Chapter Twenty Three

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Later Hermione would wish she had been a little less blunt in her delivery, but she didn't have the time or patience to waste. Severus turned absolutely white, and Rabastan took a step backwards as if to put space between them.

"You have to be fucking kidding me," Rabastan said, looking around. "She's joking, isn't she? She's joking guys."

Nobody laughed.

"Muggles," Regulus said. His lip curled. "Filthy muggles."

Hermione whipped out her wand so fast that he never saw it coming, and had it jammed against Regulus's throat before he could utter another breath. His eyes bulged, and a vein popped on the side of his forehead.

"Don't you ever speak of my parents that way again," Hermione snarled.

"Easy," Arabel said, putting a hand on Hermione's arm. She lowered her wand reluctantly and Regulus bent over with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

"You lied," Alecto said, staring at Hermione. "When you made me kill Amycus. You pretended it just happened, but it didn't, did it? You planned it all."

"You come from twenty years in the future, and we're all dead," Rabastan said. He kicked the wall. "What the fuck?"

Hermione shook her head, and took a step backwards.

"You read the book. You know what happened to you."

"I don't know what happened to me," Arabel said, a note of fear in her voice. "I'm not in your book. Why?"

The deluge of questions trapped Hermione, and made her panicky, and she stepped back until she was pressed against the dirty wall. A round of obliviations, she thought, sounded good right now. But there was one person who hadn't spoken.

"Severus," Hermione whispered.

Severus stared at her blankly. "I thought we were something," he said. "I thought that we - that you and me -" he coloured, and seemed unable to continue.

"We were! We are. I wasn't pretending…"

"Pretending that you wanted me? So that you could use me for your own ends?"

"No!" Hermione shouted. "I would never. I wanted to save you, from the awful, terrible life you were about to go through. You have no idea what kind of a shit future I was trying to save you from!"

"You're lying," Rabstan snarled. "The Dark Lord is going to save wizarding society."

Hermione snorted.

"Save it? That's a joke. The Dark Lord fucking destroyed everything he touched. Ancient families wiped out forever, lineages gone, bloodlines eradicated in his stupid, ridiculous war that he only started because he was a half-blood orphan who nobody loved."

Hermione's words hung in the air and silence fell instantly. Everybody stared at her.

Rabastan found his voice first.

"You're lying."

"I'm not. Its true."

"The Dark Lord is a half-blood?" Alecto said in disbelief.

"As true as I'm a muggleborn," Hermione said. "And it makes all the same amount of difference. He's an evil, twisted piece of shit. But don't just take my word for it."

It had been too much to hope for that they would take this well, Hermione thought. Now that the truth was out she felt somehow resigned, as though she had always known that it would eventually come to this. But her heart was beating fast and there was an unexpected lump in her throat. If only she could make them understand it all.

Hermione pulled her beaded bag from her shoulder, and thrust her arm in until it was submerged to the elbow. Her searching fingers brushed against stacks of books, racks of potions ingredients and the occasional quill, until at last they found what she was looking for. She hadn't used this item for years, had almost forgotten that she still carried it with her.

"A pensieve," Arabel said in surprise, as Hermione pulled out the small stone bowl.

"Where did you get that?" Rabastan said. "I heard there's only three in the world."

Hermione set the bowl on the ground, and then she tapped it with her wand. The pensieve grew instantly, screeching across the floor and making Alecto jump backwards. It only stopped when it stood at waist height, and the basin was a foot across.

"There's four in this time now," Hermione said, gathering her thoughts in order. "I took this one from Professor Dumbledore's office right before Hogwarts was burned down."

"What?" Arabel gasped, but Hermione ignored her. If her friends walked away after watching this, she thought, then she could wipe their memories without a hint of regret.

Hermione pressed her wand tip to her temple. It took almost ten minutes to deposit several hours worth of memories into the pensieve. Some of them she queued up to play in a certain order, and others she left to dip in at random.

When she was finished, Hermione gestured her friends towards the bowl. Regulus leaned forward first to look more closely at the surface, which swam with a milky, silvery light.

"Help yourselves. When you've seen enough, come back. And -" Hermione hesitated, glancing between Rabstan and Alecto. "I'm sorry. For showing you this. But I have to."

Rabastan and Alecto exchanged glances, and then her friends entered the pensieve. Finally only Severus was left.

"Is this -" he started.

"Oh fuck!" Rabstan shouted from inside the pensieve.

Severus frowned. "What's he seeing?"

Hermione pressed her lips together. "That would be my first sighting of him, back when I was sixteen. When he broke out of Azkaban. He's changed….well, he's changed a lot. Azkaban wasn't kind to him."

"Back when you were sixteen?" Severus said, and Hermione cursed her slip of the tongue.

She gestured to the bowl. "Are you going to join them?"

"In a minute," Severus said. He swallowed, painfully. "I just wanted to ask you something. This - us - what's between us. I have to know the truth. Was it all just part of a plan?"

Hermione closed her eyes. Maybe everything wasn't lost after all.

"No," she said. "You and me - this was never supposed to happen. I promised myself I wouldn't get close to anyone in this time. I didn't want attachments, anything that could stop me from getting the job done. But...I couldn't stop this. It's you Severus. I don't know why, But it's you."

Severus let out a breath.

"That's good," he said quietly. "Because I'm starting to think I'm in love with you."

Hermione froze at his words, colour rising to her cheeks. "You're...what?" she said,

"That doesn't mean that I'm not fucking furious about how much you've lied to me."

"I -"

"I'll see you in a bit I guess," Severus said, before Hermione could formulate a sentence. Then he stepped forwards and entered the pensieve.

