Chapter 2

AN: Thanks go to my beta firefly_124 and my Brit-picker saracen77!

Chapter 2

A Ministry Records search confirms it – only two of the many missing names have Wizarding birth certificates.

The quiet yet official channels between the Ministry and the Muggle government would allow Hermione to order copies of any records she needs, but such activity could easily be tracked. Severus argues for a weekend attempt, but impatience and a growing feeling of wrongness won't allow her to wait that long. Besides, who in their right mind expects government officials to work late? Especially when Man U is playing Arsenal?

So come Wednesday night, she finds her Disillusioned self facing something much more frustrating than filing cabinets: computers.

If asked, she would say that the Births and Deaths Section of the General Register Office in Southport might have been using microfiche at best. But no, they're 'Ready for the Twenty-first Century!' as a poster in the lobby proclaims rather obnoxiously in hideous neon orange.

Too bad Hermione's been living in the Nineteenth.

She sighs, causing Severus to rustle beside her, and then his breath is warm on her ear as he leans towards her in what must be a miscalculation of their respective, albeit invisible, positions. "Do you know how to work one of these infernal contraptions?"

She shakes her head, hitting his nose lightly with her cheekbone, then stills to say, "Not really. Mum and Dad keep one at the office but don't have one at home since I never needed one for schoolwork. And Muggle Studies never got to the calculator, let alone the computer, so ..."

"And while I could procure undetected entry into the building for us, that is the extent of my expertise."

He's even closer, lips brushing her ear with every third sound, and a quick rush shivers through her at the sensation.

"So ..." Voice cracking, she stops to clear her throat. "What do we do?"

"Magic, I daresay."

Even his voice has the ability to smirk.

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Ten minutes later, there's no smirking of any kind. But there is a fair amount of smoke and a computer that's sparking and ... shivering?

Having given up on being Disillusioned, Severus raises his wand, and Hermione swears that the computer cringes backwards like a small animal cornered by its traditional predator.

"Agua–"

"No!" She turns to clap her left hand across his mouth, steadying herself on his shoulder with the other. "You can't use water on this unless you want to short out the electrics for the entire building."

He mumbles something against her palm in a warm tickle, and she jerks it away. "Um, sorry. What?"

"What do you propose then?"

"Well, Reparo didn't work, but if we could exactly reverse everything we did ..."

"That does not seem likely." He gestures towards the quivering machine with his wand hand.

The computer sends up a shower of red sparks that fountain above it like a distress signal.

"Right," Hermione says, looking around the room. "What if we use one of the other computers as ... as a sort of template for this computer? Force it to adopt the status of the good one?"

"Feasible."

"But then we leave. We obviously can't magic information out of these." In frustration, she prods a normal computer with her wand. "We'll have to ask for help."

He raises a skeptical eyebrow.

"Don't worry. I have someone in mind."

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"Hermione!" Harry's smile beams as he draws her in for a hug. "I thought you said you couldn't make it." He pulls back and holds out a hand to Severus. "Good to see you."

Shaking the proffered hand, Snape simply nods.

"Well, you've missed the first half," Harry says, waving them into the house and towards the lounge, which echoes with the sound of Ginny and Ron cheering over the voice of a football announcer. "Man U's up three goals, but I think Arsenal might rally."

"Harry." Hermione lays a hand on his arm. "We didn't come for the game."

He takes in her serious expression and says, "Right. Why don't we go into the study?"

A computer still takes up half the desk, and Hermione feels a flush of relief as they all sit.

"So what can I help you with?"

"We're taking a look into something that might be dodgy or could be nothing, but we need to make sure."

Harry sits forward, elbows on knees, the gleam of adventure in his eye. "So you want an Auror to look into it?"

"No," Severus replies. "It is imperative that this be handled discreetly as it appears that certain ... elements, shall we say, at the Ministry are involved."

Looking back and forth between the two of them, Harry's smile fades, and he sits back in his chair.

She continues. "To take things further, we need someone who knows a bit about Muggle computers and can ..." She glances over to Severus, who's wearing a slightly-smirky expression, his lip curled just a bit in what Hermione now reads as amusement due to mild Shadenfruede. Turning back to Harry, she says all in a rush, "Well, we'd need you to do something that's not exactly ... legal, and I know you're an Auror now, but trust me when I say this isn't to hurt anyone, and –"

"Hermione." Harry holds up a hand to stop her. "It's alright. There may only be a handful of people I trust completely, but you're one of them." He looks over at Snape. "You're both one of them."

She glances over to see Severus's eyes widen slightly in what she assumes is surprise, then smiles at Harry. "Thanks, Harry. So how are you with computers?"

"Not as good as Ginny. She got that tinkering gene from Arthur, you know, though she's a good sight better at it than he is. Uh, don't tell him I said that. Anyways, she's always sussing out all those things to hook to the telly and messing about with the internet. Still, I'm decent enough."

"You'd need to be able to get into a government computer and find specific files."

He runs a hand over his hair, making it stand up even more. "I'll try, but that might be beyond me."

Hermione frowns. There's no way to have Ginny come along – she's due any day now. Water breaking in the middle of breaking and entering doesn't seem quite the brightest idea. Then she thinks of something. "I know. What if we used something that would allow us to communicate with Ginny to ask her advice? Like the DA coins, only bigger? I think I remember the spell."

"Those were quite a clever use of the Protean Charm. I remember Albus raving about them," Severus says. "And I could aid you in making something appropriate if necessary."

"Good – that's sorted. Now all we need is to pick the night to do it. Tomorrow?"

Harry shakes his head. "That's no good. We've dinner with Molly and Arthur. How about Friday?"

Severus nods, so Hermione says, "Friday it is. You'll fill Ginny in without telling her what it's about?"

Harry laughs. "How could I? You haven't even told me."

"Right. Well, that's ..."

"Hopefully only a temporary measure to ensure security," Severus adds.

"I get it. Now, let's go watch some footy. I made that chocolate log you like, Hermione, and Luna probably kept Ron from eating all the crisps."

Snape's lips pinch inwards just a bit, and Hermione laughs to herself. "Come on." She takes his arm and pulls him towards the lounge after Harry. "A little football won't hurt you."

"It will if Arsenal wins."

"A Man U fan? I should have known, you Northerner you."

She grins up at him, and he returns her expression with the first real smile she's ever seen on him.

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Work the next day drags, routine filing not nearly enough to distract Hermione's thoughts from what she'd rather be researching.

And who she'd rather be discussing it with.

But going through the lists again without any additional information would be a waste of time. She should know – she already did it twice last night instead of sleeping.

Lunch is quiet, her soggy sandwich much less appetizing without someone to make fun of it to.

She takes a sip of tea that also doesn't taste as good, although this time it's due to the fact that the Ministry doesn't use as nice of a blend as the one Severus makes.

Hermione sighs. Anytime she's not thinking about her project, she catches her mind wandering ... elsewhere.

Is it simply loneliness, or is it him?

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The computers of the General Register Office stretch before them on desk after desk, a sea of bouncing balls on black mocking, so mocking. Hermione never realized it was possible to hate a screensaver.

When she sees the chair in front of the first computer move, she says, "Not that one, Harry."

"Why not?"

She pictures it trembling before Severus. "That's the one we messed about with. It might not be one-hundred percent."

"Which one then?"

"How about that one?" She points to one a few desks over, then realizes he can't see her, and says, "The one three to the left. It should be far enough away that we didn't affect it."

"Right."

The chair moves, and then the mouse, causing the password prompt to appear. A glow forms above the monitor.

"What are you doing? I thought I mentioned that they don't respond well to magic." She reaches out to grab his shoulder and mistakenly gets his ear. "Sorry."

