Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Fifty-Three

"Well, that’s that," Snape said, and straightened up, wincing, from the row of petri dishes he’d been bent over. Hermione, looking up from her notes, leaned over and craned her neck to peer curiously at their contents.

"What’s the reagent this time?" she wanted to know. Snape shook his head.

"Not one reagent," he corrected. "Three different ones. This is the final series of tests."

"Oh? We can do three at a time, now?"

"Mm." He studied the contents of one of the dishes for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, then turned back toward her. "I saved these three until last because the reaction isn’t instantaneous – we’ll have to wait a while to accurately determine the results. They’re all slow-reacting proteins."

He pointed to the first dish. "This one, for example – Glumbumble treacle. Purified and distilled, of course. And this one is Streeler venom – oh, I know it’s toxic," he added as Hermione opened her mouth, "but the toxin’s what produces that kaleidoscopic effect on their shells. Very useful in the encryption process, I’ll warrant; I’m betting that it’s the ingredient which is causing that shifting effect in the runes. You don’t always see that in encryptoink, you know."

"Huh." Hermione filed away that snippet of information in her mental ‘Potentially Useful; Further Research Warranted’ folder and nodded toward the third dish. "What about this one?"

"The third one? Albumen from a Runespoor egg. As ingredients go, that one’s not a bad bet, either."

One of the dishes was emitting strangled gurgling sounds and another was hissing, but Snape didn’t spare them a second glance – merely crossed to the nearest armchair on the other side of Farouk’s library and sank into it with a barely-audible sigh. Hermione, after brief consideration of her wristwatch, didn’t blame him – it was past eleven-o’-clock, after all, and they’d been at it since mid-afternoon without so much as a dinner break. She folded herself cross-legged into the chair adjoining his and rotated her head in a luxurious, vertebrae-creaking half-moon.

"So, now what?" she asked, once she was facing the right way up again. The neck-cracking had caused her vision to blur momentarily; she shook her head to clear it and shifted to a more comfortable position in the big leather club chair. "What’s the plan? We wait?"

"We wait," he agreed, but didn’t volunteer further information. Hermione drummed her fingers on the armrest.

"And then?" she prompted. Snape sucked his teeth, a mannerism he often affected when deep in thought.

"Then," he said presently, "we’ll know which of the three is the formula used in the journal. Just to make sure, we’ll test it first on a Replicated page—"

"—Wait," Hermione interrupted, frowning. "Once we know which formula it is, don’t we have to brew its antidote in order to decode it?"

Snape shrugged.

"The antidote is just the original formula plus one additional ingredient," he said. "You don’t even have to brew it freshly – it can be mixed right into the ink we reconstituted." For a moment, he looked amused. "That’s the infuriating bit about this – or the interesting bit, depending on your point of view: the hours of testing for identification, when the key to the puzzle is invariably such a simple one. But then, each separate combination uses a different substance as its Decryptor; there are literally thousands." He looked thoughtful. "Some quite arcane, too—"

"—And then what?" Hermione broke in, rather more urgently than she’d intended. Snape blinked warily.

"Then," he said slowly, "we Call the other half of the book. If memory serves, there’s a short ritual that must be followed in order to reconnect the two halves, but that’s probably more al-Hussein’s area of expertise than mine. That’s all there is, really."

Hermione swallowed hard. "And then you go back to Hogwarts."

It wasn’t a question. Snape nodded.

"Yes."

Something was building inside her, dark and hateful and inexorable, the sort of feeling that made her want to scream into a pillow, or maybe punch something. A wall, perhaps.

Or a man, for that matter – one black-eyed Potions expert, in particular, would fill the bill quite nicely. Didn’t he get it?

"Do you love her?" she blurted out – then immediately recoiled in horror from her own effrontery. Whatever she’d thought she was about to say, it hadn’t been that – and it was pretty safe to say that she couldn’t have come up with anything more mortifying, if she’d tried.

"Don’t answer that," she said, hot-faced, looking away and squinching her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to look at him, even by accident. Her cheeks felt like flame. "It’s none of my business. I don’t even think I want to know."

"Part of you must, at least," Snape pointed out, in a tone more brisk than sympathetic. "Else you wouldn’t have asked."

Hermione squirmed under the logic of that, as irrefutable as it was unkind. "Um. Yes. Well …"

"And for the record," he continued, "my feelings on that particular subject are mostly a mystery, even to me." He raised a sardonic eyebrow in her direction. "What about you and your Mr. Weasley? Can you put a one-word label on that relationship – one that isn’t either inadequate as an explanation, or else an outright lie?" When she shook her head mutely, he sniffed, triumphant. "I thought not. We aren’t simple people, you and I."

"I want to be," Hermione said, and the fierceness in her own voice shocked her. "I want to be simple – I do."

She met his eyes with a defiant, glittering stare of her own that wavered under his steady regard, but didn’t fall.

