Betrayed

Thank you, Jo, for your creative genius and your generous spirit.

Thank you, GinnyW, for support and wisdom beyond my ability to measure or describe.

Thank you, lifeasanamazon and Juno Magic, for once again flinging yourselves into the breach and giving me fresh sets of eyes and notes.

And finally, thank you to all of my readers and reviewers whose support and interest and wonderful feedback keep my muse fed. I'm totally humbled by and grateful for all of you.

52. BETRAYED

She heard. Of course she heard.

It began as disjointed phrases but ended with nightmare clarity.

What irony, that the spell that kept her frozen in stillness to protect her eyes also kept her frozen in stillness to listen without reaction.

Except, of course, for her tears.

Tears that were absorbed by bandages.

Bandages as the ultimate form of Occlumency...the reason she could mask her knowledge from him.

She had wanted to cry out, to interrupt, to leap into the fray of their discussion. To defend him, to protect him, to attack in his stead.

But being so frozen had been her salvation, had somehow given her the strength to restrain her reactions, and that had bought her time.

She lay very still beside him despite the fact that hours had passed, despite the fact that every fibre of her being strained to curl against him, into him, and...

Seek comfort.

Give comfort.

Soothe and be soothed.

She wondered how Legilimency worked when there were no images to be seen, only the blackness of the backs of her eyelids, only words, only emotions quaking through her in the terrifying black of a blindfold.

She wondered how she could hide her knowledge from him long enough to act to save them both.

She wondered if the tears that bathed her eyes now could possibly be healing, or would they undo the good done by the tears she'd wept when he made love for her.

Mostly, she lay so very still beside him, counting his breaths, knowing he didn't sleep, and knowing that now, it was all up to her.

And finally, her guilt so overwhelming...what had she done, what had she been thinking when she had so selfishly and stupidly set them on this course of events that ended with this man she loved destroying himself over her...she went back to the beginning, the very beginning, and a half-hearted and unintended prayer....

And prayed again.

Full-hearted and with full intention.

Because when the previously revered headmaster revealed himself capable of dreadful emotional abuse to get his way....

When her previously indestructible professor became an all-too-vulnerable but dearly beloved Severus....

She needed, in this black moment in this black night, to believe in something invincible.

And her childhood's God was all that was there.

And then, when her body could no longer tolerate inactivity and every bone and joint ached, when she could no longer live in dread of morning and his eyes...oh, god, his eyes...and the pain they would hold...

She set her plan in motion.

She sat bolt upright in bed and screamed.

XX

Her scream wasn't shrill; it was deep and jagged and from the depths of her soul, and it hadn't ended when he grabbed her and held her flailing arms and attempted to wrap her up in his own.

She knew.

She'd heard.

She knew.

Again, the scream, and she wrenched herself from him, but he was faster, stronger. "Wait! I won't...I won't hurt you!"

"Please...Professor...the snakes!" Her voice was strangled, her panic and fear as palpable as the air they breathed.

"There are no snakes," he insisted, stroking her hair, her skin, her bare skin....

"They were...they were biting me! Oh, god, please...please hold me!" She flung herself against his body and he hauled her to him like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline.

His heart pounded. A nightmare? She'd had a nightmare?

He clutched her body against his, breathed in her scent, relished the feel of her, so trusting, in his arms.

"Just hold me," she whispered into his neck as she clung to him, and there was nothing he wanted or needed more than that, to just hold her.... "I need you. I need you to hold me."

A nightmare.

A nightmare of snakes and bites and pain.

A nightmare that didn't hold a fucking candle to reality.

But still, a nightmare, and he could hold her and soothe her with nothings and nonsense. He could conquer the nightmare and hold her in their bed, not the nightmare bed of which she dreamed.

He dragged his body up against the headboard, and pulled her into his lap, and rocked and soothed and kissed and murmured, and for a few long minutes the rest of the world retreated.

He pulled back to look at her in the dim light and saw the bandages. Muttering a soft curse, he reached to release their closing.

She stiffened and caught his hand in hers. "Shouldn't we...shouldn't we let Madam Pomfrey?"

He felt her heart pounding against him and frowned. "I'd like to look for myself first."

