A/N: In defiant celebration of life. Warning: We spend part of this chapter in Mr. Ollivander's mind – Luna, that's for you.

The title of this chapter translates to "Into glory." Sources given below.


In Gloriam

Mr. Ollivander's face cracked into a weary smile. He would sleep now, for a few hours, while the island waited for the sun.

The light was turning blue over the garden in Grimmauld Place.

Hermione opened her eyes and watched the morning for a few minutes, blinking slowly, reaching up to push her hair off her face.

Smooth? She turned her head, and realized that their hair had mingled during the night. She raked her fingertips very lightly over Severus' hair, watching his face in repose. His eloquent face, slack with sleep, the shadows under his eyes stark against his pale skin; his lips slightly parted, his eyelashes a charcoal sweep, a gentle curve against the hard angles of his face. Her breath caught at the contrast.

Hearing him in memory, I'm right here. She smiled even as her throat tightened, wiping the smile from her face as her vision blurred.

She blinked rapidly. She would not cry. She would enjoy his face in the morning light.

His cloak over them, a fall of black silk, rustling.

Rippling in the corridors. Sweeping behind him, sarcastic punctuation with impeccable timing. Hiding the thin strips of white against dark wool.

"Bewitch the mind… ensnare the senses… " Easy, Granger. You were eleven. Don't make it something it wasn't.

It wasn't then, but it is now, her stubborn mind argued.

She drew her hand down, over the silk, remembering the night in the bolt-hole, the wind, his shoulders rising, the lean muscles in his arms straining, over her, as he moved within her, his hair tangling, unnoticed, in his eyelashes, dusting her skin as he bent, lower, a blazing intent, a decadent elevation, a strangled cry, and a glorious, luminous fall.

Whatever place logic had had in her waking up, here, this morning, next to him, it was long gone, a casualty to chaos, a sacrifice of war.

For Harry. Then - Absurd, Granger. Absolutely absurd. You fell in love with your former Potions master – your teacher, a spy, wanted for murder, a 'traitor' to the light – for Harry?

In an absurd way, it was true.

No one alive would believe her. If there were any left, in the end.

Oh, gods…

Her fingers hovering over the sharpness of his jaw, darkened in the morning shadow, hovering over his neck –

- the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp contrast, in the fiery shadows, as the formula resolved in its deadly heartbeat, his breath coming sharp, shallow, sharper, destroying the last shreds of consciousness, borne away on a rising wind, his breathing tortured, her own, each breath within her, alive, a knife edge beyond which there was no nightfall, no sunrise, only forever in a moment and his eyes, wide, with horror, with gentleness, with the taint of knowledge never erased which he emblazoned deep within her, marking her, begging her forgiveness in his release, his despairing cry as the storm clouds on her heart broke free and she cried her triumphant hope as the clouds swirled, a low, endless keening, and the benediction of softness a kiss at her eyelashes a sweeping caress on her neck a warm hand on her breast, and he was collapsed, undone, breathless, open, and never whole, listening to her heart beating in wonder...

Could he?

How could he?

But how could she not have? In any rationally erratic, irrational, chaotic system of the human heart, her skin, her body, everything within her alive under his eyes, his voice, his breath, his touch, his anger, his passion, his hope, how could she not have?

Knowing that he remained the last thing she must face, how?

That she was the last in a long line of everything he'd ever lost - he, who had lost everything, how?

How had she found him?

He was broken. But not defeated.

Not him.

Not ever.

But as she watched him breathe, she bit her lip slightly.

Underneath the black silk, the blanket she had made of the leaf. Soft. So soft. Warm, white.

If you wake up one morning in the presence of everything, you say, "Yes."

Even if it's the last thing you ever do.

She rolled slowly to her side, her hand shirring the silk over his arm, up to his shoulder, to whisper on his cheek, and under the blanket, her hand on his stomach, flat, claiming, moving downwards, her face lifting toward his, the silk on his neck, her touches, insistent, behind his neck, lower, surrounding him, drawing him closer in the lightening shadows …

His first thought – Glorious, and his eyes, aware, awed, stayed closed as the smallest groan escaped his lips into her own, resonant, into her chest, her heart, his wordless voice the air she breathed, her blood.

Her fingers a dance of intricate simplicity, pure touch, sensation, and his thoughts a spiraling purpose; his hand, fiercely, into her hair, behind her head, holding, no reserve, no restraint as he slipped his hand his thumb brushing her breast, down her side, grasping her hip, around, behind her, covering her back, drawing her closer; her leg, smooth, over his own, her hand leaving, moving to his thigh, around, now, please, yes, all of me, Hermione, all of me …

... now, please, I can't, I can't, I can't…

"Yes. You can." A feral truth in her mind that she felt, everywhere.

