Chapter Thirty-Six
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Hermione had not had the time to weave a lifetime of memories carefully, the way she had the first time she had met Lord Voldemort. She calculated that she could put off following his summons for two hours, and that time limit had left only one option.
The silver potion had been invented by the adult Severus himself. It was known in Order circles as the SOS Draught, which had stood for Save Our Secrets. Everyone in the Order of the Phoenix had kept one close at hand when circumstances permitted. It was quick and easy to brew and worked extremely well when a person had a particular secret they wanted very much to protect.
Hermione had used the potion several times when she had been captured and interrogated over the years. It allowed a person to completely alter any specific memory in which they had taken part in events, witnessed meetings, or heard information that they did not want the other side to gain access to through legilimency.
It took a small amount of effort, but Hermione drew the memory of the events of the afternoon to the forefront of her mind. She thought very hard about entering the office with Bellatrix and Lily, and about everything that had followed. She allowed the memory to fill her mind and overwhelm her senses, and then uncorked the little vial and swallowed down the silver liquid. It was still warm and tasted like sweet, spicy fire sliding down her throat. She coughed a little and then opened her eyes.
Severus watched anxiously.
"Did it work?"
Hermione nodded. It was time to face Lord Voldemort.
\\/
"What I don't understand," Voldemort thundered. "Is why it took you so long to answer my summons. Crucio!"
Hermione collapsed onto the rug. The pain was intense and every nerve ending in her body was on fire, but she kept breathing, retreated inside and waited for the pain to end. At last, it did.
"I was unconscious," Hermione said, wiping a small trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. "I didn't get your summons until now."
"I find that hard to believe when Bellatrix Lestrange is dead and you were in the same room."
"What are you accusing me of?"
"I believe you know exactly what I am accusing you of."
Hermione turned to stare into the fire but Voldemort gripped her chin and wrenched her head up to meet his eyes.
"Legilimens!"
"Come in," Bellatrix said, holding her office door open.
Hermione and Lily entered the office. As they did so the door blew shut with a bang and Hermione jerked slightly. Then a small streak of light shot across the room and hit Bellatrix. She stumbled against the desk, coughed and straightened.
"What are you staring at? Miss Evans, please take a seat over there."
There was a small desk beside the window with several sheets of parchment and an inkwell neatly stacked.
"You will be writing lines. 'I will not abuse my position as the head girl to wander the castle grounds at night.' Five hundred ought to do it."
Lily hesitated, glancing at Hermione.
"Is there a problem?" Bellatrix asked.
"No problem," Lily said, dropping her bag by the desk.
Bellatrix smiled. "Good. Miss Black, please follow me. You will be assisting me in the marking of second-year essays next door."
Hermione paused.
"Hurry up," Bellatrix snapped, holding open the door that divided her office from her classroom. She turned to Lily. "And do not even think of touching anything in my office."
"I wouldn't -" Lily spluttered, but Bellatrix had turned her back. Hermione followed Bellatrix into the classroom. The door slammed closed behind them.
Bellatrix turned to Hermione. There was a blinding flash of light and then everything went black.
\\/
"What happened?"
"I don't know! I must have been cursed."
"I am finding reasons to distrust you," Voldemort hissed, fixing his eyes on hers. "Wherever you go my followers seem to die. Amycus Carrow, do you know what happened to him?"
"I didn't kill him," Hermione said honestly.
"Then where is he? His father has been making himself a nuisance, demanding that I continue the search where the Aurors failed."
"I didn't kill him, but I can think of a lot of people who would have wanted to."
Lord Voldemort scowled. His face was white and pinched as he paced up and down the study.
"Two rooms away you will find Rodolphus Lestrange waiting for an explanation as to why his wife is not returning from Hogwarts. And you can't tell me anything?"
"Maybe I could tell you more if you'd tell me why she was at Hogwarts in the first place," Hermione countered.
Lord Voldemort's fingers tightened on his wand.
"How dare you question me," he hissed.
"But you said that I was to be your second in command," Hermione said, her voice steady. "You said that you wanted me at Hogwarts to keep control. And yet you sent her as well, without telling me! I'm supposed to outrank her."
A part of her hoped she could keep Voldemort on the defensive long enough to distract him from probing her mind again.
"Next summer you will outrank her," Voldemort sneered. "As of now, you are an underage witch in charge of several teenagers. Of course, I sent an adult witch to keep an eye on you. It would be unspeakably foolish to allow you to run riot at Hogwarts, particularly with this tournament you engineered without my permission."
"With all due respect my Lord, I was taking initiative -"
"- Have I ever given you the impression I required or desired initiative?"
"I'm going to win it! That will gain us respect on the international stage, new allies…"
Voldemort's lip curled.
"Initiative," he said, dragging the word out as though it was a curse. "Legilimens!"
It came without warning, and Hermione rocked backwards as the mental probe burst through her defensive shields. Voldemort dragged up the memory of Bellatrix again, searching through it. She felt him seethe as he discovered nothing new. Then abruptly he changed trajectory.
No!
Voldemort was rifling through memories irritably, searching back through the year. Hermione had too much to hide, she couldn't let him search at will. Her defences weren't strong enough, the best she could do would be to misdirect him with something that would distract him so thoroughly…
You are hiding things.
The voice echoed through her mind and Hermione braced herself. The pain was intense, and surely Voldemort would see now...
Hermione gave in, released the only secret that might keep her alive.
"Stop! Wait. Yes, I've been hiding something," she gasped, and Voldemort paused. He withdrew from her mind and her vision came into focus. Voldemort swam hazily into view, standing over her, hands gripping the arms of her chair.
"Well?" he demanded.
Hermione swallowed.
"I….I'm expecting."
Voldemort drew back, initial confusion followed by genuine surprise on his face. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then spoke.
"You are...with child?"
Hermione slumped in her chair, struggling to regain her clarity of mind after the mental examination she had been subjected to.
"Yes," she said hoarsely.
Voldemort's thin lips compressed. "Is the Lestrange son responsible?"
Fearing for his life, fearing for her own, yet knowing a lie would be uncovered easily, Hermione steeled herself.
"No. It's Severus, my Lord."
Now his fury broke over her like a dam. Voldemort's face twisted, his eyes narrowed, and he raised his wand again.
"Crucio!"
Hermione slid from the chair to the hearth, wrapped her arms around her knees, and waited for the pain to end. Minutes, or possibly hours later the searing agony ended, and she uncurled herself, every muscle shaking uncontrollably.
"Legilimens!"
He was inside her mind again, surrounding her, filling up her mind until she could feel nothing but him pouring inside her and didn't know where her own mind ended and he began. He was furious. So angry. His hot, scorching rage altered the timbre of his vibrations, making the chaos of their merging become less of an attack and more of a match. He was distracted, searching through her mind for the moments she had wanted to keep private forever. Herself in bed with Severus, naked and entwined. Standing in front of Madam Pomfrey, hearing the word over and over again.
He was distracted. He was angry. He was disturbed. Hermione could feel his revulsion through the connection in a way that she had never felt any emotion from him before. Lord Voldemort was disturbed by her pregnancy.
She could feel him.
Ignoring the pain, ignoring the shame of her private moments ripped open and viewed carelessly, Hermione turned her mind to the invading voice and probed, experimentally. She waited for the answering retaliation but none came. He hadn't felt her.
Like quicksilver, light and fleeting, Hermione tried to slide around him. She couldn't push through with force, she was no skilled legilimens, but perhaps she could slip around, while he was distracted.
Hermione's fingers found her wand. He was in front of her, his dark eyes boring into hers but not seeing, and she couldn't see him, but then she could. She couldn't speak, the words caught in her throat, but her lips formed the words.
Legilimens.
