Chapter Fifteen: Seeds
Hermione collapsed against her front door when she arrived home.
Seeing the professor—Severus now, she supposed—had been a strange experience. Relief had warred with anxiety and worry when he confirmed that he was still on their side.
He looked awful—pale skin, dark circles, lank hair, ferocious scowl. But it was comforting to see that he was still himself. Still brilliant, still intense, still a tall looming presence. Seeing him eat fish and chips, dressed down without his robes and frock coat had made her feel something alarmingly close to tenderness. She didn't make a habit of watching professors while they ate, but she had noticed that he had taken to picking at his food in the Great Hall before everything happened. And seeing him had made her feel better.
She groaned inwardly. He would bite off her head if he knew that she was feeling anything like concern. But she was concerned.
Severus carefully brushed the dirt off his robes before he hung them up. He had just contaminated the entire supply of a rare ingredient necessary for Veritaserum which was only harvested once a year and incredibly rare outside of Great Britain. He hoped that he could buy the Order some time safe from questioning, as it would take awhile for the Death Eaters to realise that they were brewing faulty Veritaserum and even longer for them to source the rare, restricted ingredient for import.
As Severus set down his paper-wrapped package of oatcakes and cheese that he had picked up in Scotland, there was a loud squawk and burst of flames on his dining table. The flames flickered dangerously near his bare forearms before he snatched his arms back.
"Watch it!" he growled.
Fawkes squawked at him reproachfully, and ruffled his feathers in a self-important manner.
"What do you want?" Severus checked to make sure that his table was free of burns. The ancient wood table appeared unharmed.
The phoenix turned his beak up at Severus, and shoved forward a long cloth-wrapped bundle with its claws. Severus eyed the bird warily—Fawkes had nearly burned his eyebrows off once when spontaneously bursting into flames—and grabbed the package. Unwrapping it revealed a long silvery sword, with a blood red ruby set in the pommel and Godric Gryffindor engraved just below the guard.
"Well, fuck me," Severus murmured. He reached out hesitantly to grasp the hilt of the sword, expecting to be burned or repelled for daring to touch it, as not just a Slytherin, but the former Head of Slytherin. To his disappointment, nothing dramatic happened except for a small scrap of parchment falling out from where it had been wrapped around the blade.
Severus gingerly set the sword down on his dining table, keeping an eye on Fawkes, and picked up the parchment. He recognised the handwriting at once; of course it was from Dumbledore.
Guard this carefully. Give it to Harry when the time is right.
"Helpful as ever," Severus said under his breath, and burned the parchment. There was a scratching sound.
"What?" Severus swung around to face the bird again. Another object had appeared in Fawkes' claws. Severus snatched the object—a book—from Fawkes, and furrowed his brows. The book was The Essential Rumi. Flipping the book open and skimming it briefly, he found that it was full of...love poetry.
Severus scowled. Love poetry? Was this a joke? Flipping to the first page of the book, he found that Albus had left an inscription for him.
Answers for when you lose your way.
Severus eyed the book warily, and shot several revealing spells at it. Nothing seemed to be amiss. Perhaps...the book was in code. That seemed exactly like the cryptic sort of thing Albus Dumbledore would do. He would deal with it later.
Fawkes squawked, and eyed him beadily from his perch on the table, leaning forward in the direction of Severus' package of food.
Severus sighed and held out some of his food to the phoenix, who he knew was partial to cheese.
"All right you ruddy glorified owl."
Fawkes squawked indignantly and preened his brilliant scarlet and gold feathers for a moment before greedily snatching the food from Severus' hand. As soon as he finished the last of the biscuits and cheese, he gave a trilling chirp and vanished in a flurry of flame and feathers.
Severus stared down at the sword glinting harmlessly on the table, mind far away from the mystery of the book, as he took his tea with the lightly salted oat biscuits and Dunlop cheese. Minerva had introduced the savoury biscuit and Scottish cheese combination to him when he said that he didn't like sweets. He ignored the dull pang inside his chest at the thought of Minerva. The ache had been there ever since the death of Dumbledore and no amount of Occlumency could make it go away.
It had taken him but two seconds to figure out that the sword was the key to destroying Horcruxes; if Dumbledore hadn't sent it, he might not have thought of it, but he remembered that Potter had destroyed the diary with a basilisk fang and that he had slayed the basilisk with the sword. There had to be a connection there.
