A/N: A low and very humble bow to Melenka, Luna, and Anastasia, who were with me as I bled this chapter.


Echoes

As Hermione's gaze crossed the few feet between them, it carried six years along with it.

He didn't need to hear her answer.

Harry held Hermione's gaze for a long moment, and the Harry who finally nodded was older, much older, than he had been the moment before.

Slowly, Hermione regained consciousness of individual sounds. A scraping chair thrust back – Lupin's. A sharp intake of breath – Tonks. Creaking leather as Hagrid's weight shifted to his heels, the almost inaudible brush of fabric on fabric - Ron's hands dropping to his knees; a whirr of clicks as Moody's eye focused fast, focused hard, focused sharp.

"Hermione," Molly began, hands fluttering to her throat. She couldn't finish. A buzz of noise grew – not conversation, not whispering, but movement, half-spoken words, and fragments of thought. Just confusion.

"It's okay," Hermione began, absurdly. "It's not a surprise – I mean, not to me. I've known for a few days… ever since the formula…" With her good arm, she reached for her shoulder, which was starting to throb.

Hagrid loomed large by the door. His voice above the general buzz, "Yer not going to die because of a ruddy formula?"

Everyone glanced toward him, and Hermione's hand was in her pocket again.

Whirr. Then, click.

And she realized Moody could see what she was holding.

She looked at him, into his real eye, an affirmation and a challenge, and after a fraction of an instant received a brusque nod.

Fine. He knows the method of contact, not the contact himself. Fine.

Turning her attention back to the group, she heard Bill saying, "No, Hagrid, not because of the formula; it's just how she knows. How she knew it was Mum, and you."

"But there's a workaround, right?" Ron blurted.

Hermione blinked.

"Right?" Ron insisted.

"Lie." Severus' thought was instantaneous.

"Yes."

Ron's face broke into a glowing smile, and in the chaos of relief and general conversation that followed, no one heard Moody's eye make one more click before Hermione turned and went to stand by the window.

Harry moved to follow her, but at a gesture from Minerva he turned instead to Hagrid.

Only Tonks saw Remus' eyes go distant for a moment before he joined Hermione and put a hand on her shoulder.

She winced, and the mirror went white-hot in her pocket.

"Hermione," Remus said quietly. "I cannot imagine what you must have felt when the formula resolved into your name. I'm... I'm relieved, of course."

"But?"

"But..." He swallowed, running his hand through his hair and looking hard at the ceiling. "... but two people died that night."

The briefest hesitation, the smallest of nods. She did not look at him.

He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, patting her shoulder again.

Hermione was sure that the mirror must be incandescent, that it would certainly burn through her clothes, but she kept her hand resolutely against it. The small pain...

Hermione flinched, and Lupin looked at her more closely. Angling his back to the rest of the room, effectively blocking her from both Harry and Moody, he said quietly, "What?"

"Nothing." She saw a dark, winged shape rise from the Forbidden forest and closed her eyes. "It's nothing."

In his silence she heard echoes of the same memories she'd come to recognize, the same memories, but from the other side of a gulf so absolute that even decades later it had the power to sear her skin.

Remus turned and leaned against the windowsill, watching Harry at the center of the Order. Kingsley was sketching a general layout on one of Dumbledore's spindly tables, and Harry was nodding.

"It seems there is never an end to the cruelty, Hermione. That you should be required by Lily's sacrifice to - "

"No, Remus," she said, her breath misting the windowpane as the Order plotted and strategized behind her. "Not me. I correspond to James."

His eyes shadowed with an old pain. "James? But how?"

Without inflection, she said, "Inversion."

Turning, Remus reached for her elbow – to steady her or himself she wasn't certain. His hand on her arm jarred her shoulder, and the mirror blistered her fingers, and she released it.

Remus ran his finger over the lead joins near the bottom of the window, tracing the diamond panes. Over, to a corner, hesitating, changing direction, angling up, pausing, then angling down a different join. Tracing a single pane, then another, adjacent, to the side, then back to the first, then up, to another.

"So, for Lily, it's - " he stopped himself.

"Him," she said.

Halfway around the higher pane, he stopped and tapped the lead at the corner. "So he… he's going to…"

"Die, if he has to." She turned away from the window and looked at him hesitantly. "He made that choice before Harry was even born." She saw something shutter his eyes, and made a fast decision. "Lily knew it. She was there."

