Blood of Mud, Wing of Bat

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Chapter 34: Memoralias

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After a few minutes, Hermione knew what she had to do.

She had to send Auror Special Operations a raging Howler about Nesbitt's treatment of her, and send the Department of Domestic Disturbances a Howler about their trashing her living room, and blowing up her shed, and doing Special Ops' dirty work for them. She also had to send Arthur a Howler about where he'd been when he should have been freeing her from Nesbitt's clutches, and find Ron and give him the in-person Howler of a lifetime over that Sheila Lasherton business. Unless he'd forgotten she was in jail and simply gone back to his team, of course, in which case she'd have to send him a Howler about that and about his cheating on her. And she'd have to warn Hogwarts that Freida and Georgia would require protection, and send the twins themselves the Howler of their lifetimes.

Oh. And demand that Trelawney give her a massive pay raise.

There was no way her current wage was covering the hell this latest assignment was putting her through.

But first, before she did anything else, she had to go make sure those Healers had Malfoy properly under control, because if they didn't, the twins might be in immediate danger.

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They'd taken him back through into St. Mungo's Heart, and deeper into it than Hermione had ever been before. In her fly form Hermione could feel the uncanny forces of the wards pressing her to turn back. She had to force herself to continue on, something no true animal would have been willing to do. She would have to be extra careful to avoid being spotted now, since a fly that penetrated the wards would be very suspicious indeed.

She caught up to Mattham, St. James, and two of the orderlies in a small sick-room still on the Potions floor. They were just lifting Malfoy's limp but perfectly conscious body and placing him on one of the beds.

Malfoy definitely looked done with attacking people for the moment. He peered up at them warily, seeming confused and disoriented. It occurred to Hermione to wonder how well he could access his Memoralias charm within the Heart's wards. The wards had been designed, among other purposes, to protect the occupants from scrying, spying, and remotely triggered attacks during wartime. They would not treat any kind of recording artifact kindly, and Memoralias Charms were an old enough technology that they would have been warded specifically against. It was quite possible that Malfoy had no access whatsoever to his memories of the last ten years. And considering how one's memory faculties tended to degrade with Memoralias Charm abuse, probably not much from before that either. He certainly didn't look like he had any idea where he was or what was going on.

St. James moved over to a small desk and sat down, began to write out something that looked like an official report. Mattham drew her wand and proceeded to perform a medical scan on Malfoy's person.

"Hmmm," said Mattham. "Hmmm."

Malfoy squirmed uncomfortably as the wand settled briefly over his heart, colors coruscating wildly along its length, then continued to pass back and forth over his shoulder and down around his side, back over his chest again.

"Oh my," said Mattham.

"Mm, yes," said St. James, without looking up. "It's not pretty, is it?"

Mattham flinched back in surprise as Malfoy lifted a clumsy hand and pushed her wand away. "Don't," he said, an attempt at a growl but his expression of overt anxiety ruined the effect.

"I told you it'd take more than that one vial to keep him down longer than a few minutes," said St. James.

"He's down," said Mattham. "It's just those combat drugs interfering a bit. He won't be on his feet again for hours, believe me." She tried to point her wand at Malfoy again, but he made a feeble attempt to push it away again.

"I'm a Healer," she said soothingly. "I'm not going to harm you."

"No scans," Malfoy said. Hermione had to admire his ability to speak clearly while semi-paralyzed.

"Leave him be," said St. James. "I'll check on him as soon as I'm finished here."

"Hmph," said Mattham, whose curiosity was obviously threatening to get the better of her. She put her wand away, however. "Well, send me an airplane if you need me for anything then. I'll be right nearby. I don't think he'll give you any trouble before, say, late afternoon though."

"Any particular reason why they can't go back to work, then?" St. James asked, looking up and indicating the patiently waiting orderlies.

Mattham pursed her lips. "It is regulation that they be here, though I suppose when he's wandless and immobilized it hardly matters. I'd trust my Paralyzing Draught with my life."

"You can go, then," said St. James to the pair. "Thank you."

Mattham beckoned the orderlies to come away with her and the three of them left. As soon as the door had closed Hermione could hear them discussing what had happened as they disappeared down the hall.

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Hermione had known right away that there must have been some history between St. James and Malfoy. The way they'd laid eyes on each other back at that meeting, hostile yet familiar, had fairly screamed it.

Now that was confirmed. The moment the voices outside had faded, St. James drew his wand and locked and warded the door, then cast a privacy charm that would prevent snoopers from outside the room.

"I thought she'd never leave," he said when he was done. He turned and looked down at Malfoy, an ironic and somewhat strained smile on his face. "So, here we are, face to face again. You seem to be all in one piece this time, for a change. Are you going to let me scan you?"

"What happened?" said Malfoy. "I feel like I've been trampled by one of those Muggle lorries."

"Oh, I doubt you'd let that happen again," said St. James, with a slight smile. "I suppose you don't even remember the first time, do you? The wards must be playing hob with your Memoralias charm."

Malfoy's hand moved slightly, twitching toward the Charm around his neck. Hermione suspected he could never actually forget how to use the Charm, whether the charm itself was working or not. Procedural memory involved changes directly to the motor cortex, cerebellum, and central gray nuclei. The Memoralias Charm operated by magically hijacking signals bound for the hippocampus, which was not involved in motor memory at all. Still, since the Charm didn't work here, remembering how to use it did him no good at all. And since he couldn't record to it, he wouldn't remember anything St. James said for longer than a few seconds either.

"Do I know you?" he asked, squinting at St. James.

"Oh, yes," said the Healer. He ran his wand lightly through the air over Malfoy's body, doing a preliminary scan. "I saved your life about two years ago, after you were shot using a Muggle gun. I don't think I'll ever forget it," he added sourly. "Seeing as how there were ten wands pointed at my back at the time. Funny how that makes an event stick in a fellow's memory. Well. Not yours, of course. But then, you don't really have one, do you?"

Malfoy lay there looking up at him with eyes narrowed, suspicion failing to completely mask his bewilderment. No, Hermione decided, he didn't. Memory of facts and events didn't usually depend upon the hippocampus after the memories were firmly recorded, but unfortunately his memories less than ten years old were not recorded in his brain where they were supposed to be. They were in the Memoralias charm which was currently inaccessible.

"Anyway," said St. James conversationally as he continued his scan, "Your people broke down my wards, dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night, Stupefied my wife, and forced me to try Heal a bloody mess of a more-than-half-dead mass murdering felon on the floor of my kitchen. When I wasn't able to pull it off alone and without any tools but my wand, they forced me on pain of immediate execution to call in favors from friends all over Europe to come and assist. Which has completely ruined my reputation, I'll have you know. I didn't lose my right to practice Healing, but my career will never be the same. To say nothing of the year and a half of hell I went through trying to get my house decontaminated before I was forced to sell."

Malfoy made no move to try to prevent St. James' scan of him as he had with Mattham. Either he felt he had no choice but to trust him, or maybe the Paralyzing Draught was still gaining in its strength, and Malfoy could no longer fight it.

"And on top of it all," continued St. James, "I've spent the last two years being harassed and interrogated by every branch of Aurors known to Wizarding kind. Apparently they decided you must have told me a bunch of important secrets while we were alone for that -- what was it, fifteen minutes? -- while your cohorts were off negotiating with the Aurors. Funny thing is, I've never been able to repeat a word of what you said. What did you do, run out and find a Secret Keeper within minutes of leaving my house?"

It was a rhetorical question, of course; Malfoy wouldn't remember any of that either. But Hermione realized at once that this was information Arthur needed. St. James might hold key evidence against Malfoy, and he might even be glad to give it up. But if a Fidelius Charm was binding that evidence to a Secret Keeper, no amount of questioning or intimidation would allow the Healer to reveal it. The Aurors obviously didn't know this, or they wouldn't still be bothering St. James after two years. If they knew, they'd be concentrating their efforts on finding and questioning the Secret Keeper instead. After all, the downside of using a Secret Keeper was that the secrets were only as safe as the Keeper was stalwart and uncorruptible. And the bigger the secret, the more difficult it was to find someone who could keep it safe. Witness Wormtail's betrayal of Harry Potter's father… they'd been best friends for seven years, and that still hadn't been enough.

Come to think of it, this Fidelius Charm business might also explain how Malfoy had been able to keep his motives regarding Batwing unknown to date. If there was a Secret Keeper involved there too, not even Malfoy himself would be able to tell anybody. And, though she'd have to do some research to verify it, Hermione suspected his Memoralias Charm wouldn't be able to reveal it to prying eyes, either.

Hermione wondered who Malfoy's Secret Keeper might be. Nobody sprang immediately to mind. The two people she'd seen him be friendliest with -- Vincent Crabbe and "Jones", the Cov Op disguised as a waiter -- seemed to be as clueless about his motives as everybody else.

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Malfoy, of course, looked even more confused than before. But even that confusion faded, as everything St. James said slipped out of his mind and was gone, un-rememberable. He looked at St. James blankly, as if aware that it was his turn to speak but having absolutely no idea what to say.

St. James sighed. "Well, never mind that. Let's get you rolled over, you won't be going anywhere until that Paralyzing Draught wears off several hours from now so you might as well get comfortable."

