Disclaimer: Characters and settings (other than the occasional Potions swot) belong to JK Rowling and Warner.
17/12/07 A/N: Long chapter, full of unnecessary detail and a smattering of angst. What the hey. The next chapter will have much more equine content, promise. Happy holidays, people!
ooOOoo
Chapter 74: Elmsworthy Tries to Explain Using Small Words
They finally managed to pin Elmsworthy down to a sentence approaching general understanding. Almost.
"The 'C' refers to the dilution factor in the potentization."
"Potentization?" asked Remus before anyone else could, which was kind of him (everyone else except Dumbledore and Hermione was looking annoyed at the number of times they'd been forced to ask Elmsworthy to, in Comrade Tyrol's ever-so-flattering words, 'dumb it down'.). "Is that something like acidity levels?"
Elmsworthy gave him one of those grudging looks of respect he usually reserved for Hermione. "No, that's potentia hydrogenii, orpotential for hydrogen – pH. Potentization is making something stronger by dilution. Serial dilution, as a matter of fact, because the relative difference between the amounts of substance and diluent is so vast."
"That makes no sense," argued Sirius.
"Not intuitively, no. But when you're working within the framework of a homoeopathic –"
"Okay, okay…" Sirius lifted his hands in surrender. The rest of the room began to breathe easier as another Elmsworthy Torrent of Jargon was averted.
"There are ways of testing the potion once it is completed," Dumbledore said.
"Arithmancy charms?" asked Hermione, who'd been almost silent over the last five minutes, her only movement that of her thumb stroking the back of Ron's hand. (Not that Harry had been noticing, he told himself jealously.)
"Yes. Professor Vector can help us with this. And I think you, Mr Elmsworthy, have cracked the code." He smiled at the Slytherin. "It – the potion formula as you have put it – seems plausible if you accept the theory underpinning it, although to be honest I always felt vitalism was overrated. I may have been premature in my assessment."
"Don't tell me you believed Adelis the Ungainly's arguments?"
"No, Elmsworthy. You're right in saying he was a moron. Even his own mother described him as a scatter-pate of troll magnitude, and she was his biggest supporter. But other researchers – witches and wizards with certificates to prove their sanity – have given convincing arguments against vitalism."
"So you're going to make the potion? Oh." His sharp eyes had seen the glances exchanged around the room. "Ah. You've already made it. Except for the potentization. Which is what you needed me for."
Remus was nodding. "Correct. On both accounts," he said. "How does it work?"
"Well, a mechanism for succussion needs to be set up. I need to look over my notes for that. I'm not sure if it needs a certain frequency and angle or if the materials for dilution should be specially prepared, or if we can just grab a bucket of water from the lake and bang away with a bottle of potion. Probably not, though."
"You have notes on succussion?" The shocking thing about the question was that it was Hermione who asked it.
Elmsworthy raised an eyebrow and one corner of his sombre mouth as if to say: I have notes on everything.
No wonder even other Slytherins didn't get on with him. Harry, however, couldn't help feeling a certain warmth for someone who was so obstinate in the face of conformity. It reminded him of –
He shut down that thought. Everything reminded him of Luna.
"What more can you tell us about the potentization process?" Remus added hurriedly: "…In brief. As if we were first-years."
Elmsworthy, who had opened his mouth, closed it again, looking sour. "Huh." He paused and Harry later told Ron he could hear the gears changing in Elmsworthy's brain. It looked painful, because Elmsworthy frowned slightly. "Hmm. Well, it's a serial dilution. You take one part of your potion and add it to ninety-nine parts of your diluent… given the polar nature of your potion, I would recommend using as a diluent double-distilled water you've passed through a Buch-charm funnel and charged with a… er… didn't you already know this by first year?"
Even Hermione shook her head. She'd probably not learned all that until second year, Harry thought as he and Ron exchanged raised eyebrows over Hermione's head.
Dumbledore seemed to be trying not to smile. It could have been the beard, though.
Elmsworthy frowned again.
"Take one millilitre of potion. You know millilitre, or do I have to teach you tha- oh, good. Look, if you didn't know about Buch-charm funnels, how could I be sure you'd know about millilitres? Right. Put the millilitre of potion in a bottle about yay big." He held up his hands to demonstrate. "It needs to be a strong bottle. A strong glass bottle. Add ninety-nine millilitres of really, really, really good water. I will give you the water. Make sure the lid is on nice and tight. Bang the bottle against, um, against the arm of this chair, which is probably leather over horsehair stuffing. Bang the bottle, um, let's say fifty times… I'll need to check the notes Snape gave me for that. And to make sure there's nothing specified in particular for the percussion stand. When you finish, open the bottle. Take out one millilitre. Put it in a second bottle of the same size. Add ninety-nine millilitres of that really, really, really good water I just told you about. Make sure you put the lid on nice and tight. Bang the bottle agains-"
"I think I see where this is heading," McGonagall said, and several people blinked glazing eyes. "And how many times is this to be repeated?"
"Well, it said 'wavy line eye 100C', so while you have to keep your eye on it to see when it activates – it'll probably turn a silvery colour as spring snow mistletoe is involved – it's going to be somewhere in the vicinity of one hundred times…"
"I thought the one hundred was the one hundred dilution factor," said Sirius in disgust. He'd been shuffling his feet through the last part of the explanation.
"No," Elmsworthy said slowly, sounding annoyed. "The C refers to the dilution factor. This may not be common knowledge to Purebloods…" he grimaced apologetically at Draco's pointed throat-clearing "… Gryffindor Purebloods, that is…"
("That's better," said Draco, sotto voce.)
"… but C represents one hundred. So if Professor Snape wrote 100C means he wanted a one-in-a-hundred dilution done one hundred times."
"There's nothing wrong with Gryffindor Purebloods," McGonagall said crossly.
"Well, to be fair, I didn't know about the C thing," Ron said, grinning. "And every one of my millilitres of blood is Pure."
McGonagall gave him a quashing glare, although Hermione was biting her lip to repress a smile and Draco was carefully gazing out the window.
