Chapter 25: An Eloquent Silence

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 huge hug and chocolates go out to VIVAvivacious for practically writing half of this chapter for me. I am eternally grateful.

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The day had passed in its regular quiet manner. The morning had been a pattern of pacing, sitting, reading, and standing by the window to stare at the snow.

She had spent a great deal of it contemplating the impending war and how she and Snape were going to somehow manage to survive it together. She had been thinking a lot about those sorts of things; she had been thinking a lot, full stop. She already knew he meant a great deal to her. He was tender toward her in a way he was with no one else, and she knew her magic, her light and her darkness, all reached out to him and drew her to him like a moth to a flame whenever he was near.

Draco was someone she had unexpectedly come to care for in a very short amount of time. He was so unlike the bratty little Slytherin boy she had known seven years beforehand, and she was glad Snape had managed to influence him and set him down a better path than he had been walking.

At this thought, her mind turned toward what she had felt creeping up on her all day – thoughts of the final battle, what would occur that day, and what position she would assume. There had once been a time she, Harry, and Ron would have fought side-by-side together as they made their way to Voldemort, where Harry would deliver the final blow and kill the dark wizard. Those days were a memory of a better time, when the only complications she had in her life was the choice she would have to make when the time came for her to apprentice to a Master.

Now though, things were very unusual, and her mind had a very different agenda. She felt numb just thinking the way that she was beginning to.

The first name that popped into her head was Lucius Malfoy. Oh, how she despised that man for all he did while she was a student, and all he did to Draco. She would render him impotent, or rather have him castrated, if she could. She'd do it herself if she had to – she was not averse to a little bit of blood and pain. In fact, she thought she might almost enjoy his punishment the most of all the Death Eaters. It was a shame the task would likely fall to Draco.

She desired for him to be gutted and left to lie in the snow, to die by whoever it was that got to him first. His red blood in the snow would be a striking sight indeed. She could see his bloody face and the dark red staining his long platinum locks. A man as vain as Lucius Malfoy would hate to die in a state such as that.

Next, she would seek out Bellatrix Lestrange.

The countless times she had been on the receiving end of one of Lestrange's curses had left her with a desire for revenge. What would be the best way for that woman to die? She tapped her lip in thought. Well, she would die by the curse she most often used. Hermione felt her magic hum in delight at the thought of torturing Bellatrix into an even greater madness, leaving her as little more than a vegetable. Her revenge would serve the dual role of her own personal retribution and that for Neville and his parents.

No, Bellatrix Lestrange did not deserve to die; she deserved to live and become the one thing she would despise the most, to live the rest of her life in prison as a crippled being with no control over her body – no control of the mind. Hermione smiled. Yes, what a fitting revenge that one would be.

She then thought of Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange – the husband and brother-in-law of her aforementioned adversary.

They had not personally gone out of their way to target her in a battle, but one bad seed could spoil an apple, as they said. If she wanted one Lestrange out of the way, she would have to deal with all of them. Rodolphus was a brutish thug of a man. He had been there on the day Neville's parents had been tortured into insanity and also when Neville himself had been murdered. Hermione had been so upset and disgusted the day Dumbledore announced Neville and his grandmother had been attacked in the middle of the night in their own home some six years earlier.

His death should be one fitting a man of his huge stature. Hermione let her mind wander over all of the possibilities and smiled when she grasped onto one. She could imagine wrapping her thin fingers around his thick neck, her hands not quite meeting in a neat circle right the way around. She could imagine herself, suffocating the life out of him, seeing his eyes widen in shock as his face went from red, to purple, to blue from the lack of oxygen. She wouldn't stop until after he took his last breath.

His brother, Rabastan, would receive no special treatment. He barely ranked notice as far as Hermione was concerned. For him, the killing curse would suffice rather than forming anything elaborate or special. He would be on the ground in seconds, and there would be very little to clean up afterwards.

After all of them were out of the way, she would go after Avery. She still had a shiny white scar on her torso that she had received from the curse he had flung at her in the Ministry at the end of her fifth year. She would slice him open everywhere with simple slicing hexes and then use Sectumsempra to deliver the final blow. She would watch as his crimson blood flowed freely from his wounds. No number of healing spells would heal his wounds without Snape's counter curse.

She continued musing about revenge, thinking of various others that she would like to hex out of existence.

Mad-Eye Moody, the cantankerous, old ex-Auror. She had never really liked the man, but his blatant dislike and distrust of her made her apathy towards him develop into something much more sinister. If he had just kept his mouth closed every time she was at an Order meeting, perhaps her resentments might not have grown to the proportions they had. The first thing she would do to him would be to remove his magical eye and toss it as hard and as far as she could into the air and incinerate it as it returned to the ground. She'd destroy his prosthetic wooden leg, setting it aflame while it was still attached, even. Perhaps if she were lucky, the flames would consume the man himself and save her having to come up with a more colourful method to remove him from existence.

Hermione longed to give Molly and Ginny both two tight slaps across the face to wake them up. They were living in a fantasy world, a world where they believed they were far more important and better than they actually were. Hermione liked to think of it as damsel syndrome. They were of very little use to the Order.

She paused for a moment, wondering who else there was, when she finally came to the last person on her hit list: Albus Dumbledore.

How she hated the man. He had manipulated everyone. He had fooled them all – even herself for nearly eleven years of her young life. She knew Snape was aware of the ridiculous amount of power he allowed Dumbledore to have over him. She wished Snape would fight as she had against the tyranny. She knew he wanted to rebel with every fibre of his being, but he was still too wrapped up in the ridiculously idiotic notion that his entire being was due to Dumbledore. The headmaster was as ruthless and cunning as a Slytherin; in fact, he would have made a much better Slytherin than a Gryffindor.

