Phoenix Song, Chapter Twenty-one : Knowledge = Power
DISCLAIMER : The characters and many of the situations described in this story are the property of the incomparable J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this story, which exists as a work of tribute. Where dialogue from the original Harry Potter books is quoted by me, the relevant text is marked with an asterisk.
Please offer up your communal thanks for the tireless efforts of my incredible betas: LAxo and WriterMerrin!
Life was much more pleasant for Hermione once her lessons with Professor Snape began again. They were spending at least one evening a week in his private lab, brewing a variety of healing potions, and a second session was spent in his office learning basic healing spells and several extraordinarily complicated wards. As Vector had suggested it might, the argument and the apology that followed seemed to have strengthened her relationship with Professor Snape. He remained as brusque and challenging as ever, but she noticed a new attentiveness to her ideas, and the comments on her essays occasionally bordered on complimentary.
He wouldn't, however, teach her the sung spell he had used to heal her injury after the Battle at the Department of Mysteries, even though she'd directly asked him.
"Sir?" she had inquired, during their third session on healing spells. "Will you teach me the 'Phoenix song'?"
Snape fumbled uncharacteristically with the phial he was holding, yet managed to catch it nimbly before it hit the table. "What are you talking about, Granger?" he asked irritably.
"The song you used to heal me after Dolohov's curse," she explained. "Will you teach it to me?"
"No." His upper lip curled back derisively. "Besides, it is the tears of the phoenix that heal, not the song."
The flat refusal surprised Hermione, and she looked up at her Professor curiously. There was something odd about the set of his face: his mouth was slightly more pinched than usual and his nostrils flared. "To hear Harry talk about Fawkes in the Chamber of Secrets," she stated neutrally, "you might think that phoenix song healed the heart while phoenix tears healed the body."
Snape turned his head away, busy labelling the potion he had been holding. His hair slid forward in front of his eyes. "As I recall, Granger, it was your body and not your heart that required attention. Your description of the counterspell is ludicrous."
Not exactly sure why she dared, Hermione pushed the conversation further. "I was delirious, of course," she shrugged, "but I still think there was something in the observation." Professor Snape hadn't moved. The muscles of his jaw, she noticed, were bunched tight under the skin. "There's a lot of the phoenix about you."
He looked up then, a bitter light in his eye. "Of course," he mocked, gesturing rather violently towards his black teaching robes, "was it my brilliant scarlet and gold plumage that gave it away? Or my ability to survive death? My talent for disappearing through anti-Apparation wards with a burst of flame, perhaps? Or merely my fondness for Gryffindors?" With each rhetorical question, Snape's anger grew larger, and by the end he was towering over her, practically spitting with rage.
"No," she interrupted his tirade calmly, raising both her eyebrows at him. Though he was shouting at her, she felt almost certain his anger was directed elsewhere. "I was thinking of your loyalty, bravery, ability to carry extraordinarily heavy burdens and your talent for healing." There was a long pause as they both attempted to stare the other down. "Although," she added, a hint of laughter creeping into her voice, "if I saw you in scarlet and gold, I might be better equipped to make the call."
The tension dropped from Snape's pose. His head rolled back, and he stared at the ceiling as if seeking celestial intervention. Then he strode to the door and held it wide.
"Out, Granger," he ordered. "You try my patience too much today. Come back next time."
That was almost, Hermione decided, a victory. She collected her things uncomplainingly and left the office. Though she wasn't sure what her "almost victory" entailed, it felt very important indeed.
In every spare moment, Hermione was working ferociously on the Arithmantic calculations. The addition of Draco Malfoy had impacted most of the equations concerning the immediate future, and she was determined to stabilise the alterations as soon as possible.
It also helped to fill the lonely gaps in her schedule that would have otherwise been spent with Harry and Ron. Harry, bless his heart, was still rigorously dividing his time between his two friends, but it was the balanced interaction between the three of them that Hermione missed the most. Without Ron, there was something missing from her friendship with Harry—a dopey, breezy companionship that was all red hair and freckles and contagious laughter. She missed him like a phantom limb, even in his absence there was pain and a sharply obvious hole.
