"I'm at least 37 years old, Harry. 20 years older than I'm supposed to be. And I'm not even exactly sure—that's how crazy things have become.
"You already know this, but I'm going to tell you because it will be easier to just talk through it."
"Okay…"
"After Christmas sixth year, Dumbledore showed up at my house. He told me the Order needed me to be trained as a Healer, and he had a plan. I'd have to sit my N.E.W.T.s first; no Healing program would take me without them. So I started with the Time Turner. I did the summer twice, took my N.E.W.T.s, did the summer again for the Healing course.
"Then he had me keep going. I don't want to go into it because not all of it is relevant at this point. I'm getting off track." She blew out a breath, glancing at him for any sort of reaction. So far, he was sitting and quietly listening. He'd forgotten about his tea—he was just holding the cup in his lap.
"I did a lot of research," she said, "a lot of arithmancy. I helped plan for things, I brewed potions, I was a Healer easily called to headquarters and not obligated to report suspicious injuries to the authorities.
"It took years for Dumbledore to track down the ring, and he nearly killed himself doing it. Then he found the necklace, or thought he had, and he did get himself killed over that one."
"He didn't. He was murdered."
"Not as simple as that."
"Murder is murder, Hermione."
"Of course it's not. Nothing is that simple."
"I was there."
"He didn't have a choice."
"He did. I watched him make it. Dumbledore—"
"When Dumbledore tells you to do something, you do it."
"He didn't tell Snape to do it! He begged him not to. 'Please,' he said."
"Believe me when I tell you Severus Snape was ordered to kill Dumbledore. He didn't want to do it. He hesitated, which was why Dumbledore said 'please,' asked him to do as he'd been told."
"Dumbledore would never—"
She cut him off with a bitter laugh. "Never, Harry? Never ask somebody to kill? Did you not read the papers?"
"Of course I did. They made most of it up. Mrs. Weasley said so."
"Mrs. Weasley also thought I'd thrown you over for Viktor Krum and sent me a very small Easter egg to express her disappointment."
Harry shifted uncomfortably. He remembered the tea in his hand, tried to drink it, and made a face when he ended up with a mouthful of cold tea. Hermione took the cup and dumped it, brought him a fresh one.
"I was Dumbledore's dragon for many years, Harry. He handed me slips of paper with names and addresses on them. I'd sneak into the houses, take what information Dumbledore needed out of the target's mind with Legilimency, and then kill them. I burned the houses down to cover my tracks; that's why the Death Eaters started calling me the dragon."
"You said—"
"I know what I said." They'd talked about Dumbledore's dragon and the other allegations in the Prophet before. She'd made light of them. She'd downright lied a few times. "I've taken Veritaserum now, haven't I?"
"You lied to me."
"I was trying to make it easier for you. Easier isn't working any more." She held out her scarred left hand. He'd know what it meant since he'd read the article that talked about the Muggle Fights, about her part in them. "This is real, Harry. I was held in a cage for months, and when I tried to get away they broke every bone in my hand and wouldn't let me fix it until after I'd used that same hand to kill somebody."
Harry looked like he might be sick. Hermione sat back, wished they had something, anything, alcoholic. They didn't, so instead she poured herself a cup of tea and drank it black. It wasn't particularly good.
"Snape… Dumbledore wanted Snape to kill him."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"He was dying anyway."
"His hand?"
"Yes. I amputated the cursed portion, but it only bought him time. it didn't solve anything."
"Time…" Harry murmured, thinking. He frowned.
"The plan—what we were hoping would happen—was that it would buy him enough time that you would be back at Hogwarts for seventh year before he died. We wouldn't have had to get you out of the Dursleys' like we did. The coup wouldn't have happened so soon as it did.
"But Malfoy wouldn't tell Severus what he was up to no matter what he tried. And not only that, but his crazy plan worked. He forced the hand."
"Dumbledore knew that whole year? I was telling him for ages that Malfoy was up to something, that Snape was in on it, and he never—"
"He didn't share information very well, Harry."
"You mean how, this whole time, Snape was acting on Dumbledore's orders, and the whole Order thinks he betrayed them."
"Exactly."
"That's… that's…"
"He always said that he preferred not to put all his secrets in one basket."
"You seem to know a lot of his secrets."
"I didn't know about his sister until I read Skeeter's book. Or about Grindelwald when they were young. And I only know as much as I do because I figured it out with the arithmancy. I still don't know what, exactly, he has the rest of the Order doing, for example."
"You think he has them doing something?"
"Kinglsey was guarding the Muggle Minister the last I heard. Lupin was playing ambassador to the werewolves. Things changed after Dumbledore died, though. You heard their code question to each other at the Burrow, after all."
