Chapter 19: A Cacophony of Sound

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

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.

The room was quiet again.

At last.

The eleven of them had scattered across the cavernous space. Ginny curled into the curve of her mother's body, the professors hovering nearby as if unsure where to perch. Arthur paced, stopping now and again to reassure Molly with a pat on her shoulder and a half-smile. Ron slumped against the stone, boneless, his eyes closed, peering through his lashes only to assess the stand-off at the centre of the room.

Neville had grown agitated when the debate first erupted, flitting from spot to spot until finally settling on a lavishly upholstered ottoman, his head in his hands. Hermione could empathise. There had certainly been enough shouting to give anyone a pounding headache.

If Severus had been capable of slouching, Hermione thought, sidling up to him, he'd be hunched in one of the red upholstered chairs instead of sitting there with his ramrod posture and his tired eyes.

Harry had his back to them all, arms folded, staring blankly into one of the flowing mirrors.

Hermione wondered if she ought to find it heartening or discouraging that her old friend hadn't lost any of his bloody-mindedness despite blatant evidence of his own frailties. It wasn't altogether different from how he'd behaved during the war, she allowed, only with the added weight of maturity and a knife-edged certainty he'd not mastered until facing Voldemort for the last time.

She sighed.

It probably had been unrealistic to expect the seven of them to fall into lockstep just because they'd managed being in the same room together without shedding blood.

"Potter," Severus was saying to Harry's back. "Stating your opinion over and over again does not, to my knowledge, qualify as an incantation."

"And of course we should just take your word for it that I'm wrong," Harry muttered, still refusing to turn around. "I'm still waiting for you to explain why you're so bloody sure that what just happened isn't a sign that everything is fixed so we can just get on with it." He folded his arms more tightly across his chest. "Oh, I forgot," he spat out. "You've got enough experience with Dark magic to make up for what's lacking in the rest of us."

Severus paused to take in a long, deep breath, and Hermione marvelled at his restraint. She moved closer and slipped her hand into his.

"You are undoubtedly accustomed to others hanging on your every instinct when on a quest, Potter," he said. "When you're not going it alone, that is." Before Harry could respond, he went on. "Admittedly, I cannot argue with your prior success."

Harry's stance softened just slightly as he pivoted to face them, and Hermione released the breath she'd been holding.

"However," Severus continued, "there is still a great deal you do not know..."

Hermione stepped forward just as Harry's eyes flashed.

"This is different, Harry," she said. "It's not a secret. Not something we're keeping from you."

He pursed his lips for a moment, eyebrows furrowed.

"No more secrets."

"None," Severus said. "Just pieces to a puzzle we cannot yet assemble."

Harry glanced at the luminous walls. His shoulders slumped as he watched the light dance beneath the mirrors.

"I'd just hoped..." His words trailed off, but she knew what'd he meant to say.

"I did, too, Harry." Hermione stepped closer to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I wish it meant it was all over now that we're working together. The broken glass fixed. The Room repaired. I can't tell you how much I wish we could all walk away and never have to worry about this again."

"And that," said Professor McGonagall, her sensible heels clacking against the stone floor as she approached, "is precisely how this got to be such a mess to begin with." She looked especially stern, her sharp eyes sweeping the room.

"It never does to pretend," she said, and Hermione was so grateful that it was their former Head saying so. "You have each done your duty, and it cost more than anyone had a right to ask from you. Any of you. But at some point, you stopped trusting one another," she added, and Hermione nearly missed the glint of tears in her eyes. Her heart ached for her former Head of house...for her losses and her mistakes. For the helplessness she must have felt as much during the war as in the years following.

McGonagall met her gaze, and Hermione felt a rush of gratitude for her steadfast presence, for her unflinching willingness to join with them in what felt like an impossible task. The headmistress's eyes lingered on her, softening, and she wanted nothing more than to lay her head on the older woman's shoulder and leave her burdens aside just for a moment. It was as if McGonagall knew what she needed, Hermione thought, as she watched her square her shoulders and raise her wand, executing a neat flick towards the edge of the cluster of chairs.

A blackboard, the size and shape of the ones hanging in the classrooms, appeared, and the headmistress stood alongside as if about to begin a lesson. She looked again at Hermione and inclined her head in invitation. It was time to get to work.

"What do we know?" McGonagall asked. "It's long past time to pool our resources, so gather around."

