Chapter 4

Invading the Manor

She arrived home well after midnight, to a beautifully empty house; Harry, Ron, and Pansy still appeared to be at the Burrow, and, as was tradition, it seemed probable that they would stay there for the night.

Thank God. If she never saw another person again, she would die a happy woman.

Technically, she thought as she stumbled into her office, Snape didn't count as a person. It would still be possible to die with a smile stretched across her lips, as long as he didn't speak to her.

But it seemed rude to not so much as acknowledge his presence as she scanned the shelves for something to read, so she pasted on something that, on a better rested person, might have passed for a grin. His response was to flip a page.

Right, so ignoring him it would be.

After several minutes of failing to find the book she was hunting for, she was forced to break that resolution.

"You haven't seen my copy of Mortimer Klapp's Alchemy of Death and Dying, have you?" Perhaps a bit tasteless, but she finally had an idea worth pursuing.

He held up the book he was reading so she could see the spine.

"Ah—I suppose you wouldn't want to part with it for about half an hour, would you?"

"If you want to read about the theory behind necromancy, there are much more involved texts, in this very room."

"But they don't discuss entropy in as much detail, and that's what I want him for."

"You mean his theory of life as entropic—life-force gradually moving from a pure state downwards until it becomes too impure to function?" He snorted. "That hasn't been a commonly held belief since the sixteenth century—purity is a myth you'd do well to rid yourself of."

"I see being dead hasn't cured you of your cynicism—"

"Death is its ultimate manifestation: the accumulation of nothing but chaos."

"Following the course of entropy?"

She raised an eyebrow as he inclined his head slightly. "Touché."

"Anyway, I wanted it more to remind myself of how he connected necromancy and alchemy—it might prove useful."

Another snort. "Nothing more than a tidy metaphor."

"Does it matter if it helps?" She held out her hand, but made no move to snatch the book away. "Please?"

"You have the rest of your life to reread it—I only have this brief space of time before the spell runs out."

Her hand fell to her side as her eyes narrowed. "The only people who play the guilt card are the ones without a worthwhile argument."

"I use what works."

With a shrug, she sat behind the desk and pulled her laptop out of the bottom drawer—she had locked it away in the hope of keeping it safe from further inquisitive Slytherin visitors—and pulled up a search engine for what felt like the millionth time in the last four days. Klapp was no longer copyrighted; with any luck a like-minded and technologically savvy witch had uploaded it for her.

*

She woke up to find herself still in the chair, but instead of her laptop resting under her cheek, there was a pillow. Which was strange, because usually when she fell asleep in the middle of working on something, personal comfort was rarely the first issue on her mind.

Snape didn't appear to have left the armchair, although he had a new book in hand, and several others scattered around his feet. On the corner of her desk, stacked on top of her laptop, sat the annotated edition of Alchemy of Death and Dying that Snape had been flipping through the night before.

She grunted an indistinguishable string of syllables that might have been distinguishable as 'good morning' if she had been living in a cave several millennia before the present time.

He seemed to grasp the meaning; without looking up, he said, "I marked any passages that might be relevant to your research, and can think of several other sources that expand on his ideas in more practical ways."

"Thank you."

It wasn't until she was halfway through her first cup of tea that it occurred to her to feel touched; this was certainly the more kindness than he had ever directed at her during the six years he had taught her.

Charming the teapot to hold its heat, she levitated her tray of breakfast up the stairs and into the study. A glance at the clock on the way by told her that it was early—too early for her to expect interruptions for the next two hours, besides whatever Snape had up his sleeve, which meant she might actually manage to form a working theory or two before meeting Theo at the office. There were plans to be made, autopsies to be examined, and suspects to be questioned—in short, a mystery that had been put off too long needed to be solved.

Most days, she resented having to share an office with Theo; he was intelligent, but needed to talk things through to reach a flash of brilliance, which meant that most days she wanted to strangle him to cut off the ceaseless flow of chatter. Snape, on the other hand, seemed to work in much the way that she did—with quiet method, and silently. He had, it seemed, put the time she had spent sleeping to good use. Her copy of Alchemy of Death and Dying was so marked up, now, that she might have raged at him for defacing her property, except that each scribble in the margin sent her barrelling down a new avenue of thought, in the general direction of epiphany.

If he hadn't been scowling so ferociously at his newest selection, she might have kissed him.

*

When she arrived at the Department of Mysteries three hours later, it was to an unpleasant shock. It was bad enough that Pansy Parkinson had invaded her private life, but she had always thought of work as a sort of sanctuary. Work was for dealing with bad things that happened to other people, not the daily annoyances of her own life.

