Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of Joanne K. Rowling. Any characters, settings, objects, or creatures from the Harry Potter books and movies used in this work are the property of Joanne K. Rowling, and Warner Brothers. Original characters belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available on this website solely for the private enjoyment of readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author.
oooOooo
My Crimson Joy
At some point between kneeling in a puddle of crimson blood in the Shrieking Shack and trying to care for the dead, the dying, and those grievously wounded during the aftermath of the Final Battle, something inside Hermione shattered.
She didn’t know when, or what, or how. Her rational mind even supplied a reasonable Muggle term to what was happening to her—trauma—but the result remained the same. Like a little old-fashioned clock that has to be wound up to keep ticking and that can’t, just can’t keep going when one of its tiny cogs cracks, something small but essential within Hermione broke.
And she stopped.
She stopped eating—she had no appetite.
She stopped sleeping—she was beyond weariness.
She stopped talking—what was left to say?
At last she stopped moving.
She sat very very still and stared straight ahead.
“—here. She sits in the same spot all day and all night, without moving. Like a statue,” Professor McGonagall said softly.
That sounded nice. Hermione liked statues. At least the ones in the castle. And the ones she’d seen in France, when she spent her holidays there with her parents. She hadn’t cared much for the statues in the Ministry of Magic.
“… well, when someone tells her to open her mouth, she allows herself to be fed,” Madam Pomfrey explained. “She doesn’t struggle when I Levitate her to the loo or into bed. But as soon as I turn my back, she gets up and returns here. Like a guard dog.”
She wouldn’t mind being a dog. Although she loved cats, Hermione also liked dogs. Big black dogs, like Sirius. Or tiny white poodles like Lavender. A little red lacquer collar would look cute on Lavender. But they didn’t know if she was to live, so maybe she’d never have need of a cute little collar or a beautiful fashionable necklace ever again.
“Does she bother—” Harry asked.
Bother. What a strange word. Botherbotherbotherbotherbotherbotherbother. Bother, Hermione knew, was a word used in the English language as early as 1718. It was probably derived from the Anglo-Irish word “pother”. Or perhaps from “bodhairim”, to deafen. But she didn’t say a word. Potherpotherpotherpotherpotherpotherpother.
“…no. No. We don’t think so,” Minerva replied.
“Then let her be!” Harry snapped. “I mean, she’s not doing any harm, is she?”
“…what is she doing, anyway?”
“She’s sitting here day and night,” Minerva replied. “And stares at his canvas.”
“Oh.”
She was allowed to stay where she was, sitting very very still. Like a statue. Like a guardian. She didn’t bother anyone, and everything was silent. Outside and inside. She stared straight ahead. Straight ahead was a wall. In front of that wall was a canvas. The canvas was white and bright. And empty.
And Hermione looked at it.
And kept looking.
Kept looking.
Looking.
And then—
A shadow appeared on the canvas.
A big black hole. It swallowed the whiteness, drank the brightness, ate the emptiness. Hermione knew there were black holes up in the sky that could consume even stars. From the distance, stars seemed like tiny, cold pinpricks of wand light. But this was an illusion. Because the sun was a star, too. And the sun was so huge that in a Muggle model of the solar system the earth was just a grain of sand.
Still there was a darkness somewhere out there in the depths of the universe that could eat up the sun.
But darkness was not only somewhere out there, farther away than Hermione had words for. Darkness was so very close that she didn’t need words for it anymore, because it ate her up, drank her in, swallowed her whole.
Now the shadow covered the whole canvas.
Like the Dark Lord had covered her whole life, had smothered all light. Had left nothing untouched, nothing unspoilt.
The Dark Lord. Just a pastiche, she’d told them. Not original, she’d said. Only a copy-cat. With his red eye. With his black riders. It was a Muggle reference and she had had to explain it to Ron and to Harry, too, a long-winded, awkward explanation, and when she finished, her joke was not funny anymore at all. But they still laughed, laughed so hard they cried, so they wouldn’t scream, wouldn’t scream because they were so scared.
A dark shape appeared behind the shadow on the canvas.
