Chapter Two: Stalking through the night…
Their next campsite was nowhere near Godric's Hollow. Hermione transported them to a place in the Forest of Dean where she had gone camping with her parents long ago. There would be nothing to lead Voldemort's forces to them, as long as neither of the two with mouths slipped up and said 'Voldemort', and they could feel reasonably confident of their safety. Conditions were more comfortable now, as Roland had considerable wilderness survival skills and didn't require any food, and they could devote most of their attention to planning their campaign.
Hermione had picked up a book at Bathilda Bagshot's house before Apparating out, despite the confusion of the fight and the urgency of flight; for anyone else that would have been insanity, but for Hermione it was standard operating procedure. The book was Rita Skeeter's The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, and it was very informative. Even allowing for the way Skeeter would have put a malicious slant on everything, it still drastically reduced Harry's respect for Dumbledore and even shook Hermione's previously almost worshipful attitude. The most startling revelation was that Dumbledore had been friends with Grindelwald. Really close friends, according to the book, and there was photographic evidence that this wasn't just Skeeter exaggerating a slight acquaintance. Dumbledore had even shared Grindelwald's ideology, at the time, as was clearly shown by a letter he had sent to the infamous wizard.
Harry began to wonder if Dumbledore still had a lingering attachment to those ideals. It would be one explanation for what, in hindsight, Harry saw as the old man's failure to act decisively against the Death Eaters and his constant insistence on using only relatively harmless spells, Stunners and the like, against them in combat rather than lethal spells or even just ones that would incapacitate them for longer than the duration of the fight. An alternative explanation would be that Dumbledore thought that, as he had turned away from the extremist supremacist philosophy, the current adherents would do the same if they were just given enough chances.
He only spent a few moments thinking about Dumbledore's motives before giving up and turning his attention to the more pressing matter of the Horcruxes. So much time had been wasted already, mostly due to Dumbledore taking nearly a whole school year to show and tell Harry what could have been covered in a week at most, meaning that when Dumbledore died Harry was left with only a few cryptic clues and no real plan. Now, at last, they were getting somewhere.
The glimpses he had picked up from Voldemort, as the Dark Wanker reacted to Nagini's death, had contained substantial clues to the remaining Horcruxes. The diary, and Nagini, had been destroyed already. The ring… as far as Harry could tell, that was the one that Dumbledore had worn when they'd gone to see Professor Slughorn, and it had looked damaged, so presumably Dumbledore had destroyed the Horcrux part of it. The locket was in Hermione's bag, awaiting destruction when they could get hold of the Sword of Gryffindor or a basilisk fang. That left only a goblet, possibly Hufflepuff's Cup, which Voldemort's thoughts had seemed to connect with Bellatrix Lestrange, and a circlet or diadem… and Harry recognised the circlet. He'd seen it in one of the incarnations of the Room of Requirement, the junk room, on the head of a rather undistinguished bust. The only problem was that Hogwarts had been taken over by the Death Eaters. There were two ways he could deal with that; either sneak in, and somehow get to the Room of Requirement without being discovered, or else storm the place with the backing of Roland's Thompson gun.
Reluctantly, he discarded that idea as he felt there was too much risk of innocent pupils getting caught up in the fighting and killed. He still wanted to take the fight to the enemy, though, and began to think about mounting a direct attack upon a Death Eater stronghold. His first thought was the Ministry but, again, the thought of innocents getting caught in the crossfire – collateral damage, he thought the expression was – deterred him. There would be plenty of workers in the Ministry who were just keeping their heads down, trying not to attract the attention of the Death Eaters, and they would be likely to assume the headless Thompson gunner was a Dark Creature and try to attack him. That wasn't likely to end well for anyone. The same applied to trying to liberate Hogwarts. No, it would have to be somewhere exclusively staffed by Death Eaters… such as… Malfoy Manor!