She was sorely tempted to slap Theo for letting that smug nose behind her desk—with any luck, Pansy had already sabotaged Hermione's filing system and hidden all the quills in an improbable corner of one of the drawers—but she kept her feet planted in the doorway.

"Any word from Hopkins?"

He nodded. "She sent me the report. Our victim—whose name, by the way, is William Falstaff of Bristol—was killed by a blow to the head, which was followed by strangulation and the slit throat."

"How pleasant."

"Redundant, really," Pansy said.

Really, she deserved some sort of international award in diplomacy for not asking why Pansy was there.

"Pansy is going to help us infiltrate Malfoy Manor," Theo said.

"I didn't realise we needed to infiltrate—can't we just get a warrant?" Some part of her was cringing at her inner bitch, who was making her say the words, but she covered that up by calling to mind all of the things that Pansy had done to deserve it.

Or, at least, the first twenty thousand that came to mind.

"The Malfoys have lived in the Manor for the last four hundred years," said Pansy, "and have owned the grounds for at least as long as Hogwarts has been in existence. Do you really think that a scrap of rolled up parchment from the Ministry is going to get you the answers that you need?"

Then again, she had a point.

Her face must have reflected her state of inner turmoil, because Theo interrupted. "We've concocted a plan."

"A cunning plan?"

"Very cunning indeed. I'm going to arrive at the Manor under the pretence of being forced to question Lucius Malfoy, and you two are going to follow me under Potter's invisibility cloak—"

"I so don't want to know what you had to do to get your hands on that."

Theo glared at Pansy. "I asked politely. Where was I—oh, yes… You two are going to follow me under Potter's invisibility cloak until we get inside, at which point you head towards the library—Pansy knows where it is—and hunt down the necromancy books. I should be able to stall Lucius for about two hours, so you two will need to keep track of the time and be back in the entrance hall within an hour and forty-five minutes. Uncle Lucius likes me, so if all else fails I can ask him to retell the tales of our ancestors or something."

There was no mistaking the disdain in Hermione's voice as she asked, "Don't they have wards against this sort of thing?"

"Trust me," Pansy said, "the problem with Malfoy Manor is not the getting in; it's the getting out."

*

Pansy was too tall for sharing the invisibility cloak to be anything near comfortable; it hovered a few inches off of the ground on Pansy's side, and dragged behind Hermione, through the mud on the side of the road. It was frustrating enough that Hermione was nearly able to forget where, exactly, they were going, and whom they were going to see.

Hermione tripped over the hem of the cloak and had to bite back the irritated words that sprang to her tongue.

"Can you stop stealing my half? The entire plan is based off of no one seeing us, which isn't going to happen if my legs aren't covered."

With a sigh, Hermione hefted up the cloak, wincing at the draft around her ankles. She would have commented on it, except that Pansy was making enough noise for the two of them, and Theo kept shooting warning glances over his shoulder to where he thought they were standing. He was about ten feet off.

She shivered into her robes as they approached the main gates, where two white peacocks paced, looking damp and less than pleased with their lot. For a moment, it looked as though one were about to charge them, but it settled for waddling under the branches of the nearest tree as a fresh downpour washed over them.

"Idiot birds," Pansy muttered under her breath.

"Haven't they got somewhere dry to keep them?"

"Of course—and a house-elf will be in a great deal of pain later today if they aren't moved there soon."

On Hermione's unofficial hierarchy of beings, peacocks came in somewhat lower than house-elves—although she didn't approve of leaving anything out in the rain when there were warmer alternatives—and she had to fight back the urge to dart out from under the cloak and shepherd the peacocks inside. As though sensing what she was being tempted to do, Pansy took hold of her arm and pulled her closer.

"That hurt!" It was hard to remember to keep her voice down when those blood-red nails were digging into her forearm, but she managed, if only because her voice squeaked high enough that it cut out entirely.

"Not as much as it will if Lucius Malfoy catches you trespassing on his property—have you read any Wizarding property laws lately? They were mostly written by his ancestors in the mid-thirteenth century, with a couple of amendments in the 1750s."

"But we have a warrant."

"Look at it this way—the Manor is like its own little country. England ends at those gates and doesn't start up for about seven miles in that direction, and all the ordinary rules of civilisation that keep us from eating each other? They do not exist."

The spark of fury in Pansy's expression was like lighting a match; Hermione wondered if light could shine through the invisibility cloak and, if so, whether any would notice the ball of rage working its way down the path. Everything in the stiff lines of Pansy's face, her posture, her face said, Don't push me, and Hermione knew better than to ignore the warnings.

