A/N: I neglected to thank Luna for her usual brilliance in the previous chapter's notes. This chapter is dedicated to TimeTurnerForSale/Anastasia, who is reading it on her cell phone screen whilst on vacation. Truer fortitude knows no partner-in-crime.


Dies Irae (II)

"She comes, my lord. Even now, she comes."

Clad formally in her school robes, shoulders back and chin tilted proudly, Hermione stepped regally onto the pavement in front of number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

From the park across the street, she appeared to ripple out of thin air.

On Hermione's shoulder, Tayet sat, icy, still, her sooty feathers drawing the light from the dusty, fading air.

The assembled Death Eaters rustled uncomfortably. Behind a mask, one pair of light grey eyes narrowed slightly.

Walking across the street, stately, unhurried, Hermione made her way under the shadows of the trees.

From her shoulder, Tayet peered into the park, her eyes darting from Voldemort to the snake at his feet and back. So low that only Hermione could hear, she emitted a low, trembling "Squeep."

Under the deepening shadows between the trees, his back to Hermione, Severus stood tall, silent, feeling her drawing nearer, following her progress in Voldemort's eyes, in the tracking movements of Nagini's head as she eyed the phoenix with deadly interest.

Overhead, the Dementors stopped circling and hovered, coming no closer at a small gesture from Voldemort. Eyes gleaming, his teeth bared slightly, he tasted the air, measuring its subtle change, drawn to the shadow of the phoenix on her shoulder as Hermione drew even with Severus.

A Dark phoenix… Desire and greed flowed in veins that had long ceased to be fully human.

Seeing the hunger in Voldemort's eyes, Hermione took one calibrated step further.

No one moved.

Last year's leaves rustled around Hermione's ankles as her robes fluttered to stillness.

The leaves settled to silence, and she spoke.

"Hello, Tom Riddle."

In the choking silence that followed, only years of control kept Severus' eyes quiet.

Out of sight to Voldemort's left, a pair of light grey eyes – less well-schooled, less practiced – flicked from Hermione to Voldemort, thence to Severus, to the soot-black phoenix, and back to Hermione.

Hermione inclined her head, and waited.

/x/

The gates of Hogwarts rang closed in the Highland dusk.

The hills echoed the sound, and, in the forest, all sound, all motion abruptly ceased.

Deep in the Lake, a rolling motion that did not reach the surface, the Giant Squid turned over in its sleep.

/x/

Voldemort took in the appearance of the young woman standing simply before him. A sacrifice… a weapon… Interesting… … the prize on her shoulder a delicacy to be claimed… Very interesting…

"No greeting, Tom?" Hermione said evenly.

Severus fought the urge to reach for her, to draw her behind him. Sensing his impulse, Hermione gestured calmly, her hand rising slightly between him and Voldemort.

"Surely, you know who I am," she continued, as though she had not just given Severus Snape a clear command in front of the assembled Death Eaters.

Tayet's unblinking gaze did not leave Voldemort's, although Hermione could feel her alertness every time Nagini moved.

Severus was watching the Dark Lord's chest for any hint of movement. Beneath the silky darkness of Occlumency, he was assessing Hermione's strategy, anticipating her next move, discarding variables as the scene played out before him, when he felt the Dark Lord in his mind once more.

Aloud, the Dark Lord answered, "You would challenge me, Mudblood?" but in Severus' mind, the words were otherwise: "A Dark phoenix?"

Tayet tilted her head a fraction, her focus on Voldemort intensifying.

"Even so, my lord."

Hermione's brittle laughter danced sharply in the evening air. "A greeting is hardly a challenge, Tom."

The Death Eaters held their breath. In his peripheral vision, Severus could see that more than one of them was visibly trembling, some from outrage, some from fear, which they would attempt to mask with doubled violence once were they allowed to spring.

Black eyes met grey across the circle. The grey blinked once, slowly.

Severus kept his eyes impassive.

