Chapter Text
Chapter 6: Justice
February 2008
Three weeks passed. Each day dissolved into the fog of the next, indistinguishable except by exhaustion.
Hermione did what she had always done when cornered by the impossible—she went to the library. Before sleep claimed her in short, restless stretches that never quite felt like rest, after hushed meetings, in between the hours she spent in France, she read.
She wished, more than once, that she still had her Time-Turner.
Minerva would laugh if she heard her say that.
Books spread across her desk like a second coat of wood stain: Foundations of Mental Magic. Principles of Mental Defense. Cognition and Consent. The Human Hippocampus. Mechanisms of Memory. Full Frontal Lobe. She even read Freud—briefly. Just enough to slam him shut.
It all blurred together. Paragraph after paragraph danced beneath her hands until the pads of her fingers were raw from turning pages, from tracing incantations that some swore would prove essential and others dismissed as utter folly.
Every author contradicted the last. Every theory circled the same truth. The simple fact that all the millions of words in the English language could not equal a single emotion. A single memory. A single life. Some things could not be taught at a chalkboard or inked onto a scroll of parchment. They had to be felt. Wanted. Needed.
In the short bursts she slept, she dreamed the same dream.
Alone, holding a skull in her hands. The brain still intact. Warm. Suspended. The vessel of the human soul.
All thought. All memory. All feeling.
Every desire a person had ever carried. Every heartbreak they had survived.
A life resting in her palm. Its secrets so close to her grasp it made her skin itch.
Just as the Keeper had said.
She always woke before she knew whether she was meant to save it by leaving it alone—or by breaking it open.
Temperance Crowther offered her no respite.
Her small home, once so cold and lonely, now roared with light. She kept the fire burning hot and high and refused to let Hermione take off her coat.
“The heat won’t kill you,” she said, tapping Hermione’s damp temple with two fingers. “Weakness begins and ends here. If you want to do this properly, your brain must be the strongest muscle you have.”
In January, Temperance had claimed she could do very little memory work. Hermione had since concluded that their definitions of little were not the same.
After Temperance raked her way through her mind - the smell of blood in the Forest of Dean, her mother’s lullabies, the weight of fur against her throat beneath a hospital robe, Harry’s laugh, the tingle in her fingertips after casting a Killing Curse - Hermione could barely stand.
Crowther could never go far enough to kill, but always deep enough to wound.
Their sessions left Hermione weak in the knees, wondering what Temperance Crowther must have been capable of before the war.
This time, Hermione came back quickly with a gasp, gripping her throat, and willing her pulse to ease. Temperance’s eyes flickered around her face before they settled incorrectly near her right ear.
A bead of sweat ran the length of Hermione’s spine.
“I’ve had enough for today.”
“You’ve had enough?” Temperance asked coolly. “You don’t get to choose when enough is enough. You have less than three months, and you’re back to barely keeping me out of your most mundane memories. How do you expect to ever find his? Let alone the ones he’s buried. The ones he’s been tortured away from?”
Hermione swallowed.
“You must understand how the mind protects,” Temperance went on, relentless, “before you can ever hope to penetrate it.”
“I do understand,” Hermione said hoarsely. “You’ve seen me do it before. I’m just—” She faltered, breath shallow. “I’m too tired today.”
“Irrelevant.”
The heat between them pressed like a brick wall. Hermione tugged at her collar and stared at Temperance over it. This old, fragile woman, barely using a fraction of the gift she’d been born with.
What more than this could it possibly take to unlock Snape’s memory? Was the human spirit even capable of such shadows? How deep must she go?
“Again, girl.”
Hermione shook her head. “No.”
“Legilimens.”
Temperance’s damaged magic slid into her mind—not the soft brush of butterfly wings, but not the clean sting of a wasp either. Blunt. Clumsy. Searching without cause. Testing the limits without reach.
Memories spilled loose: her sixth birthday. Ginny in a wedding dress. The Time-Turner ticking in her palm. Lee Jordan’s booming voice. Blood glinting between Bellatrix’s teeth. Amelia’s brain pulsing in its tank. The setting sun catching the strands of silver in Snape’s hair.
