Authors' note: Spoiler, spoiler!
This chapter is related with chapters Spinner's End (2) and The Lightning-struck Tower (27) in HBP but doesn't remind what happened in them. If you do remember, you can just start reading. In case you don't, here is a short summary:
Chapter 2: Bella insists in accompanying Cissy to visit Snape. The blonde wants him to promise he'll help his son with lord Voldemort's new plan, which we assume was to lead the Death Eaters inside the castle and kill Dumbledore. Bellatrix advises her not to tell him about it because she doesn't think Snape is trustworthy. She questions his loyalties and he responds all of her accusations. Narcissa and Snape finally make the Unbreakable Vow, swearing he'll watch over Draco and help him on the plan if Draco finds himself unable to do it. Bellatrix is their Bounder.
Chapter 27: Harry and Dumbledore come back from their little excursion to the cave. They fly from Hogsmeade to the highest tower of Hogwarts, where the Dark Mark has been set. Some Death Eaters show up, and Dumbledore immobilizes Harry, who goes undetected because he's under his father's invisibility cloak. Draco is one of the Death Eaters. He explains to the Headmaster how he has leaded the others inside the castle. When he has to kill him, he finds he can't do it and Snape has to do it instead.
Author's note II: Thanks to Sinderella for beta reading this chapter.
Chapter two: Explanations.
"I have never betrayed Dumbledore" he said reading her mind.
"So murdering him doesn't count?"
"As I told you lately, Granger" he said, trying not to lose control over his temper again, "not everything is as simple as it looks like. And before you answer back" he added when he saw she was about to "I'll explain why I brought you here."
She relaxed her expression, letting him know she was listening.
"Shall I assume that what your friends and you know about horcruxes is that the Dark Lord created them, once he left Hogwarts, during the many years he went unnoticed? He reached six before he attempted to kill the Potters, with whose death he planned to finish the seventh. One of them, the diary, was destroyed by your friend Potter, who obviously didn't know what he had done by destroying it - sheer dumb luck, I suppose. Another one, the ring, was destroyed by Dumbledore last year. And I suppose the night Draco lead the Death Eaters into the castle he took Harry to destroy the third one, the locket. I cannot find another reason why the Headmaster would have taken Potter out of the castle. Am I mistaken?"
He looked at the girl, who still had her eyes glued on him, but said nothing.
"I will take that as a yes. That would mean there are only three of them left; the snake and something that belonged to Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw."
He looked at her again, and she kept her mouth shut.
"Good, another yes. Let's allow Potter to keep that mistaken idea in his mind. After all, those are the horcruxes he is supposed to destroy."
"What do you mean by 'those are the horcruxes he is supposed to destroy'?" she spoke for the first time.
"I heard enough from the prophecy to know it is him, and no other, who has to defeat the Dark Lord."
"Yes," she insisted, "but why does he have a mistaken idea?"
"The Dark Lord is not an enemy you can allow yourself to underestimate, Granger. After his return, he discovered that his diary had been destroyed by Potter himself, and when Slughorn returned to Hogwarts it became obvious that Dumbledore would be aware of his soul splitting. Then, he decided to end his work. He went back to Godric's Hollow, where the last object he planned to make a horcrux had been forgotten after his fall. He retrieved it, and facing the prospect of his other horcruxes being destroyed, he made the seventh, about which no-one would ever find out once Dumbledore was out of the game."
"No-one except you?" she said slightly sarcastically
"You'll see, Granger. You may know the Dark Lord doesn't usually discuss his plans with his followers. He gives orders, not explanations. But you may not know that also he usually… talks between lines, if you will. This is how Dumbledore came to be sure about the horcuxes: 'I, who have gone further than anyone on the path to immortality'" he quoted him. Hermione had heard those words before; Harry had reported them exactly the same way after coming back from the Riddle House in their fourth year.
"Still, what does this have to do with that seventh horcrux you were talking about?"
"Now he's no longer here, no-one will ever find the secret of my immortality... not now that I reached the most powerful one" he quoted him again.