"Bad break-up with Malfoy, then?"

Theoretically.

For a second, she was convinced that Pansy was going to rip the cloak away and slap her, but that second flowed into the next and, as quickly as it had come, the tension ebbed.

"Draco can't help that he doesn't like women."

In front of them, Theo pulled out his wand and sent a silencing spell at them. It took all of five seconds for Hermione to counter it, but the reminder was sharp; the steps up to the entrance were only a few paces away, and they couldn't afford to make a mess of their one and only plan.

A house-elf answered the door, and spent what felt like hours pontificating on 'kind Master Nott' who was 'so very kind to visits us, and so soon after Christmas'. In ordinary circumstances, Hermione would have been disgusted by the creature's servility, but her feet were going numb, and Pansy still hadn't let go of her arm so that was numb too, and the smell drifting out from the open door—a mix of pine-scented cleaner and a sort of dignified must—had passed through her lungs and shot straight to her stomach until she thought she was going to be sick.

It was the smell of insanity, the smell that had filled the holes in her memory when she had—when they had—when Fenrir…

She hadn't thought that Pansy's perfume was particularly subtle when they had first pulled the cloak over their heads, but she was grateful for it now, because it meant she could suck in deep breaths of lavender and it would mean that she could ignore the pressing of memories.

The dizziness faded to the inside of the Manor. Sometime in the last few minutes, she had collapsed into Pansy, who was steering her away from the direction in which Theo was being led—not towards the drawing room, thank goodness—and into the heart of the house.

"Are you going to be able to manage, now?"

She wished that she could detect a note of sarcasm in Pansy's tone, hunted for one, even, but could only find quiet concern. Sarcasm, she could deal with; Pansy treating her like a human being was … weird.

Rather than saying something that would provoke another argument, she nodded and straightened, tugging her hair out of her face. The real reason for Pansy's presence was being shoved into clarity—it had nothing to do with navigating the bowels of the Malfoy family home, and everything to do with keeping Hermione from completely losing her mind.

She wasn't sure whether she ought to feel touched by Theo's way of showing his concern, or insulted.

The last hitches smoothed out of her breathing as they entered the library; regardless of the numbers of house-elves being instructed to clean, there didn't seem to be a way to clear the dust from the air. It smelt of the winter afternoons she used to spend curled up in her mother's study when the covers of books started to curl from the damp, weekend hunts through used bookshops, and the Hogwarts library, which had been more home than the dormitory she had slept in during her school years.

Pansy let go of her arm, and pulled the cloak off of them, turning her attention to warding the library door as Hermione wandered into the stacks. It was difficult to hate a house that held such a magnificent library, regardless of its owners; as though to prove it, she reached out and stroked the nearest spine, drawing her fingers away and examining the dust that stuck to them.

No, not difficult—impossible.

"Right, so under the usual Forgetfulness Charm, I've used a diluted version of a curse for temporary paralysis that I learned from an Egyptian tomb. Anyone who tries to break through it, should be stuck in place for at least a few hours."

"Isn't that a bit much?"

"But so much more fun." Pansy turned to face the far corner of the room. "If I remember correctly, we found the necromancy books over here—Theo said you knew a copying charm?"

"Well, invented it, technically." She had been shocked and appalled to discover that the magical world didn't have a Xerox equivalent—no wonder so many pages had been torn out of library books.

"Great, you can teach me how to do it, and we can speed the process up."

The ease with which Pansy found the correct shelves and was able to point out which books were rare or otherwise non-existent made Hermione's eyes narrow in suspicion; she pushed it down because Pansy was being helpful—also suspicious—until she caught the other girl flipping through the pages of one of the particularly rare and ancient tomes with her eyes alight, and a faint smile on her lips.

Just as she was about to open her mouth and let out a furious lecture, it occurred to her that she needed Pansy to get out of the Manor. Diplomatic, then—she could manage that.

Without pausing her copying spell, she said, "So, how do you know your way around the library so well?"

It was meant to be conversational; in the silence that followed her words, it occurred to her that it sounded rude.

Pansy didn't seem to mind—she laughed. Then again, maybe polite would have been more bewildering than anything. "You mean, why am I flipping through the pages of a book full of dark, evil magic with fond reminiscence?"

"I, er, didn't mean it that way."

"But it's what you were thinking."

"Well…" Not something that she could deny, particularly since her cheeks were warm and her eyes downcast.

"If you must know, when Draco, Theo, and I were teeny tiny evil children, in the summer after first year, Draco's favourite pet Kneazle died. We thought he was going mad with grief when he started spending every waking moment in the library, but it all became clear when, after a week of research, he emerged with the plan to stage a resurrection."