"The last thing Dumbledore said to them."
"Yes."
"They had a private meeting with Dumbledore."
"They must've."
Harry actually smiled. He settled back on his haunches a bit and sipped his tea.
"That's good."
"Good?" How could it be good when the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing? They were a mess.
"It's not just me alone in the woods fighting this thing. I'm playing my part."
"You shouldn't have had to play a part," Hermione grumped. "You should've been allowed to finish school like a normal person. If you'd chosen to be an Auror, then you'd signed up for this sort of thing—"
"What else was I ever going to do?"
"I don't know," she said, rubbing her eyes. "Professional Quidditch?"
Harry laughed. It was a belly laugh, a hearty thing she hadn't heard since before Black died.
He got up and hugged her. She hugged him back, though she hadn't expected a hug any more than she'd expected him to laugh. She'd expected shouting. A lot of shouting. Maybe a dash for his wand.
"I'd forgotten," he said, pulling away and sitting down again, still grinning.
"What had you forgotten?"
"I'd forgotten that you're still you."
"What?"
"You're still you. It's harder to see it most of the time. You're so serious, and you're always working on the arithmancy, solving logic puzzles, moving us around. You're still you, though."
"Does that mean professional Quidditch was a bad guess?"
"No," he said, smiling again. "No, it was a perfect guess. I think, if I hadn't been expecting to fight this fight since I was eleven, I'd've chosen Quidditch."
"That's what I hate the most about it," Hermione said, looking up at the ceiling. "Dumbledore was testing us from the beginning. Hiding the stone in the castle and dropping hint after hint to you that it was in danger and the teachers weren't doing anything? That was him seeing how you'd react. He meant to be watching us through the whole experience, you and whoever you chose as your sidekicks."
"That's—"
"Machiavellian? Manipulative? Callous? Irresponsible?"
"It's cold, yes," he said, nodding, but he looked thoughtful. "It's strategic, though, right? Logical."
"What?"
"He had to test us to be sure we could do it. How could he know that we'd carry on the fight once he was dead if he hadn't tested us and taught us before that?"
"He shouldn't have placed it on us to begin with!"
"Had to," Harry said. He shrugged. "Prophecy."
Hermione wanted to pull her hair out.
"Harry, your bloody scar is a Horcrux! That's why you can see what he sees when he's angry. That's why you could hear Nagini call to him when she had us at Godric's Hollow. She's a Horcrux, too." It was all coming out in a rush. She could hear her pulse racing in her ears. Harry just sat there, stunned, as she talked faster and faster, louder and louder. "I've run the equations thousands of times. Dumbledore ran the equations. I made Severus invent a truly atrocious spell. None of it works. None of it balanced.
"No matter what I try, you die. I can't find a way to remove the bit of his soul from your scar without removing your soul, too. And the only way to destroy a Horcrux is to destroy the vessel, and you are the vessel." She took a deep breath. She wished Harry would say something, but he was just sitting there. "There is the tiniest fraction of a chance that, if the Dark Lord is the one to do it, to cast the curse that kills you, if he's the one to destroy the vessel, his spell would only destroy the Horcrux and you'd come out of it alive."
"That's the plan then, right?" he asked without hesitation, his face suddenly lighting up like it did when he talked Quidditch, when he and Ron were going over games and talking about Wronski Feints and other things she'd never caught on to. "We'll get the other Horcruxes, then draw him out. You could burn something; that'd be flashy enough. And then we face off, and he does it, destroys it himself. Then I kill him."
"Or then you're dead!"
"Dumbledore thought it would work, didn't he?"
"Yes," she said through her teeth, forced by the potion. "It is statistically unlikely, but statistically possible. While he was a manipulative bastard, he wasn't completely unfeeling. He was nearing his death and he didn't want to think that he was leaving us with a plan that deliberately killed a seventeen-year-old boy."
"You're very cynical, you know that?"
"Killing hurts, Harry. It hurts every time. Even when it's a bad person, even when it's for the right reason. You feel it." She tried not to glare at him, but she couldn't keep herself from glaring so she looked away. "Albus Dumbledore sent me out to kill so often that they came up with a nickname for me." She looked back at him at last. "Of course I'm cynical."
"But you still have hope."
She was glad he hadn't phrased it as a question, because the answer was 'yes' and it didn't illustrate her point in the least.
"How would you know?"
"Like I said before, you're still you."
"I don't know what that means."
"You do, don't you? You still have hope."
"Yes."
"Why?"
He was probably hoping for some strategic answer, for some revealing little factoid, an ace in the hole. Instead, she said, "I'm a mother, Harry. I have to hope that all this shit and hurt and death and violence amounts to something better than what we started with."
