Chapter 18: The Luminance of Memory

"I don't care what it is that links us, if there is anything tying us together other than what we feel for each other. I need no explanation for this." He brought his lips to her forehead, resting there, breathing in her scent, feeling the cadence of her pulse through her skin. "It doesn't matter?" she echoed. "Hermione," he whispered. "It's not the magic. It's never been the magic." He cupped her face in his hands and looked her in the eye. The grief had ebbed, and he saw a spark of light there again. "Hermione, it's you. I love you." She didn't need to speak. The tears that poured from her now were like crystal. Joy and love and hope spilled from her, and he caught every drop in his outstretched hands.

The night held her as she slipped into sleep, sated and spent.

From the deepest place of slumber, the starlight drew her up, up, up and out over the grounds. She could see everything from here. Each leaf on every tree, the crags in the worn paths that trailed down from the castle like ragged ribbons. Rocks and trees and stones alike, alive with possibility.

And when the wind huffed its challenge across the sky, sending her tumbling down, down, down, towards the unyielding ground, she raised her arms and let it carry her instead back into the safety of his embrace.

~~**~~

It was dark when she opened her eyes, and the steady cadence of his breathing anchored her nearly as much as the warm weight of his hand on her hip.

Here, wrapped in the silent weight of the night, they are ageless, and their time together far more substantial than five, now six cycles of sun and moon might otherwise imply. She was his as surely as the sun would rise on the morrow. His words from the night before, magnified by the cosmic tableau streaming through the window, had flowed through the cracks and crevices like water. Like ink from the depths of the sea.

"Awake?" he murmured.

"Just now," she said. "Odd dream."

His eyes flew open, and it occurred to her that dreams were nothing to be trifled with.

"Nothing bad," she added. And to the quirk of his eyebrow, continued. "Felt like being one with the night, except the night was filled with starlight and air." She paused. "And falling."

"Falling?"

She could hear the tension in his voice.

"Not scary. Not like that. The kind of falling like when you jump from a diving platform into warm water. It's joyful, you know? You're sure you're safe."

His eyes were narrowed as if he had never had the experience of jumping into open air or into water, for that matter, and known he was safe.

"Joyful falling?" He couldn't quite keep the sneer out of his voice.

She laughed. "Sounds silly, doesn't it? But that's what it was."

He blinked and shook his head just a little with a gesture she recognised as his way of covering confusion, especially the emotional variety.

"Where did you land?"

She smiled and leaned in to kiss him, snuggling just so against the curve of his arm.

"Right here."

In the instant before his body turned to cover hers, that split second before she was flooded with heat and a force of need she'd already come to associate solely with him, she saw surprise cross his face, followed by the look of rapture seen exclusively on the face of a man who loves.

**

They were already nearly done with breakfast when the Great Hall grew curiously silent, then abruptly much, much louder. Hermione looked up, and there he was. Harry Potter and what must have looked like his entourage were walking through the giant doors and making their way to the High Table, not one of them sparing a glance to their left or to their right.

From a distance, and with the benefit of six days of healing magic, Hermione could see the strain in the lines around Harry's eyes and the slump of his shoulders. They all looked tired, she thought. Frayed around the edges. It was no wonder, really, that none of them had returned to Hogwarts all these years save Neville, for whom the magical energy of soil and magical plants must have provided a small but meaningful shield.

Being here at Hogwarts had always been undoubtedly magical, but unarguably painful.

"Good morning, Mr Potter."

"Hullo, Professor McGonagall."

For a moment, Hermione thought, he looked just like a seventh year crashing the High Table. But ten years had gone. Ten long years whose toll reached far deeper than the simple passage of time or even the disappointments wrought naturally by life's capriciousness. Ten years had passed, the other side of which brought them here once more. Full circle, back where they had begun.

The students were finally filing out, headed to the first classes of the day. Despite their hurry, their eyes strayed again and again to the table overflowing with characters from the bedtime stories their parents must have told them since infancy. Witches and wizards whose images had graced the covers of books and wizarding magazines and whose exploits had fuelled most every wizarding student's imagination at some point in childhood.

But now, with the room nearly empty, they transmuted as if by magic back into nothing more than a group of survivors hanging onto one another by the barest thread.

Though the students had gone, some of the staff still remained, and Hermione wondered with a surge of gratitude how much shuffling had gone into accommodating the unexpected visitors over the last few days.

"Don't you all have to teach today?" she asked to the staff at large. The headmistress leaned back in the seat once occupied by Dumbledore, looking as if she planned to stay a while. Flitwick and Vector had also remained, as had Neville, she realised. He must have classes to teach as well.

"We have made alternate arrangements for those on staff whose expertise might prove useful to you, Miss Granger," said the headmistress. Her eye lingered on the younger witch, her discerning expression all too familiar to Hermione. She only hoped she satisfied.