"And of course you went along with it."

Pansy looked insulted. "Of course—what else were we supposed to do? Leave him to wallow?"

"Better than blowing up Wiltshire accidentally."

"We were children—we didn't believe in consequences. Besides, it was a very long, boring summer up to that point, and we probably would have blown up Wiltshire anyway to get some excitement. And Draco had his heart set on an undead Kneazle, and we knew better than to say no."

And that was the difference between purebloods and Muggleborns, Hermione thought, scowling. During her summer vacations, she had been forced to cut the magical part out of her, forbidden to use her wand. The only things that had kept her from believing that term-time had been more than an elaborate hallucination during her first summer away from Hogwarts, had been the trunk full of magical books and the occasional owls from Harry and Ron.

When she had been curled up in her bedroom, reading textbooks in a frantic attempt to feel connected to her world, her classmates had been raising the dead.

She noticed Pansy looking at her, brows furrowed, and she straightened, turning the page and copying it. "What happened to the Kneazle, then?"

"Lucius found out right before term started and was… not very pleased—that was right around the time when the Ministry started increasing their raids. He made us watch when he ended the spell, and buried the body."

Which told Hermione that he knew enough about Inferi to get rid of them without much effort. At least they seemed to be moving in the right direction.

They spent the next hour working in silence, concentrating on copying as much as they could, as quickly as possible. Although Pansy was right, and it was probably among the most extensive necromancy collections in the world, it wasn't large—there were only so many ways to animate a corpse, and even fewer to bind someone's soul to it. Not to mention that research in the field had been illegal for the last three centuries, which meant very few published their findings.

As Pansy slid the books into their gaps on the shelf, Hermione bound the copied pages and shrunk them, slipping them into her bag.

"We have plenty of time," Pansy said, glancing at the clock, "so let's not get caught on the way out."

Hermione nodded, and flung the invisibility cloak over the two of them.

It was the work of seconds for Pansy to undo her spell, and a slightly feral grin spread across her face at Hermione's noise of surprise. "Wouldn't do us much good if we couldn't leave, would it?"

Leaving, she found, was easier than going in had been. There were a few close calls with house-elves rounding the corners with feather dusters, and a heart-stopping moment when Narcissa swept through the corridors, presumably to grace Lucius and Theo with her presence, but Hermione and Pansy had drawn together and were barely breathing, so she passed by without noticing them.

The clock in the entrance said that they only had five minutes left, and Pansy was beginning to fidget.

"Lucius isn't friendly enough to keep up a conversation this long," Pansy whispered. "Theo's probably been poisoned—he never remembers to pack a bezoar."

"I'm sure he's fine," Hermione replied, although a knot of fear was beginning to form in her stomach.

"Or they've trapped him and are forcing him to flip through the entire genealogical history of Wizarding Britain—they always leave it sitting out in case conversation begins to wane."

It was obvious that Pansy was attempting flippancy, but her tone was brittle—her great-great-great grandfather had probably married a Muggle, and the Malfoys did not approve.

They stood in silence for nearly half an hour, leaning against the wall, until Hermione's legs were aching to sit down. Pansy had begun to fidget with the lining of the cloak; Hermione wondered if it created a ripple in the wallpaper to the observant eye.

"Well, at least we know that he can't be dead," said Pansy, after they had been standing in the hall for nearly an hour. "They would have disposed of the body by now, if he were."

"They could be planning to blame it on the house-elves."

"No, unless you can prove the house-elf's insanity, that one never works. We have to accept that he is being subjected to a fate worse than death."

"The genealogical history of Wizarding Britain?"

"No, that one only takes an hour or so—everyone's related, so it's really just a giant family tree. They've probably taken him to the portrait gallery."

"Ah," Hermione said, trying to sound as though she knew what that entailed.

"It means we'll be sitting here for hours."

There were, of course, bonuses to being Muggleborn. True, she hadn't been resurrecting her pets at the age of twelve, but neither had she—or would she ever—be led around a room and expected to make polite conversation with her entire ancestry; she suspected that the ones who only spoke Old English would be the really tricky bit.

"I'd say we ought to rescue him," Pansy continued, "but it wouldn't exactly result in the level of secrecy that we're hoping for, would it? Besides, he knows better than to get into these situations."

"You don't think he's already left, do you?"

Pansy snorted. "Of course not—have you ever had a conversation with him? When he wants to talk, there is no non-violent way to shut him up."

