"What do we do about the horcruxes?" Hermione whispered.
They had fallen into a tense silence as the enormity of their revelation stunned them both. Draco had been playing both sides, had been doing so for a long time. When he would strike against them all to seize power, it was unclear.
But they knew that it was inevitable.
There was no doubt about it. The evidence against him was damning.
Snape looked grave as he considered her question.
"I … I had planned to steal it tonight. The tome, Secrets of the Darkest Art," Hermione admitted. She fidgeted with the hem of her sweater, pulling at it. "He's not at the estate often, he's usually away. Narcissa was to wake and I would stay overnight to care for her and watch over her. I learned curse-breaking to prepare, I had everything in my bag, I would search the estate from top to bottom for it. I just- …" she trailed off.
"Didn't expect Narcissa to unwittingly sabotage your plan by refusing further healing," Snape finished for her.
Hermione nodded miserably and looked up at him.
Snape had slowly paced back to his shabby writing desk, deep in thought. He leaned back against the front of it and gazed at Hermione.
"This … changes nothing. We will continue searching for the tome from an alternative source. Granted, it will be more difficult," he grimaced. "But in the grand scheme, this changes nothing."
Hermione nodded faintly. They both knew it would be next to impossible to procure the rare book. The Insurgency did not have the funds or connections to secure it from a collector or on the black market.
Malfoy Manor was the only place they knew with absolute certainty that the book could be found, but that avenue had been abruptly cut off.
"He said Voldemort would be in Romania next week to finalize a new government. He'll be secretly gone," Hermione said slowly, after some time.
Snape looked at her sharply. His eyebrow was quirked up doubtfully, so Hermione continued on.
"Draco told me that they were in Romania a few months ago, on a diplomatic visit. Voldemort needed Draco there, as the High Reeve. It was a show of hard power and intimidation, Voldemort himself couldn't manage to convince them."
He looked thoughtful at this.
"It worked, apparently," Snape drawled out. "I admit that I am not as well-informed as the High Reeve, but the Dark Lord has been boasting of a Romanian alliance. It appears that will materialize shortly."
"Draco told me the Insurgency needs to strike while Voldemort is gone," Hermione breathed out. "Sussex will be left defenceless if we strike at multiple targets first, he said … he said the response will be delayed. Confusion will set in."
Then, an unbidden thought occurred to her. Draco had hesitated when he told her.
"Do you think he's leading us into a trap?" Hermione pressed on urgently. She started beseechingly at Snape. This could be their one chance at a successful assault on Sussex.
Or it could be traipsing into their collective demise. A suicide mission.
Snape's brow knit together as he stood silently, deep in thought. He brought a hand up to stroke at his chin. It was a while before he answered.
"No," he said slowly, emphatically. "Draco still needs the Insurgency to do his dirty work … eliminating us so early would make his eventual coup attempt all the more difficult. Voldemort struggling against the Insurgency for as long as he can play us against one another is to his benefit."
Snape's glittering black eyes met hers.
"He has no reason to be rid of us so soon. An attempt on Sussex while they are out of the country would be, undoubtedly, to both our benefits - his, and the Insurgency's. We will need to act on this information, quickly."
Hermione nodded her head fervently. They had a plan. She had a plan.
A plan.
They would see it through.
A plan meant a solution moving forward. A plan meant she could still salvage this.
A plan meant she could bury herself in work for the time being, that her loyalties hadn't wavered. She could distract herself by pledging herself even more fervently to the Insurgency.
On Hermione's intelligence report, the call had been sent out. Every Insurgency operative in Europe was withdrawn and smuggled back into the country near overnight to prepare for an all-out assault.
The planned attack on Sussex was kept secret from most of the Insurgency. An elite squadron of Curse-Breakers and duellists were assembled specifically to breach Sussex while the rest of the Insurgency were to hit a number of Voldemort's bases at the same time.
The hope was that the coordinated attack would distract from Sussex long enough that the squadron could breach the wards, destroy the labs and building, and make their way out.
Hermione had been, at her insistence, brought into the elite squadron as a Curse-Breaker.
