A/N: Lady Luck is on my side today, which is why I can bring you this chapter. Unfortunately, it is only one. Hope you like it anyways.
Warning: Somewhat shocking revelation ahead…. Oh who am I kidding, you probably all suspected it by now.
Also, keep meaning to say this, always forgets: Thanks to all who reviewed and are still with me. May you still be with me at the end, which should hopefully come before the real book seven comes out and destroys this. Thanks a lot.
Disclaimer: Actual owner is in New York. I am not. You do the math.
*****
A Change of Plan
"My Mum and Snape… they were friends… is that what he told you, was that his proof of 'remorse'?" asked Harry, no sooner than had the door to the office shut behind their backs. They could barely hear the first of Professor McGonagall's steps as she started down to check on Peeves' latest disturbance. But Harry was long past caring; he had just spent the last two days impatiently, trapped at the Burrow waiting for the chance to interrogate Professor Dumbledore. Professors McGonagall and Trelawney, Peeves, Phineas Nigellus, glaring reproachfully at him from his painting, and even the bloody Minister of Magic could all hear if they liked.
He was upset and people had to know it.
Professor Dumbledore, by contrast, calmly looked up from his portrait and said genially, "Well hello Harry… Mr Weasley, Miss Granger, back again so soon?"
"My Mum and Snape…" repeated Harry, slowly, angrily, ignoring his greeting and formalities, "They were friends?"
Professor Dumbledore closed his eyes and sighed sadly, and then said, "Have a seat Mr Potter… all of you."
Hermione immediately took the first available chair, but it was a few tense moments where Harry and Ron glared at Professor Dumbledore's portrait, before they joined her. And when they did, Harry again demanded, not missing a beat, "Is that what he told you, because that's a load of-"
"That's not quite what he told me Mr Potter," said Professor Dumbledore, surprisingly wearily. "What he told me… I had hoped you would have found out, but then your aunt and uncle were attacked two days ago, as I understand it? Your uncle was killed?"
Harry said nothing, but Hermione did, "It was a stroke… brought on by the Cruciatus Curse…."
"Oh dear," said Professor Dumbledore, thoughtfully. "He was not a young man."
"Or a nice one," said Ron.
Professor Dumbledore looked over to him then and agreed, "Indeed not, a most unfortunate temper and prejudiced world view…. But I can see that you two, or is it all three of you, are greatly upset with me?"
"You could have just told us," replied Harry, sullenly.
"Would you have believed me?" Professor Dumbledore asked, weary again.
"Why wouldn't I?" asked Harry in turn, brow furrowing slightly. "If it was so important that you couldn't tell me before, why wouldn't I when you did?"
He replied simply, "I know how you feel about Severus… and I understand that he hasn't been the most pleasant person to deal with-"
"Well, in general many murderers aren't," cut in Ron, loudly.
"And this especially… Harry… would you have believed me if I had just told you that Severus had been in love with your mother…? That they had come to be very close before she began to date your father, and that it was his fear that the Dark Lord would kill her that drove him here…?" asked Professor Dumbledore, staring at each of them in turn.
The world just out the windows of the office today was a blustery, clouded dark grey. Rain was threatening again, though they had not and need not worry for it, they would be leaving the castle the way they arrived, through the fireplace in Professor McGonagall's office. They noticed now though, because they had all apparently lost every ability and function save the need to breathe.
Harry was the first to recover though, "In-in love… he told you that he was in love with her?"
Professor Dumbledore nodded, "After he overheard the prophecy, after he had been discovered… I spoke to him, I pleaded with him not to relay the entire message, and for some reason he did not. But Tom got more than he needed, and knowing of only two couples who fit the 'criteria', went after them. Severus tried his best to stop him, he told me of how he pleaded with Tom that he would spare her, he showed me how he begged Tom to spare her… but your mother chose to die for you, making it all for nothing-"
"How could he expect any mother to-" cut in Hermione.
"I don't believe that he expected her to do anything, or at least he had been hoping that the spy, whoever he was, would never get as powerful information as Peter did," Professor Dumbledore replied. "But he did, and she didn't, and he was sorry, very sorry that he could not have done anymore, anything else to save her, if not her husband and son."
"I don't believe it," declared Harry then.
Professor Dumbledore sighed, sadly, clearly expecting this reaction.
"I do," said Hermione suddenly, and he, and Ron and Harry too, looked up at her at once, surprised.
Without saying a word she searched through the folds of her cloak to her pocket and from it withdrew a small, neatly folded piece of cloth. Setting it out in her lap she carefully unfolded it before them to reveal that someone had placed three carefully dried and pressed amaranths in the centre under a painstakingly elegantly scribed message:
"Like these flowers do not, our connection shall never fade. S.S."
