Harry was lost in his wretchedness, unable to move. There was no reason to any more: Voldemort was dead, and so was he. He had lost Ron and Hermione, which meant he had nothing left. What good was winning the war when you lost your soul? They had been his soul. No—they were his soul still, and it had died with them. He…

…felt himself being lifted by the hair. The room was spinning, and for a second he couldn't tell which way was up, as though he were drugged. He was hauled to his feet, then roughly shaken while his feet scrabbled for purchase on the tiles. "They're alive," someone said.

His head snapped up, hardly daring to believe. "W-what?"

"But they won't be for long, if you don't come over her and help with the healing spell."

He could hardly see, and felt numb. But the sudden surge of hope shot him through with new life. Trying desperately to pull himself together, he stumbled over to kneel on the floor between them as they lay suspended in the air. "Take their hands. No, wait a minute," the somebody snapped. He blinked, wiped his glasses on his filthy shirt, and just managed to make out the blurred image of Snape taking Hermione's burnt, carbonised, withered claw and plunging it into a basin of water. "Yes!" he heard a voice. He thought it was Madam Pomfrey, and thought he saw her hands splashing Ron's into the bowl as well.

He could only stare as Hermione's hand emerged dripping, as perfect as it had ever been, pink and intact and gleaming. Five pink fingernails, five shiny knuckles… Dizzy with hope, he watched, heart fluttering, as Ron's larger, stronger hand emerged from the basin, pink and wet and shiny and whole. His hands were roughly pressed into each of theirs, "to complete the Nurturing Web. And don't you dare let go!" snapped a Healer, but he was crying so hard he couldn't care who.

Harry gripped their hands tightly, not needing to be told twice. He pressed them both against his cheeks, giddy with their presence, kissing Hermione's strong fingers and Ron's large, rough knuckles over and over, as he blurrily watched Pomfrey and Snape shouting jubilantly, "He's still crying!" But he didn't understand, and he didn't care. Something seemed to have turned his insides to mush, and he couldn't stop shaking and crying and kissing Ron's and Hermione's hands. He could make out plastic sheeting being spread underneath his friends. Above him, Madam Pomfrey filled a goblet from the basin and splashed it onto Ron's head with a flourish, while Snape mirrored her actions for Hermione. Harry gaped as he saw Ron's fatally charred skull starting to grow back; it was so fast that by the time he'd whipped his gaze round to Hermione, seen her flesh rebuild itself and cover up with a layer of new skin, and turned back to Ron, he could see tufts of red hair growing back onto the baby-new head. Snape raised his hand high and poured a gobletful onto Hermione's back, sloshing the liquid back and forth with his hands to cover all of the sickening, fatal injury, and Harry sobbed with relief to see new flesh blossoming everywhere; he turned to Ron, where Pomfrey, laughing with joy, was recklessly splashing more water onto his longer torso with the same effect, banishing the arid, carbonized burn-desert and leaving the pink, damp skin of Ron's beloved, familiar body in its place. Thighs, buttocks, legs, all were rebuilt, a mediwizard diligently siphoning the excess liquid off the sheet back into the basin with his wand, and Pomfrey and Severus laughing, growing steadily more thrilled and euphoric as it went on.

"Severus, it's working!" Pomfrey trilled.

"Poppy, you're stating the obvious!" Snape's voice was filled with exhilaration.

"Grow up, Severus!"

Suddenly, there was an upward pull on his hands, but Harry wasn't ready to let go; he stood, shakily, to see his friends being sat up, their twisted stumps of feet plunged deep into the stone sink. Wide-eyes, he saw the impossibly damaged limbs reforming, the black falling off like so much scale, pink toes growing, each with a perfect nail, translucent skin shining, delicate and shell-like, twinkling underwater as the rippling surface caught a shaft of reflected sunlight from the window.

It was all Harry could do not to collapse on the spot. He couldn't help it; he let out a cry of relief. With what strength he had, he stayed on his feet, and wept.