One by one, they clustered around the headmistress, her familiar voice and posture like a calming draught for them all. She could help them organise themselves, unaffected by Horcrux poisoning as she was...another advantage to seeking outside help...Hermione realised. It was a relief, too, to imagine what felt like a river of memories and theories pouring out of her, lining up in neat columns, obedient, organised in well-defined categories. She'd carried them alone for too long, along with a mountain of useless speculation and unlikely possibility. What a relief to leave go of the burdens she'd clung to so tightly, lest she forget a morsel that might prove valuable later.

Arm wrapped around Severus, once she'd managed to pry him from the chair and onto the couch, she sat back and watched the others fill in the empty spaces of speculation. Symptoms and signs. Observations they hadn't let themselves acknowledge but had catalogued, nonetheless. The board filled with neat lists in their crisp rows until finally, Professor McGonagall turned to the two of them.

"Tell us about the cards, Severus, would you please?"

~~**~~

If his mother had ever suggested that one day he would be standing before colleagues and former students alike, explaining the intricacies of Ogham cards, of all things, he would never have picked up her deck that first day. Shades of Trelawney and her improbable brand of magic flashed before his eyes until rapt expressions and astute questions brought him out of his own insecurity and back to his circle of compatriots. Friends, he reminded himself. Friends.

Friends listening intently to the story of the Ogham spreads he had read for them, Severus realised with a start. Grateful glances and tentative queries grew more confident as they discussed the symbols illuminating their journey: Rowan, representing both the poison and its cure, protective branches beckoning them to take shelter beneath; insistent blackthorn, piercing and unyielding; ivy, tenacious and resilient, strongest when rooted in the earth; and the vine, its catalytic power shining behind the high stone walls, and inside each one of them, alike.

The room swam with the power of the images...the symbols...for all that they were conjured only in imagination. Symbols, though, that comprised the world, interlocking cogs moving below the surface and hovering beneath only the most translucent disguise.

Severus looked around. Arthur still stood, his back straight and his eyes clear. An anchor again, at least for the moment. Weasley, calmer with each passing hour, but still as prickly as his friend, whose green eyes even now were clouded with defensiveness. Ginevra's hand lay on her husband's arm, and Severus remembered that too-young witch whose own Horcrux exposure had disrupted her life at a time when her power was still developing. The brittleness had softened over the last day or two, and she sat tall, her features looking younger...softer...again and more vulnerable, ready to face the journey ahead.

Longbottom. Neville. Looking thoughtful as if he might decode yet another layer of interpretation in the Druid tree symbols...as well he might. He could only imagine what depths of meaning Neville might glean from the delicate contour of roots reaching for water beneath bedrock, or the angle of wand wood branches reaching for the sky.

At last, he let his gaze rest on the woman next to him. Her hair had escaped its confines and was steadily creating a tangled cloud around her head. He wondered how many of the symbols he could find twined in her hair alone and allowed himself the ghost of a smirk just before she turned her face up to him. Her eyes shone, or maybe it was the way she looked at him, angling her body towards his as if pulled by an inexorable tide. He let himself be pulled, too, winding his other arm around her and feeling the flow of energy through him. Her face lit up, and he knew that she felt it, too. She smiled the sort of smile he'd only ever expected to see in the privacy of their chambers...brimming with hope and promise. His heart lurched, and not for the first time, he wondered how something as simple as her smile could set his heart racing, sweeping him along like rushing waters, cleansing him and setting him free.

He couldn't possibly look away...she held the depths of the sea in her eyes.

**

"So, what about the Tarot spread, Hermione?" asked Neville. "Didn't you say that Severus found you outside a Muggle Tarot reader's place?"

Severus suppressed a smile at her blush.

"Well, yes. He found me outside, but I didn't see him until after we were both inside." She flushed more deeply and turned to Neville. "Honestly, I can't remember much about that reading. Do you, Severus?"

He shook his head. "I remember more what the old woman..." What she did.

He felt more than heard Hermione's sharp intake of breath.

"What is it?" Weasley the younger.

"She did something." Hermione hesitated, thinking. "Something with threads of light that she pulled from inside us."

Eleven heads turned as one from Severus and Hermione to the luminous walls. And the room exploded...again...in a cacophony of sound.

~~**~~

"She did say that we would know when it was time to come back," Severus said later that night when they were alone in their rooms. He had changed into nightclothes and was drawing the curtains and extinguishing the lights before joining her in bed. "I didn't pay much attention at the time, granted, but it presupposes she knew she'd taken something from us that we would ultimately need."

