Author's
note: Major thanks to my betas Sinderella and Cherbear22 for making this
possible.
Chapter one: First secret shared.
She would never admit it in front of her friends, but she was scared. Right after going into the forest she had discovered Moody and Kingsley fighting four Death Eaters. She tried to help, but the opponents were far more prepared than she was, and Moody and Kingsley had to not only fight them, but also protect Hermione.
She escaped, as Kingsley told her to do. She was running as far from the forest as she could, fearing she would be discovered by her laboured breathing. She stopped and told herself to calm down.
"Little dirty Mudblood..." she heard a voice say. "How wonderful you came here to be killed by me."
"Don't be ridiculous, Malfoy. We all know you couldn't kill anyone," she tried to provoke him.
"Yes, you've always underestimated me. You didn't think I was up to something last year in Hogwarts, just like Potter suggested. Well, you were wrong, just like you are now. Crucio!"
Hermione felt the pain in her entire body, but did not scream. Malfoy wasn't used to casting Unforgivable curses, something she noticed immediately.
"You're better at History of Magic, Malfoy, and that's saying something... "
"Sectusempra!"
"Protego!" she stopped the curse. "Cunfundus!" Suddenly, Malfoy started cursing a rock that was six yards far from her. She took advantage of his confusion and yelled, "Stupyfy!"
The boy was knocked out and she threw his wand away, far from where he lay. She didn't kill him. She didn't have the nerve to do it. She was not a murderer, and she was there not to defeat Death Eaters but to save her friends. 'He won't be a problem for this battle. No one will find him here.' She kept moving, looking for her mates.
"Amycus! Bellatrix! Tonks and that stupid werewolf are over there with Greyback and Pettigrew. Come on!"
They were coming close to her and she hid in the bushy environment the forest contained. She did want to fight, but she knew she could do nothing against Greyback, Pettigrew and the owner of that voice on her own.
She waited a couple of minutes to make sure they weren't around before leaving her hiding place. She walked deeper inside the forest until she saw a Death Eater. Just one. She thought this was her chance to do something.
"Expelliarmus!" they both shouted, making each other fly in a different direction. But bad luck decided to accompany Hermione that night, and she hit her head against a rock. She took a moment to recover and told herself to stand up quickly. However, once she did, the Death Eater was already on his feet looking intensively at her. Two wands were on his hand. 'Great!'
"Well, well, well... lucky me, Potter's friend! Poor little girl, so little, so alone and so defenceless... So tell me, do you know where Potter is?" Hermione looked at him, a funny expression on her face. 'Yes, and I'm going to tell you of all people, 'she thought "Okay then. Crucio!"
This time she couldn't help it. She fell down. She could feel every inch of her body scream in agony, making her twist and jerk uncontrollably on the ground. She tried hard not to give him the pleasure of hearing her shout, hearing her scream, but finally couldn't.
"You know, what I like the most about being here with you is the fact I have nowhere else to be. I can stay here the whole night, making you suffer more than you can possibly imagine, and just because you won't tell me where your friend is..." he was waiting for a reply. She managed to kneel and gave him a pleased look.
"I'm glad to know you haven't been able to fi--"
"Crucio!" he shouted the curse, enjoying watching her twist. And suffer. And scream. This time Hermione couldn't help it. She had been told about the increasing amount of pain the Cruciatus caused, but her imagination didn't come close to reality. She could feel her bones being squeezed by an invisible force, bringing her to tears. The pain ceased after what felt like an eternity to Hermione. "I wouldn't mind if you ended up sharing a hospital room with the Longbottoms."
She couldn't think. She couldn't hear him. She could do nothing but feel. A single word came out of her mouth, not on purpose...
"Please..."
He actually did look pleased.
"Crucio!" During the instant it took the curse to have effect on her, she thought she wouldn't hold up against the pain and would pass out. However, a few seconds later she felt the pain subside somewhat. She looked at the Death Eater and saw his body fall unconscious near hers. Hermione felt a sprout of happiness inside her; someone from the Order must be there. She glanced around, hoping for a smiling face and a helping hand, but all she got were black unfriendly eyes and a hooked nose.
Severus Snape was there.
'Traitor... Coward...'
"Do you know what motivates most Death Eaters to keep on with torturing people, Granger?" he asked grabbing her sharply by the arm and making her stand up. "One single word; please."
"Talking from personal experience?" She tried to get the ex-professor's hand off of her arm; the idea of Dumbledore's killer touching her was almost repulsive. "Don't touch me!"
