Chapter Three
In which Hermione remembers a lot
She awoke in a cold sweat very early that morning. A fuzzy sort of light was pouring in through the window as she raised her head from the desk where she had fallen asleep. The chair, she realized, had been a poor substitute for a bed. She stretched the kinks from her back and slowly stood. The dream came back to her image by image in a rush of darkness and fear. Hermione rubbed her eyes and attempted to clear her head. Dreams, her dreams, were usually meaningless. Divinations class had taught her that much. She glanced at the clock in the corner. She had slept only for a few hours, and what a troubled sleep it had been! But there were things to be done. Idleness could not be afforded.
Hermione settled into her morning routine as best as she could. She had just buttoned the last button of her dark blue robes, the standard uniform of those serving in the Ministry legal offices, when there was a knock at her door. She saw her own eyes widen in the mirror.
"No, no, no! He can't have come here!" she thought desperately, more than half assuming that it was her former potions professor. She glanced and winced at the reports on her desk and floor as she dashed to answer the door.
She composed herself before opening it. Her heart skipped a beat as she recognized the robed figure standing in the hallway.
"Professor Lupin! What on earth are you doing here? And at this hour!" she laughed in happy surprise. It was none other than her favorite Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. "Come in!" she added before he could reply.
"I can't just drop by for a visit? I do believe you had issued an invitation ..." he said with a tired, but friendly smile.
"Of course you can. I just wasn't expecting you." she chuckled. "Would you like some breakfast? I could whip something up."
"I'm afraid I can't. Classes at Hogwarts in about two hours. If I weren't in such a rush ..." he shrugged.
"Ah, then this isn't just a visit, now is it?" Hermione asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
Remus looked uncomfortable as he ran his hands through his shaggy graying hair.
"I wanted to ask you, on behalf of Sirius and myself, to pass ... on Severus Snape's case, to let someone else handle the matter."
"But why? You know as well as anyone how valuable he was to our side during the war."
Looking more uncomfortable than ever, Remus gestured for Hermione to take a seat while he sank heavily into a chair himself, and said, "Sirius ... spent years in Azkaban."
"I know that, but what has it got to do with Snape?" she questioned impatiently.
"When the Potters were murdered ... and when Sirius was accused of betraying them and killing Peter Pettigrew and others ... Snape could have come forward, or come forward more quickly, with information to save all three of them. But he didn't. Hermione, some things can be forgiven. Little grudges from childhood, for instance. Some things cannot be. Like ..."
"Withholding information?"
"When its consequences are so severe." nodded Remus.
"But you don't have any proof. You can't possibly. I have read all the reports, you know."
"There are some things you just know."
"Remus ... you would send someone, you would send Severus Snape, to Azkaban possibly for the rest of his life on a feeling, on ... nothing more than a hunch?"
The professor looked away and sighed, "You're young, Hermione. You don't remember those days ... back then. For all the good he might have done since, Snape is still the man who let Sirius take the fall for Peter Pettigrew's actions. And believe me, the only things that have stopped him from taking those years in Azkaban out of Snape's hide are the fact that Severus helped Harry and because Sirius believes, has always believed, that the Dark Lord's servants would get their due."
Hermione shifted in her seat as she remembered her dream, remembered Sirius blocking the path between her and the courtroom. Talk about a premonition. Just as Snape had long hated Sirius Black for attempting to lure him to his death, Sirius hated Severus for attempting to deliver him over to the dementors.
"Then you don't believe that a man may make amends?"
"In his case, no, I don't suppose that I do. I wish ... I wish that I didn't remember so much. I wish that life could be like it should be now, happy and free of old grudges and crimes unatoned for, but it can't be. Not ..."
"Until the last reminder of the wars, of Voldemort, of all of that have been neatly swept under the rug or into prison. Who's next? Harry? Ron? Me? You? Aren't we all just nasty reminders of darker days?" she questioned hotly.
Remus hung his head for a moment, nodding as he conceded her point.
"I know I won't be able to dissuade you, but ... can I at least ask you why you agreed to defend him?"
"I'm not sure." she admitted, a thousand different answers coming to mind at once.
"Does it have anything to do with the last battle and ... after?" questioned Lupin, looking up at her with his keen, but sad eyes.
Hermione gripped the arms of her chair and squeezed her own eyes closed. Some things were very difficult to forget ...
Her ears were still ringing and she just knew that she had a concussion. It was the darkest part of the night, and a heavy mist had rolled over the school grounds and vicinity. Sparks, here and there, illuminated the grounds. Signs of battle. Green flashes. Red Flashes. Sometimes more green than red. Forbidden curses being cast. Hermione clutched her injured arm to her chest, grateful that she had kept a good grip on her wand nevertheless. Somewhere behind her in a ring of scorched grass Pansy Parkinson lay dead. Somewhere in front of her in the fog, Harry was fighting his final duel with Voldemort, just months before his eighteenth birthday and days before graduation. She knew that she had to find him, or die in the attempt, which seemed far more likely.
Stumbling through the mist, which had become a light drizzle, the sound of a familiar voice crying out in pain drew her attention. She could tell, even from a distance, that someone was being hit by the Cruciatus Curse. For a moment she hesitated. Her duty was to find Harry, and it wasn't his agonized voice reverberating through the fog. She adjusted her grip on her wand and began moving through the rainy night. Uncertain as to Harry's location, not to mention her ability to aid him, she turned her faltering steps toward the painful screams.
She slowly followed the sound to the edge of the Dark Forest, stopping only when she beheld a startling scene before her. It was Voldemort himself, delivering the Cruciatus Curse to a raven-hared wizard in flowing black robes who stood over a thin fallen form. Her heart skipped a beat as she watched Severus Snape take curse after curse, crying out, but not flinching. He held his position over the young wizard, over Harry Potter, regardless of the pain.
As Hermione stood there, rooted to the spot in terror, she saw Harry move, raising his wand arm and the hand that held the brother of the instrument that tortured his protector. As Severus finally crumpled to the ground, Harry rolled to the side and pointed his wand at Voldemort. His youth that had at first betrayed him, made him susceptible to the first painful curses used by the dark wizard, gave him the speed he needed to cast one deadly spell before Voldemort could turn to strike. In that moment Voldemort toppled to the ground in a heap of seared robes, and to Hermione Granger it felt as though the world stopped. She watched Harry clamber slowly to his feet, swaying dizzily as he wiped the blood from his face. He had defeated Voldemort.
Her eyes drifted to the motionless form of the potions' master. They had defeated Voldemort, she amended.
It was chaos. None of Voldemort's supports would go down without a struggle. The battle raged on even as Hermione and a very dazed Harry Potter half carried, half dragged the rigid, trembling body of their professor from the field and back toward the castle, which was in shambles. Gryffindor Tower had practically collapsed in upon itself during the first assault. How the wards had been broken, or weakened so severely, no one could really say even after the night was over. It had taken much of the dark wizards' power to do it. That much was certain.
They made their way to the castle infirmary where dozens upon dozens of cots had been made up. They were occupied by the injured and the dying. The dead were covered with thin shrouds in the corner, enemy lying by the side of friend, equal and undifferentiated in death. Hermione glimpsed a few familiar faces peering through the shrouds: Lavender Brown, Pansy Parkinson, Argus Filch, Assistant Professor George Weasley, young Crabbe and Goyle, Professor Minerva McGonagall, and many more. She looked away with a shudder as they made their way to an empty cot where they deposited Snape. Harry had yet to say a word to her. He seemed to be in some sort of shock.
Harry sat down heavily on the floor by the makeshift hospital bed while Hermione glanced around the over-crowded room in search of Madam Pomfrey. She spied the overwhelmed mediwitch flitting from patient to patient like a pixie on a caffeine high. Still holding her aching wand arm to her chest Hermione waved her over. The witch let out a little shriek as she saw Harry, Hermione, and the professor.
"Is it over? Is it over?" she questioned them as she rushed over. Many people were staring in their direction, holding their breaths.
Hermione looked down at Harry as the young wizard raised his head.
"Yes." he replied just before he finally fainted from pain and exhaustion.
In the days that followed many things were uncertain. Who was dead, who was missing, who was alive, and who was going to die. The mediwitches were hard put to save those that could be saved. And Hermione remained in the hospital wing for many days with her arm in a sling because they were all beginning to rely on rudimentary muggle medicine out of desperation and want. They were running out of potions at an alarming rate, but that was no small surprise. The chief maker of potions for the school was lying upon a cot near the rear of the hospital wing where a young woman with curly hair and a broken arm bided her time in the space between his bed and that of Harry Potter.
Severus Snape was unconscious, broken like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and deathly pale. The human body, whether it belonged to a wizard or muggle, could only bear so much punishment, so much physical pain. His body's limit had been found, it seemed. And it nearly wounded her to see him in such a state, knowing what he had done, knowing how he had earned it. Hermione was grateful and yet sad. Perhaps that was why she remained there with the dour, ever unpleasant man.