While Harry looked stunned, and Professor Dumbledore surprised, Ron burst into a fit of quiet sniggering that only increased when Hermione looked up to glare at him.
But Harry ignored him to ask, his voice barely above a whisper, "Where did you find that?"
He thought he knew the answer though, the sight of her palming something off just before they were interrupted by Mr Llewellyn and Ron in the basement flashing immediately to mind. But he had just spent the past two days flipping through his mother's notebook, among the other things they had found in the house, and found nothing….
"In the house, in the basement when we were searching the boxes… it had fallen out of a book," she replied.
Ron struggled, and failed, to control himself, before he asked, "Snape gave this to Harry's Mum…? (Another failed attempt at restraint.) I mean, the idea of Snape giving flowers to anyone is disturbing enough, but he gave this to-"
"What are you laughing at Won-Won? Ginny told me about that necklace Lavender sent you, 'My Sweetheart'?" demanded Hermione, nastily.
He stopped at once, and glowering at her, asked, "How did you find out about that?"
"Does it matter?" she asked, in reply, and then turning to Harry, her tone and very demeanour softening, "I don't think-if you are-that she-that they were… well, you know… but, they were friends, they must have… she may have forgotten it was even in the book…."
Harry looked up at her, and asked, "Would you?"
Her face reddened at once, and she became rather flustered, stammering as she tried to reply, "Well I… I, well of course I might, he probably gave this to her long before she married your father…."
Professor Dumbledore cut in again, "As he told me, they developed a friendship in their Sixth Year… but it went no further. Harry, I trusted-I still do trust Severus Snape-for it, he did not lie to me, he did what he was supposed to do, and you will have to find it in yourself to trust him t-"
"What?" Harry exclaimed, cutting him off. "Us, trust Snape, after what he did? This (he pointed to the cloth in Hermione's lap) may have been enough for you, but it doesn't do anything for me. If he loved her so much he would have actually saved her, not left her to die-"
"-he did not-" protested Professor Dumbledore.
"-and then murder you in the Astronomy Tower and run off with Draco Malfoy and those Death Eaters after!" he continued furious. "There is nothing that you could say or he could do that would ever get me to trust him!"
"Is that so?" asked Professor Dumbledore, eyeing him carefully.
"Yes!" declared Harry.
"Even if I tell you that I asked him, that I told him to kill me?" he asked again, still eyeing him.
"Yes! Wait… what?" Harry asked, now completely confused.
Professor Dumbledore sighed, and sank his forehead into his palm before replying, "I had no choice. He had made the Unbreakable Vow and once we found out what Draco had done… he had to do it, to spare Mr Malfoy, to save him…."
All three teenagers stared at the portrait with mouths opened slightly and unable to speak, once more stunned into silence. The only ones who could were the other portraits, and they started a rush of low-whispering that only rose in volume and intensity until Phineas Nigellus declared, "No one of my flesh and blood would dare attack an administrator of this school!" and then, when one of the others gave him a sceptical look, added, "At least without reason…."
But eventually Harry regained his speech, "What if it had backfired, what if Draco had done what Voldemort had told him to do before Snape got there?"
Professor Dumbledore replied, "It was a risk we had to take, but you yourself saw him, had been following him… surely you knew that he would not have done it."
Harry coloured slightly but insisted, "What if he had done it?"
"It was a risk we had to take," Professor Dumbledore repeated.
Harry rose out of the chair and stalked to a window, feeling a mixture of disgust, anger and hurt. The weather in the distance before him was as angry as his mood, and as he looked a sharp, jagged white bolt suddenly cut across the sky to the earth in the direction of Hogsmeade. He wished he could strike out just like it. He couldn't believe what he had just heard; he didn't want to believe what he had just heard….
Professor Dumbledore continued behind his back, "Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for those we care about, and in war."
Harry tried to ignore him, and at the same time shut out the image of Ron being knocked unconscious by a faceless queen on a chess board in their First Year. He had said almost the same thing, but this time, somewhat more so than that, he didn't want to hear it.
Finally he said, "You begged him…."
"I was asking him to do it. He did not want to, you saw his face, he did not want to, but I insisted, I made him… reminded him of how he had failed someone he cared about once before…" Professor Dumbledore replied, his self-disgust evident in his tone. "He could not allow Draco to fail…."
It was Ron who spoke next, "What good did that do anyway? Malfoy's still going to kill loads of people now that he's with You-Know-Who."
