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0. Prologue1. Living with the Enemy2. The Truth Hurts3: Brewing Plots4: Festival of Horror5: Mixed Emotions6: Painful Healing7: Death's Favourite Victim8. Reforming the D.A.9. Airshafts10. Visitors11. Close Shaves

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11. Close Shaves

“Here we are, Gryffindors,” Draco called to the frightened group before him. “Your heroes.” The long knife inched closer to Hermione’s throat with every passing second and Hermione could not help but whimper slightly. The Death Eater holding her was practically tearing out her hair in an attempt to keep her still. Bellatrix and her husband were watching this scene as if it were all a very interesting television program.

“You have hidden Potter,” Draco announced. “And thus must be punished for your actions. You all—”

A loud crash exploded through the common room. Draco paused. He glanced over at Crabbe with a pointed expression. When the oaf did not understand the discreet look, Draco jerked his head and hissed: “Find out what that was. Now.” Crabbe, scowling, obeyed and head off in the direction of the Tower’s bathroom. Shaking his head, Draco continued speaking; he was determined to do this correctly.

“The Mudblood here has refused us information. For this, she must die. We will continue to torture and kill all of you until Potter is revealed, understand?”

The knife gently began to press into Hermione’s throat. She grit her teeth and tried not to scream. Tears were sparkling in her eyes. Ron appeared lost for words, bound beside her. A small, thin line of scarlet blood traced itself onto her esophagus.

Draco leaned in close, breathing softly in her ear.

“Any idea where Potter is, mudblood scum?”

Hermione shook her head only slightly, her words flying at Draco like sharp rocks dropping in a well. “You. Will. Rot. In. Hell.” A single tear slipped from her eye and began to mix with the already trickling blood.

Draco smiled broadly. Such an evil smile. Hermione could not help but wonder how such a terrible smirk could be on her schoolmate’s face. He had always been a prat, but this was beyond the line. Was this really what happened to you when you became a Death Eater?

The knife was raised up in the air, poised precisely above Hermione’s neck.

Neville would not—could not—watch. Any moment now he would be sick. He thought of all those bubbling potions Hermione had helped him with in class…all those exams he would have failed without her help…

The light from the dagger shone brightly in everyone’s eyes.

Ron could not move. He could not breathe. This was it. The end. If Hermione died…well, then there would be no reason for him to live either.

“I always did like dramatic scenes,” Bellatrix could be heard cackling in the doorway.

The knife jerked and plunged down towards Hermione’s unprotected neck.

~**~

Harry’s heart nearly stopped when the door to the bathroom opened and Vincent Crabbe stood at the threshold, staring at the crippled Harry. His first thought was how embarrassing to be seen fainting over this minor wound. Then Harry heard the voices in the Common Room and instantly realized what was happening.

“Bloody hell!” He said loudly, glaring at an unprepared Crabbe. “Is privacy against the rules now too? This is a bathroom you lumpy-headed git, not a museum! Don’t look at me like that!”

Crabbe’s dull eyes widened with surprise. “You—”

Harry drew himself up to full height, his head swimming with the pain from his foot. “I don’t expect this kind of treatment.” He said, trying his best to sound confident.

Crabbe shook his head. The situation was too confusing without Draco there to explain things to him. Crabbe decided it would be better if he showed Draco what he had found. “Come with me.” He ordered, grabbing Harry by the arm and dragging him out of the bathroom.

~**~

Hermione saw the knife coming towards her throat in slow motion. It was like one of those Muggle horror movies she had watched as a child, the victim helplessly watching as their own death flew down upon them. She knew that in the movies, this was the part where the victim screamed. But Hermione would not give Malfoy the satisfaction of hearing her fear. She was determined to be strong. Finally, as that knife came rushing down towards her throat, she closed her eyes and—

“OI!” A voice shouted loudly. The entire room froze—including the hand that held the knife. Hermione opened one eye and saw the dagger hovering a half a centimeter away from her neck. Her ability to breathe suddenly resurfaced and she moaned and dropped her head, which was no longer being held forcefully by the Death Eater.

