Free Will and Fate

"You know who I'm talking about, right?"

Harry nodded, not wanting to remind Hermione that he knew a great deal about the world she inhabited. "Voldemort." She flinched at the name. "I still don't understand."

"Years ago, Professor Snape was one of You-Know-Who's followers."

"Still is," Harry interrupted.

Hermione shook her head and continued. "I don't know all of the details, but apparently, he heard that You-Know-Who was going to come after you and your parents."

The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal.

He has marked you for a most painful death.

Harry nodded. "Go on," he said.

"He found a way to get word to Dumbledore and your parents went into hiding. They were using the Fidelius Charm to hide themselves. You know what--?" She continued at Harry's nod. "Their Secret Keeper betrayed them to You-Know-Who. When Snape found out, he contacted your parents and warned them." Harry went pale at this and swayed a little on the sofa. Hermione moved to sit closer to him.

"Are you all right?"

He nodded, not trusting his voice. He would tell Hermione what he knew about Pettigrew later.

"He warned them that Neville's parents were in danger as well." She inhaled sharply as his expression changed. "Harry, are you sure you're all right? You don't look well."

He was feeling increasingly nauseated, but he didn't want to say that. "What happened next?" he whispered. Hermione put her arm around his shoulders before continuing.

"Your parents went to stay with Dumbledore somewhere on the coast and he became their new Secret Keeper. The Longbottoms were supposed to stay there too, but--" She broke off and Harry stared at her, his expression expectant. He knew what was coming, but he needed to hear her say it.

"What did Voldemort do?" Hermione flinched again and Harry frowned. "Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself," he said, repeating the words he'd heard from Dumbledore.

She nodded. "When they, Neville's parents, were leaving to join your parents, V-- V--" She sighed. "You-Know-Who found them and killed them. Only it was strange because--"

"Because he'd been trying to kill Neville and his parents were protecting him," Harry supplied. At Hermione's look of astonishment, he continued. "When Voldemort used the Killing Curse, his parents moved to protect him and saved his life. The spell killed both of them, but Neville got away with just a scar. I'd wager it looks a lot like this one," Harry said, lifting his hair to show the lightning bolt shape just above his eyebrow. "Voldemort lost his body in the fight, and most assume he is dead, but there are rumors that he's still around someplace." Harry finished in a monotone voice, a faraway look in his eyes.

"How did you know all of that?"

Harry let his head fall forward and his shoulders slump. He didn't know how long he'd been crying, but it seemed a fitting tribute to the news he'd just heard. He'd been responsible for Neville's parents getting killed. Why had he mentioned them in the note? He had no way of knowing if Death Eaters would've still come after them if his parents hadn't been attacked. Was this fate better than the one he knew they shared before--close supervision in a ward at St. Mungo's? Was it better to have parents who were alive and had no idea who you were, or ones who had died to save you?

"Harry?"

"I did it," he said. He looked over to Hermione and acknowledged her worry with a wan smile. "Do you remember when I told you I went back in time and changed something major?" Harry continued without waiting for her response. "I wrote the note warning my parents. And I told them the Longbottoms were in danger."

"But how? You couldn't have done."

"I was a baby, but I was included in the charm. Protected by it, and able to find the house, even after traveling back through time." Harry swiped at his eyes with his sleeve. He refused to look at Hermione when she clasped his hand in hers. "When I was in the Ministry, I saw the date and knew what I had to do. My parents--they were going to die the next night, to protect me. I couldn't just let that happen. And I knew that Neville's parents--I thought they'd all be better off if they knew what was coming. I sentenced them to death."

"Oh, Harry!" Hermione launched herself into his arms, the sounds of her sobs filling the quiet space. "You didn't kill them." She pulled back to look into his eyes. "The darkest wizard our world has ever known was after them, there was nothing more you could've done."

Harry vaguely registered surprise that she wasn't lecturing him about the consequences of changing the past. "I could've left it alone," he said. "I had made peace with what had happened to my parents. As much as anyone could, I guess. I just wanted so badly to see them, especially my mother. She's so much more beautiful than in pictures." His voice had dropped to a whisper and Hermione hugged him tight again. "So Snape took credit for my note?"

"Yes, I suppose that is what happened." She cleared her throat. "According to the Daily Prophet, Dumbledore had recruited him to work as a spy against You-Know-Who over a year before the planned attack. When he--when the note saved your parents, Dumbledore told everyone he was responsible and was completely reformed from helping You-Know-Who."

