Hermione and the Watch Part 18 (Patreon)

Hermione spent a couple seconds trying to wrap her mind around the fact that Snape wanted to leave then pulled her wand and hit Harry with an enervate. “Wake up.”

Harry yawned as he sat up and noticed McGonagall and Snape were both frozen in place. “What’s the damage?”

“It could have been worse, two detentions a week for the foreseeable future and Snape quit.”

“He quit?” Harry asked in surprise, ignoring the detentions he probably deserved for attacking a teacher, even if it was Snape.

“He talked Dumbledore into firing him, said that he had better things to do now that Voldemort was back than keep a mostly useless cover.”

“Huh,” Harry muttered as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “That actually makes a certain amount of sense.”

“Really?” Hermione asked, not sure why Snape would be happy about being fired, especially when it was basically Harry’s fault.

“Sure, if he’s Dumbledore’s spy then he’d want to be in the thick of things and he’d need an excuse he could sell to Voldemort. Oh heavens me, I shot the little shit with a stunner and Dumbledore fired me,” Harry said sarcastically.

“What if he’s actually working for Voldemort?” Hermione asked warily.

Harry yawned as he stood up. “Then he’s not leaving the castle alive. Either way, let’s cut off his head and make sure we’re not letting a spy walk out of here.”

“Off with his head!” Hermione agreed enthusiastically, waving her wand like it was a scepter.

Harry gestured and summoned Snape’s clothes other than his boxers so they wouldn’t get covered in blood. “Any bets? Loyal order member? Death Eater spy?”

“Not a clue,” Hermione admitted, not sure what to make of their former potions teacher. “If I had to pick, I’d say slightly more anti-Voldemort than anti-anyone else.”

“I guess that’s a fair bet,” Harry replied as he dropped Snape’s clothes on the bed then walked up behind Snape and grabbed his hair with his left hand. “Huh, not nearly as greasy as it looks.”

“Probably because he hasn’t had time to work in his lab yet,” Hermione pointed out as Harry pulled out his knife and slit the professor’s throat. “Hopefully we can actually get some decent answers out of him.”

“Hopefully,” Harry agreed absently as he watched Snape’s blood splatter over the door. “Speaking of finding things, I should be able to make the pirate ritual work assuming the watch doesn’t screw it up.”

“The one for making you immune to sea sickness or the one for making you immune to scurvy?” Hermione asked as she walked over to check Madam Pomfrey’s collection of books.

“No, the one that lets you sacrifice a body part in exchange for increased durability.”

“Can you use that on other people?” Hermione asked.

“Considering the required setup, it wouldn’t be all that useful as a combat spell but yeah, you can sacrifice other people to increase your durability.” 

“I meant can you boost your friends?”

“Sure,” Harry agreed as he worked on sawing through Snape’s neck.

Hermione turned to look at Harry. “Wait, if the ritual is that useful why is this the first time we’ve heard about it? Is this another secret pureblood thing?”

“Not really, you see even back in the days of piracy, it wasn’t exactly a common ritual and it has a limit on the amount of durability you can get by sacrificing people. That and it doesn’t significantly boost your spell resistance if you’re sacrificing other people. The best result they ever got was a wizard sacrificing their identical twin. Between the rarity, spell costs, questionable legality, and wizards being lazy, it fell out of use.”

“Questionable legality?” Hermione asked, slightly annoyed at the confusing mess of laws that restricted various types of magic.

“Technically speaking, it’s legal to use on yourself because of a loophole in the law that covers enhancement rituals, it’s just not something most wizards bother with as there are spells to deal with projectiles and it requires losing a body part.”

“I wonder if the Egyptian wizards used something similar on their eunuchs to make nearly unstoppable warriors,” Hermione mused.

Harry twitched as he finished cutting the last of the flesh holding Snape’s head on. “I happen to like my bits where they are...” he trailed off as he realized she was snickering. “That was evil.”

“Maybe a little but it might be worth testing on lab rats,” Hermione said as she glanced at Snape.

“I’m not doing anything that drastic until I know which side he’s on,” Harry replied as he walked over and stuck Snape’s head on the wooden tray Madam Pomfrey had left on the nightstand.

