Roman Holiday

Chapter Forty-Four

Sunday afternoons had been designated by Madam Hooch for Gryffindor Quidditch practice; thus, Harry and Ron disappeared straightaway after lunch, broomsticks over their shoulders. Hermione walked them as far as the castle doors, then halted on the steps, staring out at a sky gone grey and chilly. Consideringly, she went over her options for the afternoon - her homework was finished; the Protection Potion experiment was safely in Draco’s capable hands - and brightened when she remembered the Trapping Spell that Slytherin had mentioned the previous night.

Now there lay the makings of an interesting puzzle. Lit with fresh resolve, she headed for the library.

An hour later, she slammed the latest in a string of highly uncooperative volumes down on the table, making Madam Pince look up from her card catalogue with startled disapproval, and jumped restlessly to her feet.

Researching in books was all very well - and God knew she had a knack for it . Even so, spending all this time in fruitless searching seemed a bit beside the point, when she had a perfectly reliable, highly voluble source three stories down - one who would throw his mother to the alligators, should the act of doing so benefit his fledgling CD collection.

So what was she doing here?

Besides, Hermione told herself, she was in the mood for conversation. Replacing the much-despised book on the shelf and throwing Madam Pince an apologetic glance, she shouldered her bag and headed for her bedroom. Once in the door, she went straight to the box of CDs in the corner and started pulling albums at random.

This time round, she was going to take along some spare incentives. When your verbal sparring partner was a mercenary-but-lovable thousand-year-old ghost, you never knew what questions would present themselves for discussion.

She just hoped her father never took it upon himself to inquire after the whereabouts of her Felicity Lott album - or any of the other music she was trading away in such a cavalier fashion. Explaining its absence from her collection in any way that wasn’t a complete violation of the truth would take more time and narrative ingenuity than she cared to think about.

She loaded her pockets down with CDs, slipped in a couple of energy bars from her mother’s latest care package in case the conversation ran long and she missed dinner, and headed for the stairs, humming.

That was her first mistake.

**

Severus heard Hermione before he saw her - that little scrap of melody floating down the staircase from Gryffindor Tower was instantly recognizable as the one she hummed under her breath during particularly tricky procedures in his Potions class. Only the fact that it seemed completely unconscious on her part - and her laudable ability to stay on pitch - had saved her the loss of House points.

Still, he could think of several snarky things to say on the topic. Halting in his tracks, he leaned on the bannister and waited for his opportunity.

She swung down the stairs into view, a Renaissance smile playing around her pretty mouth, secrets sparkling in her eyes, and set off across the Entrance Hall without so much as looking his way. Severus sucked his teeth consideringly and scowled - the insult he’d worked up had been particularly amusing, and he hated to let it go to waste. Beyond that, he knew that beatific look of hers. On another face, it might have looked like a girlish daydream about some lover or another. In Hermione’s case, he was willing to bet that romance wasn’t even on the menu.

She was up to something.

Jaw set, keeping a judicious distance, he followed her.

Sure enough, she slipped into the Trophy Room - no one ever went in there for a good reason - and headed straight for the Morgan le Fay tapestry. Severus’s eyes narrowed as he watched her duck beneath it - if there was a hidden door there, not even Argus Filch knew about it - and disappear.

Lips twitching with the unquenchable urge to assign detention, he went after her.

Twenty minutes of unsuccessful experimentation later, he slid his wand back into his robes and glared at the stubbornly blank stone wall. Above him, Morgan le Fay fluttered her woven eyelashes.

Normally, Severus avoided talking to Morgan. Despite her Celtic earth-goddess roots, she had adopted the ridiculous affectation of peppering her speech with breathy interjections in French. Possibly this was because the tapestry itself had been woven in Normandy, and boasted the French version of her name - la Fée - as part of its elaborate apple-tree border; in any event, Severus found her sex-kitten mannerisms, and the steely calculation underneath them, unsettling, and stayed out of the trophy room when he could.

Still, information was information, and a source was a source.

“I know she said something,” he muttered, and cast a speculative glance at Morgan. “You didn’t happen to catch it, did you?”

She shrugged the shapely warp and woof of her shoulders and tested the tension of her bow with a distracted forefinger. “Bonjour to you too, Severus,” she murmured in the whispery, thready voice common to all the castle’s tapestries. “As to the password, I could not say - though whatever la mignonne seeks must be très amusant; this is the third time I’ve been disturbed since yesterday sundown.”

