Disclaimer: All the characters and their memories were created by and belong to JK Rowling.
Chapter 3: I Don't Hardly Know Her
Hermione pulled the box of vials into her lap and pulled out one that seemed to be empty. She carefully extracted the memories Harry had left in the Pensieve and let them run into the bottle, then stoppered it and replaced it in the box. On the other side of the compartment, Harry and Ron were deep in an argument over the effectiveness of something that might have been a Quidditch move that seemed to involve a starfish. Hermione rolled her eyes almost automatically and turned her attention back to the vials. To her relief, she found that they were each labeled with a date.
Hermione thought hard. Harry had talked to Hagrid just after Ron was poisoned, which was on his birthday. The conversation Hagrid had mentioned must have happened a few days before – not more than a couple of weeks. The only labels that seemed to come from that time window were the ones marked "24.Feb." and "1.Mar." She tipped the contents of the former into the Pensieve and watched as the surface swirled and shone.
"Harry, do you mind if I use the Pensieve for a bit?" Hermione tried to keep her voice light.
"Er, are you sure you want to?"
"I wanted to see if there was something I missed the first time. I know what's coming now… I can handle it."
Harry shrugged, still looking a little concerned, and before Ron could begin what Hermione was sure was a protest, she bent over the stone basin, said, "I'll be back in a bit then," and found herself falling headlong through snowy branches on the edge of the Great Forest.
Dumbledore and Snape were walking so briskly that Hermione had to run every few steps to keep up. It looked like Snape had just caught up to Dumbledore.
"Did it ever occur to you that maybe you're taking too much for granted, Albus? You just assume that I'm ready to go through with this. But what if you're wrong? What if I don't want to do this anymore?"
The Headmaster stopped abruptly and turned to face the younger man. "But you already agreed to do it, Severus. You made me a promise, and that is my final word on the subject."
"I never promised to help him kill you."
"But you did promise to do whatever I asked of you, no matter how extreme the request. I certainly am not about to let you out of a promise because you no longer like its implications, and I am even more adamant about this now that your life depends on giving Draco whatever aid he may need."
"And your life depends on him failing."
"My decisions about my own life are mine to make, and not yours to question. I will repeat that I believe it is extremely unlikely that Draco will even come near to succeeding, but should he do so, I expect you to respect this request as much as you have any other wish of mine."
"What if I don't?"
Dumbledore sighed wearily. "Have we not been over this enough times, Severus? Please consider the possibility that your presence in the most intimate of Voldemort's circles is more vital to Harry's ultimate success than is my continued existence. A very wise man once said that to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure. And I flatter myself that my mind is better-organised than most."
Snape glared silently at the Headmaster. "You will do it then, Severus?"
"If I have to… I will do it, yes."
"Very good. Now, let us get out of this cold evening. I wonder if any of that most excellent onion soup is left over from lunch. You didn't have any then? Oh, a pity. It…" Dumbledore's voice faded as the white around Hermione intensified until she found herself alone in the middle of nothingness. With an effort, she pulled herself out of the memory.
Hermione caught her breath as she landed back on her seat on the train. Harry and Ron were staring across at her with looks of concern.
"I'm okay," said Hermione.
"You look rattled," Ron protested.
"No, really, I'm okay this time. I just have to do one thing."
Hermione pulled Dumbledore's memory out of the Pensieve with her wand and coiled it carefully back into its vial. She replaced the vial in the wooden box, and touched the tip of her wand to her temple. I am standing outside Snape's office, and he has just rushed out to tell me and Luna that Flitwick has collapsed. As she pulled the wand away from her head, Hermione gasped as she saw, or rather felt, the memory on which she had been concentrating rushing through her head like a movie on fast-forward. She let the silky white strand dangle above the Pensieve as she glanced up at the others. They were watching her silently, but seemed to know better than to interrupt her. She let the strand drop into the basin, and didn't hesitate at all before diving into it.
"Miss Granger, Miss Lovegood: tend to Professor Flitwick – he seems to be taken ill." Snape looked intently at the Hermione next to Luna, and the now-Hermione devoted all of her willpower to slow down the course of time within the memory. When the three figures in the corridor had all frozen in their positions of shock and haste, Hermione moved between herself and Snape, looking into both of their faces for some clue to what he had been trying to tell her. Her own eyes were wide and blank, his intensely focused, but otherwise uninformative.
Hermione looked around, frustrated, and allowed time to proceed slowly again. As Snape held the other girl's gaze, Hermione felt, rather than saw, a flash of something all around her. She concentrated hard again, and after a moment succeed in going backwards in the memory. She felt the flash again, and allowed herself to move forward again, but painfully slowly. For a long time nothing happened, and then it was as if a different memory had appeared around her. Hermione gasped as she recognized the hooded eyes of Bellatrix Black and the pale face of Narcissa Malfoy. Snape was there as well; Narcissa's hand was in his, and from Bellatrix's wand a thin stream of red flame was shooting, encircling the clasped hands. Hermione recognized the symbolic binding of an Unbreakable Vow.
As suddenly as the scene had appeared, it was gone, leaving Hermione once more in the dungeon corridor, triumphant but confused. She slowly let the memory speed up again until she felt another flash, and worked her way back to that one. Suddenly, she was in the Great Forest again, standing between Dumbledore and Snape, who were clearly in the middle of the same argument she had witnessed in Dumbledore's memory. Dumbledore wore an expression of stern affection; Snape looked plaintive and sadder than Hermione had ever seen him in real life.
The next flash she found was a scene Hermione did not recognize. It was a windy heath with a strange formation of boulders perched at the edge of a soaring cliff. Snape was there, alone this time, simply standing in the middle of Hermione's view. Hermione went backwards and forwards in the memory twice more, but she couldn't find any flashes in them apart from these three.
If Hermione was unusually quiet the rest of the way to London, so were Harry and Ron. The boys had exhausted all possible avenues of Quidditch conversation, and Hermione was doing her best not to seem as agitated as she felt. When the brick and stone buildings near King's Cross came into view and the train had begun to screech to a stop, Hermione stood up.
"Ron, do you think your ministry driver will be able to take my luggage back with you?"
"Yeah, but I thought you were coming back to the Burrow straight away? What are you on about?"
"I've got to make a quick stop first," Hermione lied more glibly than she'd thought she could pull off. "My parents will be worried, you know. I should at least drop by."
"Oh… all right. You'll be apparating then?" Ron was clearly trying to keep the jealous twinge out of his voice.
Hermione smiled gently. "Yes, much faster. I'll see you in a while then? Don't know if they'll want me to stay through dinner, so you won't be worried, will you?"
Ron shook his head as Hermione hugged first him, then Harry. "I'll see you both soon," she said as cheerily as she could manage, and closed her eyes to concentrate on her destination.
As Hermione disapparated, Harry turned to Ron. "Why would her parents be worried? They're both dentists."
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A/N: There's only one more chapter to come, and it shouldn't take long. I changed the name of the story because: dear lord are there a lot of stories called "Chosen." Maybe this should serve as my lesson not to be so cliche-friendly. It should be obvious that this is never going to happen, especially to those of you who already know what the title of the fourth chapter must be. -clara