Chapter Text
On a winding narrow street cobbled with brick, a row of houses stood interrupted, the roofline suddenly dropping away to nothing. A tree poked up into the air where a chimney had once stood. Around it there was only the ragged shape of stone walls and rotting wooden beams to tell of the pleasant cottage that once housed a young family before the wheel of fate turned and left them at the mercy of one who still struck terror into the hearts of wizards and witches across Europe.
Next to the gate a sign stood, visible even in the depths of night as a witch stood in front of it, the lettering defaced with thick scratches and bright paint.
On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,
Lily and James Potter lost their lives.
Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard
ever to have survived the Killing Curse.
This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left
in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters
and as a reminder of the violence
that tore apart their family.
Hermione examined the graffiti without looking too closely, aware of the vitriol Harry had attracted after things went south. Someone had scratched out most of the lines about him having survived the Killing Curse, apparently with something sharp, and neon insults covered half of the rest. A brightly flashing Potter Stinks badge stuck irrevocably to the top of the sign reminded her vividly of their Hogwarts days, of Cedric Diggory, the first to die at the hands of the resurrected Lord Voldemort but far from the last.
Tears didn’t come. Not now. Not anymore. She was done crying, having emptied herself of everything that might have passed for an emotion in the past two years. There was no point crying anymore, not when the world had turned so far in the direction Death Eaters had hoped for, when Voldemort pulled every string in the Ministry of Magic just as deftly as he cast Unforgiveables, and when there wasn’t even the refuge of Hogwarts to return to unless one was willing to give up every moralistic ideal in favour of the New Order.
All that was left was Hermione. The few friends who had managed to survive the various purges and battles had dropped contact with her for their own safety, knowing that the wanted posters with her image on them were not to be taken lightly, and they had already crossed into a grey zone when it came to personal safety simply by having known her at Hogwarts. It didn’t matter.
Harry was dead, and with him the Order of the Phoenix, never truly useful after Snape betrayed Dumbledore and threw him off the Astronomy tower at Hogwarts on the night the war started in earnest. Harry had lasted through the following year, dragging Hermione and Ron with him on a suicidal mission to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes, but they hadn’t been thorough enough: by the night of Harry’s final battle, there was still at least one Horcrux left. It had been enough to destroy the efforts of those still following Dumbledore’s will. Voldemort’s snake, Nagini, had been safely tucked away somewhere off of Hogwarts grounds, and Crabbe had managed to snag the diadem of Ravenclaw on their mad dash out of the Room of Requirement after the place was set alight by Fiendfyre. Hermione still wasn’t clear where the diadem had ended up, but it hardly mattered at this point. When Harry went into the forest to confront Voldemort he came out a corpse and Voldemort went on a thrilled killing spree, scattering the remaining defenders of Hogwarts like so many flies.
Hermione shuddered in spite of the warm summer evening as she stood in Godric’s Hollow. Memories were all she had left of Harry. She and Ron almost died in their escape from the carnage, and it only left them on the run once more, gradually running out of supplies and places to hide from the now emboldened Death Eaters. Hermione suggested escaping to France, when things got too bad; Ron refused, wanting to find the remains of his family.
The last time she saw him was six months later, his bloated corpse face up in one of the ponds outside the ruins of the Burrow.
She really had run, then. Run and not looked back, escaping into France and then deeper into Switzerland and Austria where she was less likely to be recognised even though she still saw her face on newspapers every so often or heard rumours of her own involvement in the last remains of rebellion in England.
And every night she wondered: where had they gone wrong? What could they have done differently? It seemed as if the odds were so heavily stacked against them that there wasn’t any way they could have succeeded, and Almighty Dumbledore had made a huge mistake in trusting this job to three teenagers. In her mind, it could hardly have gone any worse. Harry was dead, the Order was a shell of itself, propped up on the shoulders of the ineffective and now alcoholic Ted Tonks and the amoral Mundungus Fletcher, both of whom featured on as many wanted posters as Hermione did, although she thought it likely that this was just a way for Voldemort’s Ministry to have an enemy. Ted Tonks and Mundungus were both useless and she’d be honestly surprised if either of them were still alive now, four years after Harry’s death.
What was there left to live for? Voldemort was as ruthless a ruler as he had been a master, and people were still attempting to flee the country any way they could in spite of blockades manned by those willing to cast unforgiveable curses on sight. In the wash of death and blood, there was nothing recognisable of the country Hermione had grown up in, or of the magical world that had whisked her away aged eleven and promised her a future that she had never even imagined for herself.
In her pocket, a piece of paper slid against metal, and Hermione didn’t need to take it out to see what she’d written on it. The words were etched into her very soul, the decision of someone with nothing left to lose or live for.
It could only have been worse if I were dead. No. If I were dead I would not be alone anymore. Death would be preferable to this.
The stark message might have been read as a suicide note if not for the next line.
As there is no way it could be worse, it will not matter if I shred through time like paper.
Her fingers moved to the other item in her pocket, something that had taken her a full two years to find and steal. She’d had to leave Europe entirely then, fleeing via Greenland back into her home nation to avoid being captured by the Swiss Ministry of Magic, who had now laid a bounty on her head that rivalled the one Voldemort was offering. Her fingers caught the chain and played with it as the numbness in her soul was replaced with dread.
If she followed through, she would be back on the warpath again. She would be singled out, targeted, attacked, and she would be surrounded once more by people. People who would get killed. People who would trust her, or betray her, or let her down; or worse, she would do those things to them. Years of running meant years of solitude, alone with her own grief and regrets.
Hermione removed her hand from her pocket, the glittering golden object coming with it. She arranged her hands around it and took hold of the knob on the side.
How many turns? A hundred? A thousand? She had not done the maths, nor did she care to. As long as she turned it more than a hundred times she should get back to before Harry died, and that would be a start. If she went farther, then she went farther. It wasn’t as if she could go back and become a fourth person in their little golden trio; wherever the time turner dumped her she would have to work alone.
Who knew exactly how this time turner had been calibrated, Hermione thought. Not her, certainly. There had been no instruction manual with it when she stole it from the bank vault where it had been lying for the past fifty years. She watched it turn with detached interest, her fingers working of their own accord to wind it farther and farther until the knob became too hot to touch and she simply had to watch the thing spin, time warping around her.
One moment she was there and the next moment she was not, the air sizzling with magic as time bent to welcome her.
Chapter Text
Time gave a great heave and spat Hermione out on worn brick cobbles in front of a gap in the terrace of houses that looked like a giant’s smile with one tooth knocked out. The tree that had stood proudly in the middle of the wreck a few moments ago was now gone. Her knees buckled as gravity reasserted itself, as if for a moment after her arrival she was suspended in place, untouched by the laws of magic or physics. This jump backwards through time was unlike any other she’d made, leaving her wrung out and hungry as well as a little nauseous.
She glanced around immediately to ensure that things had indeed gone to plan and found the sign that she’d left a moment ago. It had been covered in graffiti, but now it looked clean and new, cleaner than she ever remembered having seen it. That didn’t mean much, in terms of locating herself in history; it merely meant that she had appeared sometime after the Potters were killed by Lord Voldemort but sometime before she herself had visited Godric’s Hollow on the one ill-fated occasion in her life.
Before the next thought could arrange itself in her head, she felt an icy sensation in her right hand that seemed to burn right through to the bone. She glanced down at the same moment something gave a poof and a sigh as if there were a very small explosion, and pain shot through her hand.
“Ah,” she hissed, and grabbed at her right hand with her left as the remains of the time-turner shattered, pieces flying in all directions, the sand that had once graced the inside of it dissolving in the clear evening air as the metal bands that made up the turning mechanism clattered on the bricks, a few drops of blood following them.
“Well that’s brilliant,” she muttered, and produced her wand awkwardly in her left hand to point at the pair of cuts on her hand. The skin across her palm was bright red and growing sudden welts from the heat of the time-turner’s final act, and she wished very much that she’d put the blasted thing in her other hand for this part so that her wand hand could have been undamaged.
Her healing spells were normally quite competent, but in her left hand her wand felt clumsy and she barely managed to knit the skin back together enough that it stopped weeping blood. With a shake of her head, Hermione pocketed her wand once more to look around her.
It was a summer night, not too far off of the time of year she’d left behind, if she had her guess. Not the same time of day, as she’d left behind her bleak present in the wee hours of the morning, sometime after two a.m., but right now it was a warm evening, still light, and a few people were walking down the street. Hermione, still clutching her injured hand, inclined her head to them with a small, forced smile as they passed. This was a magical village; no one was going to be too surprised at someone appearing or disappearing suddenly.
Plans that had been waiting for months churned to life as Hermione walked away from the Potter house, throwing a last glance back at it over her shoulder, and she felt freer than she had in years. Somewhere out there, Harry Potter was alive, a little boy, perhaps in his aunt’s house, perhaps not happy but with a future ahead of him. Ron was not dead, not rotting in the pond where they’d once gone dipping for minnows. He was probably heading to bed right about now. How old was he? She swivelled her head, looking for some sign of the year, a newspaper or anything, but saw nothing that enlightened her.
Halfway down the street she felt alive again, blood pumping through her as it hadn’t since…well, certainly not in a long time, and the next part of the plan slid into place. She needed a place to work from, and she knew where it needed to be.
She was heading back to Hogwarts.
Hogwarts was alway quiet in the summer holidays. With no students roaming the halls and the teachers mostly away for a slice of their own peace and quiet, the halls became dusty and silent, echoing only with the occasional sleepy murmurs of the portraits. Even Peeves went into a kind of hibernation over the summer, with none of his usual energy or antics, perhaps because he fed off of the naughtiness of children and there were none around.
Severus preferred Hogwarts like this. He stood at a second floor window facing the sunset with a cup of tea, peacefulness oozing up out of the flags and into his very bones as bright orange light slid slowly across the floor. The only time Hogwarts was this quiet the rest of the year was in the middle of the night, and he’d found himself waking up in the middle of the night to appreciate it more and more often in the past year. It was pleasant to experience this kind of peace in the daytime, with no dunderheaded children demanding his attention.
Teaching was not something he would ever have said was a calling. Instead, the job sort of just…happened. He didn’t like lingering over the specifics, the choices he did not get to make and the way that both of his masters ran roughshod over the top of his preferences to position him in a way that he would be sufficiently useful to them both. The position they chose meant that it was his job to spend the majority of his time drilling basic potioneering into a bunch of dullards who didn’t know the meaning of ‘widdershins’. It was dull, it was unpleasant, and he spent a great deal of time sneering at small humans.
But now, in the quiet of these halls, he could remember the more pleasant things about his position. The silence that could be found, the beauty of this place, the warm tea that could always be brought by a willing house-elf (house elves! What glorious Brownies the creatures were!), the arcane knowledge contained in the vast library a few floors away from his rooms. Even the other professors could be pleasant enough, he supposed, although he still felt strange around many of them. Three years of teaching was miniscule in the scale of some of the professors’ careers—McGonagall alone had been teaching since long before he was born and it was absurd to treat her like an equal, a fellow head of house—and he was still so young compared to any of the others save for Professor Trelawney, who was so absurd he tried to avoid her at all costs. It was also not long enough since the dark days of his short but active Death Eater career that he felt comfortable in the relative peace that had descended on the world since the fall of the Dark Lord.
Severus raised the tea to his lips for another sip, feeling balanced in this moment. He was the Dark Lord’s disciple, he was Albus Dumbledore’s spy, he was a reasonably successful young professor, he was a Death Eater when the moment called. Rarely did he have time to simply exist as something outside of his many titles and duties, and this moment, warmed through by the summer sun and a fresh cup of tea, was one of them.
A bell in the distance alerted him to an intruder on his peace. He tilted his head, waiting to hear a response from any of the few other people on the grounds, but heard nothing. The foolish half-giant must be away on errands, and Dumbledore as a matter of course didn’t answer the calls from the grounds. He thought Flitwick might be around, but the tiny man struggled to get to the gates in less than forty minutes. Severus sighed and set his tea down on the window ledge, snapping his fingers as he did so.
There was a loud CRACK as a house-elf appeared to clear up behind him, but Severus was already moving away by the time the small creature had fetched the cup and saucer from the ledge. His feet were quick and automatic as he made his way down stairs and corridors. Hogwarts had been his home for more years than three, and reflex took over when he had a destination in mind. Down and over the trick stairs, around the corner for the shortcut behind the large purple tapestry, a few more turns and he was down the stairs to the great hall.
The bell rang again, louder now that he pushed through the main doors and strode across the grass. The castle gates were a good long walk from anywhere in the castle, but apparently the person ringing the bell didn’t know just how long it could take to get from the centre of the grounds to the edge, because they gave the bell another pull even as Severus came in view of the gates.
It took a few more minutes for him to arrive at the wide iron gates flanked by griffin statues, and by the time he arrived Severus had built up a bit of a sweat. Not for lack of fitness, but more for simply how far he’d had to come on short notice.
“Ye-e-es?” He drawled, placing fists on his hips as he looked through the iron gate. A lone figure stood on the other side, a small woman in an all-consuming cloak with an over-thin face and sharp eyes below slicked back but still frizzing brown hair.
“I’m here to see Albus Dumbledore,” she said, her words precise and her manner demanding. “He’ll want to see me.”
“Is he expecting you?” Severus demanded, not moving from his superior position. If he let the woman in, he’d have to walk her to Dumbledore’s office. She’d already interrupted his peaceful contemplation of the silence of the castle, and would undoubtedly want to talk the whole way up to the castle. Women usually did.
“No. That doesn’t change the fact that he’ll want to see me.” The woman put one hand on her own hip, elbow swinging her cloak out to the side to reveal tight jeans and a dark green tanktop. Mudblood, then, or a half-blood at best. No grown woman of pure blood would deign to wear something so revealing and obviously muggle. Severus felt his cheeks pinken slightly, not from embarrassment (of course not!), but from the way she stared him down as if she were superior even when she was so obviously not part of the better echelon of wizard society.
“And what makes you think that?” Severus lowered his voice to a bemused rumble, looking her up and down with his best attempt at the look Lucius gave to basically anyone who appeared at his door. Condescension was the aim, a sense of total superiority that could be conveyed with a simple look at another person’s clothing.
“You’re not his keeper,” the woman said with utter confidence and stepped up to the gates, eyes flashing. “So get out of my way and let me in.”
Severus felt one of his eyebrows lift as the woman practically crackled with magical energy. “Is that a threat?”
“If I were threatening you, you’d know it,” she bit back. “I’ve come a very long way and I wasn’t expecting to be interrogated before I even got to his office.”
Apparently she was expecting an interrogation once she got into the headmaster’s office. Amused in spite of himself, Severus stepped aside slightly and produced his wand. “It seems you’re familiar with his ways. Your name, please?”
“Hermione,” she said immediately, then hesitated, her eyes sliding across his face in a way that gave Severus pause. “Grant,” she finished, and Severus had the immediate impression that the question had taken her off-guard somehow and that she was lying. Her eyes told the truth even without any particular attempt on Severus’ part to read the thoughts flashing behind them, but when they flicked back up to meet Severus’ gaze again, it was as if a window had clouded over. Her emotions were hidden now, behind honey brown eyes that must have been her best feature.
Severus waved his wand at the gate and it opened to admit the woman. She was certainly still irritated, and he could feel the magic seeping out of her at the emotional response he’d managed to elicit, but he doubted he had anything to worry about. Severus was a decent duelist and Dumbledore an excellent one; even if one of them was caught off-guard the other would not be.
An excellent team we make, Dumbledore and I, he thought sarcastically as he closed the gate behind the Hermione woman and gestured for her to begin walking. She did so without hesitation, taking off at a fast enough walk that Severus would have been hard-pressed to catch up with her without resorting to a run, and he had no interest in debasing himself in such a manner. Instead, he took up a place ten steps behind and a couple steps to the side, not allowing himself to hurry as he matched her quick strides.
Hermione apparently knew her way around Hogwarts, as she did not hesitate at any point on her way across the extensive grounds. Not that it was a particularly complicated trip, just one road from the gate to the castle with occasional trails coming off to either side, but she did not even glance around to ensure she was going the right direction. Severus tilted his head, wondering when she had attended Hogwarts. It seemed the only explanation for her familiarity with the grounds, but he didn’t recognise her, and she didn’t look old enough to have graduated before his own time at Hogwarts began.
He was just musing on this oddity when the castle came into view around a bend in the road and Hermione slowed, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder at Severus. He did not slow, which brought him up level with her, and it took her a moment to recover from whatever thought slowed her down so that when she began walking again she was now a couple of paces behind him.
“Do you work here?” Her question was careful, and Severus thought by the way she phrased it that it wasn’t what she really wanted to ask. It was some kind of hedge, a concession she was making, perhaps because she felt guilty for her rudeness earlier. Her anger certainly seemed to have fizzled out with the walk, leaving her looking far smaller and less interesting than she had at the gate.
“Yes,” Severus replied shortly, not interested in starting a conversation now when they had so nearly made it all the way to the castle without having to resort to such inanities.
“You seem young to be a professor here,” she pressed. “I didn’t know they would hire someone so early in their career.”
Severus didn’t dignify that comment with a response. The woman behind him huffed, probably thinking him abominably rude, and he smirked. Good. Maybe that would stop her talking.
They mounted the steps up to the entry hall and Severus waved his wand at the door, which responded smoothly with only the smallest creak of hinges as it opened. Not far now. The Headmaster’s office was only just the other side of—
“Am I right in thinking…” the woman started, then hesitated, and Severus glanced back at her, gesturing for her to keep moving as she seemed to have stopped at the threshold. “…are you Severus Snape?”
A cold black feeling slid down Severus’ gullet, dropping through his legs and pooling in his feet, making his foot catch on the barest unevenness in the stone floor. Had his name been in the paper again? His photo? Had something been shared publicly, a confession from a compatriot caught in the web of arrests and trials that were still ongoing? Dumbledore said he would take care of it, that the name Severus Snape would never appear again in context of the Death Eater trials and lists of the accused, that he had fixed it.
Rage bubbled up in him. Of course it hadn’t been so simple to fix this problem, of course things had still got out. What had he expected? For Dumbledore to be an infallible deity with the ability to shape the entire world to his whims?
Severus turned to face her properly, his face undoubtedly reflecting his fury. The woman’s face went pink, and she looked down at the floor as she scurried past him in the direction of the Headmaster’s office. He didn’t even look at her, eyes fixed in the middle distance as his blood boiled and he now followed her in the direction of the statue that led to Dumbledore’s office.
The deep growling voice behind her proclaimed the password, “Merino,” and Hermione did not look back as she slipped past the statue onto the moving staircase that took her up in a spiral to the Headmaster’s office, aware all the time of the black shape at her back, a few steps behind, angry at her for reasons that she could not even begin to understand.
She hadn’t expected Snape. Of all the people she could have seen, she hadn’t expected him. The sight of him on the other side of the gate, as dark and intimidating as he had been through all of Hermione’s Hogwarts years, sent a rush of adrenaline through her veins as her reflexes flipped: enemy — ally — enemy —
His role in the war had been confusing at best, always trusted by Dumbledore and very often deserving of that trust, whether or not Harry or anyone else wanted to extend it. The complexities of his actions in the year before Harry’s death left even Hermione’s mind in turmoil, unable to justify any of his actions as being fully devoted to either side in the last war. Snape was a man who saved some lives and disposed of others with complete nonchalance, up to and including Hermione’s own as she and Ron had fled the castle that fateful night. Snape had been in the castle, seen them running, and turned away to fight someone else, someone that he probably killed based on the green light that flashed behind them as they dodged behind a tapestry into another corridor.
And when she’d asked his name just now as they entered the castle, hoping that he would confirm something more about exactly when she was? That flame of anger reminded her so suddenly of his fury at her in her first year that she was pretty sure she’d squeaked. There was no understanding him now, just as there was no understanding him back when he’d been a spy for the Order who dumped Dumbledore’s body off a tower.
The stairs brought Hermione up to the door of Dumbledore’s office, where she rapped her knuckles on the door just as she had done a thousand times when she wanted to see a teacher in their office. Never mind that she’d never actually been to see Dumbledore on her own, only as part of the occasional prefect meeting in fifth and sixth year. She was an adult now, and she ought to have the confidence to speak to the Headmaster as equals, even if she were here to ask something from him.
“Come,” the voice came from the other side of the door, and Hermione pushed it open.
The office was half-lit with the fading rays of sunset through the high windows that encircled the top of the round room, full as Hermione had always known it with books, papers, and trinkets of unknown origin or use. She stepped forward, glancing around at the portraits of former Headmasters that punctuated the walls, and let her eyes settle on the man she was hoping would be as willing to join in her schemes as he was to create his own.
“Welcome to Hogwarts,” Albus Dumbledore said, coming around his desk to extend a hand to Hermione. His white hair was loose down his back, his robes an attractive dark maroon edged with white and black borders, and his face was as Hermione remembered it from her early years at Hogwarts, lined with age but not excessively so, a sign of experience but not fragility as the man himself glided through the wizarding world. He smiled at Hermione. “How is it that I can help you?”
Hermione shook his hand and released it, tucking her robes around herself again, hoping that she hadn’t shown too much of the ratty clothing beneath, some of the last remains of her wardrobe. Running from the law had not been kind to her belongings, and at some point along the way—somewhere in Geneva, she thought—she’d lost the beaded bag that had once housed everything precious to her. There were only so many times one could transfigure clothing and the ones she wore had already been stretched and repaired beyond what anyone would recommend. She was glad that she still had Ron’s old cloak, which was voluminous enough to hide not only her lack of proper clothing for an interview like this, but also her scars.
She inhaled sharply through her nose and put on her most polite smile. “I hear that you are looking for a Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor.”
Dumbledore looked past her, and Hermione remembered suddenly that Snape was still behind her. She felt her shoulders stiffen, surprised into relaxing at the sight of Dumbledore, and she pressed on.
“I trust the position has not yet been filled? Or am I too late?”
“You have missed the candidate interviews,” Dumbledore said, his smile turning apologetic. “I’m afraid that we have already prepared to extend an offer, the owl is to be sent tomorrow morning.”
“Then it isn’t final,” Hermione said firmly, relief flooding through her. “If you haven’t made an offer then you still have time to change your mind.”
“And you think you’ll change my mind, miss…?” Dumbledore trailed off, the question hanging in the air.
“Hermione Gran—Grant. And I’m very good. Better, I can assure you, than anyone else you interviewed this year.”
Dumbledore’s eyebrows quirked, and Hermione swore he exchanged another glance with Snape behind her. Damn her inability to remember an alias! It was too reflexive in her to respond to Dumbledore with honesty and speed, in a remembered hope that house points would soon be forthcoming. She only hoped that a bit of swift talking would set things right.
“I’ve always been something of a prodigy,” Hermione said, words tumbling out of her as she planned they would now that she had regained her mental balance. “Outstanding on all my O.W.L.s but one, absolute dedication to my studies. And I’m experienced,” she lied, hoping that this one would go unnoticed. “I set up a Defence Against the Dark Arts league at my school in my fifth year and served as a primary instructor for the club before going on to an apprenticeship under one of the premiere aurors in my country.” Lies, but little ones. The meaning of them was true even if the truth wasn’t exactly reflected there.
“References?” Dumbledore asked as he headed back around his desk to sit, gesturing for Hermione to take one of the chairs opposite him.
“Er,” Hermione slid into the chair, wishing that Snape wasn’t still standing behind her, his black form sucking all of the life out of the lies she was trying to tell. “Unfortunately I suffered a bit of an incident on my way over from France and I’ve lost my paperwork. Would you accept a practical demonstration?”
