Ashes to Ashes

Disclaimer: Mind, all mine. Ha. Hahaha. *regains composure* Okay, so it\'s not. But you already knew that. What, you enjoy rubbing that in or something? While you\'re at it, why don\'t you remind me that this plot has probably been used before?! :)

Summary: Hermione is wandering Knockturn Alley in the dead of night, only two days before Christmas Eve. Why, and what will happen when she runs across Professor Snape? Well, you’ll have to read to figure that one out, won’t you? Forgive me for the horrid summary, all in all, this has been done before, but what do you have to lose by reading and reviewing a poor author’s work?

Author\'s pathetic ramblings: Please bear with me, since this is only my second attempt at Harry Potter fan fiction, and I was slightly disheartened by the diminutive response I got on my other story. Also, forgive me if the characters are...well...out of character. This isn\'t my usual fandom. Did I fufill my pathetic excuse quota, or should I keep going?

Okay, enough of that, here\'s the story.

Ashes to Ashes--------Chapter I

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Making her way swiftly through the darkened streets of Knockturn Alley, the girl made little noise, and attracted little attention. Dressed in a dark long-sleeved shirt, dark pants, and practical leather boots, she called little attention to herself. A heavy robe had hastily been thrown over her muggle clothing, and the hood obscured her face from any curious passerbys.

A bookstore to her right caught her eye as she passed, but she scolded herself mentally. She was here for one thing, then she needed to leave—quickly. It would not do for the Head Girl of Hogwarts to be found navigating through Knockturn Alley at two o’clock in the morning—over the Christmas Holidays, nonetheless!

Her feet were cold and she had quite a time getting out of 12 Grimmuald place unnoticed, due to the new wards that had been put into place since the most recent battle with Voldemort.

Normally, she would Apparate directly from her room to Knockturn Alley, but the new wards on the Headquarters would alert Dumbledore to anyone Apparating or Disapparating, and where they had gone to. She didn’t especially want to explain to him why she was going to Knockturn Alley at two o’clock in the morning.

“Well, you see, Headmaster, I’ve been dabbling in the Dark Arts and making illicit potions because I want to infiltrate Voldemort’s ranks and kill a countless number of Death Eaters. I’ll probably die in the process and all, but it would make me feel better. Surely you understand. Ooo, Mind if I snag a Lemon Drop?”

Yes, that would have gone over well.

In that ‘everyone-screaming-cursing-and-berating her’ sort of way. The climate at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix was one of tension and aggravation, and it didn’t show any signs of abating soon. The battles with Voldemort were growing more and more frequent, and the casualty rate was growing quite high.

And now, during the Christmas holiday of her seventh year, the first holiday she would not be able to tell her parents “Happy Christmas”, she noticed the strain on everyone far more vividly.

Stopping to get a grasp on where she was, Hermione took a deep breath of the frigid air and pulled her robe closer. The alley was coated in a fine layer of snow, which reflected the dim lights outside of the stores that were still open. It was a very seedy place, but Hermione felt oddly comforted by it. Wandering here, no one questioned who you were. Her boots made little sound as she strolled further down the alleyway, only leaving a light imprint in the snow.

Hermione had always loved the light snow in the winter. It wasn’t too frigid, and she and her parents would walk along their street, talking about anything and everything, humming Christmas carols, and laughing at her father’s terrible puns...she’d never be able to hear a terrible pun from his lips again.

She took another breath, willing her mind to move onto a different train of thought. She needed to focus, dammit...

When she got the news, she felt as though whatever world she had been living in had been blown away, leaving this...whatever this was. The Order was not fighting the good fight between light and dark—they were fighting to live, they were fighting for their way of life.

Hermione had been spending most of her time in her room, avoiding people completely since she got the news of the Dark Mark hovering above her parents’ house.

Professor Snape had been the first to know...obviously. Dumbledore had called her down to his office at Hogwarts, and within three seconds of being told, she was out the door, off of school grounds, and Apparating to the house. The skull, hovering in the sky, gave the scene a surreal feeling to it...

She had run towards the house, past their manicured lawn and up the sidewalk...her hand was on the doorknob when a much larger hand covered hers. She looked up in surprise, reaching for her wand, when she saw whom the hand belonged to.

‘Professor Snape...’

‘Miss Granger,’

‘Let me go.’

‘No, Miss Granger.’

