Ashwinder :: To bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses

White Flag
by snarkypants

He had been pardoned while he was in hiding, and didn’t know the details until he had them much later from Minerva. Never particularly garrulous, she had relayed the facts to him in a brisk three sentences or so, and left him alone.

Severus’ exoneration had come in the form of one of Dumbledore’s ubiquitous Pensieve fibres. Minerva had discovered the small bottle in the Room of Requirement, after ‘needing’ to know what Dumbledore kept hidden. This had been mere days before the Battle of Hogwarts and the defeat of the Dark Lord. Despite innumerable demands on her attention, she had a quick visit with Minister Scrimgeour, leading to a pardon for Dumbledore’s death.

The tricky part had been coaxing him out of hiding.

He had been sleeping rough, wandering the moors that made the landscape outside the hardscrabble town of his birth. Fortunate for him it had been a cool summer and the start of an unusually warm autumn. The moors were an excellent place to go to ground, but he hadn’t been looking forward to winter.

They sent the girl in after him. Miss Granger. He had been by turns terrified and infuriated with her blatant disregard for her own life and, to a lesser extent, his. She had spoken to him in a soft, even voice, moving very slowly, as if she were trying to calm a vicious stray before she clapped it in irons.

“What makes you think I won’t kill you?” he snarled at her.

“I think you would surrender your own life to protect me,” she said simply, holding her hands open towards him.

“Then you are a fool,” he said, holding his wand in a trembling hand.

“I know why you did it, sir, and so does everyone else. The Minister has given you a full pardon. You can come home, back to Hogwarts if you wish.”

He swayed a bit, buffeted by a gust of wind and weakened by hunger and illness. Her eyes widened in alarm, and she moved to support him, but he staggered backwards, away from her; he landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle and falling in an unceremonious heap on his backside.

She was at his side in an instant, touching his forehead with a cool, soft palm. “You’re burning up, Professor.”

“Why are you calling me that?” Acid burned in his throat, bringing tears to his dry eyes.

“You’re still my professor, sir. Cleared of all charges. Eligible for reinstatement.”

“Ridiculous. Next you’ll be telling me I’m up for an Order of Merlin.”

She grimaced. “No, sir. Politics rears its ugly head there. You might be exonerated for Dumbledore’s death, but you’ll never get the Order of Merlin.”

Now he was confused. If she were leading him into a trap, she would have given him pie-in-the-sky predictions about his rewards. Or perhaps she was clever enough to know that he would suspect such a thing, and did the opposite.

His brain simply couldn’t process both possibilities at once.

“M-miss Granger,” he said, his teeth beginning to chatter. “I don’t have the energy to argue with you. If you’ve come to lead me to my slaughter, let’s have done with it.” He held his hands out, wrists together. “I’ll not fight you.” He slumped, hanging his head, waiting for the dagger.

She clasped one of his hands in hers and pulled him to lean against her, his head on her shoulder. He didn’t resist at all. She Apparated them into the sunny Hogwarts infirmary, where he was promptly cleaned up and deloused, dressed in flannel and put to bed with a healing draught and some Dreamless Sleep potion.

He had woken up days later to find that his deliverance hadn’t been a dream and that the war was over. Only a motley, ragtag group of Hogwarts staff and both current and former students remained. Those fit to do so had set to work repairing the school; Hermione Granger had been one of them.

Potter was now the defacto head of the Order; Severus supposed he could live with that, particularly as Potter couldn’t be arsed to come to their meetings. His duties and authority naturally had devolved to Minerva, who led their meetings briskly and efficiently, albeit without passion. Much of the light in the old woman’s eyes had gone out upon Albus’ death.

Severus was teaching again, Dark Arts. So much for the curse on the job, he thought with a satisfied smirk. There were fewer students than ever, so he had ample time out of the classroom to conduct private research and, finally, to learn to enjoy his free time. He had put some weight back on his skeletal frame, and he felt better than he had in years.

Potter and his Weasley friend were in London living the pretty life, but Miss Granger had returned to Hogwarts to help put things to rights. Minerva had hinted at something like a rift between Miss Granger and her two best friends, but she had stopped herself before revealing anything more.

Miss Granger became Professor Granger, and she taught Arithmancy. She was another of the walking wounded somehow; none of them was functioning as they had before the war, he thought somewhat dolefully.

And no wonder. Sitting through bloody awful endless meetings, compiling meaningless paperwork and data to submit to the feckless Potter, who did fuck-all with their suggestions.

Minerva ended the meeting, and with a collective sigh, the attendees rose, yawning and stretching. Severus heard the bones in his knees snap and pop, and he grimaced.

War was a young man’s game, he thought, imagining Mi-Professor Granger’s look of scorn at his choice of words. He now knew that she fought as bravely as any of her fellows, but the gender-neutral language she would have preferred simply didn’t have the same punch to it.

He was far too old for war, but he knew now he was not nearly old enough to savor peacemaking. He might like the peace in and of itself, he supposed; surely there could not be as many meetings?

His mouth twitched again at the thought. And she was looking at him, nascent smile on that rosebud mouth. For a long time they just looked at each other across the staff room, as the other Order members filed out. Her eyes were the sweetest, warmest, candle-lit brown, he thought.

Had she always been this lovely? How had he missed something so stunningly obvious?

The answer, of course, was that she had been neatly compartmentalized in his mind as “Student: Dunderhead: Obnoxious.” He was good at compartmentalizing his students in this fashion. It was a check in the “positive” ticky box of his career, and there were precious few of those.

The only real problem associated with this skill was de-compartmentalizing people after they were no longer students. Many of them remained “Dunderhead: Obnoxious” for the rest of their oblivious lives, but a select few could shed two out of the three labels within a year or two of leaving school.

The fact that they remained “Obnoxious” didn’t trouble him; most people were, to one degree or another, and as long as they stayed out of his way he was content. Hell, even the Headmaster had been pleasing in only modest doses, and Severus had considered him a friend.

His former students could usually be relied upon to follow one of two predictable paths after they left school. The first path involved using their newly-liberated status to ‘pay him back’ for his harshness during their school years. There was little they could do to hurt him there; he had tenure, a finely-sharpened tongue, and forty years of training in the art of the put-down.

The second path he respected slightly more than the first: the students would turn tail and run from him as soon as they saw him. He accepted this as his due as a master: acknowledgement that they would not win with him.

But she…she did neither. She didn’t flee from him, didn’t try to insult him. At Order meetings, she treated him with the deference she gave all of her former professors, calling him “Sir” or “Professor.” At the same time, she would seek him out with sparkling eyes when amused by a joke or a funny turn of phrase, inviting him to share the joke with her.

It confused the hell out of him at first. He couldn’t tell if she were making fun of him or if she were merely addled. After a few weeks, he grew to anticipate it.

She progressed to gently teasing different members of the Order; never anything hurtful or overly personal. Her ‘target’ would chuckle or protest good-naturedly, and by the time she got around to gently teasing him, he knew what was expected.

He didn’t know which reaction he relished more: her radiant smile, or the others’ slack-jawed astonishment.

And then he was in love. It was a pathetic, schoolboy kind of love; it shamed and embarrassed him deeply. Only it didn’t, at least not when she was in the room, not when she was expected to arrive. He would take meticulous care with the selection of his robes, shine his boots, ensure his hair was neatly arranged, that his teeth were clean, his breath inoffensive. It was a fine line to walk – he didn’t want anyone to remark upon a difference in his appearance, but he wanted to look his best for her.

He didn’t feel like the stereotypical ‘dirty old man.’ He wasn’t titillated by her youth; indeed, the difference in their ages was more an obstacle than a fillip. He wanted something simple, something clean. A life and a living he wouldn’t have to conceal or run from.

Autumn slipped imperceptibly into winter. Poppy Pomfrey surprised them all by abruptly leaving Hogwarts to join a long-lost love on the Costa del Sol.

The students were soldiering on through the year. Their work was neither stellar nor abysmal, and they occupied his attention for no longer than it took to teach and mark their work. His duties as Head of Slytherin were anything but onerous; he had all of eight students remaining, and those eight were extremely self-sufficient.

Professor Granger had taken to joining him in his quarters for dinner on Saturday evenings. He was rather unclear as to how this had developed, but her company was at once restful and stimulating, and he looked forward to their private meals.

“What do, ah, your friends think, about you keeping company with me?” he asked one night, elaborately casual, half afraid to hear her answer. He was serving her a slice of roast beef, and was thus able to put his attention on the table, on his knife, on her plate, without having to look at her.

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t see much of them anymore. Their opinion of my...” she paused before smiling shyly at him. “...my new friends isn’t important to me.”

Part of him was overjoyed that she seemed to have outgrown her childish relationships with the boys he detested. But it didn’t seem quite right, somehow. Friendships changed, grew, even ended, to be sure, in the years after leaving school, but Hermione seemed to have left all of her friendships behind after the Battle of Hogwarts. It worried him a little.

She had kissed him that night.

It had been after he walked her to her quarters. The halls were so very quiet these days; there were no ghosts, no Peeves, no subjects in portraits to create noise, and the students kept largely to themselves.

He had walked her to her door, slowly, relishing the warmth of her arm tucked through his, the bob and sway of her breast against his forearm. She plainly didn’t need his protection; she seemed simply to enjoy being close to him, just as he enjoyed her presence.

As kisses went, it was chaste and sweet, but it was enough to make his hands shake and his belly twist rather pleasantly.

Winter break came and went. Fewer students returned after the hols; he had five Slytherins remaining in his House, and taught fifteen students per week. He had been worried at first, but Minerva put him at ease immediately.

“Their families were worried for them here at Hogwarts,” she said reassuringly. “And as they were all so close to leaving school anyway, they’ve gone on to jobs rather than sit their NEWTs.”

“Seems like a waste,” he said, shaking his head.

“With all they’ve seen, they were anxious to put Hogwarts behind them, and no wonder,” she said.

Days later, Hermione surprised him with gifts and a cake for his birthday. He couldn’t remember the last time he had celebrated the day, and was even harder pressed to remember another person celebrating his birth.

“Make a wish,” she said happily, leading him to the cake, its candles ablaze.

This, he thought. This is my wish. He looked at her and blew out the candles.

“What did you say, Severus?” Minerva asked.

“Hmm? Oh, I said that time was getting away from me these days; must be old age,” he said distractedly, flipping through a small batch of essays he was marking. “It’s odd, having so few students at the school; we seem to have fewer every day. No discipline problems to speak of; I’ve never had so much free time.”

She looked up at him oddly, he thought. “What is it, Minerva? Have I grown a wart on my nose or something?”

“No, of course not,” she said wryly. She stood abruptly. “Excuse me, Severus, I must go check on—”

He waited to hear the rest of her statement, and she evaporated before his eyes.

“Minerva!” He blinked repeatedly, thinking that his eyes were playing tricks on him. The Headmistress had been right there, and then vanished. “Finite Incantatem!” he cried, brandishing his wand.

Nothing happened. She was simply gone.

He tore from the staff room, wand out.

He sprinted down the corridor to one of the alarms, and fired off a spell to set the giant claxon to shrieking. He ran to the Great Hall, to see if any students were studying there, but the Hall was empty. No one was in the corridors or in the classrooms.

Finally, Hermione came down the stairs. “What is it?” she asked, slightly winded from rushing.

“The castle is under attack, Hermione. Help me find the students.”

“Why do you believe we’re under attack?” she asked, preternaturally calm.

“Minerva...vanished. I can’t find anyone--” he said, panting. “Why--?”

She silenced the alarm with a flick of her wand, and he looked at her in shock. “The students are fine, Severus.”

“You’ve seen them?”

“I know where they are,” she said. “They’re safe, and so is Minerva.” Her voice was soft and soothing, doing its magic, calming him. As if she were trying to calm a vicious stray before she clapped it...

His eyes narrowed. Her manner was wrong; she was hiding something. “Severus?” she asked, looking up at him with those pretty, pretty eyes.

He drove her into the wall, wincing involuntarily as he heard the hollow-melon thunk of her skull against stone. He manacled her wrist with his hand, chafing her tender skin and forcing her wand to clatter to the flagstone floor. “What have you done?”

“It’s not me, Severus,” she said, her voice thick with tears.

“Is it Imperio, then? Finite incantatem,” he said, making the appropriate wand movements, but there was no sudden change to her expression, no hum of magic. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She tried to bring her free hand up to touch the sore spot on her head, and he thumped her against the wall again. “You move again, and I will break your fucking neck.”

She began to cry in earnest as he pinned her there, burning her wrist with his grip. “Does it hurt?” he spat at her. She nodded with the tiniest possible motion. “Good. How could you do it? How could you betray us?”

