"Love is a burnin' thing

And it makes a fiery ring

Bound by wild desire

I fell into a ring of fire"

"Burning Ring of Fire" – Johnny Cash

Snape didn't give even a moment's notice to his friends as he rose unsteadily to his feet. He grabbed up his mobile, shoving it into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew his wand, not caring that the movement caused Charlie to flinch in reaction. He spun on his heel and caused a thunderous crack to sound throughout the entire floor at Galdrvale Headquarters. In his wake several people working in adjacent cubicles to the conference room rushed in to check that all was fine.

He was privy to none of this, of course. In the next half a second he was standing at the perimeter of a circle of flattened grass in a rural field. His appearance had startled a family of ducks which had taken off in the distance, fleeing the loud noise that sounded so much like the firing of a shotgun.

At his appearance four other heads turned to look at him, three of them masked, and one streaked with dirt, her hair a halo of riotous fly-aways, looking more beautiful to him that ever before he'd seen her.

He didn't let his gaze linger on Hermione for long, however. And he ignored Declan's curled up form on the ground completely. He could do nothing for the man yet. Instead, he looked from masked face to masked face, his eyes surveying details that to anyone else wouldn't bear notice.

"Gentlemen. You called?"

One of the masked men turned his whole body to face him, brandishing a wand on the advancing wizard. "We didn't, in fact. Your dear wife did the honours of summoning you. You have her to thank for selling you out."

Snape grinned, his snaggle-teeth glinting in the evening sunlight with a malevolent shine. "Did she now?" he asked. "Dare I ask why it was incumbent upon her to summon me to join the party? Did I not merit an invitation by virtue of our shared membership?" He purred, now within three meters of the group. His eyes were flitting all over Cal's face, and then from the top of his head to the tips of his boots.

"Oh—now, now what is this?" He drawled, his voice picking up with demented amusement, "I dare not call it stolen valour. Stolen cravenness, more like. Who in their right mind would play dress up as Death Eaters? What nature of cowardly ne'er-do-wells do I have the pleasure of addressing?" He waited. "No takers? You'll attack a woman and a helpless muggle but won't show your faces or tell me your names?"

"W'as that?" Fergus hissed urgently at his commander. "Stolen valour— what's he mean by that, Cal?"

Snape pursed his lips, "It means that you're obvious imposters, that much is clear enough. The most obvious give away is your 'leader's' golden tooth—which in authentic regalia would be the left-side canine, not the front-most incisor. Besides that, it's clear enough from your uniforms. The Dark Lord insisted on the best, which meant expensive Chechen Chyornii scales, not the inferior Hebridean scales you've chosen to cut corners with. Chyornii scales will deflect most common jinxes and hexes, those," he pointed with a dismissive wave of one hand, "wouldn't deflect a stinging jinx from a first-year."

"I suppose all that merely begs the question of why a trio of idiots would sink so low as to traipse around dressed up as murderous thugs— unless…" he chuckled and looked to Declan where he lay crumpled on the ground. "Imagine that— Charlie may have been right after all,"

Declan made a choking sound, his voice, when it emerged, was hoarse from his hysterics. "Charlie?"

"Indeed. Charles seemed to think that the Ministry may be involved in the recent spate of Death Eater activity. I wasn't sure at first, but I must admit, new evidence is… compelling.

"After all," his eyes glistened in the late afternoon sun, "when one so thoroughly crushes an enemy, such that no enemy remains, how else would you justify continuing to push through authoritarian reforms other than perpetuating the existence of the enemy yourselves?

"An attack on the minds of the magical public, as it were. Undermining their sense of security. Stoking fear of their neighbors," he ticked off fingers as he went, "institutional capture of the press, of the Ministry itself? I don't doubt that you have the board of governors at Hogwarts itself infiltrated.

"Don't look so surprised, gentlemen." He chuffed a laugh. It wasn't in the least bit reassuring. "Were I grading for originality I'd have to offer no better than a low level Acceptable. Perhaps Poor, even. The playbook has been plagerised more than once. The Dark Lord himself did the same, making a scapegoat of the muggleborns and their sympathizers.

