Remember to Breathe

Chapter 9 Remember to Breathe

Hermione had already compiled another list...this one labeled Testable Parameters...with two columns: Subject and Observer.

"Sounds," she began. "So far, with the animals, once they've had the potion I've not heard a squeak from either of them. But I wonder about causing noises with an object...how far does the magic extend?"

"Throwing something, you mean? Or opening a door, that sort of thing?"

"Or striking one object with another," she said, gesturing to a heterogeneous collection laid out on the table which included, among other things, a tuning fork, a small hammer, and a bottle of vanilla extract.

He picked up the bottle, and she said, "I've been wondering about smells...what makes them indiscernable, and at what distance from the body do they remain undetected? I mean, if you stop and think about it, odors are actually tiny particulate matter."

"Believe me, I have thought about it. Pondered it, even, whilst sharing the Slytherin common room with a horde of flatulent adolescent males."

She grimaced. "I think I'll stick with the vanilla as a test medium, if you don't mind. Unless . . . " She leaned toward him and sniffed gently. "What is that, vetiver?"

"Vetiver, and a very small amount of bergamot."

"You make your own soap?"

"I do."

"It's very nice. But the trouble is, that odor's already in the air, isn't it? I won't be able to tell if I'm smelling you at the moment, or if it's left over from before you took the potion. Better use the vanilla...the bottle's enclosed in a Continere charm."

"You seem to be assuming that I will be the one taking the potion in this little trial."

She looked ceilingward in a parody of innocence. "Well, it would be the gentlemanly thing to do."

"Miss Granger, in what universe did you imagine me to be a gentleman?" He took a Galleon coin from his pocket. "We'll toss for it, shall we?"

"We shall not. If you think I trust you not to cheat at a coin-toss, you're mad."

"What then?"

"I notice you don't bother pretending to be insulted." She held up a fist. "Paper-scissors-stone."

"I've no idea what you're talking about."

"You sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus, didn't you?"

"Were that the case, I would have no umbilicus, and I assure you that I do. But what's all this in aid of?"

"Childhood, comma, my growing conviction that you had none."

"Perhaps I simply didn't waste mine on frivolities like paper-scissors-stone, whatever that is."

"It's a choosing game, but I suspect that teaching it to you would just be an invitation to more verbal abuse. I'll show you how to do morra instead; it's quicker."

"This conversation has already taken longer than any number of coin tosses."

She held up her hand again. "It's quite simple: on the count of three, you hold out your hand with several of your fingers extended, and then we add up the total. Do you want odds or evens?"

"Odds."

"Of course you do. Ready? Un, dos, tres, ¡ya!"

She held up two fingers; Snape held up four.

"Ha!" She grinned smugly. "You're the guinea pig, then."

"So it would seem."

She turned back to her list. "Sound, smell, vision, touch. We know from Wilbur's reactions that he could hear your voice, and feel the water when it hit him, and presumably smell and taste the milk in the second dose. But I'm very curious to know whether those senses are at all modified or blunted."

"Duly noted."

"I've also got a couple of items that I've just written down as they occurred to me. What about sweat, for instance?"

"You mean, does the subject perspire? Why should that be affected?"

"No, I mean, if the subject perspires, is the moisture visible to the observer? Because if it is, we'll need to add an anticholinergic agent to the potion base. Silverbush seed, maybe."

He shook his head. "Not with the emetic properties of the Carica parviflora already a problem. Have you got Egyptian henbane?"

"A little, I think."

"That would be better. It has an antispasmodic effect as well."

She made a note in the page margin. "And breath. Will I feel it if you breathe or blow on me?"

"I'll try to remember to breathe."

She pipetted a careful amount of the potion into a diminutive beaker and handed it to him with a smirk. "Off you go, then. There's a loo just over there, the door to the right of the storeroom."

"I don't really expect it to make me violently sick, do you? Your pig didn't seem to feel any ill effects."

