30 June 1997
"What did he want?" Hermione asked, sitting up straight and putting the half-written letter she'd been working on aside. Harry had just arrived back in the common room after meeting with Dumbledore, breathing hard and with a sheen of sweat on his brow that immediately put her on alert. "Harry, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he said in a clipped tone, sidestepping both literally and figuratively to race up the dormitory steps. Hermione shot Ron a glance on the sofa across from her, but he just shrugged. Harry was only gone a minute, returning with a jumper, the Marauder's Map, and a pair of old socks in his hands.
Then he explained what was happening. With Dumbledore, and the horcrux, and their plans to leave the school that night. To leave the school in a few moments, in fact.
"You need to watch Malfoy," Harry pleaded as he shoved the map into her lap. "Snape too."
"Harry, I don't –" she started, only to be cut off.
"I know. I know, you don't fully believe that Malfoy is a threat, but I have a feeling and I need you to trust me. Please."
Hermione looked up at him, the expression of ardent concern twisting his features, and rather than arguing she bit her tongue and nodded. Harry took another brief moment to explain about the Felix Felicis wrapped in his socks, then he gave her a quick hug and was gone. The portrait-hole swung shut behind him with a soft, yet definitive, thud.
"Bloody hell," Ron breathed after a beat of silence, sitting back against the sofa and anxiously running a hand over the back of his neck. "What do we do now? Who else do we tell?"
Hermione leaned forward and pressed her palms into her closed eyes for a second, thinking hard and running through the different scenarios in her head.
No, she wasn't entirely sold on Harry's theory, but she wasn't as credulous as he seemed to think, and there was something off about the suddenness of the evening. Something not right, humming in the air and prickling at her skin. Dumbledore was leaving the school unprotected with very little notice, and he was taking her best friend with him.
The dread coiling in her stomach was quickly overshadowed by a sense of resolve, the mistakes of the last year rising to the forefront of her mind and, at her former self's behest, taking over.
"If something goes wrong, or even feels off, you tell me. Don't wait."
"Everyone," Hermione said, sitting up sharply and opening her eyes again, pinning Ron with a stare. "We tell everyone that we can trust."
Ron, though a skilled strategist, was not a natural leader. Quite frankly Hermione wasn't one either, she didn't relish it in the way that Harry did, but somebody needed to come up with a plan that went beyond 'Drink this temperamental luck potion and hope for the best.'
"Alright," Ron said, gamely squaring his shoulders. For as much tension as there had been between them in past months, she was glad to have him there with her just then. It wasn't their first time walking through fire together, and, by all indications, it wouldn't be their last. "Okay, then what's the plan?"
"I'm going to go get Ginny and put out the word on the DA coins. You find Neville – and Ron, watch the map. Don't let Malfoy out of your sight."
She deposited the parchment into Ron's waiting hands and turned to head up the stairs to the girls dorms, tugging up the sleeve of her jumper as she went and pointing her wand at her wrist.
oOoOoOo
"Miss Granger, Miss Lovegood, Professor Flitwick has been overpowered and is in need of assistance in his office," Professor Snape barked in a clipped tone, descending upon them outside of his office door like a specter from the shadows. He looked… not worried, not in the way that she was, but wan. A bit off-kilter. "The school has been breached by The Dark Lord's followers; I am going upstairs to convene with Professors McGonagall and Sprout to head them off."
Ron, Neville and Ginny were outside of the Room of Requirement, where Malfoy had disappeared, and Hermione and Luna had taken up position in the dungeons while the other DA members roamed the perimeter of the castle. If the message that flashed on her wrist moments ago was any indication, the twins should also be at the school with reinforcements soon, but they had to apparate to the edge of the wards before they could enter the grounds.
Furthermore, Ron still had the map, and she had no way of verifying that anything they'd just been told was true.
"You need to watch Malfoy, Snape too."
"Luna, go find Lavender and Parvati," Hermione said over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off of the man in front of them. "They should be somewhere near the library. Take them to check on Professor Flitwick."
If Luna questioned her decision to stay, she didn't voice it. In fact, her normally wistful expression took on a sharp glint in Hermione's periphery as she nodded and ran in the direction of the stairs without further comment, platinum blond braids swinging behind her.
