Chapter Text
Hermione stood in the middle of the empty classroom, arms crossed over her chest and a foot tapping the stone floor as she glared at the hysterical Gryffindor.
They had barely managed to get away from their group after lunch that day and they would need to return soon enough so as to not raise any suspicion. It was risky but needed to be done if they wanted their plan to work and Sirius on their side.
They had told him almost everything about them; who she was, who Severus actually was, how they’d gotten there, and why they were talking to him. Sirius in turn had dutifully listened to everything, his expression either blank, curious, frowning, or scowling, but he never actually said a single word. The moment Severus finished explaining however, the idiot burst out laughing so hard she thought he would pass himself. Five minutes later and he was still at it.
Hermione was two seconds from slapping him into reality and had an Obliviate ready on the tip of her tongue if Sirius did not swear on his magic to keep their secret though.
“I swear to Merlin, Black, I will curse you to hell and back if you don’t stop laughing.” Severus growled, an even more intense glare settled on his face. “I honestly cannot see what you find so amusing.”
Sirius’ laughter became a chuckle and he brushed away a stray tear. “Honestly, Snape, do you really want me to believe such nonsense?”
Hermione tilted her head to the side, trying to think of some facts that would make him believe what they were saying was the truth. “How about this, Padfoot,” Hermione started and Sirius froze, his gaze sliding slowly towards her. “How else could we know that you're an animagus with the form of a Grimm? Or that you live at number 12 Grimmauld Place in London? I can draft the floorplan of your house, where your bedroom is, where Kreacher sleeps when he's not saying nasty things and snivelling at your mother? Or shall I draw you the detailed family tree tapestry you have in your drawing room maybe? What will it take?“
“How…?”
“We know, because we’ve been there, you idiot. In our own timeline!” Hermione sighed and closed her eyes tiredly, feeling a headache coming on. “We need your help, Sirius. Otherwise we wouldn’t have said anything. Hell, I’ll even erase this whole conversation from your mind if you want nothing to do with it, but it is the truth, I swear it.”
Sirius stared at them for what felt like an eternity, his grey eyes shining with confusion, disbelief, but also fear, and Hermione could empathise with the maelstrom of emotions he was going through. Of course, Sirius had had a difficult life growing up as a Black, the heir to boot, needing to uphold the family name and failing miserably, but he was still a teenage wizard that mostly occupied his time with thinking up pranks to play on his fellow students and professors. They realised he would never be able to see things their way, but they also needed him to act that little bit more mature and help them fulfil their mission.
The Gryffindor sighed, but the emotions in his eyes did not dim. “So what exactly do you need me to do?”
Hermione shared a look with Severus before she answered. “If we are not mistaken, your dear cousin Bellatrix is to marry Rodolphus Lestrange and the Malfoys will gracefully lend their manor as a venue for the party. As the Black heir, your presence will be required. We need you to agree to attend and say you will have a plus one.”
“I am not taking Snape with me,” Sirius scowled.
Hermione smirked. “You won’t. I will be your date for that event. While we are there though, you need to help me find the time to search for something in their library.”
“Why the library?” He asked, a confused look on his face. “Look, for a start, I really don’t want to attend, and if it’s a book you're looking for, I can probably find it in my own library at home..”
“We’re not looking for a book,” Severus cut in. “We are looking for a special diary. One that does not actually belong to the Malfoys.”
“The Dark Lord’s then?” Sirius questioned with a tilt of his head. “Do you expect to find some dirty secrets or something?”
“Or something,”Hermione nodded. “So, are you going to help?”
Sirius shrugged. “Sure, why not…”
“One more thing,” Severus said seriously. “There is a very big chance the Dark Lord will be there, and he is a very skilled Legilimens. Knowing that, and the fact that you have zero mental barriers, we propose you allow us to cast a spell on you that will make your mind a little difficult to read, or we could maybe manage to deviate a bit from the repelling charm...” Severus drifted off there, a thoughtful expression on his face as he tried to think of a way to protect Sirius’ mind.
"Or, “Hermione suggested, “we can always just use the Imperius on you,” she shrugged.
“No!” Sirius growled. “Why would he even have a reason to look inside my mind anyway? I’m sure I am unimportant to his grand plan,” he said, waving a dismissive hand.
