Dark Gods In The Blood
Chapter Twenty-One
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A/N: As appeappens
to work out (because, as I’ve said before, the story is done, not a WIP), this
chapter has Snape in it, just like a handful of my reviewers requested.
other chapter from here on out has him in it.
I tend to think of this chunk of the story as the “home stretch,” you
see. Thanks for reading!
Summary: A wandering
student comes home, a broken man pays his penance, and a gruesome murder is
both more and less than it seems. Some
paths to self-discovery have more twists and turns than others.
Rating: R, for
intermittent dark themes, violence, and language
Disclaimer: Nothing
you read here (save the plot and bits of the text itself) belongs to me.
property of JK Rowling and Warner Bros. (and someone else, probably, but not
me). All chapter headings are properly
credited to their sources.
Dark Gods in the Blood
by: Hayseed (
Chapter Twenty-One
What
made this emotion so overpowering was -- how shall I
if something
monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious to
the soul,
had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.
Heart of Darkness
Snape was being
recalcitrant todspanspan style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Well ... more
recalcitrant than usual.
Today, Hermione had approached
the visitation room far more purposefully than ever before, knowing exactly why
she was here and exactly what she wanted to speak with him about.
her best smile, and said, “Good morning, sir,” as warmly as she could, she was
chagrined when he did not so much as flutter an eyelid.
And now he was fairly
glowering at her. She was, of course,
far from unfamiliar with that particular expression of his, but she usually
knew the reason for it.
They sat in silence for a
short while, but Hermione was unwilling to revisit the staring matches they’d
had when she first began visiting him.
So it was not long after she entered the room that she finally attempted
to provoke his response. “May I ask,
sir, what I have done to offend you?” she asked icily.
“You may,” he said
curtly, sitting as rigidly as if he’d been carved from stone.
and he made no motion to remove it.
She waited for him to
continue and inwardly sighed when he did not.
“I am not as skilled a Legilimens as you are, sir, and moreover, I do
not have my wand.”
An indefinable expression
flitted across his face as she spoke.
“We are nearly equals, then.”
“Prof -- Snape, sir,” she
said. “Please
presence here is unwanted, I will not linger.”
Snape snorted.
Six Thursdays in a row, whether I wanted you here or not,” he
grumbled. “And then you just ...”
Eyes widening, her voice
was incredulous. “Is that
“Are you angry because I didn’t come in last week?”
His cheeks reddened
faintly but the sour look on his face did not waver.yes"> A hand fiddled with the sleeve of his shirt.
trouble you to adhere to a schedule at least.”
sir sir, I missed you,
too,” she said sweetly, unable to resist herself. As it was Snape, after
all, she did manage to keep from actually fluttering her eyelashes up at him.
“I ... you ...” he
spluttered, clearly enraged beyond words.
The blush deepened to a definite flush.
“Granger, you --” His chair
clattered as he stood.
Not willing to allow him
to loom over her, Hermione also rose to her feet, placing her palms flat on the
tabletop. “I had a couple of questions
for you today, if you don’t mind,” she said mildly.
His face twisted.
to know what to do with themselves as they moved from his sides, up into the
air, and back down to his hips repeatedly.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> “Granger!” he growled.
“Yes?”
“Do not assume that I
take myself so seriously that I cannot easily discern your sarcasm, Granger, but
do not suppose that your pitiful attempt at levity has been successful,
either,” he bit out, hands finally relaxing.
“Of course not,” she
demurred, highly amused by the level of his distress. She wondered when had been the last time someone else had tried
to tease him.
His stance became less
defensive, but he remained on his feet.
“I was wondering,” she
began, timidity somehow creeping into her voice. “I was wondering about something we discussed some weeks
ago. When I told you about ... Harry’s
...”
“Yes, yes,” he
interrupted impatiently, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
parties unknown. What of it?”
Frowning, she folded her
arms around her middle, dimly wishing that Snape would dow down so she could as
well. “Well, Ron -- Ron Weasley, you
know --”
He rolled his eyes.
“Ron,” she repeated
emphatically, glaring minutely up at him, “finally got put on the case down at
the Aurory. And there’s been another
death that they suspect is linked somehow to Harry’s.”
An eyebrow rose
questioningly. “Another?”
“His name was Alistair
Bones. His mother was --”
“Amelia Bones,” he said,
cutting her off. “She was
amiss. I believe I actually taught her
son.”
