Chapter Thirty-Nine

A/N: All italicized text belongs to JKR. These are her characters, and I make no money.

Very big thanks to Shellsnapeluver, RedOrchid, and OpalJade, the most insightful beta-team around. I'm infinitely in your debt, and the story is richer for your thoughts. Thank you.

The door to the Room of Requirement stood open, and the three of them looked at each other for a moment. This would be the last Horcrux before Nagini. Once they had done this, there would be no choice but to face him. Ron broke their gaze first and entered the Room, and Harry had just stepped across the threshold when Voldemort's voice boomed out around them, as if he had been hiding in the Room, as if they had unleashed him just by opening the door.

"I know that you are preparing to fight. Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood."

Hermione closed her eyes. It was now. He had come.

"Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."

Harry checked his watch. "Fifteen minutes," he said. "We have fifteen minutes."

He crossed into the Room, and Hermione followed. It was almost exactly as she remembered it, save the fact that one path seemed even more traveled than before. Chairs had been upended, and a thick gooey substance mixed with black powder covered the floor. Hermione followed Harry down the cleared path, until she saw the mangled cabinet with its door standing open. This was not the way. She turned back and picked her way through the rubble until she saw the graffitied bench. There. That was where she had climbed over, where she had stood frozen while Snape had distracted Draco. She stepped onto the bench once more, feeling time settling around her like a cloak. It had been a year, a year since she had last been here. Where was that girl, that student, who had come here looking for her lover? What had happened to her? She had the sudden, senseless thought that perhaps her old self was in this room somewhere, beneath a pile of tattered robes, hiding still.

The bust stood before her, and she walked to it calmly and plucked the diadem from its head. She turned it over in her hands. Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure. They had found it. This was it. Wit beyond measure. Hermione thought of her old self again, lying at the base of this very statue, studying a potions book. Was it possible that the legend of this thing were true? That the person who wore it was somehow enhanced? She had nearly finished settling the thing into her hair when she realized that she was crowning herself with a bit of Voldemort's soul, and she whipped it off again. She thought of Dumbledore's hand. What had she almost done? Was there some kind of enchantment on the thing? She had to get rid of it quickly.

"I have it!" she yelled, edging around a heavy wooden table covered with books and bottles. "I found it!"

Ron was in the center of the room when she reached it, but Harry had not come back. "Where is he?" she asked. The Horcrux was clutched tight in her fist.

"Dunno. I haven't seen him since we first got in. Harry?"

Hermione's mind was suddenly filled with the image of Harry climbing into the cabinet's open door, of Harry escaping and leaving them there. "Harry!"

She rushed down the open path to the cabinet. Harry's back was to her, and he had the sword of Gryffindor raised to shoulder height. "Harry!" she said, but he did not turn toward her.

"Ungh!" There was a splintering, crunching sound as the sword made contact with the wood of the cabinet. Harry raised it again. "Ungh!" He grunted with the effort, wrenching the blade from the wood and slamming it down again. The cabinet door hung by a hinge for a moment and then clattered to the floor.

Hermione approached him cautiously. "Harry, please. Please. We have the Horcrux. There's not much time."

"Fuck them!" Harry screamed as he drove the sword into the cabinet again. "Death Eaters in Hogwarts! Dumbledore..."

"I know. I know, please, Harry, but it's happening again, and we've got to stop it now. Give me the sword."

He did not hand it to her, but raised it in both fists above his head and stabbed the cabinet, as if he intended to pierce its heart. "Gaaaaah!" he screamed and sank to his knees before the cabinet's gaping mouth. Silence rang through the room. Ron shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, seeming not to know where to look. Hermione wondered who Harry had pictured as he had rammed the sword home. Voldemort? Draco? Or someone else?

"If we win," she began.

"If we win, he'll still be dead."

"I know. We couldn't change it then, and we can't change it now. But we can do what he asked of us. We can still do that."

Harry did not move.

"I'm going to take the sword now, Harry," Hermione said gently. She stepped gingerly around him and took the hilt in both fists, stowing the diadem under her arm. She wiggled the blade back and forth until she could pry it from the wooden wound.

"C'mon, mate. Hermione's right. Let's get rid of this thing."

Harry's shoulders shook slightly, but he made no move to get up.