"…So any questions about the potentization?" Elmsworthy asked.
"Not just yet," Remus said. "But we probably will as soon as we try setting it up. Can you make sure you're around for that?"
"Not a problem. It's a very interesting potion. If I may ask one thing…?"
Dumbledore inclined his head in assent.
"… What did you use to bind the potion?"
Silence.
Only the sound of Fawkes preening could be heard for a full four seconds before Harry said: "What?"
ooOOoo
It turned out there was a big, big hole in the formula, possibly the one that had stumped Snape and Narcissa and stopped them making the potion so Narcissa could take revenge on Voldemort. To wit:
"It's a vitality charm you're countering, one used by a certain very powerful Dark wizard I'm not supposed to have guessed the identity of, so you'll need something – a living component – something very solid to bind the potion. That's where the notes are coming up short – no binder. I mean, if you're using bog-standard mistletoe to break a Vivicus on, well, this potion is ingenious, yes, but it would only have worked to break a Vivicus if it was placed on a Squib or a baby wizard. You're using spring snow, and by Merlin you'll need spring snow mistletoe to break the Vivicus on a fully-fledged bastard of a Dark wizard. But spring snow is on a different plane to the usual stuff, I mean, to think otherwise is to go up against Blewitt's Paradox of Herbology…"
Remus nodded tiredly. "Yes, so you pointed out earl-"
"… Because the difference between the Benvolio thresholds for a Vivicus on a baby or a Squib and an adult wizard must be of the order of, oh, somewhere about two point one on the natural log scale, which takes it beyond the range of ordinary mistletoe, which could only counter something point four above Squib level," Elmsworthy was saying, tapping volume 2 of Applied Arithmancy For Brewers.
"Between Voldemort and a Squib I calculated the difference in thresholds to be two point seven eight four," Dumbledore said.
"Gosh, that much?" Elmsworthy looked rattled, as did Hermione and Draco, who were both taking Arithmancy. Harry and Ron exchanged bemused shrugs. "Hm. That's interesting to know. It's also a little scary to have someone that powerful on the same planet as you."
Dumbledore managed a thin smile. "Isn't it, though?"
Hermione was nodding thoughtfully. She should be looking as astonished and worried as the rest of the room. Harry wondered if she knew that sometimes she was a very annoying person. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, but that didn't do much to stop his headache.
"So you can see that no amount of spring snow mistletoe in the world is going to be of use if you can't activate it on the plane of magical human biology, not when it's going up against a charm of the magnitude of the Vivicus. It's like… like..."
"Like mixing oil and water?" suggested Hermione.
"Exactly! Immiscible at any proportion until you tilt the thaumo-enthalpic balance!"
"Don't you mean 'thaumo-entropic'?"
"No, I mean 'thaumo-enthalpic'. It's a case of –"
"Yes, yes," said Remus, who looked as fed up as Harry. He squeezed his eyes shut a moment. "Let's argue entropy versus enthalpy in magical systems another day."
Elmsworthy had just spent a busy fifteen minutes explaining (with the help of a blackboard, a range of coloured chalk, three of Dumbledore's little silver machines, a ruler, a fourth-dimensional slide-rule, some pins, all three volumes of Applied Arithmancy For Brewers, two marbles, a glass of water and some blue string) the fact that a spring snow mistletoe potion to be applied to a non-plant organism sustained by the Vivicus charm (which, as Elmsworthy pointed out, was tightly self-sustaining and a real bitch to infiltrate) needed something to bridge the gulf between charm and potion.
Harry hadn't followed much of it, although Hermione, Lupin, Flitwick and Dumbledore had. Even Draco and Sirius had asked a few salient questions, and McGonagall had nodded occasionally in the manner of one who'd just had something made understandable they'd never previously been able to grasp. He'd have liked to blame it on the headache, but knew it was purely because he'd spent more time over the Quidditch pitch happy in the knowledge Hermione would predigest his homework assignments for him. Ron, his befuddled expression reflecting Harry's, had even less excuse.
Draco had gone pale at the point where he realised that if his parents and Snape had used spring snow instead of standard mistletoe in the potion used to break the milder Vivicus variant which must have been cast upon himself as an unborn infant, the potion wouldn't have been bound properly and he wouldn't have been born. Harry didn't say anything – he was the only other person in the room to know about Draco being one of Voldemort's test subjects.
"So how powerful a living component is required?" asked Dumbledore, the hand which had been stroking his beard stilling.
Elmsworthy shrugged. "I hate to say it, but the lower limit might be human-sacrifice-powerful." He threw a sharp look at Dumbledore. "I'd like to go on record as saying I totally disagree with such a practice."
Hermione made a small noise. So did Sirius, although his was more of disapproval than distress.
Dumbledore's eyes flashed, and any comment any of the other members of staff might have made never made it off their tongues. "Noted. And for the record, I am of the same accord. It's also embedded into the Hogwarts Charter. The last time anyone tried to remove it, only their boots were found, still smoking. I hope that puts your mind at ease."
Elmsworthy flushed slightly but, ambassador's son finally showing through, did not fidget. "I would be regretful if my words might have given you the slightest cause to interpret them as implying someone with your reputation had such a lack of moral fibre that you would even remotely entertain the thought of human sacrifice to further even the noblest cause," he said, smoothly as Harry had ever heard even someone like Lucius Malfoy roll words. What with the intonation and slight rise of the eyebrow, did that mean Elmsworthy thought human sacrifice was potentially feasible so long as it was used to stop Voldemort, or that Dumbledore was a staggering hypocrite? Harry was lost.
Draco's fingers twitched – Harry suspected he was thinking of writing that one down. He strongly suspected Malfoy had started a journal for these things, and was a little worried at the prospect.
"Well, I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us when I say that human sacrifice can be ruled out," said Remus heavily, although he wasn't the only one who glanced at Draco as if there was some question about his attitude towards murder for the greater good.
Draco's expression darkened.
"Any ideas?" Hermione asked before blood could be shed and the question of human sacrifice be answered with a resounding if incidental yes.
