VIGIL
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.
Nearly all of the italicised lines come from Hermione's memories of conversations with Snape in earlier chapters.
She didn't believe it. She sat in the Hospital Wing with Ron and Luna and the others, staring at Bill's mangled face that might never heal, listening to Ginny and Harry say the news in tandem, and she didn't believe it.
"Dumbledore's dead … Snape killed him."
He couldn't have. He'd never have done that. She didn't believe it. When I do what I soon must, it will seem to you like the greatest betrayal. Shebit hard on the inside of her cheekand clenched her fists unseen in her lap.
"I was there," Harry said. "I saw it… Dumbledore was ill… I think he realised it was a trap… He immobilised me, I couldn't do anything, I was under the Invisibility Cloak – and then Malfoy came through the door and disarmed him –"
Don't defend me. Whatever you hear. She clapped her hands over her mouth.
"-more Death Eaters arrived – and then Snape – and Snape did it. The Avada Kedavra."
She was going to be sick. She was going to be sick. She didn't believe it.
What if you saw me kill?
And then, somewhere outside in the night, Fawkes began singing a lament. Hermione bit harder till her cheek ached and she tasted blood. Dumbledore was dead. Snape killed him.
How could he?
Dumbledore, blue eyes twinkling at the Welcoming Feast, "Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak..."; Dumbledore, grave and quiet, locking her and Harry into the Hospital Wing, "Five minutes to midnight, Miss Granger, three turns should do it..."; Dumbledore,in his office,shaking with laughter, "Severus does love his little triumphs..."
A long time later, Professor McGonagall came in to say that Molly and Arthur Weasley were on their way and to ask Harry what he'd seen. She didn't seem to believe it either.
"Snape… We all wondered… but he trusted… always…" She collapsed into the chair Madam Pomfrey conjured and hurriedly pushed under her.
"Snape was a highly accomplished Legilimens," Lupin said harshly.
Nobody trusts a spy. Nobody.
"But Dumbledore swore he was on our side!" whispered Tonks. "I'd love to know what Snape told him to convince him."
A shared history; the secrets I've kept, the consequences I've faced, even the lies I've told on his behalf when truth would have served me better.
"I know," said Harry. They all turned to stare at him. "Snape passed Voldemort the information that made Voldemort hunt down my mum and dad. Then Snape told Dumbledore he hadn't realised what he was doing, he was really sorry he'd done it, sorry they were dead."
Hermione's mouth opened – Snape was sorry they were dead? But Snape repented before they were dead, Harry had seen Dumbledore tell the Wizengamot that in his Pensieve in fourth year – and shut again.
Don't defend me. Whatever you hear. What's gone cannot suffer.
She couldn't say anything. She didn't say anything. Not when Harry accused Snape of calling his mum a Mudblood. Not when McGonagall blamed herself for sending Professor Flitwick to fetch Snape to help them and allowed that he hadn't known they were coming. Not even when Harry explained how Malfoy had brought the Death Eaters through the Room of Requirement into the school by fixing the Vanishing Cabinet, twin to one at Borgin and Burkes. The one they'd watched him point at all those months ago, without ever for a moment suspecting it was the Cabinet he was pointing at. They'd thought it was something behind the Cabinet.
Ron and Ginny continued the story with an account of their doings. How they'd waited outside the room until he came out, clutching a Hand of Glory, and saw them. How he threw Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder from the twins' shop – the twins! Those stupid, stupid twins! – into the air and guided the Death Eaters safely through, while Ron and Ginny and Neville floundered in the dark. How the three of them – luckily! - joined forces with Lupin and Tonks and joined battle minutes later with the Death Eaters heading for the Astronomy tower. How Gibbon had been killed by an Avada Kedavra meant for Lupin.
Then Harry turned to her to hear about her vigil outside Snape's office with Luna and she could be silent no longer.
"We heard a loud thump and Snape came hurtling out of the room and he saw us and – and –" She blinked back tears and continued in a high-pitched whisper, "I was so stupid, Harry! He said Professor Flitwick had collapsed and we should go and take care of him while he – while he went to help fight the Death Eaters –"
She couldn't look at him. When I do what I soon must… You will have to decide whether to trust me. Did she? Could she? He'd killed Dumbledore. Killed him. It will seem like the greatest betrayal. Thousands of lives will hang on your choice. I hope you will choose wisely, choose wisely. How could she when she didn't know what was true?
