Chapter 14
Severus Snape was shocked by few things. The Dark Lord's interest in Hermione Granger was one. Miss Granger's insistence on him being her friend, another. Her hug, that first day of lessons, another. What didn't shock him was that the second Miss Granger apparated away his door opened and Albus Dumbledore walked forward to greet him.
"Severus," Dumbledore greeted, "how went the lessons?"
"It was as I expected," Snape said in monotone. "She has an organized and disciplined mind, and had already been studying it when Mister Potter was to be trained last year. She should be able to divert the Dark Lord until we can erect a shield."
Dumbledore's expression relaxed slightly. "Good. Very good."
Severus Snape quirked a brow at the Headmaster. "Are you planning on helping the girl yet? Or has Moody convinced you she's too dangerous to keep around?"
"Alastor was sufficiently reprimanded," Dumbledore replied lightly, but the underlying implication was grave. "Minerva was not impressed with him, to say the least."
"Am I to assume you've come with her accolades for my own performance?" Snape sneered.
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled happily then. "You certainly shocked them all. Severus, you seemed to genuinely care for the girl."
Snape shrugged, careful not to show anything. "I feel . . . responsible for her well-being. As you are aware."
"I daresay we all feel a certain guilt for her situation," Dumbledore allowed, his own showing. "You, however, are not to blame."
Snape nodded, his face carefully hidden from the Headmaster. He knew perfectly well who was, but to accuse Dumbledore of intentionally leading the girl to her doom was not a conversation he wished to have. Miss Granger may not have been a favourite student previously, but he'd be damned if her treatment at the hands of either of his masters sat well with him.
Miss Granger had been prodded along in her studies of illegal magic by Dumbledore, then scooped up by the Dark Lord to be used and abused, and then, on top of it all, ordered trained by the man who had prodded her into it. Dumbledore would never admit to it being his plan, certainly not since the girl was abused and raped, but Snape knew well enough that he'd planned on the girl trying the ritual. And with both Masters dead set against her rescue, all that was left for him to do was train the girl to cope.
Still, he could not shake the feeling of the girl's trusting embrace from his mind. She'd been so eager to have anyone help her that within a few hours of his instruction, she trusted him nearly completely. How anyone in her position could trust anyone, let alone a man, was beyond him. She was of such singular mind that Snape himself couldn't quite understand how she wasn't an occlumens already; she was already partially occluding. The details of her rape were things he couldn't find in her mind when he'd looked, and it seemed as if the trauma from the situation had relocated those memories behind an accidental occlumency barrier. He would not be telling Dumbledore that.
"You were in her mind today," Dumbledore continued. "Did anything in particular strike you?"
"The Dark Lord is changed," Snape noted aloud.
That much was definitely true. The girl had memories of him both before and after the change. He was different, more emotive. Snape repressed a shudder at the memory the girl had presented in practice, of the Dark Lord's fingers through her hair. He'd watched that interaction himself on New Year's, but to hear the Dark Lord's words in her ears and to know him as he did still made him shudder. It had been a strange interaction, laced with his approval but also a darker desire that Miss Granger hadn't picked up until the end. Something was drawing the Dark Lord into the girl, and he didn't like it.
"I believe so as well," Dumbledore affirmed, his face both grave and focused. "The binding did something to both of them, Severus. Miss Granger seems more . . . darkly inclined than before, and Tom himself is more human. Do you agree?"
"No." Snape ade sure his tone brokered no argument. "Miss Granger is, as far as I'm concerned, much the same girl she once was. She has merely been put through an ordeal far beyond her ability to handle. The darkness you see is not something that was not there previously. Remember the end of Dolores?"
"Ah, yes," Dumbledore nodded. "Miss Granger did do quite well in punishing her. And Miss Edgecomb, as I recall. Assuming it is only Tom, then, that is changed, I have a confession to make."
Dumbledore explained to Snape the horcruxs of Tom Riddle. Snape listened carefully, then.
"You put on the Dark Lord's ring knowing fully well it was a horcrux?" Snape demanded. "You knew it was cursed with dark magic, yet you still wore it!"
"Curiousity is an old man's foible, unfortunately," Dumbledore agreed sadly. "Still, perhaps if Miss Granger had been put through the ritual last year, the mistake could have been averted. Tom seems more . . . put together than before."
"You believe the old magic binding was enough to destroy his horcruxs?' Snape posed carefully.
"Not destroy," Dumbledore corrected, "merely fix them. Old magic can do many wondrous things which even I have not known the limit of. Two people with old magic flowing through them, one of them completely whole, the other not, being bound? Perhaps magic saw fit to put them on equal footing."
Dumbledore sighed whimsically. "Very much conjecture, at this point. I'll need to find another horcrux of his to be certain. Keep your eyes open, my boy. Perhaps you can help me find the next."
Snape nodded curtly.
Dumbledore went to leave, but before he opened the door, he turned back to Snape. "Severus, I've known you for quite some time. I am aware you have doubts regarding Miss Granger's foray into old magic."
Snape's eyes narrowed. "And you would tell me that it was not your intent for her? That you didn't intend for her to find that ritual and yet no warning as to its consequences?"
Snape watched as Dumbledore's shoulders sagged slightly under his accusation, and it confirmed for him the Headmaster's involvement. He saw the weariness in his eyes, and the guilt that lit up in their centers.
"I had no intention of Tom taking her," Dumbledore promised him in a low voice. "But yes, I did intend for Miss Granger to enact the ritual."
"Knowing she could have died." It wasn't a question.
Dumbledore nodded. "Call it an old man's experience, but Miss Granger reminded me so much of Tom, so much of myself, that I knew if anyone could do it successfully, it would be her. The risk of her failing was minimal."
"And why would this be necessary?" Snape asked.
Dumbledore sighed, and leaned up against the door. "I am dying, Severus. I have been as comfortable with death as Tom, but I have resigned myself to its coming. Without me, Tom would take over the Wizarding World quickly and without hesitation. Surely you see the need for someone to replace me. I needed another with old magic to keep Tom balanced out. I had hoped . . ." he shook his head. "I had no intention of her being used against us. I had hoped to have her be my successor."
"So your meddling, instead of producing her for you, was vague enough and indirect enough to give her to the Dark Lord on a silver platter," Snape accused. "Damn it, Albus, you could have told her! You could have saved her!"
Dumbledore just nodded, the weight on his shoulders now evident. His blue eyes met Snape's with heady regret. "I could have. Instead, I have doomed her."
