A/N: *Skitters into the room, wide-eyed*

*Raises eyebrows, wondering if you're all in quarantine*

*Hopes desperately that you're all feeling happy and well*

*Waves a chapter and leaves it in sterilized packaging on your pillow, being careful not to touch anyone*

*Scampers off to wash her hands. Again.*

xx-Kitten

Savior

By Kittenshift17

Part IV

"We're going in," Harry told Hermione seriously late in the evening three weeks later.

"To Hogwarts?" Hermione asked, raising her eyebrows at him seriously over the top of the book she was reading for the fifth time. At this stage she was sure she would kill a man for access to a library or a bookshop just so she would have something new to read to help pass the time while they hunted for Horcruxes.

Harry nodded.

"The Horcrux has to be there," Ron agreed.

"Harry, the most dangerous place you can currently go is Hogwarts," Hermione pointed out. "Look what happened when we stormed the Ministry. I know we've discussed the idea that the next Horcrux might be there, and that we could invade the Chamber of Secrets for Basilisk fangs to destroy the cup, but it's not that simple."

"When's anything ever been simple for us, Hermione?" Ron challenged, looking grim.

He seemed to have accepted that she wasn't interested in rekindling their relationship, and so they were back on friendly terms. Hermione was grateful for that. Ron could be incredibly childish, and she had feared that he might make more of a fuss, but he seemed to have come to terms with the fact that while she had forgiven him for abandoning them – mostly – she simply wasn't as interested in their romantic pursuits as she had been previously. Largely, that was due to the fact that she was crushing on whatever Death Eater had saved her life – and her suspicions were still on Snape, no matter how awkward and uncomfortable the idea of fancying him made her. Of course, she hadn't divulged that little fact to Ron or Harry, though she suspected Harry had his own ideas on the matter anyway. Ron had been gracious enough in accepting her gentle rebuffs when he'd broached the topic of them getting back together, and once she'd assured him that her feelings had nothing to do with Harry, he seemed resigned to the fact that she, at least, had moved on.

"Never," she sighed. "I'm just saying… Hogwarts is as much the place You-Know-Who calls home as you do, Harry. He's going to expect you to go there eventually. And you know that the place is overrun with Death Eaters. You've listened to Fred and George's radio as often as I have. You know that there are at least four Death Eaters inhabiting the castle right now, Snape and Malfoy included."

"Yeah, but we have the map, and the Invisibility cloak," Harry pointed out.

"We do," Hermione agreed. "But you and I both know the three of us don't fit under it very well anymore. The last time we all tried to hide under it, our ankles were on display because Ron's grown so tall."

She spared Ron a small smile when he grinned, pleased with his height.

"But we need to get in," Harry said.

"I agree," Hermione nodded. "But… and don't blow up at me before thinking about this… what if I go in alone?"

"What?" Ron said.

"No!" Harry exclaimed. "Absolutely not!"

"Harry," Hermione warned, holding her hand up, sensing his rising temper. "Just listen."

"It's too dangerous!" Ron protested.

"Listen!" Hermione snapped, closing her book and setting it down hard on the table. "I agree that we need to go in. There's no way around it. But we don't all need to go. Now, I'm the smallest, so I fit best under the cloak, and I'm the one with the least to lose."

"Hermione," Harry began.

"It's true, Harry," Hermione said. "It can't be Ron. He's got too many family members in positions where the Death Eaters can get them. Ginny's in school. Fred and George have their shop. Percy and Bill and Arthur have their jobs at Gringotts and at the Ministry. Even Charlie is reachable in Romania on the dragon reserve. They've already attacked the Burrow more than once. It can't be Ron."

"But," Ron protested.

"Quiet," Hermione admonished him. "And it can't be you, Harry. If we're caught, you'll be taken straight to You-Know-Who and any chance we had left of thwarting this monster would die with you. It has to be me. My parents are beyond the Death Eater's reach. I have no other family. What's more, I'm the smallest, and forgive me, but the least hot-headed. I can be in and out, get the fangs, search for the Diadem, and get back here without being detected. I'm the least likely to be lured into doing something stupid, like picking a fight with Malfoy, or trying to rescue our friends, or telling Snape that he's a monster."

