Spoilers: Order of the Phoenix
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Quickly, she tied her Slytherin collar around her neck. Severus knew she didn't really like Tom, even if she was polite to him whenever she met him. Somehow she hadn't forgiven him for Nagini. She managed to blame him in some way for having had the snake for a pet and thus being responsible of Firene's death.
Severus opened the door and Tom entered, looking at them with curiosity. He seemed especially puzzled when seeing the silver and green collar. Severus had no remembrance of Hermione wearing it since the encounter that proved her to be the Heir.
"Hum, good evening, Hermione, Severus," said Tom rather nervously. "I… overheard that you had some problems with Crabbe and Goyle and it seems that this collar only proves the rumours–"
"Stop it, Tom. Which conversation did you listen to that you weren't supposed to hear?" interrupted Severus.
Tom had the grace to look sheepish.
"Actually, I didn't spy on any conversation. Ginny doesn't really like that; she says it only brings troubles. But I do know of your problem concerning a certain contract binding Hermione to Crabbe and Goyle until the end of the year. If I'm not mistaken, the contract stipulates that they can do whatever they want with her. Which is not a good thing."
"Understatement," muttered Hermione darkly.
"On the other hand, if you try anything against them, they're going to throw you to the wolves. That is, they're going to throw cousin Severus to the wolves. All because of this strange mark on his arm; you know, the one of the sect called Death Eaters. Silly name, if you ask me."
Hermione couldn't help it and giggled nervously. Tom looked surprised and vaguely vexed.
"Don't worry," said Severus. "It's a silly name indeed, but I was young and stupid when I joined them."
"Ah! Well, anyway. They intend to show it to Fudge and present proofs that you never left the sect, contrary to what you claim."
"It would mean they really have proofs," murmured Severus, a line of worry appearing between his eyebrows.
"Well, one of them is the testimony of Jonathon Crabbe under Veritaserum if needed. Apparently, he's still free when he should not but would be willing to give himself up just to testify against you."
"I knew I should have made sure that he had been captured! He's more slippery than an eel!"
"Well, said Jonathon Crabbe would be able to prove that your mark was used recently and that you answered the calls, willingly. He would know spells to make it show what you did when you were with the other members of the sect."
Severus started and paled. Hermione wanted to come to him, but didn't dare, not really knowing what game Tom was playing and on which side he was.
"I didn't know the Dark Mark had such powers," he said softly.
"Few know, for all I understood. Jonathon Crabbe wasn't supposed to know. Only a witch called Bellatrix Lestrange knew, and another man called Barty Crouch."
"Then how did Crabbe know and how do you know?"
"Oh, Jonathon Crabbe spied on them and told his son about it. The two families Crabbe and Goyle are very close and the older wizards tell their sons everything."
"Jonathon Crabbe's sister is Aloysius Goyle's wife," said Severus absentmindedly. "Something strange about the women in the Crabbe family is that they are always willowy, unable to play the same brutish dumb role as the men. So they play the role of 'be beautiful and quiet'."
Hermione had a slight grin, but then, her mind was rather on what Tom had said a bit earlier.
"What happened to Bellatrix?"
"Strangely enough, Potter took her down on Samhain, while I was bringing you back here. She was his first aim, even before the Dark Lord."
"It's surprising he didn't tell me."
"Oh, for all I know, there was nothing to be proud of. He apparently hit her in the back, calling her name just before releasing his curse."
Hermione had a grimace of distaste.
"Yes, nothing to be proud of, indeed."
"Back to this thing about the Dark Mark. Tom, you say it can somehow act like a Pensieve?"
"That's what Crabbe and Goyle seem to think. I don't know the exact mechanism of the thing, but I think it's linked to the fact the mark is visible. So you just have to hide it and they won't be able to prove that you once belonged to this sect."
"The problem is that Fudge knows it. In a foolish Gryffindor move, Professor Snape showed his mark to him, in front of witnesses," commented Hermione dryly.
Tom gave her a genial smile.
"You don't need to hide from me, Hermione, I'm glad my cousin and you are happy together. I will support you all the way."
Hermione was surprised by this declaration and she knew, from Harry's retelling of his experience in the Chamber of Secret that Tom was usually smiling, unless things were not going his way.
"How do you know so much, Tom?" asked Severus, quite worried that his previous memories were coming back to him.
