Summary: SSHG, AU, EWE, Probably crack. Hermione meets Severus in the Forbidden Forest, and things do not go as planned— for anyone.

A/N: #scratchthatniche2021, short fic entry (3749 words), Birthday present for DeepShadows2

Prompts: Lethifold, Snarl, Found

Rarepair: Lily Evans/Evan Rosier

Beta Love: The Dragon and the Rose, TheFrenchPress

Poking the Beast

So embrace the darkness

And I will help you see

That you can be limitless

And fearless

If you follow me.

—Become the Beast, Karliene

The mist seemed to move like a living thing through the trees, leaving behind moisture in its wake. Dew was dripping from bark and leaf in defiance of the day's heat as both the air and the forest were cool. The night's creatures seemed to sound off in the darkening forest as the moon rose low over the horizon.

"Don't go, Hermione," Lily insisted. "It's forbidden!"

Hermione turned to stare at her childhood friend. "He's our friend, Lily. I trust him. If he wants me to meet him here or anywhere else, then I will be there."

"He's a DEATH EATER!" Lily yelled.

Hermione closed her eyes. "You don't know that, Lily."

"He hangs out with all the other Slytherins. They cannot be tr—"

Hermione's eyes darkened, seemingly black against the dark of night. "You sound like that nasty little gang you so aptly dubbed a bunch of toerags," she said.

Lily turned red, flustered. "They aren't quite as bad as I made out."

"And maybe Severus isn't either," Hermione pointed out.

"He called me a Mudblood!"

"You smiled while he was being tortured," Hermione said.

Lily flushed again. "I did not! He called YOU a Mudblood, too!"

"He thought I felt the same as you." Hermione's eyes closed as she turned her gaze upward to the treetops. "And he apologised."

"And you just accept his apology after he throws his lot in with those bloody Death Eaters?"

"And you would what? Give him no other options?" Hermione asked, arching a slim brow. "You forgave James and his groupies after they tortured our friend. Tortured. Ridiculed. You smiled while they did it. Don't think you are so perfect that you can judge anyone. None of us are perfect. Not me. Not you. Severus may have made some mistakes, but he's owning up to them. Can James say the same? Sirius? Peter?"

"They aren't the ones that called—"

"A name, Lily," Hermione said. "I've been called a Mudblood many times now."

"But not by HIM!"

"You've called me worse."

"You know I didn't mean it!"

"And he didn't mean it, either!" Hermione sighed. "Look. You don't have to come. I'm not forcing you by wandpoint. I'm going to be there for my friend because he asked me to."

"But you are going to get in trouble!" Lily insisted.

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "And who is going to go and tell on me? You? You are the only one who knows I'm here and where I'm going."

Lily paled, shaking her head.

"Go back to bed, Lily," Hermione said, shaking her head.

Hermione took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, taking her first steps across the threshold to the Forbidden Forest and onto the moonlit path beyond.

Perhaps she'd been a little too hard on Lily, Hermione thought as she walked the leaf-strewn dirt trail that wound through the forest. Like with most things, Lily came in hot and was too proud to admit fault. Everyone took what she said as "just Lily", but Hermione was a little fed up with her getting a pass on being Lily while their mutual childhood friend got the short end of the stick every time.

The forest seemed to hold on to some of the radiant warmth of the day, but it was cooling enough to make the path misty. The colours were almost muted in sepia like an old photograph come to life. The colours became darker as she went in deeper, partially due to the canopy and the time of night.

Whatever fear she had in the back of her mind of the unknown lurking in the Forbidden Forest, she remembered what Severus had said.

"Stick to the path and take a right when the path splits. Do not leave the path until you get to the clearing." He looked at her with a pained expression. "I need you to be there. Please."

"But what about Lily?" Hermione had asked.

"She won't come. She doesn't trust me. I need you to trust me."

Hermione sighed. "I do trust you. You know that, Severus."

And when the gobstones were down, she did trust Severus. If anything, he was brutally honest when others were content to smooth things over and lie. Severus was, despite what most people thought, capable of great feats and greater emotion, but he hid the latter under a scowl or a mask of feigned disgust.

But she and Lily had known him since they were all small children, and she could read those small tells better than most. Lily probably could too, if she ever bothered to try.

Hermione continued to walk the path, feeling as though eyes were always watching her, but whether they were friend or foe still remained to be seen. There was a reason the forest was forbidden, after all.

She trusted Severus.

He had never meant to hurt her, and he was always the first to draw a wand in her defence whenever James and his idiot mates came around to make fun of her hair or some such rot. They always tried to sweet talk Lily, even though she always told them to go get bent— at least to begin with.