Every bit of good news had a bittersweet taste to it. When Ron returned after days of being lost in the Dark Forest, during which time he decided to pursue the idea of becoming an Auror, though for reasons he was never quite comfortable explaining, Hermione had been happy. Then as they stood by Harry's bedside where The-Boy-Who-Lived slept a dreamless sleep, their eyes drifted toward where Snape lay, paralyzed and perhaps dying.
"Ugly git. I wonder what side he fought for when the chips were down." said Ron.
"Ours." Hermione whispered. "I was there."
Then when Neville and Ginny came out of their comas, she had been very glad. Voldemort had taken other happy couples from their midst and others death had split asunder, but not those two. But a nagging part of her mind wondered when Professor Snape would return from his coma, and if he would ever do so. She had begun to doubt it, though she did not forsake her watch upon him even when the dead were laid to rest and Gryffindor Tower was restored to them, long after Harry had awakened and begun to truly heal.
It was in the early darkness of evening when Professor Lupin, who had passed through the fire all but unscathed, came to visit two of the last patients of the ward, a quietly convalescing Harry Potter and desperately wounded Severus Snape. Hermione had been unaware of him for a long time as she sat in a comfortable chair close to Snape's bed. Every evening she told him the news of the day, and often there was so much of it that she could not tell him everything that had happened. She knew later, of course, that Remus had watched her gently rub Snape's pale hands, trying so hard to evoke a response from the comatose potions' master.
Hermione turned only when Remus cleared his throat, interrupting her quiet and one-sided conversation. She looked up into his knowing, piercing eyes as she released Snape's hand. His eyes always seemed sadder after the day of the final battle, the day that he had been forced to kill young Draco Malfoy, who had carried the Dark Mark for just less than a year.
"You know there is a place for you in the tower. The beds have been repaired and the common room is filled with pleasant and friendly voices again. Or so I hear." he told her softly.
"I know, but I don't feel quite right leaving them yet." she admitted.
"Harry will return tomorrow. Madam Pomfrey is letting him go. Will you remain when there is only one of them here? Will you stay only for him?"
"I don't know."
"Graduation is scheduled for next week ... What will you do then?"
"I haven't exactly decided."
"You shouldn't stay here. It wouldn't be good for you, not after all that has happened. The Ministry is always hiring ..."
"Yes." she agreed, glancing at Severus.
"Hermione, don't waste your concern on him. Go sleep in a real bed tonight and tomorrow, start planning for your future. I know it will be a bright one." Lupin advised her.
She left her chair reluctantly, not affording Snape another glance. She could not have borne it. It was heart rending to leave him after so long.
"Yes, professor." she replied quietly as Remus slipped an arm around her shoulders, leading her toward the stairs to Gryffindor Tower.
The next morning Professor Snape awoke from his coma to the relief of many and the consternation of some.
"Hermione? Are you all right?" questioned the soft, worried voice of Professor Lupin.
She rubbed her eyes, tearing herself away from the memories of the past, and managed a smile.
"Yes, of course, professor." she answered, a small quaver in her voice giving her away.
Remus smiled softly and pulled a hunk of chocolate from inside his robes and handed it to her. Hermione blinked away a few tears.
"The dementors have been confined to Azkaban, you know. This is hardly necessary." she informed him.
"Or an acceptable breakfast, but old habits die hard."
"Thanks."
"I think you answered my question though. You are doing this for Severus, aren't you? Not because of honor or duty, but because of him."
"You weren't there, Remus. You didn't see what he did to save Harry. He very nearly gave his life ..." she answered.
Remus patted her knee gently as he rose from his chair.
"I just wanted to know if you were doing this for the right reason. The man, in my opinion, deserves a good defense, even if his actions in the past did warrant a long stretch in the deepest hole in Azkaban, possibly even the Dementor's Kiss. Sirius doesn't share my sentiments, which I must confess are not without certain misgivings that won't be easily allayed. I can't say that he won't try to hinder you in some way." he said.
"Then you ...?"
"Hold fewer grudges than some people. Good luck, Hermione. I have the distinct feeling that you will need luck in spades to pull this one off."
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A/N: I can't think of a good question today. My sincere thanks go out to the three people who reviewed: Irene, cloudshape, and Laura.
Just FYI I have revamped the summary.
