A/N: Here's the penultimate chapter! Just one more to go! :-)

CHAPTER THREE: THEIR SONG

"Where are they?" Severus looked all around, expecting to see his comrades... somewhere. But there was no one.

"Severus, I told you," Fawkes hated to see the man, really still a boy in so many ways, look so confused, but he had to know the truth. "They're gone. They gave up on your return, left you for dead."

"What?" he turned on her, those dark eyes blazing, but Fawkes was not afraid. He had harshness in him, but he was still her Severus. There was goodness in him too, even if he didn't know it. "That's impossible. You mean they didn't even try to find me? Surely at least Lucius-"

"No," she shook her head. "I think he thought about it, but he was too afraid of your master to disobey his order. They don't care for you, Severus. Not enough to save you when their own numbers are at further risk."

Severus Snape's gaze hardened, and he set his mouth in a line. "Very well then. If that's the way they'll have it, then I won't be a Death Eater to serve the Dark Lord any longer, but for my own purposes. It's the ends that matter, not the means. As long as I'm a part of the takeover, as long as I subjugate the Muggle population, I need no affection for the Dark Lord."

Fawkes didn't know what she had expected Severus to say, but now that he had said it she was not surprised. After all, most followers of dark wizards didn't join up because they cared for their leaders, but because they saw them as the only people who could get them what they wanted. "Why do you desire that so much?" she kept her voice soft, her hand still in his, their eyes still locked together. "Take it from me, it's not worth it. We gain much more by living in harmony with Muggles than by trying to subjugate them, even if we live separately." Finally, finally she had the chance to say these words to someone who needed to hear them. "Is it because of him, that you feel this way? Because of your father?"

Severus stared at her for a long moment, and for an instant she saw that same vulnerability in his eyes that she had seen when she had sat with him as a little boy, but it was quickly gone. Replaced by shock and even anger. Once again he released her hand and drew away. "That was you!"

Fawkes's heart caught in her throat. She hadn't even considered this angle, but now it was all too clear. Surely a person as private at Severus would balk at the thought of another human being hearing his deepest thoughts, even as a child. That was why she had made him feel safe then, because she had been a bird. A male bird, even, or so he had apparently thought at the time.

"Please," she tried. "Don't be angry with me. If it pleases you I won't bring it up again, but I never believed the spell would be broken. I had fully expected to stay a phoenix by then. Long before then, really. I only wanted to help."

"That doesn't make it all right," he said, though he relaxed his stance a bit. "But... a spell? A thousand years? And you said you helped me because you 'had to'?"

His brain seemed to be regaining its full functionality, and he was a brilliant wizard, even just barely out of adolescence. He was certain to have many questions. "If you'll let me take you somewhere safer than this, we can talk. I'll explain everything." She didn't want to suggest a place. Hogwarts was out, because she didn't know, first of all, if she could get back in in her human form, and secondly she wasn't entirely certain she could trust Severus within those walls, while he still had his Death Eater convictions. And the thought of asking to go to Severus's home with him made her blush. So she would let him decide the locale. The very thought of having the time to just sit down with someone, perhaps eat human food, and tell her story... well, the pure joy of it didn't even fully register in her mind.

"I..." he hesitated, and Fawkes could barely believe her eyes, but Severus was reaching out, his hand moving for hers, taking it in his again. Her body was on fire, and it had nothing to do with previously being a phoenix. "I suppose, for a little while..."

"Stop!" A strong voice and the pounding of hooves interrupted their moment, and they turned in unison to see a centaur with white-blond fur and hair galloping towards them, skidding to stop nearby, his brilliant blue eyes anxious.

"Firenze?" Fawkes had no idea what was going on.

"You mustn't leave together. I have read the stars. Your fates are much graver than that. If you are seen in public now, Fawkes, in that form, then we will all suffer the consequences far into the future."

"Ridiculous," Severus snapped, but Fawkes shook her head. She didn't know how... perhaps she had a bit of the Second Sight, as Trelawny liked to babble on about at school, but as soon as Firenze had spoken those words she realized that she still had a bad feeling in her chest about tonight. In her desperation to save Severus and her bliss at being safe and together with him she had forgotten it, but now it was back.

"Listen to him Severus, please," she said. "I think he might be speaking the truth."

Severus still looked doubtful, but he remained silent and let Firenze speak again. "You are both needed for other things. Other, very important things that will shape our entire society. Fawkes, you were the only one who could save Severus from the acromantulas because you were the only one he would listen to, the only one he would bother to trust long enough to learn the truth. Because you and he are tied by fate, by the stars..."

Fawkes turned to meet Severus's gaze and found that he had done the same, and his dark eyes held a gentle conviction. He felt it too, that the centaur's words were true. That they were, somehow, meant for each other from the beginning. Had he been the one she had dreamt of all along, even from when it had all started a thousand years ago... the one to take her away, to give her her freedom? She sensed it as true. Had fate been at play even as far back as then? Had it set her on the path to be taken by the evil dark wizard Aldous, to become a phoenix, to return to Hogwarts and become Albus's companion, just so that she would meet Severus one day?