"It's okay. I'll do this one," Hermione said. She lay the silver circlet on the stone floor and raised the sword. It felt odd--theatric--in her hands. How high was she supposed to lift it? How hard did she have to hit? She had never wielded any weapon but her wand. But as her muscles tensed to strike, a high, cold voice permeated the silence. It was not the same as it had been when they had opened the door; it did not seem to come from everywhere, but from the diadem on the floor.

"Hermione Granger," the thing hissed. "I know you."

Ron met her eyes and shook his head frantically. "No," he said. "No, Hermione! It did this to me, too. It doesn't know anything--just stab it!"

"Oh, Miss Granger... I am so sorry to be the one to tell you." The diadem paused and chuckled almost sadly for a moment. "He's already dead. I killed him myself... less than a half an hour ago. If you find him now, you may feel a hint of warmth yet, in his skin. But perhaps not. He told me, just before he died... he told me to tell you..."

"Hermione--NO!" Harry shouted as she reached for the diadem.

"He told me to tell you he never loved you at all... He told me to tell you that he was mine until the very end... my spy, Miss Granger, not yours."

Hermione screamed as Harry wrenched the sword from her hands.

"He begged me to let him live..."

"Kill it!" Her voice tore through her throat as if it were still lodged in her chest somewhere, ripping everything free as it poured from her mouth. "Kill it!"

Harry stood pale and shocked, looking at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Hermione? Fuck, no, Hermione..." He shook his head as if to deny what was crossing over his face, through his mind. "It was Snape? It was Snape all this time?"

"I wish I could tell you his death had been painless, Miss Granger, but I'm afraid..."

"Harry, please! You don't understand--"

"He killed Dumbledore!" Harry roared.

"Harry, please listen! They planned it! Planned it between them--Dumbledore made him--he thought you would take the wand from Snape--Harry, I swear it--Dumbledore would tell you the same!"

Harry still stared at her, furious, uncomprehending. "This doesn't... I don't... SNAPE? How much does he know, Hermione? How much have you told him?"

"I... he... H-Harry, he already knew. Dumbldore's portrait... He brought us that sword--it was his Patronus in the forest, his doe! And in Malfoy Manor--you said yourself someone was helping us--he Stupefied Draco; he put the Shield Charm on you!"

"I'm afraid I had to hurt him rather badly... Have you ever heard him scream, Miss Granger? Have you heard him beg for mercy?"

Hermione grabbed the sword from Harry's boneless fingers. He made no move to stop her. She had no thoughts about how to do it now, but fell to her knees beside the cackling Horcrux and plunged the blade into the thickest part of the metal, feeling it give beneath the pressure, feeling a kind of sickening softness as she pierced the heart of the thing. It gave a low, winding moan as it died, and Harry took several stumbling steps backward clutching his scar, looking horrified.

His eyes were glassy and strange behind his glasses. His hand had not left his scar, and he seemed torn between the pleading voice at his feet and the voice that must be ringing through his head.

"He got us Bellatrix's key, Harry. He saved my life--all our lives. You have to trust me. This is me, Hermione... Harry, you know I would never betray you. Never. You said yourself there was something keeping me alive... Harry, please." She dropped her eyes to the floor. Why was this happening? Why now?

She heard the thin whistle of breath being let out through clenched teeth, and she turned to look at Ron. His brow was pinched, and his face was guarded, wary. He looked at her as if she were a curious animal he had never seen before, one that might be dangerous.

"Bloody hell, Hermione. Snape?"

She turned her face away from him, from both of them. Snape, they would keep saying, both of them, refusing to see, refusing to believe, just as she had known they would. So, the Horcrux would win, even in its death. It had found, perhaps when she settled the damned thing on her head, the one thing that would tear them apart, that would make them leave her.

Harry's voice, when it came, was quiet and wondering. "Hermione..."

She raised her head and met his eyes.

"Harry, please. I love him."

Harry's eyes locked with hers, and she wished that she had had time to learn Legilimency, that she could force her memories into his mind, that she could make him see Snape as she saw him and show him how relentlessly he had fought on Harry's behalf... how he had come back from the bowels of hell to fight for Harry.

"Trust me," she whispered, and something did cross over Harry's face, but she could not tell what it was.

