H.U.R.L.

Following on the heels of a rash of rashes in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the entire Ministry of Magic has contracted the virulent purple contagion! Reports of dueling in the halls by distinguished members of the Ministry staff, resulting in many grievous injuries, have been flooding the Daily Prophet since early yesterday morning.

One eyewitness, his jowls aquiver with fright, told this reporter, “It was Undersecretary Umbridge, without a doubt! She hexed a clerk until he had more arms than toes! Just for knocking a pile of papers to the floor!”

And where are our intrepid Aurors during this crisis of skin complaints? At home, nursing their own rashes!

The Minister for Magic was unavailable for comment, but…

Hermione snorted rudely as she abandoned the article mid-sentence and jabbed her spoon between the pulp and membrane of a section of grapefruit with all the disdain she held for Ms. Rita Skeeter. Several droplets of juice splattered onto her portrait at the bottom of the article, and the photographed woman glared balefully out of the photo, wiping ineffectually at the drops with two-dimensional fingers. Smirking, Hermione popped the section into her mouth and chewed with relish. She was determined to enjoy her breakfast because it was very likely the only thing about her day that she would enjoy.

She was no closer to solving her long-term cosmetics Potions shortage than she had been a week ago when she’d had that disastrous meeting with Malfoy and Snape. Quince had managed to finagle enough of their staples to keep A New You running for a couple more weeks, and she had spent long hours in her lab brewing the trickier ones herself, but they couldn’t continue like this. For one thing, she needed to sleep once in a while.

‘When I get my hands on those contract-breaking bastards, I’m going to give them the worst case of jock itch they have ever known and then light their hands on fire,’ she promised herself. In actuality, she knew that she wouldn’t actually light their hands on fire, but as soon as the Ministry settled down after its crippling bout of Rash, she would drag them through a legal process so painful that they would wish for something as trivial as a burning groin.

Now that her company wasn’t going to chug to a halt come Monday morning, she could continue her investigation into the mysterious Rash. She had determined that whatever the irritant was, it had to come in contact with one’s skin, and from there, it rooted into the tissue, forming the notorious purple hives. Though many of the infected Aurors had stopped coming to her clinic, she was now being inundated with the overflow of Ministry staff that couldn’t be treated at St. Mungo’s. This bleary dawn’s breakfast was actually a very late midnight snack.

Hermione gave her loose, dirty hair a good scratching with her nails, grimacing at the feeling of oil collecting at her roots. She hadn’t pulled all-nighters like this in many years. She had only just gotten home thirty minutes ago, when a spreading stain of periwinkle light was extinguishing the final few faint stars. The pristine white walls of her tiny kitchen and dinette were now glowing a pale pastel pink that would have irritated her had it actually been paint. Five stories below her kitchen window, the street was still relatively quiet. The most ridiculously tempting smell of baking bread was wafting through the small gap she had opened to let in the summer morning breeze.

Something cold and wet touched her shin, and she jumped, jerking her leg away and slamming her toes into table’s center pillar. Cursing, she twisted to glare under the table at her cat Crookshanks, who was giving her a yellow-eyed look of effrontery. He twitched his orange bottlebrush tail and leapt onto the chair next to her, proceeding to sniff the table and eye her breakfast with interest. Smiling sweetly at her long-time familiar, she offered the grapefruit to him. He looked away disdainfully, turning his back on her to circle in place on the seat of the chair until he had found the perfect position in which to lie down. Smiling fondly, Hermione gave him a good scratching behind his ears, which he tolerated with an air of forbearance.

The whole fiasco had begun to remind her so much of her years at Hogwarts – the disaster, research, and late nights – that in a fit of sleep-deprivation induced delirium, she had run to the bathroom to verify that she hadn’t suddenly re-grown buck-teeth.

She snorted again and sipped from her mug of strong, scalding hot, black coffee. It amused her to think that Snape, who was so adamantly opposed to the “ridiculous Cosmetic Transfiguration business,” had been part of the instigation of her first foray into it. Had he actually helped her when she had been struck by the Densaugeo instead of making nasty comments, then she might not have been moved to help the old witch with her appearance. Perhaps she should send the old black bat a coupon for a free nose job after all.

