Disclaimer: Not mine, all the characters and the world belong to our dear Ms Rowling.
A/N: A benchmark chapter. As you can tell, it bears the same name as the famous chapter in HBP. Why improve upon perfection? This is a part of canon that many of us have written on or around. I hope you enjoy my treatment of it.
The Lightning-Struck Tower
June, 1998
Snape paced in front of the young woman standing ramrod-straight in front of him. The long black of her Death Eater's robes draped about her like a shroud, but her hair shone in the torchlight like a waterfall of gold, and her expressionless face was un-masked in the presence of the man who had hand-picked her from the Dark Lord's ranks to join the elite cadre of Assassins.
Of his choices from the younger generation, this one showed the most promise of turning the bloody fate she had chosen for herself aside, and reminded the saturnine wizard of one of his few reasons for continuing the charade he had longed to renounce with Voldemort's return.
'You wished to speak to me, Miss Redson?'
She jerked her chin sharply, eyes still focused straight ahead, and he waved a long hand, granting her permission.
'Sir, a few days ago…you asked us to think on who would have power, once the Dark Lord rises.'
'Indeed.' He schooled his features to deliberate neutrality as he ceased his pacing to stand directly in front of her.
He saw the faint movement of a controlled swallow that betrayed her nervousness. Her dark eyes connected with his, and he was abruptly struck by her youth. A scarce three years older than his bondmate. Than all the would-be seventh-year students of his House who looked to him for guidance and protection. It took all of his considerable years of training not to reach out and place a hand on her shoulder, to offer some reassurance…
He shook himself mentally, and allowed his irritation at the unbecoming and distinctly out-of-character surge of emotion to flicker across his face. He knew his Assassin would take it as impatience, and hurry her tongue.
'I wish to…ensure my status…in the coming world order.'
He did not blink. He did not allow the hundreds of hopes suddenly streaming across his mind to enter his fathomless gaze. The careful turn of phrase, the hesitation in her speech – she had taken precautions, in case his previous conversations had not meant the things she thought, in case someone delved into her mind or his to find and peruse this moment, to sound merely ambitious. Not traitorous.
'I see. You are young, yet, but there may be…a place for you. Rewards are given to those who serve, Redson.'
'I wish to serve.' She drew herself up, and Snape checked his surprise as she boldly met his stare, the irises of her eyes faintly clouded as she employed Occlumency. There was more to this than her tentative understanding, and when she spoke again, her voice vibrated with the formality Voldemort insisted upon between the lower and higher echelons of his followers. 'Master Snape. When we strike Hogwarts, I request to be placed in charge of the assault on the Astronomy Tower.'
Snape cocked his head, steepling his fingers and wondering if this were another trap laid for him by the jealous and long-out-of-favour Bellatrix, the way he had been double-bound by his Unbreakable Vow. The Astronomy Tower presented the best ground to occupy in the entire castle – and an Assassin's skills could be put to use to fell those on either side.
It was critical that whoever was assigned to that post, their sympathies did not lay with the Dark Lord.
It was the post he had intended for himself.
He pulled a long breath through his nose as he considered how to answer.
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June, 1997
Ron tapped the map lying spread on the table, its four corners anchored by heavy Defence tomes that had served as references for the DA both under Umbridge and over the past two weeks. The more-than-thirty members of Dumbledore's Army were crowded around him, shoulders jammed together as they tried to pack as many around the rectangular table as they could.
The black dot labelled Draco Malfoy was travelling fleetly, traversing stairs and halls as it ascended from the dungeons to the seventh-floor. Along the corridor, it doubled back on itself twice…and disappeared.
'The Room of Requirement,' Ron said. Neville, Lavender and several others nodded grimly. 'We don't know what, exactly, is going to come out of there. But whatever it is, it's going to be dangerous. Something we don't want here. Ginny.' His sister's brown eyes snapped to his blue at the unmistakable note of command in his voice. 'Take Neville and Lavender. Wait directly outside the Room. You are our first line of defence against what or who Malfoy is bringing out with him. I'll come join you.' Ginny tilted her titian head in acknowledgement, and slid out of the common room with the two sixth-years at her heels.
'We also don't know how many will come out. The first line may be overwhelmed,' the Quidditch player continued heavily, pushing away the part of his brain that was screaming with horror for writing off his little sister. Harry had left them the Felix. 'Dean – you'll take Seamus, the Patil twins and the Creevey brothers. We don't know which way he'll come, but most of the dormitories are this way – and the rest of the school is empty. Stay behind these corners – there's a tapestry and two statues that make ideal hiding places.' There was much jostling as a half-dozen bodies clustered closer, fingers tracing the route Ron had mapped for them, and then sharp nods as they, too, withdrew to take their positions.
'You heard Harry, Hermione,' Ron turned his attention downwards to the friend on his right side. 'Snape also has to be watched. Take Luna and go sit outside his office.' The miniscule dash of ink labelled Severus Snape was stationary in the room that belonged to him.
'Snape—?' Susan Bones started to ask, startled.
'Harry overheard him offering to help Malfoy. Until we know more, we have to assume he's the enemy.' Although he was, ostensibly, answering Susan's question, the last was said with his gaze fastened firmly on the formidably intelligent witch next to him. Hermione's relationship with their Defence professor this year had been…peculiar…to say the least. She had nursed him back to health in the Burrow not a year ago, and as Harry's suspicions rose regarding the light and dark Slytherins, she had made it clear she wanted no part of his theories.
But such division of purpose would not serve them now. Fortunately, she voiced none of her doubts – if, indeed, she still had any. The wild curls dipped briefly in acquiescence, and the straggled, dirty-blond head of Luna Lovegood followed Hermione into the corridor and down the many stairwells towards Snape's underground office.
'What about the rest of us?' Ernie Macmillian asked, re-directing Ron's attention from where he had been worriedly watching his other best friend descend willingly into danger.
Ron looked over the map again, shook his head. 'Guard your Houses. There's no way of knowing what they're after, but anything other than human lives can be replaced. If they aren't interested in us, so much the better. Macmillian. Corner. Can I trust you to guard Gryffindor Tower?' The Gryffindors had all been previously deployed. They had more battle experience than all of their peers and many of their professors combined – a consequence of being Harry Potter's friends and roommates.
The Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw exchanged surprised glances before nodding.
Silence engulfed them, and the youngest Weasley son found himself at the centre of the expectant hush. He could feel their anticipation, knew they were waiting for him to say something final, something dismissive…
His gut twisted. He was a chess player – good at seeing the big picture, excellent at planning strategy. But words had never been his forte – neither written, nor spoken. Hermione was the intelligent one. Harry was the inspiring one.
'Good luck,' he settled for saying shortly. It was enough. Housemates rapidly filed back out through the portrait hole, hands thrust into pockets in readiness to use their wands. Ron's blue eyes found the ancient clock ticking peacefully away over the mantle. 9:53.
Praying that he would see the red-and-gold room again, he stepped out of Gryffindor Tower and started for the seventh floor.
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'All clear?' Ron whispered, sidling up to his sister, who was stationed directly behind a large suit of armour that afforded a perfect view of the hallway and the stretch of deceivingly blank wall that held the entrance to the Room of Requirement.
'Perfectly. No sign of him.' Her brother swiftly scanned the Map, blue eyes hardening until they more closely resembled shards of mountain ice than the warm summer sky.
'He's not on here – so he must be in there already. Here…' he was pulling a tiny bottle from his robes. It was two-thirds full of a golden liquid that generated its own light, casting golden sparkles on the stone under their feet.
'Is that—?' Ginny breathed. She had only seen it once.
'Yes. Harry gave us the last of his bottle. He…he told us to tell you goodbye for him.'
Fury flared in her brown eyes as she recoiled, glowering at her older sibling. 'You…you…prat!' she hissed viciously.
'Gin—' Ron started, a pained expression on his face.
'I wondered why he wasn't in the common room with us, but I thought…You let him go without allowing me to say goodbye to him!'
'Look, he was in a hurry, Dumbledore was waiting, he had to get out—'
'I went to bed fifteen minutes before you called us back down!' she snapped. 'It wouldn't have—'
'Gin, take a swallow.' The commanding tone in the tall wizard's voice interrupted her rising rage, and brooked no argument. 'Have a little more than half. The rest is for me. Harry says a small mouthful will last us a few hours – it should be long enough for him and Dumbledore to get back.'
Still glaring mutinously, Ginny grabbed the bottle from her brother's hand and took a sip. A part of her wanted to continue storming at her boyfriend's hapless sidekick – but she mastered the urge. It wasn't entirely out-of-character for the boy she had loved since the age of eleven to disappear on her. After Christmas, he had been slowly growing more open to her support instead of shuttering himself away and insisting that he leave her alone 'for her own safety'. But sometimes, when she caught his eye, she could see the deeply troubled look comprised of fear and longing, and knew that a part of him could still see – would always see – the spectre of Tom Riddle hovering over her lifeless body.
She had left slightly more than half of the Felix, and by the cocked eyebrow on her brother's face as he tilted the rim to his own lips, he knew she had. He downed it silently.
Ron remembered the lightness of Harry's expression – was it only a few months ago? How had the time stretched to feel like years between his best friend's foray to discover what Horcruxes were? – when he had taken Felix. But even as the golden liquid slid down his throat, dripping into a warm pool in his stomach, the giddy pleasure that had suffused Harry did not arrive.
There was, instead, a firm sort of certitude. The quiet, utter confidence that as long as he followed the potion's instructions, everyone he loved, everyone he cared about, would be all right over the coming hours.
'Me, you and Hermione have all had some,' he told Ginny softly. 'We're the only ones who're protected.' Her eyes reflected flame from the torches, lending the brown an orange sheen as she nodded, understanding his meaning. If there were to be fights, better for those with the luck to take centre stage, protecting those without.
'Lavender and Neville?' he breathed as silence settled once more in the wake of the youngest Weasley's near-explosion.
