Severus Snape and the Order of the Phoenix

Disclaimer:

I don't know why I keep reminding you what you already know...not mine.

Hats off to my wonderful beta Writermerrin!

Harry went inside to speak to Ginny about the newest development while Severus contacted Minerva and told her to inform the Minister of Magic, who was a former Order member himself, about their mission in case they needed help from the French authorities.

Within fifteen minutes or so, Minerva came along with Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood through the Weasley kitchen's Floo. Bill insisted that Fleur should stay behind with the family and help Minerva to alert the other members of the Order, so that in case of emergency they could join in with the away team.

Severus did not think that the Malfoys would let a whole lot of people in to the knowledge of their secret hideout. Therefore, they kept the team small.

Before Minerva could leave, Severus stopped her, saying, "Listen, if something happens to me..."

"Yes, I know, Hermione gets all your books; it was always what you told Albus, since she was twelve. But now I think she would prefer to have you and your books." With that, she stepped into the Floo before he could say another word.

"Is that so!" George wiggled his brows with a wise grin, but seeing how uncomfortable Severus was, he sobered up and said, "Hermione is always going to be a sister to us. Welcome to the family, mate."

The Order of the Phoenix Apparated synchronously to the front yard of the current Malfoy residence, and Severus immediately started to take the dark wards down; that sent an alert inside, and the two Parkinson brothers came out to check what the matter was.

Harry joined in with Severus and took down the final ward, but before they could barge in, Draco Malfoy came out with his cronies, including Flint, Higgs, Bletchley and Goyle.

Suddenly everyone was pointing wands, shouting spells and dodging them.

Draco had sent a Confringo toward Severus, but Severus promptly levitated himself to avoid the blasting power of the spell; missing him, it hit the white marble statue of Aphrodite, blasting it into pieces of dust. Pansy's eldest brother, Pendelton, attacked Harry with a Flagrate charm that took the shape of a fiery cobra, and Ginny threw a Fire Freezing charm towards it to save her husband.

Neville threw a Furnunculus, and Plantgenet Parkinson caught the curse while dodging George's Inflation charm. Bill was fighting both Flint and Goyle. Draco suddenly had disappeared, confusing Severus in the middle of hurling a curse towards him.

Harry and Severus fought their way inside to find Hermione suffering under Pansy's pointed wand. Harry shouted out his signature Expelliarmus, but she deflected it and threw out Impedimenta, which slowed Harry down. Severus used the chance to throw a nonverbal stupefying charm at her.

Then he lifted the curses from Hermione and started checking what kind of damage she was suffering. As soon as he was near, she whispered, "You came!"

"Of course I've come; how can I not come, when you've got such a penchant for trouble?"

"You've come to rescue her, or to reproach her?" Harry said, finding his opponent immobilized.

"Rescue her to reproach her," Severus said as he administered a few healing charms.

"You didn't have to come." Hermione turned around. Her frail condition was too much for the emotional upheaval...but she did not want to break down again in front of him; she could not let Harry see how easily this man could humiliate her to the point of...

"Hermione." Severus touched her arm lightly; she did not turn around, but the plea in his voice made her swallow her cry with a few quick breaths.

"Why would you care? I'm not dead yet."

"Hermione... please." He moved even closer and turned her around to face him. She struggled, but he did not let go...held her to his chest and chanted in her hair, "I am so sorry, so sorry, Hermione. I am truly, truly, truly sorry, my love." Hermione trembled in tears all over his chest.

Harry felt awkward witnessing the tender moment, as if he was intruding on their privacy, but could not leave them unprotected in their emotional state. So he kept himself busy, watching the door for any sign of trouble.

He doubted if either of the two had remembered, in the forgotten world behind them, there was a fight going on between the Order and the Malfoys, which Snape was supposed to be leading.

"Don't call me love if you don't mean it," she said in her raspy, tear-stained whisper.

Severus held her tighter. "I didn't." And he lowered his lips to hers.

At that moment, Harry felt a wand on his throat, and Draco Malfoy materialized before them out of thin air, saying, "AW!... Look at the lovebirds, Potty darling, and she told me he didn't feel anything for her! Should I give them a bit of time?" he asked as if he was simply chatting with an old friend.

"Will you STOP calling me darling?" Harry did not know who he was more furious at...Malfoy or himself...for not anticipating this move from the ferret. No matter how cowardly he seemed for fleeing from the fight, Draco Malfoy was Slytherin enough to plot something. Harry should have thought of that.

As they broke apart immediately, Snape pointed his wand at Draco, only to find that Harry had become Draco's shield. Hermione was blushing furiously in spite of the situation, as she looked anywhere but at Harry.

Snape assured her, "It is all right, my sweet. Potter knows."

"Harry?" Hermione was hesitant.

"How could I not know...the way he acted after you went missing! And no, I don't have any problem with it; you know I want you to be happy."

"You must tell me about it, darling Potty-face. He calls her sweet... love... What this world is turning into!" The forgotten asperser let his existence be known, and then he ordered Snape to unfreeze his wife.

Snape reluctantly did so, as Harry once again chewed on his every word. "Stop. Calling. Me. Darling!"

Pansy cackled like the maniac she idolized as she took Snape's wand from him, "So that's how Granger got top marks! Bewitched and ensnared the professor, did you?"

"How dare you!" Hermione tried to launch towards her, but Severus held her back saying, "Don't, she's not worth it." A furious Pansy had cast a Cruciatus by pointing her wand at him, but Hermione pushed him off balance and in the process became the victim of the curse instead.

