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Serpentine Series	By : HarmonyB Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Hermione/Voldemort Views: 12060 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING IN REGARDS TO THE HARRY POTTER FANDOM NOR DO I MAKE MONEY OFF OF THIS STORY.

Chapter List
- 50
- 51
- 52
Trees as thin as spaghetti contracted and condensed until their trunks were as thick as pillars. Their leaves, florescent green in the sunlight, were blurry forms up above until they sharpened to the point Harmony could make out each of their heart shaped bodies. When she had Apparated Snape and herself, she had fallen backward and landed her head on a boulder making lights dance behind her eyes.
Why she was never able to make a stable Apparition landing was beyond her.
Harmony propped on her elbows, waited for the nausea to pass, and sat up. She was resting on a bed of dry leaves which crunched beneath her weight when she moved. With a look around she saw she was surrounded by trees with no ending in sight; over to the side she saw Snape, motionless. She groaned as she stood and stumbled over to the potions professor.
"Sir," she said, she grunted when she grasped his shoulders and moved him onto his back. "Oh," when she looked down on his face it was covered in mud having landed face down in the ground. It rather suits him, Harmony thought jokingly, giving some consideration to leave the mud. But after a moment her guilt won over and she wiped away the dirt with the edge of his cloak. While she worked, her scrubbing had irritated Snape and he quickly snapped out of his spell. He was faster to sit up and question his surroundings.
"Where are we?" He looked around, his dark shiny eyes finding Harmony's.
She stood, wiping dirt from her hands. "We're in the forest between Shell cottage and town."
His eyes widened and he looked up at her furiously. "Near Shell cottage? Have you gone mad? This place could have been crawling with Ministry officials!" He quickly moved to his wiry feet. "They could be scouring the forest as we speak! Has your intelligence left you?" He looked her over questioningly.
"I'm sorry," she said, although she felt she shouldn't be the one apologizing since she was the one who had helped them escape the Deatheaters, Mag and Marek, when he couldn't. "I couldn't stop myself from coming here. My mind has been on Shell cottage a lot lately and it came to mind when I thought of a destination, but at the last moment I knew I had to take us somewhere safer." She waved her hands about. "So I brought us here; I camped here for a day or two after the battle at Hogwarts."
Snape grunted, glancing around. When he was assured no one was around, he quickly whipped out his wand and set charms around their circle of trees to keep from outsiders hearing or seeing them. When he was finished, and his temper subdued, he said, "So you two stuck to the countryside while on the run, hm?"
"Excuse me?" Harmony asked, "'you two'?"
He rose an eyebrow at her while he slipped his wand into his cloak, "You and the Dark Lord, after you Apparated yourselves from Hogwarts."
"Oh," she suddenly remembered she hadn't told him, or anyone else for that matter, what had happened after the battle at Hogwarts. All everyone knew was that she had left Hogwarts with Voldemort, so they assumed she was with him. Anyone could figure that out. "Yeah," she said meekly. She winced at him waiting for the next dreaded question she knew had to come next: so how did Voldemort lose his memory?
But the question didn't come. Snape went about setting up camp, starting a fire. He looked up at her from beneath black bangs and asked, "You wouldn't happen to have anything useful in that sac of yours, would you?"
"Er," she dropped her bag on the ground and opened it, rummaging through her contents. "Not unless you're going to a party or need some reading material." She showed him her Slytherin dress and book.
Snape produced a money bag from his cloak and began counting his galleons. "Which book?" he asked.
"Horcruxes," Harmony said, staring at Snape without blinking, watching his reaction. He looked up at her slowly. She continued, "I'm in the process of doing some research on how to split my soul into millions of pieces, all the while planning to take over the world."
The forest was suddenly dead quiet as though every forest creature and insect had stopped to raise their eyebrows at her questioningly. He showed no reaction, which, for Severus Snape, was a large reaction indeed. He blinked.
Harmony scowled, "Kidding." She stuffed her contents back into her sac. When Snape still hadn't moved, she looked at him sharply. "Didn't you hear me? I said I was kidding."
"You better be," he said, his voice deadly. "If you think that is something to laugh about, you are gravely mistaken."
"I know, I was only joking," Harmony said, feeling foolish. "I was just tired of having to lie to everyone all the time. I thought perhaps I could try a different approach."
Snape sighed, sitting back on his haunches and pinched the bridge of his large nose.
"Sorry, I was just trying to lighten the mood," Harmony mumbled under her breath. After a moment she said, "But it is a book on Horcruxes, I kind of stole it from Voldemort's-"
"Stop," Snape interrupted, holding up a pale hand. "I don't want to know how you got it."
Harmony nodded, "Right." She handed him the book when he held out a hand to her. He flipped through it while Harmony fed the fire with her wand. When Snape grunted she asked, "What?"
He held up the book, showing her the inside cover on the first page. At the center of the page was a stamp with the Hogwarts crest.
"Did he mention this was originally Hogwarts school property?" He looked down at it wonderingly, "I bet you this was the very first book on Horcruxes he read as a student." He glanced up at her, "Just think, perhaps if this book never had been published the Dark Lord would not be who he is today."
"You really think that?" Harmony asked, looking at the book in his hands.
He shrugged. "It is quite a thought, though, isn't it?" He handed her back the book.
She took it in her hands and babbled as she put it back in her bag, "If this book never had been published—and Voldemort never really became who he is—then he and I would've never met." She mulled this over in her mind, befuddled with the prospect that every little choice made greatly affected the future. For a moment she wondered what her life would be like if she'd never met Voldemort.
"You look sad," Snape interjected her thoughts, and she noticed he had been watching her.
She met his eyes, but said nothing.