It also amused her that neither Snape nor Malfoy had realized that she had cast a countercharm to the Muffliato, hearing every word that they had intended to share in private. She had developed it years ago to deal with staff that thought it funny to snicker about the boss behind her back. Not even Harry or Ron knew about it, and she was pleased to keep it that way.

Her satisfaction in her small victory only partially ameliorated the sting of Snape’s comments. She supposed that she shouldn’t have expected anything more, and goodness knew that she didn’t deserve anything kind from him, but his contempt for her was demoralizing. He had seemed so changed, so unlike the greasy git of her school years, that she had been caught off guard. He could actually be appealing if he quit scowling and kept his mouth shut.

They were quite the matched pair, Malfoy and Snape: the honey-tongued golden boy who could charm the knickers off a marble statue and the razor-tongued dark wizard who probably hadn’t seen a pair of knickers for decades. They were so different that they fit together like puzzle pieces. Or bookends. Her eyes slightly glazed, Hermione smiled goofily at the shelves of books that lined her living room wall. They could sandwich her collection of historical vampire romances… Hermione frowned and blinked.

She really needed sleep.

Sighing wistfully, she took another slurping sip of coffee and shuffled through the dinette and into her living room to the fireplace. Sleep would have to come later.

Saturday at dawn or not, Hermione suspected that Harry would be at the office. Tossing a pinch of Floo powder into the fire, she waited for the flame to flare green before sticking her head into it. “Harry, are you there?”

“Ginny? Oh.” Eyes as bloodshot and unfocused as hers felt, Harry heaved himself out of his desk chair and slouched to the office Floo, grinding his fists into his eye sockets.

“Sorry to disappoint.” Harry grimaced at her and blinked hard several times. His uniform was disheveled and wrinkled, and he had a splattered, brown stain on his chest. “Long night?” she asked.

“And an early morning. Ginny brought me breakfast,” he said, gesturing at the stain with a tired smile. “Are you bringing me a cure?”

“I wish that I had better news… And if you are working these hours, then I assume Skeeter wasn’t exaggerating the state of the Ministry as much as I had hoped.”

“If by exaggerated you mean demolished by a stampede of drunken trolls, then yes, she exaggerated.”

“Try Umbridge hexing extra arms onto an underling? Everyone out sick with the Rash? Dueling in the halls?”

Harry nodded and gave his eyes another good rubbing. “Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.”

Chuckling, Hermione shook her head. “You really need to get some sleep.” He sent her a pointed look. “I know; you don’t have to say it.” Magic surged around her, the green flame engulfing her head and neck and crackling against her skin like static electricity. Someone else was trying to use Harry’s office Floo.

Immediately, he noticed her discomfort. “That’s probably Ron,” he said apologetically.

“Right. Goodnight, Harry.”

“Morning.”

“Whatever.” She pulled her head out of the Floo with a sigh of relief, fingering the frizzy harpy’s nest that her hair had become. Nothing had the ability to undo the effects of expensive, leave-in conditioner like Floo traffic collisions. She couldn’t muster anything more than resigned irritation and, deciding that she might as well add snarls to frizz, flopped onto her back on the hearthrug and gave her own eyes a thorough rubbing. She still had things to do this morning, but the thick pile of the rug was much more cushy than she had remembered, and a short moment of relaxation wouldn’t do any harm…

Before the last traces of Floo green had been burned from the hearth, Hermione had fallen fast asleep.

Severus Snape was in a foul mood this afternoon, a condition that was much more atypical than most of his acquaintances would think. Usually, he was happy to putter about his garden trimming herbs, watering, weeding, and the like. The sun warming his dark hair; the cool, moist feel of the earth on his hands; the scent of flowering herbs and fertilizer, all were so far removed from his life under the Dark Lord that he relished each and every sensation. Even the caress of soft cotton against his skin, the tee shirt and jeans he had adopted as his gardening clothes, was a reminder that he was free and alive to enjoy it.

