A/N: With gratitude to Anastasia and Luna305, as always. Special thanks to Tobert and his Marauders for Wednesday night's mischief and mayhem.


Unspeakable

Her thumb moved slowly, stroking gently on the back of his hand, a smudged, bloody thumbprint blurring on his skin.

Desperation, passion, and sacrifice.

Timing, will, and fury.

And Tayet watched, and waited.

"He said you forced him," Hermione said, finally, still rubbing her thumb on his hand. "Pettigrew. Harry asked why he'd done it – betrayed his parents, and everyone, and he said, 'Because Severus forced me to.'"

Severus' eyes flashed in the shadow she was casting in the candlelight. "Potter will believe that."

"Of course – because he'll want to." She thought for a while. "I don't know how I'll be able to convince him not to."

"Don't try."

Hermione rolled toward him and the unblocked candle flame sparked to life in Severus' eyes. "Don't? Why not?"

"The effort you expend trying to convince Potter – in vain - may reveal too much about - " he tucked a curl behind her ear " - to the rest of the Order. They will not take your word for my… status, Hermione. Not when they barely trusted Albus. No," he continued, tracing her hair on her skin. "Any attempt to convince Potter will only give them cause to mistrust you."

She said nothing for a few moments. "That's not fair." Her eyes were angry, and her thumb was still bleeding.

He chuckled. "An insight far beneath your usual standards."

"Not fair to you, I meant." She raised her head to rest it on his shoulder, and his arm came around her.

He couldn't help but laugh at that. "No, not fair at all." He laughed again.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Around 4:30, I think. You should sleep."

"There's no point."

He looked at her with brutal delicacy and appeared to reach some sort of decision. He drew her over him, then, and she sighed, brushing their mingled hair out of his face, following one strand down his neck, to his shoulder.

Tayet whirred, very softly.

"What is it, Tayet?" Hermione glanced at the phoenix.

Tayet whirred more insistently, and rustled her wings.

Hermione looked at Severus. He was watching her intently, fingers splayed, lightly circling on her back. "What?"

"You're bleeding," he said.

"I pricked my thumb on… I pricked my thumb."

The atmosphere in the room shifted, darkened. Tayet gave a low, throaty "Whrrr." A caution. As a warning, Hermione found it oddly reassuring.

Severus felt the change and looked up. He reached to the bedside table for his wand and closed the bed-curtains.

They rippled shut, waving slightly, and Tayet's note deepened.

Hermione was in his mind instantly. "Are we in danger?"

"You are."

Tayet's voice washed over Hermione. "From?"

"Me. More accurately, us."

Hermione looked at him. She could barely see his eyes in the shadows. "Why?"

"Because I am a dangerous man, and because this is -" he brushed his hand across her shoulder, down her arm, drawing a finger up her spine. His hand coming into her hair, he spoke aloud. "Unspeakable."

His kiss promised everything if she but dared, everything she feared she would never be allowed to keep.

Tayet's low descant rippled beneath the shadows.

"Unspeakable." Hermione laughed darkly. "Taboo, you mean."

Still kissing her, he murmured, "That is the Muggle term, yes."

"Like breaking time," she breathed.

He held her head still for a moment, then another kiss. "Death. The veil. That which is living cannot pass it."

"I've never understood why love has its own Unspeakables," she said.

"Because of this." A confirmation.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head into his shoulder, brushing his collarbone with her lips.

He drew a sharp breath, tilting his head back, an offering, a surrender. "Hermione," he said, "may I tell you?"

She nodded.

"Every true mystery has a line, Hermione – a line that cannot be crossed without payment, in full. Dumbledore crossed the veil of death. The Dark Lord has profaned the limits of time."

"Our little lives are rounded with a sleep." Her voice was low.

His tone changed. Soft. Subtle. Hermione listened.

"Everyone has a line they will not cross, and they are judged, by others, on where that line is. To my mind, though, the location of that line is only half the equation. The true measure of a person is not based only on where it is – that is far too easy - but on how close to the line a person is willing to live."

Tayet was silent.

"My line is not static. I have not had that luxury, but I have been given that chance."

"Because of Lily. That line moved, because of Lily."

"Twice."

"And you found yourself on the wrong side of it, that second time."

"Yes." He held her closely for a moment, and then forced himself, deliberately, to loosen his arms. He touched her eyebrow gently, one hand dropping to the pillow, the other coming to rest, lightly, on her hip.

"Beyond that point, I felt only revulsion for… my necessary actions. But up to that point - " He inhaled slowly. "Do not imagine that I did not enjoy them, because I did. Make no mistake, Hermione. It's part of who I am."

She said nothing.

"I enjoyed them very much."

"And you remember that pleasure."

"Yes." He paused, tracing a slow line along her hip. "How fine is your judgment, Hermione?"

"There is a difference between an action and its quality, and as large a difference again between identical actions in different contexts."

"Moral relativism, Hermione?" he raised an eyebrow in a softer, slower echo of its usual sharpness.

