Chapter 10 - Transportation

Every morning when she opened her eyes, Hermione half expected to come down the stairs to find her foul tempered, sallow faced potion master of old, swishing about in his black robes. Yet she was pleasantly surprised to find a very different pattern developing. Again this morning she had awoken to hot tea and a note by her bed. She got ready as fast as she could and rushed downstairs to find Severus hard at work on the sofa, having discarded his carefully repaired and cleaned black teaching robes for a well-conjured pair of khaki pants and a white button-down shirt. His face warmed upon seeing her at the top of the stairs with the mug of tea he had carefully brewed for her. She couldn't stop herself from smiling back and quickly descended the stairs while he began filling her in on the next item on the list.

"I was hoping you would explain what 'transportation' meant sooner or later," Hermione began. She knew from his note that this was the list item they would be tackling today, but she still had no idea what it meant.

"Do you remember the night when you moved Harry from Privet Drive to 12 Grimmauld Place, before school began last year?" Hermione shivered at the memory of transforming into Harry's body and serving as a decoy, "yes, we were attacked. The death eaters somehow knew about…oh." She stopped short, putting the pieces together.

"It was a calculated risk," Severus said heavily. "I knew you would be well prepared to defend yourselves even if attacked, and my revelation of Potter's transportation plans gained me needed trust both with Death Eaters and with Voldemort." She would never get used to the sadness in his face when he discussed the events in the war. It was more than grief, more than regret, but rather as if part of himself was still trapped in that time, experiencing the trauma over and over again. With a sigh, she realized that this was probably more accurate than she could know. That's why we're doing this. She told herself. So he can be free.

Hours later, they were again beginning to disappear under a growing pile of textbooks, notes, and research materials. "Have you seen my quill? It seems to have gone with the sapphire necklace," Hermione asked, rifling through the massive pile of books stacked precariously on the coffee table-turned-desk in front of their sofa-turned-strategy-center.

"I may have muggle heritage on one side of my family, but that expression still evades me. Has all this reading finally turned you round the bend?" Severus' newly discovered playful side never ceased to take Hermione by surprise. She couldn't stifle her giggle, and quickly explained, "not a muggle expression, just a Granger family expression. My father gave my mother a sapphire necklace for their wedding. She wore it on their wedding day, but didn't want to take it off over the honeymoon. Somewhere in their trip through the Caribbean it disappeared, and somehow it just became an expression that whenever something was lost it must be with the sapphire necklace." She finished with a look of embarrassment on her face, having realized somewhere in the middle of the story that she was explaining her nonsensical family sayings to none other than Severus Snape.

Instead of the reaction she had begun to fear, halfway through her story (which was at best a sarcastic comment and at worst…she shuddered to think), he looked at her with an amused little smile and commented, "Ahhhhh. Well, in that case…" he reached over and pulled the quill out of her bun, where she had absentmindedly lodged it while rifling through a heavy encyclopedia of magical protection spells and their uses. Blushing madly, Hermione wordlessly took the quill and began to scribble quite pointedly on the paper in her lap, not daring to look up at the man sitting next to her.

When did this happen? He couldn't stop himself from getting more and more distracted by the young witch beside him, and as the days went on it was, in his opinion, beginning to be a problem. He couldn't pinpoint when exactly, but he had stopped thinking of her as Miss Granger, the annoying little Gryffendor know-it-all with her hand flapping in the air or her nose buried in a book. No, his image of her was clearly that of Hermione, a fully competent adult witch who had faced death, torture, suffering, and sacrifice at the hands of the same evil he himself had fought against for so many years.

She had a sense of sarcasm and biting wit that was positively Slytherin at times, but had somehow retained the bleeding heart and unfathomable sense of compassion that made her into the Gryffendor she was. I didn't think perfection existed. He was simultaneously proud of himself for being able to open up to her (he was even comfortable with the little touches she made when she brushed his hair from his eyes or grabbed his arm to apparate) and furious with himself for getting attached to yet another unattainable Gryffendor witch. Did you learn nothing from Lily? Girls like that will always end up with a Potter, or, as he feared in this case, with his faithful Weasley sidekick. You're just setting yourself up for disappointment. He realized was staring a second too late as she glanced up at him and did a slight double take as she caught his glance.

I know he was looking at me that time. I can't have imagined that. She thought ruefully to herself, but what she said was "I think that our best bet is going to be the same combination of sleeping and protection spells we used on Fred. The only hard part is going to be keeping him quiet."

