Needfire

Chapter 21 – Seemingly Haphazard


\"I remember vividly a day years ago we were camping you knew more than you thought you should know,
you said \"I don\'t want ever to be brainwashed\" and you were mind-boggling you were intense,
you were uncomfortable in your own skin you were thirsty but mostly you were beautiful.\"

-- Joining You. Alanis Morissette.


Holding him bore a strange sensation: almost unnatural, thought she reminded herself that salmons swam against the stream and nature consisted of anomalies. She might be, as Charlotte Bronte had once put it, a budding woodbine to heal his decay with freshness, or a plant growing about his roots.

Hermione could hardly say what drove her to offer this; Ron\'s hand the other day had been sweaty and sticky under her palm: she knew she would be washing his perspiration off her skin once the training session was over. Falling asleep beside her lover, however, was different, be it Snape or Ron.

Whenever she lay with Ron, she remembered a quick retreat into herself, as the heavy breathing and lazy, sweet silence of love\'s aftermath turned into awkward conversations. Lying in Snape\'s arms after he made love to her, however, was like time outside time. In a sense, time outside of her body. She would liquefy, molten sugar and sticky honey in his arms, and there would be no actual margins to her body. Even though he might enfold her, might determine a new edge simply by winding his arm around her waist and stating that this was the point where she ended and he began.

Which wouldn\'t be possible unless he had first perceived her as an intellectual and emotional being; unless she could pour herself over and onto him, mind to mind as well as body to body. So it wouldn\'t be like touching – not the physical action of bringing the limbs of two separate individuals closer to each other until they made a connection and one\'s sweat stained the other – but rather the mental application of transferring thoughts, notions, emotions and comfort through touch.

You are pathetic, Granger, she told herself desperately, lying to yourself in order to be allowed to hold him. Just look at the mental web you wove only to make this simple action possible, and now you\'re caught up in your ivory tower of rationalizations and will never be able to untangle yourself from his arms. Don\'t want to, in fact.

She was overwhelmed to hear Snape had visited her parents\' house – her home – without ever consulting her. Without ever asking her permission. It was just like using Legilimens on her without her knowledge, stepping right into her most intimate memories – incarnated in flesh and blood; snow, bricks and stones – and defiling them simply because he looked at them with prejudice; with hatred. With murder in his eyes. It made her so sick she wanted to strangle him, then fill this large bathtub in his bathroom, plunge a scalpel into her wrists, and wait for the darkness to engulf her.

Was that what he thought of her? Of her parents? So she was a snake, lying in the wind-blown grass, waiting for a yellow- downed chick to cross her path? And her father: a perverted, seven-handed monster who lusted after his daughter? How could she, and why would she justify herself to him? What, after all, could she tell him? That Lester didn\'t need her; didn\'t want her? That she didn\'t know all this, or that it made her hate her father? It did, damn it, and it didn\'t stop her from loving him. Did Snape think that she wanted her father to touch her? Did he think she encouraged it? What could she say to the man she loved, who was in every way right, and in every way wrong?

So she just hurled her rage and sense of betrayal back at him, demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing at her parent\'s house; almost shocked to see him retreating to the bathroom and slamming the door behind his back.

Alarmed, she listened to him retch, immediately reaching to knock on the door. Once inside, she saw she was right. He was sick. Over her? The tears prickled her eyes at the thought. Over her father?

\"Because I make you sick?\"

\"Because of what I saw, because of what I did, because of the hurt I have caused you.\"

The realization that he did not condemn her had suddenly blown up her spit-bubble of anger and pain. The emotional blast, unbuckling her knees, sent her stumbling against the lintel. She wanted to cry. She wanted to wipe Snape\'s swollen lips with her thumb. How foolish we sometimes are, she mused. All our life busy shielding ourselves, making sure that the walls are high and strong, so no words can reach the other end without distortion. No wonder I fail to hear him and he fails to hear me. We are programmed never to hear the other person\'s true intentions.

