Chapter 72: Wednesday, May 13, 1981
"The best way to find out if you trust somebody is to trust them."
-Ernest Hemingway
"Bugger," Hermione said, waving her wand for the third time over the kettle, trying to fill it with water. With an annoyed huff, she moved to the sink, turning on the tap and filling the beat up, old kettle from the faucet.
"Still not working?" Remus asked, looking up from the copy of the Daily Prophet he had clutched between his fingers as he sat at the table, nibbling some toast.
"I can use my magic sometimes," Hermione said. "And then, other times it doesn't want to work! It's like it picks and chooses what spells it wants to do."
"If you would just go to St. Mungo's, perhaps—"
"I am not going to St. Mungo's, Remus." Hermione said, irritably. "I already told you—they aren't going to be able to help me if the curse is eating through my magic. The only thing I can think of is the near death experience is speeding up the decline of my magic. And they're hardly equipped to deal with curse extraction of this level."
"You don't know that," Remus argued. "They might have something!"
Hermione sighed, placing the now full kettle on the hob and looking at Remus expectantly. He picked his wand up from the table, pointing it to the stove top and raised an eyebrow at her, as if proving a point.
They had been having this conversation for days. Ever since she woke up and things began to smooth over, she had gotten some strength back and Lily had explained to her what she thought had happened, Remus was insistent that she go to St. Mungo's for a proper look over. Hermione was frustrated. They had been hopeful, the first hours of her finally coming to, that she might not be infected with the curse anymore. However, that theory seemed to be proven wrong by the inability to perform even the most basic of household spells. Let alone, the spells she needed to produce to even check her magical core.
She had reverted to washing her clothes by hand in the basin, since she couldn't get her wand to do the washing as she had always done. She lived by candlelight if Remus wasn't around, because she couldn't get a lumos to work, and her potions had all been stirred by hand. Even the more demanding healing potions that required constant stirring for forty straight minutes.
Hermione felt more helpless than she had ever felt before. She had officially been reliant upon her magic longer than she had lived in the muggle world, and she felt as if her right arm had been lobbed off. In fact, she mused a little grimly, it might be easier to live with a missing limb than without her magic. Moody was missing an eye and a leg and seemed to get on just fine…
She was startled out of her bitter thoughts when the kettle began to whistle. Loud screams of steam pushed through the spout and she groaned, pulling it from the hob and pouring the hot water into two mugs, adding bags to each, and bringing them over to the table where Remus sat, an unreadable expression on his face.
"What?" Hermione sighed, wondering if they were going to have a row about St. Mungo's or if there was something else bothering Remus.
"Have you given it thought?" He whispered, staring at her with his jaw tight.
"Given what thought?"
"The erm...the r-ritual." Remus stammered, folding the Prophet in half and setting it on the table, giving Hermione his full attention.
"The...oh. Oh."
Remus hadn't brought up claiming her as his mate by way of werewolf marking ritual since he initially said the idea weeks ago, when she first woke up. She had been trying to find the right time to bring it up to him, but she was unsure how to do it.
I would very much like you to bite me and keep me as yours forever, even if I can't reciprocate the level of intimacy you are offering of yourself to me didn't seem like a great opener for the conversation. Apparently, Remus had been under the impression that Hermione needed time to process the decision, to weigh her options or find something better before agreeing to tether herself to a werewolf for the rest of time.
She didn't need the extra time, however. Hermione would be willing to let Remus lay claim to her in a heartbeat, she had been under the impression that he was the one in need of the time to process the decision.
"I've told you before, Remus, I want to do this."
"You understand the ramifications though?" He asked, tugging at the string on the tea bag and watching it bob up and down in the steaming water.
"The ramifications?" Hermione chuckled, "Please explain to me the consequences of being tied to a man that I am very much in love with for the rest of my life. I'm sure they're terrible."
"It isn't funny," Remus snapped. "It takes away your choice to ever have anything with anyone else. You'll never be able to deeply feel, deeply connect with another person on an intimate level. When you go back—"
"I'm not going back." Hermione interrupted.
Remus stared at her for several long minutes before speaking again, "You have to go back."
"Not anymore," Hermione said. "I've been trying to tell you! I died, Remus. The vow has been fulfilled and I can live the rest of my days here...with you."
