Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. Endless Sorrow was written by Ayumi Hamasaki, under the label Avex. The translation is from wataru at wataru. but umm. slightly modified.

A/N - Well here I am posting. This fic is based on a picture created by Saphron that was posted on the S.S. Emerald & Ebony. I'm not illiterate no matter what the fic will probably end up making you think. Though. all those descriptive linguistics classes I've taken have had a tendency to screw with my intuition. Right, anyway. updated A/N - Oops, didn't mean to confuse. I uploaded from a Word file and didn't realized that it would get rid of all my italicization. So, everything between the - - would be the translated lyrics for Endless Sorrow. Oh oh and of course, how could I have forgotten to put a link to Saphron's pic? I hope you don't mind that I'm posting this link.

---
What if you're alone and suddenly couldn't see a thing? And what if despite that you kept walking forward?
---

She leaned against the parapet, her fingertips idly tracing across the crenellations; their smoothness and history soothing. Her eyes were fixed unseeingly on the blue moon that hung -- brilliant and gibbous -- in the sky.

What was I thinking, listening to Trelawney?

There was nothing here for her. Her choices had been made long ago. If she regretted them now, it was only because of later knowledge; hard won. She'd learned that hindsight was ever perfect. She accepted that; pushed her useless regrets away; moved on. She had done what she had done then with her eyes open. Her choices were her own and she would not be made to be ashamed of them. Not now, not ever.

And yet. And yet.

Things she would have sacrificed without a thought in her youth, she found more and more meaningful as time passed and old friends died. Simple things like family, friends, peace, routine, maybe even love. She found that it was rather nice waking up in the morning, in her own bed, knowing almost exactly what the day would hold.

And now?

She liked her life; she liked what she had made of it. She worked for a man whose brilliance and integrity she admired, and if she had never had children of her own. Well, she had an entire house to mother.

So what was she doing out here in the middle of the night, on Midwinter's Night no less?

And then she felt it.

The presence of another.

---
Come here; give me your hand.
---

Earlier that day she had been stopped on the way to her Transfigurations Class.

"Give me your hand," Trelawney ordered imperiously. And -- bemused by this unexpected forcefulness on the part of the usually vague and spineless Divinations professor -- she had complied.

"Are you going to tell me that I'll meet a tall, dark stranger?" She inquired bitingly, trying to disguise her momentary discomposure.

"Not a stranger, no. Only someone you think is a stranger, someone from your past who will figure heavily in your future." Trelawney replied absently, tracing her heart line thoughtfully, totally unconscious of the heavy sarcasm directed towards her.

"The answers lie in the Astronomy Tower. But they shall only be revealed once in a blue moon," Trelawney announced portentously. "I will definitely have to study the stars more upon this subject," she said grandly, impressed by her own prophecies. And with that pronouncement the Astrology Professor swept away in a flurry of wispy scarves, jangling bracelets, and swishing robes.

Staring after the colorful figure Trelawney cut, she blinked in bemusement. Did Trelawney think she was some green girl to be taken in by melodramatic pronouncements?

---
Even if you've only got one wing, And even if I've only got one wing left...
---

It seemed that Trelawney was right in her assessment; as she was indeed standing on the parapet of the Astronomy Tower during a blue moon.

There was a wry twist to her lips as she turned to face him.

"Did she put you up to it?"

A flicker of something that might have been astonishment glinted in his eyes.

"I have no idea what you mean," he replied with his customary cool composure. If it hadn't been for that brief flicker she would have thought that he knew exactly why the two of them were here, alone.

"Well you certainly cannot have come up here simply to see me?" She hated the faintly questioning note that rose at the end of her statement. She hoped that he wouldn't have noticed it, but knew that it was highly unlikely.

"No," he replied without rancor. "Sinistra recommended that I see the blue moon tonight. She said that the view was particularly illuminating up here."

"Were you hoping to meet her here?" The words slipped out before she could stop them.

She could feel his eyes on her back, could almost hear him weighing his options in his mind. Strange, that after all these years she still knew the processes of his mind, but not the answers it gave him.

"No," he said finally, reluctantly. As though giving up a part of himself in that truth.

---
What if there isn't a single thing left to believe in?
And what if all that's left is despair?
---

"Sometimes. sometimes I think that I might have pushed you to it, to him," she confessed. Her fingers tightened against the parapet so that the rough edges of the stones bit into her hands and scraped her whitened knuckles.

"You're probably right." His voice was neutral, his words were not.

"I'm sorry for that then," she said compassionately.

