Disclaimer: Oh look, I still don't own Harry Potter. Ay me, why?

Warnings: Bellatrix is her own warning.

Hermione apparated back to the farm.

Shacklebolt had blown the horn for retreat. There was just too many of them. Never mind that the dark wizards were just as bloodied and battered as their opponents from the previous week. Never mind that it was outside the House Wards. It was close enough to their centre of power for them to defend.

She stalked into the Farm, feeling like complete shit.

A fail. Susan blind, Hannah dead—

She passed by a box stall where a crowd of her peers were cheering and lifting their mugs.

"You-Know-Who's dead!" proclaimed Podmore, throwing back a shot of firewhiskey. "Three cheers to Dumbledore!"

"Hip-hip—Hurray!

"Hip-hip—Hurray!

"Hip-hip—"

She slammed the door open so hard it swung 180' into the next stall over with a resounding crash, and Mundungus Fletcher dropped his glass.

"What the fuck are you celebrating?" she snarled, ignoring the pain that came with speaking so loudly. "He's coming back, you idiots. Coming back, and we don't fucking well know when or how, but when he does, he'll have control over an entire axis of Britain thanks to that thrice accursed Ley."

"He will," came the grave voice from behind her. She uncrossed her arms and turned, mortified anyone had been able to get the jump on her, then, seeing who it was, untensed. Dumbledore.

"Still," he continued gently, slipping past her to the table to take up a glass, "that is no reason not to enjoy what time we have, while we have it. We should enjoy what scant reason we have to celebrate."

Hermione's fists clenched furiously.

Yes, of course she knew. Troop morale. That's what the Headmaster was always reminding her of, when she forgot that the accuracy of what was said was less important than its effects. What good was it, telling them the odds, if it just clouded their minds, made them desert, and leave their friends and country with worse chances than before?

Still. She wanted to scream it.

Instead, she took a seat to the side, accepted the offered tumbler, drank.

"Some battle," murmured an onlooker. "So, who was that woman squabbling with Voldemort anyways?"

Hermione tensed, but the Headmaster caught her eye, gave her an almost inperceptible shake of the head.

He didn't do the same to Ron Weasley, unfortunately.

"That was Heather Potter," he announced—stupidly proud to finally know something, she thought, and too dumb to consider whether or not he should mention it. "We ran into her right after she escaped from the Riddle House. I couldn't believe it—she magicked open the Wall of Souls, easy as you please."

"HEATHER POTTER?"

"The Girl-Who-Lived—"

"But if the Chosen One has returned—and You-Know-Who is dead—we might have a chance—"

"Where is she now?"

"But why did Professor Dumbledore attack her? She was fighting You-Know-Who! I thought we were supposed to be recovering a dark witch, not Heather Potter—"

Hermione wouldn't mind knowing the answer to that question herself. She caught the look exchanged between Dumbledore and Moody.

"Our intelligence," Dumbledore said heavily, "has indicated that Voldemort has spent the last few months training an apprentice at his House. We were informed she was a dark witch whose power rivalled or exceeded his own, and his immortality in some way relied on her."

"Heather Potter is a dark witch?"

"Well," Ron Weasley began slowly, "she did command the Wall of Souls. I thought you had to have dark magic to do that."

"You-Know-Who didn't seem too keen on killing her either."

"Then why were they duelling in the first place?"

"Maybe they were training. She didn't seem that competent."

"She was competent enough to put a needle through the eye of a Death Eater. Whatever side she's on, it's not theirs!"

Hermione could feel Dumbledore weighing the opinions of his men. Once, she might have believed Dumbledore's suggestion, that he hadn't realized he was aiming at the Potter girl, that he meant to kill whatever dark witch Lord Voldemort was training. Not now. The Headmaster had listened to 'sightings' of the Potter girl since her disappearance with particular disinterest. That told her the man had known exactly where she was.

And Dumbledore did not aim to kill unless he felt it was extremely necessary.

So, how did a girl, who looked to be on their side, merit death in the first place?

And if she did, why hadn't Dumbledore recruited the rest of them for help?

