Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Madrigal	By : Rotisserie_Cassowary Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 7982 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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We had no time to make sure Draco hadn’t discovered our tampering. We left the room, moving as quickly as humanly possible while still remaining perfectly silent. We arrived at Dumbledore’s office, and I shouted, “Fizzing Whizzbees!” when we were still halfway down the hall. We slid to a halt in front of the stone gargoyle and ran up the moving staircase.
My eyes instantly alighted on Godric Gryffindor’s sword, gleaming proudly in a glass case behind Dumbedore’s desk. The portraits of the former Headmasters called down to our indistinct shapes, wondering who was breaking into the Headmaster’s office in the middle of the night. I ignored them, smashing the glass case with a paperweight I took off the desk. The portraits let out cries of surprise and indignation, wondering just who the hell I thought I was, going around destroying other wizards’ property. Shouting at them to shut the fuck up, I took the sword and handed it to Hermione. She dropped it into one of her large pockets, and it disappeared immediately.
We left the office at a dead sprint, both of us totally soaked in perspiration and gasping for oxygen by now. We returned to the seventh floor corridor, hunkering down behind a limestone carving of Hildegarde the Horrible, a few dozen meters from the Room of Requirement. We waited there for nearly an hour, and each second ticked by with unbearable sluggishness. It felt as if I were going to spend the rest of my life there, crouching behind that damned statue, waiting for something, anything to happen.
Finally, the door flew open, disgorging Bellatrix and Draco from the room. Bellatrix was covered in dozens of tiny scratches, all of which were steadily weeping blood. She appeared to have a large volume of wood fragments embedded in her rat’s nest of hair. I assumed that she came through first, immediately discovering that the door wouldn’t open. She got increasingly crushed inside the cabinet as a second and third Death Eater arrived. She would have sent the others back then blasted her way out of the cabinet with sheer brute magical force. Relieved that we now only had one psychotic murderer to deal with instead of a dozen, we tracked the pair at a safe distance.
They hardly even looked over their shoulders as they scampered down the hallway and up the spiral staircase. Shaking my head at their brash disregard for caution, I had no trouble tracking them up to the astronomy tower. My legs were burning with lactic acid by the time we finished the laborious climb to the highest point in the castle. We watched through the audaciously unclosed door as Bellatrix shouted “Morsmordre!” and cackled triumphantly. A shower of green stars burst from her wandtip, resolving themselves into the shape of the Dark Mark. The skull drifted lazily upwards into the sky, casting its sickly green light over the slate rooftops.
Draco stood in a corner, shaking slightly, with his arms wrapped tight around himself. He stared moodily into the middle distance, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Bellatrix paced around, muttering quietly to herself, letting out mad barks of laughter every so often. Her skeletal face was the most deranged I’d ever seen it; she was obviously becoming more mentally unwell with each passing day. I concentrated on my breathing, carefully occluding my nervousness and fear.
All of a sudden, Bellatrix started jumping up and down, pointing excitedly at something I couldn’t see. A few minutes later, two shapes swooped down, circling carefully to land on the flagstone floor of the tower. Harry stood in front of Dumbledore steadily, shoulders squared, wand drawn, glasses opaquely reflecting the green light from overhead. The wizened Headmaster seemed to be struggling just to remain standing, though he had his wand out as well.
Bellatrix laughed triumphantly, “Well, Dumbledore, you look like somebody’s already done most of the hard work for us! You’re on death’s doorstep as we speak!”
“Quite right, Ms. Lestrange. Perceptive, as always. As you can plainly see, this has not been an enjoyable evening for me. So shall we have this unpleasantness done with? I’m quite exhausted,” he murmured pleasantly, letting out a huge yawn for dramatic effect.
Hermione and I slipped outside, and Harry’s eyes flicked towards the impression of movement against the light spilling from the doorway. He made out our disillusioned shapes on either side of the doorframe. The Death Eaters’ were thankfully facing away from us, and Potter kept his face carefully impassive so as to avoid giving away our presence.
“Go on then, Draco,” she urged, giving him a small push on the shoulder. He raised his wand for the first time, pointing it over Harry’s shoulder. “Expelliarmus!” he cried, and the Headmaster’s wand spun through the air. Draco caught it deftly, sneering haughtily. “Not so tough now, are you old man?”
“Indeed. You have me at your mercy, Draco. Does this please you?” he asked mildly, as if inquiring about nothing more serious than the boy’s favorite sweet.
“Of course it does, you daft old wanker! You’ve had a Death Eater hiding under your roof, plotting against you for an entire year, right under your crooked nose, and you didn’t even notice!” he shouted, then laughed with a note of desperation in his voice.