Dumbledore leaned his elbows forward onto the desk, his fingers steepled as he watched Hermione. “If you have something to demonstrate, I would be obliged.”
Without standing, Hermione produced her wand, wincing as the wood met the burns from the time-turner. “Expecto patronum,” she said clearly, holding on tightly to the memory of Ron’s burning kiss in the forest after their escape from Hogwarts, a moment that told her she was the most important thing in the world to someone, a gleaming beacon of hope as the world collapsed around her.
A silver otter poured out of her wand to swim around their heads, twisting joyfully in the air for a moment. Hermione cut the spell almost immediately as she knew it would begin to flicker if she left it too long. As joyful as any of her memories were, they barely held up to the crushing weight of sorrow that remained irrrevocably attached to them.
“Good,” Dumbledore said, and Hermione thought she might have seen the beginnings of an approving twinkle in those blue eyes. “What happened to your wand hand?”
Hermione’s heart juddered. “Er,” she managed eloquently, her fingers automatically gripping her wand a little tighter before she winced and almost dropped it.
“Severus,” Dumbledore said, gesturing. From behind, Snape appeared over Hermione’s shoulder and reached out a hand, palm up. Hermione glanced at him, a blush racing up her cheeks at the thought of having to come up with an explanation for the strange pattern of burns and cuts on short notice, but she set her wand down on her lap and extended her right hand for examination.
Snape took hold of her wrist none too gently and pulled her arm forward so he could catch the light; Hermione got pulled along with it, her cloak sliding almost completely off her right shoulder as she did so, revealing the tatty tanktop and jeans underneath. Damn Ron and his broad shoulders—she should have resized it so it would stay on better, but hadn’t thought about it in the twisting plans that filled her mind from the moment her feet landed on the cobbles in this time.
“I—I cast a—well, there was a bit of an incident with a—” Hermione paused, unsure exactly what to claim had happened, as she wasn’t familiar with anything that would leave the kind of marks the exploding time-turner had.
“Burns,” Snape said without looking up from her hand, and his wand was out in a moment. Hermione inhaled sharply at the sight of his wand in hand, but a moment later there was a blessedly cool sensation flowing through her hand.
“Thank you,” Hermione breathed, glancing up at Snape with a smile. “I really shouldn’t have been holding it with my wand hand, I’m no good with healing spells in my left.”
Snape froze, staring at her, obsidian eyes locked onto her own. Hermione’s mouth dropped open slightly in surprise at the sudden eye contact, and she bit her lip, unsure what she’d said to make Snape stare at her as if she’d grown an extra head, but he didn’t look away for what seemed like an eternity.
Across the desk, Dumbledore cleared his throat and Hermione looked back at him and Snape dropped her wrist as if he were the one who had been burned. Dumbledore’s eyes were twinkling now. “What is it that you were holding?”
“A firework,” Hermione said dumbly, grasping the first thing that came to mind. She gaped at herself for a moment at the stupidity of that comment, wondering what kind of person would hold a lit firework in their hand, and struggled through an explanation. “It was for a party, a friend’s birthday. We were having fireworks and I just happened to get distracted…”
“You could just tell me the truth,” Dumbledore said quietly, eyes locked onto Hermione’s. The twinkling had not disappeared, but there was a sternness to his gaze that told Hermione that none of her many lies had truly got past him. “We don’t generally hire waifs and strays to teach at Hogwarts, I’m sure you’ll understand. It isn’t a job for the unprepared or the dishonest.”
Hermione almost snorted. Either he was kidding himself or standards were going to drop a lot in the next however-many-years.
“Fine,” she said, standing abruptly, almost knocking Snape over with her shoulder. “I’ll be honest.”
“I think that would be best,” Dumbledore said, standing up as well, and if Hermione wasn’t reading the situation wrong, she thought there was a tension in the air that said that if she were to try anything funny, it would be wands out at any moment.
“My name is not Hermione Grant,” she said first, wanting to clear the air as much as possible without losing control of the situation. “But it is Hermione. For my own safety I cannot tell you my surname and I would appreciate if you don’t ask.”
“Of course,” Dumbledore said smoothly, and Hermione could sense Snape moving away behind her so that she was once again surrounded, unable to see one of the two powerful wizards in the room with her.
“I’m here at Hogwarts because I need a place to work.” She lifted her chin. “My friends and family are either dead or in hiding, including my former professors and those who could give me a recommendation, but I know I could be a good Defense teacher, if you’ll give me the chance.”
“Many lives have been lost in the war,” Dumbledore said, and his voice held both sorrow and a desire to comfort.
“I will tell you three things, and if you don’t want me here after those three things, you’re free to send me away,” Hermione said, knowing that this was a gamble. “Let’s start with the first one: I want You-Know-Who so permanently destroyed that he never has the chance to rise again, and the only way I can do something about that is here, from Hogwarts.”
The momentary flash of concern and confusion on Dumbledore’s face almost coaxed Hermione into a laugh. She shook her head and raised a hand at him. “I can’t tell you more right now. If I do take you into my confidence, it will be privately.” Her voice was pointed, and there was another glance between Dumbledore and Snape.
“Second, I am not a Death Eater.” Hermione carefully pushed her left arm forward, the scar there shining even in the dying light of day. She watched as Dumbledore scanned her left arm first for a dark mark, and then more slowly a second time as he read the jagged word that had been carved into her arm with a cursed blade. Mudblood. She inhaled, setting a sharp smile on her face. “I have been tortured at their hands too many times to have any interest in serving Voldemort.”
There was a gasp behind her at the name she forced past her lips, still hating to have to say it in spite of Harry’s influence. Apparently Snape hated her saying it just as much.
“The third thing,” Hermione said, her voice slowing as she pulled her cloak back around her, “will require a pensieve.”
“Legilimency would be simpler,” Snape’s voice came from behind for the first time since they entered the office.
Hermione whirled on him, furious. “I will not have you intruding on my mind, no matter how good you think you are at finding what you want.”
Snape stared at her, those dark eyes blank and shuttered, unmoving against the force of her sudden anger. Hermione gripped her wand tightly, sparks falling from the end of it as she wished he would just get out of the room so she could speak with Dumbledore without his slithering presence.
“The pensieve will do,” Dumbledore said, and Hermione realised it was already levitating out of a cupboard to come to a rest on his desk. “Will you kindly join me to view the memory?”
“Yes,” Hermione said, turning her back on Snape. “But he stays here.”
“Of course.” Dumbledore was smiling now, the small smile that always had a way of calming her, making her think that things were going to turn out alright if she just trusted the process.
Hermione inhaled, cleared her mind, and lifted her wand to her temple. The memory came free easily, all by itself, glowing and silvery as she dropped it into the bowl. Without hesitation, she leaned forward and fell into the pensieve.
The swirl of silver memory resolved into words they could hear before Hermione’s feet landed on the carpet of the Burrow in the memory she’d chosen for Dumbledore.
“The last Will and Testament of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore…yes, here we are…To Ronald Bilius Weasley, I leave my Deluminator, in the hope that he will remember me when he uses it.”
The image of Rufus Scrimgeour produced the Deluminator from the bag at his side as he sat across from Ron, Hermione, and Harry, the three of them crowded together so tightly on the two-seater sofa that Hermione could practically feel Harry’s elbows digging into her, even from where she stood next to Dumbledore at the side of the little scene unfolding in front of them. Hermione chanced a glance at Dumbledore as memory-Scrimgeour interrogated Ron. She knew that the Deluminator was one of a kind, and Dumbledore must have known it as well based on the curious, interested look on his face.
“To Miss Hermione Jean Granger, I leave my copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, in the hope that she will find it entertaining and instructive.”
Scrimgeour now presented the small, peeling copy of Beedle, and Hermione felt a pang. The book had gone missing with the rest of Hermione’s belongings when she lost the beaded bag, along with the rest of her textbooks. She missed the books every day, feeling as if a part of her identity was ripped away when she suddenly no longer had her books to reference and read.
“Why do you think Dumbledore left you that book, Miss Granger?” Scrimgeour’s face was harsh, interrogatory.
“He…he knew I liked books,” memory-Hermione said, mopping her eyes with her sleeve. To Hermione, it looked very much as if her younger self were mourning the loss of someone close to her, a true friend, and that’s what she hoped Dumbledore would take from it.
“Did you ever discuss codes, or any means of passing secret messages, with Dumbledore?”
“No, I didn’t. And If the Ministry hasn’t found any hidden codes in this book in thirty-one days, I doubt that I will.”
Hermione watched as Ron’s ghostly figure pulled an arm out of the crowded space on the sofa and put it around her shoulders, as her memory self turned into his shoulder, and she found her own hands going to clutch at her arms, hugging herself at the pull of sorrow that threatened to drag her down at the sight of Ron alive and moving.
“That’s all,” Hermione said before Scrimgeour could move on to Harry, hoping that Dumbledore would take the information she’d offered and not dig too much farther into the details of the memory. With a force of will, she pulled them both out of the memory and she stood, hands on the desk in front of her, looking Dumbledore full in the face. “Is that a good enough reference for you?”
Dumbledore was still staring at the swirling surface of the pensieve, apparently processing the large amount of information that Hermione had shared with him.
- Hermione is from the future
- Dumbledore is dead in this future
- Dumbledore trusted Hermione enough to leave her something in his will, something obscure and peculiar that has obvious value beyond what you could sell it for
- Dumbledore has things he wanted to tell Hermione that would justify finding secret means of communication
- Hermione is known to the Minister of Magic in her own time, and he doesn’t like her or Dumbledore
Hermione hoped that was roughly where the list ended. There were snippets about Ron there, too, and at some point it would probably become obvious about Harry’s presence in the room if Dumbledore remembered this well enough, but she couldn’t help that. This was the only memory she had that was likely to convince Dumbledore to trust her, and to give her what she wanted.
Finally, Dumbledore lifted his head and Hermione was surprised to find a glimmer of tears there in the blue.
“I see. I understand,” he said in a quiet voice. “And I’m sorry.”
Hermione had a sinking feeling that Dumbledore was able to gather far more than just what she’d wanted to share. She grimaced and scooped the memory back up, placing it back to her temple where it rejoined the rest of that memory, the whole thing sharper and clearer after having reviewed it. There was nothing more for her to say at this point. She could only wait to see what Dumbledore decided.
The headmaster took a deep breath and straightened to his full height, shoulders squared, and Hermione suddenly realised just how tall he was. With a tilt of his head, he gestured to the door.
“You are welcome here at Hogwarts, Miss Grant. I will make arrangements for your employment, although if you are unable to fulfil the duties of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher then something else will have to be put into place. I will not put my students’ education at risk even for the sake of this mission you espouse.”
Hermione grinned. Yes, standards had indeed slipped. Would slip.
“Professor Snape will escort you to your rooms, as I am sure you have nowhere else to go.”
Hermione turned to look at Snape, who was watching her with suspicion, then back to Dumbledore. “Would it be possible to get an advance on my pay? I have nothing but the clothes on my back and my wand right now.”
“Of course,” Dumbledore said, and the twinkling was back in his eye as he watched her. “Good luck, Professor Grant. I very much think you shall need it.”
Notes:
*Some text taken verbatim from Deathly Hallows
Chapter Text
The new professor kept mainly to her rooms, a development that bothered Severus not at all. He saw her briefly at breakfast a couple of times in the first week, but out-of-term meals were an informal and simple affair that mostly consisted of browsing through a simple buffet that one could come to anytime within a two hour window, and with only five professors taking rooms at the castle over the summer it was easy to avoid chit-chat.
More of an irritation was her obsession with the library. Every time Severus went up there to find a reference or check what was available to the students when it came to their homework, she was holed up in one of the prime spots near the back of the Restricted Section, an enormous table covered in books that she flitted between without ever looking up. He scoffed at the idea of doing one’s preparations for the year in the library instead of in one’s office, but said nothing to her.
A few days before term started Dumbledore sent Severus a summons, so he found himself riding the moving stairs up to the Headmaster’s office straight after dinner. He knocked at the door but stepped inside without waiting for a response, as he was expected.
Dumbledore was standing in front of the fire, hands clasped behind his back, staring at the flames as they leapt on the logs. “Severus, good evening.”
“Headmaster,” Severus replied, dipping his head and coming to stand a few feet away from Dumbledore, watching the man in front of him instead of joining in with the fire-watch.
“How go your preparations for the return of the students? All of your syllabi prepared?”
“Yes,” Severus replied shortly. “I have made some minor changes from last year’s curriculum lists that I believe will help things to run more smoothly.”
“Excellent,” Dumbledore said, glancing up at Severus with a small smile. “I do hope we will have fewer visits to the hospital wing as a result.”
Severus felt his cheeks warm at that. His first two years of teaching had been…rocky. He’d overestimated the skills of some year groups, which resulted in a fair few injuries due to inexperience, and underestimated the skills of others, which had resulted in boredom-induced injuries. It was, he knew, fairly typical for a new Potions master to have some incidents as Potions was the most temperamental of the subjects, but it still hurt his pride to know that he’d made errors of judgement when it came to his students. Thankfully nothing serious had occurred, but it had left him scrambling for replacement lessons for most of the first year and a half. It was only in the last six months or so that he felt he’d really got a grip on where he needed to set the difficulty level for each year group to get the best results.
“I can hardly help it that so many students are complete dunderheads.”
Dumbledore’s smile grew. “You have grown in the last two years. I would hardly say you are the same man that joined my employ.”
Severus did look at the fire now, as a way to avoid Dumbledore’s gaze. Halloween night four years ago had been a turning point for him, the beginning of a hideous spiral as he was slammed with the death of someone he loved dearly, the destruction of one of his masters, the capture and trials of many of his friends, and the scandal that followed him into his Mastery training. The best thing that could be said for his Mastery training was that it took two years instead of the usual three and the Daily Prophet rarely made it to the Isle of Man, so he’d been reasonably insulated from the rumours that he knew were swirling back on the mainland as his name landed in the papers in connection with known Death Eaters more than a few times. It had hurt to come back to Dumbledore for a job then, knowing that it would put him forever in reach of both of his masters, even if one of them was dead. Lord Voldemort had been just as keen as Dumbledore on the issue of having an inside man in the enemy camp and had encouraged Severus in the direction of a professorship with something that bordered on neuroticism, so by the time of Voldemort’s death the wheels were already in motion for Severus to move into old Horace Slughorn’s position.
If he had changed much in the last two years it was only in his competence as a professor and his new ability to stuff down his anger behind a mask of cold indifference. The first time he’d yelled at a student he’d been dragged into Dumbledore’s office for a humiliating confessional session, which had been more than enough encouragement to figure out how to stop showing the dumber students how much he hated being around them even if he still felt it inside.
“Well,” Dumbledore said, stepping away from the fire, “the only other preparation that needs to be made has to do with our newest member of staff.”
“Professor Grant,” Severus said automatically, following a few steps behind Dumbledore as the headmaster went to sit in one of the pair of chairs this side of the desk. Severus did not sit, but took up a place next to the other chair so he could see Dumbledore clearly.
“She seems to have settled reasonably well,” Dumbledore said, relaxing into the armchair. “She’s taken Professor Hushley’s notes from last year and reworked them into a plan for each of the year groups and I must say it looks well thought out. Perhaps a little heavy on written work, but I imagine she will adjust as the year progresses.”
Severus sniffed, looking away to the large window behind Dumbledore’s desk. The new professor would sink or swim on her own without his input.
“I am worried that she doesn’t seem to have come out from her rooms much,” Dumbledore continued. “It would do her good to get familiar with the castle and its inhabitants, and to meet some people. I don’t believe she knows anyone in the country, and has few enough friends even at home.”
“And this is somehow my concern?”
Dumbledore looked over the top of his half-moon glasses, one eyebrow raised. “I should think you of all people would acknowledge how difficult it can be to have no friends in the world.”
Severus scowled, rolling his eyes, but Dumbledore was undeterred. “To that effect, I would like to give you an assignment.”
“Of course you would,” Severus intoned, practically growling.
“You won’t be working alone on this,” Dumbledore warned. “I’ve also asked Remus Lupin to help, as he is similar in age and has a generally pleasant temperament.”
“Let me guess,” Severus said, his voice taking on the nasally whine that he couldn’t avoid when he was truly irritated, “you want me to make friends with the new professor because friendship is the answer to all of life’s problems.”
“I knew you would come to see the truth of that maxim someday,” Dumbledore replied with a bright smile and a heavy dose of sarcasm. “Although I do admit that’s part of it. No, I’d like for you and Lupin to find out more about her to see if she’s a good candidate for the Order.”
“The Order,” Severus said flatly. “The Order of the Phoenix?”
“None other,” Dumbledore replied cheerfully. “Professor Grant has many of the qualities we would look for in a member of the Order—”
“Including some kind of knowledge of the Dark Lord, I assume,” Snape interrupted, remembering the veiled references she’d made to both her past and her concerns that Lord Voldemort might rise again in future.
“Indeed. Given the nature of the information she gave me in the pensieve, I believe we should take her concerns seriously, but it is currently unclear whether to leave her to her own devices or to bring her in to the larger Order so that her plans can be brought to fruition more quickly.”
“So you want me to be her handler,” Severus said, all becoming clear quite suddenly. “To gain her trust and relay information back to you.”
“You or Lupin, at any rate.” Dumbledore lifted one hand in a gesture that said that it didn’t matter. “If both of you attempt to befriend her there’s a better chance that one or both of you will end up with her trust. I’m not entirely sure which of you will be more appealing to her.”
Severus felt his cheeks grow pink again at the idea of being appealing to someone. The only people that found Severus appealing, in his experience, were people who wanted to manipulate him for their own gain, and he had no intention of forming yet another of those dependencies. Even Lucius Malfoy, whom Severus would count as a friend, had a tendency to ask for far more than he gave.
However, he could hardly say no. Not after all that Dumbledore had done for him.
“Fine,” he spat, turning away to rub at his eyes with one hand.
“Good.” Dumbledore’s voice was still so damn cheerful. “I’ve asked young Remus to be at the Three Broomsticks tonight, as I think you’ll be able to persuade Miss Grant to join you there for a drink. He already knows what he’s supposed to do, so you can simply introduce him as a school friend.”
Severus scoffed. “So your big plan is to send me—me! To ask a woman out for drinks?”
Dumbledore shook his head, still smiling. “There’s no one I would trust more with the task.”
Fifteen minutes later Severus stood at the door to the Defense teacher’s office on the third floor, not far from the Defense classroom, trying very hard not to sneer as he lifted a hand to knock.
“One moment,” the voice came from somewhere inside, and a moment later the office door opened. Professor Grant looked as if she’d been interrupted in some intense thought, her eyes unfocussed, brown ringlets drooping down her shoulders as if they’d been repeatedly abused by the fingers that were even now winding a lock of hair around them distractedly. She was wearing the tight muggle jeans still, though the tanktop from their first meeting had been replaced with a cream collared shirt buttoned almost all the way to the top but with the sleeves rolled up past her elbows.
“Oh,” she said, blinking rapidly as Severus thought he caught thoughts of complex arithmancy diagrams clearing from behind her eyes. “Professor Snape. What brings you here?”
The grimace did not move from Severus’ face as he registered her body language and tone. She was surprised at his presence here and didn’t particularly have any intention of inviting him inside. Of course. And Dumbledore thought she would accept an invitation to go out to the Hog’s Head with him!
“I…realise that you are new to Hogwarts and I came to ask if you would join me at the pub in Hogsmeade this evening.” He spoke in his best approximation of kindness, but he thought it came closer to a guilty apology. “For drinks,” he added for clarity’s sake.
“I just…what?” Her face screwed up in confusion, and the fingers that had been twisting her hair stilled.
“Drinks. In Hogsmeade.” Severus frowned. “You’re under no obligation to come.”
“No I…I’m sorry, I just…” she looked down, then up at his face again, then shook her head. “I’d love to. Sorry, I just didn’t expect that.”
Severus’ heart dropped into his feet. She didn’t say no? She’d love to? What on earth was this world coming to?
“When did you want to go?” She asked, a little line between her eyebrows as she watched him in her confusion.
“Now,” he said tactlessly, hoping that it would persuade her that he was too thoughtless to want to tag along with. If he pushed hard enough, she would say no and the whole assignment to befriend her could be pushed onto Lupin instead. “I was about to leave and merely stopped by as a courtesy.”
“Of course,” she said, glancing down at herself. “If you can just give me a moment?”
Severus nodded sharply, and Professor Grant whirled away into her office, leaving the door ajar. Once it was obvious that she had gone deeper into her suite of rooms, Severus stepped forward into the doorway she had vacated to look around the office.
There was hardly anything in the room, unlike most of the other professor’s offices. It seemed that Professor Grant truly had come with nothing to her name, because everything in the room was Hogwarts standard, including the library books that were open on her desk. The only other professor whose office looked nearly this sparse was Professor McGonagall, and Severus always put that down to her serious and incredibly exacting nature. Professor Grant wasn’t like McGonagall, Severus thought, if only because Grant’s desk looked like a whirlwind had hit it. There were stacks of parchment with miniscule writing that cascaded from the desk to the floor, filled the wastepaper basket, and even had been pinned up on the wall. There was organisation there, but it was organisation that didn’t take itself too seriously, as if the creator of it recognised that the information on the parchment was more important than the organisation of that information.
He was just considering walking over to look through her notes when the door to her private rooms swung shut from deeper in the room, out of sight from the main office door. Severus stepped back to make room, and Professor Grant came around the door in a flurry of motion.
“Sorry about that, thanks for waiting,” she said as she closed the office door and warded it behind them. Her voluminous curls had now been swept up into a precarious bun atop her head and her sleeves were now rolled down to her wrists. A new cloak, not the same as the one she’d worn before, hung easily from her shoulders, a far better fit than the last one. “I wasn’t expecting to go anywhere, you understand.”
“Nor was I,” Severus said in a low voice, hating Albus Dumbledore with every fibre of his being as he set off towards the entry hall.
“A last minute decision to go out, then?” The woman beside him asked, and he cursed himself for speaking.
“Yes,” he replied shortly.
There was a long silence as they made their way out of the castle, this time walking alongside each other, their paces matched. Finally, she spoke.
“I’ve done my best to prepare for the academic year,” she said, her voice light and conversational. “How do you find the N.E.W.T.s students generally? They’re the one group I’m not entirely sure of.”
“Riddled with spots and so driven by hormones I’m surprised they come to class at all,” Severus said immediately.
Grant snorted, and Severus sent a sharp look at her, surprised to see her trying to bite back a laugh. She spoke without further prompting. “I was seventeen once. I remember the feeling.”
“There are a few I expect to take things seriously. The incoming sixth-year Ravenclaws are worthy of attention.”
Professor Grant took this conversational handhold and wrung it for more material, prodding Severus into talking about students both good and bad. He didn’t resist this, knowing that McGonagall had done the same thing for him at a dinner party she’d thrown near the beginning of his first year teaching and it had been incredibly helpful. Their conversation moved down the year groups until, by the time they arrived at Hogsmeade, they were discussing the third year Gryffindors, who Severus knew were likely to cause problems.
“At that age there’s a chance they’ll still turn up as good students,” Professor Grant was saying as they walked down the main road, still keeping up a reasonably quick pace. It was warm but cloudy, the beginnings of a drizzle starting.
“I strongly doubt it,” Severus sniped back with a shake of his head. “I’ve yet to see any Gryffindor choose a path of responsibility when the chance to rebel was still open to them.”
