Disclaimer: Everything you recognize is the property of JK Rowling. Everything you don't came from my twisted mind. I'm not making any money from this.

Chapter 9 – May

Severus sat at his desk and stared at the small, leather-bound chronicle of his inadequacies. The young woman, whose essence filled its pages, played a pivotal role in his life for months, and he never knew. He never saw her, yet she saw him so clearly. He fancied himself a lover – a man with a brooding, unconventional attractiveness. A man whose abrasive exterior camouflaged a keen intellect and a courageous spirit. But she saw him for what he was – a deeply horrible person whom no woman in her right mind would ever find attractive.

No woman in her right mind…

Hermione found him attractive. Hermione loved him. She didn't see a scrawny, petty tyrant with greasy hair and bad teeth. She saw the man he imagined himself to be. Was she deluded, or was Hyacinth Tilly?

Severus was loath to read any more of the diary, but he was compelled to open the book and immerse himself in Miss Tilly's world once again. He was no longer looking for absolution in its pages – clearly the book could never be made public. He was looking for a different kind of salvation. He read to assure himself that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Hermione saw the man he truly was and that Miss Tilly was indeed insane.

May 24th

I don't want to go back to the dungeons again but Annie is making me. She says that Harry will never believe us in a hundred million years if we tell him what Hermione let Professor Snape do to her. She says that we're running out of time and that we need proof that Hermione Granger is a wicked, wicked girl who is telling his secrets to Professor Snape.

She doesn't make me watch them every night. Annie says that we have to "be smart about this" and "pick our spots". She told me not to get any ideas about not listening to her either, because the charm will only work with her help. I don't know why she thinks I'd do that. If it were up to me, I'd never go down to the dungeons again, but Harry needs me to look out for him, so I listen to Annie.

Professor Snape was very tired looking in class today and very mean to Harry --even meaner than usual. He was mean to Ron too. Annie said that that means tonight is a good night to watch them again.

I don't want to watch Hermione and Professor Snape do those dirty things again. I really don't. It makes me feel queasy in my stomach and I'm not sure that I like being invisible. What if the spell wears off while I'm down there? I asked Annie why we couldn't go to Professor Dumbledore and tell him about the dirty things that Granger and Professor Snape are doing in the dungeons. He would make them leave school and Harry would be safe. Annie said we couldn't because no one, not even Professor Dumbledore would believe us without proof. She said we would have to tell Professor Dumbledore how we know and then we would be in trouble. I don't see how, really. Spying isn't bad if you're spying on bad people who are going to hurt your boyfriend. I wish Bella was talking to me. She would know what to do. But she's gone and Annie is very bossy now. Mary and Suzy just agree with everything Annie says, so now I'm on my way to the owlery to get ready to go to the dungeons again. I hope I don't puke.

Right on all counts, Miss Tilly. Harry wouldn't have believed you, Dumbledore wouldn't lose his spy unless he had to, and yes, you would have been in trouble.

Aside from her imaginary friends and her imaginary relationship with Potter, her assessment of the reality of the situation she – they—were in, was dead on. Severus took no comfort in that. The date – May 24th, the day before Miss Tilly died – the night…

Dear God, she knew everything.

April 25th

I love the hour before dinner. From the owlery I can see the other students scurrying around the grounds like little mice – so carefree and stupidly unaware of what's going on around them. I imagine what it would be like to be an owl and swoop down and snatch one of them up in my talons. They'd squeal and struggle while I squeezed the life out of them. I would squeeze harder and then they'd be still. The owlery is quiet before dinner. The owls are still asleep and very few people come up to post letters. My friends and I used to meet at this time to plan and dream, but now it's just me. I've never been alone before, and I rather like it. The other voices are silent now and I can use this quiet time to think, and to decide.

The others, they hindered me. Bella, with her constant objections, she tried to prevent me from doing what was necessary to protect Harry. She said that learning Mr. Ely's secret was wrong, but she didn't understand. Nothing done to protect Harry could ever be wrong. She tried to stop me from stealing the potion Mr. Ely brewed in his back room, so I silenced her. Now, at last, she's a good friend. She doesn't nag and she doesn't tell secrets. Bella holds all my secrets now.

Suzy and Mary didn't stand in my way, but their constant chatter was distracting. I can hardly be expected to care about fashion and grooming when Harry is in mortal danger. They served no purpose, so I silenced them as well. One voice remained, but she was weak. She was so terrified by what we saw in the dungeons last night that she was going to leave the school and go to the Ministry and tell them everything. The Ministry would ask questions about my relationship with Harry and how I managed to become invisible. I couldn't permit that, so I silenced her.