She waited a moment too long before slowly releasing him with a smile that was all too nervous. "All right."

A twitch of his fingers and the bandage fell away leaving her face raised to his, her eyes still closed.

Gently, he teased her lashes with his thumbs until they fluttered open....

And her eyes swallowed him whole. He fell into them, hard, with a clutching in his gut like he was freefalling from the highest tower...

And before he could collect himself, before he could see, could see...

She jerked her face away and squeezed her eyes closed again.

"What's wrong? Are you in pain?" he demanded.

She gave her head a hard shake. "No, not that."

"Then what?"

And the voice in his head chanted, She knows, she knows, she knows.

Her chin was quivering, her lips quivering, her voice quivering as she struggled to turn sounds into words.

"Pro...Professor... I can't...I can't...I can't pretend nothing is wrong. I can't keep waiting for you to tell me..." She fell apart in his arms, and he clutched her against his body, his heart ripping. She lifted her face to his and her eyes were swimming in tears. "You know the truth, don't you?"

He couldn't speak.

"You read the book," she said, dropping her eyes from his again, her voice a mere whisper.

The book?

What fucking book?

Air filled his lungs again, and he managed to pull her head close to his so she couldn't see his face, couldn't watch as relief washed through his veins.

"Madam Pince told me you had it," she said mournfully. "And now you know."

Irma? And then he remembered. The Magical Child. He'd got it, flipped through it, couldn't figure out what in hell made her want it burned. "I give up. I don't have any fucking idea what you're talking about," he ground out. His hands gripped her arms too tightly, but to release them would be to allow them to tremble like leaves.

She kept her head down, so he buried his face in her hair, her... he couldn't even rouse enough emotion to think of it as horrid. His head pounded; his pulse raced; he fought for calm.

"The incantation we sang... when you healed me. I'd never heard it before but when you sang...it was as if I were part of you. I knew it because you knew it.... That was earth magic, wasn't it?" she asked.

"It...according to some schools of thought, yes, it's a form of it. The most basic kind, what might be considered similar to a magical adrenaline. In moments of desperation, sometimes a witch or wizard can draw on the ancient power. It's often a mother calling upon it for the sake of her child."

"Like Harry's mother?"

He swallowed. "Perhaps. Yes, it's probable."

"I don't have any earth magic."

"Of course you do," he snapped. "We just established that."

"No, that was yours. I was using yours! Through this, this connection we have." Again, she jerked her eyes away from his. "You said..." she whispered. "You said that if I didn't show any magic on my own before I bought my wand, I was a squib."

"Miss Granger, you are not, nor have you ever been a...a fucking squib!" What was she carrying on about? With everything else, he didn't have time or patience for...

"The vows," she said. "I'm talking about the vows!"

He forced himself to be still, to release her arms. "Proceed."

Her hands fluttered as if she didn't know where to put them. She almost touched him, jerked back, started to push hair out of her face, stopped, finally clutched her hands in her lap and stared at them. "I had no magic. I would know if I did, and I never had that kind. Until..." Finally, she looked at him, her eyes haunted. "Until you gave me yours. 'With all my earthly goods I thee endow.'" She shivered as she spoke. "You gave me your earth magic." Again, she looked away. "And I...I gave you nothing. It's the way the vows are written. We exchanged oaths of fidelity and respect and comfort...exchanged in equal measure, but you're the one who gave something, and it was too high a price for you to pay."

What was she blathering about? They were beyond the point of vows mattering now, beyond the point of any of this mattering. Again, he tried to shut her off. He shook his head, numb, unable to follow her. "I've never excelled at, nor have I attempted to master earth magics."

"According to The Magical Child, the highest form of elemental or earthly magic is the spirit. Earth, air, water, fire...and the fifth point of the pentagram is the spirit. And, according to the book..." she said urgently, " Professor, after our vows I began to use wandless magic, for the first time in my life. They are what particularly powerful children use when they're first manifesting. I not only used it, I excelled at it. Like you. I was suddenly proficient at Occlumency. Like you. I got it from you. It's all from you." She pinned him with her eyes.

