Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

"Lost Bastion" (4/?)
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

"It's my watch, anyway," Minerva said as the others left. She and Snape heard the door close behind the others in silence; neither broke it for what seemed a very long time.

In silence still he regarded the chessboard, nodding slowly to himself. Understanding of the symbolism came quickly; the fallen king, the three knights of their army, the bishop and pawn of Voldemort's forces which met those knights upon the battlefield.

"Knight takes bishop," he whispered. With a careful flick of his sword, one of the knights knocked the bishop aside. Snape lifted the pawn. "I should think," he said quietly, "that each of these should stand for at least ten of the Death Eater foot soldiers."

"Yes," she agreed, "I had thought of that myself." She reached for the remains of the dark bishop and set it aside on the edge of the table. "Severus. Show me."

Reluctantly he drew up his sleeve and held out his arm. And she saw the star and circle, the star crowning the head of the Phoenix in the midst of that ring, and the colors seemed to her more vivid than they had been. Snape looked and saw it as well, and found that he was not surprised. The Phoenix mark had things in common with the Dark Mark, its polar opposite.

"Does it hurt?"

He shook his head. "No. I felt nothing, then or even now."

She nodded. "So Albus was right. We never thought we'd have an opportunity to test that theory, of course, but he believed it would work. I am glad that it did, but- It was foolish."

"Yes," he agreed. There was nothing else to be said. It had been foolish, but he had allowed his temper to get the better of him. About his intentions that night Snape had no illusions- He had gone intending to kill Lucius. The man's arrogance, and the things he'd said, the words he had thrown in Snape's face in an attempt to wound him, had sealed his fate, though they hadn't changed it. Snape had meant to kill his former friend from the moment he had agreed to taking part in the first stage of Minerva's plan.

He'd held no illusions, either, that he would return home with his hands clean, but he had not thought he would return with them so stained and darkened, either.

"I'm sorry," Snape said. "I didn't mean for it to happen. There's no excuse for it, and that least of all."

"Lucius's death isn't what concerns me, Severus. He was dangerous, and you might argue that bringing him back here would have been too great of a risk. No, what concerns me is the risk you yourself took. You could have been killed."

"It seemed unlikely," he said, and wished immediately that he hadn't spoken at all. But, since he had, and there was no taking it back, he did the only thing he could, and went on to try and defend his statement. "I couldn't think of a reason why the Phoenix Mark would hurt one who bore it."

She sighed. "Not the Phoenix, Severus. The Killing Curse."

He nodded. "As to that..." He sighed. "I was wrong. I have already admitted as much."

"It was untested," Minerva all but snapped at him. "You knew nothing, risked everything, and for what? Lucius Malfoy. He wasn't worth it, Severus. He was never worth it."

"No," Snape agreed. "I know. I..." He shook his head. "Forgive me."

"I can't afford to be angry with you," she replied. "No matter how much I might want to. And I couldn't let it show, even if I were; I need you too badly now." Minerva sighed. "I need you beside me, not..." She trailed off, and he nodded.

"And you have... You know what you have, Minerva. But it worked, and we have another weapon now. One they may know nothing about, which is why I dealt a killing blow though I knew Lucius was already dead- so they would have no cause to wonder what had killed him."

"That was well done, and I thank you for it. But- But," she added sharply, "if you get it into your head to do something just as untried in the future, you had best think again."

"Understood," Snape told her.

"You're right, though," she said quietly. "It did work, and that is the important thing now. That is what matters in the end." Minerva reached out her hand, towards the Phoenix mark.

"Don't!" Snape cried. "It may not know you, and this would be a poor way to tell. You say you need me? We need you more." He shook the hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head.

"If I had one of my own-"

"You don't, because you didn't need one. Mine was necessary, as a counter-spell to the Dark Mark if nothing else."

"I know that. But I feel as if what you and the others went through, I should share."

"You ought to know better than that," Snape replied. "We aren't the Death Eaters, Minerva- We don't brand our people uselessly, or because we enjoy it. Those of us who bear the Phoenix mark bear it because we need it, because its benefits outweigh its costs. While Dumbledore was with us, it was something you didn't need."

"True," she agreed, "but things have changed, haven't they?" It wasn't really so much a question as it was a statement of fact. "I need it now. Or at least I need to know that the marks will respond to me when I need them."

"The marks will come to know you, but only in their time."

"I know. But I'm not ready."