She reached over and grasped his hand in both of hers, his skin forever several degrees warmer than her own. She let the warmth under her fingertips wash over her, comforting her in a way that she knew she would not obtain from any other person or item.
"I don't want to be with anyone else. I want you, Remus, and if I…" she swallowed, her chest suddenly feeling very heavy. "If I have to create a rift in time to stay here and grow old with you, then that's what I'll do."
"You're foolish," Remus whispered.
Hermione shrugged, "Maybe. But, not too long ago I seem to remember you thinking I couldn't possibly love you without restraint."
The words caused Remus to flinch.
"I should have never—"
She held up a hand to stop him, "Everything you said was true. So, are you aware of the ramifications of being tied to a swotty, know-it-all, bint from the future who spent the last two years poorly showing you that she loves you?"
"How will this work, if you don't go back? What's going to happen?"
Her throat constricted slightly and she took a slow, deep breath. "I don't know," she whispered. "But, I'm willing to find out. I love you, Remus. Curse or not, mate or not, I want to be with you."
"Werewolf mate magic is powerful," Remus whispered. "It could very well destroy that curse."
Hermione shrugged, pulled her tea bag from her mug and added a scoop of sugar from the tray in the center of the table. "Even if it doesn't, I'm prepared to live the remainder of my life with you."
Remus sat staring at her, a dumbfounded look on his face. Slowly, he pulled his eyes away from her and looked down to his mug, muttering to himself a bit as he warred with Moony inside his head. He didn't look upset or angry, but Hermione got the distinct impression that he was.
Finally, he spoke. "I don't want you to feel like you have to stay because of the things I've said to you, Hermione. If you need to return to your own time before...before it happens…"
"What are you talking about? I want to be with you."
"I've only been in your life not even two years," Remus said, a pained expression stealing his features.
"You ridiculous, silly man!" Hermione said, getting up from her chair to force herself into his personal space. She squeezed herself into his lap, facing him with the edge of the table digging painfully into her back, the tips of her toes brushing the floor on either side of his feet.
Remus closed his eyes and his head dipped in shame, his chin tucked against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his head to her, his nose nuzzling against the crook where her neck and shoulder met.
"You've been in my life so much longer than that," Hermione whispered, her breath ruffling his hair as she pressed her lips into it. "I've known you since I was fourteen. Albeit, a different you, but you, nonetheless. There wasn't a day that passed that you weren't on my mind. You affected my soul long before I took this curse from Harry. I think...I think I've always loved you, even if it was in a different way then."
It felt freeing, somehow, to say the words aloud. Her heart felt like it was pounding and her chest and her stomach felt suddenly like a bowl of jelly, but to actually voice the words—to tell him she's loved him longer than what was probably appropriate, given the nature of their relationship in her own time…
The years of teasing from Ginny didn't matter now. The snide comments of "you only like Professor Lupin because he's handsome" and the "are you sure it has nothing to do with that little crush you harbored for him?" gone to the wayside as her arms tightened around the man beneath her. Maybe her attraction to Remus had always been because they were together here and now. Would her feelings toward him change if she never left? If she stayed and changed time simply to be with him longer?
No, they wouldn't. She was sure of it.
As a teenager, Hermione always found the prospect of love to be a little...ridiculous. Harry loved so wholly, with every fiber of his being, and look at where that had gotten him! No, she had always preferred to stuff her own feelings aside and focus on the more important things at hand. Her marks in school, her research, her mind. Her mind was always more important than her heart. At least, she thought that was true. Until her mind convinced her to come back here on a whim under the thin attempt to gain some sort of knowledge...it was her heart that begged her to stay.
Was this the reason her relationships never worked in her own time? Because she had been so bonded to Remus that deeper connection with another living soul wasn't even on her radar…? Perhaps because of that bond, because of the connection to Remus and Moony, she had never found the matters of the heart to be of interest. Until now.
She wanted to choose Remus, she needed him to understand that she chose him, and that the curse that was easting upon her magic and slowly damning her to a life of darkness—would not be the deciding factor.
"I need to go," Hermione said.
"Go? Go where?" Remus asked, finally pulling his head from her shoulder but not before placing a soft kiss to her skin.
