A/N: So, here is the eleventh chapter of A Gift of Time, and once again the story has vastly changed, I hope for the final time before I can really move on and keep adding to it. For those readers who are coming back to this story, I strongly suggest skimming from chapter three onward, as plot points regarding the Zabini twins are especially different. Happy reading!
Happy Christmas
"Where did you get that?" Lily was staring at the gold-wrapped package Hermione was still holding clenched in one hand as they shoved their luggage up the stairs and into the train.
Hermione opened her fist, gazing at the small object, letting the gilt glitter in the dying sunlight. "Snape," she admitted as they bent to push their trunks into the compartment on the Hogwarts Express, allowing the door to shut behind them.
"Snape?" Lily hastily clustered next to her on the seat, green eyes shining like the thirteen-year-old she was as her fingers reached for it, practically twitching with her desire to unwrap the miniscule box herself. "What is it? A present? Why would Snape give…" she stopped, and then asked in a hushed voice, "Do you reckon he gave you the other…thing?"
Hermione did not answer. The question had occurred to her at once as well, but it truly depended on what was in the box. After all, the anonymous deliverer had ensured she didn't know who they were. But Snape had not gone to such trouble.
Her musings were interrupted as the compartment door swung open to reveal Sirius' scowling face. "What about Snape?" he interrupted, inviting himself in and plunking down across from Hermione. The gold box instantly vanished, stashed somewhere in Hermione's robes.
James stepped in, saw Lily, blushed, sat down across from her and next to Sirius, and studiously examined the floor. Mouth pursed, she sat back next to her friend, grabbing the first book that came to hand out of her bag and throwing it open ill-temperedly. Sirius smirked, and leaned back in his seat comfortable, his long legs extended in front of him, his intention plain. He was not moving.
Peter entered third, squeaked as Hermione met his eyes coldly, and hurriedly seated himself next to James. This left Remus, finally heaving his trunk into safety, to sit next to Lily's icy silence and pointed rustle of pages.
"What about Snape?" James repeated his best friend's earlier question. His eyes were on Lily as he waited.
"Nothing," both girls replied, far too quickly. The four boys swapped glances, and Sirius leaned forward.
"This is one of those 'Nothings' that means 'Something', isn't it."
"No," came the unified reply.
"Uh-huh," James muttered as Sirius snorted.
"He's bad blood, Evans," Sirius warned. The red-head's hackles rose and she bristled.
"I think I can choose my own friends, Black, and as I recall, you are not amongst them."
"Hey, hey, guys…Christmas? Good cheer and peace on earth and all that stuff?" James interrupted what promised to be a row, hands outstretched, pleading.
"It would make me cheerful if you would go somewhere else," Lily snapped, curling into a ball with her book, elbows locking on the outside of her knees to form a bony fortress. "No one asked you to stick your noses in here."
James shot Hermione an appealing glance. She sighed. "They really aren't that bad." She knew her tone was less than convincing, and Lily's eyes as they lifted from her book told her so. The younger girl snorted, and conceded:
"Remus isn't half awful."
James' face continued to fall with every word tumbling out of Lily's mouth, and Hermione felt that perhaps he needed some rescuing- in the name of Christmas spirit, or just perhaps an atmosphere slightly warmer than sub-zero- so she asked in a bright voice completely unlike her normal tones, letting the boys understand that their presence was neither desired or necessary, "What are you guys doing for the break?"
"Home." The reply came from three quarters, and Hermione was amazed at how different the word sounded from each tongue. James was excited, Remus neutral and Peter…fearful? Her interest in the future traitor sharpened for the first time. She knew about Sirius' and James' home lives, in very broad strokes, but still… Remus was plagued by being a werewolf, and Peter…Peter she knew nothing about. Was he a muggle-born wizard?
"Where is home, Peter?" she asked. It was the gentlest her voice had ever been while speaking to him, and James and Sirius gave her sharp glances.
He blinked, as if uncertain what to do being addressed by her so directly, probably for the first time. "Er…Cornwall," he squeaked.
"Are your parents wizards?"
He nodded, and his face flickered, fear and something like a spiteful loathing flared briefly. "Dad works at the upper levels of the Ministry. Mum's works in Experimental Charms. Everyone says I'm a big disappointment because I'm no good at magic."
Hermione opened her mouth automatically to counter the pitiful statement, and closed it again, comfort dying before it could be voiced. For all that he was a wizard, and his wand occasionally produced results, it rarely operated to the desired effect. And the wand picked the wizard, or so Ollivander had said. Even Neville Longbottom's skills- admittedly fast improving in the past two years- were vastly superior.
"Where're you going, Sirius?" Hermione asked, as he was the only one who had not responded that he was going home.
"James' of course," he said with a wide smile. Then his face darkened, and for a moment he looked much more like the hard man who had hosted them during her fifth year. "I can't stand my house." It was clearly more than just a teen's rebellion against his parents, the bitterness there deep and solid, no passing fad or frivolous surface feeling. Lily eyed him from behind her book as if seeing him for the first time, and Hermione felt her throat close as she recalled the dark, heavy, dusty curtains and the mounted house-elf heads lining the corridor. She could not fault him for hating Grimmauld Place…
Awkward silence permeated the coach, and then, "So, Hermione- are you going to be visiting Flourish and Blotts over break?'