Elmsworthy lifted a thin shoulder. "Well, we'd need something with a high vitality index and catalytic –"
"The fig," said Harry, his eyes widening. It seemed so obvious now.
"What?"
"The fig. That – that's the binding magic we need."
"What fig?"
Harry ran his fingers through his hair. "When – um, something happened when I was back in time –" he flicked a glance at Sirius that nearly hit the mark "– and a catalyst was needed to bind and activate a certain charm, a fig from Hufflepuff's fig tree did the trick."
"What fig?"
"What tree?"
"What charm?"
"Hufflepuff's what?"
Harry looked around, realising belatedly there were quite a few people here who didn't know the whole story of him and the Severus-badger. All of them barring himself, in fact, because he'd promised Sn- Severus to keep a lot of that secret. Sirius had guessed about the identity of the badger but Harry hadn't told him exactly how the badger had come about.
Did Harry know the whole story? He wouldn't put Galleons on his knowing the totality of what had gone on when he'd gone back in time. "Er… long story."
"Is this the, er, the odd dimension the horse brought you out of, Harry?" Sirius was asking, his tone carefully polite, his stance suggestive of Padfoot with his ears tucked back in canine apology.
Harry still refused to look at him. He couldn't ignore the question, however, and addressed the rest of the room with his answer: "Yes. It's Hufflepuff's Secret Glasshouse. Inside is a whopping great fig tree with figs that are a concentrated form of magic – but it's gone crazy – the dimensions in the Glasshouse, that is. Up is down and left is right and I'm not going back in there until I can be sure my insides won't suddenly become my outsides." He shivered at the thought. "Not that I need to. Last time I went inside – when we were collecting mistletoe," he added, "I came out with a fig in my pocket."
"How did you get a fig in your pocket?" asked Lupin, his brow furrowing.
But Dumbledore was nodding. "I expect it was meant to be in his pocket."
Lupin shot him a look. "What? Sentient figs?"
Dumbledore smiled and resumed stroking his beard. "Have you ever tried talking to one?" Then, when even McGonagall looked alarmed, he sighed and added, "The interesting thing about Helga Hufflepuff, which most Gryffindors and Slytherins and even the wise Ravenclaws forget, is that while she left herself in the background, when you are in the background it is easy to manipulate behind the scenes."
Draco's fingers twitched again.
"This wouldn't be an ambrosial fig, perchance?" Elmsworthy asked, his sombre face barely concealing the fact he was almost falling out of his chair with delight.
"Er… I'll get it, shall I?" asked Harry. At Dumbledore's nod, he shot off towards Gryffindor before Elmsworthy could ask him to explain the unexplainable.
On his way along the corridor along from the gargoyle guarding Dumbledore's office, he heard his name called.
He turned. "Oh, hi Stephanie. Can't stop, I'm afraid."
The portrait tilted her head. "Even if it means stopping the castle crashing down around our ears?"
"You what?"
She leaned on the lower bar of the frame of the painting she was in – it was otherwise uninhabited and showed a rather boring strip of moorland. Her yellow robes and the yellow ribbon she'd tied in a bow in her hair were astonishingly bright against it, and Harry wondered if that was partly why she'd chosen it. "Castle. Falling down." She lowered her voice as he came closer. "What Remus was just telling you about certain weak spots. And you should know that spring snow mistletoe is a remarkably volatile substance…"
"I'd noticed," Harry said sourly, remembering how it had triggered his fall into Hufflepuff's Glasshouse.
"Y'know that fig…?"
Harry frowned. How did she know about what Lupin had been saying? And the fig?
"I can sense it a mile away," she said in a tired voice, accurately predicting his second question before he opened his mouth. "It resonates in counterpoint with the Sickle."
Harry felt his eyebrows climb to his hairline – not such a feat these days because it had been a while since his last haircut and he was almost as shaggy as Siri- as that person who masqueraded as his godfather and friend. "I beg your pardon?"
"They compliment each other, the fig and the Sickle. Mistletoe can counterbalance either of them when used wrongly – that's why the Sickle sparked when you touched a fresh-cut sprig to it."
"Oh. Of course. Permit me to ask, if I may, but how the bloody hell do you know so much about it?" Harry hissed, glancing up and down the corridor to make sure they weren't being eavesdropped upon.
They weren't.
She shrugged. A crow flapped its way across the grey sky behind her, cawing, but she ignored it. "I've been around a while. Look, Elmsworthy was correct – it's an ambrosial fig. Better warn everyone about it. Because if you just chuck a whole ambrosial fig into any potion containing spring snow, you'll not be able to tell anyone what happens by virtue of the fact that you will be atomised."
"Hmm. That has possibilities. Maybe I could lob some at Voldemort…"
"While I like your thinking, it might do weird things around him, what with the Vivicus Charm he's using…"
"He's really using the Vivicus, then?"
"In my opinion, yes. He asked me about it when he was a student – not that I told him anything about how it really works. Sometimes it pays to play the 'duh, me-just-a-slow-Huffie' card." Had little flecks of diamond been painted into her eyes? Because they twinkled like Dumbledore's when she was amused. "Tom really is a prime twat, you know. And you're definitely on the right track with the potion you're making – both the potions."
"Would you tell me if I wasn't?"
Her mouth curved. She was probably hundreds of years old and only a painting, so Harry shouldn't be thinking it was a very sexy sort of smile. "Yes," she said. "I have an interest in Hogwarts' welfare and I certainly don't like it being undermined like this. Literally undermined," she added. "Because the tree roots are what are sustaining the barrier and sucking out the wards. Earthen magic. Hufflepuff magic. My mother would be spinning in her grave to think of her dear oaks being used like this…"
"Oh my god. You're Hufflepuff's daughter?"
"Yes. I don't believe we've been properly introduced. Stephanie Moira Hortinghouse-Black-Terwillager-Spense-LeStrade-N'dongo-Chong-Goyle-Blair-Dafoe-Crofts-Schmitt. Nee Hufflepuff." She bent her head in a faux-curtsey.
