AN: Many thanks to karelia for her prompt from the 2012 SSHG Exchange: A murderer is on the loose in the wizarding world. After Aurors fail to track him or her down, Hermione and Snape are asked by the Minister to investigate, since the two have more brain cells between them than the entire Aurory.
Also, thanks so much to sixpence_jones for her amazing alpha work and brit picking! Without her, you'd all be reading a bunch of word vomit.
Chapter 1
She brought him a vial.
It had been with solemn, tired eyes and a deep frown that she placed the blue, crystal vial in his hand along with an envelope. Her entire being radiated that something was wrong with her, and it was when she began describing what was inside that he understood.
It was a poison.
Several charms had been placed on the poison, resulting in an undetectable nature and preventing it from being broken down into its individual components or from being replicated. The first few samples she'd received had promptly burst into a near fatal vapor during her first attempts to remove the charms placed on it. Clearly, it had been rigged to kill anyone who attempted to figure out where it came from.
She spoke with a weary voice, eyes carefully averted while she explained how it took her forty-three hours straight to break the last charm placed on the poison. She didn't have a Mastery in Charms and wasn't the head Unspeakable in the Division of Charms and Transfiguration Theory and Research for nothing.
He noted how her voice wavered and her fingers twitched when she got to the part about how the poison had been ingested by four wizards and one witch, all of whom were now dead. The poison burned its way through the internal organs, starting with the stomach and spreading through the intestines and working toward the kidneys. It worked to keep the victim alive as long as possible to suffer through the unimaginable pain of having your insides scorched out of existence.
If her eyes misted after that, he made no mention of it.
The deaths were being called murders, and the Aurors were working diligently to try and find the culprit. She'd been entrusted by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to try and remove the charms from the poison so they could break up its components. If they could find out what it was made of, then they could possibly determine its origin. That would be the next step in determining the murderer.
She met his eyes then, her cinnamon gaze tiredly meeting his coal one. She looked like she hadn't changed her clothes in two days, and had probably rushed this down to him the moment she broke the last charm. His job was to break the poison down into its individual components and locate its origin. Based on its ingredients, they could determine what part of the world the poison may have been created in, and start searching from there.
She handed him the vial and the envelope, smiling at him softly before turning to leave. He placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her before she finished her first step.
"Who was it?" he asked, his voice gravelly and quiet – a permanent change after the snake had ripped through his larynx.
He felt her stiffen underneath his hand as her head drooped, her hair covering her face.
"Ch-Charlie," she managed to choke out. Her resolve had finally crumbled, but she managed to suppress it enough so he wouldn't have noticed without feeling the slight tremble of her shoulders underneath his hand.
So, a Weasley was dead.
He let her go then, and she hurried out of his office without another word. He leaned against the front of his desk, bringing the blue vial up to dangle from his fingertips in front of his eyes.
A poison that burned the victim's insides until death.
He feared he didn't need to break the poison down to figure out where it came from.
He already knew.
Five years ago.
Hermione Granger stared at herself in the mirror, wearing nothing but her plain undergarments. The war had been over for nearly three years, and she'd finally gained back all of the weight she'd lost during her time in the woods. And then some, she mused as she poked her belly.
Her hair was still an untamable mass of curls that fell in thick waves around her head. Ever since she'd turned twenty, her hair seemed to take on a much healthier shine and the almost constant frizz had dissipated. While she could never get her curls to fall in sleek, glossy rings like some of the other witches and their fancy spells could, she was still proud of her bush of golden brown locks.
If her cinnamon toned eyes had been missing some spark in them three years ago when the war ended, she was certain something was beginning to return in their depths. Academia did tend to bring out her cheer, and since she'd just completed her degree in Charms and was halfway through her Mastery, while getting a degree in Transfiguration as well, she knew her academic success had something to do with the re-birth of the slight sparkle she saw in her cinnamon irises.
She frowned slightly at the silvery scar visible down her sternum, only to have it deepen as her eyes landed on the slightly more prominent scar on her forearm. Dittany could never return the smooth, flawless skin back to her forearm, but it had erased most traces of the horror that had been carved into it all those years ago. She didn't let her eyes linger too long. Hermione Granger did not hide her scars. They were a reminder of everything she'd been through, and she'd learned a long time ago that trying to hide it only made things worse.
