CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH
This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.
Thanks to my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Cecelle.
WARNING This fic contains HBP Spoilers. Enter at own risk if you haven't read HBP.
Hermione grinned at her buttery mashed potato and took another bite. It had been a good day so far. Clear bright weather, Ron by her side and no Lavender or Parvati in the group to watch and scowl. They were too young to be taking the test this time around, so she'd had a whole glorious morning without them.
The practice session had gone brilliantly. She'd Apparated perfectly every time, according to Mr Twycross, and for the first time Ron had managed to do it too, though only once and landing several feet further than he was aiming for. He'd need to put more concentration into Destination and maybe Deliberation too if he was to master it in the two weeks before the test.
"Hah, that'll show Snape!" he'd said jubilantly. "I'll show him 'too solid to Apparate half an inch'!"
Afterwards, they'd all stopped in at the Three Broomsticks for a butterbeer. That had been fun too, except for spending half an hour trying to jolly Ron out of a sulk when Madam Rosmerta didn't laugh at his joke. The hag, the healer and the Mimbulus mimbletonia! That was so old, it was almost a shaggy Crup story!
She wondered where Harry was and whether he'd spent the entire time hanging around the Room of Requirement or had given up and followed her advice. Did he really want another telling-off from Dumbledore about not trying hard enough to get Slughorn's memory?
Apparently, he did. And he'd achieved exactly what she'd expected – nothing! – though he did have a rather odd story about having met Tonks in the corridor when she was supposed to be outside, guarding the school. Hermione's breath caught. Had something roused the Auror's suspicions about Snape and the "terrible thing"? She wouldn't arrest him without Dumbledore's permission, would she, not when they were both in the Order?
It did sound like that might be why she was there; "Thought he might know what's going on … heard rumours … people getting hurt … Prophet's often behind the times…"
Could he have done it already? She risked a quick glance around the room. He wasn't here, but the teachers who were looked so placid, surely – Oh, there he was, striding in with his usual glare.
Her hand unclenched around her fork as she turned her attention back to her friends. Harry had a theory that maybe Tonks had been in love with Sirius. She tried to remember if she'd seen any signs of that a year ago, when she'd ditched mum and dad's skiing holiday and joined the others at Grimmauld Place, but she didn't think she'd ever noticed them together. Not that that meant anything; she'd been too worried about Harry to look at what the grown-ups were doing.
"How will I know when you do – whatever it is you're going to do?" she asked Snape two nights later, at the end of a particularly gruelling session. She'd need to know immediately because – well, just because.
He gave her a heavy-browed glance, half over his shoulder, as he returned to his desk to start again on his endless marking.
"You'll know."
She stood in the middle of the floor, still panting slightly.
"But how? Is it going to be here at Hogwarts or will I know because you don't turn up to lessons?"
"You'll know," he repeated. "That's all you need to know."
'If you call that knowing!' she grumbled to herself. 'All I need to know is that I don't need to know.'
She tried again.
"Will you send me a message? How will I know it's you?"
"A Patronus message is safe from forgery," he said.
"I've never even seen your Patronus."
"That is immaterial. It carries my essence; you'll recognise it even if it changes." He pointed his wand to her left, nevertheless, and out rushed a silver wisp like a sleeping question mark that shuddered and twisted instantly into a scorpion half the size of Crookshanks.
Hermione gave a little scream and jumped away, one hand over her mouth. She should have expected this shape, she'd even toyed with the comparison once, but still it was a shock. Her professor smirked.
"Be careful what you wish for. It won't hurt you - which is more than I could say for myself."
Her eyes jerked to his, then slid back to the closer scary creature.
"Your plans involve hurting me?" She didn't believe him.
"Not any differently than I have in the past."
Her memories of all the times he'd made her cry were interrupted when the silver scorpion flicked its tail – 'not just a tail, a stinger,' she thought nervously – and scuttled closer. She backed away from its slender pincers till she could go no further.
"Is this your Gryffindor courage?" he mocked. "It's quite safe unless you're a Dementor in disguise. Hold out your arm."
"Gryffindor courage doesn't mean stupidity," she protested, but she held out her arm, wincing as eight hairy legs tickled their way along her trembling forearm. He was right. She felt its voice in her head with a sense other than hearing, just as she'd felt its movement with a sense other than touch. It was sour and sharp and proud and bitter, just like him.
