#saving muggles

“It should be obvious. Granger tempered with her parents’ memories to protect them, not to hide her own plans. She would never be so stupid as to entrust her muggle parents with her plans. And even if she did, and we find her plans somewhere in her parents’ memories, they would only know where she intended to go last summer. That would not help us finding her now. They must have been hopping from one safe untraceable place to another for months now.”

“What do you suggest then, Severus?” Voldemort asked.

“I am sure, you thought about that, my Lord. Keep them, use them as a leverage when the mudblood turns up. Use them to aim at Potter through her.” Snape’s voice was devoid of emotion. “Let Bella have some fun with them, just not too much.”

Voldemort’s laugh held no joy. “As if Bella had deserved a reward. No fun for her. Where to keep them, though?”

Lucius Malfoy spoke up. “In our cellar, my Lord.”

Voldemort grinned, his face became even more inhuman with a gesture that could have been nice in other people.

“Listen to yourself, Lucius. You feel up to the task to hold some muggles in your cellar? In your cellar, that did not hold Harry Potter? After your wife almost ruined our chance to even get these muggles?  Your wife’s passion for neatness almost destroyed our chance to find them, when she cleaned their daughter’s bloodstains from the floor.”

Lucius Malfoy slumped.

“No, no, the cellar here will not do.” Voldemort tapped with his wand on his left hand. The couple in front of him looked with horror at him. Their hands had found each other.

“Severus, you’ll take them. I trust you to be able to hold on to some muggles.”

“My Lord, I have no house elves, I am headmaster at Hogwarts, surely the Malfoys….”

Voldemort held up his wand and Snape stopped himself.

“Severus, do you think I don’t see what you are doing? You want me to forgive the Malfoys for their extraordinary failure, but you should know better than to try to manipulate my decisions. You will take them and answer me for them.”

“As you wish, my Lord. At once, my Lord.” Snape bowed and manhandled the muggle couple on his way out.

“And you, my dear Bella, will not get them, even though the mudblood’s blood on your knife was useful.” That was the last thing to be heard.

***

Hermione’s parents panted heavily with fear when they were apparated to Spinner’s End. Snape led them to a sofa at wand’s end.

“Please, sit,” he told them.

Their eyes gave away their surprise at his surprisingly friendly tone. They let themselves fall on the sofa.

“This must be a misunderstanding,” the man said. “We do not have a daughter.”

Snape sighed.

“This is a complication I could well do without,” Snape remarked. “But I promised myself that I would try my best, in every case.”

Snape opened his cupboard and fetched a bowl and poured a potion into the bowl. “Not as good as a pensieve but it will have to do.”

He put his wand to his own head and pulled out a silvery memory.

“I don’t have much time. Brace yourself. I will show you, that you do indeed have a daughter.”

He let the silvery strand descend into the bowl and on the surface of the liquid the memory came alive, not like a scene that could be entered like in a pensieve, but more like a movie that could be watched from the outside.

The memory showed the couple on their way to Platform 9 ¾ , Hermione walking in their middle, chatting happily about the excitement to go to Hogwarts.

The Grangers stared at Snape when he put his wand into the bowl and retrieved the memory.

“She does look like she could be our daughter,” Mrs Granger whispered.

Snape rummaged in the drawer of one of his cupboards. When he turned again, he held a poster in his hands. “Hermione Granger”, it read. “Undesirable no. 2.”

Mr Granger took the poster with trembling hands.

“How?”, he asked. “this is our daughter? But why don’t we remember her?”

Snape explained it all to them. He spoke in clipped tones, fast and without detail, but he didn’t leave out anything important. When he had finished, the Grangers knew that Wilkins was not their true name, that their daughter had tried to save them and had almost succeeded.

“What are you going to do with us?”

Snape gave a mirthless laugh.

“Up until now, the Dark Lord could probably believe that I told you all of this just to torture you. But I do not mean you any harm.”

Mrs Granger had clutched the poster with her daughter’s face so hard that it almost crumpled. Her eyes were moist.

“Why would she do that to us? Was there no other way to protect us?”

Snape interlaced his fingers, deep in thought.

“I don’t know why the Order took no measures to protect you. It could well be, that they thought you were not important enough or that they did not have the manpower to protect you. The order has not always managed to save people, even when they tried. Maybe your daughter did not ask, maybe she was confident in her own abilities. And if your daughter had not been captured it would have been enough. It was only with her blood that the Dark Lord could trace you. He would have searched for her herself, but she’s at an untraceable place.”

He took a deep breath. “I am sorry, that I cannot answer this question. I can say for certain that the order has underestimated her importance, for Potter’s task and for his survival.”

“She was captured?” Mrs Granger asked.

“The order?” Mr Granger asked.

“She was captured but fortunately only briefly. And the Order is the Order of the Phoenix.” Snape scoffed. “The light side of the magic. The good side you could say. At least after a fashion. Apparently not, when it comes to protecting muggle relations of people other than the chosen one.”

He smiled without real warmth. “I had the means to observe your daughter for some months and I can assure you that she is a resourceful and resilient witch.”

“Which side are you on?” the couple asked.

“I’m on the side that wants the Dark Lord dead.”

“The Dark Lord?”

Snape raised an eyebrow. “I am certain you can guess who that was.”

“The evil wizard. He picked our brains.” Mrs Granger shuddered. “It was horrid.”

“Why tell us? When he reads our minds again…. I am sure he would not want you to help us.” Mr Granger’s eyes were wide open with fear.

“Because I will obviously remove this conversation from your brains.” Snape stood. “You will feel compelled to return to my house here as long as nothing happens. But you can buy food, cook, everything. I’ll leave you money.”

Snape shrugged and did not relent in the face of the Grangers obvious anxiety. “I know it’s not much of a house but better than living on the streets.”

“You will remember this conversation, if I die. Then that happens you must leave immediately. You should be safe enough if your daughter does not fall again into the Dark Lord’s hands. Thanks to Narcissa Malfoy’s neatness, he does not have the means to search for you any longer. And I will try to inform someone else who cares about your whereabouts. But I can’t promise anything.”

He began to wave his wand, casting his spell wordlessly as was his habit.

“Do not, under any circumstances, look for your daughter. If the Dark Lord falls, no, when the Dark Lord falls, his name may be spoken again. When you hear that name spoken out loud, you may begin to look for your daughter and resume your old life. I’ll let you remember this.”

The faces of Hermione’s parents changed from frightened to slack under the movements of Snape’s wand.

Snape reached out with his right hand and shook both their hands. “Mrs Wilkins, Mr Wilkins. I wish you a good day. That was the best I could do. I hope it will turn out to be enough.”