A/N 1: Here's a nice, extra-long one for you.
Chapter 17
Neville confirmed everything that Sunday after he'd been released from the Hospital Wing. Although Madam Pomfrey had done her usual excellent work, he still limped a little, and his eyes looked bloodshot and haunted.
"Why?" Hermione asked him as gently as she could. They were alone in the DA headquarters in the Room of Requirement after the latest meeting. Neville helped her put away the cushions and chairs. "Why cause that kind of a fuss over something that didn't – technically – hurt anyone?"
"I just…" he sighed, looking even more tired as he waved his wand at the last of the chairs so that they stacked themselves – a little haphazardly – against the wall. "I just couldn't let it go. The first years always look so afraid now, and they should be afraid, you know. And I couldn't just stand there and let Carrow do something like that to them."
"But you do realise that your actions caused even more first years, not to mention yourself, to get hurt?"
Neville glared at her, and Hermione suddenly saw him more clearly than perhaps she ever had: he wasn't a round-faced, worried little boy anymore. A man with broad shoulders, a straight back, and a direct gaze stood before her.
"And you'd want me to just let something like that happen, Hermione? When so many DA members were watching?"
"No," she said, "no, I'd never want to let something like that go. But we have to choose our battles – and especially our battlegrounds – carefully. Fighting with the Carrows in a corridor full of potential hostages who can't really defend themselves is an impossible choice."
"So, what, I was supposed to just sit back and let it happen without any kind of consequences to Carrow?"
Hermione had to reassess him again. Instead of the anger she herself had displayed during this same conversation with Snape, Neville seemed to genuinely ask the questions, and ask for instructions. He's so much braver than I could ever be.
"Yes," Hermione said, hating herself as she said it. "That's exactly what you do the next time no one is being badly hurt by the Carrows. We can always debrief DA members after incidents like that – but we can't keep fighting at a serious disadvantage all the time."
"And if I'm alone with the Carrows and they attack me?"
Hermione felt herself smile, and felt warm affection surge through her.
"Then you give them everything you've got."
Neville smiled back at her, and some of the new, haunting darkness left his eyes. They sat down together to discuss plans for the DA: further defense lessons and techniques, duelling practice, practical approaches for diffusing potentially violent situations, and so on. At the end of their tête-a-tête, Hermione felt, at last, that they might be gaining some ground in this great fight.
The more she tried to stop thinking about it, the more it overtook her. During classes, when she patrolled, during the DA meetings, during the informal discussions with Ginny, Luna, and Neville, and, especially, at night when she was supposed to be asleep.
It hadn't been an invasion – that was the thing. After he saw that memory that night - Hermione shuddered just thinking about it, trying not to pull her robes tighter over her chest - Snape held onto her wrist and entered the dull memory she'd chosen, and he'd slid into place as though he belonged there, as though he'd been there all along. His power crept up her arm, following the chakral pathways, making her shiver. Thus connected, he watched the entire memory with her, inside her, floating so deeply within her Mind's Eye that she felt his magic and his person overtaking… everything.
Hermione shook her head violently as she walked down a dark corridor, unsure of where she was going, what she was doing. The memory overtook her time and again - first the memory of the memory, then of the slap, the gentleness he'd displayed, and then finally...
"Stop it," she hissed softly to herself. "Just… stop it."
But it played in a loop in her mind: the rapid fall into his eyes, his dark, cool presence, one warm hand on her wrist, the other on her shoulder, and, at the last moment before the memory ended and she reversed the link, her own hand connecting with his cheek, gaunt and worn and with a layer of stubble, as she affixed herself to him in return, welcoming him in so firmly that their connection deepened even further.
"Shut up," she told herself firmly – and loudly.
"I didn't say anything yet," an echoing voice said from behind her.
Hermione whirled around, wand primed, hair already crackling with her magic. Draco Malfoy stood at the other end of the corridor, his hands held empty and innocuously at his sides.
"Malfoy," Hermione breathed, the fear leaking away from her to be replaced by suspicion. "Were you following me?"