"I know it," Snape said quietly. "The others would spare you this if they could, but they don't understand. This is something you have to do."

"If I can't, who will?" she countered.

"Exactly. But if you wait until you are ready, you'll be waiting a long time. No one is ever ready for something like this, Minerva. You can only take the weight onto your shoulders, and then learn how to bear it."

"Easy for you to say. You get to sit back and watch. I'm the one who has to get herself together and do it."

"I've never known you to lack for determination, or courage. You know what has to be done, and you must make ready to do it."

"Alone."

"Only if you insist upon it," Snape told her. "You are the one he wanted for this. You, Minerva, not I, nor any of the others. But you know I'll stand behind you, as will the others."

"Because I am Dumbledore's chosen." She sighed.

"Because he chose you, yes, but also because they trust you. Of all of us you are the most worthy of that trust, and probably the most stable as well."

Minerva laughed. "Don't count on it, Severus. I have my moments, too."

"But fewer of them than the rest of us. For one thing, when's the last time you attacked a rubbish bin?"

She fingered the white queen upon her chessboard, and did her best to hold back a laugh. "You know I hate you when you're right, but I..." Minerva shook her head. She held her silence for a long moment. "Severus."

"Yes?"

She raised a hand to touch his face; a hesitant, almost tentative gesture, though those were words he would never before have used to describe Minerva McGonagall. "There is so much I must do," she whispered. "So very much. And I cannot have this, can I? What I want most of all..."

Snape knew he should have pulled away then, but he could not do it. He remembered too keenly the feel of her embrace, her kiss, the gentle touch of her hands upon his face and brushing through his hair. And now she had done it again, had taken that which he'd thought nearly indestructible, and thawed its frost, cracked it right open to the core. That single gesture cut him to the quick, and the pain was an agonized longing of which he could not let go.

"My heart," he whispered, hardly aware of having spoken the thought aloud. "Crack the steel, melt the ice..."

"Yes," Minerva said. "And yet you won't let me in."

He said nothing.

"Why," she pressed on, "did you kiss me if you were so unwilling?"

"My heart has been willing," Snape said, "always. The rest of me has not. The mind fears and the body trembles. The spirit...the spirit knows that you could hold it in the palm of your hand and crush it in your fist, and that I would allow it to happen because I would not deny you anything. In time, I would come, possibly very quickly, to that point. It is a danger and a weakness I cannot afford."

"Then let it go," she said. "Forget it and let it go."

"Don't you know," he asked her, "that I can't?"

Gently she stroked the side of his face. "Fools, both of us," Minerva said. "I cannot have it and you cannot let it go."

How true her words were, and how much it cost him to admit it! "And so we are fools together. Again or still."

As if reading his thoughts, Minerva said, "That must have cost you dearly to say."

"You could ask blood of a stone, and probably get it," Snape replied, "if it could see as I see, hear as I hear, and feel as I do."

"And that terrifies you."

"It does," he said.

"Why? What is it you're so afraid of?"

He held her face between his hands. "The truth," he whispered. "Only the truth."

"Why?" Minerva asked. "What can the truth do to you, Severus? What power does it have?"

"It could destroy me," Snape replied. "Perhaps it already has."

"Then what do you have to lose?"

His hands shook as he drew them away from her face. The fear must have shown, and the shame; There was too much of both to hope they might remain hidden, and it was all he could do to stand his ground, all he could do not to walk away. Snape knew that he was a disgrace, that he would never be anything more or less, and that he had no right to look upon her as he did.

"Everything," he said. "Don't you know that?"

She shook her head slowly. "Sometimes I don't think I know anything anymore, Severus."

Snape couldn't help himself; he laughed. "I know that I don't," he said quietly. "And this is only half the reason why." He shook his head. "Don't you understand? Now, more than ever, we can't afford-"

"Oh, stop it," she snapped. "Just stop. I can't let you carry on like this. You're no good to me- or to the Order- in this sort of shape."

He laughed again, but this laugh was bitter. When, he thought with that same bitterness, had he ever been of any good to anyone? Least of all her, or her Order of the Phoenix? Oh, the old gods knew he had tried, but trying was not enough, and knowing he had done the best he could had never been any solace. He should have found a way to do something, anything, more, should have known in time and gotten word...

