Unbreakable

She felt vomit rise in her throat and collect just behind her uvula. It could go no further, for her borrowed body flexed its vocal folds against her will and emitted a high-pitched giggle like a schoolboy. After giving the body a parting kick, he loped away with a gangly limbed gait. He moved towards a house whose outline slowly began to appear through a cloud of thick smoke.

Her surrogate body picked its way through the debris with a nearly delightful air, acting like nothing so much as a child in a playground. A swish of his wand caused the twisted carcass of a sapling to disintegrate into ash.

As she approached the path that would lead into her backyard, she began to hear other voices. They were indiscriminate but harsh and sharp, like the chattering of blue jays. Her body rounded the corner, and as she beheld the sight in the backyard, she nearly retched out her insides.

She – Hermione Granger – crouched upon her knees, her head hanging between her arms, her palms barely holding her body off the ground. She was wearing jeans and a white sweater that had a large tear across one shoulder, exposing a bra strap. As she watched, the memory of Hermione Granger vomited blood onto the grassy lawn.

Only then did she notice the half-circle of figures surrounding her other self. One of the shadowy figures turned to face her and her surrogate body, and she recognized him even through the mask: Antonin Dolohov, the man who had wounded her in the Department of Mysteries. She noticed more familiar figures within that circle: Bellatrix Lestrange, Augustus Rookwood, Walden Macnair, Nott, Mulciber, Avery, more that she did not know.

For a brief moment she felt an idiotic sort of pride that what appeared to be the entire Death Eaters' fighting elite had been assembled in her honor.

"You're late, Jonas," Dolohov growled at her, at her surrogate body, who must have been another Death Eater.

"It seems like you started the fun without me anyhow." Jonas, the mysterious Death Eater's voice was effortless, sneering, and slid through her vocal cords like sugary-sweet syrup. "This one doesn't look like she has much left."

Dolohov scoffed. "The only mark on her is where she banged her head when she was thrown by the explosion. We 'convinced' her to take a little potion to make sure she hadn't swallowed the Dark Lord's locket." Both turned to watch as Hermione spat another mouthful of blood onto the scorched grass, the contents of her stomach long since emptied. "Why waste our magical energy if there's a chance of getting it another way?"

"You would enjoy that, wouldn't you?" It was a new voice that spoke then, sibilant and familiar.

"How utterly brutish and unoriginal. Do you have no idea of who this is?"

"Of course I do. She's Potter's Mudblood friend. And I also know that she is female, and she is human. Therefore, why should we not exploit her most obvious weakness?"

She felt Jonas' lips twist upwards into an unpleasant smile as Lucius stepped to one side. Hermione never thought the day would come when she would beg for Malfoy's protection.

Jonas walked forward, and the other Hermione Granger lifted her head slowly. Her eyes were streaked with red, and her face was ashen.

Mercifully, there was no pain; all of that fell upon her past self. Instead, Hermione's mind was assaulted by images and sounds, scenes from a life that was not her own flickering in the back of her mind like the shadows of Plato's Cave.

"Where is the locket, Mudblood? Tell us and we might stop. Then again, I might not."

Jonas twirled his wand in his baby-smooth hand and watched his victim's twitches slow, then stop, then return with a steady tremble. And then he did it again.

Hermione watched with horrified fascination as her limbs thrashed and bent underneath the pain. Her body jerked violently, and she heard a crack as she landed on her wrist. The Hermione staring through the eyes of her tormentor suddenly felt a twinge in her malformed right wrist.

When Jonas broke the curse, Hermione saw herself flop bonelessly to the ground, landing on top of her broken wrist without a sound, her mind too overwhelmed to process this additional pain.

She tried to scream then, wanted to scream more than she ever had in her life, because she knew that things had only just begun. Her mind did not remember what had happened this terrible day, but her body did, and it was shrinking away in horror from the scene before her eyes.

Jonas did not disappoint. Few wizards were capable of tossing out an Unforgivable more than three times in succession without becoming fatigued. Even Lestrange and Crouch had help when they had tortured the Longbottoms into insanity.

Hermione saw herself thrash and scream over and over and felt that she must be quickly approaching that point.

