Solace - Chapter 26

[northangel27]

Chapter 26

 

“You never made paper snowflakes as a child?”

 

“Yes, and I recall the mess they made—all those little snippets of paper.”

 

“You’re too fastidious.”

 

“There’s no such thing.”

 

Hermione smiled.  They had been working all morning, and so far, all they had gotten done was a garland made of what seemed like thousands of small strips of red and green paper formed into loops and linked together into chains.  When she had done it in the past with Ron and Harry and Ginny at the Weasleys’, they had finished in no time.  There had been the help of magic, of course, but even when Mr. Weasley had insisted on seeing them do it the way a Muggle might, Harry and Ron had simply cut the strips haphazardly, all different lengths and widths.

 

Severus had insisted on measuring, on cutting every strip to the identical length and width.  The result was much prettier, she had to admit, but it had also taken them much longer.  Now, it seemed he was going to be equally as picky about the snowflakes.

 

“Were you this exacting as a child?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled.  “Something worth doing is worth doing properly, that’s all.”

 

“Hmm…”

 

‘Wen had finally come out of her hiding place and was curled up on the arm of the sofa beside Severus, sound asleep.  There was a fire crackling in the hearth, and Hermione had, as per Severus’ suggestion, Conjured some mulled cider.  The little house at Spinner’s End was starting to both look and smell like Christmas, and it was a rather happy feeling, she had to admit.

 

Severus was currently pretending that their conversation of earlier had not happened.  This was his usual tactic when faced with something emotionally uncomfortable, she was quickly learning.  It was all right.  One or two such emotionally charged interactions a day seemed to be becoming their norm, and she had no desire to push it to more.

 

“Did you come home or stay at school for hols, when you were a student?” she asked by way of making conversation.

 

“It depended on the year.  First through third, I came home.  Fourth I spent it with Lily.  My Da was in the hospital, and Len was spending most of her time there, so she thought it easier.”

 

“Len?”

 

He looked over at her as he traced circles onto pieces of white paper, using a saucer as a template.  “My mother.  It was my father who started calling her that, and—I picked it up somehow.  I don’t really remember calling her anything else.”

 

“But her name was Eileen, wasn’t it?”

 

He nodded.  “Perhaps it was the ‘leen at the end that got shortened to ‘Len…”  It was clear that he had not thought about it before.  “My father’s accent was a bit odd, part Irish, so perhaps that was it.”

 

“Mmm—maybe.”  She started to cut out the circles he was tracing. 

 

She had begun to notice something else interesting.  Severus, too, had a bit of an accent.  It came out in little snippets here and there, when he was relaxed or particularly upset.  It was just the cadence of something he said, or occasionally the emphasis he would place on a vowel.  There were little bits of a working class, northern accent sneaking in.  She liked it.  It made her feel trusted, like he was comfortable enough with her to let his walls down without him even realizing it.

 

“What about after fourth year?” she asked.

 

“Mmm…  Fifth year I spent at home.  Tobias died that February, so it was the last time I saw him.  Sixth year I spent with Regulus.”

 

“Regulus Black?”

 

“Yes.  That was a bit of a fiasco.”

 

She laughed.  “I can’t imagine you spending Christmas at Grimauld Place with miserable old Mrs. Black, and…”

 

“Yes, she was not very fond of me.  She made certain to make me aware of that fact.”

 

“I would imagine that she would have,” Hermione said.  “But I must know, was she as nasty a piece of work as she was in her portrait?”

 

“Worse,” he stated flatly.

 

Hermione laughed again.  “So you were friends with Regulus, then?  That must have displeased Sirius a great deal.”

 

“It did.”  He looked a little smug.  She could tell that the fact gave him more than a little satisfaction.

 

“You were very good friends, then?”

 

“One might say that—yes.”  His tone had changed.  There was tightness there, but also softness.  It reminded her somewhat of the tone she heard him take when he spoke of Lily.

 

She nodded.  She remembered how he had mentioned Reg earlier that morning, when telling her about the Death Eater Maloney, something about a trade, him for Regulus.  She shuddered at the possible interpretations of it, her mind unwittingly returning to the scars on his back, the way he raced to cover them when she had entered the bath unexpectedly.

 

“What about seventh year?” she asked, trying to get her mind off of it.

 

“The Malfoys’.”

 

“Ahh—and when you were a professor?”

 

“Here or at the school.”

 

“Well, this year is a bit different, then, isn’t it?  Sort of nice?”

 

He looked up from the paper, taking in the room around him, and let his eyes travel briefly to her face before looking back down at his work.  “Yes.”  She saw color come to his cheeks again, and she smiled softly before looking away. 

