Ashes of Armageddon

Half an hour later, Severus finished shower and changed his clothing. He wore a long-sleeved robe , and an undershirt that had even longer sleeves, which conveniently extended to conceal almost half of the Blood Quill scar, which suited him just fine.



Neville Longbottom showed to pick him up shortly after. Still drained by the sleepless, torturous night, Severus did not care one way or another. He was still in hell, as far as he was concerned, just being transferred to a different department of it for the day.



Neville thanked Harry profusely, then nodded to Severus and they departed. They used the Floo to travel to St. Mungo\'s, and emerged in a little potions laboratory that looked disorganized, shabby, and completely... mediocre in every way. Severus nearly shuddered at the prospect of working in a place like that, but Neville, to his surprise, did not have any intentions of staying there. He tossed another another handful of powder into the fire, and they stepped back into the fireplace, just as soon as they arrived, only to reemerge a second later, in a spacious, brightly lit office with an enormous desk by the window. Hermione Granger stood up – no, virtually jumped up, and waved at them from across the room.



“Professor! And - Neville!” she laughed. “You\'ve managed to pull it off! You got him out! For how long?”



“For as long as my research in Healing Potions remains mediocre, I hope,” Neville said wryly. “Which might be a while.”



Severus was looking at them with astonishment.



Hermione smiled brightly. “Professor, we assumed that you would rather not spend your days sitting at Godric\'s Hollow... and we really should stick together as much as possible, I think.”



Her smile disappeared quickly, as she approached them and looked at Severus closely, noting the fading cuts on his lip, and the fresh scar on his hand. He was holding his hand discreetly turned away, and half-covered with the long sleeve of his robe, but even then, the new injury did not escape her. She took his hand in hers and stared.



“Halloween of 1979 - what is that all about?” she demanded. “Harry wasn\'t even born then!”



“That was the date when I conveyed the prophecy of Sybill Trelawney to the Dark Lord,” Severus said impassively.



She bit her lip and clenched her fist, obviously attempting to subdue a fit of temper.



“I don\'t believe it!” she said finally with cold fury in her voice. “After the drama with Dumbledore\'s Army, YOU supplying Umbridge with fake Veritaserum, YOU checking on Sirius to make sure he was alright, YOU alerting the Order once we had all gone ahead and done something so incredibly stupid.... that YOU of all people should be displaying a damned blood-quill scar?”



He stared at her very blankly for a few minutes, and then shrugged indifferently. He then abruptly removed his hand from hers, and covered it up with the sleeve again. “No matter,” he said tiredly. “So what is going on here? A miniature conspiracy against the Ministry? Revival of Dumbledore\'s Army?”



“Yeah,” Neville said, not bothering to banish the hopelessness from his voice.. “Army of four.”



“Five, if you count Hugo,” Hermione said unhappily. “Maybe it\'s time to get him a wand.”



“What\'s going on?” Severus repeated.



Neville answered reluctantly: “What is going on, is that... everyone else seems to be affected by him... beyond what is normal. I mean... it\'s almost like he can reach out for a person\'s mind and twist it. Other people fall under his thrall quite easily. They believe Harry\'s theories, agree with his reasoning, support his actions... no matter what. This .. influence of his grows over time.” Neville glanced down. “I guess he\'s a little like Voldemort in that sense... except, he has no Dark Marks to control people. He doesn\'t need them. He... I think, reaches into people\'s minds, somehow, and... well.”



Hermione looked at Severus apologetically. “Back in Azkaban, you\'ve seen Percy and Kingsley...”



“Oh,” Severus said. “I wondered. Who is immune to this influence?”



“I am,” Hermione said firmly. “So is Ron, and so is Neville. You are as well, it appears. As for Hugo, who knows. It\'s too early to tell.”



“Are there any others?” Severus asked.