“I haven’t--” she began.

“Liar!” he shouted in her ear. She recoiled as much as possible from him. “What did the Dark Lord offer you? Money? Status? Was it worth it?”

She was disgusting in her misery, a snot trail across her upper lip, her eyes red and puffy. He released her wrist and sank to his knees, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his face to her thigh. “You needn’t have done it. I would have loved you, Hermione. I would have loved you. If that was what you wanted, what the Dark Lord wanted, you could have brought me to my knees, without...without harming the others.”

He couldn’t weep, hadn’t wept, in fact, since he was six years old, but the acid inside him made him want to bawl like an infant. He wanted to slap her, hard. He wanted her to hold him against her breast and kiss his brow. He wanted her, finally, to use the dagger he had been expecting since first he saw her on the moors.

The horrible tension in her body slowly eased, and before long she knelt beside him. She didn’t embrace him or stroke his back; she merely watched him.

After another eternal silence, she reached out and took his hand; her hands were small and squared, with slightly spatulate fingers. Her hands trembled; her grip was neither featherlight, nor yet a desperate, clutching vise. It was more like the firm pressure one would apply to a severe cut: caring and reassuring and supportive and solid. Although he might not trust her eyes, he found himself trusting her grip.

“Haven’t you noticed anything strange about Hogwarts? About the students and the staff?” Her voice, coming so abruptly after the long silence, made him jump.

He shook his head, trying to clear his increasingly-fuzzy thoughts. “How few of us there are, but that’s the war. We lost so many...”

“Hogwarts lost forty-four students and staff.”

He did some quick mental arithmetic. “That can’t be right. There would still be hundreds of people here. Where is everyone else, then?”

“They’re all at Hogwarts, Severus, the real Hogwarts.” He looked at her as if she were mad, but she stepped closer to him nevertheless. “How many staff and students did we have when you arrived here?”

“Thirty...nine,” he said. “What does this have--”

She put her hand on his cheek, cool and soft. “We’re the lost, Severus.”

“You are mad.” He stepped away from her caress, and her hand stayed in the air like a flag.

“Perhaps,” she said, with a sad smile. “Time oozes by at some times, and flies at others, even more so than you remember before...before Dumbledore died, right?”

“You’re raving,” he said, his face frozen in a rictus of horror.

“We have fewer students every day, and Flitwick disappeared days ago...”

“He went on a sabbatical!”

“Severus.” Her eyes were filled with tears. “We are the lost ones. The others have transitioned. You and I are the only ones left here.”

He ran from her then. Ran, and sought refuge in his quarters for what felt like days, although he never felt hunger or thirst.

He could sense her presence in the corridor, waiting for him like the very Angel of Death. He couldn’t stand it any longer, and flung open the door.

“Leave, then. Leave me alone, Granger.” He paused. “I didn’t die here, in the battle, did I?” She shook her head. “Why am I at Hogwarts, then?”

“You were in hiding, on the moors; you had no idea you were dead, and you would never be able to make your choice in time.”

“What choice?”

“The choice we all have to make. Whether to go on, or to remain bound to our old lives, our old fears,” she said.

“How do you know that we won’t end up slaves of the Dark Lord when we get there?”

“Nothing is certain, but I don’t think we will.”

“’You don’t think’? That’s all we’ve got to go on, your intuition?”

“Minerva told me...Minerva told me that Albus was waiting here for her when she arrived. He told her what she would have to do, and then she told me. And now I’m telling you.”

“Albus! That’s impossible. He’s been dead...nearly two years, now.” She shrugged helplessly. “What if we won’t go?”

“Then you will be a ghost. And haunt Hogwarts for the rest of your days. If you’re lucky, you’ll be sentient enough to teach. If you’re very unlucky, you’ll simply roam the halls, trying to keep all of the students safe, whether they want it or not.”

He winced. “You’re going, then?”

“Yes, I promised Minerva. I can’t bear leaving you behind--”

He brushed that aside. “So you’ve waited here out of your great, deathless love for me? More fool you; I have a hard time believing that.”

“Good. Because that’s not why; I began by trying to help everyone. But no one else needed my help like you did; they were able to transition without me.”

She ducked her head, and when she spoke he had to watch her lips to follow her words. “I couldn’t have done it,” she said, eyes brimming with tears. “I couldn’t have done what you did.”

