CHAPTER 30
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to JKR. All situations are mine. No $$$ is being made from this fanfic.
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Chapter 30 ~ Restorations
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Hermione stared at the circle in amazement. It seemed the question as to how all parts of the score would be played. Standing in a circle around Harry, eyes closed and bows in different positions stood not one, but twelve Potions Masters, each with a violin. Initially Severus and the Severus next to him played the opening strains, then three others joined in, and the participation increased thereafter, with duets, solos, quartets and all manner of combinations, the passion and power increasing. What was amazing was that each Severus appeared oblivious to the others as he played.
Streaks of light flew from the instruments and into Harry every time a bow touched string, the wizard looking as if he were in the center of an electrical storm as the music became more intense. Above the circle a swirling cloud formation appeared, darkening and spinning, a hole opening up in the center, a powerful wind issuing from it. The Severuses played wildly, their bodies twisting rhythmically and sensually as their bows flew over the violins. For a moment, Hermione wished she was in the middle of that circle.
The dark shadows screamed and tried to flee but were sucked up into the strange cloud which began to flicker with its own light as the music became more powerful, all the Severuses playing passionately. Suddenly there was a loud clap of thunder and a ball of white light shot out of the opening and landed in the Soul Circle. There was so much static in the air, Hermione’s hair was standing up as energy crackled around the glowing sphere as it hovered in the circle. Then slowly it began to circle Harry, starting to elongate, four tendrils of light dropping down, a bulb of light stretching from the front and more tendrils stretching upward. The bottom tendrils fleshed out and began moving as the body of light became recognizable. Hermione gasped, covering her mouth.
Prongs.
It was Harry’s patronus, in the shape of his father’s animagus form, a stag. It galloped around Harry, horns lowered as if charging some unseen creature. It ran faster and faster until it was a blur of light between the Severuses and Harry. Suddenly the music came to an end and the light expanded, covering all of them, then coalesced into a small glowing ball and hovered above Harry, dropping lower.
Suddenly Harry gasped, his mouth falling open and a long tendril of light issued from the orifice, reaching up and entwining like a constricting snake around the glowing orb. It snapped back inside Harry, who made a choking, coughing noise. The Severuses suddenly telescoped back around the circle, slipping into the original Potions Master, whose eyes flew open. He looked over at Hermione, then his dark eyes dropped to Harry, who lay coughing in the center of the pentacle.
The elves stopped chanting and stared at Harry, Dobby especially, his ears pricked forward.
“Comes on, Master,” he breathed.
Hermione stood frozen staring from Severus to Harry to Severus.
The Potions Master watched Harry shudder and cough for a moment, then scowling, handed the nearest house elf his violin and bow, strode over to the pentacle, pulled Harry up by one arm and beat him on the back.
“Severus! What are you doing?” Hermione called from the protective circle, horrified as the wizard pounded Harry’s back.
“He’s choking,” Severus called back. Suddenly Harry sucked in a huge amount of air and the coughing stopped. Severus let him go, and the green-eyed wizard looked about him blankly.
Hermione felt her heart dropping at the blank expression on his face. Harry looked up at Severus.
“Professor Snape…what are you doing here? Where am I? Where’s Voldemort?” the wizard rattled off at the Potions Master.
Severus frowned at him then looked over at Hermione.
“He’s fine,” he sniffed, walking out of the circle and retrieving his violin and bow.
The wizard started walking back towards the house and he heard Hermione shriek. It must have just hit her that the boy-who-lived was truly back.
“Harry!” Hermione screamed, bolting from the circle and diving on the startled wizard, taking him down into the sand.
“Master!” Dobby screamed, diving into the small pileup.
The other elves all chattered and danced around in joy, doing somersaults and handstands.
Harry spluttered, spitting out some sand as both Hermione and Dobby clung to him.
“Talk to me, Harry! Say something! Anything!” Hermione said breathlessly, her bare legs showing above mid-thigh. Harry looked at her legs.
“Hermione, are you wearing anything under your robes?” Harry asked, his eyebrows raised to his hairline.
“No! No I’m not!” Hermione yelled joyously, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him on the mouth happily.
Harry pulled away from her kiss.
“Then I really don’t think you should be kissing me like this. It feels…well…weird, knowing you are naked under your robes,” the wizard said, adjusting his glasses. “Now if I were Ron…well then…”
Hermione colored and released Harry. He had mentioned Ron.
Ron and Hermione had been showing a marked interest in each other when the Final Battle came upon them. In fact, Hermione lost her virginity to the red-haired wizard the night before he died. Hermione hadn’t wanted them to die virgins.
