Chapter 9: Speak

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.

"Must we do the last bit?" she murmured, sated and sleepy, lying more on him than on the hard wood floor. His fingers wound absently around tangled curls, and she sank into the luxury of half-sleep and hazy thinking.

"Hmmm?"

"Wasn't there a third part?" She ran her tongue over stubble-roughened skin, goose flesh erupting at his appreciative moan. "Severus? Can we skip it?" She looked over at the transparent images still hovering on the other side of the room. The two spheres looked like glowing nimbuses, encircling truths no longer hidden and needs no longer denied. What could the third sphere possibly add?

"No, we can't skip it," he huffed, though she noticed he made no effort to move from where he lay. There was something vaguely reassuring about his insistence that they had to complete the reading juxtaposed with the lazy path his hand took down her back, along the curve of her bum and to the tender skin of her thighs, lingering there. It was as if they might burst the bubble around this, whatever this was...other than patently necessary...if they resumed the reading and saw the future that beckoned.

"Well, is clothing optional, then?" She really didn't want to lose the heat of his body and sheen of his skin against hers, and the clothes she'd worn earlier weren't really in any shape to put on again without some repair. Besides, she thought that she might actually die if she had to put back the layers between them. If she did, he might never let her so close again.

"No, not optional," he murmured as he traced maddening circles across her skin. "In fact, they are strictly forbidden."

It took her a moment to digest what he'd said, but the relieved smile that lit his face when she burst out laughing went further than any words of reassurance to settle the butterflies in her belly.

~~**~~

After the tumult of the first two circles, the almost ethereal nature of the last one felt like a whoosh of air rather than rocks tumbling into their path.

Yew, Rowan, Hazel and Beech hung before them. Rebirth and protection, intuition and knowledge more ancient than even libraries could catalogue. All of it part of the knot to untangle, and yet her eyes were fixed on the centre image. He couldn't blame her, really.

It was the Vine that held her. Vine, whose tendrils snaked out and around; Vine, whose grip linked the four symbols surrounding it until it seemed to him as if they were really one integrated image.

"Vine?" Her voice was quiet.

"Vine. Signifying divine inspiration and success. Triumph in work completed... "He paused. "And ecstasy." Indeed.

"Ah." His chest warmed at the fierce blush that stained her cheeks and the way she smiled, as if to herself, like she was secreting a precious object she wanted to savour.

Precious. Him?

Them?

He caught her eye, her shy smile growing larger until she was fairly bursting with it.

"Triumph," she said softly. "Triumph by way of ecstacy?"

Now his cheeks were red and he fumbled. "We must consider all of the cards, Hermione," he said. "But I think that this combination of cards indicates that we will ultimately succeed if we permit ourselves to take this path."

"There's a path?"

"Of a sort. However, we are in uncharted territory..."

"What sort of uncharted territory?"

"The sort where intellect is set aside for intuition and emotion," he said.

"Oh. The terrifying sort, then."

He couldn't help himself. He laughed.

~~**~~

They sat together in the current of his laughter. Absurdity and certainty had collided, and what was left, inexplicably, shone.

The three rings of symbols hovered where they'd left them, each its own universe of truth, bound to each other and to those whose fate they described.

The story they told still had soft edges. If it were a book, she thought, the words would be melting off the page, untethered to their ultimate truth. Instead, the future...indeed, even the present...felt mutable. Like they could feel their way through it and nudge it here or there and in doing so, transform it.

Catalytic power. That's what the vine signified; she could feel it surging through her veins and wondered if he felt it, too.

She knew about vine. It was her first wand's wood, after all.

Of course she'd looked up the composition of her wand when it chose her right before her twelfth birthday, so long ago. Learning everything she could about every magical object that crossed her path was a mission and a passion, especially in the early days after Professor McGonagall came to her home with a letter from paradise.

Catalytic.

Transformative.

Wasn't that her role alongside Harry and Ron?

Rarely the initiator, but still essential to the movement of the three of them, to their ultimate success. It had taken years to appreciate the value of that job, especially when Ron implied that she craved more.

He shifted position and she looked up.

"One more task and we will be finished," he said as if they hadn't been staring in the face of an inchoate task for the last twenty minutes.

