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A Kiss for the Netherfairies by zaubernuss [Reviews - 6]

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Thank you very much for your reviews! The following chapter is an attempt to make sense of some of the things that happened in the 'Deathly Hollows' that I never fully understood. Such as why Dumbledore wanted Severus of all people to be the person who told Harry about the necessity of his self-sacrifice...




A Matter of Life and Death

"Telling Harry the truth was never your mission, was it?" He didn't answer. But he didn't have to. "It was all about the Elder Wand..." she wispered, her eyes widening in shock when all the pieces finally came together. Yet she shook her head vehemently, denying the conclusion she had come to. "No!" she said tonelessly. "You couldn't... Dumbledore couldn't have planned this!" But his silence was confirmation enough. "That was the plan? That was your mission? To confront Harry and, if worse came to worst, let him kill the messenger?"

Hermione jumped up from her chair, feeling the urge smash something or to hit someone to vent her rage. Preferably Dumbledore. Or even him.

"We had to ensure that the mastery of the Elder Wand would be passed to Potter," the former spy said with cool detachment. "Without the Deathly Hallows, without becoming the Master of Death, he most likely would have died. Surely you wouldn't have wanted that."

"But neither would I have wanted Harry to kill you! That's just as horrible!"

"Miss Granger..." the man chosen to be sacrificed said, using his most placating tone.

"No!" she cried, outraged. "How could Dumbledore demand this of you? Why would you even consider to go along with this insanity of a plan?"

"He didn't demand it," was the calm reply. "It wasn't his plan. Albus had the vague hope that me killing him – given that I was just fulfilling his wishes – would not equal defeating him, and that the mastery of the Elder Wand would remain with him. It would have given neither Potter nor the Dark Lord an advantage, and in all likelihood The-Boy-Who-Lived would have become The-Boy-Who-Died."

"What if Dumbledore had been right? Luring Harry into a duel to pass on the mastery of a wand you never possessed... you would have died in vain!"

"Albus and I did a lot of research on the Elder wand and the way it worked. The wand chooses the wizard, Miss Granger. The Elder Wand is drawn to strength. It goes where the power is. Albus was considerably weakend after he triggered the curse on Gaunt's ring. He would have been defeated by anybody who chose to attack him. He finally had to concede to the facts."

"So on realizing that by fulfilling your vow to Narcissa and your promise to Dumbledore, you would most likely end up as master of the Elder Wand, you came up with the idea to provoke Harry into attacking you?" Hermione asked, incredulous. "You planned on sacrificing yourself?"

"Killing the previous owner of the Elder Wand isn't necessary to become its master – just disarming him was sufficient. That's how Draco had gained its mastery."

"I know that you are much more skilled than Harry, but he hated you with a vengeance, and hatred is what fuels an Avada Kedavra! What if it had made him powerful and vengeful enough to cast it? Apart from you being dead, Harry might have split his soul!"

"The likelihood of that happening was small. Neither Dumbledore nor I thought Potter capable of casting an Avada. But if he had indeed killed me, he would never have learned the truth. He would have done so in the utter conviction that he was bringing Dumbledore's murderer to rightful justice. And Potter being Potter, he would still have felt remorse afterwards. His soul would have mended."

Hermione wrung her hands in agitation. "How can you be so callous about it?" she demanded, aghast at his casualness when discussing his own death. "You and Dumbledore all but planned your death! I still can't believe this! There must have been another way!"

"Of course!" he agreed deliberately. "The easiest way would have been for Potter to kill Dumbledore in my stead. But Albus and I saw some difficulty in persuading him to along with that course of action. It did, however, become our Plan A when the opportunity to have Potter unknowingly do the deed presented itself."

Hermione stared at him, aghast. "What do you mean?"

"Dumbledore made Harry feed him the poison in the cave."

"How could that have been a plan?" she frowned. "Dumbledore and Harry had no idea what they would find before they got there."

"Really?" Severus raised his eyebrows at the young witch. "You think the headmaster would take his most precious charge to a place that was reeking of dark magic without checking out beforehand what awaited them there?"