“Anyway ...”
a difficult time determining a motive that would fit both of them.
--”
He interrupted her for a
third time, and Hermione was sure that her internal struggle with her anger was
becoming increasingly visible. “I told
you that there is not a Death Eater alive who is capable of such a thing, did I
not?”
“You did,” she
agreed. “But they’re reluctant to
dismiss such an obvious set of suspects.
Ron said that there could be a fringe group ...”
“There could,” he said
idly, tapping a fingernail against the table.
“But there probably isn’t. Not
one that would go after both Potter and Amelia Bones’ son, unless, of course,
Mr. Bones led a double life that no one knows about and offended the wrong sort
of enemy. Certainly,” he drawled, “the
wonderful Harry Potter wouldn’t be capable of such deception.”
Hermione grit her
teeth. “Leave Harry out of it, Snape.”
“Oh, I am,” he replied in
a mild voice. “Albus Dumbledore decided
many years ago that Potter had a clean bill of mental health.
Blinking away her ire,
she considered his meaning. “You mean
...” she began slowly. “You knew
“Albus couldn’t watch the
boy twenty-four hours a day,” he said chidingly. “There were a select few of us who knew why the Potter boy needed
to be watched so closely. But then that
fiasco with the Chamber of Secrets happened and Albus let his guard down.”
With a slight widening of
the eyes, Hermione wondered why a man so reportedly brint ant as Albus
Dumbledore would share Harry Potter’s darkest secret with a man who hated him
as completely as Snape did. It either
said something about Dumbledore’s trust in Severus Snape or something about
Dumbledore himself -- she fervently hoped it was the former.
“No more than three at
the very outside,” he said. “Myself and
Minerva McGonagall, of course. As his
Head of House, she was in the best position of all of us to keep an eye out.
with enough of the facts that it wouldn’t hurt to give him the complete
truth. He was just ... careful
She smiled ruefully.
needed to be made aware of the situation right after he joined the Aurory.”
“It is irrelevant, in any
case,” Snape said with a wave of his hand.
Finally -- Finally! Hermione
mentally shouted -- he sat back down, scratching behind his ear almost
absently. “Clearly, Potter’s death had
nothing to do with that information.
Especially if there was a second victim.”
“And a third,” she said
before she could help herself.
He cocked his head at
her. “A third?” he echoed.
Shaking her head, she
collapsed into her own chair. “At
least, I think so.
last week and she mentioned that one of her students had lost his father due to
a similar set of circumstances. The Ministry,
of course, doesn’t want to hear it.”
“The Ministry,” he
scoffed.
Hermione resisted the
urge to agree with him. “Ron’s right,
of course. I don’t have any proof --
St. Mungo’s didn’t document the incident very thoroughly.”
“They wouldn’t,” Snape
said sagely. “There are generally only
four potential causes of death for any wizard -- illness, old age, murder, or
accidental. Murder is clearly
distinguishable either by use of the Killing Curse or a discernible
poison. Any irregularities, then, are
just lumped under ‘accidental’ and not thought much of.
been notified of either Bones’ or Potter’s deaths if they hadn’t been
well-connected enough for the appropriate calls to be made.”
“It just doesn’t make
sense ...”
He smirked at her.
Muggle, Miss Granger. Wizards are
difficult enough to kill, as a rule, that there is only a small number of ways
in which to go about it. Why do you
think it took so much effort to deal with You-Know-Who?
sleep -- it simply would not have worked.”
Fiddling with the sleeve
of her robes, toying with a string that had worked itself loose from her cuff,
Hermione blew out a deep breath, exasperated.
“It’s so senseless. Death Eaters
couldn’t have killed Harry because whoever killed Harry killed at least one
other person. And whoever it was has an
obscure enough agenda to fit Harry Potter, the son of a political official, and
a Scottish potions brewer together in some fashion that not even the Aurors can
figure out. Oh, and they also managed
to kill them in a way that should never haorkeorked in a million years because
wizards have natural guards against such things.”
“That does seem to be the
sum of things,” Snape said with a slight nod.
“Either there’s no answer
or there’s an answer that’s so absolutely ludicrous that no one can see it,”
she exclaimed.
He contemplated a
fingernail. “Are you reaching some
brilliant conclusion, Granger, or just rambling without end?”