"I shouldn't have come back," Snape told her quietly. "I'm already no good to you, Minerva. Did you never wonder why no one ever relied on me as Dumbledore did, as you do? It is because in the moment when you most need me, I am the one who will let you down. Who won't be there, or won't be there soon enough. I am the one who always finds out the truth a moment too late, who arrives just in time to see the greatest of us fall, not in time to save him."

"And you really think that had you gotten there sooner, you could have made a difference?" She shook her head, and dark strands of hair came lose from the knot at the nape of her neck. "I couldn't. Moody couldn't. We were outnumbered, and even had you been there you couldn't have done anything. None of us could."

"But the information-"

"Wouldn't have been any help to us- not really. We suspected it was a trap- Albus did, at least. He thought by arriving before the trap was set to spring- Well, better to walk into an ambush before they're quite ready for you, if you've got to go at all. And we did. At the time, it seemed like enough." A dark look crossed her face, of the sort Snape was used to seeing in his own mirror. He couldn't help thinking that she had not done nearly enough to deserve to see that look in her own reflection; that such a thing did not belong upon her face. She was, in that respect, quite unlike him.

"We played right into Voldemort's hands, of course," she went on. "He meant it to send a message- That when you think you have managed to even the odds a little, he will always immerge the stronger."

"If you really believe that," Snape said, "then we are lost." As he spoke he realized his own hypocrisy. But it didn't matter. His own cynicism and lack of faith most likely wouldn't affect things one way or the other. Hers might, and he could not let the one who would lead them succumb to the sort of bitterness that had so overwhelmed him. No one needed Severus Snape's strength, but there were a great many people depending upon Minerva McGonagall's. He included, much as he tried to make himself forget it.

"It isn't easy," Minerva said. "But I try. I remind myself that if I don't go forward as if I believe we will see the end of this, no one else will believe it either."

"No, of course it's not easy," he replied. "None of this has been easy- Not the battles, not the losses, not the years before them when we knew it was coming. And if you expected that it would be, you are more of an idiot than I've come to expect even Gryffindors to be."

"Severus," she said warningly, but her expression was thoughtful. "But what is easy, ever?" she asked.

"Exactly. You know what is required of you, and you don't like it- no sane person would. But you know, too, that we need you, and you are too brave- too bloody noble- to dare to let us down."

"Your perspective has always been unique, my dear old friend."

Snape grasped her hands, and in an almost perfect echo of Moody's words to her, asked, "Is that what we are to each other?"

"How in the hell should I know?" Minerva replied. "You do everything in your power to push me away. You complain, you bicker, and you test my patience at every turn. But there are times you'll look at me, and I suddenly don't feel as if you're pushing me away because you want to. You don't think you have a choice, do you?"

"It doesn't matter what I think."

"What ever gave you that idea?" she shot back quietly. "I have always valued your opinion."

"No, you haven't. You never value anyone's opinion when it contradicts the decisions you've already made."

"And neither do you, you bloody hypocrite."

"I know what I am, Minerva," Snape told her.

"Damn you," she whispered. "I would just bet that you do."

"I know what I am," Snape said again. "But I don't think you do."

"No?" she asked. "What are you, then, that I don't know?"

"Someone you ought to try and stay away from, for one thing."

She laughed. "I've been hearing that for years, you know. From my friends, from my housemates, from total strangers. Even my parents weighed in on the subject, and you know how much it took to get them out from under their respective rocks. 'Stay away from the Slytherin', they said. 'Turn your back on him for a second and he'll stick a knife in it'. A favorite of my father's- as if he were so very superior... 'Forget him, stick to your own house'... They said all that, and more, and do you know something? I never listened."

"Now why doesn't that surprise me? You were always stubborn."

"'He isn't like us'- they told me that, too. Told me you would never understand me. And yet you always did."

Ignoring this, he said only, "Did they tell you, too, not to trust me?"

"Of course they did. Do you think I cared?"

"Perhaps you should have. Perhaps this once you should have listened to them."

"Why?" she countered.

"I have always been a liability to you. That hasn't changed. If anything, I am more of one now. I couldn't save him, Minerva, any more than I could have saved you if you had been in his place. I couldn't even help myself when they came for me. You don't need-"

"Who are you to tell me these things? Who are you to say that you know best?"

"Min, I-"

"Oh, for the love of all that's holy, Severus... Shut up."

And, as if she were uncertain whether he would have taken her suggestion otherwise, she tilted her head up to kiss him.

"Turn away," Minerva whispered, "turn away if this isn't what you want, if it really and truly isn't, but don't you dare do it and say it's for my sake that you're running."

