Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

Ron's feet thumped angrily along the decorated carpet between the twin rows of desks as he led Professor fucking "watch your language" Snape towards the huge crystal edifice which dominated the far wall of the Time Room.

He had seen the bell jar a number of times since Hermione had started working at the Ministry, and it always sent a shiver through him. The glittering, spectral wind which circulated within it, carrying the tiny body of the Eternal Hummingbird through its perpetual lifecycle, quite frankly gave him the creeps. He still had nightmares from the battle that he and the others had fought through this Department in their fifth year.

Unconsciously, his left hand wandered to his right forearm as he approached the great glass edifice. Madam Pomfrey's ointment had almost completely removed the scars on his arms and chest, but sometimes it was almost as if he could still feel the tendrils writhing under his skin just like the memories of that horrible time.

He pushed the thought away as he reached the warded screen to the right of the jar. It was about twelve feet high and of finely carved wood, its surface gleaming with polish. It radiated power from the protective spells that Hermione had laid upon it. He could feel it crawling over his skin, uncomfortable pinpricks sending him shivering as he turned around to wait for Snape to catch up.

It spoke volumes about his desperation that he was pinning any hope at all on the sarcastic bastard. He watched Snape approach, the man's sallow face illuminated by the blue fractured light from the bell jar, all harsh lines and bruised shadows beneath his eyes. Snape was carrying Hermione's diary very carefully in both hands, weaving his way, snakelike, between the various items that were balanced on the research tables in the room. Ron forced away a stab of jealousy at the thought that Hermione might have confided something – anything – to the hateful git about her work.

The thought suddenly occurred to him that she may have confided even more to Snape than that. After all, Hermione had always refused to tell him anything about what happened between the two of them on New Year's Eve...

"Well?" Snape had stopped before him, his thin frame radiating irritated tension. Hermione's diary was still cradled defensively against his chest.

Ron fought the irrational desire to demand it back.

Instead, he turned his attention back to the ornate expanse of wood before them, fighting an impulse to back away from its forbidding surface. A Compulsion Charm, he thought, among other protective spells. Hermione had never allowed him to see behind the screen; he had never tried to argue – it was enough that she let him come into the Time Room to pick her up for lunch sometimes.

Snape shifted beside him and clicked his tongue, obviously impatient.

Ron could feel heat prickling the skin of his neck. "The screen's warded," he explained, fingering his wand. Judging from the amount of magical energy emanating from the screen, opening it would not be a simple question of pulling it to one side to take a look.

"Yes?" Snape sneered. "It may have escaped your attention, Weasley, but we are on rather a tight schedule this evening." He gestured at the wooden screen, shimmering and beautiful in the glistening light from the bell jar.

Ron ground his teeth again and turned to face the ornate expanse of wood. "Finite Incantatem," he cast, then made to pull the screen aside.

The shock from Hermione's unaffected ward sent him back a stumbled step and set his teeth chattering.

Behind him he heard Snape sigh.

Ron cleared his throat. "Finite Incantatum Totalem," he tried again with an outward display of bravado that he didn't really feel. He touched the screen once more, only to find the wards as viciously intact as ever. Shit. Bollocks.

"I-I could send a Patronus to Bill," he offered. "There's not a curse or a ward he can't crack. He's out in Egypt at the moment, so it might take a little time to..."

"Oh, good grief! Get out of the way!" Snape jostled past him and stood silently in front of the shimmering wooden screen.

"This is lignum vitae, Mister Weasley," he murmured after a moment. "Also called Iron Wood." He held out a hand, allowing it to hover about an inch away from the screen. Ron saw the man's shoulders hunch and his eyelids slide shut. Snape's fingers lightly traced a pattern across the screen without touching it.

"Lignum vitae's strength comes in part from the magical energies that it is able to connect itself to, utilising the power of localised sources to enhance its own," Snape whispered, as if reciting a page from a text book. "It is widely renowned for being one of the most effective materials to use in warding charms, its metamorphmagical characteristics lending themselves in particular to the use of feminine magic."

