This Present Darkness

Chapter Seven

"few and evil have the days of the years of my life been"

Genesis 47:9

"O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united"

Genesis 49:6

Things were quiet for a few weeks and before she knew it, Hermione had started at Hogsbridge University. She had opted to do several general Arts subjects first year before she made any decisions that would take her down any particular career track. She was tossing up about going into the Department for Magical Research and Development at the Ministry of Magic but had not finally made up her mind whether she wanted a research and development career as yet.

Padma had gone onto Hogsbridge as well and was doing a major in Muggle Studies hoping to eventually get into the Muggle Relations Department at the Ministry. One of her first assignments had been to compare the previous war on Voldemort and the Death Eaters with a similar Muggle crisis. Of course, those brought up in wizarding families had little exposure to Muggle history or current events. Padma had asked Hermione for help in gathering Muggle sources of information.

One afternoon, one week into semester found them in front of Hermione's TV with a stack of videos and DVDs. Padma had never used a TV before. "This is so cool! Geez, Muggles are clever. They don't have pensieves or moving photos or crystal balls so they use these to document their history visually," she observed, looking at the TV from all sides.

"Yes. Now you decided on World War II as you comparative Muggle crisis and fortunately there is heaps of information on this part of history," Hermione clarified, setting up the video with a tape.

"Uh huh. I wanted to compare the Nazi's hatred of Jews with the Death Eaters hatred of Muggle born wizards and witches," Padma elaborated.

"Oh. So you're really interested in what Muggles call 'the Holocaust'," Hermione said with a frown, glancing back from the video at Padma.

"That's right. The whole of World War II would have been an impossibly broad subject for an undergraduate paper. That would require a Ph.D. thesis," Padma explained.

"Very true," Hermione agreed. "Okay, so have you formed a hypothesis?"

"Not yet. I will compare why Nazis hated Jews with why Death Eaters hated Muggle borns. I'll look for common threads and then come up with my hypothesis," Padma said with a decisive nod.

"You're looking for a common basis for the prejudice across Nazis and Death Eaters?" Hermione probed.

"Something like that. There may not be any but it will be an interesting study," Padma qualified cautiously. "Why do you think Nazis hated the Jews?" she asked curiously.

"There are a lot of theories," Hermione said with a shrug. "I don't know a lot about it except that ostensibly is was about racial purity. Nazis had an ideal of 'the Master Race' made up of pure blood Germans. They didn't want the German race sullied by Jewish blood intermingling with theirs'," Hermione said, her disgust evident in her voice. "Really, it was probably economic. The Jews in Europe were very rich and economically powerful. The Germans wanted what they had and used the excuse of racial purity to get it. The Germans felt threatened by the Jews."

"Do you think the old wizarding families felt threatened by the Muggle borns coming into the wizarding community?" Padma asked seriously.

"I don't see why. The old wizarding families are far wealthier and more powerful than the new Muggle born additions to the wizarding world," Hermione pondered.

"Then it boils down to the issue of blood lines and the Death Eaters not wanting wizard and Muggle blood mixed," Padma continued.

"Prejudice must have some basis in fear," Hermione reasoned.

"You're right," Padma agreed. "What were the Death Eaters afraid of?"

"Maybe weakening their magic over time by mixing it - even in small amounts - with Muggle blood?" Hermione postulated.

"Definitely possible," Padma nodded.

"What we don't know yet is whether their fears are actually justified or not," Hermione said thoughtfully.

Padma was silent as this realisation dawned on her for the first time. "So you think the Death Eaters may be right?" she finally said, her voice quiet with horror.

"No. I will never believe there is any just cause for murder, torture or any attempt to wipe out a whole race or section of society," Hermione said firmly, her eyes hard.

"No," Padma said softly.

"Even if we Muggle borns do weaken the pure bloods' magic over time, I don't believe they were right to embark on their campaign of terror. Here's why," Hermione stated and turned on the first video.