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The first thing Rabastan did when he came out of the pensieve was throw up all over the floor. Hermione scourgified the mess as he gasped and spluttered. Regulus was right behind, and although he didn't throw up he looked thoroughly shaken. Alecto and Arabel came out gripping hands, and Severus was the last.

Hermione sat on the floor with her back against the wall. She was still exhausted and aching, and she had dozed off as the hours wore on.

"What the fuck," Rabastan summarised.

"You were crazy," Alecto said, glancing fearfully at Rabastan.

"You threw a dozen first years off the Hogwarts astronomy tower," Arabel said, pale and trembling. "Just dropped them."

"I didn't," Rabastan said, spitting angrily on the floor. "The other me did. That wasn't me. I'm not him."

"You killed the Prewetts," Alecto said. "Even if they were blood traitors, they were still members of the sacred twenty eight!"

Rabastan rounded on Alecto. "And you tortured students and fucked your brother, so you can stop right there with the name calling."

"I betrayed the Dark Lord," Regulus said, wild-eyed. "I died for that shit."

"Hermione, what was that last scene, where all of the people in the ministry just turned and started killing each other?" Arabel asked, turning towards Hermione. She seemed more composed than the others, perhaps because she hadn't seen herself in the memories.

Hermione took the chance to turn the subject. "It was the Dark Mark," she explained wearily. "By the turn of the century, almost everybody had taken it. Only those of us still actively resisting avoided it. Voldemort could control them through it. If we wants, he can use the Mark to take over a persons will, turn them into a mindless killing machine."

Severus scowled. "That's why you wanted yours off."

Hermione nodded. "No matter the risk, I couldn't keep that on my arm. We never knew when exactly he added that feature to the Mark."

Regulus walked away abruptly, and punched his fist into the wall. Dust rained from the ceiling and the chandelier rattled above their heads. When he turned back there was blood dripping from his hand, but his face was set. "I'm never taking the Mark," he said. "I'm not dying like that. I was only eighteen. For hells sake, I want to live."

Alecto looked green. She caught Hermione's eye and spoke barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry about what I said before. Thank you - thank you for helping me kill Amycus. I can't - I don't - the things we did in those memories-"

"I think Amycus controlled and abused you for decades," Hermione said gently. "By the time you broke out of Azkaban you had been sharing a cell together for fifteen years. It's not uncommon for victims to grow close their abusers."

"He was my brother," Alecto said, looking like she was going to gag. "The things we did…"

"You have not done," Hermione said firmly. "And you will never do. He's dead. That world is gone."

Her words were meant for Alecto, but they resonated in the spaces between them all, and nobody spoke. That world was gone, Hermione thought. It was like the relief of waking up from a nightmare and realising that the terror had been nothing but a dream.

"This is your second chance," Severus said to Hermione, staring at her. "Isn't it? You're trying to stop this before it happens."

Hermione swallowed, a lump in her throat. FInally she could share with somebody the burden she had been carrying.

"Yes," she said. "I'm trying to make it so that world will never exist, and none of those people will have to die. I'm trying to make a world where none of you become those people you saw."

"I'm not going to run away anymore," Arabel said suddenly. All eyes turned to her, and she shrugged. "I had money put aside, I'd made contact with a facial transfiguration expert, I'd made a list of places I could escape to. But I'm not leaving you to do this alone Hermione."

"Nor I," said Severus. He hadn't so much as said a word about what he had seen in the pensieve, but his long fingers came up and massaged his throat. Then he turned to Hermione.

"A fucking teacher? I was a teacher? Thank you for coming back to spare me from that."

That broke the tension, and everybody laughed. Regulus nodded, as though coming to a decision.

"I trust my own judgement," he said. "If I'm going to change my mind in less than two years anyway I should probably do it now and save myself the painful death."

"I'm with you," Alecto said, shuddering. "I don't ever want to see that face in the mirror."

EVerybody turned to Rabastan. He stood in the centre of the room, alone, the only one who hadn't declared for either side. The battle was fought out on his face. He had never been good at hiding his emotions, and Hermione could see them waging inside him.

"It's just...you're a mudblood," he burst out. Severus snarled, but Hermione raised a hand.

"Rabastan," she said softly. "If you ever use that word in my hearing again I will cut out your tongue."

Rabastan gulped, but forged on. "It's just, the Dark Lord is fucked up, but is what he wanted really so wrong? A world in which we can live openly alongside muggles? A world in which our traditions and bloodlines are preserved? Wasn't it the method that was wrong, not the man?"

"Think about the cost," Hermione said quietly. "It sounds like a pretty world, but think about what it would take to get there. And then tell me if it's worth it."

Rabstan was silent for a minute and then he finally slumped. "You're right," she said. "I'm in."

Hermione looked around the room. A bubble of happiness filled her unexpectedly, at odds with the drawn, serious faces surrounding her. She wasn't doing it alone anymore. Already her brain had begun to whirr, plans and ideas changing and evolving. Something inside her felt like hope.

"Good," Hermione said, getting to her feet. She brushed the dust from her robes, and stretched. "We'd better get started then. We'll begin with the unbreakable vows, and then tonight we've got the Selwyn Midsummer party. Lord Voldemort will be there, and showing up will tell us if we've still got a place in this game or not."

Hermione realised there was some confusion occurring, and tilted her head.

"Oh, yeah. I suppose I'd better fill you in on what happened at the marking last night."

"Yeah," Rabastan said. "Why you came back nearly dead."

Severus turned to Hermione, and his brows knitted together. "And at some point I'd like you to tell me who Harry Potter is too. That bit got confusing."

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Thanks for reading,

Cas