Chapter 21: Care too much?

"We've got to get out of here!" Harry barked as he stormed around the large, enchanted office. He was decidedly moving every object away from the walls in the hopes of finding a secret passage that might lead him to his girlfriend.

"Oh Harry, it's useless. Even if we could get out of here… we don't know where they are. We'd be storming around at night, in the dangerous forest, in hopes of finding a trail that leads to Snape." Hermione's voice was monotone and level. She had no emotion left in her.

"What about Snape, Hermione?" Ron's head shot up as he heard Hermione's soft voice practically whisper his name.

"Oh… I meant Ginny. We don't know where Snape took Ginny." She recovered quickly. Snape was the predominant thought in her mind. She didn't know what she was going to do with herself. She was practically openly mooning over the man who had kidnapped her best friend for the pleasure of the dark lord. She trembled on the inside, furious that she let herself be taken advantage of by Snape. She had let him into her heart, and worse, her mind.

"You boy! Why are you destroying the order of the Headmasters office?" Harry, Hermione and Ron snapped their heads up to a portrait of a very frumpy old man with whiskers poking out if his chin in the shape of a question mark that had lost its period.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, very rudely, but supremely beside himself.

"I am the former Headmaster Angus Magillicutty. That was my original pouf chair with red leather seating that you just angrily moved from the corner." His voice was strong and determined to prove that he was strong despite his small size. At the mention of the chair all three sets of eyes traveled to the chair. Headmaster Magillicutty's voice had a way of demanding attention. "Can I possibly help you with something?"

"No. No you cannot help us." Harry said, still frightfully angry at being locked up in a room while Dumbledore was fighting his fight.

"Headmaster Magillicutty, maybe you can help us." Hermione said, thinking quick on her feet. She knew that each painting typically led to another outlet. Maybe one of the other headmasters that surrounded her led to the exact place that she could find Severus and Harry could find Ginny and Lord Voldemort. "Do you know where Dumbledore went tonight?"

"Well young lady! That m'dear is secret. I don't believe Dumbledore would approve of me telling you such information. You see, what he confides in his previous headmaster's is done so, I believe on a code of honor."

"Oh what difference does it make Hermione? We can't even get out!" Ron's voice spoke for nearly the first time since they had been locked in the office hours before.

"Oh ye of so little faith!" Spoke Magillicutty once more. "Why is it that you mere children need to leave the safety of this office anyway?"

"Lord Voldemort… You do know who that is, don't you?" Harry said sarcastically. When he saw Headmaster Magillicutty tranquilly nod his head he continued. "Well Lord Voldemort and his little spies called Death Eaters kidnapped his sister, her best friend and my girlfriend!"

"Lord Voldemort himself was in this castle tonight? He kidnapped three girls you say?" The former headmaster began to tear at the seams showing his anger and fear at the very thought.

"No no no. He wasn't here. He sent his minions to do his bidding. And he didn't kidnap three girls just one very special girl." Harry said, throwing himself into the pouf chair that had once belonged to Magillicutty.

"You see Headmaster; his Death Eaters hoped that by kidnapping the girl, Ginny, they would lure Harry out to find her. Then I'm sure they would want to trap him and kill him."

"Oh yes… This is Harry Potter? Well of course they would want to kill you. You see, Dumbledore is doing you a great favor by locking you in these walls. He doesn't want you to die at the hands of He-who-must-not-be-named." Magillicutty looked down on the trio with wisdom written all over his face. Little did he know he was completely wrong.

"That very well may be sir-"Hermione began, but before she could get her thoughts out Harry cut in.

"He is fighting someone else's fight!" Harry screamed, letting his anger flow out once again. "The prophecy from the ministry said that I have to fight Voldemort. Either I fight him or he will never die! And when we fight… he must go or I must go!" Harry's face was red with turmoil. For the first time he completely understood the depth of his destiny.

"Well now I see. There was no need to yell. I understand completely. They went to Godric's Hollow… Wherever that is. Now if only you could find a way out."

Godric's Hollow. Hermione's mind worked feverishly. Of course the Dark Lord would return to the scene of where everything had begun so very long ago. She knew now, after hearing Harry's outburst that they must find a way out. Or people who would never have died… would see their very last night. She cursed Dumbledore's bravery and willingness to protect Harry, because she knew that now it would be his demise.

She let Harry storm. She let Ron pout in a corner. She let herself settle down and think.

She had to get them out of this room. She had to let Harry fight his fight. She had to find Ginny to know she was okay. She had to hurt Severus for all the pain he was causing her now.

IIII

Severus stood silently as the Dark Lord prepared the other death eaters for the fight ahead. Any moment now Dumbledore and his band of do-gooders would rush the threshold. Then it would all be over. They would kill him. Or worse they would capture him as a death eater and he would be put to death and to shame. He was not a death eater, he thought repeatedly. What was happening was not his doing but the Dark Lords! He was desperately angry with himself for allowing his brain, and worse his heart, to open to Hermione because by doing so He-who-must-not-be-named had entered his brain too. He was the instrument of ultimate evil.

Somewhere not too far off he knew that Hermione was cursing herself for the dreamscape. He hated himself for the idea that she considered herself stupid. He wanted so much to comfort her and tell her that he was not this evil. That he had given up these awful ways and was merely a lonely and stubborn old man.

"Severus, what is that you're thinking? You care for a girl?" Lord Voldemort's words entered Snape's ears as he ran through his most private thoughts. "A student too… Very nice. Oh how I enjoy being in your mind." The Dark Lord laughed unevenly into Severus' ear and then he walked away.

Any moment now, Snape thought.

IIII