A/N 1: This chapter contains a major deviation from canon. I usually try to stick as close to DH as possible, but I'm immovable on this point. See A/N 2 for an explanation at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 7

It was still her face. The same lips, top too thin, bottom too thick. The same forward-pitched chin, almost obnoxious and certainly audacious. The same ski-jump nose making too fine a point. Cheekbones not high enough, forehead too high – she had to have room for that big brain, after all. All of it the same, right here before her. The same. Except the eyes. The eyes held the scars – or the nothing beneath the scars. An expanse of brown, muddy with a reddish undertone that she'd always hated, but blank as a blackboard now, reflecting absolutely nothing into the mirror, no light, no memory, just the emptiness of scars rubbed out like chalk. Hermione closed her eyes, and blocked herself out.

Her day passed this way, blocked out, as though she saw through tinted glass that distorted everything just enough to make it uncanny. Her friends looked worried; her other friends, the ones a flashing parchment away, were surely worried as well, although they were too busy scrawling incoherent summaries of their fiasco at the Ministry to ask her anything beyond the usual inquiries. They had got the Horcrux off of Umbridge, they said, although it had been messy. The news should have made Hermione smile. She should have jumped for joy. She should have sent them her Patronus in an exuberant and mildly dangerous celebration. She did none of this. She added a few exclamation points to the end of her last sentence to them, made her excuses, and put the parchment away.

She felt comfortable, really. She sailed through classes easily, despite the fact that for the first time in her academic career she hadn't actually read and reread all of the textbooks. Extraordinary, that – then again, this was still only the second week of classes. She went from class to class trailed by a worried-looking Neville, whose eye was still mildly ringed in black. She ran the DA with the same efficiency she'd started. But she avoided the Great Hall the entire day, fasting instead of eating, and when she finally went to bed, she sighed with relief as she slowly watched her Mind's Eye shut her down.

"Are you sure you should go to class today, Hermione?" Lavender asked one morning.

"Yes," Hermione answered tartly. She was looking in the same mirror, this time trying to bully her hair into a ponytail. How had Snape managed to do what had taken her a quarter of an hour in just a few seconds?

"Let me help," said Lavender, coming up behind Hermione to peer at her face in the mirror. "Wow, it really does look like nothing happened."

The other girl started to tug at her hair, but Hermione pulled away.

"Leave it," she said shortly, before turning around to exit the dormitory.

She heard Lavender muttering mutinously to Parvati behind her, but did not bother to turn around. Ginny waited for her at the bottom of the stairs, and Hermione sighed when she saw her.

"Hello to you too," Ginny said primly, linking her arm with Hermione's and steering her forcefully towards the portrait hole. "How are you today?"

"I'm fine, okay?" Hermione bit out.

"Really? Because you don't seem fine," Ginny said as they both clambered through the hole and into the hallway beyond. She stood up straight, hands on hips. "You seem weird, in fact."

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, feeling testy. She hadn't slept well, and her mind was still in the oddly subdued state she'd imposed on herself since being hit by the cutting curse several days before. And, she reminded herself distantly, you have to see Professor Snape this evening. Twice now he had helped her, seen to her. She shuddered inwardly; he saved me so that he could have me for himself. Shoving that thought quickly into a deep drawer in her Mind's Eye, she turned her attention back to Ginny and started walking with her down the hall.

"I mean," Ginny said emphatically, "that your face is as blank as a sheet of parchment, but you don't have the voice to match. You sound angry, and the lack of expression makes you look nuts. I noticed it yesterday when I caught you in the bathroom, and then again in the Common Room. I was hoping you'd have gotten over it by this morning, but apparently not."

Hermione tried to walk away from Ginny, but the latter grabbed her arm, digging her fingernails into Hermione's wrist.

"Oh, and don't even think of skipping breakfast this morning," the redhead snapped. "I know you didn't eat a thing all day yesterday."

Hermione marched along next to the younger girl, and she slowly felt herself start to relax, a tiny fraction at a time. Her Mind's Eye was still holding all of her emotions in a vicelike grip, save for anger, which kept escaping, serpentine and slithering through her. It was hard to do, but she forced her shoulders down from their defensive half-shrug, and she realised that she had held the posture for days now, and that her entire upper body was aching from it.

"I'm sorry, Ginny," she said, looking into the other girl's light brown eyes. "I don't know what happened. I'm just… it's been really stressful."

"That's quite alright," Ginny answered. "But I've been worried about you, 'Mione. And I know I'm not the only one who's noticed how off you've been."

"I'll work on it, all right?" Hermione tried hard to smile. "Where are we with the sixth-years?"

"There's the fearless leader we know and love," Ginny said, giving Hermione a quick, bracing hug. They resumed walking together. "We're just about on schedule, and I think we should consider a meeting sometime early next week to sign up the new recruits. Most of the former DA actually approached us, which made things pretty easy."

"Good," Hermione said. Many students had approached her as well, and she had firmly redirected them to Ginny, who was not in a position of authority under Snape's rule, and would therefore be slightly less conspicuous than Hermione herself.

They made their way down to the Great Hall talking of smaller things. They ignored the surreptitious looks on the faces of the other students they passed. They ignored the dark looks sent their way by many others. And they especially ignored the non-scars all over Hermione's face. They arrived just as Professor Carrow and his sister were leaving. He tossed Hermione a resentful glare, and she noticed that he leaned on his sister as he moved about stiffly. Hermione looked immediately to the High Table, searching out Snape, who was conspicuous only by his absence.

"Now he looks like he could use a good slash to the face," Ginny whispered, glaring at Carrow's back.

"Shh," Hermione whispered back. "Don't let anyone hear you saying things like that."

They sat down next to each other and Hermione, suddenly ravenous, immediately tucked into a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon.

"Actually," Ginny said in a carefully modulated undertone. "I heard from Luna that Snape and Carrow duelled."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Luna and the other sixth-year Ravenclaws were waiting to go into the Dark Arts classroom yesterday, and they heard all sorts of banging and swearing. By the time the rest of the year came along, Snape stormed off down the hall, and Carrow was crouched behind his desk like a half-dead kneazle. I wish I'd been there, but I don't suffer from the Ravenclaw tendency of showing up twenty minutes early for class."

"Why didn't you tell me this earlier, Ginny?" Hermione hissed, feeling a wave of fury. She had asked – demanded – to be kept informed by all of her DA fellows. And this was exactly the kind of thing she needed to know.

"And when would I have told you, hm? Luna only told me about it after dinner last night, and by the time I'd gotten back to the Common Room you'd disappeared."

"Right," Hermione answered, feeling slightly abashed. "I… I'll make myself more available from now on."

Ginny nodded, and Hermione continued eating, her mind racing. She acknowledged that she was surprised that Snape would have duelled one of his fellow staff members – and a fellow Death Eater as well. But what really puzzled her was that he did it almost publicly, not where the whole school would see, but where a select few would be hard-pressed to miss it. The thought nagged at her until the end of breakfast.

The day passed too quickly for Hermione's liking. She made an effort to allow some of her emotions through her Mind's Eye, but it was draining to feel so much all the time. During her afternoon free period, she shook herself firmly and climbed up to the deserted dormitory and retrieved the twinned parchment from her beaded bag.

"Otter reporting for duty," she wrote.

It took a few minutes for a reply to come, and Hermione shifted her attention to the parchment she'd been folding and unfolding throughout the day – a list of things to report to Snape that evening. She hoped to expedite the meeting, to cut it short if she could, and so she'd carefully listed everything she thought would be relevant to him, including details and comments on the implementation of his new regime. Now she tapped the neat list to colour-code it. She wouldn't actually give him the parchment, but she figured that if she read from it, she could earn her dismissal from him sooner than later. Something inside her kept squirming at the thought of being alone with him in his office once more, and she was glad to see Harry's familiar untidy writing appear on the parchment.