To be fully honest, Hermione had never understood why Dumbledore had chosen to take Harry along on that dangerous endeavor at all. It had seemed like a place he should have explored with Order members for backup.

"When Dumbledore first found the basin with a mysterious potion that couldn't be spilled, he came to me and asked for my expertise."

"And you knew what kind of potion it was?"

"I did, given that it was the potion master I was apprenticing with at the time who brewed it."

Her mouth fell open in shock, then closed again. Of course - it should have been obvious. Who else could have brewed it but a Potions Master in Voldemort's service? And he must have had someone in his employ even before her professor gained his mastery.

"He never told me explicitely what he was working on," Severus felt the need to explain, "but I had eyes and a keen sense of smell, and I was curious about his experiments... a potion that couldn't be spilled or vanished but had to be ingested, a fast-acting poison that would make a person relive his worst nightmares and cause so much pain that the victim would wish for his death... " When he had deduced for whom his master was brewing this elixir, Severus had refrained from asking any more questions. He had just been relieved that he had never had to witnessed its usage and never been asked to brew it, not even after his master had passed away a few years later. When Dumbledore had told him what he had found in the cave after his first trip there, Severus had immediately known what kind of substance the basin held.

"Dumbledore had been elated..." Severus continued gloomily. "He immediatly saw it as a way to solve all our problems - save Draco, pass on the Elder Wand to the Chosen One, release me from the obligation of killing my mentor..."

"But if the poison was fast-acting, as Voldemort surely demaned it to be ..." Hermione mused, "how could Dumbledore have even hoped to make it back to Hogwarts? The poison should have made him drop dead on the spot, which would have left Harry with a myridad of problems."

Severus was amazed how quickly her mind worked - digesting a new piece of information, looking at it from all angles, dissecting logical inconsistencies and asking the questions that needed to be answered. She really was a bright witch. "Indeed. But by taking a Bezoar beforehand, he effectively slowed the process down. There was no way it could have saved him entirely, the poison was too strong, but it bought him time. He wold have died in his bed, just a couple of hours after his return to Hogwarts. He had actually planned to leave the poisoned mead that Draco had exchanged for Slughorn's Christmas gift on his night stand. Draco would have been able to claim his mission fulfilled and would have been safe from the Dark Lord's wrath."

Making Harry the tool for Dumbledore's demise had seemed such an elegant solution. Albus would have succumbed from a mysterious illness come the next morning, with no one being the wiser. The boy-who-had-killed-him would have known, of course, but he had also been made aware of the importance of keeping the hunt for the Horcruxes a secret. Too bad that Draco had chosen that very night to finally make his move.

"But Draco allowed the Death Eaters into the castle before the poison could take full effect..." Hermione concluded, echoing his thoughts. "When Dumbledore realized this on coming back from the cave, he sent for you to execute the back-up plan: Kill him him before Draco could."

"Correct. Unfortunately, Draco had already managed to disarm Dumbledore in his weakend state, making him the new Master of the Elder wand. Of course, he had no clue. Neither had the Dark Lord, whom Dumbledore supected to have be after the wand for quite some time."

"But you didn't take it. It was entombed with him."

"Given that I had not been ordered to procure it, I could feign ignorance. The Dark Lord, at that point, didn't know that the wand's allegiance needed to be won in order to use it efficiently. For the longest time, he thought it would be sufficient to be in its possession. I wished to keep him ignorant."

"But in order to stick with your and Dumbldore's original plan, you had to defeat Draco at some point and thus make yourself the rightful owner of the wand..."

"Yes," Severus sighed, "that turned out to be the tiny flaw in the plan. It wasn't as easy as I had thought it would be. After all, I had no valid reason to attack my godson, but was still under oath to protect him from harm. Narcissa had to release me from my Unbreakable Vow first, but she proved unwilling – until I appealed to the Dark Lord. Given that he was extremely annoyed with the Malfoys, he ordered her to revoke the vow.

