Objects of Desire

Chapter 3 - Prelude to a Kiss

By Azrael Geffen

The first lesson that Harry, Ron and Hermione had attended together had been Defense Against the Dark Arts and, after much speculation as to the identity of the new teacher, they were met with Professor Sabine Delancet, an attractive witch in her late twenties who, Harry thought sadly, would have been brilliant to have around a year ago. Her specialties were Dueling and Dark Magic Detection. Classes in Dueling were to be practical affairs, with students to choose a dueling partner for the year to work with in class and practice with as part of study.

“Dueling,” Professor Delancet said at her first practical class, “was once considered the last bastion of polished society. Any hot and tot can brawl, but the well bred Wizard or Witch duel.” She smiled devilishly, “which is why you find that most purebloods are very good at it.”

Draco folded his arms and smirked.

“Of course, many purebloods aren’t above brawling.”

“That’s true,” Harry muttered out of the corner of his mouth, the war was testament to that.

“And many half bloods and Muggle Borns are excellent duelists”

Hermione shot a look at Malfoy and grinned in satisfaction. He sneered and resisted the urge of poking his tongue out at her.

“So, my aim is to teach you to duel in the traditional sense, as a sport more than as combat, but of course, when and if the need arises, what you have learned will hold you in good stead. Now, have any of you seen a Wizard fight with a staff?”

A collective gasp rippled through the class. Staves were heavy objects, huge and long and powerful. Once upon a time a pureblood would have called the things ‘Barbaric’ but, as many of them had seen, the Death Eaters, purebloods all, were excellent wielders of staves. A few students raised their hands in answer to her question and Professor Delancet was nodding.

“Good.” she disappeared behind her desk for a moment and when she re-appeared she was holding a great long Staff. It was black and carved with ornate letters, at one end was a large crystal ball; the other was a pointed crystal conductor. “The benefit of the staff is that you can cast from both ends, it takes a great deal of mind control to do so which is why only masters can use them in actual combat.”

“So that’s what your Dad was, Malfoy, not a Barbarian at all eh?”

Draco shot a withering look at Ron who was grinning back at him.

“Thank you Mr. Weasley, but if you could keep your remarks about people not connected with this class room to a minimum, I would be most grateful.”

“Yes Professor.”

“Now, I am showing you the staff because later in the year I plan to have the students who prove most proficient at dueling, learn how to use them.”

“That’s so cool!”

“I’m glad you think so Mr. Finnegan.” She put the staff down and returned to the centre of the room. “If you can all choose a partner please, and I ask you, please try to choose someone other than your best friend, it makes the sport oh so much more interesting.”

“Bugger that!” Ginny giggled and grabbed Hermione before Ron could, Ron then turned to Harry who shrugged and was about to move towards him when Colin Creevy stepped in and claimed the red head.

“Please Ron, come on,” Colin was saying, “she said try not to choose your best friend.”

“Harry?”

“It’s ok, Ron, I’m sure I’ll find someone who’ll want to partner me.” Harry was actually a little miffed that Colin hadn’t chosen him. It seemed he was a good photographic subject, but not a suitable dueling partner.

He soon discovered that most people thought that way. They loved Harry, they all did - with exception of most of the Slytherin house who were essentially terrified of him - but Harry was legend at Hogwarts and beyond. He had defeated Voldemort. He was an excellent fighter. Who the hell would want to be beaten by him over and over again? They could get hurt!

“Looks like it’s you and me, Potty,” came an unwelcome and familiar drawl.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me.”

“Think of it this way. No one wants to fight the Savior of the Wizarding World and no one wants to fight the son of a Death Eater, so it looks like we’ll have to fight each other.”

“I think Professor Delancet said the word was “Dueling”, not fighting. It’s supposed to be a sport, Malfoy.”

“Fighting, Dueling, same thing.” Draco shrugged lazily. “Either way I get to kick your ass around the corridors for a year - and that’ll make me happy.”

“Oh? And what makes you think you can manage it if your Daddy and his Master couldn’t?”

Draco, refusing to be goaded, sneered, and replied with a voice dipped in saccharine sweetness; “Because the good Professor there is going to teach me how. What’s wrong? Scared Potter?”

Harry smiled openly at the challenge. “Oh, Malfoy, you wish.”

And so it looked like they were dueling partners for the next year.

~ ~ ~

Potions began as it had every year since Harry had come to Hogwarts. Hermione hoped that Snape would be different now that the War was over and Snape, never failing to disappoint her, was as cruel and as evil as ever.

