Chapter Forty-Four
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It was late by the time Hermione made her way back to Hogwarts and she was nauseous with exhaustion. Somewhere a clock chimed three o'clock in the morning. Perhaps Lord Voldemort could have a lie-in, but he hadn't considered his followers who had school and day jobs.
Severus sat up waiting for her, and Hermione's heart gave a leap, but his expression was neutral. He nodded at her.
"You made it back then."
"Yes." Hermione sank onto her bed, too tired to find anger or the strength to make a quip. She unbuttoned her robes, fingers thick and unwieldy and hung them back in the wardrobe. As she pulled on a pair of plain robes, Severus shifted.
"Where are you going?"
"I need to report to Dumbledore," Hermione said. "It's important that he knows as soon as possible."
"You don't look like you can make it to his office," Severus said.
The energy to argue eluded her but Hermione's duty was clear, and she turned towards the door.
"Oh for god's sake - don't be ridiculous," Severus said. "I'll go. Obviously. Now, what do you need me to tell him?"
The relief was so great that Hermione almost cried. In halting sentences, she explained Lord Voldemort's plan. How they had to - had to under any circumstances - get the Horcruxes.
"If we don't have the Horcruxes by then there's no point in fighting him," Hermione said. "Even if we kill him he'll just be a wraith again and find another way to come back. It'll be so much harder - it could drag this out for another decade like last time."
"Yes yes, you already said all that," Severus said, making notes on a piece of parchment. He muttered a spell at the paper and tucked it in an inner pocket of his robes.
"Right, I've got it. Now for the love of god get some fucking sleep, the baby needs it."
Severus left the room without another word, and Hermione sank onto the bed, so exhausted that she couldn't keep her eyes open or remove her robes. It was typical Severus to keep his feelings for the baby separate and to split his ire and attention between then. Typical Severus, but the emotional strain might kill her.
The tumult left Hermione wrung out. Crawling under the covers and closing her eyes, her exhaustion relieved her. She wouldn't be lying awake for hours. All she craved was the bliss of sleep, and in short order, it came for her.
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The next day, after Hermione met with Dumbledore, she caught up with Severus, Alecto, Rabastan and Regulus.
"You need to hear this," she told them and didn't wait for protests.
Hermione led them outside. She could not bear another awkward meeting in their duelling practice room, with Severus avoiding her eyes, and the others shuffling and trying not to bring up the subject. The absence of Arabel would be an open wound in that situation. Instead, she led them towards the snow-covered forbidden forest.
"What are we going to do?" Alecto said when Hermione told them they must find the Horcruxes before the duelling final.
"Professor Dumbledore has all of his best people working on it," Hermione said. "He's spending hours trawling through the Dark Lord's memory. He's sending Aurors to double and triple check all of the locations I gave him, but since there was nothing there the first time I don't know…"
She kicked at a tree stump, unable to curb the rising sense of frustration at the mysteries surrounding them. Nobody spoke, and Rabstan said:
"I could check in the family library. There's some dark, really fucked up books in there. I bet they'd have some stuff about Horcruxes in them."
"Thanks, Rabastan," Hermione said. He nodded.
"You said the Lestrange vault was one of the locations, didn't you? Has anyone been down there? I can't possibly imagine they could get the goblins to let them in unless they were a Lestrange."
"I'm not sure," Hermione said, frowning. "The last time we did it, we just broke in. I don't know how Dumbledore checked. Perhaps he had someone look at the vault inventory."
She paused. Rabastan was staring at Hermione like she'd grown an extra head.
"You broke into my vault?"
"Not yours," she corrected. "The Lestrange family vault."
Rabastan's eyes bugged and Regulus gaped.
"What the fuck," Rabastan said.
Severus scratched his head, confused. Rabastan, catching this, explained. "Our vault is one of the oldest and most valuable in Gringotts. The protection on it should kill anyone coming near. They should be crushed, burned alive and trapped inside the vault. On top of that, there's a dragon set to guard it."
"Oh yes," Hermione murmured. It had become a fond memory. "We set it free."
"I…" Rabastan spluttered without forming words, and Regulus began to laugh.
"You set a dragon free? What is wrong with you Hermione?"
"It was cruel to keep it down there!" Hermione protested.
The conversation showed every sign of continuing, but Severus coughed, and everyone turned.
"I wonder if perhaps we could keep this update on track. Once it is over some of us have places to be."
"Oh yes," Hermione said, stopping in her tracks. She sighed. It was the first time in weeks any of her friends had talked to her as though nothing was wrong. But Severus was right - she needed to ask the pertinent question.
"Has anyone heard from Arabel?"
Rabastan shook his head, and so did Alecto, but Regulus shrugged. He blushed.
"Eh not really. Sort of. I know she's okay."
"How?" Hermione asked. "Dumbledore said we wouldn't be able to have any contact with her. He said it was too dangerous."
Regulus scuffed his shoe against a snowdrift.
"We have a piece of charmed parchment so we can keep in touch," he said, his eyes fixed on the snow and his cheeks flaming.
They all stared at him for a moment.
