Faith For The Faithless

Chapter Three: Porridge and Malfoy's Potter

There was silence in the cramped room as Severus Snape woke up awkwardly. Two weeks after she had arrived, he was no less comfortable sleeping in her bed with her warm body next to his clammy skin. Unfortunately for his sense of dignity, she apparently did not have the same inhabitations; her long cold legs were wrapped around a single one of his, one of her arms was draped over his thin chest. His breath spiralled up in front of him as he stared into the gloomy half light of the dingy room.

He moved her arm cautiously, not particularly wanting her to wake up and cause more disdain between them. She swallowed a little, but allowed him to drape the offending limb over her own stomach. He left her legs where they were; he knew that moving those would wake her up suddenly, and she would not even look him in the eye for the entire day. His breath froze in the clear air.

"Stupid girl," he murmured, rolling over onto his side to peer into the room and drifting back to sleep again.

Hermione was woken moments later by a freezing arm snaking its way around her warm waist. Sighing irritably she removed it firmly over to his side of the bed. Within seconds of her turning her back on him, the arm was back again.

"Imagine," she whispered to him rather spitefully, wishing he was awake so she could watch him shift uneasily, "the scary Deatheater likes cuddling."

Snape was fast asleep with little snores permeating the air next to her ear, so naturally he made no reply. Hermione, whose stomach was breaking out in goose-bumps as his frozen skin bore into hers, rolled her eyes in annoyance, and moved his hand again. This time she sat up before he could wrap his appendages around her again, and clutched a fur around her shoulders. The air around her hung heavily in the dim light drifting through the thick velvet curtains.

She was squatting by the fire when Snape sat up and pulled furs over his head, her thighs and lower legs hidden by the thick furs and cloaks she wore. There was a look of intense concentration on her face as she stirred a small green plant into the cauldron.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

"Cooking," she answered blithely, still peering into the pot.

"What?"

"Cooking. Making food."

"Food? Where did you get food from?"

She looked up at him in surprise at the odd sounding break in his voice.

"From the storerooms," she answered.

He gazed at her in horror.

"How did you get into the storerooms?"

The look she gave him did not inspire his confidence. Her eyes were open wide and falsely innocent, and there was a little smile playing about her lips. He shivered as a burst of cold air swirled through the room.

"It's hot," she stated, as if he could not see the steam rising from it.

"I am not deficient Granger," he answered coldly.

She made no reply, but got up from her hunches and crossed the room. He rolled his eyes, and when he looked again she was kneeling in front of the cauldron ladling something into it. When she stood up, she was holding a bowl in both of her hands with a miniature ladle lying on top of the thick porridge. A mint smell rose up from it, and he ate it quickly.

It wasn't until she was eating calmly from her own bowl and he had almost finished his second bowl that he noticed the runes around the edge of the vessel. He spluttered and spat the mouthful he was chewing back into the bowl.

"This is the virgin-blood bowl!"

She looked at him levelly.

"That bowl has to be completely pure before it can be used!"

"It's used for virgin blood," she answered.

"Are you trying to sabotage my entire life, or only this little bit of it?" he burst out.

"None of it," she replied, "well, I'm leaving most of it alone."

He did not reply, only pulled his furs closer to his shivering body as a loud bell rang out through the building, resonating off the mouldy walls and shaking cobwebs. Glaring at her, he left the room hurridly, sliding past her and out into the corridor. The sound of pounding boots echoes up the long corridor and into the room as dozens of Deatheaters skittered up the stairs to answer the summons. Hermione pulled on her outer furs, and slipped out of the room when the sounds had faded into the distance.

The corridors were completely empty and iced over. The floors were slippery underfoot as she skated over them on a pair of soft dragon-hide boots with pointed toes. When she reached the staircase she dropped to her knees, and then stretched the length of her body on the floor. There was a tiny crack in the wall through which she fed a thread, and then fished the opposite end through a pair of glasses she had propped on her nose simultaneously.