Yet even with regard to Ron, she felt more hopeful. Though determined not to exploit her Legilimentic advantage, it was obvious from body language alone that things between Ron and Lavender were a little rocky. Every petulant scowl that crossed Lavender's face was a balm to Hermione and helped her to keep her head held high.
There were limits, however, and the morning of Ron's coming of age was one of them. Hermione had bought him a gift long before their argument and had harboured the hope that they would be friends again by now, their estrangement nothing but water under the bridge and fodder for joking references. Since that wasn't to be, she got out of bed early, determined to avoid Lavender's gushing morning gossip with Parvati, and crept off to Vector's office before anyone else was up. As she had hoped, the Arithmancy professor's office was empty, and Hermione managed a good hour and a half of uninterrupted work before the rumbling of her stomach forced her to the Great Hall for breakfast. Before entering, she braced herself and was surprised to note that neither Ron nor Harry was in attendance. Lavender and Parvati sat with their heads together, whispering over an elaborately wrapped gift. The presence of the package suggested that the girl hadn't yet had the opportunity to offer Ron her many happy returns. Maybe if I eat quickly, I can get out without having to witness it. Hermione slipped into a seat and pulled a plate of eggs towards her.
"Where is he?"
Hermione looked up, fork poised halfway to her mouth, to see the harsh and tear-lined face of Lavender Brown. "I beg your pardon?" she asked, her own voice icy.
"Where is he, then? Why isn't he here?" Lavender sounded desperate.
Hermione raised one eyebrow in her best Snape impersonation. "I have no idea," she drawled. "The whereabouts of Ronald Weasley are no concern of mine."
All pretence aside, Hermione felt a twinge of concern as Lavender flounced back to Parvati. She glanced up at the High Table, noting the absence of McGonagall, Pomfrey, Snape and Slughorn; Vector and Trelawney weren't there either, but that was only to be expected. Has something terrible happened? Mechanically, Hermione chewed on another mouthful of food.
When Snape swept through the teacher's entrance and took his seat at the High Table, she looked up. He gazed out over the students breakfasting, scanning the room from one side to the other. When their eyes met, his habitual sneer deepened, though Hermione ignored it. Much more importantly, she felt the pressure of his mind push against hers. She dropped her Occlumency shields to find herself gazing into his memory.
Snape and McGonagall stood in the staff room. Her Head of House looked frazzled, and her Scottish burr was thickened by stress.
". . . ach, after a week or so in the Hospital Wing the boy will be fine—Potter did something with a bezoar—but, I ask you, who poisons someone on their birthday?"
Snape blinked and looked away, severing the connection. Hermione's eggs turned to ashes in her mouth. With some difficulty, she swallowed. The sight of her plate made her slightly nauseous. Pushing out her chair, she stood. Ron. Poisoned. The room around her felt unreal and insubstantial. I have to get to the Hospital Wing. Oblivious to the people around her and to Neville's greeting as they crossed paths in the doorway, Hermione headed straight for the infirmary.
Harry was there when she arrived, pacing the hallway in front of the large double doors. As soon as he saw her, he grasped Hermione by both shoulders and started babbling almost incoherently.
"It was the mead! Thank God I remembered about the bezoar! And for Slughorn, but, of course if it wasn't for the love potion . . ."
Hermione squashed the urge to slap him and gripped hold of his robes instead, giving him a quick shake. "Calm down, Harry. Start at the beginning."
Harry took a deep breath and began over, this time starting with the birthday gifts and the love potion and finishing with the bezoar. He had only just finished when Ginny arrived and he had to relate the story all over again. Hermione said nothing, biting down on her overwhelming guilt. Her mind raced with an endless series of recriminations. I should have talked to Dumbledore about Malfoy and the Arithmancy calculations . . . If only I had finished more of the formulae, I might have predicted this . . . If I'd asked for help from Professor Vector, she might have solved this part of the equation . . . If I'd listened to Harry earlier, I might have added Malfoy long ago. Her head spun with awful possibilities, and despite the remembered echo of McGonagall's words that Ron would be fine, her stomach was clenched with the dread of what-ifs: What if she was wrong? What if Ron were to die? What if I never get to speak with him ever again?
