LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Twenty-Six

They’d both told her now, independently of one another, that she was clever. And though Hermione might have expected the kindly old ghost to pad the facts a bit in deference to her self-esteem, she didn’t imagine that Severus Snape had ever flattered anyone in his life.

Still, she was half taken aback by the surge of relief that hit her when she started to read, and realised how easy it was.

Spells were one thing – old information half-remembered, her wrist veering into the sharp slippery curve of the swish-flick before her brain could think of the proper words to accompany it. Rather, she thought, like finding yourself on stage at a piano recital, playing a piece you’d memorised years ago and hadn’t touched since: accurate, maybe, or at least accurate enough to bear out their story – she was a witch, right enough – but nevertheless uncomfortable in that accuracy, as if her skill could at any moment turn on her.

Reading, thank goodness, wasn’t like that at all, but pure second nature. Hermione could picture herself as that buck-toothed little girl from the photo album, curled oblivious in an armchair with Great Expectations open on her lap while the dark-haired man Severus had identified as her father beamed proudly down at her: reads like a fish swims, that one. Chip off the old tooth.

That mental image was so clear, so photographic, that it brought her up short. Was it speculation, or genuine memory?

She couldn’t decide.

She paused, waiting for another scrap of recollection to escape the locked box of her brain and float to the surface, but her inner airwaves stayed stubbornly silent. Sighing, she turned back to Reclaiming the Magic.

It wasn’t very well-written. Phineas Sturbridge might have been a charismatic leader, but his memoirs consisted mostly of personal vignettes, seen through the rose-coloured spectacles of hindsight; Hermione thought that if she read I realised, even then, that I was destined for greatness one more time, she’d abandon her endeavor and put the bloody book through a window.

The interminable, self-congratulatory rambling was laced throughout with what she imagined Sturbridge had thought of as his political message: Muggles, he maintained were not only inequal to wizards, they were something less than human. A witch or wizard who intermarried with the nonmagical, he declared, was to be held in contempt – rather as if he or she had set up housekeeping with the family cat – and as for Muggle-born wizards and the offspring of mixed couples, Sturbridge claimed them the most insidious and dangerous of all, recommending that they be – oh, lovely – drowned at birth.

Hardly an original thinker, is he? Hermione thought, and then – immediately thereafter – I wonder how I know that. Frowning over the conundrum of her damaged memory, she didn’t notice Sal approaching until his clammy, arctic shoulder accidentally passed through hers.

"You’re looking fierce," he said, hastily removing his chilly self to a greater distance. "What do you think of it?"

Hermione rubbed her arm absently to bring warmth back into it. "What do I think of it?" she repeated. "I’ll tell you what I think – it doesn’t make any sense. That’s what."

He studied her with unabashed interest. "It’s a harsh message, I’ll grant you that. He wasn’t a pleasant man."

"True," Hermione said. "But it’s not that."

She was pleasantly surprised to feel a resonant click inside her head, rather as if her Inner Logician had finally yawned, stretched, and downed her first cup of coffee. "It’s him. He doesn’t seem smart enough to come in out of the rain on his own, never mind inspire some secret cabal of assassins to annihilistic abandon. Half this book is his own rubbish, and the other half is rubbish he’s borrowed; I know I’ve read some of it before, I just can’t think of where."

"That bit," Sal said, "was old news a thousand years ago. It’s been borrowed and re-borrowed since the dawn of time – who knows where these things start?" He paused for a moment, apparently deep in thought, then shrugged to himself and turned to her, pale eyes alight with speculation. "And you’re absolutely right, by the way. Sturbridge wasn’t one of the century’s great minds by any stretch of the imagination, merely a passably eloquent hack whose brand of vitriol happened to appeal."

"Mmph." Hermione, dissatisfied with this – whether or not it was true, it certainly wasn’t encouraging – flipped through the remaining chapters of the book, rifling the edges of the pages with a careless thumb. "Doesn’t seem fair, does it?"

And then: "Hold up a minute, Sal. What’s this?"

"What’s what?"

She was staring at the inside back cover of the book. "There’s something inside the binding. Look."

He floated over to peer over her shoulder. "I think it’s just badly glued, Hermione. Hardly a masterpiece of bookmaking, this."

"No." She was industriously picking at the corner of the flyleaf with her thumbnail. "I don’t think so. See, if you look really closely, you can see there’s something written here. It’s been glued over."

Sal frowned. "Could be," he said. "More likely, they recycled part of an older book to make this one. Wouldn’t be the first time, you’re talking about an amateur press after all. No standards, really."

"Sal." Hermione huffed with exasperation. "Look at this."

The glue, stiff and brittle with age, gave way. Hermione lifted back the false flyleaf to reveal the page underneath it. "No writing," she said, disappointed. "Just some sort of strange little symbol. Looks like a publisher’s mark. Never mind."

"Symbol?" Sal frowned. "What’s it look like? Let me see."

Hermione held up the book so he could examine the flyleaf more closely:

"It’s like a little doodle," she said. "Not hand-drawn, though; it’s definitely a printer’s mark. Suppose it means anything?"

"I’ll say," Sal said, and sat down in the deck chair next to hers, as heavily as could be expected of a man without a corporeal body. He looked shaken. "This is odd," he said. "Really odd. You do manage to find the mysteries, don’t you?"

Hermione shrugged. "I suppose. What is it?"

"If you remembered anything from your Arithmancy classes, you’d know," Sal said. "This symbol is the physical representation of ever number set presently known to mankind: rational, irrational, and transcendental. It’s said to depict a basic understanding of the construction of the universe. See, here? You’ve got the side, the diagonal, and the circumference, all in one neat little package. It’s a sort of geometrical primer."