Tom smiled again, a brilliant smile.
"Legilimency," he announced proudly. "They were quite wary around me at the beginning, their minds closing as soon as I was appearing, but they began to relax slightly lately. I couldn't resist the offer and went on a tour of their minds. Only a few moments and I was hooked. I have been a permanent host of them during the last week and they haven't felt a thing. It's really instructive, you know. I saw that Voldemort guy, the one they call the Dark Lord, and he was really ugly, with a maniacal laugh."
Severus glanced at Hermione; how was it that Tom still had his Legilimency skills? She nodded briefly and didn't seem too surprised, so he surmised that he was somehow expecting something like this.
"So, what did you learn about, except the dilemma Hermione and I are facing?"
Tom sat without having been invited and looked at them seriously.
"You are in a bad position. They intend to send a document to the Ministry, under heavy seals. I managed to get a copy of it…"
He stopped at Severus's snort and had an apologetic smile.
"Alright, so I went through their room on a very thorough search and I grabbed everything that seemed to be of some importance. I didn't break the seals; I thought you had the right to read it first, but for all I understood, there's a loophole in the contract they made with you, Severus. The exact wording was that Hermione would be free of them as soon as she would be free of Hogwarts."
Severus paled as Tom reminded him of the words that had sounded so blurry at the time he had heard them.
"As Hermione is the Heir… she will never be free of Hogwarts," he said slowly.
Hermione clutched the edge of the desk, her knuckles turning white.
"How can this be legal? How can they enslave me for the rest of my life?" she asked, her voice getting close to a shriek.
Tom didn't answer her question directly; he handed a sealed document to Severus, who had no qualms about breaking them without the usual Slytherin subtlety. His sallow face paled as he read and he swallowed with difficulty before reading aloud:
"I, Severus Snape, as soul mate of Hermione Granger, relinquish all rights on her on the behalf of Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. Due to my status of Death Eater, I wish for her to be protected against my kin and even against myself if needed in case I would try to take her back. Being a pure-blood wizard and she being declared as a Muggle-born witch, it is my right to claim her as mine as it is my right to concede those rights to someone of my choosing. This document will lose all legality as soon as Hermione Granger will be free of Hogwarts or, whichever happens first, as soon as the last Death Eater will be no more. Drawn up and signed on Friday, November 10th, in presence of those concerned, named above, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle."
A heavy silence welcomed his reading the last words. He looked up at Hermione, almost afraid of her reaction. Tom didn't say anything either, as if stunned by the revelation.
"There are no more Death Eaters!" she said crisply.
"As long as I will be alive, there will be one last Death Eater, Hermione," he replied evenly.
"You're not a Death Eater! You redeemed yourself long ago!"
"Hermione," he said gently, reaching for her without caring for Tom's presence, "you know they still see me as a Death Eater. Even your friend Potter doesn't trust me. You know he would have preferred for me to be at Black's place when he fell through the Veil. I think I remember him trying to place the blame on me, no matter what."
"If there's no Dark Mark, there's no Death Eater!" she insisted. "Crabbe and Goyle won't be considered as Death Eaters even though they are more than you are, just because they never took the mark! We just need to make it disappear!"
"It's impossible, Hermione. Don't you think that some people would have taken it away? Bagman, Karkaroff and others would have been quite happy without that dark reminder on their arm."
"How do we know for sure that the contract will be broken? How do we know that they're not lying?" she asked desperately.
"The collar," said Tom quietly and they started, having forgotten his presence. "It's not written anywhere, but the collar will turn scarlet and gold as soon as the conditions of the contract will be met."
"It will not be enough," said Severus. "If Fudge reads this document, it will be enough for him to send me to Azkaban and remove Albus from Hogwarts. Who in their right mind would let a teacher sell students to others as if they were mere things? And who would keep a Headmaster allowing such practices?"
Tom grinned happily.
"Oh, I have a solution to that!"
Like a conjurer, he slightly bowed and presented a Pensieve to Severus. The Potions Master took it, frowning.
"What is it?"
"A Pensieve, naturally."
"I know that," snapped Severus. "Whose Pensieve is it and which memories does it contain?"
"It contains the memories of the moment you face Crabbe and Goyle and they tricked you in signing this contract. It also contains the discussion they had earlier, with Draco Malfoy, about using the dark version of the Confundus Spell. And I brought you this back."