"Thank you," Hermione said, pitching her voice for only her former mentor's ears.

McGonagall's eyes softened, and Hermione pretended not to notice how watery they became before the older woman blinked away any sign of sentimentality.

"You should expect more of the same, Miss Granger," the headmistress said. "I only regret you didn't approach us sooner."

Hermione could feel the flush staining her cheeks and schooled herself to breathe. Regrets were so easy to find, and she didn't have enough of a foothold on solid ground to risk drowning in them.

"I know," she said. "I wish things had been different." She looked around at the others who had grown quiet, leaning in to hear the two witches' murmured conversation. "I think that we all did the best we could do under the circumstances."

McGonagall nodded, her eyes shifting to look at Severus.

"I would imagine so. For longer than anybody could possibly have known."

Severus looked at his former colleague and nodded. So many layers, Hermione thought. So many knots to unravel. How could they possibly hope to untangle them all?

"Thank you, Minnie," said Arthur, his voice gruff. "We didn't even realise. Hermione, she tried to tell us, but, well." He looked uncomfortable, shifting in his chair. "I suppose the illness itself makes it hard to listen. Isn't that it, Hermione?"

She looked at him, grateful. So thankful for the words that so resembled forgiveness.

"That's it, Arthur. You've got it exactly right."

He reached for her hand across the table. Leaned forward, reaching past Harry and Ginny until his fingers had clasped hers. She burst into tears, and all of the sudden, she was surrounded. Arthur's arms around her, but Harry's too. Ginny's hand stroked her shoulder, and Ron's hand had grabbed her free one, and there was Neville's voice, his laugh directly to her left. She held on to all of it with both arms, so relieved, bursting with the joy of it.

"Severus?" she whispered.

"I'm right here." His voice behind her. And so she leaned into him, her friends all around her, the man she loved at her back.

~~**~~

The room opened as if it had been waiting.

The seven of them plus Molly, followed by McGonagall, Flitwick and Vector approached the smooth stone wall. They held their breath collectively until the wide arches...seven of them merged into one...appeared in the grey rock.

"We'll wait for you here," said McGonagall.

But Hermione wouldn't have it.

"You should come in," she said. "Don't you think they should join us, Severus?"

He did, actually. And his chest was tight with the unspoken knowing they shared.

"I agree. Isolation has done none of us any good. Hiding from one another hurts us all. Even those of us not poisoned by Horcrux exposure." He caught Minerva's eye and raised an eyebrow in query. "Join us. Please."

Vector and Flitwick looked to McGonagall, and then they looked at him.

"All of you," he said. "We need you. Please."

"Indeed." The headmistress' crisp response drew a chuckle from Arthur, and Severus allowed a small smile.

"Indeed." He caught Minerva's eye. "Thank you."

And so it was that the eleven of them walked through the portal to the Room of Requirement, Longbottom taking the lead. The Room looked almost the way it had when they left it, save for marginally fewer shards on the floor and a vague, irrational sense that somebody had been in to sweep up.

"Dark in here," the younger Weasley muttered, shivering as he settled himself on one of the couches the Room had provided.

"You'll get used to it," said Longbottom. "Besides, it might change. You never know. You weren't here during the war, Ron, but the Room shifted all day long. Seemed to respond to the changing needs of the people in here at any given time."

Weasley nodded whilst looking around. "You brought them to the right place, mate, you really did."

He nodded. "I did what I could. You lot were off doing..."

Severus watched Weasley's face fall.

"Hermione and Harry did way more than I did," he said. He paused to fidget. "I guess the problem must have already started then. For me, at least," he continued, speaking as if to himself.

"What do you mean?" asked Longbottom.

"Didn't they tell you? I left them. Harry and Hermione. I went and left them alone; they were on the run and scared and I left them alone because... Hell, I don't know, I guess I was angry."

"But you came back, mate," Potter said. "You came back."

"That's because I figured you'd let me," said Weasley, looking over at Hermione.

"You left, Ron, but you hadn't injured either one of us," she said. "That locket made all of us crazy, and I'm not surprised you left. But you never did anything to harm me or Harry. Nothing like what I did to you." She paused for breath. "I'm so sorry."

"It was pretty bad, wasn't it?" Weasley said. "Even after I came back."

Hermione just nodded, and Severus watched her closely to be sure she didn't slip back into shadow.

"You stayed after that. And you even stayed with me when I destroyed the cup," she said.

Severus sat up straighter. Damn and blast. He'd forgotten entirely about the cup. The last time she mentioned it, she had disintegrated right before his eyes.

Weasley cleared his throat. "I did. I probably should have paid closer attention to what the cup said, though. I mean, what the Horcrux..."

