Chapter Eleven

1st May

'I don't want to do this, Severus!'

'We have no choice. Potter has been sighted in Hogsmeade. When he gets here, the Dark Lord will follow, and we will all have to fight.'

'I don't mean I don't want to fight! I mean I don't want to leave you!'

They were in his office. All around them the school was making preparations to fight, casting protective enchantments, organising battalions. Severus knew the time had come to keep his final promise to Dumbledore: to find Potter and tell him Dumbledore's last secret, but just now, his concern was all for Hermione. He placed his hands on her shoulders. 'We cannot be seen together. As far as the Death Eaters are concerned, ours is a marriage of convenience. If they realise we have feelings for each other, even Occlumency will not save you. They will kill you. If you still refuse to go into the Room of Requirement...'

'I can't! I can't stay in there while you're out here!'

'In that case...' He stopped and gave a short, mirthless laugh, 'I cannot believe I am saying this, but you will be safest with Potter. At least Weasley will want to protect you.'

Hermione slipped her wedding ring off and put it in Severus' desk drawer, which she then charmed locked. 'I don't want to lose it,' she explained. 'And I don't want to have to explain to Harry and Ron.'

Severus stared at her naked finger, trying hard not to see it as an omen. 'When this is over, we should renew our vows. Our ceremony was a miserable affair; you deserve better. We'll go to Australia, find your parents, and you shall have a proper wedding.'

'If we survive.'

Severus clasped her to his chest and kissed her hair. Hermione felt him trembling against her as the enormity of what was to come overwhelmed him. She couldn't breathe, crushed against him, but she would happily have stayed there forever, quietly suffocating, if it meant she could have prevented him leaving. He didn't answer her; he simply pulled her closer and kissed her, desperately, as if he would never let her go. Tears flooded down her cheeks and made their kisses taste salty.

*

Hermione caught up with Harry and Ron outside the Room of Requirement. Having friends in the DA was turning out to be very useful.

'Harry! Ron!' she yelled, hurling herself at them so hard, she knocked the breath out of them. 'Are you OK? Merlin, I've missed you. I'm sorry I couldn't contact you; it was... difficult. How are you getting on; have you got the Horcruxes yet?'

'Let us breathe, Hermione,' panted Ron, extricating himself from her hug.

'We've destroyed the locket,' Harry gasped, massaging his side. 'We've got the cup, but we need to destroy that too. What about you? Did you get taken in by the Registration Committee? How did you escape?' His eyes widened as the other possibility hit him. 'You're not married, are you?'

'Course she's not,' scoffed Ron. 'Hasn't got a ring, has she?'

'I escaped,' Hermione told them, mentally crossing her fingers. 'I'll tell you later. Not now; we've got work to do.'

*

Several hours later, Hermione and Ron were bent over Harry as he emerged from the trance in which he had sought Voldemort. 'He's in the Shrieking Shack,' Harry said. 'The snake's with him. He's just sent Lucius Malfoy to find Snape.'

Hermione's stomach dissolved. She felt sick.

'You two stay here,' Harry was saying, 'I'll go under the Cloak and I'll be back as soon as I...'

'No,' said Hermione, trying not to let her voice give her away, 'it makes much more sense if I take the Cloak and...'

Eventually, Harry threw the Cloak over all three of them and they made their way to the Shrieking Shack, dodging battles, giants and Professor Trelawney's crystal-ball-bombs. At last the tunnel began to slope upwards towards a sliver of light. Hermione tugged at Harry's ankle. 'The Cloak,' she whispered. 'Put the Cloak on!' Severus could not see her here.

Then he spoke, and Hermione's heart lurched: he was inches away from where they crouched, hidden behind a crate. 'Let me find the boy. Let me bring you Potter. I know I can find him, my Lord. Please.'

Snape strode past the gap in the crates, and Hermione had to fight every instinct she possessed: to run to Severus, to cast herself in front of him. But if she did so, Voldemort would kill her, and she wanted Severus to see that even less than she wanted to experience it.

'I have a problem, Severus,' Voldemort was saying softly, raising the Elder Wand. 'Why doesn't it work for me?'

Hermione's eyes were fixed on the same sight as her husband's: the coiling serpent in its protective sphere.

'I think I have the answer,' Voldemort continued, his voice barely louder than a whisper. 'While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot truly be mine.'

Hermione was paralysed by horror, her voice trapped in her throat, sweat pouring down her spine.

And Voldemort swiped the air with the Elder Wand, and spoke in Parseltongue, 'Kill.'

There was a terrible scream. It was echoed by Hermione, who had found her voice at last, but no one paid her any attention. The room was swirling around her; her head was echoing with her husband's scream; she couldn't breathe as the snake's fangs pierced his neck, and his face drained of colour.