Hermione's mouth went dry. Obviously, if Voldemort had said that, that would mean he had actually created a seventh horcrux. She raised an eyebrow. Only if he had said that.
"I did not expect you to believe my every word, Miss Granger, I am not that presumptuous" he read her mind again. "Therefore, I brought the memory along."
He pointed a cupboard on a corner of the room with his wand and the doors flew open, showing a vessel that contained a grey liquid. Snape came closer and touched it with his wand. One of the memories started to set off above the others.
"Come in."
"After you."
"Come in" he said again marking his word.
Hermione realized she had no choice. She bent over the Pensieve and let herself fall forwards into the memory.
She was in a building made of stone. It was impossible to distinguish whether it was an old and abandoned house or a cave. The poor light that was lighting the place came from small fires that had been strategically cast out in some corners. On one side of the room there was a short, stocky man who looked unconfident. His gaze was on a door but he looked lost.
"That, as you will probably know, is Pettigrew –the rat" Hermione turned to her right and there was Snape, who had entered the pensieve after her.
The door shut open and a group of people came in.
"What?! He did it?! Him?!" Bellatrix Lestrange's voice was echoing around the room while she turned to face the door she had just crossed. She looked at Snape, challenging him with her eyes and pointing one thin finger at him. "What is wrong with you, Snape? Draco had to do it, it was his assignment!"
"Well, yes- but the boy didn't had the nerve to do it," another of the occupants of the room said. Draco Malfoy was wearing his Slytherin uniform and looked from one Death Eater to another without saying a word.
"Shut up, Amycus!" the woman reproached. "The Dark Lord will be displeased because Draco didn't kill that old meddler himself and its all Snape's fault! We can't trust him even for that!"
"Do you still think I can't be trusted?" Snape asked, looking severely at her.
The woman opened her mouth to reply, but before any sound was able to leave her someone else had entered the room.
"My Lord..." she said finally, bending lightly as a welcoming greeting. She stood apart in a corner, next to Pettigrew. Voldemort glanced at her and then turned to look the others. He walked around inside the room for a while, making the present Death Eaters become nervous by his silent presence. He suddenly stopped in front of the young Malfoy.
"I must confess that I really am pleased by tonight's events, Draco. I was getting impatient when you didn't seem able to achieve the assignment I gave you. But in the end, I see you could do it – with a little help from Fenrir, I must add. You finally found a way in. But I also must confess that I am disappointed. I thought you would consider it to be a great honour to be given this assignment. However, you don't seem to share my opinion. Tell me, Draco, why weren't you able to get on with all of the tasks I gave you?"
"My Lord" Malfoy said with his head down, Hermione couldn't say whether it was because of respect or fear, "I beg you..."
"No, Draco" he said in a sharp voice. "No pleas. You failed, and that brings me to only one conclusion; you don't fear and respect me enough to comply with an order as simple as to take someone's life."
"My Lord," Bellatrix Lestrange interrupted, taking one step towards them, "the boy has already proven he's able to kill for you. I don't think it is him who y-"
"Bite your tongue, Bellatrix, before you say something you'll later regret. My judgement is not mistaken. However, you're right about one thing; Snape has also something to answer for. As do you. The others may leave and tell Narcissa to join us." For one moment, it seemed like Bellatrix was going to say something, but then she decided to look another way and wait in silence.
The majority of those who had entered the room minutes before were now exiting, leaving Bellatrix, Malfoy and Snape alone with his Master. He started walking around the room again, gazing at them inexpressively. After a while, even though it looked like hours to most in the room, Narcissa arrived. She looked with a confused expression at her sister, and then realized her son and his professor were also there.