The question was how he was going to give it to Potter; he had told Hermione that they should meet as little as possible to be discreet, but perhaps he could Apparate the sword with him to her home and let her deal with how to hand it over to Potter. Encouraged by the fact that one of their problems was now solved, Severus returned to the business of plotting sabotage on the Death Eaters.
The early July sun was shining brightly in the unwarded corner of her garden where she received her post. Hermione sat in the glare of the mid-afternoon sun, her dark thoughts a marked contrast to the lightness of the day.
"Muggle-borns are dangerous to the secrecy of the wizarding world and steal things that rightfully belong to Purebloods because they're envious...Harry Potter is mentally unstable, attention-seeking...what really happened when Dumbledore died a 'concerned citizen' writes in...rubbish, pure rubbish," Hermione muttered as she set down the Daily Prophet and violently crumpled the paper.
The Quibbler had stopped publishing any articles that mentioned Harry or Muggles in a positive light as well. Hermione felt alarmed and helpless at the state of the news in the Wizarding World—she felt as if she was fighting a losing battle against prejudice, even though she was doing everything she could.
Another owl swooped by and dropped a letter off for her. Hermione cast several detection spells at it before she decided it was safe and opened the letter.
It was from Tonks, saying that she was needed at the Burrow. Hermione had been avoiding the Burrow partly because she knew the family would be grieving Dumbledore, something she found more and more difficult to do when she thought of what he had asked of Severus. She knew Dumbledore asked a lot of Harry and Severus, but to kill a friend—she couldn't bring herself to completely mourn the man. She found herself alternating between grief and rage at Dumbledore for dying, which she knew was not rational, but she could not help it.
Part of the avoidance was also because she couldn't face Ron. She knew that he still had hope that things would work out between them, but she had realised long before his breakup with Lavender that she didn't like him like that, not anymore. There was a war going on, and she had no time to fall in love.
Severus held his breath as Yaxley passed by him, unaware of his presence. He had cast a subtle Notice-Me-Not charm on himself, muffled his footsteps, and disillusioned himself. It was late in the evening, and he had finally caught Yaxley visiting the Ministry. He had managed to slip into the Ministry through an entrance that the Death Eaters had made which allowed only those marked with the Dark Mark through—he privately thought it was a security flaw, but he was grateful for it.
Yaxley made his way to the Aurors' office, and Severus followed at a distance, his footfalls muted as he tailed the Death Eater in front of him.
There was only one lighted office in the Auror department, and Severus was not entirely surprised to see Yaxley, a wanted Death Eater, greet the Head of the Department of Law Enforcement familiarly.
"Pius. How are things going?" Yaxley said in a low voice. Unfortunately for Yaxley, Severus was not only good at muffling conversations by magic, but also amplifying them. Yaxley's voice was as clear as if he had been speaking right by Severus' ear.
"Good. I have a new friend for you to meet—I've spoken to the head of the Research Committee and he is very interested in meeting you to discuss the Muggle-born threat," Piers replied.
Severus flattened himself further in the shadows, and listened intently to their conversation. Yaxley and Pius discussed various activities of their family members, as if they were old friends, instead of Death Eater and Ministry Department Head.
Minutes later, a short man with slicked back salt-and-pepper hair strode stiffly into the office, and politely greeted Thicknesse.
"Corban, this is Professor Phoebus Penrose, of the Research Committee. Phoebus, this is Corban Yaxley," Thicknesse said, and the two men briefly shook hands. Penrose did not seem surprised to be introduced to an escaped Death Eater.
"Corban here has some information about Muggles and Muggle-borns that you might find relevant to your research…" Thicknesse said. What followed then was a brief conversation where Yaxley spoke of contacts in the Muggle government who vouched that there were a growing number of Muggles that were aware of the Wizarding World, and were fearful of them. He said that it would only be a matter of time before they moved to military measures, and that it was exceedingly dangerous to allow Muggle-borns to continue to exist in the Wizarding World considering how much of a threat they were to Wizarding society.
