Design Paradigm
Fourth: In Motion
"Longbottom! What in the blazes do you think you're doing?"
"FUCK!"
Neville's reaction to suddenly hearing Severus's authoritative voice was magnitudes greater than Hermione expected: he jumped so badly that the lantern and what seemed to be a tangle of tentacle-like plant creepers flew out of his arms as he tripped and stumbled, the lantern shattering against the wall with a loud crash. As he staggered forward, he twisted himself around and, with surprising accuracy for someone who was just startled out of his wits, fired a jet of red light at Severus. He lazily deflected the Stunning Spell and swept over toward the unfortunate man, whose eyes were wide in bewilderment. Hermione had to admit that the whole dramatic sweeping thing was much more impressive when he was wearing those billowing black robes—it just didn't have the same oomph in a hoodie and slacks.
"Attacking a teacher, Longbottom?" said Severus silkily, looking down his nose at Neville. Poor Neville looked ready to soil his pants.
There was a brief silence punctuated only by the sounds of Neville's panicked breathing, before Severus leaned down and offered Neville his hand.
"My apologies, Longbottom," he said with a small smile. "I didn't think your reaction to my voice would be quite so…fantastic."
Neville did not take his hand; in fact, he scooted back slightly, eyes fixed on Severus's arm as though it was on fire. Small wonder, too, as Severus had offered his left hand. Was Neville thinking, perhaps, that the Dark Mark still resided underneath his sleeve?
Severus, ever perceptive, glanced from Neville's eyes to his own left sleeve and, with a tiny sigh, pulled his sleeve up and bared his forearm, which had a few scars from Nagini's venom but no Dark Mark in sight. "If you're looking for the Dark Mark, it's gone," said Severus. When still Neville didn't answer or even move, Severus turned to Hermione in exasperation. "It's no use, I've scared him witless. Can you talk to him?"
"Neville," Hermione said, immediately trotting forward and offering her own hand to Neville. He took it slowly, as though unsure if he was really seeing her there.
"Hermione…what…?"
But their conversation was forestalled when Severus suddenly jabbed his wand over Neville's shoulder, sending little balls of fire past Neville's face and singeing the tips of his hair. "That's Devil's Snare, isn't it? It was creeping up behind you," said Severus, arching an eyebrow. Hermione peered over Neville's shoulder and found that it was indeed a small Devil's Snare recoiling and writhing away from the little balls of fire surrounding it.
"So the rumors are true, then," Neville said shakily as he finally got to his feet. "How?"
"Haven't you read Witch Weekly's article? Hermione has a life-giving kiss," Severus said matter-of-factly. "I've been dead for ten years and only just came back to life a few weeks ago."
"Wh-what? Really?"
Severus rolled his eyes. "No, you fool," he said as Hermione stifled a giggle. "If I was really dead for ten years, do you think my body would be in any way fit to be kissed? Unless Hermione is a necrophiliac, which I'm certain is not the case."
"Then…you've been alive…this whole time?" Neville said quietly, his eyes still wide in confusion. Severus nodded.
"Indeed I have. Hermione found me, in fact, and I've come back to help her research something."
"Liar," Hermione interjected. "You came along because you wanted to harass your portrait."
"That may have also been a reason."
Neville's confusion only grew with that little exchange, and he made a few incomprehensible sounds that may have been attempts at speaking before finally stringing together distinguishable words. "Th-then where have you been? Were you hiding in Britain?" he managed to ask.
"Why would I stay in this god-forsaken country? It's cold and wet," said Severus wearily.
"Then where have you been?"
"Living on a palm-lined tropical beach," Severus said with a smirk. Neville gave him a skeptical look that made it clear he didn't believe a word it. Severus let out a sigh. "Look, I expect you have several curses you'd like to send my direction. Let's get it over with, Longbottom."
"You what?"
Hermione looked to Severus in slight surprise before she realized what it was he was implying. It would be foolish to expect the wizarding world to accept him back with open arms, regardless that the few people he had become reacquainted with were quite agreeable about it all. They were bound to come across someone who would love to curse him into an unrecognizable pulp, and Hermione was loath to admit that she hadn't been thinking of that during their time together. Regardless of the fact that Harry had explained exhaustively to the Ministry and the wizarding world at large that Severus Snape acted as he did in order to defeat Lord Voldemort, there were those people that flatly refused to believe a word that even The Boy Who Vanquished The Dark Lord said regarding the matter. In any case, it seemed that Severus was expecting such people and thought that Neville would be one of them.
