Orpheus

Chapter 29

By Pigwidgeon37

Self-discipline had always been one of Hermione’s strengths. Without it, she would never have got through her third year at Hogwarts, or—if truth be told—through any other of her school years, or even through her marriage with Harry. It had failed her only once, in the terrible year after Ron’s death.

In many respects, she was feeling the same now as she had then, the same desperation, the same unwillingness to go on, the same numbness. Back then, more years ago than she cared to count, it had been Harry’s insistence and stubbornness that had ultimately hoisted her out of the swamp of emotions she’d been drowning in. Now… She didn’t know what it was now. Not that Moody’s rough attempt at shock therapy hadn’t had a certain effect on her. He had shaken her out of her stupor and somehow pressed the right button that triggered her self-discipline. It was a purely automatic reaction, though. Whatever was governing her actions wasn’t herself, because her Self, that very core of her being, was still hiding somewhere, inaccessible to everybody else. And inaccessible to Hermione as well. She rose, showered, dressed, ate, went about unimportant small household chores, got tired and went to bed. She had written a letter to McGonagall and another one to Sirius. She didn’t spend all her time in her room anymore. She watched TV, she even tried to read. But whether images, sounds or printed words, there never was any real contact between her and whatever her eyes and ears were registering. It all seemed to hit an invisible barrier, but without causing an impact or any kind of shock wave. The stream of stimuli just flowed by, peacefully and calmly, parted when it arrived at the barrier and continued to flow smoothly, and she stared at it but didn’t comprehend it. She gave answers when people asked her questions. They all seemed to think that she had ‘got over it’.

As if. You could ‘get over’ a mountain, but you couldn’t ‘get over’ the firmament. You just climbed and climbed, without ever arriving anywhere, because there was no destination or point you could arrive at. There merely was infinity, and an increasing darkness.

Now that alcohol wasn’t an option anymore—although she hated herself for having risen to Moody’s blunt baiting—the refuge of drunken haziness had been taken from her, and her only heaven of peace was sleep. Without whisky or brandy, though, sinking into its depth had become difficult. Gone were the unpeopled, friendly and indifferent landscapes where she had wandered aimlessly. Those peaceful oniric oases had been replaced by hectic successions of scenes from the past, some of them from a very distant past, where rooms, houses and sceneries constantly changed as did the people in them. They seldom spoke; it almost seemed as if they didn’t have enough time, so quickly did they and the surroundings melt and morph into each other.

Hermione suffered more than she had before, as she was now equally afraid of waking up and going to sleep. She feared that what was now a bizarre, slightly surreal film playing at double speed during her slumber might suddenly turn into nightmares. But her everyday life, dull and empty as it was, fatigued her so much that she simply couldn’t fight sleep. And so she dragged herself through day after day, wondering whether her soul was ever going to heal. When she’d met Sirius, she had been tempted to ask him to send her some Dreamless Sleep potion, but then decided against it. All she was likely to get were admonitions about addiction and having to cope with reality and ‘getting over it’, and probably he’d deny her request in the end. If she had to fret along without the potion, she preferred to renounce the side dish of sage advice that came with it as well.

Towards the end of January the weather changed; there was a whiff of moist earth and spring in the air, and despite her general unwillingness to leave the house, Hermione suddenly felt like going for a walk. It became longer than she had planned, and she arrived home after more than three hours, hungry and more lively than she had been in a long time. Delighted at seeing her daughter’s rosy cheeks and a brightness in her eyes that for once wasn’t due to tears, Mrs. Granger prepared a lovely dinner for the two of them; Hermione helped her in the kitchen, and they even had a proper conversation, if a brief one, instead of the usual scenario with Mrs. Granger asking questions and Hermione giving monosyllabic answers.

She was tired after dinner, really tired, not just exhausted, and went to sleep quite early. The dreams started almost immediately. As she was now accustomed to, she found herself in the girls’ dormitory at Hogwarts, with Parvati and Lavender chirping and giggling; the scene immediately changed to the garden party at the embassy in Paris, where a small Lucertola Malfoy sprayed her father with Sangria; then she was at Hogwarts again, recovering from her bullet wound in the Hospital Wing and talking to Sirius; and finally she was sitting in the courtroom, looking at Severus. But the image didn’t fade into another one. It stayed, so she could glance at her husband and scrutinize his face, which was so pale and tired. She felt her throat narrow and her heart go heavy. Soon the death sentence was going to be pronounced, soon he was going to drink the hemlock, grow even paler, go limp and…

He turned his head and looked at her. His face and demeanour seemed to have changed, but only very slightly. And he was wearing different clothes, not the black trousers and white shirt with which he had appeared in court. He was wearing jeans, black jeans, and a heavy, high-necked jumper. And he smiled at her. His expression… she felt a rush of warmth run through her at his look, which was so full of love that she could hardly bear it.