Light faded from the sky as afternoon turned into dusk, and the bright red splashes of her blood on the grass faded to black. She heard some of the Death Eaters standing around them begin to chuckle. Hermione felt Jonas' annoyance when Lucius Malfoy laughed outright after a particularly drawn-out Cruciatus.

"Jonas, once again you show us how much you lack in subtlety."

Jonas turned towards Malfoy as the older wizard stalked towards him. In the background, the Hermione on the ground moaned softly. The blond wizard looked past Jonas and raised a disdainful eyebrow.

"Is this how you do things? Beat their heads against the ground until their brains come spilling out, leaving you to plunder at your leisure?"

Hermione felt his shoulders shrug. "It appeared to be the path of least resistance," he said. And then he added as an afterthought, "Sir."

"Do you know who you remind me of, boy? Severus Snape. Oh, not as he is now, but how he was when I first encountered him: a scrawny, mal-proportioned youth with no greater desire than to make the world bend to his will. He had to make up for what he lacked in other areas, you understand? By the end of his years as a Hogwarts student, he could recite and cast any Dark Spell ever known and several that weren't."

Hermione felt Jonas swell under possibly the greatest praise that Malfoy would ever bestow. His smile began to falter as Malfoy's grin grew wider, like a shark about devour its prey.

The wand twitched in Jonas' hand but remained pointed at the ground.

Jonas glared at him for a long moment before stepping back with a curt bow. "Be my guest, sir."

As a diligent soldier, he proceeded to watch the ensuing scene with impeccable attention.

She saw Malfoy walk slowly over to the Hermione upon the ground. She had pulled herself back onto her knees, holding the greater part of her body off the ground but barely. Her hands trembled as they pressed into the ground as if she were kneeling in prayer. Her fingernails were bloody and streaked with green from clawing frantically at the grassy lawn around her.

A jet of water spouted from his wand and trickled past Hermione's cracked and bleeding lips. She swallowed and immediately coughed the water back out, the liquid tinged red from where she had bitten her tongue. Malfoy was a patient man and continued to trickle water into her mouth until she was properly hydrated. She saw herself reach out her hands towards Malfoy's hand, wanting more. One hand closed over his wrist and tugged feebly.

"Tsk tsk, Miss Granger," Malfoy chided as he firmly pushed her hand aside. "You mustn't be greedy. Now then, we can talk in a civilized manner." And with that, he swept his robes to one side and sat lightly on the bloodstained grass. He began to chuckle. "Didn't they always say that I bathed in the blood of children? Well, I imagine that this wasn't what they had in mind."

"What... do you want?" Hermione heard herself say in a trembling, pained voice. "Please... just tell me." She gasped in pain as, leaning towards Malfoy, she put pressure upon her broken wrist.

Hermione saw herself lift her healed wrist into the air and saw the gratitude shining in her eyes.

"What we want is very simple," Malfoy said. "You and your little friends have stolen something that belongs to the Dark Lord, and we very much want it back. Oh, I agree that some of us have been quite overzealous in their efforts to persuade you to return it, and you have my grudging admiration for withstanding the Cruciatus for longer than anyone in the history of wizardkind. But I trust that you understand our distress over the predicament."

Hermione, her eyes glazed over, nodded mutely.

Hermione wheezed and whimpered, closing her eyes.

"None of that," Malfoy said, his voice still soothing but slightly sharper now. "Let me help you, Hermione."

She nodded in submission, and Hermione, who was watching, screamed in helpless outrage. She could do nothing, though, as her other self opened her mouth to speak.

"I... I want..."

Malfoy moved closer, placing a hand on her wrist, "Yes, Hermione? Tell me."

"I want... dinner." She saw her mouth crack open in a grin as Malfoy's face filled with confusion. "And a movie. I'm not... the kind of girl who falls for anyone without at least... dinner and a movie." Then she laughed, the sound horrible and roughshod as it split the scorched air.

Malfoy's eyes narrowed like a snake's as he hissed and leapt to his feet, making a slashing motion downward with his wand. Hermione echoed the strangled scream that her other self emitted as her wrist shattered and exploded. She stared dumbly at the chips of bone poking out through her skin.

"Quite right, Lucius."

Jonas turned. She looked.

The unmistakable figure of Severus Snape stood at the edge of the circle, having just Apparated to the scene. A hush fell so quickly that Hermione's ears rang. Snape stepped forward, and Malfoy stiffened, rising to his full height and averting his eyes.