Sketchy black and white shots jerked over the screen. Humans packed like animals into cattle cars. Dozens of people squashed into one flea-ridden room in the ghettos, their faces skeletal and their eyes without hope. Walking bones with shaved heads in rags lying on rough wooden bunks, six deep. Old men being kicked to death in the street; mothers forced to throw their babies on huge lit pyres. Rows of ovens filled with human bones. Human carcasses being bulldozed like dirt into huge mass graves. Massive bonfires of the dead with the bodies stacked like so much firewood; half dead women undergoing grotesque tortures under the pretence of medical science. Piles of shoes, spectacles, gold teeth, hair, clothes; all that remained of millions slaughtered. Naked men crowded into huge shower rooms and gassed; the lines of people stripped naked and shot dead before huge pits. Nazis setting huge dogs on helpless Jews on the streets; winding lines of people carrying all the possessions they could manage as they marched away from their homes. People screaming for their loved ones as they were separated at the death camps; mothers, children, grandparents, siblings.

Minute after minute of the horror unreeled before them. Hermione's face was tight with cynical and tired resignation. Padma's was flooded with horror, never having seen anything like it in her life.

There was a sudden crash behind them. Hermione and Padma jumped and turned to look. A very sick-looking, white-faced Snape was standing there with a mug smashed at his feet. His dark eyes were riveted on the screen.

"What is this?" he rasped.

"Footage from World War II," Hermione replied, examining him with concern. "Are you sick, Professor?" she added.

He didn't reply, simply watching as though unable to remove his gaze. Hermione thought she understood. She knew what Padma didn't, that Snape had been a Death Eater. She wondered how many scenes similar to these he'd seen during those years as Voldemort's flunky. She turned back to the screen. The footage was coming to an end, thank goodness.

As soon as the tape ended, Snape woke up as if from a dream and fled downstairs to his rooms.

"Well, that was odd," Padma observed, looking after him.

"It is pretty horrifying the first time you see this footage," Hermione fobbed her off. Padma was quiet. That was a complete understatement.

"There are some other tapes that explain more about what was in the raw footage," Hermione said to change the subject. "Do you want to see those now?"

"Yes, please. I'll make some notes too," Padma said gratefully, getting out a quill and some parchment from her bag.

* * *

Snape sat on an armchair in front of the fire, as still as death and staring sightlessly ahead of him. Memories flickered in front of his eyes, each as dark as the images he had just watched. "Muggles do this to each other, too," he murmured.

It was dark before Padma left and she thanked Hermione for her help. She was unusually quiet, the scale of the evil and human tragedy she'd witnessed too great to even comprehend fully.

After she'd left, Hermione made some coffee and on an impulse took some to Snape having cleaned up the broken mug earlier while Padma was busy making notes.

"Professor?" she called as she went down the stairs. He didn't answer. "Professor?" She found him still in the armchair looking shocked and lost in some other world. Not a pleasant one either, from the look of it. "It's freezing down here," she commented, putting the coffee down next to him. She efficiently built a fire. She looked at him again. He hadn't moved. "Professor, what's wrong?" she demanded, handing him the mug.

Finally he looked at her and took the coffee. He didn't drink it, however. "I take it that footage brought back vivid memories of being a Death Eater?" Hermione stated bluntly. He nearly dropped his coffee. He was in no state to wrangle with her.

"Yes," he grated.

"Why'd you do it?" she asked flatly, sitting on the foot-rest.

"Become a Death Eater?" he clarified. "I come from an old, powerful, wealthy, wizarding bloodline Miss Granger," he said with a sudden, cold formality.

So it's 'Miss Granger' again now, is it? Hermione thought with irritation.

"I was afraid our powerful magical bloodline would be diluted if we allowed Muggle borns to invade the wizarding world," he continued harshly.

"So I was right," Hermione concluded aloud as an aside. "Was it worth all the torture and murder?" she asked mercilessly, her face withdrawn.

"No!" he almost yelled and put the mug down sharply. "No! How could it be?" he asked, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"Then why?" Hermione persisted, needing to know.

"I didn't know," he replied emotionlessly, suddenly flat. "Not anything like the full extent of it. When I did, I went to Dumbledore and turned myself in."

"How could you not have known for all those years?" she asked incredulously.

"I went into the Death Eaters as a Potion Maker and Muggle spy. I only had to attend very few, formal meetings. I was never part of the most inner circle. Most of the time I was in a lab making potions that were picked up by other Death Eaters or I was in the Muggle parts of Europe someplace spying," he explained wearily.

