Conspiracy Theory (1/6)
Title: Conspiracy Theory
Author: ubiquirk
Fandom: HP
Rating: PG13 (no warnings)
Genre: action-adventure, humor, drama, romance
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Set in the summer of 2006. Ignores much of the epilogue with ‘Snape lives and is exonerated by Harry’s testimony’ a given. Much thanks to my beta firefly_124 and my Brit-picker saracen77. Written for the sshg_exchange, and originally posted there, for mundungus42 to her prompt: A bureaucratic thriller and/or noir parody involving Hermione or Severus as a paper-pusher of some sort with access to shelves and shelves of confidential information. He/she discovers a dirty institutional secret and is determined to bring it to light, no matter what the cost. The institution can be anything.
Summary: Working as the Ministry’s new Keeper of Records turns out to be not quite what Hermione Granger had in mind. It’s … well, dull, dull, boring, and possibly - no, very definitely - dull. She has a mountain of information at her fingertips - a log of everything officially recorded in the Wizarding world - and most of it’s, yes, dull. Then one day, a filing cabinet sticks, and her busy brain notices the smallest clue, one that will have her and Severus Snape struggling to uncover a conspiracy that, if true, will tarnish the Wizarding world’s golden post-war view of itself forever.
Chapter 1
The eleven o’clock warning bell chimes, and Hermione jerks back to make room for the humongous piles of parchment that appear in midair to drop with a crash upon her desk, papers from the tops of the stacks fluttering to the floor.
What irony, she thinks, that the Ministry makes sure to deliver right at eleven and four when everyone takes their tea breaks. Almost as if to guilt employees into returning to work quickly, quickly, quickly.
She avoids the deluge by a precisely calculated few inches, six months as the Ministry of Magic’s Keeper of Records having honed her reflexes more than years of skirmishes with Death Eaters ever did. Amazing the amount of motivation multiple paper cuts on one’s face can bring to bear.
With a sigh, she gathers the parchments off the floor and glances through them: the Hodgekins filed a permit to add a magical extension onto their popular ‘Muggle food’ restaurant in Diagon Alley, Celus Wally reported selling five mooncalves to Maggie Pruce, Bea Dooley requested funding to develop a primer school to prepare students for Hogwarts when their parents cannot home school, Thurner Dackery lodged a complaint that his neighbor Edward Puce keeps attacking his begonias with a Wilting Spell, …
If she read all of this, she’d be what Sherlock Holmes warned Watson about: someone with a mind too full of meaningless facts to do any crucial thinking. A huff of laughter escapes her at the thought that she’s quoting a fictional character to herself as a source of wisdom, but mooncalves and magically large buildings? Her world now is far stranger than anything ‘fictional’ in Holmes’s.
Although this bit’s a mite dull.
She looks around at the filing cabinets that fade into the distance on all sides of her, growing smaller and smaller, trains of information receding, and can’t help but feel once again that anything good, anything juicy, slips from her grasp. Working as head clerk for the Wizengamot may have been a lower rank, but it was at least interesting. This promotion seems anything but. She sighs again, even more loudly.
“That is the sound of a person desperately in need of tea.” Amusement colors the deep voice.
“Severus!” She turns to find him smirking behind her, a tray of tea things hovering at his side. “Circe, yes. Give us a cuppa.”
A quick flick of his wand, and the brown betty hovers to pour two cups, spoons rising to stir milk into hers and lemon with sugar into his.
The cup floats to settle warm and solid in her hands. She breathes in, bergamot wrapping her senses, and the first sip is a bit too hot, but only just a bit, a pleasant tingle of burn across her tongue that warms throughout as it slides down to her stomach. It’s perfect.
Severus settles across from her, tea cup well in hand.
“So what brings you to the depths of the Ministry?” She waves a hand at the dark, cavernous space.
He cocks an eyebrow at her. “You do realize, do you not, that my laboratory is only one level above yours, which places it squarely quite a ways below ground.”
“Yes, but that still doesn’t explain the tea - not that I’m complaining, mind. Your blend is superb.” She takes another sip to prove her point.
“And why could this not just be a social call?”
She tries an eyebrow raise of her own in answer. He’s much less prickly with fellow Order members now that the War is over, but ‘social butterfly’ will never be high on the list of phrases that define Severus Snape. Actually, she’s fairly certain it wouldn’t make the list at all.
“Point taken.” He clears his throat. “Well then, I will admit that I was hoping I could persuade you to prioritize some records research I need for -”
“Done.”
“But I have not even outlined the importance of the project and -”
“Severus,” Hermione holds up a hand to interrupt him again, “as I told you last time, I don’t care what it is. If it’s something you’re working on, it’s going to be a good sight more interesting than any of this lot.” She points to the parchments on her desk.
“Yet you seem to have quite the task before you.” He moves a hand to push one teetering stack back into vertical alignment.
“Please.” She snorts disdainfully. “Within a month, I’d retooled all the Filing Charms used, and even created some new ones, so that now all of this takes almost no time and less than no thought.”
“It took you an entire month?” The smirk twitches his lips upwards.
“Ha bloody ha. But really, I had to stretch it out a bit to have something to do. It’s not as though I have tea with researchers with special projects every day, now is it? You’re really the only one who comes down here, and even that’s only about once a fortnight.”
“But would you not like to hear at least a little about said project?”
His face and voice are impassive, perhaps a little too impassive. She thinks yet again of how the Atrium, usually hellishly loud with everyone trying to get home at the end of the day, quiets when he walks though. If there’s one person at the Ministry people talk to even less frequently than they do her, it’s him.
“Of course I want to hear about it. Don’t I always? Especially if there’s more tea in the pot.” She grins and holds out her cup. Let the Slytherin assume her motives are more self-serving than they really are.
Although, considering how dull her week’s been, even though it’s only Wednesday, maybe they are purely selfish after all.
