Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.
13. A Stag of Life
In her breathing, there appeared a knot of fear, a resounding spell of all her life's memories and all the faces she had seen; her parent's faces smiled in her mind, wandering off like doves. Her mind and soul fluttered around Snape's eyes like blind moths. Close to him, a blue light ignited, an incomprehensible stag standing in the door's kitchen.
Blue light. The animal's frame dispersed between her breathing; it grew inside her, warming up everything. Harry's warmth. His invincible, green gaze lightened up the corners of her fear.
She had never loved her friend more as much as in that moment.
The half-blood seemed to notice too the perennial spirit peeking in their house.
His eyes spoke for him.
Oh! Let him know we're here. Run, Granger!
The girl followed her body, apparently moving on its own. The Death Eaters advanced towards her, forming human waves; Snape threw himself unarmed on some of them.
"Grab her," she heard someone scream downstairs; she had climbed the stairs in a frantic, reckless flight. She turned her head to see how a sea of hands and bodies tumbled in the stairs, how Snape was swallowed by that human cave of savage arms and nails.
She found two masks when she reached the room upstairs and barely managed to threw them out of the window with an awkward, hurried spell. The Death Eater screamed in such a way she didn't think possible for humans, howling like delirious wolves. There were still noises of windows being broken, and a green, grim light stumbled from the first floor. She ran to the window's frame and let her wand out to cast her Patronus, but a howl restrained her blood and thoughts; a painfully familiar voice stood in front of her, producing short, grotesque noises, pieces of yelling and moaning that wrecked before completely spreading.
Snape's mutilated voice.
The Patronus didn't appear from the tip of her wand because she was unable to think of anything happy; she could only pay attention to the hoarse moans and hyena's laughter scattering like gunpowder.
She trembled, without thinking of anything but running downstairs and attack and attack and attack...
The stag stood in front of the window; it looked unearthly compared with the terrible reality of pain and torture, with the screaming and impotence.
Calm and eternal, intact despite the violence she could hear, so close, so hard to quiet down in her mind.
She tried to focus, screwed her lids and squeezed her chaotic head until she could wring Ron's image, the sudden and immense touch of their first kiss, the window to another world that was opened for her when she found love for the first time.
The otter rose to the skies, swam around the trees and the house's roof.
Downstairs the laughter continued, and the screams turned quieter, more agonizing.
"Harry!"
The name of the boy-who-lived, that had been their only hope for so many years, that still was the only helping hand.
"Harry!"
She hoped that, like an amulet, that name could sweep the masked faces downstairs and the shreds of voice that overwhelmed her.
Without being able to control herself anymore, she dragged her rage with her, ready to get rid of anything and anyone that stood in her way. She heard footsteps behind her.
"Hermione!"
Granger was scrawny and dishevelled; her eyes were red and her face was wet with dirty tears. A frenzied glint shone in her eyes.
"Snape, downstairs!"
Harry understood the meaning of her words when he heard deep moans and laughter downstairs. In the window's frame appeared McGonagall, Hagrid, the Weasleys, Luna and Neville one by one, all armed and quick. They ran downstairs like a deadly cloud, killing in their path the coven's participants that stood in their way. Many of the masked men turned into smoke and perforated the roof like torpedoes. Others stayed behind to fight, and the house was soon filled with burning stars, fireballs and ferocious lightning. Many bodies fell; a trail of light perforated Ginny's leg, and her scream ignited the battle, like a war scream. Minutes passed, Neville rolled down the stairs and fell with a dislocated arm; given the fight McGonagall was, for the first time, wearing her hair loose, falling on her shoulders, making her look more human and somehow more dangerous. Ron gasped, supporting himself against a wall.
The majority of the Death Eaters had run away, but some of them were laying down on the house's floor.
Hagrid and Weasley focused on carried the injured, Hermione and Harry looked for Snape. The girl found him laying face down, close to a scattered Death Eater. There was blood.
That was it, a body with a brown shirt laying down in the middle of the living room. That was how it ended, it was that simple.
The brunette cringed, without leaving her spot. So much effort, so much controlled fear just to end like this, quickly, without managing to do anything.