"Hermione... Voldemort has sent for him. He's sent Lucius Malfoy to fetch Snape. He says there is some... service... he requires of him." There was warning in Harry's voice, but Hermione could not tell if he was warning her of what was to come or warning her of Snape's treachery.

"Where?" was all she could manage.

"The Shrieking Shack."

Hermione was on her feet in seconds, leaping over a suit of armour that had fallen in her path and running for the door.

"Hermione, wait!"

When she pulled the door open, it was if it were Hogwarts and not the Room of Requirement that could magically transform. The battle had begun while they had fought their demons in the Room of Hidden Things, and it seemed the Death Eaters had already breached the enchantments of the school. As she ran down the hallway, she had to dodge crumbling stone and blasts of light from wands she could not see. She held her wand out in front of her and charged through the castle, veering among pairs of duelers. She jostled a startled grunt out of Professor Trelawney as she passed and ducked beneath an orange curse she could not identify. She heard running footsteps behind her as she approached the first staircase, but she would not be stopped by friends or enemies.

"Glisseo!" she screamed and threw herself onto the smooth expanse of marble that the staircase had become, sliding quickly toward the floor below. A broad, hooded Death Eater stood at the foot of the steps, and she hit him with a Blasting Curse as she slid and watched with curiously emotionless eyes as he was thrown backward. Her stride did not break as she reached the bottom; she launched herself directly to her feet and tore down the hallway. She saw Fred and Percy dueling a man who, beneath his mask, looked remarkably like the Minster of Magic, and as she passed he screamed, "The Mudblood!" but she heard nothing further as her feet carried her faster and faster toward the next staircase.

There was an explosion beneath her, and the floor began to tremble and give way. She turned and doubled back down the hallway. There was another staircase on the east wing of this floor, between a bathroom and the Muggle Studies classroom. Hermione focused only on where she was going. She did not look at the faces she passed, nor the bodies of those who lay crumpled in the corners. She could not afford to look, not afford to stop. Snape was on the way to the Shrieking Shack, and she would get there in time...

In time to what? It did not matter. It was simply one more thing not to think about. She heard her name with some distant part of her mind, but it did not trouble her as she ran. Part of the floor had collapsed here as well, but she would not be stuck on the sixth floor. The staircase she was running toward was trying to swing free, away from the wreckage, but it was hung up on a hunk of stone. She swung herself up over the balustrade and onto the steps, blasting aside the offending rock. The staircase shuddered and creaked as it tore itself free from the landing and swung her around to the opposite side of the castle, connecting to another staircase that seemed to have been trying desperately to find a mate. Down, down she ran, and once she reached the third floor, she was in the midst of a battle more furious than she had ever seen. People were swarming everywhere, some cloaked, some not, and even the statuary seemed to have come to life to join the battle. An armoured knight clanged down the hallway, swinging an enormous axe, and she was shoved aside by a stone gargoyle who ran snarling past her and sank its teeth into the knee of a masked figure who was shooting hexes at several retreating students. She forced herself not to look at their faces. Only two more floors to go now.

But the ground floor made the third floor look like dueling class. She was unable to dodge a Slashing Curse that flew by and tore through the sleeve of her robe and into her arm. She heard tortured screaming and saw Greyback's hunched form bent over a writhing figure, and she blasted him away, but the body remained on the ground ... a body wearing black robes and trainers and... no... not now. She would not focus on that now. Professor McGonagall ran by, her long hair loose and flying, her lips drawn back in a soundless scream as she shepherded a team of desks through the Main Hall. An unmasked Death Eater--that idiot Travers--appeared suddenly in a gap before her, and she Petrified him before he took aim at Lavender Brown, who was running with all her might to some spot behind Hermione, her face wide open with a strange mixture of fear and relief. She tried not to look, not to care, but there was Remus Lupin, his chest thrown out, and his hair blown back, looking so much more proud and purposeful than he had ever seemed to her before as he dueled Lucius Malfoy.

Lucius Malfoy. Why was he here? Harry said that he had gone to fetch Snape. Suddenly, Malfoy saw her, and the lazy sneer that he had worn as he traded curses with Remus disappeared. He turned to her with a face filled with self-righteous fury, and she knew he must have been badly punished after their escape from Malfoy Manor. He did not look like a man who wanted to fight--he looked like a man who wanted to rip her limb from limb and piss on the remains.

