A Fate Worse Than Death.

By West Dean

The Harry Potter Universe belongs solely to J K Rowling and her chosen associates. This author is just having fun playing in it and no profit is intended.

An AU Year Six Story set after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Not HBP or DH compatible. Spoilers for everything else everywhere.

Pairings: HG/SS: SS/Other.

Author's Warning: Although this is a Hermione/Severus fic., there is implied male slash in this story as an integral part of the plot – If you do not like slash please avoid!

Chapter One.

The Corridor appeared to be empty.

A possessor of enhanced senses, a pet rat perhaps, hurrying to search for a dropped treasure from Honeydukes, before the castle elves swept through the Hogwarts classrooms on their nightly clean, might think otherwise. They might hear the soft whisper of leather soles across the cold flagstones, notice the slight guttering of the torches in their iron holders and even the beating of a nervous heart.

The owner of a magical eye would immediately see that the corridor was occupied.

The willowy form of Miss Hermione Granger, wrapped in a familiar invisibility cloak, was moving rapidly down the corridor in the direction of the Grand Staircase.

Her bushy hair was compressed beneath the folds. Her right arm was held up before her face to create a bubble of fabric, that would hide the telltale puffs of cold breath on this frozen February night. A rolled parchment was clutched carefully beneath her other arm.

To find out why this paragon of a Hogwarts student and model prefect should be wandering through the castle late in the evening, when even prefects were required to be in bed, a slight nudge on a time turner would be needed to return just twenty minutes into the past.

Here in the Gryffindor common room you would see Hermione put her quill down onto the cosy corner table, with a small sigh of satisfaction. She had managed to write ten inches more than required, on a parchment that now detailed all the possible ways of dealing with an infestation of Glumbumbles. She looked up to find herself yet again the sole occupant of the common room apart from a very miserable looking and hunched up figure occupying an armchair by the fire. On closer inspection this turned out to be Neville Longbottom, who was clutching his toad so hard that its eyes were bulging even more than usual, and muttering to him-self in a despairing tone.

Hermione quickly packed away her schoolwork and walked quietly over to the fire.

"Are you OK, Neville?" asked Hermione, as she settled herself into the neighbouring armchair, curling her feet comfortably onto the cushions.

Neville gave a horrid start but then settled back into the depths of the armchair as he realised that he was looking into the warm brown eyes of his most sympathetic of classmates.

"Oh it's you, Hermione. You gave me a bit of a scare, I - thought everyone had gone to bed."

Neville put Trevor onto his knee, but the annoyed amphibian jumped down onto the fireplace rug and hopped off across the room away from the fire.

Neville made no move to chase him but looked at Hermione with a worried frown and said "It's my Potions essay. I finished it even though it took up all my spare time this week – I do want to do my potions NEWT, but – I was supposed to hand it in by the end of suppertime this evening, Professor Snape was most insistent, but – then I had to go to the greenhouses and by the time I got back I – forgot!"

Hermione managed to keep her face from showing her dismay at yet another Neville mishap, especially as yet again it involved Potions.

Professor Snape appeared unable to hide his annoyance that Neville Longbottom had managed to reach the required level on his potions OWL to enable him to start at NEWT level. No one had appeared more amazed at this result than Neville himself, who had put his amazing achievement down to the simple fact that Snape had not been present at the exam. Anyone aware of the progress of Neville's potions career would have assumed that, at this first chance to escape his dreaded professor, he would have fled the dungeons and never looked back. However, displaying that streak of stubbornness in adversity that was Neville's strongest Gryffindor attribute, he had signed up for the NEWT classes, which he saw as necessary for a career in Herbology.

The result had been a series of hideous potion lessons with Snape rounding on Neville with vehemence for the slightest mistake and assigning him significant amounts of extra potion's homework presumably hoping that the boy would crumble and resign from Snape's classes.

The necessary visit to the school greenhouses reflected on Neville in a much more positive light. His skill at Herbology and his genuine enthusiasm for the subject had led to the pleasant result of Professor Sprout accepting his proposal for the first practical part of the NEWT exam. Students were expected to plant, tend and harvest a plant noted for its magical properties and produce a parchment detailing what they had done and the uses to which their specimens could be put. Most students had opted, predictably, for fairly simple plants. Ron Weasley, for example, had chosen magical hazel, a project that involved the planting of several hazel cuttings and observing them over a period of months to see if they grew straighter than ordinary hazel. The experiment would be raised to NEWT level by a series of trials involving grafting the magical and non-magical twigs into an old broom, under the supervision of Madame Hooch, and carrying out Quidditch trials. Obviously a project that appealed to Ron even though its relevance to the study of Herbology was doubtful.

Neville on the other hand had chosen the planting and cultivation of Whinging Snoutgrass, a plant treasured for its useful effects in treating magical ailments of the nose, but which truly lived up to its forename of whinging. If the plant felt anything was amiss such as a lack of water, food or the greenhouses being too hot or too cold, it would whine and moan in a thin reedy voice about its neglect. The sound of a bed of Snoutgrass that felt it was too cold was truly disruptive to any class being held in the Herbology greenhouses and, to keep in Professor Sprouts good books, Neville was forced to visit the greenhouses half a dozen times a day to ensure his patch of plants were truly happy in the current frosty weather. The suppertime visit had proved necessary to put the plants to bed under soft fluffy blankets for the night otherwise, by morning, they would be so upset that they would complain the whole of the following day.