Hermione burrowed beneath the blankets, watching him. The scene was, she thought sleepily, surprisingly domestic. She hadn't considered how many times they had fallen into bed or into sleep over the last week without preamble, like diving into deep water...quickly...before anything could interfere. Severus was a meticulous man, and seeing him relax, slipping into what must be his usual night-time routine, flooded her with heat as if he'd trailed his fingertips...slowly...across her skin. Nearly.

"I just hope she can tell us what to do once she gives it back," said Hermione, making room for him under the duvet. "What does one do with a woven ball of light, anyway?"

Severus snorted. "How have we managed to become dependent on the advice of Seers and fortune tellers?" he asked.

Good question, she thought, through the growing haze of sleep. And so many of them, at that: Trelawney's bizarre observation about repairing mirrors from the other side, Severus's own legacy of Ogham Divination, and of course, the Muggle Tarot reader's inscrutable words.

"Stop fleeing from the shadow," the fortune teller had instructed her that night. "You must embrace it... and then step out from the dark."

Hadn't she done? Compared to her state a week ago, she thought, relaxing into Severus's embrace, she was positively bathed in light.

"Has t'do with trust," she murmured as her eyelids grew too heavy to lift.

"Trust?"

"Umhm," she agreed. "Like with magic. Y'know."

The shock of cold bedclothes roused her, and she opened her eyes. Severus had loosened his hold, shifting her away from his warm body.

"What'd you do that for?" she complained.

"What do you mean, 'Like with magic'?"

The urgency in his tone woke her further, and she scrambled to hold onto the thread of clarity that the twilit space between sleep and wakefulness had given her.

"I don't know," she said, shaking off sleep. "I guess it's like the leap of faith you take the first time you go into Ollivander's shop. Trusting that the pieces of wood he gives you aren't an enormous practical joke. That you really can change things around you with the wave of a wand and a bunch of Latin words." She paused, remembering that rush of power the first time she had held her wand. Hers. Limitless possibilities opening up before her, governed only by her ability to find the perfect combination of word and motion to make it so.

"But it isn't ever really so simple, is it? It's sort of the wand and it's sort of the words, but it's always really the intention behind it all and that we believe it. In magic." She wrinkled her brow. "We have to trust all that or else it doesn't work."

He nodded, his brow furrowed in thought.

"The relationship between a wizard and his magic is both delicate and powerful," he said. "Classical magical theorists believed there was a synergy between them. They argued that harnessing the natural flow of magical power using benign intent allows for its development." He raised his eyebrows. "I'd imagine you noticed this during even your foreshortened time at Hogwarts."

She paused to remember.

"I suppose I did, though I assumed it was just the usual outcome of practice and study. Work harder, and you get better. What you're saying assumes that magic gets stronger based on how you use it, not just because you're older and learn how to channel it more effectively."

He nodded. "Intent matters. How a witch or wizard engages their power affects the magic and, in turn, the wielder."

"So, the way Voldemort related to his magic changed him, and that, in turn, led him to..." She hesitated.

"To twist it," Severus finished for her. "He took something that for most of us is natural and distorted it into something horrifying." He shuddered. "It's a vicious cycle and once started, is nearly impossible to stop."

Hermione nodded, wondering what it took for him to stop. Wondering about the cost of still having to stay in such close proximity to evil year after year.

"It takes courage and determination, doesn't it?" she asked softly.

His eyes narrowed. "You have it backwards. Evil is cowardly. It requires no self-discipline at all."

"I don't imagine it would," she said. "It does tend to run amuck." She paused. "But I meant stopping. You made a choice to turn away. Intentionally."

"Yes," he allowed.

And still, it followed him, still haunted him a decade beyond Voldemort's death.

"So, what do you think this has to do with fortune telling and Horcrux poisoning?" Severus asked.

Whereas a week ago, his question would have roused a virtual menagerie of fears and insecurities, tonight she could simply hear the question...honest, vital...and see the glittering interest in his eyes, thrilled at the respect it implied.

"Well," she began, thinking aloud, "we don't really know what broke inside us because of exposure to the Horcruxes...to evil...right? Neville said that he would look for a pathogen if a plant was sick, and then he could look for a way to eradicate it."

Severus nodded.

"So, what's the pathogen?"

~~**~~

Severus hesitated.

Talking of evil and intent and twisted magic was all well and good, but to make a Horcrux required a profound distortion of one's humanity, demanding the cruellest type of death. Murder with the intention of harvesting the consequent rip in the fabric of the soul.

What did it take to kill another human being in cold blood?

Eyes, burning red, flashed in his mind's eye.

Isolation. Contempt.

