To Dust

A/N: Many thanks to Indigofeathers for the late-night beta, and to Melenka, Indy, Annie Talbot, and Machshefa for reading an early version of the chapter. My humble gratitude, as always, to Anastasia, without whom there would be much flinching.

WARNING: CHAPTER CONTAINS DESCRIPTION OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE.

If you have a button, this chapter may hit it - please skip this chapter; I'll do a plot summary in the author's notes of Chapter 36.

35: To Dust

"... Hermione Jane Granger, you are hereby remanded into the custody of the Department of Mysteries."

A moment of crashing silence in which Hermione froze; into her terror, Shriver smiled.

"You can't mean..."

As she voiced her disbelief, the silence collapsed into motion. She was dimly aware of Neville zooming in front of her, an ineffectual obstacle to the Unspeakable's designs. Peripherally, she saw the Baron dart through the door; stumbling involuntarily backward, she saw Poppy reach, staggering, for the footboard, inadvertently cutting off Severus' path to her, blocking any shot he had at Shriver.

Severus' automatic hand steadied Poppy, and he drew her hastily aside, back to the shadows by the wall.

Poppy hissed, more at Shriver than at Severus, her wand already pointing toward the Unspeakable.

Hermione saw Severus' hand closed over the Healer's, saw more than heard him murmur an injunction for Poppy to wait.

His eyes turned intently to Hermione and blazed into her soul.

As if from a great distance, she vaguely heard Poppy's protest and Severus' repeated rejoinder to wait.

She looked into his eyes and knew he was willing to fight or to accompany her into whatever hell the Unspeakable had planned for her. But, even more deeply, she felt his hope that she would somehow prevent her own imprisonment.

After looking at him for a long moment, Hermione dropped her head, her hair falling in front of her face.

---

Severus swore softly and felt the Healer's hand tighten on her wand.

"Wait," he murmured.

"Severus, she is distraught – as well she might be."

He shot Poppy a tight look.

The Healer's eyes were doubtful, but no hex flew from her lips.

---

From behind her fallen hair, Hermione waited for her mind to stop shouting at her that she had been stupid.

Another voice in her mind, a voice that had spoken nothing but truth since her childhood.

Teaching her deception. Honour. Ruthlessness.

And cruelty.

"Deliberate cruelty can be anticipated, shaped, twisted back on itself... To survive its wounds, it only requires that you not be innocent... To triumph, you must expect the wounds and inflict your own, far greater, on your opponent..."

Very slowly, she nodded.

"...your weapons readied by constant, deliberate attention to detail, to nuance, to betrayals of vulnerability..."

Behind her hair, she opened her eyes.

" – and craft it into the cutting remark your opponent will use to carve out his own heart."

And another voice – not Severus', not Ron's – but the words she heard clearly: You know you want to.

And she realised the voice was her own.

She raised her head slightly. Neville was still hovering between her and Shriver.

And in her mind, Neville's death became Ron's, and Ron's death became her own, and, by the light born of death and truth, she looked upon the Unspeakable with new-fallen eyes.

Compared to what had killed Neville, he was nothing.

Compared to truth, he was a lie.

And compared to her, to what she had done, he was innocent.

Vulnerable.

She wanted to break him, and she found she knew how.

Within the Darkness she had once embraced out of desperate panic, she claimed her own deliberate place.

"Cruelty... is a slow, artful dance."

Schooling her expression to resignation, to fear – small, empty, afraid, she raised guileless eyes to Shriver. "So let me understand..." She hesitated deliberately. "What you want is to..." She feigned the need to swallow. "For your research, you want to use me as –" She pretended to be too overwhelmed to finish the sentence.

Shriver's smile deepened. "I assure you that our research is purely theoretical."

She shook her head, still feigning fear. "There can be no 'pure theory' in the Dark Arts – it is too dangerous a dance. There can be no stopping, Shriver, once the dance is begun."

---

In the shadows, Severus' eyes went quiet.

---

Shriver looked at her, bemused, then he gathered his cloak about him and turned toward the door. "If you're ready, then, Miss Granger."

Dropping her voice, Hermione muttered quickly, "Neville – please – go. I don't want you to see me like this."

Neville turned in the air to regard his friend. "See you like what? I'm not leaving you."

But her eyes pled with him, and, when she held his gaze, he looked more closely into her eyes.

She made no effort to hide the Darkness she knew must be visible to the ghostly memory of her friend's soul.

"Oh," Neville said. "I see." But his face was determined. "Whatever you have to do," he whispered, "do it. But I'm not leaving." He backed away to hover near Severus and Poppy.

"A moment, Mr. Shriver," Hermione said, allowing a fine edge of trembling back into her voice. "Please?"

He turned back to her.

"When you call me 'Miss Granger,' it makes me feel like a child." A pale hand emerged from her dark robes as she stepped forward, extending a pleading hand toward Shriver's arm.

Fascinated, his eyes tracked her hand.

Turning slowly around him, she reached for the door and turned the key, slipping it quickly into the folds of her robes.

She shook her head, her hair rippling away from her face, and her robes slipped past her shoulders in a soft rustle of black silk. An abrupt wand movement and the bedside lamp was snuffed out.

In the dim light cast by the Neville's misty glow, her skin was the color of a shadow, cast by moonlight, on snow.

Shriver's face betrayed him. His gaze had dropped to her throat, to the curve of her shoulder, lower –

Mine, she thought. It is mine to do, it is mine to decide. But her voice was still soft, still low, as she turned to Shriver. "You say you really want to know when the soul is at its most vulnerable."

Shriver watched, mesmerized, as she ran her hand through her hair, loosening its curls so they fell more softly around her shoulders.