"What-?" was all Snape was able to gasp out.

She shook her head, and he noticed that most of her hair was uncoiling from its knot now. "Oh, Severus, you can be so blind."

"I've had little choice," he said, as if reminding her. "There have always been things it was best for me not to see."

"And since when have you cared about what's best for anyone, let alone yourself?"

"Never," he whispered.

His hands reached out, taking hold of her shoulders, and he found he couldn't stop them. Snape drew her into his arms, and, heartbeat pounding in his ears, tried to mask his amazement. Who would ever have thought, that she would fit so perfectly against him, that her head would be at just the right height to rest against his shoulder, or that it would feel so comfortable, so right, to have her there?

I was right, her eyes seemed to say. "What else was it," she asked, "that I don't know?"

The question seemed to demand an answer both truthful and thorough, and so he gave it. "I am not sure you know how strong you truly are. You don't know how much Dumbledore believed in you, or how much the others do. You don't know that Hermione Granger looks up to you. You don't know just how many members of the Order would follow you to the end of the world if you asked them to- or even if you didn't. You don't know that no one doubts you as much as you doubt yourself. And you don't know that I love you."

The last slipped out before he could make any effort to snatch it back, and Snape could have kicked himself because it had. It was not exactly the way he had hoped to tell her, when he had finally begun working his way towards gathering the courage to do so. But not even in his worst nightmares had he imagined that he might reveal it in the way he just had- that it might come out as a simple slip of the tongue, in a place and time where it didn't really belong.

He hoped- rather in vain, Snape thought- that somehow she hadn't caught it. But of course she had.

"Ah- What was that last?"

There was no help for it, and nothing to be done but to say it. At least this time he could perhaps manage to get it right- or at least die trying. "I love you, Minerva."

Amazing, though, how much lighter his heart was with those words out in the air between them. Amazing how they made the dark room around them seem to glow and spark. And amazing, too, how he suddenly found he didn't mind the slip so very much after all...

She smiled softly. "And it has taken you so long to admit it, to yourself and to me..."

"It has," he whispered. "Minerva..."

"Don't you know that I love you?" she asked, her head resting still against his shoulder.

"No," he answered. "I never knew anything. I'd always thought you would do better than me- that you deserved better. You still do."

"Better," she scoffed. "Severus, there is no 'better'. There is only what we feel. You say you love me. Some part of you must know that."

"Perhaps," he agreed, "but I don't understand it. I should never have let myself come to feel this way for you."

"Shh..." she soothed. "How could you have stopped it? And why on Earth would you have wanted to?"

"Because I know it can't be."

"And yet it is. You can't stop it- and knowing what I know, I won't let you try."

Snape shook his head. "It doesn't matter. If they know, if they ever learn-"

"What?" Minerva asked. "That we are each other's greatest weakness? Severus, they must already know that. Lucius knew it, and he was never one for keeping other people's secrets. And even if they didn't know it, I will not hide. I will not cower in shadows and wait for them to find me. I am what I am, you are what you are, and we will face what comes together. Until we fall, or Voldemort does. Until it is done."

"And they wonder why I always loved you," he whispered. "My dear..."

"Hush; They'll be back any moment." For an instant Snape wondered who she meant, and then it came back to him. Moody, Granger, Sirius, and Lupin. Of course. Tactful of them to be gone so long.

She brushed her lips against his, and Snape closed his eyes and sighed, his hands moving across her face as if he were trying to find his way in the dark.

"Moody knows," Snape said as he drew back reluctantly.

"Moody knows everything," Minerva replied. "Here, sit down. You look very tired."

"I am," he said, sinking down into the chair she had offered him.

She took the chair next to it, drew it up close. Hardly thinking what he was doing, Snape reached out to her again, put his arms around her.

"Moody knows everything," she said again, "and he speaks very little. Don't let it trouble you. I trust him."

"I know. And I know I should as well, but-"

"-You haven't changed," she finished for him. "You don't want to start thinking too well of people, lest they disappoint you."

"They've done it often enough," Snape replied. "You're right, of course. But then, you usually are."

She smiled. "Of course. Severus... We're burying Albus tomorrow. And once that's done-"

"I know," he said. "It'll be alright. You are stronger than you know. And I believe in you." Snape laughed bitterly. "For whatever that's worth. Some people would say not much."