Sirius kicked him and Hermione rolled her eyes. He was worse than his son. The word subterfuge was obviously not in James' vocabulary, and Lily's eyes had lifted from where she had planted her short nose firmly in her book to give Hermione a skeptical look.
"Fancy James Potter knowing the name of a bookstore," Lily said coolly. "It doesn't even have any Bludgers to dodge."
James' cheeks filled with red, spilling into his forehead like a glass of punch overfilling, instantly distracting him from the bruise Sirius had given him with his none-too-stealthy reminder that there was someone in the car that had no idea what they were doing.
"Yes, I am," she said, so quietly she hoped it would end the subject. If her tone hadn't been enough, Sirius' warning hand on his wrist was. James asked no further questions, and once again the car descended into stillness, broken by the flickering paper-on-paper slide when Lily turned her pages.
Sirius ended the uneasy quiet by talking about the Tornados and their chances of winning in a minor league this year. The boys put their heads together to talk strategy, and Lily, eyes cutting towards them to establish that they were indeed well-ensconced in their plotting, and then turned to Hermione, whispering softly, "What about your present?"
Hermione withdrew the minute box. It was no longer than her middle finger, and three times as wide. She eyed it with some apprehension. She could not imagine what she might have done that would have prompted him to give her a gift, and especially not one in what looked like a jewelry box. Lifting it to her ear, she rattled it gently. Nothing inside it moved, and it was surprisingly heavy. Heavier than gems.
"What is that?" Remus surfaced from the conversation, attention caught by the flash of gold casting a rectangular bar of light on Hermione's throat. The source vanished quickly once again, and Lily glowered at him.
"It's nothing." His wounded expression prompted her to embellish slightly. "From one of my friends at my other school." It had exactly the effect intended. He smiled absently and dove back into the Quidditch.
To Lily's enquiring green eyes, Hermione mouthed, "Later." The younger girl tossed one more impatiently resentful glance at the boys and her thumb opened a book automatically, burying her once more in history.
Hermione's hand wrapped around the package, fingers encasing it so that the tips grazed the bottom of her palm. What was in it? She dared not activate it on the train, it might cause a disaster.
Yet, somehow, she didn't think so. He had been so painfully shy in giving it to her, thrusting it at her and bolting down the corridor, that she was almost certain it did not contain a hex or other unpleasant object. That was a Fred and George style gift. The generally dignified, aloof boy who had given her this was not a prankster.
Fred and George. The raw loneliness that robbed her of breath crashed over her in a wave. It had grown so rare, this stark homesickness, this feeling of missing not just something desperately important but the entirety of her world, that tears bubbled to her eyes instantly. The first Christmas in two years that she would not be at the Burrow, and the first in three that she would be away from Harry and Ron and most of the Weasley family.
Absurdly, her abrupt sense of loss culminated in the intense desire for some of Molly Weasley's mashed potatoes smothered in gravy made from chicken stock, and ebbed. She was in the train, going home with Lily Evans, and with a standing offer from three of the Marauders to call them if she needed company. She was hardly all on her own.
Her fingers were clasped around the box, clenched tight, the corners digging into her flesh. She loosened her grip, but did not let it go, the weight an anchor to now, the mystery a puzzle to occupy her brain. And she was good at puzzles.
888
Mrs. Evans was a slender woman, like her daughter, and her dark eyes snapped with the same intelligence and gentle spirit. But there the resemblance ended.
Mr. Evans was who Hermione saw first, standing nearly six and a half feet tall, with Lily's same red-brown hair and sparkling green eyes, his gaze sweeping the crowd for his youngest daughter. And skulking behind them, with none of the unbridled enthusiasm and eagerness of her parents, was Harry's to-be-aunt Petunia.
She was blond, like her mother, and clearly growing, taller already than the other woman, though her bent shoulders made her smaller, and her sulky mouth damaged features that might have been considered handsome enough.
Lily's parents stepped forward eagerly to embrace their daughter, and while Mr. Evans offered Hermione a friendly handshake, Mrs. Evans swept the girl into her arms as well. "And so pretty. Robert, look at this glorious hair!" Mrs. Evans exclaimed, examining Hermione's russet curls. Hermione's mouth twitched. Her glorious hair? Lily had by far the most wonderful locks that she had ever laid eyes on.
"Lily tells us you're a transfer student?" Mrs. Evans started. Lily and her father exchanged a glance- so similar to Fred and George when Mrs. Weasley began harassing Harry that again Hermione lifted her hand to her mouth to hide her amusement.
"Yes. From America…" They walked down the platform to the car, two girls, the Evans' and Petunia, far at the back, lagging behind and glaring after them, as if afraid that sharing their air might transmute some unforgivable disease.
888
"Why would Snape give you a present?" Lily asked as they unpacked their trunks in her room. Petunia had flatly refused to share space after Lily had been accepted at Hogwarts, so Hermione and Lily easily fit in Lily's room.
