Ginny was currently unwinding Gag-Me-Bondage-TapeTM ("Keep your friends from spilling the beans! Tape their mouths shut! On sale now!") from a large cardboard box decorated with dancing clowns, who bounced all over the surfaces and then came together in giant clown pyramids to spell out WEASLEY'S WIZARD WHEEZES. There seemed to be far too much tape for the size of the box, and it kept trying to climb up her arm to get to her mouth. Hermione had already had to rescue a few strands of long red hair that managed to get tangled in the sticky stuff.
"Because you're tired of repotting deadly nightshade?" Hermione suggested.
Ginny shook her head. "Most of the professors are more in need of someone to have tea and biscuits with than to do their grunt work. And it doesn't help that the house elves keep sniffling all over the trays. Maybe you should go back to trying to liberate them - the fear might cheer them up."
"I hate to say it, I really do, but this is more important than the house elves," Hermione sighed. "We need information on what Snape was up to. Well, what better place to look than in his rooms?"
"We already know what he was up to," Ginny pointed out. "Plotting for You-Know-Who."
"But plotting what exactly? The headmaster trusted him. If all he wanted was to murder Dumbledore, he could have done it at plenty of other times, surely. He didn't need a big invasion of Death Eaters to do it. It would have been easier to do it himself and cover it up so that we never found out it was him."
"So, what, his plan wasn't to kill Dumbledore?" She raised an eyebrow. "I hate to tell you this, Hermione, but he did it. Harry wasn't just seeing things."
"No, no, I wasn't saying that at all! I just think there's pieces of the puzzle we're not seeing yet. And that means research. And that means we have to get into his rooms and... well, snoop."
"Why don't you just ask McGonagall if you can go in? Or if they've already searched them?"
"If this doesn't work, I'll have to," Hermione admitted. "But you know if we start asking questions they'll try to tell us not to worry, to let them handle it... And then they'll mess everything up. It should be us, Ginny. If there's something there, we're the ones to find it."
Ginny wrestled off the last of the tape and stuffed it unglamourously under the seat of a wooden chair. "Well, I can't guarantee this will work. But it was the first thing I thought of." From the box, she pulled out a pair of wrapped sweets. "Still in development. Parrot Pastels. Otherwise known as 'the candy that makes them eat your words'. See, the professors' personal rooms are keyed not just to a passphrase, but also to the owner's voice."
"So if I eat these, I can mimic any voice?"
Ginny shook her head. "They'd never let them market that, it would cause a little too much trouble. No, you can only do the voice of the person you're looking at when you eat the candy - we'll have to find a photograph of Snape in the library - and it only lets you say things that you have heard that person say. You can repeat their words back to them, but you can't really impersonate them."
Hermione smiled. "So I can insult you in any number of ways, but I would be completely unable to say 'Fifty points to Gryffindor'."
"Something like that. I haven't tried them myself. They're not done, you know. They could turn your tongue purple or make you lose your voice completely. And you still have to guess Snape's password."
Hermione grabbed the candy from her friend's hand. "And we'll never know until we try. Come on. Let's go find a picture."
---
"Occulis ab nebulae."
The vision that formed in Draco's blinking eyes was the scowling face of Severus Snape. He gulped and searched for a suitable form of address. "Sir?"
Snape lowered his wand. "If you choose not to humiliate yourself by addressing me as 'Father' in private, 'Sir' will suffice. However, when you are in the company of our associates, remember your new station."
"Thank you, sir." Draco blinked a few more times, reassuring himself that his eyes were back in working order, then turned to examine his surroundings. They stood in a spacious room of fresh white walls and a wooden floor, with spotlights overhead and a fake fireplace built into one wall. A staircase with a carved wooden banister led up out of sight. Tasteful modern accomodation, by Muggle standards, but a far cry from the familiar elegance of Malfoy Manor. "Where are we?"
"Buckinghamshire. While I now have access to your family estates as well as my own, either location would be an obvious place for searchers to look for us. This house has no ties to any wizarding family." Snape sneered. "Feel free to disinfect the bed before you sleep in it."
Draco turned around. "Where is my mother?"
"She and the rat have gone to purchase items that she feels are necessities for her survival in these 'difficult circumstances'. No doubt she will return with an entire new wardrobe and an assortment of gourmet foods for you."
Draco nodded. "Thank you." It was unexpectedly lenient of the man posing as their new lord and master to allow his mother to shop just to make her feel better. Perhaps everything wouldn't be so bad after all. "You protected me. I am in your debt."
"What I have done was not for your protection, Draco." The older man turned and walked to the wall, black robes whispering in his wake. "It's too late to protect you now."
Draco gulped. "I'm sorry I wouldn't tell you what I was planning. You were right that I needed your help."
"You're sorry? You're SORRY?" And now Snape whirled to face him, wand extended. "There is no such THING as sorry, Draco! Nothing changes the past! Your failures will follow you for the rest of your life. Now GET OUT OF MY SIGHT BEFORE I END IT!"
And Draco fled.
---
"Say something, Hermione. You're making the most HORRIBLE faces," Ginny pleaded. "It didn't boil up your tongue or anything, did it?"