"Do you think I wanted any of this?" she demanded. "To always be running after what I can’t have, what you won’t give me? To be offered, then, what part of me longs for and the other part tells me would be unfair to take?" Her lips tightened. "Fuck that. And fuck being complicated, too – why can’t I love someone who loves me back? Why are you always standing in my path?"

"Why am I –?" he started, eyes narrowing.

But Hermione wasn’t finished.

She was beyond embarrassment now, beyond anything but the terrible words spilling soft and scraping out of her guts into the quiet warm air, as if wrenched by unfriendly hands. The threat of tears was an ache in her throat.

"Every time I round a corner, I’m hoping it’s you," she whispered, hating herself for the admission. "Whenever I look up. Whenever someone calls my name. It’s you I’m looking for."

She swallowed hard. "And you don’t bloody care, do you?"

"Hermione –"

She dashed at her eyes with the back of her hand. "You said ‘go away’, and you said ‘grow up’, and damn it, I’m trying to. I’m trying. But it’s so … bloody hard—" she was openly weeping now—"it’s so bloody impossible, when I keep seeing you everywhere, and I can’t get away from you, and I know you don’t c-care for me, not that way, and …"

"Hermione." Whatever else she was going to say was mercifully cut off against his black work robes, as he scooped her huddled, miserable form into his arms and settled them both into the big leather chair. "For Merlin’s sake, don’t cry. You’ve got it all wrong."

She knew she ought to break free – wasn’t this just adding to the humiliation of the situation, weeping all down his robes like a petulant toddler? But he was so warm, underneath his clothes, so solid and reassuring … and he smelt of laundry soap and disinfectant, something so commonplace and yet so characteristic of him that it made her want to start crying all over again. "I’m not wrong," she said into his chest, then pulled back to look up at him. "I know I’m not. If you loved me, it wouldn’t matter how old I am. How old I’m not."

"That’s where you’re wrong." He sounded angry, Hermione thought … but when he seized her shoulders and shook her, the rebuke was a gentle one. "It’s because I …"

On the verge of the declaration, he broke off. "It’s not just age, you little idiot. It’s everything."

"Everything?"

"Look at yourself," he said, giving her another gentle shake. "You’re on the edge of your life. You’ve stuck in a toe, you’ve waded out into the shallows, but you haven’t taken the dive yet. It’s all still in front of you."

"Oh?" Hermione glared up at him. "Being tied up naked to a ceiling with Lucius Malfoy’s hands all over me is ‘sticking in a toe’? Dodging the Avada Kedavra from an assassin’s wand is ‘wading in the shallows’? I don’t know about you, but I’d personally classify all of that as the Deep End Of The Pool, myself." She thought for a moment. "Though I didn’t as much dive in as get dragged."

"The point is," he shot back, "you’re still swimming. Me, I’ve been through the water and clawed my way out again – leaving bits of myself behind in the process, mind you, that I’m never going to regrow. And now …"

He sighed unexpectedly, making her look up. "Can’t you see? I’m afraid to go back in."

"You dived in after Trelawney quickly enough," Hermione pointed out. Snape shook his head.

"She’s not in the water, either," he said tiredly. "We’re landlocked, both of us – screwing on the floor of the cabana, if you want to take the analogy to its most visceral of possible conclusions. That’s the reason why it’s so easy with her – neither one of us is risking anything."

"Am I that big a risk?"

"Yes."

"Oh." The simplicity of his averral took all the indignant wind out of her sails. "Well, that’s something, at least."

He snorted. "Glad to hear it. And while we’re on the topic …"

"Yes?"

"Don’t wait for me," he said softly. "Don’t wait, Hermione. Once we’re done with this, once you’re safe, I’m going to walk away, and not come back."

"Oh." She closed her eyes against a fresh tide of tears. "Why?"

"Because you’ll almost definitely be ready someday," he said, not looking at her. "But I might never be."

**

Snape had been right in his assumption; Duathor had used Streeler venom in her encryptoink. Furthermore, the antidote was an easy one to brew – powdered shrivelfig seeds, part of every first-year Potions student’s standard kit. When applied to a Replicated page of the journal, the runes stopped shifting on the parchment … a sure sign, Snape said, of successful diagnosis.

The journal still wasn’t readable, of course – they’d need the other half for that. Hermione studied the muddy brown beakerful of antidote, then raised her eyebrows in Snape’s direction.

"Should we wake up Farouk? Or can we Call it ourselves?"

He glanced pointedly at the wall clock, whose hands were quivering near midnight. "We could always wait until morning, you know."

"No." Hermione rejected this suggestion out-of-hand. She’d already said her farewell twenty minutes earlier – in her head, while cuddled against his chest. She didn’t want to have to say another one in the morning. "We’ve come this far. Let’s finish it."

A long searching look – could he read her mind? He always looked as if he could – then a slow nod.

"All right, then. We’ll need a clear surface."

"Fine."

Silent and tight-lipped, avoiding each other’s eyes, they began to clear the table.

**