The Fingers of One Hand

Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to JKR.

Chapter 4. The Fingers of One Hand

It had seemed the most natural thing in the world to ask him to stay for dinner.

She took a packet of sardines from the refrigerator and began cleaning them, cutting off the heads and removing the backbones.

"Will I make us a salad, then?" asked Snape.

"That would be brilliant. There's lettuce in there, and some tomatoes, and a bell pepper, I think. And maybe some spring onions."

He pushed his sleeves up to wash his hands and she saw it then, a blur of blue-grey against his pale skin.

Not like before, when it had pulsed starkly on his forearm like a living thing. The skin beneath it had at first been an angry red, and then had quickly paled as his life leaked out between her desperate fingers onto the wooden floorboards.

Now, turning the tiny, slippery fish on the cutting board, her hands remembered the slickness of his cooling blood, and began to tremble.

He had turned away to assemble the salad ingredients, and so she had a merciful moment to steady herself before retrieving a bottle of Riesling and two glasses from the cupboard. She passed him the bottle and a corkscrew, not sure why; she certainly knew how to open a bottle of wine, but the small deference seemed appropriate.

He handed her a glass and lifted his own. "Confusion to our enemies."

She smiled faintly and touched her glass to his, and drank.

*******

She had knocked back the first glass with hardly a pause, he noted, and was well into her second by the time the meal was ready. He collected the periodicals scattered about the table and shoved the pile to one side.

"The Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology? he asked, holding up an issue.

"Yes, er, part of some spell research I've been doing," she said, putting a pair of plates and a basket of bread on the table. "Would you mind getting the silver? It's in that drawer over there. Oh, and napkins, too, please."

They sat down and she handed him the plate of sardines.

"Spell research? In geriatric psychiatry?" He forked three crisply grilled fish onto his plate. "Do please explain."

"I have an aunt in America. Really my only family, now that my parents are gone. I talk to her now and then."

He wondered what she meant by her parents being "gone." He had some recollection that they had been sent away during the war...was that what she meant? Or were they dead?

"Her father-in-law...my great-uncle John...has Lewy body dementia."

"How can a body have dementia?"

"No, it's not dementia of the body. Lewy bodies are microscopic clumps of protein that form in the brain."

"And what has this got to do with spells?"

"One of the symptoms is that when patients fall, their bodies are completely rigid. They fall like trees, not like human beings."

"Signs," he said automatically.

"Pardon?"

"The rigidity is a sign, Miss Granger, not a symptom."

"Aren't those the same thing?"

"They are not. Symptoms are experienced by the patient; signs are observable by another."

"Oh. I never knew that. Thank you. 'Some things never change,' indeed." She grinned. "Professor."

He paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. He could count on the fingers of one hand the students he had had, in sixteen years of teaching, who had thanked him for correcting them.

"Old habits die hard, I suppose. Do go on about the dementia."

"Well, when Aunt Jean told me about that...the falling, I mean...the first thing I thought was 'Body-Bind Curse.'"

"It does bear a certain resemblance, yes."

She leaned forward. "Haven't you ever wondered how curses work? Especially since so many of them seem to resemble actual human diseases?"

"What do you mean, how they work?"

"I mean, what's the mechanism? Why should certain spells be able to provoke boils, or vomiting, or memory loss? What exactly do they do?"

"I don't think anyone knows."

"Too right they don't. And why isn't anyone creating new spells?"

"The occasional person does, I believe," he said dryly.

"Oh, well, yes, I suppose so." She colored slightly. "But for the most part, we're all using spells that have been around for hundreds or even thousands of years, without giving a thought to why they do what they do, as if it were just hocus pocus, just some kind of..."

"Magic?"

She laughed. "Magic. Exactly. Whereas if we knew more about how they worked, we'd know more about how to counter them. Plus, we could create new ones methodically, instead of just stumbling about in the dark and hoping to trip over a winning formula."

"So you've been researching neurological disorders."

"And endocrine, and musculoskeletal," she added, waving a forkful of salad inclusively.

"Looking for new possibilities," he said slowly.

"Just so."

"And what do you do with these new spells, once you create them?"

"Publish them, or sell them."

"There's money to be made in that?"

"Certainly. Though, as I said before, the potions business is steadier. But the disease research applies there as well."

He was silent, thinking about the slip of paper in his trouser pocket. Best to stop with the interrogation before it occurs to her to wonder why you're asking all these questions.

