Chapter 11- Adrenal Vapour
AN: One of these days I'll update regularly. Instead of sporadically. As always, don't own it, not making money off of it. The title of this chapter comes from the Portal 2 soundtrack, one of my favourite albums of music to write to. s
Hermione had three hours until Harry came barreling through her door, anxious for a cure to all of his problems, and she was still struggling with getting the spell to stick without constant maintenance from the caster. Anything less than full magical concentration caused the glamour to dissipate instantly, which was the last thing Harry needed to have happen in a room full of dark magic detectors— something he'd likely have to go through at least once during the meeting. If there was one way in which the muggle world was similar to the wizarding community, it was in that they took the imbibing of illegal substances in their athletes very seriously. The glamour couldn't fail, not even a little bit, not even for a second. This meant she needed to find a way to either concentrate Harry's magic and get him to maintain the spell on his own (unlikely at the best of times, she remembered his attempts at occulmency, and even less likely when his magic was volatile from the potion) or she would need to find a way to funnel her magic onto him. She was hoping at this point she could maintain the spell long-distance but she was unsure about the degree of magical backlash she or Harry could potentially experience.
She reminded herself that she'd done a great job to get this far with this big of a challenge in this little of time. Hermione was running off snatches of sleep, stolen here or there when she was waiting for replies or books or Harry to wake up. He had essentially not left her house, something she was sure the tabloids had noticed by now, and she'd had to forcibly send him back to his own place to sleep last night, more for her own piece of mind than anything.
She'd had nothing to go off of and even less idea of where to start when she'd tackled this. Hermione had always been stronger with spells than potions, and to attempt to counter either you had to understand them at a fundamental level. So, she'd started with the empirical method, noting any and all changes she could find in Harry while she'd sent off discrete letters to every contact she might have had that she could trust to keep circumspect about the fact that she was looking. It was nigh illegal to even mention the potion, that's how desperate the ministry was to keep this under wraps. Thinking she might not get any responses at all, she'd been determined to at least gather a list of traits to go off of in Harry's particular case so she might be able to find potions that at least acted similarly and begin to study those. He hadn't requested a cure, just a way to conceal the effects of the potion, but she'd planned on gathering evidence for both.
As she'd poked and prodded, waiting for results as to how the potion was reacting on all kinds of physical levels, Hermione had sent Harry's house elves out whenever possible to gather information. She had been loathe to use them in such a way, but Harry had reasoned with her, pointing out that they were her best shot of getting unbiased information as they had a whole underground of other elves to gather from as well as being able to follow sources invisibly on the off chance that they'd find a lead. She hadn't heard anything back yet, however, and she was starting to get worried that one of them would be injured. They'd sent Kreacher to do the spying on the Ministry, something the elf seemed to revel in, and Harry's two newer elves, Mia and May, who'd showed up on his doorstep shortly after the war, looking to serve in honor of "Sir Dobby", were given the more innocuous tasks of asking the other elves they knew. Hermione had also had Harry send off letters to Brian and the Weasley twins, adding their hastily written, and carefully warded letters to the pile of information in her journal as soon as they had arrived. She'd hoped for knowledge of distributors of the potion, something that neither of them had divulged, although the twins had been glad to share their gossip, which seemed to verify some of the behaviours she and Harry had already identified in himself.
In the little bit of time she could scrounge for herself admist all of this, she'd sent correspondence to Flitwick regarding her apprenticeship and was now awaiting the official modified contract to arrive. All in all, Hermione felt very accomplished, even if her own plans had taken the back burner for a bit. She thanked the powers that be that she was the type to flourish under pressure.
Still, jumping in blind with both feet when it came to the actual potion itself was not Hermione's preffered method of research, but she'd countered the chaos as best as she could by making her methodology as methodical and meticulate as she could. If nothing else, she could patent this style of glamour when all was said and done and maybe make herself a little cash on the side, she reflected ruefully. It was the kind of glamour that could have been devastating during the war, a spell that could be modified to mask whatever element was keyed into it. She'd yet to try it on physical features, though she was longing to do so to see if it could cover up the scars that liberally marred her torso. The inspiration for the spell had come, oddly enough, from the childhood library she'd visited in hopes of finding a starting place for her other research. The glamour Dumbledore had placed there had sealed off the room entirely, which was simple enough, but it had not simply masked it as some disused room as other muggle deterring spells often did. Instead, to people who were not keyed to the glamour, the room ceased to exist entirely. They wouldn't bounce off of invisible walls, they would pass through to the other side, only there was no wall for them to see, they just crossed what they viewed to be open space. It was very unnerving to Hermione, ever since she was a child, and she supposed that Dumbledore's casting had likely been warding instead of just spell work as it remained even after he passed, but it had served as a good idea for the kind of thing she wanted to do, and had given her the place to start looking when she'd began finally experimenting with the glamour. Still, it had frustrated her, made her feel like she'd missed some fundamental element of education, to not know how his spell worked. If she'd been taught why certain spells dissipated while some stayed virtually forever, she wouldn't currently be fighting with her own fickle invention and she'd feel a lot safer casting it on Harry. She decided it would have to be one of the first things she asked Flitwick about once she was officially signed on for her apprenticeship.
