Damnation of Memory

Title: Damnation of Memory
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: MA/NC-17
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Suspense, romance, angst
Warnings: Character Death, Violence, Adult Situations
Summary: DH-EWE: With every generation, a Dark Wizard rises. Hermione Granger has survived one. However, after nearly thirteen years, a dead man returns to inform her that she must fight again, and this time, Harry Potter will not be the one to save the world from madness.
Author's Notes: This is my 1st full length SS/HG fic and my second 1st person POV fic. Please note that not every detail is canon, including the canon floor plan of Grimmauld Place. This chapter is also unbeta’d, so please, pardon the mistakes!




Damnation of Memory - XIII





I did not think about Dodderidge again until I read my Codex in Watchet, Somerset. I sat in the window seat of our rented room, looking down to the sea. I was wrapped in a comforter, my hair damp, and my clothes hanging from a line over the tub in the small lavatory. Severus lay on the full sized bed; his black clothes a drastic contrast to the white sheets. He had a pale arm thrown over his eyes.

It was late day, and we had been in Watchet since morning, three days after finding the runestone in the middle of the Ashbrittle Yew. There had been no correspondence, and besides a few one-syllable words, and one phrase, Severus and I had not spoken. Only an hour before we had stood in another graveyard by St. Decuman’s Church with the sound of the sea in our ears. Graveyards were all the same to me, crooked gravestones, the grey stone of the church, and the yew trees and hedges. Rain had pounded on our shoulders and the cowls over our heads as we moved through the graveyard, I following Severus, as he searched.



Under the protective branches of the largest, oldest yew tree, Severus knelt down. On either side were gravestones, and oddly, a carved boar. He did not have to dig as he had in Ashbrittle, but merely swipe and brush away loose dirt and dead yew needles from the flagstone underneath. His long fingers traced the spiral of the labyrinth, dark soil still staining his fingers and nails from Ashbrittle. His forefinger lingered over one mark in the outer circuit of the labyrinth, a tiny primitive figure of a human.

“This has been moved from the well,” he whispered, and that was the only complete sentence he had uttered aloud.

St. Decumen’s had a sacred well, and though a plaque read 1170, as he passed the entrance to the well, I knew better. The well was ancient, just like the one under the Church of St. John the Baptist. Severus did not stop to even notice the ancient swell of magic coming from the direction of the well, heading back to the village.

We took a room in a bed and breakfast, very modern, very comfortable. Severus had waited outside in the rain while I paid with Muggle money he had given me, his pockets full of it. I did not ask for an explanation and took the room under the guise that I was Severus’ wife. No questions were asked and I was given the key to the best room.

And that was how I ended up wrapped in a fluffy white comforter, on a window seat. I knew I could simply magick my clothes dry, but the cold I felt was deep in the bone. I sat in my knickers while Severus lay quietly. I wished for warmth and blue sky, anything but the grey and rain of the sea. I wished for a deserted island, or even a populated island, I was not fussy, somewhere in the South Pacific or the Caribbean, maybe Bali or Hawaii. I wanted to soak in sun like a plant absorbing energy, and feel warmth in my blood and bones. I simply wanted to be comfortable.

I sighed and gazed out the rain streaked window and frowned. To me, Watchet was nowhere, but it was more to Severus. The flagstone, the design of the labyrinth, the location, I wondered why Severus was not telling me where we were going and why. If we were following a ‘path,’ I had yet to see it. I rose slowly, my bare feet alighting the floor. Pulling the comforter tighter around me, I moved to the low dresser and took up my wand.

With a flourish, the comforter was Transfigured and in the wall mirror over the dresser, I stood in a long white dress, a simple one piece that was more suiting for a warmer spring than the one outside the window. I could not keep wearing the dragon hide armoured outfit, I was wanted for questioning, and surely, a warrant had been issued since Harry’s and Pansy’s letters. I dispelled the Transfiguration on Harry’s old leather jacket hanging on the back of the room’s door.

“You realize that by going out alone and unguarded, you risk being apprehended,” Severus growled from the bed.

I sighed. “I am not an idiot,” I muttered.

I was angry, very suddenly, and I was not exactly sure why.

“I need air,” I whispered.

In the mirror, I watched Severus shift, he still had not removed the arm over his eyes, but his free hand dug into the pocket of his trousers. Throwing several fifty pound notes on the empty side of the bed, he was still again.

I left the room with Harry’s jacket over my shoulders, money in my pocket, along with my wand. I knew I looked silly in a white dress and unseemly high dragon hide boots and leather jacket, but it did not matter. The landlady in the front room eyed me coolly, but smiled when I asked about bookshops or cafes nearby.

