Hermione had managed to remove the Lupins to conjured stretchers when Phineas appeared in a nearby portrait—a nun in full habit currently sobbing into a hanky—and began shouting at her.
"Madam Snape! You're needed in the entrance hall at once! Madam Snape! Now, Madam Snape!"
"What is it?" she asked dumbly. She wiped at the tears on her cheeks, striving for composure.
"Go to the entrance hall, Madam!"
"But the—"
"Leave them!" Phineas waved his hands frantically. "The headmaster needs you now."
Hermione conjured a large white sheet to cover the Lupins, Stunned the tall Death Eater still hanging upside down, and Disapparated.
When she'd left the entrance hall, people had been organizing themselves, bringing the wounded to the hospital wing, collecting the Death Eaters. She and Severus had gone to chase down the last signals from the wards, people who weren't supposed to be in the castle.
Severus was back in the entrance hall, standing surrounded by Aurors. He held his hands out to his sides, nonthreatening. The Auror nearest him had him at wandpoint but stood a good two paces away; it appeared he wasn't under immediate arrest. Kingsley and Minerva stood to one side, talking quickly and quietly.
"What's going on?" Hermione snapped, finding herself staring down the business end of four Aurors' wands.
They're trying to decide if I'm under arrest or not.
"If you put him in there with the Death Eaters, they will kill him," Hermione said, her voice flat.
"Miss Granger—" Kingsley started, but Hermione shook her head and interrupted him.
"Madam Snape, actually."
That's not going to help you at all, Severus told her, smirking down at his feet while the Aurors looked at each other for cues on how to react.
Harry walked in, surrounded by Weasleys.
"What's going on?"
"Exactly what it looks like," Hermione said, fighting the inclination to go for her wand and hex them all into oblivion.
"You can't arrest him," Harry said, a crooked grin growing on his face, "he's the one who killed Voldemort."
"With a box," Ron added.
There was a tense moment. The Aurors looked between themselves. Finally, after a sharp look from Minerva, Kingsley called it.
"We have more important things to worry about," he said. At his gesture, the Auror nearest Severus returned his wand. "Just don't leave the castle until we've taken your statement, alright?"
Severus nodded and crossed to Minerva, who looked like she wanted to transform into a cat and claw somebody's calves. Hermione joined them, firmly ignoring the looks she was getting form the Aurors and most of the Weasleys.
The Aurors were organizing the captured Death Eaters, Snatchers and assorted hangers-on; the members of the Order who were still on their feet paired off to go around the perimeter wall and put protections in place on any gaps. Hagrid was dispatched to the main gate.
"Oh my God, Fred!" Hermione said, looking at George.
"No," said George, turning to show her his lack of an ear. "The other one."
"No, no. I've just remembered Fred!"
"What about him?"
"Come with me."
Severus went to the hall outside the kitchens. Travers hung limp in his bindings, hovering less than two paces from a large white sheet. He knew the Lupins were beneath it, but he couldn't seem to wrap his head around it.
The last Marauder. Of all of them, the most tolerable. The one who had only indirectly bullied him, not stepping in to stop what he could have. The only one who had apologized for that near-fatal encounter. (He hadn't wanted to hear it, of course; he'd been sixteen and mad as hell.)
But so much had changed since he was sixteen. So much had changed in just the last few months—Lupin had a son. An orphan now.
Severus sighed and levitated the Lupins carefully. He let the Death Eaters float along behind him, entirely undignified, the dead one occasionally bumping against the unconscious one.
Back in the entrance hall, he handed Travers over to one of the Aurors and brought the other three into the Great Hall where they had begun to collect the dead. The bodies didn't go wall to wall by any means, but the number of them was still staggering.
He lay the Lupins in line with the defenders who had died. He didn't want to look at them all and feel guilty for surviving—hadn't they deserved luck enough to outlive him?
He turned his back on them when he saw little Denise Clearwater, a fourth year Hufflepuff, in the line of the dead. She should have been evacuated, but instead she'd died in a flannel nightgown patterned in duckies. Had she been running? Had she tried to fight?
Instead, he walked to the line of the fallen Death Eaters, Snatchers and the other scum the Dark Lord had unearthed for the fight. He'd wanted cannon fodder, and he'd had an alarming number of volunteers.
Somebody had set Bellatrix Lestrange's head next to the stump of her neck. He'd hoped it would be lost after it had tumbled away into the fighting, but it was probably best that it had been found. Some first year would probably have stumbled on it come September, rotting, and been traumatized.
