Chapter Two

"I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me." Ezekial 3:17

Dumbledore was pleased to see them both when they arrived in his office, although he had seen them only the previous day at the Christmas party at the Manor.

Dumbledore looked at Hermione keenly. "Let me guess, my dear. You recently transformed again, didn't you?"

"How did you know?" Severus hissed, turning suddenly on the tall, white- haired, old man. "Have you got information that you've been keeping from us?" Anger was burning in the depths of Severus' black eyes. He would not take kindly to finding out information on Voldemort had been kept from him when it could involve Hermione in life-threatening danger.

"Calm down, Severus. I only received information just this morning and was about to owl you both when you arrived," Dumbledore replied calmly. "Take a seat," he offered.

Severus relaxed slightly and sprawled in one of the chairs opposite Dumbledore's desk, his long thin legs stretched out before him. Hermione sat next to him.

"What have you heard?" Severus rasped. Hermione looked at him strangely. It had been years since she'd heard that particular tone in Severus' voice.

"A strange incident in the northern regions. The Northern Lights have been showing strange, aberrant phenomena all through last night," Dumbledore said, pressing his fingertips together lightly and frowning slightly in thought.

"Aberrant?" Severus repeated sharply.

"Yes. As you know, the Aurora Borealis is slightly more common in Spring and Fall, and coincides with increased sunspot activity. Also, its most common colour is a yellow-green. Of course, it can appear all year round and in almost any colour of the rainbow. However, pure red Auroras are very, very rare indeed. Now lately, there has been very little sunspot activity at all. Sunspots tend to peak in an approximate 11 year cycle and we are well out of a peak period*. Last night there was a static, pure red Aurora in the extreme North in the dead of Winter. To be honest, my spies are not even sure it really was the Aurora Borealis for the simple reason that the light did not move although it held a fairly typical sheet- like formation of the Aurora Borealis," Dumbledore explained carefully.

Hermione listened intently. She'd never heard anything like this. She glanced over at Severus. His colorless hands were gripping the armrests of the chair and his knuckles were white.

"How do you connect this occurrence with Voldemort?" Severus asked, his eyes narrowed in his pale face.

"We couldn't, at that stage. That's why I was going to owl you. I knew if it was Voldemort that young Hermione would give us our confirmation and so she has," Dumbledore said compassionately, smiling kindly at her.

"What instructions have you given your spies?" Severus asked tensely.

"To stay away from that region until we can get a party of experienced Aurors together to investigate further," Dumbledore said quietly. "They are able to monitor the region with powerful telescopic charms but that's all I want anyone to do at this stage."

"Who are you thinking of making part of this party?" Hermione asked seriously.

"I think the usual people that I know I can trust plus some senior Aurors from the Ministry. Remus naturally, and some of our Hogwarts teachers including Hagrid," Dumbledore replied.

"What about us?" Hermione said eagerly, leaning forward in her chair.

"No! No way, Hermione. You're not setting foot outside of England until this is sorted out!" Severus said in a voice like a whip cracking. Hermione visibly jumped and looked at Severus with wide eyes.

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do!" Hermione said, recovering quickly and looking furious.

Here we go, Dumbledore thought, trying to suppress a smile.

"You must be mad, Hermione!" Severus hissed at her. "Voldemort would love nothing better than for you to walk straight into his lair. Are you going to be stupid enough to hand yourself to him on a platter after everything that happened 10 years ago?"

"Who said anything about handing myself over? I want to go there to defeat him once and for all!" she said, a light kindling in the dark grey eyes.

"The best thing you can do for everybody is stay right here!" Severus snapped.

"You know, I thought you had more faith in me than that. I'm really insulted that you seem to think I'm so useless!" Hermione said angrily.

"I never said you were useless," Severus said through clenched teeth. "I'm trying to protect you!"

"I don't need protecting! I'm 28 years old!" Hermione yelled back.

"Severus! Hermione!" Dumbledore interrupted when he saw Severus take another breath. "This is a moot point right now. There may be no need to take a party North. It may well be that Voldemort will come back to his home turf if he has the strength." Hermione and Severus continued to glare at each other from their respective chairs. Dumbledore felt like sighing but was too well schooled in the art of tact to do so. "Go back to the Manor for now. Any further reports I get, I will send on to you immediately," he promised.

* * *

Hermione refused to speak to Severus for the rest of the day. She kept an anxious eye out for owls, hoping for further reports.

