Hermione's Choice and What Came Of It
By JalendaviLady
Timeline: Deathly Hallows
Summary: A 'what if things had happened a little differently' thought experiment for the Battle Of Hogwarts. AU from the Shrieking Shack onwards.
Characters: Severus Snape, Harry Potter, Remus Lupin, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, Minerva McGonagall
Warning: Deathly Hallows spoilers, including things that will be revealed in the Part 2 movie.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter 1: In Which Hermione Wants Answers
He was dying. Cover unbroken, but he was dying and the boy did not know, had no clue...
He would die under the cover of his own tangled web, but the boy and their mutual world would lose, would lose everything... The boy, her boy, would live on, but the world around him... and he might never know why...
And then someone was there, and he focused upwards as the boy appeared from nowhere silently and the boy's Muggle-born friend who could make any pureblood look like nature's left-behind plaything was there as well, holding a vial in her hand.
His awareness was slipping away from the pain. "Granger?" The added agony almost swept him away.
"Quiet. I've been keeping the stuff that worked on Mr. Weasley's bites on me, just in case. I want answers."
They began dragging him backwards almost before the sticky flow between his fingers had begun to slow. Potter and Ronald Weasley cast silent spells to seal the opening and muffle the sound the moment his feet were fully into the tunnel.
They had finally listened to his advice, after all this time. And their minds were closed.
Potter's especially.
An annoyance to be sure, as he was used to the boy being an open book the moment he was in range, but it would give him an advantage against the Dark Lord beyond value.
They stopped at a wide point in the tunnel, among the whomping willow's huge roots. The pain had lessened, but it still claimed most of his attention.
A twitch of Granger's wand. "Whose side are you really on?"
He swallowed, something he regretted a split second afterwards. "Yours, Miss Granger," he choked out. He braced himself. "Dumble"
"How dare you even speak his name!" Potter's wand was practically up Snape's nose
The potion master's mind was suddenly drawn to the 101 common spitting hexes generally known by even second-years and how all of them would be fatal for him at the moment. "Potter, you... saw his hand."
"Yes." The wand did not move.
"The ring was cursed, there was no way to contain it, and it was spreading. Another two months... maybe three... and then there was Draco. He... he didn't want a student damaged... Before the year even began, he'd made me promise."
Silence.
"If it hadn't been me, it would have been Bellatrix or Greyback. You know that, Potter. Either a fast end, or a slow one."
Granger whispered, "He didn't want to go through what the Longbottoms and Bill have experienced. Instant death, and there's nothing there to cause pain..."
Snape tried to nod, then gritted his teeth and hissed air between them.
Hands at him again, and a small flask at his mouth. He could recognize that particular potion from vapors alone. From that and the taste...
"E."
Granger looked at his face, got a little closer. "What, Professor?"
Apparently he was worthy of titles again.
"E, if this were the NEWT you have clearly not been studying for. Although, were this the actual test, most situations requiring the tester to taste the pain draught usually lead to grades of Troll. So that particularly correct aftertaste..."
She glanced down, and it was not hard to guess she was blushing.
"You both spend too much time over cauldrons," Weasley interjected.
Snape almost told Potter, then, but he couldn't. Not the least with the others there. Not that he could have told him to his face, anyway. "We need to get back to the castle. He knows it's out of his control now... he'll tighten the guard around it..." His throat felt better and he was fairly sure his feet and knees could hold his weight now.
The Dark Lord's voice everywhere at once, booming out a temporary cease-fire for an hour. All Snape could do was lie still and try not to let the fear of that little room in the shack and of the ground where he had returned as a Death Eater to fast and hard questions three years previous overwhelm him. There was still work to be done, and his cover was not blown.
His cover was not blown! It was a mantra in his heart, keeping the despair of the wrecked world at bay, as it had been since the first day he had simpered back into the Dark Lord's service as a spy and told him that there were other women of purer blood, more deserving of a wizard's love than her, never mind that he had already begun to understand that he and she would never have been a good romantic match for each other at all. Since the first day he had felt like a house-elf with conflicting orders and nothing to do about it but bang his head against a wall and try to hide the bruises from his master.
Silence again at last.
"We need to get back while we can," Weasley said as he looked over his shoulder, towards the Hogwarts entrance of the tunnel.
"Professor, do you think you can walk?" Granger looked as though she were about to rummage in her bag again.
"I think so." With help he got to his feet. "I should be fine until we get to someplace safer."