AN: Thanks for reading/reviewing! This is where the more extensive rewrites are starting to come in. So hopefully there will be less drag from here on!
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"I just don't understand it," Ron said, rolling over yet again on his bed so that the sheets were twisted another time around his legs. His arms draped off the side of the mattress and his face hung down between them, staring woefully at the floor. "We've been together so long. Why would she do this to me? Just out of the blue? Over nothing? Did she say anything to you about it? Like why? Is there someone else?"
Harry, with a sigh, abandoned the procedure text he had been painstakingly annotating and turned his chair around so his back was to the desk. It was Sunday afternoon and there was an exam tomorrow, but there was no point trying to work. Ron wasn't getting through this on his own.
"There's no one else, mate, she's just going through a hard time and needs her space."
"Do you think she'll come back, then?" It was sad how fast Ron popped up, how loudly he pleaded with his eyes.
"I don't know, mate. Probably not before she finishes with The Matrix."
Ron flopped back down and snarled into the mattress. "Always The bloody Matrix."
That was what they called her project between themselves. The Matrix, like that American film that had come out a few months back and was all the rage amongst the Muggles. They had never seen it, but the adverts were here and there in Muggle London. They liked to joke that Hermione saw everything in streams of green numbers, that she knew secrets that would blow everyone's minds. They were waiting for her to start wearing all black naugahyde and sunglasses. It was just a laugh, something to break up the painful seriousness of what she was going through, at least in private.
Harry wasn't sure what to do. Ron was bad off, but Hermione seemed fine about the breakup - if not everything else. It didn't sit well with Harry, who had watched them dance around each other for so many years before finally coming together. They were good together, they fit and seemed stable and right to him, the way that a couple should be. So it was disturbing to watch Hermione destroy that stability because she deemed it a distraction from The Matrix. It bothered him quite a bit that she would just give up on Ron when he became inconvenient. In fact, it bothered him so much that he'd ignored her owls all weekend, setting them aside unread.
Harry loved Hermione, and he had immense sympathy for her losses, but here was Ron before him now, his best mate, torn up over a girl who had to pretend that he mattered.
Harry crossed the room and sat down on his own bed across from Ron. "Look, I know it hurts right now, but you're better off without her, alright?"
Red-faced from breathing through the bedding, Ron peered pitifully up at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"She's just-" Harry shook his head, tried to think how to put it. "She's changed. Losing her dad like that, it made her… cold."
Ron seemed to digest this for a moment, seemed to think it over. Then he threw himself to his feet and began pacing the room. "You know what? You're right. She has gotten cold. She used to be interested in cool stuff. We used to talk about Quidditch sometimes! But then she got wrapped up with all this and suddenly everything I said was too dull for her."
Harry got the distinct feeling that Hermione had probably never cared about Ron's Quidditch stories. More likely, she had just lost the patience it took to sit and listen to one of his winding accounts of whichever team's long road to victory. But it felt better to see his friend pacing rather than wallowing.
"And, you know, not to be the sort of tosser to say it but-" Ron let loose a sardonic, brittle laugh. "Well, I'll just say 'cold' might be a good word for her, but 'frigid' hits a mite closer to the mark if you know what I mean."
Having only just escaped the swarm of mental images Hermione had stuck him with, Harry shook his head and tried to change the subject, but Ron was already going on.
"I mean, she's got so many rules! It's like trying to shag an instruction manual that's charmed to tell you everything you're doing wrong."
This was actually not so far off from what Harry had envisioned in some of his lower moments, but hearing it confirmed aloud was by no means comforting. "Well then," he said, leaping to his feet. "Like I said. You're better off without her."
Ron stopped square between him and his desk and, as Harry watched, his face crumpled. "But I love her! Isn't that what you do when you love someone? Look past the stuff that makes it hard and just-" He held up his hands before him as if jamming two impossible puzzle pieces together. "-make it work?"
Harry peered helplessly at his friend. "I don't know, mate. Honestly, I've always kind of looked at your family as the ideal sort - and you grew up in it. I imagine, if there's a trick to making things work, you're probably more likely to know it than I am."
As he watched, Ron's face shifted from one of wretched sorrow to the thoughtful frown he got while leaning over a chess board. "Right. That's it, then. That's what I'll do."
"Wait. What?"
