Chapter 20: Iconography

Draco Malfoy was doing a favour for Colin Creevey.

The statement was, in and of itself, absurd. Draco didn't do favours, and he certainly didn't do them for a mobile inane grin in a Gryffindor scarf. But Hermione had asked him to do it, as a favour to her, and he'd been so pleased that she actually thought they were close enough for her to ask him for a favour that he'd immediately agreed to everything.

In retrospect, he should have asked exactly what it was Colin wanted him to do. Thank Merlin his costumes hadn't been too bad. Colin had eight sixth and seventh year girls dressed up as 'flower fairies', which were apparently some sort of superstition held by Muggle gardeners. Draco himself only had to be the Personification of Winter (a rather handsome outfit in pale grey wool and white satin) and a Forlorn Knight, which involved black velvet, a sword, and a shield held in place by a charm to hide the fact that his lower left arm was missing.

He'd been outside at dawn to do the Forlorn Knight bit, and had nearly frozen to death because not only was it was February and bloody cold outside, Nearly Headless Nick and the Grey Lady had been in the picture with him. Creevey had kindly helped him stumble to the Slytherin table and poured him some coffee before vanishing upstairs. Ten minutes later, Draco had seen him dragging Professor Lupin past the doors of the Great Hall, and had been pleased to notice that Lupin was wearing a decidedly drafty-looking brown robe with a rope belt. With any luck, something important would freeze off and Nymphadora would lose interest in him.

The Seasons bit had, thankfully, been left until after breakfast. (Lupin had been a bit blue around the lips at breakfast, but seemed otherwise unharmed, which was a shame.) Now Draco was back outside, waiting for his turn to pose in the small courtyard that the Charms Club were running through all four seasons in the space of about an hour and a half.

Spring had been quite pleasant to watch - Ginny Weasley in ever-so-slightly transparent gauzy green, with her arms bare and more than a hint of cleavage. (There had been charms involved to keep her warm, presumably.) Ron Weasley had provided additional entertainment by going purple attempting to insist that Creevey cover her up. Potter had been enjoying the show, but hadn't at all liked Draco enjoying it as well, so Draco had enjoyed it as visibly as possible.

Draco had ignored Summer, since it was only Justin Finch-Fletchley being forced to look Casually Manly in sky blue and white. Autumn, however, had gotten his full and undivided attention.

Hermione, naturally. And wearing the robes he had given her. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself that she didn't understand the significance, there was a part of himself that was exulting at her acceptance of the indication of his intentions. He'd been right... they suited her perfectly, especially with her wavy hair pinned up and decorated with tiny sprays of orange berries. Creevey posed her carefully, hitching her skirts up to show slender ankles and small bare feet, and Draco was suddenly very glad he was sitting on an uncomfortable chunk of frozen rock. Hermione looked far too enticing, and had he not already been going a bit numb...

Far too soon, Hermione was climbing off her rock, trim ankles concealed again and her smiles being wasted on Creevey. Perhaps it was fortunate that Draco was immediately dragged over to what Creevey called 'the set' - he might have embarrassed both her and himself by some sort of public declaration, otherwise.

He would get her alone later. Today. He would definitely say something today.

Hermione couldn't help but admire Colin's stamina. He'd been up before dawn, shoving Hagrid into a gigantic St Christopher costume (complete with drowsy first-year on his shoulder), and he hadn't stopped moving since. Neither had his able assistant Dennis, who was running ahead to ensure that each new set was ready the minute Colin finished with the last one. Everyone else had gotten breaks between shots... nobody was in more than two or three, and Colin had allowed plenty of time for resting and changing costumes.

Now he was looking very weary, but triumphant. "I'm almost done," he said cheerfully. "Just you, and the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, and then I'm all finished. Today has been a very productive day."

Hermione nodded. "You're absolutely certain you want me to do this?" she asked, still feeling a bit odd about it. "I mean... well..."

