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 - XV





Severus rarely released my hand. After Aberforth’s note, which I still had to read, we moved faster, taking Bridgwater and Highbridge in only a few hours. However, in Cheddar, we were at an impasse. We had searched the parish churches, the excavated Roman villa, and the remains of a Saxon palace, and found nothing.

To me, Cheddar was an odd village, and that oddity grew stronger as we moved toward the famous Cheddar Gorge. It was night as we walked along the narrow Cliff Road. I supposed it was close to midnight, and already I was growing tired. Severus did not speak, but trudged on, me beside him. Many times during the course of the day, I wanted to ask about Aberforth’s letter. The letter had set his jaw and furrowed his brow, and I was sure there was more to the letter than what Severus said.

There were signs along the road advertising the Cheddar Caves, Gough’s Cave, famous for the discovery of the Cheddar Man, and Cox’s Cave. The Cheddar Man, the first complete human skeleton found in Britain had died nine thousand years before. I had read about it as a child in primary school, and in a scientific magazine at my parent’s practice, I had read about DNA tracing in 1997. It had been an interesting read, but I had never considered ever visiting Cheddar.

Severus plodded on along the winding road until he stopped, the night too dark, and pulled me onto a sloping path just as the headlights of a cars passed us. Throughout the day, Severus had stopped many times, mid step, raising his face to the sky. It looked as though he were sniffing the air or listening, and then he would change direction as we walked and scowl.

I allowed myself a small amount of quiet whinging. “I wish I were somewhere warm,” I had begun, Severus seemingly ignoring me. “A tropical island, maybe in the South Pacific, or the Carribean…” Severus grumbled something indistinct, and pulled me by the hand along the dark road. “Anywhere but here and now,” I sighed.

I ended my whinging there as Severus stopped along the road, forcing me to run into his back. I doubted Severus had heard a word I said.

“Hang onto me,” he whispered, and in the red taillights of a passing car, I could finally see Severus’ face. It was grave, tired. “It isn’t here…”

I was beginning to hate Side-Along Apparition.

When I could breathe again, I still clung to Severus in the dark.

“Don’t step back,” he grumbled. “You’ll fall.”

Severus lit his wand, and I found myself standing at the edge of a drop, at least thirty feet, to a leaf-strewn gorge.

“Ebbor Gorge, near Wells. Let’s get below…” he said, answering my unspoken question.

Severus grasped my arms, and despite my terrified squeak, pushed me off the edge. We fell, but before hitting ground, I felt magic cushion us. Severus had some ability to fly, and I vaguely remembered Minerva telling me about his escape from Hogwarts just before the Battle.

Lighting his wand, we swept between the narrow passes of the gorge, moving south. My feet were aching, and my legs were heavy. Between the limestone faces, the air was dank and wet, but it was also dead, as if there was not enough oxygen.

“Severus,” I hissed.

Severus did not stop even as I slowed. He wrenched my arm to pull me forward. I hissed his name again, more urgently.

I could feel it, a shift of magic, deadening the air around us. In the dark behind me, there was movement. I jerked on Severus’ hand, causing him to slow, but he did not look back.

“I know,” he snarled. “Move!”

We were running, my shoulders banging against rock as the passage seemed to narrow. I managed to slip my free hand to my pocket, having foregone the holster over my Muggle clothes. I knew that I could not turn to defend myself with Severus’ tight grip on my hand, so I tried to run faster, my boots slipping on the uneven ground.

A strange whizzing noise sounded ahead of us, and suddenly Severus’ lighted wand went out.

“Protego!” he hissed, and the light of the spell flashed in the narrow, blinding me. We did not stop running although I could feel someone approaching quickly behind and another ahead.

Severus stopped suddenly as the passage widened, and in the dark, pushed me down to the ground as two Stunners flew over our bodies, slamming into each other creating a shower of red sparks.

We stood, back to back, in the all-consuming dark, wands drawn. I listened, as did Severus, and after what seemed like an age, we moved simultaneously.