"But you've never lived as a Muggle," Hermione questioned.

"I didn't spy as I am. I'm an unregistered animagus. I spied in my raven form," he said quietly.

It took Hermione a few seconds to take that in. "And the potions? Surely you could tell from what was ordered that it was being used for murderous purposes?" she probed.

"Some were poisons but most were truth serums or body binds or other fairly innocuous things. The Death Eaters weren't very sophisticated. Their methods were remarkably similar to the sheer base brutality of that... that..."

"Footage?" Hermione supplied.

"If that's what it's called," he replied drily, never having watched TV or a video before even in Hermione's home.

"How did you finally find out?" Hermione asked more gently.

"Voldemort was thinking of promoting me from what I can gather but I was untested in the more unsavoury aspects of the Death Eaters' activities. I'd been oddly protected from the worst of it for over a decade. One night, he called me for a special tour of the inner circle's operations. I'm sure it was quite deliberate. If I'd shown any reaction at all to the horrors he was about to show me, I'm sure he would have killed me on the spot. There are times I wish he had," Snape said frankly and without self-pity. Hermione carefully did not interrupt.

"We toured...Death camps so similar to the ones I saw today..." he couldn't continue for a minute. "People half dead, corpses everywhere, the stench of death. All were Muggle born witches or wizards - any half bloods. Even friends of half bloods were targeted. Horribly tortured people in filthy, flea-ridden, rat-infested cages like animals sitting in their own excrement." Snape covered his eyes with one pale, long-fingered hand. "They stared at me without hope once they saw the Dark Mark on my robes. That was when I first really understood what I was. These people saw no difference between me and those that tortured them everyday," Snape's face was bone white and his slender hands trembled. "They were starved like skeletons, their heads shaved and sitting naked on cold, bare stone; chained like dogs. The had horrible infected wounds from some bizarre experiments that were being run on them." Snape shook his head. "I can't describe the filth, the dark, the despair - the complete inhumaneness of it."

Hermione was quiet. "Not all of them were treated that way. The pretty Muggle born girls and boys were kept clean and better fed to be used sexually by the high ranking Death Eaters." Hermione wanted to bring up her lunch. "Of course, they were all killed eventually too," Snape continued blankly.

"How many died during that time?" she asked quietly in a neutral tone.

"I don't know," Snape admitted with shame. "I should but I don't."

"How did you get away?" she asked.

"After the 'tour of operations' we were going to have a dinner. I never wanted to eat again," he commented bitterly. "I was shown to my room in Voldemort's manor and I apparated as soon as I was left alone and went straight to Dumbledore. I wanted to go straight to Azkaban rather than be associated with those evil lunatics ever again," he explained, his face tight.

"If you had gone to Azkaban, all you would have been able to think about was those wretches in Voldemort's clutches," Hermione observed quietly.

"Yes, I know. I thought it was fitting punishment. Dumbledore knew too but said I would be more useful outside of Azkaban," Snape added.

"He wanted to save you from there," Hermione said.

"Yes," Snape agreed.

Hermione was silent for a few minutes. "What did your parents think about you becoming a Death Eater?" she asked curiously.

"They were Death Eaters too but like me, weren't part of the inner circle," Snape said quietly, looking away.

"So now? Are they okay with your choice to leave?" Hermione asked gently.

"They were killed by Aurors long before I defected," Snape said emotionlessly.

"I'm sorry," she said simply.

"Don't be. I don't miss them," he said matter-of-factly. Hermione looked at him without surprise. Something in her expression suddenly made a connection in Snape's mind.

"You're the same, aren't you? You don't miss your parents either. That's why you never cry," he said with narrowed eyes.

"No," Hermione said honestly, her face blank. She was silent for a few moments. "My parents weren't very affectionate people and they had ridiculous expectations. If I got 98% in an exam, they asked what happened to the other 2%. It was hard work earning their love and approval, and I never managed it," she explained finally, with a shrug. "What were your parents like?" she asked.

"Hard as diamonds, cold as glaciers and distant as a mountain peak," he replied wryly. "I was their only son of an old bloodline, so you can imagine the expectations."