"Miss Granger, I explicitly told you to –"
"The others know just as many healing charms and counter-curses as I do," Hermione reasoned aloud, ignoring the slick sweat on her palms and thinking that she was relying a little heavily on that luck potion just then. He could kill her, and easily; she'd just ordered away her only would-be witness. Hermione half-circled him, her wand drawn but lax at her side. "And besides, I'm the better duelist."
"These are not your schoolyard friends, girl," he sneered sharply. "They won't be casting tickling jinxes. They will kill you and they will torture you and they will take pleasure in doing so. Now go."
"I know perfectly well what they're capable of," Hermione snapped back without thinking, her voice unintentionally rising in volume. She swore she saw a single dark brow twitch up before flattening again.
Snape silently assessed her for another long moment and then made a vaguely disgusted sound, turning away with robes billowing behind him while he ascended the stairs. She stayed tight on his heels the whole way. As they emerged in a side-passage near the entry hall, spellfire and shouting could be heard coming from the upper floors and Hermione's heart leapt into her throat.
He hadn't been lying. This wasn't a drill or a false alarm; there would be no pinching her awake this time. Hogwarts had been breached.
The professor slowed abruptly and turned again when she made for the bottom landing of the Grand Staircase, almost causing her stumble into him. Dark eyes, nearly black, fixed on her intently with a sort of despondency simmering in their depth. It was the gaze of a man facing the gallows, and it was far and away the most human he'd ever looked — save for perhaps the night Remus had transformed in front of them third year.
"Miss Granger, are you familiar with the fabulist, Phaedrus?"
"I - what?" Hermione blurted, fully taken aback. She glanced toward the stairs where shouting could be heard, the urge to push him aside and run up them nearly overpowering, but then she stopped and thought for a moment of the dusty tomes lining her father's study. The ones she'd devoured so voraciously in her youth. Then she nodded. "Yes. Yes, I know a little. He was an Athenian aristocrat, a friend of Socrates."
Professor Snape nodded curtly and she half-expected him to award her house points, but instead there was a sudden flash of red light between them, and everything went black.
oOoOoOo
"In the name of Merlin's left tit, Fred, relax. She was just stunned." Hermione heard voices drifting overhead, returning to consciousness an indeterminant amount of time later with the cold floor hard against her back.
She slowly blinked her eyes open to see her boyfriend crouched on her left and Angelina on her right, with George hovering behind the pair of them. His wand was raised and his head was swiveling, left and then right again like a sentry. He paused for just a brief second to shoot her a wink.
They appeared to have just come in a side entrance from the grounds, the hems of their jeans visibly damp, and Fred was so pale, she was afraid he was going to pass out.
"What happened?" Hermione asked, sitting up quickly and glancing around. "Where did Snape go?"
"Snape?" Fred asked, surprised. He was regaining some color, but was still clearly uneasy. He looked to Angelina, who shook her head and shrugged. "We didn't see him. We came in from the grounds a minute ago and nearly tripped over you. Was Snape the one that stunned you?"
She nodded, allowing herself to be pulled to her feet and squeezing Fred's cold hands before releasing them. Quickly assessing her state, she was surprised to find that not only did she not have any of the soreness that typically came with crumpling unconscious onto a stone floor, but her wand was stowed back in her jumper pocket rather than being discarded on the ground or removed from her person. She was certain she'd been holding it.
"It's – it's not important now," she said distractedly, removing the length of vinewood again and rolling it between her fingertips. Something told her that it was in fact very important, but there wasn't any time to dwell. The sounds of fighting hadn't ceased upstairs, in fact it had grown louder, so she couldn't have been unconscious long. "We need to get up there."
Hermione conjured an elastic and tied her hair back as they all four began to jog up the stairs, like the most depressing double-date ever recorded.
"Miss me?" Fred asked quietly beside her ear, as they waited for a staircase to rotate fully to the next landing. She smiled a little in spite of the circumstances.
"Always," she replied, turning to kiss him quickly on the cheek. They shared a look upon parting again, just one second of calm before the proverbial storm.
It said, 'Hello.'
It said, 'I love you.'
It said, 'Please don't die.'