After a minute he looked away and their conversation was forgotten. When Harmony was settled on her cloak in front of the conjured flame that hung in the air between them, Snape brought matters back to the present.
"We will need to move to different locations each day, perhaps several locations a day." He ignored Harmony's grumbling. "So if you can think of good, well-isolated places around that would help us greatly."
She looked over the fire at him sheepishly. "I've never really traveled much in my life, except to France with my parents a while ago, but I can't Apparate the both of us to France, it's so far." She thought a moment, "Though, I did come across several inns around the area that are pretty vacant of people, we could look there."
"Tomorrow," Snape agreed.
"It would be nice to have a bed to sleep in for once," Harmony said, thinking about one bed in particular she spent many nights in at the Riddle mansion. Voldemort's family had been extremely wealthy and their furniture and possessions were nothing short of extravagant. Sleeping in his bed was like sleeping among clouds of green velvet. As Harmony settled down in her cloak in the leaves her mind wandered as she let the flicker of the fire ease her. She recalled one night in particular she spent with him; she was still new at having to share his bed, an intimate fact that made a blush creep into her cheeks even now. She had been woken by his stirrings while he slept, no doubt having another nightmare. She comforted him, but she accidentally fell asleep with her arm around his chest. Before she drifted off to sleep she had felt his hand caress up the length of her arm that rested on him. His hand had curled around her shoulder, touching her in a way that once made her skin crawl. But that seemed forever ago; now her skin itched that very moment for the same touch. In her mind's eye she could just imagine looking over at him in the bed and his lips opening to speak—
"Harmony," a man whispered.
Harmony gasped, sitting up quickly. She had been drifting off to sleep when the voice sounded as though it spoke directly in her ear. She looked over at Snape between the flickers of the flames. He was scribbling on a parchment with a small quill and looked up at her when she sprung up from her cloak.
"Did you say my name?" she asked.
He shook his head and went back to writing his notes. "Bad dream?"
"No," Harmony explained, "I was just falling asleep when I heard someone speak my name."
"I heard nothing."
"It's silly I suppose," Harmony said tucking a stray hair behind her ear thoughtfully, "but the voice sounded like Lord Voldemort's."
This got Snape's attention and his eyes looked up at her from his work.
"Perhaps I was just daydreaming," Harmony whispered.
"You dream of the Dark Lord often?"
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as though convinced to confess a deep secret. "Only recently," she whispered. She moved so she faced him and the fire, crossing her legs in front of her. "Just last night I dreamt he came to Shell cottage. It seemed so real."
"What happened?"
"Er," Harmony immediately recalled Voldemort's lips on her neck. "He spoke to me. He talked about his family gathering."
"Death eaters," Snape added.
"Right. He said for me to stop hiding and," she shivered, "that he was searching for me." She hugged her knees up to her chest, staring into the fire.
"Paranoia?" Snape implied.
"I'm not paranoid!" Harmony scoffed. He raised a black eyebrow at her and she looked away. "Maybe a little, but the dream was too real. It was unlike any other dream I ever had before. It was so clear, like-"
"A vision," Snape finished.
"Yes."
"Hm," Snape nodded, "and when did these vision-like dreams begin?"
"Oh," Harmony thought a moment, "I'd say about two weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts, perhaps before."
"They may have some kind of Seer importance. I'd keep track of these dreams if I were you, in case they add up to something."
Harmony rolled her eyes, remembering how she had failed Divination classes. "I have no Seer ability, trust me."
They fell into a lapse of silence while she watched him write.
"What have you been working on?" she asked.
He smoothed out the paper on his knee, "List of ingredients I still had in my pantry at Spinner's End."
"You don't really want to go back there, do you?"
"I never go anywhere without some ingredients."
"Do you plan to make a potion for us?"
"That is precisely what I am trying to figure out." His eyes scanned over the parchment. "If we mean to avoid the Ministry affectively we need more than our two legs, we need to consider changing our appearance."
"Like Polyjuice potion."
"Yes, but with my Polyjuice ingredients stolen I have to buy more, but I don't have enough," he patted his money purse, and then nodded his head to her sac. "Unless you have Gringotts hidden in that bag of yours, we need to think of other means to change our appearance with what we have."
"I know a few glimmer spells," Harmony said. "But they're hardly as affective as a Polyjuice potion."
"They will have to do for now."
Harmony rocked back onto her elbow feeling her tummy rumble, she hadn't had any breakfast or lunch that day. She swallowed, trying to ignore the pain. Listening to the crackle of the fire, her thoughts drifted to other things.
"Is this all I have to look forward to," she asked softly.
"I'm sorry," he asked looking up at her questioningly.
"Is this what the rest of my life is going to be like," she asked, "always on the run, always on the defense and never on the offense, always looking for the next opportunity to change my appearance…always running." She shook her head to herself thoughtfully.
He narrowed his eyes at her, "For now, yes, you do have to keep running, if you value your life whatsoever." He paused, pursing his lips, "You want me to leave you? You want to avoid the entire Ministry, all the Death eaters—the entire world, for that matter— by yourself? Then you go right ahead. I will not stop you from leaving." He watched Harmony as she picked at a loose thread in her black cloak. "If this is what the rest of your life is going to be like, I don't know, nor does it matter. Look at me," he demanded. Harmony's eyes flickered up to him, "Nothing matters right now but tomorrow; where we'll be tomorrow, not the next day or the day after that. Do you understand me, Miss Granger?"
She stared at him hard when he used her name. It sounded strange hearing it; almost like it was new to her ears.
"You understand?" he asked again, his eyes as black as obsidian.
She knew the question had to be rhetorical, but she nodded to her professor anyway feeling moved by his unexpected enthusiasm.
"Yes, sir," she whispered.
- 50
- 51
- 52
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Serpentine Series