There were two slight problems with that choice of target. The first was that Hermione thought that it was an idiotically rash idea, even for a Gryffindor, and refused to cooperate. The second, and more important, was that Harry only had a rough idea of Malfoy Manor's location. Dobby would know, of course, and might come if Harry called, but he didn't know how the manic house elf would react to Roland and the potential for catastrophic misunderstandings was too high. Discounting Dobby, he was at something of a loss. Knowing that the manor was somewhere in Wiltshire wasn't going to be a great deal of help. He voiced that thought and, to his surprise, Roland gave him a 'thumbs up' and produced an Ordnance Survey map of South-West England. He unfolded it to the section showing Wiltshire and pointed to a glowing dot.
"That's Malfoy Manor?" Harry exclaimed. "How…" and then the answer struck him. Roland had, after all, tracked him down, without difficulty, despite Harry and Hermione having moved camp after sending the letter asking to hire the mercenary. Magical maps, possibly operating on a similar principle to the Marauders' Map, must be how Roland found prospective employers and targets. "Magic, of course," he said.
Roland gave a 'thumbs up' and then produced a Biro from a pocket in his battledress. He picked up the 'Soldier of Fortune' magazine and wrote in the margin of one of the pages. 'How I find you, how I find Van Owen in Mombasa'.
"Who's Van Owen?" Hermione put in.
Roland pointed at the stump of his neck.
"He killed… well, not exactly killed… you, did he?" Harry guessed.
Thumbs up.
Harry didn't bother enquiring further. He was certain that Roland had exacted a revenge upon Van Owen that would have been painful, terminal, and spectacularly bloody.
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The night was cold and clear. It had snowed during the afternoon, not heavily but enough to leave a thin layer of powdery snow on the ground, and now there was a hard frost. Hermione was asleep in the tent and Harry was on watch. Not that it was really necessary, as Roland never slept and was eminently capable of defending the camp, but the two teenagers felt more comfortable if they shared the watch-keeping duties.
So far nothing had disturbed them, but now something unusual appeared. It looked like a deer, at first sight, except that it was glowing and left no footprints in the snow. A Patronus. A doe Patronus. For a second the idea of a Dough Patronus crossed Harry's mind, conjuring up an image of a sort of underdone Gingerbread Man, and then he dismissed that thought and concentrated on the here and now and why a Patronus had suddenly appeared in the forest.
It turned around and headed away. After a few steps it stopped, turned its head, looked at Harry and then moved on. The obvious conclusion was that it wanted him to follow it, well, if a Patronus could be said to want anything. Would following it be safe? Harry glanced around and saw Roland behind him, Thompson gun held ready for action, and decided that if it was leading him into an ambush the ambushers would get more than they bargained for. He set off after the Patronus with Roland stalking silently in the rear.
The glowing spirit led him deeper into the forest, to where the shadows of the trees blotted out what little light was coming from the crescent moon, and Harry cast a Lumos to illuminate his path. He glanced around and saw no sign of Roland but was sure that the undead mercenary was still somewhere in the vicinity; he was just very good at moving without being seen. Harry kept on going, following the Patronus, and then heard a slight noise from somewhere out of sight; a muffled 'thud'. Simultaneously the Patronus blinked out and vanished. Had it led him to where it wanted him to go? He scanned the area and saw a dark pool ahead of him, its frozen surface glinting in the light of the Lumos spell. There was nothing else around, and still no sign of Roland, and he stared into the pool.
There was something glinting under the icy water. Something metallic and cross-shaped. A sword… with gleaming spots of red at the hilt. Rubies. It was the Sword of Gryffindor!
Harry was simultaneously elated, puzzled, and wary. How had it come to be here? Someone must have put it in the pool, and sent the Patronus to lead Harry to it, but who could that be? And could he get it out without dying of… what was it called… hyper… no, hypothermia? He looked for Roland again. Roland seemed to be absolutely unbothered by the cold, possibly due to his undead state or perhaps simply because he was Norwegian, and Harry doubted very much if Roland could drown. He was supremely qualified for the task of retrieving the sword, but he didn't seem to be anywhere in the vicinity. Harry didn't want to risk calling for him, and he worried that if he went searching for Roland he might not be able to find his way back to the pool. He tried summoning the sword, but it had no effect. Reluctantly, he accepted that he would have to dive into the freezing water himself, and he stripped off his clothes and dived in.