Now Harry understood Ron's hero comment from earlier.

"Then he and your parents became good friends. After your dad...Professor Snape was there for you and your mother, and--"
"I don't need to hear any more." Harry wanted to scream his frustration, but didn't think he had the strength. "My mother's married to that bastard and it's all my fault."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Harry with his head on Hermione's shoulder. Hermione rubbed his back until his tears were gone and he was left with nothing but a cold, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"I need to tell you everything," he said, sitting up.

"No, not if it's too much. You can wait until tomorrow."

Harry nodded. "I need to do this now. Unless you want me to stop." He could practically see Hermione about to start in how they both needed to begin their homework assignments and get some rest, but she didn't raise an objection as he began his story. When he finished telling her the major events of his first five years at Hogwarts, she sat back on the sofa, her face uncharacteristically pale.

"Cedric had been killed? And Professor Quirrell? A Ministry employee was torturing students and no one did anything?" Hermione's eyes widened as Harry showed her the back of his hand, on which I must not tell lies stood out in deep scarlet beneath the skin. She held his hand in both of hers and traced the words that had been written in his blood so many times they left a permanent mark. She had begun crying again, but didn't move to brush the tears away as she looked at the evidence of Harry's torture, the vivid reality she had wanted so badly to believe was just a story.

"I feel horrible for putting Neville in the position I was in. There was always this attention, this pressure on me. And to find out Voldemort came after me because he thought I would have some power to hurt him--I don't know if I would've left my parents the note if I'd known things would turn out this way. A lot of people's lives have been spared, but Neville's parents..." He caught Hermione's eyes. "I never wanted anything to happen to them, you have to believe that."

"I believe you, Harry. I know you wouldn't have wanted that to happen. But a lot of people are better off because of what you did."

"Do you really believe that?" he asked. He snatched his hand from her grasp and ran both through his unruly hair. He rested his head in his hands. "I wonder if Neville would feel grateful to me if he knew the truth. If he knew that instead of dying that night, his parents would've been tortured by Barty Crouch, Jr. and the Lestranges."

"Lestrange? As in, our Potions professor?!"

"Yeah. I thought I said that earlier."

"You just said a couple of Death Eaters were going to use the Cruciatus Curse on them," Hermione responded. "Now that I think about it, she started teaching here not long after Professor Snape."

"Being a reformed Death Eater has its benefits. As far as I know, she wasn't caught hurting anyone before Neville's parents. I guess after what happened with Snape pretending to save my parents, she got to pretend like she'd never supported Voldemort at all. Now she's here. And no one will ever know the truth."

"You said Lucius Malfoy was also in You-Know-Who's inner circle?"

Harry nodded. "He gave Ginny Weasley the diary that possessed her. He was in the graveyard the night Cedric was killed." Harry smiled faintly. "He was the only person keeping Bellatrix from hurting me that night at the Ministry. He's in the thick of everything. Why?"

She hesitated and Harry sent her a penetrating look. "The Lestranges and the Malfoys have been really close to Professor Snape and your mom for ages. You and Draco have spent the last 7 or 8 years practically like brothers. That's something you'll have to be careful of," she said, touching Harry's wrist gently. "He'll still expect you to be close to him, to confide in him. Sometimes you guys spend so much time together, I practically have to force you to study."

"Sounds like me and Ron," Harry said, giving her a genuine smile. "I think I can avoid being close to Draco by telling him I want to spend more time alone with you. Think he'll buy that?"

"We won't give him a choice," Hermione responded promptly. "There's something else. Your mom and Professor Snape spent a lot of time arguing over the summer. First, he objected to having me come spend a few weeks over the summer with you guys. Your mom was okay with it, but he thought it would provide us with too much temptation," she said, blushing. "We've both gotten really good at sound muffling charms. We settled for writing letters almost every day."

Harry smiled at her embarrassment and motioned for her to continue.

"Then, they argued about other stuff. You kept telling me it was fine, but I knew there was more to it than that. You were suspicious that Professor Snape was hiding something from your mother. You were trying to figure out what was going on when your mom suddenly announced you were all moving out."

"She left him?"

"Don't sound so sad about it," Hermione said, grinning at Harry's hopeful question. "Madam Bagshot, one of your neighbors, had a really nasty fall down the stairs. She tried to repair her injuries herself and ended up in worse condition than when she'd started. She was examined and it was determined that she'd either gotten a nasty bump on the head or, well, she's not fully there anymore. And because of her age, it's going to take a lot longer for her to heal than it would you or I. When the Healers at St. Mungo's refused to release her to recover on her own, your mom volunteered to stay at her home with you and Raven and supervise her. Your own house isn't that far away, but your mom insisted that living with her was the best way to make sure she was okay, and she didn't want Madam Bagshot to have to leave her home.