"Though I must admit I am a little bit impressed." He mused aloud. "I suppose I could award an Acceptable— in truth it is incredible to me that you managed to weaponise the public's own desire to be seen as good and upstanding people well enough that they handed over the reigns wholesale to laws which made them easy prey for werewolves and which granted the Ministry unfettered access to their taxable incomes, not to mention determining whom it's legal for them to marry." He clucked. "And all for the sake of looking like they're not hateful, tribalistic neanderthals when accused of marching against the party line. There is a bit of cleverness in that, I'll grant you."

"Shut up! SHUT UP!" Number Three screamed, striding forward toward Snape, startling all present, "Don't you two fucking listen to him! Those are nothing but purist talking points!" He cried, his voice rising and cracking as his hysteria grew, "Riddleist! Purity-hawk scum!" Three chanted, casting a hasty Reducto at Snape's feet.

The man jumped back, going airborne for a moment. He landed a few meters to the left.

"Funny, I'm not the one gallivanting around the countryside dressed as a Death Eater," Snape spat. "How did you manage to call me, anyway, if not for the fact that at least one of you must have a Dark Mark,"

Three took another menacing step, this time toward Hermione and fisted his hand in her messy hair. "We didn't call you Snape, she did. We said it before, amazing you didn't hear us with those great big ears of yours."

For the first time Severus eyes took in more than Hermione's blessedly familiar face and traveled down the length of her, stopping to rest on her charred inner arm. "Oh... oh Christ, Hermione," he groaned, "No,"

His wife let out a low moan of pain as the fingers twined in her hair tugged sharply at the roots.

"So you see then, eh? You're both fucked." Three mocked, his grin triumphant. He pushed the witch he held by the hair face first into the ground, causing her to topple over Declan's prone form. "When we're done here we'll call in the Aurors to take you away and dispatch you for good," he threatened, brandishing his wand at Snape again.

"Oi—I'm the one meant to be giving orders here," Cal interrupted, pulling his own wand and attempting to still Three's hand.

Number Three slapped at Cal's hand, obviously annoyed. "It's like Snape said, isn't it? Your gold teeth aren't real and neither is your leadership. Let me do it, Cal," he complained.

"I'll show you what's real when we're back at the office tomorrow!" Cal seethed, though he did allow Three to keep his wand trained on Snape. It was a pity that both of them were too absorbed in their squabbling to notice that the man had discreetly directed his black wand at the muggle and witch laying in a heap on the dirt.

"Er, lads—" Fergus made to warn them, but he was too late.

Snape flicked his wand at the two and spoke in a low voice, "Flipendo."

The jinx caught the two full-force and sent them toppling like two tumble-weeds out into the rushes where they disappeared from sight.

"STAY DOWN," Snape called to them, dodging to the right quickly to avoid a conjured lick of fire from one of the three Death Eaters. "Accio Hermione's wand,"

The slim stick flew into his waiting hand and he tossed it into the air, expelling it in the direction of the witch and muggle he'd sent careening into the tall grass with a snarled "Waddiwasi!"

It was all he had time for, as all three opponents now were cursing him in earnest, spreading out in a trident formation.

He lost ground with each blasting curse, watching as the earth cratered before him and grass and gravel spat high in the air as if displaced by a geyser.

The first few times he managed short flights, until one of the men he faced grew wise to his game and began sending hexes into the air, hoping to cut him high while the other two attempted to take his legs out from underneath.

This game lasted a few minutes, where by now a line of nine or more enormous holes had been excavated from between Snape and his adversaries, in more or less a straight line. He'd allowed them to push him back, had ceded ground strategically in order to give him space to operate.

So far, he'd not fired off a single hex in their direction. He was baiting them. Allowing them to change the battlefield and directing their adjustments through his own movements—just as Terry and Charlie had devised.

Cal and the one they'd called Fergus (who was identifiable by his barrel-chest), appeared winded, evidently not used to fighting in earnest. Three, however, was only growing angrier by the minute, and appeared to be in better shape than his compatriots. He would throw a volley of hexes at a time, his words running together into something which might have resembled a chant, and had a fog not set in, he may well have managed to hit his target with something fatal.

The fog was timely. Too timely. When Snape launched himself into one of his jumps, somersaulting in the air to avoid a high-flying disemboweling hex, a glance into the grass where he knew Hermione and Declan to be revealed that the witch was belly down on the ground, covering the two, and with her wand directed through the tall grass like the barrel of a sniper's rifle.

