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Disclaimer: I do not own the characters named below - JK Rowling does and I stand to make no profit from this.
At What Price Redemption?
“Here you are Severus, a little ‘gift’ from your fellow Death Eaters,” Lucius Malfoy sneered as he shoved the girl roughly through the doorway. She stumbled in her bare feet at the threshold and Snape reached out casually to catch her elbow, jerking her up roughly to stand beside him.
“Bellatrix is toying with her comrade, but I told her you might enjoy this one for the evening yourself, even if she is a Mudblood,” Malfoy continued staring at Snape as if expecting a certain reaction.
Snape merely tipped his chin in the barest acknowledgement, still holding the shivering girl by the elbow to keep her from falling. “And what am I to do with her?” he asked.
“Why, whatever you like,” Malfoy replied. Just then the air was rent by a blood-curdling scream from below. “Ah, I see the evening’s festivities have begun. I should join Bellatrix. Enjoy yourself, Severus,” he reached out to cup the girl’s chin in his hand then added, “We’ve saved her just for you. You have one night all to yourself.”
Malfoy turned on his heel and swept back down the stone corridor. Severus closed the heavy oak door behind him and turned to face the girl. She took one step toward him as if to hug him and murmured, “Oh thank God, Professor Snape…”
She halted in mid-step as he addressed her in a lethal whisper, “You stupid, ridiculous girl! What in God’s name are you doing here?” Another scream split the night. “And who is your unfortunate partner? Weasley? Potter?”
“I…I…Ron,” she answered weakly, hanging her head and wincing at another howl of pain from below.
“I see,” he sneered in response. “And I suppose you two bold Gryffindor’s decided to single-handedly save the day?”
“I…we…,” she floundered helplessly, then took a deep breath, trying to compose herself. Once she began again, the words tumbled out in a torrent. “You’ve been gone for so long, we didn’t know where you were or what had happened. Harry’s in the infirmary. Dumbledore is gone. The castle is under siege and we just…didn’t know what to do.”
He crossed his arms and glowered at her. “And as I just said, you came here to try to single-handedly save the day.”
She gave a small sob. Her answer was so soft he could hardly hear it. “We just didn’t know what to do.”
He slammed his hand down on the desk in the room so hard that it rattled then he hissed, “You were ordered, ORDERED by Professor Dumbledore himself to remain in the castle at all costs. Did it ever occur to you that he and I have means to keep in touch of which you are not aware? That we have been in constant contact? No, all that matters to you is your insufferable need to ‘do something.’”
He took a deep breath and ran one hand through his hair, then turned to look at the girl in front of him. He studied her intently, truly seeing her for the first time tonight. He’d never noticed before how small she seemed and how young - hardly on the brink of womanhood. How old would she be now? Sixteen? Seventeen?
The simple shift she was wearing was filthy. He’d seen House-Elves in tea-towels that looked better. Bellatrix may not have used the Cruciatus curse on her as of yet, but she’d certainly suffered at the hands of the Death Eaters already. Her hair was matted, her cheeks scratched. He glanced down at her feet which were cut and bruised. It appeared as if she’d walked a great distance over rough terrain in her bare feet.
“What happened, Hermione?” he asked her then softly.
Amidst continued shrieks from below, she managed to get out her story. She and Ron had snuck out of the castle three days earlier and entered the Forbidden Forest. Almost immediately, they had been tracked by Death Eaters stationed near all the entrances to the castle. The Death Eaters had made a game of it, harassing and following them through the forest, almost but never quite apprehending them. She and Ron had pressed on, thinking they were eluding them, only to realize that they were being herded to the Death Eaters’ very headquarters, the labyrinth of stone caves where they now were.
Hermione finished her story. Ron, for the moment, was quiet below. She looked up at Snape and asked “What do we do, now?”
He gave a sarcastic laugh. “We aren’t going to do anything, Hermione. The question is, what am I going to do with you?”
“What-what do you mean?” she stammered. “Can you hide me? Can you get me out of here? What about Ron?”
He shook his head weakly. “No, no, there’s nothing I can do for Weasley. And you my dear Miss Granger, are a trap.”
Something about the finality in his tone when he said there was nothing that could be done for Ron hit home for Hermione. She sagged and he had to catch her by the elbow again, then led her to the bed and sat her down. “What do you mean, a trap?” she asked gazing up at him with child-like eyes, over bright with tears.
“Lucius has erred once tonight and he now knows it – he’s let Bellatrix begin on Weasley too soon. She’s going to torture him for the sake of her own pleasure without extracting anything useful from him. That leaves only you, Miss Granger, to expose me as the spy in their midst. My position here is still precarious. If I show mercy to you, they will immediately suspect my loyalty to them and the Dark Lord. Lucius will return here expecting to find you raped... or tortured... or dead.”
Hermione looked around the room wildly – there was no exit save the door through which she had entered. “Couldn’t you just say you’d done that? I could pretend to be injured, we could…”
Severus raised his hand to cut her off. “Lucius would require proof,” he began, “evidence that your… injuries were real.” Hermione looked away as she comprehended what kind of proof he meant.
“How do you know he would require… proof?” she asked hoarsely.