 

In all her years at school, she had never once seen the man blush.  There was a rumor that a seventh year Ravenclaw girl, back in the early eighties, had seen it once, when she had gone alone after class to ask him a question about an assignment.  It had become a bit of a school legend, especially amongst the small faction of students, Ravenclaws and Slytherins mostly, who inexplicably formed infatuations with him, but no one really believed it.  She wouldn’t have believed it herself until recently.  Now, she found it rather becoming on him.  A little bit of vulnerability in his seemingly implacable exterior.

 

“I sort of wish I’d gotten more food, now that you’re eating.  It might have been nice to have a goose, a nice pudding, you know, Christmas things.”

 

“I’m sure we’ll survive, Granger.”

 

“I’m sure, but still, it would have been nice.”

 

“You find a great many things nice.”

 

“Some things,” she said meaningfully.  “This is nice.”

 

“What?”

 

“This,” she repeated.  “Sitting here like this—with you.  After all, two Christmases ago, I was cold and hungry, standing in a frozen graveyard in Godric’s Hollow with Harry, and…”  She let her voice trail away, immediately realizing her mistake.

 

Severus just continued to trace circles.  “You can talk about it, you know,” he said at last.

 

“Oh, well, I didn’t know.  I—I know it can be hard sometimes, to talk about someone you lo…”

 

“I’ve never been,” he interrupted.

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“To the grave—in Godric’s Hollow.  I’ve not been there.”  She was astounded by this information.

 

“Oh…”  She didn’t know what else to say.

 

“What is it like?”  He had asked casually enough, but she was only too aware that it was no light question.

 

“It’s a small churchyard, the kind you usually see in country villages,” she began.  “There’s a kissing gate that leads into it and the village church just off to the side.  Dumbledore’s mother and sister are buried there too, and—and Lily’s grave is just two rows behind.  It’s white marble—simple enough—it’s engraved with the words, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’.”

 

He cleared his throat, but he didn’t look at her.  After a moment of tracing in silence, he finally spoke.  “I suppose they’ve buried her with Potter.”

 

“Yes.  They share a headstone, actually.”

 

He said nothing.  She continued to cut circles.  “Would you like to see it, do you think?”

 

Silence descended on the room.  The only sounds were the occasional popping of the fire in the hearth, the scratch of Severus’ pencil, and the snipping of her scissors.  She had cut out several circles before he finally responded:

 

“It’s far.”

 

“There’s Apparation.”  He said nothing.  “We could side along Apparate, I mean,” she clarified.  “Obviously, I would leave you to yourself, but if you would like to go…”

 

“It’s Christmas Eve.”

 

“Everyone will be in service.  The churchyard will be empty.”

 

Silence again.

 

Finally, he spoke: 

 

“If you are willing, then...”

 

“Of course.  We can go around seven.  They’ll all be in service, then.”

 

“No.  Later.”

 

“There is a midnight service, I assume.”

 

He nodded.  “That will be fine.”

 

“All right.”  She folded one of the circles in half, and then in half twice more before beginning to snip out small sections in order to form the snowflake, allowing the small pieces to float down to her feet.

 

Severus sighed beside her.  “Not on the floor, Granger.”

 

XxxX

 

Hermione walked into the sitting room, bundled tightly against the cold.  Severus was already there, bundled just as warmly, she was glad to see it. 

 

“Ready?” she asked.

 

He just nodded.

 

Striding over, she took his hand, meshed her fingers with his, and held on tight as they Apparated.

 

It was cold in Godric’s Hollow.  There was snow, and it glowed faintly bluish-silver in the light cast by the full moon overhead. 

 

Severus let go of her hand.  “Where are we?”

 

“Just outside the village.  I didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves.  We—we have to pass by the cottage to get to the graveyard.  If you’d rather not—I can try to get us closer.”

 

“No.  Let’s walk.”

 

It felt strange to be back two years to the day she had last been there.  She had the strongest sense of déjà vu, like reliving a particularly vivid dream.

 

They didn’t have far to walk before the cottage loomed up on the side of the lane.  She reached out and touched Severus’ sleeve.  “It’s just there, see.”  She pointed.  He followed the trajectory of her finger and nodded, but said nothing.

 

Stopping in front of the rusted front gate, they stood in silence.  What was there to say, after all?  She could feel the stillness, the pall of residual Dark magic and death that still seemed to hang over the place.  Being there with Harry had been one thing.  He had survived the attack that had destroyed the cottage in front of them and taken his parents’ lives.  The man beside her had not.  A part of him had died in that building eighteen years before.

 

She thought of the little note on rainbow-hued paper, of the paper napkin imprinted with a grape-stained lip print, and of the shock of dark red hair and T-shirt that had long ago ceased to smell like the vibrant girl who now lay, nothing but moldering bones and dust, in the graveyard a short way down the lane.  Something of the horror of Lily Potter’s death struck her in a way it never had before.