He had thought that he would hate gardening when he had first started it as a necessity for acquiring potions ingredients. It had been during the war crimes trials when most of wizarding Britain howled for his blood and he dared not show his face in public. By the time he had been exonerated and had become famous for his work as a spy and the potion that had saved his life, his bit of garden had become his solace, and his brewing merely a means of supporting himself.

It had started out small and functional, just large enough to support the basic necessities of small-shop potions brewing. Now, he had a greenhouse that he was ever expanding to accommodate more plants and an outdoor garden that overtook the backyard of Spinner’s End and half of the neighbors’ yards on either side of him (not that they noticed). Two years ago, he had extended his back porch into a sort of atrium where he kept his more ornamental varieties and a wicker table and chair set.

He even had a small pot of tiger lilies in memory of Lily Potter, to which he gave the most diligent and dedicated care. Finally living as a free man after so many years under two masters’ yokes, Severus had learned to be happy, and with that happiness had come acceptance of her choices and her death. That wasn’t to say that he didn’t still miss her and that a piece of his heart wasn’t irretrievably lost with her passing, but he could finally think about her without tearing fresh wounds. He could honor her with these flowers and remember what a brilliant being she had been. It made him happy, so he did it. It was a good feeling.

This week, however, he had lost his equilibrium such that he could not even relax in his own garden. The blame rested solely on the shoulders of his tosser of a godson. He did not want to work with Miss Granger, and he didn’t owe explanations to anyone. He wasn’t quite sure how he had lost the argument at Liliput’s, but since the little wanker hadn’t shoved a signed contract under his nose, he assumed that he had been sufficiently nasty that Miss Granger had taken her obscene company and gone elsewhere.

He could throttle Draco for that nose job comment, even if he had misheard it.

Severus glared at the tray of fireweed seedlings that he meant to transfer to a freshly mulched bed, absently wiping his hands on a rag. He couldn’t quite remember if he had added one brick of brimstone to the bed or two, compounding his vexation. If he added another brick after already adding two, then the plants might spark as they grew, possibly causing a fire in the herb garden. If he left at as it was, but had only added one, then the plants would be sickly for lack of sulfur. Growling to himself, he crumbled half of one brick over the dirt and mixed it with his hands.

Planting this particular herb was always a little off-putting. It was a key ingredient in his famed Stoppered Death. He had developed it during the quiet between the Dark Lord’s death and resurrection mostly because he had wondered if he could. It put the drinker in a form of stasis just before the moment of death: blood ceased to flow, organs shut down, the heart ceased beating, but the fireweed kept the body warm and the brain oxygenated while shavings of bezoar neutralized almost any poison that had entered the bloodstream. The only person with whom he had shared its existence was Dumbledore, and the old wizard hadn’t gotten around to taking it before his death. In the end, it probably wouldn’t have saved him.

After the Dark Lord had made his reappearance, Severus began dosing himself, just in case. By the time Nagini had bit him, her venom had been almost instantly counteracted and his body had been held in stasis until the Aurors had found it, albeit several pints low. It had been Potter’s words at the final confrontation with the Dark Lord that had earned him immediate medical attention and saved him a trip to Azkaban. Although he did wish the little prat had kept the part about Lily to himself. He later learned from Poppy that Dumbledore had told her about his potion, which was how she had known to treat him. In the rush to save him, she had inadvertently leaked the knowledge to the Aurors that had brought him in. He was now quite famous (or infamous, depending on one’s audience) for his little pet project. The name had premiered in the Daily Prophet, assigned by one of his prior students, and had stuck ever since. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad name. It was also one of his most expensive products and had already earned him enough to live comfortably for a long, long time.

For more than ten years, he had managed to steer clear of the trio that had been both a prime source of aggravation and final salvation. He’d kept his eye on them, of course. Potter shouldn’t have lived. The fact that he had, even though the Horcrux had been destroyed, meant that a piece of the Dark Lord would always live, even if it was only in Severus’ own mind. Weasley was ever the sidekick, and he doubted that the boy would have made much of himself if he hadn’t had Potter’s coattails to ride. Miss Granger, though… She was something else. What, he wasn’t sure, but certainly a force unto herself. No Muggle-born witch had climbed quite so far so fast in the wizarding business world. She bore watching, and watched her he had – from a distance.