"Bill can't be the only Curse-Breaker on the team," she argued vehemently.
Hermione had pored over the Sussex blueprints with Ron and the rest of the high ranking operatives: a room of just the Golden Trio, top duellists, Moody and Shacklebolt. She had seen the various protections and enchantments that made Sussex impenetrable. Draco had scribbled it all down for them.
"It doesn't matter how good Bill is at this, he can't take on the entirety of the building by himself. Look at this!"
She flipped through the blueprints and sent them scattering across the war room table. Pages and pages of building plans, all colour coded.
"Multiple floors, multiple labs, that's hundreds of protection wards he needs to break. It's a two person job, there's no way he'll finish it in time by himself. This is our only shot, while Voldemort and the High Reeve are out of the country. If we fuck this up, we will NOT get another chance," Hermione seethed.
She slapped her hand down across the table to emphasize her point.
The room was tense.
"It's not worth the risk, Hermione," Ron sputtered at her. He gestured angrily at the blueprints.
"Sussex is one part of the plan but what if the other missions go south? If people are injured or di-"
Ron was cut off by the raspy growl of Moody speaking up.
"Boy, let Granger go. The entire mission, Sussex and bases, will be for nothing if the elite squadron ends up stranded in Sussex because Weasley can't crack through the doors fast enough."
Moody eyed Ron with his beady eyes, as if daring him to protest. Ron swallowed heavily. The set of his jaw was hard and quirked but he knew the chain of command.
Moody had put his peg down and that was the law.
"We'll assign a squad of Aurors to Granger, the best duellists we can spare," came the deep calming voice of Shacklebolt. He had remained silent for much of the tirade, deep in thought. He held their attention magnificently; Kingsley did not need to shout to be heard.
Ron shot him a grateful look and turned back to the blueprints.
"A-Alright … Alright, it's settled. We'll divvy up the teams: Bill will be protected by Proudfoot, Podmore, Greaves. Hermione will be protected by Tonks, Davies, Robards. Harry leads Team Alpha to attack the base in Norwhich; I'll lead Team Beta at Cambridge. Team Gamma is headed by Lupin, they'll take Leeds. Delta is Shacklebolt, they'll attack Plymouth."
As Ron spoke, his enchanted chess pieces zoomed around a map of Britain. They fell in their enthusiasm, and righted themselves promptly.
"We'll coordinate the attack at exactly 2 AM, under the cover of dark. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta will launch their offensives at the same time. Twenty minutes later, Team Omega storms Sussex. It won't be easy or pretty but I think we can manage it, we brought two dozen back from Europe for this."
Ron swallowed heavily and looked around the room. Determined faces looked back at him.
"This is the biggest, most ambitious attack we've ever planned. This will make or break us and- ... and it's been an honour, gentlemen. Constant vigilance!" he barked.
Moody gave him a glare that could petrify a Basilisk. The rest of the room broke off in nervous, excited laughter.
This is it, Hermione thought grimly. She stared down at Sussex's blueprints.
This is what you always wanted. You're going to sacrifice anything to win this war. No more hiding at base.
Days passed by in such a tense blur that Hermione thought she truly had a mental breakdown.
Dissociation? Depersonalization? There was a Muggle psychiatric term for what she was feeling, she was certain of it.
Her body did not feel like her own. She was far removed from reality, as if her consciousness had taken one, two, three steps back from her life. She observed herself dispassionately as her body moved through the movements.
Hermione watched Hermione prepare supplies, gather Insurgency members that had steady hands and Healing knowledge and teach them the basics of stasis and healing charms. She would be gone on a mission, she watched herself explain. It'll be your responsibility to heal and patch everyone up as best you can, until she returns.
Hermione watched herself work frantically. A frenetic rate. A rate that would burn herself out if she wasn't careful. It didn't matter. She didn't need to worry about an "after" when the Sussex assault loomed so large in front of her.
Three days left.
She taught the infirmary interns as best she could. It was a handful of girls, who weren't up to par at duelling but could heal and memorize spells reasonably well, and had the fine motor control for healing wandwork.
