Iridescent Snow

Chapter Three: Let Grief Convert to Anger

A thunk caused Hermione to lift her eyes from the book she was reading and glance sharply around the dark common room. When all she saw was Crookshanks stalking away from the fireplace, scruffy tail waving lazily in the air, she exhaled in relief. The wisps of hair that had fallen into her face shifted, and with a yawn, she rubbed some moisture back into her stinging eyes and straightened her sore legs out beneath the table. Her concentration broken, she felt like she had been dragged out of bed before she was fully awake and was still trying to rouse herself. As she rolled her stiff shoulders back, the bones in her neck cracked in protest.

The common room was deserted, as the other members of Gryffindor House had long gone to bed. The sole source of light was the whitish glow furnished by Hermione's wand. Her schoolbag lay open on the ground beside her, its contents spilling out to reveal an assorted collection of broken quills and crumpled parchment, messy artifacts she would have blushed to have Harry, Ron, or some other classmate see. With all the students gone, only the long, angular shadows cast by the pile of books she had painstakingly amassed from the Restricted Section kept her company.

These scarce hours, spanning the last stroke of midnight and the first glimmerings of dawn, were when the house-elves were at their busiest. The unique brand of magic they possessed allowed them to Apparate soundlessly, so Hermione did not notice their presence until she had already spent a few nights sitting up in the common room. If she schooled her attention, she could see them bobbing about the Tower in her peripheral vision. But as soon as she turned her head, the elf would disappear from sight, its task of sweeping the grate or straightening the sofa cushions instantaneously accomplished.

She had started to keep the same hours as the house-elves in order to do some research. The first few nights had been rather awkward, as they squeaked in surprise at coming upon her sitting in the common room and then immediately recognized her as the House-elf Liberator, which sent them scurrying away in fear. With some embarrassment, Hermione had informed them that she had no intention of tricking them into accepting clothes.

Now, she and the house-elves more or less coexisted in peace, for which she was glad, because research, she had learned, was best done in the heart of night. Not only were there less distractions, but also, it was during this murky, amorphous interval of darkness, when one day dissolved into the next, that Hogwarts truly pulsed with the magic of the Founders. When all was still and quiet, the centuries-old spells that had been poured into the worn walls of the castle crept forth like nocturnal creatures venturing out beneath the moon. Every drop of water she heard falling outside the window, every sigh the castle made as it settled into its ancient foundations, every creak of a floorboard, and every soft whoosh that sounded in the corridor beyond the portrait hole, Hermione knew, was magic.

Despite her devotion to Hogwarts, A History, the discovery of the castle's magical essence had still taken Hermione by surprise. What fascinated her even more was that as an inhabitant of the castle, she was able to weave herself into the enchantments. Well, of course! Hermione had murmured the first time she had experienced the immersion. She wondered why she hadn't noticed the magical outflow before. It was really just basic spell theory, another of the dry concepts that she had diligently shoveled into her brain when she had been preparing for her OWLs. As a witch, she was a magical conduit, and flowing magic would naturally pass through her.

Hermione was unsure of the effects that would come of routinely intermingling her own magic with the castle's. Her eyes glinted against the wandlight as her pensive gaze hardened into determination. She only knew that the ancient spells surrounding the castle were potent...And for the aim she had vowed to achieve, an additional boost of power from Hogwarts would certainly not be unwelcome.

It had started as a wild whim, one of many that had swirled amidst the storm of desperate anger that had enveloped her the night following her parents' funeral. She was sitting alone in the suffocating silence of her empty house, her eyes resting unseeingly upon the stack of documents from the solicitor's office. It seemed to have burst from her, out of nowhere; one minute she was exhausted--on the verge of nodding off--the next minute, she was shouting, to no one in particular-- chair upended behind her--papers scattered on the floor. A hollow promise, born of rage. A cocky dare that she had thrown at Fate as a return challenge for what Fate had placed before her. Cut for cut, swipe for swipe. A crazy, extravagant bluff, to take the edge off of the gnawing, all-consuming pain that she had felt. But at some point during the evening, rash resolutions somehow started turning into reckless reality. Suddenly, the outrageous claims had become fashioned into a breathtaking vision.