"Why is there a Paralyzing Draught?" asked Malfoy, looking bothered by the idea. He did not resist as St. James helped him over onto his uninjured side. Hermione wondered if St. James knew that was how Malfoy preferred to lie down from past experience, or if he'd deduced as much from his scan. St. James ignored the question, simply scanning Malfoy again and then nodding and putting his wand away.

"I'll just be over here," he said, indicating the desk. "I'll have someone else watch you when I go back to work. No one will disturb you."

Malfoy seemed unaware that his question had been ignored. He'd probably forgotten it already. As St. James went back to his desk, he simply lay there, looking unhappy. What else could he do? Hermione supposed he'd end up sleeping the potion off. He probably needed the sleep fairly desperately anyway, from what she'd seen so far. But for now he was still awake, staring into space in her general direction - in her exact direction, actually - while the sound of St. James' quill sounded quietly into the room.

She was just about to leave, figuring Malfoy was no threat in his current condition, when she realized he wasn't just staring in her direction.

He was staring at her, with the farsighted eyes of a Seeker.

She almost fled immediately, but that would be too suspicious. So after her initial flinch of surprise, she froze, watching him watching her.

No sound, no movement, other than the scritch-scratch-scratching of the Healer's quill.

Malfoy's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, did nothing. Not that he could do much. But if he spoke, if he said anything to deliberately draw St. James' attention to her, she was in trouble.

He couldn't though, could he? He could speak, of course, but would he know what to say? Would he even know a fly was suspicious, here? Did he even know where he was? Suddenly what Hermione knew of Muggle brain studies seemed perilously vague. She knew that the hippocampus was involved in mapping and place-knowledge, but much of the detail of places and recognizing them out of context must be semantic knowledge, not spatial memory. Considering how long he'd been donating money to St. Mungo's - and going into combat for the Death Eaters, if you believed Nesbitt - much of his knowledge of the place must be more than 10 years old, and therefore he might well know that this was a room within St. Mungo's Heart, and he might well know that a fly shouldn't be within the wards. But could he put two and two together? As the seconds stretched on, Hermione dared to hope he couldn't.

As quietly as she could, she left the wall and flew to the other side of the room, behind Malfoy. Here she had a view of his back, and he had no view of her at all. He couldn't move. He'd quickly forget he'd seen her, and so long as he'd said nothing before he did, that would be the end of that. Certainly she didn't have to worry about him making any connection between what he'd just seen and the fly that had fallen on his desk at his office… and the one he'd found in his tea at the restaurant. This particular episode would never be recorded.

She waited for what felt like an eternity, then softly stole back across the room. Malfoy's eyes had closed. He looked to be asleep, or near to it.

A bit shakily, Hermione flew to the door and found her way out through the keyhole, unnoticed by the still busily scribbling St. James. Luckily the protections the Healer had put on the door failed to take an insect into account. As she buzzed back down the hallways and stairwells toward the lobby, she felt a vast relief, whether due to her close call, knowing Freida and Georgia were safe for the moment, or simply being released from the wards' oppressive influence, she couldn't say.

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She found a ladies' loo and turned back into her human form there, then used her wand to make herself truly presentable for the first time that day. Likely nobody who'd seen her "Disapparate" from the courtyard would be indoors now, unless one of the reporters had managed to sneak in or something. She could walk back out through the lobby and use the fireplace there to Floo back home, and nobody who saw her would realize she shouldn't have been there. It wasn't perfect, but it was fairly safe and a lot better than remaining trapped here any longer or catching a mystery ride on a random stranger.

It was a short walk back to St. Mungo's lobby from the loo. She didn't recognize many people from before; most of those who'd been waiting would have been served by now. It was still crowded, loud, and bustling however. Hermione walked as calmly as possible to the fireplace and found a packet of Floo powder in a pocket of her robes.

She threw it in and shouted, "The Burrow!" Then, she timed a brisk step forward with the precise moment the flames flared their highest. In the instant of her commitment, she saw a furry dark shape dart past into the floo at her feet her, timed to pass through exactly as she did.

What the...?

It all happened so fast she was zooming through floo space before she really registered what had happened. Was that a cat that had just run into her floo? Why on earth had a cat run into the floo?

As if Hermione didn't already feel like she was going mad, she could swear she'd recognized the cat as the very one that had been sitting near Malfoy and the python lady in the lobby earlier.

"Oh, bother," she muttered. Now she had accidental cat-theft to contend with, on top of all her other problems. At least it was only theft now. It'd be cat-murder if any of Crookshanks' descendents discovered the intruder in their territory.

The moment they'd arrived through to the other side, the cat tried to shoot out from under her feet but Hermione stooped and snatched it up, hands under its armpits.

"Gotcha!" she said, as the cat let out a yowl of surprise.

But when she straightened, Hermione forgot all about the cat. Her mouth fell open and the cat fell out of her arms with a thud.

The Burrow had been completely trashed!

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