Chapter Nineteen: Rue
"You know he doesn't really mean any of that. He's wearing the locket," Harry said, after picking up the pieces of the Monopoly game that Ron had upended when he stormed away.
"I'm not sure that's true." Hermione shook her head and helped him put the game away. "The locket doesn't make you think any differently than you already do, it just magnifies the worst parts."
"Yeah, come on Hermione. That was Ron at his worst." Harry nudged her with his shoulder and then moved to the doorway.
Hermione looked around the sitting room, with the floral sofas and oak wood coffee table. Comfortable landscape paintings bought from the local art school hung on the walls, in between small landscapes that her grandmother had painted. The room was done in soothing pastels and natural wood finish, and there was a comfortable blue rug in front of the seats.
It felt strange that such conflict—fights with the boys and the war—could happen while she sat in her childhood home.
Hermione followed Harry to the kitchen, where Ron sat broodingly with a cup of tea.
"Ron," Harry said, clearing his throat meaningfully.
"I made you a chocolate cake for your birthday," Ron said, ignoring whatever Harry was prompting him to say. He turned away to fetch the cake from the kitchen, which had been charmed to keep cool in the absence of electricity.
Hermione gaped at the sight of the roughly frosted cake.
"When did you even get the time to do this?" she asked wonderingly, moved by the sight of the obviously handcrafted cake.
"I did it last night when you were asleep," Ron said with a shrug.
Hermione moved to hug him, but he stepped away.
"Let's serve the cake after dinner, yeah?" he said, busying himself with dinner preparations.
Hermione turned to Harry with a questioning air but Harry was busy pretending that he had not noticed Ron's standoffishness.
"C'mon. Let's look more at those Muggle books to see what other stories there are of Merlin and his forest," he said, tugging her out of the room.
Earlier that week Hermione had told Ron and Harry that she had "made the connection" between the Sword of Gryffindor and the diary, and it had taken her every ounce of persuasion to prevent Harry from running off to Hogwarts immediately.
Only the fact that they agreed that they did not know for sure where the Sword was stopped them from storming the castle. She made Harry promise her that he would not go sneaking off to Hogwarts to find the sword himself, and Ron had been all too happy to avoid potentially facing Death Eaters again. They knew escaping from Hogwarts would be more difficult than escaping the Ministry.
Hermione had thought that it was a simple matter of having Severus hand over the sword, but apparently, there was more to it than that. He had tried mailing the sword to her multiple times, but the sword would return to him sometime during the trip. She remembered his last visit.
Hermione was greeted once again by the sight of an increasingly irate ex-Potions Master, holding on to a very stubborn sword. Every time he tried to hand the sword over to her, it had flown back to his hands. Their attempts at tricking it had all proved useless; wrapping it in cloth didn't help, putting it down on the floor and Apparating away didn't work, and asking her to summon the sword did not work either.
A faint flush tinged his cheeks, and it was clear he was nearing the end of his limit.
"Maybe there needs to be special circumstances that would allow someone to draw the sword," Hermione suggested.
A quiet growl left Severus' throat.
"I mean, Dumbledore had said that Harry had drawn the sword because he was a true Gryffindor..."
The look on Severus' face darkened more. "Do I look like a Gryffindor to you?"
"Of course not," Hermione said in a placating tone. "But, perhaps we're missing something. It's late—maybe we should do some further reading?"
Severus agreed reluctantly, then Apparated away without a sound.
Hermione had not found any references to magical swords to help with her Gryffindor sword issue, except for stories of Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone, but somehow she didn't think either legend quite fit. She had briefly thought of handing the locket over to Severus to destroy while she was wearing it, but a voice inside her head convinced her that action was very wrong.
It was because they were unable to immediately go after the Sword of Gryffindor that Hermione had focused on the soul repairing aspect of their mission with the Horcruxes. She found a reference to the "miracle cure" book of Myrddin Wyllt after searching through her earlier research notes, and had shared the information with the boys. Desperate to keep Ron and Harry busy, she had tried finding more information in the local Muggle library and, to their surprise, found a large collection of Arthurian literature.