The shock of the cold water seemed to almost stop his heart but he managed to get to the bottom, seize the sword, and struggle back up to the surface. He broke through the ice, gasped for breath, and floundered his way to the bank. A hand extended to help him out of the water and he grasped it gratefully, expecting it to be Roland, but it wasn't the mercenary.
It was Ron.
Harry's first priority was to get warm and dry, and to dress as quickly as possible, wishing as he did so that his drying and warming charm was as good as the one Dumbledore had used on the way to the cave where they had found the fake locket. Once he was dressed and no longer shivering his first thoughts were that Ron was the one who had put the sword in the pool, and led him there with the Patronus, which he assumed must have changed from its original Jack Russell Terrier form the way Tonks' rabbit had changed into a wolf. Ron denied having anything to do with it, and confessed himself just as baffled about the sword as was Harry. They talked as they made their way to the camp. Harry tried to warn Ron about Roland but could hardly get a word in edgeways as Ron was so determined to recount his own adventures. He had had a narrow escape from 'Snatchers', who from his description Harry worked out were the wizard militia who had turned up on the two occasions he'd said 'Voldemort', and Ron seemed to be trying to play up the danger he had faced to distract Harry from his desertion.
When they arrived at the camp Harry still hadn't managed to tell Ron about Roland, and he didn't manage it on arrival either as they were immediately shouted at by Hermione. She told Ron off for deserting them, and Harry for going off after the Patronus, taking Roland with him, and leaving her alone.
"Where is Roland, anyway?" Hermione wondered, after she'd calmed down slightly.
"Who's this Roland bloke?" Ron asked.
"That's Roland," Harry replied, as a figure loomed out of the darkness. "Don't panic, Ron, he might look scary but he's… well, he's not exactly harmless, he's killed Nagini and eleven of those Snatchers, but he's on our side." Then Harry got a good look at the approaching mercenary and saw that he was carrying a limp body across his shoulders. "Hey, he's captured someone."
Then the light of Hermione's Bluebell Flame fire lit up Roland and his burden clearly and the three kids recognised Roland's unconscious captive.
It was Snape.
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Harry's first impulse was to kill the man who had murdered Dumbledore, or at least to tell Roland to do so, but killing an unconscious prisoner wasn't the same as killing someone in the heat of battle. It would be murder, whether he did it himself or had Roland do it, and Harry wasn't a murderer. His anger cooled somewhat as he saw what Roland was doing to the captive.
"Are you sure he's safe?" Ron asked. "Dad always said not to trust anything if you can't see where it keeps its brain."
Roland had stripped the unconscious Snape to the waist and was engaged in duct-taping his captive's arms together. He broke off, briefly, to scribble a quick note in a notebook that Hermione had given him after he'd written his first note on a magazine margin.
"Stanleyville, now called Kisangani," Harry read out. "That's where your brain is?"
Roland gave a 'thumbs up' and then returned to immobilising Snape. He produced a hand grenade from the pocket where he kept his ammunition, taped the grenade to the small of his captive's back leaving the lever clear of the tape, and hooked a finger of his left hand through the ring of the pin. Ron didn't understand what was going on, but Hermione did and was terrified.
"If he pulls that pin out Professor Snape has five seconds to live," she told Ron, "and the same for us unless we can get a long way away very quickly."
"We can Apparate," Harry said, "but if Snape does, he just takes the grenade with him and goes 'boom' at his destination. Clever."
Snape started to recover consciousness as the tape was being applied. He tried to reach for his wand, found himself hampered by his bound hands, and then got a proper look at the man holding him down. His mouth dropped open in astonishment.