'I regret it,' said Voldemort coldly. He pointed the Elder Wand at the starry cage holding the snake, which drifted upwards, off Snape, who fell sideways on to the floor, blood gushing from the wounds in his neck. Voldemort swept from the room without a backwards glance.

'Harry!' breathed Hermione. Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak, and looked down at the man whose widening black eyes found Harry as he tried to speak. Harry bent over him, and Snape seized the front of his robes and pulled him close.

A terrible rasping, gurgling noise issued from Snape's throat. Hermione bit down on her knuckles to stop herself crying out.

'Take... it... Take... it...' Snape rasped.

Something more than blood was leaking from him. Silvery blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed from his mouth and his ears and his eyes.

Hermione thrust a flask into Harry's hands. She knew Harry had to see Severus' memories, and the sooner he collected them, the sooner she could help her husband.

Harry lifted the silvery substance into the flask with his wand. When the flask was full to the brim, Snape turned pain-filled eyes on Harry. 'Where... is... Hermione?' he whispered.

The paralysis affecting Hermione's body broke; her head cleared, and she shoved Harry aside to kneel down by her husband. 'I'm here, Severus. It's going to be OK, I promise.' She forced an optimism she didn't feel into her voice whilst scrabbling in her pockets for the bloodmoss and bandages she had stashed there earlier.

'Don't bother,' Ron muttered. 'Another thirty seconds and he'll be a goner.'

"Another thirty seconds and I'll be a widow," Hermione thought desperately. "No, I won't let that happen." She pulled a handful of bloodmoss out of her pocket and pressed it to the wounds the snake had made. 'Don't you dare die on me, Severus Snape,' she told him fiercely. She took a length of the bandage she had torn from their clean bed sheets and wound it around his neck, binding the bloodmoss in place.

As the white cotton turned red, she began to sob. 'Don't do this to me, darling; don't leave me; stay with me, sweetheart, please!'

'Sweetheart!' Ron spluttered. 'What the hell? Have you... with him? No!' He lurched forward, clearly intent on tearing Hermione away, but Harry grabbed him round the waist and held him back.

'Hermione, what's going on?' Harry yelled, still battling with a furious Ron, while Ron himself, looking like he'd just been slapped in the face, roared, 'You married him didn't you? You didn't escape from the Ministry at all; you bloody married him!'

Instinctively Hermione threw her arms wide to protect her husband, and yelled over her shoulder, 'Ron, not now, please! Harry, go. Get those memories into the Pensieve.' The boys froze, staring at her in horror. 'Go, just go!' Still staring, Harry dragged an incoherently shrieking Ron out of the room.

Hermione pulled several phials of Blood Replenishing Potion out of her pocket, thanking Merlin she'd had the foresight to bring them – although she had imagined having to use them on Harry or Ron, not her husband. Severus' eyes were closed, and his breathing was horribly laboured. She uncorked a flask and forced the potion down his throat. 'Come on, Severus, drink it. Just try, love, for me.' While she was babbling away to him, more for her sake than his, she managed to get three more phials into him. He seemed to be losing blood as fast as she was replacing it, however. She needed to get him to hospital, now. She wrapped one arm around him, cradled his head in her other hand like a baby's, and Disapparated.

*

Hermione landed so hard on the floor of St Mungo's reception, she nearly winded herself. Vaguely aware of gasps and shrieks all around her, she raised her head with enormous effort and addressed the Welcome Witch. 'I need Healer Smethwyck. Now!'

As the shaken Welcome Witch hurried away, Hermione looked down at herself and her husband. She was covered in blood. Severus was deathly pale, but still breathing, and a weak pulse fluttered at his throat.

Healer Smethwyck came haring round the corner in a swirl of green robes, skidding to a halt as he took in the gruesome scene in front of him.

'We need whatever you gave Arthur Weasley two Christmases ago,' Hermione gasped. 'My husband has been bitten by the same snake.'

The Healer recovered his professional demeanour, and levitated his patient onto a stretcher.

*

Hermione sat beside Severus' bed in the Dai Llewellyn ward. She had refused to go home, but had taken the Healer's advice and got herself a cup of coffee to try and stay awake. Severus was still deathly pale and had two drips in his arms – one of anti-venom and the other of Blood Replenishing Potion. But his breathing had eased, and his pulse was stronger. Hermione took hold of his hand, and his eyes flickered open.

'Hello, darling,' she whispered, smiling. 'Good to have you back.'

Severus' eyes blinked, then focused on her face. 'Who are you?' he rasped.

*

A/N: I have used many lines from 'The Deathly Hallows' to make this fit with canon. Except from where italics are necessary in my own work for emphasis, anything in italics is from DH 32.

Lines in double quote marks are Hermione's internal musings.