Chapter 13: Stone and Glass

I almost can see to the very bottom.

And the thunderous noise of ice cracking tore him from sleep into the bright light of day and Hermione's body anchoring him to the earth.

Of all the details of Hogwarts castle she'd carried with her, the warm depths of the stones and their patches of smooth and rough had fallen away from her right along with her sense of safety.

But when the headmistress led them to their chambers late in the afternoon, her eyes were riveted to the rough-hewn walls. The ones not covered in thousand-year-old tapestries looked as if they'd been carved straight from the side of the mountain, and she couldn't keep her fingers from tracing the troughs and furrows of the stones surrounding the window frame, as if they might map where she'd been and where she now must go.

While Severus stowed their bags and arranged with the headmistress to meet in the staffroom in an hour, Hermione gravitated to the uncovered wall alongside the windows. She listened to the murmured voices behind her with half an ear and lay her hands flat against the rough stone. She fancied it pulsed beneath her hands, like a living entity.

It felt like a welcome from the bones of the earth from which Hogwarts had emerged fully formed a thousand years prior.

And an apology.

Or perhaps it was only the echo of the unspoken apology that her former Head of House conveyed by way of the eagerness of her welcome and through the simple beauty of the suite of rooms she'd chosen for them to occupy.

The door closed, leaving her alone with Severus in the late afternoon sunlight. She couldn't bear to unpack her meagre possessions quite yet, so she slid to the floor and leaned her head against the wall while she watched Severus pace the perimeter like a caged animal.

"The windows are over here."

"I am aware," he said. Despite the bite in his voice, he turned to look through the glass and across the expanse of stone and water beyond. The view was astonishing, she thought, and for once Severus seemed as lost in the world outside as in his internal one.

"There are so many things I'd forgotten about this place," Hermione said. He glanced at her.

"It's been a good many years," said Severus. "And you did not live in the castle terribly long."

"Not like you."

"No, not like me," he murmured. He turned back to the windows.

"We don't have to stay." She held her breath. She did. They did.

"Yes, we do."

Relief flooded her, but the faraway look in his eyes left a knot in her belly. She stood, moving toward the windows. Towards him.

His back was stiff when she first wrapped her arms around him, but when she lay her forehead against his chest, she felt soft puffs of breath on her scalp as his breathing grew less shallow.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"This isn't happening because of you, Hermione. Besides, I've faced far more difficult challenges in my lifetime."

"Have you?" she murmured.

~~**~~

He tightened his arms around her. Hadn't he faced countless obstacles more difficult than this? He'd have thought so, but now, from his new chambers in the tower overlooking the expanse of grounds...stone, wood, water...he was no longer sure.

"This is one of the few times I've found myself in a bind not of my own devising." He felt her sigh.

"It's the helplessness. I didn't know this would happen, and I can't fix it...that's the worst part for me," she said. "Apart from the unpredictable floods of misery."

"It used to be that I'd tell myself to buck up and that if I hadn't been the worst of dunderheads to begin with, I would never have been stuck in the bind at all."

"Why am I not surprised that the exemplary compassion you showed for your students was extended first to yourself?"

He huffed and buried his face in her hair. His students had, for the most part, deserved his disdain, if not his contempt. Even so, he'd always reserved the worst of the vitriol for himself.

"This castle is a complicated place for me, Hermione."

"I know. But for me, it still feels like magic. You know, the good kind of magic."

He laughed. "The magical kind?"

"Exactly," she said and lifted her head from where it rested against him. Her eyes were bright, and he realised for the first time that just as the darkness sometimes spilled from her...no, he corrected himself, slipped through those cursed cracks...light poured from her, too. Light he hadn't recognised during her years as his student. Light that he'd mistaken for arrogance or over-eagerness to please. But nothing was simple with this woman, neither the labyrinth of her Darkness nor the vibrancy of her Light.

"I would like to see the castle through your eyes, someday," he said.

She reached up to trace the lines around his eyes. "I should like to see it through yours as well."

"It won't be pretty," he said after a pause.

"I didn't imagine it would be," she said.

"Perhaps after," he said.

After

"After, yes," she echoed. "We will have an after, Severus, won't we?"

"If we succeed." He brushed his lips against hers. "If we survive, hopes for after will be largely responsible, I'm sure."

She smiled and deepened the kiss.

A hope, and promise.

~~**~~

The circle of witches and wizards around the table was largely familiar if the room they occupied was not. At some point, she imagined, they'd revisit her old familiar places, but for now, she resigned herself to being introduced to the teachers' haunts...places even the prefects had not been permitted to go.

Severus sat alongside her, his hand in hers. Discussion had gone on for hours, long past curfew, the ghosts periodically wafting in to report on the state of the students in the library and common rooms.