“Severus,” she whispered.

He got up from the chair he’d been handcuffed to—somehow the handcuffs, too, had vanished—and went towards her, holding out his right hand. “Come, Spikes. Let’s go to some nicer place.”

This is a dream, she wanted to say, this is a dream, and you’re dead, I know you’re dead, because I saw you drink the poison! But all she said was, “Yes.”

Hand in hand, they wandered out of the courtroom, out into bright sunshine and down to the lake where the grass was green and the Giant Squid was splashing about lazily. They sat down in the grass; Hermione lay back so that her head was resting on his thighs and he could stroke her hair. He smiled down at her while his fingers ran through her hair, again and again, so soothing that she would almost have closed her eyes. But she didn’t want to doze off, the moment was too precious. So she scrutinized his face instead, the black eyes and the tiny creases at their corners, which deepened when he laughed. They seemed more pronounced now, because the sun was already low on the sky, and the shadows it cast were deep and very dark.

“How are you, my love?” he asked.

“Now I’m happy.” She turned a little and placed her right hand on his shoulder. It felt very solid. “Are you a ghost, Severus? Somehow… somehow you don’t feel very spectral.”

“No, I’m no ghost. But I can visit you only in your sleep.”

“Only today, or can you come back again?”

“I can come to you every day.”

“And you will? Come to me every day?”

“Of course. If that is what you want.”

“What a stupid thing to say.” She swatted his upper arm. “Of course I want—Severus?” She propped herself up on her elbow. “Can you kiss me?”

“I’ll try. I’ve never done this before—not the kissing, silly,” he said, bending down to her and chuckling.

Heart beating wildly, Hermione craned her neck to meet his lips; she could already feel his breath on her face, and then—

He was gone. A sudden gust of wind chilled her, and she scrambled to her feet, stumbled, fell

And woke up.

*

Torn between elation and frustration, Severus massaged his forehead. Legilimency was difficult enough if two people were in the same room. He’d never tried it from a distance and been unsure whether it was going to work at all, although he’d had a feeling that love was at least as strong a bond as the one Voldemort had established between Potter and himself by cursing the boy. And he’d been right. It did work, and all he had to do was perfect his skills.

The awareness that his wife, his Hermione, was alive and relatively well, hit him with immense force—suddenly his heart was thumping hectically, and he had to bite into his pillow to prevent himself from shouting out loud. The Dursleys would probably believe that the noise was coming from some neighbour’s television, but it was better to control himself and not incur any risks.

He would have liked to make another attempt immediately, just to assure her that he hadn’t disappeared forever and was going to come back. The experience had been very exhausting, though, and so he forced himself to be reasonable and wait until the next day.

*

Shivering, Hermione got out of bed and went to shut the window—she had been so tired that she’d forgotten to close it when she had gone to sleep. Now she cursed herself for her negligence. If only she hadn’t been so sloppy, the cold air wouldn’t have woken her, and she could still be sitting there in the grass with Severus, kissing him. Only her damned stupidity had ended the dream prematurely.

She was so angry that going back to sleep was impossible. And she was quite cold. So she decided to go down to the kitchen and have a cup of cocoa, which would warm her and make her drowsy. And while she drank it, she might relive her dream, which had been so vivid and comforting. Merely thinking of it made her feel better.

Strange, she mused while fishing for her slippers and putting on a dressing gown, strange that Severus should have worn clothes she’d never seen before. Or rather, she mentally corrected herself on her way downstairs, she had seen him in jeans, but only once. That had been the day when, infuriated and ready to break off their relationship which hadn’t even really begun by then, he’d come to the Minister’s Manor.

Her mother had already gone to bed; all was dark on the ground floor. Hermione tiptoed her way to the kitchen, careful not to make any noise, as Mrs. Granger was a light sleeper. Deciding to prepare not cocoa but hot chocolate, Twitchy style, with more calories than was probably good for her, she rummaged through the cupboards in search of ingredients. No, she thought, she definitely had never seen Severus in this particular attire. Not that it was of any importance—dreams were like this, after all, pieced together from the most fleeting images the conscious mind had long forgotten—but she simply couldn’t shake off the idea that this seemingly insignificant detail was important.

