Life on the edge

Chapter 4

The trio looked at each other.

"But Hermione... Snape has to inform Dumbledore every time when he is called; don't you think that both of them would get suspicious when it is during school time? And Dumbledore himself told us the story about Snape being sick - that would mean that he knows exactly that something's going wrong. But why... Why has he sent Snape despite this knowledge?" Harry wondered.

"Because," the three of them jumped as the headmaster stepped out of a hidden door behind them, "it is not unusual that Professor Snape has been called on a Wednesday morning. Perhaps you remember that he has only your class in this time, which he can catch up later with the use of his time turner. But I'm pleased to see that you use your brains," he said with twinkling eyes. Hermione grew purple, and Harry and Ron stood before him with open mouths. The headmaster continued:

"I'm sure that I don't need to tell you to keep your thoughts by yourself. And don't worry; Professor Snape may have not returned by now, which is, I have to admit, a bad sign, but I'm sure I will get message from him soon." "Yes Sir, of course" the trio stammered. With a wave and a last smile Dumbledore went towards his office. Hermione stared past him.

"But why did he speak of a whole week at breakfast?" she asked no-one special. Shrugging, the two boys took her with them back to the common room.

'Ah, Miss Granger, there you are." Hermione turned at the sound of Professor McGonagalls voice, waiting in her steps to Gryffindor Tower. Harry and Ron waved and climbed through the portrait-hole to leave Hermione to the head of their house. The elderly witch came towards her and handed her a folded piece of parchment.

"Professor Snape asked me to give you this, in the case that he does not return today." Hermione glanced at the note in her hand and recognised Snape's neat and elegant writing; she was puzzled, had he known something about his delay before he left? And why did he inform her via McGonagall? He could have passed her the note directly into her room, with his owl or one of the house-elves. She shrugged and looked up at her head of house:

"Thanks, Professor. Um, do you know if he'll be back tomorrow? Because there is this particular potion he is researching, and I can't go on with it's brewing on my own..." McGonagall smiled at her best student:

"I don't know when he'll be back, but I'm sure he left some instructions for you to deal with." She pointed at the parchment in Hermione's hand.

"Well, I should leave you to your tasks." With a small smile, McGonagall went back in her office. Curious Hermione unfolded the parchment and read.

For the case that I'm not able to be back at time, please follow the instructions below. As you may know, the Lingua Franca potion requires special treatment at this phase, so make sure you report every step of the ongoing brewing. Do not go any further than step six as the rest must be done under the next silvermoon. At last, Madam Pomfrey asked for a greater supply of pepper-up potion, please prepare fifteen phioles size three. You will find the ingredients in the left cupboard, as well as the phioles.

If I'm not back till weekend, freeze the L F potion. Don't try to finish it on your own, it is too dangerous.

A short list of required ingredients and a description of the brewing process followed. Brows furrowed, Hermione re-read the short note at the beginning. So it was this "Lingua Franca" potion for what he had needed her notes from the linguistic articles. Interesting. What would it be used for? And the name? Wasn't a lingua franca a trade-language? Or better, a term for a language which is used as a medium for communication between different speaking communities in trade, she remembered the definition from one of the articles she had read yesterday. Amazing, maybe Snape was looking for a way to understand foreign languages through potions? The new discovered hint on Snape's work kept her concentration away from the riddle around his absence, and lost in thought she entered the common room.

She was greeted with buzzing talk and laughter while she climbed through the portrait hole. She looked out for Harry and Ron and found them already in their favourite armchairs in front of the fire. It seemed as if Harry was losing another game of chess to Ron, instead doing homework. With a smirk, Ron watched as his bishop swept Harry's last tower off the board. Harry pounced his head on the table with a groan.

"C'mon, you've becoming better since the last match!"

"Well, that doesn't save me now... Oh, Hermione! That was a quick talk. Aren't you supposed to help the bat in his secret plans to take over the world while he is absent?" Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Actually, I think if Snape were planning that, he would have succeeded years ago." Ron watched her with big eyes.

"Don't tell me you really believe that!"

"Well, he's genious with potions. And he is very smart and talented..."

"And intrigous as well," continued Harry grinning.

"Yak! That sounds almost as if you'd like him, Hermione!"

"To like or to respect someone are different pairs of shoes, Ron!"

