FORGET PRUDENCE
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.
A/N: This fic will not be fully DH-compatible because the story emerged from its original planned ending, which I don't plan to change. However, it is full of DH-spoilers, and I suspect I'll eventually add an alternative DH-compatible ending. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Cecelle and Lady Memory.
There's a bit of mild swearing in this chapter.
The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape has been easing his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters twenty years into the future to Hermione. It is now sixth year…
He's asked me to kill him, Hermione. With that infernal twinkle in his eye, as if he was offering me a second slice of treacle tart. He wants me. To kill him. By the end of the school year.
I can't do it. I won't.
To save Draco's soul the damage, he said. (Hah! If he cared for Draco's soul, he'd have tried to turn it from its path before now. Draco has known since the end of his first year that Dumbledore offered Slytherins nothing but undeserved humiliation in their moment of hard-won triumph.)
"And my soul?" I asked him. Am I nothing in his eyes?
He tried to tell me I should be doing him a kindness, sparing him "a protracted and messy" death at the hands of Greyback or Bellatrix. He tried to tell me I must do it to protect the children – to be in the best position to stand between them and the Carrows next year. He tried to tell me it didn't matter, because he was dying anyway from the cursed ring that withered his hand.
He wants me to kill him.
Whatever possessed him to put it on? Surely he knew better than to touch such a thing ungloved! He was "tempted", he said. Tempted? What could the great and brilliant Dumbledore want enough to forget prudence? To throw his life away when he's so desperately needed?
He wants me to kill him. I can't.
S
Hell, Hell, Hell!
I should never have listened to him. He told me to offer whatever help or guidance might win Draco's confidence, with the result that I've trapped myself into an Unbreakable Vow. I didn't dream Narcissa would ask me to do the deed myself "if it seems Draco will fail". I'm a worse dunderhead than Longbottom. Of course Draco will fail! His imagination has always been bigger than his capacity.
I don't know what to do. Rip my soul to shreds to stay alive for the children or die too soon, abandoning them. Save Dumbledore or the boy – both boys. Is there no other choice?
There is still one chance. He wanted Horace Slughorn back for reasons of his own. (Probably to enable Potter to continue a subject for which he has neither interest nor talent.) So he's offered me Defence at last, and I have accepted. Perhaps the curse may kill me before I have to kill him.
S
That boy will be the death of me! How did you contrive to ally yourself with such a reckless hotheaded idiot (or I may say, two such reckless idiots, for there's little to choose between the pair of them) – and to endure six years of their company with apparent pleasure?
He cannot turn up on time for the Sorting Feast; no, he must get himself nobbled on the train and be brought to the gates by an Auror! If Tonks hadn't been watching for him, he'd be on the way back to London by now, and every member of the Order scouring Hogsmeade in widening circles. Worse, his meddling in Draco's affairs risks cutting short Dumbledore's life too soon – before he's ready. And before you are. Use this year well, child. Time is running out.
S
Even you must admit he earned that detention, Hermione.
After only one lesson, it's clear that he intends to pay as little attention to learning Defence skills that may well save his life – or a friend's – as he did to studying Potions. Presumably, he imagines that, having coached a few other students, none of whom was ever taught by a competent Defence teacher (with the possible exception of Barty), he has nothing more to learn. If he thinks he'll be able to take down the Dark Lord with Expelliarmus, I assure you he very much mistakes the matter.
S
You are always on the spot, aren't you, Hermione? Whatever happens at or around or concerning this school, from Petrified cats to cursed necklaces, somehow the three of you always contrive to be there, just in the nick. And Minerva tells me that not only did you see the curse take effect yesterday, but you claim to have seen the necklace at Borgin and Burke's, months ago, while following Draco.
Stay out of his affairs, child. (Child no longer; you came of age last month, didn't you? Girl then.) It isn't safe. He has not the stomach for killing face-to-face, but he's not above killing by proxy, as this affair shows, alibi or no.
