What Little Things Remain

"I only just arrived," said Bunter apologetically.

"Forgiven, but see it doesn't happen again. Granger, shall we go for a walk?"

"That would be fine," she replied, as Bunter left the room, holding the door open for them.

It was a fine day. The sun shone brightly as they left Snape Castle and walked, silently, along the roadside. Snape had offered her his arm, which she took more out of a sense of requirement than anything else. His clothes could be taken for Muggle, if he wasn't examined too closely; hers were Muggle. They walked along the road looking for all the world like a pair of bored tourists to 'the picturesque, historic village of Snape.'

"If you're Lord Snape over all this, why were you in in the United States in the first place?" Hermione finally asked, uncomfortable with the quiet.

"It doesn't exactly come with incredible wealth," he replied dryly. "I've the family home, which needs expensive magical upkeep, a trust fund and a style of living to uphold. The Muggles had their own Lord of Snape for many years, and the wizards had a different one - the wizards got the bad end of the deal. The family hasn't owned most of the land around here for a good many years now."

"But you enjoyed working?"

"As much as anyone enjoys their work. That is to say, I did not enjoy teaching at all. Research had its high points, but overall I would much rather not have to answer to any company."

A fair answer, she thought, and not one which invites further conversation. But he spoke again.

"It's been a very mild summer. Pleasant, according to Bunter."

Hermione looked up at him. She was anxious to tell her grand idea, but also nervous (in case someone had thought of it long before). "Pray don't talk to me about the weather. Whenever someone talks to me about the weather, I get a sneaking suspicion that they mean to be talking about something else."

Snape looked quite surprised - perhaps he almost laughed, in that split second before he responded. "Wilde, Miss Granger?"

"It seemed appropriate."

"More appropriate than you know. This is locally known as the 'Lovers' Walk.' We will not meet anyone, and our presence here can be easily explained." He cast a simple anti eavesdropping charm, then offered his elbow to her once more. "And you are correct. I would much rather be talking about your sudden flash of inspiration. Were you visited by a vision? Did God speak?"

She absolutely refused to bridle at his sarcasm. "Nothing so melodramatic. No, what I was thinking was that Lily and James Potter were married in a traditional ceremony with all the trappings, weren't they?"

"Yes. Quite the to-do. I remember because there was an article on it in Witch Weekly, a longer one than was run when Narcissa deVries married Lucius Malfoy. The Malfoys were quite angry."

"And there were protection spells cast at Harry's birth, weren't there?"

"Only the ones cast on most children. There was a theory that Lily Potter used one of the protection spells to save her son, but nothing was ever proven."

"Then that confirms it," Hermione replied. "If those protection spells were never broken, they're still on Harry's body. There might be a way to use them against You-Know Who."

Snape stared straight ahead, walking on. His boots crunched the gravel; it was the sort of noise that fascinated Hermione, the sort of noise that is relegated to the background but that is quite important to an overall sensation. "You have a point," he finally ceded. "But they didn't help Potter when he was - inhabited."

"There are some aspects of the spells that aren't activated till a second part is cast, though. Anti-burning wards, that sort of thing." Hermione's voice was a little strained. He was walking far too quickly for her, though they were about the same height, and she had the unpleasant feeling that she was constantly about to fall behind. Forget it, she thought. He can just slow down. But before she altered her pace he stopped and turned to face her, taking her hand. He bent in, putting his face very close to hers, whispering in her ear.

"The owl is flying over us now. It just went back for a second look."

"Can it - hear us? And report back?"

"I'd rather not take a chance, would you?"

His closeness was frightening - not disgusting, as she had thought it might have been, but it made her nervous. He straightened, putting one arm around her waist and pulling her to him. Clever. If he angles his face right he'll be able to watch the sky.