"I returned here—to the UK—fully expecting some sort of violence against me once it got out that I was alive, and considering your defiance your seventh year, I thought you might like the opportunity to get it out of your system," Severus said, sounding almost bored. "Not that it would be undeserved in the least, of course. So if you please. Do try to avoid killing me, though; you'll have Hermione to answer to if it comes to that."
To Hermione's horror, he took a step back and spread his arms, welcoming any sort of attack that Neville might have launched at him. Neville stared in confusion, his eyes going from Hermione to Severus as he clearly attempted to make sense of what Severus was asking of him.
And there suddenly there was the flutter of Neville's earthy brown robes and the flash of Neville's fist and suddenly Severus staggered backwards with a soft grunt, clutching at his eye. A gasp of shock left Hermione's lips, but Severus made no sound and said nothing as he leaned against the wall while he regained his balance. It only took a moment for him to straighten up, lowering his hand from his face as he did so to reveal his squinting and watery left eye. He gave Neville an expectant look, inviting him to continue, but Neville was frozen in place, his fist clenched at his side and his eyes still wide as they silently stared each other down. Hermione watched them furtively, feeling almost like an intruder in a private and silent conversation.
Finally, Neville turned away, exhaling as he did so. "Harry cleared up a lot of things about you, and I trust Harry," said Neville, giving him a sidelong look. "That was for being such an ass during Potions."
A fleeting look of surprise flashed across Severus's face before his lips spread into a smirk. Which, of course, seemed to horribly confuse Neville again, prompting him to give Hermione a pleading look, begging her to explain. "He's…friendlier now, I suppose," Hermione said, smiling.
"That's me, your friendly neighborhood Potions Master," he said gravely. Hermione couldn't help but let out of a snort of amusement.
"Then how did you meet? You said Hermione…found you?" Neville asked. The deer-in-the-headlights look had returned to his face.
"I had a…portkey accident at work; that's why I was gone for a few months," Hermione said. "Ended up right in front of his house. And don't ask how—it's classified information." Well, not quite: she hadn't yet explained to the Department why she had ended up in Hawaii, but she probably shouldn't be explaining things so openly in the middle of a Hogwarts corridor.
"Oh, I see…" said Neville, his face falling a bit. However, he quickly recovered and flicked his wand at the shattered lantern, catching it as the pieces flew back together and into his hands. "Well, I've got to get the Devil's Snare back to the greenhouses. Will I see you later?"
"We might stay for dinner. I'll see you then, okay?" she said, smiling.
They watched as Neville rekindled the flame in his lantern and gathered up the Devil's Snare, which attempted to hide from the lantern by shrinking under his arm, before he nodded to them and continued on his way. "Are you all right?" Hermione asked, gently cupping his cheek in her hand and peering into his left eye, stroking the skin under his eye with her thumb. The skin around his eye was turning red and would likely be a purplish bruise before the day was done.
"It's nothing. I'll be fine," he said, smiling and leaning into her hand. She loved these moments when he dropped the calculating and sarcastic exterior and let his decidedly softer self peek through—if even for a little bit.
"Well, shall we?" Hermione said, returning the smile and feeling her cheeks turn a little pink at Severus's gesture.
"Let's. Hopefully, Madam Pince won't throw a fit if she sees me."
"Oh, stop pretending. You know that you'd love it."
"No no no no, absolutely not."
"But you did the job so well for years—"
"And I hated every one of those years. No."
"But we're having such trouble finding a replacement for Horace, and you're the best candidate—"
"I would be a candidate, if I was, in fact, applying for the position. How quickly you forget your promise to let me live in peace, Minerva. Teaching is not, in any way, shape, or form, peaceful."
"I haven't forgotten. I just thought that perhaps you might consider the idea."
"Did you think I enjoyed it? Trying to teach and keep all the Slytherins happy?"
"But, you see, you won't have to do that any longer..."