Severus barked out a laugh as he turned towards the Marauder. “That’s where you’re wrong, Black. You are very important to his plans indeed. As the heir to the Black fortune, one of the most Ancient and Noble houses in Wizarding Britain, you are a prize. In our timeline, after you decided your family can go to hell and abandoned them to go to the Potters, your brother was the one to take your place and the mantle of representing the House of Black, as the spare. He became a Death Eater and died before his twentieth birthday. You ended up hating him your whole remaining miserable life, thinking he was as much a monster as the rest of them. Which was not the case, by the way.”
Hermione watched as the dark wizard linked his hands behind his back and started pacing the floor, his bitter coffee eyes focused on his shoes. “You have no idea what being in his service means, Black,“ he sighed, “but I can tell you what your brother will be going through. You may not realise it, but your brother is very much like you, even though he did not have the courage to stand against your mother and father like you did. He will become a Death Eater, branded forever in body and soul with dark magic you can never scrub off. He will be forced to rape, torture and kill muggles, muggleborns, and anyone that stands in Tom Riddle’s path. He will be summoned weekly and suffer through torture himself when he fails to fulfill His orders, sometimes even when he does but there is no one else to punish. He will not be able to have a normal life. He will be at the Dark Lord’s beck and call, and he will be required to surrender his fortune to the ‘cause’-”
“Stop.” Sirius said hoarsely and Hermione turned to see the young Gryffindor staring at them with tears in his eyes. “I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to help if it means my brother is kept out of it.”
Hermione nodded. “Thank you, Sirius. And rest assured that we will make sure nothing happens to Regulus.”
He nodded. “What now?”
“Now we wait,” Severus answered. “We wait for you to get the wedding invitation along with a letter from your mother with your duties. Then the ball starts rolling. You invite Hermione as your date and we make sure we get what we need from the Malfoys.”
Sirius nodded and stood, heading for the door silently. His hand settled on the handle but he did not step out just yet, pausing in the doorway for a minute before he spoke again. “If what you told me is true, and not just a sick prank, I will help you in any way I can. But if anything happens to my brother or my friends, I will personally hold you responsible.”
Having said his part, Sirius departed, closing the door behind him quietly and leaving them alone, watching the spot he just left.
“Do you think we made the right decision?” Severus asked quietly, his gaze still on the door.
Hermione sighed. “We gave him a choice, Severus. We can still use the Imperius if he changes his mind though.”
Severus chuckled. “You’re becoming more Slytherin with each day that passes, Hermione Granger.”
She shrugged and headed for the door. “Sometimes you just do what you have to in order to get things done, and save a few lives along the way.”
Severus shook his head, a smirk still planted on his lips as he followed her out of the classroom.
“Why the hell aren’t the warming charms working? It’s freezing out here,” Severus hissed as he cast yet another charm on the both of them.
They had spent the remaining weeks before the winter holiday keeping an eye on their group of Slytherins, but also on Sirius. As expected, he had received a letter from his mother informing him of the wedding at the beginning of January, which had also helped erase any doubts the Gryffindor may still have had.
The same day they’d cast a spell of their own devising on Sirius. With that spell he did not need to know Occlumency, but it would need to be cast at least once a month for it to stay in place. And just to be sure it stayed up, they both cast it separately, creating two layers of protection instead of one. The spell they managed to create was a mix between Severus’ Muffliato and the day to day repelling charm, and that would not only create a White noise like barrier around the Gryffindor’s mind, but it would also try to repel the spell back to the caster.
As the holidays approached, they’d also decided it was time to retrieve the Gaunt family ring from the Gaunt Shack. That was how they found themselves trudging through the woods, snow, and freezing wind, looking for the abandoned house.
Hermione sniffed and crossed her arms across her chest. “It’s too cold. I remember when we were on the run, I had to charm blankets to keep us warm, and even those needed renewal every hour or so. Sometimes the cold can be too much even for our magic.”
Severus threw a glance her way but did not dare ask. He’d always suspected both Potter and Weasley would have perished in their very first year at Hogwarts if it weren’t for her. He didn’t even want to imagine what she went through while in hiding, with protecting them and making sure both those two idiots didn’t die on her watch.
“I think we’re here.”
Severus snapped out of his thoughts and looked ahead. He could indeed see a small dilapidated shack through the trees, but he could also feel the layers of dark spells that surrounded it as they approached. If Hermione’s scowl was anything to go by, she could sense them as well.
Wands drawn, they carefully approached the house, working together to take down the spells and curses one by one, inching closer to the house carefully. By the time they reached the door they were as tired as if they’d run a marathon.
