Chapter 8: What Lies Beneath

Three strokes across and a long, sensuous stroke down.

And in the dark, book-lined room downstairs, the translucent image of two figures reclining against the heather grew solid for a moment as the reed broom took one final circuit and came to rest alongside the beech tree that sheltered it.

Night's echo sang in her blood even hours after they woke, limbs tangled together, the scent of his skin a balm to her bruised soul. Silence cradled them there in the cool morning air more surely than words. She knew this in her bones and kept her peace.

There were no words for what had passed between them. No words to follow the waves of raw sensation wrapped in the certainty that there was something right about being here with him that reached far beyond relief at his touch and surcease for her loneliness.

She lay like a rag doll, spent from the force of her need and the release that the press of his body on her...in her...wrought. Her skin tingled, still remembering the play of his fingertips along the planes of her body, drawing out her desire and deepening it...deepening it until she thought she would scream from the wanting.

Every time she reached for him, he'd move her hands or mouth away from skin that she could feel crying for her touch. He'd murmur, "Not now," and distract her with his clever tongue and nimble hands until her keening cries shook them both.

Only when the moon had set and darkness cloaked the room did he finally join with her, slipping into her body silently, moving with the urgency of a prisoner's reprieve until his body shuddered its release and he cried out, bringing her with him so that she dissolved into tears against his still shaking body. He held her there with him for what seemed like hours but must have only been moments held still in time. Held her while the silence of the room pressed against her as she emptied herself of toxins built of fear and brokenness carried for a decade...or longer.

She didn't speak of it, but she couldn't have stopped if she'd tried. He didn't recoil or push her from him, and so she accepted the shelter of his body and his steady breathing and the unrelenting beating of his heart beneath her as she bathed him in tears too long withheld.

And they slept.

~~**~~

He woke with the sensation of velvet and heat against his body, and a nest of hair in his face.

Ah, Granger.

Oh, Granger.

Oh, Merlin.

The way she clung to him in sleep, he could hardly believe that she had sobbed in his arms after...

After.

After hours tracing the angles and grooves of her body, inscribing the taste and texture of her skin into memory. He knew the need drove her as it drove him, but the closer they got, the fewer barriers stood between them, the stronger the feeling that he was meant to be there, his hands and his mouth and his self in synchrony with hers.

So long as she didn't touch him with those curious hands and push him beyond his limits.

He couldn't...wouldn't let her see the force of his need. But with her first touch, fingertips tracing swirls on his skin, he knew. There was no way he could hide from her if she touched him, and if he let her kiss... let her whisper tender words and send soft breath and lips where...Oh, Merlin. No. No, no, no.

So he did what he knew how to do.

He poured himself into her from behind translucent shields until it was safe to join her on the other side. With the darkness cloaking him, he came to her at last and knew that she was too far beyond reason to hear the hope cloaked in the cries of a man too long denied.

*

Morning's light was kind and they dressed in silence, side by side. The night wound like a thread of glass around them, between them...too fragile to withstand even the whisper of words on its delicate surface.

And so they moved side by side from the bedroom to the kitchen, unspoken understanding keeping them a hand's reach apart, and shared breakfast in tranquil companionship. He found himself deeply grateful that she didn't fill the quiet with chatter.

Soon enough, they made their way into the front room, the translucent images from the day before hovering right where they'd left them. He had a moment when he was sure they'd been watching, but shook the thought from his head. If anything, the cards had been waiting for them to return...suspended in time, a map of the past awaiting continuation and resolution.

"Do you feel up to doing the next bit?" he asked. His voice was rough, and he realised that he'd not spoken in more than monosyllables since they'd woken.

"I do," she said. "Do you?"

He nodded. "I feel well enough."

Flustered at the blush that rose to stain her cheeks, he turned to the cards stacked on the side table and busied himself with laying them in their array on the silk. Looking up at the imprint of the first circle, he motioned with his hand and, translucent figures still in gentle motion, wafted it to the side as if on a current of air, making room for the new cards.

