Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Lucius emerged for breakfast to find that Severus and Hermione had already finished theirs.

Severus raised an eyebrow at him. “Late night?”

Lucius shot a dirty look at him over the top of his cup of coffee. “I seem to recall that you are the one who sent me on an errand to Shacklebolt last night.” He pointed at the empty plates only just vanishing from the table as the house-elves collected them. “You could have waited for me.”

“It was your idea,” Hermione reminded him from her seat beside Severus. “And we would have, but we thought you needed your beauty sleep. Speaking of Kingsley, what did he have to say?”

“You are looking at the official Ministry liaison between Muggle-borns and the wizarding world.” Setting his cup down, Lucius dug into his fry up.

“Congratulations,” Hermione murmured.

“I’m surprised you managed to sit on that overnight. It might be just what you need to kick your reputation out of the gutter.”

Lucius shrugged, unoffended at Severus’s words. A mouthful of bacon kept him from saying anything. Under the current circumstances, his reputation or lack thereof didn’t matter much, although proof that he had really changed after all was admittedly useful. It might make it easier to gain access to Shacklebolt in future, too, as it had taken him a couple of hours to do so.

“You’d already retired for the night by the time I got back, and it’s hardly as if it means anything as things stand. For the time being I can assist Shacklebolt in preparations to ease the passage of Muggle-borns into our world, but it’s a meaningless title when there’s practically no Muggle-borns to do it for.”

Lucius paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, suddenly aware that he was flirting with a case of foot in mouth, saying such things in present company. “Merely a statement of fact,” he hurriedly added. “It will still keep me occupied and make me feel marginally useful while the two of you help save the witches of the wizarding world.”

Severus snorted. “While I admit the cure is a touchy subject, you don’t need to walk on eggshells around it. I know that you must have some faith in me, or you wouldn’t have bothered to waste hours chasing Kingsley around at the Ministry to talk to him about something that wouldn’t be an issue should I fail.”

“When are you going to ask that portrait of your ancestress about the Arithmancy?” Hermione asked.

“I already have, actually. I did not so much as have a ‘late night’ as you two had an early one; there was time for me to talk to a family portrait before bed.”

“Define late,” Severus muttered. “It was a long day. That riot did not start it well, and the Arithmancers on the research team killing themselves and nearly taking me with them really did not improve matters.”

In other words, Severus had been the one in need of his beauty sleep. It had even worked to some extent, as he looked far less haggard. Almost healthy, although his skin was still as sallow as ever.

Hermione sighed. “I meant to ask if I could be there when you did talk to the portrait. But I guess there’s nothing to stop me from talking to her at another time?”

“Nothing except the fact that she will not talk to half-bloods, let alone a Muggle-born. It’s why I didn’t wait until morning so that you would be around too.” Lucius looked away, embarrassment an uncomfortable heat. Even before Hermione proved to him that it was possible for a Muggle-born to be exceptional, his views hadn’t been quite so extreme.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me from a Malfoy,” Severus muttered, on the edge of Lucius’s hearing; he wasn’t that old, so it was still as sharp as ever.

Lucius narrowed his eyes at Severus. Granted, it hadn’t been long since he held similar views, but besmirching the family name was not on. Particularly when it was not correct to do so. “Technically she is only related to me by marriage to a brother of one of my great grandfathers.”

Before Severus could do more than open his mouth to say something in return, Hermione put her hand on his arm. “At least Lucius knows better now. It doesn’t matter what his portraits think of me. Hardly as if they can poison me, is it?”

Lucius winced. Good of her to defend him, but bringing up the murderous actions of that elf gone bad would not help pacify Severus.

“Provided that they cannot give orders to the elves.”

Or perhaps it would, as this way Lucius could assure him of Hermione’s safety. “Of course not! While in some households that might be the case, not under my roof. I am the master of this house.”

“While that’s good to know, don’t we have other things to talk about? Like what that portrait had to say, for instance.” The impatience underlying Hermione’s words was endearing. Always so eager to learn more.

Lucius frowned. He found lots of things appealing about his flavours of the month in the past, but only Narcissa’s quirks had been endearing. Such affection – love – was reserved for her alone.

‘It’s nothing but lust! Hermione is appealing in both personality and body, but… Impossible. Never love.’

He blinked and refocused his eyes on Hermione when she waved a hand in front of him. “The portrait?”

“What?” ‘Very smooth, Lucius.’

“If you would care to stop daydreaming, did your portrait have anything useful to say?” Severus said, impatience bleeding into his voice in a far less endearing way.

“Well…”

“Young Abraxas should be ashamed to produce such an inbred fool! I told him that your mother was too closely related, but did he listen? You make me glad to be only related to you by marriage, although poor Wilfred would turn in his grave.”

“Aunt Mildred, a simple ‘no’ would suffice. And perhaps an explanation rather than insults. I am the master of the house, you know, and you are bound to provide me with answers to any questions I might have.”

“Very well. Then you might leave me in peace, or as much as I can have when a Child of Mud sleeps under this roof.”

“Get on with it.”

“Really! Such ill manners. In my day—”

“I shall not ask again.”

“To perform my art, I would need a heart to beat beneath my bosom, to be flesh and blood once more. Not oil on canvas, imbecile!”

“Thank you, Auntie, that’s quite enough. You’re a fine one to talk of manners, and I have but one more word for you: turpentine.”

Lucius winced; Mildred’s outraged shriek still rang in his ears. “In a word, no. Suffice it to say that an Arithmancer needs a pulse to calculate anything.”

“Oh, damn. Sorry.” Hermione slapped her forehead. “I should have been able to tell you that. It’s in the textbook that the equations rely on the magic of the caster, and that’s tied to the caster’s life. Ghosts can’t work magic in the same way that living people can, and portraits are even more limited than that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucius said and patted her shoulder. “Perfectly understandable that you would be preoccupied in the current circumstances.”

“Indeed.” Severus put his hand on her other shoulder, apparently ignoring Lucius’s straying hand or interpreting it as the friendly touch it was. “While Arithmancy would let me know for sure how the plague will mutate, examining the plague affecting the dying Muggle-born babies may reveal something useful for a permanent cure, or at least one that will work for your next attack.”

Hermione shrugged them off. “I do appreciate the thought, both of you, but I don’t need to be coddled.” She stood up, rolling her eyes when Lucius and Severus also rose. “Do you really want to go to the loo with me?”

Lucius watched her leave, his eyes still fixed on the door as it shut behind her. “Lovely girl, but her manners could do with a bit of work. A lady talks of powdering her nose.”

“Hermione is only a lady when it suits her, and I wouldn’t change her for the world.”

Poor Severus. Under her thrall already. For him it had been at least a year until that point with Narcissa.

However disgustingly in love Severus was, at least it had provided Lucius with some entertaining memories. Come to think of it, dipping into a few would be the perfect way to spend the morning.

He started for the door and halted at the realisation that Severus was following him. While Severus would not be able to follow him into his sanctuary, it would be very suspicious if he disappeared through a wall right in front of him. “Shouldn’t you be in your lab?”

“There’s not really anything productive I can do until I receive samples from those Muggle-borns.”

“When will you get those?” Lucius asked, doing his best to keep the frustration he felt out of his voice. Even if those samples arrived in the next minute, being reminded again of those dying newborns was a formidable mood killer. Severus had no idea, of course, but he’d just sucked out any enjoyment Lucius could hope to get that morning, just as efficiently as a Dementor could.

“As soon as possible. Beyond that, I have no idea. I sent the messages before bed last night to ask for them and to inform what’s left of my research team.”

“So the owls might not have even reached them yet, depending on how far away some of those researchers are now. You could be waiting for days! Surely there is something you can do.” As soon as Lucius spoke, he regretted it. The last thing he wanted to do was put any pressure on Severus. He’d be under plenty even without anyone else saying anything. Long association made it very clear that no one was harder on Severus than himself.

Severus merely shrugged. “That might be the case if I had used any of your owls. Fawkes was rather insistent that I use him. I was going to use some owls, but Fawkes appeared before I could so much as select one. He recovered from his burning day faster than I expected.”

Lucius closed the distance between them with two quick strides, stabbing his finger at Severus. “Appeared? You had better mean that he flew, or I might have to evict him from my aviary, pride of the collection as he is.”

Severus pushed his hand away. “Fawkes lives wherever he wants to and does whatever he wants to. I thought you knew everything about birds – phoenixes are not familiars. If anything, I’m his.”

“In other words I have some rather singed owls, don’t I?” Lucius shot him a dirty look.

“I’m afraid so.” Lucius glared harder; Severus’s tone was utterly unapologetic. “But they’ll live. My point is that Fawkes took the messages and was done within a minute, the smug show-off.”

“They had better,” Lucius grumbled. As he couldn’t amuse himself with his illicitly acquired memories – and was no longer in the mood to do so, thanks to Severus – perhaps he should check on his poor birds. “I shall see to them myself, then.” He turned to leave.

His hand was on the doorknob when Severus spoke. “Before you do, might I have a word? I assure you that they could all still fly perfectly well, as they all made themselves scarce with no difficulty.”

“Can’t it wait?” Lucius snapped, not even bothering to turn around. His owls might not be of any concern to Severus, not when he had his very own pet phoenix to instantly transport messages, but Lucius did not have the same luxury. Apart from that, every single one of his birds was a treasured feathered friend.

“It could, but it’s not something I want Hermione to hear. It’s about the plague.”

Ah. Something considerably more important than any bird, then. Lucius let go of the door handle and turned back. “What is it?” he asked, his tone as gentle as it could be when directed at another man.

“You remember my Omnioscope?”

Lucius blinked at the apparent non sequitur. “The thing you used to examine those blood samples you took from Hermione?”

“Yes. The sample I took just before I gave her the cure for the second time is the issue.” Severus pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, and spoke hesitantly, as though the words were somehow painful.

“How so?” Lucius prompted, wondering if the conversation could be any more surreal. Severus obviously wanted to talk, yet the words had to be pried out of him.

Severus dropped his hand from his face and opened his eyes, something flickering in them before his face went blank. Lucius thought it might have been worry but couldn’t be sure. “With the first sample I took, back before the cure was developed, the plague was completely stationary. It still is in that sample, as if it were somehow dead or frozen. But the most recent sample…”

“Yes?” It had been easier to get Draco to confess when he’d pinched some of his Firewhisky while underage.

“The plague isolated in that sample is mutating.”

“Isn’t that good news?” Lucius asked, puzzled why Severus looked so grim. Surely it meant that how the plague would change could be predicted.

“Not when the changes are occurring fast enough to be seen by the naked eye. Especially not when those changes were not visible at first except by comparing the current form to the records in the Omnioscope.”

Lucius frowned, conscious of Severus impatiently folding his arms, awaiting his reaction. “So the speed of the mutation is increasing. Which will make it difficult to predict how it will have mutated by the time it attacks again?”

“I fear it will be virtually impossible if there is no link between the ‘cured’ plague and the plague unaffected by the cure, the one currently afflicting new Muggle-borns.”

Hence why Severus hadn’t wanted Hermione present for the conversation, then. There was no point raising such a fear when it might not be an issue.

“I hope those samples you are waiting for arrive soon, then. And, of course, that they will help—Ah!”

The wards screamed. Lucius winced, his hands instinctively raising to his ears, the alarm call still a little too loud. “Finite,” he barked.

“What’s going on?” Severus asked.

“The wards,” he said shortly.

He frowned, concentrating on the origin of the alert. Hermione’s room. His face contorted with a mixture of concern, bafflement and fury. He couldn’t tell that she was actually in the room, her presence hidden. Only one thing could result in that: she’d put up her own wards. “What is she doing?”

“She? Hermione? What—”

No time to explain. Whatever Hermione was doing, she was in danger. He grabbed hold of Severus and Apparated them outside her room. If they had to break down the door and her warding with brute force, so be it.

* * *

Hermione slipped into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. She slumped against it, deliberately letting her head fall back with a slight thump. ‘Wonderful excuse, idiot.’

While saying that she needed to go to the loo had let her escape from Severus’s watchful eye for a bit, it wouldn’t be nearly long enough. Fifteen minutes at the most, then Severus would be bound to look for her. All she could do was try to delay him a bit.

She pushed away from the door, strode over to her bed and perched on the end of it, after checking if Crooks was hiding under it. No sign of him, thankfully, as he might also have objected to what she was doing.

Wand in hand, she cast an Imperturbable, making sure to extend it beyond the doors and walls of the room. That way the spell would serve to protect the physical barriers. It wouldn’t hold off Severus forever, but it would hopefully slow him down enough for her to do what had to be done.

After Summoning a self-inking quill and some parchment, and enchanting the parchment so that she could write on it with no table beneath, she set her wand aside. The quill scratched across the paper as she started scribbling down the numbers and letters forming the equations. Several times she had to pause, searching her memory for the right formulae. It had been over a year since she last touched her Arithmancy textbooks, or at least over a year since she could remember doing so, anyway.

The parchment quickly filled up, although Hermione caught herself anxiously glancing at her watch several times. Five precious minutes had passed by the time she finished, and another minute wasted to double check the calculation.

‘No.’ Not a waste. Checking something was never a waste of time, particularly when it was this important. It would not do to end up calculating how she would mutate rather than the plague, a mix-up that was not out of the realms of possibility when using her own blood to attune it.

She reached for her wand, ready to touch it to the parchment to cast Vector’s test. Or not, Hermione realised, eyes widening. One vital thing was missing: the blood! Hermione didn’t hesitate. She snatched up her quill again and stabbed it into her left palm.

‘Ow!’ She flinched, hissing through her teeth as she tugged it back out, a mixture of blood and ink dripping from both quill and wound. She quickly scrawled over the relevant part of the equation with the bloody ink.

Picking up her wand, she looked to her wound first. It wouldn’t do to get any more blood than necessary on the parchment. She also needed to concentrate when casting the spell, and the throbbing pain wouldn’t help. And—

Ouch. The cut looked quite deep, blood welling out of it to pool on her cupped palm, the ink a dirty stain mingling with it.

“Am I a witch or not? Better use a little Diffindo and something to collect the blood in next time. Hope it’s not toxic ink,” Hermione muttered faintly. “Tergeo.” That took care of the collected blood and seemed to remove all traces of ink, but blood still welled from the wound. Obviously. Although she didn’t think of herself as squeamish, the sight of that self-inflicted wound made her feel rather lightheaded.

“All right, idiot, stop dawdling and deal with the wound.” She absently wondered what it said of her mental state that she was talking to herself. “Episkey.” She paused before casting another Tergeo which took care of the freshly leaked blood. It was very doubtful that this calculation would pass Vector’s test, so she might as well take a sample of blood to use with a different calculation. That done, she turned back to the parchment.

She touched the tip of her wand to the middle of the parchment. ‘Salus in numerus.’

The ink started glowing as soon as the spell was cast. Back in her first Arithmancy lesson, Vector had showed them how her test worked but stressed that none of those who would be able to cast it – the girls – would be allowed to except under her supervision until they were studying at N.E.W.T. level. The test itself was not dangerous as such but required adult supervision to ensure that none of them tried to activate the calculation after performing the test.

A successful Arithmantic calculation meant that the equations must balance. That didn’t just mean that the equations had to be correct, but that the caster had to be powerful enough to power the spell used. As the Arithmancers on Severus’s research team had demonstrated, there could be fatal consequences in attempting Arithmancy that was beyond the caster’s abilities.

Hermione kept her unblinking gaze on the ink and made sure that her wand did not stray from the parchment. Breaking the connection would mean redoing the test, and it was never as reliable when repeated. Vector had explained once that it was something to do with the ink having limits on the amount of magic it could absorb.

The ink stopped glowing and started to change colour. To green, at which Hermione blinked, as it meant it was safe to cast the spell, but within ten heartbeats it changed again to amber. Not advisable to cast, then, as while she was powerful enough it would drain her magical reserves for a while. She almost lifted her wand from the parchment, but the ink colour changed again just before she did. Hermione swallowed hard. Red. Permanent loss of magic. If she had lifted her wand and tried to cast, then…

Wait.

All colour faded from the ink, returning it to ordinary black. Impossible. She’d double checked the calculation, she couldn’t have made a mistake. Plain black meant the spell wouldn’t—

Hermione clutched at her chest as her heart skipped a beat. She broke the connection between wand and parchment with a gasp, her fingers white knuckled and her heart racing after the rude interruption in its rhythm.

Not plain black, then, but the last of Vector’s traffic light warnings. Black for death. As most ink used by students tended to be black, Vector had modified her test twice; so that the red was a different shade to that used in marking, and again so that it made the caster’s heart skip a beat if it resulted in the worst case scenario.

Definitely just as well she hadn’t broken the connection sooner, or Severus would be put out with her to say the least. It would have been rather embarrassing to inadvertently kill herself, too.

Hermione threw the stiffened parchment up into the air, and while it floated down aimed her wand at it. “Incendio.” By the time the parchment reached the carpet, it was so much ash. Rather than give poor Dilly more work to do, she Vanished it. Theoretically she could have just used Tergeo on the ink and reused the parchment, but that was something Vector had advised against doing time and time again. Like other writing utensils, quills left indentations in parchment. As such, reusing the parchment risked accidentally activating the erased calculation in addition to the one written over it.

She took a fresh sheet of parchment and held the quill over it, poised to start again. As she’d suspected, she’d have to calculate something different. Not how the plague would mutate, which should also include when, but… what?

As she racked her brain for an alternative hopefully within her capabilities, Hermione caught sight of the vial of her blood collected after her display of what-not-to-do-with-a-quill.

If she couldn’t calculate how the plague would mutate, she could still try calculating when it would strike again. Not nearly as helpful to Severus, but an idea of how long he had would still be of some use. She began scrawling on the parchment again, pausing when she came to the equations governing what would be used to calculate it with. Perhaps the plague itself was too complicated. Instead…

A grim smile slipped over her lips as she dipped the quill into the vial of blood and continued to write. This way, she didn’t even need to modify the attuning medium.

She double checked the equations carefully, something that she had always done, of course… But today she took extra care, as she didn’t usually combine blood with ink, let alone her own blood at that.

Hermione rested her wand tip against the parchment and cast Vector’s test. The ink flickered to green, then to amber. She waited a minute before breaking the connection, but there were no further changes. Not advisable to cast, then, but…

Before she could let her doubts and guilty conscience – a mental voice that sounded distinctly like Severus – talk her out of it, she moved her wand to rest on the first equation.

“Sum,” she muttered, activating the calculation. It was a deceptively simple incantation for such a potentially lethal spell. She trailed her wand over the parchment in the direction that the equations were written, the ink glowing again after her wand passed each numeral.

Once all of the ink was glowing, she tapped the centre of the parchment with the wand tip. The ink ran together and slowly started to rearrange itself into the answer to the calculation, glowing brighter still until Hermione could see purplish after images every time she blinked.

Her skin began to tingle as though she had a cross between mild static electricity and pins and needles, mingling uncomfortably with the exhilarating rush of watching the calculation rewrite itself.

The tingling increased until it became prickling, moving from discomfort to pain. She could feel the drain on her magic now, almost as if a Dementor was attacking, but on her personal magic supply rather than her emotions.

Then the exhaustion hit. Her breathing ragged, she struggled to keep her eyes open. Everything was blacking out around the edges, as though she were in a tunnel. Darkness claimed her.

* * *

AN: Many thanks to Kribu, Septentrion and JunoMagic for betaing.

Salus in numerus = safety in numbers, at least according to the English-Latin online translator I used. While quite possible that it’s wrong, I hope it’s not too glaring.

Sorry for the delay in posting the chapter. It was the busiest time of the uni year with no breaks between essays, revision and exams. With any luck I should be able to get back to my usual posting schedule of about one chapter per month over the summer. There should also be about three chapters left, not including the epilogue.