Chapter Two: Mistletoe
Hermione had returned home three days after being discharged from the Hospital Wing and already she was missing the food they served at Hogwarts. Her mother had been pushing barely cooked broccoli around her plate for the past five minutes, her short light brown curly hair wild with agitation, the thin lines of her forehead evident from her furrowed brows. She finally spoke.
"Hermione, dear, listen to us. We're worried about you. You've returned home gravely injured from an accident in Potions class, there's a Dark Wizard who kills people like you according to the Daily Prophet, and you're friends with the biggest target of this Dark Wizard, who somehow got involved in a battle with him! Leave the wizarding world. We've been putting money in your university fund all these years—I'm sure you can catch up to others in no time—"
"Mum, we've been through this. It was an unusually violent accident in Potions class—" Hermione put her knife and fork down, her appetite suddenly lost.
Jean Granger bristled. "Unusual or not, it's still unconscionable that it happened at all—"
"—and I've told you the Daily Prophet prints rubbish—"
"We weren't born yesterday!" her mother snapped. "Your father and I can tell when a government is trying to do damage control; the articles read less like propaganda now and more like news reporting, and right now things sound dangerous—"
"It'll only be more dangerous if I leave!" Hermione exclaimed.
"Why?" Richard Granger asked in a deceptively soft voice, settling his cutlery down with a clink. His solemn face looked more serious than usual, and his soft brown eyes looked tired. He had more grey in his dark brown hair than the last time she saw him.
They all stopped eating. Hermione groaned. She had not meant to say what she did, but it had slipped out of her mouth before she could think better of it. She took a deep breath before she explained. "Because I'm Muggle-born. Because the Dark wizards will hunt me down regardless of where I am, and if I'm around Muggles when it happens—"
"When it happens?" her mother asked sharply.
"I mean, if—" Hermione faltered at the look on her father's face. "Fine! When it happens, I want to have gone through school so I know how to defend myself, and I don't want to be around non-magical folk because they'll be in danger around me!"
"Oh, sweetie…" her mother's face crumpled.
Hermione took a deep breath. She hadn't meant to be this honest with her parents, but now that she was, she was going to tell them what she really thought. "You shouldn't be worried about me—you should be worried about yourselves. They'll target you because you're parents to a Muggle-born! You should pack up and leave the country—"
"And leave my only daughter to face danger alone?" her father asked, voice dangerously calm.
"Yes! Because you'll be safer that way—"
"Over my dead body!" her father hissed.
"Richard—"
"No Jean, this is ridiculous. The wizarding world is obviously dangerous and going to the dogs, and Hermione is going to leave. We'll go—we'll all go to Canada or Australia—I am not sitting by idly while my daughter is in danger," he said with finality.
"I won't leave," Hermione said.
Her father snorted. "Why not? The wizarding world is obviously hostile to people like you—"
"That's why I have to stay and fight—"
"You don't have to stay and fight. This can be somebody else's fight. How much can you do? You're just one girl. Let the others fight. There must be more qualified people, and all the worse so if they're so badly down on their luck that they have children fighting in their wars for them. We're going to leave the country and that's final." Her father leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
Her father's words stung. I'm not just one girl, she wanted to say. Even if she was, she knew the numbers of the Order were limited, and she knew Harry needed her—and it was her fight, too.
"You can't make me leave," Hermione said, feeling strangely adult as she said the childish words. It was a hollow feeling.
Her father looked at her with a mixture of hurt and pride. "No, I suppose we can't."
"But we're not leaving either," her mother said.
Hermione resisted the urge to shout. "Mum—"
"No, listen. How could we go away when our only child is in certain danger? How can we go to a foreign country and live as if nothing is happening? If you refuse to leave, we also refuse to leave." Jean Granger's mouth twisted as she said the words.
Hermione gaped at her mother. The conversation had gone from disastrous to tragic, and she had not thought her mother would resort to emotional blackmail to get her to leave.
"Mum…" she said weakly.
"Don't you understand what it would do to us if you died?" her mother asked softly, eyes turning red.
"Jean—" her father began gruffly.
"Nobody's going to die," Hermione said.
"Lots of people have already died. It looks like they're having a really hard time with this Dark Wizard with no name, so how can you say that?" her mother asked.
"Hermione is right. No one is going to die," her father said calmly. "Let's all take some time to cool down and think rationally. I'm sure we'll feel much more reasonable tomorrow after a good night's rest," he said, looking hard at Hermione.
"Dad's right," Hermione agreed in a tight voice. A tense silence fell upon the table.