“Draco!” Crabbe’s voice shouted excitedly from behind her. “Look what I found! Look!” Her heart beating continuously against her chest, Hermione turned slowly and saw Crabbe… holding Harry!

“In the bathroom, Draco!” Crabbe’s smile was obviously proud. “I found ‘em in the bathroom!”

Draco Malfoy stared evenly at Harry, whose bright green eyes blazed with fury. His face was streaked with grime and his hands were filthy. All eyes were on Draco, waiting for his reaction. Hermione felt something brush against her leg and she jumped and pulled away before realizing that it was Ron, carefully pulling her up and away from the Death Eaters. The binds that had held him had disappeared now that the Death Eater’s mind was distracted. His warm embrace was heavenly. Hermione immediately leaned against him, burying her face into his chest. His grip around her shoulders tightened.

“Bloody hell, Malfoy,” Harry said coldly. “I didn’t realize that you had to execute people so that I’d hurry up off the toilet.” A few Gryffindors began to whisper and smile at this, but they were silenced by a loud bang like a gunshot that erupted from Draco’s wand.

“In the bathroom, Potter?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Based on your appearance, I hardly think that likely.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry gestured in an almost helpless manner. “Those House Elves…they don’t seem to be doing as much cleaning as usual.”

The silence poured on. Harry’s face became increasingly paler, yet no one seemed to notice. It was clear that he was not about to reveal anything to this large crowd.

“Very well,” Draco nodded, accepting this temporary defeat, although his expression said otherwise. “Return to your dormitories.” He barked at the Gryffindors. “Now!” The students scrambled to obey. Over the tumult of noise, the young Malfoy could be heard ordering the other Death Eaters to leave. Crabbe gave Harry a slight shove at which he toppled over in pain and fell to the ground. Draco watched all of this through furious eyes. He turned to Hermione, who was clutching on to Ron as if he were her only thread of life.

“Next time, Granger,” He sneered. With a flick of his wand and an odd ripping sound as the portrait of the Fat Lady resealed itself, Draco Malfoy left the Gryffindor Common Room.

~**~

“You could’ve been killed! Honestly, Harry,” Hermione muttered under her breath.

“It wasn’t me I was worried about, Hermione.” Harry snapped, looking down at his hands. “You were the one who was almost killed.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Hermione shrugged away Harry’s protests, though her cheeks were pale at the thought of her close brush with death. “I knew you’d show in the end.” If she had not been digging shards of glass out of his foot at the time, with jolts of what felt like thousands of needles shooting into his foot, Harry would have felt much kinder towards his friend.

“No,” Harry clenched his jaw, trying not to cry out. “I was only thinking of myself and the plan. I’ve been focusing so much on escaping that I didn’t think of our own safety right here and now.” A hiss escaped him as the glass was finally freed from his flesh. “Stupid of me,” He grunted, screwing up his face.

Hermione smiled, but did not meet his eyes. “It’s all right.” She tore Seamus’ old bed sheets into long strips and began to use them as bandages on Harry’s foot. Harry snarled as she tugged on the dressing tighter.

“Easy,” He begged her through gritted teeth. His foot throbbed as the blood continued to seep through the white clothe. Ron made a face at the sight. Hermione ignored him and tied the bandage in a knot.

“There,” She said, satisfied. She sat back to appreciate her work. “Once we get out of here, I think I should be a healer,” She proclaimed confidently.

“You’d make a good one,” Ron agreed in an eager voice. Although ready to make Hermione happy, he was easily distracted. He looked out the window where small flakes of snow drifted past. “It’ll be Christmas soon,” He said mournfully.

They were sitting in the boys’ dorms, an hour after Harry’s shower escapade. Harry’s dirty clothes, streaked with blood and soot, lay in heaps on the floor. He remained in his pair of clean pajamas, having scrubbed himself clean with water from a jug. Hermione chided him sternly about the dangers he had put himself in and how he should have confronted her about his idea. Ron simply questioned Harry over and over about all the information he had heard from the Malfoy’s.

