"Thank you, Hermione, for cleaning up the mess I created," She huffed as she barged her way into the room Harry and Ron were sitting in, talking animatedly. She had patched Severus up the best she could, cleaning the blood from the wounds and bandaging the wounds that were left behind. He had insisted they were but a scratch but it was the least she could do and then she had taken him back to his room with some blood replenisher potion and some food to steady his sugar levels and ensure he didn't pass out and die. She had left him with the promise she would come check on him again soon to ensure he was still breathing.
"Is he alive?" Harry asked with a sombre tone in his voice but the look dancing in his eyes told Hermione that his true feelings didn't back that up and he probably really didn't care if Snape lived or died. After all, he had made it known on more than one occasion how deep his hatred for the elder wizard ran. It ran deep inside of him, almost consuming him as it ran through his veins like an insidious disease he couldn't control. She was sure that he wanted to hate Snape, she knew it, she could see it in his eyes and etched into every line of his face. Even if Snape had been totally innocent Harry would still loathe him with every inch of his being.
"Yes. No thanks to you." A roll of her eyes told Harry that perhaps she was just a tiny bit pissed off with him.
"I admit maybe I shouldn't have done that… Flew off the handle a little bit but I was angry, Hermione. He insulted me. I. Well. I have an unusual amount of anger and hostility in me lately and I just can't explain it." A shaky hand carded through raven hair, getting lost in the long tresses and emerged seconds later to fall by his side.
"He's insulted me plenty of times too, but I haven't gone and tried to kill the man. Do you realise if he had have died you would have been up for murder, Harry? It's bad enough you have him here against his free will but if he had have died that would have been the end for you. When this is all over when it's all said and done you would have been trialled for murder and there would have been nothing I or anyone else could have done. I think it's about time you think about letting him go. You aren't any closer to getting him to talk." She clenched her teeth together so tightly, they slipped and ground audibly.
"I can't just let him go, Hermione," His voice shaky and wavering. "He knows too much. He knows where the order resides, he will get revenge on us for what we have done."
She snorted derisively. Maybe he would come after some of them, but not her. He had proved that quite a few times now. "Speak for yourself, Harry. I am certain I am fairly safe, you on the other hand…" She trailed off shooting him a look of mock pity from where she stood. Her tolerance for him was growing lower by the day.
"What? The amazing Hermione Granger is exempt from feeling his wrath. You are just as guilty in this as Ron and I." Arms folded tightly across his chest as he peered at her almost over the top of his glasses daring her to question him.
"Unlike you two." She pointed to the two boys one after the other, "I have shown him nothing but kindness. You know like how a human being should be treated. I've said from the get-go that I wanted nothing to do with your stupid idea and I haven't. I have merely cleaned up the mess that you were too stupid to clean up yourself." Her words were heavy and angry. She was seething right now and wanted to lash out at him, she wanted to hurt him and make him feel some of the hurt he was causing her to feel right now. She was slowly starting to resent her best friend because of the stupid choices he had made in life and had now dragged her into. She felt little more than the clean-up crew to all of his wayward plans.
"So I'm stupid now, am I?" He pulled himself to full height, towering over the girl who was much shorter in stature than he was. She felt minuscule now next to him, intimidated beyond measure. Harry had never laid a hand on her before but the anger he was feeling was palpable and hung thick in the air.
"Some things you do are so ridiculous Harry," She admitted. Her eyes bore into the floor beneath her, lip quivering heavily threatening to spill tears along with it.
"Just tell me how you really feel then, Hermione," he pressed, accusation heavy in his tone.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself emotionally and she looked up at him. Caramel eyes had sadness within them, and he could tell she was so close to bursting out in tears it wasn't funny. Her eyes were red, and the tears glittered in them, but they hadn't fallen, not yet. But if she had something to say, he wanted to know now before he wasted any more time including her in any of this. If she wasn't here for him, no matter how crazy or stupid things seemed then he didn't want her coming along at all now or ever.
"Ok, fine." Throwing her hands up in the air she prepared herself for the colossal tirade she was about to unleash. If he wanted to know, he was going to know.
"I think this whole thing, is stupid. This whole Horcrux thing. The way you treated and still do treat Dumbledore as if he were a god amongst men when he was little more than a manipulative asshole who played a teenage boy better than a finely tuned piano. He used you more often than not for his own ill-gotten gains. You seem to think he was, in fact, a hero. Someone to look up to, perhaps. But it wasn't all that long ago he was treading down the path of darkness following Grindelwald like a lost puppy towards the darkness. He wasn't perfect, far from it actually." She took in a much-needed breath. She could feel the tension growing to a surmountable level within the room and Ron physically grabbed onto Harry's arm to try to diffuse the situation before anything could happen.
She watched as Harry tried to process what she had said. His mouth opened and closed a few times, his eyebrows raised once or twice, a finger extended out to point at her before he retracted it lightning fast.
"Dumbledore was a great man," He protested but was stopped when she scoffed.
"Dumbledore was great, you have that right. Great at manipulating every single person he could. Playing the maleficent puppet master to get what he wanted, when he wanted. He was no hero. He was no gentleman. He was just a man with an agenda who played everyone around him, so you all fell into his perfectly laid trap. And if you can't accept that, well I am sorry Harry, but I think we better part ways."
"Hermione," Ron warned sternly as if she were in the wrong here. But she wasn't, she was telling nothing but the truth and if they didn't like it, well do be it. Why should she lie and walk around on eggshells just to appease the amazing Harry Potter? She rolled her eyes at her own thoughts. It was sickening.
