This Subdued Fire

I started this chapter right after posting chapter 26...or 32 as AFF counts. :) Been dying to write this scene since I began. :D

To my readers and reviewers, thanks so much for your time. Thanks for the absolutely lovely five-star rating. Thanks for all the numerous hits I\'ve gotten. Thanks for sticking with me all this time. And no, this isn\'t the end of this fic. Just to let you know. May feel that way. But there\'s more until we get to the end. Not much though.

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or most of their settings. I do own original settings and original characters and the tune that they dance to. If there are any ideas/oc\'s you want to \"borrow\" just ask and/or creme. me. In that spirit, I\'m crediting Cassandra Claire, kazVL, Lillith Janvier, Mexx, Lexx and a whole bunch of others for helping me to round out my visions of these (sometimes! :) ) fictional persons who populate this work of fiction.

Disclaimer #2: Draco - *raises hand*
JKR - Yes, Draco?
Draco - I think she\'s going to kill me, mum.
JKR - Don\'t be ridiculous. She wouldn\'t dare....would she?
Me - Nah. But you can never be too sure, can you? *wolfish grin*
Draco - mummy!
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The Breaking Point

Five days later and it was Wednesday. There were only three days left until the Seventh-Year Dance. Excitement began to swell among the students and there was a definite buzz in the air. Packages had begun to arrive with intensifying frequency as the date of the gala drew near. This afternoon was extremely fair and sunlight streamed through the windows of the Great Hall in translucent ribbons. Owls dropped a large package onto Ron\'s and Ginny\'s laps. Both were from Fred and George, care of Madame Malkin\'s. Ron grinned like a git, his brothers had remembered to get him new dress robes. No more used ones with crusty lace about the neck. A brown-papered package for Harry had been delivered the day before. Hermione had yet to get her dress. She\'d made the decision to go entirely Muggle in her choice of garment and tradition be damned.

This day, though, clothes were the last thing on her mind. She sat absently eating lunch. Hermione was thinking about the dance itself. She wanted more than anything to walk in with Draco on her arm, to be with him openly and give the wizarding establishment a hearty \'fuck-you and your long beards, too.\' It was a worm in the bloom of her life and it ate at her like nothing else did. Watching Harry and Ginny and Ron and Lavender and Neville and Parvati coo all over each other did nothin hel help her disposition and Hermione was nearing her breaking point. Her eye caught Draco\'s and she sent a seething glare his way.

Draco was thinking along those lines as well. He resented the fact that it really did appear as if he had no date for the dance. It nicked his pride that he couldn\'t be seen with Hermione on his arm. Despite the cliche, this time the Head Boy and Girl really *did* belong together. Pansy had cozied up to Nott and they were now oozing sickness all over each other. Goyle and Millicent were still together, still ugly as sin, and o pro prayed daily that one of them was sterile. Blaise he rarely saw, knowing as he did, that she preferred to spend her days communing with Voldemort. The last time he\'d seen Blaise he\'d hardly recognized her. She\'d become so hardened and stony-faced that he thought that she\'d crumble away if he shook her hard enough. It was either that or become a pillar of salt, whichever came first. He looked up and saw Hermione staring at him through the din of excitement over the post. He knew what she was thinking as clearly as if she\'d said it aloud.

Their thoughts ran exact and parallel to each other\'s. They were together, they were one. They were marked, mated and branded for life. What does it matter if the whole world knows? People should be so damned gossipy anyway. And who gives a flying fuck if Voldemort knows? He can\'t do anything about it. We\'d only be parted by death and I\'d kill him before I let him/her be killed.

Unbeknownst to the two, silence fell in the Great Hall as their gazes locked and great flashes of emerald, gold, sapphire and crimson light arced across the room. A wind sprung up - light at first and slowly gathering strength as the intensity of their thoughts built. Soon, only the one thought was left. \"We are one\" reverberated through their brains and through the mind of another, who watched from a distance, feeling the brand upon his flesh burn with more pain than the Dark Mark ever did.

The wind rose with a howl and the clouds scuttled across the enchanted sky in the ceiling to reveal a facsimile of the sun that shone with as much ferocity as the one suspended in the heavens outside. With one movement, Draco and Hermione got up from their seats along the benches. A simultaneous wave of their left hands and the tables - groaning with various items and the benches containing their peers - parted, sliding slowly and deliberately across the stones. When they were done there was a four foot path through to the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. Every eye in the Great Hall was on the two magi as they worked their magic.

As they approached the next two tables, robes billowing, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws scrambled out of the way. The house-elves and Filch appeared in the Hall to watch the goings on. The other two tables slid out of the way to clear a space in the center of the floor. A song began humming through the minds of the assembled. Those who knew something of Muggle music would have recognized it. But one stanza kept repeating itself.