“Hermione,” Harry said, stretching his fingers out carefully. “I forgot to ask you…how’s the potion coming?”

She beamed. “Wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I’m really quite pleased with it. But I do need more ingredients—”

“Yes, I’m still working on getting those.” Harry frowned, thinking of Blaise and feeling rather angry that his spy was taking so long to get him the ingredients.

“Where are you getting all these things, anyway?” Hermione demanded.

“I’m not going to tell you,” Harry responded patiently. He poked the cuts on his hand, trying to see if they still hurt or if he could move them. He did not want to loose mobility.

Seeing Harry curling his hands, and thus causing the blood to soak through the bandages, Hermione firmly gripped them and shook her head. “Are you determined to hurt yourself? Stop it!”

Harry snorted and shook his head.

“So…you don’t know who they could be?” Ron asked tentatively, glancing over at Hermione. She was still fuming about not being let in on Harry’s planned spying.

“You mean the people Malfoy and Bellatrix said were looking for Voldemort?” With a sigh, Harry shook his head and leaned back into the pillows. Ron nodded, though winced slightly at the sound of Voldemort’s name. He still had not grown accustomed to hearing it. “No,” Harry said, knitting his brow together in thought. “I honestly can’t think of anyone else that isn’t already here. I mean, Voldemort recruited nearly two hundred Death Eaters before the Final Battle, but half of them were killed and the rest are here. Bellatrix said that they were searching for him, but we all know that he can’t come back…” He trailed off for a moment, remembering his destruction of the Horcruxes. Scars still stretched across his back and arms from a particularly nasty one.

“Well,” Hermione said briskly, casting the leftover bandages onto the floor. She obviously did not like being reminded of the many times the three had nearly died. “Could it be…? I mean, they said he was dead, but couldn’t he have—?” She stopped abruptly. “That is, could it be Snape?”

The atmosphere immediately tensed. Harry’s shoulders and back became rigid and his eyes cold. Ron acquired an ugly look on his face and muttered an offensive name under his breath. This was now a touchy subject between her and Harry because she had been partially right about the Half-Blood Prince. Hermione nearly regretted mentioning it, but knew that she had to voice her opinion.

“It can’t be,” Harry said in a stiff voice. “I saw him fall, Hermione.”

“You hit him with an Unforgivable,” Hermione corrected him patiently. She hated reminding him of all the times he had use the Cruciatus Curse. “And of course, he was quite in pain, you were furious. That fury fueled the power that made the Curse so strong towards him—”

“Can we not talk about this?” Harry snapped, but Hermione persisted.

“—But that did not necessarily kill him. I mean, Neville’s parents didn’t die after being tortured with it, they only—”

“Went mad,” Ron interrupted, looking horrified at the thought. Glaring at the interruption, Hermione shrugged.

“My point,” She continued firmly. “Is that couldn’t he have survived?”

“Hermione,” Harry said in a quiet voice, “he fell nearly a thousand feet.”

The image flashed to the front of his mind: Snape’s sneering face as Harry tried to fight him. His taunting laughs. His screams as Harry’s hate poured into the man who had made his life a living a hell. And the look of immense shock as he fell from the Astronomy tower—pushed by Harry and forced to endure almost the same exact death as Dumbledore. They had never found his body, but then again, the entire front lawns of Hogwarts had been ablaze…including the corpses of many fighters from both sides. Harry knew for a fact that Luna’s father had been one of the many bodies burned that night.

“He fell,” Harry repeated. Hermione sighed.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s just that…who else would the Death Eaters trust with discovering the location of Voldemort? I’m just worried that he might come back.”

“He fell,” Harry muttered, trying to convince himself as much as Hermione. He stared fixedly at his hands, trying to clear his head of the images of that night. But now that he had opened that door, the memories came pouring out and he suddenly felt sick.

“He died,” Harry whispered. “He had to have died. I killed him. I killed him for Dumbledore.”

Unbeknownst to Harry, Ron and Hermione shared a worried look behind their friend’s back. It had been a long time since Harry had acted like this.

