Vita Labyrinthae Similis In Quo Umbrae Vagamus

CHAPTER 16

is dedicated to Bradley, for some ideas. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

(Anon, medieval song)

Days passed, slowly. The castle wound itself up like a spring for the Christmas banquet. Walking along the familiar stone corridors Nadezhda found herself faced over and over again by house-elves draped and festooned in tinsel, clambering over each others' shoulders to tack the decorations to the walls with muttered spells. She herself had refrained from decorating. It wasn't as if she intended to spend much time in her quarters, anyway. The Great Hall was, as every year, utterly magnificent, and even she felt a tiny spurting of Christmas spirit in her dry and scarred heart at the sight of the vast and glittering tree.

(Christmas in the Urals wasn't like this.)

Yes, well, she reminded herself, Christmas in the Urals was a long long time ago, when Dad was still around, and customs were different. Quite different.

She found herself, the day before Christmas Eve, walking down the grand marble staircase to the entrance hall. Vaguely aware that a few students were still in the castle, she was not surprised to see a clump of snow-covered individuals engaged in lively conversation about a snowball fight, standing by the door. But a familiar voice shocked her out of complacency completely of a sudden, and she found herself watching in utter surprise as she recognized a man she hadn't seen for more than seventeen years.

Below, Harry had just come in, flushed with cold and exertion, carrying his Firebolt. Nadezhda watched as he suddenly stiffened with shock, then began to run towards the group.

"Sirius!" he cried. "Sirius, I didn't know you were still in England!"

Nadezhda felt that strange little tug at her heart again as she watched Black pull his godson into a bear-hug, despite the fact that Harry was now almost as tall as he himself was. Harry was clearly jumping around with delight to see Sirius, whom everyone had thought long gone to the friendlier shores of France, after the complicated and unpleasant events of the previous year.

Good, she thought to herself. Harry needed someone, I think. We all do, at this time of year. Draco and Hermione have got each other, and thank the All-Mother for that; I've got Severus...... As always, that particular thought sparked off a little surge of hot, painful pleasure beneath her sternum, and she thought she felt tears rising to her eyes again. I've got Severus. I never thought I'd be able to claim that. I am monstrously and unworthily lucky.

She grinned to herself, and hurried down the rest of the steps, quickly turning and continuing down to the dungeons before anybody had a chance to recognize her and call her over to join in celebrating Black's return.

She had other things to celebrate.

Snape's chambers were comfortingly unchanged. She let herself in with the familiar charm and tiptoed through to the bedchamber. He lay still asleep—it was only ten in the morning—under the mounded green velvet covers, his black hair tumbled in a dark fall over his face, his hands relaxed and open on the covers. Nadezhda loved to watch him sleep, almost as much as she loved to watch him lost in the depths of his beloved potion-making; most of the hard pain-lines faded from his face in the embrace of sleep, and he looked years younger. He looked, she thought suddenly, like the man he could have been in a life without Voldemort, or Malfoy, or Death Eaters. Like the man he should have been allowed to be.

She felt a brief stab of regret that no one else had ever known that look on his face, but shoved it away. Moving quietly, so as not to disturb him, she went into the adjoining room and set some things to heat over a witchflame, before coming back into the familiar bedroom and beginning her second task.

When she had finished, the great blackened fireplace was glowing and crackling with a brilliant fire; the mantelpiece was adorned with sprays of holly scantily lit by bright berries. Around the walls dark green velvet hangings masked the bare dungeon stones, and soft sheepskin rugs piled the floor in front of the great fire.

Snape was stirring as she came back from the adjoining room with two steaming cups. What remarkable timing, she thought. I bet he manages to wait until the dishes are almost done before asking if he can help. Grinning, she set the mugs down on the blackwood table by his bed and waited for him to float up through the last layers of sleep.

"Good morning," she said, as he blinked at her. It really isn't fair, she thought, that he's got better eyelashes than me. Without any sort of mascara. She proffered a mug.

Severus propped himself up on an elbow and took it. "What's this?"

"Just try it. Dad used to swear by it on, ah, cold days."

Severus flicked an amused, questioning glance at her, but sipped the steaming liquid. His black eyes widened, and for a moment she could see the brown glints in their depths. "Your father must have been an astonishing man, love," he said mildly, and looked her up and down. "What are you doing out of bed at such an ungodly hour?"

"It's gone ten," she protested. He smiled again, like a wolf.