And then she was inside, in a gaping chasm, a dark fearful world where laughter echoed and darkness pressed inside. Hermione ignored the darkness, pushed her fear aside, knowing she would be ripped to pieces from the mind outwards if she was discovered here. She had never done this before, never tried, but she had read the theory. She knew how to search. Tentatively, softly, in a whisper, she said the word.
Horcrux.
At once she was engulfed in colour, and images whirled around her. Brief glimpses of a bathroom sink, a very old woman, a house-elf, a dark cave…
Where are they now? Hermione asked the mind. And the mind gave the images, one after the other. The cave. The shack. The Lestrange vault. Malfoy Manor. The room of hidden things.
There were no more, and Hermione withdrew as fast as she could, faster than she would have believed possible with the terror of being caught inside Lord Voldemort's mind sending adrenaline racing through her veins. She came back to herself just as Lord Voldemort ripped himself from her mind with a growl of fury. He stood and knocked the ornaments from the mantelpiece with a sweep of his fist and withdrew from view.
Minutes passed. Hermione trembled, tried not to vomit on the rug. Waited.
"This is extremely inconvenient," Voldemort said. He was out of sight, sitting behind the desk. Hermione stared into the embers of the fire. Her face was wet from tears, saliva or sweat; she could not tell which.
"I'm sorry, my Lord."
"Rodolphus has lost a wife. I had intended to offer you to him in recompense."
Hermione shuddered inwardly, grateful to have avoided that fate. She tried to follow the conversation and tried to forget what she had seen.
"But now," Voldemort said slowly. "Now...you must marry the Snape boy. I cannot have illegitimacy among the ranks...it could undermine what we have worked so hard to achieve. And yet this insubordination cannot go unpunished..."
The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed very loud. The coals hissed in the fireplace, the murmur of voices from below came through the floor, and Hermione lay twitching, unable to control her limbs, and waited to hear what fate Voldemort would assign her.
"Ah yes," Voldemort said, as though with sudden inspiration. "You will be taking my command in the summer, and unable to spare the time to care for a child. I believe your cousin Narcissa is recently married, and as yet has not conceived. She will take the child and raise it, whilst you carry out the duties I require of you."
Hermione felt as though a large, cold stone had settled into her stomach. Narcissa, raise her child. She would die before allowing this to happen.
"Narcissa isn't my cousin -"
"Are you questioning me?"
"No, my Lord," she rasped with great difficulty.
"Good," Voldemort said. "Now return to Hogwarts and your post. Your wedding will take place on the winter solstice, here at Lestrange manor. As Deus is without a wife and you are orphaned, I will ask Lady Stella Malfoy to take care of all arrangements. You will inform Snape."
Hermione began to nod but Voldemort was not finished. His voice turned cold and foreboding.
"And if anything strange occurs, another of my followers dies, or you fail in any duty I assign you at Hogwarts you can be assured that you will wish very much that I had killed you where you stood right here and today."
"Yes my Lord."
"Oh - and -" Voldemort half-turned, on his way to leaving the room. "Do make sure you win this tournament. It wouldn't do for others to see weakness in you before your work has even begun."
\\/
The portkey dropped Hermione in front of the iron front gates. Hogwarts was bright with lights beyond. She tried to stand but her knees buckled. Too much crucio could make the muscles decide to take a holiday and cease to function properly.
Hermione frowned and cast a patronus, the silver otter leaping the gates gracefully and gambolling towards the school. Then she leaned back against the gates and waited, wand still drawn.
Five minutes later a figure appeared, wand lit in the dark.
"Sev?" Hermione called. "Is that you?"
But the voice that replied was not Severus.
"Hermione Black," said a heavily accented voice, and Hermione stilled. Now she recognised the broad-shouldered figure under the cloak.
"Grindelwald."
Ivan came closer and the wandlight revealed his face. He was not smiling as he bent to inspect the gate padlock. He tapped it with his wand but nothing happened, and he grunted in irritation.