"No, Ronald. Don't Hermione me. I have something to say and I will say it. I will not be silenced and chastised into the cookie-cutter friend that you think I should be. We are all our own person and we can think and feel what we want. I don't care if you worship the ground Dumbledore walked on and hold a grave-side vigil. Whatever, that is up to you, but I don't see him for that great man that you both do." She huffed and tossed her wild mane of curls over her shoulder; they became frizzier as she got angrier and riled herself up.
"Ok. Well if that is what you think, Hermione. Just leave," Harry offered coolly, lips pursued and eyes narrowed in a show of utmost anger.
"No. How about you leave on one of your little trips that the wise and amazing Dumbledore would have wanted and I will stay here and make sure Snape doesn't die so you don't end up with murder tacked onto your record along with kidnapping, holding someone against their free will and oh, torture."
"We were going to go for a few days anyway and quite frankly, I don't want you coming along now," he huffed as they played their pettiness tit-for-tat.
"Good. I wouldn't have wanted to come anyway. I'm much safer here alone where I don't have you to make stupid life decisions and put my life as I know it in danger."
"Oh yeah. Cause being left alone in a house with a mastermind murderer is really so much better than having us two for protection." Lip curling back, he snarled low in his throat angrily at her.
"No. Pretty sure I am safer here. At least if something goes wrong, I have someone with a brain to get me out of a bad situation."
"Fine!" Harry bellow angrily.
"Fine!" Hermione reiterated back in the same tone. She shook violently from the pure white-hot anger that was coursing through her veins and it took every ounce of power within her not to pull her wand out and hex him from here to last week.
And with that she turned and stormed out, stomping every step of the way out of the room and up the stairs to Severus where she burst into the room he was held in and slammed the door behind her.
"Back so soon?" He propped himself up gingerly in the bed as pain radiated across his abdomen and down his thigh almost making him lightheaded and wanting to vomit. He might be healed to a degree but then the pain that lingered during the aftermath was never pleasant and may last for weeks. Well, at least he wasn't going to die anytime soon. Every cloud did have a silver lining he thought sarcastically to himself.
"Yes," her voice filled with bitterness and anger as she flopped down on the bed beside him sending the springs recoiling beneath her and almost upending him out of the other side of the bed.
"Do tell." Yes, that was it. Build a rapport with her, make her feel as if she could confide in him. If she confided in him her trust would grow exponentially and eventually, he would have her exactly where he wanted. Fuck, she would be trotting after him hanging off his every word while she looked at him with intent carnal fascination.
She relayed the entire story to him in detail. He really didn't care one iota, but it was interesting none the less and broke up some of the otherwise monotonous days that blurred into one another, day after day, minute after minute and hour after hour all blurred into the murky mess of time that ticked by.
He listened and he nodded, and he agreed. Tapping his bottom lip as if in deep thought he finally spoke once she had spoken.
"Well. You are right about Dumbledore. He was a master manipulator." She got that much right and he realised she was smarter than he had given her credit for. The fact she could see through the rock-solid front Dumbledore had thrown up spoke volumes about her intelligence and character.
"So, why did you kill him?" She pressed gently, tilting her head slightly to the side in interest and wonder. Hopefully, he told her. Maybe he would but she doubted it.
Rubbing open palms over weary eyes he sighed, resigned to the fact that he may as well tell her sooner rather than later.
"Draco Malfoy was supposed to kill him. He couldn't, and the truth was I didn't really want him to darken his soul and break his spirit killing when he so clearly didn't want to, so I did it. You see, Narcissa came to me one day at my home and begged me to take an unbreakable vow and to do what I had to if Draco couldn't and who was I to say no when a woman comes to my home almost crying her eyes out, distressed." He signed haughtily as if gathering his thoughts before continuing.
"Dumbledore knew, of course, he did, I told him. We had already discussed that when the time came, I would be the one to kill Dumbledore, thus saving Draco from a life of misery, locked away in the confines of Azkaban for something he was forced to do by the Dark Lord. Draco isn't as cruel and as cold and calculating as he appears on the surface. Deep down inside, past the hatred and the bitterness lays an innocent boy just yearning for attention and a life of normalcy. He didn't want any of this, he doesn't want to be used as a weapon for the Dark Lord, threatened with the life of his mother should he not comply."
He shifted again in the bed trying to get comfortable, his leg brushing against her thigh gently and he was surprised she didn't recoil from him in disgust.
"So, you saved Draco from having to spend the rest of his natural life in Azkaban?" Her expression softened at the realisation of the selflessness that he had shown.
"Basically. Yes. And in return, I end up here against my free will for a crime that Dumbledore organised, and I had little to no say in. Again, with the master manipulator thing as you have already discovered. You see, he was smart and quick-witted but he, just like Potter often didn't think about consequences to his actions."
"A victim of circumstances beyond your control?" She asked softly.
Without thinking he reached out and tucked an errant frizzy curl behind her ear, a single finger brushed against her cheek accidentally. "Aren't we all Hermione? Aren't we all."
A/N: I am really feeling this story lately. Loving writing it if I am honest, and I have had a bit of inspiration which is why you are getting a second chapter in twenty-four hours. I hope this tides you over until the next chapter, hopefully, sooner rather than later whilst I give love to my other stories and their readers also.
-Aliasmel1