“You’re head of Slytherin house, right?” She asked, and Severus glanced over to see a wry look on her face.
“Yes, I am. I think you’ll find the Slytherins a responsible bunch—when they aren’t being taunted to within an inch of their rope—and I’m sure they’ll treat you well.”
“Why? I’m not a Slytherin.”
“You could have been.” Severus looked at the woman again, trying to place her in the basic rubric of the Hogwarts Houses. “Although I’m sure Ravenclaw would have had first claim to your affiliation.”
“Not Gryffindor?” She asked, and the way her mouth tilted up at one corner Severus was sure he was being teased.
“Hardly,” he replied, giving a huff. “The last two professors in your place were alum of that particular House, and neither of them spent any time making lesson plans ahead of time. Judging by the look of your office, that’s all you’ve been doing for the last four weeks.”
The sign for the Three Broomsticks swung in the breeze above as they pushed open the door of the pub to get a face full of alcohol fumes and smoke. Severus inhaled deeply, finding comfort in the smells, and led the way to the bar, not watching to see that Grant followed.
She did, but hesitated to take a long look around at the mostly empty pub. Severus did a quick catalog of those in attendance, noting Remus Lupin at a table not far from the bar. No one else was worthy of note, mostly regulars from the village.
Grant joined Severus at the bar a moment late, and slid onto one of the barstools next to him, unclasping her cloak as she did so to lay it across her lap in the warm bar interior. “I still could have been a Gryffindor. Or a Hufflepuff,” she added, as if the house was an afterthought.
Rosmerta slid up to them, dark eyes bright with the thought of a good topic for gossip as she saw that Severus had come in with a woman. “Evening, Severus. What can I get for you and your friend?”
“Double firewhiskey,” Severus said without thinking.
“Just a butterbeer for me,” Grant added.
Severus continued the interrupted conversation as drinks were poured. “You’re out drinking with the head of Slytherin House, I don’t think Gryffindor would accept you.”
Professor Grant laughed, a full, throaty thing that drew Severus’ shocked gaze up to look fully at her. She accepted her drink from Madam Rosmerta and lifted it in his direction. “Perhaps you’re right there,” she said, and clinked glasses with him, apparently oblivious to his stunned reaction to her laugh.
He downed the firewhiskey in a single swig, hoping it would give him the fortitude to handle both Professor Grant and Remus Lupin, who appeared behind him as if on cue.
“Severus,” the werewolf’s voice was as soft and calm as it always had been. “It’s been a while.”
“Lupin,” Severus grunted, extending a hand to shake with the other man as if there was no more history there than a simple loose friendship.
“How’s the school?”
“Pestilential.”
Lupin gave a laugh. “Who’s this? I’m not sure we’ve met.” And he sent a smile in the direction of Professor Grant.
The woman was staring at Lupin with cheeks burning, chewing on her bottom lip as if she were so shell-shocked that she had no idea how to respond. Severus felt his own burning, but it was a furious sort of jealousy at the mild-mannered man that had come up to them. Remus Lupin was tall, reasonably well-shaped, and had the soft personality that had attracted more than a few girls to him back in his Hogwarts days. Apparently his appeal had not lessened in the intervening years, in spite of the new scars that graced his face and neck. Even now Lupin was sporting an almost-healed black eye from one of his moonlit jaunts, which even Severus could appreciate somehow only made him look more manly and interesting.
“Hermione Grant,” she said finally, extending a hand to shake with Lupin, a small smile on her red face as she could barely keep eye contact. “I’m the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.”
“Remus Lupin. I was a student at Hogwarts, same year as Severus. I hope you have a successful first year.”
“Thank you. It’s quite the daunting job.”
“Do you mind if I join you?” Lupin asked, moving to the barstool the other side of Grant without waiting for a response. “I can imagine. I don’t know how Severus handles it, teenagers scare me.”
Both of them glanced at Severus and the words slipped out of his mouth without warning. “Alcohol and calming draughts.”
Professor Grant laughed again, this time an ungraceful snort of a thing. “Are the calming draughts for you or the students?” She asked, laughter still in her voice.
“Keep one brewing in the classroom and it doesn’t matter,” he replied without looking at her, gesturing for another drink. He was going to need it if Lupin was going to be so damn charming.
Hermione couldn’t help but feel as if the world had aligned for one beautiful evening just for her. Seeing Remus again, so young and whole, made her feel as if a weight had lifted off her shoulders. Her shock at seeing him had quickly been subsumed in the joy of his company. He’d always been good fun as a professor, but especially now he was friendly, funny, and far better company than Snape, who sat silently with them at the bar nursing a butterbeer after having shot back two doubles of firewhiskey in ten minutes.
Currently, Remus was in the middle of describing a prank his friends had played on him at Hogwarts, and Hermione felt as if she was wrapped in a warm cocoon, alcohol and familiarity making her relax against the bar. She could almost pretend that nothing bad had ever happened and that she was simply in a bar with old friends.
“—and then Peter slipped off the boat and fell smack into the water, I do mean smack into the water, he bellyflopped it so hard you could have heard it from the castle,” Remus said, laughing over his own firewhiskey, which he’d swapped to after the second butterbeer. “He was always such a clumsy little idiot,” he added fondly.
Hermione’s grin became a little forced, and she turned back to the bar to avoid giving away any of her internal thoughts about Peter Pettigrew. “I had a friend in first year who was like that, always clumsy and awkward. Poor thing, he was round as a button until after O.W.L.s. We sneaked out of the common room one night and he tried to stop us but I put a full body bind on him and he fell flat on the floor, I think someone must have found him in the morning and fixed him up. Come to think of if I’m not sure I ever apologised to him for that—” Hermione cut herself off, the memory of Neville being shot through the heart with an arrow spell blasting itself into her thoughts as if it had never left.
“Maybe you would have been good in Gryffindor after all,” Snape’s voice came from behind her, smooth and dripping with contempt.
Hermione turned on him, a cutting reply on her tongue, only to see that this wasn’t the same Snape from her memories, but someone younger, different. This Snape watched her with dark eyes that held stories she couldn’t read and a queer kind of sorrow, not the bitterness of his older counterpart. Perhaps it was the alcohol talking but Hermione even thought there was something handsome about the angular face and long hands, even when he was telling her off.
“I suppose Gryffindors aren’t known for their remorse,” she said in a low voice, thinking of all the times she had enabled Harry and Ron to get away with something or to cheat on their homework without any particular regrets.
“Or their good judgement,” Remus agreed, his own voice turning bitter. “I sometimes wonder if we’d have all been better off if they hadn’t divided us up the way they did. Those labels didn’t do us much good.”
“Labels don’t generally do anyone any good,” Hermione agreed, pushing her butterbeer away and thinking of all the things that had been shouted at her in the halls of Hogwarts and in the years afterwards. The warm, comfortable feeling was ebbing now, and Hermione knew that it wouldn’t take much longer for her to find herself a sad drunk. It was better that she get herself back off to her rooms before she said something she would regret. “I should go,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and swinging her cloak back on. “I still have things to sort before September first.”
Remus stood and took her hand one more time. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Hermione. I hope we can meet again sometime.”
“Of course,” she said automatically, unable to help a genuine smile as she stared into Remus’ face. “I’ve really loved getting to meet you.”
Remus’ cheeks pinked, and Hermione laughed a little again. The alcohol was not doing him any favours if he was going to blush over an innocent statement like that. She turned back to Snape, who had straightened up on the barstool and turned to look at her, his own face pale rather than red.
“Thank you for inviting me out tonight, I needed this,” she said, finding her smile a little more fixed as she faced a man who still scared her in spite of his new youth. “If you ever want company again, feel free to find me.”
This seemed a safe enough farewell, and Hermione fixed her cloak in place before sweeping away out the door of the Three Broomsticks.
The earlier promise of drizzle did indeed develop into rain, and Hermione found her face wet after only a few minutes walking back towards the castle. She left it, feeling sobriety return with the cold water, and thought hard as she walked back up to the castle.
Voldemort had destroyed so much, and some of the things that he destroyed were so obvious now that Hermione could see with adult eyes what things had been like before. Even Snape, Death Eater and spy for the Order, was a completely different person in this time, before Voldemort’s poisonous influence had so much time to make itself known. The invitation to the pub was a kindness, one that she’d not thought him the type to extend, and the conversation on the way down had been great for helping her to know what to expect from the students in a few days’ time. She didn’t think this was all the difference between interacting with him as a student and interacting with him as an adult—she couldn’t imagine the Severus Snape she knew from her student days inviting other professors out for drinks and chatting with them through a forty minute walk in the way that he had with her tonight.
And Lupin had been so friendly with Snape, as if whatever rivalry there had been between Snape and James Potter had not extended to the rest of James’ friend circle. Lupin obviously didn’t resent Snape for his role in what happened to the Potters, or at least not as much as Hermione had thought he would. Snape wasn’t necessarily entirely friendly with Lupin, but he was cordial.
The walk back to the castle found Hermione’s thoughts shifting from the events of the evening back to the same thing that consumed her every time she stopped doing other things.
Voldemort. Horcruxes. How to destroy Horcruxes.
The Defense Against the Dark Arts post was cursed, and that meant that she would probably only have a year to find the Horcruxes and destroy them. What would happen after that was anyone’s guess; the curse on the position was not picky about how the Defense teachers were booted out of the position, leading to the death of one, the insanity of another, and the loss of career and reputation of several more just in Hermione’s time as a student. Whatever the result of the jinx, she wasn’t going to be at Hogwarts by the end of the school year and there was a good chance she’d be unable to continue her self-imposed mission after that point.
So she had only a matter of months to do whatever she could to take down Voldemort.
Back in the Three Broomsticks, Severus and Remus took their drinks and moved off into a quiet back corner booth where they could discuss the evening without being overheard.
“She seems genuine,” Remus said as they sat with heads close together in the darkness. “I didn’t catch any hint of whatever it is that Dumbledore thinks she can contribute to the cause, but at least she doesn’t seem like a Death Eater in disguise.”
Severus gave him a sharp look, and Remus coughed. “Sorry.”
Severus didn’t respond to that. Instead, he turned to the more immediate issue. “Someone should follow her if she leaves the castle. Dumbledore will want to know where she goes and to whom she speaks.”
“And by someone you mean me.”
“Obviously,” Severus drawled. “Between Dumbledore and myself we will be aware of her movements in the castle, but we can hardly be expected to follow her everywhere. You don’t have anything else happening in your life, you can handle the dog-work.”
Remus shook his head but didn’t respond to the implicit insults. “Has she been out of the castle since her arrival? Dumbledore didn’t tell me where she came from.”
“I have no idea.” Severus sipped at his drink again. “I’m not interested in the vain dilly-dallyings of the female sex.”
Remus let out a small snort at that, but Severus didn’t feel like picking him up on that at the moment. Instead, he thought to the last few minutes at the bar, when Hermione had shoved her sleeves up as if by reflex.
“You saw her arm?” He asked in a low voice.
Remus nodded, mouth downturned. “Who would do something like that?”
“You mean brand someone with an indelible and cursed mark of their identity?” Severus drawled sarcastically. “I have no idea.”
“But who? Who among the Death Eaters would have done that?”
“Already seeking revenge on behalf of your lady love?” Severus couldn’t keep the contempt out of his voice. “I thought you were too busy howling at the moon and watching soap operas.”
Remus slammed his glass down, most of the remainder of his drink splashing across the table. “You’re such a prick. It’s no wonder Sirius—“ he choked on his words, but the anger between them did not cool. “What do you even care? She’s a nice girl, Professor Grant, but there’s no way she’d go for a…someone like me.”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” Severus said, rising smoothly from his seat. “I’m sure she has better taste than that.”
He strode out of the Hog’s Head, anger dulling to drunken apathy as he thought of the smooth skin of Hermione Grant’s jaw and the curve of her neck with her hair pulled up out of the way.
She surely has better taste than to want a Slytherin potions master, either.
Notes:
Next time: Hermione finds another familiar face at Hogwarts, this time amongst the students
Chapter 4: Of Kneazles and Redheads
Notes:
Thank you to everyone who left a review and kudos! I really appreciate it and it certainly makes it easier to get the next chapter written.
Last time: Dumbledore assigns Snape and Lupin to determine Hermione's trustworthiness. Snape asks Hermione to join him at the pub and immediately becomes jealous of Lupin's charm
This time: Hermione sees more familiar faces and makes a new friend
Chapter Text
The evening before term started, Hermione found herself in her new office surrounded by paperwork of her own creation, attempting to force a kind of order onto it. Lesson plans mingled freely with Horcrux research in the great pile that she’d accidentally created on her desk, and she was nearly tearing her hair out trying to separate the two.
“What possessed me,” she cried sotto voce, “to plot the floor plan of Gringotts in the margins of the year six homework list?”
Her demand echoed in a small way in the nearly empty room, that paper joining a hundred others that she’d decided would have to be rewritten and the original burned so that students didn’t get a glimpse of something they shouldn’t see. Hermione Granger of all people knew the risks inherent in letting students learn too much about secret topics—if it hadn’t been for the curiosity of even the eleven-year-olds, Voldemort would have risen years earlier.
“But I’m not going to put children at risk, I’m not allowing children to do dangerous things—“ she declared to herself, wondering suddenly once again if Dumbledore had let Harry figure out the riddle of the philosopher’s stone on purpose as a way of testing him. “No, no,” she said with a shake of her head, straightening up the piles of lesson plans and turning to the pinboard on the wall where she’d laid out the year-long topic summaries for each year group. “I’m sure Dumbledore was simply slack that year. He didn’t anticipate Harry and his hero complex. He couldn’t have. Tabellis iungere,” she added with a flick of her wand. The pile of lesson plans she’d neatly organised on the desk flew to the pinboard and joined themselves to the topic summaries in a way reminiscent of the Marauder’s Map, so that when she wanted to reference the plans for the week, or for a year group, the board would simply fold out the correct parts of the lesson plans and she could see all of them at once.
Feeling warm and cheerful at the sight of the interactive lesson plan board, Hermione turned her attention to the remaining papers. Mostly they had to do with Horcruxes, although many of them only peripherally. There were notes she’d taken from various treatises on the Dark Arts referencing wizards and witches who had created them in the past, everything she could gather about the type of incantation and spellcasting involved, a great deal of research into the nature of souls and how they react to magic, the arithmantic relationships between various numbers and soul magic, as well as the less-familiar dive she’d had to take into star-signs, palmistry, and predestination.
A few more spells brought all of her Horcrux research together into three neatly bound volumes in plain brown covers. Hermione glanced through the pages to ensure that everything was secure before she stacked them up and turned her attention to the stack of pages she would need to re-transcribe and then burn. With a sigh, she sat down at the desk and pulled out her quill.
She was only a few pages into her task when she was interrupted by a tentative knock at the door. “Come,” she called with a sigh, scratching the last few words onto the page before she turned over the original page that held both information for sourcing a grindylow for the third years and a diagram of magical nodes in the body, complete with notes on which were most susceptible to being split off from the others.
The door opened slowly to reveal the black-cloaked figure of Professor Snape. Hermione couldn’t help staring as the dimly lit corridor brought to mind the same professor who had docked her points for answering questions in class, but when he stepped forward slightly into the light her heart gave a thump and the automatic anxiety drained away. The smooth, unlined face of the Potions Master in front of her was not the same as the one that had tortured her as a child. Perhaps he would soon turn into the same man, but either way she was now a peer, a colleague, and perhaps even someone he might someday think of as a friend if she stayed at Hogwarts long enough. He did not hold the same power over her as he once had.
His drawling voice was even and cool, almost uninterested. “Professor Dumbledore has sent me to bring you to the staffroom for the final briefing before the students arrive tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Hermione said, looking down at the sheaf of papers that she had only begun to work through. “Of course.” She set down her quill and frowned. This would mean less time to sort out this mess before term began. She had hoped to have the job done so she could concentrate on one thing at a time, instead of spitting her attention for the first few weeks of term.
Nevertheless, she stood and followed Snape out of her office, warding the door automatically behind her. Snape waited, and they set off towards the staffroom together.
Hermione watched him for a moment as they walked, the gears in her head turning on the fact that he had once again come to fetch her. He certainly seemed friendlier than she would have expected. First the invitation to drinks, now fetching her from her office for a meeting. And he’d introduced her to Lupin. Lupin and Snape, she thought, the ultimate odd couple.
“I didn’t realise there would be a staff meeting tonight,” Hermione said as they went down a flight of stairs. “I suppose it should have been obvious.”
“Dumbledore likes to be sure we’re all appropriately under his thumb before he starts the year,” came the sarcastic rejoinder, and Hermione’s mouth quirked upwards. Maybe it was age or maybe it was her growing nihilism after the destruction of her entire life in her own time, but she certainly appreciated Snape’s sarcasm more now than she ever had.
“I’m fairly sure he thinks of us as chess pieces instead of people,” Hermione said unthinkingly. “No need to worry for individual pieces as long as he can leverage a win.”
Snape snorted something that might have been approval and came to a halt at the staffroom door, which stood flanked by life-sized stone gargoyles. “I wouldn’t say that in front of him,” he said, looking back at her over one shoulder.
“Obviously,” Hermione drawled back. Snape paused, hand on the doorknob, and she could have sworn she saw a hint of a smirk before he opened the door.
The staffroom was a reasonably sized place not far from the Great Hall in a corridor that students wouldn’t have had much call to go down unless they were seeking a teacher, which made it quiet enough for a cup of tea between classes. Hermione had been here looking for a particular professor on any number of occasions before, but it was the first time she felt as if she was actually supposed to be there. The wood-panelled walls made it feel cosy, especially with the low fire that burned in the large fireplace at the other end of the room. A variety of mismatched wingback chairs stood scattered through the room, along with little end tables and a single large wardrobe that Hermione remembered from Lupin’s year at Hogwarts as the home of a boggart. There was also a decent sized table with low benches on either side, where the few teachers who had already arrived at the school were gathered.
Dumbledore sat in the middle of one of the benches, Professor McGonagall at his right side, and waved them in to be seated. Snape glided in to take a place at one end of the table on the opposite side from Dumbledore and McGonagall, as far away as possible from the young Professor Trelawney, who looked slightly more put together than Hermione remembered her. Professors Flitwick, Sprout, and Sinistra were also there, and to Hermione’s surprise, Professor Binns hovered a little way away from the table. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen the ancient ghost of the History of Magic professor anywhere other than his classroom.
Hermione stepped over the bench to take a seat next to Professor Snape, who shifted away very slightly at the encroachment on his self-proclaimed personal space. She lifted her chin and refused to acknowledge his discomfort. He’d invited her to drinks and he’d come to fetch her from her office tonight, both of which she took as friendly gestures. She was going to be friendly in return whether he liked it or not.
“Welcome, my dear friends,” Dumbledore began, looking around at all of them, blue eyes bright. “We are about to embark upon another year of educating young minds and moulding great witches and wizards. I hope you are all prepared for the chaos that will undoubtedly ensue when the young ones once again flood the halls of Hogwarts tomorrow evening.”
“As ready as we ever are,” Flitwitck chirped. “Which is to say, undoubtedly not very.”
Dumbledore smiled back at the small man, then turned his gaze to Hermione. “We have welcomed a new member of staff who you may have had the pleasure of meeting already. Professor Hermione Grant joins us at my own recommendation and promises to be a welcome addition to our staff. Would you like to introduce yourself, Professor Grant?”
Hermione blinked at him and opened her mouth to say something like no thank you, but found herself standing up as if she were still a student who had been called on by the Headmaster. “Thank you. I’m merely a student of magic who seeks…knowledge. And safety for all. Especially the students.” She sat back down, a little heavily, and felt her face flush red as Flitwick squeaked out a “Hear, hear!”
She didn’t hear the next part of what Dumbledore said as there was blood rushing through her ears and a profound sense of embarrassment warming her skin, but she managed to tune back in as Dumbledore listed the jobs that still needed doing before the arrival of the students.
“—Now Hagrid is seeing to the thestrals, they seem to have taken quite well to him even in the absence of Ogg, which will be a relief to all of us. Madame Hooch will be joining us by tomorrow morning and has volunteered to help Hagrid to feed them and get all of the carriages ready, so we will likely see her for the first time at the feast. The house-elves have informed me that the common rooms need a good sweep for magic before the students arrive as there seem to be some pests that have cropped up that the elves are unable to deal with themselves. Minerva, if you and Aurora could take the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw towers, Severus and Hermione can deal with Hufflepuff and Slytherin.”
Hermione glanced across at Snape now as Dumbledore continued his list, to see that the Potions Master had gone rigid in his seat next to her, his mouth pressed in a firm line. She looked away, blinking. Perhaps she’d overestimated Snape’s tolerance for friendly overtures.
When the meeting finished, Hermione turned to Snape amidst the new outbreak of conversation in the staffroom. “When should we see to the common rooms? I have rather a lot to see to still before the students arrive, so I’d like to get it done.”
Snape only glanced at her before standing. “Now. Then we can both get on with other things.”
“Brilliant,” Hermione said, forcing a smile. “Lead the way.”
Snape did not hesitate to take the lead down into the basement, where they first went in the direction of the kitchens to find the Hufflepuff common room. Hermione had never been into the Hufflepuff common room before, so when Snape tapped out the password on a barrel with his wand and a round door appeared in the wall, Hermione stepped through it with a sense of wonder that she thought she’d left behind around second year.
The Hufflepuff common room was round, warm, and cosy, more homelike than any other room she’d been into in Hogwarts, which was saying rather a lot given how much she felt that the Gryffindor common room was a kind of home. It was as if Helga Hufflepuff had tapped into the quintessence of childhood and warm kitchens alive with the smell of fresh-baked bread and cake and then wrapped it all in a summer’s evening. Noticing the round doors leading off of the common room, Hermione had a sudden sneaking suspicion that J.R.R. Tolkein had perhaps been a wizard, and a Hufflepuff at that. There wasn’t any other reason she could think of for the common room to so closely resemble every description of a Hobbit hole she’d ever read.
While Hermione stood admiring the room, turning in place to take it all in, Snape had already crossed to one of the round doors in the wall to disappear briefly before returning, wand out. “Nothing in the boy’s dormitory. I trust you will check the girl’s?”
The pointed critique in his tone prodded Hermione into action. She took the other main door and cast a quick revealment spell as she toured through the girl’s dormitories, finding nothing suspicious. The dormitories were so pleasantly turned out that she couldn’t help wishing that her own rooms looked like this; the bedroom off of her office was about as sterile and cold as the dungeons in spite of the warm east-facing window, and there was little she could do about it without spending all of her small remaining advance on her salary on it.
She returned to the common room to find Snape presumably finished checking the rest of the rooms, as he was standing next to the door. Hermione hurried across to him, muttering an apology as she went. He didn’t reply.
The Slytherin common room was more what Hermione expected, mystical, dark, and impressive, as much an expression of old money as it was magic. Snape walked in with the same confidence he did everything, but Hermione lingered on the threshold of the common room, thoughts of Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson filling her head.
They were both dead too, in her own time. Malfoy killed by Voldemort for his attempted betrayal, Pansy by George Weasley in what might be described as a catfight on the same night Harry was killed. Hermione took a deep, shuddering breath and reminded herself of what was most pertinent: Voldemort hadn’t had a chance to kill all of those people yet, and Hermione wasn’t going to let it get to that point. She was going to destroy Voldemort before he even knew she was a threat.