Now, it seemed, Lily was experimenting with a number of interpersonal relationships. She'd been with so many blokes by now that many of her fellow students were whispering that she was working on testing out all the brooms at Hogwarts. She'd started off by breaking poor Remus' heart, moved on to Conrad McLaggen, then it was Mitchell Corner. Some suggested that she'd dated Frank Longbottom just to get Alice jealous enough to get with the program, but even Hermione wasn't exactly sure what Lily's true motives were. What was really boggling was the fact that after a nasty potions explosion, Evan Rosier had started courting Lily like she was a pureblood, having seemingly shed his own bigotry overnight, trading it in for kindness and understanding.

This had all frustrated James Potter to no end, and the arrogant boy now seemed utterly determined to "set things right."

Whatever had happened, potion or not, Evan Rosier and Lily were two peas in a pod. They'd been off shagging in every available spare classroom, corner, broom closet, supply closet, linen closet, walk-in closet, wardrobe, locker room, armoire, and even some of the larger cupboards under the stairs.

The Slytherins were utterly mortified by this, and it took some of the attention off of Severus in favour of some rather severe head-scratching over the odd couple of Evan Rosier and Lily "Mudblood" Evans.

James was always trying to accuse Severus of slipping a lust potion into Lily's pumpkin juice, which had led to Minerva McGonagall doing a scan looking for any trace of lust and love potions. That had gotten James, Sirius, and Peter in a whole lot of trouble as they had accumulated quite a stash of both in their school trunks.

Remus, to his credit and dismay, had been found perfectly clean of all such potions.

Needless to say, the majority of witches with a history of "riding certain brooms" came down on them like the Great Siege of Gibraltar. The boys, of course, swore up and down that they hadn't ever used them, only confiscated them from some of the younger students.

Since no potions were found to be missing from Slughorn's stores and the apothecaries in Hogsmeade had no records of selling any of their potions to minors, however, it was impossible to tell how many (if any) had actually been used, and the Gryffindor boys had been let off with a stern warning.

Some said that the punishment meted out by the witches in question was far worse than anything the Wizengamot could have come up with as the little gang had been painfully hobbling about for a good month after,squeaking like mice whenever they talked.

Potter's Quidditch form had diminished considerably, and he hadn't caught a snitch in months.

So sad.

Positively tragic, even.

But all the drama in Gryffindor didn't really matter much to Hermione save for those occasions when it personally affected her, and she and Severus had spent most of their time studying for N.E. . Since the exams were now over ( sadly they took longer to grade than to sit) it was all about finishing up the remainder of the school year to graduate and become adults in the eyes of the rest of the Wizarding World.

So, if Severus needed her to slip away and meet him in a dark and creepy forest, then she would gladly do so. He'd never asked anything of her before, and what he had asked for was so miniscule.

When she arrived at the clearing, she noted the torches glowing in the gloom, and she wondered what sort of meeting required torchlight in the middle of the night.

It seemed strange to her that there were so many torches lighting the area just to meet with one person.

"Ah, so our little guest has arrived." Hermione heard the voice in the darkness outside the fires as low chuckling surrounded it. More voices came from behind her, and she saw several wands pointed at her.

"Get into the centre, Mudblood," she heard the voices jeer at her.

She stepped out into the clearing, her eyes squinting in the flames. Her cloak completely covered her head, but it also blocked her peripheral vision slightly. She had a feeling she was vastly outnumbered.

The cloak protected her from much of the cold, and it had been her constant companion ever since she had found it in the second-hand shoppe in Diagon Alley. Hogwarts Castle was naturally quite chilly, even in the summer months, and a warm cloak was a godsend in the even cooler dungeons. As she had grown older, her tolerance for the cold had lessened, and the Scottish weather was likely to freeze her to death when she wasn't wrapped in her cloak, no matter what sort of warming charm she'd tried on her other clothing.

Sometimes, it even seemed like the cloak wrapped more securely around her when she was feeling chilled, and she wondered if someone had worked some greater enchantment upon it before it had found its way to the shoppe. And Crookshanks never once tried to scratch it— unlike other things he loved to dig his claws into.

"So this is the Mudblood," a wheezing, almost-hissing voice said. "Doesn't seem like much, does it? I think that yes— it is most appropriate, indeed."

Was this where Severus wanted to meet? Surely he hadn't meant to bring her to a meeting with—

Death Eaters?

Was this You-Know-Who?

"Avery, Mulciber—" the hissing voice said. "Show the Mudblood a bit of pureblood hospitality."

Suddenly she was punched directly in the face, her head reeling and spinning, her vision filled with small stars.