Shooting him a nasty
glare, she gave the string on her robe a vicious tug. “You know ...” she drawled in a fair imitation of his usual snide
manner. “If I were to give this matter
great thought, I might simply say that the connection is that there is
She paused to gauge his reaction.
Disappointed when he did
not seem to have one, she continued. “I
mean, of course, that the Aurors are pulling their hair out looking for some
political tie, some group to link to all of this, but perhaps there simply
isn’t one.”
“You seem to have
developed a great propensity for stating the numbingly obvious, Miss Granger,”
he said dryly. “I told
“No,” she interrupted
triumphantly. “You said there weren’t
any Death Eaters capable of this.
sufficient motivation for all three of these crimes?”
“Or two,” he suggested
meanly.
“Or two,” she repeated
without pause. “But I wonder ...
they’ve been operating under the assumption that whoever it was killed Harry
because he was Harry Potter and no one else.
That there was some external need.
What if the killer killed Harry simply because he needed to be killed --
not for any other reason?”
Snape looked rather
puzzled. “I don’t follow.”
Gaining momentum, she
spoke more quickly. “Are you familiar
with the term ‘serial killer?’”
His mouth fell open,
reminding her unattractively of a fish.
“That’s ... that’s ridiculous,
Granger! Serial killers are a Muggle
phenomenon.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Have you not been
listening?” he snapped. “Wizards cannot
be killed in just any fashion. And
serial killers ... well, they could never exist in our world.
could blink -- there’s nothing the Aurors can’t trace.”
Her face was grim.
style='font-style:normal'> way to kill a wizard that they can’t figure out.”
“Then why hasn’t this
happened before?”
“Who’s to saat iat it
hasn’t?” she asked in reply. “You
yourself admitted that St. Mungo’s wouldn’t have documented such deaths
properly. And they would never have
been brought to the attention of theper per authorities.
because the killer happened to choose two fairly important people as
victims. But ... but I don’t think that
the killer selected them because of
their importance -- I think there’s something else.”
“What then?” he asked
sarcastically, voice grating in her ears.
“I don’t know,” she
admitted. “I don’t even know how
Snape sighed and rubbed
at his face with a single hand.
“Granger, you make me tired.
Impossible murders and serial killers ...”
<:p>
“I’ve got to go!” she
cried, leaping out of her chair.
He looked startled.
Spinning around, she
walked briskly toward the door. “I’ve
got to let Ron know!”
-- -- -- --
“A what
She scowled at him and
picked a chip off his plate. “A serial
killer,” she sighed, impatient with his antics. “It’s someone who --”
“I know
let people in the Aurory without a basic background in Muggle culture.”
“Then you must see what I
--”
He interrupted her with a
wave of his hand, a piece of lettuce off his sandwich flying halfway across the
table. “Hermione ...” he began
exasperatedly. “You’ve got to get your
mind off this. Trust me -- we’re doing
all we can. We’ll find them.”
“But, Ron,” she
protested. “This is too ... you’re not
even going to consider it?”
“Even if we were.”
bite of his sandwich and chewed. “It
doesn’t change much,” he said through a mouthful of food.
“It does
Ron finished off his
sandwich. “But we still don’t know the
motive. Even if you’re right and it’s a
serial killer -- which is ludicrous, by the way, as we’ve never had a wizarding
serial killer on record -- there’s no visible connection between Harry and
Alistair Bones.”
“And Weaver,” she
inserted firmly.
He glared.
right in footfoot. If I recollect the
file Kingsley got from St. Mungo’s, Weaver was a black fellow.
certain racial group?”
“They don’t have to,” she
said. “At least ... I don’t think they
do.”
With a sigh, he ate his
last chip. “Hermione, you’ve got no
experience with this, all right? You’re
not an expert in this sort of thing, either wizarding or
promise to mention this serial killer thing to Kingsley, do you promise
“I promise nothing,” she
retorted. “But I know you’ll tell
Shacklebolt -- you want this solved as much as I do.”
Ron rolled his eyes and
tried to glare at her again. “You know
something, Hermione? You’re just as
insufferably correct all these years later as you were when we were kids.”
She grinned at him.
intended it to be, Ron.”
Snorting, he stood up,
pulling a couple of Muggle bills out of his pocket.es"> “Sure. Anyway ... I’ve
got to get back to work. Are you coming
over to the house for supper?”