"That's - brilliant," Hermione said. "And she was carrying it when she left? Thank god! Do you know where she is? Is she in any danger? Who was the auror that helped her escape."
Regulus shrugged. "I don't know. She wouldn't tell me where she was, she said it was too dangerous to say anything."
"That's fair," Hermione said. "But if we can contact her we can use her! Can you ask her if she could do any investigating from where she is? We need to find out how Grindelwald ended up dead. I'm sure it's connected to all of this somehow."
An awkward silence fell, and Rabastan became interested in a bowtruckle peering out of a tree. Regulus coughed.
"What?" Hermione said.
"There's no point wasting Arabel's time on how Grindelwald died," Severus snapped.
It took Hermione a second to understand and her cheeks burned.
"Right. You all think I killed him," she said tightly.
"Hermione -" Alecto said apologetically, but in her fury, Hermione turned and marched away, determined that she would have no more to do with this. The snow clung to her ankles and made making a dignified retreat difficult, but she ploughed onwards back towards the castle, fuming.
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The next months became the longest term Hermione had ever known at Hogwarts. January blurred into February and February spilt into March. The seventh years prepared for their NEWTS and anticipation was growing for the duelling final, but Hermione was unaware.
Life had become a waking nightmare. Sharing a room with Severus was the cruellest torture devised. Every morning she woke to see him under the blankets, his hair fanning the pillow and his face at rest. She had thought time would dull his anger, but it had not. It had made him more distant.
Hermione believed Severus was struggling. He flinched when she caught him staring at her, and he arrived back to their rooms late at night. She tried to talk to him, hoping to break him from the stupor he had sunk into, but nothing worked. One late February evening when the halls whistled with the raging wind and snow fell outside the castle walls she had stayed up late.
Severus had arrived with snow in his hair, out of breath. His flushed cheeks had turned sallow when he saw her sitting up in bed, still awake.
"Severus," she had said. "Can I talk to you?"
"Is the baby alright?" he asked at once, taking an involuntary half-step towards her.
"The baby is fine," she said. "I just wanted to talk - please. It's been two months. Can't we talk like adults about this? I know I made a mistake but living like this - it's killing us."
It was a poor choice of words. Severus's gaze shuttered at the word 'killing'.
"Oh come on," she had said, in rising frustration. "You won't even talk to me! He was a bastard anyway, you can't deny that."
It was nothing that she hadn't said before, but this time Severus didn't rise to the bait and become angry. Now he was merely sad. Quiet and withdrawn. Calm.
"It's not who he was," he said wearily. "It's that you did it at all."
"But -"
Severus raised his hand.
"Stop. Please, Hermione, you have to stop. Don't you think this hurts me too?" And it did hurt him. The pain was on his lined forehead and the creases at the corners of his mouth.
"I just need you," she said, and it was so simple and true that saying it made her raw
He swallowed. "I need you to...stop. I can't do this. I have never been able to control my own life. There was always someone - my father, Dumbledore, Voldemort - someone having the final word. I can't be with someone else like that."
"But…" Hermione had whispered. "Don't you love me?"
Severus had shaken his head in frustration. "That's not the - Christ Hermione don't you know? I love you more than I've ever loved anyone in my life. Don't you see that's what makes this so hard?"
"I'm sorry," she said, crying again, deep ugly sobs. "Severus I'm sorry. I love you so much. I'd do anything to go back in time and undo it."
He sank to his knees, staring with such yearning that it made her heartache. She reached out, her hands trembling, but when she touched his face, he jerked back like an electric shock. He leaned back into her touch, closing his eyes as she stroked his face.
"No…" It was half a moan, half a sob.
He had grabbed her face in his hands and crushed her to him, kissing her so hard it was barely a kiss at all. They clawed at each other, frantic, desperate for the comfort and relief of the other's body. Both of them were crying when they came together, and Hermione beat her fists against his back.
"Damn you, Severus," she whispered.
After they finished, Severus rose from her bed and dressed, his face tortured.
"That was a - a mistake," he said, voice breaking.
"How can it be a mistake? Please!"
"I can't," Severus said, his voice so ragged it tore at her. "I can't. Please Hermione - if you love me you need to leave me."
"But I can't -"
"You know too much!" His words were a howl. "You know everything about me! All of my secrets, all my shame, and hurts, everything! How can I bear it? What will it be next? I'm surprised you didn't kill James Potter when you arrived, given that you arrived here knowing everything he ever did to me!"
Hermione bit her lip. It was impossible to answer, and she could not tell Severus the truth about James yet.
"I knew about your father because you told me," she said.
"And you didn't already know before I told you?"
Hermione hesitated, and Severus nodded.
"Exactly. So please - please - just let me go."
And he had gone, leaving the room to stay who knows where. Since that night, Hermione hadn't spoken a word to him. She hadn't spoken a word to anybody. Arabel - the one person who had still sought her out - had gone to a safe house. At least, Dumbledore swore it was safe.
Arabel's family had been furious at her disappearance. Voldemort had raged too but accepted Hermione's explanation that Dumbledore had spirited her away. Dumbledore himself would not confide in anybody where Arabel was, claiming it would be dangerous. Hermione's letters returned unopened, and she assumed Arabels' post was blocked. But her absence created a hole. Hermione missed her wit, her sparkle, her slyness and her energy. Nobody matched Arabel.