“Of course you did, mate,” Ron said evenly. He clapped Harry on the back and Hermione gently rubbed her friend’s shoulders. Harry, however, seemed to hardly feel their touch.

“I killed him,” he whispered.

~**~

Ginny yawned as she arrived home in the early evening. The Burrow, although with some modifications to make it more secure now that her father held the position of Minister, looked almost exactly as it had been when she was a child. She glanced over at the clock with all her family members on it—including two small hands that had been added for Harry and Hermione. Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s hands all continued to point to mortal peril. This at least meant that they were still alive. The clock also revealed that her father and other brothers were at work, and her mother at the hospital. This thought did not alarm Ginny, for her mother was constantly visiting those sick at St. Mungo’s or the injured Aurors that often came to their house for dinner. She sighed. She had the house to herself for at least twenty minutes.

The house was eerily silent. Too silent, in fact. Ginny frowned. There was usually at least three owls flying in and out of the house, bringing in letters from their friends in the ministry. Their guard, Raymond, was not working today because it was his wife’s birthday, but many wards had been placed already on the house. A chill crept up Ginny’s spine.

Could someone be in the house?

She drew her wand and looked around the kitchen. Nothing seemed out of place. Her footsteps were soft and silent as she padded down the halls. After a few minutes of searching, she made her evaluation: no one was on the first floor, as far as she knew. Only the slight dispersal of dust signified anything different, but Ginny could still feel that same sensation of being watched. It had followed her home and now, it seemed, was in her house. She glanced at the clock again. No one was home. She pushed open a few doors, but everything was silent.

The stairs. They loomed in her vision. The silence was unbearable, pounding down on her like a heavy fist. Fighting against her training, she opened her mouth: “Hello?” she whispered. She desperately wanted to hear another human voice. The comfort of the sound almost made her gasp in relief until a door slammed upstairs.

The house rattled from the force. Ginny immediately leaped up the steps, taking three at a time, her wand pulled out and ready. All the doors upstairs were open except for one.

Her bedroom.

Slowly, as if in a dream, she reached towards the handle. She heard movement inside, and she felt her breath slowly winding through her lungs. Her eyes fixed on the knob as it rattled and shook. Her heart was beating a steady tattoo against her chest.

With a push, the door swung open.

And she screamed.

~**~

Fred was just placing his cloak on a peg hung on the wall, noticing his sister’s things sprawled on the couch, when he heard her scream. One of the side doors of the house that led out to a cluster of trees had been open when he arrived, but he had dismissed it to be Ginny’s carelessness.

The scream pierced through the air again and Fred did not even realize his wand was out as he flew towards the sound.

~**~

Ginny screamed.

Her room completely destroyed. Things were thrown everywhere, torn from their proper place. Her mattress was in tatters. But everything had been cleared away from one wall. One wall remained barren except for an inescapable message.

Written in the dripping froth of blood, were the words:

STAY AWAY

Pictures of Harry were stuck to the walls everywhere, with red X’s on each of them. They crossed out his face, as if symbolizing that he was doomed. Pictures of Harry from his babyhood, and all his years at Hogwarts. They were not moving pictures, but the still Muggle shots—all of them in black and white. And the last one, taped to her window, most horrible of all…

A picture of Harry in shackles. Surrounding him were a multitude of Death Eaters and the sickened figures Ron and Hermione. Ginny had no doubt that this was a recent picture from their imprisonment. Harry’s eyes were sunk into his head, his face haggard and pale, his stature bent and broken. Blood was like a second coating across his skin and Ginny could hardly recognize his corpse-like appearance. His face stood out and she could not look away, though it sent horrified shudders through her body to see it.

As the screams tore from her throat, her world on fire, the…the thing hung, strangled to death, in the middle of the room.

Ginny fell to the floor, her gaze fixed on the strangled creature.

A rooster.

It was only too obvious. The roosters she had strangled in her first year still haunted her dreams, and here was one, its eyes bulging out of its head. Its beak remained open, as if it were still gasping for air. The rooster’s head was hanging down; its red comb flopped over its staring eyes. Its black and green plumage was sleek in the setting sun and Ginny’s voice became hoarse as she continued to scream.