Patronising wanker, Ron thought, but said nothing as Snape droned on, the man's thin, clever fingers dancing across the surface of Hermione's wards.

As he watched Snape's fingers move onwards, feeling their way across Hermione's enchantments and seemingly unaffected by her protective charms, Ron forced down the jealousy he felt at the older man's magical abilities. Instead, he concentrated on his twin convictions that something about Hermione's disappearance was sinister and, furthermore, that his best chance of help was standing beside him.

He had not really meant his threat to call the Aurors in the pub. The awkward fact was that they were just as likely to arrest him if Hermione went missing as they were to throw the miserable, patronising git beside him into jail.

The last time that Ron had called the Aurors to report that Hermione had gone missing, he had been made to feel like the worst kind of stalking psychopath. His panicked Floo call to the DMLE after Hermione's disappearance at New Year had led to a series of events that had culminated in a humiliating lecture from a senior officer about wasting Auror time, a firm talking-to from his mother, and a near-hysterical dressing down from Hermione herself. He shifted awkwardly at the memory, his fingers still smarting painfully from the screen's hex.

He focused his attention back on what Snape was saying. "... Which is, of course, why so many wizarding jewellery boxes are constructed from this particular wood. Ahhhh... there we have it... Clever, clever, Miss Granger..." The man's stained fingers flicked more quickly over the surface, careful not to make physical contact with the warded wood beneath them.

Despite himself, Ron was prepared to admit to a grudging regard for the Professor's warding skills.

"Now, if I might just suggest..." Snape fell silent again, spreading his fingers out and moving them slowly closer to the screen's glistening surface.

Any second now, Ron thought. His earnest desire to discover what Hermione's wards had been guarding warred with a mutinous wish to see Snape humiliated by failure – dumped on his arse by Hermione's charm work.

The pads of Snape's fingers gently pressed against the wood, and to Ron's irritation, the wards appeared to simply... fall.

Snape stood back, an expression of something like triumph written into his unforgiving features.

He spun around to look fully at Ron, raising an insouciant eyebrow. "... All of which I am sure you would have remembered, Mister Weasley, had you paid any attention whatsoever to your Charms lessons in your fifth year," he finished smugly while gently pushing the screen to one side.

Ron bit back the retort he was about to make as the screen folded back on itself and he saw for the first time what it guarded. At Ron's thunderstruck expression, Snape turned back around and stared too at what the screen had revealed.

For a moment, there was nothing audible in the room except for both men's shocked intake of breath.

Unbelievable.

Before them, thrumming with magical energy... magnificent, extraordinary and impossible, was an enormous, mechanised engine.

The machine's walls formed a roughly horseshoe shape, about fifteen feet high, with a space in the centre that was big enough for perhaps two or three people to stand inside.

Balanced above the walls of the machine was a huge hourglass which appeared to contain the same spectral material that filled the bell jar. Ron had never counted himself the most sensitive of wizards, but the magical energy that was coming off it set the hairs of his forearms and neck on end. Automatically, he held up his open hand, as if warming it on the machine's glow. He stared into the heart of the thing, trying to understand what it was.

As he stood, staring up at it, he began to feel the magical energy emanating from the metal structure fluctuate and change, morphing in much the same way as the Eternal Hummingbird altered its shape and form. What began as a warm and nurturing awareness, seemed to cool to a foreboding chill that made him feel older and drained. He shivered and pulled his hand away from the unpleasant sensation. Gradually, however, the warmth that had first drawn him in began to slowly envelop him once more.

He let out a shaky breath. "Bloody hell," he said. "Bloody... hell. What the...?"

"It is... remarkable," Snape said eventually.

Ron felt a surge of pride undercut his astonishment. He knew that Hermione was working on something, but he'd had no idea.... He gaped upwards at the towering structure, at the confusing amalgam of metal and glass. No idea at all....

And it looked like Snape had no idea, either.