"Erm…" Hermione could not think of a way to explain her connection with the boy. It hadn't seemed strong enough to warrant a gift, but perhaps what he had given her was a trifle…
"I don't know really," Hermione said slowly. "We've talked a few times…that's all. Oh – and he helped me out when Malfoy was being a scumbag." Lily frowned.
"Maybe it's not safe," she said hesitantly. "You're top of our year, and before you came, he was…he might not like the competition. You should probably have opened it at school just in case…"
"No. I'm sure it's all right," Hermione replied, shaking her head. Snape would not have given her a prank gift. Not and delivered it the way he had.
888
It was the owl that did it.
They had survived quite well for the first three days, ignoring Petunia's petulance, her slamming door, her heavy-handed footfalls just shy of stomping. Hermione felt embarrassed only for her parents, and then simply because the Evans' were so obviously distressed and mortified by their daughter's behavior. It was the first time Lily had had the nerve to bring home a friend to face her sister's censure, and it was proving a difficult trial.
"She's just…it's taking her a little time to adjust to Lily's talents," Mrs. Evans had assured her, a little nervously when they had entered the house and Petunia had instantly vanished without so much as a "How d'you do?"
"Of course," Hermione accepted with a grace that surprised the older woman. "How old is she?" She didn't know if Petunia was older or younger than her sister. Harry had never said.
"Oh, thirteen, same as Lily," Mrs. Evans replied with some surprise. "Lily didn't tell you they were twins?"
Hermione's eyes widened. Twins? But they looked so-
"Fraternal, obviously," Lily beat her to the question.
But the owl that arrived the fourth morning of their stay during a breakfast of French toast and eggs tapped on the window right behind her, sparking a shriek, the splattering of toast caked in butter and doused with syrup against her skirt, and the subsequent cries of dismay as Hermione hastily rose and allowed the bird inside. It added insult to injury by misjudging it's landing and sending Petunia's orange juice to join her syrup-butter skirt, and she burst into tears. The owl startled at suddenly having a wailing girl behind it, and rose in a flutter, wingtips brushing Petunia's face so that she screamed again and batted at it with her hands.
Hermione quickly held out her arm, the owl perched, back to Petunia to indicate its displeasure, and extended one leg. Hermione winced as the bird's balance shifted and it dug one clutch of talons into her forearm. But a few scratches were infinitely preferable to Petunia's continued hysteria, and she bit her tongue, smiling her thanks at the owl and untying the letter before breaking off a bit of toast. It glared at her balefully with yellow eyes as she brought the sweet concoction to its mouth, and she sighed, setting it down.
"Mrs. Evans, do you have any bacon or sausage? Owls like meat."
Lily's mother beamed at the grouchy creature and bustled into the kitchen to retrieve the requested item. Petunia's tears had stopped by now and her eyes were locked- not on the animal, but on Hermione, with loathing. Suddenly, Hermione was very glad she had never encountered Harry's aunt as an adult. Remus, Sirius, and her professors knew and understood enough to be circumspect, but she doubted the Muggle woman would be so reactionless had she encountered her in the future.
Her face splotchy, Petunia turned to her father, rage replacing the frustration in her eyes.
"It comes clean," he placated quickly. "Your mum is a dab hand at mending and cleaning, Petunia, you know that. She'll have it clean in a mo." For so large a man, he had proven remarkably soft-spoken and was clearly the peace-keeper in the brood of females.
"If they're so special, and they can do magic, why can't they clean it?" she challenged.
Hermione sighed. "We could if we were at school. Underage magic is not allowed where Muggles can see us- in other words, outside of Hogwarts."
"Convenient," she responded icily.
"Petunia- Hermione didn't make the mess!" Lily swiftly rode to her friend's defense.
"That beast she's cradling did," her sister snarled. "And it clearly came for her."
Hermione tossed a glance at the handwriting. Remus' painstakingly neat lines marked the parchment.
"Remus," she told Lily, and a sudden snort of amusement had to be stifled. What on earth would Petunia say if she knew the owl had been sent not by any old wizard but one who was also a werewolf?
Mrs. Evans hurried back out with the bacon, and hesitated, eyeing the owl. In spite of the fact that Lily had received several owls a summer for the past two years, her mother had never touched one of them, and the curved, incisive beak gave her significant pause.
Petunia waited intently for her mother to notice her, knew it was not going to happen, thrust the napkin still gripped in one hand on the table, and fled upstairs. Her mother and her father both watched her go, pained expression on their faces. Hermione saws the bird take note of the bacon, and knew that Mrs. Evans was shortly to lose her fingers to a hungry hunter.
"It's all right, Mrs. Evans. The owl came for me, I should feed it." Taking the bacon, she fed the bird, who gobbled it eagerly, hooted gently, dunked its beak in Hermione's water, and flew out the still-open window.
"Who's it from dear? Do you have a sweetheart?"
"Erm…no. It's from a friend of ours at school," Hermione quickly replied, reaching to break the seal.
