A/N: You'll probably notice that my Death Eaters look a bit different from the movie portrayal. If you're interested in getting a glimpse of how I've attired them/designed them, I have a few pieces of art I did of Snape in his DE uniform (though they're not actually illustrations for this fic in particular. They can be found on my DeviantArt (username Mothboss) under the titles:
"Music To Chant Morsmordre To"
"We Dem Boys"
And "A Very Snape-y Character Sheet"
"Listen!
Trying to recruit is the mission
We offer you a position
Where Tech will rule and condition your brain
To know actin' a fool is the vision
Caribou Lou is tradition
And the way to be true to your living is strange"
"Technicians" – Tech N9ne
Beneath her feet she felt the spongey turf of a well-irrigated field. The Death Eater behind her allowed her to fall forward, and she was unable to catch herself with her hands, her head ricocheting off the scrubby ground in front of her.
Her fall was greeted with raucous laughter and she felt rather than heard them drop Declan to her left. When she turned her head, her mouth coming away with bits of grass and moss, she saw his frozen visage staring back at her. The only thing that moved on him were his eyes.
One of the men grabbed first her right hand, and then her left, wrenching them behind her back so that her shoulders screamed in protest, then affixed them, bound at the wrist and elbow so that she was unable to move her arms even an inch.
One of the other men stood over her, feet to both sides of her body as he spelled her legs together with rope, bound at the knees and ankles, then bending them up and attaching her ankle bindings to her wrists so that she was arched in a crescent shape. Hog-tied like a sow.
They released her jinx just to watch her writhe and flex with helpless futility. The laughter inspired tears of anger and humiliation. The indignity of her position stirred the tears of frustration. She wasn't sure that they tasted any different, but they ought to have. Surely, they should have. Both were salty as sea brine, and yet somehow the flavour of fury was so different, perhaps tinged with the sulphurous volcanic rage she felt, when compared to the taste of hopes dashed, fears realised. Destruction all but assured. That tasted like shit. Nothing more and nothing less.
"Go and set the wards," the main Death Eater, Number One, directed. His mask had two shiny golden front teeth to show his superior position. The other two plodded off, the sounds of their footsteps squelching away several hundred feet. Hermione could hear the chanting as they set up Muggle-Repelling charms around the perimeter, as well as a few well-placed Notice-Me-Nots and a large-scale glamour to obscure their presence.
The three didn't deign to speak to their captives as they waited, and Hermione had no desire to use her faculty for speech to talk back to them, either. They'd taken seats a few meters off behind where she lay on her side, and she could hear them as they made themselves comfortable, waiting in vain for the potion they assumed Declan had taken to wear off.
She glanced at the muggle man who'd been unwittingly drawn into the kidnapping.
"I don't want to scare you..." she began, watching as his eyes, which had already been wide with terror seemed to dance frantically in their sockets with her exposition, "but we may not make it out of this." Hermione swallowed thickly, tasting dirt on her tongue.
"I'm really sorry." She whispered. "This doesn't have anything to do with you, and... if there's any chance of one of us making it out, I'm going to try and get you out, okay?" she asked, her voice bordering on frantic.
Declan let out a strained grunt, his eyes, if possible, going even wider.
"They want me. Me and Severus—if they find out you're not him they might wipe your memory and let you go..." she mused aloud. It was wishful thinking, she knew, but that was all she could hold on to.
"I... if you make it, Declan, tell Severus I love him, alright?" The witch pleaded with the petrified muggle beside her. "And tell him... tell him to kiss Marcus for me? Tell him not to go after them, please?" Her voice dipped into a choked sob. "I don't... I d-don't want him t-to be a... an orphan," she whimpered, snorting in a breath through her nose which had begun to run.
She heard the stomping of boots approaching and then stop behind her. All was still as her eyes widened and she drew in ragged breaths before pain exploded in her back, knocking the wind out of her and causing blood to spew from her mouth when she bit down on her tongue.
"Shut. The fuck. Up." The wizard behind her enunciated. "We gotta sit here for a fuckin' hour waiting on your man here to turn back, n' I don' wanna' hear your whinging the whole time."
She couldn't help the whimper that escaped.