I trotted down the wet street wishing I had an umbrella. I passed by several shops until I found a wide awning before a small shop. I stopped, wiping my face with the back of my sleeve. I had needed air, and time.

A few automobiles passed on the street and I turned away to the plate glass window behind me. In the display was information for the Watchet Festival in July. There were also books, mostly guidebooks for the county of Somerset, books of Coleridge’s poetry, and books on local history. My eyes scanned the titles and covers, until a particular cover, very plain, very simple, caught my eye.

The cover was black with white lettering, and there was a black and white picture below the lettering. It was a book on Glastonbury Tor; the subtitle read ‘guide to history and legend.’ The photograph was what drew me to step closer to the window. I narrowed my eyes, and licked my lips.



It was an aerial view of the Tor with St. Michael’s Tower standing like a small figure atop an ovoid shaped hill, a drumlin I believed it was called in geologic terms. Along the slope of the Tor were terraces incised into the earth. Glastonbury Tor, it was a place with a rich history and mythology, Muggle and magical. Once touted as the burial place of King Arthur and his queen Guinievere, the Tor had been used since ancient times as a sacred locale. The terraces had many theories surrounding it, ranging from cow paths to an ancient labyrinth. It was the labyrinth theory that made me study the picture through the glass.

I stepped back when the shopkeeper came near the window, curious as to my loitering under the protection of the awning. I smiled, only to receive an annoyed expression.

I sighed and pulled up the collar of Harry’s jacket. The silence and awkwardness had to end. As I stepped back out into the rain, I knew I would somehow have to break the ice. I would have to know about the marker stones, and the ‘path.’



Severus was in the small lavatory when I returned with take-away. He was shaving with his wand, using one of the male grooming Charms that I knew almost nothing about. He had bathed, but his hair was still greasy and lank about his face. He turned as I set the plastic bag full of seafood from a restaurant I had found on Market Street. I knew he was hungry because I was hungry; we had not eaten since the day before.

I began removing food as Severus finished in the bathroom. In the small double room, there was little space to sit and eat properly, so Severus sat on the bed, eating, while I changed back into my dry clothes in the bathroom. I dispelled the Transfiguration on the comforter and carried it back into the room, Severus’ eyes watching me all the while as he chewed on a fishcake.

I took a seat in the window and worked up my first question in my head.

“You said you knew about the marker because you had seen it in your dreams. Our journey, it has something to do with the labyrinth design?”

Severus swallowed. “Yes.”

I pressed my lips together. Another one-syllable response…

“How do you know where we should go to find Aberforth?”

Severus shifted on the bed, leaning back into the headboard, a paper plate lifted to his chest as he ate with his fingers. “Because Aberforth took this path.”

I frowned. “An explanation would be greatly appreciated,” I mumbled, crossing my arms before my chest. I let Severus eat first; I wanted answers before I ate.

Severus sighed and rested his plate on his lap, untidily wiping his fingers into his trouser leg. “I know now how it was that I was rescued.

Aberforth saved me while Potter left me, thinking me dead. He brought me to Perpetua Fancourt to heal. That part you know. I had dreams, I dreamed of the yew tree and the graveyard at Ashbrittle. The magic that saved me, the magic that preserved and healed me, it also healed the wounds on my soul. I suspect that is why parts of my memory are missing. I’ve had this theory for a while now. I do not remember things that scarred my soul…”

“Killing Albus, the Dark Mark, that didn’t…?”

“No. Don’t ask me to explain the whys or hows, I only have the theory.

However, when I was taken from the tree, it was done because I was needed. The surviving Knights were old, over half of them dead. They were needed again; you, Potter, Goyle, Parkinson, and me were called to serve, as is our duty. For almost a whole year, I was free of the tree before I came to be completely aware. The Fidelus Charm was placed, and more parts of my memory Oblivaited, I assume.

Some memory of that time remained, mostly of places, the Church of St. John the Baptist, the Ashbrittle Yew, Fannie’s cottage, and a few places nearby. There is also some memory of information given to me—programming.”

“Programming?”

Severus nodded. “The instructions to find Potter, to give the message being part of it. There were compulsions programmed into me as well, as if I were some automaton. I did not know when or if I would ever need the information, but it seems that Horace, Fannie, and Aberforth had planned for the worst.

The labyrinth is a map. I was told to follow the path of the ‘caerdroia,’ in the event of danger.

Just after you slipped out of Grimmauld Place, Fannie became agitated. You were not to leave the house. You had already placed yourself in danger with protecting Parkinson. She uttered a phrase to me, a key phrase.

