Chapter Thirty-One

A/N: Many thanks, of course, to JKR. All you recognize belongs to her, and of course, all fully italicized lines are from Deathly Hallows. And much love to Shellsnapeluver, my glorious beta, without whose thoughtful advice I would be lost. Oh, and to avoid confusion, yes, there are two Deluminators.

Snape was sitting at his desk in the Headmaster's office, thinking carefully through his last few encounters with Voldemort. All the traveling, his capture and torture of Ollivander, his insistence that he find Grindelwald... what did it mean, and how was it related to that symbol Hermione had drawn? He cursed himself for having assumed that the Dark Lord was slipping into some strange new form of fanaticism when he could have been lingering around him, encouraging him and becoming privy to his secrets.

Given the events of their last meeting, he could hardly stroll into Malfoy Manor and gain his audience. What had he been thinking, letting such an opportunity go by?

He was startled from his reverie by three loud, insistent knocks on the door to the office. It had to be a member of the faculty--no one else knew the password to the Headmaster's office, and he rose with a sigh, wondering what brand of nonsense he would be dealing with today.

When he opened to the door to Minerva's grey and angry face, he was so taken aback that he failed to greet her. Had she returned to continue their argument?

"Snape," she hissed. "I want to see you in my office."

He smoothed his features, regained his composure, and replied, as silkily as possible, "Minerva, if you need to speak with me, I'm certain I can arrange a time for you to visit this office at my convenience."

She seemed to pale even further and glanced quickly over his shoulder. Did she expect the Dark Lord to be sitting in the wing chair, drinking scotch?

"My office," she repeated more fiercely.

"Whatever your concern, Minerva, I'm certain that--"

"My office," she said a final time, spun on her heel, and took off down the staircase, leaving him no choice but to pull the door shut behind him and follow her, trotting at her heels like a schoolboy who had been summoned by his head of house.

Flitwick and Hootch were chatting near the entrance to the Great Hall as they passed, and he saw the look that shot between them, the bewildered amusement, and he vowed to make Minerva pay tenfold for this humiliation. Perhaps he would insist that even her use of house points be approved before...

She swung through her office door and slammed it shut as soon as he had entered, triple warding it and casting a Silencing Charm over the room.

"Gracious," he said mildly, as if he were completely unconcerned by this turn of events.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she barked, and he took an involuntary step away from her.

"I assure you, I haven't the slightest--"

"Oh, I suppose you did tell me in your own inscrutable fashion," she muttered, seemingly to herself. "But why didn't he tell me?"

Was it possible? Was it possible that she had somehow figured it out? It seemed almost too much to hope for; surely, he was simply hearing what he wanted to hear from her, and in a moment, he would discover that Slughorn had rearranged his Potions schedule in a way that conflicted with Gryffindor's Quidditch practice or some such idiocy that would leave him angry and ashamed that he had dared to imagine--

"Severus," she said, and her tone was pleading. "Severus."

"Minerva," he said, growing alarmed. "Get a hold of yourself. What in Merlin's name are you going on about?"

"I should have known. It would have been just like him, and I can hear him telling you that you mustn't ever let us know, that to do so would be death, but Severus--"

He turned from her then, as he was not sure he could keep his face still and unaffected. But she crossed in front of him and touched his arm. Touched him.

"I can understand if you're furious with me. I have conducted myself like a child, and a foolish one at that. But you must believe that I had no idea, that I--"

"That you never once--never once--considered that we are at war, that I am a spy, that my situation might not have been exactly what it seemed? That you never for one moment had a shred of faith in me? That you have refused, over and over again, to see that instead of ruling this school like an iron-fisted Death Eater, I have tried to protect our charges--our children--from harm, that I would rather die than--?"

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and her voice, her tired old schoolmarm's brogue, seemed in direct contrast to his outburst, and he quieted.

He closed his eyes. He wanted to scream at her; he wanted that very much. He wanted to scream until he was hoarse and gasping for air; he wanted to reduce her to tears and pleadings; he wanted her to beg for his mercy. But more than that, he wanted to collapse into the chair in front of her desk and tell her everything. She had touched him and said his name. More than that, she had dragged him down to her office to do it. She had kept it from Albus. He had an ally.

"Sit," she said, and though he was loathe to take her orders, he sat, because sitting at least relieved the pressure of standing so rigidly.

