Chapter 65: Thursday, March 12, 1981
"A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life"
-Honore de Balzac
Tensions were running high at the long wooden table at Dorcas Meadow's home that Thursday evening. There had been news of a massive overhaul at the Ministry in which dozens of employees had been dismissed from their positions and replaced by known or speculated Death Eaters or blood purists. Moody had been deranked from head of the Auror's to a regular member of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement— "No better than one of those damn muggle bobbies!"—Kingsley had been sacked and several other moves had been made within the Ministry in an attempt to uproot Dumbledore from Hogwarts. Thankfully, all of their efforts had proven to be futile, not even the Minister himself was ill-minded enough to remove Albus Dumbledore from that school.
On top of the stress of the Ministry and the pawns being moved in place there, murders and disappearances had become a daily occurrence. The Prophet had begun running articles on the third page of every issue with the list of names of the dead or the missing. Descriptions of bodies that had been recovered in hopes of trying to find someone to claim them. Death Eaters were becoming ruthless, out in the open and attacking at regular intervals. Most of the muggleborn population had either been killed, captured, fled the country, or gone into hiding. Order members with ties to muggles or muggleborns were working tirelessly to protect their loved ones, everyone encouraged to put wards up on every house of friends or kin.
Not to mention, Remus had yet to return from his last mission.
Hermione's stomach had been in knots for over a month now, her nerves on edge with every creak of a floorboard or rattle of the wind in her home. She hardly slept, staying up well into the early morning hours, working on a plan for when she had to depart. Trying to do something to keep her mind busy, to keep her mind off of Remus and the terror she felt knowing he was not safe. And with the next full moon only eight days out, she didn't think he would be back anytime soon.
Her attention pulled up from the notebook she was staring at as Moody's voice began to rise in pitch, arguing with Dumbledore in the next room over. They had been locked away in the room for nearly an hour, slowly Moody's voice had risen and became more lethal in tone. Whatever it was they were talking about, Alastor Moody was furious.
A very small group sat at the table, waiting for further instruction. Lily and James had been dismissed an hour ago, with Harry in tow, and told to remain home and not to leave. With them, left Kingsley, to accompany them back to Godric's Hollow and set a few extra wards on their home. Arthur Weasley sat next to Hermione, humming a pleasant tune to himself as he read a muggle newspaper. Occasionally, he would laugh, delighted at some muggle quip or a piece of information that made no sense to him. He had taken, as many of them had, to scanning the muggle news as well—looking for names of people that could be associated with the Wizarding World.
Sirius had been at the meeting earlier but left on an assignment that involved scoping out several areas for potential safehouses and checking in on the other safehouse residents that had been hidden away already. Peter had volunteered to go with him, having just got back from a mission not two days prior, but Moody insisted they had a different position they wanted him in, so Dorcas accompanied Sirius.
"If you don't, for one bloody second, think there is a spy among our ranks then you are sorely mistaken, Albus!" Moody's voice hissed through the creaking of the door as it opened.
Furious, Moody limped through the room, his electric blue eye whizzed around wildly in its holster on his face. It landed on Hermione for several seconds before shifting back to face forward as he stormed from the house, the front door slamming shut behind him.
A spy.
"It was you, all along!" Harry's voice said, shaking with anger as he screamed at the filthy man before him. "You were a spy! You were their friend! They trusted you, and you betrayed them!"
The memory of Harry's voice, broken in its desperation and cracking with fury, seeped from the recess of her mind and lingered heavy behind her eyes as she blinked several times. She swallowed, trying to clear the uncomfortable feeling of despair and anger that had twisted in the pit of her gut. When she looked up, she saw Peter staring at her. His small, brown eyes darted around her face, a sheen of sweat across his forehead as if the very idea of thinking caused him to over exert himself. As she studied him through her lashes, careful not to catch his eye, she felt that overwhelming feeling of raw fury cut through her.
"All that was missing was his finger!"
She tilted her head, her eyes dragged to his hands and she counted the joints of his knuckles and the tips of his fingers. Five on each hand, all ten fingers accounted for. Hermione sighed and shifted in her chair, giving her head a small shake. It was silly to think that the strange bits of information that had poured from the blocks of her mind, completely out of context, may be of any use to her now. Especially when trying to find a reason to explain the misplaced anger she felt toward the man in front of her.
After several minutes, Dumbledore emerged from the room, a small amused smile on his face, eyes twinkling behind his half moon spectacles. He clapped his hands together and took in a slow breath, "Arthur, I apologize that I've kept you waiting. I'll owl you in the morning, if that will suit you?"
Arthur stood and tucked his muggle newspaper into his cloak, pulling his hat over his head and smiled, "Certainly!"
