(Disclaimer: See Beginning)

Thank you everyone who reviewed or alerted this story! I love it! And of course thanks to my Betas, McGonagall's Bola and Emilia Wolfe

Recap:

"Hmm…yes, it can be very shocking," the mediwitch nodded in understanding. "Why don't you go to bed? A good night's rest will hopefully help you forget."

Hermione gave her a grateful smile, and began her walk back to Gryffindor Tower, her mind still on her sleeping professor. 'Somehow, I doubt I'll ever be able to forget tonight'.

Chapter 7

Despite having an overabundance of potions sloshing around in his stomach─half of which should have kept him happily sedated for a few more hours, Severus found himself waking up around his usual time in the morning. Ignoring the sharp pain in his back, he tried to latch onto the last trace of sleep, all the while knowing that it was a futile effort. He was awake.

Groaning in defeat, he gently propped himself up against his headboard and took in the room around him. He was back in his quarters, surprisingly, and even more shocking, Poppy wasn't hovering over him, prodding him with her wand. His wounds the other night must not have been as bad as he had thought they were, or maybe the House Elves had found him earlier than usual. Either way, it didn't matter. He was just glad to be surrounded by the welcoming silence of his room.

Sitting back with a sigh, he relaxed in the calming atmosphere away from nosy mediwitches and nattering old men. Maybe his luck would continue throughout the morning and he wouldn't be forced to endure anyone's company until later in the evening.

His mouth tugged down in a familiar frown as Albus' soft voice called out to him from the other room. Then again, when has shit ever gone my way?

Pulling his cover over his lap and straightening his posture in the most dignified manner he could muster, he called out to the headmaster sealing his doom. "I'm awake, Albus." But please feel free to leave anyway.

Albus came through, closely followed by a House Elf who was carrying a small tray of tea and toast. The two waited until the Elf had placed the tray on a nightstand and disappeared with a pop before turning to each other.

"You're uncanny ability to always show up just as a I awaken, leaves me to wonder if you somehow managed to sneak a portrait in my room without my noticing it." Severus' eyes narrowed in accusation.

"I'm sure you would have found such a infringement by now and destroyed it, had that been the case. Now, how are you doing this morning, my boy?" Albus took a seat beside the bed and began preparing two cups of tea.

"Fine," Severus answered, accepting a cup and resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He took a sip and grimaced at the overly sweet flavor. "Honestly, Albus, must you put the whole sugar bowl in the tea?" With a wave, he vanished the cup's contents and began pouring a second cup, this time with no sugar or milk added.

The headmaster seemed to take this in stride and simply smiled fondly at his younger colleague. "A little sugar is good for the soul Severus, especially after your latest ordeal."

"Somehow, I doubt copious amounts of sugar would have any effect on my tarnished soul, Albus."

The headmaster changed tactics before the conversation could turn too negative. "You gave us quite the scare."

Severus dismissed the comment with a wave. "Nonsense, I have no need or desire to hear such empty platitudes." He continued, ignoring Albus' disappointed gaze. "Now, more importantly, how is the girl?"

"Miss Bones is doing well. Poppy was able to get her in order easily enough and she should be released from the infirmary sometime today."

"Good," Severus nodded in approval, then frowned, thinking something over. "Was she able to tell you how the Snatcher's got a hold of her in the first place? I was under the impression the two Aurors who showed up yesterday were there to prevent this very thing from happening."

Albus smiled ruefully. "Yes, they were. Unfortunately, the Snatchers overwhelmed them outside of the Ministry while they were escorting Miss Bones to St. Mungos."

Severus snorted in contempt. "And people wonder why the war has lasted as long as it has…I'm assuming you were already able to piece together why she was taken."

"I have my suspicions, yes."

Severus rolled his eyes when the headmaster would not go on and gave him what he knew anyway. "It appears that Amelia has been creating too many waves in the Ministry and the Dark Lord wants her out. I believe Miss Bones was to be the bait that would ensure her aunt's…silence."

