When Hermione returned to Hogwarts, her Occlumency shields barely holding back the roiling damned feelings, Severus wasn't in his office. The portraits said he'd gone to the Room of Requirement, but he wasn't there either. The only people there were seventeen year olds who wanted to fight and Ron, who had just finished telling them about how Bill had been called in to work at Gringotts early that morning because she'd broken in and cursed a bunch of stuff in the Lestrange vault.
"Not now Ron," Hermione said. "Get to the Great Hall."
There probably wasn't a plan, but when there was one it would likely involve the Great Hall. It would be a good gathering place for all the fighters. Hopefully there would be fighters.
Seamus told her that he'd sent the Heads of House to Ravenclaw Tower, so she headed that way. The halls were eerily quiet, filled with a sense of whispers just outside the range of her hearing. The portraits were restless.
She rounded the corner just in time to see Harry clutch at his forehead. The professors watched, confused, and Hermione hurried forward to catch him before he fell.
"It's time, Minerva," Hermione said, hearing a strange hollowness in her own voice. "Barricade the school. He's coming now."
Harry groaned. Hermione looked Minerva in the eye, and the older witch nodded once.
"Very well. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming," she told the other teachers. "Potter has work to do in the castle on Dumbledore's orders. We need to put in place every protection of which we are capable while Potter does what he needs to do."
"You realize, of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep out You-Know-Who indefinitely?" Flitwick pointed out, seeming to set aside his questions and focus on the task at hand.
"But we can hold him up," said Professor Sprout.
"Thank you, Pomona," Minerva said. "I suggest we establish basic protection around the place, then gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay and fight, I think they ought to be given the chance."
"Agreed," said Professor Sprout, turning and hurrying toward the door. "I will meet you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with my House."
She was muttering about various unfriendly magical plants as she ran down the corridor.
"I can act from here," Flitwick said, and pointed his wand through the smashed window, muttering incantations.
"Professor," said Harry, startling Hermione when he stepped away from her. "Professor, I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is important. Have you any idea where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?"
"—Protego Horribilis—the diadem of Ravenclaw? A little extra wisdom never goes amiss, Potter, but I hardly think it would be much use in this situation!"
"I only meant—do you know where it is? Have you ever seen it?"
"Seen it? Nobody has seen it in living memory! Long since lost, boy!"
Hermione was wracking her brain for anything else the Horcrux could be if not the diadem. Nothing came to mind, though. The idea of the diadem just felt… right. It had to be.
Harry turned to look at her, desperate.
"What do you think?" he asked her. She shrugged one shoulder, still wracking her brain.
"We shall meet you and your Ravenclaws in the Great Hall, Filius!" Minvera said, then beckoned for them to follow. They made it to the door before Slughorn spoke.
"My word," he said, pale and sweaty. "What a to-do! I'm not at all sure whether this is wise, Minerva. He is bound to find a way in, you know, and anyone who has tried to delay him will be in most grievous peril—"
"I shall expect you and the Slytherins in the Great Hall in twenty minutes, also," Minerva said sharply. "If you wish to leave with your students, we shall not stop you. But if any of you attempt to sabotage our resistance or take up arms against us within the castle, then, Horace, we duel to kill."
"Minerva!"
"Go and wake your students, Horace."
Hermione dragged Harry and Luna along when Minerva was stopped by Filch. Before long, the corridors were full of students and moving statues, suits of armor.
The Room of Requirement held more people than it had when they left.
"Harry, what's happening?" Lupin asked the moment they entered.
"Voldemort's on his way, they're barricading the school—what're you doing here? How did you know?"
They bumbled through ten minutes of confusion. The members of Dumbledore's Army who had left school had still received their alerts, and they, in turn, had told the Order. Any and all had come. Even Percy Weasley.
Harry explained what had happened before she'd arrived outside the Ravenclaw common room. She hugged him, forced her Occlumency into place to keep herself from worrying about Severus, and followed along with the crowd when they gathered in the Great Hall. The students looked petrified. The House ghosts hovered overhead, somehow more macabre than usual in light of what was to come.
Hermione walked with Harry down the length of the Gryffindor table, drawing eyes as they went.
"We have already placed protection around the castle," Minerva explained, voice easily carrying to the entire Hall. "But it is unlikely to hold for very long unless we reinforce it. I must ask you, therefore, to move quickly and calmly, and do as your prefects—"
The rest of her instructions were drowned out by a high, cold voice that echoed through the Hall without seeming to come from anywhere.
"I know that you are preparing to fight." Students screamed, some clutching at their ears or each other. Hermione froze, staying beside Harry and scanning the room, waiting for the threat to emerge. "Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood."
The Hall practically echoed with the silence that followed the statement.
"Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded.
"You have until midnight."
Silence reigned again. Every eye was on Harry. Hermione drew her wand, but kept it close to her thigh, as if that meant nobody had noticed. On his other side, Ron had done the same.
"But he's there! Potter's there! Someone grab him!" Pansy Parkinson screamed, rising from the Slytherin table and pointing across the Hall with a shaking arm.
Hermione flicked her wand, casting Levicorpus and Incarcerous just as it seemed like the entirety of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw stood to put themselves between Harry and Pansy Parkinson.
"Thank you, Miss Parkinson," Minerva said, her voice clipped. She didn't seem to notice that the student she spoke to was dangling upside down, bound in conjured ropes. "You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the rest of your House could follow."
Hermione released Pansy in a heap on her House table. She gathered what remained of her dignity, and led the way out of the Hall.
"Ravenclaws, follow on!" Minerva called.
"Let's go," Harry said, turning and heading for the door. She and Ron fell into step with him, eyes scanning the crowd as they walked. The Order was there, the D.A., and a surprising number of seventh years. Eyes followed them as they left, taking one of the side doors so they wouldn't have to fight the crowd making their way out the main doors.