‘I...I have to see them... What happened, what did they...’ her voice caught in her throat at the look on Snape’s face.

‘I cannot let you go in there.’

He closed her hand gently around her and carefully removed it, as though her bones were fragile enough to break with such a gesture.

She had asked once again to go in, but something about Snape’s demeanor made her hesitant.

‘My parents, I can’t...what did you...they do to them?!’ she trailed off again, her usually sharp mind was tripping over itself. Tears were trailing down her cheeks, and she bit her tongue to hold back a sob. Snape\'s posture stiffened slightly when she spoke.

‘Your parents have passed on, they will no longer have to worry about this silly world and the silly charades that go with it. You have far more to accomplish, Miss Granger, and allowing this to deter you will only encourage the Dark Lord.’

So accustomed to seeing an unemotional sneer on Snape’s face, she was quite surprised to look up and see many different emotions reflected in his eyes. Regret, a quiet anger...and perhaps even sympathy.

With that, he Apparated the two of them back to Hogwarts, and escorted her in silence back to her rooms. She remembered stumbling and falling somewhere near the Great Hall, and never wanting to get up again. He simply scooped her up as if she weighed nothing, and took her to the Gryffindor common room. After asking for directions from a very speechless Neville Longbottom, he took her to the Head Girl rooms. He had set her down on her bed with a gentleness she didn’t know he possessed, and disappeared. A few moments later, Harry and Ron had arrived, looking rumpled from sleep and mildly shocked, and perhaps also disconcerted by the thought that Professor Snape knew where they slept.

Hermione had finally slept that night after crying her heart out to Harry, Ron, and eventually Ginny. They would still come to talk to her, she never kicked them out, but she was rarely in the mood to “talk about it” after that night. She didn’t think she’d ever be in the mood to “talk about it”. Professor Snape continued to act as if she did not exist after that point, but she noticed that he did not berate her as much for helping Neville Longbottom during Advanced Potions classes.

She now had even more of a reason to defend him when Harry and Ron started insulting the man. Greasy git indeed. She had often been accused of harboring a crush on the Potions professor, and to an extent, it was true. She didn’t have a ‘head-over-heels, all-out school girl crush’ on the man, more of an intense interest, and from that, and attraction to his dark demeanor...

Snapping out of the wheel of random thoughts that was spinning in her head, Hermione found that she was standing in front of the shop that she had been searching for.

The potions shop was rather musty, and Hermione only sneezed seven times, and not on anything particularly important-looking. There was no one at the counter, and the shop was quite dim.

Her sole purpose in here was to pick up what some may call “illicit” potion ingredients. In her copious spare time, when she was just sitting in her rooms at Hogwarts (having of course, finished all her assignments a week early), and staring at the walls, she would take out the books she acquired from the Restricted Section of the Library, and browse through different spells and potions. Most of them were things that were never taught, something that only served to increase her interest. One book lead to another book, which lead to another book, which lead to a potion. A rather nasty one at that.

The potion she was attempting would make the membrane, muscles, and blood of one’s body turn to ash, leaving only the organs and the skeleton. If brewed under the waxing moon, it was said that the bones of the body would burn with fire for the rest of the moon’s cycle.

After ingested, Hermione had determined that the potion would be absorbed into the bloodstream where did its awful work, turning one to ash from the inside. It was quite intriguing, really. Hermione hoped to test it out on a Death Eater during the next battle. She had a few people picked out. She wasn\'t even convinced that the potion\'s effects were legitimate, that it wasn\'t folklore. But she was willing to try it if would cause suffering.


Perhaps this meant that she wasn’t “dealing with the whole ordeal relatively well” as she had overheard Dumbledore saying to Professor McGonagal a few days before the Holiday break.

Hermione perused the shelves in the darkest corner of the store, keeping an eye out for the seemingly nonexistent shopkeeper. Her hood remained over her head, but she moved it up enough so that she could see the shelves above her head.

As she came across a type of Conium maculatum, or “water hemlock” that was most definitely not something she would find in Diagon Alley, she felt a shiver move up her spine. It was a feeling that she was well acquainted with; after having spent many hours in Potions Class helping Neville Longbottom. It gave one a sixth sense, making it easier to sense a certain Professor when he was sneaking up on you.

Turning around quickly, her suspicions were confirmed.

“Honestly Professor Snape, do you have any other facial expressions?”

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Thanks for reading. What do you think? Should I keep going? Review and tell me.