"I'm...going to my room to do some reading," Hermione said, appetite completely gone. She took her leftovers to the kitchen, then retreated to the confines of her room.
She sat at the white wooden desk of her childhood bedroom, now too small for her, and returned to reading the book on mind magic. She had spent most of her days reading while her parents were at their practice and had taken thorough notes on the Occlumency section. She had been practising basic exercises to prepare for practicing Occlumency for the past three days, and felt that she was ready for Occlumency with magic. The basic methods of clearing and focusing her thoughts, and focusing on a visualisation to keep her mind blank required no magic, so she felt comfortable practising at home while she still had the Trace.
She was just reading the section on planting false memories when she got an idea…
Hermione woke up with her heart pounding from an unpleasant dream where she was being chased by ten-foot-tall Death Eaters to the sound of tapping at the window. The nightmares plagued her most nights after the battle at the Department of Mysteries, and in all her dreams she had been chased by Death Eaters who she could never outrun.
It was dark in her room; the edge of the sky peeking through her curtains was a deep inky blue. She rose from her warm blankets, stumbling slightly, to let in the owl that was impatiently waiting for her. It looked like a Hogwarts owl and carried a lumpy envelope. She frowned in confusion; school had been out for little more than three weeks now and she was not expecting any post. Scrawled on the envelope was her name in a strange, scratchy hand.
In the envelope she found a ticket to enter Stonehenge the following Friday at two in the afternoon, with a single flower she recognised as Solomon's seal, and a small sprig of mistletoe. She was surprised Snape had decided to contact her so soon.
Hermione's eyebrows knitted together. Solomon's seal for secrecy and discretion she understood, but what did mistletoe have to do with anything? Surely it was not the obvious meaning.
She dug the copy she had illicitly made of Floriography and Potions Making from her trunk and looked up the entry on mistletoe.
While mistletoe has become a symbol associated with fertility and love in modern times, traditionally, it symbolised peace and was often hung by druids at sacred meeting places where no violence was to take place.
Ah. Druids. Stonehenge. A safe meeting space. Hermione felt silly she had thought of kissing in connection with the mistletoe and set about pondering how she would make her way to Stonehenge.
She had been having passive-aggressively terse yet outwardly calm arguments with her parents near daily about her decision to remain in the wizarding world, and her father had been acting more overprotective than usual, demanding to know where she was going at all times. It had reached the point where she stopped trying to go outside and focused harder on her Occlumency studies.
"You always told me to fight for what is right!" Hermione had said to her father in frustration one day, as he questioned her yet again when she wanted to go to the library.
"I meant going to protests! Organising fundraisers! Writing to parliament! Ensuring that our social rights are protected in a civilised manner—the way civilisation should be, not getting killed in an act of civil conflict!" her father had replied, bristling with anger.
"But what if I had to fight, because the other side wouldn't listen to civilised debate? They're violent and hurting us. They're targeting non-magical folk too. I can't just run away—"
"You most certainly can! Wars are fought by soldiers, and you are a civilian. We'll go somewhere safe. Your mother and I didn't raise you to engage in violence. It is one thing for a community to engage in warfare with trained adults, even though they shouldn't, but you are an unprepared child—"
"I'll be of age in the wizarding world this September—"
"But you'll still be a child in our world—"
"It's not my world anymore," Hermione quietly said, and her father had deflated.
"We don't want to lose you," he said, defeated.
"You won't," Hermione lied, thinking of how close she had come to dying at the Department of Mysteries.
"Please leave Britain," Hermione had pleaded. But her parents would not change their minds. They would not leave without her, and she would not leave either.
In the end, she had made up an excuse about meeting Harry at Stonehenge for a school assignment and had assured her parents that no one had ever been attacked in crowded places in broad daylight, or on public transportation, so her father begrudgingly let her go.
The trip to Stonehenge from Oxfordshire was two and a half hours. Hermione spent most of her train trip listening to the radio on her AM/FM cassette player while she watched the landscape speed past; she never got used to wizarding music and treasured her time catching up with Muggle pop hits. There was a lot of Oasis on the airwaves. By the end of the trip, she was thoroughly sick of hearing the nasally opening lines of "Wonderwall".
She heaved a sigh of relief as she left the final leg of her trip—the bus—and looked around the Visitor's Centre. Would Snape arrive as himself, or disguised? The ticket was for two in the afternoon, and she had arrived with twenty minutes to spare, but she was anxious to see the professor.
