Roman Holiday

Chapter Sixty-Nine

As it turned out, Areli Ben-Nadir was neither a black-cloaked academic nor a sleek, super-efficient lab rat, but rather - as Hermione might have surmised, nerves aside - her own unique persona. At precisely five of ten on Friday morning, she rose from her chair to pull Hermione out of the green column of Floo-fire and into her Cairo office - the very picture of casual, wealthy elegance in unbleached linen trousers and matching tunic, a small fortune in hammered silver clasped around her slim wrists. Her shoulder-length hair was pulled back at her nape, setting off a Nefertiti profile and diamond studs the size of grapes.

Hermione was instantly reminded of Gram, and put further at ease when Areli, instead of pulling back from her immediately, drew her into a Continental embrace, kissed her lightly on both cheeks, then leaned back to beam at her.

“Brilliant, as promised - I can tell - and a beauty too,” she said in a surprisingly deep, throaty voice. Her English hadn’t a trace of accent. “Welcome to Cairo, my dear. Come in and sit down - here, let me take your bag for you. Do you care for lemonade?” She studied Hermione with dark film-goddess eyes, shot her a persuasive, mischievous smile. “It may be only ten o’ clock in Scotland, but it’s noon here, after all.”

“Lemonade would be wonderful, thank you,” Hermione said cautiously - a bit dazed at the warmth of her welcome; this wasn’t at all what she’d expected - and settled back in her chair to take stock of her surroundings.

She was in a spacious, high-ceilinged room the colour of an eggshell, with starker white crown mouldings that matched the cornices on the immense fireplace. Opposite the hearth - now stone-cold with the passing of the Floo enchantment, and home to a flourishing basket of Boston ivy - were a set of elegantly curved French doors, draped with fluttering sheers and opening to a tree-shaded rose-quartz balcony.

Very British Colonial, Hermione decided - but in contrast to the formality of the architecture, the furnishings were pure casual comfort: sisal rugs, squashy oversized chairs flanking a matching davenport in luxurious caramel suede, potted palms in earthenware urns that six men couldn’t have lifted. The warm air was pleasantly stirred by the faint hint of a cooler breeze - probably a Zephyr Charm, she thought, but it was so well done that she couldn’t quite tell.

Settling deeper into the womblike recesses of her chair, she took an appreciative sip of lemonade. “This is a beautiful room,” she said politely, then couldn’t help adding, “but it doesn’t look much like an office, does it?”

Areli chuckled.

“Not in the slightest,” she said with a conspiriatorial wink in Hermione’s direction. “We’re a completely autonomous unit, you see - very insular - so I took a few liberties with the décor. From the outside, to the non-magical eye, this is just another dreary post-industrial office building. But I thought - we had might as well be comfortable, hadn’t we?”

She gestured toward the French doors with her sweating lemonade glass. “This is one of the conference rooms. Not that we ever conference formally, of course, but it’s a comfortable meeting place for the more social among us, and a handy thinking spot during more solitary moments. There’s another room similar to this one downstairs, which leads out into a lovely little walled garden - you’ll see it later when I give you the tour.” She glanced toward the arched doorway, through which Hermione could see apple-green walls and the sinuous curve of a banister.

“And then we all have our own space - that’s crucial, when you’ve got so many deep thinkers under one roof. A few of us are quite solitary indeed; it’s entirely possible to go months and never see certain people at all.”

For lack of a more erudite response, Hermione nodded and nervously decimated an ice cube between her back molars. It made a crack like a thunderbolt in the quiet room.

Oh, very professional, Granger.

“I hope I’m not being too forward in asking,” she said, swallowing hard, “but could you tell me a little bit about what exactly goes on here? Professor Dumbledore was most closemouthed on the matter.”

Areli raised an amused eyebrow. “Well, that’s Albus for you,” she said. “When in doubt, look mysterious. The truth is, Hermione, that he didn’t tell you what the Consortium does because he didn’t know.” She looked quite self-satisfied by this; something that Hermione, having been brought up short by the Headmaster’s seeming omniscience too many times to count now, could certainly understand. “It’s a bit difficult to explain, really - ah, well, here we go.”

She wagged one exquisitely-manicured index finger in the air. “For being as exclusive as it is - the Consortium is made up of eleven members, presently, including myself - it’s an unusually multi-disciplinary group. My goal in forming it was to bring together the finest minds I could recruit, and put them in a setting where they were allowed to work unimpeded, regardless of their chosen field.”

She took a reflective sip of her lemonade. “We have a small team of three, devoted to magical archaeology; their contributions to the Museum of Egyptian Art alone are enough to keep us all in funding. We have an expert on Celtic runes, a couple of mathematical geniuses, a husband-and-wife duo who spend eight months out of the year in the Congo bush, living with and studying a small tribe of primitive magic-users there.” She looked pensive. “Fascinating study, really - apparently these people are either born mute or just never learn to phonate - instead, they communicate and cast their enchantments using an elaborate finger-language of magical drumbeats, instead of wands.”

She grinned at Hermione’s look of astonishment, then shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Then,” she said, “there’s the literary crowd - we have a poet and a novelist; touchy creatures, both of them - and myself. The token run-of-the-mill scientist. How we manage to swim along together is worth a bit of research, all on its own - but so far, it’s worked out quite nicely.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Hermione said fervently, and it was the truth - everything about it appealed: the room, the chair, the city, the fascinating woman opposite her. “But I guess …” She broke off, frowning, causing Areli’s other eyebrow to elevate.

“Yes?”