"You're perfect." Colin lowered the camera he'd been looking through, smiling at her. "Really. I've always loathed the icons that have her all blonde and blue-eyed. Or looking stoned. A stoned Virgin always just looks really wrong. You're a bit fair, but at least you've got dark eyes and hair, and you're not exactly ivory-pale even in winter."

"It still feels a bit weird." Hermione smoothed the simple gown a bit nervously over her stomach. "I know the Slytherins call me the Virgin Saint sometimes, but it's not literal."

"That's what gave me the whole idea, actually." Colin moved a stone bowl full of figs slightly closer to her hand, and stood back to admire the effect. "You look... right. The way I've always imagined her. Small and soft and pretty in an ordinary sort of way, like a real person."

"Thank you." Hermione smiled at him, and the camera clicked. "Wait, I wasn't ready -"

"You were just right." Colin lowered the camera again. "I'll still do the posed shot, but I think that one might be better."

Ten minutes later, they were done, and Colin helped her up off the wooden stool she'd been sitting on. "There. Thanks for all this, Hermione."

"You're welcome. It's been... fun, actually. And you did promise me copies of all the ones I'm in." Although how her parents would respond to a picture of her as the Virgin Mary, she didn't dare think.

"I promised everyone copies. I'm going to be in the Potions lab all night developing them." Colin grinned, seeming quite pleased at the prospect. "Anyway, I'd better go get started on my Archangels before Justin's wings fall off again. For some reason they just won't stay with him."

"Could be some sort of Divine disapproval of him being gay." Hermione grinned a little. "Or just that you've been running the Charms Club ragged and they're all getting tired."

"They agreed to this of their own free will," Colin said giving her an innocent who-me look. "On the condition that Professor Flitwick watched them showing off, which he did, so there you are."

Hermione nodded. "Colin? One question, before you go?"

"Yeah?" He was already at the door, looking back at her enquiringly.

"Why are you only doing two Archangels? You did four Seasons."

"I could only get two Archangels." Colin scowled. "I tried for a set, but I couldn't get anyone who looked even remotely right for Raphael, and when I asked Professor Snape for Uriel he said no. And threatened to stuff my camera up my nose."

Hermione had done a little reading, when the subject of icons came up, and gave Colin a horrified look. "You asked Professor Snape to be the Angel of Death?"

"Of course. He'd have been great. Severe and kind of haunted, you know?" Colin sighed deeply. "Oh, well."

"Colin, that was... tactless isn't a strong enough word!"

"You mean because he was a Death Eater?" Colin shrugged. "I guess. Anyway, I have to go, I can practically hear feathers falling like rain."

Hermione watched him dash off, biting her lip. No wonder she hadn't seen so much as the tip of a hooked nose all day... he'd probably not only been offended by Colin's thoughtless request, it could have really upset him. She knew death was, to say the least, a difficult and touchy subect for Snape now. To be asked to represent it...

She'd better go find him. Just to make sure he wasn't turning students into toads or locked in his rooms moping.

Getting out of her Virgin Mary costume didn't take too long, with Dilly's help, and once she was back in the ugly but cosy student robes she headed for the dungeons. There was no answer when she knocked on the door to his office, and she was heading for his rooms when she heard her name.

"Hermione!" She turned to see Draco, also in student robes again, smiling down at her. "What are you doing wandering around down here?"

"Looking for Professor Snape." She felt her face going pink, and added a hasty excuse. "Colin was... uhm... a bit rude to him. He asked him to pose as the Angel of Death."

Draco winced. "Tactless little shit... not that it surprises me. He's not here, though - he went into Hogsmeade after breakfast. He told Professor McGonagall he wanted to shop for replacements for the student stores, but he told me he just wanted to get out of the way of all the fuss."

"Oh." That made perfect sense, of course. But she couldn't help being a little disappointed that it was quite certain he hadn't seen her looking nice for once. "Well, as long as he's got something to do that isn't turning Colin into a flower-pot."

"I'm sure he could manage both." Draco grinned. "He won't, though. He's mellowed a bit now that the war's over. I've seen him go for whole classes without making a single student cry."

