They ought not, of course, to have been there. Ought not to have just turned a corner
and there encountered blood, screams and hurt in a violent death that was warmer
than an exploding sun. Severus could remember her screams. Oh Merlin, her screams
– and all because she had been just a few steps in front of him, landing on top of him
when the death she feared most swept over them in a forceful rain of flames, debris of
falling buildings and shards of what used to be human bodies. All around them others
had been knocked to their feet and his heart pounded loudly as they rode out this
destructive wave. He wondered for the first time why they had taken a walk in Muggle London,
why today of all days just the two of them together had done this foolish thing?
When eventually he could move again he found that she was gone, gone in an
unexpected whirlwind like gold dust or desert sand blown away. His mind was a
maelstrom of selfishness and nightmarish fears and so he had carried her all the way
home, without minding the urging thoughts that screamed, "It is too late, too late, too late…"

He wasn't supposed to be holding her in his arms, this property of someone else. But
it was many years since they strode off the battle fields, that battle field, the sun
burning as they pocketed wands and weapons and those bright beams made a
mockery of the entire world when they left their dead behind them. Light is our world
and by Merlin, there had always been and would always be a high price to be paid for that.
Many years and who, love, yes who, would try to stop him from taking this dead
woman away? Away, away, away to a cave on a strand in a grey dawn. He would lay
her to rest, a light spray of rain showering him and the other two men that had come
and she would rest, forever, in wet sand where the echo of waves never stopped.
An anonymous grave did not mean there was no love for the dead.

She had once, so long ago, been given a glimpse into this quicksilver man, the empty vessel,
and found she would fill it. Fill him with love. Because she was determined,
immensely curious and feeling sorry for him.

And who can douse the fire you lit just as a game?

Oh, love – I am just a man, after all, he is just a mortal after all, and mortality
sometimes fails and we must bend or break.
Hermione wouldn't bend, because he knew that no matter how yielding her spirit
was before the souls her own responded to... she couldn't bend. So she must break –
snapped in two over the knee of the black stream that had swept over them and that
carried death death on its tide.

If he had been faster –oh, love, just a little faster, just a damnable few seconds
faster- this would not have happened. Before his inner eye he could see his body
bending in the arching leap, the desperately powerful push-off that would have
thrown her out of harm's way. But he is just a man and too destructively aware of
that.

How did you go on with your life when the dancer who danced your dance has
stepped behind the final curtain?
Ah, love, you didn't – you carried on as the empty shell you had been before She
came along and, oh, maybe you laughed occasionally and even felt happy but in truth,
you're only just waiting for that moment to come when the bird that is your aching
heart can fly free.

And you live in the past, racking your brain for every moment she has ever spent with
you and you try to see what you said and what she said and what you said. Oh, all
those things you have said.
And everything she has told you, taught you. All those conversations, correspondences
and intimacies you know about even though you weren't present but she was.

It was a strictly political decision, Hermione said when she later on told him of her
conversation with Ginny, of why she must end things with him. Of why he was
suddenly being thrown away for something higher, something brighter than his bleak
dungeon soul.
"It is a strictly political decision," she said and stroked his cheek so tenderly. "In time
you'll forgive me, you'll understand I don't want to do this. But we need someone to
keep Malfoy under control, and we need his money – that's the ugly truth, love, we
need his money." Her brown eyes were so sad and worried, so captivatingly beautiful.
They shimmered with tears and unspoken words – who is she to bind him so?
Because he can see beyond the facade –that is his ability alone- and he can see the
utter ugly truth – like a petulant child she cannot let him go, will not let him go. She
is moving on to a new toy, but he is left behind, fettered and dragged in chains he
can't shake off. Who is she to do this?
"So you will marry mr. Malfoy." His tongue feels wooden, swollen and it takes up too
much place. There's a strange itching feeling in his throat as well, a heavy constriction
that makes it hard to breathe. And his heart is beating so fast, so fast like a flock of
fluttering birds flying for their lives from danger.
"I will marry Draco." She replies calmly, a shade reproachfully, understandingly,
pityingly, sadly and above all lovingly for she loves the golden man who will be her
husband and Severus is so tired now of this. Chasing all these nuances that only he
can hear in her voice as they rush by, grasping them and understanding them, angling
and returning them – he wonders if she knows what she is losing in him that she will
find in no one else and he feels so ill throughout his entire being. There is no remedy
for this. Yet who is she that she is doing this?

The last fight had been particularly nasty. They fought all the time, but this last was
appallingly spectacular. A little cautiously Harry had eventually approached the
matter, something he felt himself compelled to do as Hermione was his friend, he
loved her, and she after all had been occupying his spare guest room now for a week.
"He's burning me out, and there's not enough left of me anymore to save. Leave it
better alone," she said, not unkindly and stroked his cheek in the tender manner that
approaching her late thirties had given her. "Remember me, though, remember who I
was, love." And he would.
After that they spoke of everyday things and eventually she retreated to the manor
from whence she came. And Harry would remember. He would.