It seemed once he could stop worrying about what to do with his body, he found his voice. "Who have you told?" he asked quietly.

"No one."

"You must not. You must not tell anyone, Minerva. It is imperative. The lives of our students are on the line. I must be allowed to remain here--my cover must remain intact."

"I understand that. I just wish that the others--"

"You think your childish insults mean anything to me? You think they are somehow more inventive or more cutting than those I have endured my entire life? I don't care what you think of me, or what you say to me, or what you do to me--you or any of these other fools."

She nodded solemnly. "I deserve that."

"You deserve more than that. Tell me, Minerva, what finally gave it away? What was the last flake on the overwhelming avalanche of evidence of my innocence that finally sent it crashing through your thick skull?"

To his astonishment, she reached into her desk drawer and held up a slim, silver instrument. Dumbledore's Deluminator. He could think of nothing to say, so he held his tongue and waited for her to explain.

"Scrimgeour came to see me. Sometime in late July. Albus's will had been read and sorted through, I suppose, by the Ministry. He came very reluctantly, I might add, as though he did not want to be handing over anything at all. But he brought this. Albus had left it to me."

"The Deluminator."

"Yes. Scrimgeour read the will to me. He said, 'To Professor Minerva McGonagall, on behalf of all my staff, I leave this Deluminator, in the hopes that it will help those who are lost find their way home.'"

Snape snorted, but said nothing.

"Yes, it was very typically Albus, I'm afraid. And I thought... Forgive me, Severus. I thought he was telling me something about Potter, telling me to help Potter somehow. I carried it around with me for weeks, but I could not determine what its uses were beyond the obvious."

"But you have discovered some other function? Something that managed, despite all Dumbledore's efforts to the contrary, to reveal my... allegiance?" he said archly.

"It said my name."

"Pardon?"

"It was just after that disastrous start-of-term meeting in your office. I heard a voice, Albus's voice, say, 'Minerva will come to see.'"

"That's it? That's all? And you heard this months ago, but now you show up and demand--"

"Albus's voice," she said. "You must imagine how I felt."

"As I hear Albus's voice far more often than I would like, I cannot say that I do."

"Yes, I suppose that's true," she said, tipping her head in acknowledgement. "But I heard his voice, and I pressed the button."

"Fascinating," Snape growled, and she glared at him.

"A ball of light seemed to swell from the device and hover just before my face."

Snape lifted an eyebrow but said nothing.

"It... it went inside me."

"Come again?"

"I know that sounds preposterous. But I tell you, that's what happened. And as soon as I had swallowed the light, it urged me toward your office."

"Indeed?"

"But I thought... well, it seems very foolish now. I thought it was leading me to Albus."

"Is there a point to all of this?"

She looked as if she would quite like to hex him, but she took a deep breath and said, "It led me to you, Severus. I wouldn't see it, but that's what it did. And yesterday, when I saw you, and you called me untrustworthy... well, you all but told me."

"I behaved very foolishly yesterday; I will not deny that."

They sat in silence for a few moments. Snape's face was blank, but his emotions were tumultuous; he was too furious and too pleased to speak. Minerva simply looked ashen.

"Can you tell me? Is he alive?"

"Are you one of those?" he asked condescendingly. "You've seen the portrait, Minerva. He is gone. I killed him myself."

"No... Potter."

"Ah, Potter. Of course. Yes, Minerva. Potter is alive."

She pursed her lips, and Snape had the fleeting thought that this was why her students feared her so. She looked quite stern when she was near tears.

"You're sure?"

"Unless circumstances have changed in the last twenty-four hours, I can say with reasonable certainty that Potter is still with us."

She looked at him long and hard. "You have a contact." It was not a question.

He opened both hands before her in a gesture that was neither agreement nor disagreement.

"You have a contact. It must be Miss Granger."

"I hardly think this is a productive or appropriate line of questioning," he said sharply. "The less you know, the better. For all of us."

She looked as if he'd slapped her, and a kind of fierce pleasure welled up inside him. "However, there is one thing I'd like to know, Minerva."

"Yes?"

"Why did you bring me down here to share your little revelation? Was it because you wanted everyone to see me trailing after you like a chastised child? Did you want to show them that you can still give orders to Severus Snape? Or was it that you were ashamed for Albus to know how long it took you to work it out?"

She shut her eyes and swallowed, opened her mouth and closed it again.

