Chapter Twenty-Three: Drowned

Minerva had been on the warpath since Longbottom went missing. He couldn't tell her that Longbottom was hiding in the Room of Requirement and the elves were feeding him. It wasn't his fault that she had not thought to consult the elves.

But it was his problem now.

"You cannot be serious about letting the Carrows get away with cursing students in the halls," she hissed furiously, cornering him in the staff room after another farce of a staff meeting. "Neville Longbottom has gone missing, and as Headmaster you should be ashamed of yourself!"

Severus experienced the beginnings of a tension headache. "I'm sure Mr Longbottom will turn up; the boy is known for getting lost. I have discouraged the Carrows from cursing students but as you know I give my entire staff free reign over student discipline." So you can step in when things get bad. "If students behaved as they should then there wouldn't be any punishments."

"Do you not even care about what happens to the students anymore?" she asked, spitting mad, and Severus had gone very, very still.

"Do you know, Minerva, that Fenrir Greyback wanted the Dark Arts position? He loves the tastes of the young," he said conversationally. "And Bellatrix was the Dark Lord's first choice for the Dark Arts; the only reason why she is not here now is because it would mean fewer opportunities for her to practice her signature Crucio. Get your cubs in line before worse happens."

"Are you threatening me?" Minerva asked, her lips thinned to the point of vanishing. "And that's Professor McGonagall to you."

His own lips thinned. "Hardly." He gathered up his parchments to show that he was done with the conversation, but Minerva was not done with him yet.

"I used to think you were a good man," she finally said, and then left the staffroom before Severus could formulate a reply to that parting blow. As if he could have. At least she was speaking to him again; for the first two months of his tenure as Headmaster all he had from his former friend was frosty silence.

When he returned to the Headmaster's office, the book that Albus had given to him caught his eyes again. The Essential Rumi. The leather bound tome sat on his desk, the gilt filigree on the cover seemingly twinkling at him from the illumination of the candles, in the same maddening fashion that Albus' eyes used to twinkle.

He had taken to reading it in the evenings, but most of the work proved no help and only infuriated him.

He had no idea what he was supposed to think, when he read things like:

The intellectual is always showing off,
the lover is always getting lost.
The intellectual runs away,
afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love
is to drown in the sea.

He had drowned for love once, and he was still drowning in the aftermath of that life choice.

And there was nothing sensible in reading most of the nonsense in the book, like these verses:

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,

Like this.

Severus had not had sex in years.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,

Like this.

Nor had he danced in almost as long, discounting Death Eaters and their associates.

And then—

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.

Like this.

He had never thought of a woman disrobing like that. He had never had a woman disrobe for him like that.

But then—

When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point

Here.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.

Like this.

These stanzas gave him a headache. Was Albus trying to give him a message about souls and love and dying? Or was it just another one of Albus' whims—was Albus trying to keep Severus focused on his previous reasons for fighting the war? That would have been ridiculous, as he and Lily were never lovers, and Albus surely had to have known that his reasons for fighting were different now.

Or was Albus suggesting that Severus—what—fall in love? It was just the sort of preposterous thing he would have done. For all the good that love had been to Albus, all those years. For all the good that love had been to Severus.

Anger mounting by the moment, Severus slammed the book down and left the Headmaster's Office, striding towards the seventh floor corridor where the Room of Hidden Things was.

Severus stopped in front of the Vanishing Cabinet and blasted it to pieces before he knew what he was doing. There was no regret for destroying a priceless artefact. He then set fire to the leftover pile of wood, and stood there, breathing heavily with fire in his veins. His wand sparked, and the suggestion of several Dark curses came to mind, but none of them could do what he wanted to do, which was to turn back time and stop the whole sorry mess from happening in the first place. He surveyed the effects of his destruction, and scanned the surrounding areas to make sure that the fire had not caught on the rest of the Room.

It was then that he noticed the tarnished circlet set on top of a grotesque statue of Wenlock the Wise. He could sense the eerie aura of the object from where he stood; several exploratory spells revealed that it was an incredibly dark object that responded oddly to the Homenum Revelio spell. Severus cast several wards on it, and stuffed it into a pocket of his frock coat before Disillusioning himself and heading back to the Headmaster's study. He wanted to owl the Horcrux to Hermione for destruction but he knew that probably would have led to a possessed owl and another piece of Voldemort's soul roaming free.

He could feel the dark whispers of the diadem from his pocket, and the compulsion to put it on. It was the famed Diadem of Ravenclaw—it could help him get out of this mess, figure out how to protect the students, how to protect Hermione and her friends, how to be rid of the Carrows, how to best the Dark Lord...

Severus shook his head and doubled back to the Room of Hidden Things, where he set the diadem back where he found it. It had been safe there for decades; it would be safe for another few days.

When he put the object back, the awful black sensation in his chest vanished, and he became aware again of the constant pain that had been there since the night that Dumbledore died.