When lunchtime came, Ginny sent Harry for sandwiches, but Hermione couldn't bring herself to eat. The younger girl tried to bully her into it, but when Hermione did nothing but stare distractedly into the distance Ginny went back to an intensive and repetitive conversation with Harry about who poisoned Ron and why.
Only at eight o'clock in the evening did Madam Pomfrey finally allow them in to sit by Ron's bed, minutes before Fred and George turned up to join them. Ron looked pale and sickly. The sheet was tightly tucked up around his unnaturally still body, with only the faint rise and fall of his chest to show that he was alive. Seeing him like that, absent the vital spark of Ron-ness, failed to ease the anxiety in Hermione's chest. The conversation of the others washed over her, and only when the topic touched on potential targets did it cut through the fog of her distraction. Ginny was suggesting Dumbledore.
"Then the poisoner didn't know Slughorn very well," said Hermione thickly, "Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he'd keep something that tasty for himself."*
"Er-my-nee,"* mumbled Ron at the sound of her voice. Her throat went dry, a flush of relief balanced by the painful pressure on her heart. After a few incomprehensible murmurs, he began to snore, the familiar noise a welcome contrast to his previous silence.
Hagrid's sudden entrance re-ignited the conversation, and his ridiculous suggestion that someone was trying to bump off the Gryffindor Quidditch team spurred Hermione to join the conversation once more.
"Well, I don't think it's Quidditch," said Hermione grimly, "But I think there's a connection between the attacks."*
"How d'you work that out?"* inquired Fred.
"Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren't, although that was pure luck." Hermione counted against her fingers. "And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was supposed to be killed. Of course, that makes the person behind this even more dangerous in a way, because they don't seem to care how many people they finish off before they actually reach their victim."*
The three Weasleys, Harry and Hagrid stared at her as if she were the oracle of doom, and the awkward silence was only broken by the arrival of Mr and Mrs Weasley. Hermione, Harry and Hagrid took that as the signal to leave, slipping out as quickly as possible to give the family some private time and to avoid the wrath of Madam Pomfrey, though Harry failed to avoid a teary embrace from Molly.
Hermione felt exhausted. She hadn't eaten all day, and her head throbbed. Trust Hagrid to let slip news of Snape and Dumbledore arguing in the Forbidden Forest. Sure, it was interesting information, but an evening of Harry ranting about evil-Snape was so far down Hermione's list of welcome activities that she slipped off to bed as soon as they arrived back at the tower. She fell asleep almost immediately, though her night was long and troubled by awful nightmares in which Ron died and his ghost came back to tell her it was all her fault.
The best thing about Ron's awful accident was that it put him and Hermione back on speaking terms. He looked so happy to see her when he was next conscious that her heart leapt. They both glossed over the previous estrangement without comment, too relieved at the restoration of their friendship to dredge up the reason for the original disagreement. Hermione took to spending the couple of hours between classes and dinner by his bedside. He moaned companionably when she gave him his homework for the day and muddled through fairly random bits of his own work while she worked on the Arithmantic matrix. Since neither Ron nor Harry could fathom the simplest set of Arithmantic data, she could safely work on the Malfoy material right under their noses.
Ron's accident had redoubled Hermione's efforts with the calculations. She had already coded the incident itself and implanted it into the subset of equations related to Katie Bell and Draco Malfoy, determined to resolve the mathematics and show the results to Dumbledore as soon as possible.
Late on Wednesday night Hermione had a breakthrough. She had retired to bed fairly early, but unable to sleep, she'd pulled the curtains a little tighter around her mattress and retrieved her notes from her satchel. Armed with a pencil (quills were a nightmare in combination with bed linen) she set to work. When she realised what she was looking at, she had to struggle to breathe. Then Hermione redid the vital sections of the calculations. The results did nothing to ease the growing panic that clawed in the pit of her stomach. Fumbling for her watch, she checked the time. It was past curfew, but in such circumstances, she decided, the need was greater. She had to check this with Professor Vector.