"That's it, isn't it?" he said, half-enraged, half-filled with the furious glee of one who has found the right button and intends to mash it unmercifully. "You didn't want to have to grovel before Albus, to admit that the tool he left was wasted on you, that you simply refused to see--"

"Stop," she said quietly.

"--what was right before your eyes, that Minerva McGonagall can turn herself into a bloody cat, but she can't put two and two--"

"You make it very difficult to be kind to you, Severus."

"Indeed. Call it lack of practice," he sneered.

"I brought you down here because I wasn't altogether certain that you would want Albus to know."

"And whatever gave you that impression?"

"What do you know about the Deathly Hallows?"

***

They Disapparated to a hillside just beyond the Burrow. As she and Ron emerged from beneath the Invisibility Cloak, Hermione had the oddest sense that time was doubling back on itself, that the three of them were third years again, sneaking down to Hagrid's hut under the cloak. To ground herself, as they trudged through the snow, she looked back at the Burrow, its odd, mismatched stories rising determinedly toward the clouds. It was strange to think that Ginny was there, Fred and George, Mr and Mrs Weasley. They had been there, at home, this whole time.

They slogged through the snow in silence for ages, but when they reached the top of the next hill, Hermione could see a tall, black cylinder rising even more improbably than the Burrow toward the sky.

"Bet you anything that's it," Harry said, and from the sound of him, he'd picked up speed and was well ahead of them now.

"Harry, wait for us," she hissed. "I don't want to be separated." But she was hurrying now, too. She disliked being in this wide open area. She had learned from Snape to like walls and ceilings, closed in places where intruders would have difficulty concealing themselves. There seemed to be too much... opportunity here, too many places to hide, too much sky from which Death Eaters could suddenly materialize.

"Come on," she urged Ron, finally taking his hand and nearly running at the strange castle-like structure in the distance.

"Hermione!" he protested, but began to trot alongside her.

They reached the gates, panting and winded. Beyond the crooked wrought iron, there was a garden of odd dimension and even odder population. Mistletoe hung from the twisted branches of stunted looking crab-apple trees, and the ground was littered with bulbous orange fruits in various stages of fermentation. The fact that the Lovegoods had somehow gotten a plant to fruit in the dead of winter was the least surprising thing about the entire tableau. The house rose like a malignant growth out of the countryside, tall and black and forbiddingly strange, and Hermione wondered, not for the first time, if there was anything useful to be found here.

It had been remarkably easy to convince the boys to come. Ron had been slavishly agreeing to anything she'd suggested since his return, but beyond that, it seemed that he longed for some adventure for the three of them to undertake. She thought he wanted to somehow forge new memories of the three of them to replace the time they'd spent apart.

Harry strode to the door, dropped the Invisibility Cloak and knocked. Before his hand had returned to his side, the door was wrenched open, and Xenophilius Lovegood stood before them, his white hair standing out about his head, clad only in what appeared to be a stained nightshirt. His face was very nearly a caricature of surprise. He did not greet them, but stood unmoving in the doorway. Hermione thought he looked quite like one of the gnarled trees wreathed in white mistletoe.

"Why are you here?" he asked, finally.

"Could we come in, Mr Lovegood? We're in considerable danger out here," Hermione said firmly.

"I--well, that is--oh, I suppose so. Hurry up!" he said, as if they'd been wanting to linger in the garden.

He nearly ran from them as they pushed into the entryway. Before she'd had much of chance to look around, Mr Lovegood was charging up a rickety-looking spiral staircase to the upper floor.

"But where is Luna?" Ron called.

"She's..." He turned on the stairs and looked at them wildly. "Luna is... well, she's down at the stream, fishing for Freshwater Plimpies."

"I'll just go down, then, and get her, yeah?" Ron said excitedly. "Luna--you guys! She'll have news; she'll have seen Ginny!"

"She'll be back in no time!" Mr Lovegood said quickly. "Come. Come up here and sit. I've got the press running--I'll just--" And he took off again.

Hermione was reluctant to leave the kitchen, but Harry and Ron were already ascending the staircase, which looked as though it might collapse under their combined weight. She paused until they had reached the top and then began to climb herself.

"Mr Lovegood," she said when they had all congregated next to a creaking and banging machine that seemed to be emitting more smoke and noise than issues of the Quibbler. "I really wish that you would go and get Luna. We've been on the run a very long time, as I'm sure you realize. We haven't seen anyone in months... it would be good to see her. It would feel... like home."