In which Hermione remembers a lot
She awoke in a cold sweat very early that morning. A fuzzy sort of light was pouring in through the window as she raised her head from the desk where she had fallen asleep. The chair, she realized, had been a poor substitute for a bed. She stretched the kinks from her back and slowly stood. The dream came back to her image by image in a rush of darkness and fear. Hermione rubbed her eyes and attempted to clear her head. Dreams, her dreams, were usually meaningless. Divinations class had taught her that much. She glanced at the clock in the corner. She had slept only for a few hours, and what a troubled sleep it had been! But there were things to be done. Idleness could not be afforded.
Hermione settled into her morning routine as best as she could. She had just buttoned the last button of her dark blue robes, the standard uniform of those serving in the Ministry legal offices, when there was a knock at her door. She saw her own eyes widen in the mirror.
"No, no, no! He can't have come here!" she thought desperately, more than half assuming that it was her former potions professor. She glanced and winced at the reports on her desk and floor as she dashed to answer the door.
She composed herself before opening it. Her heart skipped a beat as she recognized the robed figure standing in the hallway.
"Professor Lupin! What on earth are you doing here? And at this hour!" she laughed in happy surprise. It was none other than her favorite Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. "Come in!" she added before he could reply.
"I can't just drop by for a visit? I do believe you had issued an invitation ..." he said with a tired, but friendly smile.
"Of course you can. I just wasn't expecting you." she chuckled. "Would you like some breakfast? I could whip something up."
"I'm afraid I can't. Classes at Hogwarts in about two hours. If I weren't in such a rush ..." he shrugged.
"Ah, then this isn't just a visit, now is it?" Hermione asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
Remus looked uncomfortable as he ran his hands through his shaggy graying hair.
"I wanted to ask you, on behalf of Sirius and myself, to pass ... on Severus Snape's case, to let someone else handle the matter."
"But why? You know as well as anyone how valuable he was to our side during the war."
Looking more uncomfortable than ever, Remus gestured for Hermione to take a seat while he sank heavily into a chair himself, and said, "Sirius ... spent years in Azkaban."
"I know that, but what has it got to do with Snape?" she questioned impatiently.
"When the Potters were murdered ... and when Sirius was accused of betraying them and killing Peter Pettigrew and others ... Snape could have come forward, or come forward more quickly, with information to save all three of them. But he didn't. Hermione, some things can be forgiven. Little grudges from childhood, for instance. Some things cannot be. Like ..."
"Withholding information?"
"When its consequences are so severe." nodded Remus.
"But you don't have any proof. You can't possibly. I have read all the reports, you know."
"There are some things you just know."
"Remus ... you would send someone, you would send Severus Snape, to Azkaban possibly for the rest of his life on a feeling, on ... nothing more than a hunch?"
The professor looked away and sighed, "You're young, Hermione. You don't remember those days ... back then. For all the good he might have done since, Snape is still the man who let Sirius take the fall for Peter Pettigrew's actions. And believe me, the only things that have stopped him from taking those years in Azkaban out of Snape's hide are the fact that Severus helped Harry and because Sirius believes, has always believed, that the Dark Lord's servants would get their due."
Hermione shifted in her seat as she remembered her dream, remembered Sirius blocking the path between her and the courtroom. Talk about a premonition. Just as Snape had long hated Sirius Black for attempting to lure him to his death, Sirius hated Severus for attempting to deliver him over to the dementors.
"Then you don't believe that a man may make amends?"
"In his case, no, I don't suppose that I do. I wish ... I wish that I didn't remember so much. I wish that life could be like it should be now, happy and free of old grudges and crimes unatoned for, but it can't be. Not ..."
"Until the last reminder of the wars, of Voldemort, of all of that have been neatly swept under the rug or into prison. Who's next? Harry? Ron? Me? You? Aren't we all just nasty reminders of darker days?" she questioned hotly.
Remus hung his head for a moment, nodding as he conceded her point.
"I know I won't be able to dissuade you, but ... can I at least ask you why you agreed to defend him?"
"I'm not sure." she admitted, a thousand different answers coming to mind at once.
"Does it have anything to do with the last battle and ... after?" questioned Lupin, looking up at her with his keen, but sad eyes.
Hermione gripped the arms of her chair and squeezed her own eyes closed. Some things were very difficult to forget ...