"I definitely don't want him knowing we had anything to do with it. Allow him to think it was a Death Eater spell gone wrong, miscast somehow. We don't have to give him an explanation, his paranoia will surely take care of that for us," Severus responded.

"So we what, put him to sleep in a remote desert somewhere and let him wake up explanationless on his own time table?" Hermione was mainly joking, but stopped short at the end of her question with the face that Severus knew meant a thought was forming. "What if we used a deserted Death Eater meeting site. There has to be someplace they used to meet that is now abandoned. We could collect him that night, unconscious of course, and time turner him to the place and let him wake up alone. He would think he had been kept captive throughout the war and would never know the difference in the timeline."

"You're brilliant." She beamed under the rare praise from such intelligent a wizard, especially one of such few words and even fewer compliments. He continued, "I know the perfect place. The Riddle manner remains deserted to this day. The Death Eaters fear it, good wizards want nothing to do with it, and the muggles in the surrounding village still think it haunted. Tonight we ride?" Severus finished with a muggle colloquialism and a self-satisfied smile.

"Ugh, don't remind me." Hermione groaned in utter dread, "I do so hate flying."

"I will take care of timing, steering, and casting the protective enchantments around us. All you have to do is cast the sleeping spell after I block the killing curse. Also, it would be most useful if you could ensure the invisibility cloak does not slide off at an inopportune moment. I am sure Voldemort would not take kindly to my head showing up uninvited and unaccompanied by my body to a mission in which I was not intended to take part." Severus smoothly went over their plans for the upcoming mission.

"I know all the wandwork, it's just…" She took a deep breath, "I really don't like flying," she finished with a nervous look on her face.

"I was never much for organized events such as Quiddich, but I am still quite competent with a broom. I promise no harm will befall you." With that, he mounted the broom he had summoned from his house at Spinners' End and swept her onto the back behind him. They donned the invisibility cloak, and she carefully wound the time turner while he began to fly. As soon as her fingers had finished with the small hourglass, she reached around Severus and clung on for dear life.

Hermione heard the soft thud of Mad Eye Moody falling into the magical net she had conjured where his body had previously landed. His now only unconscious form was cradled in what appeared to be a patch of tall grass, but was really a magical spider web of sorts, cushioning his fall but not allowing anyone to remove him from it. "We should take cover before we collect him," Severus whispered back at Hermione as the battle raged on in front of him. Hermione was about to agree, but had a split-second idea. She whispered her request quietly into Severus' ear and was not at all surprised when his shocked, "seriously?" made it's way back to her.

"Yes, please." She answered conclusively enough that he swiftly turned the broom 180 degrees and sped up slightly.

"Same spells?" he asked without taking his eyes off the target.

"Same spells," she muttered determinedly, wand already taking aim.

Later that night, Mad Eye Moody woke with a start. He was alone in a dusty room of a house he didn't recognize. To his surprise, he had his wand in his hand. He illuminated the tip and quickly assessed his surroundings. This had to be his house, thought Mad Eye. After determining that he was, surprisingly, alone and, even more surprisingly, not trapped within the walls by any kind of spells or curses, he quickly made his way out of the house. Seeing where he was and finally putting together the significance of what that place must be, he quickly dissaparated. Deciding it best to make a few extra stops in order to make sure no one was following him, he apparated first to Dubai, then somewhere in Northern Canada. When he finally performed his final apparation to the door of 12 Grimmauld Place a full day later, he was greeted with faces of shock and eventual elation by the remaining Order members, who finally filled him in on what had transpired in the year he had missed.

Meanwhile, back at her house in muggle suburbia, Hermione sat on the couch with the feet of a sleeping Severus in her lap. She signed her name to the note she had just finished writing to Harry.

Dear Harry,

Severus and I are continuing the mission we discussed at the Burrow. (Where I assume you are now staying? Are you and Ginny ever going to leave the nest? Mrs. Weasley can't be pleased.) Anyhow, our little project is not yet ready to be a matter of public discussion, so I do hope you can keep this between us (and the Weasleys, of course). However, in our most recent encounter I stumbled on an opportunity I simply couldn't overlook. Consider this a thank you for lending us your dad's cloak.

Hermione

And with that, she sealed the letter and tied it to the leg of the snowy owl perched on the arm of the couch. Hooting softly, Hedwig nuzzled Hermione's hand in unspoken gratitude and soared off toward the Burrow.