To Save A Serpent

Hermione sat with a blanket pulled around her and she sipped from the steaming mug, eyes avoiding his. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on? Or should I let Molly and Ron in here and they can have a go at you?” Harry growled. She’d heard him be angry before, but she was seldom on the receiving end of it. “You just— disappear and then as I go with a group of Order members to retrieve his body, thank Merlin I came through the passageway first, I find you curled up in bed with—”

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Harry!” she spat.

“I don’t want to know, Hermione. If you felt you had to say goodbye, that’s fine, after what I saw in that pensieve—”

“You— you saw me? In the pensieve?”

Harry was silent. “Hermione, you could have told me, I would have came with you.”

She too was silent, contemplating. “You moved his body.”

“Not me alone, but yes, why?”

Her face colored. “You didn’t—”

“Look, I came in, saw you in the bed and tossed my cloak over you. He was lying like he was stretched out on a funeral pyre on the floor by the door we watched Voldemort leave through. He was dressed practically to the nines, not an inch of blood on him, no sign of puncture wounds from Nagini, and his body was warm. It was creepy, almost like he was—”

“Sleeping.” She wept.

Heaving a great sigh, he came over and stood beside her. They were in the Headmaster’s office once more. All of the portraits seemed to have vacated their picture frames, leaving the two of them alone. “Hermione, why couldn’t you tell me?” His face fell, worried lines of hurt crossing his forehead.

“You— you wouldn’t have understood,” she sniffed. “How could I? You would have thought I was nutters, or needed a permanent stay in Mungo’s!” her voice was quavering as she shouted and sobbed, trying to choke back the tears, but they just kept coming. She withdrew. Perhaps she had dreamt it all, but she’d disproved that theory when she’d told him she had needed a moment in the girl’s lavatory to fix herself. And she’d touched herself, felt the still drying mixture of their coupling, even tasted it to be sure. It hadn’t been a dream. But who had moved him? Who had dressed him and laid him easily to rest while she slept?

“He wouldn’t have.” Hermione nearly jumped feeling Ginny’s hand on her shoulders, “But I would have.” She turned to gaze at the redhead. “You could have said something, I could have helped you deal with it.”

She hung her head and continued to cry. Harry looked from Ginny to Hermione and back, casting his long awaited lover a pitiful glance before burying his head in his hands. “I don’t know what to do with this, what to make of all this. He loved my mum, for Merlin’s sake! And you too apparently!”

Hermione’s sobs only magnified tenfold at Harry’s words. She hadn’t been ready to face that road. They’d never professed their love for one another, and he’d sworn he was incapable of it, but she knew somewhere along the way she’d fallen for him and hoped the same was true of him that he had fallen for her. She thought they had come close, one night, and her eyes closed, as she tried to remember how it had almost happened.

~*~

They’d been without Ron for what seemed like an eternity and she’d been tossing and turning in the tent, unable to sleep. As she rose from her bed, full intention to bring Harry some tea, she found that he had abandoned his post. Alarmed and frightened at the same time, she wielded her wand and gazed around. She hadn’t heard anything but had the sinking feeling that eyes were upon her. And then she saw it, the dark figure looming just a few yards away, blended into the shadows of the trees.

With her wand pointed, she steadied herself to the ground, ready to attack, but the onlooker did not advance. Her heart leapt into her throat. It was impossible. “Lumos,” she muttered but as quickly as she’d said it, her wand tip flickered out.

“Nox.” The almost inaudible hiss reached her ears and she shot forward into the darkness, wand discarded in the leaves. Her arms flew around him, her lips to his, but their kiss was short lived. “That was foolish,” he hissed in a harsh whisper. “I could have been an enemy.”

Her eyes were almost over flowing with tears. “You are the enemy, silly.” Again she kissed him, but this time he did not push away from her lips. His tongue penetrated into her mouth and his arms held her close. “Gods I’ve missed you.”

“It does get lonely without having your inane question asking in my classroom,” he muttered and pressed his lips to her jaw and then her throat. She swatted him playfully, and tried to melt into his body. It was as close to a confession that he missed her that she was going to get.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” his breath was warm despite the cold and his lips tickled her. “We should go some place warmer.”

Hermione eyed the tent. “Harry could be back any moment…” she whispered.

“Not bloody likely, especially if he sees Weasley—”

“Ronald’s here?” she practically shouted but his hand covered her mouth.