"Some people are trying my patience," Minerva replied. "You'll bear the sword?"

He was too shocked to even think of hiding his surprise. "If that is what you wish."

"It is."

"Then I will carry it. I will be honored," he said, "to carry it. Though the others-"

"Oh, the hell with the others," she said irritably. "I'm sick and tired of hearing what they think."

"Pity," said Snape. "If you insist on going forward as you are now, you stand to hear a great deal more of what they think."

"Why must you always change the subject?" she asked.

"Because I'm deathly afraid of your wit and charm, what do you expect?"

"And so you should be," Minerva replied, amused. "So you should be."

"Yes. You do realize I'm right?"

"When aren't you?" she quipped. "Yes, you're right, and do you know something, Sev? I really don't care anymore. Let the others say whatever they'd like. They're going to say it anyway; I can't stop them, and neither can you."

"It may be easier to say that now than it will be to act upon that basis. It traces back to the same problem we faced in school, of course. There will always be those who will not be able to see beyond their prejudices, who will never understand because they do not want to try."

"Yes, and there always have been," she agreed. "We used to call them Slytherins."

Snape smiled, just a bit. "Wits like that will either keep you out of trouble or land you in a great deal of it."

"As usual," Minerva said. She fell silent, resting her head on his shoulder. For a time Snape held very still, and savored the feel of her body in his arms. If only it could always be this simple, this easy and honest...

But it couldn't, and she must have known that as well as he did.

"I don't give a damn what they say," Snape said quietly. "But I've always had less to lose than you."

"You're wrong," she said. "But I'll save that argument for another time. They're going to have to learn to mind their own bloody business. If necessary, I'll teach them how."

He smiled more broadly then. "My dear, I don't doubt that you will. I just hope the lesson takes."

And because he couldn't stand it anymore, because he didn't know when he would be able to do it again, Snape rose from his chair and opened his arms. She stood and moved forward. He pulled her to him, and felt Minerva's slender form through her robes as they embraced each other. Snape did not know what to say, and so he said nothing, simply held her, and very gently he kissed her.

"Severus..." Minerva shook her head. She kissed him as if she were a climber upon the side of a mountain, desperately scrambling for the rope needed to save herself. A quiet sob escaped her, and her shoulders shook.

"Let it out," he whispered. "You can't-"

"I have to," Minerva said. "I haven't any choice. I can't fall apart now. You know that as well as I do."

"Damn it all!" Snape sighed. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright, dearheart." A pause. "We should go."

"I know. But I don't want-" He shook his head. "Oh, hell... It doesn't matter what I want. Will you be alright?"

"I have to be."

Despite himself, Snape smiled. "That's my girl."

Minerva laughed softly. "Arrogant bastard..."

Snape bowed. "Truly." Then, "Let me... Let me come to you tonight. Let me keep the demons from your dreams." He brushed her hair back from her face as he spoke, and a tear came to her eye. Snape lifted it from her cheek with a fingertip.

Gods, what was he saying? How much of a fool was he, to think that she wanted him, to think that she even needed him? How dare he even ask-?

"Are you going to take care of me now, then? Are you, Severus?"

"If I can."

Minerva smiled. "Oh, Sev... I wish my nightmares were the sort you could chase away."

"I know what they are," he said softly. "I know there is little I can do. If I could..." He sighed. "If I could, I would ask you to go with me, far from all of this, and never look back. I would-" He drew her to him, looking over her shoulder as if he couldn't bear to see her expression as he went on. "I would make love to you under the starlight, run my fingers through your hair the way that I always wanted to... If I could, that is what I would do."

"And who ever," Minerva whispered into his ear, "said that you couldn't?"

He cringed away from her. "Gods, don't pity me! Don't pity me because I am a madman who presumes too much."

"What you are," she told him, "is a madman with lovely dreams. I like yours a great deal more than mine. I love you, Severus. Did you think I would rather be here than under your starlight?" Minerva shook her head. "Use your Slytherin cunning, Sev. I'd rather- Oh, gods, don't say these things, not now!"

Think, man, think! She's right; you can't do this here, now, today. "I'm sorry," Snape said. Then, "Damn them all!"

"We really should get going," Minerva said with a sigh. "Busy day ahead of us tomorrow."

Snape laughed bitterly. "And that's quite the common tale, isn't it?"

"It all makes me so bloody tired..."

"I know just what you mean," he said. "If this is ever over, I intend to rest for a year. At least."