Chapter Twenty

A/N: All that you recognize belongs to JKR. I make no money. Thank you to Shellsnapeluver for beta reading this chapter, and OpalJade for cheerleading it. The kiss is for Irishredlass. Love you, ladies.

She did not gasp, nor cry out, but she had gone a sickly gray. She stared at him, immobile and silent.

"Surely, you don't think that I--"

"No," she said slowly. "But you've taken an enormous risk to come here, so you must be planning something."

"I have thought of only one option that might hide them successfully," he said. This was true. He had spent the last two days thinking of nothing except how to get out of this and had dreamt up and discarded what felt like a hundred plans.

She waited. It struck him how often Hermione stood, watching him, waiting for him to speak, and he wondered briefly if her two little friends had ever seen this side of her. Had anyone? Once again he was nearly paralyzed with shame. Her trust in him--it was not right. It was not decent. But the look on her face brought him back to the situation at hand. He wanted to break the plan to her slowly, but he found he could not.

"A Memory Charm," he said baldly. "One strong enough to convince them that they are other people, with other hopes, other aspirations.... If we could move them far away from here--"

"Take me from their memories, you mean?" she said, and at first he thought she was protesting. "Erase everything about magic, everything about Hogwarts, everything even about who they are... like Witness Protection..."

He nodded.

"No one could break them," she murmured, "but would they be safe?"

"I think we could hide them well enough. With new names, new jobs... It would be a risk, but I think--"

"It would be a huge risk, maybe too huge a risk. What if Voldemort were somehow to discover--? I mean," her voice broke, but she managed to continue, "I can't bear the thought of sacrificing them. I can't. But I can't sacrifice you, either."

"I do not wish you to consider my situation," he said. He would not allow her to choose him this time. He simply would not allow it.

"Really? Well, I'm sorry, but that is not possible."

"Hermione, this is exactly why I did not wish for us to become involved beyond--"

"Please. Are you really trying to tell me you'd have taken this risk if it weren't my parents?"

"I do not kill the innocent."

"Dammit! You know that's not what I'm implying. I cannot tolerate the idea of exposing you any more than you can bear the thought of murdering my parents."

"The Dark Lord wants to weaken you, Hermione. This is to force you into hiding and to render Potter unable--"

"I know that! Of course, I know that. But this whole marriage was designed to keep you alive, to keep you in contact with Harry. And I cannot risk that."

"Which is why this is the only thing that makes sense."

"I don't even know if I could perform a Memory Charm that complex," she said. Her color had returned, and he knew he had almost won.

"I will do it."

"Severus--" she began, and he knew that with his name, she had played her last card.

"Hermione," he said firmly. "It's a risk either way. Even if you performed the charm, I would still have to take evidence to the Dark Lord of their deaths. I would still have to dissemble. This way, at least there will be less risk that we will permanently damage their minds."

She looked at him, and in her look he could read mind-numbing fear, sadness, resignation, defeat... and hope.

"Do you think that there's any chance that the charm could be removed... if we were to live?"

"If you were to live, I think there is a chance that it could be undone, yes."

"All right." She set her jaw in a pose he recognized as determination. "With the understanding that if we live, we track them down and undo the charm."

He nodded, but the word 'we' pained him. Why would she not accept the fact that there was no chance he would live through this war?

"Will I get to say... that is, will we tell them what we are going to do?"

"Do you think they would allow you to do it if you did?" He watched her face carefully as he asked the question. Her answer would tell him a great deal about whether she understood why he had kept the Headmaster's plan from her.

"My father maybe. But my mother, no." She paused for what seemed an eternity. "Shall I Stupefy them?" she asked, and though she did not move, he could sense that she was about to unlock the door.

"Eventually. But first, there are other things to consider. I want you to think carefully through the house. You will only have a few moments to retrieve anything that you might wish to keep."

"What do you mean?"

He pulled a bone from his pocket. "You remember Bartemius Crouch, I presume?"

She nodded mutely, a vague look of disgust crossing her features.

"We will have to destroy the house to keep anyone from looking too closely. I have what will pass for bodies. When it is time, you must go quickly through the house. Get your school things and anything else that you... want to save. Transfigure it and keep it with you. We'll Apparate out."

"But where will we go?"

"You shall go on the Burrow. They are expecting you for the Weasley wedding, are they not?"

"Yes, but--"

"And I will take your parents with me."

"Where?"

"Do you really want to know that? If you were captured--"

"I need to know," she said quietly. Good girl, he thought. Perhaps this meant that she did understand that when the war was over, she would find them alone.

"I thought Australia."

"Can you go that kind of distance with two Muggles by Side-Along?" she asked.

"I will have to."

This answer seemed to satisfy her. He was quietly impressed. It seemed Hermione understood the relationship between possibility and necessity.

"Do you have your bag with you?"

"It's in my luggage."

"From now on, you will need to be prepared to leave at any time. That bag needs to be packed and on your person."

"I will see to it tonight."

"Fine. I have some things for you." He removed from his pockets several flasks. "This was all I had outside of Hogwarts," he said, holding them out to her.

She turned the bottles over in his hands. "No. I won't take this. You need them."

