Into the Woods

Disclaimer: The whole entire Potterverse belongs wholly and entirely to JKR. This is fanfiction and no copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

Music. A cello, playing alone. Oh, she thought. I love that piece. What is it? It stopped. A door down the corridor slammed. Don't leave, she cried, and ran, but the corridor never got shorter.

Shrieks echoed around her, Mudblood filth get out of my house, and the walls were lined with closed doors. Which was the right one?

The floor sucked at her feet. It had become a mudhole, freezing cold, and she knew it would swallow her. Come back! she screamed. Don't leave me!

'Hermione!' Hands were shaking her awake. 'I'm here! I'm here. I didn't leave, I'm here.'

Someone's face was right in hers when she opened her eyes, the lamplight shining on black hair. Haystack hair. Not right.

She jerked backward and banged her head against the bed frame. 'Ouch!' Now she was fully awake, though still awash in that muddy, helpless, heartbroken nightmare feeling.

'I'm fine,' she said sharply, and shrugged away from Harry's hand, which was still on her arm. 'I was just...'

'Dreaming,' he said, sitting back on his heels. 'Are you okay?'

'Fine,' she said again, but without heat. The dream-fuelled tumult was ebbing. 'I'm fine. Do you want me to take over?'

'No, I'm...it's, I'm not going to be able to sleep. Not after...' He ran his fingers through his hair.

'Of course. Just...I'll be here if you change your mind.'

He nodded, and ducked out.

I'll be here, NOT sleeping.

She never got back to sleep, not after that dream. It had a dozen variations, all of which made her feel deeply wretched and somehow almost nauseated, if your heart, or some part like that, could feel nauseated.

Sighing, she got up and sat at the table, reached for The Tales of Beedle the Bard and a battered Middle German to English dictionary, and unfolded a long piece of parchment on which she was making a sort of concordance of about three hundred words from the modern English edition Dumbledore had left her. Digging for clues in mistranslated words. Probably useless. Anyway, it was nit-picky, absorbing work, and a tonic for an irritable mood or a nauseated whatever.

* * *

The night was moonless and here in the wood it was starless, and velvety dark, and very, very cold. The cold struck right through Severus's clothes. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the greater darkness. When they did he saw snow covering the ground under gaps in the trees' canopy.

He was in a beech grove beside a car park...he'd been there before, long ago. Potter and Hermione were probably to the west of here.

He drew his wand and began the motions and incantation of the locating spell.

His wand twitched slightly, then more sharply. There. He started walking. The wand was like a dowsing rod, leading him to the west and south, across the road and into a clump of old oaks and then deeper into the pathless parts of the wood.

A small clearing opened before him, and above it there was a break in the clouds. Starlight flooded the clearing, bright on the snow, especially to one who had just stepped out of the deep dark.

Standing right in the middle of the clearing, a front foot raised on hoof-tip, was a small doe, coal black in the cold light. He froze at the trees' edge, his heart pounding. The deer looked right at him, just for a moment, and then she put her foot down and began to walk away from him, not quickly at all.

Mesmerised, he followed her. She walked under the trees. He was just a few paces behind, but still she didn't run. These trees were beeches too, with white peeling bark, and for a tantalising moment he could still see her outlined against their trunks before she melted away.

'Lumos!' he hissed. It was unwise to risk a light, but at that moment he could not bear to let her go.

It was no use though; she was gone. But there. His wandlight shone dully on something several yards to his left. It was a frozen pool, about ten feet across, covered with thick, dirty-grey ice.

He forgot about the doe. Perfect... He'd thought to use the river, finding a shallow bit near the bank out of the main current. This was much better...safer, more contained, fewer variables.

'Evanesco,' he whispered. The ice began to steam, and in seconds it was gone. Severus withdrew the tiny sword from his waistcoat lining and brought it back to size, then Suspended it horizontally above the water and slowly lowered it until it rested on the bottom of the pond, three feet down. He refroze the surface of the pond, taking care that the ice should be clear enough to show the sword.

Satisfied, he renewed his locating spell. Fifteen minutes' walk, and he came up against the edges of her wards and stopped, then slipped through them and behind the shelter of a huge oak.

There was the tent, glowing faintly from within, not a stone's throw away. Severus pointed his wand at it, and silently laid upon the tent's fabric the tracing spell he'd prepared. He had no wish to lose Potter again now he'd found him.

Someone was sitting slump-shouldered in the doorway of the tent. From the shape of the head, he could tell it was Potter. Thank god. He needed it to be Potter.