Xenophilius Lovegood looked at her with a strange, pinched expression, and it seemed to her that he acquiesced. He jerked a tablecloth from a large workbench, scattering books and parchment everywhere, and threw it over the seizing machine. "I'll go and call her and then--yes, very well. I shall try to help you."

***

"I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about."

Minerva rose and walked to her bookshelf. She selected a volume and returned to her chair, pushing the book across her desk to Snape.

"The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore?" He gave a short, barking sort of laugh. "You're actually reading that Skeeter woman's bosh?"

"Turn to page 463."

Snape took the book reluctantly and turned to the page. On it, there was a letter from Dumbledore to Grindelwald. Grindelwald again... What was the connection? Why did the wizard keep cropping up? He skimmed the letter with growing confusion. Albus had intended to... rule with Grindelwald? He looked up into Minerva's expectant face.

"So Albus had some rather unsavory connections in his youth," he said as if it mattered little. "I am hardly in a position to throw stones."

"It's not the letter, Severus. It's the signature."

Snape's eyes returned to the page, and he nearly gasped. The symbol. Hermione's symbol. He paused before raising his face from the text. There must be no sign in his manner that excitement was surging through him.

"I am not familiar with that mark. I take it you know what it means?"

"It is the sign of the Deathly Hallows."

***

Mr Lovegood was gone for so long that Hermione began to grow restless. She rose from the workbench where she had been seated and walked back to the steps. The upper floors of the house were lofted and connected by a complicated series of staircases. By leaning into the stairwell, she could see into some of the other rooms. Directly across from them on the next floor was what had to be Luna's bedroom. The walls were painted in dusty blue, and hanging from them were bundles of strange herbs tied with twine. Luna's bed was spare, but covered in a thick silver coverlet, and a jumble of books and boxes seemed to serve as her nightstand. But what was truly striking about her room was the ceiling. On it, there were painted five portraits: Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny and Hermione herself. Luna's style was extremely vibrant, but there was a certain life-like quality about the portraits all the same. A thin gold chain seemed to wind about the figures, binding them together with a thread that reminded Hermione of a spell. She leaned further out onto the landing. The spell was made a single word, repeated thousands of times. Friends.

Hermione was suddenly terribly glad that they had come. Friends, yes. Friends. These were her friends, these were the people who fought along side her. She felt renewed by the picture, and she longed to see Luna, to have her face here with them to complete the picture. "Harry, Ron," she breathed. "Come and see."

Harry joined her on the landing and looked up at the portraits. "Ginny," he said quietly, and she reached over and squeezed his hand. Just then, Mr Lovegood appeared at the foot of the steps. He cleared his throat, and Hermione jumped back.

"Luna is most excited that you are here," he said, beginning to climb the steps and carrying a tray precariously laden with cups and saucers. "She ought not to be too long, she has caught nearly enough Plimpies to make soup for all of us. Help yourself to this infusion of Gurdyroots."

Harry and Ron looked dubiously at the pot of a thick, murky looking liquid, but Hermione thought it best to accept Mr Lovegood's hospitality, however strange. She poured herself a cup.

"Mr Lovegood," Harry said. "What was the symbol you were wearing around your neck at Bill and Fleur's wedding?"

"The sign of the Deathly Hallows?"

Hermione raised the cup to her lips and then lowered it. It was not just the heavy, earthy smell of it, but suddenly Snape's voice in her head, chastising her for drinking an unknown substance given by a stranger in wartime.

"One simply uses the symbol to reveal oneself to other believers, in the hope that they might help one with the Quest."

"But what are the Deathly Hallows?" Hermione asked. Mr Lovegood was shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

"I assume that you are all familiar with 'The Tale of the Three Brothers'?"

Hermione's heart began to beat furiously. The Tales of Beedle the Bard! As angry as she was with Dumbledore, it was cheering to think that they had stumbled back onto his path, that from here they might be able to sense whatever plan he'd had.

"It's a fairy tale," Hermione said to Harry, who had not read it. "It's about three brothers who meet Death."

"You mean they died?"

"No, I mean they met him, like the Grim Reaper. They met Death. He was angry that they had used magic to avoid him, so he gave them magical objects that would doom them. It's kind of a morality tale."

"Finish it, Miss Granger," Mr Lovegood said. "What did they win from Death?"