Snape’s voice interrupted her reverie from the far side of the common room, near the fireplace. “I believe I’ve found the culprit.”
Hermione jumped and crossed the room to where Snape was crouched in front of one of the green armchairs in front of the fire, clutching his right hand with his left, wand sticking out at an odd angle. Hermione leaned down to him, spotting the little bit of blood visible under his hand. “Are you alright?”
“Kneazle,” he grunted, peering under the chair. “No wonder the house-elves couldn’t handle it.”
Hermione let out a soft ah and flopped onto her belly, glad she’d worn her jeans under her robes again today. From here she could see under the chair to where it backed up against the wall, bookcases on either side creating a little nook in which she could just make out a pair of eyes watching her from the gloomy corner. “Hello, darling,” she cooed, reaching under the chair.
“Are you insane?” Snape hissed, and he grabbed her arm to pull her back. She flipped her hair over to the other side so she could look up at him, still crouched over her, staring at her as if she had just tried to tame a thestral with cake. “It’s a kneazle.”
Hermione just grinned up at him. “I used to have one as a pet. Or a part-kneazle, anyway.” She turned to look under the chair again. “Come here, sweeting, I won’t hurt you.”
Her outstretched hand was met with a rough wet nose, then the smallest brush of soft whiskers. Hermione guided the little creature out from under the chair slowly, motioning for Snape to move back, which he did without any hesitation. The kneazle slowly came out from under the chair following Hermione’s hand, black fur with grey spots making itself visible as the creature that looked like a long-haired cat peered up at Hermione. Without any further hesitation, she scooped the creature up into her arms and gave its fur a nuzzle, hands stroking it automatically. The kneazle made a noise that sounded like a faulty motor but Hermione recognised as purring.
“It’s only a kitten,” she said, inhaling deeply from the dusty fur and giving a little moan of pleasure. “I just love the smell of kneazles, they honestly are the sweetest things.”
Hermione lifted her face from the kneazle kitten long enough to look at Snape onto to see him standing slack-jawed, looking at her in horror. She grinned. “What, never seen a friendly kneazle before?”
“Kneazles aren’t friendly,” Snape gaped at her, “they’re incredibly picky and usually violent. I’ve never met someone that a kneazle was nice to before.”
“I’m sure he’ll be nice to other people too,” Hermione said, moving across so that the kneazle, currently cuddled up to her chest with a baffled expression on its face, was near Snape. “Go on. Try stroking him.”
Snape stared at her with the wide eyes of someone who has just seen the face of death and made no move to reach out to the little creature. Hermione leaned closer to him and put on her kneazle-charming voice, looking up into Snape’s dark eyes. “Come on, Professor. You’re not afraid of a sweet little kitten, are you?”
Slowly, his eyes locked onto Hermione’s, he lifted a hand in the direction of the kneazle.
It hissed.
“No,” Hermione said firmly, looking down at it and using one finger to boop its nose. “Professor Snape is a friend and you will be kind to him.”
The kneazle jerked back from Hermione’s finger as if struck, but kept its mouth shut and claws retracted. The tufted tail swinging with aggravation was the only sign of the kitten’s irritation at this edict.
“Go on,” Hermione said, nudging the kneazle closer to Snape again. “It won’t do anything to you.”
Snape lifted a single long finger and ran it between the kneazle’s ears and down to its neck. The kitten shifted slightly, but did not hiss. Hermione watched with pleasure, aware that she was grinning madly at this turn of events.
“I always wanted another kneazle, and this one is young enough I can’t imagine it belongs to a student,” she said, her fingers rubbing against Snape’s as she took up stroking the kitten again, his fingers warm and solid as hers slid against his. He pulled his hand away, but Hermione shook her head at him. “No, keep stroking him, he’ll get used to you that way. My cat, Crook—Crooks,” she hesitated over the name, aware that she could create problems if she shared too many details, “I had to send him away when the war got bad enough, he was too easy to target—” she snapped her mouth shut suddenly. How hypocritical of her to refuse to say the name of her cat but to talk so easily about the war!
Snape listened in silence, and when Hermione glanced up at his face, worried about her time-travel faux pas it was to see that he was very still, and far closer to her than she remembered him being a moment ago. She had, apparently, shoved the cat almost into his chest while at the same time clutching it to her chest, which left them standing a breath apart, the toes of their shoes almost touching. Snape was stroking the kneazle kitten with one finger and didn’t look inclined to meet Hermione’s gaze.
“I’ve always heard they were clever,” Snape said finally. “But I never thought that even such a young one would understand so clearly.”
He stopped stroking the kneazle and stepped away, and Hermione felt suddenly cold, as if Snape had been radiating enough heat to bridge the space between them. She licked her lips, suddenly feeling rather dry, and looked back down at the kitten. “I suppose if you haven’t seen one in action it’s easy to believe them another dumb animal.” Hermione hitched the kitten up slightly as it curled into her arm, purring again. “Do you think Dumbledore will let me keep it?”
“I suppose if it will listen to you like that then he might,” Snape said, walking away to the door without looking back.
If Hermione had eyes for anything other than the kitten, she would have seen the way Snape flexed the hand that had touched hers, made a fist, and hid it away in his cloak as if nothing had happened.
That night Hermione parted company with Snape to show McGonagall and Sinistra the result of their search, which made for a cluster of cat-loving women standing outside of Gryffindor tower stroking the bewildered kneazle kitten and cooing over it like a baby for a full fifteen minutes. McGonagall gave her permission to keep it in her rooms as long as she could ensure it didn’t escape and cause havoc, so Hermione took it with her to her office, closed the door, and got back to work on her papers, this time with a little black familiar on her lap.
She slept better that night than any other since she’d come to the past, the warm weight of a kitten on her chest keeping dreams at bay.
The house-elves didn’t like the kneazle, Hermione remembered the following morning when she returned to her rooms after breakfast to find that her laundry had not been collected and her bathroom not cleaned. Instead she found the kneazle curled up in front of the fire in her room snoozing even after Hermione left a bowl of kippers she’d brought back from breakfast. It shouldn’t be a problem to keep it fed, she thought, as once the kneazle was old enough to hunt regularly it would make do with mice and rats from the castle and grounds. Even now it hadn’t been begging her for food, although she had given it something the night before. It did mean that Hermione would have to clean up after herself and the kneazle, though.
“You’re worth it, little one.” She said, crouching down beside the kneazle on the rug in front of the fire. “What am I going to call you? How about Ceres?”
She waited to see if the little creature would respond, but there was nothing. Hermione sighed. “I’ll call you Ceres for now. You can let me know if you’d prefer something different when you wake up.”
Paperwork and classroom preparations consumed the rest of Hermione’s day, until sometime around five p.m. when a chime sounded; Dumbledore had explained the chime, a special sound tuned to the professors and other staff so they could be aware of goings on in the castle without the need to disturb students. This one was the chime for the main gate, and would be the signal that students were approaching.
It was time.
Hermione cleared away her Horcrux research and locked it away in her wardrobe in the bedroom, then took a long look in the full-length mirror to be sure that she looked like what she meant to. She’d chosen her new clothing carefully, with attention to both Hogwarts tradition and her own muggle roots, not wanting to look like anything she wasn’t. As such, her ivory silk shirt was topped with a deep burgundy pinafore dress that hung just past her knees, thick tights to keep her legs warm, and sleek black leather boots. This was topped with her robes, but she did not wear the witches hat that McGonagall and some of the older teachers favoured. Instead she had pulled her hair at the nape of her neck with a ribbon, knowing that this was one of the few ways she could consistently contain her hair without it going completely frizzy. The ivory ribbon was made into a bow at the nape of her neck, which felt both completely wrong for a professor and completely right for Hermione.
With one last look, she set off for the Great Hall.
Students were already arriving in dribs and drabs, laughing and chatting about the holidays as they crossed into the Great Hall. Hermione avoided the entry hall entirely, taking one of the back corridors that led to the high table. She couldn’t help a light flutter of nerves as she pushed the door open to see the Great Hall fully bedecked in house colours and Hogwarts emblems, the view very different from the slightly raised high table. She hesitated slightly at the door, but finally moved to an empty seat near the middle of the table where she hoped she wouldn’t stand out. The seating at the high table wasn’t assigned, something Hermione had noticed over her own years at Hogwarts. Teachers would choose where to sit based on who they wanted to talk to that evening, with the exception of a few who prioritised familiarity.
The din in the hall only grew as the final carriages arrived and the hall was flooded with students. The professors were, at this point, mostly seated with only the exception of Professor McGonagall, who was leading the first years inside.
Hermione scanned the hall, attempting to get a grip on which faces belonged to which house, when a flame of orange hair caught in the edge of her vision. She stilled, watching as the very Weasley hair bobbed down, around another student, and up again, the owner of the hair laughing as he slapped someone on the back. He turned, and she suddenly recognised him.
Bill Weasley.
How old was he? Twelve? Thirteen? Not eleven, or else he would have come on the boats with the first years. Hermione shook her head as she watched him take his seat with a group of Gryffindors she didn’t recognise but who must have been his same age. She hadn’t expected a Weasley here, as one of her students. It wasn’t rational to think that she would avoid the Weasleys completely, given that they’d had a child at Hogwarts since around the same time that Professor Snape started teaching, and of course she knew that Snape was here.
She was unnervingly aware of how Snape was here. Now that he’d come to find her twice she was starting to worry she’d stumble on him every time she rounded a corner or held office hours, and even now he was seated only a couple of spaces down from her, the other side of the Muggle Studies and Arithmancy professors.
The sorting began a few minutes later, and Hermione couldn’t help watching Bill throughout. It was a few minutes later when she was engrossed in dinner that she glanced up again to see that Bill was watching her, too, although he ducked his head the moment her gaze lifted to him. There followed a small flurry of conversation amongst the young Gryffindors, and the whole group then turned to look at her almost as one.
“I think they’ve spotted you,” the elderly Muggle Studies professor said, nudging Hermione.
Hermione almost choked on her wine and set it down to dab at her face with her napkin. “Sorry?”
“The Gryffindors,” the woman said, offering a grin that showed one gold tooth in her wrinkly face. She was unusual for a witch, dressed primarily in muggle clothing but without any apparent sense of how an outfit ought to go together, striped socks pulled up to the knee over the top of plaid trousers and a band tee paired with a brown waistcoat. “They’re terrible when it comes to young professors. Even the little ones are complete trash for a pretty face.”
Hermione gaped at her, taken completely aback at both the compliment to her face and the insult to her house. She certainly wouldn’t have pegged Gryffindor as being any worse than other houses when it came to hormones and crushes—she stopped herself at the sudden memory of Gilderoy Lockhart and how every girl in her own year had been completely enamoured of him, even at twelve years old, including her.
“I’ll take it as a compliment,” she said, pasting a smile back onto her face, and she looked across to the Gryffindor table, raising her goblet to them as if in toast.
There was a smattering of hoots, and a rash of goblets raised back at her from that end of the Gryffindor table. Hermione laughed, shook her head, and took another drink. This was certainly going to be an interesting year.
Dumbledore sat at the back of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, fully disillusioned, and waited. The room filled with students at the expected hour, and a moment later Hermione Grant swept into the room from the main door, her robes billowing out behind her to show the muggle clothing she had chosen in what Dumbledore could only assume was a statement about her alliances when it came to blood-purity. She certainly hadn’t chosen pureblood witch fashion as her go-to.
“Welcome to Defense Against the Dark Arts,” Professor Grant said, turning around swiftly and leaning against the front of her desk, arms folded and chin held high. “I’m Professor Grant and I’m very glad to be joining you at Hogwarts this year. If I’m correct—” she referenced a small sheet of paper in her hand, “—this is the second year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs?”
She paused and there was a gentle nodding of heads as the young students watched their not-much-older professor, waiting to see what kind of teacher she would be. Dumbledore leaned forward, curious himself. This was his first opportunity to see what kind of person exactly he had brought into his school. Of course he trusted himself, the himself from the future that apparently was more than slightly acquainted with this young woman and approved of her enough to entrust her with information that could lead her to become the Master of Death. Chances were she would be the kind of person he could trust in a classroom.
“The first thing I want to inform you of,” Grant was saying from the front of the room, not yet moved from her casual lean against the desk that highlighted her long legs in boots and pinafore, “Is that this year you are eligible to join the Hogwarts Duelling Club.” There was an outbreak of excited murmuring at that. Grant spoke over them. “Which, if you want to join, you are welcome to, but don’t get too excited. You’ll have to prove your grasp of some basic defense spells before you can gain entry to the club. We’ll cover them briefly in class between now and Christmas but don’t worry if you don’t get them straightaway, there will be further opportunities to learn them.”
A hand shot up, and Dumbledore recognised it as belonging to young Bill Weasley. The boy had already proven himself academically capable, with some of the top marks last year, as well as generally responsible, a good points-earner for his house.
“What spells are required?”
Professor Grant offered a small smile at the boy, and Dumbledore couldn’t help his own grin. She certainly was going to make herself popular with the boys at the rate she was going.
“You’ll need to know a simple tickling hex, a deflecting jinx, and the one and only expelliarmus.” She pushed off from the desk and turned to move around to the blackboard. “Of course it will take a reasonable amount of time to learn each of those—yes, miss…?”
“Tonks,” the owner of the next upraised hand said, and Dumbledore leaned forward to get a good look at the small, spritely girl who was leaning forward in her desk. “I already know those spells. Can I join straightaway?”
“You already know them?” Grant watched little Nymphadora Tonks with a close eye, her gaze unusually fierce. “Would you be willing to show me?”
Tonks stood up from her seat, barely taller standing than she had been sitting, and immediately tripped over something in the vicinity of her desk, falling smack into another student and banging her elbow with a loud THUNK. Laughter rocketed out of the rest of the class and Tonks shot to her feet, still stumbling, her face bright red with mortification. Her hair, which had been long, straight, and black, began to take on a reddish hue. Grant said nothing, but gestured for her to come up to the front of the class, her mouth slightly downturned.
“You, there,” Grant said, pointing to a boy in a red tie who was dramatically re-enacting Tonks’ fall for the boy next to him. “You can be on the receiving end.”
The boy stood slowly, his face turning ashen at the sight of Tonks’ glare, and Grant set them up at the front of the room facing each other. Grant smiled a little sharply at the boy and pointed. “You might want to keep a tight grip on your wand. Go on, Miss Tonks.”
Immediately Tonks flourished her wand and shouted the tickling hex and expelliarmus, which resulted in the boy’s wand flying wide. Professor Grant jumped to catch it, fumbling slightly, and passed it back to its owner, who was jerking to the side giggling with a horrified look on his face.
“Finite,” Hermione said, producing her wand from somewhere in her robes with fluid agility to nullify the tickling hex. “Very good, Miss Tonks. And if you’ll just deflect this…” Professor Grant sent off a non-verbal spell in the direction of the second year with a little more flourish than necessary, as if to make up for the lack of a verbal indicator of the spell.
“Recedite!” Tonks called, sweeping her wand to the side as the harmless rainbow of sparks reached her. The sparks slid away to bounce off the wall behind her instead, and Professor Grant made an approving gesture.
“Well done, five points to Hufflepuff for that excellent and above expectations demonstration of those spells. I’m sure you have a bright future in front of you.” Professor Grant dismissed the pair of students to go back to their seats and gestured to the blackboard, which turned over to reveal a neatly written set of questions. “Now, we’re going to start the year out by making sure that your first year studies haven’t completely gone out of your head. Can anyone name the standard spell categories that we deal with in Defense?”
Dumbledore leaned back on his chair, practically glowing with pleasure at the state of the new Defense class. If this was to be a benchmark for all of Professor Grant’s efforts to teach, then his trust was well-placed.
Now if only he could figure out exactly why she’d come back in time…
Chapter 5: Call me Hermione
Notes:
Sorry for the wait! This chapter was more difficult to write than I expected and I had to take a different approach than I expected, so we get less of Hermione and more of Severus here.
Thank you for your lovely comments and kudos, and of course for reading this! I'm so pleased that people are enjoying this one and I hope to live up to your expectations <3
Not beta'd, I'd love to know how that works and have a beta but I'm probably too impatient - Usually these chapters get posted the minute I finish writing haha
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
To Do:
Prepare lesson plans and homework listsBrush up on curriculum-grade spellcasting- Master Fiendfyre spell
Reconnaissance at Grimmauld Place- Find Bellatrix
- Get acquainted with the Malfoys
- Find Diadem
- Reconnaissance at Gaunt house
- Figure out how to purge an extra soul out of a child
The first years only started being on time to lessons about three weeks into term in spite of any amount of assistance they received from older students and professors about it. Severus thought they were trying particularly hard to be stupid this year, given that it usually only took about a week for students to learn where the classrooms were and be on time for the beginning of lessons.
He growled at them and deducted points, but it didn’t seem to make any difference aside from burning through any remaining goodwill he had from the student body. Three years of teaching and he was certainly making a name for himself: the menacing Potions Master who hates his students.
His irritation was made worse by the new assignment to keep tabs on Professor Grant. Dumbledore had made it clear that he wanted to know what she was up to both in and out of the castle, but there was only so much Severus could do without being completely obvious that he was following the woman, and anyway he had his own class schedule to keep up with. He kept an eye on her location generally, but didn’t go too far out of his way to keep up with every movement she made.
Severus had decided, after a few days of half-hearted tailing, that school days were unlikely to be a problem; Grant was as busy as any other professor on those days, given the heavy teaching schedule and office hours required of a core curriculum teacher, in addition to assigned evening patrols. It was Severus’ weekends that were suddenly sacrificed to the Greater Good.
Not that he would have been doing anything really interesting with his weekends anyway. It wasn’t like he had a crowded social schedule that this reconnaissance was crimping, but it did mean that he couldn’t do as much brewing as he would have liked.
Four weeks after term started, just when everything seemed to settle after the beginning of the school year, Severus watched from the window in Dumbledore’s office as Professor Grant crossed the grounds below them, a small figure on the grass recognisable by the ivory bow hanging from her hair.
“She has been leaving the castle more and more regularly in the late evenings, always in the same direction,” Dumbledore said, standing next to Severus with a cup of tea steaming gently in his hands. “The only thing I can imagine is that she heads for the Forbidden Forest.”
“That’s hardly suspicious in itself,” Severus said, sipping at his own tea (milk, no sugar). “I myself go down regularly to harvest potion ingredients.”
“She’s no Potioneer,” Dumbledore said thoughtfully. “She seems to me to be a theoretician more than anything. She certainly spends enough time in the Restricted Section.”
“Perhaps she’s looking for grindylows or some other such thing for her lessons,” Severus offered. “The older students seem to approve of her focus on practical work.”
“She has assigned an interesting topic for the seventh-year homework, on researching spells that have not been taught to you before. Apparently the goal is for them to learn to cast a spell without help from anything other than written material.”
“Hm.” Severus wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was an interesting topic, but Dumbledore said it in that infuriating way he had of double-meanings and secret purpose.
“I’d like you to find out what she’s doing out in the forest,” Dumbledore said, turning away from the window, where Professor Grant’s form had disappeared from view. “See if you can catch up with her and follow at a good distance. I don’t want her to know that you’re there.”
Severus put down his teacup a little hard and gave a sharp nod as the teacup rattled. The master calls, and the dog jumps through hoops to answer, he seethed to himself as he left the office. Down the stairs he went without a word and out the front doors of the castle to follow Professor Grant.
The evening air was cool now that summer had ended and the nights were drawing in. It was nearing dark but not there yet, still early enough that a few students were out on the grounds doing homework or practicing for the upcoming Hufflepuff-Gryffindor quidditch match, the inaugural one of the year. Severus ignored these students entirely, whooshing past them in a flurry of black robes. He would not be followed. Students wouldn’t dare, and no one else would care.
Severus went in the direction Professor Grant had gone, past the caretaker’s hut and off into the Forbidden Forest. Hagrid, the great oaf of a man now employed as the gamekeeper, waved as Severus went past, and for a moment Severus wondered if he should stop to ask about Professor Grant. It was possible that the huge man had seen more of the Defense professor’s general direction.
“Hagrid,” Severus called, his voice low and irritated. “Has anyone been trespassing in the Forbidden Forest that you’re aware of?”
The half-giant straightened from where he was digging in his vegetable patch and gave a kind of shrug. “There’s signs o’ people in the forest, near t’ where that doxy infestation took root las’ year. Ah though’ it mus’ have been yerself.”
Severus grimaced and didn’t respond, simply waving and heading in the direction indicated. It was a good thing he’d stopped as he wouldn’t have naturally looked in that direction. It was well off of any paths, the type of place that only Hagrid would willingly go. Hagrid was a failure of a wizard and an odd creature besides, but he certainly was good at taking care of the forest, likely because there wasn’t anything there that could really threaten him at the size he was.
Once inside the Forbidden Forest the air turned dark and heavy, as it always did. The forest was many things, and Severus didn’t know even a fraction of its secrets, but one thing he did know was that it was so imbued with magic that the very air hung like a noose ready to catch the unsuspecting. Magical creatures were drawn to it like flies to honey and the hundreds of acres of it managed to repel all but the hardiest witches and wizards; muggles stood no chance of walking into it by accident. Severus often thought that they should make more use of the great magical forest, and perhaps have special classes to take students into the forest and expose them to the strange miasma of magic, if only because it would open their eyes to the great variety of magic waiting to be found in the world.
Unfortunately the Forbidden Forest was also difficult to navigate. Severus found himself swearing under his breath as he tripped over exposed roots and had his robes snagged a dozen or more times by thorny vines that seemed to reach out to stop him. Still muttering, he doused his lumos as he drew near to the place Hagrid mentioned, where a crag in the landscape made a kind of hidden niche where last summer the doxies had bred so thoroughly it had taken a six-man team to drive them out.
Ahead of him, flashes of magic lit the air at irregular intervals. Severus slowed and slipped into a thicket of bushes, creeping forward slowly until he could see what was happening ahead of him.
Professor Grant stood in a small clearing in the bowl of the crag with notes and a large book set up in front of her on a small conjured table, her wand out and poised to cast as she glanced over the papers for what couldn’t have been the first time.
“Concentration, determination, firmness of will,” she said as if it were a mantra, raising her wand once more. She took a firm stance, raised her left hand as if to prepare herself to cast a counterspell, and shouted “Pestis Incendium!”
There was a flash of light and a wave of heat, and Severus surged to his feet in the thicket without any regard for whether he would be discovered, his wand raised and eyes wide with shock.
Pestis Incendium, the incantation for Fiendfyre. Destructive, completely deadly, and totally merciless, a tool Voldemort had taught a few of his most favoured and destructive Death Eaters. Severus had seen it at work exactly twice, and both times he had come away feeling filthy and horrified, the spell dripping so heavily with dark magic that even amongst Death Eaters it was seen as too extreme. It didn’t help that on one of the occasions Severus saw the spell cast, the Fiendfyre, which had taken the form of giant ropes with dragon heads, consumed not only the muggleborn target but also six houses, a pub, and a large section of brick road, but also the Death Eater who’d cast the spell in the first place, a man by the name of Helicus Prosper.
The Dark Lord had found it incredibly funny and laughed most of the night about it whilst plying the rest of the Death Eaters with excessive amounts of wine from the Malfoy cellars. Severus had drunk a bottle and a half that night and spent the whole of the next morning throwing up as he couldn’t stop thinking about Helicus’ eyes exploding out of his skull while the flesh around them crisped black under the heat of the Fiendfyre.
It was the first time he’d ever watched someone die. He was nineteen.