The magic burrowed deeper—an icy pick driven into her skull. Hermione cried out, hands flying to her head, but the pain crested and broke too quickly to escape.
And then quiet.
She was standing in her parents’ kitchen.
Watching herself. Younger. Her hand trembling, wand raised.
“Darling,” her father said softly, confusion lining his face, voice muffled through the years. “What—what are you doing?”
The betrayal in their eyes cut sharp as a blade at her throat.
“Obliviate.”
“Stop!” Hermione screamed, her own voice echoing back at her, panicked and shrill.
Temperance did not.
The pressure intensified. The memory sharpened against Hermione’s will, dragged forward like a blade drawn across bone.
The kitchen brightened cruelly. The hum of the refrigerator grew louder. There was her late grandfather’s favorite chipped mug by the sink. The family cat in his window. Her mother’s hand, half-raised. Her father’s confusion curdling into fear.
Hermione felt the familiar terror swell. That old, suffocating certainty that if she stayed here, she would break.
No.
Something in her snapped.
It was not fear that answered but fury.
A violent, incandescent rage surged through her chest, hot enough to scorch. She did not shield. She did not retreat. She shoved.
She pushed with everything she had—every hour of study, every buried grief, every spell she had ever cast in desperation or defiance. She slammed Temperance out of her mind with brutal force, a psychic blow so sudden it felt like throwing someone down a flight of stairs.
The world lurched.
Bodies tangled in water. Fingertips gripped forearms. Feet kicked shins. A fight to the surface.
Then the dark.
Her vision came first, the low light, thick and smothering. The smell of damp stone and sour magic clung to the air. Hermione backed into a stone wall. Not as herself, but as an observer slammed into Crowther’s mind. The shock of it all rattled through her teeth.
Temperance.
Younger.
Whole.
She was dragged forward by her hair, fingers tangled mercilessly at her roots. Her feet scraped uselessly across stone. She tried to twist, to fight, but a boot caught her ribs and sent her sprawling.
The room was windowless. Narrow. Lit by a single wand held low.
The man who dragged her wore an old Ministry uniform. Voldemort's regalia. Stiff and formal, the insignia of the Ministry gleaming faintly at his collar. His grip never loosened.
Temperance’s eyes were clear. Brilliant. A piercing and impossible blue.
Hermione recoiled, though she did not pull away.
A figure moved just beyond the reach of the light. Minister Pius Thicknesse. His profile momentarily caught by the glow of a wand as he pushed another into the light.
In front of Temperance, small and trembling, stood a child. His face was blotchy with tears, nose running, hands clenched in the front of his too-large jumper. He sobbed openly, hiccupping breaths tearing through his chest.
“No.” Temperance said hoarsely as if her voice had gone unused, “I will not.”
Thicknesse shifted somewhere in the dark. In one swift, robotic motion, the Ministry man ripped Temperance from the floor and backhanded her. Her head snapped sideways. Blood filled her mouth.
“The Minister has ordered–”
“No.”
Robes rustled in the dark. The man’s wand lifted.
“Crucio.”
Pain detonated.
Temperance convulsed, a soundless scream ripping from her throat as her body arched violently, nerves set alight. Hermione felt it—every white-hot fracture of sensation, every instinct shrieking to escape a body that no longer obeyed. She fell to her knees.
Then, as suddenly as it began. It stopped.
Temperance gasped, shaking.
“I will not,” she screamed over the boy wailing, “I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.”
“You will,” said Thicknesse’s disembodied voice.
The wand rose again.
“Crucio.”
Again. And again. And again.
The world narrowed to agony and the terrified sound of the child screaming. Was it days? Was it seconds?
Finally Temperance broke.
When her wand rose, it shook so badly Hermione thought it might fall from her fingers.
The child looked at her with wet, hopeful eyes. She knelt in front of him.
The intrusion was immediate.
