Fortress

It was only when she was back in her own sunny kitchen that she began to feel pressured to get going, to get to her laboratory before the day ran out. As she moved from room to room, gathering what she needed for the day and exchanging her outdoors cloak for a more formal one, she could hear Jason in the barn, but the rest of the house seemed oddly silent. Finally she found Severus in their bedroom, also dressed for traveling. He reached out towards her the moment she stepped into the room, the grim look on his face effectively shutting out the warmth of the rest of the house.

"I've sent the house elves away," he said, "banished them to Hogwarts. I've received information that this house is no longer safe." Hermione shuddered against him, feeling that her worst fears of the night before were coming true. "Have you spoken to Jason?" he asked.

She nodded. "He is no longer planning to join Finnigan. I doubt he was ever truly planning on it, but on the way home he told me he'd be done with his applications to the universities before the end of this break."

Despite the urgency of the situation, she could feel him relax against her. "I will rest easier when I hear it from him." He kissed the top of her head, then stepped away from her. "I will see you both at Hogwarts. Take Jason and go as soon as he comes in. I have to leave now."

She nodded. "I love you," she said. He dropped her hand reluctantly.

"I love you too." With that he vanished.


Setting up their quarters at Hogwarts took only a few minutes; after all, they had only just left at the beginning of the month. Jason was sullen, staring into the fire. Before they'd left he had insisted on setting Achilles free, considering that they would neither be able to take him with them, nor count on any friendly presence at the house to tcarecare of him. Still, the knowledge that the bird would most likely return to hirn crn caused Jason no end of torment and speculation. Hermione sighed, wishing that Hagrid was still alive. He could have handled the bird well enough, but the present game keeper had no interest in either befriending students or doing favors. She sat down at the table, suddenly lonely.

"How long will it be before Father is back?" Jason asked.

"He did not say," Hermione answered, feeling her own worry reflected in her son. "He did say he'd meet us here."


Jason nodded, drumming his fingers on the edge of the chair, thrumming the pads, not the tips of his fingers against the dark stained wood, an exact, if unconscious, imitation of his father.

When she woke the next morning there was still no sign of Severus, and Jason had fallen asleep in front of the dying fire. She used a Mobilcorpus spell to put him back in his bed, then readied herself to go to her lab. No use sitting around worrying, she contemplated. The only person who might know where he was would be Cho Chang, and Hermione was loathe to press Hogwarts' new headmistress for anything.

Her lab was deep in the Hogwarts' dungeon, too far underground to even have the tiny windows that Severus' quarters had had. Still, it was a generously proportioned room, and not too hard to get to, if you knew where the staircases in the walls were hidden.

She lost herself in her usual work, transfiguration research for the Ministry. As she experimented on turning a rabbit into various inanimate objects she let her mind focus solely on her work"”when it did wander enough to think of Severus, it was only to think that he surely must be home by now.

Allowing herself a rare break, she petted the rabbit, feeding it a bit of carrot she had brought down with her. The transfigurations did not hurt the animal, but she fancied that the rapid-fire ones left it feeling a bit out of sorts.

"Alright now," she murmured as she set it back on the work bench, "this might just be the end of you." She had her qualms about using a living animal in the first place, but for the purposes of her research, anything other than a mammal would not suffice.

She double checked her spell, then aimed her wand, and spoke clearly. "Nebulae Rasa!" The rabbit was gone, and in its place was a pile of what looked like cake flour.

Hermione stepped cautiously towards it, both pleased and a bit sad for the fate of the animal that had been like a pet. Pressing her hand into the pile she confirmed that it did have all the obvious properties of flour. Taking a deep breath, she thrust both hands into the pile, then flung them outward, covering the bench and the surrounding floor with a fine white film. Just as she had pointed her wand again, there was a knock at the door. She set her wand down.

"Who is it?" she called.

"Fred and George!" chorused the familiar voices. With a flick of her wand, the door swung open. The two men stepped in, dressed casually in slacks and jumpers, then stopped short when they saw the powder everywhere.

"So, Hermione, you came back early just to make a mess?" asked George.

"Highly unlike you, I should say," added Fred. Age had not dimmed their tendency to speak in tandem.

"This mess used to be a white rabbit," Hermione informed them haughtily, "and the end result is that I have taken one living animal and transfigured it into a multitude of tiny particles small enough to have become suspended in the air." That last point was illustrated boldly by the white coating their ginger and pepper hair was at that moment receiving.