"Yes," Hermione sighed. "And you were brought up with this pride of pure bloodline?"

He simply nodded. "I didn't question it and I should have," he muttered.

"Why? In a way, it makes sense to try and preserve the full magical strength of the wizarding community," Hermione said logically.

"The biggest lies are concocted mainly of truth," Snape snapped angrily. "I fell for it."

"Did you suspect that the Death Eaters' strategy was simply to destroy anyone with mixed Muggle and wizarding blood?" Hermione questioned with a frown.

"I didn't see it with my own eyes so I deliberately didn't think about it. I guess I knew deep down. I just didn't want to face it. My family and all my friends were Death Eaters. On the surface, even if I had faced the truth there seemed no-where to run to," Snape said resignedly. "It sounds pathetic even to my own ears now."

"Poor Malfoy," she murmured.

"Yes. He would appear to be in a similar situation," Snape agreed.

"He's not even as smart as you. He won't see any alternatives," she mused.

Snape shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "We have yet to know Malfoy's true character under a big test," Snape replied fairly. Hermione suddenly understood Snape's preferential treatment of the boy. It was born of a sympathetic understanding of his situation in life as it had been so similar to his own growing up.

"If you saw so many people in these death camps that one time Professor, how did so many disappear without the Muggle community panicking?" Hermione asked inquisitively.

"Memory charms. The Death Eaters took people that were suspected of having wizarding blood and then everyone who had known them had their memory erased," Snape explained simply. "Tens of thousands disappeared from all over the world during that decade, I estimate."

"A huge, well-organised endeavour," Hermione commented with a shake of her head.

"Yes. My role as a spy was to identify them from ordinary Muggles," he said with a twist of his thin, pale lips. "I had no idea what happened to them after that. I chose not to know," he added bitterly.

"How did you find them?" she asked thoughtfully.

"Arithmancy at first. Then once I'd located a suspect, I watched them in my animagus form until they gave themselves away," he clarified.

"Use of raw magic under emotional stress?" Hermione guessed.

"Yes," he answered briefly.

"There must have been hundreds of spies," Hermione said with a frown. "Then the Death Eaters who ran the camps and experimented on the captives as well as the elite inner circle," she said, thinking aloud. "Most of them got away," she concluded.

"Yes," Snape said heavily. "Very few are in Azkaban.

"The same happened with the Nazis," Hermione said with quiet anger. "You can't identify them?" she asked hopefully.

"We wore masks at meetings and I had little contact with other Death Eaters other than that apart from my family and friends - nearly all of whom are now either dead or in Azkaban," Snape said with a hopeless shrug. "I could now identify very few. I would need proof anyway and how would I get it now?"

"Mmmmm," Hermione mumbled, disappointed. She noticed suddenly that he looked drawn. "I'm sorry talking about all this has been hard on you," she remarked and gave his arm a brief squeeze. He jumped as though she'd burnt him.

"It should be hard on me," Snape said sullenly, deep lines cutting into his drawn flesh from nose to mouth. She examined him closely and her thoughts from the animagus potions lesson came back to her.

"That's why you do all those things, isn't it? Risk your health making noxious potions without protection; skip meals and stay in those dungeons never seeing the sun; test dangerous potions on yourself. It's all a form of self-punishment, isn't it? Even being nasty to people so they stay away from you is a kind of self-enforced loneliness that adds to the punishment," she reflected rather analytically.

Snape's dark eyes bored into her profile, blind for once to its delicate, feminine curves. He was speechless. Was it true, he thought anxiously? If it was, why had he never realised it himself? He frowned deeply. He suddenly felt as transparent as glass and he loathed it.

Hermione glanced at him after a moment when he was silent. His face was white and haggard, his body tense and bowed. Her face softened into concern. "You need a good meal and a glass of wine. I'll bet you've eaten nothing all day because I've been out for breakfast and lunch," she accused gently with a wry smile.

She was right. Snape hated it. She got up and said, "come upstairs in an hour and we'll have dinner, okay?" Before she turned to go, she dropped a kiss atop Snape's head. Snape grew even more rigid under her affectionate caress. He didn't relax until he heard her footsteps on the stairs going up to the kitchen.

* * *

As Hermione made dinner she contemplated what Snape had just told her. She made no excuses for Snape's behaviour in the past but she could imagine that it would have been very hard to break out of the life his parents and friends had wanted for him. She could even understand to a lesser extent the fear that drove the Death Eaters of their magical ability being diminished by the Muggle-borns. She felt restless and a bit sick as she chopped carrots and peeled potatoes. Once again, she didn't know how all this made her feel. She still felt a bizarre sense of concern about him but the thought of him being involved in these activities made her stomach churn. She very much wanted to cry but found, as per usual, that she couldn't. She knew she was still sexually attracted to him too as sitting near him, talking to him today had made her skin prickle with awareness even while what she was hearing was horrifying her. She felt mixed up and confused and over-wrought.

Meanwhile Snape was struggling not to think about all the memories that had been dredged up that day nor how hard Hermione had struggled not to show her revulsion regarding what he had told her. Still, she had wanted to know and he was tired of hiding these things inside him and allowing them to grow in him like a cancer, taking over his mind. He did not understand why he had told all this to her in particular, apart from the fact that she already knew general details about his past thanks to that blasted Potter. Then again, he still had no idea why he did all manner of things with regard to Hermione. He wanted to protect her but he didn't want to hide the truth about himself from her either. Better she has no illusions, he thought grimly. He knew she was not a romantic person nor that he was likely to be the object of any projected romantic ideals but he didn't want to lie to her, not even by omission or be evasive. Suddenly he realised that somewhere along the line, Hermione had earned his respect and trust. He frowned darkly. It was not in his nature to trust, he was a naturally suspicious person. He bit his lip hard as he contemplated the dangers that this new feeling of trust could bring.

* * *

There was less than a month before their magical contract was over. Snape wasn't entirely sure how he felt about this fact. Once part of him would be glad to get back to the comforting familiarity of his routine at Hogwarts and another part of him felt terrified that the past 2 months had changed him so much that even the habitual would feel strange. He felt off-balance and as though he had woken up one morning to find that he was really somebody else. He didn't know what had brought this feeling on. Possibly the unwelcome sexual re-awakening he'd experienced since he'd lived in close proximity to Hermione or maybe it was being in the Muggle world without anything recognizable around him. Perhaps both.

Perhaps, a small voice at the back of his mind suggested, you've gotten used to having Hermione to yourself and you don't want to have to give her up. He told the voice to shut up even as an inescapable feeling of dread overtook him at the thought.

His mind drifted over the events of the past few weeks. It was amazing that none of Voldemort's spies had seen him on either of the two occasions when he had been with Hermione as an animagus in the Dark Forest. It was true that he had not spent much time with her on either occasion but it was still incredibly fortunate for them both. Snape knew full well that if any of Voldemort's spies had seen them together, they would both already be dead.

Hermione was feeling listless too. University was far more challenging and difficult than high school. She was used to only working as hard as her natural curiosity and interest demanded in order to get top marks. At university, she was going to have to put in some serious hard yards to maintain a good grade point average.

Ridiculous as it seemed, the thought of Snape leaving in a month's time made her feel unbearably hollow. True, he wasn't much company at the best of times in the conventional sense but she would miss him. Since the night of the party, he had given no sign that he even realised she was female let alone that he was still sexually attracted to her. Suddenly, that thought brought tears to her eyes. It startled her that she cared so much about how he felt about her. When did that happen, she wondered? She also felt annoyed that after showing her in such a graphic way that he desired her, he had gone on to pretend it never happened ever since. She could tell herself it was because he was being a responsible guardian but it pissed her off none-the-less and didn't allay her insecurities.

Apart from all that, she was worried about him. She didn't want him to go to any more Death Eater meetings, especially not if he came back in the same state he did the last time. She was determined to go to the next meeting and sent her owl to Harry with a request to borrow his invisibility cloak for a few weeks.

* * *

Snape knew it would not be long before he was summoned again and sure enough, within a week of recovering from the cruciatus curse the mark on his arm began burning again late one evening. With an angry sigh, he pulled on his Death Eater robes and his mask, and apparated at the designated place.

