Chapter 53: The Underground Vault

Hermione was increasingly glad that she'd improved in the art of silent spell-casting, but she was utterly amazed at how seamlessly Anya worked with her wand. A number of doors flew open with a practiced flick of the now violet-haired vampire's wrist and Hermione could feel the shiver of a neutralized ward as she passed through every doorway in the long, twisting chain of hallways and rooms. Rather than the more modern furnishings above, the stone and metal around her gave off a foreboding, oppressive atmosphere.

Of course, that might also have simply been due to the ever-present thought of the poison gas filling the air around them.

It felt almost as though they were navigating an endless maze made of long stone hallways punctuated by round, open, windowless chambers, and Hermione was unnervingly reminded of the Indiana Jones movie she'd seen where the characters had been trapped in an underground tomb. Belatedly, she wondered why she hadn't simply used a bubble head charm, but then she remembered that the charm generally worked by sucking the oxygen from the water around the spellcaster and something told her that Garbor was at least clever enough to hide his most precious possessions using a precaution that would not be easily defeated by the average seventh year Hogwarts student.

Her thoughts came to an abrupt halt as Anya stopped ahead in front of a rather nondescript wooden door on the left side wall of the hallway only feet away from yet another open, empty room and held up a hand to signal the others to stop as well.

Silently, she rested the side of her head against the door and Hermione had to bite her inner lip to stop from snickering when she saw long, pointed wolf ears rising on either sides of Anya's head. Pointing the tip of her wand directly at the door, Anya made a complicated series of twists and turns with her wrist.

Hermione sorely wished that she could open her mouth and ask what was going on behind the door as a loud series of thumps and clanging noises issued from the room beyond, but she knew that speaking up would not only cause an extremely unwelcome distraction but there was the tiny and inconsequential matter of dying, which she knew would put a decidedly large damper on their evening.

With a final, deeply resonant click, the door came loose from its frame and Anya pulled it outward with very little effort. A shimmering, bubble-like membrane was stretched across the doorway in all directions, similar to the one that they'd stepped through from the hallway. They all waited patiently for Anya to go through first, though Severus kept the fingers on his free hand tightly entwined with Hermione's and pulled ahead of her slightly so that he would be the first to go through. The windowless room beyond was small and cluttered, featuring a wooden desk piled up with papers and various non-magical paintings on the wall. The only ornate things in the room were a pair of massive stone basilisk statues on the far wall, their bodies turned to the side so that they stared at one another, their fangs bared. After the maze of halls and rooms they'd just traversed, it looked out of place, like a stuffy professor's study in the middle of a medieval castle. Which, considering that such things could be found at Hogwarts, the sparsely decorated yet cluttered space wasn't alien to Hermione, but she still found it odd, especially due to Garbor's unabashed flair for the theatrical and the expensive. She had to admit, the basilisks were the only thing that really fit that theme.

"The air in here is safe to breathe," Anya said, turning to look at the four vampires who had assembled in a messy half-circle behind her. "Garbor found that the poison interfered with his magically imbued tomes, and it led to a rather messy situation during its installation."

Hermione sighed with relief. Though she didn't feel the ache from holding her breath that she would invariably have been experiencing had she tried to do so before having Changed, it was still disconcerting to breathe so rarely. It was a habit that she couldn't help but desire, like the physical craving she always got for tea when the sky went gray and the air grew cold.

Hermione looked around the room, but other than a couple of books on one side of the desk, she didn't see any others. She wrinkled her nose with disgust. The books were covered with dust and one appeared to have a rather large stain on one side. Garbor seemed to treat his books the same way he treated people, which made Hermione hate him even more than ever.

"Dare I ask what sort of poison gas your...employer...has so graciously filled his underground labyrinth with?" Severus asked sardonically, smirking slightly at the look on Hermione's face. Her mouth was frozen open with the beginning of what was obviously the same question.

Hermione sniffed and turned her head away from Severus, but she didn't pull her hand away from his.

"That...is something that only Garbor himself knows." Anya stared at the floor, the corners of her mouth twitching downward as though this were an old argument. "He does not trust me as much as he says he does. I suppose, considering all that has happened, he was right not to do so."

"Why are there no guards posted around his building?" Hermione asked, genuinely curious.

Anya looked at Hermione with a somewhat skeptical look.

"Well, first off, there's the fact that he's the most powerful vampire in the Underground, and quite possibly the world. He can destroy a vampire's societal standing in less than ten minutes. For those of us who live in the margins of mortal society, this is a fate worse than death. Some say that he takes some of the prisoners from their cells and does...things to them. Many speculate, but whether it is true or not, I cannot say. If it is, he hides it very well."

"Forgive me for not being surprised," Hermione said with a scowl, "but I realized that he was both evil and powerful the moment I met his pompous arse, since I am neither deaf nor blind."

Hermione blinked and looked up at the dour professor with surprise. She could hear Severus laughing ruefully in her head, but his face betrayed no emotion beyond disdain.

"Let me guess," Severus drawled, "the whole 'cannot be killed, even by a Vow' thing puts him at an automatic advantage against any opponent, so he sees no reason to keep an army?"

"Oh, no. You saw his army earlier. The problem is, without being properly treated in the vats...most of the...soldiers...begin to fall apart within a week."

"You are, I think, referring to the Nachtenblutegel?" Erheldt asked, his eyebrows furrowing. "I just want to know how he makes them in the first place. It would involve forcing vampires to give blood to mortals against their will. The Blood Curse would do the rest, but to create so many of them...it seems impossible. However would he be able to accomplish such a thing?"