"Incarcerous," she shrieked, and her spell collided with his in midair and sent showering sparks flying everywhere that hit her arms and face and burned like acid.

He brushed at his face for a moment and ran toward her, and she made a split second decision.

"Sectumsempra!"

He fell to the ground before her, clutching his face as blood poured from between his fingers, staining his long blond hair. "My face! My face, you fucking cunt; I'm going to--"

"Lucius!" Narcissa screamed from several yards away, and Hermione turned and Petrified her, watching as she toppled to the ground. Someone stepped on her and nearly fell as he ran past.

Lupin Stupefied Malfoy. "Hermione!" he yelled, but there was no time for that, and she took off once more for the huge wooden doors at the end of the hall. So close now. Soon she would be on the open ground.

"Hermione, get down!" That voice was unmistakable. That was Ron Weasley in a full-on panic, and she hit the ground flat, her face pressed against the stone, her eyes squeezed shut. She half-heard, half-felt the scuttling of thousands of feet as the spiders ploughed over her. The rough hairs of their legs scratched her face and neck, and she longed to scream, to flail, to beat and punch them away from her, but as long as they were moving and taking no notice of her, she would try to keep still. Finally, the clicking wave of spiders passed, and she felt Ron's broad hands on the back of her robes, lifting her onto her feet.

"What the bloody hell are you doing, running from us? That was me you socked in the gut in the third floor corridor, in case you were---" Suddenly, he snatched her backward as the stained glass windows in the Main Hall imploded. Glass shot through the air like hundreds of tiny darts, and she and Ron were both bleeding freely. She could see fire through the gaping holes where the windows had been.

Hermione tried to pull free of Ron's grasp, to run for the doors once more.

"Just wait for me and Harry for Merlin's sake!" he bellowed, but she felt her robes tear, and she shot away from him, leaving him with a handful of her sleeve. She tugged at the heavy wooden doors at the main entrance, but they would not open. However the Death Eaters had gotten into the castle, it had not been in the traditional way. Hermione leaped through the jagged remains of a window that had once depicted Salazar Slytherin. She was out.

Hermione ran harder than she had ever run in her life. Her chest heaved, and her sides were on fire with cramps but she pushed on, past the centaurs firing arrows at strange, creeping creatures she had never seen before, past the giants with their monstrous clubs, past shrieking figures all in black, past, past... until the grounds were engulfed in a different kind of darkness, a cold and sucking darkness that threatened to freeze her in place. Dementors. She tried to keep on, tried to push through the dangling black robes that whispered in the wind, whispered horrifying tales of death and madness and endless dark, tales of pain and blood and slithering things, moving through her mind, making her breath whistle in her throat.

"Expecto Patronum," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Expecto Patronum."

Nothing came--not even a silvery wisp from her wand tip. Tears built behind her eyes--her husband was out there in the dark, dying? Dead? And she could not reach him; she could not go any further. She would lay here on the ground and let them take her, and he would never know that she had tried, tried to get there...

Then a shining silver hare bounded through the air in front of her, driving the Dementors back. Moments later a Jack Russell terrier joined the hare, and finally, a gigantic stag charged through, using its horns to lift the Dementors and throw them aside.

"Hermione, would you wait? Charging into a pack of Dementors is not--"

She turned and half-heartedly raised her wand. She could not stop the desperation, the tears in her voice. "I can't wait--I can't! You don't understand!"

Harry stepped up to face her. "No, I don't understand," he yelled. "I don't understand why you didn't tell me. But I have just as much interest in getting to Voldemort as you do, Hermione. We have to kill that snake. And as for Snape..." He paused and looked as if he were choking on the words. "You have never given me any reason--any reason--to doubt you. And I won't start now."

Hermione stood eye to eye with Harry. Though the words he had spoken were ones of peace, the tension between them remained. Hermione was nearly quivering with her need to run, to hit someone, to get to Snape.

"Luna," Ron said quietly.

"Oh, I know. You have to go on alone. Just--Hermione--"

Hermione turned to look at her friend and inspiration dawned. "Luna, you know! You tell them!"

"They don't need telling, Hermione. They just need you to let them go with you."

Ron took Hermione's hand and for a moment she wanted to yank it back, but she yielded when she felt him tugging her forward, tugging her toward the Whomping Willow. They began to run, and she leaned into the wind, pressing forward with all the strength she had left. Harry joined them quickly, and his stag cantered ahead of them like a beacon in the dark.

