A/N: The Ravens won the superbowl (woo-hoo!) and I'm home sick today. Ah-choo!
Anti-Litigation Charm: I do not own.
Please review!
"Harry's defenses are beginning to fail," Hermione informed Severus the next day, as they stood outside Tine Cottage. They were in the shadows under the eaves, away from the bright summer sun. Selenius's odd, sullen streak had not quite abated over the last week, though it seemed to improve whenever he went flying. Now they watched him bowing to Buckbeak, unblinkingly, with Sirius supervising. "I've told the Headmaster, naturally."
"What caused it?" Severus asked quietly.
"The Dark Lord found out about the locket Horcrux," Hermione said in an undertone. "Harry managed to block it out moments after it happened, and though we undoubtedly know he's still enraged—perhaps even more so, now that he's had a chance to check on other Horcruxes—Harry's managed to deaden the link enough that a second bleed-through hasn't happened. But the fact that it happened in the first place concerns me."
"Potter hasn't been having strange dreams?"
"No. Ron can attest to that."
Her husband lifted a finger to his lips, tracing them the way he often did when deep in thought. "It would seem to me that strong emotions, particularly on the Dark Lord's end, strengthen the link. Sudden outbursts seem to be enough to break through the normal level of defenses Potter employs against him, forcing Potter to put in more effort to keep him out in those moments than usual."
"That's what I thought, but the way things are going for the Dark Lord, things are only going to get harder for Harry from here on out," Hermione said in a hushed tone. Selenius was climbing onto Buckbeak's back now, and a moment later, the Hippogriff took off at a running start, racing for the cliff. "Harry has been keeping up his practice—even I could tell that, with the amount of time it took him to cut off the link—but it still presents a danger."
"I agree," Severus muttered.
There was an audible shout of delight as Buckbeak spread his wings and lunged into the air.
"How are the Malfoys faring?" Hermione asked quietly.
"Draco left for France today," Severus replied.
"I thought Faulkner moved to the Mariana Islands?"
"He moved back to Europe five years ago," Severus corrected. "Narcissa appears to be relieved, and according to her, Lucius shares her sentiments. Things went better than expected."
"And the Dark Lord?" Hermione asked, her tone perfectly casual.
"He appears to have more important things on his mind."
"Excellent."
Another pause, and then Hermione said, "Charlie's namesake dropped by today as arranged to pick him up."
It took Severus a moment to realize who she was referring to, and then his lips quirked up in a smile. "He's going to Romania?"
"He's taking Charlie back to the Hebrides Isles," Hermione corrected. "The MacFusty clan want him back. Dumbledore agreed it was best. And what better place to hide a powerfully magical object than in the belly of a dragon?"
"It would be amusing to see someone try to retrieve it, to be sure." Severus cocked his head at her for a moment, his expression thoughtful, and then he asked, "Why didn't you just destroy it?"
Hermione bit her lower lip, trying to decide how much to divulge. Sometimes, the lines between husband and spy became blurred, and she had to think carefully before she spoke.
"I have… plans for it," she said at last, and this was true. After much careful consideration and consultation of her notes, she had found a use for the stone that was too important for her to let slip away. "Charlie will keep it safe, for as long as need be."
He gave a non-committal grunt at this but did not press further.
Hermione silently took his hand in hers, resting her cheek against his shoulder as they watched Buckbeak bank to the left, riding the wind before dipping down to skim the ocean spray.
"Just one more year," she whispered. "I'm sure of it."
"Seer," he muttered.
"Not bloody likely."
~o~O~o~
Severus was summoned that evening.
They had been eating dinner when his elbow slipped, nearly knocking the bowl of Hermione's home-made rolls as he grabbed his forearm, grimacing in pain. Hermione caught the bowl just before it left the edge of the table and slid it back in place.
"That doesn't look good," she said quietly.
"It never is." He got to his feet, subtly flicking his wand to summon his mask and cloak. "I don't know how long I'll be gone. Don't wait up."