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Tea stretches into a working lunch with them ordering in sandwiches from the shop the Ministry has a contract with. His chicken tikka is a bit dry, and her tuna with sweet corn a bit moist, leading both to make a moue of faint distaste before barreling right back into a discussion of where best to find information on which the uses of bubotuber pus and scarab beetles have been patented.
One o’clock comes too soon, and the Records Room feels unwelcomingly quiet once the sound of his footsteps fades. It’s true no one else comes to see her - the occasional requests for records always seem to come via owl or the Ministry’s interdepartmental flying post. If Severus didn’t visit occasionally and have such interesting projects, then …
Hermione stands, pushing the piece of parchment he gave her into the top desk drawer so that it doesn’t get mixed in with the rest. Wand firmly in hand, she says, “Consurgo Pro Genus!”
The mass of parchment rises into a swirling ball of paper, and the sound of a hundred birds taking to wing fills the large space, even as the movement stirs her hair around her face.
Using a separate wand movement for each, Hermione begins a series of incantations: “Genus Pactum! Genus Venditio! Genus Animadverto! Genus Permissum! Genus Faeneror! …”
With every spell, the mass of fluttering paper grows smaller, pieces dashing off to file themselves in the appropriate drawers, which snick open and slam closed in percussive counterpoint, as she stands at the center, a musical conductor of an unusual sort.
It takes a good fifteen minutes to complete her list, and Hermione collapses into the chair, knackered from the massive outpouring of energy, yet pleased by the sheer organized beauty of it all.
She’s still trying to catch her breath when something taps at her shoulder, and she turns to see a piece of parchment hovering beside her. Pulling it out of the air, she says, “All right, what’s up with you then?”
It shivers, and she steadies it with her other hand to read.
“Hmmm. Nothing that unusual.” It’s a list of more supplies ordered for Hogwarts’s new term, which starts in a few months. Nothing peculiar about it - just the things the teaching staff forgot to put in the large order done two months ago - magical chalk, three new basic brooms for flying practice, some lacewings, which need to be fresh, etc.
“Well, since the spell to sort orders seems to have worked on everything else, I’d say something else must be going on. Let’s take a look at your cabinet, shall we?”
The parchment trembles in reply.
Grabbing her map of the Records Room, Hermione takes a quick look at it to get her initial direction and sets off. Filing cabinets are arranged by a method she’s never been able to suss out. It’s not alphabetical - that would assuredly be far too logical for the Wizarding world - and it’s not by making associations between like things either. No, orders of dragonheart string, say, are placed in cabinets next to ones containing permits for building, which are flanked on the other side by records of arrests for petty crimes.
She thought she’d hate that - and on some level, a part of her still does - but Hermione’s come to enjoy the little bits of chaos this arrangement brings to her life. Once when looking for a bill of sale for strangle weed, she’d found a fat file recording the century-long feud between the Haversniffs and the Bolts, one laced with tales of inept cursing that read like a farce and culminated in the funniest exchange of all: a plague of boils cast by Reginald Haversniff instead cleared up Clara Bolt’s spottiness for life so that she became the most beautiful debutant of the year; Clara’s retaliation, an attempt to literalize the ‘large stick he had up his bum,’ backfired and just gave him a large stick, which he developed a reputation for using well; after making each other, well, perfect for each other, they fell in love and married, ending the feud even as they ensured their magical ineptitude would be reinforced in their progeny for generations to come.
Laughing to herself, she consults the map again. It seems the Hogwarts cabinets are even farther away than she thought. She swishes her wand at her feet, changing her work-appropriate shoes into trainers, and sets off again.
Sconces flare to life as she approaches and fade into darkness once she’s passed. After walking for ten more minutes, she turns once to see the other source of light, the station around her desk, shrunk to a faint glow in the distance.
It should feel spooky, like the setting of one of those bad Muggle horror movies where you yell at the blond on the screen not to go in there, yet it’s got nothing on the Forbidden Forest or the Shrieking Shack, so she just shrugs and continues on.
Eventually, once she thinks she’s done her fitness quota for the week, she reaches the right area, the parchment in her hand fluttering violently enough to break free to tap at the front of a cabinet a few feet ahead of her.
“All right, all right.” She laughs at it. “Let’s see what the problem is, shall we?”
A few tugs prove the drawer is stuck. She puts her back into it, bracing a leg on the cabinet in front of her and pushing back with it. Nothing. Make that well and truly stuck.
After pulling the paper out of the way, she casts spell after spell, from Alohomora to insane made-up-on-the-spot bad-Latin ones, colors flying from her wand to strike sparks of yellow and red and teal. But none work.
The cabinet sits there, perfectly impervious, handles forming mouths that seem to smirk slightly.
Wiping an annoying tickle of hair back behind her ear, Hermione leans against the cabinet behind her to catch her breath.
She’s not strong enough to open it as she is, and magic directed at it doesn’t work, so …
She bolts upright as the idea strikes, turning her wand on herself and saying, “ Invalesco!”
Wisps of fatigue dissipate like fog struck suddenly by hot sun as power floods her limbs. This time when Hermione grabs the handle, the metal creaks in protest, and she can hear the crackling of wood beginning to splinter as she pulls.
Then - bang! - it gives.
She tips over backwards to land on her bum, a flurry of paper shooting from the cabinet to fall like alien-large snow around her even as the supplies order she’d been carrying arcs out of her left hand to bury itself in the drawer.
The magicked power fades, leaving her hands a little shaky as she stays on the floor, gathering parchments and sorting them into small piles around her. Everything’s fairly routine, and she’s thinking of needing to pop ‘round the shops for cat food, when the top of a sheet catches her eye.
Hogwarts Induction List for the First of September, 1991.
Her fingers tremble as they brush over the names, so many lost, so many almost forgotten, she’s ashamed to admit. Hermione sets it aside and stands to begin placing everything else back in the drawer.