She looked imploringly at Harry. They hadn't mentioned to Ron that Hermione suspected it'd been Professor Snape who had saved her from the Killing Curse at the wedding, and they definitely hadn't mentioned that she'd run into him again at Cokeworth. They didn't have any hard evidence, but what they did have suggested as much. If her theory proved true, Hermione would potentially be safest even should she be found out by anyone within the castle and dragged before Snape.

"What if you're caught?" Harry asked her seriously.

"We have contingency plans for that," Hermione said. "And again, I'm the one with the least to lose, and thereby, the one with the best chance of escaping."

"Hermione, they'll kill you," Ron told her quietly. "The list of names Fred and George read out on the radio every day isn't a joke, you know? And more than half of those people who've been killed so far are purebloods. Blood Traitors. What do you think they're going to do to a muggleborn witch? Particularly one well known for being one of Harry's best friends. There's posters all over with your face on them claiming you to Undesirable No. 2. They'll torture you for everything you know, and then they'll kill you. Don't you get that? Worse, you're a girl, love. They'll use you for sport, before they put you out of your misery."

"I know that, Ron," Hermione said just as quietly. "I've always known that. From the beginning, when things started to look bleak and we came on this mission, I've known that if I'm ever caught, things won't end pleasantly for me. They won't end pleasantly for anyone. But that list of names of the people who've died? It's only going to get longer, Ron. The longer we delay and the longer it takes us to make You-Know-Who mortal, the longer that list is going to get. When you left last time, you were concerned about Ginny. About your brothers, and your Mum and Dad. We've already lost Moody and Sirius and Hedwig and Dobby. What if we delay too long and the next person we lose is Ginny? One of the twins? Percy, or Bill or your Dad. What if they Snatch your Mum when she's buying groceries, Ron? They won't be any more merciful to them than they will be to me."

"Which is why we should come with you," Harry told her. "We have to go in, but I think we've always been strongest together."

"We have," Hermione agreed. "When we had to go in there, wands blazing, and fight for our lives. But it doesn't have to be that way. I've studied that map as religiously as you, Harry. I know all the secret corridors, and the little nooks where I can hide from anyone who happens along. I'm going in alone, and that's final!"

"But Hermione," Ron protested weakly.

"No," Hermione said, holding her hand up to stop any further arguments. "It's settled. I'm going by myself. The two of you can wait here, or somewhere nearby that's safe. I'll get in, get what we need, and get out. I'll run through my wild-goose-chase apparation stops on the way back and meet you back here to make sure I'm not followed. First thing tomorrow, I'll leave."

"Hermione," Harry protested.

"Harry, it's done," Hermione said softly, reaching out and patting his hand comfortingly. "I'll be fine. You know I will. I'll take the cloak and the Map, and you'll have to brush me up on some Parseltongue so that I can get into the chamber from the girl's bathroom, but it'll be fine. I'll see if I can convince the House Elves to give us some food too. Our stores are getting low. No one will even know I'm there, and if I'm detected, I'll make a run for it. Everything will be fine. Now come on, you need to teach me how to say 'open' in parsletongue."

"This is a bad idea," Harry told her seriously, running a frustrated hand through his messy black hair. It still looked awful from the most recent haircut she'd given him, but it was growing out a bit, so it wasn't quite as bad as it had been.

"It's fine," Hermione smiled encouragingly, and Harry sighed and nodded in agreement before beginning to try and teach her how to speak parsletongue.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

At dawn, Hermione apparated directly into the Forbidden Forest on the grounds at Hogwarts. She had the Invisibility Cloak firmly pulled over her, pinned closed at front with a bit of nifty spellwork to ensure there was very little chance – even if she had to make a run for it – that it would fly open and allow anyone to spot her. She clutched the Marauder's Map tightly in one hand and held her wand in the other.