After the Easter holidays, I organised practise duels for all 7th year students, supposedly to test their skills in the Dark Arts. I defeated Draco and believed myself to be the master of the Elder Wand right until the moment the Dark Lord disarmed me in the Shrieking Shack. I had no idea that the wand's allegiance had been with Potter ever since he had disarmed Draco at Malfoy Manor."

Hermione shook her head in bitterness. "So a confrontation with Harry, even if you had managed to force it before he faced the Dark Lord, would have been completely pointless. You would have died without having accomplished your self-given task."

He rubbed his forehead as if trying to wipe away the memories. "That's exactly what I thought when Voldemort defeated me..." he murmured. "That I had failed again. Without the mastery of the wand, the boy-who-lived stood a low chance of surviving another confrontation with the Dark Lord. The only thing left to do was to give him my memories make sure that he knew what he had to do."

"Dear God – to think that so much depended on Harry possessing all Deathly Hallows!" Hermione felt a rush of anger at the deceased headmaster and his obsession with secrecy. They had been manipulated and manoeuvred like chess pieces. "All that Dumbledore left us were cryptic hints and a fairytale book! Why not simply tell us what we needed to know instead of leaving us fumbling around in the dark all this time? What if we hadn't figured it out at all?"

Severus raised his eyebrow at her. "Albus left the book with you, did he not? Of course you'd figure it out."

She was too agitated to take notice of the implied compliment on her intelligence. "We only understood that the Deathly Hallows truly existed! But Harry never actively tried to get into possession of the Elder Wand, least of all gain its allegiance! It was pure coincidence that he ended up with it."

"Albus was convinced that actively seeking to become Master of Death was not a good way to get there," he explained calmly. "It was my job to make sure that it happened. He wanted you to know just enough to understand the 'why' in the end, and probably to give Harry a bit of hope for his encounter with the Dark Lord. He didn't have to be in physical possession of the wand. Once Harry had defeated me, he would have been the wand's true master. Voldemort wouldn't have been able to wield its power against him. Dumbledore had hoped that it would backfire on him and kill the Horcrux in Potter's head instead. As it did. It was a great plan."

Hermione had a hard time holding on to her composure. "Except for the fact that we wouldn't have known that disarming you would be sufficient for Harry to gain the wand's allegiance!" she all but shouted. "It wasn't in the stupid book! If everything had gone according to your and Dumbledore's great master plan, Harry might have killed you!" She felt an icy shiver running down her spine even now, thinking how easily everything could have gone down the drain. How could he be so utterly calm about it?

He raised a curious brow at her. It was about the third time she mentioned the fact that he could easily have ended up dead at Potter's hand. Obviously, the thought really upset her. He could understand why his demise in the Shrieking Shack might have given her a hard time – guilt wasn't always rational. But other than that, it could only be Potter's hypothetical guilt that she felt concern about... unless his own survival was really that important to her. The idea seemed so strange that he didn't dwell on it.

He merely shrugged his shoulders. "Possibly. But my survival had never been an important factor to consider. It was a risk I was willing to take. I was basically a dead man the moment Lily died."

Her heart constricted at his words. How much he must have suffered to not even consider his life worth living anymore! "You loved her that much..." She fell into her chair again, her eyes big and dark and full of emotion.

Severus scowled at her. If he had known that he would survive his degrading experience in the Shrieking Shack and that Potter would use his memories to clear his name in a very public trial, he would have exercised more care when selecting them. He might have preferred to bleed out on the floor rather than live on with the fact that his most private affairs had become public knowlegde after making it headline in the Daily Prophet.

"Don't romanticise me into some kind of tragic hero, Miss Granger!" he admonished sharply. "Even if it fits into this absurd image of me that you seem to have made for yourself. I cared for Lily – greatly. But I surely wouldn't have died out of unrequited love for her."

"Then why were you willing to die for her son? You hated him!"

"I didn't hate him! I hated the fact that he wasn't his mother. I hated that I wasn't his father. I hated being in a position where I could never even acknowledge that I was..." He broke off. "Never mind."

"Never acknowledge that you were what?"

"It's of no importance, Miss Granger." What in Merlin's name was wrong with him that he was starting to mindlessly blurt out all of his secrets to her? It was almost like she had dosed him with Veritaserum.