Then they took the last two flights, arriving on the seventh floor and stepping straight into bedlam.
"Fuck me!" George exclaimed, barely dodging a bright yellow curse that flew out of the pitch-black darkness in front of them. He stumbled, skidded to a halt and then shouted, utterly outraged, "Is that our product?!"
"Uh-huh," Fred confirmed, nodding grimly as he took in the scene. It was without a doubt Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder; the light from the spell hadn't even been visible until it emerged from the cloud and nearly struck them.
"What's the counter?" Angelina asked, skillfully casting a wide shield in front of their party for good measure. She looked around expectantly. "C'mon, the two of you don't sell anything you don't know how to counteract. How do we see through it?"
"We don't," Hermione answered candidly, before either of the twins could.
"Correct," Fred said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward as he nodded. "Do explain why, dear."
"It works by suspending the powder in the air and not allowing any light to refract through it. So, while it can't be counteracted –"
"- it can be vanished," Fred finished simply. Angie kept her shield up while the other three raised their wands and chorused, Evanesco. The dense, black cloud slowly began to disappear and thin.
Just as the last of the powder was siphoned away, a bone-chilling scream split the air.
"Bill," George gasped, spotting him a little way down the wide corridor, near the astronomy tower stairs. Fred swore under his breath and pressed a fist to his mouth.
Their eldest brother was lying face down and there was dark blood actively pooling outward from his head.
There was a lot of blood.
The scream had come from Ginny, who was nearest him and the first to see what had happened once visibility was restored. She crouched protectively over the body – over Bill - while two Death Eaters that Hermione recognised vaguely as the Carrow siblings advanced on her, blood-thirsty expressions on their faces.
Hermione distantly registered other duels happening around them – Ron and Neville facing off against Jugson, Tonks trading spells with Rowle, but they were background noise in the wake of that scream.
Fred and George were still frozen in apparent shock, staring at Bill's limp form, but Angelina and Hermione snapped to attention just as the Carrows raised their wands against Ginny, who, though she held her wand, wasn't in any state to defend herself.
"Reducto!"
"Incendio!"
The hex left Hermione's wand in a brilliant flash of cerulean while flames licked outward from Angie's, both deflected at the last moment as the Carrows realised they were being attacked from multiple sides and turned.
"Go," Hermione commanded over her shoulder at the twins. The rest of the unspoken sentence was, 'Go see if your brother is dead,' but Hermione couldn't bring herself to say that part. Fred met her eyes for a split second, his own wide and openly scared; he looked younger than he had in a long while. She wanted to touch him, to tell him it would be okay, but there wasn't time and she couldn't guarantee that it would be, so instead she just nodded at him once and prepared to clear the way. "I'm alright. Go."
oOoOoOo
Fred heard the iron-clad edge on Hermione's voice, the fiercely protective determination, and before he knew it, he was halfway down the passageway, defying every instinct that he had and running away from her with George at his side.
Ginny, having been forgotten by the Carrows in light of new opponents, had dropped to her knees beside their eldest brother, white as a sheet and noticeably shaking.
Fred and George skidded to a halt when they reached them, pausing only to deflect a stray stunner that ricocheted their way.
"Don't be dead, don't be dead, don't be dead," Ginny was murmuring hysterically under her breath, tears silently tracking through the grime on her cheeks.
"Ginny, is he –" George choked before he could finish the sentence.
"I don't know! I can't – he isn't – we need to roll him over," she said. Her shaking hands were stained crimson and pressing ineffectively against Bill's broad shoulder. Fred knelt on his other side and helped to move him as carefully as possible, stomach lurching and threatening to vacate when Bill's face turned toward the torchlight and he saw where exactly the blood was coming from.
Ginny dropped her head, sobbing, but Fred reached a trembling hand out, pressing two fingers beneath Bill's jaw and holding his breath. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears, which seemed ironic given the sheer volume that was currently on the floor, soaking through the knees of his trousers.
It felt like an eternity before he felt it, but there it was nonetheless: a pulse. Weak and far too fast, but still present and fighting.
"He's alive," Fred announced aloud, as much in reassurance to himself as his siblings.