‘Dulce periculum,’ danger is sweet. It compelled me to follow despite my fear of being seen. It compelled me to save you. It compelled me to begin the task to find the map and follow the markers along the path. Aberforth, as it was agreed, would follow the circuit of the caedroia, leading to the goal.”

“And what is that?”

Severus did not answer, but began eating again.

“And what is that?” I asked again.

He ignored me and licked his fingers as he cleared the paper plate. I rose, my lips trembling. I had to know. I moved to the foot of the bed, standing just at Severus’ feet.

If I were to follow him any further…

“Damnit, Snape, what is it?” I growled in more of a shout.

Severus dropped the greasy paper plate on the bed and met my eyes.

“Avalon.”





We moved next to eastern Somerset, to Frome. In another graveyard, next to another church for St. John the Baptist, Severus found the next marker under a hedgerow, lost to time. In the same day, we arrived in Chard, the original headquarters of Cerdric, the first king of Wessex. The next marker had been used as a flagstone in the side of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, and the design was nearly worn away.

By nightfall, we were in Taunton, in a double at The Castle Hotel.

For the whole day, I had been trying to digest Severus’ words. Avalon.

I did not sleep the night before in Watchet, preferring to sit wrapped in the comforter in the window seat while Severus snored softly. I did not want to dream.

The Isle of Apples.

I chewed on my fingernails in the dark, pressing my hot cheeks into the cool windowpanes to keep myself awake. I felt sick.

Why had I been having the dreams in the first place? Was it some kind of sign, a premonition? It had to be, although I did not want to believe it. Premonitions and omens were in the domain of Divination, an ‘art’ better left to silly ninnies like Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil.

The next morning, I clung to Severus’ arm, allowing myself to Apparate with him, following what felt like a chaotic path about Somerset. By Taunton, however, I had made a sketch in my Codex with the ballpoint pen I found in the hotel room’s writing desk. The labyrinth. I then found a tourist brochure of Somerset and began superimposing the spiral, classical labyrinth over the map. It was crude and drawn in a shaking hand, but as I began on the dot for Glastonbury. The classical labyrinth did not fit well, so I tried other variations of the spiral. Finally, the ink ran through Taunton, Chard, Frome, Watchet, and Wellington approximately where Ashbrittle lay. I had found the correct permutation and design. I then supposed the next marker would be a Yeovil or Stoke-sub-Hamdon.

Severus stood near the window of the room, gazing out the back of the hotel and into a garden below. Ever since his words the night before, he had not spoken. It was dark out and raining still.

His shoulders were slouched as he hugged himself. I watched his back for a long while at my seat at the writing desk. Severus was trembling.

I did not realize I had risen and cross the room until I placed my hand on his back, moving around his right side. He watched me out of the corner of his eye. The cool façade was crumbling, his lips parting to breathe.

“I am a fool,” he whispered.

I said nothing.

“It was a mistake,” he continued.

I stepped back, drawing my hand away, and leaning into the wall next to the window. A pain coursed through my chest. I straightened, however, and felt my face arrange itself into a snarl. I knew very well what he was implying.

That night, Severus slept on the small loveseat next to the foot of the bed.






Castle Neroche near Staple Fitzpaine was once a hill fort, and all that remained were earthworks, but somehow Severus knew to look for the marker near the place where hut circles had once been. Archeologists had placed signs as to where artefacts were found, and it was near the place a sword had been found that Severus found the marker.

The rain had abated for a few hours, but the sky was still overcast as he used his wand to move earth instead of his hands. It was unusually cold on the hill, and I shifted from foot to foot as Severus pulled a heavy blue-grey stone from a good-sized hole. My Muggle sense told me that we were breaking about five different laws, but it really did not matter.

Severus set the stone on the wet grass, his fingers cleaning out the carved circuits of the labyrinth, then the tiny figure, of dirt. It was as he began muttering quietly to himself that we were ‘nearly halfway,’ that a series of pops made me draw my wand.

I felt my teeth begin to chatter. Seven men, all in black robes, surrounded us. However, the eighth man was in red robes. Severus did not move from where he knelt near my feet, his cowl falling so low over his face, that I was sure none of the men could see who he was.

“Hermione Jean Granger, you are under arrest…”

Ron Weasley’s face was twisted angrily, his wand trained upon me. He continued speaking, but I could not hear. By the way his mouth moved, I only managed to understand ‘murder.’ The men in black encroached, wands being drawn.

