Fortress

Hermione woke feeling not really refreshed, as if her mind had contemplated her son all night while it should have been resting. Still, there was a lingering kind of sweetness to the morning, and as she sat at the table for breakfast she tried to hold on to some of that happiness. From the looks on the faces of the two men already there, it was going to be a hard job.

"Morning, you two," she said, helping herself to the toast Severus had made for her. She was answered only with nods, osiblsibly since both of them had their mouths full, but she felt the tension between them. Jason's dark look was a weaker imitation of his father's, but it still conveyed the same kind of brooding discontent.

"Jason, what are you doing today?" she asked when he swallowed, and before he could get another bite in as a pretext of silence.
I'm I'm not sure," he said, his tone measured. He knew that if he stepped out of line with his mother, things would be that much worse for him with his father. "I've got all my homework finished, so I thought I might take Achilles out for a while."

"Very mature of you, having all your homework done so early," Severus said with that familiar yet still dangerous undertone of sarcasm. Hermione sighed, wishing his dulcet tones of the night before might find their way into the kitchen a little more often.

"No less than would be expected of me, I'm sure," Jason said, building on the sub-text Hermione couldn't help but feel she was missing out on.

"What would you have Achilles practice on, Jason?" Hermione asked, knowing that she could not break the tension, yet feeling that she should at least try to keep the conversation civil. Achilles was Jason's kestrel, and though she did not like hunting per sey, Hermione could not argue with Jason's devotion to his animal's well-being.

"There were some voles out in the lower field yesterday," Jason said levelly, "it's been a mild winter here, it would seem."

"It has," she agreed. Severus was staring out the window, the look on hise sue suggesting he would welcome an ice storm at any moment, just to spoil the weather that might be good for falcon sport.

"It would be a pleasure to take Achilles out for some exercise, and training," Jason said, his voice intimating that he was somehow edging into dangerous territory, "before I go away to a place where I won't be able to keep my pet." Achilles was not welcome at Hogwarts, despite his shared ancestry with the owls, as he tended to be rather too aggressive with them. A keen hunter, he also wasn't the most adept at delivering messages, and so Jason kept him at the family home.


"I'm sure that Achilles would be more than welcome at any university you chose, Jason," Severus said, "and after all, you would be away no more than you are now at Hogwarts."

The silence around the table was almost deafening. Jason seemed to be weighing his next words, and Hermione had no idea what they might be. Though she and Severus had rarely been divided on how to raise their child, it seemed that there was information the father was privy to that the mother had somehow been excluded from, and she had a feeling it was not merely a matter of rising late.

"You know that's not where I'm planning on going." Hermione's blood ran cold at her son's words.

"Where are you planning to go?" she asked. It did not sound as though he merely planned to take a gap year.
"Ask him." His nod towards Severus was uncharacteristically brusque, and Hermione was not surprised to hear her husband's response when their son rose from the table.

"Sit down." It was a quiet command, but it held all the weight, and more, as anything he had ever said in one of her Potions lessons. Jason's mouth twisted, in disappointment of his own inability to defy his father, it seemed, but he sat quietly none the less. "You owe your mother an explanation, even you cannot deny that." Severus' voice remained low and deep. "Though, it is clear, you truly believe that you owe me nothing." The sadness in that last touched Hermione more than the pervasive unpleasantness of thrninrning itself. Jason had often angered Severus in the way that any teenager or child will anger a parent, but he had never driven him to anything as tender as sadness.

"I do not plan on going to University, Mother," Jason said, looking only at her. "I feel there is more important work to be done, both in the world and in the matter of my education, elsewhere."

"Where?" she said, feeling her voice become as hard as her husband's.

Jason sensed the change. "I plan on joining Finnigan's group immediately after graduating. I'm not the only one, either."