Jonas, however, did not look away, and Hermione was able to take in the sight with a twisted sense of awe. Severus Snape had always been a force of terror in the halls of Hogwarts. But there had always been something missing from his overbearing personality: a lack of credible malice as he took points away, as if he knew that he could do nothing to prevent other professors from adding them back; a slight restraint in his glare from the Head Table, knowing that the Headmaster watched at all times.

All manner of restraint and hesitation was gone now. This Severus Snape did not walk, he glided forward, a black-robed monolith of absolute power. Even Jonas remained silent. In her prison, Hermione despaired.

"Why was I not informed of this sooner?" he asked in a tone of voice that Hermione had never heard before. He barely whispered, yet the sound sent chills down her spine.

"And doing so serves absolutely no purpose when the person responsible for coordinating his actions is lying here among the ruins of her house. Lucius..." The blond wizard's eyes darted over as the dark wizard turned his attention to him. "Physical violence was never your style. Who is responsible for this?"

"I am," Jonas said.

Jonas tipped his head not quite low enough to be deferent. "I believed that I would be better suited to answer for myself."

Snape's lip curled in a sneer. "How long did you torture her?"

"Three hours, give or take a few minutes."

"Impossible. The Longbottoms went insane after one hour."

Hermione cursed the dark and the inability to see clearly into his eyes. He could not be emotionless; he could not stand there and feel nothing...

Jonas smiled. "I did it myself, so I'm pretty sure."

"As sure as you may be, the fact remains that you have done a remarkably stupid thing. Who do you think is the mind behind all of Potter's actions now that the old fool is gone? You have destroyed any hope that her mind could be put to use in our service. And it is also obvious that despite all your trouble, she has told you nothing."

"There's more than one way to hurt a sniveling schoolgirl..." Jonas snickered. "So many more." She felt his hand creep to his belt buckle.

A grinding sound filled her ears as Jonas bared his teeth at Snape in animalistic fury. He did not, however, disagree.

Snape smirked. The semi-circle of Death Eaters watched as he glided over to where Hermione lay flat upon her back, her pain-filled eyes staring into the night sky.

The girl's spine arched, and wretched coughs emerged from her throat as Snape neared.

Her own voice was much more distant. "...Snape," she heard herself say.

"Miss Granger," Snape hissed. Then he paused, his Adam's apple bobbing. "What an unexpected displeasure it is to see you here."

His wand trailed a path down her cheek, pushing her head to one side. Snape's breathing sounded unnaturally ragged in Jonas' ears, or it could have been the effect of the listening charm. Snape took several steps back and stopped. His body was angled in such a way that only Jonas had a clear line of sight to his face.

Only Jonas and Hermione saw the look of gut-wrenching sorrow – she was too skeptical to call it compassion – fill his gaze like a ray of sunlight piercing a deep, dark pool. Snape pointed his wand at her head.

The curse streaked toward Snape, and she was traveling inside, her world spackled with red sparks that connected and shivered around her. The world outside was a blur, and she felt the curse impact Snape between the shoulder blades.

And then her world exploded.

"Hermione!"

She thought she heard it escape his lips, a shout with the brevity and intensity of brushing her hand against a burning stove.

There was a sun-bright explosion as two flashes of colored light, one red and one silver, collided like two dueling dragons. She felt something within her other self shudder and then disintegrate, leaving only emptiness behind.

Then she was looking through Snape's eyes as they snapped out of their pain-filled haze to see Malfoy and a Death Eater she did not recognize holding a young boy between them. The boy, he could not have been more than twelve years of age, cried out as Malfoy threw his weight onto his arm, snapping the bone.

Hermione screamed at them to stop. She could see the tears in the boy's blue eyes, and his skin was as pale as a ghost's. The Death Eater standing by Malfoy twisted the boy's broken arm viciously, sending him to his knees, and Hermione's blood boiled at the sight. However, the words the Death Eater spoke next froze her to her core.

"You're dead, Jonas," he hissed.

The boy's face screwed up, and Hermione saw that they had been tears of rage, not pain, in his eyes. Malfoy had broken his arm to make him drop his wand.