It was difficult to resist the urge to kick the head across the hall. She's dead; it's just a corpse now, he had to remind himself. He could vividly recall the way his palm had throbbed as he'd held her steady. His hand stretched around her neck, squeezing tight while she writhed, scratched at him. He'd kept his wand on her cheek and hadn't felt the burn of the scratches until much later, well after he'd watched her head roll away, watched her body crumple in a heap, leaking blood and fluid all over the stones.
"Mourning fallen friends?" One of the Aurors; he didn't know the name.
"Trying to convince myself that their deaths were worth their deaths," he said, pointing from one line of bodies to the other.
The Auror glared suspiciously. Severus almost rolled his eyes, but didn't. Instead, he bent down and fixed the sheet over the Lupins, then left the Hall.
A jab of his wand Silenced the Death Eaters who shouted when he passed them, calling him 'traitor' and every foul thing he'd heard from the general public not so long ago.
He went to his office. The gargoyle guarding the staircase was listing dangerously to one side and he wondered if somebody had tried to get in, or if it had just been a stray curse.
"Why don't you just step over here for now, hm?" Severus directed, helping the gargoyle limp to one side of the door. "There's a good lad. You rest there for a bit."
Gods, I'm speaking to the statuary. And channeling Dumbledore while I do it.
In the office, most of the portraits were empty. They'd be around the school taking stock of things, or trying to help where they could. Derwent had probably gone to the hospital wing or her portrait at St. Mungo's. Dumbledore would probably be in his frame at the Ministry directing the political coup.
In the quiet, Severus sank down to the floor beside the door. The stone was cool beneath him and behind him as he sat back. He sat there for a moment, trying to just be blank, trying not to think about all that had happened and all that had to be done.
His Occlumency wouldn't come. The familiar blankness that he'd relied on for so long. His shields were nonexistent. They'd shattered when he'd shattered the Dark Lord's skull.
The tears came on quite suddenly. They shook his body, made it difficult to breathe.
When he calmed, he was only half surprised to see Minerva next to him. She was squatting in front of him, both of her hands holding tightly to one of his.
"You shouldn't sit like that," he said stupidly. "Your knees will hurt."
Minerva beamed at him. "My knees will hurt anyway after the night we've had."
"I suppose that's true."
"Oh you suppose, do you? Well I'm glad I have your approval."
His lip twitched. He had half a mind to smile at her, but it didn't seem right after coming from the Great Hall.
He could feel the physical aches and the soul-deep exhaustion that had been creeping up on him for the last few hours. The adrenalin had kept it at bay, and some of it had leaked out with the tears. He felt wrung-out now.
"I could sleep the clock around," he said
He could feel himself leaving the adrenalin behind, coming out of the disorientation and racing heartbeat. All he felt was tired. And sore.
"That sounds lovely," she said, easing herself down onto the floor next to him. They sat on the cool stone for a long time, looking out at the office. He didn't know what she was thinking about, but he was thinking about his children. He hoped they were peacefully asleep in Edinburgh.
The wards, which had been silent claxons ringing for his attention for what felt like most of his life, eventually drew him off the floor. He manipulated the spindly devices, turning off the ringing in his ears,
"Thank you," Minerva said, rubbing her temples. He smirked at her.
He desperately wanted to showerand sleep, but instead he sat behind the big desk and began sorting through the papers. The disciplinary requests could be discarded. The Ministry would hardly be open to receive official requests to postpone O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s, but they could be drafted. The Board of Governors would need to be contacted, though of course most of them were likely to be arrested in the next few days.
Severus started making a list of all the people he knew the Dark Lord had been blackmailing, keeping a list on the other side of the parchment of the people he knew had been aiming to earn a Dark Mark.
"You don't have to do that now," Minerva told him when she realized what he was up to.
"Whoever comes out of the coup at the Ministry will need this list."
"But not right now."
"Time is of the essence, Minerva. They are men with power. They can easily flee the country."
"They'll be tracked down."
"Better to get them before they leave."
She had no idea the atrocities some of the men on the list had committed. The Muggle Fights had merely been the most public incarnation of their blood sports. The things they'd enjoyed in private…
He shuddered and kept on with the list.
"What happened to your neck?"
His hand went to the bandage. It was tender, sensitive like a burn. "He set the snake on me."
"Before or after you picked up the crate?"
"Before," he said, smirking. "He was going on about his wand not working properly because he hadn't been the one to kill its last owner. He was going to kill me. Potter leapt in and attacked him, but not before he'd loosed the snake."
Nagini had always made his skin crawl. An enormous snake, venom highly lethal, able to talk to the Dark Lord. Also it was a giant snake. Fucking huge.