A shadow within a shadow. Like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Hermione remembered a book. She remembered many books, of course. Magical books and Muggle books. But this one was a Muggle book about magic. A Muggle magical book. In that book there were tombs. In those tombs there were ghosts. Ghosts without names. A young girl was sacrificed to them. They ate her name. She became a priestess of the nameless ghosts. A priestess without a name. Until a wizard came and knew her name.
How that was possible, she didn’t know. And he could not say her name anymore. Ever again. The snake tore out his throat. You could not speak without a throat. Inside one’s throat are the vocal chords and you need those to speak. Also, without a throat you could not breathe, and you sputtered and guttered, those wet red sounds, until you knelt in the blood, until blood was everywhere—
A brush-stroke seeped across the canvas,
a black form was born from the darkness beyond the shadow.
(Professor Snape’s blood had felt so hot at first in the cold air of the Shrieking Shack, but it had cooled, cooled quickly and congealed. His cold blood had made her jeans stick to her naked skin like glue. And the smell. The thick, metallic stink of death. It had gripped her throat and squeezed until she gagged.)
More strokes showed up. Dips and nips. Dots and spots.
The form turned into a figure.
“Hermione? Can you hear me?” Poppy asked.
“Hermione.”
Her name held no power. But she knew names that did.
Albus—Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
Harry—James Potter.
Severus—Snape.
Tom—Marvolo Riddle.
A list of names in alphabetical order. Names that could save or destroy a world. Names that did save and destroy her world. On a list she made. She liked lists, she always made lists. Lists with books, lists with necessary items for the Horcrux hunt, grocery lists; lists to keep the chaos at bay. Colour-coded revision schedules, so that the boys wouldn’t fail their OWLs and their NEWTs, only they hadn’t stayed at school to take the NEWTs and now the war was over, but they still wouldn’t take their NEWTs together, because Ron was dead and Harry was a hero. He’d get an order. Order of Merlin, First Class. Probably Ron, too. Posthumously. Probably all members of the Order of the Phoenix would get an Order of Merlin. Alive or dead.
What did it matter? The dead were dead after all, and those left alive would die eventually, too.
“Shouldn’t they be…taken away?” asked Professor Vector. “The girl, at least?”
“No,” Professor Flitwick said. “This is their home.”
The figure on the canvas was drawn black.
No, the figure on the canvas was dressed in black.
He had always worn black, as if he was mourning. For those he had killed. For those who had died. For those he would kill. For those who would die.
For those he would save.
“Is she still at it?” Minerva asked.
“Yes,” Poppy replied. “She’s still watching his canvas. Her eyes follow every brushstroke.”
“Does he mind?”
Poppy snorted. “As you can see, he’s not in a position to say so.”
“Do you think he does?”
“Why should he? She’s just sitting there, silent as a mouse. He always complained about her questions. She’s stopped asking them.”
“Well,” Minerva said. “Well.”
Clothed in darkness, he stood in the shadows.
And behind the shadows the Dark Lord waited for him. Lord Voldemort.
Vol de mort.
The invisible worm that flies the night.
In the howling storm.
Those were lines from a poem. She had learnt the poem by heart, because English literature wasn’t taught at Hogwarts and her father said it was important that she did not forget where she came from.
The poet was William Blake.
“William Blake. British writer and artist. Born Nov. 28, 1757, London, Eng. died Aug. 12, 1827, London. English engraver, artist, poet, and visionary, author of exquisite lyrics in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794)…”
She remembered reading the article about William Blake in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was positioned at the top left corner of the page and the name was printed in bold letters and the titles of his works were printed in italics.
Her song of innocence was a moon-bright doe in the Forest of Dean.
In blind faith she had followed it, leaving Harry behind at the pool. Dazzling and elusive like quicksilver, the doe slipped through trees and thickets, racing for the sheer joy of it. Hermione had run after it, stumbling, tumbling, panting. Scratched bloody and bruised black from brambles, roots and thorny twigs. On, on, on—the painful pounding of her heart propelled her forwards, even when her knees weakened, threatened to give out.
Until the doe disappeared.
Until she fell.
Until she lifted her head.
And saw him standing in the darkness, clothed in black, unsmiling.
On the canvas, delicate brush strokes formed a head for the hidden man.
But his face remained obscured.
Her song of experience was the joy of her virgin’s blood on him. Crimson smeared over heated flesh.
His tears, disguised as the sweat of pleasure but recognised in their bitterness.