Hermione felt it. The child’s mind cracked open, unprotected, thoughts tumbling over one another in a chaos of fear and longing. His mother’s face, blurred by tears. A kitchen that smelled of bread. A voice singing off-key. A father’s boots by the door.
Temperance tore through it with surgical precision.
Names. Addresses. Hiding places.
She pulled back sharply, gasping, as if surfacing from deep water. The child clutched his head and continued to cry for his mother.
“They’re near the coast,” Temperance rasped. “They went last spring. The father… he works for Dumbledore—”
“But know this, Madam,” said Thicknesse.
The words were mild. Almost bored.
Temperance stared at him. Blood streaked her chin. Her hands shook.
“He’s a child. He likely knows nothing more.”
“Again.”
The boy screamed as she reached for him a second time.
“No—no—mummy—mummy!” His voice broke into wordless terror as she forced her way back inside his mind.
Temperance dug deeper.
She stripped past surface memories now, past comfort and routine, into places still forming. Half-shaped thoughts. Fear without language. Love without structure. The boy convulsed, body jerking violently as she worked.
She tore herself free, choking.
“There’s nothing more,” she sobbed. “I swear it.”
Thicknesse didn’t move.
“Wrong, Madam.”
Temperance’s hands were slick with sweat. Tears ran unchecked down her face as she obeyed his spell.
Again.
And again.
Each time, the child screamed until his voice gave out. Until his cries dissolved into wet, broken sounds. Blood began to seep from the corners of his eyes, trickling down his cheeks like tears gone wrong.
Hermione felt herself screaming inside the memory, felt her own rage coil and then -
The boy seized.
His small body arched violently, then went terrifyingly still. He collapsed forward into Temperance’s arms, limp, eyes staring, unfocused.
Silence fell.
Thicknesse stepped into the light at last. He looked down at the tiny body.
“Inadequate even in death.”
Temperance stared at the boy’s face. Her breathing hitched once.
Then she screamed.
The sound tore through the memory. Hermione was flung backward, ripped violently from the scene as if expelled by force.
The present crashed back in around her.
Temperance lay curled on the floor of her cottage, hands clamped over her ears, breath coming in sharp, broken pulls.
Hermione dropped to her knees beside her.
“Oh, God! I—Temperance, I’m sorry,” she said desperately. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t know—it was an accident, I swear—”
Temperance’s hands flew out. She shoved Hermione hard in the chest.
“Get out,” she hissed.
Hermione froze.
“Temperance—”
“Get out of my house.” Her voice was raw, stripped of all sharpness now, leaving only hurt and fury.
“I didn’t mean to–”
“Get out!”
Hermione stumbled out of the cottage as if shoved, though no hands touched her this time. The door slammed behind her, hard and final. The sound cracked through her skull like a curse.
Cold sunlight struck her full in the face. Too bright. Too sharp. It sliced across her vision and turned the world white at the edges. She gasped and bent forward, hands braced on her knees, fighting the sickening sensation that she was sinking, that the ground beneath her feet was tilting away.
Her thoughts scattered.
“Mummy.”
Her stomach heaved. She swallowed it back, breath coming shallow and fast, the air tasting wrong. Too thin. Too loud. Everything felt muffled, as if she were underwater and the world above was shouting down at her through glass.
What happened?
The question looped uselessly, bumping against fragments that refused to line up. Her chest ached where she’d been pushed by Temperance’s shaking hands, as though the force had followed her out of the mind and into her body.
She took a step. Then another. The lane swam. Stone walls blurred together. She had no idea where she was going, only that she couldn’t stay there. Couldn’t breathe in that place anymore.
Go somewhere. Anywhere. Away from here.
Her wand was already in her hand. She didn’t remember drawing it. She twisted on the spot and Apparated. The crack of it split her ears.
She landed badly, boots skidding on pavement slick with rain. Her knees buckled and she caught herself on a lamppost, vision tunneling. The city reeled around her—horns, voices, a wash of foreign language she usually loved and now couldn’t process at all.
Her head pounded. Her magic lurched, sluggish and wrong, like it was dragging itself back into place.
Paris? No. Not here.