She could do it. She would do it. The counter to Avada Kedavra.

Hermione sighed. Grandiose declarations were all well and good, but only if one had hope of following through. Listlessly, she slid her thumb down the crisp edge of The Compendium of Common Curses, which lay open before her. Tonight definitely had not brought her any closer to her lofty goal. She had been meandering through the theory of spell inversion for the past hour and a half, and after Crookshanks' grand entrance, she had found herself unable to read at all. With her mind so restless, no amount of her usual intellectual discipline could enable her to make sense of the text.

Instead, her wandering thoughts dwelled insistently upon the events that had taken place in her fourth year: the Tri-Wizard Tournament and Voldemort's resurrection in the graveyard. She recalled with a shudder Harry's brazen escape. Why had he been so obstinate? He shouldn't have resisted. With a sigh, Hermione admitted that the thought was pointless. Harry would have preferred to die in a mortal fight rather than submit to Voldemort's orders and cling to the hope of survival. It was Harry's defiance that had furnished the proverbial "enemy's blood, forcibly taken..." If he hadn't struggled when Pettigrew had sliced his arm...would Voldemort have risen again? And would her parents still be alive...?

Shutting her eyes, she slammed her quill down upon the table and gave herself a mental shake. She was being ridiculous. To be blaming Harry for her parents' deaths? Harry, who had made unfathomable sacrifices to the war since the moment of his birth? Harry, who lived in the shadow of an impossible calling, a grim destiny? A fine friend she was turning out to be, criticizing his conduct at the graveyard when she herself grew nauseous merely from thinking upon the incident.

She yanked the Compendium a bit closer and doggedly applied herself to the science of magical apexes. While the book droned on about spell synthesis, she wondered what would have happened if she hadbeen the one at the graveyard that night. Probably still would have ended up making a trip to the Wizarding Morgue, she thought darkly, and not by way of the front door this time. She didn't share wand cores with Voldemort...

With a huff of frustration, Hermione abandoned her pretense of studying and conceded defeat. Her mind was obviously not going to be diverted from the path that it had started down tonight, in spite of her best efforts. She attributed this sudden bout of vacant musing to her flagging strength. After weeks of sleep-deprivation, it did not come as a complete surprise that she should be deprived of all but the most idiotic thoughts. But could exhaustion explain these thoughts, this sudden fixation upon Harry's Fourth Year rendezvous with Voldemort? After all, Harry had had quite a few other run-ins with the Dark wizard. She was free to choose among several reunions, Hermione thought peevishly. Perhaps bed would not be such a bad idea, after all...

She pressed her forehead down upon the heel of one hand. Even as she was considering her present predicament, a remote locale of her brain still ruminated fitfully, chewing and gnashing randomly through the disjointed memories that cluttered her mind. Hermione furrowed her brow as something tried to claw its way out of the mental background noise, scratching urgently at the surface of her consciousness.

The Hospital Wing in Fourth Year, when Harry had described the spell that had brought Voldemort back to life...

Bone of the father, unknowingly given...Flesh of the servant, willingly given... and of course, Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken.

Hermione flinched. That the spell had resurrected Voldemort aside, something in the wording of the incantation was distinctively unsettling, causing the hair on the back of her neck to stand up and the pit of her stomach to turn to ice. Glancing about her, she now found the common room to be intolerably bright, bleached in the flood of light from her wand. With a sense of strange gut panic that rose out of nowhere, Hermione hastily gathered parchments, quills, and inkstand, shoving them haphazardly into her bag. Small details around her that she had previously overlooked, such as the brooding bust of Merlin sitting upon one of the bookshelves, suddenly leapt out at her with macabre vividness. Slamming the Compendium shut, she threw it into the bag along with everything else, then sucked in a shaky breath. Feeling absolutely ridiculous but yet unable to quash her inexplicable unease, she flew up to the dormitory and fairly dove into bed.