She read through the books they had borrowed listlessly, while Harry went through ancient accounts of dragons in Arthurian myth.
She was reading through a strange series of stories that all dealt with Merlin and his confrontations with the Grim when Ron shouted at them that dinner was ready.
When she entered the kitchen with Harry, she was surprised by the sight of two large homemade pizzas and a green salad on the kitchen table.
"This is amazing," she said in wonder, taking the indicated seat at the head of the table.
"Surprised that I did something right for once?" Ron asked with a slight sneer.
"No! It's just...very impressive." Hermione winced.
"Yeah, this is amazing," Harry added, hurriedly taking a seat.
"Sure." Ron didn't seem convinced, but finally sat down.
They didn't say much after that. The pizza was delicious; Ron had made a perfectly chewy crust and balanced sauce, with just the right amount of cheese. He had chosen to serve one plain pepperoni pizza and another topped with just vegetables, likely a nod to Hermione's usual insistence that he and Harry eat more fresh vegetation. Hermione tried not to take his attitude personally and focus on how thoughtful the dinner was—Ron was still wearing the locket, having refused to give it up to Harry right before dinner—but his sullen silence at the dinner table was making it difficult to focus on the good meal.
It was a painful reminder of how difficult conversation had gotten—when they weren't talking about their Horcrux research, and wondering what Death Eaters and their friends and families were doing, there wasn't much to talk about, unlike the easy conversation they made at school.
Ron owned a small radio that received the wizarding wireless, and he and Harry had taken to listening to Quidditch games on it. The standard channels on the wireless never reported any news worth mentioning, except an ever increasing amount of anti-Muggle and Muggle-born propaganda that now veered into truly hateful territory. Muggle-borns were now blamed for the decline of the Wizarding World: introducing their filthy Muggle ways which were tainting society and increasing Squib births, creating a need for the Statute of Secrecy in the first place, and all sorts of nonsense.
Hermione could not stand to hear the bile spewed by the Wizarding Radio channels, and had never managed to acquire a taste for wizarding music, so she rarely joined Harry and Ron when they had the wireless on at night.
They were used to depending on each other but it had become more difficult for them to have only each other for company. It was easier for Harry and Hermione, as they were fine spending long stretches in silence with only themselves for company, but Ron needed constant conversation. Hermione thought it was because he had been raised in a large family. Which was why it was so strange that Ron was silent during the meal. He usually attempted conversation, and though he was less talkative with the locket on he had never gone entirely silent before.
Harry had tried to start a conversation a few times, but Ron was unreceptive and it had been exceedingly awkward for Harry and Hermione to talk while Ron sat with a surly expression on his face.
Finally, dinner was over, and Harry brought out the cake. There was a single candle on it.
"Make a wish," said Harry, lighting the candle with his wand.
Hermione thought of all the things she wanted, how she wanted the war to be over, how she wanted her friends and family to be safe, how she just wanted to be a normal student again, but found in that moment the only thing she wished for was the additional presence of Severus, Luna, and her parents.
'Step aside, little boy,' said Death. His eyes were dark like the moonless night sky, and his pitch black cloak billowed to an otherworldly wind that could not be felt.
'No.' The boy was not scared. He knew the secret to protect his family. He had gone to the hidden woods that only took those wild of mind during the in between times like the witch had said, and had read Merlin's tome. He would defeat Death, even if he had to die.
'Very well,' said Death, drawing up to his full fearsome height. He cast out a finger at the boy, and said the words of passing.
'Abracadabra.'
A cold creeping sensation crawled down her back as Hermione read the fairy tale. It was a story of a boy who died to protect his family, who were haunted by Death because his father had accidentally taken part of Death's spirit. She had not thought of the silly "abracadabra" "spell" since she had looked it up as a first year and learned to her disappointment that it didn't mean anything, but she could see how Muggles got the word from the Killing Curse now. She wondered how many Muggle fairy tales were influenced by the magical world before the time of Seclusion.