She placed her hands on either side of Remus' face and pressed her lips to his in a tender kiss before climbing off his lap to get dressed.
"Can you send an owl for me?" Hermione called from the bedroom as she rummaged around for a clean pair of trousers. Her laundry had gotten considerably piled up from doing the washing by hand, refusing Remus' plea to let him do it for her.
"I can," he answered, leaning against the doorway. "What are you—"
"Here, run to James' and send this off. Tell Kevin it's from me and he knows where to take it, tell him to get it there as quickly as possible, would you?" Hermione yanked open the drawer of the desk and pulled out a scrap of parchment and one of Remus' quills. On it she scribbled a note that read:
I need to meet with you. I will make it worth your while. I'll be waiting.
-Hermione
She folded it in half and handed it to Remus, who arched an eyebrow at her.
"Who are you—"
"Snape," Hermione said. "Please, just send it for me?"
Remus looked at her, skeptically before letting out a long sigh and nodding. "I don't like that you work with him."
"I know," Hermione said. "But I need to speak with him."
"About what? Surely, I can help!"
Hermione recognized the tone of a wounded ego quite well and she chuckled to herself, "I need someone with a little inside information right now."
"What are you on about?"
"Remus, please."
"Yeah, all right." He huffed, tucking the letter into his pocket. "I'll be right back."
Hermione's feet landed outside of the rundown cabin and she silently thanked her lucky stars that she didn't splinch herself, although getting home may be another story. She felt exhausted now, between the apparition and using magic to dig up the Jabberknoll carcasses in her back garden, she had used up what little energy for magic she had. She walked quickly up the path and pushed open the door, surprised to see Snape already awaiting her arrival.
"What is so important that you feel the need to rip me away from—"
"Oh, give it a rest, won't you? Here," she tossed the sack containing the tiny birds onto the table. "This cost me an argument with Remus, but I promised you Jabberknoll feathers. There's nine viable birds, the rest were...unusable."
Snape raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch, intrigued, as he straightened up in the chair that he sat. A scowl still on his face, he smoothed a wrinkle from the shoulder of his robes before leaning forward to grab the sack and inspect its contents.
"Back from the dead and already as arrogant as ever. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."
Hermione rolled her eyes and took the seat opposite of him, "I need to know if it's gone."
"A little more context is needed, if you please." He said, setting the birds aside and looking at her expectantly.
"I was hit with the Dementor's Curse over a year ago," Hermione said, a satisfied smile pulling at her mouth when a look of shock overcame Snape.
"You...you were?"
The stumble in his speech felt strange. Almost as if he was terrified, a very foreign tone of voice for the usually arrogant and silky drawl.
Hermione nodded, "I need to know if it's gone. I can't test it myself, my magic still isn't working properly and—"
"Well that's your answer, isn't it?" Snape asked, as if it were the most obvious thing. "If your magic is still failing you, one could deduce that the curse still lives within your soul, biding its time."
"Except, as you so kindly pointed out, I died. When I died, it took another form of powerful magic with it and I thought—"
"What magic?"
Hermione huffed, irritated at his constant interruptions. "It doesn't matter."
"It does," Snape said, leaning back in the chair and folding his hands on the table in front of him. "If it was another curse or some type of blood magic…"
"It was a vow."
Snape's face fell, his haughty expression changing to bewilderment. "A vow? An unbreakable vow?"
"You can stop with the theatrics! Yes, an unbreakable vow, unless you know of a type of magical vow that bonds your magic to someone else's that you can easily get past?"
"No."
"Exactly," Hermione said. "The vow can only be broken—"
"By fulfillment or death."
"You're catching on, Snape." Hermione mused. "Now, if dying—no matter how briefly I was parted from this Earth—caused an unbreakable vow to sever; it could stand to reason that a dark curse would be severed from the witch or wizard it was inflicted upon, by means of death as well, couldn't it?"
Snape stared at her, his black, beady eyes narrowing as he seemed to roll over the information in his mind. "Why did you come here?"
"Because, regardless of how adamantly you insist that you did not have a hand in the creation of this curse, I think you're lying. And I want you to do whatever assessment to me that you did to the people you used as lab rats to test the effects of the curse on. I need to know without a doubt if it has eradicated or not."
