"YOU HAVE ONE HOUR. DISPOSE OF YOUR DEAD WITH DIGNITY. TREAT YOUR INJURED."
The high, chilling voice rang through the castle, raising the hairs on the back of Penelope's neck, and she looked up from the bloody wound she had been stanching. She had been working in the hospital wing for hours; it was the most she could offer in a battle. She was better off saving lives than taking them, anyway. Her unfortunate patient groaned in agony and she whispered soothing words to him as she looked across the room to meet Poppy's eyes.
"Go," the nurse said firmly. "Bring the wounded to me, anyone we can help…"
"Of course." She tipped a sleeping drought down her patient's throat and slipped quietly into the corridor, unnerved by the eerie silence. The walls had crumbled in places and bore numerous scorch marks from missed curses, and she passed a column that looked dangerously cracked. As she strode down the deserted corridors toward the Great Hall, she heard muffled sounds that slowly became more distinct: a woman's wailing, soft voices, the shuffle of feet. On the stairs down she nearly slipped in a puddle of blood.
A few times she caught herself glancing around absentmindedly for Severus, as if she might see his black cloak whipping around a corner or hear his familiar tread as he stalked up the stairs to meet her. Once she reached the Great Hall, however, the knowledge that others were in need pushed all thoughts of him from her mind. She saw first the long line of bodies on the floor; people were bringing in more, even now, but she could not look at them. She could do nothing for them.
She made the grim journey to and from the hospital wing several times, delivering the wounded to Poppy's care. She was bone tired, and she could feel her leg aching and the scraping of what felt like a broken rib. A Death Eater had come blasting through the door to the hospital wing in the heat of battle and Penelope had flung herself on him, wand forgotten. Poppy jinxed the intruder to high heaven, but not before he had broken Penelope's rib with a curse that, had it reached her heart, likely would have killed her. It was no matter now, though. So long as she was able to walk and hold a wand she would continue healing, doing what little she could until she couldn't anymore.
On what felt like her hundredth time clambering down the deserted stairs, avoiding the nauseating puddle of blood, she was startled to see Harry Potter's face appear out of nothing before her.
"Potter! What-" she started to say, but he pressed a finger to his lips and she fell silent. He looked so much older than she remembered; his face was soot-stained and there was a long cut above his eye. When he spoke, it was with an urgency and decisiveness that was utterly unfamiliar.
"Professor, I don't have much time. Snape is in the Shrieking Shack. He's dying; Voldemort set his snake on him."
Penelope's heart began to beat very fast. There was more; she knew there was more.
"He was on our side, all this time," he said softly and she could hear blood rushing in her ears. "Dumbledore asked Snape to kill him; everything he did was in service to the Order. I wanted you to know in case…" He trailed off but Penelope finished the sentence in her head: in case the truth dies with us. Her mouth felt very dry.
"I'll go to him," she whispered. "The truth… the truth will be known. Thank you, Potter." He had already vanished.
She was out on the grounds before she knew what she was doing, running full bore toward the Shrieking Shack. The air burned in her lungs, her leg shaking like it could collapse at any moment, and still she ran.
The only thing that surprised her was how utterly unsurprised she was. It was as if something in her had been waiting for this moment, waiting for the final turn that Severus had in store for her. The grass whispered under her feet. Day had not yet broken, but the sky was lightening above her, the stars slowly winking out. She could see the dim silhouette of the shack growing closer. Her rib felt like it was splintering into a thousand pieces, the air burned in her lungs and she pushed herself onwards, closer to the man she had been running towards for what felt like forever… Always going back to him… She burst through the door, willing herself not to collapse.
She had been picturing him in her mind for so long it felt unreal to see him now. He lay still on the floor, his skin a chalky, deathly pale. His hair was longer than she remembered it, spilling out haphazardly around his face, and there was blood, copious amounts of blood, blossoming onto the dusty floor from a wound in his neck.
"Severus… Severus, my love…"
She knelt beside him and his dark, unfocused eyes moved slowly around the room. He did not seem to see her, but he was alive, mercifully alive. For now. She hastily pulled a small bottle of Appleton's General Antidote from her robes and tipped it down his throat, then conjured a stretcher and set off back to the castle, hoping she could make it in time.
All that mattered was that he continued breathing. She kept her eyes trained on his chest, oblivious to the shouts and stares of passersby. Each slight rise and fall gave her strength to take another agonizing step; each time the motion stopped she focused all the energy she had left into hoping, praying, as though her own sheer willpower could keep him alive. Keep breathing, keep breathing… Just one more, my love… and another…
Poppy came bustling towards her as Penelope burst into the hospital wing, then stopped short when she saw who was in the stretcher.
"No." Her normally warm voice was hard and cold. "I won't have him here."
Penelope didn't even have it in her to scowl at the older woman.
"It's not your choice. He's wounded, and we're healers. I've personally had enough death for one day…"
"Get him out."
Penelope glanced at Severus' chest and saw him take another shallow, agonizing breath… They did not have time for this.
Numbly, she pointed her wand at her friend. Every nerve in her body was shot, every muscle aching, but her hand was steady.
"I hate to do this, Poppy… but get out of my way or I'll hex you to hell."
The older witch gave her a look that was almost pitying.
"Fine. I'll not lift a finger for him, but take him to the bed in the corner and do what you will." She turned away and Penelope rushed Severus to the bed, breathing a sigh of relief.
She wondered, without much feeling, what the hell she was doing. I know the truth, she thought, staring down at the prostrate man before her as she cast several diagnostic spells. He has to live long enough to know that…
The diagnostics revealed he had administered a weak antidote himself before she had arrived at the Shack, and that had kept him alive just long enough. The cursed poison from the snake was the most dire threat, but after that she still had massive blood loss to contend with. She stanched the wound in his neck with a quick spell and, after trying several incantations, found one that would at least arrest the spread of the poison through his body. But nothing she tried seemed able to lift the curse entirely.
