What Is Left When All Is Said and Done

Prologues

He closed the door behind him and fell back heavily against it. His body slid, limp and lifelessly, into an inky pool of robes. There was no movement for several more minutes, and silence was sustained until the barest of sobs could be heard emanating from the crumpled mass. Somewhere, Severus Snape was crying.

-------

"Before we go," said Hermione cautiously, as she noticed the tension in Harry's body, "Harry, I don't mean to upset you again, but we need to recover Snape's textbook."

"Hermione, enough about Snape...." started Ron.

"No, she's right. There might be something in there, something I've missed," said Harry determinedly. "He's not going to catch me unawares again."

"But we have to be quick," interjected Hermione, before Harry could dwell in his hatred. "The Hogwarts Express is leaving in less than an hour." The trio quickly made their way to the seventh floor where they paced back and forth three times thinking, "I need the room where the Half-Blood Prince's potions textbook is hidden." The door appeared and they entered.

"Wow," exclaimed Ron as he saw the enormity of the room and the multitude of items in it. Hermione had paused beside him in awe as well. Harry, having already seen this place walked straight ahead with a single purpose, saying, "This way." His two friends followed him further in. He noticed that the Vanishing Cabinet that the Death Eaters had used to enter Hogwarts was gone, impounded by the Aurors, he surmised. Finally, he brought them to the cupboard with the tiara-ed bust sitting upon it. It was there that his resolve failed him. All of a sudden, he couldn't bear to see the book again.

"It's in there," he said and pointed at the acid-burned doors. Stepping forward, Hermione opened the cupboard and retrieved the copy of Advanced Potion-Making from behind the cage. She held it carefully in both hands and examined it at arm's length before cradling it close to her chest.

"All right, Harry, we can go now," she said while she put one hand on his shoulder. The tension left his body then, and he led them back out of the Room of Requirement. Since Ron was also ahead of her, neither of them noticed the small bottle that she stealthily picked up from the heap of many and slipped into her pocket on their way out.

Chapter 1

Sitting on the Hogwarts Express, Hermione rested her chin on her hand and stared out the window. The carriage was quiet as Harry, Ron, and Ginny were currently napping, lulled to sleep by the dull vibrations of the train. In their sleep, Ginny, who was sitting next to Harry, had leaned over so that her head was resting on his shoulder, and Harry, in turn was resting his head protectively on hers. Ron was by her side, and at one point had been leaning towards, but a particularly nasty bump on the tracks had repositioned him so that he was now leaning against the wall opposite her and snoring slightly with his mouth agape. Not that she minded.

While she was just as exhausted as the other three, there were too many thoughts floating through her head, and she hadn't had enough time to herself these last few days to thoroughly process them. Every morning since that night she had woken up with a dull, leaden feeling in the depths of her soul. And every morning she would once again realize that yes, Dumbledore was truly dead, and Snape had been the one to kill him. Although it seemed much easier for Harry and Ron to accept the latter, for her, it was just as hard as the former. There were few constants in Hermione Granger's life, but for the last five years, one of them had been that Professor Snape, the greasy bastard, was one of the good guys. He had proven it when he had risked his reputation and shown the former Minister of Magic his Dark Mark. He had proven it a year before that when he had risked his own life by protecting them from Remus in werewolf form, even though she had just earlier that night cast the stunning spell on him. But most important of all, he had somehow proven his redemption to Dumbledore.

And that was what was plaguing Hermione's mind. What was it that Snape had done or said to have so fooled Dumbledore into believing in him so implicitly? How could such a great man have been so mistaken? And, her pride asked herself subconsciously, how could she have been so deceived?

There was another part of her--a part that she kept well hidden from Harry--that still fostered a glimmer of hope that both men had not been truly lost. A hope that perhaps one of them had been a Polyjuiced imposter. Or that Snape had been under the Imperius curse. Or that there was still some plot that the two of them had figured out that would account for this great rip in her reality. But being the practical girl that she was, Hermione suppressed those ideas, for now.

While she continued to stare out into the foggy landscape that blurred past her, her free hand had strayed to her book bag, and she was idly tracing the outline of the newest collection to her library. A loud snore from Ron jolted her out of her reverie and also drew her attention to what she was doing. The book, his book. So far it was her only possible lead to the mystery of the triple agent.

After double-checking that the other three were still safely ensconced in sleep's sweet embrace, she carefully and silently eased the textbook out of her bag. How ironic that the self-named "Half-Blood Prince", whom Harry had defended so vehemently, would turn out to be Snape. She really should have been able to figure it out earlier. Who else would have been able to deduce all those tips to producing perfect potions? Or for that matter, been able to create those sinister hexes and curses?

Since she had never had the chance before to peruse it at leisure before, she now took the time to pore over the pages. After just a few, she was able to see just what a genius Severus Snape had been at seventeen. While she was slightly irked that he had been better than she currently was at Potions, she could not help but respect him. Clever, yet evil, she reminded herself.

Towards the end of the book, she noticed one page that looked different from the others. While the previous pages had been crammed with the black-inked notations, there were areas of the parchment here that were clear of any writing. Her pulse quickened as she reached for her wand. She remembered that the Specialis Revelio spell had produced no results but that had been cast on the book as a whole to see if it was anything more than just a book. The spell she would cast now would reveal anything written in invisible ink. With three quick taps and a quietly whispered, "Aparecium," the words that she suspected would be there appeared. What she didn't expect, though, was that they would be in a different handwriting.