Every professor had chimed in with possible solutions, each from their area of specialty. Arithmancy and Runes had seemed the most likely pathways, and so her two most favourite teachers had huddled together, attempting to find one.

"I can attempt another Arithmantic solution, but I'm not optimistic," said Professor Vector. She'd been scribbling on a long parchment for the last hour, looking increasingly vexed. "There aren't enough solid variables for me to enter anything resembling a workable formulae."

"Didn't the Ogham images help?" asked Hermione.

"They don't, unfortunately," she said. "Nor do the symbols derived from Neville's description of his symptoms." She looked at Neville, deep in conversation with a junior staff member Hermione didn't recognize. It had occurred to her as they shared details with the Hogwarts faculty that they'd all witnessed Neville's deterioration firsthand. A wave of respect and appreciation for Neville swept through her.

Professor Vector was still shaking her head at the parchment. "They seem to either spin us in circles or point us in the same direction you already determined. They've given me nothing new. Nothing that points us to a remedy."

Us. Hermione wanted to hug her. Her former professors had, to a one, embraced the problem they all faced as if it affected each of them personally. She looked over at Neville. This time he caught her eye and smiled, and she nearly beamed at him.

Why had it taken her so long to return here? Why...? She felt Dark fingers reach for her but held Severus's hand and took a deep breath. It was no use berating herself. She'd had enough years of doing that, and it was obvious only in retrospect that she could have turned to these witches and wizards for help. At the time, mired in the rising Darkness, she hadn't been able to see a thing, certainly not anything resembling hope.

Professor Babbling was leaning over the parchment, hair dishevelled, as vexed as her colleague, and Hermione focused her attention on them again. "You mean to tell me that none of the runic sources are clearing up that bottleneck?" Professor Babbling asked.

"If they had, you'd be the first to know, Bathsheba," said Vector.

Hermione looked at Severus and smiled. He looked far more relaxed than he had when they'd first come into the room, the collected faculty silent only for a moment before exploding into motion and sound, surrounding them, drawing them into conversation and demanding explanations of all sorts from them both. Hermione had been overwhelmed with their welcome. Severus had gone still, visibly stunned. Neville had stood off to the side, his face flushed, pleased.

Severus smirked at his former colleagues, and Hermione wondered how many similar skirmishes he'd witnessed over the years.

"I tried all that," Hermione said. "I told you already."

"Forgive us, Miss Granger," said Vector, "but I imagine we do have a bit more experience in solving complex equations than you." She inclined her head and smiled, taking the sting from her words. "Though our lack of success doesn't much support that notion, does it?"

"I'm sorry, Professors. I didn't mean to imply that my level of skill compares to yours. It's just that none of the usual routes to solve problems...the usual things I might try...have helped in the least."

"In fact," Neville interrupted, "the esoteric seems to have been more helpful. Isn't that right?"

Severus grunted and folded his arms. She thought he might have muttered, "Stupid airheaded bint." But she couldn't be sure.

"Helpful might be stretching it, Neville," Hermione said. "But in all honesty, it's the only thing that hasn't sent us in circles." She turned to the group around the table. "I've been told that intellect will not help me in this quest." She smiled as her former professors chuckled at the notion of Hermione Granger setting aside her intellect in favour of... what? Divination? "Which brings me to a question."

"How novel," Severus muttered. She nudged him under the table and tried not to smile.

"Is there anywhere in the castle, any magical site here, or anywhere, actually, where something other than intellect and focused intention can elicit a magical response?"

"Someplace where the witch or wizard need not know from the outset what it is they seek?" asked Professor Flitwick.

"Precisely," said Severus.

"Why not try the Room of Requirement?"

"I thought it was destroyed in the battle," said Hermione. "Fiendfyre." She shuddered.

"Has anyone here had need of the Room since the battle?" asked McGonagall. She looked around the table and nobody moved. "None of you?" They shook their heads.

"None of you has attempted to enter the room since the last day of the war?" Severus asked.

They looked at one another again, heads shaking.

"So then nobody knows the current state of the room. Is that right?" Hermione asked.

"So it would seem," said Professor Flitwick. "And as I am the only Charms master in the castle, I believe it is my responsibility to investigate this and to assess the condition of the room."

"May we accompany you, Professor?" asked Hermione.

"Let me think for a moment first," he said. He rose from his seat at the table and moved to the hearth.

From the back, it looked as if he were speaking to the fire, and Hermione made to stand and join him, but Severus leaned down and whispered in her ear. "It's what he does when he's figuring something out. Leave him be; he'll talk it through to himself and come back with a perfectly reasonable approach. Just watch."

