Author's Note: I want to thank everyone who reviewed and followed and favourited this story. Even those who flamed me were helpful in seeing how I might in future better phrase things to differentiate between a character's opinion (Hermione's) and my own. This chapter contains Pottermore factoids and some real-world history.
In the days that passed since finding out her husband was alive somewhere out there, Hermione tried to throw herself into her studies. Her apprenticeship tasks were all but complete, and she didn't want to lose focus now. Still, though, she found it hard to focus on the bubbling cauldrons in Slughorn's potions' lab. She had chosen a Potions mastery over Transfiguration, Charms and Arithmancy based not on skill (though she had it in spades) but in sentimentality. It was something she could keep, something that would remind her. Now, however, there was a very real chance that the reminder might be unneeded. As soon as the latest batch of Veritaserum was ready to steep, she was going over to the MacDougal-Flint house to meet Marcus and Morag. In the weeks since their first meeting she had come to form a real respect for them both, and tonight they were discussing a lead Marcus might have found in some shady character. A shady character they would be meeting tomorrow. A shady character who might help her find Severus. She timed the potion and let her thoughts drift. She drifted through a lot of things lately, struggling for her usual grounding and pragmatism since the war had ended. Sometimes she felt like a boat that had lost its' mooring.
That feeling was magnified after sitting in the MacDougal-Flint kitchen sipping tea. She felt so close to something with this latest lead that even though Morag had wandered off with a cheerful trill of 'Off to do research,' while Marcus kissed her on her forehead and sent her on her way, she stayed sitting. She had still not quite managed to sit down Harry and Ron and tell them about Severus: his being alive or her marriage. In a strange way, these two people she would have never exchanged more than a few sentences with knew more of her personal life than her best friends, and wasn't that sad? After all, Morag hated her, and Marcus...she never knew what to think about him. He was by turns serious and upbeat, but always friendly. "Your wife hates me." She informed him, staring into her tea.
Marcus paused slightly at that, hand halfway to the biscuit tray. He sat his hand back down and sighed. "Morag…" He said slowly, sighing. "Morag's angry. Morag's angry at everyone who isn't Percy or me." He pushed his chair back with a sigh. "The war ending has been hard on her."
"The war ending?" Hermione repeated, half in disbelief. "Isn't the fact that it's over a good thing?"
Marcus pushed back, tilting his chair on two legs. He looked guiltily toward the narrow stairs in the corner of the kitchen. "I suppose I should tell you." He said slowly. "You'll experience some of the same things, if we're successful."
Hermione was burning with curiosity, eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn't say anything. He seemed reticent, as if he would somehow be betraying his wife's confidences to speak of it. Instead, she encouragingly pushed the plate of biscuits toward him, and topped up her cup of tea.
Marcus smirked, as if he knew what she was doing, but took a piece of shortbread anyway. "Morag and I married secretly over Christmas break, during her sixth year, right before I started spying." He admitted. "When seventh year started, she tried to get through as normal, putting her head down and working hard, but the DA and the Carrows were constantly squaring off, and she was feeling pain through the bond on and off when the Dark Lord decided to pay attention to me."
"But she wasn't a member of the DA." Morag said, trying to remember the new faces in the Room of Requirement. "And I don't remember her hiding with them after the final battle."
Marcus's mouth was set in a grim line. "She wouldn't." He said softly. "I begged her to, in order to keep herself safe, and she refused. She called it cowardice to hide while I was putting myself at risk." He stared off, as if remembering something. "To most of the DA, her refusal to take the sanctuary without telling them why, and the fact that she was - and is - stunningly good at the Dark Arts was enough to set most of them against her. It was us vs. them, and she wouldn't play, which made her a them."
"Did they hurt her?" Hermione asked, cautiously.
"Only with words, but they cut deep." Marcus said, shaking his head. "It completely destroyed her friendship with Macmillan and they'd been best friends since they were in nappies together. He's tried to reconcile a few times, but still…" He stood up and moved over to the pantry, pulling out a brown bottle of some kind of liquor. "That was better than the Carrows, especially Amycus. While traditionally Ravenclaw instead of Slytherin, Morag's family is old and noble. She was a bit too quietly arrogant and sure of herself, a bit too good in his class. She became a favourite target. He wanted to make her break, to bow to him the way he had to bow to the Dark Lord."
Hermione felt herself go cold. She had heard much about what the Carrows had done to their students. "What happened?"
"The Cruciatus, whenever he could trump up a reason." Marcus said, tipping a good portion of the alcohol into his tea. "He expected her to beg."
