The Quality of Mercy

Chapter 22: Bloodlines

Hermione awoke from a troubling dream, one in which she wandered from room to room in an enormous gray stone building that resembled Hogwarts in its basic architecture but whose details were utterly unfamiliar. In the dream she had been searching for something, but although she moved from corridor to corridor and room to room in ever-increasing haste, the object of her quest remained tantalizingly out of reach, just a flicker of elusive golden light at the very edges of her vision. She couldn't recall making a sound, but she felt Severus' hand first on her arm, and then against her forehead.

"Bad dreams?" he asked quietly.

She wondered what nightmares he might suffer. What flashbacks to his dealings with Voldemort and his time with the Death Eaters might haunt Severus' sleep? "I'm not sure," she said. "Not a real nightmare, anyway. More like something I should remember."

"Ah." He pushed her loose hair back from her forehead and laid a gentle kiss on her temple. "Then I have no doubt you will remember in time." His black eyes glinted. "I just recalled that I have been rather remiss myself."

"Remiss?"

In answer he kissed her again, this time on her throat, and then in a delicious trail from her neck to her breast, barely accessible through the open placket of her heavy nightgown. His free hand pushed the flannel up off her legs as he reached to touch her. Hermione gasped, feeling his long, sensitive fingers finding the exact spot which brought on the most exquisite sensations. Her blood seemed to flare hot as dragon fire, and she pressed herself against him. The climax came quickly, but he was not content to stop there. Instead he slipped under the covers, breath hot on her skin. She barely felt him tug at her underwear and pull it down her legs. Then his mouth was on her, his tongue flickering against the delicate flesh.

Hermione cried out, her fingers knotting in his heavy, slick hair. Every nerve ending seemed to throb with pleasure, until the orgasm broke over her in a huge pulse of golden heat that rippled down to her very fingertips. But even that wasn't enough - Severus did not stop until she had climaxed once more. Then at last he pulled away slightly and thrust himself inside her. She welcomed him, wrapping her legs around his back, clutching him with every last bit of strength she still possessed. They rocked together for time unending, lost in the heat of their mingled bodies, as the echoing waves of ecstasy ebbed and flowed between them.

Some time later they broke apart. Hermione could do nothing but lie back flat against the pillows, her chest heaving with the effort of pulling in enough oxygen to keep herself somewhat conscious. The bed was a mess and the linens would now need changing, but she found she didn't care much. Not when Severus had just reminded her of why it was such a good thing to be alive.

He lay there for a moment as well, but then, ever businesslike, took himself off to the bathroom to get himself cleaned up. Hermione knew she should do the same, but somehow she wasn't quite sure her limbs were yet capable of independent movement. Besides, there was something delicious about lying there, her entire body still warm and languorous in the afterglow of their lovemaking. The bed was outfitted with two quilts and a heavy woolen blankets, so there was little chance of her catching a chill.

The curtains had been pulled shut, so she could see nothing of the day outside save a hazy, dim glow through the heavy linen. Probably it was snowing again; something about the gray quality of the little light which did seep through told her of yet another bleak Yorkshire morning. Even that wasn't enough to dampen the warmth inside her, a warmth which didn't entirely stem from the lovemaking they had just shared. No, it was also the memory of Severus' words the night before, when he had told her he had no desire to face a future without her in it. She had be so uncertain for so long, not knowing whether the depth of his feelings for her matched those she had for him. Only a fool would think they didn't still have a dark and difficult road ahead of them, and Hermione was no fool. But at least now she could face the future secure in Severus' love.

He returned to the room clad in the dark robe that usually hung from the peg on the back of the bathroom door. His dark hair fell in lank strands almost to his shoulders and left trails of moisture on the fabric. Obviously he had decided to take a quick shower. Another perquisite of being a wizard; one was always assured of endless hot water, even if one's abode hadn't originally been plumbed that way.

His words quelled some of the warmth inside her, however. "You should think about returning home."

At that she sat up. Her nightgown gaped all the way past her breasts, but Hermione didn't bother to pull it shut. "Home?"

"You may have put Harry off for now, but you cannot keep making excuses to the Ministry forever." Severus frowned. "And I would suppose that ridiculous animal you call a pet will need to be looked after at some point."

His words caused a spasm of guilt. Of course she had left enough food and water for Crookshanks to last several days, but Hermione knew the cat must be missing her, left alone in the cottage as he had been. As much as she loved Severus, she had a duty to Crookshanks to make sure her pet was taken care of.

"You're right, of course," she said. "But our research - "

"Can be carried out remotely, if necessary. You may take Draco's sample with you. Perhaps with both of us working in parallel we will reach a solution that much more quickly."