And of course, the idiot man was trying to send her off once more. Didn\'t he realize by now that she wasn\'t going to let him? Small wonder then, that in the heat of the moment, she decided she might as well hold him as he held her. That she might as well want to hold him.

Washing the filth in the sink, Hermione ran a deep cleansing charm over the washbasin. Her pale, exhausted reflection wavering at her from the mirror, she held back Snape\'s hair while he washed his face and mouth, then quietly retreated, for him to brush his teeth. Only then did she slide her arms around his body, pulling him back to the bedroom and under the covers.

He was exhausted, this she could tell. Bluish circles were taking shape under his eyes, and the harsh line of his mouth had deepened and somehow loosened, as if his lips were carelessly pulled out of place. Snape objected, claiming he could not fall asleep beside another person. Soon enough, though, with her arms wound around him, he had indeed fallen asleep. For Hermione, it took a little longer than that.

She first thought of her plans for the next couple of months: school work; taking the boys to the Stones… the resumption of her, Harry and Ron\'s training; the formula of the charm designed to break reality\'s conditioning on integral numbers. Anything, but the fact she was holding him, which was a certain form of intimacy that felt terribly wrong for some reason. And yet right- it must have been right, really, with his head snugged between her breasts, and his breath warm on her naked skin… closing her eyes, it was the last thing she remembered thinking.

* * *

\"Hermione…\" Harry breathed in the frigid, lung-piercing air, \"would you please tell me why are you wearing these stupid clothes and what the fuck are we doing outside – in this bloody chill – before there is even light??\"

She gritted her teeth, reaching to rearrange her Gryffindor scarf so it would better prevent the frost from reaching her skin. Frowning, she lifted the scarf from its sagging loop about her neck, using it to cover her face from the hollow of her throat to her reddened nose. Satisfied with the results, she stretched it to cover her ears, and tucked its fringed ends neatly under the hood of her winter cloak. \"As I said before,\" she muttered, \"I will tell you everything when we get there.\"

He groaned. \"I hope it\'s worth it.\"

\"Sometimes you can be such a git.\"

\"Try waking Ron to at 4:30,\" Harry retorted darkly. \"See what he has to say about it.\"

It was the first ritual she would accomplish alone, without Snape\'s participation – without his knowledge, in fact – and Hermione was fairly nervous.

Only a day before she sneaked into the Forbidden forest, and grateful for her training – for bestowing her not only with power and strength but also with the ability to cast a heating sphere without using her wand – climbed into the same oak-tree from which she saw Snape gathering mistletoe that portentous September day. With her warm winter cloak set aside, so not to be in her way – she gathered the sacred rain water into a goatskin, then awkwardly climbed down to the ground. Damn the man for making it look so easy!

For the briefest of seconds, standing at the tree\'s foot where the foliage was too thick for the snow to reach the ground, she was reminded of the velvet upholstered drawer, where, along with her sacred ideals, a copy of the Bible, and the phallic, shiny black berretta, a black and white photograph of Severus Snape now lay, contrasting with the fierce hue of the blood-red fabric. Then the moment was gone, and Hermione moved to another oak tree, knowing she would have to visit multiple trees before the goatskin was full.

She had fasted that night, waking at a quarter to four in order to ready herself. Crook, who just returned from his night\'s prowl, had been fed a fresh can of tuna, and therefore was rather cooperative and didn\'t interrupt her preparation.

First, Hermione had taken a thorough shower, after which came the ritual cleansing. At half past four she descended to the common room. Ten minutes later, Harry joined her there.

Some of the castle\'s windows were casting a sallow light; watching Harry and her from a cliff-face as they made their way toward the Stones. A Cheshire-cat smile of a moon hung at the edge of the sky, apparently waiting for the sun to rise.

\"What are we looking for?\" asked Harry.

