AN: I actually like this story a lot! I think I might work on it for a while. It's turning out better than I thought it would. All of my attempts were flops! Major flops…but this! I actually have an idea of where I'm going with this! I think I might still have to take breaks here and there, you know, to rearrange thoughts and ideas. Anyway, here's the story.
VM13
PS I'm sorry if any of the information doesn't fit with the six book or anything to do with Hitler and the holocaust…I never was one for history and I limited resources.
If the End Comes
By: VeilMistress13
•Chapter Two•
Hermione rolled over onto her side, blinking in and out of sleep as the sun peeked through a gap in the thick red curtains covering the window. She buried her face into her pillow and let out a low, incomprehensible sentence while pulling the coverlet over her head to shield the light from her still tired eyes.
"Always the dictionary, Miss Granger," came the same velvety purr from the night before. "Do you always speak in foreign languages when you are just waking up?"
Hermione shot up in her bed and rubbed her eyes, looking around and spotting a fully dressed Snape standing in a shadowy corner of the room. She yawned and stretched languidly, resting her back against her headboard and then taking in Severus Snape for the first time since she'd seen him at Malfoy Manor. His hair, which Hermione had once remembered as shoulder-length, lank, and greasy, had become very straight and very long, tied back in a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck. His beetle black eyes were still cold and guarded but seemed to be filed with more knowledge and memories. He was still tall with broad shoulders and clothes in black robes.
"Good morning, professor," she greeted, finally. "Have you been here long?"
"Not at all, Miss Granger," he replied, stepping from the shadows. "Only about ten minutes. That gave me a supple amount of time to debate whether to throw the curtains open and wake you up or to retreat."
"And your decision?" Hermione inquired, slipping off the bed and stretching again, still sore in her joints and ribs.
"I had elected the former but you began to wake up on your own so I left it," he replied. "Poppy left you clothes on you trunk. I will wait outside of your room for you."
Hermione merely nodded and then rounded the bed to the trunk sitting at the foot of it. She picked up the simple white blouse and gray pleated skirt that somehow reminded Hermione of school. She dressed and was pulling her knee socks up her legs when she spied herself in the mirror. She nearly fell of the bed, which she was sitting on, and gasped in shock at her frightful appearance. If her hair had once been bushy, the word was now an understatement to the mass of frizz and curls that were tangled at the top of her head. She pulled the second sock on and jumped down, running to the mirror and gazing in, mournfully. There were scars on her face here and there and she looked dreadfully thin, like a good wind would have been the end for her. She also looked very tired.
Something on a table next to the dresser gleamed in the sunlight from the crack in the curtains and Hermione looked over, spying a pair of scissors. She grabbed them in her hand and smiled at them. Her room was like the Room of Requirement, always things popping up when you need them. Hermione hesitantly grabbed a loose curl and lifted the scissors up to them, snipping it a good two inches shorter, making it chin-length. She grimaced slightly at the new length but continued on making the rest of her hair the same length…well, at least tried to. When she was done, she frowned. 'Well, I suppose it is a little uneven but it will do.' She nodded to her reflection, which shook its head in regret. Hermione pointedly ignored, gave an irritated look to the hair on the floor, and, deciding that she'd clean it up when she had a wand, left the room.
"Bloody hell!" cried Snape, very uncharacteristically, upon seeing her butchered hair. "That certainly is…different." Hermione grimaced again.
"Does it look bad?" she inquired, seeing the shocked expression on the Potions Master's face.
"Good heavens!" came a loud shout of surprise. "Hermione, what happened to your hair? It looks like you got in a fight with the scissors and lost terribly!" Hermione looked over her shoulder to see Ginny coming toward her. The older witch let out a defeated sigh.
"I was only going for a new look," she stated, turning toward her redheaded friend. "Would you mind evening it out for me?"
"Sure!" squealed Ginny, grateful to have some time to talk to the friend that had disappeared so suddenly after graduation and had been missing for nearly a month. Hermione then turned to Snape.
"You can go on," she told him. "I'll have Ginny show me to the dinning room after we're done." He nodded at her and left down the hall.