Ahead of him in the clearing the light and heat died away, the spell a failure. Hermione Grant swore, slapping her wand against her leg while she looked over her notes again. “Damn it all to hell, what’s wrong with the bloody thing? Is it me?” She whipped her wand around and hissed an incantation Severus couldn’t hear. A jet of blue flames shot out of the wand to blast a hole in the rocky wall twenty feet from her, the spell powerful enough to blow her hair away from her face on the rebound. She slid her wand into its holster and bent over the large book, still talking to herself. “Not my wand, then. Me. I’m the problem. Not enough wild magic in my blood.”
Not enough dark magic, more like, Severus thought to himself, still not lowering his wand where he stood in the thicket. Dumbledore wanted to know if he could trust Hermione Grant, and this was the biggest evidence he’d seen in either direction: the girl was trying to master a dark spell powerful enough to consume whole towns. If that wasn’t a reason to distrust her then he didn’t know what was.
No one with good intentions spent their evenings learning to make Fiendfyre.
A loud snap echoed across the clearing as Professor Grant slammed her book shut and began tucking things away, vanishing the conjured table with a non-verbal spell. Severus finally lowered himself back into the thicket to watch as she rid the clearing of the evidence of her time there. She was quick with a wand and reasonably careful, although apparently not so much that Hagrid was fooled. The half-giant would undoubtedly notice where she’d blasted the stones and spend weeks trying to figure out what had happened.
Professor Grant went back the way she came, passing close enough to Severus that he held his breath to be sure she wouldn’t stumble on him in the dark. Her focus seemed to be entirely internal as she went, her gaze distant as she navigated the forest. Severus quickly disillusioned himself to follow her.
She left the forest but did not head back to the castle, turning off instead to head for the main gates leading out of the castle grounds. Severus picked up his pace and cast a non-verbal silencing spell on his feet so he could tail her more closely, knowing that once she got outside the gates she could apparate anywhere and he might not be able to follow.
Indeed, Professor Grant swiped the gates open and shut behind her so smoothly that Severus wasn’t able to slip outside with her, and a moment later there was a pop and a whoosh as she was gone, apparated away cleanly and quickly without leaving a trace behind.
Severus took a deep breath and took hold of the iron gate with one hand, watching the space that Professor Grant disappeared from. Dumbledore wouldn’t be happy that he hadn’t managed to follow her, but he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to tail someone who apparated away without grabbing hold of them. She was gone, and he had no idea where.
The only thing he could do now was to wait.
A disillusionment charm can’t last forever, regardless of the skill of the caster. Severus prided himself in the fact that he didn’t need to refresh his more than twice an hour, but after the fifth time he refreshed the spell he had to question whether it was even worth it to maintain his efforts to hide himself.
Somewhere around midnight, no longer disillusioned, Severus found himself dozing off on his conjured stool. Not long later, he conjured an umbrella as well as the wet night air turned to rain.
Hermione Grant had not yet returned by dawn. Yawning, Severus cursed Dumbledore and Professor Grant equally and hauled himself up to the castle to at least brush his teeth and change before breakfast.
Feeling slightly fresher, Severus took his seat at one end of the staff table in time for the bell that signalled the beginning of the eating hour, though he had to stifle his yawns through the tea he hoped would be sufficient to perk him up for a day of teaching.
Halfway through breakfast, Professor Grant appeared from the staff entrance with deep dark circles under her eyes and took her place at the table, where she offered Madame Fletchley, the Muggle Studies professor, a brilliant smile. The smile wasn’t enough to hide the exhaustion, but Severus was sure as he watched her that he was the only one who would catch the other thing she was trying to hide.
Her hands were shaking so violently she couldn’t lift her cup without spilling, so she forewent a drink entirely and settled for things she could eat without bothering with cutlery. Her entire breakfast was a single bun, which she ate from her lap instead of her plate as that kept her hands out of view.
Severus recognised the symptoms immediately, and the coy movements that kept her shaking fingers mostly hidden. He’d suffered the same ailment a number of times through his mastery training after he’d been away to see his old master for the weekend.
She’d been tortured with the cruciatus curse. Depending on the proficiency of the caster, the shakes might last for hours or days afterwards, even if the spell had only struck home for a few seconds.
Severus averted his eyes from the slim, shaking fingers and tired face of the Defense professor with a pang of guilty sympathy. He knew what it was like to try to hide those symptoms from others who might recognise it. He also knew exactly what it felt like when the curse struck, how it urged every breath out of your lungs in a hoarse, uncontrollable scream as every nerve in your body sang pain like violin strings drawn across too harshly by the bow.
At the same time, Severus combed his memory for any dark witch or wizard likely to have taken a new disciple and sent them to infiltrate Hogwarts; it was a very Voldemort thing to do. Who had sent Professor Grant? What budding Dark Lord was there to send a new spy into Hogwarts and then torture her when she returned, presumably not having accomplished as much as she was supposed to by this point? The only dark wizards he knew of were either in Azkaban or attempting to keep their hobby quiet in the aftermath of Voldemort’s fall.
Breakfast petered out in the same way it always did, students and professors trickling away from the tables as they finished eating to prepare for the rest of the day. Severus took one last sip of his tea as Professor Grant stood, wanting a chance to inspect her more closely as she left. In a quick movement, without looking up at her, he managed to push his chair out and stand at exactly the right moment.
Professor Grant almost ran into him as she came past, one hand meeting Severus’ chest as she deflected herself to the side, a surprised look came across her face. Severus staggered, heart suddenly pounding as her small warm hand hesitated where it was on his chest even as she stepped back to avoid him.
“Oh,” she said, an embarrassed grin breaking out on her face. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
The warm, small weight of her hand on his chest made his heart stutter for a moment, which he ignored as much as possible in spite of the slight flush of warmth he could feel on his cheeks at the contact. It was far more important that he could feel that her hand was still shaking, and see the blue undertone in the veins of her face that made her look sickly in a way that spoke eloquently of the aftereffects of a curse.
“Of course,” Severus said, stepping back to offer a sharp, short bow as he gestured for her to go first. Professor Grant pulled her hand from his chest, the movement leaving him as cold as a winter breeze, and she glided away as elegantly as ever.
Severus didn’t realise exactly how closely he was watching her until he felt a round elbow meet his arm. “Move up, then, young Master Snape.” Madame Fletchley bustled into the gap that Professor Grant had just vacated, a teasing smirk on her face as she leaned forward to whisper, “Keep ogling the new Defense professor like that and the students will catch on to your crush.”
Severus felt his whole face heat up at that, especially when Professor Sprout snorted from where she was also in the queue to leave. Severus turned, pushed past Madame Fletchley, and fled.
Embarrassment coloured his cheeks for the whole of the walk down to the dungeons. He didn’t have a crush, he had an assignment. It figured that an old harpy like Madame Fletchley would make wild assumptions about his intentions with the new professor against all evidence.
Severus pushed all thoughts of Professor Grant out of his mind, including the bouncing curls and delicate fingers that had touched him (twice!) without so much as a flinch. Dumbledore needed to know about Professor Grant’s extracurricular activities last night, now that he was more certain what they were. She was practising the dark arts whether or not Severus knew who she was working for, and that was more important than any rumour an old woman might start about him.
At the door of the Potions classroom Severus paused only momentarily, taking a quick breath in to steel himself for the sixth-years who should, by this time, already be inside. He flung the door open and pushed everything else out of his mind as he flowed into the classroom, cloak swirling behind him.
“I hope you have left all thoughts of excellence behind today as we are starting the first of our new potions for the year. By the time we finish, this brew should be second nature, but the Edurus potion is a complex and intricate piece of work that will likely flummox all of you in your first and even fifth attempts.” He waved his wand at the chalkboard to reveal the ingredients list and instructions. “But first, theory…”
By the time the sixth years had gone and Severus had a half hour to himself, he felt a little calmer, his irritation at Madame Fletchley down from a roiling boil to its more usual simmer. Something else had shifted, as well, and he found himself walking up the stairs from the dungeons with a vial in the pocket of his robes, one hand closed firmly around it to ensure that it met no harm. He didn’t brew this particular potion often, not anymore, and he didn’t want to risk one of the last vials of it coming to harm.
His footsteps slowed as he neared the Defense classroom. The corridors up in this part of the castle were busier than those below, more students willing to spend time in the warm, airy halls of the Defense corridor than they were the dungeons. Students were gathered in little clumps laughing over their whispered conversations or hastily finishing homework in the time between lessons. One large knot of third-year Ravenclaws stood just outside of the Defense classroom itself, eagerly discussing the homework they were going to be turning in to Professor Grant only a few minutes from now.
It took only a glare and a gentle clearing of his throat to produce a cacophony of squeaks and gasps from the knot of Ravenclaws, and they shuffled out of the way looking both guilty and terrified. Severus didn’t look at them again as he crossed between them to open the door and enter the Defense classroom.
Professor Grant was seated at the desk looking through a stack of homework with one shaking hand visible, nearly hidden as she slouched in the large chair. She glanced up at his entrance, but Severus was rewarded when she did a double take and straightened, eyes wide at his unexpected appearance in her classroom.
“Professor Snape,” she said as he stalked across the room towards her. “What a…surprise.”
Severus rounded her desk to come to the side of her chair, leaned down to put his mouth next to her surprised face, his fingers producing the small vial to place it on the desk directly in front of her.
“If you’re going to make a habit of getting yourself tortured,” he said in a low voice just above a whisper, “Learn to hide it better.”
Professor Grant gasped, her face turning to him, and Severus could feel her soft breath puffing against his lips, the smell of coffee hitting him with every one. Her eyes were wide, and Severus thought with satisfaction that there was terror there, an undercurrent of questions that he didn’t need legilimens to understand. How did he know? Why is he giving me this?
There was a loud bang at the door, and Professor Grant jumped, her eyes flying to the closed portal. Severus prided himself in his ability to remain unperturbed and simply straightened, still watching, as Professor Grant reached out for the vial, eyes bouncing from the door to the vial to Severus himself. The door didn’t open; probably merely students messing around outside of it as they waited for the lesson to begin.
Professor Grant moved like lightning to sweep up the vial in one shaking hand and use the other to grab Severus’ robes, pulling him suddenly away from her desk as she fled to the side of the room behind a pillar where they wouldn’t be visible from the doorway if it opened suddenly. Severus found himself pushed against the pillar, Professor Grant in front of him standing far too close, the vial held up between them and her eyes aflame.
“What is this?” She hissed, her hand still clenched in the front of his robes, the heat of her irritation making her shaking worse.
Severus felt his face flush even as he raised an eyebrow in an attempt to keep his expression cool instead of embarrassed. “Something of my own design, aconite based. It helps mitigate the…unfortunate side-effects of the Cruciatus. Like the trembling.”
He watched her face as this information sunk in, felt the way her hand clutching his robes loosened, and saw the moment her fear was replaced by a strange marriage of gratitude and suspicion. “Thank you,” she whispered, carefully uncorking it to toss the potion back like a shot. She swallowed with a shiver and placed the cork back in the vial, passing it back to Severus. His fingers closed over hers to take the vial, warmth shooting up his arm at the contact.
To distract himself from the woman effectively pinning him to a pillar with her proximity, Severus focussed on the next most important thing.
“You reek of dark magic.”
Her eyes flashed with that same suspicion, and no small amount of venom. “You would know.”
Any embarrassment Severus felt at being so close to Professor Grant drained out of his body with a suddenness that left him cold and furious. His hand closed around her arm and he leaned forward even as she gasped in something like pain, although he knew he wasn’t grabbing her hard enough to cause any.
“Yes, I would,” he ground out, giving her a little shake. “You convinced Dumbledore that you’re on the side of Righteousness—whatever that means—but it will take more than a charming smile at breakfast to fool everyone. I am not the only person at this school who will recognise the tang of dark magic on the air, but I am likely to be the most forgiving.” He let out a little scoff. “I know what it means to wade in these waters and I also know how difficult it is to hide when you get in too deep. You, Professor Grant, are getting in too deep.”
Professor Grant gasped, and Severus could see the moment that his words sliced all the way through because her eyes welled with tears, though she blinked desperately to keep them from falling.
“You don’t understand,” she hissed at him, glancing warily to the door, where the volume of the students was rising. Any moment they would come through the door expecting their lesson to begin. Professor Grant fidgeted, her hand going to the chain of a necklace tucked into her robes. “I am on Dumbledore’s side. It’s just…more complicated than right and wrong. The Dark Arts are a tool that I can’t avoid.” Her voice had become desperate, as if she was trying to convince herself of it as much as anything.
Severus took a sharp glance at the door to the classroom as well, knowing that the students would push through any moment, and lowered his face once more to whisper. “You don’t have enough darkness in you to cast those spells, Professor Grant, and you shouldn’t try. If there’s something you truly must do, let me help. It’s why I’m here.”
A look of surprise crossed her face, her eyebrows lifting and the threat of tears gone. Her lips quirked with what might have been a hidden smile, and she stepped back, making it suddenly quite obvious just how close they had been standing, as even now they were far closer than a casual conversation might allow.
“You mean that?” She asked, clutching at the chain around her neck.
“I don’t say what I don’t mean,” Severus replied stiffly, wondering how his firm telling-off had turned into…whatever this was, with her looking at him so earnestly.
The door to the classroom burst open and Professor Grant took another step back as Severus straightened from his place against the pillar, both of them turning to look as Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs began to pour into the room.
Still mostly out of sight of the students, Severus turned to slink away down the side of the classroom when a hand caught at his arm. He turned back to see Professor Grant looking at him as she held his wrist, her expression as warm as it had been when she found the kneazle.
“If we’re going to be friends,” she said softly as the cacophony of students rose around them, “call me Hermione.”
Call me Hermione.
Wasn’t that a loaded statement.
“Severus,” he replied, his mouth working faster than his brain. “I’m…call me Severus.”
A moment later he was gone, leaving a confused tangle of students in his wake.
High in the headmaster’s tower after dinner, Dumbledore handed Severus the Daily Prophet, where the furious face of Walburga Black stared out, her hands gesturing to a case next to her where a single empty cushion stood between a hundred other trinkets. The photo was captioned Robbery at Black Home while family at Ministry Gala: Is this the beginning of a new era of crime? Read more pg. 6.
“It happened last night,” Dumbledore said, his voice thoughtful. “Is there a chance Professor Grant had anything to do with it?”
Yes, Severus thought to himself immediately. It absolutely explains what happened and why she came back looking like that. I would have been more gentle if I’d known she’d tangled with the Blacks.
“It’s possible,” Severus said instead, flipping to the appropriate page to read details. “The perpetrator would have had to be a particularly talented ward-breaker to get in—Mrs Black returned home to interrupt the robbery and attempted to capture the offending witch with the help of her cousin Elphias Crabbe—” Severus’ voice rose as he read, then trailed off in horror at the thought of Professor Grant—Hermione—fending off two of the most vindictive magic users he knew. No wonder she’d returned in the morning looking like death; she’d faced it the night before.
He found his voice again after a moment, though it came out as a rasp. “What was stolen?”
“A locket,” Dumbledore said, walking to the teapot to pour a cup. “Details were sparse. Apparently it had a serpent on the front, some kind of Slytherin House artefact.”
“The Blacks do love their serpents,” Severus intoned, thinking of Regulus, the young Black he’d known in Slytherin House before his disasppearance. Regulus had joined the Death Eaters before Severus and been something of a wunderkind in Slytherin House for it; the Dark Lord wasn’t usually keen on such young inductees but with the power of the Black name, he’d been able to get in quickly. It was probably at least partly Regulus’ fault that Severus took the dark mark; it had seemed like an easy way to get respect in Slytherin at a time when Severus was so badly looked down upon. Regulus had been someone for young Slytherins to emulate, even if his actions had gotten him killed.
“If you would,” Dumbledore said, dropping an extra sugar cube into his tea, “Find out what she took. If our Professor Grant thought it important enough to resort to theft from a family known for their support of Voldemort, I imagine there was a good reason.”
Severus grimaced at the paper he still held, unwilling to look up at Dumbledore. Of course he knew it was Hermione behind it. He wouldn’t have asked otherwise. Slowly, Severus folded the paper. There probably wasn’t much point trying to hide the rest of it.
“She’s trying to learn the Fiendfyre spell,” he said finally. “That’s why she was in the forest.”
“Fiendfyre,” Dumbledore said, pausing in his stirring of the tea for a moment, a faraway look on his face as he considered this information. “Not a particularly useful spell.”
“Unless one has a particular love for destruction,” Severus admitted, slapping the Daily Prophet down on Dumbledore’s desk. “I didn’t take her for the type.”
“Hm,” Dumbledore allowed, still not lifting the teacup to his lips. “I think Professor Grant has a good deal more in her plans than either of us are currently aware of.”
“Obviously.”
Notes:
An all-Severus pov chapter with *moments* between him and Hermione - ahhhhh yes that's the stuff
Chapter 6: In the Shadow of the Forest
Notes:
Sorry for the wait! Things have been busy irl over here, so I haven't had time to sit down and make this chapter happen. As it happens, the time away gave me some good ideas for how to manage this chapter and I'm quite pleased with how it came out. I hope you enjoy it too!
TW: mentions of self-harm/suicide
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Bill Weasley was not a coward.
That was why, when a rumour went around that the Forbidden Forest was home to giant spiders and the girls in Gryffindor house spent an entire evening squealing in thrilled terror at the thought, Bill had coolly bragged that not only was he not afraid of spiders, but that a giant spider would be the perfect target to test out the new duelling spells he’d spent the last few weeks learning.
The shocked, awed faces of his fellow second-years were all the payoff he needed, especially when Elise Howard put a hand up to her mouth and shook her head, as if the thought was too horrifying, her silky brown hair swishing back and forth and her cheeks pink.
“Would you actually do it?” Elise asked, lowering her hand only slightly to reveal pink lips pressed together in a worried pout.
“Yeah, of course,” Bill said, not moving from his slouched position sideways across an armchair where he was throwing a spent bludger up into the air with one hand and catching it with the other, careful to only look at Elise occasionally, when he could make it look casual. “Spiders haven’t got anything on me.”
A tense hush lowered over the group, the only sound the rhythmic strike of bludger against Bill’s palm. Myron Helsing leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I bet you twenty galleons you couldn’t get a piece of one of those spiders and bring it back.”
Bill fumbled the bludger as it landed and straightened slightly. “What, you mean bring back a leg or something?”
“Or a fang,” Nellie Thurso interjected, her shiny face alight with the thought of a good wager. “I’ll witness.”
“I’ll witness too,” Myron said, folding his arms to lean back on the sofa, his face triumphant. “Nellie and I will come with you to make sure you don’t just grab a bit of a dead one and you can show us what you’re really made of, Weasley.”
Bill Weasley, not a coward, put down his bludger and put out his hand to shake on it.
The corridor outside of Hermione’s rooms was calm and quiet as the nightly curfew passed and the grounds slipped into darkness. The nights were growing longer now as autumn closed around the castle, Halloween only weeks away and carved pumpkins popping up in more and more places as students and teachers took the chance to get into the festivities of the season.
Inside her office it had begun to look more lived-in. Ceres lay curled up in front of the fire twitching her tail contentedly on a rag rug Hermione threw together in her spare time, along with a few cat toys in a little basket Hermione had scavenged from the cupboard in her office. Stacks of books—borrowed, mostly—tottered at the side of every chair and on every table, and Hermione had fallen into something of a rhythm of throwing her scarf and cloak over the back of the chairs as it made the place look a little more cosy. Even the old teacups, only rarely collected by house elves who were less afraid of kneazles, just made it look a little more like someone lived here as far as Hermione was concerned.
The lines under her eyes had grown darker in the last two weeks. She glanced at the door to her bedroom, firmly shut and warded even beyond the standard Hogwarts wards, and felt the usual sense of dread building in her once again at the thought of entering that room to try to sleep.
The necklace was in there, tucked away at the bottom of her wardrobe where she thought it least likely to affect anyone who entered the room. Unfortunately, whether it was her own imagination or a reality of living with a Horcrux, she’d begun to have nightmares the very first night she slept in the room with the necklace. Nightmares were hardly a foreign thing, but her jump to the past had brought a strange distance from the memories and thoughts that hurt her most, and in the first weeks she’d been at Hogwarts in this time she’d slept with the honest exhaustion of someone who works hard, deep and dreamless. Now, with the Horcrux mere feet away, her sleeping hours were filled with the ripe, rotting images of terror that had been her life until she used the time-turner. Even Ceres wouldn’t enter the bedroom anymore, hissing every time the door opened even fractionally.
Hermione sighed and sank her face into her hands, rubbing her face hard for a moment before the roll of a quill between her fingers reminded her of what she’d been doing before exhaustion had driven her to wish for a dreamless sleep between the soft sheets of her bed. She pulled her hands away to look at them and saw a wide smear of black ink across her right forefinger. Undoubtedly there would be a matching smear across her forehead or cheek. Clucking her tongue in frustration, she chucked the quill down at the table as she stood, where it bounced once and rolled to the edge, stopping just before it fell, the tip still wet with ink.
This couldn’t go on. She had to do something about the Horcrux, and soon. Last time the effects of the Horcrux had built and built until it wore the three of them down to incompetence, and Hermione felt it far more sharply now than she ever had back then. It was like a scar she didn’t know she had until the Horcrux came along and ripped the wound back open again far more easily than it had the first time. The seeping sickness of dark magic was under her skin like a curse, and the only way to get rid of it was to destroy the necklace.
If only she could cast Fiendfyre! No amount of practice seemed to help, especially as she was growing more and more exhausted by the combination of her busy teaching schedule and the effects of the Horcrux. Standing at her desk, she tapped her fingers distractedly on the wooden surface, looking around at the diagrams she’d pinned to the walls. Nothing too incriminating, of course, no overt information about Horcruxes or soul-splitting, but there were astronomical charts and rune translation keys, radial graphs of moon phases and botanical schedules, all things that Hermione knew could have a direct bearing on the ebb and flow of magic through the world. If only she could leverage some of those external forces to make it easier to cast Fiendfyre…
Hermione’s mind stuttered across the astronomical chart and the thought hit her like a brick. It was nearly Halloween, one of the most magically interesting nights of the year, and if she wasn’t mistaken it was also very nearly the full moon. Pleiades would be rising, the connection between this world and the next growing stronger every night. Perhaps—just perhaps—it would be easier to destroy it tonight if she could call upon more powers than just her own.
With sudden determination, Hermione rounded her desk and gathered her cloak. There was no point sitting here worrying, she just needed to go out and try.
And, perhaps, to enlist a little help.
Severus was in the middle of cleaning the potions classroom when someone tapped on the door and swung it open. He looked up from his careful dusting of the ingredient shelves atop a stepladder, an automatic sneer on his face in the even that this was a student up after hours that he would have to drive back to their beds with a well-placed threat of detention.
Instead it was Professor Granger—no, Hermione, he reminded himself—her hair flying wild and her clothing rumpled as if she’d fallen asleep over her desk. The wide smudge of ink above her eyebrow contributed to the impression.
Severus felt his cheeks pinken and scowl die as he recalled suddenly that his own hair was tied back in a haphazard bun and his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, a severe cleaning apron tied around him that made him look like some kind of housewife.
“Professor Sn-Severus,” Hermione said, obviously struggling as much to call him by his given name as he was to call her by hers. “Sorry to interrupt. Are you busy?”
He licked his dusty lips and looked back to the shelves in front of him and the rag in his hand. “I assume you require help?” With some care, he finished the shelf and stepped down from the ladder, tucking the rag away into an apron pocket.