"It's from Remus," she recounted to Lily as she scanned it, "and he wants to know if we can meet him in Diagon Alley."
"What do you have to get there?" Lily asked.
"A book for extra Arithmancy study," Hermione lied.
888
Hermione had never visited Diagon Alley over Christmas. The Alley, sunny and hot whenever she stepped through the brick and into molten light for back-to-school supplies, looked perversely odd covered with snow, flakes falling thick, fast and silent, the circular beams of the streetlamps casting pools of light to punctuate the blue-tinted darkness of the landscape.
And, as in her own time, the overwhelming stench of fear in the Alley turned her gut. The gaiety that Christmas brought out at Hogwarts was muted here- a string of lights, a few steady candles, a wreath already half snow-covered. But the shuttered windows, locked doors and drawn curtains told the story underneath the few sad, neglected attempts at decoration.
The terror instilled by the attack on the Alley at the beginning of the year had changed the face of the once-cheerful winding corridor of shops, and Hermione's loathing for the Death Eaters spiked again as faces peered around drapes at them as they trudged through the snow, other witches and wizards giving the two girls, and everyone else, a wide berth. Hermione smiled at a golden-haired girl no older than six, and as a gap-toothed grin responded, the girl pulled away, arm tugged by a harried witch who shot Hermione a look of deep mistrust.
Lily stared in distress. "Trina and I came here last year," she whispered, her voice rough as if she were about to cry. "It was so…it was alive, Hermione. Every shop had a pennant as well as a sign, and fairies twinkled everywhere for the season, and…"
"I know," Hermione responded softly. Fortescue was always so cheerful with Astronomy, and Madam Malkin's shop stood wide open for everyone. The emporium was decked with colors and flags and signs for familiars and pets. And even Gringotts…the goblin-run bank was barely visible through the snow, and it looked chilled, dead, a deserted bastion, remnant of a grander time. Two realities warred for space in Hermione's brain, warm memory and cold present, the difference in the Alley so shocking she nearly turned to check the sign that arched over the entryway, wishing that they had stumbled into the wrong place, the oppressiveness of the air so much more suited to Knockturn Alley.
The whole of Britain will be like this if we lose, Hermione thought bleakly, and as a customer hurried out of a shop, the door slamming behind him in testament to the thinness of Christmas spirit this season, Hermione felt that if Harry didn't kill Voldemort, she would.
The silence between them had changed, and Hermione hadn't noticed, but Lily was staring at her, both arched eyebrows drawn, studying Hermione's face. The furrow in her brow and the sorrow in her eyes betrayed her, and Lily wondered yet again where her friend had actually come from. It was clear from the ache exuding from the drawn mouth that Hermione knew the alley, knew what to expect when it was whole, and that the silent misery bore on her with a weight that came only with the unexpected and dramatic change of the familiar.
But something of Hermione's solemnity stilled Lily's questions, and it occurred to the girl for the first time that Hermione might be older than she was- not by a mere few years, though that, too, could be true- but by decades or centuries, or even millennia. She knew too much for the average third-year, even Lily, who had always been the best of their Gryffindor class, felt that Hermione had more experience at living – that her book knowledge came almost as a side-effect of something else.
The snow packed beneath their feet, crunching downwards as they made their way towards the closed and locked bookshop, shivering in their cloaks as they waited for their raps to be answered. A face peered around the curtain that covered the door, seemed to assess them, determine they were of little danger, and furtively swung the door open, inviting them in with a jerky, birdlike movement of his hand, fearful and hurried. The responded in kind, hunching into the shop, the door closing so quickly behind them it nearly nicked their heels.
"Sorry to trouble you, sir," Hermione began carefully. Her respectful foray brought the reaction she sought. The man, stooped in worry, stood up straight. He was aging- just at that time of life when he had enough silver shot through his hair to make him dignified, but not enough wrinkles or extra skin flapping at his jowls to make him old. She did not recognize him, and assumed he was likely the father of one of the future proprietors.
"Hermione?" a figure rushed towards them from the bookshelves, and Hermione smiled. Remus.
"Hi, Remus!" she greeted him cheerfully.
"So this is the friend you were waiting for," the owner said with some satisfaction. He gave Lily a quizzical look. "You didn't say there would be two of them."
"I didn't know," Remus apologized.
"No harm done, lad. They seem perfectly respectable. I offer you my apologies, ladies, for my slowness in opening the door, but the Death Eaters…"
"We understand, sir," Hermione replied quietly, and her tone held an underlying hint of steel that made it clear she did, indeed, completely understand.
"I've been checking up on the list you gave me," Remus instantly presented her with a stack of books as the owner smiled and returned to his polished wood counter. Hermione winced as Lily arched an eyebrow.
"Arithmancy? These look like Transfiguration to me." Her voice contained both question and challenge, and Hermione was tired of lying. "Animagi?" Lily was staring with avid interest at the books Remus cradled. The boy was looking nervously from one girl to the next, uncertain what to say, knowing from listening to James and Sirius stick their metaphorical feet down their esophagi that boys often only made things worse when they opened their mouths.
"These are part of what we need," Hermione flipped her hand carelessly. "But the more important books are in the Arithmancy section."