"There's a hand grenade taped to your back, Snape," Harry warned him, "and Roland here has his finger through the pin ring. If you try anything, and he pulls it, we'll Apparate out and when we come back we'll have to Scourgify your innards off the tent walls, or what's left of them. If you try Apparating you'll just be taking the grenade with you. Uh, you do know about hand grenades, right?"
"I was brought up in a Muggle household, Potter," Snape replied. "What do you think you are doing? And… is that Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner? I thought he was a myth."
Harry couldn't resist. "You were mythtaken," he said. "Yes, that's Roland. I hired him as a bodyguard and to fight the Noseless Wonder. I'm surprised he captured you alive. Usually he just fills enemies full of lead. I'd guess he thinks we should interrogate you." Roland used the hand that wasn't holding the grenade pin to give a 'thumbs up'. "So, start talking. How did you find us?"
"I followed Weasley, of course," Snape said. "Dumbledore had given him a way to locate you and I used him as my… tracker dog. Although, of course, somewhat less intelligent."
"Hey!" Ron protested.
Harry ignored the snide remark and pressed on with his questions. "Why did you track us down? Were you going to fetch a gang of Death Eaters to us, or use that Taboo thingy to call a pack of, whatchacallems, Snatchers? It wouldn't have worked like you planned, not with Roland here, as the last two groups of Snatchers found out."
"Use your brains, Potter," Snape snapped, in the same tone of voice he used when admonishing a pupil for making an idiotic mistake in brewing a potion. "I came to bring you the Sword of Gryffindor."
"What?" Harry's jaw dropped. Why would Snape do that? It seemed impossible… but he had turned up at exactly the same time as the Patronus and the sword, and the slight thud simultaneous with the Patronus vanishing must have been Roland rendering Snape unconscious. The evidence seemed to fit, despite the incongruity of the claim. "It was you who brought the sword? Why?"
"Because you'll need it to destroy the Horcruxes, Potter," Snape answered.
Harry's jaw dropped. "But… but… why do you want us to destroy your master's Horcruxes?"
"I'm following Dumbledore's instructions, given through his portrait," Snape revealed. "He knew you would need it."
"But… you killed him."
"Because he ordered me to," Snape said. "The curse was killing him anyway, and he didn't want the Dark Lord to have the victory, nor did he want to die at Draco's hand. He wanted to save Draco from the damage to his soul from committing murder." He snorted, and his voice took on a distinctly bitter tone. "He didn't care about any damage to my soul. Anyway, Narcissa and Bellatrix had made me swear an Unbreakable Vow to make sure Draco didn't fail his task of killing Dumbledore. If the curse killed Dumbledore before either Draco or I killed him, the vow would kill me. I was damned either way."
"And did he order you to cut off George's ear?" Ron snapped.
"Indirectly, yes," Snape said. "It was his idea for me to leak the true date of Potter's departure from his relative's home, to consolidate my position with the Death Eaters, and that's why they were ready and waiting. I had to go along with them, and pretend to be fighting on their side, and when I hit Weasley I had been trying to hit another Death Eater whilst making it look as if I'd been aiming at one of the Potter duplicates. Unfortunately, he changed course and flew right into the spell."
Before he had read Rita Skeeter's Dumbledore biography Harry would have disbelieved Snape's account out of hand. Now, however, Harry found it all too plausible… and the delivery of the Sword of Gryffindor did seem to confirm that Snape had been following Dumbledore's directions all along.
"Is everything you do at Dumbledore's orders?" Harry asked.
"Everything significant, yes," Snape said. "Even my prejudice against Gryffindors was his idea, although I confess that I was quite enthusiastic about going along with it. I felt it would be more cunning to pretend neutrality, but Dumbledore believed the Dark Lord and his followers would expect the behaviour that I displayed."