“Indeed,” Severus said, his jaw beginning to tick at this distressing bit of news. Morgan chuckled silkily.

“Quelle intrigue,” she said playfully, her ersatz French accent thickening. “Quel mystère. And what a good little girl she is, to have so great a secret - don’t you agree, mon cher Severus?”

“Mm,” Severus said noncommittally. Morgan studied him with amused cornflower-blue eyes that matched the sunny sky of the tapestry’s background.

“One might ask,” she purred, “why you want to follow her so badly. One might … wonder.”

At that, he bristled - and would have responded with insinuations in kind, had his eye not been drawn to her belt. A large ring of keys hung from it, and the fingers of one creamy-white hand were playing idly with them. The deliberation of her movements, combined with the smirk on her pretty face, brought him up short with baleful realization.

“You know,” he said slowly, swamped by a fresh wave of infuriated frustration. “You know the password, you little Cornish tease, and you’re not going to tell me what it is. Damn you.”

Morgan tossed her blonde courtesan’s head and tilted up her patrician chin; making a reference to her pedestrian Cornwall connections was the fastest way to piss her off that Severus knew, and today was no exception. Even that provocation didn’t break through the superior silence she’d wrapped herself in, though. Severus felt his teeth grind together.

“I’ll go to Dumbledore,” he warned her, and was answered by a husky Marlene Dietrich laugh, its contemptuousness matched only by its self-satisfaction.

“There are secrets in this castle,” she murmured seductively, “older and more powerful than even the Headmaster … and more inscrutable even than you, ma bête noire.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “If you wish to possess the knowledge of the secret, you must speak to la petite lionne herself … for without the password, I cannot allow you to enter.”

What was that she’d called Hermione? Severus thought distractedly, struggling to recall his rusty French.

Ah, yes. The little lioness. Fitting - as fitting as her characterization of him: the Black Beast.

Even so, pretty words didn’t get him past that stone blockade.

He fumed impotently for a moment, spun on his heel, and was about to stalk away - Hermione, in whatever mood he found her, was sure to be easier to deal with than this snippy, pretentious French throw-rug - then slowly wheeled around again. His brain was buzzing with a sudden idea - simple, really, but diabolical enough to make Lucius Malfoy snap his wand in half with envy.

If this didn’t fix her wagon, he’d hand the Potions Master position over to Neville Longbottom, and retire to Montana for good. Steely-eyed with determination, he pointed his wand at the tapestry’s hem.

“Conflagrio,” he said calmly, and watched the fringe begin to smolder. Morgan stared at him in utter, open-mouthed disbelief.

“What do you think you’re doing, Severus?” she said quietly. When she dropped the bombshell act, she sounded eerily like Minerva McGonagall. He smiled thinly.

“There’s more than one way to smoke out a secret,” he said. “Are you feeling the heat yet, Morgan?”

“Put it out,” she said sharply. “You’re mad!” Severus tilted his head to the side.

“Possibly,” he said, watching the little lick of flame spread from the fringe to the apple-tree border. “But at least I’m not on fire.”

The unicorns in the tapestry’s background had smelled the smoke and were rearing and wheeling in maddened confusion, their slashing hooves coming dangerously close to Morgan’s golden tresses. Severus watched her grab for their rosebud halters and miss, so that she stumbled and trod heavily on her discarded quiver of arrows.

“Say the word,” he prompted cheerfully, and got a poisonous glare for his trouble.

“Coleridge,” she said, ducking another spatter of flying unicorn hooves. “The password’s Coleridge, all right? Now, put it out!”

“Finite Incantatem,” he said, then added almost as an afterthought, “Reparo.” Morgan glared at him as he ducked under the now-intact tapestry fringe.

“Beast,” she spat. “You’d better hope I never get my hands on a wand, Severus Snape, or I’ll be out of this damned thing and in your nightmares so fast your head will spin.” Severus stifled a grin.

“Morgan, chérie,” he said mockingly. “You’re already in my nightmares.” And started down the steeply sloping corridor, grinning as the stone wall closed behind him with a clang.

Time to find out exactly what his star pupil was up to.

**

Felicity Lott and her Bach cantatas had scored Hermione the Trapping Spell she wanted. “What was it used for?” she asked absently, jotting down the last of her notes. Salazar cleared his throat meaningfully.

