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Doing it for the Order Complete	By : Desert_Sea Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 72673 -:- Recommendations : 6 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any other characters/things/places created by J.K. Rowling. I make no money from my fan-fiction.

Chapter List
- 27
- 28
- 29
A/N: Keep holding on, DSx
Kvarta – ‘and silver, place of the bow...I'll leave that to your imagination...I'm certain you won't disappoint ;)’ – that you can be sure of ;). ‘just so you know, you made me cry’ – I made me cry too, don’t worry x ‘does she have problem with him creating the enchantment or with jealousy?’ – I think her main problem is with being manipulated, deceived and feeling like she wasn’t the one he wanted. ‘have you any idea how I hate her in this moment?’ – she’s hurting ;) ‘my hun is convinced someone died’ -:( ‘I'm volunteering her as sacrifice’ – whoa now that’s harsh! ‘And I'm sorry for ranting’ – OK, I do understand. Always feel welcome to rant xx
OO – ‘And what a horribly perfect time to admit you love someone.’ – yes, a positive outcome wasn’t ever looking likely unfortunately. ‘But I guess this could be partially chalked up to their age difference.’ – You might be right, she still has her slightly naïve and principled approach to conflict. ‘but there's something to be said for leaving the past in the past’ – yes, with any luck she might still have the capacity to gain some perspective. ‘Lord knows I like to hold a grudge’ – hahah, you still haven’t forgiven licourice or grey shrimp! ‘Self-sacrifice is so final though, isn't it?’ – you got it, my friend.
HG4Eva – ‘I am really glad you said not to lose hope’ – and I really hope you haven’t <3 ‘I feel horrible for her. But, I also feel terribly for him, since this time he is being punished horribly for something he didn't ever think would see the light of day.’ – Yes, they are both suffering greatly - the frailty of the human condition comes to the fore. x
Anon – Not too long! ;)
Fox – Must start by thanking you for your delightful reviews for Grape Juice – so glad it was able to provide a little comedic interlude amongst all this angst. And yes, it was madness!) Thanks also for your impatient prompts to get on with it :) ‘What have you done!’ – umm, added a bump or two to the road? ‘As a person so full of compassion, willing to sacrifice herself for others’ – exactly, it’s so very opposed to everything she holds dear. ‘Accepting, that someone is different is not the same as understanding’ – so insightful. ‘He was an angry young man, with his life being so miserable and difficult’ – and then having to pay for the rest of his life for his mistakes. ‘But even a fractured soul can reach the light.’ – so beautifully put. There is so much more I want to say about your beautiful review but have run out of word space <3 xx
Anon – ‘I have no idea how you have a life and are able to update so consistently.’ – I don’t always get a lot of sleep ;) ‘I check at least twice a day for your updates, I'm not a very patient person lol.’ – hahah, either am I!
Ali – ‘Are we experiencing a tumbleweed moment here?’ – see I had to look that up too! And the answer is . . . yes. ‘What a sick little puppy these Northern lads can be!!!!’ – he is a worry isn’t he? ‘hard to forgive, though not impossible’ – let’s hope so. ‘"losing" his book’ – well they were stolen from him and given to Voldemort, there are a few likely suspects.’ ‘See I've still got it in for him.’ – you don’t you? :) Greetings from warm and sunny Down Under x
Discord_the_lunatic – :D xx

Chapter 28 – From Order into Chaos

Severus could barely see the door as it closed. It took some time for his vision to clear—for him to see the room, more empty than it had ever been—to notice row upon row of books, once friends and confidants now standing in austere judgement of his pathetic existence.
They had been all he had—for so much of his life. They were his source of inspiration, they'd challenged him, he’d engaged them in, admittedly one-sided, conversations, questioned them, debated with them, and often dreamed about them.
It had been therapeutic. At the time, it had been essential. Without that outlet for his thoughts and emotions, he would have taken his own life— there wasn’t a doubt in his mind.
But they had also betrayed him.
And he now had a sense that they’d taken from him the one tiny spark of light that had inexplicably flared in his life—a candle in the storm, a delicate bud that had managed to blossom from a desolate wasteland—his last chance at happiness.
Approaching slowly, he thought back to when he’d first entered these rooms. He’d arranged before all else, even before the arrival of his bed, for shelves to be constructed to house these books. He’d wanted to be surrounded by them, reassured by their presence. And now? Now, they were little more than a miserable reminder of his inescapable past.