"Don't flatter yourself, Granger," he said, moving slowly towards her and lowering his voice. "I am supposed to patrol the dungeons, in case you'd forgotten. Maybe you're following me."
Hermione looked around and cursed silently. The patrol that was supposed to take her through the castle's upper floors had instead turned into this long, late-night walk around Hogwarts. The same impulse that led her through the narrow aisles of the Room of Hidden Things had taken over. She'd put the Map away at some point, and now here she was, answering to Malfoy.
"I must have gotten turned around at some point," she said lamely. She gave him a nod and made to walk the opposite way up the corridor, towards the staircase that would take her back towards the Room of Requirement.
To her surprise and considerable annoyance, Malfoy fell into step beside her.
"I've been meaning to catch you alone for a while," he said, glancing at her narrowly in the dim light of the torch-lit hallway. "We need to discuss – "
"Nothing," Hermione said firmly. "You and I have nothing to discuss, Malfoy. Just get back to your patrolling."
"I know about the DA, Granger."
Hermione felt a swooping in her stomach that she quickly quashed down.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"In fact, the whole school knows," he continued. "And I can't help but notice that you've not extended membership to any Slytherins."
Hermione huffed out an indignant breath and started up the staircase. Malfoy followed doggedly behind her, his low voice becoming more urgent as they climbed.
"Even though some members of my House have been having trouble under the new regime."
Hermione whirled on him in the dark stairway, standing her ground above him.
"Why in the world would we want Slytherins in the DA?" she demanded. "Why would we let the same people in who dismantled it two years ago?"
"I didn't say you should let the same people in," he answered, his voice steady and calm. "Not all Slytherins were part of the Inquisitorial Squad, and only a few are directly connected to…" he trailed off for a moment before rallying. "The younger ones deserve some protection, don't you think?"
Hermione felt heat creeping over her face. He had a point: although Slytherin had been the least affected of all the houses, their members had still faced some of the same horrible punishments and unspeakable expectations from the Carrows.
"I… I'll have to think about this," she said slowly.
"That's all I'm asking."
He gave her a formal nod and headed back down the stairs, leaving Hermione with yet another strange puzzle to consider.
"It's the only thing that makes sense," Harry scrawled across the twinned parchment. "It's the only thing we HAVE, Hermione."
Hermione rubbed her eyes with one hand, while she held the other poised, ready to send her reply.
This again, she thought, this stupid, dangerous idea again.
It was early December now and, with the cold settling in, the boys had been having more difficulty than ever before. Ron had become irascible at their lack of success, and Harry had been obsessing endlessly on Godric's Hollow. Hermione had tried to turn his attention to the symbol she had found in her inexhaustible readings of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, but Harry kept coming back around to Godric's Hollow.
As she sat on her bed in the Room of Requirement, shielding her eyes from the insistent messages that would doubtless follow, Hermione's mind raced. The Sword of Gryffindor, she thought, the Sword of Godric Gryffindor… Godric's Hollow. And something clicked, something that Harry hadn't thought of all those months ago when he and Ron had first heard that the Sword in the Headmaster's office had been a fake…
"And you KNOW how much it would mean to me to see where my parents – "
"Yes," she wrote to him, ignoring his previous scrawls. "Yes, Harry, I think you might be right. Not necessarily because of your parents – I understand why you'd want to see where they lived, of course – but because of the Sword of Gryffindor. The real one is missing, right? The one Dumbledore wanted to pass on to you in his will –"
"YES!" Harry's writing grew messier with his excitement. "Exactly! Ron and I can go tomorrow. We can look for the Sword – "
"No, Harry, please don't get carried away with this." Hermione breathed a sigh at her friend's doubtless frustration. "I think it's a good idea to go, but I want to plan it properly so that you and Ron are ready for… for whatever might be there. It'll be dangerous, I'm sure, and we want to make sure you're well-disguised, and that you have a way to escape if need be."
It was the wee hours of the morning by the time Hermione finally set aside her quill, thoroughly exhausted, but somewhat satisfied with the plan she and the boys had worked on. She felt a swoop in her stomach, however, every time she imagined them executing it at the end of the following week. It was hours later when she finally fell into a restless, almost feverish sleep.
