Dark Gods in the Blood

Chapter Twenty-One

What made this emotion so overpowering was -- how shall I

define it? -- the moral shock I received, as if something

altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious to

the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.

-- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Snape was being recalcitrant today. Well ... more recalcitrant than usual.

Today, Hermione had approached the visitation room far more purposefully than ever before, knowing exactly why she was here and exactly what she wanted to speak with him about. So when she walked in, sat down, offered him her best smile, and said, "Good morning, sir," as warmly as she could, she was chagrined when he did not so much as flutter an eyelid.

And now he was fairly glowering at her. She was, of course, far from unfamiliar with that particular expression of his, but she usually knew the reason for it.

They sat in silence for a short while, but Hermione was unwilling to revisit the staring matches they'd had when she first began visiting him. So it was not long after she entered the room that she finally attempted to provoke his response. "May I ask, sir, what I have done to offend you?" she asked icily.

"You may," he said curtly, sitting as rigidly as if he'd been carved from stone. An errant lock of hair fell into his eyes and he made no motion to remove it.

She waited for him to continue and inwardly sighed when he did not. "I am not as skilled a Legilimens as you are, sir, and moreover, I do not have my wand."

An indefinable expression flitted across his face as she spoke. "We are nearly equals, then."

"Prof -- Snape, sir," she said. "Please. If my presence here is unwanted, I will not linger."

Snape snorted. "That's never stopped you before, Granger. Six Thursdays in a row, whether I wanted you here or not," he grumbled. "And then you just ..."

Eyes widening, her voice was incredulous. "Is that it?" she breathed. "Are you angry because I didn't come in last week?"

His cheeks reddened faintly but the sour look on his face did not waver. A hand fiddled with the sleeve of his shirt. "And today is Friday. If you are to bother me incessantly, I would trouble you to adhere to a schedule at least."

"Oh, sir, I missed you, too," she said sweetly, unable to resist herself. As it was Snape, after all, she did manage to keep from actually fluttering her eyelashes up at him.

"I ... you ..." he spluttered, clearly enraged beyond words. The blush deepened to a definite flush. "Granger, you --" His chair clattered as he stood.

Not willing to allow him to loom over her, Hermione also rose to her feet, placing her palms flat on the tabletop. "I had a couple of questions for you today, if you don't mind," she said mildly.

His face twisted. "You stupid, arrogant, little --" Clenching into fists, his hands did not seem to know what to do with themselves as they moved from his sides, up into the air, and back down to his hips repeatedly. Snape broke off his own tirade with a frustrated noise. "Granger!" he growled.

"Yes?"

"Do not assume that I take myself so seriously that I cannot easily discern your sarcasm, Granger, but do not suppose that your pitiful attempt at levity has been successful, either," he bit out, hands finally relaxing.

"Of course not," she demurred, highly amused by the level of his distress. She wondered when had been the last time someone else had tried to tease him.

His stance became less defensive, but he remained on his feet.

"I was wondering," she began, timidity somehow creeping into her voice. "I was wondering about something we discussed some weeks ago. When I told you about ... Harry's ..."

"Yes, yes," he interrupted impatiently, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Potter's untimely demise at the hands of parties unknown. What of it?"

Frowning, she folded her arms around her middle, dimly wishing that Snape would sit down so she could as well. "Well, Ron -- Ron Weasley, you know --"

He rolled his eyes. "Of course I know Weasley," he spat. "How many 'Rons' do you know?"

"Ron," she repeated emphatically, glaring minutely up at him, "finally got put on the case down at the Aurory. And there's been another death that they suspect is linked somehow to Harry's."

An eyebrow rose questioningly. "Another?"

"His name was Alistair Bones. His mother was --"

"Amelia Bones," he said, cutting her off. "She was on the Wizengamot council. I'd imagine she still is, unless something has gone terribly amiss. I believe I actually taught her son."

"Anyway ..." Would he ever sit down? "They've been having a difficult time determining a motive that would fit both of them. And you told me that the Death Eaters are --"

He interrupted her for a third time, and Hermione was sure that her internal struggle with her anger was becoming increasingly visible. "I told you that there is not a Death Eater alive who is capable of such a thing, did I not?"

"You did," she agreed. "But they're reluctant to dismiss such an obvious set of suspects. Ron said that there could be a fringe group ..."