"Yes, I had feared as much." Albus looked disappointed. "I will warn Amelia immediately. Thank you, Severus. I'll leave you to recuperate. Shall I come back for the rest of the report around lunch?" The old wizard stood to go, but the Potions master called him back.

"That will not be necessary, Albus. I prefer it if we just get this over with now, so I can be done with it."

"Severus, there is no need for that. You should rest a little bit more. You know how taxing it can be."

"I'm fine." The dark haired wizard bit out, resolutely holding the headmaster's gaze.

Sighing, Albus nodded his consent and went back to his chair. Leaning in so that their foreheads were nearly touching, Albus whispered, "Very well", before casting Legilimens and falling into the younger wizard's memories to relive the previous night.

Severus Apparated between two old trees with a soft crack. His feet landed gracefully on the mossy ground of Deadmarsh. Dipping immediately into a crouch he took in his surroundings. The air festered with the aroma of mildew and dank waters yet he couldn't see the swampy lake anywhere near. Nor could he, thankfully, see any huts, which meant that he was probably right on the edge of the marsh and a good distance away from its inhabitants.

Staying low to the ground just in case, he reached in his pocket to retrieve a paper packet of black hair.

The hair samples had been somewhat tricky to retrieve. The house of the kidnapped bride had been easy to break into. The wards weren't particularly hard to break. They were slightly childish, if he were being honest, but the fiancé (or who he assumed was the fiancé) had taken to hovering around the rooms of the house like a wandering ghost. He had unfortunately settled in the bride's bedroom to gaze at a picture frame for a few hours before eventually getting up to leave the house. All the while, Severus had to huddle in a dark corner, disillusioned and cramped, until he was finally able to get into the bedroom, and pluck a few hair strands from a brush. If the grieving man, hadn't been so distraught, Severus probably would've been able to simply Obliviate the man and take what he needed. Alas, Obliviating emotionally unstable people was highly dangerous, and Albus would've had his head if he accidently turned the man's mind to mush.

So he waited, and wasted so much precious time that now the sun was beginning to set already. He most likely only had a couple more hours before the woman's kidnappers would relocate her. And then, finding her would be nearly impossible.

Sliding the strands out onto his palm he whispered a soft, slightly illegal, incantation that morphed the strands into a solid pointing stone. The stone lifted in the air, swiveling around in a slow circle until it stopped, and pointed towards the northeast.

"Lead me." Severus trekked through the swampy vegetation following the pointer until the landscape changed and became a thick forest. The dark stone abruptly stopped, and unable to continue forward disintegrated into a fine dust. Reaching out with his wand, he brushed against a familiar set of wards that he knew belonged to Snatchers. This was the spot.

He spent a few minutes walking around the wards to find any weak spots that could be chipped away without the caster noticing. He nearly laughed when instead of a vulnerable point he found a small metal spike in the ground. Walking around to the opposite side of the wards, he found three more spikes, confirming his suspicions. He couldn't believe his luck. Instead of tying the wards to an individual caster, who would most likely feel it if the wards fell, the imbeciles tied the wards to four grounders, objects that kept the invisible wall in place.

Either these Snatchers were extremely lazy or they were extremely moronic…or both. He'd met a few of them before at meetings and was not impressed.

Quickly dispatching the curses around the pegs, he was able to simply kick them aside and walk through the destroyed wards. With the house in sight, he took out two vials of potion and downed them one after the other and waited for their effects to take place in a small copse of trees.

He watched as his hands faded away into formless shadows, the rest of his body and his robes followed suit, until he was nothing more than a dark blur. He began his mental countdown as he approached the house. With two vials in his system he had only an hour before the potion wore off. He had to move fast if he wanted to beat the clock.

Crawling along the perimeter of the house on silent feet, he counted the number of men he would have to deal with. Two were outside, guarding the door (actually they were playing cards, but he suspected that they were supposed to be guarding the door), another two were in the kitchen, talkin,g and the last was patrolling on the second floor. 'Five in all, not bad odds considering they're all inept fools,' Severus thought to himself. He was infinitely glad that he didn't have to deal with his fellow Death Eaters.