Lupin exhaled slowly. "I think she cared for him once. I've often wondered if that was what set all this in motion."

"No," Hermione said quietly, "but it may be what stops it." She hesitated for a moment, then said, "I think he wonders, too."

She left him turning to look out at the pennants that were stirring softly over the Quidditch pitch, and went to join Harry, Ron, and Bill, who were standing with Hagrid.

"Bloody brilliant, Hermione," Ron said, thumping her on the shoulder, his features once again open as he smiled at her.

Hermione forced herself to smile back as inside her pocket her hand went again to the mirror.

It was cool.

/x/

Severus sat at the table glaring through the broken window at the shapes that were drifting just beyond the garden wall.

The mirror sat before him on the table.

The Order was once again seated in a semi-circle around Minerva's desk and had nearly concluded their discussion of the evening's plans – to reconvene at Hogwarts at dusk to receive their Portkeys and wait. There was little else concrete that they could do; they had an afternoon in which to come to terms with improvisation.

As Minerva was about to draw the meeting to a close, Remus asked, "What's the correspondence, Hermione?"

Hermione glanced at him, suddenly wary. Her hand went into her pocket, and she felt Severus' wordless response.

Hagrid turned toward Remus – "What d'yer mean, correspondence?"

Everyone settled and Remus glanced at Hagrid, then focused abstractly on a point on the floor halfway between his feet and the bottom of Minerva's desk. He was reaching for an explanation when Bill spoke up. "Each of the Indemnities corresponds, in some way, to a quality, a characteristic of the person who was killed to make the original Horcrux. The first was 'childhood,' corresponding to Moaning Myrtle, and Ginny. Do you see?"

After a quiet moment, Hagrid nodded.

"And it seems," said Molly, "that all of the correspondences imply some - " she gestured, groping for the right word.

"Connection?" Arthur offered.

Molly smiled her thanks and nodded. "Some connection between people – children and parents. Motherhood, fatherhood, protectors…"

"So what's mine, then?" Hagrid asked gruffly. "Haven't got any kids, and neither does Hermione, here."

"Caretaking," Hermione whispered, not trusting her voice not to break. "It's caretaking. Frank Bryce…" She swallowed.

"The Muggle caretaker at the Riddle house," Minerva supplied quietly. "The one Tom killed to make the Horcrux in the snake."

Hagrid's eyes hooded for a moment, then he gave a grim nod. "'E's hitting us where we live, 'in'e? The ruddy bastard."

"What's yours, Hermione?" Ron asked curiously, confident that his friend would save herself, just as she has saved his mother.

Neither Remus nor Minerva moved.

"I should have thought that would be obvious, Ron," Hermione sniffed, with a glance toward Harry and a significant look back to Ron.

Ron knew from long experience what that look meant – he'd just put his foot in it. "Sorry, mate," he muttered to Harry.

Harry nodded, eyes ablaze. "She cares. About me. And so did my mum." He looked grimly at Hermione. "It's sacrifice, isn't it?"

Hermione bit her lip. "Sort of."

"Ruddy bastard," Hagrid repeated.

"I'll make him pay," Harry said quietly. "For all of you."

/x/

In the kitchen at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, Severus sat suddenly straighter, seeing Harry's eyes through Hermione's.

He had seen that same determined intensity in Lily's, once, so long ago.

And in his mind, an entire set of variables that he had for nearly two decades played in constant, endless variation – his torment through grating hours of sleeplessness; his scream of defiance, bitten behind his clenched jaw during raging performances of depravity and blood; his desperate plea, shouted from the depths of half-remembered nightmares.

An infinite set of possibilities dissolved, resolved, hardened in an instant, replaced by one certainty, a constant, as across space, time, and memory, and for the first time, Severus saw more than just her eyes in her son.

/x/

As the Order members dispersed, Minerva chivvied Kingsley ahead of her out of the office. "A word, Kingsley…"

Finally alone – Tonks had gone ahead with Moody and the Weasleys – Remus buried his head in his hands. James. Lily. Sirius. I wish…

"It is difficult, I know," came Dumbledore's voice from the wall.

"Albus." Remus' voice was hollow as he spoke into his hands. "It's all happening too fast. And too late." He turned haunted eyes to the headmaster's portrait. "We were children, Albus. All of us. As they are…" He gestured to the empty office that Harry, Ron and Hermione had just vacated along with the rest of the Order. "Children."