He put Draco's letter on the desk. Hermione didn't even register the fact that he probably went through her things to recover it.
"It's all you need to prove that you were framed on this and thus not responsible of what happened."
"It doesn't change the fact that Albus allowed it."
"The Headmaster was focused on Voldemort and had other fish to fry," said Tom with a shrug. "Anyway, use of a dark spell on a teacher with the purpose of enslaving a fellow student should guarantee at least a stay in Azkaban. I think you could use this to bring Crabbe and Goyle to reason."
"But there's a last point," said Hermione hesitantly, still reluctant to consider Tom as an ally. "I'm the Heir. I'm bound to Hogwarts. Which means I have even more powers than the Headmaster on the school. I took the anti-Apparating wards down and it didn't ask me for too much an effort. I know everything that happens in the school, I know more than the Headmaster and I can ask of the castle to hide facts from him if I so desire. It could be terrible if too many people knew of this. They could try to use me against Hogwarts."
Tom looked at her with burning black eyes and grinned again.
"Then I would say that you are the obvious choice as for the next Headmaster."
Both Severus and Hermione gagged.
"What?" said Tom. "It's true! If she knows everything that happens in Hogwarts, if the castle obeys to her, then she should remain in Hogwarts."
Severus rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"You know, he's right. It's a nice solution to your problem. Being the Headmistress of the only wizard school for Great Britain, it would give you a certain status that nobody would dare to defy and you would be as respected and feared as Albus currently is. Besides, you would be the first Muggle-born Headmistress and it would be quite a shock for the wizard population and also the ultimate, striking proof of our victory over the ideas of pure-blood supremacy."
"I'm far too young and I lack experience!"
Severus grinned, obviously enthralled by this new idea.
"Ah well, we could still ask Albus to train you for one or two years…"
"Professor McGonagall would be disgruntled; she's Deputy Headmistress and probably wants to be Headmistress."
"Believe me, Minerva would be delighted to see you become Headmistress. Besides, I think she would miss teaching Transfiguration far too much. Anyway, were I in your place, I would think about it."
"Well, I've imposed too long already on your time, so I will leave you alone," said Tom cheerfully. "One last thing," he added as he was at the door, "once the contract is broken, if the conditions are not longer met, it's not important. It isn't reactivated. Once it's broken, it's broken forever."
Left alone, Severus and Hermione looked at each other.
"It should have been illegal," she murmured. "It should not be permitted to enslave another student, no matter what. Why did the Headmaster allow it?"
Severus took a deep breath.
"I'm not sure, but well, Albus has his own reasons for behaving the way he does. Like he did with Potter."
"What do you mean?"
"Albus didn't expect Black's death. In fact, he kept him in his horrible house because he knew it would fuel his restlessness and thus he would push Potter to be more and more reckless. Potter allowed Black to live vicariously the same way he was living as a teenager. I think that Albus hoped that Potter would refuse the Occlumency lessons because I was the teacher and that he would surrender to the Dark Lord's injunctions to go to the Department of Mysteries and take hold of the prophecy. I suppose that, Potter being totally unaware of the protections surrounding the prophecy, he would give it to Albus. The problem is that first Lucius told Potter how the prophecy was protected and then Black died. Potter wanted explanations and Albus had to give them. Then he only had to drop subtle hints from time to time to keep Potter's anger alive. The quickness with which he dispatched Bellatrix is the proof that he had his revenge planned for quite a long time. I think I underestimated Potter too much," he admitted grudgingly.
"So what about his reason considering you and this hateful contract?"
"I can only guess that he hoped that it would keep me in check. We were beginning to get along quite well, as he probably knew. He probably didn't know everything, since I had to explain to him and he seemed genuinely surprised, but I was in deep troubles and couldn't get away without losing the face, which would have made it hard for me to find another employment, especially considering that I'm a Death Eater."
Hermione frowned at that mention but didn't comment.
Severus woke up at the soft sound of a strangled sob.
"Hermione? What is it, love?"
"I… I so much want to heal your wounds, Severus, the ones imprinted on your soul forever, this idea that you'll be a Death Eater forever, no matter what you did to prove the contrary."
She pressed her wet face against his arm and he hissed at the sudden burn. He was quite used to feel the burn there, but he had hoped that with the Dark Lord dead, he would never feel the smarting feeling again. He grabbed his wand with his free hand and murmured a quick:
"Lumos."
Hermione looked up at him, blinking owlishly. The tears running down her cheeks were thick and pearly white. One of them fell from her chin to his arm and he hissed again. Looking down, he saw that the skin sported two red angry patches of raw flesh.
"It… it burnt the Dark Mark," he said in wonder.
Hermione didn't react at first, her tears still silently falling, not even registering his slow hiss of pain each time one of her tears touched the pale flesh of his inner arm, and then suddenly, she smiled through her tears.
"Remember what Firene said? He said that my tears would take the properties of a phoenix's when the time comes!"
"Shed no tear for me, Hermione, for each of them would burn my heart were I to cause thee grief. Treasure them for they will have the healing properties of a phoenix's when the time comes," quoted Severus softly. "True, I had forgotten. And the first prophecy… Pain, oh so much pain, and phoenix tears to heal the burns in the flesh…"
"Severus… Let me heal your wounds with my tears, let me erase this stain of your past, this poisoned arrow in your heart… Please?"
Even though her shoulders were still shaking with repressed sobs, her smile was luminous and her eyes full of hope. Reluctantly, Severus nodded and clenched his teeth as the burning drops fell on his shame. Slowly raw flash replaced the ugly Dark Mark and he looked at it in disbelief, as if it was too much for him to accept that it had truly disappeared.
"I thought it would never go away short of cutting my arm off. I tried to take this part of skin away with a knife more than once, but each time it would heal, the Dark Mark would reappear. The Dark Lord had no imagination for spells, but when he wanted a truly original one, he would always be very thorough in his research."
Hermione wiped her last tears away.
"Isn't it odd that his younger version would help us out of our predicament?"
"Even if you didn't take his powers away, you changed his personality. He's another version of Potter, except that this time, he likes me," he added with a smirk.
Then he noticed something behind Hermione and gently nudged her in the ribs. She turned her head and her eyes widened when she saw the scarlet and gold collar shining on the bedside table.
"The contract was broken…" she breathed. "There are no more Death Eaters, I'm free! You're free too!"
Severus fell back against his pillow.
"Which means we will have to talk a lot tomorrow. To Crabbe and Goyle to prove them it would be better for them to keep it quiet and to Albus to prove him you're not as dangerous as you may seem, even though you are much more."
"Severus… there's a problem. Jonathon Crabbe is still free and he is a Death Eater. How is it the collar turned scarlet and gold?"
"Oh, he had a skin graft on his arm a long time ago, just after the Dark Lord's first demise. He kept the original skin, in case the Dark Lord wanted to check, but technically he's no more a Death Eater, since the Dark Mark is no more emblazoned across his flesh."
"Why didn't you use skin graft?"
Severus hesitated a moment before explaining:
"A wizard's skin is infused with a part of his powers. Remember when Potter touched Quirrell and burnt his face? It was due to his mother's protection, which was in his blood and on his skin. You cannot graft any skin in impunity. You have to graft skin of a member of your family. If you ask your friend Vincent Crabbe, you will discover that he has scars in his back. He was the donor for his father's graft. I have no family I can ask for skin. Trying a graft with a foreigner skin could endanger my powers and I'm afraid I'm vain enough of my magic to be willing to keep it."
"I didn't know," she said thoughtfully. "I guess I still have much to learn about the wizard world. And what about Bagman and Karkaroff that you mentioned earlier?"
"Oh well, the Dark lord called them once the coward and the one who left forever. Igor left as soon as his Dark Mark told him that the Dark Lord was back. I knew he would never come back, but he tried his best to teach the students of Durmstrang as many dark spells as he could, so they would know how to defend themselves. The Dark Lord had him killed last year. As for Bagman, he was an idiot. Even though he didn't really belong to the Death Eaters, he took the Dark Mark; he thought it was a rather dashing tattoo. The Dark Lord never called him for the meetings. He fled after the Triwizard tournament and Pettigrew killed him something like two months later. Wormtail was very proud of this and bragged about it endlessly."
"So there's no more Death Eaters."
"No more," agreed Severus in an echo, looking at the burnt flesh of his arm. "The last one just claimed his life back."