A moment later, Fred was by her side. His eyes took in the situation and he pulled her away, hauling her towards the door. But she dragged her feet, screaming and crying. As much as it revolted her, she could not leave.

“HARRY!” she screamed. Tears streaked down her face.

Fred finally managed to pull her to the doorframe, but not before the wind came bursting through the window, shattering the glass with an unnatural force. Not before Ginny’s eyes reached her window, which looked out on the vast lawn of the Weasley household.

And not before she saw a dark, hooded figure slowly slipping out of view.

~**~

Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat quietly at the Gryffindor table. The guards paced restlessly up and down the students, glaring at each one of them in turn, daring them to speak aloud. None remained close to Harry and his friends, but he could see Draco Malfoy carefully watching him from across the room.

“Any other plans?” Ron asked out of the side of his mouth. Harry’s gaze flitted over to him.

“Not yet,” He muttered. Crabbe Sr. plodded slowly past. “I need to speak with…someone. They promised me some information…” Ron made a face at the mention of Harry’s anonymous spy, but was otherwise silent. Harry had still not told either one of them it was Blaise Zabini who was helping them. Hermione sighed.

“Two weeks until Christmas,” She said under her breath. “I suppose we won’t be getting any presents this year?”

Harry looked up at her mournfully, “I can’t get us out of here that fast. I’m sorry, Hermione.” She shrugged, giving him a forced smile.

“It’s all right. I just hope my parents are okay.” She blinked a few tears away and shook her head. Underneath the table, Ron squeezed her hand tightly.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash outside the Great Hall. Hermione looked up inquisitively at Harry.

“It’s not me,” Harry shook his head, looking around at the frenzied guards. “I’m not doing anything this week.”

“Maybe someone’s had a heart attack,” Ron said hopefully. “That would be one less Death Eater to worry about.” The change in subject was fast and abrupt. Harry marveled at the way the three of them could avoid the topic of missed family members.

“Or maybe they’ve just broken another of Hogwarts’ many valuable artifacts. I could kill any one of them.” Hermione grated. She brushed her curly hair out of her face, looking positively outraged.

Harry laughed at this. “Maybe. Or suppose Goyle accidentally ran into the door, because he didn’t realize it was there.” Ron snorted and Hermione gave a small smile.

But it was one of the last smiles she would have in a long time.

“Or perhaps,” said a new, cool and silky voice. “There are some unexpected visitors for you, Mr. Potter.”

Harry did not even have to turn around to know the voice, though he felt his face go white with shock as all the blood drained from it and he began to feel dizzy. Beside him, Hermione started to shake and Ron remained impeccably frozen in his seat, rigid with terror.

Slowly, as if the air was so dense with fear that he had to push his way thorough it, Harry turned around and stared up at the source of the voice. His gaze met those fathomless, yet familiar, black eyes and he felt a wave of uncontrollable hatred and fear sweep through him at the same time.

“Snape,” Harry whispered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: And there’s a cliffhanger for you folks!

I chose “Uncle Henry” for Professor Trelawney because King Henry VI of England was supposedly insane, so I thought it was fitting for Trelawney’s uncle to be named such. J I could give you many reasons why it has taken me nearly a year to post this, but it would eventually sound like I was complaining so I’m just going to stick with the facts and promise that I’ll try my hardest to do everything so that I don’t keep you readers waiting too long anymore. I suppose I did not do quite a good job on that this time! Once again, sorry this has taken forever. Please keep reading, more soon to come. (Thanks once more to my wonderful beta, Bronte, for working with me when I’m sure her life was even more hectic than mine!)

Chapter Navigation:

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0. Prologue1. Living with the Enemy2. The Truth Hurts3: Brewing Plots4: Festival of Horror5: Mixed Emotions6: Painful Healing7: Death's Favourite Victim8. Reforming the D.A.9. Airshafts10. Visitors11. Close Shaves

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