Disclaimer: All belongs to JKR and I'm not profiting from this work
Note: This is only half the chapter up, I never meant to leave it as I did but I felt I couldn't leave you without an update this week. Hope you all enjoy, and thank you all for the reviews on the last chapter: It's great to know you're all enjoying it and all constructive criticism is a god send :)
Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.
Winston Churchill
Severus knew it would be too late before he'd even left for Hogsmeade. Apparating from Diagon Alley, he'd kept his scowl fierce and his gait determined. To all those who saw him suddenly appear in Hogsmeade's town centre, he was the same aloof Professor Snape they'd always known. Beneath his stern exterior though, a battle between guilt and dread raged on.
He shouldn't have sent the letter until he'd checked in with the patents office, until after his trip to the vault. He'd been as brash and foolish as any common Gryffindor; he'd let his emotions run away with him. Although perhaps it would be more apt to say he'd let the whiskey run away with him. The point still stood though, he had been an idiot.
He had rushed through the village of Hogsmeade, paying no mind to the startled gasps and shocked stares that followed his wake in the soft summer dusk. Storming into the post office he had quietly, and somewhat threateningly, asked if it was too late to cancel the owl he'd hired, if there was any way the letter could be retrieved.
The clerk looked next to tears as he answered. The owl had been sent immediately. Apparently no one had wanted to keep Severus Snape waiting. Sneering down at the spindly postal worker, Severus spun out of the building, his robes flaring dramatically behind him.
He'd known he would be too late. Swirling into the still warm night air, Severus cursed the faint hope he'd nursed, before swiftly apparating away.
Hermione had been dreaming of bed since around 4.30. Drifting through the lab she felt the heavy press of movement surround her as though from very far away. The small murmurs of the other researches, the dull hum of liquids boiling, and utensils hitting the bench tops all droned together. The notes she had steadfastly written swam in front of her, leading her eyes around the pages, without ever letting the information reach her brain. By five o'clock she was just going through the motions, focusing on looking the part, acting interested, appearing concerned. It was the first time her work, indeed, any academic pursuit she'd engaged herself in, had felt flat. She had absolutely no interest in the numbers and figures in front of her.
Which is not to say she failed to understand their significance.
The ministry had found what it was looking for. At least, Hermione had. She seriously doubted the Ministry would be able to piece all their information together and reach the same conclusions in less than a fortnight.
At least, she hoped they wouldn't.
The integration of a blood analysis potion with colour-changing ink; the reversal of Faerie Wings and Nightshade, the exploration of Caligula's effects: They were not, as Hermione had first, rather ignorantly suspected, all separate antidotes.
They technically weren't antidotes at all.
Faeries wings, when used in an illegal subversion of a girding potion served as an anti-conception agent. The ministry couldn't have that now, not when their proposed law was created with the specific goal of reproduction. The researchers had identified the reactive extracts in the ingredients that modified the standard girding potion. By isolating the magic that prevented pregnancy, they could create something to neutralise it. Hermione scanned down the list of observations and spotted just the ingredient the ministry needed to achieve this neutralisation. Kneazle Blood would magically locate the foreign anti-conception agents and render them useless. Unfortunately, where Faerie Wings were rare and expensive to obtain, Kneazle blood was cheap and plentiful. Luckily, the ministry had them fairly low down on their list of options; if they were to test each agent before coming to a solid conclusion, they'd easily waste their 30-day time limit.
That's if no one else with a basic understanding of logic took the time to evaluate the listed materials. Luckily logic was such a rarity in the magical world then.
Still though…
Hermione slumped back into the workbench's high stool, nibbling absent-mindedly on the back of her quill. Perhaps Hermione could do her best to delay the ministry's inevitable success. Drawing a pencil out of the bun at the top of her head, Hermione lightly went over the entire list, placing small, mostly unobtrusive ticks next to most of the ingredients, and faint crosses next to a few of the dafter ideas. Making her way through the list she looked up, covertly checking the room around her before placing a cross by Kneazle blood.
It wasn't technically sabotage, Hermione told herself, still chewing on her bottom lip. She wasn't actively crossing the items off the list, and she wasn't coercing anyone to follow her notes.
She was simply trusting that they would. Her time at St Mungo's may be limited, but she could safely say her knowledge and intellect were still highly valued. Casting the list aside, Hermione steeled her nerves and once again set about examining the lab's collection of observations: This time on Nightshade.
