Another chapter! Thanks to my reviewers. For all of you wondering, I promise Hermione is not so bad as she seems. Just trust me on this. The next couple chapters are going to be quite the surprise. Just one more little hint: things aren't always the way they seem, or the way the author makes them out to be. Remember, this story is being told from only Hermione's point of view. I am trying to give you little pieces of information at a time to make it more interesting. So, just wait. Don't freak out on me, and enjoy your chapter.
Thanks for reading.
He is silent in the car.
It is deafening, to hear the nothingness when so much needs to be said. I look out the window, anything to take my mind from the turmoil and confusion swirling around it. He is ignoring me. I can feel that from him. I look back at him, hoping for something, anything but feel his denial, his complete and utter refusal to even acknowledge my presence. I shiver. The air is cold. In the richly upholstered car that Severus has me in,this is evident. A thick gloom settles over the land around us and I look to him yet again for answers, but he is still only silent. So, I give myself back over to the scenery: Cold, dark little houses. There are almost no cars now. Before, there were cars everywhere one turned. They covered the earth almost as thoroughly as people. Now…now it is desolate. When I was a little girl, I used to have this recurring nightmare that the world was made so empty as it is now. I would wake up to this razen and parched land where everyone was dead, and god it was so lonely. I would cry for hours after I woke up.
Now, it really isn't that scary.
The car stops abruptly.
Cursing, I lurch forward and grab my seatbelt to steady myself. Severus looks over at me with a strange expression. I hear a click and the door opens when a rough looking man grabs my arm and drags me from the car. I struggle and scream, busting one man's nose with my elbow and breaking another's arm. Severus looks calm, and the thought flutters across my mind that he planned this, that perhaps he has finally sickened of me. Or maybe, the closeness of what we almost did brought emotions to that cold heart that he couldn't and wouldn't feel. I remember the disgust shining in his eyes as he pushed himself back from me in my room.
There are twelve of them, Hermione. Stop struggling, you cannot beat all of them. They are assassins.
The voice reverberates in my head. Severus has picked his way in there somehow. He flashes me a look to make sure I know it is him, and I nod, calming down at his intense gaze.
The men push me down onto the ground, using their magic to hold me. The feeling energizes me as it has been so long since I have felt the familiar thrum of powerful magic coursing through my body. I had rather hoped my reintroduction would be under different circumstances.
"Where is the boy?" The man's voice, a heavy british drawl, sounds out against the empty air. I try to search Severus' mind for more information, but he has shielded it. I follow suit. The man smells of tobacco and …spices? Like something exotic.
"I've no idea what you are talking about." He narrows his eyes at the man, who in response comes to stand beside me.
What the hell is he doing? Severus looks at me, impassively schooling his features. I know what is to come now. They think I am important to him. They will punish me for his lack of cooperation.
"Your lover will suffer for your lies." The man says, and in that insane moment I want to laugh and tell him that the bastard that is lying would probably rather beat the fuck out of me himself. I don't though as the man, who I notice now is rather quite old, brings one booted heel down on my first finger, crushing the delicate bones.
I've felt pain in many shapes and forms. But this, this is unimaginable, burning white hot through first my hand and then my entire body. My mind is screaming at me to do something, say something, but I don't. I don't even scream. No, I don't scream, but I cannot help the solitary tear that travels down my cheek. I will not give the man whose boot heel is still grinding into my finger the privilege of seeing that.
Severus laughs, and then I really start thinking about all the ways I had earlier imagined torturing and then killing him. Really, I've always been a vengeful person, always kind of achieved because of my amazing capacity for disdain. I decide that if we get out of this alive, I will crush his finger, too, maybe even cut it off and shove it down his throat.
"You think this whore is important to me? She is chattel. That is all. I don't know what boy you are speaking of, but now I am rather late for a very important engagement. My party will wonder where I am." His seductive voice curls around my ears and calms me.
Magic. The thought causes me to start out of my stupor of pain and hate. Severus is putting them in a trance so we can escape. Well, at least him. I'm not so sure about me. He can be pretty vindictive when he wants and I did call him a bastard this morning. I try to look up at him and catch his eye but he is deep in concentration obviously casting.
"Chattel…" the old man asks, cocking a thick eyebrow. "Then why haven't you fucked her?" He smirks, and for a moment, I see the impassive mask that is Severus' face crumble, his bearing become unsure. He gains it back quickly, though and eyes the man down.
