Published 8th of October, 2020
Howden Dam
England
Late evening
As the day was extremely cold at the end of April, a large fire was burning in the fireplace. The flames danced across the three wood logs, torn by the gusty wind that blew through the chimney - for a moment they gave up and faded, only to explode a moment later.
Along with the heat, a sharp smell of fire spread through the apartment; it smelled of leaves, resin and sour fruit and smoke with a hint of cooling heat and hot iron.
According to Peter, it smelled of lost dreams, bitterness and self-hatred.
Half sitting, half lying and drinking up the leftover whiskey left from the previous alcohol session, Peter stared at the empty bottle held right in front of his eyes. Inside, the flames swirled, licking the sides of the bottle in the same rhythm as those on the fireplace, transforming it into a glowing lamp.
But the bottle was cold, just like himself.
A muggle kidnapped yesterday has been locked in the smallest room. All night he was knocking on the door, shouting and cursing them in every way. In the morning he calmed down, but not because he was tired but because he began to feel unwell. He had gotten worse so far, having asked several times for what must have been a cure.
Peter, on the other hand, tried to cope with the realization that it was going to be even worse.
As there was a loud knock on the door, Gratus grabbed his wand, slid off the couch, and jumped to open it. Peter put the bottle down with a thud and watched the broad-shouldered man who cast a probing charm, then removed the spells and opened the door.
"Good morning," Gratus said to the old man who just nodded and stepped inside.
The newcomer, with some effort, sat down in an adjoining armchair, crossed his legs and brushed some lint off his shoe.
„How is our guest? He asked, looking at Peter.
Then his gaze fell to the empty bottle and the man pursed his lips in disgust.
"As expected," Peter shrugged. "I would say exactly like the last one."
"When did he drink the poison?"
"Yesterday evening," Gratus replied, sitting down on the couch. "He dried the entire bottle."
"Perfect. Give him the healing potion on Monday morning. Let's say around eight," the old man decided.
Peter shuddered visibly and looked at him in horror.
"Only in two days? Mr. Tylor, I won't eat my want he is going to make it through this!" he objected.
"You gave him poison after the last changes?"
"Yes but..."
"So there's no BUT. You are to wait until Monday morning. Give him the potion and watch the changes," the old man said coldly. "Take careful notes, Peterson, I want to know exactly how the recovery is going."
Peter clenched his fists and nodded silently.
"How long will it take for him to get over?" Gratus asked. Apparently he had chosen to ask this question in the company of the Old Man, otherwise Peter wouldn't have answered him.
„Two days."
"More precisely, Peterson," said Old Man.
"He should heal in twelve hours, but it will take at least a full day for the internal bleeding to begin to absorb," said Peter reluctantly. "Two days later, he should be feeling much better, but of course it will take at least a month for the effects of the poison to dissipate."
"We won't wait that long. Two days are enough."
Tylor tried to stand up, but only grunted with effort and sank back into the chair, so Gratus jumped up to him and grabbed his arm.
"Go away!" The old man shouted, and pushed him away violently.
His face was clearly disgusted as he adjusted his jacket and hobbled quickly toward the door.
After a while, they heard a loud thump against a wooden frame.
"What happened to him?" Gratus muttered, stunned.
"You couldn't have better let him know he was an old freak," explained Peter. "Congratulations on your tact, asshole."
Sunday, April 27th
Spinner's End 6:00 am
Hermione showed up at Spinner's End just before six. The rain that had fallen all night had turned to a heavy drizzle, and the wet world looked especially bleak today.
Wondering what mood she would find Snape in today, she knocked three times and ran her fingers thoughtlessly over the trail that the dripping drop had left. After a moment she heard footsteps and the door clanged open.
Behind them, Snape looked paler than usual.
"Good morning," she said uncertainly.
"Come in," he opened her door and let her in. "Good morning."
Hermione smiled to herself. Since Severus Snape had said "good morning" to her, apparently her confession yesterday was a good idea and their arrangement was changing for the better. She just hoped it wasn't just a temporary improvement.
"I made dinner for us," she showed him the bag that contained a large pot of stewed potatoes and pork chops, along with a lettuce in cream. "Can I put this in the kitchen?"