“You did offer,” she said, glancing behind her as she stepped in to close the door of the classroom. “And you seem to have some sense of what I’ve been up to anyway, so it hardly seems worthwhile to try keeping you in the dark.”
“No one keeps me in the dark for very long,” he said as lightly as he could manage, rolling his sleeves down self-consciously before he gestured for her to make herself comfortable. Whether or not she knew he was a death eater, he didn’t want to show off the dark mark on his forearm so casually. His fingers found the buttons at his sleeves to do them up again as he moved across the classroom towards Hermione. “What dark magic is it that you need from me?”
Severus was sure he didn’t imagine the slight shudder she gave as he drew near, and he couldn’t help the sneer that revived itself on his lips. Was he really that repulsive?
“I’ve been attempting to learn a spell,” she said, hesitation written all over her as she avoided his gaze and sat down at the nearest potions station, one elbow resting on the table as she examined her hands. “Normally I don’t have difficulty with spells, but this one has proved more difficult than just about anything else.”
“What spell?” He demanded.
Her toffee brown eyes flicked up to meet his, a challenge written in her gaze. “Fiendfyre.”
Severus didn’t have to pretend to be surprised, his eyebrows twitching upwards at her frank and unexpected confession. She was willing to be honest with him, which had to be a point in her favour as far as Dumbledore would be concerned. He couldn’t help but repeat what he’d said to the headmaster. “Hardly a useful spell, unless you have a particular love for destruction.”
“I’ve never struggled with fire spells before,” Hermione said, avoiding the unasked question. “In fact I would have called myself a bit of a natural with them, so it surprises me that it’s been so difficult.”
Severus leaned sideways against the table, arms folded, watching her. “Fiendfyre isn’t the usual fire spell. I meant what I said before, you don’t have enough darkness in you to cast that kind of spell. It takes a wantonness that I don’t believe you’re capable of.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over them, and Hermione wouldn’t meet his gaze. It took a moment for his own words to register, at which he felt his cheeks warm again. Oops. That word could easily be misinterpreted. Unable to bring himself to stutter a clarification, he pressed on. “Fiendfyre requires a willingness to destroy for destruction’s sake, and you don’t seem to me the type. Too noble, if I don’t miss my guess.”
“Too much of a Gryffindor?” She asked without meeting his gaze, an unexplained bitterness in her tone.
Severus shook his head, looking away as he thought of the few people he knew capable of casting the spell in question. “The Malfoy family is as noble as they come and all Slytherins. I haven’t known a single one who could muster up the sheer love of destruction required to cast Fiendfyre. It requires a kind of madness to pull it off effectively.” He shrugged, dragging his attention back to Hermione, who still hadn’t looked up at him again. “The larger problem with that spell isn’t even casting it, it’s getting rid of the fire after the spell is cast.”
“Can you cast it?”
“No. And I wouldn’t want to.”
There was another long pause. Finally, she shook her frizzing mane back and fixed her gaze somewhere at the level of Severus’ chest. “Can you put the flames out if someone else casts it?”
Severus hesitated, thinking of the desperation that had coursed through him even as the dark lord coached him through the counterspell as Fiendfyre wormed its way towards them on a dark street years ago.
“I can,” he said, his voice low. Regret and fear warred for control of him, so he stuffed them down behind a wall of occlusion. “I take it you remain convinced that it is the only way to accomplish your goals?”
“Unfortunately yes,” she said, standing. “Do you have time now?”
Severus untied the apron from his waist and gestured to the door. “If we must.”
Severus stopped in his office briefly to retrieve his coat and cloak, as well as to shake his hair out of the bun and altogether get himself looking like Professor Snape again, rather than the half-wit punk he always felt like without the armour of his professorial persona. When he joined Professor Granger again it was to see that she still looked like Hermione rather than her own professional alter-ego, from the smear of ink to the jeans and walking boots. Why she would choose those muggle clothes to change into after hours he couldn’t understand; it made her look nearly as young as their oldest students and certainly not as reputable.
“I’ve been practising out in the forest,” she confided as they left the castle on the way out to the place in question, darkness a comforting embrace around Severus. “There’s a relatively quiet place I found not too far in.”
Severus didn’t respond to this, not wanting to let on that he’d followed her on a previous occasion. Instead he accompanied her as if this were all new to him, never commenting as they passed Hagrid’s dark hut and went into the forest, only lighting their wands once they were firmly under the ancient trees.
They came to the area where Hermione had practiced before and she drew to a halt in the little clearing beneath the cliff. Severus couldn’t help eyeing the area with suspicion now that he knew exactly what spell Hermione was trying to cast.
“And what exactly was your plan if you cast a successful Fiendfyre here, in the middle of the forest?” He asked, his voice low and disapproving. “I trust you realise that trees are flammable.”
Perhaps he expected a meek blush and stammering response to that, he realised in surprise, as Hermione whirled around at him and hissed right back with something far closer to anger than embarrassment. “Everything is flammable when it comes to Fiendfyre. I could have been practising in the Sahara Desert and my surroundings would have been flammable as far as this spell is concerned.” She hesitated then, and with a frustrated motion removed a necklace from around her neck to fling it at the floor. She took a great heaving breath, as if a great weight had been lifted from her, and rubbed her temples. “Give me a minute. I need to prepare some things.”
Severus stood a few feet away from the discarded necklace watching as Hermione prepared herself. It was unclear exactly what she intended as she cut away a few branches from the overhead trees and scattered herbs that were impossible to identify in the darkness. It looked as if she were attempting to harness the power of the moon and stars in casting the spell, an old-fashioned approach that might help her to cast this spell tonight but certainly wouldn’t be of any assistance any other time she tried.
It was as Hermione finished her preparations that Severus felt the change in the air, a subtle, crawling thing that rose up the back of his neck in a black wave of anticipation that made his wand hand tingle with familiarity.
He knew this power, this presence that bore down on him like a weight. A phantom shudder ran down his left arm to the dark mark on the inside of his forearm, little more than a memory but injected with terror and anticipation that made him turn, wand in hand, searching for the source.
Lord Voldemort.
The dark presence exploded out of the ground, ten times as powerful as Severus and a hundred times more dangerous, a formless entity of seething rage and murderous hate, at the very same moment Hermione raised her wand and shouted “Pestis Incendium!”
A roaring fire flew out from her wand in four fiery whips swirling towards Severus, and for a long, heart-stopping moment he saw his life flash before his eyes before his feet responded and he threw himself to the side to escape the whips of flame, rolling through dead leaves and pine needles to surface ten feet away covered in the detritus of the forest floor, wand at the ready, furious and ready to strike.
What he found was Hermione standing with her wand pouring Fiendfyre, her face pale and slack, staring across at twenty or thirty figures, all of them with the look of death and decomposition, each one tethered to the same spot on the forest floor by a trailing black cloud as if they were djinn.
“You were never clever enough to stop him,” one of the figures at the front said with looming disapproval, round dark glasses hanging from a face that was missing half its flesh. “What makes you think this time will be any different, especially without me? You were only ever a clever stooge at my side, no one ever cared about you except as a way to hurt me.”
“Hermione Granger, the dullest girl in our entire year,” another figure with long brown hair and a face torn beyond recognition said, swimming to the front without effort. “Despised by every girl in the school and overlooked by every boy. You only drew any attention because of your connection to Harry. I hope Rita finds you again so she can write more stories, they were the best thing that ever came from you.”
Voices were overlapping as the decomposing figures swarmed forward around her, completely unaffected by the Fiendfyre, one figure with flaming red hair sliding up so close to Hermione that Severus could see her flinching away from his pale, bloated features, the holes in his skin punctuated by fish and worms that poked their way out, actively eating away at his flesh.
“Come with me, Hermione, we can be dead together. All you have to do is find a lake and drown yourself in it. Let yourself sink into the water and the fish will eat you too. Won’t that be nice? We can build our own little kingdom in the water.”
The fire pouring out of Hermione’s wand was unfocused, the four serpent heads of it snapping aimlessly at nearby trees to ignite them in a spectacular burst of flames, the connection between Hermione’s wand and the Fiendfyre sputtering as she began to lose focus, and with it, control of the spell.
Some of the figures began screaming, dropping to the floor around Hermione as they cried out “You’ve killed me! Your stupidity has killed me! Why couldn’t you do your job properly? If only you’d done better I’d still be alive!”
“Professor Grant!” Severus shouted as he ran towards her, struggling to be heard over the noise from the ghouls that had risen from the forest floor. “Hermione!” He corrected, and he thought there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes as she glanced at him.
Something dark caught hold of him before he was able to take the last few steps, pulling him backwards by his left forearm like a physical force. Severus felt his feet slip and he fell to one knee, his left arm stretched out behind him, preventing him from moving forward.
A delighted crowing sounded around him, and without warning a familiar voice erupted from all around him.
“My servant!” Voldemort’s voice was as Severus remembered it, high and piercing, triumphant over the cacophony of other voices drowning Hermione. “How fortunate you came! Kill the woman!”
Severus jerked back in horror as the figure of Lord Voldemort rose from the ground near where Severus had been standing before Hermione cast her spell, his face distorted into something else, still recognisable but not quite the creature that Severus remembered. This version of him was, if anything, more human.
But this…vision of Voldemort didn’t recognise Severus. If he had he would have called him by name, as he had taken to in the last couple of years of his reign, when Severus had gradually become more and more useful to the cause as both a brewer and a spy. Whatever this spirit was, it wasn’t the Lord Voldemort that he had made his vow to.
Sudden movement caught Severus’ attention, and his gaze snapped over to Hermione, who was screaming, tears streaming down her face, as she pushed blindly through the ghostly figures that surrounded her, wand upraised and pointed towards the forest floor.
The Fiendfyre, unfocused before, now converged in a blinding flash of heat that tore at her hair and clothing as they attacked something on the ground. In the same moment the figures all around them began screaming in earnest, including the figure of Lord Voldemort, the sound so shrill and piercing that Severus threw himself to the ground and clamped his hands over his ears.
The sound died suddenly with a crisp popping sound, and every single figure that had hung over the forest disappeared at the same time, the relative silence deafening. Severus lifted himself to his hands and knees, looking for Hermione.
She was on her knees with Fiendfyre swirling around her, the deadly flames completely unconnected to her wand.
She had lost control.
Severus dragged himself to his feet and planted himself in duelling position, targeting the first snake head of fire.
“Discutere Maxima!” He shouted as he found the control within himself, the determination to succeed that he knew from experience was enough to dispel this particular brand of magic.
The first head of the Fiendfyre slid towards his outstretched wand, stretching out into something thin as the power was drained out of it and into the ground around Severus, which he could feel grow warmer under his feet. It took only a matter of seconds for it to drain away completely, leaving only three heads of flame, but in that time the other three heads had started snapping away in all directions, igniting everything above the ground.
“Discutere Maxima!” He shouted again, targeting the next one, a frantic feeling rising up in his chest as he noted the forest bursting into flames all around them. The whole forest was going to go up in flames if he wasn’t fast, and even if he was, there was a chance of a huge loss here.
As the second head sputtered out and he took aim for the third, another voice shouted out from the clearing.
“Discu—Discutere Maxima!”
In spite of the false start, Hermione’s wand responded to the hastily acquired spell. In moments the last two heads of Fiendfyre drained away, leaving the ground around them steaming with heat and the forest aflame around them.
Severus whirled on the spot, taking in the fire that was now spreading out from this clearing with a speed that normal fire could not match. Fiendfyre had a way of feeding on itself and everything around it, but with the heads cut off it would now be possible to put the fire out even if it spread.
The only problem was that Severus was feeling the effects of both the ghostly Voldemort and the powerful spell he’d had to cast three times to deal with the Fiendfyre. Chances were he wouldn’t be able to keep up with a forest fire on his own, and Hermione didn’t look much better. She had used her wand to put out the flames on her clothing but was now limping her way along towards Severus, her face pink with burns.
“We have to get out of here,” she said, pulling at Severus’ arm to move him towards the least on-fire part of the forest. “This fire will overtake us in minutes. Are you good with a broom?”
“Passable,” Severus said as he wrapped an arm around her waist without looking down, helping her along even as she steered them towards the line of fire.
“Good, because I hate them,” she said as she cast a wordless aguamenti to douse the flames in front of them enough that they could navigate out of the ring of flames. The gap was small, and it wouldn’t last long, but they could get through. Hermione continued with her spellcasting even as they staggered forward together, Hermione’s legs apparently weak under her as she stumbled repeatedly across the forest floor. “Accio broom,” she pronounced as they hurried past the spreading flames.
“We’ll need to fetch as many teachers as we can,” Severus said as he kept pulling her forward, adrenaline driving him forward as the heat of the fire behind them grew more intense in spite of their speed. “This is going to require a lot of manpower to control. We’ll start with Hagrid, then Dumbledore, he can alert everyone the most easily.”
Hermione nodded at Severus’ shoulder, and a moment later a whistling sound came through the trees as one of the school brooms drew level with them. Hermione gave a great gasp of relief and grabbed hold of the broom with both hands. The old Cleansweep swerved under her hands, as if the broom wasn’t entirely sure of her.
Severus reached out to grab the broom from her, awkward as he moved around her. “I’ll steer,” he said, pushing her back. If she were to steer they were likely to end up facefirst into a tree. Hermione moved towards the back of the broom and they both swung a leg over, ready to kick off as the temperature behind them picked up again, the light from the flames flaring up massively.
Just as Severus was about to kick off of the ground, a scream sounded from behind them in the forest. He swivelled his head to listen, but Hermione was faster. She dived off of the broom and shot off through the forest as if she hadn’t just been staggering with exhaustion a moment before.
Severus swore under his breath and kicked the broom in the direction of the scream and Hermione’s sudden flight. A moment later there was another scream, from a different person this time, and Severus caught up to Hermione as the path forward was cut off by flames.
Hermione swept her wand in front of her and a gust of ice cold wind sliced through the flames. She followed a heartbeat behind her spell and Severus shot through behind her, the broom faster than she was so that he drew level with her.
Another arm of flames had spread out in front of them, still moving too quickly to be anything but magical, and on the other side of it stood three students, wands raised and eyes wide with terror as flames surrounded them.
Hermione and Severus acted as one in that moment, slashing away at the flames to create a path. “Come on!” Hermione shouted, gesturing for them to come through as Severus climbed down off of the broom.
The students dived through the gap in the flames and Hermione steered them in the direction of the castle, though it couldn’t be seen from where they were, still deep in the Forbidden Forest.
“Idiot students,” Severus hissed at them as he sent aguamentis off every few seconds to keep a path clear through the flames as they ran. “I hope you remember this next time you try entering the forest!”
A sharp slap struck his shoulder and he caught a glare from Hermione even as they herded the students away to a place that the flames had not yet found. Presumably she didn’t appreciate his telling them off while they were still in the middle of the flaming forest.
“Onto the broom,” Hermione ordered in the direction of the students, and summoned a second. “Do you know the way back to the castle from here?”
Before any of the three of them could reply, a wild chittering sounded behind them. All five of them turned sharply to see, through the gloom of smoke and flickering flames in the darkness, a dozen spiders the size of large dogs swarming out of the forest towards them.
With his hands still occupied with the broom and getting students onto it, Severus was slower to respond than Hermione. She ducked forward, wand swirling, to let off a barrage of slicing and freezing spells as well as a strong protego maxima that shielded the group from several of the advancing spiders that her initial spells didn’t take care of.
“Get on the broom!” She screamed, terror and command both in her voice.
Severus shoved the two nearest students onto the broom and cast a quick guidance spell, the broom shooting off towards the castle the moment he let go of the front of it, the two unsuspecting students barely clinging on as it whirred between the trees.
The last remaining student—Mr Weasley, if Severus remembered correctly—had raised his wand as if to help, his round young face firm even as his eyes reflected his terror at the way the night was unfolding. Undoubtedly he and his friends had come into the forest on some kind of dare, it was practically a rite of passage for Gryffindor first and second years, but no one could have predicted that it would end in flames and an acromantula attack.
Heat flared at his back, and Severus turned to quickly douse another spout of flames that had come out towards him. “Weasley! Do you know aguamenti?”
“Yes sir!” The boy replied immediately, raising his wand a little higher.
“Back here, then,” Severus directed, pointing him towards the castle. “Make a path, if you can! We have to get out of here.”
With the Weasley boy set to dousing any flames he could manage, Severus turned back just in time to see a larger acromantula charge out of the forest, half of it aflame, chittering so loudly it sounded like chalk screeching across a blackboard. It dashed off through the forest without taking any notice of them at all.
Hermione was crouched, dodging, fending off the three remaining acromantulas with the grace and speed of a professional duelist, but the fire was closer than ever and if she stayed a moment longer she would be trapped once again. Severus dashed forward to grab her arm, pulling her backwards as he shouted blasting spells at the remaining spiders.
The two of them staggered along sideways, sending spells behind them at the giant spiders as they hurried along behind Bill Weasley, throwing extra dousing spells ahead of them whenever they got the chance. Flames licked at their clothing, and as they left behind the area with the spiders it became even more difficult to push forward through the fiery forest without all three of them casting near-constant water spells.
Severus found himself having to douse his own clothing and those of Mr Weasley as often as he doused the flames in front of them, and the heat was now so intense that all three of them were soaked with sweat, skin and eyes burning.
“We’re not going to make it!” Mr Weasley shouted as his aguamenti spells dropped in power, unable to keep up with the intense pace of the flames.
Next to Severus, Hermione swore as a flaming piece of wood clattered to the ground next to her. A single glance revealed it to be a broom, consumed by the flames before it could reach their side.
“Come here!” Hermione shouted, grabbing Mr Weasley and pulling him between herself and Severus. “Keep your heads down!”
Severus ducked, pushing Mr Weasley down underneath Hermione’s arm, wishing that she were taller so there was a little more space as she began a complex incantation he recognised vaguely as an atmospheric charm. The burning wind around her whipped her hair and cloak in all directions as she chanted with a faraway expression, the charm coming into force in a low bubble above her not a moment too soon as fire completely enclosed their little space, which was now full of a cold rain that soaked through clothing in moments. Severus gauged the size of the atmospheric charm and followed it with a complex protego ward that settled over the magical raincloud, leaving them gasping for breath and streaming water but finally safe, the rain cooling the temperature in the bubble to something liveable.
Hermione collapsed as if she were a puppet with the strings cut, and both Severus and Mr Weasley scrambled to keep her from falling out of the little magically protected space they’d created. The fire wasn’t going to get past the combination of shield and atmospheric charm, but if they left the small protected area there was nothing to stop them from getting burned to a crisp. There was barely enough space in the little bubble for the three of them to huddle together, so that’s what they did, carefully manoeuvring Hermione until she sat leaning against Severus’ shoulder with Mr Weasley sitting between their legs, all three of them blinking away rainwater as the forest burned down around them.
Severus let out a sigh of relief when it became obvious that the charms were going to hold. If it had been down to him alone he wouldn’t have been able to cast such an impressive atmospheric charm, even if he had thought of it, which he hadn’t. Protego would keep falling branches out, but not the heat.
It seemed like forever that they sat there waiting to recover their strength enough to do something further, but it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes or so before the flames around them were blown out by a strong burst of magic and faces appeared between the burned out trunks of trees.
Professor McGonagall was the first to rush forward to meet them as Severus dropped the shield spell. He rose to his feet, stiff from sitting on the ground for so long and pulled Mr Weasley to his feet.
“Get Mr Weasley to the hospital wing,” he said harshly, pushing the boy towards Minerva. “He and his friends were out here unsupervised when the fire broke out. It’s a good thing Professor Grant and I were here.”
“Good lord,” McGonagall said, taking hold of Mr Weasley but looking past him to Hermione, still seated on the floor without moving. “What happened?” She demanded, eyes flying to Severus’ face.
He didn’t respond, instead going to Hermione to take her by both arms and pull her up out of the little raincloud that still graced the spot where she’d cast it. She was shivering, her face pale and eyes red. It looked, if Severus was not mistaken, as if she’d been crying silently while she sat in her little rainstorm and he hadn’t noticed. “I need to take her up to see Dumbledore,” he said as he got Hermione to her feet.
“Hospital Wing first,” McGonagall said in her typical stern fashion. “Dumbledore is seeing to the rest of the flames just now, he won’t be back to his office until we’re content the fire is under control.”
Severus nodded sharply and steered Hermione in the direction of the castle, only to find that her legs would not hold her. With a grimace, he stopped to face her, aware of Minerva’s gaze from not far away.
“Hermione,” he said in a low voice, reaching up to tap her cheek, his other arm still supporting her. “Hermione, please wake up. Can you hear me?”
Her eyes, glazed with exhaustion, finally focussed on his face. “Severus,” she slurred, leaning into him as if all of her remaining strength had now deserted her. “I’m glad you’re my friend.”
From where he stood looking down into Hermione’s face, the first treacherous thought that crossed his mind was that now would be the ideal opportunity to push past her normally seamless defences and read her true intentions and memories, to see exactly what it was she was up to.
But something stopped him. Perhaps it was the vast amount of information revealed tonight in the forest, which he would undoubtedly be able to use to discover a great deal more about her, perhaps it was his revulsion at the command from a shade of his former master to kill her. Perhaps it was the sight of her eyes, red from crying, in a face that betrayed no distrust of him in this moment, a face that looked at him as if he were some kind of hero.
“I need to get you to the hospital wing,” he said, and brought his wand into position. “I’ll levitate you there.”
And a moment later, he did, her fragile form collapsing onto the cushion of the charm as if it were the softest bed in the world.
An hour later, Bill Weasley was deposited back at Gryffindor Tower under the watchful eye of Professor McGonagall, who left him in the common room after a trip to the Hospital Wing.
A little group of second years slowly brought their heads up from where they’d been slouched out of sight on the sofa in front of the fire, whispering excitedly as Bill approached and plopped himself down on one of the wingback chairs, more than slightly exhausted and still somehow damp in spite of drying spells.
“What happened?” Elise Howard asked, her beautiful face a mask of wonder.
“The Forbidden Forest caught fire,” Bill said with as calm a voice as he could muster. It wasn’t hard, at this point. He was so tired by now that it was all he could do not to yawn as he spoke. “We found the acromantulas but the fire started about that time so we had to run.”
Excited whispers were exchanged now, rumours passed back and forth after the return of Myron and Nellie, who had solemnly reassured everyone that Bill Weasley was indeed not afraid of spiders and that he had successfully held up his end of the bet. Both of them were now soundly sleeping in their own beds thanks to calming draughts from Madam Pomfrey and would have to wait until morning to answer further questions. Bill could feel his own dose of the potion catching up to him, but he wanted to satisfy the inevitable curiosity of his friends.
“Professor Grant killed a bunch of the spiders,” he said, stifling a yawn. “She was so cool. Like a professional duellist. Professor Snape was busy trying to stop us from getting killed by the fire.”
“Wow,” Elise managed, her hands covering her mouth once again. “It took both of them?”
“Yeah,” Bill said, stretching unhurriedly. “Professor Grant did this cool rain spell that kept the fire from getting at us and Snape did a pretty intense shield spell. We had to huddle under it for ages before the other professors came and found us.”
A hush fell over the Gryffindors as they processed this information, some of them shuddering at the idea of being huddled under a shield spell with Professor Snape.
One of the other second year boys, Alan Borders, reached down to the floor and picked up a hefty bag of gold, placing it on Bill’s lap.
