Chapter Nineteen

"ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you" Numbers 10:9

Late that first night, Hermione was woken up by a House Elf. "Mrs Hermione! Mrs Hermione, sorry to wake you but there is someone here to see you. A Miss Luna, Mrs Hermione. Says it's urgent, Mrs Hermione. I can't make her go away although it's late, Mrs Hermione. Will you see her?"

Hermione nodded sleepily and got up. She padded behind the House Elf to the library where a very distressed Luna was waiting. "Why aren't you at the Pole with Draco and the others?" Hermione asked, her eyes half closed and still yawning.

"I've been too sick," Luna said anxiously. "I'm sorry to disturb you at this ridiculous hour but I had to tell you."

Hermione knew Luna got sick when something very bad was on its way. The research Hermione had done with her upheld that empirically. "You've been dreaming again?" she asked in a hushed voice.

Luna nodded. "You know how I dreamt of flames early in the year? It's not actual flames, its flame coloured hair. Whoever owns it is in danger - real danger. And that black horse? It's not a horse, it's a black unicorn with a gold horn. I saw it clearly this time. The two are connected in some way by the same source of danger. Something wants them both dead and that something is very close," she said, very lucid and succinct.

Hermione stared at Luna and something clicked into place in her brain. "Lily! He wants Lily. She's the one with hair like flames and Dumbledore believes that being Harry's daughter and the grand-daughter of two people that Voldemort murdered makes her both very powerful but also most particularly dangerous to him," Hermione explained, remembering the conversation with Dumbledore.

"And the black unicorn?" Luna asked steadily.

"That's me, Luna. My animagus is a black unicorn," Hermione said, telling her the secret she told very few.

Luna gave a single nod. Now was not the time for incredulity or dramatics, it was time for action. "What should we do next?" she asked as Hermione began walking rapidly towards the children's rooms. Luna hurried to keep up and once Hermione had checked that they were all in their beds and sleeping well, she turned back to Luna.

"You need to go to the Pole and bring everyone back. It's just what we feared, the vanishing Muggle born wizards and false Auroras were a decoy to get them all out of Britain again. You need to go to Hogsbridge library first and find out exactly where the Pole is at the moment," Hermione said rapidly. "Tell everyone at the Pole what you told me. If they won't all come, ask them to at least send two powerful Aurors to help protect Lily. I have no doubt that Harry himself will insist on at least that."

"Yeah and Severus will go berko for sure," Luna said without mirth just before she apparated to crash Hogsbridge Library at 2am.

Hermione sat beside the children's beds, for they were all in a huge bedroom with the children's beds set up especially for their expected extended stay at the Manor. She wished that Severus had left her the wand with the black unicorn hair but he had taken it with him in case it was needed at the Pole. Her eyes drifted over to the wavy, fiery red strands of Lily's hair. They did look like flames, she thought with a sick feeling. Wakeful and alert, she watched over the children's slumber.

* * *

The mission arrived at the North Pole at the scheduled hour and set up camp. There was no false Aurora Borealis in the sky but that was not unusual, its appearance was intermittent. The Auror scouts came back with information that they had found a cave with evidence of recent wizard habitation less than 500m from the Pole and their camp but it was deserted. They had not approached too closely lest it be protected with dangerous charms but had seen a great deal using telescopic spells.

A team of charm dismantling specialists went with the scouts to check it out. Some of these had been on the team that had dismantled the charms around the camp North of Gillamoor 10 years ago. By the time they had dismantled the heavy set of protective charms around the cave, it was a good 12 hours since they arrived.

A snow owl was sent back with the news that it was now safe to approach and the rest of the team trekked over. They found a living area with stone cave walls. It contained plenty of comforts including a library of disturbing Dark Arts books. It was quite warm and dry, and due to special charms put on the place none of the heavy snow outside or freezing wind had made it inside. Beyond this room was what the charm dismantling Aurors wanted the others to see. Down a long, cold tunnel in the ice was another cave but this was made entirely of ice and was substantially larger. In one corner they found the bodies of the Aurors who had gone missing in a heap, all dead from hypothermia and perfectly preserved by the cold. Along another side was a row of metal cages with several half dead Muggle born wizards - all of the ones who had gone missing.

There was no sign of Voldemort.

Severus barked out orders for snowy owls to be sent to Medi-wizards and witches in Britain to prepare to receive the nearly dead wizards. While they were waiting for the stretchers to be brought from the camp to allow the patients to be apparated to the hospitals, Severus carefully examined a couple of them. There was not a mark on their bodies, unlike the poor bastards that they'd found in the Gillamoor camp or even the original camp that Severus had seen the night of his defection from the Death Eaters so long ago. They were suffering from hypothermia and starvation but did not appear to be abused beyond that.

"So he wasn't up to his old tricks," Severus murmured to himself, his dark eyes narrowed as he calculated what it all meant.

He supervised the apparating of the Muggle born wizards back to Britain and organized a special owl service to transport the bodies of the dead Aurors back there for burial also. He would have buried them in the snow but he knew the families would want the bodies buried back on home soil.

They had all been awake for 16 hours by then and Severus was just about to order them back to camp for sleep when Luna was brought to him by a paler than usual Draco. "Tell him," Draco said hoarsely, his colourless eyes reflecting the horror he felt.

