Thanks for your corrections, alix33. Thanks also to KylieKyotie, Sooty85, NadeshikoBlack and JanuaryLestrange for your support.
If you are a French speaker, you may wish to check out my French version of this story. I am a native English speaker and am only learning French, so any corrections or advice is appreciated.
If you think of a clever chapter title, let me know.
The author acknowledges that all characters are copyright by JK Rowling
Chapter 6 Of mind maps and St Mungo's
From The Leaky Cauldron, Hermione took the tube back to Lavender's flat. Sitting alone near the door of the carriage, she returned the occasional glance from passengers at her broom with an apologetic smile and various minimal excuses—like 'Homebase', 'larping' and 'theatre extra'. There had been a time when she would have charmed the broom to look like something commonplace—a guitar case, perhaps. But these days she didn't bother—she was over the stage of always having to fit in. She used her magic sparingly, judiciously.
As Hermione walked to the office the next morning, she revolved various plans in her head while scanning the trees of the park for the raven. The bird was not in evidence, yet her step remained determined. She wanted resolution—one way or another. She would seek out Bob Reingold after her first meeting to chivvy him along.
This turned out not to be necessary. An owl was waiting at her office when she arrived. Bob had done more than retrieve the promised article. The note advised her that he had acquired a box of useful literature and objects for her. He had also practiced the Altera Vita spell by working it on various historical materials he could lay his hands on. Bob had come in early and was at her disposal.
Hermione looked at her cell phone. It was not yet 8 o'clock— plenty of time before her first meeting at 9. Stowing her backpack behind her desk, she retrieved the bag containing the feather from a filing cabinet and headed downstairs.
Bob jumped up as Hermione knocked and entered his office.
"You have the feather?" he enquired eagerly.
"Yes," said Hermione, holding out the packet.
"Excellent!" replied Bob, hurrying to retrieve something that looked like a small wooden toolbox from within a larger box. "I've collected some things that might be useful, including one of the collapsible Auror hoods I spoke of. However, for the benefit of this demonstration, I thought it might be better if we could see it together. I believe one of the rooms of the Hall of Mysteries will serve us admirably."
"Is the spell very long?" enquired Hermione. "I have a 9 o'clock meeting."
"Time to spare!" said Bob jovially. "Let us head there directly."
Hermione couldn't suppress a shiver as they entered the darkened Hall together. Though she had been there many times as an Unspeakable, she had never been able to entirely repress the memories of the terrible run-in they had had with Voldemort's followers there, trying to retrieve The Prophecy—an encounter that had cost the life of Harry's godfather Sirius. Returning now, it hit her full force again. She felt a wave of anxiety and nausea. How fierce and brave she had been in those days!
"Just step in here," said Bob, oblivious to her discomfort.
He had opened a door to a room that was even darker than the gloomy hall.
"You might want to get the feather out first," he advised. "It is very dark inside."
Removing the feather from the evidence bag, Hermione passed it carefully to him, then followed as he stepped into the room. She stood to one side to allow him to shut the door. It was pitch black. She could not see her hand in front of her face.
"Very well," said Bob, "it's a bit of a tongue twister, so silence please."
Hermione held her breath.
"Exi noctis.
Verum sui revelare tuum.
Altera Vita*!" Bob intoned.
There was a spark of blue light which illuminated the feather, then Hermione saw it dissolve and form a diffuse blue cloud of humanoid shape. Trying to discern the features of her beloved teacher, Hermione at first could not recognise him. But with a vertiginous realignment of her expectations, she realised the form was indeed that of Severus Snape, but as a youth—with a longer face than she had seen in his seventh year school photo of Slytherin House at Hogwarts, but still very young. The moment galvanised her.
Then it was gone. There was silence.
"Was it anyone you recognised?" asked Bob tentatively.
Hermione tried to still her fast-beating heart. She licked her lips.
"Yes," she said hoarsely.
Bob had clearly noticed the tension in her voice. "I suppose it's classified?" asked Bob when she was not forthcoming.
"Possibly," said Hermione. "I'll have to discuss how to proceed with my line manager."
"Oh, dear!" said Bob, opening the door to step back into the dim hall. "Are they likely to be prosecuted?" he asked with a modicum of interest.
