A/N 1: I'm going to aim for post-weekend updates from now on (NZ time, as always).

Chapter 24

"Are you all right, Hermione?" Ginny asked when she returned from her meeting with Snape. "You look pale."

"I'm fine, yes," she answered, sinking into one of the many chairs in the DA headquarters in the Room of Requirement. "Just a little tired, I guess."

Ginny gave her a sidelong glance.

"What exactly are you and Snape getting up to all these evenings you spend together?"

"We don't 'spend them together,'" Hermione said, feeling a little exasperated. "We just discuss how the school is running."

"For three hours at a go?"

Hermione glared at her friend.

"Sometimes our discussions get… exhaustive."

Ginny continued to look sceptical, but she let the conversation drop. Hermione looked down at her hands, where they gripped the edges of the chair. The rest of the lesson had been different. Snape's Mind's Eye had seemed larger when Hermione had seen it during the inversions she'd pulled off, and his defences had been more visible as well, but she'd gotten the sense that he'd let her in further than usual on purpose. She'd seen more of his childhood than ever before, and now she couldn't quite shake the sad scenes that had played out in the shabby house on Spinner's End.

"How was everything in here?" she asked Ginny, determined to put the dark man from her thoughts.

"Very well. I think we've got everything pretty coordinated. There'll always be that lag, though, between what we find out is happening around the castle and what we can do."

Hermione nodded thoughtfully.

"Of course. But, Neville's teams will be circulating the castle throughout the day, so hopefully they'll catch sight of anything untoward quickly enough. And I don't think we'll have issues with DA members being out of bed at night."

"Hopefully not, now that Harry and Ron aren't here," Ginny answered with a sad, slightly wistful smile.

Hermione leaned forward and patted the younger girl's hand.

"I miss them too," she said.

Then she straightened up, and the two dived into a discussion on what Ginny had gathered through the vast intelligence network they were putting together. They had been successful at painting an overall picture of the school's warring factions for the most part, but there was a particular conversation between the Carrows and the Junior DEs that eluded the DA.

"It's something to do with the seventh years," Ginny said, biting her lower lip in an uncharacteristic display of worry. "We've added to the portrait rotation in the Slytherin Common Room, but we can't do much more without getting really obvious. And we've not been able to get eyes into either of the Carrows' offices yet."

"That is a problem," Hermione said, feeling a wave of nausea at the thought of what the Death Eater siblings might be planning. "What about the ghosts? Maybe they can spy invisibly in their offices? Have you talked to Nick about it?"

"Of course I have," Ginny said without heat. "But it turns out that the ghosts aren't allowed in the teachers' offices - it's a structural thing of the castle itself to preserve privacy or something. They have to use passwords just like the rest of us, and the Carrows are being paranoid about their passwords."

"Then there's only one other way to get that information," Hermione said firmly.

Ginny shook her head vigourously.

"No way, 'Mione. We can't trust him."

"But he is attending those meetings in their offices?"

"Yes," Ginny admitted reluctantly.

"That settles it then," Hermione said resolutely, "I'll talk to Malfoy after Dark Arts tomorrow, and we'll see if he'll turn spy."

Hermione sat down in her usual front-row seat in the first Dark Arts class of the term, her stomach in knots. We can plan for attacks in the halls, on the grounds, even on the train… but how would we handle this, even if we did know what was coming? Their bold DA planning now threw this problem into sharp relief, particularly with Carrow standing before them, his small menacing eyes alighting on each student in turn. Hermione turned and tried to catch Malfoy's eye, but he sat low in his chair, his eyes focused intently on a piece of blank parchment on his desk.

When everyone was seated, Carrow turned and waved his wand at the blackboard. His blocky writing appeared instantly: How to perform the Cruciatus Curse. The class took a collective, shuddering breath, and the Death Eater grinned at them.

"Tha's right," he intoned, prowling down the centre aisle between the desks. "We'll be steppin' things up in this here class."

She couldn't help it; Hermione shot her hand up as Carrow made his way back down the aisle. He stopped beside her desk. Hermione looked up at him, beyond her raised hand, which shook in the air slightly. He glared down at her, his cruel eyes at odds with his wide grin.

"Mudblood-that-was?" Carrow said, calling on her in his usual manner.

"If I remember correctly," Hermione said, struggling to keep her voice calm and polite, "your syllabus did not feature the Unforgivable Curses until the end of summer term."

"Tha's right," he said again, his wolfish grin widening further as he stared at Hermione.

"Why are we learning them now, then?" she demanded.

"Well, I'll tell you, Mudblood-that-was." Carrow turned his back on her to return to the front of the class as he spoke. "My sister, Professor Carrow, and I talked it over, and we think that you's all need some help in discipline. And the Dark Lord happens to agree. A lot of students in this here school think they can lark about doin' what they please, thinkin' what they please. We will be showing them students a new side of Hogwarts this term – and by that I mean all of us."

Hermione didn't raise her hand this time. His words seemed to strike her core, and she responded before thinking.

"So you expect us to discipline one another?" she asked, her voice coming out slightly higher than usual. "Using torture?"

"Penny for the smart lass," Carrow crowed. He stalked forward again until he stood in front of Hermione's desk. "And you'll go first, I think, for talkin' out of turn in my class."

"No!" Neville shouted immediately, jumping up from his desk so abruptly that his chair flew backwards.

Carrow was ready for him: he turned his wand on Neville so fast that all Hermione could do was watch as the Death Eater screamed "Crucio!" and bore down on her friend. Neville slammed his head into the desk before falling to writhe on the floor. Hermione was on her feet, wand drawn, but she hesitated and glanced over her shoulder. The Slytherins were on their feet as well, their wands pointing collectively at Hermione. She met Malfoy's eyes, and he gave a slight shake of his head.

They're prepared for this, she thought numbly, lowering her wand. This is what Ginny couldn't see going on in their offices. They planned this, right down to who they would torture first. And Luna's charm for our duels will never work for faking the Cruciatus...

It seemed to go one for ages, Neville's screams echoing around the room, but it couldn't have lasted longer than a minute. Finally, Carrow lowered his wand, and Seamus helped Neville to slump back down into his chair.

"Front and centre, Mudblood-that-was," Carrow snarled, his wand still pointing at Neville, "or he gets another round."

She moved forward, her eyes still on her friend, who looked almost unconscious as he leaned heavily against Seamus. Hermione stood as straight and tall as she could beside Carrow, and made eye contact with each DA member in the classroom in turn, giving them each a minute shake of her head, and thinking it at each of them, although she knew they couldn't possibly hear her: do nothing. Follow standing instructions. We'll be alright. Lavender and Parvati were crying openly, Seamus's lip quivered, and Neville glared past her at Carrow, his eyes only half open, a trickle of blood running down his face from where he'd hit his head against his desk. Hermione pulled up her Mind's Eye and engaged the interface, storing away her roiling emotions – she couldn't stop what was about to happen, but perhaps she could prepare for it.

"Now, who'd like to go firs' for teachin' the Mudblood-that-was a nice little lesson?"

Hermione watched, her dismay carefully contained, as Crabbe's hand shot up first, followed quickly by Goyle's, then Pansy Parkinson's. She caught Malfoy's eye, but he turned away from her, seemingly intent on writing notes on his piece of parchment. Carrow called on Crabbe, who walked to the front of the classroom quickly, a perverse, terrifying smile plastered to his face.

"Now, wha' you wanna do…" Carrow said, clapping his hands onto Crabbe's shoulders in a friendly display.

Hermione stopped listening as he told Crabbe to focus his hatred, anger, and other negative emotions into the spell to achieve maximum pain for the victim – for her. Instead, she breathed slowly, in and out, illuminating each of her chakras in turn as she always did before her lessons with Snape. She thought of the Headmaster now, of his dark eyes on hers, his dusky magic wrapping around her, his cool mind opening to hers. I wish… I want… she didn't allow the thought to crystallize.

There was no warning except the sudden silence. It couldn't have lasted longer than a second, the time between when Carrow stopped speaking and when Crabbe screamed the incantation, but Hermione made it stretch on and on, sinking into herself. And then –

"I've got you, 'Mione," Neville said, his soft voice determined, strong despite how shakily he led her down the hallway. Hermione laughed – she couldn't help it. The déjà-vu flowed through her, leaving her feeling absurd yet empty, and utterly unhinged. Her laughter stopped Neville in his tracks, and he looked at her. His eyes were hollow and haunted, with dark circles beneath. The blood that had trickled down from his scalp had dried along one of his cheeks like a dirty, red tear track.

"We… we've done… all this before," Hermione said. She noted distantly that her voice was hoarse and pained from screaming. She looked around, and quickly glimpsed a pale face with a pointed beard in a painting. Her mind swam, and she collapsed against Neville again. She went on anyway, the stubborn thought refusing to dissipate unvoiced. "It's like we've done… exactly all of this before, and we'll just… keep doing it. Forever."

Neville, looking more worried than before, picked up the pace, moving forward clumsily but holding onto her waist even more firmly.

"Let's get you to the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey will sort you out."

But Hermione already knew who would join them in the Hospital Wing. It would play out the same way, like some horrible re-enactment – the same players, the same location, perhaps even the same lines. Only their injuries were different. It was a pattern they'd settled into, and one that would perpetuate itself, she knew, through to the end of the year. And beyond. Unless they changed it somehow.

"Here we are," Neville said, his soft voice nudging Hermione back into the here and now.

It was precisely as she'd predicted, with Madam Pomfrey fussing over them both until a lean, dark figure interrupted her, and Hermione watched the Healer walk away to help Neville.

"Miss Granger?" the voice was low, pitched carefully to include no indication of his feelings.

She was so tired of this. All of this.

She did not look at him. Her folded, white-knuckled hands were more interesting. He was speaking, saying… it didn't matter. Her fingernails were tinged with blue. His presence receded, and she heard another exchange further down the ward, two voices intertwining and blending into white noise. Hermione remained there, her eyes mostly closed, staring at the curves of her fingers, breathing in that shallow, abbreviated way that seemed to slow the burning still racing through her body.

A familiar hand on her upper arm, pulling at her. She closed her eyes completely now, uncaring. Her feet moved, answering the low, urgent voice, despite her determination to ignore it. Warmth engulfed her, the voice said something loud and perfunctory, and arms wrapped around her, anchoring her. The world tilted and turned, and Hermione leaned against the solid figure. She smelled woodsmoke. Too soon, she was moving forward again, and then descending onto something soft.

The voice spoke again, and something small and hard – a glass vial – was pressed into her hand. Opening her eyes hurt too much. She released the vial. It fell with a soft tinkling of breaking glass. The hand was back, sudden and firm, wrapped around her jaw. Another vial, this time pressed to her lips, and an acrid, nasty liquid filling her mouth. The hand descended to massage her throat, forcing her to swallow. She did, gagging a little.

And the room came into sharp, sudden focus. She was in the Headmaster's office, of course, sitting on precisely the same conjured sofa as last summer after her imprisonment in the Ministry of Magic. Snape knelt before her, his intense black eyes searching her face. Without speaking, he handed her another vial. She hesitated for only a moment before drinking its sickly sweet contents. Dreamless Sleep, she realised; it had been months since her last dose, but she recognised the taste. The pain coursing through her nerves, the aftermath of the Cruciatus performed in turn - however assiduously or unwillingly - by each and every student in the Seventh Year Dark Arts class, faded to a dull ache as the potions took hold. Hermione had to clear her throat before speaking.

"Wh-what happened?" she asked, her voice a quiet, shaky whisper. She would fall asleep soon, she knew.

"You were going into shock," Snape answered.

"I…" Hermione sat up, trying to collect herself, despite the redoubling exhaustion. She attempted to pull up her Mind's Eye, and cried out when a sharp pain resounded within her head. She clutched at her forehead, where the pain burned brightest.

"Don't."

Her eyes squeezed themselves shut. She felt Snape's hands on her shoulders, pressing her back down onto the couch. She resisted, trying to push his hands away with her own, but he caught her wrists. He was gentle, but insistent. Hermione felt her strength give way, and the dark man laid her down.

"Do not use your Mind's Eye, Granger. Rest now."

"I… I wish –" it was hard to speak, hard to articulate anything within her mind, let alone aloud.

"Tell me."

"I want…" she trailed off, her weak voice choking on a sob.

A warm hand on her cheek, stroking the tears away. Hermione felt herself fading once more, this time into a velvety blackness that held the promise of rest.

A/N 2: Thank you for all of your reviews! (And, as always, I very greedily demand MORE!)