Chapters 191-200

The Apprentice and the Necromancer by JunoMagic
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?’

25 Responses to Chapters 191-200

  1. mw says:

    Precioussss (LOL you spelt it right…I just couldn’t resist)

    Very interesting stuff about Hogwarts the castle…it does seem almost sentient even in the books – what with all those moving staircases etc.

    I like the idea that it knew who defended it – and mourned those who died as far as it could.

    You’re making me all sentimental…

  2. mw says:

    Magical Forensics

    Question – so I’m a bit confused about when Kingsley died. Weeks ago, right? and then they raised his body to act as him for those intervening weeks until someone figured it out? I assume they had some purpose for him in that time.

    *iz confused*

  3. mw says:

    Umbridge Unravelled

    You don’t know it yet – but I cottoned on to the fact that Umbridge was not the main perpetrator a while back. *glares in the direction of the Inquisition*

    EBIL.

    *i iz shaking in my bootses*

  4. Fluffette says:

    No one expects the Monks of the Inquisition!!

  5. zauza says:

    Precious

    “He even permitted her to smooth back his hair, to gently stroke his cheek.” *sigh*

    I never thought about it, but Hogwarts is indeed an accumulation of magical energy. I say so many times that the Castle has a soul…but it’s not really a soul. So much magical energy just gave it a magic of it’s own. Right?

  6. zauza says:

    Magical Forensics

    “If I were a Muggle, Hermione thought” i love this. She is finally so distant from her Muggle origins!

    So , she probably killed Shacklebolt when he went to her office (silly Auror,in fact so many are being so silly), but how did she do it?

    • JunoMagic says:

      There is a scene in which Umbridge and Shacklebolt are alone. The scene ends with Umbridge touching her wand. That was right before she cast the Avada Kedavra or something like that…

  7. zauza says:

    Umbridge Unravelled?

    I’ve been thinking for sometime about Necromancers. Severus told Hermione on a previous chapter that there were no Necromancers among the Death Eaters, but how could he know? Madame Dubois recognized him as one, but he didn’t recognized her.

    And wasn’t Severus the rightful Owner of the Elder Wand? This always left me confused.

    Is it possible that the Guys in Black have Necromancers or something similar?Isn’t that what Severus is thinking? Hmmm

  8. zauza says:

    Absurd Suspicions

    *sigh*

    I can’t stop thinking that if anyone else made that suggestion , Andromeda would at least consider it!

    And why can’t they just understand that ,if the wizarding world STILL believes in and practices old rites , why shouldn’t the Muggles do the same.

    The guys in black use Necromancers has exorcists, so they must be wizards who probably don’t even know they are or something like that.( 😀 )

    But the Inquisition left records of their activity in the past.Someone with power and knowledge engaged Umbridge to do this, the stupid, ambitious frog!

  9. zauza says:

    Defeat

    Of course.

    And the owner is probably whoever defeated Umbridge. And this also means, that it was not necessarily, the one who killed her!

  10. zauza says:

    Trolls, Death and Friendship

    This was just lovely! Harry is growing up a bit! I guess “marching hand in hand into Death and back” does indeed change you!

    And what a smart idea a game of Quidditch. Almost too Slytherin !

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