A/N 1: Thank you all so much for your amazing reviews! To my new readers - thanks for giving this story a shot. To my returning readers - seeing your names pop up in the review list was an absolute, thrilling delight.

Chapter 34

"It feels like it's all falling apart," Hermione wrote. "Before, we had a good handle on the DEs and I thought the DA would pull through until the end of the year, but now that they've started threatening students' families…" she let her writing, messier than usual, trail off.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," came Ron's answer a moment later. "I know you're doing everything you can to hold things together over there."

Hermione nodded to herself, feeling her eyes pricking with tears at his sympathetic words.

"It's not enough," she answered. "Not even close. We've started rotating the most at-risk DA members into Headquarters overnight as of today, but we can't just hole up in here forever. And…" she hesitated to put into writing the thing she dreaded most, "it feels like there's a breaking point coming soon. I know that sounds daft but… it's all holding together by a thread and it would take just one more slip and we'd be done for."

"Look what you lot have managed so far, Hermione!" Ron wrote back, his loopy writing even messier than usual. "You're just getting started on those Carrow bastards."

"Yes, we had successes in the past but… It's not even a week since the DEs made their move against Neville's gran, and they've got the upper hand already! The Carrows have the run of the place now – the teachers daren't help us openly anymore, the portraits are trying to keep out of it, even the ghosts are too afraid to do much! We've all just been keeping our heads down, but that's not enough. The Carrows, the Junior DEs, and Filch…"

The twinned parchment absorbed her words, conveyed them to Ron, and was blank for a long minute. Hermione reviewed that past week as she awaited his reply. She hadn't exaggerated in her summary to Ron; in fact, she'd done just the opposite. The Carrows now stalked through the castle at all hours, cursing and jinxing every student who set a toe out of line. This could be for even mild infractions, such as Neville muttering under his breath (he'd suffered a cutting curse that time), Parvati insulting Pansy Parkinson (an evening in the dungeons with Filch), or even just "lookin' at me the wrong way," which many students – especially the younger ones – seemed unable to avoid. Nearly two dozen students were sent to the hospital wing by the week's end. She took up her quill again.

"Like I said, it's all looking very bleak over here… one more slip," she knew she was repeating herself but couldn't seem to stop, "and we're done for."

"Enough talking rubbish about being done for," Ron wrote at last.

Hermione couldn't help smiling to herself at that.

"I'm not talking… I'm writing."

"Ha-ha. You know what I meant. And I think it's time to stop putting so much pressure on doing, Hermione. You've clearly got your hands tied, you can't change that, but you can try to keep a cool head about it. That'll be impossible if you keep on whinging."

Anger flared so hot inside Hermione that a single blue spark flew from the end of her long plait.

"WHINGING? Ronald Weasley you –"

"Hear me out! I'm completely serious 'Mione. You sound depressed as anything, and that's the LAST thing that will help you lot right now. You've got to figure out a way to boost morale over there – yours AND the DA's. You're right that things will fall apart – that will sure as shit happen if everyone else starts thinking the way you're thinking!"

The anger was gone as quickly as it had come, and Hermione shook her head ruefully at the parchment.

"Since when are you so wise?"

His answer was immediate.

"Since always. It's you who failed to notice."

Hermione thought for a moment and sighed.

"I'll start thinking of ways to boost morale, and you and Harry let me know if you have any ideas. But, Ron… I'm not whinging; I'm worried."

"I know. I am too." The parchment was blank for a moment before his writing reappeared. "Look I've got to go. I'll start brainstorming morale boosters and we'll talk soon."

"OK, Ron. Bye."

Harry's writing appeared next.

"Ron's right, Hermione. And I know you'll pull through – they won't win this, they CAN'T. Not while we continue to resist. Remember that you have resources. You still have the Map. You still have the DA and the brain chain and the fighters. I think you just need to reframe how you use those resources. You're right that you can't fight a war right now – it's siege. Start using siege tactics."

Hermione sighed and stared down at Harry's cramped script. She knew that he was right, and she had already started mobilizing the DA in exactly the ways he was suggesting: plans to use Memory Charms on the DEs were being rolled out within the next week, as well as softer methods for defusing the worst classroom situations. But she knew that Harry was unaware of other aspects of this new, dark Hogwarts that had her in such a tailspin.

She knew she should answer Harry… knew that he'd be waiting for her reply. He surprised her by writing first.

"It's Ron's turn on watch now, and there's been some odd noises outside the tent so he'll be a while." Hermione stared at the words, wondering if Harry had just kicked Ron out of the tent in order to write to her on his own. His next question proved her inkling to be correct: "What about Snape?"

"What about him?" she scratched back immediately.

"You told us about the Carrows and Filch and the Junior DEs, and you mentioned the teachers and the ghosts and the portraits, but you've not said a word about the greasy git in ages. How does Snape feature in all of this?"

