Beta love to the ever patient CarbConnoisseur
"Pads?" Hermione whispered as she walked into the living room in the middle of the night. Sleep had remained elusive, and for once Draco was peaceful. She didn't want to disturb him. The familiar black dog looked at her and whined. "Oh Snuffles," she murmured, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Do you want to hear a story?"
The dog thunked its head onto her lap and looked at her expectantly. Hermione huffed out a laugh, stroking a hand repeatedly over his head.
"Once upon a time, there was a brilliant boy, whose star was the brightest in the sky. One day, the boy made a terrible decision when he was drowning in grief and he was taken away, locked up inside an unforgiving prison in the middle of the sea. But the boy did not break. Even though the years were long and the conditions were ruthless, he remained strong, listening for any news of his Pup, anything that meant he knew he was safe. And sometimes, when it all got too much, the boy became a dog, allowing it to soothe his mind.
Several years later, a man came to visit and he left the boy, who was no longer a boy, his newspaper. The newspaper showed the evil rat on the shoulder of his Pup's best friend. It was then that the man knew his Pup wasn't safe and he needed to get to Hogwarts. And so he did. He changed into a dog and slipped through the bars, snuck past the guards, and threw himself at the mercy of the sea. The sea, while cold and harsh, was no match for the man's determination to keep his Pup safe, and so he swam, making it to land before walking the length of the country, catching glimpses of his Pup as he went.
One day, he got lucky and he managed to catch the boy and the evil rat, but his Pup…his Pup was forgiving and begged him not to kill the rat and instead to hand him over to be punished. And so he did. But the rat escaped, forgetting he owed the Pup a life debt. The man was angry, but he had his Pup and Gods, did that boy love him more than anyone else in the world." Hermione bit her lip in an attempt to stem the tears. "The man became the boy's home, his family and…he adored him."
"And the rat?" Remus whispered from the shadows, making Hermione jump.
"The rat paid for his life debt with his life," she answered quietly, her voice hard as she shifted to allow Remus to sit next to her, all three of them finally falling into an exhausted sleep, piled on the sofa.
The Order was subdued when they met the following night. None of them were sure they were ready for whatever was coming next. The residents of Potter Manor were particularly jumpy. Their faith in their world was rocked down to its foundations. None of them had been able to process any of the past few weeks.
"Peter Pettigrew will be put on trial in a month," Amelia spoke into the uncomfortable silence. "He….we extracted some memories. I'm so sorry, but none of it looks good."
"So Azkaban?" Sirius asked quietly.
"I don't know. There is talk of the Kiss," Amelia admitted. "Animagi are hard to hold, even in somewhere as formidable as Azkaban, especially one as small as he is. All it takes is one small slip up and he'd escape. It doesn't help that Dementors are not humans. They do not think as we do and they do not see what we see. They…feel emotions, I suppose, rather than being able to actually see a person. That makes them vulnerable in a sense."
"Fuck," James swore.
Amelia smiled sadly at him. "It's not ideal."
"No," he whispered, unsure how to feel about his friend being Kissed, even knowing what he knew now. Peter would have killed him, had killed him in the timeline Hermione and Draco came from, but he was struggling to combine Peter the Death Eater with Peter the boy who had been one of his best friends since first year. When had it gone so wrong? What had tipped him over the edge? They loved him. He was a Marauder and if he had been asked a month ago, he'd have sworn on his magic that none of them would ever betray the others. But now? He wasn't sure about anything.
"I…I think this year we're just going to stick to the basics," Hermione said faintly into the silence. Her face was sickly pale and she was pressed so tightly against Draco's side that it was like she was trying to burrow under his skin. He didn't look much better. Although none of them would admit it, that scared them more than anything else. Draco had managed to mostly maintain a reasonable facade during the retelling of their lives. To see him look so fearful was unnerving.
"I think…." Dorea began, "I think that if you feel up to it then perhaps we need a little more than that. You know what they're capable of and perhaps some of us need that reminder."
Hermione swallowed visibly and bit her lip. "I'll try," she said finally. "As…as I said, we were staying with the Order for the summer. Molly was planning Bill's wedding and I had been packing for weeks. The wedding was ambushed by Death Eaters. Harry, Ron, and I got away, but not everyone was so lucky. We went to Grimmauld Place first. We had no idea what we were really looking for beyond Slytherin's locket. The one Harry and Dumbledore had removed from the cave before Dumbledore's death was a fake. Inside it was a note signed by an R.A.B. It took us a few days to realise what those initials stood for."
"Regulus?" Sirius questioned quietly.
