Roman Holiday

Chapter Fifty-Two

The worst thing about being Practically Number Two to a Dark Lord, mused Lucius Malfoy, was that when it hit the fan, you were not only the most logical person to blame, but you were also standing closer than everyone else. Take the case of the Missing Initiates, for example. The existence of Peter Pettigrew had been just about the only thing to save Lucius’s hash.

Peter wasn’t feeling so good at the moment.

Lucius allowed himself a little smirk at that thought, then sobered. His head wasn’t off the block yet. More than a week since the Disappearance, and they were no closer to locating their missing persons than they’d been back at Hogwarts, alone in the sunny December dawn with a mess of rapidly melting, disembodied footprints as their only clue.

Vanished, into thin air. And Hermione Granger knew why.

Oh, he couldn’t prove it. Not to Albus Dumbledore, that cackling idiot - not to Severus, the Traitor - and not to the Dark Lord, either, though it wouldn’t have made any difference if he could, in that case. A slip of a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, and a Muggle-born at that, wasn’t on Voldemort’s list of Worthy Adversaries.

But she knew, and he knew she knew. The way she’d looked at him, from her comfortable seat in Dumbledore’s office - back straight, head tipped oh-so-slightly to the side, pert elven face properly serious but backlit with amusement - yes, she knew all right. Which meant that Draco was in on it, too.

Draco. Lucius let out a little growl at the thought of that name and tossed back another nip of Ogden’s Black Label.

Draco, the Saviour, Draco the Sacrifice - and now that deal might be queered, too; the boy obviously knew all about what was going to happen to him, and Lucius would bet his last Galleon that he had the Mudblood to thank for that, as well.

Somebody, after all, had to get close enough to see that mark on the back of his neck. Not for the first time, Lucius regretted his forced resignation from the Hogwarts school board. Were he still in a position to do so, he’d have plenty to say about Dumbledore’s lenient snogging policies.

Another shot of Ogden’s - it’s the holiday, after all, isn’t it? - to stave off the fear that was gnawing at the edges of his consciousness. Your goose isn’t cooked yet, he told himself. They could look from here to doomsday, his wayward son and the Junior Bitch Goddess he’d taken up with, and they’d never find a way to stop the curse. He’d done a fair amount of reading himself, during his school days, and there wasn’t a bit of useful information on that particular prophecy, anywhere in the castle.

Which still left eight missing Death Eaters, the most promising of the New Generation - the delayed Initiation was a real blow to Voldemort’s machine. Lucius dug viciously at his temples, where a migraine was throbbing just beyond the reach of the alcohol.

The Granger girl had them, or at least knew where they were. He was certain of that. What he wasn’t so sure of was what she’d done … or was going to do. Would they turn up out of whatever secret dungeon they’d been lured to, rubbing their eyes and blinking, at the start of the spring term? Or had she disposed of them for good? Was a pretty little Gryffindor witch even capable of pulling a cold-blooded stunt like that?

Lucius wished he knew.

She was the root of all his problems. Darkly, he imagined explaining that to Voldemort, then decided that the Dark Lord’s reply wasn’t even worth contemplation.

She’s your problem? Then deal with her, Lucius. Haven’t I taught you anything?

He rolled the last swallow of Ogden’s around in his mouth and pondered that idea. She was just an ordinary student, after all - not the fawned-over, notorious Potter. No special privileges, no guards, no magical barriers, no omnipresent, meddling Headmaster looking over her shoulder.

Just a girl, and a Muggle-born at that.

He set down the glass, leaned back in his chair, and smiled for the first time in two weeks.

**

“So what is it we’re supposed to do again?” Draco asked.

They were both looking doubtfully over the neatly arranged array of phials and equipment, which had been moved into Elysium. There, they had a more congenial workspace - and they weren’t threatened with the possibility of interruption, however benign. Hermione sucked her teeth thoughtfully and, with barely a twinge of regret, broke the spine of the paperback book her father had sent her so that it would lie flat on the counter.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” she admitted. “It looks like the sort of process we need to undergo is something referred to as qualitative chemical analysis, and believe me, I didn’t get that far in Muggle science. But at least it seems logical - and the Hogwarts library has a book with some of the basics, though according to this they’re pretty outmoded.”