Later, she had to admit to herself that one very juvenile part of her simply enjoyed being touched again. It had been months since anyone had touched her, apart from a handshake or a tap on the shoulder. There is a tendency to avoid a grieving person, when one does not know them very well. Nobody knew Hermione very well, after her friends and parents were dead. So she clasped her arms around Snape's neck and buried her face in his shoulder, letting him hold her.

"It's gone. Tomorrow we research protection spells. Now, I think it would be best that we be seen together in the village."

"All right."

Snape set her from him and offered her his elbow again, leading her back the way they came. "I've grown used to having supper rather early, from Hogwarts. Shall we dine in the village?"

He led her to the Sober Robin Inn, a staid little building out behind a cottage on the outskirts of the village. "Wizards and Witches Only Since 1823," the motto beneath the sign read. While she expected it to be something like the Leaky Cauldron from the name and the outward appearance, in fact it was much more modern. Someone who sounded like Bing Crosby sang in the background - but Bing Crosby wasn't a wizard, was he? - and Hermione enjoyed herself thoroughly, even though she knew Snape had picked the intimate little corner table in order to best survey the room.

As long as she was traveling, she had eaten in restaurants: chain restaurants, family owned cafés, never anything terribly expensive. Entering the chatting mass of people was always an exercise in solitude and observation. Food only interested her in that it provided sensations to experience. As long as she was fully engaged in taste, memory could not come to the forefront. It never worked for very long, but it was as good as anything else. Now, though, she was part of the crowd, not strangely separated.

She appreciated it.

They walked back afterwards, discussing spatium blossom and its uses, discussing which professors would be returning to Hogwarts. It was throwaway talk, easily spoken and forgotten. "You've changed your mind on my conversation then? From the hotel. In New York." It was surprising to find that when the words made their way out of her mouth, they were teasing and light.

"Not at all. When I am forced to converse with a lesser mind, I make the best of it."

I have changed, she thought. That comment's not meant to be cutting in the least. Last year I would have -

Her amusement was suddenly gone. Last year was not worth mentioning. She had to relive it often enough, both waking and sleeping, to wish to forget as often as possible.

Miss Hermione Granger has had a change of heart.

Snape, now - that was another matter, and despite the letter he had sent Riddle was of two minds about it. Snape had made his choice of loyalties and reneged on it, but many a Slytherin might say the same, about less important causes. He could say it himself, once, when he was the protégé of the old conservatives that longed for a return to the isolation of the wizarding world. Magic seeks magic; blood seeks blood, and that is the way it should always be, he remembered one saying - Cecil or William or perhaps another Thomas, not titled but certainly rich, speaking to the student Headmaster Dippet found so very trustworthy.

He had killed that one's grandson, a young Ravenclaw half-blood with excellent marks. Evidently the old man's morals had stopped at his front door, if he had allowed his son to marry a Muggle. It wasn't the boy's fault, but his grandfather was dead, and revenge for any slight at all must be taken seriously.

Hypocrisy was not something Lord Voldemort welcomed. When one had a compelling reason, on the other hand, contradicting oneself was perfectly acceptable. After Dumbledore had so carefully cultivated Harry Potter, after he had soothed the Weasley boy's ego and fed Hermione Granger's lust for knowledge - after all that, he was dead, and his greatest student with him. It was tempting to kill Granger, for a moment. He had no compunction about threatening to do so. But waste not want not, the orphanage's motto, was too firmly ingrained into him for that. It was the only thing he had learned there of any use, apart from the basic dog-eat-dog realities of life.

Waste not, want not. The Weasley would never be his, but by Malfoy's account, Granger was under Snape's thumb. The owl he had sent was quite intelligent; it supported Malfoy's assessment, hooting and turning its head almost all the way around to put an exclamation point on its agreement.

Which brought him back to Snape.

Trust among Slytherins - a funny thing, and not one which comes easily to us. Very well. The test shall have to be to the death, then.