Picking up a stick, he quickly snapped it in half catching the attention of the two guards out front.

"Hey, what's that?" the first guard said with slight panic.

"Stop being a little bitch. It's just a deer or something." The other guard answered.

"Well what if it ain't a deer? What if they found us?"

"Who the fuck is this 'they'?"

"I don't know, like Aurors or something."

"Then Lucinda would have sent us a message by now, but if you're so worried about it why don't you go and check it out?"

"What! Are you fuckin' crazy! I'm not goin' to check it by myself. We're both supposed to be guarding the house."

"And? What's your point?"

"And so you gotta come with me. I can't take on Aurors by myself."

"I already told you there ain't no fuckin' Aurors."

"You don't know that!"

"Fine! Fuckin' Circe! I'll come, just shut ya trap about the damn Aurors."

"Whatever, let's just go."

"I knew we shouldn't have brought a rook out on the job…gettin' scared of fuckin' twigs…damn disgraceful."

Severus pressed up against the side of the house and cast a Silencing Bubble around the area as he waited for the two voices to get close enough. Conjuring a second bubble to put around his head for protection, he opened up a square potion bottle that was filled with pink fumes. The fumes quickly rose in the air, swirling and expanding in the atmosphere until Severus and the two guards were completely surrounded. The Snatchers didn't last two seconds under the cloud of noxious gas and fell to the ground in an unconscious heap. They didn't even get the chance to call for help.

Not stopping his momentum, Severus put on two black gloves and retrieved another vial from his robes. It was a potent poison that would take care of the two men efficiently and with no fuss.

His hand didn't so much as twitch as he brought the vial, that would stop their hearts, to each of their lips and poured it down their throats. He couldn't risk them waking up before he was finished in the house and alerting others. It also didn't hurt that they were worthless scum who took joy in ruining the lives of others. He considered it an added bonus to the world that he could permanently put an end to them.

Dropping the last guard's head back to the ground, he cancelled the Silencing Spell, and vanished the fumes. Carefully, he hovered to one of the second floor windows and slipped inside. He tip-toed over to the door to press his ear against it so he could hear where the patrolling guard was. Twenty seconds later the third Snatcher had passed the door and Severus was able to smoothly exit the room, creep up behind the unsuspecting wizard and bring a poison soaked handkerchief to his mouth. Three Snatchers were done. Now there were only two to go.

Moving down the stairs like a whisper, and arriving at the kitchen, Severus' shadowed body slid in through the entrance, hovering around the dark edges of the room. The two Snatchers were still there, blissfully ignorant of his presence. By the table, not one but two young women were bound and gagged. The witch with curly black hair was, he assumed, the bride-to-be, and strapped against her was a smaller witch with straight blonde hair, her terror-filled eyes flitting between her two captors. She turned away and as her head unknowingly tilted towards Severus, the dark spy found himself inwardly cursing in as many languages as he knew, as he recognized the face of Susan Bones. Now he had two hostages to save instead of one. Slithering out of the room, he backtracked knowing he would have to move forward carefully if he wanted to save both women. The conversation from the kitchen followed him out.

"I'm just sayin', it's not like the Dark Lord will mind if I just have a little taste…just for a minute or two. I won't kill 'em," one of the Snatchers said.

"No, you idiot!" the other, probably the leader, replied hotly. "The Dark Lord wants them both unharmed before he gets them, 'specially the tattoo broad. If he finds out that you've been dipping in the pot without his say, he'll have both our heads."

"A'right! Fine, then let me have the blonde chit. He never said nothin' bout her."

"No, they're both off limits for now, but I'm sure when that Bones judge serves her purpose, the Dark Lord will gives us the girl. So for now keep it in your pants until I say so! Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah…whatever, I'm gonna go take a piss."