At the ill-conceived meeting at Liliput’s, he had caught from her mind the lingering guilt she held for her inaction when she had thought he had been killed by Nagini’s bite. He hated it. He wanted neither her guilt nor her pity. He wouldn’t have wanted her help either, even if she had offered it. What he wanted was to be left alone and to live life on his own terms. Simple enough, unless one’s marketing rep was Draco Malfoy.

“Severus!” His godson’s voice intruded on his ruminations as surely as if he’d summoned him with his thoughts. He blinked down at his fireweed seedlings, still in their tray. For that past several minutes, he had been absently massaging brimstone into their new bed, and it was now more than mixed.

‘Blast. Now, was that one brick or two?’ he wondered, stoically ignoring Draco’s insistent calls. ‘Ah, yes, I added that half-brick…’ It would have to do. Carefully twisting the tray, he eased the first seedling out of its cubby and into his hand.

“You know I hate it when you ignore me,” Draco stated as his tall body blocked the sun and cast a dark shadow over his work. Severus did know and chose not to answer. Instead, he prepared a small hole with his free hand and deposited the seedling into it, tamping down the dirt with light pressure from his fingers. “Uncle, I am going to start whinging, and I know that you hate it when I whinge.”

That was also true, and Severus debated for a moment whether annoying Draco was worth being further annoyed himself. Apparently unwilling to wait, Draco sighed and shoved a newspaper into his face. Severus decided that the sooner he dealt with whatever his godson deemed so important, the sooner he would go away. Surely there was some skirt out there that he had yet to poke.

Following on the heels of a rash of rashes in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the entire Ministry of Magic has contracted the virulent purple contagion! Reports of dueling in the halls by distinguished members of the Ministry staff…

“And?” Severus asked as he pushed the paper aside. He had seen the article in yesterday’s paper and had had a good chuckle.

“Have you seen this?” Draco shook the paper in his fist as his voice rose in incredulity.

“Yes,” he said as blandly as he could manage.

“We need to be the ones to invent the treatment! We’ll make vaults of Galleons when we charge top-of-the-market prices to all of the medical facilities in Britain!”

“I’m sure St. Mungo’s has it well in hand.” Severus really didn’t want to be bothered by this. It had Trouble written all over it, and he liked his quiet life. The wizarding world could sort this one out on its own without any help form him. As far as he was concerned, he had paid his dues. “Besides the fact that one must know the cause of the infection to produce a cure.” He narrowed his eyes and fixed his godson with a determined frown when the boy opened his mouth to speak. “I want no part of this. Do I make myself plain?”

Dismissing Draco by turning his back, he pulled a sizable handful of dragon dung fertilizer from the bag at his thigh.

“Potter and Weasley work for the Ministry – I bet Granger has an inside track.” The way the boy said her name disturbed him, and Severus glanced up to see a decidedly wolfish smile stretching his face. He had termed it Draco’s Hunting Smile, and it was, indeed, Trouble. “Excellent. I had intended to drop in on her tomorrow, anyway. I’ll see what she knows.”

“And why would you do that?” he asked guardedly, knowing that he wouldn’t like the answer.

Draco raised an eyebrow. “Business. Remember, I acquire the clients and you brew the potions. Though,” he paused thoughtfully, and Severus did not like the combination of consideration and Hunting Smile, “I wouldn’t mind knowing Granger on a more… personal level. She is a formidable woman with exceptional assets. We would make an unstoppable— Hey!” Draco backpedaled swiftly, shaking manure out of hair. “What the fuck? Hey!” Ducking, Draco watched another handful of manure sail over his head.

“Get out!” Severus roared and plunged his hand back into the bag of dragon dung for another clod, lobbing it at his godson’s retreating back.