***

Snape had hung back, lingering in the trees, watching the siege on Hogwarts. He had watched as the Death Eaters dismantled the wards protecting school as easily as if they had simply walked up, knocked on the doors and requested entry. They had smashed through the windows, blasted away a huge portion of the west wing of the ground floor and poured in through the ragged hole in the stone. He had seen the castle lit from within with fire like a giant blazing wound against the landscape and seen the frenzied movement of the battle inside.

He did not fight. It was not his destiny to die in battle, to reveal his true allegiance to those who made a final stand. His duty was to go to Voldemort when he was called, to make him believe that he had taken what was not Snape's to give him.

From behind him came the creatures of the deep, dark places. Hags and vampires, banshees and Dementors, floating, slithering, creeping onto the grounds, and the trolls, the giants, charging out of the hills, swinging their mighty clubs. Hogwarts was as good as lost. Who fought for the Light inside? A few ancient professors, the motley Order, and a handful of seventh years.

As he stood there, it occurred to him that this, too, could be laid at his feet. The Dark Lord attacked only to force them to give up Potter. Potter, a child, an ordinary child, marked for this by the rambling of a demented old woman. Had he not reported it to the Dark Lord, had he never revealed the contents of the prophecy, he would not be standing here, breathing the stench of death as he watched his home laid to waste.

So he would go, yes. He would go and give his life, meager compensation for the destruction he had caused. As he watched the burning of Hogwarts, he thought of Hermione, still inside, he presumed, though he had not heard a word from her since she had told him they were coming. Still inside, prepared, as he was, to give her life to save Potter because of what he had done. If there were any hope left to be had, if he had any right to hope, he hoped that she would die quickly and painlessly, that he might find her on the other side. That she might still love him if he did.

Lucius came toward him, his blond hair startling against the heavy, smoky night. As soon as he saw him, Snape knew the time had come. He touched his robes a final time; the bottle was still tucked securely inside. He would go now and do what had to be done. He left the cover of the trees.

"Lucius," he said.

"Snape. The Dark Lord requests your presence."

"Snape, is it now? Funny, I haven't felt--"

"He sent me to fetch you. He says he wants you immediately in the Shrieking Shack."

"I see."

"What have you been doing, Snape? Afraid to fight? Hiding in the--"

"The Dark Lord has plans for me that do not concern you, Lucius. Your job, apparently, is to be the errand boy."

Lucius raised his wand.

"Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you. Didn't you come to tell me that our Lord requires me? It wouldn't do if I were... detained."

"Go on, then," Lucius growled. "Go to him, if you are not afraid."

Snape took two running steps and launched himself into the air. He could not stop himself from looking back at Lucius Malfoy, who stood slack-jawed on the ground, watching Snape's ascent into the sky. The smoke choked him, and he struggled to rise above it, to reach the clear night above the blanket of death. The stars lit his way over the Quidditch pitch, over the spiked gates of Hogwarts, now lying decimated on the ground. He flew over Hogsmeade to the Shrieking Shack, where he circled and landed inside the magical gates that protected the structure. He knocked three times upon the boarded door, and it fell away.

The Dark Lord stood at the top of the stairs. "Come, Severus," he said.

Snape climbed the stairs, acutely aware of each breath, each step, each beat of his heart as he ascended.

"Come and see."

Snape followed him to the back wall of the shack, which had been transformed into a one-way window. From here, the Dark Lord had watched his battle. Beside the window-wall, Nagini rested in a magical bubble, coiling and uncoiling in the starry sphere. But keeps it safe beside him under magical protection... he thought. Then it will be time...

"It is almost beautiful, almost tragic, is it not? Their foolish bravery." The Dark Lord shook his head as if at the antics of a beloved child. "They have no chance, and yet they struggle on. Why do they do it? Why do they think there is more honor in death than in life? When they could have..." he waved his hand to indicate the whole of Hogsmeade... Scotland... the world, "everything."

"They have had their heads filled with Dumbledore's nonsense, my Lord."

"Ah, Dumbledore. And yet, he was mine, too. Mine when I chose to ask for him. I thought that when they saw how easily he fell that they would realize, that they would come to me."

"You do not need fools, my Lord."