Now I'm alone. The voices are quiet and I can think, and I do need to think very carefully about what to do next. You see, our surly potions master is a Death Eater --no doubt gathering secrets about Harry to pass on to You Know Who. I know this because last night, while we watched, his Dark Mark began to burn when he and Hermione were rutting like barnyard animals. Snape jumped for his master as if set on fire, and while he put on his Death Eater's robes, Hermione complained about him having to leave and cursed Dumbledore for sending him. Dumbledore – the only wizard You-Know-Who ever feared. Bah. I don't know if Hermione is complicit in his plans or a witless dupe. It doesn't matter; either way, she's a danger to Harry and must be dealt with, along with Snape and Dumbledore, and anyone else who is in league with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

A good girlfriend does whatever it takes to protect her boyfriend.

The question is how to deal with them? I only have two doses of the potion left, so I have to carefully plan how I go about this. Silencing them in Snape's chambers while they're naked has a certain appeal. Can you imagine the Prophet? 'Death Eater Professor and Hogwarts Head Girl, Found Together Naked and Dead'. It would serve them right, but unfortunately it's impossible. A password isn't enough to open Snape's door; it has to recognize your touch. I'm not sure I could get out and I have no wish to be included in that Prophet headline. I think the best time to approach them would be after hours, when they're doing rounds. They're both out in the open and there aren't any people around to witness my work.

Now that I know when I'm going to deal with them, I have to decide how. Magic is out of the question. You can be sure that the Aurors will check every wand when they find three people silenced. I could slip away, but Harry doesn't understand that Snape, Hermione and Dumbledore are dangerous. He would think that I've gone mad and I can't have that. There is another way. Perhaps I could silence Harry's enemies the same way I dealt the rabbits that I fed to Daddy's owls. Yes, that would do nicely – come up from behind and silence them with one quick stroke across the neck. Nearly Headless Hermione. I like that.

So that's my plan. Just like an owl, I'll descend on them at night, unheard and unseen. I'll take the potion after dinner, and instead of going to Gryffindor tower at curfew I'll head to the dungeons. I won't activate the potion until I hear them opening the door. I'll need all the time I can get if I'm going to deal with all three of them. I'll follow Snape and Granger until they go their separate ways and then I'll silence Granger. Then I'll find Snape and silence him. And then, if there's enough time, I'll wait over Snape and when Dumbledore comes, I'll silence him too.

There's so much more I'd like to write, but dinner is in twenty minutes and I have to sharpen my talon.

Annie?

It chilled Severus to the bone to bear witness to the planning of his own death, and that of his lover and his mentor. If he and Hermione hadn't left his chambers early that night, her plan might have succeeded. He and Hermione had just parted ways on the second floor when he heard Hermione scream. She must have encountered Miss Tilly, or Annie as it turned out, before she activated the potion. If they hadn't left early…if he hadn't been nearby when Hermione screamed… for all his cleverness and training, their lives were saved by happenstance. Life was funny that way sometimes.

He turned the page and saw that there was nothing more. How could there be? He'd killed her only a few hours later. After reading her final journal entry, he was sure of one thing; he did not kill Hyacinth Tilly. Hyacinth Tilly died the previous night, after seeing Hermione and him 'rut like barnyard animals', and after seeing his Dark Mark flare to life. He killed a monster, an abomination born of…

Born of what?

At that moment, Severus realized that he had, in fact, killed Hyacinth Tilly. He didn't do it intentionally, and he didn't do it alone, but his actions caused her death just as surely as if he had cast an Avada Kedavra. She was alone, and no one saw her. She was tormented, and no one stood up for her. He was the final straw. She witnessed the inappropriate choices he made in his life, from taking the Dark Mark to taking a student for a lover, and it drove her over the edge. He was not guilty of her murder, but far from blameless. He pressed the book between the palms of his hands and waited for justice to stumble through his door.

There was nothing he could do to save himself, but he could spare Hermione. He lacked the power to destroy the book that exposed them, but he could conceal from the Aurors who would soon arrive. He thought it fitting that Miss Tilly's diary would share a shelf with some of the darkest texts known to wizarding kind. By the time anyone discovered his library, if indeed they ever did, the scandal would be long forgotten and Hermione would be safe.

An odd feeling that he was not alone came upon Severus when he entered his classroom, on his way to his private laboratory. He stood stock still and tried to locate the source of his uneasiness, but found nothing. He brushed it off as the paranoia of a condemned man and started to move when he heard a sound – a very light, very insistent tapping on his classroom door. It couldn't have been Hermione or Tonks; they would have let themselves in. Curious, Severus opened the door and saw no one. Just as he was ready to close it, it pushed further open of its own volition.

"About bloody time you opened the door, Severus." Lupin's voice was soon joined by the rest of him when he threw off the invisibility cloak.

"You should have been here an hour ago," said Severus, motioning for Lupin to join him in his study.