Her skin had a healthier tone now that summer had arrived and she'd been spending more time outside with her Charms and Transfiguration work. Not exactly tanned, but she did have a nice glow. The frown didn't leave her brow, though, because as she continued to stare at her image in the mirror, she pondered over her current dilemma for the fifteenth time in the last three minutes: she had no idea what to wear.
It was her first day working as an Unspeakable at the Ministry of Magic. Her progression through university had been impressive. She'd acquired her degree in charms in two years – half the time it normally takes to complete the program. She'd thrown herself into her studies rigorously, having learned from the war that there was no time to waste in life – it could be snuffed out any second. She'd gone through her first semester at an alarming speed, spending almost every waking second revising and researching and reading and writing. That first Christmas had approached almost too quickly, and it was with dark circles under her eyes and two ink-stained fingertips pressed to her lips that she watched Harry say, "I know you're trying to live your own life, Hermione, but you can't forget to…live, y'know?"
It was then she realized how much she missed Harry and Ron, her boys, and every Saturday since then they had dinner together to catch up. Hermione had school, Harry and Ron had Auror training and Harry was expecting his first son to be born, but they never missed a Saturday to remiss and enjoy each other's company.
Now, two and a half years later, even with her Charms degree and a Mastery on its way, with a head crammed full of advanced Arithmantic equations on which angle she should flick her wand to increase the longevity of a hovering charm, or which crystals she could wear around her neck to resonate with the elemental flow that her wand conjured from the Earth every time she transfigured an object to stabilize the transformation, Hermione still did not have all the answers. In the end, know-it-all Granger couldn't decide if she should wear the blue robes or the gold robes.
Somewhere, in another room of her small flat, a bell went off. For the briefest of moments, Hermione froze. Then, it was as if she'd been struck by lightning. All flying limbs and muttered curses, she scrambled from in front of her mirror and into her closet, haphazardly grabbing the first things her hands could grab (which turned out to be a set of charcoal robes lined with crimson silk that she threw over black slacks and a soft, white tank), pulled on her heeled boots in a flash, and knotted her hair on top of her head with her wand in her mouth as she made her way to the front door. Without skipping a beat, she snatched the beaded bag off the small table near her door, nonverbally iNox/ied the lights in her flat, and flicked her wrist to lock the door as she scrambled down the stairs.
If she didn't hurry, she was going to be late!
"You're going to Romania!"
Hermione felt like she was gaping like a fish.
It was her first day as an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries' division of Charms and Transfiguration Theory and Research, starting off as an assistant to the assistant of the Head Unspeakable, Helga Grouse. She'd arrived five minutes early, making sure that every speck of lint had been removed from her robes, that no flyaways were sticking out from her tight knot of hair, and that her fingernails were clear of dirt. With an enthusiastic grin and bounce in her step, she'd stepped right in to her designated workspace only to be startled when she saw a completely empty room.
No desk. No chair. Not even a bloody poster.
Blank, stark white walls on all four sides, and gleaming pearl tile met her vision, and she had to blink a couple of times so that her eyes could adjust. She frowned, about to turn on her heel to find someone to escort her to her proper workspace, when a hand had slapped down on her shoulder, nearly scaring her to death.
A tall, young wizard stood next to her, dressed in white robes. He had a dark mop of hair with fringe that nearly fell into his green eyes, and impeccable teeth dazzled her as he grinned at her.
"Ah! You must be Hermione Granger! We've been expecting you," the wizard boomed in an unnecessarily loud voice. She noted he still hadn't removed his hand from her person.
"My name is Stanley Thudkin, assistant to Helga Grouse," he continued before Hermione could utter a word. "You'll be working under me. I see you found your workspace. I'm sorry it's so bleak, but we haven't had time to fully furnish it for you. We're very busy at the moment, but no worries there! You won't need the workspace for a while yet. You're going to Romania!"
Gape, gape.
"Ah, you must be excited," Stanley misinterpreted, but he finally managed to remove his hand and motioned her to follow him. They began to walk down the corridor, and he spoke to her without giving her a chance to interrupt. "Our partners in Romania are having a nasty case of Dragon Pox spread across the country. Apparently, one of the dragons they've been studying caught a cold, sneezed on one of the trainers, and then bam! Everyone and their mum in Romania is sick with Dragon Pox. They've requested our help to set up wards around their facility to help quarantine the situation, since we're the only ones who can charm the wards just right to prevent the flow of the Dragon Pox escaping. You'll be working with Charlie Weasley in the situation. Do you know him?"
