Chapter 11: The Necessary Ingredients

Hermione flinched and the old wizard knew that she had come back to them. He spoke softly to avoid startling her.

"You must excuse me, Miss Granger, but there is a reason why Poppy Pomfrey runs the Hospital Wing and why I am merely Headmaster."

Dumbledore had given her something, a potion of some sort, though she couldn't remember having taken it. Rather she felt its presence in her veins, speeding the flow of blood, lending focus to her thoughts, collecting the remnants of a shattered psyche and melding them into a whole. It was an arduous process, one that left her with a certain amount of psychic noise, a mental interference in her train of thought, not unlike the static on a Muggle radio station.

Slowly Hermione made sense of the information being fed to her through her eyes: Dumbledore's gnarled hands holding a damp cloth wiping the dried blood from her ear, several coppery orange feathers beneath Fawkes's empty perch, and a candy dish full to the brim with what looked suspiciously like Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. She was in the Headmaster's office and he was tending her.

She knew that she needed tending, but she couldn't say how she knew. It was almost as if that information had come to her secondhand, as if someone had told her that she needed tending and she couldn't remember why.

Then she saw him. He was standing nearly cloaked in the window drapery, purposefully in shadow. She glimpsed his profile, the crooked hook of his nose, the tight angry slash of his mouth. His face was partially obscured by dark, lank hair, which hung in damp hanks to his shoulders. Recognition struck her. Snape. He had come after her. He had meant to break her. And then she knew why it was that she needed tending.

Snape was sweating, she realized. It was somehow at odds with the harsh lines of his profile. It was somehow human, very human against the violent stillness of his figure. He turned then, the movement slow and unfocused, hollow like his eyes.

Hermione flinched. Dumbledore understood why. The old wizard turned and raised a hand to Snape, indicating that he remain still. The gesture was not without warning. It would do to halt one man or slow a thousand; such was the latent power in the wizard's heavily lined palm.

"She is perfectly fine," Snape snarled from the window dressing.

Dumbledore cut his eyes to the former Potions Master.

"Forgive me if I doubt your judgment in this matter, Severus."

"It is my judgment, my sound judgment, which has made all of this possible."

"Yes, and it therefore demonstrates my lack of judgment in asking of you that which it is beyond your capacity to give."

Hermione sat in stunned silence. She felt that peculiar brand of uncomfortable embarrassment which stems from witnessing a conversation that she knew she shouldn't have.

"I know your discipline, Severus, and while others may doubt your loyalty, I know you to be steadfast and true. Yet I thought, perhaps I hoped, that your determination would be tempered with simple human compassion. I see that I was wrong."

There was a sadness around Dumbledore's eyes that aged him immeasurably. He turned his focus to Hermione.

"I'm afraid that I owe you an apology, Miss Granger. These past months have no doubt been trying for you. It was unfair to involve you in Order business."

Hermione shook her head. Somehow she found her tongue. "I was already involved, sir, from the moment I met Harry on the Hogwarts Express."

Dumbledore smiled faintly.

"Ah, Miss Granger, your logic is, as expected, unassailable. You are already a formidable young witch, lacking only in the wisdom and experience borne of age. Had you been a lesser talent, we would not have thought to involve you at all." Dumbledore patted her gently on the arm. The movement seemed to take something out of him, however. He withdrew from her and after several halting steps lowered himself into the chair behind his desk.

"It is for those of us with years of accumulated experience to protect youth. It is not for us to take advantage of its brilliance, nor to exploit its capacity to trust. I have done both, to Harry and to you, Miss Granger, and for that I am deeply sorry."

Hermione took no pleasure in the apology. If anything it frightened her. It upset the balance of things. That Albus Dumbledore, arguably the most powerful wizard of all time, would apologize to her felt as if the entire world had turned upside down.

"If I may, sir, there's still so much I don't understand," Hermione said. "Why did you involve me?"

Dumbledore steepled his fingers beneath his chin.