“As I see that most of you did not manage to get yourself killed over the summer break, I suppose I should make some kind of attempt at welcoming you all back,” he started silkily, “and I see that the Gods have seen fit to send me Mr. Potter for yet another year, how wonderful for us all to be graced with the presence of such celebrity as this, I don’t know how I shall contain myself.”

Harry sank down into his chair and almost groaned.

“Just ignore him. You know he does this every year.”

“Was that whispering, Miss Granger? How unlike you, conspiring with your little companion in my class. It is a shame I can’t take house points from you, or perhaps I should just punish Gryffindor anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Professor, it won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t.”

To Hermione’s relief, he did take any points. She looked at Harry who rolled his eyes in return. Another year of Potions had begun and despite all alliances during the war, Snape was his usual self. She couldn’t help but feel disappointed, she’d hoped he might have softened – if only a little.

Snape prowled around to sit behind his desk and glared down at his suitably cowed students before starting the lesson. “Alchemy is one of the three pillars of the Hermetic Sciences, the other two being?”

Hermione’s hand shot into the air, and he ignored her.

“Wand Craft and Astrology,” Draco answered smugly.

“Correct. Alchemy is essentially the art of?”

Hermione’s hand, still half in the air, shot back up and Snape smirked, looked in her direction and said;

“Mr. Potter, Alchemy is the art of?”

“I don’t know, Professor.”

“Really, that is a pity, what are you here for if you don’t know what you are studying?”

Harry flushed.

“Alchemy is the art of, and please try to remember this before returning to my class Mr. Potter, Potion Making. As you have all elected to be here, I would hope to assume that by the time this year is complete you will be mildly competent Alchemists. You will find that too many of our kind rely on Alchemists to prepare potions for them and few realize how crucial it is to the craft to be able to practice the work themselves. As it is your first week you are going to be producing Planetary Fluid Condensers, Liquid Universal Fluid Condensers, Solid Fluid Condensers and Elemental Fluid Condensers. These base condensers will be the working base of every potion you produce this year, if you make them incorrectly now, your base for all work performed this year will be flawed and you will fail this class. Instructions are on the board.” He waved his wand and they appeared. “You may begin. You have until the end of the week to have all conductors completed, bottled and labeled.”

Harry turned to Hermione and managed to look lost, helpless and confused all at once. Hermione knew what was coming, and although she hoped she was wrong, she knew she wasn’t.

“Hermione, what in hell is a Fluid Condenser?”

“They are the base element of all Alchemical potions.” she whispered in reply.

“That’s nice. What is an Alchemical potion?”

Hermione looked at Harry and wondered if it was some how Neville polyjuiced into Harry’s form. “Haven’t you read the text book yet?”

Harry looked thoroughly exasperated. He picked up his book and waved it at her, opening to page after page in demonstration. “'Mione, in case you haven’t noticed, there are no words!”

The book was a beautiful heavy bound thing and Hermione had fallen in love with it when she had first purchased her copy at Flourish and Blotts. The pages were made of metal and each one featured an intricate engraving.

“The Mutus Liber is an ancient text, Harry. Each of the engravings represents a sequence of the Alchemical process performed by a man and woman. This is very High Magic Harry, we’re lucky to be learning it.”

Harry looked at her dubiously and then cast his eye around the class. Noticing that everyone had set about making their fluid condensers. Everyone except Hermione and himself. He reminded himself once again why he had chosen the class. He had never felt more out of depth in his life. He simply didn’t have Hermione’s brain, nor her love of all things complex. In advance Potions, Hermione was in her element; Harry was simply a drowning man clinging to a piece of drift wood.

“Problems Mr. Potter?” Snape’s silky voice sounded from the front of the room.

“No Professor,” Harry replied evenly.

“Then I suggest you start working and stop distracting you partner. I would hate to see Miss Granger actually fail my class because she couldn’t concentrate.”

Harry snorted. Like that would ever happen.

“You find something amusing in the idea of your classmate failing, Mr. Potter?” Snape purred, “How predictably selfish of you.”

“No Sir, I…no Sir,” Harry finished lamely.

Snape smirked, picked up his quill and returned to his work.

~ ~ ~

Three months of school had passed in a whirl wind of lessons and homework. They had been integrated into the existing seventh year for classes, which made for bigger classes, but they got a sense that they were back in their beloved houses just from sitting with people emblazoned in house colors.

The seventh years, however, looked on enviously as their eighth year companions reveled in the amazing sense of freedom that saw them heading to Hogsmeade most nights of the week to sit in the Three Broomsticks and talk and laugh and drink enough to forget that they were in fact still at school due to a war that had killed more of their friends than they dared to contemplate. This practice was starting to calm down however, as they quickly realized that drinking and actually completing assignments and studying were not things that often went together. Hogsmeade nights were now becoming things of Friday and Saturdays, when they had mornings to lay in bed and sleep off the hangovers that blissfully took away the need to think about who they were and what they had seen. Study could be done in the afternoons and by the evening the process could be repeated all over again.

Hermione, who rejected traipsing down into the village more often than not, found it difficult to comprehend how it was possible that Harry and Ron had forgotten just how fast homework could accumulate at this level of Hogwarts. Ron was sweating over his divination homework, lamenting (for yet another year) that he had taken the class through lack of anything else to take. Hermione, who thought the subject complete twaddle anyway, refused to help and Harry had been so glad the day he had left Divination behind forever that he had let anything he may have learned run out of his head like water through a sieve.

Harry was having troubles of his own. He had managed, with much help from Hermione, to create all of his Fluid Condensers and he had found, through the Restricted Section of the library, a book named Primus Materia which step by step deciphered the engravings in Mutus Liber, so he at least understood what Snape was going on about. But he knew that his potion making skills left a lot to be desired. He spent much of his time potions study time listening to Hermione wax lyrical about the joys of high magic, a practice she had taken to like a duck to water. That no teacher other than Snape had decided to teach it irked her more and more as her interest progressed. She had even voiced a desire to ask Snape to teach her privately, something which had sent a shudder through her friends.

The boys had never been particularly good at organizing their time well when it came to study and homework. For each of their classes they had been told to try and study for “an hour or so” each night, plus complete homework. Which meant that they needed around 15 hours a night to complete everything. Clearly, there was not enough time in the day.

“I’m going to ask McGonagall for a Time Turner,” Ron declared on a number of occasions before Hermione, sick of hearing it, had written up a home work / study time table for them to adhere to. She stuck it on the wall next to the contract and told them to make a bold attempt to work with it. They pointedly ignored it until they were snowed under with work, where upon they complained that the time table didn’t work.

They all had dueling practice every night and that was an ordeal in itself. Malfoy, as it turned out, was a brilliant duelist. Then again, he had been taught by a master. Harry had fought Lucius Malfoy on a number of occasions and he recognized the style. There was, as Harry soon learned, a real difference between being in a high stress battle situation and actually dueling in the old style way and Malfoy knew moves that Harry hadn’t even considered. He ended most nights with his body aching all over and feeling as though the wind had been well and truly knocked out of him. It was exhilarating though. There was something about the thrill of the duel that was addictive, and watching Malfoy leap into the air, or literally bend in half backwards to avoid a curse (and he was remarkably good at avoiding curses) was certainly a sight to behold.

~ ~ ~

With the year flying by, it was Halloween before they actually managed to discuss the contract, and even then it was only because Ron had started to panic. The year was slipping past them and he decided that it was time to take his friends to task.

“Nothing!” He admonished. “We have done nothing!” He was holding court in the bed chamber he shared with Harry and he kept jabbing at the contract for effect. “It’s been months and nothing!”

“Well,” Hermione hissed in reply, “in case you hadn’t noticed, Ron, we have been busy!”

“Yeah? Well, you tell me that when school ends and your sitting there covered in festering bubbles of pus!”

Eew!

He turned to Harry, “I can understand her!” He gestured to Hermione who looked offended. “Girls have this stupid thing about having to fall in love and all that, but just about every girl in the school would do anything to have a go with you, Harry, you’re a red blooded male, why haven’t you done anything thing?”

“Well…I…”

“Do you have your eye on someone?”

He felt a blush start and he suppressed it as best he could “Um, No, Ron, I don’t.”

“I thought I saw Padma looking at you the other day?”

“I really didn’t notice Ron. Besides, I might have had something stuck to my face.”

“What are you?” Ron cried, “An infant? What would you have had stuck to your face?”

“Nothing, it was a hypothetical something.”

Ron began to pace the room, throwing desperate looks at the contract with its horribly naked rose bushes. “What about you?” he demanded of Hermione.

“No Ron, sorry.” She bit her lip, “Hang on, your really hoeing into us, what about you? I don’t see your rose bush alight with flowers!”

“I was trying to convince Lavender,” he said quickly, “but she wasn’t really up for it.”

“Well considering she is seeing Ernie Macmillan, I am hardly surprised.”

“He’s not here,” Ron snapped, “besides, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Hermione started to laugh. “You really are immoral Ron.”   

“I just want to get this over with,” he said indignantly, but he was starting to laugh as well.

“Yeah, you are really desperate to get this over with, and the sex? That’s a happy part of the outcome?”

Ron was openly laughing now, “Of course!” Suddenly, his eyes widened and he smacked himself soundly in the forehead, “OF COURSE!” he cried, “I just had the best idea!”

“Careful Ron, the last time you had “the best idea” we ended up in this mess," Harry said.

“Yeah, yeah, but this really is a good one.”

“Ok, what is it?” Harry asked, deciding that they could at least indulge him, although his ideas hadn’t been that great up to this point.

“Truth or Dare!”

“Truth,” said Hermione.

“Dare,” said Harry.

“No! I’m not asking you, we should play the game.”

“I thought were just did.”

“Oh good grief Harry, did you lose a brain cell in dueling practice today? We should play Truth or Dare with the others.”

“What?” Harry looked a little panicked. “Are we going to dare someone to sleep with us?”

“That’s a great idea!”

“Ron, be serious.”

“Ok, ok. After the feast tonight we all adjourn back to the common room. Malfoy, fucking little shit that he is, has bought all of this wine from some bloke in Hogsmeade.”

“Hang on...you trust wine that Malfoy, fucking little shit that he is, bought from some bloke in the village?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Malfoy drinks it, and he’s still alive.”

“Ok, whatever, continue.”

“After everyone is relaxed I will suggest a game of Truth or Dare.”

Harry sighed, “I get that bit, what I don’t get is why?”

“Harry, Voldemort hit you one too many times in the head with the Cruciatus curse didn’t he mate?” When Harry didn’t respond Ron impatiently prompted him. “What happens when some one dares you in Truth or Dare?”

Two blank faces stared back at him.

“Come on! ‘Mione, please don’t tell me that you have joined zombie boy here!”

Two blank faces continued to stare back at him.

He goggled at them incredulously. “You always get dared to kiss someone. Always, it’s like an unwritten rule of Truth or Dare. Only really ugly people don’t end up getting kissed in Truth or Dare.”

Oh.

“And kissing can lead to other, more intense things, right?”

Right. They both nodded dumbly and looked remarkably uncomfortable with the idea.

“Come on guys, it’s a good plan, we could end up with some nice candidates out of it.”

Harry squirmed a little. Hermione appeared to be studying a crack in the plasterwork.

“Do you want to end up covered in boils?” Ron demanded.

“No.”

“No.”

“So just do it, will you, please?”

Harry and Hermione exchanged glances and turned uneasy smiles to Ron. “Sure,” Harry replied with as much false bravado as he could muster, “what ever you say, mate.”

~ ~ ~

The Museum of Magical Arts and Antiquities was a simple stone structure, block like and grey, that stood in the centre of London’s Soho district. It was perfectly unassuming with the exception of two tall columns that reached up to a simple unadorned pediment that served as the buildings only real adornment. The exterior was an unchanging façade that had stood for several hundred years, its’ interior, based on the mobius expansion architectural system, unfolded endlessly and thus the cubic capacity was infinite.

The Museum was curated by one Archibald Semeuse, who had been cataloguing a rare rock bone collection when the letter had come from the Ministry requesting that he curate the traveling Dark Magic exhibition that they had been planning since the end of the war trials. Semeuse had been the Curator of the Museum for approximately 53 years and had been thrilled with the plan. He was a collector of anything and everything that could possibly be catalogued and labeled and placed in a set.

He had begun acquiring collections of collections on a small scale, purchasing individual pieces from flea markets and antique stores and then later, as the impetus grew, he had migrated to auction houses buying any lot listed as curios. His tastes were non-specific. Having minimal interest in fashionable items like paintings or porcelain, he concentrated his efforts on objects of magical significance. His current favorite, his Rock bone collection, included various examples of proximity assimilation, a phenomenon occurring when minerals, plants and skeletal tissue combine through convergence. Magically, such items were highly prized as they could be ground down and liquefied and used in base work for universal and planetary condensers, Alchemists and Potion Masters lusted after such a collection as his, and he guarded it with a jealously that bordered on obsession.