Two days left.
She brewed as many potions as she could, pulling out all the cauldrons in 12 Grimmauld Place, instructing Insurgency members to raid their own homes, their parents' homes, their granny's dusty old attic for any cauldron they could find. A hundred stared back at her from every flat surface of the Potions lab.
The combined fumes nearly made her pass out. Dandelion roots, fairy wings, powdered belladonna leaves, vampire fangs, dried nettle powder. She had to grip onto the table and walls and work benches as she walked around carefully, lest she collapse and drown in a vat of Blood Replenishing potion.
That would be really terribly embarrassing, she thought to herself with a cringe. Imagine reading a history book about the Insurgency and I'd just be a foot note in there: Hermione Granger, Healer - drowned in a vat. Snape would show up to my funeral just to make fun of my teeth.
Oh Merlin I need to get it together.
One day left.
She wrote out a frantic note.
Please take care of my parents. Monica and Wendell Wilkins. Someone please check up on them, make sure they're okay. Daisies are my favourite flowers. Please make sure you place some on my grave.
Feeling slightly silly, slightly weepy, slightly terrified and slightly bemused, she laid down in her bed.
The note was safely under her pillow. She laid there for a long time before she fell asleep.
Day of the attack.
Hermione got up and dressed around noon. She figured she deserved a lie-in, possibly the last lazy sleep of her life. She ate … well surely not breakfast, but brunch was a fancy affair in her mind and the chipped plates of Grimmauld Place were hardly fancy, so she called it lunch instead.
The rest of the Insurgency was quiet around her in the kitchen. Everyone was deep in thought. Hermione wondered if they, too, had a silly little suicide note tucked under their pillow.
Would anyone be alive to come back and read it, honour her wishes? Probably not, if things went south.
She swallowed the lumpy oatmeal in her mouth. It seemed to stick to every inch of her esophageal surface, stubbornly clinging on.
Hermione managed to consume half a bowl before she abruptly stood up, sprinted for the patio door, and vomited her breakfastbrunchlunch into some bushes in the yard.
After retching a final few times for good measure, she stood up on shaky knees and walked back into 12 Grimmauld Place like nothing had happened.
Nobody reacted. It seemed to be a very normal occurrence that day, for she had spotted the remains of at least three other meals discarded in the bushes.
Lavender, a gigantic purple hickey on her neck, gave Hermione a weak smile. She was not eating.
Hermione smiled back and almost threw up again. She did not need the mental image of her childhood best friend and Lavender having one last round of desperate war sex.
She double checked and triple checked her supplies. She left the newbie healers in the infirmary with a hastily put together playbook of healing spells, healing brews, stasis charms if they couldn't handle the injury and needed Hermione to take care of it, humane methods to euthanize anyone that needed it.
They looked aghast at the last note and Hermione made them swear on their lives that they would do the necessary thing, if it came down to it.
They swore on their lives. Two girls were crying as Hermione held their hands ferociously and hissed out her desperate instructions. She was weeping a little bit too.
It was just past 1 AM when Team Omega stood on the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld Place and disappeared together. Time, space and reality distorted around them before they were summarily dumped into a field in Sussex, approximately 2 miles west of the Sussex laboratory building.
They made their careful trek over under the cloak of dark, Disillusionment Charms cast over each person. Any outsider looking in on the fields and forests would only see a slight shimmer in the air, gone when they blinked.
Crawling through bramble and pushing through grass, Hermione's heart pounded painfully. This is what you wanted, she reminded herself. War requires sacrifice.
They assembled around the outskirts of the Sussex lab and stared up at it, 100 paces away. A glowing orb seemed to cloak the cathedral-like building. The wards glowed and shimmered possessively around it.
30 minutes left.
Hermione's left leg was falling asleep. She jostled it carefully, shaking it and twisting it. Tonks looked at her strangely so she stopped.
10 minutes left.
I miss my parents.
5 minutes left.
I miss Draco. I wish that I had told him.
2:20 AM. Showtime.