"I only beat you here by a few minutes," Remus cottoned on quickly. "I haven't had a chance to peruse those shelves yet."
Hermione thanked whichever god oversaw her fate for her newest theory- that becoming an Animagi would, in fact, involve arithmantic equations, giving her a real reason to purchase a book or two from the shelves. Professor McGonagall had given her the titles of a half-dozen books, but she did not believe for one instant that one would contain all of the information necessary for practical application, or that even all six together would provide every piece. And since most animals were either larger or smaller than humans, there was at least some mass displacement with every transformation, the greater the difference in weight, the more the mass that had to be accounted for.
She marched to the Arithmancy books on a shelf towards the middle of the store and started flipping through indices. "What are we looking for specifically?" Remus muttered.
"Mass Displacement Theory and Human Transfiguration Technique," she replied out of the corner of her mouth.
"Why?" It had been too much to hope that Lily's attuned ears would not hear her words. "Mass Displacement? How much are you planning to transfigure, Hermione?"
"Big things," Hermione replied vaguely.
"Hermione Jane Granger," the red-head snapped, "If you think I'm going to buy that load of bollocks, I suggest you think again."
Green eyes blazed with a ferocity that Hermione had only seen in Harry during his campaigns for Quidditch, and it quelled her, knowing the formidable force of mind behind that gaze.
Remus was watching them, face wrinkled in worry and fear. No wonder Snape doesn't like Gryffindors. We lack subtlety, Hermione thought. If Remus wasn't careful, he'd give the game away himself.
"Look, it's something for Snape," Hermione told Lily in a hushed voice. The red-head gave her an incisive look- Hermione's partial avoidance of her eyes was mistaken for embarrassment, and the hesitation to tell her led Lily to clap her hands over her mouth in delight as Hermione passed her test.
"Snape? But why does Remus have a list?" she asked, derailed as suspicion returned.
"It's for us too, but the transfiguration and mass stuff is for Snape. He gave me a present, and he already knows all about Potions and the Dark Arts-" Mentioning the gold package Hermione still hadn't unwrapped had the immediate intended effect. Lily forgot about Snape and mass and transfiguration as she returned to the mystery. Hermione wondered if she'd been so single-mindedly distractible when she was thirteen, and if she had been, how often had her teachers used this same technique?
"What's in it?" the girl pressed hopefully.
"I haven't opened it yet. I told you, Christmas. You'll know as soon as I do."
"Snape gave you a present?" Hermione clamped down the instinct to groan aloud. No peace at all between these two, it was battling two fronts. Lily who knew nothing of the Animagi, and Remus who knew nothing of her two unexpected gifts, one anonymous and another one that Snape had shoved into her hand. She reluctantly turned back to her gentle friend, who had frozen with a promising book half-off the shelf, staring at her intently.
"Erm…yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know," she admitted.
"It might be dangerous. You shouldn't open it in a Muggle house," Remus said with unusual vehemence. "But…my dad might be able to take a look at it for you, make sure it's safe," he offered, his customary manner returning.
Hermione smiled ruefully and shook her head. "No. It wasn't like that…he's not James or Sirius, who I would expect to give me itching powder or a quill that spurts ink all over my bag or a book with- shall we say interesting- pop-outs. It's a real present."
"If you're sure," he swallowed. "I think this book has some of what we want," he focused suddenly on the black binding, pulling it all the way out and flipping to the index, allowing his search in the book to bury his disappointment and hide the briefly flaring jealousy that he knew poisoned his eyes.
888
The store owner smiled at them as they came forth with their books. Books were expensive, and though on the train Sirius had offered to pay for the lot by diverting a small sum from his family's fortune, Hermione had shaken her head. They were all useful titles, but in the end they purchased four books- three were Transfiguration and Arithmancy texts for becoming Animagi, which Remus quickly wrapped in a bag to keep Lily from putting two-and-two together.
He needn't have worried. Lily's attention belonged to the slim, spell-locked fourth volume, a book with a series of enchantments around it. The man behind the counter arched an eyebrow. "This is a difficult book to open," he warned, amusement in his eyes.
"I know. The…opener, is up to the challenge, I believe," Hermione replied, smiling.
"I see." The crinkled corners of his eyes sharpened as he put it carefully in a bag and handed it to her. "Happy hunting."
She grinned widely, and the three started for the exit.
"Hold on," the owner stopped them, hurrying forward, placing himself in front of the children to peek around the drawn curtains again. "Too much mischief about these days," he murmured, only partially to them. "I wouldn't want to see your young faces in the morning Prophet under a nasty headline." A thorough checking of the street assured him that they were, indeed, allowed to leave. And as the door opened to admit the cold in a swirl of flakes, a niggling thought that had finally jostled to the front of Hermione's brain, asked:
"Sir? Who fought the Death Eaters during their attack months ago?'