Penrose seemed hesitant about Yaxley's views, but he did not disagree. Then, so softly that if Severus had not magnified his hearing he would have missed it, he heard Yaxley murmur "Subicio". Severus stopped breathing entirely for a moment. Subicio was Latin for "to suggest", or "to plant". Penrose paused in his halting explanation of how unlikely but possible Yaxley's suggestion of a wizarding apocalypse by the Muggle military was, then shook his head slightly.
"...but of course, what you have said is very reasonable, and I am sure my research will support these claims," said Penrose.
No wonder the Order had not found anyone under the effects of the Imperius curse. Because there were no people under the Imperius curse this time. Awareness of the Imperius curse was at an all-time high, and Voldemort had asked for a solution to this problem. It seemed that they had found a solution. Severus was impressed with Yaxley's genius, cursed as it was.
The men then said they would remain in contact, then left Thicknesse. Thicknesse seemed lost in thought for a moment, before he looked around his surroundings, eyes passing right by where Severus stood, before he too left the offices.
Severus waited until they were far away from the offices before he cautiously made his way around Thicknesse's office, checking for wards. One drawer was tightly warded, and after some careful spellwork he found several papers, one of which was titled For the formation of a wizarding militia - the Magical Defence Association.
Severus blinked, quickly Geminio'd copies, patiently re-warded the desk before he made his way out of the Ministry, and carefully made his way through Diagon Alley. The streets were deserted at night, but he walked slowly and steadily to avoid the tell-tale shimmer that came with the disillusionment when moving too fast.
He paused at the entrance to Knockturn Alley, nose wrinkling in disgust at the smell and the sight of the shrivelled onions peddled by one vendor as a ward against werewolves. He had an idea for how to move Harry despite the restrictions imposed on him by the Ministry, and he needed Mundungus Fletcher to help him do it.
Hermione gripped the Thestral tightly with her legs as they took off from the ground, shivering slightly in the summer night air. Hermione sent a silent thanks to her parents for her brief months of horseback riding lessons as a child, before she learned that she detested horses. It was still preferable to brooms.
As soon as she left the perimeter of the Dursley's, several black masses appeared around her. Streaks of light flew over her head and she cursed; she needed to fly higher. She urged her mount forward, tailing close behind Kingsley, and thought quickly.
Her heart was in her throat and she locked thoughts of Severus away with Occlumency.
"POMPA!" Hermione screamed. Bursts of blue fireworks streamed out from the tip of her wand, blinding the Death Eaters immediately behind her.
"Stupefy—stupefy! Stupefy!" Kingsley roared in front of her, catching one dark figure and narrowly avoiding another.
They swerved to avoid a tall building that rushed up in front of them, and soon five figures were following them.
Hermione tried to Stun the Death Eaters following them, but her aim was not good enough and they were moving too fast. Not giving up, she cast Avis, followed by Oppungo, and another Death Eater fell away cursing as they tried to out-fly the flock of canaries pecking at their face.
Her heart stopped as she saw a figure with Severus' mask masterfully zip away after the fallen Death Eater, easily handling the broom with one hand as he almost lazily fired off spells with his wand in his other hand. This is real duelling power, she thought dumbly, before coming to her senses and nudging the Thestral to fly faster.
Her blood chilled as the unmistakable form of Voldemort materialised behind her, airborne with no assistance from a broom or animal.
They ducked multiple Killing Curses while Kingsley fired Slashing spell after Slashing spell, and an occasional Bombarda. All of his spells were repelled lazily by Voldemort. Hermione managed a few hexes of her own, mostly variations of burning hexes. Then, just as suddenly as he appeared, Voldemort left, though two Death Eaters remained on the chase.
Hermione barely noticed the silvery evening landscape streak by as Kingsley began a rapid descent. Almost immediately, they passed a magical barrier and landed on the neatly clipped lawn of an ancient house.
An elderly wizard with white hair greeted them.
"Doge. What were your first words to me when I joined the Ministry?" Kingsley said in greeting.
"'I hope you're better behaved than your father,'" the elderly man replied. "And what did you say back?"
"'I make no promises,'" said Kingsley.
"Is that Harry with you?" Doge asked, looking around Kingsley to where Hermione stood clinging to the Thestral.
"No, that's Hermione Granger," said Kingsley smoothly.