She gestured to the far corner, where a number of covered beakers had been sitting for nearly two weeks. “Lucky for us we did one thing right - before we do anything at all with this, we need an aqueous solution of each sample. And we’ve got them; they just need to be strained.”

The beakers contained distilled water, in which the carcasses of several different species of insects had been decomposing. Gingerly, Hermione pulled off the cheesecloth which had been covering them, and they stared nonplussed at the lumpy, discoloured sludge.

The spirit of scientific inquiry was one thing when it smelled like lemons and tasted like orange juice. This was entirely another matter.

“Okay,” Draco said finally, grimacing, and picked up the beaker labelled ‘houseflies’. “I have the feeling we’re going to need more cheesecloth.”

**

What would really have made their job easier, they discovered upon further reading, was an instrument called a spectroscope, designed to break down chemical compounds into its component parts with the use of a laser beam. Hermione, scanning the chapter on spectroscopy software, entertained brief wistful thoughts about the big white computer in her room at home, about the sleek little laptop her mother carried back and forth from work, then sighed and turned back to the heading entitled Low-Tech Qualitative Analysis: Litmus, Flame Testing, and Reagents.

They were going to have to do this the hard way.

They had four samples - houseflies, billywigs, chizpurfles, and of course the lacewings. The idea, according to Hermione, was basically to test the hell out of the solutions that they had, and note any differences they found. “What we’re looking for,” she said, “is anything that distinguishes the lacewings from all the other samples. Then we’ll know what to focus on.”

They skipped the carbon test - these were all insects, after all; of course they were carbon-based - and proceeded directly to the litmus paper; luckily, the chemistry set included an ample supply. “Tests for the presence of acid or alkaline,” Hermione said shortly. “I remember from my last year of Muggle science.”

All four samples performed similarly - no surprises there, but it didn’t hurt to check. They moved on.

Hermione studied the page on flame testing and pushed her hair back impatiently. “Well, I hope this works,” she said finally. “If it doesn’t, we have to move on to reagents - and quite frankly I’m not getting all the scientific mumbo-jumbo about cations and anions; I think this book assumes that you know all that stuff already.” She looked grim. “Writing home for another book could set us back a week. Or more. And school starts back right past New Year’s; I was hoping to have made some progress by then.”

“Owls are pretty fast over the holidays,” Draco said helpfully. Hermione didn’t look convinced.

“Yeah.”

“We could just forget it,” he said unexpectedly, and Hermione sent him a sharp look.

“I’m sorry?”

“We could just forget it,” he repeated. “He knows we know now - what are the chances that Voldemort’s going to go through with it and activate the curse? Won’t he assume that we’ve taken the necessary steps to counter it?”

“Possibly,” Hermione said. “Though he came through this school too, you know, and I bet you a Galleon that he read the same books we did. As far as he knows, we’re aware of the curse’s existence, but we haven’t a clue how to stop it.” She frowned. “Besides. He’s getting way too cocky - sending his goons up to collect the Initiates at the front gates is the next thing to flipping Dumbledore the bird. Something’s going to happen soon, and when it does, I want our side to have a working Protection Potion.”

She sorted through the jumble of hardware that had come with the chemistry set and laid out four aluminum wire loops. “Ready?”

Draco sighed. “Ready.”

**

They fired up the Bunsen burner and carefully dipped the first wire loop into the housefly solution. “Hold it in the fire,” Hermione directed, and flipped the page to a complicated-looking table. “What color is the flame?”

“Red.” Draco peered more closely at it. “Well, it was yellow for a second, then it turned red.”

“Yellow’s sodium,” Hermione said, her finger scanning the page. “If it burns off, it’s not important. Would you say that red was a ‘carmine’, a ‘scarlet’, or a ‘yellow-red’?”

“Um. More yellowy, I’d say.”