Harry got a gleam in his eye that she didn't like. She'd told him and Ron an abbreviated version of her time in Australia—she'd been pregnant, she and her husband had fled the country and used the Time Turner, it had backfired, they'd had three lovely children, named them Bast, Sofia and Ellie. They'd wanted to know who her husband was, they'd wanted to see pictures of her children, they'd wanted to know where they all were now. She hadn't told them any of that.
"What's your husband's name?"
"Severus Snape."
Severus had a seat of honor. First row, third on the Dark Lord's right.
It was impossible to leave without being noticed. He had to lean forward and look fascinated by the blood, appear to be enjoying it. He couldn't look away, but that was only because he, horribly, was imagining the smaller of each pair was Hermione.
The Dark Lord had held the first Muggle Fight since the death of Remy Bird, hosted in a pit carved out on the Malfoy estate, the weekend before. It was now a weekly tradition. Every Friday night, Death Eaters gathering in the rows of stadium-seating with their spouses and friends, cheering and jeering while they watched captured Muggle-borns fight.
The Muggle-borns weren't kept at the Manor. Bellatrix implied that the smell of them was the reason, but Severus suspected they were simply plucked out of Ministry holding cells as needed, since it was more convenient not to have to think about feeding them or preventing escape when the Ministry budget and ignorant (or bribed) Aurors could be made to do it.
He almost hadn't told Hermione. He hadn't wanted to. It would've been worse if she'd found out through some other means, though.
After the first Fight, when he'd fully emptied his stomach and brushed his teeth after, he sat down with a firewhiskey and his Muggle pen.
They've brought back the Muggle Fights.
There was a long pause. Long enough for him to wonder if she was doing something, if something had happened. The she wrote back.
Who's fighting?
Captured Muggle-borns. Out of Minstry holding.
The Registration Act?
Yes.
A pause again.
They fight to the death? she asked.
And naked.
There had been three fights the first weekend. The first had been two men, physically evenly-matched. The winner of that fight had fought a larger man. The second fight had dragged on; the larger man had obviously never been in a fight in his life. Eventually, the man from the first match had won the second, but he'd lost the third to a narrow-faced woman. She'd been willowy and had mean eyes. She'd looked relieved to have survived the night, but the Dark Lord had killed her with a negligent flick of his wand and a flash of green light.
Where? she'd asked.
If I tell you, are you going to try to stop them?
No. Maybe.
Don't, Hermione.
I ended them once.
The Dark Lord hosts them.
Hosts them where?
It's a bad idea.
Hosts them where?
Malfoy Manor.
Damn.
He finished his whiskey before he wrote again: Should I not have told you?
I don't know.
\\
He woke in the middle of the night. Something was watching him.
"Lumos."
The lights flickered, and he saw the ugliest cat in the world sitting at the foot of his bed. It was watching him, its tail flicking from side ot side.
"You're Hermione's cat," he said to it. It didn't do anything. It just sat there, staring down at him, tail twitching. "I don't have any food for you." The cat blinked, but kept on staring. Severus sighed. "If you destroy anything while I sleep, I'll use you as potions ingredients."
The cat looked away, seeming bored. It inspected a patch of blanket, pawed at it a bit, then curled up and went to sleep. Severus watched, wondering what that had been about.
\\
What's your cat's name? he asked her in the morning. She didn't respond for almost an hour.
My cat?
Ugly orange fellow.
Crookshanks—I thought he'd ended up at the Burrow.
It seems he's decided to live in my rooms.
Be good to him. He tried to eat Pettigrew when we thought he was Scabbers.
I think I can put up with him, then.
They'd been back in England for less than a week. The safe house was a tiny thing outside Liverpool.
She didn't know how the Snatchers tracked them down; they'd simply arrived outside the house one evening.
"Come out of there with your hands up!" a rasping voice called. "We know you're in there! You've got half a dozen wands pointing at you and we don't care who we curse!"
"How did they find us?" Harry whispered, but Hermione could only shrug. She flicked her wand, dousing the lights.
"Stay here," she admonished, making a quick circuit of the house. There were six wizards outside, none of them familiar. She doubted any of them were Death Eaters: They had wands drawn and looked like they meant business, but they were all gathered by the front door, jostling elbows, excited.
"Well, what're you selling?" Hermione called once she reached the foyer again. Harry looked at her like she'd lost her mind. She held up a hand, begging for silent patience. She took up a position near the front door.
"Wha'?" the Snatchers muttered to each other, shifting around a bit. She peaked through the curtain, watching them look at each other.
