"Quod Me Nutruit, Me Destruit – Chapter 4"
By The Crystalline Temptress
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, the brilliant writer J.K. Rowling does. So don't sue me.
A/N: And again, a chapter bereft of Severus. *sigh* I really must do something about these intervals; I think that I should shift between characters more instead of making a chapter centered on one.
As I was reading the 1st book for the nth time, I read a line that had a very intriguing line: "Hermione wasn't going to give up that easily. She followed Ron through the portrait hole, hissing at them [Harry and Ron] like an angry goose." J.K. Rowling has the drollest descriptions. :) Oh, and as for the line "like a malevolent bat" in chapter 1, it turns out it was "gliding forward like a large and malevolent bat." *grin*
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Words swam before her eyes, inscribed on the worn page that held the table of contents. Most of them were in Latin, French or some other ancient tongue, emblazoned on the paper with shiny black ink that had long faded with the centuries.
She ran her fingers lightly over the rough and brittle surface of the parchment as she scanned the titles of the potions. The book seemed to beckon to her, whispering in ancient languages, imploring her to read it.
Potions of great complexity lay beyond the twine that held its mulberry leaves closed. Potions that required patience, presence of mind and intellect, potions that turned to poison with one slip of the hand, with one excess drop.
A challenge, was it not? A Gryffindor was brave and daring.
Her eyes drank in the names of the potions. . . . And finally, an aging potion.
She flipped through the pages carefully and found the right one. She read it eagerly, taking in the procedure.
"Perfect!" she hissed.
"For a second there, I thought you looked rather like a mad scientist," Harry whispered.
Hermione glanced up from the book, perplexity wrought clearly on her features. "What did you say?" Apparently, she hadn't heard him.
Ron stifled a snigger. "He said that you looked batty."
Harry and Ron were huddled up underneath Harry's invisibility cloak as Hermione searched the shelves for encyclopedias. When she had found quite a number of books to study, she just sat beside them on the floor and read as if they weren't there.
Earlier on during December, she had been doing an Arithmancy project for Professor Vector and was allowed access to the Restricted Section. The three of them had taken advantage of that freedom (although Harry and Ron had to keep themselves from being seen; they weren't allowed in there, only Hermione was) and had decided to look for an aging potion while it was still peaceful; they were rather sure that things were going to get vicious by the time the issue of Sirius Black had been dwelt upon long enough.
"Batty, eh?" Hermione raised an eyebrow and smiled rather wryly. "Why don't you try looking at yourself when you're discussing Quidditch with Ron?"
"What's wrong when I discuss Quidditch with Ron?" Harry demanded.
"The manic glint in your eye . . . Oh, Ron's just as bad too, when he makes those arm gestures of his." Hermione smiled as both of them sputtered beneath the cloak.
"Arm gestures?" Ron finally hissed.
"You know what I mean, whenever you describe something that's happening in Quidditch, you just have to move your hands round as well," she replied keenly.
"I do not!"
"You do too, and Harry can vouch for that," Hermione told him.
"I don't. Right, Harry?"
"Well, you do. . . . Kind of . . . I mean, you have a tendency to wave your hands about sometimes. . . ." Harry seemed to be at a loss for words.
Hermione gave them both a rather self-satisfied grin and glanced at her book again.
"Before you two interrupted me, I was about to tell you that I've found the perfect potion!" she said, pointing to a page. "It's called the Aevum." She squinted at the recipe.
"The Aevum is a complex potion that requires the drinker's blood and a piece of their skin," she said. Harry and Ron blanched. "It makes you age depending on the amount you drink, and . . . Oh . . ."
"What is it? We have to put our entire hand in or something?" Ron said disgustedly.
"It adds the years you drank to your age permanently. For example, if you drink it when you're twenty to make yourself twenty-two, for the rest of your life, you'll have two years added to your age. So when you're twenty-two you'll really be twenty-four, and so forth."
"Permanently?" Harry repeated. "We can't be two to three years older than our normal age permanently!" he exclaimed.
"I know that," Hermione scoffed. "But it says here that this potion can pass age lines, because it's permanent, and the effect has something to do with altering your body's chemistry."
"Sounds dodgy," Ron said dubiously. "But how often are we going to find aging potions that pass protected areas?"
"Still, I don't think that adding two years to our age forever would be such a good idea," Harry said, looking distinctly ruffled at the idea.
"I still think that this is the best potion to use, but let's just put a bookmark on it, shall we? I mean, if we find a better potion, then that's good. If not, we return to this and just think of a way to get around the 'aging permanently' business," Hermione said. She placed a folded sheet of parchment onto the page and shut the book.
"Oh no, what time is it?" Harry asked suddenly. The invisibility cloak moved about a bit.
"It's nearly six," Ron answered. "Why?"
"I forgot that I had Quidditch practice today!" Harry bolted out of the cloak. "I'll leave this here with Ron and run through the back of the shelves, making it seem as if I came from the far end of the library. I'll just see you guys at the common room later, okay?" he said breathlessly.