But he was already grabbing his cloak and striding out the door, muttering to himself. The door shut behind him and Harry stared at it for a long, unnervingly quiet moment. He had a feeling that he'd just set something terrible in motion.
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For reasons she did not care to parse through, Hermione detested going to the Auror Academy, and even though the dormitories were the least academic part of the campus, she hated them most of all. She told herself it was the drinking and feckless debauchery, but her disgust for that disorderly behavior stemmed more from resentment for persons able and engaged in scholarly pursuits who instead wasted their time on hedonism.
And tonight, when she could no longer avoid going at all, it was especially bad. In the lounge that was the central hub of the building, adult children spilled themselves across sofas and study tables, giggling and gibbering nonsense to one another over booze-spotted notes. In the stairwell, a necking couple hardly spared her a glance, and only that to ascertain whether she was an authority. Even in the hallway, probably just steps away from their own rooms, boys sprawled with their legs across the walkway, gazing up at her with what they wrongly assumed was sensual ambivalence. To Hermione, they just looked drunk and foolish.
Disgusted, she stepped over their feet and rapped on Harry and Ron's door enough times to draw slurred questions from her witless audience. Thankfully, the door wrenched open quickly. The ghost of irritation faded from Harry's face as she brushed past him into the room.
"There you are! Haven't you been getting my owls?"
He stared at her with an anxious light in his eyes, then glanced down the hall and shut the door. Outside, the drunks were guffawing, probably at her, now that she thought of it. But that didn't matter. Harry's effort at a blank expression, though, did.
"No," he lied. "I mean, yes. But I've had this exam to study for and, between Ron being heartbroken and everyone deciding to tie one off for Ifrit Week, I didn't have time for distractions."
Hermione accepted what was, after all, a perfectly reasonable explanation and completely failed to notice the understated barb he'd aimed at her. "I don't know how you can study like this, Harry. What is Ifrit Week and why has it made your entire school go mad?"
He sighed and rammed his fingers through his hair. He must have been doing that a lot, as it remained unchanged, sticking straight up all over. "Those are all third years. Instead of having an exam tomorrow like me and most everyone else, they're preparing to interview the visiting ifrits, which are-"
"-magical creatures created by the spilled blood of murder victims. Does it really take an entire week to learn that?"
"I don't know. I'm not a third year, am I." He sighed heavily. "I guess it's a tradition for third years to perform their interviews massively hungover. Apparently, the ifrits find it disarming."
Hermione watched Harry stalk across the room to his desk and brace his hands on the back of his chair. From the look of it, he had done a great deal of work already. And yet, he didn't look at all pleased about it.
"Harry, is something wrong?"
He sighed and faced her again, rubbing the back of his neck now. Hermione knew that look. He was on the brink of admitting to having done something.
"I may have… That is, I'm worried about Ron."
"He's not studying, is he? Oh, Harry, I didn't even think of that! If I'd known there was an exam, I would have timed it better."
He stared at her for a beat, then smiled sadly. "I know you would, Hermione. You must have gone through this loads of times, studying hard with me and Ron off running around Hogwarts."
She knew he was changing course. She knew he was hiding something. But if he was willing to change the subject now, she would not turn down the chance. She didn't have time right now to wheedle the truth out of him. So she only smiled bittersweetly back. "Doesn't feel good, does it?"
"Well, maybe a little bit, in a sort of a righteous way."
"There is that." Hermione chuckled with him, then grew serious. There wasn't time. She had so many preparations to make still. "Harry, I need a favor. I have to borrow your invisibility cloak."
"Sure," he said reflexively, then hesitated. "Off to loot Malfoy again?"
Her mouth popped open and she gaped at him. "How did you know?"
"Well, I am training to be an Auror. You know, investigating crimes and such." He grinned at her expression and finally shrugged. "His name is inscribed in half the books you leave out on the table, Hermione. And you're clearly up to no good."
That much was true. Hermione opened her mouth to admit to what she was really planning to do with his cloak, but she hesitated. Maybe, if Harry was keeping secrets of his own, it wasn't exactly prudent to tell him what she was planning. He had always been prickly when it came to Professor Snape, and he'd been tight-lipped about whatever secrets he'd seen revealed in the Pensieve, reporting only that Snape had worked for the Order even through his worst years. Even killing Dumbledore was a part of that plan. It was hard to guess where Harry stood on the spy, and to ask now would be exceedingly incriminating. If he took it into his head to interfere, he could cause Hermione no end of trouble.