"No," said Hermione flatly. "They are dead."
"In that case," said Bob softly. "I'm afraid the bird will have to be disposed of. But it should be done humanely. It may even be possible to retrieve its memories beforehand—provided the family of the deceased is willing to pay the relevant fees. If you see the bird again, or are able to capture it, you merely have to notify the Centre for Disposal of Magical Creatures."
"Well," said Hermione, who had no intention of having anything to do with the disposal of any magical creatures, "it remains to be seen if the bird reappears. By my calculations, it must be close to the end of its natural life."
Hermione realised she was being extraordinarily ungracious by not letting Bob in on her little secret, but something told her she must not let the cat out of the bag just yet.
"If I see the raven again," said Hermione, "I think I should test one of the feathers before notifying the Centre—just to ensure I'm not getting them to dispose of a hapless ordinary bird. Would you mind instructing me in the spell?"
"Of course!" said Bob. "I thought ahead! I prepared this little toolbox for you."
They proceeded back to his office, where Bob went over the spell, demonstrated some artefacts like the hood, and gave Hermione the box of test objects for practising the spell.
"I'm afraid it took me half a dozen tries to perfect it," smiled Bob. "These transformative spells are so sudden death! No sneezing or stuttering permissible!"
Finally, he indicated a stack of tooled leather-bound volumes from the desk which looked to be of some antiquity. Multiple yellow Post-it notes protruded incongruously from the pages. Each appeared to be inscribed with Bob's careful script.
"I'm not sure if you'll be wanting these manuscripts on the magic of familiars now? They relate to the article I was telling you about…"
"Of course!" said Hermione, before reminding herself not to sound too eager. "You have piqued my interest now," she added disingenuously.
Bob looked highly gratified. "This is the edition of the Auror manual with the most extensive entries on familiars," he said, indicating the top volume. "I've reproduced the article I told you about here," Bob continued, pulling out a document wallet that had been hidden in the stack, "along with some excerpts from references that were short or in the reserved section. The volumes underneath are ones I was able to borrow which are more extensively quoted."
Hermione had enough presence of mind to thank Bob profusely before dropping the books in her office. She then headed off to her meeting, where she had a lot of trouble concentrating on the mundane business at hand. Her colleagues noticed her unusual distraction.
Finally free to think on the topic again when she returned to her office, Hermione locked the door from inside with a spell. Propping her elbows on the desk, Hermione rested her forehead on her palms and felt a shiver run up her spine. If the raven had not expired, there was a chance Severus could be reanimated, but it depended on so many tenuous things: that her stasis spell had held; that she could negate Nagini's venom; that she could recapitulate Annie Price's success…one of the greatest documented witches. And what of Severus's treatises? Would success ultimately depend on decoding those too? The unlikelihood of aligning all these variables pressed in on her. She felt the twinge of a migraine-like headache, then pushed it away with some deep breathing exercises she had learnt in yoga. This is no more difficult than defeating the Dark Lord, she told herself. But this time, she was not buoyed by the indefatigable determination of Harry. She shook her head, thinking of their escape from Gringott's on that dragon… Would she have ever dreamed they could have pulled that off?
Pulling a notepad towards herself, Hermione began to make a mindmap. If the stasis spell had arrested death, there was no need for the familiar. If it had not arrested death, both an antivenin and the familiar would need to be employed. In what order? More research on familiars… Decode.. Orthogonalisation…The bubbles and arrows multiplied across the page, looking more daunting by the minute. What order should this be done in? She was running out of time…
Then contemplating the spaghetti, Hermione decided to throw all her balls in the air, and deal with them as they dropped. She opened her laptop and clicked on her gmail account, which she used for unofficial correspondence. Quickly, she composed emails to her former university tutor and St Mungo's Hospital. Then, taking her quill, she wrote another message to Professor McGonagall, to be delivered by owl post, requesting more time with the Pensieve and intimating that she had enjoyed her overnight stay at Hogwart's so much that she would appreciate repeating the experience. This was just an ulterior motive. She did not think that Professor McGonagall's involvement at this stage would be wise. What Hermione really needed was Hagrid.