Her ears were still ringing and she just knew that she had a concussion. It was the darkest part of the night, and a heavy mist had rolled over the school grounds and vicinity. Sparks, here and there, illuminated the grounds. Signs of battle. Green flashes. Red Flashes. Sometimes more green than red. Forbidden curses being cast. Hermione clutched her injured arm to her chest, grateful that she had kept a good grip on her wand nevertheless. Somewhere behind her in a ring of scorched grass Pansy Parkinson lay dead. Somewhere in front of her in the fog, Harry was fighting his final duel with Voldemort, just months before his eighteenth birthday and days before graduation. She knew that she had to find him, or die in the attempt, which seemed far more likely.
Stumbling through the mist, which had become a light drizzle, the sound of a familiar voice crying out in pain drew her attention. She could tell, even from a distance, that someone was being hit by the Cruciatus Curse. For a moment she hesitated. Her duty was to find Harry, and it wasn't his agonized voice reverberating through the fog. She adjusted her grip on her wand and began moving through the rainy night. Uncertain as to Harry's location, not to mention her ability to aid him, she turned her faltering steps toward the painful screams.
She slowly followed the sound to the edge of the Dark Forest, stopping only when she beheld a startling scene before her. It was Voldemort himself, delivering the Cruciatus Curse to a raven-hared wizard in flowing black robes who stood over a thin fallen form. Her heart skipped a beat as she watched Severus Snape take curse after curse, crying out, but not flinching. He held his position over the young wizard, over Harry Potter, regardless of the pain.
As Hermione stood there, rooted to the spot in terror, she saw Harry move, raising his wand arm and the hand that held the brother of the instrument that tortured his protector. As Severus finally crumpled to the ground, Harry rolled to the side and pointed his wand at Voldemort. His youth that had at first betrayed him, made him susceptible to the first painful curses used by the dark wizard, gave him the speed he needed to cast one deadly spell before Voldemort could turn to strike. In that moment Voldemort toppled to the ground in a heap of seared robes, and to Hermione Granger it felt as though the world stopped. She watched Harry clamber slowly to his feet, swaying dizzily as he wiped the blood from his face. He had defeated Voldemort.
Her eyes drifted to the motionless form of the potions' master. They had defeated Voldemort, she amended.
It was chaos. None of Voldemort's supports would go down without a struggle. The battle raged on even as Hermione and a very dazed Harry Potter half carried, half dragged the rigid, trembling body of their professor from the field and back toward the castle, which was in shambles. Gryffindor Tower had practically collapsed in upon itself during the first assault. How the wards had been broken, or weakened so severely, no one could really say even after the night was over. It had taken much of the dark wizards' power to do it. That much was certain.
They made their way to the castle infirmary where dozens upon dozens of cots had been made up. They were occupied by the injured and the dying. The dead were covered with thin shrouds in the corner, enemy lying by the side of friend, equal and undifferentiated in death. Hermione glimpsed a few familiar faces peering through the shrouds: Lavender Brown, Pansy Parkinson, Argus Filch, Assistant Professor George Weasley, young Crabbe and Goyle, Professor Minerva McGonagall, and many more. She looked away with a shudder as they made their way to an empty cot where they deposited Snape. Harry had yet to say a word to her. He seemed to be in some sort of shock.
Harry sat down heavily on the floor by the makeshift hospital bed while Hermione glanced around the over-crowded room in search of Madam Pomfrey. She spied the overwhelmed mediwitch flitting from patient to patient like a pixie on a caffeine high. Still holding her aching wand arm to her chest Hermione waved her over. The witch let out a little shriek as she saw Harry, Hermione, and the professor.
"Is it over? Is it over?" she questioned them as she rushed over. Many people were staring in their direction, holding their breaths.
Hermione looked down at Harry as the young wizard raised his head.
"Yes." he replied just before he finally fainted from pain and exhaustion.
In the days that followed many things were uncertain. Who was dead, who was missing, who was alive, and who was going to die. The mediwitches were hard put to save those that could be saved. And Hermione remained in the hospital wing for many days with her arm in a sling because they were all beginning to rely on rudimentary muggle medicine out of desperation and want. They were running out of potions at an alarming rate, but that was no small surprise. The chief maker of potions for the school was lying upon a cot near the rear of the hospital wing where a young woman with curly hair and a broken arm bided her time in the space between his bed and that of Harry Potter.
Severus Snape was unconscious, broken like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and deathly pale. The human body, whether it belonged to a wizard or muggle, could only bear so much punishment, so much physical pain. His body's limit had been found, it seemed. And it nearly wounded her to see him in such a state, knowing what he had done, knowing how he had earned it. Hermione was grateful and yet sad. Perhaps that was why she remained there with the dour, ever unpleasant man.