What she had been able to find from books told her that the key to creating a new spell was intent. The difference between modification and creation was also important and while she knew much of modification from her transfiguration lessons, there had been nowhere in the curriculum that had covered creation. She recalled the spells Snape had created, recorded in his sixth year Potions book and wondered if it had been taught to him at school or if he was simply an outlier with more obscure sources than her own. Shaking her head she reminded herself to stay in the present and get back to the most pertinent problem, her hand snapping back into visible existence as she released the spell clinging to her skin. She'd only felt magic stick like that when she'd been disillusioned she realized, wondering if the spells had more in common than she'd found before.
She dived for her books, doing quick index searches until she found the disillusionment spell. Reading frantically, her heart sped up as she skimmed down the passages, trying to find the key she'd been missing. Harry bounded in the door right as she slammed her finger down on the key passage, the piece she'd over-looked.
"Magical compatibility is not required for a spell of this magnitude as it seeks only to muffle the person or object covered, not vanish it entirely." She muttered aloud, waving Harry into a chair with a shushing gesture as she scrambled for her arithmancy notes. It had worked on her skin, even though Hermione had keyed it to cover up dark signatures, because she'd simply also focused on making her hand invisible. If it was as simple as her texts seemed to imply, she'd only have to start on a small area and gently expand the spell, then the magical signature would be cut off. Like the disslusionment spell, which started in an isolated area, then spread to cover the rest of the body. Hers of course, would need to have a bit more focus than the other spell, as she was masking a magical signature, but the principle should be the same. It required a few more tests of course, but Harry had given her a 47 minute window before he had to be at the Ministry's office to take his official portkey and she was going to take the time given; make him rush just a little.
She glanced up at her best friend turned test subject then, noting that he was practically vibrating with nervous energy. His normally out-of-control hairstyle had evolved into a truly terrifying level of fluffiness, his glasses were askew, but he had managed to dress in marginally nice clothing and he hadn't put anything on inside out so far as she could tell.
"How're you doing?" he blurted, taking her appraisal of him to mean she was done thinking. She barely had time for an exasperated look before more words were tumbling out of his mouth, almost as if they were coming up faster than he could stop them. "Did it work? Have you found a way to make it stick? Have you gotten any sleep at all? I'm sorry Hermione, if it was too big a task, I just, you were my best hope. I didn't mean for you to run yourself to the ground like this. I should've never tried. I-"
"Harry." It came out sharper than she intended but it seemed to bring him to heel well enough. "I know you're not at your most patient right now, but I've literally only seconds ago found the key to this. I need to think for a moment, then I'm going to run some tests. If- and only if- they work, then yes, we will be in the clear."
Harry's face broke into a smile before she'd even finished speaking and she wondered if he'd heard her at all.
"I knew you'd have it figured out." He practically chirped happily, previous worries forgotten instantly.
"We'll save the lecture on how I'm nothing short of a miracle worker for another time." She replied wryly, moving out of her carefully cultivated circle to stand before him, making a mental note to add yet another note about mood swings to Harry's symptoms chart.
"There are three tests." She said brusquely, taking ahold of his hand, barely managing not to flinch when a little spark bubbled up in her as their skin made contact. Maybe it had simply been her increased contact with dark magic over the past 48 hours, but Harry's hand felt as though it was consumed with it. She quietly resolved to double her efforts for a counter of some kind to this potion immediately, before the magic consumed him entirely. She wondered if her spell could even cover this magnitude of darkness. He felt… positively dangerous, and a tiny bit exciting if she was telling the full truth. Cutting off those thoughts as ruthlessly as she had the last ones, she drew her wand out of its current residence in her bushy-haired bun and began to cast the spell for the first diagnostic.
"The first spell will just be me casting on a part of your hand, to see if the magic will even stick at all. There could be an extreme magical backlash, let me know if anything feels… odd" Hermione warned, a second before she began the incantation carefully on Harry's right pinky finger.
There was the faintest shimmer of gold, and then the spell vanished completely, just as it had on her own skin. Breathing deeply, Hermione pulled at the spell, gently feeding it magic, smiling in delight when she made the pinky vanish completely, holding Harry's hand firmly in place when he jumped and shouted uneasily at the sight.
