Chapter Thirty-Three

A/N: Everything you recognize belongs to JKR. I make no money. Endless thanks to Shellsnapeluver (who beta'd this one from my house!), RedOrchid and OpalJade for their insights and support. I love you ladies very much.

The deal had been, of course, that he would live as long as he possibly could. That was what they had outlined that night back in Dumbledore's office, after he had debased himself on that windswept hill, after he had fallen to his knees and begged.

The warmth of Dumbledore's office had seemed oppressive, and his heart beat erratically. He knew how much the old man disliked his presence there, how little he trusted him. "You disgust me," he had said, and Snape had felt the disgust still radiating off him in waves. He had longed to shrink down to nothingness, to conjure a hole into which he could slip and disappear from the world forever. And yet, Dumbledore had been willing to work with him, had been willing to accept his help. It had seemed then that it was all that he had ever wanted--for someone to accept his apology, even if his apology was for being ugly and skinny and sharp-tempered, for someone to recognize that he could still be of use.

He had agreed to turn spy that night, and the promise that he made was not just one of absolute fidelity, but to extend his usefulness over as much time as he possibly could. In essence, he had promised not just to do the job, but to do it well, to do it relentlessly, to press on past crushing fear and isolation and hatred, to preserve his role at all costs, to give as much as he could to Dumbledore. Because they both knew it would never be enough.

As the years passed, he knew why Dumbledore had extracted that promise from him. After the first year of teaching, a year in which he struggled to become used to the things his students said about him when they thought he could not hear; after the night of the Dark Lord's return, when the Mark had reappeared on his skin, so black and malignant, like an accusation; after the first time he had arrived back at Hogwarts, his flesh flayed and burning; he knew. It would be easy, would it not, to make some fatal error, to give himself away and let the torture end? For however the Dark Lord chose to end his life, it would be better than this.

But the difficulty had been the point. The suffering... it was the only way to atone. Not that he hadn't tried to lessen it. He plunged his fingers into his hair and let his head fall forward until it rested in the cradle of his hands. Everything about him had been carefully chosen to keep people away from him. It was the way of a good spy, he had told himself. If no one wants to be around you long enough to know you, if no one wants to consider you too closely, then your secrets are safe. But it had also been a protection of a different sort, he knew. If he were cruel and ugly, if he were purposely objectionable... then he wasn't suffering others' rejection, he was inviting it. It was weak, he saw now. He had deserved to truly earn their disdain. They should hate him for the right things. They should hate him for Lily.

So why should it trouble him that Dumbledore had arranged for his death? Shouldn't he be welcoming the end of these long and lonely years? If he died in a plan to save Potter, wasn't there a symmetry to that that should satisfy him? He could not fathom why he felt so empty and afraid.

But what was the plan? If he understood it, if he could see how his death would contribute, perhaps then he could be satisfied. But if Malfoy had the Elder Wand, and no one knew it but he and Dumbledore, then what was his death supposed to serve?

He felt anger rushing through him, speeding his heart and clouding his thoughts. There were things he wanted to do, things that were not yet taken care of. This was why he had never wanted any attachments. Had he ever truly cared how the war came out? Had he truly ever hoped to see Voldemort defeated, or had he simply cared only to lift the heavy burden of grief and guilt that he had saddled himself with? Suddenly, it seemed that he had no idea, no recollection of who he might have been before that night in September when he agreed to tie his life to that of a seventeen-year-old girl. A seventeen-year-old, Muggle-born girl, who despised him, but looked into his eyes that night and promised her life to him. Promised because Dumbledore had tricked her, had used her, had required her services. Just as he had been tricked that night. Dumbledore had said he wanted to see them married to give Snape a chance at life, at survival. Lies. And he had hoped, had so foolishly, childishly hoped that Dumbledore might have wanted him to live. He had thought that might have meant that he had done enough.

But now, he was certain, he wanted very badly to see the Dark Lord vanquished. When had it changed? When had he begun to care for things beyond these walls, for people alive instead of dead? Unbidden, her image rose into his mind, the way she'd stood before that grubby little tent in the frozen January woods--her wand in her fist, her posture unbroken.