"Next, we will cast the circle that illuminates the current dilemma," he began. He would approach this clinically. There was no reason for this knot in his stomach. The cards would show them what they needed to know as if they were an enchanted mirror, and he would simply interpret them with the sharp eye that had served him well when approaching any integrative form of magic. "This will illuminate the balance of factors necessary to tackle the problem."

"The present, yes," she echoed. But her eyes still lingered on the circle from yesterday, the rowan's branches hanging low, the reed resting in its shade, and the lovers oblivious to the swirl of menacing spirits behind them. How he wished he could feel such safety.

He shook himself again. Concentrate, Snape.

She was sitting, waiting, hands folded and he knew she had forgotten what they needed to do. The moment he lifted his hands, her expression changed and her cheeks again grew pink, but she lifted her hands and threaded her fingers with his.

The rush of wellbeing that ran through him when their skin touched made him stop to catch his breath.

Concentrate, Snape.

"Rector Nos," he murmured, and he vaguely heard her voice right behind, echoing him like harmony to his melody. Sepia light turned indigo flooded the cards for the second time and sank beneath their surface. His hands lingered, reluctant to release hers, and then...

"Terra." The first card rose to its position in the air.

"Ivy," she whispered.

And it was. Not a lone sprig, but a garden of ivy, tendrils climbing, squeezing between the cracks in the walls it scaled.

Ivy.

Virtually indestructible and ruthless in its quest to move forward.

Searching.

"Oh," she breathed.

"Tenacious," he observed. "We will need tenacity, to be sure." He felt a sharp stab of regret, remembering the fierce persistence with which she'd habitually approached tasks while she had been his student. Trauma and untended grief had worn that edge dull, and he wished he knew how to put the spark back in her eyes.

"Yes," she agreed, and the wistfulness in her voice said she remembered, too. "Mustn't give up," she murmured.

Startled, he paused. "No, I suppose not." He held her there with him for a long moment, and it felt almost as if she had touched his bare skin. And then she smiled. A small smile, but it nearly reached her eyes.

"What's next?" she asked, and he saw a glint of the steely determination that he remembered.

"Ignis," he said, in response. And the second card rose to join its brother.

"Blackthorne."

Thorny, insistent, blackthorne.

"There is no choice here, none at all," he spoke as if to himself, and the bleakness in his voice surprised him. The task felt so daunting; that must be it. And they had no option but to face this, to take it apart piece by piece in order to...hopefully...put it back together.

"There is always a choice," she said. He wondered if she were referring to herself.

When had he ever been free?

"No," he murmured. "Not always."

She was quiet but he could see from the stiff set of her shoulders that she was holding herself back from arguing with him.

"Just look," he said, gesturing to the image's imprint. It was suddenly important that she understand what he saw there. "There is enormous conflict there." He eyed her. "Division, disagreement, but alongside it the strong hand of fate that we must obey."

"The choice is in how to go about it," she said. "If there is a difficult path to walk, you decide how to walk it. Whether to get dragged by the scruff of your neck or..."

"Thank you, Granger," he interrupted, feeling unaccountably defensive, "for the lecture on attitude in the face of adversity." She flinched. "I have had more than enough experience facing myself in the mirror every day and hating what I see; far more experience than you choosing a path that others find abhorrent but which is the only one that has the potential to bring a victory."

"If you feel so trapped, then I should just leave..." Her voice sounded choked, and panic rose to flood him.

"I never said I felt trapped, just that I am once again facing...devastation and by all indications..." he waved his hand towards the card, "...I am fated to battle it and the poison fuelling it."

"I know the feeling," she murmured. "I do."

For the first time that morning, he looked at her. Really looked.