“I doubt it,” she
replied, shaking her head. “I’ve got some
reading to catch up on.”
He narrowed his eyes at
her expression. “Hermione, you really
should leave it alone. I know you
won’t, but I wish you would.”
“Ron ...”
“I know, I know,” he
said, flapping a hand at her. “I’ll
stop, Butterfly. Merlin knows I’ve
never managed to keep you from doing anything you really wanted to before.
Her voice was firm.
She watched him walk down
the street, back to the Ministry, with understanding in her eyes.
her best interests at heart, but he had forgotten. It had never been anything but a matter of necessity.
Snape had once spoken to
her about the nature of need. About the
word’s overuse, how most people used it in contexts that barely made
sense.
But Hermione knew about
need. She had spent large parts of her
adult life finding just what it was that she needed and what she didn’t.
the sky was blue, that she needed to
know what had happened to Harry Potter.
And what had happened to
Alistair Bones.
And what had happened to
Alisander Weaver.
She sat at the table in
front of the café an indeterminate period of time, ignoring the chill in the
air that made her wish for her cloak -- October had firmly arrived.
clean the table, and the fourth time he came over with a questioning look on his
face, she actually left, walking down the street slowly.
Diagon Alley was not far,
and she stepped behind the Leaky Cauldron and began tapping flagstones without
much thought, automatically re-entering the wizarding world and moving through
the crowd, among the indistinguishable faces.
But Hermione’s mind was far too busy to pay attention to her
surroundings -- she was puzzling over everything that she currently knew about
Harry’s death.
Firstly, she had to do
some research on serial killers. She
couldn’t convince the Ministry based on a mere hunch -- especially without any
credibility of aind.ind. And
unfortunately, Ron was correct -- she was not an expert; she wasn’t even a
professional.
And she had to somehow
get access to the Aurors’ files -- Ron did not appear as if he would be particularly
forthcoming any .
There was an Apparition
point a few yards away. For a brief
moment, Hermione considered ducking into the Leaky Cauldron and using their
Floo connection -- she was distracted enough to splinch -- but in the end, she just
jerked her mind back to the matter at hand and Apparated. Apparently she hadn’t done a good enough
job, however, and her head spun as she momentarily staggered in front of the
flat’s door.
Her copy of the Prophet
was sitting neatly on the front doorstep.
She must not have picked it up before she went to see Snape that
morning. Scooping it up, she fumbled a
bit for her key, opening the door and stepping inside.
She immediately went into
the bedroom, quickly changing out of her robes and putting on trousers and a
Muggle jumper. Even after all these
years in theardiarding world, she still preferred lounging around in Muggle
clothing. She briefly wondered if Snape
had ever worn Muggle clothes of his own accord -- he looked so ... unnatural
The paper fell off the
bed when she sat down, and she picked it up off the floor, giving it her full
attention.
Hermione still tried to
read the Daily Prophet every day, from back to front, taking an odd sort of
comfort from the mundane headlines even as she tried to read between the
obituary lines in the back of the paper.
Opening it, she began
skimming the death notices. There were
not many today, and of all the faces smiling gently up at her from the page,
there was only one that caught her eye.
Romulus Cooke,
thirty-four. According to the obituary,
he had distinguished himself as a student at Durmstrang and still maintained
rather close ties with the school. He
was the father of three, and it did not appear as if he had a particular
occupation. Hermione inferred, then,
that he must have been independently wealthy.
And he died ... at home
ago.
Blinking, she read the
article at least four times, wondering.
What if Romulus Cooke had
been someone with Ministry ties? What
would the Aurors have found if they’d been called in?
Would he have been split
open? Was his kitchen covered with
blood?
What did his wife see?
She stared at his picture
-- a fairly handsome fellow with an arrogance in his features that reminded her
oddly of Draco Malfoy. His photo gave
her a debonair smile, telling her that he was just as aware of his good looks
as she was.
at Hogwarts, he would have been two years ahead of her.
braids and scrubbed toilets under Filch’s watchful glare -- the glint she saw
in his picture’s eye told her this. She
probably would have laughed at his antics, just as she had laughed at the
Weasley twins. He might even have
turned the Terrible Twins into a Trio.
And now he was dead.
She should tell Ron.
know.
But instead, she just
held the paper in her hands, watching Romulus Cooke’s shade wink up at her.
-- --