The Deatheaters were gathered in their ranks, stiffly standing to attention as they gazed at the front of the room in perfect unison and devotion. Each one of them wore their gruesome silver skull mask over their faces; pointlessly, they all knew who the others were, their families, their occupation, and the angle of the attack. At the front of the wide room stood a huge, velvet covered armchair with a curving back and long legs. Voldemort sat upon this, lanky legs touching the ground easily as the right limb folded over the left elegantly. He wore no mask, but surveyed his followers through sharp, red eyes fringed by heavy black lashes and no eyebrows, fingers tapping on the edge of the armchair in a rhythm of death.

Wormtail stood behind him, crouched close to the roaring fire as he watched with fearful eyes, nursing his silver hand. Severus Snape stood half a step behind the Dark Lord, looking at the assembled ranks over his long, aquiline nose with disdain in his obsidian eyes. The room was utterly silent apart from the dancing of Voldemort's fingers.

"My Deatheatersss," Voldemort hissed, "sssoon we will be conquerorsss as mighty asss any barbarian!"

The Deatheaters and Snape looked at each other silently. Wormtail, with his limited experience of muggle history from Percy Weasley's long lectures, shivered a little.

"Draco Malfoy, come forward."

There was a ripple in the ranks as Draco Malfoy left the head of his parade, swathed in furs and silver mask. The other Deatheaters moved as little as possible so his fur scraped along theirs, and his blonde hair streamed out a little behind him. Even behind his mask the classically Greek face was clear in its beauty and grace.

"My Lord," he murmured softly, dropping to his knee in front of the Dark Lord, "I live only to serve you."

"Of courssse you do, Malfoy," Voldemort gestured for the young man to stand up, and he did so, "and ssso I have a ssspecial tasssk for you."

"I am honoured, my Lord."

"Potter isss in London again, the foolisssh boy. No one elssse isss aware he isss there; he left Birmingham three hoursss ago by muggle transssport and arrived in Victoria Ssstation momentsss ago. He will be ssstopped before he reachesss Hogwartsss and hisss friendsss."

"My Lord, you honour me indeed," simpered Malfoy.

"Take twenty-five of your regiment with you; go now!"

Malfoy dropped away smoothly, waving a hand at the regiment which stood to the left side of the hall. Discreetly, twenty five Deatheaters detached themselves from the main group and flocked behind Malfoy, adjusting the snug fit of their masks as they dropped into a neat two-by-two file after him.

Hermione tugged the string behind her and wound it around her wrist as she slid back to the rooms she occupied. As she threw the door open, the thread gleamed in the dim light reflected off the ice and span around so quickly it looked like a single silver thread. She touched her fingers to it and it stopped in a stream of silver; wrapped around her wrist was a thin silver bracelet closely moulded to her bones and topped with a tiny diamond in the centre. Heavy feet faded into the distance, and she crossed to the window which overlooked the front of the disused factory.

The Deatheaters were standing in a loose group, still in lines. Their clothing had changed from the thick, heavy robes to muggle clothing; each was dressed in a pair of pale, stonewashed jeans and a black long sleeved t-shirt. Malfoy stood in front of them, a head above the rest. His distinctive blonde hair was folded into a baker-boy cap, from under which his displeasure beamed. Potter knew that hair so well it was a liability. He barked a few commands from behind the misty glass Hermione was watching him through, and the Deatheaters slid into positions.

Before they had even apparated out of the factory courtyard, Hermione was out of the room and slipping down the stairs silently. Faintly, she could hear the sounds of Voldemort's voice and screaming. The empty dormitories presented no problem to her; she ice on the floor meant she whipped past them so quickly that even if the Deatheaters had been inside them, they couldn't have seen anything. Her furs were discarded on the bed outside, so that when she crept out of the small door that led into the courtyard from the disused kitchen, her breath caught painfully in her chest, paralysing her for a precious second as she gasped.