"Er… Harry James Potter. Pleased to meet you." He wondered if he was meant to shake hands, but then realised that of course he couldn't, not with a portrait, and bowed awkwardly instead.
"Yes – I believe we're related through the Goyle family." She smiled again when he groaned. "But I think I can trust you not to spread that around."
"Sure. Er – you meant about you being Hufflepuff's daughter or the bit where we're both related to the Goyles?"
Her teeth gleamed. "How about both?"
Harry decided it wasn't a good time to ask how she kept her surname straight. He was pretty sure he'd heard the Black name in there. "So… how should I use the Armageddon fig?"
"Ambrosial, not Armageddon. Not unless you add it wholescale to mistletoe, and then it's 'Arma-geddin' outta here'. Get the Sickle and use it to slice the fig into strips from the stem down. Take about a gram of the wet seeds and grind them into a paste. Use a white ceramic mortar and pestle – one that's not been used before. Severus has some in the general potions stores – he orders them in in bulk every few years since they get broken so easily and as he only ordered a new set this school year there must be screeds still in brown paper – those will be unused."
"Oh, that's handy."
"Mm. As for the rest of the fig, you may want to dry it."
"Really? What can I use it for?"
"Midnight snack? I always did like dried figs," she said wistfully.
"It won't… do anything funny?" Harry said, remembering Severus turning into a badger.
She shrugged. "Leave a fresh will if you want."
Harry laughed against his better judgement. "Story of my life… Anything else?"
"Just remember to add the potion to the ground fig, not the other way around."
"Like in some potions, adding weaker to stronger – like water to the infernobud infusion rather than the other way around?" Like Neville had tried to do that time. The explosion had only been delayed until Snape regained his equilibrium. Harry had afterwards entertained the suspicion that the reason Snape had kept his hands tucked around the ends of his sleeves half the time was to stop them shaking after near-misses in Potions. Hermione, who had been sitting next to Neville, had been as pale as Neville and she hadn't been the one given a week's detention with Filch.
"Exactly. For exactly the same reason."
"Okay. We really don't need to give the castle any more reason to fall down. And…?"
She shrugged. "Follow the notes Draco was given. I'm afraid I can't help you as I don't know much about the potion itself. Herbology was my strong suit, not Potions. However, I suggest you then add the potion you've already made to the ground fig in a ratio of one part fig to twenty-six parts potion – you need to make it up to twenty-seven parts total, fig and potion – three to the power of three, you see…"
No, Harry didn't see and his headache was really bothering him now, but he nodded anyway.
"… but make sure you add the potion slowly – say about half a mil – mix – one mil – mix – then three mils then five before you add the balance – slowly, as I said, or it can, err… have an unwelcome reaction. Now tell me what you're meant to do."
Harry recited the method back to her and she nodded. "Good memory."
"Thanks. Umm… just in case, do you, um… know anything about… y'know…"
"The potion to break the barrier? You should be fine with that one. You're using it on oaks, so the potion doesn't need any further triggering other than the charms Hermione used."
Harry wasn't sure if he liked this. Stephanie knew far too much. But in her way she was comforting, because if someone like her – a daughter of a Founder, who had been a friend at very different times, someone who knew where and when Harry had been and still approved – if someone like her was on his side then maybe he'd been going down the right road all along, Sirius be damned. "If… if you think of anything I should know, you'll tell me, won't you?"
Her face for a moment looked as grim as Remus' right before the full moon.
"Trust the unicorns."
"Huh?"
"You heard." The shadow of worry on her face passed and her usual good-natured smile was like the sun coming out from behind clouds. She made little shooing motions. "Off you go, or they'll be sending a search party."
Harry nodded, thanked her quietly but from the bottom of his heart, and went to dig out the fig.
Halfway down the corridor, he heard a "Psst!"
It was Stephanie again.
"I just thought," she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "Save some of the seeds. Have Neville plant them."
"Seriously?"
She nodded and wriggled her shoulders in a rather distracting way, seeming very young and kittenish for someone who must have been painted nearly a millennium ago. "Seriously. Just to see what will happen. Come on… say you will…"
Harry chuckled. "Okay. If we come out of this alive and the castle is still standing, I think Hogwarts will have proven itself able to stand up even to an ambrosial fig tree standing it on its turrets."
"That's the spirit."
Harry laughed. It was nice to know you had a friend in the right place, even if that place was halfway up the wall and – he looked back and saw a flicker of yellow disappear into a side corridor – yup. Currently round the bend, too.
"I still say it'll turn out to be an Armageddon fig," he muttered for his own benefit.
ooOOoo
Back in Dumbledore's office (with Elmsworthy almost breaking into a smile from sheer ecstasy at the chance to work with a real ambrosial fig), he told them about processing the fig. He didn't say how he knew about using seeds and the… er… special knife he knew Snape had down in his workroom which would do the trick for cutting up the fig. Elmsworthy still didn't know about the Sickle.
Harry gave Dumbledore a look which, he hoped, conveyed his intent to explain the matter of Harry's sudden enlightenment into the secrets of the fig when they were alone. He suspected Stephanie mightn't want extra questions, not if she'd kept quiet about who she was for nearly a thousand years. (Hang on, he thought: She'd said something about marrying one of her husbands for a Monet… Harry wasn't an expert, not even a novice, on Muggle art, but he was sure Monet hadn't been painting that far back. Hogwarts just kept coming with its secrets…)
Dumbledore waved away McGonagall's query of how Harry should suddenly become a Potions expert in one short walk to Gryffindor Tower. Even Elmsworthy looked worryingly pensive as he watched Harry from the corner of his eye, and Harry suspected if he wanted to protect his painted friend he'd have to watch his step.
Damn those curious Slytherins. But then Elmsworthy didn't tend to stick his nose in uninvited, so Harry supposed he and Stephanie were safe for the meantime.
Harry laid the fig down on the desk.
They stared at it for a while. It sat there innocently, the plump picture of fig-ness.
"Fell into your pocket, you say?" Ron said. He was sitting back in his chair, arms crossed.