Hermione and Ginny retreated into the brunette's room where the youngest Weasley spotted the hair on the floor and, with a flick of her wand, it disappeared. Hermione blinked at her.
"Are you sure you can do that?" Hermione questioned. "I mean, aren't you still underage?"
"No, not since He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named took over the Ministry," Ginny explained. "Dumbledore sort of…disillusioned our wands. Making them undetectable by You-Know-Who. Anyway, where are the scissors? Ah, there they are. Sit down in front of the mirror and we'll start."
Hermione plopped down onto the floor and listened to the sounds of cutting scissors as Ginny snipped here and there. Only small pieces fell to the floor and Hermione was relieved to see that she seemed to be doing everything all right. When the redhead was finished, Hermione got to her feet and turned every which way, feeling the back of her head and checking it in the mirror. Everything seemed all right. Every strand seemed straight.
"Does this look okay on me?" asked Hermione, feeling the tips of her newly cut hair tentatively.
"It looks great!" exclaimed Ginny. "Let me just magic it permanent so that it doesn't grow back out into a bird's nest overnight." Hermione gave a half-hearted glare at her friend's description of her once messy hair. Ginny laughed nervously. "Let's go to breakfast and show off your new hair. Everyone is dying to see you." She flicked her wand at Hermione's hair and then nodded in satisfaction "Okay. Ready to go?"
"As I'll ever be," replied Hermione and they both started for the bedroom door.
The two walked almost silently down the corridor. Ginny was drifting in her own thoughts while Hermione tried to focus on the stairs they were going down, which were made of hard stone. The surroundings quickly became darker and danker with each step they took down the long staircase. 'This isn't Number 12 Grimmauld Place…' thought Hermione, taking in the depressing lobby as they reached the foot of the stairs.
"Gin, where are we?" Hermione finally asked as they turned and started toward a pair of overly large double doors.
"Huh?" asked Ginny, being pulled from her silent reverie. "Oh! Well, I'm not too sure. Dumbledore said that it was some kind of muggle place that was used during a war to hide refugees. I don't remember too much else about it. I was kind of…scared by the odd choice of décor." Hermione nodded as she and Ginny pushed open the double doors and entered a large dinning hall.
The dinning hall had a dark, mysterious look to it. There was a long, oak table, long enough to fit all of the houses, directly in the middle. People were scattered about it, eating breakfast or reading the Daily Prophet. Ginny and Hermione made across the hall and sat down next to Ron and Harry, who were craning their necks over an opened Daily Prophet, staring at a picture of a cackling cartoon of Voldemort.
"'Morning," the two boys greeted distractedly.
"What are you reading?" asked Hermione, sitting to Harry's right and leaning over the table to read the article as well.
'Doom's Day?' it read.
'The days have grown darker and many now know that the Dark Lord has taken over the Ministry. Deaths are increasing by the thousands each day, in both muggle and wizarding worlds alike. Death Eater's have reached large numbers and have even succeeded in infiltrating and overrunning Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Scotland, as well as other large wizarding schools (i.e. Durmstrang, Salem, Beauxbaton, etc.).
'The whereabouts of the infamous Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore are currently unknown, though some witness say they were last seen fleeing from the country. This reporter is dying to know whether or not this will be the end of existence, as we know it. Is this the proverbial and Catholic-related Doom's Day? Only time will tell.
'Where is the famous boy-who-lived when we need him and will this chaos ever have an end?'
Hermione let out a sigh and rested her hands in her head, wishing that she could be blissfully ignorant of the goings on forever. She shook her head in despair and watched as Harry closed the newspaper and handed it over to Caefyne Mallince, a witch Hermione had had the pleasure of meeting in her seventh year. Hermione glanced at the food that had magically appeared on her plate but did not feel like eating anymore. She, instead, pushed the plate away and turned to Harry and Ron expectantly.
"Well?" she asked. "Is someone going to inform me of what's happened to the world since I left? Or am I to remain unawares of our situation?"