Looking up at castle on that bleak winter morning, Hermione shivered in her ratty robes. It'd been weeks since she'd managed a shower and what she wouldn't give to slip into one of the bathrooms inside the stone fortress just to wash off the feel of so long spent camping in the wilds. She was hungry, and tired, and she probably smelled bad – she'd stopped being able to smell herself or the boys weeks ago. She looked at the structure mournfully, sighing as she made her way through the trees, uncomfortably aware that a pall seemed to hang over the castle like the snow blanketing its grounds and high towers.

Even the castle mourned the loss the childish antics and the excitement of education, it seemed. It stood silent and stoic, unbroken, but clearly beaten down and battered. Whatever Snape was doing up there as Headmaster, it was clear that it was a not happy. Hermione felt a grim sense of sadness and determination settle upon her shoulders. This was not the Hogwarts she knew. This was not the castle she loved. That place was gone, just like the childhood of herself and all those living through this treacherous time. It had been replaced with fear, and worry, and a foreboding sense of doom that persisted no matter the efforts they each might make to shake off the melancholy.

This had to end.

They couldn't go on like this.

"Hello, old friend," Hermione murmured softly as she stepped out of the trees behind Hagrid's hut, brushing her fingers over the rough old stones, blackened though they were from the terrible fire Bellatrix had started when she and Snape, and the other Death Eaters had fled grounds following Professor Dumbledore's murder.

The magic imbued in the old stones seemed to reach out to her as she trailed her fingers over it, eager for the familiar touch of an old friend who'd long brought happiness and light to the hearth that laid within. What she wouldn't give to let herself in the back door of Hagrid's home just to allow the friendly half-giant to draw her into one of those painfully tight and warm hugs he so specialized in. How long had it been since she'd seen her old friend? What wouldn't she give to assure him that she, Harry and Ron were alright, if a little hungry, and tired, and weary of the fight that really had yet to start?

But she hadn't come there to reveal herself, even to those select few with whom she would entrust her life. She couldn't endanger him that way. She wouldn't let him put himself at risk, and she knew without trying that while the bolstering of hope would undoubtedly lift his spirits, Hagrid would be unable to refrain from giving the game away. He would be tortured for explanation for his good cheer in such trying times, and she couldn't let that happen. No, she had come here with a job to do, and she was going to do it, and be on her way without allowing anyone to come across her if she could help it.

Not even the allure of storming Professor Snape's office and demanding to know if he was the one responsible for saving her could distract her. She couldn't let it. They had too much to lose, and time was short. Passing the hut, Hermione made her way through the snow, being careful to wave her wand behind her as she walked to ensure that she wouldn't leave any footprints. It had snowed during night, and her shoes were already soaking through to numb her toes, but she had nothing else and it was better to leave nary a trace of her visit.

When she reached the castle, slowly making her way across the courtyard, an alarm began to scream and Hermione cringed, running for it quickly and dashing through the enormous oak front doors, planning to get lost in the corridors where detection spells couldn't give her away. She trotted across the Entrance Hall and took a left immediately down toward the kitchens and the Hufflepuff Common Rooms. No detection spells would illuminate her amid the hundreds of students likely still abed so early in the morning. It was a weekend, after all, and no classes were in session. She didn't imagine anyone would dare leave their dormitories if they didn't have to – not in times like these.

Of course, when the tread of many footsteps sounded, Hermione was grateful that being on the run had kept her fit. The senior Slytherin students - led by Malfoy, of course - stormed the corridors within minutes of the alarm beginning to sound, and Hermione was careful to tuck herself behind a tapestry just around the corner from the Hufflepuff common rooms to make sure she wouldn't be detected.

"What is it? Who set it off?" people were calling and shouting, and the vicious tones and anger radiating in their voices told Hermione everything she needed to know about the state of things inside the castle.

"Intruders!" someone else shouted. "Someone must've tripped the alarm. No student would be out of bed this early!"

"Find them!" Draco Malfoy's voice was low and stern as he spoke and Hermione knew then, without a doubt, that it hadn't been him who had saved her.

His tones were unmistakable, and it hadn't been his voice in her ear the night she'd been saved from certain death.

Snape then.

Hermione wasn't surprised.

