A/N: I'm responding to amr's review here since it was a "guest review" and I can't send a message back. Feel free to skip on down to the not-bolded text for the chapter.
Okay. My response— The first time, Dumbledore didn't sanction killing. He didn't have wet works people, he didn't kill in duels. He captured, he put them in Azkaban. This time, he's escalated. Voldemort complimented Dumbledore on growing a pair because he finally killed somebody, so Voldemort is mocking Dumbledore since he knows that Dumbledore sees it as sinking to his (Voldemort's) level and it amuses him.
So far as Edward Barr as Rabastan Lestrange's plaything goes, I didn't mean sexually. Lestrange was toying with him, telling him his assassination ideas were good plans, inciting him to recklessness so as to be the perfect scapegoat. Snape was making the point that Dumbledore had had a pawn killed— somebody relatively harmless, especially since the Order had known to watch him.
And the sin and vice confusion: Dumbledore's sin was killing. Lestrange's vice was killing, so Dumbledore's sin is Lestrange's vice.
I wasn't referring to a personal/sexual relationship between Barr and Dumbledore. Just the player (Dumbledore) removing the opposing side's pawn (Barr). The sin in question was murder, not sex.
It's about the way we think about sins and vices, the way we perceive our actions is what makes one thing a sin to Person A and a vice to Person B. Any question of morality is subjective. That thought was where my title came from, at least— the story grew and changed quite a bit, and I never addressed it directly, and I almost feel like doing so at this point would be pandering. Sort of a discarded discussion on the subjectivity of morality.
Did I answer your points of question? I feel like I got off track...
Mr. Weasley brought out the brandy. It wasn't particularly good brandy, but it was passed around anyway. Hermione and Severus both declined, sharing a smile.
"I don't think—" Harry cut himself off, clearing his throat. "People shouldn't know about that."
"Agreed," Severus said, surprising most of the others at the table.
"What?" Hill asked, taking a second gulp from the bottle when it came back around to him.
"You know what was at stake and you know why, and you needed to come in and have a drink," Severus said, but gently. He wasn't judging them, just reminding them what had happened. "We need Albus Dumbledore to be the benevolent grandfather. It's who he wanted to be."
"But he—" Hill said, but stopped and looked away. "Why are you, of all people, defending him?"
"That was just one of many arguments he and I had. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. We agreed on the ends, not always the means."
"Did you fight with him, too, then?" Kingsley asked Hermione. She smiled and shook her head.
"Oh, no. I mostly just drank."
He almost smiled at her, but he remembered the look of her the morning after she'd been sent out to play the dragon too well for it.
In Dumbledore's terms of sin and vice, her sin had been the killing and her vice had been the drinking. It was the opposite of Severus's father, ironically—the drinking had been Tobias Snape's sin, and beating his wife and son had been his vice.
A bottle of firewhiskey had been produced and joined the brandy making the round of the group.
"Are you pregnant?" Mrs. Weasley asked Hermione when she passed on the bottle.
"No," Hermione said. Severus rolled his eyes—they'd been too exhausted in the week since the Battle of Hogwarts to do more than hold onto each other and fall asleep. They'd had a very nice snog the previous morning upon waking, but they were sleeping in the sitting room. The children had been up before they could go much further, and this morning Minerva had bustled in and woken them before anything could even start. "The memory just didn't shock me."
"What are we going to say at the debriefing?" Bill asked, bringing them back on point. "As I understand it, whatever is said will be a sealed record. The public won't hear it, but the Wizengamot will."
"We don't have enough people to have a full Wizengamot hearing, which is why it will just be a debriefing on the record," Kingsley said. "There will be a panel and Dictaquills. The statements will be used to determine who goes to trial, if anybody."
"So we just tell them what happened? We don't need to leave the..."
"The remains of the Wizengamot knew Dumbledore longer than most of us were alive," Minerva said. She sounded more collected than the others, but Severus supposed that was because she'd known Dumbledore for longer than most of the rest had been alive, too. She'd seen glimpses of his ruthless backbone before. His dedication to the greater good over all else.
\\
Hermione had fallen asleep in one of the wingbacks in the sitting room. He'd gone in to check on the children—they'd been sleeping soundly; they hadn't even twitched when he'd kissed them—and when he came out again she was out like a light.
So much for pregnancy, he thought, smirking to himself.
She looked younger when she slept, but that seemed to be the way of it. Everybody looked younger when they slept.
Her mad hair, braided back all day, had begun to come loose. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt beneath a long-sleeved robe. A gray-blue brocade that she'd opened up before she sat down. The fine quality of the robes clashed with the casual Muggle clothes.
Severus considered waking her. Before he made up his mind, her eyes opened. She looked at him like she'd been awake the whole time. Had he completely imagined the boneless way she'd slumped in the chair?