"I should have specified which bed," he said, and held out his arms to her. Gladly she leaned into his embrace, and felt her blood quicken as it always did at his nearness to her, his answering heat, the soft rhythm of his heart beside her own. She let him pull her down to the bed beside him, curled happily up with her head against his shoulder.

"It's almost Christmas," she said softly.

"You're right," he said noncommittally. "Another year down the drain."

She raised her head, blinked at him. "I wouldn't say that."

"Well, no." He kissed her, meditatively. "I retract my statement. Another year gone by. And I, for one, don't care." He pulled her closer to him. Through the silk sheets and the velvet covers she felt the sweet warmth of him, and felt her resolve to get things done melting away under the onslaught of the heat beneath her breastbone echoing the heat she felt from him. His fingers found the fastening of her robes, and a moment later the heavy fabric fell away from her. She sighed in happiness as Severus's mouth explored the curve of her collarbone, the rising swell of her breasts, and gave up entirely on the morning.

She was never sure how much of their lovemaking was aloud, and how much echoed in her mind. The names he cried out as he gave himself to her....windlily, red hawk, moonchild.... and the brilliant images that flickered through her mind seemed to be connected, as if his mind and hers found a connection in that heightened state, a kind of faster-than-thought communication. All she knew for sure was that he took her to places she had never known existed, all within the sweet curving shelter of his arms, the protection of his presence. She had not known, before, that love could be a pleasant thing. It had only been a hurtful and a sorrowful one, before. With Severus, love seemed to have reached its natural habitat, and was settling down forever. She had not thought she could be so utterly happy, or so completely satisfied.

They lay tangled in green velvet beneath the magical mistletoe she had hung on the ceiling. He happened to look up, and see it there, and then his gaze flicked with more concentration about the room itself, and he laughed a little.

"Very festive," he said. There was no mockery in it, though, and she thought that he didn't mind her decorations. "Thank you, my love."

"Thank you," she repeated, tracing the line of his chiseled jaw with her forefinger. "Thank you."

Severus turned his head on the pillows to look at her. "Nadezhda..." he said. "Do you have the slightest idea of what you've done to me? What you continue to do?"

She felt a faint splash of fear drip down the insides of her bones. "Not if you put it like that," she said simply.

"Then I will tell you." He pulled the pillows up into a makeshift elbow-rest, and stared into her eyes. "I will tell you, and you have to believe me, because I can't lie about this. I can't actually lie to you at all, you understand, which is a surprising revelation on my part." He paused, staring at his hands. "Nadezhda....I love you, you see, and I have loved you for a very long time. When I was ill, and floating in the darkness with his voice beating at me, I kept hold of sanity by thinking of you. And when you were there, those few times that I came out of the dreams, I thought you were only a happy fragment of dream that somehow stayed there into reality, to comfort me. I thought I was probably dying." He raised a finger as she began to protest. "Let me go on. I think I have to." He took her cigarette case off the table, selected one, and lit it with a flick of his wand. "And, since I was dying, I wanted to hold on to my images of you as long as I could. After you went into the dream and told Radu to fuck off, and after I began, very slowly, to recover, I realized that you weren't part of the dream at all; that you had really been there, all those times I woke in the night and couldn't help crying out from the pain in my chest. You had been there."

Nadezhda wanted so badly to say something that it hurt, but she merely lay there by his side and let him speak. He needed to say these things.

"I was still me, though, that me I had been working on for years and years, and I clung to that like an anchor in a storm. Whatever I felt for you would go away, I thought, if I just held on to that version of me. I could deny vulnerability, that way. I could deny culpability, and regret. But you didn't let me. You came to me, and you were you, wise and snappish and to the point, and you demanded why I was behaving like I was, and I couldn't help it. You knew what you were doing, didn't you, Nadezhda. You knew all along."

No, she thought. No. I knew nothing. I thought I did, but I was wrong. And lucky.

"You pushed the right buttons to bring me out of where I was, and then I had no choice but to hear what you said, and to tell you what parts of the story were fit to hear. And when, at the end of my storytelling, you spoke the words I had so wanted to hear for so long, in the intonation I had dreamed of hearing, and you meant them, I lost what fragments of the old me I had still been able to hold on to. You took away my armour, Nadezhda."

She turned her face up to his, would have spoken, but he laid a long pale finger against her lips. "Hush," he said. "I'm almost finished, love." She subsided.