"That is a mistake few have made twice, Mudblood," Voldemort said calmly, lips parting in what might have been amusement, or anticipation.

"Then perhaps a formal introduction is in order." Turning her head ever so slightly toward Severus, she nodded.

Again checking his impulse to step forward, to break the empty plane between Hermione and the Dark Lord, Severus said, "My lord, I present Hermione Granger."

Voldemort eyed her silently for a moment, then dropped his eyelids slightly. Not a full blink, but an acknowledgment – more to the phoenix she bore, to the fact that she bore the phoenix, than to her, obviously, but she would work with it.

"Granger," Severus continued, "his servants address the Dark Lord as 'my lord,' and only when invited to do so."

Something around Hermione's eyes crinkled. "Ah," she said simply. "I see."

She reached up to her robes and began unfastening them.

The light grey eyes were blinking furiously, their owner silently grateful that he was out of the Dark Lord's line of sight.

"I am afraid that I do not bear the Dark Lord's Mark," Hermione said, fingers still working at her robes, at the blouse underneath. "Only this." She pulled aside layers of fabric to reveal the black circle over her heart.

From a distance, it seemed an abyss.

Voldemort drew in a breath, an almost silent hiss. "That marks you as his, I suppose," he said finally, his chin tilting toward the unmoving phoenix.

"Hers," Hermione corrected him, "but that explanation will serve."

Robes rustled as several Death Eaters twitched involuntarily backwards, and a few – Severus among them – mastered their urge to step forward.

Hermione's only response was to reach out almost absently to toy with Severus' hair.

The grey eyes flew open, wide; a few other pairs sharpened with ill-concealed interest, growing heavier, clouding as blood rose in response to the implications of Hermione's gesture.

"You want her, don't you, Tom," Hermione continued, her voice darkening, huskier, her fingers trailing to comb through the hair at the back of Severus' neck. "Her presence calls to you – I can sense it." A small frown; her brow furrowed. "Or, perhaps, she can." Her gaze back to Voldemort, her fingers continuing through Severus hair. "Sometimes it's difficult to tell, for sure." She dropped her gaze briefly, opened her free hand, and smiled, a small smile, as if in apology.

From underneath her lashes, Hermione's gaze encompassed the park, but she saw no sign of the Order. Letting her open hand fall into the folds of her robes, she touched the package concealed therein and loosened its silken wrappings.

As Hermione touched his neck, Severus felt her in his mind, beneath the concealment of Occlumency.

"What are you playing at?" His mental whisper carried with it an unmistakable growl.

"Delay, Severus. I should have thought that would be obvious."

"It is dangerous for you to be in here; he, too, is here."

"Death Eaters before us, Dementors above, and the man speaks to me of danger," she chided him, although he felt the far reaches of her control splintering along the edge of her thoughts. "Theoretically, your Occlumency should cover both of us."

"'Theoretically?'" His response was arid.

"The odds were never in our favor." Her mental smile was fleeting –young, open, and very, very scared. "He should come for my mind shortly – I think I've pushed him a little hard..."

"You're mad, Hermione," came Severus' response, but the mental caress that accompanied it was one of recognition, not regret.

Hermione felt the equivalent of black silk shirring over her mind.

"Know that you are my darkness and my flight, Severus. Protect Harry. And us, if you can."

Inwardly drawing a deep breath, Hermione's focus returned to Voldemort.

Very slowly, she raised one eyebrow.

And as the Dark Lord leapt from Severus' mind to hers, Tayet spread her wings and let forth a piercing cry.

/x/

As the echoes of the closing gates faded away, Harry's hand closed around Ginny's, and he felt hers tighten in response.

Molly and Arthur smiled softly at Ron. Ron nodded.

A slight breeze ruffled Tonks' hair, and Lupin's throat tightened. The other Aurors waited silently.

Hagrid cleared his throat and turned to look at the castle, but all he could see was a vague, blurry outline.