I cast a Body Bind, which came from my wand as white magic, but behind me, green shot from Severus’ wand. In the flash of light, I saw my pursuer, a man in black robes, and I saw his dull eyes widen as he fell face first to the rough ground. Two bodies fell, one alive, one dead.

I lit my wand as Severus did, seeing that we stood in a wide gap between the rock with deep undercuts. In the light of my wand, I moved slowly to the agent I had jinxed and with the toe of my boot, rolled him onto his back. Uninteresting brown eyes followed me as I moved around him.

I vocalized ‘Incarcerous’ and further bound the agent before moving to Severus who stood over the body of the second agent. I could feel air moving again as Severus knelt down to study the dead face in the wand light.

“Why only two?” I asked in a whisper.

“I think they were scouts of a sort, or merely sweeping the area. We surprised them.”

In death, the Polyjuice slowly dissolved the borrowed face until we were looking down at not a man, but a woman. I did not recognize her, but it seemed that Severus did. His brow furrowed and the deep crevasse between his brows returned. The woman was younger than I was with short brown hair and green eyes that were wide in the shock of sudden death.

“Eleanor Branstone, Hufflepuff. The last year I taught Potions, she caused a silver cauldron to explode, hurting her lab partner.”

I turned away. I vaguely remembered the girl, she was perhaps three or four years younger than I was, but other than her name and her House, I did not know her.

“Such a waste,” Severus spat, rising. “What have you caught?”

His tone was angry, and he stalked over to the living agent. He knelt down and scowled at the frozen face staring up at him. I could shock in the dull eyes.

“This Department of Intelligence must incur great cost to buy the ingredients for Polyjuice for so many,” Severus muttered. “We can wait a while and see who this person is…”

And so we waited. I Levitated the living agent under the undercut of stone, casting a charm for heatless, smokeless fire, Transfiguring a stone to act as a shield to keep the light from seeping into the passage. Severus, meanwhile, left in the darkness with the body of Eleanor Branstone floating before him. I did not question what he did with the body when he returned.

We sat against the rock face, sheltered from a light rain that had begun. We watched the bound body in the enchanted firelight, and waited. Severus spoke little, showing me what he had found in Branstone’s cloak. A plain flask filled with Polyjuice potion.

“This could be useful,” I said softly as Severus slipped the flask into his own Transfigured trench coat.

Perhaps only twenty minutes passed before the Potion’s effects on the living agent ended. Instead of plain brown hair and eyes, dark, long hair ripped from a reshaped scalp and deep blue eyes stared at us.

Roger Davies.

“He was at Helston,” I told Severus. “He was the one who made a statement with Ron…”

“Indeed,” Severus purred, rising to crouch under the rock, moving to Davies’ side. He ended the Body Bind, but left the Conjured ropes that held his limbs inert against his body. “You were in Ravenclaw, were you not?”

“Snape?” was all Davies could manage to say.

In the firelight, Severus seemed to grin. “In the flesh, Mr. Davies.”

Davies reacted by gasping loudly, panicking. He squirmed on the ground as if to escape, but Severus grabbed the man’s throat and sat him up to face me.

“It’s time for answers.”

I shifted, my arms about my knees pressed to my chest. I held my wand in both hands and waited for Severus to move. When he sat next to me again, he aped my posture.

“How did you interrogate combatants?” he asked softly.

“Intimidation,” I answered, and then took a deep breath.

Davies’ eyes flicked back and forth between us, his body quaking with fear.

“Meaning that if you do not provide us with some information, Mr. Davies, you will end up like your partner,” Severus explained coolly.

I said nothing, but cocked my head as I regarded Davies.

“Are the rest of your ‘group’ nearby?” I began.

Davies swallowed thickly and shook his head. “Martock.”

Martock was about thirty miles to the southwest.

“Were you there, at Castle Neroche?”

Davies nodded.

“You are under Ron Weasley’s command?”

Davies’ eyes moved to the ground.

I knew the answer, best put perhaps as: not exactly.

“You attacked Pansy Parkinson and myself at Helston, but were you part of the group at Islington when Percy Weasley was killed?”

Davies licked his lips, moving his eyes along the ground.

Yes.

“You know then that I had nothing to do with his death.”