"All of you. All." Her eyes searing into his, through his mind, to his heart, beyond, reaching for his soul.

"All," she insisted gently in his mind, poised in a moment of trembling stillness, holding him, hovering, trembling on the edge of a last movement, drawing him down, covering her, consuming him, demanding more…

And lips and hands and legs and hips meeting, sweeping, rising, enraging, empowering, his body slipping, hidden, within, hers, surrounding…

Then no skin – no power, no magic, no life beyond everything they held between them.

And he held her, his eyes wild, alive, his arm braced, tension, unbearably strong, her body rising, his hand under her shoulders, lifting, easing…

Joy, perfection, her hair a fallen, tangled sweep across the pillow -

- and her voice, untamed, untranslatable, loud, glorious, and strong in the morning -

And as she laughed the sun over the horizon, he drove the night into yesterday.

/x/

The line dividing night from day moved westward, a vast expanse, the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.

Although she didn't know it existed, Tayet knew the ocean.

She was a drop, albeit a sparkling one.

/x/

The sun on the walls with no windows cast a sharp moving shadow across the floor of the house with no ceiling.

Ollivander's hands gnarled over an unblemished white birch sprig, fallen to his hands from the zenith on a summer solstice over a decade before. "Ne dederis maculam in gloriam tuam," he chanted, harsh, low, rising and falling with the rushing wind above, the sea below and the chaotic, endless rhythm of waves, breaking. "Let nothing stain your glory…"

He reached for the black phoenix feather - the first. The last.

The shadow receding, inexorably, the sun swallowing the floor, his legs, the legs of his worktable.

He watched the sun's progress, focusing, waiting for exactly the right – "Glorius!"

As the sun touched wood and feather and they fused into a perfect column of light and overhead the breeze stilled and the sea was silent and no waves no rhythm all sound stopped…

The only shadow was under the table, a shadow around the first one, ebony around a core of white, resting, hovering, suspended in a web of magic, at the center, waiting.

… and the waves resumed and the sea rushed and the bubbles broke sparkling on the sand and the wind rattled the palm fronds and Mr. Ollivander's hands fell to his side.

Glorious.

The one in the light and the one below, waiting…

Mr. Ollivander's voice, once more, a rich cadence to his strange work:

"Non erit tibi amplius sol ad lucendum per diem nec splendor lunae inluminabit te sed erit tibi animus in lucem sempiternam et anima tua in gloriam tuam."

And both wands were silent, tuned, ready.

He closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged, slightly. Turning once again to the pallet in the corner, he repeated, "Thou shalt no more have the sun for thy light by day, neither shall the brightness of the moon enlighten thee, but your animus shall be unto thee for an everlasting light, and thy anima for thy glory."

He sat and stretched his legs out before him.

Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English… immaterial, for this matter, does it matter? Or, for that matter, Sanskrit, Swahili, Arapaho? He paused, scowling. Binary, hexadecimal, the Periodic Table? D major, A major, b minor, f# minor, G, D, G, A…

He paused, and wiggled his toes.

G major 7, c minor! A victory march? Sculpture, samba, sonnet… (Petrarchan? Spenserian? Shakespearean?) A manic gleam began in his eyes. Slowly, very slowly, he raised a single finger. Haiku! He scratched his ear. Yes, haiku, perchance binomial nomenclature…

More muttering.

He examined his hands and chortled. Oh, yes.

He counted on his fingers. "Midnight, high noon." Two. Two for tea. Tea for two…

The delivery would wait until tea-time.

To everything...

"… everlasting light… in your glory… sun… moon… luna…"

It was already past tea-time in England, of course, but time mattered differently to Mr. Ollivander. It was one minute past noon on the outskirts of Havana, and he felt like taking a nap.


Note on sources:

The "fate of this man... was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea" (677). T.H. White, on the death of King Arthur, in The Once and Future King.

Mr. Ollivander's Latin (translated in the text) is from Ecclesiastes 33:24 (Ne dederis maculam…) and based on Isaiah 60:19 (Non erit tibi…; emended in the text: animus/Dominus; anima tua/Deum tuum). (If I've botched the Latin in the emendations, blame it on the fact that it was an 8 a.m. class.)

D major, A major, &c.: The chord structure (a broken circle of fifths) of Pachelbel's Canon in D.

G major 7, c minor: The last two chords of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, I, the opening four notes were used as a code for "victory" during WWII (dot dot dot dash "V").

"Haiku, perchance binomial nomenclature" is an Ollivanderian allusion to Hamlet's line, "To sleep, perchance to dream" from the "To be or not to be" soliloquy.

…if I had to guess, I'd say he's thinking about forms, broken and whole. Don't worry. Dumbledore didn't fully understand him either. Ari