Warmth in Darkness

by corvusdraconis

SSHG, AU, Hermione helps bring an end to the Wizarding War in a non-conventional way which inadvertently makes her a pariah. Living away from others, she tends to those that normally get no help: the Dark creatures that came to her aid. COMPLETE

Summary: SSHG, AU, Hermione helped end the war in a way most people think made her the next Dark Lord. Living as a pariah, she makes her living tending to those that no one wants to help, the Dark's creatures.

Beta Love: No one found me! I'm publishing unsupervised! HAHHAHAHAHAHA!

Well, The Dragon and the Rose and Dutchgirl01 found me at last…

I'm stuck in a snow cataclysm.

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Warmth in Darkness

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

Werner Herzog

---

The bitter cold descended on Scotland as it always did during the winter season—frigid with the sting of feeling one's eyeballs freezing on contact with the air. Hermione wrinkled her nose as she huffed a cloud of warm breath as she pulled her cloak around her.

Her cloak obliged her by wrapping himself more snugly around her with a warm embrace that made the cold seem a bit less oppressive. She felt the questioning probe in her mind, a light tingling across her grey matter, and she surrendered to the bond between them to allow the Lethifold to merge with her more completely. A stronger warmth flowed through her body, driving the cold away and making her feel as though it were a pleasantly warm spring day.

She felt immediately sleepy and comfortable, and she wobbled slightly before the dark spectre of a Dementor caught her deftly in its arms and cradled her to itself. She murmured into the warmth she felt, snuggling in as she forgot entirely what she had braved the cold to do in the first place. There was just the warm, comfortable feeling, and she had no doubt it was the same feeling Crookshanks had when he found the very best sunbeam to bask in.

Her life had been one of a pariah after the war had ended due to her unorthodox method of helping end it.

The Lestrange vault had held all manner of things they would have rather no one else know about, and Harry's touch had caused countless things to replicate and smother them all, but Hermione had found and bonded to an unexpected Lethifold amongst the Lestrange Vault.

It—he—had been starving inside the vault, desperate for both sustenance and companionship, and he had found Hermione perfect for both. She provided companionship, and she had also provided a multitude of meals for the hungry Lethifold.

One unwary Dark witch and wizard at a time.

Later, Walter, as she'd come to call him, came to appreciate the convenience of ham steaks and hamburger, turkey legs, or even the whole turkey, but Walter never turned down the opportunity for live dining when one of Voldemort's tried and true zealots came knocking wand first.

With each attack, Walter had grown stronger, and in turn, so had Hermione. The bond between them had grown ever stronger, and he had shared the magic he had eaten with his meal as one would offer up a fine dessert directly to her magical pool.

By the time they had found themselves in the Shrieking Shack, Walter had already devoured Nagini and a handful of Voldemort's knights, giving Harry and Ron time to find the final Horcrux in the chaos and for Hermione to search Snape's robes, shove a bezoar down his throat along with a few potions he'd had hidden in his pockets, and cauterise the wound on his neck using desperate, instinctive magic and the help of her friendly Lethifold companion.

Magic that had attracted a group of Dementors—

Dementors that had refused to leave her side even as she fought the army of Voldemort's minions to get back to Harry.

Dementors that sucked the souls out of countless members of the Dark Army, leaving them as soulless husks on the battlefield around Hogwarts.

It was as if they had been given purpose beyond the mere providence of "food"—potential for some greater purpose. No longer satisfied to be at the beck and call of Voldemort, waiting for him to dictate when, whom, and where to roam, they took to protecting her instead.

Not an ideal or a goal, but just plain old, Muggleborn Hermione Granger and her dutiful Lethifold.

One even hoisted up the body of Professor Snape and carried him away—to where she wasn't sure but it was somewhere away from the battle and the ensuing chaos.

So as Harry found his way back to Hogwarts, she had fought to reunite with him, cutting a swath through the Dark army leaving both soul-drained corpses or skeletal remnants depending on which creature took after her attackers first.

It hadn't been on purpose.

She just knew she had to get to Harry and support him on his journey. That was what everything hinged on now. It was what Dumbledore set in motion with his hints and his gifts—

By the time she had reached Harry, a swath of defeated Death Eaters, Snatchers, and supposed Dark-aligned creatures lay in waste behind her. Yet those that were Dark-aligned seemed oddly taken with her, joining her crusade and abandoning the Dark Lord's army in droves as the tide of war changed into a rising tsunami of Dark and ice.

The Dementors had flown them out of the Room of Requirement, pausing only to snatch up the babbling Draco Malfoy and Gregory Goyle as Vincent Crabbe was burned alive to his own summoning. The Fiendfyre devoured the cursed diadem as it did everything else it could touch even as Harry seemed torn between gaping in shock at Hermione's new "friends" and facing his future.

Ron certainly didn't waste any time condemning her for being no better than the "bloody Slytherin snakes."

So Harry went off on his destiny to confront the Dark Lord.

And the Dark Lord had laughed at her as he demanded the Dementors and vampires and creatures of the Dark to serve their Lord and master.

And Harry had taken him out with his infamous Expeliarmus, but it hadn't ended gloriously. His spell had knocked Voldemort into a pack of still-hungry Dementors that gladly feasted upon his emotions, memories, and whatever shreds of soul he had left.

It was an inglorious end for the Dark Lord, and it had been equally ignominious for Harry Potter. His actions had looked like he had purposely thrown his hated enemy to be devoured by the Dark creatures that everyone feared.

The Dark Lord lay as a desiccated husk of a twisted man, neither living nor dead—unable to reform and utterly unable to resurrect himself in the future.

Drained of all magic and soul—two things that alone would have been horrifying enough to the Wizarding World—Voldemort became an example to everyone that the Dark did not like to be used.

And Hermione had proven that sometimes the Dark chose the least likely one to support.

While the Dark Lord was terrifying in many ways, seeing the man's end to something even more horrifying had proven that humans were not the apex predator regardless of their magic. Humans were still fragile and relied on tools, magic, and sheer numbers.

The Dark was patient.

The Dark waited for the unwary or the lazy and snatched them up when the opportunity was simply too good to be ignored.

The Dark was still the Boogeyman that had scared the very first people as they huddled in caves without fire hoping something larger and hungrier wouldn't find them in their sleep.

And the greatest of ironies lay in the revelation that the war should have proven long before: the Dark didn't give a damn what kind of blood ran inside Hermione Granger's veins or even Tom Marvolo Riddle's.

Or in the countless drained and defeated Death Eaters and Snatchers—

The Dark was a living thing, and it made its own choices regardless of who believed in it and why. It existed despite or perhaps in spite of what was said of it.

Hermione had realised, however, when her best friends couldn't accept her newfound allies as being capable of being sentient (let alone friends) that perhaps the world just wasn't ready for such epiphanies.

At least, she figured, not so soon after a war against "the Dark Lord Voldemort."

Skeeter wanted nothing more than to paint her in the blackest shade of black by dubbing her the Dark Lady Hermione, but most people believed she meant Hermione had become antisocial, sat at the back of some tavern in a dark cloak, and muttered to herself.

No one had seen her much after the war after the battle was said and done because Hermione had gone to Perth, Australia to return her parents memories and attempt to patch the gaping hole in her soul from all but exorcising her parents from her life.

She'd thought it would go horribly, but an unexpected boon in being accompanied by a Lethifold and Dementors served as a convincing argument to her rationale that she'd been trying to save their lives from the kind of people that didn't take no for an answer and would have killed them without question just because.

"If you needed those floating boogeymen to protect yourself, Hermione," her dad had half choked a laugh, "then you did what you had to do. We're a little cross with you for not telling us first, but—"

He'd paused to look over the hefty stack of old Prophets and underground flyers for Harry Potter supporters and "the resistance." He and her mum had grown paler and increasingly sombre with each article. Her parents had linked hands and squeezed in solidarity.

"You were always very brilliant and pragmatic, Hermione," her father had said. "If you believed the only way we were to survive was to send us to Australia, then you certainly researched all the options. Probably had a few notebooks full of notes and coloured flags. Lines going everywhere. Concept maps. The whole thing."

"We love you," her mum had burst in. "And you loved us enough to care for our survival more than having us close to you. So grown up. Far too soon. I mean look at the friends you have protecting you!"

The Dementors, hovering ominously in the various corners of the living room, had dropped the sweltering summer heat down to a tolerable cool that had both Granger parents thinking it was the ideal Wizarding answer to air conditioning.