"I know what you mean, Ron," she said, smiling softly. "It didn't go without a fight, did it?"

"Hardly," he said, snorted.

He wanted to ask; he was afraid to say a word. This was an experience she'd shared with Weasley. He'd forgot that bit. Given what he'd learned about Horcruxes over the last week, he wondered what manner of evil that one had exuded in the throes of death.

"It might be useful to examine what Horcruxes do when they..." He hesitated. "When they die. Or are destroyed; whichever way one prefers to think about it."

He had an ulterior motive. Of course he did. But come to think of it, if they were to repair the damage done, perhaps understanding the weapons the disembodied pieces of soul had at their disposal would help them piece together what they needed to do next.

Hermione looked at him, her eyes clouded, and he regretted his words. Who knew what manner of horror had risen before her in the Horcrux's futile effort to avoid destruction. His own insecurity drove him. It was for him, not for the greater good. But Hermione seemed eager to talk, despite the tension radiating from her in waves.

"They die. Definitely," she said, looking him in the eye. "They die."

Weasley sighed. "That cup almost didn't," he said.

Hermione took the younger wizard's hand in her own, and the redhead nodded as if she'd said something only he could hear, but Severus was sure she'd said nothing.

"At first I thought it was a Dementor," she said, eyes fixed on the mirrored wall behind Weasley. "As soon as I brought the Basilisk fang near it, this big whoosh of black came out of it, like smoke. And so cold." She shivered.

"I was sure it was a Dementor, too. It's why I stepped back. I meant to pull my wand, cast a Patronus, you know?"

She nodded. "I don't blame you for moving back, Ron. Truth be told, I was jealous of your reflexes. I just stood there."

"Well, it started talking to you, didn't it?"

"Yes, but it didn't look like a Dementor anymore by then." She shuddered and fell silent.

Severus waited as long as he could, but she kept on staring at the wall of broken mirrors across from her, lost in memory.

"Hermione?" he finally asked, his hand reaching for hers. "What did it say?" He kept his voice pitched low, willing his eyes to say what his words did not.

Tell us what it said so that it doesn't keep burning a hole inside of you. Tell us what that abomination convinced you to believe so that we can tell you the truth.

She nodded and her eyes grew focussed again. Squeezing his hand, she drew a long, deep breath and spoke as if only to him, his gaze her anchor.

"It kept changing shape. I realise that now, but it was happening so fast."

Leave it to Hermione, he thought, to berate herself for not instantly assessing the behaviour of a Dark object as it was acting on her. But he just crinkled his eyes, encouraging her to continue.

"First it looked just like Dumbledore. It told me that my teachers had tried to hold me back. Said it would teach me everything I'd ever wanted to know...everything my professors had kept from me from jealousy and competitiveness." She bowed her head. "I believed it. Only for a minute, but that's the truth. I believed that my teachers..." She glanced out of the corner of her eye to McGonagall. "...that they kept me from the books and knowledge that would have allowed me to surpass them."

Her cheeks were bright red, and Severus wanted to stop her, to keep her from baring her soul and exposing the shame of the nineteen-year-old she had been.

"I must have hesitated, because all of the sudden it wasn't Dumbledore anymore. It was my mother telling me that she hated me, that I shouldn't bother to come back for them because they never wanted to see me again." Even now, ten years later, her voice broke. "And then it turned into Ron and told me that he didn't love me and didn't want me and that nobody ever would..."

"And that's when I started screaming at it and at you. Don't you remember, Hermione?"

She looked up at him. "I do. I remember. It pulled me out of the trance, I think. I could see the difference between the Horcrux pretending to be you and you."

"I should have picked up a Basilisk fang and done away with it myself. I should never have let it go on as long as it did, and I shouldn't have let you kill it."

Hermione winced. "It's not your fault. You didn't know what it would do..."

"Didn't it just scream like the locket did when you stabbed it?" Potter's voice surprised him. He'd forgot for a moment that it had been the two wizards who had done away with the locket. Hadn't known, in point of fact, until Hermione had told him the story she, herself, had been told.

"I wish it had," said Weasley.

"It lunged for me," said Hermione. "It looked like her. Bellatrix. That was so awful, and I forgot that it wasn't real. I mean, it felt real enough. I tripped over a pile of fangs when I backed away from it, and then it loomed overhead like it was going to grab me and..."

"Until I shoved a fang into her hand and she waved it around until it backed off again."

"And then I stabbed it and stabbed it until Ron took it away."

"So you battled Bellatrix Lestrange twice that night, Hermione," said Molly, her eyes bright.

Hermione looked up, startled, and let out a sigh. "I suppose I did."

"Thank you, Miss Granger, Mr Weasley," Professor Flitwick said in a voice even squeakier than normal. "You did a great service for all of us. For the whole wizarding world."

