A/N: The title of this chapter is taken from a Dylan Thomas poem. It's worth reading... Thanks, as always, to Anastasia and Luna305.


Into That Good Night

His eyes softened. He did not let go.

They went upstairs.

When they reached the third floor landing, Hermione looked at Severus. "Um… my trunk… I need to…"

He nodded, strangely formally. "Accio Hermione's trunk." He squeezed her hand and waited for the trunk.

She slipped into the bathroom at the end of the hall, and looked in the mirror.

She scarcely recognized the creature before her. Wild hair, knowledgeable eyes, and a small billowing cloud of darkness over her heart. She would not have believed it several days earlier. She was not sure she believed it now.

She gripped both sides of the cold porcelain sink and leaned her head over, breathing deeply. Oh, Granger. What have you gotten into…

An excellent question.

She was good at those.

She glanced at her eyes in the mirror, and then began a clinical appraisal. They were, undoubtedly, darker. Sharper. And deeper.

And her former Potions teacher was waiting for her.

Oh, dear.

At that moment, the former Potions teacher was in the hallway, casting an apprehensive eye over Hermione's trunk as it hovered innocuously, awaiting direction. Dammit, Snape, just do it.

But he could not. He could not, somehow, bring himself to levitate Hermione's trunk into his room in Harry Potter's house. His perfect execution of an intricate, improvisational masked dance on the tight-rope of truth that comprised his life as a spy was built on a rigid sense of honor – it was his only safety net. He knew this, and he reveled in the sometimes agonizing friction between his honor and his cynicism – the friction kept him sharp.

It also kept him from moving Hermione's trunk the final distance into his room.

He scowled at the inoffensive trunk. This didn't help. It didn't even really make him feel any better.

Tayet zoomed up the stairs and landed on the trunk, looking at him, amused. "Whirp," she suggested.

"That helps not at all, Tayet."

She rustled her wings and smirked at him. "Whirp," she insisted.

His scowl deepened. "Bloody conspiracy of one, you are."

She seemed to scowl back. Otherwise, she didn't dignify his statement with a response.

Hermione opened the bathroom door to discover Severus and Tayet apparently engaged in a scowling contest.

"Um… if I could perhaps… "

They turned to look at her.

"I – well – I need my toothbrush," she finished inanely, not quite sure what she had interrupted.

Tayet fluttered to the banister as Severus released the Wingardium spell on the trunk and turned toward the bedroom. He stopped at the door and reached for the handle, but did not turn around.

"Hermione," he asked, too calmly.

Her hand clenched around her toothbrush. "Yes?"

"Do you want this?"

"Do I… what?" she asked, startled.

"The reality."

She stood then, holding her toothbrush.

He heard her start to say something, but held out his hand.

More harshly than he intended, he began, "We all have choices, as you've so accurately noted. It is one thing, Hermione, to relinquish control in passion. Blood magic, sacrifice, and whatever she - " a gesture behind him toward Tayet, who was still perched on the railing " – represents."

Hermione stood still, looking at his back.

"It is another matter altogether to make a choice while standing in a hallway, holding a toothbrush. There are many rooms, Hermione, and you have as much right to any of them as I have. More, actually. But I hope - " He swallowed. "I hope you will choose mine."

She stared at him, not knowing what to think, let alone say.

"It means something to me, Hermione," he said, quietly.

"Of course it does. It means your heart still works."

He turned and faced her, a low anger surfacing.

She held up her hand. "I meant that. Don't cheapen it."

He looked at her, and said, "You know I can't love you," putting a careful inflection on the word "can't."

She nodded, understanding. "I don't imagine you can, with a broken soul."

Tayet lamented her agreement.

Standing with one hand on the door handle, head held at an odd, self-deprecating angle, he said, "If - no, when I can, it may be too late."

"No."

Something snapped. "Hermione, you can't know - "

Something else snapped. "I don't have to know. I have faith. In me. In her. In you. And in us."

Tayet's humming changed key – fuller, deeper.

"Go to bed, Severus. I'm going to brush my teeth, and I will join you in a moment."

But halfway down the hall, she paused, and he felt it. He stopped, halfway through the door.

Without turning around, keeping her voice low, she asked, "Would you?"

"If I could."

"Then if you would please get my trunk out of the hallway."

"Of course."

Satisfied, Tayet zoomed downstairs.

/x/

She appeared in the doorway.

He tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

She tried to hide the fact that her hands were shaking.