"He has been doing it for a long time, Erheldt," Anya said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You could not have known. I have only been involved for the past fifty years, and even then, it's only in commanding them. There are wards in place in the tunnels to their kennels that only allow their kind through. I have no access to the place where they...live."

"If you can call it that," Sanguini said with a shudder.

"Actually, I would not be surprised if Garbor is using those vampires he supposedly takes for his own purposes to make those...things...in the first place," Hermione said, wrinkling her nose with disgust.

Everyone stared at Hermione, their incredulous expressions turning to horror as they began to connect the dots. Sanguini shuddered violently, burying his face in Erheldt's jacket as though trying to banish the mental image.

"Do you think that he meant to do that...to…?" Anya looked at Hermione, her face growing pale.

"We really shouldn't be standing around here discussing Garbor's little hobbies as though we have all the time in the world, you know," Severus said shortly, his hand slipping from Hermione's with a slight squeeze as he pulled ahead and strode purposefully towards the cluttered desk, "Instead, you should be helping me look for the information on stopping him!"

Hermione followed him, her fingers itching to touch the unloved books that she'd seen earlier.

"No, you don't understand," Anya said, "This isn't the room we need to search. This is just the facade he keeps up at the front."

"What do you mean?" Sanguini had untangled himself from Erheldt and was squinting his eyes as he leafed through a dusty stack of papers.

Anya sighed and abruptly pulled the stained book from Hermione's hand. Hermione made a strained squeak in protest, but she was too late. Anya placed the book in the stone mouth of the basilisk to her left. The eyes of the great stone snake rolled silently in their sockets until the pupils were no longer visible and the statue turned to face them, revealing a doorway.

"This side is the library, and that side," Anya grabbed a faceted metal paperweight that Erheldt was inspecting and placed it in the other basilisk's mouth, ignoring the incredulous looks she was getting from everyone in the room, "is the trophy room. Both are large and it will take time to go through everything. We really ought to split up, don't you agree, Hermione?"

Anya's voice was so full of longing for praise, that it was a wonder she didn't grow a tail and start wagging it. Her eager eyes followed Hermione, who had moved at inhuman speeds towards the basilisk statue with the book in its mouth. Hermione worried at her bottom lip as she ran her fingers over the stonework, but her eyes were on the darkened entryway. Now that she knew what was on the other side, she could barely contain her excitement.

"Come on, Severus, wouldn't want to keep the library waiting, would we?" Hermione asked excitedly, turning back to look at him with wide, curious eyes.

Severus joined her, his dark robes whispering against her body as he turned to face Anya with a distrustful expression.

"I believe that the two of us will be sufficient. Nobody is as skilled as I am at finding something in the stacks save Hermione. You three can sort through the trinkets and see if you can't find a terribly convenient immortal-vampire-killing-amulet."

"Then I suppose that Anya will come with Sanguini and I," Erheldt said gently, placing his hand on Anya's shoulder.

"Indeed!" Sanguini said, linking arms with Anya on her other side.

"What? But- hey!" Anya called out as she was pulled through the second doorway.

Hermione and Severus sped through the doorway and down a short, dark hallway that opened out into a large, well-lit room filled from floor to ceiling with books.

"It looks almost as large as the Hogwarts library!" Hermione exclaimed.

"Hermione, I have an idea, but I do not think that you will like it," Severus said gravely, his dark eyes meeting Hermione's with a sense of weary resignation.

"What do you mean by that?" Hermione replied, her nose twitching with confusion.

"First, do you have your beaded handbag? We will need it."

"Yes, but what do you-?" Hermione pulled the bag from where it had been tied under her robes.

"We cannot necessarily defeat Garbor, but we can cripple him. We shall take as many books as we can and place them in your bag. Anything that could possibly help, we can throw inside. But the rest...Garbor cannot be allowed to have so much damning knowledge at his fingertips. Knowledge is power, but the antithesis is true as well."

Hermione nodded, though the thought of destroying books made her feel ill. Still, they had much to do, and neither of them were sure when Garbor would return.

They set to work, gathering materials as quickly as possible. They'd emptied out a good number of bookshelves, but there were still too many books. Hermione was the one to cast the Fiendfyre as they stood near the opening to the hall that would lead them out to the basilisk doors. Hermione had to blink to clear her eyes of the tears as the massive snake-like head burst from her wand and engulfed the room in flames. They held hands, running back into the office. Severus grabbed the book from the basilisk's mouth, and it rolled closed again. There was only a slight scent of smoke to even hint that anything in the library was out of place.

The others hadn't returned, but Severus proposed that they wait fifteen minutes before rushing into the trophy room.

"Hmm," Hermione said, using a finger to trace the bloody streak that wrapped around from the front cover to the spine of the book, "Let's take this one too."

"Very well," Severus replied, his face growing a little warm as Hermione lifted up her robes so he could reach the handbag.

"I don't think I'll ever tire of seeing that," Hermione said, a cheeky smile playing across her lips.

"What, exactly?" Severus grumbled back.

"The way you look at me when I let you see my naughty bits," Hermione replied, pulling up the robes and skirts even more to show off her knickers.

Severus rubbed his lips together, his fangs sliding over this bottom lip as he tried not to stare and failed miserably at it. He knelt down on one knee and placed the book on the floor, wrapping his long arms around her thigh and leaving a trail of kisses up her sensitive skin until he reached the soft cloth of her undergarments.

"I cannot help it," he said breathlessly between kisses, "You draw me like no other, my love."

Hermione moaned softly as his fingers slipped up higher and caressed her in deliciously intimate places. In moments, she had lost herself in the pleasure of his touch. When he finally stood and pressed his lips against hers, all thoughts of books flew from her mind completely.