Chapter 8: Spiralling Downwards

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author.

A big thank you goes out to VIVAvivacious for the beta of this chapter.

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The air in the room was cold and a little stale from years of disuse.

Hermione gasped, sitting up abruptly from her sleep. Her eyes were wide, and she was desperately sucking in deep breaths of air rapidly, her skin clammy and sweaty. She'd had a nightmare again. It was the third time in two days she had awoken to that very same bad dream. Scrubbing roughly at her face that was wet with tears, she pushed the bedcovers down, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, sliding off it and onto her socked feet. She managed to exit the bedroom and stumble her way to the bathroom just across the hall and stand before the basin and mirror.

She was a fright to look at: skin pale, dark circles under her eyes, and the evidence of her slightly malnourished state was obvious in her gaunt cheeks. The delicate bones of her face were more prominent than ever, giving her a sharp and exhausted look. A few weeks earlier, she'd had a much healthier appearance, even if she had been a little on the thin side. Now she appeared to be in desperate need of a hot bath and a good meal.

Hermione felt as though it was predestined for her to look this way. It was as if the darkness of her soul was manifesting physically.

She felt her stomach lurch forcefully at that idea. If that was the case, she was going to be putting an end to it then and there. She refused to end up like some fort of Bellatrix Lestrange, with her mad eyes ringed with black circles and her bones far too prominent. What better way to satisfy the Dark Lord than the evidence his actions had affected her in any way?

She wondered for a moment at her dreams. It was the same as the battle in the forest, except everything felt like it was slowed down by half. She swore she could still feel Greyback's vile touch on her body. It made her skin crawl just thinking about it. He was, without a doubt, one of the most brutal and unconscionable killers in Voldemort's recruits. At the end of each and every one of her dreams, Hermione always saw Ron's blue eyes and heard Greyback's voice yelling inside her head for her to kill Ron.

She sighed heavily in resignation. She doubted very much she would be able to get any more sleep that night in the state she was in. Walking over to the claw-footed bathtub, she turned the faucets and spent some time adjusting the temperature to suit her needs. Slipping out of her warm flannel pyjamas and cotton under things, she kicked them aside and added some liquid soap to the water to create bubbles. Once the tub was full enough, she dipped her big toe in to test it before allowing an entire leg to slide into the hot water.

Once her entire body was immersed, she closed her eyes and let her head rest on the back of the tub behind her.

She emerged from her bath an hour later feeling much less sore and tired, and she felt clean after bathing herself so fully. She changed into comfortable jeans and a sweater before heading down the stairs and into the kitchen. She put the kettle on the stove to boil water for her tea and sat down at the small table pushed against one of the spare walls.

As she looked across the kitchen to the window, she could see a window box filled with herbs and small seedling potions ingredients. The cottage so obviously screamed Snape. She had never expected to be living temporarily in Snape's untraceable Scottish cottage near Aberdeen, but there she was.

Snape was there with her nearly every night, Flooing between there and Hogwarts. The potion remained in his lab for the time being, but when the Christmas holidays caught up with them in two weeks, he planned to move the entire setup to the lab he had fitted in the basement of the cottage when he had bought it.

As Hermione made herself a pot of tea, she wondered what Snape was doing. He was likely in his lab already, checking the potion before doing his morning rounds. It was barely six o'clock, but he always liked to catch students behaving badly as early as he could. He had an image to maintain, after all. Hermione felt her lips curl into a smirk at that. She carried her tea tray with her into the downstairs study and set the tray down on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. She curled up into the armchair and used her wandless abilities to pour herself a cup of tea, add cream, stir, and Summon it to her.

She quietly sat and drank her tea, staring at the flames in the fireplace until she had drained the cup before sitting up to get to work.

Over the past few days since moving into Snape's cottage, Hermione had been allowed the freedom of working on her own personal research. She had discovered a few ancient tracking spells she had found in the old Black family journals Kingsley had been kind enough to send her the day before. None of them were perfectly suited to her purpose, but a couple had elements to the spell that could work to her advantage if she was able to combine them properly to create the exact spell she would need.

Writing down all possible combinations of the spell, she gathered together as many possibilities as she could find before going back upstairs to her room to grab a spare spread of parchment from her trunk. It was the equivalent size of a regular map. Taking it back down to the study with her, Hermione spread it out over the large mahogany desk and went in search of an atlas in the study shelves.

It didn't take long. Snape's shelves were all meticulously ordered, and not a single speck of dust was to be found on the books.

She opened the giant atlas to the double page spread of Western and Eastern Europe and smoothed the pages out. Pulling her wand from the back pocket of her jeans, she pointed it at the atlas and spoke in clear tones.

'Exigo Restituo.'

A thin blue light crept from the end of her wand before it multiplied a hundred times over, and then there were little cotton-like lines of blue magic curling around all of the lines of the map she was copying. Once all the outlines and necessary information were faintly glowing blue, she transferred all of it over to the blank parchment. She stood back and watched as the plain parchment came alive with black lines that were an exact replica of the map she had taken the image from.

She spent the remainder of the day transforming her copied map into a map that would work similarly to the Marauder's Map, except instead of simply Hogwarts, she wanted it to cover the whole of Western and Eastern Europe. By the time she had completed her modifications, it not only showed people, it could zoom in on towns and villages if specific addresses were mentioned.

At exactly seven that evening, Hermione was making a light dinner of pumpkin soup with Turkish garlic bread when she heard the Floo activate in the sitting room. She walked out of the kitchen to greet Snape, and her eyes lit up in delight when she saw Luna was standing beside him, brushing soot from her coat.

'If I had known I was expecting so much company, I would have put on something fancy for dinner,' Hermione joked as she went to embrace her friend beside a rather uncomfortable-looking Snape.

'I came to see you at Hogwarts, but Professor Snape told me you had relocated,' Luna answered with a grin.

Hermione flashed Snape a grateful look, and he nodded before following the two young women into the kitchen where it smelled like roasting garlic and rich soup. Getting out her wand, Hermione began Summoning bowls, plates, spoons, and knives to the table. She set the table for all three of them, knowing Snape likely hadn't eaten his dinner due to his slightly lax habits as far as his own care was concerned.

'Soup will do you some good,' Hermione informed him.

The pot of soup and platter of bread was soon brought to the table by Hermione, and she let them serve themselves before she sat down and served herself also. They all ate in silence until it became uncomfortably awkward.

'What have you been up to here, Hermione?' Luna asked, breaking the silence.

Hermione swallowed a mouthful of bread and soup. 'I can't really say,' she murmured, looking down at her food. 'It's something I need to adjust just a little more until I can finally get it to work. When it's perfect, you'll both be the first ones to know.'

'This... project of yours,' Snape began. 'It doesn't have anything to do with the potion for the Dark Lord.'

Hermione nodded, and the conversation was dropped. She knew the look in Snape's eyes and that it wasn't over between them, but with Luna there, she was reluctant to speak about it. The last thing she wanted to do was get her only friend involved in something as dangerous as what she was contemplating.

After spending some time with Snape and Luna while working on the final calculations for the acceleration spell for the potion, Luna Apparated home from the small courtyard behind the cottage. Snape gave her the address so she could return without being escorted there. When he returned from outside, Hermione was sitting in the armchair in the study, her copied map spread out over the table and her journal open in her lap.

'What are you planning?' Snape asked quietly.

'I am going to find Greyback,' she whispered, finally admitting to him what she had been keeping under wraps since her research began.

'And just what do you think finding Greyback will accomplish, Miss Granger? You know what that man can do. And if you give him half a chance, he will do it again, and this time, you might not come off as lucky.'

Hermione shot him a dark look. 'Lucky? You think the ripping apart of my soul was lucky? I would rather he had raped me!' she said, tears beginning to blur her vision. 'I am never going to be the same person I was before. I have death on my hands and darkness in my soul, and you think I am concerned he might actually rape me if he had half a chance? You know nothing!'

Snape glared at her then, stepping closer to her and staring down his hooked nose. 'You are the one who knows nothing, stupid woman,' he growled. 'He can transform himself into a beast even when it is not a full moon. He will tear you apart, literally.'

'I know what he is capable of,' Hermione snapped angrily. 'I know what could happen, and I will be prepared for that possibility. I can't sit here in this house and simply waste away. I am so angry, all the time. I can barely think straight until I think about finding him and making him pay for what he did to Ron and to me.'

'You will need to learn to control that anger,' he said, visibly reigning in his anger at her. 'I can't, in good conscience, allow you to do something so foolhardy while you are under my protection.'

'I'm twenty-five years old, Snape! I'm not a little girl,' she exclaimed.

'Your age is irrelevant,' Snape said through gritted teeth. 'Your judgment has been severely compromised by this entire situation.'

Hermione closed her eyes and shook her head, willing away the hot angry tears that threatened to spill. 'I need to do this.'

Snape took a steadying breath himself at this. 'I know you do, but do not act so hastily,' he replied. 'I came here tonight to tell you the Wizengamot has decided to hold a trial to judge whether or not you are innocent of the murder of Ronald Weasley.'

Hermione looked at him, stunned. 'What?'

'Albus is obviously having a tantrum over your defection from the Order,' Snape explained. 'You will be found innocent, I can assure you. He is simply trying to make things difficult for you.'

Hermione closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Things were becoming increasingly complicated.

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A/N – Yes, another twist thrown in for good measure. More twists and turns are on the way.