"We need to get him to the hospital wing," George said, having stepped around Bill's other side to Ginny. He gently pulled her to her feet and back a step.
Fred chanced a glance back to Hermione. He didn't know how they'd gotten that way, but she and Angelina were nearly back-to-back, each in fierce combat with one of the Carrow siblings.
"She won't die," Ginny cut-in, having had a second to compose herself as George levitated their brother off the ground, hastily layering on bandages and preparing to move him to the hospital wing.
"What?" Fred asked sharply, looking at his sister before directing his attention back to the fight.
"Hermione," Ginny said, reaching out to touch his forearm. Her frightened expression eased a little as it read the worry that he knew was clearly etched on his face. "She drank liquid luck. So did I. Watch."
Fred scrutinised the duel itself more closely as a bright orange spell that, for all intents and purposes, should have collided with her shoulder went wide and struck the wall instead. Amycus Carrow, who'd cast it, bared his teeth in a sort of feral display of frustration.
Angelina on the other hand had no such advantage, and she wasn't faring as well, having transitioned to mostly defensive magic. George had taken notice of this too. He'd taken a few steps down the passageway and then stopped, clearly torn between Bill and Angie in the same way that Fred was with Hermione.
Not for the first time in his life, Fred acted before he thought.
"Oi!" He yelled as he lurched to his feet, wand raised and not yet entirely sure what he was doing yet. "You bleeding ugly bint, over here!"
He threw one of the most obnoxious spells he knew, lighting up the corridor in bright pink and drawing the attention of nearly everyone for a beat, including his intended target, Alecto Carrow. Angelina quickly put a shield around herself and stumbled back toward the wall, breathing hard with a hand pressed tight over a nasty burn on her arm.
She cast him a grateful look that he saw for just a fraction of a moment before she quickly ducked around the corner, back toward the stairs and out of sight. George and Ginny didn't delay once she was gone, levitating Bill and running in the opposite direction toward a side passage that lead to the stairs and, with any luck, an unobstructed path to the hospital wing.
Alecto responded to his bone-breaking hex with a dark red cruciatus curse. Bit of a disproportional response in Fred's opinion, but then she was rather hacked off at the rotating door of opponents. He pushed slowly forward, driving her back and then circling with a practiced hand until he'd taken Angelina's place with Hermione and her opponent behind him.
"Nice of you to join me!" She called over her shoulder to him, in response to which he chuckled and shielded a blood-boiling curse that missed him and almost clipped her. For as unnerving as it was watching her duel, it was also a thing of beauty. She was casting almost entirely non-verbally - not that it mattered with the din surrounding them, but he still felt a flicker of pride at it. "Bill alright?"
"Still breathing," Fred replied, struggling a little to do the same himself as the battle waged on. He put a shield up on the left only to see a slicing hex fly in from the right. It nicked the outer edge of his thigh, cutting through his trousers and leaving a shallow gash in his flesh below.
"Alright?" Hermione asked, hearing him hiss through his teeth.
"Never better," Fred replied, more annoyed at himself than anything. Alecto was a chaotic sort of combatant, and it made her hard to counter. "But let's wrap this up anyway, yeah?"
"How exactly," Hermione grunted and dodged to the left before righting herself again, "do you suppose we do that?"
"On the count of three, you take mine and I'll take yours."
"You think that'll work?" The skepticism in her voice was nearly insulting.
"Humor me!"
"Alright, one –"
" – two –"
" – three!"
In perfect synchronicity, Hermione ducked under his arm and stunned Alecto while he pivoted in place and did the same to Amycus. It was a movement he and George had tried in practice a few times and it worked like a charm, distracting their opponents just long enough to give them the upper hand.
Hermione let out a shocked laugh, letting her head fall back and panting as both dark forms crumpled to the ground. They were contorted around one another, pressed practically chest to chest, and Fred hooked an arm out, grabbing Hermione around the waist. He looked down at her, pupils the size of saucers and an exultant expression still on her face. Then he kissed her hard on the mouth.
He could rightfully admit that the timing of it was wildly inappropriate. The school was under siege and his brother was hurt and they might all be about to die – but he kissed her anyway, fire and adrenaline thrumming a path through his veins. Both still clutching their wands as they grappled with one another, he tasted a bit of coppery blood where her lip was split and the musk of their sweat mingled with ash and dust, hanging heavy in the air.
