Title: Sacra Necromantia
Ominous October 2024
Team: Dragon
Challenge: Trick or treat prompt 1; Midnight spooky Bingo Card, B1
Prompts: "Ashwinder dust, occamy eggs, smoky quartz ground fine; someone has tampered with this ritual's instructions." / "How do you know?" / "It used to list freshly drawn blood."; Apprentice!Hermione
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Year 2 Assignment: 4
Task: film studies, task 3
Prompt: Write about not being able to trust what you see
Gotta Catch 'Em All: number 85, Dodrio, flying
Prompt: [action] brewing a potion
Disney Magic: Halloweentown, number 4
Prompt: [action] performing a ritual
Diagon Alley Adoption Centre: number 34, Donatello the turtle
Prompt: [character] Hermione Granger
Fandom Frenzy: Fourth Wing
Prompt: [trait] brooding
Inktober: theme 10, snakes; style 10, no colour (greyscale)
Prompt: write about a Slytherin; [character] Severus Snape
Supernatural-fragilisticexpialidocious: Teen Wolf, number 3
Prompt: [character] Hermione Granger
Monster Smash!: Sonic, Dr Robotnik
Prompt:[ character] Severus Snape
A Guide to the Apocalypse: step 2
Prompt: [location] Cokeworth
House Challenge Tetris: piece 5, row 2, yellow z
Prompt: "I don't know what you see in him/her."
Writing club
Good vs Evil: number 15
Prompt: [object] cauldron
Days of the Year: number 24, bat appreciation week
Prompt: [character] Severus Snape
'Tober Fest: Dialogue-Tober, day 23; BONUS character
Prompt: "Sleep? That's a myth, isn't it?"; Severus Snape
Word count: 1355
Warnings/Trigger warnings: mentions of blood
A/N an AU. Magic and wands exist but doesn't follow canon. No magic schools.
Hermione stood over a cauldron in the living room of her mentor's run-down house in Cokeworth. She tipped the crushed beetle eyes into the cauldron and stirred vigorously. The steam rising from the cauldron had made her already bushy hair even wilder, but that was not going to deter her from finally brewing a sleeping potion that would allow her mentor to get some sleep. Speaking of mentors: Severus stalked into the room and flung the book he'd been carrying against the wall, and flopped down on the beat-up sofa with a cry of frustration.
"I assume that was not the book then?" Hermione hypothesised.
"No!" Severus replied acidly.
"Did you get any sleep?" she asked, glaring at her mentor.
"Sleep?" Severus asked with a humourless laugh. "That's a myth, isn't it?"
"Not if I've perfected this potion, it isn't," Hermione said, lowering the heat beneath her cauldron to a simmer.
"Another one?" Severus asked wearily. "Don't you ever get tired of making sleeping drafts?"
"Don't you ever get tired?" Hermione countered.
"Touche," Severus replied, letting his head fall back against the sofa and shutting his eyes. "Surely you want to try something new?" he added after several minutes of silence.
"Like you?" Hermione said sarcastically. "You've spent months looking through books for that ritual. You're becoming obsessed, Sev."
"So are you with your damn sleeping drafts!" he snapped back.
"I wouldn't have to if you would just get some sleep," Hermione replied loftily. Severus merely grunted. Hermione took that as a sign that she had won this round.
There was silence for several minutes before it was broken by Severus's grumbling complaint.
"I wish I could find that damn book. I know I saw it a few months ago. I don't understand where it's disappeared to," Severus muttered, more to himself than Hermione, but that didn't stop Hermione from giving him an incredulous look.
"You don't understand how it can disappear?" she asked scathingly, glancing around the room that was filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. Every inch of available shelf space was covered with books. Some of the shelves sagged slightly in the middle under the weight of the many tomes.
"I had it a few months ago," he grumbled.
"Ron was wondering why you don't just go and buy a new copy," Hermione suggested.
"Oh, was he now?" Severus snapped irritably at Hermione's mention of Ron. "Well, if I could remember the name of the damned book, I would! Tell Ron to keep his opinions to himself."
"Keep your hair on, Sev, he was only making a suggestion. Be honest, you hadn't actually thought of that possibility, had you?"
"I don't know what you see in him," Severus retaliated, trying to ignore Hermione's question.
"Avoiding my question, Sev?" Hermione smirked as she ladled her new batch of sleeping potion into crystal vials.