Bellatrix sneered, taunting him further, “You’ve really lost your touch, Dumbledore!” The withered man simply nodded, seeming to agree with her assessment. “Go on, then, Draco! Kill him! Cast the Avada Kedavra!”
Draco raised his hand once again, and I could see it shaking in the murky darkness. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Harry cried out, casting a powerful Impedimenta Jinx at the two figures. They flew a half-dozen feet, crumpling into a heap on the ground. Harry set off down the stairway, taking two to three steps at a time. “Get back here, boy!” Bellatrix screeched, sprinting after him in predatory pursuit.
Draco was now apparently alone on the tower with Dumbledore. He dragged himself to his feet, looking at the old man uncertainly. He raised his wand again, but couldn’t seem to bring himself to make a single sound. His hand was noticeably quaking now, his wandtip zig-zagging this way and that. He let out a grunt of frustration, yanking on his hair with his free hand.
“You don’t need to do this, Draco,” Dumbledore murmured soothingly. “You can be your own man. You don’t have to do the bidding of the Dark Lord.”
“What? So I can become your personal slave like Snape?” he spat with exaggerated arrogance.
The Headmaster pretended he hasn’t spoken, continuing placidly, “This isn’t you, Draco. You’re not a killer. Your parents don’t want you to do this, you know.”
“What the hell do you know about my parents?” he demanded.
“I know they love their little boy, and they don’t want to see him become a monster. Every day they have to suffer through the consequences of a decision they made when they were only a year older than yourself now. We all make rash, impulsive choices when we’re young. I’ve lived every single day of the past century tortured by regret for a relationship I had in my youth…” Dumbledore trailed off as Draco began to lower his wand. When the boy tucked it into his pocket, I raised my own and sent a nonverbal Stupefy in his direction. He crumpled to the ground, eyes unfocused and dazed.
I removed the Disillusionment from myself as I took the dozen long strides across the flagstones to where the Headmaster stood, leaning heavily against the ramparts. He gave me a small smile, “Good evening, Severus.”
I scowled at him, lifting the corner of my lip in a disdainful sneer. “Lovely to see you, Headmaster.”
“You need to do it now, Severus. Please. I’m in so much pain.”
I shook my head resolutely, saying, “There’s been a change of plans, Sir.” A glass bottle seemed to appear out of thin air as Hermione pulled it from her Disillusioned robes. “Drink this,” I commanded, holding it out to him.
“Is it poison?” he inquired, looking at the pale pink liquid curiously.
“Yes. Among other things,” I smirked.
He looked at me angrily, eyes flashing behind his half-moon spectacles. “I believe I specifically requested that you dispose of me by the Killing Curse.”
“Now that you mention it, I believe you did make that request…” I murmured with feigned remembrance, tapping my chin thoughtfully. “But there’s been a small change of plans. When you’re ready to go, you can do it your own damn self. I have a third potion that will activate the poison.”
“A third potion?” he spluttered. “What does the second one do?!”
I let out a scornful chuckle, leaning forward so that my long, hooked nose was a mere inch from his own crooked one. I smiled at him dangerously, whispering, “Oh, you’ll see eventually. Now drink that fucking poison before I pour it down your throat myself.”
He shook his head disapprovingly, tossing it back as he swallowed the bitter concoction. His eyes crossed, and he collapsed within a few seconds. I caught him on his way down, lowering him gently to the flagstones.
I rolled him to his side while holding onto his cursed hand. I stretched the limb out, pulling it straight up into the air.
Hermione pulled the sword out of her interior pocket, and the ruby-encrusted hilt glimmered through her nearly-invisible hand. She walked over to me slowly, and the sword shook in her unsteady hands. I looked at her fiercely, murmuring, “You can do this, Hermione.” She raised the sword, but promptly let it drop.
“I can’t. I can’t. I don’t have the strength. I can hardly even lift the damn thing. You have to do it.”
I protested, “I don’t know if it’ll even work for me. I’m not a Gryffindor!”
“I don’t think I can swing it hard enough to get through the bone… I think you can use it. It responds to bravery, Severus. You’re the bravest person I know. I’m sure you it will let you.”
I shook my head in dispute, but I picked up the sword anyway. She took the Headmaster’s limp hand in her own, rolling the sleeve down to expose the entire arm. I saw that the curse had worked its way quite far up the old man’s shriveled limb. I realized I would have to chop it off as near to the shoulder as I possibly could.
Steeling myself, I held the sword firmly in both hands. “Keep it steady now, girl,” I growled through bared teeth, and she wrapped her other hand tightly around the blackened, dead wrist. I pulled the sword back as if I were preparing to strike a cricket pitch. I took in a deep breath, and as I slowly released it, I swung…
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Madrigal