Beggars Can't Be Choosers

by Verity

Chapter Fourteen

            "He'll do," she said to him as Malfoy shut the door. "Did you understand?"

            "Somewhat," Severus answered her, but she wasn't paying much attention to him. She looked lost in thought. "Somewhat," he repeated.

            Hermione shook her head, sighed, bit her lip. "No… you can't. It was silly of me…"

            "What?" He walked around to her and laid a hand on her shoulder, trying to ignore the fact that she was tired and he could see a good deal more of her through the opening of her robe than she surely intended…

            "Do you know how it feels…" she said slowly, drawing out the words until they were less of a question than a thought spoken aloud, "to know that the only person who has been where you're heading has been dead fifteen years? And to know that you're the only person who can do anything at all…"

            "The first, no. The second -  yes."

            She tilted her head up to meet his eyes. "You were a Death Eater, weren't you?"

            "I…" he began, aghast, horrified. The firelight flickered, reflected in her eyes - warm, intense, smiling brown -

            "Mother." Hermione answered his unspoken question. "How did you think I knew – when I saved your life?"

            Severus turned away from her, pacing toward the fireplace. It was not a topic that they had ever entirely addressed, and not one he was eager to – knowing what he owed her. A life-debt. Just as binding as Pettigrew's to Potter. "Do not discuss it," he snapped at her, regretting his temper the moment the words were out of his mouth.

            She narrowed her eyes at him, but did nothing more than glare.

            "I will not take this attitude from a student."

            "Is that all I am to you?" Hermione Granger asked him, those dangerous eyes fixed on his – she stood up then, not bothering with straightening her robes. That act alone told him more than her words. Hermione Granger had never tolerated sloppiness.

            She had more lenience for necessary evils.

            "I am Walker of Two Worlds." This she said as she crossed the floor of his office to stand in front of him. Her eyes burned into his. "Do – you – understand?"

            With her dainty, icy cold hand, she grabbed his warmer one (the change in temperature surprising her a little, Severus had mind enough to note) and covered it with hers.

            I didn't fall, Lamp-Bearer's pale pink lips whisper, I jumped.

            "I understand." The earth has stopped its incessant spinning for the moment.

            "I'm sorry," she apologized, leaning over (to kiss him on the cheek?) but that wasn't where her lips landed; and for a moment they just stood there, locked in silence, in the wee hours of the morning.

            "Get out," he hissed at her, and she went, her eyes no longer vivid and compelling but wide and sad.

            Better for her, he thought to himself later that night. Better for all of us, in the end.

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            She weaves nets of safety over the sleeping girl, keeping her tethered in the dream world for as long as she can, keeps her safe from mother. She uses Walker's tears and her own to make the spider webs fast to the mind that was the dream world, a spinning vortex of flowing and jolting thoughts, what-ifs, what-had-beens.

            The Knight helps her, and she thanks him. They join their hands over Walker's dreaming body, and speak:

            May she be forever protected in sleep, she who Walks in the Two Worlds and Leads those of the Lamp.

            When they are back at the lake, he asks her, over the Raven's piercing cries, Do you really think mother would try something like that?

            Mother would do anything to return to this earth, Cedric, she says quietly. Never underestimate her.

            They look out over the lake, silver in moonlight, faint ripples skimming across its surface. The monster beneath the surface resettles itself and goes back to sleep.

            Are you sure? The Knight isn't referring to her previous comment, as she well knows.

            Yes. I did a dangerous thing then, you understand. I entrusted them to her care… she sighs. I've done what I can do. It has to be enough. It has to.

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            A wind blows across the snow, whistling between the barren, fallow trees that are scattered across the graveyard. The Witch of the Lamp kneels in the snow, her bony white fingers tightly tangled in a rosary, chanting a prayer for the soul of the dead woman whose body lies beneath her feet.

            The metal and crystal of the centuries-old rosary cuts into her hands, but this does not deter her; she continues on, faltering occasionally, with her litany of devotion. The beads of Christ lacerate her tender skin, and droplets of red blood trickle over her white clenched hands. Tears glisten on her cheeks.

            "O my Jesus, have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell. Take all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy...." she begins again, finally choking on a sob and throwing herself across the cold, cold gravestone in front of her.

            Her sorrows have no end, her tears would fill the widest ocean. "Mama!" she cries, "How could you leave me?"

            After the Witch has quieted somewhat, and is merely lying in the snow, dolorous and silent, a woman walks up over the hill behind which the graveyard lies. "Witch," the Peacock tells her, laying a woolen cape across her shoulders, "Tears will not raise your grandmother. Words will not, either. Come home."

            "Then I will take a vow of silence," the Witch of the Lamp says, her voice like a knife, acute and vicious. "Until she has been avenged."

            And the Peacock cannot get another word from her.

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Apologies again about the wait! ;) Switch II (Ask) is now up at The Site That Must Not Be Named & WIKTT. I hope to get out the next chapter in a more expedient manner – the past month or so I've been ill, coping with Familial Crises, and busy with evil!schoolwork, but hopefully all of those things have been remedied.

Verity