He dropped his hand from the bandage, wondering if he actually needed it. Hermione had patched him up, and it didn't feel like it was bleeding anymore. Maybe it hadn't healed fully, though; maybe the venom had complicated things, maybe it was still as raw as it felt.
"Hermione was there. If she hadn't been, if she hadn't known what to do, I'd be dead."
Minerva surprised him by hugging him again.
\\
They'd parted ways for a bit. Minerva had still been in her dressing gown, and he'd been crusty with his own blood.
He showered, scrubbing himself raw. He'd found dirt and blood in the strangest places. He was sore all over. His neck hurt where the snake had bit him, and despite Hermione's expert attentions the scars were vibrantly red and pink against his pale skin, slightly raised with irritation. He'd used a Sticking Charm and gauze to cover it and keep his collar from rubbing. He didn't bother to shave, wondering if Hermione might like him to regrow that beard. Also he didn't think his hands were steady enough not to slice his damned nose off if he tried to hold the razor (or worse, use magic).
His joints were sore and his bones ached from too much Blood Replenishing Potion—to be precise, it was the bone marrow causing problems, but it felt like he had a bone-deep ache going.
Jeans, a plain black t-shirt. It was wonderful to look down at his arms and see no sign of the Dark Mark. It was truly gone.
The earsplitting roar that met his reentry into the office made him flinch, taking a step back so that he was partially blocked from the room by the door frame. He had his wand in hand, ready to start cursing, when he realized it was applause. All around, the headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts were giving him a standing ovation, waving their hats and wigs. They were shaking each others' hands, dancing on their chairs. Dilys Derwent was a mess of tears. Dexter Fortescue waved an ear trumpet. Phineas Nigellus Black was shouting about Slytherin House.
Dumbledore stood in his portrait behind the desk, crying openly, beaming with pride. Severus glared at all of them and desperately wished he didn't have things to do in the room. He'd never been recognized for the things he did, and especially not by the people he so desperately wanted recognition from.
"Enough," he said after a moment, striding down the stairs like it was any other day. He kept his back straight, his chin up. It was imperative they didn't know how uncomfortable they made him.
"Severus, dear boy," Dumbledore said, dabbing at his eyes with a lacy handkerchief, "well done."
Severus nodded, recognizing the statement, then focused his attention back to the desk. He was halfway through his letter of resignation when Minerva came in. She looked exactly as she always did, hair in a perfect bun, tartan robes pinned in place with some sort of clan brooch.
What a fucking day.
"So," said Minerva, taking the chair across the desk without being asked. She looked exhausted and he wondered what she'd been up to.
"So," he said, smirking at her. She smiled.
"The ghosts are sweeping the castle for damage. They'll be here as soon as they're done to fill us in. The dormitories are undamaged, luckily. The remaining students are in their beds, and the Order and some villagers have pallets in their old common rooms. The house elves seem to be dealing with the stress of all this by cooking."
Severus smirked, still working on the letter.
"Kingsley, Arthur, and everybody else who works for the Ministry has gone to London to try to sort things out. Do you have those lists finished?"
"I sent them on to Arthur shortly before you arrived."
"Good."
He'd split the list up into people who had been Imperiused, and people who had been blackmailed, extorted or otherwise coerced. It was a list he'd been keeping in his head for years, just waiting to be able to put it on paper.
"Did you collect the Carrows yet?" he asked, suddenly remembering.
"Filius and Pomona did. They're in the entrance hall with the Aurors now."
"Good."
"So what's next?" Minerva asked. Severus signed his resignation and sat back, a strange peace taking up residence in his chest cavity. It was very nice.
He handed her the letter of resignation and smirked again when her eyebrows shot up. It proposed her as headmistress, and of course she would be. The Board of Governors (or what little remained of it) would have to officially accept his nomination and all that, but they would.
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
"Severus, you've built your career here. And you really are a good headmaster…"
"Yes, when you look past all the concessions I've had to make to madmen and megalomaniacs."
Minerva raised an amused eyebrow. Behind him, Dumbledore's portrait huffed out an annoyed breath. Severus smirked.
"I'm done at Hogwarts, Minerva. If you desperately need a substitute, feel free to call upon me, but I won't be teaching here again. It would be… awkward. At best. And I want the time with my family."
"Your family!" Dumbledore said, jabbing a finger at them. "Severus. Your family. It was—"
"Oh, Minerva, you should have been here when they told him they were married!" one of the portraits shouted down at them.
"Come now, Severus—" Dumbledore began again only to be interrupted by a cackle from one of the other portraits, higher up on the wall to Severus's left.
"Don't you try it, you old goat!" It was Dilys Derwent, of course. She liked to stir up arguments. "You should've been here when he found out they were married, McGonagall!" Derwent said, hooting with laughter. "If he could've had a stroke, he would've. Personally, I don't know where he got the pigment to turn that color purple."