Hermione stopped flapping her lips helplessly and wracked her brain for the memory of any appropriate response spoken by the professor. "Your usual standards, Weasley," she managed at last. The words erupted in a scathing sneer that was Severus Snape to a T.
The redhead shuddered. "Gah. I'm not sure which is scarier - hearing THAT voice, or hearing it coming out of you!"
"Adequate." Which was the closest Hermione could find to 'Okay' in her memory of Snape. "Proceed."
Ginny led the way down into the dungeons of Slytherin. "Um, I suppose we should start with potions ingredients. You've heard him say lots of them, and it would be fitting."
"Tansy."
"Wormwood."
"Ashwinder eggs."
The list went on for a very long time, as Hermione had a good memory for Potions ingredients. When she'd gotten desperate enough to mention stewed slugs, a very un-Snapelike association, Ginny suggested she move on to Dark creatures - he had, after all, been so insistent on obtaining the Defense against the Dark Arts position all those years. They both crossed their fingers before the attempt at "Vampire!", but to no avail.
"I don't think it's going to work," Ginny kicked at the stone wall. "They could have sealed it up since he left. Maybe they've translocated the whole place to the Ministry for examination. Anyway, we should probably get out of here before somebody sees us - or hears you talking and rushes in to hex you."
"I trust you will clean up this mess?" Hermione-Snape quipped.
Ginny laughed. "Sounds like you're ready to give me detention!" Somewhere in the long list of password attempts, she had stopped twitching in fear every time the dark tones of that familiar voice fell from Hermione's lips. "Come on and let me show you what else was in that care package. Best possible cure for mouth-affecting magics."
When they had returned to the comfort of Gryffindor, Hermione found a bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky being pressed into her hand. "Loosens the tongue," Ginny grinned, and took a swig. Moments later, she gulped for air, eyes watering. "Loosens the eyeballs too!"
Hermione sipped her drink more cautiously, testing her voice every few minutes. Soon she was able to whisper her own choice of words. "I bet Ron wishes he were here now," she managed quietly.
Ginny snorted. "You think the boys haven't smuggled their own supply into the house? And Mom will probably feel too guilty to stop them getting falling-down drunk at least once." She held up her bottle, admiring the lights dancing inside. "I wish Harry were here. And too drunk to remember that he shouldn't be."
"Shouldn't be?" The room was starting to seem very warm and fuzzy now. At least her voice was clearing up.
"Shouldn't be with me. He thinks he's protecting me. He's not, really." Ginny took another sip. "They've gone after me before. They've gone after Dad. And lots of people know we were together. They'll probably come after me again." Sip. "'Sreally Harry's being protected. Cause if I'm with him, he'll be distracted by trying to look after me, stead of letting me look after m'self."
"You're good at looking after yourself," Hermione agreed.
"To men and idiots!" She lifted her hand and Hermione cheerily clinked the glass bottles together. "Did you ever want him?"
"Want who?"
"Did you ever fancy Harry?"
"Not really," Hermione frowned and pushed her hair away from her face. Had it always been so wild? It seemed to be everywhere tonight. "I love Harry. Just not like that."
"Like a brother?"
"Not that either." She twisted her hair up behind her head, but had nothing to secure it with, and it sprang back into a cloud as soon as she let go. "When all those people kept saying we were dating and we weren't. It was so stupid! Because what we were doing was so much more important than dating. That's how I feel. I don't fancy Harry because he's got other things to do."
"It's because he's going to die," Ginny's eyes welled up with tears. "You don't want to love him, because you know he's going to die. He's going to fight Voldemort and die, and you don't want to be the one in love with him..." The bottle fell forgotten as she put her hands over her face and sobbed.
"Don't cry!" Hermione crawled over to put her arms around her friend. "No, no, he's not going to die... he can't die, he's Harry! He always wins!"
Ginny lay her head against Hermione's shoulder, her tears soaking through. "We never thought Dumbledore could die either... We're all going to die."
"Don't say things like that! You're not going to die. You're not!"
And somehow, with the shaking form in her arms, the red hair so like and so unlike Ron's, with the warmth and the whisky, Hermione found herself kissing Ginny. She tasted of fire and flowers, deep and sweet. The two girls clung together, mouths frantically seeking love and comfort. It felt warm and soft and painful and... wrong.
They broke apart, gasping for air. "I'm sorry," Hermione started. "I didn't mean..."
"F'get it," Ginny mumbled, her cheeks a brilliant pink. "Drunk. It happens."
"We should... we should get some sleep," Hermione suggested.
"Water first," said the voice of experience. "Water helps your head. Get th'elves."
And it was only much later, as Hermione lay half-awake in her bed, that it occurred to her. There was another way for her to learn about the Half-Blood Prince.
Harry's book...
---
Author's Note: Surprised you again? No, I am NOT shipping Hermione/Ginny here. The above was exactly what they claimed it was - two tired and emotional people reacting under stress. People do unusual things when they're emotionally worked up. This is relevant...
As for Draco's eyes, the blindness was never meant to be permanent. Just to make him more scared and disoriented during last chapter, and also to represent how he has been, in some ways, blind to what he was getting himself into. Poor Draco is still not having a very good time.
