Chapters 191-200

Precious

When Severus cracked his eyes open, the first thing he saw was Hermione. Hermione!

She sat cross-legged on her half of the bed, watching him intently. Her choice of dress was absurd: green leggings, hand-knit woollen socks in stripes of green and black, and one of his black shirts. She was wearing his colours! Her cropped curls formed an unruly brown halo around her head and emphasized the bony angles of her thin face.

She looked impossibly young. And fragile.

‘You’re awake,’ she whispered. ‘Thank God, you’re okay.’

She crawled towards him on hands and knees and lowered her lips to his. The first touch of her mouth was careful, tentative, as if she was afraid of hurting him. But when he opened his lips, her kiss instantly deepened. She fed at his lips almost feverishly, as if his kiss was manna, and salvation from starving to death in the desert.

When she raised her head and smiled down at him, only one word came to his dazed mind that could describe her expression: joy.

Pure, radiant joy.

oooOooo

‘So Dumbledore was wrong? About Death, I mean.’

She could not stop touching him. Again and again her hand drifted over his arm, across his chest, to his stomach. The back of her curled fingers followed his collarbone. Fingertips traced his jaws…He even permitted her to smooth back his hair, to gently stroke his cheek.

They both needed to feel the other. The touch of skin on skin, her breasts pressed against his chest, each breath palpable, the first stickiness of sweat, of legs curled around each other under the thick duvet.

‘Not necessarily,’ Severus murmured.

While Hermione kept reassuring herself that he was still in one piece, running her hands all over every part of his body she could reach, he had manoeuvred one hand under her head, while the other rested on her waist, so he could easily pull her closer still, should the need arise.

‘How can you say that after—’

‘After meeting Death Personified?’ He tightened his embrace. The curls at the apex of her thighs brushed against him intimately, and he felt the faintest stir of desire. She lay as close to him as humanly possible without a complete physical union of their bodies. Somewhat to his surprise, Severus experienced a keen pang of regret because he was still too weak for sex. Hermione burrowed against him and shuddered. When he angled up her chin, she did not resist and allowed him to see her tears.

‘Hush,’ he sighed and brushed his lips against hers. ‘I’m here, I’m here.’

‘I know,’ she whispered. She tilted her head back on the pillow to watch his face more comfortably. His fingers cupped her cheek and her breath flowed gently against the heel of his hand. ‘I’m being silly.’

‘Not silly,’ he protested without thinking. Suddenly his throat grew painfully tight. He closed his eyes for a moment as he struggled with the word that was foremost in his mind.

‘Precious.’

He cleared his throat. ‘About Death—the figure or the phenomenon, which we encountered beyond the Veil may very well be nothing but an accumulation of magical energy. A manifestation of the remnants of magic that are stripped from the souls of the dead when they are sucked through the Ninth Gate.’

When Hermione blinked, obviously confused, he smirked. ‘I’m feeling generous today, so I’ll give you a clue: You have lived with two similar manifestations for the last ten years.’

‘A clue?’ She brought up her hand, pretending to feel his temperature with the back of her hand pressed against his brow. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling better, Severus?’

Her fingers began to smooth away the lines on his forehead. Moving in tiny circles, her thumb massaged the vertical lines entrenched above the bridge of his nose.

‘Hmm…’

He tried to concentrate on her face, how she wrinkled her nose in thought, the light dusting of freckles, those beautiful brown eyes…he must have dozed off nevertheless.

‘Ha!’ Hermione exclaimed. Her bright voice jolted him awake with a gasp.

‘Peeves!’ Her voice vibrated with satisfaction. ‘And Hogwarts itself,’ she added. ‘Peeves was easy. But you had me stumped with the second manifestation. For a moment I thought Dementors might be…but we did not really live with them. And while Boggarts have certainly a connection to the magic of individual witches and wizards around them, they are just ordinary wights. But then I remembered the epitaphs.’

Hogwarts—the castle itself—had produced epitaphs wherever someone had died during the Final Battle.

‘So Death Personified is the essence of our magic and not a real mythological—no wait, that isn’t quite right either…’ She frowned at the contradiction of a ‘real mythological figure’.

Severus smiled; he wasn’t surprised that Hermione preferred a scientific explanation. ‘No matter what the explanation for his existence may be, He is certainly real.’

‘Yes.’ Hermione sighed. ‘And even if He was not real at all, we’d still have to find the second half of the Resurrection Stone and the Elder Wand in order to break that curse.’ She lowered her head to hide her face at his chest. Her breath tickled his skin. He inhaled sharply as his nipple reacted to the sensation.

Break the curse…

All pleasure fled from his body. Dumbledore.

He squeezed his eyes shut although he knew that such infantile gestures were useless to keep memories at bay.

‘Severus…Severus…please…’

He shuddered.

‘Severus?’ Concern darkened Hermione’s voice as she hugged him close. ‘What is it, love? What’s wrong?’

He knew it was inconsiderate to burden her with his maudlin pangs of conscience. But somehow the words spilt from his lips before he could stop himself.

‘Wasn’t it enough that I had to kill him, Hermione? Is it not enough that I have to live with the guilt for taking his life? Now I’m supposed to take his soul, too?’