Love And Revolution

V

When the newspapers were delivered in the morning, Snape's dread seemed to have come true- the front page featured a picture of Hermione sporting an enigmatic smile and the word 'MISSING' printed underneath it in bold fonts. Only now, in a surprising turn of events, the subject of his worries was seated right under his nose. She took the paper from him and after reading the headlines, glanced back at him. The wheels have been set into motion- everything was starting to happen the way that they had conjectured.

According to the story that had been planted by Snape, the Hit-Wizards had reported back that they had bungled up the mission but the Ministry couldn't possibly release that information to the press, so they had to pass her off as missing or abducted. It might take them a few days to come to know the truth or they might already be suspicious as to what really happened the other night- nonetheless, Hermione had to stay hidden. And Snape had begrudgingly offered his house for her to stay.

She went through the other articles and saw that people had expressed their opinions about the suspicious disappearance of Hermione Granger not more than a couple of months after the tragic death of her husband Ron Weasley and fingers were getting pointed at the Ministry. The minister had released a statement saying that the best agents had been employed to find her and that they were looking into this matter as their top priority. Hermione also saw a column dedicated to Harry who was seen to be extremely upset and had vowed to find out what happened to his friend at any cost.

Hermione felt bad for him that she couldn't let him know she was all right but she couldn't afford to make contact with anyone on the outside right now. It was lucky that she hadn't told him where she was going when she had left Grimmauld Place- no one knew where she was right now.

But Snape was afraid that the one(s) who was(were) behind this still knew that he had something to do with all this; they had seen Ron exit his house and Hermione come to visit him as well, and had tried to take them both out, they must suspect that Snape knew something. What would it take for them to swoop in right at the moment and take him in for questioning- off the record- and then getting rid of him too?

Right after he had made sure that Hermione was all right, he had applied every kind of precaution available- he had put powerful wards up against the house, set up booby traps and alarms all around and also performed an incantation that made it practically invisible to the naked eye if someone tried to peep in from outside. It wouldn't hold for long, however, it would do for now.

The Ministry were going to be busy investigating Hermione's case for at least the next few days or would have to keep up the pretense of doing it till everything cooled down again. She was sure that Harry would not lose hope and continue his search till he got actual proof that she was dead, however this provided them with the window of opportunity that they needed to get into the Ministry records and take them by surprise. 

As per their plan, they started making arrangements for this quest for truth, so to speak. They had to be prepared for all kinds of possibilities since neither of them knew whether they would be able to come out of the Ministry headquarters without attracting attention or would have no choice but to surrender themselves if they get caught. In that case, they intended to publicize their findings to the media and deal with the punishments of illegally trespassing a government agency later.

Hermione set forth the idea of using polyjuice potion and formulated a plan for infiltrating the Ministry that didn't largely differ from her previous instance of doing the same thing while it was under the ascendancy of the Dark Lord and his minions, and Snape concurred with the design. If all went well, then they would find out the person or persons responsible for this and bring him out in public and force him to tell everyone the truth.