What was more important, although she only realized it when her cup was already half-empty, was that she was feeling almost happy. Of course it had all been a dream, and probably it wasn’t going to happen again, but it had caused her a sensation of lightness and well-being that refused to leave her.



Severus hadn’t come back to her that night after she had finally returned to her bed. Hermione was slightly disappointed when she woke up the next morning, but all in all she still felt better than she had in a long time. Taking a shower was a pleasure; she stayed under the hot water almost a quarter of an hour, relishing the sensation of her muscles relaxing and her hair becoming heavy, pulling her head back. After stepping out and drying herself off, she attentively scrutinized her face in the bathroom mirror—the result of this examination caused her to frown at her mirrored image and plunder her mother’s stock of cosmetic products. She definitely needed a facial scrub, and a moisturizing mask wouldn’t do any harm, either. She needed to leave the mask on for fifteen minutes, and during that period of forced idleness she happened to glance down at her naked feet. She didn’t like what she saw at all. One thing led to another, so that she spent a grand total of two hours in the bathroom, from where she emerged feeling like a totally new human being.

Smiling at her suddenly reawakened vanity—for, after all, she hadn’t given herself that makeover for anybody’s but her own sake—she entered the kitchen, where she found a note stuck to the fridge, telling her that her mother had gone out and wasn’t about to return until late afternoon. So she had the house to herself, which was a surprisingly pleasant thought.

Hermione set about making herself some breakfast and found that she was actually enjoying all those small movements, taking the metal box containing the coffee from the shelf, opening it and inhaling the strong aroma, measuring the already-ground coffee into the espresso machine, cutting bread—all those simple actions the sum of which was everyday life. When she was finished, she decided she wasn’t going to have breakfast at the small table in the kitchen. She wanted to do things differently today, so as to give them more meaning. So she loaded everything on a tray, which she then carried out into the dining room.

The coffee was good, hot and bitter and very strong; she bit into a thick slice of white bread with butter and orange jam and relished the contrast between the different textures and tastes, the creamy mixture of bread and butter interspersed with brittle, acrid pieces of orange peel. She felt her body react to the food, enjoyed the rush of energy the caffeine and sugar were giving her.

It was as if she were eating for the first time. And although she chided herself for being silly, she knew it was all due to her dream.

While putting away the dirty dishes, Hermione pondered what she was going to do today. Reading seemed quite alluring—something comforting, maybe something from her childhood? In the end, she settled for ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, of which she possessed a worn, dog-eared copy she’d been given for her fifth birthday. She’d never told anybody, but Alice had been her childhood idol. For a long time, she had wanted to be like her and had, in some respects, also become like her. Her bossiness, for example, and her inquisitiveness owed much to Alice.

It took her some time to locate the book in a cardboard box under her bed, and for a while she merely stared at it lovingly, caressing the stained cover, which was a bit frazzled at the edges, until she finally took it down to the parlour with her. She’d been sitting on the couch next to Severus during their first visit here as a couple, but somehow the memory had lost its sting and turned into something soothing rather than upsetting. Hermione sat down and, as she wanted to get really comfortable, shoved aside a few of her mother’s magazines, so she could put her feet up on the coffee table. She had already reclined into a heap of cushions and opened the book, when she frowned, put the volume down and leaned forward to fish one of the magazines out of the neat pile she’d made. The cover showed a young man wearing a heavy, high-necked jumper made of rather grainy, charcoal-grey wool specked with lighter grey and cream.

The very jumper Severus had been wearing.

Totally agape, she kept staring at the picture for a few moments, almost afraid to open the magazine. Because she’d never seen it before; she didn’t really like reading magazines, that was her mother’s guilty pleasure. Hermione was absolutely sure she’d never set eyes on it before—it would have been the perfect explanation for her subconscious having clad Severus in this jumper, maybe because of some obscure, unconscious idea that it would have fitted him very well. But no. No, she could exclude having seen that particular photograph with absolute certainty. So why—

With a resolute gesture, Hermione leafed through the pages until she found what she’d been searching for. ‘Demetrio Belloni presents his 2015 Fall Collection’ she read, shook her head and frowned at the page. Fall 2015? That had been some months ago… Another glance at the cover solved at least this mystery: the magazine was old, dating from last summer. This, however, was the ultimate confirmation she had needed. Mrs. Granger had visited a friend the other day, while Hermione was out for her walk, and come home with a bag full of old magazines. And she hadn’t unpacked them before Hermione had gone to bed. Still holding the journal in a death grip, Hermione let herself fall back again and stared at the ceiling in an attempt to stop the mad whirl of thoughts in her head. It might all be pure coincidence, she told herself. It wasn’t impossible for her to have got a glimpse at this cover photo during one of her outings into the Muggle world.