"Ah, of course, Miss Granger. It's a pleasure to meet you, though perhaps not under the circumstances," said Doge, extending his hand for a shake. Hermione shook his hand briefly and said likewise.
"You're a bit early, would you like anything to drink?" Doge asked.
"No, thank you. Is there somewhere I can talk to Kingsley for a moment though?" Hermione asked.
"Of course," Doge said without even blinking, and led them to a study furnished in dark polished wood.
"What is it?" Kingsley asked, a look of concern on his face.
Hermione gathered her thoughts, and tried to put them into words. "I have a message from...a friend. A friend who is currently on the other side."
Kingsley gazed at Hermione for several moments, before nodding. "All right. Go on."
"I know you've figured out that the Ministry is falling into the hands of the Death Eaters, and fast—but they're going to start up a militia controlled solely by the Death Eaters because they can't infiltrated the ranks of the Aurors fast enough and they're going to do some things that aren't legal by current Wizengamot standards because they'll only be answerable to the Minister—and it's imperative that you do not get arrested for overtly interfering with their plans," Hermione said in a rush. "Please."
"I see." Kingsley looked at a dark painting on the wall of a gloomy misty forest. "Of course. Thank your friend for me."
"You're going to trust me? Just like that?" Hermione asked, stunned. She and Snape had made up all sorts of background information for how she had gotten this intelligence, but Kingsley was not asking a single question of her.
"I know you're entirely loyal to Harry, and Remus assures me that you're the brightest witch of your age. I trust you and your sources," he said, and briefly glanced at his very Muggle-looking wristwatch. "Come now, our Portkey leaves in two minutes."
They returned to the sitting room where Doge was holding a wooden toy top in his hands.
"Thank you," said Kingsley, taking the toy from his hands.
Hermione and Kingsley kept their hands on the toy for a minute, and then came the nauseating sensation of being whipped into the air by a hook in her navel.
As soon as they touched down at the Burrow, Hermione could feel the Polyjuice begin to wear off. She ripped the glasses off her face, and her bones ached as she returned to her normal height, and shrank slightly in Harry's clothes. She had barely gotten her bearings when Harry emerged from the Burrow. She ran to him and hugged him tightly, relief flooding her body. Lupin followed after Harry. Immediately, Kingsley raised his wand to Lupin's chest and demanded to know what Dumbledore's last words were to them.
"'Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him,'" said Lupin calmly.
Satisfied, Kingsley stowed his wand away. He then began to talk of the appearance of the Death Eaters, concluding that the Order had been betrayed. Hermione had reached the same conclusion herself when the mass of Death Eaters appeared.
It did not feel real, that the battle was over and that she was standing on solid ground again. She began to shake as the adrenaline wore off and all her thoughts were tied to Snape.
Hermione listened with half an ear to Kingsley's conversation with Lupin while the others arrived one-by-one. Her pocket burned, and she found a message while she changed from Harry's clothes in the bathroom: Ear. Accident. Are you safe? Relief flooded through her at the proof that Severus was still alive. She had no idea what the ear referred to and hoped that his were fine. She sent back: I'm safe. Are you?
Back in the front of the Burrow, Bill and Fleur materialised through the thick wards. Bill briefly hugged his mother before he looked at his father with a grim expression. "Mad-Eye's dead."
Hermione felt sick with guilt; she had completely forgotten Moody while she worried about Severus.
And then George had come in with a cut off ear, and Harry was more inflamed by hatred for Severus again even though Hermione knew it was an accident but she knew that Harry would not listen, so she hid in a corner of the sitting room pretending to read until she noticed late in the night that Harry wasn't around.
Because he had tried to leave alone. Harry, who was both so noble and so idiotic for even thinking that she and Ron would let him go alone. Her heart broke for Harry, but she did not ease up on him just because he meant well. She told him in no uncertain terms that she would be following him with Ron. Because they wouldn't let him try to go alone. Because they were friends.
She hoped Severus would never get wind of Harry's moment of spectacularly bad judgement for trying to go alone, but in some ways wasn't Snape doing the same thing? Cutting himself off entirely from the Order so that he could better protect everybody.
After she coaxed Harry into returning to the Burrow with Ron, Hermione sat on the back steps watching the wind sweep through the tall grass that surrounded the Burrow, waiting for Snape to respond.