She'd discreetly manifested a weather charm over the battleground. Snape took full advantage and dropped close to where the ground was exploding, using the combination of smog and flying debris to cover him as he cloaked himself with a Disillusionment charm.

"Where's 'e gone?" Fergus demanded, firing off another blind blast. The clearing looked a bit like the face of the moon now, cratered like swiss cheese.

"Would you stop that, you great numpty?" Cal hissed, "It didn't work the last twelve times, what makes you think it'll work now?"

"'E can't keep flyin' forever," Fergus complained, sending a blast dangerously close to where Severus stood.

As he dodged, he was narrowly missed by a shower of knives that Three had transfigured from rocks and sent his way with an "Oppugno!"

They cut through the air and embedded in the earth behind him. He snuck back to where they'd landed and grabbed one up by the handle. He pressed his wand to the tang of the blade and for a moment, the whole thing glowed blue.

The wizard crept along the perimeter of the grass circle, stopping where he saw Hermione and Declan, low to the ground.

Hermione had evidently released Declan's bonds, and the Muggle was huddled up behind her as she held her position just outside of the clearing.

"Hermione," Snape hissed.

The witch glanced around wildly, before she spotted a distortion where his foot trod. She glanced up.

"Hold out your hand,"

She did so and her fingers closed around the knife he handed her.

"A portkey." He told her, under his breath. "Take Declan and go—it'll take you back home."

"I'm not leaving you here alone!" She argued back, her voice pitched low.

"Damnit woman, you will if you know what's good for you!" He snarled.

It was too loud. Cal looked up from where he'd been searching the fog and pointed in their direction, "He's there! Fire! Stupefy!"

Snape leapt to the side, and Hermione rolled, but they were effectively separated once more. He watched as she army-crawled over to Declan and pushed the knife into his hands. Whispering words to the shocked muggle man before tapping the knife with the tip of her wand.

He spun away in the strange spatial distortion that always accompanied the use of a portkey.

Severus wanted to scream at her but couldn't very well do so when Three began once more directing vicious attacks in his direction. He was growing impatient and had begun employing dark curses rather than the lighter jinxes and hexes he'd begun with.

He darted back to the knives and levitated them en masse, before spelling them with a Flagrante, the metal growing red hot under his wand. He sent them back toward the three, hearing a shriek of pain. At least one of the knives had flown true.

It was Fergus. He doubled over, his hands scrambling over his portly belly in an attempt to hold the flesh closed. The knife had bisected him below the ribs and did so deeply enough that he was failing to hold that which should have been inside his body from spilling out his front. Along the cut boils were erupting from the heat of the blade. The large man collapsed eventually, no longer having a will to fight. He lost the battle with his innards several minutes later and lay, forever stilled, in the dirt of some random field.

Cal responded with a roar. He had only narrowly missed being hit by the knives, and he whipped his wand about, summoning a great wind that dispersed the fog. But no sooner had he done so than he was hoisted by the ankle, his cloak hanging down and obscuring his vision. He batted and struggled with it, no longer able to see the battleground he'd finally managed to reveal by summoning the wind.

Snape was confused for only a second, after all, he'd not been the one to use Levicorpus this time, but quickly saw Hermione's form retreating further into the grass once more. She'd initiated a sneak attack as soon as her weather charm was no longer using her concentration to maintain. It still infuriated him that she'd chosen to stay, but, having an ally in the wings was probably better than fighting alone, he was forced to concede.

At least she wasn't rushing in like an idiot.

Three more groupings of projectiles made their way through the air, one of them catching Snape's upper arm and ripping a gouge below his shoulder. He staggered and clutched at the wound for long enough that Three cried out triumphantly: "I SEE YOU NOW, YOU SCUMMY FUCK!" The shimmer must have given him away.

There was a strange moment of silence, and Severus used the opportunity to force himself back to a standing position before he felt a bubbling volcanic heat. The presage to a curse he knew all too well.

Fiendfyre. The imbecile was conjuring Fiendfyre and it would kill them all, including Cal and Three himself.

It would be a miracle if it didn't spread throughout the surrounding countryside and attack the nearest muggle village. The fire was known for insatiability.

