All Kinds of Directions

“Harry, are you sure about this?” Hermione asked as she set her things on the counter.

“After what happened today, how can you even ask that?” Harry demanded. “If we hadn’t been incredibly, unbelievably lucky, Neville would be being tortured to death right now! Every real success we’ve had so far has been because of luck! Well, I’m not willing to wait for our luck to run out at exactly the wrong moment!”

“You’re right that we’ve been counting on luck to much,” Ron agreed as he closed the basement door, “but mate, this is asking for trouble!”

“How?” Harry countered. “We’ve worked on the wording of the geas for hours; none of us can find any loopholes. Snape won’t be able to do anything to harm us—he’ll even be forced to defend us.”

“Snape’s too tricky,” Ron said for what seemed like the millionth time. “He’ll figure out a way around it.”

“You weren’t so worried about the geas Hermione put on Pansy!”

“Pansy isn’t Snape, Harry,” Ginny said. “She’s clever, but not as clever as him. And we’d already determined through Veritaserum that she really did want to help us—she wasn’t looking for a way around the geas. But Snape will be.”

“So you think I’m nutters too?” Harry asked furiously.

“No,” Ginny answered calmly. “Actually, I think that so long as we’re really careful about who and what Snape has access to, he won’t be able to do us any harm. But I’m not convinced he’ll do us much good, either.”

Harry lost some of his anger and considered what Ginny said. “Snape has an incredible amount of information,” he said slowly. “Giving him the bit of freedom we’re going to might convince him to give up a few more key memories. And he can advise Pansy and Hermione on some of the potions they’ve been having problems with.”

“Now that’s nutters,” Ron insisted. “What if his advice turns the potion into a poison?”

“Ron, he’s a potions master,” Hermione said. “He may have been a terrible teacher, but he does know his craft—everyone says he’s one of the best potions masters on this continent, maybe even in the world. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

“I wasn’t talking about by mistake,” Ron said darkly.

“The wording of the geas specifically prevents him from harming anyone in any way,” Ginny retorted. “That includes instructing them in ways that would harm them. He literally won’t be capable of giving us misleading information if it could harm us.”

“Yeah, all right,” Ron muttered. “But he could still intentionally tell Hermione and Pansy to do the wrong thing and make the potions useless.”

They all considered that. “That’s true,” Hermione agreed reluctantly. “I hadn’t considered it.”

“He might not,” Harry said, “as a show of good faith, right?” Ron snorted. “And anyway, that’s not what’s really important! We need the information Snape has more than we need his potions skill. We’ve had this vast source of knowledge right under our roof for months, but we’ve been too afraid to take the chance. Well, that fear cost Ernie his life, and it’s almost lost us Hermione, Neville, Justin, Katie, Pansy and Fred and George! And if they’d caught Neville today, all of us would be sitting ducks!

“Snape was right about one thing: sometimes hatred does overwhelm self-preservation. Well, right now I’m very aware of how much I’d like to live through this war, and no matter how much I hate or mistrust Snape, he may be the key to it. So even though I can’t stand the idea of giving him anything he wants or listening to his sarcastic complaints, if it keeps us alive it’s worth it!”

A ringing silence followed Harry’s loud declaration. Harry forced his breathing to even out; he thought he might have assumed too much.

“All right, Harry,” Hermione said firmly. “I think we should do it.”

“What?” Ron gasped. “You think—”

“I think,” Hermione interrupted softly, “that I don’t want to go another day looking into the faces of our friends and wondering who will be the first to follow Ernie.”

“I’d like to believe that we didn’t bring Neville back just so we could lead him to his death,” Ginny added quietly.

Harry nodded. “I don’t—” He swallowed down the lump in his throat. “I don’t ever want to be as close to losing my best friends—my family—as I’ve been to losing each of you,” he whispered.

Ron stared at Harry for a minute before looking around at Hermione. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I’d like to think I might actually get the chance to marry you.” Hermione blushed. “You’re right, Harry,” Ron said. “I hate this greasy git and I’d be happy to see him dead, but if what he knows might win us the war, we have to try.”

“Look at it this way, Ron,” Ginny said wryly. “Maybe he’ll try to betray us and the geas will kill him.”

Ron smirked. “Yeah… or better yet, maybe he’ll be forced to save us! That would probably piss him off but good!”

“That’s the spirit,” Harry chortled. He turned to Hermione, who was half-frowning, half-grinning. “Okay, Hermione… Let’s do it.”

FIN

Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny.
Free men pull in all kinds of directions.
- Terry Pratchett, The Truth