Safely ensconced beneath her covers, Hermione's eyes latched onto the one memento of her parents that she kept near her, a Muggle snow globe containing a miniature castle. The ornament occupied a space on her nightstand, and though the label on it read, "Chateau Chambord," her parents had been convinced that Chambord would pass quite easily for Hogwarts, and had given it to her as a start-of-term gift in the beginning of Seventh Year. Reaching for it with trembling hands, she carefully inverted it, then set it back down, watching as the iridescent snow fell serenely over the castle. As the little world enclosed by the globe once again became coated in powdery white, she felt her racing heartbeat gradually slow.

Finally, as the silence of the dormitory grew heavy, she whispered, "Nox," and the light vanished, leaving only formless darkness in its wake.

Surely, she had gone mad.

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Potions class the next morning was an exercise in torture for all parties involved. Hermione, whose concentration already wavered from poor sleep, was unable to shake off the lingering apprehension from the night before. She could not bring herself to pay attention to the properties of Nodal Potions when something was obviously odd about that spell used to restore Voldemort. She felt like she was being presented with an important but incomprehensible answer to a puzzle. Furthermore, she was more than a bit nervous about her panicked flight from the common room. More of this, and she might as well hide from her own shadow.

Her uncharacteristic distractedness created problems for her lab partner, Harry, who kept shooting her covert glances that spoke of both his concern and irritation. Though Hermione thought Harry's brewing skills to be serviceable enough, her friend found himself, for the first time, in the position of directing them both.

"Hippogriff gizzards!" Harry hissed from beside her, and with a light start, Hermione nodded and plunged a hand into the bucket at the end of their bench. She handled the cold, slippery organs without giving them much consideration and hardly noticed the rather unsavory consistency of the liquid that emerged from beneath her pestle as she absently grounded them in the mortar. At least they didn't grind Peter Pettigrew's hand, she thought distantly.

"Uh, Hermione, it says to 'to dislodge tendons and fat by briefly crushing,' not bloody pulverize!" Harry commented, peering dubiously at the reddish-brown slop that had been the Hippogriff gizzards.

With sinking heart, she read the protocol, and nodding in agreement, she muttered, "Merlin, Harry, I'm really sorry for being so careless."

As her hands made yet one more trip into the bucket, Harry asked a bit hesitantly, "Hermione, is there something wrong? I mean, I'm getting a bit worried here, since you're basically letting medo all the work this time, and you know as well as I do that that's not going to get us half a decent grade!"

"For once, Potter, I am inclined to concur."

The smooth voice of the Potions master sounding from behind caused her hands to freeze mid-exit from the bucket, leaving the gizzard juice trickling down her arm. Mortified, Hermione lifted her eyes to meet the disdainful ones of Professor Snape, who surveyed the two students imperiously over his long, hooked nose. Arching an inquiring eyebrow, Snape gazed pointedly at the messy, ingredient-splattered lab bench and at Harry thumbing frantically through their Potions Manual.

"Miss Granger, I do believe I have been giving you too much credit. I had thought your intelligence and your sense of self-preservation would prevent you from handing Potter the reins in the collaborative project. "

Hermione focused on keeping her eyes level with the expanse of black robe that covered the professor's chest while Snape continued his diatribe.

"I see, however, that you are as foolish as the rest of your House. As momentous as it is that you are not prepared for class, I am still obliged to take ten points from Gryffindor."

Her cheeks burning, she was torn between shame and anger. Though she felt properly chastised for her poor performance in class, she was incensed by Snape's unfair inclusion of Harry. When she finally drew adequate breath and replied, "Yes, Professor," her words emerged as a cross between a croak and a squeak.

"Sir," Harry said fiercely, "Hermione is unwell. Even you should be able to notice that."

"Twenty more points for speaking out of turn, Potter," Snape countered calmly. Crossing his arms, Snape silently regarded her, much in the same way one would size up an owl at Eeylop's. Then, after a light sigh, the professor surprised Hermione by asking in an almost conversational tone, "Miss Granger. A Nodal Potion is?"

She had no idea where Snape expected to lead this bizarre exchange, but now that her mind was saturated with adrenalin, she figured she might as well prove that she actually had done the reading.

"A potion whose ingredients are chosen not for their own magical properties but for their ability to serve as magical 'nodes,' or conductors, for the brewer's personal magic."

Snape sneered. "So your capacity to memorize the text has not diminished with your capacity to follow instructions. The reason why the protocol calls for loosely pounded Hippogriff gizzard and not gizzard juice?"