And suddenly they washed over him, memories long suppressed, memories of laughing at his father, jabbering nonsense...and his father hating him, not wanting to be near him, hitting him when he stared too long, when he...

When he read his fucking mind and repeated it, thinking he'd be praised and rewarded for being such a clever little boy.

And got knocked across the room.

"The spirit," she was saying. "Your spirit. You gave me your magic when our spirits... connected."

"Preposterous," he spat.

She pulled away from him, and he knew she was stung by his rejection.

"All right," he said, frustrated. "Just say, for the moment, that you're right. Why are you upset? Why are you crying? It's not as if this is a tragedy."

She wrapped her arms around herself. "It means what they said is true about me. That I was nothing but books and...you even said it! I was just a know-it-all."

"For fuck's sake..."

"But it's more than that. Are you sure...can you be certain...that your magic wasn't diminished after our vows?"

"You witnessed what we did together when we healed your arm. You witnessed Albus's surprise and Poppy's reaction. It was remarkable. Together we did something I've never seen done before. That, Miss Granger, is not a sign of diminished magic. It's a sign of enhanced power." He watched her trying to assimilate that information, felt relief easing the tension in her body. "When I was injured, when you cared for me...at the time I thought perhaps your unintended use of Drowning Sleep potion had been a lucky happenstance and had resulted in a healing more effective than any I've had under Poppy's care.... But perhaps it was an early manifestation of... this."

"Then you believe it? You believe something special, something important is happening between us?"

He measured his words. "I don't disbelieve it. More to the point, however, I would prefer that you stop wasting your time and energy on the preposterous idea that you weren't born with magic. It makes no sense and more to the point, it makes no difference. You are what you are now; nothing else matters."

"If it doesn't matter..." She stared into his eyes, and for a moment he felt as pinned to the felt as if it were Albus, fucking Albus, or the Dark Lord staring at him. "Professor, would you have ever chosen a wife who might not give you magical children?"

"No."

She flinched away from him.

"And it's a moot point. This conversation serves no purpose."

"Indeed," she said, and with that single word broke away and headed to the bathroom, leaving him feeling more frustrated and angry than he'd felt since...since the first long night he'd spent wrapped around her in the cold, dark dungeon.

Fucking Albus Dumbledore.

XX

She sank against the bathroom door, her heart pounding.

She'd done it...so far. If she could just hold on longer, just a little longer....

She used the loo and washed her hands and face...her face looked ravaged, as well it should after a long horrible night without sleep, not to mention the injuries of the day before. But her eyes were shining...the whites milky white, no trace of blood or irritation. Perfectly healed, in fact.

She opened the door to find him still sitting, staring blindly into space.

She sank beside him and let her head hang. "You think I'm a twit," she said mournfully, hoping he continued to accept her desperate performance.

"On the subject of your deficient magic?" he sneered. "Indeed."

He was angry, so angry, and it was all she could do not to reach for him and pull him down onto the bed with her so that she could remove this anger, this suppressed rage.

But she needed his anger. She needed him to keep his distance from her, to think her foolish.

Neither to suspect nor discover her horrible knowledge.

So she denied herself even the solace of a goodbye kiss...something he wouldn't initiate and now, she couldn't either...before he left for the morning's Advanced Potions class.

Only when he'd been gone for a full five minutes and she trusted that he wouldn't return for a forgotten quill or reference did she finally allow herself to fall apart.

To sob into his pillow, taking huge gulps of his scent and clinging to what little of his essence remained there.

How easily she'd distracted him, tricked him, manipulated him.

So easily that it struck terror in her heart.

Had he always been so vulnerable? Or was this her doing?

And he thought he could trick Lord Voldemort....

XX

From her spot around a dark corner in the corridor, she watched the small N.E.W.T. level Advanced Potions class gathered outside the classroom door. She couldn't call attention to herself, but she needed...desperately needed...

Harry glanced up and, surprised, met her eyes.

Relieved, she gestured and ducked back out of sight.

Moments later, Harry and Ron both joined her. "No, she said, "not both of you!"

After a moment's hesitation, Ron and Harry exchanged glances and Ron reluctantly nodded and left them.

"You look terrific," Harry stammered. "You look like you were never injured. Your eyes...are they okay?"