"No, perhaps not. Perhaps not, Severus. You have not been a fool."

"My Lord."

"It is true. Of all my followers, you have never troubled me with foolishness. You have grace, Severus. Wit. Talent."

"Your praise is staggering, my Lord. I do not--"

The Dark Lord smiled his broken smile. "You do. And that is why I regret what must happen."

"My Lord? What must happen?"

"This wand, Severus. This wand does not work for me."

Suddenly, Snape's skin was aflame with a different kind of awareness. Hermione was in the building. Hermione was here. He tried to glance around the room without attracting the Dark Lord's attention. Was she under the Cloak? Surely, she would not interfere, would not risk herself--she knew what must happen; she had heard Dumbledore--

"My Lord, I do not mean to contradict you, but the wand... Look at all you have done here. You have flown with that wand."

"No, Severus. In my hands, the wand is ordinary. Reluctant, even. I can coax from it this meager magic, but it is not the magic I need to kill Harry Potter."

He did not want to do this with Hermione present. This was not how it was supposed to happen. He had expected Potter--Potter to come to kill the snake, to take the memories--

"I think I know why that is, Severus."

"My Lord?"

"Do you know it, Severus? Do you know why it is?"

"No, my Lord. I... my Lord, Potter is weak--the child is weak; he has always been so! Let me go and find him myself. There will be no more mishaps. I will bring him to you myself and then we will see whose magic is--"

And now she would see him beg, which made him feel like screaming at the injustice of it all. The memories were to go to Potter--it was his final promise to Dumbledore, and if he did not carry it out then what was the point of dying in this disgusting place?

"No, Severus, do not dishonor yourself. You have been brave and loyal; you have done your duties without complaint. You are a clever man, as I said, and I think you know why I have called you here. "

"My Lord--"

"I have made Nagini a beautiful enclosure, yes?"

Snape's mind reeled. Where was the Dark Lord leading him? Did he know that Snape knew about the Horcruxes? "Nagini... yes," he repeated senselessly.

"I think Potter wants to kill my snake, Severus. My beloved familiar."

"Why would Potter want to kill Nagini, my Lord?"

"Because he childishly thinks it will give him power over me. But what he does not know is that, in a moment, even Nagini will be expendable. In a moment, I will have the power of Death's wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. In a moment, I will take the mastery from you, Severus, as you took it from Dumbledore, and there will be nothing and no one that can stop me. It cannot be any other way," said Voldemort. "I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last."

***

Harry's arms were wrapped tightly around her, and Ron's hands covered her mouth. She fought viciously against them, driving her teeth into the fleshy pad beneath Ron's thumb, jabbing her elbow into Harry's ribs, kicking furiously at his knees, but the boys held her grimly and silently. A crate had been pushed against the entrance to the tunnel, but most of the room was still visible, and they watched in horror as Voldemort used the Elder Wand to reposition Nagini's strange, shining sphere. It descended over Snape's head and shoulders, and the snake wound around him almost affectionately, as if she knew her Master's favorite servant well, rubbing her smooth, triangular head against his cheek.

Voldemort hissed in parseltongue, and Harry's arms tightened around Hermione until she thought her ribs would crack, and she knew what must have been said.

"Goodbye, Severus," Voldemort said coldly, and there came a scream from within the bubble that would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life, as Nagini sank her fangs into Snape's throat. Hermione's knees buckled; it was only Harry's arms that held her upright now. She watched, unable to look away, as her husband crumpled to the floor, as his blood and some strange silvery substance ran in rivulets toward her through the dust and the cobwebs. Voldemort flicked the wand once more and strode from the room, Nagini's cage bobbing after him.

Harry and Ron kept her imprisoned a moment longer. When the sound of Voldemort's footfalls had died away, they released her, and she hit the crate with the full force of her body, slamming it out of the way and running to Snape's side. She sank to her knees, rolling him over and pressing the heel of her hand against his throat. She could feel his blood sliding thick and warm under the useless pressure of her palm; she could feel the spurting heat of it as his heart beat out the last of its life.

"Severus, no. Severus, no," she said as if the words were a talisman that could drive it all away. "Severus, no."

His hand scrabbled uselessly at his chest. Perhaps he felt constricted, perhaps if he could breathe... her mind gibbered, and she took the neck of his high-collared robes and gave an almighty yank, spilling the buttons across the wooden floor, hearing them dance and roll, mixed with the sound of her own chanting. "Severus, no. Severus, please, no."