“What did you give these rats, Hermione?” Ron asked as he crouched in front of a glass aquarium. In it, two hairless rats mottled with purple hives wobbled about on a bed of shavings. Two others, almost covered with the Rash, were curled into tight balls in the corner. “They look stoned.” Wrinkling his freckled nose, Ron tapped the glass with his fingernail. One of the rats gave him a disinterested glance and then flopped onto its back to roll in the shavings. Another aquarium, this one divided in half with a shimmering magical barrier, contained two infected rats with their sharp teeth bared and specks of foam around their mouths. In a flash of glowing red eyes, one the rats threw itself against the barrier, where it was held immobile for a moment before being dropped twitching to the shavings. As it lay inert, the second rat attempted to attack it, but like the first, it hit the barrier with similar results. Ron shuddered. He’d never like Hermione’s lab.

A bizarre amalgamation of Magic and Muggle, the room was something out of one those late-night “movings” (Ron thought that was the word) that Hermione used to make him watch, complete with hulking machinery, various magical implements for weighing, measuring, and who else knew what, a complicated Potions rig with more tubing than he had ever used in all his years of Potions classes, and crazed animals scurrying in cages. All it was missing was the stretcher with the patchwork man on it, hooked up to wires that would bring him to life when lightning hit the roof. It already had the mad doctor with wild hair.

‘Not so wild anymore,’ Ron thought fondly as he eyed his ex-girlfriend. She had cleaned up much more elegantly than he could have ever guessed. Even in her lab coat, she had her hair slicked back into a tight bun that accentuated her high cheekbones and large, brown eyes. And she wasn’t really mad, though she did seem irritated that they had sought her out in her inner sanctum.

“They are not rats, Ronald,” snapped Hermione as she snatched his hand away from the aquarium. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interfere with my work.”

“They look like rats.” Folding his arms over his chest, he shot Harry a long-suffering look behind Hermione’s back as she jotted something down in the notebook she always carried while in the lab. “Except for being bald.”

Sighing loudly, Hermione straightened and propped a fist on her hip. “I told you months ago that I had developed a way of testing without using live animals. They are Transfigured cotton balls, and I designed them to behave like humans when treated with potions, Charms and Transfigurations. They Transfigure back to their original form instead of dieing. It’s much more humane than using real rats.” Hermione sniffed when Ron rolled his eyes, then turned back to her notes.

“Maybe you should start a club,” Ron suggested casually. “Humanitarians Unite for Rattish Liberation.”

“Well, erm,” Harry interrupted before Hermione could do anything she would later regret with the long-needled syringe she was holding in one hand. “We won’t be here long. We just wanted to check up on your progress.”

Depressing the plunger of the syringe until a thin stream of liquid squirted from the tip of the needle, Hermione lifted the top of the divided aquarium. With a gloved hand, she grabbed one of the rats, still unconscious from its most recent altercation with the barrier, and inserted the needle into the flesh at the back of the neck. Once the syringe was empty, she deposited the rat back into the cage and shut the lid.

“I’ve managed to infect these specimens with the Rash from samples of blood collected from patients.” She popped the needle out of the syringe and dropped it into a small, plastic container. Tossing the container into a bin marked “Hazardous Waste,” she set the syringe on the counter and gave them her full attention. “Most of them get spotty and feverish, but improve in a few days. A couple have died from the fever.”

“I’ve not heard of anyone dieing,” Harry said quickly. He frowned and glanced at Ron, who shook his head.

“Nor have I, but we shouldn’t discount the possibility.”

“And these rats over here?” Ron pointed to the divided aquarium. The rat that Hermione had just dosed was now sitting calmly in the shavings, watching with twitching whiskers as its cellmate threw itself at the barrier again.

Pausing for a moment, Hermione pursed her lips as she stared intently at the more aggressive rats. Finally, she spoke. “What do Pleatherby, Umbridge, Davenport and Watson all have in common?”

“They’re all being held at St. Mungo’s for violent tendencies and a nasty case of the Rash,” Ron said, proud of himself for knowing the answer to her question.

“And?” she asked in that tone of voice that made Ron feel like an idiot. He frowned at her.

“They’re all right bastards.”

“Davenport isn’t that bad,” Harry corrected him. “He’s just a bit…” Harry shrugged.