"Madam Pomfrey just checked them. I'm fine." She didn't have time for such discussions. "Harry, the pictures. I need them."

"I saved you a couple that showed the auras, but Dumbledore wanted the others. I got them for you while he Obliviated Colin."

She gasped in anger, and he rushed on, "Nobody knows about the bed, Hermione. We can't take a chance on Voldemort figuring out what we're doing."

"I know that," she snapped, but the hot surge of rage she felt had nothing to do with Voldemort or with poor Colin being Obliviated, or even the headmaster having her photos. Her rage was focused solely at the thought of the headmaster's visit, the way he used and abused her husband, the things he said...

She shoved it down, hard. She couldn't let herself think about that.

"Hermione," Harry said quietly. "How did you know that bed was there? I mean, how did you even know Salazar Slytherin's bed existed?"

"Before I came to live with him, Professor Snape had a smaller bed. When we needed a bigger one..." she felt her cheeks blazing and hoped in the dark corridor he wouldn't notice, "it showed up. But it...well you saw what it did. I couldn't get near it, so Professor Snape got rid of it."

"Thing is, Professor Dumbledore didn't even know it existed until after you blew it up. He wanted to see the pictures. So what you're saying is..." Harry stared at her, "if you hadn't married Snape...we wouldn't have found the last Horcrux."

How silly of her to feel her eyes brimming with tears, to feel vindicated, justified, and...dare she even think it? Important. Their marriage, it was vital. It had done something vital.

She had to tell the professor. He needed to know. She wanted him to know, to understand...

But he couldn't understand. He couldn't know about the Horcruxes. She couldn't tell him.

When she knew she could speak without betraying her emotion, she said, "And the pictures you saved for me? Where are they?"

"In my bed, under my pillow."

"What's the password?" she asked tersely.

"Clytemnestra's knickers." Harry touched her arm. "Hermione, what's wrong?"

She brushed him off with a quick, "Nothing," and added, "Don't tell anyone you've seen me this morning. I'm supposed to be resting."

"Oy, Harry!" Ron whispered down the hallway, and Harry gave her a quick wave and took off for class.

Hermione waited several long minutes to be certain no latecomer turned up and saw her.

If even Harry could tell something was wrong with her...

She took deep breaths. She had to get control of her emotions or all would be lost.

She ran through her mental list, and once again realised that there was truly only one person she could count on to help her without question, without second-guessing and without feeling any desire or need to confess later. She just hoped she could find her before it was time to return to bed and her pretence of exhaustion...

The boys' dormitory was, as usual, a tip. But the photos were where he'd promised, and a quick glance of a striking snake almost made her drop them.

If she'd allowed herself to sleep, she would have had nightmares about them.

If she'd swallowed the Dreamless Sleep potion he'd given her, she wouldn't have had any dreams at all, of course.

But then she wouldn't know about the headmaster's visit....

She swallowed thickly. Took deep breaths. Pulled herself together.

She couldn't think about these things, not now, not here.

It only took her two attempts to break through Harry's wards and open the trunk to retrieve his Invisibility Cloak.

She was halfway to the Ravenclaw common room when it hit her.

If she'd taken the Dreamless Sleep potion she wouldn't have had nightmares....

And Professor Snape was bound to realize that.

That she hadn't been asleep.

That she'd heard.

Not now. Not here.

She hovered outside the Ravenclaw door under the Invisibility Cloak and prayed...funny how often she was doing that lately...for things to go her way.

Terry Boot emerged, followed by two boys who looked like they must be first- or second-years. The combination of clattering footsteps and lively chatter as the group disappeared down the tower stairs was enough to make her want to scream.

She was wringing her hands like a first-year herself.

And with a gush of relief, she heard the off-key humming moments before the door opened and Luna emerged.

"Luna!" she gasped.

Luna raised her head and looked calmly around. "Hermione? Where are you?"

"Over here," she whispered. "Come closer." She watched Luna come unerringly forward and noted that today one earring was a radish and the other a miniature aubergine. If anyone noticed Luna talking to a blank wall they'd never pay it any mind. "I need your help, desperately, but no one can know."