"We're splitting up," Harry said once they were out of the Hall. "We need to find the diadem, and it's not in Ravenclaw Tower, and Flitwick didn't know a thing about it. We need to find the Ravenclaw ghost…"
"Yeah, who's that?" Ron asked.
"The Gray Lady," Hermione said. trying to remember if she'd seen where the ghost had gone after the Ravenclaws had evacuated the Hall.
"Right," said Harry. "Ron, you head for the Room of Requirement where they're evacuating. Hermione, you go to Ravenclaw Tower. I'm going to try to find Nick or a different ghost or something."
"No, wait," Hermione said, grabbing them both by the elbow and closing her eyes. She hadn't ever used her sense of the castle as the headmaster's wife on purpose, and the last time she'd been able to really track any of the information it provided her had been in the summer. The information was overwhelming when she thought about it. "Wait."
The Bloody Baron was in the Room of Requirement, watching the Slytherins depart. Myrtle was in her toilet with all the taps running. Sir Nicholas and the Fat Friar were outside the Room of Requirement, perhaps saying soothing things to the younger children as they went in. The Gray Lady… the Gray Lady was…
"Found her!" She took a firmer hold of their arms and Apparated to the courtyard. The Gray Lady startled, spinning to look at them.
"You must be the headmaster's wife," the Gray Lady said. She was pretty in the way most pure bloods were—in spite of the haughty, proud air. She had waist-length hair and a floor-length cloak, and she hovered a few inches from the ground.
"I am," Hermione said, releasing Harry and Ron.
"He is a… complicated wizard."
"Yes."
The Gray Lady turned as if she was going to drift through the far wall of the courtyard.
"Wait—please!" Harry cried, taking a few steps forward. The ghost consented to pause. "You're the Gray Lady."
She nodded but did not speak.
"The ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?"
"That is correct."
"Please: I need some help. I need to know anything you can tell me about the lost diadem."
She smiled, but it was a cold, unencouraging smile. "I am afraid that I cannot help you."
"WAIT!" Ron shouted when she turned to leave. "This is urgent."
"If that diadem's at Hogwarts, I've got to find it fast," Harry said.
"You are hardly the first to covet the diadem," the ghost said disdainfully. "Generations of students have badgered me—"
"This isn't about trying to get better marks," Harry said, sounding tired and angry at the same time. Hermione put a restraining hand on his arm. "It's about Voldemort—defeating Voldemort—or aren't you interested in that?"
The ghost's transparent cheeks became more opaque, and Hermione wondered if she was blushing. Her voice was heated when she replied: "Of course I—how dare you suggest—?"
"Well, help me, then." His voice was beseeching now. Calm.
"It—it is not a question of—" she stammered, her composure slipping. "My mother's diadem—"
"Your mother's?" Ron asked. The ghost looked angry with herself.
"When I lived," she said stiffly, "I was Helena Ravenclaw."
"You're her daughter?" Ron asked. "But then, you must know what happened to it."
"While the diadem bestows wisdom," she said with obvious effort to pull herself together, "I doubt that it would greatly increase your chances of defeating the wizard who calls himself Lord—"
"I'm not interested in wearing it," Harry said fiercely. "There's no time to explain—but if you care about Hogwarts, if you want to see Voldemort finished, you've got to tell me anything you know about the diadem."
The ghost was very still as she looked down at them. Hermione had given up hope that she would speak when she did.
"I stole the diadem from my mother."
"You—you did what?"
"I stole the diadem," Helena Ravenclaw repeated in a whisper. "I sought to make myself cleverer, more important than my mother. I ran away with it.
"My mother, they say, never admitted that the diadem was gone, but pretended that she had it still. She concealed her loss, my dreadful betrayal, even from the other founders of Hogwarts.
"Then my mother fell ill—fatally ill. In spite of my perfidy, she was desperate to see me one more time. She sent a man who had long loved me, though I spurned his advances, to find me. She knew that he would not rest until he had done so.
"He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I refused to return with him, he became violent. The Baron was always a hot-tempered man. Furious at my refusal, jealous of my freedom, he stabbed me."
"The Baron? You mean—?" Hermione interjected.
"The Bloody Baron, yes," said the Gray Lady, and she lifted aside the cloak she wore to reveal a single dark wound in her white chest. "When he saw what he had done, he was overcome with remorse. He took the weapon that had claimed my life, and used it to kill himself. All these centuries later, he wears his chains as an act of penitence… as he should," she added bitterly.
"And… and the diadem?" Harry prompted after they'd had a moment to soak in the story.
"It remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron blundering through the forest toward me. Concealed inside a hollow tree."
"A hollow tree? What tree? Where was this?"
"A forest in Albania. A lonely place I thought was far beyond my mother's reach."
"Albania," Ron groaned.
"You've already told this story, haven't you? Another student?" Harry asked, holding a hand out to Ron, telling him not to give up yet. The ghost closed her eyes and nodded.
"I had… no idea… He was… flattering. He seemed to… to understand… to sympathize…"
Harry nodded. "Well, you weren't the first person Riddle wormed things out of," he muttered. "He could be charming when he wanted…
"He hid the diadem in the castle, the night he asked Dumbledore to let him teach, didn't he?" Harry said. "He must've hidden the diadem on his way up to, or down from, Dumbledore's office. But it was still worth trying to get the job—then he might've got the chance to nick Gryffindor's sword as well—thank you! Thanks!"
He dashed off, leaving her floating there looking utterly bewildered. Hermione nodded awkwardly, receiving a much more dignified nod in return. She and Ron ran after Harry.
They turned a corner, then dove to the side when the window broke open with a deafening, shattering crash. A gigantic body flew through the window and hit the opposite wall, making them shove themselves back to avoid getting hit. The three of them were on their feet, wands pointing at the dark shape, but then they realized what it was.
"Hagrid!" Harry shouted, fighting off Fang as the half-giant clambered to his feet. "What the—?"