"You must return to your old lives, at least until your missions are complete. And you mustn't let on to anyone that you have encountered each other in this manner, not until the day the Dark Lord takes his last breath. This much I know for certain."

She believed him. Fawkes still believed him and so too, she knew, did Severus, but it still didn't sit right with her. Firenze's words made no sense to her mind, even when her heart understood their truth. "I don't understand," she told the centaur. "How can I return to my previous life now that the spell has been broken?"

"You know." Once again he appealed to a deeper level of understanding that her logical mind could not touch. "You have been a phoenix for near a thousand years. Your body is so familiar with the state that you should be able to use the Animagus spell to transform again without hesitation."

"Truly?" she murmured, the centaur's image blurring with her tears, but she knew he was telling the truth. Then, it was back to her old life and her old ways, at least until Voldemort's destruction.

Severus watched the expression on Fawkes's face and it tugged at his heartstrings. He felt her sorrow, and her knowledge, even without the use of Legilimency. The centaur's ridiculous babblings were true in this case. They had to return to their old lives. There would be no whisking Fawkes away to a far-off establishment to learn her story, and he would not feel the touch of her hands again until the spell was broken.

Perhaps the death of the Dark Lord would be the start of a new life... one in which he, Severus,made the rules, and the Wizarding world could rule over the Muggles without abandoning their companions in forests to be eaten by acromantulas. And then they would be together again, and she would understand his position. Already she had not abandoned him for disagreeing with her and for being a Death Eater, the way Lily had.

Thinking back on Lily, he still felt the fond affection coupled with loss that he always had, but it was different now. He still wished for her to see him as he truly was, to be his friend again, but the feelings he felt for Fawkes were stronger. Stronger than anything he had ever felt before in his life. "Will I see you again?" the vulnerable murmur left his lips before he could think. He wanted to be sure she would stay with him, although in his heart he knew she would.

Fawkes drew in a trembling breath and turned her tearful gaze upon him, reaching her soft hand out to rest on his cheek, and he closed his eyes and placed his hand over hers, indulging in this touch for a moment. This touch that would soon go away. For how long he did not know.

When he opened his eyes again her own dark irises were full of that conviction, that phoenix fire he had fallen in love with without even realizing it, perhaps since the dawn of time. "You will. I am not bound to Hogwarts as a phoenix, and I can come to you any time I wish, if there are no battles and if I can find you. You are meant for so much more than this, Severus. You are a good man, and I believe in you with all my heart and soul. I will watch over you, and some day, when our missions are complete, we'll be together again. We can... leave all this behind." She closed her eyes and sang, for a moment, lines of the songs he had heard her sing so often before. Her voice was even sweeter as a woman... it spoke of such loneliness, such longing, and yet... hope.

Severus allowed himself to smile, reaching forward to pull her into his arms. "I will carry you away," he promised. She would see, would see the kind of person he was, and they would be together again. Whatever her past, he was now her future.

Fawkes closed her eyes as a few tears slipped down her cheeks, indulging in this bliss, this glorious moment with Severus. He was holding her in his arms, and they were together. She had found the one to carry her away, to rescue her from her imprisonment, and though she would remain a phoenix for some time still, she knew in her heart they would find each other again, and all would be well. He still fashioned himself a Death Eater now, but if Firenze's words were true, they both had roles to play in a mission that would save this world and culminate in Voldemort's destruction. But she didn't need the centaur's words. She knew her Severus, and she knew that when he grew older he would come to see his own truth, and take the right side. And no matter what, she loved him.

Drawing gently back, Fawkes leaned up and their lips met for a brief, lingering moment. It was strange, this being in love, so sudden and yet so true. They did not even need to say the words for their meaning to be clear. As a former victim of sexual abuse, Fawkes should have been afraid to love, but she had lived so long as a phoenix and seen so many close, loving relationships that any fears had subsided a long time ago. And there was a wave of magic connecting her with Severus, a knowledge of a reality they had chosen that reached beyond fears. That glittered with the truth of their destiny, together.

Their lips parted and Fawkes stepped back, closing her eyes as Severus and Firenze watched. Severus still felt the lingering warmth of her lips against his as he watched his beloved transform into a phoenix again, instantly as the centaur had said she would be able to. Then, without another word, Firenze nodded his satisfaction at their actions and galloped back into the forest. Fawkes, her shining black bird eyes sad, flew forward, hovering in front of Severus for their bittersweet parting. She leaned forward and pressed her head into his hand and he embraced her, surprised at the warmth her feathers exuded, and at the same time remembering it from when he had been a small boy, and she had been the only friend he could tell all of his story too.

"When this is all over, will you tell me your story?" he asked her when their gazes met again.

She nodded, their thoughts as one, and then she lifted off and flew back over the gates, in the direction of Hogwarts and her home with the headmaster.

And, already dreaming of the day he would see her next, Severus Apparated away into the night.