"I have heard reports that he hasn't been spotted with anyone… even when they went to your aunt's house," Professor Dumbledore replied, still looking to Harry.
"Doesn't matter, he's just saving him for something 'special' then," said Ron.
"It was Severus' belief that young Draco was being used as a tool to punish his father. I'm sure you know of Lucius' attempt at escape recently, Voldemort gave Draco this task at once to be rid of me and then to punish him for failure. It was a suicide mission, and any purpose to which Draco is put anymore-though he may have 'succeeded' here-may be to that end, to kill him," replied Professor Dumbledore. "He knows that Draco isn't a killer either, or at least suspects it… who knows, he could be of help to you."
"He's not in love with Hermione is he?" asked Harry scathingly from the window, turning back to stare at the portrait.
"I beg your pardon?" said Professor Dumbledore.
"He hates us, he would rather stick with him than help us, and frankly I don't want his help," replied Harry.
"You just might," said Professor Dumbledore. "I know you two do not like each other, but if he offers you help, you would do well to take it, even with a pinch of salt."
Harry said nothing to this, and then went back to his seat before the Headmistress' desk. For a time he sat staring at the piece of cloth in Hermione's lap, and then asked, "Do you know who R.A.B. is now?"
The change of topic was so sudden that it was a wonder that Professor Dumbledore so quickly replied, "No, I'm afraid that there are too few I would consider capable of something like this…. It may even be someone he met in Eastern Europe."
"Eastern Europe?" asked Hermione, speaking up now.
"That was what I had originally planned to tell you the day you arrived. I believe that Voldemort took the cup to Eastern Europe, and specifically to Albania, Romania or Bulgaria," he replied.
"That's not exactly specific," she said.
"I know, but do you remember Mr Igor Karkaroff?" he asked.
They all nodded, Ron muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, "That coward helping Vicky cheat, who couldn't?"
"Well, yes, the former and late Headmaster of the Durmstrang Academy, as you should remember, was also a Death Eater, but one who refused to go back to his master and was subsequently killed for it. When Voldemort disappeared after the death of Miss Hephzibah Smith, I believe he may have gone there and recruited him, among others. It was almost instinctive the way he ran back after that night in Godric's Hollow," Professor Dumbledore explained.
"But that was Albania, why Romania and Bulgaria too?" asked Harry.
"If one has a Dark and delicate item such as a Horcrux, it is not wise to keep it too close to one's person. If you are caught…" replied Professor Dumbledore, letting his voice trail off.
"That's a lot of ground to cover, we can't search every inch of those countries," said Harry, trying to think of Dudley's unused globes and atlases and then remembering, with a slight jolt, that they were now all gone.
"I don't expect you to, that's where the memories come in. I had managed to procure a few from Mr Karkaroff himself, before his death, and along with a few of my own I hope we might be able to narrow the ground," replied Professor Dumbledore.
"And if it's there… how do we get to it? How do we get there, and who will help us, if we need it?" asked Harry, now fully getting into the discussion. It seemed, if just for a moment, that the tension of before had temporarily dissipated.
Professor Dumbledore smiled, "Voldemort is not the only one with friends, you and I have a few as well, and I doubt that some well-worded letters and requests would go unanswered."
The three looked at each other, slightly puzzled, and then back at him and Ron asked, "So when do we start looking at these memories?"
"Well you see, I'm glad you asked that," said Professor Dumbledore.
Harry felt his heart sink a little; he didn't think he was going to be so glad about it.
Professor Dumbledore seemed to notice, and reassured, "Don't worry; it shouldn't be too awful for you: When school reopens in September, I want you to come back as usual."
He was right, he didn't.
"But sir, if I was in school I would have less freedom. There are things that I can't do here, and the Ministry, they're not just going to let me-" he protested.
"As I understand it, secrecy in our venture is of the utmost importance?" asked Professor Dumbledore.
"Yes but-" protested Harry again.
"Then what better cover than that of Hogwarts itself? You don't have to stay the entire year, but you are still a student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to the day you sit your last NEWT exam, no one can be sure that the rumours of you being the 'Chosen One' are true, and we cannot afford to give Voldemort a chance to kill you before you can stop him… or find out what we're up to," Professor Dumbledore reasoned.
"But-" Harry tried again.
"I can speak to Minerva about giving you a little leeway where bedtime is concerned, and though I cannot tell her exactly why, I'm sure she would understand. Your fellow students are used to you all ignoring the rules at times, they may not be so suspicious if you happen to 'disappear' once or twice during the term. And as for the Ministry… well, you shouldn't worry about them too much, I have it on good authority that the new Transfiguration and Defence Against the Dark Arts professors may be corruptible," he continued, pleasantly.