He watched as the older man seemed to take in all the details of the strange construction, from its thick, rounded base to the web of transparent, twisted tubes that wrapped around the top of it, thin rods jutting out of each of them, all connected to each other in a latticework of shimmering golden threads and wires that seemed to pulse and wiggle as he stared at them. Ron stared, mesmerised and a bit revolted, as a thick iridescent liquid bubbled slowly upwards through the translucent piping around the structure towards the glass structure at the top of the machine.

The same blue spectral light from the bell jar also seemed to fill the hour glass; faint whippoorwills swirled around it, drawing Ron closer as he stared, feeling the thrum of its energy prick him with an eerie chill. Unthinkingly, he took a step forwards towards it.

Sharp fingers caught his elbow. "Don't," Snape cautioned softly, and Ron paused.

"Is that what she was working on?" he asked after a moment, his voice sounding hoarse in his ears. "The stuff from her diary?"

"I have absolutely no bloody idea at all," Snape replied, still clearly enthralled by the sight before them. His fingers, still gripping Ron's arm, shook slightly. A slight hiss of pain escaped the thin man's teeth.

Ron frowned. "Are you alright?" he asked.

The fingers dropped immediately. "It's nothing. A slight stomach complaint." Snape moved away from him, still clutching Hermione's diary tightly to his chest.

Ron shrugged. He didn't believe Snape, but if the man wanted to play the martyr, who was he to interfere?

He resumed his consideration of the series of toggles and switches before him.

Ron reached forward. "What does...? Ow!"

This time, Snape had rapped him sharply on the knuckle. "I told you: don't touch what you don't understand," he said shortly. "Who knows what damage you could create with your witless tampering?"

"Oh, sod off, Snape. Who put you in charge?" Ron countered mulishly.

"I rather thought that you had, idiot," Snape spat, waving his free hand about them. "Something to do with accosting me in a public house, demanding that I help you to find your missing girlfriend!"

"Help me, yes," Ron agreed, refusing to give an inch, "not throw your weight around like I was some sort of bloody teenager."

Snape wheeled upon him. "Weasley, I am a convicted criminal on parole from Azkaban. We are in the very heart of the Ministry of Magic, a few floors away from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement... which is currently full of people who wish to see me returned to prison without asking too many questions first. If you can restrain yourself for one moment, from behaving like an erumpent in an apothecary's store, I may be able to discover what on earth is going on here."

Ron opened his mouth to retort, but something in Snape's expression made him shut it again. Don't give the bastard the satisfaction, he thought.

Snape watched him for a few seconds longer, then emitted a brief snort of satisfaction and turned back to resume his study of the machine.

Ron felt his embarrassment deepen. Muttering, "Wanker," under his breath at Snape's back helped him feel a little better.

Against the wall, to the side of the mechanism, stood two benches. Both were crowded with bits of Muggle machinery and other strange articles and artefacts. Intrigued, Ron drew closer and was surprised when he recognised some of them.

There was an old scooter carburettor, here a vacuum cleaner, its innards spilling out onto the metal top of the workbench. More Muggle electrical equipment surrounded an 'expresso' coffee maker that he had scrounged for Hermione only last week. He frowned – hadn't she insisted that she wanted it for her flat? Bloody hell! He poked at the buttons on the machine, disappointed when the electricity didn't activate the indicator lights. He moved on.

Next, in front of the bench to his left, stood a dentist's chair, old and battered, its leather seat split and gaping open, the plastic arms reflecting the blue light from the bell jar behind him and the hour glass above. By its side stood a high stool, just like the sort that Flitwick had sat on in his Charms classroom. His stomach flipped; it had one of Hermione's cardigans draped over it. Ron resisted the temptation to pick it up, but he allowed his fingers to rub through the fibres of its collar. He pictured her wearing it, laughing with him at some stupid joke of George's, her hair tumbling down over his fingers as he caressed her neck...

He shot a quick look over his shoulder at Snape. The man was still holding Hermione's diary to his chest with one yellow-stained hand, as if it had been glued there. The blueish light in the room reflected on his narrow, lined face, casting deep shadows beneath his brows and cheekbones as he stared upwards, seemingly transfixed by the peculiar structure before him.

