Chapter Eleven

"thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land." Deuteronomy 23:7

A month later the Aurors and other members of the mission were due to meet at the Ministry to apparate together in a team to the outlying reaches of the Northern Polar Cap.

Severus had been forced to postpone the wedding until he was due back and the pain of it lodged in his chest like a dull ache. He had hidden it from Hermione as much as possible, not wanting to make her feel guilty nor spoil the time they had together before he left but she was withdrawn and distracted much of the time anyway, seemingly absorbed in some new experiments that her and her team at the Ministry were working on.

She had not come out of her study since before breakfast that morning and he had to leave soon. He stood in front of the fire in the library, restlessly drumming his long fingers on the mantel and watching the clock. Surely she would come out of her study so he could say good-bye? He couldn't bear to leave without holding her one last time. He hadn't been able to share any of the details of the mission with him which meant she had very much been shut out of his life for the past month. It also meant she had no idea of the team's meeting time but she knew it was that day.

With a last glance at the clock, he swore quietly under his breath and quickly strode to the wing of the manor that he'd given her for her own personal use. Softly he tapped on the door of her study. No response. "Hermione," he called in a low voice. He knew she was in there. It was her favorite place if she wanted solitude. They held each other's studies inviolate and so he had never intruded there before and nor had she ever been in his study or even so much as knocked on its door. "Hermione, it's time for me to leave," he added in the same low tone.

Hermione looked at the door from across her desk with sad eyes. One part of her wanted to leap across the room, fling open the door, grab him and hold him so tightly that he couldn't go anywhere without her attached to him. Instead, she propped her sharp chin in one hand and sat very still. She honestly didn't think she could say goodbye without breaking down.

Severus rested his forehead against the door and briefly closed his stinging eyes, one hand clenched in a fist against the solid wood. He wanted to plead with her to open the door but he knew making her angry was more likely to work. "Hermione, you're being childish!" he said with a touch of imperiousness.

Hermione gave the door a filthy look. "I am not!" she muttered.

"Hermione, if you don't open this door I will break it open," he said, his tone cool.

"Oh, you would not!" Hermione replied more loudly, her eyes narrowing.

When nothing happened, Severus closed his eyes again and took a deep breath. "Hermione, please!" he said. There was something in the tone of his voice - a slight catch - that suddenly broke her down and with a quick flick of her wand, she opened the door. It swung silently open, and Hermione got up from her desk and walked over to where he was standing looking at her with hungry eyes.

He held her so tightly, Hermione could feel every familiar muscle, bone and contour of his wiry torso and arms against her. "We won't be any longer than a fortnight," he said in his velvet and granite voice, next to her ear. She nodded but didn't say anything. Sometimes, what she felt for him felt bigger than herself - as though her body simply couldn't contain it and it would break her wide open one day and scatter her into a million pieces.

"Don't transform. Please - not while I'm not here. Just lock yourself in a big room in the manor or go to the Malfoy Manor or Potter or the Weasleys," he rasped in a tone as close to pleading as he ever got. Hermione realized she was shaking or was it Severus? She suddenly realized they both were. She grasped the silky hair at the nape of his neck and caressed it, afraid she might never be able to again. He lowered his dark head and buried his face against the soft, smooth skin of her throat, breathing in her scent. He lifted his head again just long enough to kiss her softly, then said achingly, "I have to go. They're expecting me," and tore himself away from her. A cold wind blew between them and for just a second they stood staring at each other, then Severus wheeled around and walked swiftly away, his black cloak billowing behind him.

Hermione felt odd, watching him go. As though she was looking at him down a tunnel or a telescope round the wrong way. All her consciousness was focused on one point, Severus' retreating back. Severus simply concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other to prevent himself suddenly whirling around again and heading straight back to her. He thanked the gods that he would soon be forcibly distracted by the mission; it was the only way he'd make it through the separation.

Hermione waited she knew Severus would have apparated off to mission headquarters, then went to her private dressing room and took out the heavy winter robes she had obtained weeks ago. She had spent the last month researching the North Polar regions in order to go on a private mission there. Her friends may think she was better off in England but she was damned if she was going to sit around at home and be useless, especially when Severus was in danger. She knew arguing with them all was futile, so she had calmly gone about making her own plans.

She had bought herself an invisibility cloak and would simply follow the mission from a distance, keeping tabs on their activities. If they ran into trouble that only she could help them with, they were hardly likely to send her home if she revealed herself at that point. All in all, she doubted anyone would ever realize she had been gone. She had been working at home with Luna running the experiments on the electro-magnetic fields so she would not be missed at the Ministry, and Harry and Ron had both been recruited for the mission itself.

She knew she had to apparate straight out over the Norwegian Sea from England to cross over into the Arctic Circle. She passed between Norway, Iceland and Greenland on the way but would never notice it. She was well prepared with charms to counteract the cold, transform ice and snow into all sorts of useful tools and navigate as well as having small vials of potions should she get sick or injured. She imagined the mission would have made similar preparations.

Feeling quite calm and well-prepared, Hermione fixed the point on the map she wished to go to which was a 100m or so from the North Pole and apparated.