Save my reputation later, if you feel you must. If you testify, I'll still be dead.
She sniffed.
"We went into his office to see if we could help Professor Flitwick and found him unconscious on the floor…" (Say it, say it. You have a part to play now and you can't express any doubts.) "…and, oh, it's so obvious now, Snape must have Stupefied Flitwick, but we didn't realise, Harry, we didn't realise, we just let Snape go!"
Be glad that when you look back you won't bear the burden of knowing you could have stopped me – and given the enemy the victory… Forewarned would be forsworn. You couldn't have helped yourself.
He was right! Oh, he was right! If she'd known she'd have stopped him, she'd have done anything to stop him! Hadn't she once knocked him unconscious to save Sirius, set his robes on fire to save Harry? Could she possibly have done less for Dumbledore?
Had he known then, Dumbledore, had he sacrificed himself deliberately? Had he been waiting all year for Snape to kill him? Surely not, and yet –
He'd given Snape the Defense position, cursed that no one could teach it longer than a year, he'd trained Harry all year to take over for him – hadn't those Pensieve memories been a kind of goodbye? – he'd even recruited her to be a link between Harry and Snape when he was "no longer available". And he'd trusted Snape implicitly.
She remembered him telling her that being a spy sometimes forced Snape into situations where there were no 'good' choices, only lesser degrees of bad. He'd said he trusted him always to make the right one based on what he knew. What he knew.
'What did he know that we don't?' she wondered. 'What's Harry missing?'
"It's not your fault," Lupin said. "Hermione, had you not obeyed Snape and got out of the way, he would probably have killed you and Luna."
Hermione bent her head to conceal the protesting flash of her eyes. Like he'd "killed" Flitwick?
Don't get yourself killed. Almost the last thing he'd ever told her
And Harry continued building his case against the Snape of his imagination, Snape as master-villain.
"So then he came upstairs... and he found the place where you were all fighting..."
"We were losing," Tonks muttered. "The rest of the Death Eaters seemed ready to fight to the death. It was all dark ... curses flying everywhere ... the Malfoy boy had vanished... up the stairs to the Tower... more of them ran after him... one of them blocked the stairs behind them with some kind of curse –"
"None of us could break through," Ron remembered. "Jinxes, bouncing off the walls and barely missing us –"
"And then Snape was there, and then he wasn't," added Tonks.
Never let an opponent distract you.
"I saw him run straight through the cursed barrier as if it wasn't there," said Lupin.
I don't fight with you; I fight for you.
"I just assumed that he was in a hurry to chase after the Death Eaters –" McGonagall whispered.
"He was," said Harry, "but to help them, not to stop them – and I'll bet you had to have a Dark Mark to get through –"
Hermione's brain was racing as she catalogued the circumstances. Surrounded by Death Eaters, including a werewolf, with no possibility of Order back-up; Dumbledore ill – How did that happen? And when? – Harry invisible and incapacitated – No, Harry deliberately immobilised. Why had Dumbledore done that?
Did he know?
Had he planned it?
It's coming, isn't it? A day when you have to do something terrible because it's the least bad option.I believe so.
She remembered again what the headmaster had told her, what was surely just as true of himself.
Severus will make any sacrifice to further our cause; what needs to be done he will do, whatever the cost to himself.
Even that?
Whatever it takes. You heard the Sorting Hat; "Any means to achieve our ends."
Dumbledore ill, Harry immobilised, Snape surrounded, outnumbered, by Death Eaters – and an Unbreakable Vow to enforce his obedience – the least bad option. She gulped and clenched her hands again. And Dumbledore had not been afraid of death; Dumbledore would have made any sacrifice to keep Harry safe –
Lupin was talking again. The big Death Eater had fired off a hex that made the ceiling fall in and broke the curse, but before anyone could enter, Snape and Malfoy had come running out, followed by the other Death Eaters.
"We just let them pass," fretted Tonks. "We thought they were being chased by the other Death Eaters – I thought I heard Snape shout something, but I don't know what –"
"He shouted 'It's over,' " Harry said flatly. "He'd done what he meant to do."
What he had to do?
I don't want to do this any more.
Neither do I. But want is not my master.
There seemed to be nothing else to say. Outside, Fawkes continued to keen his lament. Hermione listened with half an ear, her chaotic thoughts swirling around her brain. And then Mr and Mrs Weasley were there, striding in past friends and children as if they weren't there, to stare again at one of their boys unconscious and near-death in a Hogwarts hospital bed. It was almost the night of Ron's poisoning again, except this time Fleur was with them.