The words spilled forth before Hermione could stop them. "If you really want to send me away - "

At once he went to her, then sat down on the bed and took one of her hands in his. "Send you away? Is that what you think? I would like nothing better to keep you here with me, for both of us to tell the world to go hang. But we have responsibilities which are not so easily shirked. Would we really want our selfishness to result in the deaths of Lucius and Draco Malfoy?"

Again Hermione felt a wave of guilt wash over her. "No, of course not. It's just - do you think we'll ever have a time just for us?"

"I cannot say. The world always expects more from those who have the most to give. I think you have learned this already."

Oh, yes, she had, on more than one occasion. Severus had probably learned this bitter lesson as well. The more capable you were, and the more you wished to make right in the world, the more that world leaned on you. She had never minded before; indeed, in the months following Ron's death, she had welcomed the weight of her responsibilities. They had helped to distract her from how empty her life had become. No honeymoon period for her with Severus like what she had had with Ron, however; the world required too much of her at the moment.

She raised her chin and looked directly into Severus' dark eyes. "I think I'll have that shower now."

Rosedell felt like a foreign place to her, although she had only been away two days. Crookshanks greeted her with an affronted yowl and all but herded her into the kitchen as he meowed loudly the entire time. He still had food and water, but Hermione knew that wasn't what had upset him so much. At once she got the last tin of tuna and put it in a special bowl, then set it on the ground next to his dry food. He would not eat until she had bent down and scratched his ears for several minutes, but at last he shook himself and went to the bowl of tuna.

"Sorry, Crookshanks," Hermione said. "I'd try to explain to you where I've been and what I've been doing, but I somehow get the feeling you wouldn't much care."

She straightened and went to set a kettle on the stove. Perhaps a cup of tea wasn't the cure for all her ills, but at least the familiar actions were comforting. She'd shared a quick breakfast of toast with Severus but hadn't lingered. He was right. She needed to be here at Rosedell, if only for a little while.

Her dining room table wasn't as large as the one Severus had at his home in Yorkshire, but it should do. In her satchel she had brought back with her Lucius' and Draco's precious blood samples, as well as the more promising of the potions ingredients Severus had collected. What she found herself thinking of, however, was not the painstaking research into which sections of Malfoy DNA contained the key to Scarbury's Syndrome, but Severus' revelation that he feared he might be a carrier as well. Something about his words troubled her, as if there was something not quite right about that assumption, even though she couldn't say why.

Hermione didn't like not knowing the answers to things. Never mind that genetics wasn't a subject covered at Hogwarts, nor even during her time at university. She'd concentrated on history, her first love, not science. But since they were trying to discover the key to Scarbury's, didn't it make sense for her to try to discover precisely how it was transmitted?

That sort of research couldn't be conducted here at Rosedell, of course. She'd have to go to the public library in Ottery St. Catchpole, even though she'd steadfastly avoided the place ever since Ron's death. Or, failing that, make use of the university library card she still possessed and go back to London University. That might be more helpful; she had a feeling the genetics section at the local facility might be somewhat limited.

But it turned out she'd sold Ottery St. Catchpole's library short. True, the place only had one or two basic works on genetics, but they were fairly recent, not the early-century relics she'd feared she might find. And the library had also recently outfitted itself with several internet terminals, thus giving her access to information far beyond what she might locate on the shelves here.

She'd already surmised that Scarbury's must be a sex-linked genetic disease, since everything she'd heard so far seemed to indicate women could only carry the disease and not show actual symptoms. A brief scan of the newer of the two texts she'd found explained why - a woman, who of course had two X-chromosomes, could only exhibit the disease if she'd inherited it from both parents. In most Muggle sex-linked disorders, this sort of transmission was very rare, as most men affected by these illnesses were unlikely to father children. However, Scarbury's didn't impair function until the portions of the brain utilized during the practice of Occlumency were engaged. Even then, though, a son could only get the disease from a carrier mother, since it was passed through the X-chromosome.

It also meant, Hermione realized, with a rush of relief, that Severus - or any other male wizard -- couldn't be a carrier. If he'd inherited the gene from Eileen Prince, he would have been afflicted the second he attempted to use Occlumency. Lucius Malfoy could have only gotten the disorder from his own mother, just as Draco must have inherited his from the Black side of the family. Even though his own son had the illness, Lucius could not have been the one who passed it on. It was just luck of the worst sort that paired two random families - two inbred, Pureblood families, Hermione reminded herself - and led to two generations of men being afflicted by the same terrible disease.

How this information might help her, she wasn't sure, but at the very least knowing Severus was free of Scarbury's taint set her mind somewhat at ease. It was very possible that his mother hadn't carried the gene at all - just because it had showed up in an uncle didn't necessarily mean she was affected. Hermione wondered how much of the female wizarding population might actually be carriers. Almost impossible to say at this point - the subject had been buried in the dark for so long that of course no one had been keeping careful statistics the way Muggles did with color blindness and hemophilia and the numerous other disorders which could be passed along from mother to child. Once they had isolated the gene, perhaps she and Severus could come up with an effective way of screening for it. After all, Scarbury's wasn't a death sentence. All you had to do was avoid the use of Occlumency and Legilimency, and you'd be just fine....