"Draco?" Snape's voice came soon after, echoing down the corridor despite how sensually waspish it sounded.

"We're searching for the culprit, sir," Malfoy reported, clearly the sentinel on duty and in charge of the others given his Death Eater status. "No tracks lead to the castle, or away from it. It might've just been some hapless fool on their way to breakfast."

"It was tripped outside the front door," Snape informed them. "And it is not hard to vanish one's footprints. Scour the castle. Do not stop until the culprit is located."

"Yes, sir," Draco answered, and he barked orders at his fellow students, directing them down every corridor, ordering them to leave no stone unturned.

Hermione had already heard enough, and no amount of gratitude for having had her life saved would convince her to leave her hiding spot and confront Snape. Turning away from the tapestry she crouched behind, Hermione lit the tip of her wand to examine the Marauder's Map, watching those students who would've been her peers had she not dropped out to go on the run, fan out across the castle, searching in pairs; an organized unit.

She watched Snape's dot circle the lower levels and disappear into the dungeons, clearly convinced that there was someone in their midst who shouldn't be. Shaking her head, Hermione climbed the stairs of the secret corridor and ducked out on the second floor when she saw that Snape had slipped into the corridor behind her, evidently aware of the secret passage and suspecting the invader to know of it too. At the other end, Hermione almost collided with Professor Sprout as she bustled down the corridor with her wand out. If it weren't for the fact that she had silenced her shoes so that she wouldn't make a sound as she walked, she was sure the Professor would've found her, and everything would've gone straight to hell in a handbasket. She doubted Professor Sprout would sell her out to the Death Eaters, but she also didn't want to run the risk. Flattening herself against the wall, Hermione covered her mouth with her wand hand to stifle her slightly labored breathing.

"Show yourself!" Snape growled, stepping out from behind the portrait that hid the secret corridor.

"Eeek!" Professor Sprout squeaked, jumping in surprise and turning toward Snape quickly.

"Pomona?" Snape asked suspiciously, his wand lowering a little and his posture straightening from a dueling stance to something standoffish and slightly annoyed.

"Oh, Severus, you gave me such a fright!" the elder witch panted, clutching and hand to her ample bosom to still her evidently racing.

"Did you take the passage-way just now?" he asked suspiciously.

"Of course not," Professor Sprout said. "I am doing my duty and patrolling the full length of the second floor, as I was charged with doing. You may recall?"

Hermione had never heard the head of Hufflepuff ever sound quite so waspish and she watched Snape's mouth draw into a hard line, his expression blanking into one of cool annoyance and nothing more.

"Indeed," Snape hissed. "Do continue, then."

He waved the Herbology professor away dismissively and it became clear to Hermione that though they had to continue working with the man, the other teachers evidently weren't fond of him. And why would they be? They believed he'd murdered Professor Dumbledore in cold blood. They likely believed that Professor Snape had acted callously, and that he had betrayed the trust shown to him for decades by the Headmaster, simply for the sake of taking his job and proving himself as a devout and loyal sycophant.

Carefully, Hermione inched her way down the corridor away from him. She wouldn't put it past him to be able to smell her as she moved, ripe as she happened to be. Cleansing charms only went so far, and the old English way of bathing with a bowl of warm water and a cloth had been used one too many times since her last, proper shower. A nose like Professor Snape's, fine-tuned for the faintest changes in the scent of a potion under his care, would sure be able to pick up the scent of an unwashed witch. Her only hope was to edge along with Professor Sprout in the hopes that the woman's penchant for smelling of soil and potting mix, and occasionally manure from her avid gardening, might save her.

Snape glared after Professor Sprout the entire way, and Hermione had to be careful to move slowly. No matter the use of the cloak, and the silencing of her shoes, she could easily slip up before somebody so attuned as Professor Snape.

"If you locate an intruder, I want them brought straight to me, Pomona," Snape said just before she could round the corner.

"Of course, Headmaster," Professor Sprout said, but Hermione could see the woman's face and so she saw the way she silently mocked the man behind her.