Luna tilted her head. "What do you need?"

"First, I want you to show this photo to Professor Trelawney and ask her what this aura means. She can't know who gave it to you or anything else about it." She took a tightly cropped close-up of the sickly green and silver magical aura around a snake's fangs and did a bit of charm work to remove the fangs from the picture, and then she slipped it through a fold in the cloak. "Don't let anyone else see it, and after you get your answer I want you to destroy it."

Luna accepted the photograph emerging out of thin air without any reaction other than, "It's rather pretty. Do I have to?"

"Yes!"

Luna shrugged. "Is this all?"

"There may be more. Right now I'm not sure. How long will it take you to find out?"

"This must be a very important mission."

"It is."

"Wait for me in the library. I'll do it now." Luna broke into a wistful smile. "Thank you for trusting me, Hermione."

"You're both very lucky", Luna had told them at the Sorting Feast. "Not everyone will end up so happy when this is all over."

Somehow, she had seen what nobody else did. She had known. How could Hermione not trust her?

Hermione felt her eyes welling...not now, not here...and infused her voice with all the warmth the pale blonde deserved to hear. "Thank you, Luna, for being my friend."

Luna smiled and tucked the photo into the pocket of her robes, and then headed to the tower stairs, humming again.

XX

He prowled the classroom, his rage tempered to a fine edge, lusting after an excuse to release it.

He had assigned a difficult potion, one prone to volatility if not brewed to a precise standard, simply because he needed the threat of danger to keep his mind away from Albus, from what the malevolent bastard expected him to do, from the real risk of failing a task set forward by the Dark Lord....

"Potter," he sneered. "It is only the fact that I desire to live for another hour that forces me to point out your idiocy. Otherwise I'd gladly let you blow us all up when you add acidophilus powder rather than asphodelus pollen to your cauldron."

He didn't even pause to see if the spoiled berk had stopped in time, but moved on to Draco's cauldron, itching for a reason to snap at him. Alas, his potion was sheer perfection, shimmering and pulsing red like...

Like the Dark Lord's eyes.

He stared into the steaming depths and was whipped back to those long moments when those eyes, those burning cold eyes, stared into him and through him as Miss Granger's voice pierced the frozen silence of the Malfoy study.

Eyes that narrowed to mere slits.

Eyes that examined his reactions, probed his weaknesses, looked for evidence of betrayal.

Which he averted by the simple measure of allowing himself to laugh at Lucius's silent fury and the icy displeasure Narcissa aimed at her spouse.

When it had ended, the Dark Lord spoke not a word, leaving it to Lucius to dismiss it with a haughty wave and a clipped, "And this is the way you control the Mudblood?"

Thank Merlin she'd taken all the credit herself. If she'd even hinted that he'd assisted her, the questions would have been difficult, indeed.

Somehow he'd escaped unscathed.

Only to find her penchant for trouble had reached new heights.

If the Dark Lord, not to mention the other Death Eaters and the fucking Slytherins, ever learned exactly what it was his precious wife had destroyed...the last existing Slytherin artefact...protecting her from their wrath would become astronomically more difficult.

"Professor Snape?" Draco drawled smugly. "Do you find anything amiss?"

"Perfect, as always," he snapped, and moved on.

His heart hammered in his chest. He needed to see her. To reassure himself, to be certain... what? That she still breathed. That she was safe. That she was in his bed, waiting. And if there were tea....

Two minutes. Less than that, even. Two minutes to move quickly through his office and their quarters to find her lazing the morning away, toes waving in the air as she surrounded herself with books, parchments and quills.

Without a word, he whirled away from the student tables and past his desk and through the door, the office, into their quarters...

The bed was rumpled and empty.

The books lay undisturbed.

She wasn't there.

He felt the uneasy clench in his gut, the slow burn.

He forced himself to return to the classroom where Potter and Weasley and Malfoy were probably hungering to hex one another into oblivion.

And tried to remember why he was supposed to care.

XX

Hermione lingered near her usual table in the library. She longed to sit down but didn't dare. The one time somebody actually sat in her favourite chair in the library would be the one time she was already in it, under Harry's Invisibility Cloak.

She hadn't long to wait.

