Roman Holiday

Chapter Fifty-Three

Severus was awakened from his post-Christmas tea armchair doze by the sound of pounding fists on the door and muffled calls of: "Professor? Professor, are you there?" He cracked one eye blearily open, glared at the door, then exchanged a baleful glance with the similarly awakened Sal.

"Don't look at me," Sal yawned. "I haven't been anyone's 'Professor' for eight hundred years."

In response to this bit of witticism, Snape growled and hoisted himself to his feet. "Malfoy and Granger," he predicted darkly. Sal grinned.

"How do you know?"

Severus made a face. "Malfoy's a Slytherin prefect. All the prefects know the way to my rooms, in case there's an emergency and I'm needed in the dormitory. To narrow it down further, he's the only one who stayed at school for the holidays."

Except, of course, for the two who'd spent their Christmas in Hermione Granger's jewelry box. He winced.

"And the lovely Miss Granger?" Sal inquired lazily. Severus clenched his teeth.

"Is the only present inhabitant of this castle who's foolhardy enough to batter down my door on Christmas afternoon." He strode over to the door, yanked it open, and scowled down at them. "What?"

At his tone, Draco paled and took a step back - clever boy, thought Severus - but Hermione, for some reason, was beyond apprehension. "Professor," she bubbled, and rocketed past him into his parlor like a cork from a bottle of shaken champagne. "Oh - Sal! Happy Christmas!"

She was holding, Severus noticed now, a covered plastic jar of something that was either Armoring Fluid or cranberry juice. "We've done it," she said exultantly - "we've really done it. You have to see this."

Just because he was curious didn't mean he was going to let her off the hook that easily. "Miss Granger, do you know what the word privacy means?" he snapped. "For that matter, shall I explain to you, in small words that you'll understand, the meaning of the term national holiday?"

Or - this unspoken - the words stay away from me?

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"This can't wait," she said, not looking the least bit apologetic. "It's really big news - I promise you."

She glanced past him, as if for corroboration, to Draco, who was still lurking warily on the far side of the threshold. Though more cautious than she, he too seemed lit from within with suppressed excitement. Severus knew when he was beaten; sighing, he beckoned Draco in and closed and warded the door behind him.

"Am I to understand," he asked - as disagreeably as possible, just so she wouldn't think she'd won any concessions from him - "that the two of you have made some amazing breakthrough concerning the Armoring Fluid?"

Hermione nodded. Severus smirked.

"And how," he asked silkily, "did you intend to prove it to me?"

He should have known that she'd call his bluff.

If anything, his snarkiness added to her high spirits. Unscrewing the jar lid, Hermione swirled the container twice as if she were preparing to sample a fine port, tipped a generous slug of the potion down her throat, and shot them all - he, Draco, and Sal - a gleeful, almost maniacal smile.

"I," she said, "am now welcoming all curses great and small." To his extreme displeasure, Severus saw her wink at Draco. "Have at it."

He didn't wait for a second invitation.

**

By the time twenty minutes had passed, however, his state of mind had travelled the country from Sleep to Annoyance, paused briefly for tea and scones at Surprise and Grudging Admiration, and was now hovering with the needle stuck firmly on Unadulterated Shock. Tossing his wand aside, he ducked the playful Jelly-Legs Draco had thrown at Hermione, and picked up the half-empty jar of potion.

"What did you add?" he asked. Hermione looked smug.

"Powdered copper carbonate hydroxide," she said with a wicked little grin, then relented when he glared at her. "Also known as the mineral malachite. As it turns out, that's the active ingredient in the lacewings. We did a chemical analysis, then substituted the pure mineral for the trace amounts found in the insects' bodies." She shot him an arch look. "I told you they were the weak link, remember?"

Snape stuck his tongue in one cheek, impressed despite himself. Sal chortled.

"Muggle chemistry, eh?" he said. "Good for you. We wizards are an inbred lot, aren't we, that we didn't think of that before. How long has this potion been around, anyway, Severus?"

"Six hundred years," Snape said absently. "Give or take." He dipped one finger in the potion and touched it to the tip of his tongue. The bloody tang of copper sat heavily on his palate. His mind was racing.

"How long does it last?" he asked.

"Almost forty-five minutes," Draco said, tossing a final Impedimenta in Hermione's direction and grinning at his professor's look of shock. Hermione dodged the curse and dropped lightly onto the rug by the hearth, drawing her knees up to her chin.

"And this is just the prototype," she said. "We haven't even started to play around with the ratios yet. I'm sure that, given a bit of time, we could nudge it up to an hour. Maybe more."

"Forty-five minutes," Snape echoed blankly. Hermione beamed at him.

"Well?" she asked. "What do you think?"

"That you're too damn smart for your own good," he said. "Both of you. And that we'd better go wake up the Headmaster." His gaze swept some faraway interior landscape, rueful and assessing in equal parts.

"This isn't a potion," he said, almost to himself. "It's a bloody revolution."