But... oh gods... here it was: that profound shifting of his magic, the upwelling of calm, strength, and wholeness he felt when she was near. He'd deliberately forgotten this. A man could become quite useless, remembering this.

Just then, a scream came from inside the tent: 'Come back! Don't leave me!' It was Hermione.

Adrenaline shot through him and he took an involuntary step forward, crushing a twig underfoot. He froze. Bugger. But Potter didn't hear...he'd leapt up and scrambled through the doorway of the tent.

Severus seized the tree trunk with both hands; the rough bark dug into his palms...he barely felt it...and he bent his head.

He thought he'd vomit. The moment passed; the cold clutching his insides didn't. Appalled, he retreated soundlessly until he was standing in deep shadow a dozen yards past the edge of the wards.

And he'd thought he could come anywhere near her...see her, even! Cretin. A man on hunger strike doesn't linger at the feasting table. He doesn't wait for a crumb to fall unnoticed so he can sneak a tiny, utterly insufficient taste of cake.

He knew this.

He turned his back on the campsite and began to move back towards the pond; he'd send his Patronus from there, and there he'd bloody well stay.

He hadn't gone five paces when he heard other footsteps...loud, crunching ones...off to his right. Again he whipped into the darkest shadow he could find and stood utterly still and alert.

'Harry? Hermione! Are you there? It's me, Ron. I'm here...please, please let me in! I've come back.'

Ron Weasley came into view, a black and pale grey figure stumbling alongside the perimeter of the wards, clearly sensing them and just as clearly unable to breach them.

'Hermione! Harry!'

Severus cast a wordless Disillusionment spell on the interloper. Now at least no one would hear the stupid, stupid oaf. After a moment, Severus cast a tracing spell on Weasley too. His plan had a new wrinkle. He moved off towards the pond.

* * *

Alecto Carrow...Professor Alecto Carrow, thank you very much...had never imagined how fascinating it would be to teach Muggle Studies. The things the Mudbloods got up to! Wars, atrocities, genocidal sprees, murder, rape, cruelty, torture, purposeless destruction...it was all everywhere, all the time, some of it quite cleverly managed. And the scale of it!

She was curled up with some tea and a rather nice book about a modern African genocide when a familiar pain seared her left forearm.

'Oh, my Lord,' she gasped and dropped her book. The fire flared green and Professor Snape's face appeared in the hearth.

'It's a general summons, Professor Carrow. Collect Professor Carrow and meet me at the front door in three minutes.'

'But surely we can't all leave...'

'You're down to two minutes fifty seconds,' he said, and disappeared.

Whomever he'd left in charge, and whatever he knew or guessed about the meaning of the general summons (it had been months since there'd been one), Snape wasn't talking. Alecto found she wasn't feeling very chatty either. The three of them walked down to the Apparition point in silence.

Outside the Malfoys' gates the air was peppered with the crack! of Apparition and the crunch of feet on snow as Death Eaters materialised in their dozens and hurried up the drive.

No one spoke until they got to the wide-open door. Snape swept in, but Amycus broke stride and murmured, 'What's that?' It looked like a pile of dirt-streaked snow had been left at either side of the door.

Alecto looked, and her pulse sped up.

It wasn't snow; it was a pair of white peacocks...Lucius's prized fowl...muddy, bloody, and dead on the stones.

So. Not a good sign.

* * *

The entrance hall of Malfoy Manor was a wreck. The walls and ceiling were scorched. The carpet on the great staircase was smouldering, and piles of rubble and broken glass littered the floor. The air stank of burning and blood.

Five people were dangling eight feet up in the centre of the hall. The three Malfoys. Bellatrix. Fenrir Greyback. All of them were Petrified, utterly still but for a trickle of tears off the tip of Draco's chin and the occasional drop of blood falling from Bella's right hand.

Below them in haphazard heaps lay ten or so little grey forms dressed in rags...all house elves, all dead. Off to one side lay another corpse, its face mottled purple and distended in death. Severus could see its right hand was made of silvery metal, and was clutching its owner's throat. Pettigrew.

As the Death Eaters flowed into the room, they stopped, and spread out into a semicircle around the tableau. No one said a word or exchanged a glance. They looked at the prisoners or at the corpses or at the floor, not at each other; they were waiting to be told what to think.

Voldemort made them wait nearly ten minutes after they'd all assembled. The foot-shuffling and whispering that had started abruptly stopped when the high, cold voice began to speak.

'My Death Eaters, look at your fellows. Today they have disappointed me very, very badly indeed. I have called you together to help me... correct... their incompetence and error.'

The five prisoners began to spin slowly in midair, and then four of them disappeared with soft pops. Pettigrew's body disappeared as well, silver hand and all. Draco crashed to the floor on top of some of the dead elves, gave a choked scream, and scrambled away to cower at the foot of the stairs.

'Severus,' said Voldemort, still nowhere in sight. 'Take this boy back to school. His parents have made a bargain for his release.' There was a loud bang and all of the little elf corpses suddenly billowed with black smoke. In half a minute they were gone, heaps of grey ash in their places. As if he'd been shoved, Draco jolted upright and stumbled towards Severus.

The voice continued. 'Everyone else, go now to the dungeons. The miscreants await. Remember, they have disappointed me today. They have made me... quite angry. You understand me.'

They all began moving towards the back of the hall, where corridors would lead them to the dungeon stairs. Severus seized Draco's arm and propelled him in the opposite direction, out the door and down the drive.

Severus let himself feel, for a moment, intense relief that he was exempted from torture duty. Then he reflected: Voldemort could have given Draco to one of the Carrows. It might mean something that he chose Severus instead, but it might not. He'd know more when he questioned Draco.

But first, they needed to get out of here.

* * *

The Apparition alarms began shrieking the moment their feet touched the pavement of Hogsmeade High Street. Severus and Draco stood where they were until the guards arrived to check their identities. Once they were cleared, Severus made directly for the Shrieking Shack, towing a hiccoughing Draco behind him.

'What happened?' he asked the moment he'd determined they were alone in the shack.

'It was Potter,' said the boy bitterly. 'Some Snatchers found Potter, and Weasley, and Granger, and Thomas and some goblin, and brought them to Malfoy Manor. P-Potter was jinxed so you couldn't recognise his face, but with those others with him...who else could it be? Father was just about to call the Dark Lord to tell him he had Potter when Aunt Bella noticed they had a sword, and she got frightened, I don't know why. They wouldn't say where they got it, so she sent Potter and Weasel to the dungeon and tried to torture an answer out of Granger...'

Severus interrupted. 'Did she die?' His voice was a croak.

Draco looked confused for a moment. 'Oh. Granger? No. She didn't. But she might have if she'd been Crucioed much longer. She was unconscious, and Aunt Bella was about to give her to Greyback when Potter and Weasley managed to escape from the dungeon, and they all Apparated away, with the goblin and a house elf.' He paused. 'But the Dark Lord was already on his way. He arrived a minute later and...' Draco trailed off, his eyes on the tip of Severus's wand, which had blasted a smoking hole in the wall of the shack.

Severus had stopped hearing. The cold terror that had gripped him at first had rapidly given way to nausea and rage. Waves of red crashed behind his eyes and his skin crawled. He wanted nothing so much as to Apparate back to Malfoy Manor and grind Bellatrix and Greyback into blood-soaked dust. Then he'd find Hermione and take her away, to the other side of the world, and hide her and make her better...

...and Potter would lose, and Voldemort would hunt them down and destroy them, or, most likely, they would never get away in the first place. He put his hand over his chest where the Transfigured ampoule of her memories lay close to his skin. She's away. She's as safe now as she's ever been. He could kill Potter for getting her caught; he was sure it was down to him. Or Weasley, that idiot...

Draco was staring at him, he noticed. He assumed his coldest expression and growled, 'Yes, go on.' And Draco told him about the Dark Lord's destructive, terrifying rage, and of how he'd Crucioed all of them and, when he'd heard that a house elf had been involved in the escape, massacred the Malfoy house elves.

'What was the bargain your parents struck for your release?' Severus asked.

'I don't know,' Draco moaned, and started crying again.

Severus sat and watched Draco, letting him cry himself out. They both knew what was happening to Draco's parents at that very moment. But for all Draco had seen these past months, Severus had seen much more, and could imagine the scene better. He cringed inside at the thought of Lucius and Narcissa caught in that, but the idea of Greyback and...especially...Bellatrix enduring whatever a pack of frightened Death Eaters could conjure was both intensely pleasurable and deeply unsatisfying.

He wanted to destroy Bellatrix. Not just kill her...Avada Kedavra was too good for her. But make her really suffer. Break her spirit and her mind. All his helplessness and his peril, all the terrible vulnerability of his heart...as Draco wept, he poured it into an elaborate, dark, and bloody scenario of revenge.

