The Perfect Azkaban Breakout

10 September 1999

Hermione walked along Hyde Park slowly, savouring the autumn breeze. It would rain soon, and the smell of approaching rain was one of her favorite smells. A Muggle-specific Notice-Me-Not bracelet jangled on her left wrist.

She stepped aside to avoid being crashed into by a couple of tracksuited joggers. They were having a conversation about which stocks to buy, based on some fancy mathematical calculations she had no idea of.

Perhaps when all this was over, Hermione contemplated, she would take her International Baccalaureates and then go to Cambridge or Durham for a degree in Physics. Not Oxford, since that was too close to the burnt out home that her parents had died in two years previously.

Enough of that. Shove that emotion away. Forget Mum. Forget Dad. Forget Ginny. Forget Ron. Forget Ron. Forget Ron.

Bloody Hell. Perhaps she would start swearing. In his memory. That was a good idea. She could do that. She resolved to do so. And if she ever had kids, she would name them all Ronald, even the girls, and teach them how to swear. There must be books that taught creative cussing.

She chuckled, and wrote the idea down in her Muggle notepad, for future perusal. Now she could forget about it and focus on other things.

Focus on those left.

Focus on Harry.

Get him out of Azkaban, and then Hex him to little itty bitty pieces for having the nerve and pure idiocy to get himself thrown in there when he should be comforting her.

But get him out first. Hex later.

An owl approached her, and she began heading for the nearest park bench. She got there before the owl did. She noticed, with a start, that she was clenching her wand. Wrist holsters were a great thing, and the waterproof South African one Ron had given her two birthdays ago was one of her most treasured possessions. He said a cousin of his had picked it up for him in Dublin's equivalent of Knockturn Alley. She hadn't wanted further details, and Ron had been relieved not to provide any.

The brown European owl was not one she recognized. It did not have a Ministry collar. It was brown, and its eyes were the orange of others of its species. Not an animagus, then. None of the Muggles around her seemed to notice it either, so it presumably had a similar Muggle-attention-avoidance charm as she had.

She relaxed. Checking the parchment it carried for spells, she cast a charm to open it and had it unroll on the park bench for easy reading. The owl nodded approvingly. Perhaps it was related to one of Moody's.

Miss Granger,

I know the location of the final object you and your friends seek.

The Dark Lord is planning to invade Azkaban and kill Potter there shortly. You need my help to get him out.

Yes, I killed Albus Dumbledore. But I have always wanted to kill the Dark Lord, as indicated by my previous messages.

I have killed and tortured several other people since, including innocent Muggles and Order members, to gain the trust of the Dark Lord. I could have killed you as well, but chose not to in anticipation of this day. You would, at least, not Hex me on sight, thanks to your incorrigible Gryffindor sense of morality.

Inform the owl of this decision. You see the ringlet on its left foot. I can hear everything you say to it.

I can still kill you.

Bellatrix

Hermione sat there, stunned. Then she stood up and paced around the bench, leaving the parchment hovering over it. As she paced, she kept an eye on the owl and its ringlet bug. It stared back, its expression as unreadable as its Master's.

Its Master was Snape. 'Bellatrix', their trusty anonymous infamous informant, was Snape. And that was why he had spared her life on a couple of missions. She had wondered about that.

Harry had told her that Snape and Dumbledore had looked in each other's eyes shortly before the Headmaster had died. They almost certainly communicated by Legilimancy in that time.

Snape was still a murderer, rapist and torturer. He had earned the right to be Kissed several times over.

But he had helped them.

She came to a conclusion.

She turned both of her eyes to the owl.

"Tell your Master I wish to talk with him. Cooperation is possible."

The next thing she knew was that her former Potions Master was standing in front of her. A red light was fast approaching her, from his wand. Then all went black.

One hour later, at 12 Grimmauld Place

It was a good thing, Moody reflected, that standard Inner Order practice prevented any of them from walking in public places alone. They were always in groups of at least two, and each group had at least one invisible member.

Granger had wanted some time to walk in the Muggle park where she had spent many hours reading as a young girl. He had not liked it, but appreciated the need for Thinking Time. He had lost his father at sixteen, his mother at twenty-three, his wife at thirty-eight, his only child (a daughter) at forty, his favorite nephew at forty-one. Every time, and many other times, he had needed Thinking Time. It was usually done in his Kitchen, watching a meal burn, but to each their own. If Granger had to do it in a public area, and Tonks was willing to guard her, this was ... acceptable. Barely.

Tonks had read Snape's hovering note as soon as Granger stopped reading it, and had stunned the traitor less than a second after he had stunned Granger. Moody would yell at the Muggleborn witch for getting stunned in the first place, but not now.

Minerva and Tonks and Lupin and Weasley (Bill) and Weasley (Fleur) were here, waiting for the Veritaserum to take hold of Snape. Surprisingly, it did not appear that he had taken the antidote beforehand. But he still required three times the regular dose before his answers were halfway near believable. His self-training as a spy ensured that. Not that Moody believed three was adequate, but it was possible that three and a bit was fatal, and it was difficult to extract information and misinformation from dead Death Eaters.

Oh well. Time to start asking questions.

"Name," asked Moody. He walked around Snape, wooden leg clunking its usual rhythm for such occasions. He had spent hours perfecting the optimal type and frequency of clunk for interrogations like this.

"Severus Hadrian Prince Snape."

"Occupation."

"Potions Master. Spy. Death Eater."

"Spy for whom?"