"But sir," began Hermione when Harry didn't, "If Harry is here, and Voldemort wants to k-kill him… wouldn't that concentrate his efforts here…? Make Hogsmeade and the school even bigger targets…?"
He seemed to think about it for a moment, before replying, "I thought of this, I've worried over it… but he cannot breach this school, he will not do it again. Hogsmeade… I don't know what can be done for the village, but the Ministry and the Order will not leave it unguarded. And if our deception succeeds, we will save it all yet. In the end you must all understand that we cannot do everything, that we must leave some things to others while we focus on a single goal. The Order will take care of the War, but you all, and you especially Harry, must take care of Voldemort."
Harry scoffed slightly and turned to the window again. The tension was back again and Professor Dumbledore hastened to quell it.
"Of course, this all depends on you. If you have some place better to hide for a while, to plan, to offer assistance where you think it might be wise, then by all means you are free to do so. You are no longer a boy who must obey; you are now a man who can choose… I would just prefer it if you would choose to stay here. To take advantage of the protection Hogwarts has to offer for now," he told him, his voice halting, and his tone hopeful.
Harry still said nothing, but after a while asked, "Are you sure that Professor McGonagall would give us the ability to move when we need to, when we have to, and that you can get us into Albania or wherever without Voldemort knowing?"
"I can't promise he won't find out, or that she would be willing, but I can try," replied Professor Dumbledore.
Harry looked away from the window, to Hermione, who gave him a meaningful look, and then to Ron, who just shrugged, and then to the portrait, and said, "I'll think about it."
*****
There was a surprise awaiting them at the other end of the Floo in the Weasley family living room, and it was neither pleasant nor welcome: the Minister for Magic had come to see him.
As Harry stepped through the fireplace after Ron, absently dusting his robes before turning to help Hermione, someone said, "At last, Mr Potter, I was beginning to wonder if I would have to send a search party."
Harry spun back in surprise. Seated on one of Mrs Weasley's comfortable, bulky, but rather patched sofas, was Rufus Scrimgeour. He looked very much as if he had come over for tea, dressed as he was in his comfortable robes, his lion-like yellowed gaze and wild hair tamed to reassure. But Harry knew he was up to no good, the Minister for Magic didn't just pay courtesy calls to the homes of the heads of his departments, and the last time he had been to the Burrow it was only to try and persuade Harry to become the Ministry's "poster boy" for instilling confidence in his administration.
He did not smile as Harry turned to look, and then eventually glare, at him, but he did when Hermione finally came through and said, "There, that should be last of you, Miss Hermione Granger I believe…? Where have you three been off to?"
"That's none of your business!" snapped Ron, furious. "What are you doing in my house, where's my Mum and Ginny?"
"In the kitchen making tea, I requested though, the opportunity to speak to young Harry alone… so if you two don't mind…" he replied, and it was clearly not a request.
They did not move, and Harry said, "I don't think so; I have nothing to say to you."
"Oh? Well I do have something to say to you… I've heard that you were asked that awful night, whether you wished to see the school closed or remain open. And I believe it is mostly on your reply alone that the school has, so far, decided to… such power in the hands of one so young," said Scrimgeour.
"So? What's this about then? You want to know why they asked me, I can't tell you that, I don't know myself," replied Harry.
Scrimgeour smiled tightly, "No, I wanted to know if you wish to see to it that the school remains open."
"What?" Harry asked, confused.
But Hermione wasn't, "You… you…."
"My dear, please do not complete that statement, I don't deserve it, I was merely making an enquiry," he replied, coldly, glaring at her.
"No you weren't," she snapped. "You want to use Harry; you're threatening the school to get him to do what you want! But you don't own Hogwarts and neither does he, they can expel him if they wish, he can quit if he likes or Voldemort can kill him and make your little threat all moot!"
He flinched only barely at the name, and said, "No confidence in your friend then?"
"No confidence? How dare you? You're the ones making him out to be the 'Chosen One', you're the one making useless threats!" she raged.
"They're hardly useless. Whether or not he is this prophesised 'Chosen One' parents all over are looking to him as a symbol. They see hope in your boyfriend, and may make the decision to send their children back to Hogwarts or keep them home depending on whether or not he goes himself," he replied.
"He's not my boyfriend," protested Hermione. "And where ever would they get the idea that Harry's not going back?"
"Haven't you all been reading the papers? The rumours are swirling, and when I arrived here and found you absent, I have to wonder if there isn't some truth to it all," said Scrimgeour, fixing each of them with a suspicious glare.
