Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 54
- 55
- 56
The sun was high in the sky and well on its way down by the time Snape returned to the inn. He was exhausted having to continuously reapply his glimmer spell in order to stay inconspicuous. He had found the perfect "money opportunity" he had been searching for, and he had to Apparate all over the Wizarding world to confirm the rumors were true. He glanced down at the piece of parchment in his hand which contained all the information he needed to know. As he read, only one thought came to mind: She is going to despise me for this. That is, more than she already does.
When he walked into the inn, he noticed the innkeeper was not standing in his usual location behind the bar counter. Perhaps he was attending to new customers, and Snape felt a twinge of worry in his stomach for Harmony. When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw the innkeeper just shutting their room door behind him with a small tray in hand. When the innkeeper saw Snape, he growled.
"That girl is a mess," he sneered up at him as he walked by. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." Without another word the innkeeper stalked off down the stairs.
When Snape walked into their room he saw Harmony sitting on the bed with her back to him. On the nightstand was a steaming cup of tea untouched. She didn't turn around when he closed the door.
"I found exactly what we needed to earn the money, though you will not like it," Snape said thinking that would get her attention. It didn't. "I ran into the Death Eater Mag once or twice, I feel that won't be the last either."
She said nothing.
Snape narrowed his eyes, "I told you to think about how Voldemort could be sending you the dreams. Have you thought of anything?"
He saw her head bob as she nodded. Sun poured from the window onto her hair, setting it aflame.
"You have?" Snape said in a surprised tone. "Well, what's with this silence? Come now, tell me." He took a couple steps toward her and his foot stumbled on an object on the floor. He looked down and saw Harmony's horcrux book; a couple of the pages were wrinkled as though it was carelessly set aside. He bent over and picked it up. He looked at the book, then slowly up at Harmony.
In a hushed tone he asked, "What has happened?"
Thoughts and memories were racing through her mind, stumbling over each other. She still couldn't believe it. She was a…she could hardly even think about it. This moment was exactly like when Voldemort told her about the meaning of her Serpentine charm, except now was ten times more horrifying. With the Serpentine charm she was still her own person, but with this she didn't know who she was. She didn't know what was hers anymore. She felt a sense of loneliness, but tried to keep in perspective she wasn't the only one; Harry, too, had once held a piece of Voldemort's soul. But despite the fact she wasn't the only one, it still changed everything.
She was only half aware Snape was standing behind her, but it was as though she could feel another presence in the room: Voldemort's. His soul—a part of his being and existence—was inside her, mingled and intertwined with her own soul. It occurred to her she was never alone; even when she fled around the country from forest to forest, inn to inn, she was never alone. When she made physical contact with Harry, it was not she who felt the hunger to kill her friend, it was Voldemort within her.
Harmony flinched when Snape spoke, dragging her away from her thoughts.
Snape's voice was low and threatening when he spoke. "You tell me this instant what is going on."
Harmony sighed. She hadn't cried yet. She didn't remember crying even when Voldemort told her she was his heir, but she felt close.
"Page two hundred and thirty-seven," Harmony said, looking over her shoulder at him and waving a hand to the book he held.
Snape was silent when he obeyed. For a moment Harmony heard the flipping of pages and when he was there he said, "Horcrux behaviors on humans?"
Harmony nodded, gave him a minute to read, and said, "Everything fits. The vision-like dreams, the random and unusual emotions, all of them, they fit."
Snape breathed in sharply and Harmony looked at him. "Of course it fits. I should have connected the similarities between you and Potter." His cold dark eyes met hers with his mouth handing open silently, and he asked, "Do you know what this means?"
Harmony turned her body toward him fully and she said, "There is some reason why I dreamt of that book," she nodded her head to the book in his hands. "Voldemort isn't immortal. He has a new horcrux. A part of his soul," Harmony swallowed, "is in me."
The room was deathly silent. Harmony was overcome with a sudden wave of shame and she couldn't look Snape in the eye. The whole world hated her for one act and that was saving Voldemort from the Battle of Hogwarts. But now, because of her, Voldemort was still immortal. Now she completely understood why the world should hate her, if they ever found out.
"When was it created," he asked. His voice was uncharacteristically gentle. "Can you think of when?"
She had tried to figure that out, but she wasn't sure. She made herself go back in time and try to sort through every event she ever experienced while with the Dark Lord. Her thoughts brought her back to one particular moment, and she knew that was it.
Harmony, Voldemort, and his Death Eaters were at Borgan & Burke's to get one of the last surviving Vanishing cabinets in Knockturn Alley. But the Aurors ambushed them and Harmony ran for cover in an alleyway. Two Aurors had been waiting there and snatched her before she could fight them off. They made a run for it with her thrown over the man's back. What was his name again? Podmore, Sturgis Podmore. They had intended to make her a tool of interrogation in order to pry out information about Voldemort. They were oblivious that the very man had hunted them down in order to save Harmony, and he had cornered them down in an alleyway. The first Auror, the woman, was dead in seconds; Voldemort took her life with a flash of green. The man holding her, Podmore, had instinctively turned his back on Voldemort and unknowingly protected Harmony from the deadly blow with his body. Voldemort killed him and Harmony felt the life leave Podmore. She saw images flash before her eyes, but not her own: Voldemort's. She saw him as a boy, a youth, and then a man. She fainted soon afterward, and with that a piece of Voldemort's soul was within her.