She craned her neck around, and caught a glimpse of the tall form of her professor dressed in a black button-up shirt and black trousers before she felt a stabbing pain in her head.
"Hello to you too, Professor," Hermione grumbled under her breath.
She took a deep breath and focused on clearing her mind. She felt a mental nudge to think of her deepest fears and secrets, but she focused on an image of the smooth blue sky, seamless and endless, concealing her thoughts and giving nothing away. She could feel Snape attempt to disturb the peace of her mind to latch onto memories, but he found nothing more than endless blue. The deeper he went the darker the sky became, and she could feel herself calling on her magic to keep him from breaking her focus on the image of the sky.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. The drain on her magic to maintain calm and unthinking was immense, and Snape got no further in his attempts to find her secrets, but her vision was gathering black spots at the edges.
As soon as the darkness set in, the attack stopped. Professor Snape had been walking closer to her without breaking eye contact the entire time, and now he was close enough she could see faint dark circles under his eyes. He had tied his hair back and looked disconcertingly Muggle without his billowing robes and lank hair surrounding his face. He looked more human and less like a force of nature.
"What flowers did I not give you in your fourth year?" he asked without preamble.
It took Hermione a moment to understand what he was saying. "Purple hyacinths," she said, trembling slightly. The attack had been nothing like she had been prepared for by her book.
"Let's drink some tea before we go in to see the stones," Professor Snape offered. Hermione nodded blankly, feeling faint.
They got tea at the café, where Snape ordered for the two of them and paid. Hermione watched in interest as he handled the transaction as if he bought things at Muggle shops all the time—he had none of the difficulty that she had seen Mr Weasley exhibit. Perhaps it was due to his spy skills, Hermione thought.
Snape also took the liberty of dumping six packets of sugar into Hermione's cup before she could protest and ordered her to drink. Her headache eased after she gulped down half the cup though she shuddered to think of what her parents would think.
"Oh no, the Trace!" she exclaimed. "I did magic with the Occlumency," she added miserably. "The Ministry—"
Snape raised a hand for her to stop. "Stonehenge cloaks certain magical activities, most notably tracking spells. It is a magical site."
"Really?" Hermione asked excitedly. "I remember in History of Magic it was said that Merlin himself built the henge with the help of giants...but the stones date from before Merlin, and most people know it's just a myth that Merlin created Stonehenge."
Snape pursed his lips. "There may be some truth to the stories. Merlin likely enchanted the stones long after they were built, though no one knows for what purpose. Stonehenge is also conveniently overrun by Muggles to the point where most wizards would avoid this area, and traditionalists hold this site sacred; Death Eaters will not attack here."
Snape drank the rest of his unsweetened tea and motioned for her to get up. "I brought you here so we may speak freely, without fear of being traced by anyone who may be observing your home or your communications. Your Occlumency skills are adequate enough for us to proceed, and your choice of focusing visualisation is unusually inspired." The implied for you hung at the end of his sentence. "Have you told anyone of your studies?"
"No! Of course not—you told me to keep things secret, so I did."
"Did I actually tell you anything?" he asked, tone deceptively mild.
"Well, not so much in words…but I thought it would be better to be safe than sorry."
"An attitude you could have demonstrated more last year," Snape said sharply. Hermione felt guilt twist deep in her gut before he relented. "But you have learned. It seems."
They had reached the ticket counter. They handed their tickets over, then walked through the door near the gift centre.
Snape led her down a path until they were in a dark tunnel lined with green faux-marble; he looked at the real sky for a moment and rolled his shirtsleeves up, before wandlessly casting a cooling charm both on himself and Hermione. She sighed in relief; it was thirty degrees and she had chosen to wear long jeans.
Hermione tried not to stare in fascination at his Dark Mark—passing Muggles certainly seemed to take no notice of it. Dressed in his black shirt and black trousers with his skull and snake tattoo, Snape looked like a rebellious barman, or librarian, though Hermione doubted she could ever ignore his aura of danger and power, no matter his appearance.
Seeing no one nearby, he gestured briefly with his wand hand; Hermione felt a strange pressure briefly around her ears, as well as a mild buzzing sound.
"That was a muffling spell. We may now speak freely without fear of being overheard," he said. "I'm sure you have many questions, however, we do not have much time, and there is much to discuss. I ask that you save only the important questions for the end." He started walking down a wide road, and Hermione hurried to match his pace.
"I have brought you here because Mr Potter needs someone close to him who can balance out the rash aspects of his personality, and the war is going to get much worse, soon." He paused and seemed to consider what to say next.
