Darkness Falls

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again.
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

— from "Longing" by Matthew Arnold

***

It had been nearly ten years.

Ten years, she thought as she broke away from the cluster of people with whom she'd been traveling on the Underground. Ten years of lying to strangers and old acquaintances, ten years of looking over her shoulder at every little bump and ten years of adrenaline spikes with every strange occurrence.

Ten years of freedom.

She shook her head at the thought and fished her keys from their place in her pocket as she approached the narrow path that led to her door. Yes, the freedom was exhilarating, but during the first few years she had been a bundle of nerves and too frightened of being discovered to truly enjoy herself. It had only been over the past three years, since she'd began working at the clinic, that she had allowed herself to begin interacting with her neighbors and colleagues, to go out to the cinema and to clubs for a bit of dancing twice a month. She never dated her gentlemen friends or permitted intimacies to develop but there were very good reasons for her actions. Or the lack thereof.

"Doctor Gragan!"

Hazel eyes swung around to find a young boy of perhaps nine years come to a panting stop, his face flushed youthful exuberance as he grinned up at her. She couldn't help the smile that emerged.

"Daniel, I've told you before that you can call me by my name," she teased.

"I know," he replied, his voice muffled as he covered his mouth to conceal a yawn. "But Mum gets on to me if I call you or any other adult by your name, Miss Gra - I mean, Harriet."

She smiled wider. Daniel Thornton was a precocious little lad, no doubt about that, and though she loved her neighbor's son tonight the only thing she wanted was the privacy of her own home. A ten-hour shift had somehow become sixteen and she was nearly dead on her feet; added to that was the nearness of the anniversary she would rather forget, the thirteenth year since the day of her most exquisite mistake.

"Daniel, I don't want to be rude, but I have a really terrible headache and - "

"It's okay, Harriet," he told her. "I just wanted to tell you that Amelia's coming home tomorrow afternoon. Mrs. Peploe told me earlier."

"That's wonderful, Daniel," she said as her internal eyebrow raised itself. She didn't know much about eleven, no twelve, year old Amelia Peploe; actually, no one knew much about the family at all except, perhaps, Daniel. He had met the Peploes when they moved in two years ago and promptly found in the older girl the sister he didn't have and, for her part, it appeared that Amelia found in Daniel the little brother she didn't have. Or rather, no longer had if the gossip was to be believed. Either way, Daniel had been both proud and devastated the previous summer when Amelia had told him that she would be going away to school from now on. Still, the two had apparently maintained a steady, if sporadic, correspondence over the intervening months and for that she was pleased. Daniel was a nice lad. In fact, she often wondered if her own -

No.

Not going there.

"Bye, Harriet," he called over his shoulder as he wound his way down the little path to the road and across the high hedges that divided all the properties on this row from one another. She lifted a hand in farewell, her eyes misty as she watched him turn the corner, and once he was gone she wiped at her eyes furiously and fumbled with the keys until the door opened.

Once inside she allowed herself to relax a fraction and dropped her bag and keys onto the table in the hall as she waded through her personal fog toward the kitchen and the bottle of wine she'd left chilling the night before. She had wanted to toast her freedom, to congratulate herself on ten years on her own. Now, however, she just wanted something to numb the pain and ease the burden of memory; brandy would have been better and a good scotch the best, but the wine was all she had on hand so it would have to do.

Five minutes and a shattered glass later she climbed the stairs to her bedroom with the bottle in hand, her eyes stinging and her mind's turmoil just barely beginning to ease. She purposely neglected the lights in favor of a few simple candles as she carefully removed the itchy contacts, relieved to once more see her own cinnamon orbs and not the hazel she put on for the world at large. Perhaps, she thought as she took a large draw from her bottle, she would look into a new color. The hazel had seemed a good choice at first; they were less conspicuous than blue or green (or gray, a little voice nagged) but they were far lighter than she was used to and even now she felt they were a bit too gold. With the contacts in she often thought the color was more reminiscent of Hoo -

No, she repeated firmly to herself, I will not even think about it. Dwelling on the past does no good.

Later she would always wonder at the course of events as they played out, would also wonder how she missed all the obvious signs. But at that moment sixteen hours of patching up patients on barely four hours of sleep and nearly an entire bottle of 1957 Chardonnay caught up with her, and she surrendered to the velvet darkness with nary a thought or word of protest.

She dreamed. She knew that she dreamed but all of it seemed so terribly real. Through eyes not her own she watched the lights of her street blink out one by one, heard the silence grow as televisions and radios fell silent in deference to the late hour and the needs of their owners for sleep. Yet, this man did not sleep and neither did he belong. Nor did the men who joined him, falling quiet at his upraised hand as another of their ilk approached and spoke quietly in a voice she had long since tried to forget.

"This is the place?"

A nod. The blond beside him smirked and the hand that was raised suddenly fell, a signal that the others obviously understood and had eagerly anticipated. They fell onto the house as if they were starving men in search of a feast and the blond frowned for a moment before turning cold gray eyes on his companion. "They'll not have much fun tonight, not here ... too many Muggles in such close quarters."