"You mean you were a terrible teacher because Dumbledore told you to be?" Harry asked, somewhat sceptical. Surely Dumbledore would have wanted the pupils at Hogwarts to get a good education… although, Binns? Lockhart? Not doing anything to stop Umbridge? The hugely obsolete Muggle Studies textbook that Professor Burbage, who was a superb teacher according to Hermione, was forced to use? Perhaps Snape had a point.
"I never received any training in how to teach," Snape said. "I resented having to teach Potions and took my resentment out on the non-Slytherin students. I never wanted to be a Potions teacher. I wanted to be…"
"A lumberjack!" Hermione broke in.
Snape actually gave a short laugh. "So, you have developed a sense of humour, Miss Granger."
"After what we've been through, it was either develop a sense of humour or go insane," Hermione said. "I chose insanity."
Snape laughed again. "Not a lumberjack, although I do have a liking for buttered scones for tea." Harry didn't know what Snape was talking about, although he could see that Hermione understood perfectly, and he guessed, correctly, that it was a reference from Muggle entertainment of the sort that wouldn't have appealed to the Dursleys and so had been missed by Harry. Ron was gazing blankly at both Snape and Hermione, obviously totally baffled, and the thought crossed Harry's mind that perhaps the life experiences of Ron and Hermione were so totally different that it would make a relationship between them… difficult, to say the least. He glanced at Roland and saw that the headless warrior's shoulders were shaking as if with laughter; presumably he would have been laughing out loud if he had had a head.
"No, I wanted to be an independent potion brewer and researcher," Snape continued. "That is more or less what the Dark Lord allowed me to be. It would have been a moderately satisfactory existence if he hadn't been a psychotic murderous madman who tortured his own followers at a whim. If I had to be a teacher, I would have chosen to teach Defence, but Dumbledore would not allow it until he decided that he wanted Slughorn back at Hogwarts. He insisted that I teach Potions. He never bothered to check that I could teach the subject well."
"Why did you join the Death Eaters in the first place?" Harry asked.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Snape replied, "and it wasn't so bad, at first. In my first year at Hogwarts Lucius Malfoy was something of a mentor to me, as was Narcissa Black as she was then, and the nastier Slytherins tended to restrict their nastiness to those in other Houses and I was spared. So, too, was your mother, for my sake, at least until after she publicly disowned me. No, the people who tormented me were all Gryffindors, with the ringleaders being your father and godfather, with the wolf pretending not to notice, and the rat watching and almost wetting himself with vicarious excitement. So, I joined the Death Eaters, and soon came to regret it."
Harry didn't like what he was hearing but, after what he had seen in Snape's memories, had to conceded that it was likely to be true. Snape's motivations weren't the important thing, except in so far as they indicated whether or not they could trust what he was telling them, but he was finding it hard to think of what he really should be asking. Security on Malfoy Manor? No, it would give away that he was thinking about attacking it, and Snape might warn the Malfoys either deliberately or by unintentionally letting something slip. And there was a limit on how much he could ask about the current situation in Hogwarts, for the same reason. He stuck to general questions about the situation at the school.
He didn't like what he heard. Snape was in nominal charge but, in practice, the power rested with the new Deputy Heads; the Carrows, Amycus and Alecto. Snape described them as "Like Umbridge, but without the subtlety." No veneer of fake niceness, just blatant viciousness and brutality.
Amycus taught what had been Defence Against the Dark Arts, now just Dark Arts, although the curriculum had barely changed except for the students being taught Unforgivables and being made to practice the Cruciatus Curse by casting it on anyone who earned a detention. Neville Longbottom was the main target, although recently he had become hard to find.
'Probably hiding out in the Room of Requirement', Harry guessed, and filed that thought away in case it affected his planned recovery of the Horcrux he believed to be there.
Alecto taught Muggle Studies, now a compulsory class rather than an elective. Hermione was surprised and pleased by that revelation, until Snape went on to explain that the course no longer covered how to preserve the Statute of Secrecy by being able to pass as a Muggle (or, at least, as a Muggle time-traveller from about 1912) but was now entirely propaganda about how Muggles were primitive, animalistic, savages who deserved only death or enslavement. Hermione was horrified, not only because of the content of the course, but also because education was being perverted by teaching things that weren't true.