"We hear you haven't accepted any cock from all the options in Hogwarts," Avery sneered at her. "Think you're too good for everyone, Mudblood? Maybe you didn't get the right offers."

Avery backhanded her, and she tasted blood in her mouth, her skin stinging and jaw aching.

"Looks like I'll be waiting for a while yet," Hermione said thickly, the blood running down her jaw to drip onto the ground. Where her blood dripped, small puffs of steam seemed to rise upward but went unnoticed.

Hermione winced as another hard blow sent her sprawling, and Mulciber licked his lips in eager anticipation as he got on top of her, pinning her down. He tugged at his trousers as he lifted his robe, all too eager to take what he wanted. "Look at me, girl, as I show you your place," he grunted. He tore the hood off her head, took her jaw in his fingers, and jerked her head around to stare at him.

The hissing man stepped out into the clearing now, his face pale and nose but slits. His eyes— oh, but they were aglow in red. He laughed, cackling. "You see, Severus?" he said, flicking his wand to float the bound wizard to the centre of the circle. "See how weak and troubled your Mudblood is? Surely you see if you swear yourself to me that it will be much better for you— I will even let you have her back. After her— reeducation, of course."

"Oi! Mulciber, hurry it up, mate. We want our turn," Avery heckled, giving his friend a kick on the rump.

Mulciber's body fell over, frozen, skin greying— still and unmoving.

"What the fuck?!" some of the others blurted in the dark, surrounding Hermione and the fallen Mulciber.

Voldemort jerked around and looked at Severus, pointing his wand at him, but what stood in Severus' place was anything but a terrified coward who didn't want to take the Mark, no.

Dark fur and a panther-like form stood in his place. Smouldering orange, sulfur eyes (four to be exact) glowered at him as plumes of smoke seemed to rise off the dark body. Spikes ran down the spine to where a sinuous tail split off into two, each with its own set of spiny plates and lizard-like scales. Rivulets of saliva dripped from the monster's jaws as it leapt upon Voldemort, jaws extended like the gaping maw of a basilisk as its fangs sank into the Dark Lord's head and crunched it between his jaws. The great beast shook the head violently and cast it aside, but it seemed as though Voldemort was not so easily dealt with. He staggered around, arms reaching out like a zombie from a Muggle horror film.

Suddenly, a black cloak went flying through the air and wrapped Voldemort up like a burrito, and the man's screams punctuated the crushing of bone and tearing flesh as the cloak revealed itself to be a very, very pissed-off Lethifold.

The beast jerked his head up. "Hermione?!" he called out, seemingly quite surprised that vocal cords were allowing speech as he was noticing Hermione standing up from the place she had been on the ground. Her curly hair was now a tangle of highly agitated asps, their eyes aglow with magic and rage.

She held out her arm, and the Lethifold returned to her, wrapping itself around her like a cloak once more as the hood came up to protect her head . The asps tucked themselves up and around the hood, disappearing as if they had never been there.

"We need to talk," Hermione said flatly.

Severus swallowed with a little difficulty. He sat down hard on his rump, his muscular body smouldering and tails flipping back and forth in an expression of obvious anxiety. "Um, yeah. We probably should."

He eyed the circle of petrified Death Eater candidates and the bones of the erstwhile Dark Lord.

"Sodding Mulciber and Avery cold-cocked me out here while I was waiting for you," Severus began. "I was going to tell you what I was— the truth I'd been hiding from you since January in our fifth year. The year Lupin—" He hissed as his Vow prevented him from going any further. "The year I almost died."

"So you weren't out here to sacrifice me to You-Know-Who?"

"No!" Severus almost shouted. "I told them to take their so-called apprenticeship offer and stuff it. I'd find my own bloody way—"

He winced. "I saw you go down, and I just saw red. Felt nothing but this overwhelming rage— and then—"

"You did have a rather life-changing experience," Hermione said dryly, tugging her hood over her head a little more deeply. "I can relate, apparently."

"You do know you're wearing a carnivorous XXXXX creature, right?"

"Well spotted," Hermione snorted. "I couldn't help but notice when it ate You-Know-Who."

The cloak gave a soft, rather polite belch as if to add its own commentary on the matter.

"I wonder what in Merlin's name it was eating until now—" Severus boggled, his sulfurous eyes widening slightly.

Hermione stared at the surrounding collection of petrified "statues". "I honestly have no idea. I should probably give it a name. He's a hero now, after all. Can they give an Order of Merlin to a Lethifold?"

Severus' tails flipped back and forth. "You're naming a Lethifold?"

"Walter," Hermione said. "After my Uncle Walt."