Harry couldn't bear the weight of believing what was in front of him.
He walked towards the fallen and his tired hand touched his nape, tangling it in the black, straight hair of Prince.
"Professor Snape?"
The Weasley watched him, condescending and pale. Hagrid's bushy eyebrows merged in a worried frown. McGonagall was still.
All of them shared a small scream as the half-blood lifted his head.
They conjured several stretchers, where they put Neville and Ginny. Hagrid and Luna tried to realign Longbottom's bones, who was biting his lips and shifting. Molly was taking care of her daughter.
The Golden Trio, McGonagall and Arthur had surrounded Snape. Harry seemed divided between a redhead and his mother's friend. He was going from this to that place constantly. The Weasleys' father helped Snape stand up and stabilize his legs; the Occlumens was shaking frantically, it looked as if they'd just pulled him out of a frozen lake. He'd have collapsed if Hermione and Ron weren't holding him by his arms.
His hair covered most of his face, many strands sticking to the bloodstain on his forehead; crimson drips fell from his nose and chin. He tilted to Arthur like an old tree. Ron watched with surprise how Hermione whispered encouragement words and tried to touch him, always regretting it just before her hand reached him.
The sat him on the first steps of the stairs. Granger went looking to the cupboard for sheets to clean Snape' and Ginny's blood.
They organized themselves in groups: Molly and Hagrid took Ginevra; Luna and Arthur were preparing to leave with Longbottom, and yet they were sorrowful because the house's protection still wouldn't let the half-blood leave. They didn't know what kind of magic they'd have used to seal it. The trio and Minerva decided to stay.
In a corner of the house, McGonagall and Potter immobilized the wounded Death Eaters and left, saying they'd be back before dawn came.
They were left alone, then. Hermione, Ron and Snape.
The redhead watched distantly Jean's light and careful hand, tracing the Potion Master's bruises, staining a part of the sheet with still-warm blood.
The man watched the floor stubbornly; his jaw trembled; his body shook.
Residual effects of Cruciatus, both Gryffindors thought without saying it.
Hermione finished cleaning the wound and noticed its shape:
Traitor.
It was written in the middle of the forehead, with clunky handwriting. She'd have liked to control herself, to avoid upsetting her professor, but she covered her mouth with her hand and tears left her eyes without her permission. Weasley grimaced, making it clear to the Potion Master that whatever they'd done to his face it was awful, maybe disfiguring. Ever since he felt the wand's pain cutting his flesh he considered it as a possibility.
Lend me a mirror.
The youngest male Weasley startled when he noticed he was being addressed. Snape's presence was still uncomfortable and nasty to him, but followed drily the man's request.
The man touched with trembling fingers the cleft's corners while looking at his reflection, clenching his jaw. The Death Eaters really didn't have any creativity left. They'd marked hundreds of people like that, and yet what they'd done to his Mark was new: they had burnt it, leaving a repulsive scar on his whole forearm and the skin sensible and fractured. Weasley bound his head and arm, given that Granger was still using the sling and found it difficult.
He opened his eyes; the three of them had fallen asleep around the stairs. Granger and Weasley held each other in the middle of their dreams, one supporting the other and vice versa, their warm hands joined. Ron's breathing blew between brown hair, like a summer breeze in the countryside.
Snape watched them for a moment, acknowledging his loneliness, burning with envy and hate towards them all, towards those too, towards that idiotic redhead that had managed to keep Granger with him despite his immaturity and his irresponsible acts.
He touched his burned forearm, painfully recognizing the scars that now maimed him.
He was burning with rage, with resentment with no target, attacking everyone and no one. To Weasley who was unworthy and yet loved, to Potter and McGonagall, to Granger…
That bloody Granger that had cried when seeing the scar on his forehead, stupid, stupid Granger.
He walked to the kitchen, supporting himself against the walls with a lot of effort. He sat on one of the chairs, gaze fixed on the white, cloudy sky of the morning. The previous night, while hearing himself scream, he'd been convinced he was going to die; he wouldn't have been able to explain the whirlwind and disorganized series of sensations that had choked him: panic, fear, shame at having died like that, like a bug, disgust at himself, a bitter happiness for knowing he wouldn't have to face anyone or anything ever again, an old, cornered sadness which he didn't want to face, an unexpected bewilderment when remembering Granger and her bravery, the know-it-all's loyalty that managed to challenge his prejudices.