"Does every family have one of these beings as friends?" her father had asked, pointing to the larger Dementor floating by the hearth. It was busying itself by dusting the mantle of dust and photograph frames.

"No, Dad," Hermione answered honestly. "It's just me as far as I know."

"You never did anything small, Hermione," her mum said with warmth. "Saving the world. Saving your parents' lives. Befriending some floating, rather scary friends."

She'd spent a few months in Perth just mending the holes in her family's hearts and giving them the saved deeds and various restored photos and items from the old house she'd saved and shrunken down so they could have them again.

Her parents had given her the old house to either use or sell and get herself a place of her own, telling her to keep the guest room open for future visits. She had promised she'd always have a guest room ready and waiting for them, whatever she eventually decided upon.

Much to her relief, her parents had loved Australian life, and they had quickly assimilated into the city of Perth, enjoyed the ballet and operas, theatres, art, and, of course, the library. They'd filled their house with photos of beaches and quokka selfies, cityscapes, and couples' pictures. Their dental practice had taken off like a rocket, and even with their memories returned, they had decided to stay in Perth under their "newer" names.

They had harassed her on how horrible those names were, however.

Hermione had blushed and admitted that it hadn't exactly been her finest moment with regard to originality.

In the present, Hermione lived in a remote region off of Scotland's eastern coast—a place where the Dementors naturally gravitated towards when Kingsley had driven them out of Azkaban. Dementors didn't mind the cold, and her Lethifold made even the bitterest cold seem tolerable during the winter.

She didn't get many visitors in her self-imposed isolation. Kingsley would visit occasionally to check up on her and her charges, and sometimes the Department of Mysteries would wander by to count heads, well, Dementors, Lethifolds, and whatever else.

Whatever bond had been formed with her tumble into a Lethifold in the Lestrange vault had somehow changed her on a magical level. She was attuned to the Dark and its denizens, but that didn't mean she knew how or even why that was so.

And it didn't give her any better understanding of the Acromantulas, who seemed to want her dead just as much as they did (if not more) than before the war. She'd been brought in to see if she could reason with them before the Department of Regulation of Magical Creatures exterminated them from the Dark Forest as per the treaty between the centaur and Hogwarts demanded.

They'd promptly tried to murder her with all due prejudice.

Tried, anyway.

The Dementors froze them into thousands of spider-sicles, right down to the very last egg.

Consequently, Hagrid well and truly had it out for her, now. He refused to talk to her after the initial screaming had begun—and soon after the hysterical sobbing and accusations. He tried to report her to the Headmistress for cruelty to animals.

Her?

Cruelty to animals?

It would have been downright laughable had it not broken something in her to have Hagrid of all people abandon her.

"Wool-gathering?" a soft voice broke into her thoughts.

Hermione jerked her head, startled. "I think I was."

"I hope it wasn't some sentimental rubbish about Rubeus Hagrid, Hermione."

Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Unfortunately."

The vampire rolled his eyes, his clawed fingers tapping lightly against the line of his jaw. "If I thought it would help at all, I'd have him thralled and away sent to the mines somewhere to dig until it stopped being funny."

"A little extreme, Mihail," Hermione said with a smirk.

"But so enjoyable," Sanguini replied with no little amusement, one finger drawing across his pale bottom lip. "Alas, half-giants are only as good as their blood tastes and, frankly, it tastes quite heavily of salt with an unpleasant touch of Occamy pish."

"Tasted that enough to know, have you?" Hermione winced with a shudder of mild disgust.

"If I were to imagine the flavour," Sanguini sniffed as he waved a pale hand dismissively.

"Honestly, I'd prefer not to imagine it at all," Hermione confessed with a shake of her head.

"Argh, I swear you Vikings cheat!" another vampire yelled as he gestured at the other at the table. The Catan hexagonal board lay peppered with game pieces and dice.

"I do not!" the other vampire protested. "I was born to conquer!"

"This is a game!"

"Of conquering!"

Hermione stifled a laugh into her hand as Sanguini rolled his eyes.

"Youth," Sanguini said with a put upon sigh.

"I am no young fledgling milk drinker!" the Nordic vampire protested with a grunt.

"Everyone is young to him, Galmr" the other vampire murmured with a shake of his head.

"Acton, Galmr," Sanguini said with a soft rumble. "Leave us."

The two vampires immediately fled with their game board and dice into the next room.

"You didn't have to drive them away," Hermione said with a chuckle.

"They are insufferable," Sanguini said with a disdainful sniff. "Let them conquer Monopoly or Cards Against Humanity with the others elsewhere."

Hermione snorted, waving him off. "It's bad enough my home has become the unofficial yet strangely official secret Dark healing clinic of Europe."

Mihail smiled. "Someone had to be," he said, an eyebrow raising as Galmr loudly accused a Dementor of cheating at dice in the next room.

"I don't think he likes to lose," Hermione commented.

"Hasn't since he lost his first longship to a whale," Sanguini said.

"I'm afraid I cannot heal broken pride," Hermione said somewhat wistfully.

Sanguini placed a hand over his chest. "There are some things that require time alone," he said. "Centuries, perhaps, for some."

"Some of us do not have centuries," Hermione replied quietly.

"Some, perhaps," Sanguini said cryptically. "Sometimes magic has other plans for us."

Hermione tilted her head. "You were not Turned as others have been, if the stories they whisper when they think I'm not listening are true."

Mihail tched his tongue. "Loose tongues. Bane of my many centuries." He let out a breath slowly. "I was buried at a crossroads, or rather, I was buried, and a crossroads was formed over me. I arose, both quite confused and time-displaced. And so hungry."

"That must have been terrifying." Hermione frowned in sympathy.

"I thought I'd been buried alive," he confessed. "It wasn't until after I'd fed and killed that some trickle of sanity returned. Memories. Personality. Realisation. The more modern vampire is Turned. It is either purposely done or accidentally in the case of morons. But, many consider me to be an original. A true vampire. I am not sure what that even means other than no vampire being created after me can resist my commands. It used to amuse me. Asking for things. Little things. Big things. Really stupid things."

Hermione raised a brow.

"I have much more self-control now," Mihail admitted.

"How fortunate for me," Hermione said.

Sanguini's crimson eyes seemed to flash. "I would never," he said solemnly. "I have a feeling, besides, that you are immune to my power. I cannot read your mind as I can so many others. You have free will even when I ask the most casual thing of you. It is a relief, I think. Knowing you are not just agreeing to my company because I want you to."

Hermione shrugged. "You are passable company when you aren't trying to bleed out on my kitchen floor."

"Tch," he said with a frown. "Whoever heard of or even would suspect a vampiric dragon let alone one older than I am?"

"You don't even know how old you are," Hermione chided.

"Old enough to not remember a calendar," Mihail muttered.

"I'm sure the dragon felt the same."

Sanguini rolled his eyes. "Perhaps, if it hadn't been completely blood-crazed and utterly insane."

"You never told me why you were running into an ancient blood-crazed vampiric dragon," Hermione said as she shelved a jar of healing balm.

"I didn't run into it," Sanguini said with a huff. "It fell on me when an ancient tomb floor collapsed on top of me while I was hunting for an artefact."

"Oh, sorry, my mistake," Hermione replied soberly.

Mihail shook his head. "That area wasn't exactly known for dragons. Not even in myth." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I think, perhaps, it was a victim as much as I was. Buried in a time long forgotten, and then one day, magic had plans. But something went wrong. Perhaps the ruins were a trap to prevent the dragon from escaping should it rise. It is hard to say. It existed, starving, for far too long. Whatever sanity might have returned was never allowed to resurface."

Hermione shook her head. "Seems sad to me, but who knows the motivations of such ancient times or beings. It might have been a place of honour that turned into a tomb." Her eyebrows knit together. "What was the artefact?"

Sanguini frowned. "I fear I do not remember. It is but a blank spot in my memory that never returned when I found myself in your care. I left no notes, no trail with which to retrace."

"Seems ominous or suspicious," Hermione said thoughtfully.

Sanguini shook his head. "Vampires do not like leaving paper trails whilst searching for powerful artefacts. It could mean that the sponsor wished to remain anonymous should the quest fail."

"Or so you didn't accuse them of trying to kill you," Hermione pointed out.

"How terribly paranoid for one so young," Mihail chided her.

"Living through a war will do that to a person," Hermione said.