"Harry, yet here! Yer here!"
Hagrid scooped the three of them up in a rib-crushing hug, then dropped them and ran back to the shattered window.
"Good boy, Grawpy!" he bellowed. "I'll see yer in a moment, there's a good lad!"
There were bursts of light in the distance, just visible around Hagrid's shape in the window. One weird, keening scream floated across the grounds and through the broken glass to them. Hermione shuddered.
It was midnight. The battle had begun.
Thank God my children aren't here.
"Blimey, Harry," panted Hagrid, "this is it, eh? Time ter fight?"
"Seems so," Harry said. "Come on!"
They hurried along together, Fang lolloping beside them. There were more lights outside the windows as they passed—the yellow of the wards absorbing spells, the multi-colored flashes of other spells.
"Where're we going?" Hagrid asked.
"Room of Requirement," Harry said.
They darted past the wreckage of the two stone gargoyles that usually guarded the staffroom. They'd been smashed apart by a jinx that must have come through another broken window.
"Oh, don't mind me," one of them moaned faintly as they ran on, "I'll just lie here and crumble…"
They almost collided with Neville and Professor Sprout when they rounded the next corner. They were followed by half a dozen others, all wearing earmuffs and carrying large potted plants.
"Mandrakes!" Neville bellowed at Harry over his shoulder. "Going to lob them over the walls—they won't like this!"
The people in the portraits on the walls were trying to keep pace with them as they ran, darting from painting to painting, screaming about the goings-on around the castle.
As they reached the end of the corridor, the whole castle shook, and a giant vace flew off its plinth with explosive force and shattered. Fang took off in terror, chased by Hagrid.
The castle continued to tremble as they got closer to their destination. They took a shortcut across an exposed walkway, pausing just a moment to look out over the grounds. People were running everywhere. She could see Neville and his group disappearing into a tower on the outer wall, then they reappeared at the top and began hurling the potted Mandrakes over the crenellations.
A different section of the wall was under attack, the Death Eaters on the other side trying to break through the wards. The magical barrier rippled yellow and gold as the ancient spells repelled their attempts. She couldn't recall, for all the times she'd read Hogwarts: A History, if the defenses had ever been called upon as such.
There were flashes of spellfire on the grounds. Worry for Severus flashed through her, but she pushed it away. She couldn't think of it now. He was relatively safe. Maybe he'd even fled properly. Maybe he'd gone to Edinburgh to keep the children safe. She hoped he had, but didn't think it likely.
Then came the fire. It roared along the wards, illuminating a swath near the main gate blue from the wards and orange-red from the magical fire. For a moment, the wards held. Then the Fiendfyre rose along the dome of them like a tsunami crashing into a glass wall; the wards rained crackling blue sparks. She'd never seen so much Fiendfyre in her life.
There were hard impacts against the outside of the wards. Inside, it was like grenades had gone off against that invisible wall—sparks of yellow-gold light fell from the dome, looking like molten lava, splattering onto the grass and stone; vanishing, leaving scorched earth and the smell of sulfur behind.
The sound of screaming metal split the air, and she could just make out the main gate as it was blasted off its hinges, flying out onto the lawn with a creak of hot metal. The wards went blue, the full dome of it over their heads vibrating and cracking with yellow bands, then more molten light splattered silently to the ground. The three of them each put up Shields to keep it off.
Fiendfyre rushed over the wall, beginning to eat its way over the grounds of Hogwarts.
"Go," Hermione said, turning to look at them. "Find the diadem."
She shoved at them, and they went. She turned back to the broken gates, so far off but so clear. She leapt up, ignoring the sizzle of red light that shot past her from below. She cast her own Fiendfyre, directing it out to join the oncoming wave of it, to take it over.
She staggered when her spell became part of the oncoming wall of false fire. The one who had cast it was dead, eaten by his own flame, and it had been free for a moment. Now it wanted her, wanted to burn her so that she couldn't control it anymore.
There was a moment when she was sure she would pass out. Her entire being was with the Fiendfyre and it was wholly unnatural. It was intent on consuming the grass and grounds, laughing at the dew collected on the greens as though it was there to try and stop it.
When it neared the castle proper, Hermione finally managed to pull it up short, spinning it into six cyclones of fire. Fiendfyre was frighteningly alive, but that was useful because it was also a showboat. It wanted to be big and scary, and so it listened to these sorts of suggestions (and could be tricked back into nothingness).
The cyclones were large on top and narrow at the base, making them less damaging. She spun them into one towering pillar of fire that nearly matched the Astronomy Tower for height.
She folded the tower into itself, curling over like a wave back onto the grounds away from the school. She could see giants breaking through the perimeter wall, and knew that there were forty of them, knew that Severus was back on the grounds for her to be able to know that. (She couldn't sense the wards nearly so well when he wasn't in the castle.)
She shaped the Fiendfyre into a stampede of horrifying fiery beasts. It raced through the sky toward the oncoming giants, shrinking down until it was just one gigantic bull, horns gleaming orange, body white hot, eyes red and roasting.
The bull took on the first giant over the wall, tossing it with flaming horns. The giant was quickly dead, consumed in flame. The second giant was exceedingly dumb and tried to grapple with the beast, grabbing for its horns and making a horrible noise when its hands melted and burned.
There were Death Eaters on the grounds, too. A few tried to overtake her Fiendfyre, but they failed. The bull absorbed the new spells, growing larger each time, transforming into a dragon. It was a Hungarian Horntail, she noted without amusement. The tail smashed into a giant's head and it exploded in a gout of flame and charred meat; meanwhile, the head of the dragon breathed fire, charring a scar into the place where three Death Eaters (or possibly Snatchers?) had been making their way toward the castle.
The dragon was too much. The Fiendfyre was too hard to control; too big. She tricked it into going out by having it pour all of itself, all the fire that made it up, out in a spewing flame from the dragon's mouth. That flame burnt up into a flicker, taking out one last giant, and then the night was dark.
