Summary: There will be 31 days of mayhem, but I'm not sure there will be 31 actual stories. That would require more brain than Corvus has.

Beta Love: Dragon and the Cold Water Bottle Torture, Dutchgirl01 the Busiest Bee that Ever Buzzed, Commander Shepard the Winter Soldier

A/N: Each story will be a separate chapter to feed my laziness and desire not to post that many new stories for the same event.

Assassin

Procrastination is opportunity's assassin.

Victor Kiam

It is hard to have a heart when you have stopped so many others.

I do my best, however—for her.

She is that bit of sunlight breaking through the thick canopy of the deep forest. A touch of warmth in the cool of shade.

For her, I can try to be more than what I am so very good at—or maybe I can at least be very good at it to protect her.

From everything that would see her cry.

I cannot bear to see her cry. Not since then—

Not since she chose to trust me over the fickle Wizarding World.

She chose to leave behind the memories of what I had been to create new memories with me after the war—to let me prove I was more than a mere puppet. A killer. A fixer of problems.

An animal.

A beast.

"We're all animals, Severus," she'd told me. "You just happen to be a highly effective one."

But I had always been strange, and not truly human. I wore a human face or rather body—but it was not me.

The true me.

I'd once tried to show my true face to someone I believed was my best friend—

And she had fled screaming into Potter's arms.

Never to be forgiven.

She had died with him—

Despite my best efforts.

Because there will always be worse monsters, and they will quite often be human.

Like the witch who had made it her personal mission to drive Hermione to give up on life. Give up on trust. Give—up.

I slid into the nest beside her. She was wrapped in her favourite blanket—a very NOT blanket that was actually a cuddly Lethifold that had taken a distinct shine to her.

Instead of eating her, which would have been the standard Lethifold operating procedure.

He, like myself, had found something precious in Hermione.

Something well worth cuddling instead of murdering.

I lifted the Lethifold so I could snuggle with her, and Walter (the proud owner of a name he'd never had before) settled over us with a soft rustle. My clawed fingers curled around her abdomen where her swollen belly gestated the result of our union—and she wasn't even nervous that her child might be a monster.

However, one might call her a bit biassed in that regard.

Considering she was mated to—well, me.

She was bonded to a Lethifold.

We had helpful house spiders that spun clothes.

How could I tell her that I'd walk through the very fires of Tartarus to return to her side?

That her acceptance meant more to me than vengeance against two dead men and the ghosts of dead bullies?

I was a Hit Wizard for the Department of Mysteries—I took out what no one else could. Hermione sometimes worried I would not return, and when I did, she affixed herself to my person in a clingy cuddle for the entire night and well into the next day.

I couldn't really fault her. Hermione had survived Bellatrix' tender mercies, and she had a way of scarring someone that went beyond the physical. That and—well, she was pregnant. She craved things and needed more reassurance than was normal for her—if I could even figure out what normal was.

Normal for us, perhaps, was nothing normal at all.

She apologised for it quite often, but I kept telling her not to be so self-critical. That was bloody ironic coming from me—the one who had tormented her and criticised her for her entire school life—

If she could forgive me that, then I knew she had it in her to forgive herself. Somewhere in that much-abused stress ball that was her pregnant brain.

Walter doted on her more than I did—and when I had to go to work, he tended her dutifully. Almost too well. One time I came home and tried to move him over, and he hissed at me.

I had no idea a Lethifold could hiss, but life was a learning experience.

He mellowed when she snuggled him while inviting me into bed with that smile that made all those teenage dreams shrivel up and die. The real thing—made those dreams pale and retreat into the void of my traumatised childhood.

A selfish part of me wanted her to be as I was—safer from Dark magic and mental manipulation, at least from the magical side. I was completely susceptible to the machinations of the old man and his failed pet project, Riddle. I was a different species, but I was no perfect god if such a thing existed.

But to ask her to be even more trusting of me when she already gave me so much—I dreaded that there was a limit to her heart. Her patience. Her flexibility.

Wasn't it enough that she tolerated my nest-building and practically cocooning her against my body as we slept?

Would asking her to leave her humanity behind be the straw that broke the Thestral's back?

Why couldn't my heart just—leave it be?

Because you don't want to lose her. You know you will live as the Dark exists. She is but a small candle in that Darkness whose wick is finite.

I hated when my brain pitched in words of wisdom. I hated when it was RIGHT.

I felt the tingle of hollow fangs emerging from behind my canines. They dripped with that very special venom—the end of her human life, if she was to choose it. I had no idea if it would hurt her. I didn't want it to. It wasn't like I'd ever had a mate before to know—

So much was instinct. So much was—unknown.

I hated it. I hated not knowing. What was instinct if it couldn't tell me that everything would be okay? That it wouldn't hurt her? That it was guaranteed—

So what if my body seemed to think she was the one—the only one. My mate.

It had thought Lily was, too.

And that was a big bag of—stupid.

If the soul could whine, mine was doing a very good attempt.

If my parents were an example of what it was to deny the Dark nature of whatever I was—then I dreaded what would happen once the baby was born. Would our love wither and die like it had between my mum and da?

Would it grow up bitter and tormented as I had?

My mother had wanted to be a normal witch. I was proof that her latent heritage was not inclined to lie down and disappear.

I was proof that my da hadn't married a "normal" woman.

They were never honest with each other. You have been. What happened to them will not happen with her.

But I couldn't be sure.

"Ow," Hermione said, rubbing her abdomen gently. "I think they are pretty eager to see the world."

I placed my hand over her abdomen, feeling for kicks, but there was nothing. "They seem calm now."

Hermione snuggled into me.

Sleep came soon after.

I woke to the sound of Hermione's startled gasp, reacting instantaneously in my war responses of fight, flight, and magic before something magicked me. My wand was in my hand even as claws unsheathed from my fingers and the ache of sharper inhuman teeth pushed from my gums as my lips pulled back in a snarl of readiness. Hermione's favourite vase went careening to the floor with a crash, thanks to my wing.

Hermione spun from where she was standing at the mirror and stared at me wide-eyed, tail lashing wildly.

Wait—tail?

Before me was the very image of a sultry demoness—spade tail, wings, wild mane of hair, and an aura of Darkness that matched my own. Her brown eyes glowed on a field of black, pointed ears twitching out of her hair.

I honestly had no idea what I was—but seeing her like that, I thought of the stories and myths of demons and the like.

She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. I'd thought so before, but—

This made my soul celebrate.

But—I hadn't bitten her.

I had kept my fangs and venom to myself.

"Am I hideous?" Hermione asked in a whisper.

I had her in my arms in a flash, my wings folding around her as my tail corkscrewed around hers. "You're gorgeous," I told her. "But how—I was so careful? Are you angry?"

Hermione placed my taloned hand over her belly where the little blighter inside kicked vigorously, and realisation set in. "I think they wanted mummy to be like them."

My spawn had converted my mate because I'd been too slow.

From inside the womb, even.

I wasn't sure if that made them Slytherins—or bloody Gryffindors.

"I could never be angry about getting the chance to truly be with you" Hermione said.

I kissed her—the heated snog to end all snogs. Our bodies entwined, just as the Dark had intended—

It was the start of the life I'd wanted forever.

We would have it—together.