Hermione felt a faint sinking sensation in her stomach. “What time?”
“Seven.”
“Alright, I'll be there then.” She turned back to her cauldron. She didn't look back at Moody as he stood appraising her for several seconds before he turned to leave.
Flashback 22
December 2002
The house at Spinner's End was crammed with bubbling potions.
Hermione turned around the room slowly and paused in surprise as she noticed a cauldron shimmering in the corner. She stepped over and watched the spiraling steam rising from the surface. She sniffed it surreptitiously — spicy, earthy scent of oakmoss, smoky undertones of cedar and parchment — no. She sniffed again. Papyrus.
It felt like receiving a diagnosis she'd expected but still hoped to be wrong about. Her stomach dropped sharply. She stepped abruptly away and glanced at the other surrounding cauldrons. There was a aching sensation inside her chest that she tried to ignore.
“This is quite a variety of love potions you're brewing,” she said, looking over to where Severus was stooped over a simmering cauldron.
“A new project for the Dark Lord. He's suddenly developed an interest in trying to weaponise it,” Severus said, sneering down at the murky, lumescent liquid he was working over.
Hermione felt her blood run cold. “Is that a possibility?”
Severus shrugged with a faint smile. “I am both skeptical and unmotivated, so most likely not. I believe it was more of a passing notion than anything he has a sincere interest in. I'm drawing up a comprehensive report to present in case he asks about it. And I'm doing it in my home rather than in the lab to ensure no one offers any groundbreaking ideas.”
Hermione surveyed the room. There were ten varieties of love potion and a few aphrodisiacs she recognised, as well as an additional fifteen that appeared experimental.
“What would constitute as a weaponised love potion?”
“Something of exceptional power that doesn't require redosage. I believe he imagines himself using it for interrogations.”
“That's — obscene,” Hermione finally said.
“Indeed. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, he has other matters he regards as more urgent for Sussex to focus on.”
Hermione stood, watching Severus crush ashwinder eggs for several minutes in silence.
“Draco says that Sussex is trying to develop a way to prevent further rescues.”
There was a pause before Severus turned and looked at her thoughtfully.
“I didn't realise he was aware of that.”
Hermione raised an eyebrow. “An excellent spy. Isn't that what you said?”
“So it would seem,” Severus muttered, turning back to his mortar and pestle. “Do you know why he's spying yet?
Hermione's eyes dropped to her shoes. “No,” she admitted. “He says things that seem true, but I can't make out the motive behind them.”
There was a pause, filled with the hiss of simmering liquid and grinding stone.
“Are you aware he's climbing rank?” Severus said, turning to his cauldron and pouring the powdered ashwinder shells into the liquid in a gradual figure eight across the surface.
Hermione was quiet for several seconds. “I hadn't heard that.”
“I mentioned it to Kingsley a few weeks ago. Climbing higher. Consolidating power. I don't pretend to know all you do together during your weekly — meetings… but I sometimes wonder if you even remember that when he's not with you, he spends his time killing people.”
Hermione's breath caught in her throat while Severus continued in an unsettlingly conversational tone. “I've rarely seen anyone who used Dark Magic as unsparingly as he has recently. The Dark Lord is thrilled by the exceptional tool he has crafted for himself. Those who make the mistake of getting in Draco's way have a habit of dying from suspiciously ingenious uses of 'Resistance' spells. A few weeks ago, one of the marked Death Eaters, Gibbon, was found with his limbs flayed and dismembered. I helped analyse the corpse; there was an exceptional web of Dark Magic used to force Gibbon to stay alive for nearly a day before he finally died.”
Hermione froze and shook her head sharply. “That's not — Draco wouldn't — you said yourself he's not a sadist.”
Severus looked over at her from the corner of his eye. “Did you think not being a sadist means he's never tortured anyone to death?” His expression was contemptuous. “I'm sure you read his runes. What manner of things do you suppose he does ruthlessly and without fail?”
Hermione stiffened until her body shook and her jaw twitched. “You kill people too and I've never questioned your loyalty because of it, Severus.”
He snorted faintly and his lips curled. “I have only one loyalty; to the purpose of the Order. The horrors I am obliged to commit, I commit out of necessity. Do you think I enjoy feeling my soul slowly tear itself apart and poison me? All while being derided and doubted by those who would never be willing to make a similar sacrifice?” He shook his head slightly. “However, that is irrelevant. Gibbon was not a necessity. He was not important. He was not powerful. There was nothing strategic or in the interests of the Order about killing him. Certainly not anything to necessitate dismembering him while keeping him alive in the process.”
Hermione kept steadily shaking her head. “It might have been someone else. You don't know it was Draco.”
Severus froze and turned slowly to face Hermione. “It was Draco. I know it was Draco. The reason I know it is because while dissecting the spellwork I came across the signature of an interesting enchantment. One that I personally invented. A containment enchantment I only ever taught one person. You. You were using it to treat his runes, weren't you?”
The whole room wobbled in Hermione's vision, and she caught the edge of the table to keep from falling.
Severus stared down at her, his expression menacing. “I have been a spy for almost as long as you have been alive, Miss Granger. Now stop defending him and listen.”
Hermione stilled.
Severus pursed his lips as he studied her. “He has gone rogue. If he ever was loyal, he certainly is not now. Whatever he is in the process of doing, it is not solely on behalf of the Order. He is one of the most powerful Generals in the army now. He reports only to the Dark Lord. He has his own web of informants throughout the army, and he has used that information to make the Order heavily reliant on him; likely to prevent us from ever betraying him.”
Hermione felt as though she couldn't breathe. Her fingertips were tingling faintly. She gave a shaky nod.
“I believe I know why he killed Gibbon,” Severus added after a moment. “He concealed it and made the process look like a torture, but once I noticed the enchantment, there were several clues that made what he had been attempting obvious. Draco is trying to find a means of removing his Dark Mark without dying from it.”
“Dying?”
“If the mark was possible flense or remove by chopping off the arm, Igor Karkaroff would be alive today. There were a few who tried to run or become turncoats during both wars and discovered to their detriment what happens. The mark is a connection between the Dark Lord and his servants; severing it results in a cursed wound. The person bleeds to death, unstoppably. There are no spells or potions to prevent it. Yet it seems Draco is determined to find a way, if he possibly can.”
A horrifying detail struck Hermione. “He was left handed. But now he's ambidextrous.”
Severus quirked an eyebrow thoughtfully. “That would be the logical thing to do, for a man intending to eventually cut off his own arm. Do you know how long he's been that way?”
“As long as I've been going to him. I've rarely seen him use his left hand.” There was a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach.