The Lady of Shalott

by Ibex's Lyre

And what is an end but only some other beginning?

Chapter Nine: Grace

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

~Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Mmm, what is this, Severus?" Voldemort whispered with a sadistic smile upon his face. "A gift? Is that why she is in white?"

"She's dead," he spat, at the same time trying desperately not to believe the evidence that lay before his eyes. Her skin was a waxy pale color, and the lack of chest movement betrayed her lifeless state. In a moment of odd despair, he saw once more what he had seen the first time he had truly looked at Hermione Granger. That moment, when she had been on the sickbed in the infirmary, comatose and lost to the world, he had seen the beauty that was Hermione, just as he saw it now. Why was it the most beautiful creatures, the ones most worthy of life are always the ones to die first?

"All the better," came Voldemort's harsh laugh. "Necromancy produces more... useful... servants anyway. And look! She has the twin to your bottle!" With a swift, serpentine movement, the Dark Lord grabbed the bottle and opened it, sniffing the contents. The contents of the bottle were foreign to him, and seemed to rival in complexity even anything he had ever known Snape to create. "What ingenuity... Perfect..." And to Snape's immense disgust and horror, Voldemort bent over and kissed the dead girl. It was not simply a chaste kiss, it was coldly passionate, brutal. Reptilian lips pressed against cold mammalian ones, bruising, biting, leaving nothing sacred. Dead things do not bleed. The heart no longer pumps blood, and unless an organ such as the liver or heart is opened, or unless a very large vein or artery is ripped, no blood is spilled. And yet, somehow a new, human drop of blood was added to the mix of substances already upon Hermione's lips, and activated the magic Snape had wanted. Unicorn and dragon's blood, phoenix tears and liquid Aurora Australis, the last drop of human existence and Severus' own well veiled potion reacted together to create something new, something powerful. Like Hermione and Severus, the new mixture was much more powerful than the sum of its parts.

It slithered slowly first, like a sluggish snake on a cold spring morning, slithering into his skin and through his veins. Surprised, Voldemort jerked back from the corpse and glared down at it, searching for his wand. "What?" he hissed angrily, and Nagini was becoming frantic, sensing the distress of her master. Faster, warming to his blood, did the snake spread through like an icy serpent of doom, crawling, angry tendrils of frozen doom spread through his arteries, and throughout his body. Hermione's potion unleashed the inner animal upon its owner--if the person was not at peace with themselves, if the one part of mercy was convinced that the core being was evil, that it was a mercy to end its owner instead of unleashing it on the rest of the world, it would destroy its owner. Voldemort's inner animal was a serpent, like Nagini, and it had determined that there was nothing good enough worth saving in the creature that was once Tom Riddle to spare him his life. He collapsed lifeless to the floor, humbled by a single dead woman.

So, too, did Snape, held up no more the painful, torturous magic. He lay where he fell, seemingly no more alive than Voldemort, except that his chest moved in ragged, harsh gasps that shot pain through his back and down his spine with every breath he took.

Nagini, at the sight of her dead master, took one mistaken strike at Hermione and bit the already lifeless girl. Horrified even at the thought, Snape, at the same time Nagini struck, grabbed his wand and aimed once at the snake. Nagini was faster, but she died even before she began to raise her head again. "No," moaned Snape softly, as he tried to crawl over to check on the condition of the corpse. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wormtail move in an attempt to escape. A quick body bind left him cursing on the floor, and Snape somewhat dizzy, as if the world around him would not stop fading towards darkness. "One move, Pettigrew," Snape growled though the haze of unconsciousness that was rapidly descending on him, "And I swear I will leave you like I left Voldemort and Nagini."

"P-pplease, mm-master--!"

"Please nothing, you less than worthless rat! I've been waiting a long time for this--" He tried to stand up, but realized his mistake too late as the sweet oblivion descended around him.