It began like a spout of magma, flowing slow from the tip of Three's wand. He was managing to control it, though it seemed to be a tenuous control at best.

The fire scoped out, exploring, almost like it was scenting the air for prey. Severus stood stock still.

Cal didn't. He was still struggling with his cape, and as the fire passed near to him he let out a shriek as the edge of it burst into flame from sheer proximity. It took mere seconds for it to climb from his dangling cloak to the tips of his flailing boots. He was a real-life Guy Fawkes. A living effigy. His yowls of pain and horror provided a nearly operatic accompaniment to the nimbly dancing flames that were beginning to multiply in number as they took on animal forms.

The grass, dry as it was in early August, had begun to work as kindling, and the fire spread outward.

Snape looked to where he'd last seen Hermione, the area was thus far unaffected, and he sent up a silent prayer that she'd have the good sense to escape. To move.

At least one of them had to make it out for Marcus...

There were precious few ways to stop Fiendfyre once it had been invoked. Water only evaporated into mist. Eventually it might burn itself out... but only after it had been satiated. In whatever dark and malevolent form that might take. Usually with the consumption of multiple lives.

Cal had already stopped screaming. He was no more than a spit-roast now. His clothes looked like they were dripping off of him as they turned to ash and fell away.

That left Three, whose arms were shaking as he held his wand with both hands, his mouth set in a grimace that spoke either to his intense rage or his intense focus. Possibly both.

One of the telescoping tendrils broke free and bounced around playfully. It looked to be the form of a small mammal of some sort. Perhaps a weasel, though it was difficult to say. It took notice of Snape before the others which were better controlled, and began to advance toward him, attracted by his magic perhaps. With each step it grew, morphed, until he was facing a red-hot chimera, its heads snapping in his direction as it bore down on him.

With each step back he lured it in line with the series of blasts that had been leveled in his direction at the beginning of the duel, and just as the lion's head seemed like it was deciding it might like to pounce on him, he made his move.

His wand was aimed at the Chimera's feet, at approximately a sixty-five degree angle. "EXPULSO!"

An enormous blue wall of magic slammed forward, excavating a yawning trench through the earth to his front. It went further than it might have given the number of holes he had to ease its way.

Earth flew in all directions, snuffing out some of the smaller heads of the Fiendfyre, but the Chimera was undeterred. It had been pushed back closer to its maker with the blast, but Snape had only managed to incite its anger. Three snarling heads reared in his direction and attempted to take the shortest route to their objective as was possible. Through the belly of the trench.

It leapt down, landing silently and created after it a hole of burning pitch, the other heads of flame Three had produced now attracted to the concentration of fire. They bounded free from their master's wand and merged with the Chimera in the pit, joining their power to the greatest beast's. Morphing him again until at the bottom, a skulking Chinese Fireball crept forward. Along the sides of the earthen hole fiery salamanders crept away, looking about opportunistically for more flammable material to consume.

Snape stood across the trench from Three, who had doubled over his legs, his hands gripping the material of his jodhpurs at the knee as he tried to catch his breath. He'd finally exhausted himself.

Severus had not.

Fiendfyre could climb. But it could not fly. He rose on the air, hovering above the burning pit of pitch, watching as it reached up to bat a scaley arm at his legs.

It missed by a mile.

Really, given a nice hole to inhabit, the fire seemed rather contented. It was producing blue flames now, growing hotter and hotter in its concentrated area, and it wouldn't make a move until it decided it was worth its while.

Three must have thought his efforts would be enough to have roasted everyone in the surroundings. He looked up and saw no one and nothing except Fergus' crumbled body in its pool of offal and Cal's burnt-out husk laying on the ground where Hermione had dropped him (once it had been obvious that he was no longer a threat). He gulped and shook his head, thinking himself quite alone.

"That'll be murder to explain," he gasped.

By his left ear he felt a woosh of air, accompanied by softly hissed words. "I'll save you the trouble,"

His wand was torn out of his limp hand and he watched it sail away into the trench where the dragon raised its head and snatched it from the air. A crack sounded as it broke from the sheer heat, accompanied by a flash of magic. The dying of a wand. A desolate sound.

The beast now had no master.

The head turned toward the two wizards, and Snape grabbed Three up under the armpits, flying up onto a thermal with him, hundreds of feet above the roiling, hellish pit.

