The Birds and the Bees

It was very early the next morning when Hermione climbed the stairs to the boy's dormitory to finally tell Harry and Ron the whole, unbelievable story of the strange magic that had claimed her. She sat on the foot of Harry's bed and briskly trotted out the whole tale before the boys' brains had a chance to kick in and allow them to ask questions. As she spoke, Harry fumbled for his glasses and Ron struggled to unstick his eyelids and sit up. She surveyed the yawning, rumpled pair, sprinkled with the sweet smell of warm, sleepy bodies, and felt a huge rush of love wash over her. On impulse she reached out to cover Harry's warm hand with her own, and smiled morning sunshine over onto Ron's sleepy face.

'Are you mad at me for not telling you sooner?' she asked sheepishly; as the boys blinked groggily in the aftermath of her strange tale.

'N-no...,' Ron answered; trying but failing to suppress a huge yawn. 'We trust you, Hermione. You've never done anything for us that wasn't good for us. Hell, if it weren't for you nagging me to study I probably never would've passed any of my exams. So if you kept a secret...well, I'm sure you had your reasons.'

Hermione smiled, relieved, but then Harry piped up. 'Yeah, well I'm not mad either Hermione,' he said, 'but that's not to say that I actually understand it all...I mean, wandless magic I can understand. Loads of people can do that. But you made it sound as if this was more than that...'

There was an unvoiced question at the end of his statement. Hermione sighed, chewed her lip for a moment and sighed again, but eventually she gave in and delivered the same speech Dumbledore had given her - although she delivered it a bit slower and with more examples. By the time she had finished, the boys were both quite unsettled. During the course of her speech, Hermione had - for illustrative purposes - frozen and unfrozen Harry's quilt, voiced words into Ron's ear without speaking, turned the air under the canopy of both beds cloudy and wet with rain and covered the sleeping form of Neville with a kind of creeping plant.

Ron had been alarmed when he saw the vines twist round Neville's arms, whispering 'Hermione, stop! You'll wake him up!', but when he rushed towards Neville's bed he realised that the air on that side of the room was unnaturally thick and still. He looked at the corpse-like figures of the other boys, and at the almost guilty look on Hermione's face, and realised that Seamus, Dean and Neville were unnaturally still - trapped under a sleep-cloud of Hermione's creation.

Ron smiled, though, and patted her arm. His smile assured her that their friendship ran deeper than secrets and strange talents and even turning Neville into a human jungle. Ron's tone when he spoke was light and jokey, but his expression belied some anxiety. 'I guess it's all for the best, really, this magic' he said, suddenly not meeting Hermione's eye. 'I mean, we need to be as strong as possible when...well, when it comes down to it. Down to a fight.'

When he did look up, his eyes were full of a painful mixture of fear and love. Hermione wanted with all her heavy heart to reach out to him; to hug him or hold him; but she was worried by the edge of something else that showed in his eyes. It was a look that she didn't know how to respond to, speaking of a hidden hunger, and so she simply looked away. She looked to Harry, who was propped up on one elbow looking sleepily thoughtful. 'Everything's leading up to war, isn't it?' he said quietly. 'And now you're going to be involved, whether you like it or not...' Hermione didn't answer. What could she say? Again she felt that terrible inevitability that hung over them, shadowing every attempt they made to be childish and normal.

She wouldn't have been Hermione Granger, though, if she didn't meet every challenge the same way: with preparation and study. And so she slipped quietly off the bed, smiling a small goodbye smile to the boys. She almost moved to kiss their sleep-warmed cheeks, but again something in Ron's eye held her back.

As she padded out of the room the air lifted and thinned, allowing the other boys in the dormitory to clamber out of sleep in bemusement.

She dressed quickly, and made her way down into the depths of the castle. Snape was in the potions classroom, setting up for the day's lessons. He didn't look surprised to see her, but then he never looked surprised. She asked for a meeting time, he suggested that night, she agreed, they both nodded and she left. When she stepped out into the corridor, though, she had a strange taste in her mouth. The brief, polite encounter had for some reason left her unsure...unsettled... But the corridors were filling and breakfast was about to start, and so she simply slipped into the stream of students and allowed herself to be swept along.

The day passed much as schooldays always do. Another roll of parchment used, more of the same tired conversations with classmates, and more traipsing down the same corridors to the same rooms with the same faces. When night-time fell, though, she found herself almost looking forward to her meeting with Snape. She gulped her food down quickly at dinner and it made Ron stare in amazement. She didn't notice, though, as her eyes were on the head table. When Snape rose to stand, with a dark glance her way, she was quick to jump up and follow him out of the room. Ron spluttered a little, and Hermione shot him a self-conscious glare. Harry just stared intently at the table.