But already Riddle planned for the future, the sweet Mudblood purifying herself, fighting for him, following his directions. It was a delicious insult to Dumbledore's memory. Yes, he would write a letter to the Skeeter woman, and she would release the news. Miss Hermione Granger has had a change of heart. It would be years from now before the story bubbled up, years in which he would steadily gain - but when it did, when it made front-page news (for where else would news about the best friend of Harry Potter himself go?), it would be fully worth the wait.

A particularly vindictive sunbeam hit Hermione's face at just the right angle to awaken her. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and stretched, feeling unfamiliar sheets scrape against her skin. The red bedroom at Snape Castle, some part of her brain registered.

The fairground was splashed with red paint, all over. Harry loved the turning twisting stomach-lurching rides, and Ron followed him gamely, but Hermione gravitated towards the high swings. They gave the feeling of flying combined with the deep-seated security of Muggle metal, gears and ropes completely solid. This was the thrill of her childhood, the only magic she had been born with.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" Mum called, and Hermione knew Harry was trying to answer, but the words were ripped away by the wind. She twisted in her seat, laughed at Ron's nervousness at trusting anything without magic. They laughed together, flying through the air at the fair.

Nobody ever knew about their excursion, the last summer before the siege. Ginny had been sick at home, so Mum had taken them to Diagon Alley, and whispered the idea of going to the fair to her like a secret - "because I'm sure your friends would like a break after we've gone shopping" - and she never felt the need to break her promise. Dumbledore would have been horrified. A fairground, a place rife with danger!

Oh but surely the Dark Lord wouldn't attack this many Muggles at once, and surely he won't have an idea where we are, since we haven't used magic to get here and there's no Locator on Harry, the rationale had been. It had been the right one. Nothing had happened, nothing at all.

Sunlight glared at her, and she was floating between fairground and waking. A vision again. She lay on the red duvet, surveying the room through slitted eyes, and thought.

It would have been the perfect day, that time at the fairground, if Ron had only admitted to loving her even then.

The past is the past is the past. She sat up abruptly, regretting that there weren't any cigarettes. It was impossible to feel ungrateful to Professor Snape's house-elf when she found new Muggle clothing neatly folded on the armchair, a fire warming the room and breakfast already laid out. Coffee did a great deal to revive her and end the urge for nicotine (honestly, you never got addicted even when you were smoking every day, why now when you've missed some time?).

Armored and fortified she ventured into the halls. Opening a door not so far from her room's, she found herself standing on a balcony in the upper reaches of the library. A black figure sat beneath her: Snape, already working.

"Come down from there," he told her brusquely. "You were ready enough to research your plans before. I've pulled the books on basic protection spells and some on geasa for good measure. I shall be working from the other end, studying possessions and spirit magics."

The books he had chosen were all very thick, very old, and very interesting. Hermione had never felt the pull of fiction; poetry was the closest she got, as she tried to analyze her way into the author's mind. Spells combined soul and science. They were her true passion, combining the archaic with the new and the esoteric with common knowledge. Once she was tutored by Professor Flitwick in theory of magic. In an essay, she wrote that "Eyes are not the windows to the soul of a wizard - spells are."

The fourth book down was entitled The Ancient Magics: Geasa and Runes, written by one Holden Locke quite recently. Snape put his hand on it before she had a chance to, and she nearly protested, but he cut her off. "There is a passage here I think you will be particularly interested in." Indeed, the book fell open to a page towards the end, and he began to read. "Magic is the art of binding - binding the supernatural to your will, binding hatred and love into useful forms. Therefore, geasa are little more than an order given and bound to a person or object, as everything can be bound with the correct understanding of its nature. This leads to the natural conclusion that everything can be unbound, even a geas. None have ever succeeded in this aim, and it is possible none ever will, but destroying a geas is a theoretically unobjectionable action."

"So I could -"

Her waiting hands recieved the book. He wore his most skeptical expression. "This is the first author I've found that says it might be possible. Obscurus Books is a reliable publisher, but I can hardly become invested in the idea when it is supported only by one scholar."