The story wasn't a direct fit for what they wanted, which was a way to destroy Horcruxes and put Voldemort's soul back together so he could leave the mortal plane forever, but there were several elements of the story that did connect with things she had found in her research before. (Because it was ridiculous of course—there was no way to defeat Death. Death was not an entity that existed in a way to be defeated.)
The woods in the story only admitted those "wild of mind" during the "in between times", something she had originally found referenced in the book on Myrrdin Wyllt. It was still a stretch to think that a mystical tome written by Merlin actually existed in an enchanted forest somewhere, but this was the third reference she had found of it, in a vastly differing account—from a Muggle fairy tale. This had to mean something. Even Severus had agreed previously when she suggested that there was some truth to these legends.
And it was something to do until they could find the other Horcruxes and get the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry.
That night, after dinner, she approached Harry and Ron cautiously, not eager to get their hopes up, but Harry was enthused.
"Hermione—this isamazing. Are you sure we could find the woods?" Harry asked, keen to seize on a thread of action.
"I think so," she said, "Binns did lecture on magical forests...if these books are referring to the mythical Lost Woods of Merlin, it's said the entrance to the forest could be approached from any forest in Britain and we've got a clue from the Muggle story about how to get in, and my Slytherin friend says that it's very likely that these woods are real—"
"We should try!"
Ron snorted.
"What?" Hermione asked.
"Oh, that's alright then. Let's just go on another wild goose chase for a legendary book in some mystical woods because we've got no plan aside from being jerked around by Dumbledore's ghost."
"Ron—" Harry started.
"No, Harry, we've been doing nothing but sitting around, reading books while people are getting killed, being put in danger—have you thought about that?" Ron asked, getting worked up.
"That's not fair Ron—" Hermione tried to interject.
"No, what's not fair is that you can talk to your Death Eater pal all you want while we aren't allowed to owl people we care about. I don't know how my family is doing—"
"We can't have people tracking us—"
"How did the Order do it then?"
"—I don't know! Contrary to popular belief I don't know everything Ronald—"
"Call the Daily Prophet, there's something the great Hermione Granger doesn't know—"
"Ron." Harry stood up slowly from the table they were sitting at. "That's enough—"
"It's not enough! We've done nothing for the past two weeks aside from read books from a Muggle library! And you!" Ron rounded on Hermione. "You talk to your Death Eater friend all the time, but have you ever asked how Ginny was?"
Hermione opened her mouth.
Ron spoke before she had the chance. "Snape is Headmaster of Hogwarts, there are Death Eaters teaching there—you don't think that they aren't torturing the students can you?"
"My Slytherin friend says that things are bad but the professors are doing everything they can to protect the students—"
"Of course, if your Slytherin friend says it then it must be true," Ron sneered. "Are you even trying to keep in touch with people? Do you even care?"
"We can't—"
"I bet you've forgotten all about those DA galleons that you've made, because you don't need anybody now that you've got your intelligent Slytherin friend," Ron said.
Hermione felt a creeping sense of sickness in her stomach. She had forgotten about the galleon—hadn't even thought of them to keep in touch with people at Hogwarts, but they had been so preoccupied with searching for ways to destroy the Horcruxes and what to do after—
"And you!" Ron turned to Harry. "I bet you've forgotten all about our friends and family too, too busy being the Chosen One—"
"Ron, take off the locket," Hermione broke in, trying to remain calm.
"—but I've been keeping in touch with people at Hogwarts. Did you know that Snape had the Sword of Gryffindor in his office, and I asked Neville to steal it?" Ron continued on as if he hadn't heard her.
"I—" Hermione was mildly horrified by the truth of his accusation, but also by the fact that he could have given away so much to the enemy.
"Bet you didn't think anyone else could do something that the great Hermione Granger couldn't figure out, did you?" Ron said. "Ginny, Neville and Luna got caught and were sent to the Forbidden Forest as punishment."
"That's not so bad," Harry said.
