Chapter 11: Rose

When they woke again, they were back in the dark. The sound of the surf was gone. Hermione was confused, standing in the moonlight, blinking. All around her were rocks, black rocks, black walls climbing high, high above. It could not have been all a delirious dream. The injuries remained. Moonlight streamed down into the damp, lifeless hole. How were they back inside? How?

She seemed to realize something in that moment.

They had escaped together, returned together, and if they were right about Rex… there was a way to escape after all because there had to be, there always was. He did not make it impossible to escape. That would be impossible and unnecessary. Instead, he made it impossible to escape together. That was the real cruelty. For him the choice would be simple, but for them it was impossible.

Really, she should have known long ago. He was not trying to trap them there. He was trying to destroy them.

She at least was just well enough to leave. She tried and tried to rouse Harry, feeling the sudden panic of being truly alone. It was suffucating. She couldn't bear it. She just couldn't.

"Harry! Harry, please." She begged, choking on her tears.

"Sleep, 'mione." He slurred. "Sleep."

"No, Harry. We have to try. We have to try." But did they? Did they have to? She was so tired.

She could not return and tell them she'd left Harry there. Wherever they were would be impossible to find again, she guessed, or he would be magically relocated as soon as she escaped. She could not live knowing she'd left him to die like this. And she couldn't face the others with what she had done to survive. Could she send him back alone magically? Would he make it? Probably not. And even if he did, how would she stay there alone?

She no longer had the energy to hate Rex. How could think of such a place? Is this how he felt, she wondered.

Maybe Harry was correct. Maybe it was easier to let go, to sleep. To sleep...didn't Shakespeare say that? They could die there together. Eventually, everyone would move on, she hoped. They wouldn't stop until they were found, though, and they would be so devastated to find them gone. She had to leave a message.

Eyes blinking open now and then, she laid one hand in Harry's the other on the rocks and tried to move the rocks into a pattern of words. They needed to know, if all they found was bleached bones, who it was. And when it was finally written, she gave into Harry's mumbling. She gave into sleep, wand lying useless at her side, Harry growing cold fast, and the stones read: it's okay. And it was sort of true, or would make them feel better.

She, very very bravely, gave up.

-00-

"NO!" Harry shouted, drawing the attention of several sheepish students in the corridors. "I don't have time for this! I've told you before, she's run away from you. I've already checked that place thoroughly, if you don't trust me..."

"But he told you, there's a special revealing spell he's uncovered he needs to try, one that is close to Rex's family." Draco lied easily.

"Please, Harry." Luna appealed. Snape thought he was avoiding her.

"No, I won't." He refused.

"Surely one more check won't hurt?" The headmistress was saying, trying to keep the peace. Potter whipped around and his eyes, his eyes gave him away. They were full of fear, like a cornered animal. If he had not been looking so desperately for Hermione, they would have seen it sooner. These eyes looked nothing like Lily. These were not Harry Potter's eyes.

For a moment, Severus had no words. He felt fear, cold deep fear like in the war. Lovegood looked triumphant beside them.

"Just the two of us." Snape calmly insisted. "Let's go down there, and,"

Harry began to refuse him again, but Snape was having none of it. He was finished waiting and done with asking. Something, something felt urgent.

"Imperious!"

"Severus!" He ignored them, all of them. It was easy. He had years of practice at ignoring people.

Prison, if it even came to that, was a small price to pay if this was who he suspected. Besides, Harry, the real Harry, could fight off this curse. Due to the imposter's avoidance, Severus was quite sure Hermione was in the Chamber now. She was so close. He had no choice.

Unbeknownst to the students they passed, Not-Quite-Harry Potter led them rigidly down to the bathroom and to the fateful sink. Hermione had brewed Polyjuice Potion in there as only a second year! She had defeated a troll, with some help, in another lavatory. She alone had figured out what was haunting the castle, and she had faced it and survived.

How could she ever think he would be unwilling to bring another person such as this into the world? He had seen the children there were plenty of, and he was unimpressed. A strange thought to be having in such a place at such a time. It might even be too late to think of such people being born, but there it was anywhere. And if this, this path could lead to such a possiblity...of such little, new persons... then he would name them for that path. Everything else be damned. He would name them Myrtle, he bargained, but somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered that bargaining was a stage of grief. He saw his face in the old glass and looked away.