Knowing they were relatively close, she chose to answer. \"A set of seemingly haphazardly arranged Standing Stones from the Teutonic period.\"

\"A Stonehenge?\"

\"People expect a Stonehenge to appear to be circular at first sight,\" she said, frosty breath blowing like puffed sugar out of her lips. \"The Stones, as I told you, look as if they were randomly located.\"

\"I think I can see them!\" he called. \"I never knew Hogwarts had a Stonehenge!\"

\"Hardly anyone does. One might think Dumbledore warns the students not to enter the Forbidden Forest in order to assure no student would find them… it\'s almost as if someone wants to keep the Stones hidden…\" aside from Snape, she added silently.

\"Wow!\" Harry seemed to have forgotten it was 5AM, bloody freezing and almost completely dark, and was now drinking in the sight of the Stones. \"Who told you about this place?\"

\"No one,\" she said. \"I discovered them myself, jogging.\" Though someone did teach me what I\'m going to show you… she cringed at the thought of sharing Snape with Harry, knowing, in her heart of hearts, that once she shared her Druidic training, she would share everything. It was time to reveal secrets: at least her secrets. She hoped Harry might share his secrets with her as well: their power was in their unity. And they had to work together if they ever wanted to defeat Voldemort.

\"We\'ll be taking Ron here as well, later this year,\" she continued, \"but first I wanted to share this with you. Are you finished looking?\"

Harry nodded. \"Not much to see, but yes.\"

\"Good.\" She hoped she didn\'t sound too nervous. \"Come over here.\"

Together, they approached the center piece, where she had stood with Snape so many times before. Snape\'s presence, she remembered, suddenly chilled, would take away the worst of the cold. She thought it merely had to do with having a warm body beside her, but now, with Harry standing next to her, she realized it was another trick of her mind: another illusion. Another black and white photo, to stain Sally and Conrad\'s blood-red snow.

\"What\'s now?\" Harry inquired, watching her piling a small heap of incense on the stone altar.

\"Just watch and be quiet,\" she ordered him. \"Or else I might lose my concentration.\"

Closing her eyes, she began the simple, but beautiful ritual of summoning the Needfire. Here were no candles, nor a wax-skinned image of Jesus looking down at her with tortured, painted marble eyes, like the one she remembered from the Anglican church of her childhood. There would be no priest or sweet voiced choir to ascend the community\'s collective prayers to heaven, only her, and the snow and the Stones, singing in the first rays of dawn. Here, in this stone and earth temple of Gaia, lived no tamed, church-dwelling God: though perhaps Severus\'s God and Goddesses visited there. Here, she believed, churned raw magic, which sizzled when summoned, simmered and stewed deep in the ground otherwise. Magic, in its purest and most basic form: the power to create a new thing where there was none. Love. Life. Needfire.

She had no sickle of her own, but a blade, disjointed from a single-use razor, did the job for her. Cutting exactly deep enough to draw blood, she saluted the Gods, called up the sun, put the moon to rest, and summoned the Needfire.

A sense of becoming gripped her body, starting as the smallest noise in her womb, where a tiny blossom was awoken to life; wide-eyed and gaping as the bright, beautiful noise spread through her body, through her circulation to the edges of her being. She didn\'t have Snape\'s drag queen cloak with her, but for that slip of a moment, when the Needfire curled silvery fingers out of the sizzling air and reached to kindle the offering, Hermione wanted to fly, too.

The cuckoo called, once, and sharply. And the incense burned, wafting its sweet, tangy fragrance.

Harry, at her side, watched her with mild boredom.

Glaring, she reached for his hand, dragging him for the nearest stone gate, where an invisible power shield formed an impenetrable wall.

\"What?\" Harry asked.

\"Try to walk through,\" she told him.

He shrugged his shoulders, and blissfully unaware of the Needfire\'s true nature, walked straight into the power shield. \"What is it?\" Harry cried out, now sitting on the snow-covered ground, where he had fallen after slamming into the magical wall.

