THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
By: Scatterheart
"Then it begins!" (Robin of Locksley)Section Lucky Number Eighteen
But the next day, when Hermione stepped into the chilly atmosphere of the dungeons for the first time in two months, she found the Potions classroom occupied not by Snape, but by Professor Trelawney. The tall, skinny woman folded her spectacles clumsily from her face and tucked them into her shirt pocket. She told Hermione to come back tomorrow; Snape was away on urgent and unexpected business, she said, her eyes darting restlessly. Hermione left the room with her head boiling in bewilderment.
The little scene unfolded itself again the next afternoon. And the next. And the next.
By the end of the week, she was almost certain that he was avoiding her. But he had been the one who had demanded that she come, Hermione thought as she stomped up the stairs; her fourth failed attempt at fulfilling that damned detention. Maybe that moment in the library meant nothing to him…
And why should it? That moment equaled nothing. In fact, Hermione decided, nothing had happened in that library. There had been no moment. She was angry once more. It was only his way of playing the game, his own plan of attack at getting her back for all of the shameful things (things she couldn't even now bear to think about) she had done to him.
So that was how it was. Severus Snape, she said to herself, and her vision dissipated wetly as tears gathered like dew in her eyes. Severus Snape, be that way. Be the way you've always been. See if I care.
But it was not quite that way.
She was making her blind, furious flight to the Gryffindor Common Room when the voices began. At first they were scattered, here and there, among a group of Ravenclaws gossiping in a corner, a pair of Hufflepuffs strolling in from the lawn, or a pair of Slytherins chatting at the doorway of a classroom. Bits of fragmented words coming from all around her.
She mentally shook herself, feeling a shiver run across the back of her neck as she pieced the words together in her mind. Rumors. Unfounded rumors. They had to be.
She walked on. All she needed to do was to enter her room, and she would be free from all this turmoil. Just two more flights of stairs…
But now the voices were growing in volume and quantity, and they were impossible to ignore, impossible to brush aside as rumor. And by the time Hermione Granger had reached the doors of the Great Hall, it seemed as if the whole school was saying it, the whole population of Hogwarts trickling like individual streams into one huge, devastating river.
Hermione stumbled. She fell against a wall. She was never going to make it to her room after all, she thought, vaguely, clawing at the stones for balance.
And then someone went up to her – it could have been Harry or Ginny or Neville; she couldn't tell – and said to her face the words that surrounded her like a swarm, "Did you hear? Did you hear, Hermione? Professor Snape got hit with the Cruciatus Curse. No one knows who did it. They say he's dying."
They say he's dying.
It was the final, fatal sting.
Hermione fainted.
--
To be continued.