"There could," he said idly, tapping a fingernail against the table. "But there probably isn't. Not one that would go after both Potter and Amelia Bones' son, unless, of course, Mr. Bones led a double life that no one knows about and offended the wrong sort of enemy. Certainly," he drawled, "the wonderful Harry Potter wouldn't be capable of such deception."

Hermione grit her teeth. "Leave Harry out of it, Snape."

"Oh, I am," he replied in a mild voice. "Albus Dumbledore decided many years ago that Potter had a clean bill of mental health. Far be it from me to interfere."

Blinking away her ire, she considered his meaning. "You mean ..." she began slowly. "You knew about Harry and You-Know-Who?"

"Albus couldn't watch the boy twenty-four hours a day," he said chidingly. "There were a select few of us who knew why the Potter boy needed to be watched so closely. But then that fiasco with the Chamber of Secrets happened and Albus let his guard down."

With a slight widening of the eyes, Hermione wondered why a man so reportedly brilliant as Albus Dumbledore would share Harry Potter's darkest secret with a man who hated him as completely as Snape did. It either said something about Dumbledore's trust in Severus Snape or something about Dumbledore himself -- she fervently hoped it was the former. "How many?"

"No more than three at the very outside," he said. "Myself and Minerva McGonagall, of course. As his Head of House, she was in the best position of all of us to keep an eye out. And I suspect that Remus Lupin knew something, but I doubt Albus told him outright. He probably guessed and confronted Albus with enough of the facts that it wouldn't hurt to give him the complete truth. He was just ... careful enough around Potter that it fits. How did you know?"

She smiled ruefully. "Ron told me a couple of weeks ago. Apparently Professor Dumbledore thought he needed to be made aware of the situation right after he joined the Aurory."

"It is irrelevant, in any case," Snape said with a wave of his hand. Finally -- Finally! Hermione mentally shouted -- he sat back down, scratching behind his ear almost absently. "Clearly, Potter's death had nothing to do with that information. Especially if there was a second victim."

"And a third," she said before she could help herself.

He cocked his head at her. "A third?" he echoed.

Shaking her head, she collapsed into her own chair. "At least, I think so. I ran into Professor Sprout in Hogsmeade last week and she mentioned that one of her students had lost his father due to a similar set of circumstances. The Ministry, of course, doesn't want to hear it."

"The Ministry," he scoffed.

Hermione resisted the urge to agree with him. "Ron's right, of course. I don't have any proof -- St. Mungo's didn't document the incident very thoroughly."

"They wouldn't," Snape said sagely. "There are generally only four potential causes of death for any wizard -- illness, old age, murder, or accidental. Murder is clearly distinguishable either by use of the Killing Curse or a discernible poison. Any irregularities, then, are just lumped under 'accidental' and not thought much of. I'd imagine that the Aurory wouldn't have been notified of either Bones' or Potter's deaths if they hadn't been well-connected enough for the appropriate calls to be made."

"It just doesn't make sense ..."

He smirked at her. "Only if you persist in thinking like a Muggle, Miss Granger. Wizards are difficult enough to kill, as a rule, that there is only a small number of ways in which to go about it. Why do you think it took so much effort to deal with You-Know-Who? It's not as if Albus Dumbledore is somehow above sending someone in to knife the Dark Lord in his sleep -- it simply would not have worked."

Fiddling with the sleeve of her robes, toying with a string that had worked itself loose from her cuff, Hermione blew out a deep breath, exasperated. "It's so senseless. Death Eaters couldn't have killed Harry because whoever killed Harry killed at least one other person. And whoever it was has an obscure enough agenda to fit Harry Potter, the son of a political official, and a Scottish potions brewer together in some fashion that not even the Aurors can figure out. Oh, and they also managed to kill them in a way that should never have worked in a million years because wizards have natural guards against such things."

"That does seem to be the sum of things," Snape said with a slight nod.

"Either there's no answer or there's an answer that's so absolutely ludicrous that no one can see it," she exclaimed.

He contemplated a fingernail. "Are you reaching some brilliant conclusion, Granger, or just rambling without end?"

Shooting him a nasty glare, she gave the string on her robe a vicious tug. "You know ..." she drawled in a fair imitation of his usual snide manner. "If I were to give this matter great thought, I might simply say that the connection is that there is no connection." She paused to gauge his reaction.

