LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Thirty-Four

After reading the first three pages, his curiosity had been equalled only by his dismay. By the time he’d plowed through the first binder, six hours later, he was shaking. The activity around him – lunch, a game of Crazy Eights in the kitchen, Neville and Joséphine’s farewells – didn’t even register.

He would never have thought of this. But if it worked …

She’d done her background research on Alzheimer’s – one whole section of her notes had been photocopied articles – and found that however the disease began, whatever triggered it, the end result was the same: the patient’s formerly healthy brain cells were crowded out by masses of sticky brown plaques and choked by cancerous black tendrils of some Devil’s-Snare-like substance referred to as ‘tangles’. From the looks of it, Muggle researchers had been scrambling for some kind of chemical combination to counteract the intruders, either before or after they occurred; whereas Hermione, making one of her customary leaps of inter-disciplinary logic, had simply isolated the unwanted material and begun to experiment with Vanishing it.

In the beginning, her Evanesco had worked rather too well – she’d tended to Vanish the remaining healthy brain cells along with the plaques and tangles. I keep throwing the baby out with the bathwater, read her frustrated memo to Areli, after a month of fruitless experimentation on brain tissue Replicated from the one donated cadaver the Consortium had managed to score. But then, a scant few days later, she’d gone back to Step One – tissue-staining, a technique that the Muggles had used for a century – and had discovered that the foreign matter absorbed her organic vegetable dye in a way that the healthy cells did not. From there, the next challenge had been to suspend the Vanishing Charm in the stain solution without triggering it immediately – a tricky bit of charm-work that she’d figured out, if the dates on the ensuing correspondence could be believed, in the space of one day and two sleepless nights.

What followed were color transparencies, tucked into their plastic sleeves; the untreated brain with its messy, choking knots of stray fibers, juxtaposed with its ‘after’ picture: a bit ragged in places, but miraculously free of impediments. Next had come the first round of animal trials, and the eminently practical question of how to administer the treatment, now that she had it, without inadvertently Vanishing anything she didn’t want Vanished; it was one thing to spray her Evanesco concoction all over a disembodied brain on a glass countertop with a plant mister, and quite another to get it into a living human being without the human being in question coming up missing a digestive system.

In the end, Severus read with a raised eyebrow, it was Christmas at the Burrow that had provided Hermione with her Eureka Moment – Bill had given Arthur Weasley a Muggle camera with a timed shutter, and they’d all been obliged to pose for far too many photographs before Arthur ran out of film and started to take the camera apart on the kitchen table. Time-release! Hermione had emailed Areli excitedly, that very night. You’re the Charms expert; do you know if there’s something we can do to it to slow the reaction down a bit?

Another round of experiments later, they’d added two more enchantments to the mix: not only the slowing-spell (basically a weaker version of Impedimenta), but a Compass Charm as well, designed to guide the potion north (or, in this case, straight up) and – more importantly – keep it there. The rest of it was window-dressing: stabilisers, flavor agents, colouring. Severus stared at the last page in the binder, a mock-up of a prospective trade-magazine advertisement (Vanesca – the one that works), and whistled to himself; the finished product came not in pills, but in a tiny packet of trendy gel-strips designed to melt on the tongue. Faster to the bloodstream that way, he supposed; even so, that little metal box with its bold purple stripe didn’t look consequential enough to warrant all the trouble it had caused.

Which just went to show you that appearances were deceiving.

Impressive, he thought, and picked up the second binder. The first page – again, a photocopy of a letter – made his blood run cold:

**

Hermione—

It was great to see you and Bill the other day, even if we did have to talk shop half the time. I spent yesterday afternoon paging through back issues of Healer Horizons and didn’t find anything remotely resembling the sort of work you’re doing; mostly, the patients on the Fourth Floor aren’t treated in any substantial way at all, if you want to know the truth. Bettina Thrush has charge of them, and ought to be sainted for it – most of them have been tucked away up there for years. As for whether or not spells gone awry cause the same sorts of neurological damage that Alzheimer’s does, I really couldn’t say. I suppose if you wanted to run that test on any one of them – a cat-scan, did you call it? how funny – Lockhart would be the obvious choice, as he’s got no family to protest it and Dumbledore’s paying his bills. If Areli can clear you some space and equipment, I’ll take personal charge of getting him out of St. Mungo’s. Bettina never asks questions.

Dinner was great – we should do it again soon. Gabrielle sends her love.

Yours, Draco

**

She didn’t confine this to the Muggles? Severus thought, half-horrified, half-admiring. No wonder they were calling for her blood. He turned the page, but only half-saw the results of Lockhart’s CAT scan – an otherwise healthy brain overrun with sticky, silvery threads. The rest of him was wondering: Does it work? Could it possibly?

He figured he knew where he could go to find out.

**

Ten minutes and a Location Charm later, he was standing in the frosty late-autumn remains of a lush English garden, shivering in the chilly evening air and wondering exactly how upset Hermione would be, if she ever found out he’d done this. He glanced down at his customary black robes and grimaced; for this bit of subterfuge, they wouldn’t do. He muttered a few words, made a face at the Muggle business suit he’d magicked himself into, and headed for the front door. It opened on the first ring.