Harmony told this story to Snape and he explained that the horcrux had most likely been unintentional, so when Voldemort's soul split it entered the nearest living thing: her.
"So," Harmony said, covering her face with her hands, "let me get this straight: Voldemort gave me the Serpentine charm so I may take command if and when he dies, correct? But now when he dies he will just come back to life through me."
"You will still be yourself," Snape said, walking over to her and grabbing her wrist so she would look up at him. "The Dark Lord will just…be there, too, both while you are asleep and awake."
Harmony reclaimed her arm. "Harry said he had to die in order to get rid of the piece of Voldemort's soul."
"It is the only way."
"I don't want to die."
"You could come back as Potter did. And besides, it's only Voldemort himself who can destroy it."
Harmony nodded slowly. She sat on the bed in silence staring at a ray of sunlight on the floor which streaked in through the window. Snape watched her as she stood up suddenly, turned around, and began rearranging the bed covers.
Snape frowned at her. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Harmony snapped at him, "I'm making the bed. This room is a mess."
"Well, are you not worried?" He followed her as she moved around the bed, tugging on the sheets. "This new horcrux of Voldemort's is a very large deal, it changes a lot."
With her back to him she shrugged her shoulders. "What does it matter," she said softly, "I've lived with it for this long. It's not so bad." She smiled a little. "The dreams in particular."
Snape straightened and stopped in his tracks, watching her. He mumbled under his breath, "Sometimes denial is the safest response." Then he said more loudly, "You know you don't have to pretend you are not afraid."
"I'm not afraid," she spat, spinning around to face him. "I mean…having to harbor the great and terrible Dark Lord's soul in me is a little frightening, I'll admit, but that's not what bothers me the most." She wiped away tears roughly with the back of her sleeve. She looked him straight in the eye when she said, "You were right when you said this changes a lot. This changes every thought and feeling I had when I was with him. How do I know whether or not what I felt was really me? The anger, the compassion? Or was that all just Voldemort, the horcrux, his soul within me? This changes every experience, every meaning behind every word passed between us."
She felt her face grow hot as Snape stared at her. This was the closest she had ever come to telling someone how intimate she was with Voldemort. As she felt Snape's eyes on her, she could imagine the thoughts going through his mind; thoughts of her and Voldemort together, no doubt.
Snape's next words made the hair on her arms stand up. "You cared for him, didn't you?"
Harmony bit her lip, hesitating, and when she replied her voice cracked, "I thought I did." Her words made fresh tears well in her eyes, but she blinked them away.
"So what you are saying is," he said hesitantly, "it was only him who had feelings for you, and because of the horcrux you felt the same way?"
Harmony shrugged her shoulders and she went right out and said it, "To tell you the truth, I hope not. I sincerely hope everything I felt was real."
"But you are not sure."
"No," she looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, wondering what he was getting at.
He laughed, but it was cold and humorless. He looked down at her as though she were a naive child. "I hope you aren't implying what I think you're implying. Really, the Dark Lord cannot love. Having spent so much time with him, you of all people should know better. He does not care for anyone but himself."
He gave her a smirk and Harmony felt an impulse to punch it off his face. Her hands curled to fists, but she restrained herself. He is so ignorant, she thought. She should have expected nothing less from someone who only knew Voldemort for his murderous and merciless actions. Snape doesn't know his master as well as he thinks.
Harmony stepped up to him until they were nearly nose-to-nose; her being a bit shorter, she had to crane her neck until her chin was nearly vertical to the floor. With her voice filled with venom she hissed, "You're wrong."
He flinched as though she had spewed an insult at him. His dark, obsidian eyes narrowed as he tilted his head ever so slightly to the side. "What has happened to you?"
She brought an index finger to her chest, pointing to her Serpentine charm. "This," she said.
After a moment Snape nodded in understanding. "I suppose I am partial to blame."
She thought a moment about what he meant. "But Dumbledore was the one who chose me to go to Voldemort."
"And I agreed with him, for the most part. I would have preferred a Slytherin to go, because it would have been too dangerous with you being Muggle-born."
Harmony nodded, thought a moment, and said, "Thank you."
"Hm?" He raised an eyebrow at her. "For what?"
"For not saying Mudblood. You said Muggle-born. Thank you."
He straightened his shoulders, adjusting his black robes. "I am a teacher. It is against policy to discriminate against students."
Harmony sighed and muttered, "I think I liked it better when I disliked you." And she added, "It certainly made everything easier."
She could see a light go on in Snape's eyes.
"Ah," he said, and he began rummaging through his cloak pockets, "speaking of hating me, that reminds me." He pulled out a piece of parchment. "Remember I told you I found our opportunity to get money." He handed her the paper for her to see. "Here it is."
Harmony took it from him and scanned over it. "Oh no," she said, her eyes going wide. She read and reread the paper, feeling her stomach drop as though she were free falling. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
- 54
- 55
- 56
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Serpentine Series