'Lavender's in the classroom at the end of the hall. Neville's behind that tapestry.' The end of her wand traced the air between their two invisible allies. Ron nodded curtly, wiped the Map, rolled it up and strode into plain view, planting himself next to where the door to the Room of Requirement would emerge.
A Disillusionment Charm later, he had vanished, and the hall looked deserted.
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Hermione and Luna rounded the corner at a fast walk, headed directly towards Snape's office. Beyond the heavy oak door and the layers of personal wards fortified by water and air, his mind was alert and restless. He, too, was awaiting a signal.
The fleeting wish to go through that door herself, to tell him, to have one more minute lived in the private world they had built, was buried the moment it presented itself at the forefront of her mind. They had already taken those minutes, had stored them up into hours and days that would see them through the coming months. To enter his office now, in full view of a Ravenclaw who, while off-kilter, was certainly intelligent and observant, would undermine a year's subterfuge.
Having no wish to exacerbate her already-protesting back, the Gryffindor witch transfigured her cloak into a rough bench for their vigil. She and Luna sat down, side-by-side, speaking no words and needing none. A peculiar understanding seemed to have settled between them – between all of Dumbledore's Army that had arrived tonight. They were defending the school that had for six years, more or less, sheltered them. The need for such defence was a cataclysmic shift that meant their world would never be the same.
At the end of the hall, a clock sounded.
It wouldn't be long now.
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Ron felt his whole body tense as the heavy door swung open soundlessly on well-oiled hinges. Strands of platinum-blond hair emerged from Draco Malfoy's incarnation of the Room of Requirement – a room Harry had spent months attempting to break through, to no avail. Malfoy's head was followed by an arm clutching a familiar, shrivelled hand in his pale fingers.
The red-head silently slid his wand out of the forearm sheath he had taken to wearing in the past months. He raised it, rolling onto the balls of his feet in a dueller's stance, the Felix Felicis telling him to wait, to be ready to stun the Slytherin as soon as he betrayed himself—
—another head, this one dark and shaggy, following the familiar gait of Ron's long-time rival, and then another, crowned by dirty blond locks and set over massive shoulders.
'Dumbledore's out, then?' the most recent sneered to the man in front of him.
The answer came as a sniggered reply, 'Out. Completely unaware that he has Death Eaters in his precious school.'
The Gryffindor felt as if the blood in his veins had been replaced by ice, lucky potion or not. Death Eaters? In the school? He spared a wordless apology to his best friend for doubting Harry's suspicions the whole year, and shook himself. There was no time to waste now on regrets. He would tell Harry when they saw each other again. The copper-haired Keeper did not allow the thought that they might have said goodbye for the last time in Gryffindor tower to assert itself as he raised his wand, aiming for the back of the big one…
'Someone's here!' shrieked the next Death Eater, obviously female, as she barged through the door. The point of his wand jerked with the force of his surprise, the light that jetted from the end ratcheted from the stone; Malfoy spun, a peculiar combination of a split-second's relief erased by searing fury on his thin features; he threw out his hand, sprinkling what looked like bullets of black snow over the corridor—
—and the world went pitch-black.
For an instant, Ron was certain he'd been hit with curse-induced blindness. Ginny's panicked cry and the next spell – one he heard as it struck a suit of armour, but could not see in the dark – dismissed that thought.
'Ron!'
'Bloody hell! There's a load of them!' bellowed a Death Eater in the darkness.
'Just take my hand – I'll guide us out!' Malfoy's hated voice shouted.
Neville's bellow came from the end of the corridor and another rebounded jinx shattered the wall behind Ron, raining chips of stone over his head and shoulders. He felt one bite at the juncture of his neck and his shoulders, and winced.
'Hold your fire!' he roared.
A cackle, and a streak of brilliant light blazed by him, centimetres from his skin, bright enough to be seen even in the opaque air.
'That's right, blood-traitor,' sang an unknown voice. 'Hold your fire,' she mimicked, and though it was not Bellatrix Lestrange, there was something of insanity about the tone. 'Don't want to hit your precious friends-' the sound of another curse leaving a wand punctuated her taunts, '-now, do we?'
'Come on!' Malfoy shouted, and Ron was grimly pleased to hear a note of urgency and almost-fear in the once-arrogant tones of his boyhood enemy. 'We have a job to do!'
'Spread a little mayhem, boy,' growled a voice that sent shivers of horror rippling down Ron's spine. 'Give the Mudbloods and blood-traitors something to worry about. We can show you how it's done.' It was a voice that belonged to nightmares, to the wild fears of small children and the monsters that hid in their closets and under their beds. A tone that sinister had no right to leave the world of imagination and enter reality.
'No,' Malfoy declared emphatically, though Ron heard his smooth voice tremble slightly on the denial. 'We have to get up to the tower.'
'Good luck with that,' Ginny said coldly, returning taunt for taunt somewhere to her brother's left, across the hall. A hex seared a hole in the door at her back, smoke wafting along the corridor as she danced fluidly over the floor. 'You aren't the only one with friends, Malfoy.'