Sixteen giants left, the wards told her. Death Eaters entering through multiple breaches in the perimeter wall, and coming over by broomstick, too. The Apparition wards were still in place. The wards on the individual classrooms and different portions of the castle—just the main wards, the ones that physically kept things out, had fallen to the Fiendfyre.
The students were evacuated, but some had remained behind. She couldn't worry about them now; she had to catch up with Harry and Ron. Just the diadem, then the snake…
Then Harry himself.
Hermione redoubled her Occlumency shields and ran back into the castle proper, headed for the Room of Requirement.
She arrived just in time to see Harry, Ron, Malfoy and Goyle shoot out the door on broomsticks. Fiendfyre filled the Room of Requirement, licking its way out, spilling into the hall.
Hermione leapt forward, casting more fire, taking control of the spell. Compared to the mess of it outside, the Room of Requirement was nothing. When the fire was gone, there was nothing but a blackened husk of a room, but the fire hadn't put up nearly as much of a fight as that damned dragon.
"The dragon," Malfoy murmured behind her and she spun away from the smoking, smoldering room to point her wand at him. His yes went wide, and then Goyle grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away. Noting that neither had a wand, she let them go.
"Harry, what's on your arm?" she asked, trying to ignore the overpowering stench of burning.
"What? Oh yeah—"
It was the diadem. Dainty, delicate-looking, a bit sooty. It had the words 'Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure' etched into it.
"Give it here, then," she said, and he did. She tossed it into the Room of Requirement and blasted it with more Fiendfyre. It was getting easier and easier to put the cursed fire out. That was a dangerous habit to get into.
The three of them stared at each other for a moment when it was done. Harry and Ron were singed, blacked with soot. She imagined she looked even worse.
"What the hell happened to you?" she asked, then flapped a hand at them when they both opened their mouths to explain. "No, no. Nevermind. Tell me later."
They nodded. Ron smirked.
"So," he said.
"The snake," Harry said. Hermione had to swallow a sudden lump in her throat.
Yells and shouts and the unmistakable noises of dueling filled the corridor. The three of them moved in sync, bringing their wands up and turning to face the noise. She missed her knife, but it was still stuck hilt-deep in a tree somewhere in the Forest of Dean. They hadn't been back to retrieve it (or the tent or any of their things) since they'd been captured.
Fred and Percy backed into view, both of them dueling masked and hooded men.
Jets of light flew in every direction. A spell—she thought it might have been from Ron—knocked off the hood of the wizard Percy was dueling; the man backed off fast.
"Hello, Minister!" Percy bellowed, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. "Did I mention I'm resigning?"
"You're joking, Perce!" Fred shouted gleefully. The Death Eater he was battling collapsed under the weight of three separate Stunning Spells. Thicknesse had fallen to the ground with tiny spikes erupting all over him; he seemed to be turning into some form of sea urchin.
"Huh," Hermione said, watching. She'd never thought to use animal transfiguration like that.
"You actually are joking, Perce… I don't think I've heard you joke since you were—"
The air exploded. They had been grouped together, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred and Percy, the two Death Eaters. In that fragment of a moment, when danger seemed temporarily at bay, the world was rent apart. Hermione was thrown to the ground. Harry, who had been right next to her, dropped out of sight…
She found him half buried in the wreckage of the corridor. The wall had been blown away from the outside. Harry was bleeding from a wound on his cheek, but it was hard to judge how bad it was because head wounds always bleed quite a lot.
"No—no—no!" Percy was shouting. "No! Fred! No!"
Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them. Hermione dashed over, ignoring Harry and his scratch in favor of Fred, whose eyes were half open, showing whites.
"Move," she instructed, and was only half surprised when Percy did.
She cast her diagnostics, then cast more over his vital organs. He'd been crushed. Most of his bones were broken; he was bleeding internally. He had moments.
She could hear herself swearing, but she didn't know what, exactly, she was saying.
Hermione yanked her satchel out of her robe pocket and returned it to its usual size, then pulled out her kit. The bones were easy to fix with a spell, but his insides were quickly trying to become soup. His stomach was punctured, his digestive fluids wreaking havoc on sensitive tissues. And when she began to fix some of those problems, he was going to start to be able to feel it all, he was going to start to come back.
Because losing Fred Weasley was unthinkable.
"Get down!" Harry shouted, but Hermione didn't move. One of them would have to react, have to put up a Shield Charm.
Slicing through Fred's robes with a careful spell, she cleaned his torso with another spell and cut into him. She didn't have the sort of potions needed to repair organs; she'd have to use spells and Dittany. It was going to be a bloody mess, quite literally.
"What are you doing?" Percy shouted, but she ignored him. Harry or Ron could explain.
She broke his ribs again so that she could get her hands in. Actually, she removed the front plate of them as if she was going to do an autopsy on him. When she was finished, she would probably be sick.
Stomach was the first priority. Seal it, neutralize the stomach acid that had escaped.
Next came the intestines, dripping Dittany to close the punctures from the first broken ribs, then carefully realigning them around the other organs with a spell.
The liver had been punctured, she fixed that.
She didn't bother fixing his appendix; she just took it out.
Kidneys were okay. Lungs bruised but, surprisingly, not punctured. She couldn't put Bruise Salve on his lungs, so he'd just have to deal with being sore when he breathed. His heart had a few bone fragments lodged in it, but it hadn't actually been punctured. He'd been very lucky that she happened to be in the corridor and have had extensive Healer training. They wouldn't have had time to find help.
The most dire injuries tended, Hermione fixed his ribs again and closed him up. She had to use a spell, so he'd have a massive scar on his chest, a Y-incision he'd no doubt joke with George about as some sort of map for his future coroner. At least she hoped he'd joke with George about it; it would almost be more awful to have saved Fred only to lose George. Could one even exist without the other?