"What on Earth is she using as a textbook?" Hermione wondered. "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich? Lord of the Flies?"
"Hey, I've heard of that one," Ron put in. "There's a wizard who's like a copy of Dumbledore, and a stranger called Rider, and a house-elf and a dwarf, but the heroes are four rabbits."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "You mean hobbits," she said, "and you're talking about a completely different book."
Ron just looked blank. Roland's shoulders were shaking in a way that Harry guessed meant that he was laughing. Harry knew about Lord of the Flies, because Dudley had been made to read it at Smeltings and had talked enthusiastically about the way the boys on the island had behaved, and what he would do to Harry in the same circumstances, before shutting up when he realised that in those circumstances there would be no threat of expulsion to deter Harry from turning him into a newt. Harry hadn't read The Lord of the Rings but had read The Hobbit, at Muggle primary school, and knew enough to correctly identify it and to understand Ron's confusion.
"I don't believe she's using any kind of textbook at all," Snape said.
"That's… unprofessional!" Hermione gasped, seemingly as horrified by the omission as by the content of the course.
"Oh, don't worry, no doubt someone will be busy writing something suitably inaccurate and prejudicial," Snape assured her. He turned his gaze to Harry. "No doubt my informing you of the situation at Hogwarts has inspired you with the desire to storm the school and set things to rights," he said. "Potter and Weasley wishing to rescue the students from the oppressive regime, and Granger to restore some measure of educational integrity. I must advise against it."
"Why is that?" Harry asked.
"You might well succeed if you attacked now, with many of the hostile students at home for the holidays, and with the aid of your headless associate," Snape said, "but there would be a grave risk of innocent students perishing in the fighting and, anyway, it would only be a temporary victory. The Dark Lord would be quick to respond. He would counter-attack with his full forces and I do not believe that you could prevail, even with the aid of your Thompson gunner, and his vengeance upon those joining you in opposing him would be terrible. No, you must continue with your mission to locate and destroy his Horcruxes. Only when they are all gone can he be vanquished. I assume that you have at least one, otherwise I would not have been ordered to bring you the sword. What progress have you made?"
"Is it safe to tell him?" Ron asked. "He's being suspiciously cooperative."
"Having a hand grenade taped to the small of my back concentrates the mind wonderfully," Snape said, "and, in case you slept through that part of my tale, I've been on your side the whole time."
"If he wasn't on our side, then he wouldn't have brought us the sword, Ron," Harry said, "and it explains a lot of things that seemed strange at the time. And you haven't read the biography of Dumbledore." He turned back to Snape. "I've identified all the Horcruxes," he said, "and located all but one of them."
"You have?" Ron interjected. "Blimey, I've missed a lot."
"Nagini was one, and Roland blew its head off," Harry continued.
"The Dark Lord was rather annoyed about that," Snape commented. "Strange, I would have expected him to be incandescent with fury, but I gather he had some good news that countered that blow. And no, I have no idea what that could be, except that what is good news for him is bad news for everyone else."
Harry nodded glumly, a feat of which few people are capable, and agreed. "Still, we've made good progress," he went on. "Once I destroy the locket, there are only two Horcruxes remaining, and I know where one of them is and getting to it will be difficult but not impossible. The last one, which I think is Hufflepuff's Cup, is a bit more of a problem but I do have one clue about it. When Vol… Vol-au-vent thought about it, he also thought about Bellatrix Lestrange. I think he must have given it to her to look after."
"My guess would be that she put it in her Gringotts vault," Snape said. "That would be both pragmatic and traditional, and those qualities described her quite well before she married Rodolphus Lestrange and started going insane."
"So she wasn't always a raving nutcase?" Hermione said.