"You would think that after these long years I would have learned a thing or two. The truth will out," he said softly. "Best to start with the truth, let it lead you, than to sweep away its footsteps and disguise its path. Once you lose track of it, it is indeed difficult to uncover." Dumbledore straightened in his chair, putting an end to his musings. "There is you see, a prophecy—"

"—Don't," Snape said fiercely. "She will not understand."

Hermione bristled. Snape had insisted on underestimating her from the moment she'd first set foot in his class. She'd lost count of the times he'd told her that she was ill-equipped or incapable of dealing with complex magic. She was tired of being underestimated. She was tired of being shielded from the truth that she so desperately needed.

"I know about the prophecy," she said. "The one about Harry and You-Know—Voldemort. It was destroyed at the Ministry of Magic."

"That is true," Dumbledore conceded, "but there is another prophecy, more recent than the one you speak of. Given the trouble at the Ministry it could not be stored there, but rather it has been stored here." Dumbledore touched a hand to his temple. "After the first prophecy was destroyed, Sybill saw again—"

"—Albus, hear me when I say, that she cannot know." Snape stepped from the shadows to press his point. His face was pale, sweat beaded along his brow.

"She must know, Severus. It is no longer a question." Dumbledore turned his pale blue eyes to Hermione. "The second prophecy is more complex. It says that the Dark Lord will be defeated, but not without a sacrifice, something—someone—most dear."

No, Hermione thought, because the answer had come to her unbidden.

"Harry," she said. "But he… he's the chosen one. He's to succeed. He can't…," her voice trailed off. She couldn't finish the sentence.

"He will succeed, Miss Granger, but at a cost."

"The cost of his life? No!" Hermione said, fighting back tears. "This prophecy, it's just Divination. Silly, stupid Divination!"

"I know you don't wish to believe it. Not one of us wishes to believe it, but I'm afraid you know the truth of my words. Sacrifice is a strong and powerful magic."

"Then there must be a way!" Hermione said desperately. "There must be a way to bring him back!"

"I am sorry." Silence hung on the end of Dumbledore's words.

"But you wanted me to help him! You sent me to find out the Dark Lord's plans so that I could help Harry—so that he could defeat Voldemort! Why? If Harry… if he is… a sacrifice, why did you need me to—?" Hermione stopped. A horrible thought occurred to her. "I'm not helping Harry, am I?"

Dumbledore sighed before he continued. It was a grand sigh, sad and deep.

"There is something else you should know about the second prophecy. As I said, it suggests that Voldemort will be defeated and Harry… lost to us. A great absence will result and the wizarding world will be left without a leader. The prophecy speaks of one who will emerge. It speaks of young Mr. Malfoy."

"Draco?"

"Yes." The old wizard nodded. "Draco in the hands of a certain tutor." Here Dumbledore paused again. At first Hermione thought that perhaps it was for dramatic effect, but then she realized that the Headmaster had no need to waste her time with such fatuous stage business. He was trying to tell her something.

A tutor.

"Me?" she asked.

"Imogene," came the response. "You see, Mr. Malfoy isn't quite the leader one would hope for. His father is a prominent Death Eater as you well know and it seems that Voldemort has taken a particular interest in him, marked him for a special task. It is no small thing to be marked by the Dark Lord, and once marked it is indeed difficult to resist."

Hermione blanched. This talk of marking was giving her a headache. There were scores of Death Eaters who'd been marked and wore the inky evidence of such tattooed on their hides. Harry had been marked and bore the scar to prove it. To be marked was to be chosen and to inherit a certain destiny it seemed. But there was something in her that refused to believe it. It left no room for chance, for the carelessness of circumstance, for free will. It was a fatalistic philosophy, this business of the mark, one that she couldn't help but reject on instinct.

"Mr. Malfoy has been raised to tread in the Dark Lord's footsteps. It is bred in him to continue the war, to pursue Muggles, half-bloods and blood-traitors and wipe them from existence. The hope…" Dumbledore's voice faltered. When he spoke again his voice was barely a whisper. "The hope, dear girl, lies in the tutor. The prophecy is clear about who she is, but not what she will teach."