Hermione mentally ran through the equations as she watched Harry skillfully cast the charms that bound and animated Snape’s head, having gotten in quite a lot of practice lately.

Snape blinked as he woke up then stared in shock at his headless corpse. “What the hell type of joke is this Potter?!”

Harry smiled at Snape. “I found a ritual to animate someone’s head so it can answer questions, I wanted some answers.”

“You cut off my head?!” Snape demanded in disbelief.

Harry shrugged. “I had to be sure that you weren’t working for Riddle.”

“By cutting off my head?!” Snape screamed as he tried to figure out what spell they’d used to freeze Minerva in place.

“Don’t worry, it will grow back,” Harry assured him, trying not to laugh at the look on Snape’s face.

“What do you mean?” Snape demanded, having noticed Harry’s smirk.

“You’re just a copy of the real Snape’s head. We figured we’d give you a chance to explain why Dumbledore trusts you before we slipped a cursed necklace around your neck on the off chance that you’re actually working for Voldemort.”

“Of course I’m working against him, the lunatic wanted to kill Lily!” Snape snapped.

“What do you mean wanted to?” Hermione asked before Harry could launch into a rant.

“I was in the Hogshead spying the day Trelawney gave the prophecy.”

Harry glared at Snape. “You’re the one that told Voldemort about it, aren’t you?”

“It’s not like that and yes,” Snape admitted. “I was reasonably sure that the prophecy was about Harry or Neville so I went to talk to Lily and James to warn them.”

“And what, things got out of hand?”

Snape glanced at the dark mark on his arm. “No, we came up with a plan to kill Voldemort.”

“What?” Harry sputtered.

“Why would you want to kill him at that point?” Hermione asked.

Snape sighed. “You have to understand, when I joined up with the rest of the idiots, I was young and naive to a embarassing degree. It started off as access to some banned books and then led to various dark rituals that my ‘friends’ wanted help with. Nothing compared to cutting people’s heads off and reanimating them.”

Harry shrugged. “It’s technically grey, it’s not corruptive but fair enough, continue your explanation.”

“It wasn’t until I’d actually joined up that I realized Voldemort considered the group completely expendable and wasn’t interested in magic so much as power. None of the secrets he’d unearthed would see the light of day, there would be no great magical libraries or leaps forward in magical research. I was, to put it mildly, disillusioned with his goals when I realized he was nothing but a fearful tyrant.”

“What does that have to do with my mother?” Harry asked, trying to stay calm and not stab him for getting his mother killed.

“I ended up apologizing and tossing myself at her feet for things I shouldn’t have said and being an idiot. We couldn’t go back to how things were but we traded letters, a discovery here, a discovery there. When I heard about the prophecy, I made contact and we came up with a plan.”

“A plan?” Hermione asked in disbelief.

“A plan to dismantle Voldemort’s empire and clean house. It was the perfect plan, it would have seen him dead and gone if it had worked and Lily dead if it hadn’t…” he trailed off as he remembered the argument he’d had with Lily the last night he’d ever seen her.

“What went wrong?” Harry asked, not sure how to feel about Snape working with his mother.

“I got cold feet and everything went to shit,” Snape said with scowl. “We’d set things up for Peter to play the spy then memory charmed him to the gills so that Voldemort wouldn’t find anything.”

Hermione cut in, “You memory charmed Peter?”

“With his permission. It was war and Peter wasn’t like Sirius or your father, he was a decent student but he didn’t have nearly enough occlumency training to fool Voldemort, so we had to get creative. I’d built a sort of mental switch and things were going well, we ‘lost’ a couple families and everything was lining up to see him dead then I found Lily’s real notes…”

“Notes on what?” Harry asked.

“Her real notes on the shield she was planning on using to kill Voldemort and protect Harry.”

“She knew she wouldn’t survive didn’t she?” Hermione asked.

Snape sighed. “Nine percent wasn’t a percentage I was going to gamble with, so I stunned them and transfigured a couple pigs to look like them. A couple spells and he never knew the difference between James and the pig, can’t say I blame him.”

