Half Magic

II

For a moment, Hermione wasn't quite sure she had heard the Headmistress correctly. How could magic abandon Hogwarts? Wasn't magic at the very core of its existence, as much a part of the castle's structure as the stones and mortar that composed its walls?

But then she looked more closely about her, noticed again how Albus Dumbledore's little silvery devices sat quiet and still, no longer making their customary whirring noises or emitting their faint puffs of pale smoke. And she saw how the portraits on the walls had lost all their life and were as unmoving as any painting she had seen in the National Gallery. A few of the frames hung empty; she wondered if their occupants had been marooned elsewhere when the magic disappeared from Hogwarts.

Professor Snape stood as unmoving as one of the lifeless paintings, brow furrowed, mouth compressed to a thin line. Since that was his habitual expression, Hermione couldn't hazard a guess as to what he might be thinking.

She wouldn't let herself think what his presence here meant. How could he have possibly survived Nagini's attack? She had seen him die -- at least, she thought she had. But the night of the battle for Hogwarts had been such a muddle of terror and worry and despair, perhaps it was possible she had misread what happened in the Shrieking Shack. Perhaps when Severus Snape had closed his eyes for what she had thought was his last time, what he had really been doing was husbanding his strength to keep himself alive until after they had gone.

A flutter of guilt in her midsection then, as she recalled how they had left the lifeless form of the Potions master behind. Not a second glance from any of them; Snape was dead, and they had had a battle to wage. At the time she hadn't thought anything more of it, save perhaps a quick fleeting notion that she hoped she would never die as Severus Snape had: alone, unloved, unmourned.

Her voice sounded thick and hoarse when she spoke, quite unlike herself. Perhaps it was the chill of her walk across Hogwarts' grounds. After all, it was much colder here than in London. Yes, that must be it.

"And you've found nothing to explain this sudden loss of magic?"

Minerva shook her head. "The staff has scoured the castle from top to bottom. No sign of anything amiss, as far as any of us could tell. No whiff of dark magic."

Professor Snape spoke, his voice coolly sardonic. "And of course you trusted Professor Williamson to make an accurate assessment."

His tone left no doubt as to his own thoughts on Professor Williamson's abilities. Hermione had always thought Williamson a good choice for the open Dark Arts position; after all, the man had served in the Auror Department for some years. Perhaps Snape simply couldn't be charitable toward anyone who occupied the post he had coveted for so many years and had held for such a short amount of time.

"Yes, I did," McGonagall replied. Her mouth compressed slightly. "We are clearly dealing with something quite out of the ordinary here, Severus. Otherwise, I would not have troubled you with it."

"Of course," said Professor Snape. He moved farther into the room, brushing past Hermione in her chair as if she weren't there. Then he paused below the portrait of Phineas Nigellus -- or rather, the empty rectangle of canvas that had once held his portrait. "Have you attempted to contact Professor Nigellus?"

For a second Minerva McGonagall stared at Snape as if she thought he had gone mad. After a brief hesitation, her expression relaxed slightly. "No -- that is, no one seems to know where his other portrait had gone."

At this remark Hermione gave a guilty start and straightened in her chair. "Actually, I have it."

"You?" Professor Snape demanded. He stared down at her, black brows drawn together in a scowl she remembered only too well.

Feeling a bit overmatched, she stood up and faced his glare. Of course he still topped her by almost a foot, but she felt a little better now that she could meet his gaze from a standing position. "Yes, I. The three of us took the portrait from the Black house, but after the end of the War, Harry said he really didn't care to take it back there, so I kept it."

And little enough Phineas Nigellus had thought of that treatment, since at first she'd had no good place to store the painting save where she had during that entire terrible year -- in the little beaded bag which would hold just about anything she placed in it. Once she had her own flat she'd tried to give Phineas a proper home on the wall of the second bedroom she used as an office, but he heaped so much abuse on her for the shoddy treatment he'd suffered that she ended up stowing the portrait in her attic. She didn't know if that was much of an improvement over the beaded bag. Harry, however, had been adamant about not taking the painting back, and she hadn't known what else to do with it.

"Then we must go to your flat and question him."

Professor Snape's tone allowed little room for dispute -- not that she would have bothered to argue the point with him. His suggestion made a great deal of sense. If Phineas Nigellus had somehow managed to escape before Hogwarts became completely magic-free, he might know something of what had caused the phenomenon.