Why had he married this girl who had forced his heart open and crawled inside and made him want things? Not life--no, never life, not for her sake--but... he wanted Potter to succeed. He wanted to live long enough to guarantee that Potter gained the mastery of the wand, to see the Lovegood girl released from the Manor; he wanted to live long enough to help Hermione to try to reclaim her family--

Not yet, he thought. I'm not ready yet.

Perhaps it was because it had been a secret. Perhaps if he had always known, if it had not come as such a shock... Why had Dumbledore kept it from him? Why not explain? If he had known that the old wizard had had the Elder Wand, they could have made some plan, they could have hidden it, he could have taken the full mastery of it and let Potter find him, that he could have done--

He lifted his head. Dumbledore waited in silence behind him. How much longer until he spoke? Snape dreaded that moment. He knew he was on the edge of something, something he had never meant to choose, something that would cost much more than his life. When he opened his mouth, it would all be over. Because it seemed to him that the man in the portrait was not going to explain how this all made sense, how there was some other interpretation of events in which his life was not thrown away on a mistake. And when he demanded answers, when he challenged Dumbledore, the path he had been traveling would come to an abrupt end, and he would strike out on a far more dangerous mission than being a spy. It seemed to him he would shed the old wizard's guidance, his protection, however tenuous it was in death, and he would be just a man again, a man trying in whatever desperate and feeble ways there were to steer his family safely through a war.

"Severus," Dumbledore said, and Snape's heart plummeted.

"Dumbledore," he replied without turning around.

"Would you care to tell me where you have been? I did not realize you were now using house-elves as transportation devices."

Snape said nothing. What could he say?

"What are you keeping from me, Severus? I thought we had an agreement--"

"I believe the question is what you are keeping from me."

"I beg your pardon?"

"When were you planning to tell me about the Elder Wand?" Still, he could not turn and look Dumbledore in the face as he spoke.

"Who has your ear, Severus? Who have you been listening to?"

"Do not dissemble, Dumbledore. It does not become you. This is your war. You have laid the plans, and I am but your servant. I expect no apologies. I only want the truth."

"Look at me," Dumbledore said.

Snape remained motionless. There was a loud noise from somewhere behind him, and he wondered if Dumbledore could knock things over in his portrait.

"Severus! Look at me."

Slowly, Snape swiveled in his chair to face the portrait. Dumbledore was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his painted knees, his hands folded beneath his chin. His eyes were calm but bright.

"I will assume you have learned of the Deathly Hallows from Miss Granger. She's a bright witch, very determined. I knew that she would--"

"Stop. Flattering my wife will not put me off of this, Dumbledore. When were you going to tell me about the Elder Wand?"

"What is it that you wish to know about it?" Dumbledore asked calmly.

"What do I wish to know about it?" Snape thundered. "It was your intent that I become its master, was it not? And yet, I think young Draco Malfoy now holds that dubious honor. How was I to pass the Elder Wand to Potter if I did not know I had it? Why did you allow it to be buried with you? And why in Merlin's name have you not take steps to correct this flaw in the plan?"

"It is true that I had intended you to be the master of the wand, Severus. The Elder Wand does not change hands in the usual way; it cannot be given, nor taken in a simple struggle. The wand requires defeat--it requires the domination of one party by the other. In killing me, you gave Harry the only reason I could think of for him to want to conquer another person aside from Voldemort himself. He could not have taken it from me; it was not in him to do so."

Snape looked at him levelly. "I do not have the wand to give him, either in the physical or metaphorical sense."

"Indeed not. I let the wand be buried with me because Harry will not seek it there. There is only one person who would dare to breach the tomb."

"He is nearly there already. He has followed the trail from Gregorovitch to Grindelwald. It will not be long now, Dumbledore. He will take the wand--he will have no qualms about doing so! Why did you keep this from me when I might have prevented it?"

"What could you have done, Severus? Voldemort will take the wand. I have always known this. But the wand will not function properly when not held by its master. I told you that Harry must be willing to sacrifice himself to Voldemort and no other--this is because I intended him to come upon a Dark Lord who was in possession of a wand that would not kill him--that in fact, would want to join him, and would kill the scrap of soul living inside Harry without touching him, that would very likely send the curse rebounding against the caster."