“You were there…” Davies trailed.

I bit the inside of my cheek and waited.

“Who is in command? Who is issuing the orders?”

Davies eyes glazed. “Confidential.”

The standard answer, I knew from working as part of the Department of Intelligence.

“Was it Percy Weasley?”

“Weasley is dead.”

“Is it Cormac MacLaggen?”

At this question, Davies’ eyes rose to mine. His face contorted and a renewed sense of fear gripped him.

“Please, Granger, don’t ask me, please don’t!”

Severus shifted, and then moved. I opened my mouth to stop him, but already, Severus was tearing into Davies’ mind with aggressive Legilimency. Davies began gasping, open mouthed, and his blue eyes wide. He tried to struggle, roll away, break the eye contact, but it was of no use. Severus caught hold of Davies’ shoulders and kept him still.

Together, Severus and Davies spoke.

“Granger is the key. Knights must be destroyed or captured. It is my order…”

I stiffened, the combination of voices as eerie as the words.

“Take the key, open the gateway, and give me the power to change this world…”

Davies gagged and Severus broke the spell. He let Davies fall back into the ground, his blue eyes rolling back into his head, his body shuddering. Severus fell back to sit on the ground, rubbing his face and his eyes with his hands.

“He’ll be fine in a few moments,” he whispered.

I was biting my thumbnail roughly at the words, the memory that Davies had held in his mind. Severus crawled back to sit next to me, and together we watched as Davies fell unconscious by the fire.

“That was dangerous, Severus,” I muttered.

I could feel his eyes against the side of my face. “Like me, in some ways, Davies has been programmed. He would never submit to intimidation or any other interrogation tactics. I was only able to extract a small amount of what is locked in that mind.”

“You could have killed him.”

“Perhaps…”

I closed my eyes and bowed my head.

“I could not see clearly, the programming is deeply engrained, but those words were spoken by the man that the old Knights are calling a Dark Wizard.”

“And this ‘change?’”

Severus said nothing and I opened my eyes to glance at him. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

When Davies regained consciousness, I gave him water from the bottle in my pack, resting his head in my lap. The interrogation began again.

“My commander is not a Dark Wizard,” Davies said finally as the sky outside began to lighten. I had been questioning him gently for hours. I had switched tactics, from intimidation to nurturing empathy. It worked, surprisingly. “He is a great man…he wants to reverse everything Voldemort did…”

I could sense Severus’ discomfort at the way I stroked Davies’ dark hair from his face. I ignored his heated gaze and continued my questions.

“What does he want to do?” I asked softly.

Davies seemed to smile. “He wants to help Muggles. He wants to bring about a revival…”

“Revival?” I asked, curious.

Davies nodded, his head rolling on my lap. “He wants the Muggles to believe in magic again… He wants to show the Muggles that we can coexist as one society.”

I could not remember if Davies were Pure-blooded or half-blooded.

“Is that what he told the agents in the DI?”

“Not all of them. We were recruited…”

Davies said no more, and gagged. Severus moved to crouch beside me as another round of seizures took Davies. Severus helped me lay Davies on the ground as he shook, spittle appearing upon his lips. I growled and rolled the bound man to his side.

“The programming. It is a modification of his memory, no, of his thought process. Getting too close to speaking anything that might be of value causes the fit,” Severus ground out between his teeth. “I doubt we will get anything more from him before the programming kills him.”

My eyes widened even as the fit began to end, rendering Davies unconscious again.

“It is Dark magic, Hermione. It is cruel and potentially lethal,” Severus whispered, his breath ticking my ear. “Another fit will kill him.”

I stared at Davies’ prone form, anger filling me from some deep well inside my body.

Davies had been lied to—that much was certain… He had been seduced, perhaps, and then led to believe that he was in the right. Hadn’t Voldemort used the same tactic? I moved to sit back against the stonewall, crossing my arms about my chest, suddenly very cold. Severus joined me, and without asking, I leaned into him. He froze for a moment and then accepted my weight.

“He said I was the key…” I muttered, growing sleepy against Severus’ warm shoulder. “I was the key to the ‘gateway.’”