"Need I remind you that I can get more? If you've found a shop selling Dittany and Murtlap in the forest, please do enlighten me."

She glared at him. "You needn't snap at me. You can't go back to Hogwarts, and I hardly think popping into Slug and Jiggers would be wise. There's a price on your head."

He looked at her very seriously. There was no way to say this without frightening her, so he simply plunged ahead. "Not for long. The tide is turning, Hermione. Soon, I will walk the streets like any man."

She blanched, but took the bottles.

"I also wish to discuss with you the movement of Potter from his home to the safe house."

She looked guarded. "Is it wise that we--?"

"I told you that there would be times that we would need to confer. This is one of those times. Before... Dumbledore's plan, I understood that the Order intended to move Potter on the eve of his seventeenth birthday."

"That's my understanding, yes."

"That will need to be changed."

"But--oh. I see."

"Yes. Sometimes I have to tell the truth."

"Of course."

"In addition, I think the Order is unprepared for the ferocity with which they will be watched and attacked."

"If the other night at Hogwarts was any indication, that will surely be the case," she said.

"I have an idea that might get Potter out safely. I'm going to plant it on Mundungus Fletcher."

"Mundungus? But why? No one really pays any attention to him."

"Indeed. So no one will question where such an idea came from. But you are to take up for it immediately. You must make sure that his plan is followed. Do you understand?"

"Yes. Mundungus will bring your plan to the Order. I will make them see its merit."

He shuddered. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Repeat the plan back to me. It will make it harder to hide. And it makes it sound as if I've Imperiused you."

She grimaced. "All right. Is there anything else?"

"Nothing else. Just that I--I'm pleased you did not attack me when you arrived." It was as close to an apology or an expression of gratitude for her trust in him that he could muster.

She turned away from him very slightly, toward the door. "Why did you do it?"

"Because he asked me to."

"I know that! I just mean... what did it accomplish besides allowing you to change sides? I'm sure there could have been other ways to--"

"You said yourself that Potter is changed."

"Yes. But--"

"For many reasons," he said, interrupting her. "Not all of which I was privy to, myself. Because a young man would have been killed if I had not. Because I needed to be in a position to take over as Headmaster of Hogwarts, to protect the students from my Death Eater 'friends.' Do these things satisfy you? Is this what you wish to hear?" Somehow, as he spoke, anger rose and nearly choked him. For it all sounded flimsy--flimsy and avoidable. How could he ask her to accept these reasons when he hardly knew why he had accepted them himself?

"Severus, I know it was his plan; you don't need to justify yourself--"

"No? That's not what you were asking?"

"Please. I just... I just want to understand." She reached out and took his hand, and he began to feel completely unhinged. A moment ago he had been ready to force her to share his bitter confusion; now, he simply wanted to kiss her until it was all driven away, reduced to a dull throb at the back of his mind.

"Dumbledore did not--he did not trust me with everything. He felt I was too... close to Voldemort. 'Dangling from his arm,' I believe was how he put it. He simply insisted it was necessary. I wish I had more answers to give you."

"It's all right," she said. "I know what it is to have to take things on faith."

How could she compare his treachery to her sacrifice? He did not deserve that kind of compassion. Better simply to force her away before he harmed her, broke her irreparably. Already there was too much damage. He began to turn away, but she spoke again, calling him back. Always, always, she called him back.

"I don't know when it's safe to contact you by the ring. I don't know when you're alone like I did at Hogwarts. I won't do it unless it's an emergency. But you--you should do it any time you like. I've never had too much trouble throwing off the boys."

He smirked in response. "Very well. But the rings... I never taught you shorthand. There are so many lessons I wish I could have given you. But that is immaterial," he said and shook his head as if to clear it. "You realize it is safe to go to Grimmauld Place?"

"Headquarters? Yes, I suppose it would be. Of course, the Order has moved out."

"All the better. No one will ask questions. There is a portrait there of a Black family ancestor, Phineas Nigellus Black. Take it with you, if you can. I will have access to his portrait in the Headmaster's Office, if everything proceeds according to plan. He is bound by the Headmaster's Oath. We can communicate through him."

"All right. I'll go there as soon as I can get away."

He looked at her for a moment. He wanted to remember the way she looked before he orphaned her, for he knew that it would change her, change her permanently to be so alone, to have no home to go back to. Already she looked older, or perhaps it was just that she looked more worn. He ran his hand over the unruly tangle of her hair. She reached up and covered his hand with hers. She angled toward him, and briefly, he brushed his lips over hers, breaking away before he could become lost.

"Go to the living room and make small talk," she said. "I know what I want, so it will only take a moment. When I join you, we'll..." Her voice trailed off.

"Dissimulo Adversus!" he said, turning his wand on himself before she could cry. "Go."

