Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Beneath My Feet
January 2008
The Minister for Magic preferred to make his announcements in the atrium.
Standing alone, in the center of the crowd. No platform. Just his dragonhide boots firmly planted on the jagged fissure in the marble where the Statue of Muggle Oppression had once loomed.
Hermione once asked him why he didn’t have the blemish spelled away. It would have been simple enough. That white, jagged scar in the perfect, shining deep green could have been vanished with a flick of his wand.
He had laughed—that deep, warm sound—and said it served as a reminder.
“All that ugliness,” he’d told her, “right there beneath my feet.”
“A reminder to yourself, then?”
“No,” he’d said, still smiling, but sharper now. “It’s a reminder to you. To them. That I’m the one standing on it.”
But not today.
Today, the Minister forwent the crack.
The tall columns, the polished floors, the soft rush of the waterfall echoing at his back like applause.
Today, Kingsley Shacklebolt sat alone, high in his private office, watching the snow fall behind enchanted glass.
His long, dark fingers were steepled under his nose.
The room was quiet, save for the furious, whispering sweep of his charmed quill tearing across parchment.
He did not look back when she entered.
“Clever, that spell,” he said at length, eyes suddenly shifting to the parchment. The charmed quill continued its frantic scrawl beside him. “Remind me how you developed it again?”
Hermione cleared her throat. “Touch expression. Cortisol secretions through the skin. I thought if we could measure hormonal stress during contact—when you asked if they’d pledged you their vote—it might offer a clearer read on intent.”
The quill raced on.
“There’s a theory that witches and wizards secrete magic-laced hormones in small bursts—subconscious signals. Almost like Legilimency, but for the body.”
She paused, watching the ink jitter and twitch across the page. It moved too fast. Too nervously. Like it knew what it was uncovering.
“The charm on your right hand,” she went on. “It registers elevated or suppressed cortisol levels upon contact. Those are the figures you're seeing.”
He gave a low whistle, and finally looked up.
“High means they lied?”
She hesitated.
“High means stress. Which often suggests deception. But it could also mean anxiety. Exhaustion. Anything, really. The results are inconclusive at best—”
She stopped herself. There was a time she would have been smug at her own cleverness. Now the sound of the quill dragging across parchment just felt like peeling something back that shouldn’t be touched.
“I only researched it briefly. Years ago. When I was still… when I was searching for my—” She caught herself again. “Anyway. It’s not something proven or tested. It’s entirely speculative. And illegal, technically. I—”
Kingsley held up a hand. He didn’t sound angry. Just tired.
“I’m the Minister for Magic, Hermione. I’ll decide what’s legal and what’s useful.”
He turned back to the parchment. The ink had begun to pool in places now—smudging its own lines.
“I just don’t have the Wizengmont votes. Not this time. It can’t all be an anomaly. You’re hardly known for miscalculation. That’s why I rely on you.”
The air seemed to leave her lungs all at once. She sank into the chair across from him.
“I didn’t think it would be this bad,” she murmured. “I thought we’d… I’m sorry.”
He smiled, faintly. But it didn’t reach his eyes. It looked like skin pulled too tightly over something hollow.
“I don’t understand what went so wrong,” she continued quietly. “I ran all the analytics myself—just six months ago.”
“It’s the trials,” he replied. “Still haunting me after all these years.”
He exhaled hard, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Everything was chaos back then. I didn’t commute enough sentences. Or I commuted too many. Depends on who you asked. I kept looking over my shoulder for Dumbledore to tell me what to do.”
He shook his head. “And then those ten I released last year. The interview Narcissa Malfoy gave the Daily Prophet .” He laughed bitterly. “I should’ve had Rita Skeeter arrested for slander on the spot.”
Hermione swallowed. “You’ve done well, Kingsley. We wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“Not well enough, apparently.”
The betrayal in his voice lingered like smoke. He stood and moved to the window, the snow casting pale light across his robes.
“Politics are messy. You’ll see that when you’re Minister.” He paused, “And you will make a damn fine Minister, Granger.”
He turned to face her, his expression stern but not unkind.
“Consider this your final lesson from me: your constituents don’t always know what’s best for them. You won’t get to fight the good fight every day. Not if you want to win. Sometimes, you have to get your hands dirty first.”
A long silence.
“That’s why I’m asking this of you,” he said. “Help me.”
He stepped closer.
“I need one more term. Just one. To finish the work. To turn the final page on this war. You, of all people, understand what it has taken. You’re the only one I can trust to help me do it.”
