Chapter Title from "She's So High" by Tal Bachman. Adapted excerpts from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling.

The Battle of Hogwarts
POV: Colleen and Severus

"...I do not want to spill magical blood. Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."

Sirius sprang from Colleen's arms like there was a rocket attached to his back. He had changed into wizarding attire and robes before they'd departed the house, and he hastily returned to them now, complete with gold-buttoned vest and double-Albert chain. Colleen's ears ached with the piercing, supernatural shrieks that still seemed to echo through the air even though the voice outside had ceased. It was the first time she'd had a true concept of the power they were up against, and the thought of sending Sirius out there into the thick of it terrified her. Part of her wanted to beg him to stay, secure in her arms, barricaded inside the shack. But she knew enough about Gryffindors to know that would be a fate nearly as terrible as death to a wizard like him.

"Here," Colleen said after throwing her own clothes back on. From her rucksack she removed the talisman she and Rhiannon had created from her sex magic practice with Sirius, and she placed it around his neck.

"No," Sirius argued. "I want you protected. You wear it."

"I'm not going to battle," Colleen reminded him. "And I have the dragon skin to wear."

"That's not full-body, love. It hardly makes you invincible. You need this more than I do. I have defensive spells."

Colleen shook her head, not taking no for an answer. "Just hide me," she said stubbornly, looking around for possibilities. "Like those spells you cast that night at Grimmauld Place, to keep others out but still allow me to escape."

Sirius sighed and hesitated, and she knew he was thinking no spell was foolproof. But he moved swiftly over to a shuttered cupboard of sorts, elevated a few stairs from the floor and standing across from the bed. It was tiny, and the slats of the door were crooked and in need of repair. It stood behind an old dusty piano, a moth-eaten chair, and a broken gramophone. But with a few wand strokes, Sirius repaired the door and set some protective charms.

"Get in, and take your rucksack with you," he instructed, his voice cracking a bit. He wasn't meeting her gaze, and Colleen knew he was slowly detaching out of fear. "I've set silencing charms and made it very difficult for someone to get in by conventional means. But if they sense your presence somehow or try to detect protective magic, they will be able to get through. This is unfortunately the best I can do."

Colleen drew him to her. "I know, Sirius. But we're bonded now. You'll know if I need you. Don't focus on me unless you hear a clear message. Focus on the battle, and on Harry. All right? This could be it...you could finally get to see him tonight." She smiled excitedly, and the briefest glimpse of a returned grin graced Sirius's face— a bright spot in the overall dread, if only fleeting.

"I love you, Colleen Black. I didn't know love or happiness was possible until I met you. I owe you my life, love. Rhiannon may have brought me back from the dead, and I will always be grateful. But you gave me a life worth living."

Colleen fought back tears and buried her face in his neck one more time, breathing his smell in so deeply that it almost hurt her chest. She needed that calming, powerful scent to last until they saw one another again. "I love you, too, Sirius. Now go to your friends, before midnight. They need you."

He nodded and started down the stairs of the Shrieking Shack, this time as a wizard, truly out of hiding for the first time in four years. With their newly formed bond, Colleen could feel the thrill of freedom pounding in his heart. Sirius looked back one last time, and she blew him a kiss. She felt like a heroine from one of those war movies, seeing her husband off as he boarded a train that would carry him far off into a world she could never truly hope to understand. She heard his footsteps retreat into the tunnel, and she drew in a sharp breath before sliding into the protective space he'd created for her.

Colleen tried her best to fade into sleep to make the time pass faster. She considered taking a potion, but of course that wouldn't be wise. She needed her wits about her. Besides, her tall height could barely stretch out within the small confines of the cupboard. It wasn't long before all thoughts of rest scattered, however, when she heard a low growl from the floor beneath her. Had Sirius returned so soon, as Padfoot?

Grateful for silencing charms, Colleen scooted onto her belly and peered through a crack in the weathered floorboard, a gasp catching in her throat. It certainly wasn't Padfoot. It wasn't a wolf either, but also not a wizard. It was some menacing hybrid, nearly foaming at the mouth, its skin scarred and gray, its squared skull somehow both human and inhuman. His face was covered in patches of fur, like he was permanently stuck between human and Animagus. His large nose twitched rapidly above yellowed teeth, his gray eyes possessed with whatever he seemed to smell from above.