Hermione nodded, bent her head, and read. The rest of the book was quite dry, even by her standards. She had not studied enough of modern magical theory to truly grasp it, despite her good grounding in Merlin's original principles. The words began to blur. She was reading a book in the back of an car, driven by her cousin Simon, trying to focus. It was hopeless. Her parents were dead and unshed tears fogged her eyes, making the page waver.

"You alright, Hermione?"

The stiffness in his voice was clear: he had never been a talkative boy, especially with the ten years' age difference between them, and now he did not know how to comfort her. "I'm fine," she told him, staring out the window. People poled down the Thames. It was a wonderful day to be a Muggle tourist in Oxford, she supposed.

She felt each bump in the road as they traveled on, but she barely noticed when he parked the car, sitting behind the wheel and staring ahead. "I haven't spoken much to you since you went off to boarding school, love, but I really did love Aunt Joyce to pieces. And I missed you, too. I only wish you hadn't been gone so often -"

Hermione closed her eyes, feeling the tears begin to fall in the memory (and vaguely, faintly, feeling them well up in her real eyes as well). "I do wish I'd never gone to Hogwarts," she choked out, "And I wish you wouldn't talk about it, Simon, for all you mean well!" Her book fell to the seat as she slammed out of the car and into the church.

Then she was awake again, slumped in her chair in Snape's library. Her unfocused eyes caught on the image of Snape starting a fire and she realized the geas was wreaking havoc again. Her necklace had slipped out of her shirt, lying dark against the white fabric, taunting her. She left it there, ignoring the urge to open it and allow herself to be swept away.

"Did this happen earlier?" he asked, not accusatory but in a tone of voice that was entirely the teacher's.

"When I woke up. It wasn't very long, just a moment - it might have only been a real memory." The idea was unconvincing even to her.

"The Hogwarts Floo's connected again. You might return to Hogwarts for an hour or so, to regain your footing away from the geas."

Hermione nodded, smiled a little. "Do you think we could get my clothes back from my cousin? Muggle post should have them there soon."

"I'm sure Professor McGonagall will be happy to arrange for it. The fireplace will remain connected for another four hours, so we needn't worry about getting trapped." She took some Floo powder from the pouch he offered her. "Say 'Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Entrance Hall, Grand Fireplace.'"

She followed his instructions, enunciating clearly. The Floo launched her through the chimneys and spat her out into the fireplace in the Entrance Hall. She was surprised to feel Snape fall into place behind her. Together they stumbled out and into the hall.

There must have been a charm hooked up to the fireplace to tell when someone was coming, for Professor McGonagall was waiting for them, and Dame Betsey Kneen.

"There's bad news, I'm afraid, Severus," McGonagall said. "We've a note saying that Arabella Figg won't be coming - she's the new Potions mistress, Hermione - and I don't believe she'd do this!"

Snape looked down at Hermione and then back to McGonagall. "If the other teachers are here, perhaps we'd better take this to your office, Minerva," he pointed out. So they followed the granite steps upwards to where Dumbledore had once lived, the gargoyle nodding as they entered ("Morwenstow!").

The room was entirely different from before. The shelves were still lined with books, but Fawkes was gone, and most of the homey clutter as well. A place for everything and everything in its place had always been McGonagall's credo, regarding her classroom; in that way, she and Snape were alike, each preferring order. Dumbledore had been the type to throw everything everywhere and rely on Accio to find what he was looking for.

They seated themselves - Hermione knew, thanks to Hogwarts: A History, that there would always be just the right number of chairs for the gathered company in the headmaster's (or mistress's) quarters. "I recieved this note this morning," the headmistress offered.

It was written on Muggle paper with a ballpoint pen. It took Hermione a moment to realize that the name printed on the stationery was the same as the name of the hotel they had stayed at in New York. She almost spoke, but Snape looked meaningfully at her. The message was short and to the point. The signature looked genuine.

