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

I am so sorry - this chapter literally got lost in translation... so I had to put it in here and push the other chapters forward.

Chapter 31

Hidden by the Invisibility Cloak they ran through the fights to the whomping willow which guarded the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. They slipped through the entrance and both Harry and Hermione immediately hid in an alcove directly behind it while Ron tried to storm on.

"Don't, Ron, stay here," Hermione hissed as she carefully folded the cloak so that she could quickly throw it over the three of them again in an emergency.

"But we want to go to the shack ..." Ron said, confused.

"Do you want to have a cup of tea with Riddle, or what? Wait until Snape arrives." Hermione was willing to glue Ron to the floor if necessary, to make the meeting between Snape and Harry possible, but luckily Ron gave in and pushed himself next to them into the alcove. However, he was not entirely convinced.

"But then we've got Snape there as well, Mione. That makes three of them if I count that damn snake in." Hermione opened her mouth to answer that they should just watch for now anyway when Harry started talking.

"I'm not so sure about that anymore ..." he said thoughtfully and Hermione was so surprised that she forgot to close her mouth again.

„Eh?" said Ron and even though that did not correspond to any elaborated question word, Hermione agreed with it without reservation.
Harry scratched his head and grimaced.

"I don't know. Something is not right. I mean ... Snape had hundreds of opportunities to get me out of the way."

"Are you okay?" asked Ron, stunned. "Snape almost killed you in the Great Hall if McGonagall hadn't been there."

Harry grimaced again, while Hermione could hardly believe her ears.

"Right. Almost. Ron, maybe I'm crazy, but ... I stood there and he ... he didn't do anything. He waited for McGonagall to push me aside." He shook his head. "Hermione, am I just imagining that or did you see that too? What do you think?"

'You don't even want to know what I'm thinking, Harry,' thought Hermione and said out loud in a thoughtful sounding tone, "You're right, that was strange, that's what I thought too. Did you notice that it was Snape who hit the Carrows with a stupor?"

Both looked at her in amazement and shook their heads.
Hermione pretended to be trying to remember carefully. "We have been wrong with him a couple of times, you remember, at the Quidditch game, for example, when Quirell tried to jinx your broom."

"Come on, you don't want to sell me the bat as the good guy now, do you?" Ron started to get seriously upset. "He murdered Dumbledore, Harry, you saw it."

Harry's face froze.

'Shit' thought Hermione and quickly said, "Ron, it's not about good or bad right now, just that he apparently for whatever reason does not want to kill Harry or hand him over to Riddle. He's not a threat to Harry. And that makes him useful to us, as strange as that may sound."

She was relieved to see that Harry had gotten over the memories of what happened on the Astronomy Tower and nodded slowly and thoughtfully.

"Well, I don't get that anymore. That's too complicated for me, "said Ron, capitulating.

"A wise insight, Mr. Weasley."
A black shadow broke away from the dark tunnel wall a few meters away from them and now came directly towards them. Hermione's heart was pounding hard as Snape stepped into the dim light that shone through the roots of the whomping willow into the tunnel.

Ron swallowed audibly and fiddled with his wand as the tall figure stepped closer. But Snape only focused on Harry's face with an intense look. Hermione knew what that meant and saw Harry's slight flinch as Snape entered his thoughts. Then, however, Harry's eyes widened to a stunned look and he stared at the wizard in front of him in disbelief, who had already pulled back from his head.

Snape raised his hand, holding the vial with the memories, and held it up to Harry's face. Since the latter remained motionless, he grabbed Harry's left hand and put the vial into it.

"Headmaster's office. Pensieve. And hurry up, Potter. You don't have much time left." The last sentence was accompanied by a strange bitterness that made Hermione's senses in the back of her head sit up in alarm.

Snape was still looking at Harry from close range. His jaw muscles worked.

"You have your mother's eyes."

This came so quietly and unexpectedly that both Ron and Hermione wondered for a moment whether they had really just heard it. Just a blink of an eye later, Snape straightened and turned to walk in the direction of the Shrieking Shack.

"Get out of here now. This is not the place and not the time." It was an order, a statement, a law - and neither Harry nor Ron thought for a second of opposing to it.

In Hermione, on the other hand, everything cringed when he shortly glanced at her and then set off into the darkness, into his certain death. He had nothing else to expect at the other end of the tunnel, for no other reason could Voldemort have called for him alone and entrusted someone else with the further preparations.
He was just as aware of this as Hermione, but he no longer cared.

He had been deeply relieved to have been correct in his suspicion that Hermione would appear on Nagini's trail with the Chosen One. He heard her voice at the tunnel entrance, where he had positioned himself waiting just moments ago. The boy's words afterwards had surprised him as much as Hermione, and it made it easier for him to accept what was left for him to do now. Buying a little bit of time, creating a diversion until Lily's son knew his fate - and then it was finally over for him.

"Sir". He stopped.

Of course. His stubborn soldier simply had to have the last word.
Her desperate voice hit him unexpectedly painfully and he didn't turn around when he answered her for the last time.

"You heard what I said, Miss Granger. Go. Now."

And after a long pause, in which the three of them stared at his black back, he added something that finally convinced Ron that the old git had gone completely mad.

"Please."