The answer was obvious as the conversation went back and forth. Heather Potter was an innocent victim. Heather Potter was a casualty of the war, her whole family massacred by Death Eaters. Heather Potter was the hope for all wizardkind. Heather Potter was You-Know-Who's sex slave. Heather Potter was the reincarnation of Godric Gryffindor. Heather Potter was a minor goddess, come to deliver her people from the scourge of war by sacrificing herself to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Dumbledore couldn't kill her, she realized, incredulous. Or, rather, she needed to die, for some reason he wasn't saying, but no one—or, at least, only his old cronies, she amended, looking at Moody—was going to accept that.

Or, if more people did consent that killing her was necessary? She looked at her bickering colleagues. There would be as many who would stand against it, fight to defend her. It would tear the Order apart. If the public got wind that Dumbledore killed their Chosen One, he'd be demonized. Never mind that Voldemort was the most powerful dark wizard since Morgana—even if they got rid of him, there were still scores of other dark wizards in Britain, and they'd all be too happy to exploit any fragmentation in the Order.

No, she decided uneasily. Heather Potter—whatever the fuck she was—had to live.

How she was going to live, as the target of the two most powerful wizards alive, was anyone's guess.

She awoke to a dry mouth and a pounding in her skull, and the smell of dust and death.

"Fuck."

She closed her eyes and let her head sink back onto the saggy pillow.

She couldn't go back to sleep.

She stared at the waterstained ceiling.

A knock at the door, an indeterminate time later, made her jolt upright in bed, her leg scything out in defence. She was up before she could decide whether she wanted to be or not.

"Heather?"

Oh, fuck no. She'd propositioned the ugly bastard last night, hadn't she? And he'd rejected her. She couldn't decide whether she was more grateful, or more humiliated.

"Heather?"

He might actually be a decent man, she thought, and then laughed manically. Decent. He'd killed three people last night, with her help, but he hadn't taken advantage. That was decency.

"Open the door." He sounded exasperated now.

Well, he had saved her life. She opened the door.

"The lock's on the outside," she pointed out.

"I did not wish to intrude if you were in a state of undress."

"Naked. Just say it, Snape. Besides," her lips twisted. "It's nothing you haven't seen already."

She flopped back down on the bed, while he sat stiffly in a wobbly wooden chair by the bed. He wouldn't look at her.

"So," she asked, picking at the embroidery on the bell bottoms she hadn't bothered to take off before bed. "What's next? Huddle up here and wait for the hubbub to die down? How long do you think it'll take for the Death Eaters to take up other hobbies, now that the Dark Lord is dead?"

Snape looked tired. "He's not going to stay dead."

"Yeah, I know. But it took him a few years to resurrect last time, right? Maybe he'll stay dead long enough for me to go back to school, get my bachelor's degree, get my career on track—"

Snape laughed awfully. She did too. She was being ridiculous, after all. Snape, on the other hand, didn't seem to realize she knew that.

"If you are delusional enough to believe either side in this conflict will allow you the time or space to pursue your personal, Muggle goals, then I am afraid your time with the Dark Lord has addled your wits more than I'd expected. The Dark Lord—"

"—I wasn't being serious!" she protested.

He didn't look like he believed her. "Let me lay it out for you. The Dark Lord," he stressed, "only took several years to resurrect last time because the white wizards were able to secure the remains of his physical body, scatter them to the four winds, and consecrate the place of his death. He had to create a new body from scratch. This time?" he paused. "There is no way the white wizards, with their forces so badly decreased from the fights earlier this week, will have secured the ground, not when it lies so close to the House. The Death Eaters will take heavy losses for it, but they'll raise him by next Moondark. He'll have more important priorities than searching for you, but make no mistake—he will still seek to acquire you, and he will be relentless.

"The Order, on the other hand—"

"They tried to kill me," she said blankly. "Why was that? I haven't done anything."

He'd thought about it, and there was one thing that made overwhelming sense.

"You are a horcrux. You understand, Heather, when the Dark Lord decided to be immortal…" his explanation trailed into silence at knowledge in her eyes. "You knew about this."

"He told me. I didn't think he told anyone else though."

"He did not. Would not. Albus Dumbledore discovered the horcruxes for himself. He never told me you were one." He stroked the scruff growing on his chin. "He must have known, or suspected though. Why else leave a witchling with Muggles, if not to prevent her from coming into her full power? I'm surprised he didn't kill you outright and claim it was an accident—except, no, if his ethics did not compel him otherwise, there were witnesses, when you were found. The media uproar afterwards, if 'The Girl Who Lived' had been found dead, would have been terrible. Better to keep you out of the public eye, let our world forget you had ever been, and then deal with you quietly if the need arose."

