Title: Charmed I'm sure
Author: Dru
Genre: Romance/Supernatural
Summary: An inventor's latest product, intended for household use, may just have the potential to be a Death Eater detector; while the inventor herself has the potential to sneak into the heart of our favorite greasy git. Snape/OC
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing…just thought you should know that
A/N: In case anyone was wondering, Paris is the name of someone from Romeo and Juliet as is Tybalt. Also Claudio is from Much Ado About Nothing. Blame Shakespeare. Now, onto the main attraction-enjoy!
Right in front of her the world was coming to an end. People were screaming, running about like little lost ants. The vast crevice opened in the Earth and then proceeded to devour the whole of London, leaving nothing but a gaping black slash behind. Everything went black, stayed that way for a moment and then the credits began to roll.
It was still rather dark, but with the added light coming from the credits along with the lights running along the aisles Fennel Royston was able to make out the silhouettes of the seats and the ramp leading the exit. She joined the crowd making it's way outside into the brightly lit lobby, the smell of popcorn assaulting her nose.
The movie hadn't been that good she decided as she walked out into the summer heat, quickly replacing her glasses with sunglasses to avoid having to squint in the bright light. She figured that she should stop going to all of these Muggle movies, they usually turned out to be pretty bad and not worth shelling out the amounts of money necessary from her stash of Muggle currency.
Quickly getting into a secluded place, far away from prying eyes of the Muggle nature, she apparated back to her shabby little house in a small wizarding community out in the countryside. Waiting for her there were her two lazy Maine Coon cats, Tybalt and Claudio, that did nothing but sit on her sagging porch and stare at people walking by plus her Cocker Spaniel who had more than enough energy for him and the two cats.
"I bet you two missed me, didn't you?" she said, addressing the two lethargic creatures. In reply they simply looked up at her and then returned their heads back to the dusty floor. "Of course you did. I could go missing and you wouldn't notice until suppertime,"
She opened her front door and was immediately greeted by her overenthusiastic dog. His idea of greeting was running at her, jumping on her at full force and nearly knocking her to the ground. Luckily for her she was used to it by now and he couldn't make her fall down any more. Not for lack of trying on his part. "Now, you missed me, Paris, didn't you?" she asked, knowing that he actually did, unlike her other pets. Fennel petted him as she went inside the house, heading down underground into her old root cellar.
It wasn't actually a root cellar anymore; she had fixed it up a bit to serve as her own workshop. The shabbiness of the place still echoed the rest of her house, despite her best efforts to make it look nicer. She just wasn't very organized. Between the haphazardly stacked pile of potions, and leaky cauldron that she didn't have the money to replace it was a wonder she hadn't blown her house into the next town or even further. Ironically she went to the movies often and had a vast collection of novels, but refused to shell out the necessary Galleons to keep from causing a potentially deadly explosion. At this point in time she was simply using the miracle material of duct tape to keep her cauldron in check. Luckily it didn't react to any of the potions she made on a regular basis, although she had to keep replacing it since it didn't work so well when it got wet in the damp cellar.
Lighting her Haute Lamp, a personal invention of hers that was basically a glowing giant mushroom, she began to work on her latest project. Lately she had been working on a detector for large concentrations of magic; it's practical use was to check to see if the wards you had places around a house were still working and hadn't worn out. In these current times, some people were anxious over the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and were getting increasingly paranoid, as attacks on Muggle-borns and Half bloods had been increasing over the summer now that everyone knew he was back. Yes indeed, she was confident that this product would sell very well. The detector itself was a small black stone with a rune carved into it, which would glow bright purple when it sensed a ward. Right now she was experimenting with different potions to make the rune glow different colors, she was trying to get blue and green shades to appeal more to the male customers. She was considering making some that glowed two colors, so she could make some to represent the Hogwarts houses. People's loyalties with their houses didn't die when they left the school.
And so, over the next couple of hours she became engrossed in her potion making, trying to find the elusive colors. The best she could come up with was a sort of deep dark purple which was bordering on black, which made it hard to tell when it was even glowing. So she really hadn't made any progress. Fennel decided to give up for the day; she might have more luck if she tried to tackle it in the morning with a fresh night's sleep.
"You see I'm actually quite stuck on this problem I have," Hestia Jones explained to the woman sitting across from her. They were both sitting at a charming little café, Madam Rosenburg's, in Diagon Alley. Although it was early in the morning they were both having an alcoholic beverage. Hestia was drinking a Bloody Harry, a drink similar in composition to the Bloody Mary of the Muggles.
"What?" her companion, an amateur inventor named Fennel Royston, asked, taking a sip of her Viva Mañana, which resembled a Muggle drink, called the Piña Colada.
"I was working on something that would detect, well people who had high concentrations of magic on their bodies," she elaborated, practically gulping down her drink. "It hasn't been going so well,"
"People with high concentrations of magic on themselves. That would mean that they would have some type of very powerful spell on their skin, or clothing," Fennel said, trying to work it out and deduct whom Hestia wanted to detect. "The spell would have to be on constantly for it to work, like a tattoo,"
"Emm…" she replied, worried that she would figure out exactly who she was trying to find. She wasn't entirely sure she could trust Fennel enough to let her join the order, truthfully she believed that she was entirely devoted to serving her own purposes.
"You're trying to make a detector for Dea-" she began to exclaim only to be silenced by Hestia's hand over her mouth.