"Your mom is there all day, making sure she takes her healing potions and monitoring her to see if she's really losing her senses or if that was just a part of the injuries she suffered. Professor Snape was really unhappy about all three of you moving out, but your mom refused to come back, saying that Madam Bagshot was an old family friend and needed her. She said you guys are her only family. Madam Bagshot was one of the people looking in on your mom and dad when they went into hiding.

"The move out is supposed to be temporary," Hermione said, "but you'd been trying to get your mom to make it permanent. You even offered to buy a house in another country, if it would keep the two of them apart. She kept telling you not to interfere, but you were livid that she wouldn't just leave him."

Hermione looked down at her hands and began fidgeting, obviously nervous about getting into the next part of the story. "The last letter you sent me was really angry. You were determined to prove to your mother something was wrong with Professor Snape and that she had to leave. You had planned to go to the house once he'd returned to Hogwarts, before you had to catch the train for school, on the pretense that you'd left something you'd need when you were here. You wanted some proof that he was doing something wrong."

"The parchment."

"I'm sorry?"

"Draco said something to me this morning about getting a parchment without getting caught. Maybe I should ask him what was going on."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Harry."

Though she didn't see him the same way, her lecturing tone hadn't changed a bit, Harry noted.

"If you start asking him questions like you don't remember anything, Draco will catch on that something about you isn't the same. I mean, you don't plan on telling him what you did with the time turner, do you?"

"No, of course not." Truthfully, Harry had no idea what he was going to do, but he couldn't sit around and do nothing. "Whatever was on that parchment, I either stole it from Snape or he caught me trying. That's probably why I was attacked before I could get on the train yesterday. Whatever it is, it was important enough that he didn't want me telling my mother about it."

"You'll have to be careful. This could get really dangerous."

"Hasn't it already? I don't know what kind of injuries landed me in the hospital, but it had to have been serious for Professor McGonagall to slip me a truth serum and interrogate me."

"Are you sure you don't want to tell her what's going on?"

"More than I already have? No. She'll do something immediately if she thinks any of the students are in danger." He began shaking his head frantically. "No, it'll never work. If she gets any hint that he's behind the attack, she could tell my mother and then she'd be in danger too. I can't let that happen. But if she really did leave...did you say I offered to buy her a house? With what?"

Hermione blinked in surprise. "Your dad left you everything in his will. He--I got the impression Professor Snape was never happy your mother didn't want to combine your vault with his when they got married. I guess he got over that. I heard him say once that she didn't need her first husband's money when he could take care of her. On your last birthday, she gave you the key from Gringott's. Told you to be responsible with it." Hermione smiled. "The first thing you did was offer to buy her a house in America. Or anywhere he couldn't find her. You said it was your only birthday wish. You told her she could empty the vault if it meant she'd be happy someplace else."

Harry nodded. He had never really paid attention to the amount of freedom his inheritance had afforded him, but now he knew what it really meant. A life without Snape for his mother if he could only convince her it was safer to leave.

"So, he knows I want her to leave?"

Hermione smiled faintly. "You haven't exactly been shy about your feelings. And Raven, she idolizes you. She wants the same thing you do."

"Did I--I didn't make her hate him?"

"No, Harry. But, the two of you are really close. The more your mom and Professor Snape fought, the more it upset both of you, Raven especially. She's too young to really understand, but she wanted them to be separate. Just to stop the fighting." Hermione put a hand on his shoulder. "She loves you, but you didn't turn her against her father. That was his doing. Actually, if her parents were getting along, she probably wouldn't have a problem with them staying together."

Harry frowned deeply.

"Obviously, you would not feel the same way." He didn't respond and she pulled his hand close to her again, grasping it firmly. "I'm sorry all of this has fallen on you. I can't imagine what kind of pressure you must be feeling."

He nodded. "I just want my family to be safe," he said, unconsciously including the sister he'd never met. "It's getting pretty late, we should probably be headed back to our rooms."

"But, I thought you wanted to talk about us." She squeezed his hand and offered a small smile. "I think the more you know about our relationship, the easier it'll be for me to help you find out what happened yesterday."