Every bit of good news had a bittersweet taste to it. When Ron returned after days of being lost in the Dark Forest, during which time he decided to pursue the idea of becoming an Auror, though for reasons he was never quite comfortable explaining, Hermione had been happy. Then as they stood by Harry's bedside where The-Boy-Who-Lived slept a dreamless sleep, their eyes drifted toward where Snape lay, paralyzed and perhaps dying.
"Ugly git. I wonder what side he fought for when the chips were down." said Ron.
"Ours." Hermione whispered. "I was there."
Then when Neville and Ginny came out of their comas, she had been very glad. Voldemort had taken other happy couples from their midst and others death had split asunder, but not those two. But a nagging part of her mind wondered when Professor Snape would return from his coma, and if he would ever do so. She had begun to doubt it, though she did not forsake her watch upon him even when the dead were laid to rest and Gryffindor Tower was restored to them, long after Harry had awakened and begun to truly heal.
It was in the early darkness of evening when Professor Lupin, who had passed through the fire all but unscathed, came to visit two of the last patients of the ward, a quietly convalescing Harry Potter and desperately wounded Severus Snape. Hermione had been unaware of him for a long time as she sat in a comfortable chair close to Snape's bed. Every evening she told him the news of the day, and often there was so much of it that she could not tell him everything that had happened. She knew later, of course, that Remus had watched her gently rub Snape's pale hands, trying so hard to evoke a response from the comatose potions' master.
Hermione turned only when Remus cleared his throat, interrupting her quiet and one-sided conversation. She looked up into his knowing, piercing eyes as she released Snape's hand. His eyes always seemed sadder after the day of the final battle, the day that he had been forced to kill young Draco Malfoy, who had carried the Dark Mark for just less than a year.
"You know there is a place for you in the tower. The beds have been repaired and the common room is filled with pleasant and friendly voices again. Or so I hear." he told her softly.
"I know, but I don't feel quite right leaving them yet." she admitted.
"Harry will return tomorrow. Madam Pomfrey is letting him go. Will you remain when there is only one of them here? Will you stay only for him?"
"I don't know."
"Graduation is scheduled for next week ... What will you do then?"
"I haven't exactly decided."
"You shouldn't stay here. It wouldn't be good for you, not after all that has happened. The Ministry is always hiring ..."
"Yes." she agreed, glancing at Severus.
"Hermione, don't waste your concern on him. Go sleep in a real bed tonight and tomorrow, start planning for your future. I know it will be a bright one." Lupin advised her.
She left her chair reluctantly, not affording Snape another glance. She could not have borne it. It was heart rending to leave him after so long.
"Yes, professor." she replied quietly as Remus slipped an arm around her shoulders, leading her toward the stairs to Gryffindor Tower.
The next morning Professor Snape awoke from his coma to the relief of many and the consternation of some.
"Hermione? Are you all right?" questioned the soft, worried voice of Professor Lupin.
She rubbed her eyes, tearing herself away from the memories of the past, and managed a smile.
"Yes, of course, professor." she answered, a small quaver in her voice giving her away.
Remus smiled softly and pulled a hunk of chocolate from inside his robes and handed it to her. Hermione blinked away a few tears.
"The dementors have been confined to Azkaban, you know. This is hardly necessary." she informed him.
"Or an acceptable breakfast, but old habits die hard."
"Thanks."
"I think you answered my question though. You are doing this for Severus, aren't you? Not because of honor or duty, but because of him."
"You weren't there, Remus. You didn't see what he did to save Harry. He very nearly gave his life ..." she answered.
Remus patted her knee gently as he rose from his chair.
"I just wanted to know if you were doing this for the right reason. The man, in my opinion, deserves a good defense, even if his actions in the past did warrant a long stretch in the deepest hole in Azkaban, possibly even the Dementor's Kiss. Sirius doesn't share my sentiments, which I must confess are not without certain misgivings that won't be easily allayed. I can't say that he won't try to hinder you in some way." he said.
"Then you ...?"
"Hold fewer grudges than some people. Good luck, Hermione. I have the distinct feeling that you will need luck in spades to pull this one off."
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A/N: I can't think of a good question today. My sincere thanks go out to the three people who reviewed: Irene, cloudshape, and Laura.
Just FYI I have revamped the summary.