He had tried so hard to forge himself a new existence. He’d been only twenty-one—one of the youngest Professorial appointments in Hogwarts history. And despite being painfully shy, over time he’d managed to cultivate a persona of gruff impatience and gradually externalised the sarcastic wit that had always been part of his internal monologue, to the point that people had become fearful of him. He had been lonely but protected.
And he’d served. He’d atoned. He’d accepted the pain—so much physical and emotional pain—in an attempt to redress his past. But it was never enough. It couldn’t be. It was impossible to wipe the slate clean when its bitter remnants were embedded within him, tattooed upon him and even carried in the hearts and minds of those few that mattered to him. Especially those to whom he no longer mattered.
Lunging at the shelves, he tore them down—book after book plummeted to the ground. He frantically clawed at them, raw shrieks of agony bursting from him as he plunged into the rows, sweeping armfuls across the room, hurling them against walls and furniture until there was nothing left to destroy.
And then he collapsed, holding his bleeding hands across his chest. It was the worst pain of all and no amount of healing was going to touch it.
Drawing ragged breaths, he leaned back against an empty shelf and closed his eyes, wondering at the absurdity of his own thoughts. All he could think of at the time she was rupturing with excruciating certainty in front of him, and all he could think now, was how he wished he had shown her.
Some of his books had indeed harboured dark thoughts—spells and enchantments to harm and punish—unfortunately most of which had been contained within the Defence Against the Dark Arts text that had been taken from him. But others were very different. Many were filled with discoveries, solutions and innovations—the types of concepts that Hermione would have been enthralled by. They could have discussed them, challenged them together. He wished he had trusted her enough to share them.
The enchantment underlying the Muggle Decree was the most deplorable he’d devised. He’d never been in a darker place. Voldemort had forced them all to take potions to ensure their servitude and compliance. They had been indoctrinated to hatred. He was never more alone than among the Death Eaters who would sooner kill him in an act of sycophantism to win the Dark Lord’s favour, than befriend him. It was a perfect storm for such desperate thoughts.
But he had come out of that. He’d managed to covertly avoid the potions, recognise the flaws in Voldemort’s vision, gain some wisdom in maturity and eventually return.
There was nearly an entire book dedicated to infant remedies. Lily had, to his surprise and pleasure, approached him after she’d given birth to a pale and sickly child in Harry, concerned about the current potions available and whether they’d been titrated appropriately for a child in his fragile state. He’d created a range especially for the boy. They’d worked. Harry had thrived. But he’d mistakenly assumed at that point that he could help her. And of course, when it came down to it, he had been perfectly impotent and hopelessly ineffective.
Lily had, as Hermione had described, bravely protected her son to the end. And since her death, he had tried his best to do the same.
It might not make any difference to Hermione to know this. But what if it did? She might even manage to love him in return if she knew that there was more—more to him than his mistakes.
***
Hermione sobbed uncontrollably, her pillow quickly transforming into a soggy mess. The flood had started as soon as she’d left his rooms and hadn’t abated, even upon the concerned questioning of her friends and housemates. There were no words to explain what had transpired and none to capture the depth of her pain.
“Hermione, tell me what’s wrong.” Lavender was leaning over her, hands pressed between her knees.
Hermione continued to bawl.
“Do you want me to get someone?”
More crying.
“If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, how can I help?” she huffed in exasperation.
“What’s going on?” Parvati strode into the room, flinging her bag to the floor.
Lavender shook her head. “Who knows—she won’t stop crying.”
“Just give her some space then,” Parvati told her.
“I’m only trying to help,” Lavender snapped. “I need to find out what’s wrong.”
“No you don’t. She’ll tell you if she wants to, and only when she’s ready.” Parvati approached the opposite side of the bed.
“And since when were you appointed her official representative?” Lavender propped her hands on her hips.
“Since I have enough emotional intelligence to work out that she needs to be left alone.”
“She’s not alone if you’re in here.”
“By ‘alone’, I mean being available but not bombarding her with dumb fucking questions.”
“Really?” Lavender smirked. “I thought by ‘alone’ you meant, getting rid of everyone else so you can try and get into her knickers again . . . Perverti.”
In one step, Parvati was over the bed and had slammed Lavender against the wall, a hand around her throat.