She holds the parchment lightly, carefully, all the long way back to her desk, and tucks it into the top drawer without really looking at it as she draws Severus’s request out and sets to work.
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It takes two days to find all the information he needs, and as Hermione reaches into her desk drawer for a quill to add a concluding paragraph to the report on Friday, her fingers brush over the Hogwarts Induction List.
The press of work no longer giving her as much excuse to avoid it, she pulls it from the drawer and begins to read.
“That’s … odd.” She scans the first column again. Yes, Elizabeth Martin, Steven Gibson … there are people here she’s never heard of. She spells her quill to make an exact copy of the document and, once it’s done, underlines on the new sheet every person she never saw at Hogwarts. The total comes to five, which, when she thinks about it, seems quite high out of a total of forty-two. Statistically significant, Muggle scientists would say.
The date says First of September, 1980, making this the original list recorded magically upon each baby’s birth.
Hermione’s still worrying it over as she completes her report and climbs the stairs to Severus’s lab. She finds him crouched down, watching a distillation apparatus drip thick red fluid into a waiting flask while his wand constantly adjusts the level of the flames under the originating mixture, which is a seething dark green.
Smiling, she thinks Hollywood might finally get something right if they got to film a lab such as this, where highly colored material is accurate, unlike real Muggle chemistry, which her cousin always says tends to run to medium-yellows at the most.
After a few minutes, the last bit of red threads its way through the condenser coil to plop purified into the receiving flask, and he whisks it aside to stopper it immediately.
“Severus.”
He turns to her, head inclined in greeting. “Hermione.”
Holding up the report, she says, “I’ve got good news. The short of it is you should be fine to use both ingredients for a brand-new potion. Bubotuber pus has never been patented, so no worries there. Scarab beetles were patented in 1746 by Elisina Mandrake, creator of the Wit-Sharpening Potion. However, they were only patented for that particular use - no other.”
He smiles, a twitch of lips that’s smaller than his smirks, if more pleasant. “Excellent.” He steps forward to take the parchment from her, glancing over it before looking back up, eyebrow raised. “Although I must admit that interdepartmental mail could have delivered such to me fairly easily. So it is my turn to ask to what do I owe this visit.”
“Well …” She turns to the side, picking up a jar of mugwort and setting it back down, suddenly feeling a bit silly, even though the issue niggles at her still. “I found something - quite by accident, as it turns out - and wanted to ask. Are there usually discrepancies between the list of students who are to attend Hogwarts and those that do?”
“Discrepancies?”
“You know - more names on the list than actual students.”
“You must remember that the one year I was Headmaster was not the most … typical of years, shall we say.” His tone sounds even more sardonic than usual. “Is that the year you’re referring to?”
“No, I mean a more … a more regular year.”
“Well, then, I’m not quite sure. It occasionally happens that some families, even if still living in England, choose to send their children to one of the European schools or have a parent knowledgeable enough to provide home schooling.”
She smiles up at him. “I’m sure that’s it. Thank you.”
“No, thank you, Hermione.” He gestures with the report. “This is just what I needed to take the next step in my studies. After all, there is no point in pursuing a long course of work if nothing can come of it in the end.”
“Too right.”
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Yet her unease doesn’t fade, and it’s exactly just such a possibly fruitless endeavor that she undertakes when she summons the file of Hogwarts Induction Lists for the past twenty years and copies them to take home with her for the weekend.
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It turns out that each class year has two lists - the ones made as the babies are born and the ones actually used by Hogwarts, which were compiled a year before each set of students was set to start.
Severus is right - the last year of the War did have the highest number of discrepancies of any, but she assumes a quick check of the Beauxbatons registry will clear up much of it.
It’s all the other years she’s worried about because certain numbers that can’t be so easily explained away hold true - for every incoming class, around four to six names on the list created at the end of the birth year don’t show up on the list of students actually inducted.
Hermione sits back in her chair and pushes the pile of sheets away from her to pull in a fresh piece of parchment.
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Minerva’s response owl comes quickly. Tea on Sunday it is.
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Small talk predominates as Minerva pours tea, and Hermione settles a selection of biscuits onto her plate.
Gossip on Order members predominates - how Teddy’s getting along, Harry and Ginny expecting their second, things of that sort.
Then, after finishing a funny tale of learning that a certain fifth year had discovered a way to determine her password every time she reset the gargoyle, Minerva cuts straight to the point. “As much as I enjoy seeing you again, Hermione, I can’t help but wonder what brought about such a precipitous visit.”
“I apologize, Minerva. I’ve begun working on something I’d like to ask you about - a little research project I’m doing on the side.”
The other woman smiles. “And it’s completely consumed you, I can tell. You have that glow to your eyes you’d get whenever I set a particularly challenging essay.”
“Well, it’s nothing official, you know.” Smiling back, Hermione taps the side of her nose, an Order signal that she still wonders if Dumbledore got from watching a few too many episodes of The Avengers at some point.
Minerva taps hers as well before raising her wand and casting a series of cloaking spells. “Always willing to be of assistance, my dear.”
“I’m wondering how the system works for you knowing which students are going to come to Hogwarts. I know there’s something about a list of names gathered at birth, but do you get that list then?”
“Oh, no. The Ministry keeps all of that until a few months before we send the letters out. Makes it easier, see. The Ministry doesn’t have to send the list twice, and we can’t get the old list mixed up with the new one. It solves the problem of us accidentally sending a letter to a family that had lost a child during those ten years.”
“And if a student goes to another school, are they still on both lists?”
“Yes. We send the letters out to every child in Britain who qualifies. Whether they then come to Hogwarts or not is decided by them.”
“Right. Makes perfect sense.” It also conveniently keeps anyone at Hogwarts from noticing the discrepancies, which she now knows can’t be due to students choosing other schools as she’d originally thought. Hermione takes one last sip of tea as she mulls this over. “And who is it that sends you this updated list?”