“Dark,” Hermione finished for him. “I would bet all four of them dabble in the Dark Arts.” Three pairs of eyes turned to the two aggressive rats, one sitting in place and one laying on its side as it recuperated. “I cast a minor Dark spell on both of those rats during their Transfiguration.”

Ron gasped, his face twisting in horror and disgust. “Hermione, you—”

“Dark Magic in and of itself isn’t evil, Ronald. Only when used for evil purposes,” she explained impatiently before he could finish. Ron didn’t agree; he had been raised to believe that anything Dark was evil. Hermione, being Muggleborn, hadn’t been taught that. They had had many arguments over the years regarding the inherent goodness or evil of magic, and he found many of Hermione’s thoughts on the subject much too liberal for his taste. Though he agreed that most any spell could be used for evil purposes, he was convinced that Dark Magic was evil, and even if used with the best of intentions, no good would come of it.

“Just as long as you’re careful,” Harry interjected before Ron could continue the argument. Snapping his mouth shut, Ron frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. He’d let it go for the moment, but this conversation wasn’t over. He did not like the fact that she had gone beyond the rationalization of Dark Magic into practical use.

“I know what I’m doing,” Hermione said, a trifle defensively. “I’ve done a great deal of reading on the subject of Dark Magic, and—” She cut herself off, steering the conversation back on topic. “Only the rats treated with Dark Magic show increased aggression, and though the Rash eventually goes away, they exhibit violence and symptoms similar to rabies. The foam at the mouth, for example.” She pointed at the untreated rat, which was pacing the barrier and baring its teeth at the other.

“What did you give that one?” Harry asked, gesturing at the one that remained seated and unaffected by the other’s display. As they watched, it climbed to its feet and stumbled away from the barrier in a drunken lurch.

“The same thing that I gave these three: Malum Quiesco.” She set her hand on the top of the aquarium that held the four other rats. “Except for these two; they remain untreated.” She pointed to the rats huddled in the corner. They looked as miserable as hairless, purple-spotted rats could look, which was very, very miserable.

Ron and Harry nodded, familiar with Malum Quiesco, a potion often administered to Dark wizards on capture to make them easier to handle. It inhibited their ability to use the Dark Arts and made them a bit dopey. Once, just after being dosed, a Dark wizard had enthusiastically embraced Harry. The wizard had proclaimed his undieing affection for the young Auror, giving him a sloppy kiss, and Ron had promptly Stunned him into unconsciousness. It was something about which he still gave Harry shit when they were in their cups.

“It doesn’t cure the Rash, but it temporarily suppresses the violent tendencies in the Dark ones,” Hermione said quietly. “You might consider keeping it on hand at all times.”

“We’re one step ahead of you,” Ron said flippantly and grinned as he pulled a tiny unbreakable phial of the potion from a satchel on his belt. It wasn’t often that he could one-up the brilliant witch.

“But we appreciate the advice.” Harry was quick to jump in when he spotted the storm clouds brewing behind her eyes. “We wouldn’t necessarily have thought to use it against Rash victims.” He elbowed Ron to forestall any more Hermione-baiting. “You’ll notify us when you have anything more?”

“Yes, of course,” she said edgily. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Through a curtain of long red hair, Ginny stared at him through hooded eyes as she dragged the swollen head of a purple mushroom across her bottom lip. Harry sat hunched in his office chair, his head pillowed on one arm that was folded on his desk as he gazed longingly up at her, but he was unable to move. Sprawled across the drifts of paperwork on his desk, she was wearing nothing but one of his Muggle undershirts and was close enough to touch. Despite his best efforts (and they were Herculean), he could not lift his arm to reach that small distance. She seemed to know this. Smirking, she tongued the ridged underside of the mushroom’s cap, watching him intently with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

It wasn’t just the promise of what her mouth was doing – he did NOT want her to eat that mushroom. The sight of its mottled, purple skin filled him with unreasonable dread, but did absolutely nothing to cool his libido. When she bared her straight, white teeth and began to nibble on the stem, he almost piddled himself. With a leisurely swipe of her tongue, she wetted the head of the mushroom and then reached across the short, impossible distance between them to wipe it across Harry’s lips. Shuddering with revulsion and need, he clamped shut lips that seemed to be the only part of his body that could move.

