Chapter II: The Zombie Mutiny of 1665
Ridiculous or not, it appeared to be true.
Probably true.
Possibly true?
Louis le Gros, prize peacock of Lucius Malfoy, was a member of the undead.
Perhaps true.
The first zombie seen in the British Isles in over three centuries, and as far as anyone knew, and the first zombie peacock ever.
The trouble was that absolutely nobody gave a fuck, save for Lucius himself.
Following their initial meeting, Aurors Granger and Red quietly closed the poisoning case. After all, it seemed that Lucius's overactive imagination and competitive nature had concocted that story out of thin air.
As for Louis?
Granger labeled the bird as patient zero and placed him under Ministry surveillance. The Aurors wouldn't allow a human of their own to be wasted on what was seen as a trivial mission, so a free elf in the employ of the office was sent to Malfoy Manor indefinitely to watch the peacock and keep him from devouring any other birds. A small creature named Nippy now resided in the Malfoy aviary, monitoring Louis' mealtimes to make sure he didn't finish off another peacock brain for dessert.
And that was that.
Oh, Lucius was furious at the lack of engagement from the Ministry. He railed against them to Severus whenever he had the opportunity. Why weren't they doing more to save Louis? Couldn't they turn him back? Didn't they understand the loss of Louis' young for future generations of peacocks?
For his part, Severus couldn't be arsed to care about a bird. He tried to ignore the man, and went back to his life as usual.
Or so he thought.
"Usual" for Severus Snape had never previously included owls from a rather persistent Hermione Granger, and yet here she was, reaching out to him every few days to ask him for his expert opinion on this, that, or the other. At first, he jotted down curt replies and owled her back, but then she asked him for lunch.
On a date.
She made sure that he knew her intentions in her letter (I intend to woo you, Severus, if you'll let me), and he didn't quite know what to make of her forwardness.
Still, scientific curiosity got the better of him, and he agreed to the luncheon.
Why not? She was tolerably intelligent, if rather too inquisitive at times. A pleasing smile, a knockout figure, and hair that he found himself thinking about while he was in the lab. Would it contaminate his brewing? Would she put it up? If she put it up, would he be given access to the skin of her slender neck? Sure, her judgment seemed a bit off, but that played in his favour on this account, as she was pursuing his attentions rather than those of some young gallant with looks and a heart of gold. And since she was the one who extended the invitation, she would surely be paying. Severus could consider himself a feminist by letting her pick up the bill.
He decided not to tell Lucius about the girl. After all, his friend would never endorse the person who, for all intents and purposes, abandoned his peacock in its hour of need. Besides that, though, Severus rather enjoyed keeping Miss Granger as his own little secret. It wouldn't be difficult. After all, he'd spent a lifetime hiding his assignations with Gryffindors from Lucius Abraxas Malfoy.
Two weeks passed from the day Louis le Gros consumed his first peacock brain, and Severus Snape was pacing outside a little French brasserie in Westminster, waiting for his date with Miss Granger.
"Severus!"
He turned around to see the young woman running across the street, waving maniacally with an enormous grin. After an awkward moment where she attempted to kiss his cheek, they took their seats at a little corner table, menus in hand.
Severus perused the list of options, smirking to himself when he saw one of the specials. "Would it be in poor taste to order the cervelle de veau?"
Granger snorted into her water glass. "Calf's brain? I suppose as long as there's not a cervelle de paon, the calf's brain is your best bet."
Severus glanced at her over the top of his menu, observing a soft blush on her cheeks. "Nonsense. If calf's brain is an entrée, peacock's brain is barely an appetizer."
"True," Granger agreed, her eyes fixed on his. "They're some of the stupider creatures I've ever dealt with. Their brains must be miniscule."
"And you socialize with Gryffindors and Quidditch players, so your threshold for tolerating idiocy is presumably much lower than most people's."
She swatted his hand across the table. "I'd tell you you're terrible, but you happen to be correct most of the time. Viktor Krum was a clever fellow, but he was the exception to the rule."
"Besides," Severus added, studying her features, "I may consider adopting the vegan lifestyle after all the bloodshed I have seen."