Hermione stared at him, her spine straightening slowly in the chair. She had the distinct sensation that something cold and irreversible was about to be said.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked, her voice on the verge of trembling.
Kingsley stopped the scribbling with a tap of his wand, gathered up the parchment and stalked over to the fire. The glow danced in his eyes.
“For the tenth anniversary,” he said, still watching the inferno, “I’m planning a public commemoration. Hogwarts. Wreaths. More monuments. Candles. That sort of thing. But it won’t be enough.”
Hermione said nothing.
He continued, drumming his fingers on the mantle “I need something bigger. Something symbolic. Something that says we’ve turned the page. To pull the public across the line. To bring them back to my side. Something divisive but sure.”
She remained still, silent—but her breath had shortened.
“I’m going to hold a trial.” He said, “And you will prosecute. A formal proceeding. Re-examining unresolved crimes. Just one case, really. For show. It’ll be carefully managed.”
Hermione felt her stomach drop.
“Whose?” she asked, though she already knew.
Kingsley didn’t blink. “Severus Snape.”
The silence was immediate and all-consuming. It seemed to pull the air from the room.
Hermione blinked once. “You want me to prosecute Severus Snape. Ten years after he died.”
Kingsley pulled away from the fire and nodded. “It’s not a real prosecution. It’s optics. We present the case. The evidence. A few known incidents. Then Harry testifies—he’ll confirm what he saw in the Pensieve. Snape’s sacrifice. The judges will deliver a verdict of... complicated heroism overshadowed by war crimes. Or whatever they like. That part doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Her voice came out thin. Brittle.
Kingsley waved a hand. “His conviction will satisfy all of those still searching for justice. It will secure those votes. That will be enough. And it doesn’t hurt anyone, Hermione. Snape’s dead.”
She stood too quickly. The chair scraped loudly behind her.
“You want him condemned?”
“I want to finish my work here. I told you– I need more time. I want this country to move on. This is my life’s purpose. This is my legacy.”
“And your legacy is worth the cost of a man’s name?”
“It’s worth the cost of a ghost’s.”
He straightened his robes. Then added, almost as an afterthought:
“And furthermore, this country is worth that cost. I expected you to respect that.”
Hermione stared at him, stunned. She blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.
Images tucked away in her mind began to rise unbidden— the sound of Nagini’s strike, Snape’s shoes in the door frame, the tear on his slackened cheek, Harry’s voice trembling as he described the memories.
She hadn’t liked the man. She might have even hated him. But she’d mourned him or what he never got to be. Quietly. Fiercely.
“But– but you know what he did,” she said. “For the Order. For Dumbledore. For Harry—for all of us. You know the truth.”
“I know parts,” Kingsley said. “We all do. The public do and they still, frankly, don’t care. He wasn’t kind or lovable. He wasn’t even clean. He’s the perfect effigy. Give him a trial. A small redemption, if you must, and then close the door. A final condemnation. It ties off a loose end and keeps me in office—which, like it or not, is still the best thing for this country. Even if they don’t see it yet.”
“Kingsley. I don’t think I can–”
“-You can, Granger. You will . When your time comes, I will endorse you but you must do this for me. For us. For Britain.”
He paused just long enough for it to land.
“You took an oath when you became Council General—the youngest in history. You swore to protect this realm. I am that protection, Hermione. I got us through. And one day, you’ll be standing where I am. But not if you break the oath now.”
She couldn’t breathe.
She didn’t remember sitting down again.
“You’re asking me to rewrite history.”
“No,” he said. “I’m asking you to retell it. With a cleaner ending. Some people can understand the gray areas. Most people can’t. Give them black and white. Give them me. Five more years, Hermione, and then I will give them you.”
Hermione gulped again.
She thought she might be sick right there on the floor.
The smell of upturned earth. Bodies thudding. Blood. Mothers howling. A map of scars across Ginny’s back. Alice Longbottom folding silver wrappers with careful, empty hands.
Fred’s headstone.
Her mother’s painted fingernails in her hair. Billowing robes in a flash of green light. James’ green eyes
She forced herself to breathe.
“Can I think about it?”
“No.” Kingsley said, “But you can take the rest of the day.”
She didn’t go home right away.
She walked.
Down the spiral staircase of Courtroom Ten, through the atrium, and out the phone booth in Whitehall.
She walked.
Among the Muggles. Fast, straight. Past the government buildings her teachers once pointed to on school trips - places she used to dream about.
Back then, she’d imagined herself behind one of those windows—changing the world with a pen in her hand and sensible shoes on her feet.
Now, the thought made her want to laugh. Or scream. She didn’t know which.