For the rest of the day, Hermione worked on mundane paperwork that had been piling up to clear it. In the late afternoon, she received a reply from her university tutor, Merlin Thistlethwaite. He wrote that he was intrigued by her problem and eager to be of any use he could to her. This was so much balm to Hermione's soul after Minerva had thrown cold water on her ideas.
Although Hermione was gratified to find Merlin's Oxford email was active—she had hoped he might still have access to it as an alumnus—she was rather surprised to find he was still working as a postdoc at Oxford. She rather thought he would have moved on to an independent position at another university over the intervening years since her A levels. Despite his enthusiasm, Merlin replied that he was rather tied to Oxford, but a Zoom call was possible or he could accommodate her overnight if she had time to visit. He had included his contact details. The direction he gave was not a college, but an address in Jericho, a short bus ride from the city centre. This turned out to be a comfortable-looking maisonette when she searched for it in Google maps.
Considering her options, Hermione thought she would like to visit Merlin in person—she believed it might be valuable if she could show him Professor Snape's journal. But she felt she needed to acquaint herself with the literature Bob had put together for her before haring off to Oxford, to at least understand whether there was indeed a good rationale as to why Severus might have used complex algebra in the creation of his familiar. After all, Minerva seemed to think it a relatively straightforward process. Hermione only had her gut feeling that Annie Price's musings on orthogonalisation were relevant. That is, that Annie's success in reincarnating Hilda was limited by the lack of orthogonalisation of characteristics in the incantation during the creation of the familiar. Thus Hermione decided to spend her evening reading Bob's article before replying to Merlin.
Once Hermione began delving into the references to enhance her understanding of the article, her evening turned into three days. She cancelled all meetings—none of them specifically required her—and decided to work from home. Afterwards, she felt like she had fallen into a rabbit hole, like Alice. She returned to Annie's treatise, which had been, at first, especially hard to read—the writing archaic, the magic next level. But once she had got used to it on her second pass, it was almost like reading fantasy or science fiction. It spoke of a completely different magical realm, a wild frontier of fantastic possibilities with little regulation. Hermione's understanding of the history of magic underwent a revision. Rather than a continual progression of understanding with time, Hermione felt that something had been lost since Annie had written her tome and was wondering whether it could be ascribed to regulation, wizarding wars, or some other influence.
On the evening of the first day, an owl came from Professor McGonagall, expressing her willingness to host Hermione at the school at short notice at any time she wished to visit.
Having left the balcony door open in anticipation of such a quick reply and sent the owl on its way with her expression of gratitude, Hermione hesitated as she went to close the door after it. She stepped out on the balcony and looked around, having not caught sight of the raven for several days now. The air was still and the avenue of trees edging the park on the side of the road was in darkness—the light of the street lamps was directed onto the road and footpath.
Stepping to the rail, Hermione called softly into the empty night, "Professor Snape?"
She thought she heard a rustling of wings in a tree opposite, though whether it was the raven or an anonymous pigeon, she could not tell.
Biting her lip, Hermione tried again, "Severus?"
Another rustling. Then nothing.
Disappointed, Hermione stepped back inside. What if she was too late? To have discovered his secret only after the bird had expired seemed too cruel.
Her hand was still on the knob of the closed door when she heard a flurry of wings. Peering through the glass, she saw the raven had landed on the balcony rail. Cautiously she opened the door again and stepped backwards into the room.
"Severus?" she called again.
From behind the curtains, she saw the bird sidle into view, gripping the balcony rail in its talons. It stopped and tilted its head to one side.
"Severus?" she repeated, holding out her hand, palm upwards.
The bird seemed to look at her side-on, tilting its beak up, almost disdainfully.
On her way home on Monday, Hermione had, of course, purchased a commodious carrier cage from a local vet, suitable for transporting a large parrot. She cautiously brought it forward and opened the side, which tilted out as a platform for the bird to perch on.
Hermione moved to the kitchen, opening the fridge in search of some offering. She saw the cut pumpkin there and remembered the seeds she'd scraped out into the bin after picking it up at the corner store.
Scrabbling round under the sink, she pulled out a handful and crept cautiously back to the door, laying them on the threshold.