And yet you're holding a scorpion.
And then it was gone.
Two weeks went fast. Ron was avoiding Lavender with as much determination as Professor Slughorn was putting into avoiding Harry, and he was studying Apparition with as much energy as Harry was putting into chasing Malfoy around. Unfortunately, because of the school's anti-Apparition wards he could only practise during the Hogsmeade sessions, but he had improved so much that Hermione had real hopes for his success.
The test was on a Monday afternoon. A scroll was delivered to Harry that day at lunchtime, but it wasn't from Dumbledore. It was from Hagrid and he'd obviously been crying. Aragog was dead.
Hermione pushed away the tendrils of guilt uncurling in her head. They really couldn't go to the funeral, no matter how much Hagrid wanted them, and it wasn't fair of him to ask. He was a teacher! He shouldn't be encouraging them to break curfew and go out at night when times were so dangerous, not when there wasn't anything they could do to change things. If it had been a question of saving the Acromantula –
Ron shook his head at her.
"I'd want to go even less," he said firmly. "You didn't meet him, Hermione. Believe me, being dead will have improved him a great deal."
Well, of course Ron would say that. He was scared of even quite tiny spiders, let alone something Harry had described as being the size of a small elephant. She was relieved to see that Harry agreed they couldn't go. Hagrid would have to bury his carnivorous friend without them.
On the bright side, Potions class would be almost empty that afternoon, which meant Harry would have Slughorn almost to himself. The teacher wouldn't walk out of a lesson, so maybe he'd get a chance to soften him up a bit.
"Fifty-seventh time lucky, you think?" He sounded bitter.
Then Ron had one of his occasional strokes of brilliance.
"Use your lucky potion!" he said.
Somehow, those always took her by surprise. You'd think by now she'd remember that Ron could do that, cut right through the fat to the heart of a problem. If he ever focused his brain on anything other than Quidditch or chess he'd be unbeatable.
Strangely enough, Harry didn't seem too keen. He said he'd been saving it. Didn't he understand?
"What on earth is more important than this memory, Harry?" she asked.
He didn't seem to have an answer, at any rate not one he was willing to share, as he stared into the distance with a dreamy look on his face. She asked again and this time he reluctantly agreed. Good! That was settled, then. Now she could turn her mind to more personal concerns.
She stood up and rehearsed her Apparition, then Ron dived behind her, as he'd taken to doing every time a girl approached.
"It isn't Lavender," she told him, as she did every time. It was the Montgomery sisters, looking quite miserable. Their little brother had died of a werewolf bite. St Mungo's hadn't been able to save him. That horrible Fenrir Greyback, the one who'd bitten Lupin!
"Harry, you've got to get that memory," she said. "It's all about stopping Voldemort, isn't it? These dreadful things that are happening are all down to him."
It was a pity that Ron didn't quite pass the test. He almost did. They'd thought for a moment that it was all right, but the examiner had stared hard at the place Ron had jumped from, then walked over and pulled a small furry ginger caterpillar-thing out of the air. Half Ron's eyebrow. Oh dear! It took most of the fun out of her own success.
They spent the rest of the day trying to cheer Ron up by abusing the finicky examiner. She was as soothing and sympathetic as she could be and tactfully didn't point out that the examiner had a point. Apparition was dangerous. If you could Splinch half an eyebrow, you could Splinch half a head – and that was a prospect altogether too dangerous to take lightly.
At last it was time. The sun had just reached the treetops in the Forbidden Forest when they sneaked up to the boy's dormitory for Harry to take his Felix Felicis. He only needed a mouthful to become awfully cocky.
"Right – I'm going to Hagrid's."
What? But they'd agreed not to. It was too dangerous, it was –
"I've got a good feeling about going to Hagrid's," Harry said, swaggering a little as he pulled his Invisibility Cloak out of his bag. "I feel like it's the place to be tonight, you know what I mean?"
They didn't. He ignored their protests with a laugh, swinging the cloak over his shoulders.
"Trust me, I know what I'm doing – or at least – Felix does." And with that he disappeared under his hood and was gone.
Ron and Hermione followed him to the common room without thinking twice. And Lavender shrieked.
Oh, no.
"What were you doing up there with her?" Lavender wanted to know.