"Neither Dumbledore nor I will always be around to help Potter when he gets into a difficult situation or concocts another suicide mission, so the job falls to you. I will be teaching you various skills that I believe will be useful in the coming confrontation."
Hermione gaped at him and opened her mouth to ask what he would teach her, but he interrupted her before she could say anything. "Before I speak further—tell me, how is Mr Potter these days?"
"I don't know. He hasn't said much in his letters," Hermione said.
"You're not staying with the Weasleys?" Snape's mouth thinned.
"My parents and I are...having a difficult time agreeing on whether I should return to the Wizarding world. They know things are getting dangerous and want me to leave the country with them. I want to stay. They're afraid I'll vanish one day and they'll never see me again, so it has been difficult getting them to let me go," she said.
"No one would think less of you if you left the country. Your parents are not wrong to want to leave—you must be aware of what is happening, and you and your parents are almost sure to be targeted before the year is out," Snape said, voice surprisingly gentle.
"But it's my fight too! How can I leave when other Muggle-borns are being targeted and in danger? How can I desert my friends?" Hermione exclaimed.
"Some would say you could very easily."
"I can't. But my parents refuse to leave without me even though they know how dangerous it is. I'm so afraid for them and I can't stand the idea of them dying and I...I have an idea."
"Yes?" Snape asked impatiently.
"I was thinking of altering their memories so they wouldn't remember me and sending them away somewhere where they think they're not themselves," Hermione said in a rush, clenching her hands so hard her fingers dug into her palms.
There was a long pause.
"Miss Granger, you do know that the act of unauthorised alteration of a Muggle's mind carries a near-life sentence in Azkaban?"
"I do now," she said under her breath. "But I would do it anyway."
"I would ask you to reconsider, but I can already tell how futile it would be," Snape said with a long-suffering sigh. "Why are you telling me this? Did no one teach you that it is unwise to disclose your crimes before you commit them?"
"I was hoping you could help me...just a little!" Hermione added hastily at the look on Snape's face. "I'll do as much of the memory modification as I can and come up with a plan to move them out of the country and sell their practice and such, I just...need to make sure I do the memory charms right so if I survive the war I can restore their memories. I just need you to guide me," she finished, twisting her fingers together.
"So you are asking me to be an accomplice to your crimes," Snape said.
Hermione had nothing to say in response. Snape took a deep breath, and let out a loud exhale.
"This is an extremely large undertaking. It is not a simple matter to make a person think they are someone else," he said.
"I know," Hermione replied.
Professor Snape sighed. "I'll help you," he said, as if it pained him.
"You will?" Hermione asked, surprised.
"It will be good practice for you to learn to cast memory charms as if you mean it, because you will mean it, and it will be good practice for you to learn to plan more involved crimes in the name of the greater good," Snape said, not breaking his stride.
Hermione wanted to tell him to stop referring to her actions as crimes, but she couldn't because he was technically correct.
"You're not going to tell me what a bad idea this is?" she asked.
"Sometimes there are no right decisions to make in war. There are only bad decisions, and worse ones, and there are times when doing nothing will be the worst decision of all. This will be a lesson for you," he said. "I am sorry," he added.
"It's all right."
Snape shrugged as if to say if you insist. "This makes things easier for me. We will begin by focusing on mind magic. I will also be teaching you basic healing and counter-curses, advanced defensive and protective magics, and something of the type of thinking that would help you survive this war."
"That sounds like a lot," she said.
"It is. I expect you to find your way to the Burrow soon—it will be safer for you to be there, and in a warded magical household you can practise your magic. We can't afford for you to spend the entire summer without practice." Snape held out his arm for them to stop walking. They stopped.
"Furthermore, from now on, you must never sleep in a space until you are sure it is warded securely, as your mind is the most vulnerable in sleep. I trust the Order has offered some level of warding for your home?" asked Snape as he turned to face Hermione.
"No...I don't think the Order has yet, and I can't do anything because of the Trace," Hermione said with a slight frown.
Snape swore. "We'll rectify that as soon as we reach the place I brought you here to see. There is an Apparation point in a small copse of trees between here and the henge. I will take you to your home from there and erect some wards."
They had reached the shadows of the trees. Halfway through the thicket stood two trees with small yellow ribbons around their trunks, with a slightly shimmering space in between.
"Here it is. Muggles do not see these trees, so it is safe to Apparate from here," Snape turned to her, half-shadowed by the trees. "Legilimens," he said in a low voice. "Show me your home."
Hermione pictured the small garden at the back of her home and tried to capture every detail in her mind. This time, the mental intrusion did not hurt.
