Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Hogwarts universe, I earn nothing. I am just playing - with a loving heart and neverending joy.

Chapter 30

Thanks to her discipline Minerva had gathered herself so far that she carefully followed the events in the Great Hall in order not to miss whatever cue Severus would hopefully give her.
To distrust him did not occur to her for a moment, all the single pieces fit together too well.
She felt as if a huge knot had finally burst that had grown in the dark and she wished she hadn't been so blind so often in the past, then maybe she should have recognized ...
Bah. Nonsense.
Even if she somehow would have managed to join this group of gentlemen - neither Albus nor Severus would ever have really included her. These stubborn men, each in his own way incapable of approaching someone as trustfully as they themselves demanded it of others.

And yet - this gloomy, brilliant boy who had always remained an outsider both as a student and as an adult had apparently been fighting his own war for a long time, against whom or for whatever reason ... Did it really have to end like this?

Minerva's heart painfully missed a beat when, at that moment, a terrifyingly grown-up Harry stepped out of the ranks and turned against Snape, almost spitting at him with anger.
An outsider as well, fighting his own war as well, nowhere near as brilliant as Severus, but with a huge heart - which at this very moment made him turn in the completely wrong direction.

Severus silently listened to the accusation, until for a tiny moment his eyes briefly searched her gaze, letting her know that the time had come. He silently pointed his wand at Harry, who was caught off guard by such an unusual reaction after his angry speech: He had never seen the professor prefer the wand to the word in his choice of weapons.

Before Harry could even think about how to defend himself, however, and started wondering why Snape hesitated and had not already hexed him into the arms of the Giant Squid, he felt pushed aside. Minerva McGonagall took his place and like everyone in the room Harry was impressed by the powerful aura that suddenly surrounded her.
Nothing reminded of the fragile elderly lady any more as she pointed her wand at Snape, who, to Harry's grim delight, seemed to freeze in shock for a moment.

Only Hermione, who stared at the scenario in front of her like she was hypnotized, knew what was really going on between these two people at that moment. It was only her who recognized the false attacks and blockades in the following fight, which gave Severus the opportunity to knock out the Carrow twins with a double stupor.
For everyone else, it looked like, damn, it had to look like Minerva had sent the treacherous Slytherin to hell, and the trembling in her voice as she called him a 'coward' when he finally disappeared was carried by triumph alone .

Besides Hermione, Severus heard the real reason in this, however; the despair and disappointment at the failed trust, which she had been able to sum up surprisingly well with the word coward. He could understand her all too well. Admittedly, he hadn't expected that she would follow the unknown plan so wholeheartedly and trust him. Perhaps it had been a mistake not to involve her sooner or more, but it was like his encounter with Narcissa at the Unbreakable Vow: Too late.
Albus' policy of complete silence had simply worked too well and it was once again idle to speculate in retrospect as to how far that might have been wrong.
At least he knew Hogwarts was in good hands now.

Forbidding himself any further thought about Minerva or Hogwarts, Snape focused on his flight. He hated this kind of travelling, which required a tremendous amount of body control and yet was loaded with the enormous risk of being blown away as a black cloud and ending up as road salt on the dustpan of a landlord in Hogsmeade.

In the Great Hall, Hermione stared at the shattered window through which Severus had took flight and in her head a huge clock hand seemed to be moving on a gigantic clock face.
'Afterwards'.
The clock was ticking.

Lost in her thoughts, she only noticed late that Ron had spoken to her and very suddenly turned around to him. "What did you say?" Ron winced at her sudden movement and tried again very carefully after his experiences with her moods of the last few weeks.

"I think I have an idea. I mean, about the cup, you know?" He looked at her waiting while Hermione took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate.

Cup. Horcrux. Destroy. Weaken Voldemort. As soon as possible.
The longer Snape would be able to survive. Who would he turn to with this darned piece of information? McGonagall?

One after the other. One at a time, Hermione.

She looked at Ron and had to smile at his caution. Christ, she urgently needed to work on her manners. He looked at her like one of those surprise bags from Fred and George's shop, which occasionally tended to explode and leave you with a bright yellow face and hair for days. Only her smile now visibly relaxed him.

"Tell me, Ron."

The plan he told her wasn't bad - why hadn't she thought of that damn basilisk before? Another specimen of this nasty species had never been heard of, so the risk of a petrifying stare was virtually eliminated. She couldn't help but thinking of Snape, how he told her he would set her up in his office if she ever was petrified again and how he would enjoy her silence. That day it had started, she had sawn him smile for the first time ...
'Hello, Hermione! Anyone home?'
Bloody hell. Stunned, Hermione realized that she was acting just as stupid as she had always pointed out to poor Lavender. Pointless daydreaming, on a very poorly chosen moment.
Hermione rigorously put a stop to her overwhelming emotional insights of the day and was finally able to immerse herself fully into the here and now.

And this was really about time.

Thanks to Harry, who by now had learned to deal with the mysterious connection to Voldemort, they knew that Riddle was already setting up his troops in front of Hogwarts. And he was very unhappy to find that he had lost another Horcrux.

Minerva McGonagall managed to keep everyone busy with tasks and decisions. She sent the hesitant, unwilling or weak away, conveying grim determination while at the same time she turned Hogwarts into a fortress.
They all were aware of what would happen, that there would be a battle and they, the remaining students, would not be spared of this. Dumbledore's army had grown up.
And they would shove the pathetic attempt of trying to persuade anyone of them to betray Harry up the Dark Lord's ass - if he had one. Hermione did not want to think about this further.
'Kindergarten-play-group'. Hermione snorted defiantly at the memory of those words from Snape. Anything else but that, professor.