A mere twenty minutes had passed when Luna wandered through the door and began a circuitous and dreamy stroll through the library stacks. Only the fact that she seemed more or less headed in the right direction stilled Hermione's desire to grab her by the neck of her robes and drag her into a quiet corner.

Eventually Luna stood about five feet away from her, staring blankly in the wrong direction. "Hermione?"

"Behind you," Hermione whispered. "Sit down."

Luna took a dusty old book from the stacks and sank into a chair at the table. Only then did Hermione sit beside her and lean in close to her. "I'm right here. What did she say?"

"She told me that all I needed to do was show it to Professor Snape. Why didn't you do that?" she asked, idly turning a page in the upside-down arithmancy book on the table in front of her. "Few people realise how intriguing the formulae can be when examined from above," she pondered.

Hermione stifled the urge to shake her. "But the aura...why would Professor Snape know? He doesn't set any store by divination!"

"It isn't a normal aura," Luna replied. "It's a protection shield, one of those placed by the Founders on the castle. She'd never seen one isolated from the others, but she said this one was placed by Salazar Slytherin, without a doubt."

"Was that all the old charlatan could come up with?" Something she already knew? Hermione blew out a breath in frustration.

"Yes, just that it was protection shield and it only activated when mortal peril presented itself. She thought it likely that since it was by itself, it was something he'd set up as a personal protection rather than part of the castle defences."

"Mortal peril."

"Yes, isn't that interesting that you could get a photograph of the exact moment when mortal peril set off the shield? I find it fascinating, myself. I would have liked to ask her more but she was totally unconcerned and much more interested in her tea leaves. She wanted to read mine, but of course I told her I hadn't time...."

Hermione stared blankly at the bare table in front of her.

She'd been in mortal peril, but only because the shield was activated.

The shield was activated because of mortal peril.

Personal protection.

Protection that would have, perhaps, been passed along to future Heads of Slytherin.

Mortal peril presented not from Harry or Ron or Ginny.

Not from Muggle-born Colin Creevey.

If you dare attempt to trick him, he will know, and he will kill you.

And the only reason her professor would try to trick the Dark Lord was to protect her.

She was the mortal peril.

"Luna," she said in a raspy voice she didn't even recognise as her own. "I need your help most desperately, and you're the only one I can trust, the only one who won't..." she swallowed, "Won't try to second-guess me or change my mind."

"That's because they're Gryffindors," the blonde said placidly. "A Ravenclaw would know better than to second-guess the cleverest witch of our age."

And then, without lifting her gaze from the book in front of her, Luna slid her hand sideways and into the folds of the Invisibility Cloak, where she found Hermione's hand and squeezed it.

Hermione clutched Luna with a death grip, knowing...knowing without a doubt...what she must do.

It was strange, how it all fell into place. How disjointed and tormented thoughts suddenly fell into order with an almost audible click, and she simply knew.

"You won't tell anyone?"

"I won't...even if they ask."

Because Luna understood what Hermione knew, had known when she turned to her for help.

That nobody would ever think to ask Looney Lovegood anything. She wasn't one of the Golden Trio. She was... Looney Luna Lovegood.

Hermione's heart lurched in her chest as she finally let go of the small hand that for a brief moment anchored her.

"Good," Hermione said. And then she repeated it, "Good. I need time...time to get a few things done, but... I'll leave you written instructions that you can only access with a password. What do you want it to be?"

"Amour. That would be a nice password, don't you agree?" Luna turned another page in the book. "Do you need a tissue?"

"No, no...I'm fine," Hermione lied. "I'll leave the message for you..."

"Here. Put it here, in this book, on page three-hundred-sixty-seven."

"Yes, that will work."

She didn't wait.

She couldn't wait.

Suddenly, she was a frenzy of movement, of certainty, of desperation.

She practically flew through the corridors, hissed a barely discernible "Clytemnestra's knickers," and was tucking the Invisibility Cloak back into Harry's trunk and re-establishing his wards before it seemed she'd had a chance to breathe.

Her luck held.

She managed to leave the Gryffindor Common room and escape back to the dungeons without running into anyone. It seemed almost as if...

She choked back a sob.