Hermione felt herself falling and falling as the cold struck her like a slap across the face. She should have simply landed on snow and ice almost immediately but there was nothing beneath her feet and it was pitch black; the kind of black that makes you feel blind. Hermione's heart began hammering in her chest. Something was very, very wrong and she had no time to think. Her breath was forced out of her body by the speed of the fall. Suddenly her back hit something solid and she felt herself sliding on a terrifyingly fast surface.

She lost any sense of time as she continued on her headlong slide, seemingly into the center of the earth. Every moment she expected to hit something and be knocked out or killed but it never happened. Gradually she noticed that the darkness was lightening but it was so slowly that it took her a long time to realize that she was seeing dark greys as well as inky, bottomless blacks.

She began to have some hope as the light slowly increased. She still had no idea of time - it could have been ten minutes sliding downwards or ten hours.

Gradually the dark greys gave way to ice blues and greens and pure whites. Hermione finally realized she was sliding down ice tunnels. As the light increased, her eyes widened. Behind the walls of delicately shaded ice she could see moving shadows. They looked like sea creatures but magical ones - sea serpents the size of skyscrapers, horned whales, giant octopi, huge jelly-fish the size of a human house and a race of merpeople the size of giants. Strange lights winked through the ice walls making spectacular shows along the tunnels that Hermione barely got a glimpse off as she whizzed breathlessly by.

Finally, after feeling like she had been sliding along ice tunnels for centuries, Hermione's descent slowed as the tunnels became less steep. She was gently dumped in a pile of snow at the end of the tunnel. Slowly she stood up, her balance unsteady after such a roller coaster ride and dusted the snow off.

Her mouth fell open as she looked around her. She was in an immense ice cave underground. A cave so immense she could not see its top nor the other end. Growing up from the bare ice floor were patches of ice crystals of the same pale blue and green of the tunnels. The walls that she could see were glowing in places from the same eerie lights that showed through in the tunnels as well. The place was silent, a silence so deep that it almost hurt Hermione's ears.

Hermione took a few steps forward and as she did so she suddenly heard the first sound she'd heard since falling. It was a quiet whisper but it sounded loud because everything else was so silent. Hermione's head whipped around as she tried to find its source but it seemed to be coming from all around her.

Then suddenly, she was surrounded.

Hermione's lips parted in astonishment for several reasons. Firstly, because the creatures that surrounded her looked so familiar. Secondly, because it was obvious they were magical and could apparate as she herself could; lastly, because they were so beautiful.

The men and women who surrounded her had excessively fine features, white skin, colourless eyes, fine white hair, high cheekbones, and long, fragile, slender bones. Hermione frankly stared, then looked fixedly at one of the men's hair. She only knew one other person with moonlight fine, pale hair like that. She believed she was looking at Draco's ancestors.

"You are not one of us. How did you find this place?" the man whose hair she had been rudely staring at asked her.

"You speak English!" Hermione said, blinking in amazement.

"No. You speak our language that we gave the Anglo Saxons before recorded time," he replied coolly.

"You're faery folk?" Hermione said with a frown.

"That's what you called us," he replied again, without blinking.

Hermione found their unblinking stares un-nerving. "Did you retreat here?" she asked curiously.

"Yes. When Saint Patrick brought his blasted Christianity into the green isles, we fled. It was a new magic that challenged ours and we did not like it," the man explained with a sneer, the first hint at feeling she had seen.

"I came here by accident. I was aiming for the Pole," Hermione said, hoping they could help her.

"The Pole moves," he said.

"It moves?" Hermione repeated disbelievingly.

"It's magnetic and the earth rotates, so of course the Pole moves," the man said as though Hermione must be very stupid. At that point, Hermione did feel stupid.

"No wonder my apparating didn't work. Its navigation is based on the earth's magnetic fields," she muttered to herself.

"Why are you here at all?" he asked, ignoring her last comment.

"I'm trying to get information on a great enemy of the wizarding community. There have been strange Aurora Borealis in the sky recently and we think it may be a sign that he's on the move again," she said, wondering if they had information and if they would be willing to pass it on.

Whispering broke out amongst the hundred or so people gathered there. "We've seen this strange Aurora. It's bright red and stagnant and doesn't follow the sun's natural phases," the man said calmly.

"Yes! Have you seen any strangers in the area recently?" she asked eagerly.

"You're not one of us," the man said unperturbedly. "And we don't trust you with what we know."

Hermione's shoulders slumped; so much for that idea. Suddenly she remembered Draco. "No, I'm not but I know someone who is descended from your kind. Would you speak to him?"

A whisper of curiosity broke out among the crowd again. "Yes, if you brought him here," the man replied.

"I can do that but how do I find you again? I only got here by accident the first time," Hermione reasoned.

The man reached down and broke off a green crystal from a patch near his feet. "Take this with you. It won't melt, its made of crystal not water. When you apparate, it will pull you directly back here. That's what we grow them for."

Hermione accepted the crystal with thanks. "Can I apparate back to England from here?" The man simply nodded. "Okay, I hope to be back inside of 24 hours. Thank you," she said, before vanishing before their eyes.