Dance with the Devil

Disclaimer: I’m actually wondering if I have to do this at the beginning of every chapter. It’s not like anyone reads it anyway. However, just in case you think I am JKR, you are wrong. To reiterate a previous rant – JKR would have a cat if she wanted one. I don’t have a cat and I want one. Therefore, I must not be JKR.

Chapter Sixteen: Musings of an Angel

Minerva McGonagall wearily pushed her battered and bruised body up out of the chair she had been ensconced during the Order meeting from Hell and began to make her way up to where Hermione lay sleeping and Snape sat brooding. Half-way up the stairs she met with Lavender Brown who was making her way down to the kitchen.

“Professor,” the previously flighty Gryffindor admonished, “you shouldn’t be walking around by yourself.”

Minerva smiled grimly. “I have to be back working at school in two days, dear. I don’t have a great deal of choice.”

Lavender frowned and moved over to her former Head of House, lifting the older witch’s arm up and slipping under to act as a crutch. “At least let me help you now,” she demanded, wrapping her own arm around the battered woman’s waist.

“Bless you,” Minerva whispered, tilting her head to briefly allow it to settle on Lavender’s locks.

Slowly they continued the journey together up the stairs.

“You certainly seem to have Mr McMillan under control,” Minerva commented breathlessly after a few steps, causing Lavender to halt and allow a brief rest.

Lavender snorted. “He is a Hufflepuff. If a lioness can’t control a badger …” she petered off, shaking her head in mock dismay as Minerva gave a soft puff of laughter.

“Then what’s the world coming to,” finished the greatest lioness of them all.

“We’d all turn out like Hermione,” Lavender blurted out, ducking her head to avoid catching the gaze of Minerva.

“Yes,” Minerva whispered.

“You know?” Lavender raised her eyes and biting her lip in consternation.

“I have listened to Draco and Severus talking about her, of course,” the Headmistress revealed.

“She’s not Hermione anymore,” Lavender wailed. “She wasn’t even Hermione in the pens! She’s … I don’t know … she’s …”

“Broken,” Minerva revealed as she began to move up the stairs again, taking the younger woman with her. “I know that, my dear. And I know why she is as well.”

“It’s Harry, isn’t it?” Lavender ventured, feeling the woman’s frail weight settle heavier on her shoulder.

“Yes,” Minerva replied grimly.

”They’re all out, Professor!”

Hermione’s dirt-smeared face gazed anxiously up at her Head of House as the Professor quickly closed off the last exit, thus sealing all the secret tunnels out of Hogwarts.

“I have to go,” she continued. “Harry and Ron won’t know what to do without me!”

“Miss Granger,” Minerva snapped. “We will complete our assigned tasks first!”

“But we have,” the young witch asserted stubbornly. “And I have to go and help Harry now!”

With that, Hermione turned and ran lightly up the stairs from the dungeons, years of traversing the halls of Hogwarts making the flight seem so effortless. Minerva frowned, assaulted by a slight sting of bitterness that the years had taken that ability from her.

“Miss Granger!” she called out fruitlessly, hurrying to catch up with the bossy young Gryffindor.

To her surprise, Hermione returned.

“You don’t understand,” Hermione began, running back to the older witch. “Harry’s … well … he’s so full of rage at the moment! And he’s been beginning to doubt that Professor Snape is really as bad as he seems and so he’s transferred all his anger onto Wormtail!”

“Peter Pettigrew?” Minerva queried.

Grasping her teacher’s arm, Hermione nodded as she hurried them both up the stairs.

“He’s had dreams about Cedric again and, well, his rage is just uncontrollable. I’ve ordered him time and time again to forget about Wormtail and concentrate on Voldemort, just as Headmaster Dumbledore told him. But he doesn’t always listen to me!”

“Miss Granger, you have, over the years, successfully badgered both those boys to study, finish assignments and patch up their silly little differences,” Minerva panted out. “Trust me, they listen to you!”

Hermione’s grin broke out white and luminous amidst the grime of her face.

They both entered the Great Hall just in time to see Peter Pettigrew crush Harry Potter’s throat with his silver hand.

“Her faith in herself was shattered that day,” Minerva reflected to the fascinated Lavender. “In shock she disappeared into herself and, once she returned, broke her wand and left the wizarding world.”

“Will she … do you think …” the young witch hesitated over her question.

“If she survives and Severus continues being Severus Snape, I feel that there is no other course of action but for the old Hermione to resurface,” Minerva answered.

Minerva gazed down at the greasy-haired boy, ignoring for now his work partner who still had whiskers sprouting from her cheeks.

“Do you ever think for yourself? Or do you always blindly do what others tell you to?”

Severus Snape kept his eyes down, focussing on the ground at his feet as the strident voice of the Transfiguration Professor washed over him.

“And you,” Professor McGonagall continued, turning to Lily Evans. “What on earth made you demand he try to turn you into a cat?”

