Heist

Phoenix Tears, Chapter Eighteen : Heist

DISCLAIMER : The characters and many of the situations described in this story are the property of the incomparable J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this story, which exists as a work of tribute. Dialogue marked with an asterisk is quoted from the original HP stories.

LAxo and WriterMerrin...I salute you both!

Hermione forced herself not to look back until she'd reached the top of the stairs. By then, she was exhausted and out of breath, and the rocks on which she and Snape had sat were thankfully hidden from sight by the drop of the cliffs. She hadn't wanted to turn around and find he'd already gone, not after he'd been so perfectly understanding about everything else.

He cares, she told herself. He cared enough to find out where I was from Phineas and to come and check on me.

Sneaking back into Shell Cottage, Hermione's luck ran out, and she crossed paths with Fleur in the kitchen. The Frenchwoman was appalled by the discovery that Hermione was not in bed as supposed. She showered Hermione with a macaronic stream of reproaches while she shooed her up the stairs and into the room she was to share with Luna. The other girl was fast asleep: her pale hair, spread over her pillow, the only visible part of her.

Fleur stood watch, arms akimbo, until Hermione was changed and under the covers. Then she left the room, still muttering crossly. Hermione heard her ward the door to ensure that this time, she stayed in her place.

As Fleur's footsteps faded away, Hermione pushed her pillow vertically up against the headboard and rolled onto her front, face pressed against the sheets. Grabbing her blankets on either side, she pulled them tightly around herself and clutched the extra material below her chin. If she screwed her eyes closed, she could imagine the pressure across her shoulders as the comforting warmth of his arms, the sheets as his robes.

He cares.

Unlike the awful hour she'd spent in bed earlier, desperately trying to sleep and besieged by visions of Malfoy Manor, she now felt safe. Tired, exhausted, but safe.

As she drifted towards sleep, her treacherous mind replayed the moment she was deliberately trying not to think about: "I told him . . . I told him that I desired you." As his voice whispered in the mind's ear of her memory, desire shuddered through her.

If only it were true.

If anything, Hermione had imagined time apart would have lessened her crush on Professor Snape, but the events of the morning demonstrated otherwise. He must have noticed, too...her reaction to his confession had been far from subtle, and before that she'd practically thrown herself upon him and burst into tears. No wonder he'd felt awkward telling her what he'd said to Voldemort.

She wasn't stupid, though. She knew he would say pretty much anything that might protect one of the students under his care. It didn't mean that he actually did desire her.

He cares, though, enough to worry about me.

And seriously, that was more than she might have hoped for. It would just have to do. She wouldn't embarrass him by making her crush any more evident than she had already. After everything he'd done for her, the last thing he deserved was a silly schoolgirl who couldn't tell the difference between the things he had to say as a spy and his true feelings. He trusted her and he cared about her, and Hermione Granger wasn't going to betray his trust for anything.

The next few days at Shell Cottage were an endless negotiation between Fleur and Harry. The former wanted to treat them all as children and wrap them up in cotton wool while the latter had reached some kind of epiphany during the Malfoy Manor ordeal and seemed to have matured dramatically overnight. He let Fleur cut his hair, and the return to his more usual style only served to emphasise the differences in his face: he looked older. The food deprivations of the past six months had hollowed out his cheeks, but there was something more, too. Something in the set of his chin and the calm, respectful expression with which he would listen to Fleur's complaints and yet concede only the points he had clearly intended to comply with all along.

Hermione was impressed and distressed by the information Harry had deduced about the Deathly Hallows and Bellatrix's bank vault. The Arithmantic matrix, it seemed, had been right: Harry was the one to work out the information for himself. Which meant, of course, that it was still her job to keep him alive...not that she was likely to forget.

If Harry seemed different, so too did Ron. He couldn't keep his eyes off Hermione. Anytime she got close enough, his arm would snake around her, and he treated her as if she were fragile. Hermione found it alternately reassuring and frustrating.

"When they tortured you," he ventured the first time they were alone, an anguished expression on his face, "I couldn't bear it. I would have done anything to get you out."

Biting back an ungenerous urge to snap at him and tell him that he'd suffered nothing compared to her, Hermione tried to think about how she would have felt had the tables been turned. She tried to imagine listening to the sound of Ron being tortured, and she remembered his scream as he ran into the Malfoys' drawing room...she had thought his scream was her own. It must have been awful, she surmised, and she pulled his head forward onto her lap, rubbing comforting circles on his back as he wept.

"Everything's going to be okay, Ron, I promise," she whispered.

Her memories of the torture itself revisited her in flashes, for with Snape's advice echoing in her ears, Hermione was careful not to Occlude against them. Instead, she concentrated on the fact that she had revealed nothing and comforted herself with the knowledge that Snape had cared enough to come looking for her. It was still hard, but she was coping.

Luna, on the other hand, seemed completely unfazed by the several months she had spent in the dungeon.

"Oh, it wasn't that bad," she replied when Hermione pressed her on the topic as they were getting ready for bed. "It was Draco I really felt sorry for."

The worst thing of all, from Hermione's perspective, was the loss of her wand. Not only was Bellatrix's wand less responsive in her hand, it felt evil. And every time she used it, she imagined the horrible woman somewhere, with her hand on Hermione's wand, putting it to terrible use.

The current whereabouts of her wand was the first thing she asked Snape about, the next time they met up. She wasn't yet well enough to run, but they took an early morning walk along the beach. He stayed Disillusioned almost the entire time, but she could tell his approximate location from the sound of his voice.

"Presumably Bellatrix has it. If she was the one who tortured you, it's possible that she has managed to wrestle it into some form of submission. Do you want me to try and get it for you?"

"No," she replied quickly, her face screwed up in distaste. Not only was a wand "wrestled into submission" by Bellatrix one Hermione might consider gone beyond the point of return, any attempt to take the wand would put Snape and his cover among the Death Eaters into very great danger.

Hermione found Snape's company incredibly comforting, even though she couldn't see him. Although in practice he managed to meet up with her only a couple of times, and though her disappointment on the days he didn't come was crushing, she kept walking at that same time and very much appreciated knowing that he might be there.

One morning, she returned to the cottage to find Ron up at an unexpectedly early hour. He was seated at the kitchen table in his pyjamas, hair tousled from sleep, with his chess board set up before him. As she came in, he snatched one of the pieces suddenly from the board.

"Oh, hey Hermione," he said when he realised it was her. Sheepishly, he put the chess piece back down.

Hermione looked at it curiously. It was a black knight, but for some reason Ron had balanced a twisted triangle of white paper on its head; it looked like it was wearing a jaunty cap.

"Ron, what are you doing?"

"I couldn't sleep," he replied, grimacing and poking at the capped knight with the tip of one finger. The black horse reared, and the tiny horseman shook his lance at Ron. Ron looked up and caught her eye. "I was thinking about things."

"What's the hat for?" she asked. Curiosity getting the better of her, she slipped into the chair opposite him.

"Don't you ever wonder," he asked back, "what it would be like to play chess if one player controlled one of the pieces from the other team, without the other player knowing?"

Comprehension dawned: the white-hatted knight was Snape. A fierce affection for Ron surged within her breast.

"It changes the whole game," said Ron, answering his own question. He gave the knight another disconsolate poke.

"You're the best, Ron," said Hermione. She got up from the table and headed towards the shower. As she walked past the back of his chair, she reached around and gave him a quick hug, pressing a kiss to his cheek. When she reached the doorway, she glanced back to see him moving the white-hatted knight around the board once more, an endearingly foolish grin plastered across his face.

It took a full month before the trio, with Griphook's help, thought themselves ready to break into Gringotts. Despite the weeks of preparation and the hours spent closeted with the goblin in a darkened room, polishing their strategy, the entire event was pretty much a farce from start to finish.