She couldn't imagine her own twins separate, and they weren't as perfectly in sync as the Weasley twins.
Do not think of the girls right now, Hermione. You know better.
She brushed away her tears, then had to wipe her eyes on her sleeve to clear the blood off.
"Okay," she said, sitting back on her heels and recasting her diagnostics. "Okay."
Fred groaned, then whimpered. He was crying.
"Here, Fred," she murmured, pulling out the strongest pain potion she had and holding it to his lips. "For the pain. Drink it down, Fred. You're going to be okay."
It was nice, for once, to be helping instead of hurting. To be an actual Healer instead of playing the dragon.
"Now this one, Fred." She gave him a Blood Replenishing Potion, then a sip of the same one she'd given Dumbledore for shock after she'd taken off his arm. "Now you just rest, Fred. I can't give you anything to help you sleep; it will react with what I've already given you. You don't have to worry about anything, though. We've got you. You're safe. You can rest while the potions do their work. I'll do a spell in a little bit that will help with your muscles."
His muscles were riddled with deep-tissue bruises from the bone fragments and from being compressed. He would hurt from it all, but he'd been lucky. There hadn't been any main arteries nicked by the flying bits of crushed bone.
Basically, he'd be a walking bruise for the next week, but he'd be walking.
"ROOKWOOD!" Percy roared half a second later, and leapt out the hole in the castle. He landed roughly, apparently casting a Cushioning Charm on the ground. He sunk into the grass and stumbled on after the Death Eater pursuing a couple of students.
Harry chose that moment to have another vision. He keeled over, and Ron jumped to catch him.
They were silent for a long moment. Hermione cast a diagnostic on Harry, too, for something to do. There was nothing unusual about his reading, though. He was a bit crisp around the edges from the Fiendfyre and his cheek had been sliced open, but he was as he normally was. Which was, of course, the problem.
She fixed his cheek, then turned to Ron and saw to his ills, too.
"He's in the Shrieking Shack. The snake's with him, it's got some sort of magical protection around it," Harry said, coming back to himself without warning. Ron jumped. "He's just sent Lucius Malfoy to find Snape."
"Voldemort's hiding in the Shrieking Shack?" Hermione asked. She hid Fred at the base of the inside wall, casting protective wards around him and making sure he had his wand near his hand; he'd passed out while she was seeing to Harry's cheek, but it was a restful sort of unconsciousness so she let him be.
"He'd not even fighting?" Ron asked, incredulous.
"He doesn't think he needs to fight. He thinks I'm going to go to him," said Harry.
"But why?"
"He knows I'm after Horcruxes—he's keeping Nagini close beside him—obviously I'm going to have to go to him to get near the thing—"
"Right," said Ron, squaring his shoulders. "So you can't go, that's what he wants, what he's expecting. You stay here and look after Hermione, and I'll go and get it—"
Hermione raised an eyebrow at him.
"You two stay here, I'll go under the Cloak and I'll be back as soon as I—" Harry tried, but Hermione cut him off.
"No. It makes much more sense if I take the Cloak and—"
"POTTER!"
Two masked Death Eaters.
Glisseo!
The stairs beneath their feet turned into a chute, and the three of them hurtled down it. She wasn't able to control the speed of the fall, and she was fairly certain that she'd left her stomach back at the top, but the Stunning Spells the Death Eaters cast flew far over their heads. They shot through the concealing tapestry at the bottom and spun onto the floor, hitting the opposite wall.
"Duro," she muttered, pointing her wand at the tapestry. There were two loud, sickening crunches as the tapestry turned to stone and the Death Eaters crumpled against it.
"Get back!" Ron shouted, and the three of them flattened themselves against the door as a herd of galloping desks thundered past, shepherded by a sprinting Minerva. Minerva didn't notice them in the least. Her braid had come undone, and she had a gash on her cheek, but she seemed to be almost enjoying herself.
"CHARGE!" Minerva shouted as she rounded the corner.
"The Cloak," Hermione suggested, and Harry pulled it out of his pocket and threw it over the three of them. When they were children, the Cloak had easily covered the three of them. They weren't children any longer. The Cloak flapped around their knees. Hermione added Disillusionment Charms to each of them, and hopefully that would be enough to keep their feet from giving them away.
They ran down the next staircase and found themselves in a corridor full of duelers. The portraits on either side of the fighters were crammed with figures screaming advice and encouragement, while Death Eaters, masked and unmasked, dueled students and teachers.
There was too much movement. There was a strong likelihood of hurting one of their own if they cast curses.
"Wheeeeeee!"
Peeves zoomed overhead, dropping Snargaluff pods down onto the Death Eaters, whose heads were suddenly engulfed in wriggling green tubers.
"Argh!" Ron said. A fistful of tubers had hit the Cloak over his head; the slimy green roots were suspended improbably in midair as Ron tried to shake them loose.
"Someone's invisible there!" shouted a masked Death Eater, pointing.
Dean and Parvati took advantage of the Death Eater's distraction, and Hermione hooked her arms through the boys' elbows to hurry them from the corridor.
Harry pulled away, chasing after Hagrid. Hermione followed. It was all madness. There were acromantulas everywhere (so Ron was uselessly clinging to her arm as they ran through it all).
"HAGRID!" Harry bellowed, and then Grawp lurched around the side of castle and set to pummeling a giant twice his size. Harry turned around. "RUN!"
And then there were dementors. At least a hundred of them.
All Hermione could think was that they were too late, that Severus was killed, that Voldemort would survive to make more Horcruxes, and she'd never see her children again.
Her children.
Her fox Patronus shot out of her wand, shining and vibrant. The awful, clinging horribleness of the dementors faded. Ron's terrier formed, then, slower, Harry's stag. They were joined by a hare, a bore and another fox. For a moment, Hermione thought of Severus, but the fox was too small and too pretty.
The dementors scattered as Luna, Ernie and Seamus stepped up beside them.
"Let's get out of range," Ron suggested.
