Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Ten

Hermione quickly came to the conclusion that the guidebook had been right: there really wasn’t much in Memphis worth looking at.

She wasn’t sure if it was due more to the city’s position low on the flood plain, or to Nasser’s ill-conceived damming of the Nile - probably a bit of both - but nary a trace of the Sekhmet temple remained, and only a few broken stone walls where the mighty monument to Ptah had stood.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust - it was a sentiment never more fitting than in this case. Below her feet lay the apex of an ancient civilisation, a veritable Atlantis - mighty but fallen, sunken not in seawater, but in layer upon dense gritty layer of sunbaked Egyptian mud.

Weird.

She wandered nonchalantly in the direction of the museum, deliberately casual, though she needn’t have bothered being circumspect - the streets were all but deserted, and no one was looking at her anyway. Score two for the burqa, Hermione thought, and slipped into the shadows of the museum’s garden entrance. She hardly needed Alohomora to deal with the rusty, ancient padlock on the wrought-iron gate.

The garden itself was little more than a dusty courtyard, dotted here and there with statuary, and overgrown with straggling jacaranda bushes and wild morning glories. Hermione dutifully made the rounds of the statues, even laying her palm flat against each one in the hopes of getting a rise out of the amulet around her neck.

Nothing.

Not so much as a twitch. Goddamn it.

Well, that left the museum itself - an unprepossessing square stone-block building that could just as easily been a pottery shed or an American Express office. Apparently, Memphis didn’t even rate interesting architecture.

Nevertheless, the doors were locked.

There didn’t appear to be a guard set, but Hermione caught the red glow of an alarm panel through the glass doors, even as she reached for her wand. Abruptly, she stopped in her tracks.

Possibly, Alohomora wasn’t such a good idea in this particular case.

Possibly, Memphis hadn’t been worth the trip to begin with.

Possibly, suggested the Voice of Caution, a bit more caustically than was really necessary, you should just go home and come back when it opens in the morning, like a normal person.

Then again, countered the Daredevil, sneering, you’re already here. And if it’s not worth one trip, it’s certainly not worth two.

Good point, Hermione thought - and, ignoring the Voice of Caution’s impotent sputtering, Apparated neatly to the other side of the locked door.

There. Easy as apple pie.

Pushing back the heavy hood of the burqa, she began to look around.

**

The room was lined with glass cases showcasing beautiful but minor treasures, rescued over the years from the shifting, sandy mud. Hermione did a quick scan of these, heart athump despite her near-absolute conviction that she wouldn’t be disturbed; this looked like the sort of place that got minimal traffic, even during business hours. The museum’s one truly spectacular artifact, a seventy-metre-tall statue of Rameses II that had once guarded the entrance to the pharaoh’s temple in Memphis, now lay on its back, its head almost touching one wall, its stone toes within a metre of the opposite. Alone in flattened majesty, Rameses stared at the ceiling, his deep-set eyes and beaky Etruscan nose giving him a look of perpetual resignation.

I hear you, pal, Hermione thought sympathetically, running one hand lightly over the immense carved forehead. I’m not exactly thrilled to be hanging around this place, either.

Though in a way, she was.

Sneaking around in the middle of the night and Apparating into locked rooms? Fun stuff. And it gave her a very tingly, Lara-Croft feeling that wasn’t wholly unpleasant.

Yes, she could see why Bill liked his job. What she couldn’t see was any evidence of magical activity in this place - either the museum, the garden, or for that matter the whole town. Not even the couple of display cases devoted to recovered artifacts from the goddesses’ temples - Bast, Sekhmet, Hathor, Ma’at - produced the slightest buzz of recognition from the jade amulet.

In other words, strikeout.

Well, Hermione thought, there was one more thing she could try, before heading home. If anything in the museum had been enchanted, a standard Revelatory Incantation ought to bring it out of hiding - down deep in her Hollywood soul, she still harbored hopes of a secret door, some ancient magical runes … maybe a big sign with rainbow letters: Priestesses of Sekhmet Annual Potluck, Next Tuesday At Seven; Sign-Up Here For Salads or Desserts.

Unlikely, sure, but still - worth a shot. She waved her wand in a loose circle, careful to indicate all four corners of the room, took one step forward, and whispered, “Oculus Incantatem!”

Slowly, she scanned the room, wall by wall.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Noth -

A sudden movement from the shadows behind her made her spin round, wand at the ready. Yes … there … black, detaching from black …

“It’s about time, too,” said a smooth voice from the darkest corner. “Next time, I’d recommend that you try that charm first, Miss Granger. I could have hexed you senseless twelve times over by now, if I’d been so inclined.”

Hermione, who had jumped at the first words, now rolled her eyes to conceal her relief.

“I should have known better than to add that postscript to my letter,” she said acidly. “Really, Professor - as replies go, a postcard would have sufficed, don’t you think?”

“I’ll be the judge of that, if you don’t mind,” said Snape, stepping out of the shadows. He glanced around at the dusty display cases and curled his lip. “Charming,” he said, managing in those two short syllables to convey the exact opposite sentiment, “but hardly the place for an extended conversation.”

“And why,” Hermione inquired, “would we need to have one of those?”

She wasn’t quite over the scare he’d given her.

“Because,” Snape said, sucking his teeth testily, “I’ve managed to garner some potentially useful information about your legend.”

“Oh.”

Hermione pondered this, then shrugged.

She’d seen his apartment, after all. Wasn’t turnabout fair play?

**

“So - how did you find me, exactly?” Hermione poured tea, added a dollop of cream, and handed him the cup. With her tousled curls, her baggy, all-concealing robes, and a smudge of dust from the museum still adorning the bridge of her nose, she made, Severus thought, a competent but most unlikely geisha. “That must have been some souped-up Location Charm.”

Severus sipped his tea, preferring to scald his tongue rather than risk loosening it. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t used a Location Charm at all; he hadn’t needed one.

That jade scarab beetle he’d attached to her charm bracelet, back in June, was more than a pretty, creamy-green bauble, after all. Unbeknownst to her, he’d sent the independent Miss Granger off to Cairo wearing a subtle-yet-effective magical tracking device.

Sure, he believed in the inherent protective qualities of gemstones and totems, and the scarab was no exception to that belief. But he was also a practical man, and a self-reliant one. Why send her to Egypt protected only by a symbol, when in a pinch - in half a heartbeat - he could offer her himself?

Not that she needed to know that.

For one thing, the minute she found out about the scarab’s undercover function would be the minute it ceased to be useful; he could well-imagine her dropping it casually into her jewellery box before sashaying off to raid a tomb or duel a couple of mummies. Not to mention that she already had too clear a view into his brain, as it was.

He wasn’t sure what would be worse - her misunderstanding his protective instincts and denouncing him as a voyeur, or her understanding exactly how much he worried about her. After all, even a high-flying little acrobat like Hermione could do with a safety net, from time to time. Could he help it that he felt compelled to be hers?

Well, enough self-scrutiny; he was here for business, after all, not on a social call. He leaned back in her far-too-comfortable reclining armchair, set down his teacup, and had just opened his mouth to tell her what he’d learned from Sybil when -

“Hermione?”

The voice, like the knock which accompanied it, was young, casual and confident. Even as Hermione’s cup rattled back into its saucer, Severus was on his feet.

Whatever the legion of admirable traits common to Clan Weasley, he thought, an appropriate sense of timing certainly wasn’t among them.

“Hermione, are you there?” Bill called again, and Hermione spread her hands helplessly in the air as if to say: what now? Severus glowered; discovery wasn’t on his agenda tonight, either.

“Go ahead - answer it,” he said tersely, already ripping the cap off his spare flask of Chameleon Compound.

As the name suggested, it wasn’t so much an invisibility potion as an agent of limited camouflage - strong enough to evade Muggle detection altogether, and also to escape the casual wizarding glance, provided you remained absolutely still and stayed out of harsh or direct light. Avoiding suspicion altogether was the key element, basically - as Hermione had proved earlier that evening, back at the museum, a well-placed Oculus Incantatem would blow the potion’s fragile cover to shreds.

He gulped the contents of the flask, snapped off the lamp, and sank back into the corner chair just as Hermione opened the door. Severus narrowed his eyes as Bill appeared, the picture of sun-gilded, cheerful Abercrombie-and-Fitch good health, his arms laden with unlikely-looking packages: an earthenware pot overgrown with catnip; a scrap of fake fur attached to the end of a fishing line; an armful of hothouse daffodils. Ah, yes, Severus thought; that big sleepy ginger tom of hers … and then blinked in surprise as a half-grown kitten with improbably large, tufted isosceles-triangle ears came skidding into the room on paws two sizes too big, emitted a series of alien-like beeps, hisses and trills, and clambered adroitly up the front of Hermione’s robes to sit on her shoulders, as proprietary and swaggering as a Matterhorn veteran staking out a bunny slope.