But all that was getting ahead of herself. First, a cure.

Easier said than done, of course. Hermione gazed at the assembled ingredients on her dining room table and struggled to fight off a sensation of overwhelming futility. Somehow this had seemed so much easier with Severus at her side. She couldn't let his absence affect her, though. Hadn't she figured out how to make Polyjuice Potion without any assistance? And hadn't she come up the clever use of the snitch jinx to have the word "sneak" appear on the face of anyone who dared to betray the D.A.? She hoped she wasn't turning into the sort of woman she'd always rather despised, the type who couldn't get anything done without a big, strong man to support her.

Admitting you loved someone and wishing they were close wasn't weakness, though. Or if it were, then it was the sort of weakness she'd gladly own. Hermione wondered if Severus' thoughts strayed to her as he worked away in solitude. Difficult to say - after all, he had many years of lonely labor behind him, as well as the ability to achieve an almost frightening focus in times of duress. Perhaps for him she didn't even exist when he was in such a state.

Hermione found she didn't like that notion very much. Setting her jaw, she pushed up the sleeves of her jumper and retrieved the vials containing Lucius' and Draco's blood from her satchel. The sooner she got to work, the sooner she'd find the solution they'd been seeking. And the sooner that end was achieved, the sooner she could return to Severus. Perhaps not the most selfless of reasons for finding a cure, but did it really matter, as long as that cure was found?

The fire guttered out in a mound of grey ash. Hermione found herself jerking awake, then shot a worried glance at the clock on the mantel. It couldn't really be that late - she'd only thought to sit down and rest her eyes for a moment, give herself a chance to get off her feet for a little while. How could it already be one in the morning?

She had no reason to distrust the clock; it was one of those little atomic gadgets that kept perfect time, a present from her parents two Christmases past. Really, her home had far more Muggle artifacts than any wizard dwelling had any right to, but between the Weasley fascination with nonmagical artifacts and her own parents of course giving her the sort of items they could easily purchase, the house was an odd hybrid of the magical and mundane. Having been raised a Muggle herself, Hermione could never embrace the total denial of technology even the more enlightened members of the wizarding world seemed to espouse. What was wrong with taking the best of what each world had to offer? Rejection of one or the other simply because of blind prejudice seemed to her both short-sighted and foolish.

It was a simple thing to get the fire going once again. Despite the lateness of the hour and the realization that she should really go to bed and start over fresh in the morning, Hermione forced herself to return to the dining room table. A trio of the same intricate, glowing orbs she and Severus had first called into being in his home hung over the table, although an astute observer might have noticed minute differences in pattern between the ones she beheld now. Draco's glowed more brightly, the tiny firefly dots that signaled the magical portions of his DNA more evenly spaced. Next to it hung the sample from her own blood that Severus had taken from her the day before. It shone even brighter than Draco's; although there weren't as many glowing segments, the ones that were lit from within looked almost like tiny suns. Hers, however, had a geometric pattern unlike the other two. If she squinted at the sample of her blood, she could almost see the elegant traceries it formed, rather like a tile pattern she'd once seen in a book on Middle Eastern architecture. Not that that helped much, since Draco's blood didn't evince such patterns, although it seemed as if they might have existed at one point and for some reason had deviated in certain sections. Lucius' sample, on the other hand, was a complete chaotic mess, as random as a drift of autumn leaves.

What that all proved, she couldn't be sure. Did she have fewer of the magical DNA segments because she was Muggle-born? Was there no discernable pattern in Lucius' blood sample because of the effects of Scarbury's, or was his DNA pattern random because he'd been born that way? No wonder Muggle research studies utilized such large control groups - it was impossible to speculate on the patterns and their correlation to magical ability (or lack thereof) without many more samples than Hermione currently had before her. Any guesses she made would simply be that - guesses, with little real evidence to back them up.

Still...

Frowning, Hermione circled the dining room table, looking at the three samples with narrowed eyes. Good thing she only needed a drop of blood to perform the spell, and that the charm kept the precious liquid in complete stasis, guarded against decay and spoilage. She and Severus had managed to get safely away with the samples they had now, but she certainly didn't want to raid Malfoy Manor again in order to keep procuring fresh supplies for research.

If her own blood was the control, the one sample she had for observation that was completely unaffected by Scarbury's, then perhaps the pattern was the key. Perhaps the degradation of the links in the magical DNA was what weakened the mind of the sufferer, allowing control of magic to slip out of his hands so that it raged, unchecked, against all in the vicinity.

Could it be that simple? Could the answer lie in the relationships among the individual bits of DNA, rather than in one lone piece of genetic material gone awry? Only one way to be certain, she supposed.