"Relax, Hermione. This spell doesn't work directly on the computer, just the area around it. Ginny created it when we left George alone with our computer for five minutes and he changed the password and refused to tell us what it was. Said it should be obvious, but 'imatosser' wasn't exactly anything that came to mind. After a day, Ginny gave up guessing and created the spell, which just sort of ... pulls the information out of the air around the computer."

The glow intensifies, and a word starts to form, floating black in the middle.

"Hmm. Bickyboo. I hope that's a nickname for a dog and not a boyfriend."

Severus snickers quietly to her left.

Harry types it in, and a new screen appears. "I'm in."

"Can you suss it?"

"Um ... not really. There are a lot of icons on the desktop, and I don't want to click them all. Time to give Ginny a ring or a message or whatever you call it."

Harry, who's using his Invisibility Cloak instead of being Disillusioned, allows the material to slide back so that his hands become visible, the stone tablet Hermione and Severus spelled resting in his left. Tapping the stone with his wand, he murmurs a phrase, and words appear on the surface before sinking into it.

A few moments later, new words appear, floating up from inside.

"She's on. I'm just going to ask her if she can suggest what to look for."

As he 'talks' to Ginny, Severus reaches out to place a hand on her arm and leans in close to her ear, breath swirling her hair so that it tickles her skin. "I say she should consider him carrying the next one. Mrs. Potter is much more useful to have on hand."

Laughing quietly, Hermione says, "Hush. You know Harry's smashing as an Auror. Just because Ginny's better at Charms and computers –"

"And Potions."

"And Potions doesn't mean he's not a dab hand at other things like Defense."

"True." But his voice is doing that audible-smirk thing again.

When she looks back over, Harry's in the middle of reading a long message from Ginny, and once the last set of words fade to not be replaced with more, he reaches for the mouse and begins clicking madly.

Then stops suddenly. "Right. That's not it." He starts talking with Ginny again, and they send a few short exchanges back and forth.

Hermione thinks about moving closer to read what they're saying, but Severus's hand has slid down to rest against hers. It could merely be a convenience, a way to keep track of each other while invisible, or it could be something else. The hypersensitivity of her skin votes for something else.

A series of screens flash across the monitor as Harry opens and closes various programs before stopping and saying, "Score!"

Hermione moves forward for a better look, and Severus moves with.

The top of the screen says something about Birth and Death Records Database.

"Do you have the list?"

"Yeah." It emerges from beneath the cloak. "I'll just type in the first name and see what we get."

Marvin Gerard Jones fits into little squares, and with a click of the mouse, disappears into the machine, which shows a blank face. After long moments, a new page comes up on the monitor.

"It's a positive," Harry says, raising a finger to point at a phrase that stands out because it's underlined and in blue. "This will show his birth certificate." His hands wavers a little before dropping to another piece of underlined blue text. "And this his death certificate."

Drawing in a breath, Hermione reminds herself that, if completely honest, this is something she always knew could be a possibility, but her heart doesn't listen and speeds up in shock. "Can you ..." She pauses to clear her throat, which has come over all scratchy. "Can you print both of them?"

"Yeah. Why don't I do that for any of them I can find?"

"All right."

A printer comes humming to life.

The lump of lead in her stomach grows as Harry types in name after name and they all come up positive – doubly positive.

Severus's hand runs up her arm to rest on her shoulder, and he gives a little squeeze. "Would you care to look at the first of the documents now?"

"No." Circe, she sounds like she's going to cry. "Not just yet."

The constant whine of the printer sounds hollow and alien in the large room.

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Bizarre pieces of paper chase her down dark cobblestones streets that turn her ankle time and time again as she runs, tripping, and Hermione wakes to the echo of a remembered sound of ... of ...

She rubs at her face, but the sensory impressions grow neither clearer nor fade. They haunt the quietness of her morning routine, and for once, she wishes Crookshanks were one of those cats who mewed and rubbed at her ankles constantly until she fed him.