\"A power shield,\" Hermione told him simply. \"No magic can breach it. No magic can remove it. It stays on, until the Needfire consumes the incense. Can\'t you see the potential?\"

Harry\'s eyes widened as the understanding slowly dawned on him. \"If – if we manage to draw Voldemort here… alone-\"

\"Many ifs,\" she concluded dryly. \"But that is so far our best plan, don\'t you think?\"

He nodded slowly. \"Muggles think the use of the Stones is long forgotten… I think wizards, too- somebody must have taught you this-\" Harry said. \"Somebody else is in the plan.\"

\"Not exactly.\"

\"What do you mean?\"

Hermione breathed deeply. She knew it would come out eventually, sooner or later. \"I thought of using the Stones for trapping Voldemort inside… The person who taught me this appeared to have thought of it too, and refined my basic plan, in a way to make me believe it would be our best course of action.\"

The boy who lived gave her a quizzical look. \"Who is he?\"

\"The man I love,\" she replied.

\"Not very informative.\"

\"True.\"

The greyish, diluted rays of dawn sprayed off Harry\'s eyeglasses. \"Hermione, who taught you this?\"

\"Snape.\"

\"Snape??\" Harry nearly spouted. \"You mean as in Professor Snape?\"

\"You\'d hardly expect me to call him Professor when we\'re in bed, now would you?\" she retorted as calmly as possible, fighting to calm down the anger building inside her at Harry\'s aggravating reaction.

Harry, on his part, stared at her in disbelief. His soft, pink lips – slightly scorched by the frost – were partially open; emerald eyes huge and confused behind the ridiculous frame of his spectacles. \"I can\'t imagine you calling your lover by his surname, either,\" he said at last, looking dumber than ever.

\"Why?\" she asked, still irritated. \"How would you call yours?\"

Harry took a deep breath. \"I\'d call him Draco.\"

Flinching – the frozen air frosting the soft, moistened hollows of her palate – she stared at Harry. Hackneyed imagery indeed, she mused, but I suddenly feel as if all the pieces of a puzzle are falling into place. \"Well,\" Hermione said, blinking, as if she was trying to force the idea – the visual concept of Harry and Draco together – past her eyelids, \"that definitely explains several things.\"

He sighed. \"Ron is so not going to understand this.\"

\"No,\" she answered. \"Not at first. I don\'t think you understand my choice to be with Snape, either. And I can honestly tell you I don\'t know what it is you see in Malfoy. But I suppose we owe each other this acceptance. However, I can also tell you something about Ron-\" the open, lovely face of the redheaded boy she fell in love with wavering in her mind. \"Something you had probably forgotten, and me too, to some degree: Ron is more tolerant than the both of us. Remember where he came from. Remember who his parents are. Remember that his loyalty to you is above all else. When it\'s time to reveal the truth to him, he will come to terms with it.\"

* * *

Back in Hogwarts, there was already some light morning traffic in the castle\'s corridors. Several Ravenclaws who had been early to rise were making their way towards the library; the suits of armor, charmed by the smallish Professor Flitwick, burst into cheerful Christmas carols – including one suit which began singing the Beatles\' \"Let it Be\", probably one of the students\' practical joke. Christmas, she realized, noting the ivy tendrils decorating the hallways, was materializing around her.

It made her think of waking up on Christmas morning; pearly, snow-screened light streaming through her window\'s shutters, playing along her quilt. She would stretch, yawning; thinking it was just a morning like any other, then the realization would strike her. It was Christmas morning! At that she would push the covers aside, and leaping out of bed, run to her parents\' bedroom where Donna and Lester would still be sleeping.

The same pearly light would glow in the Granger couple\'s bedroom, entering the vast, airy room from the French door at its rear. It would crawl among the thick fibers of the carpet, moving slowly until it reached the foot of the bed, where the five year old Hermione was standing now. Careful as ever, she used to climb up onto the soft, expensive mattress, and smiling, turned to settle herself. There, in her mind\'s eye was Donna: wafting a rich, dulcet fragrance of silk and costly night-creams; facing the Queen Anne wardrobe at the other side of the room. And at Donna\'s side was Lester: facing his wife, his scent strong and masculine and good; inducing comfort and security. So five year old Hermione crawled between the two, their heavy quilt – giving off their mingled scents, mixed into a strange but not unpleasant fragrance– crushed under her small body.