"Not for getting sick in, for taking off your clothes." At the look on his face, she said, "You were planning to test this potion fully dressed?"

"I was, yes."

"Really, Snape, how scientific would that be? Plus I don't believe for a second that you'd have entertained the idea if I'd been the one to lose the toss."

She had him there.

"Tell you what," she said. "You can keep your underwear on if you'd rather. I don't think it will compromise the study too much."

He was on the point of agreeing when he remembered the guinea pig's form under the tented cloth napkin. "No, in for a Sickle, in for a Galleon," he said dryly, and picked up the little beaker along with the bottle of vanilla extract.

In the lavatory he stripped down quickly, somewhat grateful that the only mirror was a small one above the washbasin. He hung his watch by its chain on a towel-hook, pressed the button to start the timer, and drank the potion down.

It wasn't too bad; slightly bitter, but not unbearably so, and he felt no immediate nausea, only a spreading warmth as it descended his gullet.

That was the extent of the change, however: after allowing two full minutes to pass, he was dismayed to find himself as opaque as before. They had calculated the dosage based on body weight, but apparently humans were going to need a stronger dose than pigs.

He stuck his head out the door. "Miss Granger," he called, "would you bring me a second dose, please?"

She was bent over the table with her back to him, writing on the parchment. When she didn't answer, he called again in a louder voice; still no response. Damn the girl, was she deaf? He would just have to fetch it himself.

Going back to retrieve his clothes, he passed the small mirror and was brought up short when he realized that it had shown no reflection as he walked by. He held his hand up in front of his face and found it as substantial as ever, but when he placed it against the mirror, no reciprocal image appeared there.

I am invisible, he thought, but only to others. I can still see myself. And that would account for Hermione's failure to answer him, he realized: he could hear his own voice, but she could not.

He opened the bottle of vanilla extract and dabbed a bit on his arm, inhaling the rich, sweet smell. Nothing wrong with that sense either, then.

Stepping out of the lavatory, he banged the door sharply behind him. Hermione jumped, then whirled round with a broad grin on her face.

"That's one question answered," she said, and turned to scribble a note.

And another as well, thought Snape. I can hear her as plain as anything.

She was looking directly at him, but as he moved toward her, her eyes did not follow him. It was a little disconcerting, to tell the truth, especially as he could clearly see...and feel...his own nakedness as he approached her.

He brought his hand down with a sharp crack! on the tabletop next to her. When she didn't react, he picked up the tuning fork and struck the edge of the table with it. The pinnngg! got her attention immediately, and she turned to face him, reaching out a hand in front of her.

He leaned over and pulled the parchment toward him, then picked up the quill and made a tick mark in the Subject column next to can see? and another next to can hear? and added, can pick up and manipulate objects.

She was feeling tentatively in front of her at chest height. "You're absolutely invisible to me," she said, squinting a little. "Not a hair, not a flake of dead skin, nothing. And I couldn't hear you walking over here at all."

He could sense the excitement rising in her voice. "Fuck me, this is brilliant. This is going to be worth a fortune. Absolutely one hundred percent infuckingvisible."

She sniffed the air in front of him."I can't smell anything, either. Did you put the vanilla on? You must have done, surely."

Her hand came in contact with his arm, and he stood perfectly still, realizing abruptly how bizarrely erotic his situation was.

She was prattling on, a rapid-fire monologue that he guessed must be her modus operandi when working by herself in the lab. "How long has it been now? Fifteen minutes? I wonder what would happen if I cut off a bit of hair...would it show up right away, or would the potion have to wear off there as well?"

She prodded his arm with a finger. "It feels almost spongy...the resistance isn't there all at once. Just the harder you push, the more resistance there is. And there's no warmth at all."

Oh, there's warmth, all right.

"What about earrings, I wonder? Or body piercings? Would the part that was under the flesh be visible? And what about things like steel pins and artificial joints? Prosthetic heart valves? What if you swallowed something like a marble? Or something organic like a bone, would that make a difference?"