She was right; part of what made Theo such an effective interrogator was that he could do it without the other person catching on. He was polite and conversational, and would gradually lull the interrogated into a false sense of security, working in the questions almost reluctantly, as though they were an irritating but necessary formality. Relaxed people, he said, made poor liars.

He was practically a human lie detector.

It didn't surprise Hermione in the slightest that he had managed to pull through the war without picking sides—he had the innate ability to make you believe that he was on your side when he was in the room, and by the time that you worked out he wasn't, he would either be far enough away that it didn't matter, or have you wearing magically reinforced handcuffs.

He did the same thing when he was seducing someone. Sometimes she pitied Harry.

"Maybe we should at least check on him, anyway," Pansy said, after another moment's pause. "I'm sure he's fine, but I don't want to leave him alone with Lucius and the portraits for too long. It's enough to drive anyone insane."

"And if he leaves without us?"

"He won't. With the tracking spell he has on us, he'll know where we've gone, and I'm sure he can talk about the furniture long enough for us to get back and make our escape, if we can't find him."

Hermione shrugged. "Well, I'm sure it will be more interesting than standing here whilst he talks to his great-aunt Ermintrude."

She tagged behind Pansy as much as she could with out leaving the safety of the cloak, and tried to push away the last tendrils of anxiety at the thought of being trapped inside Malfoy Manor for the second time; she almost succeeded. Even passing by the room in which she had been tortured didn't send her into her earlier panic, although she did turn her eyes down to Pansy's feet, forcing herself to stare at the contrast of the sharp black lines against faded baroque rugs. It wouldn't do to get caught up in her memories a second time—she didn't want to have to explain to Pansy, not when she had been unable to tell Harry and Ron the full of extent of what had happened.

They'd been tortured by people who enjoyed it, which was bad enough, but for the sake of information. She supposed she ought to be grateful that they had given her a reason to hold back: she had been more afraid of Fenrir than of Bellatrix, and the knowledge that he would have her once the others had what they needed was the only thing that held her back from sobbing out every last scrap of information that she had picked up.

Pansy didn't need to know that. Harry and Ron didn't, either—they had been relatively safe in the dungeons at the time, and angering them more than they had been to begin with would have only got them all killed.

A thought made her freeze, mid-step. Pansy kept walking, and a moment later the protective shroud of the invisibility cloak had slid off of her, leaving her exposed and stumbling in the direction in which she thought Pansy might have gone.

"You idiot, do you want us to get caught?" hissed a voice somewhere near her left ear.

Closing her eyes, Hermione lunged towards it, and felt the cloak settle over her shoulders.

"Again, do you want us to get caught?"

"I thought of something."

"Do you know what thinking gets you in these sorts of situations? A cosy little chamber six feet underground in an obscure part of the Malfoy crypt. The only other way you'll get that sort of treatment is if you marry into the family, which, I strongly suspect, isn't the sort of posterity you're aiming for."

"Sorry," said Hermione, "but, look… The dungeons—can we get to them from here? Easily, I mean?"

"We just passed by the entrance." Pansy's eyes narrowed. "Why? You know that if they suspected Theo was trying to trap them, they wouldn't imprison him—poison is so much less messy."

"The Stonehenge victim was held over a period of several months—there were runes carved into his skin, some of which had already scarred. So if they were using the dungeons…"

"They'll have cleaned them."

"Exactly—who tidies their dungeons without a reason?"

"House-elves?"

"But it's worth a try—for all we know, they have another potential victim down there right now. Besides, all the books in the library are circumstantial evidence and aren't going to convince anyone—"

"Except for the thousands of Malfoy-haters already in existence."

She had a point. "I would rather have some sort of conclusive proof that I'm condemning the right person—satisfying as finally seeing Lucius Malfoy behind bars may be, convicting the wrong person isn't going to do anyone much good."

Pansy nodded once, sharply, and, clutching Hermione by the shoulder, led the way back to the staircase.

*

The dungeons were not what Hermione had expected—the bars were rusted and could probably be sawed away in less than five minutes by anyone wielding a nail file, and the air was stale, heavy even in the dank hall.

"Word of advice, if you ever find yourself imprisoned by an ancient and noble magical family," muttered Pansy, pulling off the cloak and folding it under her arm. "Glamours are much easier than performing actual maintenance, so everything is much less sturdy than it looks."

"It's hardly worth renovating when the inmates are only going to pee all over the floor," Hermione said, peering into a cell and seeing nothing that might pass for a latrine.

"That's hardly a problem if you just don't give them water."

Silently, they lit the ends of their wands and walked the length of the corridors; each cell was empty, and coated in a fine layer of dust. If she hadn't known better, she would have assumed that they hadn't been used in centuries.