"Yes. Voldemort had asked for Kreacher and seeing the state Kreacher returned in was enough for Regulus to have an epiphany of sorts, or so Kreacher said. He demanded Kreacher take him back and destroy the locket." She paused, her face clearly unsure.
"How did he die, Kitten?"
Hermione flinched. "Inferi," she whispered, tears already beginning to fall at the broken look on Sirius' face. "It won't happen this time. We won't let it!"
"How?" he asked harshly.
"We know when he dies. If we can't get to him before Kreacher is called, we'll…intercept."
"So you can die instead?" he snarled, his face twisted.
"If we need to," she replied quietly.
"No! Fucking no!" Everyone jumped as Sirius slammed his hands down on the top of the table.
"We both came back knowing we were unlikely to survive the next conflict, Sirius," she said softly. "If that's what needs to happen, we've….we've made some sort of peace with it, I suppose. The plan is that we'll have all the others dealt with before then. Whoever's left can take out Voldemort."
The flash of pain that crossed Draco's face indicated that he hadn't quite accepted it as well as she said. The entire Order was still, watching her in horror.
"You cannot be serious?" Morag McKinnon voiced faintly.
"About which bit?" Hermione asked politely as if they weren't discussing her death.
"You…you cannot want to die!"
"I don't…want wouldn't be the word I'd use," she admitted slowly. "But…I've been asked to compromise my personal safety for the sake of the Wizarding world every year since I was twelve. I have thought I was going to die or have come close to dying more times than I really want to count. After…after everything turned properly to shit and we were no longer fighting but desperately just trying to survive, I think…I think I realised that there was very little chance of actually being allowed to live. I'm…tired. So, so fucking tired. This needs to end and if I have to die to make that happen….well…I like to think that everyone I love is waiting for me. I miss them. Maybe it won't be so bad."
The Order slowly processed her words, many of them wondering how they had managed to fail so horribly that an eighteen-year-old witch had just admitted that she was willing to die to end this War. Charlus felt like his heart had been ripped from his chest. This girl, his girl, was willing, ready, to give up her life again for their safety. He had never wanted to murder anyone more than he currently wanted to murder Albus. He had set this in motion and he wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to forgive him. As he scanned the room, his eyes landed briefly on Draco. He looked nowhere near as accepting as Hermione. In fact, if he was honest, the boy looked ready to break down. His arm was wrapped around Hermione so tightly it had to be painful and his mask had all but disintegrated. If he had ever wondered if the boy truly loved his granddaughter, he knew for sure now.
"You can't die, Princess," he heard him whisper. "I know what we said but you can't." It was as close to begging as Charlus had ever heard from him.
"We might not have a choice," Hermione responded softly. "You…you have to keep your head. If I die getting the locket, you can't do anything stupid. You have to finish this. Promise me."
Draco was shaking his head frantically. "Please don't make me," he whispered.
Tears began falling down Hermione's cheeks. "I…fuck. I can't live through that again. It needs to end."
"What was the point in living through it if you die! I can't do this without you! I won't!" Draco shouted suddenly, his control shattering, unable to genuinely contemplate her death.
"Maybe the point was so that everyone else gets to live," she said softly, her face completely blank. "And you can. You, Draco Malfoy, have a long, happy life ahead of you. We just need to get through this last bit."
"Not without you," he insisted.
"Oh, Draco. I really want to believe it's possible, but we need to face the fact that you might not have a choice."
"No!" he growled, shoving back from the table and storming from the room. To everyone's surprise, it was Severus who got to a sobbing Hermione first, pulling her onto his lap and squeezing her tightly. None of them could hear what he was saying.
Charlus rose quietly, leaving the room in search of Draco, hoping he wasn't going to do anything stupid. He found him in the library, sobs wracking their way through his thin form as he huddled in on himself.
"Perhaps it's time to insist on that talk now," he said gently, sitting down next to him.
"How can she…how can she just accept that she's likely to die?" he asked once he had calmed himself down enough to speak. "It's…it's like she doesn't care, like she sees it as an irritating detail….like she's planning on fucking leaving me alone. I…I can't. I have no fucking idea how to do this without her. Everyone else is dead. She's all I've got left and she's… she's fucking planning to die! She can't fucking leave me!"
"I don't think she would if she felt like she had a choice," Charlus replied gently, wondering who he was trying to convince.
"She does have a fucking choice though!"
"She doesn't think so," he commented mildly.