The first thing Hermione saw was Ron's sleeping face, his red eyelashes and thin bows. She stood still, watching him for a moment, without daring to breath or move. She wouldn't have been able to imagine a few days ago how close were joy and relief. Everyone was okay, there were some injured, but everyone was safe and Ron was with her.
Ron, Ron, Ron, like a loving meow. She smiled to herself and felt stupid, but very happy in spite of that. It took some minutes for her to realize Snape wasn't where he had laid down exhausted the night before.
She slipped away carefully, leaving the boy half supported over the steps. She looked at him again for a long time; those skinny legs were her Ronald's, that bright, striking hair, her Ronald's hair.
She peeked at the cupboard, but it was empty, the quilts were still laying all over the place as she had left them. She went upstairs and didn't find anything but pieces of glass on the floor and emptiness. Finally, she looked for him in the kitchen, without getting alarmed; there was no way he could leave the house, after all.
She found him sitting at the table, almost demurely, watching over the window.
She heard his screams from the night before inside her head as if they were a recording and shivered a bit in the threshold. She could barely believe the man that had been howling like that was the same man sitting in front of the table so calmly, as if nothing had happened. But she was fooling herself; Snape seemed truly depressed, his eyes were sunken and the eyebags had become two big, black circles around his sockets. He looked quite unhappy.
"Professor, how do you feel?"
The man turned around slowly and watched her like one watched a shadow in the living room. Granger felt really uncomfortable, almost transparent to the black eyes, as if her weight was empty, just air.
Isn't it obvious, Granger? I could be jumping on one foot.
The dishevelled girl stepped into the kitchen and sat in front of the gaunt man.
"You must be hungry. Harry and the professor came back at dawn, but you were asleep, and we didn't want to wake you up. They went out to buy food and some stuff for the house."
In the past, he'd have felt offended at knowing everyone watched him while asleep, but it didn't matter anymore: they had seen him in agony, in prison, dirty, bloody, in every humiliating way known to man, what did it matter if they saw him asleep or not.
"They explained what happened," Granger kept talking, who would never waste the opportunity of using her big mouth non-stop. "Apparently, the Ministry cast protections around the house that turned it invisible and prohibited visits and mail so nobody could find us and that way we'd be safe from the Death Eaters. Maybe it'd have worked if it weren't for a detail."
She made a dramatic pause, watching him inquisitively as if she was waiting for a question of his to continue the tale.
Are you going to finish telling it or are you waiting for me to complete your pleasant story?
"Don't you wonder what that small detail was?"
The Ministry is full of Death Eaters? Is that your open secret?
Granger seemed taken aback.
"Did you know?"
It's obvious.
"Well, yeah, but…" Hermione didn't seem to know how to continue. "The thing is that our location wasn't a secret for the Death Eaters, but it was for Harry and our allies, so we were in a really dangerous situation all this time."
I see. I hadn't noticed at all.
The girl frowned slightly.
"Harry and Ron looked for us for days. They thought they'd transferred us somewhere else, but they started to dig in the Ministry, you know Harry's cloak and Polyjuice Potion, and managed to understand what was really happening. It was a big scandal; the Ministry was taken by force last night and many officers fled; only a few of them weren't involved in the Death Eater situation. It was really lucky Harry arrived on time.
The man listened carefully for a few moments before turning his gaze to the window.
"You really were wi—lling to die. Every Gry—findor is the same."
Hermione got a bit closer, tilting her head in a kind gesture.
"I can't say the same about the Slytherin. You, for example, surprise me more and more each day."
The professor turned her gaze back to her.
"Maybe you should've been one of us."
I doubt it, Miss Granger.
Hermione looked at the bandage on Snape's forehead; a few thin blood marks were appearing on it. And she was sure, absolutely sure, that the Potion Master was, at his heart, one of them.