 

There were tears in her eyes before she realized.  It was empathy she was feeling, real, deep empathy, and it was his loss she was weeping for, his pain, as though it were her own.  She didn’t try to stop the tears from coming.  Let her help shoulder his burden for a while.  There had never been anyone else who would do it.  That truth hit her harder than any other, that sense of complete and utter loneliness.  To have no one; no one at all who cared enough to even listen to your memories of a woman who had meant everything to you.

 

He had reached forward and laid his hands on the gate, which triggered the memorial plaque.  He was looking down at it, now, and she saw his eyes moving back and forth as he read:

 

On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,

Lily and James Potter lost their lives.

Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever

to have survived the Killing Curse.

On 2 May 1998, Harry Potter defeated Lord Voldemort,

the murderer of his parents.

 

This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left

in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters

and as a reminder of the violence

that tore apart their family.

 

Hermione noted the new line added to the inscription, but whoever had added it, had apparently not thought to apply a cleansing charm.  The sign was still covered with all the graffiti that Harry had thought so brilliant—words of sympathy and encouragement left by countless visiting witches and wizards.

 

Severus reached down and laid a gloved hand over the words.  “They shouldn’t have written on it?” he whispered.

 

“No.”  She sniffed.  “They shouldn’t have done at all.”

 

He glanced over, looking at her oddly.  After a moment, he fished around in his pocket, took out a handkerchief, and handed it to her.  Nodding her thanks, she wiped her eyes.  It smelled like him, and it comforted her.

 

“Let’s go on, then,” he finally said.  “It’s colder than I thought it would be.  I wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.”

 

“I’m fine.”  She sniffed again and wiped the last of the tears from her eyes.  “I’ll be fine, it’s just…”

 

“What?” he asked quietly.

 

“When I was here with Harry, two years ago, she wasn’t—she didn’t seem real to me—not really, but now…  Now, I feel as though I know her, and I…”  She took a deep, gulping breath of cold air.  She could tell that he was waiting for her to finish.  “I know—how much she meant to you,” she finally choked out.

 

He looked away from her as her eyes filled again, as though the sight of her tears was something indecent.  She was ruining everything.  She had meant to be a strength to him, and now, here she was, crying like a child, and over someone she had never even met.  She felt foolish and silly, now.

 

He started off down the lane without further word, and she followed after him at a short distance.  He probably would rather do this alone.  If he hadn’t needed her for Apparation, he probably wouldn’t have permitted her to come at all.

 

They were approaching the center of the village, now.  The war memorial rose up in the center of the square, and as they passed it, Hermione saw it transform before her eyes into the sculpture of Lily, James and baby Harry that she remembered.   Severus stopped and looked at it.  “Good Lord, Potter would have loved that,” he stated sardonically.  She wondered if he meant Harry or his father.  The line between the two had always been blurred for him, anyway.  “There was a time she would have hated it,” he continued, his voice softening a little.  “But in the end—I don’t know.  I didn’t know her anymore.”

 

Severus looked down at her.  She had managed to reign herself in, and he seemed relieved to see dry eyes.  “Do you tell Potter everything, then?” he asked completely unexpectedly.

 

“What?”  She felt confused by the question.  “No.  I—I mean, we’re only friends.  He doesn’t need to know everything.  Truth be told, I don’t think he wants to know everything,” she added wryly.

 

The corner of Severus’ mouth cocked up into a crooked sort of smile.  It faded after a moment, and he looked back up at the likeness of Lily looking down at them with her permanently beatific smile.  “I never gave Potter all my memories,” he confessed plainly.  “I saw her again after fifth year—many times.  There are things he didn’t need to know. Things—too personal.”

 

Hermione felt a strange and painful twist in her heart.  “Oh…”

 

“Things were—I couldn’t let her go.  I knew I had to, but I couldn’t, and she seemed—she seemed almost bound to me in a way—a way I could tell she didn’t understand.  I didn’t understand it, either.  I still don’t.  But it seemed we always managed to find one another, when we least expected it and most needed it, like two magnets inexplicable drawn across great distances.

 

“There was no way we should have been seeing one another.  It was dangerous in the extreme—to both of us, but she couldn’t stop, it seemed.  She couldn’t love me, but she couldn’t give me up, either.  Perhaps…” he mused.  “Perhaps it was fascination—like Skeeter—only different, somehow.  I seem to fascinate a great many people.  At times, I feel a little like a curio in a museum.  Fascinating, intriguing, historically significant, even, but not the sort of thing one would or could really identify with, connect with.”

 

Hermione didn’t know why, but this new information hurt her, and she was suspicious that it wasn’t wholly unselfish.  What exactly did he mean when he said that they saw one another?  Was he talking about meeting for tea, or—or something more, something she couldn’t seem to think about without feeling that twisting pain in her heart. 