But Hermione inevitably did. As soon as he left, she began clearing the table, putting things away, knowing that after the events of the past few days, he was unlikely to return quickly. She did the dishes by hand, hoping to whittle away the time with a mindless task, and then ensconced herself in the cluttered library that she had—truthfully—not seen much of for quite some time. Their combined duties had meant the house had been somewhat abandoned over the years, and Hermione found herself idly magicking away dust off of shelves and various tomes as she waited. The collection at Spinner's End had expanded from a general assortment of treatises on dark arts and mildly illicit spellbooks to rare discourses on Alchemy and a variety of highly-illegal tomes. Hermione regretted none of it; the shared desire for elusive knowledge kept at their fingertips was a shared passion between herself and her husband. Their library, for all they rarely had an opportunity to enjoy it now, was a work of passion built between them.
The Restricted Section at Hogwarts had absolutely nothing on their personal, deranged little collection.
It occurred to her that they had never really had to child-proof the library, because Selenius had never been at Spinner's End often enough to warrant it. On the occasions he had, they usually spent that time together as a family. It meant he wasn't wandering through the house on his own, thereby keeping him out of trouble. Hermione's eyes leveled on a book on one of the top shelves, and she gave it a grim sort of smile as she pressed it in place just a bit further. The thought that they had never really had the chance to be a proper family—to live at home, to raise their son, to go through each and every rigor that all attentive parents were guaranteed to face—saddened her, but there was nothing to be done about it now.
Thinking about lost moments in parenting momentarily drew her back to thoughts of her own parents, but she quickly pushed them away. It was for the safety of all involved that she kept her distance. At the very least, it was a rather convincing reason to do so. It kept an already-complicated situation from becoming even more so.
The minutes ticked by agonizingly, and the sky outside grew dark as she waited. Hours passed as she sat in the library, gazing down at a book that her brain refused to read. Her eyes slid off the page, lost in thought after a few sentences of reading Herpo the Foul's Convulsions of Nature. It was an interesting book, it really was, and entirely relevant to the many inquiries she had about the incomplete Philosopher's Stone—particularly in how she planned to utilize it—but it was difficult to concentrate when her mind was hundreds of miles away at Severus's side instead. It was also risky, because when she did let her thoughts wander, the smoke would unfurl impatiently from between the book's pages, and Hermione would quickly rush to subdue it again.
And then, as she turned a page, she seemed to snap back into herself. Something had been off for a long time, and now that she finally had a free moment in-between duties, her mind finally seemed to latch on and attack the problem, the one puzzle that had been bothering her since Ravenclaw's Diadem had been broken. Aside from Nagini, who was currently out of her reach, the last horcrux that needed to be destroyed was utterly unknown.
There were seven Horcruxes. Everything that Hermione knew about them told her that he took great care in their creation—in not only where he kept them or what object he chose to place a part of his soul in, but also in who he murdered for the honor. He based his decisions upon a combination of convenience and status—Moaning Myrtle belonged to the former, but Tom Riddle Sr. and Hepzibah Smith belonged to the latter.
Everything that Hermione knew but had not quite put together until now pointed to the idea that Voldemort had not seven Horcruxes at the time that he murdered Harry's parents, but five. He had spent years collecting valuable objects to turn into horcruxes before seeking Harry out. He had already found the important objects he intended to use, but he wanted six horcruxes. It would make sense, then, that he would have also intended to turn Harry—his prophesied usurper—into a sixth, thereby splitting his soul into seven.
He had seven horcruxes now, with a soul split eight different ways. Bertha Jorkins had come along later, completing the set. So why had he made a seventh?
Hermione pondered this. Voldemort's soul had already been dangerously unstable the night he killed Harry's parents and tried to kill Harry. She had seen the damage the backfired spell had done to him, when it nearly blew up the house.
Dumbledore never told them what the seventh horcrux was, and Hermione had foolishly assumed that he himself didn't know.
But some things simply didn't make sense. Harry's link to Voldemort was more than just an irregularity, it was unheard of. Of course, until now, no one had survived a Killing Curse, but nothing logically explained why that would be the sole reason for their mental connection. Not unless Harry had some kind of anchor to Voldemort's mind.
