Redemption

Chapter 8: The Slyffindor

"Hermione, Hermione... this could all have been avoided, if you'd just been a bit more selective about your choices. But then I guess that's the story of your life isn't it?" Percy sneered, squatting down to where Hermione lay slumped on the floor. Her mouth might be gagged, but the hatred flaring in her eyes left little doubt as to what she was trying to communicate.

"No, you're a liability now. Terry, me, and you - how cosy. We alone will know the truth behind my meteoric rise. But you've betrayed our trust now, you see?"

Hermione's eyes widened.

"Oh don't worry, I may be many things, but murderer is not one of them. I think a simple memory charm should suffice. I'm sure Terry will find some use for you after that." He laughed harshly as Terry re-entered the room.

"Ah, just in time to supervise the activation."

"Have - have you done it yet?" Terry squeaked.

"I thought that pleasure should be yours." As Percy stood smirking annoyingly to her left, Hermione wondered why Terry followed him so obediently. If he really cared about her, then why didn't he stop this maniac in his tracks? Perhaps that was why Percy had insisted on gagging her, because he was aware that blind fear exerted only a very tenuous hold.

"Me? I couldn't!"

"Oh, but you must. I seem to remember you describing me as an unimaginative bean counter in the past. I feel it only proper to let the real scientist oversee such a delicate operation."

Percy stalked toward Terry, handing over something that was blocked from Hermione's view by his turned back. As he moved away again, Hermione caught a flash of silver light. Then Terry advanced forward, affording Hermione a glimpse of the metal object clenched uncomfortably in his right hand. The large dagger glinted maliciously, leaving no doubt to its purposes.

Desperately, Hermione managed to catch Terry's eye, and concentrated forcing as much emotion as she could muster into a single, piercing stare. Terry faltered.

"Is this really necessary?" He swallowed hard, breaking away from Hermione's large brown eyes only with immense effort.

Percy stepped toward Terry and leaned threateningly into his face.

"If I have to do it, then I do it to her face," he hissed.

Terry virtually ran to Hermione, nearly colliding into the pillar she was tied to. He crouched down slowly, his knees clicking painfully. Hermione turned her head, and watched as he reached down and rolled her left sleeve up. How considerate she thought, snorting into the gag, he's chosen not to slice my pen-hand. She watched almost disinterestedly from the corner of her eye as Terry lowered the dagger toward her exposed flesh. The point was just digging into her arm, when the pressure stopped suddenly, before the blade had been able to pierce through the skin.

"I-I can't do it." Terry backed away quickly, dropping the dagger to the floor with a heavy clatter.

"Merlin's beard, Terry!" Percy bent down to retrieve the knife with obvious irritance, as Hermione's eyes widened with shock - she couldn't believe that Terry was going to let this maniac cut her up! It was very lucky for him that she was gagged right now.

Percy seemed to hold no such qualms about exacting physical pain. He picked up the dagger and strode toward her, balancing the weapon casually in his hand. She shut her eyes as he bent down, feeling as though this would lessen the pain somehow, like putting earplugs in to shut out the sound of a dentist's drill. The next thing she felt was the skin on her face tearing open, and a burning jolt whip across her face as she gasped into her gag. Then she felt something cold press onto her right cheek, and opened her eyes to find Percy bent over her, collecting drops of her blood in a glass test tube. The right side of her face was now throbbing painfully, and she could feel it was wet with blood.

"I can't believe you just did that!" Terry screamed and bent down to Hermione, dabbing at the trickling blood on her face gently with his robe sleeve. Hermione couldn't believe Terry had let him do that, had put his own spineless feelings before her physical well-being.

"Well, do you want to see whether the potion works or not?" Percy barked impatiently from somewhere to Hermione's left, out of her field of vision. Terry paused for a second, trying to catch Hermione's elusive eye, before rising quickly and striding over to Percy and out of Hermione's sight.