She laughed aloud.
And caught his eye, growing serious in the span of a breath.
For a moment, they shared something. Something indefinable, a kind of like responding to like. He could sense camaraderie with her, and he felt the warmth of her body and the softness of her skin when she reached across the table, taking his hand in hers.
She was so soft.
The arrival of the server interrupted them then, the moment was broken, and she grasped her menu again. They ordered dishes that were rather tame by comparison to brains of any kind—some unpronounceable stews with lots of wine and onions and herbs.
Twenty minutes passed in relative ease, with conversation rambling from what each had been up to after the war and to how much they despised the press. Then they returned to the rather sticky subject of Louis le Gros and his condition.
"By my understanding," Severus began, "the Ministry's response has been inadequate thus far. What on earth, Granger—"
"Hermione—" she said, interrupting him.
"Hermione," he said, forcing himself to acclimate to the intimacy of her given name, "what in Merlin's name is the real plan of action concerning Lucius's damned bird? That house-elf can't watch him forever."
"I'm afraid he'll have to." Hermione straightened up in her chair, flicking nonexistent lint off the jacket she was wearing. Avoiding all eye contact with him, Severus knew she wasn't telling the whole truth.
"Louis is ten years old," he said, idly stirring his fork through his mostly empty plate, "so he has roughly five or six years remaining, according to the average lifespan of the species."
Hermione snorted. "He'll die of heart failure before then."
Just in case someone was listening in on them, Severus cast a Silencing Charm over the table. He leaned forward and whispered. "And if he's really a zombie?"
"If Louis really is a zombie, who's to say what his life will be like?" Hermione asked. She then sat back in her chair, crossing her arms and acting defensive. "It's not as though we have anything for comparison. There are no non-human zombies documented anywhere, although there's a case for anecdotal evidence for vampire bats and a dog or two from years ago. Maybe Louis will fly off to that lovely farm in the sky in a few years anyway."
Severus wasn't satisfied. "Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the peacock does not hop the twig within the next few years."
She nodded, acquiescing. "Go on, then."
He frowned before stating the obvious. "Could he not, hypothetically, live forever?"
"Well…" Her voice trailed off, and she stared at an unremarkable patch of ceiling halfway across the restaurant. The soft blush to her cheeks deepened in hue, and she took a sip of her water. A long, leisurely sip designed to put off the inevitable. "You see…"
"Spit it out, Granger."
"Nippy has instructions!" she blurted out.
"Instructions?"
"Yes," she said, leaning in as she spoke more quickly. "Above all, the Ministry wants this quiet. Nobody needs to panic about this if it's under control. If Mister Malfoy's bloated peacock doesn't die of natural causes in the next ten months, Nippy will alert the Aurors to… er…"
He took pity on her, filling in the blanks. "Alert the Aurors to eliminate the threat?"
At least she grimaced before nodding in affirmation. Then she rattled on, tapping her fork to the table with a nervous energy. "Listen, Severus, I was really hoping you'd be able to convince me nothing terrible will happen here. I mean… zombies?" She tittered an odd laugh of disbelief. "Zombies. Until last month, I though zombies were purely fictional. When I first learned I was a witch, I read all the hidden histories of centaurs and goblins and giants. For that matter, I met centaurs and goblins and giants. At my school. As my teachers. When a zombie didn't step forward to teach basic maths or writing skills, I relegated zombies into the category of imaginary creatures, just like dryads and naiads and whatnot."
"Zombies certainly are… uncommon in the magical world," Severus conceded. He plucked the fork from her hand before she did any damage to the tablecloth. "I have never encountered one in the flesh before, but one hears stories of unmentionable things out of the Caribbean islands and certain regions of Africa. It's all related to a branch of unorthodox magic we like to ignore in the civilized West these days, something called Vodun or Voodoo. My limited knowledge of the subject comes from the Potions master who trained me years ago."
Hermione slid her chair around the table, placing herself right next to his side. Clearly, she valued secrecy. When she whispered, he could feel her breath, hot on his neck. "After Ron and I filed our reports on that bird, we both received the zombie briefing from the Department of Mysteries."