His face passed through startled, cheerless, fearful and finally, rueful as he decided to answer her question. "Death Eaters? No one knows. The attackers weren't Death Eaters, leastways, not at this end of the alley. The men who took apart Lady Arjou's Asian Jewelers had no masks- and they wore red. Dark red. Not black. And they fought in the middle of the street, much closer to the Leaky Cauldron- but it wasn't the Ministry. They destroyed the alley as much as they hurt the Death Eaters." He shivered, and the glaze over his eyes told them he was seeing another time on this street. "They…I supposed one could call it singing…as they attacked," he related quietly. "Some of the most violent harmonies I've ever heard. And as they sang, apartments came undone, ceilings smashed into floors, merchandise shattered windows, into the street- the whole of Lady Arjou's store was smashed on the cobblestones. I don't even begin to know what magic spared me." His face twisted with irony at the remembrance.
He shook himself furiously. "Dangerous stuff, music. The Ministry's got the right idea – keep it all under lock and key. I can't even listen to WWN anymore." In another time and place, Hermione would have objected that WWN's crooning witches and whining warlocks did not constitute music, but now the thought did not so much as enter her mind.
Lily and Remus were both staring at the man, and then turned to Hermione. She nodded slowly at him, fear causing her throat to spasm closed. "Thank you," she grunted hoarsely, and they finished leaving the shop, the door closing behind them silently.
"What did he mean?" Remus asked.
"Red cloaks," Hermione whispered hollowly, all sense of merriment vanished, she cursed her stupidity- all that time closeted and learning about the Echo- she could have asked so many questions! They had been ordered there to find her and Dumbledore had gotten in their way, kept her safe…what if they were, in fact, seekers of the knowledge that Grindelwald had buried with him? Mroczek had ordered her to be extremely cautious, but it seemed that warning was more to save his own skin, and allow him to do things like this…
As the oppressive silence of the alley fell around them again, hatred boiled anew, and this time not just for Voldemort.
They attacked using music. No wonder they don't want us learning how. Not a very good weapon if the most powerful controller on earth can counter it, she thought bitterly.
"Red cloaks…Hermione, the inspectors!" Lily cried. "The ones at Hogwarts – they wore red." There was fear in her voice that Hermione could not quite place, but she didn't have time to think about that now…
"Lots of people wear red," Remus was reasoning. "They could have been doing anything…and there's no real reason for musicians to be at Hogwarts, is there? I mean, it's not like we're allowed to have classes in the stuff." He turned to Hermione to ask her opinion.
But as he opened his mouth, Hermione turned abruptly and started towards the far end of the Alley and the Post Office, where she could rent an owl for a few Knuts. She had to send a letter…
Upon reaching the door, having left Lily and Remus some ten feet behind her at an unconscious rapid pace, Hermione's eye caught a flash of white-gold, a streak of light piercing the snow-darkened Alley to her left…
She spun, her mission briefly interrupted as her body followed her sight to watch Lucius Malfoy, no more than twenty yards away in the gloom. She sneered at his vanity. It took spells to make your hair shine without the help of sunlight, and the sheen that looked so natural in the summer popped out awkwardly in storm-covered Knockturn Alley.
As she watched, he removed something bulky, and oddly familiar, from his robes, handing into a shadow- that suddenly grew a clawed hand as it darted forward to seize the heavy-looking object. A hiss of displeasure, Malfoy withdrew his hand as if burned, and muttered something unintelligible. As he strode- or slogged- down the twisted alley, Hermione watched the shade he had handed it to shrink the large, awkward burden, and in the moment before it shrunk to fit in the palm of his hand, the light from the spell illumined it brightly and she recognized it.
A hard protective case, molded imprecisely around an irregular shape that ended with a curved bell. It was a saxophone.
A shipment of instruments had vanished en route to England, Mroczek had told her when he was talking about the potential dangers that accompanied playing music. Most likely stolen. Now she wondered whether Mroczek was the man who had ordered it done.
But regardless of that, Lucius was clearly involved. Make that two things to write to Snape about. As Knockturn Alley cleared, she pushed open the door to the Post Office.
888
Hermione awoke groggily on Christmas morning, cold seeping through the snugly-fastened window near the bed the Evans' had set up for her in Lily's room.
"Pssst. Hermione."
"Mmmph."
"Are you awake?"
"Hmmphg."
"It's Christmas."
"That….mm-yaaah….so?" Hermione shoved her fingers into the corners of her eyes, pulling sleep from the corners.
"Present." Lily was referring not to the presents tumbled together under the tree, but the gold-covered box nestled in Hermione's trunk.
"Mmhmm. All in good time." Hermione was thoroughly enjoying dragging this out. Lack of female friends had left her bereft of this particular brand of women's nosiness and persistence, and torturing Lily with the much-speculated upon contents of the box was all that had kept her from opening it days ago.
"You promised." Lily was poised on the edge of her bed, leaning forward towards Hermione's trunk, an Irish Setter eager for the hunt.
"I know." Hermione lazily dragged her feet around to touch the floor- and swiftly shot them back under the covers, shivering. She gathered the comforter to her body and glowered at Lily.
"Cold."
"It's Christmas. There's snow outside." Lily's voice held no compassion or caring and her green eyes barely flickered from the trunk.