Harry let out a sigh and also turned in his seat. Ron pulled his chair around Harry's so the two were sitting side by side and staring at Hermione. There eyes wandered to Hermione's hair and they opened their mouths to say something, but the brunette raised her hand for silence.
"Don't skirt the subject by starting on my hair," she demanded. "We're talking about the world right now, and then you can ask all you want, okay?" The boys nodded.
Harry ran a hand through his usually tousled hair, as he seemed to regain all of the events.
"'Mione," he started, giving Hermione a softened look that told her what she was about to hear was not going to be pleasant. "I don't know where you've been but you gave me and Ron and everyone a start. We thought you might have been dead…for all we knew, with what's going on, you could have been dead. Horrible things have happened. I'm not sure if you're aware, but Voldemort and the Death Eaters permeated the Ministry of Magic and killed the Minister, as well as all who got in his way…" There was silence and Ron took over.
"My dad and Hagrid were two of the casualties. Bad things happen when you're in the wrong place at the wrong time…" Ron's voice was etched with sadness, anger, and vengeance.
"Well, in any case," Harry continued, "you know how the Ministry knew that we were using magic when we were underage or when we use an unforgivable?" Hermione nodded. "Well, Voldemort got a hold of that and tracked all of the wands over Britain. He sent Death Eaters after us when we had just gotten out of school and ran us out of the country. We're still in Britain but when we leave, we are automatically taken somewhere far away. For Ron and me it's to Tokyo but everyone else goes to different places. Dumbledore invented this sort of charm that you can use that confuses the tracking system in the ministry, making it seem like when we use our magic, we're using it somewhere other than here."
"Pardon me, Harry," interrupted Hermione. "But where exactly is 'here'?"
"It's a bomb shelter that Britain built when Hitler and his Nazis were invading the world during the holocaust," Harry explained. "We've warded it until there's no other way to protect it. Added onto it so that it's become more of a Head Quarters. Normally, we would have been on Grimmauld place but Kreacher let it…'slip' to Lucius Malfoy about it, giving him that piece of parchment that Moody wrote for me. They invaded and we were run out again. It was becoming a nuisance having to run away all the time. We had to find a place where we wouldn't be found out and somewhere where only those that were trustable could come. We magicked the entrances so that no one who had any intention of blabbing about our hiding place could get in and anyone who had once been trustable suddenly decided to switch sides would forget anything the saw immediately and forget where the entrances to the head quarters was."
"Brilliant!" breathed Hermione. There was twinkle in her eyes for the thought of such genius but then, quickly it was gone. She suddenly bowed her head. "Has-has anyone else…died?" her voice was small and wavering.
Harry, Ron and Ginny all bowed their heads. Ginny took a deep breath and began to answer.
"Well, there was Seamus…he was killed because he was half…" she explained. "Katie and Alicia were killed at a tryout for the Hollyhead Harpies. Professor Flitwick went down defending the castle…" Ginny lifted her head. "There were casualties on both sides, though. Harry took out Rudolphus Lestrange, though he really wanted to get red of Bellatrix. Professor Snape secretly assassinated McNair not too long back. It was bloody brilliant." Ginny sighed. "We weren't sure if we should have held a memorial service for you, though. If you don't mind us asking…where were you?"
Hermione looked from person to person of the three sitting around her. She could feel her stomach knotting up as she debated on whether she would tell them or not. Her mind was racing and she made eye contact with each of her three friends.
"You guys…if it's all right, I'd rather we didn't talk about it yet," she murmured, looking down at her fidgeting hands. "It's just too soon." An awkward silence drifted over them and none of Ginny, Harry, and Ron looked satisfied with her answer. "Maybe if you give me a little time for it all to sink in."
"So—er—what's with the hair?" asked Harry, deciding to change the subject.
"Well, I just thought I needed a change," Hermione replied. "Does it look okay? Not too boyish?"
"No, really, it suits you," Harry replied, smiling.
"But since when have you worried about being too boyish?" teased Ron, receiving a playful slap on the arm from Hermione.
"Well, being boyish never seemed to bother you much, Ronald Weasley!" Hermione retorted, smirking slightly. Ron's ears colored and he turned back to his plate of food.