Hermione resisted the urge to put her head in her hands. While he had been a bit of a goof when they were at school, Seamus Finnigan had grown to be a statesman the likes of which the Wizarding World had not seen in generations. When the Death Eaters had begun gaining strength of their own accord, he had been among the first to recognize the threat for what it really was, and under Percy Weasley's ministry he had been allowed to form his own organization dedicated to the defeat of the Death Eaters. Now the entire Ministry of Magic was mainly dedicated to that goal, departments like Arthur Weasley's beloved "Misuse of Muggle Artifacts" having long been forgotten or modified to the point where they were no longer recognizable, but it was still Finnigan's organization that commanded the most respect and attention. Some of the younger wizards and witches had even begun to refer to the group as Finnigan's Army, but it was mainly a misnomer, as actual contact with the Death Eaters was not the norm. Still, that was not to say that none of them had died, quite the opposite. Still, some of the most loyal converts were teenagers, fresh from the secure walls of Hogwarts. Like their Muggle counterparts they truly believed that no harm would come to them, even if they had seen evidence to the contrary with their own eyes.

"Why would you even think of such a thing, Jason?" she asked. "You know they prefer to take in Wizards with advanced training, not fresh out of Hogwarts."

"You are a bit out of the loop, Mother," Jason said, his voice uncharacteristically hard with her, but not as hard as it had been with his father. Sus tus turned towards him, as if to say something, but was stopped with a look from Hermione. "That is no longer the case. They are training as they go now, the skills needed being too lately clarified to make advanced training outside the group an impediment, not an advantage."

"And it would seem that you are the one "out of the loop," as you say," Severus said, leaning towards him only slightly. "The reason they are accepting anyone and everyone may well be more that they are replacing members only as fast as they are being killed." He sat back and arranged his features into a calmer masque while his son struggled to control himself. Hermione knew it wasn't a kindness that kept his voice so low, but she preferred his self-control, as infuriating as it could be, to the yelling she had seen other families deteriorate into. "Hermione," Severus said, drawing her back to the present, "you would do well to use your ample influence on your son to convince him that a university would be the best place for him. A few years of so-called delay would be more than compensated for by his increased skills and knowledge, much more than he could ever hope for by joining Finnigan's little rag tag bunch right away." His voice teetered dangerously on the edge of condescention, but Hermione decided that it was not truly directed at her, and besides, this was not a time for them to fight with each other. She shifted her gaze from father to son, wondering who to respond to first. It would not do to act as if Jason was not there, but neither would it do any good for her to ignore Severus' comments. Trying to appease them both, she looked at Severus before turning to her son.

"Jason, perhaps you would let me accompany you when you take Achilles out."
He looked at her with a coldness she had not yet seen from either of them. "Aren't you supposed to return to work today?" The undercurrent in his voice was both obvious and dangerous. Clearly he was intimating that she was shirking the duty he was all too willing to perform.

"I am," she agreed, "but you know I am welcome to go in to my laboratory any time I want. I can spend the morning with you."

Severus pushed himself away from the table without ceremony, leaving the room before his son could reply.