So they sat, Vector continuing to scribble on her parchment and mutter to herself and the others talking in soft whispers around the table. Hermione was content to settle into the soft chair, her hand safely in Severus's. Finally, her former Charms instructor made a noise that sounded like a cheer and slipped through the Floo and disappeared.

Hermione gasped, but Severus just shook his head. "Wait."

It felt like forever, but in fact couldn't have been longer than a quarter hour when Flitwick returned, beaming in triumph.

"I know what needs to be done."

~~**~~

They'd insisted on providing an escort.

Moving through the castle en-masse, Severus thought they must have looked ridiculous. Fortunately, the students were long asleep...or should be, he thought. Thankfully such issues were no longer his concern.

The seventh-floor corridor was empty; the tapestry opposite the putative entrance to the Room looked untouched by time or battle. The house-elves had been consulted and had reported that, as far as they knew...and they knew, it must be acknowledged, quite a lot...the room had been accessed by neither student nor staff these last ten years. It was, Flitwick said, enough.

"Remember," he said, "each of you must clear your minds and walk past the wall three times in tandem. When the door appears, walk through together. It would be best..." He hesitated. "...if you were to link hands when you did so." He waited for their terse nods of agreement and continued. They'd been around and around on this point. Severus was equally unhappy with the idea of touching Longbottom and with the idea of Hermione touching him in his stead. Best he do it, he'd decided, and neither had argued when he placed himself between them.

"The Room, I believe, will reconstitute itself in tune with the need you three share," Flitwick continued. "This should include the information we need to move forward with a cure for what ails you."

There it was again. We.

Severus had hardly expected to be received with anything less than disgust and barely concealed pity when he'd crossed the staffroom threshold. Instead, after a moment of hesitation, the camaraderie and concern that greeted him...them...had at first set him on edge. Suspicion came naturally...hadn't ever left, actually, particularly given the history he had with this place, with these people. He supposed they'd had ten years to come to terms with the Snape they thought they'd known and to adapt to the idea of a Snape whose redemptive secrets outweighed his obvious faults.

It would take some getting used to.

"Professor," Hermione asked. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but you're sure we don't need to wait until we have the others here to enter the room? What if the cure is incomplete because only three out of the seven of us walked through the doors?"

Damn. She had a point.

"An admirable question, Miss Granger," said her former Professor, fairly bouncing with excitement. "And one I considered."

He was gearing up for a lecture; Severus knew that look.

"I believe," Flitwick said, "that given the level of destruction the room experienced during its last known use, a strong and focused need coupled with a powerful magical energy behind that need is our best hope for reviving it, if the Room is indeed injured. As the three of you are the only ones affected who have thus far accepted the reality of your injury and are eager for a resolution, I believe the Room may respond in kind, as it were. In fact," he added, "I would worry that even if we could entice the others to join us here, their resistance would subvert the purpose of the Room. At worst, it could prevent the Room from awakening, and at best, it would provide us with a muddled solution."

Ah. Well, at least that made some sense.

"Hermione?" Severus asked. "Does that explanation satisfy or do you have further concerns?"

Hermione shook her head. "No, that makes sense to me. Thank you, Professor. Now I suppose we have to just see if the Room works at all."

"Indeed," he said. "Let us see."

He turned to the others and motioned for them to take several steps back, leaving Snape, Longbottom, and Hermione standing across from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.

Oddly appropriate, Severus thought.

One behind the other, they walked the length of the wall. Severus focused only on his breathing, the movement of air in and out, mind as blank as he could make it, chasing out the persistent thoughts, doubts, fears, and hopes alike as if they were persistent nifflers in search of gold.

The only thought he couldn't banish shone behind his eyes.

Help us. Please help us.

~~**~~

The expanse of stone wall shimmered, the memory of searing heat alive still in its magical bones.

Heat.

Need.

Such need as this hadn't crossed its doorway since the day Fiendfyre had swept through its Hall of Memory and reduced it to ash. No need of witch or wizard could compete with its own need to heal, to replenish, to restore itself to wholeness.

No need, that is, until today.

Tonight it felt the longing of the wizards and witch as an extension of itself. Their injury, in terrible harmony with its own.

Tonight, for the first time in over a decade, it felt the grinding of its joints and tendons, the breath of hopes forsaken, and the blood and tears of the dead and the dying. Tonight, it prepared itself to welcome kinsmen once more.

The wizards and the witch paced, and the Room wept for their pain.

The wounded opened themselves in their need, and the Room awoke.

Three openings appeared in the wall made of stone. And when the tall wizard linked his hands with the two on either side of him, the three archways joined together, and they walked through as one.

**

Huge beta thanks to Annie Talbot who makes my story better each time she touches it.