"Sure you are." The leader let out a lecherous laugh.

"Fuck off." The grumbling snatcher left the kitchen towards the bathroom unaware of the shadow following him into the sitting room. Springing into action the minute he was far enough away from the kitchen, Severus slammed the poison handkerchief on the Snatcher's, mouth smothering his scream as well.

A shocked gasp suddenly came from behind the spy. "What the fuck did you do to Daryl?"

Severus whirled around, dropping his victim to the floor, and spat out a curse as he turned to see a grubby looking wizard staring at him in shock. Two things immediately became apparent to the spy. One was that the potion had worn off and he was now visible, and the second was that there were six snatchers inside the house instead of the five he had counted.

'How did I miss one?' the spy thought viciously, as he whipped out his wand determined to stomp out the problem before it got out of hand.

Severus spun his wand in a wide arc casting a silent Stupefy that sent the other man flying back into the wall, but not before his opponent could send a burning hex first that hit his thigh.

"Shit." Severus staggered back momentarily, hissing at the pain. Just as he was heading towards the unconscious man to make sure he stayed down, the door to the sitting room swung open. The leader, who had come running the instant he heard the racket, immediately charged the spy with a yell. Severus barely had time to raise a shield for himself before a number of attacks were sent his way.

Making a split second decision, Severus grabbed the knife resting at his hip, and let his shield drop, so he'd have more maneuvering room. He quickly dropped into a forward roll, ignoring the sting of a hex clipping his shoulder and twisted to the leader's left to stab him in the neck. The last of the Snatchers dropped to the ground.

"Finally," Severus muttered, kicking the last of his assailants away. His sweat soaked clothes clung to his body, his back was throbbing again and his thigh needed a long soak in a medicated bath, but at least the job was done now. Sending a Patronus to Kingsley for clean up and retrieval, he left to check on the women, who were still tied up in the kitchen.

The bride-to-be was still firmly knocked out. From her feverish skin, the tremors racking her body and the dilation of the pupils, he speculated that the woman had been force-fed so many drugs to keep her sedated that her body was already shutting down.

He turned to Miss Bones who was also showing signs of an overdose, but at least she had somehow managed to remain conscious. Her clouded blue eyes looked at the professor with dawning comprehension and relief. "Hang on Miss Bones, I'll get you untied in just a moment. I have to─"

Pain speared his body, cutting off his speech. An iron snake with spiky thorns wrapped around his torso, steadily increasing the pressure of its squeeze. He had seen this before. It was the Snatcher's specialty, used only for emergencies because of the massive amounts of magic it called for. If cast correctly, it would create a full body bind that was nearly impossible to escape, then the snake would continue to squeeze until the body was crushed or the snatcher released it. Fortunately for him, whoever had cast the Binding Spell had done it very poorly and they had failed to catch his arms in the vise as well.

And he had a fair idea of who the culprit was. Heaving out a painful wheeze, Severus turned towards his attacker and there was the sixth Snatcher, the one he had Stupefied, stumbling towards him. He spat out a curse as he realized that he had forgotten about him after his duel with the leader.

"Fuckin' Snatchers!" Severus hissed, throwing his knife so fast the Snatcher barely had time to blink. The blade embedded itself in his opponent's eye, killing him instantly. With its master's death, the snake disappeared as well, leaving behind a trail of gashes along his chest and back.

The world became dizzy as blood loss muddled his senses. He needed to hurry. Knowing Kingsley was on his way, Severus scooped up the Bones girl and Apparated back to Hogwarts. He made it two steps into the entrance hallway before everything went black.

Albus slipped back out of his Potion master's mind and sat back to catch his breath. Severus who was once again pale and feverish, slumped against his headboard. The mental exercise had proven to be too much for his healing body after all.

Patting Severus' arms, Albus said, "Thank you again, Severus, for bringing Miss Bones to safety. It seems that you were able to arrive just in the nick of time. You'll also be happy to know that Kingsley arrived shortly after you left and has secured the bride a private room in St. Mungos. Her fiancé is most appreciative."

