Chapter eight
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Hermione left more than a whole month before she acted. It wouldn't do to overplay her hand, act too quickly and give anybody cause for suspicion. After the duel everyone knew there was bad blood between her and Avery.
So she waited for a time when the duel as begun to fade out of peoples minds. Of course they would remember it, but it wasn't immediate and correlating. And in the mean time, she began to watch him.
Avery was a creature of habit. He attended his classes, studied in the library with his friends, and played chess in the common room. A couple of times a week Mulciber and Snape would accompany him on a trip to the kitchens, where they would stay for around half an hour before leaving. Once a week on a Sunday night Avery would walk up to the owlery with Mulciber, where they would post their letters. Snape never went, presumably because he never wrote home.
Hermione planned carefully. This had to go right. She began to go to the library every Sunday night, and at first her friends accompanied her.
"Hermione this is boring," Rabastan began to whine. "Exams are months away! Come back to the common room."
"You go," Hermione encouraged. "I just like studying. You don't have to come with me."
So, they didn't. Before long nobody questioned her evening trips alone.
She picked the first sunday of March, when a howling storm hit Hogwarts. The ceiling of the great hall was an angry mass of roiling clouds and crackling lightning, and the castle felt as though it was shaking under the torrent of rain washing over it. Nobody would hear a thing.
Hermione went to the library, laid out her books carefully, and then headed off to the shelves as though she was looking for more books. Then she disillusioned herself. She left the library and followed the corridors until she reached the bottom of the stairs that led to the owlery.
Then she waited.
"- and it was ridiculous for McGonagall to take points for that. Completely biased."
"I agree," Avery said, as he and Mulciber strode around the corner together. "Ridiculous."
"Imperio," Hermione whispered, pointing her wand at Mulciber.
Mulciber stopped short for a moment, frozen in place. His features slackened for a split second and Hermione grimaced, because it was so obvious, and why wasn't he -
"Oh damn, I forgot my letter," Mulciber said. Then - "It's still in the dormitory," after a moment. Hermione breathed again, and sagged against the wall. She was out of practice with the unforgivables.
"Do we need to go back?" Avery frowned.
"No no," Mulciber said blithely, waving his hand vaguely. "You go on, I'll run back now and then catch you at the top."
"Alright," Avery shrugged, and headed for the stairs. As soon as he was out of sight Hermione stunned Mulciber and pushed his body into an empty classroom, panting at the effort of hauling his bulk. Then she disillusioned him, and pulled a desk over his body.
Jogging now, Hermione headed up the steps after Avery. She could imperius him if she met him on the way down, but she didn't want to. It would be better if he was in his own mind.
Luck was on her side. When she reached the top of the stairs Avery had just waved off his bird, a handsome tawny owl. The rain was beating down and spraying through the open walls of the owlery, and lightening crackled overhead.
"Hello Avery," Hermione said calmly, raising her voice to be heard over the storm.
Avery spun around, reaching for his wand. But Hermione was faster than him.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Avery froze, stiff as a board. He began to topple over but was caught by the edge of the owlery wall. Hermione stalked towards him, locking her brown eyes with his fearful blue ones.
"Nice to have you here alone at last," Hermione said softly. "I've been waiting for this moment. You have no idea how I've been waiting for it."
Avery's eyes were wide and blinking furiously. Hermione had no doubt that if he could speak he would be screaming unforgivables and obscenities. As much as she wanted to enjoy the moment though, she didn't have time. But she wanted him to know why.
"I saw your memories," Hermione whispered, leaning close. "I saw that muggle family you killed. I saw what your father did to the mother, and I saw what you did to that little girl."
Hermione stepped back, and looked Avery directly in the eye.
"When you get to Hell, tell them they're going to need more room. There's a lot more coming where you've come from."
Then she pushed him off the tower, and leaned out, letting the rain pour over her, dripping down her face like tears. Hermione watched until Avery's body disappeared into the darkening night; until the moment she knew he had hit the ground.
Then she cast a drying charm, and headed to the library. By the time shouts began to echo through the castle, Hermione was immersed in her essays just like every other Sunday night.
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"Completely splattered, I hear."
"Had to identify him by his wand."
"His parents weren't allowed to see the body - I heard the casket is going to be magically sealed."
The whispers at the breakfast table the next morning were delivered in hushed, slightly horrified yet awestruck tones. It was always the same. People loved disaster when it wasn't happening to them.
Hermione sat in the centre of the Slytherin table with her friends, eating her breakfast without concern. She didn't feel guilty in the slightest about killing Avery. The man had been an animal; and dangerous, deranged animals needed to be put down. She had already saved many future lives by taking his.
"May I have your attention please Ladies and Gentleman?"
Professor Dumbledore stood at the staff table wearing robes of dark sombre blue, and spread his hands, looking sorrowful.
"Last night a terrible tragedy took place, which many of you already know. A student was murdered. Fastius Avery was pushed from the owlery by another person in this school. That same person used an unforgivable curse on Marcus Mulciber, who is recovering in the hospital wing. We have not yet apprehended the culprit."
The room erupted with whispers and murmurs, and people leaned in to discuss the issue with their friends. Professor Dumbledore cleared his throat, and the room fell silent again.
"Thank you. We will ask for all of your help and cooperation in assisting with the investigation, and I need to say that if anyone has any information about the incident, that you speak to your head of house immediately. Aurors will be in the castle until the matter is solved."
Hermione tuned the speech out after a moment. She had wiped her wand clean of spells that morning, and knew her occlumency was strong enough to misdirect anything that could be thrown at her. Nobody had seen her, nobody knew, nobody would catch her.