Hermione was having trouble keeping pace with his words. She heard them all right, but there was a pronounced lag in her understanding as she sought to piece together the truth of the matter at hand.

"It was indeed our hope that as Imogene you would teach Mr. Malfoy that which would allow him to be the leader we deserve. It was our hope that you would teach him love."

Hermione shook her head. Here it was, the truth ostensibly, but there were still so many questions left unanswered. Something about Dumbledore's statement bothered her. What was it? There was an important piece of information missing; something vague, something that she could only barely grasp. It was shocking, then, to hear the question slip from her lips even before it had emerged whole and intact from her consciousness.

"Where is she?" Hermione asked. "Where is Imogene? Why isn't she doing this herself?"

It stood to reason that Imogene LeCoeur existed. She had to. It was as simple as second year Potions class. It was as simple as the requirements of the polyjuice potion; a potion she'd taken countless times, a potion that couldn't have been brewed without a bit of the person one wished to impersonate. All this time and she hadn't thought to ask. Where was Imogene?

The silence that met her question was deafening, and in that silence a terrible realization struck.

"She didn't want to do it, did she? She didn't want to teach what you wanted her to teach." Her voice was soft, halting as she guessed the truth.

"She is dead." It was Snape who spoke, his words striking the air with a ring of finality. The Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor watched, his eyes cold, as the young witch in front of him absorbed his words. "The trouble is that you're a clever witch, and as a clever witch you will wonder. It is the curiosity that will drive you to ask that which you do not wish to know—"

"—Severus—" Dumbledore cautioned.

"—She is dead, Miss Granger, and has been for some time, but not to worry. I have access to those things that the polyjuice requires: a strand of hair, an eyelash, a bit of fingernail. I have access to the necessary ingredients."

Hermione pushed herself up to standing on shaky legs. She wasn't sure which was worse, that which she was about to learn, or the fact that Snape was right. Her curiosity would drive her to know.

"How did she die?" Hermione asked, her voice hollow. It was the expected question, one that Snape had managed to prompt while discouraging it simultaneously. He drew breath to answer, malice in his eyes, but he was too slow. Hermione beat him to it; quick wit once a blessing, now a curse. "You killed her," she answered her own question dully.

The weight of it hit her. She could barely stand. She stumbled toward the door of the Headmaster's office. Murder. Imogene murdered.

"Miss Granger," Dumbledore called after her to no avail. She'd crossed the threshold and was on the stairs before the sound died, hands scraping along the walls of the spiral staircase, slipping, stumbling toward the unknown.

OOO

They were hiding her. He was convinced. One of them knew where she was; the dim-witted Weasel perhaps, most likely to follow her about like a lost Pygmy Puff. Only the Weasel was nowhere to be found in the seventh floor corridor outside the not-so-secret entrance to the Gryffindor common room.

Draco had been looking for Hermione Granger. It was twice now that he'd thought he'd seen her somewhere she couldn't possibly have been, and twice was two times too many. Something was going on and she knew the truth of it. Only she'd disappeared.

Footsteps in the otherwise deserted corridor. Draco took a step back, melting into the shadows, using a nearby suit of armor to hide his presence. A particularly chatty portrait made to address him and ruin his cover, but he quelled it with a look—a rather nasty hitch of the Malfoy brows over stormy grey eyes laced with threat. The inhabitant of the portrait blanched and ran away bawling, a tearstained handkerchief clasped in her chubby fingers.

The footsteps in the hall stopped, the commotion with the portrait having alerted whoever it was to Draco's presence.

"Sod it all," he muttered. He stepped out from behind the suit of armor only to find himself face to face with the Boy Who Lived. Harry's wand was drawn and leveled at him.

"Little early to be lurking about isn't it, Potter?" Draco asked.

"I'm not the one lurking, Malfoy. That's for snakes and Slytherins." Technically, Harry was right. After all, he hadn't been the one skulking about in the shadows making the portraits cry.

"Snakes and Slytherins. How charming," Draco said. "There's no question that I'm the Slytherin in this equation, so I guess that makes you the snake, Parselmouth."

Harry stiffened. It was all too easy with Potter. He had the sensibilities of a hero which led him to be easily offended. Draco felt a familiar grin begin to tug at the corner of his mouth, but he stopped the smirk before it even started. He didn't have time to indulge in the usual bout of cat and mouse with Potter.

"Where is she?" Draco asked.

"What?" Harry said. He'd been busy picturing himself pounding Draco's face with his fists, so the question took him by surprise.

"You may be thick, Potter, but I know you're not deaf. Do I have to say it in Parseltongue? Where is Granger?"

Harry narrowed his eyes. "What do you want with Hermione?"

"None of your business," Draco replied. He would've liked to have thought that he replied coolly, but the truth of the matter was that he heard the edge in his own voice. It hadn't been there a moment ago, but there was something about the way Harry had said her name that caused his control to slip.

Draco didn't like it. He'd said her name as if she belonged to him and him alone. It was very clear, even though Potter hadn't said it, that she was his Hermione, and that Draco had no business asking her whereabouts.

Whether Draco had replied coolly or otherwise, it was of no consequence to Harry. He didn't like Draco's reply period. It made no difference how it had been delivered. To that end, Harry took a step toward him. The tip of his wand met Draco's chest dead center, lodging itself squarely against his sternum.

"Don't," Draco said sharply. "Not unless you plan to use it."

"Piss off, Malfoy." With a sharp flick of his wrist, Harry ground the tip of his wand into Draco's flesh. Draco stood stock still in warning.

"So be it, Potter," he said, his voice soft with quiet menace. "I'll find her anyway. The choice is yours. Are you a help or a hindrance?"

The two boys stood in stony silence for a moment that would later be known as the moment it took Harry to decide that he'd had enough. Malfoy was vermin. He'd clearly been up to something all year. There was no good that could come of him. Harry understood this. He understood it in a way that even Dumbledore couldn't.

He could've hexed Draco point-blank on the spot, but there was something infinitely more satisfying in feeling the crunch of his curled fingers against the flesh of Malfoy's face. Harry hauled off and punched Draco in the nose, and it had required the intimacy of his bare hands.

Draco staggered, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. Blood smeared across his skin. "A hindrance, then," he murmured, before he lunged at Harry.

OOO

She was running. She must have been running for a while if the stitch in her side were any indication. It was foolish, really. Of all the means there were of getting from one place to another, she had chosen the one that was the most Muggle and the least efficient. Granted, it hadn't been a conscious choice. Her legs had carried her, seemingly driven her from Dumbledore's office and out of the castle. She'd been running blindly for who knew how long, and when she finally drew to a stop, the sky was blotted out by a thick canopy of trees.

Hermione leaned against the gnarled bark of an ancient willow, doubled-over and gasping for breath. It had been something of a relief to run to the point of exhaustion, to become absorbed in the movement and function of her body, to rely wholly on the workings of the extraordinary machine which had carried her, legs churning, arms pumping, from the suddenly desperately claustrophobic corridors of Hogwarts castle. She should have known, however, that it was only a matter of time before logic asserted itself and she'd be forced to grapple with what she had learned and where, precisely, she was.

From the looks of it she was deep in the Forbidden Forest, the ground mossy and uneven beneath her feet. It was quite possibly the least comforting place she could think of, and she realized that that was what she had been seeking: comfort, solace.

The forest offered neither. Its rarefied air often bore the scent of hostility, a pungent, tangy odor designed to discourage those reluctant to observe its rules and acquiesce to its desires. It permitted humans entrance, but the permission was often fleeting and liable to be revoked at a moment's notice. It did not welcome a slip of a girl, troubled and exhausted, though she might be. It made no difference that she was witch, Muggle, or just plain vulnerable. The forest didn't care.

Hermione sank to her knees, feeling utterly alone in a place more likely to offer harm than refuge. She was thinking about the dead girl, the one she'd been living as—or maybe living for.

She was shaking, she realized, her skin cool and clammy to the touch. Like a corpse, she thought. It was her own skin, but she couldn't help thinking that she had worn the skin of a dead girl, walked in it, loved in it, and that the skin was angry.

It would have its revenge.

OOO

It was those hero's sensibilities again. They were fouling things up, making Potter think that there was something to be gained by showing mercy and turning from hate. Draco knew better, he understood the nature of hate, had been taught it from a very early age. Hate was instinct, and instinct was nothing to be trifled with. Chances were if you hated something it was because it was a threat. It could harm you, kill you even. Hate made it possible to eliminate the threat before it eliminated you. Hate, then, was power, the power to vanquish.

The trouble with Potter was simply that he didn't understand hate. He couldn't give in to his capacity for it. Draco had no such scruples. It was how he had come to be sitting on Potter's chest, his wand shoved into the boy's armpit, his face inches from the cracked glasses wrenched askew across the bridge of the boy's nose.

Draco was staring at the zigzag scar, blood dripping from his face on to the broken lenses of Harry's spectacles. Whatever the scar was it hadn't helped him any. It made no difference that the Dark Lord had given it to him. Draco pressed a finger to the scar and watched as Harry winced squeezing his eyes shut.

Potter was feeble. He wasn't a champion, wasn't a leader, and obviously wasn't a match for Voldemort if he couldn't manage to get past a rather angry and determined schoolmate. Granted, Draco was no average schoolmate, but he certainly shouldn't have presented an obstacle for the wizard who thought to best the Dark Lord.

Harry's lips were moving, seemingly without sound. As close as Draco was, he couldn't hear him, though he knew instinctively that Harry was trying to speak. Draco turned his ear to Harry's mouth, angling to hear the dry, cracked voice which made its way, constricted, from Harry's throat.

"Go on…" Harry said, "…finish…"

Draco could feel the boy's labored breathing, chest struggling to rise and fall beneath his weight. He knew what it was to be that boy, to have the weight on his chest, the wand driven into the tender flesh at the pit of his arm. Lucius perched on his chest, brilliant pale hair hanging down above his face. Draco with his eyes squeezed shut as his father sought to drive the weakness from him. There was no room for weakness. It had no place.

Draco cast the spell wordlessly. There was no escaping it, the tip of his wand lodged in the vulnerable area beneath Harry's arm. He watched as the boy's eyes snapped open, hazy and unfocused. Harry had long since stopped screaming. His body simply rocked in a silent spasm of pain as the spell wound its way through him. His lips drew together in a tight line, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth where he'd bitten his own tongue.

Draco closed his eyes, felt the tangy, salty taste of blood on his own lips, whether his or Potter's he wasn't sure. He only knew that there was no room for weakness. It had no place. Finish, he thought. Finish.

He opened his eyes. Two thick-soled black boots cut into his periphery. Draco stared at the boots, eventually lifting his eyes to see Snape standing over him. It was impossible to say how long the professor had been standing there. Clearly he had come upon them with near soundless movement.

Snape looked down at the two of them with the kind of impassive detachment which had become his hallmark. He regarded them a moment, curious to see what kind of damage they had done to each other. There were thin bloody slashes along Draco's arms and face, as if he'd dodged the Sectumsempra Curse, but caught its nasty residue like shrapnel from an explosive device. Potter looked, in a word, broken.

Snape cocked his head and sighed, before he tucked his fingers behind Draco's collar and pulled him bodily from Harry. He snatched the wand from Draco's hand, shook it once and hissed, "Priori Incantato."

The wand shuddered and seemed to groan as it leaked the ghostly residue of the last spell it had cast: the Cruciatus Curse. Snape studied the boys, the tumbled suit of armor and singed tapestries in the hall, and began to form an idea of the fight which had taken place before he'd arrived. It had been lengthy and heated, no doubt, with Draco unafraid to move beyond the schoolyard hexes and basic defensive spells that Hogwarts ingrained in its students.