“Dumbledore,” he said softly.

She nodded. “You did what you had to do, even though it killed you, even though it’s still killing you. I would have resisted him; I would have thought I was so smart I could figure out some other way...” Her voice broke as her tone turned bitter.

“You think I didn’t try? I had years to prepare for it, and battled him every step of the way. It was only when...when I had to choose between his life and that of one of my students...”

“But you did it. You did your duty, even though you knew everyone would hate you for it, and think the worst of you.” Tears spilled over her cheeks. “I couldn’t have borne it; it would have been worse than death.”

He swept a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I had years of practice at it.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist and wept against his chest. “Please don’t stay here. Come with me.”

He held her, delighting in the scent of her hair, the warm throb of blood beneath her skin, the little snuffles and gasps she made as her tears subsided.

“I’ll have to go soon,” she said dully.

“When?”

“I don’t know. I can feel it, though.”

“What is it like?”

“Like…a tugging, but also as if things aren’t as...solid...here, somehow.” She looked up at him. “I may not have much time left, and I hope you will come with me. I can’t bear the thought of you roaming the castle alone; I’m afraid that you’ll be trapped here.”

He felt oddly numb as he held her, as if the ancient cold of the castle walls were seeping into his body.

He looked towards the spot from which she had vanished.

He wasn’t aware of a question being asked, but he found himself answering.

There were many new portraits at Hogwarts that year. Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore advised the headmaster in his office. A few portraits of former staff members graced the staff lounge; Professor Flitwick could be counted on to snore loudly --and falsely-- during staff meetings.

Unusually, there were also portraits of fallen students. Thirty-six students had perished in the Battle of Hogwarts, and their portraits had appeared in the Great Hall. Hermione Granger, OMFC, Head Girl, Gryffindor Prefect (10 OWLs, 7 NEWTs), appeared in portrait form four days after the battle.

It was a lovely portrait; she wore the simple and modest robes of an adult witch, not her usual school robes. Her cloud of bushy hair was tamed, but not too severely, else she wouldn’t have looked like herself. She soon became a particular favorite of both the younger students and the resident swots, as she encouraged them and gave them advice about their studies.

Her portrait also drew those who had loved her in life. Mr. and Mrs. Granger had a standing invitation to see their beloved daughter’s likeness whenever they wished it. Months after the portrait appeared, they were astonished to see a huge, fluffy orange cat stretching lazily in a sunny spot in the background; Crookshanks had disappeared shortly after Hermione’s death.

Harry Potter would bring his wife, and later their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, for Hermione’s approval. Many years later, when he was elected Minister of Magic, he tried to have her portrait removed from Hogwarts and secured in his office, so he might benefit from his beloved friend’s counsel; not surprisingly, he ran afoul of the newest headmaster, continuing the rich tradition of bad blood between the Ministry and Hogwarts. Potter’s efforts were nevertheless unsuccessful; he might have a copy made for Hermione to visit him in, but there was no magic, earthly or otherwise, that would allow him to prise this painting from the Great Hall.

Ron Weasley tried to pine himself to death when her portrait first appeared; portrait-Hermione humoured him for exactly thirty-six hours, at which point she told him in no uncertain terms to bugger off and quit snivelling over her.

“I thought you might want...” he began.

“Oh, good heavens, no,” she said, rather tartly. “Go and have something to eat, Ronald. You’ll feel better.”

“Oh. All right, then. Ta,” he said. He wouldn’t bring his wife to meet Hermione, but his children would find her portrait soon after arriving at Hogwarts. Meeting the Dead Girl Dad Loved Before He Met Mum was a bit of a letdown after eleven years of their mother’s histrionics.

Deep in a corridor in Slytherin Tower was another painting, but only one person ever made a pilgrimage to view it. The headmaster was the only one who knew of the existence of this portrait, in fact, and he wasn’t telling anyone until he himself became a portrait. He had no intention of allowing students to desecrate the last image of the onetime Head of Slytherin; despite his exoneration, he remained deeply unpopular.

The headmaster visited the portrait from time to time, telling himself it was just to check that its occupant was still there. The portrait rarely spoke, and simply looked at him appraisingly, withholding judgment. It might be like going to a Muggle priest for an admission, he thought. No, confession, that was the word; his dear Muggleborn wife had taught him that.