"Bottle," he choked wetly. "Potter," and blood was leaking from the corners of his mouth now, and in a moment, she would have to know what she could not bear to know now, and that was that her husband had already passed the point at which she could save him, that all she could do was stare into his eyes as he died.

"Bottle?"

His hand rose again, more feebly this time, and she began to feel inside his robes, to run her hands frantically over his chest until she found it, the remnants of a small bottle, not much bigger than three of her fingers.

"Potter," he said again, this time with a strangled gargling sound that made her want to shake him. Stop this, Severus, you're frightening me. Stop this right now, she thought. Put this blood back where it belongs and sit up this instant, or I will never speak to you again.

She looked frantically at Harry, her eyes pleading. "Please--please, whatever it is, take it--take it and go. He wants you to have it." She pulled out her wand and conjured a small crystal bottle, no different from the one that lay broken in Snape's robes.

Harry's fingers brushed hers as he took the bottle from her hand. He did not flinch at the blood that smeared his fingertips and for that she wanted to thank him, but she could say nothing but, "Take it and go--go, please, and do whatever it is he needs."

Ron stood in the corner, his back against the wall, looking pale and horrified. "Hermione, we don't want to leave you..."

"Go," she repeated.

Harry bent and began to siphon the silvery substance into the bottle. "It's pensieve silver," he muttered, perhaps to himself, as he worked.

"Pensieve silver," she repeated dumbly.

"Look... at... me," Snape whispered, and she whirled to look into her husband's eyes. She felt him slip into her mind, and she wanted to tell him, No, stop, save your energy, Severus, save yourself, but she was unable to break his gaze, to look away from the blackest of black eyes that had held her so powerless and naked in life.

I love you, Hermione.

She screamed then, for she knew that he would never have said that--never, never have said that if he thought there was any chance, and her scream seemed to break the connection, to echo through both their minds and rebound around the little room in which they were now alone. Harry and Ron had left them.

Her hands flew to her own robes, and she ripped them open in an odd mimic of his. She saw his eyes widen as she pulled the phial from its pocket, the pocket where it had rested against her chest, soaking up the beats of her heart.

"No," he breathed, but when she looked into his eyes to weigh the meaning there, she found them blank and flat. The Snape of him, the spark of him, the life of him... was gone.

There were no words, no thoughts in her head as she dug the cork from the phial with her fingernails. She thought of nothing. She thought of endless expanses of sky, of a freshly painted white wall, the calm surface of the Black Lake. Just as he had taught her, she pushed everything below the heavy blanket of her mind as she tipped the phial to his lips and poured the potion into his mouth. She pressed her hand against the huge, ragged wound on his neck, lest the potion somehow escape him through it, and she waited so long that she began to wonder if the bottle had contained anything at all, anything but a hope meant to keep her going.

She stared into his pale face, made paler by blood loss than she had ever seen it, memorizing the heavy arch of his brow, the slope and curve of his nose, the sharp planes of his cheekbones. His thin lips with their oddly deep cupid's bow, the fine black hair that lay caked and plastered to his neck with blood.

She raised her wand and conjured a cloth and some water, just as she had so long ago in his rooms when she had cared for him, and she began to dab gently at his skin, peeling the locks of his hair away and cleansing the wound underneath. She could not explain why she did this, only that she had to do something, because otherwise, she would sit there until the end of time waiting for him to wake up.

Wake up. A dry sob wracked her frame as the foolishness of what she had been doing rolled over her. She was waiting for a dead man to wake up. Suddenly, everything she knew about magic seemed like a long and rather silly fantasy. A witch? She fancied herself a witch? She waved her magic wand and things appeared out of the air? A teaspoon of liquid could call a man back from the dead? Was she really here at all, or was she five years old, asleep in the rocker on her parents' back porch, dreaming fevered dreams in the sun? Tears would not come, but pain was there in abundance, waiting below the surface, eager to make an appearance, and she shook as it overtook her.

"Severus," she screamed. "Severus, Goddammit!"

But it was not Snape's voice, but Voldemort's, that answered her. She leaped to her feet as the sound echoed around her, convinced that it was coming from within the shack itself. She held her wand aloft as she spun, looking for the source of the high, cold voice that boomed inside her head.