Harry nodded. Of everyone in the room, he seemed to be the most comfortable with it. Elmsworthy and Lupin kept alternating their gazes between the fig and the door. "I would have remembered picking it, especially given how busy I was hanging on to a tree at the time."
"And… you've had it in our dorm all this time?"
"Er… yeah. I didn't really think…"
Ron's expression was a mix of horror and amusement. Draco turned what might have been a snigger into a cough, although he was sitting as far away from the fig as he could without falling off his chair.
Dumbledore took the fig carefully, much as a Muggle charged with defusing a bomb might do. He turned it over in his hand. "Now," Dumbledore said, "I think I can set up a mechanism for succussion if Mr Elmsworthy helps me with the details. There is a small room near the North Tower which should do the trick – it's easier to keep an eye on things in it and it's not near any of the supporting buttresses. I confess I'm concerned with the state of Severus' workroom after Luna's last experiment. It's all rather shaky and I don't think Hogwarts can absorb another explosion in the Dungeons, especially one triggered by spring snow mistletoe and an ambrosial fig."
"I need to collect some things from there," Harry said. "I think the potions were left in a special safe…?" He raised an eyebrow at Hermione.
She nodded. "I'll go down with you. That safe is pretty – well, safe. It should protect against anything short of a nuclear weapon. Even then, it might be useful – it's got reinforced lead shielding."
"Sounds like a Doomsday Safe," said Lupin.
"It certainly looks like one," said Hermione.
"Where was it?" Elmsworthy asked with an edge of excitement in his voice. What with potions and figs and the prospect of exploring a Doomsday Safe on the horizon, he had forgiven Harry and Draco for dragging him away from teaching students how to make a ventriloquism potion.
"In the cupboard under the ventilation hood," said Hermione. "Next to the filter system he must have used for evaporating volatiles and preventing poisonous fumes from being vented into the environment."
"Oh, he never let me poke around that much," Elmsworthy said with a sigh. He sounded jealous.
"Well, it's doubtful he'd ever have let me in the door, but Dumbledore showed me where some of the more interesting things were. I'll show you when we go down and get the potion," Hermione offered, gaining an almost-smile from Elmsworthy and a sullen scowl from Ron.
Elmsworthy ignored Ron. "Lovely. We'll need to drag the filters upstairs, too – can't have mistletoe potion that's been charged misting around all over the place, and we certainly can't dump the waste from the serial dilutions in the lake."
"Hang on a tick. What the hell was Snape needing a Doomsday Safe for?" Sirius asked.
Elmsworthy sniffed. "You mean you wouldn't like a Doomsday Safe?" he said in a tone that implied Sirius was mentally challenged if he turned down such a wonder-device. "They can hold plutonium, you know," he said to Hermione. "How cool is that?"
Sirius shut up, probably realising some arguments couldn't be won when you were arguing against a fanatic. Remus covered a smile with his hand.
Hermione's face suddenly went ashen. "Professor Snape didn't have plutonium in there, did he?" she said in a small voice.
"Nah. Shouldn't have thought so. Plutonium's pretty expensive and you can use Erumpet horn extract as a cheaper substitute."
"Both of which are proscribed substances, so will not be present at Hogwarts, not even in the safe," Dumbledore pointed out, and Hermione nodded in relief.
Harry tried not to look to closely at Elmsworthy; hadn't Draco mentioned that Elmsworthy, now staring at the fig and ferociously avoiding the eye of anyone else in the room, had occasionally helped Snape 'locate' interesting ingredients for potions?
He'd warn Hermione later, in private.
It only took another minute to decide that Dumbledore would go to organise the room while Harry (with the fig back in his pocket) took Elmsworthy and Hermione down to the little workroom to fetch the two potions. Elmsworthy hadn't been let into the secret of the barrier-breaking potion. Hermione had tucked the potions book Snape had written in into her robes before he saw it. But Harry decided he would talk to Dumbledore later about that – the more brains involved the better. He took Dumbledore aside for a moment as everyone else worked out their plans, and quickly ran through how Stephanie had told him about the fig. Dumbledore nodded in relief, and asked Harry if he minded skipping the last class of the day to give him and Flitwick a riding lesson.
Harry said that would be okay, and Draco, when they asked him, also agreed, although McGonagall rolled her eyes and muttered something about how it was her class that was dispensable.
Draco wanted to attend the next class, however, which would be starting in a few minutes (he and Hermione had Arithmancy, although Hermione was given permission to miss it and Harry and Ron, who both had Divinations, tried not to smile too obviously as Dumbledore gave them permission slips, too). Ostensibly, Draco would show up for class to stop anyone getting suspicious about what he was getting up to, but in reality Harry reckoned it was because there was going to be a great deal of heavy lifting in the next hour (magical levitation wasn't advised when setting up for mistletoe based potions).
McGonagall and Flitwick had to prepare their classes, but Minerva promised to go to the new workroom to transfigure some glassware into tubes and flasks for the double-distillation of all the water they'd need; Remus went to the Potions stores to find a new mortar and pestle and boxes of bottle of the size Elmsworthy had described; and Ron – Ron was going to accompany Hermione, Harry and the Slytherin Potions swot.
Sirius changed into Padfoot and went with Harry's group, not that he had been invited. Perhaps he thought it safer than being alone when Draco was unsupervised (because at Sirius' betrayal the blond Slytherin's mouth had thinned in a way most Gryffindors had learned to be wary of). He merely ignored Harry's attempt to shut the door on his nose, the Animagus pretending it had been an accident, flicking it back open with a paw, and slunk after them, his claws clicking on the floor.
Harry whispered a request in Hermione's ear, and she and Ron and (after Harry scowled at him in a particularly poisonous way) Padfoot took Elmsworthy on an impromptu detour to the Potions store to supervise Remus' selection of bottles and mortar and pestle (and give Harry some privacy).
Robes whipping around his ankles, Harry strode alone down the cold corridor in the Dungeons, to a certain dark door where he pulled the handle (taking care not to touch the wood), spoke his name and entered Snape's workroom. He paused there, looking around in the light of the globes the teachers who'd cleaned up this morning must have left behind, to see what damage had been done.