"Not so bad," Ron repeated in a mocking voice. "...you don't give a rat's fart, do you, it's only the Forbidden Forest, Harry I've Faced Worse Potter doesn't care what happens to her in here, well, I do, all right, giant spiders and mental stuff—"
Hermione clenched her fists. "Ron, I'm sorry but—"
"It makes me sick, how little you two care about the other people who are suffering. My family is out there, getting hurt, but it's all right for you two isn't it, with your parents out of the way?" Ron rose from his chair. Hermione felt punched in the gut. Her parents possibly would never know that they ever had a daughter—
"Take that back." Harry shot out of his seat, toppling it over.
Hermione swallowed the anger rising in the chest. "Ron—stop," she said through gritted teeth, "I think you should go and calm yourself down—"
"You know what? I think that's a great idea. I think I'm going to go. It's obvious you two don't need me and don't want me here. Hermione Granger finds all the answers and the great Harry Potter fights for her and backs her up. And what information they don't know they get from Hermione's bloody Slytherin friend. What am I even doing here aside from being your cook?" Ron let out a bitter laugh.
"Yeah, what are you doing here?" said Harry, arms crossed over his chest.
"No—Harry, Ron, don't be ridiculous—" Hermione started.
Ron scoffed. "Ridiculous Ron always needs someone to explain to him why he's wrong, doesn't he? Ridiculous Ron who can't possibly understand how ridiculous it is to go chasing after another thing on nothing more than a few mentions in some mouldy old books—"
Hermione felt the hot sting of tears around her eyes. "Ron, please, I didn't mean it like that—"
"No. You meant it exactly like that. You always do. I'm going. And if you think your Slytherin friend doesn't care about your dirty blood you're barking." Ron made to leave the room.
Hermione suddenly found it hard to breathe.
"Get out." Harry pointed his wand straight at Ron.
Hermione was feeling dizzy from the stress of the harsh words being thrown around her.
"I will." Ron Accio'd his trunk, and a few more of his belongings.
"Hermione's done nothing but try to help and find answers and all you do is pick on her. We're going to search for the Lost Woods soon, so don't expect to find us when you come back." Harry said, wand arm unmoving.
"You do that." Ron ripped the locket off his neck and tossed it onto the table. He left without looking back. A moment later they heard the front door slam.
Hermione sat down, though the room still swam around her.
"Harry—the locket—"
"Don't." Harry sagged against the wall behind him. "Don't make excuses for him anymore. He went too far."
Hermione sat still for a few seconds. She was exhausted. "I think we should stop wearing the locket," she said quietly.
Harry was staring at the locket, before he shook his head as if trying to shake away a thought. "All right. I'm going to bed." With that, he left Hermione alone to sit and stare at the Horcrux.
She resisted the urge to cry. She found an empty biscuit tin in the kitchen, and threw the locket inside, and then casted the strongest wards she knew around the locket.
Only after clearing up their dinner did Hermione allow herself to break down. Crooks crept out from a dark corner and nudged himself into her lap, and she clutched him hard.
Severus was walking off his insomnia underneath the guise of doing rounds when he heard the sounds of a wounded animal. He heard repeated whistling noises, choking gasps, nearly inaudible whimpers, and the occasional grunt that sounded like a cover for a scream. He followed the sound down an unlit hallway, hair prickling on the back of his neck, until he found himself in front of Filch's office.
In the dimly-lit office, a student had been chained up and was being whipped with great fervour by Amycus Carrow.
Severus saw red.
"What are you doing?" he hissed, stalking forward and wrenching the whip out of Amycus' hands.
"This boy was caught reading deviant materials in Defence class," Amycus said belligerently.
"And what were these materials?" Severus asked in a bored voice, forcing himself to bury his rage with Occlumency and ignore how his hands crackled with the sensation of freezing caused by unspent magic to focus on the situation. He tried to ignore the sight of the shirtless boy with the whipped back—Nigel Wolpert, fourth year Gryffindor his mind supplied—to loom over Amycus.
"I've saved them as evidence of his insubordination, " Amycus said proudly, reaching over his desk to shove a roll of newsprint into Severus' hands. "You'll want to see this."
"What's this?" Severus lifted an eyebrow.
"A paper full of lies," Amycus spat, evidently waiting for Severus to agree.
Severus looked down.