Hermione felt Harry's hand tightly on her arm, he pulled her with him and Ron also nudged her shoulder towards the exit. Stunned, she stumbled through the angry branches of the whomping willow and allowed Harry to tear the cloak from her hand and toss it over them. However, when they arrived at the castle wall, she stopped.

"Harry, I'll keep an eye on this while you look go to the pensieve. Ron can watch out for you. I have to go back, otherwise we have no way of knowing where he's taking Nagini. Whatever Snape is telling you now is probably so dangerous that you shouldn't be fooling around in Riddle's mind afterwards. Otherwise he wouldn't have waited that long."

"But Mione, we can't part." There was panic in Ron's voice. "How are we supposed to find you again in this chaos?"

"Ron, please, there is no time for that now. Trust me. We'll find each other."

Now it was her who pushed the boys forward under the Invisibility Cloak and Harry, who hadn't spoken a word since meeting Snape, nodded absently at her and ran off. Cursing, Ron followed him and for a while she could see his bodyless legs stumbling grotesquely through the side courtyard of the castle until the cloak covered them both completely again.

In fact, Harry hadn't really listened to Hermione right now. He was too preoccupied with what he had just experienced, the image that Snape - Snape! - had conveyed to him as his own memory. He recognized them immediately, James and Lily, his parents, laughing and dancing happily in a swirl of autumn leaves, a young couple in love, very similar to him and Ginny. And this image was carried by a single thought from Snape, a constant repetition in almost desperate breathlessness. 'I regret.' Again and again. 'I regret.'

Harry was inexplicably sure that he had received a key from Snape with the memories in his hand. Finally, an answer in this swamp of silence and hints, and he ran so fast that Ron really had trouble following him. The headmaster's office was unlocked and indeed - there stood the pensieve, ready to use. It had been planned well in advance, obviously.

"Watch out for the door, Ron," Harry gasped as he pulled the cork out of the vial and then let the silvery liquid run into the pensieve. Obediently, his friend positioned himself in the hallway, leaving him with whatever Snape wanted to tell Harry.

The minutes passed like tough silver toad slime and finally Ron couldn't take it anymore when he couldn't hear anything from inside the office. Carefully he looked through the door and saw Harry, who had already emerged from the memories and seemed to be staring into nothingness with both hands on the edge of the pensieve. He had an expression on his face that shook Ron to the core.

"Harry?" He asked fearfully. What in Merlin's name had he seen?

Harry took a deep breath and seemed to come back from a place very far away. He turned to Ron and tried a smile, but failed completely and made his friend even more insecure.

"It's okay, Ron. That was ... that was just a little bit much."

"A little bit very much, apparently. You look awful." Ron didn't trust Harry's soothing tone.

Harry took another deep breath and tried to get his thoughts and emotions under control again. He looked at the vial that he was still holding in his hand, then dipped it into the pensieve and caught the silver thread of Snape's memories which were so closely connected to his own life. After carefully sealing the vial he turned and looked at the portrait of Dumbledore, who returned Harry's gaze unmistakably tense. Apparently Dumbledore had left the picture with an inkling of what was really hidden behind his violent death.

Harry held up the vial. "I received this from Professor Snape, and I think you know what it is. Should he ... "Harry cleared his throat," Should he or I not be able do that anymore, make sure the world knows what really happened. Promise me that."

"My boy ..." said Dumbledore's portrait with a somewhat helpless gesture.

"You owe him that, at least that." There was a harshness in Harry's voice that Ron had never heard of him and Albus Dumbledore's portrait nodded silently.

Harry pocketed the vial.

"Let's go, Ron."

Silence grew in the headmaster's office while the paintings eyed each other carefully.
After a while, it was Phineas Black who first commented on what had happened.

"There you have it, Albus. Gryffindors. Whenever you think you know them ..." and Albus Dumbledore sighed.

In the hallway, Ron grabbed Harry's sleeve and stopped him.

"Honestly Harry, that's enough. Tell me what is going on. Why does Dumbledore owe Snape something, what should the world know? I'm your friend, Harry."

Harry looked at him and couldn't help but give him a quick hug.

"I know, Ron. And you have no idea how grateful I am for that."

He let go of him and shook his head.

"We were so wrong, Ron, everything was so different from what we thought. Snape - he had to kill Dumbledore, Dumbledore forced him to do it. It was all a plan, Ron, all a plan to stop Riddle." Harry told the increasingly stunned Ron what he had learned, leaving out Snape's feelings for his mother as well as the information about what exactly the last Horcrux was, which had to be destroyed after Nagini.

That was his very own business - this painful truth had become clear to him as he bent over the pensieve and pondered what he had seen.
Ron didn't notice such gaps in a story, the rest of it was indigestible enough for him. He couldn't have done that with Hermione, thought Harry, she would have ...

Damn it! Hermione!

They had to find Hermione before she tried to confront Nagini herself, because she assumed that all other Horcruxes were defeated, as he had thought himself a few minutes ago.

Neither Harry nor Ron had the slightest idea that it wasn't Nagini that made Hermione almost fly her way back to the Shrieking Shack. She ran through the angry branches of the whomping willow and down the secret passage, driven by the greatest fear she had ever felt: to lose the most precious thing there was.

Life.

And she was not thinking of her own life.