"Well, I can't say I'm surprised." Hermione extinguished her wand, and turned to face the beam of light shining down from the staircase. "There would have been wards of some sort up."

Pansy nodded, pulling the cloak back over their heads. "Of course, there are plenty of other, more subtle, places on the grounds to stash one's future human sacrifice, so this doesn't mean much. Now, shall we rescue Theo from the grasp of his ancestors?"

*

Theo, as it turned out, had not been forced to set foot outside of the drawing room; although there were one or two ancestral portraits hung above the sofas, from whom he was expected to send greetings to his mother, he had spent most of the time wrangling answers out of Lucius and Narcissa.

"Right," he said when the three of them had Apparated to the gates of the Ministry, and Hermione was shoving the invisibility cloak into her bag. "I need a drink, now. I'm positive that Narcissa has the elves slip some whisky into her tea to help her through life with Lucius, but she never offers any to her ailing guests."

"There, there," Pansy said, looping her arm through Theo's, and letting him rest his head on her shoulder. "It's why you should use that sleight of hand I taught you and bring your own flask."

"But it's far too much effort." He began wandering in the general direction of the nearest pub, and Hermione and Pansy did not protest.

"Then you deserve what you get. Besides, it's not as though they forced you to wander through the portrait gallery, so you really shouldn't complain."

"And the only reason they didn't is because I managed to distract them with a clever question about the marriage of my third cousin twice removed to the German branch of Narcissa's family."

"I told you Theo could look after himself," Hermione said, raising her eyebrows at Pansy.

"Can you blame me for being concerned?"

"Now, ladies," said Theo, offering his other arm to Hermione, "we have a great many things to celebrate on this fine day—it is not the time for squabbling over me—and if you rip me into two, you'll never learn the extremely vital information I have obtained by placing my person into the path of deepest danger."

"We are most grateful you survived," Pansy replied, snuggling closer to him and causing them to veer left.

"I don't hear any expressions of relief from my right arm."

Hermione grinned up at him. "That's because I have faith in your ability to talk your way out of any given situation."

They rounded the corner, and curled into the pub, still a linked chain until they slid into the table near the window. Pansy picked up the menu and studied it, wrinkling her nose.

"Do either of you want to split some chips? I'm absolutely starving."

"I have been stuffed full of cucumber sandwiches, and cannot bring myself to eat another bite. Besides," Theo added, flicking back his hair, "I've heard the fat content is terrible for one's complexion."

"Do I look like I care?" Pansy rolled her eyes and pulled a tube of lipstick from her purse, arching her eyebrows expectantly in Hermione's direction; she nodded.

"Yeah, I'll have some. Please."

Theo refused to tell them anything before the drinks came—Hermione hoped to speed up the process by only asking for a glass of water, but Theo cut her off in the middle of her order.

"She needs vodka," he told the server. "Something as vodka-y as the vodka gets, but is still sweet, otherwise she won't drink it—and once she's done that, she'll need another."

It was perhaps an even less effective way of taking care of her than shoving her in a building full of traumatising memories with her childhood enemy, but Theo had always expressed his affection in unusual ways—although she had to admit, once the vaguely cranberry-tinged drink arrived, that it did relax her.

After she had finished feeling as though someone was pouring bleach down her throat.

"So," Pansy said, stirring her frozen, pink concoction with a straw, "now that we are all settled in—what's the verdict?"

Theo shrugged, taking a sip of his equally pink and equally frozen drink. "The man's as slippery as they come—he makes his Legilimency seem sloppy, but he's powerful enough that you know there's no way it can be that bad."

"What about Narcissa?" Hermione asked. "Did she act like she knows anything?"

He snorted. "What, the ice queen?"

"In that relationship, she's the compassionate one," Pansy said. "And I think she's finished with anything resembling the Dark Arts—remember the bargain she made with the Wizengamot?"

"You only defend her because she didn't…" He trailed off, flicking his eyes towards where Hermione was sitting.

She made a show of staring at the table, feeling conscious for the first time in hours of who was sitting across the table from her. The alcohol rushed to her head, combining with her irritation at what she suddenly perceived as Theo's manipulation—he knew that she loathed Pansy, was anything but oblivious to the fact, but had still thrown them into a situation in which he knew she would be vulnerable…

"You can tell her," Pansy was saying. "It's the only thing about me that she won't judge."

Which was a lie—Hermione was determined, with renewed vigour, to loathe as many of Pansy's features as was humanly possible.

"Pansy is a half-blood."