"It looks like you've been re-arranging my plan behind my back" Voldemort spoke once the five of them were inside the room, door closed. "I thought I asked you Draco" – he looked back at the boy - "to get rid of that old meddler. And you, Severus" – he looked at him now - "I thought I made myself clear when I said I told you about the plan so it didn't surprise you, and not because you took part in it. I could have asked you at any moment to kill Dumbledore, but your position as a spy in the Order was too valuable for me." Snape was looking at his master in silence, without blinking but not defying him with his gaze either. "That old man had such faith in you that he had introduced you to the Order and would count on you for anything. It was impossible that he could plan something without you being aware of it. Now, however, I can't say I still have such an advantage. And all of this is because of what?" he said turning to face Narcissa now. "Because of a mother's fear. You must have felt proud, Narcisa, that I gave your son such a mission. But no, you went to cry on Severus' shoulder instead, asking him do participate in the Unbreakable Vow and make sure your son was okay, with no though to the fact that Severus may have had to reveal his true loyalties. Tell me, Narcissa, have you placed your priorities in front of your master's ones, to whom you swore loyalty?"
"No, master, of course I haven't..." she apologized, the normally cool, collected woman falling over her words. "I thought... I thought you only sought Dumbledore's death, I didn't think you also wanted Severus to stay as a spy... Please, forgiv-"
"I am not merciful, Narcissa. You will receive your punishment for defying me, as well as Severus, your son and your sister."
Bellatrix was startled. She looked astonished.
"But... My Lord, I wasn't even there! There's nothing I could've done to stop Snape from...!"
"Wrong, Bellatrix. There was something you could've done to avoid that Severus was the one who killed Dumbledore. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't every Unbreakable Vow need a Bonder? You should have come to me and told me, Bellatrix. I would have expected that from you."
"But don't you fear" he went on, looking satisfied. "I'll not surpass in your punishment. Even though you ruined half of my plan, you did kill him. Oh, I've been waiting for this moment so long... Now I'll be able to finish Potter off without having to worry about Dumbledore and his habits of messing in other people's business. Now he's no longer here, no-one will ever discover the secret behind my immortality... not now that I have become the most powerful wizard on Earth. I'd expected to keep having the information you brought me about the Order, Severus" he added looking at him. Snape stepped closer, kneeling and lowering his head.
"I assure you, my Lord, I will never disappoint you again."
"I assure you that you will not" Snape looked up, trying to meet his Master's eyes. "Let's get started."
Then he pointed at the ex-professor with his wand. Hermione started, not because of the image she was seeing but because she felt someone's hand on her shoulder.
"I believe that's enough."
She felt how she was being pulled out the Pensive, and for one instant when everything went black she thought she'd heard someone screaming.
She came back to her senses when she felt herself collapsing against the floor of the room. Snape was on his feet in front of the Pensive, and he put it back inside the cupboard with a movement of his wand. Without looking at her, he turned around and went to sit back to the couch he had been occupying before.
She decided to follow his example. A lot of things were spinning around inside her head. Doubts about what she'd just seen. That memory must be from the very night Dumbledore was murdered. Had Malfoy joined the Death Eaters on one of their missions before that night? If not, what had Bellatrix Lestrange meant when she said the boy had already proved he was able to kill for Voldemort? And what Unbreakable Vow had Snape done with Narcisa Malfoy? Had Voldemort actually produced a seventh horcrux? If he had, he must have done it before Dumbledore's death. And the idea of Voldemort doing such a ting without Dumbledore noticing didn't exactly convince her.
But there was one thing that startled her above everything else; why was Snape showing her all this?
When she came back to the reality of the room, Hermione realized she must have expressed her last concern out loud. Snape was gazing at her. He sat up in his couch, leaned his elbows over his knees and put his hands together. He seemed to find something really interesting in them. He sighed deeply, visibly trying to relax.
"When I wanted to come to Dumbledore's side to defeat the Dark Lord during the first war, he obviously didn't believe only my word that I was up to good. I showed him some memories too." His sight was lost somewhere, as if he was living it all again. "I suggested doing the Unbreakable Vow, as a way for him to be sure I would not betray him, but he was aware the Dark Lord wouldn't care much about giving up the lives of a couple of his followers to get to him, and he didn't accept it. He told me he believed me though" he said, with a do-I-look-like-the-kind-of-man-who-needs-compassion look "and therefore he would count on me. He said he couldn't take the risk of allowing me to join the Order without knowing which where my real aims. I decided to show him they were the same as his."