Donna sighed, retreating into the covers, muttering something about the dinner party planned for later and about needing her sleep; Hermione should go away to her room and not interrupt her parents\' rest. This reaction was only to be expected and child Hermione didn\'t mind it in the least. Lester, however, sprawled on the other side of the king sized bed, had sleepily lifted the edge of the blanket, urging her to get inside, \"before Mummy\'s rear end freezes.\"

She remembered giggling, sneaking into the good, suffocating heat beneath the quilt. Lester\'s arms reached to draw her nearer, and closing her eyes, she snuggled against his strong, wide chest.

\"What\'re you thinking of?\" asked Harry, waking her from her short reverie.

\"Christmas,\" she answered shortly, wishing to get rid of the tangy, bittersweet memories which would come to haunt her. \"The feast is in a couple of days, isn\'t it?\"

\"Monday, in fact. Already bought presents?\"

\"Last Hogsmeade weekend,\" she told him. \"While you and Ron were busy drooling over the new Firebolt model.\"

Harry\'s eyes flashed with indignation. \"If you\'d only seen that broom you would never have-\"

\"Understood why you are so excited about it,\" she interrupted.

He screwed up his face, but nonetheless, maintained the friendly, comprehensive silence the both of them were careful to keep on their return from the Stones. The place, she reflected now that they were back in the castle, seemed to release some natural hindrances in people; it made it possible to talk, or perhaps the talking made it necessary to keep silent, at least for a while. They let out so much of themselves, there; on the pure white snow, that she was relatively sure the snow could no longer be white. It must have turned grey, she mused, grey and pink, like one\'s soul is grey and gelatinous, with pinkish, quivering tendons to connect it to the body.

She asked him about Draco – Hermione could no longer refer to Harry\'s Draco Malfoy the way she referred to the arrogant, obnoxious, Slytherin – finding it difficult to understand why would Harry fall in love with the boy who did nothing but bully and mock him from his first day at Hogwarts.

\"Well, you see,\" Harry told her, \"I never meant to fall for him. He\'s really the worst prick imaginable. I surely never meant to go to bed with him. Well, he was a boy, right?\" He shrugged his shoulders. \"We were fighting one day, just a short while after the year started. He cornered me in some deserted corridor. His goons were missing, no teachers around to prevent me from aiming a fist straight into that pasty face of his… the next moment we were kissing like madmen. It was the first time I ever had sex. For real.\" Harry wore a lost, yet focused expression, so sharp with love and longing that he could probably melt the soft, soluble snow with his gaze. \"I thought it was because he was a boy and so I must be gay, or at least bisexual. After all, I did sleep with a couple girls…\" light blush appeared on Harry\'s cheeks as he said that. \"Well, I tried… other boys. Didn\'t want to be with Draco Malfoy, if you get what I mean. It was better than being with women, though not much better. Kept sleeping with him, all that time. Seemed like a much more gratifying option to bullying. We could hate each other and have sex with each other instead of hate each other and spend all our fucking time circling each other. Sex is way better, I can tell you.\"

She nodded, urging him to go on talking.

\"It would make him nuts that I was seeing other blokes. Not that Draco was ever celibate,\" Harry snorted. \"Oh no. He\'s having all of them. He would rut against anything with a pulse. I suppose it made me nuts as well.\"

\"So what did you do?\"

\"He told me he\'d kill me if I\'d ever again slept with another man. I told him the same goes for him. We\'ve been sort of together, ever since.\"

\"But not publicly.\"

\"Not publicly,\" Harry sighed, rubbing his eyes and shifting his spectacles into an awkward position while doing so.