The sinks in their granite benches seemed okay, but that was about it. The windows seemed initially to be undamaged until he noticed that they all reflected the room and had begun to bob where they had once hovered without moving, and while the set of alchemical glassware appeared to be intact, he had a sneaking suspicion an extra set of dimensions was flowing through one of the alembics. The fume cupboard with its specially designed ventilation hood over its metal bench that kept poisonous fumes from killing the brewer was a mess, the glass hood completely shattered with only the frame remaining, the bench warped, and the fan had been driven into the wall. Underneath it, Harry made out a dark cube – the Doomsday Safe, which absorbed light and made his eye twitch when he looked at it too hard. The cupboards had all had their doors blown in and the scarred bench had a starburst pattern of soot radiating out towards the fume cupboard from a small pale circle, and although most of the equipment had been retrieved from where it had been blasted, there were still twinkles of glass in the flagstones and some unidentified pieces of metal and wood sticking out of the stone walls. How Luna had survived was a mystery.
There was a crack running up one of the fat stones that Harry knew for a fact was part of the supporting structure. Faint blue light glittered inside it – the wards of Hogwarts which held the castle together were straining to repair the wound, and they were failing.
Harry paused to check in one of the drawers, and ducked as a quill shot out at him, followed by a frightened growl from the thing cowering at the back of it.
"Hey, Bertram," he said softly. "If you need anything, you can… er…" He looked over his shoulder to see that the quill had embedded itself in one of the windows. "Um, how about you go and find Lupin or Hagrid, okay? I'm sure they'd love to meet you."
The growl didn't stop, and Harry closed the drawer.
The door down the far end of the room was only slightly smoke-darkened.
"Kinkajou."
The password hadn't been warped, which was a good sign: the door swung open at the touch of a finger.
He stepped softly into the smaller corridor, glancing at the painting on the wall. A breeze ruffled the waterlilies, but that was the only movement; the picture, so superbly executed in every other respect it argued even Harry the art-pleb into being a connoisseur, was sadly devoid of yellow-robed witches. He ignored the pang of disappointment and went to the second to last cupboard, the one with the tall door, and paused with his wand hovering over the plain lock.
"Alohomora. Masquerade."
The tarnished brass lock gave an obliging click and the door swung open. Harry leaned forward to peer inside, ignoring best as he could the not-so-empty threat of the blindly-staring Death Eater mask and robes. He crouched down and reached under the whispering black fabric to the box built into the base at the back, which opened to reveal the gleaming crescent of the Sickle. It seemed to hum as the light hit it and when he picked it up the handle was warm to his hand, warm and reassuring, like the time his mother had brushed his hair back from his forehead and smiled at him when he talked with her all those days and years ago in the Infirmary. Even his headache seemed to ebb.
Harry sighed to himself, took it out and went back to the workroom. Mindful of the meagre amount of time he had, he forced himself not to rush as he found a pair of scales and some round glass dishes with short vertical sides and overlapping lids which had miraculously survived Luna. He sliced up the fig into strips and weighed out two separate grams of the seed pulp – hopefully he'd only need the one but there was no reason he shouldn't have a spare portion ready – and put them into three dishes: one tiny dish for each preweighed gram and one larger dish for the slices.
Against his better judgement, he put one of the strips in a separate lidded dish for Elmsworthy.
He'd just cleaned the Sickle and put it back in the cupboard, wincing at the feel of the cool black cloth of the Death Eater robes which started up his headache again, when the others arrived.
Ron whistled at the havoc, his eyes wide as he stared around. "Remind me not to ask Luna around next time Mum wants to redecorate the Burrow."
Elmsworthy ran a professional eye over the burn on the bench. He traced above it with his finger. "Look – the blast was reflected away from here. She must have been standing behind one of her force wall things."
They cleared out the workroom quickly. Harry had the sensation they were being watched by the shifting darkness in the wood of the door, but put it down to the long day and the headache that had set in. Hermione tried to argue Elmsworthy out of lugging the safe up the stairs, but it was only after he found out that it was set into the floor with Goblin-forged bolts that he gave up. He was mollified by the slice of fig Harry gave him, although his uneasiness at being given such a gift without being told the price of it was apparent. Harry mentally shook his head – even giving a Slytherin a gift was a trial.
"Hang on – what about the notes?" Harry asked, pointing down at the elderly potions text Hermione had left on the scarred table. Ron, Hermione and he had shut the door on Padfoot and had a quick whispered discussion, and come to an on-the-spot decision to tell Elmsworthy about the barrier-breaking potion.
Elmsworthy had sighed, run his hands through his hair, and agreed without being asked to say nothing to anyone else about being shown the book ("My word. Snape actually wrote in a library book? And I thought all the interesting times were happening now."). He'd scanned the pertinent notes (Harry could tell it was almost painful for him to have to pass over the notes for the time-travel potion) and given them his opinion that the potion seemed sound, although he'd mull it over some more and get back to them if he thought of something which wasn't apparent right now.
At Elmsworthy's conditional approval, Harry felt a relief he hadn't felt even from Stephanie's nod.
"Good," he had said, and smiled, and had been busy following Hermione and Elmsworthy's orders for the dismantling of anything and everything they might possibly need for the binding and succussion of the potion. But then they turned to leave, and Harry noticed the book on the table.
Elmsworthy shrugged. "We don't need them now, although I'd like to take a butchers at that time travel potion you had some time. The barrier-breaking potion's complete, far as I can see, although if you want I can check the resonance against the barrier itself. Mind you, I'd be cautious of letting the potion too near it in case You-Know-Who has sensory feedback via his link with it." (He'd guessed at the link halfway through Hermione's explanation of the barrier potion, feeding Ron's blossoming disgust.) "Anyway. Dumbledore should have the equipment set up in that room, I've got some twenty litres of water to process into ten of a class II standard, and there's a dog waiting for us outside who's probably getting suspicious. Come on."
Harry paused, staring down at the book.
"Harry…" said Hermione.
"Hm?"
"I'll take it back to my room," she said softly. "Just in case we need it again."
"Okay." But they wouldn't need it again. Nor would they need the notes Narcissa and Snape had generated and Draco had transcribed. From now on in, Severus' part in this was over. Harry wished he could send a note back in time just to thank him and tell him that, well, he'd been a good friend.
He heard a small cough from just outside the door Ron, Hermione and Elmsworthy were carefully walking through.
It was Sirius, back in human form and waiting at the door, keeping an eye on him as if he expected Harry to run off and do something stupid – hah! Sirius had a nerve.
Harry turned his back on the scarred table and the crazy glassware which had miraculously withstood Luna's final experiment, the floating windows and Bertram-in-the-Drawer and walked out, barely restraining the vicious impulse which wanted to shoulder Sirius into the door and leave him thinking he was a chicken for a week.
The door closed quietly behind them with a last swirl of darkness.
ooOOoo
They carted everything up to the room Dumbledore had set aside. McGonagall had been and gone and left behind her a sparkling new distillation apparatus that Hermione and Elmsworthy eyed greedily as soon as they came through the door. Luckily it was a quarter of an hour until the next class, and the corridors they'd walked in silence were deserted apart from Nearly Headless Nick, who only nodded in a friendly way, then had to readjust his head when it slipped sideways. Harry's own head was throbbing in a steady, unyielding rhythm by now, and he wanted nothing more than to go and take a –
"I hate to sound like bossy big sister," Hermione said, dropping a cauldron of knives, stirrers and part of the filter system at her feet with a clang that made sparks shoot out from the pain behind Harry's eyes; she was puffing from the climb up the stairs and wiping her forehead with the back of her hand which left a black smear of soot, "but you look like you could use a nap. Or maybe a bath," she added, which was rich given the way she had accidentally painted her face to resemble that of a Panamanian Witchdoctor ready to create a zombie.
Harry nearly rubbed at his sweaty face with his hands, then thought better of it and used his sleeve instead. "Yeah. I didn't get much sleep last night. But I have to give a riding lesson soon…"
She took him by the shoulders, turned him one hundred and eighty degrees so he was facing the door, and gave him a gentle shove. "Go," she said softly but firmly.
"Yeah," said Ron, who was helping Elmsworthy unpack the filters from a box. "We'll look after things for the next little while. You need a break."
Harry tilted his head. "You sure?"
"Sure," they both said. Even Elmsworthy looked up with a sympathetic eye, so Harry must have looked rough.
"We can look after the potion from here on in," she said.
He nodded, feeling a little offended to be suddenly not at the centre of things at the same time he was glad that he could step back and not shoulder all the responsibility for once. "Okay. If you're sure…?"
"We're sure, and you're exhausted," Ron said. "Have a rest, mate. Go back to the dormitory and get some sleep. You've earned it."
Harry wasn't sure he had, but he couldn't argue, not when the headache was coming up to full steam, so he simply nodded and left. He was just outside the door, wondering if he really wanted to go back to the dormitory, when Hermione called his name.
He turned.
"Here," she said, handing him a yellow envelope. "Sorry. I nearly forgot what with everything else. Colin – I saw him earlier – he asked me to give these to you."
"Oh. Okay. Thanks."
"Take this, too." She pressed something into his palm. It was one of the coins they'd used for Dumbledore's Army. "I can call you if anything comes up. And vice versa."
"Okay." It made him feel better – he wasn't completely out of the loop.
He walked away and around the corner and stopped, curious about what was in the envelope.
Photos.
Black and white photos slid out and into his hand.
They were lovely, even through the blur of a headache Harry recognised Colin's talent. There were several taken in the Gryffindor common-room; what could be bland, everyday life given a new and special freshness thanks to the lens of a camera – a Muggle camera, which caught the moments and pinned them down like butterflies under glass. Here was one of himself sitting at chess with Ron, their expressions caught just at the moment where Harry realised he'd lost – Harry's showed dawning exasperation while Ron's was trying and failing badly not to show smug triumph. Harry smiled despite himself.
Harry turned the next photo over. It wasn't one of Colin's triumphs, although in its own way it was interesting. It was one from the other day, himself sitting bareback on Simon, Draco holding the leadrope (Draco wisely refusing to sit on the horse's back without a saddle or – at minimum – a cushion). This one was overexposed: Harry looked sickly under the shock of black, black hair (it could have been from the potentially very painful position he was in), and Draco's pale eyes were unholy.
Simon didn't look too bad overall, but the shine on his coat seemed to divide him into blocks and columns with an odd, twisted triangle over his chest. He seemed to be picking up on Malfoy's unease at being confronted with an outlandish Muggle device (or possibly Harry's continual shifting in a futile effort to find a comfortable place to sit). Draco had, in the photograph at least, reverted to Malfoy with a strong and disturbing resemblance to his father in the set of his shoulders and tilt of his nose.
While Harry…
…Harry shot a quick glance down at Sirius, who'd reverted to Padfoot and followed him around the corner as quietly as possible…
…Harry on the brink of seventeen looked even more like his father than Draco looked like the younger Lucius. Perhaps it was the way the exposure lightened Harry's own eyes, because for the first time – the very first time – Harry fully appreciated that he had his mother's eyes. Almost. Trying for objectivity, even though he almost had to step outside himself and into a cold place, Harry saw that there was something prematurely aged about the boy sitting astride the tall black horse. Too uncomfortable looking at himself, he took a better look at the horse. True to form, Simon's ears were tilted back with suspicion as he eyed the photographer. Perhaps it was seeing the ghosts of James and Lucius, but Harry was reminded of how he'd seen suspicion like that before – seen it for years before recognising it for what it was.
Harry suddenly felt very depressed indeed.
Ghosts. And not the regular comforting Hogwarts brand (well, as far as Peeves or the Bloody Baron could be regarded as being comforting). Lucius of the past, haunting his son while still alive; James, setting Harry on a path mined with expectations; and Severus, standing back even when he was in the foreground of some social mire, braced between fight and flight for the inevitable moment when someone did something bloody stupid and he had to cope with the fallout.