“The Head of the Department of Magical Education or at least their office. Old Humbert never really fooled with it when he was in place - always seemed to delegate it to an underling.” Minerva’s brow hunches in thought. “In fact, if I recall correctly, I’ve seen the same name on the document for years now, no matter what her position at the Ministry. Let me check.”
Rising to rummage through her desk, Minerva pulls out a stack of parchments and flips through them. “Yes. Yes. And again, yes. All the same person.”
“Really? Who?”
Minerva’s mouth tightens as if she’s bitten into something sour, and her eyes narrow. “Why, Umbridge of course. It seems she’s maintained a position in the Department of Education as the Junior Undersecretary of Educational Admissions.”
Hermione feels her own expression harden. “How interesting.”
“Indeed.” After holding her gaze for a few moments, Minerva slides the sheets closer to Hermione, nodding towards them. “I’m afraid that, as lovely as this has been, I have to make sure a few things are in order before dinner tonight. The Hufflepuffs were using the Great Hall for a Gobstones challenge, and the elves always get a bit flustered when things are moved about.”
“Thank you again.” Hermione stands to look around the Head Professor’s office, at once familiar and new with touches of Minerva showing. “I find myself missing Hogwarts. I think I might need to visit much more often.” She taps her nose.
“It will always be a pleasure to see you, Hermione. Do come back for tea again soon.” The glint in the other woman’s eye reminds Hermione of how strong of an Order leader she’s proved since Dumbledore’s death.
Left alone, Hermione hurries over to make exact copies of the parchments, and even without her versions to compare them to, she can see one distinct difference. The lists filed at the Ministry were unsigned. The Hogwarts ones have not only Umbridge’s name, but also a rather gaudy seal of office - an office Hermione didn’t even know existed let alone that it was held quietly by Umbridge.
She thinks of Minerva’s determined stare, an echo of her expression from when she stood up to Umbridge in Trelawney’s defense. It feels good to have such steel at her back.
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Monday finds Hermione scowling at the lists spread across her desk, trying to sort out what that little niggle in the back of her brain means. Her concentration breaks when a tea cup levitates into view.
“Severus!”
“Hermione.” He tips his head towards the cup and takes a seat.
She gulps the warm liquid, suddenly recognizing her body’s signals for thirst and hunger. “Circe, that’s good. Thanks. What time is it?”
“It is going on two.”
“Oh.” She’s missed lunch. Her stomach grumbles at the thought.
A plate of biscuits, hearty chocolate-coated digestives in fact, settles in front of her. Her mother always warned of talking with her mouth full, so she’s silent for the next few minutes as one, two biscuits disappear in one prolonged crunch.
Severus cocks an eyebrow. “Perhaps you spent too many of the impressionable years of your youth with a certain Mr. Weasley?”
Swallowing, she says, “Or I skipped elevenses and lunch.”
“Or that.” He nods consent.
“So what brings you down so soon? Another project?”
“Not exactly. Or at least, not a project of my own.” He takes a sip of tea. “I received an interesting owl from Minvera, who seemed of the mind that you might like the aid of another member of our organization.”
“And you’re …”
“And I am quite literally the closest in physical proximity, as well as the fact that my actions are much less scrutinized than, shall we say, Potter’s.”
She picks up another biscuit and nibbles at it slowly, mind whirling. If her idea turns out to be nothing, she could lose his respect. On the other hand, if she’s on to something, someone as intelligent as Severus would be quite a boon to the project. Her brain makes another leap, and she suddenly says, “You’re also quite a dab hand at spying.”
Smirking, he pulls a miniature Sneakoscope from his pocket to show it sitting quietly in his palm. “There is that as well, yes.”
“All right. You can start by seeing if you see anything odd about these lists.” Hermione hands over the stack.
He hmms a reply because his attention’s already on the papers.
Pulling open a desk drawer, Hermione retrieves her emergency apple and removes the Preservation Spell by muttering a quick Finite Incantatum! over it before taking a large bite. In her head, her father gives his infamous mini-lecture on the wonders of eating apples after sweets, and she shushes him to pay better attention to Snape.
Pages flutter and dance in his hands, and his brow cycles through various levels of … of furrowment. She wonders for a second if that’s even a word, but watching Severus for any period of time makes her realize it should be.
She’s finished her apple and a second cup of tea by the time he looks up. “I can see what has you concerned. The number of discrepancies each year appears significantly high for such a small total number of students.”
“Exactly!”
“But I must admit that I cannot yet see anything else unusual about the names.”
“Right. I mean, they’re all bog standard. Smith’s and Willis’s and what have you. Nothing strange there.”
Severus stares at the parchments again, shuffling them slowly and shaking his head slightly.
“Nothing strange,” Hermione says. “Nothing strange. Wait! That’s strange!”
“Nothing strange is strange?”
“Yes! Wizarding names tend to be a bit odd, or at least a good half of them are.” She grabs hold to pull the parchments closer so that they bend over the sheets, heads together. “See here.” She points. “None of the names that are missing from the Hogwarts lists sound strange to me at all.”
When he looks up, they almost bump noses, and Hermione suddenly and sharply realizes how close they are … and that he smells nice, somewhat herby over musk.
Flushing slightly, she shifts in her chair and tells herself to focus.
“So if they are not wizards …” Severus’s voice trails off.
“They’re Muggles.” Her heart stutters to a halt, then races double-speed. “Something’s been happening to Muggle-born.”
Muggle-born like me, she thinks.
Latin to English: Consurgo Pro Genus - rise up for sorting; Genus Pactum - sort contracts; Genus Venditio - sort sales receipts; Genus Animadverto - sort notices; Genus Permissum - sort permits; Genus Faeneror - sort loans; Invalesco - make stronger.