"What. are. you. selling?" she repeated. They had a few minutes before they started pounding the house; Hermione used them to prepare. Her satchel was shrunk and went in her back pocket, but only after she'd taken out the things she had once worn when she played the dragon. "You've got to be selling something," she said. Hermione twisted the leathers around her wrists and hands. "Why else would you be outside my bloomin' house at suppertime?"
"Leave off!" one shouted back.
"There's a mouth on this one," muttered the one closest to the door.
"I said get out here or we'll start—"
She cut him off by blowing out the window next to the door, then striding out the door into the confusion.
"You'll start what?" she asked, trying to sound like Severus at his mocking best but only coming so close.
"Merlin's beard," said one of them.
"That's Dumbledore's dragon," said another.
She hadn't liked being Dumbledore's dragon.
"Not Dumbledore's anymore, am I?" she said, and she heard the threat in her own voice.
Harry snared the Snatcher closest to her with Incarcerous. They scattered, looking back at the house in confusion.
"Go back in the house," she snarled over her shoulder.
I'm not a very nice person anymore, she thought, and set to it. She didn't bother with anything but the fire.
They screamed. They were caught in their own Anti-Disapparition ward. A few tried to fight, but the fire was too hot. They didn't have a chance.
It was over in less than half a minute.
She swore under her breath, realizing she'd killed them all. Even the ones Harry had tied up with his spell. It would've been nice to have one to question; she still didn't know how they'd been found.
Quickly, she transfigured the bodies into bones and Harry buried them beneath the spiky shrubbery next to the door.
When they finished, she wanted to jump in the shower and scrub herself raw, scrub it all away.
At least the children are half a world away.
\\
They had to leave the safe houses behind after that. They didn't know how they'd been found, for one. And there were ways to trace them back to the other houses through the one already discovered, anyway.
For better or worse, they'd be using the tent she'd borrowed from Mr. Weasley.
We've resorted to bloody camping, she wrote on her palm. Harry was asleep in the tent. She'd set the wards to wake her if anybody was about, but she hadn't been able to sleep anyway. His prompt response—Crookshanks had taken to leaving him ghastly tokens of affection, mice on the hearth rug and such—meant he couldn't sleep either.
\\
"So. Mrs. Snape, huh?" Harry said. It felt like it had been years since their conversation in France. He hadn't said much about it. He'd asked if she had pictures of her children, and she had shown him the two she hadn't been able to leave behind. He'd accepted it. He'd been thinking about it.
"Madam Snape, actually," she said, trying to sound like the know-it-all she'd been when they were in school. "I'm a Healer."
"Like Madam Pomfrey, then."
"Exactly."
"Snape, though. Really."
"You want to talk about this now?"
They were eating a meager dinner of tinned beans topped with wild mushrooms. Without the safe houses, they didn't have the supply of nonperishables or the emergency Muggle cash to buy groceries. She'd taken everything with them from the Liverpool house, but it hadn't lasted.
"Well," he said, pushing a mushroom around his plate. "I've had time to think about it."
"I see."
He glanced up at her and shrugged before refocusing on the mushroom. "He didn't—you didn't—" He sighed. He set his spoon down and looked up at her, eyes keen. "There wasn't anything going on when you really were a student, was there?"
In that moment, he looked so much like a concerned elder brother that she laughed out loud.
"No, Harry. I promise. There was nothing between us until I'd already done most of the Turning. We were married Christmas of sixth year, so I was around thirty."
"I just had to ask." He looked almost embarrassed, so she got up and hugged him.
"Thank you for asking."
"And he's not awful?" Harry asked a few minutes later. They'd finished their suppers and the dishes had just put themselves away.
"What?"
"He's always so intense, Hermione. And he's angry about everything. He hates Gryffindors. He made you cry."
"I love him dearly and he loves me back, and we spent seven absolutely brilliant years raising our children together, Harry," she said. "I assure you, we're—"
"Oh my god, Professor Snape is a dad."
Hermione laughed again, not stopping until there were tears streaming down her face.
A/N: As far as I've noticed, Harry goes with his first reaction to people unless he's given mind-blowing evidence to the contrary. He first saw Snape and thought he was a bit sketchy, therefore he is dark and untrustworthy until he proves otherwise by dying for the cause. He first saw Dumbledore as the doddering grandfather type—"Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"—and an authority figure, therefore that was what he was until after he'd died (and even then he didn't see the manipulative streak). That's the basis for his reaction here. Once he knew about Snape, he thought he was a hero (and he's working towards that, though it's slower going because Snape is alive and married to his friend and it's weird). Once he knew about Dumbledore, he still believed in the plan.
Sorry there wasn't more shouting. (I hated his stint fifth year with all the shouting, though...) At least you have the part where he realizes that Hermione knew where, when and how Sirius Black would die to look forward to?
Cheers!
— M