***

When she thought back on her choices later, Hermione would wonder what on earth had made her decide that she could not leave the house she'd grown up in without her mother's Christmas decorations. Of all she could have saved--scrapbooks, baby clothes, a favorite blanket or a well-loved book--all that she had thought of when Snape mentioned saving things from the house was a large and tattered box kept in the back of her mother's closet. But perhaps everything that she wanted was in that box after all, she thought as she dragged a high backed chair across her parent's bedroom. In it was her childhood: ornaments of paste and glitter, desiccated strings of cranberries, ribbons and cards. And it held for her, perhaps, more memories than a photo album could have done and spanned the years both pre- and post- magic. She climbed onto the chair, shoving shoe boxes and extra quilts aside and seized the box, Transfiguring it to fit into her pocket. Then she hastened to the living room, where she found Snape sitting stiffly in a wingback chair, a glass in his hand.

"Sixteen years," he was saying as she came through the doorway.

She looked at her mother, wanting to read her eyes, wanting to know what she thought of the wizard who sat, chatting idly, in their home. Did she like him? Did she know? But a quick glance told her that her mother was already insentient. Her eyes whipped across the room to Snape whose wand was barely exposed beneath his jacket's sleeve.

"I thought it best to do it quickly," he said.

"Yes," she agreed, though she would have liked... well, it didn't matter what she would have liked. She would have liked not to be Obliviating her parents. She would have liked not to be living in a world in which her husband was considered a murdering traitor; in which, for that matter, she could admit she had a husband. She refused to give the dignity of thought to the idea that in a different world, she would have no husband. What did it matter if she would have liked a last look into her mother's eyes?

"I'm going to begin with a simple Obliviate," he said. "Then, I want you to watch and listen closely as I perform the Memory Charm. You will need to remember it clearly in the event that you need to undo it."

"I understand," she said.

Snape pulled his wand from his sleeve. "Obliviate!" he said.

She would not have thought it possible that Stupefied people could look even more blank and... terminal was the word that leapt to her mind. Ended. They were simply bodies, as surely as if they were dead. She felt like screaming.

"Do something," she whispered.

"Are you calm? You need to--"

"Do it, Severus."

He seemed to understand. "I'm placing them in a suggestible state. I believe the Muggles call it 'hypnosis,' though their understanding of it is limited," he said. "It is related to the Imperius Curse."

She watched in a state of horrified fascination as he used an Obliteration Charm on her parents, erasing her name and history from their minds. He suggested to them that their names were Wendell and Monica Wilkins and that they had harbored a lifelong dream of relocating from England to Australia. He further insinuated that they had recently retired and were planning to realize that dream on their upcoming vacation.

His voice droned on and on, providing them with false memory after false memory, inventing, in his dry and clipped tones, a chance meeting, a courtship, a marriage. A career in medicine for her father; for her mother, life as a homemaker. They had not wanted children, he told them. Their marriage had been rich and satisfying enough that there had been no need to expand the family. Yet, they had always wanted to travel. They had quite enough saved up, he told them quietly. Enough to enjoy themselves in Australia, where they had always longed to spend their retirement years. This was their chance, he whispered, and on this trip they might look for a house. Everything at home was tied up; they were perfectly free to do as they chose. Unencumbered, just the two of them, as they had been years before when they had married, before careers and mortgages... free to do as they liked. Why not move? It was hardly impulsive. Hadn't they been discussing it for years?

She felt perversely grateful that he had given them a happy life, that they would believe themselves quite satisfied, accomplished, passionately in love, that they might think themselves lucky.

"Pack," he ordered her, and she raced back up the stairs to her parents' bedroom.

"Pack!" She said, flicking her wand at the closet. "Pack!" The dresser. "Pack!" The bathroom. She levitated the trunks down the stairs, just in time to see Snape filling her father's pockets with Muggle money.

"You don't have to--" she began.

"It has to be at hand. They must ask no questions, want for nothing. Hopefully, we can avoid setting off any memory loops. Is there anything in those trunks that might remind them of you?"

"I--I don't know--"

Snape threw the trunks open, one by one, and rummaged through them. He found a single picture. It was one of Colin's--a moving one he'd taken of her at Christmas. She'd forgotten that she had even sent it; thank goodness Snape had found it. And then he shut them up tight again. He cast a Feather-Light Charm on the trunks and Transfigured them into a ring of keys, which he pocketed.

"Are you ready?"

"Almost." She Transfigured her own trunk, placed it in her pocket and scooped up her school robes.

"I have one last thing for you before I depart," Snape said formally.

"Yes?"

He handed her a scrap of parchment. Before she could read it, he reached back into his pocket and pulled out two bones. "Turn around," he said, and his voice told her that it was best to obey him. She heard an odd, squelching sound as the bones hit the floor; he had hit them with Finite Incantatem. "Confringo!" he shouted, and the wall behind her crumbled.

"Get out now!" he told her. "Incendio!"

She did not look around her. Her memories would have to suffice. Clutching the bit of parchment he'd given her tightly in her fist and holding her robes to her chest, she began to spin. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him grasping her parents firmly to each side of his squat, unfamiliar figure. Surely, he could not manage their weight alone, she thought, but she was afraid to try to go back for fear of Splinching herself.

When she arrived in the meadow outside the Burrow, the world seemed unreal in its serene quiet. She unrolled the parchment, now sweaty and crumpled.

If all is lost, it said, go to the last house on Spinner's End, Manchester.

He had not left her homeless after all.

It took all she had to burn it.