Her eyes flashed, and her lips turned down into a pout as she shifted on his desk to sit up, sending an untidy stack of scrolls clattering to the floor. Glaring at him from behind locks of hair, she flicked the mushroom at him, pegging him between the eyes. Harry jerked in his seat, but could not even make a noise of protest. Retrieving another mushroom from somewhere on his desk, she threw it at him, this time hitting one of his cheeks. As if hit by a muscle-spasm spell, his body convulsed, and he wrenched out of the chair, falling supine to the floor.

“Ow, fuck,” he groaned and felt at the back of his head for a knot with hands that suddenly obeyed his commands.

“You better not have been dreaming about Ginny,” Ron’s voice intruded on his foggy thoughts, and he opened crusty eyes to see his friend perched on the edge of his desk holding a bag of peanuts. He flicked one at Harry, and it landed in his stubbornly tousled black hair.

“What?” Ron shot Harry’s tented trousers a pointed look, and Harry closed his eyes again, letting his head fall back to the floor.

“And here I was, thinking you were working, feeling sorry for you,” Ron said as he tilted a handful of peanuts into his mouth and chewed with a minimum of smacking – Hermione’s influence, Harry was sure. Toeing several scrolls that were scattered on the floor, he eyed Harry’s desk with disdain. “You know they have a supplementary file for this kind of stuff,” he said, fluttering a large stack of forms and wrinkling his nose at the clouds of dust that shot from the pages. “It’s called a rubbish bin.”

“Unless you’ve got real food or are willing to help, go away,” Harry said from his supine position on the floor. He’d get up in a minute. Just not this minute.

“I’ve got something better for you, mate: we have a skulker in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.” Ron grinned widely and much too enthusiastically for Harry’s taste.

Groaning, Harry covered his eyes with his arm. “Maybe someone came in to do some actual work, Ron. You know, that stuff you do at the office?”

“Like sleeping at your desk? No. For one thing, it’s Sunday afternoon and all the Floos are blocked. And for another, that entire department is sick with the Rash.”

“Fine,” Harry grumbled and heaved himself off the floor. His joints popped so loudly that Ron winced in sympathy. Upon standing, Harry realized that he had a crick in his neck and couldn’t turn his head to the left. Fantastic.

“Blech. Did the squid get stuck in the U-bend?” Harry whispered to Ron as they splashed as quietly as they could through a long puddle that stretched the stone corridor and around the bend. The intruder was just around the corner near the lavatories, which were always flooding. Rumor had it that a pygmy squid had escaped from one of the department’s tanks and had taken up residence in the pipes. No one in the department would admit to keeping a pet squid in the office, however; nor could anyone explain how a squid could jump out of a tank and crawl to the loo.

Ron put a finger to his lips and sidled along the hall with his back to the wall. Reaching the corner, he pointed at the corner and crooked his index finger, then jerked his thumb toward Harry; the Auror gesture meaning that he intended to confront the perpetrator and that Harry should back him up. Harry tapped his temple and then pointed to the row of doors lining the corridor, meaning that Ron was being an idiot and that it was probably just someone there to catch up on work. With a frown, Ron pointed to Harry’s drawn wand and held his thumb and forefinger one inch apart: Harry should have a mid-range Stunner prepared. Rolling his eyes, Harry pointed at the corner and then made the international sign for wanking: if Ron Stunned whoever it was, then there would be paperwork to file, and Ron would be doing it solo. Ron gave him the two-finger salute and slipped around the corner. Resignedly, Harry slid along the opposite wall, his wand held steady and ready to return fire or cast protections.

Ron stopped dead, staring in amazement at the woman kneeling on the floor, her long, blond hair trailing in the puddle of water. Her forest green robes were also wet where her knees touched the stone. She was leaning over, peering at something along the base of the wall. “Luna!” he exclaimed, his voice echoing down the stone corridor.

“Hallo, Ron.” She glanced at him over her shoulder, smiling invitingly as if she had been waiting for him.