Hermione had to stifle the urge to laugh, and once she'd rounded the corner, Hermione turned on her heels and ran down the corridor as fast as she could away from both Snape and Sprout. She kept running, ducking into nooks to keep an eye on the map, before running some more. She needed to get to the room of hidden things, and she needed to get to the Chamber of Secrets, but unfortunately, with so many prefects and teachers and wannabe Death Eaters patrolling the corridors searching for her, she was having little luck.

Worse, Myrtle was evidently holed up in her bathroom, and she was making quite a racket today. She'd never liked Hermione, and she would undoubtedly sell her out the minute she showed herself. Maybe she could be silent and stealthy and whisper the word to activate the long slide down into the Chamber. She didn't really have a choice. Myrtle had been known to mope for days and her moaning and crying might help stifle the sound of the entrance appearing out of the stonework.

Hissing the word in Parsletongue that Harry had taught her, Hermione watched the bathroom begin to reconstruct.

"Who's there?" Myrtle demanded sharply, appearing out of her usual cubicle and glaring around idly.

Hermione stayed silent.

"What's this?" Myrtle asked. "Someone wants to play games, do they? You think it's funny to come in here and open that… that… stupid thing?"

Again, Hermione stayed quiet until the bathroom stopped moving. Peering down into the abyss, Hermione gulped. Merlin, she'd never liked heights.

"Here goes," she whispered to herself, her stomach turning.

Folding up the map and tucking it away in her pocket, Hermione stuck her wand between her teeth, squeezed her eyes closed, and jumped. A scream of pure terror wrenched from her chest as she plummeted down and down and down before crashing into the curves in the pipes, and then she began to skid. Even as a girl, she'd never been fond of slides, and this one had to be the worst. She couldn't see a thing, and for all she knew there might be a hoard of Basilisks at the bottom. There was no guarantee that the one Harry had slain was the only monster guarding Slytherin's secret cavern, after all. What if it'd been female, and it'd laid a batch of eggs somewhere?

She skidded and skidded all the way down and she really hoped her scream of fright had been mistaken for one of Myrtle's cries, otherwise surely, someone might follow her.

"Oomph!" Hermione grunted when, finally, the slide spat her out at the bottom on top of a mound of bones. Piles of rat bones from countless lost pets and castle vermin littered the bottom of the chamber, and the entire place stank of dankness and damp and sewage.

"Disgusting," Hermione declared, rising to her feet and dusting off the cloak as best she could.

She used her wand to clean it in spots, and she made sure to affix it over herself once more, even down here. Knowing her luck, someone would've heard the chamber opening, or heard her scream, and it would be just her rotten fortune to have someone follow her. Probably Professor Snape. Wouldn't that be delightful, to see him again for the first time stinking of unwashed body, and now of sewage and old bones, too? There certainly wouldn't be any kissing on this encounter, in any case.

Hurrying through the Chamber once she was on her feet, Hermione was horrified by it all when, finally, she reached the cavern Harry and Ron had spoken of. The statue of Salazar Slytherin still bore the battle wounds of Harry's fight with the Basilisk, and there, lying where Harry had slain it, was the slowly decomposing corpse of the very beast that had petrified her and made her miss most of her second year here at Hogwarts.

Rats littered the decomposing body, gnawing on the rotting flesh, and the stench turned her stomach.

"So gross," Hermione muttered to herself, shaking her head and casting a Bubblehead Charm for herself so that she might breath unpolluted air.

Growing up with Ron and Scabbers, Hermione had no fear of rats, but she didn't particularly like them and when one crawled over her foot as she made her way around the snake and to its head, she squeaked indignantly.

"Just get the fangs and get out," she told herself. "Just get the fangs and get out."

Pulling a small dagger from her pocket, Hermione parted the folds of the cloak to better allow her hands to move, and with painstaking care to avoid accidentally cutting herself or impaling herself on any of the foot-long fangs inside the snake's maw, Hermione began the slow process of digging each fang from within the jaw. Most were deep-set, and stubborn, and she was covered in stinking, rotted flesh and old blood, sweating and panting heavily as she removed fang after fang.