Then again, she thought, she’d been having that nagging feeling, that idée fixe that the jumper was important, since she’d woken up from her dream. So maybe it was important. Only she had no idea why.

*

One of Severus’s first destinations was Cnossos. He remembered very well what Hermione had told him about the library there, namely that she hadn’t found any of the primary sources amidst the volumes it contained, but lots of useful hints. So he’d have to destroy those first.

Mr. Pappadopoulos, the ancient librarian, had been at their wedding; he and Severus had had more than one animated conversation, and therefore Severus was aware that the old wizard might recognize him unless he altered his appearance very thoroughly. Thus, he would have to take two big risks on this trip: firstly, that the librarian might recognize him despite his best efforts, and secondly that the wand he had to steal in order to disguise himself would have to be used not for one or two, but for a whole series of glamours, which might lead to serious problems.

He spent a whole afternoon brooding over the Dursleys’ big world atlas, making choices and discarding them immediately afterwards. This time, he’d have to Apparate a long way in order to steal the next wand, and that was going to slow him down considerably, as transcontinental Apparition was particularly taxing. Of course he was able to go to South America or Australia, but he would have to stay there for some time to recover his strength and continue his journey. He didn’t like the thought at all, but couldn’t come up with a viable alternative. In the end, he decided on going to Argentina. The wizarding district of Buenos Aires was teeming with magical folk of very motley provenance—there were descendants of Italian, Spanish and German wizards, to mention but a few, and his dark-haired, black-eyed and hook-nosed looks might not draw as much attention to him as they would undoubtedly, were he to go to Northern Europe or Africa.

There was, however, still the problem of clothing: it was now late summer in Argentina, and he had to decide whether people’s curiosity was going to be sparked more by his wandering around Little Winging in summer attire, or Buenos Aires in heavy winter clothes. In the end, he chose to do the former. A light jacket and scarf might cover up the fact that underneath, he was only wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt. Besides, curious stares from Muggles weren’t half as dangerous as suspicious glances from his fellow wizards.

With a final nod to himself, he turned to the last pages of the atlas, to look up the time difference between England and Argentina.

*

Things were slowly returning to normal at Hogwarts. The staff had shed their black robes and returned to their usual colours, the students had become used to Professor Praetorius teaching Muggle Studies ( partly, their quick acceptance was due to his much more lenient ways) and to the new Transfiguration teacher, a good-natured, red-haired witch from Australia—she was English, but her parents had moved to Australia when she’d still been a little girl, during Voldemort’s first rise to power—whose accent and vocabulary always made them laugh. Professor Hagrid didn’t burst into tears anymore each time he looked up at the round tower where two rows of shuttered windows indicated that the Headmaster’s quarters had been sealed and weren’t being used. The sight of Professor McGonagall occupying the Headmaster’s chair—this she couldn’t refuse very well, although she would never have moved into his and Hermione’s rooms—wasn’t strange anymore. Even Professor Black seemed to be slowly going back to his old self. He was still dating the assistant librarian and had resumed his old habit of smiling and winking at students during the meals in the Great Hall.

Lucy, too, felt herself relax more and more. There had been a Hogsmeade weekend at the beginning of February, which she had taken advantage of to separate herself from the main throng of students crowding such shops as Honeyduke’s or Dervish & Bang’s and sneak down a side lane to a small apothecary’s where she’d bought a bottle of Dr. Fidantius’ Magical Muscle Mollifier. It had worked miracles on her aching body, and she’d had a few nights of deep, dreamless slumber; therefore she felt thoroughly refreshed and better able to control her fears and worries.

Her remedial Charms sessions with Professor Black had been reduced to once a week, and since he didn’t look so sad anymore, Lucertola felt she was in less danger of loosening her own self-control and spilling out her and her father’s secrets.