The weight of the silence between them pressed into Hermione on all sides. She waited, her leg bouncing, shaking the table a bit with her nervous energy. She needed to know. If her theory was correct, if her death—no matter how brief it had been—could break the vow…
"We didn't test on people."
The response was so quiet, so small, Hermione nearly missed it. She felt her face harden, her stomach roiled uncomfortably. "What do you mean you didn't test on people?"
"We didn't test the curses on humans," Snape said. There was more honesty in his voice than she had ever heard.
"What did you test on?"
"Werewolves."
Hermione suddenly felt as if she had gone deaf. She couldn't have heard him correctly, there was no possible way that Severus Snape was that stupid to openly admit to testing on werewolves—on the very being the person she loved most was. She remained absolutely still, her breath caught in her chest and it was so quiet that she was confident the drop of a quill would sound like an explosion. The acrid taste of bile burned in the back of her throat and she had the sudden urge to lunge across the table and break the beaky nose that sat between the glaring eyes on Snape's face. She yearned for the feel of his sallow skin, clammy and pale beneath her knuckles. The crunch of cartilage and bone against her hand.
Duelling and magic were powerful and seemed omnipotent at times, but sometimes nothing could compare to the feeling of settling scores the muggle way.
Before she could haul off and do something regrettable, Hermione stood up. The rickety, splintered chair toppled backwards and clattered against the ground, effectively breaking the silence. Hermione wanted to scream. She wanted to cry and punch and kick and...and…
She rounded on Snape, brandishing her wand, "You're going to tell me right now what you've done to him."
Snape looked taken aback, "Who?"
"Remus!" she cried. "What do you mean who?!"
"Lupin? I didn't—"
"Yes" Hermione hissed. "Lupin! Unless you know of any other Remus' that are werewolves? What did you do to him?"
"Nothing," Snape said coolly. "Unless, of course, you count the moon morphing potion that was forced on him last year..?"
Whatever Hermione was going to say next, died in her throat and she swallowed, staring blankly at Snape. "M-moon morphing?"
Snape eyed her, clearly glad to be back in control of the conversation. "I'm not sure if that's what they're still calling it. Rather juvenile sounding name in my opinion but—"
"What is it?" Hermione asked, her voice shaking with anger.
"I couldn't tell you everything that was in it, even if I wanted to. You aren't the only one with vows to keep you quiet."
She understood. Naturally, the Death Eaters would never entrust someone in their ranks with the classified information that would eventually lead them to control an army of werewolves at their will, regardless of the lunar cycle. And there had been something about it jotted down in the journal, but it hadn't been a completed potion then—it had been only an idea. Hermione clenched her back teeth so hard her jaw ached from the pressure of it.
"Why was Remus the first one to test it?" She asked.
"Your werewolf has been sniffing around Death Eater camps for months," Snape said, his voice cold with accusation. "The Dark Lord does not take kindly to infiltration, especially one so tactless and blatant."
"He's been working with werewolves, not—"
"He's been infiltrating werewolves and turning them against him," he hissed. "Surely you are intelligent enough to understand that warrants the target on his back! He's been sloppy and careless, giving his real name and who he works for. The imbecile is lucky he hasn't been murdered."
Hermione ignored the rude delivery of Snape's words and latched on to the proof that werewolves were being turned on Voldemort's orders. "He's building an army of dark creatures," she said. "And werewolves will head the lot."
"It seems to me as if they have had success with the potion, now."
"Because of you—"
"Do not assume to know what I have accomplished," Snape said.
"You tested on werewolves," Hermione said. "Because they have a different magical signature."
"No one cares if a werewolf goes missing," Snape said, simply. "But the entire world upends for a muggleborn. They take the werewolves from the camps, the weaker ones. Old and frail, young and fragile, and test their curses and potions."
"There's a way to check then," Hermione said. "There's a way to see if the curse is still…"
She trailed off, not sure what to say. Still eating away at her? Still going to turn her into a soul sucking demon? Still threatening to take away her life so that she'll be forced to leave Remus and everyone else behind?
"Embedded in you, yes." Snape offered. "But it will not be pleasant."
.
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a/n: Hope you liked this one! 3