Severus brooded in the library in front of the fire. He was terrified although he wasn't about to admit it to anyone. He had never cared about his life before, in fact he had never really cared about anything much but his own academic pursuits. Now he cared too much about Hermione and he was paying the price for it in fear. If he thought he had been afraid for her 10 years ago, it was nothing to how he felt now. Time had bonded them so closely together that if something happened to her, he would feel like he had lost some vital part of himself. He sneered at himself when he realized how pathetically cheesy that sounded then shuddered with a kind of despair when he realized how deeply true it was. Hermione was probably the only truly good thing that had ever happened to him in his life. He had not thought about suicide in a decade. He did not want to go back to that place.

Hermione came sulkily into the library late that night to find Severus pacing in front of a dying fire, his brow deeply furrowed. Her heart smote her when she saw how worried he looked and she went straight up to him and put her arms around him.

"You know, all this worrying and pacing is not going to achieve anything but to wear out your newly restored Persian rugs," Hermione teased gently. He rested one hollow cheek against her hair. "And you didn't eat dinner," she added bossily. Severus was silent. "The Ministry will be in an uproar when I go back to work," Hermione observed, looking down into the fire and still hanging onto him.

Severus wound one hand into her soft, thick hair feeling comforted by its familiar texture and the sensible, down-to-earth tones of her voice.

Suddenly, Severus let go of her and grabbed his left forearm and hissed with pain. Hermione drew her breath in sharply and stared at him in horror. She looked at the Dark Mark on his forearm that he was clutching. It had turned red just around the edges. Hermione swore in a way that Severus himself would have been proud of. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!" She wanted to hit something and her eyes filled with tears.

"Hermione, it's alright. It's not that bad, I just wasn't expecting it. It's quite weak compared to what it felt like 10 years ago," he said through teeth clenched in pain.

Hermione had learnt some basic wizard medical practices because her career meant she worked with dangerous potions and charms in a laboratory setting and needed some rudimentary skills in case of accidents. She quickly went to their stores of medical potions and got a pain killer potion and carefully measured the correct dose. She brought it back to him immediately and made him drink it. The potion worked quickly and he was immediately sleepy and he sat down in a chair in front of the fire to doze.

"You didn't get an owl this time," Hermione said quietly, gently stroking his arm as he nodded off.

He blinked. "No," he said, waking up slightly. "I hardly think he wants me at his Death Eater meetings after I attacked him last time" he said darkly with an undertone of apprehension.

"But why would your mark burn unless Voldemort wanted you at the meetings?" Hermione asked curiously, her grey eyes serious in the firelight.

"Anyone with who has a mark would have felt it burn tonight. The spell that binds us to Voldemort is unbreakable even when Death Eaters defect. It didn't happen very often of course because it meant an automatic death sentence. Only my own death would prevent my arm burning when Voldemort calls his Death Eaters. It's actually a flaw in Voldemort's plan, as it turns out," Severus observed tiredly. "He didn't plan for any defectors to be still alive to know when he's active. I'm sure we will hear from Draco soon that his mark was burning tonight too." Severus shifted restlessly in his chair. "We don't have anyone who can infiltrate those meetings now."

"The invisibility cloak is too dangerous," Hermione commented distractedly.

Severus' heart gave a sudden thump as he remembered with unexpected clarity when Hermione had been discovered at the last Death Eater meeting before Voldemort went back into hiding. He never wanted to live through another moment like that again. "Yes!" he hissed, suddenly wide-awake. "That must never be used again!"

"No," Hermione agreed, still deep in thought and unaware of his agitation. "If Voldemort is in the deep North, why would he be sending messages to his Death Eaters anyway? I suppose they could apparate to him but they wouldn't be able to go to the Polar region without significant preparation even just for a meeting,"

"They're all in Azkabahn anyway. None of them have been let out. Some of them had the Kiss administered too. No, it doesn't make sense," Severus said, shaking his head.

"Maybe there were Death Eaters who didn't go to those meetings - some who were part of an inner circle who weren't there that night on the moors," Hermione postulated. "You said yourself once that you didn't know who they all were."

"No but I knew most of them and I was sure we got them all. Names that I couldn't provide, Draco provided from his parent's parchments from the secret Dark Arts chamber in their house," Severus said, deeply disturbed at the idea that there may be Death Eaters still free.

"Not that Voldemort may know that all his Death Eaters were caught. He disappeared into vapour that night on the moors and vanished very quickly. Unless he's managed to recruit spies on the continent, how would he know that they're all in Azkabahn?" Hermione said thoughtfully.

"That's true," Severus said, relaxing slightly. "He may be trying to call them to him without realizing that none of them can go."

"We just don't know," Hermione said, shaking her head and sighing. "We just know so little, it frightens me." She put her smooth cheek against Severus' arm while he gradually went back to sleep under the effects of the potion.

*Information sourced from