"Don't say I didn't warn you. Silencio!"
Any further sound she might have made was now utterly eradicated. She tested her faculty for speech and produced no noise. Even the wheezes she suspected that her injured ribs ought to produce were stifled by the man's magic.
It didn't seem possible that Declan could look any more scared, and yet with each new event in the procession of horrors, his face, in so far that he had any ability to move it, morphed further into a mask of nearly indescribable apprehension.
Hermione sent him a wry grin, feeling the blood that coated her teeth. It was probably far from reassuring, as the man's cheeks looked wet with tears.
"It's OK," she mouthed to him.
The minutes ticked by, time seeming both longer, and shorter than normal. She could feel itches and scratches come and go—likely from flies and gnats that lived in the field landing on her and then fleeing when she twitched her limbs to dislodge them. They were certainly coming and going from Declan quite frequently, given that he wasn't able to move in any way that discouraged their visits to his sweat-slicked skin.
They seemed to take an especial interest in her face where they could smell the fresh blood.
"Cal, he ain't changin'." That was from Number Two. The man who'd kicked her.
"Well, give it a moment,"
"It's been an hour already," a third voice groused with ill temper. "I'm getting eaten alive out here."
There came an annoyed sigh, "Cast a repelling charm, idiot. It takes as long as it takes, you're not being paid for time."
"Bruv, it's been longer than an hour," came the voice of Number Two again. "I don't think ee's changin'. What if that's not 'im?"
All three approached and one man stood over Declan, bodily turning him from his side onto his back.
"Keep your wands on him,"
"He didn't have one on him when we checked him." Number Three added.
"Snape's known for wandless magic," the man straddling him, presumably Cal, mused, "can't be too careful."
"I don't know of any Polyjuice variants that last longer than an hour."
"Snape's a Potions Master, if anyone knew of a way to rig that up it'd be him. Stop questioning me— we wait." The man's voice was a forbidding hiss, it fully communicated his impatience with his compatriots.
"We don't have the time, Cal, these fields are already under scrutiny—"
Cal turned to the left and seemed to be pinning Number Three with a glare, or else Hermione supposed so. It was impossible to tell through the mask's magically shadowed eye sockets. "What. Do. You. Mean?" He ground out.
"It were reported in the papers few weeks ago." Number Two dutifully reported. "Muggles are interested in the circles made by our wards flattenin' the grass."
Cal scoffed. "The circles? What's so interesting about a bunch of circles?"
Number Three looked sheepish. "See, most of the muggles aren't interested, but some…"
"Some?" Cal prompted, impatience clear in the way his knuckles tightened around his wand.
"Some think it's aliens."
Cal swore a florid litany of curses. "Aliens!?" He spat, "Like those late-night flicks?"
Number Two and Three nodded in tandem, one a bit sheepishly and one a decisive jerk of his cowled head.
"Like fucking 'Martians'?"
More nods.
"Un-fucking-believable." Cal sneered. He turned his attention back to Declan. "We'll have to expedite this then. I guess we'll have spent enough time on your game of hide-and-seek, Snape. Legilimens."
After several seconds Cal cancelled the same. "Fucking fat waste of time—"
"He block you?"
Cal laughed loudly and cancelled the petrification hex. "He had no walls at all! Bloke's just some muggle. Wrong place. Head filled with junk if you ask me. Thinks we're in some stupid cult," he spat at Declan's feet as the man struggled to sit up and shuffle away from the three as quickly as was possible laying prone on his back.
"I hate to admit it, Fergus—"
Number Two preened. "I were right—"
"You were right." Cal's body language suggested that had his eyes been visible he would have been rolling them along with his meager concession.
He spun and hit Declan with a leg-lock as the muggle was attempting to crab-walk his way away from the three wizards.
"Ah-ah-ah," crooned Cal in a cruel sing-song. "We may have a use for you, after all."
"W-what do you want with me? M-money? I can give you however much—"
"Shut up or I'll silence you like we did Granger, here." Cal drawled, his voice lazy with an obvious affectation of boredom. He seemed to be enjoying his position at the head of the team.
Hermione privately thought it likely that he didn't have much real power in his actual day to day life given the airs he seemed to be putting on.