“Be careful, constant vigilance,” Severus cautioned as he used his foot to push the door open. “The Dark Lord can be very crafty with his curses when he wants to protect something. One thing I almost know for sure is that we may encounter Inferi. Dumbledore had to go through them to get to the ring. I have no idea if it was later added as a precaution, but we should be careful anyway.”
Hermione nodded. She remembered Harry telling her about the cave he and Dumbledore had been in, and how that one held Inferi in a lake. She wasn’t afraid of facing them individually, but she trembled at the thought of facing a horde of them.
The inside of the shack smelled like wet rotting wood. Black mould and moss could be seen in the corners of the single room house and climbing the walls, while critters scurried away to hide amongst the floorboards. Severus stopped in the middle of the room and Hermione followed suit, placing her back to his and keeping an eye on every dark nook and cranny.
“Can you feel anything?” Hermione questioned quietly. Severus had spent so many years at the maniac’s side that she hoped he would be able to feel His magic and maybe make it easier for them to find what they were looking for.
Severus hummed. “There is something here, yes” he murmured. “I can feel the magic reaching out to us, as if testing our own to see what our intentions are. It is coming from the floor, if I am not mistaken.”
Hermione frowned and looked at the dirty wood under her feet. “That would be the only place you could hide something here, or so one would think. It could be a trap. Maybe that’s where Dumbledore failed. Maybe the Inferi are under the floor, and digging them up will awaken them.”
“Spoken like a Ravenclaw,” Severus smirked, “but I agree. But if the damned ring is not under the floor, where is it?”
“Hello, Severusss…”
They both froze at the sound of the hissing voice and slowly turned to find Lord Voldemort walking through the only entrance, his black robes billowing in the ice cold wind, his red eyes focused on them as a sinister smirk stretched over his reptilian features.
They both trained their wand on him, even as Severus stepped in front of her, his free hand going around his back to latch onto hers and pull her close.
“I was expecting you,” Voldemort said, trying to sound disappointed and failing miserably as all they could see was the hate clearly written in his burning crimson gaze. “I had expected more than this though, I admit. An army of witches and wizards, perhaps? I never thought you would think yourself enough to take me on,” he barked a laugh then. “And with a mudblood at your side nonetheless. Or maybe you brought her for me? Oh I could have ssso much fun torturing that bit of flesssh… ”
Hermione heard Severus growl, but paid him no attention whatsoever. Something didn’t feel right, and her gut instinct almost never let her down. If she remembered correctly, Severus said the Dark Lord had once been a charismatic, handsome man, yet the wraith standing in front of them looked like the one that came into existence through the botched resurrection ritual in their fourth year.
“Severus,” she hissed in his ear urgently. “It’s a boggart, it’s not him.”
The wizard stilled, then straightened his back and let go of her as he pointed his wand anew, shouting ‘Riddikulus’.
The boggart screamed and turned into a balloon wearing a sheet with eyes drawn on it. Simultaneously, Hermione conjured a trunk and helped Severus guide the boggart inside. The moment that the latch snapped closed, they heard another pop behind them.
Both spun on their heels to see a small black velvet box hovering in front of them. The first thing Hermione felt upon seeing the box was an intense desire to touch it so her reaction was to move back a step.
“Containment,” Severus hissed and she could see him struggle to fight against the curse, spell or whatever it was that was causing that reaction.
Just as they had done with Ravenclaw’s diadem, they contained the Horcrux with a double layer of containment spell and locked it in a new box. Not wanting to stick around and see what would happen next, they rushed out of the shack, clasped hands and Disapparated back to Hogsmeade.
They Apparated back behind the Hog’s Head Inn with a grunt and a groan, then looked at each other and started laughing. They were filthy, cold and exhausted, but they were happy to have captured yet another Horcrux. One more point in their favour in this guerrilla warfare against the Dark Lord, which would hopefully bring them closer to victory.
“I’m hungry,” Hermione stated as they cast disillusionment charms on each other and started on the short road to the castle.
Severus nodded his agreement. “I am famished myself. Luckily we’ll be in time for dinner.”
“We do need to clean up first though. Can you imagine Antonin’s face upon seeing us like this?”
“True,” Severus nodded again. “On the other hand, maybe he’ll stop following us everywhere like a lost puppy.”
Hermione mock gasped. “Don’t let him hear you say that or he’ll pee on your leg just to spite you,” she snorted in amusement.
They kept joking and laughing about their Slytherin companions all the way up to the castle, but they both also knew that they’d grown attached to their blossoming little group. None of the boys were what they used to be in their own timeline and both Hermione and Severus hoped they never will be.