"No, she was perfectly lucid when I first met her, and capable of being quite charming, although admittedly in a superior and patronising fashion," Snape said. "It wasn't until after her marriage that she became infested with Nargles, as your young friend Miss Lovegood would put it, and ended up as nutty as a fruitcake and as vicious as a rabid wolverine. And Azkaban made her ten times worse."
"So, getting into Gringotts," Harry mused. "That's going to be… difficult, to say the least. Still, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We'll deal with the others first."
"There is something you don't know," Snape said. "Dumbledore didn't want me to tell you yet, he is… was… obsessed with the rhythm of the school year, and he wanted me to delay until the end of the summer term. Your recruitment of Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner has accelerated your timetable, in a way Dumbledore couldn't have predicted, and I feel I must tell you now. There is one Horcrux of which you are not aware, one the Dark Lord created by accident, and even he does not know about it. It's you, Potter. There is a Horcrux in your scar, and you must die to destroy it and make the Dark Lord vulnerable. That's what the prophecy means. He can't die while you are alive."
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"Don't tell me you believe him," Ron said. "He's a Death Eater. He's just trying to trick you into getting yourself killed."
"No, it makes total sense," Harry said. "It explains a lot about the way Dumbledore treated me. I believe Snape's always been loyal to Dumbledore, and still is. Otherwise, why would he have brought me the Sword of Gryffindor."
"So… are we going to let Professor Snape go?" Hermione asked.
"Well, yes," Harry said. "We don't exactly have the facilities to keep him a prisoner."
Hermione sniggered, Snape gave a short bark that might have been an approximation of a laugh, and Roland's shoulders shook again. Ron stared blankly.
"Sorry," Hermione said. "Harry was quoting from A Bridge Too Far, a Muggle film."
"Unconsciously," Harry said. "I didn't make the connection until you laughed. One of the few films the Dursleys ever let me watch, when it was on the telly. Vernon thought it was an inspiring example of normal British values. Dudley just liked the violence." And, Harry thought to himself, he had learnt some important lessons from it, lessons he had almost forgotten until the mention of the film had reminded him. Don't over-extend yourself, and don't make complicated plans that depend on all the stages going right. Lessons Dumbledore had never learnt.
"So, are we going to let Professor Snape go?" Hermione repeated.
"We can't!" Ron protested. "He'll lead the Death Eaters to us."
Hermione sighed and raised her eyebrows. "Ron, like Harry said, if he was on their side why would he have brought us the Sword of Gryffindor?"
"I know!" Ron exclaimed. "You can Obliviate him."
Hermione's face fell. "That would be beyond me," she said. "Maybe I could make him forget the past hour or so, but then he wouldn't remember bringing us the sword, and that would probably make it all fall apart."
"You did a much more complicated job on your parents," Harry reminded her.
"That… wasn't what I really did," Hermione said. "I'll explain later. For now, just accept that I can't Obliviate Professor Snape in any way that would help."
"Okay, we'll let him go, and we'll just have to trust him," Harry said. "We'll move as soon as he's gone, just to make sure. Roland, you might as well take your grenade back."
The headless man released the grenade pin, gave a 'thumbs up', and began to rip away the duct tape from Snape's back. The professor grimaced and gritted his teeth as the tape tugged at his skin.
"It would be much worse if you had a hairy back," Harry commented.
"Ewww!" Hermione exclaimed, her lips tightening in distaste. "I'm going to have to Obliviate myself of that thought."
Once Roland had removed the grenade, and put it back in his pocket, Snape got to his feet and straightened his robes. "My wand, please," he said. All three of the teenagers kept their wands pointed at him as Roland handed it back. "A sensible precaution," Snape observed. "Perhaps you are not a trio of witless dunderheads after all, and certainly the decision to enlist Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner was inspired. Farewell." He spun on his heel and Apparated away.
"Right, start packing up," Harry ordered. "We're leaving. But first, get out the locket. I'll destroy it right now." As Hermione was taking the locket from her bag a thought struck Harry and he called "Kreacher! Come to me!"