"Hermione?! Hermione?!" she heard Tonks and Lupin call for her. They'd have probably heard her yelling. She turned around to face the direction the voices were coming from, but her body couldn't deal with the sudden movement and she passed out. She didn't care; they had found her and she was safe now.
She felt great. Really great. So comfortable. She hadn't slept that well in a while. She really didn't want to wake up yet, so she allowed herself to rest a little bit longer.
Eventually, she opened up her eyes and sat up. She could feel her whole body was painful. 'The forest!' she remembered. The camping, the Dark Mark, the fight... The image of a Death Eater popped up in her mind. She felt frustrated, even now, for not being able to do anything. And Snape. She swore if she saw him again she was going to knock him out and send him to Azkaban on sight.
Hermione shivered. Why was the room so cold? What had happened to the heating? She took a jersey that was on a couch next to the bed and put it on. 'Much better.'
She looked back at the couch, and then took a look at the room. She didn't recognise it. That was unbelievable; the Order had changed its headquarters- again. She could understand they had to be careful, and now there were a lot of people in the Order they couldn't risk staying in the same place for so long. But this was ridiculous; they had changed headquarters three times in two weeks.
She stood up ignoring the opposing pleas of her body. She opened the door. The smell and noises that she guessed were coming from the kitchen downstairs told her it was lunchtime, and she was starving. She made her way to the ground floor, looking for Tonks and Remus. They'd be able to explain to her what happened once she had passed out.
Going down the stairs she noticed not a single portrait was moving. That meant they were in a Muggle house. She also noticed the lack of voices the house had. Even though most people only paid short visits to the headquarters, just to inform the others of something, people were constantly entering and leaving. No one was entering or leaving this house.
She cautiously pushed open the kitchen door. No one was inside, but there was a platter of bread and fruit on the table. She didn't hesitate to take a roll and begin eating.
"You finally woke up, I see."
Hermione turned around to face the man talking to her. She dropped the food. "Snape..."
The man didn't pay attention to her astonished expression and entered the kitchen. Hermione put her hands in her pockets, looking for her wand. "Shit!" That Death Eater had it last night.
"I have your wand, Granger."
Hermione grabbed a knife she had seen in a glimpse. The ex-professor laughed at that. It was a cold and empty laugh.
"Exactly what a Muggle would do." She knew he was right in what he meant. It didn't matter how many knives she had and how sharp they were; there was nothing she could do to harm him without a wand. And he had two.
"I want my wand back."
"Not yet, Granger."
"Why?"
"You would use it to attack."
"Which is pretty much what you're about to do, isn't it?"
He looked at her quietly, not saying a single word.
She panicked. She was supposed to be brave, but staying there to face Snape was not bravery, it was stupidity. She bolted from the kitchen. She still felt weak, but she had to get out of that house and find someone from the Order.
Her first thought was to Apparate to Diagon Alley, but nothing, not even putting her best effort into it, allowed her to Disapparate inside the house, reminding her of the non-Apparation charms placed on Hogwarts. Running down the hall, she pulled on the front door to open it, but it wouldn't move. 'That damn wand!'
"You will not leave for now. But I will not harm you either, you can have my word."
"Do I? That makes me feel much better," she replied sarcastically.
"Two days of rest were not enough to calm you, I see."
"Two days?!" She couldn't believe it. She had been with Snape for two days and she was alive? That couldn't mean anything good; whatever Snape's plan was, he seemed to have planned it carefully. "What do you want?"
"I want you to sit, eat and listen to what I have to say."
"Of course. And I want to have the moon packed in silk sheets, but I simply can't."
"As I see it, you do not have many other options," he said in a cold voice that had no effect on Hermione after six years of hearing it. But he was right, again. She was trapped inside that house, and sooner or later she would have to listen to Snape. There was nothing she could do about it no matter how much she wanted to. Snape made his way back towards the kitchen but turned and sat on a couch in the living room. Hermione followed his example.
"So," she said trying to sound disinterested, "what was that you wanted to talk about?"
Snape found it hard to believe Hermione would be paying any attention to him at all.
"Horcruxes," he said, simply.
That single word had a strong effect in Hermione. In the Order only Harry, Ron and she herself knew about the Horcruxes, and they knew Voldemort wouldn't tell his followers about them. But she was not going to tell Snape anything about them, and that included the fact that she even knew Horcruxes existed.
"About what?"
"Don't play innocent with me, Granger."