Together with Ron she destroyed the damn cup and in a wave of relief they embraced each other. He wasn't supposed to kiss her and as it happened it just made it clear to her what she already had known before - it was like kissing her own brother, it didn't work.
Not at all.

There was no time now for a clarifying conversation with a lot of butterbeer and loads of fat loaden potato products, however, and Hermione simply turned around, pulled him with her and they ran back to Harry. He had been able to solve the riddle about the diadem in the meantime and with hope in their hearts they ran to the Room of Requirement.

The encounter with Draco and his clowns there was annoying, but manageable - at least until the idiot Crabbe conjured up a demon fire that has the annoying habit of being almost impossible to be put out again. An impressive demonstration of what happens when you play around with dark magic without a clue; her accidental almost phonecall to Voldemort, on the other hand, had been downright harmless compared to that, Hermione thought.

Draco's face showed pure horror while they had to listen to the screaming of the dying Crabbe, and his palpable despair after Harry's scarce rescue touched Hermione more than she wanted. She wanted to hate him; he stood for everything that she had had to endure in his father's house when this madwoman had tortured her - but she couldn't. She saw too clearly now what Dumbledore and Snape had long recognized: Draco's character was weak, but not yet completely depraved.

Harry and Ron watched in amazement as she pulled the sobbing boy up from the floor by his cloak with astonishing strength and shook him. Startled, he looked into her face and she knew that he too had the events at Malfoy Manor in mind when he immediately avoided her gaze again. She shook him again ruthlessly so that he had to look at her.

She spoke to him in a tone that somehow reminded Draco of his Head of House. "Grow up, Draco. This isn't the end." Draco's eyes widened in surprise, apparently he'd rather expected Hermione to take care of his nose again.
Instead, she continued in that strange tone that he had heard by no one but Snape before.

"Who are you, Draco Malfoy? Make up your mind instead of just trying to please someone else." She didn't know if she was making a difference, but she had at least tried - and ignored her inner Snape who rolled his eyes and was muttering something to himself about world improvement madness.

Suddenly, battle noises rose from all sides; evidently the progressive loss of pieces of his soul had not amused Voldemort very much.

In fact, Snape had been glad not to be anywhere near the Dark Lord at that moment when, in quick succession, he could feel the waves of anger that followed the destruction of the Horcruxes. It must have been a strange sight for outsiders to see the otherwise terrifying Death Eaters in the midst of preparations for going to war with Hogwarts, suddenly writhing like a silent choir in synchronized pain.

Only when Riddle's concentration had returned to something else did Severus allow himself the brief moment of thinking about his warrior in the besieged castle, who was apparently fulfilling her task well.

Now she thinks there is only Nagini left, he inwardly sighed.

He had to get hold of the boy somehow to make sure that he would look at the memories that would prompt him kindly to give up his life.

He would never have thought that Lily's son would even make it this far - and now it would all be in vain, the thought was unbearable to him. But if he knew one thing, it was how Lily would have dealt with this situation. The Sorting Hat had sent her to Gryffindor for a reason.

'The truth, Severus.' she had always said when they already got into arguments a lot and her path had started to lead away from him. 'I don't want to waste my time guessing if you just want to please me. Give me the truth, tell me what something is about and then I'll have to see for myself whether I can deal with it or not.'

She couldn't.
Not even when his repentance and his incipient doubts about the whole Death Eater glory had become the truth; by then she had already stopped listening to him and decided to live a distant life.
And yet she would want the same thing for her son: That he knows the truth, even if it would put him in an irresolvable conflict.

The irony of being the chosen one to deliver the death sentence to that boy, for whose life he had forced himself through his own existence - that was his last penance.

Inside the castle, Hermione, Harry and Ron saw from the gallery that the open fights had begun. Death Eaters - and to Ron's much more horror, Acromantulas as well - had managed to break into Hogwarts. And with many other species pouring in it was impossible to even tell which side they were on.

They left the two Slytherins where they were and ran back into the center of the castle.

"Nagini," Hermione gasped, "Where's the snake? She is the final Horcrux. Don't bother with other fights, the sooner we'll get rid of him." She was right; Harry stopped and concentrated.

„She's with him." He said slowly and Hermione and Ron watched him silently for not to disturb Harry's thoughts.

"Not in the castle, not in the castle. In the Shrieking Shack, with Malfoy, Nagini ... " Harry's voice went quieter, almost became a murmur and Hermione leaned forward to understand him better, until suddenly Riddle's voice came crystal clear out of Harry's mouth, causing her to almost jump backwards.

"Lucius, my dear." As always, when Harry switched to Voldemort's voice in his mental connection, shivers went down Hermione's spine.

"Bring Severus to me and take care of the further preparations."

Harry ended the connection with a short movement of his head before he would give himself away and for Hermione the information was perfectly complete.
Severus was alive.
At least for the moment.
And now he would be on his way to the Shrieking Shack, where the monster was waiting with Nagini.

She knew what she had to do and, for the first time ever, didn't have to bother the boys with a lame excuse. Harry already had already grabbed the Invisibility Cloak and they started running.