 

It was ridiculous; the poor woman was dead and had been for eighteen years.  And he had loved her, clearly.  In fact, he loved her still, it seemed.  Skeeter hadn’t bothered her this much, and she had actually seen that going on in the flesh.  Skeeter meant nothing to him—but then, perhaps that was the difference, she mused.  She didn’t like to dwell on it.  It was too confusing.

 

“I—I don’t think that it was only fascination.  She was your friend.  She must have loved you in some way.”  She had no idea where she was getting the strength to say what she was.  “She probably missed you, and like I said the other morning when Harry sent over the picture, perhaps she regretted not trying harder to make things right.  Perhaps it was her way, wrong or right, of trying to make amends.” 

 

“Ever the optimist, Granger.”  His voice was soft, without its usual sarcasm.  She rather wished he’d kept it.  It was familiar.  It would have made the moment easier.

 

“I could be wrong,” she acknowledged.

 

“Does it bother you?”  She had not expected that question at all.

 

She stared up at the statue, unable to look him in the eye.  “Does what bother me?”

 

“What she was to me?”

 

“I—don’t know.  What was she to you?”

 

“She was…”  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him look back up at the statue above them.  “She was everything to me, once.  You could never understand it.  You don’t know what it is to discover something you never knew existed—personified, embodied, in a single person—and then to realize that you need it, like air, like breathing.  You will do anything to hold onto it, Hermione, anything!”

 

“But she’s gone.”

 

He grew very still and very quiet beside her. 

 

Hermione felt small and insignificant, standing in the shadow of the marble effigy before her.  Lily Potter wasn’t just a woman, she was something more, and not only to the world, not only to Harry, but to the man standing beside her as well.  She was a touchstone, a catalyst, a metaphor.  She was almost divine in his eyes. 

 

Hermione knew that she could never be that.  She was only a girl, and a plain and uninteresting one at that.  There was nothing to make her stand out from the crowd, except perhaps her brains, and next to his intelligence, she felt that even that was insignificant.  She wished they had not come here at all.  She wished that she had the courage to walk away, now, to leave him on his own to complete this pilgrimage.  But there was something about the emptiness she knew that would leave inside her, that seemed to keep her feet glued to the spot.

 

“Yes.  Gone,” he finally said.

 

“Shall I leave you alone, now?” she finally found the courage to ask.  “The graveyard is just there.”  She pointed across the square.  “You see the church—and the graveyard is just beside.  Her grave is…”

 

“I would imagine it is difficult to find in the dark,” he interrupted. 

 

“I—I can show you, if you prefer, of course.”

 

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

 

“Of course not.”

 

Severus let her lead, then.  He walked beside her, and only the slightest bit behind, but when they finally reached the kissing gate, and she pushed it open, he fell back.  She turned and looked at him, expectantly.

 

She thought that perhaps he was afraid to enter, perhaps he had changed his mind, but he was studying her, she suddenly realized—very closely—and she didn’t know why.  “If I ask you a question, will you promise to answer it honestly?” he suddenly asked.

 

It sent a little thrill of fear racing up her spine, but she nodded.

 

“Why did you suggest that we come here?”

 

Hermione swallowed hard and thought about it.  She had a way of lying without meaning to when it came to such things.  She thought that she knew her own motivations, only to discover later on that she hadn’t at all.  “I thought that maybe you might like to say good bye.”

 

He took a deep breath and held it, his eyes still searching hers across the moonlight expanse between them.  After a moment, he let it go in with a deep sigh.  “Little Slytherin,” he finally said.  The corners of his mouth twitched, and his tone was unexpectedly soft, almost affectionate.  She didn’t understand it at all.

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“Never mind,” he said.  “We’ve come all this way.  Show me where it is, then.”

 

“All right.”  She turned without waiting for him and started off through the rows of graves.  It didn’t take her long to reach it, and she stopped, staring down at the names, the familiar inscription.  She felt him come up behind her.  He was standing close enough that she could feel his heat along one side of her body.

 

“I’ll leave you alone, now,” she said.  “I’ll wait for you by the gate.”  She turned and walked away without waiting for a response.  There was a little stone bench near the gate, and she sat down on the icy surface with her back to him, bringing her mittened hands up and blowing on them to warm them.  She felt like crying again, but she refused to.  It was getting completely out of hand.

 

It seemed like an eternity that she sat there, but really, it probably wasn’t more than twenty or thirty minutes.  Still, it was time for the church to empty of its inhabitants, and her teeth were chattering.  She felt some relief when she finally heard his footsteps coming up behind her.  She got up.  “Ready, then?”

 

He was looking at her again, but it was different than how it had been when they first arrived.  Reaching out, he took her hand and meshed his fingers with hers.  “Yes.”

 

.