Orpheus

Chapter 14

By Pigwidgeon37

Severus's spy years had ended a long time ago, and therefore he wasn't as much in control of his reactions anymore as he had been back then. When, in the total silence and almost-complete darkness surrounding them, a hand came to rest on his shoulder, he gave a most undignified yelp. A very soft one, but it was enough for a second hand to clamp down on his mouth.

"Shhhh! It's only me, Hermione!"

Slowly the hand left his mouth. Severus breathed deeply, closed his eyes and prayed for patience. "Spikes! Don't do that!" he hissed, looking back over his shoulder. Exactly like himself—only in himself it was less unusual—his beloved wife was clad in black from head to toe, her hair hidden under a tight black woollen cap, her face blackened. Only her eyes, round and wide open, stood out from the dark background, and when she smiled, apologetically he thought but could not be quite sure because her facial expression was somewhat diminished, her teeth, too, glittered white and moist.

"I'm sorry," she whispered back. "I just thought… if the notes were charmed to update themselves automatically, do you think they went blank once the original was destroyed?"

It was bizarre enough to be standing on the first floor landing of a small cottage in St. Dogmaels (a village near Cardigan, Wales) in the dead of night, clad in rather ridiculous Muggle attire including a poacher's make-up. But to actually have a conversation in this totally outlandish situation made the whole experience even more surreal.

"I suppose," Severus whispered, "that she would have considered such an eventuality. Or do you want to leave, just because of the remote possibility of the notes being useless?"

Hermione merely shook her head and lightly nudged his shoulder to urge him on. He rolled his eyes and sneaked noiselessly—thanks to the sound-muffling charms they had put on their shoes—towards the first of two rooms they would have to enter, wondering why one always ducked and hunched one’s shoulders when sneaking, even if there was no need to do so.

Identifying the house had been easy, and while Severus, concealed by an Invisibility Spell, had monitored the comings and goings of the inhabitants (an elderly married couple and, until the day before, two boys, probably grandsons or nephews, but they had been picked up by their parents the night before), Hermione had paid a discreet nightly visit to the City Hall at Swansea, Planning Department, and made a copy of the blueprint of the house they had to enter. Both had let out sighs of relief when the results of their investigations showed that not only did the old couple not possess a dog, they had also left the building as it had been in Lily's youth. Which meant that there was a master bedroom on the first floor—supposedly occupied by the elderly couple—and two smaller rooms, one of which must have been Lily's.

The doors to both rooms, exactly opposite each other, were identical; whether the faintly shimmering paint was a dark blue or green was indistinguishable, but the colour was doubtlessly the same, and so was the shape of the brass doorknobs. With a few gestures of his right hand Severus suggested that they separate and search one room each, but Hermione shook her head. Her years of nightly adventures with Harry and Ron had come to an end at approximately the same time as her husband's spying; besides, she had never felt comfortable breaking rules and venturing into the realm of the forbidden. If she had to do it—and she had never flouted any regulations unless her conscience told her that it was illegal but necessary—she didn't want to do it alone. Severus grinned and patted her shoulder, and they crept towards their first target.

A sound-muffling charm on the handle and latch, another one on the hinges, a whispered Alohomora, and the door opened noiselessly. Both felt it at the same time, looked at each other and nodded—to a wizard, the faint thrill of residual magic was immediately recognizable. They had hit the right room at first try.

As Severus had already told Hermione, the furniture, carpets and curtains (he had risked a few peeks inside under the safe cover of the Invisibility Spell) looked worn but solid. Both had agreed that, seeing as how Lily's parents had left the country pretending to go on a holiday, they had probably abandoned their house as it was, to avoid suspicion. It was more than likely that it had been sold complete with furniture and everything after their death. The mirror and dressing table certainly looked as if they had been there for at least a century—this was, of course, more a gut feeling than rational thought, since it was so dark that the mirror reflected only the weak shine a lamp burning above the entrance door cast on the white-washed ceiling of the room.

Before advancing any further, Hermione cast another silencing charm, this time on the wooden floorboards, which looked slightly warped and were only partly covered by a thin carpet.

The mirror wasn't very large, maybe 1'4'' by 1', but it had a heavy-looking silver frame. Severus therefore used magic to levitate it off its hook and gently deposit it on the bedspread. In the meantime, Hermione cast a revealing charm that caused the air to flicker and eddy; then a glowing rectangle, slightly smaller than the mirror, appeared on the wall.