“If you replaced my father with a pig, what happened to him?” Harry asked, wondering if there was something wrong with the binding spell that prevented Snape from lying.

“The pig? He got splattered as I didn’t leave him with a wand and he wasn’t a magical pig,” Snape said sarcastically.

“I meant my father,” Harry snapped.

“I sent him and Lily to a place where they’d be safe, they should still be there alive and well.”

“They’re alive?!” Harry demanded.

“Assuming nothing killed them,” Snape said, hoping against hope that they were still alive along with the rest of the people he’d sent to the island over the years.

“You don’t know?” Hermione asked.

“I haven’t talked to Lily since the day I sent them away. The island is out of phase with the world save for once every forty years. I can send people there, I just can’t get them back until it's in phase again about seventeen years from now.” 

Hermione frowned slightly as she tried to recall any legends of hidden islands that might match what Snape was telling them. “Why send them at all?”

“Because I knew they’d jump right back in the war and Lily was pregnant. I wasn’t sure that Voldemort would die, but I just couldn’t risk her that way.”

“I might have a sibling?” Harry asked in disbelief.  

“It’s possible you have a dozen, it’s been more than ten years,” Snape said, trying not to think about Lily and James together.

“What happened after that?”

“That’s when things went wrong. Rather than destroy Voldemort outright, it merely destroyed his physical body. Sirius went crazy and took off to find Peter. I was expecting to have time to find Peter and fix things, to explain but Peter got himself blown up and Sirius got tossed in jail or at least that was what I’d assumed happened to Peter.”

“Why didn’t you testify?” Harry asked.

“You said it yourself, I’m a marked Death Eater, no one was going to believe me. Besides everything we did was so illegal we might as well have been using unforgivables on the minister in front of the Wizemagaunt. The Imperius was invented because it was considered less dark than rewiring someone’s mind the way we had with Peter. Also… Sirius did try and feed me to a wolf, as you’ll recall.”

“That’s petty, though understandable when you put it that way,” Hermione agreed after a moment’s hesitation.

“I never said I wasn’t an asshole,” Snape said with amusement. “Truthfully I had enough trouble saving my own skin. Malfoy had enough gold to bribe his way out of it, naming names wouldn’t have helped and would have made sure I died when Voldemort came back. Dumbledore wasn’t in the know or he might have been able to help, but like I said the Imperious was considered less dark than what we did and you know how he is.”

“What about all of the people you had to kill to become a Death Eater?” Harry said accusingly.

“Safe and sound on the island, along with dozens of muggle borns that never made it to Hogwarts.”

“What about their parents?” Harry demanded.

Snape chuckled. “I sent them to the island as well, then conjured a pig and transfigured it into a copy of my targets. A couple of blasting curses later and you have a beautiful mess that made most of the Death Eaters that came with me on the various raids, completely terrified of crossing me. It was either send them or let them die when someone else came for them, so the choice was obvious.”

“Does Dumbledore know?” Hermione asked.

“About the island? As far as I know he just thinks I did what I had to and made the deaths quick. It’s a bit disconcerting really, considering the number of order members I sent to the island, but there are restrictions on who I can tell about it, some lingering enchantment that affects everyone who knows of it. I have no idea why I can speak of it now when I never could before.”

Hermione shook her head, wondering if they would be affected when time restarted. “Why do you torment Neville?” she asked.

“Because someone needed to put some steel in his spine. I mean, shit. If I’d known Augusta would botch the job that much, I’d never have sent Alice and Frank to the island, I would have just dropped them unconscious somewhere and risked being able to save them again if they needed it.”

“Neville’s parents are alive?!” Harry asked in disbelief.

“So far as I know. I’d heard Bellatrix talking about going after them and I knew they’d stupidly drop the protections once Voldemort’s death was announced. So, I snuck in early, sent them away, and transfigured a couple of squirrels to take their places with some simple preprogrammed responses to make them seem human while being tortured. If I’d known Neville was hiding in a closet I would have taken him elsewhere. I only found out about it later.”

“Did you actually kill anyone during the war?”

“I used a couple of Death Eaters as human shields but the dark mark prevents infighting without Voldemort’s permission so no, I’ve never directly killed anyone,” Snape replied. 