"What makes you think I have not?" He asks, calm again.
"Call it a hunch. Oh, and you shouldn't use magick on me, Severus. It really won't work. I am a little harder to trick than your average wizard."
"He was calming me down just fine." I mutter to the pavement below my body which earns me a well- placed kick to the abdomen. Severus starts again at this, trying to move toward me.
"Leave her be. Hurting her will do nothing but infuriate me into ignoring you."
"Yeah, leave me be. I mean, I'm really just minding my own business down here" I mumble to the pavement yet again which earns me an angry look from the lesser of two evils standing above me."
"Then I will ask you once more. Where is the boy?"
Severus looks at me and then at the man. He opens his mouth for a moment, then on second thought closes it.
"Canada…" My voice rings out among the cold. "The boy, and the boy I presume you are looking for… is in Canada."
The old man leans down to me after a look of mock disbelief. "And just how would you know this?"
"Because it was actually my order that has him. Have you not heard that this thing that you assume to be my companion killed many of us with his betrayal. So why, in the damn world, would he know where he was at?" I bitterly tell the man, a sinking feeling of despair in my stomach.
The man looks at me as though weighing my words. He tilts his head to the side.
"Of course, mas enfante. He would not know, but why would you betray your friend so easily?"
I start for a moment. My friend…what?
"My friend has abandoned me, left me for dead with this fucker. Why should I show any loyalty." A wave of relief washes over me as the magic holding me is released. I stand up, shaking off the pain throbbing through my fingers. The man tilts his head to the other side and I am confronted with the image of a bird sizing up its prey. As a reflex, I feel tension in my body gathering, tightening my bones and heating my blood. My breathing speeds up. My heartbeat reverberates through my head.
Hermione, calm down. Your ears are red. I can practically feel static come off of you. You can't fight without your wand. His voice is ringing in my ears. Yes, come to think of it, I do feel a little hot.
The man throws back his head and laughs, and for a moment, I am think of a villain in a cartoon. Daeth….the man's name is Daeth. A swirl of images comes to me, sending me back a couple of steps. Snape, seeing his chance, rushes in front of me in an effort to stop the images or protect me, I don't know. It doesn't really work, though. The images are instead changed.
A father calling a boy out of his hiding spot after his fathers death.
Me coming down the stairs after the fight in the dress
A little boy killing his father with magic
A man crying in the dark
A mother burning alive
A boy being beaten.
Me in my cell.
Nightmares.
Demons
Death.
Me
I pull back with a gasp staring in wonderment at an awe-struck Severus. In that moment, I want to pull him to me and cry, for his pain, for my pain, for our pain. I want to tell him that he only did what he had to. For just that moment, I see him for what he is: a scared little boy playing a dangerous game. I want to linger in that temporary crack in his strong wall of stony indifference. I want to suck him out through that break and keep him in the open forever, always knowing how he thinks or feels. His eyes dart to Bartok and then to me, confusion clouding the icy blacks.
"You didn't strip her magic. How interesting." Daeth's voice pulls him out of his amazement and that stony wall once again constructs itself. I know in that moment that Severus has been discovered, that there will be no going back for us, that in probably no time we are dead.
"I did…" he whispers through my haze. "The filthy witch must have found a way to…" He breaks off in uncertainty.
For a moment, I wonder if he is lying or telling the truth. My mind weighs the two and I finally decide he is lying. This new vulnerable Severus could never do that.
"I will take it from her again." He reaches forward and a ribbon of colors comes from me into him. "
No. My new Severus could never do that, but the old sick, sadistic bastard Snape sure could. I groan as I collapse onto the ground in a fit of haziness, my head making a sickening thump on the concrete. So much has been sucked out of my body. It feels like there is a hole in my head. My thoughts waver and I once again become flooded with images, but these images are no one else's but my own. Memories…no, nightmares of my life, highlighted and magnified for my almost comatose viewing pleasure. I wonder if I have died and gone to hell, and if I have not, could this really be the last thing I see before death. If I were stronger, I would be filled with rage. Now, I can barely move. I pull in a breath out of sheer force of will, the same will that Snape once chided me for having. A flutter of emotion flies through my weakening body. I was clinging to him…am clinging to him because he is one of the few vestiges I have of a world that was once all I knew. I was clinging to him because he was the only way I could have even a piece of it back. Again the memories hit, beat me while I am incapacitated. If past experiences could kill you, I would have been dead long ago. I fade in and out of fogginess, knowing with an alarming certainty that I will probably not be getting up from the cold grey slab of rock below me. It feels like blood is filling up my eyeballs, and I again pull in a breath. Amazing, someone as strong and as brave as me could fall victim to such a simple death.