Her coin remained cold the entire night, but saw his message the next morning, head under her blankets, while Ginny changed. It simply read: I'm fine.
Hermione frowned. Are you really?, she sent back.
Yes. Just a minor injury.
Take care, Hermione sent back, feeling lost as to what she really wanted to say.
Severus looked down at his newly acquired scar; even dittany could not heal spelled burn wounds sometimes, and he knew this would be one of those times. The skin ached, the newly mended gash across his ribs was tight and shiny, adding to his constellation of strange hex and curse marks that he had been accumulating almost steadily since he had been a child.
He did not know what possessed him to respond to Hermione and tell her that he was injured—but he tried not to think much of it, because he knew that he needed his wits about him as Voldemort was planning more attacks in the coming days, and he would need to keep his emotions in check to survive seeing all of the people he could not save.
Hermione had worried about how Ron would act with her around the Burrow, but she shouldn't have, because Mrs Weasley seemed determined to separate her, Harry, and Ron by all means possible. She knew this was Mrs Weasley's way of showing her concern, by trying to protect them from the world, and by extension themselves, but it was aggravating.
Finally, a chance to talk came when Mrs Weasley assigned Hermione the same chore she had assigned the day before. Cautious to make sure the Weasley matriarch wasn't within hearing distance, Hermione quietly slipped into Harry and Ron's bedroom.
They began to talk about Horcruxes immediately. Hermione told them how she had found the instructions for making a Horcrux in one of the books from Dumbledore's study, but did not tell them how awful the ritual was. They had just talked about how unstable ripping a soul six times would make someone when Ron asked—
"Isn't there any way of putting yourself back together?"
"Yes," said Hermione, with a hollow smile, "but it would be excruciatingly painful."
"Why? How do you do it?"
"Remorse," said Hermione. "You've got to really feel what you've done…"
"And we've got to put his soul back together before he goes?" Harry asked.
"Yes—"
"That'll never happen," Harry stated flatly.
"Well, I've found some encouraging research that might be able to help. But first we've got to destroy his Horcruxes." Hermione twisted the scratchy blue blanket she was sitting on.
"So does it say how to destroy Horcruxes in that book?"
"Yes...from all that I've read, what Harry did to Riddle's diary was one of the really foolproof ways of destroying a Horcrux."
"What, stabbing it with a Basilisk fang?" asked Harry.
"Oh, well, lucky we've got such a large supply of Basilisk fangs then," said Ron. "I was wondering what we were going to do with them."
Hermione bit her lip, thinking of how Severus had the Sword of Gryffindor already, but how they still had not made a plan of how to reveal the sword yet.
"It doesn't have to be a Basilisk fang," said Hermione patiently. "It has to be something so destructive that the Horcrux can't repair itself...you've got to put it beyond magical repair."
"But even if we wreck the thing it lives in," said Ron, "why can't the bit of soul in it just go and live in something else? Like Voldemort has done already."
"Yeah, I remember Voldemort saying something like… 'I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost…'" said Harry. "But he came back, didn't he?"
"Yes, but for him to build up to possessing something more intelligent than an animal took him ten years," Hermione reasoned.
"That was the first time. He has Wormail now." Harry crossed his arms.
"We don't know if he is able to feel it if his Horcruxes are destroyed, so as long as he doesn't know, his followers can't do anything about it." Hermione shifted on the bed uncomfortably. "This is all moot until we find his Horcruxes anyway."
They lapsed into silence after that, each lost in thought, until the silence was disturbed by an irate Mrs Weasley who led them away to help her sort wedding presents.
They did not speak of Horcruxes after that, but the subject of how to deal with the issue of Tom Riddle's torn soul fragments weighed heavily on her mind.
AN: As always, I love getting everyone's thoughts on things, and really appreciate all the feedback. :) It has been kind of odd posting this fic, because I started writing the fic in February 2019, and this chapter was actually started in September 2019. My writing style has changed since I started this fic, and for some chapters it's less noticeable compared with the later chapters, but it's really noticeable here, for me. It's going to be more pronounced towards the end; I'm hoping people won't be thrown off by the changes in style!
Also, I have a playlist for this fic up, which you can find on my tumblr (username "viridiantly", tagged under "advanced floriography")! :)