Lend me your love tonight

by Katta (KET on ff.net)

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They all belong to J.K. Rowling, of course, of course. I'm sorry if I've borrowed them for a bit, but I am making no money from it.

A/N: This chapter deals with suicide. Please don't read it if this is likely to upset you.

Chapter 6: 'Suicide is painless'

Hermione and Snape flew out of the room after Felicity. She led them up to the owlery, too puffed to speak as she ran. When they reached the door, they found a very pale Paul Smith, incongruously with a muggle flashlight in hand. He had clearly just been sick.

'He said he was going to send an owl to his father. To tell him he had been expelled, I mean. And when he didn't come back, I went to look for him. And that is when I found him. He was already dead, I'm sure of it. And he is swinging from the beam …'

Paul was sick again. Meanwhile, Snape had gone in and returned to confirm Paul's account. Hermione was only just beginning to take in what had happened.

'Expelled?' she asked slowly. Then she turned on Snape. 'That poor boy failed his resits, didn't he? And you expelled him, just like that!' She was shouting by now.

Snape looked slightly crest-fallen, but only slightly.

'I had made the new policy quite clear last year …' he began, but Hermione interrupted him.

'And what help did he get when he was struggling? Did anyone bother to lay on extra lessons? And how did you break the news of his expulsion to him? You just called him in and told him to get out, didn't you?'

In her mind she could see the pale boy on the train who had wanted to do arithmancy but had been told by his father he wasn't clever enough. She thought her heart would break. The thought of his parents raised another issue. Someone would have to tell them. And as it happened, she was standing in as Head of Hufflepuff this weekend as Professor Mopps had gone to see her sister.

'I'm going to see his parents,' Hermione announced.

Snape raised a hand to stop her. 'Hermione, I don't think …'

'I think you've done enough harm already, Severus,' she announced and before anyone could stop her, she had dashed to the nearest fireplace and grabbed a handful of floo powder. The fireplaces at Hogwarts were keyed to the names of all students, so their parents could be easily reached, and in an instant, Hermione had vanished.

She landed outside a long low Elizabethan manor. To look at, it seemed totally deserted, but when she rang the bell, she could hear movement inside. An ancient house elf appeared at the door. She gave her name and was let into a parlour at the front of the house. The room was icy cold and badly lit, but she could see that the bulk of the furniture was in roughly hewn blackened wood and contemporary with the house. She had seen rooms like that in museums, but nowhere else.

After a long wait, in which she shivered in her teaching robes, a tall man dressed in black entered the room. He had the haughty look of a pure-blood wizard and regarded her with obvious distaste.

'Yes?' was all he said.

'I am Professor Granger', said Hermione, uncertain how to begin. The man looked sceptical.

Undeterred, Hermione ploughed on. 'I have some very grave news. Very grave indeed. Concerning your son. Perhaps you would like to ask your wife to come in here, too.'

'You can speak to me. I will tell my wife,' said the wizard haughtily as if he wasn't accustomed to having his wife involved in anything.

'Ah, well, if you think so,' faltered Hermione. 'The fact is, there has been an accident. A very grave accident indeed. I am very sorry, but your son, Melkior, that is, … is dead.'

There – it was said. A silence hang in the air for a few seconds.

'Dead? What sort of accident?' exploded the wizard.

'Well, not so much an accident. A … well .. ehr … I'm afraid he appears to have hanged himself.'

'My son killed himself?'

'So it would appear. You have to understand, he was under a lot of strain. He was being threatened with expulsion.'

'Expulsion? What for?'

'There were these exams he had failed and then he failed the resits …'

'Traitor Snape expelled my son?'

Hermione drew a sharp breath. She hadn't heard Snape called 'Traitor Snape' since the Death Eater trials ten years ago, when many an invective had been levelled at him from the dock.

'Where is he?' roared the wizard. 'I want to see him.'

Hermione thought at first that he meant his son's body, but the wizard continued, 'I'm going to wring his neck, the miserable traitor!'

Then he ran to the fireplace and grabbed the floo powder. Hermione was hot on his heals, so they almost tumbled over each other when they landed in Snape's office.

Snape was seated at his desk, filling in what looked like a ministry form.

'You expelled my son!' shouted Morgan Senior. 'You always were a traitor to the cause! How dare you!'

'Your son wasn't performing well enough academically,' said Snape coldly.

'But he was pure blood! You're expelling pure bloods to make way for mudbloods … like this harlot!' Here the wizard pointed at Hermione.