The bird watched her as she stepped back. Then it swooped down and snatched the seeds from the floor with a flurry of wings before disappearing into the night.
Hermione sighed. While the raven was clearly attracted to her, there was still some wild part of it that was urging caution. How could she get it to cooperate?
Despite leaving the balcony door open for the next two nights and piling more pumpkin seeds just inside the threshold, the raven did not return. At 2pm on the third day of her research, another email came in. This one was from St Mungo's, regarding her application to talk to Hippocrates Smethwyck or whichever witch or wizard was now in charge of the Dai Llewellyn Ward for Dangerous Bites. She had received a long thread from various witches and wizards, both in administration and in the ward, which had finally been passed on to Hippocrates himself. He apologised for the delay, but he was officially semi-retired and only came in for emergencies, the new head of ward being still a journeyman who lacked experience in rare wounds. Hippocrates was now paid by the hour on top of a retainer. After much consideration, it had been decided that her enquiry, coming from the Department of Aurors and pertaining to a previous patient under his care, qualified for his attention. He was currently at St Mungos, in attendance on yet another victim of a werewolf bite. Having obtained the permission of the patient, he would be pleased to discuss the case of Arthur Weasley immediately, if she could be there before he clocked off at 8pm on Thursday.
Feeling that she had immersed herself too long in her reading, Hermione decided some action was needed. Had Harry been involved, she knew she would have been dragged from her endless information gathering long since, to be precipitated towards her destiny.
Deciding she might have time to visit St Mungo's prior to jumping on a train to Oxford, she finally replied to Merlin's email, begging his pardon for her tardiness. She was able to catch the train up to Oxford that evening, if it suited him.
Hermione got up to pack an overnight bag in preparation, throwing a night dress and toiletries, clean underwear and a change of clothes into a voluminous duffel bag. When a confirmation came back from Merlin within half an hour, she added the best part of Bob's box of useful things into the bag and then bespelled it to make it lighter. She retrieved her backpack from beside the couch, slung the duffel over her shoulder, checked for Lavender's keys, and was off.
She walked ten doors down to an art deco block of flats, occupied by a colony of superannuated witches and wizards, but blending in nicely with the perfectly ordinary office blocks on either side. Hermione headed down to the common laundry in the basement. There, a disused fireplace sat disconsolately in a room containing a coin-operated washer and dryer and some empty washing lines, decorated only by a few old pegs and a single forgotten sock. On the mantel of the fireplace stood some odds and ends, including a much-battered cardboard box of washing powder with the faded name "Bio-Rad" still visible on it. Had anyone looked inside in the hope of some emergency supplies, they would have wrinkled their nose in disgust at the black powder it contained. Hermione reached into it, grabbed a handful, crouched to step into the fireplace, and threw the floo powder on the ground, clearly annunciating "St Mungo's Hospital" as she did so.
Stepping out of a pristine empty fireplace in green marble in a foyer that smelt of Dettol, Hermione did not at first recognise the waiting room she had once seen stuffed with rickety wooden chairs occupied by witches and wizards with an alarming array of injuries and disfigurements. A single witch sat on a pew against a wall with a child at her feet. The youngster seemed to have something large protruding from its nose, but was nonetheless playing happily with a set of jumping jacks. Hermione approached the reception desk manned by a young witch wearing a lime-green pinafore and a starched white wimple, with the crossed wand and bone device of St Mungo's embroidered above her forehead. The hospital seemed to have updated its uniform.
"I'm from the Department of Aurors," explained Hermione. "I have a meeting with Hippocrates Smethwyck."
The witch's eyes popped and a broad grin broke out over her face. "Ooh!" she said, doing a little jig on the spot. "Can I have a selfie?"
Hermione blinked. She was certainly not used to being recognised in the street like Harry. "Of course," she smiled.
"One moment!" said the witch, bending over something that Hermione belatedly realised was an intercom. "Desk, please!" she said into the device.
The witch then opened a gate at the side of the reception desk and let herself out into the foyer, just as an older wizard shuffled out of an interior door behind the desk.
"Could you look after the front desk, Peter, while I take Miss Granger to the second floor?"