Hermione drew out her wand. If she were wrong, then she would surely ruin the sample she had before her. But there was enough left in the vial for her to create another specimen cell if necessary, and it would not do to be timid. Had Marie Curie hesitated when researching the effects of radium? Had Rowena Ravenclaw equivocated when she invented the ever-changing staircases at Hogwarts?

Sometimes all one could do was act. Hermione raised her wand, pointed it at the shimmering orb of Draco's blood that floated above the dining room table, and cried out, "Reparo!"

A wash of golden light flooded over the sphere. The individual twinkling segments of DNA seemed to writhe and twist, as if being bent into place by some unseen force. And then the golden light ebbed, leaving behind it a sphere almost identical to Hermione's sample. It shone a little less brightly than hers, but the pattern was there, if she looked hard enough.

Hermione expelled a breath and slowly lowered her wand. Moving with care, almost as if she worried she might undo what she had done with a hasty gesture or too heavy a step, she went closer to the table. The gleaming orb did not shift or alter its appearance, but merely hung there, motionless before her wondering eyes.

Did that do it? she thought. It can't possibly be that easy, can it?

With one finger she reached out to touch the orb. It felt warm and unpleasantly moist against her fingertip, but although it shuddered slightly as she pushed against it, the careful patterns remained in place, the softly glowing bits of DNA never flickering or growing dark.

She wanted to throw her arms out and do a dance of joy. Her elation faded abruptly, however, when she realized that all she had done was repair one cell. One cell, out of hundreds of millions.

It's a start, though, she told herself. Now that I know how it works, I can tell Severus, and perhaps he'll know of a way to get a similar effect through use of a potion. After all, it wouldn't be exactly practical to extract a Scarbury victim's cells one by one and cast a repair spell on them individually. It would take years just to cure one person.

Not for the first time, Hermione wished Severus were connected to the Floo network. Then it would be the simplest thing in the world to contact him through the fire and have him come here to see what she had done. Failing that, however, she'd send him a message through her Patronus.

It was easy enough to summon the Patronus; despite the complications of extrapolating a cure from the healing of a single cell, she still felt positively euphoric over the discovery she had just made. The sleek, glowing shape of the otter disappeared through her front door almost at once, heading north with its message. Now all Hermione had to do was wait.

With anyone else perhaps she would have waited until morning to impart the good news, but she knew Severus most likely was still awake. Even if he were not, she guessed he would not be overly upset at being awakened for such a reason. So little was known of Scarbury's that Hermione had no idea how quickly the disease might progress, or how much time Lucius and Draco might have left. Judging by the degraded state of Lucius' blood sample, Hermione guessed it mightn't be very long at all.

It would not do to wait in idleness, however. She returned to the dining room table and drew out her wand once more. It had been simple enough to repair Draco's sample, but what of Lucius, so much more affected by the disease than his son?

Nothing ventured....

"Reparo!" Hermione cried out, injecting every ounce of desire to find a cure she possessed into that one syllable.

Again golden light splashed its way across the sphere. This time, however, the hugely enlarged cell seemed to shrink in on itself, even as it shuddered and twisted, contorting like a sponge being wrung by unseen hands. Then it exploded outward. Hermione barely had time to utter a Shield charm before the glistening contents coated every inch of the dining room, including her. As it was, the table and the potions supplies it held got a liberal dousing of rather nasty-looking organic matter.

"Well, damn," Hermione said, then cautiously lowered her wand. At least the Shield charm had protected the two other samples, but Lucius' blood cell was gone, reduced to several large patches of ooze on the table.

She wasn't quite sure what the cell's self-destruction meant. Had she been too forceful in casting the spell? Or was it simply that the disease had progressed too far, and the cell was too damaged to be repaired? If that were the case, were all the cells in Lucius' body similarly degraded, or did she just have a bad sample?

Questions, questions, all of which had no answers. Frustrated, Hermione set about cleaning up the mess left behind by the cell's destruction. She couldn't very well leave the dining room table that way, and she thought perhaps it would be better to wait for Severus to arrive before attempting any further experiments.

Luckily, such a task was accomplished quickly enough through the judicious use of a few household spells she'd learned from Molly. More than half of the potions supplies, however, were a total loss. All Hermione could do was throw them in the waste bin and hope none of them were items Severus might need to synthesize a potion based on her findings.

She had just returned the waste bin to its place in the kitchen when she heard a loud pounding on the front door. Even as she hurried to answer it, she wondered why Severus hadn't just Apparated directly into the house instead of knocking. No matter, she supposed - the important thing was that he was here.

But when Hermione flung open the front door, she found herself not looking up into Severus' familiar features, but rather down into Pansy Malfoy's battered, bloody face.

"Help us," Pansy whispered, and then collapsed in a messy heap on the front step.