He revelled in this for a little while, but soon enough he arrived at the truth he already knew. The only way to really hurt Bellatrix was to destroy the one thing she cared about: her precious Lord. And that was going to happen through Potter's agency, not his. Bloody fantasies aside, he was now just where he'd been before in regard to Voldemort and his own fate: his hands tied, dangling over the abyss. And he had to come to terms with what had happened to Hermione, and...all over again, because he thought he had done...with what might yet happen.

* * *

Two days later Severus made the mistake of looking into a mirror in one of the tower storerooms. He'd gone there in search of the case of narwhal oil he'd been missing since his move from the dungeons.

The large mirror, off in a corner, had always been covered with a cloth; now the cloth had fallen off it somehow, perhaps disturbed when the house elves had cleaned. He strode over to put the cloth back in place...and stopped short.

In the mirror, Hermione stood beside him, her arm around his waist, her body tucked up against his side. Nothing else was in the reflection...not any of the other junk in the room, or any other scene or object, just the two of them. She was smiling her radiant smile and looking into his eyes from the mirror, and when he put his hand up to touch the surface, it was Hermione, not the image of himself, who raised a hand to lay her palm against his. Her eyes were dancing.

Struck stupid, he dropped the cloth and stepped forward. He rapped against the surface of the mirror, and then, heart racing, he darted around behind it and felt along its wooden back. As if she'd fall out of some hidden panel. By the time he'd rounded to the front again, and looked up to see the words 'Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi' carved into the top of the frame, he knew what this was.

He stood still in front of the mirror and stared at her happy face for he didn't know how long. Then he dragged his eyes over to the image of himself, looking... also... happy.

The vision of his own smug face...closed lips curved up, forehead nearly smooth, eyes glinting...and of his arm around her shoulder... He swallowed hard, and a wave of pure rage swept through him. He wanted nothing more than to blast the image to smithereens. So he did.

For an instant, the mirror showed an image of itself exploding in a flash of green light, and then it collapsed in a pile of silvery dust and splinters. He threw the cloth over it and, completely forgetting the reason he had come into the room, stalked out of it.

* * *

'Why did you destroy the mirror, Severus?' asked Dumbledore, his painted brow furrowed.

'Because I wanted to.'

'That was a rare and precious object. Why would you ruin it?'

'I just told you,' said Severus coolly.

'I wish you would tell me what's troubling you.'

Severus snorted. 'I'm sure you would. However, most troublesome to me right now are my Ministry reports, due tomorrow. I apologise for destroying your mirror, and would like to get on with my work now. If I may.'

The portrait said nothing more, though Severus was sure Dumbledore was regarding him with concern behind his back...and that he probably had his own ideas about why Severus had destroyed the mirror.

He'd apologised for form's sake, but he wasn't sorry. The mirror's existence would have been one more temptation than he needed. Furthermore, wasn't that a malignant sort of object, taunting its victims with what they might never have? As if he didn't know what he wanted...as if he needed to be reminded.

In the days since he'd returned from Malfoy Manor, he'd seriously considered Obliviating himself. His anger and fear had peaked and receded, leaving him filled with a new kind of despairing hopelessness. Before, when he had been without hope for himself and his own happiness, he hadn't much cared about it. He'd lived without hope for so long.

Then she came, and woke him up, and for a few weeks he had felt alive and whole and happy, happier than he could have imagined being in such circumstances...or, really, in any circumstances. He'd tasted what it might feel like to really live, rather than just survive. And now not only was he intensely aware that he would probably never have that, but he was raw with his own helplessness to protect her from death or worse.

It had often felt, these last few days, as though Obliviation were the only way to make it through. It had always been an option of last resort. And deadening those thoughts and memories was certainly the safest and most rational course. They were a torment, not a comfort any more. Before his encounter with the mirror, he'd begun to gather the ingredients for the self-Obliviating potion.

After the mirror, though, he knew. It hurt, and it was dangerous and probably hopeless, but he'd rather die knowing he'd been loved than buy a measure of peace by deadening that part of his mind. He would keep his memories, cost what it might.

* * *

A/N: Okay, I slipped in that conversation between Harry and Hermione. In canon, he stays alone on watch until the doe appears. Maybe we are officially AU now? *g *

The black doe: the Forest of Dean is home to a number of fallow deer, some of which are melanistic, or possessed of a dark...even black...coat.

And, in case you were wondering by now if I actually enjoy torturing him, the answer is no. That was one of the most depressing chapters I've had to write in this story.