"What's that?" whispered Severus, who had joined Hermione in front of the table. He pointed at four small figures, one in each corner of the rectangle.

"I don't know," she replied, "They're too small to make out anything. Should I—" she gestured at them with her wand.

He nodded, and Hermione touched the top left corner with the tip of her wand. This time, it was her turn to yelp; she staggered back, and Severus caught her. The tiny figure had become a three-dimensional image of a rat, hovering before them in mid-air. "Name me!" it squeaked.

The two amateur burglars looked at each other in shock, sure that the rat's voice, tiny as it was, must have woken the inhabitants. They waited in breathless silence and, when a minute later everything was still as quiet as before, exhaled in relief. Severus went to close the door and, rolling his eyes, cast another silencing spell, this time encompassing the whole room.

Hermione turned back to the rat. "Wormtail," she said. The animal flicked its tail and, with a soft 'puff', dissolved into a shower of green sparks.

They had been lucky to have activated the rat first, for the mighty voices of the stag, the dog and the werewolf would certainly have alerted the couple next door, sound sleepers though they obviously were. When Hermione had pronounced "Moony," the last of the animals dissolved, and what had hitherto been a rectangle on an otherwise uninterrupted wall transformed into a small wooden door with a large metal ring in its centre. Hermione hooked her index finger through it and pulled. It swung open to reveal a rather shallow recess in the stone, just big enough to hold a large, leather-bound book. Gingerly, Hermione lifted it out and closed the door.

*

Treasure-hunting was fun, but Lucertola wished her grandfather had given her more detailed indications as to the location of the wooden box. And, not enough with these rather vague instructions, she also had to get into her father's study or, more exactly, his desk. She knew that both were always locked and warded when he wasn't there; he had never forgotten to protect his sanctum against intrusions of House Elves and family members likewise. This was something she knew from experience, as she'd tried often enough. Not because she wanted something in particular, at least not until recently. No, she had simply wanted to enter the room in his absence, to sit in his chair and feel the atmosphere.

Now, however, entering Draco's study had lost its playful appeal and become a mission. A secret mission to boot. It filled her with anticipation and excitement—she was only fifteen, after all, and the lure of the forbidden was strong, more so as she could justify it to herself with the excuse that, all things considered, she wasn't acting on some random whim but had been explicitly told to do so by her grandfather. He was an authority, after all, and not only to herself.

After a couple of fruitless attempts at breaking her father's complex wards, Lucertola realized that, unless she came up with an alternative method, she was never going to get that key. There was no other choice—she had to wait until her father went into his study, open the door as silently as possible, cast a sleeping spell on him and search for the key. The mere thought made her stomach lurch, because deep inside she felt there was a difference between mere theft, which involved only herself, and freeing the way towards the object of her desire by harming another person. Of course she told herself that a sleeping spell wasn't going to do any harm to her father. But she felt that casting it would be a step in a direction she wasn't sure she wanted to take. On the other hand, she wanted that box, and she wanted to unlock it. She had to weigh her desires against her scruples and, unsurprisingly even to herself, the desires had an easy victory.

Draco never went to bed before midnight, and Lucertola knew that he had fallen asleep at his desk more than once. So she decided to put this first step of her plan into action very late one night, when her father had returned from Paris already tired and exhausted and wasn't likely to suspect magic had been used on him, if sleep overtook him in his study.

It was surprisingly easy. He didn't even turn his head when she stealthily opened the door, and when she cast the Somniferus spell, he slumped slowly forward in his chair, his head landing on his left forearm. The desk had three drawers on the left side and three on the right, but only the bottom drawer on the right was locked. Very carefully, Lucertola pulled her father's wand out of his sleeve and tapped the lock. The drawer glided forward with nary a creak. There were a few stacks of parchments she would have loved to inspect but didn't dare, as she wasn't quite sure how long her spell would last. So she lifted the bundles, one by one, until she found a handful of keys of various shapes and sizes. There was only one that fitted the description. Marvelling at the steadiness of her hands, Lucertola put the parchments back, closed the drawer, locked it with another tap of Draco's wand, which she then slid back into his sleeve. He was holding a quill in his right hand, and she noticed that it must be tickling his nose. So she adjusted it, pressed a light kiss on her father's temple and pussyfooted out of the room.