Or unless Voldemort had an anchor… to Harry.
Suddenly, it all seemed to click with surprising simplicity.
Harry was the final Horcrux. The seventh, unintended Horcrux.
Hermione had been spending her time destroying all the other pieces of Voldemort's soul, but to what end? Unless the piece within Harry died, it would be for naught.
But surely, a part of her mind protested, surely even if the Headmaster knows this, he doesn't mean to kill Harry…
But what alternative is there? The harsher, more rational side of her pointed out. Just because Albus cares for the boy doesn't mean he would be above sacrificing him for the greater good…
Confronting the Headmaster about it right now was not the solution. If he knew—and if Hermione's suspicions about Harry were true, he surely did—then it would undoubtedly dissolve into an argument where neither of them would leave satisfied. At worst, a disagreement with him on this scale would erupt into a duel, and Hermione did not fancy her chances. She would rather wrestle hand-to-hand with the Giant Squid than duel Albus Dumbledore. Furthermore, he probably wouldn't need to fight her—he was a powerful wizard, but his real skills lay in manipulation. And Hermione knew that no matter how warily she walked in, dealing with her—whether with wand or wit—would be child's play for the Headmaster.
Hermione's power had grown over the years, and she had become accustomed to getting her way, but she hadn't fallen into reckless complacency. There were limits to how far a combination of manipulation and forceful personality would take her. She was not prepared to deal with Albus Dumbledore.
Part of Hermione was certain that if he expected Harry to survive, he would have told them this information already. The fact that he did not meant that Hermione was going to have to work this on her own.
She took this new discovery of hers with a calm, eerie sort of acceptance. She wasn't the brightest witch of the age for nothing. There were reasons why she was the Order's second-in-line chief administrator and the handler of its most important spy. There was quite a good case for why she was the true mastermind behind what was happening at the Ministry, where Scrimgeour was her figurehead. She had waltzed Sirius out of Azkaban, stolen a Prophecy from the Department of Mysteries, and single-handedly found and destroyed two of Voldemort's horcruxes.
She was married to a potions genius, hobby alchemist, and dark arts expert. She had personal collection of books that would make Madam Pince weep with envy. She had a Philosopher's Stone that would be at her disposal in about a year's time.
She tucked Convulsions of Nature under her arm and went upstairs to her private workroom
She needed to think.
~o~O~o~
Severus noticed a marked change about his wife over the following few weeks.
The day after his summons, she paid a visit to the Minister with her two youngest friends, and then returned home and went straight to her workroom. This was not entirely unusual; the summer was the only time they had to spend time on private projects. He himself had taken the opportunity to ensconce himself in his lab to tinker with a few ideas that he hadn't been able to entertain during his time at Hogwarts.
He had his own things to worry about. Aside from intermittent summonings—which Hermione abandoned her project to get a report from, upon his return—he had exams to grade and a son to attend to. The exams were done away with fairly quickly, but the sullen son was another matter.
Hermione appeared to have slid into one of those rare cases where she focused on her project to the exclusion of all else. She was absentminded, distracted, and distant. She forgot what days she had planned to visit Selenius at Tine Cottage, or when she was expected at the Burrow for dinner. Severus had to go into her workroom remind her of an important Order meeting that was being held at Grimmauld Place that day, on the thirtieth.
"It's the end of July?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at him with an odd sort of frown. "I thought it was still June … isn't Harry's birthday tomorrow?"
Severus would have laughed at this incident if it had not so perfectly highlighted the level of disengagement she had sunk into.
"What are you working on?" he asked, picking up a sheaf of parchment that was more ink than paper with the amount of notes she had scribbled on it. This was a test; it was normally considered taboo for one or the other to go through their partner's private research without permission, but Hermione simply waved it off.
"Research on the Philosopher's Stone," she said, chewing on the end of her quill and staring at the diagram in front of her with an unblinkingly intense gaze. "Do you know where our book on basic rune layouts is? I can't remember where I left it."
"It's in my lab."
Black had started giving him odd, suspicious looks weeks ago, whenever he visited Tine Cottage. On more than one occasion, Severus caught him giving Hermione a scrutinizing look, as though trying to figure out the method to her madness. The reason for her strange, distracted behavior. Severus could have told him it was because even if her body was there, playing chess with Selenius, her mind was still stuck in her workroom hundreds of miles away, chewing away on an entirely unrelated problem.
But he didn't. He couldn't even remember the last time he had spoken to Black.
Any sense of territoriality Hermione had about her workroom vanished in the face of her all-encompassing attention to the project. It had reached the point where Severus could walk in and read her notes, and she would hardly notice. The walls were lined with diagrams, spell-o-taped to each other to form an overarching composition, with Muggle post-it-notes stuck at intervals.
And sometimes, she forgot to eat dinner. Even if he made it. Even if he delivered it.
"Hermione," he said one evening, leaning against the doorway with an untouched plate of grilled salmon, "this has to stop."
He was extremely surprised when Hermione slowly set her notes down to look at him.
"Come here."
He crossed over to her work table, and she motioned for him to set down the plate.
"Take a look at this."
He did.
Unlike her other notes, which were messy in composition for all that they were arranged beyond compare, this one was a neat organization of ideas carefully centered around a final diagram. Severus recognized the many components and elements of its make-up, and took a moment to reference the numbered notes that accompanied each particular mark and its purpose.
"What are you trying to accomplish?" Therein lay the real question.
"If this was activated, what would it do?"
He took a closer look.
"According to design, it would be triggered by the Killing Curse," he said, his face blank.
"And what would happen?"
"It wouldn't work. You would need an exceptionally powerful reservoir of magic to accomplish this."
"Assume there's a sufficient reservoir of magic here," she said, tapping the relevant part of the diagram. The one that marked its source of power. "What would happen?"
Severus considered this for a moment.
"If a person were standing in the place of the trigger," he said slowly, "they would die."
Hermione nodded. "Go on."
"But this is not the layout for a human sacrifice. There is no apparent purpose to it." Nor would he expect his wife to be actively working on a project that would require it. Human sacrifice was not her forte. "No power would be drawn from the person killed. Who would be standing there?"
"That doesn't matter yet. Continue."
Severus traced his way around the intricate diagram with one finger. "The Sacrifice's life would cycle through the smaller circles distributed over the larger one, and then…" he paused. "I presume you're trying to temporarily remove the Sacrifice's soul from their body and return it intact, but the last circle would prevent that."
"Would it prevent all of it, or just a part?"
"It would act as a filter. It would trap a specific aspect to it." Severus flipped the diagram upside-down and pointed to another part of it. "If that's your goal, you ought to invert this rune, or you'll unintentionally trap the entire soul in this circle—you're looking to excise a portion of it, not trap it all."
He handed the diagram back to her.
"I don't know how you would expect this to work," he added flatly. "No one's going to stand precisely where you want them to while you hit them with the Killing Curse. Unless you're attempting to make a Horcrux of yourself without murdering someone else?"
"No, I'm not. With that in mind, who do you think I'm planning to use this on?" Hermione asked, with an air of false innocence that didn't fool him for a minute.
"The Dark Lord, of course," he said.
"It's a good guess, but no." The only evidence of his surprise was a rapid blink, and she added, "There are other factors to consider, but I think I have the basic layout." She pulled out a roll of spell-o-tape and snapped a piece off, walking over to a clean section of the wall and putting the parchment in place. "I have a little under a year to perfect the diagram. I have time."
She turned to look at him.
"What's today's date?"
"August 10th," he supplied.
She blinked. "It's been that long?"
He held out his hand to her. She walked across the room, and took it. With a tug, he pulled her to him, and buried his nose in her hair. Her presence in bed had been decidedly missing for the last month and a half, and he had sorely missed actually having her at his side. As opposed to her lying on her back wide awake, staring up into the darkness, her head still trapped in the room down the hall with her notes and diagrams. "Yes." A slight sniff, and he commented, "And you need a shower."
His wife looked ready to smack herself in the face. "Oh Merlin—I have books to assign! And I need to take Selenius for new books and robes…"
He let out a sigh that was partly relief mixed in with a healthy dose of exasperation. At least she had completed the first leg of her project, or had gotten a big enough breakthrough that she could redistribute her attention more evenly. Finally. "You finish up the exams. I'll speak with the Weasleys about taking Selenius with them this Saturday."
There was a brief flash of remorse in her eyes, which he recognized as regret that she would not be taking Selenius. He felt the same, but unlike her, he had no excuse for accompanying Selenius for school supplies. And then the expression was gone, and he knew she had shoved it aside, the way she locked up most of the thoughts and feelings she couldn't allow herself to dwell on at the moment. Hermione gave him a look, that particular look that contained a certain fiery glint in her eyes and a slight tilt to the corner of her lips as she took him in.
"Good. Because I have a job for you."
~o~O~o~
"You wished to speak to me, Severus?"
Severus closed the door behind him, silently surveying the Headmaster's office. As always, it seemed, Dumbledore was seated behind his desk, with something or another that required his attention. But as usual, he treated it as thought it could wait, in the event that someone needed his immediate attention.
"I wish to speak to you about Potter."
Dumbledore gave him a look of surprise. "What has he done now? Surely you aren't intending to put him in detention before school has even begun?"
Severus sneered. "No." Not that Potter wouldn't deserve it—Severus privately thought Dumbledore's Army deserved to be put in detention until the New Year for violating Orders to remain in their dormitories during the attack. Naturally, Potter would have paid it no heed. He smoothed his expression, as he took a seat. "The private lessons you gave him last year—do you plan to continue them this year?"
"Detention plans in advance now, I see," Dumbledore said, looking at him over his half-moon spectacles.
"I wonder," Severus said softly, "about the evenings you spend together. What information can you tell him, but not me?"
"What makes you think he knows any more than you do?"
"Call it intuition." Severus tilted his head. "Additionally, I have a wife who has been unable to share with me the same information that she says you gave him—and her."
Dumbledore gave him an assessing look that Severus was not at all unfamiliar with.
"It is Harry's task to defeat Voldemort," he said at last. "There is information that he needs that is essential to this."
"You trust him," Severus said quietly. And my wife. "You do not trust me."
"I prefer not to put all of my secrets in one basket, particularly not one that spends so much time dangling on the arm of Lord Voldemort."
Severus felt his hands clench together of their own accord. "Which I do on your orders."
"And you do it extremely well," Dumbledore said, folding his hands together. His gaze was perfectly serious. "Do not think I underestimate the constant danger in which you place yourself, Severus—or your wife. But you two play a dangerous game that has, at several points, nearly gone awry. There are some things that are not necessary for you to know, and we will all be the safer for it."
"These things, which you wish to keep from the Dark Lord," Severus stated, endeavoring to keep from grinding his teeth as he spoke, "you are telling to a boy with a direct link to the Dark Lord's mind. And who, even with his almost miraculous improvement in Occlumency, does not have the mental fortitude to keep him out entirely."
"While Lord Voldemort's emotions may occasionally leak through to Harry, I do not believe he will try to take advantage of their connection again," Dumbledore said. "He had a taste of it once before, and it resulted in unimaginable pain. Voldemort's soul, maimed and damaged, cannot bear to be in contact with one like Harry's. He will not try it again."
Severus searched the Headmaster's face, his own expression guarded. "I don't understand."
Dumbledore seemed to contemplate Severus carefully for a moment, and then apparently came to some sort of consensus with himself, because he got to his feet and walked toward the window. Fawkes let out a low, musical trill that, for a moment, put Severus at ease—but then Dumbledore next's words crushed it.