"You took away my armour," he repeated, looking absently up at the mistletoe, "but you didn't take away anything else. You opened a door back into me. And I've had to recreate some illusion of my shell so as to stop rumours flying, but it's no more than that; a shell. After I managed to convince myself that you had run off after my idiot stunt in the lounge and were in mortal danger, I realized just how much of me you had set free. The old me would never have allowed such sentimental feelings to cloud his adamantine purpose. He would also have missed the greatest and most magnificent second chance of his life."

She felt the pricking behind her eyes that meant tears were not far.

"If I had been able to love you, truly love you, the way that most of me already wanted to, back when we were young....I might never have joined the Death Eaters. But, Nadezhda, I love you now, and you have freed me from all the prisons I walked so happily into. You have given me a reason to go on living. The days aren't so much challenges any more; they are things to look forward to." He looked down at his hands again, and for the first time Nadezhda caught the faintest hint of a silvery scar down his left forearm, and another one crossing it at the bracelets of fortune. "There isn't a way to say this without sounding like a dreadful Tesco card, but... well, thank you, my love, for giving me a life. When I told you I would never speak about the horrors in my past, I hadn't realized just how much freedom you had given me. I can tell you, now. If you need to hear it. I can tell you."

His voice had begun to shake, and Nadezhda abruptly leaned over and stopped his words with a kiss. She was aware of how momentous this realization was. How very, very important, to both of them. The fact that he could tell her about everything he'd gone through meant that he was finally coming to terms with his past.

And that, in turn, meant he could be free of it. Joy leapt and danced in her chest.

"I love you," she murmured into his neck.

"I love you," he told her. "Although I do feel that phrase is somewhat lacking in impact. If I were to say that I love you more than anyone else has ever loved anyone ever, more than gravity loves the ground, more than fire loves oxygen, I would be getting closer. But I'm afraid English fails me when it comes to truly describing how perfectly I love you." His eyes, half-closed, smouldered beneath their dark lashes; his high cheekbones were flushed with blood. "You are my hope. My Nadezhda."

"So you know what it means," she murmured.

"Of course I do. Ever since you let me have your name, I have known what it means. It's one of the things I've clung to, during the sessions with Lucius. Some people have mantras; I had your name, and what it meant." He sighed, kissed the top of her head. "And you must also understand that I had no idea of how to deal with this until Radu's ghost showed up and started making life more difficult than it needed to be. Until then... I was more or less able to deal with my love for you without letting it change anything. It was just something I lived with. I couldn't ever let myself hope that you might still love me, because that was letting myself in for a whole new world of pain I wasn't ready for. And from the time when I first came out of the fever-dreams to find you there, I was trying to convince myself I didn't love you, I couldn't love you, I wouldn't love you. I wasn't very good at it. You broke through the last of my resolve, and you took most of my shame with you."

"It isn't all me," she said quietly. "I have loved you since I first met you, yes, but I think we both know that it would not have worked back then. I was too young, too inexperienced, too innocent. You were too ambitious, and hurt, and proud. I told myself, later, that I loved Radu; but I have only ever loved one person. I saw your face, you see, every time I closed my eyes. You were always there with me. You are now, but it isn't painful any more; it's just a kind of overwhelming and unspeakable completeness. Then, you were a memory that taught me not to love like that again, even if I could have."

She reached out, reclaimed her cigarettes from his side of the bed. "And I was pretty good at it, until I saw you crumpled on the floor of your room, looking a hand's-breadth away from death. Then...all of it came back to me. All of it. And I couldn't for the life of me think of an excuse to deny it."

Severus lit her cigarette with a flick of his wand and lay back, his arm around her shoulders, regarding the ceiling through half-closed lashes. "All of this has been said before, hasn't it?" he said mildly. "We seem to have run out of phrases."

"I know. It's annoying. There has to be an original way of expressing my feelings for you." She blew smoke rings with the skill of long practice, shooting one through its predecessor. "I feel like shouting it from the tops of the battlements."

He laughed. "That might be construed as indiscreet. Far be it from me to complain, however."

"I always think that if you're going to be indiscreet, you ought to do it ostentatiously," she yawned. "What I was going to do, before I was distracted, was to go down to Hogsmeade and do a bit of last-minute Christmas shopping. You want to come?"

Severus narrowed his eyes. "Good Lord, it's Christmas Eve tomorrow, isn't it. Yes, I think I'd better." He stretched like a cat, the visible rack of his ribs arching with the movement, and slid out of bed, yelping as his feet touched the cold flagstones. She smiled, watching him shrug into his robes. He was still painfully thin, but his cough was slowly getting better, and he no longer had to pause and catch his breath at the top of staircases.