"I just feel so sorry for him," Hermione breathed and settled further into her
husband's embrace, both quite tired and waiting for sleep to overcome them but still
quite content to just quietly bask in each other's presence. "Just… very, very sorry
that he should still love me." And yes, she did sound sorry but also –for Draco knew
her very well after all these years- just a little pleased. "And after all I have done him!"
she lamented regretfully, and the contentment unknowingly became more
pronounced, almost tangible, and he couldn't help but shudder.
"You do yourself too great a justice, my dear." His flat voice cut precisely through the
personal pity-party she had arranged for 'the poor man'. Outraged, insulted, she stared at him.
"It is not a very attractive thing for anyone to be too modest – nor to be immodest.
Right now you're being the latter, thinking you're the former, and it's a little detestable.
Love, don't demean yourself with trying to imagine his woes. How could you know
them? You'll only end up imagining, exaggerating, undoing any good that it might
have done him. No, leave it better alone because, while you are a fine person and I
love you dearly, please don't cheapen both you and me with this."

And here they were then, men of the world, men that made the world, and they are
four, standing in a small, nondescript room. It is sparsely but expensively equipped –
a small, round table, three chairs, a large wardrobe looming in a far corner, and a bed
with exquisite bed linens. So this is the place where things change and events are
shaped, where the sounds of the world shifting and rearranging itself cannot be heard
for here the decisions are made. . .
There is a man lying on the bed. He looks tired, and the bruise-like half moons
under his eyes are visible proof of it. The three others are fanned out – one sitting on
the foot of his bed, one leaning against the wall right before his eyes with arms
arrogantly crossed, and the last one lounging, reclining, on a chair pulled up by the bed.
They are talking about something that is very important in every possible way,
but trivial, so trivial if you do not know what they do. A woman, her hair is a lively red,
enters quietly at some point during the conversation – right after the fair-haired man
on the bed has been coolly congratulated on so successfully recovering from his
months-long mating with insanity, and just before he breaches the subject that is so
hard on them all. She stands still by the door with her thoughtful face, merely listening.
And one must listen closely indeed for every nuance in this room.
"And did you--" he hesitated and then made the visible effort of going on, wrenching
the words from himself, "did you lay her down… gently?"
"Yes, but not for your sake."
"Did you know, professor," the Malfoy spawn said, and amazement shone so clearly
through his eyes, "That I love her? She is-- was, perhaps the most remarkable person
you'll ever meet. I know what everybody thought, and well enough at that, let them
think what they want. But I love her. Where is the, ah… grave?" Where, oh where, love?
"It is where she'd have wanted it," he spat out. So, this fair-haired child would sit and
say that he loved her.
More hesitation. "Will you… is it too much if--" Draco had to break off momentarily
when he perceived the depths of grief in the three pair of eyes –striking green,
piercing blue, oblique black- before him, not aware at all that they were perfect
reflections of his own grey. Grey in which pain swam, diving and resurfacing like a
playful dolphin, and grey that was so solemnly portrayed as only the sobriety of death
can call forth. "Will you lay me to rest next to… to her, in the end?"
"The grave will be unmarked," Ron Weasley spoke, eventually, and he was not at all
aware of his sister observing them all and seeing everything. The man with the dolphins nodded.
"Even so."
"Even so, then. Maybe, if you earn it. You have this wish… so deserve it and then
maybe in the end…"
And Severus had long since gotten up and left, headed for a cave on a stony beach
that bathed in moonlight by the time he came there. Yes where, oh where, love.
Only one person had noticed his going when he actually went, and that person was
not as of yet assured enough to go with her perceptions, and so his flight was undisturbed.

Then, almost two years after her death, he was in a bar. That was not, in itself, a
surprising thing for even before he had been struck with this soul chilling madness-like
grief he had not minded frequenting such a place. They had music there. And oh Merlin, the music.
The high, clear notes swivelled in the air as the pianist –bless his talented soul-
launched into a new series of painfulness. His mind rose easily with the music and
became more and more purified with every step covered; love and pain and grief and
love in a confused, blunt mixture but slowly the pain and hurt fell away until all that
remained was love and sadness. His grief was a sharply honed blade, a surgeon's
knife, and when it neatly sliced into him he could finally cry the tears she deserved.
The tears that would release him. Release her.
So in a smoky bar of less respectable repute Severus could finally weep drunkenly
into his almost-empty glass and for a long time he would carry with him the taste of
dim lights and the impression of tear-salted whisky in his mouth.

And they came before him, many friends he did not even know he had, pleading,
venturing into the bleak dungeons of the big bad infamously ill-tempered Severus Snape.
Their supplicant pleas were written so clearly in their eyes and they tried, oh,
they tried; they even ventured Hermione's name and he knew how much that would
cost them. Lord, he thought and closed his eyes against the painfulness, he knew.
So it was not fair, not at all fair when he viciously cut them apart, tore their patched
dreams until they ran for shelter to mend them again, carefully. It was not just and
they deserved better from him but, oh love, how could he ever give anyone that? How
could he ever give anyone a little of himself even when all they wanted was for him to live?
To just do something beyond breathing, eating and functioning – yes, to truly
live again. He could not, so then he did not. And they dared not try again.

