CHAPTER 24

Hermione found herself sitting along with Regulus at the breakfast table next morning. She and Remus had spent the previous night lying in the room of requirement. At morning they had sneaked out through the Honeydukes after Hermione had convinced Remus to accept a package of Chocolates from her as his birthday gift. At first, he had been reluctant but after a defeated look and a pout from Hermione he gave in. Back home they were welcomed by Severus who left immediately after a disillusion charm on himself to hide himself. He had some potion ingredients to purchase from Diagon Alley. Hermione had volunteered to get them for him but snape had waved her off saying he could do his work himself. James and Lily were gone for her monthly checkup. Sirius was taking a bath after their morning jog and Remus was currently sleeping. It was the day of the full moon after all. So, when Regulus came to meet Sirius it was just Hermione in the room who was herself there to meet the dog man.

As they sat there quietly passing time, Hermione decided it would be impolite that she didn't say anything to him.

"How are you doing?" She asked in lack of a better topic. She knew Sirius and Remus in her time. She was also acquainted with Severus. She had been staying with James and Lily for two months now. She knew them. But Regulus was different. She had no idea about him.

"Fine. You?" he asked uncomfortably.

"Doesn't it get lonely living all alone?"

"It does. But it is better than sleeping among Death Eaters." She nodded understandingly. "Besides, Sirius visits sometimes." He said. She could not help but notice the sense of regality with which he spoke.

"Why don't you try and contact your cousins." She proposed. "Andromeda and Narcissa. Don't tell them your location but you can surely write to them."

He thought for a while and his eyes gleamed before he composed and gave her a curt nod.

"It sounds acceptable."

"Just be careful. Sirius won't want to lose you again."

Again silence fell.

"I don't think I ever thanked you." He said after a while.

"You don't need to. Sirius did."

"I do. I would have been dead if not for you. My brother would have hated my guts. So, Thank you."

She smiled at him. "I am glad I could help. You are too good a person to lose."

It was an hour after the full moon and Hermione was restless. Lily was sleeping at Flavus Moon for the night since the boys were all out and she couldn't be left alone in her condition. Hermione had given the wolfsbane to Remus along with his lunch. Now she was restless. She couldn't help but wonder if the potion had worked. Had she given him false hope that he won't suffer any more? She was pacing in the living room.

"Don't you have anything else to do?" An irritated voice asked.

"Sev." She jumped at the sound of his voice. From the look of it, he hadn't slept either. "You are awake. Did I wake you?"

"You did." He said and sat down on the couch. Hermione smiled at him. Ever so impolite.

"I am just worried." She admitted to him. "That the wolfsbane won't work."

"The potion you said will help the werewolves?"

She nodded.

"Do you think that you did something wrong with the potion?"

"No." she answered.

"Then don't worry. Find something better to do. It will keep you from overthinking and if the potion still doesn't work then you hold yourself in too much light." She knew he was trying to rile her up.

"Oh Please! I learnt from the best." She said in mock offence. "That means I know best too."

His lips twitched.

"The first part of the sentence is true. The second… well, we will see about that."

"You will. Wait for it." Hermione felt much more confident on herself after the conversation with Severus. But still she won't be able to relax until she saw Remus with her eyes. Safe and unscathed. She took his advice and decided to do something productive. But what? There was only one thing that she could think of. With her mind made up, she stood up.

"Where are you going?" Severus asked as she pulled on her cloak.

"To do something good."

"And what would that be?"

"To steal a part of someone's soul." She winked at him.

"Is it necessary right now?" he asked, "You could go later at a better hour. It is late night and above that it is full moon."

"Are you worried Sev?"

He gave a grunt as he said, "I value my life too much to let your wolf hunt me down for letting you go."

"Tell him I won't listen to you."

He gave a defeated sigh and got up. He opened the door and went outside. She followed him and asked, "Now, Where are you going?"

"I am coming with you." He said.

They apparated outside of Little Hangleton. Severus look around the secluded area. The place wasn't inhabited much. The only thing he could see were thick trees and a few houses in the distance.

"Where is the house?" he asked. If one of those houses were their destination then why had Hermione apparated them in front of nowhere.

"I don't know." She said looking around. "It is supposed to be here. I have never come here before. So, I don't know." It was difficult for Hermione to accept not knowing something.

"Splendid." He muttered under his breath.

It was decided they ask the neighbor when the point me charm failed to work. They knocked on a door of the closest house. From within a young woman in her thirties came out. She looked incredulously at them

"What would you like?" she asked them.

"We are looking for the Gaunt House , do you know , where it is?"

She stared suspiciously at them. "Why would I tell you where it is? My Mother always said that the shack was cursed and the people living in there were evil."