The Malfoy—or, as the name had been spelled in earlier times, Malefoy, Malefoi or Malfoi—family originated from Ouessant, but the house they currently called the family seat was a lot younger than the family. The original cornerstone, engraved with runes and magical symbols, had been kept whenever one of Lucertola’s ancestors had felt they had to build a bigger, more splendiferous mansion, but the house as it was now dated back to the seventeenth century. Although the Malfoys were now as English as mint sauce and muffins, it had never been uninhabited for periods longer than six months. In times when the family law hadn’t yet forbidden to sire more children once the male heir had been born, it had housed younger sons and their families, banished from England by threat of a very gruesome end in case they got it into their heads to come back and claim part of the fortune. Due to lack of money and respectability these undesired branches of the Malfoy family tree had soon become barren and died out, and somewhere around the turn of the eighteenth century the house had found its way back into the main (and now only) family’s property.

In four hundred years, many inhabitants had changed the furniture, decoration, even the paintings; what was not needed anymore but might still be of use had been relegated to the spacious attic. House Elves, brought to the French mansion once it belonged to the English Malfoys, kept the attic as clean and cobweb-free as the rest of the house. Paintings were leaning, face-to-wall, against the raw brick-and-wood structure on one side; most of the space was taken up by various sideboards, cupboards, cabinets, chests of drawers, tables, chairs and other discarded furniture, and in one corner an assortment of different boxes and trunks had been stacked up to the rafters.

Due to this orderly arrangement that resembled the storage room of a museum rather than an attic, Lucertola had never felt particularly drawn to explore the vast space, more so as it was unbearably hot in summer and bone-chilling cold in winter. Now, however, she had to venture up there.

At the sight of an inordinate amount of boxes, many of them wooden, many of them embellished by silver ornaments, her heart sank. This was going to take longer than she’d thought. And she would have to remember to go down for lunch—her father wouldn’t be present, but maybe her mother might leave her rooms (parents always did things they never did when you absolutely didn’t expect them to) and Lucy was in no mood to find explanations for her stint into the upper regions of the house.

It was unbearably hot, just as she had anticipated. Lucertola fished in her pocket for some hairpins and wound her hair, already tamed into a plait, up into a tight coil at the back of her head. While fixing it, she let her eyes wander over the stack in front of her, deciding to levitate them off layer by layer, in the hopes that the smallest ones had been positioned on top anyway. She pulled out her wand and frowned—whenever using magic at home and without the presence of adults, she was reminded of that dreadful Mudblood, who had peremptorily forbidden her to perform a shrinking spell on the books she’d bought.

“Slut!” she murmured between her teeth. Well, the slut wasn’t going to have an easy life once Lucertola arrived at Hogwarts. Cheered up by this thought, she worked quickly and efficiently, until she finally saw the right box hover above her. She knew instinctively it was the right one, and when she tried the key, her intuition was confirmed by facts. The lid snapped open, and Lucy gasped. “Now that is useful,” she breathed. “Beware, Mudblood.”

Even more quickly than she had disassembled it, she put the pile of boxes together again and left the attic, her newfound treasure safely tucked under her arm.

*

Severus Snape was Headmaster of Hogwarts, but that didn’t mean he allowed his potions-making skills to become rusty. Once or twice a week, he ventured down into his laboratory in the dungeons (his former laboratory now belonged to Yuri Avanessian, but Severus had appointed another, slightly smaller but better-equipped one for his exclusive use) to brew complicated concoctions with the same enthusiasm a skilled pianist might feel when playing a difficult piece he hasn’t applied his hands to in many years.

After the successful rescue operation at St. Dogmaels, he and Hermione had carefully hidden Lily and James Potter’s notes in a secret compartment Severus had created himself. There was a large fireplace in the laboratory that took up one third of a side wall, its mantelpiece adorned with a pattern of intertwining snakes and dragons. The compartment was a simple drawer, which slid out of the mantelpiece if one tapped the left eye of the third snake, counting from left to right, and pronounced ‘Serpensecretum’. Both had agreed that it was better to leave the book there permanently. There was no need for them to read it elsewhere than in the very room they were going to prepare the potion in.

This, however, proved to be more complicated than they had thought.

“This,” Severus declared, holding up the list of ingredients he had just finished writing, “is practically a copy of the list of Class A non-tradeable substances.”

Her eyes still on Lily’s notes, Hermione nodded pensively. “Hmm. What about illegal acquisition?”

“Spikes! You know at least as well as I do that purchasing ingredients illegally has become practically impossible. You used to be married to the man who signed the law, remember?”

“Yes, but…” She shrugged. “I thought you might have some contacts.”

“Not only do I not have such contacts, not anymore at least, I also haven’t seen them for almost twenty years. Besides, my darling, I’m not in a position where it would be advisable to meddle with the law—imagine how quickly our dear Minister would have me removed.”

“That’s true. And as your wife—I suppose I shouldn’t be seen with smugglers and the like either?”

“Better not, I daresay. You are of course aware—” he perched on the armrest of her chair “—that this leaves us exactly one possibility?”

“Buy them abroad?”

Severus laughed and kissed the top of her head. “No, oh Queen of Smugglers, that was not what I meant. Besides, we’d be ruined in less than no time. These ingredients—” he tapped the list against his thigh “—would be horribly expensive if bought legally. The black market starts somewhere around ten times the regular price, but if the substance is really rare, you might easily arrive at fifty times as much." He sighed, shook his head and looked at the list again. "The phoenix tears wouldn't be a problem, I'm sure Albus would help us out. But the Sirens' tears are worth their weight in black diamonds. The giants' blood is another problem, not to mention scales of a Mesopotamian Triplecrest…"

"I think I got the message," Hermione said quickly, before he could continue his annotated version of their list. "But—unless we buy those items where they aren't illegal, what do you suggest?"

He shot her an uncertain look, pretty sure that she wasn't going to like his idea the least bit. "We have to tell the Ministry."

"The Min—are you out of your mind? You were the one who warned me of the dangers this potion might cause, and now—"

"Wait!" he interrupted her. "Wait, and let me finish what I wanted to say. Not the Ministry, in the sense of some moronic Head of Department. I think it would be enough if we told Potter."

"Harry? What's the point in telling Harry? Do you want him to run straight to Godric's Hollow and exhume Lily and James, to bring them back from the dead?"

"Who said that we have to tell him about this property of the draught?"

Hermione's mouth shut with an audible 'click' of teeth on teeth, and for a while she sat in silence. Then she nodded slowly. "That would be… possible, I guess. Tell him about the hints we found in Lily's diary, and about our nightly excursion, and that we'd like to recreate it, maybe improve it—merely for the Aurors' use…"

"Exactly. I don’t see what harm it might do, seeing as we’re not going to actually use it, whether to bring back the dead or defend ourselves against the Killing Curse. Potter is bound to be enthusiastic, and we would get special permits for the acquisition of our ingredients. Maybe the Ministry has some slush funds, so we won't have to pay for all of it ourselves. And of course we must find another name for our concoction—Draught of Life might be a tad suspicious."

"Don't you think he might make the connection anyway?"

Severus snorted. "You must be joking. Have you forgotten how poorly he performed in Potions? No, no. If you didn't remember that there was such a thing as the Draught of Life, Harry Potter is never going to figure it out."

"Thanks for the compliment," Hermione said, smiling up at him. "Well… then I suppose I should make an appointment with my ex-husband, shouldn't I?"



The Minister's new assistant was female. She was also very young, very pretty in a stern kind of way. And she was very, very embarrassed.

"I make all the Minister's appointments," she said, her voice faltering when her dreaded former Headmaster's face appeared on the grate behind Hermione's. "G-good day, Headmaster. How… uh, how are you?" she stammered, nervously fidgeting with her short hair.

"Very well, thank you, Miss Puxton." Somehow he managed a threatening smile—Hermione saw it out of the corner of her eye and wondered how exactly he did it.

Turning back to the young witch, she said, "Listen, Miss Puxton. I know that you are responsible of the Minister's agenda, but this is a private meeting, and I'd like to talk about it with him myself."

Miss Puxton shoved her horn-rimmed glasses up her nose. "I also make the Minister's private appointments, therefore—"

"Harry doesn't have private appointments," Hermione interrupted her, thoroughly and unaccountably delighted at the girl's desperate expression. "Is he alone right now?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then put me through to him, he won't fire you, I promise."