"For the Dark Lord and for Albus Dumbledore."

"Who do you owe ultimate loyalty too?"

"Neither."

"Do you serve You-Know-Who now?"

"Yes. I am a Death Eater. We always serve the Dark Lord. We have no choice."

"Do you wish to serve You-Know-Who now?"

"No."

"Did you kill Albus Dumbledore?"

"Yes."

"Did you kill him on his orders?"

"No."

There was silence.

"Why did you kill Albus?" This was from Minerva. Her hands were shaking, presumably in rage, and her voice was close to trembling. She had, after Albus, been the only person whose opinion of Snape was higher than pigeon droppings, and had taken his betrayal hardest.

"I was under an Unbreakable Vow to kill him if Draco Malfoy was unable to. If I had not killed him, I would have died. Dumbledore knew this, but we had not expected the situation to arise that quickly and thus had not discussed its possibility. He asked me not to kill him, but I disagreed. I felt my worth as a spy is more than Albus' worth as a leader. This is still true. Albus was too soft on Potter. By getting close to the Dark Lord, I could find the location of the remaining Horcruxes, and help vanquish the Dark Lord."

Lupin shot a spell at Snape, but Tonks pushed aside his arm. It hit the ceiling, leaving a large scorch mark.

"What and where is the last Horcrux?" Moody resumed his questioning.

"It is the staff of Salazar Slytherin. It is in the grave of Merope Gaunt, his mother. Her grave is unmarked. It is in St Edmund's Field in Kent. Next to it is the grave of a Mr Lucas Kewnsthorpe."

Moody's eye swivelled to focus on Granger. She had been standing at the base of the stairs behind him for the past ten minutes, listening to the traitor's poor excuse for a confession. Flanking her were the Weasley twins, wands out and wearing an uncharacteristically stern expression.

No-one said anything.

The Veritaserum wore off. More accurately, from Moody's point of view, Snape pretended it had been effective and now pretended it had worn off.

Granger broke the silence.

"Snape," she said, her voice admirably cold. "Why is your Animagus form an owl?"

Trust the girl to ask that question. Though, come to think of it, it was the most unexplainable event of the day. Tonks reported that the owl's eyes were orange, and Snape's eyes were black. The Animagus transformation did not change eye colour. Everything else that had happened was barely plausible, but this was impossible.

"That is because, idiot girl," said the irascible Potions Master with a glare that gave no indication that he was bound, shackled, under innumerable wards, and had half a dozen wands aimed at him. "I am not an Animagus. I have no natural Animagus form. The Dark Lord has aided me in the procurement of several obscure journals. One has a Potion discovered by Salazar Slyherin's great grandson for human-to-animal transfiguration. I modified it so that one could choose the animal. I find owls most suited for spying."

Moody wondered if there were degrees of silence. The silence following this pronouncement seemed even more acute than the one that followed his purported confession.

"You expect us to believe this?" asked the old Auror, his wand moving to the bound man's throat.

"I certainly don't expect you to believe anything," spat Snape. Moody moved to his left, avoiding the spittle. "I merely intend to give you information, and perhaps some of you will have adequate cerebral capacity to use it."

"Severus." Minerva spoke again, her tone icy. "Only your missives signed as Bellatrix stand in your favour. Explain what you get out of this. I wish to know why I should not turn you into a misshapen cauldron, fill it with acid, and toss you into a furnace to melt over a period of several weeks."

Snape winced, but answered. "I have been a slave of two masters for the past twenty years - the Dark Lord and Albus Dumbledore. I hate them both. I want them both dead. My mission in life is half complete. I intend to use you all to help me finish it. I will take an Unbreakable Vow to help and not hurt you all. In return, I want amnesty. I want to leave this miserable country forever under a new identity once the Dark Lord is dead. I want enough money to brew and research Potions in peace for the rest of my life. I want an Unbreakable Vow from you all to leave me alone, both directly and indirectly. I want this to end."

Moody, for the first time, felt inclined to believe him.

"You think you are in a position to ask us for anything?" spat Fred.

"I am not stupid, Mr Weasley," explained the prisoner. "If there is no exchange of Unbreakable Vows, then I will bite a capsule that is currently lodged in my teeth. They contain a Potion of my devising, and I will die. And you will gain no more information from me. I hardly need say that you need it."

"We will add to the Vows you will take," pointed out Granger, after more silence. Only Moody, Minerva, and Bill Weasley had their wands still fully raised.

"Good. You would be uncharacteristically stupid not to do so," Snape smirked.

"Why did you try to hex me then?" asked Granger after recovering from the compliment.

"To avoid this whole interrogation, of course," barked Snape. "I don't particularly love being the one bound and threatened. I was going to explain all this to you, and let you go to tell these other imbeciles."

"Of course you were," continued Granger, her poise apparently recovered. "Now, your note mentioned that Voldemort wants to break into Azkaban to kill Harry. When?"

"In three weeks, on the first of October."

"Have you got the instructions for this Potion of yours?" asked Fleur, glancing at Granger for permission to ask the question.

"Check the inside pocket on the left wrist of my cloak. There is a parchment there. It has instructions that are nearly correct. That should convince you of its plausibility. After your Vows, I will provide the correct version."

Moody could see Fleur heading for the cloak. Her husband stopped her, and began casting various revealing spells on it. It probably be several minutes before he allowed her to touch it. The old Auror approved.

In the meantime, the questioning continued.

Moody felt the ensuing debate would be a long one. And he suspected he would not be on the winning side.