Bill slammed down the most destructive bundle of curse-breaking spells he knew, while Hermione assisted him by mimicking it. Their magic combined pushed, pressured, heaved against the protective ward surrounding Sussex.
Tiny cracks began to form on the surface of the protective ward. Hermione pushed harder and harder, urging the magic to drive out of her body and into the ward.
Come on come on come on, she gasped. Her chest was heaving at the effort and sweat collected on her forehead. Bill was equally as focused, and she could see him panting with the effort.
The wards flickered their glowing blue light and illuminated Bill's scarred face. Lit up in the ethereal glow, he seemed to shape shift. He resembled Mad-Eye.
The cracks turned into fissures, and the fissures broke apart. The ward finally shattered with an all mighty boom and collapsed in on itself, like an angry Norse God awakening.
They were in.
"Go, go, GO!" screamed Tonks from behind Hermione, pushing her forward. Their team surged and sprinted the 100 paces from the edge of where the protective ward was, towards the Sussex lab building.
Hermione gasped for air as she ran, trying to keep up with the frantic run. Davies and Robards cast the biggest Bombarda they had at the stone fortress ahead and it broke apart, while Tonks began casting protective enchantments around them as they ran.
An entire portion of the multi-floor building had collapsed, and they surged in. They had split off from Bill's team, who was responsible for a different sector of Sussex.
Hermione sprinted down the corridors, up multiple flights of stairs, and began breaking apart the protective wards around laboratory doors, brute forcing her way in. The wards shuddered and disappeared before her, and she wrenched the door open. Entering the sterile lab, she started looting as much as she could: rare potions supplies, warded stacks of research material, mysterious bottled concoctions were haphazardly dumped into her beaded bag. Tonks kept up with her at every turn and did the same, while Davies and Robards brought up the rear and guarded them.
They had looted two entire floors by the time the alarm was raised in the building, blaring out a terrifying siren.
Delayed reaction indeed, Hermione thought. Fear had crept into her and drilled a sharp spike through the adrenaline.
They had been noticed, and Death Eaters would begin pouring in shortly.
Checking her watch quickly (2:32 AM), Hermione trailed Tonks as they began their ascent down to the main level. Robards and Davies followed right behind.
They had started on the top floors to give them a topographic advantage when Death Eaters began pouring in, and they were right to do so. Despite the delayed response and the ongoing attacks by alpha, beta, gamma and delta, there were still dozens of masked figures in the building.
Tonks battled fluidly, casting and slashing out Dark Magic as she raced down stairwells. Her hair stood pastel pink in the chaos, a single vibrant splash of colour. Hexes, jinxes, curses flew around Hermione as she desperately tried to parry and deflect, block and protect.
She shot several Slicing Hexes and watched with satisfaction as Achilles' tendons were brutally cut apart, femoral arteries sliced open. Blood sprayed a hot mist across her face as several Death Eaters toppled before them.
They were steadily making their way out. They were nearly at the ground floor, they were just so close. All they had to do was get to the collapsed section of wall, battle out and they could Apparate to base.
A pained, wet gurgle behind her.
Hermione turned just in time to watch Robards fall to the floor a few feet behind, ran through by a Death Eater's knife.
The Death Eater pulled the knife out with a sickening squelch, and turned to look up at Hermione. With a delighted hiss, he surged forward in pursuit.
Another gurgle at her side, and this time, Davies had fallen. A Dark Curse had been shot at him and rended him sliced apart. Hermione watched in horror as deep, gory cuts appeared on every part of his body. Davies looked down in fright for a single second, before the curse hit his face and his eyes were gouged out by it.
His body fell with a thump.
Hermione scrambled back and felt Tonks at her back. They were the only two left.
She slashed and cast, urging and heaving as much magic as she could, they were so close, just a few more paces and they would be free, so close so close so close until -
A scream tore itself out of Tonks abruptly and Hermione turned just in time to watch Tonks fall forward. A Severing Charm had cut her vocal cords out. Her body gave a frantic final twitch and was still.
Hermione was alone.