“Mm. Well, that makes sense. Yellow-red means lots of calcium.” She jotted something down in her notebook. “Want to try the next one?”

The chizpurfle sample performed similarly, which they considered to be a good sign. The billywigs, on the other hand, proved to be a bit more problematic.

“I get that yellow flare at the beginning,” Draco reported. “And the orangy-red calcium colour. But then there’s a flare of something else … this brighter red colour that the others don’t have. Here, look at this.” He picked up a clean loop, re-dipped it in the billywig solution, and thrust it into the Bunsen burner. Hermione studied the sputtering flame thoughtfully.

“I think that must be what the book calls ‘carmine’,” she said. “And that means lithium. No wonder those things are hallucinogenic when they sting you. I’m off Fizzing Whizzbees for life.”

“Mm,” agreed Draco half-heartedly. He had no idea what she was talking about, but she had that intent, predatory look on her face that only ever had to do with a problem she’d solved. That face meant she wouldn’t hear a question, even if he asked it … so instead, he dipped the last wire loop in the lacewing solution and placed it carefully into the center of the flame.

Hermione shivered. She was holding her breath, and wasn’t even aware of it.

A short burst of yellow. A flicker of orange-red. And something else - not the clear red-pink of the lithium, but the barest tinge of bright, emerald green.

Jackpot, she thought, and went for the book like a vulture to carrion.

“Well?” Draco asked, turning down the Bunsen burner, and Hermione smirked happily.

“One of two things,” she said. “Emerald green means either thallium or copper. And if I recall correctly, thallium is really, really poisonous. So I think we’re looking at a copper compound here. Fabulous.”

“Great,” Draco said cautiously. Those colour-changing fires looked cool, but they creeped him out a little. As did Hermione herself, quite frankly; she was just a little too excited about this, and she was starting to mutter in a language he didn’t understand. “So what do you want me to do now?”

Hermione tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “We still have some Armoring Potion left over, minus the last ingredient, right?”

He nodded. “So you want to add the lacewing goop to it?”

“Let’s go one better than that,” Hermione said, and started sorting through the pile of neatly labelled powdered elements that had come with her chemistry kit. “If it’s copper this thing needs, by all means - let’s throw some in, and see what happens.”

It wasn’t quite that simple, they soon discovered. The Grangers had taken Hermione at her word when she said she wanted a professional model: this particular kit contained not one, but three different copper salts, labeled only with a series of mysteriously arranged letters and numbers that resembled nothing so much as secret code.

“Copper sulfate,” Hermione translated from one of the tables at the back of her user’s manual. “Copper oxide. And … um … oh, here it is. Copper carbonate hydroxide. For all the good that does us.”

Momentarily stumped, they stared at the phials of powder - deep blood-red, brilliant blue, variegated moss-green - then back at each other. What now?

“Process of elimination?” Draco suggested, and Hermione nodded.

“Works for me.”

This part was home turf for Draco, who’d done it what seemed like a million times since mid-October. If anything, he remarked to Hermione, Muggle chemistry had at least three advantages over potion-brewing: the ingredients came in neat little jars, he didn’t have to chop them up, and they didn’t resemble anything that might have once been alive. Ceremoniously he measured out a tiny scoop of each substance and dumped one into each identical beakerful of Armoring Fluid as Hermione stirred. They craned their necks curiously over the beakers.

A traditional Armoring Fluid, when properly brewed, was the consistency of iced gin and the colour of Bing cherries - adding the Illuminata transformed it into a clear liquid with perhaps just a tinge more pink than usual in its rainbow sheen, but they weren’t going to bother with the Illuminata today. For one thing, they’d have to go all the way down to the Potions classroom for it, and it wasn’t really necessary for experimental purposes anyway - they’d already figured out that its function within the finished Protection Potion was not to shield, but to repair existing damage.

Draco had gotten quite good at predicting whether a given variant would work, based on its colour. Now, however, he had to admit he was stumped. Despite the colour differences in the copper salts themselves, all three beakers glowed an identical cough-syrup red.

“Oranges?” he asked, and Hermione snorted.