Her knowledge that this was sick; a twisted, secret dark love that could but destroy.
And did.
Did.
“Did you read that article about the trial? Harry Potter took the stand. He swore before the whole Wizengamot that they were lovers! She went mad with grief, when V-V- when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named set his snake on him and—”
“Move along, will ye,” Minerva’s voice cut through hushed voices like a chainsaw. “This is not a zoo, Miss Gordon.”
“Does she even realise that—”
“Now, if ye please, Mr Patrick.”
In front of layers and layers of shadows, stood a black figure. Tall and alone.
…and his face remained shrouded in shadows.
And alone.
She was astonished there was anything left of her heart to break.
But something, something ineffable, crumbled within her.
“Is there truly nothing to be done?” Minerva asked.
“You read the same expert opinion as I did,” Poppy said.
“But what do you think? I want your instinct, not some bloody pencil-pusher’s hoity-toity expert opinion.”
“The painting’s not finished yet.”
For a long time, not much happened. A shadow here, a highlight there.
Tentative touches of black and white and grey.
No hint of colour.
Hermione recalled a lecture on a guided tour in the Louvre: Nature knows no true black, knows no true white.
The great artists of the past knew that, too. Look at the blue-black of Franz Marc. The red-black of Modigliani. The green-black of Monet.
And white?
White is no colour at all—it is light.
Reflexions of blue in black hair. Diamante sparkles in dark, dark eyes. A ray of sunlight gentling harsh lines into a smile.
Hermione waited for that smile.
Few had ever seen it. Only one had touched it. And she set it free, a long, long time ago.
Waiting.
Slow breaths. Deep breaths.
Breaths that did not hurt anymore.
More waiting.
Silence.
So much silence.
And out of the silence, a face was drawn. Gently. Hesitantly. The black hair appeared first.
A lanky smudge of raven-wing-blue.
Oily.
Then: harsh lines, angles, more shadows.
A face.
Still drawn too thickly, with too much pressure.
A lifetime of bitterness and hard choices, wrong decisions—
so that, in the end, everything could be all right.
All right.
“There should be a smile,” she says suddenly. She does not recognise her voice. It is a raspy, rough sound that surrounds her and buoys her. But there’s a resonance to her words that is not there when she is only thinking, secure in her silence. “There should be colour.”
She inhales deeply and turns.
Hermione gets up and disregards her weak knees, as she disregarded her fears before, once upon a time in the Forest of Dean. She bends down and picks up a brush. For a moment she stares at the palette, brilliant in all shades of the chromatic circle.
Only true black, true grey and true white have been used so far.
She squishes her brush into the splodge of crimson joy. Rises, brandishes the brush like a weapon, like a wand—
—and delicately slides it over his lips.
Until his lips are swollen with her kisses.
Until he closes his eyes.
Until he smiles.
“There should be colour, for I love you. And I always will.”
The mute man turns. His brush, drenched in black, falls to the floor, a dry, hollow clattering noise that remains unnoticed.
He holds his hands out to her.
She grips her crimson brush harder, but allows him to draw her into his embrace.
In pungent swathes, red oil colour outlines the contours of a kiss.
A kiss of crimson joy.
…and a portrait that was never finished.
oooOooo
FINITE INCANTATEM
oooOooo
A/N: This was written for the LiveJournal community “hpcon_envy” for bambu345’s prompt “Hermione talks to Snape’s portrait a week following the Battle for Hogwarts.“
- the etymology of “bother” is from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and the Online Etymology Dictionary
- the joke with the Dark Lord being only a Muggle pastiche refers to “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien
- the book with the nameless ghosts and the priestess is Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Tombs of Atuan”
- the interpretation of Vol de Mort as “flight of death” was first made by Philip Nel
- the William Blake quotes are from the poem “The Sick Rose”, the title of this story also alludes to this poem
- the information quoted about William Blake is really from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but I have no idea on which page (or if it’s really worded like that; I used the online edition)
- the description of the does is lifted from “Deathly Hallows”
- the information about black and white in art hails from a lecture when I majored in art at college level, some sixteen years ago
- “and out of the silence, a face was drawn” is a reference to Ursula K. LeGuin’s poem “The Creations of Éa”
Many thanks to Mia Madwyn and Juniperus for beta-reading!