"I know," Draco whispered. "I know but….I can't breathe every time she brings it up. She is… she's fucking everything and I can't just watch her allow herself to die. We…what is the fucking point in fighting any of it if she's dead?" The look Draco gave him as he finally lifted his head to look at him would stay with him for the rest of his life. If he thought the boy had looked broken before, it was nothing compared to the complete devastation on his face now. "We used to talk, you know, about life after the war?" He gave a broken sob-like laugh as his head thunked back against the wall. "Salazar, we were so fucking naive. We used to believe that it would one day be over, that life wouldn't fucking look like this. We never, not once, considered that Harry wouldn't win, that things would end the way they did. We…we talked about how we would manage. She'd tease me about how I'd have to lower my standards drastically because even at our most idealistic, we both knew my father would never accept us. I was…prepared…ready to be disowned. I had her. It was fine. We used to talk about children and jobs and marriage and…..and now she's fucking planning to die. I…want…I need that future we spoke about. Haven't we done enough? Don't we deserve it? How much fucking more does this world want from us? It's taken everyone else. It can't have her too."
Charlus swallowed harshly, his chest constricting at the desolate sound of the boy's voice. "You've done more than enough," he said honestly, not trusting himself to say anything else.
"Hush now little Pygmy puff," Severus crooned in her ear as he rocked her, blocking out the stunned faces of the Order and focusing on the deceptively tiny woman in his arms. Draco had been right. The remnants of the bond created when his future self had sworn an oath as his Godfather were there, magic only knew why, and through him, something was linking him to this terrifying little witch who had saved his life and managed the impossible by getting Lily to speak to him again. He owed her more than he felt comfortable with, not that she had mentioned it, which was both terrifying and refreshing because Severus got the impression that she very much did not do things because she was getting something in return, which was an entirely new experience. He'd been getting to know her over the last week, popping in to see her and Draco daily, and while it wasn't like him to trust someone blindly, the pull on his magic wasn't something he was willing to ignore. And now, now she was apparently planning to die so that the rest of them could have peace. It was unfathomable, and if he had his way she'd be doing nothing of the fucking sort, so he rocked her, this tiny witch that felt like family, and he tried to come up with an alternative plan.
"I think he hates me, Severus." As close as she was, he still had to strain to hear her.
"That's nonsense and you know it, little puff. Draco loves you. That's why he's so upset."
"I don't actually want to die, you know," she whispered.
"I should bloody well hope not," he muttered.
"I just….there's a high chance one of us will if we can't get Regulus in time or we're not quick enough when we're in that cave, and I can't watch someone else I love die. I barely survived the last round of deaths. And… it would be so much worse if he died. I need him to be happy and safe and alive."
"You don't think he feels the same way?" Severus queried softly.
Hermione burrowed closer, breathing in the soothing scents of potions and Severus that apparently the man had always had. If she closed her eyes she could almost make herself believe that he was her Severus–the man who, despite his sarcasm, always gave the best advice and who had done more to keep them safe than almost any other adult in their lives.
"I don't know what else to do, Severus," she murmured softly. "We may need to make that decision and I can't argue with him while we're there."
Severus hummed, still rocking her. "And if neither of you went?"
"We can't let someone else die!"
"Why does it have to be you, little Puff. Haven't you done enough?" he asked gently.
"They all look so…whole…so alive," she whispered. "They weren't really real, most of them, in my time and now they are. And…I'm not sure I am whole. I think the war took pieces of me I'll never get back." She turned her head slightly, keeping it anchored on his chest, as she stared down at her forearm, stroking her finger down the line of the last remnants of her friends.
One of Severus' hands moved to still hers. "You can get better," he said softly. "You can learn to live. You can have a life that's not fighting and war and death. You'll never forget them, little Puff, but in order to honour them and what they sacrificed, you have to live. Who do they represent?"
She stilled in his arms, wondering if he was right. "Harry," she began softly, stroking a finger over the snitch, not noticing the avid attention the Order was paying to her words now that they could hear them. "Youngest seeker in a Century, he was…so, so fucking brave. He took everything that was thrown at him and he ran with it when many would have crumbled under the pressure. He was my best friend, my baby brother and….I miss him, so fucking much."
Severus hummed, still rocking her like a child. "The chess piece?"
"Ron. He was….hot-headed and a bit of an arse at times, but he was our arse. He was so fucking good at strategy and cordinating atacks. During our first year he was the chess knight when we played McGonagall's giant game. He was the…playfulness Harry needed. It balanced out my studiousness. We were…linked irrevocably, the only two people who truly understood what it took to keep Harry functioning at points. He sacrificed himself so we could move on during that chess match and he did it again during that last year. He stepped in front of a curse meant for me and told me to run. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for leaving him there."
Gingerly, not entirely sure he knew what he was doing, Severus produced a handkerchief from his robes and wiped the tears that had begun falling down her face again. Comfort was not his strong suit.