She would hex the old man into the next millennium. She knew not what she would cast, only that the desired result would be that she would not have to see him again for the rest of her life. She knew it was fruitless. Dumbledore was the one man everyone in the Wizarding world held in high regard. So few knew exactly what he was. He was bad-tempered and fickle when it involved his plans not going as he wanted.

Hermione felt a strange elation run through her at the thought of Dumbledore no longer being a nuisance to her life. Her magic was beginning to crackle around her hair and run through her veins to her fingertips when she heard the distinct sound of the Floo come to life. She turned her head sharply to see the green flames that had snapped her out of her trance-like state. She looked down at her hands and saw the glow fading and the magic slowly receding.

A cold, shocked feeling settled over her as she watched Snape emerge from the green flames and step into the sitting room, then brush non-existent soot from his black teaching robes. What had she just been thinking? Had she really just contemplated the deaths of half a dozen people? She blinked once, but her eyes still remained wide with shock as she stared at Snape, who was looking back at her with concern.

'Hermione, are you quite all right?' he asked, snapping her once more out of a daze.

She swallowed and didn't move, unable to tell whether she should nod or shake her head. Logically, she knew what she should be feeling was guilt and horror over her chain of thoughts. However, the darkness within her whispered seductively to her subconscious, telling her it was perfectly right – perfectly okay for her to want them dead. She couldn't deny the voice, not when it was making so much sense to her while at the same time making no sense at all.

'I've been doing a lot of thinking today,' she murmured, sitting down in the armchair she had moved over to the window.

Snape walked over to join her, leaning against the back of the chair as he stood to listen. 'Are you going to share with me what it was you were thinking?' he asked.

Hermione nodded. 'I don't see how keeping things from you will benefit me,' she replied. 'I was thinking about you and Draco for a while.'

'Why would you think of myself and Draco?' he questioned.

'Well, I'm not sure if you had noticed, but aside from Luna, you are the two most prominent people in my life at present,' she said sardonically. 'Of course, it is only natural for my thoughts to turn to you when I think of the dangers you put yourselves into on behalf of the Order and Dumbledore.'

'And were there other things you were contemplating?'

Hermione shrugged. 'I thought it would make me feel sick or something, but it has only further exhilarated me,' she answered. 'Thinking about murdering people – it's sick, isn't it? But something in me craves it. I can't feel guilt over my thoughts. How shall I be able to feel the guilt in the heat of battle? Will I kill for the sake of killing now, with my urges being the way they are?'

'Is that all that was upsetting you? You looked like you saw a ghoul.'

Hermione was quiet. 'No, that wasn't all,' she said softly, looking away.

'Hermione,' he said, and she looked up at his use of her first name. 'You can tell me about anything you're struggling with.'

She nodded, looking down at her hands. 'I know,' she replied, 'but it's just so... so disturbing, what I was thinking, and what I was feeling was even more vile.' She peeked up at him, looking for a reaction, but all she saw was a smooth face, patiently waiting for her to continue.

She let out a breath. 'I was contemplating deaths. Of people who – who I think deserve it. Death Eaters,' she said. He nodded, a look of understanding crossing his features.

'But it wasn't just that!' she said in a rush, wanting to get it out and over with. 'It wasn't just them, it was... others, too. Not just Death Eaters, but... but Order members, as well.' If Snape was surprised, his face did not betray it.

'I thought about Moody, and Dumbledore, and even Ginny and Molly Weasley,' she said, a dark look forming in her eyes. 'I can't stand them,' she said, looking back up at him. 'I want them to suffer, for everything they ever did to me, to you, to anyone.'

'You need not worry about me, Hermione,' Snape said gently.

'I know, but it doesn't change my reasoning. But the worst part is, not only was I revelling in the thoughts, once I realized what I was thinking, I wasn't shocked or horrified. I felt... numb. It felt normal to feel so vengeful, to have such hatred.' She looked up at him imploringly. 'I can't feel guilt over my thoughts. How shall I be able to feel the guilt in the heat of battle? Will I kill for the sake of killing now, with my urges being the way they are?'

'You are not alone in this,' Snape reminded her.

'I know I'm not alone. You feel the same way I do.'

Snape nodded.

'I couldn't blame you, being forced to do what you did all those years ago.'

His eyes snapped to hers. 'What are you speaking of?'

'You know exactly what I'm talking about, Snape,' she said, looking at him with a mixture of determination and sympathy in her eyes.

'How could you possibly think to presume?' Snape snapped at her, his eyes cold for the first time in months.

'I presume because I can, Snape,' she said, her temper bubbling to the surface. 'Because I have been thinking about it every day for the past month, and it all leads down the same path.'

'Get out,' he said quietly, averting his eyes from her.

Hermione stood from the armchair she was occupying and, with a wave of her hand, sent it back to its original position in front of the fireplace. Angry, she walked out of the room and didn't look back until she reached the door. She turned just in time to see Snape slump into the armchair she had been sitting in, his head dropped into his hands. Her anger dissipated like fog in the morning sun. She was hurting him, the one person she could count on. How could she? How sick was she really, that she was starting to turn into someone who lashed out at those closest to her?

'Severus,' she murmured softly. 'I'm sorry.'

With those parting words, she turned and walked out of the room, closing the door gently behind her. As she leaned her back against the door, Hermione felt she wasn't sure what was to come any more. Her thoughts that day had led her down a dangerous path. Logically, she knew contemplating all of those deaths was sick at best.

But it didn't change a thing.

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A/N – They were too peaceful together. It's time to shake things up.