"I think you have been spending far too much time inside the head of Severus Snape," Mihail observed.

"I'm healing his wounds, not his mind," Hermione said, her one eyebrow raising in a steep slant.

"You might think so," Sanguini said. "Sometimes both happen at the same time."

Hermione harrumphed as there was a scratch at the door. She walked over to open it, and an injured Barghest whined at her, tail wagging slowly in appeal. Multiple oozing wounds covered its hide.

Hermione let it in, tutting as it flopped down near the door, clearly exhausted.

Walter scooped up the Barghest in a sling and carried it over to the treatment room, and Hermione followed after as one of the Dementors floated over to join her.

"All hours," Hermione said ruefully as she nodded to Sanguini.

"I'll go make sure they don't trash your other room," Mihail promised as he left her to work. "Do call upon me should you need any assistance."

Hermione nodded gratefully as she followed Walter to the treatment room, a friendly Dementor floating along behind her.

---

Hermione lay her hands on the wounded Barghest and closed her eyes. The Dementor lay one hand on her shoulder as Walter wrapped around her. A dark purple flow of energy trickled out between her fingers and around the beast, oozing into the poor animal's wounds.

The wounds shimmered and tightened, healing up as the Barghest took in deeper, less pained breaths. His tongue moved out between his lips to peg her hand, and he whined softly.

Hermione opened her eyes, scanning his body for other wounds she might have missed even as she ran her wand over to confirm. The beast browled and tail wagged at her, the tail smacking loudly against the treatment table.

"I'm not sure just what you ran into," Hermione said, "but I highly recommend you don't do it again."

The Barghest licked her between the eyes and panted, seemingly happy with her scolding.

Hermione shook her head. She sighed and lay out her hand, palm up, and a dark swirling formed in her open hand, forming into a bone-shaped darkness that looked like she had taken the midnight sky and cut it with a biscuit cutter.

The Barghest took it off her palm with a frantic tail wag and bounded off the table and out the door, trails of dark plasma following him as he went.

As Hermione walked out into the next room, the dull thud of a red deer buck landed at her hearth, the distinctive dark vapour trailing from the throat where the buck had met its end. Payment for services rendered, she had come to realise.

Every creature took care to leave a little something for her. Sometimes it was a skill, sometimes minor magic. Sometimes it was food like deer, boar, edible kelp, seafood, pheasants, grouse, hares, or eggs. On some visits, she saw nothing, at least not immediately, but then at a time she really needed something, it would just seem to appear out of thin air: rain when her garden truly needed it or perhaps a break in the heat or cold.

It was the natural balance of things, Sanguini had explained. It would be more obvious to one such as she who tended the Dark who came for help just as others might go to St Mungo's to seek treatment for a sickness or malady.

Most denizens of the Dark did not use money, but they paid for her services in other ways.

The startled Dementor nearest the hearth had set to work dressing the deer, carrying it off to the larder to hang and age.

Hermione smiled.

Dementors were hardly the expected tenders of hearth and home, but they had adapted to the unique conditions of Hermione's home far better than Azkaban. They had outstanding manners, tended the chores, and guarded the property in a way that she'd never once asked them to.

Even Kingsley had commented that he'd never seen such a thing before, and he wondered if perhaps the severe working conditions of Azkaban had created the Dementors people knew and feared rather than given thought to how Dementors could be.

Still, Dementors were a bit creepy to the first glance with their floating and preternatural cold, but Hermione didn't notice that as much ever since she'd bonded with Walter and yanked the Dark Army out from under the Dark Lord's grasp.

Since then, she'd fallen asleep wrapped in her Lethifold and propped up against a random Dementor for far more days than she could count.

Crookshanks meowed from the window ledge, stretching as he complained that the sun-baked window was no longer sunny, baked, or even warm. He took his favourite catnip stuffed fish with him to the hearth and proceeded to sprawl on the cat tree nearby, ignoring her in favour of the heat as was his feline habit. The older he got, the less he cared about anything but food and warmth or complaining about either being absent. He wasn't a particular fan of the undead guests, and he was even less happy about the Dementors because both of them were not a portable heat source he could utilise to heat his ageing bones.

Hermione had charmed the cat tree and the cat bed to warm for him, and he rarely left them unless a sunny window was involved. Due to her rather night-loving guests and clientele, however, there was only one room she had designated as the "sun" room for her elderly half-Kneazle lest her patients spontaneously combust. It was also the guest room for her parents should they decide to visit. Crooks, of course, firmly believed it was all about him.

He was many things, but he was still a cat, and considering how old he was, Hermione figured that letting the furry old man rule his roost in the way he wanted wasn't really all that onerous to accommodate.

She knew that he was old, even for a long-lived magical feline, and he had survived quite a bit in his time.

While she had traded her day-loving ways for a bit of the nocturnal, Crooks had simply been along for the ride. It wasn't as if he had any real say in it, otherwise, the entire house would be a perpetual glorious sunbeam twenty-four hours a day and her patients would be either so many motes of ash or else very unhappy.

The nearby Dementor shifted uneasily beside her as if it had sensed her train of sun-loving thoughts.

Hermione touched his (and she was never truly sure if they were all male, ungendered, or she was oblivious to the signs of such) arm, and the Dementor engulfed her with its presence. It was like the sea swallowing her up each time, scary the first time but had become comforting and relaxing once she realised she wasn't going to end up a soulless husk of a person—or whatever the heck she was, now.

Ron would claim she was an inhuman monster. A corrupted Dark witch who was no more human than a Dementor or "one of those bloody leeches."

The Dementor sent her feelings of deep soothing warmth, and she felt drowsiness set in again. The warmth of their unwavering rapport had been a totally unexpected benefit, and it had helped her sleep so deeply that very few things could wake her up, not even a hungry Crooks.

Thankfully, the Dementors would usually stuff food into the feline's hungry craw when she was basically dead to the world. They were such wonderfully thoughtful creatures when given a chance. She still felt a bit guilty that her first interactions with Dementors had been full of fear and misunderstanding.

Everything books had told her said that Dementors were evil creatures of the Dark with no redeemable qualities.

Perhaps, that had been when she realised what Professor Snape had tried to drill into her was right: books really couldn't solve everything. They didn't hold all of the answers. They weren't unfailingly correct.

She should have learnt that lesson from Gilderoy Lockhart if anything—

Hermione sighed.

She truly was an idiot.

A soft knock at the front door broke her out of her fit of self-deprecation, and she hugged the helpful Dementor that had eased the emotional backlash of her own thoughts. He pressed a cool hand to her cheek and it warmed as the trickle of Dark energy flowed between them.

"Thanks," Hermione said, giving his hand a squeeze before moving to open the door.

If she wasn't so used to Dementors, she'd have thought one was standing before her. The tall, brooding figure of Severus Snape filled her doorway, his intimidation factor having not dulled a single iota since his hated days as the fearsome Slytherin-favouring dungeon bat of Hogwarts, bane of unwary hallway snoggers everywhere.

"Please come in," Hermione said with a slight bow of her head as she gestured to one of the treatment rooms.

The wizard seemed to silently evaluate her before stepping into the house, and she felt the tingle of the wards as they let him pass unmolested. He walked into the clinic without a word, but Hermione didn't take offence.

He was a man of few words if they weren't scathing, cutting, or otherwise disparaging.

Hermione served tea first, knowing that few things got things moving like the traditional offering of tea, and they did have a certain ritual to his visits.

After tea was imbibed, he situated himself on the treatment bed without a sound, closing his eyes.

It was a compliment, she figured. A man like Severus Snape trusted little and no one anyone easily, if at all. That he was willing to close his eyes said something. She wasn't sure what that was, but she wanted to believe that he'd come to trust in her and their sessions. They had, at least she thought so, developed a rapport even without his voice to tell her in no uncertain words.

She gently placed her hands on his throat as Walter settled about her body. Dark energy swirled around her hands, and she explored the wound scar left by Tom Riddle's most favoured pet and Horcrux.

While Tom Riddle was no longer in any condition to be reformed in any way, traces of his foul taint still remained upon those he had touched. There were those such as old Death Eaters that were wasting away as the Darkness ate at their magic thanks to the Mark that had tied them to their Lord. There were those who had been attacked by mutated magic such as from Nagini that had required years of delicate handling.

While it was easy to see why most Death Eaters wouldn't be coming to her door for help, her status as a pariah in the Wizarding World hadn't exactly given her a long list of trusting clientele from the human element.