She butted the cigarette in a silver ashtray and slithered back into her clothes, tucked the tangled red hair behind her ears. Together they left the room, hand in hand.

***

Christmas Eve, and bitter chill it was. Snow was falling again about the castle, whispering its way down through the vast blue night. There was a sense of great and ancient things awakening, things much older than Christ, or even man. The old rituals of the winter and the dying of the light were strong here in the north. The land itself seemed to await some kind of magical change.

The Christmas Eve banquet in Hogwarts's Great Hall was a magnificent spread. As always, Nadezhda amended mentally, remembering other Christmases here. Tomorrow's Christmas dinner would be even more exquisite, but the Christmas Eve banquet had always been her favourite; the feeling of suppressed excitement and looking forward to the next day lent the food a special kind of spice. Enchanted snow swirled and drifted down from the illusion of the sky, dry and soft, vanishing before it touched the tables or their occupants. Red, green, gold and silver tinsel fell in heavy glinting swags from the torchbrackets; wreaths and garlands of holly and ivy twined around the portraits and escutcheons hung on the walls. Glittering ornaments hung in midair, turning gently with the air currents in the room; the normal white candles that lit the Hall were replaced with red and green. All of this glory faded into the background, however, when compared with the thirty-foot Christmas tree Hagrid had lugged into the Hall some days before and set up behind the staff table on the dais.

Most of the professors had been involved with the decorating of it. Nadezhda herself had been the one to set tiny glimmering heatless flames at the tip of every branch; McGonagall had hung bunches of golden glass globes from the branches which occasionally transfigured themselves into sparkling stars, and back again; Lupin had decked the tree with several hundred yards of glittering blue-silver beads. Dumbledore, watching, had waited until everyone had finished their contributions, and then waved his wand at the tree, creating a fountain of multicolored fire which settled, glowing, in gems and drops all over the dark branches. It looked rather as if the Northern Lights were caught in the tree's lush needles. Nadezhda looked up at the distant pinnacle of the tree's top. A star shone there, with a clear blue-white light that cast reddish shadows over the rest of the Hall. She wondered who had put it there, and how.

She returned her attention to the tables. Harry Potter was sitting with Black and Lupin, who had both joined him at the Gryffindor table. Beside her she could feel Severus staring at Black, and gave him a questioning look.

He smiled ruefully, shrugged. "It's just a bit of a surprise," he said. "Seeing him again. Although I suppose this is the appropriate time of year for him to show up."

"Just ignore him," said Nadezhda. "And be civil."

"I am civil," he retorted. "And Black and I officially made some sort of peace last year. Doesn't mean I like him, though."

"Good." Nadezhda sipped her wine. "Neither do I, as a matter of fact."

Severus grinned. She looked back out over the Great Hall. Almost no one had opted to stay at Hogwarts over the holidays. All four student tables were mostly empty, and several of the chairs at the staff table were pushed in and unoccupied. It gave the place a slightly sorrowful, but mostly intimate, air. Those who were still here had gravitated towards one another.

"Hermione and Draco are still in the hospital wing?" she asked.

"I believe so. I don't think either of them need to be, not anymore, but I doubt they want to face the larger world until they have to." Severus refilled his goblet. "I can understand the feeling."

"Even so," she said. "They're missing all this food."

"Oh, I expect they'll manage," he said mildly. "Neither of them are stupid enough to miss an opportunity like this. Nobody's around to regulate where they go and what they do."

She blinked. "For a master of this school, you're sounding awfully complacent about rule-breaking."

"Chalk it up to the spirit of the season," he said, smiling. "Nadezhda, my love, I believe Draco and Hermione should be left well alone. They will rejoin the world when they are ready to do so."

"I know. I just feel sorry for them, you know, stuck up there in the hospital wing while the rest of us eat and drink ourselves silly in this—" she waved her fork at the decorations—"palatial surrounding."

Severus sighed. "I know."

The banquet wound down to coffee and brandy and the Legendary Chocolate Mousse. Dumbledore tapped his glass with a fork to call for silence, and rose.

"My friends," he began, "before we all separate tonight, I should like to share with you a few thoughts on the year that is drawing to a close. We have all been through a great deal, both good and bad, this year. We have experienced some dreadful losses and some heartbreaking triumphs. We are, of course, very lucky in the continuing peace we have been granted so far, although as my old friend Alastor Moody would warn, we must maintain constant vigilance against the threat of further evil. We have not yet won." He paused, stared out over the few faces in the Great Hall. "I would like to ask all of you, tonight, to consider what this year has given you as well as what it has taken away."