"Imperius? Or simply a change of heart?" Kneen asked Snape. He was about to reply, his mouth already forming the words, when a head suddenly popped out of the fireplace. It was Lupin, a piece of paper in his mouth. Hermione leaped up and took it from him.

"Thank Merlin you're here," he said as soon as he was able to speak. "I just got this, and - Elspeth went shopping and she says she isn't coming back. Grandmother, do you know anything about it? Anything at all?"

The tone of voice he spoke in was immediately recognizable. Hermione remembered it from the Shrieking Shack. Third year, she thought, When he realized that Sirius Black was innocent - that's the same tone, but sadder. And Dame Betsey Kneen is Elspeth's grandmother, of course, or something very like it, so Lupin calls her that and suspects her of conspiring with her granddaughter -

Kneen read the note quickly. "Elspeth left you? To go to North America? And she didn't even tell you she was leaving until she got there?" She pinched her lips tightly together, handing the slip of paper back to Hermione. "She didn't say anything to me. She would have, too, if she was so desperately unhappy, unless something happened - and that, my dear, is a doubtful occurrence."

But Hermione had not even bothered to read the note. Her eyes were still stuck on the logo on the stationery. "Best Western," she said, "New York."

All eyes were rivetted on her as she held up the note McGonagall had recieved. "It's the same paper - and it's the same hotel Snape and I stayed in when we were in New York. Doesn't that strike you as strange? If they'd been kidnapped, who would have known?"

"Once is an accident, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern," the headmistress intoned, in the way some people do when they have nothing to say but a platitude.

"I said Elspeth would never leave without telling me," Dame Betsey said. A cold cup of tea stood on the desk, and she swished it around, as though she could divine Elspeth's and Figg's whereabouts from it. "There's much that's fishy going on. I haven't an idea of where to start, but at least we know to start looking, now."

"I have an inkling of where they might be," Snape cut in, looking coolly into the faces of McGonagall and Kneen, "but I can't tell you right now. I don't know where, exactly, myself."

You-Know-Who? Hermione mouthed to him, but he pretended not to see her.

McGonagall did her best to get it out of him. It was clear that she harbored the same suspicions he did, but wanted to hear it from his own lips. After all, there was no good reason why it should be them who were kidnapped, out of all the wizards in the world. There was no good reason for kidnapping at all, from any source. The Dark Lord was simply the most possible, besides being the name every person's mind immediately went to upon the suggestion of pain, coercion or death. Snape, however, would not budge. At length he said that he was planning on returning to the village as soon as possible and stood to go.

Kneen took his wrist as he began to walk away. She had been quite silent while they were going back and forth with their arguments and details. "Snape. You're Elspeth's first half-cousin once removed, you know."

"I know," he replied.

"You can use the protection spells on her, then, to cause her to fall asleep. If worse comes to worse I'd rather she feel that - and it could be useful yet."

"Is that the spells that were put on her at birth?" Hermione queried.

"Yes," came the confirmation. "It only works if it's said by a person of her own blood.. Her keyword is 'feldspar,' and it has to be said with the proper intent, of course."

"I'll give you my word that I'll use it if I need to," Snape told her.

She looked very old, then, far older than Professor McGonagall. Her ebony cane seemed far too big for her thin frame and her eyes were huge and wrinkled as she sighed, sinking back in the chair.

"Elspeth will be fine," Hermione felt the need to tell her, although it went against her nature and all her experiences with grief. "I'm sure she'll be found, and everything will be fine."

Kneen smiled and patted her hand. Her doubt didn't need to be aired. They had debated for quite some time over nothing but a hunch, and there was little evidence that anything else would be discovered - unless Snape and Hermione had been believed, unless the Dark Lord wanted to bring them into his circles, unless Snape was to reprise his rôle as a spy.