"He's a traitor!" the boy spat at Snape. "I saw the look on his face. He cares for the Mudblood bitch." The childish voice, which sounded effeminate on the man that Hermione had believed Jonas to be, was now the most horrifying sound she had ever heard.

"You cursed a superior officer, little Death Eater," Lucius hissed into his ear.

"And now you'll have to explain yourself to him," said the unknown Death Eater.

Jonas sneered. "I owe him nothing!"

He was barely three feet from Snape, and Hermione couldn't help squirming. The slanted red eyes turned onto her, and she had trouble breathing.

"I trust you are not damaged irreparably, Severus."

Hermione felt Snape nod abruptly, coldly.

Behind Voldemort, Jonas sniffled, wiping his nose with his unbroken hand, and looking for all the world like a little boy who had just lost his favorite toy. On the ground, Hermione lay unmoving upon her back, eyes staring blankly upwards.

Voldemort turned slowly, with the ease and menace of a panther. At a gesture from him, Malfoy and the Death Eater released their hold on the boy. They did not return his wand.

"Jonas, Jonassss..." Voldemort's reptilian tongue lingered on the final syllable of the name languidly. "You disappoint me."

Jonas drew himself up to his full height of four feet, ten inches, including his straw-colored hair. "My Lord, you taught me..."

"I taught you to be the perfect soldier. And that involves respecting your superiors."

Jonas sniffed and frowned. "My arm really hurts."

Voldemort's eyes gleamed as if he were smiling. "Silence." He drew the tip of his wand down the boy's downy cheek, leaving a thin line of blood. "I suppose that it is somewhat poetic. When I pulled you from the trash heap as a babe, I had marvelous plans for you. If Dumbledore was going to build his perfect warrior from a toddler, it was only reasonable that I should do the same. And he thought I spent over ten years as a helpless cripple! You were to be my greatest warrior, Jonas. After all, there is nothing on earth crueler than children. But from trash you were born and to trash you have returned."

The boy's eyes, which had been slowly drifting closed as he drank in the praise, opened abruptly. "My Lord! Please let me explain. I saw his eyes as he prepared to curse the Mudblood. There was no hatred there, only compassion."

Jonas gritted his teeth together. "I did what I thought was proper, my Lord."

There was a chilling laugh from Voldemort. "And I too shall do what I think is proper. Severus!"

Snape's gaze moved from the boy to Voldemort smoothly like a camera changing focus. He made a slight bow. "Yes, my Lord."

"What satisfaction do you demand from our willful son?"

There was a silent pause that roared through Hermione's ears. "I demand the fate of the Mudblood."

"Such a curious and small price. Should I have listened to Jonas? Can it be true that you care for this witch?" Voldemort's cajoling tone was edged with ice.

Snape laughed lightly. "I demand the fate of the Mudblood in hopes that something still may be salvaged of her mind for our ends. For the injury and insult to my person, I demand the fate of Jonas."

The circle of Death Eaters seemed to shrink away, cringing in anticipation of Voldemort's reaction.

The Dark wizard's red, serpentine eyes narrowed. "Is it really necessary for you to kill him?" he said at last.

"Death would be too kind. The boy is a danger to everyone around him. He no longer knows his place. He killed Draco Malfoy in Hogsmeade last September, against your orders. He has turned his wand upon a Death Eater today."

Voldemort paused, long and calculating. "I expected as much from you, Severus," he replied. "You are, after all, a man who knows his values." He paused, pondering as wistfully as his flat, reptilian face would allow. "It is a shame to lose such an effective instrument."

There was a blinding white flash of magic, and both Malfoy and the other Death Eater released the boy with hisses of pain. The stench of scorched flesh filled the air. Hermione blinked and almost missed Snape's hand flying forward, wandless – the smoke clearing to reveal the fair-haired boy suspended in a crackling sphere of energy, limbs splayed inelegantly in the posture of fleeing.

Jonas fell roughly to the ground when Snape released him. The Death Eaters tightened the circle. He got to his feet slowly, and as he turned his hard, blue eyes on Snape, he began to clap his good hand and broken hand together slowly, in mocking applause.

"You may take your secret to the grave, Snape. But I know... I know." The boy's voice, no longer light and jeering, sounded as if it were being scraped over sandpaper.

"It's a shame that you were never taught how to fear, Jonas. I don't think I'll enjoy this nearly as much as a result," drawled Snape. His voice was cold and reverberated like a death knell in Hermione's head.

The voice was emotionless, soulless. She found herself praying to whatever gods that existed that Snape's skills as an Occlumens must have merely blocked his feelings from even himself.

The spell was spoken as calmly as if he were reading off a list of Potions ingredients. Hermione had never heard it before. Apparently, neither had the Death Eaters, for they watched the sickly yellow curse arch towards the boy with an air of morbid curiosity.

The beam of odd yellow light struck Jonas square in the chest, and he grimaced, scratching at the spot. For a moment, Hermione imagined that Snape had struck him with an advanced version of the Tickling Charm.

Then Jonas began to laugh in short, sharp gasps, always scratching away at the spot on his chest. Five minutes later, the buttons on his thin linen shirt flew in every direction as his fingernails tore through the fabric and raked bloody gashes across his skin. His gasping had mutated into the guttural moans of a wounded animal.

Jonas dropped to one knee, keening as he clutched at his chest, a paroxysm of a small, shriveled man suffering a heart attack.

"I find it is much better to peel away their endurance layer by layer. A skilled wizard could continue this spell for hours, even days, as the victim begins to realize that the pain just gets worse, that it can always get worse... and that it will never stop getting worse, every second that it continues."

Jonas was on his back now, blood gurgling in his throat from where he had bitten through his tongue. He flailed his limbs like a madman one moment and curled into a foetal position the next.

Time ceased to have meaning and was marked only as the boy's gasping turned into screaming and finally into sobbing pleas for mercy. A dozen Death Eaters, their Dark Lord, and Hermione-through-Snape's-eyes watched as Jonas begged for his mother and his father, for mercy, and finally for death.

The boy didn't move anymore; he had broken his back, arching from the ground in spasms of pain. His eyes lolled in his head as his skin began to glow strangely. For a brief instant, his veins were imprinted clearly against translucent skin, a network of nerves glowing darkly like molten lava flowing through cracks in earth. Then the body burst into flames, a rancid inferno that blazed brighter than the sun before extinguishing in a puff of smoke, leaving only a pile of ash behind.

Snape's breaths were rapid and harsh in Hermione's ears. "Unfortunately, the body always gives out long before the mind breaks."

Within the circle, nobody spoke. The other Hermione remained as she was before, prone upon the ground, locked within her own personal hell and immune to the horrors around her.

Without a word, Snape walked over to Hermione's body and reached down, his spidery fingers closing around her limp wrist. She wished she had a corporeal hand to slap him and scream for him to get his filthy hands off of her.

"Severus. Stop." Voldemort's voice sounded behind them, curt and clear. The reptilian wizard sounded almost joyful. "Just where did you learn that delightful little spell?"

Snape's shoulders rose and fell. Then he turned to face the dark wizard. He had not released Hermione's wrist. "I invented it back in my school days, my Lord. There was little else to do at Hogwarts."

"Quite advanced for a schoolboy's daydreamings." Snape was silent, his eyes fixed on a point about two inches in front of Voldemort's curled lip. "See that you never again keep anything that useful to yourself, Severus."

Snape nodded rigidly. "Never, my Lord."

"For example, would you care to enlighten us as to what you will do to the Mudblood?"

Snape looked down to where he was still holding her wrist. "The girl was hit with a complex combination of spells with promising results. It seems to have completely incapacitated her where several hours of the Cruciatus could not. I would like to properly analyze her symptoms and see if I might refine such a weapon against our enemies. This much we can salvage from this botched operation."

"Botched is right," Malfoy sniffed. "I would have liked to see how strong her singular mind truly was. What a pity that mind had to be wasted on one of her kind."

The assault came rapidly, unexpectedly. But Voldemort only lingered at the gates to Snape's mind, stroking the fine border separating him from Snape's deepest thoughts, a location that felt like bare millimeters from where Hermione shrank away, trembling. Then Voldemort withdrew and nodded. "Promise me that I will see the results of your endeavors in good time."

Snape inclined his head. "Yes, my Lord." Then he turned to the other Death Eaters. "Torch the house. Leave no Dark Mark in the sky; let the police think this a case of Muggle arson so that the Order will not be informed. It wouldn't do to put them on their guard."

