A/N: A note to readers: Tayet promises she will wake up soon. :)


Mist to Rain

She was hungry. And her feathers itched.

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Severus trailed his finger down Tayet's increasingly iridescent plumage as she settled back to sleep. Lovely.

She let out a note of agreement.

Severus chuckled softly.

Sitting on a Transfigured armchair, her legs tucked under her, her head resting on her hand, Hermione asked, "How long do you think I'll need to stay in here?"

He shrugged. "Until daylight, probably. If nothing happens between now and then, we can assume that the wards will hold."

"They'll go away then?"

"Not unless something wanders by that appeals to them more… and that's not bloody likely. But if nothing happens tonight… Dementors are efficient. If there's a way in, they'll find it quickly." He looked at her and hesitated.

"What?"

"You would be safer at Hogwarts."

Two evenings ago she and Ron had gotten their pointed revenge on the Dursleys for their ill-treatment of Harry. Two evenings ago she had arrived in the kitchen. Two evenings ago she had fallen into this web, this labyrinth of silence that was memory, myth, and magic, and ever since she had been following the thread laying before her, a few inches visible at a time, her path proscribed by the past and future of this man, this man whose arctic eyes and infernal passion both repelled and compelled her.

She would be able to see the Thestrals now. She wondered what they looked like. Even the illustrations in the Care of Magical Creatures sources she'd checked remained blank, until…

She ran her fingers over her eyes. "Safer at Hogwarts. Yes, I suppose I would be. But how long will Hogwarts remain safe without my work here?" she smiled, a sad smile, to be sure, but the courage in it, her acceptance, her commitment – all were unmistakable.

"Succinct, and accurate." His eyes reflected some new measure of respect, and the last traces of some old shadow fled from his features. Innocence lost.

"Besides," she continued, adjusting in her seat. "Do you have any idea what effect Apparition might have on a fledgling phoenix?"

"No."

"Me neither." She rested her head on her hand again and closed her eyes. Lily's book nudged her. Sighing, she opened her eyes. "Hello, there," she said to it tiredly, and opened the back cover to thumb through the index..

Transfiguring the broken mirror into a seat for himself, and the hat rack into an ottoman, Severus sat back and steepled his fingers.

Faith. He snorted. He was really out of his element.

She looked up, and he waved her back to the book. "Read," he said.

He looked more tired than she felt. Of course he does. She turned to the middle of the book.

"Tayet," she began, aloud. "Goddess of Weaving."

"Webs." He snorted, beyond irritated.

She glanced at him as if to say, "What did you expect?" and continued reading. "Associated with Anubis, funerary rites, and the underworld, via the cloths used in mummification to bind the body and spirit for its passage." Binding. Spirits. Souls. Oh, gods.

He snorted again. Really. If it hadn't been completely impossible, he would have suspected the meddling of a certain former headmaster. It simply reeked of the kind of thing he would have enjoyed.

Hermione continued reading. "Represented in funeral rites by a linen curtain" – she looked, involuntarily, at the strangeness of Severus Snape in white – "hung in the chamber of Anubis, symbolizing the liminal point between…" Bloody hell.

He looked up sharply, just as she let the book fall to her lap.

"… between the known and the unknown, I presume?" he drawled. Had Dumbledore been alive, he would even now have been flowing up the spiral stairs outside his office, spoiling for another tempestuous debate on the relative merits of order and chaos.

He was definitely in the mood to argue with Dumbledore.

Eyeing Hermione speculatively, he decided she would do in his stead.

She was gazing at Tayet, her mind roaming freely. Tayet and Anubis. So, she looks to him, then. She felt a pang of envy, which she promptly squelched. He needed the phoenix bond more than she did. Still… she sighed, her hand coming up to trace the circle on her heart.

Her sigh – or, more accurately, the memory of her breath on his neck, that last night –
drove the argument he was preparing out of his head. Chaos.

She couldn't feel it through the cloth. She listened with her mind. The wind in the image was gusting, rushing, its "voice" – for so she thought of it – no longer screaming, just a low, distant keen. That's an improvement, at any rate.

He watched her hand, hypnotized as she undid one of her buttons and pulled the cloth aside.

She glanced down to check it. The circle was, perhaps, slightly more full than it had been. Not by much; just enough that she didn't doubt her perception. She pursed her lips and rested her chin in her hand, one finger curled over her mouth. So much still to be done. How to destroy… how to heal… how to… her eyes closed.

He watched her sleep.

It was the longest time he'd gone without consciously directing his thoughts since one Saturday afternoon twenty years before.

Lily's book seemed to sigh in Hermione's lap as it slipped out of her hands. Silently, he caught it before it hit the floor.

Its bloodstained cover warmed under his touch, and, resting his arm on the back of Hermione's chair, he leaned his forehead on the book - feeling the rough weave on his skin, the worn corners, a thread from a frayed corner brushing his eyelashes.

Lily, he thought. I'm sorry.

The thread flicked to his cheek. It might have been moving in his breath.

Forgive me.

The thread brushed his eyelid closed, lingered, and was still. It might have stopped when he stopped breathing.

Tayet murmured a soft, sleepy note.

He started breathing again. He opened the cover, and read the inscription one more time. He smoothed his hand over the page, lightly outlining the witch's smile with his fingertip, stopping to rub his thumb over the wizard's too-small, wrinkled robes… He started to close the cover, then stopped, closed his eyes, and raised the book a last time, to breathe the scent of the slow, spiraling steam.

As he inhaled, It changed.

Before, it was autumn.

Now it was rain.