So she smiled, and shrugged feebly. "Does it count as stealing if you steal from someone vile?"
"In the eyes of the law, I suppose so." Harry grinned and fished the Invisibility Cloak out of his sock drawer. "But I'm not an Auror yet. Rob the git blind, Hermione."
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Less than twenty-four hours later, Hermione snuck into St. Mungo's under the cover of the Invisibility Cloak and knocked around the fourth floor landing like a guilty ghost. She hated lying to Harry, even if he had started it, and she hated knowing that Ron's grades were going to take a hit because of her. There was nothing for it, though. She'd set out on this course of action, and she had to see it through.
Finally, quite a bit late, Neville came lunging up the stairs three at a time. He very nearly ran into her.
"What part of six o'clock sharp was unclear?" she demanded.
He teetered on the last step, searching the apparently empty stairwell with wide eyes. Hermione snatched his robes to keep him from tipping backward down the stairs. Neville gulped and peered at an approximation of where she stood. "S-sorry, Hermione. I'm just a fair bit nervous. This is kidnapping…"
"Oh, pish posh, Neville. It's for his own good. We're performing a public service, if you think about it."
"Are you sure? I mean-" He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the floor. "-you weren't there for his go at headmaster. He was unfair as a professor but he was an absolute nightmare when he had the run of things."
Hermione gritted her teeth. She should have predicted more resistance from Neville. He wasn't the same doughy boy she had gone to school with. He was the new Neville, a snake-chopping hero in his own right who had led the resistance against Headmaster Snape.
"Look," she said, taking a firm grip on his shoulder. "It's true he's a cruel, miserable man. But he made it possible for us to win the war, and he very nearly died to do it. Do you really think its right for him to stay in this ward for the rest of his life?"
"Well, no… But you're not exactly doing this out of the kindness of your heart, Hermione."
"Yes, fine, I need his help."
"See, that's just it. You're taking this enormous risk for a nasty git who could be helpful, if he wanted to be. Only, he's not exactly known for his generous nature. How do you know you're not going to go to all this trouble for him, only to have him turn on you when it's done?"
Hermione hardly paused a beat. "That's not going to be a problem. Now, can we carry on already? We don't have much time."
He wasn't exactly enthusiastic, but he listened to her instructions with enough attention that she knew she had won. Finally, she explained the signal she would use to let her know when it was time to leave.
"I'll give your ear a pinch, like this."
"Hey!" He gave a start and nearly went toppling back down the stairs. "Couldn't you just whisper it to me or pull the back of my robes or something?"
"Too conspicuous. The nurse could see your robes moving or might overhear me whispering, but she won't notice if your ear twitches a bit."
Looking very anxious and somewhat pink-cheeked, the wizard did as she asked. Hermione slipped through the door in front of him and, tip-toeing in her trainers, made her way down the ward. Behind her, she could hear Neville greeting his parents in the sitting area and then tossing some nervous but tolerably casual questions towards Gwen, who happened to be the Mediwitch on duty.
Hermione smiled. Neville could be subtler than a hammer, after all.
She spotted her mother sitting amongst the chairs clustered about the windows at the end of the ward. Jane was smiling faintly, reading the book on magical creatures that Hermione had procured for her. Resisting the urge to investigate further, Hermione glanced around to make sure no one was looking and then slipped through the split in the curtain around Snape's bed.
As usual, he was sitting up, gazing around mindlessly.
Hermione threw off the Invisibility Cloak and unzipped the garment bag she had brought along, carefully laying it out on the floor next to the bed.
A full-grown man would not fit inside her beaded bag – well, he could perhaps be made to fit, but it would be sketchy squeezing him through the bag's opening. However, the same Undetectable Extension Charm could be cast on another object, such as the garment bag that usually contained Hermione's professional robes, to make it spacious enough inside to contain a body.
Hermione drew back the blankets that covered Snape's legs and leveled her wand at him. Like all patients in St. Mungo's, Snape was tagged with a number of enchantments designed to notify the staff if he should wander out of his ward, as well as to monitor his vital signs and internal magical activity. They were all fairly simple spells to remove, but security precautions were also set to inform the staff if the spells were being tampered with.
Hermione smiled slightly and fished in her pocket until she found the grease-spotted napkin from this morning's breakfast pastry. She wadded and twisted the napkin until it was vaguely human in shape and set it on the bed next to Snape.