"I hardly—" Dumbledore tried, but Derwent talked over him. Severus looked on, watching the painted Dumbledore go from pink to red. He would miss this part about being headmaster, at least. When lives weren't hanging on his lies and he wasn't terrified for Hermione out there in the woods, the former heads were damned amusing.
"Oh, you hardly," Derwent mocked. She looked down at Minerva and Severus, eyes gleaming with mirth. "He went on for hours. Hours. They had duties to perform, orders to fulfill. How can you let yourselves be so distracted? I had thought better of your devotion to the cause, both of you." Her impression of Dumbledore was quite good, actually. "And what of Harry Potter?"
Dumbledore had his face hidden behind long, painted fingers and was shaking his head, but his shoulders were shaking with what was probably laughter.
"Tell her about the day she told him she was pregnant," Dumbledore said, coming out from behind his hands. Severus repressed the blush he felt coming on and glared up at Derwent, daring her to continue.
"I quite like my canvas whole and unmolested, thank you," Derwent said.
"Of course, we didn't know that was what she'd told him."
"It is a nice change of pace to get a young headmaster," one of the others said, a headmaster whose name he couldn't recall. The portrait was higher up than Derwent's, older.
"Such verve for life," said another.
"That's quite enough, thank you," Severus said, cutting off further comments. He was blushing now, and felt like he was fifteen again, caught out after curfew by the Head of Gryffindor.
Intent mattered more than anything. That was why there were so many ridiculous hexes, like the Jelly Legs Jinx. Not particularly harmful, not particularly useful, but funny. A trick to play on friends.
Intent was what made Healing tricky. If a mishap was intended in jest, it could be cleared up quickly. The Accidental Spell Damage ward at St. Mungo's saw the most traffic and the least number of fatalities. (Sure, it produced quite a few long-term cases, but things usually cleared up eventually.)
The intent of all the spells during the fight had not been light-hearted. A Stinging Hex was intended to distract and debilitate, not annoy.
Hermione hadn't thought beyond getting Fred to the hospital wing. She hadn't actually planned to spend the rest of the night going from one bed to the next, then out into the hall when they ran out of beds.
She'd never imagined it would be possible for the hospital wing to run out of beds. The neat rows of them all down the ward had always seemed so surplus, no more than a handful ever in use.
\\
Time had gotten away from her. It seemed like she'd hardly blinked—she'd got Fred to a bed and cast diagnostics, and the next moment she was sitting at the foot of an empty bed, the bedding Vanished as a total loss to the mess of injury. Dawn was breaking yellow and pink and white in the tall windows of the ward.
Poppy hurried past, though she strode with purpose now instead of that rushing half-panic of the night hours. The school matron had directed them all—Hermione and the small contingent of Healers from St. Mungo's—as if she did it every day.
Severus sat down beside her and took her hand. He'd had a shower at some point, lucky bastard. His fingers were splotched with ink and his hair was pulled back—making arrangements, then.
"How are you?"
"Tired," she said. "I'm very tired." She leaned into him, putting her head on his shoulder. It was like she'd forgotten how to breathe but now she'd remembered and it hurt but she still felt better than she had when she hadn't been breathing. "How are you?"
"I'll be okay."
"Your neck?" She flicked her fingers, casting the diagnostics almost without thinking. Residual inflammation, a bit of anemia. She Summoned her kit, but of course she was out of everything she was looking for.
"It hurts but it doesn't feel like it's going to kill me."
"Come on."
Slughorn had set up in an attached room Hermione hadn't known existed. It was either for quarantine or privacy, there was no telling. It didn't matter, anyway. He'd set up a lab, calling his things up from his quarters and putting a pair of sixth year Ravenclaws to work chopping and stirring.
"I need blood moss," she said, headed for the table (a bit rounded at the edges since it had been a hasty transfiguration from a bed) that held raw ingredients. "And is there any beetroot?"
She answered her own question, finding the beetroot as well as dandelion and burdock root. She put a bit of each in an iron mortar and started grinding it all into paste with an iron pestle. When it began to get powdery, she added honey.
"Blood Replenishing Potion would be faster," Slughorn observed when she stirred the paste into a glass of water and handed it to Severus. It wouldn't taste particularly good, though the honey would soften it a bit at least. He needed the iron, though.
"He's already had too much," she said, taking the glass from him and Vanishing it when he'd drunk the whole thing.