"Yes it is!" she insisted, reminding him of a dog with a bone. "There is more to it, isn't there? A reason why you – despite your strong dislike for Harry – watched over him all these years and would even have sacrificed yourself for him. What drove you to do it, if not deep love for his mother? What exactly was Harry to you?"

Frustrated, he rubbed his forehead and briefly closed his eyes – as if it was possible to forget about the girl's presence and her frightening effect on him when he didn't have to look at her. The wretched chit had the dubious talent to spot every little chink in his armour and attacked mercilessly, twisting the knife with surgical precision. And worst of all, it didn't even hurt that much, so he wasn't really making an effort to defend himself properly.

"Please, don't lie to me now," she pleaded with wide open eyes that conveyed nothing but sympathy and compassion. And just like that, he felt his resistance melt.

"Fine," he grunted, acknowledging defeat. "If you must know and if it will serve to finally make you stop pestering me: I had sworn to his mother to protect him – with my life, if need be."

Hermione was dumbfounded. "But I thought you and Lily... I thought after what happened... she never spoke to you again."

"Did you believe Lily Potter to be that shallow? No, she was very upset with me for a very long time. Too long, as it turned out. By the time she was willing to forgive me, I had found other people to associate with – people who believed that calling her a Mudblood was nothing but stating the truth. She would eventually have forgiven me for using the word – but she couldn't forgive me for joining those who believed in the ideology behind it. Still, she continued to care about me, and she knew I still cared about her. She and James were already high up on the Dark Lord's hitlist, and she was well advanced in pregnancy when I saw her again..."

He got up and walked over to the fake window, turning his back to her as he stared into the stormy night outside that was mirrored in it.

"I was shocked," he continued with an emotion-laden voice. "I hadn't known she was expecting. A few months before, I had given the prophesy to the Dark Lord – a prophesy which, as I suddenly realised, might refer to her child." He paused briefly, and she could clearly see the guilt that was still tormenting him in the posture of his body. "We talked – for hours, in fact. In the end, she made me promise to look out for her child if anything was ever to happen to her and James. She said it would be my atonement."

Hermione could only stare at him in gobsmacked silence as, with a soft click, another piece of the puzzle finally fell into place. A seemingly small, unimportant one, on the border of the grand picture of things. But it revealed a crucial detail, something that had always been missing without anybody questioning it.

"Children in the magical and the muggle world," Hermione reflected, fixing her eyes on his back, "they usually have two godparents... Why is it that no one ever questioned why Harry had only one?"

Again, he didn't answer.

"Are you Harry's godfather?"

He gave her a glance that was halfway between exasperated and defeated, and sighed. "Not officially. The Dark Lord couldn't ever know."

"Sweet Merlin..." she breathed. She didn't even know what to think. All this time... and Harry had never had a clue. What a cruel entanglement of loyalties, love and debt.

"I suppose Dumbledore knew?"

"Of course he knew. I told him when I defected. It was, above everything else, what convinced him that I was trustworthy."

"And Harry's father – James – he had agreed to it? I thought he hated you."

"He did. But Lily put her foot down. She wanted the best possible protection for her child. And what better protection could he have than that of a man in the camp of the enemy? Potter agreed because he knew I couldn't ever go against my promise. I owed him a life-debt."

"For saving you from Remus in the Shrieking Shack in your fifth year... I know. Remus told us." Her face lit up as she solved yet another riddle. "So that's why Harry never owed you a life-debt, isn't it? You can't owe a life-debt to family members, including godparents, as they would always come to your help, no matter what. I had been wondering about that..."

He snorted. "Of course you had! Is there anything at all that ever escaped your notice, Miss Granger?" All the teachers had commented on her quick mind and intelligence. He had thought she was merely book-wise. But there was no denying it. The girl was frighteningly brilliant. At least, as far as her deductive skills went. She was still incredibly naive when it came to people, though.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Well, this just goes to prove that a lot of things escaped my notice for far too long. I'm glad you told me."