"You may have noticed I'm a devotee of the Dark Arts" he went on now looking at her in a way that made her feel nervous. "Not because of the Dark Lord. Even before I joined him, I had been studying them on my own." She remembered Sirius telling her friends and her that Snape was known at school by his interest in Dark Arts, and also that when he started his first year he already knew more dark spells than most of the people in the seventh year. "And as an expert in the matter, I was aware of what a horcrux was. I found it hard to believe that a dark wizard like the Dark Lord wouldn't have been seduced by them and wanted to create one."
"Just one? Didn't you suspect he'd create more of them?" Hermione had given up in pretending she didn't now anything about horcruxes. First, she'd thought he wanted to find out what did she know about them, but instead he surprised her telling her the bit she already knew and wanting to go on. Then, she decided to pay attention.
"Even for a dark wizard, splitting one's soul is an unnatural act that turns you into something less human. No-one would have thought that even in school, Tom Riddle was not human enough to be willing to repeat the splitting six times."
"Between the other Death Eaters" he kept on his explanation "" I found someone else who knew about them; Regulus, who was also convinced that he knew where the horcrux was hidden. He never realized I found out he knew about it. And I was lucky, because he never was much of an Occlumens. When the Dark Lord discovered him trying to find out more, he killed him without even letting him know why. He sent two of his Death Eaters.
"Regulus Black! Sirius' brother?" He nodded. "Sirius told us he had joined the Death Eaters but some time after he had gotten himself killed by them." The image of the note Harry and Dumbledore had found with the fake horcrux plopped in her mind. She told herself to remember to tell Harry who R.A.B. was. "Why are you tell--?"
'Why are you telling me this?' was going to be her question, but she stopped when he found he had jumped to his feet and was staring at her, just as if he had first realized she was there.
"Then, he really did destroy it?"
"What...?" Hermione wasn't sure what was she going to ask this time. Had he destroyed it? "How am I supposed to know that?"
Snape must have been pleased with her response, because he shook his head and said "I thought you and your friends would have already figured it out." He sat back down.
"Now, back to where we were; I told Dumbledore this, and he decided to do some research on his own. I also told him most of what I knew about the Dark Arts. He must have found something that proved my theory right, because he told me to hide those memories somewhere in my head where nobody would ever be able to find them. Or, otherwise, I'd end up like Black. Regulus Black. After that, when the Dark Lord could not kill Potter Jr. and was almost destroyed, it wasn't difficult for the Ministry to catch his followers. Some of them said they had been acting under the influence of the Imperius curse. Some others decided to give names of other Death Eaters to avoid Azkaban and there were a couple who were too proud of what they had done that would rather face Azkaban than pretend they were mistaken."
"And you?"
"Dumbledore responded for me. Thanks to him I didn't have to go to Azkaban."
"A favour you paid him back."
Snape didn't listen to her. He wanted to talk about the seventh horcrux and her constant interruptions were irritating him. But for the very first time, he could not put her into detention and tell her to shut up like the other times when students told things he didn't care about. Now he had to be polite and treat her right if he wanted her to help him, and he knew it.
"Some years went by calmly before he came back" he decided to go on. "It was then when he realized Lucius had given his diary away and that it had finally been destroyed by Potter. He also found out Dumbledore must be aware of the horcruxes, assuming he figured it out when he saw the diary. The Dark Lord used to fear Dumbledore when he was a student at Hogwarts, and this fear has never really abandoned him. I daresay this is one of the reasons why he wanted Draco to kill him" he ignored Hermione's grimace. "A year after his came back; he decided to finish creating the seventh horcrux. He did hide it beyond the darkest magic that exists, and which can only be defeated by dark magic itself. This way, Potter would never be able to destroy it."