Not for the first time, Ron wondered just what his old teacher had been up to in the past few months. There had been no details in Hermione's journal (he had flicked through it quickly, searching with a shaking hand for the man's name). Only that short record of their meeting and her plans for another. He hadn't seen him since the trial – which Hermione had insisted that he attend, gripping his hand so tightly in hers that he had almost lost all sensation in his fingers.

Snape had looked truly awful then: prison clothes hanging loosely off his thin frame, the thick, white bandages on his neck stained reddish brown, yellow and green from his wound underneath, and the harsh light of the courtroom further emphasising his usual unhealthy pallor and his sunken and sharpened features.

Hermione had been shocked at the punishment meted out to their old teacher by the Wizengamot, but Ron had not been surprised. He had found it impossible to forget the stories that Ginny had told him and knew that many on the Wizengamot had been less than convinced of Snape's 'heroism' during the war. If it hadn't been for Harry's testimony, Ron reckoned that Snape would still be rotting in Azkaban.

Snape grimaced as if in pain again, and Ron watched as he ran the fingers of his free hand through his lank hair. Snape's hand seemed to shake as he pushed through the greasy locks, his face pinched and tired looking to Ron's eyes.

What's wrong with the man? Ron shivered, his fingers clenching again into the soft yarn of the cardigan, pulling it off the stool and up to his belly. The connection with Hermione's favourite shrug forced him to focus. He needed to know. Hermione had told him virtually nothing about her encounter with Snape on New Year's Eve, but the way she had spoken about their disgraced professor, with a kind of sadness mixed with regret, had left Ron with the profoundly uncomfortable sense that the two of them had some sort of unfinished business.

He had to discover the connection between this dismal man and Hermione and whether or not it would lead to her return. Surreptitiously, he watched as Snape began to circle the machine. He noticed how carefully Snape stepped over the strange, twisted cable which ran from the base of the bell jar into the heart of Hermione's creation, picking his way around the foot of the giant metal structure with the same fierce attention that Ron remembered from school before disappearing from view.

Ron frowned, tempted to follow him – but he caught himself in time. Don't be a pillock, he berated himself. You're not going to tag along behind him like some sort of pathetic Crup. Instead, he turned his attention firmly back to the stuff on the benches beside him.

He was strangely reminded of his father's shed at home. Old kettles and a toaster (why didn't Muggles simply put bread on a toasting fork?)... an ancient gramophone – complete with a small collection of circular plastic-looking discs with scratches on them...

Something within Ron had actually believed the bastard's initial reaction in the pub, the way Snape's face had twisted in such utter shock and surprise at Ron's accusation that Snape had had something to do with Hermione's disappearance.

Perhaps Snape really doesn't know anything about Hermione's disappearance, a small, traitorous voice whispered in his mind. Perhaps she has just left me, after all.

Again.

Disappointment twisted in his gut at the thought. His fingers clutched the soft wool of Hermione's cardigan in his hands.

No.

No. He would not be deterred.

He knew that something was wrong. He burned with the conviction of it, deep in his gut... and he also knew that if anyone could work out the puzzle of Hermione's disappearance, it was the greasy bastard whom she'd confided in. The man whom she'd seemed so excited about meeting again and who had broken through her wards with such ease.

His fingers sank deeply into the soft wool of the cardigan. He had to find her, to get her back.

Snape came back into view, moving slowly, still utterly focused on Hermione's creation. As the Potions master stepped delicately around the column, completely absorbed, Ron was unaccountably reminded of spiders.

Urgh.

Repulsed, but equally fascinated, Ron watched his old professor pause by the Muggle computer screen that was connected with a wild growth of electrical wires to the main base. The screen was showing revolving star constellations on one side and a series of what looked something like rolling Arithmantic calculations on the other. He had no idea what they meant.

Next to the screen, held awkwardly in place by some sort of sticking charm, was an ancient-looking piece of circular metalwork. The object was roughly eight inches or so wide and about two inches thick. Ron thought that he could make out a series of runes or writing around the edges of its rusted surface. He squinted at it. It looked so weird compared to the other equipment that surrounded it – battered and twisted, its edges rough and pitted with age.

Ron saw Snape reach out one long, tapered finger and brush it against the old metal. The finger lingered over the rough surface of the object for a few moments before Snape slowly withdrew it, curling the digit upwards to gently tap his thin bottom lip.

Ron realised that he was holding his breath, so intense was the atmosphere about them. Self-consciously he let it go, hissing outwards between his teeth. Snape snapped a look over his shoulder in Ron's direction and dropped his hand. The blue light from the upper bulb of the hourglass flickered and danced around them, casting crazy shadows about the vaulted room.

Snape turned away, cleared his throat and opened the diary. Ron noticed that the older man was holding the book oddly, with his left arm and hand underneath its spine, fingers curled protectively over the top of the double pages, the base of the book held snugly against his sternum, as if he were reluctant to let it part from him. Slowly, he turned a page, hunched over like some sort of dark creature devouring Hermione's words, blocking Ron from seeing anything.

What was he reading? What did he know? Ron rubbed his fingers again on the gentle fibres of her cardigan. He had glanced through Hermione's notes, nothing more, before finding the references to Snape and jumping to all sorts of conclusions.

Carefully, Snape turned another page. Then he looked up again at the machine and moved slowly back to the display screen to his left. The man paused, turned another page and scanned the screen, his right eyebrow cocked upwards as his quick, dark eyes took in the scrolling numbers before him.

Another twenty seconds passed. Ron thought he saw Snape's mouth quirk upwards slightly, as if he were privy to a secret.

"What are you looking for?" he asked, frustrated by the continuing silence.

Snape did not move his eyes from the screen. "Clues," he replied eventually, his voice nasal and patronising.

Ron saw the man's fingers tighten on the binding of Hermione's journal. He could feel his temper rising. "What kind of clues?" he gritted out from between clenched teeth, refusing to be intimidated by the surly bastard.

"Clues as to your... Miss Granger's whereabouts. That is why we are both here, after all," Snape sneered curtly.

Ron took a breath, refusing to rise to the bait. "Well, have you found any yet?"

Snape turned slowly to look at him, an expression of such intensity on his face that Ron almost took a step backwards. He raised his hand involuntarily. "Right, right. 'Fuck off, Weasley' – I get it," he muttered, turning his attention back to the rest of the little area that had been partitioned off to contain the machine. Perhaps there was something here that might tell them where she was... or what had happened to her.

Ron poked and prodded his way along the jumbled bench, searching for anything that might point to where or why Hermione had gone. The objects skittered and slid against each other and across the table. The noise echoed loudly in the small space around the machine.

"Weasley, will you keep quiet?" Snape's voice, annoyed, interrupted him as he was fiddling with the mechanism of some sort of Muggle device.

Ron rolled his eyes and moved on to the end of the bench, muttering darkly under his breath as he continued to sift through the bits and pieces on the long table, searching for anything that might suggest an answer.

He couldn't for the life of him see anything that might help.

At the end of a bench, a shop mannequin was propped up against the wall. The female figure was clad in an elaborate wizarding cloak and wore, incongruously, a pair of old-fashioned aviator goggles. The light from the bell jar danced in reflection from the eyeglasses, giving a peculiar effect of animation to the still form.

The robes were Peverell's, he assumed. Draped over the mannequin in much the same way as her cardigan had been thrown over the back of the chair. He had met Hermione's Apprentice Master once or twice – a small, scuttling man with a nervous handshake and quick eyes that never seemed to settle in one place for long. Hermione called him brilliant and inspiring, but Ron had not liked him.

He shot another look back towards Snape. The man had not moved, still hunched over Hermione's notebook, his lips moving silently as he read.

Ron looked back at the mannequin.

He couldn't shake the sensation that something in the area was... off....

oOo

Severus sank further into Granger's words, trying to focus on the essentials of what she was recording through page after page of calculations and notes from this book or that.

He had to admit (privately to himself, of course) that the work was astonishing. There were comments on genealogy texts, an analysis of Einstein's and Hawking's works on Muggle physics, an essay on the life of Hypatia of Alexandria... a spirited defence of Anderson and Pell's thesis on Wizarding time theory... He leafed through the information, searching for anything that might draw it together.

Weasley moved about the area, prodding noisily at the mess on the benches, and Severus spared him a sharp look. Why was he even bothering with the detritus that had been left over from Granger's haphazard construction?

A flare of hot pain suddenly slid upwards through his belly. Snape grunted and tipped forwards. The Occlumency block had completely failed. He gasped as the panicky feeling of loss and distress that he had been fighting for hours, returned even more strongly than before, accompanied by a desperate constriction in his chest.

He shivered, remembering the look on the Other Snape's face outside in the alleyway. Redundant timelines. Find Granger.

For some reason, the bloody woman appeared to be responsible for an older version of himself who, dressed up like an extra from Lawrence of Arabia, was prepared to babble on about 'time-shifts' and 'timelines' before willingly throwing himself into the hands of the Ministry. He wondered suddenly whether the failure of the block meant that the Aurors had discovered his double's deception.

Aurors. Snape's heart thundered in his chest. How much longer would he be safe from capture? Shit. Shit. A further rush of adrenaline coursed through him.

He turned another page with a shaking hand. It was obvious of course, from her notes and the giant prototype before him, what Granger was trying to achieve... but to what specific purpose? Severus grimaced. He could feel the smaller device nestled on his chest, hot against his sweaty skin.

Why couldn't he see where she had gone? His fingers shook as he turned another page of Granger's journal, revealing more of the woman's dense, looping scrawl.

She always had written too much.

A loud crash from the benches by the wall of the room disturbed his concentration.

"Weasley, will you keep quiet?" he spat, the throbbing in his guts warring with the skittering sense of fear and urgency in his head.

Concentrate, damn you! His doppelgänger had spoken about finding the answers in the Ministry... Perhaps he was looking in the wrong place...?

He froze, cursing his fading instincts. The answer was not in the bloody book, it was elsewhere in the room. He allowed his magical senses to expand, consciously pushing outwards to assess the energies in the room.

Dominating all others of course was the machine before him – the changing energies radiating from it pulsed and twisted, almost obscuring everything else. He could feel Weasley close beside him, his magical signature stolid and undemanding. He felt his own magic of course, a brittle and bitter thing, settling unhappily under the Trace. But there was something more. He forced himself to relax even further...

There!

Faint, but unmistakable. Skittish, but traceable. Clever.

"There is a Chameleon Charm here," Snape said softly.

Weasley froze, his wand raised immediately in front of him. Snape was reluctantly impressed both by the speed of the younger man's response and the stillness that now radiated from him as they both searched for the origin of the spell.

"Harry told me about those," Weasley breathed.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Oh, good," he drawled in a whisper that lost none of its acidic tone for all its quietude. "Did he mention how to counter one, then?"

oOo

Hermione woke, sprawled naked on the floor of the darkened yurt, her hands and arms tingling as if she had been electrocuted.

But she knew who she was, and where she was.

For a few moments, she lay there shuddering, breathing in and out and trying to control the wild beating of her heart.

Sweet Nimue, she had made it. She had done it! She was suffused by a savage, giddy feeling of excitement mixed with the same sort of terror she usually experienced when airborne.

Alexandria. The harbour and pharos. The Serapium. The greatest library of the ancient world.

Her heart beat so strongly against her ribcage that it almost hurt.

Oh. My. Word.

She sat up, and her head swam for a few moments. She calmed herself; a certain amount of disorientation was to be expected, after all. She pulled the sheet that had come loose around her and pooled at her waist back upwards, tucking it neatly under her arms, wondering again at her initial disorientation and the fact that she was naked under the rough linen sheet.

She fumbled with the linen. Why were her hands so numb?

Her memory was returning to her, but in fits and starts, like a disjointed puzzle slotting into place in a seemingly random order. She knew her name, that she had struggled to overcome significant obstacles to reach this place as part of a grand experiment which, if successful, would cement her position as a respected academic in magical theory. A warm feeling of accomplishment bathed her in its glow.

Beyond that, as far as her memory was concerned, however, things were a little... fuzzy.

A few images shifted across her memory. Her reflection shining and distorted in a great glass mirror, swirling blue energy, and the sharp pain of time transference. Time transference. She paused a little, trying out that phrase in her mind again, but its meaning was elusive and impossible to define.

She breathed out in frustration, but rather than trying to pursue it, she decided to shift her concentration.

She found with relief that recent events were far more easier to recall.

She remembered going to the Bedouin tent's opening and teasing the flap apart to look outside, confused at her location, not remembering anything about the series of events that had sent her there. She recalled the light that had shone into her eyes and the wave of intense desert heat that had taken her breath away. She had blinked once... twice, as if in slow motion, as her irises had adjusted to the direct sunlight.

The sight of the ancient city before her, spreading out in its grid-like formation over the flat sea plain around the harbour, had taken her breath away. The houses and taller buildings... the sight of the ancient lighthouse and the gaily coloured sailing vessels that bobbed about in its lee. She remembered trying to locate where the other major civic buildings must have been from the ancient plans and maps that she had poured over for weeks.

She remembered reaching up to twist the tent's door flap further out of the way – and the immediate shock that sent her tumbling backwards into the cool, darkened interior of the yurt.

Suddenly, she knew why her fingers felt as if she had touched fire, and the knowledge struck her like a well-cast Petrificus Totalis – freezing her to the spot on the harsh fibres of the yurt's floor.

There were wizarding wards on the tent's door.

oOo

Snape moved silently to Ron's side, Granger's journal held tightly against his roiling stomach, sweat beading on his upper lip, wand in his shaking hand.

"Can you tell where it's coming from?" Ron whispered, keeping his wand hand raised as he scanned the room.

"Ssssssshhhh," hissed Snape, his teeth bared in a sort of twisted snarl.

Ron stared at the older man. "You look awful," he said in a low voice from out of the side of his mouth. "What the hell is the matter with you?"

Snape made a frustrated noise in his throat, ignoring the question, continuing his slow sweep of the room until his wand was pointed more or less directly at the old shop mannequin by the side of the benches.

"Shit," Ron breathed, bringing his own wand to bear.

"Be ready," Snape whispered.

Ron nodded, tightening his grip on the willow wand in his hand, wondering just what exactly he was supposed to be ready for.

Snape stepped delicately to one side. "Come out, come out wherever you are," he called in a strange, sing-song voice, moving his wand in a series of elaborate twists and flicks which seemed to be describing a pattern of runes in the air before them.

Ron felt the air thicken, like the atmosphere before a summer storm. The mannequin began to shiver and shake. It rose slightly in the air and altered in form, twisting and reforming underneath Snape's obvious efforts. Ron stared in shock as the mannequin's head and body began to change. It was obvious that the hidden body was reluctant to form. Snape's lips were pulled back from his teeth into a savage grimace as he channelled all his energies into forcing the transformation.

With a final thrust of Snape's wand, however, the mannequin gave up its former shape, and before them, a small, sleek-haired wizard with heavy, rounded glasses shivered into being, clad in the same robe that had recently wrapped itself about the tailor's dummy. Emitting a frightened shriek, the man fell to the floor, clawing at the fibres of the blue carpet at their feet.

Snape sagged backwards against the metal column of Hermione's machine, panting with the effort it had cost him. "Master Peverell, I presume," he gasped.

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A/N: I'm back! And I am really sorry for the delay in posting this chapter... *hangs head*.... Clairvoyant, nagandsev and beaweasley2 are wonderful! I do not own these characters (well, most of them...).