warnings: graphic descriptions, blood, grumpy sev
word count: 2527

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Charms and dark spells were soaring above her head, Death Eaters circling them as the beating of their agitated hearts morphed into drums of the night, breaking down each and every single pump.

She was so focused on killing an enemy that she didn't see a cruciatus curse coming for her neck, luckily her friend protected her.

"Nice one Francis!"

"Get down!" A baritone yelled as a wall of woolen black curtain closed over her lonely sight.

Her eyelid fluttered.

Soon after she was in the Forbidden Forest, fighting wizard ghosts with a powerful Potions Master at her side.

Cesira looked up at the dreadful man who just dodged an unknown spell for her, his raven hair splattered all over his face as his even breath blowed on her face.

"Watch out!" She yanked the tall shadow behind her, sending a charm back to its dead caster.

They had been fighting restlessly for Merlin knows how much hours, yet the ghosts weren't as drained as they slowly, painfully turned out to be.

They both were naturals at fighting, Snape fought as if he was dancing a waltz - elegantly spinning, whipping, fencing, cutting through the foggy air.
Cesira, on the other hand, was a body-to-body warrior - perpetually attacking, pouncing on the enemy, trying to get as closer as needed to strike where it hurt the most.

Alas, they were fighting ghosts - no amount of their brilliant skills could scar them.

But had they stopped casting, they'd be dead. There was no other way around.

"This is pointless!" he bellowed over the noise, summoning a whip of fire, rotating his wand arm above his head so as to keep the ghosts away from them. Cesira blowed on the tip of her wand, drawing a circle of high flames around them to catch a breather.

"Well we can't just run away Snape, we have to defeat them," she retorted, her back glued against his muscular one.

She pressed her feet to the ground, legs wobbling, magic dulling.

She pondered and yes, there was no way out of this if their intent was to simply kill them.

"I know a spell that could nearly neutralize their magic," Cesira breathed through her words, a pounding tiredness crawling at her feet. Severus felt the same shredding sensation - he gritted his teeth and pressed his back hard against hers, supporting each other's body right when earth called her children to lie on her lap.

"I could die," she breathed on smiling, "or disintegrate to pieces."

She arched her neck, resting her head on the back of his, searching for her lucky stars behind all those dark branches. Snape mirrored her, a trail of sweat trickling down his forehead.

"Thank you for the extra motivation." he replied with his signature sarcasm.

Cesira laughed with her heart battered but full, actually laughing in the merriest sense of it.

"Where else am I going to find a night like this?" she whispered, a twinkle above answering to her wandering eye.

For a split second, there was only quiet and the beating of their hearts.
As sweet as a tender goodbye.

"Cast it," he said softly, "I will make sure you'll be buried with your dear ones."

"And Minerva?" she countered.

"She'll understand, and if she needs someone to comfort her I... will be the one."

"Penny?"

"I'll keep an eye on her."

Cesira nodded. "Good."

Snape absorbed the fire in his wand, leaving her free ground to practice her magic. Cesira whipped her wand in a vertical move three times, wind started to correct its traveling - Severus immediately caught the fallen foliage wiggle franctically.

"Flosviridis!" she yelled into the night as the ghosts started floating towards them.

Quickly, the sharp tongue of wind picked up the foliage, engulfing the ghosts in a bubble made of a blizzard of leaves that turned out to have become hundreds of daggers.

Cesira kept them locked inside the bubble, her free hand open next to the other to help herself. It was impossible to hold that spell for more than a minute, the daggers seeming to resurface from within her, piercing her bones to come out.

Just as she was about to let go, one cold hand covered her grip around her wand, another reached to her left.
She felt his inky locks graze her temple, her magical source being pushed to the surface by him just an inch from losing it all.
Their magic entangled, a fresh sense of insurmountable power flowing inside their veins.

Cesira didn't felt like dying anymore, now that Severus was sharing her pain.

Horrific screetches roared from the blizzard, signaling that they were succeeding - somewhere in their fingertips they felt those ghosts were being deprived of their energy.

"Let go! You're going to die too!" she cried, begging him to run away.

"Severus let me go, please!"

In response he tightened his grip, pouring more of his magic in her spell. Her aspenwood was shaking in her right hand, channeling more magic it could contain.

At last, the bubble disintegrated, and so did the ghosts.

They fell to the ground, breathless.

"I said it was pointless to kill them you imbecile." he groaned, still being able to talk among all the energy spent.

Cesira shook her head, feeling her triceps ablaze as she prodded herself up, still vigilant.

Snape regained his tall, regal stature, staring at her between staccatos, his greasy hair all over his harsh features.
He looked disheveled, absolutely unhinged.

Hot.

"Since when do I listen to you?"

She laughed and he chuckled, offering to help her walk - there she saw it: a ghost taller than the others with an ancient sword lurching toward him.

Her mind didn't process a thought, she acted from her heart's will.

"Get down!"

Cesira pressed her left foot on his bended thigh, assisting her high jump as she waned on the giant ghost, casting a non verbal spell to send it away.

Sound of flesh getting stabbed muffled every distant howl, Snape turned to see a long blade cut through Cesira's shoulder, the sharp edge emerging in clad-crimson.

She fell face to the ground, hearing his baritone howling a latin word, yet the ghost stood there.

She was between his ankles, he was protecting her like that tormenting painting of a sheep shielding its dead lamb as hungry crows surround them, goners.

The ghost smirked, his skull producing horrible sounds at that.

"You can't kill what is dead, and he who should have joined will soon cease to exist. Then true darkness will wake, Master will come back."

It produced an ear-shredding sound as it spoke, cracking the thick barks of immortal trees around them.

An arrow escaped its slender finger, thrusting itself inside his stomach.
Severus Snape never gave voice to his harrowing pain, this time he couldn't possibly muffle a cry caught in a gasp.

He fell to his knees, his hands on his belly seeping dark blood.

When Cesira managed to sit up, the ghost was gone.

She could feel the freezing air passing through her open flesh, climbing to her brain nerves.

Snape clenched his jaw in pain, partially healing their wounds so as to prevent dying right away from blood loss - albeit the wounds were still open, still bleeding. It took more than spells to cure them.

"A-a... ccio Cleansweep," she worded, squeezing her hand on her shoulder.

He immediately forgot about the arrow's tail visible from his stomach, catching the speeding broom on the fly with one hand as the other kept Cesira standing by her waist.

It felt as if they had already died and their souls were trying to drag their bodies to Hogwarts.

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"It's been hours Professor McGonagall and they haven't come out of the woods yet!"

Erika and Minerva were strutting through the corridors; the young Prefect informed her on what she had seen, how her dear Professor and Snape were seen running inside the Forbidden Forest and how distant flames shimmered near the foot of the mountain.

The older witch nodded, ready to storm off and find them.

"You stay here Miss Hatch, I will form a rescue team with other teachers at once. Keep everyone inside the castle!"

But Minerva couldn't even start to head to Pomona's quarters when the entrance door of the lower west floor flung open.

Erika and her Transfiguration teacher froze in their steps.

An eyepatchless Cesira and a crouching Severus were limping holding each other's bodies up, their own tracks were covered in blood, red drops raining down their numerous injuries.
He was keeping a clad-crimson hand on her shoulder, she was pressing hers on his stomach.

As the doors closed, they fell to the ground.

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"No, no! You're losing too much blood Hazel you can't fight-"

"I'm fine Rira, I can do this all day." she smiled as she was bleeding.

Francis helped her up.

"No Zel, this is it. We have to get away."

Hazel shook her head, holding their hands to her heart.

"I will never leave your side. We fight them, together."

And then they were ripped from her, ropes snaking around their bodies as they were hurled at ten Death Eaters feet.

Cesira raised her wand to fight, but Minerva grasped her arm and apparated behind a house wall.

"NO!" She cried, running towards the enemies as they dragged her friends on the street, casting curses on them just for the pleasure of hearing them scream.

Minerva was struggling in keeping her still.

"They're too many! We have to get back!"

° .• °:. *₊ °

Cesira opened her eyes... eyes?

Yes, she could clearly see, though half of her vision was softly blurred by a thin mist dividing the world into things and shadows.

The Hospital Wing was empty, had it not been for the sea of blue and bronze tokens surrounding her bed.
Rivers of cards wishing her a speedy recovery, some Ravenclaw scarves and even a brand new broomstick, the latest model.

"Good afternoon, Blyde."

She whipped her head to the right, eyeing a slumber-looking Severus Snape with his back against the backrest of his hospital bed, reading a book. She could see his torso wrapped in a bandage above a long sleeve black sweatshirt.