Peter looked indignant. "As the lady is not in a wheelchair, Porschea, I expect she is capable of getting there under her own steam!"
This remonstrance was so much water off Porschea's back*. She pranced to the elevator, pushed the call button, and once safely ensconced inside with Hermione, divulged that Peter was only playing solitaire behind the screen of his desk anyway, on pretence of updating visitor records. She then proceeded to take her selfie with Hermione amongst their reflections in the lift mirrors as they ascended.
"Professor Binns told us about how you finished off Lord Voldemort with Harry Potter!" said the nurse excitedly as she tucked her cellphone back into her apron.
"Ah!" said Hermione, realising the source of her celebrity. As he was a ghost, she was not surprised that Professor Binns was still teaching at Hogwarts, but she was surprised that he had updated his curriculum. "Well, Harry did most of the finishing off. But I did help a bit along the way."
The lift reached the first floor with a 'bing!' and they waited for the doors to open.
"I was so excited when Jeffrey told me you were expected!" continued Porschea. "He's the Welcome Wizard who was rostered on this afternoon. When he went home early—sick—I volunteered for the front desk. They didn't really need me on level 4 tonight. It's been very quiet!"
As they continued down a hallway running the length of the ward, Hermione lowered her voice to a whisper, so as not to disturb any patients, and tried to continue the conversation. "So you recently graduated from Hogwarts?"
"Well," said the girl confidentially, "I only got my OWLs. I failed all my NEWTs. But they took me on as an intern here anyway, as they are short-staffed. My mother says I'll never amount to much—she dropped me in a cauldron when I was young. But she says if I can bespell a successful healing wizard, then I'll be set for life!"
"Right," said Hermione, not thinking much of her fan's recipe for success. She wondered exactly what had been in the cauldron.
"Well!" announced the girl, stopping at a door halfway down the hall and leaning forward to knock at the door. "Here we are! Thank you so much for the selfie!"
An aged voice from within summoned the supplicant inside.
The girl gave an energetic happy wave and retreated back towards the lift.
Hermione opened the door and entered a dark office. It was a small windowless room with a low ceiling, which looked like it had once been a store room of some kind—for linen, perhaps. Shelves held up by practical brackets lined the walls, and these were filled with irregular stacks of parchment. More stacks were sitting on boxes on the floor, leaving a narrow path to a desk wedged into the corner of the room, created from a small table and a trolley. An old wizard rose from a three-legged stool behind it, his ancient face illumined by several candles placed strategically on the desk.
"Ah! Miss Granger! Hippocrates Smethwyck at your service. Excuse the mess! I had to vacate my office on retiring, so they found this spot for me. Let me just make a space for you," he said, moving a stack of parchment from an ancient wizard's chest and piling it precariously onto another large stack. He gestured her towards the chest before reseating himself. "I believe you are interested in Arthur Weasley's case? I seem to recall you visited him in hospital?"
"Yes, however my renewed interest in his case is professional, and more general. I am documenting successful treatments of snake bites for the Department of Aurors. I am particularly interested in magical snakes like Nagini."
For a moment, Smethwyck looked affronted. "Well, as you see," he said, gesturing about him, "everything that I do here is carefully documented. I'm not sure we need the Aurors duplicating everything."
"The idea is to ensure we're doing everything we can to ensure the victim's well being," Hermione assured him. "At the moment, we generally stabilise the victim with a stasis spell and transport them here as quickly as possible—those are the current guidelines. But Muggles generally have specialised workers called paramedics who can apply basic first aid on the spot. We are hoping to implement something along those lines."
"I heard the new Minister has a passion for implementing Muggle inventions," replied Smethwyck, with distaste. "I do not think it would have been wise in Arthur Weasley's case. As you yourself said, Nagini was no ordinary snake."
Hermione nodded, encouraging him to go on.
"She was actually a large python," continued the Healer, "so naturally, she should have only been a threat to goats and small children, even with the sentience of Lord Voldemort guiding her actions. It's just as well for Arthur that I had treated a few other of Nagini's victims when they contacted us for advice upon finding him. I suggested pressure and the stasis spell—treatments that are generally reserved for venomous snakes. I knew that the Dark Lord had been experimenting with transferring the properties of venomous snakes to Nagini. Prior to Arthur's case, he concentrated on the haematoxic venoms, which is why we had such trouble getting Arthur to stop bleeding."