She took the bandage off his neck, gently probing his injury with fingers and spells. He was right that it wasn't going to kill him. It would be a vivid scar, and would likely take ages to fully close up properly, but it would just be another scar. They both had worse
"I'm fine," Severus said. She nodded, putting the gauze back in place to be a barrier between his raw skin and his shirt.
I thought you were dead, she could admit to him in the quiet of their minds. We were listening in the tunnel. I was wondering if we should just burst up and attack, and then… Then I heard you scream.
The sound of it echoed in her mind, shattering her Occlumency at long last. She was crying against, and Severus pulled her to his chest, wrapped his arms around her and held her close.
"And I saw you," she said, because she couldn't make eye contact with her face pressed to his shoulder but she didn't want to move. "I've seen you pretty bad, Severus. Never like that. Right on the artery, blood spurting, blood everywhere…" She shuddered.
He rubbed her back, slow, soothing circles, and then pulled back to look down at her face. He kissed her lips gently. "Come now."
He led her out of the makeshift lab. She couldn't bring herself to be embarrassed to have lost her calm in front of Slughorn and the students. She didn't care.
Severus led her through the halls, and the walk was calming. He held her hand tight in his. His fingers were an anchor, solid and real and alive around hers.
Waiting for the appointed time, Severus scribbled ideas for the staff meeting on a spare bit of parchment. Minerva would be making the rounds to gather the professors. They'd agreed on eight because it gave everybody time to mentally prepare, but not enough time for a nap. He wanted to have things out between him and the staff before the reporters figured out what had happened and started trying to sneak in.
At quarter to, Severus gathered his things and left for the staff room. He would be early, but he figured that would be a good thing.
Of course, the rest of the staff had beaten him. He opened the door, his attention on the list in his hand, and noted the immediate tension. The room had the feel of a place that had been full of conversation one minute until the topic of that conversation had bumbled in.
"Am I late?" he asked stupidly, checking his pocket watch and reconfirming that he was, in fact, more than ten minutes early.
Pomona Sprout burst into tears. Horace Slughorn sort of shifted, like he wanted to approach but didn't dare. Vector, veins much less pronounced than when he'd seen her in the hospital wing, twitched. Minerva beamed at him from her usual spot at the long table on the right-hand of whoever sat at the head of the table.
"There ye are!" Hagrid cried, coming up behind him, the last one to arrive, and scooping him into a bone-crushing hug. "Ye did it, Perfessor!"
Severus patted Hagrid's arm gently, not sure what the fuck he was supposed to say. To any of them.
"Are those jeans?" Hooch squawked from across the room when Hagrid put him down, and Severus frowned down at his jeans, visible from the knee down under the frock coat he'd put on on his way out of his office.
"I like jeans," he said defensively, making his way to his place and knocking on the table twice to request food from the elves. Unlike the staff meeting at the beginning of the year, everybody was sitting together at the table instead of scattered throughout the room. He didn't know if that meant anything; all that mattered at the moment was that they'd all have easy access to the food. He was famished.
"You like jeans." Hooch was gaping.
Minerva laughed again, then said, "He's married, too."
The professors looked at him shrewdly, obviously trying to decide if they believed it or not. He rolled his eyes and added, "Married with children."
The food arrived, and he enjoyed their reactions while he served up a hearty plate for himself and tucked in, smirking conspiratorially. The elves had even provided several bottles of wine, and damn the hour because none of them had slept anyway. Besides, they'd probably need it by the end of the meeting.
"But who… who did you marry, Snape?" Madam Pince asked, looking earnest. He raised an eyebrow and pierced her with a look—as if any of them hadn't seen (or heard the story of) him and Hermione sweeping into the courtyard together.
"Hermione Granger," he said at last, resuming eating. There were mutters along the table and he scowled. "There was a Time Turner involved."
"Hermione Granger is eighteen!" Vector said, affronted.
"Quite a lot with the Time Turner," Severus said. "It's a long story, but she was closer to thirty when she returned to Hogwarts after the Christmas holidays last year."
"At which point they were already married, of course," Minerva said, smiling fondly at him. He glanced around the table sheepishly.
Minerva corroborated the Time Turner's existence, talking a bit about her summer with Hermione and Hermione's excellent N.E.W.T. scores. Severus let that be it—he didn't want to explain the details of his life to them at large. He'd probably tell Hagrid and Minerva (they already knew most of it, anyway), possibly Vector (because Hermione liked her) and Pomona, maybe Flitwick. Definitely not Horace Slughorn, that wanker.
"What we need to talk about," Severus said at long last, pushing his plate away and refilling his wine glass, "is what happens at Hogwarts next."
There were murmurs, but they quickly died away.
"The school governors will be here tomorrow morning for a tour of the school, confirming the damages and such as they like to do…"
And on it went.