"He's going to hit the floor any moment now," Snape chuckled to Poppy. "That's all right, he can recuperate later."

"Do my eyes deceive me?" Poppy looked sidelong at Severus. "The dour Professor Snape, smiling?"

Snape rearranged his features hastily. "Don't get used to it." Yet the grin tugged at his features again, immediately, and he let it; how could he not? Naked, glowing and perfect as the day they were born, the boy and girl were propped unconscious in a sitting position, as Pomfrey splashed handfuls of healing water on any smaller spot she had missed. The very sight of them – Adam and Eve or passengers on Noah's Ark? flitted across Severus' mind – was living proof that the darkness did not always have to triumph, that there was still – well, not hope, he had believed for far too long that there could never be hope, but that perhaps, perhaps, there was a healing water somewhere that could restore the charred and blasted desert.

Perhaps.

"Don't you want to do the honours, Harry?" Snape said into the boy's ear. The only thing that marred Granger and Weasley's newfound perfection was the hands their friend had not been holding, as they had remained on the far sides of the basin between their 'beds'; from the wrists down, they remained black, clawlike, twisted.

But the boy was too punch-drunk to react, the potion properly taking effect now, his responses slow. "Wha?" he slurred.

"Oh, for–" Snape grabbed Harry's hands, shoved each of theirs into one of his, and plunged the whole mess into the basin.

He watched, mesmerized, as their hands healed.

…He watched, mesmerized, as their hands not only healed, but started to shimmer and incandesce. Potter quietly lost consciousness, but his hand remained held fast. A strange white light glowed down each of their arms, the three strands intertwining, rising up from the surface of the water like a braided tree of silver. Severus heard Poppy's gasp and felt her hand slip into his as the healing tree continued to grow, branching out into delicate, smoky spirals, curling tendrils of light throughout the room. A smoky wisp of light curled around Severus, then Poppy, seeming to disappear into Severus' chest as he watched. The pulse of alarm he wanted to feel was dispelled by a strange influx of peace, a gentle healing pulse. And still the tree grew before his eyes: tendril blossomed upon tendril, wisp curling and branching out from smoky wisp. The mediwizards stopped what they were doing to stare, mesmerized, at the wispy ringlets, numbering into the hundreds now. Each curl wended its way towards one of Voldemort's victims lying there, wrapping itself around the patients in their makeshift beds, melting into them and making them glow briefly with a white light. He saw lesions disappearing, limbs regrowing. Severus frowned, trying to reassert his grip on the situation, and felt obliged to whisper to Poppy, "Are you sure this is in order…"

"It's what every Healer dreams of, Severus," she whispered. "Ssh."

After healing the injured in the closed ward, the tendrils slipped out under the door, presumably in search of the rest of the patients. But a few wisps of silver remained; as Severus watched, one of them shimmered and coalesced into a gigantic, powerful stag. "Potter's Patronus?" he whispered to Poppy, who nodded. As the shining animal advanced towards him, muscles rippling, Severus took a step back. He knew who else had had a stag Patronus, and had no illusions about how that man had felt about him.

But the dignified animal came to Severus, and knelt at his feet, majestic head bowed.

Severus' mouth dropped open. He knew Patronii couldn't talk independently, but he could swear he heard a voice in his head:

Forgive.

Forgive? Not bloody likely, Severus snarled before he could stop himself. You didn't just torment my youth - you ruined my life, Potter.

And my own.

Eh? Severus blurted most unsophisticatedly.

The dead know karma, Snape. Let me show you the paths it takes.

Severus had never performed Legilimency on a Patronus before, but in a flash, he was in the silver mind, floating blue on a cloud, high above the world. His mouth dropped open as he saw the chakras and the katras far below him shining with human energy, lines sparking from one to the other like firework trails in broad daylight.

Even Muggles sometimes see this, Severus. The silver voice was almost friendly. 'How it's all connected', Sting called it. Ringo Starr said, 'What goes around comes around…'

Snape rolled his eyes. Is everything definable in terms of Muggle rock music?