* * *

Snape pushed Septimus and Neville out of the way, to look for himself at the entrance under the kitchen sink. Sure enough, where the bottom of the cupboard should have been, there was a large rectangular hole over the lip of which the top of a wooden ladder protruded. That left him with a roofspace of about three feet to manoeuvre himself into, which was an uncomfortable fit for a man who stood over six foot tall. He gripped the top of the kitchen worksurface and swung his lower body into the hole. After a few seconds of blind searching he managed to find a toehold on a ladder rung, and ducked the rest of his body into the small cupboard, before beginning his descent down the sturdy ladder.

The first few steps were taken in darkness, but he was relieved to find that, as he neared the bottom of the ladder, the rest of the way was lit from below.

The ladder rattled with the weight of another person as he took his last step and jumped off gratefully. Wiping his hands reflexively on his robes he turned to examine his surroundings. They appeared to have landed in some sort of reception room, that was completely bare except for a plain wooden door on the opposite side.

"Well, this ain't much of a grand entrance," Septimus sniffed as he stepped deftly off the last rung of the ladder, and joined Snape standing in the middle of the room.

Draco cursed in the background as Neville trod on one his hands. Snape, however, was oblivious to this as he felt another violent pull rip through his guts.

"This way," he gasped, placing a hand over his stomach. "Hurry!"

Snape virtually ran to the door and tugged it open, relieved to find that it did not require magic. Every further minute spent away from Hermione seemed to be unravelling more of his mental state. He had no idea that a Location Potion could be so powerful; he just wanted it to end. He gave in to the wrenching pull readily, because he knew that the sooner he obeyed it the sooner it would go.

He was running down a straight corridor now, unseeing as he flew past closed doors, only knowing that Hermione lay at the end of the corridor, through that door. He was unaware how far behind the others really were, unaware that he had raced out of their sight.

Snape flung open the door to the laboratory, just in time to see Terry adding a few drops of crimson liquid to a vial of steaming green potion.

Hermione. She was there. Tied to the pillar.

* * *

Hermione looked up in surprise as Snape burst into the room, rushing toward her like a man possessed. Her stomach turned as she watched him fly to her side, a tall, suddenly imposing man clad in black robes with an intense expression eked out across his hard face. But he had come. He had come for her.

Snape crashed into her, knocking the wind out of her lungs.

"Thank God," she heard him mutter as he stumbled away from the painful collision, "it's finally gone."

Hermione felt the ropes coiled around her loosen, then fall to the floor as Snape cut expertly through the binds with his small knife, before reaching his deft fingers behind her head and carefully untying the knotted gag. She could feel his hands lightly in her hair, as he struggled with Percy's tight knot, until finally the choking piece of material was released, and fell onto her lap.

"Professor Snape? What are you doing here?" Terry squealed.

Hermione sprang to her feet, massaging her wrists in an attempt to return some colour and feeling into her deadened hands. She turned, and was finally able to see what Terry and Percy had been up to. They stood behind a large rectangular lab bench, Terry cowering behind Percy as he viewed Snape with trepidation, Percy clutching the vial of Phoenix Potion triumphantly.

"I believe he is just in time to witness one of his former pupil's greatest achievements, Terry," Percy drawled smugly, raising the vial to Hermione by way of acknowledgement.

Snape seemed to have noticed the strangeness of the situation for the first time, as he looked in cold puzzlement from Percy's flushed face to Terry's pale imitation.

"What is going on here?" That same cold voice whipping around the room like a curtain of ice, instantly commanded the attention of the three former Hogwarts pupils. Hermione half expected him to dock points from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw in the next breath.

"Trial run of the Phoenix Potion. I'm sure a man of your learning knows what that means," Percy smirked, lowering the vial slightly as he regarded Snape appraisingly.

"Yes, it means that you are about to waver your sanity and your life, for a few snatched moments of artificial glory."

Percy laughed. Hermione wondered how such a mirthless person could possibly find so many unamusing things humorous.

"Ah, I think not. One swig of this and my destiny will finally be realised. I hardly call that an unfair exchange."

"Percy," his tone was level, reasonable, "did you never wonder why I chose to mention the possibility of bottling fame, every time I addressed a new class of Hogwarts pupils? I did so because it was a conundrum that has puzzled the Wizarding world for hundreds of years, that has inspired much debate but little result. What makes you think that Terry Boot, an inconsequential man of twenty-five years, has managed to solve a riddle that has occupied and eluded so many great Wizarding minds?"