Hermione managed to nod once before Stanley continued.
"You'll be leaving tonight through Portkey, and we expect you'll be over there for two weeks. I trust you know how to charm yourself to prevent the contamination of Dragon Pox from entering your body while you're there, correct?" He didn't give her time to nod this time. "Ah, here we are! My office. Let me give you you're scroll with your orders on them, and off to the library for you! I expect you to touch up on some of your warding, since it isn't a primary study in Charms work. After that, you may leave to pack your things at home. Your Portkey to Romania leaves at eight sharp. Do you have any questions? No? Good! Have fun in the library!"
With that, the door to Stanley Thudkin's office slammed in her face, leaving her staring helplessly at its finely polished surface with a scroll wrapped in gold ribbon dangling from her fingertips.
It was her third hour in the Ministry's expansive library. She'd just finished reading the last paragraph of a chapter titled Seamlessly Integrating Charms and Wards with the Right Crystals when she saw him for the first time in almost three years.
She'd just happened to look up from her page at just the right time to see something the registered in her mind as a "familiar billow". Furrowing her brows in confusion, she decided she could do for a quick stretch and placed the heavy tome she'd been hunching over on the table in front of her. Her boots clicked audibly against the impeccably polished surface of the marble floored library as she began to walk, stretching her arms over her head as she scanned the empty aisles, searching for what had previously caught her eye. Thinking she'd probably been imagining it, she almost gave up and returned to her seat when she found the object of her search standing at the very end of the last aisle.
She froze, her mouth slack in amazement at what she saw.
He stood, facing her, with his head dipped low into the cover of a thick manual. He didn't seem to notice she was standing there, as his brow was furrowed in concentration. Even from where she stood, memories of how much he towered over her flooded her mind as she took in his familiar height. He wore rich, dark robes, and she noted that they seemed tailored to his form, just like they had during her school years at Hogwarts. His skin looked much healthier than it had that last time she saw him, though she made note thathe'd had much less blood flowing through his veins at that time. His hooked nose still struck her as his most prominent feature, but what screamed out the most to her was that most of his hair was missing.
Instead of the sheet of oily, stringy hair that had hung around his face during her school years, his hair now stood out in short, uneven tufts no longer than her index fingers. It looked as if he'd had a bad haircut earlier in the year, and he was letting it grow back out. It was messy, and almost reminded her of Harry's hair, except that she remembered that this man was the epitome of anti-Harry. Not only that, but it looked remarkably clean and soft to the touch.
Without the curtain of hair to hide his face, she could see that the lines of stress and premature aging that had riddled his features only three years prior were nearly nonexistent. He looked countless years younger, and even though he was deep in concentration, the absence of the harsh lines marring his face gave him an…appealing air.
Hermione gasped at her last though.
Severus Snape's head snapped up from his manual, his gaze meeting hers.
Ice flooded her veins. Even though he looked different, she knew that Snape had been a nasty, acidic man, and didn't appreciate being ogled. She'd expected him to come bearing down on her in an instant, chastise her for her inability to keep to her own business, make a cold comment about how she was an insatiable know-it-all, and maybe even insult her hair.
Except, he didn't.
He only watched her for a few brief seconds, without a hint of malice or rage. In fact, he didn't seem to recognize her. He looked at her with calculating regard, as if he was to trying to figure out who she was. She only stared back, unable to move.
She was staring down Severus Snape and she was going to live to tell the tale. Amazing.
Something clicked, and she saw her identity dawn on him as recognition filled his eyes. She expected a sneer, or a scowl, or a glare.
Instead, he smirked.
Hermione nearly fainted.
The smirk remained on his lips as his he lowered his gaze from her, returning to his manual. He'd clearly dismissed her, even though it wasn't in the typical "fury of the storm" fashion she'd anticipated. She continued to watch him for a few extra seconds, taking in how his brow furrowed into that look of concentration once more, and noted that the smirk remained plastered where it was, never disappearing.
What a first day.