"I would enjoy that," Jason said, visibly relieved that his father was gone, almost all the traces of hosti rem removed from his voice. Hermione allowed him a smile, thinking it was amazing that after nearly eighteen years as their son, he still didn't understand that she was harder than his father in all regards save for appearance.

~~~~~~~~~

There was no snow, but the frozen stalks of the wild wheat crunched beneath their feet in an approximation. The air was cold, but still and dry, and Hermione entertained herself for a while by watching her breath evaporate only inches from her mouth. The morning light was bright but thin, coating everything with a yellow cast, so that Achilles' helmet looked as though it might be made of pale gold rather than leather. He moved his head from side to side as if he could see, but he'd been blind since the three of them had left the barn on the side of the house, and now the house was receding into the distance. Jason was following the line made by the woods at the edge of the property, and apparently he intended to walk the entirety of the modest Snape estate. Hermione didn't mind. She had nkepoken a word since they had locked the barn behind themselves, but the silence did not seem at all strained. On the contrary, it reminded her of the companionable silences they had shared when he had been just a small boy. Curled by the fire in the staff quarters at Hogwarts, books and toys strewn around them, it would sometimes seem that he reached a point where words bored him, and he would stare quietly into the flames, or even off into space, only rarely gifting her with a quiet sm one one that for all its rarity would light up his features. Hermione glanced quickly at him as Achilles let out an impatient squak, and caught a momentary smirk, a twitch of amusement, so close to the same expression his father made in moments of surprise.

He stopped at the edge of the property, just as Hermione had suspected he would. Her heart filled with an odd foreboding. What could possess someone so young to pace out the family holdings, unless they thought they might never see them again? The noontime sun was coloring the world with brighter hues, and under her heavy wool cloak she felt damp with perspiration.

"I know he's not happy," Jason said, pulling Achilles' helmet off. The bird shook his head, as if the necessary precaution had been thought up only as an inconvenience to him. For Jason it was an old habit, broaching subjects with Hermione by bringing up their relevance to his father. He looked sideways at his mother, trying to gage her response to that, but she remained impassive, watching the bird. Achilles remained obediently on his master's glove, but he was clearly longing to fly. Jason bent his knees and lowered his arm, then stood, pushing his arm up and forward. As the bird took off, towards the trees, his arm stayed out, feeling suddenly lighter than air after having had the bird there for all that time. "Is he?" he asked as they watched the bird disappear into the shadowsthe the forest.


"Neither of us are, Jason," she said, trusting herself only to look at the last place the bird had been. "It doesn't seem a very wise decision."

"I have given it a lot of thought," he said without rancor.

She continued looking straight ahead, as though Achilles was going to suddenly return, bringing their stilted conversation to an end. "I'm sure you have," she said levelly, "let's hear it then."

"This war could end at any time," he said, "by who knows what intervention, by who knows which side. If I'm off in the university for all that time, I might as well be hiding away, having nothing at all to do with any of it."

Hone one fought the anger she felt then. "So, you're afraid of appearing to be a coward, is that it?" she asked. "If you're still in university when it's over, then chances are there would have been nothing your untrained self could have done to speed that up had you been out alread She She caught breabreath, not aware that she had fairly been holding it. "You're afraid of missing out." She laughed bitterly. "I never would have figured Severus' son for that kind of thinking, or mine either, but especially not his. Knowing what you know about him, how can you just blindly say you want to be where the action is?" She turned to him then, her eyes challenging him to give her an answer.

"It's not that I don't want to be away if it just ends soon." His voice was patient, but strained. "I don't care about what I appear to be. I just really believe that a lot of volunteers, no matter how trained, will be more valuable than a few eggheads who spend all their time in the university library while the world is practically burning down around them."

Her stomach lurched at practically hearing her own words spoken back to her, but she gained control of herself. "Listen, Jason," she said, "It is harder than anything not to feel in control. But joining Finnigan"¦" she trailed off, not wanting to insult her old friend. Was it his idea anyway to let these young men and women join him? By any accounts, he wasn't stopping them. She started again. "Joining him you will learn practical knowledge, but it will only be just enough to keep yourself from getting killed. You'll have only just enough knowledge for that, and for what? So you can be a moving, self-defensive target? The Ministry doesn't even particularly like that group. They have a lot of popular support, but you'll never have the backing you'll need to really get things done, you won't have the knowledge, and without that all your best effo as as a person and as a group, will be for naught." She paused. "I'm sorry, Jason, but that is how it is."

He nodded. She repressed the shock she felt at that simple gesture and forced herself to stay still, so that he could speak whatever might next come to his mind. The light was full on his face, and if not for that she might have thought she imagined the look of relief that crossed his features. He opened his mouth, but at that moment something caught his eye and he looked up. "Mother, look." Above them Achilles was soaring on a thermal, making a perfect circle around the sun, with them in the middle.