Title: Artificium Magum
Author: Calliopeia17
Summary: The Slytherins are trying to murder Harry, Hermione has a Magical Theory book that holds all the answers – if she knows where to look, and Snape seems to be putting himself in more and more danger – for what? There's a plot to make Harry immortal, the trials of being Head Girl, and Hermione hates Snape…doesn't she? A novel-length 7th year SSHG fic.
Rating: Will eventually be R
Pairing: Snape/Hermione
Warnings: Pre-fic character death. Sorry, Draco fans. I don't want to scare anyone away with that, but though this is not yet AU, I'm pretty sure it will be as soon as HBP comes out. There will eventually be teacher/student relationships, obviously non-canon ones, and some violence.
Reviews: Please! Feedback is good!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. That honor belongs to JKR and Warner Bros.
A/N: Many thanks to my lovely beta, beautifulrain.
"Hermione!" came Ron Weasley's voice from across the narrow street. "Hurry up and get over here!"
Hermione laughed as she ran to meet her friends. "It's brilliant to see you all! Did you all have good summers?"
"As good as can be expected, with all those piles of homework McGonagall and Snape assigned," Ron replied, grinning.
Harry smiled too, though he looked as though his mind was elsewhere. "You know well enough how my summer's been, Hermione—you've written practically every day."
"I was worried about you," Hermione replied honestly. "I didn't mean to nag; I'm sorry if it bothered you."
"No, it was nice to be getting news for once," Harry said, rolling his eyes and looking—thank Merlin—a bit more awake. Hermione had honestly been worried about him. He'd faced down Voldemort once again the previous June, at Hogsmeade—it seemed to be becoming a yearly tradition—and this time the battle had seen more violence than Hermione thought any sixteen-year-old should have had to have been party to. Harry had killed for the first time—oh, not with the Killing Curse, of course; he'd used magic to pull a wall down on top of Lucius Malfoy. Harry'd been trying to save Ron's life, he hadn't meant to kill Malfoy at all—at least, Hermione preferred to believe that—but there was no denying the blood on his hands now, and it had aged him more than Hermione had ever thought possible.
The entire fiasco of the battle was only worsened by the subsequent death of Draco Malfoy. The idiot boy had been fighting on the side of the Death Eaters, though there'd been no Dark Mark on his body; she'd looked herself. Still, Hermione had known him since she was eleven, and even if he was a nasty, elitist git she didn't think he had deserved to die. The sight of Harry's face as he stood over Malfoy's body—unmarked and looking only slightly surprised; he'd been hit with an Auror's stray Avada Kedavra—had been the most chilling experience of Hermione's life, worse even than watching the elder Malfoy's body disappear under a pile of bricks and be removed, hours later, broken and lifeless as his son. It was only when Hermione had seen the thestrals pulling the carriage towards the Hogwarts Express that she had realized that nothing would be the same again, and that Harry would need his friends more than ever.
She and Ron and Harry had written this summer more than they ever had before, frantically, almost, sharing with the others what little information each could find. Ron knew the most—with his parents and four older brothers active Order members, the Burrow had become almost as much a hub of activity as Grimmauld Place. The most Hermione had had to report recently had been the arrival of her Head Girl badge, and Harry his matching Head Boy one. Hermione had been surprised by that at first—why give Harry more responsibility than he already carried on his shoulders?—but then she realized that there were any number of possible reasons.
First and foremost, of course, was that the Hogwarts students would almost automatically follow the Head Boy. Hermione didn't doubt for an instant that Dumbledore was preparing for war, within the walls of Hogwarts itself if it had to be. Then too, there was fact that Harry deserved the honor, after all he'd been through.
Now Harry just looked resigned, and so, so old.
Hermione's train of thought was interrupted by a shout from Mrs. Weasley. "Oh, Hermione, dear, it's so good to see you. Congratulations on being made Head Girl, but you deserve it of course, it's not as if we've had any doubts you'd make it." She enfolded Hermione suddenly into a crushing embrace, which Hermione tentatively returned.
When Mrs. Weasley finally released her, Hermione saw Ginny for the first time since June as well, and stood up to hug the younger girl. "Summer been all right, Ginny?" she asked, and Ginny nodded.
"Brilliant, really. And Ron's finally decided that I just might be grown up enough to read a few of your letters—the ones where you talk about--" she lowered her voice and cast a furtive glance at Mrs. Weasley "—the Order."
Hermione grinned at that. Ron's overprotectiveness towards his younger sister had been the stuff of legend, up until last June's battle in Hogsmeade, where Ginny had held her own in combat against a full-grown Death Eater and Ron was forced to admit that Ginny might be more grown up than he had wanted to believe.
"How long have you all been here?" Hermione finally asked.
"Oh, we just arrived," Mrs. Weasley answered for all of them. "But when I talked to your parents, they said you'd arrived this morning."
"What've you been doing all day? You can't have been shopping for that long," Ron declared, sounding scandalized.
"I wasn't, Ronald. I was at the bookstore," she replied.