Someone brushed past her shoulder. She flinched violently, heart hammering. The press of people was unbearable. She couldn’t tell if the wet on her face was rain or tears.
Don’t stop. Don’t think. She Apparated again.
Manchester.
The landing knocked the breath clean out of her. She staggered into a brick wall and slid down it, palms scraping rough stone. Her vision went dark for a terrifying second, stars bursting behind her eyes.
Long-distance Apparition was never meant to be done like this—stacked, reckless, fueled by panic rather than precision. She could feel the cost now, deep in her bones. Her limbs trembled. Her magic burned low and uneven, a live wire fraying inside her chest.
Where was she going?
The third Apparition nearly broke her.
She landed hard on wet grass and went straight down, the world spinning violently. Rain poured from the sky.Somewhere beyond her vision, the sea rolled on, steady and indifferent.
She lay there, gasping, every breath scraping her throat raw. Her heart raced and stuttered, trying to remember its rhythm. The sky above was an angry, overcast blur. The grey of the Highlands pressed down on her like a hand between her shoulders.
Her mind finally began to slow—but only enough to let the images surface.
She almost wanted to laugh. Here? Of all places?
Inverie. Snape.
Then, the child’s wails. Blood at the corners of his eyes. Temperance’s scream.
She pushed herself up from the ground with a sound that was half a sob, half a snarl.
Anger surged through her—not clean, not righteous, but feral and unfocused. It burned away the numbness and left her shaking with it. Angry at herself, for opening the door at all. Angry at Temperance, for breaking, perhaps for even surviving. Angry at the Ministry, for what it had done and what it had always done, dressed up in necessity and law. Angry at Harry for his secrecy. Angry at Snape for not being stronger. Angry at Kingsley, smiling gently while the machinery kept grinding beneath him.
Angry at the very idea of justice.
The word felt hollow now. A trick of language. Something people clung to because the alternative, that the world simply took whatever it wanted and left wreckage behind, was too unbearable to sit with.
Her legs wobbled, but she stayed upright through sheer spite. She turned toward the cottage, jaw set, and began to trudge up the hill, through the rain. It was not far. It felt endless.
Each step scraped against her bones. Her magic lagged behind her like a torn muscle, aching and unreliable. Whether it was the long-distance Apparition or the Lutins Harry had warned her about, she didn’t know, but the ground seemed to pull at her boots, the air thickening with every breath.
By the time she reached the door, she was trembling. Soaked through.
She raised her fist and pounded. Once, twice, three times, hard enough that it sent pain shooting up her arm. The sound echoed inside, dull and heavy.
Nothing.
She hit it again, breath coming in ragged bursts, chest heaving so violently she thought she might be sick.
“Open the door.”
There was a pause. Long enough for doubt to creep in.
For one terrible moment, she thought he might not answer. That he would see her through the wood and turn away. That this, too, would be something she had broken beyond repair.
Then the door opened.
Severus Snape stood there, black-clad and sharp-edged as ever. His eyes flicked over her in a single, assessing sweep—robes plastered to her, hair slicked to her forehead, mud streaking her hem, skin pallid, pupils blown wide.
“Granger.” he said, voice clipped, cautious.
Her restraint shattered.
She grabbed the edge of the doorframe to stay upright, fingers digging into the wood as if she could anchor herself there.
“Is there,” she demanded, her voice breaking mid-sentence, “anything left worth saving?”
For a heartbeat, he didn’t answer.
He studied her, one brow lifting slightly, as if weighing a decision rather than the question - whether she was too far gone, whether this was a door better left closed. She braced herself for a remark about her appearance, her soaked cloak, the fact that she had been crying.
Instead, he stepped forward and caught her by the arm.
His grip closed around her bicep, too firm to be called gentle. Hermione couldn’t tell whether he meant to steady her or shake her apart. If she’d had any strength left, fear might have flared.
“I only wish I knew.”
The words landed honest and unsoftened. Something came undone. Her knees gave out.
The world tipped sharply, light smearing at the edges, Snape’s fingers pressed into her flesh, and then there was nothing at all.