She seemed to have completely lost awareness of his nakedness, her mind haring off down a dozen rabbit trails in rapid succession. She poked at his arm again, then laid her other hand flat against his chest. "It's like touching something while wearing a pair of heavy eelskin work gloves," she said. "Or pushing opposite magnets together."

That wasn't how it felt on the receiving end. He could see her hands on his skin, and was exquisitely sensible of every detail of their surface as they touched him: warm, dry, gentle, but insistently probing and exploring.

Christ almighty.

His libido, roused finally from its years of dormancy, roared into life and screamed What are you waiting for, you fool!?

Somehow her obliviousness made it more, rather than less, arousing. Her hands moved over his chest matter-of-factly, and then she brought her face in close to sniff at him.

He bent his head over hers and could smell the faint traces of her shampoo. Something sweet and light: jasmine, perhaps. Or frangipani.

His cock was fully awake now, clamoring for attention. Hard as Chinese arithmancy. In fact, if she stood any closer, it was going to poke her.

He reached down with his free hand and pinioned it against his belly. "Would you excuse me for a moment?" he asked. Just for a second. I need to mentally recite all of Golpalott's laws and their corollaries. Backwards.

She appeared not to have heard him...and of course in fact she hadn't.

He could say anything he liked.

"I want to fuck you," he said, and his cock leapt in his hand.

Perhaps if he kept his movements subtle, he could . . . he could . . . Oh sweet Nimue.

Her hands continued to pat down his upper body as if frisking him for hidden weapons, and he began tentatively to stroke his cock, senses vigilant for any indication that she was aware of what he was doing.

There was none. No pause in the methodical movement of her hands as they worked their way across his shoulders, up his neck, into his hair; no stutter in the stream-of-consciousness narrative that was now so close he could feel the moisture, smell the toothpaste she had used that morning.

Too close. Distracted or not, she would tumble to what he was doing if he didn't put some distance between them. He stepped back from her, and her hands closed briefly on the empty air.

He looked directly at her, his movements quickening. "I want to fuck you," he said again, bolder now. "I want to grab your arse in both hands and bury my cock in you over and over until you scream." Ah, god, he was close, so close...

"Are you sweating, I wonder? Because I'm looking really closely and I don't see any sweat."

He froze, transfixed by the sudden realization that when he ejaculated, the semen might be visible to her.

But it was too late, he was too far gone, he was not going to stop, he was damned if he would stop, it was too good, and it had been too long...

In a few swift, desperate strides he was out the French doors and onto the little balcony, leaping over the railing on the uphill side to the ground just a few feet below. Where he stood, cock in hand, and shouted OhfuckohfuckohFUCK! as he thrust forward into the empty air.

He had taken a moment to catch his breath and climbed back over the railing before he realized his mistake.

The house's enter-me-not wards would still be in place...he had watched her reactivate them earlier that morning after letting him in. So now he was locked out, standing stark naked on her balcony, with perhaps another hour of invisibility left him, and that only if he turned out to metabolize the potion at the same rate as a bloody swine.

He looked about for something with which to tap on the glass, but the only object on the balcony was the cage with the guinea pig in it; he would have to climb back down and find a stick or pebble. And come up with a good explanation for what he had been doing out onto the balcony in the first place.

Still, it had been worth it.

Without any real hope of success, he extended his arm into the aperture presented by the open door, and felt no resistance at all. Holding his breath, he walked forward, and...to his utter amazement...stepped through the doorway into the lab as if there were no obstacle at all.

Hermione was standing with her back to him, scribbling notes on the parchment. He returned to the table and struck it once more with the tuning fork, then took the quill from her and wrote:

I'm going to get dressed now

She read the note and nodded. "I'll make some tea if you like."

Excellent

Fucking hell, yes, it had been worth it.

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