Disappointed when he did not seem to have one, she continued. "I mean, of course, that the Aurors are pulling their hair out looking for some political tie, some group to link to all of this, but perhaps there simply isn't one."

"You seem to have developed a great propensity for stating the numbingly obvious, Miss Granger," he said dryly. "I told you that there aren't any --"

"No," she interrupted triumphantly. "You said there weren't any Death Eaters capable of this. Which then begs the question of who is. What group, what individual, could have sufficient motivation for all three of these crimes?"

"Or two," he suggested meanly.

"Or two," she repeated without pause. "But I wonder ... they've been operating under the assumption that whoever it was killed Harry because he was Harry Potter and no one else. That there was some external need. What if the killer killed Harry simply because he needed to be killed -- not for any other reason?"

Snape looked rather puzzled. "I don't follow."

Gaining momentum, she spoke more quickly. "Are you familiar with the term 'serial killer?'"

His mouth fell open, reminding her unattractively of a fish. "That's ... that's ridiculous, Granger! Serial killers are a Muggle phenomenon."

"Why?" she asked. "What's so ridiculous about it?"

"Have you not been listening?" he snapped. "Wizards cannot be killed in just any fashion. And serial killers ... well, they could never exist in our world. A serial killer would be caught before you could blink -- there's nothing the Aurors can't trace."

Her face was grim. "It seems as if there's at least one way to kill a wizard that they can't figure out."

"Then why hasn't this happened before?"

"Who's to say that it hasn't?" she asked in reply. "You yourself admitted that St. Mungo's wouldn't have documented such deaths properly. And they would never have been brought to the attention of the proper authorities. The only reason we have what we do is because the killer happened to choose two fairly important people as victims. But ... but I don't think that the killer selected them because of their importance -- I think there's something else."

"What then?" he asked sarcastically, voice grating in her ears.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't even know how the killer did it, much less why."

Snape sighed and rubbed at his face with a single hand. "Granger, you make me tired. Impossible murders and serial killers ..."

"I've got to go!" she cried, leaping out of her chair.

He looked startled. "What?"

Spinning around, she walked briskly toward the door. "I've got to let Ron know!"

-- -- -- -- --

"A what?" Ron asked incredulously.

She scowled at him and picked a chip off his plate. "A serial killer," she sighed, impatient with his antics. "It's someone who --"

"I know what the term means," he snapped. "I'm not completely ignorant -- they won't let people in the Aurory without a basic background in Muggle culture."

"Then you must see what I --"

He interrupted her with a wave of his hand, a piece of lettuce off his sandwich flying halfway across the table. "Hermione ..." he began exasperatedly. "You've got to get your mind off this. Trust me -- we're doing all we can. We'll find them."

"But, Ron," she protested. "This is too ... you're not even going to consider it?"

"Even if we were." Giving her a pointed look, he took a large bite of his sandwich and chewed. "It doesn't change much," he said through a mouthful of food.

"It does," she said, stealing another chip. "It means you should be looking for an individual, not a group."

Ron finished off his sandwich. "But we still don't know the motive. Even if you're right and it's a serial killer -- which is ludicrous, by the way, as we've never had a wizarding serial killer on record -- there's no visible connection between Harry and Alistair Bones."

"And Weaver," she inserted firmly.

He glared. "Actually, that shoots your little theory right in the foot. If I recollect the file Kingsley got from St. Mungo's, Weaver was a black fellow. Harry and Bones were both white. Don't serial killers usually stick to a certain racial group?"

"They don't have to," she said. "At least ... I don't think they do."

With a sigh, he ate his last chip. "Hermione, you've got no experience with this, all right? You're not an expert in this sort of thing, either wizarding or Muggle. If I promise to mention this serial killer thing to Kingsley, do you promise you'll back off?"

"I promise nothing," she retorted. "But I know you'll tell Shacklebolt -- you want this solved as much as I do."

Ron rolled his eyes and tried to glare at her again. "You know something, Hermione? You're just as insufferably correct all these years later as you were when we were kids."

She grinned at him. "I'll take that as the compliment I know you intended it to be, Ron."

Snorting, he stood up, pulling a couple of Muggle bills out of his pocket. "Sure. Anyway ... I've got to get back to work. Are you coming over to the house for supper?"

"I doubt it," she replied, shaking her head. "I've got some reading to catch up on."