"That was a long afternoon," Hermione said, shifting out of the wingback and onto the sofa beside them. It was still transfigured to be more bed-like, wider and longer.
"We made them uncomfortable."
"That's nothing new."
He smirked, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her close.
The children were off somewhere with Hagrid. (He was probably showing them baby Blast-Ended Skrewts or something equally horrible.) They had the run of the school these days. A week and a half after the Battle of Hogwarts (a name from the Prophet that didn't seem to be going away), most of the debris had been cleared away and there was always a house elf (usually Tup) paying attention to redirect them as needed. After so long confined to the headmaster's quarters, they were making up for lost time.
Meanwhile, Hermione was on her own this morning, at least for awhile; Severus was at Gringotts again. Hermione found herself in the entrance hall working the familiar protective enchantments into the new stonework.
The masons had been hard at work for the past few days, patching the castle back together. The professors were occupied convincing the statuary and suits of armor to return to their alcoves and pedestals (a trio of medieval suits of armor had taken it upon themselves to patrol the halls, and at some point they'd begun taking direction from Sir Cadogen).
Hermione finished the section of wall and turned in time to see Peeves floating off toward the Charms classroom, singing his victory song ("We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter's the one. Now Voldy's gone moldy, so now let's have fun!") and swinging what looked like his handy old sock full of chalk.
It was nice that some things never changed.
"I've just seen Sebastian taking on Minerva at chess," Severus said from behind her. It was a perfect day and she'd left the doors open while she worked; he was coming up the steps.
"She's avoiding Ezra Pierce, I think. He's around today."
"Oh, God. Let's go down to Hogsmeade for lunch."
"There are reporters camped out in the village."
"Better them than Pierce."
"I think they'd put me off my lunch."
"Maybe we could hide in the kitchens here."
"You don't need to hide, Severus," she said, rolling her eyes at him, but smiling too. "You're not the headmaster any more, so you're not the one he wants to talk to."
"He's proposing a victory ball," Severus said, frowning, looking up and down the hall like they might summon him if they thought about him too much. "He'd just love to get us cornered and convince us to attend."
"It's too soon. It doesn't feel like a victory," Hermione said. She pointed at the next section of wall she had to work on—it shone, new and strangely pristine. She hadn't noticed that most of the walls had scorch marks from the torches that lit the hallways until the masons had begun to replace the stonework. She'd stared at a stretch of wall for almost three full minutes before she'd put her finger on the problem. "We haven't even had time for funerals, yet."
The bodies of the fallen had been claimed by friends or family, and arrangements were being made. Lavender Brown's service would be the first, the day after the debriefing. Then it would be a rapid flow from one funeral to the next.
Unless, of course, they tried to send her to Azkaban. Then she'd be on the run and she wouldn't be able to attend any of the funerals at all.
"I've convinced the goblins you aren't a horrible person," Severus said. She smiled at him, grateful for the change of subject. "I donated half a dozen goblin-made items from one of the Prince vaults. It made them very happy and it probably has Princes rolling over in their graves, so I'm happy. And here is your key."
"Does this mean I have to go to your banking meetings now?"
"With any luck, that was the last of them."
"You weren't negotiating my access, were you?"
"No. That was more of a perk. All the old vaults tend to have services and securities attached—"
"Like dragons?"
"Yes. But we don't have a dragon."
"Good. That poor thing…"
"We have a goblin assigned to us. A sort of financial advisor."
"I suppose he's the one who chose which artifacts would compensate for my crimes?"
"Yes, but he'd selected a round dozen. I brought Ernie Mortimer with me and he negotiated a better settlement."
"I thought he just handled the Hogwarts affairs."
"Personal favor. He was very professional this past year—just keeping his head down and carrying on—but he seems to be feeling apologetic for thinking badly of me."
"Well that's lucky."
"Indeed. Anyway, we've got it all sorted now, I believe. There are some terribly nasty curses guarding the vault."
"You look as though there's a good deal more to say but you don't want to say it."
"Well, you're not going to like it."
"I don't like radishes, but not talking about them doesn't make them cease to exist."
"We own several houses now. All of them have house elves assigned to them."
"Oh."
S.P.E.W. had been a lifetime ago. She'd all but given up on it after she'd gained some perspective on elves, but that was a long way from being comfortable with owning house elves. Plural.
"How many…?"
"I don't know for sure. A handful are here, actually. They came to— attend me— once I inherited, though I didn't known it at the time. I assumed they were Hogwarts elves assigned to me, not family elves overruling school elves' claim on the headmaster."
"Tup?" Hermione guessed. Severus nodded.
"And a girl-elf called Thorpe intended for you, but your wards were too good for her to get to you unless you called her."
"You said there were a handful here?"
"Nim, Pip and Steven. I think Nim is the head house elf of Prince House. I haven't sorted out their hierarchy yet."
"Oh, God, Severus," Hermione moaned. Severus just laughed at her discomfort.