She stared into space.

"So all his men are gunning for me."

"Probably not all of them. It sounded as though he had convinced the men with him that you were a high level dark witch. Given the chaos of the past week, I doubt there has been time for anyone to question his orders. A little time, and they will ask for details. Photos, names." He scrutinized her. "It does not help that you look like Black's love child."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, tell me about it. So they'll learn I'm Heather Potter. Then what?"

He regarded her speculatively. "They'll ask him why he's trying to kill the Girl Who Lived. He can't keep pursuing you, at least not openly, or invite criticism."

"That's helpful, but really stupid. So the Girl Who Lived is a sodding horcrux. You'd think they'd be after me with pitchforks regardless."

Severus pinched his nose in irritation. "That would be the sensible response. You forget, public sentiment is rarely sensible, and often the opposite. In spite of efforts to credit ordinary folk with ending the first war—efforts that in retrospect, were probably encouraged by Dumbledore to decrease the public's obsession with you—the Wizarding World still regards you as its Messiah. The date of the Dark Lord's first fall is Heather Potter Day. They've set up a shrine at your parents' house in Godric Hollow. I've been there. There are probably more notes strewn about the porch than you'd find secreted in the Weeping Wall. They make pilgrimages there. They pray to you."

Her mouth dropped.

"Jesus Christ," she muttered.

"Exactly," Snape said with some satisfaction.

They prayed to her. There was something significant in this, but she didn't have time to consider what it might be now.

"If you were, say, to go public with your story—contact the media, give interviews, let them know about your experiences in the Dark Lord's House—the public would rally to your side."

"Or crucify me. What's to prevent Dumbledore from making them believe I was a willing participant? I tortured people, Snape. Under his orders, but fuck if anyone will care. There might be witnesses."

"I doubt it, but who cares if there were?" His voice became mocking, theatrical. "I can imagine the bylines now: 'A delicate young woman, struggling to keep her virtue while surviving the attentions of the darkest wizard in history.' You'll be inspiring bodice-rippers for generations."

She made a face. "That's not what it was like at all."

"Does it matter?"

She stared out. "You know. I don't know whether it should or not. All that shit they tell you in school, about being true to yourself—"

"Muggle schools," Snape muttered,

"—and I don't even know who I am."

Snape massaged his temples. "May the gods preserve me from teenage existentialists." He faced her irately. "I had this discussion with your mother over that exact same phrase, and I daresay this will be as tiresome the second time around as the first. 'Being true to yourself' is a rather stupid phrase to think of if you're trying to find direction in life. What's it supposed to mean? To act on and preserve your ethics and beliefs in stasis from the moment you first heard that phrase? Who you are, what you want—that is fluid. That is in a constant state of evolution. And, assuming our knowledge increases with time—and I should hope yours has—it makes no sense to limit our actions to those of a prior self who was more ignorant."

"What the fuck? Speak English, for gods' sake."

Snape huffed. "Forget what I just said. Clearly, you take after your father when it comes to theoretical nuance."

"Is it just me, or do your words get bigger the more pissed off you get?"

"Your troglodyte of a sire had a similar penchant for resorting to mockery—"

"You know, they call that overcompensation."

He glared balefully at her.

She laughed.

He shook his head in incredulity.

"Wasting time on worrying about your actions isn't going to help you," he said evenly. "For now, you have to decide, and quickly, and act. They'll be occupied with the site for now, Bellatrix and Narcissa know what town I grew up in, and it's only a matter of time-"

She froze, mid-laugh.

"They won't tell anyone, not right away, not with the men as riled as they are. Narcissa is protective of you, and Bellatrix—" Severus grimaced. "She will want to keep you, and your punishment, all to herself."

"Oh." It wasn't as terrifying as it should have been. She'd been Bella's roommate for months. "And then what? Lock me back up in Malfoy Manor until the Dark Lord rises?"

"Likely."

"So that'd be back to square one. Not good. Any other ideas?"

"You really only have two choices. Keep running—or go back to the Wizarding World."

She goggled. "Didn't we just establish that I have kind of crazy obsessive fanclub waiting for me back there? And, oh yeah—assassins, gratis of your Head Do-Gooder. Not to mention the Dark Lord will be trying to catch me up at every turn."

