Jewel of the Nile

Chapter Forty-Two

"So," Sybil said, and took advantage of Snape’s shift in her direction to slyly snag a few more centimetres of the duvet. "Are you going to the Halloween ball?"

As conversation starters went, this one was a bold choice. Snape rolled his eyes darkly and yanked back his share of the comforter.

"Not if I can help it," he said. His shrug was fatalistic. "Albus, of course, takes fiendish delight in forcing my hand, where these things are concerned; I can’t imagine that he’ll give me too much choice in the matter."

"You just have to know how to handle him," Sybil said lazily.

She’d uttered these very words on many previous occasions and invariably gotten entertaining results from them; in her experience, they were the verbal equivalent of sticking a hatpin into a caged tiger. Dangerous, but fun to watch. Snape, by this point accustomed to her conversational jabs, made a rude sound in his sinuses but reined in his annoyance.

"My mistake," he said sardonically. "Obviously, my approach to existence in general has been hitherto utterly misguided. In my next life, I’ll be sure to invest heavily in chiffon draperies and nosy incompetence instead."

Unfazed by his sharp tone, Sybil shrugged.

"It works, doesn’t it? Don’t knock it."

The rest of the conversation usually deteriorated into: Where’s your pride, anyway?, followed up by a snappy Hiding under my sense of self-preservation (or, if she was feeling particularly pugilistic, this alternative: It crawled up your arse. To keep your stick company.) But tonight, Snape let the fledgling argument drop with a mere shake of his head. Either he was more tired than usual, Sybil thought, or he was starting to get mellow on her.

"Did a bit of research today," she offered presently. He quirked a passably amiable eyebrow at her.

"Oh?"

"Malfoy’s missing book," she said. "Remember the only other one in existence? In the private collection in Jordan?"

"Mm."

This ungracious little monosyllable, Sybil knew, was Snapian for Go on; I’m fascinated. Tongue exploring the side of her cheek, she plowed ahead.

"Dumbledore knows the owner," she said. "Farouk something—Al-Hussein, I think it was. He studied at the Alexandrian Academy back in the thirties, before it closed and all the Middle Eastern students had to transfer over to Bombay. Apparently he spent a year at Hogwarts after that, doing advanced study in magical languages and covering a sabbatical opening in Runes; that’s how he knows Dumbledore."

Snape’s other eyebrow strolled leisurely north toward his hairline.

"Someone," he remarked maliciously, "got caught in the Headmaster’s office for all of teatime. Research, my arse."

"Oh, shut up." Sybil glowered at him—as it happened, he was dead on the money; she’d been unwise enough to slip into the staffroom just as Albus was coming out of it, that afternoon, and had found herself summarily hauled off to his office for far longer than should have been necessary, considering that all she’d gotten out of the deal was this information, a cup of tepid Earl Grey, and two slightly stale lemon biscuits. "Do you want to hear this or not?"

A long-suffering sigh. "Do I have a choice?"

She shot him a dark look. "The books are Paired, all right?" she snapped, and had the satisfaction of seeing him blink in genuine surprise. "One calls the other. Al-Hussein’s half has been under a Containment Charm for more than three centuries, to keep it from disappearing … no one’s ever been able to read either one. Without both halves, they’re nothing but gibberish."

"Fascinating," Snape murmured, with an unfeigned flicker of interest. To Pair a document, though one of the most effective means of encryption in existence, was difficult and dangerous enough that even the simplest of Paired books could reach hundreds of thousands of Galleons at auction. Add an arcane, whispered-about legend like the Jade Priestess to the mix, and the value of both books together would be astronomical … small wonder, then, that Malfoy was interested; to be a rich man cut off from your own funds was probably galling in the extreme. "I suppose," he mused, "that the catalogue listing them as identical is a deliberate bit of subterfuge, then?"

"I should say." Sybil shook her head. "Can you imagine? The poor man would have been smothered in owls by now."

"Or just plain smothered."

"That too." She frowned. "But that’s not the point."

"It isn’t?"

"No." She bit her lip thoughtfully. "What was … oh! The Halloween ball – that’s the point."

"What does that have to do with Malfoy and the books?"

"You don’t have to go this year," Sybil said. "I’ve sprung you."

"Oh." Severus shrugged, then blinked as the meaning of her words registered. "You’ve done what?"

"I’ve sprung you," she repeated smugly. "No dress blacks or drum-machine backbeats for you this year. You’re free as a bird."