Hermione found herself thinking rapidly as she looked away from Neville's downcast face into the flickering flames of the fire. She had been at supper that night and knew that it was almost certain that Professor Snape had not swept down to the owl-holes outside his office in search of a potions essay by the least magical of his students, detailing all the things that had gone wrong with Neville's attempt at a Vervescentio Potion.

Ever observant, Hermione had seen the black- haired Potion's Master unable to prevent himself from clutching at his forearm with a grimace of pain halfway through supper and then rise and sweep from the Hall leaving an untouched meal behind him. She knew that Voldemort's summons had to be answered immediately, tardiness likely to be rewarded with a vicious curse, and the early fall of dusk on these winter evenings had led to Snape leaving early on several occasions.

Despite Hermione now being a junior member of the Order of the Phoenix, she was not privy to Snape's work for the Order and could only guess at what he endured in order to obtain vital information on likely Death Eater activities.

But his inevitable short temper and exhausted appearance on the day after such a summoning meant that she was filled with foreboding when she realised what was happening.

"Neville, I think it's OK - I mean you don't have to worry that Snape found your essay missing after dinner. I saw him –um leaving Hogwarts and I don't think he'll be back until morning." Hermione looked at Neville and saw hope blossoming for a moment in his eyes before fading again.

"But Hermione," stuttered Neville, "he'll notice in the morning- he's bound to. What am I going to do?"

"You can go down now to the Dungeon owl-holes and put your essay in. Snape will find it in the morning and will never suspect that it wasn't put there at suppertime." Hermione tried to say this in an encouraging tone of voice but Neville's face remained glum.

"I can't – what if I get caught? It's well after curfew. I've lost enough points off Gryffindor this year in potions already – how do you think everyone will feel about fifty points and a general Filch detention being handed out? And even if Snape is not there, there's likely to be members of Slytherin House out and about – you know what they are like. If they catch me sneaking around their dungeons you'll probably find me in three weeks time stuffed in a toilet like Montague!"

Hermione almost kept silent, but she knew that Neville had got into this fix through taking care over his herbology project rather than his usual forgetfulness or clumsiness and she could not leave a deserving friend in the lurch.

She could also imagine what the next day's double potions would be like if an irritable Snape had a missing essay with which to pursue Neville.

She finally said, "I could take it for you. I'm likely to get into less trouble if caught because I'm a prefect and could come up with a good story for being out of the Tower that no one would question as I'm a 'model student'. But to make sure I'll even borrow Harry's invisibility cloak."

Neville's face brightened immediately. "Wow, Hermione, that would be great! I'll pay you back somehow."

Hermione stopped herself from asking how, and instead looked around the Common room for Crookshanks who had spent most of the evening dozing on top of her feet while she was doing her homework.

"Crookshanks, where are you, you great furry lump, I've got a job for you." Hermione called .

She spotted a bristly ginger tail waving slowly under a nearby armchair, but Crookshanks did not respond until Hermione, with a sudden realisation, called reproachfully, "Oh Crookshanks! Leave Trevor alone. I've warned you about this before. He doesn't like it."

The ginger tail emerged backwards followed by the rest of the big demi-kneazle who looked at Hermione, his squashed face plainly asking, "Who, me?"

"Trevor!" cried Neville, who could now see his toad, who had been pinned down beneath Crookshanks furry bulk and was looking a little worse for wear. He got up and quickly captured Trevor between his two hands and brought him back to the fire- place.

Crookshanks assuming an innocent but superior expression sauntered over to the corner table where Hermione had gone to retrieve her school bag.

"You really shouldn't." She said in a fond way, glancing down at her cat, as she quickly wrote a few lines on a scrap of parchment.

"Now take this up to Harry in the boy's dormitory. I know they are still up as I heard the sound of a pillow fight a few minutes ago." Crookshanks obligingly took the roll of parchment in his mouth and set off up the stairs to the Sixth year bedroom.

A couple of minutes later, a grinning Harry appeared, clad in pyjamas and dressing gown, and carrying the glistening folds of the wonderful cloak.

" Hermione, I'm surprised at you! Preparing to sneak around Hogwarts and risk a Filch detention – please don't tell me this is a trip to the Library?"

Harry Potter in the spring term of his sixth year at Hogwarts was a very different boy to the one that had returned so miserably the previous autumn. Then, wracked with guilt at the death of Sirius and weighed down by the knowledge of the prophecy that Dumbledore had finally revealed to him, he had been numb, cut off from his best friends and not even able to enjoy his restored Quidditch or annoying Snape after he had been accepted into NEWTS potions. He suspected that Professor McGonagall had kept her promise to him and called in a debt off Snape to achieve this.

Help had come in the form of Remus Lupin, restored to DADA teacher (and Harry suspected brought in by Dumbledore to mentor him), who had offered Harry a focus and a lifeline in the shape of advanced defence against the dark arts lessons.

These had proved vital in thwarting Voldemort's attempt to kidnap Professor Trelawney during a death-eater raid on Hogsmeade at the end of the Autumn term.

This success had done a lot to restore Harry to himself and, although Hermione sometimes worried that his practise of defence (and if she but knew, attack ), magic was becoming too intense, she was happy to see his confidence on the rise.

Hermione quickly explained Neville's plight to Harry who helped her put on the cloak.

"Rather you than me this time, Hermione." said Harry, opening the portrait hole. "I'm afraid that two hours of Quidditch practice in this cold left Ron and me absolutely whacked."

"Good Luck!" called Neville as Hermione set off on her mission of mercy, instantly feeling goosebumps rise across her body as the warmth of the common room was dispelled by the chill of the corridor.

T.B.C.