"Well, I'd hardly call it winning," she said. "The oldest brother got an unbeatable wand. With it he could win any duel."

"I dunno, that sounds pretty good to me," Ron said.

"The second brother got a stone that calls people back from the dead."

Harry looked up at her. She thought she saw an odd kind of hope pass over his face.

"And the youngest brother got an Invisibility Cloak." Harry's eyes widened noticeably, and Ron nudged her foot with his excitedly. She glared at him.

"But how were they doomed by those things?" Harry asked.

"The oldest brother couldn't keep quiet about his wand, and someone killed him to get it. The middle brother called back his lost love from the dead, but was driven mad when he couldn't truly be with her and ended up killing himself. But the youngest brother lived a long life because Death couldn't find him. It's just like any fairy story," she said dismissively. "It's meant to teach children to be humble and quiet and satisfied with what they've got. Not to use magic in ways it wasn't meant to be used, that sort of thing."

"A rather crude telling," Xeno Lovegood said. "But accurate enough in its essentials. The Deathly Hallows: the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility." He drew the symbol on a bit of parchment as he spoke.

"So you're saying you think those things are real?" Hermione said, bewildered.

"Of course, they are real. Very few wizards believe in them, but you have studied History of Magic, Miss Granger. Surely you recognize the many names of the Elder Wand: the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny. The Elder Wand is the Hallow that is most easily traced, because of the way in which it passes from hand to hand." Mr Lovegood turned and glanced out the window.

"Which is what?" asked Harry.

"Which is that the possessor of the wand must capture it from its previous owner, if he is to be truly master of it... The bloody trail of the Elder Wand is splattered across the pages of Wizarding history."

"What do you mean, 'capture,'" Hermione asked. "You have to kill its owner to get it?"

"So it would seem."

"But who has the Elder Wand now?" Ron asked.

"Alas, who knows?" Mr Lovegood said. "The trail goes cold with Arcus and Livius. Who can say which of them really defeated Loxias, and which took the wand? And who can say who may have defeated them? History, alas, does not tell us. There have been rumours from time to time, but no one has seen the Elder Wand for nearly two hundred years."

***

"There were rumours, Severus. Rumours for years, among those of us who cared for such things, that Grindelwald had the Deathstick. They say he stole it from the wandmaker, Gregorovitch."

"Minerva, forgive me if I've failed to understand you. But it sounds to me if you've just given an extremely long lecture on a fairy tale. Now, if you will excuse me, there are matters--"

"Snape! Listen to me. When I saw the symbol, when I realized he was a believer, I knew. Dumbledore must have had it. He must have taken it when he defeated Grindelwald."

"You just said yourself that the Elder Wand passes from wizard to wizard by blood! Dumbledore did not kill Grindelwald. The man is in Nurmengard as we both know." The entire conversation was ludicrous. He would have never taken Minerva McGonagall for the type to chase after these childish daydreams of special wands and stones that raised the dead. But however impossible her tale, it seemed that Voldemort had taken an interest in it. Ollivander. Gregorovitch. Grindelwald. Nurmengard. There was no way it added up to anything else. And Hermione's book. Dumbledore had left it to her. She'd seen the mark in Godric's Hollow, and the old wizard had told him he expected them to visit the town.

"Perhaps," she said. "But I cannot help but think that Albus had it. It explains so much. There were so many things he could do that I had never seen... never even heard of. And when I first began to realize that... things were not as they had seemed, that Albus must have asked you--must have ordered you--to kill him, I could not determine why."

Snape felt chilled, numbed, but he refused to think beyond the words he spoke. "Because he knew that Hogwarts would fall. He wanted me in a position to take over, to spare the students--"

"What else?" she asked sharply.

"Draco Malfoy had been ordered to kill him. He did not want the boy's soul fractured--"

"He did not want a true servant of Voldemort to be the master of that wand. He wanted you."

"Ridiculous," Snape said faintly. If he were the master of the Elder Wand, then...

Minerva was as pale as milk, but her eyes were strange and fiery. "The question is, why didn't he tell you?"

Snape set his jaw. "If I were to assume that all this had some basis in reality, I would gather that Dumbledore felt I might be swayed by the power of such a wand, that I might be lured--"

"No, Severus--if you have contact with Potter, then I cannot believe that he doubted you."