"You know, Lily, I'm starting to think that you only invited me so that you could have a look at what's in that box," Hermione teased.
Lily finally tore her gaze from the trunk containing the object of her curiosity and arched an eyebrow. "I invited you before Snape gave you that miserable box. I just want to know what's in it."
Comforter wrapped firmly about her like very bulky robes, Hermione crossed the five feet to her trunk, opened the lid, and withdrew the box. "Budge up," she grunted to Lily as she started for the other girl's bed. Lily scooted sideways, head bent to the package obscured by Hermione's hands.
"You are so nosy," Hermione groused playfully.
This garnered no reply, for her fingers were already slitting the tape. She was grateful that Lily didn't rush her in her careful unwrapping as she had before. It reminded her of Harry and Ron – the boys almost always had all their presents opened before she had even managed to unwrap two. But Lily traced every movement of her fingers, the meticulous parting of the tape from the wrapping, leaving the gold intact and unblemished.
As the gold fell away, a tiny box made of mahogany shone in the thin light filtering through the curtains. It was unmarked, just a smooth-grained rectangle of dark wood with a fitted lid. And after a moment of wiggling to loosen it, the lid came off as well.
The box was lined with parchment that had been written on, and in the middle of the parchment nested a tiny golden harp. Lily lifted her eyes to Hermione coolly as the older girl's hand flew to her mouth, stifling the gasp of surprise.
"So you don't play an instrument?"
Hermione hesitated, but it seemed that now was the time to tell the truth. "I do," she admitted.
"I think I'd gathered," Lily replied, in that same slightly cold voice. Her eyes were already glazing with hurt and withdrawal, and Hermione could hear that it was time for her to explain quickly or lose her only female friend.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before…when the music went everywhere, but…it's illegal, and I haven't really told anyone."
"Except one Severus Snape." The distinct chill coating Lily's words told Hermione that her fumbling explanation wasn't convincing the younger girl of anything. "The only Hogwarts student to be widely disliked by just about everyone."
"I – well…" Hermione threw caution out the window, along with common sense, and said, "He plays too. Clarinet. And his cousin, Klytemnestra, plays viola. And I'm sure the other twin must, but I've never heard her play. Maybe flute…Snape said he heard one…"
To her surprise, Lily blushed and looked away, and something about the sudden drop of her eyes clicked together with the slight, half-afraid, half-eager tone in her voice when she had seen The Rite of Spring and asked, "Do you play?" "You do too!" Hermione exclaimed. "You're it, aren't you? The flute player we've been wondering about?"
"Shhh!" Lily said fiercely, and stopped her gesture towards the door with an embarrassed smile. "I guess it doesn't matter if they hear," she jerked her head towards the stairs that led to the rest of the family. "They bought it for me, after all, it's not like they don't know."
Hermione laughed. "And you were angry at me for not telling you?"
"Oh, all right," Lily grumbled. But it was good natured, and both girls were once again staring at the pure gold instrument lying in the box. Lily reached for it, paused, murmured, "May I?" and received Hermione's nod of assent before delicate fingers lifted the harp. It was no longer than a single joint on her long finger, and only half again as wide, the arched gold of the body meeting the glimmering knobs that were the pegs, miniature yellow strings imprinting tiny grooves on her index finger.
Hermione tore her attention from the miracle of the harp to scrape out the parchment that had been shoved underneath the tiny replica of her instrument and unfold it.
The harp can be played. On the back are four different spells to transfigure and enlarge it into a full-size instrument. I would have given you a real one, but they are heinously expensive and extraordinarily difficult to come by.
True to his awkward, brief form, it was unsigned. Her eyes widened, and her sucking breath shifted Lily's attention from the toy-sized piece in her hand to the parchment in Hermione's lap.
"It works?" Almost unconsciously, Lily reached for her wand, only to find Hermione's hand firmly around her wrist. The old girl shook her head regretfully.
"No magic outside of school. The Improper Use of Magic Office will take your wand."
Lily stared at her. "You're not going to even try it?"
"And cause Petunia another fit when the owl arrives fifteen minutes from now on Christmas morning? I don't think your parents will be inviting me back."
Lily waved that away with fluttering hands. Hermione captured the one cradling her harp. "Let me see it."
Lily gave over the treasure with a smile that carried a hint of knowing. "I can't believe he gave that to you."
"Me neither," Hermione agreed. But the detached quality to her voice told Lily that she hadn't caught the other girl's meaning, too wrapped up in the details of examining her brand-new treasure.
Lily debated as to whether she should hint again, but another question popped through her mouth before she could. "Do you think he gave you the music too?"
Hermione wished that she could say yes, but something about the music was too… cautious. Too distant. Almost as though someone had placed a firecracker on a burning log from one hundred meters away and was waiting to see the result. She believed that Snape-the-man would have no trouble doing exactly that. But Snape-the-boy still wore just enough of his heart on his sleeve that she doubted it. And sheet music was incriminating evidence. A solid gold harp smaller than her pinkie was not.
"No," she answered finally. "No, I don't think so. And I should get rid of it – thank you for reminding me. No one will think anything of it if I leave it in a Muggle house."