"Yes?"

He nearly flinched from the steady-eyed gaze in front of him; it might have been housed in an elderly woman’s body, but it was heartbreakingly familiar – those were Hermione’s eyes, right down to the colour, shape and gleam of cool speculation. "Mrs. Granger?"

"Yes."

He had to be sure. "Martina Granger."

She smiled. "Yes, dear. How can I help you?"

"I’m from the University of London," Severus lied, "and I’m doing a follow-up study on an experimental medication for Alzheimer’s disease. According to my records—" he glanced at the binder, as if for corroboration—"you were part of the study. Could I ask you a few questions?"

She studied him for another moment, then flashed that surprisingly-young smile again and stepped aside. "Come in, Mr. …?"

Severus thought fast. "Black," he supplied. Martina inclined her head.

"Mr. Black. Come in and sit down."

She installed him at the kitchen table and offered him almond-paste macaroons on a bone-china plate, then – despite his remonstrances – put water on to boil for tea before taking the chair opposite him. He had the opportunity to study her as she moved, and did so: she was in her late-seventies, he’d say, with thick grey-streaked black hair drawn tidily back at her nape by a black ribbon and the high-torsoed carriage of a dancer, only slightly stooped by age. Her movements were precise and unhesitating as she scooped loose tea into a tea-ball and poured the water from the kettle to the teapot; if she’d ever been halting or confused, ever been less than the mistress of her universe, he’d never know it to look at her.

"Now," she said, dropping into the chair and squeezing a twist of lemon into her cup. "Mr. Black, was it? What was it you needed to know?"

Hermione’s eyes again, gazing out at him from that faded-but-elegant face that must have been breathtaking, once; this was a woman who would be beautiful until the day she died. Severus, stalling, took a sip of his tea.

"The study," he said again. "My records show that you were diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s, a little less than three years ago, and that you chose to take part in experimental trials for a memory-enhancing drug called Vanesca. What was your experience with this medication?"

Martina Granger laughed, chose a biscuit, and bit into it.

"I had been slowly losing my mind for nearly six months," she said, "before I finally gave into my daughter-in-law’s nagging and went to the doctor. Honestly, I didn’t think anything of it, except that I was getting older – what’s that Roger Bacon quote again? ‘Old age is the home of forgetfulness’?" She picked up her spoon to stir her tea, dropping her eyes as she did so. "Well, it wasn’t just senility, as it turned out, and my doctor told me at the outset that there was no cure. He was so firm on that point that I would never have thought to go looking for alternative medication; I went home and cried and threw things, and then settled down eventually to wait to be taken over."

"How did you find out about Vanesca?" Severus prodded. She shrugged.

"My son and his wife are dentists," she said. "I assume they’d gone to some medical convention or other and heard about the drug trials that way – I really don’t know. I never had to visit a hospital or see a doctor – I just remember getting a call from my daughter-in-law, Kate, on the subject. She came to visit a day or so later … she, and a younger woman. A scientist, I suppose, or an intern. Lovely girl; I don’t remember her name now. Could have been my granddaughter, she was so young." Another sip of tea. "She gave me a little purple packet full of gel strips – I remember thinking that they looked like breath mints – and told me to take one a week until they ran out. That’s all there was to it, really."

She smiled ruefully. "I remember …"

"Yes?"

"Well," Martina said, "it was rather amazing, really. I’d had this low-level headache for months, it seemed, and two minutes after the first strip dissolved on my tongue it was gone. I felt so – light-headed; it was unreal. And then –" here, she laughed – "my daughter-in-law asked me where my keys were. And I knew."

Severus digested this. "Any side effects?"

"None at all," Martina assured him, and leaned over the table to whisk away his empty cup. "Another cup of tea, dear?"

He hesitated, then shrugged. "Thank you."

She was in the act of pouring it when she suddenly stopped and set down the teapot. "Yes," she said. "One side effect. If you can call it that. It’s more like a memory lapse, and it’s odd, because I remember virtually everything else."

Severus took his half-filled teacup. "What is it?"

"Wait a minute," she said, "and I’ll show you." She was already pushing back her chair, disappearing into the next room. A lamp flicked on, and Severus could see from his seat at the table the far wall of the parlor, decorated with framed and matted theatrical posters and photographs of a young dark-haired woman in elaborate costume. Must have been an actress, Severus thought, then was distracted from his view as Martina came back into the kitchen, bearing a photograph album.

"It’s the strangest thing," she said. "The scientist I told you about? She must have been a family friend – she’s in all these photographs. Here – look." She pushed the open album across the table toward him.

He tore his gaze away from the double rows of happy Granger family snapshots, each containing a smiling Hermione, and met Martina’s eyes. "Yes?"

"I keep thinking I should know who she is," said her puzzled grandmother. "But I just can’t think of her name. Isn’t that odd?"

Severus could think of nothing to say.

**