Snape sat in paralyzed silence. Minerva was right. Dumbledore had married him to Hermione to give him access to Potter. If Albus had truly thought there was the chance that he might go bad, he would never have risked the boy in that way. Not believing, as he did, that Potter would have to face Voldemort to defeat him.

"So you must ask yourself, who will track the wand to you first? Potter or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? And which of them, at this point, will have fewer compunctions about killing you? I brought you down here to tell you, Severus, because I think Albus sent you to die, that he sealed your fate as surely as if he had killed you himself. And I don't think I could have told you while he watched you. I don't think I could have stood it."

Snape's mind bucked and reeled. If Minerva was right, and disarming was all that was needed to control the Elder Wand, then he did not have it. The Elder Wand was not his, and Dumbledore must know it! Why, then, hadn't he said anything? What was twisted game was he playing? He heard Dumbledore's last words in his mind as if in an endless loop. Severus, please. Severus, please. Severus... please.

"I thank you for your discretion, Minerva. But if, in fact, this was Dumbledore's plan, then it seems we have a problem. Draco Malfoy disarmed Dumbledore before I killed him."

***

After looking out the window for Luna once more, Mr Lovegood had left them to return to the kitchen. Harry and Ron were whispering excitedly among themselves, but Hermione could not make sense of all she'd heard. Could Dumbledore really have believed this nonsense? An unbeatable wand? A stone that raised the dead? She was bitterly disappointed. This was not what she had come here to learn--they were supposed to be hunting Horcruxes! How did it fit?

"You heard what he said," Ron said. "A cloak that never wears out, that hides everything completely! It's your cloak! And Dumbledore gave it to you! We already have one Hallow!"

"Ron, don't be daft," she said. "That entire story was rubbish. The Tale of the Three Brothers is a myth."

"The Chamber of Secrets was supposed to be a myth, wasn't it?" he countered. Hermione had no immediate response to that, so she pursed her lips and glared at him.

The wheezing and banging of the machine behind her suddenly ceased, leaving the room feeling ominously silent. Absentmindedly, she picked up one of the papers that had shot from the machine and turned it over in her hands as she thought. She gazed at the parchment on which Mr Lovegood had drawn the symbol. Why had Victor thought it was Grindelwald's mark? Snape had said that Voldemort had been looking for Grindelwald, had wanted to see him. Did Voldemort believe in the Deathly Hallows?

"Look, it's just a story. A story about being afraid of death. It doesn't help us; it doesn't mean--"

"Hermione!" Ron said, interrupting her. "Harry! We've got to get out of here. We've got to go now!"

"Why? What are you talking about?"

"Look!" Ron said, pointing at the issue of the Quibbler she held in her hands. Harry's face stared back at her, blinking and looking around nervously. Undesirable Number One, it read.

"No," Harry said under his breath. "No."

Hermione eyes stuttered to the window. There were figures out there on broomsticks. Cloaked figures.

Mr Lovegood's voice startled her so badly that she nearly stumbled as she spun around to face him. He was standing at the top of the staircase, looking wild. "They took my Luna," he whispered. "Because of what I've been writing. They took my Luna and I don't know where she is, what they've done to her. But they might give her back to me if I--if I--"

Luna! Not Luna, with her misty, far-away eyes. Luna, who always came when they needed her. Luna, her friend. Why hadn't Snape told her? Quickly, she thought. Quick now, Hermione. Think.

The Death Eaters were congregating in the garden. Any moment now, they would burst into the house. There was shouting and a blast as the door caved in, and Mr Lovegood gave her a look of deep sorrow as he turned back down the stairs. "Potter is up here!" he called. "Please... please... give me Luna, just let me have Luna..."

The sound of his words tore at her heart. What wouldn't she give, if they had her family? If they had Snape? Perhaps if the Death Eaters saw them, if they knew that Mr Lovegood had told the truth, Luna and her father would not be harmed. Hermione grabbed hold of Harry in one hand and Ron in the other. While Mr Lovegood called, once again, to the Death Eaters, she whispered, "You must trust me. You must. Ron, put on the Invisibility Cloak. Both of you, hold tight to me." She aimed her wand at Xenophilius Lovegood. "Obliviate!" she screamed and then swung her wand toward the floor. "Deprimo!" The floor gave way, and they were falling, falling, spinning as they fell. If she could not turn, if she could not summon her concentration, they would crash into the kitchen, right into the arms of the Death Eaters--

And then, blessedly, her lungs compressed, and darkness took her.