And then the world disappeared before him, and Hermione let out a little scream as they were sucked into the vacuum of Apparition, reappearing before Spinner's End with the mill chimney on the horizon.

Snape muttered something under his breath, and Hermione's body lifted to hover several centimeters from the ground. He walked rapidly up the street and through his front door, guiding Hermione behind him like a floating sack.

Once the door was closed and warded behind him, he turned towards another door off the side of the main sitting area through which she caught a glimpse of a bedroom. Then he seemed to think better of it and instead flung Hermione's body onto the sofa in the middle of the room. The dusty springs squeaked as her body hit the cushions hard. Hermione heard herself moan softly.

Hermione felt his jaw tremble as his stomach emptied itself again and again until there was nothing left and he continued to dry heave with shuddering, gasping breaths.

He remained there, his forehead pressed against the hard floor as his breathing slowly grew deeper and calmer. It took a long time, long enough for Hermione to grow certain that she truly didn't know him at all.

Snape struggled halfway up and moved over to the side of the couch on his knees before taking her shattered wrist tenderly in his hand. He took a deep breath before murmuring a spell in a steady tone. Hermione's wrist went limp and rubbery in his grasp.

"Be thankful to that idiot Lockhart for teaching us that charm in your second year. Otherwise, I would be at quite a loss." The voice that had tortured a young boy to death mere minutes ago quavered under a watery smile as he held her wrist gently in his hand.

Without releasing her hand, he reached into the folds of his cloak and removed a small vial. Hermione recognized it as Skele-Gro. He pulled the cap off with his teeth and then tipped the steaming contents into her mouth, rubbing her throat gently to induce swallowing.

The girl on the sofa did not react except to close and reopen her eyes with painful slowness.

Her vision blurred, and Snape blinked rapidly, lifting a hand to wipe the moisture from his eyes.

There was the sound of a gasp from far away, and the scene began to fade. Snape, she realized, attempting to pull her out of his memory.

She mentally seized upon the nothingness before it had a chance to disappear from view. Contrary to her early desire to depart, she knew she would not leave now until she had seen everything. Feeling as if she were pulling a Hippogriff through a knothole, she dragged Spinner's End back into focus.

It was an indeterminate amount of time later. The couch had been transfigured into a cot, and Hermione's wrist that Snape held in his hand was no longer swollen. With his other hand, he bent finger by finger forward and backward, watching her face intently.

Hermione screamed, her good hand scrambling for purchase on the wall behind her, her wand hand dangling at one side, the hand bent unnaturally at her wrist that would never heal properly. He walked toward her, hands held out, wandless. "I'm a friend, Hermione. I'm a friend."

Her eyes bugged out from a mask of pure terror. "Who is she? Who are you talking to?"

His voice was impossibly gentle. "You, Hermione. It's you."

With a hiss, she brought her distorted right hand to her temple, rubbing forcefully. She opened her eyes again, her gaze darting around the enclosed room like a caged animal.

Her eyes lit upon the strange, dark wizard standing much too close. She shrank against the wall and began to scream piteously. "Where am I? Who are you? Don't hurt me, please..."

It took Hermione several seconds to get over her shock enough to examine Snape's memories. He had spent a week reading through every book on memory charms he owned as well as the considerable collection in Malfoy's private library. Finding nothing even remotely similar to her condition, he had turned to Muggle publications. He had hit upon a promising solution at last, but it had required Muggle laboratory equipment.

She watched Snape bend over a small dancing flame beneath a glass beaker filled with clear liquid and adjust a knob until the flame blazed blue.

Snape made the beaker disappear into the folds of his cloak. "I believe that your brain has grown weary of fear, even if you don't actively remember."

She snorted. "Remember. The last thing I remember is heading home on the Hogwarts Express." She stopped, and she could see her brain working furiously. "Then where... where is this?" Her eyes widened and she backed away. "What have you done to me?"

"Why are you so afraid, Hermione?"

"Do I have a reason not to be? It was always Harry and Ron rushing off into danger while I made excuses and held them back. I'm not the strong one. I never was."

Snape stood up so fast that Hermione flinched. "Not the strong one? Don't you ever even think... Shut up, Miss Granger, just shut up!"

He swept out of the room and slammed the bedroom door behind him. Then he fell to his knees before the mattress, and for the first time, Hermione heard him weep.