“That’s yours,” he said without ceremony. “From Myron. He wanted to give it to you himself, but…” Alan trailed off, not sure how to finish his own sentence.
“Cool,” Bill said, taking it up and standing again, more than ready to go to bed. “Next time you want something from the Forbidden Forest, just let me know. It wasn’t so bad.”
He left the other Gryffindors in their silent awe, twenty galleons richer.
Notes:
Wow, Hermione got away from me a little bit in this chapter. I had plans for this Horcrux but she certainly had opinions on how it should be dealt with haha.
Thank you for all the reviews and kudos! I love to hear your comments, they really keep me going. It's been a long time since I felt confident in my writing so every bit of your kindness is much appreciated. See you soon, hopefully not such a long pause between chapters this time!
Chapter 7: I Have You
Notes:
A short one today but I hope you still enjoy it! I'm slowly working through my scene notes and this one is important even if I didn't really want to write it.
Thank you to everyone who left reviews on the last chapter, I really appreciate them - it does a writer's heart good to know that others got the same kind of pleasure out of that action sequence that I did. There are a few more of those to look forward to in the future!
Chapter Text
Hermione felt the world slide by around her almost by instinct. Every time her eyes flickered open something different appeared there, first the dark starry Scottish sky, then the vaulted ceiling of the entry hall, then the sliding grey that could be any corridor in Hogwarts. She was freezing, soaking wet from her atmospheric charm, but every bit of exposed skin on her body was also on burning with the vicious heat of her foolishly cast fiendfyre spell.
But the horcrux was gone. Her heart was soaring, free of the weight of that piece of Voldemort's soul that she'd had to tolerate. It hadn't been with her long, but somehow the effect of it had made her forget that this lightness of being could even exist.
All of her friends may be dead in the time she came from, but there was still hope in this world.
She wasn't sure where she was going until the ceiling stopped sliding past, her view now of dark rafters and the face of Madame Pomfrey, slightly less lined than she remembered it. Hermione blinked groggily at her, wondering what had happened to make her look so young, and a moment later felt herself sink into a bed.
'Emergency first aid only,' Snape's low, smooth voice made her feel disoriented for a moment as she couldn't recall why he was here with her. 'We need to see the headmaster urgently.'
Snape's sentence slid out of Hermione's mind as quickly as he spoke, and she didn't so much feel herself lose consciousness so much as she felt it return when someone propped her up and put something in her mouth.
Reality snapped into focus around her as the Pepper-Up Potion slid down her throat. She was in the hospital wing in 1984. Severus Snape was the closest thing she had to a confidante, and she'd just burned down part of the Forbidden Forest. The words slipped out of her mouth unbidden.
'Ah...shit.'
Madame Pomfrey made an immediate tutting, shushing noise at the same time Severus scoffed and muttered, 'How apt.'
'Professor Grant, you would do well to remember that there are students here,' Madame Pomfrey hissed at her, spreading a thick salve onto Hermione's hands. Indeed, Professor McGonagall was just arriving with Bill Weasley, whose bright copper hair was plastered to his head with ash and rainwater. He was shivering too.
'Sorry,' Hermione said without feeling as Madame Pomfrey moved on to smearing the salve onto her face. Her skin cooled immediately under the sticky substance, and she thought vaguely that she ought to keep this stuff on hand. She turned to look at Severus, who was apparently still supporting her to sit up as his arm was around the middle of her back. 'I suppose I'll need to speak with Professor Dumbledore.'
'Yes,' Severus replied shortly. 'The moment you've had basic first aid.'
Hermione nodded and glanced down at her hands. Someone had pulled her wand away when she wasn't looking, as it wasn't in her hand anymore. She glanced at Severus again, noting with nervousness how close his face was to her own. 'Where's my wand?'
'Here,' Severus said, flicking his cloak away from his side enough that she could see both his wand and hers tucked into the holster at his waist. Her wand appeared to be smoking slightly.
'Poor thing,' she said, looking at the wand that was now into its second Horcrux hunt. 'I don't think it was well-suited for that spell.'
Severus' lips pressed into a thin line. She thought he was probably biting back a comment that was better kept for private conversation, undoubtedly something about how she should have known better than to get into such dark magic.
'There,' Madame Pomfrey said, straightening up. 'It's as much as I can do right now. You've severely depleted yourself, Professor Grant, whatever spellwork you were doing tonight is obviously too much. I would strongly recommend that you don't repeat that kind of thing in future.'
Hermione bit the inside of her cheek and didn't comment. It had been successful, hadn't it? The Horcrux was gone and the fiendfyre had been successfully put out. Next time she would need to do it somewhere else, somewhere farther from civilisation. In spite of her understanding of how out of control fiendfyre could get, she had still underestimated the viciousness of the spell.
Severus pulled her to her feet and Hermione felt a disorienting rush of warmth surrounding her as his cloak swept around her shoulders and for a moment they stood in a kind of half-embrace. He wasn't looking at her, but his arm at her back was solid, a weight that tied her to the world so strongly for a moment that she felt tears prickle at the corners of her eyes. When was the last time someone had held her? Had it been Ron, in those months before death took him?
The words of Horcrux-Ron, dead Ron, decomposing, bloated, horrible Ron, came back to her in a nauseating rush. Come with me, Hermione, we can be dead together. All you have to do is find a lake and drown yourself in it. Let yourself sink into the water and the fish will eat you too. Won’t that be nice? We can build our own little kingdom in the water.
She shuddered with a mixture of revulsion and heartsickness, her fingers clawing at the front of Severus' robes as she pulled herself to him, clinging to the warmth of the friendly body in front of her, her forehead dropping onto his chest as she huddled in on herself, mentally and emotionally exhausted in a way that no Pepper-up Potion could fix.
Above her, Severus shot a wide-eyed, baffled look at Madame Pomfrey, who only shook her head and shrugged, unsure what to make of the moment.
It took Hermione several long seconds to realise what she'd done and pry her shaking fingers out of Severus' clothes. She lifted her head at the same time she swiped open hands across her face, smearing away tears and salve at the same time in an attempt to get rid of any sign she'd started sobbing the minute someone gave her something that even resembled a hug.
'Let's go.'
At the other side of the castle, Hermione followed Severus into Dumbledore's currenty empty office, feeling hollow and tired. Severus apparently felt much the same way, as he lowered himself into one of the cushy armchairs by the fire and sank into it without preamble, though he was still watching her as if she might explode, or possibly hug him again. His reaction to her unprompted need for physical contact in the hospital wing seemed to indicate that neither would be a surprise but that both would be unwanted.
Hermione dropped into the other armchair less gracefully, feeling completely wrung out. There was something missing that she recognised from other times she'd done a lot of particularly intense spellcasting; she had well and truly run up to the very limits of what her magic could do tonight and there was nothing left for any more. If anyone attacked her now, she would be completely defenceless.
Severus put one elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned his forehead into his hand, slouching in a way that spoke of his own exhaustion, and Hermione took a good look at his face for the first time since she'd cast fiendfyre.
His skin was paler than usual, exhaustion written on every feature, along with an undercurrent of something else, some suspicion or deep worry that she didn't immediately understand.
'I suppose you didn't expect me to actually cast that spell,' Hermione said guiltily, recalling all of his warnings about it and his apparent distaste for the spell overall.
Severus didn't move, his eyes moving to the empty fireplace. 'It's hardly something you expect someone to manage unless they're on the cusp of being sent to Azkaban.'
Hermione might have laughed if she'd felt more energetic. 'Is that why you've kept my wand?'
He glanced at her. 'Would you give my wand back if you'd just seen me burn down half of the Forbidden Forest?'
This time she did laugh, a low, rusty chuckle. 'No, I suppose not.' She took a deep breath and sank a little deeper into the armchair. 'It's hardly an Unforgiveable Curse.'
'Last I checked, everyone who has managed to cast fiendfyre was either already in Azkaban or there's a price on their head.'
Hermione couldn't respond to that. She hadn't really thought through the longer consequences of casting fiendfyre, the destruction and death that the spell could cause if it got out of control, and it had obviously gotten out of control. She wasn't strong enough to keep that spell in check, and chances were if she tried it again she would be burned to a crisp, along with anyone who got in the way of the unchecked spell. If this were reported to the Auror department she would probably be looking at a very large fine if not a stint in Azkaban.
'Will you report me?' Hermione asked, her voice low. She looked across at him, worry building in her chest. Whatever friendship they had was small and fledgling, not yet the kind of thing where she could trust him to help her break rules and laws in the service of her quest.
Severus didn't look back at her, nor did he respond, still staring into the fire grate as if the ashes of Dumbledore's last fire would give him some guidance on how to deal with this situation.
Finally, he snapped his finger, a small purple spark flying from them at the noise. Almost instantly, there was the crack of apparition as a house-elf appeared on the carpet in front of him.
'Tea,' he said, his voice more gravelly than before. 'And biscuits. Something with chocolate.'
The house-elf popped away without a word. Moments later, a tea tray appeared on the small side table next to Severus' armchair. Neither of them spoke as he prepared two cups of tea and passed one across to Hermione, who sipped at it, cautious of her remaining nausea.
It was several minutes later that the door of the office opened once more to admit a stern-faced professor McGonagall, whose sweeping emerald robes were dusted with ash and mud at the bottom, and a brilliantly clean Albus Dumbledore.
'Well,' Dumbledore said as he summoned two more armchairs and turned them all to face each other with a single swooping motion of his wand, 'this has certainly been an eventful night.'
Hermione opened her mouth automatically to start explaining, but Dumbledore held a hand up to silence her as he sat in one of the armchairs. 'I see you've found tea,' he said, his voice still calm in spite of the stern undertones Hermione could hear laced through his words. 'Minerva, the usual?'
'Yes, Albus, I think I'll need it.' McGonagall's usual Scottish burr was definitely laced with rage, which Hermione was fairly sure was directed entirely at her. She swallowed, nervous; in all the years she had known Professor McGonagall, she'd never been on the receiving end of her temper. This was not the same woman who had known Hermione from childhood and helped mould her into the best version of herself; this was a senior colleague who had merely witnessed the tail-end of what was obviously some very dangerous spellcasting that had risked the lives of students.
Dumbledore waved again at the tea tray, which floated towards him. With a snap, a few more things appeared on the tea tray and he mixed up a cup of tea with what Hermione was sure was a healthy slug of gin, which he passed to the incandescent McGonagall.
'Now the first thing you should know,' Dumbledore said, directing his attention entirely to Hermione, 'Is that there were no human casualties from what happened tonight. The students are all safe and accounted for and no one else was on the grounds to take injury. Mr Weasley, Mr Helsing, and Miss Thurso came out of it without any real damage although I expect them all to be somewhat shaken by their ordeal.'
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief, but Dumbledore held up one finger to silence whatever she might have said in reply. 'However,' he said with gravity, 'an entire acromantula nest was destroyed, three centaurs were seriously injured, and a unicorn was caught by the flames and killed. Not to mention the forest itself, which has taken significant damage that will take decades to heal.'
McGonagall cut in. 'You had better explain yourself, Professor Grant, before we hold an inquiry. You may well be out on your arse by morning.'
Hermione couldn't help but gape at the stern Scottish witch sitting opposite sipping from a dainty teacup half-filled with gin.
Dumbledore didn't give her any time to process what was happening, but finished, 'Please explain to us exactly what spells you cast and why, Professor Grant. This is no time for half-truths.'
Hermione swallowed, looking from one stern face to another. Severus was again looking at the empty fireplace, working through his own thoughts about what had happened.
Taking a deep breath, Hermione put her teacup down on the table next to her and straightened, not wanting to face this inquisition without taking at least some marginal control over the situation.
'Professor Dumbledore,' she started, fixing him with an open stare, knowing that if he were to cast Legilimens that she would have no power to repel him from her mind with her magic so depleted, 'You know where I am from and who I am working for. Those two things remain true through everything that has happened and everything I am about to tell you.' She took another deep breath, glancing at Professor McGonagall and knowing that what she was about to say could be taken as a grave insult. 'I am only going to speak freely in this room if I know that you won't regret whatever information I share here. Do you trust both Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall enough to let them be privy to what I have to say?'
She could see the wheels turning in Dumbledore's head. He only knew a small part of what Hermione was here for; the memory she had shown him indicated an interest in the concept of the Master of Death but said nothing about Voldemort. He couldn't know where this conversation was going to go, and that may have been for the best. Dumbledore had his own skeletons in the closet, and he probably thought she was here to talk about those; if he was really willing to let both Severus and McGonagall be in on that conversation, he trusted them enough to let them in on the concept of Horcruxes.
Even if the version of him from Hermione's time never had.
McGonagall did indeed look even more offended and angry at this questioning of her trustworthiness, but Dumbledore spoke before she exploded.
'Anything that you have to say can be said here, in front of them.'
'Good,' Hermione said, and fixed her eyes on the window behind Dumbledore's desk, not sure she would manage to keep all of her thoughts in order if she made eye contact with the three complicated people in front of her. 'In that case, let's talk about Lord Voldemort.'
McGonagall's teacup rattled in the saucer, and Severus winced so visibly that Hermione could see it from the corner of her eye. Dumbledore, on the other hand, leaned forward with something like surprise.
'When Lord Voldemort died in the Potter house on Halloween night a few years ago, it wasn't actually death that took him,' Hermione said carefully, not sure how to broach the long and complicated subject of the horcruxes or how much she wanted to let them know. 'He had taken precautions against the possibility over the course of decades, tracing all the way back to his time as a student at Hogwarts in a quest for immortality.'
'Conspiracy theories,' McGonagall scoffed, but her hands had become very still holding the teacup.
Hermione shook her head, shifting her gaze to the pattern of the rug on which their armchairs stood. 'Professor Slughorn, formerly the Potions Professor here at Hogwarts, gave him enough information while he was a student that he hatched a plan to...to split his soul into pieces...and create something called a Horcrux.'
Severus jolted upright and McGonagall's hands went slack, tea and gin pouring out the side of her cup unnoticed. Dumbledore's eyes, normally bright and twinkling, shuttered.
'A horcrux can be destroyed with fiendfyre,' Severus said, his voice sharp. 'That's what that was.'
Hermione lifted her eyes to his. 'What did it do to you?' She asked in a low voice.
'What do you mean?' McGonagall demanded, her face pale and voice shrill. 'What did what do to who?'
Eyes turned to Severus, who was now perched on the edge of his seat, something like wonder dawning in his face. 'You mean that we truly destroyed the rest of the Dark Lord's soul?'
Hermione barked out a laugh and covered her face with one hand at the same time McGonagall gasped and Dumbledore made a kind of choking cough sound.
'Unfortunately no,' Hermione said, scrubbing her face with that hand before lifting her face to look at Dumbledore again. 'We destroyed one of the remaining parts of his soul.'
In the horrified silence that followed this pronouncement, there were any number of silent questions flying through the minds of the three other professors, but it was McGonagall who spoke first.
'And how many more are there?'
Hermione shook her head, knowing that this was not the time or place to talk about the details. For one thing, she wasn't sure how to even broach the topic of Harry having a part of Voldemort's soul living inside of him, especially because Harry was currently barely more than a toddler.
'Professor Dumbledore, I can promise you that you will have enough information to track the rest of them if something were to happen to me,' Hermione said with more conviction than she felt. 'I have notes that I'm certain would be helpful in the event of my death, but it isn't safe for me to share everything that I know, especially all at once.'
'But there is more than one remaining,' Severus interjected.
'Yes,' Hermione said, looking at him apologetically. 'I'm sorry that I dragged you into this, I should have realised it would be more difficult for you because of the Mark.'
Severus flinched, and McGonagall finally put down her teacup with a clatter.
'Exactly what happened tonight? No, not you, Professor Grant, let's hear from Severus,' McGonagall said firmly as Hermione opened her mouth to attempt a further explanation.
'We went to the forest,' Severus said, his voice still low and quiet. 'Professor Grant was interested in having someone with her who was able to subdue fiendfyre, which is why she asked me along. I didn't think she would manage, given her lack of propensity for dark magic, but apparently she found a way to make it work-'
'Natural flows of magic can be harnessed for this kind of thing,' Hermione interrupted.
'-I don't think she'll manage to cast it again, the forces she called on are available now but few other times. She was probably aided in the casting by the magic of the Forbidden Forest itself. As for why,' Snape hesitated slightly, drawing out the next words with care, 'She threw down a necklace and cast the fiendfyre for the purpose of destroying it. Just as she went to cast the spell, however, something burst out of the necklace. I can only describe it as the presence of my former master, Lord Voldemort.'
More gasps, and Dumbledore sat on the edge of his seat, leaning forward as if he was ready to pounce.
Severus continued. 'It sent out apparitions, I assume in the shape of people known to Professor Grant, which attempted to distract her from her aim of destruction. They were...effective. She temporarily lost control of the spell, but regained herself and sent the fiendfyre at the locket, which was destroyed. She did properly lose control at that point, but between the two of us we were able to nullify the spell and leave behind only the enhanced flames. It was a magically exhausting experience, hence the fire getting out of our control.'
'And what did your Dark Mark have to do with this?' Dumbledore asked, elbows on knees, his fingers steepled in front of his face.
Severus hesitated again, and based on the glance he sent at Professor McGonagall, Hermione guessed that she wasn't entirely privy to the depth of Snape's allegiance to the Dark Lord.
'The part of Lord Voldemort's soul inside the necklace recognised that I was one of his Marked servants,' Severus said carefully, looking down at his hands. 'It was able to...to take hold of the Mark on my arm and command me to kill her.'
Hermione felt ice drop through her chest into the pit of her stomach. She had heard nothing of this. Which was worse, seeing the faces of her dead friends, or being compelled to murder someone by the hand of a dead master?
'Well aren't we all glad you could occlude enough to resist the command!' Professor McGonagall said, her voice high and startled. Apparently she was now convinced that it wasn't entirely Hermione's fault about the events in the forest.
'If the part of Voldemort's soul in that locket had a chance to see my hesitation, I don't doubt it could have killed me,' Severus said harshly, looking across at Dumbledore. 'He has always had powers over us that I couldn't explain, and apparently they extend to these parts of his soul.'
'I shouldn't have brought you into it,' Hermione said, horror and regret warring for control. 'If I had known...'
'You couldn't have known,' Severus shot back, and it wasn't an attempt at comfort. 'But you should have told me that the Dark Lord was involved, especially as you apparently knew I was a former Death Eater.'
McGonagall made another choked noise, and Hermione glanced at her to see that no, McGonagall had not been aware of Snape's allegiance before tonight, and that this final confirmation, stated so baldly, had just about given her an aneurysm.
'The difficulty that we come to here,' Dumbledore said, taking control of the conversation again, 'Is that there are more Horcruxes, are there not? And although I am a master of many things, destroying a Horcrux is not one of them. Am I to assume that I will master this skill?'
Hermione shook her head. 'It was a Horcrux that killed you.'
A deep silence settled over the room before Hermione realised what she just said. Clapping a hand over her mouth, she closed her eyes.
'A tale for another time, I think,' Dumbledore said, a little bit of his usual brightness returning in spite of the turn the conversation had taken. 'But I do believe you know of other ways than fiendfyre to destroy a Horcrux, Professor Grant?'
'Ah,' Hermione said with a grimace. 'Yes. Did you know Hogwarts has a basilisk?'
Hermione wasn't sure how she survived the rest of the conversation in Dumbledore's office, fending off confused questions for the following hour about everything from the Chamber of Secrets to the Slytherin family line and the details of dealing with a Horcrux. When Hermione, Severus, and McGonagall finally left the office sometime after midnight it was with yawns and a bone-deep exhaustion that Hermione was certain was not unique to herself.
McGonagall bid them goodnight at the bottom of the staircase to Dumbledore's office and moved off with all speed in the direction of the hospital wing to check that all of the students were recovered, which left Hermione to walk slowly in the direction of the stairs, matching Severus' speed.
'I'm sorry,' she said in a low voice, turning to look at him. 'I didn't even think how it might affect you to face part of Voldemort's soul.'
Severus didn't respond immediately, but his pace slowed further until they were unmoving at the foot of the stairs where they would part ways. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough.
'How much do you know about me?' he asked, not quite meeting her eyes.
'Enough,' Hermione said with a half shrug and a shake of her head. 'You've been a good friend to me since I arrived.'
'That's not what I mean,' he said more harshly, his eyes flashing up to hers, this time brimming with anger. Hermione flinched back, and Severus leaned forward. 'You aren't from now, are you? You've come back in time with a time turner. That's why you know Hogwarts, and Dumbledore.'
Hermione bit her lip, looking up at Severus through her eyelashes, not wanting to turn her face up to meet the force of his anger. She felt like a child.
'Yes,' she breathed, barely able to get the word out.
'How far in the future? Does Voldemort rise again? Is that why you're here, to try to prevent it?'
'It won't happen for a long time,' she whispered, so tired that tears were pricking at her eyes again. 'But yes, he does. I really shouldn't say more.'
'It doesn't go well,' Severus said, not letting her go. 'If it had gone well you wouldn't be here. Dumbledore dies from it.'
Hermione closed her eyes and nodded, sure that even the slightest bit of Legilimency would send all of her secrets spilling out of her like milk out of a smashed bottle. Everything felt so fragile in the face of how difficult it had been to destroy even a single Horcrux.
'Everyone dies,' Hermione managed, her voice cracking. 'Everyone that matters. The world falls apart and nothing we did made any difference.'
She wished, in that moment, that Ron were there to crush her to him with a great bear hug, to press so hard that all of her worries would leach out into the flagstones and leave her empty, because empty would be better than all these feelings. But Ron was dead, wasn't he? A corpse somewhere in the future, flesh rotting away to leave nothing but bones and dust. There was no Harry to push her to a heroic stand, no Ginny to vent her frustrations to, no Luna to argue about nargles. No one who knew what she had before or what she had lost.
Finally, Hermione turned to the stairs, unable to stand any more, and glanced one last time at Severus, dark and exhausted in the midnight castle. She could feel a little bit of pain ebb away at the sight of his dark profile.
'At least here I have you.'
Chapter 8: AMATEURS with no sense of REALITY
Notes:
This fic is not abandoned! I just had a busy summer and am finally back at the keyboard ready to knock out a few more chapters, hopefully they won't take too long.
Thank you for the continued support and interest in this story, I love these characters and the chance to play with them is just so delightful. I hope this chapter is at the standard you hoped for! Enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
At least here I have you.
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Severus sat at his desk in the Potions classroom with his eyes on the copy of Potions Monthly on his desk as students chopped and stirred in front of him. The students were certainly aware of the black mood that had overtaken him, based on the way they had visibly recoiled when he entered the room and barked instructions at them, distraction making him even more irritable than usual. Fear didn't stop them from whispering to each other; the Hogwarts gossip mill was hard at work today as a result of the smoking remains of a large section of the Forbidden Forest visible from every north facing window in the castle, but Severus was far too invested in his own thoughts to pay much mind to the looks being thrown his way every five minutes by excited fourth-years.
'Five points from Hufflepuff,' Severus drawled finally as a flurry of notes passed from hand to hand behind cauldrons, too tired to lift his wand to do something magical about it. The rustling of paper stopped abruptly, and six or seven of the Hufflepuffs at the back of the room looked up with guilt-ridden faces. 'Cease your meaningless gossip immediately or it will be detention.'
It didn't fix the problem, but Severus was able to redirect his attention to the magazine in front of him without the constant rustle of notes being passed. Or, more accurately, to put his attention to the problem of Hermione Grant. Hermione Granger, as he'd heard the spirit of the Dark Lord call her last night.