A shiver went through Hermione as she recalled her torture in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, how she had begged and lied. "Did she?"
Marcus snorted, and gestured with his tea to a stained glass window in the kitchen, a picture of a ship she had found oddly comforting, but he was pointing to the banner underneath it, that read clearly: 'Conquer or Die.' "What do you think?"
Hermione looked at the words and frowned. "I think it's stupid."
"Says the Gryffindor." Marcus rejoined in amusement. "Though I didn't disagree at the time. I begged her to give in after the fifth day he had cornered her. She told me that she couldn't dishonour her family that way, that she had to be strong for her ancestors, that even in the witch hunts MacDougals didn't break."
Hermione snorted in disgust. She had heard too much about the witch hunts as a muggleborn. "That's an excuse. Witches just cast flame-freezing charms, Wendelin the Weird…"
Marcus raised an eyebrow at her. "Did you know the Fat Friar was executed for witchcraft?"
Hermione stopped at that, confused. "What?"
"The Hufflepuff ghost." Marcus repeated. "The Fat Friar, he was executed for witchcraft after his superiors became suspicious of his ability to cure pox." He glanced sideways at her. "They didn't burn everyone, you know, and I don't know many people who could pull off a wandless flame-freezing charm with their hands bound if they had...of course, here in Scotland, they strangled you before they burned you. The MacDougals lost quite a few from both the magical clan and the muggle clan that was founded by squib relations in the twelfth century, including a six-year-old witch who was seen levitating a spindle."
Hermione's mouth snapped shut at that. She remembered with astonishing clarity her old History of Magic essays that suggested the witch hunts were useless. She had taken the book at face value. "Why weren't we taught this?"
"Politics, I think." Marcus answered with a shrug. "Dumbledore couldn't avoid addressing it altogether and not have the Board of Governors in a tizzy, so the curriculum was focused on people like Wendelin the Weird and Lisette de Lapin. Probably so people who hadn't been raised without family histories of it wouldn't fear muggleborns and muggles so much." As much as he would rather discuss ancient history, they were getting off topic. "At any rate, Severus saved her more than once from Amycus's wand, because the darling girl refused to dishonour her clan and ancestors by begging for mercy."
"That's why she's trying to help me." Hermione realised, quietly. "Because he saved her."
"I think she's more inclined to help you because he helped me." Marcus said with a laugh. "In her mind, he helped me when he could, keeping her spouse safe, so the least she can do in turn is give his back to him. I admit, I feel the same way about it. He saved my wife from a lifetime in the Janus Thickey Ward, I want him to have his." He paused and took a deep drink of what was now more scotch than tea. He didn't want to bring it up, but he wanted to make sure she had thought this through. "But you do realise that when you get him back, it will be just like your fourth year, only worse. Just like Morag's dealing with, the blood purists and former Death Eaters will have it out even more for you. You won't just be Hermione Granger, muggleborn genius and Order of Merlin, you'll be the traitor's wife. To the light, you'll be the child-bride of the spy who will never really be trusted. To the DA, you'll be the one of them who shagged the man who let the Carrows torture students, and to the people on the street's you'll be a Death Eater's whore."
"I know." Hermione said softly. "Sometimes I wonder if he stayed away to spare me that."
Marcus stood up and refilled the teakettle, putting it back on the stove, cleaning the pot with a spell, and adding more leaves to it. "Possibly." He said quietly. "I hate seeing Morag come home some days. It was worse in the beginning, when she had thought it would be better. That the war ending meant we could have a happily ever after and everything would be okay. Every person who hissed at her, or shop that turned her away was a new shock. When a ministry employee spit on her the same day Yaxley's sister hexed her in the street, I thought she'd never leave the house again. Our circle has shrunk to just the two of us and Percy, and now you, more for self-protection than anything else."
Hermione was surprised by his bluntness, but she set her shoulders and pulled up her Gryffindor courage from where it had lain dormant for so long. "He's worth it."
"You know," Marcus remarked, as he refilled the teapot with hot water. "You still haven't told me how your bonding happened." He bit into a jam biscuit. "I'm curious. Professor Snape is much older than you, a Slytherin, and surly on the best of days."
Hermione held out her teacup for a refill, and smiled to herself, thinking of black eyes and a sotto voice that ran through her like a shock. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments. Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds,/Or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,/That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;" She quoted, and then laughed at the look on Marcus's face. "All right, I'll tell you, but only because you're helping and we might need friends in the future." She settled back in her chair slightly, adding milk to her tea as she took a breath to start her story.