There was a 'Pop' and the ugly house elf appeared. "Young bad master calls Kreacher and he must obey," the elf said.
"I'm going to finish the task Regulus gave you," Harry said. Hermione passed him the locket, he put it on the ground, and commanded 'Open' in Parseltongue.
A hazy black figure appeared over the open locket and started to speak. "You are weak," it began, but got no further before Harry whacked the locket with the Sword of Gryffindor and sliced it in half. The phantom shrieked and faded into non-existence.
"Young master has done it!" Kreacher exclaimed. "Kreacher is redeemed! Kreacher thanks you on behalf of brave master Regulus."
"You can keep the locket in his memory," Harry said. "Take it, go back to Grimmauld Place, and wait for further orders."
"Kreacher obeys, young master," the elf said, and vanished.
"Right, let's move," Harry said. "I don't think either Snape or Kreacher will betray us, but just in case we'd best be off."
"Blimey, a lot has happened while I was away," Ron said. "Where are we going?"
"It'll have to be somewhere we all have been before," Harry said, "so I think the place we were at when you walked out on us." Ron frowned at the way Harry had expressed it, and his face reddened, but he made no comment. "We'll move on from there after we've rested and had time to think," Harry continued. "I have a plan, but we'd better talk it over."
Ten minutes later they were gone, taking Roland by Side-Along Apparition, and soon they were restoring their campsite and bringing Ron up to date on what they had done while he was away.
"Snape's right that attacking Hogwarts might not be feasible," Harry said, "but Hermione mentioning Hobbits gave me an idea. I'm going to sneak in, using the Cloak – and we were idiots not to think of hiding Roland with it when we went to Godric's Hollow – and get the Diadem which I'm pretty sure is a Horcrux. I'll avoid all contact, so I don't make Bilbo's mistake and, in Hogwarts terms, 'tickle a sleeping dragon', and just destroy the Horcrux and get out. Then we'll attack Malfoy Manor."
"But it will be full of Death Eaters!" Hermione protested. "Even with Roland, we'll probably get killed!"
"You two stay in the rear, and get out the moment things start going wrong," Harry said. "You'll have to carry out the rest of the mission if I get killed. I'd better make a will, leaving Roland the eight and a half thousand galleons, in case I'm not around to pay him. If we can kill Voldemort's body that will buy time for you to find and destroy the last Horcrux while he's a wraith and can't interfere. The Death Eaters should be thrown into confusion and a lot of them will be dead."
"You're going to deliberately kill the Death Eaters?" Ron gasped. "What would Dumbledore say?"
"Well, he's dead, so his opinion doesn't count," Harry said, "and after I read Skeeter's book, and heard what Snape had to say, I'm not that fond of Dumbledore any longer. He messed around for years without making any progress but now we're really getting somewhere. Roland has shown us how to deal with Death Eaters and Snatchers. Fenrir Greyback will never turn or kill anyone ever again and I count that as a win. If we can kill Bellatrix, and Lucius, and a few others of the worst of them, that will be a really big win that will make life better for everyone."
"Like Stella says in Silverado," Hermione added. "He can't hurt me… if he's dead." Harry and Ron didn't get the reference, but Roland gave an enthusiastic 'thumbs up' and mimed a draw and shoot from a Western holster. Hermione's brow creased, as she wondered how the headless mercenary had managed to watch a movie, but she shrugged the thought off and continued. "It will be very dangerous, though. Are you sure we should take the risk?"
"Well, you two should take as few risks as possible," Harry said, "but remember what Snape told us. I'm a Horcrux, and I have to die before V… Lord Noseless can be vanquished. If I have to die, what better way than to go out in a blaze of glory?"
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Author's Note: for anyone disappointed at the lack of violence in this chapter, I can tell you that the chapter titles are taken from the lyrics of the song, and the next chapter title is 'Knee Deep In Gore'.