"Gate must open. "
"Open for what?" Hermione said, trying to disguise how much her limbs were still trembling.
She was helpless, entirely exposed here. None of her protective shields were in place and she could barely hold her wand in her shaking fingers.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked.
"Otter is sweet," Grindelwald said, still fiddling with the padlock. It refused to budge and he spat a curse word in a foreign language.
"You, open it," he said to Hermione, pointing at the padlock.
"I can't," she protested. "Don't you think I'd be inside already if I could?"
Grindelwald scowled. Then he glanced around him as though checking for witnesses, and pointed his wand at Hermione.
"It not matter. I...how you say? Ah. Apologies. Is not personal."
"Are you trying to kill me again?" Hermione asked with disbelief. Cold fear trickled down her spine. She held her wand as tightly as her numb fingers would manage. If it took lethal force to end this nightmare with Ivan then she would do that.
"Is not personal," Grindelwald repeated with a shrug. "I apologies. You good witch, but in the way. Sorry -"
"- Hermione!" a shout rang out, and Grindelwald turned. Several figures were running across the grass, wands raised and lights glowing.
Grindelwald cursed furiously and turned to Hermione, then back to the figures. He looked as if he was weighing up his options, but finally shot one last scowl in her direction and melted into the shadows.
"Grindelwald," Hermione gasped when her friends reached the gates. "He was here. He's just here - over there! He was going to -"
"He what?" Severus said, unlocking the padlock swiftly and pulling the heavy gate open.
"We can still catch him - look!"
They all turned, but there was nothing to see beyond the wandlight but inky darkness. Like a ghost, Grindelwald had vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
"He was…" Hermione repeated, but her head was foggy, and as Severus tried to pull her to her feet she felt distant and unconnected from her body. And then all was blackness.
\\/
When Hermione woke up in the hospital wing several hours later nobody had found Grindelwald. Arabel claimed that his dormitory was empty and he hadn't been seen in days. And now that she was safe Hermione's friends were more concerned with how her encounter with Lord Voldemort had played out. But Hermione had too much new information that she needed to process and plans that needed finalising, and she kept them at arm's length.
Hermione answered only very briefly the questions that Professor Dumbledore asked her. She left the hospital wing almost immediately and told her friends that she would speak to them when she could.
"You've obviously been under the crucio for fucking ages," Severus exclaimed angrily. "You need medical treatment!"
"It can wait," Hermione told him. "I need to work something out first. And then I'll be back. Just give me time."
"You haven't even told us what Voldemort found out from you," Severus said. "Did the potion work?"
His face was pinched with worry, and Hermione softened. "Yes, it worked. And Voldemort has given approval for us to get married."
"I...what? Are you joking?"
"I wish. Stella Malfoy is planning it. Now please, I need time. I'll be back soon, I promise."
As Severus's jaw dropped with horror, Hermione cupped his cheek briefly then left. She recovered from the crucio bout in her bed where only Arabel and Alecto went, and they gave her the space she asked for.
For two days she was locked in the dormitory with her small blue book. She updated, annotated, changed, scribbled, and discarded. Her bed was strewn with pieces of parchment and there were ink splatters all over her hands before she finally tore a page out of the book and wrote a note to Professor Dumbledore.
I need to speak with you. In your office. Tomorrow, 8 PM.
\\/
"Do you know about the Horcruxes?" Hermione asked Dumbeldore as soon as the office door closed behind her.
Dumbledore froze with his hand halfway to a bowl of lemon drops. What little colour there had been in his face drained.
"I have the locations," Hermione told him quickly. "I've found them in his mind. I need to go to them, to destroy them. They're the same places he used the first time around in my time."
Dumbledore blanched.
"You were inside the mind of Lord Voldemort? Forgive me, I confess I did not think it possible…"
"I distracted him with something else," Hermione said.
"How did you succeed in such a deception?"
"Not important. But Professor, have a look at these."