I would laugh if I could
Really.
There is something going on above me. I pull in another breath, sending a sharp pain through my lungs. There are voices above me. The world starts to come back into focus with startling clarity. I feel the skin on my head pulling, tugging back into place, covering the large crack. The blood comes back into me, and I draw in another breath shakily. I can feel magic gathering in my body, pulling me taut and ready beneath it's demanding presence. Many have often tried to explain the feeling magic, but it is nearly impossible. I can tell you this. It is like seeing everything for the first time. You notice everything. Time slows and your blood pumps so steadily that you could set a watch by it. It is the feeling of power.
I stand up, somewhat woozily at first. Snape looks at me amusingly, as though he knew what was going to happen. Daeth, though, just laughs. That is the bastard I will deal with first, I vow silently, pulling energy around me for a killing blow.
The man falls to the ground, twitching and flopping like a dead fish. The strike…it wasn't mine. I look around, my gaze settling heavily on Snape. His hands are red and steaming. He looks down with a sadness swimming in his eyes. I know that look. It is the same look that I used to get after every kill, the look that says "just more blood on my conscience". There are several men still wavering around the still twitching body. I flex my fingers and a look of understanding passes between us. I will protect him in his moment of human emotion. Daeth's team backs off, as though in fear of the both of us. The magic lets go of my body, and I slump forward, no longer held up by the force. I sit down shakily, leaning my head against the car. Snape still hasn't moved, but stands transfixed by the sight of the dead man.
"He was in the order…Why in the world would he come after us?" His voice is quiet, distant, as though in thought or confusion.
"Snape, you did what you had to do. If you hadn't killed him, I would have."
I stop for a moment. I have never really been able to do much wandless magic. What in the hell just happened? The power that I just felt was amazing, overwhelming. It felt very old, like it came from somebody who was quite good at it.
I look at Snape.
"WE needed answers." He growls in frustration and turns around to put a solid arm on the car. His moment of human weakness is now gone.
"What good are answers if we are dead?" I point out, rather calmly considering our car now has a scorch mark on it.
Fuck.
Our car?
Severus is looking at me, his head cocked slightly to the side as if in question. I wonder briefly if he heard that thought, but I decide quickly that he probably didn't. After all, I still hear no smart- ass comment. He looks down for a moment and balls his hands into fists.
"Only one of us had to die."
I cock my eyebrow at him in a mock effort to hide my surprise.
"I could have let you die"
He looks at me, uncertainty clouding his feature. For a moment, I wonder if this is the same Snape at all, so unsure of who he is. Never in all the years that I had exchanged sharp words with this man have I ever seen him look uncertain, and now, I have had the privilege of seeing it twice in one day. Who would be posing as Snape? What the hell kind of drugs is he on? But, sadly, I know better. The same old monster is there, a hateful, arrogant, cruel temperament lurking behind an elegant and indifferent façade. Today, I decide, he must be on his man period.
"Did you hear me?" he asks, looking as though ready for flying objects to head his way. Instead, I calmly turn his way.
"Yes, I heard you, Severus. I quite agree. You could have let me die. Why you didn't is beyond me. Someday, maybe you'll let me in on the reason you play the mind games that you play." I pull myself up, only slightly woozy now, and head to the car.
"No. You know why I didn't let you die, Honor binds me to save you like Harry asked."
"Honor! Honor? What honor is there among killers Snape?" I snarl at him, barely able to bear it shoved in my face that I am another man's burden, saved only by the one I killed. "And in the end, Severus, that is all we are- killers."
Okay, I know that Hermione says Snape is on his man period. Some of you may not find that very funny, but I do, so it stays. If it offends you, I am sorry, but there is nothing to be offended by. Please don't get offended. So, what did you guys think? Are any of you wondering what is going on? Thanks again for reading, and I hope to post soon.