Except for that. "Oh," was all she was able to manage for the first minute, followed by, "But you were always so… so…"

"Desperate?" Pansy busied herself again with the lipstick, but didn't manage to hide the ironic twist of her lips behind her compact mirror. "Don't worry—I was painfully aware of it every minute of my life."

Maybe the vodka amplified the effect of Pansy's revelation, and maybe it was just the feeling of having to revaluate all of her assumptions in the space of a second—regardless, the room began to twist and lurch around her, and she had to take a fortifying sip of vodka before it righted itself.

Tossing the straw aside, Pansy polished off the rest of her drink, and proceeded to do the same to Theo's. "I know it's terribly cliché, but every generation has its child who needs to be brainwashed back into being sensible—I was so very fortunate that my father decided to be his generation's rebel. He met my mother the Muggle—I don't know where or how, actually, but presumably he met her and fell in love with her enough to forsake his family, and all of the usual events leading up to tragedy took place, but we were all very happy, until the Dark Lord caught wind of the depraved mixing of Muggles and purebloods, and killed her to teach Father a lesson."

It was a touch too melodramatic to be taken at face value, but a glance at Theo and the hint of revulsion in Pansy's voice told her that it was as close to the truth as she was going to get.

"I've heard it was all by request of my grandfather, although he knew better than to tell anyone. My father took me back to his family, and spent the next few years losing his mind as my aunt brought me up—most people, including the Malfoys, assumed that I was her daughter and didn't bother to ask questions until Rita Skeeter published an unfortunate exposé on my family after the war."

"Lucius wasn't very happy," Theo said, as a second round of drinks appeared in front of them.

"And by 'wasn't very happy,' he means threatening my aunt for feeding him lies about my parentage, and tried to stop Draco from seeing me—ironic, since that was about the time when he started experimenting. Of course," she said, looping her arm around Theo's shoulders and squeezing, "all of us know Theo's tragic tale, which is almost as tragic as mine, so there is no need to relive the painful details of that—unless you insist on continuing this conversation."

There was a strong hint of irony in the entire story, Hermione thought privately. Willing to kill for a half-blood, but forbidding his son to date one. Of course, she thought, the apparent half-blood and impoverished pureblood hardly needed reminding.

She took another sip from her drink, and hiccoughed.

*

"You shouldn't have let me have so much to drink." Hermione stumbled and clung to Theo's waist for support, and trying not to notice that the sun hadn't even begun to set yet.

"Nonsense," he replied. "It's good for drowning one's memories in, without the nasty effects of Dreamless Sleep."

She giggled as he swayed sideways and tucked herself into the curve of his shoulder, scowling at Pansy, who was somehow managing to keep a straight line in high heels, despite having had twice as much as both of them.

"Thank goodness we weren't far," Pansy said, drawing her brows together in something that simultaneously passed for amusement and disgust.

"Thank goodness one of us is Muggle and knows how to navigate the tube."

"Thank goodness one of us maintained enough sobriety to be able to read the map," Theo said, and Hermione felt a giggle well up inside of her.

"This is your idea of sober?"

"You're the one who is so staggering drunk that she can't make it into her own house."

"And you," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and letting him lift her through the doorway, "are the one who made me this way."

"If had known you were this pliable when drunk, I would have taken advantage of you years ago."

"Are you implying sexual harassment in the workplace?"

Still giggling, she half-tripped into the kitchen to pour a glass of water—there was still far too much to do for inebriation to seem like a good idea—and nearly turned and bolted at the sight that greeted her.

Harry was hunched over a cup of tea on one side of the table, eyes locked on his trembling hands, even as Ginny brushed them with her fingertips. She drew back at Hermione's appearance, and wiped her tears away with sudden, jerky movements.

It was instantly sobering.

"Hey, Hermione," she said, her voice wobbling. She had to clear her throat before continuing. "There's still some tea in the pot, if you want some, but it's probably gone cold by now."

"Thanks." She kept her gaze trained on the sink as she filled the glass, and tried to shut out the menial scraps of conversation that reached her ears. Both of them would tell her later, anyway.

Her escape upstairs was swift and would have been silent except for the creaky floorboards. Theo and Pansy were just settling onto the floor when she burst in and tossed her bag to the floor.

"The copies that we made of the books are in there," she said, "and don't anybody go into the kitchen—I think Harry and Ginny are breaking up."

Snape glanced up from his book long enough to grimace. There was something about it that was more, well… dead than she recalled it being—perhaps it was the light.

"There was shouting earlier; be happy you missed it."

A scent lingered in the air, coating the inside of her throat—one that she knew from old crime scenes and cleaning up after the Battle of Hogwarts—and now that she thought about it, he was looking distinctly green. A thought began to trickle into her conscious mind, and she let it settle in before voicing it.