She still didn’t have any friends—her behaviour during the first few months of school had seen to that—but she really didn’t mind. She’d been alone, or at least without the company of peers, for all her life and didn’t miss the feeling of belonging to a group. But she had never again visited Alecto and Tisiphone, nor had she, for that matter, ventured anywhere close to their corridor, because the two girls were too closely linked to what had happened to the Headmaster for Lucy to be comfortable around them. They hadn’t sought her out, either, and as she was now writing and receiving letters from home quite regularly, she really didn’t feel any need to use the painting for communication purposes.

While Lucy had hitherto not been an assiduous visitor of Hogwarts’s library, she now discovered that it was indeed quite a pleasant place to be at, and spent many hours there, reading and occasionally also studying. Her life was calm but also a bit boring.

From time to time, she was toying with the idea of getting her Invisibility Cloak and sneaking around the castle a bit, just for fun. The thought was usually enough to brighten her up, and so far she hadn’t yet put it into action.

*

Buenos Aires had been a close shave, Severus thought when he materialized amidst the ruins of the royal palace of Cnossos and ran his hands along his body to make sure he really hadn’t splinched himself. There had been fewer people than he’d been expecting—probably many wizards were still on holiday—and so stealing a wand hadn’t been quite as easy as he would have desired. He’d succeeded, though, and merely cast a Confundus Charm before checking into a small wizarding hotel, where he had spent a godawful night, unable to sleep because his body insisted it was early morning, and because of the constant noise outside. The next morning, after partaking of a surprisingly excellent coffee and some sweets vaguely resembling Danish pastries, he had felt sufficiently reinvigorated to put on the necessary glamours and then Apparate to Crete.

What he had not reckoned with, though, was the efficiency of the Argentine Ministry of Magic. They’d been extremely quick at locating the wand, he had to grant them that. He’d only just had time for a cursory look at his new appearance—only about six feet tall, stout with slight pot belly, ginger hair and blue eyes—when he already heard the first telltale ‘plop’, which had made him drop the wand as if it were a red-hot piece of metal and Disapparate. How lucky that he’d altered his looks so drastically, otherwise they might have recognized and gone after him. For a mere thief, no Auror would bother to cast a tracing spell and Apparate all the way across two oceans. For Severus Snape, they might have done just that.

Despite the island’s very mild climate, it was quite cool—the sun had long set, as it was almost seven p.m.—and there was nobody around. Only very few tourists went to Crete at the beginning of February, and locals weren’t likely to venture out into the ruins of Cnossos when all they wanted was to stay home and have a good, warm dinner. This was also what Severus would have liked, but he decided against lingering longer than was absolutely necessary. The wizarding library certainly was still open, and so he set out towards the magical district at a quick pace. At least he would be warmed up well once he arrived there.

The library was, indeed, still open, but when Severus stepped up to the librarian’s desk, he was politely greeted by a middle-aged witch, instead of the wizened face of Mr. Pappadopoulos. “Er…” Severus looked around the room, not sure what to do. He needed to talk to the ancient librarian, who knew the premises and books therein like the back of his own hand. The woman, competent though she was looking, certainly didn’t have the necessary experience. “Do you speak English?” he finally asked. When the witch nodded, he continued, “I was hoping to meet an old acquaintance here, a Mr. Pappadopoulos… But obviously today is his day off.”

“Oh, no.” She smiled, fondly but also a little sadly. “Aristoteles never had days off.”

“Had?” Severus stared at her in disbelief. “He… He isn’t dead, is he?”

The woman shook her head. “No, but I don’t think he’s going to live much longer. He is very old, you know. And sooner or later…” Her voice faded, and she looked down at her hands.

“I would really like to see him, if that is possible.” While he pronounced the words, Severus realized that he truly wanted to meet the old wizard, and not only because of the books. He’d been so fond of Hermione, besides being a nice, old fellow. “Do you know where he lives?”

The witch described where he had to go—it wasn’t far, merely two streets away—and Severus thanked her and left the library. He didn’t have any trouble finding the house, which was small and white-washed, the door and window shutters painted a vivid blue. On the door, under the knocker, was a small brass plaque embossed with the letters A.P. Severus knocked and, when there was no answer, tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked, neither by key nor magically. Yes, Severus thought smiling to himself, there was indeed a notable difference between small wizarding communities like this and the large ones. People knew each other, they didn’t have to lock themselves into their houses for fear of intruders.