She looked so pleased with herself that he was automatically suspicious. "What do I have to do instead?"

"Haven’t you been listening?" Sybil tugged at the comforter again, pouting a bit when he refused to let it budge. "You’re going to Alexandria, of course. Dumbledore’s given you a leave of absence, effective immediately."

"What?"

"Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?" Sybil’s voice had taken on that look-how-reasonable-I’m-being tone that generally set his teeth on edge; on the other hand, after grading the seventh-years’ pitiable attempts at essays on the Seven Warning Signs of Dreamless-Sleep Addiction, Snape couldn’t say that a week’s holiday would sit badly with him at the moment. "Al-Hussein has agreed to use his half of the Pair to locate and Call the half Malfoy has," she explained now. "At the very least, we’ll be able to find out exactly what we’re up against with the Jade Priestess. And with any luck at all, it’ll deliver us Malfoy, too."

"I still don’t see—" Severus, racking his brain for the little he remembered about Paired books from Advanced Charms, pushed himself up on his pillows and frowned. "The adhesion formula? But that’s not so difficult."

"It’s not that, I don’t think. Albus said something about encrypted ink, and needing a counter-formula." Sybil prodded his shoulder with a meaningful forefinger. "Not to mention that you’re the closest thing to a Malfoy expert that we have."

"Yes, well." He shifted uneasily. "I’m not so sure that’s an endorsement."

Sybil ignored this. "Admit it," she said triumphantly, grinning. "You’re happy that you’re going."

He summoned all the sarcasm at his disposal. "Overjoyed."

"’Thank you, Sybil,’" she prompted mischievously. "’I owe you one, Sybil.’ ‘You’re my hero, Sybil.’"

He studied her narrowly. Cheeky, elfin little face tonight, framed by a mink-brown toothbrush-stubble of messy stick-straight hair. The body under his duvet was slim and small, with jutting hipbones and hardly any breasts to speak of—an acrobat’s body. Give her a green hat, a torchy ballad, and a wooden sword, and she’d be off to Never-Never Land.

That shouldn’t be sexy, but it was.

"If I make it up to you," he inquired acerbically, "does that mean I can skip the fawning gratitude?"

"Maybe," she demurred, and flicked him a sly look over one skinny shoulder. "I don’t know, though. This was a pretty big favour. It might take some … doing."

Now, that sounded like a challenge. Severus slid his hands around to cup those teacup breasts, and – as she squirmed onto his lap – applied pressure to her nipples, slow and even and deliberately ungentle, until she whined in her throat and began to grind against him.

"Let me see what I can do," he said into her ear, and sent his fingers sliding south across that gaunt little belly with a frisson of unalloyed anticipation.

There was something to be said for dating Slytherin women.

**

"Can you hear anything?" Harry hissed, and Draco shook his head.

"The Amplifying Charm’s a wash," he whispered back. "He must have some serious wards on that door."

"Probably a good move," Harry murmured sourly, "considering the grades on some of those essays. I saw Parvati and Lavender in the library yesterday, taking notes on voodoo dolls." He elbowed Draco under the cloak. "Well? That means Phase Two, right?"

Draco hesitated. Phase One – that is to say, hanging out under the Invisibility Cloak and eyeballing Snape’s door from the relative safety of the corridor – was sufficiently behind-the-scenes and subtle to keep him in his comfort zone. Phase Two was more of a Gryffindor thing … the problem was, it’d be mostly his arse on the line, if things went awry."

"Yeah," he said reluctantly. "Yeah, I guess it does."

This, muttered his subconscious, is why you spent your first four years here hanging out with Crabbe and Goyle. They’d no more be able to come up with a scheme like this than fly without broomsticks.

On the other hand, life with them hadn’t been nearly as interesting. Draco sighed and slipped out from underneath the Invisibility Cloak.

"Practice first," Harry said calmly – Phase Two was right up his alley; he’d probably been pulling these kinds of stunts since first-year, Draco thought with a touch of what felt suspiciously like envy. "What are you going to say?"

"I’m going to apologise about a million times for bothering him in his rooms at this hour of the night," Draco recited dutifully, "and then beat round the bush until he gets irritated enough to ask me in."

"And then?"

"Then I’ll blather on for awhile about Lucius being loose and my wasted scholarship and how Hermione doesn’t owl me anymore." He rolled his eyes. "And while I’m making a complete prat of myself in front of my Head of House, what will you be doing?"

