AN: Many thanks to karelia for her superfast beta work on this fic!
Okay, peeps. Time to think thinky thoughts…
Snape's face froze with a look of total surprise as he toppled over.
Hermione lifted him with a spell and set him in the center of the bed, folding a blanket over him. She was irrationally worried he would get cold.
She looked down on his incongruously beautiful face and kissed his forehead. "I meant, I'm so sorry I can't do what you want, Severus. I just can't let you die without a decent fight, and I can't have you mucking up my research anymore."
She kissed his Petrified lips and headed for the door, muttering, "Make me promise not to research. What the hell was I thinking?"
:
When she walked into the sitting room, she was struck by the palpable expectation in the room. Whatever entity lurked in the books knew what had just happened and was… eager. The air was pregnant with anticipation.
She walked over to the most benign book she could think of, Lavitia Morrel's Book of Common Healing Spells, and pressed her fingertips to the spine. It throbbed excitedly under her hand. She crossed over to the chair and crouched down to look at the papers that had slipped off the shelf the other night. A quick scan through the old, yellowed sheets showed they were notes on the subject of demonic possession. "Stupid, Hermione. Truly stupid. You could have been looking at these days ago."
The awareness in the room fluttered against her mind like a butterfly. She straightened up and looked around.
"All right," she snapped, stepping away and pulling out her wand. "Whatever you are, show yourself!"
A barely perceptible rustle of paper circulated around her, one she might have missed had she not attuned herself to Severus's muted voice.
"This isn't a game! Come out now, or go away. I've no time for this nonsense. A man's life is at stake!"
The barely audible susurration again raced around the room again. Awareness pressed against her, and she felt both censure and amusement.
She sucked up her ragged courage and expelled it in a quiet plea. "Help me."
She yelped when she heard a noise by her ear. She whirled around in time to see a book slide two inches off the shelf. Swallowing her terror, she read the title, Advanced Protective Charms.
She reached for it, and it flew off the shelf, seeming to leap for her hand. She caught it, noting that the feeling of sentience was gone once the book left the shelf. It was a bit of a struggle to hold, and she nearly dropped it as the cover fell open and the pages started to flap, caught in a mysterious wind. Cradling the book in her palms, she let it flutter until it settled at the beginning of a chapter entitled, "Protecting Yourself from the Unknown and Unknowable." It wasn't what she had been expecting. She'd assumed she was dealing with a poltergeist, like Peeves, only less formed.
A ripple of amusement held the subtle wisp of insult.
"Okay," she said to the entity. "Give me a minute to read."
She walked over to his chair but stopped. The presence in the room became a pressure, which grew as she walked closer to the shelves that held the books on Dark Arts. She swallowed thickly and backed away. The feeling dissipated with each step. She walked back towards the books on healing and felt their lightness soothe her nerve endings, but the pressure grew again.
She looked around the room and finally understood what she had been looking at all along. Severus had organized his library under his own, personal system. He had disregarded any common organizational rules and grouped them according to beneficence, even the ones stacked on the floor and the sofa. The worst of the Dark Arts tomes were grouped right behind his chair. The most benevolent topics were directly opposite. The shelves that she had thought were filled in an almost whimsical order, shaded perfectly from light to dark. She would have caught it sooner if she'd had time to explore his library these last few days.
She snorted.
Most likely, she would have mindlessly rearranged them.
She felt an answering cascade of rebuke and delight.
"I'll just go read upstairs, then shall I?"
She held the page with her finger and pushed past the pressure to reach the door to the stairs. Digging out some parchment and ink, she crawled into bed next to Severus for comfort and began to research what the books wanted her to know.
:
Hermione looked up when she realized she was having trouble seeing. A flick of her wand lit the candle next to the bed.
She'd lost track of how many hours she'd spent, or how many pages she'd filled. She'd alternated between terrified and thrilled on and off throughout the day. Eventually, her awareness and emotions had gone numb. Closing one book with a quiet thump, she would hear an answering thump from the room below. She would cautiously make her way down to the sitting room to find another book lying on the floor open to yet another relevant passage. She would then pick it up and scurry back to the bed like a squirrel hiding nuts.