"I was here. Getting to your chambers was the difficulty. Your floo is closed, the castle is crawling with Aurors, so I had to find Harry and borrow his cloak. You try finding an eighteen year old boy and a sunny afternoon in May!" Remus settled heavily into one of Severus's comfortable chairs and sighed. "I'm afraid I don't have much information for you. Ely won't let me in his store at all, so I sent Rosemary to do her thing. He told her that he gives the owls a potion that doesn't do anything until –"

"You cast a disillusionment spell. I know," Severus intoned wearily, taking a seat next to Lupin. He selected a cigar from the humidor on the table, and with a practiced hand, he expertly trimmed it and drew his wand to light it. When the wand failed to perform, he began to laugh madly. Remus gaped at him.

"I fail to see the humor in any of this," he snapped, while at the same time offering Snape a light from his own wand. "And this is hardly the time for a good smoke. How did you know it was a potion?"

"This is exactly the time for a smoke," Severus snorted. He finally remembered his manners and offered Remus a cigar, which he declined. "I knew about the potion because our poor little victim wrote all about it in her journal. He tossed the book on Lupin's lap. "Tell me Lupin, how did you kill that owl during the Easter hols?"

Remus let out an exasperated breath, quite convinced that Severus had finally snapped. "I don't see how my accidentally hexing an owl to death –oh. I see." He drew another deep breath and told his tale. "You have to understand; the baby was teething and screaming all day. None of the usual remedies were giving her any relief. She was agitating the owls, the owls were upsetting her. I finally got Annabelle to sleep and the owls started up again. I know Ely warned me not to use any magic, but at the moment I was a bit desperate and at the end of my rope. I cast a calming spell on the owls."

"And that killed them?"

"No, it calmed them…right into a coma. One of them survived. The other died that night." Remus shook his head regretfully. "Ely was furious. It was an accident, Severus. Does the information help you?"

"I understand why the potion is illegal and not used often." Severus took several leisurely puffs of his cigar and explained. "It appears that the invisibility potion works by amplifying the effect of charms. A disillusionment charm renders a person invisible, a calming spell puts an owl in a coma, and a Petrificus Totalus caused," he picked up Miss Tilly's autopsy report and quoted from it, "a sudden and complete failure of every system in her body. Do you see, Lupin? A Petrificus Totalus paralyzes your skeletal musculature, but with the potion, it paralyzed everything – heart, lungs, even her central nervous system. Entirely too risky for human use."

"And she says she took this potion in her diary?" Lupin shook his head and thumbed through the pages of the book. "I wonder why she took such a monumental chance with her life? In any event, the book exonerates you. Have you notified the Aurors?"

"No, I haven't, and I'm not going to."

"Have you gone mad?" Lupin was gaping at Severus once again. He could see that Severus was very serious, and answered his own question. The man was clearly not in his right mind. He slipped the diary into the breast pocket of his robes, and spoke plainly. "If you won't turn it over to save yourself, I'll do it for you. I'm not going to stand by and watch you kill yourself."

"Settle down, Lupin. If you think I'm doing this out of some misplaced sense of responsibility, you don't know me well." He'd expected Lupin to react this way. "Before you run off to save me from myself, read the last diary entry."

Remus looked at him curiously and flipped through the pages at the back of the journal until he can to one with writing. He read for a moment and then looked up at Severus with a disbelieving expression, before returning to his reading. When he finished, he closed the book and took several deep breaths before speaking. "I see."

They sat in silence for several minutes, both of them staring off at nothing. Finally, Lupin asked the question. "Why?"

Severus looked at him fiercely, and hissed, "How can you even ask me that? I would think you, of all people would understand."

"She's seventeen years old!"

"She's eighteen."

"She's your student!"

"So what?" Severus snarled. "Do you think that you're the only person who gets to break the rules to be happy?"

"It's hardly the same thing, Severus," Remus spat out in a disgusted tone. "The laws I broke were unjust. There are good reasons why grown men aren't permitted to fuck children!" His head snapped back against the chair when Severus's fist made solid contact with his jaw.

"She's not a child, and I don't fuck her." Severus's anger abated somewhat when he admitted quietly, "I love her."

Remus moved his jaw from side to side, and decided that it wasn't broken. He rubbed his forehead as if trying to stave off a tremendous headache and chose his words carefully. "No, Severus, you don't." In response, Severus arched his eyebrow dangerously, but Remus continued anyway. "If you loved her you wouldn't have risked her reputation, the honors she's earned, and as it turns out, her life. You wouldn't have taken advantage of her innocence. Tell me, was she a virgin when you talked her into your bed?" Remus waved off any reply Severus might have made. "Don't answer that; I don't want to know.

"Love isn't something you feel, Severus; it's something you do. You put another person's welfare first, everyday, even when you don't particularly feel like it. You're her professor, you're old enough to be her father, and you're a spy. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what Voldemort will do to her if he ever discovers your little ruse. Don't you think she's enough of a target already? If you loved her, you would have waited until she was out of school and until after this bloody war is over."