"I'm never going to be able to look you in the face again, am I?" Severus said, his muzzle turned into a great approximation of a frown. It looked more like a snarl, and he seemed to realise that a human expression on a monstrous muzzle was not a good match.

"I'm starting to think that the heirloom my mother gave me was made so you could."

"Excuse me?" Severus replied. He didn't remember there being any family heirloom.

"Mum said it's been in the family for generations," Hermione said. "It's an ancient Greek Drachma with Athena's face on one side and her owl on the other. She said Great Grandma said it protected those we loved from our gaze. She was never sure what that meant, but she promised she'd take care of it and pass it down to her daughters. Mum said it would disappear as if by magic but when I was born, it showed up again and kept reappearing no matter where she tucked it away."

She took a necklace from around her neck, and it shined in her hands as it fell from her palm and dangled on a seemingly fine chain. It pulsed with energy—deep, ancient magic that seemed rooted beyond the senses he was used to using.

Hermione seemed to stare at it; she held it in front of her face even as the hood kept her gaze safely hidden away.

"I think it required me to have an epiphany," Hermione whispered.

"What sort of revelation?" Severus asked.

"That a lifetime without you in it would be no life at all," she answered. "If you would have me."

Severus' ears flattened on his head as his lips pulled back from his teeth. "Are you mad, woman? I'm a giant smouldering cat with double vision."

"I'm a Gorgon," Hermione said with a tug of her lips.

Severus worried on his split tails with his teeth and then let them fall away. "I would, you know. Be at your side. Always."

Hermione fell to her knees, her head cast down so the hood covered her face completely. She reached out with her hands, and Severus placed his head in her hands so she could feel him.

She ran her fingers over his muzzle, teeth, ears, and spines. "Your fur is so soft," she said quietly. The coin pendant seemed to glow a light but bright green as she put it around his neck and kissed his forehead. "I love you," she murmured into his fur.

There was a surge of warmth and then radiant heat, and Severus' hands enclosed hers as his beast shape fell away. He pulled her up to her feet as his mouth covered hers.

Severus felt the slither of asps against his forehead as the warmth of their kiss spread through their bodies and left them quivering with ancient, undeniable magic.

As he pulled away, he took in a deep breath and pulled down the hood of the Lethifold cloak and looked into Hermione's eyes.

Her chocolate brown eyes had black rings around the irises, and her pupils were opened wide but distinctively slit like a serpent's. Her head asps were staring at him curiously, tongues flicking.

"I love you, too," he confessed, a shy but genuine smile on his face.

A shimmer caught his attention as the coin necklace reappeared around Hermione's neck. He touched his neck where it had been in a panic.

A wreath of olive leaves shimmered in a magical circle surrounding the Greek pattern of the aegis. Setting in the centre of the aegis was the proud head of Medusa looking upward, head-snakes rising gracefully in a circle as if she were whispering to them even as they entwined like the Ouroborus to crown her head.

Severus looked into Hermione's face with wonder.

Hermione smiled at him. "I think Athena approves of us."

He took her hands in his as he pressed his forehead to hers. "Then we shall give proper prayers in the morning in her honour for her gifts," Severus said, his palms cupping her cheeks.

Her head asps slithered against his hands like felines seeking pats as Walter the Lethifold surrounded them both and obscured them from sight for a bit of well-earned, long-awaited privacy.

Unbeknownst to the canoodling couple, the three wizards hidden under the invisibility cloak stared in horrified petrification as they joined the stone garden in eternal meditation.

Three Wizards Go Missing from Hogwarts as First Wizarding War Comes to an Abrupt End

Memo

From: HBOY, Amelia Bones

To: DoM, all

The new "statue" placement in the Arboretum courtesy of our newest Unspeakables Severus and Hermione Snape has been added along with a beautiful fountain donated by the Rosier family to commemorate the wedding of their son Evan to Lily (née Evans) as well as their upcoming child. They had fountains given to every department in the Ministry. If you have a spare moment, take a look. (Ours is most definitely the best, I don't care what the Department of Redundancy Department says.)

Also, Manfred, stop charming the water into firewhisky!

We will be having a welcoming dinner for all our new agents this Friday. Come say hello!

Murphy, don't forget to bring Alastor. The last time he missed the welcome dinner he was cranky for a month from missing out on the raspberry tarts.

See you there!

And they lived happily (and shadily) ever after.

Fin.

A/N: Happy (almost there) Birthday to Tea! (DeepShadows2)

Thanks to Dragon and the Rose and TheFrenchPress for their shady help in betaing this fic right under DeepShadows2's nose.

p.s. Walter the Lethifold is just going to show up like Manfred in almost all of my stories, I think. He's the best Lethifold!