It was snowing hard again by the time she reached her flat. A small row house—modest for her salary, but warm. Usually.
The fire had gone out. She lit it with a flick of her wand, then stood staring into the hearth as the flames caught and settled.
A knock at the door startled her.
She checked her watch. Six o’clock. Already. Every Tuesday.
Tea.
She had forgotten.
The knock came again.
Hermione opened the door to find Minerva McGonagall standing there, brushing snow from the shoulders of her tartan cloak.
“My apologies, I would have flooed,” Minerva said briskly, pressing a quick kiss to Hermione’s cheek, “but it was acting up again, and I don’t trust it not to spit me out in Glasgow. And at this time of year? I don’t think so!”
“You’re never late,” Hermione said, forcing a smile. “Come in.”
Minerva stepped inside, taking in the dim light, the half-laid tea things on the sideboard, the air still chilled, the faint smell of ash and snow and something unsaid.
“Busy day at the office?”
Hermione winced. “Oh, not really, just the usual.”
Minerva said nothing, just handed over her cloak and moved to sit in the armchair nearest the fire. She examined Hermione’s face as she passed her, not unkindly, but sharply– like someone reading the last few lines of a book she’d already read once before
Hermione hung up the cloak and summoned a tin of biscuits Molly had sent her on Sunday.
“Take these back with you, please, before I blow up like a breeding toad. Molly’s convinced I’m too thin. Worried I won’t be able to have children. Something about the hips.”
Minerva gave her a wry look. “If you’re keen on children, I’d worry less about your waistline and more about your utter lack of a male counterpart. Poor Molly. Still holding out hope for you and Ronald.”
“We’re much better suited to friendship,” Hermione said, sitting across from her.
Minerva poured herself tea without comment, but there was a gleam in her eye. They sat companionably for a moment. Fire crackling between them.
“Now,” she said at last, “are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or do I need to play twenty questions like one of your dreadful Muggle party games?”
“Everybody liked that game.” Hermione smiled tightly, avoiding Minerva’s eyes. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“I see,” Minerva said dryly. “Which is why you forgot our standing tea, let the fire go cold, and look like you’ve seen a Lethifold in your filing cabinet.”
Hermione busied herself with the biscuit tin.
“For a solicitor, you are a terrible liar.”
Hermione stilled. The silence stretched between them.
“He’s asked me to do something,” she said at last.
“Kingsley.”
Hermione looked up, surprised.
Minerva only raised a brow. “You always forget things when you’re disillusioned with the Minister. Which is becoming more frequent, I might add.”
Hermione’s mouth opened, then closed again. She set her tea aside and leaned forward—elbows to knees, palms to her forehead.
“It’s for the tenth anniversary,” she said. “He wants a public commemoration.”
“Not another monument, I hope. Hogwarts will crumble again under the weight of it.”
“No.” Hermione shook her head. ““He wants a trial. A symbolic one. Or so he says. Closure.”
Minerva went very still.
Hermione hesitated. “But I’ve seen circuses like this before. It’s never about closure. It’s about re-writing.”
Minerva’s voice was quiet, careful. “Whose trial?”
Hermione exhaled slowly. “Snape’s.”
There was a pause. Then Minerva sat straighter, her face unreadable.
“Severus Snape is dead.”
“Yes.”
“The Minister has asked you to put a corpse on trial?”
Hermione flinched. “It’s not a real prosecution. More about ending it all. The choices he made. The things he might have taken too far. Kingsley wants him convicted. For the sake of... finality.”
Minerva looked at her for a long time.
“And you’re considering this? You believe in it?”
Hermione’s eyes flooded, suddenly and without warning.
“I believe in Kingsley,” she said. “I trust him. I owe him so much. I’ve run his campaigns since I was eighteen—ten years now. While everyone else was rebuilding their lives, I was sitting in a folding chair in a Ministry hallway handing out flyers.”
She swallowed. “He helped me look for my parents—for years. Even after we missed the reversal window.”
The heat from her tea was suddenly unbearable.
“We went all over Australia together that summer. He helped me study for the bar. He taught me things. He made me Council General. Whenever I see him speak, I still feel proud. I always thought…”
Her voice broke.
“You thought he would always be the one you were fighting for,” Minerva said gently.
Hermione nodded. “I thought he was good. Maybe not always kind. But righteous. And now…”
Minerva didn’t speak right away. Her eyes had softened; the usual edge in her voice dulled.
“You can love someone,” she said at last, “and still not agree with them.”
Hermione looked away.
“You can even believe in them once,” Minerva continued, “and still recognize when it’s time to stop.”