Nadezhda felt Severus's hand touch hers, hold it firmly. She looked up at Dumbledore again. He smiled, and those astonishing ice-blue eyes twinkled. How powerful is he, really? she found herself wondering. How many have misjudged him because of that twinkle, because of the mild voice?

"Enough of my ramblings," he finished. "I wish you all the very best of Christmases. Good night."

Draco sat curled in the window, looking out over the King Wenceslas landscape. He half expected to see reindeer come tripping over the glittering snow, or the white hounds of Herne's Hunt. It was that sort of a night.

More and more he was realizing that the world might have a niche in it for him, but in order to find that niche he was going to have to do a lot of work. A very great deal of work. And he didn't particularly want to. If only someone would come along and tell me what to do, he thought. I grew up with military orders; I'm not very good at making myself behave without someone leaning over me with a whip.

He thrust the thought away. This was supposedly Christmas Eve. Think festive thoughts, he told himself. Happy festive thoughts. Although of course he didn't have much of a basis in memory for happy festive thoughts.

Just then Hermione knocked on his door. He was aware it was her, somehow, even before she came in. "What have you been doing?" he inquired, turning away from the snowy night. She sighed.

"Wandering. It's sort of pleasant to be able to roam the castle at will, but....I know it's Christmas Eve, but I don't feel anything. It's just another night."

"I don't remember much about Christmas," said Draco quietly. "When I was a kid Mother used to make an effort, you know, decorating the mansion and setting up the tree, but Lucius never liked it. He thought it was foolish and sentimental. And I didn't really miss it, you know, when they stopped pretending. But—you know---I do wonder what I'm missing."

"I remember it being magical, when I was really young. I believed wholeheartedly in all the myths they spread about. It's still a wonderful time of year, and so on, but I don't feel it as Christmas this year. I think I must have grown up too damn fast, because all I know is everyone else is making a big fuss about nothing. Just another night."

"I know. And what did we have to eat? Gruel. Well," he amended, "I had gruel. You probably had real food. Ho bloody ho ho ho."

Hermione smiled, as he had meant her to. She stared down at her fingers for a long moment, and appeared to make a decision. She came and joined him in the window, took his hands in hers. "You still hungry?"

"Very."

"I'll make you a deal," she told him. "If you make a concerted effort to decorate this boring little room, I will procure a feast for us that will please even your jaded palate."

He raised an eyebrow at her, but picked up his wand. "Please tell me you're not thinking of giant glowing Father Christmases that move?"

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response," responded Hermione. "Use your impeccable Malfoy taste, okay? I've got to get down to the kitchens before everyone else decides to raid them as well."

Sneaking down to the kitchens was a lot different now, Hermione reflected. For one thing, she didn't have Harry's Cloak, and there was the very real possibility that she could be caught. It was only nine o'clock, and the castle had not yet gone to bed. When she had crept down here with Harry and Ron, years ago, they'd done it much later at night. So she was extra-super careful as she hurried down corridors and staircases festooned with tinsel and tiny heatless fairy-lights, and came without incident to the vast fruit painting in the entrance hall. She felt a sudden wave of nostalgia for the days when it had been her and Harry and Ron against the dark and inchoate world. Things had seemed simpler then.

The house-elves clustered around her, talking animatedly. She supposed Harry was right about them, but it always made her feel slightly guilty to hear them bowing and scraping to students. "Good evening," she said pleasantly. "Any chance of some extra food for two hungry invalids?"

Draco, alone in the room with his wand and a vague instruction to decorate things, stood in the centre of the floor and considered. What he had said to Hermione was mostly true; he had never had much of a traditional Christmas at home, but that didn't mean he didn't want one. Frowning, he directed his wand at the arched window, and a spray of light flooded out of its tip and landed lightly in a drape of sparkling points over the top of the casement. He hung tinsel around the tops of the walls, red and gold and silver and green, and after a moment's argument with himself, added a spray of mistletoe over the door. A few more flicks of his wand lit a blazing fire in the hearth and turned the institutional grey blankets on the bed into heavy green velvet. The fragrance of pine needles drifted on the warm air from the wreath he had conjured for the mantelpiece. Naga, who had been sleeping on the pillow, shifted as the texture of the fabric she lay on changed, but remained where she was.