Hermione awoke from a deep sleep with a start. She wasn't sure what woke her except perhaps the echoing quietness of the house. She frowned and got out of bed. Something told her that something wasn't quite right. She crept out into the hallway. Suddenly she noticed there was a dim light from downstairs. Was Snape still up, she wondered? She glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall; it read 1am. Impulsively she went downstairs. If Snape wanted to know why she was there, she would say she heard something.

The first thing she saw was a large black owl sitting on the back of one of the couches in the sitting room. Hermione recognised that owl and it only meant one thing - that Snape was out on Death Eater business. She went through to his room and sure enough, there was an open parchment with a Dark Mark on it. Hermione felt absolutely no conscience about picking it up and reading it. If Snape was in potential danger, she wanted to know about it and was completely unapologetic about it.

Her mouth fell open as she read it. She couldn't believe where they were meeting that night. How was Snape going to explain this, she wondered heatedly? Angrily she crumpled the paper into a ball and watched with surprise as it disappeared into a flash of green light. "Well, that was careless of you Snape. Obviously you're not supposed to leave these around for nosey teenagers to read," Hermione murmured.

She hurried back up the stairs and pulled on a track suit. She left her feet bare even though it was cold as any noise of footsteps at all would give her away. She pulled Harry's cloak over her and using floo, made her way to a pub in a village many miles away.

The pub was not far from Snape's family home and she could quite easily walk there in less than 10 minutes. As she could have predicted, Snape's home was really a mansion - a huge gothic pile.

The huge, rusted, iron gates were easy enough to get through with a simple metal bending charm. She had expected there to be some vicious charms protecting the place but only encountered similar tactics to the ones Hogwarts used. To a Muggle, the mansion would look merely derelict and deserted. As for the wizarding community, no-one would dare enter the Snape mansion without permission.

She snuck in through a ground level, library window. If Hermione has been in her normal frame of mind, she probably would have had to be forcibly dragged from that room. It had floor to vaulted ceiling of books of every size, shape, binding and language imaginable. The room itself was the size of a ballroom and had tall cases of yet more books and magical instruments lined up neatly along the centre of the room. The dark wood panelling and faded brocades gave the room a dark and neglected and austere air. Hermione was to find later that almost the whole house had a similar feel to it.

It was not hard to find the Death Eaters' meeting. She simply followed the hissing voice that was surprisingly loud and clear down corridors until she came to a well-lit room. Confidently she sidled in, knowing she could not be seen or heard. Her heart stopped for a minute when she saw the reptilian speaker. He was tall and broad shouldered under his Death Eater robes, and had a lean, broad face with slit-like, red eyes. Was this what Harry had had to face so many times, she wondered with a pang for her friend. He was truly hideous. He was hairless and had no nose - only tiny, flat nostrils. His mouth was thin and his skin a repulsive shade of parchment yellow. Dracula eat your heart out, Hermione thought inconsequentially.

He was haranguing his Death Eaters, around 200 of them Hermione estimated.

**". . . I also want to talk to you quite candidly about a very grave matter. We can talk about it quite frankly among ourselves and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate before to do our duty to ourselves, and to annihilate those Death Eaters who had lapsed - so we have never spoken about it and will never speak of it again. It was that good breeding which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never speak of it. It appalled us all, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders should be issued and it should be necessary.

"I am referring to the Muggle-born Wizard Eradication Programme, the extermination of the Muggle-born among us. It is one of those things which is easy to talk about. 'The Muggle-borns will be exterminated', says every Death Eater, 'It's clear, it's in our programme. Elimination of the Muggle-borns, extermination and we'll do it.' And then they come along, the worthy Death Eaters, and each one of them produces his decent Muggle-born. It's clear the others are swine, but this one is a fine Muggle-born wizard. Not one of those who talk like that has watched it happening, not one of them has been through it. Most of you will know what it means when a hundred corpses are lying side by side, or five hundred or a thousand are lying there. To have stuck it out and--apart from a few exceptions due to human weakness -- to have remained decent, that is what has made us tough. This is a glorious page in our history, and one that has never been written and can never be written. For we know how difficult we would have made it for ourselves if, on top of the bombing raids, the burdens and deprivations of war, we still had the number of Muggle-borns today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and troublemakers. We would now probably have reached the stage when the Muggle-borns were still a large part of the body of the wizarding community.