Was it her? Did the detection charms not protect her from a keen nose? Or was it something else the creature was smelling? Something left hanging in the air of the shack from the events the building had witnessed earlier that evening...the bonding between another beast and his mate in heat...

With a leap and a rush, the monstrous creature was charging up the stairs, and Colleen was convinced he would find her in spite of any enchantments Sirius had cast. Tears stung her eyes, and her heart pounded. Would she really have to call for Sirius so soon? It felt like he just barely left, and for a mission far greater than protecting one pathetic, helpless Muggle. She hated herself nearly as much as she had in the beginning, when she'd first learned about the magical world. She was only a liability to them, with nothing of her own to contribute.

Having reached the top of the stairs on all fours, the creature resumed full height. His eyes were demonic, somehow both vacant yet alive with evil. Colleen felt like she could smell him just as keenly as he smelled her— a pungent animal stench like dirt and death— nothing like her Animagus's rich and spicy musk. She heard another growl in the creature's chest; was he a werewolf? It wasn't a full moon. Still, every time she peered through the crack of the door and caught sight of the piercing, possessed eyes, Colleen knew he could destroy her, full moon or not.

The monster turned away from her, and she dared to hope for one second he'd given up on finding fresh meat. Instead she was suddenly repulsed as he threw himself upon the bed where she and Sirius had consummated their soul bond, pressing his nose into the center and inhaling the feral notes that remained. His insatiable nose trailed upward to the pillow where she had begun to drift off earlier, his snuffling growls now escalating into a hungry howl, and he whipped around to face once again the closet where she hid.

This was it. This was going to be the end of it all, right here. She and Sirius hadn't even been bonded one night, and she was possibly carrying new life within her, yet her own life was going to be snuffed out at the hands of a monster. Would he make it quick? No— Colleen could tell by his demonic hunger that he would relish every second of her fear. This wouldn't be the first time he'd ravaged and tortured his prey. Would he kill her? Or would she be like Remus, subject to monthly isolation and self-loathing? Tears streamed down her cheeks now, and the monster's eyes gleamed, yellow teeth bared as he sneered and raised a wand to the handle of the door...

"Greyback! Return to your master at once!"

The voice was a quieter, milder version of the screech that had resonated throughout the Hogwarts grounds. Colleen returned her gaze to the crack in the floorboards to see a tall, sleek wizard with a reptilian face and blazing eyes now standing on the shack's first floor. Behind him was a blonde wizard that would be strikingly handsome if it weren't for the half-healed bruises that disfigured his features. He was well-dressed in silver trimmed robes and held an expensive looking cane.

At the reptilian wizard's command, the wolf-like monster near Colleen began to retreat, but being forced to do so caused his face to contort with agony. He pounded his chest in protest as if obeying his master in that moment necessitated the betrayal of his most basic nature. He pounded angrily down the stairs.

"I can smell a woman here, my Lord."

He was met with a dismissive, high-pitched laugh. "This shack has been boarded up for decades, Greyback, and the fools of Hogsmeade believe it to be the most haunted building in all of Great Britain. Hardly a draw for a little girl to play house."

"I smell a man too. They mated here. They're magical - like half beasts. Their juices are thick on the air."

"Feral dogs, seeking shelter from the night. Stop wasting my precious time, Greyback. The battle has begun, and instead of doing your sworn duty attacking my enemies, you choose to fixate on the disgusting mating rituals of beasts. Focus your energies instead on the witches who would defy me, and you will be rewarded with the spoils that remain."

This seemed to satisfy the creature somewhat, for he tore towards the tunnel with newfound enthusiasm and released a long, terrifying howl into the night. Colleen's first instinct was to breathe a sigh of relief, but she knew the threats were far from over as she peered down at the scene below her. The long-haired blonde wizard settled himself into a dark corner of the room and lit a solitary oil lamp with his wand, while the tall reptilian figure used his wand to carve out one of the boarded up windows of the shack. Through the large open space Colleen could now hear distant bangs, screams, and shoots of electric jets— a sound that could only be produced by the combined effects of the most destructive curses and hexes being hurled by hundreds at once.