"You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured."

Hermione walked to the clear wall that faced the castle and looked out. In the distance, the fires still raged and piles of lumpy shapes, which she took to be bodies, littered the grounds. Nothing moved. For a moment, it seemed to her that she must be the last living person in the world.

"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."

She turned back to Snape, and her heart leaped into her throat with fear and joy at the sight of him. He was sitting up, his neck smooth and whole once more, and he held the empty bottle of Vita Secundus in his hand. She had raised the dead.

***

The first breath felt like the deepest yawn he'd ever known. Air rushed into his lungs, and the sensation was so perversely pleasurable that he did yawn, just to feel swollen with it, to feel the stretching of his shirt over his chest and the end of the panicked screaming of a million nerve endings inside him. The air tasted of dust, of mould, sharp and delicious, and he breathed until the rushing in his ears stopped, and he began to be aware of a faint light.

He had thought his eyes were closed until he blinked, until his eyelids seem to catch upon the parched surfaces of his eyes. Stinging tears pooled beneath his lids, easing their passage, and he lay quietly while his body carried out the simple task of adjusting to the dimness.

Voldemort's voice echoed around him, which seemed strangely fitting. Voldemort is, was and ever shall be, he thought in some bizarre childhood association, the beginning and the ending.

The Dark Lord spoke to Harry Potter, and that was good. That meant that things had gone according to plan. Potter lived... Potter would get the message; he would go to Voldemort... within an hour, yes. It would be over within the hour.

But something lingered around the edges. A black and worrisome thing. Something was not right here; some part of the plan had failed. Where was he? He knew, somehow, that the Dark Lord was not present, and yet someone was. Something... There were hazy memories--the snake, pain... horrible stinging, a crushing sensation in his chest... the struggle to hold on to sense, to tell Hermione... Tentatively, he lifted his hand to his throat and felt not the bloody, flapping remains of his neck, but his own skin, inviolate, untouched.

Hermione.

He turned his head, the muscles moving easily now, and he saw her in the window, but did not speak, instead running his hands over the sticky floor around him, feeling for the slim glass phial that would confirm the sick, cold assurance that flooded his veins like new blood. She had used Potter's potion on him.

When his fingers closed on the phial, he allowed himself to sit up. He stared at the empty glass, no bigger than his little finger, and yet, what had been held within was powerful enough to have destroyed everything. He lived. He lived while Potter remained in mortal danger. He lived, and for what purpose? He was useless. The Dark Lord believed him dead; he could not spy. And even if Potter were to succeed, the life he'd known had been destroyed, his home in the castle forsaken. The Order would throw him into Azkaban or worse. There was nothing left for him here. Why had she done this?

"Severus--" she whispered. He could hear the tentative joy in her voice, the hesitant elation.

"What have you done?" he said without looking at her.

"Severus, thank God. I thought it wasn't working; I thought maybe it was all in my mind, that--"

Rage rose in him. This was supposed to have been his chance. This, the final atonement! He should have escaped hell for what he had sacrificed; he should have been restored to himself. And then, then he might have deserved to have her love; he might have found her on the other side--there might have been some chance. But now...

"What have you done?"

She shut her mouth with a nearly audible snap, and her eyes grew round and frightened as he rose to his feet.

Now she would live or die in the battle and go on without him either way. There was no place for him here--nothing. If he lived, a sentence perhaps, a punishment, a trial, or hiding. A life without magic, and he could not, he could not bear that. Or death--a coward's death--running after her into the darkness, or taking his own life here on this dirty floor, undoing whatever salvation he might have earned.

Why did she still look at him with those awestruck eyes? Couldn't she see what she had consigned him to? A continuation of hell... these endless years, the waiting... He was supposed to have given his life to save Potter's and earned his rest, earned the end of pain.

She reached out her hands, taunting him with life and love and freedom and things that he would never have now, never, because of what she had done. And he longed to wound her, to cut her, to rage and slice with his tongue, to watch the hope in her eyes dissolve as it dissolved in his heart the longer it resumed its senseless beating. But he could not seem to find the strength, and so he gave her a long look meant to carry the weight of her betrayal.

"I trusted you," he said. "That potion was for Potter, and I trusted you." And with that, he spun away from her and into a future he could not imagine.