"But Malfoy--"

"Yes, Malfoy. When I realized that Malfoy had taken the mastery of the wand, I admit I had a moment of distress. But then I realized that the plan had worked out far better than I could have hoped! The mastery is hidden! Voldemort will believe you to have control of the wand. Before it would have been a race--who would reach you first, Harry or the Dark Lord? All would hinge upon that, and I would have had to send you to Harry before he was ready in order to ensure that he would be the one who would take it. Harry might have become distracted, might not have finished his tasks and then all would have been for naught. But this way, even if Voldemort should kill you, he will not master the wand."

"And you chose to tell me none of this."

"I saw no need to tell you once it became clear that sending you to confront Harry would be useless."

"You did not think it necessary to tell me that the Dark Lord would wish to kill me to gain mastery of your wand?"

"If Voldemort believes that he has gained the mastery from you, he will grow sure of himself. He will believe himself invincible--he will be more apt to take risks, to be careless--"

"I see," Snape said quietly. "And Potter? He will die without the mastery of the wand. It will not act on his behalf."

"That cannot be helped. It was always a possibility, Severus; you know that. No wandlore can fully explain the Elder Wand--I have only history and suppositions to go on. However, in our current scenario, Harry will approach the Dark Lord only at the precise moment when the Dark Lord is most apt to be killed--and Voldemort himself will destroy the last of the barriers between himself and death! It has a strange beauty, does it not? And the Elder Wand will still be hidden. The Dark Lord will not possess the unbeatable wand."

"And who will kill him, if not Potter? The prophecy--"

"The prophecy is only as strong as we allow it to be; I have tried to explain this to Harry for years. Had Voldemort not acted on it seventeen years ago, killing James and Lily Potter and trying to kill Harry, the boy would never have come to house the bit of Voldemort's soul and hence a fraction of his power. Harry is an ordinary wizard--you know this, Severus. You have always said it. There is nothing particularly special about him. He was not born with extraordinary power--he was only marked with power by Voldemort. Once that power is gone, when the scar is destroyed, the terms of the prophecy will have ended. Any wizard will be able to kill Voldemort, and I daresay there will be many who would like to take a shot at it. Perhaps your Miss Granger will do it. I imagine that once you are gone, she will have great reason to want--"

"Stop there." Snape's eyes were molten stone as he glared threateningly at the portrait.

"Ah, yes. You are terribly sensitive where Miss Granger is concerned. I must caution you again not to share too much with the girl. She is still a child, and her devotion to Potter is extreme--should she become aware that--"

"You think she might be a bit put out? You think she might not want to follow your plans anymore? Why did you do this to her, Dumbledore? Her family is gone; there is only the slightest chance that she will ever find them or succeed at undoing the Memory Charm I have placed upon them. You tell me plainly that you are sending Potter, her dearest friend, to his death. Why did you marry us? Why marry us if you intended me to die? Why give her more loss to bear?"

"You are making your old mistake, Severus. You are seeing the witch and not the war."

Snape's wand whipped through the air before he had even had time to consider what he was doing. Red light shot from its tip and tore a jagged, diagonal slash across the portrait. He did not know whether he was furious or relieved when the canvas began to glow and knit itself back together.

"By all means, take out your frustrations. It is a healthy impulse. I admit, I had rather thought you looked forward to death. Part of me is glad that it is not the case. You have grown up a great deal in the last seventeen years."

Dumbledore's calm assessment of his character and emotions seemed to be Snape's final undoing.

"You cannot make these kinds of decisions without regard to--" he said, his voice so low it was nearly a growl.

"But I must. Someone must. Truly, the war can be won no other way."

"Then all your talk of deep magics, of love, has been a lie."

"Oh, love is real enough, and it has power, but it does not win wars."

Snape fixed the portrait in his dark, steady gaze. "Then you are no different than the Dark Lord. No different at all."

He wanted to swish from the room in an indignant swirl of fabric, but it seemed to him that the argument had taken the last of his strength. Everything he had trusted, everything he had believed in, had gone. Potter would not be saved. Neither of them would go to death in triumph. Dumbledore was not... he was not the man Snape had believed him to be, and the thought left him broken and unsure.

He opened the door to his bedroom. He needed to think. There had to be a way to put things back on track.

Perhaps Dumbledore could still be circumvented. Perhaps there was a way to coax Potter into defeating Draco...

