Snamione One Shots

In Your Memories

The night after the Ministry falls and Harry, Ron and Hermione return to Grimmauld Place, Hermione stumbles across an unwanted intruder in Sirius' room who has a most unexpected story to share. What she learns has the potential to change everything...

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Grimmauld Place was silent and cold, and Hermione's footsteps echoed in the empty hallway as she paced its dusty length. The third time she passed the drawing room door, she pulled out her wand and whispered a charm to muffle the noise; Harry and Ron were in there, where they had set up a makeshift camp for the night. Her two friends had fallen asleep almost immediately, exhausted physically and mentally by the events of the day. From the joy and celebration of the wedding to the horror of their close call with Death Eaters, it had been a day of emotional extremes at both ends of the scale.

Hermione couldn't sleep, though. Her mind was filled with a roiling tangle of thoughts and worries… concern for her friends, fear for what would become of them now the Ministry had fallen into Voldemort's grasp. If their task – Harry's task – had been difficult before, it was infinitely tougher now.

She feared desperately for all their lives.

Walking through the former Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, she drew in slow, deep breaths of musty air. She needed this time, away from everything and everyone, to clear her head and maintain her sanity.

Reaching the stairs at the end of the hallway, Hermione paused and considered her options. Downstairs was the kitchen, the dark hallway with Mrs Black's portrait waiting to shriek at any visitor she deemed unworthy of entering the house, and then there was… the curse. Hermione shuddered as she remembered the terrifying, ghoulish likeness of Dumbledore that had set upon them as they entered the house earlier that day.

Decision made, for she didn't want to invoke that vision again if she could avoid it, she headed upstairs instead. On the next landing, the doors led to the bedroom she and Ginny had shared the summer before, and the one next door that had been Harry's and Ron's. How things changed in only a year…

True, a year ago they had already been at war, as they were now… but despite Sirius' untimely death, there had been so much more hope in everyone. Dumbledore's death had been a terrible blow, not only to the strategic war effort, but to the morale of all who had known him. And the betrayal of one of their own had been the cruellest turn of fate.

Hermione shook her head, wondering for the umpteenth time how she could have been so wrong about Snape… They had all been mistaken, of course… duped, tricked, manipulated. But Hermione hated herself for all the times she had defended him when her friends had seemed too harsh. How could any of them have been so blind?

Continuing on up to the next level, she found herself on the narrow landing with only two doors, each labelled with a name. On her left, the door bore a stern warning against entering without Regulus Black's permission. On the right, the faded nameplate simply said, Sirius.

Harry had refused to enter the room after his godfather's death, the memory and the guilt far too painful as it were without being confronted with more reminders of the man.

Having not known him as well, though, for Hermione the memories were not as painful, and her curiosity got the better of her. Silently, she turned the handle and pushed open the door.

The room was darker than the hallway outside, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. When they did, however, she realised she was not alone.

Kneeling on the floor between the bed and a tall wooden chest of drawers was a man, hooded and cloaked in black.

Inexplicably, her entrance hadn't alerted him to her presence, but her sharp intake of breath upon laying eyes upon him gave her away.

He moved with a speed Hermione hadn't thought was possible, and suddenly she found herself shoved roughly up against the back of the door as the solid wood slammed closed, her wand flying from her fingers. She tried to cry out, but her throat constricted as though an unseen hand was squeezing it. Trying to push back and give herself room to fight him, she grappled at the intruder's face, pushing the cloak aside and clawing at his eyes.