"Still shopping," commented Harry with a grin.
"I didn't see you in Flourish and Blotts," Ginny commented. "I went over there first."
"I was at Medea's—Alexandrine Books. It's right on the corner of Litre Alley," she added, seeing Ginny and the boys look puzzled.
"Who's Medea?" Ginny asked.
"She graduated before you came. She was in Ravenclaw," Hermione answered. "And I stopped at the Apothecary, too," she added as an afterthought. "Snape was there, so I left."
"I don't blame you," Ron said snidely. "I'd try to stay away from the man too. He was up at the Burrow the other day—came to see Charlie, he said, though I didn't hear a civil word out of him the entire time he was there. I answered the door when he knocked—it was the most scarring experience of my life." He gave a dramatic shudder, and, for the first time since June, Hermione saw Harry smile.
"What did he need from Charlie?" Harry asked. It was, Hermione knew, one of those questions that he didn't expect an answer to—the three of them had spent the summer trying to piece together what little bits of information they could garner into a coherant picture of Voldemort's movements and the actions the Order was taking to counter them. It was a doomed endeavor, Hermione knew. Not even Fred and George, full-fledged Order members and successful businessmen, but still as light-hearted as ever, would let slip information, or even donate an Extendable Ear or two to the cause.
"Something about dragons, I would imagine," Ron said. "I wasn't about to ask him—he looked like he'd swallowed a lemon the entire time. And he called me a dunderhead."
Even Harry laughed at that, and Hermione couldn't help but say, "You are a dunderhead, Ron."
"But we love you anyway," Ginny added with a grin.
"Actually," Hermione said consideringly, "when I saw him at Slug and Jigger's, he was talking about making Translation Potions from dragon's blood."
"Eurgh," said Ron, making a face. "Can you imagine drinking anything's blood?"
Hermione felt a twinge of annoyance. "Translation is the first of Dumbledore's twelve uses of dragon blood. If a drinker consumes the undiluted blood, especially that which is fresh from the heart of the dragon, he will be able to speak in any language of human or beast." She knew her voice was taking on the lecturing tone that Harry and Ron always rolled their eyes at, but really, it was better for them to know than not.
"Snape was drinking dragon's blood?" Ron asked, looking slightly ill. "I know he looks like a vampire, but—"
"I highly doubt that Snape was drinking undiluted dragon's blood," Hermione couldn't help but interrupt, "as it's generally considered an inconvenience to be able to understand everything anything is saying, all the time. You'd be walking in a forest, and every birdsong would sound like words to you, every noise an animal made would be in a sentence. All the time, forever. Most people who drink it go insane. Besides, he was talking about a Temporary Translation Potion. It uses dragon's blood, but in much smaller amounts."
"Why would Snape want to translate anything?" Harry mused.
"Who knows, mate?" Ron answered. "Who knows why Snape does anything?"
That seemed to be the general consensus as the three of them left to go buy their few remaining school supplies, and Ginny wandered off with Mrs. Weasley, purportedly to go shopping for a pair of dress robes at Gladrags. Harry seemed brighter already for the company of his friends, which lightened some of the worry in Hermione's heart. Perhaps things were finally looking brighter.
It wasn't until that evening, curled up in bed in the Leaky Cauldron room she was sharing with Ginny, that Hermione had the chance to take a closer look at the Artificium Magum. She pulled open the heavy cover and began to read in the dim candlelight.
It is one of the great mysteries of Wizardkind that we do not understand whence our Powers come. This Book gathers all the research collected on the subject to the present day and attempts to draw conclusions about the source of our Power and the manners in which it is applied. It is known that Magic is an Energy as heat or flame, one which some ability in the mind of the Witch or Wizard allows us to utilize using only our Wills and a focusing device, id est a Wand or Staff. Magic is a product of the mind's ability to control the Magical Energy that exists both within us and the World around us. To be Magical is to be attuned to this Energy, to be capable of feeling it and manipulating it; to be Muggle is to be unable to feel or use this Power. Magic itself creates Witches and Wizards, and being in the Presence of Magic while in the Womb of one's Mother is perhaps the best indicator of whether a child be born Magical or not. Muggle-born Wizards and Witches were often exposed to Magic before Birth, by their Mothers passing through Magical locations or fields. Children born to Magical parents are always in Magical fields by nature of the Spells which their Parents perform, and the lingering Power in Magical houses and towns.
Hermione sighed deeply as she sat the book down, marking the page with a strip of scarlet and gold-striped ribbon that she always kept on hand. It was, as Medea had warned her, not an easy read. It wasn't as if Hermione would ever be scared away from a book by big words, but the cramped print and the dim light was beginning to make her head ache, and she longed for the Hogwarts library, brilliantly lit at every hour of the day and late into the night. Well, she'd be there tomorrow.
Murmuring a 'goodnight' to Ginny, who mumbled something unintelligible back and rolled over, Hermione blew out the candle and pulled the covers over her head. She fell asleep instantly.