"We took from them what wealth they had. I issued a strict order, which you had carried out, that this wealth should, as a matter of course, be handed over to be shared among the Death Eaters without reserve. I have taken none of it for myself. Individual wizards who have lapsed will be punished in accordance with an order I issued at the beginning which gave this warning: Whoever takes so much as a knut of it personally is a dead wizard. A number of Death Eaters--there are not very many of them -- have fallen short, and they have died, without mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty to ourselves, to destroy these Muggle-borns who wanted to destroy us. But we have not the right to enrich ourselves personally with so much as a fur, a watch, a knut, a cigarette or anything else. We have exterminated a bacterium because we do not want in the end to be infected by the bacterium and die of it. I will not see so much as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it may form, we will cauterize it. All in all, we can say that we fulfilled this most difficult duty for the love of our pureblood wizards. And our spirit, our soul, our character has not suffered injury from it. . . . "

Hermione held her hand over her mouth in case she let slip any noise to betray her presence. Her eyes were filled with tears of disbelief and utter horror. She had wondered about these Death Eater meetings in a vague way from time to time but the reality of the depravity and evil was something she could never have imagined. She could not believe how blatant they were in their evil nor how completely they clung to their own self-image as 'decent' and 'well bred' and 'morally right'. It was ludicrous! It was deeply terrifying. Still, Voldemort was almost hypnotic in his rhetoric.

After Voldemort's speech several Death Eaters were called up to report on their activities. With such small numbers, they were not able to accomplish much anymore. Someone mysteriously disappearing; someone's name being smeared, someone losing their job at the Ministry, someone hexed; it was pitiful compared to the one-time scale of their operation that Snape had described to her.

Finally Hermione heard Snape's name being called. He came forward, taking off his mask. Hermione watched him anxiously. "Well," Voldemort hissed. "I hope you have some information on the black unicorn for me. It's your special assignment and I expect results."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. Her animagus had been made Snape's special assignment? He'd never told her that. She watched as Snape bent one knee to Voldemort the way the others who had come forward had. It looked automatic and practised to Hermione. As though he had been doing it all his life, as he probably had.

"Yes, my Lord. As I'm sure your spies have told you, the unicorn has not appeared again. However, in my family's library I have come across an ancient Arabic source regarding the creature." Hermione's ears pricked up. "Apparently, when the unicorn kills - it charges with its gold horn. Anyone whose skin is pierced by this horn has any dark power drawn out via the horn. The gold horn absorbs this power, turns red and then finally black before dropping off. The unicorn loses its magical properties and becomes an ordinary black horse. The blackened horn is then useless too."

Voldemort studied Snape with displeasure. "And how can this creature be destroyed?"

"It can't be killed until it's sacrificed its horn in such a way," Snape replied steadily.

Voldemort looked very displeased. "So, in order to be destroyed, this creature must destroy another's power first?" he hissed, eyes glowing.

"Yes, my Lord," Snape confirmed calmly.

"Truly, a dark creature," Voldemort said with a sneer. "Can it be caught?"

"The only information I could find was from the apocryphal writings of St Macrina. It reads:

*** "In the beginning, they were like the unicorn - wild and uncommitted such as cannot be caught by the hunter, no matter how skilful. Nay but he can be tamed only of his own free will"."

Voldemort's eyes narrowed with concentration. "So it can be tamed, if it can be persuaded," he mused aloud.

Well, you won't be persuading me, Hermione thought.

Voldemort's gaze came to rest on Snape. "Well Snape, you know your assignment now. Find and tame this unicorn and when you have, bring it to me!"

Snape didn't flicker an eyelid. "Yes, my Lord," he murmured.

"You have done well Snape so I will not inflict my usual punishment for your previous disloyalty to me," Voldemort said contemptuously. Hermione let her breath out quietly in relief. Snape nodded and pulled his mask back on, melting back into the crowd.

The meeting didn't last much longer, it had already been going for the two hours Hermione had been there and goodness knows how long before. One by one the Death Eaters melted into the night; either Apparating or using one of the fireplaces. Voldemort was, mercifully, the first to go. Hermione wasn't sure when Snape went but the large, formal sitting room was empty inside of ten minutes.