He glanced up. Sitting on his bed, in a shaft of moonlight, looking as pale as death herself, was Hermione, and beside her, rocking miserably, Dobby.

***

Hermione had never seen Snape looking like this, and whatever she had felt in the moments before he opened the door, however badly she had wanted him to come in and comfort her, she instantly pushed those thoughts from her mind.

His eyes were empty and hollow, and he looked stooped and shaken. The sight of him terrified her--perhaps more than anything she had seen in the past year. This was a man who simply didn't break. He took fear and made it anger; he took the impossible and made it look ordinary. He was not allowed to look like this, to stare across the room at her as if he did not see her, did not trust himself to believe she was really there. She rose and aimed her wand at the door, shutting and warding it, and quickly crossed the room toward him. She caught his hands in hers.

He stared at their hands for a moment and then looked into her face.

"How?"

"Dobby came for me. I dosed the boys with Dreamless Sleep. He said you needed me."

Snape looked over her shoulder at the elf, and she followed his gaze. Dobby looked an odd mixture of proud and terrified himself. "Dobby... Dobby thought... when we was coming back from Dobby's old master's house, Professor Snape looked..."

"He waited in the woods until I came out alone and told me that I needed to come. I gave them three drops a piece in their water with dinner."

"How did you find her?"

"It is the duty of the house-elf to do what is needed, sir. If you call for Dobby, Dobby will come to you no matter where you are. Dobby just thinks of you, and there he is. Dobby thought of Miss Granger, sir."

"Thank you, Dobby," Hermione said, releasing Snape's hands and turning to the elf. "I would guess that we've been here about forty-five minutes. That should give us at least two hours more. Would you leave us for an hour and a half?"

"Yes, Miss Granger," Dobby said and left the room with a resounding crack.

Snape's head seemed to clear slightly. "Forty-five minutes. How much did you hear?"

"All of it, I think. I came in just as you began discussing the Elder Wand. You need to sit down." He did not argue with her as she led him to the bed. He sat down heavily, and she sat beside him. He had regained some color, but Hermione still felt uneasy. The man she knew would be pacing and planning.

"You went to Lovegood's," he said finally.

"Yes. He told us about the Hallows."

"So you know what the Elder Wand is."

"The Deathstick. Yes. Though I didn't believe it until tonight."

"I would not have believed it myself if I hadn't gone to Ollivander. I saw young Miss Lovegood in the basement of Malfoy Manor. I--I admit, I was afraid. But you got in and out of Lovegood's--"

"He alerted the Ministry, and they sent Death Eaters. We got out in time. Ron realized it was a trap, actually."

"Weasley is back."

"Yes."

"I am concerned at how easily you have been located recently." His tone was severe, and Hermione actually felt a rush of gladness. If he was scolding her, he was recovering.

"He found us using a Deluminator. Dumbledore left it to him in his will."

"Well," Snape said almost sardonically. "There seems to have been quite a bit of that lately. Minerva also received a Deluminator. She... advised me... yesterday that she no longer believed me a murderer."

Hermione knew better than to smile. "Big of her," she said, but Snape seemed to catch her pleasure nonetheless, and his hand enfolded hers.

They sat quietly for a moment.

"Are you all right?" she asked finally.

He did not respond, and she stared at his pale, pinched face.

"Severus..."

"I was supposed to save Potter," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I trusted him. I trusted Dumbledore. I thought... I wouldn't have minded dying if it would have saved Potter."

"We still have the Vita--"

"No! Think, Hermione. The Dark Lord wants the Elder Wand because it cannot be defeated. He will not be afraid to use the Killing Curse--he will be certain that it will not fail. And if Potter does not have the mastery of the wand... he will be correct."

"But I thought the wand would not work well for You-Know-Who if he did not have the mastery?"

"Ollivander said that the Dark Lord is powerful enough to channel through any wand. Its allegiance only matters in a match between the two." He sounded odd, distracted, as if he were listening to a far away sound that only he could hear.

"Then we make sure Harry gets the mastery."

"What are you suggesting? That we go against Dumbledore? That we storm Malfoy Manor? It would be suicide."

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting. It's no worse than what he's set up. What if we broke the Taboo? What would happen? Would we be taken to the Manor?"