Hermione sat quietly with Neville as they watched Severus and McGonagall argue back and forth over the small table set up in McGonagall's personal quarters. Professor McGonagall had the bright idea of suggesting that Severus return to his former position as Hogwarts Potions Master and once again train young minds in the art of brewing potions, and of course, that simply opened up a can of worms—a veritable Pandora's box. As soon as she even insinuated that he take up teaching again when Horace Slughorn retired, he had let loose a verbal barrage the likes of which Hermione hadn't seen in ages. But McGonagall was equal to him: she countered everything he threw at her and Hermione sensed that maybe she enjoyed it—after all, she and Severus had done a lot of that sort of thing before the war took a turn for the worse. Hermione had a vague feeling that Professor McGonagall was intentionally goading him; perhaps Severus was not the only person who had changed over the years.
As far as Hermione was concerned, she didn't care either way what Severus decided—all she really wanted was for him to be happy doing whatever it was that made him happy, and at this point, it was obvious that teaching was quite far down on the list of things that made him happy. She busied herself with finishing the delicious black pudding that the Hogwarts elves had cooked up as Neville helped himself to some treacle tart. It was only the four of them eating together, as only Neville had run into Severus earlier (apart from Madam Pince, but she was hardly in any mood to have dinner with them) and McGonagall had decided it would be best to keep Severus's presence unannounced.
"So did you find what you needed in the library?" Neville asked Hermione lightly in a thinly-veiled attempt to avert his attention from Severus's and McGonagall's argument as it suddenly took a turn toward a recent transfiguration journal that they had rather differing opinions on.
"I hope so…Professor McGonagall gave me permission to borrow a few, so I didn't read them on the spot," Hermione explained. "What about you? How have you been?"
"How about this, Severus?" McGonagall said, her voice suddenly raised. "Since you are such an expert in transfiguration, why don't you take the transfiguration post and I'll send Denham to teach potions?"
"I don't understand why you want me to teach so badly, Minerva," Severus said in exasperation. Then suddenly he froze, as though having some sort of epiphany. "Could it be that you…miss me here, Minerva?"
"Honestly, Severus? There is nobody with whom to argue about Quidditch."
"You want me to return to teaching…so that you'll have someone to argue with?"
There was a long silence.
And suddenly, startling both Neville and Hermione, McGonagall and Severus burst into cackling laughter.
Nothing—there was nothing in the books Hermione had borrowed from the Restricted Section. Granted, between her and Severus, they'd only gotten through two of them that night following their Hogwarts visit, but if those books were any indication, they would be no better off figuring out what happened to Angela Villar than when they had started. As she poured herself a cup of coffee and returned to her dining table, where the five books she'd brought home were stacked beside her plate of buttered toast, she let out a sigh. She began to wonder if it was really some sort of severe memory modification that had stricken Angela, rather than any sort of beyond-the-impossible Muggle-to-witch conversion.
If that was the case, then what of Severus's claims that her mind felt like a Muggle's mind? That it was full of numbers and computer code? What sort of wizard would have the sort of detailed knowledge about those things to fill her mind with it?
She paused a moment to clear her mind and take a sip of coffee. It would be easy to just return all the books and go about her life as normal now that the Ministry had custody of Angela. She was under no obligation to help her, really—she'd just been the one who happened to run into her in Diagon Alley. But that felt all wrong…Angela had absolutely no idea about anything, and it felt akin to throwing her to the wolves to just turn away and continue on, especially with all the suspicious Hit Wizard movements and Sinclair's escape.
Well, she supposed she should just go to work this morning and see if anything odd was going on. And, if the clock on her wall wasn't lying about it being nearly nine o'clock, she would be late if she didn't get a move on. "Severus, are you going home today?" Hermione called into her bedroom—or at least, she tried to. She'd stuffed the last of her toast into her mouth, so it mostly sounded like a lot of muffled noises.
"Weren't you ever taught to not speak with your mouth full?" said Severus, emerging from the bedroom with his hair damp and a rather disgruntled look on his face. Whenever he was in London, either because of the time difference or because he hated being in Britain, he always seemed a little irritated in the morning if he did not wake before her.
"I said, are you going home today?" Hermione repeated once her mouth was clear of toast.
"I think I might stay and look through the last of the books while you're at work," he said as he took a sip of coffee from her mug.
"I see. Are you just going to wait for Danny, then?" she asked as she pulled her jacket on. Danny had sent an owl late last night saying that he might have news for them and would drop by if Severus didn't meet him at his place.
"I will. He'll likely be here soon."
"Sounds good. See you later."