She took more than she thought they would need. There weren't that many Horcruxes left, after all, but she took them just the same. What they didn't use hunting the Horcruxes might one day be invaluable in potion making, should she happen to survive the war. When finally, she had enough tucked away inside a special bag in her purple beaded bag – the teeth would need to be washed, at the very least, to remove the decaying gum and flesh still attached to a few of the more stubborn fangs – Hermione sighed and rose to her feet once more.

She sterilized the blade she'd used, flicking her wand over it, and then over her hands to better clean them off.

"Merlin, I'll never get this stink out," she muttered to herself.

"I wouldn't worry about that," a low and painfully familiar voice drawled from behind her and Hermione spun quickly.

Severus Snape stood at the end of the Chamber, his long robes marked with dust and filth from the slide down into this pit. His wand was drawn, clutched in his fist, though he didn't have it trained on her.

"I know you're there," he said, though Hermione knew he couldn't see her.

Moving quickly, she hurried away from the corpse, but the fall and the length of time since casting the charm meant that her Silencing spell had worn off and her footsteps echoed eerily within the chamber.

"Don't," Snape warned as she ran the length of the chamber just the same, zig zagging a little even though he couldn't see her, just on the off chance that he could duel by ear.

Hermione fought to hold her tongue.

"Stupefy!" he hissed from behind her and the spell whizzed by her ear, missing her by inches.

"Really?" Hermione demanded furiously.

"Did you imagine there would be no security in place?" Snape drawled, and Hermione could hear the satisfaction in his voice.

Narrowing her eyes, Hermione ducked behind a pillar and quickly cast another silence charm on her shoes. Unfortunately, in all their planning, Harry and Ron hadn't been able to offer ideas on how to get back out of the chamber now that she was inside it. When they'd gotten out with Ginny and Lockhart in tow, they'd been air-lifted by Fawkes the Phoenix. Hermione didn't imagine she would be so lucky, given that Professor Dumbledore's familiar had flown away upon his death.

"My patience is not infinite," Snape warned from behind her, and Hermione realized that he'd managed to sneak up on her because his shoes must be spelled silent, too. She didn't hear a sound, and only the relative proximity of his voice suggested he'd come closer.

Peering around the pillar, Hermione stifled a squeak to see he'd come within ten feet of her. Damn it, was his nose so good that even with the stench of sewage and a rotting snake corpse, he could still sniff her out? She needed to get out of here. She needed to find a way back into the castle. She still needed to raid the room of Hidden Things for the diadem horcrux. And after handling that corpse, she desperately needed a bath. If she took too long to return, she knew Harry and Ron would come in after her.

She'd made them promise to at least give her twenty-four hours, but already four hours had passed since she apparated into the forest and she didn't imagine the diadem would be easy to find. People had been looking for it for a thousand years, after all. Of course, none of them had thought to look in the room where everything is hidden right there at Hogwarts.

"How did you imagine you were going to get out after climbing all the way down into this pit?" Snape sneered, sounding amused. "You've no bird to fly you out this time, Potter."

It occurred to Hermione that Snape thought Harry was with her. It also occurred to her that, no, she didn't have a bird to fly her out… but she did have a broomstick!

Digging into the beaded bag swinging from her wrist, Hermione fished out the broomstick she'd been loath to bring with her. Harry had insisted on it, just in case.

"How do you plan to get out?" she asked of Snape before dashing around the far side of the pillar away from him and running across the cavern.

"There you are!" he sounded triumphant.

No amount of silencing charms could prevent the water on the floor from splashing beneath her footsteps.

"Bloody hell," Hermione hissed, diving behind the snake corpse again when he flung another stunning spell and something unfriendly and bright purple in her direction. "Sod it all, who saves a girl's life and is then this much of an imposition?"

Wrenching off the cloak hiding her from view – not daring to try and fly with it on, lest she lose it, Hermione glanced around wildly before spotting a small hole in the ceiling high above the chamber in the far corner where a lonely beam of winter sunshine dared penetrate the chamber's gloom. She'd have to make a break for it.

"Come out," Snape commanded quietly, sounding more amused that annoyed. "The jig is up, Potter."