"You're avoiding mine," he countered.
"He's funny and kind and loyal," Hermione replied, causing Severus to screw up his face in disbelief. "And you can just keep your comments to yourself, Sev, thank you very much. Drink this," Hermione commanded, thrusting one the vials of sleeping potion at him.
"Must I?"
"Yes! You're irritable enough when you get sleep. You're intolerable now that you're sleep deprived and obsessed."
"You say the nicest things, Hermione," Severus complained, taking the vial and downing it in one.
"I speak the truth," Hermione deadpanned.
Severus awoke several hours later, actually feeling refreshed. Damn it! It looked as though Hermione had finally managed to perfect a sleeping draft for him. He was going to have to admit he was wrong and thank her! He hated being wrong. She would gloat insufferably about it as well. Whose stupid idea was it to take on an apprentice Potioneer anyway? Yours a voice in his head told him.
"Oh, shut up!" he said aloud to himself.
He wandered into his living room and stopped short. He wondered if he was still dreaming. He pinched himself and it hurt. A lot! Which ruled out the possibility he was still dreaming. His living room furniture was all missing and there were candles, jars of ingredients and amulets positioned deliberately in a chalk circle that had been drawn on his carpet!
Hermione entered the living room from the kitchen and spotted Severus.
"Ah, you're awake. Feeling more refreshed?" Hermione asked with a grin. Severus just scowled in reply.
"What is all this?" he asked, gesturing to the candles and amulets. "And why have you drawn on my carpet?"
"You don't recognise what this is?" Hermione said, crossing her arms and looking at Severus expectantly.
"You found the book?" Severus finally asked.
"No, but I have a photographic memory so I bought new copies of all the books we were using a couple of months ago and eventually found the ritual in this book." Hermione tossed a book entitled
Sacra Necromantia to him. "Take a look, I've got everything set up for you."
Severus looked about and smiled, the first genuine smile in years, ever since…
"I'll finally be able to tell her I'm sorry," he muttered.
"You do know it wasn't your fault, right Sev?" Hermione prompted; her voice full of concern.
"I should have been better. I should've been able to save her!"
"It's not your fault," Hermione reminded him gently but Severus didn't reply.
He moved into the centre of the circle and started chanting the incantation from the book. His eyes sparkled with the kind of fervour that Hermione hadn't seen in years. Severus fell silent as the roaring sound of a strong wind filled the little living room. A sudden gust of wind extinguished all the candles and the room became as black as pitch. A Sloshing sound, as though someone had tipped over a large bucket of water filled the room and Severus yelped. Hermione hastened to light her wand and the light fell on the drenched form of her mentor in the centre of the circle. Except it wasn't water that he was drenched with, it was blood. Hermione waved her wand igniting the lamps in the room and had to stifle her laughter as her mentor came into full view: drenched in blood from head to toe and wearing a scowl.
"It didn't work then?" Hermione asked, the amusement in her voice plainly evident.
"Obviously," Severus replied. "Are you sure you set it up correctly?"
"I followed the instructions in that book to the letter."
Severus didn't doubt that. It was one the qualities that had led him to choosing Hermione as his apprentice. Her fastidiousness in following instructions. He couldn't have tolerated someone who would have questioned his teaching of the basics. He turned the page and started reading through the instructions, trying to figure out what had gone wrong and checking in the jars of ingredients.
"Ashwinder dust, occamy eggs, smoky quartz ground fine; someone has tampered with this ritual's instructions," he concluded.
"How do you know?"
"It used to list freshly drawn blood," Severus said grimly. "Where did you get this?" he asked, holding up the book.
"Malfoy's Apothecary," Hermione answered. "I know we normally avoid their shop but you have no idea how difficult that book was to find."
"No doubt it's one of his many scams to get people to come to him for his services when they can't get it to work themselves. I know for a fact he sells fake ingredients for their potion making and they think it's their lamentable potion skills that resulted in a useless potion. It's why he refuses to sell me any potion ingredients because he knows that I could spot a fake immediately."
"Can't we report him to the authorities?" Hermione asked. "If he's scamming people."
"He's too clever. They've never been able to catch him at it," Severus replied. "But at least I know which book I need now. Accio Sacra Necromantia."
Hermione ducked just in time as several books tumbled off the shelf nearest her. Severus' own copy of Sacra Necromantia sailed neatly across the room and into his hand.
"Now we can do it properly," Severus said.