"That crazy obsessive fan-club of yours, loathe as I am to admit, will have its uses. Establish that the Dark Lord was attempting to ravish you, and every idiot romantic in the nation will be taking up arms to defend your honor. You're rich. We can hire guards with no connection to British politics—the Americas have decent mercenaries. Even Dumbledore might be persuaded to suspend his action against you for awhile, given that just by living in our world, you'll be bait for the Dark Lord and his people."

"I'd rather run."

"Stupid. I had thought better of you."

"Snape…"

She tried to find words for what she was feeling.

"Look. I haven't been in a house—a real house, not one that wants to suck my blood—in almost a year. I want that. I want electricity, and lightbulbs, and, and internet! I want a cellphone. I'm bloody sick of magic. What's it good for anyways? Blowing people up? Killing? Aunt Petunia was right—my mother got mixed up in it, and she came to a bad end—"

"Your mother," Severus said hotly, " was heroic, she died to save you—"

"She died because she got in a madman's way, that's what! I don't want power, I don't want responsibility, I don't want to anyone's hero. I want to be normal."

"And I did not wish to be the babysitter for a selfish brat, but see where we ended up," Severus retorted.

She glared at him.

He glared back.

"Fine!" she snapped. "We'll go back to the sodding freakish Wizarding World! Why the hell not? Maybe we can live in your precious Hogwarts, so at least one of us can resume their normal life—"

"Not Hogwarts," Snape cut off tersely. "Not while Dumbledore is still Headmaster."

"Where then?"

Snape furrowed his brow, paused a moment. "London," he said finally. "Close enough to the Ministry of Magic that for every Auror Dumbledore can convince to try to take you out, there'll be another sworn to the Dark Lord to do the opposite, and another dozen just trying to uphold the law. The bank is there. You've attained your majority—you'll be able to access all your vaults. There's more than enough pocket change there for you to buy a house."

"A normal house," she said flatly.

"It has to be in a wizarding community," Snape argued. "If there is an attack—and there will be, by the time the Muggles realize something is amiss, you'll be either dead or back in the Riddle House, answering to his Lordship for your misdeeds. Oh—to say nothing of the civilian casualties," he dropped idly.

Of course, Heather reflected, considering the civilian bodies stacked neatly by the door like trash ready to go out to the curb, that wasn't really a concern for Snape.

"Houses in Wizarding London go up for sale rarely enough that we'll be lucky to find anything, let alone something with… Muggle contrivances. Stop dithering and dress yourself. It is past time we were leaving."

She trudged upstairs, waited until she was in her room, shut the door, and hugged herself, smiling.

London. London, with its universities, its museums, its history, its thousand generations portrayed down the breadth of a city street. London! Hang the damn wizards, there was no way she shouldn't get a chance to take a course or two at a real university, even if she had to get a security detail to do it.

She scrimmaged through the musty boxes of clothes, feeling hope for the first time in a long while.

Bobby Walters and his two sons snowshoed over the crest of the hill. He paused for a moment, expecting them to do the same, and breathed out deeply appreciating the way his breath clouded in the icy air.

It was a cold, clear night, the moon half-full and silver on the snow, casting long shadows in the pine wood. A good night. He picked up his ski poles and whooped, listening to the echoes of his voice, and his sons', in turn, in the deserted forest—

-not so deserted, he realized suddenly.

There was a clearing up ahead, the one he used to take Daisy and the boys to, back before he'd gotten tenure at the university and they'd moved away from Little Hangleton. And in that clearing were figures dressed in dark robes, standing in a loose circle. One of them was gesturing in their direction—they'd heard them yelling.

Bobby expelled another breath.

"Damn, Dad," swore Paul, the older of his sons by twenty minutes. "What do you think? Neo-Pagans?"

He didn't think so. There was something disquieting about those dark figures below, standing still and somber and altogether at odds with the raucous frivolity of those Neo-Pagan hippies.

"Nope," he answered definitely. "It's too cold out. Those tree-hugging yuppies only get out of doors when it's above 16' C. They'll be holding their séances in the saunas til May at least." He paused. "Still, I can't say like the looks of those folks. Might be some weird cult. Best steer clear."

"I don't think we can," said Walter, the younger by twenty minutes, and more perceptive by at least 20 IQ points.