She'd offered her assistance with Arthur's now-constant migraines and debilitating and progressive nerve damage, but Ron had erupted in rage, accusing her of attempting to murder his father, and Molly hadn't been far behind.

Skeeter had painted her black at all opportunities, after all, and Molly was always quick to believe Skeeter over Hermione. The tiny chocolate Easter egg had proven that five times over.

Having conveniently forgotten that she had used Dark Prewett family magic to atomise Bellatrix Lestrange, she was all too eager to point her finger at the "obviously Dark witch" that had led an army of Dementors, vampires, and Dark creatures to Hogwarts.

While her treatments had cured him of his Dark Mark almost immediately, Nagini's magic-corrupted bite had been something truly unnatural. She had been human, once upon a time. But then she had been corrupted by Riddle into something that wasn't truly born of the Dark but made into it, and her venom was uncharted territory due to its sheer uniqueness, a virtual cocktail of poisons and potions that none had ever seen the like of before.

The Dark Mark itself had been almost strangely simple by comparison, and Dark magic always wanted to return to the Dark.

To her.

Now, at least.

Dark energy would eagerly return to her, and Walter would syphon it off her and then share it with the Dementors via whatever excess emotions she happened to be harbouring at the time. It was a win-win situation. Everyone felt better in the end, and no one had to get their soul devoured.

That made Kingsley feel a bit better, anyway.

It made watching sad old movies that made her cry a rather interesting situation. She'd find herself sobbing over poor Old Yeller and then ended up feeding everyone around with the ensuing emotional waterworks. Then, she'd get the absolute best sleep of her life.

What wasn't to love?

Her movie collection was a strange mix of romantic tragedies and emotional tear-jerkers, but at least no one was around to judge her for it. The vampires weren't going to say anything, after all, as they were the ones who thoughtfully provided her with the technomagery film projector to watch said movies in home theatre style bliss complete with comfy seating and an old-fashioned crank-style popcorn maker.

Severus' wound oozed Dark magic, and after consulting with a few vampire healers, she'd come to realise it was a side-effect of his body's magic attempting to conquer the invader on its own. The venom, having long since been dealt with, had left a lingering memory of its effects in the magic of that area, and Severus' magic was still fighting it. It was like an infection that, while it never travelled to other places, was a constant irritation.

Severus' magic was, fortunately for him, quite strong, and he was getting his wound tended weekly by her. Arthur, on the other hand, had only his reserves and personal magic with which to deal with it.

She'd wondered how she could effectively treat a "memory" wound, and Sanguini had observed that it was merely a matter of replacing it with something better.

Sounded simple enough.

Only it wasn't, of course.

Well, until he figured that part of his life out, Hermione would be there to help him with his treatments. She never asked for anything, but he would bring her potions, tinctures, and the like to stock her stores just in case she needed them.

He, like all of her other clients, paid in barter for services rendered.

If he held a grudge against her for saving him, well, Hermione wasn't sure about that. If he had, perhaps it had worn down a touch after the years. It had been over ten, almost fifteen years since the end of the war. He still came to her for treatment, and the harsh edge he'd always had during her schooling years seemed lessened, at least in her opinion.

They'd spent a lot of time together while she monitored his condition after the treatment, she with his silent company and her flitting around treating her other patients, tending the needs of her Dementors, checking on Crooks, and whatever else needed doing around the house.

Sometimes he would busy himself in the kitchen and shove food into her face with a stern look that spoke volumes on his opinion of her self-maintenance.

It should say something, she figured, that he knew where all the cooking supplies were.

She did, if she were honest with herself, miss his voice. Even with the terror it had once bestowed in her youth, she had always liked the sound of its rumble and the more subtle nuances she could appreciate more in her maturity than she had ever done as a child.

Not that he ever graced her with his voice after the war.

Only in dreams.

Dreams she had no right to entertain after Harry's oh so embarrassing spew in the face of Voldemort.

She had no chance against a ghost of a woman—a woman he had done absolutely everything for even after her death. What was she against something as powerful as that?

Especially with her tainted reputation and company she kept.

He was a hero, and he had every right to keep such a reputation after all he had done during the war. He didn't need to be sullied even more by being seen with her. At least when he came to her for treatment, no one knew about it but various Dark creatures and beings—things that had every intention of keeping her to themselves, safe and protected from harm.

Somehow, they always knew how to find her, even if the rest of the world couldn't. Perhaps, she mused, there was a Dark network out there, where Dementors posted flyers saying "Lose your place in Azkaban? Float on over to Dark Healer Granger's place." "Find yourself on the wrong end of a battle with the light? Healer Granger can help."

Truthfully, Hermione had no idea. Kingsley said there wasn't exactly a handy reference book for such things. All he knew was that she was the only one he knew of. It didn't mean there weren't any others, though. Obviously, if they hadn't known about her, they wouldn't have known about potential others, either.

There were lots of interesting secrets in the DoM, but Hermione wasn't really a fit to live there. With all the things that sought her out, it would bring too much attention to the things that were supposed to remain mysterious for the safety of everyone.

Hermione could understand that, at least, especially after Ron's intimate fall into the brain tank, Harry's godfather ending up passing through the Veil gate, and Arthur's attack by Nagini—

She winced as she thought of Arthur Weasley.

Snape's potions had cured him at the time, but Nagini's insidious venom was a special case of maintenance due to the body's magic attacking a memory of the venom and the Dark magic that had infested it.

No, she corrected herself, it wasn't that it was Dark magic. She of all people should know that after having cohabited with Dementors, a Lethifold, and vampires for over a decade.

It was unnatural magic that plagued the victims of Nagini—magic that went against the balance of nature, some unseen check and balance of Dark and light. A Dementor did not live in a constant state of war with itself. Even a vampire could exist despite having defied death. No, there was something twisted in what had been done to Nagini that had made her venom far worse.

And, according to those at the DoM, Nagini had been cursed from the start as a Maledictus—a human doomed to eventually turn into the animal they could (at least for a time) shapeshift into at will. The curse, however, was that they would eventually not be able to change back, doomed to never lose their humanity in both form and mind.

While Hermione had learned that not being human was hardly a disability, she couldn't imagine living as her mind gradually faded away and became limited to instinct. She could handle it if she were trapped in the body of a Kneazle if she could hold onto her mind, have her books, and continue to learn—

She couldn't bear to live knowing that the complexities of the mind would fade into nothing!

When the last of the residue dissipated from Snape's neck wound, the skin looked less angry than what she had come to know was his normal pallor. His magic seemed calmer, and that eased the tension in the man.

She removed her hands from his neck and wrapped a loose poultice to his skin to ease the area's tenderness. She had no doubt that the area had always been tender after his attack, sensitive both physically and magically.

"I'll make some tea," Hermione said as she gave him some privacy to collect himself. Healing sessions were usually intense no matter how long they lasted, and sometimes her magic healed things she wasn't intending, unblocked something she hadn't known was, or some other such outcome. She tried to give each of her patients space and time to recover before exiting the healing room, whether they be human or otherwise.

What happened in the healing room stayed there unless the patient wanted it otherwise.

Her living space was separate from the healing room, a bit of a pocket of sacred nestled inside her home.

She found her way to the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil her water. Her "mystical" water-boiler worked much like the old electric kettle her parents used to have, and it provided perfect temperature water in just as much time as it took to measure out the tea and warm the teapot.

Once she had wrangled the teacups, she poured water into the pot to warm it and let the water come to boil as she swirled the heated water around in the teapot and dumped it out.

She added tea leaves into her pot, poured the water over it, and put the tea cosy that looked like a British spangled mammoth over the teapot. The cosy had been a gag gift from Sanguini when he'd said that tea was as old as him, and he'd been around since the mammoth walked the Earth. It had endeared itself to her after she discovered it was highly functional, and she'd never gone back.

Much to Mihail's utter chagrin.

Setting up the tea tray, she selected a tempting array of shortbreads and other assorted biscuits for the offering and carried it to the smaller table in the next room. To her surprise, Snape had already taken his accustomed place upon the comfy chaise longue he favoured. There was a crate of shrunken potions that had been placed on the side table, filled to the top with various useful potions she knew would stock her healing supplies for quite some time.

"Thank you, Master Snape," Hermione said with a smile as she gestured to the tea.

He reached for it and then frowned, glowering up at her.

She wondered if she'd forgotten to put the sugar and milk on the tray in a fit of absentmindedness.

Severus, he mouthed silently. His dark brows furrowed as he stared into her.

"Severus," she agreed, tilting her head slightly in acknowledgement.

He seemed satisfied as he nodded, accepting the offering of tea and biscuits silently.

It had been years, and he had never insisted on her using his given name. Perhaps, she wondered, he had, only silently, but she in her obliviousness did not notice until he mouthed it out and glared at her to get her to pay attention.

She'd come to truly appreciate the silent company. Both the Dementors and her Lethifold communicated without words, and the vampires that often came with Sanguini were usually far too talkative amongst themselves. She wasn't sure what kind of trouble the younger vampires managed to get into that he kept having to bring them in to have her fix their varied issues, but it never failed to amaze her that they could walk away from it despite quite literally looking like death frozen over.

Sanguini never came in with anything more than minor ailments, and she had a feeling the ones he had gotten resulted from helping keep those under him alive in the undead sense of the word rather than him attempting to wrestle rogue dragons in the woods. He kept most of vampire "society" tribulations out of the conversations for the most part, but she did glean that it took a lot for a vampire to survive their "childhood" and make it past a few hundred years.

And everyone was a "child" to Sanguini.

He was old enough to not really remember how old he was, and that was saying something. The younger vampires liked to remember exactly how old they were like it mattered.

Such things were well beyond Sanguini.

He'd always said that the old had a responsibility to the young, but the young had to take responsibility for themselves to ever hope to approach independence. Vampires were, he said, much like the people they had once been in life, and some took responsibility for themselves, and some spent their entire life trying to hide from it.

But what was old to someone like Sanguini?

He wasn't exactly telling.

Being in a friendship with the ancient vampire was always pushing her boundaries and leaving her wondering what to expect. He'd helped her greatly in easing the guilt she had felt over her parents as well as working through the ungodly mess that had been her feelings about Ronald and Harry after the war.

She'd thought their friendship would be forever—something hardened and strengthened by the war.

It hadn't, though.

If anything, the war had exposed vulnerabilities and made their friendship less substantial.

Or perhaps, she realised, it had always been that way. She simply hadn't seen it for what it was.

A friendship based on a lie.

Her lie.

Mind you, her relationship with Snape had started with far too much hand-waving and setting his robes on fire.

She was surprised the man trusted her so near his neck of all places. If their positions had been reversed, she had no idea what she would have thought of herself.

But, if she could just please stop having dreams about her former professor and herself in a tender and warm relationship, that would be great, thanks. It just made reality so much harder to stomach when she woke up.

Suddenly, Walter seemed to get a wild hair and dumped her into Snape's lap, caught his tea, set it deftly on the nearby table, and then he zoomed off into the next room.

Hermione sputtered as they came face to face. So close that his nose brushed against her cheek.

She flushed, absolutely mortified. "I'm so sorry!" she stammered, "I have no idea what got into him!"

His eyes were impossibly dark.

She couldn't even see his pupils.

His lips parted slightly, and she imagined him yelling at her to get off him just like he would have whenever she heedlessly ran into him rounding a corner with an armful of books—

Face burning, she quickly rolled off of him and stuffed the teacup back into his hand. She staggered back to her own chair and sat down, checking to make sure that Walter wasn't going to pitch her off again.

Awkward, she thought to herself as she fought the rising blush.

In the healing room she could keep everything in its designated compartment, but outside of it—being so close to him.

She winced.

Torturing herself certainly wasn't going to get her anywhere. He wasn't interested in her or a relationship. Pining and brooding over it wasn't ever going to change that.

His hand touched hers.

He looked at her with a tight expression that bordered on constipation. His mouth worked, but no sound came out. He looked like he was saying something important, but she was never that good at reading lips beyond the basics.

A knock at the door broke her concentration.

She gave Snape an apologetic wince. "I'm sorry, let me get the door. It might be someone injured."

Severus closed his eyes, shoulders tense. He jerked his head as if to dismiss her.

Hermione frowned and stood up, making her way to the front door. Patients could come at all hours, but it was strikingly unusual when they actually knocked. Most of them scraped, scratched, or thumped against the door, sending their Dark energy out to greet her and entreat her to let them in.

She opened the door as some of the Dementors floated closer, just in case she needed their assistance.

As she opened the door, an impossibly bright beam of light blinded her as the weave of her significant wards dissolved through brute force.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" a voice yelled out, and the Dementors screeched as one even as they fled in their distress and agony.

Walter shot forward in a blur of darkness, and his mental scream hit Hermione like an instant migraine of swords battling inside her brain. She fell to the ground in agony, rolling around and clutching her head.

Something dark and tendrilly was wrapping itself around her, tightening. Organic. Alive. Choking her.

Similar to the Devil's Snare that had guarded the path to the Mirror of Erised in her first year, only infinitely worse.

Worse because something was digging into her skin, and fire was shooting through her blood vessels.

Poison.

Venom.

Something horrible.

There was a glow around the vines as bright, shimmery sap dripped from cracks in the surface. It burned where it touched her skin, and she could feel a suppressive malevolence pulsing around her.

"You see, Neville?" a familiar sing-song voice said. "She's been taken by the Darkness."

Hermione winced, grimacing as she attempted to focus on the familiar voice. Her vision was blurry, tears filling her vision with a sting of salt and sweat as an oppressive brilliant light that eclipsed that of a Patronus shined seemingly everywhere at once. She felt a deep pain that seemed to sink deep within her mind and her body, and the familiar warmth that had come from her Lethifold and Dementors lay in tatters. Even the air seemed frightfully hot in the midst of the Scottish winter, the snow melting to create an oppressive, humid mud in both air and ground.

"I've waited a very long time to give you a piece of my mind."

Hermione tried to see, but everything was too bright and painful. It was like staring at the sun.

"You're always fighting some crusade," the voice continued. "But you never see what's right in front of you. I never forgave you for playing the hero after getting away with calling me Loony Lovegood. Never once did you apologise. Never made it right. Then you go and craft your own army of Dark creatures. You steal the suffering and hard work the rest of us suffered during the war. You traumatised my father! He was just trying to save me! You even made Harry doubt himself. The only people that never made fun of me, all of them, you made them look bad. Just like you made me look bad."

"L-luna?" Hermione whispered in shock.

She didn't see Luna as much as she saw the movement of her hair. She heard her voice.

"I'm so very cross with you, Hermione," Luna said. "Daddy had it all set to end the war. He would have brought Harry to the meeting, he would have understood everything, and everything would have been okay. People would have understood. But you ruined everything. You had to get others involved. You had to get Harry away."

"You're angry because—" Hermione rasped, "I helped Harry?"

"You just don't get it, Hermione," Luna said as she fiddled with a strange green thing in her hand. It unfurled like a flower only it writhed and shuddered.

Hermione could barely see, but she saw the hint of green, black, and blue. There was a shape that seemed like a butterfly, but there were wicked-looking spikes that ran along the wings.

As Luna stroked the creature, it changed colours, and the spikes began to glow. Hermione saw the head—a strange skull of what looked rather like a wolf—shimmer and drip light.

"Isn't it beautiful, Hermione? Neville and Hagrid helped me create it from a Swooping Evil. They're not evil at all, really. Unlike you. They just have different dietary requirements. They don't choose to be what they are."

"I'm not," Hermione grunted, wincing, "evil. I'm just darker than I started."

"You're both Dark and evil, Hermione," Luna said, tilting her head. "You were bad before you went Dark. Judging people. Thinking you were better than everyone else. Calling me names. Making Neville feel like rubbish. Showing off with your hand in the air all the time. Always trying to prove how much better you were. You weren't though. If you'd really been smart you'd have been in Ravenclaw, but you weren't were you? No. You were just a Gryffindor who thought yourself better than everyone else. Had to prove it by correcting everyone even when you were wrong."

"I was trying to save people. Save Harry," Hermione whispered.

"You were trying to prove yourself against popular belief," Luna snapped. "We should have been friends, but you turned out to be just as bad as the rest of them. Judging people. No better than the ones you were trying to prove yourself against. And for what? Put yourself in the same class as them?"

"I didn't want to be like them," Hermione grunted, the pain making it impossible not to wince. "I just wanted to be able to be myself."

Luna launched the mutant Swooping Evil into the air, and it fell upon Hermione with a vicious hiss, its wolfskull-like face snapping as it attempted to engulf her head and crush her to get at her brain. Poisoned spines jabbed into her skin, spreading the glowing, mutant poison into her body.

