Chapter 6

"Severus," Hermione said gently, "Are you awake?"

The brothers had taken the portrait out to talk to Bellatrix while they ate dinner. Hermione could smell food, possibly fish and chips, and she was so empty that the odour made her nauseous.

Snape moaned faintly, and she felt his head shift on her thigh.

"Yes, unfortunately."

"Can you change into your Animagus form?"

"I do not have an Animagus form."

"Oh." She frowned. "I thought you were the black cat. It has such unusually dark eyes; I was convinced it was you. It's been hanging around Grimmauld Place for weeks."

Malfoy gave a hoarse gasp of laughter. "Yes, my friends, we do have to hold on, indeed."

Hermione fell into a dreamlike state in which she floated, light as a feather levitated in a Charms class, above a landscape made up of bits and pieces of her memories. There was Hogwarts basking in a shaft of sunlight; here was the Burrow, complete with chickens and Molly hanging out the washing, and below her, the grimy London square where house-elves slipped unseen through the scurrying Muggles as they came and went around the detective agency.

She could feel hands on her thighs, their touch hard and indifferent, and told herself that this was not Lucius, it was simply his body, borrowed for another's purpose. The Lestranges were determined to make her react for their damned camera. They wanted pictures to send to The Prophet and to Harry and Ron and anyone else who loved her, showing her writhing in obscene pleasure while Malfoy and Snape used her, but the brothers were unable to hold the Imperius curse upon all three of them at once. As soon as they cast at Snape and Malfoy, Hermione would slip away into passivity; once they recast upon her, either Snape would shrug off the curse to sting them with wandless hexes or Malfoy twisted out of view of the camera.

"Curse them! Crucio them all!" Bellatrix screamed from far above, but Hermione was watching Ron and Harry, zooming across a murky landscape on their brooms.

Her visions grew darker as rain swept across the castle, and it disappeared. The Burrow was overwhelmed by black clouds, and she searched for her friends, fearing for their lives as thunder roared overhead.

"Harry?" she called, and there he was, clad in his Auror's robes, flying the newest top-of-the-range Thunderbolt with Ron close behind on his own racing broom. She saw the sky split open by lightning, and then realized that the fire had come from Harry's wand, and his face was fixed in an expression of fury as he bore down upon her enemies. "Harry!" she shouted and jerked back to full consciousness.

The thunder pealed out again, rattling the dilapidated old house and sending dust sifting down from the ceiling. As the Lestranges stared around in alarm, Snape thrashed and succeeded in hooking a foot behind Rabastan's knee, bringing him crashing to the floor. Malfoy immediately took advantage of their inattention, lunging for Rodolphus's wand and grappling with him.

"Idiots!" Bellatrix shrieked, "You let them distract you! It's only a storm! Bind them again, bind them!"

Rabastan turned his wand onto Snape and screamed "Incarcerous!" but Hermione flung herself on top of him, grasping the wand by its shaft. It felt greasy and her fingers slithered, but she was able to keep it aimed away from Snape for long enough. Snape seized the bucket and brought it down onto Rabastan's head, water sloshing everywhere.

Malfoy and Rodolphus rolled and grunted, neither accustomed to Muggle hand-to-hand fighting, limbs flailing so wildly that Hermione could do nothing to help. Snape fell to his knees, a hand pressed to his side and his teeth gritted against the pain of his broken ribs. Rabastan slowly pushed himself up to his feet, and Hermione pointed his slimy wand at him.

"Don't move!" she cried, and he leered through his dripping hair.

"Oh, yeah? What you going to do, little girlie? You going to curse me?"

"Watch me!"

"Just do it," Snape groaned. "Oh god..." He toppled and Rabastan lunged at Hermione.

Such was her mistrust of the wand that Hermione did not even try to use it to cast a spell. Rabastan, a pure-blood wizard, misread her intentions as she raised the wand high but failed to summon her magic. Perhaps he was not sufficiently skilled at wandless magic to Summon the wand from her grasp, or maybe his contempt for her made him forget for a moment that this was the witch who had stood with Harry Potter against Voldemort. He took two lumbering steps, arms spread wide, intent upon knocking her to the ground and reclaiming his wand, and she thrust the tip into his eye. His own momentum carried him forward. The wand splintered with a burst of sick, green light, and Rabastan gave a shriek of agony.

"Crucio!" Bellatrix screamed. "Crucio them!" Hermione was trapped beneath Rabastan, who jerked convulsively and continued to emit a high, wordless sound like an animal in unendurable pain. Snape was unconscious or dead. Malfoy's struggles were weakening against the heavier Rodolphus, who appeared to be regaining control of his wand.

Something small and black darted across the periphery of Hermione's vision. It launched itself into the air, landed on Rodolphus's head and attempted to remove his eyeballs from their sockets with two clawed, furry, little paws. His scream rivaled that of his brother. Malfoy drew back his fist and punched him square across the jaw. Rodolphus flopped backwards, unconscious. The cat skipped out of the way, sat down and began grooming its front feet.

Thunder crashed and abruptly fell silent, a silence that rang in Hermione's ears. Rabastan had stopped moving and something horribly warm was splashing across her face and neck.

"About time, too," Malfoy grumbled as he sat up and rubbed his knuckles. The cat ignored him.

"Hermione?"

The voice seemed distant, something out of her past, but then hands were tipping the limp, heavy body from her, lifting her up and cradling her against a strong chest. "Hermione? Say something!"

Harry sounded frantic, brushing at the blood that covered her face.

"I'm okay," she said, "it's his blood. I'm all right. Please, see to Severus, he's badly hurt."

"I is seeing to the Headmaster," declared a high, little voice, "I is taking the Headmaster sir to St Mungo's."