His bed was flooded with Slytherin themed tokens as well, which he didn't seem to care about in the least.

"Wha-"

"We've been here for five days, Poppy said we will be able to get back to our duties tomorrow morning. Bee- Penny brewed potions to get rid of the poison that was found in our wounds. She's studying it."

Cesira hummed in response, unable to process thoughts worth telling. She remembered everything, how they kept saving each other until they were on the brink of Death.

"I... when did you wake up?" she asked, hoping he would put that damned book down and look at her.

Surprisingly enough, he did.

And his eyes were molten dead stars.

"An hour ago." he answered curtly.

Silence followed through for a minute or two, perhaps twenty.

"I shouldn't have brought you with me." she bit her lip in regret.

He scoffed loudly, bitterly. "Spare me the hero's guilt Blyde, you would have died in the blink of an eye back there without someone."

Yes, he's right. And I know why I called him upon everyone else. Even Minerva.
I know that.

"I'm glad it was you I almost died with then, you grumpy bastard." Cesira cooed knowingly, aware of how he despised sweet talks and unrequited affection in his regards. She did that too - never believing in the right of deserving love.

"Go back to sleep, I'm already through with your bratty mouth. It's giving me a mind-splitting headache." he spat, opening his book again.

She chuckled - she thought waking up from such a tough experience would result in taking in another trauma, but with him in the room she didn't cry, nor drowned in her all-consuming mind.
She beamed and giggled like a kid.

"Severus, you are a great wizard. I mean it." she blurted out of the blue, looking for his charcoals once again.

He breathed in, pausing.

"So you are, Cesira. I mean it." his lips lightly curled up in a lopsided imitation of a smile.

She sighed, falling into comfortable silence for the umpteenth time.

Not a wisp of thought flying to Minnie, her students, her past, Albus. For now there were only two hospital beds bathed in tokens, and the two wizards resting on them.
That was a memory to keep her warm during cold winter days, she could already feel it.

"You look... different without your eyepatch." he was the first to break the thin wall between them.

"Well, I can partially see things now I guess," she replied, turning her head to him only to meet a teensy mirror he was holding out to let her see her reflection.

There it was: her narrow scar crossing her twin sapphire - though it was covered in a graysih veil. Moreover, her iris was split in two colors: blue and a bloody red.

"It wasn't meant to heal." she puffed.

Snape shrugged. "Penny brewed a potion to save it. The insufferable know-it-all."

Cesira grinned at his ranting. "I know you're proud of her, does it physically hurt you to admit it?"

He dramatically opened his arms ajar.
"I am literally on an hospital bed."

Another laugh escaped her throat. It felt so natural to do it around him.

Shut up.

"I feel naked without my eyepatch," she thought out loud, catching a mischievous smirk on his face as he oh so slowly grazed his canine.

"You should cover up then, dunderheads are to storm inside in an instant."

Cesira tied a conjured eyepatch around her head just in time to see a handful of greens and blues walking up to them in a haste.

Poppy was going to blow up.

"Professors! We heard you woke up, how are you feeling?" a snake briskly asked, the young group naturally splitting to corner the bed of their respective Head of house.

"Have you seen the size of this room? There's no reason for you to be this close to me." Snape scoffed with his usual sassy snark, grinning inwardly as his students slowly stepped away from his bedside.

"We're fine guys, you will have us back tomorrow morning." Cesira hid her amusement at his sarcasm, talking softly to the youngsters.

They started bombing their teachers with all sorts of questions, and before Snape could give them the reproach of their lives, Cesira decided it was better not to tire the poor man.

"Guys! I know you're worried about us, but now is not the time. Plus I wouldn't get Madam Pomfrey crossed if I were you." she hushed them firmly in a relaxed tone, glimpsing at Miss Hatch who nodded dutifully.

"Alright, you heard Professor Blyde, off we go!" she ordered her peers, gesturing them to get out of the way.

They mumbled under their breaths and carefully placed Hogsmeade sweets on their sheets, following the Prefect's lead into the corridor.

Snape sighed, closing his eyes.

"Bloody dunderheads." he muttered, cupping the sweets in one hand to discard them on his drawer.

Cesira ate some chocolate frogs.

"I know you appreciated it," she chided.

"Had they truly known me, they wouldn't have set a foot inside this room."

Yes, he loved it.