Every bone in Severus' body hurt, and that was how he knew he wasn't dead.
He hadn't opened his eyes yet, but he had a feeling those would hurt, too. He could feel a scratchy pillow pressed against his cheek, crisp sheets pulled up to his chin. There was an uncomfortable tingling sensation in his right arm, which was odd, because he couldn't remember anything in particular happening to it. He cracked open an eyelid that felt as though it was made of lead, and the rush of light made his head throb. His eyesight was poor but the blurry sights and smells were familiar enough. The hospital wing…
How had he come to be alive, and in the castle, and not long since bled dry on the floor of the Shrieking Shack? There was no one in the world who cared about him, no one who didn't revile his name as a murderer and a traitor… The last thing he remembered, after giving Potter the memories, after he had tipped the antidote into his mouth with the last strength that remained in him, was a pair of green eyes. He hadn't been sure if they were Lily's or Penelope's: the two ghosts that had haunted him in life, come to take him across the divide to death…
He tried to move, and immediately realized that had been a bad idea. His throat burned, and there was a dull, horrible ache in the side of his neck. The pins and needles in his right arm really were terrible and he tried to move it, but found that he couldn't. He heard an oddly familiar gasp and turned his head in the direction of the noise.
Deep green eyes met his. Beautiful, living, familiar eyes.
"You…" he rasped, and his voice sounded horrible, even to him. "Of course it's you…"
Penelope gave a soft scream and promptly burst into tears.
Someone was tipping water down his throat, and he saw the portly figure of Madam Pomfrey patting Penelope's shoulder, muttering, "There, there…" as she continued to sob uncontrollably. He realized he had never seen her cry before.
"Is… my return… that… unwelcome?" he croaked, trying to affect some snideness despite the fact that his throat felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to it. She did not laugh.
"I th-thought you were going to die," she gulped. "And you d-d-didn't know that I knew everything…" Fresh tears poured down her cheeks. "I thought you were going to die thinking I h-hated you…"
He stared in amazement at her beautiful face, older than he remembered and streaked with tears, but still undoubtedly hers. He found he could not speak. Ignoring the bone-deep ache, he reached out and gently brushed the tears from her cheeks with his thumb, before he came to his senses and pulled away abruptly.
He had almost forgotten that a year had passed since they last saw each other; reality hit him with all the grace of a bludger. He sat up clumsily, struggling to support himself and not vomit while also thinking of something to say to the woman he had betrayed a year ago, something, preferably, to stop her crying. His right arm felt like rubber, and he glanced down at it in concern, only to realize with a gasp of horror that it seemed to be connected to hers.
"Penelope…" he growled. "What the bloody hell did you do?"
A few weeks later, he had regained full use of his arm. They had found a counter-spell to separate them, but not before Madam Pomfrey lectured Penelope so harshly on the use of untested magic he felt his own ears burning in shame, as though it had been partially his fault for not just dying as a lesson to future reckless experimenters.
Penelope planned on assuming her post as Buidistry professor once more, and he was sincerely happy for her. Now that he had been acquitted of his actions during the war, he was leaving Hogwarts to help the ministry track down the remaining Death Eaters. He knew it would take more than ministry rulings, public acquittals, and overwhelming evidence to make him welcome in these halls ever again. Leaving was for the best.
He sighed, stuck in the seemingly never-ending struggle of deciding which books to pack. He could leave Experimental Potions for Penelope, he decided, and the thought of her made his chest tighten. He was leaving tomorrow, and he still had no idea how she felt about him.
They had gone on a few walks on the grounds, talking about this and that, but mostly just strolling in silence. The weight of the war seemed to hang unspoken around them in the heavy summer air; it was easier to stay silent, and speaking of love at a time like this just felt foolish. Her freckled face swam in front of his eyes, and he remembered her fierce voice telling him she trusted him absolutely. That was so long ago, so many hardships and heartbreaks and losses ago… Was it possible for love, even love as strong as hers, to survive all that had befallen them?
He looked down at his pale forearm, the thin lines of the rune etched into it lingering on as shimmering scars. He would have them forever, but they weren't the only remnants of her reckless, lifesaving magic. Ever since that fateful day he had felt oddly heavy, fuller, though he was as thin as ever. It was as if some of her weight, her life itself, had been transferred to him in that moment when she risked her life for his.
The thought made him oddly, bittersweetly happy as he looked out onto the grounds. The trees were a burst of luscious bloom, as if in denial of the death that had happened here. Pink petals twisted in the air, some already fading to brown, and the sight called back a thought he had had, so long ago, that his love for her was over before it had begun. Yet here was summer again… Love would go on and on, a heaviness he would bear for the rest of his life. He was startled from his thoughts by the woman who occupied them bursting into his room.
"I was under the impression I had put a ward on this door," he said dryly, and she shrugged.
"Doesn't work on me, I guess." She grinned. "Now that we're blood brothers and all."
He rolled his eyes, but he had a sense this conversation wasn't going to be all light teasing. He glanced over and she was still standing there, arms crossed over her chest, staring at his half-packed trunk.
"Yes?" he said glibly and she sighed.
"Do you still love me, Severus?" She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet and he was reminded rather poignantly of himself asking her on their first and only date. He smiled at her.
"Let's go for a walk."
The day was perfect, the sky a clear, cloudless azure so bright it almost hurt to look at it. They strolled over the grounds in silence for a ways, both of them walking slower than usual in their still-recovering bodies. He kept expecting her to pull out a cigarette, as she normally would, and he had to remind himself she had quit smoking. Shortly after the battle she had unceremoniously flung her last pack of Salamanders into the lake, claiming she'd had enough damage done to her body for one lifetime. He could no longer detect the familiar sweet scent of smoke and danger on her, the scent that had cloyed his senses and made him lightheaded so many times.
He was surprised how little he missed that smell, how content he was just to have her walking beside him.
"Penelope…" he said after a while. "I have treated you abominably. I knew Dumbledore's plan since the summer before, and I lied to you and let things go on the way they were… I know I hurt you, and I am sorry." He was surprised to feel her small hand in his.
"Apology accepted." It was rather unnerving to hear her so quiet. He didn't think she'd ever uttered so short a sentence.
"But I- I earnestly hope it does not… diminish the pain I have caused to tell you that I always loved you."
"Loved?" she said softly. He stopped walking abruptly and turned to her.
"Penelope, not a day, not a minute has gone by this past year when I have not thought of you." His voice was harsh with the passion that had been stifled with despair for so long. She looked up at him with wide eyes. "I thought, after everything I had done… that it was hopeless, that I likely would never see you again, let alone live to speak with you, to go walking on the grounds like we used to…" His words were choked with emotion and he took a deep breath, struggling to contain himself.
What had happened to them? he wondered. She had always been the loquacious one, and now she was uttering barely a word and here he was pouring his heart out to her.
"Penelope," he murmured lowly, "my feelings for you… remain unchanged. I do not know, at this point, that anything could change them."
They kept walking. He watched the dappled sunlight dance across her drawn face as they passed beneath the trees.
"My feelings have changed," she said softly. "They are deeper."
He didn't trust himself to breathe, let alone speak. Something in his chest was fluttering happily, but he just gripped her hand tightly and walked on with her beneath the trees. The silence was heavy, but for once the dead did not seem to be standing so close to them.
"Penelope," he said after a while. "Now that my allegiance has been revealed… I can no longer be a double-agent." He formed his words carefully. Her hand in his was warm and firm and so alive.
"The war is won, and I have done all I can for those-" He swallowed, his chest feeling very tight. "I have done all I can to right the wrongs of my past. I am free, or as free as I can be."
She was staring out over the lake, not looking at him, but he knew she was listening. He spoke very softly.
"I am free to devote the rest of my life to the only other thing that has ever mattered."
When she looked back at him there were tears in her eyes. It was the second time he had seen her cry.
He realized rather stupidly that she must have cried at some point during the years they were together; she had just never let him see it. She had had her own secrets to keep. But now, in this moment, it felt like there was so little between them, so little to hide. Just the warm summer air and her body so close to his…
"Marry me, then?" The tears poured down her cheeks but she was smiling, the chipped tooth showing in the corner of her mouth.
"I don't have a ring."
"You'll have one up your arse if you don't get on with it."
He got down on one knee, laughing, and for a moment he caught a glimpse of the spitfire he had known before the war, the infuriating, beautiful woman he had glared at from across the staff room almost four long years ago. Tears were still dripping off the end of her freckled nose.
"Penelope May Thorpe," he said softly. "Will you marry me?"
"Of course I will, you great fool." She knelt down in the grass right there with him and kissed him.
Later, much later, she dangled her feet in the cool water of the lake, his arm around her as he sat beside her. He had shed his waistcoat and rolled up his shirtsleeves in the heat; she thought he was handsomest that way, anyway.
"Penelope," he said softly. "I really am sorry that I lied to you. That one time, when you asked me…"
"I remember," she replied, rather sharply. "Of all the things that have happened, that's the one you're fretting over?"
"You would have told me the truth."
She gave him a long look.
"Maybe. But that doesn't mean it would have been right, or better." She sighed. "Severus, I think you did a rather selfless thing. I know you kept it from me because… because you didn't want me to share your pain. You wanted me to be content for as long as I could." She grinned at him but there was sadness in her voice. "You're still a bastard. But I can't fault you for what you did. I can't fault you for any of it."
He leaned his head on her shoulder, breathing in the smell of her, familiar yet changed.
"I've never met anyone as good as you. I don't deserve it."
"Say that one more time and I'll show you how good I am at throwing you in the lake."
He chuckled, twining his fingers in hers.
"Severus," she said gently. "You won the war. You sacrificed so much for the greater good, for people long gone, or people you didn't even know…" Her head leaned against his and the weight was comforting. "Sometimes I wish you could be a little more selfish. Maybe we could have had more time together if you were… Could've gone on more than one date before getting married." She cracked a grin that quickly faded as she stared out over the lake, out beyond where he could see. "But then you wouldn't be you. You wouldn't be the man I love."
As was happening increasingly frequently, he didn't know what to say to her. He reached out and ran his finger over the intricate configuration of scars on her left forearm, then gently pressed his lips to it.
"I love you like mad," he whispered into her soft skin.
She laid down in the grass and he flopped beside her.
"Like mad is right," she murmured. "You know, not a month ago I thought you were a murdering Death Eater and now I'm engaged to you."
The sun was just low enough that everything looked golden and heavy, richer than real life. He stared up at the deepening blue sky.
"You know… That is pretty weird."
The silence lingered for a moment. He looked over at her beautiful face beside him in the grass, framed by that wild tangle of black hair. She was so beyond his comprehension, beyond everything he had come to understand about the world. Was love always this weird, this mad, this deep?
You'll just have to get used to it, she had told him in this very spot, all those years ago. He would have a lifetime, a long, free, lifetime, to get used to it.
His dark eyes met her green ones and they both burst out laughing.