"You say prior to Arthur's case," said Hermione with a frown. "Are you implying that Voldemort added other properties afterwards?"
"Yes, from that time up until the Battle of Hogwarts, he basically ran the gamut of venomous properties—including neurotoxins from Australian elapids and cytotoxins from the Indian cobra. He seemed to be able to change the mix of the toxins, possibly adapting them to specific victims. The cytotoxins are very painful, for example, so he used them on victims he was interrogating. The neurotoxins, on the other hand, can be quite insidious—they have analgesic properties, so you might not even realise you had been bitten before collapsing."
Hermione's heart sank. She had been hoping to acquire something equivalent to a Muggle antivenin that she might employ, specific for Nagini.
"I developed a little kit to help us customise the treatments," continued the Healer. "Our procedure was to temporarily waive the stasis spell, extract a little blood from the wound, then throw it back on again while we checked the venom's properties. Unfortunately, most of Nagini's victims were not found immediately, so unless they had the presence of mind or tenacity, shall we say, to cast the stasis spell themselves, they were generally too far gone for us to do more than make them comfortable in the time left to them."
Hermione could see that more complete disclosure was necessary. "I was being circumspect earlier when I spoke of developing first aid protocols. While that is a project the department has been pursuing, my more immediate interest stems from a person I have identified who was attacked by Nagini and subsequently buried after the Battle of Hogwarts while under the influence of just such a stasis spell."
"Well," replied the Healer, "after this period of time, I wouldn't hold out much hope. I only know of a few instances where stasis spells have lasted that long—they were generally cast by master wizards and had unusual conditions such as low temperatures which aided their success."
"I see," said Hermione, her throat constricted. "I have yet to view the body, but if there is any hope, would you be willing to assess the victim with your kit and provide an appropriate treatment?"
"Of course," said Smethwyck. "I still have the kit and keep all the appropriate potions fresh on hand. While the Dark Lord may be gone, we still treat the occasional bite from unidentified snakes from travelling circuses and such."
"And how transportable is all this?" asked Hermione.
"You are not proposing that your 'paramedics' carry this apparatus about, are you?" cautioned the Healer. "It really is only suitable for use by properly-qualified Healers."
"No," replied Hermione. "I am thinking of the difficulty of getting family permission for a formal exhumation."
"Ah," said Smethwyck. "I see a site visit may be appropriate. I am always interested in unusual cases. I am completely at your disposal."
It is a short bus ride from the shopping district where St Mungo's resides in an apparently disused London department store to Paddington station. Hermione climbed aboard the bus. But rather than mount the twisting stairs to the second level as she generally liked to do, she flopped disconsolately onto a seat just inside the door.
Was there any point in going to Oxford at all? The chance that Professor Snape was in a recoverable state at all was remote. At the very least, she really needed to establish his current state before wasting any more of everyone's valuable time.
She almost got off the bus then and there. Only the knowledge that she would be messing her favourite tutor around stopped her. She could make it a social trip. They had always joked that they should meet up for coffee some time, if he found himself in London or she in Oxford.
Hermione checked the departures on her cellphone. There was a Great Western in 15 minutes, so she bought and downloaded the ticket before she got off the bus at Paddington.
Once Hermione was safely ensconced in her seat on the train, her mind returned to Hippocrates Smethwyck. She, of course, hadn't been entirely straight with him by withholding the fact that reanimation with a familiar might be involved. She didn't want to scare off the only wizard who might be capable of dealing with Nagini's poison.
The conductor announced the imminent departure, the doors beeped, closed, and they were on their way. The swaying carriage lulled her to sleep as it accelerated out of London.
Hermione dozed fitfully during the hour-long journey to Oxford while the information she had read on familiars organised itself in her mind. She had encountered nothing in the article or the references she had checked so far that mentioned orthogonalisation. That information she had so far only encountered in Annie Price's treatise. She felt it was important and could only hope it would not be yet another investigative dead end.
Footnotes
Come out at night
Reveal your true self
Alternate life
Allusion to 'Water off a duck's back'