Chapter 2
Author: ubiquirk
Fandom: HP
Rating: PG13 (no warnings)
Genre: action-adventure, humor, drama, romance
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Set in the summer of 2006. Ignores much of the epilogue with ‘Snape lives and is exonerated by Harry’s testimony’ a given. Much thanks to my beta firefly_124 and my Brit-picker saracen77. Written for the sshg_exchange, and originally posted there, for mundungus42 to her prompt: A bureaucratic thriller and/or noir parody involving Hermione or Severus as a paper-pusher of some sort with access to shelves and shelves of confidential information. He/she discovers a dirty institutional secret and is determined to bring it to light, no matter what the cost. The institution can be anything.
Summary: Working as the Ministry’s new Keeper of Records turns out to be not quite what Hermione Granger had in mind. It’s … well, dull, dull, boring, and possibly - no, very definitely - dull. She has a mountain of information at her fingertips - a log of everything officially recorded in the Wizarding world - and most of it’s, yes, dull. Then one day, a filing cabinet sticks, and her busy brain notices the smallest clue, one that will have her and Severus Snape struggling to uncover a conspiracy that, if true, will tarnish the Wizarding world’s golden post-war view of itself forever.
Chapter 1
The eleven o’clock warning bell chimes, and Hermione jerks back to make room for the humongous piles of parchment that appear in midair to drop with a crash upon her desk, papers from the tops of the stacks fluttering to the floor.
What irony, she thinks, that the Ministry makes sure to deliver right at eleven and four when everyone takes their tea breaks. Almost as if to guilt employees into returning to work quickly, quickly, quickly.
She avoids the deluge by a precisely calculated few inches, six months as the Ministry of Magic’s Keeper of Records having honed her reflexes more than years of skirmishes with Death Eaters ever did. Amazing the amount of motivation multiple paper cuts on one’s face can bring to bear.
With a sigh, she gathers the parchments off the floor and glances through them: the Hodgekins filed a permit to add a magical extension onto their popular ‘Muggle food’ restaurant in Diagon Alley, Celus Wally reported selling five mooncalves to Maggie Pruce, Bea Dooley requested funding to develop a primer school to prepare students for Hogwarts when their parents cannot home school, Thurner Dackery lodged a complaint that his neighbor Edward Puce keeps attacking his begonias with a Wilting Spell, …
If she read all of this, she’d be what Sherlock Holmes warned Watson about: someone with a mind too full of meaningless facts to do any crucial thinking. A huff of laughter escapes her at the thought that she’s quoting a fictional character to herself as a source of wisdom, but mooncalves and magically large buildings? Her world now is far stranger than anything ‘fictional’ in Holmes’s.
Although this bit’s a mite dull.
She looks around at the filing cabinets that fade into the distance on all sides of her, growing smaller and smaller, trains of information receding, and can’t help but feel once again that anything good, anything juicy, slips from her grasp. Working as head clerk for the Wizengamot may have been a lower rank, but it was at least interesting. This promotion seems anything but. She sighs again, even more loudly.
“That is the sound of a person desperately in need of tea.” Amusement colors the deep voice.
“Severus!” She turns to find him smirking behind her, a tray of tea things hovering at his side. “Circe, yes. Give us a cuppa.”
A quick flick of his wand, and the brown betty hovers to pour two cups, spoons rising to stir milk into hers and lemon with sugar into his.
The cup floats to settle warm and solid in her hands. She breathes in, bergamot wrapping her senses, and the first sip is a bit too hot, but only just a bit, a pleasant tingle of burn across her tongue that warms throughout as it slides down to her stomach. It’s perfect.
Severus settles across from her, tea cup well in hand.
“So what brings you to the depths of the Ministry?” She waves a hand at the dark, cavernous space.
He cocks an eyebrow at her. “You do realize, do you not, that my laboratory is only one level above yours, which places it squarely quite a ways below ground.”
“Yes, but that still doesn’t explain the tea - not that I’m complaining, mind. Your blend is superb.” She takes another sip to prove her point.
“And why could this not just be a social call?”
She tries an eyebrow raise of her own in answer. He’s much less prickly with fellow Order members now that the War is over, but ‘social butterfly’ will never be high on the list of phrases that define Severus Snape. Actually, she’s fairly certain it wouldn’t make the list at all.
“Point taken.” He clears his throat. “Well then, I will admit that I was hoping I could persuade you to prioritize some records research I need for -”
“Done.”
“But I have not even outlined the importance of the project and -”
“Severus,” Hermione holds up a hand to interrupt him again, “as I told you last time, I don’t care what it is. If it’s something you’re working on, it’s going to be a good sight more interesting than any of this lot.” She points to the parchments on her desk.
“Yet you seem to have quite the task before you.” He moves a hand to push one teetering stack back into vertical alignment.
“Please.” She snorts disdainfully. “Within a month, I’d retooled all the Filing Charms used, and even created some new ones, so that now all of this takes almost no time and less than no thought.”
“It took you an entire month?” The smirk twitches his lips upwards.
“Ha bloody ha. But really, I had to stretch it out a bit to have something to do. It’s not as though I have tea with researchers with special projects every day, now is it? You’re really the only one who comes down here, and even that’s only about once a fortnight.”
“But would you not like to hear at least a little about said project?”
His face and voice are impassive, perhaps a little too impassive. She thinks yet again of how the Atrium, usually hellishly loud with everyone trying to get home at the end of the day, quiets when he walks though. If there’s one person at the Ministry people talk to even less frequently than they do her, it’s him.
“Of course I want to hear about it. Don’t I always? Especially if there’s more tea in the pot.” She grins and holds out her cup. Let the Slytherin assume her motives are more self-serving than they really are.
Although, considering how dull her week’s been, even though it’s only Wednesday, maybe they are purely selfish after all.