Hermione screamed in agony as the bond that had brought her comfort with both Lethifold and Dementor instead caused her untold pain.

"You won't forget anything, Hermione," Luna cooed. "We changed the venom so it works only against evil like you. It will burn away all the Dark and make you so very eager to make amends for all you've done. I'm sure you'll appreciate Neville's genius, now. Maybe, you'll even have respect for your betters— something you never seemed to have before."

Hermione felt something being dribbled over her head. It was warm and smelled of iron and—blood? It both dripped off her skin but also seemed to absorb into it as though it were alive.

"Now, now," Luna said. "We wouldn't want any extra players to enter the party without permission."

Hermione heard a series of hisses—vampiric snarls.

"Cannot control," she heard a voice say.

"So hungry!"

"She smells so good!"

"Must have—"

"NO!" Mihail's voice broke through as she heard a clash of bodies. There was a loud series of flesh against flesh, blows, and inhuman snarls.

"Like my little blood replacer?" Luna asked dreamily. "It's just like blood, only stronger. I made it for St Mungos, but it drives vampires absolutely mental to get at it. They had to lock it up in a safe, and then they realised they couldn't use it because it just painted a target on whoever got it. It was a failure as a replacement for a blood replenisher only I realised it wasn't quite a failure at all for what I could use it for."

Luna hrmed. "It seems the older ones have a little more restraint, but—there are far more younger ones to keep them suitably entertained. Best thing is—" Luna crooned at Hermione. "They don't pay any attention to little ol' me because the blood is all they care about."

Luna dribbled more of the liquid onto Hermione. "They'll be dying to get to you, and your little master vampire friend that cares so much—he'll be too busy trying to keep them off you. Meanwhile, the toxin will work its way into your entire body and make you nice and compliant and unable to tap into that Dark you've come to love so much."

Hermione's lips twisted in pain even as she scoffed. "You call me Dark? Look at yourself. Look at what you're willing to do to get even on someone who wasn't even attacking you."

"A hundred thousand little cuts led to this moment, Hermione," Luna said bitterly. "But you were the keystone. The one people looked to, and that makes you the worst when you tarried off the path, put my father in danger, pulled Harry away from where we could guide him, robbed Neville of his leadership during the war by bringing Harry back to the school, and marching in with a horde of Dark creatures that you tried to make into heroes."

"They helped us," Hermione whispered.

"They helped you gain power. No better than Voldemort," Luna informed her. "You didn't care who you stepped on to obtain superiority."

"It wasn't—" Hermione choked as the vines constricted and the venomous spines of the mutant Swooping Evil dug into her.

"Be silent, Hermione," Luna ordered as the Swooping Evil dug in tighter.

Hermione heard Sanguini's voice bark out a series of words in another language, and the other vampires yelled as their bodies were forcibly ported away by powerful magic.

Luna spun as she felt the roll of power coming from the elder vampire's location, and she smiled as Hagrid appeared out of nowhere and used a downed tree as a shillelagh to knock the vampire into a patch of angry plant creatures. Neville cast a strengthening charm on the plants as spikes formed out of the growing thorns and skewered the master vampire.

"That's for me friends," Hagrid bellowed. "The friends you killed!"

Hermione grimaced as her vision grew steadily darker. "Hagrid—" she groaned.

"There you go assuming again, Hermione," Luna chided. "He's not going to help you, and it's time for the toxins to—"

Hermione slumped, lifeless.

Luna smiled.

"I've avenged your honour, Daddy," Luna said dreamily.

---

Hermione's eyes opened, and she found herself surrounded by inhospitable-looking rocky cliffs and the ocean. She was alone on a small shelf of stone as the sea roared all around her. The surf was dark and ominous. The waves seemed almost angry as they crashed and foamed in the dark.

A dark, winged spectre caught her eye in the darkness that surrounded her, and she wondered if she was truly dead.

He hovered just above the surf, toes bare, multiple black wings beating as his hair hung around his face like the tangled kelp forest.

"Am I dead?" she asked the spectre that seemed remarkably like Severus Snape but also not.

"You are in the in-between worlds," the spectre said, and its voice—his voice—was just as she remembered Severus Snape's, baritone lined with velvet. From a lifetime ago and from her very dreams—

"Are you a spirit?"

His lips curled into a smirk. "Hardly."

Hermione felt a pang of pain and regret. "Then you cannot be real."

The spectre's subsequent scowl was so utterly Severus Snape that she winced in response. "I am not a hallucination."

"You're speaking to me," Hermione replied with a gusty sigh. "That's how I know this isn't real. I must be dying."

The figure's scowl softened slightly. "You are dying," he admitted, his voice strangely clear over the sound of the pounding surf. "But I am, as difficult to believe as this may seem to you—quite real."

"But, you're actually speaking to me," Hermione protested, her eyes going wide.

"Think, Granger, and look at me," he demanded. "Do use that much-vaunted brain of yours. What else could look like this?"

He seemed to float toward her, his flight propelled by his multi-layered wings. Droplets of water dripped from the feathers as if from a waterfowl, seemingly unfazed by it all. They were the blackest of blacks, only the glistening of what might have been a shimmering of magic and a water-phobic oil bringing a distinct iridescence to their colour. His hair was, as always, that surreal inky straightness as if oiled, which she had always attributed to constant exposure to potions fumes.

Something tickled at her grey matter, and she suddenly realised that his hair; much like his wings, were protected from the surrounding water, completely immune to the effects of the humidity and salt spray. She'd never paid as much attention to Care of Magical Creatures save for whatever she absorbed in books, and again she was plagued by the realisation that books couldn't solve everything. Sometimes she had to think and put things together for herself.

Hagrid, as well-meaning as he'd been, had only taught them what not to do.

It probably hadn't been his intent, either, given his smouldering grudge against her after the Dementors had flash frozen the entirety of his Acromantula "friends" on the battlefield at Hogwarts as they had attacked absolutely everyone and everything in their path, Death Eaters and defenders alike.

The centaurs had been relieved, but it was obvious that Hagrid was holding such a deeply seated grudge against her that he hadn't held one whit of understanding about just how dangerous his "friends" had been to everyone.

She looked at the spectre's exposed legs, the eerily pale skin tapering into what seemed like bird legs. Black almost-scales covered them, and each digit was armed with deadly talons that would have made even a fishing eagle envious.

"And Demeter did curse the sirens," her father had told her during a storytime before bed. "For their negligence in watching over and preventing her daughter's abduction, forcing them from the fertile fields and warmth of her domain to the edge of Posiedon, trapped in between land and sea, their voices turned to weapons so great that any who heard them sing felt compelled to seek their doom upon the dangerous hidden rocks or drown themselves in the vain attempt to seek the voices' source." Her father had closed the book, having often memorised the stories or changed them a bit to suit his creative whims to make storytime more interesting. "It was said that those who survived were never allowed to leave, not that they ever would have wished to, and the children of their unions spread out across the dangerous seas, cursed to remain silent lest their voices compel any who heard them to seek their own deaths, desperately attempting to earn the favour of the siren that so enraptured them."

Could the story have been—true?

Hermione could feel the gears in her head begin to spin, grinding together in an attempt to adjust her reality to the new facts before her. "You're the son of a siren."

"Ten points to Gryffindor," Snape intoned, his mouth twitching slightly. "My mum was a rebel. She used an artefact to enter the mortal world and go off to school like a human. But one day, someone stole that artefact, and the magic that sealed away the dangers of her voice was no more. The man who would one day become my father was enraptured. Devoted. Obsessed. At first, she thought it was about love, but when she realised he had been ensorcelled by her voice, she spoke no more. He soon grew desperate. Angry. He then drank constantly to either remember or forget. He died of the bottle he slowly drank himself into, forever yearning for that voice he could never hear once more no matter how much he begged for it. How much he—beat her. She stayed on my account, waiting for the time my birthright reared its ugly head, but it never did while she remained with Tobias."

Severus' impossibly dark eyes seemed like gazing into the depths of space. "She died of a broken heart. The only way sirens can truly die, I think. She loved him, you see. It made it all the worse that my father was not immune to her voice."

Severus closed his eyes. "Only our true mates can hear our voice and survive it. But at what cost can you risk killing hundreds if not thousands that hear you before you find that one who can? She told me, and I did not believe. How could I? She had long since detached from her old power. Her birthright. She had no proof but the voice she refused to use. She frantically shoved parchment into my hands, begging me to read, but I cast them into the fire, refusing to believe such rubbish. Convinced she was struck on the head too many times by my sodding drunkard of a father."

Severus closed his eyes. "It wasn't until I was almost dead that I finally came into my birthright. I awoke in St Mungo's, screaming my head off. Five healers and half the floor promptly attempted to abase themselves upon me and tend to my every last wish and need. At that point I finally realised that my mum's stories were not just stories, and that's when I did what she did. I sealed my voice away. The great irony, of course, is that it happened after the war and not before. Could you imagine how short the war would have been had I come into my birthright and simply ordered the Dark Lord to go get stuffed?"

Hermione snorted despite herself.

"Really, it was probably for the best, anyway," Snape idly speculated. "I was such an arrogant, bitter, misguided teenager. I am fairly certain that I would not have been—terribly judicious in the use of such a voice."

"But, you're talking to me, now," Hermione said, her brows furrowing in thought.

"In dreams—in this between-world, I can speak to you without the worry of compelling you to follow my every whim," Severus said. He winced. "But now that you know what I am, you will understand the sin I have committed in allowing us to share such closeness in dreams when the reality would steal away your will, your sense of independence. You."

Hermione frowned. "Did you ever lie to me in those dreams?"

"Never." Snape's expression seemed haunted.

"You said I'm dying," she whispered.

"Ms Lovegood was always a very apt student," Severus said. "Her mind, when properly focused, was capable of great leaps of intuitive innovation. But she is blinkered, blinded by her unreasoning hatred of the Dark and, most importantly, by her hatred for you. Her collaboration with the likes of Hagrid and Longbottom, however, is emotionally charged. In her haste to inject the light into you in an attempt to purge your darkness, she is killing you, keeping the Lethifold and Dementors from your side, those that could help you."

He sighed. "Her marriage to Longbottom was an impulsive union of shared misery. Their supposed love for each other is rooted in a shared desire for vengeance."

"Against me."

He nodded. "Indeed."

"So this is goodbye," Hermione said, looking wistful.

"I will avenge you," Snape said bitterly.

"I don't want to be avenged," Hermione said softly. "I just want you."

"Now knowing what I am?" He scoffed. "A siren and their mates are immortal, though they can die of a broken heart. I will not be long behind once you are gone."

"If I am going to die anyway," Hermione said. "At least let me hear your voice just once. Your real voice."

Severus shook his head.

"If the myth is correct, I will at least die happy, Severus," Hermione said quietly. "And I am dying anyway. But what if it is just a voice that I happen to like very much and have always liked very much."

"My mate?" Severus whispered, his voice like the rush of waves.

"Would it be so terrible to be stuck with me?" Hermione's expression was sad, her brows knitting together.

"The bond would change you—you'd become a siren. A Dark siren. Like me."

"I would be with you."

"You'd never again be able to use your voice within the mortal world."

"There aren't that many people I'm entertaining on a regular basis right now, being a pariah and all," Hermione pointed out with a sigh. "I typically keep company with Lethifolds and Dementors, and I have tea with vampires, which aren't exactly mortal either."

"Just tell me to forget you with your true voice, Severus," Hermione sighed. "And be at ease with whatever happens. Just know that—I treasure what we had. I only wish—you could have told me before this. That we had more time to be—" She smiled with a hint of ineffable sadness in her eyes. "Happy together in the waking world."

He touched her cheek, cupping it with one pale hand. His crystalline claws brushed against her skin as he grimaced in what could have been a sign of either pain or elation. "I do not deserve your limitless compassion."

"I think you deserve far more than you give yourself credit for, Severus," Hermione said, her eyes meeting his.

His mouth suddenly covered her own, his great wing beats sounding much like the beat of a heart. "I will cherish you until the end of my life," he said as he pulled away, "Hermione."

The roar of the sea rose and grew deafening, the waves swallowing her whole as the great beat of blackened wings closed in around her. "Goodbye, my love."

---

Everything suddenly went pear-shaped.

Luna stared down in dismay at her hands where the vial of her custom blood replenisher had shattered, watching as the thick fluid dripped from her in dark rivulets, absorbing into her skin as well.

Sanguini was laughing wildly at her even as the thorns and plants held him fast, leaving him quite taken out of the picture.

Taken out—

And so nothing remained in place to prevent what he had worked so very hard to keep from happening.

Vicious hisses sounded out all around the yard.

Vampires.

Many, many vampires.

The wards they had so painstakingly designed to blast apart had exposed the entire area, leaving it plainly visible to everyone and everything.

And the vampires had no Dark-infested blood like Hermione to alert the custom-made plant creatures they had designed specifically to immobilise and subjugate Hermione.

They weren't living.

The only creature that could contain a vampire was the one holding the master—

Sanguini.

Hermione's leech-friend.

And all of them were occupied keeping him subdued.

"LUNA, LOOK OUT!" Neville's cry alerted her, and she spun, sending a cutting hex to rip the leaping vampire to pieces.

It fell to the ground, twitching before turning into a true corpse.

One after another, she savagely beat them back, lethal spells flying in all directions. Bodies were falling all around her as the sky was painted in sickly green beams of light.

But as her spells flew every which way, she heard the snap and ping of something falling and shattering. Vaguely she knew it was something important, but she was fighting for her very life, and that came first.

As the air around her suddenly turned deadly cold, she realised what she hit with her spells.

The mists were rolling in.

The Darkness.

Shades—

Dementors.

She'd inadvertently knocked the light censors off of their chains—the enchantments they had devised to prevent the Dementors and other Dark denizens not specifically bound to the Dark witch from coming to Hermione's aid.

Even the vampires hissed nervously amongst themselves as the Dementors floated in, the largest of them looking like Charles Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Future coming to collect.

One of the Dementors was freezing and killing the vines wrapped around Sanguini, helping free him.

"NO!" Neville yelled, hastily conjuring a Patronus to drive the Dementor away. It left with a screech, but others were coming in fast.

Many, many others.

Neville suddenly went down hard under a flurry of madly screeching Lethifold, the blackness swirling with so many fangs and the gnashing of teeth. Neville got off another summoned Patronus, driving the Lethifold back, but the vampires were realising that Luna was still there and smelling very, very delicious.

The wave of vampires snarled, moving forward again from multiple positions, and Luna fired off spell after spell, using Patroni to drive back the Dementors and curses to cut down the vampires.

Hagrid had already gone down under a wave of attacking vampires, all of them using their preternatural strength to both break him and deprive him of his latest favoured weapon: the tree.

Packs of Hagrid's hybrid creatures surged forward to meet the vampires and the Dementors, attacking everything they could get their claws, teeth, and stingers into.

But in their frenzy and berserker blindness, the creatures turned on Neville, and he went down under a mass of snarls and roars.

"Neville! NO!" Luna screamed, and she used a spell to blast into the pile, sending bodies of vampires and creatures alike flying across the garden.

And suddenly there was a pulse of power unlike anything she had ever felt. It was like both sunshine and night coming together, smashing her between it. Her body tingled with mingled need and desire, trembling and crying out for release.

"ENOUGH!" a voice boomed across the garden.

"You call yourself warriors and defenders of the light? Look ye upon what chaos and murder you have wrought upon this place. *Look, ye Mighty, and despair."

Luna found herself wailing with emotion, tearing at her hair as she looked around. Terrible despair filled her chest, and she tore at it frantically with clenched hands as if to rip out her own beating heart.

"Sanguini," the voice rumbled. "Take your kinfolk away from this place."

Sanguini, who was brushing himself off as if one would remove stray bits of lint from their suit, straightened at once. "Of course, Severus." He clicked his tongue, and pulled his ancient magick toward him, and with a crack he and the other vampires vanished into the night. Some willing and relieved, some by sheer force.

Luna looked up as sudden movement caught her eye, and she found the familiar figure of Severus Snape floating in the air, great black wings beating. Power radiated from him even as he cradled Hermione's body in his arms.

"You've been very, very naughty, Mrs Longbottom," Severus seethed. "Normally such great dedication and tenacity would be applauded, however, you'll have to forgive me for taking your unprovoked attack on a healer as an unforgivable offence. And while I well know what true bullying is, I can say for certain that the path to revenge ever ends in pain and regret. And it never feels quite the way we think it will afterwards."

"She ruined everything!" Luna wailed even as she continued to feel waves of crushing despair. Even as she felt it, she also felt an even more driving urge to appease the spectre in front of her.