Hermione had never thought that she would become injured from the war, even less that it would happen by accident when there were no enemies around. She had thought she would die, possibly, but never become injured. Which was extremely shortsighted of her, in hindsight.

The slow-acting ward that Bill had missed at the Lestrange Estate aimed at Muggle-borns was sheer bad luck. As well as the fact that the Flesh-Eating Curse was repelled by dragonhide boots, which was why it had not shown up on the diagnostic charms Bill had cast for danger for his party.

And it was extremely unlucky that for all that she suffered for the trip, the men had found nothing at the Lestrange Estate aside from a few dark creatures and an empty secret cellar space littered with empty bottles.

The Flesh-Eating Curse had not completely taken effect when she realised the tingling on her legs was not numbness but magic and jumped up on top of the seat that she had conjured, but the flesh on her feet and legs had been mottled with sores that dittany had not been able to close. She had not been able to walk for a week due to the sores on her feet, so she had rested at Shell Cottage for a day with Harry and Ron hovering close by, while she and Fleur did the best to patch herself up so she could return home. It was not safe to stay at Shell Cottage, in case of visits from Arthur or Molly.

Severus had looked like stone when she told him that she had been caught by a stray ward the first night. His face had frozen into an unreadable expression, and he had not said anything for nearly a minute when she told him about the Flesh-Eating Curse.

"Say something," she had asked, nearly pleading.

His throat had bobbed, and there had been a minuscule twitch of his eyebrows drawing together. And then he had ended the call.

It was just like when he withdrew from her after the Ministry debacle.

She did her best to ignore the feelings he stirred up. Even when he was disappointed in her it was good to see his face.

Severus stared blankly at his mountain of paperwork.

"Say something," she had said.

What could he say? He wanted to tell her that she was going to get herself killed one day and the war would be lost without her, but that wasn't entirely true. Accidents and injuries happened all the time in war. She had got off easy, all things considered.

But fear had overwhelmed his Occlumency for a moment, and with that fear came anger, and he knew he had to walk away before he said something he would regret. Her face had still crumpled with his silence but what could he have done?

He looked back at his paperwork. He needed to do something about the end-of-term expense reports, but he couldn't focus. He had to do something so he could focus again.

Before he could think better of it, he picked up a salve from his private store, and Apparated to Hermione's yard.

It was late in the evening, and what he was doing was madness, though everything he had done since turning seventeen had been mad, so what was a little more?

He stood in the garden, listening carefully, before he cast a Homenum Revelio. Three figures lit up in the house, two on the upstairs level of the house, and a third higher up in the loft. They were all stationary. Of course, at this hour, they were asleep.

Severus debated what to do. He entered the kitchen—Circe, they didn't even lock the door nevermind that they were Secret Kept—and looked around before he found the cooler where Hermione kept her potions. He nearly added his salve for the Flesh-Eating curse when he realised that he could not leave it where Potter and Weasley could find it.

He had nearly gone up the stairs before he realised what a monumentally bad decision that would be, so then he left the house and flew until he was just outside Hermione's window.

A series of diagnostic charms were cast through the window, checking to see if there had been any more curse damage than Bill had uncovered—Bill Weasley was good, he could admit, from what he had remembered of their days in the Order, but Severus was better—and finally relaxed slightly when all his charms only enveloped Hermione with a pure white glow.

He attached the glass bottle of the salve to her windowsill with a Sticking Charm and a Notice-Me charm, and then stuck a bloom of conjured purple hyacinth beside it before he could think better of it.

She was the only person who he could offer apologies to now, now that Albus was dead, and Minerva and Hagrid thought that he had betrayed them all. This was a small indulgence he could have.

He made himself check in on Potter and Weasley as well, to make sure they were not under the influence of any curses that they could have picked up from the Lestrange Estate, and then left before he could do anything more foolish.

Hermione idly twisted the purple hyacinth in her hands. The last apology from Severus had been pressed between one of her editions of Hogwarts, A History, and she was debating between immediately pressing this bloom or putting it in a small vase.

If any other man had given her flowers she would have thought that he had romantic intentions. But this was Severus Snape. Besides, apologies were not romantic.

And the apology was exasperating. He could have just told her he was sorry, except he continued to insist on some sort of cloak-and-dagger nonsense, though the apology and the salve had soothed her where she hurt. It was pointless to dwell on it, so she looked down at her letter for Viktor, and thought back to what Bill had said when he had asked her for help.

Bill sat on the edge of her quilted blanket, lost in thought. "I've been in contact with someone at the Ministry and one of the things that we're doing is setting up targeted Muggle-borns and their families in France. It's a lot of work, and we could use all the help we could get," Bill took a deep breath, and flexed his hands.