As if the very castle itself were helping her.

Even as her heart wept and begged her, no, no, no...

Her mind rattled off the facts, and she knew what she had to do.

How much simpler, if you had allowed me to arrange things for her. How much easier your conscience would be. You've already ruined my plans beyond repair, Severus.

No, she thought fiercely. We didn't ruin them. We saved them!

Their marriage...it was vital, it was important, it was real.

And it had served its purpose.

The Horcrux was gone.

But the bed's protections...the warnings...were also real.

She would not let him die.

She wouldn't let their cause fail.

She flew down the empty corridor and felt the warm welcome as she passed through the wards and into their quarters...

Their quarters. This had been theirs, together, for such a short time but it was the most amazing and beautiful time of her life, and...

She couldn't think about that, not here, not now.

She couldn't think at all.

To let herself think was to let herself feel, and to let herself feel was to...

No. Not now, not here.

She was all motion, all frantic motion, as she made hasty decisions and acted upon them.

But her last action...such treachery...was the most difficult.

She couldn't let him suspect what she knew and what she intended.

She couldn't let him stop her.

She waited for the water to boil, spooned tea into the pot, blinking back tears.

She heard him enter from his office, the rustle of his robes and sharp movements.

He was still angry.

"I hardly think it should need stating," he snapped, "that in future if you feel you have bested an enemy, it is a very bad idea to gloat?"

Instead of responding, she kept her back to him and poured his tea into a cup, her hands trembling.

"Do you have any idea what a position you put me in when you sent a fucking Howler to Lucius? What it said to them, to the Dark Lord, that my wife dared do such a thing? Have you any fucking idea the risk you took with my life?"

Was there any way in which she didn't risk his life? The question burned into her like a searing brand. She stirred, and stirred, and stirred, and turned to face him, her eyes brimming.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "It won't...it won't happen again."

And watched his expression melt from anger to surprise to... softness. His eyes...oh, god...his eyes, as he looked at her and the cup she offered, and his anger seemed to melt away as he slowly closed the distance between them and cupped her cheek in his hand.

It took so little to soothe him.

She wanted to soothe him, needed to soothe him, but...

She braced herself.

"Sit down," she urged.

But he didn't. He took the cup from her hands and pressed the briefest of kisses to her forehead, and then...

He sipped deeply.

She could only watch in despair as, once again, his expression shifted.

As his lips parted in a belated attempt to spit...

As his eyes darkened...oh, god...not in anger, but in pain, in the awareness that she betrayed him...

His black, black eyes--God forgive me--those eyes staring at her in shock and betrayal.

And then...

He slumped to the floor, unconscious, the rose-spangled teacup in shatters around him.

"No!" she cried, as she dove forward to break his fall, as if she hadn't been the one, the one who drugged him with his own Dreamless Sleep potions, who put them into his tea, as if she had the right to weep as she clutched his head in her lap, rocking and stroking his hair away from his ashen skin, watching the pulse slowly beating in his temple, his throat.

As if she didn't inhale guilt and agony with every breath she took.

And, finally, because she had to, she had no choice...

She eased his head to the floor, cushioned it with her grandmother's quilt...

Took her wand in her hands...her trembling hands...

And snapped it in two.

And something deep within her screamed as pain ripped through her, pain that took her breath, sent her careening off the wall and to the floor.

Pain, oh, god, the pain.

And the scream wasn't silent. It tore from her throat as she fell...

Red.

Everything was red.

A low moan pierced her, and she saw him so near she could touch him if she but reached out her hand...

His face was a twisted grimace of agony, his cheeks streaked with blood, and he opened his eyes and saw her...

And his face, oh, god, the expression on his face. Confusion, pain, fear, as he groaned, "Miss Granger, what have you done..."

Her finger burned...it burned...oh, god...it burned.

The ring...the gold Ministry ring...was melting away.

He reached for her.

She sobbed.

Grief washed over her in a sickening wave.

She staggered to her feet, grabbed her rucksack and reached into her pocket for the old halfpenny her grandmother had once given her for luck...bile rose in her throat, nothing about this was lucky...

And activated it.

The sickening tug pulled at her stomach...

And she was gone.