Still, she felt more than a little odd taking Severus Snape to her flat -- even if their destination was only the attic. At least they could Apparate directly there once they were off school grounds.

"That seems the logical thing to do," she replied. Was it her imagination, or did a flicker of surprise cross his features, as if he had expected her to put forth much more of an argument?

A second later she wished she had, for she belatedly realized that since of course Professor Snape had never been to her attic, their travel would necessitate Side-Along Apparition. And that spell required the person hitching the ride, so to speak, to hold the caster's arm quite firmly.

Oh, dear.

Hermione hoped none of the dismay she felt had revealed itself on her face. "It's best if we go as soon as possible," she went on, since there was no way to backtrack without making herself look a fool. Besides, interviewing Professor Nigellus did seem the best thing to do, given that they really had no other leads.

"Would you like to put your things in the rooms we've had prepared?" Professor McGonagall asked. "Get yourselves settled, and then go on with the investigation?"

That did sound like a wise thing to do. No doubt the Headmistress would rather not be tripping over their travel things in their absence.

Snape gave a small, nudging nod, and Hermione replied, "Of course. That way we shan't disturb you if we're late in returning."

"Excellent." Professor McGonagall turned toward the door, obviously expecting them to follow her.

Hermione bent and picked up her valise. Professor Snape, she noted, carried a slender slim black case almost hidden by the folds of the traveling cloak he had draped over one arm. They both trailed after the Headmistress as she led them out of the office, down the steps, and then along a corridor Hermione had never seen before. Then again, she'd never had much need to explore this part of the castle. The hallway was wide and well lit by a series of sconces with fat yellow candles sitting on them. The air smelled of beeswax.

They stopped at the end of the corridor, which terminated in a rounded antechamber with a pair of doors flanking a side table carved from age-darkened oak. On it sat a bust of some ancient wizard; perhaps before the magic had left the castle he had been as animated as the portraits in Professor McGonagall's office, but now the wizard was still and quiet, his eyes shut as if he were indulging in a long-needed nap.

"Yours," said Minerva, who produced a heavy ring of keys from some pocket in her robes. She unlocked the door to the left and gestured toward Hermione, who gripped her valise a little more tightly and stepped inside.

The room was quite sumptuous, furnished in more heavy carved oak and hangings of burgundy and gold. No doubt it had been intended for important visitors who had once belonged to Gryffindor House. She set her valise down on the chest at the foot of the bed, all too aware of Professor Snape's cold gaze on her as she did so.

"And yours," the Headmistress went on, going to the door on the right.

Hermione turned to see an equally elegant room, this one draped in dark green and silver grey. Without a word, Professor Snape moved past Professor McGonagall and placed his own meager luggage on the floor next to what looked like an extremely comfortable armchair. Still silent, he returned to the antechamber, then crossed his arms.

"It would be best if we went now," he said.

No doubt he wished to get what he most likely viewed as an unpleasant task over and done with as quickly as possible. Hermione tried to keep her tone neutral as she replied, "My thoughts exactly." She turned to the Headmistress. "Does the area affected by the loss of magic follow the boundaries of the school grounds? I Apparated about ten yards from the front gates and had no difficulty."

McGonagall nodded. "As far as we've been able to tell. Whatever is affecting Hogwarts, its influence does not extend beyond what's commonly accepted to be the property's borders."

Well, she'd thought as much, considering she'd been able to travel to the school by magical means just as she always had, but Hermione was glad to hear they wouldn't have to go miles away just to cast a simple spell. She picked up her cloak and said, "Then we'd best be on our way."

In response Snape draped his own cloak over his shoulders, then turned and strode down the corridor in the direction they'd come. Hermione wouldn't let herself trot to keep up -- that would be too undignified -- but she lengthened her own strides as best she could and managed to stay only a pace or two behind him. Poor Professor McGonagall had been quite outmatched, but then, she wouldn't be accompanying them anyway.

The night air felt even more freezing as Hermione emerged from the relative warmth of Hogwarts' corridors, and she pulled her cloak more tightly around her. Even Snape reached up to fasten the row of buttons that held his own outer garment shut. That didn't slow him down, however; he maintained the same ground-eating pace until they were well beyond the school's front gates.

Finally he stopped and faced her. The moonlight cast harsh shadows on a visage that had never been soft. "Ready?"

"Of course," she lied. Not about the spell, since Apparition had always come easily to her. But the rest --

Hoping that he hadn't seen her hesitation, Hermione reached out and hooked her right arm around his left. His arm felt slender but strong, stronger than she might have imagined.

Sooner done, sooner over, she thought. She fixed the image of the attic in her mind and whispered the words of the spell, even as she spun into the nothingness of Disapparition, Severus Snape's arm clutched tightly within both of hers.

The dusty confines of her attic room materialized around them almost instantaneously. Hermione barely had time to acknowledge the crushing pressure on her chest before it was gone.

Professor Snape had a look of grudging respect on his face. She could Apparate and Disapparate elegantly and in almost complete silence, unlike Ron, who invariably sounded like a cork exploding from a champagne bottle whenever he came and went in such a fashion.

Still, Hermione knew better than to expect any words of praise. She was not disappointed.

"The painting?" Snape asked.

Without replying, she went to a linen-shrouded shape propped up against the far wall. "Lumos!" she said, then twitched the drop cloth aside with a mental sigh and waited for the inevitable explosion.

"This is absolutely intolerable!" spluttered Nigellus. "Do you have any idea how disrespectful -- "

"Professor, we need your help."

"Help!" The snort that followed this imprecation was explosive and also rather incongruous, coming as it was from a flat image trapped within the confines of a flaking gilt frame. "I'll help you to a cell in Azkaban! When the Regents hear how I've been treated -- "

"Phineas," drawled Snape, and stepped forward into the bluish-white glow of Hermione's illumination spell.

The appearance of the Potions master was apparently enough to shock Nigellus into silence...if only for a moment. He stared at Snape, then said, "Severus? What are you doing with this uppity little mudblood?"

The epithet did not unduly upset Hermione. She hadn't been raised in the wizarding world, and its silly prejudices would only harm her if she let them. But she could tell Nigellus' words had angered Professor Snape. His mouth thinned, and she noted the hard set of his jaw as he stared down at the portrait of the former Headmaster.

"Miss Granger and I," he said, taking care to emphasize her name, "are here on Ministry business. If you behave yourself, perhaps I will see to it that you are given a proper home."

"Is that any way to speak to your betters? Why, I -- "

"The drop cloth, Miss Granger?"

Fighting back a grin, Hermione bent down to retrieve the heavy length of linen. Even as she did so, she heard Nigellus screech,

"No, not that! What sort of help did you need?"

Snape crossed his arms and stared down at the pointed face of the man in the portrait. Hermione had always been of the opinion that Phineas Nigellus had cultivated his narrow, vaguely Elizabethan beard to hide a weak chin.

"Have you tried to return to Hogwarts recently?"

The portrait couldn't exactly turn pale, but some alteration in his face made Nigellus look even more pinched and hollow. "No."

Hermione stepped forward. "Why not?"

"Because I can't."

She risked a quick glance at Snape. The former Potions master stared down at the portrait with an expression of mild interest on his saturnine features, as if Nigellus were some new form of fungus he couldn't quite identify.

"Can't...or won't?" she asked.

"Can. Not," Nigellus snapped. "Have you had your hearing checked recently? Or do you not have command of the most basic aspects on the English language?"

Her only reply was to feint toward the abandoned the drop cloth.

"I can't, I can't!" squawked Nigellus. "I've tried. It's like traveling down a tunnel, only to find it bricked up at the end."

Severus Snape's expression did not change. "What did it used to be like?"

"Darkness, but with a rectangle of light at the end -- the other portrait frame, if you will." Phineas Nigellus seemed to gather himself a bit. "I always saw my destination. But this last week or so...nothing. I tried, of course. Anything was better than being trapped here in the dark." He shot a narrow-eyed glare in Hermione's direction.

She wished she could feel guilty, but really, she had had no choice. Even exiled to the attic Nigellus had made his disgust at his treatment known, usually during the darkest hours of the night. In desperation she had thrown the drop cloth over his portrait, reasoning that such a strategy had always worked for her parents when they wanted to control the more vociferous of the budgies they'd owned. She'd hated herself for doing so, but the neighbors in the flats to either side of her had begun to complain, and what else could she do? The girls in the flat below hers were also witches who worked in the Ministry of Magic, but the people to either side were Muggles who most likely would not have accepted an explanation that involved a painted former Headmaster with a nasty disposition.

Why Phineas bothered to come back here at all, she didn't know. She could only guess that he enjoyed plaguing her existence. It was highly unlikely that Minerva McGonagall would countenance that sort of behavior.

"And then what?" she asked.

"Then nothing," he replied, giving her a truly evil glare. "As I said, like hitting a brick wall and being thrown backward. I kept ending up here, no matter what I did." His eyes narrowed even further, although Hermione wouldn't have thought that was possible. "Someone put a spell on my portrait at Hogwarts, didn't they? I'd blame one of those dreadful Weasleys, but of course they're all long gone by now."

"No one's put a spell on it," Professor Snape interjected. "Quite the opposite."

"I'm afraid I don't follow."

"I mean, Professor, that magic seems to have vanished from Hogwarts. The 'brick wall' you mentioned is no doubt the absence of magic surrounding your other portrait frame. Of course you cannot travel there, because the magic doesn't exist to allow you to materialize at that end. All of the paintings hanging in Headmistress McGonagall's office are simply that -- paintings, with no more life than a landscape you'd see hanging on the wall of a Muggle home."

Hermione had never thought she'd feel sympathy for Phineas Nigellus, but the look of horror he turned on Snape was genuine, and rather heart-wrenching. "It's not possible," he whispered. "I'm trapped here?"

"For now," Professor Snape said. There was certainly no sympathy in his tone. "The Ministry has tasked us with solving the mystery. Obviously, the current situation cannot continue indefinitely."

"No," Nigellus said, although Hermione got the impression he was still thinking of himself rather than the larger issue of a school for wizards that -- for the moment, anyway -- was bereft of magic. Ignoring her, he fastened Snape with a pleading stare. "You will fix it, won't you?"

"If we can," was Snape's only reply. "But if there's nothing further you can tell us..." He turned to Hermione. "I think it best we return to Hogwarts and focus our energies there."

"Wait!" called Nigellus. "I remember something else -- a feeling of cold, of dread, like a Dementor -- "

Snape crossed his arms and raised one eyebrow ever so slightly. It was a technique often used to good effect on his students, and apparently Phineas Nigellus wasn't immune, either.

"No," he said, misery clear in his voice. "I really didn't feel anything. Just the realization that I couldn't go any further, and that I had to return here."

"Thank you, Professor Nigellus," Snape said, although he sounded less than grateful. "Miss Granger."

Under other circumstances she might have been irritated by the manner in which he had taken over the conversation. But it was clear that Phineas Nigellus was just as dead an end as his erstwhile route back to Hogwarts, and they had nothing further to do here.

At least this time she didn't have to take Severus Snape's arm. They whirled away into the darkness, and Apparated in the same spot from which they had left. Nothing had changed, save a slight shift in the moon's position, and an even deeper bite to the chill wind that swept down off the Scottish crags.

She refrained from speaking until they were safely inside and the doors shut against the frosty night. After undoing the cloak clasp at her throat, she remarked, "Well, that was a waste of time."

"Not at all," Professor Snape replied. "Whatever is causing this cessation of magic, it seems to have quite thoroughly blanketed the place. It is nothing as simple as blocking basic spells, or even casting a curse that would prevent any mortal man or woman from using magic in Hogwarts. Phineas Nigellus is not mortal, of course -- he is a specter, an echo of his former self. And yet even he cannot return here. There is no magic in this place to support his shadow being."

For a moment Hermione was silent as she turned over Snape's words in her mind. A curse that could block magic was something she had never heard of, although theoretically she supposed it might be possible. But all the evidence seemed to suggest something much larger than that was at work here.

"So what's next?" she asked.

Something that might have been the barest flicker of a grim smile touched his lips. "I suggest we sleep on it, Miss Granger. It is late, and I suspect Hogwarts will be unchanged when we awake tomorrow."

That didn't sound quite right to her. Surely they should be doing more than merely going to bed and calling it a night. She opened her mouth to protest, but it was too late; he had already turned away from her and was moving swiftly down the corridor in the direction of his chamber.

Hermione shut her mouth with a snap she could feel in her jaw. Most likely the day's frustrations would set her to grinding her teeth in her sleep once more. And of course in her haste to come here she'd forgotten to pack the little mouth guard her father had made for her.

Whatever else might happen, she couldn't stand here in the entryway all night. Perhaps a good night's sleep was in order. Perhaps she would wake tomorrow with a fresh perspective on the situation. No doubt Professor Snape was right, and Hogwarts would be exactly the same when she awoke the next morning.

She didn't quite know what she would do if it wasn't.

12