"You are aware, of course, that Lord Voldemort's quest for immortality resulted in the creation of horcruxes." There was a slight note of censure in the Headmaster's tone, and Severus knew it to be a reminder that he was not supposed to have known this. Try as they might, there was no hiding from the Headmaster that his wife often told him more than he was supposed to know. "With Hermione's assistance, we managed to destroy four of them over the last year, in addition to the one Harry took out four years ago in the Chamber of Secrets."
"There are seven," Severus offered quietly. "So this leaves two."
"You already know of the sixth, Nagini," Dumbledore continued.
"And the seventh?" Severus asked, hoping against hope that Hermione's suspicions were not correct.
For a long moment, Dumbledore did not answer him. He gazed out at the grounds of Hogwarts, which were slowly darkening in the coming twilight. At last, he turned to look at Severus.
"And the seventh," he said, "is Harry himself."
~o~O~o~
"So the boy must die," Severus said quietly, as he watched Hermione double-check her notes from Advanced Runic Rituals. "He kept it from us for this long—I doubt he would have ever willingly told us until the end."
"It's Dumbledore's way," Hermione said, seemingly unconcerned by this.
"And you have a better plan?" Severus demanded, sitting down next to her, pushing aside some detritus that had fallen off the table and onto the chair.
"I do."
"And you have no plans to divulge it to Dumbledore."
"Because Dumbledore and I are too much alike," Hermione said, opening up Convulsions of Nature and laying it down side-by-side to Advanced Runic Rituals. "We both think we know best. Oftentimes, we come up with equally viable but entirely different plans."
"So," Severus said, sarcasm dripping from his words, "despite the fact that he has undoubtedly tried to find other alternatives, and doubtlessly still has more information withheld from us, you believe that you know better than Albus Dumbledore."
"Possibly. It's just like with Sirius," Hermione continued distractedly, scribbling away at her notes. "Dumbledore wanted to keep him locked up. I sent him to Tine Cottage for fresh air. My idea worked just fine, but when I asked Dumbledore for permission initially, he shot it down."
Severus gritted his teeth. "I believe that the subject of the Dark Lord's soul attached to Potter's is a tad more complicated than the logistics of keeping the mutt out of Azkaban."
"I know, Severus." For the first time, she sounded a bit weary. "Dumbledore's plans tend to be more foolproof than mine. Killing Harry is a lot simpler than formulating a complicated, untested, untestable ritual to separate a scrap of Voldemort's soul from Harry's."
"Yes. It would be such a shame if you trapped both of their souls together for all eternity," Severus remarked.
"That's fixable, at least," Hermione argued. "I could try to repair that with another ritual. But once Harry's dead—he's dead, Severus. There will be no fixing that."
"I don't dispute it," Severus said, burying his face in his hands. "I'm merely disgusted. All these years, thinking I was protecting him… when I was really just raising him to be slaughtered…"
"No, you weren't," Hermione said, taking a pause from her notations to look at him.
"According to Dumbledore, we have."
"Well," Hermione said, her voice hard, "Dumbledore won't get the final say in this, will he?"
Severus looked up at her.
"Dumbledore says the Dark Lord himself must be the one to kill him," he said, sounding strangely calm.
"He did?" Hermione said, looking at him in surprise. "Did he say why?"
"As usual, he saw fit to speak in riddles, but I imagine it has something to do with the protection's Lily's death gave him," Severus said bitterly.
Hermione fell silent for a moment, and Severus watched the wheels turn in her head as she absorbed this.
"That… will merit further research," she said, her voice so quiet Severus barely heard her.
To his surprise, she set her quill down and held out her hand to him.
"It's late," she said. "We have a year to figure this out, and Dumbledore is in no hurry to kill Harry—at least, not while Nagini lives." He took her hand, and she pulled him to his feet. "We have time. Let's go to bed."
"Give it a fresh look in the morning," Severus muttered.
She kissed his cheek, and then with a gentle tug, began leading him from the room. He shut the door behind them.
"Hermione."
"Yes?"
He kissed her forehead.
"Thank you," he whispered, "for trusting me."
Please review!
~Anubis Ankh