Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Forty-Nine

"Wands."

"Check."

"Drinking water."

"Check."

"Sandwiches."

"Check."

"Plant mister."

"Um. Check." Gabrielle glanced curiously at the little spray bottle, started to sniff at the contents, then thought better of her impulse. "What’s in this, anyway?"

"Dreamless Sleep," Draco informed her. "One good blast full-on is enough to knock out a hippogriff."

Gabrielle frowned. "And you know this because …?"

He ignored her. "Invisibility Cloaks?"

Sigh. "Check."

They were going after Malfoy alone, after a prolonged group discussion on the topic. Safety in numbers, sure – as the adventure-happy Ron had pointed out – but on the other hand, the reclusive Draco and equally aloof Gabrielle had a relatively good chance of slipping away from the castle unnoticed for the duration of the Feast, whereas the others – traditionally more sociable, and certainly more high-profile, in terms of Hogwarts’ social strata – would most definitely be missed.

Their agreed-upon compromise: a Remembrall, set to ‘mortal peril’ instead of ‘things forgotten’, much in the manner of the Weasleys’ kitchen clock, and enchanted to look like a quartz crystal. Ginny had conjured up a silver setting for it and strung it on a lacy silver chain, and it was presently adorning the portion of milk-white cleavage that her tangerine ball gown showcased so efficiently. Any serious trouble, and it would flash from diamond-clear to blood-red … the Gryffindors’ cue to alert Dumbledore.

Personally, Gabrielle figured it wasn’t a bad idea to have a safety net; on the other hand, she didn’t think they’d need it. This excursion had been much more carefully planned than her impromptu visit to Malfoy Manor, after all. And it wasn’t as if they were assured of finding Malfoy, anyway – Draco had as much as admitted that he didn’t know exactly where the Malfoys’ secret bunker actually was.

"It moves around a bit," he’d said evasively, a couple of weeks back when she’d first asked him about it, and had been wearing that remote don’t-ask expression specifically designed to shut off the possibility of further questioning … so Gabrielle, figuring she’d find out what she needed to know eventually, had let it slide. Now, however, as they tucked their Books and Keys into the pockets of their robes and prepared to sling their Invisibility Cloaks over their shoulders, she felt her curiosity resurface.

And this time, he didn’t rebuff her.

"On one hand, I know exactly where he is," he said, taking a deep breath. "We must be the only wizarding family on the planet with a bomb shelter; my grandfather was convinced, back in the Sixties, that the Muggles were going to nuke each other and bring about the end of the world."

"Oh, I’ve heard about those," Gabrielle said, and snickered – the thought of the elegant Lucius Malfoy sleeping on an army cot and eating tinned fish was distinctly ludicrous. When she explained her amusement to Draco, however, he shook his head.

"That’s the thing," he said. "I was down inside the thing once, and it’s not much like the Muggle model; it’s all enchantments. Looks more or less like a facsimile of the Manor itself. Minus the grounds, of course. That’s why you didn’t run into any of the house-elves – he’s probably taken all of them down there with him."

Gabrielle frowned. "Well, if you’ve been inside, don’t you know where it is?"

"I told you. It moves around." Draco plucked at a ravelling thread on the sleeve of his robe. "I think it’s under an Obfuscus Charm. I know the password, but in addition to the incantation, you have to be holding an object that has close ties to the real Manor. Otherwise you end up in an oubliette – and he’s probably stocked that with one of his standard creepy-crawlies." He scanned Elysium’s living-room appraisingly. "That’s the problem, see? Some of this stuff came from the Manor, but by now it’s been at Hogwarts so long that it’s linked more closely with school, or at the very least just with me. I think we may have to stop at home for something."

"What’s the problem with that?"

"Well, for one thing, the Ministry’s changed the locks," Draco said gloomily. "The Floo network won’t work any longer; it means illegal Apparation onto the grounds, and then Merlin knows how long trying to break through the wards. At the very least, it’s bound to attract attention, and at the very most we could land ourselves in a ton of trouble."

"Oh."

Gabrielle thought hard for a minute. "Wait a minute," she said. "This object – can it be anything from the house?"

Draco nodded, puzzled. "Yeah. But you don’t have anything from Malfoy Manor, do you?"

Gabrielle shrugged. "Well, there’s Fifi," she admitted, flushing a little at Draco’s enquiring look. "The stuffed poodle from your mother’s … um, closet."

"Oh." Draco looked interested – and perhaps just the slightest bit amused. "You stole Mum’s stuffed poodle?"

Oh, this was embarrassing. Gabrielle swallowed hard. "Well, the thing is … I mean, she’s been … er … sleeping with me. Sometimes," she added hastily. "But only for a month. And she was in your house much longer than that, right?"

"Probably, yeah." He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "It’s worth a try," he said. "Why don’t you go get it – uh, I mean, her – and then meet me by the stone witch? I’ll bring these other things."

Gabrielle was bright pink. "I’ll be quick," she promised, and – throwing on the Cloak – hurried out of the library toward the Ravenclaw wing.

He really could be very sweet.

**

The experiments were well under way, and Hermione – though still bruised and more than a bit shaken by Snape’s bombshell announcement – couldn’t help but be interested in their outcome.

That must be your own personal curse, Granger, she told herself hotly, that you always need to know what happens next, no matter what. Couldn’t you pitch a bitch and swan off for a good snivel, like any other normal girl would have?

I don’t have the right to cry, retaliated her common sense. I’m sleeping with someone else, aren’t I?