He lowered his wand. All around him the room glittered and glowed. Draco felt the stirrings of a childlike excitement as alien to him as love, and as exhilarating.

He was putting the finishing touches on the illusion of a bed-canopy when Hermione elbowed the door open, stopped with her eyes wide in shock, and nearly dropped the tray she carried. He darted forward and rescued it from her sagging grasp. "I take it that means it meets with your approval?" he inquired mildly.

"That's not the phrasing I would have used," Hermione said as he set down the tray on the bedtable. "Draco, it's magnificent. Absolutely gorgeous." She prodded the velvet quilts, sat down. "And it's already snowing. Now all we need is a bevy of little children singing off-key carols at the top of their lungs right outside the window."

Draco made a disgusted noise. "I will concede the roaring fire and the drifting snow and the glittery decorations, but I draw the line at carol-squawking children. What have you brought us?"

She had been right; it was a feast. Thick slices of roast turkey and duck, great golden potatoes, carrots, fresh bread still hot from the ovens, fluffy Yorkshire puddings dripping with fragrant gravy, steaming vegetables. The house-elves, to their everlasting credit, had also found her a bottle of Merlot and two glasses. They sat cross-legged on cushions in front of the fire, and ate.

At length, when most of the food was gone, and the bottle of wine had been drained, they were discussing Christmas. Hermione was close to Draco, almost touching. He thought he could feel a kind of electricity between them, a crackling in the air.

"...I was five," she was saying. "I remember not being able to sleep all night for fear of missing Father Christmas. I did so want to see him. And yet, somehow, although I swear I never went to sleep, I opened my eyes and it was morning, and my stocking was full. I remember the sheer excitement and happiness of Christmas when I was little. It hasn't been like that for a long time."

Draco had been watching the play of the firelight on the long wavy fall of her hair, noticing the deep golden glints of light that swam in its depths. He found himself breathing hard, as if from exertion. With an effort he forced himself to concentrate.

"It was never like that for me," he said. "I'd get presents, and everything, but Lucius would never bother to wrap them. He'd just have the servants deliver them to my room. We'd have Christmas dinner, and Lucius would give the servants a half-day off. That was it. Just another day." He looked down at the scraps left on the tray. "I sometimes wished I could have had a normal holiday."

He was very aware of her presence, very close to him. The faint sweet scent of lily-of-the-valley tugged at his heart.

Hermione turned to look at him, and her great cinnamon eyes were overbright with tears. He started to say something, but she shook her head, leaned in, and kissed him.

Draco felt his heartbeat thundering in his ears, was aware of nothing but her—of the vast and unspeakable wave of warmth that washed over him as their lips touched. Her hands crept around the back of his neck, held him. He took her in his arms.

The kiss went on for a long time, waking a slow, sweet, dim fire all through Draco's body. At last Hermione pulled back, her eyes huge and suddenly very knowing, rose, and held out her hand. Hardly knowing what he did, Draco allowed him to help him to his feet, and lead him to the bed. And then he was kissing her again, hungrily, his hands moving from her hair to her back to her waist, pulling her to him. Together, still locked, they sank down on the bed, dislodging Naga, who slithered to the floor with a hiss of irritation. Draco was aware of the soft yielding velvet they sat on, and was glad he'd transfigured it.

Hermione's mind was a whirlpool of heat and fear and desire. She hadn't known she was going to kiss him, but she knew she'd started something momentous, something not unlike an avalanche; she had no choice but to ride it all the way to the end, because she no longer had any control. Neither did he. She could feel his heart banging against his ribs. He was kissing her throat, her shoulder, the V of her collarbones.

Hermione had not known what love was until this year. It had come upon her completely of a sudden, with the undeniability of the grave. She realized, with the tiny part of her mind that was still functional and clear, that she loved Draco Malfoy more than she had ever thought she could love anybody or anything, and she thought with an almost unbearable flood of happiness that he might, possibly, love her too. She knew that what she was doing was important, in the same way that saving Draco's life had been important.

Her hands crept to the buttons on his pyjamas, began to take off his shirt. He stiffened as she let her hands slide under the shirt, down his back. The skin felt oddly roughened under her fingers, ridged.

He pulled away from her, breaking the kiss.

