Needfire

Disclaimer: See chapter 1.


love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

-- \"love is more thicker than forget\"

-- e.e.cummings


Epilogue


It was Midsummer Eve. Much of the day Snape had simply puttered about, gathering his incense for the night\'s celebration at Angharad\'s Circle. Though he had been the only one to perform the rites for more than three years, he still thought of the Circle as belonging to Angharad. The cottage and garden finally felt more like they belonged to him, but the more spiritual aspects of the Circle were still hers. Whenever he performed a rite, he imagined her at his side, or across the altar from him.

And, always, he imagined Hermione there as well. A new Hermione, one whose hair did not reach the small of her back. He imagined her with a frizzy brown aureole, rather like a dandelion, though he knew it was three years since she had shaved her head, and it was likely longer than in his imagination.

It was nearly six weeks since he had heard from her. A week ago he had finally broken down and asked Potter, on one of his pestilential weekly visits, if he\'d heard from her. Potter had not, but didn\'t seem the least disturbed. Potter was almost blissfully happy, in fact. The potion Snape had been brewing for the past month was beginning to have the desired effects upon the patient, who Potter called \"Chloe,\" though there was still much work to be done. Something was still not balanced in the combination of dragonsbane, digitalis, bluebell extract, and St. John\'s Wort. Or perhaps it was the orris root Snape had put in to mask the stench of the dragons bane. According to Potter, Chloe would abide any stench, no matter how vile, if she could simply see the sky without a roof over it, for a day spent outside St. Mungo\'s, even if she had to return each night to sleep there when the potion wore off. Snape\'s goal was to make the potion more permanent, or at the very least, a single dose per day.

It was good to have the distraction of the potion. It kept his mind from completely derailing in his worry over Hermione\'s continued silence.

And now there was the Midsummer ritual, a more elaborate ritual than his usual salutes to the dawn and the dusk at the different moon phases. This was the only ritual that involved burning oak in the Needfire, and he had carefully chosen a small branch from a large oak along the lane to the village, one free of mistletoe. The incense was particular and specific, and consisted of a long list of plants: birch bark, cardamom seeds, blossoms of St. John\'s wort, white lilies, sweet meadow rue, rose (for which Snape had plucked a very few petals from the single black rose that had bloomed so far this year), sedum, fragrant verbena and clover.

A short time before sunset, he bathed in the oak water and dressed himself in his druid clothing. The feathered cloak was too warm, but he pulled it around himself anyway and wandered slowly to Angharad\'s Circle. He had fasted for only a day prior to this ritual; Hermione had been right, years ago, to proclaim that the long fasts did nothing for him except to weaken him and make him susceptible to hallucinations out of hunger.

He faced west and saluted the sun. \"Bel, sweet rest.\"

He faced east and greeted the moon. \"Arianrhod, welcome.\"

He turned back to the altar and lifted his basket.

He smiled slightly to himself as he placed the incense, plant by plant, on the altar. Among the long list, four had special significance, and as he placed each, he spoke a beloved name.

Cardamom seeds. \"Conscience Minerva.\"

A white stargazer lily shamelessly filched at dawn from a neighbor\'s garden, while the sky was still dim, for his first Gryffindor love. \"Lily.\" And now he could add her last name without feeling anger or the sharp stab of jealousy: \"Lily Potter.\"

The oak, for his mentor. \"Angharad, dear one.\"

And last, but certainly not least, black rose petals, for his Gryffindor love. \"Hermione, my heart\'s one love.\"

He carefully sprinkled the remaining plants over the altar, crushing the verbena and clover in his fingers to release their fragrance.

\"I see that you\'ve forgotten the sedum,\" said a voice behind him. \"But that\'s all right; Mrs Cates down the lane has some in her stone wall, and I managed to pluck a bit on my way from the village. I\'ll put it in, shall I? How appropriate, Snape -- sedum, also called stonecrop, the plant that grows where others cannot. A plant that looks like it belongs in the desert, yet it grows here in our cool, wet England, among our pale stones.\"

From the first spoken syllables, Snape\'s eyes had closed. That voice, the one he had thought never to hear again. Husky, sweet, soft, and strangely new. Dream? He did not dare to open his eyes.

\"I was sure I would find you here, today of all days,\" she continued. He could hear her drawing closer, the sound of cloth brushing over the grass. Will you be barefoot, now, you who could not bear the earth to touch you?

When her small, warm hand touched his waist and trailed along the small of his back as she walked around the altar, Snape began to tremble.

\"Sedum, for Snape, my love.\"

His eyes opened slowly, in time to see her placing the fleshy leaves and purplish blossom stem of the sedum on the altar. He heard someone gasping harshly, almost a sob torn from a sore throat, and realized it was himself. Her hair was not the dandelion aureole of his imaginings; it was just above shoulder length, and wildly curling. She was not dressed in her druid clothing, and so he knew she had not been to the cottage, for her white robe and cloak hung in his armoire, at the back behind his wizard robes, the ones he never wore any more. She was wearing a yellow singlet, tucked into loose-fitting, natural linen trousers. The flaring hem of the trousers brushed the grass and was what he had heard as she approached. Her feet were bare. She wore a necklace, made of small, wooden beads, what appeared to be hard seeds of some sort, with oddly silvery stones interspersed. It was snug about her neck, resting on the knobs of her collarbones in the hollow of her throat.

As she straightened, she lifted her sickle from her belt. \"In Peru, the midsummer is celebrated in January, on Nazca plain in a series of dances. Everyone in the town dances, young and old, fat and thin, happy and not. I think I prefer the solitude of this ritual of ours, Snape.\"

Snape swallowed, unable to look away from her eyes, unable to speak. A small smile curved her lips.