Snape frowned and nodded.
"Yes. And tell me what you've learned about Inocreation," he said.
Hermione decided to focus. Snape seemed trying to be "nice", but she had no doubt he wouldn't miss the opportunity for critical comments if her response wasn't Outstanding!
"Inocreation is really an Incantation that allows us to discover the characteristics of the potion on which it was cast," she replied, taking the food out on the table and returning to the living room. "I think we will focus on observing temperature changes, bubble patterns and vapors to determine if our antidote will simply eliminate the poison or have healing properties. We can also analyze the color of the sediment on the Moon Stones, because in the case of a working antidote, the sediment must be the opposite color to the color of the poison sediment, but it takes a few days. I also read that you can use Inocreation to analyze the color of the brew, but this method is used to confirm the presence of ingredients, which in our case is already done, so I didn't learn it."
She looked at Snape with expectation and a challenge at the same time. It cost her a lot to learn only the most obvious methods yesterday, not everything, but she decided to follow his advice.
"Acceptable," Snape assessed. "Let's go brewing then."
As Hermione followed him down to the basement, she felt like she had caught the sun. To her amazement, the smell of mixed ingredients, wood, stone walls and wax seemed pleasant, quite intoxicating. It smelled similar in Hogwarts, in potions class, and suddenly hundreds of memories from her school days flashed through her mind, leaving behind a taste of something close, friendly. Home.
Snape took a few bottles and jars off the shelf and, pressing them carefully to his chest, walked with them to the table. Hermione immediately jumped towards him.
„I'll help you!"
"I can manage."
But the girl had already picked up the first bottle and slipped it from his hands, holding the rest of them underneath so he couldn't even step back. Their hands rubbed slightly, and Snape felt a sudden discomfort.
„Didn't I tell you yesterday that I decide here?" He huffed, leaned over the table and, setting the others bottles aside, stepped away from her sharply.
„That's what I'm here for. To help you!" Hermione protested.
Snape was surprised that he reacted so much to someone's touch. He had completely gotten out of this. Just in case, he turned away from her and began to move the pile of glass cauldrons very carefully.
„If you want to help, better tell me what you think the best additional ingredient will be."
"In fact there are many ingredients that we could add to make the antidote stop the poison from working," she replied immediately. "But I think we should do something that is more of a curative nature, because the Muggle doctors won't even know how to treat it. And for this, Phoenix's tears will be the best."
He knew perfectly well that the girl would come to the same conclusion as he did, but though he had been thinking about it since yesterday, the nightmarish memories flooded him again.
Hermione couldn't see his face, but she knew from all his posture that he was suddenly tense, so she raised her voice a little and, without waiting for the next question, continued, just to keep him listening:
„Please tell me if I'm wrong. From what I read yesterday in your book, we will have to mix the poison and our antidote and boil it. When the brew is boiling and thick steam is rising from it, we'll cast Creatho. And then it will stop boiling, all air bubbles will disappear, and there will be no trace of steam. However, if we wanted to check the deposit, I suppose it would look like crystal powder, unlike the poison deposit, which will be dark brown, almost black. Oh, and I read that during the analysis we will have to be as focused as possible, because our thoughts will affect the effectiveness of the spell and the response of the antidote."
As she spoke, Snape handed her beakers, chopping boards, diamond-tipped knives, and glass spoons and she set them down on the table. He concentrated on listening to what she was talking about and pushed the gloomy thoughts away. Finally, he moved a tripod with a thin glass plate towards it.
"I don't remember asking you that," he said. "Why is everything glass?"
Hermione looked at him closely and forced herself to be serious, though she wanted to smile.
He relaxed his shoulders and deep vertical wrinkle on his forehead softened. And if she had any doubts as to whether she had managed to keep him occupied, she would have known it from what he said. There was not even a hint of impatience or irony in his voice, as if he was just saying it for the peace of mind, because it was right. And most of all, he did not interrupt it earlier.
„So that the ingredients have no contact with the metal?" She hesitated. "Though it's not a cutting spell potion?"
„No," he nodded. "You know what's the difference between knife wounds and spell wounds?"