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Tea stretches into a working lunch with them ordering in sandwiches from the shop the Ministry has a contract with. His chicken tikka is a bit dry, and her tuna with sweet corn a bit moist, leading both to make a moue of faint distaste before barreling right back into a discussion of where best to find information on which the uses of bubotuber pus and scarab beetles have been patented.
One o’clock comes too soon, and the Records Room feels unwelcomingly quiet once the sound of his footsteps fades. It’s true no one else comes to see her - the occasional requests for records always seem to come via owl or the Ministry’s interdepartmental flying post. If Severus didn’t visit occasionally and have such interesting projects, then …
Hermione stands, pushing the piece of parchment he gave her into the top desk drawer so that it doesn’t get mixed in with the rest. Wand firmly in hand, she says, “Consurgo Pro Genus!”
The mass of parchment rises into a swirling ball of paper, and the sound of a hundred birds taking to wing fills the large space, even as the movement stirs her hair around her face.
Using a separate wand movement for each, Hermione begins a series of incantations: “Genus Pactum! Genus Venditio! Genus Animadverto! Genus Permissum! Genus Faeneror! …”
With every spell, the mass of fluttering paper grows smaller, pieces dashing off to file themselves in the appropriate drawers, which snick open and slam closed in percussive counterpoint, as she stands at the center, a musical conductor of an unusual sort.
It takes a good fifteen minutes to complete her list, and Hermione collapses into the chair, knackered from the massive outpouring of energy, yet pleased by the sheer organized beauty of it all.
She’s still trying to catch her breath when something taps at her shoulder, and she turns to see a piece of parchment hovering beside her. Pulling it out of the air, she says, “All right, what’s up with you then?”
It shivers, and she steadies it with her other hand to read.
“Hmmm. Nothing that unusual.” It’s a list of more supplies ordered for Hogwarts’s new term, which starts in a few months. Nothing peculiar about it - just the things the teaching staff forgot to put in the large order done two months ago - magical chalk, three new basic brooms for flying practice, some lacewings, which need to be fresh, etc.
“Well, since the spell to sort orders seems to have worked on everything else, I’d say something else must be going on. Let’s take a look at your cabinet, shall we?”
The parchment trembles in reply.
Grabbing her map of the Records Room, Hermione takes a quick look at it to get her initial direction and sets off. Filing cabinets are arranged by a method she’s never been able to suss out. It’s not alphabetical - that would assuredly be far too logical for the Wizarding world - and it’s not by making associations between like things either. No, orders of dragonheart string, say, are placed in cabinets next to ones containing permits for building, which are flanked on the other side by records of arrests for petty crimes.
She thought she’d hate that - and on some level, a part of her still does - but Hermione’s come to enjoy the little bits of chaos this arrangement brings to her life. Once when looking for a bill of sale for strangle weed, she’d found a fat file recording the century-long feud between the Haversniffs and the Bolts, one laced with tales of inept cursing that read like a farce and culminated in the funniest exchange of all: a plague of boils cast by Reginald Haversniff instead cleared up Clara Bolt’s spottiness for life so that she became the most beautiful debutant of the year; Clara’s retaliation, an attempt to literalize the ‘large stick he had up his bum,’ backfired and just gave him a large stick, which he developed a reputation for using well; after making each other, well, perfect for each other, they fell in love and married, ending the feud even as they ensured their magical ineptitude would be reinforced in their progeny for generations to come.
Laughing to herself, she consults the map again. It seems the Hogwarts cabinets are even farther away than she thought. She swishes her wand at her feet, changing her work-appropriate shoes into trainers, and sets off again.
Sconces flare to life as she approaches and fade into darkness once she’s passed. After walking for ten more minutes, she turns once to see the other source of light, the station around her desk, shrunk to a faint glow in the distance.
It should feel spooky, like the setting of one of those bad Muggle horror movies where you yell at the blond on the screen not to go in there, yet it’s got nothing on the Forbidden Forest or the Shrieking Shack, so she just shrugs and continues on.
Eventually, once she thinks she’s done her fitness quota for the week, she reaches the right area, the parchment in her hand fluttering violently enough to break free to tap at the front of a cabinet a few feet ahead of her.
“All right, all right.” She laughs at it. “Let’s see what the problem is, shall we?”
A few tugs prove the drawer is stuck. She puts her back into it, bracing a leg on the cabinet in front of her and pushing back with it. Nothing. Make that well and truly stuck.
After pulling the paper out of the way, she casts spell after spell, from Alohomora to insane made-up-on-the-spot bad-Latin ones, colors flying from her wand to strike sparks of yellow and red and teal. But none work.
The cabinet sits there, perfectly impervious, handles forming mouths that seem to smirk slightly.
Wiping an annoying tickle of hair back behind her ear, Hermione leans against the cabinet behind her to catch her breath.
She’s not strong enough to open it as she is, and magic directed at it doesn’t work, so …
She bolts upright as the idea strikes, turning her wand on herself and saying, “ Invalesco!”
Wisps of fatigue dissipate like fog struck suddenly by hot sun as power floods her limbs. This time when Hermione grabs the handle, the metal creaks in protest, and she can hear the crackling of wood beginning to splinter as she pulls.
Then - bang! - it gives.
She tips over backwards to land on her bum, a flurry of paper shooting from the cabinet to fall like alien-large snow around her even as the supplies order she’d been carrying arcs out of her left hand to bury itself in the drawer.
The magicked power fades, leaving her hands a little shaky as she stays on the floor, gathering parchments and sorting them into small piles around her. Everything’s fairly routine, and she’s thinking of needing to pop ‘round the shops for cat food, when the top of a sheet catches her eye.
Hogwarts Induction List for the First of September, 1991.
Her fingers tremble as they brush over the names, so many lost, so many almost forgotten, she’s ashamed to admit. Hermione sets it aside and stands to begin placing everything else back in the drawer.