\"I\'ll start, shall I?\" she queried. \"But I think we should both supply the blood this time.\" She set the sickle to the pad of her thumb. Even in the sunset light Snape could see the tracery of scars, the map of Hermione\'s world carved into the skin of her forearms, but the scars were white and old. \"East, into the first of the Night.\" A drop of blood fell into the incense on the altar.

Snape, still trembling, fumbled with his own sickle, and had to calm himself before he was able to nick his skin. \"West, into the last of the Light.\" And at last he was able to look away from her, and watch the droplet of his blood fall to land next to hers.

Hermione spoke again. \"South, into the warm Spark.\" Another drop.

Snape completed the words. \"North, into the chill Dark.\" And the last.

\"Call it,\" she whispered to him, putting her blade away.

\"Help me,\" he whispered back, holding out his arm. She took his hand and coiled herself inside his arm, pulling it around herself, pressing her back to his belly. \"Goddess,\" he murmured into her hair.

\"Hardly that,\" she responded, lifting her free arm, and together they called down the Needfire, and the Circle woke around them.

To Snape, falling to his knees and gripping her hips to turn her to face him, it seemed as if the Circle spun slowly, lazily, without haste, without urgency. He could smell the verbena and clover and black rose as their fragrance wafted upward. Her hands moved to rest on his shoulders, at first, then to thread through his hair to brush it back from his face, and finally to cradle his jaw and tilt his face up. Her fingertips traced the fine dark arch of his brows.

\"Your eyes,\" she said to him. \"They\'re calmer. Quieter.\"

Wordlessly he took hold of her right hand and flattened the palm against his chest, over his heart. From her small smile, he knew she could feel his heart\'s wild pounding. She sank to her knees in front of him, still holding him. Snape knew she could feel him trembling, but he could not make himself still.

\"There was that question,\" he said, finally. Hermione\'s eyes lowered; he thought he could feel them burning at the hollow of his throat, and a moment later her mouth burned there instead, soft, moist, hot.

\"Do we need to ask it?\" she queried, nuzzling her way up his neck. \"I\'m here, you\'re here.\"

\"I suppose we don\'t,\" he murmured. Somehow his fingers had moved into the tangle of her hair; he pressed his lips to her right temple. But that wasn\'t enough; not when he had dreamed of her mouth for more than three years.

\"Right, then,\" she mumbled. Her fingers moved to the rope that belted his robe. Her fingers untied the knots. Almost ceremonially she set the belt aside, and met his gaze. Snape looked only into those brimming brown eyes; his fingers found the knot of the drawstring -- a proper, druid\'s knot -- that cinched her trousers snugly to her waist. She rose a moment so that he could tug the trousers and practical cotton pants down around her ankles, then she stepped out of them and knelt again.

Hermione\'s hands, small, square, practical, and so warm that he thought he might be scorched by them, set free the feathered cloak and allowed it to wander the Circle as it would. Then they parted his robe. \"Shall I?\" she asked, her fingers moving to the long winding of his loincloth.

\"Yes, please,\" he said, between teeth gritted in control. He waited impatiently as she slowly unwound the loincloth and folded it precisely. Her warm hands cupped his erection, stroking gently, and he had to bite his lip. He was shaken; he was elated. He was going to explode like a teenager if she kept touching him like that.

\"Help me,\" she said to him now, still holding his eyes.

\"Merlin,\" he whispered, his hands reaching for the hem of her yellow singlet and lifting it over her head, finding her breasts constrained by a strapless bandeau. When the singlet was set aside, his hands returned to caress the curve of her buttocks, then to slide upward over her ribs and tug the bandeau away, leaving her naked in his arms. She squirmed closer still, and hurriedly pushed his robe aside, before he lay back and drew her down upon him. The soft curls of her hair brushed his cheeks and throat; he could feel her legs stretch alongside his own, her bare toes curling against his shins. The necklace swung forward and he could smell the scent of nutmeg in what he had taken for wooden beads. The seeds had been polished by their long contact with her tanned, dewy skin. She looked down at him, still searching his eyes in the last of the rosy sunset light. And finally he could bear it no longer, and rolled her over in the longish grass of the Circle, the small stars of lawn daisies framing her face. He settled his lean hips between her thighs -- and surely, in the years of her wandering, she had grown more curvy -- the cup of her navel was deeper, her muscles more toned, yet not so taut as when she had been sixteen and ready to fight the last evil of their world. Womanly, now, and serene with it.

He moved to slide inside her, but something made him halt, poised at her entrance, trembling. He felt her hands slide to his hips and clutch at him. Her back arched and her eyes darkened, and then her hands moved to link behind his neck and pull his head down at last, to that sweet, parted mouth.

\"Celebrate,\" she whispered to him. \"Celebrate, Snape.\"

~fin~
Israel
&
Washington, USA
23:48 16 August, 2004


Authors\' Note: Thank you for reading. And to those of you who have sent us letters or left us a review, we bow in appreciation.

A few people deserve special mention, however. Our patient, glorious and mighty beta, the illustrious Hephastus. Sweet Bambu and Harg the Hapless, who encouraged us. Doomspark, who provided a home for our fic when it seemed no one wanted it. NotSoSaintly, who invited us to post Needfire on thepetulantpoetess.com. Eris Anglachel, Lifeasanamazon, Bloodcult of Freud, Novinha, Innogen, Expected Aberrance, Rachel W, lovethelab, knight0fswords, Pandora Nervosa, Angie, AJS, Lu Ling Qi, Nesscafe, Alarase and Cavalaxis to name just a few, who read chapter after chapter, reviewed us and recced us and reminded us of why we were writing this story.

Blessings on your keyboards, one and all.

--Meli and Areola