"All right," she agreed.

He waved his hand, and the circles broke apart. She gasped, but they were just shuffling position. From three circles of five, they moved into five sets of three.

"First," he gestured, "foundational cards. Terra. Earth."

"Yes." She followed his gesture with her eyes. Three cards: Rowan, Ivy, and Yew.

"Would you like to attempt an interpretation?" he asked.

Surprised, she nodded. Of course.

"Foundational symbols," she began. "Rowan for the danger and protection from it; Ivy for tenacity; Yew for rebirth." She snorted. "I suppose it's clear that the danger is real, that we mustn't lose our determination to succeed, and," she paused, "that success means renewal."

"Survival," he murmured.

"Life," she added. Love?

She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned into the cradle of his body as she continued.

"The second set represents the focus?" she asked.

He nodded. "Ignis."

"Beech, for the old knowledge that is necessary, but which we need not get too caught up in." She looked to him quizzically, and he inclined his head in agreement. "Blackthorn for the difficult path that we have no choice but to walk. And Rowan again for protection?"

"I think so," he answered. "And for the enchantment that has caused all the damage."

"It will be difficult," she murmured. "Frightening." Panic swam around the edges of her vision but found no purchase this time. "Have to remember the Rowan," she said.

"Shelter," he said. "Yes. To succeed in such a quest, there must be a home base of sorts."

"Home," she echoed. She hadn't had a home since...well, since long before she threw Ron through a plate glass window with the magical force of her rage. She'd known even then that home was much less a place than...

A tear splashed on the long-fingered hand she'd been clutching. He didn't say a word, only turned her face to his and drank her sorrow until she could bear it again.

~~**~~

Her sorrow filled him and found its mate in his own weeping soul.

Odd how light he felt when her tears finally dried, and she'd whispered her hope between his lips.

Speak.

Aeris.

Reed, and heather and hazel, as if to emphasise that the woman with whom he'd shared more intimacy in the last twenty-four hours than he had with anyone in twenty years was to be...was...the organising principal of his existence. No logic or argument could contradict it, and nothing could negate the reality.

He rather thought he had better things to do than to try.

~~**~~

"Is there more?" she asked, feeling almost steady again.

"Aeris and Aqua seem closely linked," he said, and she wondered why he looked so uneasy.

"They are?" She stirred and looked to the clusters, curious.

"See." He gestured with his hand, and the images shifted position just slightly, but enough to appear to tell a story. Their story.

"Oh!" she gasped and leaned in to see the figures more closely. "It's like some ancient illuminated text."

"Showing us."

"I like what it's showing us," she said and winced that she'd said it out loud.

"As do I." He'd said it low enough that she thought he might deny it if pressed.

"Please tell it to me," she begged. "I want you to tell me." She thought for a moment he might refuse, but as if a cloak had slipped off his back, he began to speak.

"It is us, our longing," he said, and she thought of the movement of his body, the sweep of his tongue, the eager grasp of his hands. Longing. Wanting. Wishing for endless nights like the one just past, and more...wanting to touch and taste him as he had her, wanting to share; wishing he would and pour himself into her like a vessel.

"The pathway is built on a deep partnership...an abiding love." He stopped as if needing to digest that for himself. "It also alludes to the need to be conscious..." He winced. "It alludes to a requirement that we be conscious of ourselves... inside. You understand?" He looked vaguely nauseous at the prospect and she could hardly fault him for it.

"We have to be conscious of our selves? Internally?" Wasn't it enough that she had to deal with hostility from her former friends and the insidious venom of the Horcrux?

"It's unclear to me, but I believe that there is some link between the mechanism of the Horcrux poison and some vague, internal state," he said.

"Oh."

"The sea confirms this," he added. "The depths of the water..."

"The soul. The heart. The self," she whispered. Hadn't she often felt like the toxins were eating away at everything that made her herself?

"Yes," he murmured absently. He looked lost in thought or perhaps feeling.

"What about the Beech," she asked. "Old knowledge in the sea?"

Old knowledge. The Sea. Heather. Oh.

The panic was rising in her again. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the poison had burned too deep and too long for any hope of repair. Love, passionate or not, seemed such an outlandish cure for an illness they had yet to properly define.