Smiling in satisfaction at the sight, the one the creature called "my Lord" now turned back to face the room, focusing on a gigantic, slithering snake that moved to his side. The long knotted wand now waved in the snake's direction, creating a sparkling, celestial sphere around her pulsating, writhing form. He then switched his attention to the wizard in the corner, and Colleen listened intently to their exchange, hoping to gleam as much information as she could.

The blonde man seemed to try his best to persuade the Dark Lord to set him free from the shack to check on his son. When the Dark Lord refused, the wizard hid his plea in the guise of wanting to find and deliver Harry Potter. This was met with amusement, as the Dark Lord insisted that before the night was out, Harry would seek him out instead. With all Colleen knew from Severus and Sirius regarding Horcruxes this made sense, but her heart still broke when she thought of the young boy's fate. The entire wizarding world, resting on the shoulders of one who could still be considered a child.

"Lucius - go and fetch Snape."

"Snape, m-my Lord?"

"There is a service I require of him."

The blonde wizard stood, limping a bit from his previous injuries as he followed this latest order. Colleen was left alone with the Dark Lord, who returned to staring onto the battlefield, stroking his wand thoughtfully as the carnage unfolded.

Rhiannon's father. It was impossible to believe- her radiant, loving goddess- descended from this sadistic madman. As powerful as Severus always warned the Dark Lord was, he was too distracted in that moment to know anything of the Muggle who watched him from above, and Colleen allowed herself a brief respite from her fear as she sank into the comfort of Sirius's protective charms.

The silence within the shack stretched for what seemed like a lifetime while they waited, and its poignance only accentuated the horrid sounds of destruction as pieces of the castle itself seemed to crash to the ground. Colleen explored the possibilities of her bond with Sirius a bit, but it was all too new that she feared she would accidentally summon him, tearing him away from his mission. But she desperately wanted to know if he was okay. Would she know, if the worst were to befall him? By the time this night was over, would there even be a Hogwarts left for Ben? Would Colleen have to escape on her own somehow, figure out how to get back to Andromeda's to find her son, and start over again, just the two of them? She couldn't begin to wrap her head around such a thought. Everything she was and wanted to be was tangled up in Sirius Black— they were nothing without the other now.

Severus finally entered the shack, but he was hardly the strong, calculated Severus that Colleen knew. His normally quiet, reassuring confidence was replaced by a worn, shaky trepidation— his black eyes wide and innocent like a child resigned to consequences beyond his control. This defeatist countenance shook Colleen deeply; if Severus was this frightened, what hope was there for the rest of them?

"My Lord," Severus spoke. "Their resistance is crumbling."

Was it? Were Sirius and the other fighters truly losing, or was he telling the Dark Lord what he needed to hear? The two continued to talk in low, measured murmurs, Severus sounding much like Lucius in begging to be released in order to summon Harry Potter. Back and forth, back and forth...the Dark Lord increasingly angry, Severus increasingly nervous. Colleen had always been so sure that Severus was sure— that the rest of them need never worry as long as he was at the helm. His clear apprehension made her want to hold him and love him back to assurance, but at the same time she longed to flee. If Severus's stony guard was crumbling, then everyone else was doomed to crumble next.

"My wand of yew did everything I asked of it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed, even under Ollivander's instruction to take another, in light of the twin cores. So I took Lucius's, and it was destroyed as well."

"I have no explanation, my Lord." Severus's nervous attentions focused on the snake, still coiling within its magical sphere.

"This is what Ollivander says to me, as if reading from a textbook: 'You will be able to channel your magic through almost any instrument. The best results, however, must always come when there is the strongest affinity between wizard and wand. These connections are complex. An initial attraction, and then a mutual quest for experience, the wand learning from the wizard, the wizard from the wand.' So I sought the Elder Wand next - the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore, from its previous master."

"My Lord, let me go to the boy." Severus was desperate to distract his master enough to escape.