"What's the matter?" she asked, realizing she was panting. He looked away. She felt herself colouring. What if she had been wrong? "Don't you want to?" She looked down at her hands. "It's all right, you know. If you don't want to—"

He cut her off. "Jesus Christ, Hermione, of course I want to. I'm not made of stone. It's just that..." he trailed off. "I'm not what you'd call...pretty, with my shirt off." He looked up, under the curtain of hair. Hermione saw vulnerability in his eyes, suddenly, a shame and embarrassment that made her feel cold inside. Suddenly she understood.

"It's all right, Draco," she murmured, beginning again to unbutton his shirt. He let her do it, staring down at nothing. The shirt fell away from his shoulders, and he stiffened as if struck, his eyes closing.

Hermione drew in a long, wondering breath. His back was crisscrossed with hundreds of scars, silvery ghosts that faded and stretched and wrote lines of odd beauty over his pale skin. She traced one of them, gently, with a fingertip.

"They're disgusting, aren't they." Draco was still holding himself ramrod-straight, waiting for her to recoil in horror.

"No," she said simply. He looked at her.

She shrugged. "I know how they got there," she said, "and that makes me angry. But the scars themselves—well—I think they're really rather beautiful."

She leaned in and kissed his shoulder where one of the pale lines ran around the edge of the scapula. Draco drew a deep breath.

"You mean it?"

She didn't reply, but bent her head to the scar and very lightly ran her tongue all the way down its pale line. Draco arched his back and made a little wordless noise. He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him, and now she saw a rising tide of joy and pleasure in his eyes. He kissed her again, hard, and suddenly that heat was back, rising between them, and she felt his hands unfastening her shirt, and a moment later nearly cried out as his fingers cupped the swell of her breasts, gently, firmly, and then slid lower, and lower. Pressed together, they fell back to lie on Draco's bed. Hermione had just enough time to think helplessly Oh God this is right, this is right, this is so right, before a wave of pleasure washed all her thoughts away on an effervescent tide of rising joy.

Draco had been horrified, but unsurprised, as her eyes widened to take in the road-map of pain Lucius had engraved into his skin. He had thought that she was going to jerk back in disgust, maybe even leave the room.

He hadn't expected her to smile that heartbreaking smile and bend to kiss them. At that moment, he was so full of a pure, serene, clear happiness that he thought his head might burst. With the happiness had come urgency and a rising heat that seemed to dance brightly in his brain, and he had taken her in his arms and sunk back down to the dark velvet of the counterpane, their clothes forgotten and discarded on the floor. She had been writhing in pleasure, holding on to him as waves of it rocked through them both, and as the world seemed to explode in a soundless flash of power and ecstasy, she had bitten his shoulder to keep from crying out. He felt the tears starting in his eyes as that heat rose and crested inside him, aware of her body moving in harmony with his, working with him in the grip of something bigger and older than either of them. He thought he had cried out her name as it happened, as the power rose to its unthinkable peak and scattered him into a thousand pieces on a wind of utter joy.

Later, her head pillowed on his chest and his arm around her shoulders, they lay quietly and talked of this and that, inconsequential things. He held her, and she lay against him in exhausted satisfaction, and slowly they both slid away into the open arms of sleep. He thought he heard, just before he sank under the surface, Hermione's voice murmuring "Merry Christmas."

********

At about that time, in Severus's dungeon quarters, he and Nadezhda lay curled in front of the fire, pillowed on soft sheepskin rugs and overstuffed cushions, accompanied by a half-empty bottle of Laphroaig and an overflowing ashtray. She wore only her bra; he was completely unclothed. She thought vaguely that she wished she could draw. The shifting firelight's play on the planes of his body was so beautiful that she wanted to hold on to it, keep it forever. His hair was a waterfall of darkness in the leaping firelight, his eyes held twin golden stars.

"What is it?" he asked, drowsily. "You're looking at me as if you expect me to turn into something else."

She laughed a little. "No," she said. "I am only thinking how lovely you are."

He scowled briefly. "Odd," he said. "Normally I can tell when you're lying."

"Oh, don't be daft," she said, and rolled over. "You know I think you're beautiful. What you may think about yourself has no bearing on the truth."

"It's odd, though." He propped himself on an elbow, stared at her. "You must understand that, at least. I'm not attractive—or at least I'm not attractive to most people. You, on the other hand, are gorgeous."

"Stop it." She poured them both another drink. "Flattery won't actually get you anywhere in this case."

"Be quiet and listen to me," he said, sipping the whiskey. "You aren't a classical beauty, nor are you a model. But you're stunning, nonetheless. It's not just the hair, although that's incredible on its own. Your face is changeable. You can look absolutely terrifying and terrifyingly compelling in the same moment. You are fascinating, and like a lot of fascinating things, you are beautiful." He let his hand trace an invisible line over her shoulder, around the curving weight of her breasts, and lower. "Very beautiful."