We are in a cleft stick. Should we remove Draco from Hogwarts, the Vow forces me to kill Dumbledore on the spot – with Potter nowhere near ready – but it has failed to win Draco's confidence. His aunt has taught him to blame me for his father's imprisonment, not wholly without justice, if for different reasons than she imagines, and he has so far refused to speak to me. It seems I've doomed myself to no purpose.
At least someone had the wit to get Miss Bell to the hospital wing quickly and to prevent anyone else touching the necklace. I suppose that was you? Fortunately, her exposure was slight – a tiny hole in her glove – and I was able to stop the curse from spreading. She'll have to stay at St Mungo's for several months, but I believe the damage can be reversed.
Unlike the headmaster. One expects people to die in war, but I didn't expect him to die before me. And never by my hand.
How you must hate me, Hermione-of-the-future. Do you even read my letters or do you rip them all up, cursing my name? If it were anyone else, I'd be sure of it, but you combine curiosity with reflection. If anyone might listen to a murderer's explanations, it would be you.
Am I a fool for hoping that the girl who trusted a faithless werewolf at fourteen, in the teeth of his confession, might grow up to trust Dumbledore's killer? Am I truly sending letters into the ether, never to be read?
I refuse to think that. If your benevolence exists not in reality, let it exist in my fantasy. I have not friends enough to disdain even imaginary ones. (Surely even Horace will believe me fallen after this year.) So that I am not there to see you hating me, I shall indulge myself with hoping that you forgive.
S
Another useless confrontation with Draco at Horace's party! He is determined to lock me out of his plans. He says he has other allies than Crabbe and Goyle. He may mean only his aunt and uncle, which would be bad enough, but I fear the worst.
He told me to "break" the Vow, as if that were possible except by dying. I knew his liking had waned, but hardly to that extent.
It doesn't matter. Why should he care more for me than anyone else ever has?
I don't think much of your taste, by the way. McLaggen? Weasley was bad enough. Minerva has often argued that at least he is a true Gryffindor – but even she will not try to defend your new fancy. He's an obnoxious, pretentious boor.
Speaking of the obnoxious, what has Potter been doing to make Horace imagine him a prodigy? He's a competent enough brewer when he bothers to try (which is unfortunately rare), but "exceptional" only at laziness, inattention, and cheek.
Are you helping him again? (Foolish girl; he won't become an Auror, as he claims to wish, by cheating.) Yet that cannot be it. You could not lift his skill to that extent, for you have it not yourself. You are proficient and steady, but not inspired. There's something very strange about this.
S
He tells me nothing. I am to kill him, he says, and become headmaster to protect the children, and that is enough to be going on with. His portrait will advise me if I need advice.
He tells me nothing, and that arrogant, talentless boy too much. How many evenings have they not spent together talking of who knows what, while I am fobbed off with reminders that it is Draco who must be my concern at the moment.
He is Potter's concern too, I see. Even during your first Apparition lesson, the boy was spying on him. You stayed where you were, I noticed. Have you quarrelled with both your friends?
Surely not over McLaggen. I haven't seen you in his company but the once. Is it Miss Brown then that has separated your little group? But that does not explain why Potter is less in your company. If anything, I'd have supposed Weasley's absorption in vulgar romance would have freed his friend to spend more time with you, not less, but you seem often alone these days, alone and unhappy.
They are not worth your regret, girl. If they cannot see your loyal generous heart, forget them. If nothing else, you may live the longer.
But you must know that your friendships expose you to danger, and it has never stopped you yet. Foolish Gryffindor girl. You are too much like Lily. As she stood in front of her baby fifteen and a half years ago, so you would stand in front of him now. I fear for you.
S
He has used me. I have spied for him, lied for him, jumped at his bidding, jumped through his hoops – all for Lily's boy, all to save the very little that remained of the one joy I've ever known. And all the time he meant him to die. He was preparing him to die.