'I am very sorry about your son's death …' began Snape.

'He was a coward – just like his mother. But that is not the point …'

Hermione drew a sharp breath.

'How dare you say that about your own son, when his body is barely cold!' she shouted.

Morgan turned on her. 'Mudblood! Traitor Snape has killed the heir to my name and I will be revenged!' And with that he turned and disappeared through the fireplace.

'Well, of all the heartless things …' began Hermione, but words failed her.

'Welcome to the company of one of the Death Eaters that got away,' said Snape quietly.

'Death Eater?'

'One of the most ardent.'

'But why wasn't he put on trial and convicted.'

'No evidence.'

'But what of your testimony?'

'You may not have noticed, but I and the other spies weren't exactly flavour of the month at the end of the war. Our testimony was not admitted unless corroborated by other evidence.'

Despite her agitation, Hermione heard the bitterness in his voice. And she understood. There he was, having risked his life for fifteen years to defeat Voldemort and at the end of it all no one trusted him. Traitor Snape to everyone.

Still, her anger was not to be assuaged so easily.

'You should never have expelled him like that!'

'I didn't mean for him to die,' said Snape, real contrition in his voice. But Hermione just wasn't receptive to it. She swept out of the room, determined never to speak to him again.

~@~@~@~

The rest of the term became a living hell for Hermione. She was driven by a strong sense of guilt even though she had been neither the Head of House nor the teacher of the boy. Perhaps if she had paid more attention to the rumours of the resits, Perhaps this, perhaps that. Well, she wouldn't make the same mistake again. She carefully inquired who the weakest students were and began a programme of remedial lessons. At first she had meant to include only Gryffindors and arithmancy students, but if soon became clear that Professor Mopps was no help at all to the Hufflepuffs so she would have to take them on too. In the end, she was even tutoring some Slytherins. Since none of the other teachers seemed willing to help, she did most of the work herself, with some help from the Head Girl and the senior prefects. One way or another, she had her work cut out every waking moment of the day. And it went without saying that the chess games with Snape stopped immediately.

~@~@~@~

It would perhaps have surprised Hermione that Snape was also plagued by guilt. He really hadn't meant for the boy to die – had never envisaged that his actions would have that effect. He simply hadn't realised the pressure he was putting on the weaker students. And now the nightmares that made him toss in the night stirred up older feelings of guilt, too. Things he had done as a Death Eater. Things he had done as a spy. Traitor Snape all round, in fact.

But most of all he missed Hermione. One night, on finding that he had run out of whisky, he put on his dressing gown and ventured into the study where he knew there was a bottle of cognac left from Dumbledore's days. He was just rummaging in the cupboard for it, when Dumbledore's voice rang out.

'If you want her, you'll have to go and get her, old boy.'

Snape jumped in surprise and nearly dropped the bottle. It was the first time the portrait had spoken since the old man's death.

'And what do you know about it? She won't even speak to me.'

The portrait shook its head sadly. 'You don't know until you try.'

Snape snorted and stalked off with his bottle of cognac to drink himself into oblivion yet again.

But the fact was that Hermione did miss Snape, against all the odds. She was still very angry with him for the insensitive way in which he had expelled the boy. But she had come to accept that he wasn't wholly responsible for the death. Hogwarts wasn't the only school for wizards, after all, especially not for wealthy pure blood wizards. Expulsion was bound to be a 'big deal', but with proper parental support, it need not have been the end of everything. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that it wasn't the expulsion itself that had driven the poor boy to his desperate decision, but fear of what his father would do. Not that she was about to admit this to Snape, of course.

~@~@~@~

Even the longest term comes to an end and eventually the students were packed off on the Hogwarts' Express for the Christmas holidays. Hermione was walking around the school that night savouring the delicious silence, when she came upon Filch sitting at the bottom of a staircase and muttering to himself. She was sorely tempted to pretend she hadn't seen him and head off in a different direction, but he seemed to be having some genuine difficulty in getting up and her natural goodness won out. She gave the ancient retainer a hand and he dusted himself down, still muttering incoherently. Then he looked up at her with his rheumy eyes and said quite clearly, 'I must be getting soft in the head. If I didn't know better, I'd say that  I just saw four Death Eaters walk up the stairs towards the headmaster's office.'

It took Hermione a moment to react. Then the pieces fell into place. Death Eaters. Headmaster. Revenge. And the next moment she was flying up the stairs.

A/N: Challenge requirements number four and five: flashlight and fireplace.