Deep in the fuzzy parts of her brain, something stirred and unwound. "Go on," Hermione said slowly. "I’ve heard this before, I think. Just remind me a little."

"Irrational numbers have been around since Pythagoras," Sal said. "And while the modern Muggle considers the concept of pi to be relatively new, the fact is that transcendental mathematics was discovered and used by the ancients. They’d never have gotten the Pyramids standing without it." He paused. "It’s only the covert removal of the Alexandrian collection, under the guise of a fire, that cut off this knowledge temporarily from the Muggle world – and of course they discovered it again, eventually, though I must say it took them long enough. This symbol’s as old as the ancient Sumerians. Older, probably."

Hermione studied the blurry outline of the figure with renewed interest. "Is it magical?"

"Depends on who you ask. And when you ask it."

She frowned. "Explain."

Sal leaned back, warming to his tale. "Mathematics was heavy stuff in the medieval world," he said. "Galileo himself – not a wizard, mind, just an extraordinarily perceptive Muggle – was excommunicated for his scientific discoveries, merely because they contradicted the body of belief that had grown up around Biblical canon. Considering how powerful a hold the Catholic Church held over life and death at that point and time, it’s no wonder that knowledge of this sort was suppressed and kept secret for as long as it was."

"Even among magical folk?"

Sal snorted. "You’re a child of the modern age," he said. "People of learning don’t find it fashionable any longer to believe in anything they can’t see; even when we in the wizarding world slip up and let our powers manifest in public, we aren’t taken seriously by the greater culture around us. They’re not looking for us, and they don’t want to believe what’s right in front of them. But the Muggle world and the magical weren’t always so far separated. Back then, everyone believed in witches, in demons, in the unseen struggle between Good and Evil. That’s what made it so dangerous to be magical."

He shrugged. "The notion that one could build a cathedral, based on the geometric principles contained in that simple collection of shapes – to the uninitiated, uneducated observer, that came as close to magic as it did to heresy. What you knew could get you killed … at least if other people knew that you knew it."

Hermione shook her head. "I follow you so far," she said. "But having read this book, I find it hard to believe that Phineas Sturbridge could make change for a Sickle, let alone understand transcendental numbers. What’s a complicated mathematical symbol doing in his memoir, of all places? And why did someone go to the trouble to put it in, then paste it over?"

"Good question," Sal said, scowling pensively in the direction of the woodpile. "I think you’re right – it’s a publisher’s mark. Though why it’s been concealed all these years is a mystery to me, as well." He thought for a moment. "Seems to me," he said finally, "that whoever financed the printing of the book must have used this symbol to represent their organisation. But like I said before, it’s an ancient and relatively universal pictogram – if civilisation has one common language, it’s the language of Number. Narrowing it down’s going to be a piece of work."

I thought the Knights of the Golden Wand had their own money, Hermione thought, and had just opened her mouth to say as much when a light flicked on inside the cabin, distracting her. "Looks like Severus is home," she said, catching a glimpse of a dark figure as it swept past the window. "That took a while didn’t it? Thought he said it’d be a short trip."

"I seem to remember that, too."

Sal grinned as the cabin’s door opened and Severus came toward them, scowling. "How was Paris?"

Snape’s lip curled. "Complicated."

One long-fingered hand swirled behind him in an eloquently irritated arabesque. Hermione wondered why, then found her own question answered in short order when two more figures – one tall and feminine, in a short orange dress; the other sandy-haired and grimacing – blinked abruptly into existence on the cabin’s steps. "Oh," she said aloud, and smiled tentatively at the newcomers. "Hi."

"Kate," the young man said, and hurried over to her. "Are you okay? Are you sure you want to be here?" He slanted a dark look at Severus, then leaned a little closer to her and lowered his voice. "He’s not … beating you or anything, is he?"

Severus stifled a gargle of outrage. Hermione blinked.

"I’m fine," she said blankly. Above her, the pretty woman in the miniskirt sighed.

"Of course he’s not beating her, Neville. He may be in dire need of a personality transplant – no one’s denying that – but he’s not a complete slimeball." She planted her hands on her hips and stared down at Hermione. "You haven’t the first clue who we are, have you, honey?"

"Sorry," Hermione said, and decided to venture a guess. "Friends of mine?"

"Glad to know someone realises that." The woman rolled her eyes and turned to face Snape, who was looking aggravated and smug in equal parts. "All right, fine," she said, shaking back her mane of braids. "So you were telling the truth – or at least some of it. But you’re not going to get rid of us that easily."

She grinned and shot Hermione a conspiratorial wink. "I, for one, smell a mystery – and until it’s solved, I’m staying. Plus, it’s gorgeous here."

She turned her back on the sputtering Severus and extended her hand to Hermione. "Joséphine Dessources. We’re old school friends, in case you’re fuzzy on the details of our acquaintance. Can’t wait to catch you up. Is there a Floo somewhere handy? I need to call Albus and tell him I’ll be delayed a few days."

"Straight inside, first door on the left," Sal said. He was suppressing a smile. "And you, Mr. Longbottom? Shall we have room service make you up a bed?"

Neville didn’t look happy.

"I’d rather eat slugs than stay a night in his house," he said, glowering at Snape. "But until I’m satisfied that Kate’s really all right, I’m not going anywhere."

"Oh, good," Sal said, hoisting himself off the deck chair. "It’s a house party! I’ll just go set out the canapés, then."

Through all this, Severus hadn’t spoken. Judging from the look on his face, Hermione wasn’t sure she wanted him to.

**