"Well, as to that, there's only one way to find out isn't there?" Outwardly Percy's confidence appeared untouched by Snape's reasoning, and he raised the vial to his lips.

"Of course, someone came very close in the sixteenth-century."

Percy lowered the vial slightly.

"But he had to keep taking the potion he had brewed to hold the effect, all the time steadily building up a resistance to its power. Such things poison the mind, drain the body of breath, but worst of all - worst of all, Percy - they eat away at the soul until nothing remains. Did you never wonder where the first Dementors came from? Percy, they were created, not made. That is your future."

"Yes, but it's worth it! I choose the life of a mayfly over the life of a tortoise."

"You choose death then."

"So be it."

* * *

Septimus and Draco were searching the corridor, trying to find where Snape had disappeared to. Neville was lagging some way behind, finding it hard to keep up with the long energetic strides of the two immaculate men.

"Why did he just run off like that?" Draco scowled, upset at being left out of the loop again. It wasn't as if Granger hadn't had her fair share of adventures - one could almost call it selfish.

"It's the potion," Septimus answered. "He's more used to defending himself against the darker arts. I think he underestimates how strong some of the simpler forms of magic can be. Especially when there's something inside him that the Location Potion is able to work on, something he won't admit to, so is unable to control."

"Oh?"

"Think about what Neville saw last night. Why was she kissing Severus? She can't have known it was an intruder - unless that's some traditional Muggle welcome reserved especially for nocturnal intruders."

"Hermione is not in love with Snape!" Neville shouted, red in the face as he trotted up behind Septimus.

"Yes, I would like to credit her with more sense too. But Severus... methinks he doth protest too much, if you know what I mean." Septimus tapped the side of his nose knowingly at Neville.

"Snape? Like Hermione? Man, if you'd sat through five years of Potions classes next to her you'd know exactly how ridiculous you sound. He never left her alone. He hated me because I was slow, but hated Hermione even more because she was clever. I mean, really hated her. Made fun of her teeth. Called her a know-it-all. Never mind love-hate, this was just plain hate-hate."

"He's right," Draco interjected. "He really did have it in for her. Even when we were doing N.E.W.T.'s. I used to get awarded House points for winding her up." He laughed meanly, oblivious to Neville's glare.

"Well, it's Mr. Darcy syndrome isn't it?"

Neville and Draco looked blankly at Septimus. He sighed.

"Let's just say that first impressions can often be very misleading. I think they're both starting to realise that now."

Neville and Draco looked at each, a rare, but brief, glint of agreement flashing between them.

"Nah!" they answered as one.

* * *

Percy was just turning his attentions back to the potion, when Snape whipped his wand out from the inside of his robes. However, Terry seemed to have been prepared for this eventuality, as he raised his own wand, concealed underneath the lab bench, and pointed it directly at Snape.

"Expelliarmus!"

Before Snape had time to react, his wand was sent whizzing through the air, landing in Terry's outstretched hand. The force of the spell threw Snape hard into the pillar.

"I have quite a talent with that particular spell," Terry sneered, growing in confidence as he saw his old Potions Master slumped on the floor. "I must have had a good teacher." He laughed humourlessly, aping Percy's increasingly nauseous trait.

Hermione bent down to Snape, grasping him firmly by the shoulders and peering into his face with obvious concern. She remembered another time when he had been hit by that spell, from her own wand, and had been knocked unconscious. It had taken nearly eleven years, but suddenly she felt a surge of guilt, remembering the tiny trickle of blood that had oozed out of his head that night. But he seemed to have been able to resist Terry's spell better than she had for his eyes flicked open as she touched the back of her hand to his cheek.

"Leave him alone!" Terry shrieked. "Get away from him!"

She backed away from Snape, as Terry's wand tip followed her progress.

"The sooner you forget about this nonsense the better!" he snarled, looking forward to administering the Obliviate charm, and doing both of them a favour.