"Why did you kill Dumbledore?"
"What does Potter know about the Horcruxes?"
"Why did you kill him then, and not use the many other chances you had?" she pretended he hadn't heard him.
"Which horcruxes does Potter know about?"
"Why did you run away afterwards and why didn't you dare to fight back?"
"You think I didn't dare to fight back?"
The girl stood up. "I think you're a coward and that's why you ran..." The Death Eater pushed her stomach sharply, taking her breath for a moment and making her fall back to the coach.
"Do not speak of what you do not know, Granger. Not everything is as simple as you see it."
"Oh, I really feel sorry for you. Such a long time alone, serving..."
One moment Hermione was looking at Snape. Next, she was facing the stairs. His hand had left a reddish mark on her face.
He leaned his hands in the arms of the couch she was sitting in, his faces inches from hers, and looked at her severely.
"You think you have seen it all, Granger? Just because you have been fighting for some months, like so many others did before you? Do you really think you know how far the Dark Lord's cruelty goes just because you have been in a fight risking your life or you have seen someone being tortured?" She noticed that his voice, even cold and distant, came from inside of him. "Allow me to enlighten you and let you see what cruelty is. It is years of servitude, having to murder your own family because they are a hindrance to him. It is torturing the same people you have previously called friends and to whom you have asked favours of; kidnapping, torturing and raping Muggles and youth who have nothing to defend themselves with, who do not understand the motivation of such a cruel incident and do not even know about the one who ordered it. It is doing all of this while your morality is shouting inside of you, telling you to stop, that you would rather take your own life than do things like these. But do you know what is more barbaric than all of this, Miss Granger? The frustration of being unable to stop it, because you know deep inside that all these crimes would be nothing compared to what the Dark Lord would do if he triumphed over his enemies someday, without being sure your actions would have been worth it. And yes, Miss Granger. Doing it alone. Take all of these decisions on your own, in silence, because you cannot risk being discovered."
Hermione didn't break the visual contact he was holding to try and make her feel uncomfortable. She was trying to understand everything he had just said. Well, actually he didn't say anything, and those words would have been nonsense for anyone who didn't know what was he talking about. However, the girl was good at empathy and knew a little about his past, and that made her understand what he meant.
She had started thinking quite some time ago that there was more than the eye could see with Severus Snape. There was more than a bad-tempered professor, servant of Lord Voldemort. Dumbledore had trusted him, and she had trusted Dumbledore completely. She even tried to defend Professor Snape in front of her friends. That didn't mean she trusted him, maybe because he hadn't done anything to gain her trust, but his bitterness wasn't reason enough to think the headmaster had been wrong about him.
Obviously, Hermione's theory broke into pieces when he killed Dumbledore. Then she had a reason to not to trust him, to hate him, to consider him her enemy. Dumbledore... how dare he! The old wizard had defended him, keeping him from a long and unpleasant stay in Azkaban with his Death Eater mates. Snape owed him.
Even though he served Voldemort, debts were something people never forget about in the wizarding world. He had saved Harry from Quirrel and kept the Death Eaters from even hurting him in their sixth year, even though he said Harry was for Voldemort. And he did it just because James Potter had saved his life when he was trying to pry in on the Marauders business. Snape always said he only did it to avoid being expelled, but he knew that if something had happened to him James wouldn't have had to take responsibility for it; the Slytherin had already been advised by the Headmaster to give up his suspicions about the Gryffindors.
He owed him. He should have saved him. And he had not only not saved him; he had killed him himself.
Hermione felt anger. She found it hard to believe that after everything that had happened the previous year Snape dared talk to her like that, on that I-am-a-victim tone. He was not the victim.
The fearful look she had had until now became a defying one. When Snape noticed the girl was reacting to his words he removed his hands from the couch, widening the space between them, and started walking around the room.
He needed her to believe him. He didn't need her to trust him; she just had to believe what he had to say so she could help him. He was angry with himself for allowing his rage to overtake him. He had always been able to control his temper. It wasn't a bad tactic; on the contrary, he could prevent people from getting so close to him and finding a weak spot even he might not know about.
He thought he'd better speak plainly:
"I have never betrayed Dumbledore" he said reading her mind.
"So murdering him doesn't count?"
"As I've told you, Granger," he said, trying not to lose control over his temper again, "not everything is as simple as it looks like. And before you answer back," he added when he saw she was about to, "I'll explain why I brought you here."
She relaxed her expression, letting him know she was listening.
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