In Memoriam

In Memoriam

Seeing the statue for the first time was nearly her undoing, although looking back she realised that that in fact had come a short while later. She had been standing in the window of the Infirmary when it had arrived on the back of a rude cart pulled by two thestrals. She saw them clearly, their blackness seeming to suck all of the light out of the dim autumn day, for she had witnessed death. All of those who remained had. The last battle had been a bloody one indeed, and she had emptied her cupboards of bandages and her stores of draughts and potions and still the wounded had come.

He had been one of the last, broken and bloodied beyond all recognition, and yet she had known him. How could she fail to recognise that careworn face, haughty even in extremity; those long limbs, twisted now; that lean body, bruised and battered. She had tended to it often enough, over the years, knew almost every inch of it, and yet they had never been more than colleagues. Never friends, not really, certainly never lovers. No. Not they.

Sibyll and Minerva were overseeing the statue's levitation from the cart and into the school. Circumstances had forced their collaboration and neither one looked happy about it, but then there was precious little to be happy about. She sighed and pinned a stray tendril of greying hair back underneath her starched cap, and busied herself straightening sheets and folding screens. The Infirmary had been empty for weeks now, the sudden horrific rush of activity a few weeks ago now the stuff of nightmares and waking phantasms. All of her patients had either died or been transferred to St Mungo's where they remained still, and the school stood empty save for those members of staff who had survived. She stayed on for there was nowhere else for her to go; and she had faith in the Headmistress when she said that the school would rise again, phoenix like, from the ashes of its destruction, for she had to have faith in something after all.

She looked around at the empty beds and her gaze fell on one in the far corner. He had lain there and she had tended him, like so many times before, only this time she had failed him. She had not been capable enough to save him. She had held the potion to his lips, one that he himself had brewed and she had kept, stronger than all the rest for his need after years of abuse was always greater, and she had willed him to live. She had willed it with a desperation that alarmed her with its vehemence. There had been enough death, and she would not allow him to add his name to the list, not after everything they had been through.

The potion had failed. She had drizzled two vials of it between his parched, cracked lips and then he had pushed her hand away and rasped,

"No. No more."

She saw death draw its shutters across his eyes and there was nothing more she could do for him. Thirty years, man and boy, and the best that she could say was that she was with him at the end.

A crypt had been hewn from the bedrock on which Hogwarts stood. It was fitting that the final resting place of so many of its inhabitants be within the confines of the school they had loved and he had loved the school far more than many had realised. And now the statue would be his memorial, guardian of his earthly remains. She smiled sadly. He would not have wanted all the fuss that surrounded a hero's death, she knew that, but at least he was at home underground, in the bowels of the school.

She found herself visiting the crypt more and more as the year stretched to a close. She would sit for hours staring up at the tall, dark man with the proud features and the flowing black robes, frozen forever in marble. No-one missed her or wondered where she was. No-one would have guessed and sought her out, were it not for the New Year's Eve 'party'. Sibyll's idea, of course, and Minerva was too tired to argue about it. It had been a party in name only, of course, for its guests could be numbered on two hands. Were there really so few of them left?

No-one noticed her slip from the staff room with a bottle of his favourite firewhisky in her hands. She did not want to celebrate the beginning of the New Year; she wanted to mourn the passing of the old one, and she wanted to mourn him. She stood before him and raised the neck of the bottle to her lips, knowing that it was an acquired taste and that it would sting, but praying that it would at least make her feel warm inside for the first time in months.

"Slainthe, Severus," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and feeling the sting of the whisky on her lips. "We're expected to make a new start for the New Year. What do you think about that, hmm?"

Then she set the bottle down and picked up her skirts, stepping on to the granite plinth that stood at the foot of his sarcophagus. Even on a level with the statue it still dwarfed her, for it was life size and he had been so much taller than she. He had stood taller than any other man she had known, she knew that now. Now that it was too late to tell him.

She told him anyway, slipping her arms around the cold, unyielding stone and looking into the lifeless black orbs that were so unlike his eyes. She pressed her lips to his cheek, closed her eyes, and let her tears fall where they would for he would not complain, not ever. Not ever again.