After her last class of the day, Hermione left Professor Snape with a pile of fifth-year essays and strict instructions, and headed for the Library. Hopefully after five years of Slughorn, they've achieved enough competence not to try Snape's patience too sorely. Although, thinking of Fiona Firesmith …
Reassuring herself that she'd go through all the essays carefully before giving them back to the students, Hermione put them firmly from her mind.
Killing Curses, Protean Charms, Blood Magic … it's the Restricted Section for me.
She passed Maisie Wilkins and her two accomplices bent over books, a stack of tomes in front of them. Giving into curiosity, she lingered on the other side of the shelf to them to eavesdrop a moment. If I had the Invisibility Cloak, I could read over their shoulders …
By stooping a little, she could peer between the tops of the books and the shelf above them.
Maisie slammed her book shut. "Maybe we're looking in the wrong place."
Colin sighed. "This is the Library at Hogwarts. Every magical thing that every happened or ever exists is written down somewhere in these books. We're looking in exactly the right place."
"Then why haven't we found anything about the Key?"
"Because there's about a thousand thousand books in here, and you're always carping instead of reading." Mike turned a page.
"There's got to be a faster way," Maisie grumbled. "A reading spell, or something."
"What you do is, you look at those funny black marks on the page, and they turn into words. It's magic!"
Maisie rolled her eyes, but she opened her book again.
Smiling to herself, Hermione continued on her way. Severus said he was going to hide the clue about the Key well.
Her smile faded as she approached the Restricted Section. Reminding herself to cast a Patronus every now and again, she made her selections and sat down to begin her research.
Dark Spells for Desperate Days was revolting, filled with illustrations of what the curses inside could actually do. Hermione flipped past pictures of witches who seemed to be having their lungs drawn out through their noses, wizards in boneless puddles, and others so horrible she refused to look at them closely enough to identify the particular brand of nastiness. Finally she reached the page with the image of a wizard withered almost to a corpse. Cast on the dark of the moon for maximum effect, but can be used at any time … incantation Homini Imputresco … place on object the desired target will hold or wear. That had been what Voldemort had done to his ring. This was probably the curse he used.
Taking out her wand, Hermione cast a quick Patronus before starting to take notes. It was non-corporeal, as her Patronus had been since the War. For years, she'd been taking it as a sign that her magic really was weaker than she'd thought, and avoided mentioning it to Harry or Ron. Now, though, she realised it had probably been another symptom of Bellatrix's curse. Hopefully she'd see her little otter frisking through the air again soon.
It was a relief to shut the book of Dark Magic and turn to Protean Charms. She read carefully, both refreshing her memory and looking for any hint that they could be used to transmit magic. None of the accounts mentioned that, although the ability to make a Protean Charm change temperature was commonly used by those who wanted to send messages. I did that myself … Hermione tapped her teeth with her quill. I wonder what the difference would be? After all, the heat or cold is transferred through magic … if I was going to make the Dumbledore's Army coins send out sparks when there was a message, how would I do it? Not a switching spell … you can't really transfer magic like that anyway … the only way to curse someone through a Protean Charm would be to curse the original, and thus change the target charm to be cursed too, but that can'tbe what's happening, can it, or they would have noticed one of the Death Eaters in Azkaban dying … maybe the witch or wizard doing it is lifting the curse, or letting it fade? Is that why Snape's getting better sometimes and worse at others?
She wrote all that down in a neat list, and turned to Blood Magic.
The sources were distressingly vague. Although that's probably just as well, or Voldemort would have known from the get-go that using Harry's blood to bring himself back to life would end in disaster for him. Hermione waded through discussions of the effect of menstruation on a witch's magic that clearly hadn't been updated since the invention of tampons, a long, detailed and completely wrongheaded explanation of blood-bonds between members of the same family, and a completely infuriating screed about "pure" blood versus Muggle blood before she finally found what she was looking for. The addition of blood — magical blood — to any charm or spell should be undertaken only with the greatest caution. The results can be extremely unpredictable, and may even invert the outcome completely. If this does not occur, however, the spell can be enhanced, and made to serve purposes not within the capacity of the original spell. For example, it may endure beyond a normal duration, or become more powerful.