Her laugh a shatter of glass falling to ice. "So how does it work, then? I don't imagine you to be the sort of man who's content to watch."

His eyes widened, and it was only with visible effort that he said nothing, swallowing rapidly.

"Do you want to watch, Shriver?" She stepped toward him slowly. "Severus and I have experimented, you know. It takes some effort to keep me... hm... controlled. It's not pretty, I don't think. But we'd be happy to show you, if you want." She dropped her voice. "Do you want to?"

He moistened his lips but said nothing.

"No... when you've no Scrimgeour in your way, you're more a 'hands-on' sort, I'd say..."

In her eyes a memory of innocence, a history of ancient, feminine promise.

Shriver's breathing increased, but still, he said nothing.

Hermione moved toward him, her pale hand extending to his shoulder, a small finger tracing a line down his arm.

"Miss Granger, what do you mean by –"

She rested a finger softly on his lips. "Shhh..."

His eyes glittered strangely, and he made a choking noise but did not attempt to speak.

"You don't really want Severus there, do you? You want my vulnerability all to yourself, to test it, to master it... to break it over your knee..."

She moved closer. "You want it – you crave it, don't you?" She paused, tilting her chin in a mockery of consideration. "You want to grab me, ripping my robes down to my elbows to pin my arms, kick my legs apart as you force my face into the desk and finally, after so many years you thrust yourself hard, hungry, brutal into the soft, forbidden, vulnerable darkness between my legs?"

His breath was shallow. Rapid.

"Do you want to make me scream?"

She moved to stand against him, her breasts brushing the front of his robes.

"Or do you want to make me cry?" she whispered, rubbing her breasts more firmly against him. "But then I could never cry on demand... however shall I summon tears?"

"You won't have to pretend," he growled, his breath hot against her hair.

One corner of her mouth raised.

Very slowly.

"Do think you can make me cry? With your fat, sweaty palm slick on my wrists, your other twisting my hair, forcing my face down hard against the splinters of your desk, my breath lost amongst your memos, your files, your statutory immunity?"

He growled again, and, in the darkness, Severus released Poppy's wand hand and raised his own.

"Helpless, terrified, and powerless to escape. A distraught, wandless teenager. That's what you want, isn't it? I can taste your temptation, Shriver. It's in the very air." She licked her lips slowly and smiled as his eyes tracked her tongue, her eyes unfathomable shadows of a rising, silent, wicked laughter.

Pinned by her eyes, Shriver's breath hitched in his throat.

"Do you know the sound a soul makes when it breaks, Shriver? I do..." She stretched, leaning in close enough to feel the flush in his skin at his neck. "I've only heard it once. I don't know if Ron did, and he could never tell me. No more could Horace – and I slept through it, that time. But you – you I can ask, after you rape me, Shriver, and you can tell me. Your soul will be vulnerable then; I shall reach for it, and break it, and you won't be able to stop me." A low, dark chuckle emerged from deep in her throat, and she felt his skin prickle. "I don't need a wand."

The crack of her hand across his face broke the spell of her voice, and Severus and Poppy were beside her in an instant, Shriver's wand flying to Severus' hand.

"You bitch," Shriver spat, his voice strangling with frustrated carnality.

Her eyes glittered clinically. "You expected anything less? How stupid. How truly stupid." She opened her hand. "His wand, Severus."

Severus placed it in her outstretched palm, but she didn't close her fingers.

Shriver's wand clattered to the floor and rolled. Hermione stopped it with her toe, and, without taking her eyes from Shriver's, she snapped it under her heel.

"It fell," she said finally, her voice containing a knifing echo of the teenager she had once been. "What a shame."

Shriver gaped at her.

"It's no more than could be said of me," Hermione said quietly, her eyes returning to their normal humanity.

"There shall be consequences, Professor Granger."

"There always are."

"And there is still the matter of this," Shriver continued, raising the Horcrux flower stem. "Horcruxes are illegal. Breaking someone's wand is also a crime."

Severus' robes rustled softly. "I believe she said it fell."

"She did," Poppy announced in a firm, clear voice. "I heard her myself."

Shriver swallowed thickly. "Do you really believe the creation of a Horcrux can go unpunished?"

She smiled quietly. "To punish me for it, you'd have to admit that it's possible to split a soul without murder. I believe you have a choice to make."

"What sort of choice?"

Hermione continued as though he'd not spoken. "Dumbledore used to prattle on about our choices making us what we are, but then I don't think he ever fully appreciated paradox."

"Spit it out, girl."

"Girl? Really." She shuddered. "Severus, do you suppose I can split his soul without killing him or touching him?"

"It may be possible," he drawled. "Speaking purely theoretically, of course."

She sensed an edge of dark, silent laughter around his voice, and her eyes flew to his face.

Well done, Hermione. He didn't say the words. She could hear them anyway.

A hint of a dimple returned to her cheek.

Shriver glowered at her mulishly, but her eyes dropped to the Horcrux he held and flashed back to his. His shoulders slumped. "What is this choice?"

"It's quite simple," she said quietly. "Are you going to tell Harry, or shall I?"

Before Shriver could respond, a sharp rap on the door. "Sir?" they heard Billings call from outside. The knock repeated more insistently. "Sir? There's something out here you should see..."

Billings' voice trailed off, the reason why immediately apparent as, from wall, ceiling, and floor, the ghosts of Hogwarts castle drifted silently into Slughorn's chamber.

All of them.

At a gesture from the Baron, the host parted to make way for the smallest among them, who was leading the sad-eyed ghost by one hand.

His other dripped a slow trail of blood across the floor.