That’s one strange-looking cat, he noted, watching the kitten rub cheeks with Hermione, chirp agreeably in Bill’s direction, then vault a startling two metres from Hermione’s shoulder to the countertop where Bill had set down the catnip pot. But even the ensuing herb-mayhem, entertaining as it was, couldn’t distract him from the brief-but-stirring embrace taking place on Center Stage. Packages discarded, Bill had reeled Hermione in for a Hello Kiss, and though she pulled away quickly, the telltale flush across her cheekbones betrayed her: her body language wasn’t communicating No, as much as it was Not now.

Oh, fuck.

Severus shut his eyes and swallowed hard.

**

What was it he’d said to her back in the Hogwarts subdungeons, just shy of the tapestry door? Ah, yes: Break another half-dozen hearts - get your own broken a couple of times, too, if you can.

Severus, you idiot. What were you thinking?

Well, whatever it had been, he’d have sold his soul to take it back. Too late now, though - Hermione, ever the conscientious student, had apparently taken that noble bit of bullshit to heart and followed his advice … or was at least halfway there. Bill didn’t seem stung by her hasty disengagement, Severus noticed, so presumably they weren’t yet in the throes of a grand passion. But even now, he’d captured her hand, was nibbling on her knuckles, had moved in close to whisper something that made his hazel eyes gleam with amusement and brought hot colour rushing into Hermione’s fair English cheeks.

Severus felt his teeth begin to grind.

Goddamnit, when he’d told her to go off to college and get herself laid, he hadn’t supposed that he’d have to watch! The fact that he knew Bill Weasley to be of fine mind and good heart didn’t make him feel any better about the situation; it was no comfort in the slightest to find your rival such a good-natured, casually virile paragon of … well, suitability. Wizard or no wizard, Severus was sure the Grangers Mater and Pater would take one look at this dashing young … archaeologist … and throw open the parental arms of welcome.

Especially if their daughter’s alternative choice of mate was a sallow, hook-nosed, socially inept former murderer twice her age.

Don’t think about that right now, he counselled himself. This whole thing is depressing enough as it is.

Chancing another glance in the direction of the foyer, he saw that Hermione had been steadily edging Bill toward the door. Now, she submitted to a final, rather thorough farewell kiss, shut the door firmly in his face, and turned back warily toward the living room, pausing to scoop up the kitten and bury her hot face in its fluffy dust-coloured fur.

The gesture must have given her courage; she was remarkably collected as her gaze flicked to the chair where he was sitting.

“Sorry,” she said, genuinely rueful; even as she spoke, another wave of hot colour washed over her. “Bill’s been very … um … neighbourly.”

Incredibly, Severus felt his lips twitch.

If she entered that sentence in an Understatement Contest, he thought, she’d walk away with the blue ribbon and the washing machine.

“So I see,” he said neutrally, shifting in his chair and shaking off the remaining effects of the Chameleon Compound. Hermione, still looking troubled, tried again.

“We’re not …. Um, that is …” She hugged her cat a little closer, mindless of its squirming and squeaks of protest. “I don’t want you to think that I …”

Severus decided to take pity on her.

“Miss Granger,” he said crisply, “I didn’t Apparate to Cairo on a school night to discuss your boudoir antics - I assure you that I can happily go to my grave with no intimate knowledge whatsoever of William Weasley’s bedroom technique.” He summoned up a suitably quelling look of hauteur. “Now - if you’ll kindly sit down and stop stammering, perhaps we can return our attention to the matter of the Jade Priestess?”

Hermione, looking profoundly relieved at this - if not, as he’d intended, intimidated - sank obediently onto the sofa and set the wriggling kitten down on the carpet.

“Of course,” she murmured, and deftly drew the amulet from beneath her robes. Ducking her head to slip off the chain, she reached out to drop the little statue into his hand.

Grasping the flesh-warmed heft of it - surprisingly heavy, surprisingly smooth - Severus felt a sizzle of awareness snake through his body, followed by a hotter tingle of something that felt like - well, like warning.

Don’t interfere, wizard. She’s mine.

The hell she is, Severus thought; even so, the quick flash of malevolence that followed his unspoken defiance had him gritting his teeth as he studied the finely carved features, then handed it unwillingly back to her.

There was Dark magic in that thing; he’d bet his last Knut on it. But if Sybil’s information was correct, for once - if this was indeed the Jade Priestess, and Hermione its chosen conduit, then to warn her away from it now might prove to be a dangerous, perhaps even fatal, mistake.

Frowning, he rubbed his suddenly-cold hands together to warm them, and missed completely the momentary look of relief that crossed Hermione’s face as the amulet slid over her head and back into its resting place.

“All right,” she said. “Tell me what you know.”

**