First they ran into a Death Eater (Travers), then the goblins had known (as Hermione should have anticipated) that Bellatrix's wand had been stolen, and Harry had had to use Unforgivable curses on two separate individuals (not only Travers but also the bank teller, Bogrod). Once inside the tunnels, the Thief's Downfall had splashed over all four of them, washing away Hermione's Polyjuice disguise and the rather nifty transfiguration she had worked on Ron, and then she, Ron and Harry were all badly burnt by the gold in Bellatrix's vault. At the culmination of what had proved a rather poorly-conceived plan, Griphook scarpered with the sword, leaving the trio to the mercy of the other goblins, and the three friends had escaped only by hitching a ride on a pain-deranged, half-blind dragon...destroying large sections of the bank in the process.

Hermione knew she should feel more worked up about the situation, but as the cool air of their literal and figurative flight blew against her seared skin, she felt only an almost incapacitating relief that they had...against all the odds...survived. As the dragon flapped its way awkwardly across the sky, Hermione clung to the hard spines of its back and sobbed. After a few moments, she felt Ron move up close behind her. He threaded both arms around her, clutching at the knob of dragon with one hand and pulling her back against his chest with the other. He was shouting random swear words rather loudly, but his presence was deeply reassuring.

Hermione moved one of her hands tentatively, lacing her fingers over his without releasing her death grip on the dragon. The sleeves of his robe, like hers, were singed, and she could see the shiny, red marks of burns on his arms. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"Fuck me!" he shouted into the wind. "Just wait until Fred and George hear about this!"

That comment brought a gurgle of laughter to Hermione's lips...a hiccupping, spluttering, short-lived laugh, but her sobs began to ease.

"What do you reckon it's looking for?"* asked Ron after awhile, shouting over the wind.

"No idea,"* Harry yelled back.

Hermione glanced around her nervously. She couldn't see sign of pursuit. The moment she did, she resolved, she would lean forward, grab hold of Harry's shoulder, and Apparate the three of them away. For now, though the dragon was terrifying, there was something oddly calm about their ride. It felt as if they were untouchable, protected by the enormous body of their potentially deadly host. Its enormous wings flapped, its body undulated, and Harry, Ron and Hermione sailed through the air, rocked gently forwards and back in a strangely soothing manner.

Several hours later, still airborne, Hermione woke with a start at the sound of Ron's voice. Her burns hurt terribly, and she remained emotionally exhausted from having impersonated Bellatrix Lestrange.

"Is it my imagination," yelled Ron, "or are we losing height?"*

Silently castigating herself for having let her attention wander, Hermione glanced around. Ron was right, the ground looked significantly closer, and even as she watched, the dragon lowered one wingtip, circling down towards the sparkling surface of a mountain lake. As the dragon tilted, Hermione gripped convulsively onto the spines of its back. Her back ached, and her hands hurt. She couldn't believe that she'd managed to sleep in such a position.

"I say we jump when it gets low enough!"* suggested Harry, shouting back over his shoulder at the others. "Straight into the water before it realizes we're here!"*

"Just say the word, mate!" replied Ron. He still had one arm around Hermione, and he gave her a reassuring squeeze.

Hermione agreed with rather less enthusiasm, though she was more than happy to be leaving the dragon behind. Gripping the handle of Bellatrix's wand, she cast a Water-Resistant Charm on her beaded bag; truly, she hated that wand.

"NOW!"* shouted Harry as he threw himself sideways.

Hermione sucked in a breath. She felt Ron lever his right leg over and watched as he let go. She felt too weak to pull her own leg over, so just tilted sideways instead. As she shifted her weight, she slipped and then began to fall; the water swung up towards her face with terrifying speed. Instinctively, Hermione pulled her arms forward and dove below the surface.

The water was shockingly cold, and the air left her lungs in a painful rush. But it was also blissfully soothing against her burned skin. Hermione pulled herself out of the dive quickly, careful not to hit the bottom. Twisting in the green water, she tried to make out the disturbances where Harry and Ron had landed, but her hair floated across her face in a tangle of curls. She struck out for the surface.