"Be quiet," Hestia warned, keeping her hand over the other woman's mouth. "Do you want everyone else to hear?" she whispered, gesturing to the busy street. "Be quiet, understand?"
Fennel rolled her eyes, annoyed to be treated like a child; but nodded.
"Good," she took her hand off of her mouth, wiping it off on the tablecloth.
"Still, it's quite ambitious. Making a detector for…" she noticed Hestia's warning glare. "them. I've been working on something similar. Geared to detecting wards, of course. It's still proving quite troublesome. Especially in the potions sector, I'm not very good at all in that aspect. I manage though. I'm actually experimenting with making it glow various colors, it's not coming along quite as well as I had hoped though-"
"Stop blathering," Hestia ordered. "You're going to give me a headache. So you've been doing something similar?" she asked. "And no long winded replies, please. Just a simple yes or no will suffice," she added, quickly seeing Fennel open her mouth to answer.
"You know I don't appreciate being treated like a child," she declared indignantly.
"I will stop once you are done acting like one. And just yes or no, please," she replied, aggravated.
"Fine then, if you're going to be so rude,"
"Yes or no!" Hestia was half ready to throttle the woman, having to rely on all of her self control to keep from doing so.
"Yes," Fennel replied, becoming a bit afraid of Hestia.
"Good then, do you think you could alter it to be what I'm looking for?" she asked. "And once more yes, or no,"
"Yes, but-" she started to say but was cut off by Hestia.
"That's good. I'll send someone around early tomorrow to discuss this further," she knew that she would have to send someone with infinite patience to deal with the childish inventor. Hestia got up to leave, putting some Sickles on the table to pay for both of their drinks.
"Wait," Fennel rose too. Grabbing the sleeve of Hestia's robes. "I hope you know that I'll need a you-know-what to see if it works,"
"That wont be a problem," she assured her, removing her hand from her sleeve. "You'll hear from someone tomorrow," and with that she left, walking out of the café leaving a very annoyed Fennel Royston behind.
"I hope whoever she sends will be more polite than her," she muttered, gathering her things and taking a large sip of her drink before she left.
It had nearly become night when Fennel returned home, having bought enough ingredients to replenish her stores and to have enough to attempt such a difficult task that Hestia was having her do. When she thought about it, she wondered why she had even agreed to attempt such a task. And when she thought about it even further, she realized that she hadn't actually agreed to attempt it. Hestia had just told her that she would. That was why she hated to meet with her; she always roped her into doing loads of things from her. Even when they were children Hestia had always managed to make her do stuff. Of course, back then she had always twisted things around so that they blew up in her face. This time she wouldn't, she figured catching Death Eaters was more important than annoying Hestia; plus she could always do that anytime just by talking way too much.
Having been through a tiring day, hiking all about London wasn't exactly easy, she decided to just plop down on her bed and fall asleep without even changing into her nightgown. She left her pile of purchases on the living room floor, fully intending to take care of them tomorrow morning.
Paris was asleep, explaining why she hadn't been knocked down as soon as she entered house. Following his example, she immediately ascended the stairs to her bedroom and fell asleep nearly as soon as she had lay down; falling into a deep slumber.
The next morning Paris's frantic barking accompanied by someone knocking on the door woke her. Whoever was knocking was doing so in a polite way while her dog was yelping in the most annoying way possible. Fully knowing that she looked a mess, with most of her long wavy hair hanging loose around her face and out of her ponytail, and still wearing the same clothes that she had worn the day before; she went downstairs and answered the door.
"Hello, my name is Remus Lupin," the man at it stated, offering his hand. "I was told you'd be expecting me," he explained.
"Of course, please come in," she opened the door wider to allow him to enter. "Would you like some tea?"
"Sure, tea would be fine," he replied politely, following her inside.
"I'll make some," Fennel said. "I gather Hestia sent you,"
"Yes, I understand that you can make what she talked to you about," Lupin stated.
"Yes, I can do that," she went into the kitchen to make some tea. "It'll take some time, and I would need a Death Eater to test it on,"
"How much time?" he asked, going into the kitchen as well.
"I don't really know. It depends on how much time I can spare between developing my own products," she elaborated. "And how many times it takes for me to get it right,"
"You'll need to work on this full time. We need it as soon as possible. There are far less of them than last time. And so their only real hope is to take us by surprise, and we need to make sure that doesn't happen," he explained.
"Right," she said, not really wanting to drop everything else but wanting to help her side against You-Know-Who. He had caused her all sorts of trouble last time he was running loose about England, and the sooner her could be stopped again the better. "I'll get working on that as soon as I can get a Death Eater. I'll need to get an estimate on the strength of the spell. I'm assuming that you don't want them to know that you've got them, right?" she didn't wait for a response before continuing. "So I'll just make it become hotter when one's near instead of glowing. That way it'll be harder to detect," she finished making the tea, pouring out some for him.
"That would be helpful, thank you," she wasn't really sure if he was referring to getting him some tea or to helping him with the detector. "And I'm sure that I can arrange a meeting with our Death Eater soon,"
"When?" she asked, taking a sip of tea from her own cup. "And you're welcome,"
"I don't have an exact date. I'll have to speak to him about it," he explained, placing down his teacup. "Regrettably I must leave now. I have other business to attend to,"
"That's fine," Fennel said, drinking some more of her tea. She watched him leave, and once he was gone she headed down into her workshop to begin what she could on the project before actually meeting the Death Eater. She even wondered mildly who he was, but mainly concentrated on her project and got lost in her spell books.