She closed the book. I bet the Dark Mark is just an ordinary Protean Charm, then. It's capable of carrying the curse from one Death Eater to another — or to Severus — because there's blood in it.
But the curse would have to be different too, in that case. It would have to be shaped more like a Protean Charm, and the casting gesture would have to be different, too. She rehearsed the wand motion in her head. Up, around … and left, instead of right.
Didn't Harry say something about a left-hand twist?
She pulled her own Protean Charm, the good old Dumbledore's Army galleon, from her pocket. Room of Requirement NOW, she sent. Then, scooping up the two books, Hermione bolted from the Library, Madam Pince's protests fading behind her.
The others arrived in the Room of Requirement soon after Hermione, Neville a bit breathless. "Ran all the way from the Greenhouses," he said, and grinned. "It's like old times, emergency summons and all."
"I think I know why Harry can't work out who's casting the curse," Hermione said. "Look." She dropped the book of Dark Magic on the table and opened it. "There."
The concentrated malice on the page seemed to hover above the book like a heat haze, and all six of them recoiled slightly.
Neville raised his wand. "Expecto Patronum!"
A shape burst from the tip of his wand, huge wings outstretched, long primary feathers fanned like the fingers of a hand. Bald head stretched forward, the vulture swooped through the glimmer of malice, bursting it apart, and soared around the room before disappearing through the wall.
"Blimey," Ron said. "Was that —?"
Neville nodded, grinning. "Gran's hat. You know how I never managed to cast a corporeal patronus? After the battle, Gran said to me that she knew my parents would be proud of me, because she'd never been prouder of any member of the family in her life as she was of me. And the next time I had to cast one, I was thinking of that, of how it made me feel, and …" He shrugged. "Gran's quite chuffed about it."
"It was beautiful, Neville," Luna said. "They're such lovely birds."
"The book," Hermione said, sharp with impatience. "Look!" She leaned over it, running her finger down the page. "Of all the killing curses in the entire Library, Harry, you said this is the closest to the one on Severus."
"So it's being done by a former Hogwarts student," Neville said. "That was always likely, wasn't it?"
Hermione shook her head. "No, that's not what I mean. It's closest, not a match. The difference isn't down to who's casting it, Harry, not entirely. Look. The wand movements described here, up, around, right … that's the same as a dozen Transfiguration charms, it's really common in spells on objects. But this one, it isn't being cast on an object. You said it had a left-hand twist? That's from Protean Charms, that twist. The curse, it's not the same as the book. Someone's changed it, I hate to say improved, but they've made it up for themselves. That's why your Auror-thing isn't helping, don't you see? You're looking at it wrong."
Harry leaned forward as well, studying the page. "I think I see what you mean … as if we've been assuming the variations are handwriting, but they're actually vocabulary."
"Yes!" Hermione bounced upright again. "Surely you can get a list of which Aurors have a tendency to make up their own spells, and find the commonality!"
"Not many," Ron said. "It's bloody difficult, making up a new charm, let alone coming up with a significant variation on a killing curse. I mean you can blow yourself up trying to adjust Aberto to work on curtains as well. Messing about with something like this —" He tapped the page in the book. "One sneeze at the wrong time and the Aurors would be cleaning you up with a bucket and mop." Then his mind visibly caught up with his mouth. "Uh, sorry, Luna, I know …"
She smiled. "It's alright. I'm quite used to it, now."
"Ron being a tactless prat?" Ginny said.
"That too," Luna agreed.
"So?" Hermione said. "Can you do it? Is there some kind of register of new spells made by Aurors you can compare the curse on Severus too?"
"Mmm," Harry said absently.
"Is that yes?" Hermione demanded.
"What?" He looked up, green eyes still distant. "Oh, yes, I suppose. I was just thinking … you know, when I look at it the right way, Snape's curse does remind me of something." He looked down at the book again. "It reminds me of Sectumsempra."
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Author's Note: Totally made up the curse Homini Imputresco. The Latin means 'person decay' or 'person rot, or at least I hope it does! I should have mentioned in the notes in the last chapter, I made up the book Dark Spells for Desperate Days, too.
Have you guessed yet?