“That, I believe,” he said, “is a separate question.”

It was clear from his tone and the sly look on his face that he was hoping for an argument. Hermione, lips twitching, obliged him.

“It most certainly is not,” she said, pretending outrage. “It pertains to the exact same subject; therefore, it’s covered in my original fee. Which I’ve paid.”

Salazar put on a look of long-suffering patience. “My dear girl,” he said, “the Trapping Spell itself falls under the umbrella of Charms research. Whereas -“ his eyebrows twitched gleefully; it was obvious that he thought he had her here - “any question pertaining to its traditional use falls into the History of Magic category. Ergo - two different subjects altogether.”

He looked at her expectantly. Hermione thought fast.

“But, Sal,” she said in her sweetest voice, “everything we talk about is so multi-disciplinary in nature anyway, that those old-fashioned delineations between subjects are really beside the point, don’t you think?”

Hah, she thought. Weasel out of that one, why don’t you.

Slytherin’s face settled into sulky bloodhound folds, giving him the look of a bearded, transparent Humphrey Bogart. “I know you brought more CDs,” he said mournfully. “I can hear them clattering around in your pockets.” He allowed his face to droop another couple of millimeters. “I wouldn’t have thought, Hermione,” he said reproachfully, “that you’d be so unkind as to deny a lonely old spirit one of his few solitary pleasures.”

He looked so downtrodden that Hermione laughed out loud. “Pathos,” she said with mock severity, “does not become you. And I would have given you this anyway - here, take it; I doubt you’ve heard anything like it before. It’s my dad’s favourite jazz album.”

“Jazz?” Salazar surveyed his newly-Perluceod album - Miles Davis’ ‘Shades of Blue’ - with interest. “What’s jazz?”

“You can find out,” Hermione said firmly, “later. When you listen to the album. It’s a digital remastering; the liner notes are pretty extensive.” She poised her quill expectantly over her notes. “The Trapping Spell,” she said pointedly, and Slytherin settled reluctantly back into his armchair.

“Well,” he said, “first things first. The reason I thought it had been employed in making the CDs is because it works in much the same way.” He held up the ‘Shades of Blue’ jewel case. “Before you perform a Trapping Spell, you need to designate and prepare a magnet object - traditionally it’s something made of iron or stone, but I suppose anything metallic would do.” He paused. “Then, once the spell is performed, whatever you’ve Trapped - be it human being, magical object, or secret knowledge - will reside helpless within that receptacle, to be released only by the initiator of the original charm.”

Hermione swallowed hard. “There are a million ways for that to go bad, I’ll bet,” she commented, and Slytherin laughed.

“That,” he said, “is why knowledge of the spell has been suppressed over the centuries, and why it’s no longer taught in magical academies - though certain elements of it were modified and incorporated into the modern-day Fidelius Charm.” He jerked his head toward the Discman. “That’s also why I suspected your little music-machine of being a purveyor of Dark magic,” he said. “Though -“ here he looked thoughtful - “I have always held the view that very little magic has inherently moral properties, in and of itself … either for the Light or the Dark.”

Hermione stiffened. She wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that.

“The Illuminata …” she began, only to be cut off by Slytherin’s uplifted hand.

“ … can be used in ways both banal and profound,” he finished. “As you’ve discovered already for yourself.”

Hermione thought hard. “The Unforgivables,” she said triumphantly. “Cruciatus. Imperius. The Avada Kedavra.”

“Were developed in times of need,” Slytherin said softly, “as weapons of war. And later corrupted.” He fixed Hermione with a penetrating light stare. “I offer you powerful knowledge,” he said, his tone suddenly deadly serious, “because your adversary is powerful and unscrupulous. Use it as you will - but recognize the force you harness, Hermione, and respect it for what it is.”

“Which is …?”

Slytherin smiled mirthlessly. “A conscienceless, mindless entity,” he said, “that depends upon you for its safe direction.”

He patted her warm hand with his chilly one. “And now,” he said, “I have a date with Mr. Miles Davis. And I believe there’s a gentleman waiting over there, to take you back up to dinner.”

Hermione whirled around abruptly and gasped.

Severus Snape was leaning against the bookshelves on the far side of the room. There was no telling how long he’d been there, or what he’d heard.

But he didn’t look happy.

**