"All this long night, at the brink of victory, I have sat here and wondered why the Elder Wand refuses to perform for me as legend has said it shall perform for its rightful owner. And now, I think I have the answer."

"My Lord..."

"Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant, and I regret what must happen."

The Dark Lord's voice was somehow soft and melodic while also cold and terrifying. Maybe it was her Muggle mind, but Colleen could feel how easy it would be to be hypnotized and to have the last shred of one's will swept away under its unrelenting pull. For a brief moment she felt what it must have been like to be Rhiannon's mother— young, vulnerable, pulled...

"The Elder Wand cannot serve me, Severus, because I am not its true master. Its master is the one who killed its last owner, Albus Dumbledore. While you live, the wand cannot truly be mine."

Severus made a move for his own wand with one last, desperate plea escaping his lips. Colleen gripped the cold, damp wood as tears fell freely down her face, her body begging her to act but her mind sharply reminding her that she was useless - a mere joke to the wizarding world, and most of all to this despicable monster who was about to destroy her family with one slash of this supposedly inept wand. Its movement sent the giant snake in its ethereal cage sailing further into the air until it encased Severus's head and shoulders within its sphere. With a hissing command in some language Colleen didn't understand, the snake sank its violent fangs into Severus's neck. His black clad knees buckled, and he fell to the floor, his back sinking against the wall.

"I regret it," Rhiannon's father said simply, and he and the snake vanished into the night.

"No," Colleen whispered, "NO!" She stood with full intentions of opening the door to her hiding place and rushing to Severus's side. She didn't care if the Dark Lord returned; something had to be done. She couldn't sit idly by and let her family be destroyed. But before she could open the door, she heard clamoring below, and a somber teenager stepped forward from the tunnel and dropped to Snape's crumpled form, his shaking hand raising to Severus's blood soaked neck.

"Take it...take it..." Severus pleaded with the boy, a silvery blue liquid emanating from his head. Whatever it was, it seemed alive in its own right. A young girl rushed in behind the boy and conjured a flask, which they used to collect the mystical substance. Colleen dared to hope for a second that the two magical teens would save him somehow. They seemed to care...maybe? It was hard to tell.

Severus had gripped the boy's robes tightly as the latter filled the flask, but now the grip loosened, and Severus paled - so white, so ghostly.

"Look at me," Severus whispered to the boy, and the expression he wore was tender, full of meaning. It was a look Colleen herself had seen before- the pained look Severus gave when he wanted to love and be loved in return, but he didn't know how to ask, didn't know how to cross those lines that most people found naturally and easily. The boy hesitantly obeyed the direction, but Severus's head sank back weakly against the wall. The young girl took the boy's hand with a comforting squeeze, and they were gone.

No! Colleen wanted to call after them. They couldn't leave. They had wands...knowledge...hope. Colleen had nothing. But still she burst through the door, her heart pounding as her shoes did the same on the rickety old steps. She fell to her knees at Severus's feet, her hands trembling as she lined the potion bottles up along the wooden floor. Each one she grabbed was frustratingly different than the ones she sought. Finally she found the anti-venom, nearly turning it over in her haste as she removed the stopper. She cradled Severus's head and parted his lips, not caring in the least that pools of blood rushed to add stains to her already soiled blue shirt. Tilting his head back, Colleen poured the contents of the dose into his mouth, then quickly followed it with a blood restorative.

The screeching voice was reverberating through the grounds again, grating on her eardrums. It might as well have been in the foreign tongue that had commanded the snake, for Colleen paid no attention to its words this time.

Neck wounds...neck wounds. Colleen wracked her couldn'tapply a tourniquet to neck wounds, only direct pressure to the surface, but with a clean cloth. She had nothing clean down here. Gods, why couldn't everyone do magic? It was so bloody unfair! She had dittany...dittany could be used on snake bites. It was like an antiseptic, but magical. If she applied that first...maybe that could begin working while she found something clean? So that's what she did, Severus's gurgling wound staining her hand red as she applied the paste to his neck. She darted back upstairs and grabbed one of Sirius's t-shirts, barely registering her feet flying as she hurried to return to Severus. She was vaguely aware that the sounds of the battle outside had ceased, leaving only the eerie hush of the dark of night.