"Alright. And how does it come that you're not down in the dungeons already?"

Hermione sighed and waved with the note.

"I have to go down soon and make some pepper-up potion for Madame Pomfrey, but that's all for today.

"Uuh, he wrote you a letter?" cried Ron in mock-excitement and tried to grab the note out off Hermione's hand. She gave him a stony look.

"He just told me what to do about the potions. But I've been wondering... Here, read it."

Harry read the note as well and handed it to Ron afterwards.

"Hmm, you're right. He must have known that his mission will take long this time..."

The three looked at each other.

"You mean..."

"Would make sense, right?"

"Well, Voldemort had time enough to plot..." They bent closer and lowered voices.

"And if it is something urgent, you know Snape would try to interrupt. Or at least, gather as much information as possible, to find some counter-action."

"Thank you, Harry, now I'm worried!" Hermione snapped and sank back into her armchair. Ron looked puzzled:

"Why? It's Snape! Wasn't that you who said some time ago that he is smart?"

"Yes, but try to imagine what happens if he ever get caught!"

"Well, one problem less... Hey, that's a joke!" Ron ducked at the cushions Hermione and Harry tossed after him.

"Ok ok, peace. But what are you worrying, Hermione, you can't do anything about it. He's an old boy, he can watch for himself." Hermione sighed.

"Right. But I still want to know what has happened."

"Perhaps you can grill him about it when he's back; but I'm not transfigurating you back, once he has cursed you into a toad!"

"Well thank you Harry, but I'll prefer flight rather than to be transformed by you! What happened to your armadillo once again?!"

They burst out of laughter.

"You know, it did look like a hand-grenade right from the beginning... Just be glad that I remembered the pin before I transformed it!"

Ron fell nearly off the chair, whipping his Queen of the board in front of him. Harry's chessmates cheered loudly to that incident and sent the trio into a new laughing fit.

"Alright, I think I should prepare those potions now," Hermione panted after several minutes. Harry, still giggling, removed his glasses to wipe off the tears, then sighed out loud.

"Yes, imagine Snape comes back suddenly and you've done nothing of his tasks... Pond or glass, Hermione?"

They burst out again, drawing once more the attention of the common room to them. Ron calmed down at first.

"By the way, what is this Lingua Franca potion Snape refers to in the note? I've never heard about that before."

"I don't know exactly what it is myself - or better, what it is going to be. See, it's a potion Snape is developing on his own, I had to read through the hole history of linguistics for him to get background information. Everything about language acquisition and bilingualism and so on. I think he is planning to create a potion that makes you understand foreign languages, but that's only my own interpretation, I have no further proof. Well, I better go down now and do those potions for Poppy. See you at dinner!" waved Hermione grinning and went through the portrait hole. But on her way down to the dungeons the worries came back. "Perhaps Snape is really already back and waiting for me; uh-oh, then he'll be pissed, I'm nearly half an hour late..." She reached his office and knocked ("Better save than sorry," she thought). The door creaked open at once, which puzzled Hermione. Snape never left his office without locking it... "But if he had, I wouldn't be able to get in, right?" Hermione mused and walked across the room to the wodden door that led to the lab. The tiny, silvery painted snake on the doorway that guarded the entrance twinkled and looked expectantly down to her. Hermione had been greatly pleased when she had seen this kind of lock the first time Snape allowed her to enter his sanctuary a week ago. With a grin, Hermione reached up and caressed the snake's head, then said the week's password she remembered from her first assistance, "Suomi" ("wonder what that means"), and watched the snake sliddering down to the keyhole. The door opened with a click, and as fast as it could the snake zoomed back to its place on the upper doorway. Proudly it blinked at her, and Hermione patted its head again before entering. "He really should treat you better, cute thing..."

A few hours later, Hermione was disturbed by a lout knock on the office door.

"Hermione, are you still there? Come on, dinner is ready in ten minutes!" It was Ron.

"Come in, I'm almost done," she called back.

Quickly she cleaned the used instruments and packed the remaining ingredients back into the cupboard. In the doorway she turned and shot a critical look around the lab; Snape would be furious if she left his sanctuary in a mess. She didn't see a single instrument out of its place, she only had to remember to bring Poppy the phioles with the pepper-up potion after dinner. She closed the lab-door behind her and was forced to laugh at the sight of Ron; he hovered nervously at the office door, ready to flee on the first sign of Snape coming in.