Hermione grinned. "I've heard that. He's even been known to let Harry get away from a Potions class without a verbal evisceration."

"Yeah. I think he might be coming down with something." Draco looked more relaxed than usual, somehow, and for once his smile didn't have a wry edge to it. "I'm actually almost glad you tricked me into the whole photography thing."

"I did not trick you! I asked you!"

"You didn't tell me I'd be wearing a costume. Or going out at dawn to pose in the slush."

"Yes, well... I didn't know about that either." Hermione ducked her head sheepishly. "Colin just said he wanted to build up a portfolio. He didn't mention that he wanted to single-handedly introduce the entire Wizarding World to Narrative Imagery."

"Is that what he calls it? The whole story-picture thing?" Draco shrugged. "It was interesting. And at least my costumes were dignified. And I was right... the brown and yellow did suit you."

"It did. And thank you, it was a beautiful gift." She looked up, meeting his eyes as she smiled up at him. It had been a lovely gift, and she was glad he thought she'd looked nice in it. The baby kicked and she touched her stomach gently. I wish your daddy had seen me in it... would he think I looked nice?

Draco made an odd noise, looking away suddenly, and she reached out to touch his whole arm. "Are you all right?"

"Fine." He smiled at her, but this time just a meaningless stretching of the lips rather than the warmth of minutes ago. "It's being out in the cold so much... it makes my arm twinge a bit." He rubbed the end of his left arm, just below the elbow, and made a wry face. "Not that I'd admit it to the general public, but it still gives me some trouble sometimes."

"Oh, I'm sorry." She nodded. "Ron has the same trouble, especially in the cold. You should go get properly warm before dinner."

"I probably should." He nodded, his face a little tight with what she assumed was pain. "I'll see you later, Hermione."

Severus was not pleased to find the Potions classroom occupied when he slipped down after dinner to restock the cupboards with fresh daisy root and dried tansy flowers. He'd spent the whole day away from the school avoiding Colin Creevey, and here the boy was, spreading out his possessions across most of the classroom. Severus did regularly permit students, including Creevey, to develop their photographs here, but only supervised and with permission.

The boy had, admittedly, done a surprisingly good job of the light-diffusing spell that cloaked the room in shadow even when the door was opened unexpectedly.

"What, precisely, do you think you are doing, Mr Creevey?"

"Developing the pictures from today," Creevey said absently, holding up a print and examining it. "It went really well. Take a look at some of these." His tone was casual but not disrespectful - he was simply too absorbed in what he was doing to pay much attention to the interloper.

"I did not give you permission to use the classroom," Severus pointed out, but he drifted over to a table where several of the dry photographs had been spread out. Draco was in one of them, standing between two ghosts. The beautiful woman he stared at imploringly, as the ghostly knight tried to warn him of his peril."La Belle Dame Sans Merci," Severus said quietly.

"The one with Malfoy? Yes, exactly," Creevey said, surprising him. "I always wanted to try it. I like Keats."

"I'm surprised. You've never struck me as having sufficient patience to do your homework, let alone reading poetry." The picture was beautiful... and a little unearthly. Draco looked barely more solid than the Grey Lady, his sword lying forgotten at his feet as he stretched out his hand to her. "And I still did not give you permission to use the classroom."

"You weren't here to ask, and I wanted to get these done quickly." Creevey shrugged. "Don't worry, I'll clean up when I'm done." He lifted another picture out of a vat of the potions that magicked photographs into motion, making a pleased sound ."Oh, this is lovely... take a look."

Severus found himself leaning over to look, instead of snapping at the boy for his insolence. He saw Ginevra Weasley standing on a great lump of broken stone, her red hair blowing around her as she laughed in delight. "Spring," he guessed, and Creevey nodded, looking pleased. "Draco mentioned you were doing a set of seasonal images."

"He made a great Winter, look." Another picture, this time of Draco in silvery grey and stark white, sitting quietly on the same lump of stone, but with snow drifted around it now and a few flakes caught in Draco's hair. As he watched, the image lifted his head to look up at the sky, his thin face unwontedly peaceful.