After giving Severus a quick kiss on the cheek, she took her tin of Floo powder and threw a pinch into the fire blazing in her fireplace, calling out for the Ministry Atrium as she stepped into the green flames.
She almost thought that she might have mispronounced the name, because instead of the roomy Atrium she was met with an enormous horde of people clamoring about something or other, until she realized that she was in the Ministry Atrium and there was some sort of stage set up in the middle of Atrium before the restored fountain. She turned to the nearest bystander to ask what the hubbub was all about and was met with a confused shrug.
"Not sure, but they've been blocking the lifts for about half an hour," said the man. "I heard them going on about showing the world something or other. Sounded like a load of rubbish."
Thanking the man, she turned and stood on her toes in an attempt to see over the crowd. She caught sight of some surly-looking security guards standing in front of the golden gates leading to the lifts, and when she turned to look at the stage, noticed that the Hit Wizards that had taken Angela from her home were guarding the stage from the irritated employees clamoring for them to call off the guards so that they could get their work done.
A bad feeling began churning in the pit of Hermione's stomach. The Law Enforcement Squad should have put down whatever this protest—or what she assumed to be a protest—was all about, since they were being quite disruptive, but the fact that the security personnel and Hit Wizards were doing the opposite of dispersing this crowd was quite troubling. She did her best to push through the crowd in an attempt to get closer to the stage and found herself face-to-face with Brian Stockton, the Hit Wizard who had led the little expedition to take Angela from her home.
"Mr. Stockton, what's all this about?" Hermione demanded, grimacing as she was jostled by the crowd. If she wasn't mistaken, Stockton looked pleased to see her.
"You'll see soon enough, Ms. Granger," he said calmly. "I expect they'll be out shortly."
"Who? Who will be out?"
But she got nothing more out of Stockton, regardless of the increasingly inflammatory things she said to try and provoke him into letting something slip. The bad feeling in her stomach was getting worse; anxiety was beginning to spread through her body and she felt restless, as though she ought to be doing something but wasn't. Her instincts were telling her that something bad was coming, and the anticipation of what that bad thing might be was maddening. Her mind immediately went to her friends: what were Harry and Ron doing right now? Were they in the crowd like she was, or had they been able to get in before the gates were sealed off? What about Severus? While he could take care of himself, she still worried that he might be attacked in her home…
And finally, after a long ten minutes spent in the tight, pulsing crowd, something happened.
A tall man in a long, deep red robe Apparated beside Stockton with a CRACK that was nearly lost amid the din of the crowd. He had a long face with smartly cropped silvery hair and a pointed gray beard to match. Hermione could only see the back of him, but when he turned to give Stockton a nod, she saw his eyes—small but wide open, as though trying to take in as much of the scene as possible. As he walked up the steps and onto the stage, she noticed that he walked with his head held high, as though he had some great announcement for them all—
"If you'll all please settle down and pay attention, we can begin," boomed this man's deep voice. The sound was almost deafening, his voice echoing wildly off the walls of the Atrium. It seemed that he too was caught by surprise by the thunderous volume of his voice, because he quickly flicked his wand and cleared his throat. "My apologies," he called into the crowd. "The Atrium's acoustics leave much to be desired."
An unintended consequence of the earsplitting sound was that it had shocked the crowd into silence: they were all staring wordlessly at the man on stage, all presumably waiting for him to say his piece so that they could get on with their work day.
"For any of you who do not know, my name is Rene Mortin and I am formerly of the Wizengamot and the Department of Mysteries," he said. A ripple of murmurs spread through the crowd, and Hermione herself couldn't keep from making a noncommittal sound in realization: this man, Rene Mortin, had been missing for over a month and Harry himself had put a team out to find him.
"I've come here before all of you today so that I may share with you all something that will change how we wizards and witches look at the world around us. You may all be acutely familiar with the rapid decline of births of magical children. Our world, liable to collapse from underneath us and our ways, disappearing…Surely that thought has gone through each of your minds." Mortin looked through the crowd and seemed pleased when it drew a murmur of assent from the crowd. "And, though I am ashamed to say it, we still have those people holding on tightly to the concept of pure blood—I know you're out there—and still others that believe us, wizards and witches, to be inherently different from our Muggle cousins. Superior, even?"
At that, the people stuffed in the Atrium grew angry, and Hermione could hear the heated shouts of people comparing him to You-Know-Who—to Lord Voldemort.