Hermione could only say then, "As a politician I'm surprised that you would take any stock in rumours."
"As a politician, it's always good to know what the people are thinking and if any of them are potentially harmful. As an Auror with more years experience than you three have life combined I can smell a rat," he replied.
"Then how'd you miss Peter Pettigrew?" asked Harry, finally speaking again.
Scrimgeour visibly bristled, and appeared on the verge of saying something awful, when Mrs Weasley and Ginny arrived with a serving tray and tea. And Mrs Weasley nearly dropped it when she saw them, "Ron, Harry, Hermione…? When did you get back, I didn't hear you come in…."
Scrimgeour barely moved, though they all knew that he must have cast a Silencing Charm to give them privacy.
"We're back," said Ron.
"Is everything alright then?" asked Ginny, coming in with her mother and eyeing the quartet suspiciously.
"Yes, we're very tired and going upstairs, we'll leave you to your tea," Harry replied.
Mrs Weasley began, "Oh but Harry, the Minister wished to speak to you."
"We spoke," he replied, and at that marched out of the room with Ron and Hermione leaving Scrimgeour to fume quietly behind them.
Up in Ron's room, with a Silencing Charm up and an Imperturbable on the door, they knew exactly when the Minister left, moments later, with his escort of two. Neither one was Percy, though they didn't expect him to be there, he wasn't welcome either. In the fading pink and gold light of the sunny afternoon, they all three looked up at the many windows of the Weasley house until they came to the one where Ron sat peering out, held his gaze a moment and then Disapparated, the aides first, and then the Minister. Almost immediately then, two black cloaked Aurors disappeared into the trees, members of a now semi-permanent guard round the Burrow.
Ron grumbled as he left, "Git's gone, can't believe Mum let him in after Christmas."
"He's the Minister of Magic, you know, your Dad's boss?" said Hermione.
"That doesn't give him the right to just pay a visit whenever he likes, what happened to owls? The Floo?" asked Ron, glaring off at the spot from which he had just Disapparated. The light filtering through now dusting his hair rose gold and slightly bronzing his features. On Harry and Hermione further away it spread white and yellow-gold and silver.
"He's gone now, and he will be back if he has to," said Harry then, cutting into the conversation.
"He can't make you go back, you're of age," Hermione told him.
"I know that, I have a choice, like Professor Dumbledore said, I can do what I want," he replied, peevishly. "But you know that I can't go rushing off to help every time Voldemort attacks someone and lets me see-"
"-you know I didn't mean it like that-" she protested.
"-and we need to keep what we're doing quiet as long as we can. I have a choice alright, either go off and get killed and let Voldemort win, or go along with everyone else and hope that I don't," he said.
"You won't," insisted Hermione, at which he rolled his eyes away from her and fell back on the bed to glare at the ceiling. She lay on her stomach beside him and continued, "And besides, going along with 'everyone else' just might get us to Eastern Europe and back before anyone's the wiser."
He grunted unintelligibly, before asking, "Why didn't you tell me about the handkerchief?"
She sat up again and folded her hands into her lap, just as Ron came away from the window and joined them. Harry rolled over and looked up at her, and she replied, "I didn't… I didn't think it was anything significant… until-until we spoke to Lupin… and then, you know…."
"So you were just going to keep it?" he asked, neutrally.
She was flustered again and stammering, "Well… no… I-I wasn't… I just, well I didn't know how to give it to you… I mean what if you overreacted… or something…."
"Overreacted?" he asked, his voice still calm.
"Well, I didn't know what you were going to think when you saw it. I mean, she kept it in a book in a box in the basement of her house, and your Dad clearly hated Snape…. I don't mean that she was…" she tried, stumbling through the sentence.
He rolled over again and said, "It's okay, I don't think my mother was some kind of 'scarlet woman'."
Hermione fell into a clearly relieved silence.
Ron spoke next, changing the topic, "So we're going to Eastern Europe?"
Without moving, Harry replied, "If that's where the cup is."
"And Dumbledore expects us to buy Snape's story to him? That twenty-odd years ago he was in love with your Mum, she chose your Dad over him but he never stopped loving her and tried to save her life when he told Voldemort the half-prophecy?" he asked, barely himself able to contain his disbelief.
"And it might be true according to that handkerchief," said Harry.
"Do you believe it?" asked Ron.
"Do you want to believe it?" asked Harry.
Ron sat quietly for a while and asked, "Are we going back to Hogwarts?"
Harry exhaled slowly, and lay for a while staring at the ceiling before replying, "Do I have a choice?"
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