He looked down at the purple plastic atrocity in his hand and then back up at her. "Because I must be precise," he said simply.

"Precise about what?"

He glared at her steadily. "Much as it pains me to admit this, Hermione, you were never as irritating as you are now."

She huffed and swung her dangling feet from the edge of the cot. "Hermione. My name is Hermione," she repeated. "Why do I remember other people's names but not mine? And not yours?"

He never took his eyes from the stopwatch. "Trust me when I say that you are better off by not remembering me."

"I was hurt, wasn't I? By Death Eaters." She gestured to her wrist once again resting in a sling. "I can still feel the pain lingering in my body. Why am I here then?"

He did look up from the watch then. Hermione saw herself shiver as their gazes locked. "You are here because you were worth saving. Because people like you are the only reason I continue playing this miserable game."

Her eyes went wide and for a heart-stopping moment, there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. "You were my professor," she said slowly, her eyes sliding briefly out of focus.

Snape's fingers dug into the arm of the chair until the wood cracked.

Hermione's lips moved. "You were my professor. You're a wizard. What..." She swayed as her eyes slid in and out of focus. Then she frowned. "What are you doing with a Muggle stopwatch?"

Snape's sigh of relief was released the same time he clicked off the stopwatch. The digits read "04:08:15." His thoughts rang through his mind, clear as spoken word.

From somewhere outside his field of vision, a few notes of phoenix song floated through the air, humming with the warmth of honeybees. Snape raised his hand, and Fawkes came to land upon his outstretched arm.

Dark hair met crimson feathers as Snape bent his head to the creature, whispering words in a language that Hermione did not understand. He finished muttering, stroking one finger along one of the phoenix's long, beautiful tail feathers.

"Hogwarts," he whispered.

Fawkes stared hard at Snape with his small, beady eyes and seemed to nod. With a flurry of feathers, the phoenix flew out of a window and out of sight.

His other hand reached into his robes and emerged with a vial filled with oily black liquid. He tipped the contents into her slightly open mouth and then wrapped his spidery fingers around her unresisting wrists, jerking them roughly out from under her body.

The body's eyes stared into nothingness. Her chest was still in death. She wore the torn white sweater and jeans she had worn on that fateful evening. Every single square inch of exposed skin was covered with dark bruises.

Voldemort laughed chillingly. "Why, Severus, I never believed you interested in that sort of thing."

Snape sniffed in disinterest. "The tests were singularly unsuccessful. I decided that she had outlived her usefulness; she fought back."

"Proud little Gryffindor! Well far be it from us to deprive Hogwarts of such a jewel. Leave her at the gates. As a parting gift."

Snape bowed. "With pleasure, my Lord."

Having just pushed open the main gate of Hogwarts, Snape whirled around, barely deflecting the vicious Severing Charm aimed at his arm.

Minerva McGonagall held her wand trained upon him, her matronly face contorted with fury until it resembled a grey-feathered bird of prey. "I didn't believe it when the wards told me you were here. I didn't believe you had the nerve to return. First Dumbledore, now Hermione?"

"Minerva..."

"Don't call me that!" she screamed, sending another curse flying that Snape easily deflected.

She stumbled but kept her wand affixed upon him. "The bruises, Snape?"

He smiled nastily. "You'd like to think so, wouldn't you? It would be convenient for you to think me a monster. They are part of a Glamour Charm, Minerva, and will vanish as soon as I am gone."

"You're not going anywhere," she hissed.

McGonagall's wand arm fell to her side, and her eyes seemed to glaze over. Snape removed a familiar silver bracelet from his robe. The freshly minted metal surface gleamed with the unmistakable etchings of a snake drinking from a flowing stream. With a whispered spell, he concealed the bracelet within an inner pocket of McGonagall's robes.

"You will wait until Miss Granger's condition has stabilized, and then you will find this bracelet on your person and give it to her, believing yourself to have made it. It will prove to be of immeasurable value to her."

McGonagall blinked several times and then nodded.

Snape looked down at the lifeless body at his feet, and Hermione felt a sudden surge of emotion through his mind that left her reeling.

Then he looked back up at McGonagall. "You will forget that I was here."

The spell struck McGonagall the same time that Snape Disapparated, and everything was plunged into darkness.

The slideshow had ended.