Harry, Ron and Hermione ran for the Whomping Willow again while the others kept driving the dementors back from the castle.
I should have just Apparated us to the Shack. What was I thinking?
The earth shook under their feet and another giant came out of the darkness from the direction of the forest, brandishing a club that looked like it had once been most of a tree.
"RUN!" Harry shouted again, but Hermione had already conjured the Fiendfyre. It tried to form the dragon, but she didn't let it. Instead, she whipped it into a wave that crashed over the giant and disappeared in a burst of orange-gold foam. The giant's feet remained, steaming slightly, the hair on top of the toes smoldering a bit.
"Blimey," said Ron, staring at her.
"We need to move," Hermione said, grabbing them by the elbows again. She hoped Harry had the Cloak somewhere because she didn't remember when they'd stopped being under it.
Hermione shoved everything away. Compartmentalized, tamped down her Occlumency shields in the midst of the emotional hurricane. She couldn't think about the wounded she was running by, or Fred barely patched together and left in the castle, or Hagrid—dear, dear Hagrid—carried away into the Forest. Or Severus. Or…
They ran. It seemed like a long time ago that Hermione had gone for a run every morning, and she realized that it had been. She ran anyway.
Jets of light flew all around. She deflected what needed deflecting, following Harry in his single-minded sprint. The air smelled of fire and dust and fresh-turned earth; it was not pleasant.
They arrived at the Willow, and Ron jabbed his wand at a random stick, directing it at the knot. The tree went still.
"Harry, we're coming, just get in there!" Ron said, shoving Harry forward when he hesitated. Hermione followed them.
The earthy passage through the tree's roots was smaller than she remembered it. The tunnel was so low that they all had to duck, even her. And then they had to crawl.
"The Cloak!" she whispered to Harry when they got close to the end of the tunnel. "Put the Cloak on!"
They crept forward as silently as possible. Her knees were killing her, but she ignored it. She could be sore and bruised later, and she definitely would be. Severus could brew her an anti-inflammatory and some fresh Bruise Salve. Or they could share a bath. Maybe even both.
She couldn't see much through the tiny gap at the opening of the tunnel. There was an old crate in the way. She could hear alright, though.
"…my Lord, their resistance is crumbling—"
Oh gods. Severus. She wanted to leap up and go to him, to help, to punch Voldemort in his nonexistent nose and drag her husband away to Australia.
She didn't.
"—and it is doing so without your help," Voldemort said. His voice was strangely high, clear. She wondered if it had always been like that or if it was different since his resurrection. It was an odd thing to wonder, but she was curious. "Skilled wizard though you are, Severus, I do no think you will make much difference now. We are almost there… almost."
"Let me find the boy. Let me bring you Potter. I know I can find him, my Lord. Please." There was a note of desperation in his voice that she wasn't sure anybody else would hear. She prayed Voldemort didn't notice.
There were footsteps, and Harry tensed. Behind him, Ron had a hand pressed over his mouth to muffle the sound of his own breathing. His eyes were wide, panicked. Hermione squeezed her hands into fists and pressed them into her thighs.
"I have a problem, Severus," Voldemort said above, softly.
"My Lord?"
"Why doesn't it work for me, Severus?"
"My—my Lord?" He sounded honestly surprised. Hermione wondered what the hell they were talking about. "I do not understand. You—you have performed extraordinary magic with that wand."
"No," Voldemort said. "I have performed my usual magic. I am extraordinary, but this wand… no. It has not revealed the wonders it has promised. I feel no difference between this wand and the one I procured from Ollivander all those years ago."
Pompous ass, Hermione thought.
"No difference," Voldemort said again. His voice was musing, calm, and yet Hermione could feel the magic vibrating in the room above. The tension. Something was about to happen, and she doubted she was going to like it.
"I have thought long and hard, Severus," Voldemort said. One of them was walking around again. "Do you know why I have called you back from the battle?"
"No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter."
"You sound like Lucius. Neither of you understands Potter as I do. He does not need finding. Potter will come to me. I know his weakness, you see, his one great flaw. He will hate watching the others struck down around him, knowing that it is for him that it happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come."
He was lying. He knew Harry would come because Harry was after Horcruxes. It was also true that Harry wouldn't want others to be hurt in his place, but it was the Horcruxes that were the real draw. They were so close now…
"But my Lord, he might be killed accidentally by one other than yourself—"
"My instructions to my Death Eaters have been perfectly clear. Capture Potter. Kill his friends—the more, the better—but do not kill him."
Harry was tense in front of her, magic and muscle coiled up. He wanted to spring in there, it was obvious. He wanted to attack. Voldemort had gauged that reaction right, sure enough. Harry really did think it was all for him that people were dying. She'd have to explain it later.
"But it is of you that I wished to speak, Severus, not Harry Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable."
He's going to kill Severus. The thought echoed in her mind, as certain as sunrise. She felt sick.
"My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But—let me go and find the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can—"
"I have told you, no!" Hermione couldn't breathe. "My concern at the moment, Severus, is what will happen when I finally meet the boy!"
"My Lord, there can be no question, surely—?"
"—but there is a question, Severus. There is. Why did both the wands I have used fail when directed at Harry Potter?"
"I—I cannot answer that, my Lord."
"Can't you? My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me under torture of the twin cores, told me to take another's wand. I did so, but Lucius's wand shattered upon meeting Potter's."
"I—I have no explanation, my Lord."
"I sought a third wand, Severus. The Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore."
Hermione had read the story of the Elder Wand—The Tale of the Three Brothers—but it was just a story. Was Voldemort so mad that he truly thought such a thing could exist? That Dumbledore had possessed it?
Then again, Voldemort had split his soul seven ways. He wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders.
"My Lord—let me go to the boy—" Severus's voice was entirely emotionless. Hermione could feel his Occlumency shields from the hidden tunnel, could picture the blankness of his eyes.