"Because--" Ingredients used as magical nodes must remain physically intact, she had meant to say, but the rest of the sentence never made it out.

Instead, her train of thought came to a screeching halt as all of a sudden, the loose facts that had been steadily accumulating in her mind began to weave themselves together like threads in a tapestry. The imposing figure of Professor Snape melted into a faint blur, while the cacophony of cauldron-stirring and ingredient-chopping that usually surrounded the potions classroom faded into a muffled din.

Nodal Potion.

Bone of the father, unknowingly given...

Flesh of the servant, willingly given...

Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken...

Blood. Enemy. Force.

Hermione's eyes widened as understanding descended upon her like a cresting tidal wave.

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Severus waited for the Granger girl to respond, his patience fast wearing thin. As he had expected, ignorance was not the root of her incompetence, for her answer to his first question alone had put to rest any doubts that she had read her text once, if not multiple times.

"Mudblood didn't do her homework?" Draco jeered from somewhere behind him.

"Mr. Malfoy, I do not believe I required commentary from you," Severus replied without turning around. After seven years of teaching Granger, Severus knew that the irksome child was not simply suffering a fit of malaise. Granger could brew Pensieve Base in her sleep; even at her worst, she had never been known to make such a grievous error. However, his sharp powers of observation had not missed the dark circles that had started to appear under the girl's eyes. A decade spent as a Head of House and his own experience led him to suspect that impending NEWTs was hardly the cause of Miss Granger's loss of sleep. He wondered how Minerva was handling her precious little Know-It-All.

The lack of any forthcoming response to his second query piqued his curiosity and made him inspect his student closer. Her eyes had glazed over, as if she were watching a spectacle invisible to all but her. Her breathing was irregular and rushed, and she seemed to have forgotten the here-and-now. Unwell, as Potter had claimed, was a slight overstatement, but she was certainly not herself.

"Miss Granger," he snapped. "Much as I am aware that you are unaccustomed to not knowing the correct answer, your reaction is hideously exaggerated."

At his remark, awareness seemed to return, and the dazed eyes gradually regained their focus, though they still retained a stunned light. Slowly, the girl nodded in response to his admonition.

Severus acknowledged that Granger's decidedly peculiar behavior was cause for concern and perhaps even warranted a trip to Pomfrey, but at the present moment, he felt nothing but fury at her disruptive antics. He allowed the class to wind down to its own destructive end, his frustration causing him to double the point deductions for every spoiled potion. By the time the period was finished, only three pairs of students out of the nine comprising the class had succeeded in brewing the potion without having him spell their work away. As he inspected the three samples lined up across his desk, he was rather startled to note that Potter and Granger's potion was among the chosen few.

For one fleeting moment, Severus regretted not delivering a stiffer punishment and marking them both down as zeros for the day. Self-recrimination was quickly forgotten, however, when he realized the utter incongruence of Granger turning in a perfect potion. First, she had seemed so utterly distracted that she had committed an error he thought worthy of none but Longbottom; then after recovering from her rousing demonstration of ineptitude, she proceeds to calmly brew the correct potion without so much as a misalignment of her shrivelfig roots. Such behavior in the Head Girl did not reflect well upon Albus' tastes, Severus thought with a smirk, never mind that Miss Granger was typically as unflappable as a sphinx.

He was just about to dismiss the class when once again, he heard the voice of Draco, this time sputtering angrily, "How dare you point your wand at me, Mudblood!"

Whipping his eyes away from the potions, Severus was presented with a most unusual sight. Draco and Granger stood on opposite sides of the aisle, wands raised at each other, fully prepared to duel. The blonde Slytherin had two bright crimson splotches on his cheeks and a noticeable tremor in his wand arm, both sure signs of the boy's barely-contained rage, but Granger, on the other hand, had an unruffled, relaxed carriage and looked almost tranquil.

One swift Experlliarmus, and both students' wands flew into Severus' waiting hand. Planting himself before the girl, Severus found himself speaking to the top of her wild curls, as she did not even bother lifting her head to meet his gaze. "Miss Granger, this little game you are indulging in today calls into question your continuing in the position of Head Girl. Fifty points from Gryffindor and detention in my office tonight at seven-thirty."