Hermione fidgeted a bit. “I guess,” she repeated, “that I’m a bit puzzled about why you want me. After all, I’m not an expert on anything.”

She was utterly unprepared for Areli’s broad smile.

“Funny you should ask that,” she said, and leaned forward to sandwich Hermione’s hand between her own. “I’m afraid my answer’s a bit long-winded - you’ll forgive me in advance if I ramble a bit, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Hermione murmured, but Areli was already talking.

“It starts with my own particular area of interest,” she said; “I’ve long been fascinated by the wizarding influences on Muggle medicine, and the possibilities that lie inherent therein.”

Hermione gave a little start.

“Your dissertation,” she blurted out. “First Do No Harm. I read it, back in the Hogwarts library.” Areli looked surprised, then gratified.

“Ah,” she said. “So you already know the basics. Well, then I can skip ahead a bit. Basically, I’ve been conducting field tests on Muggle medical paraphernalia over the past few years, subtly bewitched to augment its effectiveness. Contact lenses, hearing aids, pacemakers - you name it, I’ve experimented on it.” She paused for another sip from her glass. “The testing on the hearing devices, in particular, has just produced good enough, and reliable enough, results, that the Consortium has been able to contract with a Muggle company, to market them on a trial basis.”

Hm, Hermione thought, intrigued. That’s a new one.

“Wow,” she said slowly, then frowned. “What are you using? An Amplification Spell?”

Areli nodded. “You are quick, aren’t you?” she asked, obviously delighted. “Well, it’s a simple idea - so simple, in fact, that it would have been done decades ago, were it not for the great divide between Muggle technology and wizarding practice. As it stands, the Consortium holds the patent on the idea.”

Cool, Hermione thought - patents are cool - and crunched some more ice, decorum forgotten. “How do you do it?” she asked. “I mean, so the Muggles don’t catch on?”

“Well,” Areli said, “the enchantment could be cast assembly-line style, and I toyed with that idea for a while. But it’s just as effective to appoint one ‘engineer’ - so far, I’ve fulfilled this duty myself - to oversee the process, at the level in which the plastic alloy used to manufacture the devices is still in a molten state.”

She grinned at Hermione. “One whispered word during the final quality check, before the molds are poured, and the very raw material itself becomes a magical conduit. Four thousand Muggles go back to their lives better-equipped to live them. And no one’s the wiser.”

“What a great idea,” Hermione said, and meant it. “But -“ she ventured - “doesn’t the Ministry of Magic frown on this sort of thing?”

Areli shook her head.

“First of all,” she said, “the African Ministry isn’t nearly as uptight about these things as the British Ministry - one of the many reasons that I decided to base the Consortium in Cairo. Secondly, there’s no law, anywhere in the world, that specifically prohibits allowing non-magical folk from unknowingly reaping the benefits of magic. Though there are those who would lead you to believe differently.”

She sat back in her chair, dark eyes sparking with challenge.

“A fully-trained mediwitch or mediwizard,” she said, “can heal wounds. Regrow bones. Can tell with a wave of the wand whether and where cancerous cells exist in the body, and can Banish them with a word. Can, in certain circumstances, start a stopped heart beating again.”

She waved one hand in a flash of rings. “Are we helpless before some things? Yes. Are we nevertheless at a medical advantage? Absolutely. Are we morally obligated to share our greater knowledge? I, for one, happen to think that we are.”

Hermione watched, transfixed, as Areli shook back her magnificent head, pitched that persuasive voice deeper and richer yet as she warmed to her subject. “Which brings me to your role in the Consortium,” she said. “I have been looking for a young person - gifted in Potions - who has a connection with the non-magical world, and is conversant enough with its structures and fallibilities to use them to advantage. Someone who’s willing to take up my torch - as it were - and step into the mighty divide that exists between Muggle potions and their magical counterparts.”

Hermione nodded, open-mouthed. “I think I see what you’re getting at,” she said. “Something like chemotherapy, for instance - it helps kill cancer, but it’s also a poison. Or asthma medication. Or kidney dialysis. Situations in which the benefits of the treatment are almost outweighed by the drawbacks, and when magic could fill in that gap of knowledge.”

“Exactly,” Areli said, and squeezed Hermione’s hand again. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me that you’re of non-magical birth,” she said, “except that because you are, you understand completely where I’m coming from. What I’m working on, what you would be working on, is nothing short of revolutionary - it’s a virtual Magna Carta of medicine, a bulldozer to the playing field.”

She shook back the thick black hair escaping from its bonds, never breaking eye contact. “I’m not going to lie to you, Hermione,” she said. “There’s a very great stigma against this sort of research, in the magical community - otherwise, it would have been done long ago, merely because of the market that exists for it. If we’re successful at it, we’re likely to end up rich beyond imagining.” She swept Hermione a penetrating look from beneath thick black lashes. “But then, that’s not really the issue, is it?”

“No,” Hermione said, surprised at her own vehemence. “It’s not the money at all. It’s - it’s doing the right thing, that’s what it is.”

Her own words were stuck in her head, from way back before Christmas - she and Draco, talking over the top of a tomato-stained tea cosy and the single spot of bright varnish on her battered desk. You idiot, she told herself fiercely. Why all the unnecessary angst? You’ve known what you wanted all along.

Something that doesn’t just make the world prettier, but makes it better.

Well, here was her chance.

“Think it over,” Areli was urging her. “Talk to Dumbledore; take your time. I’ve waited this long - I can wait another week or so -“ but Hermione barely heard her.

“I don’t need to think about it,” she said, and looked the older woman straight in the eyes. “I’ve made up my mind. I’m in.”

**