He narrowed his eyes at her expression. "Hermione, you really should leave it alone. I know you won't, but I wish you would."

"Ron ..."

"I know, I know," he said, flapping a hand at her. "I'll stop, Butterfly. Merlin knows I've never managed to keep you from doing anything you really wanted to before. Just ..."

Her voice was firm. "I won't, Ron. But I need to keep looking into this."

She watched him walk down the street, back to the Ministry, with understanding in her eyes. Certainly Ron only had what he thought were her best interests at heart, but he had forgotten. It had never been anything but a matter of necessity.

Snape had once spoken to her about the nature of need. About the word's overuse, how most people used it in contexts that barely made sense.

But Hermione knew about need. She had spent large parts of her adult life finding just what it was that she needed and what she didn't. And so she knew, just as she knew that one and one made two and that the sky was blue, that she needed to know what had happened to Harry Potter.

And what had happened to Alistair Bones.

And what had happened to Alisander Weaver.

She sat at the table in front of the café an indeterminate period of time, ignoring the chill in the air that made her wish for her cloak -- October had firmly arrived. The busboy asked her three times if he could clean the table, and the fourth time he came over with a questioning look on his face, she actually left, walking down the street slowly.

Diagon Alley was not far, and she stepped behind the Leaky Cauldron and began tapping flagstones without much thought, utomatically re-entering the wizarding world and moving through the crowd, among the indistinguishable faces. But Hermione's mind was far too busy to pay attention to her surroundings -- she was puzzling over everything that she currently knew about Harry's death.

Firstly, she had to do some research on serial killers. She couldn't convince the Ministry based on a mere hunch -- especially without any credibility of any kind. And unfortunately, Ron was correct -- she was not an expert; she wasn't even a professional.

And she had to somehow get access to the Aurors' files -- Ron did not appear as if he would be particularly forthcoming any more.

There was an Apparition point a few yards away. For a brief moment, Hermione considered ducking into the Leaky Cauldron and using their Floo connection -- she was distracted enough to splinch -- but in the end, she just jerked her mind back to the matter at hand and Apparated. Apparently she hadn't done a good enough job, however, and her head spun as she momentarily staggered in front of the flat's door.

Her copy of the Prophet was sitting neatly on the front doorstep. She must not have picked it up before she went to see Snape that morning. Scooping it up, she fumbled a bit for her key, opening the door and stepping inside.

She immediately went into the bedroom, quickly changing out of her robes and putting on trousers and a Muggle jumper. Even after all these years in the wizarding world, she still preferred lounging around in Muggle clothing. She briefly wondered if Snape had ever worn Muggle clothes of his own accord -- he looked so ... unnatural in the scrubs that the hospital provided for him.

The paper fell off the bed when she sat down, and she picked it up off the floor, giving it her full attention.

Hermione still tried to read the Daily Prophet every day, from back to front, taking an odd sort of comfort from the mundane headlines even as she tried to read between the obituary lines in the back of the paper.

Opening it, she began skimming the death notices. There were not many today, and of all the faces smiling gently up at her from the page, there was only one that caught her eye.

Romulus Cooke, thirty-four. According to the obituary, he had distinguished himself as a student at Durmstrang and still maintained rather close ties with the school. He was the father of three, and it did not appear as if he had a particular occupation. Hermione inferred, then, that he must have been independently wealthy. And he died ... at home two days ago.

Blinking, she read the article at least four times, wondering.

What if Romulus Cooke had been someone with Ministry ties? What would the Aurors have found if they'd been called in?

Would he have been split open? Was his kitchen covered with blood?

What did his wife see?

She stared at his picture -- a fairly handsome fellow with an arrogance in his features that reminded her oddly of Draco Malfoy. His photo gave her a debonair smile, telling her that he was just as aware of his good looks as she was.

If Romulus Cooke had been at Hogwarts, he would have been two years ahead of her. And he probably would have pulled on girls' braids and scrubbed toilets under Filch's watchful glare -- the glint she saw in his picture's eye told her this. She probably would have laughed at his antics, just as she had laughed at the Weasley twins. He might even have turned the Terrible Twins into a Trio.

And now he was dead.

She should tell Ron. She should Floo him at work and let him know.

But instead, she just held the paper in her hands, watching Romulus Cooke's shade wink up at her.

-- -- -- -- --