The next few moments were confusion, but I knew I had fallen into a combat stance, hexes flying from my wand tip in quick succession. Four men fell, and the other four were running, not away, but toward me. I supposed I should have Apparated away or run, but the decision to fight had won over the decision to flee.

When sound returned, it was to yelling, vocalized hexes cutting through the still air. I moved, not thinking of Severus or caring. The instinct to fight had taken over and all I had was my self-preservation.

Ron was roaring orders, to stun me, incapacitate me. I was running into the trees around the slope of the hill, hexes, and then curses slamming into trunks and splintering wood. I could feel the compression of air as hexes flew by me as well as the flying pieces of soil and tree smacking into my dragon hide armour. I cast over my shoulder as I ran, my boots pounding into the steep ground. I wove in and around trees until I was atop the hill again, near a circle of earth with a sign reading ‘castle beacon.’

“Hermione!”

Ron’s voice drifted through the trees as I scanned the hilltop. The four I had Stunned lay very still, and Severus was missing, as was the marker stone.

A Stunner gazed my left arm and I fell, rolling on the wet grass off the knoll of the castle beacon. I could feel my arm going numb, but I climbed to my feet and began running again just as two black-cloaked men emerged from the trees.

It had begun to rain again as I dropped another man with a well-placed Impediment jinx. The second man glided forward, after me, with a burst of speed. He did not cast though his wand followed me, and soon, he was running along side me. He had a dull, unremarkable face, and short brown hair. I gritted my teeth and cast again, a Stunning hex which nearly blinding me at such close range. The force of the hex sent the man flying high and into the trees. I did not look to see where he fell.

As I came to the far edge of the clearing on the hilltop, my boots slid in the grass as I tried to stop. Ron stood at the far end, the remaining man in black near his back.

“Where’s the other one?” Ron asked, not to me, but to the remaining Department of Intelligence agent.

I wondered if Ron knew that it was such a man that was responsible for Percy’s death.

“He’s Apparated away,” came the answer from another unremarkable face, but the voice was oddly disproportionate—a female voice.

I blinked. Polyjuice was the only explanation. However, I was more concerned with the fact that I was alone and that I, unlike Severus, had not Apparated away as soon as the first hex was cast. Severus had obeyed his ‘flight’ instinct.

“Lower your wand, Hermione,” Ron growled, taking a step forward.

I did not.

“Please, Hermione.”

The anger was still there despite the request.

“You know what this means. You are a criminal combatant, a fugitive…”

I looked past Ron to the remaining agent who was slowly moving to flank me. I shifted on my feet.

“Don’t think about Apparating, we’ve set a ward on this whole hill… Your friend just managed to slip past, we’ll catch him too.”

I ground my teeth together. I wanted to scream at Ron that he was making a terrible mistake. I wanted to Curse Severus Snape for leaving me.

“If you come with me willingly, you won’t be hurt…”

At Ron’s words, like a mental trigger, I felt pain. My left arm was numb, but my shoulder ached. I could feel stings on my cheeks and hot blood. The worst pain came from my back; as if something had stabbed me in the soft part of my right side, and whatever it was still in my flesh.

Ron still had his wand pointed me, but with his left hand, he was reaching toward me. The androgyne agent was at my left side, sidestepping to move behind me as if to trap a wild animal from escaping.

“Just lower your wand, and I swear, we will help you…”

I was caught, and I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Ron took another step forward, his face softening.

“We’ll sort this out, I promise. Please, luv,” he whispered and for a short moment, I believed him.

“No…” I hissed, and pushing the pain aside, I moved to hex the agent who was near my left shoulder. I did not have a plan on what to do next, which would probably lead to me having to duel my old friend and lover.

“Jump!”

The deafening sound of Severus’ voice nearly made me drop my wand, but my body responded. My brain was confounded.

Jump? Why? But I did jump, and my body was lifted off the ground. The voice had commanded, and I obeyed.

“Granger!”

Ron was shouting, but I could not see. My face was covered in wet cloak, my arms wrapped about a straining neck, my legs about a narrow waist. Severus held me and I could feel rain and wind around us.

The impact of the hard ground into my left side knocked the air out of me, and I caught sight of Severus rolling on the ground in a field below Castle Neroche. His grunts were loud, but with the momentum of his roll, he managed to lithely jump to his feet.

I began coughing as oxygen filled my lungs again. Severus ran to my side, his face wild with fear, his eyes burning into my face. He pulled me up roughly, lifting me into his arms. All the while I coughed, Severus ran.

“Damnit!” he hissed.

We had not Apparated from Castle Neroche. We had flown. We were nearly in the village of Staple Fitzpaine when Severus slowed. He did not release me, however, but held me tighter.