The Order, Ron thought desperately. We have to get the Order…we have to get out of here… They could hear Malfoy's Death Eaters moving in the dark, the whisper of their cloaks mingling with their rhythmic foot falls.
Somehow, the Slytherin wizard had a way of leading them out…
Felix made itself known again, niggling at his brain, prompting the memory of Malfoy's long fingers, splayed in a violent rush of motion as a powder fell from them, and darkness blossomed…
Powder. Darkness. Peruvian Darkness Powder. A wave of fury scalded Fred and George's youngest brother, and Ron felt for a single, terrible instant that he was channelling their mum's raw rage. The itwins/i had sold Malfoy the product that was now allowing Voldemort's followers to creep into Hogwarts detected – but unchallenged.
Felix introduced the memory of a brilliant orange box, the word Instructions in bold on the back. Without the potion, Ron knew he'd never have recalled one product amongst the many others that had claimed his attention in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes last autumn. But as it was, he could remember the label as clearly as if he were staring at it now.
The radius of the powder's usefulness was narrow – only fifty feet or so. If they backed away from the steps of the Death Eaters, they would come out in the dimly-lit corridor on the other side…and that would give them the chance to find McGonagall and warn her what was happening…
He felt Ginny fall in beside him as he slowly started stepping backwards, and wondered if she was obeying her own dose of the draught.
Pitch-black faded to muggy grey, but the opacity of the magical sight-deprivation did not fade until they had reached the stairs. Their primary sense returned to them in a gratifying rush as they moved beyond the range of the powder. The siblings glanced back to see the swamp of murky darkness still coalescing in the hall before meeting one another's eyes, determined blue locked on ice-cold brown.
'Find McGonagall,' Ron ordered his sister in a clipped voice. 'Warn her.' She gave him a grim nod of obedience and sprinted forward, vanishing down the stairs in search of their Head of House.
The tall Gryffindor started down another hallway, his lanky legs eating ground with increasing desperation as he replayed Malfoy's conversation in his head.
'We have to get up to the tower.' Felix told him that his dormitory tower was not the target. They were headed for the castle's tallest point – the Astronomy Tower.
He took a flight of stairs three at a time, launched himself to another staircase as it groaned and creaked with the effort of beginning its swing, and as he whipped around a bannister, he began to run in earnest.
McGonagall could call the Order. He had to lay as many traps as possible between the Death Eaters and their intended target.
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Skidding around the turn of corridor that ended in McGonagall's office, Ginny found herself slammed face-to-chest with thread-bare robes. She rebounded, staggering backwards, and felt warm, friendly-if-firm fingers gripping her biceps.
'Ginevra?'
She knew that voice. Trusted that voice. Blinking to clear her vision and steadfastly ignoring the blossoming pain in her forehead from where it had struck the sharp angle of a collarbone, she found herself gazing into the worried hazel eyes of her one-time Defence professor.
'Lupin!'
'Ginevra! What are you doing out of bed? It's nearly midnight—'
'Death Eaters,' she cut him off ruthlessly. Time was of the essence, and the last thing they needed were a jumble of questions no one could answer. After they had rid Hogwarts of Voldemort's infestation there would be time to learn, time to understand…but not now. Not yet.
'What—?' He was staring at her, slack-jawed.
'Malfoy got Death Eaters in through the Room of Requirement. They're going to the Astronomy Tower. There didn't seem to be many – maybe six, or eight—'
Confusion in his eyes had been replaced by a dark fury so palpable Ginny winced as it jolted her through Lupin's tightening hands where they still clutched her arms. 'Albus did say—' He released her abruptly, as if only just realizing he was still holding her. 'Go back to Gryffindor,' he ordered curtly, striding back the way she'd come.
'No.' Her voice was quiet, but resolute. 'Dumbledore's Army was called, Professor. They've already started the fight. And it's my job to get Professor McGonagall.'
For a moment, she could see the twisting expression of pain, and pride, and fear, on his face that reminded her so of her father. It was clear he wanted to argue, that words like '…safety first…' and '…too young for such dangers…' and '…let the adults handle this…' had pushed to the forefront of his tongue.
But he did not waste his breath in protest. The drumming of her heart was loud in her ears, a tattoo beating away the moments of those already embroiled on the floor above them. Perhaps Lupin heard it too, for he favoured her with a final, piercing look, and dashed for the Tower, his wolf Patronus bursting forth in four streams of air-whipped silver to deliver their desperate message to members of the Order.
The sound of glass shattering preceded a thump, followed by a thin echo of deranged laughter overhead.
Ginny tore for the end of the corridor, and, without knocking, threw open the door and charged into Minerva McGonagall's office.
When she burst in, the Transfiguration professor rose from her chair without waiting for an explanation. At another time, Ginny would wonder why her professor was still in her office, fully dressed, at nearly midnight. Now, there was time for nothing but the mission she'd come on.
'Death Eaters—' the younger witch panted, her frantic dash through the castle a strain on even her Quidditch-fit body.