After a long look full of doubt and indignation, the assistant finally nodded. "Alright Mrs… er…"

"Snape," Hermione supplied amiably. "But I'd advise you to tell him his ex-wife wants to talk to him. No need to ruffle his temper more than necessary, is there?"



Two days later—the summer holidays were almost over—Severus and Hermione were waiting for Harry on the terrace of their house in Tuscany. Albeit surprised and a little hesitant, he had agreed to meet them there, evidently mystified by Hermione’s request that he tell nobody where he was going, why, and whom he was seeing. This didn’t come as a surprise to his ex-wife, who had spent enough time in his company to know that secrets weren’t his cup of tea. Not anymore, that is. It seemed he had had enough of them during his youth.

He Apparated right before them at eight o’clock sharp, wearing Muggle clothes and a puzzled look on his face. He had been informed that both Snapes would be expecting him, but when he saw Severus, a rather nasty scowl made his brows contract and his glasses slide down his nose. The greetings the two men exchanged were polite, though, if a little cold; when he squeezed Hermione’s hand, he gave her a lopsided smile.

“Well,” he said, after they had entered the house—the evenings were already a bit chilly, and dining outside wouldn’t have been too pleasant—and sat down at the table, “I’m curious to hear why I have been invited to this admittedly beautiful place. If I didn’t know better, I would think you are preparing a conspiracy.” His forced laughter was met with rather embarrassed glances from his hosts.

“Starters?” Hermione asked, trying to make her voice sound as cheerful as possible, and grabbed the small silver bell sitting next to the impressive array of glasses before her.

“Er… yes, I suppose that would be a good idea.” Harry was looking even more bedraggled than before.

The Snapes’ original plan had been to take Twitchy with them. But the little elf had wailed and protested—as much as a House Elf dared protest, anyway—and implored them not to shame her by making her serve dinner to her former master. Severus had merely rolled his eyes and told her to stop being hysterical, everything was going to work out just fine; but Hermione, who felt she still owed a big debt to her elf, had suggested that they might just as well take Giacomo and Puccini. These two had literally swooned with gratefulness, overwhelmed that ‘Master Severus’ deemed them worthy of preparing dinner for His Excellency.

At Hermione’s signal they appeared, levitating what Hermione thought must be the biggest silver platter she had ever seen—its diameter was at least three feet—loaded with every delicacy Italian gastronomic brilliance had ever invented. I the elves’ wake a battery of wine bottles in coolers was floating towards the table.

A few minutes later, the glasses were filled and the plates loaded, and Harry raised his flute of slightly fizzy white wine. “To the conspiracy,” he declared and, after exchanging a stealthy look, Severus and Hermione echoed, “To the conspiracy!”

“So,” said Harry, spearing a small chunk of burrata and carefully dunking it into a side dish filled with deep-green olive oil, “what is the reason for this pleasant meeting? Nothing wrong with the book, I hope?” he inquired, raising his eyebrows at Hermione.

“Not with the book, no. But—” she contemplated a slice of Parma ham, unsure whether to combine it with melon or not “—it all started with the book.”

“I see.”

No, you don’t, Hermione thought, hard-pressed to keep this to herself. “You see,” she continued, “there was a lot of useful material in the box you sent me.”

Severus decided it was time for him to participate in the conversation as well, as he had no intention of playing the silent host and sommelier. “Am I right in assuming,” he asked, “that you had never looked at its contents?”

Harry shook his head, his speaking abilities momentarily impaired by a bite of Crostino al Fegato. His table manners had definitely improved since his school days. After a sip of wine, he ceremoniously deposited his glass, exactly on the spot where it had stood before. “No,” he replied, “I have never looked into that box. Don’t ask me why. I suppose I didn’t want to—never mind. So, what did it contain?”

They had agreed that Hermione would be the one who dropped the bombshell. “Your mother’s diaries,” she said quietly. She knew it had to be a shock for him, and in a way she pitied him. For he had tried so hard to deliberately ignore every problematic aspect of his past, had repressed and overlooked and shut out; therefore such an irrefutable reality as a diary was likely to shake him to the core.

And so it did. He sat there, suddenly so very like the eleven-year-old boy she had met on the train, pale and insecure, hands shaking and eyes suspiciously bright.