“Yes, come on, in the tent, its warmer.”

She was not one to object, dragging him inside, though if the boys somehow managed to make it back before she could properly dispose of him, how she’d explain his presence, she hadn’t the foggiest. But none of that mattered. He was alive, and she was in his arms once more. Then a thought crossed her mind. She smacked him hard over the head. “What the bloody—”

“You damn near cost George his life!” she snarled, taking a seat on her bed.

“I wasn’t aiming for him, he got in the way, would have been killed otherwise…”

Hermione was silent for a moment. Then she threw her arms around him and dragged him back to the bed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you.”

He said nothing, but kissed her lips and then wrapped her close to him. “My bed had been empty, and I find it impossible to sleep,” he whispered against her ear and she shivered. They spent several minutes just laying together, holding each other, nothing extremely sexual about either one of them. But his lips hardly left hers, only to mutter sweet things to her ever so often.

Nearly twenty minutes had passed and Hermione could hear rustling. “They’re coming back!” she yelped, and sat straight up. “Come on, I’ve got a secret back entrance, the boys don’t know about it, but it only works if you’re leaving the tent, it doesn’t double as an entrance.” He smiled at her brilliance and followed her through the back.

“Hermione, be careful,” he warned, and pulled her close to him.

“You didn’t have to come tonight, whatever your reason…”

“I think I did, and you’ll quite see why, soon enough, love.” She froze, he had called her love. Her eyes glistened. “No tears, Hermione, they’ll freeze to your face and it will be some time before I see you again.”

Slowly she nodded. “Severus,” her lips were poised and she waited.

“Hermione…” he too looked as if he longed to say more, the silvery white mist of their breath surrounding them. Pressing his lips to hers, he kissed her. Slow, deep, sensual was his kiss, and her arms were around him tightly, his around her, the dim of the moonlight just barely filtering through the high canopy of the trees. She was first to pull away, her lips quivering as if she longed so desperately to speak. “Go, before they realize you’re missing,” and in her hand he placed her wand, which he had picked up on their way into the tent. With another kiss to her lips he stole off into the night.

Dodging around the front of the tent, she slipped inside just before Harry and Ron came bursting in. Her eyes widened in shock for in Ron’s hand was the sword of Godric Gryffindor.

~*~

“He was there?” Harry spat, pacing, enraged. “He was that close! He—”

“Don’t be angry with him, Harry!” Hermione shouted. “He was trying to help you! He did help you!”

“You could have bloody told us!”

“What good would it have done?” she sniffled, and Ginny rubbed her back. “He died anyway, knowing that it was him that gave you that sword makes no difference whatsoever, you never believed in him until you looked through those memories and now you’re angry because he was obsessed with your mother!”

“You knew?” his eyes were wide, green glowing orbs of near rage.

“Of course I knew. I knew he could never love me like he loved her, and that’s why he had to protect you. That’s why he had to save you, had to help you!” Again she broke down into hysterics, doubled over herself, sobbing and thrashing about. “Just leave me be! Please…”

Ginny ushered a bereft Harry from the Headmaster’s office and sat beside Hermione. “Minerva has asked you to speak tomorrow.”

She hardly heard the other girl. “What?”

“He’s being laid out in a traditional service, tomorrow. And Minerva would like you to speak, about him, about how he served us, gave his life so we could better defeat Voldemort.” Hermione’s eyes glittered with tears as she looked at her friend. “Most everyone’s staying here tonight, you could stay in his…” her voice trailed off. “Just, let me know if you need anything, I’ll be around the castle, and let Minerva know too. I think you should sleep.”

Hermione was numb. They’d taken him, and then his body and now they wanted her to speak about him. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to do it. When Ginny had left, she carefully leaned over the pensieve, took her wand to it and with a flourish, shrank it and stuffed it into her pocket. His private thoughts would belong to no one else.

Making her long decent into the dungeons, she found his chambers easily, just as he’d left them, not a thing out of place, until she reached the bedroom. For an instant she thought she saw movement in the shadows. There was a strong fire going, which caused her heart to thud loudly against her chest, her stomach doing flip flops as she raced through the room into the bathroom. But there was no one to be found.

An hour later, she’d dug through his drawers and found a faded Oxford University tee that he’d one lent her, and dressed in that and a pair of his boxers, she crawled into bed, snuggling her nose against his pillow, the scent of him still fresh to her nostrils. Hermione cried herself to sleep.