Giving a brief handshake to Peter and a small squeeze around Hermione's shoulders, Arthur took his leave. Peter stood as well, a quick nod in Hermione's direction before turning toward Dumbledore, his face twitching a bit as the ancient wizard laid eyes on him.
"Am I…should I go back to my post then, Professor?" Peter asked.
"I think that would be wise, Mr Pettigrew. Yes."
Peter nodded, "I'll contact you soon, then?"
"Lovely!"
Peter headed toward the fireplace, dipping his hand into the shimmery black powder held in the crystal bowl on the mantle. He tossed it into the grate and stepped in, yelling out a word so quickly, Hermione could not decipher it, before he was whisked away in a rush of green flame. Dumbledore moved closer to the table and took a seat, sighing as his rear hit the cushion of the chair, as if he had been on his feet all day. And, Hermione supposed, he probably had been.
"Sir, is there something you need from me?" Hermione asked, slowly packing up her journal and pulling her eyes to meet his.
"I received missive from Mr Lupin last night," Dumbledore stated.
Hermione's mouth instantly went dry and she swallowed, trying to rid the sandpaper from her tongue. "He's been gone over a month! Is he hurt? If you need me to go to him I can and I'll have—"
Dumbledore put up his hand to stop her, "He's well, spoke only of minor injuries, nothing to cause concern for immediate attention or lasting damage."
Hermione pulled her brows together, feeling only minimally better. "Okay…forgive me, sir, but I'm not sure why you're telling me this, then?"
"He brought to my attention that there is a potion being used among werewolf colonies now, given freely by an unnamed source, to allow them to transform outside of their cycle. He simply mentioned that you may have an understanding of some of the ingredients being used to create this potion."
Of all the words that he spoke to her in the last few seconds, it was the word now that dug it's claws into her brain and instantly flared her anger. Now, as if Remus hadn't been subjected to the potion against his own free will last year. As if she hadn't watched him bleed and blister under the bindings of silver chains. As if he hadn't been the bloody test subject for the potion to begin with!
Hermione swallowed back the rush of fury that sparked from the fire that burned in her belly where Remus' safety was concerned. Instead, she took a slow breath and nodded. "Yes, I was able to isolate a few of the ingredients. But, I think you should ask Severus Snape about the potion, if you'd like to replicate it."
"I have," Dumbledore said. "Severus was under the impression, as well, that you may have more information on this subject than he does."
Hermione snorted, "With all due respect, sir, Severus Snape recently stepped away from the Death Eaters. He's a Potion's Master. If anyone has knowledge about the workings of this potion, it's him."
Dumbledore seemed to regard her for a minute, as if he were rolling her words around in his head and trying to come up with what to say next. Hermione felt a strange surge of anger laced victory swell in her chest.
"This potion could be detrimental to our cause, I trust you understand, Ms Granger. And Remus has alluded to the possibilities of other potions being created that are similar in structure."
"You know about my journal," Hermione said. "You know about the curses being used."
"I know there are heinous curses in that journal, yes."
Hermione waited to see if he would continue, wanting to understand where he was going with this but unsure of what to say. After the silence had stretched between them for quite some time, Dumbledore finally rose to his feet and spoke again.
"Andromeda Tonks has brought it to my attention that you will need a way to hide your identity once you depart from this time. I have spoken to Severus, he knows not the reason I asked for the potion, only that you should be the one to assist in the brewing of it. I suspect you will hear from him soon."
Sunday, March 22, 1981
"Bugger," Hermione muttered as she dropped one too many lacewing flies into the cauldron.
"I was under the impression that you were a competent brewer," Snape drawled, his voice heavy with irritation as he pulled his eyes from his own cauldron and arched an eyebrow at her.
She huffed in irritation and rolled her eyes, "It's one extra fly, it isn't going to have a massive effect on—"
"Well versed in brewing volatile memory potions, are you?" Snape snapped, "Scrap the cauldron, start over."
"It was one fly!"
"One fly can cause permanent brain damage in a memory potion. Or perhaps it is your goal to ensure that whoever takes this will end up in the Janus Thickey Ward of St. Mungo's?"
Hermione scowled and closed her eyes, swallowing back the irritation momentarily before vanishing the contents of her cauldron, performing a thorough cleaning charm and starting over.
"Do try and remember not to be too heavy handed this time. The ingredients for these brews are not cheap and require a lighter touch, I trust you can manage without fumbling for five minutes?"
"Merlin, give me strength," Hermione mumbled under her breath as she began the set up again while Snape worked diligently on preparing the more complex ingredients.