Severus, who had been following Hermione's research with Luna with genuine interest and understood what he was being told particularly as it was supported by what they'd found that day, went berserk as Luna had predicted. His face went as white as Draco's own, his dark eyes blazed to life and with a terse, "tell Harry immediately," he was gone, apparated back to Britain and Snape Manor.

* * *

In Britain, the sun was due to come up within minutes. It was that powerful time of cross-over between night and day when magical powers were at their full strength.

Severus apparated to a small sitting room away from any of the main rooms that Hermione would most likely be in. If Voldemort was in fact there, he would at least have the element of surprise on his side. He could hear strange sounds, like hollow clattering on stone floors. Creeping cautiously to the door of the room he was in, he found himself looking down the long passageway in the central section of the Manor. At one end stood a lizard man who almost looked more like a corpse than a wizard. His yellow-grey skin looked even less human than it had 10 years ago and it was crepey, like that of an old man. The glowing red eyes were still malevolent though but the frame had shrunken and looked frail.

Closer to where Severus was, with its back to him facing Voldemort and causing the clattering noises was a splendid black unicorn with rolling molten eyes and a sharp gold horn glinting in the half light as it tossed its mane. Between its legs was a laughing two year old with flame coloured hair. "Ugly man!" Lily cooed with delight.

It was a stand off. Voldemort did not dare approach the unicorn and the unicorn did not dare leave the child. Having learnt from his last confrontation with the creature, Voldemort did not allow himself to look at it least the beast catch his eye, and he ended up paralysed and helpless as he had before. Severus reached into his robe for the ebony wand and as he did so Voldemort saw him and disarmed him, knocking him to the ground in the process.

Severus struggled to his feet again but before Voldemort could lift his wand a second time, Harry stepped out of another doorway between the unicorn and Voldemort, raised his wand and disarmed Voldemort. By that time Severus was back on his feet. Voldemort hissed "accio" and his wand flew back to his hand. In the same movement, he sent a powerful disarming spell at Severus once again who was merely knocked backward this time and staggered back against the wall, dropping the ebony wand. Voldemort opened his mouth still pointing the wand at Severus and said, "Avada."

But that was as far as he got because the unicorn suddenly screamed its piercing, heartrending cry and reared, its ebony hooves kicking the air in anger and panic and fear. Voldemort gasped for breath, dropped his wand and covered his ears, falling to one knee. The universe seemed to split wide apart for the eternity of that dreadful shriek.

Lily calmly picked up the dropped ebony wand, pointed it at Voldemort and said, "bad man!" in very stern tones. A red and gold light shot from the wand and surrounded Voldemort completely. When he tried to move, he found he couldn't. Lily held onto the wand and kept it trained on him, gurgling at the fun of it all.

"Accio," Harry said, catching Voldemort's wand and then taking great delight in snapping it in two. It exploded in green light with a terrible noise that made them all catch their breath.

A second later, the hallway was inundated with Aurors and the rest of the mission team who had all come back from the Pole and direct to Snape Manor upon orders from Ron who was in charge in the absence of Severus and Harry.

Soon after, Dumbledore arrived and observed Lily cheerfully keeping the wizarding world's worst enemy easily within the power of the ebony wand. Dumbledore had reluctantly sent for the Dementors he distrusted and they arrived soon after Dumbledore, infiltrating the hallway silently.

Severus stood up shakily, horribly affected by the unicorn's cry. He put one hand on the beast's shadow flank and it turned its horned head and regarded him out of one liquid fire eye. He gently coaxed it away from the bustling hallway into the peace of the nearby library. It was now just past dawn and the unicorn quickly transformed back into his wife. She looked at him, rather shell shocked but then threw her arms around him. Both of them could have so easily lost the other that day.

"You were right," she said, burying her face in his shoulder.

"About what, darling?" he asked gently, using a rare endearment.

"Voldemort. He didn't want anything this time but revenge," she sniffed.

"I think he may have wanted more than that," he said, stroking her hair. "What he wanted was to annihilate the only thing that could really stand in his path and that was the black unicorn and Lily. He wanted to destroy both those potentially deadly things before either could defeat him. He needed you both out of the way once and for all."

"He was going to kill you," Hermione protested, looking up at him out of agonized grey eyes.

"It was just opportune. I'm sure he would have come after me eventually but it wasn't his priority tonight," he said, his voice low and comforting, and the expression on his face unusually tender softening its harsh lines.

They stood there for a long time in each other's arms but when they ventured back out into the hallway, there were still a lot of people milling around. Ginny was holding Lily and crying, and Harry was holding them both and trying to soothe his distraught wife. Lily looked solemnly at her mother and patted her comfortingly, not at all disturbed herself.

Molly, Albert and Eddie had come running from the hiding place Hermione had put them in when they heard their mother's voice. Padma was not crying but her face was white and she held Molly tightly, compulsively stroking Albert's hair while Ron held onto Eddie, every freckle on his face standing out in sharp relief.

"What have they done with Voldemort?" Severus asked Dumbledore, holding onto Hermione's hand firmly.

"They took Voldemort back to Azkaban with them," was the old wizard's response.