Harry slipped the photo along with the others and those as yet unseen back into the envelope, which he tucked into a pocket inside his robes.
God, he was tired… the hallway wallowed, but it wasn't magic or any real threat, unless tiredness was a threat…
Tiredness was a very real threat, he realised: he couldn't think straight. He needed to think to get through the next few days. He needed…
… what did he need?
He needed Simon to come and carry him out of this mess; because Harry was just as helpless as when he'd fallen into the Glasshouse. He wanted that moment when he'd been surrounded by the buffer of his friends and the memory of his parents and the birthday cake, and Sirius and Remus had been there sheltering him. He wanted that moment when he'd looked deep into the eye of the unicorn stallion and felt the Forest thrum through his body and known himself to be a part of it and accepted and whole and loved.
Simon was only a horse. His friends were only human. Remus was so distracted by the threat to Hogwarts he had no time to listen to Harry. Sirius was a liar. Unicorns didn't fight Death Eaters. And his parents were as dead and gone as that blown-out candle. Harry was up against Voldemort… and himself, because he could barely put one thought after the other, and his judgement was totally off – look at how he'd trusted Sirius!
It was time to open that door again.
"Stay," he said to Padfoot. Padfoot growled, but it was more like a canine sigh of resignation. He didn't follow.
ooOOoo
The little room was colder this afternoon. There were the same old blankets folded up and left on the floor, somewhat the worse for dust and mice and years. Harry toed at them and frowned when he noticed something more solid.
It was the little box Snape had used to store the things he didn't think were safe in Slytherin. There was the sketchpad right where Harry had left it after bringing Sirius (Merlin, but Harry could kick himself some days!) in to prove that Simon was Snape. Which he hadn't been, so Harry had betrayed Severus yet again, he decided sadly. Did that make him the same as Sirius? His mood darkened further. He was cheered slightly by the box, which was pleased to see him and opened without any growling after Harry remembered the counter-charm. It wriggled happily as he patted it, and he lay back and flicked his wand, casting the soundproofing charm. The hairs on his bare forearms prickled: he must be channelling a lot of magic – Harry hadn't realised he'd been upset.
Oh well – there were remedies for that. Severus was dead; it wasn't like he'd complain about Harry going through the box now…
The bottle of Ribena. Harry didn't think the level was lower than when they'd opened it. He decided against opening it to check if it was still drinkable – it probably wasn't, and he didn't want the bad odour to further remind him of what he'd done and not done.
A couple of Muggle records.
One was Wish You Were Here, the first Pink Floyd album Severus had bought. Apparently he'd liked the cover: on it were two men shaking hands – one man was on fire. Well, that said more about Severus' sense of humour than his taste in music. Harry had listened to it once and thought it okay.
Ah – this was what he'd been looking for. He picked out Animals and turned it over in his hands.
Dogs. Padfoot. Death Eaters. Pigs… Lucius Malfoy, who needed a ring in his nose to stop him digging up dirt. Would Draco save him from being turned into bacon like he deserved? Yet again, another son who deserved a better father. Sheep. The people who had died. Been slaughtered. Gone trustingly into doom. Had put their lives in the hands of a friend who'd sold them to the enemy.
At the bottom of the box was a thin book. It was broken so that half the pages jutted past the others, which was why Harry had thought there were two books when he first looked into the box.
Harry picked it up. The cover was loose from the spine – Madam Pince would tut about the quality of the glue so Harry balanced it in his hand and turned the yellowing pages carefully. George Orwell. Animal Farm. Further damaged when Severus threw it at Harry because Harry wouldn't shut up and let him get to sleep.
He'd sat here with Snape and talked about this book; Severus refusing to tell him how it ended because Harry should read the book and find out for himself. He'd said there was a horse named Boxer in it and that Boxer epitomised horses.
Professor Snape had died, and Harry had nodded and gone on because Professor Snape was more an angry force of nature. But once upon a time Professor Snape had been Severus, and Severus had been a grudging friend to one Harry Lovegood, lost and alone and in search of something to save his world, and Harry had lied like Sirius.
Harry cradled the book to his chest and sat hunched down on the blanket, not caring about the dust.
Harry had asked Severus to write down the potions necessary for breaking the barrier. An older version of Severus (had there still been a bit of Severus in him or had he been fully Snape by then?) had helped Narcissa Malfoy restart the growth of her baby after one of the most awful experiments by Voldemort Harry had ever heard about. And now the notes were finished. In a few hours – by tomorrow morning at the latest, he was sure – the second potion would finish its odd method of brewing. And then Snape's part in this – Severus' part in this – would be over.
It was finally real. His friend was dead. And Harry was probably going to die soon, too.
He realised he was shaking. Harry didn't want to die. And he didn't want any more of his friends to die.
He curled up around the book and tears ran down his face. There was a muffling spell, but he refused to cry aloud. He told himself that it was bad enough that he was coward enough to weep.
After a bit – only a minute or two – Harry wiped his eyes and blew his nose on one of the handkerchiefs Malfoy had given him. He was exhausted and although he didn't feel good, he didn't feel… he didn't really feel anything anymore, only empty. He was hollow.
Time for some mood music, he decided.
"Discus leviosa. Fusus canto."
He didn't have all afternoon, so he chose a track – 'Dogs' – and turned up the volume loud. Really loud despite the headache. Then he lay back against the pile of dusty old blankets with his hands folded behind his head.
He played 'Dogs' twice, even though it would make him late for the riding lesson.
It wasn't happy skippy music; it shouldn't have made him feel better. But it did. After setting 'Dogs' to play for the second time, Harry dozed off. He couldn't have been asleep for more than five minutes, and the dream was an almost incoherent snatched series of images of Draco brushing Simon and Ron&Hermione and Luna helping him blow out the candle on his first birthday cake and Severus drawing pictures of unicorns, but when he woke again his headache was gone and he felt refreshed in ways that were more than physical.
ooOOoo