-00-

The closer the entrance to the chamber grew, the more the Not-Harry fault the spell. It took some force to make him speak the word "open" in a hiss. Once the great doors worked their way open, the imposter pulled away, darting and stumbling in one direction. Fortunately, Luna dropped him like a deer with a stunning spell. They left him there, lying in some nasty dampness. He was of no more use. He had already figured out how to resist veritaserum. Anything he said was likely to be more dangerous than helpful.

The group silently surveyed the chamber, the pillars, and the face of Salazar to whom Snape mentally pled for help. I'll name them Salazar, I swear I will. Was she here? Was she so close this whole long time? Was she part of that rotting stench?

"Hermione?" He called, but there was no answer. Could they be wrong again? Draco shrugged. "Hermione!" His voice echoed back at him.

Still, no one spoke. Their footsteps slowly tapped their way along the stone floors to carefully inspected surroundings. When at last a charm brought down the mouth and opened it, inside where the snake had slumbered, there lay two bodies like corpses resting in a catacombs. Gently laid out on pale linens, arms crossed around their chests.

They ran to them, the others, but he could not. He wanted every last second of hope she could still be living. Weeping filled the tunnel. The whole place seemed too wet, too buried. He needed out.

"Severus?" Someone asked. He did not hear who and could not respond. The astronomy tower. He needed to go to the astronomy tower. That's where he should have died before. Before before.

"Harry's waking!" Luna screamed. He stopped.

Severus Snape had terrible luck. He had a rotten father, a poor childhood, lost his mother, lost his best friend, fell in with the wrong crowd. He was pale. He had an unlucky nose. He was rubbish at most games, and he almost always lost a bet. When he finally did fall in love, it was with a former student of all things, a Gryfinndor, a know it all at that.

But maybe just maybe his luck was about to change for what he saw was a cauldron and by that cauldron several vials and notes. He poured over them, sharp eyes hungry, sniffed them, stirred them around, his mind speeding away at a rate that would have made Hermione proud.

"It's a form of the draught of the living death, if I had to guess. Something he's been working on. He lured out Crookshanks, the student… so he could get his hands on her and give her this. Harry made himself too accessible as always…" He scolded.

"But what does it do, Severus?" They pleaded.

"It makes us think we are somewhere we would try to escape," A groggy voice interrupted them. "But the only way to wake up is to give up." Harry spoke, ashamed but too wane to blush.

"If it had taken you any longer, you would have starved to death." Headmistress observed. Their state was only partially suspended. They were wasting, weakening.

Their sights turned at once upon Hermione. And he knew. Severus Snape knew that without a doubt Hermione Granger was never, ever going to give up.

She lay there, wasting away like one of those sick fairy tales she had shown him in that book. And there was nothing he could do. She was trapped somewhere, fighting so hard to get back home, and to save her friend. She wasn't going to leave Harry alone. She wasn't going to leave him alone. It was the perfect trap. Rex did not use their flawed nature against them; he had used their goodness.

And that meant it was stronger. She was never going to wake up.

-00-

He walked as if underwater as they levitated the others up to the hospital wing. He seemed to be seeing things happen as if observing through a pensieve. He saw them restrain Rex magically, but surprisingly felt nothing, not even surprise. He still looked like Harry, like there were two sleeping Harry's floating up through the castle. The windows were open by the white beds. Voices were whispers, but Harry was talking. The others were caring for him, waiting on him. He was safe. Snape tried hard not hate him for it. "Tell her to give up! Go to sleep!" He urged Snape.

Snape knew it was no use. He was going to sit there until she was gone, and then he was going to the astronomy tower. It might be night by then. It would be quiet and pretty. He always liked the night.

"He's crying." Draco murmured.

This came as no shock to hear, but Potter wasn't crying. Severus was looking right at him being half held down in a hospital bed, and the younger man wasn't shedding a tear.

"Severus, I'm so sorry. It's Lily all over again." Someone said, with a hand on his shoulder. He stared on in muddled silence. "Who?"

While Hermione could not see it, above the forest, the sun rose.

A/N: What do you think will happen next? Thoughts on this spell? More to come soon... Please review. Elsie