"Don't worry, he's not came back in the meantime."

"I'll never understand why you accepted to work with that git! Come, this room makes me shudder." She sighed.

With a drilling headache, a strange sensation of something badly going wrong soon and the bad feeling that she had forgotten something, Hermione woke up the next morning. Luckily her first lesson was to start at half past nine, so she could rest a little longer and enjoy the peace that her private room, the privilige of the Head Girl. She dozed on for a while, then sat up and reached for the book that she had discovered in Snape's library yesterday. She was positive that she would need a good explanation for Snape when he returned and discovered that she had took something out of his rooms without his permission, well, even without his knowledge. The book's explanations of the moon's influence on photosensible potions were complex and in a highly elaborated language ("no wonder Snape speaks like the Oxford Dictionary in person," Hermione thought), and soon she got up to her desk to take notes and to look up some of the used terms in the "Vocabulary of Potions"-dictionary that she had borrowed from the school library. While she read about the special storage of photosensitive potions, it hit her like a flash: The pepper-up potions! They were still in Snape's office; if he had returned by now, she would receive a nasty remark on fulfilling her duties, but what she feared most was that he could get the impression that she was not up to his expectations. Hurriedly she dressed and scampered down to the dungeons. The earlier lessons had already started, so it seemed as if she was alone in the hole castle. Skipping breakfast she ran straight to Snape's office and knocked. There was no answer, and irritated she knocked again; he wasn't still asleep, was he? The pictures of the accident a few days ago came back to her mind, and she wondered if her teacher looked so peaceful and (cute?) natural in his normal sleep too. With effort she forced her thoughts back to the present; carefuly she tried the doorhandle. It wasn't locked, and surprised she recognised that she must have been the last to leave the office. That meant Snape wasn't back yet, and with relief she opened the door to his office. She collected the small bottles out of the lab and this time remembered to lock the door with a spell as she left. On her way to the hospital wing she met Harry.

"Hi! What's the matter with you, are you sick? Or why are you up so early when you have the first lesson at ten?" she grinned at her best friend. Harry grimaced with twinkling eyes.

"Nope. But somehow Neville blew my Firebolt out of the dorm, he wanted to take a ride and just fell off before it carried him out of the window. I have to collect it..."

"Why don't you Summon it back?"

"I tried, but it didn't come. I guess it is stuck somewhere in a tree or something. Where are you going, by the way?"

"Hospital wing, I have to bring Poppy these potions. I should have done it yesterday, just forgot it about Ron's rage when Pigwidgeon landed in his potatoes..." Laughing they made their way to the hospital wing. Hermione put the phioles down on a desk in the nurses' office and scribbled a note of excuse. Harry waited outside:

"Want to come with me outside, searching?"

"Yep. I don't have any classes for a further half an hour. What do you think about breakfast at the lake?" Harry agreed, and they wandered outside and began to look after Harry's broom. It was one of those warm, sunny spring days with a deep blue sky and bright golden sunshine. The Forbidden Forest was covered with an enormous flock of white blossoms, and the lake glittered like silver. With a sigh Hermione recognised that this was her last spring at Hogwarts; next year at this time, she would be at university for half a year already, and she still had no idea which one she would prefer. A bit sad she closed up to Harry who had rounded the beautiful castle at half on his way to the outside of Gryffindor Tower.

"I hope Neville didn't blow it right into the forest, I don't want to bother Hagrid with a missing broom!" Harry grimaced.

Lazily Hermione nodded in agreement and looked around at the singled trees in this area of the grounds, enjoying the soft, spring-smelling breeze, but there was no sign of a broom. Instead, a small flutter of something black caught her eye. It was sprawled on the ground near to the rim of the Forbidden Forest, nearly hidden in the tall grass. She tugged Harry's sleeve.

"Hm? Have you found it?"

"I'm not sure; do you see that over there? Can you make out what it is?"

Harry had grown a lot in the last years and was now at least a head taller than her, so he had a better overlook. He craned his neck.

"Shit; that looks like a person! Come, quick!"

He sprinted towards the woods, and Hermione followed with an icy rock in her stomach and the sudden sensation of fear.