"Allow me to continue, if you will," Mortin said, holding up his hands. When the crowd was quiet enough to satisfy him, he continued. "I don't mean to say that I hold these beliefs. Far from it.
"We are not so different from our Muggle brethren. The culmination of several years of research proved just that: there is but a switch, to grossly simplify it, that determines whether a human child will be born a Muggle or a wizard—something embedded deep in our genetic code, and, if we stretch our understanding of it a little bit, our very souls. And, up until recently, we have not been able to touch this switch, either with Muggle science or magical means."
Hermione could sense realization beginning to spread through the crowd and could feel them beginning to fidget behind her.
"Now, if you please, Mr. Sinclair, please bring out our guest."
Her stomach clenched when Sinclair—that blasted Sinclair—appeared beside Stockton with a reverberating CRACK.
"Let go of me! Let go! You promised I could go home if I could do those things!"
It was all Hermione could do to keep from running forward when Sinclair began dragging a struggling Angela up the steps of the stage. It seemed she was oblivious of the people surrounding the stage until she was actually standing on it: when she realized that a crowd of people were staring wide-eyed at her, she stopped struggling and froze, clutching her wand close to her face for lack of anything more substantial to hide behind.
"My name is Folgian Sinclair, and I'd like to introduce my friend here, Angela Villar," said Sinclair with that same irritating self-satisfaction that he showed back on Severus's beach. Angela shot him a dirty look when he gestured at her with a flourish of his hand. "Tell everyone what you do for a living, Miss Villar."
"I—" said Angela meekly, nervously casting her eyes over the sea of onlookers. "Erm…I'm a software engineer."
The crowd rippled with confusion, which only seemed to please Sinclair. "And where did you attend school? Tell these nice people what you studied," Sinclair continued.
"Uni—University of California in Berkeley. I—I studied computer science."
"And who else, friends, would study computers and work as a software engineer?" Mortin said. "It's likely that most of you are unfamiliar with computers and never heard of such occupations like software engineering. Am I wrong?"
There were angry shouts of "Hey, I have an electric mail!" and "We use that friend face!" but these, unfortunately, only exemplified Mortin's point.
"My point is that this woman, up until recently, was none other than a humble Muggle."
Hermione felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her lungs. So she'd been right—Angela had been a Muggle. But how—how was this even possible?
"You keep saying 'Muggle' this and 'Muggle' that around me, but you never told me what that means," said Angela, quietly at first but her voice quickly gaining volume but getting lost in the indignant cries of "Prove it!" and "Prove she was a Muggle!" from the surrounding crowd.
"Very well, we'll prove it, shall we?" said Mortin, nodding to Sinclair. The latter nodded pulled out a flask filled with an inky purplish liquid.
"You, you're in the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, right? You should be familiar with potions," said Sinclair, pointing at a wizard near the stage. "Please verify for me that this is indeed a genealogy potion. You can test it on your own parchment if you like."
It seemed that all the people in Atrium were holding their breath as the wizard nervously took the flask and swirled it around. After a moment, he pulled a scrap of parchment out of his briefcase and let a few drops of potion fall onto it before handing the flask to his neighbor to hold while he took his wand from the inside of his robe. He hesitated slightly, before muttering something and wincing—it seemed he had used some sort of spell to prick his finger and was letting the little droplet of blood fall onto the parchment. Hermione couldn't see from where she was standing, but it seemed the people around him were ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the parchment he was holding, presumably because it was indeed a genealogy potion.
"Right then, now that we've gotten that taken care of, someone give me a piece of parchment," said Sinclair, who had briefly hopped off the stage and snatched the potion away before anybody could think to break the flask. He seemed to get a few mutinous glares from the people around him and a couple murmurs from elsewhere in the crowd that he was wasting their time, but he nonetheless got a piece of parchment from someone and climbed back onto the stage. He practically slathered the parchment in potion before putting the flask down and snatching Angela's hand, pricking her finger with the same spell the Reversal Squad wizard had used and wiping her finger across the parchment before she could pull her hand away.
From where Hermione was standing, she could see black letters and lines blossoming on the parchment until the entire sheet was covered. With a wave of his wand, Sinclair enlarged the parchment until it was enormous and visible for most of the closest people to read, and Hermione could see Angela's entire family tree going back several generations, with each and every name in the tree (including Angela's own) marked distinctly with the word "Muggle." The crowd nearly lost it at that point, and Hermione felt truly worried that she might be crushed with all the furious movement going on.