As she worked she heard the sounds of the battle resuming below her, the crashes and screams reaching her ears as though from many miles away. She tried a third incantation, a fourth, a fifth… She lost count… Then, abruptly, the curse dissipated, the charmed air around Severus glowing a comforting blue.
Someone must have killed the snake, she realized, but there was no cause for celebration. He was safe from magical wounds, but simple blood loss would likely kill him now. He was barely breathing, the rise and fall of his chest shallow and arrhythmic. She cast another diagnostic spell but it just told her what she already knew: he wouldn't last much longer.
The effort was beginning to wear on her. She could feel a dull pain in her chest, her leg shaking underneath her; something seemed to be terribly wrong with her knee. She paid it no mind and kept working, summoning potion after potion from Poppy's supplies, trying to find something that would help him hold on, if only for a little while longer. She knew that all she was doing was keeping him barely alive, buying him minutes of useless time. With the amount of blood he had lost, he would need some sort of massive, immediate replenishment to fully recover…
The recollection came to her so vividly she felt stupid for not having thought of it before. In Muggle Medicine, Magical Methods—the book she had loaned Severus, so very long ago—Warlock Adelbard had mentioned a Muggle procedure known as a blood transfusion and noted its similarity to ancient blood-binding magic. Hypothetically, one could modify a blood-binding spell such that it drew blood from one person's body into another, but this type of magic had never been tested to Penelope's knowledge. Her heart was pounding painfully in her chest, and she became very conscious of the warm, red blood pumping through each of her veins. She summoned several books from her office and began flipping hastily through the first, trying to find something about blood runes, love magic… anything…
At last, in the second book, she found it: a rune the author claimed would create a blood pact between two parties. If she modified it slightly, it could be made to actually transfer blood from one person to another—at least in theory. In practice, using an untested blood rune was foolhardy at best; at worst, it would be the last thing she ever did. She looked down at the pale, thin man lying before her; his hair was longer, his sallow face more lined than it had been a year ago, but it was still him. Still the man she loved. She realized she was not afraid to die.
Still, something tugged at the back of her mind, some reason she shouldn't do this… Then she remembered: she had promised Potter the truth would be known. She owed him and Severus that much. She summoned a quill and parchment from her office and hastily scribbled down everything Potter had told her, then folded the parchment and slipped it into a pocket over her heart.
If there was a good way to die, she thought, this was it. She had borne Severus' secrets and lies for years; it was only right that now, at the end, she would bear the truth.
She glanced furtively around the hospital room; Poppy was bent over a patient, and several people were gathered around the beds of friends and loved ones. No one was looking. The noise from downstairs had quieted and she wondered idly why that might be as she raised her wand and cut a complex rune deep into the flesh of her left forearm.
A long time ago it might have hurt, but she felt nothing now. She watched the bright red blood slowly trickle down the curve of her arm as she took Severus' right arm, thinner and bony, and cut an almost identical rune into it. She pressed their arms together and muttered the incantation from the text under her breath, hoping no one would hear.
"Visceras mobilis… visceras mobilis…"
For several long minutes, nothing happened. The silence from downstairs was deafening and she wondered numbly if they had lost, if they were both going to die anyway no matter what. Blood dripped in a warm trickle down her arm and she watched Severus' breathing become shallower and more infrequent… The beginnings of desperation and panic clawed at her chest…
He took a long, shuddering breath, and then no more.
She had nowhere to turn, no other potions or incantations to try, no further effort to distract her from the crushing reality. She was alone. Alone with the truth she had never even needed, while the only thing she did need was gone forever. The pain in her chest was unbearable.
"Severus…" She reached out and pressed her hand to his sunken cheek as tears dripped onto her outstretched arm, mingling with the rivulets of her blood. "Please don't go… don't leave me… Visceras mobilis…" She fell to her knees and pressed her face to his unmoving chest to stifle her sobs.
"Don't leave me, Severus, not now… I couldn't bear it…" Her rib ached horribly with each shuddering breath. "I love you…" Her blood dripped stupidly on the marble floor as she pressed her arm against his lifeless one.
"Visceras mobilis…"
Her blood was no longer dripping. She lifted her head from his chest and watched in astonishment as her blood moved in a thin stream, wrapping around her arm and Severus' like a gory Christmas ribbon. She couldn't have pulled her arm away if she wanted to; it was stuck fast. Suddenly her stomach dropped and a wave of nausea rolled over her, leaving her lightheaded; she realized she was feeling her blood leaving her, pulled into Severus' dying body. What if it doesn't stop? she wondered idly. Will it just drain all the blood from my body and leave me dead?
That certainly felt like what was happening. Black spots swam in front of her eyes and she shook her head, focusing on Severus' face. Some of the color seemed to be coming back into his cheeks, perhaps his chest moved slightly… She couldn't tell anymore. Something dark and warm was slowly closing around her. It doesn't matter, she thought as she strained her eyes to get one last look at him. They were bonded now; they would be together in life or together in death…
A distant roar reached her ears and she realized it was applause, jubilant, overwhelming, raucous applause. Where was it coming from? She could not see, Poppy was shouting… Was this what people heard when they died?
She thought oddly of the applause at the end of a concert, and it was as if Severus was standing beside her once more in the warm darkness of the theater… She could see his aquiline face beaming boyishly as he clapped; they were all clapping, that fever pitch of happiness and delight and gratitude rising up in the air once the music had stopped at last…