Voldemort is victorious. Of those who would oppose him, only Severus and Hermione are still alive. Could they still overcome the Dark Lord and make the Wizarding world a better place?

She came to him many, many years later, long after the war had ended and the Dark Lord declared himself supreme conqueror over all of the Wizarding World. She’d been hard used but, like him, she was a survivor. There were so very few left, even on the Death Eater side, who remembered the days before Voldemort’s Great Victory. The Dark Lord’s favourites and enemies alike did not last long. Voldemort was quite mad, evil and omnipotent. There was no end in sight to his reign.

Severus himself had survived first by making himself indispensable to his Master and also by making sure no one else was in a position to unmask him as the double agent he had been. Then he trained up new Dark potions specialists to take his place. Those new potions specialists caught the eye of the Dark Lord. They never lasted long, however, and so Voldemort kept Severus alive as a valued ‘consultant’. He was always there to train up the next potions specialists as needed.

Hermione’s survival had been a miracle. She should have been dead years ago. Most of the remaining Order of the Phoenix members had been publically tortured and executed by Voldemort shortly after his Great Victory. He had decided to keep her and Ginny Weasley alive as a reminder of his subjugation of wizard-kind, as a deterrent, and as an occasional reward for favoured Death Eaters. Severus had never been that favoured. Valued, yes. Favoured, not at all.

Ginny had died five years ago, accidently suffocated by a bunch of over-zealous Goyles, who had paid dearly for their error. This made Hermione more precious to Voldemort, the only one left. She became a kind of talisman to him. He decided to make her write an extended and detailed narrative of the new Wizarding Order and how it came about, faithfully recording the crimes and deaths of her former friends and any foolish new challengers, in order to amplify the glory of the Dark Lord. It delighted Voldemort to think of her reliving the horrors of her life, and the utter hopelessness of her present situation in vivid detail.

Voldemort required Hermione to write the original Chronicles with a blood quill. She was cursed to rewrite the words over again as her dried blood faded from the page, as well as keeping the Chronicle up to date, writing fresh entries extolling his latest atrocities.

Voldemort adored smelling the pages just after she wrote them, ecstatic at the perfume of blood, still hot from her body. He would run his hands over the writing and, putting out his tongue, would delicately lick the words she had inscribed. It was as if he was savouring his victories afresh, reliving each triumph, every time he did this.

Each of her hand-written volumes was carefully bound in the skin of a former Order of the Phoenix member that had been carefully preserved for this purpose.

He had her entertain him by reading out parts of the Chronicles to him in front of his acolytes, or his enemies just before he killed them. Passages from the Chronicles were chanted by Death Eaters, and incorporated into liturgies for the faithful.

Parts of the Chronicles were required learning, by rote, in such schools as Voldemort permitted to operate.

Severus had tried to maintain a physical distance from the Dark Lord. Out of sight, out of mind mostly, unless he was required as a consultant. He occasionally saw, and heard the Chronicler from a distance. He always carried a copy of the Chronicles with him, though, as Voldemort had decreed all his subjects should do.

Finally, Hermione was delivered to him. It apparently amused the Dark Lord to put his two survivors together. His Dark Potions Master, and his Chronicler of Victories. Ostensibly, it was so that Hermione could verify the effects some of the poisons Severus had brewed for his Master for the Chronicles, and how they had been used. The Chronicles must be as accurate as possible. Many Hogwarts professors, his former colleagues, had been poisoned by the death-potions of Severus Snape.

“Use her as you like,” Voldemort had sent a message to Severus. “However, do not kill her or render her incapable of fulfilling her duties as Chronicler.”

Severus intended to follow these orders.

And now she was in front of him, taking off her grey cloak. Older, thinner and grey. Stern, sombre and unbending. She looked dry and bloodless.

Their eyes and minds locked. She had never betrayed him. She was not defeated. Severus knew what he need to know.

It was what he had been waiting for. After all these years, together they would be able to forge the instrument of Voldemort’s downfall, and avenge the dead.

“I’ll be the Chronicler of his Defeat,” she said with utter certainty. “I’ll go on to chronicle our Victory over the Dark Lord.”

Voldemort fell the following year, thanks to the two remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix.

The Chronicler continued to record everything, dispassionately and with great accuracy. The Chronicles continued to be the authorised version of events, the canon law for all wizards.

Severus and Hermione were honoured as liberators, feted and almost deified. Wizards, unused and unable to govern themselves after Voldemort’s regime, begged them to set up an interim government and repair the damage done to their world. They couldn’t refuse.

Power has an insidious effect on people. Those who had lived so close to the Dark Lord could not help but be tainted by him.

The Chronicles faithfully recorded that, although Severus and Hermione perhaps never intended it, their ten-year reign as King and Queen of the Night was scarcely more benevolent than that of their predecessor.

The New Chronicles record their overthrow, deaths and the establishment of the First Wizard Democratic Commonwealth with Curiosus Malfoy as its First Citizen.

Update: in response to some of the reviews for this story 'Blood and Poison' has now been posted, which deals with how Hermione and Severus overthrew Voldemort.....