Snape looked away, breaking the connection. "Thank you. I will take you Side-Along now—we do not have much time," he said, holding his arm out.
Hermione tentatively grabbed onto his forearm. There was a faint popping sound, then a jerk under her navel propelling her forward through space as she whirled through the air. As suddenly as it started, it ended.
Hermione swayed on her feet, and dry heaved. When her nausea faded, she stood up. There was a yowl from a corner of the sparsely-decorated garden as Crookshanks streaked past them to the front of the house.
"Miss Granger," Snape said sharply. "You've Apparated with a known Death Eater to your family home and they are looking to slaughter your family. What do you do?"
Hermione's heart jumped in her chest before she realised that Snape was testing her.
"I Stun them and notify the Order," she said quickly.
"Wrong answer," Snape said.
Hermione's forehead wrinkled in confusion. She thought this was what she should have done in the Department of Mysteries. How was it wrong?
"Why?" she asked.
"You may not be able to successfully Stun them. How many Death Eaters did you manage to successfully Stun at the Ministry? The Order may take time to rally, at which point you'd all be dead. Try again."
Hermione thought hard. "I shake off the Death Eater through any means possible, grab my parents, and Apparate us somewhere safe," she tried again.
"Better."
Hermione frowned. "What's the right answer?"
"There is no right answer. The Death Eater might Avada you on sight, at which point you would be dead. They may call for reinforcements, at which point you will also be dead. They may also decide to torture you or bring you in front of the Dark Lord for information, at which point you hope you have become much more proficient in Occlumency and may very well wish that you were dead."
"I didn't know my death was so likely," Hermione said wryly.
Snape shot her a sharp look. "You are friends with Potter. People around him die."
"I know."
Snape muttered something that sounded suspiciously like Gryffindors. "I need you to go away for half an hour so we don't activate your Trace. Do not stay closer than five hundred metres," Snape instructed.
Hermione nodded her agreement and walked to the corner shop a few blocks away, checking her watch every few minutes. It was sweltering hot, and Snape had removed his cooling charm when they had Apparated to her backyard.
Bored, she bought a lemonade ice-lolly, walked to the local pre-preparatory school, and swung idly in the playground. She had not been surprised when Snape told her he would be training her up to help Harry—she had expected it, even, but had been surprised at how civil he was.
Idly, she wondered what Harry and Ron were up to, and how she would get her parents to let her go to the Burrow when they were feeling so insecure about her continued presence in their lives. It had been easy leaving her parents when she was younger, so eager to spend time with her friends in the magical world, because it seemed as if she had all the time in the world for her parents later. Now that it was later, it seemed as if she had hardly any more time left with them. She was loath to go.
When twenty-five minutes had passed, Hermione started walking back. She felt the telltale tingle of wards when she stepped onto the property and found Snape leaning against a tree in her backyard, looking impatiently at a silver pocket watch.
"I have a few last things to say to you before I leave," he said, skipping a greeting again.
"Your Occlumency skills are adequate so far, but as soon as you arrive at the Burrow, I want you to practise more advanced techniques that require the use of magic," he said, arms behind his back. "Everything between us must be of utmost secrecy—Mr Potter must not know of our association, nor the Order, nor Dumbledore."
"Why can't Dumbledore know?" Hermione asked, surprised.
"We have disagreements on how much information is to be shared amongst the Order. I do not wish to lose his confidence," he said with a neutral expression. Hermione's mouth parted in an "o", but she nodded her agreement.
"I need you to act as if you have not learned any of this, and that you are not preparing for your parents to leave. It would be safer if it was a secret until they're gone—perhaps even after," he added as an afterthought. "Do you have any questions?"
"Will I get to know anything more about what's going on?"
"In due course. I may send you another meeting time before the summer is out, otherwise, I will let you know about our meeting arrangements when school begins. Oh, and pick up a copy of Basic Healing Charms and Potions if you haven't already." He turned to go.
"Wait—how can I contact you if I've got questions or need anything?" Hermione asked.
"You cannot. Owl post is too dangerous at the moment. This whole meeting has been dangerous, and you failed four times to check your environment for strange wizards. See that you don't next time." With that, Snape strode out of her garden. Hermione didn't hear the pop of Apparation, but knew he was gone.
She sank down onto the small patch of lawn beside her mother's half-heartedly planted flower bed, mind spinning. Professor Snape certainly didn't pull any punches.
But that night, surrounded by the magic of Snape's wards, Hermione slept better than she had in weeks.
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