After a long moment, Minerva put her hand gently on Hagrid's elbow. "Hagrid," she said softly.

Hagrid blinked rapidly and looked at the sky, adjusting his grip on his cross-bow. "All righ', then, Harry?"

"All right."

/x/

Tayet's cry sliced the air, and Hermione felt an odd slithering in her mind and, beneath it, a brush that felt like Severus' hair on her naked skin.

Her mind filled with the rustling of scales against silk. "Such a strange mind, Mudblood."

Hermione felt more scales rustling as Voldemort inspected her mind.

"It reminds me of your master's. He has trained his pet well… Show me, Mudblood, show me the creation of the phoenix…"

The silk that was Severus' Occlumency rippled aside, revealing a parchment in flames and the phoenix, blinking, in the ashes.

The image faded without revealing Severus' presence or either patronus.

"Dark Arithmancy," Voldemort mused.

Hermione's thoughts were still – an awareness, nothing more.

"You fear me, Mudblood."

"Be careful," Severus' thought breathed in her mind, little more than an exhalation, silence shaped into meaning by sheer force of will.

"As all must," she answered.

A pleased slithering, the scales of his thoughts coiling around themselves.

Then –

He struck her mind, blindingly fast, thrashing her thoughts to a scrambled chaos – faces flashing in her mind, flung aside – her parents – Ginny – Professor Dumbledore – Mrs. Weasley – Professor McGonagall – Hagrid –

"No." Hermione's tone was absolute.

And the coils of Voldemort's thoughts slammed, hard, into something solid. He hissed.

Tayet sang a low note of warning, her wings beating once, a slow, curving darkness in the deepening shadows, drawing Voldemort's eyes.

Hermione's fingers tightened around Severus' braid, and she touched the smooth serenity of Tayet's tear.

As Tayet returned Voldemort's gaze, her wings still open, Severus and Hermione quickly scanned the area for…

There. An enormous shadow, waiting, in the trees. Behind it, another.

The grey eyes stopped blinking.

Overhead, the Dementors resumed their slow circling.

Drawing herself to stand taller, Hermione steeled her thoughts to strike one blow in a fight she would surely lose. "She is a force of chaos, Tom. But you – " A short laugh. Several Death Eaters started at the broken silence, Severus among them.

Hermione's mental laughter stopped suddenly, replaced with a pregnant waiting, a certain storm, poised to break. " – you are merely Darkness. As much a slave to order as the Light which you claim as your opposite. The Light still defines you, Tom, in a way it can never define me," she spat furiously.

An endless moment in which the flickering tongue of Voldemort's mind tasted the blazing, erratic truth of her words, and then he was gone from her mind.

She braced for the judgment she was certain was coming.

But Voldemort reached for Severus' mind again.

"My lord?"

"She is dangerous."

Severus nodded once.

"Still, I am disappointed in you."

Severus dropped his gaze briefly in apparent subjection, but remained alert to the entire area. As the Dark Mark prickled with the Dark Lord's displeasure, the bands of his oaths tightened around his soul, his oath to Lily constricting painfully with his Compulsion as the Order closed the distance from Hogwarts.

"Hermione," he breathed into her mind, "they are coming."

"You concealed the phoenix from me, Severus. A Dark phoenix… so powerful an ascendant Darkness. Why?"

A satisfied gleam grew in Severus' eyes as he answered, "The phoenix did not turn full black until this afternoon.

Voldemort's eyes bore into Severus' steady, unblinking ones. As he weighed the balance of Severus' loyalty with the truth he tasted in his words, one long, pale finger wavered in the air, extending hungrily toward Tayet's blackened feathers.

A small hand closed suddenly around Voldemort's finger, bending it sharply backwards. "No. She's mine. The voice in Severus' mind was Hermione's.

Voldemort's wand was instantly at Hermione's throat. "Crucio!"

Tayet screamed, beating her wings furiously, and the Dementors broke their circle, swooping down on the Order members as they Apparated around them.