Hermione cast a silencing spell and slipped out of bed, covering her pyjamas with her uniform and collecting up her calculations in the dark. She couldn't afford for Lavender or Parvati to notice her leaving. She snuck out into the stairwell, shoes in her hand, and moved through the common room on stockinged feet. For a long moment, the Fat Lady refused to open.
"It's important," she whispered, improvising a story. "I have to go to the Hospital Wing immediately."
"You watch yourself, young lady," the portrait grumbled as she finally swung open. "Don't expect to hear a word in your defence from me."
"Thank you," Hermione breathed as politely as she could, the darkness hiding the disrespectful face she pulled at the same time.
Once she reached the hallway, she put on her shoes. It was far too cold to walk around without them, and she would have to risk the noise they made. Don't be silly! she upbraided herself. The difference is purely psychological! She cast an extra Silencing Charm on her shoes for good measure. Putting all envious thoughts of Harry's cloak and map out of her mind, she reflected on how odd if felt to sneak around the castle at night without her two best friends. By some freak of fate she made it across to Vector's office without running into anyone but an unrecognised castle ghost, who drifted past without a sound—Hermione had never been so thankful that Vector's office and the entrance to the Gryffindor common room were both on the seventh floor.
She tapped gently on the door, sighing with relief when she heard Vector's voice from within. As she stepped inside, the older woman smiled.
"Hermione, what a pleasure!" Vector wasn't one to comment on the late hour of her visit.
"Hello, Professor." Hermione didn't pause to make small talk, she was already pulling her calculations from her satchel. "I've been adding some extra information into the present tense of the matrix and I'm pretty sure I've uncovered an improbability fold."
"Show me." Vector was immediately businesslike.
She had only to glance at Hermione's workings to realise the implications, muttering imprecations under her breath in a language Hermione could not understand. "We've got to take this to Albus," she decided, rising swiftly and stepping towards the fireplace. Throwing in a pinch of Floo powder, she knelt on the hearth and pushed her head into the fire. Hermione was unable to hear the ensuing conversation, but within seconds Vector was back, beckoning her forward.
"Dumbledore's office," said Vector clearly, pushing her firmly into the flames. After only seconds of the unsettling whirling sensation of Floo travel, Hermione stumbled out onto Dumbledore's hearth.
"Good evening, Miss Granger." Dumbledore greeted her urbanely, as if it wasn't well past midnight and she hadn't suddenly dropped into his study—in the middle of a meeting. Professors McGonagall and Snape had swivelled in their seats to view her arrival. McGonagall looked mildly taken aback, but Snape was as imperturbable as ever, one eyebrow slightly cocked.
"Good evening, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Snape, Professor McGonagall." By the time she'd finished that long mouthful, Professor Vector had stepped through the Floo behind her.
"Minerva, Severus, Albus," said Vector. "We're sorry to interrupt, but it was something of an Arithmantic emergency."
Dumbledore conjured two chairs with a wave of his wand. "Have a seat, both of you." He turned to Hermione and added pointedly, "Among this select company, you should feel free to express yourself without hesitation."
As Hermione and Vector took their seats, McGonagall spoke. "What is the meaning of this, Albus?"
He graced her with his jolly-old-man smile. "I have absolutely no idea! Perhaps our guests would be happy to enlighten us?"
Hermione looked expectantly at Professor Vector, but she merely smiled back and gestured for Hermione to speak. "Well," she began, spreading out the handful of parchments she'd been gripping up to that point. "I've been working on the current arc of the matrix, and I'm pretty sure I've uncovered an improbability fold . . ." She faltered and glanced up at the four faces of her most revered professors. "You all can follow the Arithmantic equations, right?"
"I haven't studied Arithmancy since 1944," replied McGonagall tartly. "I, for one, would appreciate the occasional clarification."