"Stag ready and waiting," it said, and vanished after Hermione read it.

"Sorry I had to leave so suddenly yesterday, Harry," she wrote. "Is Ron not there?"

"He's out scavenging for food. It's slim pickings around here."

She thought of her two friends, alone in the woods now that Grimmauld Place was out of bounds. She was deeply relieved that she had packed Perkins's old tent for them – at least they would have shelter, even if they didn't have food.

"Look for mushrooms," she wrote. "It's the right time of year for them."

"Huh, gross."

"How is the Horcrux?"

"Creepy. It's got a heartbeat or something. It's like I have two hearts in my chest."

"You're WEARING it?"

"Yes. D'uh."

Hermione shook her head vigourously, thinking of what had happened to Ginny with Riddle's diary, and of what she'd read in Secrets of the Darkest Art.

"Take it off, Harry. No one should be in close physical contact with a Horcrux for longer than strictly necessary. Ginny, remember?"

"Come off it. It's not whispering or anything. It just kind of ticks. Like a watch."

"Take it off. Please, Harry."

"All right, all right. I'll share it with Ron, that way neither of us is overly exposed to the jiggery pokery of it."

Hermione thought for a moment and nodded slowly to herself.

"Fine. But be careful handling it, Harry. I know you don't want to lose it or anything, but it's still a dangerous object. Take a look at Secrets of the Darkest Art if you don't believe me."

"How are things over there at Hogwarts?" he asked, changing the subject in an obvious bid to forestall more lecturing.

Hermione contemplated what to tell him and decided almost immediately on the truth.

"Horrible. Be happy you're not here to see it. The teachers are all afraid, and a lot of the older students as well. We're trying to keep people as safe as possible, but the Carrows have already shown their true colours."

"Meaning?" The word was barely half-formed, and Hermione could imagine the anger rising in Harry's eyes as she wrote her reply.

"Meaning that Carrow used Sectumsempra on me for refusing to duel Malfoy in our first Dark Arts class."

His reply was immediate, scrawled almost on top of her own writing.

"Shit. SHIT. Are you okay? Why didn't you tell us sooner? Did Pomfrey fix it? Where did he hit you with it?"

"Yes, I'm ok, Harry. Don't worry. And no, it was Snape who fixed it. The cuts were on my face."

Harry blew up after that, swearing all over the parchment. She almost regretted telling him what had happened. He was the only person in the world – other than Snape – who had any idea of what she was actually involved with here. Finally, Hermione persuaded him to take the Horcrux off, and Harry reported that he felt better instantly, and calmer.

"Keep an eye on how it makes you both feel," she told him afterwards. "I really don't think you should wear it."

"I'll keep an eye on it, I promise."

Hermione checked her watch and sighed. Her last class of the day – Charms – was in fifteen minutes.

"I have to go, Harry. Tell Ron I say hi," she wrote, missing the both of them terribly at that moment.

"I will." The parchment was blank for a second before Harry continued, "I know you can't tell anyone over there that you're talking to us, but watch out for Ginny, please."

"Of course. She's strong, you know. And she's being a lot more careful than I'd expected."

"Just be safe. All of you."

"You too."

A/N 2: I don't buy for one second that Hermione Granger would have OK'd wearing that locket. I do buy Harry overlooking the side-effects of getting close to Horcruxes. I do buy Ron forgetting about his sister's horrible experience with the diary in COS. But I do not think that our beloved Know-It-All would have magically forgotten that Horcruxes can manifest serious power over those who hold them - she's seen them in action before, her memory runs longer than Ron's (and she's closer to Ginny), and she's studied Horcruxes academically and recently in DH. I don't usually quibble with Rowling, but I refuse to subscribe to this inconsistency.