“And indirectly?” Harry asked suspiciously.

“Probably loads,” Snape said cheerfully. “There are the compulsions spells I tested on a few churches and schools that make rapists and pedofiles confess themselves to the police, I was trying to get them subtle enough to work on wizards with occlumency training. Pretty sure a number of people lost their lives in prison from that. Sadly, I never got it to work on Malfoy as I intended. There are the number of subtle changes I made to the potions I provided to slow down the reflexes of the Death Eaters and make them easier to fight. Bellatrix would never have been taken down by the aurors if I hadn’t managed to slip a few Tears of Madness into her monthly draught for period cramps. Then there are the number of times I provided false information on Dumbledore’s orders-”

“I meant on our side,” Harry interrupted him.

“Fuck if I know,” Snape replied and tried to shrug. “What is your side anyway?”

“How can you ask me that?!” Harry demanded.

“Simple, I open my mouth on my dismembered head and question the moral stance of the person who has killed me for answers that could have easily been provided with a few drops of Veritaserum that he knows I keep on me,” Snape replied sarcastically.

“I said your head would grow back and I meant it,” Harry snapped out. “I won’t go into details, but the original you will be back to normal and will have never had this conversation when we are through.”

“Are you sure that’s not dark magic?” Snape asked suspiciously. “Because seriously, that sounds a lot darker than anything short of what we did to Peter.”  

“It’s not dark magic, I’ve checked,” Hermione stated firmly.

“What about me?” Snape asked. “I’m a conscious being even if I’m not the original.”

“We’re working on a way to let your head fly around and animate your hands. That reminds me, I should grab your hands while I’m at it,” Harry said as he walked over and worked on cutting Snape’s hands off just below the wrists.

“So I have to go through eternity without my balls?” Snape asked with annoyance.

“I’m working on a spell for that but I still have to work out some details,” Harry complained.

“Wait, really?” Hermione asked.

“I needed a break from working on animating the hands. I’ll admit it was mostly an excuse to castrate Draco.”

“Understandable,” Snape agreed. “Though truth be told, his particular brand of stupid probably isn’t genetic or at least not completely.”

“Question, if you could remove your original’s dark mark, would you?” Hermione asked, curious if there was a decent reason to leave the mark.

“Gleefully but removing it would kill him, Voldemort wanted to make sure we couldn’t turn on him.”

“Should be easy enough, we’ll just cut it off then move the arm out of range,” Harry said as he finished cutting through Snape’s left wrist. He tossed the severed hand onto the nightstand then started on the other wrist.

“That shouldn’t work as it’s based off a version of the protean charm. Were you always this violent or did something happen recently that pushed you over the edge?” Snape asked warily.

Harry snorted. “Probably the fact that Umbridge sent dementors to kill me then I got tried for underage magic for defending myself. Add the shit with Umbridge as the defense teacher and yeah, I’m more than a bit angry at the wizarding world right now.”

“Fair enough, I should be able to help with the spells to animate things. I’m not without skills even if I currently lack a wand.”

“I’d love a third opinion,” Harry admitted as he cut through Snape’s other wrist. He lobbed the hand onto the nightstand next to the other one then turned his attention toward the dark mark. “Damaging it should trigger the death curse, right?”

“If it doesn’t just jump to another location,” Snape replied as he focused on the dark mark he could see on his arm.

“Don’t worry about it, I have a better idea and it should give him a decent boost to his magic.”

“Wait, was Filch your fault?” Snape asked in disbelief. 

“Guilty as charged,” Hermione admitted smugly.

“What other upgrade rituals can you do?” Snape asked, wanting the version of him running around killing Death Eaters to have an easier time of it.

“One that upgrades your durability, our regeneration prevents the side effects, basically you’ll be reasonably durable against most spells. I wouldn’t try to tank an AK or fiendfyre but short of that, you should be fine against most types of spells.”

“I’ll take it,” Snape agreed.

“If you want to grab the supplies, I’ll get everything cleaned up in here,” Harry offered.

“Sounds good,” Hermione agreed then vanished in a burst of flames.