The ministry had so far correctly identified Nightshade's historically illicit use as a post-coitus means of preventing pregnancy. From what she could determine from the notes, It seemed to Hermione like an exceptionally brutal variation of the muggle morning after pill: Instead of simple preventing the egg from attaching itself to the uterine wall, or indeed the sperm from attaching to the egg, a specially prepared mixture of the plant would simply force the recipient to menstruate prematurely, gorging the uterus of all offensive material.
The plant was highly poisonous; indeed the most commonly obtained strain of it was Atropa Belladonna, which even muggles throughout history had noted as a dangerous poison. Hermione grimly frowned, remembering the abandoned hoard of it that had been piled in Hogwarts' Room of Requirement. It would take either a very foolish, or very desperate young girl to consider such options.
Her frown only deepened when she considered exactly what the Ministry's preparations showed: They had casually accepted that some witches would be just desperate enough to risk their lives to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, and their only efforts in the face of this knowledge, were aimed at protecting the foetus. Every note on every page Hermione had read through showed exactly that: The interns had extensively covered the several ways of counteracting the drug's contraceptive effects without so much as referencing the several other toxins which would be released into the patients bloodstream.
Hermione drummed her fingers along the bench once more, looking for even the smallest way to delay the ministries research. Glancing at the clock once more she wished her head wasn't so foggy. It was very nearly 6.30 and Hermione knew she would soon be counting down the minutes before she could return to Grimauld Place and leave the tense, inclosing hospital behind her.
Reading through the notes once more, Hermione reasoned her only input could be to point out the toxic nature of the drug once more, and hope her notes would be read by someone with a last enduring shred of humanity.
Which is a long shot really.
Shuffling the papers once more after making her entry, Hermione glanced over the Blood Analysis/Colour-changing-inks folder. Here, at least, she was too late to make any significant impact. The research had been concluded on only their second day, and what had at first seemed like a step backwards for St Mungo's efficiency, was actually a quite ingenious, if immoral, method for the Ministry to keep tabs on the fruits of the nation's marital labours. A drop of an individual's blood on the marriage certificate would later change colours according to different hormonal factors: namely the increase attributed entirely to pregnancy. In most cases, Hermione presumed, the ministry would be aware of an oncoming child weeks before the parents.
Which is possibly the most disgusting invasion of privacy in magical history.
Hermione sighed. If only she'd come into work yesterday. She might have been able to delay the research, perhaps even full out sabotage could have been excused. Hermione lightly shook her head. It was no use heaping guilt onto her conscience. She knew that, and yet she would never be able to forget that she had personally aided this project. Her conclusions had irrefutably contributed. It was a mark against her name that she would never scrub clean.
Hermione glanced down at the thick wad of notes the junior researchers had compiled on their work with Caligula. It would take her a full day to sort that lot out and draw conclusions, and with her current state of mind, she wouldn't be able to retain so much as half the information. Looking up as the clock struck 6:30, Hermione resolved to leave the work for tomorrow, and gathered up her notes, leaving them in a neat pile by her workstation.
Several heads looked up from their research as Hermione rose from her bench walked through the room. Her contract with St Mungo's specified her hours as 9 – 6.30 and Hermione knew that technically she was free to leave. It certainly didn't feel that way as she made her way across the wide airy lab, now lit up and still full of constant activity. She could feel the stares of the ministry officials boring into her back as she reached the door and struggled to control her breathing. She needed to appear calm, to act naturally. Fainting due to a lack of oxygen suited neither purpose.
Once she finally reached the landing at the top of the staircase, Hermione let out a deep sigh of relief. Thank the gods today was over. She
would never survive as a double agent. All day, every simple task had felt cumbersome and unnatural, as though every person in the room could see through her. Making her was down the stairs, Hermione tried to level out her breathing and relax her tense muscles, but something was still weighing her down at the back of her mind. It was a niggling feeling that wouldn't leave her alone, even in the throes of her triumph. She couldn't look forward to returning home, to finally getting to bed, not when there was something she'd forgotten pressing deep beneath her skull. Slowing her step on the stairs, Hermione drew in her brow and tried desperately to place the thought. Was there something she was meant to do? Something she'd left up in the lab?