Three attempted to struggle, but Snape's grip on him was stronger. The more he thrashed, the tighter Snape's arms managed to secure his neck, until he felt his consciousness fading away.

He had a distant memory, nearly irrelevant it seemed, of what such a hold was called. A sleeper hold.

For the last time, Three felt cool air on his sweat-slicked face as Snape pulled the red-lacquer mask away and dropped it a hundred feet below where it, too, was consumed by the fire. Perhaps the antipasto to his primo piatto. He looked down at his feet where they dangled. Such an odd sight, Three noted, remotely.

"Adieu, Mr Rudd. Adieu."

Snape didn't linger over his kill. He was efficient that way. There was no glory in the act. No taking of trophies. He dropped Gerald Rudd into the burning ring of fire and landed beside it quickly, busying himself with summoning all of the displaced earth that had manifested in piles around the circle and dumping it into the trench while the Fiendfyre was distracted by its meal.

After a minute or two, he was joined at the elbow by Hermione, who looked up at him with her face a mess of dirt and blood, and set to work beside him.

Between the two of them it still took another half an hour to fill in the lake of fire. They only knew it had ceased to burn when all of the fire salamanders were snuffed out of existence. What was left looked like the aftermath of a warzone.

Perhaps that wasn't so far from reality, really. There remained two bodies to dispose of, and, belatedly, they realised that their best opportunity would have been to have buried them in the pit with Gerald's. Putting out the Fiendfyre had been more pressing, however.

Snape stalked over to the two, examining the corpses. Cal's was burned beyond recognition, but Fergus was still recognisable.

"Dare I ask why you didn't go with Declan," he growled, his heart rate finally returning to something approaching normal.

Hermione kicked Fergus over onto his back with her white plimsoll. Amazingly, in spite of all that she'd suffered through, it was still spotless thanks to her repelling spells on the canvas. "You could, but you already know the answer, I think."

"Need I remind you that without one of us here, Marcus would be entirely alone in the world?"

"Not entirely alone," Hermione replied, stooping down and unbuttoning the cuff of Fergus' jacket. She yanked the fabric up to the elbow. "He'd still have your mother,"

"And she did so well raising me—" Snape rolled his eyes, crouching to help her. What was revealed was a perfectly bare forearm. No Dark Mark in sight.

"Don't be a berk, she did a fine job raising you."

"I know hundreds of people who would disagree with you." He riposted. "I suppose it's too late to ask them now, but it seems I may have been right in my assessment. These were no true Death Eaters."

"Gerald Rudd..." Hermione frowned, her expression thoughtful.

"Quite. Though he consorted with the Carrows, he was no Death Eater. Certainly, he was too young to have been selected by the Dark Lord himself. And from his invectives against me earlier, I have a suspicion that his motivations aren't exactly what I'd call 'obvious.'"

They removed the masks of the other two before attending to their remains, which they transfigured into bones to bury, having taken a leaf out of Barty Crouch Jr's book.

Cal's face was nearly fused to the mask, and it was impossible to see what he looked like when it came away. Fergus' revealed a rather normal looking middle-aged man. Perhaps five to ten years Snape's junior.

Neither Snape nor Hermione recognised him.

"It's possible we were in school together," Severus mused, "if we were, I've forgotten him." He said with a shrug. "He wasn't a Death Eater either, that I know of."

By the time they finished working, the grass had been cleared away. The earth leveled out, and the sky was beginning to darken, the dying light of the sun casting orange and red light out over the field where they toiled.

"Potter never did get back to me." Snape mused.

"Harry?" His wife asked, her shirt clinging to her with sweat as she coaxed some of the grass to spread forward with a clever charm she'd learned in Herbology. They were attempting to obscure the circle itself to discourage muggles from coming out to investigate. "You contacted Harry?"

"Of course I did." Snape grumbled. "Figured he might have access to the same tracking charm."

Hermione straightened and glanced around the clearing, her face creased as she considered her friend's absence. "Gerald said it was him who found where I was... I'd put money on him having either hid my files or having taken the original copy and replaced it with one without the charm." She lifted her shirt and wiped her face with it. "We should probably let him know I'm safe, right?"

"If we must."