"If you broke the Taboo, a gang of snatchers would come," he said dully. "They would check you against their list of known renegades and Muggle-borns. The snatchers are not usually proper Death Eaters--it's considered a demeaning job. So they would not have the power to call the Dark Lord directly. They might take you to the Manor--but Hermione, only Potter would be safe from murder on the spot, as everyone has orders to save him for the Dark Lord. And even Potter would only have moments to do what he needed to do before someone summoned him, before he arrived."

"And if we were all disguised?"

"Then they might not take you to the Manor at all. Then you would likely be taken to the Ministry."

"So we'd have to go as ourselves. Unless I made imperfect disguises. Enough to create confusion--"

"Perhaps," he said, shaking his head and seeming to sink deeper into the bed. "But still, I think--"

Hermione yanked her hand from his. "Why won't you help me?"

"Because I've chosen a side. I've chosen Dumbledore, and if--"

"You're wrong, Severus. We're not on Dumbledore's side. We haven't been for more than a year now, for as long as there's been something to hide. We're on our own side, on Harry's side. Why have we been sharing our information if you are unwilling to act on it?"

"I can't."

"You can't what? If we're all slated to die anyway, what difference does it make to try?"

She glared at him angrily and took his chin in her hand to force him to look at her, but what she saw in his eyes turned the anger into cold, numbing panic.

***

He looked at her, confused. His brain felt foggy and dark. What difference did it make to try? None. None at all. It would make no difference. They would be picked off, one by one, leaving no one who knew of the Horcruxes, no one to finish what they had started.

He closed his eyes. She seemed to go on and on... he heard the volume of her voice rising, but he could no longer make out the words. Voldemort was after Grindelwald. How soon until he knew? How much longer until these planned events began to take place? The Dark Lord had already begun to distance himself... Hermione and her friends had escaped Xeno Lovegood's and still, he had not heard a thing...

When she kissed him, his surprise registered in some buried part of his brain, but the rest of him went on stumbling through the darkness. How would he die? A traitor? Perhaps there was some final act he could commit to show who he had tried to be, something that would help, something that might give her strength... But then, who would believe it? And it might be best simply to evade him, evade him as long as possible. It might be best to hide, to give Potter as much time to find the Horcruxes as he could. Yes, he could hide. He imagined Disillusioning himself, sliding beneath the bed, lying there in the dust and the darkness until he simply ceased to be...

Her hands were fumbling through his robes. He imagined the moment in which he would receive the call, the special burn in his arm that meant it was just for him. Would he be brave? Would he answer it or make the Dark Lord hunt him down? He must remember to leave something for Potter, something that would let him know when it was his turn to die...

When she took him into herself, when she began to jerk her hips to his, when she began to whisper his name, he thought, Yes. Use me. Use this. There is power here--take whatever is left, whatever you need to sustain you. Deeper and deeper into himself, he dove, seeking the blackness, the empty bottom of his soul, a quiet defeat that would erase everything. He felt his hold on her slipping; he could not remember her face, her voice, his own name; it had all gone. Thrown into the abyss.

But she shoved him to the mattress and buried her face in his neck, pinning him down and forcing him to experience her tongue as it snaked its way around his earlobe, as it laved the exposed skin of his neck. She forced the pleasure into him as she snuck her fingers into his hair, pressing them into his scalp, tugging; and her hips, oh, her glorious hips, plunging and grinding, and the soft, warm heat of her...

No. She called, but he would not answer. This was an illusion; it was only temporary respite, a prelude to a long, slow spiral into hell.

"Please," she begged, "please, please, Severus." And her hips drove harder; she was shaking them both with her effort. With her limbs, she struggled to tether him to the world, to the present. She pressed her cheek to his; her hair settled over his face like a cloud, and suddenly he remembered her, laughing in the snow, the wind buffeting that hair into a nearly living thing... He remembered the biting cold of the winter wind, the blinding whiteness of the grounds blanketed in snow. It seemed he was being assaulted by pain and pleasure, and he began to burn with it, to feel it taking him, forcing him to...

He gasped as he surfaced, like a man who had been held underwater past the breaking point, past the point at which it seemed perfectly reasonable to breathe the water, and forced himself up onto his elbows, catching her surprised mouth with his. He thrust up into the tight heat of the living witch that was his wife, and he felt her strength seeping into him like... magic.

