Through a Glass Darkly

A/N: Some chapters are more exhausting than their word counts would indicate, thus, Anastasia, Melenka, and AnnieT, two more: thank you.

"Slughorn was already dead, Hermione. An Avada Kedavra won't work under such circumstances."

In a lower but no less urgent tone, he continued, "And it would seem we have a further complication."

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

"Complication?" she echoed, her voice cutting into the high-pitched whistling that was coming, as always, from her cracked window.

He nodded curtly, standing before the door. "The Ministry."

"What?!" Her strident pacing came to an abrupt halt as she wheeled to face him, her hair coming lose from its knot.

"I heard that librarian begging Potter to summon them in the Entrance Hall. Even if he managed to resist her appeal to his heroism, she's doubtless done so herself by now."

"To what end?"

His lips thinned. "Yours, I imagine."

Her gaze swept the room. A shard of moonlight fell on her bedspread, and she glanced automatically to the crack in the window.

Unrelieved by texture, the purity of light seared her eyes, and reflexively she turned away.

He saw her flinch and tried to read her purpose. "Are you planning to run?" he asked.

"Of course not." Her eyes blazed.

"To surrender yourself, then?" He kept his tone deliberately neutral, although the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling with urgency.

"I knew what I was risking when I decided... when we... this. Besides. The curse failed."

"The casting, not the result, is Unforgivable. And then – for some unfathomable reason – you left without bothering to ascertain that your task was complete."

She flared. "I saw the green flash, Severus."

He was tempted to shake her and crossed his arms to stay the impulse. "You left your work not only unfinished, but unchecked. Very unlike you. Not at all up to your usual methodical standard."

Hermione's fingers twitched toward her wand, but she merely stood straighter and fired back, "You know I dismantled your stasis spell, thus releasing the fragment of his soul to – where? Do you know? Did you stop to check your work, Professor?"

He scowled, and the air around them crackled with the imminence of magic held in check, underscored by the wind's high-pitched whistling through the cracked window.

"No? Then I'd hardly criticise, were I you." She turned succinctly to her window. "Reparo," she muttered, knowing it was ultimately a futile gesture.

The crack disappeared and the whistling, blessedly, stopped.

A retort was on his lips but it died as he registered some resignation in her stance and couldn't place its source.

"I'll surrender my wand, and go to Azkaban, and Harry will be elected regardless, and... it can all end."

"Until someone dies and you start snapping souls again."

Her look was bleak. "Assuming they do figure it out, it's not as if they'll admit that such magic is possible. Really – they can't afford to undermine Harry now."

"They may never admit it, Hermione, but you may be sure that they will figure it out. You're as much of a danger to them in prison as out of it."

"I'm amazed they didn't just kill me twenty-two years ago," she said bleakly.

His eyes snapped. "I'd be very surprised if they'd not considered it."

She stared at him, ready to laugh, to insist that theirs was a civilised society. She waited, but neither laughter nor words came.

His eyes held hers for a long moment.

A clink as a shard of glass hit the floor, and she flinched as the wind resumed its keening through the crack.

"That always happens," she said tiredly, turning to repair it again, bracing herself against the moonlight.

But as she endeavored to keep her eyes away from inevitable moonlight, she caught her reflection, blue in the colored glass. Her hair ghostly pale, her eyes smudges of shadow in the distorted oval of her face, the image rippling in the ancient, uneven glass as though she lay still in a slow current, held fast beneath an indifferent layer of ice.

"Oh, gods," she said, dropping her wand.

Startled, he was behind her in an instant. "I believe I can keep you out of prison, Hermione... if nothing else, we could... my..." His voice trailed away as he realized she wasn't listening.

He followed her gaze to her reflection.

And in a moment, he saw, and thought he understood.

"They didn't kill you, Hermione."

"They didn't have to," she whispered. "I more or less did it for them."

His throat tightened, and he drew her to him, his chin coming to rest on her hair.

Instinctively she looked for his face, reflected above hers, but saw only the crack, and the moonlight through it pierced her eyes, and, squeezing her eyes shut, she drew back toward the warm darkness that was Severus behind her.

"What is it?" he whispered, pressing his lips to her hair.

"The light. It hurts."

He looked into the light, but his eyes adjusted quickly.

"Severus, why doesn't it work? I've tried and tried to fix this window. Every night, I fix it, and every night..."

He held her and had no idea what to offer, although his mind was racing. He'd seen her stare unblinkingly into the sun... where? In the library... at the sun, reflecting on the snow... much brighter than the moon... what was it? "What is it?"

She said nothing.

"Tell me, Hermione."

She shook her head, turning her face into his cloak. It rustled... so soft... like her dream...

He will drink the stain...

"Your soul is fine, Severus."

He blinked at the non sequitur, going instantly alert, but refusing to allow any hint of tension to invade his limbs. "You're sure?"

She nodded against his chest. "I... I saw it. It's whole, and complete, and perfect."

"How can you be sure?"

She smiled sadly against him. "I wouldn't have wanted to break it otherwise, would I?" Her tone took on a mocking self-deprecation he'd only heard in the echoes of his own voice, and his heart tightened. "What would be the fun in breaking it, if it weren't whole?"

"You say you saw it."

"In your eyes. Shining, round, and whole..."

He sucked in his breath. "You saw Minerva's?"

She nodded.

"And... " Blast... had there been a moon the night of the battle? His mind frantically sorted images – confused, urgent, mortal – and at once, he knew. "You saw Ronald Weasley's."

She paused, and he heard her breath catch.

"And then you didn't."

She nodded again. "When I opened my eyes, his eyes were open, staring at the sky, and the moon..."

"Oh, Hermione," he breathed.

"I can't bear it any more. The trees, overhead, their branches... it was the last thing he saw... it must have been... before I... and then I... the sound... I can't bear it."

In his mind he saw the skeletal fingers of trees reaching, creaking in the cold, fracturing the moonlight beyond their vaulted shadows...

For long moments, he held her and said nothing as the rising moon through the cracked window traced its slow path down his face, seeking hers.

She finally sighed, her memories spent, and leaned against the darkness of his cloak, the warm, breathing man it enshrouded, and tried to memorize the feel of him holding her.

The single, broken ray of moonlight slipped from his lips to touch her forehead, nearing her eye...

"Hermione," he breathed, carefully drawing his wand, "you cannot fix what is meant to be broken, and you cannot remain in this darkness forever." He closed his eyes. "Forgive me."

Sensing his intentions, but having no wand of her own with which to block him, she shouted, "No!" just as he cast a quiet Reparo, and her window shattered.

The thousand fractured shards of glass arced through the frosted air. As they fell, each for a split-second caught and refracted the light of the rising moon, casting for an instant a frozen rainbow against the dark tower stone.

Author's Note to Petulant Poetess readers: This story is now caught up on this site; future chapters will be entirely new. Thanks for reading! ~ Ari