Hermione rolled her eyes and worked the broomstick between her legs. She'd have to fly like mad, and evasively if she wanted to avoid his vicious hexes.

"I'm not Potter," Hermione declared before she kicked off from the ground behind the snake and zoomed in wild spirals that turned her stomach, heading for the opening.

"Stupefy!" Snape cried again, just barely missing her a second time and Hermione hissed in annoyance, forced to veer off course slightly. "Miss Granger?"

Hermione looked over her shoulder for the briefest moment to see that he'd stopped hexing and was staring in wide-eyed surprise to realize it was her, and that she was flying. She couldn't do more than meet his eyes before she had to wrench her gaze away once more and Hermione squealed when she directed the broom through the tiny hole in the ceiling, catching her shoulder and wrenching it violently, tearing her jumper on the rough-hewn rocks as she made her escape.

Too late, she remembered that Snape had been under the tutelage of Voldemort and had learned how to fly without a broom. Rocketing into the open sky, Hermione flew hard directly for one of the topmost towers where she knew she'd be able to make an escape back into the castle from the rooftop. A flapping sound had her looking back only once and Hermione's heart flipped furiously to see Snape flying behind her, though he couldn't keep up with the Firebolt she'd borrowed from Harry.

Skidding onto the roof, Hermione ran for it, stuffing the broomstick back into her bag as she dashed away, and yanking the cloak out instead. She flung it over herself just in time, because as she skidded around the next corner high on the seventh floor, she almost ran smack-bang into Malfoy and his goons all over again.

Plastering herself against the wall, and squeezing past Goyle, Hermione covered her mouth, stifling her panting.

"What is that smell?" Malfoy demanded, clearly horrified as he reached to cover his mouth. "Merlin, Crabbe, you need to get your stomach checked. That's vile!"

"It wasn't me!" Crabbe complained. "It was Goyle."

"I didn't," Goyle argued.

Hermione rolled her eyes, shuffling past them. While the three idiots argued, Snape came striding down the corridor in her wake and he stopped dead at the sight of the three students.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, and Hermione was beginning to think more and more that it had to have been him who had saved her because he looked alarmed at the idea that she might've run into the three young Death Eaters.

"Sir," Malfoy said, straightening his shoulders. "One of these idiots has… I'm sorry, sir. Has the intruder been caught?"

"Have you caught them?" Snape sneered in reply, and Hermione didn't stick around to hear anymore.

If Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle could smell her from under the cloak, then Snape undoubtedly could. She needed to bathe quickly, and maybe to burn the clothes she was wearing. Turning on her heels, Hermione ran for it once more, barreling down the hallway and trying to think of somewhere she might go where there would be a shower that no one would think to investigate. It would need to be somewhere private. Not one of the student bathrooms. Not with everyone on lockdown and searching for an invader. A teacher's bathroom, then. Of course. And unused office, maybe? The third floor where Fluffy had once been housed was still mostly unoccupied to this day. There were teacher's quarters there. She could shower there in secret, and then change her clothes. Her shoulder was aching too, and probably needed attention.

Yes. It would have to do. She'd have to try it.

Ducking behind a portrait of Jerome the Jaunty – who squawked in surprise to have been opened by an invisible force – Hermione took the secret passage down, down, down, into the bowels of the castle, knowing from experience that this passage let out at the back entrance to the library – the one Pince didn't like the students knowing about. From there, Hermione took a sharp left and slipped behind a statue of Valerie the Valiant, taking the short slide into the third floor corridors on the unused side.

The air was thick with dust there, and Hermione was careful to hide her footprints just as she had in the snow, refusing to leave marks in the dust that Snape might find and follow. She ran down the corridor's full length, annoyed that the torches all lit up as she did so. She could only hope Snape wouldn't think to look for her there, and that if he did, they would've gone out again by the time he arrived.

When she reached the end of the corridor, Hermione ducked into the last classroom, and dashed across it, hurrying up the stairs at the back of the room and into the teacher's office that led through to living quarters. Inside, she barricaded the door, warding it heavily and barring it against anyone coming in after her. Even if Snape didn't suspect that she was in there, it would take him a good long while to undo the spells she'd cast.