After receiving the letter from the Ministry advising him of the plans for the exhibition he went deep into the vaults of the museum to check that every piece that he had collected with any connection at all to Dark Magic was still ordered and intact. He had long hoped to be able to display such pieces, and in an exhibition such as this he would finally get the opportunity. Then had come the news regarding the Death Eaters. He would get people. Real human specimens. Live Humans, soulless in a state of living death. His eyes had widened, he felt his heart begin to race and he had almost begun to salivate over the letter. It was as though all of his Christmases had come at once.

Several weeks later he took delivery of fifteen long narrow boxes, each containing one of his newest prized possessions. As the House Elves had opened the boxes, he had knelt beside each one and carefully unwrapped the cotton wadding around its occupant. Of the fifteen, three had died in transit and he cursed the over-zealous fool who had wrapped them in too much wadding and no air holes. He couldn’t display them if they were dead. They would deteriorate and rot. Unless of course he pumped them full of Arsenic which would preserve them admirably. But he knew he could not, he had a duty to the Ministry to report the loss.

It was the fifteenth box that contained his real prize. He had unwrapped the specimen with the same sense of dread he had after he had discovered the first dead one. He couldn’t stand the very idea of a fourth dead, he needed at least twelve to make the collection work. Twelve was his lucky number; he would never display any collection that didn’t have at least twelve pieces. He pulled back the cotton wadding and was overjoyed as he listened closely and heard the short intake of breath form the body. Then he had looked at it. His heart had almost skipped a beat as he stared at the glazed grey eyes staring back at him, unblinking, unseeing, but very much alive.

“Dear Merlin,” he had whispered, “he’s perfect”

Or at least he would be after Semeuse had cleaned him up, shaved him and washed the cascade of pale blonde hair that was almost filling the box. He ran a long finger over the smooth flesh of the mans cheek and trailed down to the tag tied around his neck.

‘Lucius Malfoy. C. 1954”

Oh no!

He looked over at one of the other boxes, one of the “dead” boxes. Damn! If the woman had survived he would have had a matched set!

~ ~ ~

True to his word, Ron started the game of Truth or Dare after the feast when everyone was sitting around the common room fire place relaxing and contemplating classes the next day. As promised, the three of them chose Dare every time the bottle was spun and pointed to one of them. Harry, who was sure that Padma had hexed the bottle, continuously came up and had so far kissed Lavender, Padma and Susan a total of around seven times each. Ron had kissed Susan twice, recited the Astronomy table backwards and run from the top of the tower to the dungeons and back in little more than his boxers screaming “Chudley Cannons rule the day” at the top of his lungs. Hermione hadn’t kissed anyone. She had pushed a peanut around the common room with her nose and sucked a spilled glass of whiskey out of the carpet, and by the time the bottle pointed to her again, she felt incredibly sick, demoralized and she just wanted to go to bed. She looked at the bottle pointing at her and then at Ron who was smiling encouragingly and finally at Draco who had spun the bottle. “Dare,” she said weakly.

Draco smirked like a fiend and said, “I want you to go and throw a bucket of cold water over Professor Snape.”

She couldn’t have heard him right. “Pardon?” she asked confused.

“I want you to go and throw a bucket of cold water over Professor Snape,” Draco repeated patiently and deliberately picked his tooth with his fingernail.

“But…I can’t do that,” she said, blood draining from her face, “it’s after two in the morning…he’ll be in bed.”

“So? I know where his chambers are, it’s a simple matter to get in there.”

“I…I,” she stuttered, “I can’t!”

“Is that a refusal?” An evil light seemed to glow in Draco’s eyes.

Hermione wanted to say yes but Ron quickly stopped her. “’Mione, don’t say what your about to say,” he said quickly and then to Malfoy he hissed, “That’s fucking low you prick.”

“Oh trust me, Weasel, I have no desire to see Mud here in all her glory.”

In all her glory? What on earth was he talking about? “Ron?”

Ron turned to her and quietly he explained. “This is Wizard Truth or Dare. If you chose Dare and then refuse the Dare all your clothes disappear and you’re forced to walk around going about your daily business with nothing on for a day.”

Her mouth fell open. She had two choices, neither of which was any better than the other. One was to perform a task that was akin to poking a sleeping dragon in the eye, the other was to be shamed and humiliated in front of the entire faculty. She glared balefully at Ron. “Great idea,” she whispered harshly, tears had started to well up in her eyes, and she fought them back. “Fantastic. Only ugly people don’t get kissed in truth or dare, ha ha isn’t it funny? Well now we know who is ugly and who is about to go and hurl water over the one person that could possibly make my life a living hell, thanks a fucking heap.” She turned to Draco who was grinning expectantly. “It looks like I have no choice. I’ll do it. When?”