"Don't worry, that was me, it's still attached." She said, grinning goofily as she willed his finger back into existence. It appeared without even the slightest of noises, and she set to work, running her fingers back and forth between the rest of his hand and the pinky finger, amazed when she could physically feel what was seemingly a drop off in dark energy when she reached the point of her own magic.
"Erm… Hermione? Is it working?" Harry inquired anxiously, causing her to crick her neck and almost crack the top of her head into his jaw she moved so fast.
"So far, it's perfect!" she breathed back in delight, fingers still absentmindedly trailing between the drop off point, amazed at the tactile difference between the dark and absence of it. She dropped his hand hastily upon recognizing it, putting her wand right against where she'd already cast and without repeating the incantation, slowly funneled more magic into the spell, causing it to spread fairly rapidly through his entire hand before she cut it off. She could've cheered at this point, amazed that the theory had needed such little tweaking. She was sure, now that she knew it worked, that if needed she could cast it as seamlessly as a disillusionment spell if she needed to cover the entire surface of a person, but being able to cut it off as she saw fit would definitely have its advantages as well.
Gathering up the vile from the table beside Harry, she placed her wand against his skin before remembering to warn him "I'm drawing a bit of blood, I need to make sure the spell covers more than just the surface" she explained, making a neat and tiny incision, capturing a trickle of blood, and sealing his hand back up almost instantaneously.
She began sending a flurry of spells at the vial while Harry examined the place she'd cut. "Nice." He commented when he realized there was literally no sign of what had occurred only seconds beforehand.
"I got handy with healing spells, remember?" she replied with a soft glance in his direction, seeing the way his eyes got darker at the mention of their past exploits.
"Yeah I guess a lot of people did." He said hollowly, rubbing his hand subconsciously.
"Well, the good news is, you've passed this test too!" Hermione said, hastily changing the topic as she banished the vial of blood to the kitchen. She'd make more detailed notes later, once she'd got Harry on his way.
"One left, but I'd like to recast the spell so it's covering you entirely first, if that's alright with you?" she asked perfunctorily, already picking up her wand to cast.
"Sure, of course." He replied, staring at her unblinkingly as she rose to her feet, cancelling the previous spell with hardly a thought before she aimed at his scar, thinking it would be as good a place as any to start. Another wand flick and incantation later, and she could feel the magic rushing out of her, swirling gold as it settled, effortlessly covering Harry from head to toe. A quick updrawn movement of her wand and the spell finished, disappearing from his skin as though it had never been. Another diagnostic confirmed what she already knew, it had worked perfectly, Harry's magic registering as 100% normal and nonthreatening.
"Alright, I need you to apparate for me now." She said, showing him to the door. "Hopefully there's an apparition star not too far from here. Go only a short distance and then come straight back, okay? I need to see if the spell holds."
"Sure thing, Hermione!" Harry was grinning ear to ear as he bounded out the door. She watched him get a block away before he turned, disappearing with the slightest of cracks. One of the things he'd learned in auror training that actually managed to stick was a near soundless apparition routine, one she'd envied only slightly.
The minutes began to tick by, but Hermione was afraid to move from the doorframe, sure that even as odd as it looked with her standing there, he would be back any second now. She shoved down panic, waiting motionless, trying to keep her brain from counting but it was no use. She'd just passed 180-181-182- when he rounded the corner, sauntering nonchalantly from the other direction. The damned apparition stars never made anything easy, and she breathed a sigh of relief as he reached her doorway again with ease, practically dragging him in behind her, her wand raised as the door latched into place.
He stared at her uncertainly as she cast again, then again, slightly disbelieving. It had worked perfectly. She'd masked the spell. Finally lowering her wand she gave him a broad smile, opening her mouth to declare he read completely clean, but before she could speak he was scooping her into his arms, pulling her up off of the ground, twirling her around as he let out a single loud whoop of victory.
"You are the smartest most glorious woman I've ever met." Harry exclaimed, setting her down much more gently than he had picked her up.
"You might want to save some of that praise for when I find an antidote, but for now, gorgeous amazing lifesaver or goddess will do just fine." She said, grinning almost as widely as he was.
"Hermione, you're working on that?! You're the best friend I could have ever possibly had, you know that right?"
"I know, I know." She said, suddenly feeling a bit bashful, "Now get out of here, you wouldn't want to be late after all of this."
Harry didn't have far to go before he reached the door again, but she was suddenly incredibly worried about the time. Long-distance portkeys were extremely tiresome to organize, and if he didn't catch this one it might be days before another one could be arranged. Her thoughts scattered once more as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her absentmindedly on top of her curly head.
"I'll let you know how it goes. Now get some sleep!" he chided, moving with such a spring in his step Hermione almost wouldn't have been surprised if he'd spontaneously started a dance routine. She waved back when he waved before carefully shutting the door, telling herself she must have imagined the flash of gold she'd seen in his eyes when he'd pulled away from the kiss.