Her face was less lined than it had been the previous day, but the dark circles under her eyes and the slightly grey colour of her skin showed how far she had to go to regain her vitality. Despite her proud carriage, her eyes held all the grief of a woman thrust into a war too soon. The hand of fate had pushed her into a society torn about the fact of her existence and into making a choice that no child should have to make. That world had nearly torn her to pieces, and yet, she had survived, only to die by inches from the echoes of a poison they had already nearly given their lives to eradicate.

"I know you do," he said finally. "I see that you do." Wordlessly, he reached for her hand and threaded his fingers with hers.

He pretended not to notice the tears that sprang to her eyes.

~~**~~

His hand in hers drove back the darkness that had arrived with the appearance of the blackthorne. Spiney and painful and twisting into places no sharp things should go, the image lingered even when she closed her eyes.

"What's next?" she whispered, afraid to ask but determined. Like the ivy, she thought.

She was grateful that he didn't dislodge her hand from his, only spoke to raise the third card. She was even more thankful that she already had his hand in hers when she saw it rising.

"Aeris."

She felt it before she saw it.

Heather.

It wasn't anonymous shadowed figures, moving within the boundaries of the card, but mirror images of themselves.

She didn't know who moved first, but all at once, her body was flush against his...strong and safe and sure.

"Oh!" She looked to him, eyes wide. Sensations from the night before...his lips, his voice, the taste of his skin...swept through her, an echo and a mirror and a beacon, and all she could think was, Yes.

Yes to holding on to each other despite the obstacles. Yes to pushing forward together and not alone. Yes to nights overflowing with loving whispers and to days filled with light.

They sat with their arms around each other until the rush of possibilities settled like a pond of clear water. His sigh felt like a river washing through her, and she shivered just as he lowered his mouth to hers. Tentative for an instant and then like being plunged into the ocean, his kiss enveloped her. Deeper, deeper she dove and brought him with her, hands burrowing beneath layers of fabric to find hot skin and pounding heart.

And as if Conjured by waves of hope revealed and need unmasked, up rose The Sea.

At first, she thought the rushing noise was coming from inside of her. But when she raised her head for a moment's breath, she saw it. And then, so did he.

Unbidden, the thought came to her, That one is mine.

As if he were in her thoughts, he said, "You."

And all at once it felt so simple.

"It's me." She gazed at the undulating water, rapt. "What does it mean?"

"It means..." His voice was rough. "The heart, the soul... the essence of the self."

"How is that me?"

He shook his head, speechless for a moment.

"You... you are the heart..." he said haltingly,"...of whatever it is that we are meant to do." He held her tight through the waves of her hope and fear and uncertainty. "I don't know how... I just..." He gestured to the cards but his eyes were on her. "I just know."

"Show me," she whispered and his only response was to bow his head until he'd buried his face in her hair. He might have whispered something that sounded like, "Not alone." But she couldn't hear him. It didn't matter, though. His actions said far more than any words.

"Not alone," she echoed. And in the centre of the circle, a doorway opened.

Oblivious to everything but one another, they didn't see it rise to join its companions. Engrossed in eliciting gasps and sighs from one another, they didn't see its branches reach out to embrace the other cards, nor the way all the figures relaxed in its shade.

Oak.

The sea foamed beneath the translucent figures reclining on the bed of heather, and the sounds of the waves crashing were counterpoint to the soft swish of fabric as clothing of flesh and blood lovers slipped away. Ivy wound itself around the trees, avoiding blackthorne's burrs and strengthening its hold on the strong tree beneath.

When night fell, only the melody of the sea and the harmony of the treasure hidden in its depths were there to meet it.

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A/N: Endless thanks to Annie Talbot for putting up with four million drafts and buckets full of wibbling, and for her incisive eye and full heart. Thanks also to Ariadne who channeled Dr. Jung for me (with me?) and whose insightful eye help me see. We all have JunoMagic to thank that what would have been two chapters are now four, and are far deeper and more nuanced than they might have been.

A reminder that the Ogham spread is a genuine one, cast by me on behalf of Severus, Hermione and the others suffering post Horcrux-exposure. I can't explain why it works. Ask Jung.