The ground floor was dark and empty, but when he stood at the bottom of a rickety staircase leading upwards, Severus noticed that there was light shining out from under a door directly ahead of him. So he climbed the stairs, which were creaking awfully, and knocked again. This time, he heard a feeble “Come in!”

He opened the door. The room he entered was a bedroom, furnished in a very Spartan manner, with only the bare necessities. A narrow bed, at one side of which stood a chair instead of a nightstand, a cupboard and another chair near the window. There was a rough carpet on the floor, and the bedspread, obviously handmade and very old so that it had taken on an ivory shade instead of the original white, looked beautiful, like a multitude of spider’s webs held together by flowers. Apart from this rare antique piece, the room didn’t hold any other ornaments.

Mr. Pappadopoulos was lying in bed, the cover drawn up to his shoulders. His hands, thin and skeletal, were resting on the intricate pattern of the bedspread, stroking it in minuscule movements. He was looking much older than Severus remembered him, his cheeks were sunken and his eyes seemed almost unnaturally big, when they came to rest upon his visitor.

“I apologize for disturbing you,” Severus began, but was interrupted by the old wizard.

“Do I know you?”

“Yes and no.” Severus stepped a little closer to the bed. “You know me, but you have never seen me looking like this. I have… changed my appearance, because… it’s a long story,” he finished his sentence, very conscious of how lame it probably sounded.

Pappadopoulos drew a rasping breath. “Why don’t you tell it to me? I love long stories. And—” he smiled at Severus “—there really is nothing else I have to do. I can listen to you, for hours if necessary.”

Why exactly he was sure the old librarian wasn’t going to betray him, Severus didn’t know. Maybe because of Hermione. Perhaps because, when a person is so close to death, life seems so infinitely precious that they would never cause somebody else to lose theirs. Or maybe Severus just needed to talk to somebody who’d understand him.

Whatever the reason, he stayed at Pappadopoulos’s house for many hours, telling the story of what had happened during the last one year and a half, feeling his heart grow lighter, as if the old man were happily taking this burden from him, because he didn’t mind its weight anymore but knew that Severus still had a long way to go and needed to travel light.

There was a long silence when Severus had finished. They first light of dawn was already tingeing everything blue, and the candles seemed to burn less brightly.

“Go to the window,” Pappadopoulos said suddenly.

Wordlessly Severus got up and did as he’d been told.

“My wand is on the windowsill. Take it.”

Returning to the bed and holding out the wand for the old man to take, Severus said, “Do you think you should be doing magic? You are very weak, Aristoteles, I’m not sure—”

A smile Severus could have sworn was mischievous made the hundreds of lines and creases in Pappadopoulos’ face deepen. “Not me, silly boy.” He laughed; the laughter turned into a lengthy coughing fit shaking his entire thin body. Severus dropped the wand on the blankets and hastily helped him sit up. After a few sips of water, the old wizard was still breathing heavily but able to speak again. “You need a wand—take mine. It’s yours.”

“But, Aristoteles, I can’t possibly—”

“Nonsense.” He patted the blankets, and Severus shoved them aside to sit down on the edge of the bed. “Listen, dear boy. I don’t have much time left, maybe only a few hours, then I have to take the last portkey. I’m too weak to perform magic. This—” he pointed at his wand, which Severus picked up a little hesitatingly “—has been with me for more than one hundred and eighty years. That’s enough, don’t you think so?”

Severus opened his mouth to protest but was silenced by a cool, bony hand touching his. “Take it, Severus. Take it and leave this instant. You know which books you have to search for, so do what you have to do quickly and then leave Crete. Nobody will notice that my wand is gone, and if they do, I’ll tell them some story. Trust me, it won’t bring you any danger.”

“I…” Severus shook his head and stared out of the window. “I really don’t know what to say.”

“Good bye seems like a good choice.”

Severus pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes against the rising tears. “You are very generous.” He rose and bent down to put his hand on the other’s forehead. “Good bye, my friend, and fare thee well.”

Pappadopoulos nodded, smiling, and closed his eyes. Unable to leave, Severus remained standing at his bedside, watching the worn old face and wondering if, after more than one hundred and ninety years of life, one might really welcome death. To judge by the peaceful expression on the old man’s face, it even seemed possible.

“Go,” Pappadopoulos whispered.

With a sigh, Severus glanced at him one last time, then turned on his heel and quickly strode out of the room, down the stairs and out into the chilly humidity of the early morning.