"Come back to me," she whispered, and he could do nothing but nod mutely. She looked flushed and desperate; tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, and she was trembling. He propped himself on one arm and wrapped her tightly in the other.

"I'm here," he said, and he felt all of her tighten around him; he swore he could feel a surge of energy travel straight up through the core of him like a blinding light. "I'm here."

***

When it had passed, when the shaking had stopped, she peeled herself from his lap and collapsed beside him, pressing her body firmly against his. She didn't know why she had done it, what had made her choose it, but it had seemed, in the instant that she saw his eyes empty out, the only thing she could have done, the only way she knew to wrench him back from the dead. Where he had been, she did not want to consider.

But it had seemed to her that there was power, there, in the act. She remembered it from their first night together, the night they had been married, how moved she had felt by their joining, as if some great magic had passed between them.

She watched his face carefully. It was empty now, slack, but she did not feel the same horror as she had before. His eyes--the Snape of him, her mind insisted--were dark but present. She wondered if he was sorry that she had come for him, sorry that he was here in this strange, sparse room again. It pained her to think of it, that he might be sorry, that he might have preferred wherever he had gone. What had she asked of him?

When she had heard Dumbledore's words, she had been afraid, yes. She had been enraged. But it had not shaken her, and why was that, exactly? Because she did not bear what he did? Even in hiding, she was loved. That night in Godric's Hollow, when the sign had risen from the shrubbery--there were words of comfort, words of strength from strangers. She did not have to appear regularly before a homicidal maniac and hide from him her treachery. She was not trying desperately to atone for some ancient mistake that had grown in her mind until it began to choke out all her hope.

Perhaps it had not affected her as badly because she had withdrawn her complete faith in Dumbledore months ago, the night that he had left Snape, tortured and delirious, in her care. It had seemed to her that in sending him to spy, he had inflicted those wounds on Snape as surely as if he had put them there himself. That he would leave him in such a condition, leave him with a student... She thought of the long hours of terror, of not knowing whether she was helping or hurting him... No, her feelings for the old man had never been the same.

But Hermione knew that Snape's inability to see himself as anything but Dumbledore's servant (on Dumbledore's side, he had said, and the thought made her want to leap from the bed and put that portrait beyond magical repair) was somehow predicated on the notion that he owed a crushing debt; to Hermione, it seemed that he had balanced his redemption on the man, that somehow he thought he wouldn't be clean or right until Dumbledore said he had suffered enough. Privately, she suspected that it was Harry's discovery at the end of the past year that Snape had come to do his penance for: he had revealed the prophecy to the Dark Lord, and it had led to the end of Lily Evans's life. His patronus... She looked hard at her husband's waxy face. Somewhere in her heart, she knew he meant to die for it.

Perhaps that was what Dumbledore had intended as well.

She slipped her hand beneath his shirt where she had tugged it free from his trousers. She pressed the palm of her hand flat against his stomach, felt the slow rise and fall of his breath. For a moment, as if it passed into her through his skin, she caught a glimpse of the magnitude of what she was trying to do. She was a child, a girl barely of age, and she lay there, trying to outwit two of the most powerfully magical men in wizarding history. She lay there, planning, in her arrogance, in her determination, to defeat Voldemort while circumventing Dumbledore. She would fail. There simply was no way. Her grip on him tightened.

Gradually, he began to stir. His hair was plastered in matted strings to his face, and she brushed them away. He rolled toward her, capturing her in his arms. She could still smell the scent of fear, the ripe, dank odor of defeat, but she allowed him to bury his face in her neck so that he could whisper directly into her ear.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"No," she murmured. "Not sorry--everything is--"

"That was foolish, weak. I will not leave you to do this by--"

Guilt stabbed her heart. "You don't have to do anything--I can do it; it's my job. I'll figure it--"

He clutched her even more firmly. She was encased in darkness, surrounded by a cloak made of her husband himself as he wound his way around her, hanks of his hair falling over them like a curtain. There was nothing but him in the world.

Time passed, though she could not tell how much. She knew only the slightly laboured sound of Snape's breathing, the press of his body against hers. This was real. Everything else was a dream.

Finally, he whispered through the heavy silence.

"I will help you. We will try to save Potter."