Severus stood a few paces before her. His eyes were on the ruined cauldron.
"Tell me," his voice shook, and tears formed in his eyes, "why do you wear flowers in your hair?"
He kept looking to his cauldron.
"I don't understand."
"How does such a sim...
"No matter how much you try, you cannot erase it."
Severus stilled his palms on her back. Cooling, blue salve that he concocted still layered upon her wounds. His dark eyes traced the red etching across her flesh. "I can ease the pain."
Niamh turned around in her chair. Part of Severus's cloak draped across her chest, keeping her body covered and warm as Severus had worked his healing magic upon her. She leaned forward and kissed Nagini's scar upon his neck. The reddened ridges still marked quite prominently. "We can't erase our pasts. I still have nightmares. So do you. But we have each other."
"To know Bellatrix has tortured you---shed your blood---I cannot truly forgive myself. Cannot forgive myself for hurting you in the times of the Dark Lord's bidding."
"Sev . . ." Niamh gazed up at him tenderly. "I cannot forgive myself for letting Nagini almost kill you. I cannot forgive myself for holding your life in my hands for years, in that quartz pendant---and you almost died with it."
"No, you are justified. Far more than what I had accumulated in the years before I knew you. Before I knew love."
Niamh looked down. "Sev, I think I know what can heal both of us. Everything about it is ironic. But it is an arc of love that in which we can recall and reconcile with, in our own ways. You'll disagree with it. I warn you."
Severus held her palm softly. "Go on."
She brought her face up, and gazed him straight in the eye. Her brown doe's eyes honest. "Hurt me as they had done to you. As the Marauders, as the Dark Lord had. As Nagini had."
He stared at her.
"Break me, ruin me, as what had been done to you. Exert the control you never had. Make me forget Bellatrix's wounds---and know that only you can hold my life in your hands. Entwine my soul with yours, in that I have empathy for the pain you've endured."
Severus gripped her tightly. His eyes almost watered. "I cannot do that to you, Niamh. I cannot bear to see you in pain."
Niamh smiled softly. "That's the beauty of lovemaking, it's pain converted to pleasure. Because I consent to it, because I admire your soft as well as rough touch. Because whenever I look at my wounds, I no longer want to think of those days in Malfoy Manor. I want to think of you ravishing me, of you making me yours in life and beyond."
A small smile, unsure of how to process it, played on his lips. "And how would this heal me?"
"Then save me. Make love to me once again, only to heal all that you have injured. Have a sense of forgiveness for yourself, in which that you so need. And it's a moment to forgive me, for asking you to hurt me prior to that. A moment you can recapture us both into blissful intimacy."
Severus stalked one step forward toward Niamh, his black eyes filling with hunger. Swallowing bile, she backed into the wall, palms pressed against the surface. Niamh bit her lip. Lifting her trembling head, she shrunk deeper into herself.
A low growl erupted deep within him. Severus stalked closer, his black cloak enclosing them into a corner. His hooked nose bent down inches from her forehead.
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