"Sure," Hermione gave him a nod, and he sprinted off, disappearing behind the towering bookcases.
"You know, the Aevum sounds a tad scary," Ron piped up as Hermione picked up another encyclopedia.
"Doesn't it?" Hermione said distractedly as she peered at the peeling letters engraved on the hardbound book. "Well, slicing off a part of your finger or something sounds horrible," she muttered. "But we have to do something about Sirius' case." She squinted at the words on the cover. "Poisonous Potions and Poisons. No. . . ." she cleared her throat and opened another book.
"I know this will sound spineless after all we've done in our past four years here at Hogwarts, but can't we just let the Ministry of Magic handle this?" Ron said with a sigh.
Hermione laughed quietly. "I guess we could, but most of them are convinced that Sirius Black is on the Dark side. Only a handful of people know the truth, the three of us being part of that handful." She suddenly exhaled wearily. "And Dumbledore too. I wonder what he's doing about it."
"And I wonder what Fudge has to say about this," Ron said angrily. Cornelius Fudge was the present Minister of Magic, and a blockhead, as Ron put it. An incident in the hospital wing last year had made Fudge extremely unpopular with a few people.
"I suppose he's overjoyed." Hermione scowled and shook her head. "He's being really . . . dense about You-Know-Who's reappearance."
"Couldn't have said it better." The book with the Aevum's procedure vanished beneath the cloak.
"Hermione, this thing looks awfully complicated," Ron blurted in shock as he read the long process. "This'll take weeks!"
"Can't be any more difficult than the Polyjuice Potion," Hermione shrugged matter-of-factly. "The ingredients won't be too hard; some of them are found in the student cupboard. The trickier ones . . . Well, there's always Professor Snape's stores."
"This stealing business is tricky. You don't think this is turning into a habit, do you?" Ron wondered.
Hermione grinned. "Let's hope not."
The two of them spent the rest of the afternoon and the earlier parts of the evening searching for other aging potions that would work. They stumbled across a few, but none of them actually passed age-protected lines, doors, et al. The last resort was the Aevum.
Hermione glanced out the large, glass windows that stretched twenty feet until the ceiling. The sky was dark and cloudy, and the snow had begun to fall again.
"I guess we have to use the Aevum," she murmured absentmindedly as she watched the snowflakes descend in pearly sheets.
"Are you kidding? I'm not hacking my finger off!" Ron cried, earning a "Shhh!" from Hermione.
"Maybe hair would work just as well," she said with a shrug. "And I'm thinking of a way to alter the potion's effect; I think that there might be another way to actually use the concoction without aging permanently." She reread the formula.
"Wait . . . The Aevum is an Ingested potion," she said, her eyes misting up in thought. "I read about how ingested potions work. . . . They work better than the other kind, because their effect is internal. But external won't be such a bad idea; the body's physical appearance is external after all. . . . How do you change the body's appearance temporarily by external means? . . . That's it!" she suddenly exclaimed, scrambling from her seat on the wooden floorboards.
"What is?" Ron asked bemusedly, rising as well in rustles of cloth.
Hermione turned to him, her eyes glittering with excitement. "Since the body's appearance is physical, and you could change your chemistry by physical means, we'll just have to make the Aevum an On-Contact potion!" she gushed eagerly. "But still, if we did make it an On-Contact potion, it would still make us age permanently, right? So what do we do to make it temporary? Put it in a charm that we can take off whenever we want to return to normal!" She started murmuring to herself, making gestures with her hands and pacing.
"I suppose we'll have to add an ingredient that will make it wear off. . . . We could put that either on the charm, or in the formula itself. . . ."
"Hermione," Ron interrupted, "I'm glad you found a potion and all, and I really congratulate you. Now can we go?" he said, educing a laugh.
"Okay, okay," Hermione relented. "But I'm checking this book out, plus a few others. . . . I want to read on the proper way to make an On-Contact potion. . . . And I also need a book on charms and on ingredients." She darted back and forth between the shelves, pulling heavy volumes out. After a few minutes, she rushed back to Ron with a pile of books in her arms.
"I'll go through the back of the library like Harry did. Meet you by the shelves in the Muggle Studies Section," Ron said as he took off the invisibility cloak and handed it to Hermione for keeping. She tucked it beneath her robes, gave him a swift nod and headed to the counter, handing the thick volumes to Madam Pince. After the checkout process had been completed, Ron ambled over to Hermione and gestured to the door. Together, they walked out and headed back to the Gryffindor common room.
The common room was bright and cheerful as they entered, offsetting the darkness outside. Fred and George were once again up to their antics, having hoodwinked Seamus into eating a treacle tart with an Intoxication Charm on it. The boy was seated by the fireplace, his eyes glazed over with drunkenness as he boomed stories of the Irish countryside and the pretty hometown lasses he left behind.
"Have you two seen Harry?" Ron asked his brothers as he approached the fire.