How could such a spark of life have disappeared from history?
Arabel had never existed in Hermione's time. Nobody had mentioned an Arabel Selwyn, she had featured in no Death Eater event and taken part in nothing that ever drew attention to her name. It struck Hermione as extraordinary that no records existed. Even the most unexceptional member of Hogwarts she at least had a vague notion of. There weren't that many witches and wizards in the world.
Mystery upon mystery. Who had killed Grindelwald, and for what purpose? Why had they tried to frame her? Where were the Horcruxes? How had Arabel managed to vanish herself from history?
Hermione tossed and turned at night with the questions that would not leave her alone. During the day she devoted herself to a frantic search for the truth. She was sure, somehow, that Grindelwald was involved in this - so she started with him.
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Madam Pince sucked her teeth suspiciously when Hermione asked for books concerning Eastern-European wizarding history. Scowling and muttering, the librarian directed her to a small corner where three bookshelves framed an alcove with a table.
"Which shelf?" Hermione asked.
"All of them."
"There's this many?" Hermione said, astonished. She was sure the Hogwarts library of her time had only one shelf about Grindelwald. Could Dumbledore have removed them?
"It was a major event in wizarding history," Madam Pince snapped. "The Hogwarts library boasts the finest collection of texts anywhere in Europe."
Hermione murmured hasty apologies for ever doubting the comprehensiveness of the Hogwarts library. Staring at the shelves, a small bubble of excitement grew in her chest. This was something she could do. She examined the shelves trailing a finger along the book spines and breathing in the musty smell of parchment. She hadn't spent much time in the library in this timeline - she had been too busy with people. But now the people were out of the picture...
It was a quiet March afternoon. Most students were outside enjoying the rare sunny day. A few Japanese students huddled over their books in the next row, but they didn't spare her a glance. Hermione breathed freely, and pulled the first book from the shelf, placing it on the table. She opened her bag and put a neat stack of blank parchment and two quills beside the tome. Everything was perfect. Opening the book, she began to read.
The afternoon passed, but Hermione didn't notice. The text absorbed her, drawing her in, the silence only broken by the scratching of her quill on parchment. She read about Gellert Grindelwald's time at Durmstrang and his Dark Arts that led to his expulsion. One book contained a heavily condensed history of Gellert's time in England, but Albus Dumbledore wasn't mentioned. That story wouldn't make its way into the public eye for another twenty years - or maybe not at all if events turned out differently.
A brief note in one book discussed Grindelwald's relationship with Erga Scamander and an even shorter paragraph mentioned a child. Erga Scamander had faced disgrace for her exploits with Grindelwald. Neither Erga nor the child appeared again in the books, though Hermione searched and searched.
The hour grew late, and at last, Hermione closed The Rise and Fall of Grindelwald with a snap. Her stomach was rumbling, and she couldn't concentrate any longer. Note-covered parchment was scattered across the table, but none of it seemed helpful. Still, many more books remained, and Hermione was sure that she would find the answer somewhere in these shelves.
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After that first afternoon, the library became Hermione's refuge in a way that was so familiar to her first time at Hogwarts that the irony did not escape her. But this time she was researching with a sharp focus, trying to find an answer that might save their lives. If someone had killed Ivan Grindelwald, were they a friend of hers? Or a mutual enemy?
As the weeks went by, however, the search did not bear fruit. Even the recent books that detailed Grindelwald's exploits with Erga Scamander only discussed their child, Reuben Scamander, and never mentioned later descendants. By the time the end of term rolled around, Hermione was worried she would never find the answer. Would her time be better spent researching the Horcruxes? Yet she couldn't contemplate leaving the books.
On the last day of term, Hermione had an unpleasant shock when she returned to the room she shared with Severus and found him packing.
"You're leaving," she said blankly, startled out of their usual silence towards one another.
Severus's lips tightened. "Of course I'm leaving. My mother needs someone to help her around the house and make sure she's alright. They discharged her from St Mungo's, but she hasn't been doing very well lately."
Hermione swallowed. She didn't rise to the bait. They'd had this particular conversation too many times, and she should have seen this coming. Severus's father had been the only thing stopping him going home for holidays. But it stung. Even more painful was the relief that she wouldn't have to fight with him for two weeks. She wondered, her stomach twisting as she did if this was the first step towards admitting it was over.
It had been three months. If Severus was going to get over it, it would probably have happened by now.
"Great," she said, looking away. "Have a nice holiday."
Severus didn't reply, but at least he did not scoff. When Hermione awoke on the first day of the Easter holidays, he was already gone, and the room was empty.
Hermione made a cup of coffee in the empty room. She was free, but it was a hollow freeness. Nobody was watching her or leaving the room the moment that Hermione entered. She could make a cup of coffee without Severus walking out. But she was alone. Utterly alone.
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Trying to get these chapters up quickly because I hate leaving this story hanging on sad notes. I wish I was still writing the weddings, epic duels and exciting plots part of the story...sigh. They'll be back.
Cas