“This might hurt,” he muttered, but I was still gasping for breath to understand until the pain came again.

We Apparated.






I had been right about Stoke-sub-Hamdon, it was our next destination. I did not realize until much later that we were there when we appeared atop Ham Hill. I was too busy screaming at the compression of Apparition.

It was also raining in Stoke-sub-Hamdon, and large raindrops fell upon my face as Severus laid me on the ground. His hands moved over me, his lips pressed tight. Pulling a splinter of blasted tree trunk from my right side, I screamed louder.

I saw the blood on Severus’ pale hands and the way his eyes burned, and I knew that I was in bad shape. Adrenaline had pushed me to run and fight, but laying on Ham Hill in Somerset, I was done.

I suppose I fainted for the last thing I saw was Severus wiping his brow of rain, only succeeding in wiping my blood onto his skin. The sight thrilled me, for some perverse reason and then, I saw no more.





“I am very sorry to be short, madam, but my wife is quite exhausted…”

I opened my eyes. I could hear the mumbling of a woman’s voice somewhere to my right.

“No, madam, there is no need for a doctor. After a hot bath to drive away the wet and cold, she will be fine, thank you…”

The snap of a door shutting brought me back. I was lying on a soft bed in a room with near bare cream coloured walls. I turned my head to the right just as Severus turned from the door. He looked different, his cloak Transfigured into a long black trench coat, his face slightly glamoured so that his hooked nose was not so severe and his eyes were a bright blue.

He slipped out of his coat and threw the dripping cloth over the metal frame at the foot of the bed. Drawing his wand from the holster that had been hidden by the coat, he dispelled the glamour as he stalked to a doorway in the left wall, a lavatory. The sound of water running soothed me, stifling the heavy tattoo of my heartbeat against my breasts and in my ears.

I felt as if I was somehow displaced from my body, and every movement was slow. I could remember everything that had happened up until Severus pulled the splinter from my side.

“Where are we?” I asked, but my voice was strained, less a whisper than a rasp.

Severus had returned from the lavatory with a towel and glass of water. He did not answer me until he had me sitting on the edge of the bed, kneeling to pull my boots from my feet.

“Montacute, about two miles from Ham Hill. The Masons Arms is the name of this quaint inn,” he drawled, dropping my boots to the floor and then moving his hands to push my jacket off my shoulders.

I winced as I moved, the dripping leather wetting the duvet under me. Soon, I was sitting on the edge of the bed in only my under things, my wet clothes on the floor. I stared at the shirt lying partially under my trousers.

“Dragon hide armour does not work when it does not fit well,” Severus murmured as his hands moved about my right side, feeling the ribs. “It must have ridden up about your waist…”

I nodded, glancing down to the large bruise on my ribs. There was still a wound, but there was no blood.

“Can you feel your arm?”

I blinked. I could feel my left arm again after being clipped by a Stunner. I could flex my fingers, and feel the pins and needles of nerves waking ran up to my sore shoulder.

“I healed the cuts on your face, I did not want the landlady to think that you had been in some accident…”

“What did you tell her?”

Severus’ brow knitted as his fingers ran along a rib. I grunted and inhaled sharply.

“We were taking a walking tour from Yeovil, it started to rain, you slipped into a ditch… You are exhausted, so that much was true.”

Poking at the sorest spot on my ribs, I grasped Severus’ hand to stop him.

“It’s cracked, you can stop torturing me now,” I grunted. “Why am I the one who is always getting hurt?”

Severus’ lip curled into half smirk, half snarl. “Because you still haven’t figured out that sometimes running is the wiser choice.”

“Cowards run…”

I immediately regretted my words. Severus’ hands, which had moved to my left side, stilled for a moment, but he said nothing.

Severus Snape was many things, but he was never a coward.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

Severus, again, said nothing, but I could tell by the stiffness in his shoulders that my words had somehow hurt him. He felt along my ribs on my left side. There were smaller bruises there, but not as bad as the right side.

“You need sleep,” he said softly. “I might have a phial left…”

When he rose, I felt his eyes skim over the top of my head. He moved to his Transfigured cloak and began digging into pockets. Pressing an open phial into my hand, I did not question what was inside. Harry had given the phials back to Severus at some point, the potions he had on him when he arrived at Grimmauld Place that seemed to be ages ago.

I drank. Severus helped me to lie in the bed, pulling the duvet over me. I had only a few more moments of lucidity as my wet head hit the pillow.

“He said I was a murderer,” I mumbled.

“Are you?”

I closed my eyes. “I don’t know…”



TBC...