„Of course. When a body is cut apart with a knife, it leaves a mark on the edges of the wound, a kind of barrier between two pieces of skin or muscle. And that is why such wounds heal more difficult, because the body must first fight the barrier in order to find the other part of itself and heal. And there will always be a scar. In the case of the cutting spell, the wound is identical, but the edges are not separated by a barrier, so they can find each other. And when the potion is administered, they will simply fuse back together as if they had never been separated."
"So...?"
"So ..." Hermione bit her lips lightly and looked somewhere on the floor, trying to take her analysis further. "So..."
"Focus," Snape said emphatically. „You are very close ..."
Hermione forced herself to think about the wounds, the potion, and the metal, not that he had just praised her.
"If there was even a trace of a metal spoon in the potion, this metal would separate the edges of the wound ...!" She clapped her hands. "That's why you cut with a diamond-bladed knife! And ... since this poison destroys the organs from the inside, but without metal, if the wounds will be treated with a potion that does not contain it, they will come together again and ...!"
She broke off abruptly. Snape froze, knife in hand, and raised a questioning eyebrow.
"We'll have to find some way to get the Muggles a post-hemorrhagic potion," she explained with much less enthusiasm. "And replenishing blood potion. If there is internal hemorrhage into the abdominal cavity, death occurs, so muggle Healers will have to hurry."
"Shit," he cursed under his breath. "How long can the victims live?"
"It's hard to say," Hermione sighed heavily. "Much depends on the amount of blood, but also on the other diseases that occur. Unfortunately, there is no specific pattern here, where everything always happens as it is. Everyone's body may react differently." She looked at him and added:
„Just like the pain."
They looked at each other in silence for a moment; each of them was looking for a solution. Finally Hermione spoke up:
"Until we don't know how to identify potential victims, we won't be able to figure out how to give them all these potions."
"Let's start brewing," Snape stopped her and motioned her to the glass cauldron. "Be very careful with it."
"I'll be very careful," the girl assured him. "I just hope this glass isn't too brittle."
"I don't mean glass. The antidote includes Moon Water, which is extremely rare and extremely expensive. One gallon costs two thousand galleons."
Hermione looked at him in horror.
"Merlin, HOW MUCH ?"
Snape lifted the corner of his mouth.
"Exactly. Moon Water is water from a pure mountain spring that is exposed to the light of the moon just before and shortly after its full lunar eclipse and then ripens for an entire lunar month. I don't know how many such eclipses there are in a year, but I suppose very few."
This time it was Hermione who could tell him more. Astronomy may not be her favorite subject, but she still remembered a lot of it.
„That explains the price. A full eclipse is very rare. There are years when you don't have it at all, sometimes you get twice a year. From what I recall ... the last one was in late December 2001."
Oh shit ...
"When's the next?"
"About mid-year. I'll check if you want."
"Check it," he replied in a very serious tone. "And really, be very careful."
Something in his voice alerted the girl. Instinctively, she loosened the handle on the spoon she had picked up some time ago.
„... Yes?"
"I only had a tiny bit because I hardly ever need it and I used up all my stock."
The girl swallowed loudly, looked briefly at the cauldron with the pearlescent mixture and nodded.
"I can see that it will take us a long time to brew the antidote ..."
Howden Dam
England
Sunday evening
Hearing another muffled groan from the next room, Peter felt he couldn't take it. Rocking back and forth and clogging his ears, he began humming to muffle all other sounds. But that didn't help, for despite his squeezed eyes, he could still see the homeless Muggle in front of him, crumpled with pain, dying because of him.
All the other deaths were completely different. Either they were very short, or he had only seen those people for a moment. This time he was forced to observe the poor, innocent man for two days and it completely beyond him.
"Let's give him the antidote now," he said aloud to Gratus, who was sitting comfortably in his chair and browsing the Comet of Passion, a magazine for men seeking the company of mature women.
"Tomorrow morning," the other replied.
„I don't know if he'll last until morning!"
"So will die."
The Muggle rolled over, moaning again.
"Gratus, I'm serious!" Cried Peter in despair. "How do you want to test a healing potion if he's dead ?!"