Once she had reached the shelter of the sparse tree tops, she fumbled with the bracelet on her hand. Wrenching it, the diamond dropped into her palm and she held it up close to her face and exhaled on to it.

There was an instant reaction; the stone cackled as if it was trying to find a signal, and then hummed a low note that carried only to Hermione's freezing, red ears.

"In the station…"

"It's me!" Hermione had no time to listen to the tail end of Ginny Weasley's conversation.

"Hermione!" the younger girl was pleased to hear from her, after three weeks of silence.

"Ginny, there are Deatheaters coming after Harry right now – he's at Victoria station. Draco Malfoy and twenty-five others."

"Malfoy?"

There was a loud, dull noise like two hundred boots hitting the floor simultaneously.

"Hermione, don't worry if it's Malfoy."

"What? No, I have to go."

Ginny's voice was cut off as Hermione shook her hand violently and pressed the small diamond back against her silver bangle. There was another low reverberation that shook the loose, freshly dropped snow from the tips of the trees. Hermione scrambled across the snow; arms and legs slipping out from under her as she spun over the frozen white tundra. As she burst into the unused kitchen there was a thin, reedy scream; as she fell up the stairs it burst into sobbing wrenches of sound; as she threw herself into the darkened safety of Snape's room it stopped abruptly.

Snape swept through the doors moments later to find her scrubbing at the dingy piece of velvet that served him as carpet, her bottom waving from the effort she was putting into the wild movements. She looked up at him as if she was a deer caught in headlights, face blotchy and red. Her nose was peeling a little at the end from the exposure to the biting temperatures outside the factory, and her fingers which seized the scrubbing brush so tightly were blackish blue at the knuckles.

"You're back quickly," she noted coolly.

He didn't answer her, but stepped quickly over to the shelves stacked full of ingredients and pulled out a large trunk from underneath two jars of boomslang skin and a decapitated, floating goat head. The wide, vacantly dead eyes met with Hermione's brown ones as she focused on Snape's jerking, rapid movements. He was wrapping his long, thin fingers round each jar and wrapping it in white cotton before he stacked it into the box.

"Go and wash those cauldrons!" he snapped.

She picked up the two bronze cauldrons, and then, on a whim, the virgin-blood bowl still half filled with porridge. As she went to leave the room, she glanced back to see Snape folding his robes erratically and dropping them into the trunk. Frowning, the girl left the doors open and padded along to the end of the corridor. There was a tap there; the fountain sticking out awkwardly from the cement wall with a strip of black velvet wrapped around the exposed copper pipe.

She crouched down next to the tap and turned it on. As it spluttered and spat, footsteps thundered up the stairs accompanied by heavy breathing and a string of swearwords. Turning, she glimpsed Blaise Zabini, his ebony skin obvious under the white bone and silver mask he wore, before he burst into Snape's room. Leaving the tap filling the larger bronze cauldron, she slipped along the wall next to the doors.

"We have to leave in the next five minutes!" Zabini was whispering to Snape urgently.

"What reason does the Dark Lord give?" Snape replied, but he approached the door nevertheless.

"Draco has not signed in."

She saw the dark shadow that was Snape hesitate before the door, and shrank backwards.

"Have none of his company reported back?"

"No!" Zabini was flustered, "The Lord thinks he has perished!"

"Dead?" Snape sighed heavily, "It does not surprise me unduly."

Hermione bent down over the cauldron again as Snape burst out of the room. He seized her arm suddenly and tugged her upright roughly, away from the cauldron.

"Come on," he roared roughly, "we must move before the advantage is lost."

Hermione was briefly aware that Zabini had vanished, taking their trunk with him, before she felt herself being tugged from the corridor and spread over along distance as they apparated.

The water from the tap overflowed through the floor and froze in stalagmites suspended from the cracked ceilings, and then froze inside the cauldron. The porridge sat there, oats pasted to the edge of the ruined bowl.