What looked like a copy of the Prophet at first turned out to be a paper called The Daily Observer.On the front page was an image of Fenrir Greyback, with the title Avoid This Man At All Costs. The front page was filled with headlines like Recent Death Eater Activity and Do Muggles Really Hate Magic? And 10 Facts About the Muggle World They Don't Want You To Know.
Severus briefly scanned the blurbs under Recent Death Eater Activity and Do Muggles Really Hate Magic? He was impressed by the quality of the writing, and the facts that the paper contained.
"I see," he said with a slight sneer. He had to think quickly, and silently cast a mild Confundus charm at Amycus.
"I think that's enough punishment for the night," he suggested to Amycus. "I do think the boy would think twice before being caught with such...subversive material again, won't you?" he directed the last part of his question to the Wolpert boy.
The boy gave a muffled grunt in assent, and suddenly fell slack in his chains.
"Thank you, Amycus, for dealing with this. I'll take over his discipline now and walk this miscreant back to his dormitory." Severus gripped the whip hard in his hand, to stop himself from whipping Amycus in the face.
Amycus nodded, his face still slightly slack from the Confundus charm. Severus hoped that his suggestion that the man had tortured the boy enough would take.
"It's been a long day for you, you should go now," Severus suggested to Amycus, who nodded dazedly and left the office without another word.
Severus forced himself not to flinch at the sight of the boy nearly collapsing onto the cold stone floor, and looked around before he found a pile of the boy's shirt and cloak.
Severus roughly dressed the boy, who seemed near catatonic.
Severus found himself conflicted on how to deal with the boy. He could not be seen to be helping Wolpert, and in the end he decided to leave the boy in front of the Hospital Wing and send a silent Patronus to Pomfrey. No one in the Order outside of Dumbledore had ever seen his Patronus. The familiar doe was even more indistinct than it was the last time he had cast his Patronus.
Once he saw Poppy pick the boy up from a hidden alcove, he continued to roam the castle while Disillusioned.
It was barely October, and already the students were testing the patience of the Carrows, rebelling any way they could. Severus did not want to extinguish their will to fight, but at the same time he needed to keep the students safe. That was what he had promised Albus, what he had promised himself.
It was already straining him, interfering by sending students from the Carrows to serve detention with Hagrid to gather potions supplies for Slughorn so he could keep the Infirmary stocked, heap gruesome-sounding yet less harmful lesson plans onto the Carrows, pretend that he didn't care about the school falling apart, pretend that he hated his colleagues and students, and keep to himself while monitoring the entire school as best he could.
Somehow he found himself in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady.
Circe, that tower just seemed to accumulate more and more bad memories.
He couldn't enter the tower without giving himself away, but he could leave a message.
Retreating to an alcove, he pulled out some parchment and a biro from his pocket, and wrote with his non-dominant hand: learn some fucking healing and pick up Nigel Worpel from the infirmary before the Carrows find him. Writing with his right hand to disguise his writing was something he had been doing more and more frequently; he would need to start practicing different scripts again if he was going to be leaving so many notes.
He stuck the message to the frame of the portrait, ignoring the soft snores from the frame's inhabitant, and walked away.
He felt nothing the entire walk back to his rooms. He had nearly gone to the dungeons, so lost in thought, before he remembered that he had an idea of how to make things better.
Severus made sure a copy of Basic Healing Charms and Potions made its way into Daphne Greengrass' hands via school owl. The Greengrasses as a family were neutral, and the younger Greengrass, Astoria, had been taking Muggle Studies even before it had been perverted and made mandatory by the Dark Lord. Of all the Slytherins, she was the most social with the other houses, and most importantly, was close to Luna Lovegood, who Severus knew would be a good bridge to the rest of the foolhardy Gryffindors who would need all the help with healing that they could get. And most of all, Greengrass was discrete; even if she suspected where the healing text had come from, she would not say anything.
That night, Severus dreamed that the castle was burning and full of broken and bloodied bodies of the students, as well as all of the people that he hadn't been able to save—Charity's ghastly corpse the clearest of them all—including Hermione, Potter and Weasley.
AN: thank you everyone for the really lovely reviews for the last chapter, they made me really happy and really touched me.