Fred looked mildly interested, but George was more appreciative.

"Wow, Hermione, that would be the first time anyone has ever transfigured a living thing into a particulate substance." He shook a bit of the flour from his bangs.

"I know." She felt herself smiling. "So what brings you down here?"

"Ran into Jason upstairs," Fred said, "he told us you were down here."

"I wanted to ask you something about the third year course," George said, "but now I'm more interested in this."

It was an odd arrangement they had, but George, with his good humor and patience, had long been teaching the first through third years while Hermione took the fourth to seventh years. It allowed both of them to work on their other businesses, and spared Hermione from loosing her patience too often.

"I'm not entirely sure it's going to work," she admitted, "if it can be reversed, it will be just about useless."

Looking to her for permission, George pulled out his wand. "Finite Incantum," he said. Immediately the mess was clear, and a slightly disturbed rabbit had to be retrieved from the top of Fred's head.

"Curious, how it chose to go back together there," George said lightly as he gathered the animal and put it back in its cage, but Hermione's face had fallen.

"I guess it wasn't as exciting as I'd thought," she said. "I'd better hit the books again." She sat on the high metal stool, slumping against the polished black surface of the bench.

"Take the rest of the day off, Hermione," George admonished, "and you'll need to write this up. It's still a first, you know."

She nodded, gathering up her things. As the three of them walked towards the door, there was another knock at the door.

"Who's there?" Fred called as he walked towards the door. Hermione reached forward, as if to pull him back, sure that there must be some danger on the other side, but the voice that answered back was familiar.

"It is Headmistress Chang." Fred pulled the door open and Hermione relaxed for a moment before she saw Cho's strained expression. Her hair had never turned gray at all, and while it usually made her look younger than she truly was, now the dark strands seemed to be casting a pall on her delicate features. "I need to speak to you for a moment in private, Hermione."

Hermione stared at the food her son placed in front of her. How could he even think to eat at a time like that? As the fragrant steam reached her face she realized the only sound in the room was their breathing. He did not even have a plate for himself. He had not thought of food then, only of her, probably from the moment that the Weasley twins had delivered her to the family quarters. It was the same pragmatic, logical care that Severus would have taken, she realized, just before she began to weep silently into her hands. Now Jason was, perhaps, the last person on earth with that kind of detached care, that steely resolve covering a keen insight.

"Jason, thank you," she managed, looking at him finally. Even in the soft light of the candles, his face seemed hard. She knew that look"”deepest disappointment and regret mingled with grief.

"I never told him," he said quietly. "Our last words were of anger."

That knowledge hit Hermione with a sickening forcehen hen she remembered her own brief meeting with him, the last one, more than an age ago, it seemed. "I told him," she said, a kind of thin relief spreading through her. "I told him before he left that morning."

Jason looked at her, his eyes meeting hers for only a moment before he looked away again. "It's not the same," he said quietly, "he might have thought you were only trying to appease him."

She pushed herself from the table, not even aware of her own actions until she found herself standing beside her son.

"He knows I could not do that," she said, wrapping her arms around him, not bothering to place her husband in the past tense. "He knew." Jason reached his hand up to touch her crossed arms, the simple gesture almost too much for his leaden limbs to accomplish.

"Mother, please eat something."

She forced herself to choke down at least half of what he had served, and when she finished she realized she had no idea of what it was. When she had sat without touching it for a long while, he stood and took the plate from her.

"Do you need me to ask Cho to stay with you for a while?" he asked. The time she had dreaded the most was already on them, and soon she would be forced to try to sleep. She shook her head.

"Are you going to be alright tonight?" she asked. "You could ask one of your friends to floo here early." She could have kicked herself for not thinking of it earlier.

"I'll be fine down here," he said quietly, "if you need anything I'll be here on the couch."

She looked at him questioningly.

"I prefer to sleep in front of the fire tonight," he said simply, and she nodded as she reached out to him again. To her relief he did not try to get away from her hug, but held her tightly, carefully in return.

"Sleep well," he said, kissing the top of her head. She barely felt it, her hair still being so thick there.

"Thank you Jason." With a nod she turned and walked to her own room. As her hand touched the doorknob she thought to ask him if he had packed the pictures that had been in his room, but a second of thought kept her quiet. If they were indeed still at their house, in harm's way, she did not want to know about it.