“I wanted to see what it was like,” the young Gryffindor replied. “You do it!”

Minerva glared at her. “Two points for impertience, Miss Evans!”

“Professor,” Lily amended grudgingly.

“It takes years of study to become an Animagus,” the professor continued with her stern lecture. “You do not order your schoolmates to blithely turn you into one!”

“It seemed safe enough,” Severus’ low rumble attempted to deflect her rage back onto him and away from Lily.

“Honestly, Mr Snape! You need a keeper. Someone who will have your best interests at heart, not someone who merely wants to use you!”

“I thought it would improve his Transfiguration skills,” Lily piped up, her whiskers twitching violently.

The look of naked adoration on Severus Snape’s face made Minerva McGonagall shiver.

“No, Miss Evans,” she replied. “You think of yourself first and use whatever means to get what you want. But one day, I hope you will grow up and find someone in your life more important than your own desires.”

And she had. It had just not been Severus Snape. However, Hermione Granger Snape was not Lily Evans Potter.

Lavender frowned. “I don’t understand,” she admitted.

Minerva smiled softly. “I know, dear.”

Silently, they made their way to the top of the stairs where Lavender gently extracted herself from Minerva and turned to face her.

“I need to ask you about something else,” she ventured, “but I know that you’re tired and …”

“Ask away, child,” Minerva sighed.

Crossing her arms over her stomach protectively, Lavender continued. “There was a woman. At the auction. Before I was sold. Her name was Katherine Anderson and she had …”

“Five children,” Minerva completed. “Yes, I know her. She was a Ravenclaw and her name was Katherine Montgomery then. She was the most brilliant student to ever come through Hogwarts. None could hold a candle to her intelligence.”

Which is why the staff meeting was being called.

“She’s going back to the Muggle world!”

Flitwick was pacing up and down the staff room, his agitation coalescing into little sparks of magic that crackled around him.

“You’re sparking, Flitwick,” came the tired voice of Professor Slughorn.

“And you don’t care,” the Ravenclaw Head of House snapped out. “She was never part of your Slug Club.”

“Because she showed good taste,” came the cantankerous voice of Poppy Pomfrey. “Also, he’s retiring at the end of this year.”

“I don’t understand what you think we can do about it, Filius,” Minerva interjected. “She wants to go back to the Muggle world, marry Simon Anderson and have children.”

“It’s a waste!” the small Charms teacher screeched, almost falling over in his vehemence. “Such intelligence, such ability, such …”

“Love, Filius,” came the calm, albeit tired voice of Albus Dumbledore. “Such love as she has should not be thwarted. Let her go with your blessings and you will find that, one day, this love she has may reap great benefits for us all.”

“I shall do a reading, if it would make you feel better,” the dreamy voice of the new Divination teacher, Sybill Trelawney, floated through the room, causing Minerva to clench her teeth in annoyance.

“Oh, piss on your readings,” spat out the tiny Head of Ravenclaw as he slammed out of the room.

Minerva smiled at the memory.

“They took her children, Obliviated her husband and…” Lavender continued, pulling Minerva further out of her recollections.

“Don’t you worry about Katherine Anderson,” Minerva asserted strongly as she started to move towards the room at the end of the hall. “Believe it or not, one of the best things that could have happened was that she was finally caught.”

“How can you say that?” Lavender gasped out from behind.

“Firstly because Katherine, in the last three months, has been ‘rented’ to no less than twelve different men.”

“And you think this is a good thing?”

“Of course,” Minerva replied. “Each one has returned her within a week, untouched and undamaged, demanding their money back together with compensation. Not only is she somehow protecting herself, she is bankrupting her owner.”

“Compensation for what?” Lavender asked confused.

“It varies. One for his impotency which he claims she caused, another for a rather embarrassing rash and many other such maladies that seem to strike all her temporary owners,” Minerva concluded smugly.

Lavender, however, was mortified. “Won’t she be found out?”

Minerva shook her head. “No-one seems to be able to trace all these problems back to her specifically.”

“Then how do we know?” Lavender queried.

“We have our ways,” the older witch replied mysteriously.

Reaching her goal, and with one hand on the door handle, Minerva half-turned to the flummoxed young witch. “Secondly, Katherine Anderson has in abundance the one thing that will eventually save us from this whole mess.”

She closed the door in the face of the confused Lavender and gazed upon the hunched form of Severus Snape holding his sleeping wife’s hand.

“Love,” she completed softly.

She smiled as Severus’ head whipped around, his wand pointed towards her as he moved over to protect his slumbering spouse.

“It’s only me,” she continued softly.

Drawing in a deep breath, Severus nodded, abandoned his protective pose and swept across the room to gather his former colleague up in his arms and deposit her gently on the bed next to Hermione’s.

“My, that was the most romantic thing to happen to me in donkey’s years,” she teased the morose wizard gently, sighing in pleasure at the relief of lying down.