And so it was that she found herself standing in the middle of the chilly potions room, hands clasped behind her back, calmly weathering Snape's glare and answering his terse questions.

'So...have you been practising, Granger, as we discussed?'

'Of course, sir,'

'Hmmm. And you enlightened you friends as to your situation, I presume?'

'I explained it as best I could, sir. Harry was concerned, though. He thinks that this puts me in too much danger.'

'He is correct, Miss Granger. Though, no doubt you are thrilled at the opportunity to rush headlong into a dangerous battle and prove your...valor.'

'I don't rush headlong into anything, sir.' Hermione's jaw was set. 'And besides, I understood that our work was about potions, not a fight to the death.'

'If we are successful with our potion, Miss Granger, it will cause quite a lot of death indeed. We are to develop a deadly, untraceable poison. Some death is thus inevitable.'

'I'm not sure I want to kill people, sir. Not really.'

'You have no choice.' That terrible coldness had settled back into his eyes.

'There's always a choice. Sir.' Now she was just arguing for argument's sake. A bad habit of hers.

'No, Miss Granger.' His voice was unusually harsh. 'Sometimes we have no choice at all.'

Only the tight hunch of his shoulders betrayed any bitterness. His eyes remained empty. Hermione couldn't help but wonder if that was just something he told himself - that he had no choice on where he stood and who he destroyed - or if he really believed it.

'There is much work to be done,' he said as he turned away from her. 'We have a poison to create. Lives to snuff out.' He spoke quietly and without irony. Hermione didn't reply - what could she say? She simply followed silently as he led her to the main ingredient store cupboard. He carefully let down the wards on the door and moved to stand in front of the shelves with their neat rows of bottles, jars and boxes. He spoke again, and this time it was in his classroom voice: brisk and snappish and oozing command.

'We are looking to create a conventional poison of the undetectable variety,' he said. 'The Dark Lord seems to have devised ways of detecting all of the known poisons, including our more recent concoctions. We do not know how he does it exactly, but it seems most likely to be by a logical but painstaking process of checking for individual ingredients; many of which can still be singled out even if the potion as a whole is undetectable. Put simply, he has learnt our entire repertoire of poisons.'

As he spoke, he stared Hermione down with perfectly still, perfectly unreadable eyes. Something in her belly fluttered - whether from fear or excitement she didn't know - but she squashed it down and continued to listen.

'What we need, therefore,' continued Snape, 'is to find some previously undiscovered combination of ingredients that are individually benign, but which combine to create a deadly poison. As you are no doubt aware, this process is usually the result of accident or serendipity. Our hope now, though, is that the unusual...aptitude...for ingredient selection that you showed in my class will aid us in creating an effective poison quickly and purposefully.'

He paused for a moment, with a slight look of distaste on his face. 'I do not fully understand how this process will work,' he continued, 'but the headmaster suggested that we simply leave you alone for a time with the ingredient store and let you...experiment.'

Listening to his voice - that classroom voice that demanded obedience - Hermione felt herself fall back into the role of the docile, compliant student. The memory of the previous night with its sudden reversal of roles still lingered like the residue of a dream, but tonight she was glad just to silently obey. Tonight they had a plan. Tonight she was working for something greater than herself. She nodded in understanding, looking away from those black eyes.

Snape turned on his heel. 'I will be at my desk if you require me,' he said curtly. 'There is a cauldron set up for you on the bench by the back wall.'

Hermione watched him glide back across the room before turning back to the store cupboard. She gently tuned her mind back into the fuzzy murmur and hum of the cupboard's contents until it became not jars and bottles, but voices hanging in the air. She reached her fingers up to run them along the glassy shapes. Poison, she thought. Something ordinary...but deadly.

Her fingers stopped on a jar of belladonna - a voice that dripped with sweetness, but concealed a murderous edge. It was a classic poison, easily detectable, but perhaps in small quantities it might be useful... ...her hand hovered over the jar.... Deciding eventually that logic was of no use to her now, Hermione plucked the jar from the shelf and continued to browse the cupboard with nothing more than poison-songs in her mind.

After a few minutes she had an armful of bottles and jars which she deposited on the bench by her cauldron. She pulled out her little potions knife - carefully sharpened - and began to chop. At one stage she thought she felt eyes on her, but when she looked to the front Snape was staring fixedly at the parchment on his desk. The back of her neck still prickled slightly, but she looked down to her work again. Her hand on the knife moved a little faster, and the leaves on the bench fell into neat slices.