"You said Greyback attacked him?" Mr Weasley said sharply, anxiously. "But he hadn't transformed? So what does that mean? What will happen to him?"
Not even Lupin knew for sure.
"There will probably be some contamination. We don't know what his behaviour might be like when he wakes."
Mrs Weasley took Madam Pomfrey's ointment and her place, dabbing at Bill's wounds.
"Of course, it doesn't matter how he looks," she sobbed. "But he was a very handsome little b-boy – always very handsome – and he was g-going to be married!"
And suddenly Fleur snapped.
"And what do you mean by zat? What do you mean, 'e was going to be married?"
Everyone stared, even Hermione, shocked out of her obsessive reliving of every thing Snape had ever said to her in the last five months, by the unexpected tableau; Mrs Weasley at a loss for words and Fleur bristling protectively over her fiance.
"You theenk Bill will not wish to marry me? You theenk, because of these bites, he will not love me?"
Of course not! It wasn't Bill's intentions they thought would change.
"You thought I would not weesh to marry him? Or per'aps you 'oped?"
Hermione was not the only one to wince at the truth of that accusation. Fleur's welcome by the Weasley family had been barely polite and certainly not enthusiastic. Her eyes sought Ginny's, to find them seeking hers.
"What do I care how 'e looks?" Fleur flung at them fiercely. "I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk!"
Oh, Fleur! Hermione had an insane desire to laugh. Could anyone but a part-Veela have put it in those terms?
But it had done the trick. Suddenly the two women, always previously at loggerheads in their jealousy of each other, were hugging and crying, united by the love that had previously divided them.
"You see!" Tonks told Lupin. ""She still wants to marry him... she doesn't care!"
What?
"It's different. Bill will not be a full werewolf. The cases are completely... I've told you a million times," he added, staring at the floor as she shook him by the robes, "I'm too old for you, too poor... too dangerous ..."
So that was why Tonks had been so depressed all year. And it wasn't a Grim her Patronus had changed to; it was a wolf. A werewolf.
Then the Weasleys weighed in on Tonks's side, then Professor McGonagall.
"Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think there was a little more love in the world," she said.
Hermione couldn't help glancing at Ron, in case he took the hint, but he was quite oblivious. And there was no way she was going to grab him and try to shake some sense into him in front of everybody. Deep in her mind, black eyes burned cold and thin lips sneered.
We are in the same room and we fight on the same side, but I am not with you and I never will be.
No, that was Snape, not Ron. One day, she and Ron would be together, she was sure of it. And until then, she'd just have to be patient and wait for him to be ready to say it.
Hagrid came in then, crying as hugely as he did everything, to fetch Professor McGonagall back to her office. The Ministry would be arriving soon.
"Please tell the Heads of House – Slughorn can represent Slytherin – that I want to see them in my office forthwith. I would like you to join us too," she told Hagrid, rising to leave and taking Harry with her for a quick word.
Hermione swallowed a large prickly lump and kept her rebellious eyes firmly lowered. Slughorn? Let that self-indulgent, self-absorbed slug of a man substitute for Snape, primping and preening himself, parroting words of strength and comfort he didn't feel or even understand? In place of Snape, who never said anything he didn't mean on at least some level?
Who do you have to worry about?
Everyone – and no one.
There were no lessons next day. It was just as well, since she'd hardly slept. There were too many unanswered questions. Harry hadn't returned to Gryffindor Tower till after she'd gone to bed and, of course, Snape wouldn't be returning at all.
News had spread quickly overnight. Parvati and her sister were called home before breakfast even, and they were only the first of a stream of departing students. Lavender moped around, still making a point of avoiding Hermione, as she had done since Ron dumped her, but without a sidekick to grumble to, her mouth drooped and trembled so much that Hermione almost felt like making up with her. She might have tried, but she wasn't feeling quite generous enough to give Lavender the pleasure of rebuffing her.
Not all the students wanted to leave though. Seamus and his mum had a shouting match in the Entrance Hall when she came to fetch him, and she had to find a bed in Hogsmeade till after the funeral; no easy task, as far more witches and wizards were coming than going.