She watched through his eyes as the face of Lucius Malfoy came into view. "True," came his voice. "But this was not a mission bent on entertainment, Lucius."

Malfoy snorted. "I can see you will never change, Severus. Still, I must admit you are correct; the Peploes needed to be eliminated quickly and efficiently, and you put together the best of our youth capable of such work."

"Indeed."

"I suppose we can stop elsewhere before we return," Malfoy mused. "They deserve a bit of a reward for proving themselves, do they not old friend?"

Another nod, this time followed by a raised eyebrow and a touch of sarcasm. "Of course, Lucius, of course ... and you'll no doubt show them how it's done."

"You needn't act so put out, Severus. Join us tonight ... it will take your mind off of other things."

"No, I don't ... "

Malfoy watched a strange expression cover his companion's face as the darker man lifted his eyes from the house to seek out another several hundred yards away. "Severus?"

His head turned towards the voice and black eyes locked with gray. For a moment Malfoy was unsure if his old friend and erstwhile rival had sustained some injury or been poisoned but, as he stared, the other man's eyes cleared — only to be filled with a grim satisfaction.

"You will excuse me, Lucius," he told the older wizard. "I suddenly find that I have unfinished business to attend."

Malfoy inclined his head and Snape flicked his wand at the sky above the house. "Morsmordre."

She awoke to pitch black and the sound of silence, completely unaware of why she had been wrenched from the dream at that particular moment. Had she been so inclined she would have recognized the dream for what it was;  as she had always held little tolerance for divination and because she had been nearly ten years away, she considered it nothing more than a mixture of too much wine and too many bad memories. At least, until she happened to look out her bedroom window five minutes later.

There, hovering above a small but growing conflagration across the street and five houses down, was the Dark Mark.

Her eyes widened in shock and terror, but it was the tall figure in black and silver who was approaching her door that inspired true fear. She looked wildly about her room for a weapon, for anything that could help her as she heard the locks on her door click open, and in a flash she all but flew into her closet and rummaged through the heavy trunk at the very back before remembering that she'd never moved it from its previous location. Back at her bedside she nearly tore off the mattress in search of a long narrow box that contained the one thing that could possibly aid her — never mind that she had not even touched it in ten years.

However, it was all for naught. She had barely taken hold of the box when she felt his long elegant fingers coil around her arm as his potions had once coiled in her blood. The box dropped onto the duvet with a quiet thud as she felt herself pulled upwards and turned, his other hand sliding into her hair and tilting her head back, but she squeezed her eyes shut rather than look directly into the eyes of her captor.

"Hermione."

His voice was soft and cajoling, but she knew the velvet tones belied the steely core and whimpered as his fingers tightened in her hair. How had this happened, she wondered. How could she not have noticed the Peploes, how could she have not known them for what they were? How could she not have realized what the dream was? She vividly remembered the sensations that their connection provoked, so why had she not recognized the so-called dream as something that had happened between them so often that they had once considered it a blessing? Had the years so dulled her responses that she would not feel him until he was almost upon her?

Her reverie was interrupted by a savage wrench that jerked her head back even farther and, with a strangled cry, she opened her eyes only to fall into the obsidian depths of Severus Snape. He caught her eyes in his and she was mesmerized, unable to look away even as she knew - she *knew* — that he was appraising her both internally and externally. And as she heard his low voice whisper something that replaced her crumpled silk blouse and wool trousers with a silken ankle length shift and a long-sleeved velvet robe with an empire waist, she knew that he was satisfied.

The sight of her clothes pooled on the floor reminded her that what he had done was not a tricky bit of transfiguration or even an elaborate conjuring, but rather an extremely complex bit of summoning. For summon them he had; she remembered the garments she now wore, though they were a bit tighter across her breasts and hips than when she had last had occasion to wear them. The paralyzing fear that had held her still now gave way to a surge of adrenaline that allowed her to break his hold and stumble a few feet away. His eyebrow lifted at her gesture of independence — or in his eyes, defiance — and he quickly caught her up again, this time pinning her arms behind her back and muttering a restraining charm. She stiffened in response and her eyes darted about the room wildly as if searching for the heroes that must surely be lurking in the corner to save her, unwilling to remember that those same heroes were dead and gone ... or worse. A flicker in the window caught her attention and she looked over her shoulder where, to her horror, she saw a cluster of Death Eaters standing just inside the courtyard outside her door. They seemed to be waiting on something and, with a motion of his hand, she realized that Snape had given them the signal to destroy the house.

A grimly satisfied smile played across his lips. "Hermione, my sweet, surely you did not expect to evade me forever?"

"Why can't you just go?" she whispered helplessly. "Leave, just leave and let me alone. Please? Just go ... "

Ebony fire danced in his eyes and his lips twisted into a near snarl as he listened to her pleas, one hand tracing its way down her tear-streaked face while the other pocketed the box she had dropped only moments before. "Why should I, my love? You are my wife, Hermione, and your place is at my side and in my bed. Now be still. We'll soon be home and there we will discuss your ... disobedience."

And as flames began licking at the walls, they disappeared.