"And Dumbledore?"
"He planned the assault to the castle –and Dumbledore's death along with that– a long time before it happened. Dumbledore was not going to be a problem."
"Still, and even though its Dark Magic, why can't Harry destroy the seventh horcrux? He's good at Dark Arts."
"Don't fool yourself, Granger. Potter is good at defending against the Dark Arts, but he has never been interested in Dark Arts themselves."
Hermione gave it a thought. After all, he was right. Harry had always proven himself to be really good at Defence Against the Dark Arts, but he had never been interested in learning them. He didn't even wonder how a horcrux was created...
"That doesn't necessarily mean he won't be able to destroy it" she challenged him. "He can lear-"
"Learn them?" he asked sceptically while he stood up form the chair. "What chance does a snotty-nosed teenager like him have against the experienced magic of the Dark Lord?"
"What do you want?" Hermione asked loosing her temper, frustration evident on her face. "You bring me here and lock me up, and I'm supposed to be your prisoner because I can't get out. Still, you don't attack me or try to injure me, but you make me sit down and listen to the story of your life. You tell me there's a seventh horcrux, apparently interested in destroying it, but at the same time you tell me we won't be able to." She also had jumped on her feet. "What. Do. You. Want? If you hadn't told me anything I didn't know before, I'd think you just wanted to get some information of me. But you told me lots of things I didn't know, so if you're going to interrogate me and then torture or kill me-" she emphasized those last words "-you can go straight to that! I assure you there's nothing you and your so-called friends can do will surprise me."
Snape massaged his throbbing temples. That girl was impossible, and he had very little patience.
And he was running out of it.
A sudden impulse that had probably been originated by the many years he'd spent in Voldemort's side made him rush at her angrily and drag her to the closest wall. Her body collapsed against it, and Snape put his hands on her clavicles.
It all happened so suddenly that the girl didn't even have time to think. In a moment, she found herself between Snape and the wall, and his face didn't show he was so pleased. He was looking at her with his eyes half-closed and breathing sharply.
"What I want" he spoke in a calm tone "is for you to shut up for once in your life and let me talk. Did Potter tell you what happened on the tower once I got there? What did Dumbledore do?"
Hermione opened her mouth twice, but no sound came out. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again.
"He begged for his life" she said, hoping not to end up just like him
"For his life? Do you think Albus Dumbledore was the kind of wizard who would beg for his own life?"
"Enlighten me" she replied bravely, her voice still roar because of the hand pressing on her throat.
Snape lessen the pressure on her clavicles but kept holding her where she was.
"Not even I can understand what enchantments may have used the Dark Lord to protect his horcrux, and I can assure so few know more Dark Arts than me. For some reason that was never really trusted to me, Dumbledore thought I was the suitable person to take care of that. But things you are too immature to comprehend happened, and I found myself in a position which didn't allow me to keep on trying to destroy the horcrux. If Potter tries to do it instead of me he will die trying and the Dark Lord will have won. Come on, Granger, you have heard the prophecy" he added when he saw her disagreement expression. "To the Magic World's misfortune, it is Potter and no-one else who has to end him. And so it looks like it is me who has to destroy that horcrux."
"And what does this have to do with me?"
"I can't do it alone."
Hermione looked very surprised, her eyes wide open. He let her go and took a few steps away from her.
"Dumbledore had helped me. I cannot be absent long enough from the Dark Lord's side as to destroy the horcrux in time without him noticing. Granger, do you understand what would happen if Potter went to face the Dark Lord while the seventh horcrux still exists?"
He'd die. He wouldn't be able to defeat Voldemort and would die trying. That seemed logical. Still...
"You do not believe me because I killed Dumbledore, isn't that right, Miss Granger?" Hermione stared at him, and he didn't need to hear anything to get his answer.
Snape pointed his wand to the cupboard and the Pensive came out once again. Without looking at Hermione, he walked towards it and chose another memory. He turned to look at her.
― Enter.
This time, Hermione didn't need to be told twice.
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