“You, Headmistress, are a complete and utter twit,” Snape’s melodic voice was little more than a rumble as he chastised her.

“I love you too, Severus,” she replied sleepily, before forcing her eyes wide open and pushing herself upright.

“What are you doing, you foolish woman?” Snape snapped at her.

“We have to talk,” she replied grimly, “and we have very little time. I need to be back at the school within two days or you will be punished and this is the only opportunity we’ve had alone since I … since you … here,” she finished weakly as the memory of her punishment was pushed to the front of her mind.

Closing her eyes and swallowing the bile that rose in her throat, she addressed the Death Eater in front of her. “Aside from the beatings and the curses, was anything else done to me?”

At his silence, she snapped her eyes open, focussing on the wall in front of her.

“I have to know,” she barked. “If you don’t tell me, it will be sprung upon me and used as a weapon.”

When his silence continued, she turned to pierce him with her flinty, resolute gaze but her resolve faltered when she saw the silent tears running down his cheeks.

“So I was raped,” she deduced flatly. “By whom?”

“I hauled Marcus Flint off you,” Snape answered, his measured voice belying the turmoil that caused his tears to fall. “However, there was evidence of others. As to who they were, I can only tell you who was in the room. I can assure you that both Rodolphus LeStrange and Percy Weasley were unable to attend the festivities in the three weeks that you were there.”

“Three weeks,” she breathed out. “I still find that difficult to believe. The last I remember was Phineas telling me that he had ordered you to marry Hermione via the Ancient Rites and me sending you a reply.”

“You had enough time to remove those memories,” Snape revealed to her. “Draco retrieved the Pensieve and we restored all your removed memories. You must have had some sort of warning as everything I had ever told you was in the Pensieve.”

“I don’t remember,” she confessed. “What else did you find in the Pensieve?” she asked apprehensively.

“All my memories,” he replied. “I have them all at the moment – I know the Dark Lord will not call me until you are at school again, so I decided it was safe for me to be … whole. At least for a short time.”

Minerva nodded and smiled in relief. “Good. It is important you know everything before we undergo the Ancient Rites.”

Snape frowned at a small noise from Hermione and turned to check on her. She appeared to be in the grip of a nightmare. Using Legilimency, he entered her mind and gently altered her dream to allow her to rest fully before turning his attention back to Minerva.

“I confess, I do not know what the Ancient Rites entail and I have been unable to find out anything about them. Draco has, for once, not been forthcoming with pureblood information,” he revealed.

The McGonagall nodded thoughtfully. “He probably doesn’t know about them. The last time they were performed that I know of was for Lily Evans and James Potter.”

Snape snorted dismissively.

Minerva frowned at him.

“Which brings me to my point – Hermione Granger,” she continued in her classroom voice.

“Hermione Snape,” Severus corrected.

“Severus,” Minerva sighed, weakly raising her hand to her forehead.

“Do you need a potion?”

She shook her head and continued doggedly. “Hermione is … well, she … I don’t know if you realise …”

“She is not the bossy know-it-all anymore,” Snape rescued her from her floundering.

“Exactly,” Minerva replied, relieved.

“Minerva,” Severus leant forward as McGonagall’s eyes widened in shock at his use of her forename. “All will be well, eventually,” he reassured.

“Lavender Brown has commented on …”

Snape’s bark of laughter interrupted her. “If Miss Brown has noticed, than it must be a truly noteworthy event!” He leant back in his chair and speared his fingers through his greasy locks. “Do not worry. I know my wife is not … completely as she should be, but only time will fix that.”

“Time and understanding,” Minerva prodded.

“You meddle too much,” he replied, but it lacked its customary bite. “She is safe and well at the moment. It is the best I can do for now.”

Minerva nodded and carefully eased herself back down to stretch out on her bed.

“Your best, Severus, is truly stupendous,” she murmured. “I just needed to know that you knew about her.”

“I know,” he assured her. “Even with a vast majority of my memories missing, I knew. Now, get some rest. We will both need our full wits to deal with the house full of dunderheads tomorrow.”

“Will you sleep?” she asked.

“Yes, he will,” came Draco’s voice out of the darkness. “Don’t worry, Headmistress.”

And with that assurance, Minerva McGonagall followed Hermione Granger Snape into a deep, healing sleep.

*~*~*

A/N – I\'m so sorry about the long wait - my internet connection got cut by some workers and it\'s taken AGES for it to be fixed up. I\'m so very, very sorry.

Thanks again to June & Ginny - most wonderful and supportive betas!

Before I get any OOC Snape reviews allow me to explain him this chapter – he has ALL his memories back (including ones we don’t yet know about), his wife was attacked by Remus (a man he truly fears due to the werewolf thing), he’s been working on Minerva for three days, trying to heal her and thus knows intimately all the damage that was done to her. Plus he’s tired. And is in a house full of Weasleys.

However, do no despair – Lord Snark will be back sooner than you can say ‘Dunderheads’