Dumbledore nodded. "It is never easy."

"And Hermione… she confirmed something I'd long suspected, about Lily, and about Snape," Remus continued, his words seeming to rush even in his reluctance to speak them aloud. "How does she know, Albus? How does she know everything she knows?"

"The same way, Remus, that you ascertained who her source was among the Death Eaters. Logic. Reason. Reflection. An open mind, and, I daresay, an open heart."

Remus looked worried. "She told me about the plural Indemnity – that Snape is willing to die, for Harry."

"As he has ever been, Remus," Dumbledore said quietly. "As have we all."

"For Harry, or for Lily?" Remus' eyes glittered with doubt, loyalty pushing him to hover on the edge of a violence, visible evidence of an internal battle he had fought against himself for so long it had become a habit, as much a part of himself as knowing the phase of the moon.

"In his mind I believe they are at once the same, and yet distinct," Dumbledore began slowly.

"Hermione said Lily knew of his commitment."

Dumbledore waited for several moments before speaking. "She did."

"How?"

"She asked it of him, Remus. She was a young mother protecting her unborn child, and she asked it of him who had once been a friend."

"She asked it of him?"

Dumbledore nodded.

"You." The struggle in Remus' eyes grew more pronounced.

"I never refused any who turned to me, or to Hogwarts, for protection, no, nor for sanctuary, Remus," he said evenly.

Some of the anger faded from Remus' face as Dumbledore's point hit home. He looked down, shook his head slightly, and cleared his throat. "Did James know?" he asked quietly.

"I believe he did not," Dumbledore said sympathetically, "but there was little to know, Remus. Lily and Severus met in my presence, once, in this office. Your loyalty to James does you credit, but there is no cause to doubt anyone's fidelity. Anyone's."

Remus glanced up and nodded. "Of course. I just… of course. It was just disconcerting, I suppose, to have been reminded. Of everything." He shook his head as though trying to clear his vision. "Albus," he continued, after a moment.

Dumbledore waited.

"Hermione and – and Snape. Do they really have a workaround?"

"Possibly."

Remus glared at the floor, and Dumbledore continued, "Harry's scar is a somewhat more complicated Horcrux than a locket or a snake."

"I thought she must be lying."

"I have found Miss Granger to be a rather poor liar."

Remus turned this over in his mind. "She seems to be getting better."

"And it is to be hoped that that improvement continues, at least through tonight."

Remus nodded, but looked as though there was another question he wanted to ask.

Dumbledore waited.

"Albus… Snape and… he – he can't be…"

"I trusted him with my life, Remus, and he did not disappoint me. Whatever reassurance you seek will, likewise, play out, given time."

"Albus. She is a child."

"From your perspective, I am certain that she seems very young indeed. Perhaps as young as you appear from mine," Dumbledore replied calmly.

A hint of quiet humor in Remus' eyes, quickly replaced by a memory. "She reminds me a little of Lily. More so this summer." He sounded troubled.

"Echoes reach us when most we need to hear them, Remus, but they are, finally, only echoes. And a fine afternoon such as this should not be wasted in listening to them, especially not when, as now, there is a young Auror waiting for you – one, I believe, with an eye toward the very near future."

Remus stood and, as was his habit, dusted off his robes, although there was no dust on them. He looked at Dumbledore's portrait, then sighed. "Thank you, Albus."

The door closed behind him. After a few minutes, Dumbledore reached into his robes and restored the book to its preferred place on his lap.

Dumbledore glanced toward the window where Hermione and Remus had stood talking a little while before. From his angle, he couldn't quite see the Quidditch pitch.

/x/

When Severus had seen that look before, threads of flame were emerging from Dumbledore's wand at the join of their hands.

He had not blinked.

Neither had she.

But when, with the final element of the Vow, she had mercifully ensured his death should her child fail, he had gripped her hand hard, embracing the Compulsion that flared in their shared blood – blood they shared from their childish Muggle ritual not that many years prior.

She had not blinked, but had squeezed his hand gently.

And he had had to look away and close his eyes.

And now, finally, her son had become her heir, a single constant in what nonetheless remained a sea of chaos.

/x/

The shapes outside the garden wall blocked more and more of the light, the mist resolved into a new generation of darkness.