"I think you'll find that you ruined your own life, Ms Longbottom," Severus said, the thrum of his strong wingbeats deafening in the seeming silence of the night.

He gestured to the garden wall where people seemed frozen in time, staring in at them. Magical. Muggle. Her own father with a look of horror on his face as he stared at—

Luna followed his gaze to find Neville's body nearly sliced in half by a cutting hex.

Her cutting hex.

"NOOO!" Luna cried out in horror. "NOOO!"

She saw the brown robes of incoming Aurors, all of them frozen in time as they Apparated in.

Severus' voice turned deadly as he spoke with venom. "It would please me very much if you would forever speak in rhyme and iambic pentameter. Oh, and confess to every single thing you have done. Everything you've even thought of doing. To every last Auror, official, or anyone who asks. It would please me. Greatly."

The words seemed heavy in Luna's brain.

Of course she would and tell the truth.

Of course she could not mislead a sleuth.

It would please him now and then,

So she would speak and find a pen!

"I will stay! Confess my all! I will shame myself and bawl!" she blurted. "Neville is dead because of me! I will confess and not go free!"

Snape's smile was dark and humourless. "Excellent. Enjoy reaping what you have so industriously sown, daughter of Xenophilius. The Erinyes are watching."

"They do so love oathbreakers," he rumbled as he cradled Hermione to his chest.

The great black wings beat closed, and Luna found herself in a roar of sound as time abruptly restarted.

The spectre was gone, Hermione with it, but she was now surrounded by the flood of late-comers and random Muggles who were attracted to the unwarded "light show."

… as Clotho pulled the thread of Luna's new fate, Lachesis tugged it free. Atropos pinched her fingers across the thread, scrutinised its length and colour and then snipped the thread, sealing Luna's new fate into the cosmic tapestry.

---

Hermione woke to find Severus looking at her with a concerned expression. She could smell the sea air and feel the warmth coming in from somewhere even though the room was customarily dark. Crookshanks was kneading her stomach with his front paws looking utterly disgusted as he rearranged her top and the blanket to where he wanted it before settling down on it.

"Severus," she said quietly, her expression softening.

"Hello, Hermione," he answered, his voice a deep rumble. Pleasing to the ear, comforting, a bit tense judging by his expression, but still just a voice.

"I feel I do not have the instant desire to jump your bones any more than I may have already had before this," Hermione said.

Severus snorted. "You've had a long day, and the night was almost more than I could bear."

"What happened?"

"You do not remember me ordering you to leave and forget about me?"

"No. What did I say?"

"You said no," Severus replied, his lips twitching.

"Just no, huh?" Hermione asked.

"You then instigated a consummation the likes of which will paint the poles in lights for a year."

Hermione flushed. "I—I did?"

Severus sniffed. "I am but an old man," he complained. "I could barely keep up with my young, virile wife."

"I'm not dead then—"

Severus levelled a look at her. "Ob-viously."

"And we're—mated?"

"Many times over. You're quite insatiable."

Hermione flushed again and found herself wrapped in a warm Lethifold. She pulled Walter around her a bit sheepishly. "Do I ask forgiveness or say you're welcome?"

"I was certainly not complaining," Severus said, his hand reaching to brush a stray curl away from her cheek. "Nor were you." His expression was very male, possessive, and utterly smug. "I'll have you know that neither of us are dying anytime soon."

Hermione laughed, choking back a spurt of sudden tears.

Severus frowned. "Gods, woman, I thought you'd be relieved."

"I am!"

"But you're crying all over your cat!"

"They're happy tears!"

"They don't look very happy! Your eyes are all red and puffy!"

"Trust me, I'm happy!" Hermione sniffled, pulling him down on top of her. Crookshanks meowed his annoyance, and padded off to find himself a nice sunbeam.

Severus whuffed, his wings all atangle as he flomped down on top of his mate. She stroked his hair affectionately. "I'm so glad you're real."

"What else would I be, witch?"

"A very sexy Dark siren," she volunteered.

Severus growled and captured her mouth with his.

They came up for air a few minutes later, both looking ready to have another go and then some.

"I may not remember yesterday, but my body is very eager to experience today," Hermione confessed. "Memory is vague, like I'm almost remembering."

"Kingsley says no baby Dark sirens until the trial is finished," Severus said sternly.

"I know a potions master who could offer some help in this regard."

"Hn," he grunted. "Already done. You insisted before our first altercation."

"Altercation? Is that what you're calling it?"

"Mind-blowing, life-affirming, curse-defying horizontal highly transformative entertainment?" he asked dryly.

"That's quite a mouthful," Hermione said, her lips twitching.

"I could think of a number of other uses for that mouth, wife," Severus purred.

The sound made Hermione shiver with desire. "You didn't even have to be a siren to enjoy the power of your voice," she groaned, utterly aroused. "You could read me the Statute of Secrecy, and I'd be more than fine with that."

"Legalese is arousing for you?" Severus asked, dubious.

"If you are quoting it, then yes," Hermione confessed.

"Would you not prefer poetry or some such rot?" he asked.

"Literary appreciation, assuredly, but I could easily curl up in your voice like Crooks in a sunbeam."

"Illogical."

"True, though."

Severus snorted.

"What will happen to Luna?" she asked, her eyes turning serious even as she touched his lips and smiled. "Neville? Hagrid?"

"Mr Longbottom will be in a different part of Mungos for the remainder of his life. While he tried very hard to die, multiple times, somehow they managed to keep him from actually doing so," Severus said. "He does not seem to be—mentally there. The lungs breathe, the heart pumps, but I think he is lost somewhere deep within himself and far beyond what the healers can fix."

"Mrs Longbottom, however, will be facing trial before the Wizengamot. She's already confessed repeatedly, to anyone who will listen, in full iambic pentameter and rhyme, to everything she's ever done since she stole a picture book from her first library. Now as for Hagrid—"

He closed his eyes. "He may never walk again. His injuries will require a Dark healer due to the extensive vampire damage. But he's refusing to even entertain the idea of Dark healing. The Weasleys have taken him in and built him a cottage on their property. As I understand it, they have chosen to take responsibility for him until his time to stand before the Wizengamot."

"That could be a very long time without a Dark healer there to siphon off the energy from his wounds," Hermione said quietly. "The longer he goes without the more perm—"

Severus held up his hand, nodding. "I am aware."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. We weren't exactly speaking to each other when you lectured me the first few hundred times."

"Git!"

"True." Severus let out a long sigh. "Arthur's condition continues to worsen as well," he said. "Molly is attempting to bring you before Wizengamot for having withheld treatment from him."

"That's a bunch of bullo—"

Severus shook his head. "Kingsley already has taken care of it. He had copies of all the records of your attempts to contact and request him to come in for healing. It was wise of you to send him copies of everything right from the start."

"They're just going to let Arthur die or end up unable to even do the smallest of things for himself," Hermione observed sadly.

"Regardless of what Arthur believes personally, he is not objecting to their protests, so he is guilty of not standing up for himself as a grown adult wizard," Severus said. "That is not your fault. You did what you could and offered what you could."

Hermione jumped suddenly, startled. "Your wound! I haven't worked on it!" She fussed with his collar to check his neck.

Severus muttered as she fiddled and examined him.

"It's—gone," she whispered in astonishment.

"I seem to have found my cure," he said, giving her a look. "I replaced its bitter memory with something I like far more."

Severus looked at her, gently cupping her face with his hands. "When I thought I was going to die, when Nagini tried to take me out, all I could think of was the regret I felt for having failed Lily, my old childhood friend. It truly haunted me. But now—I think of you. Your touch, your acceptance, your—"

"I love you," Hermione blurted.

Severus' expression softened completely. "I love you too."

Hermione looked a little shifty as one foot rubbed up against his leg. "How long do we have to wait before we can have those mini-sirens?"

Severus looked at her heatedly as he grabbed a potion vial from the nearby bedside table and downed it in one go. "The trial could easily take years. We should get plenty of practice so we don't fall behind."

Hermione giggled and then squealed in delight as Severus pounced her, caging her with his arms and wings as he instigated the most glorious of kisses smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle.

If a ship or two had gotten lost out there amid their ardent "practice," well, they could always blame it on the "aliens."

---

And so they lived sirenically ever after.

---

A/N: Happy Valentine's Day! I really didn't think I'd get this out in time. Ever.

*Quote from Ozymandias