"Yeah. He did a bit of extra training," Fred yelled over the din, covering his ears as the people roared with laughter.
"Okay," Ron said, moving back towards Hermione. She was still passing through the portrait hole.
"How do you plan to concentrate in this racket?" he asked, gesticulating to the people crowded around the hearth. He made a face as shrieks of laughter greeted Seamus' last remark.
"I'll stay near the end over there," Hermione replied as she moved towards her favorite armchair by the window. She curled her legs beneath her and sat on the cushion comfortably, opening the heavy manual on On-Contact potions.
"You know, maybe asking Professor Snape would be easier," she said as Ron settled in the sofa across her.
He snorted. "And have him snap at you. 'Miss Granger, much as this curiosity on the topic piques my interest, you are prying into matters that you shouldn't be looking into. Now, I'm too lazy to tell you about On-Contact Potions, and I don't want to add to your already sizable knowledge on my subject because Gryffindors do not deserve to know more than Slytherins. So leave me be and don't bother me again.'"
"That was cruel," Hermione remarked, torn between amusement and disgust.
"What can I say; I don't like him very much," Ron shrugged. "Don't like" was an understatement.
Just as Hermione was about to banter in return, they spotted Harry descending down the staircase. He saw them as well and approached, looking tired and sleepy.
"Quidditch practice was grueling," he said by way of greeting. "So, what have I missed?" he asked as he sat beside Ron.
"Well, we were talking about how much Ron hates Snape," Hermione supplied. "But on to the important things. Firstly, we are using the Aevum, but we're using a different kind. . . ." She went on, explaining how she was going to alter the potion's form into an On-Contact potion. She also explained her guess on changing the chemistry by outward means, and using a charm so that the effects aren't permament.
"Of course, we'll need an ingredient that'll make the whole thing temporary, so I'll have to research on that too." Hermione concluded her explanation with a pat on the oversized encyclopedias she had brought along from the library.
"We'll help you look for the ingredient," Harry offered with a yawn.
"Good. We'll be able to enter Moonshine Tavern soon enough. Hopefully before Christmas break's over," Hermione said briskly.
"And hopefully, Sirius' case doesn't worsen within the vacation," Ron added. "By the way," he said, lowering his voice, "have you received anything from him yet?"
Harry shook his head tiredly. "No. I'm beginning to worry," he admitted.
"But didn't you say that Dumbledore was keeping touch with him too?" Hermione whispered, leaning in as to catch their words.
"Yeah," Harry nodded.
"Then wouldn't he say something if ever Sirius was in trouble? I hardly think that Dumbledore wouldn't know," she suggested matter-of-factly.
"I guess so," Harry agreed, relaxing visibly. "Dumbledore's really a great man."
"Yeah, he knows what he's doing," Ron said, obviously remembering the conversation with Fudge in the hospital wing. "He's wise. He knows that we should all unite to fight You-Know-Who. I mean, Fudge obviously thinks that giants don't mesh well with us wizards, and he thinks that dementors protect us. Talk about demented."
"I suppose it isn't Fudge's fault. I mean, he just doesn't know better, I guess." Harry proposed. "But there's no denying that Dumbledore would make a better Minister of Magic."
"I'm happy Dumbledore's our headmaster. He's jolly good at running the school," Ron said.
"That's it!" Hermione suddenly exclaimed, startling them both. She had gone back to reading while the two boys were talking, and obviously she had discovered something in the process.
"What is?" Ron asked for the second time that day.
"I could use a Crystallizing Charm for the potion so we could hang it by a chain," she said animatedly. "Now, all we have to do is search for the ingredient to make it wear off. . . ."
"When are you going to start making this potion?" Harry asked.
"Whenever I can manage to steal from Professsor Snape's stores." She suddenly looked worried. "I don't know when I'll be able to manage sneaking into his dungeon without being detected. School's out, so we can't distract him during class again."
"And I think he stays in his dungeon all the time. It certainly seems like it," Ron said as apprehension visibly dawned on his features.
"What about on Christmas day when we all gather to eat?" Hermione suggested.
"He'll be at the tables. It's a perfect opportunity," Harry agreed.
"But we can't be too late, or we'll look conspicuous," Ron put in.
Hermione nodded. "Christmas isn't too far off, anyway. We could wait until then. Tomorrow, I'll get the ingredients we can find in the student cupboards."
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A/N: Ah, finally, the chapters focusing on only one person are finished. The next chapter will have a discussion with Professor Snape and Hermione.
In response to LilyAyl. . . . I always imagined that Professor Snape would want to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts because he knows that he's got hands-on experience, and he thinks that he could teach the students to fend against Dark magic like no one else could. :) Honestly, I think that an ex-Death Eater DADA teacher would be better than having an Auror DADA teacher. And yes, Hermione will see the books later on.
Another thought . . . I think that Snape is a powerful wizard, because in the Dueling Club in the 2nd book, he managed to cast the finite incantatem and stop all the spells in the Great Hall. An idea for another chapter. :)