Dreaming Through the Noise

Author: Faeline
Title: Reunion
Rating: T
Timeline: Sometime after HBP, perhaps?
Genre: AU, certainly.

God help me
Believe me
This wasn't what I wanted, but no
I can't leave
He's got me

~"God Help Me," Emilie Autumn


"Reunion"

When she woke, she could vaguely make out patterns in a canopy lit up by flickering red light. Somewhere in the room a log broke and a fire flared in a grate.

"There's a potion on the table beside the bed. Drink it."

His voice was a little more than a whisper.

She sat up slowly, waiting for the room to spin, and when it didn't she reached out for the flask and brought it to her lips, sniffing softly before she drank. The throbbing in her head stopped, as did the pain in her right arm where her wand had been wrenched from her fingertips. On her tongue, she tasted valerian root and...tansy?

"An analgesic laced with a contraceptive?" she asked.

"Best to be prepared." The voice came from her right and she turned her head. The fireplace came into view, two heavy wing chairs set before it, and a small table laden with food; she could make out ripe cheeses and bread, fresh fruit; the scent of savory meat wafted toward her and her stomach rumbled.

An arm extended from the depths of the chair on the left. A pale hand unfurled. "Come here," he said, and as she made her way from the bed to the fireside, he gestured, "Sit and eat."

She looked over the food, chose a thick slice of bread and a dark, sharp cheese. She ate, watching the fire and when she licked the last crumbs from her fingers, she finally turned her gaze to him.

He was cloaked and cowled, his face lost in darkness. She couldn't even see his eyes.

"Why do you hide yourself?"

"Hide?" The word came out in a rolling hiss of breath; she recognized it as a chuckle. "I am not as I was, last you saw me."

"I know," she said, looking at her hands. 50 years spun out in a matter of moments and there was no evidence of time on her skin. On her left hand, the simple opal ring glimmered in the firelight. She looked to his chair where his hands were resting on the arms. The fingers were long--longer than she remembered--and still pale, and tipped now with sharp nails. The strength was evident in the twitch of smooth veins and muscle as he noticed her stare.

"Stand up," he said, "Come here."

And she did so, barely flinching when his hands shot out to grab her wrists as she drew to his side. He tugged her to her knees before him, pulling her off balance so her weight lay against his chair, between his legs. He pulled her hands higher, touching her fingers to the cowl, using her hands to push the fabric away from his face.

Firelight shadowed the smoothness of a scalp, a heavy brow, found its flame lost in red ember eyes.

She'd always thought she would gasp when she saw Voldemort for what he was, what he'd become. But she didn't. She leaned harder against the chair. Her hands, free now, wandered of their own volition, fingers lightly touching the slope of his forehead, parting to move down either side of his face. She brushed his cheekbones, the flat length of flesh with the nasal openings where once a narrow, arching nose had sat, and ran a finger across the thinness of his bottom lip. His tongue—not forked, as she might have thought—darted forward as she did so.

He scented her skin, the perfume of her on the air.

Then he was tugging her hands again, pulling her to her feet and toward him, drawing her down onto his lap so her legs draped over either side of his own. She faced the fire, the shadows warm on her face. He wrapped one arm around her waist, drew her to lean against him with the other hand, her face coming to rest next to his.

"You don't shudder," he said. There was no awe in his voice; it was merely an observation.

"I told you I wouldn't," she said.

"And you wear this still?" Those unnaturally long fingers had prized the heart shaped locket from beneath her shirt, where it had rested for a fifty year minute between her breasts, heavy with its contents.

"It can only be taken off by the one who put it on," she whispered.

"I remember."

He'd slipped into her room just before the portrait could close, shooting the maid in the picture a glowering look when she opened her mouth to scold him.

Hermione had stood with her back to him, removing her robe, her blue and silver tie. She surprised him when the shirt she was wearing joined the clothing on the bed. He moved forward as her fingers reached for the clasp on her undergarment.

"Allow me," he'd said and his voice had caused her to jump--"Tom"--as his fingers nimbly undid the clasp and pulled the wretched contraption away from her body. He noted the fine tremble in her arms as she denied the instinct to cover herself. His
smile was sharp.

"I have something for you," he'd murmured near her ear, and he'd seen the almost imperceptible tilt of her eyebrow as she glanced at him. He'd pulled a chain from his robes, held it in front of her. Her eyes had widened and he'd felt her stiffen against him.

"What is it?"

"I...I'm sorry. You just surprised me. It looks...expensive." She'd raised her hand then, slowly, and with the same care she'd reserved for touching the unicorns in Care of Magical Creatures, she'd cupped her fingers around the locket. He'd closed his eyes and exhaled hard, his other hand twitching on her hip, longing to push her back against him, on to him.

"It's a family heirloom," he'd said when he recovered. Unclasping the chain, he brought it against her skin, drawing the heart slowly up between her breasts until she shivered. He'd brought his hands beneath her hair, clasped the chain, and smiled as the clasp melted away, leaving nothing but links in its place. "And it can only be removed by the one who put it on," he'd said, when he'd noticed her frown as she'd felt along her neck for the clasp. "So you need not worry about losing it."

She'd turned to him then, nakedness seemingly forgotten. "Why give me such a thing?"

"Because," he'd said, leaning down and catching her bottom lip with his teeth, "it makes you mine."

"Are you still?" he asked and she blinked, coming out of the memory.

"What?"

"Mine?" he said, pressing his palm against the locket hard enough to leave an imprint in her flesh. The metal itself seemed to heat at his touch and she wondered if she would have a heart shaped burn on her chest. "Knowing what I did. What I've done." He paused. When he spoke again his voice was lighter, almost teasing--and that, she knew, was when he was most serious--"What I will do."

The knot that had been in her belly since her return tightened. "Yes..."

And she thought about the boy she'd bowled over as she fell down the stairs outside of the Great Hall after the hex that had come out of nowhere -- the boy who didn't go to Hogwarts in her time.

She saw him reflected in the glass of her mirror as he crept through the portrait to her rooms. Tearing her away from a group of Slytherins who'd cornered her outside of the Transfigurations classroom, his knuckles white on wrists, his eyes flashing in fury, voice a cold, cold hiss that translated itself easily to each and every member of the Serpent's house.

Sliding the simple silver band with a small, perfect opal around her finger.

Staring at her, unblinking and half-believing, as she touched his eyes and said, "I can always find you here."

Pulling her into him--"You will not leave me"--giving her a little shake, hands wrapped around her arms so tight she'd still have his impression the next day.

The silver and green glow of the successfully cast counter-hex and his eyes narrowing, one hand reaching toward her as she faded from his past…

"What was that?" Hands pushed her up, turned her as easily as a doll so she was now straddling his lap. Those long fingers caged her face, and he pulled her close enough to kiss, forced her to meet his eyes. Bloodstone red and burning. "Say it again. Now. Looking at me, girl," he said, and she got the distinct impression he knew where her thoughts had been.

And the knot unraveled, the tension in her spine loosening. She slumped in his hands, resting her weight on his thighs. A tremor went through her legs and she was unsure if it was his or her own.

She closed her eyes, opened them and met his. "Yes."

Something flitted behind his eyes. A spark of blue-black. A scrap of what he once was. Then it was gone and all that was left were the slitted pupils, the inhuman color, and the sudden flicker of an all too human tongue against her lips.