Neither was particularly successful.

He had turned down the covers for her.

She had left her hair down.

Both were exceptionally grateful.

He lifted the covers for her.

She couldn't not smile as she slipped under them.

His arm covered her shoulders.

After a moment, he asked, "Do you want another pillow?"

"No, thank you. This is good."

"Yes."

Neither dared to breathe.

After another moment, she said, "I'd only hit you with it anyway."

He chuckled. "Indeed."

They both started breathing again.

Drawing her close, he kissed her gently. "Goodnight, Hermione."

"Goodnight."

Neither closed their eyes.

"Pleasant dreams," she said, finally.

"Yes," he said, looking into her eyes. "They are."

/x/

In her private quarters, Minerva McGonagall finally asked the question she'd been worrying in her mind for far too long. "How could you have been so blind, Albus?"

"Minerva, as I told Harry, I was never omniscient, merely intelligent. My mistakes, when I made them, were proportional to my abilities."

"An enormous 'mistake' to trust Snape, Albus. One might be tempted to call it 'tragic.'"

He corrected her instantly. "My death was not tragic; just the inevitable result of a mistake of mine." He paused briefly. "For something to be truly tragic, Minerva, one must be torn between love and duty. I faced no such dilemma. I expect you to remember that." He looked at her as though she were once again a student, and not Headmistress of Hogwarts.

"Thank you for the Muggle Studies lecture." She fixed him with a sharp look. "Why have you been pretending to be asleep? I am in no way ready for…" she gestured. "I'm neither strategist nor philosopher, Albus. I cannot lead them the way you could."

"That is not for you to do, Minerva. It is for Harry. Soon. Sooner than you think. For him to succeed he must follow a path only he can choose."

A wry look. "So you allowed yourself to be killed – oh, yes, Albus, I figured that much out; young Malfoy, disarm you? Please. You allowed yourself to be killed to fulfill your role in some Muggle paradigm, in which the white-bearded wizard must die in order for the young hero to... fulfill his destiny?"

Albus' eyes twinkled.

"I did pay attention in Muggle Studies, as you well know," she reminded him.

"Then it should come as no surprise that I did not awaken instantly as a portrait, nor that I will ask you to keep my alertness a secret from Harry – and the rest of the Order – for a while longer."

She sat, exasperated. "Really, Albus. How am I-"

He interrupted her, speaking sternly. "I ask no more of you than I've asked of others, Minerva. In fact, a good deal less. There are those who are preparing Harry's path – water will always run downhill, Minerva, and there are those who even now are grading the terrain to see that it does. For you to reveal that I am awake could skew that path, and the results could be disastrous."

"Albus Dumbledore, you are a manipulative old coot."

"Rather," he agreed, unapologetically. "I find it more efficient than endless explanations." His tone lightened. "A stance you will come to appreciate when the Board of Governors meetings resume."

She glanced at him sharply. "When? Not if?"

"I believe so, Minerva. However, as you've had occasion to notice, I have been wrong before."

She was quiet for a moment, weighing the lightness of his tone against the enormity of his meaning. Finally, she sighed, but rallied enough to ask, "As you've not really answered any of my questions, should I even bother asking how Miss Granger fits in?"

Albus' face grew serious. "No."

Minerva's eyes flew to his. "And… her source?"

Albus said nothing. Minerva knew him well enough to realize he looked slightly worried.

Her eyes widened, the beginnings of alarm. "Her information, then? Can we trust it, Albus?"

"Do you trust her Arithmancy skills?" he countered.

"Implicitly."

"Her Arithmantic analysis would not work were it based on faulty information, Minerva."

Minerva felt a twinge of exasperation. This conversation seemed to be leading backwards, and yet its logical pattern was so familiar that her next words were not what she expected. "I miss you, Albus. I miss you terribly."

"You will join me up here eventually, Minerva – hopefully not as soon as you expect to. Forgive me if I wish to seek to avoid hastening that eventuality."

A look passed between them, and, although her eyes glistened, she smiled slightly.

"Besides," Dumbledore continued, summoning a twinkle with a nearly invisible effort, only just visible, and only to Minerva. "Your language is quite… colorful, when dealing with owls from the Ministry. Pray, enlighten me – how does one go about doing that with a haggis, exactly?"

Had Minerva McGonagall had a pillow and a slightly different temperament, she very well might have hit his portrait with it.

Instead, she merely said, "Really, Albus."