The Last Magicmeter

"Tonks, what is so urgent?" Arthur Weasley looked up from his breakfast to greet the newcomer.

"Here, have a cup of tea to calm down, dear." Molly Weasley looked with alarm at Tonks' hair, which was threatening to burst orange through her usual bubble-gum pink.

"No, Molly, thanks. I think I've got it!" Tonks rushed into the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, tripped over a chair, and her hair finally gave in to her internal struggle and flamed bright orange as she lost her balance. "Oh, bollocks!" Tonks exclaimed, rising from the floor and replacing the chair. "I think I know what they did to The Burrow."

"Really?"

"Yes! It's a simple Portkey Charm!" Tonks was beaming and self-consciously proud of her discovery.

"A Portus?"

"Yes," Tonks confirmed.

"Interesting." Mr. Weasley rubbed his chin and frowned.

"Well, it makes sense, Arthur." Mrs. Weasley looked less troubled than her husband. "We should have thought about it earlier. Kingsley said right in the beginning that the charm was in an uncomfortable pain range. Travelling by Portkey is certainly uncomfortable. If the Death Eaters did not catch anyone during their attack, they would want their prey to fly to them as soon as we returned home."

"Actually, darling, that's not what is worrying me. We expected the uncomfortable charm to turn into something nastier when triggered. And while travelling to Death Eaters' hands is nastier than the journey itself, I have a nudging feeling that there might be more to the issue than meets the eye."

"Tonks," Mr. Weasley continued, "do you think you would detect the additional charm placed on our house if the Death Eaters never blocked the magical signal?"

"Yes, if the charm was harmful. No, if it were a Portkey Charm as it turned out to be that only causes discomfort. I wouldn't mention it. Perhaps, I wouldn't even notice. I might suppose that you transfigured cushions into kitchen chairs or something like that. You are right, Arthur. They could have made it less apparent, and we wouldn't have noticed."

"And their trap could have worked. Hm," Mr. Weasley hummed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Headmistress McGonagall was grading the seventh-year essays on dangers of blood clotting during human transfiguration, late on a Friday night. She would keep her N.E.W.T.s level classes along with her other duties until the new Professor of Transfiguration got settled.

She looked at her watch as if she was expecting someone and sighed. After a while, she straightened the pile of marked essays, got up, walked out of her office, down the stairway, past the gargoyles and descended to the dungeons. She knocked on a hidden doorframe and entered as soon as she was admitted.

"Good evening, Professor. It's past curfew. I know. I apologise. I lost track of time." Hermione nervously bit her lower lip.

"Good evening, Miss Granger. Don't worry. I'm not going to deduct house points from Gryffindor. We agreed that you might work longer over the weekends, and I'm keeping my side of the bargain." Minerva McGonagall winced.

"Thank you, Professor."

"However," the professor raised one eyebrow and clasped her hands in front of her robes, "I am concerned that you choose to work this late every allowed evening. I've been waiting for your signal longer than usual tonight. I understand that you are fighting our war here, but you are straining yourself, Hermione. If you don't rest sufficiently, I will be forced to remove this privilege from you."

"No, Professor, please, I feel I've almost solved it. Please, I just need a bit more time." Hermione's eyes framed by dark circles welled up with tears. She lifted her slightly shaking hand and quickly wiped an escaped drop.

Professor McGonagall calmly approached her and asked, "What is giving you such a hard time?"

Hermione weakly smiled, sat down next to the Headmistress and began to explain. "To sum it up, Professor Snape tried various modifications of magicmeters to ensure that they would be able to measure probability of death of a certain person over a distance. The only modification that worked was altering material of the pointer. The problem is that the metals do not work predictably according to their magical properties. So he tried all metals, and he listed them with respect to their performance in the blood loss tests." At this point, Hermione shuddered, thinking of all Dumbledore's willing injuries, but continued, "This is the table. I understand it is the metal performance in Distance Probability tests, but there is something vaguely familiar about it. I just can't grasp it. And this name underneath. Mendeleyev. He is not in any reference book I looked into. It must be someone Professor Snape knows personally who has some kind of information about this table. I cannot get any further although I feel the solution is somewhere in my mind."

Hermione let her hands hopelessly fall into her lap and leaned deeper into the transfigured armchair. "I just can't reach for it."

"I'm sorry to hear that. You could have said something earlier." Professor McGonagall was considerate. "Mendeleyev was a Muggle chemist. We don't teach chemistry at Hogwarts, so you wouldn't find him in the reference books in our library. He ordered the elements with respect to their mass and..."

"And properties! I remember!" Hermione screamed and jumped up. The professor looked displeased by her behaviour, but she was interrupted again before she could retort. "I apologise for interrupting, Professor, but I'm so excited. I've read about it before I received the letter from Hogwarts."

Professor McGonagall nodded.

"And Professor Snape's experiments show," Hermione excitedly continued, "that a magicmeter is able to measure probability of death from greater distances if the pointer is made from metals with heavier nuclei."

Professor McGonagall smiled warmly. "With more protons, actually. According to Mendeleyev's table."

"Then," Hermione paused for a moment and thought, "if the last experiment with gold detected even a minor blood loss over seventy-three miles, then according to this table we need a mercury pointer for increased distance. But mercury is liquid." Hermione's spirit faded.

"I see." Professor McGonagall uncharacteristically grinned. "That's why Severus asked me to transfigure his vial of mercury into a solid form. I thought he needed a different consistency to stabilise a new potion." She filled in the last piece of the puzzle.

Hermione promptly returned to eagerness. "Did you make it?"

"Yes. I gave it to him."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hermione toyed with a shiny, dark, silvery piece of metal and blankly looked at her parchment, her quill forgotten.

"What do you have there, Hermione?" Ginny asked her over a Potions textbook.

"What? Sorry, Ginny, I didn't hear you. I'm working," Hermione apologised.

"You are not. I've been watching you. You are playing with that thing. What is it?"

"Oh, this!" Hermione lifted her hand. "I'm not doing my homework, but rather I'm thinking about my project."

"Well? You haven't answered my question," Ginny prompted her again. "What is that thing?"

Hermione sneaked her hand under the table, took her wand and murmured, "Muffliato," under her breath before she continued, "This is Snape's solution to Distant Probability tracking! It's a piece of mercury, and according to Professor Snape's theory it should measure the probability of death over great distances."

"But shouldn't mercury be liquid?" Ginny was surprised.

"Sure. At room temperature. Professor McGonagall transfigured it to solid," Hermione replied matter-of-factly. After a few days, she was used to the idea of holding solid mercury.

Ginny, however, was perplexed.

"Why are you looking like that? It's not as if she was changing one metal to another. She doesn't have the Philosopher's Stone. She just changed the consistency. It is never done because no one needs it, but it can be done," Hermione explained.

"If solid quicksilver is so normal to you, what's bothering you so much?" Ginny asked.

"Professor McGonagall gave Professor Snape this piece of solid mercury days before Professor Dumbledore's death. So he had time to construct a magicmeter with this pointer, but he never did it. Although there are usually only a few days between his experiments, I have to wonder why he chose to have a longer break when he was so close to final success. What kept him from finishing this?" Hermione shook her head.

"Why do you think he never made the modification?" Ginny continued to probe.

"We cannot find it. It's not among his other experimental magicmeters, nor anywhere else." Hermione shrugged. "Plus he said he could be of no further help and stopped replying to my Patronus messages. That's what bothers me even more, I guess."

"But, Hermione, that does not mean that the magicmeter doesn't exist. Who knows what Snape is thinking when he refuses cooperation? In fact, who knows what Snape is thinking anytime? You are concentrating too much on what might have stopped him, whereas you should also ask why the last magicmeter isn't in his laboratory," Ginny pointed out and held Hermione's sight. At first, she was mildly annoyed and irritated, but then her eyes widened in apprehension and understanding.

"Thank you, Ginny! You are brilliant!"

Hermione joyfully hugged her friend, tossed her schoolwork into her bag and rushed out of the Gryffindor common room. Ginny just shook her head and smiled. Few people ever praised her for criticism.

~~~~~~~~~~~

For the next two days, Hermione spent every free minute in the laboratory. She begged the Headmistress to allow her to stay in late at night, but Professor McGonagall forced her back to her dormitory at curfew on each school day.

On Friday she was nonetheless finished.

"Congratulations, Miss Granger, you have successfully completed your project," Professor McGonagall complimented her student with pride.

"Thank you, Professor." Hermione was beaming. "Shall we try it?"

"Of course." The Headmistress smiled, and both women walked out of the school.

Hermione carefully carried a magicmeter tuned to measure general magic and fitted with a mercury pointer that enabled the device to register all magic in the distance. Hermione hoped with all her will that the instrument could make a miracle and help Harry find Voldemort's Horcruxes, without Dumbledore's knowledge and skills.

"This will do." Minerva McGonagall stopped in the middle of a meadow and turned to Hermione. "Let's see how it works."

Hermione tapped the small magicmeter with her wand, and an opalescent chart appeared. She began to turn slowly, and the line of the reading jumped up and down as she moved around. When she turned towards Hogwarts, the line shot up so high that it disappeared in the darkness of the night.

"So much magic," Hermione said in awe and continued to finish her turn.

"Wonderful, Miss Granger," Professor McGonagall exclaimed. "I sincerely hope that your magicmeter will aid Mr. Potter in the task he started with Professor Dumbledore. Are you sure you won't tell me what he needs this skill for?" she tried.

"Sorry, Professor. That is up to Harry to decide," Hermione declined.

"I understand. We are finished here then." The Headmistress began to return to the castle when Hermione caught up.

"Professor?"

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

"Ginny, I mean Ginny Weasley, suggested that if we cannot find Professor Snape's last magicmeter with the mercury pointer, he might not have been stopped from constructing it, but rather finished it and hid it out of Hogwarts."

"I thought about such a scenario too, but it's not viable." The Professor paused to organise her thoughts and proceeded. "He has not left the castle since I gave him the mercury piece; the wards would now alert me of his comings and goings. Unless he carried it with him into the battle, he couldn't have taken it out. I'm sorry, Hermione, but I don't see it happening."

"But can we just quickly check, please? Perhaps he somehow managed," Hermione pleaded. "We could now just retune the magicmeter to track your transfiguration spell that solidified the mercury rather than the general magic and see if it shows us the direction."

"That could work," Professor McGonagall accepted, "but it will take too much time at the moment. We will try it on Sunday. No, Hermione, certainly not now, and tomorrow you should take a break and enjoy your Hogsmeade visit."

~~~~~~~~~~~

The next day, when the students passed Mr. Filch on their way to the only entirely wizarding village in Britain, Hermione Granger sneaked out a magicmeter in her robes. She briefly stopped at Honeyduke's, let herself be seen in Zonko's, had a quick butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks and hurried to find a secluded place to try to track Snape's magicmeter that might have measured Dumbledore's probability of death.

She tapped the magicmeter with her wand and worked for a while to tune it to the magical trace of solid mercury. She pointed the magicmeter towards Hogwarts, but her device did not give a reading. With mixed feelings of anxiety and satisfaction she began to turn slowly and carefully watched the results chart.

The reading jumped high when she faced southwards.

"It exists!" she squeaked. "And he took it out!"

She slipped her hand into her pocket and took out a vial of potion.

He said, take one a week, so this could as well be the one.

Hermione drank the potion, looked at the horizon, broke plenty of school rules and Disapparated south. At the hill she found the course of the signal again, looked at the respective horizon and Apparated.

Hogwarts towers soon vanished from sight, but the magicmeter showed that the other spell that solidified mercury was still further. Hermione cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself and tried her best to suppress the noise of Apparating. She always paused just for a few moments to find her path and let the magicmeter lead her on.

Just after she Apparated across a vast valley, her magicmeter showed her next course directly where she had come from. A bit puzzled, but largely relieved, she looked into the valley.

Finally! The Distant Probability magicmeter must be somewhere down there.

She would know soon.

Hermione selected a small loch surrounded by a few trees and Apparated to its bank to find out which way she should continue.

As she hit the ground, her body was immediately ejected back to the air by a set ward spell, and she was falling in a wide arc into the water.

She screamed, "Protego!" just in time for a red curse to bounce back from her shield.

She dived deep into the loch, composed her powers and emerged ready to fight whatever trouble she got herself into. But the dark wizard on the shore stood there calmly, his hands peaceful by his sides. From what she knew about him, this was not a reassuring sight as he was fast enough to best her in any duel. Even if his wand was not yet drawn.

But it was.

Hermione swallowed. She expected to find the hiding place of the magicmeter, not of its owner. He looked paler than she remembered him, and his frown was more menacing in the open sunshine than in the dimness of his dungeons.

"What did you think you were doing, Miss Granger?" he asked so quietly that Hermione wasn't sure whether the chills running down her spine were from his voice or the cold water.

"I'm looking for..."

"Did you expect you could Apparate back and forth within my wards and I wouldn't notice?"

"I wasn't... I didn't mean..." Hermione was trembling.

"I'm a convicted murderer and a known Death Eater. Haven't you had enough experience with Death Eaters to warn you not to dawdle here?"

"NO!" Hermione blazed. "Let me finish! I'm looking for your last magicmeter, not you. You weren't supposed to be at the same place. It is dangerous. Voldemort could have found what it shows!"

Snape looked at his former student in silence. Then he hissed through his teeth, "Don't mention that name. Get out of the water and dry yourself. There is tea in the cottage," he said, then turned and walked away.

Author's Notes: The idea of the Portkey Charm placed on a house was inspired by notsosaintly's story Soothing Hands on Ashwinder. Thanks a lot for that wonderful story, notsosaintly! Please review. Reviews are what keeps the writer friends with the Muse.