That Draco had cast the Cruciatus, repeatedly if Potter's limp form were any indication, told Snape that the battle had most likely been one-sided. Potter hadn't stood a chance.

He saw it more or less; Potter leading with his fists, brash and unthinking like his father. Draco responding in kind, perhaps shoving the boy against the stone wall, hoping to do damage at close quarters until one or the other of them realized that they were wizards, not Muggle fools.

Perhaps Potter drew first, using the kind of clumsy magic only the talentless could manage; something blunt, unsubtle and unlikely to do permanent damage, a body-bind maybe, or a disarming spell.

Draco would retaliate with something flashy and dangerous, perhaps Fiendfyre, scorching the tapestries. The boy was dramatic and ruthless in his spellwork, a trait no doubt inherited from his father.

A Blasting Curse narrowly evaded had certainly been the ruin of Potter's glasses, and Draco looked as if he'd caught the wrong end of a Conjunctivitis Curse judging from the swelling around his eyes.

Snape had it right more or less, but there was one thing that he couldn't deduce from the evidence around him, one thing that he couldn't see. He couldn't see, could never have seen, the moment of mercy. He couldn't have known that Harry had once had the upper hand, having driven Draco to the ground, crippling him with a quick volley of hexes, leaving him vulnerable to the one curse that would put a permanent end to their rivalry.

Snape would never see how in that moment Harry would find himself and know himself for the first time. Harry would know that he was many things, but that he wasn't a killer. He was not that. He would never be that. He may be a boy, lost; he may even be the Boy Who Lost, but he was not a killer. Harry had stayed his wand and turned from the fight, leaving Draco to exercise his hate.

Both boys were badly damaged and in need of care. At last, Snape stirred and spoke into the silence.

"Casting an Unforgivable Curse is… unforgivable, Draco."

Still clutching Draco's wand, Snape cast a spell which lifted Harry's broken body into the air. He turned and began walking down the empty corridor levitating Harry's unconscious form in front of him.

Draco followed behind, his gait labored, in the rear of the grim procession, unrepentant and unforgiven.

OOO

"Potter is in the Hospital Wing. Draco was treated and is recovering in my office. I thought it best to separate the two of them," Snape explained.

"We've failed them, Severus," Dumbledore said.

Snape shook his head. "I'm afraid some sort of confrontation between the two of them was inevitable. They are who they are."

"Indeed, and knowing who they are we could have prevented it."

"This business of prevention is giving me a headache," Snape said dryly.

Dumbledore rose from the chair behind his desk. "And what is it that caused the confrontation?"

"Miss Granger, ostensibly."

"Then Draco knows?"

"No, but it is as I feared. He finds himself drawn to her for reasons he can't explain."

"It is time, Severus. We have waited long enough, perhaps too long." Dumbledore crossed to the door.

"Where are you going, Albus?"

"To find Miss Granger. No one has seen her since she fled my office."

"That won't be necessary. She'll come back of her own accord."

"I doubt that she'll want to return to us. When she left she was under the impression that we betrayed her and murdered a young girl."

"It doesn't matter," Snape shrugged. "She needs the potion. Without it she'll fall ill."

Dumbledore stopped and turned to face the former Potions Master.

"What do you mean, Severus? There are no such side effects of the polyjuice potion. It is not addictive."

"You are correct, polyjuice is not, but Miss Granger has been taking my own particular brew."

"Severus." Dumbledore's brows drew together.

"From the beginning I knew that she would fail us. She is a Gryffindor, after all. They are known for their courage and daring, but I have noticed that they are selectively courageous. Often they are decidedly weak in the face of what needs to be done."

Dumbledore sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk, knowing that, once Snape finished speaking, the failure of his legs would be imminent.

"Therefore, I created a kind of fail-safe in the plan. She needs the potion," Snape said softly. "Her body requires it. Miss Granger is an addict."

OOO

I know. It took me way too long to update. But I'm buckling down, really. New chapter soon.

Next up: the origins of the perverted polyjuice potion and a dead girl's revenge! Hmm, not bad titles for the next chapter.