Turning the corner, Hermione stepped on to the second floor landing and came face to face with the directory sign. It only took a glance at the words "Fourth Floor- Spell damage" for Hermione to realise the source of the relentless nagging feeling. She hadn't thought of Ron once all day. She'd had countless chances to duck in and see him, and it had completely slipped her mind.
Hermione could only hope it was something the ministry had failed to notice; especially if Ginny's idea of a continued romantic pretence was still to be borne. Surely a concerned girlfriend would have been to see him at least briefly while they were in the same building
Surely a concerned friend would do the same, or any decent person for that matter.
Hermione cringed guiltily, thinking fondly of continuing down the stairs, of flooing through to the warm kitchen of Grimauld Place and sinking in to the soft bed that awaited her there.
It would be so easy to do. To pretend she'd forgotten the matter entirely. That she'd never once remembered.
Sighing Hermione only shifted her bag onto her shoulder and carried on back up the stairs. Sleep would have to wait.
Severus was still furious with himself as he appeared with a crack in the middle of his living room. Before his cloak had time to settle, his senses were tense and alert as he noted a shift in the magic around him.
His wards had been breached.
Scanning the darkened room, Severus sent out a silent shield charm and homo revelio almost simultaneously. The shield charm stayed in tact as the room remained just as still and lifeless as ever, except for the faint glow slowly pulsing from the cottage's modest kitchenette. Wand held aloft and shield charm still in place; Severus stalked silently through the shadows, a curse on the tip of his tongue.
Rounding the corner Severus had to bite back a curse as he almost stumbled over the prone figure of Draco Malfoy, immobilised on the cold kitchen tiles.
Scowling, Severus let the shield charm fade away before stalking to the other end of the kitchen and muttering the counter curse to let the boy up.
"Just what, may I ask, compelled you to break into my house this evening Draco?" Severus asked gruffly as he leant against the counter, pointedly not levelling his wand.
"Lovely to see you too Uncle. Impressive wards, you always did have a way with company." Draco drawled sarcastically, the effect somewhat lessened as he picked himself off the dusty kitchen floor.
"You weren't home when I flooed. Mother was worried."
"If you're trespassing was merely out of concern for my health, feel free to go and assuage your mother's concern. I am entitled to leave the house you know."
"Oh we knew that, it's just for months it's seems to have slipped your attention. Was that fire whisky I spotted by the mantle?" Draco queried without really asking, making his way through to the small sitting room and helping himself to a glass.
"By all means, make yourself at home" Severus snarled, somewhat irritated by the house call. He was more than capable of looking out for himself. He'd done so for forty odd years without anyone blundering into his house after him.
"Now there's my gracious godfather's renowned hospitality once more. Actually uncle, I actually have a bit of a business proposition for you. What do you know about Caligula?"
Hermione was slightly out of breath as she climbed the last few steps to the fourth floor. She didn't have to time to think as she bustled through the empty ward and she wasn't quite sure what she expected to find as she rounded the corner into Ron's room.
Walking into a room crowded with laughing nurse staff definitely wasn't it. Lowering her bag from her shoulder, Hermione quietly continued into the room unnoticed. Ron was animatedly telling a story, flailing his uninjured arm around while two pretty nurses, one Asian and one brunette, ate up his dramatics. Hermione had nearly reached the bed when the other participant in the room, a taller, blonde male turned from the bed to greet her with a surprised smile.
"Miss Granger! We'd just abandoned hopes of meeting you. Visiting hours are almost over!" The man laughed, shifting so Hermione could clearly see Ron leant back against the pillows, smiling weakly at her.
"Ahh yes, I'm abusing staff privileges I'm afraid." Hermione joked weakly while tugging at her lime green robes, noticing for the first time that the stranger wasn't wearing any. His robes were light grey and closely resembled the cut of a modern muggle suit. Hermione glanced up at his face once more as she faintly recalled Kingsley's inquiry about a tanned, blonde wizard from the ministry. This man fit the description to a tee.
Hermione suddenly felt like a deer in the headlights, caught between moving to Ron's side or pleading an excuse and leaving. How could she leap into the pretence of a relationship after Ron's pale greeting, after the wizard's reference to her own neglectfully late appearance? What if Arthur hadn't spoken to Ron yet? And was Hermione meant to feign jealousy over the two probably lovely nurses who had kept Ron company in her absence? The wizard's attention never wavered once as an odd stalemate fell across the room.
Shit.
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