Severus nodded slowly. "You've captured it well," he said, and meant it. He would never have believed bouncy, overenthusiastic Colin Creevey capable of envisioning and photographing such a serene and contemplative moment.

"Thanks." Colin nodded. "Wizarding photography is... complicated. You can't just pick a model who looks right, their state of mind has to be right as well, or the picture goes all over the place when they start to move. Harry kept trying to escape out of the first pictures I took... he hates being photographed. Malfoy would have been complete shit as Winter two years ago. Now... he can just stop, you know? And enjoy a moment of silence and peace. He's right now."

Severus looked at Creevey's nondescript face. His usual cheerful smile was missing, now, and he wore the intent expression of a craftsman at work. He looked suddenly very much older, and Severus was painfully reminded of seeing that same face pale and slack on a stretcher, and the stench of blood and ruptured intestine from his pierced stomach. "You are right," he said quietly, and turned to one of the pictures still hanging up to dry.

It was Hermione, this time, and his stomach clenched a little. Creevey had found the delicate beauty of bone and line that Severus saw in her, and captured it for the world to see. She was sitting on the same piece of rock, with autumn leaves drifting around her slender feet and ankles, her hands cupped gently over her stomach and a small, private smile on her face. "Very nice," Severus said, flat and inadequate, as he ached with an almost physical urge to reach out and draw her back from that remote absorption with his child that left none of her thoughts for him...

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Creevey sounded as proud as if he'd constructed her himself. "But this one is even better." He picked up another of the dry pictures, handling it gently. "Look."

Hermione, again, but this time with her hair in a loose braid hanging over her shoulder, half-covered by a soft drape of blue cloth over her head and shoulders. Underneath it she wore a simple, shapeless green dress that stretched across her stomach as she sat on a wooden stool with a bowl of figs on a window-ledge beside her and a spindle at her feet. She was smiling again, but it was a different smile, a warm and welcoming smile, as if she were about to rise to her feet and greet the newcomer joyfully.

"This is... an icon," Severus said slowly. "A photographic icon." Hermione as the Virgin... He should be shocked, and yet it looked right. No over-dressed sanctity or wax-doll perfection, just a pretty girl with irregular features and untidy hair and warm dark eyes.

"One of several." Creevey smiled fondly at the picture. "Two Archangels, four Saints, and the Virgin."

"Only two Archangels?" He wanted this picture. Wanted to be able to see that smile whenever it pleased him.

"I could only get two." Creevey actually looked ill-at-ease for the first time. "Er... Hermione said it was rude to have asked you, and I'm sorry if it offended you. But there's nobody else at the school who could do it."

He'd been offended. And angry, and pained that the boy thought of him that way. "Why did you think I could?"

"Because you know death," Creevey said quietly. "Because you've faced it and fought it and feared it and denied it and accepted it and you understand it, as much as anyone still living can. I've always imagined Uriel as more... resigned, than anything else. Not grieving, because he's had a long time to get used to the idea, but perhaps a little sad that it's necessary. You would be... right."

"Then I am not offended." And he almost - not quite, but almost - wished he'd granted the outrageous request. Someone who could capture Hermione's elusive beauty and Draco's hard-won peace might have found something in him, too. "At least, not by your request. Your presence in my classroom without permission, on the other hand..."

For the first time, Creevey actually gave Severus his full attention. "I'm sorry if I've invonvenienced you, sir, but I really wanted to get these done. The pictures are better if you develop them within twenty-four hours, when the images are still... fresh."

"It is not a matter of inconveniencing me, Mr Creevey, it is a matter of your being in a place where you have no business being without a teacher present." The statement, which should have been cutting, fell rather flat. Creevey had not, after all, been meddling and prying like an ordinary nosy student, but working, hard and efficiently.

Creevey clearly caught the lack of his usual certainty. "Then why haven't you taken twenty points off Gryffindor and ordered me back to my common room?" he asked. Severus hesitated, and he nodded. "It's... awkward for everyone, isn't it? Us still being here, after the war." He rested a hand on his stomach, where there was surely an impressive scar under his robes. "You... the teachers who fought with us... you don't treat us the same anymore. And we don't treat you the same, either.

"You can't follow someone into a battle, cover his back in a fight and come around to him pouring a Blood-Replenishing Potion down your throat and then go back to school and think 'oh, yes, he teaches Potions' and not think any more about it. And I bet you can't fight with someone and lead them and heal them and then go back and think 'oh, yes, just another student', either. Because I'm not just another student. I've killed people and I've watched my friends die and I've had a dirty great chunk of wood shoved right through me and been sure I was dying, and as hard as I try now I really don't give a flying fuck about house points or detentions or any of that crap because it is profoundly fucking unimportant!" The words that had been boiling out of him stopped suddenly, and Creevey actually blushed. "Er. If you know what I mean, sir."

Severus nodded slowly. "I do know what you mean." He remembered shouting at Creevey in the heat of battle, roaring orders that had been obeyed swiftly and courageously. He remembered the brother, Dennis, being carried away on a stretcher, screaming, with acid burns splashed across face and arm and shoulder, and Creevey gritting his teeth and moving up to cover the hole left in their ranks. And they had come back - nearly all the students who had survived had come back - and they'd pretended to still just be students and he and Minerva and Hooch had tried to pretend to still be teachers, but Creevey was right. Things had changed, irrevocably, and while the pretence was necessary for the benefit of outsiders, there wasn't much point trying to maintain it between themselves.

"Good. Because I'm not trying to be cheeky or anything, sir, it's just..." Colin shrugged. "We're just going through the motions here, aren't we? I don't mean the actual lessons, but... Everyone wants to pretend that everything's gone back to the way it was, and we've all got to play along, but we're not kids anymore. We're just... not."

"No. You're not." Severus picked up another picture at random and looked down at it. Susan Bones, as fierce as a valkyrie in Gabriel's armour. On the table was a charming picture of Lavender Brown, kneeling beside a lavender bush. Both girls were pretty. Susan made Lavender look like a colourless child by contrast. (Susan had suffered internal injuries on the second-last day, in the same attack that had killed Hannah Abbot) "But the... appearance must be maintained. Any suggestion that those of you who fought with us are favoured above the others would be frowned on by the Board of Governers, not to mention the general public."

"Of course. I'll remember to ask next time." Creevey nodded. "But it's hard to remember to pretend, if you know what I mean."

"I know better than most, Mr Creevey, how hard it is to remember to maintain a pretence." Severus nodded, and felt an absurd rush of what might be happiness when the young man nodded and grinned lopsidedly at him. He hadn't realised that, even among the Gryffindors, he had earned respect at last. Even if it was only with a few of them.

"I thought you would." Creevey turned back to his work. "And I'll try to keep up the pretence. Until then, sir, with all due respect, please go away and let me get this done, or I'll be here all night."

Severus couldn't help a sudden laugh that startled both him and Creevey. "In other words, bugger off, sir. Very well, Creevey, I will leave you to your work, and get to my own."

The infuriatingly cheerful grin was back, and Creevey nodded to him politely. "Thank you, sir. Much appreciated."

Severus left... but not before surreptitiously pocketing the picture of Hermione as the Virgin. Creevey always made multiple copies of everything, and he wanted this one much more than Creevey possibly could.

He was planning a safe hiding-place for the picture when he opened the hidden door into his quarters - and then, when he stepped through, something crunched under his feet. He looked down at the shattered remains of a teacup and then up at Draco.

Draco, wound as tight as a spring with tension. Draco, with his hair a mess and his face pale. Draco staring at him with a miserable accusation that Severus hadn't seen since the days just after Albus Dumbledore's death.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Draco said, his fist clenching as he turned to face his godfather. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Severus stared at him. "Tell you what?"

"That the baby's yours!"