How was one to deal with a woman who dropped out of nowhere, from the future, with secret knowledge that somehow encompassed the secrets of Albus Dumbledore, Lord Voldemort, and Severus himself? Just how did she come by this knowledge? And why did she feel so responsible for the deaths of so many, as evidenced by the vision the Horcrux had produced?
Her wand, still tucked into the wand holster at Severus' waist, felt warm, as if it were still channelling some of the power she had managed to coax from it last night. To say that it was a powerful wand in the hands of a powerful witch seemed entirely wrong, looking at the dried-out wood that had taken all of the abuse of last night. In fact, if Severus wasn't mistaken, it was a perfectly average wand in the hands of an extraordinary woman.
He needed to give it back. Dumbledore had offered her the chance to skip her classes during their debrief in Dumbledore's office the night before, but Hermione had shot that idea down immediately.
'The students need to know the professors have everything under control,' she'd said, exhaustion lacing her voice. 'Anyway it will only cause gossip if I cancel classes under the circumstances.'
Gossip about her, Severus knew, would not be stopped by the simple expedient of attending to her teaching duties. If he wasn't mistaken, word had already spread around the castle at breakfast that it had been Severus and Hermione in the forest last night, and that had come with all kinds of conflicting opinions as to why they were there. The most imaginative was the story he'd overheard during the sixth-year Ravenclaw Potions class that morning: that he and Professor Grant had been out for a romantic stroll to pick moonflowers at midnight when a rogue dragon burst out of hiding and a frenetic duel had broken out. Where exactly the dragon was supposed to have come from (and gone to) was left entirely to the hearer's imagination.
Why they'd chosen to include the 'romantic stroll' angle was...unclear, Severus thought as he idly turned a page in his magazine without taking in any of the text printed there, but he supposed it was flattering. Unless it was a joke? He grimaced slightly. It would be just the kind of thing hormonal teenagers would find funny, to put the greasy, ugly Potions Master and the beautiful new Defense teacher together in their gossip-fuelled fantasies.
When the bell rang, Severus collected student notes and put a stasis charm on the cauldrons, dismissing the students without paying much attention. In fact, as the day proceeded he found himself focussing more and more on the wand at his belt that needed returning.
Hermione did not appear at lunch, and had apparently slept through breakfast just as Severus had, according to the word from other teachers at the high table. The only time Severus caught even a glimpse of her was while he was escorting two arguing and wounded students to the Hospital Wing (seventh years, a Gryffindor and Slytherin of course), and that had been nothing more than a fleeting glance as she attempted to fend off a mob of curious first years who had apparently followed her out of class to ask questions.
It hardly mattered. Dumbledore had already determined their next 'date.'
At ten o'clock that evening, Severus found himself outside the door to Hermione's rooms once more, her wand in his hand.
The door opened almost as soon as she knocked to reveal Hermione, hair scraped back into a tight but still messy bun, robes abandoned in favour of those tight, ragged jeans and an oversized jumper in shades of brown that was so inexpertly made it looked like something Hagrid might have produced.
'Interesting jumper,' Severus drawled before he could stop himself.
'I knit when I'm stressed,' Hermione said breezily as she closed the door behind her and reached out to him. 'Wand?'
Severus handed it to her without ceremony, and she cast a quick ward over her rooms before tucking the wand away. Her shoulders relaxed ever-so-slightly, and the two of them set off towards the entry of the castle.
There wasn't a lot of room for conversation as they crossed to the gates and out to where apparition would be possible. Severus took Hermione by the elbow and turned the moment they were far enough out, and they slid away into the night air with a crack.
Hermione stumbled on the landing, and Severus could only do his best to keep her upright on the uneven tussocks of brown grass that dotted the hillside. She regained her balance and turned, taking in the windswept hills and low heather plants visible in the moonlight as the breeze caught her hair, sending stray wisps flying out of her bun.
'Where are we?' she asked, turning to walk with Severus towards the lone two-storey cottage atop the hill, where warm firelight leaked out of the gaps in the wooden shutters, lighting the white-rendered walls of the odd little building.
'North Yorkshire,' Severus said in a low voice as they crossed to the door. 'The house belongs to a member of the Order.'
Severus did not knock on the door, instead swinging it open and stepping inside without ceremony, pulling Hermione with him into the low-ceilinged front room of the cottage. A high fire crackled in the hearth, throwing light onto the sofas and chairs that ringed the room, a low table in the centre where a young house elf was busy putting out cakes. Several of the seats were already filled, and Severus couldn't help a scowl. Dumbledore, of course, but also Arthur Weasley, Alice Longbottom, Alastor Moody, and Remus Lupin. Severus almost growled at the sight of the werewolf, knowing that any hope he had of keeping Hermione's attention had vanished the moment Lupin made himself known at this meeting. The memory of Hermione's stammering blushes when she first met Lupin forced themselves to the front of his mind every time he saw the werewolf's mop of mousy brown hair.
Lupin's eyes ran over both of them, pausing at the hand Severus still had around Hermione's elbow. His eyes flicked up to meet Severus' gaze, and Severus found himself dropping Hermione's elbow as if she were made of the fiendfyre she'd wielded last night, his fingertips prickling at the sudden loss of contact. Hermione didn't seem to notice, her face lighting up as she gazed around the room.
'And here is the lady of the hour,' Dumbledore said with a smile, gesturing for her to take a seat across from him. Hermione moved to the offered position and sat, accepted a cake, and greeted the others as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be introduced to members of the Order of the Phoenix.
Severus didn't join the circle of sociality, instead choosing a dark corner in which to stand, not leaning against anything in the event someone told him off for it. It had happened before - admittedly at Malfoy Manor, but the Longbottoms were Sacred Twenty-Eight, too, so it seemed likely they would share at least some of the strange, judgemental habits.
Dumbledore went about with introductions, although if Severus weren't mistaken, Hermione already knew everyone in this room except for Alice Longbottom. At the sound of Alice's name, Hermione gave a sharp intake of breath and her eyes widened, staring at the soft little woman that no one would ever guess was an auror.
'I've brought you all here tonight because Professor Grant is involved in something that may require our assistance,' Dumbledore said when introductions ran dry. 'I'm afraid I cannot give too many details, but I will advise you that her task centres around ridding the world of the vestiges of Lord Voldemort's power.'
'And who exactly are you?' Moody demanded, leaning forward on his knees, watching Hermione with that disturbing mismatched gaze that Severus still saw in his nightmares sometimes. 'I've looked into you and I can't find anything on or off record about a Hermione Grant, British or not.'
Hermione's lips twitched into a minute grimace, but Dumbledore was the one who answered. 'Professor Grant is here on my recommendation and with my backing. She is indeed a witch, simply one who has not yet been recorded through the official channels.'
Severus snorted. That was, indeed, one way to put it.
'I know you have no reason to trust me, aside from Professor Dumbledore's word,' Hermione said, taking a deep breath. 'But I hope that I can earn your trust through my actions. Last night I destroyed a dark artifact in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts,' she said, glancing at Severus. 'Professor Snape was present with me, and can attest to the fact that it was a particularly evil kind of thing that caused us no small amount of trouble. There are more artifacts like this, formerly possessions of You-Know-Who, that will be a considerable problem if they aren't dealt with. My intention, therefore, is to deal with them before it comes to a crisis point.'
'What kind of objects are we talking about?' Alice Longbottom asked, leaning forward. 'Perhaps the auror team can help.'
'No,' Hermione said, shaking her head, eyes wide. 'No, these objects are not something I can tell you about. They are manipulative, agonising to be around if you have any intention of keeping your moral compass. It only takes a hint of moral ambiguity for these things to turn a formerly law-abiding person into something else.' She gave a little shudder, and Severus felt that in his own spine as he remembered the way the spirit of the Dark Lord had commanded him last night.
'I was only exposed to its influence very briefly,' Severus ground out from the corner, and every face turned to him. 'It commanded me to kill Professor Grant with such power that if I hadn't been Occluding, she'd be dead.'
Hermione stared at him, chewing on her bottom lip, and Severus thought quite suddenly that he hadn't actually mentioned the power of the command last night. He felt a reedy apology rising up through his system, desperate to spew out all over the room and humiliate him in front of Lupin, and swallowed it back down, biting the inside of his own cheeks to ground him back in the moment.
It took a moment, but Hermione spoke again, her voice a little more shaky than before. 'I will need help to access at least some of them,' she said, leaning forward a little more. 'Particularly in the case of the one in Gringotts.'
There was a frozen, silent moment, then a burst of surprised commentary.
'Gringotts is impossible to break into -'
' - perhaps you know the person who owns the vault? Could you ask for access?
'The goblins will not like this, they might not be fans of You-Know-Who but they aren't fans of the Ministry, either - '
' - even if you managed to get into the vault, you couldn't take anything out - '
Hermione listened to the chatter for a long moment before speaking up. 'I do have a plan, you know.'
Moody turned on her, his growling burr more irritated than before. 'A plan will do you no good, idiot girl! No one has ever broken into Gringotts and lived to tell about it!'
Severus chose this moment to speak up, curious what possible plan Hermione could have, but guessing the gist of it. 'Unless you know the owner of the vault? Permission would be the only prerequisite to entering the vault legally.'
Hermione straightened as if confident, but shifted a little uncomfortably on her seat. 'I do know the owner. Or rather, I know of them.' She took a deep breath. 'Bellatrix Lestrange.'
Again the silence, again the outbursts. Even Lupin looked flabbergasted, stammering something incoherent about Azkaban and the Black family.
It took Dumbledore setting off a contained firework in the middle of the room to calm the little crowd of babbling ministry workers (plus werewolf).
'I take it,' Dumbledore said with no little confidence, 'that you know something of her whereabouts?'
'She's in Az -' Hermione stopped the moment she started speaking and gave a series of surprised blinks, as if something had gone wrong in her memory. Perhaps, Severus thought, she had forgotten the details of the part of history she'd dropped herself into. 'No, sorry, I've forgotten something,' she said, looking down at her hands as if there were a sheet of parchment there that she needed to reference, and when she looked up again it was with more confidence. 'Bellatrix Lestrange is still in contact with the Malfoys, though, isn't she?'
'Less frequently, but yes,' Severus said, moving forward slightly from his dark corner as the topic moved into something that was obviously his territory.
'I need an in with the Malfoy family anyway,' Hermione said without hesitation, watching Severus closely now. 'They also possess one of these artifacts.'
'That explains a lot,' Alice Longbottom whispered, tilting her head thoughtfully.
'I suppose you think I can provide an introduction?' Severus asked, his voice cold. So she was planning to use him. Had that been the plan all along? Her only reason for manipulating him into a 'friendship'?
'No one else can,' Dumbledore said calmly, steepling his fingers in front of him.
'But it will do me no good to gain access to her vault until I have access to a basilisk,' Hermione said with a shrug of nonchalance that just about gave Moody an aneurysm.
The scarred man shot to his feet, gesturing wildly at Hermione. 'This is what I'm talking about!' he shouted down at Alice Longbottom, who was watching him with the fixed smile of someone who has listened to the same lunatic ramblings every day for years. 'AMATEURS with no sense of REALITY who think that dealing with dark magic is as simple as strolling down to the corner shop for a bag of SWEETS! What kind of naive little OAF talks about BASILISKS like they're as common as SELKIES?"
Moody's furious, roaring outburst drove Severus to step closer, but he was positioned too far away to provide an effective shield for Hermione; instead, Remus Lupin stood up between Hermione and Moody, his hands up in front of him in a defensive pose, calling Moody's name to try getting his attention.
"Moody, Moody! Stop it and listen to the girl. I'm sure she doesn't think Basilisks are easy to find.' This is what Lupin said, but he glacned back over his shoulder at Hermione as if he wasn't too sure himself. His doubting of her didn't seem to matter, for she sent a grateful look his way in spite of the implied insult to her intelligence and Severus let out an offended scoff, looking away from the two of them.
'Anyway I know where there's a basilisk,' Hermione said, glancing at Dumbledore. 'It's just a question of getting access to it. Does anyone know someone who studies Parseltongue, by any chance?'
This time Moody just threw his hands up in the air, apparently pleading to God for patience with NAIVE little AMATEURS as he plopped back down onto the chair he had risen up from. Lupin sank down into the seat next to Hermione on the sofa, a little too close for Severus' liking.
'So the Malfoys have one of these artifacts you're looking for,' Arthur Weasley spoke up, his freckled face bright with interest. 'May I just ask if it's a muggle artifact that's been enchanted? Something they use for muggle baiting, perhaps?'
Hermione's mouth quirked up into a smile. 'It isn't quite as simple as muggle baiting, but yes, the one the Malfoys have possession of is indeed a muggle artifact that has been enchanted.'
'Perhaps I can organise a raid?' he asked, and Severus rolled his eyes at the bright interest visible on the man's face. He was relatively new to his position in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, and far too invested in the work. Hermione and Severus spoke at the same time.
'I doubt it would turn anything up -'
'The Malfoys aren't stupid enough -'
Hermione closed her mouth, surprised, her tone light and soothing, a gentle put-down for the overexcited Mr Weasley, in contrast to Severus' sharpness. She glanced at Severus, then back at Mr Weasley, her voice still accommodating as she spoke to him. 'Don't arrange anything without speaking to me. It's possible that I can retrieve the item myself, but if it comes to anything more complicated a raid could be helpful.'
Hermione thought for a moment, then looked back at Mr Weasley. 'There is one other place where a raid might be useful,' she said carefully. 'Has the ministry ever raided the former home of the Gaunt family?'
'The Gaunts?' Mr Weasley said, taken aback. 'Uh, not that I know of. Not in my time there.'
'I believe any raid would have taken place decades ago,' Dumbledore said, eyes bright with interest. 'You think one of these items may be hidden at their home?'
'Yes,' Hermione said with confidence, but Severus could detect a quiver of doubt in her voice, and if he could sense it, Dumbledore would too. 'It will be important that you don't get involved, sir,' she added, looking at Dumbledore.
The headmaster leaned back, any disappointment he might be experiencing well-concealed behind those twinkling eyes.
'So if I am correct, Professor Grant, you seek for the following: an introduction to the Malfoy family, access to Bellatrix Black's vault at Gringotts, a basilisk, an academic who studies Parseltongue, and a raid on the house of the Gaunts?'
'That about sums it up, yes,' Hermione said with a bright, false smile.
'We'll see what we can do.'
Dumbledore led Severus and Hermione back into the castle sometime after midnight, their footsteps ringing through the empty Hall as they crossed to the main staircase. Hermione hesitated when Dumbledore glanced back at her and gestured for her to take the lead, but crossed in front of the two wizards with her chin up, trying not to betray too much of her exhaustion.
It had been two difficult days with almost no sleep, and Hermione was certainly feeling it at this point, her head full of the kind of pressure that hints at a migraine in the near future. Caffeine and exhastion were at war in her system, with a net result of both tired and wired that made the walls seem slightly out of sync with the floor as she walked.
'How exactly did you come on this place?' Dumbledore asked as they walked up the stairs to the second floor.
'It was an accident,' Hermione said with a half shrug as she turned down the corridor to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. 'We wanted a place to brew potions without being found, so we chose a place no one generally wanted to go.'
'And you just happened to discover a basilisk in the toilets?' Severus probed, doubt lacing his voice.
'No,' Hermione said as they turned the corner to see the familiar corridor where once, in Hermione's past, the walls had been daubed with red paint proclaiming the return of the Heir of Slytherin. 'But we realised that Myrtle was killed by the basilisk, and that led us to investigating the room more thoroughly.'
Dumbledore made a soft noise that might have been dawning understanding, and Hermione drew to a halt at the door of the girl's toilets. 'Mind, I'd really rather not get drawn into conversation with her,' Hermione said in a low voice. 'I don't think she's ever really liked me.'
She pushed open the door and candles flared inside the otherwise empty room, sending the flicker of a dozen tiny flames to be reflected in every porcelain sink and rising column of pipes. They provided enough light to see, and enough light to brew Polyjuice Potion, Hermione recalled, but the candles alone were hardly enough to show what they were looking for in the pipes underneath one of the sinks.
'Lumos,' she whispered, the simple spell drawing enough power that Hermione thought it might just flicker out if they took too long.
Dumbledore passed her to go along to the stall that most people in the castle knew was the haunt of Moaning Myrtle, but returned a moment later. 'Our resident ghost appears to be haunting elsewhere at the moment. Or perhaps has rediscovered her joy at hiding in the u-bend.'
Hermione bent down in front of the sink that she knew from experience housed the entry to the Chamber of Secrets and put her wand near enough that the scratched outline of a snake could be made out on the main waste pipe. 'Here,' she said, taking a long look at the familiar sight. 'It opens with Parseltongue.'
Severus, leaning down beside her to inspect the scratched snake, raised an eyebrow at her. 'I've only known one person who speaks Parseltongue and he's dead.' He paused. 'Mostly dead.'
Hermione couldn't help a small smile. 'If you mean You-Know-Who, he's the one who put this mark here. I'm fairly sure he altered the pipework to provide him an entrance, given that the Chamber predates the pipes.'
'What chamber is this? I know many of the secrets of Hogwarts, but I was unaware of one accessible from here.' Dumbledore had now come up behind them to inspect the small scratched snake.
'The Chamber of Secrets,' Hermione said, extinguishing her wand as she straightened. She did her best to ignore the stunned looks on the faces of the wizards next to her, as their shock was hardly going to help the situation. 'Now, there is a chance we can get in if we say the password correctly, but I'm not sure whether it will actually work.'
'You know the password, then?' Dumbledore asked with deceptively gentle curiosity.
'Er,' Hermione managed, looking to Severus. 'I've seen it opened, so I suppose I've heard the password, but it took multiple tries on that occasion. My friend who spoke Parseltongue was the one who opened it last time we killed the basilisk in the future - ' Hermione winced at the imprecision of language ' - But Ron and I went down later to fetch basilisk fangs. He was with Harry when he opened it the first time - ' Hermione cut herself off, biting her lip at the mention of Harry, not wanting to let on too much about what she knew about Harry or his fate. 'Anyway, I'm not sure I remember it well enough to copy what he said, or whether I can even pronounce the word. Sounds. It was a kind of garbled hissing,' she added apologetically.
'Hence your search for someone who studies Parseltongue,' Dumbledore said with understanding. He glanced at Severus and brightenend slightly. 'I suppose if you were willing to let Severus have a look at the memory in question he might be able to reproduce the necessary sounds?'
Hermione's gaze slid back over to Severus, who looked rather like he'd turned to stone. Fitting, Hermione thought, given her last interaction with the basilisk.
'I believe Professor Grant was vehemently against the idea of my intruding into her mind,' he said, tilting his head towards Dumbledore, though his gaze never left Hermione. Those dark eyes were flat, expressionless, guarded.
It felt like an eternity ago that Hermione had stood in Dumbledore's office begging for a job, refusing Severus' legilimency with such fervour. The Severus that stood before her now was practically a stranger, so unlike the version of him she knew from her school years, and yet he was the closest friend she had in this time. She...what? Thought he was a better person than he would become ten years from now? That he was less bitter, less guarded, more trustworthy, more noble? That there was good in him now that even she could see and appreciate?
'I know you better now,' she admitted finally, looking down at the sink and back up again. 'I trust that you won't go looking for things that don't concern this issue. You know my secret anyway,' she said with a shrug.
'I can't guarantee I won't see things you would rather I didn't,' Severus said, his voice still cold, his expression still closed-off from whatever he might have been thinking.
'I know,' Hermione said, leaning against the sink for support. 'Go ahead, it's probably best we get this over with.'
Severus glanced at Dumbledore, who nodded, and raised his wand.
'Legilimens.'
Memories swirled around him that he was certain Hermione had no intention of him seeing, a wash of colours, shapes, and feelings that simultaneously bored and intrigued him. A ball of orange fluff cuddled up to her while she read a massive tome in the library, the smell of potion ingredients and bleach as her young hands stirred polyjuice potion in this very room, a fleeting image of a cat's head on a girl's body.
Severus smelled sweat and aftershave before the image he was looking for settled, the smells sharper than they would have been in real life as Hermione's memory magnified some specifics of the moment while downplaying others. It took only a moment for the memory to resolve, settling in the very place that they stood in reality, but this version of Hermione was wild eyed, filthy with masonry dust, gaunt as she had been when she arrived at the gates of Hogwarts (she'd put on a little much-needed weight since then), streaks of blood mixed with the dirt on her face and hands.
'Are you sure you remember?' younger Hermione demanded, obviously impatient to move, half crouched below the sink next to a tall, lanky man with bright red hair and a face that might be best described as 'pointy'. He looked no better than she did, a burn across one cheek and both knees torn out of his jeans to reveal scrapes that must have been new.
'Give me a second,' he said, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. He opened his mouth and carefully pronounced, 'Ssssaaaiiiyahhhhttsssiiiieee.'
A loud bang sounded from outside the door, and shouts echoed down the corridor. Hermione leapt to her feet, turning her wand to the door with the speed of a duellist, hair flying around her, one lock stuck to her sweating cheek that Severus wished he could wipe away. She looked like vengeance and terror all wrapped up into one beautiful woman, and hearing the sounds of a fight coming from outside, Severus thought that she both belonged in this obvious maelstrom of violence and should never be forced to face it again.
Meanwhile, the orange man was still struggling to pronounce the necessary word, combining hissing sounds with a strange gargling at the back of his throat. Hermione winced at a scream from outside and leaned back down to the man.
'Ron, we really need to hurry, who knows when they'll break through -'
'Heeessshhhhaaaasssaaaaah,' Ron intoned at the same time, and something clicked. The pipe slid and swirled, opening by magic as if it had never been closed.
Both Hermione and Ron stared in shock as the pipe moved, frozen with surprise, and, apparently, delight.
Hermione grabbed Ron's arm with a bright, delightedly baffled look. 'You did it! You actually did it!' Her smile could have lit a whole room, a look that Severus had never seen on her face before. It was the look of someone unabashed, unafraid, certain in their happy ending and bright future.
'Come on,' Ron said, his voice a bit gruff as he put an arm around Hermione's waist. 'It's a bit of a shock getting down there, just hold on to me.'
The way that Ron said it, the way that he angled his head, made Severus realise where he'd seen this man before.
This was the bloated body that had floated around Hermione as the Horcrux attacked, taunting her to join him in death. Someone she cared about, someone she perhaps loved. A boyfriend, probably. Someone whose death broke her heart and fractured her into the sadder, more paranoid version that Severus met at the gates of Hogwarts.
Severus felt the push at that moment, knew that Hermione didn't want him to see the way she reacted to this red-head putting his hands on her, to see the blush that coloured her face or Ron's neck. Responding to the prompt, Severus pulled himself out of Hermione's memories, feeling his own feet touch the ground once again.
Hermione was pale, shaking slightly, and Severus automatically reached out to her. She shook her head, putting up a hand to stop him. 'No, I'm fine. Just exhausted. Did you see what you needed?'
Severus nodded and turned to the tap.
'Heeeessshhhaaasssaaaah,' he pronounced as carefully as he could.
In the cold midnight of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, no magic activated, no bit of pipework moved.
The Chamber of Secrets was still closed.
Notes:
AN: ....this almost went a very different direction....
I really wanted to play with a scene of Lupin, Severus, and Hermione playing a morbid drinking game while Trelawney told them their futures, but it just didn't work with the tone of the wider story so I had to scrap it. Please enjoy imagining it yourself though!
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