She tore her mouth from his with a gasp when a window a few feet away suddenly exploded inward. Fred pushed Hermione backward against the wall hard, knocking the wind out of her and caging her in against his chest. He ducked his head into her neck as a few stray shards of glass and rock struck his back.
Just as the dust cleared, both of them dazed and looking around, they saw a familiar head of dark, messy hair descend the spiral staircase and go sprinting down the corridor.
oOoOoOo
"Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world," Professor McGonagall said curtly in response to Tonks' tearful confession to Remus. Fred and Hermione had done their level best to seem surprised at the big reveal, Fred having been told and Hermione parsing it out months ago when they saw Tonks in Hogsmeade.
While eyes were focused across the room, Hermione reached out to take his hand.
"Right. Well, in that vein – " Fred began in a vie for attention, but he was cut off by the appearance of Hagrid, who announced he'd moved Dumbledore's body and effectively stifled the momentary air of hopefulness. A few minutes later, Harry departed with the new interim headmistress, and Molly and Fleur had returned to fussing over Bill alongside Madam Pomfrey.
Hermione and Fred shared a look and he just shrugged, leaning down to whisper beside her ear, "They'll figure it out sometime between the wedding and our first kid."
Hermione couldn't help but giggle, drawing the attention of Ron, who was seated in the corner and staring at her and Fred, their hands still very publicly interlocked.
Something squirmed in her gut at his expression; it seemed that all was not resolved after all.
"I need to go check something," Hermione muttered under her breath. Fred looked down at her and then over at George, who had been entirely focused on applying a bit of burn paste to Angelina's arm. He stopped suddenly and looked up like he'd been called. The twins shared a silent exchange and a nod, then Fred jerked his chin toward the hospital wing doors, he and Hermione taking their leave.
"Where are we going?" He asked once they were out of earshot.
"Library," she replied, slowing a little. She was beginning to crash, but this couldn't wait. Fred gave her a disbelieving look and then out and out laughed as they descended the stairs.
"Only you, darling. Only you."
They made their way there to find it unguarded, Madam Pince not at her usual post. Hermione stopped briefly at the reference desk, searching for a moment until she located the correct stack. Fred watched curiously the whole time, but he didn't interrupt.
She grabbed a lantern off the counter and led them all the way to a dusty section of muggle texts, the spines of which held various names and dates.
"Penbygull, Petrarch, Petrizi – Phaedrus, here. Hold the lamp, would you?"
Fred took it as she extracted a relatively small book, brushing dust off the cover before her eyes began rapidly scanning the table of content.
"Here, notable principles and wisdoms," she grabbed a clump of pages and flipped toward the back of the slim text. "'Gentleness is the antidote for cruelty,' that certainly wasn't what he was talking about."
"Who?" Fred asked.
"Snape," Hermione replied absently as she continued to read. "He said something to me before he stunned me earlier. I'd forgotten about it, but after what Harry told us happened – here."
She turned the book toward him suddenly, exchanging it for the lantern and pointing at several lines of tiny black text near the top of the page.
"An alliance with a powerful person is never truly safe."
He arched a brow, but she nodded for him to continue and read further down as well.
"Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many. The intelligence of a few perceives that which has been carefully hidden."
Fred chewed on that for a moment, obviously thinking the same things that she was.
About what Harry said had happened. About Snape stunning Hermione rather than simply killing her. About a conversation the two of them had had nearly two years prior, in a dusty bedroom at Grimmauld Place.
"Do you ever think that Dumbledore is sort of… manipulating us?"
"I certainly don't think he's as grandfatherly and genial as he lets on."
"You don't think Snape killed him," Fred finally said softly. It felt blasphemous, like a crime to admit aloud so soon in the wake of his supposed murder, even if Hermione was the only one around to hear him.
"I didn't say that," she corrected hastily, taking the text and replacing it on its shelf. She cast a spell to replace the dust and make it look as though the book hadn't been disturbed at all. "I believe that Harry saw what he said he saw, and I don't doubt that the spell left Snape's wand. But I think there's more going on than we know."