“Because it’s what we do,” he answered in a flat tone that left no doubt in her mind that he had participated in such activities before.
Then Severus sighed and continued, “Even if I could magically concoct artificial injuries that would merely postpone the inevitable. You would then be passed around among the rest of the Death Eaters here or else handed over to Bellatrix.”
He walked to the far corner of the room, the heels of his boots clicking resoundingly on the stone floor. He turned to face her. “We are at a crucial point in the war Miss Granger. The Dark Lord has developed a method that would render wizards incapable of performing magic, in effect turning anyone not loyal to him into Squibs. And Squibs and Muggles, Miss Granger, would be unable to stand up against power such as his. I am now in possession of enough information to be able to prepare an inoculation against this.”
“You could give me the information,” she said desperately, “You could get me to Dumbledore and I could get it to him.”
“Miss Granger, I cannot get you away from here. And I cannot let you return to Lucius – there is no way to prevent him from finding out through your mind that my allegiances are with Dumbledore.”
“So what are we going to do?” she asked once again.
“No, Hermione, the question remains, ‘what am I going to do with you?’”
She stood up and paced around the room, unmindful of the cold stone beneath her feet. Her voice was high and frenzied, “You’re not saying that you’re going to kill me are you?” She whirled to face him.
His expression was infinitely soft, tender. “I’m saying that I have no choice,” he whispered.
“No, you can’t. You just can’t” she mumbled disbelievingly.
“Do you want your friend’s death to have been in vain?” he asked nodding towards the door. There were no more shrieks, only an ominous silence from below. “Do you want to be responsible for the deaths of thousands, the enslavement of the entire world?”
“Ron…,” she shook her head, “No, not Ron, no. This can’t be happening.”
Severus moved to stand beside her. “This isn’t a fairy-tale children’s story, Hermione. There is no happy ending.”
“NO!” she shrieked and she flailed against him with her fists. He caught her wrists and held her arms away from him as she cried out, “You can’t, you cold-blooded bastard, you can’t!”
She fell against him sobbing and he folded his arms around her, murmuring softly as he smoothed her hair. He felt the life and youth and vigor in her body. Despite her earlier shivering she felt warm to him, one arm wrapped around her slender waist, the other cradling her smooth shoulders.
He slid his hand from her waist to his own, reaching for his wand. It had served him faithfully all these years, an extension of himself, of his will; yet now it felt as if it were made of lead. Hermione sensed his movement and stepped back, looking up at him.
“Please, not Avada…not with magic, please,” she pleaded.
He replaced his wand and wiped her tears away with his thumb, smudging the dirt on her cheeks as he did so. “Hermione,” he whispered, “I haven’t a potion I can use.”
“No,” she began then squared her shoulders and looked him defiantly in the eye, “No magic at all.”
He contemplated what she had just said and admired her bravery. Hermione Granger was nothing less than Gryffindor through-and-through. Before he could answer her she cleared her throat and made a most odd request.
“Before you do…it…could you kiss me once... like a lover would, I mean, so that I… know what it’s like before I die?”
Her question startled and puzzled him. There was certainly no love lost between them. Why ever would she make such a request? He studied her pale face once more and then he understood. Hermione Granger was a young girl, with all the same hopes and dreams and desires of young girls who had gone before her. By rights, she should have slipped from the castle to meet a young lover in the moonlight; to lie with him as a man and a maid were meant to do; not to have been herded here to face death. Hermione knew the cause they were both fighting for, was willing to to die for it, but at that moment the cause it self seemed very distant. Here, in this room, it was only the two of them.
“I can,” he answered simply.
“Which?” she asked.
It took him a moment to realize that she was asking which of her requests her was agreeing to. “Both,” he answered just as simply.
There was an awkward silence between the two of them, then he reached out and stroked her cheek. “Hermione, Hermione, in another time, another place...,” he began.
They moved toward each other as one. He leaned down to kiss her and she tilted her head unconsciously so that their lips met perfectly. Her hands fluttered a bit before she placed them on his shoulders and drew herself up to him. He cinched his hands around her waist, holding her tightly as she molded herself perfectly to him. His tongue flickered gently at her lips and she parted them willingly.
He tasted the sweetness of her mouth. He slid his right hand up to tangle in her hair. He deepened the kiss, passion without any reservation whatsoever. He groaned inwardly to himself that she was every bit of youth and beauty and passion he had lost himself so long ago. His right hand still cradled the back of her skull. He cupped her chin in his left hand. Hermione pulled back slightly from the kiss and squeezed her eyes shut hard. He held the back of her head firmly in his left hand, her chin in his right and with one swift jerk he heard the resounding crack of vertebrae snapping.
Hermione sagged against him, her head lolling on his chest. He folded her body in his arms again and held her long past the time when warmth had left her. His own hot tears slid down his face as he wondered to himself what price redemption.
**
When Lucius Malfoy returned in the morning, he was not surprised to find Hermione Granger dead, but rather surprised that her face did not bear the expression of shock characteristic of those who have died from the killing curse. He questioned Severus about it.
Snape drew his robes about himself, his face a cold expressionless mask as he stepped over the slight body on the floor. “Surely by now, Lucius, you have learned that some things require the human touch?”
~ Fin ~