"Terry." It was her turn to have a go. Snape had used Ravenclaw knowledge to try to talk down a Gryffindor; now Hermione would use Gryffindor sentiment to try to talk down a Ravenclaw. "It doesn't have to be like this. You really don't need to force me to do anything. Nothing that I wouldn't want to do anyway, that I haven't dreamed about." She paused delicately before continuing. "But I've had my fill of crowded trios, Terry, it's you that I want. Just the two of us, me and you." She advanced toward Terry, eyes fixed exclusively on his drawn face.

Snape sighed inwardly. Oldest trick in the book. If his use of cool logic had not worked, then how on earth did she expect such transparent female manipulation to work?

Percy had placed the potion back on the workbench, searching his robes with both hands for his own wand. He groaned at his own stupidity, as he realised that he had left it in the desk drawer of his office. There was something about the wavering expression on Terry's face that he didn't quite trust - he would have preferred to have had some back up.

"What do we need Percy for? The two of us, we could do anything with that potion. We could make them see! Pick the potion up Terry."

"Well I-I-"

"It's your potion Terry, your work. Hold it, admire it!" she barked. Snape jumped, he had never seen this domineering side of Hermione before.

Percy lunged forward to grab the vial, but was beaten by Terry, who held it tentatively in his hands, as though it were made of the finest bone china.

"That's what we did, together. Imagine what else we can do, you and me."

She took a few more steps forward toward Terry, separated now only by the width of the workbench.

"You were right, nobody else will ever understand us. Not Ron, not Harry, not Fudge, certainly not Percy. We're two lost souls, Terry, isolated by our minds. We don't see the world how everyone else does. Where they see hope, we see stupidity, but where they despair we see the possibilities. And they've never understood us for that; they resent that part of us. We don't fit in, we make them feel uncomfortable. We're made to feel stupid for not being stupid, tormented and shunned because of our minds."

Snape watched her slowly snake her way around the workbench, until she was standing beside Terry. Despite the situation, he could feel a part of himself become drawn out by what she was saying, a part of him desperately wanting to stand up and shout that he had always felt exactly the same, that she was not alone - that he was not alone either.

"Don't listen to her Terry, she's just trying to trick you into handing over the potion," Percy snarled.

"Trick? And what is it that you've done to Terry? Do you actually believe Percy, when he says that after he becomes Minister of Magic he will help you, help people like us? He will destroy us, destroy us like they have always done, because we can see through them. Percy isn't like us, and he will never forgive us for it. We will be the first ones he strikes down. You think he will let you live, carrying around the secret of his success like a ticking bomb?"

"Together Terry, it's a partnership, your brains and my charisma. Together we will rule the Ministry of Magic." Percy tried to grab Terry's arm, but the young man stepped away, toward Hermione.

"I can offer more than that Terry, and you know it." She reached a hand out and placed a warm palm against his sweating face, mirroring her earlier gesture to Snape in the kitchen. Snape shivered as he watched her at work, a part of him in awe of the wandless magic she was weaving around the men in the room, a greater part of him disgusted when watching it objectively from a distance.

"I can offer you all the things you secretly yearn for, true fulfilment in every sense."

It was now or ever. She placed her other hand against his chest and stared challengingly into Terry's eyes, before softening her gaze into what she hoped was an expression of hopeless longing.

"All you have to do is reach out and take it," she breathed.

"She's lying, Terry! Can't you see it! She's just manipulating you!" Percy shrieked.

"Silencio!"

Terry lowered his lips onto Hermione's upturned and expectant ones, and slowly, gently, kissed her. Despite everything, she felt a tingle run through her body; she didn't think anyone had ever kissed her so tenderly, as though scared of breaking her. She felt like the most delicate, most beautiful woman in the world right then. Then she felt his arms wrap tightly around her, but she didn't feel warmth or security this time, only a flaring annoyance at the physical constrainment, and her romance vanished.

It was at this point that she felt a painful wrench, and was flung to the ground by a solid and heavy weight that crashed against her head. The last thing she heard was Snape's cry of triumph, before she felt something else crack against her head, followed by the sound of smashing glass and a horrible, cold feeling, as something wet and clingy dribbled down her hair and face.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *