Half Magic

VI

Concentration was not something Hermione had much difficulty with, but for some reason she couldn't seem to maintain focus on the pages before her. Perhaps it was the continuous soft rustle from a few feet away as Professor Snape flipped the leaves while he worked away at his own stack of books. Or perhaps it was merely frustration at having to quickly scan the precious materials he'd brought from the teachers-only section of the library instead of giving each volume the close attention it deserved.

In any case, she found herself continually glancing up to see how her companion fared. Better in terms of attention, it seemed; his expression was abstracted, his black eyes flickering as they absorbed the contents of a page and then moved on. The day outside was dark, the sky heavy with clouds, so a number of candelabras provided the illumination for their studies. Their light softened the lines around his eyes and caught warm little flickers in his hair.

You are completely daft, Hermione told herself as she closed a volume of wizard history and reached for another book. Why on earth are you staring at Severus Snape when there's work to be done?

She had no answer that; at least, no answer she was currently willing to acknowledge. As she opened the book she held, she realized that tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Why that should make any difference, she wasn't sure. She'd already resigned herself to being far from home during the holiday. Ron would be furious, of course. Then again, lately it seemed Ron was angry with her more often than not, no matter what she did.

"It's almost Christmas," she said.

Professor Snape didn't look up from his book. "And?"

"I suppose it just seems odd to think that we'll be spending it here."

Then he did glance over at her. "So little confidence in our sleuthing skills? Perhaps we'll find the answer this afternoon, and then you can be on your way back to London and the no-doubt pining Mr. Weasley."

"That would be lovely," she replied, refusing to be baited. "But considering the fact that I haven't found anything yet, and neither have you, and that we still have a very large stack of material yet to get through -- "

"Ye of little faith," he interrupted. His mouth twisted as he gave her the sort of smirk she remembered all too well from her days in his classroom. "Will you feel better if I promise to drink a cup of wassail with you? I draw the line at singing carols or giving presents, however."

She scowled. "As if I would ever ask such things of you, Professor Scrooge."

To her surprise, the smirk transformed itself into something that closely resembled a real smile before disappearing altogether. "If it's any consolation, I'm sure the house-elves will roast us a goose fit to rival the one from the story. And I daresay Minerva will be glad of our company."

Of course. Strange that Severus Snape should be the one to point out to her that Professor McGonagall would have a very lonely holiday indeed with all the students and almost all of the staff gone. Hermione wasn't sure who still lingered at the school, but guessed that Madam Sprout had stayed on. She had always been at Hogwarts for the holidays; presumably she had no relatives she could visit.

Hermione thought it would almost be worth missing Christmas with her friends and family if she could provide support for Professor McGonagall during this very difficult time. And if she and Professor Snape somehow did manage to solve the mystery of the beast in the seventh cellar before then, it would make a wonderful present for the Headmistress.

"I hope this mission isn't keeping you from your own celebrations, Professor," Hermione said, her tone somewhat arch. She suspected quite the opposite, but that snide comment about the "pining Mr. Weasley" had gotten under her skin more than she had thought it would.

He shut the book he was holding with a snap. "Is this your oblique way of trying to discern where I've been and what I've been doing for the past five years?"

His voice sounded suspiciously bland, but there was a glitter in his black eyes that should have told her to leave well enough alone. Hermione said, "Well, since you did let everyone believe you were dead -- "

"And I would like you to take care to keep it that way," he cut in. "I owe the wizarding world nothing."

"Then why are you here?" she asked.

Silence then, accompanied by an angry flash of those night-dark eyes. Without replying, he reached out and picked up another book, then opened it.

She didn't quite know why she continued to press him, but there was something liberating about being on an equal footing with him for once. Before, she had always been the student. But now she was an adult, a woman with a life of her own and her own standing in the wizarding community. She refused to let him intimidate her.

"You could have said no, couldn't you?"

Another pause. Then he looked up from his book and fastened her with a cold, black glare. "You are very young, Miss Granger." At once he returned his attention to the pages of the hide-backed volume he held.

For a few seconds Hermione could only seethe inwardly. Young? In years, perhaps, but certainly not in experience. Why, there were elderly wizards on the Wizengamot who had never confronted the sorts of dangers she'd faced in the war with Voldemort. How dare Severus Snape be so dismissive, so contemptuous of the person she had been and the woman she had become?

"Do you want me to reply that you're old, Professor Snape?" she retorted. "Because that's not true, and you know it. Are you really that willing to be a hermit and turn your back on the world when your life is barely half over?"

This time he shut the book carefully before turning a withering stare on her. "What I do with my life is no concern of yours. Now, I would suggest applying yourself to that stack of books, or I fear we'll be toasting in the New Year before we manage to solve this mystery."

His tone had a note of finality that allowed no further argument. Hermione settled for shooting him a sharp glance of her own before she returned her attention to the volume she held. What rankled the most was that he had spoken the simple truth. His life and how he chose to live it should be of little interest to her. Her focus should be discovering the identity of the beast in the seventh cellar, not meddling in Severus Snape's personal affairs.

Why, then, did she feel a stirring of disquiet deep within, as if some part of her cared more than she was willing to admit?

***

He had upset her, he could tell. Served her right, with all her poking and prodding. What difference could it possibly make to her whether he spent the rest of his life rotting in that little cottage in Cornwall?

Still, Snape couldn't completely ignore the little pang he felt as he saw her bite her lip and ostentatiously smooth the pages of the book she was holding. A spot of color burned high on each cheekbone. She studiously avoided looking at him.

Perhaps there was something else he should have said, but he had no talent for smoothing ruffled feathers. And really, she had no right to ask him those sorts of questions. Typical Granger behavior. Clever enough, of course, but she could be woefully lacking in tact.

He didn't want to admit to himself that he took offense at her behavior because it resembled his own a little too closely.

In silence he set his own book aside and went on to the next one in the pile on the table. It was worse than looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack; if one truly needed to find a needle in a pile of hay, a simple magnetizing spell would do the trick. But no spell had been invented that could magically extract the necessary information from a stack of books almost higher than his head.

He wouldn't allow himself to sigh, but he did feel a distinct lack of enthusiasm as he thumbed through the pages of the volume he had selected. Nothing of note, as far as he could tell -- merely an account from a disciple of Helga Hufflepuff's about their attempts to catalogue the flora surrounding Hogwarts.

Just as he was about to cast the book aside, a chance phrase caught his eye. He forced himself to stop and reread it.

Barthelemy Endicott and Justinia Pugh also reported the same curious cessation of magic in a valley a few furlongs from the castle proper. I had thought it merely my own weariness, but it appears some outside force is affecting all our ability to perform even rudimentary spells. The field of effect is not overly large; once we were back at Hogwarts, our powers appeared to reassert themselves. We plan to set forth on the morrow with colleagues from the other Houses to investigate further.

Snape could feel his heart begin to beat a little more quickly, but he managed to keep his face a mask of cool indifference. "I may have found something."

Hermione's head jerked up at once. "What?"

"Here," he replied, and read the pertinent passage aloud to her. "It continues, The next day, all the members of our party experienced the same thing -- none of us could perform any magic in that hidden little dell. This is a cause for enough concern that we believe the Founders should be involved."

"That must be it," Hermione broke in. Her eyes were glowing, all previous upset apparently erased. "So what happened?"

"I'm getting to that," he answered, a little testily. He returned his attention to the page in front of him, scanning its contents for the pertinent selections. "It appears that three of the Founders -- I see no mention of Salazar Slytherin -- returned to the valley with their pupils. They, too, were unable to perform magic, but -- " he paused, and then picked up the thread of the tale, " -- here it says, We followed the spoor to a shallow cave almost hidden behind a screen of blackberry brambles. All was darkness within, but we saw golden eyes glowing far back. After some debate, Godric Gryffindor and several of his larger and burlier students entered the cave. The creature hissed like the serpent it resembled, but we soon saw it was only defending a clutch of eggs hidden at the very rear of the cavern."

"It must be another one of them," Hermione said. "Of course we couldn't see any eggs, but naturally the creature must have attacked us because it thought we were threatening its offspring."

He had reached the same conclusion but did not wish to agree with her too readily. "That is one theory."

"The only logical one."

This time he couldn't quite repress a sigh. "May I continue?"

"Of course." An impish glint from those big brown eyes. "Pardon me for interrupting you, Professor Snape."

No point in responding to her too-sweet tone. Instead, he returned his attention to the page and said, "The next few paragraphs are blurred and unreadable -- something was most likely spilled on the page. But it goes on to say, Against Professor Hufflepuff's wishes, the consensus was that we should remove the creature from Hogwarts' environs. We could not risk it wandering closer to the castle and disrupting our studies. But we also did not wish to hurt it or kill it, for it bore no malice toward us, but merely affected those with magical abilities because of its own inborn traits.

"At length a large cage was constructed. We trapped the creature and carried it and its eggs far away, over rough ground made more onerous by the fact that of course we could not levitate the cage or Apparate ourselves to our destination. No, the slog was made over many miles of perilous terrain, until we reached another hidden valley where we deemed the creature could be safe. And there we left it, and made haste to depart. Once we had put a little over a mile between us and the creature, our powers returned. We Disapparated to Hogwarts, glad that we did not have to make the return journey on foot. Notes were made to keep an eye out for the creature in case it ever returned to Hogwarts. But for now at least we are free of it."

"If only this book hadn't been locked up in the teachers-only section," Hermione commented, still in that treacly tone of voice, one which reminded him uncomfortably of Dolores Umbridge...one that he guessed Hermione had deliberately adopted in order to needle him. "Then perhaps people would still be aware of the danger that could return to Hogwarts."

"And perhaps some would have taken it upon themselves to hunt these creatures, whose only crime is an inborn ability to block the powers of witches and wizards," he retorted. "Hundreds of years have passed, and only now has it returned. Who knows why, except the past few winters have been exceptionally hard. It may have only been returning to territory that was once hospitable, following its instincts the way birds fly south for the winter."

At once her expression sobered, and the glint disappeared from her eyes. "You're right, of course."

Would he have been so quick to agreement if their roles had been reversed? Most likely not. But Hermione, while proud in her own way, had always been one to follow the most logical course. How someone so clever and admirably hard-headed had ended up with a whimsical fool like Ron Weasley, Snape couldn't begin to imagine. Perhaps it was an ongoing hangover from teenage hormones. He'd long ago abandoned any attempt at understanding the human heart.

"At least we can be reasonably certain that it wishes us no harm," she continued. "While I suppose I've faced worse in my time, I'll admit I wasn't particularly looking forward to confronting an inimical monster while being deprived of my powers. I was beginning to wonder if I'd have to ring up my Uncle Brendan and ask if I could borrow his hunting rifle."

The image of Hermione Granger armed with a rifle and hunting monsters in the Hogwarts cellar was so incongruous that Snape let out a chuckle despite himself. She looked back at him, apparently a little shocked that the stony-faced Potions master had actually deigned to make a sound of amusement. Then her mouth curved in a grin.

"To be fair, I'm not sure that rifle even works," she said. "I've just seen it hanging on the wall of his study when we've gone visiting during the holidays."

"No need for that. It seems obvious enough that we merely need to trap the creature and remove it -- and its eggs -- from the Hogwarts grounds."

"'Merely'?" she echoed. "At least back in the Founders' day they had a large enough group of people to carry the thing out of the vicinity. Right now we've got you, me, Professor McGonagall, and Madam Sprout. I don't think either of them is quite up to hauling a creature that probably weighs at least twenty stone overland for miles, and unless you've been lifting weights in your spare time, I doubt you are, either."

He couldn't argue with that, much as he would have liked to. Strange how one took magic so for granted -- it was like knowing there was air to breathe and ground beneath one's feet. Take it away, and things that once would have been so simple immediately became a logistical nightmare.

"No," he said. Much as he would have liked to say he was up to the task, he knew that was madness. Oh, he'd managed to stay fit and strong enough, thanks to his efforts in his garden and the rambling walks he took near his adopted home in Cornwall, but he knew his own limitations better than anyone. "A cart, perhaps? There may be something in Hogsmeade we can use. Innately magical creatures don't seem to be affected -- witness the house-elves' continuing use of their abilities -- so the thestrals -- "

He broke off abruptly, for Hermione had begun to laugh.

"I fail to see the humor in the situation."

"Oh, I'm not laughing at you," she said, then paused. "Well, perhaps I am, just a bit. I suppose I'm finding it rather funny that we're both trying to solve this by thinking like wizards."

"Well, how else should we solve it, pray?" Really, he saw very little to laugh at. Perhaps they had at least managed to track down the source of the magical disruption at the school, but removing the creature was not going to be easy. Not at all.

Her lips pursed as she appeared to consider his question. "We've already established that human-created magic doesn't work anywhere within the vicinity of the creature. So all the spells protecting Hogwarts -- all the spells that keep Muggle devices from working -- have to be nullified. We can't solve this the wizard way, so we'll solve it the Muggle way."

A suspicion as to where all this might be heading began to niggle at the back of Snape's mind. He wasn't sure he liked it at all.

"It's so simple, really," she concluded. "All I have to do is procure a lorry and a cage. I'll just drive right up to Hogwarts' front entrance. We'll trap the creature, load it on the vehicle, and take it out of here. A few hours on the road should get it safely away."

He thought he could come up with a few hundred objections to her plan but settled for the most obvious. "You can drive?" he asked, in tones of deep suspicion.

"Of course I can," she said breezily. "My parents made sure I learnt. We're closest to Aberdeen -- I'm sure I can rent a lorry there. I don't know about a deposit, but I suppose I could get one of my parents to wire me the money if necessary."

Now she was dragging her parents into this. Would they inquire as to why their daughter the witch suddenly needed to procure a vehicle in Aberdeen, or were they now so inured to the ongoing madness of her life that they no longer bothered to ask questions?

He wished he could protest, but he had no reasonable alternatives. Hogwarts and the rest of the wizarding world had sheltered him for a very long time, but he'd spent his early years living the life of a Muggle. No one would question a lorry going about its business. A cart and a horse, if they'd even been able to find one? Sure to raise a few eyebrows at the very least. And using a thestral would be even worse. Perhaps a spectator would find a cart and horse trudging along the road charmingly Luddite, but a cart that appeared to move of its own volition? He didn't want to imagine what a Muggle's reaction to that spectacle might be.

"We still have to find a cage," he said sourly, but it was only a token protest. For better or worse, it seemed they would have to follow Hermione's hare-brained plan. He couldn't seem to come up with a better alternative.

Still, he found himself hoping that she could pilot a Muggle vehicle a bit better than she could a broom....