NOTE

Warning for minor physical violence.

79. Snow

The sound of the clock tower woke me. Ten chimes.

Morning greyness leaked into the hospital wing through the tall windows, and the sound of a quiet, cold rain filled the long stone room.

I had been moved in the night, from the chair to the empty bed next to Remus. I was lying on my side, blankets covering my body from shoulder to toe, and I opened my eyes to the sight of him there. Pouncer had arrived during the night and was curled up sleeping beside Remus, soft yellow fur rising and falling.

I studied the lines of Remus's face. The greyness of his hair. The same old scars across his cheek and forehead; and a new one, from his ear to his chin.

I couldn't quite believe it.

Ten.

I counted them on my fingers. The chimes. The months he'd been gone.

The candle had burned down significantly in the night, and the wick was black and curled. I stared at Remus's sleeping face for a minute longer before sitting up.

My neck was sore, but not so sore as it would have been had I passed the entire night in the chair. I was sure it was Severus who had softly picked me up, had covered me in blankets. My skin could remember the feeling of his hands, even though I'd been sleeping.

Keeping one of the blankets around my shoulders to fight the chill, I sat down in the chair again and watched Remus's unchanging face. The movement of his breath. I doubted he had woken in the night, and wondered when he would. I yearned for the moment… but I also feared it.

The events of last night returned to me through the fog, like images from a nightmare. I remembered Greyback's death–the moment of the backward fall, the sound as his skull cracked, and the blood slipping down the marble stairs. The way he'd licked my face. The feeling of vertigo that had followed the Imperius Curse. The wide painted eyes of the portraits as they'd seen us walking down the grand staircase. The blackness of the underground passageway…

Severus's patronus.

I turned my head as Poppy stepped through the archway and entered the hospital wing. Her face was drawn tight with exhaustion, but there was a certain easing around her eyes as she looked at me.

"He is going to be fine," she said, keeping her voice soft so as not to wake Remus or the kneazle. "It may be a day or so before he comes round. When he does, it will be painful, but… He'll survive."

"And what about the full moon?"

Her expression darkened slightly and she let out a very quiet sigh. "I… I don't know." Her eyes looked at me frankly. "It will take an enormous amount of willpower, on his part, to get through it. In his current condition…"

There was a long pause, and I nodded my understanding. I looked at Remus again and touched his sleeping hand. It was very cold. No hopeful warmth.

Poppy sat down slowly on the edge of the opposite bed, and looked at me intently. I glanced up at her, surprised by the vulnerability in her eyes. She spoke slowly, after a long moment of silence and rain.

"It was a miracle, what you did. He was dead. He really was."

Uncomfortable with the way she was watching me, I shook my head slightly, and looked at Remus. He must have been just close enough to life to have not entirely given up by the time we found him. There must have been some thread, some rope, that he'd been able to climb back up. My tear had only lit the way.

I remembered again the blue raven, how it had unfolded and illuminated the darkness of the passageway.

I didn't want to leave Remus's side, but I needed to see Severus.

"Have you seen Severus this morning?" I said.

"In his office."

Poppy stood again and began to gently pull the blankets down around Remus's shoulders, lifting up the dressings to check the most recent wounds. Pouncer stirred a bit, and stretched, but did not move from Remus's side.

A conflicted part of me imagined kissing his forehead. But I couldn't do that.

"Wilma," Poppy said, as I turned towards the archway. I looked back at her. "When you have a chance to look in the mirror…"

My hand reached up to softly touch my face, checking for a missing nose, a missing cheekbone. But everything was in its place. I didn't know what Poppy meant by it, but her eyes were kind, and contained a kind of warm sympathy. I nodded vaguely.

Quiet as a mouse, I left the hospital wing.

Soft thunder began to roll outside as I walked down the stone steps, past the rain-blurred windows. The doors of the great hall were open and Ginny, George, Arthur, Luna and Neville were there having breakfast together. The wolves were there too, but were too busy being tempted by the chicken on the table to take notice of me.

Sir Nicholas floated out of the doors as I was passing by. His voice filled the entryway. "Oh, thank goodness for what you did. We feared we'd be banished to the forest again, forever! I hear it was you who led the charge."