He contented himself with watching her as she applied herself to her food. The short hair suited her: it wreathed her face in a soft halo of curls, and made no pretense at concealing the scar that pulled at the side of her mouth. Her eyes were the color of copper, and when she looked up at him he felt scorched by the intelligence that burned in them.

"You're staring at me."

"Am I?"

"What are you thinking?"

That you are magnificent. "That you are a very dangerous woman, Miss Granger."

She gave a little snort. "Just making a living."

"You could have made a living teaching, or working for the Ministry."

"Fuck the Ministry! I'd sooner scrub toilets at Victoria Station."

The bitterness and vehemence in her voice startled him as much as the vulgarity. "You have some issue with the Ministry?"

"You could say that. One or two small things." Her mouth was a thin line.

"Such as?"

She looked at him incredulously. "Besides sending you off to Azkaban for twenty years for a crime you didn't commit? That's not enough?"

"I was duly convicted," he said calmly. "By a jury of my peers."

"Your peers!" she spat. "Kept in ignorance by the Ministry and terrified to let a murdering Death Eater back onto the streets."

"I did kill him, after all."

"Because you had to! Because he begged you to!"

"The jury didn't know that."

"Harry knew. And if the jury didn't, it's only because he and Shacklebolt kept them in the dark. And because you refused to testify at all."

"It wouldn't have mattered, you know. A person can't legally consent to being killed."

Her eyes were fire. "They could have freed you and you bloody well know it! Why are you making excuses for them?"

Because it fascinates me to hear you defend me.

"Because it's water under the bridge, now. I'd rather just get on with things."

She looked at him steadily for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, but still intense.

"Are you really satisfied to be on parole for the next ten years? Don't you want to clear your name?"

"I doubt any efforts on my part would be well received. Likely to do more harm than good, I should think."

"I don't see how that's possible."

"People are happy with the version they've been fed, Miss Granger. They have their heroes, and their villains, everyone in his proper place. It would serve nothing to disrupt that idyll."

When she made no response, he said, "Potter has surely said as much to you."

Her eyes blazed again. "We don't speak," she said tersely.

This was a surprise. "Since when? As I recall, you were quite chummy at school."

"Since the war. We don't speak since the war."

He couldn't resist goading her a bit. "I quite imagined the two of you would marry and raise a pack of obstreperous children."

"Don't be absurd."

And in an instant, the animation was gone from her face, the light in her eyes extinguished as if he had pinched out its flame with his fingers.

Bugger.

There was a loud rattling sound outside the window. "What the hell is that?" he said, grateful for the interruption.

Hermione had jumped to her feet and was smiling again. "That'll be my delivery from Peru," she said, opening the window over the sink.

The creature that clambered through the opening and perched awkwardly on the kitchen counter was of a species he did not recognize: a sleek black marine bird with a red throat. It had a long white bill, hooked at the tip, with which it plucked the proffered sardine head from Hermione's fingers.

She unfastened the packet from the bird's leg and brought it back to the table. "Restauro," she said, tapping it with her wand. The resultant shoebox-sized parcel, when unwrapped, revealed a quantity of knobbly brownish roots.

"Carica parviflora," she said, her eyes dancing with excitement. "Now I can make enough of the Invisibility Potion to begin serious testing."

She gathered up the roots and carried them into the laboratory. Snape stayed behind in the kitchen, leafing through the stack of journals. There was a half-sheet of quadrille paper marking a place in one of them, and he lingered for a moment, reading the notes written on it in Hermione's neat hand.

In the lab, she had placed the roots into a large apothecary jar and was writing out a label.

"I should be going," he said. "The meal was excellent...thank you for inviting me."

She looked up at him. "I wonder..." she began diffidently.

Yes.

"Yes?"

"Would you...I don't know how busy you are, but would you be interested in helping me tomorrow? With the potion preparation and testing, I mean?"

"I don't see why not."

Her smile at once warmed and chilled him. "Excellent," she said.

A/N: Thanks to my fabulous beta/Britpick team: corianderpie, lifeasanamazon, and exartemarte.

Signs vs. symptoms is a pet peeve of mine, and it always irks me to hear journalists--and sometimes medical professionals--confuse the two. So consider yourselves warned.

The bird that brings Hermione's package is a Magnificent Frigatebird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificent_Frigatebird) renowned for its ability to fly for days without resting, and also for its habit of forcing other birds to regurgitate their meals when it's feeling peckish.