When she broke through into the air, she gasped for breath. Her ribs were still constricted from the sudden cold, and she panted in order to pull in the oxygen her body so desperately needed. Harry and Ron were not far away, and overhead the dragon soared on, oblivious to their departure.

The three friends swam towards the shore furthest from the dragon. Conserving the little strength she had, Hermione used breaststroke, although unfortunately, the lake was not particularly deep, and before long, the reeds and mud were so thick and the water so shallow that Hermione was forced to fight her way through on foot.

"Come on," urged Ron gently, hooking his hands under her armpits and half pushing, half dragging her up the last few yards onto dry land.

With a small sob of relief, Hermione collapsed onto the ground. She squeezed her eyes shut in a futile attempt to hold back the prickle of tears.

"Come on," repeated Ron. "Where's the beaded bag?"

Hermione managed to pat the correct pocket, and Ron extricated it from her robes.

"Accio ditany," he muttered with his wand hand thrust into the opening. "Here we go."

After a few seconds, Hermione started, and her eyes flew open. Ron knelt over her, dabbing dittany onto the most prominent of her burns, a solicitous look on his face.

"All right, Hermione?" he asked.

"Yeah." A genuinely happy smile curved her face, and she reached out and caught hold of his hand. Pulling it towards her, she placed a gentle kiss on his knuckles. He blushed...adorably. "Let me do that," she instructed, pulling the cloth from his grip. "You do yours."

Ron's concern infused Hermione with a new energy. By the time Harry had finished setting the wards, she was ready to push the dittany into his hand. She rummaged around in her beaded bag for the bottles of pumpkin juice she'd packed at Shell Cottage and clean, dry robes.

As the dittany did its job, her skin prickled and itched. She could literally see a new layer of skin growing over her burns.

"Well, on the upside, we got the Horcrux,"* said Ron, "On the downside..."*

"...no sword,"* finished Harry, wincing as he treated a particularly nasty burn on his knee.

"No sword,"* echoed Ron. "That double-crossing little scab . . ."*

Hermione wacked Ron on the shoulder and he tailed off with a sheepish grin. After his and Harry's plan to double cross Griphook, he didn't have much of a leg to stand on.

Harry extricated the golden cup from his wet clothes and put it down on the grass. It looked so innocent. Where the locket had a kind of macabre beauty...not unlike some of the family heirlooms sported by Slytherin girls at the Yule ball...the cup looked innocuous, almost cute. As if you might give it to a small child to drink from.

"At least we can't wear it this time," noted Ron, "that'd look a bit weird hanging round our necks."*

Hermione rolled her eyes and gazed out over the lake. The dragon was crouched on the far shore, sucking seemingly endless quantities of water up through pursed lips. Hermione wondered when he or she had last had the chance to drink their fill.

"What will happen to it, do you think?"* she asked suddenly. "Will it be all right?"*

Ron grinned and rolled towards her. "You sound like Hagrid,"* he teased. "It's a dragon, Hermione, it can look after itself. It's us we need to worry about."*

"What do you mean?"* she demanded indignantly.

"Well,"*...he sounded like his old self: joking, happy..."I don't know how to break this to you, but I think they might have noticed we broke into Gringotts."*

Laughter gurgled up from somewhere deep inside Hermione. Harry was laughing, too, as was Ron. The look on the boys' faces was itself so comical that Hermione laughed harder still. She laughed until her stomach ached and tears were rolling down her face. Ron had gone so red from laughing that she laughed some more.

"What are we going to do, though?"* she managed eventually, wiping tears from her eyelids with the edge of a finger. "He'll know, won't he? You-Know-Who will know we know about his Horcruxes!"*

"Maybe they'll be to scared to tell him?"* suggested Ron. "Maybe they'll cover up..."*

Harry's dramatic scream cut Ron off. He collapsed backwards, clutching at his scar. Ron and Hermione leapt instantly to their feet.