The Patronus shrugged. Just trying to make it easier. Suit yourself... With a whoosh, all the trails faded out save for his, James' and those connected to them. Like following a luminous trail between lighted points on a map, he saw it: that if James and Sirius had not tormented him and destroyed his youth with their bullying, he would not have been embittered enough to turn to the Dark Lord; if he had not, Voldemort would never have known about the prophecy, for he had been the one to tell Him; if the prophecy had remained a secret, I would still be alive and Lily would not have had to give her life for Harry, and the chain of events that sent Sirius to his death at the Department of Mysteries would never have been set in motion. I lost you your best friend and the woman you adored and your youth and a good part of your adult life - the illuminated karma lines glowed fiercely - in return, I lost the mother of my son, Lily, the beautiful, beloved wife I died to protect, lost my life, orphaned my son and left him alone in the world, doomed my dearest friend to languish for years in the most horrible place on earth, and finally got him killed as well, depriving my son of a godfather in the process - and all as payment for my childhood arrogance and cruelty. Their deaths are on my conscience too, Severus. If you find that a sufficient price to pay, forgive. If not, I understand.

Severus' mind was reeling, yet he managed to get in one last argument: "Don't consider yourself absolved just because you died. You died loved, with your family. Sometimes to go on living is worse than death."

But the silver stag seemed perturbed not at all. I know, Severus. You of all men will understand me when I say that the torments of conscience are worse than the Cruciatus. I feel them every day. You know I am not a ghost; but I know you are aware that Wizarding dead can sometimes linger a while to observe from afar, particularly if they were from their flesh and blood untimely ripped. I have seen how my son has suffered; (Severus snorted) but I have also seen your suffering, all of it. I have seen all the hells you have gone through to atone for Lily's death, and believe me, I revere you for it. I am not here to play some silly game of one-upmanship as to who has suffered the most; I would only have you take some solace in the knowledge that I have been punished too.

For a long time in the timelessness, Severus just stood there, staring at the "map". He watched the luminescent trails coruscate from one point of light to anther, bringing people together, joining their fates. Inwardly, he swore. How could he have been so blinded by his bitterness that he'd failed to see the karma that had rebounded on his tormentor, far worse than anything he could have planned deliberately? How was it that thick-headed, self-centered James Potter had seen it where Slytherin-subtle Severus hadn't?

Oh, don't worry about that, Severus, the Patronus smiled (Smiled? How the deuce did he smile?) The dead see more than the living. And please don't judge me by my childhood self; unlike you, I never had a chance to grow up.

Severus felt his "face" grow unaccountably hot as the Patronus bowed his head again.

Healing cannot begin without forgiveness, Severus. You know that, most of all.

"Oh, all right," Severus muttered irritably. But the Patronus remained kneeling, head lowered.

Bless.

Even as a Patronus, the Potter gene can't leave bloody well enough alone, can it? "Now isn't that taking it a bit too far? Bless whom, pray tell? Potter the Arrogant, Sadistic Prat or Potter the Boy-who-remained-Clueless? "

"Severus, really!" Poppy chided gently. Her voice seemed to snap him out of a trance. The stag's eyes flickered to his and Poppy's joined hands, and Severus could have sworn he waggled an eyebrow.

Severus dropped Poppy's hand like a hot coal. Elemental magic or not, he could give as good as he got. "Now look here, you interfering, officious ungulate…"

A bolt of amusement from the stag. I shall give my blessing, then. And he tossed his regal head and was gone, galloping straight out of the window of St. Mungo's.

"What was that all abou…" But of course, now a shining ephemeral otter came to Pomfrey, frolicking in mid-air, while a little silver Jack Russell terrier gambolled towards him, and finally licked Severus' face. "Weasley's?" he spluttered, trying to bat the affectionate animal away. Pomfrey nodded. "Should have known," he muttered as the frisky puppy frolicked off and disappeared, making playful circles around the otter until both were out of sight.