A Terrible Temptation

A/N - In answer to the question, where did everyone else go, here is the next chapter. Thanks to Kate for being a great beta and thanks to my roomies for providing so much inspiration to me in the battle scences. :)

I love my reviewers they are the most wonderfullest people ever!


Chapter 37 – Defending the Castle

The portkey dropped them into the Headmaster’s office. Severus was occupied for a moment in fighting off an exhausted but enraged Hermione who hadn’t figured out his identity yet.

“Hermione!” He shouted and she froze and stared at him wild-eyed. He fumbled with the charm that kept his mask in place and ripped it off to let her see his face.

“Severus!” She flung herself into his arms and her mouth fastened to his. Despite all that he knew was happening outside he took the moment to gather her against him and return the kiss. His body was raging at him to do so much more than kiss her but he had run out of time for that right now.

“We need to get down to the battle again.” He groaned as he pulled himself from her embrace and then he felt it, a strange tickling in his stomach like the beginnings of nausea.

“The wards! They’re falling!” Hermione shouted and then darted away from him towards the Headmaster’s study. Severus pulled himself upright and followed her. All the work she had done studying the wards gave him confidence in her ability to choose the right direction to run.

“Hermione!” He shouted as she ran through a wall and he closed his eyes and darted through it after her. An icy coldness hit him as he passed through and he had the strange sensation of being turned inside out before his momentum carried him through to a small chamber.

Hermione was frantically passing her hands over a collection of crystals and stones that were laid out around a tiny scale model of the school and grounds. Severus watched as tiny figures darted around, running and fighting on the field. He found it very hard not to just stare at the battle in miniature but Hermione’s frenzied movements drew him back to her actions.

This must be the Ward Room, he realized. Looking around he noticed the entirety of the inside of the room was a layer of crystal. It was like being inside a gemstone. The scale model sat in the center and light came through from somewhere to illuminate the entire chamber in flashing rainbows. It was breathtaking. The Founders were truly amazing.

“Salazar Slytherin designed the whole system, you should be proud.” Hermione muttered as she thrust a finger into the heart of a small ball of light and wriggled it. The ball vibrated and twanged and she frowned.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out what has gone wrong.”

“Voldemort said that Draco had put certain items around the school to bring down the wards.”

“Dampeners!” Hermione exclaimed. “Of course.” She began poking the stones in a certain pattern and muttering as she went. “Severus, go sniff out those dampeners while I adjust the tones; make sure you destroy them when you find them.” He was amused by her barked orders but obeyed without question. He shifted into his cat form and zipped back out through the crystal wall to do as his lady commanded.


Hermione wished she had a few of the Headmaster’s books in here with her. Mind wholly occupied with trying desperately to remember all the complex keys and tones of the ward tuning, she became lost in utter concentration and didn’t even register Severus’ departure.

“What are you doing?” Came a voice from behind her and she turned in shock to see a ghost drifting in midair, some feet away. He had been tall, slender and rather good-looking in life, dressed in long black robes with a circling hem done in a pattern of wyverns.

“I am trying to retune the wards so that they negate the effects of the dampeners.” She responded, surprised into honesty by the ghost’s appearance. Salazar Slytherin, I presume; her mind came up with the line in the back of her head even as the rest of her brain was in shock at the idea of a thousand year old ghost -- one of the Founders no less -- floating before her.

“Well, you are doing it wrong, you foolish girl.” The ghost scolded. Hermione glowered back at him. The stress of the day hit her; Susan Bones’ death replayed in her mind and she lost her temper.

“Then bloody well help me, you great Slytherin git!” She shouted in anger at him. “My friends are g oug out there!”

“Move aside, wench!” The ghost bodily shoved her away, which she didn’t think ghosts could do and then he got busy with the crystals until a clear singing note was reverberating around the chamber and the sick feeling in her stomach was gone.

The room was vibrating in a way that made her feel light-headed. The ghost grabbed her by the wrist and tossed her out of the room -- she could feel herself flying through the air and then nothing as she slipped into darkness.