"From what you've said, I very much doubt you had a choice," he murmured. "Who is the broom for?"
"Ginny. She was….Quidditch mad, and determined, and fiery. No one messed with Gin. She was fucking terrifying when she got going. She was so full of life and had so many plans. She adored Harry. They were supposed to get through the war and pop out hundreds of tiny messy haired babies for Harry to look after while she played professional Quiddich. I almost got fire for her, but when I close my eyes I can see her, hair flying as she zooms about on a fucking broomstick doing tricks to give me a heart attack looking so…free."
"For someone so bloody terrifying, I can't believe that broom tricks is what it takes to unnerve you," he huffed, inwardly relieved when she gave a small smile. "What about the fireworks?"
"Fred and George. They…I didn't always understand them and they drove me fucking insane with their attitude to school. They were so immensely clever though. Their inventions were amazing, but their fireworks were the best. They left school without sitting their NEWTS but sent a firework dragon at Umbridge and left a portable swamp she couldn't get rid of. They were fiercely loyal and looked out for me more than once when one of the boys was being an arse. I used to consult for them on some of their products before we were forced to go on the run. They made me take myself less seriously and have some fun."
Severus hummed, watching her run a finger over the exploding fireworks. "What about the plant? I don't think I recognise it."
"Mimbulus mimbletonia," she murmured. "It's for Neville. He was…underestimated his entire life. He was brilliant at herbology, like genius level brilliant, and my first ever friend. He was loyal to a fault and so brave in this sort of quiet, understated way. He kept the Carrows from torturing the younger years during his seventh year. He helped so many people get to safety, and he died taking out one of Voldemort's Horcruxes. Nagini got him in the end, but he fucking took her with him."
"And the….odd glasses?"
"Spectrespecs. Luna…she was everything I'm not. We didn't always agree. I found her ability to invent things and believe in fantasy frustrating. She found my refusal to see beyond the written word limiting. But she was one of the best friends I ever had. She would have done anything for any of us. She had a unique way of looking at things….She was….my balance. She forced me to look beyond what was in front of me, and if I'm honest, she is the only reason I accepted Draco's apology. I'd give just about anything to be able to ask her advice now."
"Oh my little puff," he muttered, wishing for quite possibly the first time in his life that he could take someone else's pain for them. The broken tone in her voice as she described her friends seemed to physically hurt and it made him want to break something….like Albus' face. "All those people, they've not gone far, you know. Given how much you clearly loved them, they couldn't. Tell me what that Luna of yours would have said. I know you know."
Hermione sighed. "She'd….she'd tell me that there were too many Nargles about and my aura was sad. And she'd remind me that we're not alone, not really. And…and she'd tell me she was right there….and….and when the time came she'd be with me because we're friends and that's what friends do."
"I have no idea what a Nargle is and I'm afraid I cannot see your aura," he admitted slowly, privately wondering if the witch had been entirely sane. "But if you are determined that it has to be you that does this when the time comes, I will be with you because I'd like to think we're becoming friends….and that's what friends do." At that, he gathered the witch firmly against him as she cried…again.
"Thank you, Severus," she mumbled against his neck once she was calm enough to speak. "I think I'd like to see Draco now."
He nodded, releasing her, watching as she darted from the room. Slowly he turned back towards the Order.
"Thank you," Lily whispered, tear tracks visible on her face. He nodded sharply.
"I owe you an apology," his head snapped up to stare directly at the distraught face of the boy who had made his school years hell. He wasn't sure he had ever seen Sirius Black look anything other than furious or cocky and he wasn't sure what to do with it.
"Oh?"
"I…I didn't trust Hermione and Draco when they spoke about you. But…I don't think I would have handled her like that properly. I want to fucking hit something every time she cries and hearing her talk about her death like it's nothing, seeing that look on my cousin's face….I'm struggling to remain in control. I…I want to apologise for my behaviour at school. What we…what I did was unforgivable and you didn't deserve any of it. So…I'm sorry."
"I…what do you want me to do with that, Black?"
Sirius shrugged. "I don't imagine we'll ever be friends, but I imagine we'll see each other. Hermione and Draco aren't likely to let you go any time soon, so…maybe we try for that civility she asked for."
Severus nodded slowly, letting out a long exhale. "Fine. Civility."
"Thank you," Sirius said softly, sinking into Remus' side, listening patiently as Remus and James made similar apologies. Lily smiled through her tears beside them as Dorea watched, torn between pride that her boys were finally growing up and terror that her granddaughter was even more reckless than Sirius at his worst.