That first morning, before the carriage from Beauxbatons arrived and the delegations from the Ministry descended, was still quiet. Ron, Ginny and Hermione sat on the grass with Harry and heard it all. Well, not quite all. Ginny still didn't know about Horcruxes and it was quickly clear that Harry had no intention of enlightening her.
He'd shown Hermione the fake Horcrux and the note from R.A.B. – I know I will be dead long before you read this, but … it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can – in a quiet moment with just the two of them. After Ginny joined them, he skated over his mission with Dumbledore, with the brief comment that it had been a wild goose chase, and dwelled instead on what had happened at Hogwarts on their return.
They'd apologised, of course, for doubting him all year. He had been right about Malfoy being a Death Eater – or as near to it as made no difference, whether Malfoy had taken the Mark or not – and he believed he'd been right about Snape. Hermione didn't argue. She couldn't.
People hear what they want to hear. You think you know me? How if everything you've seen to the contrary was a lie? How could you tell?"
Harry kept coming back to Snape, his villainy, his guilt, his fault – all his fault. Somehow for Harry it was all about Snape now. He hated him worse than Voldemort, with a deep, personal loathing that overshadowed his anger at the person who'd really killed his parents. Although he'd found a way to blame Snape even for that, of course. After all, it had been Snape who overheard the prophecy and passed it on to Voldemort in the first place.
Hermione nodded in the right places and kept her mouth shut about what niggled her, something Snape had said that time she'd argued his sincerity from the timing of his repentance.
The histories were not aware of the prophecy. I was. Naturally, I knew which side to choose.
That just didn't make sense. If he believed the prophecy pointed to Voldemort losing, why try to change destiny by telling him it? Why not just defect then and there? Unless – Unless he'd heard the next line, "And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal" and told Voldemort the first bit in order to speed its fulfilment. He was cold enough, pragmatic enough, ruthless enough to have sacrificed strangers to that purpose – and it would explain why Dumbledore believed his repentance, why Dumbledore trusted him – but then why be sorry?
I found I couldn't fight on a side that kills babies.
Yet he'd exposed the prophecy baby to danger – No, he must have believed the prophecy wouldn't let it be harmed, so he hadn't repented till he realised that the parents he'd condemned to death were people he knew.
But why then? He'd never liked Harry's dad – and he'd scoffed at the life debt, told Harry that his dad had been in on the prank he "saved" him from, so that couldn't be it. Could it have been Harry's mum? Perhaps they'd secretly been friends? After all, they were Slughorn's two best students, as she'd heard all year at Slug club meetings.
"Harry," she asked. "When did Snape call your mum a Mudblood?"
To her surprise, Harry blushed and fiddled with his sleeves.
"I saw it in his Pensieve," he muttered, not looking at them. "Last year, in Occlumency lessons. My dad and Sirius were – were bothering him in school and she told them to stop and he said, 'I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!' "
"Bothering him?" Ron snorted. "I'll bet they were. Good on 'em! What'd they do?"
Harry scowled at the grass.
"Turned one of his own spells on him. From that Potions book."
Ron stared.
"You mean?"
"Yeah, he was the Half-Blood Prince. He told me so when we were duelling last night, just before he hexed me and Disapparated."
Hermione's mouth fell open and she closed it with a snap. Snape was the Prince? Snape was the reason Harry had kept beating her in Potions lessons all year? Snape was the "friend" Harry had been defending and finding excuses for, even after one of his spells had almost killed Malfoy and got Harry expelled?
Why do you trust your friends and why do they trust you? Because you've been forged in the fire together. You know each other's strengths and weaknesses, as Dumbledore and I know ours. Even mistakes strengthen the bond, if you face them.
And that explained his knowledge of Archaeology and the IRA too. He was half-Muggle himself. Surely he couldn't have really believed all that Mudblood nonsense then or have meant it when he called Harry's mum one; he'd probably just been embarrassed at being saved by a girl.
After that, it wasn't hard, of course, to find the Prince in Prophet back-copies. She just checked through the birth announcements from September 1959 till she found him, born January 1960, to Eileen Prince and Tobias Snape. So she'd been right, it probably had been Eileen Prince's book once. Checking back through the previous few years, she found his parents' wedding announcement too. It was tiny.
R.A.B. was another matter. There were some fairly well-known wizards with those initials, but no one that seemed to fit, no one with a connection to Voldemort. She wondered if Snape knew the name. She wondered if he'd tell her if she asked. She wondered whether everything he'd ever told her was a trick.