The thing about living on the run and being hounded by Snatchers and by Death Eaters, with access to highly potent magical textbooks focusing on protection and defense, was that she'd had a lot of time to practice and a lot of cause for using all myriad of hexes and wards to protect herself, Harry and Ron. Just as they had done when Scabior and the other Snatchers had come looking, the wards she cast would prevent Snape from seeing her, even if he did manage to get in.

"Alone, at last," Hermione muttered, flinging off the cloak and hurrying into the bathroom. She turned the taps on and let the way begin rushing through the pipes, knowing that such prolonged disuse might've left them dusty and dry. The only things she could count on was that they would still work because the castle was still operating.

While the water ran through the pipes – coming out brown and smelling foul at first before slowly beginning to clear – Hermione stripped out of her soiled clothes. She used cleaning charms on them before shrugging her shoulders and throwing them into the bottom of the shower. She would have to make the most of the running water while she had it. It'd been months since she'd been able to do laundry, after all. Camping in winter was not conducive to good hygiene, unfortunately. She casting a charm on the clothes under the spray of the shower, setting the magic to wash the garments with leftover shampoo before stepping under the warm stream herself and scouring her body of the stink from the chamber and the sweat from too long between baths.

Even knowing Snape knew she was in the castle, and knowing she had limited time, Hermione couldn't resist indulging in the hot water. While her clothes washed themselves by magic, Hermione took the time to shave her legs, and shave her pits, and to deep condition her hair as she hadn't done since before Bill and Fleur's wedding. The stink of the Basilisk took several rounds of scrubbing with her most strongly scented soap to budge from her skin and Hermione felt raw but refreshed when she finally stepped out of the shower and began to dry off.

Hermione paused when she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror, horrified to see the toll the war had taken on her body these last long months. She was too skinny, she thought idly. Her ribs all showed through her skin, and her collarbones stuck out sharply. Her face was gaunt from hunger and there were dark circles under her eyes. She might not be carrying the locket Horcrux anymore after Harry and Ron had destroyed it, but the foul thing had taken its toll. The vicious, angry red lettering of the word "MUDBLOOD" where it'd been carved into her arm stood out sharply against her pale skin and Hermione turned it to investigate the wound.

It was terribly slow to heal, and Bill had informed her that when Ron had carried her to Shell Cottage, unconscious from the Cruciatus curse, that the dagger she'd been cut with had been cursed. Fortunately for her, Bill was a Curse Breaker by trade, and he'd recognized the old spell used on the blade that would otherwise have slowly devoured her flesh until there was nothing left. He had saved her life, Hermione knew, but he had told her that even he didn't know healing spells strong enough to force the wounds to heal any faster than time would allow. Some wounds, she had learned, had to heal on their own without the aid of magic.

The gashes on her arm were one such wound. The skin was healed over now – she no longer needed to bandage it to keep from bleeding all over everything she touched. But the skin was still raw and sensitive to touch, and it looked terrible. She suspected that if she survived the remainder of the war, she would carry the scars for the rest of her life. Being tortured with the Cruciatus curse had taken its toll as well, and Hermione could see the effects of the pain she'd endured, and the aftershocks and attacks she still suffered when her nightmares got the best of her. Fresh bruising and a graze on her shoulder from her flight out of the chamber rounded out the pathetic picture she made, and Hermione found herself hoping that she survived simply so that she might one day regain her tan and the womanly curves she'd been developing before she'd learned to live on the brink of starvation.

Toweling off her hair, Hermione wrapped a second towel around her body and padded back into the main living quarters to where she'd left her bag, levitating her freshly washed clothes with her. Once there, she flicked her wand to start a fire in the hearth, carrying enough firewood in her bag to feed into it so that she might warm the room while she dressed, and so that her clothes might dry without the aid of magic. They always felt better – less stiff – if they could dry naturally.

"Why are you here?" the low voice cut across her musing as she padded about the room and Hermione recoiled violently, shrieking in surprise and stumbling back into the bed at the sound.