Hermione stared into the fire.
She tried to picture his face—sallow and lined, mouth twisted with contempt. Her stomach tensed, even now, even after everything.
“I’ll never think he was a good man,” she said finally. Her voice was low, almost embarrassed. “He was cruel. He humiliated children. He tried to get me thrown out of school in first year. He called me—”
She cut herself off. Minerva didn’t interrupt.
Hermione pressed on, quieter now. “He tormented Neville. Let Sirius rot. Bullied Harry. He always looked at me like I was something beneath him. Sometimes I still feel it—after all this time.”
The words hung there—ugly, absolute.
And then came the memories, creeping in without permission.
Ron bleeding in the Department of Mysteries. Harry screaming in the forest. Bellatrix laughing through the locked door. The air during battle– metallic, thick with dark magic and blood and smoke.
Snape had been part of all of it. Not always directly—but near enough. Silent enough. Complicit in the spaces where he might have said something. Anything.
“I don’t want to feel this way,” Hermione admitted. “It’s small and childish and unfair. I’ve tried to see the bigger picture. One moment I try to forgive him and the next I can picture his name in ink in the history books- on the wrong side. But when I think of signing my name on a parchment that condemns him…” she shuddered, “I hate that I care. I don’t know why I care. I don’t know why you do, either.”
It came out more desperate than she'd intended. Like a child trying to understand why the adults kept breaking the rules they were meant to uphold.
Minerva sat back in her chair and exhaled through her nose. For a long moment, she didn’t answer.
Then, softly: “Because I saw him try.”
Hermione blinked. She hadn’t expected that—certainly not from her.
“I don’t mean in some grand, redemptive way,” Minerva said. “Not in the way people like to tell stories—about heroes and sacrifices and deathbed apologies. No. Severus Snape was… vicious. Petty. Exhausted by the world. But he never stopped trying.”
She folded her hands in her lap. There was an ache in her voice.
“He kept Dumbledore’s secrets. Kept students alive. Kept pretending. Even when it cost him. I saw what it took out of him. I saw what it turned him into. I spent years watching him wear himself down to nothing.”
Hermione watched her, something fragile stirring in her chest.
“He was a difficult man to abide by sometimes. And then sometimes I almost looked at him as a friend.” Minerva said plainly. “I respected him and I pitied him and I was angry with him, too. But I will not stand by while someone turns him into a villain just because it’s more convenient than letting him stay complicated.”
Hermione lowered her gaze.
Minerva paused, then added, more carefully now: “There’s something else.”
Hermione looked up, frowning.
“What?”
Minerva’s gaze didn’t waver. “He’s alive.”
Hermione stared at her. The words didn’t compute.
He’s alive.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. The air felt strange in her lungs—too thin, too sharp.
“No,” she said at last. Quietly. As if they could both agree to undo it. “He—he died. I saw him die. Harry saw—”
Her voice caught.
She hadn’t meant to say Harry’s name.
Hadn’t meant to remember the shaking hands and the blood-soaked floor. The laboured breath. The sound of the snake, the way it had—
Hermione squeezed her eyes shut.
Minerva didn’t flinch. “He survived,” she said simply. “Barely. Poppy may be the matron of a school but she’s a fierce healer. She worked miracles to keep him breathing. We kept it quiet. He didn’t speak for the first two years. He’s very unwell.”
“Why—” Hermione blinked, then shook her head, harder this time. “Why didn’t you tell us? The Order? Kingsley?”
Minerva’s mouth was a line.
“Because he didn’t want you told.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It was his,” she looked a little reluctant, “And– well– Potter does know, Hermione. He’s known since the beginning.”
Hermione stood, suddenly, needing to move. She crossed to the window, stared at the heavy snow falling in sheets outside. The light beyond the glass had gone blue, like it was evening on another planet.
She pressed her palms to the windowsill. Her breath trembling, fogged in the pane.
“You let the world believe he was dead.”
Minerva's voice was quiet behind her. “He was meant to be.” She paused. “After everything—he didn’t want a pardon. He didn’t want gratitude. He didn’t even want peace. He certainly didn’t want a trial. He asked to disappear.”
Hermione closed her eyes. The silence in the room stretched and snapped and stretched again.
A man she’d hated. A man she’d grieved. A man whose name she would be forced to blacken in front of the entire wizarding world.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. Hermione turned, slowly. “Where is he?”
Minerva didn’t answer right away.She reached again for her tea, but her hands were no longer entirely steady.
“Not far,” she said. “But far enough that he thinks the world has moved on.”