It was the eightieth anniversary of the defeat of the Dark Lord Voldemort, and so few of the young people today cared about such a momentous occasion. They were caught up in thinking that dark lords belonged to the distant past, that the future of the Wizarding World was solely of peace and prosperity. But, as his wife liked to remind him, he hadn’t thought much about the Dark Lord Grindelwald’s defeat when he himself was a student.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” he murmured. Addressing the portrait, he said. “I can’t remember who said that, but he was right. I shall ever remember the past, Professor.”

The headmaster bowed his sleek, grey-blond head in salute. “I hope you believe your sacrifices were worth it, sir,” he said softly.

The headmaster left, leaning heavily on his cane, taking the light with him.

“I thought he’d never leave,” a feminine voice said slyly, and giggled.

“I’ll remember that, with interest, the next time Minister Potter pays you a visit,” he said. “Let’s see how composed you remain while I...explore your deepest...secrets.” He glared at her. “That was cruel, Hermione.”

She sobered. “You’re right. It was unfair. I’ll never do it again, I promise.”

He looked at her. “There’s no need to be rash,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

She curled up against him happily. “You did well with him, Severus.”

“With whom?” She thumped her head against his sternum. “Ow,” he said tonelessly.

“With Draco, of course,” she said.

“That was all his own doing,” he replied rather gruffly, and Hermione knew to let the subject go until he was ready to talk about it.

“I’ve a correspondent at the National Portrait Gallery who’ll let us use his frame after hours during the Christmas break,” she said. “Fancy a holiday?”

“Haven’t we talked before about you corresponding with strange artworks? Remember what happened when we got stuck in the Miró exhibit?” he chided.

“Oh, tosh. I thought we’d agreed not to speak of that again. Besides, he’s an ancestor of yours, on the Prince side,” she said, smiling as his expression brightened.

“Well, that’s different, then. We’ll bring a few bottles of Ogden’s Finest and I’ll have a rousing genealogical discussion with my distinguished forebear, whilst you harass Anne Boleyn and that lot.”

She hugged him. “Do you think anyone will notice that we’re absent from our frames at the same time?”

“Do you care?” he asked, nuzzling her ear.

“Not in the least,” she said.

A/N: We still don’t know much about wizards becoming either ghosts or paintings upon their deaths, so I made up some of my own rules, based upon things I’ve seen in/inferred from canon and interviews with JKR:

1) The subject of a painting is not in communication with the spirit of the deceased. The painting is like a Technicolor fingerprint, with the deceased’s information stored upon it. Which is not to say that the subject of a painting cannot make relationships or get drunk, eh, Violet? But these things do not affect the deceased, who has gone ‘beyond the veil.’

2) Portrait!Hermione and Portrait!Severus are playing out a reality that began for them in the time before they transitioned, while in ‘limbo,’ if you will. I like to think that Spirit!Hermione and Spirit!Severus are doing the same on the other side, but we’ll never know.

3) I can just see Minerva hectoring the other would-be spirits along (“Go towards the light. No, towards it, Longbottom”), and enlisting Hermione to help her round up the ‘stragglers.’

Q: Hermione’s portrait appears a mere four days after her death, but months have passed since the Battle of Hogwarts...WTF?
A: I just don’t think that spirits in any form reckon time in quite the way we do.

Q: Anne Boleyn...she was a Muggle. How could she have a Wizard portrait?
A: Who says she was a Muggle? What fun, if she were a witch. I mean, fun from a writer’s perspective. Not so much fun for her, either way.

The quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” has often been attributed to Orwell, but rightly belongs to George Santayana.

This story must owe a debt of gratitude to Ramos’ “Unfinished Business” and Hayseed’s “Getting the Hang of Thursdays” (both archived here at Ashwinder). Although the story is my own, I hope that I haven’t inadvertently lifted bits from their work.

My first attempt at writing HG/SS since HBP. The germ of this story was written before HBP came out, and after reading the new canon, there was only one way to make it even remotely plausible: to kill them both. But I tried to kill them softly.

The title came from the Dido song of the same name. I heard it the morning after HBP came out, and was struck by the rather apt lyric, “I will go down with this ship.”

Thanks to my flist who dutifully read the first germ of the story and commented, and wondered where it went when I didn’t do more with it.

And as always, special thanks to selened, my beta, who keeps me honest and on track.