Hermione shook her head sadly. “Not as far as we know. Everyone else we know is under his spell, so to speak. The Weasleys, other than Ron... even McGonagall... even Luna Lovegood. By the way, I am beginning to think that\'s why Ginny decided to cut bait and run. I think she sensed she was becoming something else – and knew she couldn\'t resist it. So she quit while she was still ahead.”



Severus nodded. “Makes sense, I\'m sad to say.” He studied Hermione\'s face carefully. “You didn\'t tell me any of it last time we spoke,” he said gently, and without accusation.



“Last time we spoke, I wanted to watch you a bit longer. I was trying to be cautious... Simply because I thought we had more time than this. But then, I didn\'t know what I know now,” she whispered. Severus looked at her questioningly. “I got an owl from Harry this Saturday. It was his diary. I\'ve been begging him to let me see it for the last two years, and he just now agreed, for some odd reason...”



Severus tried not to look too smug when he smiled at her words. She stared at him, her eyes wide open in awed admiration:



“You convinced him! How?”



Severus shrugged. “I honestly have no idea. I didn\'t think I was getting through to him at all. So .. what did you find out?”



She took a deep breath. “It\'s a bit of a long story...”



“Spill it,” Neville said sharply.



“Alright,” she murmured. “I\'ve read through it. I couldn\'t find any clues to what actually happened to him. But then, I decided to analyze his behavior, and see if there are any patters to it...”



Neville rolled his eyes. “Hermione!”



“I am doing the best I can,” she said dryly. “I assigned numeric weights of different values to any thoughts, verbal outbursts, and actions that were not characteristic of Harry the way he used to be five years ago. The greater the intensity of ... noncharacteristic violent behavior, the higher the numeric value. Then, I plotted those values against time. Long story short, his behavior ... the intensity of it, is escalating at an exponential rate.”



Neville\'s face paled slightly. “Well,” he said awkwardly. “What does it... practically mean for us?”



Hermione opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out, and she swallowed hard, in an obvious attempt to choke down a sob. Severus sighed tiredly:



“Mr. Longbottom, it means that a few weeks from now, a cut on the face, or a blood-quill scar will be the least of my concerns.”



Neville stared at her intently. “Hermione...at his rate, how long until he kills someone?” he asked very quietly.



“I don\'t know. I mean, the way I assigned the numeric weights was somewhat arbitrary, and ....”



“HOW LONG???” Neville shouted on top of his lungs.



“Unless we figure out what the hell is going on, and find a way to reverse it, probably not very long. A couple of months, at best, I am guessing. Maybe less.” She looked at Severus with a pained smile. “You should be safe, I think... for now....”



“Don\'t be silly, Miss Granger,” Severus chided her. “If he decides he wants to kill me, he will. It\'s not that hard to find a way around the Unbreakable Vow for someone like him. You are a clever young woman. You\'ve figured it out even before I have.”



She was shaking her head furiously. “It won\'t come to this... I swear... We will stop him... We won\'t let him...”



“Come to what, Hermione!” Neville demanded. “Harry can\'t kill him. The moment Harry tries, the Unbreakable Vow will kill him!”



Hermione\'s lip trembled. “Not if he has a Horcrux, Neville. All he needs to do is murder someone else first, and cast a Horcrux spell... Then he\'ll be invincible... He will be able to do to Severus whatever he wants; Unbreakable Vow or not. Harry will torture him to death if he decides that\'s what he wants to do.”



Neville slumped in the chair in front of her desk. “Fuck,” he said very weakly. “Now what do we do?”



“You should get to your lab and start working,” she said firmly. “You have Polyjuice potion to perfect. Come back here at noon. Ron will join us, his shift will be over then. We\'ll sit down, pull our brains together, and figure it all out.”



Neville smiled bitterly. “You haven\'t figured any of it out in five years, and now we are going to figure it out in – what? A few days? A week?”



She nodded, very gravely. “Yes. We are. And we are going to fix it, too. We really don\'t have a choice in the matter, do we?”



... To Be Continued...