They didn't have an answer. It had all been perfectly innocent, of course. Harry had been with them all the time, but they could hardly tell her that. No one else even knew Harry had an Invisibility Cloak and it wasn't the sort of secret you wanted to share, especially in these dangerous days. One day, having that cloak might save Harry's life – but only if no one knew to check for it.
Ron was spluttering.
"Nothing. We weren't doing anything. We just –"
"Not doing anything, my foot!" Lavender's voice was getting shriller. "You two, sneaking off by yourselves to a bedroom and you tell me you're not doing anything?"
Three first years left the room in a hurry. While it might be interesting to watch their elders fighting, there were some sounds that just hurt your ears. Over by the door, another quarrel was beginning.
"Don't push, please, Dean." Ginny snapped. "You're always doing that. I can get through perfectly well on my own."
"Jeesh, what's with you?" Dean answered hotly. "I didn't touch you! I wasn't anywhere near you!"
"Liar! It must have been you, no one else was within two feet of me!"
All around the room, people began shuffling together books and papers, folding away game-boards and picking up their cards. McLaggen was one of the exceptions. Sprawled across a deep chair, he thumped his leg and let out a loud bray of a laugh.
Hermione bit her lip, as she stared from one red-faced Weasley to another. 'Oh Harry,' she thought. 'Look what you did.'
Ron was shouting now, his chin jutting out and his eyes hard.
"I've been trying to tell you for a month to naff off and leave me alone! You're worse than the bl – ruddy giant squid, you are!"
Hermione winced. At least he'd changed that swearword at the last minute. This was ugly enough without that. At the other end of the room, Ginny was yelling.
"I'm sick of you treating me like a doll that you think's gonna break if you don't keep me in a box for show! I can do anything you can do – and I can do it better. You wouldn't even be on the ruddy team if you weren't my boyfriend."
McLaggen brayed his laughter. Hermione hastily suppressed an urge to hex his lips sewn shut with red cotton.
"You see here, Ginny Weasley –" That was Dean.
"Ron Weasley, you pig-headed insensitive oaf!" Tears were running down Lavender's cheeks as she jabbed a finger at her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend. "You've been stringing me along for months. You're a spot-faced, wet-lipped, ugly -"
"I do not have wet lips!" Ron protested.
"- lying, cheating, weaselly –"
"Oi!" But Lavender was on a roll.
"- heartless, brainless, gutless -" she continued.
"Think you're so great!" Dean was sneering in tandem. "Think I don't know who you've really been fancying all this time –"
"- greedy, gobbling, gabbling, grasping –"
"Oooh, let's save the game for Harry." Dean's voice was a high thin treble in savage parody of Ginny's. "Let's run after the Boy-Who-Lived and lick his footsteps off the floor and –Ow! Aargh! Ouch!"
Whatever he'd been saying was lost in moans and grunts. Ginny looked with satisfaction at the bat-bogeys swarming over his face andtossed her head, bright hair catching the light as it swung.
"We're through," she said, in tones of utmost disgust. "Don't bash your fat head against the door on your way out."
She left the room not much quieter for her absence. Dean, having dropped his wand, was still clutching at his face with both hands, Lavender was still listing all Ron's faults and Ron was sneering back.
"Stupid gold chain, ugliest thing I ever saw in my life –"
Hermione decided to follow Ginny's example. If she went to bed right now, maybe Lavender and Parvati would think she was asleep when they came to bed and leave her alone for the night. She'd thought she wanted Ron and Lavender to break up. She did want them to break up. But not like this.
The next morning, at least the common room was quiet. Most people in Gryffindor got up late and everyone looked rather shell-shocked. Everyone except Harry. Hermione didn't get a chance to ask him about his night until the Charms lesson, but she knew it must have gone well.
He cast Muffliato, one of the Prince's spells, and began. It was enthralling listening. He'd softened up Slughorn with the chance to harvest Aragog's venom (A hundred Galleons a pint? No wonder Slughorn was keen!), then he'd watched the two adults drink, using the Refilling Charm to keep their glasses topped up, and, after Slughorn drank Hagrid under the table (Goodness, what a capacity he must have to outdrink a half-giant!), he'd wheedled the information out of him.
"You are brilliant!" Ron said.
"That goes for me too," Hermione agreed.