In all honestly, he didn't even know why he had. Maybe because she was so persistent in finding all the answers. It was most irritating. For a moment, the both fell silent, each lost in their own thoughts and memories.

"I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that must have been," Hermione finally said. What you have been through would have brought a lesser wizard to his knees. You are the strongest person I know, and I equally admire and envy you for that strength, for that capability to endure and carry on and never even lament about it. The sacrifices you made went beyond and above any atonement you might have felt was needed, and well beyond your call of duty. If it wasn't for you and Harry, our world would be different today."

Once more, he found himself speechless. He almost felt the need to look into a mirror – just to make sure it was really him she was talking to. It was almost like she had taken an eye-sweetening potion. The rose-tinted brew made people slightly delusional and immensely optimistic at the same time, and allowed them to see pleasurable things everywhere. It wasn't as harmless as it sounded. When faced with an Acromantula, smiling and commenting 'ah, look at the cute spider!' in all likelyhood got you killed. But she couldn't have taken it. It was impossible to cry or get angry while under the potion's influence, and she had done both.

So how could she view him in such light – an eighteen year old Gryffindor girl, of all people? It made him uncomfortable. It was insane. For some reason he couldn't comprehend, she had painted him a hero in her mind. He wasn't. He could never live up to expectations like that. It made him feel vulnerable and brought all his insecurities back with a vengeance.

She almost sounded – passionate – about him, about the role he was forced to play and how others treated him because of that. He had a hard time getting his mind around the idea. Of course, this was Hermione Granger talking, the girl who had single-handedly initiated a campaign for the liberation of house-elves in her fourth year. She had always been one to stand fiercely at the side of the down-trodden, the mistreated, the misunderstood. That thought was quite a downer. He had no wish to be put in the same category as house-elves, goblins and – Merlin prevent! – Neville Longbottom.

"A most touching evaluation, Miss Granger," he said, making an effort to put on his mask again and hide his inner turbulence behind his sarcasm. "It was missing important bits and facts, but, for what it's worth, you have my thanks. However, it still doesn't explain your desire for the kind of physical intimacy your pledge involved. One usually neither expresses respect or admiration, nor pity by exchanging kisses."

Hermione smiled. What a Snape-like thing to say. So formal, so stiff, so carefully devoid of anything that might reflect positive emotion. It was probably why people thought him to be cold and unfeeling. But it was nothing but an armour. Just like his clothes, which were always too stiff and too formal, with those tightly buttoned sleeves and the tightly bound cravat, and all devoid of colour. But she had learned a long time ago to never take anything at face value, especially not the things that were so blatantly obvious that they screamed 'charade'. She had long found out that a lot of Severus Snape was just an act. And she had grown increasingly curious about the man that was hidden behind the cold and dark facade.

"But one surely does express attraction that way..." she said, blushing again.




A/N: This is an edited version of the original chapter with added content. Hermione and Snape kept having discussions in my mind, and Hermione was pestering him with those very questions that always bothered me. Snape finally came up with some really surprising answers. The secrets he revealed shed a new light on quite a few things, especially with regard to Snape's past and future relationship with Harry. As it fit nicely into the story, I decided to add those revelations that Mrs. Rowlings lamentably kept from us.

Also, in the earlier version, I had assumed that Dumbledore didn't know that killing the previous owner was not a requirement to gain allegiance of the Elder Wand. One of my reviewers pointed out that this can't be canon: Dumbledore never killed Grindelwald, and still won the wand's allegiance. So he must have been aware of the fact that defeating or disarming would be sufficient. I changed the story accordingly, as I wanted it to be as close to canon as possible.

As to the life-debts mentioned: I went along with what seems to be canon in fanfiction: The idea that a life-debt is a bit more than a moral obligation; something that can be felt physically and has an effect similar to a vow. From what I understand, it's not quite what Ms. Rowlings had in mind.

Given that I didn't want to pester my dear beta Dreamthrower with all those relatively small chapter changes, a few paragraphs / sentences haven't been proof-read. All the mistakes you may find are entirely mine, not hers!


A Kiss for the Netherfairies by zaubernuss [Reviews - 6]

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