"Or should I call you Snape?" He grinned unpleasantly at her. "After all, you're a married woman now, aren't you?"
Hermione stared him down for a moment and then spat at his feet, blood and saliva splattering against his boots and dragon-scale jodhpurs. Hebridean Black scales.
That was a bit odd... She could have sworn that when she'd seen the Death Eaters years before they had been wearing Chechen Chyornii scales on their uniforms... They were close enough in appearance that unless one made a careful study of dragonology, it would be difficult to notice the difference. If it hadn't been for her research on Norbert in her first year, it would have been beneath even her notice.
His boot kicked up a spray of dirt that flew in her face, the grit coming in contact with the delicate mucosa of her eyes. She screwed them up in pain.
"Speak!"
Number Three cleared his throat, "She can't, Cal, Fergus silenced her."
"Fuck. Finite Incantatem."
Hermione still didn't say a word.
Cal snarled at her. "Fergus?"
Fergus stomped back over to her and speared his hands into her hair, gripping it by the roots and hoisting her up. She couldn't stifle the squeal she made as her scalp bore the weight of her torso and her ribs, cracked as they likely were, protested the rough treatment.
"Gran-ger?" Cal's voice tinkled again, in the same dreadful sing-song he had employed earlier. He squatted in front of her, the glossy red of his mask only inches from her own face.
She swallowed the blood that had welled up once more from her injuries and licked her lips. "Snape. Snape was right."
He snorted and glanced up at the man who had her hair by the roots. "Drop her."
He did.
"Won't even repudiate your murderous husband? Tut-tut, one would think you were actually proud of him,"
"I am proud," she told the ground.
"Proud to be married to a Death Eater?" He gasped in mock surprise. "The great Hermione Granger? Muggleborn best friend of Harry Potter? Proud to be married to one of the Dark Lord's men?"
She turned her face off of the turf and looked at him, her brow furrowed. "He wasn't. Any Death Eater worth his salt knows Severus was a traitor to the cause," she blinked, looking a bit like an owl as she did so, before musing aloud: "any Death Eater worth his salt wouldn't know what an alien was..."
Pain exploded from her hip as Fergus delivered another swift kick from the back, this time catching her pelvis with his boot. "Ohhh, well spotted. We ain't Death Eaters, little bird," he breathed.
"Bet she wishes we were," Number Three sneered from where he stood watching over Declan, "maybe your husband's old crew would have saved you, traitorous bitch—"
Cal rose from his squat, "Now's not the time for anything personal. We've a job to do." He turned to her. "Where's Snape?"
"He's not coming,"
If the phone hadn't ended the call when she'd shoved it in her pocket, it surely had when they'd apparated her and it had disconnected from the closest tower.
"You were enough for us to come for by yourself, if I'm being honest, Granger, but when we checked your personnel file and saw that you'd taken vows—well. We waited."
"Snape were supposed t' be dead," Fergus growled.
"That he was, that he was." Cal nodded. "Imagine all of our surprise when we saw that we might manage a package deal."
Number Three seemed to be sulking, further away from the other two. "I'm the one who found it, it ought to be me who does it—"
"I'm still not sure why you care so much, but it's no gold out of my vault. She's all yours."
Three glanced down at Declan, who had taken the earlier advice to shut up to heart. "What'll we do with him?"
"Easy, he'll be her victim." Cal decided. "How much easier will it be to show that she's gone round the twist than by her killing a muggle?"
Declan let loose with a strangled keening sound that seemed to be wrung from the back of his throat, he had now turned onto his belly and was attempting to army-crawl away into the rushes where the perimeter of the circle gave way into natural growth.
Three sighed and aimed his wand at his back. "Incarcerous." Ropes flew from the tip of his wand, gnarled like the root of an infected plant, and wrapped all about the retreating muggle like twine around a roast.
His sobs were both pitiful and heart-wrenching and Hermione winced with sympathy.
Somehow, she knew that Severus would never be caught dead groveling and pleading for his own life.
"Well, it's only getting late, bring her here." Three demanded, crooking a finger to Cal and Fergus.