He gave me a kind of comrade-to-comrade look. One Gryffindor to another. But I wasn't in the spirit. The adrenaline of battle had left me numb rather than prideful. Sir Nicholas hummed in discomfort, and took leave of me, gliding up the staircase where Greyback had fallen, broken, leaking blood.

I turned and went downstairs into the dungeon. It was very cold, even colder than it had felt last night. I shivered as I knocked on the door of Severus's office.

There was a moment of silence, and then the door creaked open. Severus stood there in the gap, smelling of soap, his hair very soft. He must have recently bathed. He looked at me as though I were a phantom, his eyebrows furrowed and his lips parted slightly. There was a dark confusion in his eyes.

"May I come in?" I said hesitantly.

Wordlessly, he opened the door and stepped aside. His stance and expression were no more inviting than they had been before, and it was a long moment before I managed to step inside.

A cauldron sat in the centre of his brewing table, ingredients spread across the surface in various stages of preparation. The process was clearly in the early stages, but there was already a soft gurgling sound coming from the cauldron, and a faint steam rising from it, smelling of a bitter earthy root. Severus closed the door and returned to his work, steadily shaving the bark from a pile of bumpy black twigs.

I watched him, hugging myself.

"What are you brewing?"

"Wolfsbane."

My body felt too heavy to respond, and I didn't know what to say. Severus continued moving the thin blade slowly over the small knots in the wood.

"It will sit in the moonlight tonight and tomorrow night. Poppy will begin administering it the following morning."

Worry filled me. I did not know if Remus would be awake by that time, let alone if he'd be alert enough to take the potion. "He's in no state to–"

"Yes, well, that's your job, isn't it."

My tongue froze. I had no counterattack.

Thunder rumbled and the rain could be heard, coming down hard on the other side of the shuttered windows. It really was freezing in the room, and there was no fire.

"Aren't you cold?" I said.

He made no response, and I went to the fireplace and started a fire with a few murmured spells. Warmth bled across my skin, but I still shivered slightly, from the feeling of Severus's gaze.

I turned around to see him watching me, that same look on his face as before, in the doorway.

"What is it?"

He appeared to try to speak, and to fail. There was the slightest slackening in his posture as he looked at me, blankly. "Your hair."

I felt my eyelids flutter in confusion. "My…"

But he'd spoken so sincerely that I reached behind my head and undid the braid I'd slept the night in. The ends came free and I held them in my hand, bringing them around to look at them.

Now I understood Poppy's words, upstairs.

I'd had some grey hairs since last year, in the turbulent time after Remus had gone. But now my hair was white. Every strand. The pure snow white of an old woman's hair. I stared down at it, feeling it against my fingertips, expecting it to be different, to be cold. But it was the same hair–my own–only white. I glanced up at Severus with uncertainty, and he looked down at his work.

My voice trembled. "May I use your toilet?"

He nodded once.

I stepped through the door to his bedroom (his bed was made, he had not slept) and into the loo.

I was shocked by the sight of the person in the mirror. I stepped towards this strange ghost of myself and leaned on the sink while I studied my unfamiliar reflection. My hair was as white as chalk, as bone, as clouds–as the poetic idea of each of these things. Before there had been slight variations in hue throughout the wavy curls. But now the colour was solid and unchanging, like a field of snow without a single shadow upon it.

The colour of my hair seemed to change everything else about my face. I looked more fragile, somehow. I could only study my eyes for a moment before looking away.

I braided my hair again and briefly washed my face, my fingers trembling as I scrubbed with particular roughness the cheek that Greyback had defiled with his tongue.

I turned the water off and rested there for a moment, clenching my eyes shut to burn away the memory of his eyes as he fell backwards down the stairs, the sound of his skull as it broke.

Then I dried my face and stood there trying to stop shaking, thinking of a way to start over with Severus.

When I returned to the room he had finished with the bark and was stirring the cauldron very carefully with a long glass utensil. I waited quietly until he'd set it down, and started to press the side of his knife against small white berries, one by one.

Only when the silence became unbearable did I speak.

"How did it go at the Ministry?"

Severus set down the knife with a low thud and raked his fingers through his hair. He stared sharply into the cauldron, but it was obvious that I was the cause of this sudden show of frustration. After a moment he picked up the knife again and continued crushing the monkshood berries.