Malfoy. They had known it was coming. Knew it was tonight. But to not know what, or how…the older Gryffindor skipped shock and went straight to rage. Rage at Dumbledore's complacency regarding Malfoy's task, rage at Snape for not finding out, and rage at herself for trusting them both. Those murderous brigands were in Hogwarts. If her husband's was the only death tonight, they could count themselves insanely lucky.
'Thank you for telling me. Back to bed, Miss Weasley,' she dismissed her student curtly as she strode from the room.
The loping footfalls next to her told her that the fifth-year was going to disobey. She whirled on the girl, pulling out her most intimidating professorial scowl, only to meet the determined, blazing gaze on Ginny's face.
Screams, shouts, curses and the explosions of spells firing and misfiring burst from the floor above them. The Head of Gryffindor looked down at her student and found her glower missing. The din of battle above them came from her students, her children, fighting against the Dark.
Her wand also sprouted silver, mist that landed on the floor in the form of a tabby-cat. 'Wake Filius. Have him summon Severus,' she ordered her Patronus tersely. The cat disappeared with none of the languidness of its living counterparts.
'Miss Weasley. Come with me.'
Pivoting on her heel once more, McGonagall stretched out her wand as she began to run, her heels marking time with Ginny's. Light flared from her wand tip to wrap them in dense layers of magic as she constructed enchantments around them, imbuing the air they sped through with protections of her own design.
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The dungeons were preternaturally quiet.
Hermione's fingers slipped inside her robe, turning the modified DA Galleon over and over, running her fingers along the raised, gilded edges of the words Zabini had sent nearly an hour before. Malfoy's task – ironic, really, that though they had known about the pale-faced Slytherin's appointed job for months, they had never managed to discover his method – must be under way by now, but the silence underground was as complete as a gathering of Death Eaters listening to Voldemort.
Ron had taken the map to coordinate strategy, leaving them blind as well as deaf, and Hermione felt a slowly-rising tide of panic threaten to engulf her. All their planning. All their efforts. And now…now that it was here, and Malfoy had finally accomplished some part of his appointed duties…who would make sure it was executed as intended? What if one of the Dumbledore's Army got in the way? What if Ron did? Or Ginny? Anything could be happening upstairs…
Luna abruptly straightened next to her, startling the Gryffindor witch out of her increasingly morbid musings. 'Professor Flitwick's coming,' she announced.
Hermione could, indeed, hear the beat of boots on the granite – she had opened her mouth to ask the Ravenclaw now surging to her feet next to her how she knew it was Flitwick – when their tiny teacher flew around the corner, his destination the office they were stationed right outside.
He blazed past them, so intent on his goal that he barely registered their presence, though they were wearing neither the Invisibility Cloak nor Disillusionment Charms.
'Professor—?' Luna started to ask, stepping forward. The sound of her voice married to her hesitant movement seemed to jerk an internal brake in the half-goblin, and he skidded as he reached the door to his colleague's office, panting.
'Death Eaters…in castle…upstairs…how they got in…no idea…must find…Severus…' and then he was shoving through the door as if the wards meant nothing – which was true, they were almost entirely protections against unwanted entry by students – and disappearing into the office.
Luna's peculiar silver eyes met Hermione's wide, chocolate ones in rebounding reflections of genuine shock.
'Death Eaters?' the Ravenclaw whispered, and the horror in her voice made her sound real and solid – nothing like the girl who so often quoted the bizarre magazine her father edited.
'In Hogwarts?' Nausea swept over Hermione, and she bent double, fighting to stay on her feet as she cursed all of them for six different kinds of fools. Death Eaters. In the castle. It wasn't just Dumbledore's life they were gambling – as it truly hadn't been all along. Malfoy had brought back-up, not knowing that the headmaster himself had sealed his fate months ago, using her bondmate, his loyal servant, to spare the teenager the heartbreak of murder.
The same murderers that had hunted them through the Ministry of Magic were here, where there were no Aurors to come to the rescue, only a handful of students, mockingly christened Dumbledore's Army, to stand in their way…
Or had this been the plan all along? Was Dumbledore's death no more than icing on the Dark Lord's proverbial cake? Was the importance of Malfoy's task the fact that Death Eaters had succeeded in gaining entry to Britain's securest place?
She was barely aware of forcing herself back into a standing position when the oak door slammed against the stone again, and that which resembled nothing so much as a long, black tornado came whirling through.
Unlike Flitwick, Severus Snape stopped to glower down at the witches standing in the hallway. 'Miss Lovegood. Miss Granger. Whatever it is that you're doing down here at this hideous hour, your detentions for breaking curfew will have to wait. There are Death Eaters in the school. Professor Flitwick has fainted in my office. Attend to him.'
Luna gasped and started for the office immediately, her blond locks vanishing around the door.
The instant the last flicker of her cloak's tail disappeared into the office that had been his for more than a decade and a half; Snape brought his onyx gaze to lock on the worried eyes of his bondmate.