\"You want to,\" she said, disturbed that, somehow, his pain soaked so deeply into her that her womb clenched.

Harry\'s lips tightened. \"Well, I do, but it\'s complicated. His father would slaughter him first thing if he realized Draco is seeing me. I told him he can switch sides- Dumbledore would protect him if I make it clear it is my wish, but Draco, Draco…\"

\"Draco… what…?\" sensing there was something deeper here, she both wished she could soothe Harry\'s pain, and that there might be someone else, better qualified for the job, to lift this burden off her shoulders.

\"He won\'t disobey his father,\" Harry answered. \"He won\'t go against Lucius\' wish. Not unless he must. Lucius Malfoy, this monster of a man- he loves him-\"

A muscle in her jaw clenched. \"Lucius is his father!\" she cut into Harry\'s words, as recollections from one of her own conversations with Snape floated into the front of her brain.

…I love my father…! she heard her own voice ring with fury. …I won\'t sit here and listen to you condemn him…!

\"But he is a monster!\" Harry protested.

Hermione\'s nostrils flared. \"Lucius Malfoy may be a monster, Harry, but he is nonetheless Draco\'s father. And Draco loves him. You would gain nothing by asking Draco to go against Lucius.\"

Harry nodded slowly, sadly. \"I suppose I knew it.\"

\"Good. Don\'t push him,\" she added, softening her voice. \"You\'ll see, when this war is over, then it will be the time for you.\"

This hint of an argument, Hermione assumed, might have clouded their conversation, but then, there was no place for such undercurrents of animosity when one felt so exposed. The mind would not bear it. She told Harry about Snape, piling her own heap of quivering, greyish soul on the snow, alongside his; knowing he would touch it with the utmost carefulness; that his small and slender fingers wouldn\'t pry and tear, only probe gently, until she could no longer stand it and ask him to stop. She told him about Lester, and was relieved to notice that beside the sorrow floating like something tangible in Harry\'s big, beautiful eyes, there was no murder in them. Just the calm, broken peace, of someone who had been betrayed by those who were supposed to love him, and knew that the memories were nothing but ash. That you couldn\'t live off your indignation. Hermione suspected this was one lesson that Harry Potter could teach Severus Snape.

\"Come in,\" she invited him, once they reached her Head Girl room. \"I\'ll brew us a pot, then you can go back to sleep.\"

Harry accepted her invitation with a quick, boyish smile, closing the door behind him. Crookshanks – sprawled on Hermione\'s bed in what was a very faithful imitation of a fur carpet – lifted one ear to greet them.

\"Hello, pug-face,\" she greeted the cat, leaning to scratch Crook\'s head and neck.

Being fed a few hours earlier and knowing that the bowl of cat-food was always available to him in the corner, the tom was a bit reluctant to leave his warm spot in order to demand his mistress to provide him with something more palatable. Seeing that she was indeed fulfilling her duty and giving him a proper scratch, the half-Kneazle decided that staying put and allowing Hermione to go on scratching, was the least of all possible evils.

\"Harry,\" she called. \"Would you please do me a favour and scratch Crook while I\'m brewing?\"

\"Sure.\" The dark haired boy landed on the bed with a thump, reaching his hand to scratch between the half-Kneazle\'s ears. Crookshanks, who had no obvious objections to this arrangement, purred loudly. \"You know, Hermione,\" Harry said. \"You really look better, calmer… less cranky.\"

\"I told you I feel better,\" she answered, moving to pull out two china mugs from a small cupboard.

He nodded. \"I know, I remember. You were never like that with Ron,\" he added. \"Happy.\"

She swallowed. \"Well, Ron was something else altogether. I loved him. Love him, too.\"

\"Yeah, well,\" Harry gently stroked Crookshanks\' belly. \"I\'m happy for you, you know. Even if I still think Snape is a git.\"


A/N
- \"Rut against anything with a pulse.\" – Honour goes to Fabula Rasa.