Chapter 26
Hermione went to her chamber and found the flashing red twinned parchment awaiting her. Grateful that she didn't have any classes until after lunch, she immediately settled down at her desk and unrolled the parchment. A series of messages from Harry awaited her:
"Stag and terrier reporting for duty."
"Hello? Stag and terrier here. Reporting for duty. Come in, otter."
"We did have a chat scheduled for today, didn't we?"
The spikey writing switched into Ron's loopy hand:
"Is everything all right over there, Hermione?"
"Hermione?"
"HERMIONE?"
Hermione shook her head, realising that she had utterly forgotten the discussion they'd scheduled for the previous evening. She tapped the parchment so that her writing appeared immediately.
"Otter reporting for duty. I'm so sorry I kept you waiting."
The answer, still in Ron's writing, was immediate:
"Terrier ready and waiting. For flipping AGES. Where the hell have you been, Hermione?"
She hesitated for a moment, deliberating on what to tell them.
"It's just me," Ron wrote. "Harry's outside getting some air. What happened?"
"I was attacked," she wrote at last, "in Dark Arts. Carrow made the other students use the Cruciatus on me. I was pretty out of it for the last 24 hours."
"Blimey, Hermione! Are you all right? We've been worrying and worrying about something like this. And who are these OTHER students who did it?"
"All of the other seventh years in the class. It wasn't their fault. It was either they do it, or Carrow would have tortured them too. He did that to Neville for trying to stop him."
"Bloody hell. I'm getting Harry."
"Wait!" she wrote quickly. "How has Harry been lately? He's seemed a bit off since you went to Xenophilius Lovegood's house."
"He's been a little off, yeah," Ron's writing came through a little hesitantly. "I think he might be really obsessing with those Hallows things we discussed with Lovegood."
"I was a little afraid of that. Try to turn him back to looking for Horcruxes, OK? Maybe look at some of the locations Dumbledore mentioned during their private lessons last year."
"I'll see what I can do. But he really is stubborn about this, mind you."
"Just remind him of Dumbledore's instructions."
"Right. Bringing him in now."
A few minutes later, Harry's writing scrawled across the parchment:
"Ron's told me what happened. Gods, Hermione, I'm so sorry. I wish we could be there to help you. I want to KILL Carrow."
Hermione smiled to herself, despite the aching that had descended into her chest.
"I wish you could both be here too. But I'm mostly fine now, I think."
"You must have been in a terrible state afterwards. What did Madam Pomfrey do to patch you up?"
"She…" Hermione almost lied, but then shook herself firmly. What is there to lie about? I've got nothing to hide. "She didn't treat me. Snape did. He gave me Strengthening Potion and Dreamless Sleep, and then kept an eye on me. I think he wanted to do more, but I left to make sure Neville and the DA were OK."
There was a long pause before Harry replied, and she could tell both from his writing and his tone that Ron was still there, and that Harry wished to say more than he did.
"Did he treat you properly? Was he… decent with you?"
Hermione puzzled for a moment, recalling the way Snape had gently seen to her the previous day, and again that morning. She remembered holding his hand, and the accompanying urge to remain there with him, to encircle herself with the warmth of his arms and the counterpoint of his cool magic. His fingers against the pulse point on her neck… and then his devastating statement that he couldn't - or wouldn't - help her any further. She shook herself before replying.
"Yes, he was careful and I do think he is more experienced than Madam Pomfrey in dealing with this sort of thing." It was the second time she'd told this same tale, and something in it rang false, but Hermione pressed on anyway. "And I think he feels like he has to keep a close eye on me." She left out the "for obvious reasons," sure that Harry would read between the lines.
"Right," came his reply.
Hermione tried to shake off the rising ache in her chest, and decided to change the subject.
"I've realised something, though," she wrote to her two best friends. "I don't think what the DA is doing here is enough. We need to do more... Ginny got us started yesterday, I think – she attacked Alecto Carrow in retaliation for what the brother did – but we need to go even further. Any ideas?"
The one-word, all-caps reply was enough to banish the ache from Hermione's chest:
"YES."
The posters went up that night:
Neville's: Dumbledore's Army, Still Recruiting
Ginny's: Sick of eating death? Join the Light
Hermione's: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts" – Winston Churchill
And several more in honour of absent friends and allies:
Beware of Dark Magic and Gum Disease
Constant Vigilance!
We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided
Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
They put them up using Permanent Sticking Charms, and ensured that they couldn't be covered over using a clever little jinx one of the younger Ravenclaws came up with. Slughorn and McGonagall were on patrolling duty that night, Peeves neutralised Filch, and Hermione and Ginny had the Map to navigate around other potential threats. By the time they returned to the Room of Requirement, tired but incredibly pleased, Neville had relieved Lavender Brown of holding the Room open.
"How did it go?" he asked, grinning broadly. He looked quite well again, although his eyes still looked slightly haunted to Hermione.
"Six dozen posters are up!" Ginny answered, beaming. "And it went just as we'd planned. One outside of each House's Common Room, the four gigantic ones up in the Great Hall, half a hundred throughout the corridors and," she grinned wickedly, "one copy of each poster up in the Carrows' classrooms."
"Fantastic!" Neville said, and he turned to Hermione. "What else should we do?"
She smiled at his enthusiasm, but felt the expression slide off her face quickly. Her conversation with the boys had been productive – it was Ron who came up with the idea of the posters – but Harry had gently pointed out what Hermione herself had always said: anything they did now would escalate the conflict within the castle.
"Well," she began slowly, "I think we should try for having one of the Carrows at least partly incapacitated at any given time – I think mildly cursing either of them on a regular basis should do it." It was another of Ron's ideas. "That way, their hold on the castle would be steadily weaker, and they'd have a harder time colluding outside the range of our surveillance."
"What about taking one of their wands?" Ginny asked. "Ollivander's been closed a long enough time that they'd have trouble replacing them.
"That might be something to consider," Hermione said, "but I get the feeling we might start losing our wands if we did that. I think we need to be subtler about it – Ginny, how about you look into curses and hexes that would be unnoticeable but effective at interfering with their ability to perform basic tasks."
The younger girl grinned wickedly and nodded.
"And what about during their classes?" Neville asked, his eyes holding Hermione's steadily. He'd come out of the Hospital Wing more determined than ever, but with a hardness about him that made Hermione feel both proud and desperately sad. "We can't let Carrow get the jump on us like that again."
"I agree, and since we outnumber the DEs in any given class, I think we'll be able to neutralise them all pretty effectively. In fact, I doubt it'll take more than one stand off to get the job done."
Neville frowned slightly.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
It had been Harry's suggestion, and one that he'd made with some hesitation, but Hermione had immediately realised he was right. It was impetuous, and brash, and incredibly bold - much like Harry himself - and Hermione had known as soon as he suggested it that it was time to bring those aspects of Harry's character, if not the man himself - back to Hogwarts.
"We already know that the DEs and Slytherins in our class are prepared for a fight. We'll do the same."
Neville and Ginny exchanged a long look, and then turned back to Hermione.
"'Mione, are you sure about that?" Ginny asked. "What about the other Dark Arts classes?"
Hermione felt herself smiling grimly.
"We'll prepare everyone." Then she said what Ron had pointed out: "But they'll raise the stakes correspondingly outside of the classroom – that's their only move. So we'll have to make absolutely sure that none of the DA puts a toe out of bounds."
"And Snape?" Ginny asked, meeting Hermione's eyes dead-on.
Occlumency was out of the question – it still hurt to engage her Mind's Eye – so Hermione had to arrange her face carefully before answering:
"Leave him to me, Ginny."
Her friend looked less than satisfied, but Hermione pressed on, briefing Neville on the plan Harry, she and Ron had put together.
Phineas Nigellus hailed her two days later when Hermione was making her solitary way from Charms to Dark Arts.
"The Headmaster wishes to see you in his office," he said from a portrait of a surly-looking troll.
"Why?" Hermione demanded and, seeing the little man frown, she quickly added: "Sir."
"The last time I checked, it was not for you to question the demands of those in authority, girl. He wants to see you. Immediately."
Hermione thought of Snape up in his office, of their last encounter, and felt that same aching – and anger – rising up in her chest.
"No."
"No?"
Hermione turned her back on the portrait.
"I have a class to attend, Professor Black. Tell the Headmaster that I'll see him tomorrow for our usual eight o'clock meeting."
She carried on determinedly towards the Dark Arts classroom, setting her shoulders and clenching her jaw reflexively, and putting Snape as firmly from her mind as she could. Bigger fish, she thought. The posters have been a success so far - at least no one's figured out a way to take them down - and now it's time to put our magic where our mouths are.
The other Gryffindor seventh years waited outside the classroom. Hermione held each of their eyes in turn before regarding the rest of the students awaiting the start of class.
"Back for more, Mudblood?" Crabbe hissed at her.
Hermione regarded him steadily.
"I think not," she told him in her iciest voice. "But I am back."
He, Goyle, Theodore Nott and Pansy Parkinson all snickered, but Hermione noticed that Malfoy and Blaise Zabini had both turned away to continue a quiet conversation they'd been having when she'd arrived.
The door to the classroom banged open and Amycus Carrow stood before them, grinning broadly in a nasty way that made Hermione want to run back down the corridor and, absurdly, up to the Gargoyle Corridor and to the opulent office beyond. It'll be all right, she told herself firmly. He's just one man. We've got this all planned out. And there are over a dozen of us to contend with.
"In you get," Carrow growled, and the students obeyed at once.
He stood before them as usual, and his eyes fell almost immediately on Hermione. She glanced around the room at the posters the DA had put up, her eyes falling on the one they'd put up on Luna's behalf: Beware of Dark Magic and Gum Disease. She felt a surge of determination at the thought of her absent friend.
"And how are you today, Mudblood-that-was?" Carrow asked. "You look a sight better than my sister does." He walked until he stood in front of her desk. Hermione looked up at him, her hand already wrapped around her wand beneath the desk. She felt Neville shift slightly next to her. "You wanna confess to what you done now, or are we gonna give this here class another round of Crucio practice to get it out of you?"
"There will be no more Cruciatus Curses performed in this class," Hermione said in her best, loudest know-it-all voice. "That part of the syllabus has officially been removed."
Carrow's manner changed immediately – his usual hulking body language turned fluid as he drew out his wand, faster and with more grace than Hermione would have expected. But Neville was ready for him:
"Expelliarmus!" he cried, and Carrow's wand sailed through the air.
Hermione did not wait to see Neville catch the wand; she turned rapidly, her wand at the ready, and she marked Crabbe immediately, as planned.
"Expelliarmus!" she shouted, and she felt a blaze of courage and joy when the spell was echoed all around her.
Wands flew to the front of the classroom to be claimed by the Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw members of the DA. Hermione peered around quickly, making sure that each of the DEs were unarmed before turning back to Carrow, a wand held in each hand, pointing directly at his chest.
"We're changing how things work in this here class," she told Carrow, who looked half-stunned, half-horrified. "From now on there will be no practical lessons of any kind. If you attempt to curse one of us, we will all respond. Curse one of us, and you'll have to curse all of us." She lowered her voice slightly so that Carrow could just barely hear her. "And if you even try, the DA will put your sister back in the Hospital Wing – and you'll join her."
Carrow's face reddened and his small, beady eyes raced between the wands in Hermione's hands, before he looked abruptly beyond her.
"And what do we have here?" a deep voice sneered. Hermione followed Carrow's glance to find the Headmaster darkening the doorway to the classroom, his wand trained directly at her heart.