But as Hermione reached for a pitcher of milk to pour into her coffee, she noticed Snape sitting a little way down the table. He was alone, with Avery gone and Mulciber in the hospital wing. He looked grim, the lines at the corner of his mouth deepening as he gazed up at Dumbledore with dead eyes. Hermione felt guilty for the first time.
She didn't regret murdering Avery. But she did regret taking away one of the only friends that Severus Snape had.
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All of the Slytherin sixth years left Hogwarts on the Saturday to attend Avery's funeral. Hermione stayed behind, claiming that she hadn't know him for long enough to attend, and nobody could deny that there had been no love lost between the two.
When Rabastan and Regulus trickled reluctantly out of the common room dressed in their finest robes, Hermione stood up and gathered her books together, heading downstairs to the dormitories. But after dropping her books onto her bed, she locked and warded the door. It was a perfect chance to search the sixth year dormitories.
There was little of use in the bedside drawers of Lucinda and Evelyn, the other two sixth year girls. Hermione made sure to be thorough, and checked for signs of concealment in the wardrobe and the bed, but both girls came up clean.
Arabel was a different story. Hermione raised her eyebrows with surprise when she found the wicked collection of knives the pretty pureblood princess was keeping charmed to the underside of her bed, wrapped in soft leather. Hermione was sorely tempted to take one, but resisted. There were also a couple of books of a questionable nature that Hermine found in a hidden drawer of the bedside table, mostly petty curses for enemies and the like.
Alecto, as it turned out, kept a diary. Smiling victoriously, Hermione used a spell to replicate it until she had an identical copy to peruse later, and then returned the original to it's poor hiding place in the wardrobe.
When she was finished, Hermione unwarded the door and checked the corridor carefully before stepping through. She had high hopes that the sixth year boys might be hiding some more interesting secrets.
The boys dormitory certainly smelt more pungent than the girls. Hermione wrinkled her nose as she stepped through and caught sight of trunks spilling clothes, and an open bathroom door. Ron and Harry had been this bad, but for some reason she had thought the Slytherins might be different. She had been wrong.
"What're you hiding then," Hermione murmured to herself, turning to the first bed. From the neat lettering inside the stack of textbooks on the bedside table, she surmised it belonged to Regulus. Unfortunately it yielded very little in the way of promising articles, and the same story was true of almost every bed.
Hermione found herself grudgingly impressed as she scoured the dormitory. Snape, Mulciber, Regulus, Rabastan and Crouch. Five death eaters in training, and they had covered their tracks well. There wasn't so much as an incriminating note or dubious books of spells to be found. For all intents and purposes it was an entirely harmless dormitory occupied by upstanding members of Slytherin house. Hermione snorted and shook her head.
Idly she smoothed down Snape's bedcovers, and for a moment felt slightly sad. There wasn't a single item from home or anything that suggested her came from somewhere that wanted him. His bedside drawers were empty, and his trunk consisted of little more than neatly folded clothes and textbooks. Recognising his copy of advanced potion making, Hermione smiled and resisted the urge to look. She already knew what it would say. But there was nothing to point to the Dark Lord.
"Good job boys," she sighed, admitting defeat. She had to hope that Alecto's diary would yield better fruit, and keep an eye out for a chance to search the seventh year room whenever she could.
Perhaps over the Easter holidays she would have an opportunity if enough students left the castle.
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Hogwarts had almost reached the end of term, and the storms that had plagued early March had blown themselves out and given way to better weather. Hermione and her companions took advantage of the warmth of early Spring, to spend the last few afternoons of term wandering the grounds - once the aurors sent to investigate the death of Avery had left the castle without finding a culprit of course.
Professor Dumbledore professed his concern and dismay when nobody was caught, but even interviewing individual students hadn't yielded crop. Hermione had been interviewed, but her story of being in the library was confirmed by both her friends and other students who had seen her that night. The aurors had left Hogwarts in defeat, and slowly the rest of the school began to forget.
Slytherin house was restless however. Although outsiders wouldn't be able to tell, something integral had changed with the unsolved murder of Avery.
"He was one of the Dark Lords," Arabel murmured to Hermione one sunny afternoon as the small group of sixth years walked by the lake. "That's why they're so shocked. Nobody should have dared to touch him."
"He was planning to join?" Hermione asked, feigning ignorance.
Beside the pair, Rabastan snorted.
"Just because they didn't find a mark on his body doesn't mean there wasn't one on his soul. Avery was our Lord's man through and through."
Hermione noticed the inclusive phrase, and didn't reply for a few moments. She needed to let her companions find their own way to the answer without realising they had been led.
"I just can't see a motive," Regulus mused quietly. "Avery might have been about to leave and join his ranks, but so are at least a dozen of the seventh years."
"The Gryffindor's wouldn't do it," Arabel said with a frown. "Assassination would offend their sensibilities."
"And we come back to a lack of motive."
Hermione stretched deliberately, and stood up with a yawn. "Maybe Avery just made the wrong person angry," she said lightly. "Maybe the wrong person heard about something he'd done, and decided to take action."
"Revenge," Alecto said in a hushed voice.
"Or righteousness," Hermione corrected. She didn't enter the conversation again; more than enough seeds planted. Her companions were intelligent enough to find their own way to the truth - or a version of it.
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Wow - I was really surprised by the response to the last chapter, the story hadn't been updated in so long I didn't really expect anyone to remember it! And for those who might not have twigged yet, yes this is absolutely a load of indulgent, unlikely, overdramatic trope-abusing nonsense. I mean, have you seen some of the chapter titles? I'm not taking this one seriously, and that's what makes it fun to write.
Several people mentioned Hermione's use of sectumsempra, so I'll just clear that up by saying I don't think Snape could even hear what spell she used, it may as well have been a severing spell.
Thanks for reading,
Cas