Harry sighed heavily, his heart still beating more quickly than normal. It was a Pavlovian response to sneaking around, and it made him feel immensely silly. Tucking his wand into his sleeve sheath, he leaned against the wall and scowled hard at his best friend’s back.

“What are you doing here? And how did you get in?” Ron asked the questions ungracefully, still pointing his wand at the blonde. He realized it a moment later and shoved it up his sleeve, belatedly taking an authoritative stance that was wholly lost on the woman at his feet.

Planting her hands on her thighs, she levered herself off the ground and cast a quick drying spell on her robes. “I just Flooed in at the entrance.”

Ron and Harry exchanged incredulous glances. The Floos in the front entrance were blocked against anyone but Aurors. That and many other security policies had been implemented since the final fall of Voldemort to restrict access to undesirables while there was no one about to keep an eye on things. All employees who wanted their Floos open after hours were required to fill out a form and have the Minister himself sign it.

Luna blinked owlishly at them. “I had dropped by to see if the Ministry had an infestation of Exotic Bluebodied Skin Mites. They cause the appearance of a rash, you know. They enter your skin through the pores, and then send up tiny snorkels to breathe. As they get bigger, they push up the skin, forming what looks like hives. You can see the purple color of their bodies through your skin.” Unconsciously, Ron began to scratch at a patch of rash on his shoulder that had not quite healed. She watched his hand curiously and Ron dropped it, blushing. She continued, “I haven’t found signs of a Mite infestation, but you do have some strange mushrooms—”

“Mushrooms?” Harry interrupted, pushing off the wall and walking quickly to the spot where she had been kneeling.

“They seem to have killed the mold that has grown due to the flooding.”

Harry’s stomach had begun an uncomfortable churning. Kneeling down, he peered at the wall where it connected with the floor. Sure enough, a patch of pallid mushrooms was flourishing in a tiny ring where a slick of mold had gone dry and brown. Even the stone blocks that made up the wall had lost their polished luster.

“I hate this place,” Ron said with a shudder. He had actually seen the department’s collection of rare and poisonous spiders.

“Ron, did we tell Hermione about those mushrooms we found in the Forbidden Forest?”

“What mushrooms?”

Sighing, Harry squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn’t, either. It had simply slipped his mind, that errand having been one of many that day, and certainly the least exciting. He now had a suspicion as to where his mushroom sample had disappeared. “I think we need to go back to the Forbidden Forest to take another look.”

“Oh, those mushrooms.”

“Alright,” Luna agreed.

“You aren’t coming,” Harry said unequivocally.

“Of course I am,” Luna said just as firmly. Her pale blue, slightly protuberant eyes regarded him steadily, and he felt his resolve weakening. Another Pavlovian response, he supposed, ingrained in him by Ginny and Hermione.

“What’s the harm in it? She’s already been exposed,” Ron said, eyeing the woman more than casually.

Flabbergasted by Ron’s thickheadedness, Harry was silent for a moment, his mouth gaping open. “What’s the harm? Some of Hermione’s rats died! Ron, this is a serious matter, not an opportunity to chase—”

“They weren’t rats!” Ron shot back. “And there have been no cases of human death—”

“You are putting civilian lives at risk, you—!”

“Are you suggesting that the mushrooms and the Rash are connected?” Luna interrupted before Harry could shout to the rafters just how stupid and selfish he thought Ron was being.

“Perhaps,” Harry said. “Which means that you might have already caught it! Did you touch them?”

She shook her head. “So no worries then. If I catch it, I’ll end up in bed with a fever and purple hives. If I don’t, then I don’t.”

“Alright, then!” Ron grinned at her. Seeing that Harry meant to protest again, he added, “We caught it, and now we’re fine. Honestly, Harry, it’s just a rash!”

“That seems to incite violent tendencies and has crippled the Ministry with mass absenteeism!”

“The Forbidden Forest, you said?” Luna said thoughtfully. “If the mushrooms are somehow the cause, then the Rash might have spread to Hogwarts.”

A/N: Many thanks to my betas! I also appreciate the reviews that you have left. I like to know what I’m doing right and what could be improved.

House points to those of you who can place Harry’s comment about cats and dogs. ;)