An hour after waking, it's a relief to tap the Portkey Severus made her and be tugged away in a whirl, no matter how it upsets her stomach.

When he answers the door, the skin of Severus's face looks almost as grey and the surroundings of Spinner's End, the flesh beneath his eyes a bruised purple that matches the sleepless appearance she presented in the mirror this morning.

A voice whispers in her mind that she never expected Snape to be this visibly upset, but she squashes her inner-Ron with a reminder that the man's previous life as a double spy allowed no freedom of expression. That he's able to do so now might still be a little surprising, but it also makes him seem much more human.

"Hermione, won't you come in? The papers are in the sitting room. As you requested, I waited for you to look at them."

"Thank you." The electric shock of wards buzzes across her skin, strong and varied – the repeated snap of multiple layers. Severus's assertion that the documentation for the project would be much safer at his home than hers proving more than true. In fact, she'd wager this house might be the safest place in all Britain.

She enters the room, which is small, but the books covering every wall give it a feel that's not exactly cozy but not bad either. Multiple candles light the room, and the sofa looks new and comfortable.

He gestures her over to it and sits beside her.

Pulling a stack of Reducioed parchments from her pocket, she waves her wand over them with an Engorgio! The bundle expands to a stack a good foot high. "This is everything from my flat. I've been leaving nothing at the Ministry."

"Good." Severus palms his own wand and enlarges his coffee table until it's multiple times its normal size. The papers from the Muggle General Register Office, which had taken the entire top, now cover only a third.

"So how do you want to do this?"

"I had thought that perhaps I would look over all of your previous work, both to fully familiarize myself and to determine if there are any additional clues I can find."

"Right. I'll start in on the Muggle paperwork then."

Severus flicks his wand, and a tea service floats into the room to settle into the middle of the table. Another flick, and it begins pouring and preparing their cups.

Hermione raises her cup in salute and takes a fortifying sip or three before diving into the certificates.

She picks up the first set, the birth and death of Marvin Gerard Jones, and jots a few notes, not sure what she's looking for just yet. By the time she's read about the third person, a Brenda Anne Barrett, she's noticed something odd.

Looking over, she sees Severus already absorbed in reading, eyes flickering quickly across the page, face set in concentration.

She'll do what any researcher should do – make sure it's an overall trend before making announcements.

The papers rattle in her hand.

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Two hours later, the tea's gone and they've both spread various piles of paper across the table.

And Hermione's no longer uncertain of her findings. "Have you got anything?"

"Nothing new." He looks up. "Although I do fully agree that it appears someone at the Ministry, either Umbridge or someone using her as a front, is involved in concealing whatever this turns out to be."

"And that something just got a lot more serious." She takes a deep breath. "Severus, only three babies died of known causes. All of the remaining ones on this list died unexpectedly. The coroners reported that they had no previous known medical conditions."

"And?"

"All of those who died unexpectedly also died when they were exactly three months old to the day."

"How ... odd."

She shuffles certificates and pulls out her notes. "I mean, we've got ones all the way from 1990 to 2004 with exactly the same pattern. That can't be coincidence."

"Indeed it cannot. If, for example, one intended to simply kill Muggle-born when they are at their most vulnerable to keep them from joining the Wizarding population, then, as Voldemort showed, it would not be necessary to be so precise."

"It seems ... well, it seems that whatever it is must rely on the three-months of age thing. And that implies that it's ritualistic."

"Yes, the timing must be necessary for a specific spell. It would be Dark Magic, of course, but I cannot recall hearing of anything of this nature."

"A spell that kills little babies." Her stomach twists as sourness burns the back of her throat. "Why would anyone do such a thing? Who would do such a thing?"

"I imagine that when we can answer one of those questions, the other will fall into place."

His words sound somewhat clinical, but the hand he places on her forearm feels warm and comforting.

She covers it with one of her own, and they sit quietly for a time.