“But I’m not a virgin. I got some from Padma last year,” Ron had told her and almost ruined his chances as the witch tried to scramble away, furious.
But he managed to convince Hermione it was just a friendly shag between friends, and that this would really mean something to him because he liked her so much. It wasn’t a declaration of love, but they really weren’t in love yet, just extremely attracted to each other.
So Hermione cast a contraceptive spell on herself and they did it. There had been a bit of pain, some very fast humping, then hot wetness. That was all Hermione had gotten out of it, though she told Ron it was good. This was part of the reason she had so few lovers. She initially thought sex sucked and was highly over-rated. It had been too fast and not hard enough. Overall, Hermione’s first sexual experience left her more frustrated than anything.
“What am I doing here? And where’s Voldemort? The last thing I remember is killing him. I did kill him, didn’t I?” Harry asked the witch.
Hermione nodded.
“Yes you did kill him Harry. You’re a hero,” she said softly, wondering how she was going to tell him he had been a walking vegetable for the past eight years.
“I don’t care anything about being a hero as long as that slithery bastard is dead,” the wizard said, standing up and brushing the sand from his robes, then shaking his leg because Dobby was clinging to it, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Let go, Dobby,” he said to the elf.
Dobby released him, staring up into his face, tears rolling freely. Hermione stood up too and watched as Harry looked around at the torches, then the circle he was standing in. He looked up at Hermione.
“Something went wrong, didn’t it Hermione?” he asked her in a low voice.
The witch nodded.
“A Dementor grabbed you and kissed you while you were distracted by Voldemort,” she said in a trembling voice. “Draco blasted it away from you, but not before it absorbed part of your soul. It didn’t get everything, but you were left…well kind of empty…not totally like the other victims. Dobby has been taking care of you,” she said softly.
Harry looked down at the elf.
“For how long, Dobby?” he asked the elf, a knot forming in his stomach.
“For eight long years, Harry Potter,” the elf replied.
Harry’s eyes went round and he looked at Hermione again. Yes, she was definitely older, a grown woman…then he looked down at himself. He was much broader than he remembered.
“Eight years, Hermione?” he asked for confirmation.
“Yes, Harry. Eight years,” she confirmed.
The wizard stared at her.
“Where’s Ron?” he asked suddenly.
Hermione swallowed and her eyes began to glisten. Harry bit his lip.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” he asked her, his voice cracking a bit.
Hermione nodded.
“He fell at the Final Battle. He’s a hero too,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Harry blinked rapidly several times.
“Ron,” he said in a hushed voice.
He stood there in silence for several minutes, Hermione and the elves staring at him. Finally he looked up at her.
“How did you bring me back?” he asked her.
“Sev…the Professor did it. He’s a Harper,” she replied. “I helped.”
Harry knew that if the Potions Master brought him back, Hermione must have done more than helped. That snarky bastard never did anything without a reason.
“What’s a Harper?” he asked.
Hermione sighed. There was so much to explain to Harry now that he was back. Standing on the beach wasn’t the place to do it. She caught the wizard by his arm.
“Come on, Harry, let’s go back to your house and talk there. I have a lot to tell you,” the witch said.
“My house?” the wizard mouthed as Hermione led him up the beach, followed closely by Dobby and the rest of the elves. Eli picked up the wands, put out the torches and removed the wards.
“My Master is the most powerful Master in the world,” the elf thought to himself. “He can fix souls.”
Smiling, Eli walked behind the others, his chest poked out with pride.
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Severus paced in the guestroom for a while, tempted to head back to Hogwarts. Hermione would be occupied with Harry now and most likely wouldn’t even act as if he existed. He didn’t feel like sitting in and listening to her go over every boring detail of the last eight years, or watching her gush over Harry.
Well, she had one of her best friends back, which meant that her attention would now be divided between him, her work and Harry. He was concerned that something might flare up between the two, and even if Hermione didn’t fuck the boy-who-lived, the Potions Master still didn’t like the idea of the wizard waiting in the wings for his patronage to end. It would feel like the wizard was in his bed.
He had to do something to nip the possibility in the bud and soon.
Severus sat down on the bed to think, wishing there was some firewhiskey about. But Harry had no use for it at the time. The Potions Master scoured every memory he had of Harry at Hogwarts his last year, trying to find something that could help him.
He sat there a good hour before it came to him. A slow, rather evil smile crossed the wizard’s pale face.
He knew what to do.
Feeling much better, the wizard divestoed his clothing and climbed into bed. He could count on spending the night alone.