"Harry? Mate?" Ron was kneeling over his friend, his hands clutching at the front of his robes.

"It's his scar!" exclaimed Hermione. Ron grabbed at Harry's wrists, and Hermione placed a hand on Harry's forehead only to snatch it back. Harry's scar throbbed horribly. It pulsed with a sickening energy that reminded her of the locket. It's the scar. The scar is the Horcrux...not Harry. It was a minor distinction, but it filled Hermione with hope that she might be able to do something. What if she cut it off? Or sliced it open? Could she separate the scar from Harry's head?

"Harry? Harry? Hermione! Do something!"

Ron's urgent words brought Hermione back to the present with a thud, and she realised she'd been staring blankly into space.

"Here," she ordered, reaching over and grabbing the wet clothes Harry had discarded. She dried them with a non-verbal charm and shoved them under Harry's head. "We just have to wait till it passes. The only thing we can do is make sure he doesn't hurt himself in the meantime."

Ron and Hermione both rocked back on their heels, and luckily, they didn't have long to wait. Harry's body stilled after a few more minutes, and only moments after that, his eyes flew open. He looked apprehensive. His gaze flicked from Ron to Hermione and back again, then he pushed himself back up into a sitting position and ran a hand roughly down his face.

"He knows,"* he said, staring at the cup and not at either of his friends. "He knows, and he's going to check where the others are, and," he added, pushing himself to his feet, a sudden, rather wild light in his eyes, "the last one is at Hogwarts. I knew it. I knew it."*

"What?"* exclaimed Ron, still on his knees and staring up at him, squinting against the sunset.

"But what did you see?"* demanded Hermione. "How do you know?"*

"I saw him find out about the cup," replied Harry, staring out over the water. "I...I was in his head, he's...he's seriously angry, and scared too, he can't understand how we knew, and now he's going to check the others are safe, the ring first. He thinks the Hogwarts one is safest, because Snape's there, because it'll be so hard not to be seen getting in, I think he'll check that one last, but he could still be there within hours..."*

As Harry spoke, Ron had risen to his feet. "Did you see where in Hogwarts it is?"* he asked.

"No, he was concentrating on warning Snape, he didn't think about exactly where it is..."*

Harry had pulled out the Invisibility Cloak from the beaded bag, and Ron had bent and snatched up the Horcrux. Things were moving too quickly, and Hermione felt overwhelmed. They couldn't confront Voldemort until Hermione had worked out how to separate Harry from his Horcrux.

"Wait, wait!" cried Hermione. "We can't just go, we haven't got a plan, we need to..."*

"We need to get going,"* replied Harry. Just as he had been with Fleur, he spoke calmly, but in a tone that brooked no argument. "Can you imagine what he's going to do once he realises the ring and the locket are gone? What if he moves the Hogwarts Horcrux, decides it isn't safe enough?"*

"But how are we going to get in?"*

"We'll go to Hogsmeade," Harry decided, "and try to work something out once we see what the protection around the school's like. Get under the Cloak, Hermione, I want to stick together this time."*

"But we don't really fit..."*

Harry spoke over her protestations. "It'll be dark, no one's going to notice our feet."*

Hermione had a bad feeling about rushing off to Hogwarts. A feeling of desperate urgency gripped at her heart. It's too early, I haven't solved the problem yet! Harry and Ron had the cloak already slung round their shoulders, and Harry held out an imperious arm towards her. For a long second, the three of them stood motionless; only the sound of the dragon taking flight once more interrupted their frozen tableau.

Hermione turned towards their unlikely saviour and watched as its huge silhouette flapped over them, blotting out the rapidly-darkening sky, and then disappeared into the distance. She didn't really have a choice, she realised: the decisions were Harry's to make.

With a sinking heart, she stepped forward and felt both boys take hold of her arms. Harry pulled the Cloak tightly around her, and moving together, they twisted into nothingness.

A/N: reviews are lovely :)