Hermione felt herself stepping towards him, almost against her will, as if mesmerized. Some part of her knew that she needed to follow Luna. The part of her brain that made homework schedules and ticked off the meticulous seconds for planning was making furious demands regarding her immediate departure, moaning over her unruly emotions that threatened not only herself and her bondmate, but the whole of the wizarding world.
And still, her right foot found a place in front of her left, bringing her within touching distance for the first time in a week.
His eyes never left hers, tension spinning between them like the gossamer threads of a spider's silk, woven to bind without being seen.
'No matter what happens,' he whispered, and thin lips found a place on her forehead, 'no matter what you hear, or even what you will see, remember.' His fingertips brushed her cheekbones to graze the shell of her ear, 'I would never betray him,' long hands slid gracefully down her neck, flowing over her thickening waist, 'or you,' they came to rest on her belly, on the six-month twins they could feel growing there, kicking in acknowledgement of their father's nearness, 'or them.'
The gentle brush of his mouth over her fuller lips, the spark of wind, fire, water and earth surging from witch to wizard, and he was striding away, the consummate Death Eater, the cruel professor she had met at eleven years of age. The man she loved. A man about to become as reviled as the Dark Lord he pretended to serve. Hermione realized she was trembling as he receded from view in the school corridor for the very last time.
She steadied her limbs, controlling them with the iron will Harry and Ron had come to both respect and fear, and turned on her heel to assist Luna.
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The Peruvian Darkness Powder only got the Death Eaters around the end of the corridor before it dissipated, lightening into grey before vanishing. Dumbledore's Army had pulled a full retreat from the impenetrable blackness, but whatever Malfoy had used as a guidance system had done its work. Neville saw the tail-end of a heavy black robe whipping around a corner – and then the jet of red light that ratcheted off the stone, spraying splinters of granite along the corridor.
Cold laughter echoed from the hallway in front of them, not-quite-masking the sudden sound of boots grinding to a halt, or the violent flashes of light that betrayed duelling wands. 'So sweet,' a woman's voice simpered at them, 'prepared to defend their little school like this.'
Neville gestured Lavender to maintain her silence as they snuck up behind their quarry, biting back a sigh of relief. Wherever Ron and Ginny had gone, the second line had engaged the enemy.
'Stupefy!'
'Protego!'
'Crucio!' Screams rebounded, only to be cut off by a horrified—
'Impedimentia!'
Orange and green, yellow and blue, red and purple flashed furiously as the two sixth years closed on the Dark Lord's followers. A grim satisfaction lent Neville strength. It seemed that Malfoy was out of powder – and they were going to have to fight their way through.
'Come pretty one, surrender. It would be such a shame to mar that beautiful face – arggh!'
'Confringo!' Heat seared as robes caught fire, casting shifting silhouettes on the end wall. 'Keep your pervert hands off my sister!' snarled one of the Patils.
'Feisty one, eh? If you want to play like that,' another low voice snarled, 'Sectumsempera!'
Harry's curse, Neville barely had time to register, and then they were pelting around the corner, a squat Death Eater's back directly in front of him.
The dread that had settled at the bottom of his stomach since Ron had called them earlier disappeared, leaving him both oddly empty and full of a single, terrible purpose. Weakness vanished, as did fear, and there was only the crystal clarity of the task before him.
His wand steady from three battles in the past year, he started casting.
'Incarcerous!'
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Water and wind flailed about him, physical manifestations of the emotions that could not play across his face, the reactions he had locked into a room at the back of his mind and bottom of his heart, leaving him empty of feeling, empty of care.
His extra-sensory sensitivity to magic betrayed his fellows long before Flitwick had stumbled through his door. The school's wards, long ago altered by the soon-to-be-late-headmaster to warn against the Dark Lord's followers, had adjusted the instant another Dark Mark had been added to the premises. And then another. And another.
Ether pushed him, helping him move so quickly he was almost gliding as he hit the main entry hall and turned upwards.
Hurry, Albus, he found himself urging the man back from his errand.
His left arm throbbed. There were now ten people on the grounds wearing the Mark. Eight were killers without conscience. Against a school of a thousand children, eight was more than enough.
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Ron heard the roar as it shook the floor beneath him, and he slid to a halt at the base of the stairs that would lead him to the Astronomy Tower. So far, the corridor was dark and still, belying the furious struggle going on now two floors below.
His brain kicked into over-drive, providing vivid horror images of Ginny, lying white-faced against the stone floor, and then of Lavender, her beautiful hair wet with blood—
He shook himself furiously, and the Felix in his blood wrestled the fearful part of his psyche into submission as he started for the stairwell leading down. They would be all right. Ginny had taken Felix as well, and he knew, with the peculiar foreknowledge granted by the potion, that no one would die in the lower corridor right now.
Pausing at the stairs, he began to weave the most complicated defensive snares and booby-traps he knew over the entrance.
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The wards were buckling under the weight of the violent spells rending great holes in the castle, and the magic's attempt to incorporate the complex defences being thrown up. Wind recognized the Gryffindor Keeper through Snape's access to the wards, and his lips twitched with the cold comfort of satisfaction. His bondmate had, indeed, managed to impart some of their study to her friends.