"Well, why not?"

A hand clasped on Bobby's shoulder. He didn't startle, his sons were always clapping him on the back.

But this wasn't their hand.

It was small—a woman's hand—with a steel grip and sharp nails, and when he turned to see who it was, he started.

She was gorgeous—more gorgeous even than Daisy ever was, before the cancer had ruined her looks. She was of a height with him, with long, tousled black curls and black eyes and redred lips. He heard the boys' indrawn breaths. Never mind that one was getting married and the other had a steady girlfriend, you couldn't help appreciating a woman this lovely.

Even if he couldn't feel a parallel between this, and the time Odysseus' men landed on Circe's Island.

"Well," she said sweetly, "what brings you out here at this hour of night?"

"Just going for a walk," Bobby told her defensively. "Sorry if we interrupted your shindig down there—not our intention. We'll be off in a jiffy, that we will."

"Oh," she smiled, and then giggled a little. "No interruption, none at all. We would love for you to join us."

"No, really, that's quite alright miss—we've been out far too late as it is, we'll be on our way, but thank you for the invitation."

She laughed harder. Was she a bit touched?

"No, really," she said, drawing a small wooden stick, like a wand, from her pocket. "I insist."

Without really understanding why, he found himself walking down to the clearing. He tried to stand still, to stop moving—

"Wait up, Dad—"

The boys were huffing after him, he realized in horror—tripping over their snowshoes to get down to the clearing. The woman—she was moving through three feet of snow like it was a summer stroll, and how—

He had to stop—

"Bella, darling, I told you there was something there," laughed a tall and ugly man.

The woman kissed him sloppily, he half expected to see a smear of red lipstick on the man's cheek, but there was none—the unnatural red of her mouth wasn't cosmetic. "Roddy, good man, you did get me what I wanted." Her voice dropped, low and sultry as a Leeds streetwalker. "I'll reward you for it later," she whispered huskily, her hand cupping her groin momentarily, before she turned back to Bobby and his sons. 'Roddy' groaned, falling forward as she removed her hand. Bobby didn't need to look back to know Paul would be red from tip to top at that lewd display.

"Now, this way darling—no need to say anything-"

His sons trailed skeptically at his side. He tried to work his mouth, to warn them what was going on, but he couldn't speak either, could do nothing, except follow the woman—

No.

The woman's eyes met his forcefully, she smiled madly.

Yes.

He stepped closer, closer, to where a man rested on the snow—not so much the man, but the shadow of a man, a black suspension hanging above the snow. Paul was gaping openly, Conrad looking at it inquisitively, as though trying to figure out how it functioned…

No, he thought determinedly. No, no, no, not my sons. Whatever the hell this was, it wasn't natural. "NOT MY SONS!"

She paused suddenly, smiled brighter than ever.

"A pity you're a Muggle," she said, lifting a shocked Paul with a wave of her wand, "but oh well."

He came at her fists flying, just as she dropped his son into the black cloud. She sidestepped his attack—though he did give her a glancing blow to the cheek—and he tripped on the mist.

He heard Conrad screaming. He looked up to Paul dissolving, as though in acid, the black mist eating through his flesh, fought to get to his feet, to help them—

He couldn't get up. He looked down at his feet, and his stomach roiled.

They weren't there. Everything, below the knee, gone. The mist had eaten them.

"Not my sons," he pleaded weakly, watching as she floated a struggling Conrad over the darkness, that was now roiling up from where it had lain.

"No one ever wants it to be their sons," the woman complained, flopping down on the snow opposite him, using her wand to bounce Conrad up and down above the mist—like a fisherman jiggling a lure, he thought. "Except, well, it has to be someone," she explained kindly. "And I'd rather it wasn't my cousin, so since none of you seem to be capable of asserting your position, well—"

She jiggered the wand once more, and the mist roiled up to consume his second son.

"Three's the magic number!" she declared cheerfully. "Now, would you be a dear—oh, wait, no, it looks like he's full. Well, we could do with consecrating this ground anyways—"

Through his shock, he saw the mist roiling, upwards and upwards, into the sky, propelled northwest by a wind that wasn't.

"Safe travels, Sirius," the woman waved, watching until he was out of range. "Now," she murmured, twirling her wand like a girl with a baton, "what to do with you, lovey?"

With no small gratitude for it, he blacked out.

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