She closed the book and listened. There was no answering sound from downstairs. She'd apparently reached the end of her recommended reading list.
She crawled out of bed and stretched her back before leaning down and kissing Severus's black marble lips.
His right eye and cheek remained deathly pale.
"Hold on for me," she whispered. "I haven't run out of hope yet."
She renewed the spell on him and left the room.
It was slightly brighter in the sitting room, but not much. She walked slowly into the center of the room, closing her eyes and finding the place of balance by the subtle pressures on her mind. A ripple of contentedness swirled around her, and she knew she was in the right place.
She opened her eyes, mindful of the twilight gloom beyond the faded curtain, and raised her arms to begin.
"Salvio Hexia. Salvio Cura. Fero Anima. Fero Animus. Protego Maximus. Incantato Solidus!"
At the last spell, a cylinder of light flared around her, leaving the room beyond her shields blurry and indistinct. She lowered her arms and bit her lip. Her numbness fell away—and left her terrified and excited, fatalistic and desperately hopeful.
She swallowed down her conflicting emotions and shouted, "Show yourself!"
The room beyond flared with both light and darkness, and she winced against the strobing effect.
She felt herself surrounded by several powerful presences and cowered as they seemed to storm around her in a rage, both righteous and tainted.
Directly before her, the swirling extremes either merged or were pushed aside by a ball of grey. It solidified and lengthened, taking on a human form as it grew.
Hermione panted in fear and awe as the grey shape elongated until it seemed to settle on the floor. Complete, it raised a hand and banished the warring presences in the room, and the conflicting lights and shadows disappeared. It turned to her and she gasped.
It was Severus, but …not.
The entity before her had his features and his height, but there was something more feminine about him. He was thinner, more delicate, and less flawed, making him less him.
His hair was grey, his skin was grey, his eyes—and the robes which made his body ambiguously asexual—were the exact same shade. The thing before her looked like an animated statue, seeming to neither reflect light nor absorb it.
It just was.
It looked at her with placid features, and she swallowed hard, feeling like a bug under glass. She gathered her Gryffindor courage and lifted her chin.
"What the hell are you?" she said, with more belligerence than she'd intended.
We are the Balion Bardo. Its voice was the deep baritone of Severus's former voice, overlaid with the whisper of a hundred other voices. We are what stands between. We are the cusp between good and evil, law and chaos. Life and void.
"I've never heard of you."
Does that signify?
"It might. I need help. I'd feel better if I had an understanding of what you are." Hermione felt her curiosity warring with the gravity of the situation. She wanted to question this entity for hours—she felt a minor compulsion to do so—but she was running out of time.
If you have angels and demons, does it not make sense that there would be an avatar of balance?
"I have no idea. One would think somewhere along the way someone would have made a note about your existence. Why are you here? Why are you hiding in Severus's books?"
We are everywhere opposing forces are in balance.
"I don't understand."
No, it is plain that you do not, and yet you are so very sure of yourself. This is what attracts us to you.
"Lovely. Now answer my question."
His books are in balance. The tension in this library creates a harmonic that draws us. It perfectly reflects the man. He is a nexus.
"What do you mean?"
He is balance. He embraces both good and evil, and yet holds them both in contempt. He has brought about great destruction, and the result was fantastic renewal. Because of his actions, both the dark and the light were strengthened. He carried the potential of victory for either side suspended within him for years. Even now, by clawing for the light, he is knowingly pulling you into darkness. This both thrills and torments him.
He is our creature utterly.
"But he's been a force for good!"
By willingly embracing his capacity for evil.
"But he's capable of such love! He did it all for love!"
While clutching hatred to his heart as his most prized possession. Only at the end of his life has his heart embraced pure love, at the very moment pure malice is taking over his body.
He mesmerizes us.
"Why do I feel you when he doesn't?"
Does a river feel the ocean when they meet?
"Don't play word games! Answer my question!"
We are not compelled to.
"Then answer me this, why are you speaking to me at all?"
We find you fascinating. We did not understand why you were able to pull him out of balance. Now we do.
You do not believe, and yet you accept our existence.
You find beauty in his deformity. You show the depth of your regard by betraying him. You are unsure if you love him, yet are willing to sacrifice yourself for him.
This pleases us.
Unaccountably stung by the creature's appraisal, she snapped at it. "So did you just want to gawk at me? Or is there a reason why you're here?"
You have a choice before you. We have a vested interest in this choice.
"Why?"
A nexus we find convenient may be destroyed. This is always of interest to us.
"And you need me to preserve this nexus? By making a choice? Why don't you?"
We cannot make a choice. We are the moment of choice.
"So you need me to choose to save him? Then I do! I chose to have him live!"
It is not so simple. You have many choices before you.
"What are they? Tell me what I need to do!"
We cannot. You must embrace your own choice. However, we will tell you what they are.
"I'm listening."
If you save him and survive unscathed, he will fully embrace the light, and his soul will become the property of the light. You will take him from us.
"How do I do that?"
Destroy the demon tethered to his life-force.
"I don't know how."
You cannot. It is beyond your present capabilities.
"Great. Thanks for that. Next choice?"
If you save him and do not survive, he will fully embrace the dark. His soul will be lost to us with this choice as well.
"You mean if I make the choice Narcissa Malfoy made?"
Correct.
"Right, so that's not an option either. Are there any useful choices here?"
If you chose to do nothing, his soul will join with us while his body pays the debt laid upon him. We will be strengthened, but our nexus will be destroyed.
"And lots of innocent people will die while we try and figure out how to stop it."
There are no innocent people. Only those who have not made a choice yet.
Hermione narrowed her eyes at that. "I don't like you very much."
This means little to us.
"Quit wasting my time. You wouldn't be helping me if you wanted me to do nothing. This whole 'we can't chose' thing is crap, isn't it? You pushed that folio off the shelf. You want to help me. You need him."
You do not understand our nature. He pleases us. He gives us an anchor to your plane. This does not mean we need him. We are incapable of need, just as we are incapable of being sated. For us, there is no love or hate, only fascination, satisfaction, and bemusement, along with their antipodes.
"Then why are you here? Why have you lured me into this conversation? Surely you must experience desire, or you wouldn't have actively tried to recruit me to preserve your nexus."
Our reasoning is beyond your small ability to understand. If it helps you to anthropomorphize, this is acceptable to us. You interest us because you are close to balance, and yet destroy balance. You are an anomaly.
"You want me to choose you? Become one of your sources of amusement, like Severus?"
You cannot choose us. We are the moment of choice. Those that choose balance are not our creatures. Only those caught firmly between against their will are ours.
"Look, this is fascinating, truly, but I don't have time for this. There's another option, isn't there. What do you want?"
We want nothing.
"Oh, cut the crap and just tell me what you think I need to hear."
So brave and so frightened, you are. Very well. If you pay his price, he will stay in balance and continue to give us an anchor.
"But won't I die? You said my death will make him embrace the dark."
His price is not his soul. That belongs to us at this moment. The Dark has no power over it. Your death is not required. However, fail, and it will be an inevitable outcome.
"What price must I pay?"
We do not know. You must bargain with the demon.
"Oh. Great."
One final thing, and then we will leave you to make this choice.
"What?"
The demon is in your debt. It has partially paid the price. For you to win what you seek, you must make sure there is balance, in order to be done with it forever.
"In debt to me? How?"
It did not deign to answer. She felt a ripple of amusement slide across her as the presence dissolved, leaving her feeling like a tiny fish being grazed by a whale.
When the gloom of the evening returned to the sitting room, she had no concept of how much time had passed. It had felt like both an eternity and a mere moment at the same time.
She dropped her shields just in time to see another book fall off the shelf. It landed with a slight bounce on the seat of Severus's chair.
She walked over and read the title, Liber Malorum Spirituum. Her hand trembled as she lifted up the book. She headed for the stairs, wondering if learning how to summon demons while huddled next to Severus's body was the brightest thing to do.
*snrk*