They both grasped her by an upper arm each and drug her forward, her shoulders screaming from their restricted range of motion. Her knees dragged along the ground through the dirt and she felt one of the legs of her jeans rip and begin to unravel where it caught against a sharp rock.
She was thrown to the ground at Number Three's feet and he used the heel of his boot to nudge her over to her side. His breathing was heavy with what Hermione imagined must have been anticipation.
"Her arm."
The witch felt her arms and legs release from their bonds but Fergus was quick to restrain her forcibly, both of his meaty hands pinning her from the wrist and the elbow so that her pale forearm was exposed and pointing up. Her right arm was grabbed by Cal, who grinned at her and sat his arse on her stomach, his weight—which was substantial—squeezing the breath out of her rather like an over-eager hand on a tube of toothpaste.
She felt like she was being stabbed from the inside. Her ribs, most likely.
They'd left her legs free, but the limbs were useless to do much more than flail as the entirety of her upper-body was physically pinned by two large men.
"Now, would'ja look at that?" She heard, as the sensation of a finger tracing along her flesh registered at the fringes of the pain she was working through.
"Guess someone got to her before you did." Cal laughed. "Mudblood," he read aloud.
"Granger the Mudblood Death Eater," Three spat in her face to punctuate his words. "Fitting for a blood traitor."
Hermione was too winded to respond, and stars were twinkling in her vision as it blackened around the edges. 'A blood traitor?' She wondered. Her?
'A traitor against whom? Against what?'
She hadn't time to figure it out.
"Give it to her." Number Three instructed.
Her right hand was closed around the comfortingly familiar texture of her wand and she blinked in surprise... 'Why—?'
"Imperio."
All further thought seeped from her brain. The pain she'd felt in her ribs. The inability to breathe. The weight of Cal and Fergus holding her down. Declan struggling a few meters away. Awareness of all of these details faded into obscurity. The witch smiled.
"I'm going to ask you a question, Hermione Snape." A smooth voice intoned. "You're going to say 'yes'."
"Alright," she agreed, her voice easy. Relaxed.
"I offer you my brand, my magic, my mark. I require your flesh, your audience, your discipleship. Do you agree?"
"Yes."
There was a brief pause as the tip of the gnarled-root wand was pressed against her left forearm, and then blinding, ferocious, red-hot agony.
It only registered in the back of her mind the words that had accompanied the bubbling and blackening of her skin.
"Morsmordre!"
Her legs kicked and bucked under Cal's weight, no rhyme or reason to their movements beyond the instinctive desire to escape, and the sound being ripped from her throat was one of sheer anguish. It began as a loud and urgent protest. A call for help.
It ended as a long, desperate whine, like an animal whose pain had been allowed to persist for too long and who likely wished for a swift death. It no longer had a pitch. Her vocal chords were shredded. It was a raspy rattle. Nearly infantile with helplessness.
It was worse than Bellatrix' repeated use of the Cruciatus, the only other large-scale pain she could compare it to. She would have put money on it having been worse than giving birth, though she rightfully hadn't experienced labour pains.
The skin of the brand had crisped like charcoal.
She lay beneath the three men, gasping for breath in great heaving movements that sent spasms through her lungs. Awareness of her pain had cut through the fug of the Imperius, but she was immobilised now by every nerve ending at once informing her that should she move, she'd regret it instantly.
She could hear Declan off in the distance, sobbing most likely. There was nothing like watching your companion be tortured to know that when your kidnappers say they intend to kill you, they mean business.
"How should we take care of 'im?" Fergus asked.
Cal, insofar as she could see his face, seemed thoughtful. "I think the Killing Curse should do the trick. It's going to be scandalous enough to find that Hermione Granger took a Dark Mark. Suggesting that she also killed a muggle in cold blood may be beyond believability if it looks too sadistic. Probably best to do it clean.
"Bring him over here, Fergus."
The burly man rose, his joints creaking as he stood and released her arms. She felt like she could finally drawl a breath after having been nearly suffocated.
There was a sound of something heavy being drawn through the dirt and grass, and Declan's weeping grew louder as he was thrown down next to her once more. The man wouldn't look at her. Wouldn't look at any of them.
"Merciful Mary, mother of Christ," he was muttering, his eyes cast heavenward as tears streamed down his filthy cheeks.