He slanted her a look from out of the corner of his eye.

"Would you change it if you could?" There was a certain intellectual curiosity in his voice.

The rigid stillness of her body spoke her answer louder than words.

"I thought not." He tilted his head upwards, staring at the blinding blue of the moon.

If he were sitting at a table he would probably have steepled his fingers. It was that kind of tone, she thought to herself half- despairingly.

Her hand made an abortive attempt to touch his sleeve.

He moved away. Effortlessly, unconsciously. His barriers well in place.

---
Please, hear this prayer.
---

I did this to him. And she flinched from that truth.

In someone more prone to self-pity she most likely would have wallowed in her guilt.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, she thought to herself with bitter amusement.

"Will you ever be able to look upon me kindly?" She wondered, not realizing -- until it was too late to call back the words -- that she had spoken aloud.

"I'm sorry, I had no right to ask that." Her head turned slightly as she voiced her apology; as if she'd almost turned to look at him and then arrested the movement in mid-motion.

The moonlight picked out slivers of red in the midnight black of her hair.

Like a river of heart's blood thick enough to drown in, he thought to himself irrelevantly. And sneered mentally at the image of lovesick swain.

He couldn't see her eyes, but he could remember the first time he really noticed their color. Greyish-green with hints of lavender in certain moods. Like Scottish heather.

He remembered finding them in the park one day and realizing they were the color of her eyes. They'd grown on the very borders of the paths, looking like a beautiful stranger transplanted in to brighten the dull predictability of that dreary English day.

---
In an age that's full of wingless angels,
---

"Perhaps we've all made decisions that--" he paused briefly, careful to choose the right words, "that were the best of choices given, but not what we would have chosen in a more perfect world."

"None of us came out of Voldemort's first Coming unsullied," she said quietly, almost to herself.

"No, but some drew their lines better, I think. Were better able to judge the battles they could afford to lose in order to win the war." He was silent for a moment, remembering the day he switched sides.

Was that aimed at me? A hint of tears prickled her eyes. She doubted he noticed. She couldn't feel him move at all. Not a rustle of cloth or eddy of air to mark his living presence.

Stupid and egotistical of me to think his every comment aimed at hurting me. He would need to pay attention for that.

But he did notice, and in him the urge to lash out twinned with the urge to comfort her. His hormones were as unsteady as a teenager's. It disgusted him.

He tried to push the past away and focus on the present when she started to speak again.

"Did we all lose our wings?" She wondered rhetorically.

---
If you're left with no wings And if I've got even one wing left...
---

"There's no use that wondering now."

In another person it could almost have been sympathy shading the finer nuances of his voice, belying his brusque tone.

"Will you tell me now that it's water under the bridge? That everyone's healed and it's all fine and dandy? That they, that you, have forgiven and forgotten?" There was an anger and a defensiveness in her voice that no other could rouse.

"No, but we've all learned to live with it. To some degree or the other." His voice expressionless, even to her.

"Have we?" She challenged, try to spark some sort of emotion in his voice again. "Have we really? Or are we like ostriches, hiding our heads in the sand. Thinking, 'As long as I can't see them, they can't see me'?"

She turned to look him full in the face. At the strange symmetry of cheekbones and jaw, eyes and nose, and -- most of all -- the keen intelligence that constituted his peculiarly compelling attraction.

"I have no urge to carry this metaphor any further, I assure you," he uttered coldly. "What you postulate is also a form of living, if you'll recall."

She sighed in frustration. "Whatever Trelawney and Sinistra were trying to do -- tricking us into meeting here and talking -- definitely backfired."

"Did it?" His fathomless black eyes glinted briefly.

Or was it a trick of the moonlight? She forced herself to question reasonably, trying to suppress the brief flash of giddy happiness his words seemed inclined to trigger.

---
Together we... together we...
---

"We've been here too long, we should go back--" she suddenly said, apropos of nothing. Hoping he would understand what she was trying to say, as he once had many years ago.

Severus Snape stood still, an inscrutable expression on his face. He gave a near imperceptible, dismissive shake of his head. The faintest of smiles crossed his face, more a realignment of expression than an actual lifting of lips.

"You're entirely correct; shall we?" Courteously he extended his arm. Automatically he moved to shake his sleeve slightly so that it could fall back over the Dark Mark branded on his forearm.

Minerva McGonagall's hand stopped the motion before it began. Lightly she rested her cool fingertips on the Mark.

For a second it seemed to burn a little less painfully.

They left the parapet to the silence and the night.

- end -