The lessons had been exactly the same since – shut up, don't even think about it – if anything, Snape had been gentler lately. And yet Hermione still hesitated before the gargoyle, still felt the familiar mixture of fear curling around her belly along with something else she refused to identify. She concentrated, yet again, on thoroughly shutting away the… whatever it was that she had felt when she and Snape had exchanged Legilimency through touch.
It was nothing, you stupid girl, she told herself firmly, in a voice that sounded eerily like the Headmaster's, it was nothing and you're ridiculous for dwelling on it. Shut it away where it belongs.
Instead, she thought firmly of her specific goals for the evening, the question she had to ask him. The worst he can do is say no, she said to herself, not for the first time. If he says no, we just carry on like normal.
"Green Day," she told the gargoyle, which moved instantly to reveal the spiral staircase.
That one I know is a Muggle band of some sort. Unless he means a day that is… green. But he's Half-blood. And… Black Sabbath… and Silver Chair... She shook her head at her own rambling thoughts and then knocked gently on the door to Snape's office.
"Good evening, Granger," Snape said. He stood with his back to her, staring out the window into the dark winter night. His shoulders were hunched forward slightly, and her first thought was that he looked drawn, and tired.
"Good evening," Hermione said, a little nervously. The question burned in her chest, making her mouth dry. She couldn't ask, not when he was turning towards her looking weary yet forbidding, exhausted yet wired. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out an entirely different question: "Green Day?"
His eyebrows shot up.
"Green Day," she carried on, with a feeling of digging herself deeper, "I think it's a Mug – "
"Is there a reason you are insisting on restating my current password?" he asked waspishly. "I imagine you have already verified it, considering that you stand here, having achieved entry to this office."
"Of course," she snapped back. "But I just wondered why you chose that particular password."
"Is there a point to this line of inquiry? You are here for a purpose, one that does not involve the etymologic disentanglement of passwords."
"And what about the symbolic disentanglement of –"
"Legilimens!" he interrupted, drawing his wand so swiftly, speaking the word so suddenly, that Hermione didn't have the chance to brace herself.
He was in her mind before she could prepare herself, but her Mind's Eye came up dutifully, directing Snape immediately to innocuous memories. He bypassed these rapidly and seized on the mixture of surprise and anger she was feeling to search out more sensitive memories. Flashes of conversations with Ron and Harry – Hermione fought her feelings down, ignoring the hopeful trepidation that was still crawling over her, and neutralised herself as much as she could. She showed Snape a childhood memory, one where she'd hoped to receive a gift one Christmas, a collection of scientific journals that her parents thought too advanced for her. He dismissed the memory, and delved further into her mind, pushing harder, and simultaneously leaving himself open. Hermione inverted the flow of memories with an enormous effort, and found herself immediately in the remote, cool Mind's Eye that Snape employed. Green Day, she thought to herself, and she delved into the residual impatience she felt around her. He blocked her with useless memories, and Hermione sighed inwardly. Soon after she came across a recent memory of Snape yelling at the Carrows, he plunged back into her mind.
Neither of them got far that night. They fought back and forth fiercely, and Hermione felt herself draining with each new memory she brought up, and each new memory she found in Snape's mind.
"Enough," he said at last, lowering his wand. He looked almost as tired as Hermione felt. "Enough for tonight."
He'd been tracking memories of Harry and Ron carefully throughout the session, but Hermione had seized on his growing exhaustion and led him on a wild goose chase with old, banal memories of her various fights and arguments with the boys over the years. He, meanwhile, had forced Hermione to tour his endless hours brewing potions, teaching at Hogwarts, and walking the castle and grounds after nightfall. They both stood in the centre of the beautiful office, and Hermione was surprised to find that she and Snape were both panting slightly.
"Right," she said, her voice faint. "That was…"
"That was well done," Snape said grudgingly. "You held your own this evening, and even attempted several half-decent attacks."
Hermione felt hope flair bright and irresistible in her chest – it was well done. And she'd held her own.
"Of course, you were fighting a visibly exhausted opponent, so your victory must be tempered by the circumstances. I congratulate you nonetheless."
She felt her pleasure at his praised turn to stone. He sneered at her, obviously enjoyed the effect his words had on her. Hermione did not sneer in return.
"I have a question for you, sir," she said as neutrally – and respectfully – as she could.
Snape's eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"Don't you always, Miss Granger?"
"I… the winter holidays are coming up, sir, as you know. And I think my… duties will be a little less… "
"Spit it out, girl."
"I wondered… that is, my parents and I wondered if… if it might be possible for me to… visit them."
Snape's face was utterly expressionless, although the skin beneath one eye twitched.
"Just for a little while," she hurried to say. "Just, you know, a day. Maybe two. I just want to see them. I know almost all of the students will be away over Christmas, so I figure – "
"You're babbling, Granger."
Hermione snapped her mouth shut, and tried to force the blush back down from her cheeks and neck. Snape looked hard at her, and she tried to straighten herself up. This was the first time, she realised, that she had ever asked him for such a personal concession.
"I will…" Snape said slowly, maddeningly, "consider it."
"Right," she said, feeling heartsore already. "I know it's a lot, as I'd have to take the train, and there would be questions and – "
"I said I would consider it," the dark man snapped, bowing his head and pinching the bridge of his nose. His harsh voice did not match his resigned posture. "Now go away."
She tried not to show her disappointment, but she felt her shoulders slump as she turned away from Snape. She was almost at the door when she heard him heave a sigh.
"Granger," he said, his voice coming out in a low, tired growl. "A moment."
Hermione paused, and then turned around slowly. Snape still stood in the middle of the room, in the same posture, with his eyes closed. He opened his eyes as she watched. In the flickering candlelight, he looked more exhausted and hopeless than before, and part of Hermione wanted to wrap her arms around this man who suddenly seemed desperately alone and desolate. She shook herself, half-disgusted by her own impulses, and raised her chin in question.
"Have your things packed. If – and I do mean if – I decide to do this, it will be without notice and you will have to comply with everything I say without question. Is that understood?"
"Of course," she answered immediately.
"Now get out."
She couldn't help it: she smiled at him before she turned tail and fled.
"Remember to keep track of everyone as best you can," Hermione said for the third time.
"We know, 'Mione," Ginny said, but she was grinning. "We're going to miss you. Be careful around here, what with the Carrows and – "
"I'll be fine," Hermione said, before Ginny could say more.
She and Neville were in the Entrance Hall, overseeing the holiday stampede to the Thestral-drawn carriages. Each DA member was assigned to an older student for the trip to the train, and then into groups of six for the train ride home. Neville, Ginny, Luna, and the other seventh year DA members would patrol throughout the journey.
Ginny gave Hermione a swift, hard hug, and then pressed something into her hands before joining a foursome of first years on their way out the door. Hermione looked down at the little square package, wrapped untidily in an old edition of The Daily Prophet. She frowned – Ginny had never given her a book for Christmas before.
"Really, though," Neville said, watching as Luna shepherded a group of young Ravenclaws down the grand staircase. "Watch your back, Hermione. I heard what McGonagall told you – you're the only student staying over Christmas."
"I know," Hermione said. "But the DA's faculty allies are all staying, too. I've already made arrangements for them to escort me to and from meals, and Dobby will keep the Room open when I'm out."
"Just make sure you don't give the Carrows an opportunity to corner you alone. Okay?"
Hermione felt a little cold at the idea of something like that happening, but she shook it off quickly.
"They've had opportunities all year, haven't they? They know my patrolling schedule and everything. I don't think they care much about me. You on the other hand…"
Neville gave her a saucy grin, a squeeze on the arm, and turned to leave the Entrance Hall. Hermione watched as the rest of the students flowed out into the bracing cold of the December afternoon. She unwrapped the package and sighed when she saw that Ginny had given her a copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore by Rita Skeeter.
A/N 2: We've got a nice, busy Christmas holiday coming up...