If I saw a rabbit riding a tiger, I wouldn't think the tiger's disposition had changed. I'd assume it wasn't hungry yet... I tricked you into persuading yourself of my trustworthiness…It was a method of manipulating your trust…
Harry wouldn't have wondered. When she tried to talk to him about Snape the next day, he was quite definite in his beliefs.
"He's just like Voldemort – ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave himself an impressive new name – how could Dumbledore have missed –?"
"I still don't get why he didn't turn you in for using that book," Ron interjected. "He must've known."
"He knew." Harry's mouth set in a bitter twist. "He knew when I used Sectumsempra. He might even have known before then –"
"But why didn't he turn you in?"
Good question, Ron. Why didn't he? He'd wanted so much to get Harry expelled in earlier years, and this year he hadn't even bothered to try.
"I don't think he wanted to associate himself with that book," Hermione said, feeling her way. "I don't think Dumbledore would have liked it very much if he'd known." And there would have been no hiding it from Slughorn and Dumbledore, who'd known him as a child.
Yet why would that matter? Could seeing evidence of Snape's amazing facility and creativity with hexes at such an early age possibly have disturbed Dumbledore's unshakeable trust? It didn't seem likely. If Snape had known more hexes in first year than most of the seventh years, as Sirius had once told them, surely Dumbledore must have known.
"I should've shown the book to Dumbledore," Harry grumbled. "All that time he was showing me how Voldemort was evil even when he was at school, and I had proof Snape was, too –"
" 'Evil' is a strong word," Hermione said. The Sectumsempra spell had been labelled 'For enemies'; Voldemort would have labelled it 'For everyone'.
"You were the one who kept telling me the book was dangerous!" he retorted.
"I'm trying to say, Harry, that you're putting too much blame on yourself. I thought the Prince seemed to have a nasty sense of humour, but I would never have guessed he was a potential killer." Except in the sense that we're all potential killers.
You didn't kill them. Death Eaters did. You're not responsible for other people's choices. Only your own. This is war. People die and we can't always stop them.
"None of us could've guessed Snape would – you know," Ron said awkwardly.
They all fell silent. Hermione could not so easily reassure herself of her innocence. She should have been able to work it out, the clues had all been in her hands; the "terrible thing", the Unbreakable Vow, the two murder attempts, the headmaster's insistence that it was time for a back-up and that he was "feeling his mortality", Snape's question, "What if you saw me kill?" Why hadn't she seen it coming?
I'm trying to teach you to think, Miss Granger. People hear what they want to hear.
The funeral would be tomorrow and the Hogwarts Express would be leaving an hour later. She packed that night, sneaking up to the Room of Requirement after dinner to retrieve the Potions book. It was obvious Harry wasn't going to, he wanted no more to do with it, but it was too valuable a resource to leave behind. She slept badly again that night, still wrestling with her questions. Could she trust Snape? Should she? What if she was wrong?
You will have to choose whether you still trust me. Thousands of lives will be waiting on your choice. I hope you will choose wisely.
She awoke no wiser, certain only that she would follow Harry, as she had done for the last six years. That was a given, no matter what she decided on that other matter. He would surely not be returning to Hogwarts next year, whether it opened or no – he certainly wasn't going to waste any more time on N.E.W.T.s when he had a Dark Lord to fight and a fistful of Horcruxes to find first – and therefore neither would she. And neither would Ron, she knew, though Ginny would not be given the choice. Both girls were sure that Harry was only waiting for the funeral to be over to break things off, as Ginny had always known he would.
She would follow Harry and sooner or later Snape would contact her, either to continue as their spy, or to betray her friends through her trust. She would have to be ready either to collaborate with him or to help the Order capture him, according to whether she believed him or didn't. She'd promised.
Didn't I tell you never to agree to a request when you don't know what it entails?
She knew now, enough to see the stark consequences of her choice. If she was right, they might yet win; if she was wrong, she'd lose them the war. It was a terrible choice. She didn't want to make it. She had to.
Refusing to choose is also a choice – and generally a choice for the worst. Do you choose not to choose, Miss Granger?
Oh, if only she could. If only she could.
A/N This takes us to the end of HBP, but there willbe either an epilogue or a sequel letting you know what Hermione decided. It probably won't be until after Passover though.
Snatches of conversation are from ch 29, The Phoenix Lament, and ch 30, The White Tomb.