"All this long night, when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here," said Voldemort, his voice barely louder than a whisper, "wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner… and I think I have the answer."
The silence was not long, but it was weighty.
"Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all, Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant, and I regret what must happen."
"My Lord—"
"The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot be truly mine."
Severus sighed.
"Oh, shit," Hermione muttered. Harry and Ron turned back to look at her. "He's going to—"
"Riddle," Severus said. He was using his classroom voice, talking to Lord fucking Voldemort like a schoolboy who hadn't been paying attention to a lecture. "There is something you do not know."
"You dare—"
"Shut up," Severus snapped. There was a sizzle of spells, the snap of impact, and a crash as a window broke upstairs.
"Move," Hermione said quietly, pushing at Harry and Ron. "Go, go!"
"You killed my best friend, did you know that? A very long time ago, now. Lily Potter."
"You desired her, that was all."
"Yes, at the time. That's ancient history, though." The floorboards above creaked like the two were circling each other. "Did you know I was married? For years, now. She's Muggle-born."
"Impossible."
"Hardly."
Hermione gave up trying to squeeze past Ron and crawled over him.
"Oy, geroff!" he grumbled, one of his shoulders dropping and sending her off balance. She skidded into the dirt wall, scraping her cheek.
"Why would you lie, Severus? You have been a most loyal servant. You killed—"
"Ah, yes. I killed." Severus's tone was almost mocking. "Not for you, though."
"You took the Vow."
"To protect my godson. I would've done that anyway." Flippant. He was being flippant. She was going to hit him upside the head. "No, I killed Dumbledore because Dumbledore asked me to. He was dying already. That curse you put on the Gaunt ring. A slow, lingering death, sucking the hope out of the Order. He preferred to go a martyr."
It was very quiet. Hermione held her breath, kept perfectly still. She was just behind Harry now, both of them pressed forward near the secret door into the Shack. She could see the snake and its strange magical protection, but not Severus or the Dark Lord.
"No, I was Dumbledore's man for much longer than I ever was yours," Severus said. "He just didn't feel the need to carve his sigil into me."
He marked his ownership in other ways, Hermione thought bitterly, thinking of the scars—on his body and on his soul—Dumbledore had allowed.
"And now it ends," Severus said. "You can kill me, of course you can. You are right in that your magic is extraordinary. I probably can't stop you. But I don't have to. You are very nearly mortal, Tom Riddle."
Severus whirled; she could see the flick of his cloak. For a moment, she thought, hoped, he might be Disapparating, but instead he attacked the snake. The last Horcrux.
"Move, Harry! Get out of the way!" she hissed, pushing at him.
He threw off the Cloak, though, and she was tangled in it. Her heart was racing. Her mind was racing.
"Potter!" Voldemort cried above.
"Hello, Tom," Harry said. She heard his wand clatter to the floor. "I'm—"
"Avada Kedavra!"
And then two bodies hit the floorboards above, heavy.
"NO!" Hermione cried.
"What's happening? What's happened?" Ron shouted, jostling with her to get a view, to get out of the tunnel.
Something hissed, and then there was a terrible scream. Hermione felt as if she'd been hit with Petrificus Totalus. Her blood froze in her veins. She didn't seem to be able to remember how to breathe.
She'd heard Severus in pain. She'd heard him scream and shout and curse, heard him shudder and keen and whimper. This scream tore through her to the core; she'd never heard him scream like this before.
"VOLARE!"
She rocketed out of the tunnel, smashing her shoulder into the trapdoor. She overshot, tumbled into a heap near a broken window, and crashed into the wall.
Nagini, the snake, turned away from Severus, crumpled on the floor in a pool of black robes and pale skin, and darted towards her. She shrieked, flinching away reflexively.
"Incendio!" Ron shouted, his torso poking up out of the trapdoor. The lick of flames only seemed to annoy the snake, though. It turned toward him, moving faster than such a large legless creature had any right to be able to move. "Shit!"
Ron disappeared back into the tunnel, and Hermione whipped her wand around.
It screamed like a human being as it burned. The Fiendfyre left a long, greasy smear in the dust on the floor where the snake had been.
"Harry? Harry!" Ron shouted, running for his best friend. Hermione cast quick diagnostics on all three of them on the floor. Harry and Voldemort had identical readings down to the weak, thready heartbeats. Severus was bleeding out. Quickly.
"Severus."
He had the antivenin in his pockets. He'd known they'd be going after the snake; he'd been prepared for the eventuality that one of them was bitten.
Why the fuck does a fucking constrictor have fucking poisonous fucking venom?
"No, no, no, no," she heard herself say as she got her satchel out of the pocket she'd stashed it in, shoved her arm in and Summoned her kit. "Severus."
He was shaking, losing blood fast. His fingers were at his neck, trying feebly to staunch the flow of blood from the wound there. His mouth moved to form the shape of her name, but no sound came out.
His usually pale face had absolutely no color to it. He was utterly black and white, robes and skin. And splashes of red blood.
"What's wrong with Harry?" Ron shouted. He'd slapped at Harry's cheeks, shaken him. "WHAT'S WRONG WITH HARRY?"
"I don't know!" Hermione shouted back, not turning to look. She uncorked a vial of Blood Replenishing Potion and tipped it into Severus's mouth. He swallowed it down, coughed. A bit of it dribbled out the corner of his mouth, and it looked a bit like blood—fake, too-red blood, like from a Muggle movie.
"Hermione!" Ron shouted, and she felt him grab her shoulder.
"He's a Horcrux, Ron. I don't know what's happening. He should be dead!" She screamed it in his face, shoving his hand off her shoulder. Then she turned back to Severus, hands searching through her kit for the next thing.
Severus went limp, and for a moment she thought he'd died. But no, the blood was still flowing out of him. His heart was still pumping.
Her mouth was running again. She was probably swearing.
She looked to her diagnostics. His heart was barely beating. His brain was starved of oxygen.