“Get away from her you pathetic fucking bitch,” Parvati growled. “You only wish there was someone desperate enough to get into yours—since they’re clearly as barren as the space between your fucking ears.”
Lavender glared at the dark-haired girl. “Fucking dyke,” she spat before knocking her hand away and storming from the room.
Hermione vaguely heard the exchange but was too immersed in her own misery to respond.
She felt disgusted and horribly betrayed, used and manipulated—and deeply humiliated by the ugly reveal of their fraudulent relationship and the contrivance of her role in it.
It was all so sordid and despicable. She couldn’t imagine what sick mindset would enable someone to think and act as he had. But at the same time, part of her did understand him. Minerva’s description of his traumatic past, his own account of his weaknesses and failings, her knowledge of his conflicted life— she couldn’t ignore them. But likewise, she couldn’t ignore the fact that the noxious and contemptible scenario she’d been embroiled in was all his fault, whether he’d meant it to happen or not.
She sobbed as the warring arguments continued to rage inside her head and heart.
Despite it all, the overwhelming sense she felt in that moment was one of loss. She hadn’t realised how much of herself she’d allowed him to infiltrate and occupy. He was already embedded in her existence, her expectations of herself in the present and the future. Without knowing it, he’d become part of her and he was now . . . gone. For so many reasons she had to let him go.
She cried harder as she recalled her excitement, only that morning, at the prospect of telling him that she loved him. Her pleasure had come from anticipating that look—that moment when the fragile threads of hope would emerge from the depths of his black eyes as he allowed himself to open up to her. She’d seen it before. And she’d witnessed it earlier, when she’d left him standing broken in his room . . . when he’d told her he loved her.
She clutched her knees into her chest. Gods . . . it hurt so much!
He’d betrayed her, and yet she believed him when he said he loved her. And the most difficult part was that, in spite of everything, she hadn’t stopped loving him. He didn’t deserve to be alone—it had been a despicable thing to say but she’d been hurting too much to hold back. Loneliness was what had driven him to the hateful depths of despair from which the enchantment had emerged. He could never be allowed to go back again.
He’d shown that, despite his past, he was capable of love. She thought back to the way he’d cared for her in his rooms—his tender attentiveness, the disarming hitch of his smile. It crushed her heart. He deserved to have love in return. But the enchantment had so tainted everything between them that it could never be her. She couldn’t be the one to say those words, despite their threat to fall unbidden from her lips, even in the midst of her deepest despair.
She couldn’t fulfil the enchantment with him anymore—not with the knowledge of its abominable origins and for whom it was intended. And if she could no longer do it, someone else would have to. The thought of him with another woman tore another ragged hole in her heart. He was hers. And she was his . . . wasn’t that what she’d told him?—as she lay in his arms, looking into those beautiful eyes, brimming with unshed tears.
No. It couldn’t happen. The only way they would both be free of it—and that everyone would be safe from the effects of the enchantment, was if it was destroyed once and for all. If Voldemort had created the enchantment using his own blood, its elimination would be sure to severely weaken him, giving Harry the reprieve he deserved, and an opportunity at revenge for everything that had been taken from him. Then there were the women—muggle women—mothers, grandmothers, as well as their children—that could be spared from the deplorable attacks of the Death Eaters. And there was this . . . this intolerable pain . . . She knew it wasn’t something that was going to simply resolve, and attempting to get on with her life as though nothing had happened was, of course, a sheer impossibility.
She was the only one who could do it. And she would do it. When she’d heard stories about the sacrifices witches and wizards had made throughout the two Wizarding Wars, and witnessed the bravery of those around her during her time at Hogwarts, she had always asked herself if she would be prepared to do the same. And her answer had always been yes. She wasn’t a martyr but she was a proud Gryffindor. And whilst it made her immeasurably sad to reflect upon what she would miss, she was now resolved that it was the right decision.
She knew exactly the person to make it happen. Someone who had been driven to reckless desperation by the Decree—who was obviously suffering under Voldemort’s brutality and the relentless and very real threat of his own elimination.
“Vati?” She blinked through her foggy despair at the girl who was leaning against the wall nearby, watching her with concern.
“What do you need?”
Hermione sniffed loudly. “Parchment . . . and a quill. I need to write a letter.”
- 27
- 28
- 29
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Doing it for the Order *Complete*

Doing it for the Order Complete