The bearded wizard set the newspaper aside and gave him a mocking look.
"Mr. Tylor made it clear that we weren't supposed to start healing him until tomorrow morning. If he won't last, you'll have to correct this pis of yours. And if it won't work, you'll have to correct your pis," he replied impassively. "Now shut up your trap, because you're disturbing my reading."
Peter jumped up from the table.
"Read? You can read? Or just staring at bare tits ?!"
And he went out slamming the door.
He went to his room, which in fact had been his prison recently, locked the door and threw himself on the bed. Something broke inside him.
It wasn't supposed to be like this! It wasn't supposed to happen this way!
He imagined glory, success, a sense of accomplishment, and yet all he felt was a deeper and deeper terror that wrapped around him like tentacles and dragged him down into a bottomless black depth.
When the Old Man came to him with an extremely lucrative contract, he was penniless. And he had a lot of debts. Tylor explained his plan and they reached an agreement almost immediately. He needed the money and Tylor needed his Potions skills.
The plan was simple and so brilliant! He was supposed to create an elixir that would make people sick, and brew a kind of antidote to be marketed as the only remedy, and win thousands of galleons on it. They were to share the profits in half, and all the fame for inventing the saving potion was to fall to him.
Oh, how blind and naive he was then! And how stupid! He only wanted to see the part of the plan where people would drink his potion, heal in the twinkling of an eye and leave the Clinic with a smile on their lips.
Cowardly, he ignored the soft voice telling him that to find out if the poison was working as it should, they would have to do human testing. He just didn't want to think about it.
But that answer of the murder-son of a bitch just told him that he hadn't thought of something else. That Tylor may want to get rid of the redundant witness and get all the gold for himself.
He felt as if he had hit the ground, falling from a great height.
He had made a working poison, and now they were going to test his antidote. His mission was coming to the end.
Peter heard another groan - this time it was his own, but terribly changed voice. The voice of a hunted animal that realized that he had entered the iron cage, from which there was no way out.
Tuesday, April 29th
Ministry of Magic, Section of Regulation and Authorization from the Department of Education
08:00
Frowning hard and twirling the long black quill unconsciously in her fingers, Octavia read Hermione's report. She looked extremely focused, and it flashed through Hermione's mind that perhaps the older witch was, for some reason, interested in catching Powell's mistake.
Maybe she will support my order list request? It was worth a try, anyway.
"I agree with you on the preliminary conclusions," Octavia said, returning the parchment to her. "He cannot get away with the matter of this backyard, absolutely!"
Hermione picked it up and rolled it into a tight roll.
"I can assure you that he will not force me to turn a blind eye in any way," she assured her. „Just after our meeting I go to talk to him about this."
The old witch reached for a pot of coffee with an admixture of cardamom, the aroma of which spread throughout the room. It was so strong that you could get drunk just breathing the air.
„Do you want a cup?" Hermione thanked, shaking her head. "What are you going to do? You have the right to hold the inspection until the error is corrected or to continue."
„I will continue. I have a hunch and don't want Powell to take this opportunity to cover up any shortcomings."
Octavia poured herself a cup of coffee and took two sips before speaking.
"What do you mean?"
Hermione bit her lips lightly.
"I checked randomly some ingredients of A and B Class and did not find any anomalies. But…" She shook her head, pretending to search for words. "Inventory is correct when ingredient receipts and usage are properly recorded. It seems there are no problems with the usage register, but I would like to make sure that everything is fine with the receipts for stock as well."
"But you checked invoices and delivery lists?"
„Yes. But who said these were all deliveries?" She paused.
Octavia nodded approvingly.
"Very good, Hermione. I can see that you take all this control extremely to heart. What you want to do?"
That was exactly what she meant. Hermione felt a wave of satisfaction spread over her chest, but she kept her face serious.
'I will ask the Central Warehouse in France for a detailed order list. The best - full list – I will get it faster and we will avoid possible errors. That way, I'll know if Powell is ordering ingredients under a false name. Could you support my request?"
"Well ... I don't know if that's an exaggeration ..." Octavia hesitated. "By doing this you are implying that Leoncius Powell is faking the orders and the record of the use of ingredients."