Calvin laughed loudly. "Whatever makes you feel better." He gave Declan's head a condescending little pat.
A throat was cleared. It was Number Three's. "Don't." He said forcefully. "It's not any of his fault he's here—let him make his peace."
Cal sneered up at Three from where he sat on her stomach. "Don't tell me you believe in that shit,"
"It's none of your business if I do or don't. But he's meeting his maker tonight, and unlike Granger," he spat her name, "he didn't do anything to deserve it. Don't make this worse than it has to be."
Not for the first time, Hermione was left to wonder exactly what she'd done that had warranted the man's ire.
"I am sorry," Three murmured to Declan. "I don't have anything against Muggles. Half of my family's non-magical. My uncle was a deacon. If you need to say a few words, I understand."
Declan had rolled away from him, onto his side, refusing to look at the man who attempting to give a pretext to killing him in cold blood.
"Come on, Bruv, it's gettin' late. You wanted ter be the one t' do it this time. Don't go actin' like it's yer firs' time. I wan'ta get home t' me wife." Fergus groused.
"Fine." Three said, straightening. He turned his wand on Hermione once more. "Imperio."
The curse took hold for the second time, though the dull, aching awareness of pain from her arm throbbed through. A red pulsating beacon in the fog.
"Get up." A voice dictated.
Well, that sounded reasonable... she tried to move but a weight on her abdomen blocked her.
"Get off her, Cal."
The weight shifted and she fumbled to her feet. She could see... but she also couldn't. What her eyes saw around her didn't register in her mind's eye. Everything was a blissful white mist.
Except down and to her left. That hurt...
She looked down with a frown. Her arm was floating there. The only part of her body she could see, as the agony of her new Mark couldn't allow her to forget the embodied sensation of burnt flesh.
"Point your wand at the muggle."
Her right arm rose and brandished her vine wood wand in Declan's direction. It was a good thing it wasn't her left... she didn't feel much like moving that at the moment. It felt good to move her right arm though. Between being crushed by Fergus' weight and having been wrenched back when she'd arrived, it felt nice to hold it aloft.
"Think about someone you hate," the voice instructed.
That was a bit more difficult... the image of a few witches and wizards swam before her eyes. The usual suspects: Voldemort. Bellatrix. Draco Malfoy. The beautiful Australian girl one of her boyfriends had thrown her over for... Most of them were dead however, and she no longer cared much about the Australian woman, as she no longer valued her ex-boyfriend's opinion. She had Severus...
The thought of Severus sent a spike of love through her. A warm shot of affection that illuminated her from within.
Not hatred. Not even close.
She didn't know if she was capable of feeling hatred at that moment... she worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. The voice wouldn't like that very much...
"Think about who you hate—and cast the killing curse."
She couldn't think of anything past Severus' dear face. His perpetual frown. At that moment she'd very much like to kiss that wrinkle between his brows... All she could feel was love and pain. Her arm really did hurt like the dickens. She glanced down at it once more.
Severus... Love... Arm... Dark Mark...
Dark Mark.
Her head cleared enough for her to see. She was pointing her wand at a tied-up figure on the ground, Declan, and around her, three masked Death Eaters were waiting with impatience for her to dispatch the muggle. Hermione blinked slowly. She had to keep her head. She had to appear as if she were still held in thrall to the Imperius. She fought to keep her gaze distant. Vacant.
Her wand arm moved quickly to press against the brand above her left wrist and she sent out a blast of intention.
'Come.' She thought. 'Come to me,'
"What are you doing!?" Three shouted, "Expelliarmus!" Her wand shot out of her grip and into his hand once more, but before he could curse her for her disobedience there came a deafening crack at the perimeter of the circle.
All four of those standing whipped around to where the sound had come from, as boots trod measured steps in their direction. Their owner a familiar, imposing black blemish against the idyllic pastoral background.
"Gentlemen," he drawled. "You called?"
"Cause if you not with the crew
Converting you is our mission
If you're a born Technician
Put your ammunition
And your hands up in the sky
This is a strong addiction
Live to this if ya a Technician till ya die"
"Technicians" (reprise) – Tech N9ne