He leapt off a staircase as it started to shift away, clearing the last three feet with the help of his Elemental connection. He could now hear the fighting just ahead of him, and feel the caustic backwash of ducked curses.
Dumbledore hadn't yet triggered the wards. They were running out of time…
Snape Disillusioned himself. He could not be seen to enter the fray.
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'We're almost there!' Malfoy shouted, his Shield Charm flickering under the attack of the Gryffindor guard, which had successfully kept all the intruders engaged as they continued to fall back, the black tide striding inexorably forward.
'Incendio!' Seamus' pyjama-bottoms caught fire.
'Aguamenti!' Colin Creevey put them out.
'Reducto!' Heads snapped up as stone collapsed in from the ceiling, burying one of the Death Eaters. The Gryffindors readily recognized their Head of House, her wand extended in front of her like a sword as she slashed furiously at the next attacker.
Neville and Lavender stood back-to-back, surrounded by four Death Eaters, with both Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin casting spells on the outside of the ring as fast as their wands could move.
Bill Weasley had one arm firmly around a cursed Dean Thomas, duelling with the squat woman who had come through the Room of Requirement as Parvati crouched behind them, furiously testing counter-curses on her classmate and defended from the back by Dennis Creevey.
Snape sidled into the battle, carefully deflecting a hex that within a shadow's breath of hitting Longbottom, using Ether to swallow the Entrail-Expelling Curse cast at McGonagall.
There was one more corridor to go, and one more narrow staircase, and they would be at the base of the Tower…
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Ron reeled as he heard clattering on the stairs behind him – those leading up to the Tower Malfoy was so keen to get to. A black cloak was hurrying towards him in the corridor.
'Protego,' he whispered. He had been improving his non-verbal spell casting all year, but didn't yet trust it in a fight.
'Who's there?' growled a voice that was both menacing and nervous.
And not one Ron recognized. Wondering how the enemy had gotten behind them, and if there were more coming from that direction, he waved his wand to cast his sister's variation of the Bat-Bogey Hex.
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They had fought their way up the stairs. Weasley's booby traps had ensnared two of his fellows before the Carrow siblings tore through them to reach the pair already locked in combat, Weasley holding his own against a broad-shouldered man Snape recognized as the stupid-and-brutal Gibbon.
A strangled cry shot along the corridor as Lupin was thrown sideways, his head hitting a sconce. Snape ducked, spinning to see Tonks advancing, her normally pink cheeks white with fury, her eyes red with fear.
'Expulso!' the Auror screamed at Alecto, sizzling orange magic blasting from the tip of her wand. The Defence Professor sucked in an unseen breath as Alecto parried, the vicious spell spluttering out against her shield.
But then, she loved him, as her Patronus had betrayed at the beginning of the year. Unbidden, his mind substituted Lupin's rapidly-greying head lying against the stone for the impossible, bushy mess of his bondmate—
He shoved that thought away as it brought his blood to boiling, and wind whipped through the hall in response, providing a momentary distraction.
'Confundo!' Snape whispered, his wand pointed at Turpin's back as the big Death Eater bore down on Tonks, who had eyes only for Alecto.
Turpin halted in his tracks, shaking his head muzzily, but he raised his wand nevertheless. 'Avada Kedavra!'
The jet of green light bolted through the now-smoky corridor, illuminating individual eddies of violence…to find its home in the breast of Gibbon, who collapsed from where he was fighting Weasley like a puppet whose strings were severed.
Before he could be relieved that the spell had worked well enough to spare his student, Hogwarts' wards shifted again, and he was close enough to see McGonagall's dark blue eyes widen as she recognized the tells spelled into the school's defence system.
Dumbledore was back.
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Later, Snape would never be able to tell whether they all, somehow, sensed the return of the headmaster, or whether Fate had stepped in with spectacular timing.
He unmasked himself in the middle of the corridor just as Fenrir Greyback launched himself at Bill Weasley, carrying the Cursebreaker to the floor in a rolling maul of teeth, wands, and nails. Screams of distress rose from both Ron and Ginny as they rushed forward, murder in their eyes. Malfoy seized the momentary distraction, slashed Lavender Brown and Colin aside and raced through the doorway.
Whatever spell Gibbon had placed over the entrance to the Tower, it was impenetrable to anyone without a Dark Mark. Neville Longbottom attempted to follow the Slytherin through, and was thrown backwards. Snape's wand flicked up almost automatically to soften the stone wherever the boy landed.
Lupin was back on his feet and snarling almost as fiercely as Greyback as he and Tonks re-engaged their opponents.
Jinxes, curses and their counters criss-crossed the hall. Reaching the end was taking too long…
Greyback, apparently pleased with the job he had done on Bill, was the next to follow Malfoy through the barrier and onto the roof. Then the Carrows.
Snape began to battle forward in earnest. The mere thought Deprimo crossed his mind, and he found his wind element spiralling forward to obey his intent, interrupting deadly duels and slamming those of both sides against the walls of corridor. As he began to run in the wake of his own magic, Ether caught the neck of a suit of armour and brought the ancient garb crashing to the ground, helmet rolling separately in a grotesque parody of a beheading.