She holds the parchment lightly, carefully, all the long way back to her desk, and tucks it into the top drawer without really looking at it as she draws Severus’s request out and sets to work.
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It takes two days to find all the information he needs, and as Hermione reaches into her desk drawer for a quill to add a concluding paragraph to the report on Friday, her fingers brush over the Hogwarts Induction List.
The press of work no longer giving her as much excuse to avoid it, she pulls it from the drawer and begins to read.
“That’s … odd.” She scans the first column again. Yes, Elizabeth Martin, Steven Gibson … there are people here she’s never heard of. She spells her quill to make an exact copy of the document and, once it’s done, underlines on the new sheet every person she never saw at Hogwarts. The total comes to five, which, when she thinks about it, seems quite high out of a total of forty-two. Statistically significant, Muggle scientists would say.
The date says First of September, 1980, making this the original list recorded magically upon each baby’s birth.
Hermione’s still worrying it over as she completes her report and climbs the stairs to Severus’s lab. She finds him crouched down, watching a distillation apparatus drip thick red fluid into a waiting flask while his wand constantly adjusts the level of the flames under the originating mixture, which is a seething dark green.
Smiling, she thinks Hollywood might finally get something right if they got to film a lab such as this, where highly colored material is accurate, unlike real Muggle chemistry, which her cousin always says tends to run to medium-yellows at the most.
After a few minutes, the last bit of red threads its way through the condenser coil to plop purified into the receiving flask, and he whisks it aside to stopper it immediately.
“Severus.”
He turns to her, head inclined in greeting. “Hermione.”
Holding up the report, she says, “I’ve got good news. The short of it is you should be fine to use both ingredients for a brand-new potion. Bubotuber pus has never been patented, so no worries there. Scarab beetles were patented in 1746 by Elisina Mandrake, creator of the Wit-Sharpening Potion. However, they were only patented for that particular use - no other.”
He smiles, a twitch of lips that’s smaller than his smirks, if more pleasant. “Excellent.” He steps forward to take the parchment from her, glancing over it before looking back up, eyebrow raised. “Although I must admit that interdepartmental mail could have delivered such to me fairly easily. So it is my turn to ask to what do I owe this visit.”
“Well …” She turns to the side, picking up a jar of mugwort and setting it back down, suddenly feeling a bit silly, even though the issue niggles at her still. “I found something - quite by accident, as it turns out - and wanted to ask. Are there usually discrepancies between the list of students who are to attend Hogwarts and those that do?”
“Discrepancies?”
“You know - more names on the list than actual students.”
“You must remember that the one year I was Headmaster was not the most … typical of years, shall we say.” His tone sounds even more sardonic than usual. “Is that the year you’re referring to?”
“No, I mean a more … a more regular year.”
“Well, then, I’m not quite sure. It occasionally happens that some families, even if still living in England, choose to send their children to one of the European schools or have a parent knowledgeable enough to provide home schooling.”
She smiles up at him. “I’m sure that’s it. Thank you.”
“No, thank you, Hermione.” He gestures with the report. “This is just what I needed to take the next step in my studies. After all, there is no point in pursuing a long course of work if nothing can come of it in the end.”
“Too right.”
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Yet her unease doesn’t fade, and it’s exactly just such a possibly fruitless endeavor that she undertakes when she summons the file of Hogwarts Induction Lists for the past twenty years and copies them to take home with her for the weekend.
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It turns out that each class year has two lists - the ones made as the babies are born and the ones actually used by Hogwarts, which were compiled a year before each set of students was set to start.
Severus is right - the last year of the War did have the highest number of discrepancies of any, but she assumes a quick check of the Beauxbatons registry will clear up much of it.
It’s all the other years she’s worried about because certain numbers that can’t be so easily explained away hold true - for every incoming class, around four to six names on the list created at the end of the birth year don’t show up on the list of students actually inducted.
Hermione sits back in her chair and pushes the pile of sheets away from her to pull in a fresh piece of parchment.
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Minerva’s response owl comes quickly. Tea on Sunday it is.
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Small talk predominates as Minerva pours tea, and Hermione settles a selection of biscuits onto her plate.
Gossip on Order members predominates - how Teddy’s getting along, Harry and Ginny expecting their second, things of that sort.
Then, after finishing a funny tale of learning that a certain fifth year had discovered a way to determine her password every time she reset the gargoyle, Minerva cuts straight to the point. “As much as I enjoy seeing you again, Hermione, I can’t help but wonder what brought about such a precipitous visit.”
“I apologize, Minerva. I’ve begun working on something I’d like to ask you about - a little research project I’m doing on the side.”
The other woman smiles. “And it’s completely consumed you, I can tell. You have that glow to your eyes you’d get whenever I set a particularly challenging essay.”
“Well, it’s nothing official, you know.” Smiling back, Hermione taps the side of her nose, an Order signal that she still wonders if Dumbledore got from watching a few too many episodes of The Avengers at some point.
Minerva taps hers as well before raising her wand and casting a series of cloaking spells. “Always willing to be of assistance, my dear.”
“I’m wondering how the system works for you knowing which students are going to come to Hogwarts. I know there’s something about a list of names gathered at birth, but do you get that list then?”
“Oh, no. The Ministry keeps all of that until a few months before we send the letters out. Makes it easier, see. The Ministry doesn’t have to send the list twice, and we can’t get the old list mixed up with the new one. It solves the problem of us accidentally sending a letter to a family that had lost a child during those ten years.”
“And if a student goes to another school, are they still on both lists?”
“Yes. We send the letters out to every child in Britain who qualifies. Whether they then come to Hogwarts or not is decided by them.”
“Right. Makes perfect sense.” It also conveniently keeps anyone at Hogwarts from noticing the discrepancies, which she now knows can’t be due to students choosing other schools as she’d originally thought. Hermione takes one last sip of tea as she mulls this over. “And who is it that sends you this updated list?”