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At about three o’clock in the morning, the wizard felt someone climbing into the bed and made a grab, wrapping his arms around a soft almost nude body. He took his wand off the nightstand with one hand and turned up the torches.
“Hermione?” he said, looking at the witch in surprise.
“Yes, Hermione, unless you have other witches that climb into bed with you at this time of morning,” she replied, yawning. She was in her bra and knickers.
The surprised wizard released her and watched as she slid under the sheets and turned toward him, her eyes sleepy.
“I thought you would be with Harry until the wee hours of the morning,” the wizard said, studying the witch.
“It is the wee hours of the morning,” she answered him sleepily.
“But you are in my bed. Surely Harry won’t approve of this,” the Potions Master said.
“I told him about your patronage and how you helped me bring him back. To say he was happy about the arrangement would be an overstatement…but he has to accept it. I’m not a child. He can’t tell me what to do or who to be with,” she said, her voice growing heavy.
“But you didn’t have to sleep with me,” the Potions Master said, his eyes glinting at the witch.
“Yes I did,” Hermione murmured, moving closer to him and curling up against the wizard. “I don’t have a room here, remember?”
Severus didn’t say anything to this. He just looked down at the witch resting her head on his arm and curled into him like a child. He felt himself hardening. It would be a simple thing to take her. But he held back.
She had come to his room of her own free will…to sleep.
He’d let her.
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The next morning, Hermione awoke to find Severus gone. She went to her room, showered and dressed then turned up in the kitchen to find Harry gorging himself on a huge stack of pancakes. A pile of sausages were in front of him and a large platter of scrambled eggs. Dobby was watching him put the food away happily. No more bibs and spoons for his Master.
“Good morning,” Harry said around a mouthful of pancakes.
“Hi Harry,” Hermione replied. The wizard thought she looked a bit distracted.
“Have you seen the Professor this morning?” the witch asked him.
Harry nodded.
“Yes, he had a bit of breakfast and left. He said he had to go see someone,” Harry replied. “Sit down and have some breakfast. Everything tastes great.”
Hermione sat down and joined Harry, but her thoughts were on Severus. Where did he go?
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Ginny Weasley sat at her kitchen table reading the Daily Prophet and sipping a cup of black coffee. The red-headed witch laughed as she read Rita Skeeter’s column, which was full of its usual outrageous commentary.
Ginny worked at the Owl Post. It was a good, secure job with benefits and she loved working with the owls. They were intelligent creatures and clean. She could have done worse for herself. She had a small flat in Little Hangelton and lived a rather quiet life, enjoying her solitude after being raised with six boisterous brothers. She had five now. Losing Ron had broken her heart. He was the brother closest to her in age and she always felt a special bond with him. She was inconsolable for a long time about him…and about Harry.
She and Harry had a relationship. He had taken her virginity the same night Hermione lost hers. But there was a difference. She had loved Harry Potter. Yes, it was young love but the only love she ever really had for a wizard. She had dated and slept with a few wizards over the years…but never met one that moved her the way Harry had.
She visited him quite frequently at first, but eventually she couldn’t take his condition any longer. It was so sad, and he would never get better. He didn’t even know who she was…so her visits became less frequent and finally she stopped coming all together. But she thought about him often, and how life might have been for them if the Dementor had been destroyed in time.
She turned the page of the Prophet, then set it on the table, preparing to get another cup of coffee when there was a knock on her front door.
“Who could that be?” Ginny wondered as she set her cup down, picked up her wand and looked out the peephole.
She nearly fainted. It was Professor Snape. What on earth could he want?
She opened the door and stared up at the dark wizard, who nodded to her.
“Good morning, Miss Weasley,” the Potions Master purred, “I wonder if I might have a word with you.”
”A word with me? Professor, I haven’t seen you in years…and I wasn’t even a student of yours after the class became elective. What could you possibly want to talk to me about?” she said suspiciously.
Professor Snape always seemed a little shady to Ginny. She thought he’d have no problem raping a witch if he was so inclined. She held on to the door, wand poised for action, waiting for him to answer.
“Two words,” he said smoothly, arching an eyebrow at the witch.
“Harry Potter.”
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A/N: Ooh Severus. You sneaky sly dog you. Lolol. Got to love the wizard. He is so freaking sneaky and manipulative. Sorry about the quality of the Mp3 violins, but that was the best I could do. I took a midi file of “Hedwig’s Song” changed all the parts to violin, then saved it as an mp3 file since midi files play differently on different computers and there was no guaruntee it would sound like violins to you. I hope you enjoyed the interactivity however. Please review.