"We've already heard of many people who have had their wands snapped and their families Obliviated for supposedly breaking the Statute of Secrecy—there have been a few Muggle-borns who chose to have their wands snapped and ran instead of dealing with...everything." Bill paused for a moment, and ran his hand through his long hair. "Some of them were hunted down. And thrown into Azkaban. Those were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones are dead, or Obliviated."

He sighed. "High-ranking Muggle-borns are also being forced to denounce their families and others have been demoted. Dad's been demoted too. It's...unbelievable. And I'm sure you know there's no way back from Obliviation. If your wealthy and influential friend in Bulgaria could help us that would be much appreciated," he said.

She said that Viktor would have been happy to help, because what else could she say?

Then Bill had introduced her to his mysterious Ministry contact, someone who had a scarlet pimpernel as their callsign.

It was the red flower stamp on the letter that she had received from the Ministry contact that caught her attention, as she looked from the letter to her letter to Viktor.

She searched through her bookshelves and found her copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel. She had vague memories of it, and then she knew who her Ministry contact was. The Scarlet Pimpernel wasa story of an English aristocrat named Percy who pretended to be a shallow dandy by day while secretly rescuing French aristocrats from being guillotined by night.

The handwriting on her parchment was different from the notes that she had borrowed as a child, but there were similarities. Did Bill know this "Scarlet Pimpernel" was Percy? Should she have told him?

Eventually, when Severus contacted her again several days later, his manner had been more brusque than before, and he seemed to pretend that the past several days of silence and the spontaneous presence of the salve and flower at her windows had never happened. Hermione told herself that his behaviour didn't bother her at all.

Severus had contacted her to tell her that he had found one Horcrux, and a lead on one more. Her friends were fine, and Neville had gone into hiding, as well as two other students.

When asked how he was faring himself, his face shuttered and he told her to worry about herself instead.

With her feet and legs healed, they had taken to camping again. Hermione had been careful to take shifts to avoid sharing the tent with Ron, even though he had tried to be helpful in the search for the Lost Woods, volunteering the use of his silver lighter, which seemed to be an object that served to find things. They had on more than one occasion been led to woods where a thick fog with a mildly spicy and medicinal scent had filled the air, but they had never been able to find an entrance to the woods. It was frustrating to be so close yet unable to find their way in, and nothing they tried worked. Harry and Ron had gotten drunk off a bottle of Firewhiskey one night, Hermione had tried various tricks with meditation and Occlumency, and they had even tried not sleeping for an entire night the night before one of their shifts, but nothing worked.

They had finally given up two weeks before Christmas and had returned to her house. Hermione had resumed researching what "wild of mind" meant and Harry and Ron returned to pacing, though this time they at least pretended to assist with her research after having seen the signs of the Lost Woods appearing.

It had been a week since they had returned to her house, and already Hermione knew that they would have to do something soon or else Harry and Ron would go crazy from cabin fever. They were still keeping visits to the outside world to a minimum, to avoid being caught by Dementors.

Hermione was still thinking of how to explain how she found another Horcrux to Harry and Ron in the midst of a conversation with Severus—"just tell them that your Death Eater friend found an object valuable to the Dark Lord that they thought you'd be interested in," Severus sniped, but it couldn't be that easy could it?—when Severus swore and dropped his mirror. Hermione nearly jumped from where she was perched on the edge of her bathtub, and tried to make out the sounds of muffled conversation between Severus and the sound of a man's voice behind him.

She waited for several minutes while the conversation grew heated before Severus' image came back to her mirror, agitation plain across his face.

"Luna Lovegood has been taken by the Death Eaters and is being held in Malfoy Manor," he said abruptly, looking lost. Before Hermione could form a question, he went on. "I cannot save her. She is the first underage prisoner they've taken, and they are likely to treat her poorly."

Poorly. The word echoed in Hermione's mind. A chill went up her spine.

"Why? She's a Pureblood—"

"Miss Lovegood has been involved in running an underground newspaper, though I do not know the particulars. A Death Eater with half a brain cell more than average seemed to recognize the layout of the new paper as being identical to the ones used by the Quibbler, and made the connection that way. They have no proof, but they took her on her way home for the Christmas break." Severus took a ragged breath, and clenched his jaw. "They will treat her poorly because she's a Pureblood, which means that they will not outright kill her."

"So far no one from the Order knows, and it is unlikely that they will find out or go rescue her. They are holding several prisoners at Malfoy Manor. I have a plan to lure the Dark Lord and most of the Death Eaters away from the Manor—if we do this carefully, with the help of your friends, I believe that we can save these prisoners."

Hermione was alarmed; Severus actually sounded concerned.

"All right. I'll ask Ron and Harry and convince them not to go running off immediately. How are we going to do this?" she asked, feigning a steadiness that she had not felt for a long time.

AN: it's been crazy lately, and I'm moving soon, so next my update might be a week later than usual. Fingers crossed I can get everything done in time though! once again, thank you all so much for the glowing reviews-they make me feel really happy when I see them. :)