"Get rid of it?" Lily gasped.
"The Rite of Spring, not the harp," Hermione clarified.
Lily opened her mouth to object and hastily closed it again when her mother popped her head in the door.
"Oh good, girls, you're up. Dad has breakfast ready. Don't you want to open presents?"
Snape and The Rite of Spring would clearly have to wait for another time.
888
The owl beat at the window. Eileen Snape scowled as she rose, only to have her sister signal her imperiously back into her seat.
"Nobby will get it," the older woman told her imperiously. From their places down the tables, Severus, Klytemnestra, Kassandra and their older brother, Sebastian, lifted their heads with the rest of the table- an assembly of some forty Zabini's living in England, the standard size of a Christmas dinner at the Zabini estate- eyes on the tawny creature obscuring most of the otherwise grey sky visible through the lattice.
And indeed, a well-trained house-elf quickly seized a short, polished wooden ladder, nipped up the rungs, and swung the window open, perfunctorily seizing the letter and tendering a treat at the same time. The bird flew off, the window closed and latched, and Nobby presented the prize to his mistress with a bow.
"Very efficient," Eileen murmured dryly. Not a single feather had so much as blown through the window.
"House elves usually are," her sister replied, turning over the letter. Her eyebrows arched in surprise and her gaze shot to the end of the table.
"Severus, it's for you."
Severus' eyes widened, and his aunt's next words and sharp eyes hardly helped. "And unless I am much mistaken, it's from a girl." It was Klytemnestra and Kassandra's turn to give him the same stare that their mother had pinned on him, though Klytemnestra had a knowing smile playing around her mouth and gently crinkling the corners of her eyes.
But his own mother laughed. "You must jest, Elizabeth. Severus looks entirely too much like his father."
"Yet his father is a father- so it is clear that some women are attracted to the Snape complexion," his aunt returned smartly, but not unkindly. Indeed, her usually shrewd eyes were soft as she looked on her only blood nephew. The Zabini family was vast, and she had no shortage of nieces and nephews by marriage, but Severus was her single nephew by blood, with the eyes that had passed from her mother to his mother to him, and she was fond of him. What he did not know was that she offered, every year with growing concern, that he and Eileen, or at least he, be removed from Spinner's End where his increasingly violent father threatened far worse than verbal abuse to his son and offered it to his wife.
Severus stood, placing his napkin on the table politely, and traversed the long table to his aunt, enthroned in the chair to the right of the head of the table, inhabited, as always, by his uncle.
"Thank you, Aunt Elizabeth," he said solemnly. She gave him a brief smile, small on the mouth but warm in the eyes.
As he took the parchment, the babble of general conversation broke again, a few curious glances punctuating his journey back to his place with his cousins. Sebastian was too well trained and cared too little about his cousin to ask, but the twins had no such restraint, and instantly leaned over to look.
"Who?" Kassandra asked as she looked at the neat line stating the recipient's name.
Unaccountably, their cousin blushed furiously. "I don't know," he lied, voice even in spite of his embarrassment. He was sure he recognized that neat print. But even Klytemnestra had not been told of the gift he had given her, and he was not going to inform them at the family table.
"Are you going to open it here?" Klytemnestra asked as he picked up his knife.
"Why not?" he replied. He pushed the sharp edge through wax hardened by a flight through the cold, and unfolded it.
The message was extremely short, cryptic, and he noted with a faint surprise laced strongly with disappointment, that she did not mention the gift he had given her at all. Instead, the ruler-edged writing read:
The people in red at school attacked Diagon Alley. L.M. had sax, gave in KA.
Severus' eyes widened and he passed the letter to his cousins. They scanned it.
"What, they were just attacked?" Klytemnestra whispered.
"No, it's past tense. I think she means the attack on the alley at the beginning of the year," Severus countered.
But Kassandra had re-read the next line, and felt her stomach heave. L.M. That could only be one person…and he had a saxophone. "I got it from Russia." She rose suddenly, almost tripping in her haste, face unhealthily pallid.
"Dear-" her mother started from the far end of the table.
"Sorry, something didn't agree with me," she barely managed to gasp out as she sprinted from the room. She stopped in the hallway, legs shaking so badly she thought they might give way, fighting the urge to vomit. And she had trusted him. Maybe even started to love him…
But he had always been interested in information. Always music. A series of late afternoons closeted behind heavy, forest-green velvet curtains shafted through her mind, his body spread lazily, somehow managing to take up almost all of the four poster, her darker skinned arms contrasting with his pale torso as they lay entangled and sated. And somehow she had never put together, never really thought about their topic of conversation. The questions he asked, the delicate hints that he dropped…and she had answered him, believing his interest in her sincere…
"What was that?" Severus asked, disconcerted.
Klytemnestra was staring out the door where her twin had vanished, disgust vying with concern. She knew of her sister's fascination with the son of Abraxas, but had not thought it to be more than an infatuation – an opinion she was now considering revising. She barely registered her cousin's question, and heard herself answer as if from a long tunnel. "Something to do with Lucius Malfoy."