Ron threw himself out of the way of another hex and threw his own at his attacker. He watched the Death Eater crumple with a feeling of relief and then turned to face the next one. He leapt over someone -- he had long since stooped looking at the bodies, he didn’t want to know right now what the cost of this battle was going to be and he didn’t have time to mourn -- and then twisted away from a burning hex. He had lost sight of Harry again, damn it.

The chaos and confusion of the battlefield was serinering. He tossed off a Patronus to drive back the Dementor that was rushing towards him and then felt the sun being blocked by the huge Giant behind him. He dropped and rolled out of the way of its club, feeling the wind of it passing just over his shoulder. He cast the ropes hex that Snape had taught him and tangled the Giant’s legs. After a brief struggle, it fell over like a huge oak crashing to the ground and Ron hexed it to unconsciousness before running towards a knot of combatants nearby. He had to find Harry.


Severus rounded a corner and, following his nose, picked up the scent again. Why couldn’t his animagus form have been a bloodhound or even a snake? They had great senses of smell. He was a vision hunter not a scent hunter, damn it, he had to find those dampeners. ‘If I were Draco Malfoy, where would I put them?’ He thought furiously and headed for the Slytherin dorms.

He heard her long before he saw her and shifted to his human form before turning the corner and finding her huddled on the floor of the corridor sobbing.

“Miss Mintage?” He called out to her and she lifted her faded blue eyes to him.

“This was my nightmare and I can’t wake up.” She sobbed out and Severus paused in shock. This was her nightmare; did she mean Hogw bei being under attack or something else?

“Miss Mintage, do you know where Draco placed the dampeners?” It was a long shot but he had nothing to loose.

Her expression of surprise and the sudden cessation of tears would have been amusing in less dire circumstances but Severus was running out of time.

“Are they the little boxes?” She asked him tentatively. He realized that he had no clue what they would look like but simply nodded at the girl. Hell, Albus pretended omniscience all the time, why not just play along and figure it out later? “This way.” She dragged herself up off the floor and started forward.

Her dun colored pigtails, plain face and thin body had insured that most of the students overlooked her but Severus had been appalled by her history and strangely fascinated by the odd mixture of frightened little girl and resigned old woman he saw in her. He wondered how many of her schoolmates even knew that she existed.

Severus followed her towards the dorms and she slowed, hesitated and then slipped her hand in his with a frightened gesture. He held her tiny hand with its thin, fragile bones in his own larger calloused one and they proceeded on together. She was only eleven and the world was coming apart around her; it was a small enough concession.


Ginny picked herself up from the ground, blood pouring down her face from a head wound and by pressing her wand to the throbbing cut, staunched the blood with a muttered spell. The cut was long and shallow but it hurt like hell. She briefly laid a hand on Neville’s face wondering if he wered ord or merely unconscious; it was so hard to tell right now. His skin was warm but the sun was hot and the air was charged with the energy of a thousand spells and hexes. The atmosphere was heavy with smoke, dust and a strange ozone smell from the discharged magics.

He stirred under her touch and she set herself to guard and heal him. He was the only living Gryffindor she had found in the past half hour and she was damned if she would let him die too. Spells of healing and repair spun out from her wand, taxing her already overextended magical ability, yet she worked grimly on him, ignoring the pain and the mental exhaustion. There was no future and no past, just a grim struggle to preserve one spark of life in the hell that had once been her haven. She would save him, he would survive, she would fight the devil himself and he had better be afraid of her because she would not be denied.



Harry stood sandwiched between Tonks and Moody, firing hexes and trying to work his way towards Voldemort. Tonks was as coldly precise as an automaton, no sign of clumsiness or humor now; she was like a Valkyrie riding into battle. Moody was a force of nature, a granite boulder that crushed his enemies to powder and then rolled on to the next conquest with the same solid inexorability.

Harry felt humbled by their loyal defense and he fought with everything in him to make it worth their while. He had watched Kingsley fall, taking a bolt meant for him, and the horror of knowing that they all thought themselves expendable and would die to protect him had become horribly real in that instant. He was working as hard as he could to see to it that no one else was going to die for him.

Voldemort was trying to evade him, letting Harry wear himself out on the others before facing him and Harry was getting angry at the bastard’s cowardice. He was going to destroy Voldemort once and for all. He had to; no other choice existed.