Chapter 52
Chapter 51
“Mrs. Weasley!” Harry called out to the Weasley Matriarch who had been shielding Ginny from fallen debris caused by several blasting curses.
“Harry dear!” Molly uttered just as Poppy ran in carrying several potions.
“Madam Pomfrey?!” Harry hadn’t expected to see her at the Burrow.
“Move!” Someone shouted and barreled into Harry, knocking them to the floor just as another fireball entered the house.
“Percy?!” Harry uttered perplexed. What in Merlin’s name was Percy doing at the Burrow after he had cut contact with his family?
‘Wait, now is not the time for that,’ Harry thought as he snapped out of his shock. He had expected the fallout to be bad but not this bad. “Mrs. Weasley, get everyone to the floo now! Where is Hermoine?!”
“With Arthur,” Molly answered as she shuffled Ginny into the fireplace and yelled for Percy to get the twins.
“The address is Prince Chateau,” Harry relayed before brandishing his wand and making his way through the debris. He found Arthur near the back door holding a Protego Maxima in place while Ron was crouched down behind the upturned dining table holding a cloth to Hermoine’s bleeding face.
“Ron, floo, Prince Chateau, GO!” Harry ordered as his eyes narrowed. He too cast his own shielding charm, covering Arthur’s and ordering him to go as well.
“I can’t! If I leave, the wards around the Burrow will fully collapse,” Arthur uttered, though his wand hand was already trembling.
“Anti-Apparition wards?”
“Of course,”
“Then let them collapse,” Harry ordered. “You can always rebuild. Your kids only have one father,” he yanked Arthur back behind the table, dodging incoming spells. Harry saw how the man shivered due to magic depletion. It didn’t take long for the wards to fall and then Harry took his chance to apparate them out and to the gates of the Prince estate just before the Aurors stormed in.
They landed with a thud on the hard ground. Arthur was now visibly shaking. “Tibsby!” Harry called out.
The elf appeared almost immediately. “Tibsby, Artur seems to be on the brink of magical exhaustion. Can you get him to Severus?”
“Yes sir!” Tibsby saluted as she disappeared with Arthur while Harry made the trek towards the front door. When he stepped into the foyer it was utter chaos. The Weasleys had come through mostly unscathed though there was commotion in the salon as Severus and Madam Pomfrey were busy treating Hermoine and Arthur. Ron sat near catatonic on one of the couches while the commotion had drawn the rest of the Slytherins as well.
“All of you disperse now!” Severus ordered in his commanding tone. The Slytherins and their younger siblings scattered, leaving only Harry, Snape, and their new arrivals.
“How bad is it?” Harry asked.
“Arthur just needs some rest. Ms. Granger will need more care.” Madam Pomfrey uttered as her wand was weaving magic over the left side of Hermoine’s face. Now that Harry got a closer look he could see that the area sported a massive burn. “Severus, I will need your special burn paste,”
“I can have it brewed within the hour,”
“We will need to keep her face cool until then,” Poppy continued.
“I can help with that,” Molly offered while looking distressed.
“The elves will lead you to some rooms. We can address what happened later. Right now let us heal Ms. Granger and then get to the bottom of things,” Severus stated, turning towards his lab but not before sending a glare Harry’s way.
Harry hadn’t been on the receiving end of a glare like that since his school days. “Someone’s in trouble…” Mordecai appeared from a painting while saying that in a sing-song voice.
“How the hell am I in trouble?!” Harry uttered as his brows shot up.
“Wow, you really are a dunderhead,” Mordecai muttered. Harry could definitely see the resemblance to Snape with that sentence.
“You literally left, after a night of passionate lovemaking might I add, without really explaining what was going through your mind. Severus was perplexed and became increasingly worried as injured redheads started showing up through the fireplace.” Mordecai reprimanded.
“I’m sorry! I wasn’t expecting a full-blown Auror raid!” Harry retorted. “I had my reasons!”
“It’s not me you should be apologizing to,” Mordecai deadpanned while crossing his arms. “If you ever want Severus to use his tongue like that on you again you better start to grovel,”
Harry flushed scarlet “HOW IN MERLIN’S NAME DO YOU KNOW ABOUT… OH Merlin, you were spying on us!”
“I get bored a lot. Tormenting the paintings of my descendants is only fun for a while,”
“That is no excuse for being a damn voyeur!” Harry uttered before storming off to the potion’s lab.
“Oh, to be young,” Mordecai mumbled while shaking his head.
Harry found Severus brewing intently. The man was dicing the fluxweed with precision before adding it to the simmering potion already on a flame causing the liquid to become sky blue. Snape didn’t look up though Harry knew that the man had heard the door creak. He decided to sit silently on one of the wooden stools while Severus brewed. It took another ten minutes for Severus to look up from where he was bent over his cauldron. Harry had seen several ingredients go in, three of which he couldn’t identify right off the bat. Severus set the flame low, letting it simmer before turning to Harry. “You have ten minutes before I have to add the next ingredient. ‘Yup, Snape was pissed at him,’ Harry thought.
“I’m sorry,” Harry uttered. “I’m sorry I made you worried.”
“Why did you just run out?” Severus asked, his voice still hard.
“I just had a sinking feeling something like this was going to happen. The last time it did kids got hurt,” Harry explained.
“The last time?”
“Sorry, for me it’s in the past. It technically hasn’t happened in this reality,” Harry explained.
“In my reality as you know, Ron and Hermoine got married. Hermoine became Minister of Magic and was re-elected for several terms as she was quite popular. She and Ron had two children, Hugo and Rose.” He said. “Sweetest kids ever. That was until one of her political opponents would do anything to have her gone. They framed her for practicing Dark arts and even got the papers to slander her by making her out to be the next rising Dark Lord. The papers never alluded to Grindelwald but it took only days for a mob to form in front of her and Ron’s house.”
“Merlin…” Snape muttered.
“Yes, people became quite paranoid after the war. Anything remotely dark, or even anyone suspected of being a dark wizard was shunned. And having evidence published that their beloved Minister could be the second coming of Voldemort… well… that mob grew violent. Hermoine had to be brought to intensive care and walked with a limp for the rest of her life. Hugo and Rose were traumatized by what happened and were never again the happy kids I knew them to be. The mob even wanted to harm the children but Ron shielded them. He couldn’t get to Hermoine in time though.
“When I read that article I saw the events repeating,” Harry frowned. “Grindelwald was one of the darkest wizards. Do you really think the public would let any descendants go unscathed? When I got there it was Aurors attacking. They did this to Hermoine and the Weasleys! They did this on orders from someone higher up, dead set on harming a girl that hasn’t even graduated yet!”
“I’m sorry I made you worry,” Harry said. “But I am not sorry for following my gut on this. The Weasleys and Hermoine would have very likely died,”
“I am sorry as well,” Severus stated which caught Harry off guard.
“At times I still see the clumsy teen running head-first into dangerous situations and not the man that is over a century old and knows how to defend himself running head-first into dangerous situations,” Snape confessed before going back to his potion.
“I don’t always run into dangerous situations and you don't have to apologize for showing how you feel,” Harry confessed. “I haven’t been in a relationship for so long that I’ve forgotten I don’t have to do everything myself.”
After that Severus went back to the cauldron to add the last ingredient. As he stirred the lab was once again bathed in silence, though this time not an awkward one. Harry excused himself a bit later, claiming that he was going to remove the Marks as he had promised. Severus nodded while bottling the potion.