Was Severus even alive? Had she been going through all these desperate motions for no reason at all? Colleen's hand brushed over his heart, but through his many layers it was difficult to tell. She began unbuttoning each of the tiny buttons, her fingers flying until she uncovered enough skin to slide her hand inside and feel for a sign of life. She brushed against the small leather talisman, worn with age, crafted with the complexity of pure love tainted with dark magic. Rhiannon's mother— not a formally trained witch, but far more magically powerful than the No-Maj women she'd helped— had crafted the trinket before Rhiannon was even born. Colleen, Rhiannon, and Sirius had all worn it at one point, and now Severus did as well. Colleen took hold of the pouch and pulled it over his heart, holding it there as her fingers sought a subtle beat.

"Severus, please," Colleen whispered. His black eyes still stared emptily into hers. She didn't blink, afraid she would miss a faint glimmer of life.

"Ahh!" she said with a start, when she felt fingers suddenly fumbling under her arm from the side opposite Severus's wound. They grasped intimately and insistently at the side of her breast, and the light she sought in those black pools seemed to slowly return— very faint, very weak. Suddenly it hit her what Severus wanted, but a knot of disappointment formed in her belly. It wouldn't work. They had tried it once before...

Severus's wand seemed to fall of its own accord from the robes she'd cast aside. Colleen lifted it resolutely and placed it in the hand on the side he still touched, pointing it diagonally across his body to his wound. Though the rest of his body faltered and failed, his fingertips were strong and sure where they pressed into her.

"These connections are complex." The Dark Lord's words from the wandmaker Ollivander echoed in Colleen's head, but she heard them in Severus's deep, resonant voice. "An initial attraction, and then a mutual quest for experience, the wand learning from the wizard, the wizard from the wand." Like a Muggle learning from a wizard, and that wizard— a Death Eater, no less—learning from a Muggle.

Severus opened his mouth slightly, attempting to speak a spell. But he couldn't muster the strength. Colleen thought back to the beautiful words Rhiannon had spoken to Sirius that night she healed the wounds inflicted upon him by Severus- quite literally translated into "May thy wounds be healed." Severus had later taught her that he used it as a counter-curse to a dark spell he himself had created, but that it was a powerful incantation against many a dark infliction.

"Vulnera Sanentur," Colleen murmured, and she felt like she heard Rhiannon's soothing voice from that night overlaid atop her own. She and the witch had always connected somehow across time and space, like the night Ben had gone missing and Rhiannon and Severus had rescued him. Colleen repeated the spell, and the small tickle she felt beneath her arm grew like branches unraveling from a tree, coiling down to where her hand held the ribbed handle of Severus's dark wand. The red stains on Sirius's shirt faded to pristine white where it lay on Severus's wound, and Colleen gently lifted the fabric aside to reveal skin, punctured with two small circles, but sealed and clean.

A small laugh escaped Colleen's lips, woven with tears of joy and a small sliver of pride.

A watery haze covered Severus's eyes, blurring the edges of everything in front of him. At the outskirts of his field of vision he saw wood - old, dark, and rotted with years of damp air that he could once again smell. The gray-black of it blurred into red...shining red, wild and beautiful. Within the red lay warm, dancing eyes, shining with a watery haze of their own. Familiar...they triggered a distant memory that seemed beyond his reach. The memory laid in a well-known recess in his mind, one he had visited often, but he couldn't go there now.

He felt himself staring at it as if it were an empty hole where the most important thing in his life once lived, and now it had moved on. But instead of heartache at its absence, Severus felt relief. Not the kind of relief one felt when something terrible had ended, but the kind one felt when things were as they should be. When pain became understanding, when regret became acceptance, and when blind devotion became true love. The watery haze began to clear, and red became interspersed with gold- strawberry blonde, if he had to put a name on it. Severus looked lower and saw a smile - relieved and proud- belonging to one who had found her magic. The past became the present, and the reality of what Severus had done settled into his awareness. The memories were gone, serving their purpose in a way they could not as long as they were trapped in Severus's mind, swirling in a perpetual cycle of hurt and regret.

Love had found its purpose, and Severus Snape was free to really live.