Wormtail was alone in silence. The clock struck midnight, off in the distance, a sad, mournful hymn to a new morning. And on the third chime, the dead rose, and breathed life into the lifeless corpse. One breath, and the veil between the living and the dead was opened, and quickly closed. Another, and her eyes fluttered opened. A third, and she sat up, alive and awake, sane and in control of everything she did. She registered the body of the giant dead snake spread over her, and of the cowering man who stared at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. She looked at the dead man, more snake than human, laying on the floor--trapped forever behind the veils that separated the living from the dead. And she saw--

"Severus--Professor..." Hermione gasped, as she ran over to the man laying on the floor, wand clutched tightly in his right hand. Carefully, she rolled him over, and placed her ear next to his lips, listening for breathing. When she heard and felt his faint but reassuring breath against her skin, she stood up and looked at Wormtail, pondering what exactly to do. A faint smile came to her lips as she thought back to everything that had happened in the past six months, and turned sad when she thought of Raidne. Finally, she decided just what exactly she would do. She picked up Snape's wand and walked over to the window, ignoring the quivering of Wormtail.

Using his long, foreign wand, which looked like it was made of ironwood, she shot red sparks out of the window and into the dark night. To the muggle community nearby, it would look simply like a stray piece of fireworks. To an auror, or any other member of the magical community, it would be read as an urgent request for help. Then she wrote a note explaining what had happened according to Snape's memories, and left it attached to Voldemort's corpse for the aurors to find. "Come on, Professor," she whispered to her fallen friend--it surprised her that she had suddenly considered him so, until she realized that in many ways, he was closer to her than anybody else was--and used his wand to take him back to the magical boat that would return them upstream, back to Hogwarts.

***

Hermione sat still, letting her fingers trail in the water softly behind the magic boat as it took them upstream back to Hogwarts. The sunrise through the early morning river mists cast an eerie magic to the early morning scene. After a long while, she looked down at the figure whose head lay in her lap, and allowed herself a weary smile. He looked so calm and serene when he was asleep. Hermione sighed softly, pulling her hand out of the water and letting it trail slowly across his brow and watching as the small beads of water ran down his face and into his hair like tears in the very same method he had done to her, once. A sentient, sane affirmation of their bond, she guessed.

So much had happened, but it seemed like such a hollow victory. Like they were missing something.

She sighed, and watched as the boat slowly settled against the bank where she had found it. Then she carefully took him through the forest, being much more gentle than the first time she had seen him under the Mobilicorpus spell, and led him back to Hogwarts. Filch was waiting for her at the great arching doors to Hogwart's main entrance, a scowl on his face. "An' what would we 'ave here, but a student out and about with an unconscious teacher so early in the morning? We've been lookin' fer you all night, and 'ere you come, please as you can be, while I should have been searchin' for my Mrs. Norris--"

"Please, sir," she said in a very tired voice, "Madam Pomfrey needs to see him."

"I think that is an excellent idea, Miss Granger," came Dumbledore's clear voice from behind Filch, startling them both. Slowly, they headed up towards the infirmary, Hermione telling him everything that she had written in her letter to the aurors. Upon arriving at the infirmary, Madam Pomfrey fussed over Snape for several minutes, before declaring his state due to mostly exhaustion, which would be cleared up with some well-deserved rest. McGonagall looked almost as though she had seen the ghost of her dead dog Ellen when she first glimpsed Hermione talking brightly to Dumbledore, with not even a hint of her previous condition apparent.

"Well done, I think," came his wise voice, the gleam of triumph evident in his eyes. "And now, I believe that you, too, should spend a night--or day, actually--in the able care of our Madam Pomfrey, just to help you recover, too." The suspicious sparkle was clear, and Hermione briefly wondered if he had a second agenda. Before she could ask, she was left all alone with Snape.