“No time like the present.”

~ ~ ~

Hermione could never recall the trip to the dungeons seeming so long or so perilous. Harry, Ron and Justin went with her to give her moral support and perhaps just to see what happened. Draco lead the way to Snape’s' chambers and the Marauders Map confirmed that he was indeed inside.

Draco whispered the pass word, low enough that no one else could hear it, and Hermione wondered briefly how he knew it. They crept inside. Ron electing at the last minute to wait in the corridor as only three of them would fit under the invisibility cloak and when the shit hit the fan they didn’t all want to be seen. Draco conjured up a large wooden bucket of water and handed it to Hermione and the three boys ducked under the safety of the cloak.

Hermione, holding the bucket, approached the bed with its sleeping form of Snape.

The first thing she noticed was that his wand was on the night stand and carefully she moved it so that he wouldn’t hex (or kill) her when he woke up. She then observed him for a moment, lying on his side, hand curled into a loose fist on the pillow. He was breathing deeply, each gentle exhalation of breath resulting in the lightest of snores. His hair spilled across the crisp white linen in an inky dark stain. For a moment the word ‘fragile’ flashed in her mind and she felt, with rising dismay, that she couldn’t do it. It was Snape certainly. Nasty, evil, snaky Snape. But he looked so peaceful when he was asleep!

She lifted the bucket, murmured a quick prayer to what ever Gods may keep her, and hurled its icy contents over the sleeping form.

The reaction was instantaneous. He shrieked. Not a yell but an honest shriek. Like a banshee or some kind of wild creature, and he sprang up, reaching wildly for his wand and upon not finding it he flew in a blind rage at the girl standing at the end of the bed.

Hermione found her legs were running without her telling them too, and judging by all of the noise behind her, the boys were out the door and running themselves.

Snape was up and after her. His legs were longer and rage had made him swift and she felt long pale fingers close around her upper arm, and she was yanked back into the room to be confronted by one exceedingly angry Potions Master. He was shaking in fury, perhaps not even registering yet that he was soaked to the skin.

“GIVE ME MY WAND!” he bellowed, and she fumbled with it, having forgotten that she was still holding it. He wrenched it out of her hand and pointed it at her and for a moment she was sure he was going to kill her then and there.

“PPProfessor, ppplease,” she sobbed at him, his fingers were digging painfully into her arm and she stared into what she could see of the tip of the wand pointed at her head. He was shaking all over with rage.

“Lumos,” he muttered and the tip of his wand erupted into light. Hermione almost wet herself with shock.

“Professor Snape, I’m sorry, it was a dare…”

“Miss Granger?” He was starting to wake fully and was suddenly noticing that his attacker was the Know – it - all Granger girl, and that was almost more shocking than being drenched at 2am.

“Yes Professor.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” His voice was strained, as though he was confused enough to not even growl dangerously at her.

“It was a game of Truth or…”

“A Game? You think disturbing my sleep is a game?”

“No Sir, I…”

“Detention,” he snarled, rapidly recovering his wits. ”Miss Granger, I plan to make you wish you had never been born.”

He dragged her to the door and hurled her out with such force that she hit the opposite wall, bumping her head against the stone work. He then slammed the door shut.

Hermione slumped to the ground and reached her hand up to her head, convinced she was bleeding. Her friends had obviously deserted her, and she was left alone on the floor in the dungeons. Without anyone to observe her, she dissolved into tears.

NOTES: For anyone who cares to read them….

The Mutus Liber translated means “The Mute Book” and is fifteenth century book of engravings depicting the Alchemical processes of a man and a women.

The Primus Materia literally means Primal Materials and actually refers to the making of Condensers (yes they do exist) being the first steps in working with Alchemy.

The Museum of Magical Arts and Antiquities is based on Nick Bantocks “The Museum at Purgatory”. The ten Galleries of my version are as follows:

The Eretria Room – Obscure Objects

The Psammetichus Room – Magic Carpets

The Samians Room – Shrines and magical boxes

The Pedasus Room – Entomological Amalgams

The Sais Room – The exhibition of Dark Magic and style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  Death Eaters (to be sent on tour)

The Hartog Room – Magical Games

The Aphetae Room – Ancient Magic and Sacred Bundles

The Battus Room – Sfumatoglyphics

The Ladice Room – Muggle Witch Hunt Memorabilia

The Dorus Room – Angels and Demons.

Chapter 4 >>