Hermione pulled her blue book from her pocket and opened it to the page where she had written all of the information about the Horcruxes, and handed it over. Dumbledore stared for a long time, and then he read the list. Finally, he shook his head.
"I have Aurors on the inside. I know you are not a member of the Order of the Phoenix but you would do well to listen to me here. You may still be under observation. I will send the Aurors to look."
"But sir -" Hermione began. "The defences are -"
"I will not require the Aurors to make contact with the Horcrux or threaten it," Dumbledore said. "They should be safe."
"I believe he will feel it when they're destroyed," Hermione said rapidly. "He didn't, in our time, but the man he is now...I think he would know. So they have to be -"
"All destroyed at the same time," Dumbledore said thoughtfully. "Clever Tom. If we destroy one he will know at once and move to retrieve the others. All for more reason for you not to be risked."
Hermione wanted to argue but she knew he was right. Bellatrix was gone but she doubted Voldemort would leave her unobserved. Someone was surely here to watch her. And Grindelwald was still an ever-present threat, skulking just out of sight but there nonetheless.
"So you get your Auror friends to go and check the Horcruxes are there -"
"- They will make no move to interfere with them, merely establish their presence -"
"- And then we'll work out the best time to destroy them."
"We can work together on the final details," Dumbledore said. He looked energised now, as though the discussion had brought Voldemort's downfall somehow closer, more tangible.
"But my friends need to know," Hermione said. "They need to know what we're fighting against. As soon as the Horcruxes are destroyed we need to kill Voldemort. That's what my friends have been training so hard for."
"They certainly have made an impressive showing in the duelling. A credit to you," Dumbledore said, lips twitching.
"The duelling was only ever practising for the real thing. They need to know, professor. About the Horcruxes."
To Hermione's surprise, Dumbledore nodded.
"Yes," he said thoughtfully.
"Yes?" Hermione asked, not sure she had heard him correctly.
"Indeed. Your friends are expected to take the Mark this summer, is that right?"
"Yes."
"So Lord Voldemort will have little reason to read their minds before then. And we hope to be finished with him before that unhappy date occurs."
"So there should be no problem at your end when I tell them about the Horcruxes."
Dumbledore shook his head. "No, you misunderstand me. I don't think you should tell them. I don't believe it is productive for us to continue to operate this way - as separate entities."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I have underestimated you time and time again, and it is time for that to end," Dumbledore said.
Hermione tilted her head in confusion.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, Miss Black, that I understand now that you were not entirely truthful with me when you arrived in my office last September."
Hermione attempted to speak but Dumbledore raised a hand to forestall her.
"I have not been entirely truthful with you either, I confess. But the time has not yet come for all to be brought into the light. Nonetheless would I be correct in saying that you returned to this time deliberately, for the sole purpose of bringing about Voldemort's destruction?"
Hermione chewed her lip. "Not deliberately...but once I realised I was here, I knew there was only one thing to do."
Dumbledore sighed, leaning back in his chair. He glanced at his gently chiming clock and then shook his head regretfully.
"One day I hope very much that you will give me the entire, truthful account of your arrival in this time, rather than the half-nonsense you fed me last year. But now is not the time. Perhaps once Voldemort has been dealt with you would consent to give me the full story over tea and biscuits? I admit I am terribly curious."
Hermione laughed. "Yes, I think we could arrange that."
Dumbledore looked extremely pleased. "Marvellous. And now the crux of the matter. Your friends. I don't propose that you should tell them about the Horcruxes. I believe that it would be more appropriate if I should tell them, alongside a few other students…"
"Professor, I'm not sure I follow," Hermione said.
Dumbledore smiled at her. "I believe it is time a number of our seventh-year students are invited to join the Order of the Phoenix."
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Uploading my backlog of this story in the hopes it will inspire me to finish it for real this time. I'll try and update daily until I run out. I read today that a third of the world is locked down at the moment. Who else is stuck at home? Got any great fic recommendations?
Cas