Hermione slept late the next morning, late enough that by the time Hermione, Harry, and the Weasley's had barrelled through the barrier to Platform 9 ¾, everyone else was already on the train. The four of them jumped on, dragging trunks and animal cages behind them, and made their way through the passageway, searching for empty seats. Nearly all the compartments were full, and so by the time they came to an empty one and stowed their luggage, the Hogwarts Express had already lurched into motion.
"You know," Hermione pointed out, "we really should be going to the Prefect's car."
"That's when work starts," groaned Ron, who, like his younger sister, was one of the Gryffindor Prefects for the year.
"Oh, let's just stay here for a moment," said Harry, "for old times' sake." Ginny nodded her agreement, and the four of them sat in silence for a few minutes.
"Who's the seventh-year Slytherin prefect this year?" Ron asked out of the blue. Harry winced visibly. It would have been Draco Malfoy, they all knew, but he was dead, and Harry blamed himself.
"Theodore Nott," Hermione answered shakily, trying to ignore the implications and force the image of Draco's corpse out of her head. "Are you all right, Harry?"
"Yeah," he said, but he sounded slightly sick.
"D'you want to talk about it, Harry? You haven't, you know, and it might make it easier…." Hermione knew she was acting far too motheringly for Harry to ever confide in her, and wasn't surprised when he shook his head.
"I don't want to talk. It's fine, you guys. It'll be fine."
"Come on," said Ginny, standing up. "Let's go to the Prefect's car. We've got work to do anyway. She picked up Pigwidgeon's cage and carried it into the corridor. The four of them were halfway down the hall when a strange noise, like the ripping of a giant piece of fabric, came from the compartment they had just vacated.
"What was that?" Ron asked tentatively.
"Let's go see," Harry said, a firmness in his voice that sounded to Hermione as though it came from taking charge of something, anything. Maybe Dumbledore had been right to make him Head Boy after all.
Harry through open the door to the compartment, and didn't make a sound. Hermione, peering in over his arm, couldn't help but gasp. The seats, the fabric on the walls, everything in the compartment was slashed as though it had been attacked with knives. Stuffing poured out of the huge tears in the seat coverings, and swathes of fabric hung from the walls.
"Rending Hex," she heard herself say. "It was cast on the entire compartment. It would have killed us if we'd been in there."
Ron's face was white, and Ginny looked queasy. Harry still didn't speak.
"It's illegal," Ginny said. "Whoever cast it—"
"No one cast it while we were nearby," Harry said suddenly. "You'd have to be inside the compartment to cast it on the entire room. And even then there'd have to be some kind of time trigger."
Hermione flinched inwardly at how easily Harry could spout off facts about Dark Magic. She'd sent him books over the summer—reading for the DA, she'd told him, in case they needed to start it up again—but it still made him seem old, somehow.
"It might not have been meant for us at all, mate," Ron said finally. "If it had a time trigger, I mean."
"Ron, who else on the Hogwarts Express would anyone be trying to kill?" Hermione said testily.
"It doesn't matter," Harry said. "Everyone's all right; let's just let it go."
Hermione was aghast. "Harry, someone just tried to kill you!"
"Voldemort's been trying to kill me for seventeen years now, Hermione, remember. It's nothing new."
Hermione couldn't think of anything to say to that. It was true, of course, but it didn't make it any easier for her to bear. It was just that he was being so—resigned, like he had given up, like he was expecting to die and it didn't matter anymore. That scared Hermione more than Voldemort ever could.
Ron put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Let's go to the Prefect's car, mate."
Harry nodded. "Yeah. Good idea."
They walked past a few open compartments—one was packed with Slytherins, Hermione saw, talking among themselves in low voices, with the new seventh-year Prefect, Theodore Nott, at their center. The one good thing about the entire mess, Hermione reflected, was that at least Nott wasn't sympathetic to Voldemort, per se. Certainly not to the degree that Draco Malfoy had been. The Slytherins went silent and refused to meet any of the Gryffindors' eyes as they walked by, then began whispering again as soon as Hermione, who was at the end of the group, was past. It was an eerie feeling, but she put it from her mind.
By the time the train arrived at Hogwats, the Rending Hex was, if not forgotten, at least in the back of all their minds as they handed out stacks of timetables and class information. Being Head Girl, Hermione realized very quickly, was more than just a nod to her class standing. People respected her, and she had work to do, and all she could think was that she'd better live up to her duties. This was going to be a difficult year.
Enjoyed? Please review!
Notes to reviewers:
I-LUV-ILC: Thanks! Nice to hear from you!
Dafina: Thanks so much! I do write original fiction- nothing published or anything though. As for your comments on my Beethoven fic, I don't think anything serious is coming out of it, though I suppose it's possible. Also, thank you SO MUCH for recommending Beethoven's Last Night- as soon as I read your review, I listened to a few sample clips, fell in love with it, and bought a CD. It really is great!
westdean: Thank you, and thanks for recommending Ashwinder. I haven't read much on it - I only go there when recommendations lead me to it - but it seems like a really great place to archive this, so I really appreciate the suggestion and will probably be up there soon.