Perhaps it was due to her confusion, or perhaps the long, deep sleep she had already had, but Hermione simply wasn't very tired. Instead, she chose to pull up a nice, comfortable chair beside Snape, and watch him. Now she allowed her mind free, to wander where it may. To her intense relief, everything she had suspected was true--the curse the other sirens had placed upon her should she chose to break through the wall that hid the memories of the question she had asked had simply been the curse of sight--of sanity, if you will. The realization that the world did rest upon not only Snape's shoulders, or hers, but on everybody's. And then she knew that there had been really only one thing she could do if she wanted her world to go down the more favorable path--something that she couldn't even let Severus know about, lest he attempt to stop her. She had had to become living--or dead bait, to drink a potion that was more powerful than the Draught of Living Death, to sleep the eternal sleep and be prepared to come back. In truth, Hermione had been quite sane ever since Snape had forced her to look beyond the walls in her mind--only, she had pulled inward into herself, inward so deep that even Snape had not been able to find the spark of existence that was Hermione Granger. And she had done what she had to.

She allowed the warm sunlight streaming in autumn rays through the windows to lull herself to sleep, and let her head rest gently on the chest of the man before her, as comfortable as if he was her. In a way, after all, he was.

***

In a nightmarish fit, Snape jerked upright, completely awake and aware of the girl whose head had just a moment ago been pressed up against him. He stared down coldly at her even as she looked back up at him in somewhat of a surprised, sleepy daze. "You," he growled harshly, the pain in his shoulders and abdomen only slightly diminished from what it had been.

"What?" Hermione asked, quite clearly confused. Her mind suddenly caught onto his rapid, angry stream of thoughts, and she stood up out of her chair, backing away. He didn't want her. He didn't want her! He was uncomfortable, embarrassed with her! Everything she had worked so hard for had been a lie! "I--" she faltered, biting her lips to keep back the emotions that threatened to spill out of her panicked, hurt mind.

"You what?" Snape responded, almost snarling now, just as confused and angry as she, not understanding what had just happened and why he was still alive in the infirmary instead of dead next to her.

"Nothing!" Hermione cried, and bolted out of the door. Heading presumably back to the dungeons, to her--their rooms.

It was then Snape noticed Madam Pomfrey watching him with a disapproving glare and her hands on her hips. "And what do you want?" he sneered, cursing everything that came to mind under his breath. He looked like he was quite ready to kill somebody.

"You know, Severus Snape, you could have a little empathy for somebody who just saved your life and rid the world of a truly nasty presence!"

"She did what? I clearly told you to make sure she went nowhere! So why did I, my dear Madam Pomfrey, see her a dead, cold sacrifice to Voldemort? Perfect object for some very nasty necromancy that would have damned her body and her soul worse than even a Dementor can do?"

"Severus! That young woman whom you just scared off did you a greater favor than is apparently worth you! She gave you the greatest gift she could--a second chance and a new life, free of the cur of all our lives, and you yelled at her, scared her off! The first person to finally see who you were through your nasty facade, and what did you do? All but bite her head off! For your sake, I hope she has it in her heart to forgive a spiteful, horrible person like you, or you truly will be all alone for the rest of your life--which will be, incase you have somehow forgotten, very very long!"

That said, Madam Pomfrey crossed her arms in an I Told You So manner. With a great frown to hide his frustration and... guilt... he swooped out of the bed and after the woman. She had a good fifteen minutes on him, and when he made their way to the quarters, her found her curled up asleep on the couch that sat before the fireplace. He almost asked her why when he got a good glimpse of her room. It was a disaster zone--it looked like Peeves had gone through and emptied all the bookshelves onto her bed and everywhere else. With a tormented sigh, he picked up Hermione and walked towards his room--let her sleep on his bed and himself on the couch. It seemed like the 'gentlemanly' thing to do, anyway.

He was stopped when he heard soft mewling sounds coming from his bed.

"No," he growled. It just couldn't be--!

It was.

Mrs. Norris had decided that the best place to have her kittens was, and Merlin only knew why, on Snape's bed. The bed was a soiled, wet mess with kittens and afterbirth littering the sheets. To top everything off, Crookshanks, tomcat that he was, was staring nonchalantly up at Snape and Hermione with a, "Why don't you go get laid?" look in his eyes.

That settled it! Snape, sleeping Hermione still in his arms, decided to sleep on the couch, and deal with everything else later.