"Oh?" Severus asked, noncommittal in his words. He wondered just what the official Ministry policy was on the undead. "What did they have to say?
"At first, I could scarcely believe my ears as the Unspeakables catalogued the events of the past. Did you know that all those medieval plagues were really outbreaks of zombies?"
Severus tipped his head in acknowledgement. "Yes. Alchemists and Potions masters were the first people enlisted by the Ministry to try to stop the threat. However, I learned nothing about zombies until I received my mastery."
Whispered questions flooded out of her. "Did I miss that information in Binns' class? How did I never read about it anywhere in any book in the Hogwarts or Ministry libraries?"
Severus casually slung his arm across the back of her chair, making it look like he was whispering sweet nothings to her. It was unlikely that anyone was listening in on them, but it was still a good excuse to get closer to the woman. "It is, Hermione, selective history telling at its finest. Collective memory is malleable. The Ministry does not want wizards concerned with zombies today, therefore it will suppress any and all information related to zombies, no matter when or where it was written."
She sighed, relaxing slightly against his arm. "It's all true then?"
Grimly, he nodded.
"So the last zombie in England," Hermione said, "died by a blow to the head in the Great Plague of London in the seventeenth century."
Letting himself lean in to breathe in the scent of her perfume, he offered up incredibly unromantic words. "That is the traditional method for zombie disposal. Always go for the head. However, what you know as the Great Plague of London is, amongst wizards, called the Zombie Mutiny of 1665."
She shivered. "It's a tragedy. Neither Muggles nor wizards really remember it. It's foolish to forget the past."
"I won't disagree." Severus thought it over for a moment. "I would not, however, say that the Zombie Mutiny of 1665 or the Great London Plague or whatever you want to call it was entirely forgotten."
"How do you mean?" she asked, gazing into his eyes.
Severus physically pinched his hand in order to stay focussed on her words rather than the rich shade of brown staring up at him trustingly. Merlin, but he was already lost to her like some pathetic schoolboy. "Think about what you were taught in history class as a child. If you consider all the written melodramas and cinematic camp that Muggles have made about zombies, you'll note that they almost inevitably feature a zombie apocalypse."
"How does that mimic the London plague?"
"Size," he said. "A quarter of the city was wiped out in the Voodoo pandemic. Think about the Black Death—"
"That was zombies?" Hermione cried, a look of horror on her face. "A third of Europe died in the Black Death."
"Yes. The Black Death was zombies, too," Severus said, confirming her fears. "It's a little known fact that Nicolas Flamel, Dumbledore's old partner, first came up with the Elixir of Life so that he and his wife Perenelle would outlast the undead."
She gasped, drawing the attention of others nearby. "You're joking!"
"I am not," he said, dropping his voice once more. "At any rate, there were the occasional zombies that occurred in isolation, much like Lucius's peacock, but the appearance of zombies is typically a much more widespread phenomenon."
"If Nippy keeps Louis le Gros safe and content, and lets someone poison him in his sleep this time next year," Hermione said, bringing them back to the present, "we'll all be fine, won't we?"
Severus decided that it was her garish Gryffindor optimism talking, and began to think through a way to remind her the world didn't always do what you wanted it to, and that the façade of control was a dangerous lie. Before he got out the words, he felt a small hand on his knee.
And promptly forgot whatever it was he'd been meaning to tell her.
UP NEXT:
Nippy the guard-elf slipped up roughly two months into his duty, having fallen asleep on his stool in the aviary. All it took was ten minutes, and Louis clambered out of his pen to nibble on the flesh of a second peacock, a 4-year-old female named Marie de Bourbon, not to be confused with Marie Antoinette. It was challenging to keep all of Lucius's peafowl straight, since the names all came from the French nobility and tended to repeat themselves.
Severus was called over for the aftermath of that particular attack.
"Don't you see?" Lucius seethed. It was a rainy March afternoon, and the man was so distracted that he forgot to renew his water-repelling charms as he marched all over the manor grounds. His blond locks clung to his neck in a decidedly unbecoming fashion, and the silk jacquard of his new robes was ruined.
Lucius Malfoy looked downright bedraggled.