The fire came swiftly into his life, swiftly and hastily and it turned everything upside
down in a way that nothing had before. Ginny Weasley wasn't a genius, she wasn't a
beauty, she wasn't serene, at best an adequate housewife and not even remotely
interested in potions. But she was life and liquid fire and the amazement of moonlit
nights on a broom, of wind through stifled rooms. He… needed her. Terrifyingly.
But…
"I – I can't cross over to you. Please don't ask this of me. Please." And to hear such a
man as he had once been and could be again rasp out a 'please' was enough to make
Ginny curse Hermione and wish she had been less lovely and less love-inspiring and
assure her memory that she would be mourned and thought of everyday. For the rest
of their lives. All of them.
Severus stared at her, and she could read how terrified he was in his eyes. Terrified
of living, of hurting, of feeling more than weary again. But she also saw –because
somewhere along the line of life she had grown up and even grown old and she had of
all things become a very perceptive person- that he was tired of being weary as well.
He wanted release but knew not what himself, could not decide on what shape of
mercy he would welcome or fear most.
"Then I'll come to you, I suppose." Ginny replied nonchalantly and in three steady steps
crossed the distance between them to take him into her arms.
And he wept as another set of shields went crashing down when he dropped into her
embrace because he could remember another doing this, half a life ago and oh, it was
unfair that the memory of the dead should cheat the living ones so.
"I'm sorry," she whispered softly, not at all sure to whom or why she said so but
feeling compelled to say it still. She felt as if somewhere a fragile bird was flapping its
torn wings, struggling to be enveloped by air and the adrenaline-rush of flight.
Was this love? Delicate caresses that had them flying together, absolute knowledge of one
another. Was this love? It was love of the most unexpected source and sort.
They were both broken shards of glass, with soft curves and dangerous sharp edges
but they did their best to become whole again together and eventually, with time and
many heated arguments, were so.

People say that somewhere, neither in a tropical climate nor in a particularly cold one,
there is a beach. There is a cave, and as often as not the dawn is grey and unflushed
when the sun does not paint the clouds in orange and pink and purple and streaks of
bright, bright red.
The opening is tinged with blunt peaks that hover ominously, giving the entrance
almost the appearance of tipping inwards and closing in on itself. It is said that once
one is inside, one will realise it is not, after all, a natural cave.
The walls are too smooth for that, the grey stone polished and purged of roughness.
With time moss and waves and the air will make it return, but not for many ages yet.
A small vein of a light blue stone runs through the entire of the dome-like cave ceiling,
creating dazzling cracked prisms of brilliant patterns. That too will be gone. It will
cave in eventually, one can expect. And no more will the light play exquisitely over
grey, wet sand.

Yet nothing of that matters. It had not mattered had it been ugly and defiled—though
it would never have been, for the ones that venture here have too much respect and
love for something like that to happen.

For in the middle of the cave there is a small, flat stone with a tiny inscription laid
down. And next to it, is another. And another. And another yet, and they flare out in a
spiral through the cave, several hundred of them though no one but her is resting
inside the cave. The others lie outside in the sand, but their names lie here, in the
echo of crashing waves and the hissing sputtering sounds of the sea current drawing
its breath.

'With love, always.' 'For my dearest.' 'Wait for me.' 'Never forgotten.' 'Don't pull at
their wings.' One cannot be entirely certain what to encounter. What is inscribed on
those small stones? Last messages from loved ones left behind to those doing the
behind-leaving, however unwillingly. Simple words of miss you, or endearments or
inside jokes that only one person would understand and now that person is not there.

And then, people say, finally in the middle, there are two stones placed quite close to
each other and one reads 'Dolphins played in his eyes' and the other merely 'Her
dance has ended'.

Others will follow, like 'For good and bad she was fire' and 'He was my brother' and
'Nobody ever hurt more'. 'He was a hero but a soul first'.

And it sounds like a sad thing, but it is not.

But, then… ah, you know that people say so much

Erm. Fin. Looking at it, I feel only relief. A little frustration, of course, but I can't work on this
anymore. It's just too annoying to find the freshness of it disappearing, and I am so severely
tired of it as well. I would also like to add my voice to all the others that are lamenting
the bombings in London. That part of this story was written before that happened,
and after much contemplation I dediced to let it stand anyway. I mean no offence
in any way, and if offence is taken - please forgive me.
Also, I sincerely hope this piece is not too obscure. Hinting at things is all
well and dandy, but if the hints are too small or too dark the author
only cheats his/her audience and him/herself. I apologise for that as well,
in advance.
Cheers,
E.