It's Hot Where We're Going

Chapter 8 It's Hot Where We're Going

"Done," he said, and waited.

A dozen urgent questions and admonitions were jangling in his brain, but he waited. With Hermione Granger, he recalled, one had only to remain mute, and before long she would commence prattling on frenetically about anything that popped into her head.

He felt it always helped to be a bit intimidating, so he settled back in his chair and fixed her with an unwavering but languid gaze, letting his eyelids droop to half-mast, and taking another sip of her unremarkable whisky. Soon there would be a flood of information, and he could simply sift through it to find the answers to his questions without giving away the direction of his interest.

"That's settled, then," she said, and astonished him by lapsing into silence.

Finally he asked, "When were you thinking of going?"

"Not for another month at least. I have orders to fill before I can leave."

He looked around the lab at the evidence of her recent activity and said, "Perhaps I can help you with those."

"Oh," she said. "That would be brilliant. Thanks."

Another long silence.

God damn it, there were things he needed to know. He closed his eyes and began ticking them off.

First and foremost: did she have any idea of the explosive potential of a perdurable liars' potion, or did she think this was just another product she could add to the high end of her catalogue?

A close second: how the fuck was he going to manage traveling to the ends of the Earth without tipping his hand to the Ministry?

And somewhere around third or fourth: how primitive was this trek into the jungle likely to get, and was there any chance it would provide him with an opportunity to get into Hermione Granger's knickers?

"Shorts," she said.

His eyes flew open. "I beg your pardon?"

"You're going to need shorts. It's hot where we're going."

His pulse began to return to normal. "I do not own a pair of shorts, Miss Granger, and I am not about to acquire any."

"Suit yourself," she said, opening a drawer and withdrawing parchment and quill.

Years of spying had made the surreptitious reading of upside-down documents second nature to Snape, and he watched as she wrote and underlined To do before leaving.

Hermione Granger, Marshall of the Lists, he thought with amusement.

She wrote expand tent, and asked, "Are you any good at transfiguration?"

He fixed her with a withering look.

"Oh, right, of course you are. I've got a tent...Arthur Weasley hooked me up with an excellent praetorist...but it's only got one bedroom. I could send it back and have it modified, but I don't know how long that would take. Do you think you could add a room to it?"

"I don't think that would be beyond my capabilities."

She wrote Snape to the right of the list entry, then added another item: barter.

"Gabriel says I need to bring things to trade for the lingua mentirosa vine, and I was thinking the Invisibility Potion might work for that. Which would mean we'd need to run human trials...are you up for that?"

"Certainly."

"We'll begin with those tomorrow, then. And we'll need to start a large batch of Veritaserum straight away if we mean to begin developing the antidote as soon as we get back." She pushed a sheet of parchment across to him and pulled a second quill from the drawer. "Check the storeroom for ingredients and see if we need to order anything."

"I might have known it would come naturally to you."

"What?"

"Bossing people about."

"Up yours." She gave him an exasperated look. "I was under the impression that you wanted to help. I'm just being efficient."

"Right." He jotted down a list, then rose and crossed to the little storeroom. A light came on as soon as he opened the door...a nicety he hadn't noticed before...and he scanned the shelves with a practiced eye. Most of the bottles, jars, and packets, he noted, were arranged in alphabetical order beginning on the bottom shelf, with a separate, warded section for hazardous ingredients. Whereas before the presence of a large number of exotic materials had captured his attention, now the careful ordering of the various containers caused him to realize that there were significant gaps in her collection. On the first shelf alone he noticed the absence of several ingredients he would have considered staples in the most elementary potions laboratory.

He stuck his head out the door of the storeroom. "Haven't you got any bloodroot?"

"Perishables in the cellar," she said, without looking up from her writing. "Through the trap."

Wandlight revealed the cellar shelves to be just as neat, clean, and well organized as those above. Full marks, Miss Granger, he thought, and allowed himself a satisfied smirk. Someone taught you well. Here were all the missing stores, and then some: roots, live cultures, trays of cultivated mushrooms, flasks of fermenting liquids with dates written on them in her neat script. And on the wall behind the ladder, a collection of seventy or eighty bottles of wine.

He was back in the laboratory and had passed the checklist over to her before it occurred to him that he had not seen, either above- or belowground, yesterday's dozen or so vials of "Love Potion No. 9." He resolved to make a more thorough inspection of both levels at the next opportunity.

The list on her parchment had grown substantially, and now comprised three columns: Travel Arrangements, Materials, and Orders. Items in this last column were all marked with one of two sets of initials: HJG or SSB. While he watched, she drew her wand down the column, lifting about half the entries and transferring them to another sheet. This she pushed across the table to him, and asked, "Do you think you could handle these?"

Her eyes were fixed steadily on him, and he had the distinct and uneasy feeling that he was being tested. He therefore bit back the dismissive rejoinder that had come automatically to his lips, and looked seriously at the list in front of him.

It contained all of the potions she had marked SSB. He understood suddenly that HJG were her own initials, and wondered what the B at the end of his could stand for. Bastard? he thought wryly. Berk? Barmpot?

Ah, well, he would puzzle that out later. For now, he made a cursory scan of the items on the list and said, "These are all banned or controlled in the UK."

"Yes," she said neutrally, still looking at him with that assessing gaze. "Is that a problem?"

It was a test, then.

"Not especially."

He thought saw her relax slightly.

"I have two product lines. The more innocuous materials go out under my own name...healing potions I sell to hospitals, veterinary products for the local farmers, that sort of thing."

She paused and took a card from the drawer and handed it to him.

"The more . . . sensitive items are produced under this label, and go through a distributor."

It was a simple, conservative business card, but without any sort of address or contact information. There was a picture of a vial, and some leaves, and the words Silken Shoal Backwater, and that was all.

Silken Shoal Backwater . . . SSB. That explained the initials, although the significance of the name remained a mystery. A reference to the village she was living in, perhaps?

He felt something bump against his ankle and looked down to see a large, flat-faced orange cat rubbing against his trouser leg.

"Leave me alone, you revolting creature," he said. And to Hermione: "Looking a bit moth-eaten, isn't he?"

"And fat, but he's old as Methuselah, so I reckon he's entitled."

"You oughtn't to allow him in here, you know. He'll contaminate everything."

"I'll have you know he's a very clean cat."

"If memory serves, you had a rather unpleasant experience with cat-hair contamination whilst you were at Hogwarts, from which you appear to have learned nothing."

She reddened. "I was a very inexperienced potion-maker at the time."

He looked down at the cat. "Scram," he said, in his most threatening hiss.

Crookshanks regarded him sleepily and began rubbing his head against Snape's ankle.

"Obedient little git, isn't he?"

"That, too," she said. "I'll shut him outside tomorrow while we're working, if he bothers you so much."

"It's not that he bothers me, Miss Granger, it's that it's substandard laboratory procedure to have some filthy beast wandering around shedding hair and dander and who knows what else whilst one is conducting delicate and precise brewing processes."

"I've said I'll put him out," she said crossly. "And now if you don't mind, it's quite late and I've had a very busy day."

A/N: Many, many thanks to my beta/Britpick team, corianderpie and exartemarte.

This chapter contains another made-up word, praetorist, which I coined to mean a maker of magical tents. Perhaps I'll compile a little glossary and send it on to JKR in case she really is considering number eight. I'm sure she'd be ever so grateful.