Hermione looked straight into Octavia's eyes.
„I know. So I don't want to give them a reason. But I can't forget that Chase Griffin died from poisoning with some toxic ingredient. Mathias explained to me that he died in terrible torments," she said firmly, and the old witch paled deeply. "Anyone who the Ministry gives the fifth Drop must be absolutely spotless."
Octavia looked up proudly.
"You are absolutely right, my dear. Write a short request and I will sign it and send the urgent owl to Calais. And people in Calais will send it to Carcassonne."
Hermione immediately handed her a small piece of parchment.
"Please. I took the liberty of writing it before our meeting. I didn't want to waste your time."
Powell's Lab
08:30
Paul had been sitting in the hall and waiting for Powell for nearly ten minutes. He had no real reason to visit, but he had promised Tylor to watch Snape, so as they were going to meet tomorrow, he just had to come here.
A few minutes and two position changes later, he was getting impatient. If you knew it was going to be so long, you wouldn't be drinking the anti-Veritaserum stuff.
A moment later he heard footsteps in the corridor and Leoncius Powell appeared.
"Hello," the other called, hurrying forward. "I am so glad to see you again! What can I do for you?"
He grinned too broadly, shook his hand far too hard, and under normal circumstances, Paul would have been intrigued and had tried to press him hard to find out what was behind it, but today he just wanted to make the visit as short as possible and return to the Quarters.
"Hello, too," he replied, tore his arm free and mastered the urge to rub it against his robe. "Can we go over to your office?"
"Of course!"
He very quickly explained his presence by wanting to make sure that no new cases had occurred and that everything was under control.
Powell breathed a little, but he didn't completely relax, so whatever was troubling him had nothing to do with the investigation.
"And how is your procedure for granting the fifth Drop?" He feigned curiosity as they finished the topic.
If he hadn't had years of experience, he surely wouldn't have noticed the flicker of anxiety in his eyes, which was immediately replaced by an expression of triumph.
"Wonderful, just wonderful! Miss Granger has already carried out most of the foreseen checks and has assured me that both the procedures and documentation are flawless," Powell assured him, a slightly raised voice. "Today I expect her visit to discuss the next steps and the completion of the entire procedure."
Paul nodded his head, though he wanted to laugh in his face.
"I work with Harry Potter, who is a close friend of Miss Granger, so I know perfectly well that she is an extremely talented and intelligent witch. And I guess you made sure you got the best person to lead her?
"Well, unfortunately I have to admit defeat here," Powell sighed heavily, and Paul finally felt interested.
"What do you mean?"
„I appointed the unfortunate Chase Griffin to this."
„Merlin! I understand!" Paul put a sad face on his face. "But you must not take this as a failure. Absolutely not! It's not your fault," he assured him warmly. "Then who's leading her now?"
Powell hesitated a second, and Paul caught it immediately.
„Severus Snape."
Oh fuck!
"And do they get along?" He asked as he reached for his bag and began flipping documents through it.
"Very good. Considering their history, that is," Powell corrected. "I have the impression that they both managed to reach an agreement and now ... they are quite a harmonious duo."
Paul closed the bag carefully and slowly stood up.
"That must be very good news for you," he said. "It's time for me. We will definitely pay you a visit from time to time, but please don't bother with this. It's an old Auror custom," he laughed.
Powell smiled weakly and shook his hand much less vigorously than in greeting.
As Paul left the office, he heard the click of his heels and, glancing in that direction, saw a young woman walking towards the stairs.
Are we talking about the wolf?
She wore a fitted jacket, and a narrow skirt just below the knee showed long, shapely legs. As the girl stepped onto the first floor landing and turned around, he saw her face for a second.
It's Granger, indeed. Why she's going upstairs for, since she has an appointment with Powell? Interesting… Perhaps you will need to look at it closely ...
Under each chapter I get a few nice words from a mysterious Guest. As I cannot replay in any way, so I take the occasion of this Chapter to thank to this person a lot. It is very pleasant to get a feedback :)
So thank you very much and enjoy reading!
Wishes
Anni