Utter denigration of others. Yes, he thought. But what could drive a wizard to sacrifice the integrity of his own self...his soul...for the fantasy of everlasting life?

A voice, cold as ice, hissing, whilst he held his breath.

What could fuel the pursuit of immortality...power for its own sake and at any cost?

What had the power to reach beyond the grave, plunging its long fingers into the hearts and souls of those who'd had the misfortune to touch it? Shredding, ripping, ultimately severing each of its victims' attachments to one another and to their own belief in themselves.

"Malevolence."

The sound of the word...poisonous, piercing...echoed against the stone walls as if looking for a foothold before finally melting into silence.

Hermione shivered, and he clasped her hands in his.

"What's the remedy?" she whispered.

I wish I knew, he thought. But then he felt the blood rushing beneath her skin, warm, and vibrant; her body alert but relaxed, brown eyes wide and shining with life. Warmth rushed into his chest until he could hardly breathe for its abundance.

Of course.

"Trust."

He could practically feel her body humming with the pleasure of the word, and he brought his hand to cup her cheek. She leaned her face into his caress and closed her eyes.

"I do," she whispered and opened her eyes. She brought her hand to his face, to trace the line of his jaw, a feather touch along the fullness of his lips.

Could she know what her trust meant to him? He, who had touched evil, who believed himself forever tainted...twisted...by it. To be trusted was so rare a gift, and so treasured.

He turned so that he could kiss the palm of her hand, holding it to his mouth as if it were water and he, a man, parched. It had to be that she understood, he reasoned through the fog of feeling that rose to envelop him, else she wouldn't have known not to speak, only to curl herself around him and let him hold her close like a talisman until his body stopped trembling.

~~**~~

"Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm coming along," said Ron. "I want to meet this fortune teller. I want to hear what she and her Divination cards have to say."

Hermione winced. She couldn't imagine Ron and the others stuffed into that tiny room with its incense and diaphanous scarves without flashing back to Trelawney's claustrophobic classroom and the utter chaos that reigned there.

This was different. It had to be different.

"Why don't we all go together, then?" asked Ginny, with an anxious glance at Severus. "Best to stick together, isn't it?"

So that was it, thought Hermione. She could appreciate their fear of being separated, especially given her own experience with the power of her proximity to Severus. It was interesting, too, how quickly everything had changed. For so many years, when they'd get together at the Burrow, all their symptoms would worsen and now, to a one, they seemed calmer together. More grounded.

She looked to Severus and raised her eyebrows. She supposed it was all right with her if they came along. It might be a bit crowded in the tiny shop, but if that was the worst of it, she'd count herself fortunate.

He inclined his head, and she smiled.

"It's Muggle London, Ron," Hermione warned him. "She might remind you of Trelawney, though she's not quite as odd. But Ron, she can do something like magic, even though she's Muggle."

Ron bristled. "Doesn't matter to me if she's Muggle, Hermione. She sounds important, and I want to be part of it." Part of the solution, she understood, though he didn't say it out loud.

"Thank you, Ron."

He flushed, and Hermione smiled, relieved. It had been ages since she'd been able to read Ron accurately, even sporadically. It had been so long she'd forgot how good it felt not to constantly misunderstand and be misunderstood by him in turn.

"I believe that seven witches and wizards are quite enough to be storming that poor woman's shop," said the headmistress. "We'll stay back here. I imagine we can find enough to occupy ourselves while you're away. Be sure to report back just as soon as you return." Her expression was fierce, as if she wouldn't tolerate noncompliance, and Hermione grinned as Severus assured her that they would.

"Ready?" Severus asked, his hand at the small of her back as the others lined up for side-along Apparition.

"As ready as I'll ever be," she murmured.

~~**~~

In a cosy storefront on a back street of Muggle London, a woman sits at a round, rickety table. Light shines from the cards laying before her, far stronger than the weak sun streaming through the room's shuttered windows.

An elegant finger traces the outline of the image in one of the cards, a blindfolded figure holding two swords, crossed at chest level. Tapping the card, she nods as she moves it further away from the array. She trails her fingertips along the spread until they rest on the central card. "Temperance," she murmurs, rubbing it against the card laying beneath it, then moves her hand to the one directly opposite. "Eight of wands," she says. "At last."

She smiles and looks towards the door as if waiting for guests to arrive.

"Well done."

~~**~~

A/N: Beta thanks to Annie Talbot and Lady in the Cloak, and to Drinking_Cocoa for incisive and thought provoking alpha-reading questions. Each of you make the story better each time you touch it.