The younger wizard nodded, his eyes still closed as his body lowered itself back onto the bed. Sleep pulled at his mind. "Albus," his tired voice croaked out, "I'll need a couple of runes respelled before I go before the Dark Lord again."

"Yes, I imagine quite a few of the healing runes broke after your adventures last night. Shall I take a look then?"

Severus nodded in consent and vanished his shirt lifting his left arm for the headmaster to see. Albus worked quickly, resealing several runes.

"Alright, they should last you for a while," Albus said, slipping his wand away.

Severus looked over the runes, making sure the headmaster hadn't missed anything. "Thank you Albus, it looks good."

"Not a problem, my boy. Get some rest." Albus stood, rearranging his robes as he moved to leave

"And Albus," Severus called back, "thank you for finding me."

Hearing this, Albus stopped, his hand on the doorknob. A curious smile flashed across his face. The older man turned back to his bedridden professor, his eyes twinkling. "There is no need to thank me, Severus. I did not find you."

Severus laid back down onto his pillow unconcerned. "Fine, then thank whichever House Elf that managed to find me." The Potions master's eyes began to drop, heavy from exhaustion.

"Ah," the headmaster chuckled, "I will certainly pass along your gratitude to the Elves that helped, but they did not find you either. I'm afraid that honor would go to Miss Granger."

Severus' eyes shot open as he jerked back up. "What?" he asked in disbelief.

Dumbledore seemed to get an even bigger kick out of his reaction. "Miss Granger was the one to find you, Severus. In fact, she was the one who kept you from bleeding out while she sent for Poppy and I. She even helped Poppy with your and Miss Bones' care all throughout the night. A truly remarkable girl, wouldn't you say? Hogwarts is very fortunate to have her." With those parting words, Albus slipped out the door, leaving the Potions master to his thoughts.

Severus remained quiet, staring down at his covers in shock. Miss Granger found me? He didn't know what to feel about that, aside from the usual irritation. He supposed he should feel gratitude and a part of him─a very small part that he was ignoring─did, but a larger part of him was just annoyed. For one, she was a student, and he hated the thought of any student seeing him in such a state. To make matters worse, not only was she a Gryffindor but she was also Potter's and Weasley's friend, and the three seemed to keep no secrets from each other.

She's probably writing a letter to them about it right now, and Merlin knows once Weasley knows, then others will, too. The boy can't hold water. The thought brought a sour taste in his mouth. He hardly tolerated Poppy and Albus knowing about his trips to the infirmary, and it was absolutely necessary for them to know. They had to be there to treat him! He didn't want anyone else nosing into his business.

Another thought popped into his head, horrifying him. If she was there while Poppy was treating me, she might've witnessed some of my rambling. His heart momentarily stopped beating. It didn't happen often, but every now and then the potions would go to his head and he would become more vocal. Poppy never shared with him what he said when in such a state, but from the pity that was always in her eyes when they talked about it, it couldn't be anything good.

Great, I probably spilled my darkest secrets while Miss Granger was in the room and now she'll go off and have a good laugh about it with Potter and Weasley. Goddamn Gryffindors!

Yanking his covers off, Severus gingerly got dressed in his robes. Poppy would probably kill him for getting out of bed so early, but he had no choice. He wouldn't leave his privacy up to chance, and if he wanted to make sure Miss Granger stayed quiet about this whole debacle, then he would have to ensure it himself.

Snatching up his wand, he limped out of his rooms. Determinedly, he ignored the pain throbbing through his body. He couldn't afford to let it slow him down. He had a Gryffindor to catch.

A/N: Dun, dun, dun-Severus on a warpath…poor Hermione, doesn't even know what's coming ;)

Hoped you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think! Reviews are always wonderful.

Next chapter: Severus and Hermione's confrontation and (drum roll…..) we finally meet Fera!

Until next time!