"Right, okay . . ." Hermione took a deep breath and glanced at Vector for reassurance. Vector smiled encouragingly. "Well, I assume everyone here is aware of the work Professor Vector has been doing?" A round of nods. "The basic premise is to maximise the probability that Harry will defeat Voldemort." More nods. "Well, the final calculations are accurate only to the degree of each of the preceding calculations, and to a certain degree the later calculations fold in the assumption that everything up until that point has gone as well as can be expected. That is," she clarified, attempting to give specificity to a rather abstract explanation, "the calculations for the final confrontation assume that everything this year went according to plan."
"Are we to understand that you've uncovered a problem regarding this year?" Dumbledore asked, a glint of his less doddery personality evident in the phrasing of the question.
"Yes, and no," replied Hermione grimly. "It's not the plan that's a problem, but the possible responses to it. Look," she tapped the paper in front of her with her wand, pulling up the matrix into three-dimensional graphic space, and extrapolated out the section she wanted. She wasn't as graceful or as quick as Vector, but she was better than any of her classmates would have been. "This is the matrix as it was: we were taking the plans for this year as a cohesive unit. The probability that everything will go well hovers at about 72%—"
"Isn't that good?" asked McGonagall.
"On the surface, yes," replied Hermione, "but, if we add in the reaction to the plans," she tapped the paper in a complicated pattern and the graph shifted dramatically, "we can see that the chances of the plans going well remain the same, but the chance of the reaction to them going well is terrible—close to 12%." She paused for a moment, then added, "The improbable event was folded behind the first, hence the name."
Dumbledore broke the silence. "So, what does that mean exactly, Miss Granger?" There was an oddness to his voice that caught at her attention, though she couldn't put her finger on why.
"Well, it depends. And Headmaster, you might be the only person with enough information to know for sure." McGonagall looked a little bewildered and Hermione hurried to explain properly. "There are a couple of possibilities, but neither Professor Vector nor I know sufficient details of the Order's plans to know which is the most likely. We rely on the runic coefficients and their link to each member to predict such behaviours through m-space. Basically, it's most likely to be one of two things: either the Order has a plan in place that, once completed, will seem so horrible that many people will lose faith and panic; or," Hermione took a deep breath, her senses acutely aware of Professor Snape's presence and his possible reaction to what she was about to say, "one of the people coded into our matrix is a traitor and the success of their particular plan will spell devastation for ours."
McGonagall's eyes widened throughout Hermione's last explanation, and as she finished, the older woman gasped with shock, her hand pressed to her heart. Snape looked back at Hermione inscrutably while Dumbledore pursed his lips, his eyebrows creased in concentration. As Hermione glanced from one face to the next, scanning her way around the table, something clicked with the certainty of fact: Dumbledore and Snape knew what she was talking about, McGonagall didn't. Curious.
"How can we fix it?" Dumbledore asked, the same still quality in his voice that had caught at her attention previously.
Hermione ran her hands through her curls. She couldn't bring herself to admit that she didn't know. "I need more information," she sighed.
Snape was looking through her calculations, the tip of his finger tracing part of the formula she'd used to demonstrate the alterations to the matrix. "Do you mean," he asked, speaking for the first time since she arrived, "that you need more information in order to calculate an answer to that question, or is that the answer?"
"I wish it were th—"
"Wait!" Vector leaned over Snape's shoulder and examined the equation he had in his hand. "You might be onto something, Severus. Hermione, what happens if we redistribute the knowledge coefficient?" Vector conjured several pieces of paper and a couple of quills and pushed one towards Hermione. "You do Kreisler's and Helpmann's, I'll do Pinkerton's and Fradenburg's."
For the next little while, nobody said anything, while Hermione and Vector scratched furiously on the parchment before them. Hermione tried not to feel self conscious under the gazes of her professors but wasn't particularly successful. Being here as an adult and not a student is hard work, she reflected. By about halfway through the Helpmann's distribution, she realised she was onto something.
"Professor?" Hermione reached out and placed her hand on Vector's arm. Vector looked up at once. "I think this might be it . . ." Vector leaned over and skimmed her work.
