bed.

The shriveled flower stem lay stark and brown against the smooth white coverlet.

The Baron looked at it without any particular interest.

It would end as it would end.

---

Outside, the moon was rising.

---

A rustling from one of the frames above roused Minerva from her nap. Startled, Hecate jumped off of her lap and padded out of the frame.

"Minerva?" Albus' voice floated downward, devoid of any tonal indication of mood or purpose.

Her throat felt dry.

Nonsense. I'm dead. How can my throat feel dry?

Out of habit, she cleared her throat softly before responding. "What is it?"

"May I join you?"

She straightened in her chair and smoothed her robes. "Of course." She examined her surroundings. "But Albus," she warned, her steel-grey eyes glinting with an energy she'd not know for years.

"Yes?" More cautious this time.

A satisfied twitch of her mouth. Good. "If you're planning to argue with me, you will want to bring your own chair. I seem to have just the one, and this could take quite a while."

A sound of dry leaves drifting over parchment that might have been a chuckle. "Indeed."

A moment's delay, and Albus Dumbledore joined her in front of her fire.

He'd been dreading this argument for years.

While he was still making himself comfortable, Minerva cast an unerring first stone. "If a paradigm shifts and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

---

In the very deepest level of the castle, Severus and Hermione slipped through darkness, strong, certain, driven within the other until the only call of reason they heard was their own.

His body seeking deeper purchase within an endless receding heat, hands braced against the bones of the castle as again and again she sought his soul.

And he denied her nothing... nothing but the one thing she sought.

His brow glistened with his efforts at control. His voice harsh against her neck, "You shall not have that, Hermione."

And, despising her desire even as she was held powerless against it, she cried out in horror, in madness, in shame.

Smooth against the surface of time, pinioned between denials and demands, enflamed by demands met and desires denied, pinned between the heat of his skin and the cool, smooth, unbearably permanent column at her back, from beneath her horror, her madness, and her shame, Hermione opened her eyes and found herself falling.

And he was watching her, and in his eyes, his soul gleamed, achingly perfect, controlled, demanding, and...

Easy. So easy...

And she released her hold on his hips and relaxed her head against the stone.

The burning in his hip suddenly ice where her hands had been...

Held between the castle and her former teacher, she whispered, "Close your eyes."

A flicker of incomprehension, of hesitation, and he sought a reason to deny her small, quiet request...

... any reason...

"Please."

And he closed his eyes, and, released at last from the reflection of his soul, Hermione pressed her lips to the corner of his eye and, with the last shred of awareness, whispered, "Bring me back?"

A sound – half groan, half growl – from deep in his throat...

"Can you?" Her breath ragged.

He tensed, his skin salty at her lips.

"Can you?" she asked, and he felt her poised to let go, to fall into the darkness that spoke within her veins and echoed in the dim recesses of the ancient stone.

His voice a low, rasping rumble. "I can." If I want to...

Weightless over the edge, she dared him. "Tell me to do it."

Their breathing a straining heartbeat in the waiting shadows...

He tasted copper, and rock, and dust. "Go."

Falling, she beckoned, "Come with me."

... and the Darkness spoke with Hermione's voice, and his fingers clenched in mortar and they fell in a shower of shattering stone.

The last sound he knew was her laughter.

In the dungeons, anonymous in darkness, the two through whose blood the bones of the castle flowed fell forward through time and found it meant nothing.

---

Below, far beneath the feet of the castle, the echoes of Hermione's laughter fell into molten depths that flowed and cooled and darkened and flowed again, ever hungering, endlessly silent.