Chapters 171-180

We Pass the Gate

The room had not changed. It was still a gloomy, windowless rectangle of granite with a raised platform at the centre. On that platform stood an archway of black stone, unsupported by the walls, its pillars cracked and crumbling with age. Inside that strange portal hung a tattered black curtain that billowed now and again as if a breeze was blowing against it from behind. The dais looked like the stage of an antique theatre. As if it were only waiting for actors to appear…to repeat a classical tragedy before an invisible audience.

Harry hesitated for a heartbeat. Then he strode briskly down the steep steps. His footfalls echoed noisily. Behind him Snape seemed to glide like a ghost, with a barely audible shuffle of smooth leather soles on the hard surface of the stones.

Once he reached the pit, Harry stepped close to the dais but didn’t climb up yet. He studied the archway closely.

‘I’ve dreamt of this blasted chamber so often since my fifth year,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve returned here over and over and over in my nightmares…’

‘You were a child.’

Harry wasn’t surprised to hear the silky voice of the Potions Master right behind him. But the gentle tone did astonish him. He turned and looked at Severus Snape. The man’s dark eyes were focused on the archway. ‘In spite of your teenaged histrionics and your Gryffindor heroics, you did the best you could.’

Harry swallowed dryly before he could answer. ‘But my best wasn’t good enough.’

Black eyes bored into him. At last Severus nodded. ‘That is true. But such is life. Sometimes a man’s very best is not good enough. And sometimes that will be his fault, and sometimes it will be mere circumstance conspiring against his best efforts.’ He paused, and his voice was very soft, when he added: ‘But no child should ever be put into the position you were in at that time.’

Harry had no idea what to reply, so he turned back to contemplate the archway.

It still possessed that archaic beauty he remembered, a certain eerie majesty that no cracks and no crumbling corners could mar. The veil swayed and rippled. For a moment Harry thought that the other side of its fabric shimmered just like his Invisibility Cloak. Like silver rain spun into cloth.

‘Right.’ Harry swallowed hard. His left hand strayed to the hilt of Godric Gryffindor sword at his side. He kept his eyes on the fluttering curtain. Adrenaline rushed through his veins. His heartbeat quickened. Then he put his palms on the dais and pushed himself up onto the platform. He squatted and extended a hand towards Severus. ‘Shall we?’

‘So eager to die?’ Severus sighed. ‘Just a moment. I need to invoke the spell on my wands.’

oooOooo

Severus took a moment to think of her, to savour the memories of the brief time fate had allowed him with his Hermione. An odd, out-of-synch beat of his heart tasted bittersweet on his tongue—he had been honest with her; he did hope for more.

More: Long winter evenings such as they’d spent in Spinner’s End, talking down a bottle of wine. Or even two.

More: Her gasp of surprise when he presented her with roses. Shared laughter and shared desire…Damn, he even cherished their arguments. Her precious, furious tears.

He withdrew his wands and raised them.

‘Coniungo,’ he whispered and recalled her body writhing under his. Yes. Writhing with pleasure. For him! ‘Coniungo!’ How he had claimed her as his own. How she had clasped him deep within herself. ‘Per vitam ad mortem. A morte ad vitam.’ How the tightness of her body, how the friction of their joined bodies had driven him nearly crazy until their union had brought him…and her…what he could only call—bliss.

‘Coniungo! Coniungo! In sempiternum.’

And he felt it—instantly—an answer. A…tingling, prickling sensation. Like the echo of a gasp, a sweet exhalation of breath under his searching lips…

He transferred both wands to his right hand. He secured the longer wand between his smallest finger and his ringer finger, extending below his thumb. The shorter wand he squeezed between ring finger and middle finger, extending above his thumb. That way he could hold onto both wands and still pluck a bell from the bandolier with middle finger, index finger and thumb.

Severus climbed the dais and regarded the young wizard who was waiting for him. He recognised that Gryffindor grin.

‘Some ground rules before we go,’ he snarled. ‘No Gryffindor heroics until I say so. And you will not let go of my hand until we are well and truly dead, with no chance in hell to ever make it back here.’

‘Sounds sensible to me,’ Harry replied with a smirk. ‘If you promise to refrain from Slytherin martyrdom until I say so. Oh, and you may keep holding my hand even when we’re well and truly dead.’ The young Auror inhaled, but he was obviously too tense to breathe deeply. Then he had the nerve to add, ‘I’d really prefer to come back alive, you know. But if we’re about to kill ourselves…I don’t think I could ask for better company.’ Suddenly he grew very serious. ‘If you’re right, and that Vow my mother made you take forces you to return as a ghost—would you…tell Ginny…’ He exhaled with a short burst of breath. ‘Oh, damn, I suck at this emotional stuff.’ He grimaced. ‘Ah, hell, Sev—you know what I mean.’

Severus frowned at this overly familiar form of address. But standing before the Veil, it seemed petty even to him to take offence. He sighed. ‘I do. If it comes to that, you have my word that I shall do my best to find…suitable words to pass on to your fiancée.’

This time Severus extended his hand to Harry. ‘Let’s go.’

oooOooo

---

« Chapters 161–170 oooOooo Chapters 181–190 »

---