"You!" screamed Bellatrix from her portrait, "Murderer! Regicide, slayer of everything noble and beautiful –"

Harry turned his wand upon her, narrowed his eyes and said in a flat, hard voice, "I've never used this curse, but they can't do me for casting it on a portrait, can they? Avada Kadavra!"

Green light splashed across the painting and faded, leaving her inert, nothing but blotches of paint upon the canvas, her mouth forever open in a soundless howl.

The elves clustered around Hermione's desk, speaking over one another in their high, shrill voices like a flock of starlings.

"I speaks to all the elves, I asks them to look for the grey stripey Crup."

"Barny sees the Crup in Norfolk, Barny tells Sherlock."

"We all goes to Norfolk."

"We looks for the place where magic isn't."

"A dead place where we can't go."

"Where the Crup is."

"Then we tells Harry Potter," Miss Marple said with satisfaction, "because Harry Potter is a good wizard and Harry Potter goes to find Miss Hermione."

"And he brings Mistress Narcissa and Master Draco –"

"They isn't your Master and Mistress, foolish elf!"

"They says the wards is like the wards was on the Manor, so they knows how to blow them up."

"Harry Potter blows them up. Harry Potter is so angry, Harry Potter blows up everything to reach Miss Hermione!"

"Merlin, are they always like this?" a slightly hoarse voice complained from the armchair by the fire.

"That's why I keep a firm hand on my lot, Severus, they're worse than the Crups. You'll have to maintain discipline on the Hogwarts elves – give them an inch and they'll take a mile."

"We is detecting elves," Miss Marple said proudly. "We is free and we is scary and we is on the side of law and order and we isn't like other elves."

"Obviously not," Snape said. His lovely voice was still rough from screaming under the Cruciatus curse, but his ribs and broken nose had been healed and he looked back to normal apart from the residual bruises. "You might bring me another Firewhisky, though, and a top-up for Lucius."

"We isn't subservient," the elf in the fedora informed him. "We is only fetching you the drinks because you is Miss Hermione's bits on the side."

Nine Years Later

"To Professor Severus Snape, Headmaster of Hogwarts, for playing a vital and courageous part in the downfall of Voldemort, and for his role in the capture of the Lestrange brothers, I am proud to present the Order of Merlin, First Class."

Amid loud applause, the new Minister for Magic pinned the medal to the front of Snape's black robe. Snape had resisted the combined efforts of his own wife, Kingsley and Narcissa Shacklebolt and Lucius and Draco Malfoy to convince him to accept his due reward, but Hermione suspected that if Harry had asked him 'for my Mum's sake' once more, Snape would have been forced to hex him. Hexing the Man Who Lived to be Minister would not have done much for Snape's academic career, and after all, he now had a family to support.

A much-loved part of that family was fidgeting slightly on Hermione's lap.

"Uncle Lucius?" Rose Eileen Snape whispered to their nearest neighbour. Lucius glanced down at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Yes, your highness?" Having never had a daughter or grand-daughter of his own to spoil, Lucius was determined to indulge his god-daughter's every whim. He drove Hermione up the wall.

"Who's that funny witch with the Crup on her head?" She pointed across the room.

Delilah Derwent waved, and the Crup wobbled unsteadily on the rim of her hat.

"Panties," Madam Derwent said in what she fondly believed to be a whisper. "ThreeWitches Peephole Panties, naughty little thing, go well with your new Muggle stud dog, bring her over for the business next month!"

"What's 'peephole panties', Uncle Lucius?"

"I'll explain later, sweetheart. It's a secret."

"Oh." Rose nodded. "The elves tell me those sometimes, too. Did you know there's a baby inside Mummy's tummy? That's a secret. And Daddy tells me secrets, I know lots of them."

His grey eyes glittered evilly as he leaned down.

"Really? Do tell your favourite Uncle all about it."

Rose was on a roll, and Hermione knew that there was no stopping her now.

"Daddy says that Uncle Ron is a dunderhead and Auntie Luna is mad 'cos she puts up with him. They're going to buy the detective agency from Mum. Dad says you have to be crazy to work with elves. And," here she took a deep breath and Hermione crossed her fingers, "Daddy and Mummy both think you've got a sexy bottom even though you are getting old! Daddy says you can still kiss as well as ever, too."

Hermione tried to wordlessly spell herself invisible. Molly Weasley tutted somewhere behind her, and Ginny Potter gave a positively crone-like cackle.

"What's the joke?" Harry asked, striding down from the podium with a glass of champagne in each hand and handing one to his chortling wife.

"I am not getting old," Lucius Malfoy declared, Summoning a glass. "I am a wizard in the prime of life, thank you very much, young lady."

"I say, Snape!" Delilah Derwent seized the Headmaster by the arm, ignoring his affronted expression. "Is that right? You and Hermione and Malfoy? What-ho! Been part of a threesome for the last seventy years, never regretted a day of it. Three witches in naughty underwear, can't beat it, prime stuff. Malfoy, I'll owl you about Panties when she comes into season. Good man!"

She strode away, the Crup bouncing around on her hat and barking happily.

"Mummy," Rose said, scrambling down from Hermione's knee, "what's a threesome? Can I have one?"

Malfoy tousled her bushy black hair.

"If you're very good, when you're grown up, you may be lucky enough to find your own." He raised his champagne. "To the Headmaster of Hogwarts!"

"If you insist," Snape sighed.

"And to the Minister for Magic," Hermione said, brandishing her glass of pumpkin juice.

"All's well," Harry said happily, and so it was... apart from the very unwell heap of butterbeer-sodden house-elves currently passed out beneath the table, but then drink has all too frequently been the downfall of the private eye.