"Quiet!" Sinclair bellowed, though it wasn't enough to quell the riotous crowd. "QUIET!"
The crowd finally fell into a reluctant silence after Sinclair's magnified voice thundered through the Atrium. "That's better," he said, smirking. "Now, Angela, show them what we've taught you. Use your wand."
"Um…which one do you want me to do?" Angela asked, her eyes nervously flitting from Sinclair to the bristling crowd and back.
"Do the easy one for now."
Angela looked once more to the crowd, quite obviously worried that someone there might suddenly attack her, before raising her wand. "Lumos," she said firmly, and a light flared up on the tip of her wand. Despite her unease, a smile flashed over her features, pleased at her success, but it quickly faded when the crowd seemed to pulsate with indignation.
"Now the other one. Use it on me," Sinclair said.
"Er…wingardium leviosa," said Angela, swishing and flicking her wand at him and causing him to hover a few feet in the air. After a moment, she seemed to grow worried. "Wait, how do I make this one stop again? Errrr...finnit! I mean, err…finite!" Sinclair immediately fell from the air and landed lightly on his feet.
"And so you see, everyone? We've finally developed magic to induce magic in Muggles. They were able to do it all along—they just need a little push. And conversely, we can take magic away," said Mortin pleasantly, which was in stark contrast to the furious crowd below him.
Immediately, there was silence. Hermione thought she could hear the beating of a thousand hearts echoing throughout the Atrium.
"Yes, I can prove it to all of you," Mortin said, still as pleasant as could be. "Mr. Conrad, please bring out our other guest."
A lean man that Hermione didn't recognize Apparated into the space beside Stockton, clutching the arm of a short, struggling woman with a black bag over her head. He had some trouble dragging the woman up the stairs and had to turn and conjure ropes to restrain her arms before he could finally get her onstage. "My apologies, Rene, she's kind of a handful," said the man.
Hermione frowned when she heard his accent. This man, who had a friendly face that might have been appealing in any other setting, was an American. Conrad pushed the bagged woman none too gently across the stage so that she stumbled and nearly fell flat on her face, and then in a fluid motion, Vanished both the bag and the ropes on his captive.
Dolores Umbridge blinked at the sudden light and let out a tiny squeak of surprise when she realized that she was in the Ministry Atrium and was surrounded by Ministry employees. This was the first time Hermione had seen Umbridge since the end of the war: though she'd been released from Azkaban the previous year, she still looked gaunt, her skin sallow and her hair, once adorned with cutesy ribbons, hung limp on her head. The years in Azkaban had tightened the skin on her once slack face, which, if anything, only exacerbated her toad-like appearance.
Conrad reached into his robes and pulled out a wand, handing it to Umbridge with a smile. "Here you go, Dolores," he said lightly. Umbridge snatched the wand from Conrad's hand, glaring daggers at him.
"I demand to know what this is about! I've done nothing to merit such treatment!" she shrieked, glaring from Conrad to Mortin, who simply ignored her and nodded to Sinclair.
"All right, Umbridge," said Sinclair, stepping forward. "I dare you to curse me. Go on."
Umbridge bristled with rage, but made no protest and jabbed her wand at Sinclair.
Nothing happened.
"Wh-what?" she sputtered in surprise. She jabbed her wand again with the same result. A faint reddish flush was beginning to creep up her face as she jabbed the wand at Sinclair more forcefully. "Stupefy! STUPEFY!" She let out a strangled sob. "Petrificus totalus! Tarantallegra! LUMOS!"
The silence in the Atrium was suffocating and the tension almost palpable as Umbridge sank to her knees, her bulgy eyes fixed on her unresponsive wand.
"Wh-what have you done to me, Mortin?" she said weakly. "What have you done…?"
"You're little more than a Squib now, my dear Dolores," Mortin said coldly, all the congeniality gone from his voice and his contempt for her coming across clear as day. "Fitting, isn't it? You, who accused Muggle-borns of stealing magic and looked upon them as little more than dirt." Suddenly, his face made a rather jarring transition back into general pleasantness. "And so you see, everyone, how this changes everything—everything—about how we look at ourselves. The very design paradigms of our society will change, and it is my sincere hope that you all will not fight it."