She looked deliberately at Tayet on the headboard, and back to him. "In case you've not noticed, Severus," she said patiently, moving her fingers into his hair, "you're not the only one standing right on that line. Or perhaps beyond it," she whispered, watching the bed-curtains rippling, softly, although there was no movement in the air.

He watched her carefully.

"You've enjoyed this," she said.

"Yes."

"All of it."

He would not lie. "In a way, yes."

"Scaring me."

He nodded, slightly.

"Marking me."

His eyes glittered darkly.

"And telling me you will kill me?" Her tone was no different when she asked this question.

His eyes sharpened. "There is a line, Hermione."

"That one cut me."

"Yes."

"And did you enjoy that?" Her fingers tightened in his hair.

Tayet shifted on the headboard.

"Who stopped the bleeding, Hermione?"

"I'm still bleeding, Severus." She hooked the braid she had made with her little finger. Tayet's tear glistened at the tip of it, a low, sparkling obsidian, even in the shadows.

"As am I."

"And?" She looked directly into his eyes.

"I will never not seek that line, Hermione. But I will never cross it. I can give you that eternity, but that is the only eternity you can ever have from me."

She ran her thumb down the braid.

He smiled. Sadly. "I've been brutal."

"And I've not broken."

"No. Should we find a way through this, I fully expect to bear the brunt of your fury for what I've done to you."

"Count on it."

He smiled again. Not sadly at all. No, this was a different smile.

It wasn't a nice smile, and she matched it.

She pressed her bloody thumb to Tayet's tear, and Severus inhaled, hissing, his body arching.

"Hermione, what have you done?" His thoughts were alarmed, dizzy, in her mind.

"Hurts, doesn't it." She did not move her thumb.

His breathing was ragged. "You will notice, however, that I am not screaming."

"Of course not." She laughed softly.

His breathing slowly returned to normal.

He turned to her, amazed. A tinge of fear. "Hermione, what have you done?"

"Crossed a line." Her thought sounded strangely stretched, and, perhaps, pleased.

He brought his hand up to cup her chin. He could just see her eyes – and he knew, even without light, that they were somehow warm, somehow dark, somehow alight. "A rather permanent gift, Hermione."

She kissed him slowly, then rested her cheek against his. "Permanence is what you understand."

His thoughts smoothed under the feel of her skin. Resting his hand lightly on her shoulder, his thought came whispering, breathy. "Why did you do it?"

"Because now we're even."

He moved to touch the mark over her heart, and, tracing the dark ring and the dark, swirling cloud, he felt the truth of her words. Finally, he spoke. "We remain unspeakable."

She shrugged, but he sensed the shadow in her eyes. "I, for one, would rather not cringe accidentally backwards through the veil. There's a difference between getting dragged into the arena and walking in."

Tayet trilled her agreement from the headboard, and the shadows lightened.

"Impressive," he murmured.

Hermione trailed the end of the thin braid against his neck. "It's something Harry told me once."

He started to growl, but she put a finger on his lips. Back in his mind, she said, "The line, Severus? It's right here."

/x/

At that moment, the author of the insight Severus found so impressive was twisting his shoelaces around his finger in Ron Weasley's bedroom.

"I don't understand, Ron. We definitely left here, and definitely made it almost to Grimmauld Place?"

Ron nodded. "Yeah. 'S what it felt like." He swallowed and looked uncomfortably out the window. "You were there, Harry. At the Ministry. She really would have done it, wouldn't she?" His fist had closed on his pajama leg, and he was twisting the maroon cloth.

Harry glanced at Ron then looked away. His gaze fell on the door. "She would. Professor McGonagall, too."

Ron was quiet for a long time.

Harry could not have spoken even if he had known what to say.

/x/

"Albus, how am I supposed to convince them not to push her? They're going to want as much information as she can give them!" Minerva glared at the portrait.

Dumbledore glared back. "And she will tell them what she can. No more, Minerva. It is crucial that Harry not know that she is not working entirely alone."

"I know he hates young Mr. Malfoy, Albus, but surely he can set that aside? Knowing would lend more credibility - "

"More credibility than is rightfully hers for her Arithmantic skill? Only two people in the Order will be able to understand her formulae, much less the theory behind it."

"Three. Bill Weasley."

"Two, Minerva." He looked at her gently. "I am not a person."

Her throat tightened. "Albus, they will push."

"A leader is sometimes at odds with those who follow, Minerva."

She considered him dourly for a moment. "Albus, please, tell me she's not mixed up with Lucius Malfoy? She's a child."

Dumbledore shook his head. "She's not."

Minerva relaxed slightly at that, but her eyes were still shrewd. "Do you know for sure that it is Draco, then, Albus?"

He returned her gaze calmly.

She turned to Phineas Nigellus' frame. "Do you?"

Phineas Nigellus scowled at her. "Of course not." Minerva could not see the hand he held behind his back.

Back in Grimmauld Place, Mrs. Black could – it had just appeared in her frame.

She was delighted to see that his fingers were crossed. It always meant a good gossip, afterwards.


Note on sources: Hermione quotes Shakespeare's Prospero, from The Tempest:

We are such stuff as dreams are made on/ And our little lives are rounded with a sleep.