"I have no time for conversation," he said. "Say what you came to say."

The truth was that I hadn't come to say anything in particular. But I didn't want to leave. I felt that I couldn't.

"I would like to know what happened at the Ministry."

"The two henchmen will have their minds searched. Greyback's body will be thoroughly examined, then burned."

For a witch or wizard to willingly burn the corpse of any person with magical blood was rare, made taboo by the burnings of the sixteenth century. Even Tom Riddle, after his death, had been given a proper burial. The Ministry had made a point of it, but had turned a blind eye to what happened to his grave in the following weeks. It surprised me that the burning of Greyback's body would now be sanctioned by the same authorities. But I was thinking less about the fate of his body than the last time I had seen it.

I shuddered, remembering the blood trickling down the marble steps.

I had never been responsible for a person's end before. Not even in the war. I knew I had not used the Killing Curse, and had not deliberately intended to murder. But it remained true that Greyback's death was my doing.

It wasn't guilt that I felt. But there was a sense of wrongness in my gut. Of being very far removed from the small, innocent child I'd once been, whose understanding of murder was black and white, who would have condemned the young woman I'd become.

I wanted to hide away, but I didn't know where. There was no place I could imagine that was safe enough, in which I could be alone enough. I wasn't certain I belonged anywhere in the world anymore. With invisible blood on my hands. My white hair. My stony heart.

Severus must have noticed me sinking into dissociation. "Pour yourself a glass of water." He pointed to a pitcher on his desk.

His focus was on the small white berries, and I kept my footfalls quiet as I did as he'd suggested. The water was cold and I pressed my wrists one at a time to the glass, feeling my pulse even out.

I realised, as I avoided looking directly at Severus, that we now had something in common. We had both killed.

The glass of water helped to bring me back to the present moment, and I watched his hands for a while as he set aside the broken white skins of the monkshood berries and used a pipette to collect the precious pearl-white juice.

Again, I remained silent until it became impossible. The rain outside seemed to be growing softer, and the thunder had faded away.

"I'm sorry."

"Be more specific."

His words stung, as he'd clearly intended them to do, and I was thoroughly silenced for a long, cold moment.

I took a breath.

"I'm sorry about your patronus. Hers was more beautiful. It was right."

"We will not speak of my patronus and fail to mention your tear." The cauldron hissed as he added the monkshood juice, drop by drop. He spoke as though he were delivering a lecture. Steady. Unemotional. "It was an extraordinary feat. No such tear could be produced for more than one person." The last drop fell from the pipette, and he set it down with a fragile glass sound. "Only for one person."

"I don't think–"

"As you may or may not realise, the brewing of Wolfsbane potion is an exceedingly demanding task, and you are distracting me. Do me a favour and see yourself out."

I stood there frozen. The steam from the cauldron was becoming sharper, more bitter, and the Severus I'd worked so hard to love was being rapidly replaced by a cold, sharp man I recognised all too well. I felt the scales of power tipping, and not in my favour.

"I needed to see you," I confessed.

"Why."

"I needed to talk to you."

"About what? You don't seem to know."

I didn't answer because, on this point, he was absolutely correct.

It felt like ages since he'd looked at me.

His movements conveyed the slightest hint of frustration, and I knew it was the tip of an immense iceberg. "I cannot understand why you are here when you should be upstairs."

There was no spark of fire inside of me at being challenged. I just felt numb, and my voice was dark and empty, an unlit cave. "Why should I be upstairs?"

"Allow me to enlighten you. It is now your responsibility to ensure that Lupin is capable of accepting the first dose of this potion in two days' time. If anyone can bring him to consciousness, it is you. Encourage him."

"How?"

"With the sound of your voice. Or another of your tears."

The fear which the glass of cold water had warded off was returning now, slowly but surely. I could feel my heart preparing to break. "Sev–"

"Get out."

Barely holding myself together, I approached the brewing table and stood nearer, where the bitter scent of the Wolfsbane was quite strong. Severus was now grinding the monkshood skins with a small mortar and pestle, and he didn't look up at me when I spoke. "Don't do this."

"Go to him. That's where you belong."

Despite the sharpness of his voice, I heard the plea buried inside of it. It was the very strength and stubbornness of his facade which made something inside of me snap at last.