"We want to buy the property." Severus answered.

"It is there curtained behind the trees. It isn't a nice place to be." With that she closed the door on their faces.

"Muggles and manners."

"I am a muggle born."

"Who said you had manners?" he asked.

The Gaunt house was small, dilapidated and filthy. Mosses and creepers covered the outside of the shack which was already hidden behind trees which blocked all the lights that could have reached the house. Even on a full moon the place was dark like it was a moonless night. The wind around was biting and cold. Hermione wrapped her arms around herself and saw Severus shiver as well. It was more because of the dark magic surrounding the shack.

"This place is dark." He mumbled.

"Have you expected the place hiding a horcrux to be like an ice cream parlor?" she asked.

"A man can hope."

"Oh, you definitely can. Let's get in."

The house was even filthier inside. They could smell rotten flesh inside. It was so pungent it made her want to retch. Beside her Sev too curled his nose and cast a charm on both of them to cast a bubble around their head which thankfully stopped the smell.

"Thank you." She said as she started tapping the floorboards with her feet. "Must be somewhere here."

They were tapping and examining the boards when Severus said, "Stop hissing. The sound is giving me chills."

"I am not doing anything. Beside, you wanted to come."

"Will you kindly shut up."

Severus was a paranoid person. Even more he was jumpy. The place had similar magic as the dark mark on his hand and the longer he was inside the shack exposed to it, he could feel the dark magic crawling within him. Two parts of magic cast by the same person recognizing each other and joining. He could feel the horcrux calling out to him and the constant noises that Hermione was making was irritating him.

"Sev." She said softly almost a whisper. He would have lashed out at her if he had not noticed the urgency in her voice. "Don't move too quickly."

Slowly he turned to look at her. There she was looking down at a gap in the floor that she must have made herself. However, the thing that scared her were the tiny reptiles that were filled inside the floor. The hissing he had been hearing all this while were made by them. He felt like one of the snake turned his head towards him and them back at her, hissing angrily. Severus Snape wasn't a parseltongue but he was observant and could feel that the snakes wouldn't attack him unless he attacks them first. The same he couldn't say for Hermione as she was retreating and the snakes crawling towards her. Soon she had been backed into the wall and was surrounded by the snakes. The gap in the floor was almost empty except for a box. He leviated the box scared of touching it and wrapped it in his cloak.

It would have been his duty to help her first but Severus Snape worked with logic. He knew once the snakes attacked them, there won't be time to take the box. But he had over estimated Hermione, she wasn't a Slytherin with a sense of self preservation, she was a Gryffindor full of recklessness and stupid bravery. As she cast a reductor on the snake that had been inching closer to her, they turned more aggressive, coiling and curling among one another until there was just one large snake in front of them.

"Nagini." He heard her say, her eyes full of fear.

Snape was contemplating what to do. But a voice inside him was making his stomach churn. The part of Dark lord he had secured on himself wanted him to let her die.

"One of my own." The voice said. "Yet you betray me. Come back to me and you sshall be rewarded."

He tried to shake the voice away but it was replaced by pictures inside his head. Pictures of him and Lily as a couple. Little children playing around them. Pictures of people bowing down to me.

"I don't want it." He hissed at the voice in his head.

"You lie, coward man." The voice was angry now. "Throwing away power for two filthy mudbloods. You will see them both die."

And then he could their dying faces inside his head. He knew he would shattered if something happened to Lily but he hadn't anticipated the pang of hurt he felt on seeing Hermione looking at him with a look of horror , blood pouring out from her mouth. He knew he cared for her , though he would never admit it out loud, but it was more than anticipated. It was almost like she was a family and he would lose her.

He shook out of it. But the horcrux had succeeded, it had distracted him enough for the snake to be at striking distance with her. To distract the snake from her, he shot an Evanesco at it but to no avail. The snake hissed angrily at him. It seemed to be growing in size within the small room until Hermione and Snape were cornered away from the exit of the house and the snake all over the place.

"You leave I will distract it." Severus said trying to swallow down the fear. He didn't want anything to happen to her. The image was still fresh in his mind.

"I won't leave you alone." Before Snape could shout at her and tell her to leave, before he even had a chance to turn to look at her, a piercing scream filled the air as Hermione fell to the floor clutching her neck. Blood kept flowing out of her veins and mouth. Severus freezed in his place. The horcrux wasn't lying. Before he could bat an eyelid, Hermione Granger was lying in a pool of her own blood.

She's gone. She's dead.

diachisjuicythighs

Glad that you liked it. I hope you like this one too because I really don't. I have written it and yet I am angry with it.

Red2Ruby

I hadn't meant to scare you. (Actually I did.) But that is nothing compared to how this chapter has left me feeling. I hope you like it.