**

Further experimentation with the chemistry set did, in fact, produce better results. The formula in its final incarnation prolonged the structural integrity of the new supply of Sacrificial Fruit by precisely one hour and six minutes - long enough, as Sal commented, to make the most persistent of foes give up and head home for a nap and a couple of pints.

Hermione, as the mastermind behind the miracle serum, was called into the Headmaster's office two days before classes resumed - Dumbledore was there, and Professor McGonagall, but also Mad-Eye Moody, and Remus Lupin, and a large black dog in the corner, as well as a handful of grim-looking others Hermione didn't know. Also there was a very old, bespectacled wizard who didn't seem to belong with the others. It was to him that Hermione was first introduced.

His name, Dumbledore told her, was Algernon Wandlesworth, and he was the Head of the Magical Patents Office at the Ministry of Magic.

"This potion," explained Wandlesworth, "is your creation, and we want to make sure that it remains yours. Albus here tells me that you're responsible not only for the improvements on the Armoring Fluid, but also for a new substance altogether, which you're calling - ahem -" here he peered over his spectacles at his notes - "ah, yes. The Protection Potion. In addition, you've formulated a working English translation of Giovanni Palestrina's notes for the Illuminata Elixir, and you own the copyright to that translation as well. Quite an industrious young lady." He held out a quill. "If you'll just sign here Ö and here Ö"

Hermione stared at the proffered quill as if it might bite her.

"Wait," she said. "I didn't do all this so I could own it, or make money from it! I don't want these copyrights!"

An uneasy pause followed, and was broken by Dumbledore clearing his throat.

"That's not the issue, Hermione," he said kindly. "No one's accusing you of being mercenary - quite to the contrary! But if your work is copyrighted, it gains an added degree of magical protection - and it means that if samples find their way somehow to unfriendly hands, they'll be much more difficult to analyze and duplicate."

Hermione frowned, unconvinced. "But we duplicate potions in class all the time," she said. Wandlesworth lifted a bony, pedantic finger of dissent.

"Those are in the public domain," he inserted. "Or special permission has been granted to study them. However, almost every magical discovery made during this century has indeed been placed under copyright protection. And rightly so."

"Oh." She hadn't known that.

"Not to mention," Dumbledore added gently, "that if this knowledge belongs solely to you, we will be legally able to create, disseminate and monitor the Protection Potion solely from the safe haven of Hogwarts. Don't forget, Hermione," he said, a hint of heaviness in his tone, "that we are indeed at war - even if our battles are invisible thus far. It is of utmost importance that a defensive weapon of this magnitude not fall into the hands of Lord Voldemort."

Put that way, how could she refuse? But one more thing niggled at the edges of her conscience, and she couldn't proceed without clearing it up.

"What about Draco?" she asked. "He was my partner. And what about Professor Snape, my advisor? This was very much a joint effort - I couldn't have done it by myself."

"We've spoken with both of those individuals already," Wandlesworth said, a touch of impatience creeping into his quavering old voice. "They declined to be named on the copyright agreement."

Hermione looked inquiringly at Dumbledore. He gave her a reassuring smile in return.

"This was your brain child, Hermione," he said. "Both Draco and Severus know that. You needn't feel guilty about taking credit for it."

And so she signed the documents with the quill Wandlesworth was still holding out for her, filled with a peculiar cerulean ink that seemed to shimmer in the air above the signature line for several seconds, like a heat mirage, then implant itself so deeply in the parchment that it appeared to be engraved. When the old Ministry official had gone, Dumbledore clapped his hands and beamed at the group who remained, and had been muttering quietly amongst themselves in the far corner of his office.

"Right, then," he said brightly. "Agenda item Number Two. Everyone, this is the formidable Miss Granger." (At this, Lupin chuckled, and Professor McGonagall hmmphed.) Dumbledore himself, Hermione thought, had never been more twinkly.

"Hermione," he said, "meet the Order of the Phoenix. They'd like to see a little demonstration."

**

That was an experience. But it was nothing at all compared to two mornings later, when Hermione woke once again before her alarm could wake her, dressed in the dark, and tiptoed down past the roomfuls of newly-arrived Gryffindors toward the main grounds, shivering under the Invisibility Cloak. The sapphire pendant had been cut out of its prison in her robe pocket, and seemed almost to buzz with anger and anxiety as it lay against the front of her jumper. To console herself, Hermione fingered its Replica on her charm bracelet.

During the Christmas holidays, they'd finally gotten snow, deep and wet and heavy; by the time Hermione reached the hidden bend between the castle and the front gates, she was soaked to the knees. She found a sheltered place by some overhanging brush, where the snow had drifted in balletic curves and the ground behind the drifts lay bare and brown, then waved her wand toward the churning path of her progress and muttered a Banishment Charm.

The footprints disappeared, leaving only a smooth ocean of foot-deep snow, shining lavender and tranquil in the not-quite-dawn. Okay, Hermione thought, and stroked the little silver cat-charm once for reassurance, biting her lip as it mewed and butted its tiny head against her finger.

Okay. Time to do it.

She closed her eyes, found her focus, pointed her wand at the middle of that lake of snow, and whispered, "Libero!"

A moment later, all hell broke loose.

**