This was ridiculous. Either the cards would tell them what to do, or they wouldn't. Time to finish this.

"The last set?" she asked.

"The Etheric link... that which joins them all."

"Honeysuckle, Oak and Vine."

Intuition lighting the labyrinthine path to the self, bringing them ultimately out of the shadows.

Wasn't Oak the tree most struck by lightning? Oh, Merlin.

She couldn't speak.

What was there, really, to say?

~~**~~

They sat like that, just looking at the images patiently floating in their clusters, as if the shadowy shapes hadn't been as disruptive as any assault, as confusing as the most tangled quest Dumbledore had ever set.

She looked so tired, he thought. Worn to the bone and on the edge of hopeless.

He was worn, too, and he realised with a start that they'd drifted away from one another during the last part of the reading. Without a word, he reached for her, and she looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

"I don't know how to do this," she said. "I can't."

"You can," he said, unsure where his confidence came from.

"If it were a set task, I would do it. I would!" she insisted. "If I knew what I had to do, I would do whatever it took. For myself, for them..." She looked at him with wary eyes. "For you."

He grasped her hand more tightly and tugged to bring her closer.

"I know you would," he murmured.

"I can't do it when I don't know what it is, and it means that everything will just get worse and worse, and I don't think I can stand it."

He'd pulled her close and she was shivering. What was it about her vulnerability that made him want to shield her from harm...to ward off the evil spirits poised to strike? More accustomed to the contempt he'd forever felt for those who were weak, the rush of protectiveness he felt around her was inexplicable.

"Stop that," he murmured, his tone softer than his words. He had no comfort to offer, only admonitions not to slip into the despair that he, himself, knew so well.

"The only thing I want to do is..."

But he shooed away her fears with the sweep of hot lips and the sounds of wanting and welcomed their echo in return.

Want. He knew what she would say, because he felt it too. Wishing they could just stay here, hidden from the world but open to each other. They'd each had enough of the pain that comes from trying to share the truths other people refuse to see.

That was the worst part, he realised. That they had to do it. Had no choice but to step outside and go back to exactly what they'd escaped. No, not escaped. He had to be honest. They'd each fled. Different times, for different reasons. But they were both refugees, and it was time now, the cards insisted. It was time to open the door again and let in the light. The time had come to walk back across thresholds they'd each believed would never be darkened again by their shadows.

"We have to talk to them," he murmured, reclining again against cushions that one of them had pulled from the couch. The sun had set, and twilight shadows softened the ragged edges of the room.

"I don't want to."

"Neither do I." Since when did that matter?

"They hate me." She paused. "They might actually hate you less than they hate me. They think you're dead."

For the first time in eleven years, Snape realised that he was grateful that he wasn't.

"Arthur was always very reasonable."

"Recall that I nearly killed his son on a bed of glass shards."

"Right." He could barely imagine Arthur Weasley unreasonable, even after seeing his son injured by Hermione's rage. And yet, he'd seen...he'd felt...what Nagini's bite left in the blood.

"Neville probably wouldn't hex me on sight."

"Oh, glorious."

She laughed. "He'll be sure he's seen a ghost," she added.

"Longbottom, then?"

"Yes," she said. "But Severus?"

"Hmmm?"

"What will we tell him? We don't even really know what's wrong, and we haven't got the faintest idea how to fix it. Why don't we just stay here for a while and look through your library..."

He shushed her and shook his head.

"No, Hermione. We go. No more hiding."

"And tell him what? 'Oh, look, Neville, look who I found? Your favourite professor isn't dead after all.' And then what? After we've roused him from a dead faint, that is."

"So nice to see you regaining a sense of humour," he said. "No. I don't know." He paused. "We tell him that there's some reason for hope." He pushed a curl from her forehead. "That's more than either of us had yesterday."

She sighed and laid her head more firmly on his chest. "Hope?"

"Hope." It would have to be enough for now.

Silvery light from the cards grew gold in the fading sunlight, and he felt the stiff muscles of her neck relax. "Hope."

**********************

A/N: Beta thanks to Annie Talbot, and to Ariadne and Juno who continue to guide and inspire.

Yes, this spread is real. These are the cards that fell. I solemnly swear.