Mortin seemed generally unaffected by the glares being directed at him from the crowds and, if Hermione was reading his expression correctly, he even looked happy that he was riling them up. It was clear that they would not go quietly—it was obvious they would fight, if only to resist changing a system that works well enough. Once more there were murmurs, accusing him of being no better than You-Know-Who—but the comparison was flimsy at best. There have been no reported casualties, no genocide, nothing. If anything, Mortin and Lord Voldemort were polar opposites, and it wasn't even clear if Mortin desired power for himself or if he was working for someone else…
"But I—but how? Is this—is this Dark Magic?" Umbridge said, looking uncharacteristically defeated with tears in her eyes. Hermione almost felt sorry for her, the victim of what could be seen as poetic justice.
"Almost" being the key word here.
A very smug and very worrisome smile spread across Sinclair's face and, a split-second later, he turned his gaze directly on Hermione—her blood ran cold as their eyes met, and the only thing going through her mind was "not good not good not good…" He threw his arms wide to play up the drama and almost gleefully said, "No, this isn't Dark Magic at all. It was developed and refined using portkey magic and potions. There's nothing Dark about portkeys."
Not good. Not good. Definitely not good.
"In fact, it is thanks to Hermione Granger's excellent portkey research that we were able to do this today. You have my thanks, Miss Granger."
Sinclair met her gaze again and bowed deeply.
Fuuuuuuck.
Hermione could feel what seemed like everyone's eyes turn on her, and they were like daggers—murderous, as though she'd somehow betrayed them…
And as though to dig the knife deeper and perhaps twist it around a bit, Sinclair squatted down on the edge of the stage to peer at her with that smug face of his—the face she'd like nothing more than to pummel with her fists.
"Tell me, Miss Granger," he said loudly, his voice echoing off the Atrium walls, "how is Severus Snape these days? He's not still spewing blood everywhere after what I did to him, is he?"
Fuck.
"You know what to do, Stockton."
There was a short silence that seemed like an eternity to Hermione, before there was an explosion of noise and movement. Hermione felt herself getting crushed by all the people, her ears ringing from all the shouting, and saw Stockton raise her wand toward her, his mouth beginning to form the beginnings of Avada Kedavra—
But she was faster than Stockton and Stunned him before he could get Avada out of his mouth. Immediately, she leapt forward toward the stage, shooting a Stunner at Sinclair and diving into the space beside Stockton's limp body, thinking desperately of her home without looking up to see if her Stunner had connected with Sinclair. After plunging into the dark space of Apparation, she stumbled onto her balcony and threw open the door, flinging herself over the threshold.
"Hermione! What's wrong?"
She hardly noticed Severus pulling her upright as she redoubled the anti-Apparition jinxes protecting her home, ignoring the horrific pain in her arm. "You splinched your arm!" came his horrified voice as she cast what protective charms she could. It was then that she dared to hazard a look at her arm—she nearly fainted when she found her jacket sleeve in tatters and soaked in blood from the great gashes oozing blood along the length of her arm. He was quick to act and ran the tip of his wand along the gashes so that they partially closed, stemming the flow of blood slightly as she struggled to remain upright.
"We have to go," she gasped, her eyes clenched tight against the pain. "They're coming—this is not good—"
Suddenly, there was the sound of splintering—two Hit Wizards had appeared on her balcony and were attempting to blast the spell-reinforced glass of the door away. Hermione felt Severus gather her up and lift her off her feet, and she heard Danny's voice screaming, "You go! I'll hold them off!"
There was the blaze of flames, Severus's voice calling out, "London Portkey Terminal!", and the rush of the Floo…
Sirens were blaring throughout the terminal, and through her rapidly blurring vision, she could see security personnel bearing down upon them. Hermione feebly shot a pair of stunners at the approaching guards while Severus looked around wildly for any portkeys that might be scheduled to leave. There was a terrible lurch as he twisted on his heel and dove for one several feet away, squeezing between some bewildered travelers and grabbing the soda can as he breathed into Hermione's ear, "Stun them, stun them, hold them off for three minutes—"
He shifted her in his arms to free up his wand arm and give her room to hold the can, and between them, they shot spell after spell at the approaching security guards. Severus managed to successfully restrain one in a full body-bind and was holding off the other with a barrage of tile fragments he had blown off the floor—
There was a sickening lurch as Hermione felt the portkey hook her behind her navel and whisk her through the portkey space she had become all too familiar with, and just when she thought that the horrific spinning would never end, there was a bone-jarring thud as she and Severus landed roughly on concrete in a bright plaza. She groaned as an agonizing pain shot through her mangled arm and hardly noticed when Severus helped her to her feet and picked her up again.