At that moment, Severus hated Remus Lupin more than he had hated anyone in his entire life. He could find no flaw in Lupin's argument. He hated Lupin because he knew he was right. "I'm willing to go to Azkaban to protect her. I'd say that meets your criteria."

"Yes, I would say it does," Remus admitted. "But it's too large a sacrifice. Your liberty is worth more than Hermione's academic honors. Her reputation will survive the hit. You should turn the book over to the Aurors and clear your name. I'm sure Hermione would agree. We'll find a way to protect her."

"Perhaps you missed the part where Miss Tilly states that I answered the Dark Lord's call at Dumbledore's request. If I turn over the diary, my spying would be a matter of public record. It would not bode well for the Order if the Dark Lord found out that Dumbledore is aware of his plans."

"You're right." Remus blew a heavy breath through his lips in frustration. "Isn't there any way to prove your innocence without the diary? Can't you say that you remembered the potion?"

Severus shook his head. "They'd only say I gave it to her. How do I prove she took it herself without the diary?"

"True." Remus read the last entry again. "It says here that she had two doses left. If she took one, and then died, there should still be one more dose in her possession. That should be sufficient proof," Remus offered hopefully.

"The Aurors have been through her dormitory, her possessions, and the owlery with a fine toothed comb. If they haven't found it by now, they never will. Face it, Lupin, I'm fucked."

"Did they interview this Bella girl, who knows all her secrets?"

Severus froze and stared at Lupin. "Say that again."

Remus repeated himself slowly, not sure which words were the important ones. The life came back to Severus's eyes and he snatched the book from Lupin's hands to confirm his thought. "Not knows, holds. Bella holds all of her secrets. I know where the last dose is, Lupin. It's in Bella."

Remus raised an eyebrow. "I'm not following. You're saying that the potion is in her friend?"

"Yes. No." Severus quickly explained, "Bella isn't a person; she's a doll. Miss Tilly made four of them out of socks. Tonks has them now. Bella is the ugly one. The potion is hidden inside Bella; I'm sure of it."

Remus was on his feet almost instantly. "Tonks has the dolls, and the potion is in the ugly one," he carefully clarified. "I'll take care of it." In the blink of an eye, Remus had disappeared under his invisibility cloak and slipped out the door.

The door clicked shut and Severus settled heavily in his chair. After a few moments, he lost interest in his cigar and he stubbed in out in his ashtray. He tried to read. He tried to sleep. Finally, he gave up trying to distract himself and simply waited. The next two hours passed more slowly than the entire previous day. He thought about Hermione and the happiness they'd found together. He thought about what Lupin said. He thought about Dumbledore, and he thought about his role as a spy for the Order. He was thinking about the only Patronus he'd ever cast when the knock on his door finally came. He was surprised to find himself rooted on the spot. The knock came again and he moved to answer.

"Albus, come in." Severus braced himself for the worst. "I take it that a decision has been made?"

"Yes, yes." Albus entered Severus's private chambers and brightened. "Ah, cigars! May I?" Without waiting for an answer, Albus chose a cigar from the humidor, then trimmed and lit it. He took a few puffs and his face turned an alarming shade of red.

Just what I need, a second body on my hands. Severus quickly produced a glass of water for the headmaster and took the cigar from him. "You mentioned a decision?"

"I see cigars haven't changed since I tried one as a student," said Albus, his voice still slightly wheezy. "They made me quite ill; the school healer seemed to think it served me right." Severus cleared his throat, prompting Albus back on topic. "Yes, now for the decision. You've been cleared of all charges. It's very fortunate that Remus Lupin happened to drop by Hogwarts today. He volunteered his special talents to the investigation, and located a dangerous potion hidden among Miss Tilly's possessions. He found it inside one of her dolls. No one else had thought to look there. Remus always was a clever boy. The Aurors tested the potion and are now satisfied that you have not engaged in any wrong doing."

The emphasis Albus placed on his final words dampened any sense of relief Severus felt when he heard the news. In many ways, he dreaded answering to Albus more than answering to the Aurors.

"Tell me, Severus. Did you learn anything from the book I asked you to examine?"

Severus considered his answer carefully. "Yes sir, I did. I'll…deal with any harmful effects it might have caused. You needn't be concerned."

"Very good," said Albus. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see to Miss Tilly's final arrangements. Her father seems to be otherwise occupied. It's tragic when adults don't fulfill their responsibilities where young people are concerned. Wouldn't you agree Severus?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then all is as it should be." Albus smiled knowingly and took his leave of Severus.

Special thanks to WendyNat for her superb beta work. Mwah. :) Just an epilog and then we're done!