Harry began to object, sure that getting Hermione further involved would only put her in danger, but stopped at her pleading look. He recognized the determination on her face, the very look that meant she was already involved and would not be turned away. He welcomed her help, even if he knew what it might cost her to give it.

"This won't take too long, Harry. The main thing you need to remember is that we became friends pretty early on our first year at school. Actually, you were my only friend for a while." She smiled shyly. "We got close really fast. We were only friends for a long time, but third year, something happened. I don't know how, but we just started looking at each other differently. After I kissed you the first time--"

"You kissed me?"

Hermione blushed and her smile mirrored Harry's grin. "I don't know what came over me." She squeezed his hand again and held his eyes for a long moment in silence. "No, I know exactly what came over me. I still..." She broke their eye contact and looked down at their hands in her lap. "After that, we were inseparable. I think Draco was a little resentful of our closeness. Maybe he thought you'd always want to be one of his little pack."

"He still has Crabbe, Goyle and Parkinson hanging all over him?"

She nodded. "And a few others. Eventually, he got over not being your number one friend and he and I sort of get along. Your mom liked the two of us together from the beginning. Snape didn't mind so much." Hermione blushed a little darker. "At least, not until Professor McGonagall caught us kissing in your dorm last term when we were supposed to be in class."

"You skipped a class for me?" Harry couldn't help the laugh that was coloring his voice. Hermione was practically turning purple with each part of the confession and her voice was getting softer and softer as the embarrassing story unfolded further.

"She um...she told Professor Snape we were lucky she hadn't walked in later. She didn't know what we would've gotten up to. He kept us from getting punished, but he kind of freaked out every time we were alone the rest of the term. He tried separating us. We found a way to get around it."

At that, Harry laughed out loud, followed soon by Hermione's nervous giggle. "It's no wonder he wouldn't let you stay during the summer. I'm surprised my mother didn't have a problem with it."

"She trusts us to be responsible. Besides, we hadn't actually decided to do anything more serious until a couple of weeks ago. We both agreed that we felt the same, that it wasn't gong to be just--that it wasn't just sex for us." She squeezed his hand hard. "That's why I was so upset when you didn't want to be alone with me last night. Not because I thought we were going to do something, but the way you looked at me when I kissed you. I thought you had changed your mind, that you didn't love me anymore. When you told me earlier that you're not the same person, I wanted to kill you. Before you explained, I mean."

"No, I understand," he said. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry you lost what we had. It sounds like something pretty special."

"It is. Was." Hermione dropped his hand then and stood from the sofa, stretching as she turned away from him. "It's a good thing we're Prefects or we'd be in serious trouble for staying out after hours."

Harry didn't say anything about her abrupt change of subject. After what she'd just shared, he figured she didn't need any further comments from him about the change in their relationship. Besides, she was right. They had to get back to the rest of the world.

Upon seeing Harry stand, Hermione asked, "What's the plan for tomorrow?"

He ran his fingers through his hair and scratched at his scalp a bit before answering. "I think I need to go through everything in my trunk, see if there's any clues to what I was searching for at the house. If I have whatever Snape had wanted hidden, maybe there's a clue as to what happened to me."

"And then what?"

"I guess I should consider telling Professor McGonagall more. I just don't know if she might be protecting him or something. After sitting through a year of class with a Death Eater disguised with Polyjuice Potion and another with a professor who had Voldemort attached to the back of his head, I've learned that Hogwarts staff isn't always safe."

"If you're afraid she might be under the Imperius Curse, you can always try Finite Incantatem. I think it'll stop any spell she might be under. Maybe we should do it together, just in case. To be sure it's strong enough to work. We can do it tomorrow."

"And I'll know she's not being controlled by Snape or anyone else?" Harry asked.

She nodded. "We can be pretty sure. I'll have to go to the library and see if there are any stronger counter-spells, but that should do the trick on most things."

"Will it work on Veritaserum? I'm not sure if that's exactly what she gave me, but it's worth a try, right?"

Hermione shook her head. "I don't know. I think you'll need an antidote for that. But it should work it's way through your system soon enough, if it hasn't already."

"It hasn't. I just don't want to talk to Snape until I know for sure I can lie to him. There's no telling what could happen if he questions me again. I had a hard enough time when I didn't know what was going on. Now that I do..."

Hermione's arms around him again and her voice in his ear were a comfort Harry could hardly quantify. "I won't let anything happen to you," she said. "No matter what, I'll do anything to keep you safe."