Hermione could imagine her friend, green eyes narrowed behind his round spectacles, his scar standing out sharper than usual as anger at the mere thought of Snape made his pale visage paler still.

"There's nothing to say about him."

"Bollocks. Hermione, it's just me now. Tell me what's happening with him. He can't just be letting the other DEs have the run of the place. There must be a way to get to Snape, and maybe that would neutralize the other DEs. Do that, and you might just take Hogwarts back."

Hermione felt a flare of wretched fear ignite in her chest when she read those words, and she replied without judging the wisdom of her response.

"Absolutely not. Snape has practically nothing to do with any of this."

"I know he has some hold over you," Harry fired back, "I get that, Hermione. But he's kept you locked in place all year where he's concerned, and I think you have to start moving against him." She raised her quill, ready to pen a heated response, but stopped herself as Harry continued, "That's why I wanted to talk to you alone tonight." His writing appeared slowly now, and she could picture him speaking the words in a measured, careful tone. "You're right that he's got your hands tied, with your parents as hostages, but I think you've forgotten that you've got resources outside of Hogwarts, too."

Hermione considered what Harry was implying. He knows how dangerous this is… too dangerous to even put into words. She took a deep breath and then wrote her answer.

"Absolutely not."

"It isn't like we're doing anything else at the moment!" Harry's writing turned spikier as his excitement grew. "And you're still writing to them, right? Every three days or so? It would be simple. You tell us where to Apparate, you tell them when to leave – hocus pocus, we spring your parents, and you're free to Avada Snape." Hermione actually cried out in indignation, and Harry's writing hurriedly continued, "Neutralize him, I mean."

This is insanity, a voice resounding with truth spoke up within her, he's completely blinded by his hatred of Snape, he doesn't know…

Hermione thought for a long time, and Harry, a thousand miles away in a draughty, smelly tent in the middle of a forest, waited for her. She sorted through her feelings, the ones that cropped up immediately at his plan – outrage, panic, revulsion – and tried to separate them from her feelings for Snape – confusion, anger, trust, longing – and to disentangle all of those from her current despondence and wretchedness. It was a completely new way of using Occlumency, and by the time a couple of minutes had passed, Hermione felt the clarity she needed to confront Harry over this matter at long last.

"I'm sure we could get my parents away safely – you're right about that. Where you're wrong is their status as hostages. They're not hostages at all, Harry."

"Wait. What?"

"They're not hostages. They never have been. I won't attack Snape because I neither want to nor need to."

"Of course you NEED to! After everything he's done! HE KILLED DUMBLED –"

Hermione had to cut him off, her quill moving sharply by magic as she wrote over his words.

"He did, yes, but not for the reasons you think." Hermione let that sink in for a moment before she continued. "Listen, I need you to trust me here, Harry. I know it's a massive thing to ask. But believe me when I say that I cannot move against Snape."

The twinned parchment absorbed her words and went blank. And that's how it stayed until Hermione sighed, and blew out her candle.

Hermione spent the following day doing just one thing. Oh, she did plenty in addition to that one thing: she attended classes, mitigated conflicts, Confunded Filch, ate two meals in the Great Hall and one in the Room of Requirement, completed homework, chatted with friends, and surveyed the Marauder's Map. But while all of those things took up her time and much of her attention, a sizeable portion of her mind was hard at work on the problem she had discussed with Harry and Ron the night before.

It's not just a simple problem, she realised at breakfast as she went over the DA pairings for the day with Neville, it's singular, yes, but it's many-sided. A decagon or a hypotrochoid or some other shape Muggle kids my age learn about in advanced geometry or parametric equations. It's the mounting pressure of everything coming together from all sides without any one thing to hold them apart.

She thought endlessly of the DA's plight, both unwilling and unable to force the feeling of failure down from her chest, given the daily trips she now made to the hospital wing to consult Madam Pomfrey or to retrieve injured DA members. She thought of the boys, out in the desolate woods, cold and alone and more than a little desperate. She thought of Harry's waning faith, his mounting lack of direction. She thought of Voldemort, shadowy and unknowable, but operating with ever-crushing force against the Light. And, she thought of Snape, whose dark eyes refused to meet her own in the Great Hall, and who continued to play his part so well that she could hardly see where the dark man began and the Death Eater ended.

She considered it all, weighing it in her Mind's Eye, which no longer filtered the world for her. Instead, it was the calculator where she computed the parametric equations that would somehow solve this hypotrochoid. And although it yielded results, these were as confusing as the original equations.

"It's the answer to the universe," she muttered to herself that night as she prepared for bed in her dormitory. "The answer is 42. And now that I know that, I just have to construct a secondary super-advanced, computer-generated mechanism for interpretation."

Her dubious laughter was interrupted by a tap at the door. It was Ginny.

"Hermione? Were you talking to someone?" the redhead asked, glancing at the empty portrait on the opposite wall.

"No, just to myself. Come in."

"I have something to tell you," Ginny said, and Hermione nodded at her to sit on the bed while she herself took the chair near the window. Her friend looked anxious in a way that filled Hermione with a sorrow she had known – had computed – was coming.

"I think I know already, Gin."

Ginny's amber eyes looked away for a moment before meeting Hermione's.

"I'm going home over Easter," she paused for a moment, "and I'm not coming back."

"Your mum?"

"Yeah," Ginny snorted indelicately, "since September she's been talking about getting me home and keeping me there. And then at Christmas she almost had my Dad convinced. Now it's both of them and…I don't want to agree, but I think it's just…"

"It's time," Hermione said, with finality.

"Right."

"I agree with her. Completely."

Ginny met Hermione's gaze again, her blazing glare subverted slightly by moisture at the corners of her eyes. The younger girl brushed the tears away impatiently.

"I'm so sorry, Hermione. I'm… I'm abando –"

"You most certainly are not abandoning us, Ginevra Weasley!" Hermione stood up, and sank down on the bed next to Ginny so that she could put an arm around her shoulders. Conviction and sorrow warred in her chest, and the former won out. "The DEs will just keep coming up with ways to blackmail each and every one of us into submission, and I don't want your family to become part of that."

"I know. But it still feels like I should stay or…" Ginny looked at Hermione from the corner of her eye, "like you should come with me." Hermione was already shaking her head, but her friend pressed on, "You and Neville. We – my family and I – I'm sure we'll go into hiding as soon as we can. We'll have to now that I'll be truant. It won't matter anymore. 'Mione, come with us."

"That's a great idea – ask Neville. But I can't leave, Ginny. I'm here for…" she thought of Snape, of his dark eyes and his small, rare smile, "for the duration. I'm staying."

"I already asked Neville. And Michael. And Parvati. And Lavender. And Seamus. I was hoping to muster a whole team of us going home to try and get you to come along…" she shook her head, "all of you brave, brilliant idiots have turned me down."

"This is the right time for you to get out, Ginny," Hermione said it in the ringing tones of truth; it was a comfort to speak it, to assert that it was time for her best lieutenant – her best friend – to retreat. "The others will have to decide for themselves."

Ginny swiped at her eyes again.

"Mum said she'd come and collect me personally if I didn't go quietly onto the train."

"Ginny," Hermione offered her a conjured handkerchief, "none of us has a real choice anymore. Not now that…" she let herself trail off, thinking of Neville's worry for his Gran. She took a deep breath before continuing, "not anymore. You have to do this." She couldn't forebear a rueful smile. "Although I would enjoy seeing your mother break down the portcullis to lay waste to anyone who got in her way."

"She'd just nag them all to death." Ginny's normally rich, determined voice became a small, shameful thing, "It feels so wrong to leave the DA."

"I'll tell you what," Hermione said with somewhat forced cheerfulness, "do you still have your DA Galleon?"

"Of course. It's not like I have any other Galleons to confuse it with. It's in my trunk."

"Neville and I will keep in touch with you that way. If – " she pointed a finger at Ginny sharply – "and, mind you, only if – there is something you can do for us safely from outside of Hogwarts, we'll let you know."

Ginny nodded firmly.

"And you'll keep me up-to-date on everything?"

"Absolutely."

Ginny left some time later, and Hermione felt the castle settling in for the night. The adjacent Room of Requirement grew still, the moon rose to peep in through her window, and a dark mahogany door appeared in the wall at the foot of Hermione's bed. She had been up, already preparing to leave when the door had popped into existence in precisely the same spot as it had done the first time.

"Not tonight," she told it, sighing inwardly. "I've got business elsewhere."

The door seemed to ignore her, standing proud and solid and utterly unapologetic in her wall. She shook her head at it – at her own desires, which had been strong enough to produce it – and pulled on an extra jumper against the early spring chill.

"Dobby?" she asked the empty room.

The elf was at her side a moment later, bowing so low that his forehead hit his knees.

"Dobby is here to serve Harry Potter's friend, miss!" he said breathlessly.

"Thanks, Dobby," she answered, smiling. It was a tonic to see him, however briefly. "I'll not be out for long. Please watch over the DA while I'm gone, and Apparate to get me if anything goes wrong, OK?"

"Dobby is on his best guard!" he answered stoutly, straightening his spine and putting on an adorable scowl.

"And a fearsome guard you are. I won't be an hour."

The Room provided a safe exit, and Hermione left the castle to visit Hagrid for a long-overdue visit, and to discuss the answer that her formidable Mind's Eye calculator had computed.

A/N 2: What's our favourite know-it-all planning? 100 House points to whoever can guess! (Come onnn, Slytherins!)