But that wasn't all. After that, he'd gone to show Dumbledore the memory -
"At what time in the night?" Hermione squeaked.
"As if he'd care for that!" Ron said. "He didn't, did he?"
"Course not! He couldn't wait to look."
"And?" Hermione leaned forward.
"We saw what he really told Riddle that night. See, you split part of your soul off by killing someone, and then you store it in an object – that's the Horcrux – and then you can't die. Not even if they destroy your body, you're still alive – sort of alive – Slughorn told him that death would be preferable, but he didn't care -"
Ron's jaw dropped and Hermione's eyes were almost popping.
"Voldemort made a Horcrux?" she breathed. "So that's how he survived all this time!"
"Not one," Harry said. "Seven."
"Seven?" she gasped.
"Seven, counting himself. And we've already destroyed two."
Ron's brow wrinkled and his lower lip stuck out.
"We have?"
"His diary – the one Ginny had – and Slytherin's ring. Dumbledore did that one. He said he almost died destroying that one – there was a curse, that's what happened to his hand – and when he got back here, Snape" – his face twisted in disbelief – "Snape saved him. At least, that's what he said."
Hermione's lips parted. Professor Snape? Not Madam Pomfrey? So he was a Healer as well as a Potions master and Dark Arts expert? She'd never have guessed that. He'd never healed anyone in class, he always sent them to the Infirmary. If only she'd get a chance to watch him heal some day – or at least talk to someone who did.
Absent-mindedly, she waved her wand at her glass of vinegar, turning it into deep crimson wine. It smelt gloriously of dark berry and chocolate and something more. She sent a tendril of query along the fast-fading magical connection. You could always identify something you'd charmed, if you asked it soon enough – well, she could, anyhow. None of her friends seemed to know how. Mmm, 1991 Penfolds Grange, the very wine that her dad's Australian cousin had sent the year she started Hogwarts. Dad was saving it for her graduation.
"Dumbledore said one of the other four was probably Slytherin's locket and one Hufflepuff's cup," Harry explained. "And we don't know the other two, but one's probably Nagini and the other something that used to belong to Gryffindor or Ravenclaw."
"Nagini? You can use animals as Horcruxes? Weird!" said Ron.
"And you won't believe this!" Harry said triumphantly. "He's actually going to take me with him when he destroys the next one!"
Hermione and Ron glanced wide-eyed at each other and then at him.
"You're kidding!" Ron was shaking his head in awe.
"He's taking you?" Hermione asked. "It's so dangerous. He almost died last time."
She couldn't help thinking Professor Snape might be a better choice, in case something went wrong again. Unless he didn't know about the Horcruxes, but then how had he healed the headmaster if he didn't know how he got hurt? Dumbledore couldn't be taking both of them; if it was possible for them to work together she wouldn't have had to spend the last four months practising to be a buffer between them.
Harry smiled widely.
"He says I've earned it."
Despite herself, her eyes softened.
"Oh Harry, of course you have."
A/N 1) Snatches of dialogue are from HBP, ch 21, The Unknowable Room, and ch 22, After the Burial. Canon doesn't specify whether Lavender and Parvati were old enough for the Apparition test. I chose to assume they weren't since canon doesn't mention their presence. Identifying one's charmed objects is also not in canon.
2) Why did I choose a scorpion for Snape's Patronus? I liked the idea of something that can protect its own back. (I also considered porcupine since his words are sharp as quills.) The inspiration was a scene near the end of Barry Hughart's "Bridge of Birds". The peasant narrator is holding the villain from behind while the latter tries to dislodge him by turning into all sorts of useless scary creatures. Meanwhile the peasant is mentally running through all the things he hopes the other guy won't think of becoming, for example scorpions.
Milady Darkan has drawn a picture of the Patronus scene which can be found at strigoaika. deviantart. com/art/Holding-a-Scorpion-30389732 (don't forget the http colon double-slash at the beginning and remove the spaces)
3) I'm not a wine connoisseur (in fact I don't drink alcohol at all), but when I found that googling "deep crimson wine" led me to a true Australian classic, Penfolds Grange Hermitage Magnum, rated a maximum 100 points by Langtons, I couldn't resist advertising my country. Apparently that was an exceptional year. (Sorry, don't know where – or if - you can buy it. The site priced it at A$1,650 a bottle, but it was sold out.)