*Why can\'t we give love one more chance? Why can\'t we give ourselves one more chance? Why can\'t we give love? Give love. Give love. GIVE LOVE!*

The hearts of all began swelling with emotions that ran the gamut but always ending with an overwhelming sense of love. Draco and Hermione met in the center of the Great Hall, with the eyes of the school and the hearts of world turned onto them.

The two seemed to become fire and energy itself.

A crimson/scarlet/green/gold/azure/violet/pink blaze, nay, a *rainbow* sprung up around them. Their cloaks flapped about their blazing forms and from out of nowhere it seemed, butterflies and roses began whirling in the cyclonic winds that flew around the hall. The rainbow twisted and twined and pulled them closer, ever closer. Hands met. Then each drew the other into one another\'s arms. And when their lips met the rainbow coalesced into a shining white coruscation that rivaled the blaze of the sun itself. None of the spectators could see where Hermione ended and Draco began or vice-versa. They seemed to be one. There was a burst of phoenix song as Fawkes Apparated from his perch in the Headmaster\'s office.

For one flawless moment it was if heaven had descended onto the Earth.

Across the grounds, the centaurs were silent and turned not their eyes to the skies but unto Hogwarts. And tears fell from their eyes. Not tears of sadness, but of overwhelming happiness. In the town of Hogsmeade the patrons in the Hog\'s Head and the Three Broomsticks stopped their drinking and lunching and conversing to sit with openmouthed wonder at the *exquisiteness*.

In Diagon Alley, much the same happened. Old Tom, the barkeep at the Leaky Cauldron, shed tears of adulterated joy and began quoting Robbie Burns.

*All* will be well.

All *will* be well.

And all *manner* of things will be well.

The patrons and residents of Knockturn Alley stopped their shady activities and for once, felt ashamed and somehow redeemed.

In the Ministry, Arthur Weasley Apparated from his home to his startled wife, who upon seeing her well-loved mate, proceeded to love him even better than before. Cornelius Fudge began to dance a jig of exhilaration on his desk for sheer joy.

Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, great friends who both mourned the passing of friend and confidante Sirius Black, turned to one another and saw in the other\'s eyes the dawning of a great and new friendship. They clasped hands tightly and smiled. It was marvelous.

Lydia, having only had sporadic and short notes from her distant granddaughter, knew with a sudden certainty that the girl was alright. She put down her knitting and turned off the telly. A great wide grin broke across her softly creased face. \"She\'s there. And oh, my. Isn\'t it wonderful?\"

Antoine was in the field, harvesting early grapes for a new dry wine he was developing. His children were near him, and their children\'s children were there. They all looked up and stared at the old man. He gazed out at them with a beneficence that gave everyone that saw it a golden glow in their hearts, adding to the swelling rainbow that crashed through their souls. Antoine, and everyone around him - family and workers alike, sent up a shout of unadulterated glee. The workers who were up to their knees in vats of grapes and juice did a little dance, reveling in the feel of squishy grapes between their toes.

Across Muggle London, the British isles and indeed, the world felt touched by a moment of serenity, peace and heart.

Closer to home, Lucius and Narcissa felt the ice from around their hearts crack a little. Their son, the boy they\'d managed conceive despite their loathing for one another, had managed to find it. The *other*. The indefinable \'it\' that so many people look for their whole lives and never manage to find. A lone tear slipped from each of their eyes as for once they could look each other in the eye and not want to commit murder.

Lord Voldemort, in his guise as Tom Riddle, fell to the floor. He writhed in a paroxysm of pain and grief. Someone, anyone, had driven an ice-hot wedge into the space where his heart should have been. The girl who was with him and her older mentor looked down at the agonied form on the floor and felt an extreme satisfaction that what they endured was now being visited upon him in tenfold.

Back in the Great Hall, the students too young to comprehend were frightened yet strangely calm. The older ones felt their beings swell up like balloons. Only instead of air there was contentment, no fear, no hate, no apathy. At the high table, Minerva and Albus clasped hands tightly, the silvery tears running down their faces, unashamed. Filius and Plumeria were huddled with one another, embracing as if there were no tomorrow. Hagrid wept huge, galumphing tears of unabashed rapture. Professor Alessandro Sinistra, he of great sartorial wit, tossed off his outer robe and grabbed the hand of Jennifer Vector and bent her back over his arm, kissing the daylights out of her. She didn\'t mind in the least. Neither did Severus, truth be told.

His heart seemed to warm and leap about in his chest. The rainbow marked him, too. In the deep recesses of Severus\' soul hope opened up a well-spring. He seemed to glow, to lift. The rapture filled him, embraced him, yet left him strangely forlorn. He wanted to be inside that magic circle, to know first hand what it felt like. Yet he could not bring himself to be jealous or resentful of the fact that the fascinating creature that had given him the mark that was burning so intensely had chosen the younger Slytherin. Severus Aurelian Snape knew with a deep certainty that all would turn out just as it should.

And all manner of things will be well.

And it was, quite simply, splendor.