Her Shield Charm sputtered and she pressed desperately into the corridor, trying to shrink herself. A dozen Death Eaters were fast approaching, even more surging forward from the grounds outside, and all she could do was watch in horror as they stalked towards her.
One Death Eater, the one that stabbed Robards, was closest to her. Just a few feet away. He lunged at Hermione, tackling her.
She was much smaller beneath him. She couldn't fight him off, she couldn't fight at all.
He hauled her up by the neck, throttling her, and slammed her into the stone wall behind them. Stars, constellations, beautiful galaxies burst across her vision. Her feet dangled uselessly, several inches above the ground.
Then, with one fluid motion, he drove his knife into her side.
It tore between her ribs, punctured her lung, nearly hit the vertebrae of her spine. Hermione gave a gurgled gasp. It was cold. It was so, so cold. It burnt, it hurt, it was goring her alive.
She gave a pained sob as her lungs burned with lack of air and her side tore apart painfully. Blood vomited out of her mouth as she tried to gasp for air, to cling to life. The Death Eater pulled the knife out with a sickening squelch. He gave a delighted laugh at his handiwork, and she felt blood pour torrentially down her side.
He pulled back, re-positioned his arm. Prepared to stab it into her again, through her heart this time.
Sever my aorta, Hermione thought desperately. Please please please let it be quick please please ple-
And then, suddenly. She heard a trill of caws ring through the air. Clear as glass crystal. Ominous as a Grim. An unkindness.
The Death Eaters heard it too, for they stopped in confusion. They froze in their steps and stared around wildly for the source of the noise.
They did not have to wait long. Ravens, black as night, made of shadow itself swept through the corridor. Hermione had never seen such creatures before, they seemed to be made of something darker than the void itself. A complete absence of light. They didn't seem solid and yet -
With a singular movement, a dozen ravens dive bombed the Death Eaters. Hermione heard horrified screaming as the birds tore into flesh, rended and flayed skin, grasped at beating hearts with sharp, otherworldly claws. They picked apart the dozen Death Eaters packed into the corridor and shredded them alive.
The Death Eater holding her up, stabbing her, collapsed. His eyes had been gouged out. His face was gone, and his skull had been cracked apart. She could see brain matter that had been pecked and feasted upon.
Hermione was dropped suddenly onto the stone floor and she collapsed with a gasp. She had fallen into a crumpled heap. Blood poured steadily from her side as she reached around, grappled blindly for her wand and managed to grab hold of it.
At the sound of a low whistle, the ravens gave a responding caw. They beat their wings rapidly and flew back to their master in unison.
Hermione looked up, through the bleary haze of pain. Across the corridor, as if forged from a nightmare itself, was the blood red mask of the High Reeve.
It glinted crimson and dangerous back at her. She pressed herself into the stone wall, shaking with pain and exhaustion, and tried to shrink back.
Draco stalked across to her and hauled her up roughly by the arm. Hermione gave a shriek of pain as his massive form towered over her and he half dragged, half marched her out of the building.
"Fucking idiot," he snarled. The High Reeve mask muffled him but she could hear his raw, vibrant rage. Hermione's vision was fading rapidly as Draco dragged her violently across the field, but she still managed to watch him.
He didn't care for cruelty. He didn't care at all, for that matter. She had never seen anyone fight like him before.
It was brutal efficiency. It was a numbers game, of optimization. How to expend the least amount of energy to kill the most people possible.
He was deadly.
Death Eaters dropped like flies around them, a half dozen falling from the ravens that swirled around him. Horrified screams, yells of pain were harmonious with the cawing of the ravens. Hermione saw glittery silver needles shoot out of Draco's wand in an arc that encircled the two of them. They enlarged in the air and transformed into swords, hurtling toward and impaling Death Eaters.
They slumped to the ground, ran through and perfectly still.
He fired more non-verbal Curses and several Death Eaters dropped to the ground, screaming as their blood had transformed into molten lead. The field had grown silent. There was no one left alive to make a sound.
Finally, they reached the edge of the Anti-Apparition Ward. Draco hauled her to her feet, grabbing her arm so hard it was bruising, and they disappeared with a pop.