This had become their routine over the last fortnight. The pair met at the dusty old cabin every Sunday, just after breakfast, and worked well into the evening on preparing ingredients for a complex memory potion. The potion itself would take several weeks to brew, and the preparation of the ingredients was volatile at best. Snape never allowed Hermione to work with the more complex preparations, although she was certain she was capable. They worked in silence, aside from the snide remarks here and there about her 'inability to chop uniform strips' or 'count a proper minute while stirring anticlockwise.' Hermione's patience was running incredibly thin, and coupled with the fact that it had been nearly two months since she had last heard from Remus, she was at the end of her rope.
After a few hours of work, they decided to take a break to wash up and eat lunch. They had successfully begun the first brewing stage of the potion without any adverse effects and Hermione was looking forward to stepping away from the cauldrons, if only for a few moments. She moved into the kitchen and opened her bag, pulling out a small basket she had packed their lunch items into. She had taken it upon herself to bring the food since their first meeting. Snape had proven that his interest laid in the potions he brewed, and he would go the entire day without eating if she didn't stop him. Not that she particularly cared about him—but she was hungry and it was rude to eat in front of him and not at least offer.
She pulled the plates from the cabinet and gave a quick once over with a scourgify before putting together a few sandwiches, some fruit, and crisps. She set a plate at the table and took the seat opposite, conjuring a glass and filling it with water. Snape entered and sat opposite of her, gently tugging his sleeves up to his wrists and murmuring something that sounded almost like a 'thanks', before tucking into his sandwich.
Hermione couldn't stand it anymore. It wasn't as if she had to talk, she had long grown out of the phase of her life where she felt the need to fill the air, but working in near silence all day and going home to a silent house was beginning to drive her mad.
"The base potion should be balanced in a few hours," Hermione began. "Once it cools and re-boils it won't take long."
"I'm aware."
She took a slow breath before biting into her sandwich and chewing. When she swallowed she tried again, "The idea to use a Polyjuice potion as the conduit for the memory potion was rather clever. Have you done something like this before?"
"No."
She pulled a grape off the small bushel on her plate and popped it into her mouth, "The properties of the Polyjuice are quite opposite from the—"
"Must you talk with your mouth full?"
Hermione blinked several times, swallowing the grape and pursed her lips, biting into her cheek to keep from yelling a few rude obscenities at him. "I'm just trying to make conversation."
"Well don't."
Hermione huffed, "You know, we've been working together a couple of weeks now. It's not like you have a ton of people on your side, willing to be anywhere near you! The least you could do is try to be a little personable."
"Personable?"
"Yes! You know, have a conversation! Talk about the work we're doing perhaps?"
"I don't know what there is to talk about," he said, dusting the crumbs from his fingers and carefully patting a napkin against his mouth. "We have nothing in common aside from this project that I was made to do."
"Made to do?"
"You know as well as I do that Dumbledore holds the cards here, he asked a favor of me, and I obliged. That is it. You being here has nothing to do with my potion. Your ridiculous little book of curses will take longer than this memory draught to dismantle, and you know it. So while you like to believe that we will—what? Become friends? We both know the minute your mutt returns from the pack of dogs he's no doubt running with, I will no longer be of use to you."
Hermione pulled in an angry breath through her nose and straightened her back in her chair, fixing her gaze on Snape's face. "First of all, you have no right to say anything foul about Remus and I would appreciate it if you kept your snide comments and backhanded insults to yourself in regards to him. Secondly, my 'ridiculous little book of curses' as you put it, was co-created by you. The only reason James, Sirius, and Remus haven't hexed you within an inch of your life yet is because I need you, but I can quickly decide you aren't worth my time. It would do well for you to remember that."
"Are you threatening me with your idiot friends?"
"I'm reminding you of a group of individuals who passionately dislike you, Severus. If I wanted to threaten you, I wouldn't use other people to do it. I'm perfectly skilled at throwing a hex on my own, thank you very much. If you'd like to find that out, I can absolutely oblige."
Snape scowled and stared at her, his already beady eyes narrowed even further.
Hermione smirked, "That's what I thought. Now, you can keep going out of your way to make this a painful experience for the both of us, or you can pull your head from your arse and try to be pleasant for a few hours a week. The choice is yours, I suppose, but I'd much prefer the latter."
Snape stared at her in disbelief, clearly appalled that someone would even think of being so direct to him. But, she was tired of this routine, of the constant sneers and scowls that carved hard lines of angry prejudice into Severus Snape's face. He had clearly proven himself to be useful, otherwise Dumbledore would not have brought him on. Otherwise, he would not have continued to act as a double agent through the second war—up until his death.
Somewhere beneath all the heavy black cloaks and prickly exterior there had to be a decent person, someone worth saving. Because Hermione had come to understand long ago that Dumbledore didn't bother with saving anyone unless the payoff was worth it.
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a/n: Sooooo I'm so sorry there was no update thursday. I've got some stuff going on and honestly I completely forgot about it. I hope you'll forgive me!
I hope you enjoyed this chapter, let me know?
xo