"The whole world, you mean," said Harry. "And for me, too. I don't know that I ever thanked you for helping me get rid of it. I wouldn't have had time that night. I couldn't do it by myself, and if it hadn't been for the two of you, I don't know..."

He'd come to sit on the floor by the sofa whilst he spoke. Weasley still perched on the chair right alongside. Without a word, Potter scooted closer and took the hand Severus had been holding before she freed it to illustrate the stabbing of the Horcrux, leaving the other for Weasley to grasp again.

Potter looked around the room. Slowly, as if he hadn't really taken it in before now.

"I've often wondered what this place looked like after the Fiendfyre was done with it," he said.

"So did we," said Hermione. "Professor Flitwick did an assessment and determined that it might be responsive to us, and it has been."

"Place looks pretty beat up, though," said Weasley.

"It was injured by a Horcrux, too, wasn't it?" Hermione's voice was soft, almost wistful, as if she were speaking of a living creature.

She slipped from the couch onto the floor next to Potter, and Weasley did the same from his chair. The three sat there, knee to knee, in an odd sort of triangle, hand in hand.

Severus watched, fists clenched in the folds of his robes. He felt the Shadow rise in him, around him, but he breathed deeply and looked at the others...his colleagues, Hermione's friends who might one day be his friends, too...and how they leaned in towards the trio where they sat. They honoured the bond these three shared, and he could too, he realised. It didn't diminish what he had with Hermione. There was nothing on earth that could do that.

Longbottom seemed particularly intrigued, Severus thought, and so he wasn't surprised when the younger wizard left his seat, too, to sit just outside the triangle, palms pressed firmly against the floor.

"The Room always gave us what we needed," he said, reverent, and the three others nodded. "And it was always there to hide us. Kept us safe."

"We don't have to hide anymore, though, do we?" asked Arthur, and Severus shared a look of relief with the other wizard. He could appreciate the awkward surprise that came with the realisation that it was safe to step out into the light.

"There were centuries worth of memories in here," Potter said. "Lost things. Hidden things. All of them up in flames."

"The memories weren't in the things, I don't think," said Hermione, glancing up at the fractured mirrors still ringing the walls. "They're all still here somewhere." She glanced at Severus and he smiled, remembering the snippets of memory captured under glass, then transmuted into white light.

"Just have to not hide," said Ginevra, her voice shaking.

"What do you mean, dear?" asked her mother, more gently than Severus had ever heard her speak.

"Memories will die if nobody voices them. Secrets are a guarantee that a story will stop being told...or at least be told accurately." She paused for breath. "If nobody asks to hear, then the story stays silent until it's gone. My story has been silent," she continued, her voice raspy, "but I don't want it to die. Feels like it might take me with it." She looked over at her parents, tears spilling from her eyes.

"We never really asked, did we?" asked Arthur.

Severus closed his eyes against the pain in her parents' faces. How well he understood the burden of carrying pain so big all alone. That night he'd shown Dumbledore his Patronus, the look on the old man's face had seared his soul. Had he never wondered? How is it that he never asked?

"I'll chronicle them," Hermione said. "I promise, Ginny. I'll listen, and I'll keep them safe."

The younger woman nodded, tears still streaming down her cheeks.

"Ginny," said her husband. He reached out his hand and she took it, joining the four already on the floor. "Come. Please."

"I for one would like to hear your story firsthand, Severus," said Flitwick.

Severus inclined his head in agreement.

"What's lost is lost," said Arthur. "But we'll save what we can."

"We will," said Severus.

And with that, the Room began to shift. He'd only ever observed it providing entryways and exits. But this, this was something else entirely.

The ash seemed to melt into the ground, leaving the stone darker, more textured, but glowing with depth. The walls seemed to draw light from outside because they began to glow, throwing puddles of light all around. But it was the glass...the mirrors both on the walls and in pieces on the floor that made him gasp and sent Hermione back onto the couch and his anchoring embrace.

The glass was flowing.

Like lava. No, not hot, but cool. Like water, it ran together, fluid and graceful, shards joining fragments, fragments merging to form chunks of glass until...

"Severus," Hermione gasped.

He'd never seen water flow up. It was quite lovely, really.

And when all the ash had melted into the stone, and every bit of glass had found its sibling in the shards scattered far and wide, the room glowed with the luminance of memory and the walls flowed with waterfalls of light.

~~**~~

A/N: Beta thanks to Annie Talbot, and to LadyintheCloak. You each make the story better with your eye and your magic touch.

Thanks to all of my readers for your patience while I finished my Snuna Exchange and SSHG Exchange stories over these last... erm... three months.

There shouldn't be any more enormous lags in posting (hopefully), though I will be spending a bit of time working on my Infinitus conference talks before returning to the story. Infinitus is soon, though, so it shouldn't be long.