"Snooping, of course," Harry said cheerfully. "Ready?"

You numbskull, thought Draco irritably, you’re enjoying this. "Ready," he said – and knocked.

**

"The book’s part of a Pair?" Hermione repeated blankly. "I don’t know what that means."

"It means that they’re magically linked, so that one comes when the other Calls," Farouk said. "And that you can’t read one without the other."

"Oh. So one of them’s a key to the other one."

"No, it’s more complicated than that." Farouk opened the little cloth-bound volume gingerly to show her the pages; at first glance, they seemed to be blank. Leaning closer, however, Hermione could see that they were filled with runelike characters, half a shade darker than the page’s surface and shifting constantly in and out of focus, so that the parchment seemed to pulse with inner energy.

"Once it’s written," he said, smiling faintly at her astonished gasp, "it’s rewritten using an encryptoquill. There’s no key as such to this kind of cipher; in order to break it, it’s necessary to know the formulation of the ink that was loaded into the quill. Thousands of those on record; it takes a real master of Potions to discern one from the other, and it’s only once the original formula has been identified that a counter-formula can be developed to break the code. But that’s only the first step."

"Seems like that would be enough," Hermione murmured, studying the shimmering page. Farouk laughed shortly.

"This was written in the 1700s," he said, "by Duathor bint-Hussein, who had – arguably – the greatest mind for experimental potions of her century. She’s the only Priestess out of the entire Hussein lineage to successfully resist the customary madness and mayhem that go along with being chosen as a carrier of the amulet. Died in bed at 184 – a bit paranoid, perhaps, but sane to the last minute."

"How did she do it?"

Farouk shrugged ruefully. "Nobody knows. This book—" here, he indicated the flickering pages in front of them—"was one of her journals. In it, she claimed to chronicle the means she’d discovered of controlling the pendant, of keeping it in line. Unfortunately, she chose not to share that information with her successor."

Hermione frowned. "Why not?"

"Family feud," Farouk said, shrugging again. "Duathor was … difficult; from the remainder of her unencrypted journals and the writings of her contemporaries within the family, it’s clear that she quarrelled with nearly everyone around her, and that her temper worsened as she aged. In the end, she was almost completely secluded, except for one of the family’s house-elves, who had known her as a child and was devoted to her despite her bad humour."

"Hm," Hermione said thoughtfully. "Is that how the second half of the Pair came to be lost?"

Farouk studied her approvingly. "You’re quick, aren’t you?" he asked admiringly. "Yes, as a matter of fact. On the morning before she died, Duathor performed the spell – Merlin knows how; it takes tremendous skill and strength, and she was at that point a very old woman – to Divide the journal into two separate but unreadable books. Then, she gave the house-elf, whose name was Adi, a package containing one of them, along with instructions to cast the package into the Mediterrenean." He took a deep breath. "Adi, of course, had no thought of disobedience, and presumably did as she was told; the surviving half of the Pair was placed under a Containment Charm in the family archives, for safety’s sake, but any thought of actually being able to read it …." He trailed off. "Well, it didn’t seem very likely, in any event. Until now, of course."

At this, Hermione perked up. "Now?" she queried. "What’s different about now?"

"Ah." Farouk shook his head. "What’s not different," he mused to himself, then seemed to gather his thoughts and turned back to her, smiling. "I had quite a chat with Albus, last night," he said ruminatively. "It seems that your misadventures with the Priestess have not gone unremarked at Hogwarts – your former professors have been working steadily on your behalf to solve the problem, while you’ve been abroad. One of them – the estimable Ms. Pince, I believe – turned up some information about Duathor’s journals in the Ministry of Magic’s Archive of International Artifacts." He shook his head. "Incorrect information, as it turns out – the journal was listed as two copies of the same book, rather than as one complete Pair – but that’s of little import now. The astonishing thing is that the second half of the Pair has recently been spotted; not only that, but in obtaining it, we may catch a dangerous criminal in the process."

Hermione swallowed hard, but the premonition lodged in her throat didn’t budge.

Mikhail, after all, knew about the Priestess. And how would he have, unless somehow …

But the book can’t be read – how could he know?

Still …

"Dangerous criminal?" she managed at last. "That wouldn’t happen to be Lucius Malfoy, would it?"

At his nod, her heart sank.

No offense, Walt, she thought dully. But bugger you and your Small World, too. This sucks.

"Great," she said aloud, and summoned a wan smile. "When do we start?"

**