He passed through the barrier as if it were no more than air, and the sudden sharpness of the night here, without the smoke of the battle, was a tangible reminder of Gibbon's last act.
The dark wizard sprinted up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He knew Malfoy was incapable of deliberately committing face-to-face murder. A cursed necklace, some poisoned mead, a little torture…these were all well within the purview of Lucius Malfoy's son and heir.
But real murder, when he had to look into the eyes of the one about to die…
'His soul…' Snape could still hear Dumbledore saying, blue eyes solemn and firm, binding Snape to obedience.
But neither the Carrows nor Greyback would have any such compunction. And they could not be allowed to kill him.
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'Draco, do it or stand aside so one of us—'
He could hear Alecto's voice screeching, and felt one fleeting instant of disappointment so severe it was almost crippling. For a moment, he wished that Lucius' son had proven as heartless as his father, that the boy had found it in him to complete the cycle Dumbledore had set in motion and spare Snape, himself, the need…
Furiously repressing the traitorous part of himself that never ceased longing for that which would not be, the long-reviled Potions master and Defence professor threw back the door to the ramparts, relishing the sound of the door slamming violently against the stone.
He swiftly surveyed the scene. Four Death Eaters, and Malfoy himself, pale and shaking, his wand drooping as he stared into the rapidly-dimming blue eyes of the failing headmaster. His eyes passed quickly over the failing form of his employer, his friend, his father, the most powerful wizard in the world, gripping the crenulation to keep himself standing.
Potter? He wondered. But Potter wasn't here…or at least, wasn't visible…
'We've got a problem, Snape,' Amycus was growling next to him, thick, blunt wand pointed directly at Dumbledore. 'The boy doesn't seem able—'
'Severus…'
He nearly closed his eyes to shut out that voice. To silence what it meant. Even in his weakness, Dumbledore could see Snape's resolve cracking, fading, failing.
He forced himself forward. One step at a time. The way he had beaten his harsh path out of the Dark was now the same road he would walk back into its treacherous arms.
A shoulder was in his way. He grasped it, felt the thinness of his student's body under the robes that hid a multitude of sins. Like a man possessed, he shoved Malfoy aside, not sparing a glance when the blond stumbled and collapsed on the stone.
'Severus…please…'
He dove back, through years of memories, years of becoming the man he could be, seeking the boy he had been, the boy who had joined a Dark Lord and dreamed of holding the chance he held right now. He sought the child who needed revenge, the righteous fury that had flared to soul-rending life when Remus Lupin had nearly killed him in a tunnel under the Shrieking Shack and the boy who had lured him there laughed at the thought…and he found the remembrance of the man who had turned a blind eye to what should have been a student's death, and forbidden the victim to speak out…
Eyes the shade and warmth of arctic water at midnight focused again, the teenager brim-full of unleashed rage summoned to stand in place of the adult, and the words left his lips almost easily:
'Avada Kedavra!'
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Kneeling over Flitwick's passed-out form, Hermione felt Darkness well within her, vibrant and poisonous and hissing, turning her stomach and making her nauseous.
'Hermione?' Luna asked. He voice sounded oddly distant, and Hermione found herself on all fours, her palms flat against the floor as she instinctively sought the protection of the earth.
'I'm all right,' the Gryffindor witch gasped, though she made no move to rise. Her arms were trembling as if she'd just done fifty push-ups in a row, and she was quite certain that if she moved so much as a single muscle, she would be violently ill—
Abruptly, the taint faded, and there was sorrow, so forceful it was blinding, and water gushed from her eyes as she gagged on her sobs, only vaguely aware of Luna's gentle hands rubbing in circles on her back.
He had done it. Many floors above them, unbeknownst to any of the sleeping students in between, their headmaster had died.
At her bondmate's hand.
Animus Delego, she felt the faint echo of an unfamiliar spell from her Snape's shaken mind. Then there was a quiet sensation of fulfilment that rose to combat her horror, a gentle affirmation and detached, tacit acknowledgement of approval, of completion, and, most strangely…of triumph.
A year's worth of unknown, unexpressed emotion avalanched on her all at once. Deaf to Luna's disquiet, Hermione Granger curled in on herself and fainted.
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A/N: And that's that. As usual, anything you recognize was written by the wonderful woman who gave us this universe to play with. This chapter contains a few lines from pages 595-596 of HBP, British edition. This and the next chapter mark the end of my adherence to canon. There may be some features of the coming chapters that borrow from Deathly Hallows, but those are likely to be few. For one, the Hallows themselves are not going to be a part of this story. Thank you for reading and please let me know what you think!
The spells I used for the battles were gleaned from the oh-so-helpful list of Harry Potter spells, curses, jinxes and hexes on Wikipedia.
Animus Delego is the Latin translation for "soul / spirit transfer". What that means for our brave anti-Voldemort league will become apparent as time goes on…