History and Fundamental Practices of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Illnesses had been located in the Magical Society section of the Hogwarts library and the spells and enchantments most recently put to use by the hospital were listed clearly in the monthly staff newsletter, a copy of which Hermione had snitched from the front desk. Carefully, she began unraveling the layers of magic that held the dark-haired wizard to his bed, just enough to shift them to their new target, the napkin. She carefully added new components to the status-monitoring spells so that they would simply continue reading as they had when they were connected to a real human.
Finally, after each magical trace was removed, Hermione wiped her sweating brow and looked back at Snape. He laid there just the same, eyes still roaming. After an instant of hesitation and a quiet, "Sorry about this, sir," she again petrified Snape and levitated him into the garment bag, where he seemed to sink below the level of the floor. His feet did not quite fit, so the witch released the spell holding him and, after another brief hesitation, knelt beside him to bend his knees one at a time so that his socked feet would tuck in the end of the bag.
The skin of his calves was cool and covered with slightly curling black hairs that made Hermione distinctly aware that Professor Snape actually was and had always been a man somewhere under his creepy black robes. Right now, he was only a lean, still, hardly-clothed man. His hedgehog-print hospital gown was rucked up slightly, baring one lean thigh to where the hairs thinned out.
He was practically naked.
Feeling down-right scandalous, Hermione raised a hand to pull the fabric back down. Her thumb just slightly brushed against his naked leg. It was cool and smooth to the touch, and it made her cheeks blaze.
Down the ward, Neville's voice rose. "Oh, um! Wait a moment! I think, um… Does Mum look different? Has she had a haircut this week?"
"No, Mr. Longbottom. She hasn't. Now, delightful as it has been to chat with you, I do need to check on another patient."
"Well, uh… Maybe it's, um, your hair that's different, Mediwitch Gwen. Have you, ah… had it… done?"
"Oh. Well, now that you mention it, yes. I had an herbal treatment this week."
"It- You'll think this is silly, but it actually looks a lot like the petals of Hamamelis Jelena. It's lovely."
"Why- Thank you… Neville."
Hermione let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and silently applauded Neville's sudden show of enthusiasm as a distraction. She quickly zipped the garment bag closed and threw the Invisibility Cloak back over her shoulders. When she picked up the bag, it felt as if it contained no more than a winter coat and was easily slung over one shoulder and covered with the Invisibility Cloak. Almost as a last thought, she executed a masterful Transfiguration on the greasy napkin. It morphed and grew into a fair likeness of Snape, complete with hedgehog-print gown and restlessly wandering eyes.
There. Snape-kin. Until someone scanned the imposter directly, no one would know he was missing.
Carefully, Hermione crept out of the curtained-off area and made her way back to the door.
Neville looked rather red-cheeked and was stammering something about 'the orchard' and 'a spectacular bloom this year' and 'would you care to join me?' Gwen was smiling her serene smile, but her cheeks were a little extra pink as well. She said something about 'that does sound lovely' and 'gentle rains' and 'uncommonly lush.' Hermione glanced between them and wondered, a little bemused despite her urgency to escape, how this hadn't happened yet.
She reached up to Neville, her arm still covered by the cloak, and gave his ear a slight squeeze. He waved her hand away as if it were a fly and went on gazing in shocked pleasure at Gwen.
His brain's been compromised!
That was alright, though. He'd done all she truly needed him to do, anyway. If he wanted to stay, she would simply find a different way to escape. Annoyed but determined, Hermione walked quietly to the door and gave three hard raps.
The Mediwitch startled slightly, then smiled apologetically at Neville and strode over to open the door. Swinging it open, she looked out, peering both up and down the stairs before shrugging and pulling her head back into the ward.
Hermione darted past her and began the descent to the busy lobby, where she would leave just as she had entered, with no one the wiser.
A pair of middle-aged witches came cackling through the ground level door and Hermione slipped easily through before it could shut again. She navigated the lobby, winding around a group of three wizards, each of whom held a fragment of a fourth wizard, whose head was calmly explaining to a skeptical Healer as to Just What Happened. Finally, Hermione slipped through the front door just behind a portly wizard in puce robes and then strode into an alley to Apparate back to Grimmauld Place with her prize.
Now, it was time for the true challenge to begin.