"Expelliarmus!" In the commotion, no one had noticed Luna slip in. The wands flew out from the Malfoys' to her outstretched hand. She let Snape and Harry take their wands.

"Finite. Extraordinary, Ms. Lovegood!" Snape said as he lifted a writhing Hermione from the ground.

"Thank you, Professor," Luna said as she bound Pansy magically. Harry joined her to bind Draco.

Luna told them that Neville and Ginny, along with her brothers, had taken the rest of the minions to the French Ministry.

"Good. I will take you back home, darling. Kidnapping and blackmail should assure you a good place by your daddy," Harry informed Draco.

"Why are you calling him darling, Harry?" Luna was not there before, so the pet name confused her.

"Potter fancies me, obviously."

"Yeah, you wish. Shut your smart mouth and think about Azkaban."

Apparently, Hermione decided it was a good time to drop the bombshell. "Um, Harry... I don't want to press any charges against him."

"Actually, that's the one I wished for," Draco said smugly to Harry, as if to answer his earlier jab.

"Hermione!" They were stunned without the aid of magic.

"Yeah. That one, but daddy won't let..." Draco thought they were asking him.

"What are you saying?" came in unison from Pansy, Harry and Snape, though Pansy's question was directed to her husband.

They ignored the arguing couple. Neville and George had returned in time to hear Hermione.

"What are we doing here fighting our arses off, then?" asked one furious George.

"Why on earth not, Hermione?" Neville asked.

"She liked kissing me, perhaps." Snape stiffened, and Pansy became livid at Draco's wisecracking.

"You two kissed?" she asked.

"That's low even for you, Draco. Severus, I am not going to defend my chastity to you or anyone else. I am a mother of two, not a trembling maiden in white, and this is not the middle ages, nor is it the Middle East. Harry, find something else for him which would allow him to stay at home while being punished."

"I am moving out. You want the Mudblood over me, you can have her!" Pansy yelled.

"Actually, he can't have her; the Mudblood does not want to become anyone's property." Now Hermione was getting angrier.

"Do not use that vulgar word. And I haven't doubted you, Hermione." It was Professor Snape who spoke, not just Severus.

"Yes, you did; your shoulder became stiff and your eyes hardened and narrowed," Luna observed.

"I felt angry at my incapacity to protect her from any harm, Ms. Lovegood. My anger was not directed at your friend."

"This is getting out of hand. Hermione, you know if you don't press kidnapping charges, I can't get him for blackmail, either." Harry tried to reason with her.

Snape joined in. "He wanted his father's freedom in exchange for yours. What about the torture you endured? You are barely a shadow of yourself."

"I'd rather be my own shadow than someone else's," was her haughty answer.

"I never asked that of you; that was entirely your doing. You were the one who insulted yourself, along with insulting me." The infamous Snape temper flared up. "You were the one who ran off and stepped into this trap blindly, causing everyone else to... Why did we even bother to show up if you were so content being tortured by these sociopaths?"

"Why did you come, Severus? 'Cause I worked at your school? Was it... I am a fellow Order member that obligated you? Maybe you came simply because Harry Potter asked you to. Surely you didn't come for the tramp who dressed to insult you?"

"And Mum thought they were a match made in heaven!" Harry gave up all his hope.

Meanwhile, Severus stopped arguing and cupped her face in his hand as he said with his deep velvet voice, "I thought you knew why, Hermione: because it is your face that I see when I close my eyes. It had been your face even since before you had asked; I just didn't have the courage to test it. It might have been that way since your sixth year. I had denied that even to myself, thinking how absurd it would have been to think it aloud, never allowing myself to... I could not deny it anymore, not after almost losing you."

"They are, Harry, just not from the same one as yours and Ginny's or Neville's and mine...a different, argumentative heaven. Did I tell you we are getting married in June? He asked me last night." Luna flashed her ring to her friends, and they began to congratulate her.

Hermione even peeked out from Snape's chest to say how wonderful it was, and Luna thanked her, instead, for getting them together.

Apparently, after her globetrotting days and whimsical marriage, she was feeling out-of-sorts and Hermione had played matchmaker between them, which was another reason for her afternoon teas with Neville, besides their obvious friendship. Ginny and Bill had returned already, and they, too, joined the well-wishers' party.

Snape became irritated. How can they forget such a serious topic and go off to gossip about rings and such! He said, "You are forgetting the problem at hand."

"We would like to know about your reason, too, Hermione." A serious George Weasley was a rarer thing than one of Luna's creatures, but definitely scarier.

"My decision has nothing to do with Draco. I can't do this to his son. You must understand. My children are growing up without their father. I cannot condemn the child who risked himself for me to a life similar to an orphan's life as a result of my action; I owe that much to Scorpius."

"Check her for Imperius, Snape. How else could she let him slip away, knowing about Ron's murder?" George was fuming. Draco kept on looking at her disbelievingly.

Hermione said, "Calm down, George. Draco Malfoy did not kill Ron; you cannot charge him for his father's crime."

"Well, let's take them to England. We can decide what to do with them in peace over there. We can call a meeting; everybody available is at the Burrow anyway," suggested Bill.

"Good idea. I need to take Hermione to St. Mungo's for a checkup, too." Severus said.

"I'm fine. I don't need to see anyone but my children," Hermione protested, then added, "Don't forget to bring Scorpius along."

"Not another word, Hermione. Someone will bring the children to see you there at once, but I must make sure you are all right, my sweet."