"Wh-where are we?" she whispered, clutching his shirt tightly as her arm throbbed unbearably.
"Seoul," he muttered into her ear as he quickly headed for some sort of overhang behind some trees, a slight limp in his step.
"Where are we going?"
"Don't speak. We're going away from here. There's a—damn!"
Hermione felt herself falling as Severus was suddenly wrenched out from underneath her, and she fell to the ground on her splinched arm, unable to keep an agonized scream from escaping her mouth. She heard Severus firing off spells as he crawled toward her, and when she managed to crack an eyelid open through the pain engulfing her, she saw two British wizards running right for them, blasting terrified Koreans away and diving for Severus as he found her wrist and clutched it tightly—
The feeling of Apparition surrounded her, squeezing her tightly so that her arm screamed in pain—but this Apparition was far longer than she'd ever experienced, and she thought she would suffocate in the horrifying, tight space—
Finally the squeeze loosened and she immediately vomited on the forest floor that she suddenly found herself on, and amid the sounds of her own retching, she could faintly hear Severus doing the same. But through the sounds of vomiting, she heard the screams of a man somewhere nearby. There were the sounds of scuffling, and when Hermione managed to focus her vision, she saw Severus pinning the British wizard from the Seoul portkey terminal to the ground, his wand at the man's throat and a hand pressing down on the man's thigh near the bloody stump where he'd splinched his leg.
"Who sent you?" Severus snarled as the man screamed in agony. "Why are you tracking Hermione Granger?"
"Rene Mortin, Rene Mortin!" the man screamed, his voice cracking as he writhed underneath Severus's body. "He's trying to mess up the Ministry! I don't know! They said to kill her! Stop! Stop!"
Hermione grimaced as the man howled in pain. "Why do they want to kill her?" Severus hissed, his nose inches from the man's face.
"I don't know! Please, I'm just a lackey, I don't know anything!"
Severus growled in frustration and Stunned the man in a flash of red light. He got off him and crouched a moment beside his unconscious body, his face contorted into a scowl, before he suddenly remembered Hermione and scrambled over to her. "Hermione," he breathed, resting her head on his knees as he examined her splinched arm. He began muttering a healing spell, his voice low and soothing, and Hermione felt the deep gashes in her arm slowly closing as the blood smeared over her skin receded into the open wounds.
A deep calm began spreading through Hermione as Severus healed her arm. Though she couldn't explain why, she felt at peace lying in his arms on that forest floor, and a tiny voice in the back of her head told her that everything would be fine if she just stayed there with him forever…
"Hermione? Hermione, stay with me. Focus. Stay with me."
But she couldn't hold off the darkness that was beginning to fill her mind. She couldn't say no to the voice—everything about it seemed right…
There was a faint whoosh, and suddenly the darkness receded from her thoughts. She opened her eyes and found Severus's phoenix Patronus hovering nearby and Severus's worried face looking down at her. "What happened?" she asked, slightly confused by both the sudden clarity in her mind and the mercifully less painful throb in her arm.
"The forest was taking you. The Patronus will help."
"The forest…? Wh-where are we?"
"Aokigahara Forest in Japan."
A/N: Hmm...this one was longer than normal too. We'll see how that goes. Haha.
I feel like Snape is drifting out of character...Then again, sticking him on a beach was probably wildly out of character in the first place. I'll try to tighten it up. Hopefully this actiony stuff will help. XD Also, I'm kinda curious about the interest level of this fic...I've realized that most people seem to congregate around the romance ones. Is this how it is, or am I woefully wrong? Hahaha. Oh, and speaking of Snape in character...I have an old fic I was writing a couple of years ago called "Marked," where you'll have your classic-ish snarky Snape. It's in my profile if anyone's interested, but there's no romance and there's also an OC, so it might put people off. XD
I've been sick all week...Please make sure to tell me if I've missed any proofing. My mind's kind of foggy.
Ninja edit: I originally wrote Umbridge as a different male character, so there were a few gender-confused pronouns hanging around.