I feel sick. The boy is a Horcrux: a vessel holding a splinter of the Dark Lord's soul, created accidentally when he tried to kill him. As long as he lives, the Dark Lord cannot die.
I cannot save him. There is nothing I can do, nowhere I can hide him (not that he would go), no way to destroy the Dark Lord's soul in him but to destroy him too. I cannot save him. The boy – Lily's boy – is a dead child walking.
I thought Dumbledore loved him, as much as he loves anyone. I thought I was protecting Lily's boy to survive the battles. I thought I was preparing him for a life after war. And all the time, I have been keeping him alive so that he can die at the right moment. Like a pig to the slaughter.
Oh, Lily. Why couldn't I have died when you did? Why did I have to linger, fruitlessly? And Dumbledore. How I have deceived myself about him. I understand now his use for me: not to watch the boy walk to his death but to send him there, to tell him when it is time for him to die. How you must hate me now, Hermione. How could you do other?
S
I knew it was too quiet. The Dark Lord has been pressuring Draco to speed up his plans. I expected another attack from him before now. If I hadn't taught your class about bezoars that very first day, perhaps your redheaded friend would not have survived to tell the tale, for Horace, I know well, is not a quick thinker in emergencies.
You would have known, of course, even without the lesson. I remember how you waved your arm in the air at my questions, how you lit up like a lighthouse at the prospect of showing your knowledge. And how you drooped when I flatly declined to let you. I little thought then you would ever be more than an aggravation to me.
And yet it was the little show-off I chose as future-confidante at the end of that year, the little know-it-all, all grown up into a woman of my own age. I still don't understand why. Did I suppose your solving of my puzzle bespoke a kinship between us, or did I see even then that there is more to you than learning?
You have forgiven Weasley, I see. I don't understand what you admire in the boy, but I shall not dispute with you on that. If you could forgive him, perhaps you can forgive me?
The cases are far different. He has sinned only in being a disloyal friend, and I … In what particulars have I not sinned? I have not killed directly until now, but there are enough indirect deaths to lay to my account, friends I betrayed and strangers I did not save. In any case, that omission is to be rectified by the end of the year, is it not?
I have lied, I have betrayed, I have hated. I hate still.
What are you like, twenty years on, I wonder? Still the same unruly hair, the same bossy tilt to your chin? Are you married to your Weasley, or to another, or have you chosen solitude? Children? Dedicated to your career? It can make no manner of difference to me, but I amuse myself when I lie awake, night after night, imagining the many possibilities of you. Or perhaps, console would be a better word. I like to think you read and sigh and understand.
I hope at least you are alive.
S
Sectumsempra, Hermione, he used Sectumsempra! Without even knowing what it was, from what I saw in his empty head, is the boy mad? To use an untried spell against an enemy! To use it against anyone!
I know now, at any rate, the source of his so-called genius in Potions. He used my improvements, my book, to fake competency; mine, the property of the Half-Blood Prince!
I gloried in that name once. I fancied myself a dark knight, a dashing hero, one of the "cool kids" – someone that Lily might fancy. How it burns to remember that. I suppose I may call myself a dark knight, of a sort. At any rate, I have cast a shadow over all I tried to help and save, so surely I am dark enough in truth, even if my knighthood consists of little more than skulking around while others destroy dragons.
But dark is exactly what Potter must not be. He must never give in to the dark splinter he carries, the Dark Lord's bit of soul. I have to make him see, before it's too late, the path he's treading. Let him copy out Filch's fading punishment records. He will see enough of darkness and its consequences in that.
Perhaps it will be best to start with my own school years. Let him see what bullying tricks his father and godfather used, the better to understand not to follow in them. He has ever been prone to worship their memory, but if he saw their misdeeds listed, severally and in detail, he may see the truth.
If there is any of his mother's heart in him at all, it may waken and take heed. Lily always hated bullies.
S
Time grows short. The end of the school year approaches, and Dumbledore's death looms ever-nearer. I have not died from the curse after all. I look not likely to. So I am taking stock.
I have failed with Draco entirely. He has shared nothing of his plans, neither with me nor with his friends. That he is using the room the elves call "Come and Go" is all that I know. I have discussed with Dumbledore whether the tapestry opposite should be supplemented or replaced by a painting to give warning, but he thought its appearance too likely to tip Draco off to our watching.
I have done my best to teach Potter the Defence skills he may need, especially non-verbal casting. He has fought me all the way, and I repose little confidence in his ability. His reflexes, however, are adequate.
As for his moral development, I fear that is another failure. The detentions have done no more than make him sullen, as is his wont. Instead of being thankful to have avoided expulsion – which he thoroughly deserved, and Minerva tells me she told him so at length – he resents being held to account at all.
Dumbledore retains some use of his hand and the curse has not spread up his arm. His plans are still mostly unclear to me, but my part in them, at least, is known. (I wish it were not.) I see no alternative to carrying out my orders. Alerting Potter to their nature (even would he listen, which he wouldn't) achieves nothing but to anguish him ahead of time.
I believe I have taught my subject well and prepared you all to defend yourselves with better success than you could previously have dreamed of. Longbottom no longer cowers at my approach, I'm pleased to say, so perhaps next year he shall escape being hexed for incompetence. The Carrows are not patient nor are they educators.
You and Weasley have reconciled and are following Potter around like lost puppies again, although your eyes are more often on each other than on him. I believe Dumbledore intends for you to support him until the end, so this bodes well.
I have removed what I prefer not to leave behind to Spinner's End, my home, and I am as ready as I can be. Lily's forgiveness I no longer hope for, but a small stubborn part of me still dreams that I may, by the time you read this, have your compassion.
S
It is done. There are no words. There were no choices, it was him or the boy – both boys – and I kept my promise. I protected the children, and I will protect them while I live. While I can.
You were outside my door, you and the Lovegood girl. How did you know? I sent you to tend Filius, to keep yourselves and him out of harm's way. I hope you went.
It is done. I killed him. I killed him and took the Death Eaters away, I sent Draco on ahead, and gave Potter a few last, much-needed lessons in duelling, and survived the Hippogriff's mauling, and saved whom I could. It wasn't enough.
"Severus, please," he begged. He didn't have to beg. Did he not know, even yet, that I am his man through and through?
S
A/N The first letter contains quotes from DH, ch 33 and the second from HBP, ch 2.
Some canon clarifications follow:
We're not told that Dumbledore actually "twinkled" as he asked Snape to kill him, but his language and his "smile" suggest the twinkle to me.
Snape seems to have known he was to become headmaster, but there's no indication when Voldemort decided the Carrows would teach. However, Voldemort's Muggle Studies curriculum was so antithetical to the previous syllabus that I'm sure he planned Charity's replacement from the outset. Given that Voldemort was more forthcoming to his followers than Dumbledore, Snape's unprompted mention of the Carrows in his argument with Bellatrix suggests to me that they'd already been chosen.
In HBP, it seemed the Vow was a ploy to win Bellatrix's trust, but Dumbledore's orders in DH to"discover what Draco is up to ... offer him help and guidance" suggest it was Draco's trust that mattered.
Of course, it was Harry, not Hermione, that told the others not to touch the necklace and that asked Hagrid to rush Katie to the hospital wing, but Snape imagines otherwise.
Dumbledore avoided using the technical term"Horcrux" to Snape, but I believe Snape was expert enough in Dark Arts to think of it for himself.
Although Snape was a Death Eater, there is no evidence that he directly killed anyone before Dumbledore. I believe Dumbledore's question in DH, "How many have you watched die?" suggests he had not.
We don't see Neville interact with Snape in HBP, but his courage and determination grew by leaps and bounds in OotP and he openly defied Snape and the Carrows in DH. I strongly doubt Neville would still cower at Snape after having faced Bellatrix.