She arched her back, a little noise like a gasp forced from her as his extremely educated fingers found their mark. "Severus," she managed. "I can't concentrate if you do that—"

"I know. Good, isn't it?"

She found a tendril of strength and reached out for him. "Be nice. I'm trying to hold a conversation here...oh!"

"I don't think so," he said, and grinned. "Conversation is for ordinary mortals. You and I are the makers of manners, Nadezhda. Come, and let us dance."

Helpless under his hands, his elegant, slender, infernally skilled hands, Nadezhda gave up the thread of thought and let him take her higher, and higher, and so higher. The clock struck midnight as they came together more powerfully than they ever had before, and she cried out his name, over and over, as in her mind the birds of spring took first flight and soared into a white sky. His name became a wordless cry, and the wordless cry became the words she no longer had any control over, the words she could finally say, with her whole heart. Radu was gone; her pain was gone, the scar down her arm was nothing more than a pale line on her skin. There was nothing else in the world but Severus and herself. The words forced themselves out into the night, burning like torchlight.. I love you, I love you, I love you.

************

Christmas morning dawned bright and clear. The snow that lay over Hogwarts glittered brilliantly, like acres of crushed diamonds, in the new light. The impression of waiting, of old magics hiding in forest and glen, was replaced by a rejoicing in the rebirth of day. The rebirth of the world.

Nadezhda found herself waking inside a cloud. All around her was mounded whipped-cream white. For a long moment she couldn't figure out where she was, but her heart spoke within her, and she began to recognize the faint woodsmoke-and-rain scent of Severus. She rolled over, and found herself alone in a bed now heaped high with white quilts and pillows. The floor was covered in white thick carpeting, the fireplace alight with a blazing Yule log.

She slid out of the bed, aware she was completely naked, but not caring. Peering round the doorjamb into the private laboratory, she saw Severus, in his dressing gown, stirring a huge iron cauldron's contents. Even the lab was different. Torches burned in the long-dead sconces on the walls, lending the place a brilliance and warmth it never normally knew.

Severus looked up as she came in. "Ah," he said, and his voice was soft and warm and did odd things to the base of her spine. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, my love." She came forward, peered into his cauldron. He looked away, sheepishly. "What's going on?"

"You'll see. Go get dressed." He waved his hands toward the bedroom. She lifted an eyebrow. "Please?" he said.

"All right, but you better explain the sudden change in decor."

"I promise."

Some minutes later, she was brushing out her hair in front of the mirror she had had to conjure. She wore a long pale grey robe in place of her normal black teaching gown; her clothes seemed to have disappeared. Severus stepped into the room, his hands behind his back. He was looking at her with an expression she had to analyze carefully. Excitement, fear, apprehension, love...and something else.

He came forward, took her hands in his.

"What is all this?" she asked.

"Nadezhda," he began, and stopped, looking down. "Nadezhda, my love. I've got something to ask you."

"What?"

"It's sort of important." He met her gaze again. She could see the brown glints in his dark eyes again. She was suddenly aware that he was focused on her as intently as a sharpshooter on his mark. "Nadezhda, I love you. I love you so much it hurts. I have loved you ever since we first met, and it is my own damn fault I have never been able to tell you this until this year. I can't live without you, you see." His voice was reasonable, but it shook. "Would you....that is... will you marry me?"

He sank down on his knee, and offered her what he had been hiding behind his back: a slender silver ring. The narrow band was set with emeralds that caught the flickering firelight and threw it back in green shards that caught her eyes. The potion, she thought. He was making the ring with the potion.

Severus's face was white and set, his eyes too bright and fixed on her.

Nadezhda felt as if her world, so long broken, was coming back together, seamless and whole. Her head was swimming. Not in my wildest, most hopeful dreams. Not in even my dreams. I can't believe...I can't....I can't....

"I will," she said softly, and held out her left hand. Severus took the ring and slid it on her finger, where it fit as if it had grown there. His hands were shaking, as if he had just come in out of the cold. She took those hands with hers, stilled their shaking, and leaned up to kiss him. Their lips met, and their hearts met, and then his arms crept around her, and hers around him, and it seemed as if their bodies were nothing more than two halves of a whole, long sundered, and recently put back together once more, and they came together in the white room, on Christmas Day, in the morning.