"But Malfoy--"

"Raised his wand in self-defense," Granger interrupted Potter, her voice steady and even. Then, still determinedly staring a hole through Severus' chest, she said, "As you wish, Professor."

Potter had gone ashen, his mouth hanging ajar as he stared incredulously from behind. Even Draco seemed too taken aback by Granger's unexpected admission to gloat over his victory; the Slytherin had scrutinized the girl through narrowed eyes for a few moments before gathering his supplies and filing out the door with the rest of the class. As for Granger, she merely wiped down the bench with impeccable thoroughness before wordlessly exiting the classroom.

As Severus watched the door close upon her retreating form, he conceded that he was perplexed. Her flightiness at the beginning of the class was more than sufficiently exasperating, but if he hadn't known better, he would have been ready to believe that the Head Girl and star pupil of Hogwarts had...resolved to earn herself a detention.

It was thus with more than the usual amount of interest that Severus sat at his desk that evening, waiting for Miss Granger to arrive.

At precisely half past seven, three sharp raps sounded on the door, but before he granted permission for her to enter, she marched right in and demanded briskly, "Professor, I wish to speak with you."

Thoroughly offended by her rude entrance and her audacious greeting, Severus snarled, "I did not assign you detention for us to socialize."

Apparently, the meek and compliant student he had dealt with this afternoon had all but disappeared, for after folding her lips briefly, Granger plowed on. "No, but I earned detention with that purpose in mind."

Severus resisted the urge to blink in confusion. So she had deliberately sought a reprimand, but because she wanted an excuse to speak with him? What in Merlin's name... "There is nothing between us that needs to be said," he spat in response. "Now I suggest you start sorting those dragon heartstrings while the night is young, Miss Granger."

He might have never said anything at all. Undeterred, Granger absently flicked her wand towards a spot behind her right shoulder and conjured a chair. Severus endeavored to not notice that Granger had mastered, at the age of seventeen, Dumbledore's favorite magic trick, deciding instead, that he had much rather dwell on how much he resented her blithely adding furniture to hisoffice without so much as consulting him.

His fingers curled into a fist beneath his desk, and he could feel his anger coalescing into a few choice words, but their emergence was abruptly truncated when Granger locked her brown eyes to his and declared, "I know how to counter Avada Kedavra."

Any of a number of scathing replies that immediately came to mind would have been an appropriate rejoinder to her outlandish statement, but something in the girl's demeanor stayed his judgment. Severus noted the clear, alert gaze, the white-knuckled wand grip, the impatiently tapping foot, the flushed cheek. Out of nowhere, the memory of a hushed conversation from a few years back in the staff room flashed before him, when Poppy Pomfrey had sworn upon her entire store of Pepper-up that a second-year girl had successfully brewed a Polyjuice Potion.

Almost against his will, Severus found himself leaning forward and softly demanding, "How?"

The tension that suddenly flowed out of her was perceptible as she sagged back against her chair and murmured, "Thank you, Professor," which he merely acknowledged with a slight nod.

"You see, ever since my parents passed away, I have been seeking a method to put a stop to that awful spell, and at first, I thought it was simply a matter of uncovering an obscure counter-incantation from a book in the Restricted Section-- "

"Spare me the superfluous preambles and please just enlighten me as to how you have managed to succeed where innumerable others more powerful than you have not," Severus interjected impatiently.

Briefly, Granger's face bore the cowed expression that Severus had come to expect in all his students, but then the girl lifted her chin slightly and stiffly said, "Just a moment, I am getting to that."

He knew that he should have ejected her from his office then and there, but for some reason, all he did was fold his arms across his chest.

"Sir, I'm sure you've realized that the potion which revived Voldemort after he was hit with Avada Kedavra was a Nodal Potion."

Severus dipped his head in assent as he inquired with a touch of disdain, "You are referring to Water of Styx, Miss Granger?" He should have known that all the girl had done was forage through a copy of Master Brewing. Granted, not many Hogwarts students were even capable of extracting meaning from it, so he prepared to be regaled with Granger's prodigious powers of reading comprehension.

The cold reception from her audience had apparently failed once again to put Granger off. Talking so fast that she was tripping over her own sentences, she continued, "Since the potion is Nodal, its ingredients aren't very useful by themselves, but combined together they conducted and amplified Voldemort's extremely weak magic, right? So then suppose that instead of viewing Water of Styx as a potion, you treat it as a verbally incanted spell, Professor. Then the three ingredients that it requires--father's bone, enemy's blood, and servant's flesh--wouldn't they effectively form the three apexes of a spell? Because the magic of any spell always begins in an apex?"

Her lunacy was oddly engaging, and as he leaned back into the ample support of his chair, she pressed herself forward and earnestly said, "What if I managed to adjust the apexes? If the original potion conferred some measure of resistance to the aftereffects of Avada Kedavra in that it restored Voldemort to his full power shouldn't a well-devised variant be able to counter it completely? If you alter a spell's apex, you alter the spell, right? Couldn't the same principle potentially apply to a potion?"

The question, posed with such perfunctory intensity startled him. The truth was that Severus really could not vouch an answer either way; he would think few besides the likes of Dumbledore, let alone a mere seventh-year student, possessed the intellectual force that went behind proposing such an absurdly ambitious scheme to counter the most dreaded spell known to Wizardkind.

"It's just an Arithmancy problem, Professor! We could find substitutes for the original ingredients if we work out the correct final ratio for all the interacting magical elements."

Pretending potions were spells and using Arithmancy to counter Avada Kedavra? It was harebrained, it was crazy and fantastical.

But it's also bloody brilliant, he thought as he idly took stock of the hundreds of bottles lining his ingredients shelf.

"Yes," he finally replied at length. Tapping his chin with a distracted air, he considered the challenge of knitting together the three major magical disciplines of Potions, Charms, and Arithmancy. "Yes," he repeated, this time more to himself.

When his gaze returned to the student sitting before him, he was surprised to notice that she was now worrying her lower lip with her front teeth. After successfully tabling that proposition, whatever else could she possibly be holding back?

"Sir, would you be willing to...assist me?"

It took a moment for him to grasp the staggering implications of her request. Abruptly, Severus uncrossed his legs and sat up straight. "Miss Granger, to assist you would require that we both work with one of the Darkest potions ever brewed by man . You do not suppose that Albus would simply add it to the Seventh Year Potions curriculum, do you?"

The coldness that stole over her eyes was something Severus thought he'd only see in the gaze of his most rapacious Slytherins, and he felt considerable unease at seeing it stir in the depths of her gaze.

"Professor, Voldemort killed my parents."

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Miss Granger,

Against my advice, the headmaster has consented to allowing you to work on your project on the condition that you conduct all research and testing in my presence. Please see me in my office Wednesday evening at seven-thirty to discuss the pertinent details.

Professor Severus Snape

Severus replaced his quill into the inkstand, and after sealing the missive, spelled it to its proper recipient.

Once again, he found himself thinking upon Granger, whose situation now occupied no small amount of his attention. Leave it to her to come up with an irresistibly elegant idea that was so risky it would make Merlin himself shudder in his boots.

He had known this would happen. The instant he had witnessed her wealth of magical ability that day at the funeral, he had foreseen her succumbing to the lure of the Dark. It was always anger that pushed one over the precipice, he reflected grimly.

But Albus, damn him, had been all sanguine confidence. Had some claptrap theory about how Granger's intentions were noble, so that she would be immune from the devastation that Dark magic inflicted upon the user

"Miss Granger's extreme intelligence is an asset to the war, Severus, and it would make little sense to quash her genius before it even has a chance to bloom... "

Severus had wracked his brains that entire night trying to explain the sudden surge of hatred he had felt against the silly headmaster after hearing those words...

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Author's Notes:

The title of this chapter is the line that follows Malcolm's proclamation, "Be this the whetstone of your sword" (4.3.231), from Shakespeare's MacBeth.

I guess this story would be considered AU now, given all the events that took place in Book 6, but after many tears and angry fist fights with my pillow, I can now proudly say, "I don't give a damn!"

Many thanks to Christine, my partner in crime at work, and Potion Mistress for betaing this chapter.

Reviews much appreciated!