“We only have one left,” she said. “Let me get my wand, and I’ll Replicate it. If none of these work, we’re going to have to raid the kitchens again.”

They decided to try the copper-oxide potion first, since the colour of the salt matched most closely that of the potion itself. They’d gotten good at this part, too; the luckless orange, placed in a petri dish - the splash of potion over its surface, followed by a quick spin to cover the entire surface - the ceremonious placing of what Hermione had begun to refer to as the Sacrificial Fruit, on a wooden chopping block they’d begged from Dobby.

Draco was responsible for the surgery itself - his scalpel of choice was a meat cleaver that looked as if it could chop a cow apart, but was in reality slightly dull. Splatter was inevitable; they had long-since learned to take the extra precaution of covering any yet-to-be-tested samples before commencing.

The cleaver came down in a spray of orange pulp. Hermione yelped; she’d gotten juice in her eye.

“One down,” she said, groping blindly for a corner of her sleeve to wipe her eyes. “Let’s try the copper sulfate next, shall we?”

They cleared away the citrus debris from the first experiment, wiped down the counters and the blade of the cleaver, and prepared the second orange. “These were the blue crystals, right?” Draco asked absently, raising his blade on high. Hermione nodded and stifled a snicker: this whole process was beginning to resemble late-night television.

This time, the cleaver bounced twice before it penetrated. Encouraging, but hardly what they’d hoped for. Hermione glared at the little phial of green powder in front of the third beaker.

“I seriously hope,” she said with mock-fierceness, “that I haven’t wasted my Christmas present on you. You had better come through for us.” Draco, who was combing his hair with his fingers in search of an errant orange seed, laughed.

“Which one’s that?” he asked, and Hermione consulted the user’s manual again.

“Copper carbonate hydroxide,” she said. “Also known as malachite. Says here - oh, this is interesting! It says here that malachite’s a gemstone, sort of like a budget version of jade, and that it’s often carved into amulets.” Her hands shook slightly as she tossed the pamphlet aside. “Protection amulets.”

“Huh,” Draco said, and took additional care wiping down the blade of the cleaver. “That sounds promising, doesn’t it?”

“Mm. I think … oooooh, maybe ….” Hermione had her fingers crossed and her eyes squinched shut; Draco found it endlessly charming that superstition could exist in that logical little machine of a brain. “I can’t look. Tell me when it’s over.”

“No,” he said. “No, I think you should watch.” He waited until her eyes blinked cautiously open, then swung.

The blade kicked in his hand and skated to one side, leaving the orange untouched. He tried again. Same results.

“Are you timing this?” he asked, after his fourth attempt. Hermione nodded.

“We’re past three minutes,” she said briskly. Superstition had given way to purpose; she was studying the sweeping second hand of her wristwatch as if the fate of the universe hung in the balance. “Okay, we’re coming up to four. Try again.”

The cleaver bounced.

At six minutes, Draco dropped the cleaver and reached for his wand.

At ten minutes, tiring of ducking the enchantments that kept bouncing back at him, he threw the orange on the floor and tried to squash it with his foot.

At fifteen, nursing a slightly twisted ankle, he took over the stopwatch and let Hermione have a go.

Twenty minutes. Twenty-five. Thirty. “Talk about a magical fruit,” Hermione panted, and Draco began to laugh hysterically. (Be you wizard child or Muggle, that particular little rhyme was universal.)

At forty minutes, the orange was still intact. “Forty-five, coming up,” Draco said, and Hermione picked up the cleaver.

“On five,” she said. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One….”

Splat.

Trembling, breathing heavily, and sticky from head to foot, they stared at each other from over the mangled remains of the Little Citrus That Could. “Forty-five minutes,” Hermione said softly, her tone disbelieving. “Forty-five minutes.”

Draco’s brain was blank with shock, immobilized with a growing tidal wave of euphoria. “What do we do now?” he said slowly, and was answered with a fierce, blazing smile that, in retrospect, he wasn’t sure he liked.

“Snape,” she said. “We go tell Snape. And the sooner the better.”

**