"If you think pushing me away will make all this simpler, you're wrong! Is this some unspoken agreement you thought we had? That we would abandon each other the moment he came back?"

He slammed the pestle down on the table and I jumped as he wheeled around to face me. Agony was written on his face. "Look at yourself! You've already given him everything! You've– You've– drained yourself for him! Don't lie to yourself, and don't you dare lie to me."

The anger in his eyes was freezing cold, and his voice was like winter, each syllable an icicle. "You have nothing left that I want."

I felt tears in my eyes. Of all the injuries I'd suffered in the last week, this one was somehow the worst. Severus turned back to his work, and the sound of the stone pestle grinding against the mortar was like needles through my eardrums. I was speechless.

"It's my own fault for letting you in. I should never have sent you to the Pensieve."

I tried to swallow. "You don't mean that." He ignored me, and I stood there like an open wound. The most I could manage was a whisper. "Say it again while you're looking at me and maybe I'll believe you."

And he did look. And there was something absent from his eyes. Something that had once been there, and was now gone.

This was starting to feel less and less like an act.

"What will it take to make you leave?" he asked. "Must I say that you fling yourself desperately at anyone who provides you with the faintest illusion of love? Must I finally confess that you're no better than a child when it comes to matters of the heart? Or must I physically remove you?"

My heart was termoring, refusing to split. "Severus, you're describing yourself!"

"The latter, then."

Dropping his work, he closed the distance between our bodies and took me by the arm, leading me roughly to the door. I held onto his shoulder, pulling it down in desperation, trying to weaken his grip. But when I struggled his arm wrapped around my waist and he very nearly picked me up off the floor. Everything was coming out in the trial of body against body, and though I was inevitably weaker I refused to yield. My heart raced, fury blossoming like a cancer in my stomach. "Don't do this!"

With a brutal tug he brought me around to his side and braced me there as he opened the door.

It was no longer a simple door. If he managed to force me through it, it would mean something. I could not allow it.

My final struggle was strong, and I felt the tension in Severus's body as he adjusted to the unexpected resistance. He was a much more experienced fighter than I, and the awkwardness of our grappling was a result of his effort to hold back his strength. My free fist beat against his chest and pushed hard. But it was no use. Severus gradually restrained each part of me, until I could barely move. He had both my wrists behind my back, and twisted my braid around his hand, keeping my chin pulled up to weaken my neck. We were in the doorway now, halfway in and halfway out.

I stared up at him, my soul throbbing like a captured bird, fear thrumming through my veins. My raven pinned under a net on the dark ground. My captor's gaze slid across mine like a pane of ice against a lake. His eyes gave me nothing.

"It's for your own good, Miss Weasley."

All the breath left my body, as though I'd been burned and set on fire. My wrists wrenched free and my hand flew, making sharp contact with the side of his face.

The sound was sharp and brief, and made no echo. My eyes did not widen. I did not cover my mouth in shock or regret.

Severus stared down at me for a long moment.

Then I was pushed fully out into the dark dungeon hallway, and the door was slammed shut.

I wasted no time standing there. Pressing on the door. Pleading.

There was no room for tears.

My hand tingled as I climbed the stairs to the entryway.

I couldn't return to the hospital wing. I just couldn't.

I had forgotten by then about my snow-white hair, and it took me a moment to understand the strangeness of everyone's expressions when I entered the great hall. I walked down the Gryffindor table without a word, and sat across from George, apart from the others.

The wolves came up to me and brushed against my calves before whimpering and walking away.

Out of the blankness of myself I stared at George, and he stared back. His eyes slowly took in my hair, the damage in my face. Neither of us tried to speak. We understood each other.

Some time passed before Arthur rose and came to sit beside me.

"I don't know if you've been warned already, but there's someone coming from the Ministry at noon to question you about what happened to Greyback."

"I killed him. That's what happened."

"Yes, well… They will attempt to understand how exactly you… achieved that. I would advise you to… bathe, and change your clothes…"

"Give her a minute, dad," George said.

Arthur left, and George and I sat in silence.

The rain had turned to snow, falling fast on the other side of the tall windows.

NOTE

Snow is usually symbolic of a fresh start. That interpretation is deliberately twisted in this case.