“The Head of the Department of Magical Education or at least their office. Old Humbert never really fooled with it when he was in place - always seemed to delegate it to an underling.” Minerva’s brow hunches in thought. “In fact, if I recall correctly, I’ve seen the same name on the document for years now, no matter what her position at the Ministry. Let me check.”
Rising to rummage through her desk, Minerva pulls out a stack of parchments and flips through them. “Yes. Yes. And again, yes. All the same person.”
“Really? Who?”
Minerva’s mouth tightens as if she’s bitten into something sour, and her eyes narrow. “Why, Umbridge of course. It seems she’s maintained a position in the Department of Education as the Junior Undersecretary of Educational Admissions.”
Hermione feels her own expression harden. “How interesting.”
“Indeed.” After holding her gaze for a few moments, Minerva slides the sheets closer to Hermione, nodding towards them. “I’m afraid that, as lovely as this has been, I have to make sure a few things are in order before dinner tonight. The Hufflepuffs were using the Great Hall for a Gobstones challenge, and the elves always get a bit flustered when things are moved about.”
“Thank you again.” Hermione stands to look around the Head Professor’s office, at once familiar and new with touches of Minerva showing. “I find myself missing Hogwarts. I think I might need to visit much more often.” She taps her nose.
“It will always be a pleasure to see you, Hermione. Do come back for tea again soon.” The glint in the other woman’s eye reminds Hermione of how strong of an Order leader she’s proved since Dumbledore’s death.
Left alone, Hermione hurries over to make exact copies of the parchments, and even without her versions to compare them to, she can see one distinct difference. The lists filed at the Ministry were unsigned. The Hogwarts ones have not only Umbridge’s name, but also a rather gaudy seal of office - an office Hermione didn’t even know existed let alone that it was held quietly by Umbridge.
She thinks of Minerva’s determined stare, an echo of her expression from when she stood up to Umbridge in Trelawney’s defense. It feels good to have such steel at her back.
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Monday finds Hermione scowling at the lists spread across her desk, trying to sort out what that little niggle in the back of her brain means. Her concentration breaks when a tea cup levitates into view.
“Severus!”
“Hermione.” He tips his head towards the cup and takes a seat.
She gulps the warm liquid, suddenly recognizing her body’s signals for thirst and hunger. “Circe, that’s good. Thanks. What time is it?”
“It is going on two.”
“Oh.” She’s missed lunch. Her stomach grumbles at the thought.
A plate of biscuits, hearty chocolate-coated digestives in fact, settles in front of her. Her mother always warned of talking with her mouth full, so she’s silent for the next few minutes as one, two biscuits disappear in one prolonged crunch.
Severus cocks an eyebrow. “Perhaps you spent too many of the impressionable years of your youth with a certain Mr. Weasley?”
Swallowing, she says, “Or I skipped elevenses and lunch.”
“Or that.” He nods consent.
“So what brings you down so soon? Another project?”
“Not exactly. Or at least, not a project of my own.” He takes a sip of tea. “I received an interesting owl from Minvera, who seemed of the mind that you might like the aid of another member of our organization.”
“And you’re …”
“And I am quite literally the closest in physical proximity, as well as the fact that my actions are much less scrutinized than, shall we say, Potter’s.”
She picks up another biscuit and nibbles at it slowly, mind whirling. If her idea turns out to be nothing, she could lose his respect. On the other hand, if she’s on to something, someone as intelligent as Severus would be quite a boon to the project. Her brain makes another leap, and she suddenly says, “You’re also quite a dab hand at spying.”
Smirking, he pulls a miniature Sneakoscope from his pocket to show it sitting quietly in his palm. “There is that as well, yes.”
“All right. You can start by seeing if you see anything odd about these lists.” Hermione hands over the stack.
He hmms a reply because his attention’s already on the papers.
Pulling open a desk drawer, Hermione retrieves her emergency apple and removes the Preservation Spell by muttering a quick Finite Incantatum! over it before taking a large bite. In her head, her father gives his infamous mini-lecture on the wonders of eating apples after sweets, and she shushes him to pay better attention to Snape.
Pages flutter and dance in his hands, and his brow cycles through various levels of … of furrowment. She wonders for a second if that’s even a word, but watching Severus for any period of time makes her realize it should be.
She’s finished her apple and a second cup of tea by the time he looks up. “I can see what has you concerned. The number of discrepancies each year appears significantly high for such a small total number of students.”
“Exactly!”
“But I must admit that I cannot yet see anything else unusual about the names.”
“Right. I mean, they’re all bog standard. Smith’s and Willis’s and what have you. Nothing strange there.”
Severus stares at the parchments again, shuffling them slowly and shaking his head slightly.
“Nothing strange,” Hermione says. “Nothing strange. Wait! That’s strange!”
“Nothing strange is strange?”
“Yes! Wizarding names tend to be a bit odd, or at least a good half of them are.” She grabs hold to pull the parchments closer so that they bend over the sheets, heads together. “See here.” She points. “None of the names that are missing from the Hogwarts lists sound strange to me at all.”
When he looks up, they almost bump noses, and Hermione suddenly and sharply realizes how close they are … and that he smells nice, somewhat herby over musk.
Flushing slightly, she shifts in her chair and tells herself to focus.
“So if they are not wizards …” Severus’s voice trails off.
“They’re Muggles.” Her heart stutters to a halt, then races double-speed. “Something’s been happening to Muggle-born.”
Muggle-born like me, she thinks.
Latin to English: Consurgo Pro Genus - rise up for sorting; Genus Pactum - sort contracts; Genus Venditio - sort sales receipts; Genus Animadverto - sort notices; Genus Permissum - sort permits; Genus Faeneror - sort loans; Invalesco - make stronger.
Chapter 2