"Are you—are you by any chance—"

He actually set the book down, now. "Decomposing? Ten points, Miss Granger, for stating the obvious."

"Isn't there anything you can do about the smell?"

At about knee height, Theo's head was shaking in silent mortification, and Pansy's expression reminded her of the six years of school they had spent together—disgusted, and as though Hermione were insulting her personal Messiah.

Which was probably not far from the truth.

"Well," Pansy said, "we could find a more permanent spell, or something that brings him back properly."

It was better than Hermione's immediate flash of brilliance, which was to shove him into the freezer, but she wasn't about to admit that.

"A spell that kills more people?" Theo asked. "That seems to be the basis for necromancy, doesn't it? A life for a life? Or, in this case, a life for several half-lives?"

Snape's mouth twitched, but he didn't have complete control over the movement—his cheeks sagged into their hollows more than ever, and his lips were swollen and blue around the edges. Inferi, in their expressionless determination, couldn't inspire the same revulsion as his attempt to sneer.

"We could ask Professor Snape what he wants," she said, tearing her eyes away; even as she was repulsed, her curiosity began to unravel. Questions like whether he had been decomposing at the normal rate since his revival or if it was a result of the spell beginning to wear off, and when he had begun to be aware of it flooded her mind, and she had to take a sip of water to steady herself.

Both Pansy and Theo were nodding and looking up at Snape, as though they were once again first years clustered round his feet and he was still their fearless leader. His expression was difficult to read under the drooping of his lips, but there was a spark in his eyes that made her think he was pleased.

There was also uncertainty, she realised; he brought his gaze down to his hands and studied them for almost a full minute before replying. "I think… I think I would like to know what my options are, first."

"Which is why Granger and I did this." Pansy began rummaging through the bag, until she found the miniature bound copies of the necromancy books, and resized them.

"But those are from…"

She grinned and handed them over.

"Your relationship with Weasley has done strange things to you—were you trying to get yourself killed?"

"Nonsense. It was fun, and I finally got to test out a modification I made on a spell we found guarding a tomb in Egypt."

Although 'fun' wasn't quite the word Hermione would have used to describe the experience, but as Pansy launched into an explanation of the technical aspects of the spell to Theo, who had a quiet gleam in his eye that disturbed her, she approached Snape.

"Do you mind if I run some quick tests on you?"

There were some basic spells that anyone who had contact with corpses on a regular basis knew—how long it had been dead, which stage of decomposition it was in… With his nod, she began casting them.

She had been present at his death, years before, but every test came back with the response that he was five days past death. She didn't need further testing to tell her that was incorrect.

Turning to Theo, she said, "I think Hopkins will need to take a look at him."

"Hopkins? You can't leave him in the same room as Hopkins—she'll molest him!"

Pansy looked confused; Snape just looked worried.

"The necrophilia jokes stopped being funny when we were interns, and Hopkins—"

"Yet you always laugh when you think I'm not looking."

She rolled her eyes. "Hopkins will know more about dead people than all four of us put together."

"How many times do I need to bring up working with mummified corpses?" Pansy asked, confusion turning to indignation. "And, I should add, I'm quite good at it."

Theo patted her on the back. "We're talking about examining the dead, not robbing their graves."

"Oh," she said. "That's all right, then."

Hermione turned back to Snape. "I'll just need to take your vitals—well, body temperature, mostly, but I need to sign off on pulse, breathing, that sort of thng. It's rather pointless, but I ought to pretend that I tried."

"Hermione Granger, subject to the whims of the bureaucracy—I always knew I would live to see the day."

"But in my free time, I get to solve mysteries with zombies! Who wouldn't want my life?"

He sneered, but held out his wrist without argument.

Temperature came first. Once she had conjured up a thermometer, she had him hold it in his mouth for two minutes, recorded the temperature, and made a face. Room temperature was really a shocking result.

"Well," she said, "this test indicates that you've been dead for quite some time. Let's see how the others do."

He raised his wrist to eye level, and she wrapped her fingers around it. Too late, she wished that she had thought to use a meter for his blood pressure; his flesh was bloated and squishy enough to make her feel ill.

Ten seconds, she thought, seeking out the second hand of the clock on the wall. She could hold onto him for ten seconds.

Halfway through, she began to wonder if her dizziness was the result of disgust, or something else. At seven seconds, darkness began to sparkle on the edges of her vision. With two left, her legs had begun to crumple, and, by the time ten seconds were up, the floor had rushed up to meet her.

And it all happened before she felt a single heartbeat.