Hermione pinned her husband with a glare. "Harry's my friend, Severus—"

"How could I ever forget?" The wizard opined, his mouth curled into a teasing grin.

They stood and stared at one another for seconds that stretched out for what felt like an eternity, until the stillness was broken when Snape bore down on her and grabbed her up under her arms, pulling the slight witch's frame against his own and burying his face in her hair. Hair that smelled like a bonfire and looked just as wild and untamable.

He heard muffled sobbing and glanced down. "What's the matter?"

"Besides everything that's just happened?" She gasped, wriggling a little in his arms.

"Naturally."

"I think..." She drew in a pained breath through her teeth. "I think they broke my ribs,"

His arms loosened around her instantly at the declaration, though he didn't let her go. "I'll have a look when we get back home—"

"And your arm looks bad, Severus—"

He frowned and glanced at his right arm. Really, he'd had worse. "Another problem for later."

"Later?" She asked, "Seems like a pressing concern to me,"

"How's this for a pressing concern, witch?" Snape growled down at her, "With the Lord as my witness, Hermione, if you ever scare me like that again I'll—" he shook his head and breathed in her filthy hair more deeply. Trying to smell his wife's own scent beneath the stench of carnage and death.

Her hands fisted in his t-shirt beneath his jacket where she'd worked them up his back to his shoulder blades. "You'll—?" She prompted, slightly breathless.

"I'll never let you out of the house. I'll buy you an old manse out in the country and erect a wall around it to keep it all out," he vowed.

She shook her head against his chest with a small smile lighting her eyes, making them glimmer like a tumbler full of whiskey, catching licks of flame from a homely hearth. "You won't. You never would."

"Never." He agreed. "But I'd want to."

"I'll just have to stop scaring you."

He pulled away at last squeezing her upper arms once more. "Fat chance of that."

She laughed. "To have and to hold. To shock and scare,"

He sobered and held her at arm's length. "You jest, but the question remains as to exactly what vows we actually are beholden to," Snape frowned down at her, "because I certainly don't remember making any, and you were in no state to make any, yourself."

Hermione's face stiffened with shock.

"Surely, you must have noticed—"

"No, no, I did… but Severus— they… when they gave me the Dark Mark… they made me agree… it was some kind of vow—" her eyes were wide with terror and she lifted up her arm, cringing with pain as the burnt skin pulled. She'd been so flush with adrenaline that she'd nearly forgotten.

"What did they ask of you?" He asked her, his voice commanding, urgent. His black eyes smoldering.

"I offer you my brand, my magic, my mark. I require your flesh, your audience, your discipleship." She recited, her eyes looking a bit distant.

"And you agreed!?" He demanded, his eyes widening, if possible, even further.

Her face flushed with shame, and her lip wobbled the slightest bit, though whether it was out of shame or fear at her present circumstances was hard to ascertain. "They had me under an Imperius. I wish… I wish I could say I tried harder to fight it, Severus, but," she started tearing up and tried to dash at her eyes with her right sleeve. It only smeared her face with more dirt. "I didn't…. I was s-so tired—"

Snape looked like he was chewing a lemon drop that was all citrus and no sugar, but he wasn't looking at her. Instead, he was looking down at their feet, evidently in deep thought. "To fight the Imperius is near to impossible for most of us, Hermione. I admit to being concerned that you accepted the terms of the oath…"

He withdrew a hand from where he held her at arms length to rub his index finger against his bottom lip, as was his wont when he was considering an intractable problem. "It may be that we have no cause for concern. Did the one you make the oath to perish?"

"It was the third one: Gerald."

"Then it ought to be voided, even if it weren't on account of being taken under magical compulsion."

"And our vows?"

He shook his head, his hair swinging in a stringy, lank curtain. "I still don't understand that."

"If… if you wanted an annulment I would understand..." she offered hesitatingly.

Snape's head came up in a sharp motion. "Do you want an annulment?" His voice was hard, like iron. And like untempered iron, it sounded brittle.

She searched his face, one small hand coming up to smooth back his hair along his temple, heedless of the sweat and grease she encountered. "No." She answered, simply.

His breathing sounded strangely laboured, and he didn't look in her eyes. "I know it's not real..."

Hermione's hand slid down his cheek to lift his chin. "It's real."