"Very good, Hermione." Vector scribbled some figures as she doubled checked Hermione's calculations. "Okay, so," Vector pursed her lips as she translated the formula back into real-world circumstances. "You, Albus," she pointed at him with the tip of her quill, "have to give some extra information to Severus." Her quill swung across the table in a wide arc. "And you, Severus, have to give some information to Hermione." The quill swung again, and Vector tilted her head to one side in consideration. "Not, I think, the same information. And last but not least, there is a specific piece of information that mustn't under any circumstances be given to Harry Potter until the very last minute. Hmm. Does that make any sense?"
Hermione carefully watched the reactions to this information. Professor Snape showed no sign of his response, Dumbledore looked wary, McGonagall turned her attention every which way as she attempted to process the new facts. McGonagall, thought Hermione, is the only one of the three who doesn't know what's going on here. She wondered, too, what information Snape needed to give her.
"And?" queried Dumbledore, "what difference does that make to the overall probability prediction?"
"61.80339887%, rounded to the eighth decimal place," responded Vector smugly.
"But," objected McGonagall, "that's a whole 10 percentage points worse than it previously was!"
"No—" began Hermione, at the same moment that Vector said, "Actually—" before they both stopped to allow the other to continue.
"It's the Golden Mean," remarked Snape dryly.
"Correct," said Hermione. "The Golden Mean has such an important magical charge," she elaborated, "that a probability prediction as precise as eight decimal places is much more likely to occur than a higher, less magical percentage."
Dumbledore looked relieved, though he turned a curiously contemplative expression on both Snape and Hermione. "Well, Miss Granger, it seems that we owe you a great debt. Your Arithmancy skills have proved exemplary."
Hermione blushed slightly, glancing at Snape and then Vector to judge their reactions. Snape quirked a sardonic eyebrow, Vector smiled.
"All the best Arithmancers are Muggle-born," Vector remarked.
Dumbledore chuckled, "So you say, Ana, and I have to agree that the evidence is strongly in your favour."
Ana? Hermione looked at Vector with a sudden curiosity. That must be her real name. Wow. A wave of tiredness rushed over her, and she turned her wrist infinitesimally in order to peek at her watch. It was nearly two o'clock. When all of the other occupants of the office turned to look at her, Hermione realised that the gesture hadn't been as subtle as she'd hoped.
"Goodness!" exclaimed Minerva. "This poor child has to be in class in just a few hours time! Miss Granger—"
"Is hardly a child, Minerva." Snape cut in smoothly. A small flower of gratitude blossomed in Hermione's breast.
"Quite right, Severus." Dumbledore concurred. "But so, too, is Minerva. It is time we were all in bed. Miss Granger, you need to be returned to Gryffindor tower; it wouldn't do to wander the halls alone at such an hour."
Automatically, Hermione glanced at Snape, more than half anticipating that he would walk her back to the Fat Lady, but the straight-faced blink he sent in her direction was more than enough of a reaction to inform her that she'd committed some idiotic mistake. Oops. Professor McGonagall is my Head of House. That would be her job. She turned towards McGonagall, relieved to note that the older woman had walked behind her to the fireplace and couldn't have seen what just transpired. Vector had, she was sure of it, but that didn't matter—Vector, with her equations, saw everything.
"Come along then, Miss Granger." McGonagall sounded mildly irritated, and Hermione realised suddenly that the older woman held a handful of Floo powder ready.
"Just a moment, Professor." Hermione hurriedly stuffed her papers back into her bag, offering the quill back to Vector, who gestured for her to keep it. "Good night, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Vector, Professor Snape." She turned to the fire and stepped closer. "Good night, Professor McGonagall."
McGonagall smiled at her tiredly and threw the floo powder into the flames. "Gryffindor common room!" she exclaimed, shepherding Hermione through. Hermione held her breath as the world spun green about her before tumbling gratefully out into the familiar space of Gryffindor tower. Her bed had rarely seemed more inviting.
A / N : Another Wednesday, another chapter. If you like it, let me know! If you don't, tell me why.