Your point being …? This viewpoint didn’t belong either to the Daredevil or the Voice of Caution; Hermione, after last night’s prolonged pity-party, had decided to dub this new, wholly unattractive aspect of her by-now-seriously-fractured personality "Angst Girl". Since when did a random rebound shag preclude you from pining away for someone else? Angst Girl demanded. Get with the program, honey.

But it’s not just a rebound shag. I like Bill … and I’m pretty sure he likes me, too.

Hmph.

It ought to be a winning combination – two thumbs up, like begets like. So why did the thought of Sybil Trelawney in Snape’s bed make her stomach want to escape through her nose?

Good question.

"All right," Snape said, breaking into her personal fog of self-recrimination by way of thrusting a petri dish in front of her face. "This is ready to test. Write down what I tell you to."

"Jawohl, mein Kommandant," Hermione murmured resentfully under her breath, but obediently found a fresh page in the notebook and poised her quill over the first line.

"Beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. Go on."

One drop of pearly-green ichor, neatly deposited via pipette over the honey-thick, slightly pulsing smudge of ink. Hermione watched the ichor fizz madly as it steadily consumed the thicker substance, then bubble and foam in reaction until it had exhausted itself, finally coming to a quiescent halt in the bottom of the dish.

Cool.

"Carmine," Snape dictated, his eyes fixed on the dish. "Streaks of brown throughout. Already crystallising at the edges." He put his face near the dish, inhaled deeply, and held the breath for a long second. "Sulfurous odour. Probably highly flammable. Appears to have lost its corrosive properties in reaction."

"Got it," Hermione said, writing madly, and got a terse nod of acknowledgement for her trouble.

"Good. Now, we cross-compare—" here, he indicated the black notebook. "Reaction to the ichor should at the very least prove the identity of the base, and narrow down the thickening agent." Hermione, already scanning the first page of neatly penned entries, hummed absently in agreement.

"You were right," she said; "it’s definitely peppercorn. That’s the only base that produces that smell of sulfur in reaction." She spared him a sardonic look. "Care to speculate as to the identity of the coagulant?"

Either Snape didn’t notice her sarcastic tone, or he was choosing to ignore it. "Not specifically, no." He was prodding at the now-hardened morass in the petri dish with the tip of his wand. "Though I’d guess that it’s one of the edibles – or organic, at the very least. There are a series of conjurations that can have the same effect as, say, an arrowroot or a tapioca … but if memory serves, the ichor burns right through the enchantment and renders it useless. You wouldn’t get this—" here, he indicated the taffy-like lump of red goo—"you’d get something much slushier."

Hermione scanned quickly down the list and gave a low whistle, impressed despite herself. "You’ve a good memory," she said grudgingly. "It is an organic." A closer examination of the chart had her biting her lip. "Don’t think I can narrow it down too much beyond that, though … not with the current information."

He shrugged. "Fair enough. We’re still further along than we were half an hour ago." He tapped the edge of the dish with his wand, murmured a Sterilising Charm that wiped away all traces of the experiment, and began to transfer another smudge of ink to the now-pristine glass surface. "How many possible options are there now?"

Hermione did a quick count. "Seventy-eight."

Snape grimaced philosophically. "Better than one-twelve. Here." He passed her an empty notebook. "Forget the coagulant for now – the next test we’re going to run focuses on the scrambler. Almost without exception, it’s going to be an herbal ingredient – tansy, mugwort, thuja, rue, something like that. Wormwood, sometimes."

Hermione frowned. "Those are all neurotoxins," she said slowly. Snape nodded.

"High in ketones," he said. "Ingest a certain amount of any of them, and you heighten your chances of becoming epileptic. More than that, and you can become delusional. Nothing particularly magical about any of them, but when you mix them with the binding ingredient and the enchantment, they’re the bits of the potion that are going to encrypt the message." He nodded at the notebook. "Our seventy-eight suspects? Divide them into categories for easier elimination. This next process should narrow things down to fifteen or less."

Wincing at the pages in front of her, Hermione picked up her quill again.

Research was a lot of things, but easy wasn’t one of them.

**

Harry had his own reason for wanting to stay for the dance, and her name was Sybil Trelawney.

"Don’t you think we should have argued a little harder?" Ron hissed into his ear on their way down to the Gryffindor common room. "I mean, Malfoy can probably take care of himself – I guess – but Gabrielle’s really little."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "When we were Gabrielle’s age," he said, "we were brewing illegal Polyjuice in the girls’ loo and chasing into the Forbidden Forest after giant spiders. Lucius Malfoy’s a lot of things, but he wouldn’t stand much of a chance against Aragog, I don’t think."

Ron shuddered. "Point taken."

Their dates were waiting for them in the Entrance Hall – Ginny, looking like a small, radiant sun in her peachy-orange gown with its voluminous chiffon skirts and its corset bodice, and a sweet-faced, dark-haired fifth-year Hufflepuff named Madeline who Harry didn’t know very well, but who he’d seen shyly hanging around the Gryffindor entrance to the Quidditch locker rooms for much of fall term. She was standing with Ginny, nervously fiddling with the sleeve of her blue velvet dress robes; when she saw Ron, she blushed to her hairline.

"Go get ‘em, tiger," Harry murmured under his breath to Ron, then grinned at Ginny. "Hi."

"Hi."

"You look great." His eyes flicked briefly to the diamond-bright crystal between her breasts. "No problems?"

"No problems."

He offered her his arm, and they went in to dinner. Harry made it a point not to look at the Head Table, where Trelawney was installed between Flitwick and Hooch – placidly forking in pork roast and pumpkin pie, amber beadery glinting wickedly in the light from the enchanted jack-o’-lanterns.

There’d be time enough to deal with her … later.

**