I am kneeling in his lifeblood, she thought nonsensically.
She wrenched his robes out of the way. Buttons went flying. The exposed wounds were bloody but small. Deep fang punctures from at least three strikes, three bites. One was clean, the others were torn and jagged, the skin ripped around the bite from the moving head of the snake or from Severus falling.
When it had bitten Arthur Weasley, when it had bitten Harry, it had been the venom that prevented healing. That was her first order of business.
Breathe, Hermione. His thoughts, instructions, his calming presence in her mind.
She wiped at her face with her sleeve, clearing her vision of the tears, and went for Severus's pocket where he kept his kit, Shrunk like she kept her satchel.
She'd sat on his desk while he brewed the antivenin. They'd flirted for hours while he went through the steps. He'd taken her to bed when he'd taken the cauldron on the flame for the potion to cool.
There it was. Three identical vials, each the size of her longest finger and filled with bile-colored antivenin.
Eight drops under the tongue; he needed a larger dose than Harry because he was bigger, taller. She dumped the rest of the first vial onto his neck. He screamed, writhed.
She stopped swearing and started apologizing.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She tore the strap off her satchel and forced it between his teeth so he'd have something to bite. "I'm sorry."
She shoved his hair out of the way. It was sticking in the blood.
Ten agonizing seconds passed as the first dose of the antivenin burned away the majority of the venom. Hermione dumped the second vial of antivenin into a flat dish and packed it with bandages, letting them soak it up. While she waited for the bandages, she cleaned his neck.
The cap wouldn't come off her jar of charmed thread, so she threw it away from her and picked up her wand. Carefully, she used charms to seal the puncture wounds. Almost as soon as she'd finished, more than half of them opened again.
"FUCK!"
"Here," Ron said in a very small voice. He'd gotten the lid off the jar. A sob tore out of her at the sight of it.
"Thank you."
The stitches held. The potion steamed. Severus bit down on the leather.
Then it was over. She wiped away the blood. Severus was rigid beneath her hands, his breath harsh. She realized that Ron had been holding him bodily to the floor.
"A little more, Severus," she whispered. "Just a little more."
She moved so that his head was propped up in her lap and helped him drink another Blood Replenishing Potion and a Strengthening Solution.
She recast her diagnostic, and her breath shuddered out of her. He was recovering. He would recover.
Hermione stroked his hair. It was knotted, and there was blood in it. She ran her fingers along his scalp, anyway. He liked it when she did that.
She didn't have any potions for pain that didn't also make the drinker sleep; she'd used up all the good ones on Fred. Instead, she took out the paste for numbing and spread a thick layer on his neck. It would be uncomfortable, and it wouldn't be so good a solution as any of the potions would have been, but he wouldn't be able to feel the burn of the antivenin.
She checked the rest of him. No other damage. He'd lost a lot of blood, but he would survive.
She gave him another Blood Replenishing Potion, and his color was beginning to come back. She gave him another Strengthening Solution, too, and bound his neck even though the wounds were closed.
"Hermione," he said, his hands on her cheeks. He wiped away tears, and the moment she realized she was crying she cried harder. Heaving sobs shaking her whole body. He sat up, pulling her sideways across his lap and holding her close. She wrapped her arms around him, careful of the injury, and held on.
Her brain was short-circuiting. She was still cataloguing his reactions, running through the steps of things she'd need to check. Lingering poison? How much venom had entered his system? Would he need more antivenin? More Blood Replenishing Potion? He could only have maybe one more dose of that last before it was too much and his blood vessels would start to crystallize.
She ran out of tears after a few minutes, but she still clung to him. He was holding her close, stroking her hair. Soothing both of them with the contact.
"I love you, Hermione Snape," he said.
"I love you, too."
"Are you hurt?" he asked her, and she shook her head, pulling away. His hand went to the cheek she'd scraped in the tunnel.
"I'm okay. How do you feel?"
"Woozy," he admitted. "But I think I'll live."
You sure as hell better live.
He smirked at her, lifting a bloody hand to trace the line of her cheek. She turned into his touch, kissing his fingertips.
Beautiful.
The word reached her from Severus's mind, and she laughed out loud. He leaned down, smoothing her hair back from where it stuck to her face in sweat and blood.
"You are."
"You're impossibly biased," she told him, but she felt better. He smirked.
He probably would have said something surprisingly romantic, but Ron interrupted.
"Harry! He's coming around!"
Hermione had entirely forgotten that they weren't alone.
The diagnostics she'd cast were still hovering above them, but they were finally giving different readings. Harry's pulse was growing stronger. Voldemort's was fading.
"What does that mean? What's it doing?" Ron asked. He was up and pacing. His jeans were soaked in Severus's blood from the knee down; he'd been kneeling in the pool of blood just as she had. Even though she'd yelled at him and shoved him away.
She didn't give Ron nearly as much credit as he deserved most of the time.
"Harry's signs are getting stronger," Hermione said, pointing to the runes in the diagnostic floating above Harry.
"And the Dark Lord's?" Severus asked, his voice hoarse.
"He's fading."
"What does that mean? Do you think they're sharing a vision or something?" Ron asked.
"Hopefully we'll be able to ask him," Hermione said.
They waited. Hermione felt like she was barely breathing.
And then, they both jerked awake.
With a yell that startled her, Severus surged forward. He had the crate that had been sitting by the entrance to the tunnel in his hands, and he brought it down hard over Voldemort's head.
The crate shattered. Bits of wood flew every which way. He held a skeleton of the original crate, and he kept bring it down. Again and again.
Bludgeoned, Hermione's mind provided.
"Burn him," Severus croaked, staggering away. He dropped the single board left of the crate and leaned against the wall, slid down to sit at the base of it.
Hermione did as he asked, leaving a second greasy mark in the dust.
Harry sat where he'd fallen, blinking at them owlishly from behind crooked glasses.