Her other hand, her left hand, with its silver ring and her Dark Mark below the wrist sought out his own, presenting a strangely incongruous mirror image. Or it would have, had his own not been covered by his jacket.

Their hands, which clasped, loosened and she brushed her hand up his arm until it rested above his tattoo, hidden under his sleeve.

He hissed.

"Did that hurt?" She asked, alarmed.

"No," he frowned, grasping her wrist with his opposite hand. He turned it over and stared daggers at her Mark.

His pointer finger hovered over the brand, looking like he wanted to trace along it, but not daring to. The pain likely would have been too great.

Underneath the Dark Mark were the letters M-U and, continuing on the other side, O-O-D. Her gift from Bellatrix. A more profoundly odd juxtaposition would be difficult to imagine.

"This isn't a proper Dark Mark." He mused. "Along with everything else fraudulent and fake about those three, they couldn't manage the correct image."

She stared down at it, her eyes widening, trying in vain to see how it differed. "What's wrong with it?"

"Can there be anything right with a Dark Mark?" He asked, the question obviously rhetorical. He relented, however and offered up his observations. "This snake has fangs, for one. And it loops back on itself twice. Then look at the shape of the skull: it's a bit happier than the real Dark Mark is," he mused.

"Let me see," Hermione urged him, grasping at his own sleeve. Together they wrestled it up to his elbow and compared brands.

Snape's was an original. Granted by Voldemort himself. All original Dark Marks were identical, the consistency in their casting a feature which guaranteed uniformity. Hermione's, by comparison, appeared nearly cartoonish. Like it had been drawn by an amateur, because in truth, it had been.

"Would it have been so hard for them to have done a bit more research?" Hermione asked, canting an eyebrow at the discrepancy.

"It seems to me that they didn't really need to. Coming from a former Death Eater, it reads like a low-level effort, but I'm the last one left to critique it. How many people who fought in the war got close enough to a Dark Mark to be able to tell it apart from a poor imitation? How many fewer for people who didn't fight in the war?" He asked. "No one would bother to ask any questions. No one has even seen one up close for years."

The witch swallowed, her eyes growing a bit wet. "Harry told me they kept catching them... that they didn't seem like they knew what had happened afterwards—but they sentenced them anyway. Within minutes, usually,"

Snape tugged his sleeve back down and withdrew from her, surveying their work in the clearing. The edges had been blunted somewhat so that it looked a little less unnatural. They had worked to turn the earth so that the cratering was disguised, and burnt brush cleared away and buried. It didn't look untouched, but it also didn't look entirely unnatural either.

"If I had to guess," he began, his eyes trained on the horizon which was now dark, "I would wager that their final act after marking you—"

"And framing me. They were going to make it out that I'd killed Declan. In fact—they were going to make me kill Declan."

Snape shook his head sadly. "He'll be alright, Hermione. A fighter he is not, but he's recovered from a lot as it is. He'll bounce back. Anyway, I assume they would have confunded you and called in the Aurory. is, himself, an Auror, correct?"

"He was." She answered, pointedly.

"A convenient, direct pipeline, then."

They were interrupted by a buzzing sound, at first distant and then growing in strength, moving closer. They both stilled as a large light began to scan, to and fro, across the field. It was difficult to make out the source in the darkness, so they both hunched down and crept back into the grass, straining to make out the source of the spotlight.

The humming grew stronger, and was accompanied by gales of wind. The grass bowed before the force, and small rocks, dirt and debris were thrown hither and thither.

The spotlight caught the edge of the clearing and seemed to zero in, scoping this way and that around the edges. Severus fell to his belly and crawled deeper into the grass, followed at the heel by Hermione.

"That's a helicopter!" She told him, her voice pitched higher than she would have liked. It was necessary in order to be heard over the sound of the blades whipping through the air. "They said that the field was under some scrutiny—the muggles already suspect something!"

"Right, that's it," Snape stood and pulled her back against his front, whisking them away before the light could touch them.

"The taste of love is sweet

When hearts like ours meet

I fell for you like a child

Oh, but the fire went wild"

"Burning Ring of Fire" (reprise) – Johnny Cash

A/N: Thanks to all of you for reading and reviewing, following and faving! I am blown away by the response to this story, and I hope you'll continue to enjoy it!