Severus hummed a sigh. “Yes.”

“To the place where Merlin is imprisoned, Avalon.”

“Yes,” Severus sighed again.

“Avalon was not said to be a prison, but the resting place of Arthur…” I trailed, my eyes shutting. Severus shifted and my cheek fell against his chest.

He was silent for a long moment, then, in a purr he asked: “’Damnatio memoriae’ of a type.”

I nodded, half asleep. Damnation of memory, a custom of the Romans to pretend that disgraced Emperors never existed… The truth of Merlin and Nimue had been obscured, due to the Order of Merlin, the Knights of Walpurgis. Instead of pretending nonexistence of such places as Avalon and Merlin’s benevolence, generations of descendants had been charged to manufacture lies and spin tales. Perhaps Arthur never existed…

Now, the truth was coming out, and it was all my fault.

Whomever this Dark wizard was, he knew enough to make me believe that he had somehow been waiting for the ‘key,’ my inadvertent mistake. ‘He’ had been waiting for something like this, waiting to take advantage.

Damnation of memory, I wished I could pretend that my life after learning of the Knights of Walpurgis did not exist. The only exception would be the man I leaned into, whose arm eventually wrapped about me to keep me warm.




“A Portkey?”

Severus shook his head. “It could be traced.”

I frowned. “As soon as it activates, we Apparate…”

“No. We have not found the marker yet.”

I huffed. “We know where we need to go, what is the use of the markers?

I had slept for about an hour when the sound of Davies struggling woke me. Severus had to lightly Stun Davies to keep him from screaming. However, the Stunner had nearly killed the man. He needed a Healer. I would not be responsible for another death.

“The markers are not simply stones.”

I frowned. “Explain. And while you are at it, tell me what Aberforth’s letter said.”

Severus sighed, kneeling next to Davies, his wand having finished casting a healing Charm I did not recognize.

“The stones mark the path, by touching them, we open the way to the goal. I destroyed the one at Staple Fitzpaine for only one reason. It cuts off the path for anyone to follow.”

Severus rose from Davies side and moved out into the sunlit passage between the limestone faces. I followed.

“It has not stopped them…” I trailed, losing momentum. “Will it guarantee that they will not find…?”

Severus stretched after sitting and kneeling for so long under the outcrop of stone. “No. Aberforth said in his letter that someone was following him. He did not specify if they were traveling along the path of the labyrinth, yet he did not destroy the stones behind him. We were meant to follow.”

I walked around Severus to face him. “What else did he write?”

I had my hand out for the letter, but Severus did not withdraw it from his coat. Instead, he studied my face, a scowl marking his face.

“The Muggle who had the letter, he was wrong.”

“About?” I sighed, letting my hand fall to my side.

“Aberforth dated the letter. It was written about four days before we came to Ashbrittle.”

Understanding did not come, and I attributed it to the lack of sleep.

“He had been running, trying to lose whoever it was that was following before entering the labyrinth. It did not work…”

I licked my lips nervously. It meant that by the time we reached the goal, Aberforth could be dead and the gateway between worlds blocked by darkness.

“We Obliviate Davies and leave him. Surely, those in his group will track him before long. By then, we need to be far away from here.”

I could not argue. Severus was the one who could find the markers, although I could not conceive of how. I had put a great deal of trust in the man without much questioning, which struck me as odd as the sun shone down upon us, warming our skin and faces.

“Davies said Martock…” I began. “We are not going there…”

Severus said nothing, but turned back to where Davies lay on the ground, in the darkness under the low outcropping.

I had miscalculated, although my rough sketch had been an estimate. There was no marker in Cheddar and we were closer to Wells now. The flash of a spell from under the rock alerted me that Severus has wiped all traces of our existence from Davies’ mind. I wondered then, where was the marker, why were we in Ebbor Gorge?

The pressing of the brown canvas bag into my arms brought me from my reverie, Severus standing over me. I glanced back to Davies’ prone body, the Conjured ropes gone.

“We go southeast.”

Severus took my hand again as we left Davies behind. I knew I had to trust Severus for the time being until the time would come again for answers.

TBC...