Of Days and Ends

Chapter 6—Merlin’s Prejudices



As the box popped open, the image of a small pale woman with deep black eyes and equally black hair and a rather long nose, blinked out at them from inside the box.



Hermione recognized the woman immediately and gasped, “Eileen Prince!”



“Oh! Now that’s surprising! Did I become famous then?”



“Uh… N-no, but I saw you in an old Hogwarts yearbook three months ago.” She paused then and had a crazy urge to turn to Snape, but knew better than to invade on his surprise.



Eileen laughed then and Snape was surprised by the sound of the cheerful tinkling laugh. She had never laughed much as he was growing up. “Ah, yes! President of the Gobstones Club! Yes, well, as wonderful as these memories are, we must get on with business. Are you my daughter?”



“No.”



“Do I have a child?”



Snape seemed to snap out of his reverie at the mention of himself, “Yes.”



The woman turned her deep eyes to lock with his and her face lost its carefree demeanour, and fell with emotion, “You? Have I a girl?”



Hermione curiously looked at Snape, who snapped out a brief, “No, just me.”



“My son! What did I name you?” It was obvious that Snape wanted to shut the box or give her a piece of his mind, but refrained.



“Severus.”



“Ah! What a brooding name! How are you Severus?”



“Well.”



“Good,” she seemed oblivious to Snape’s anger, “I am here in this box as keeper of The Book of Days and Ends. Merlin himself deemed our family capable of carrying his legacy beyond his death. We may use it, but we must realize that it is pure magic. It cannot be used for good or evil; it’s much too powerful for that.” She paused for a moment and brushed her long locks over one shoulder before sweetly asking, “Do you have a daughter?”



“No.”



“Ah… do your sons have any daughters?”



“I have no children.”



“Ah… do you trust your wife?”



“I’m not married.”



She looked shocked and turned to Hermione who looked away shyly. “Severus, I have been forbidden from giving the book to a man. Only my female heir can take the book and if you cannot marry someone trustworthy or produce a female child, the book will cease to exist.”



Severus remained totally silent, his brows furrowed in thought, so Hermione asked, “Is there no other way? Can he not name an heir?”



“No, he can’t, and the only things he can actually use are some of Merlin’s drafts.”



“Right! We’ll take those then.” Snape said.



“But they aren’t very neat and they are littered with notes and they are just drafts that were later put into the book, so—”



Snape interrupted, “We’ll take them.”



His mother looked taken aback, stepped backward in her frame, and pulled out her wand. “I’ll be right back.” She said softly before disappearing down the long hallway painted behind her in her frame. As she returned, she appeared to be levitating a bundle ahead of her, and as she drew closer, they realized that she was levitating the bundle of parchments right through from the portrait, into the material world.



Snape reached for the bundle, taking into his hands the large collection of inventive spells created by Merlin himself. He gently laid the ancient texts on the table and picked up the top most one, opening it to reveal a blank parchment. Hermione, who leaned against him, both to remain standing upright and to get a better look, gasped.



Snape turned his glare from the parchment to Hermione and back again, before growling, “What’s wrong with you?”



Hermione cowered from his anger and stammered, “I—I don’t understand. What’s wrong with the spell?”



Snape understood immediately and turned sharply to his mother, “Why can’t I see it?”



“Merlin was very partial to women, though some of his drafts actually restrict against women viewing them. After all, I’ve never been able to read some of them.”



As Snape turned back around and looked at Hermione, she saved him from having to ask when she quietly said, “I’ll read for you.”



He nodded gratefully, and shut the box over his mother without a word. “I appreciate the gesture Miss Granger, but I think you should be getting back soon.”



She looked out of the window with thought before answering, “Actually, I think I’ll be okay for as long as you want me to stay. The boys are going to a quidditch match and I told them I might spend the night at my aunt’s flat.”



“Okay, then we can get started.”



He lifted the stack into his arms and carried them to the chair, transfiguring it into a love seat. Hermione sat down primly after Snape and began to read the documents, lifting one at a time and reading while he took notes until one shocked her fingertips so severely that she screamed and leapt away from the stack into Snape’s lap. He grasped her waist to steady her and snatched up the last scroll they had rolled and used it to prod at the most recent papers. When he was thoroughly convinced that there were no biting insects, he lifted the paper with the tips of his fingers before unrolling it gently.



“What was that?” He asked Hermione.



“It shocked me.” She had set herself on the armrest and leaned away from the scroll.



He sighed and smoothed the paper out, and they both stared at the contents. Hermione’s eyes widened steadily as she read the ingredients, then her eyebrows furrowed as she scanned the ingredients again. “It could be almost anything!”



Snape distractedly said, “Uhm-hmm.”



“I mean, the title could mean anything. Is it a soul-splitting potion in the sense that you can split one’s soul in two or split two bound souls?”



“What are you talking about? He explains it perfectly.”



“This recipe. There’s no description.”



“You see a recipe?”



“Ah! So you see the description, and I can’t touch it!”



“And I can’t make the potion without your assistance.” Snape concluded with a sigh.



“And vice versa.” She finished with excitement, “This must be a very important potion. It’s a wonder it’s a part of the drafts.”



“Yes…” Snape was apparently half listening again, “Surely you see how this could help our cause.”



Hermione cocked her head and waited patiently for Snape to continue.



“Miss Granger, what do you know about Horcruxes?”



A cold shiver ran down her back at the mention of the horcruxes from Snape and she suspiciously asked, “What should I know about Horcruxes?”



He narrowed his eyes at her and continued, “You obviously know what a horcrux is, so I’ll help you understand where I’m going with this. We already know where Voldemort’s 7 soul fragments are, but we have yet to—What’s your problem?”



“You know where they are?” Hermione wondered, her eyes wide.



“Partially. I know that Albus destroyed the Slytherin ring last year. Harry destroyed the diary four years ago, and that sword was likely purged of the soul by the basilisk’s venom. The fourth was recently revealed to me by the Dark Lord himself, and I am guarding it to this day.” At Hermione’s sign of protest, he continued quickly, “I cannot give it up Miss Granger, because if the Dark Lord ever asks to see it, and I don’t have it, or his soul is not intact within, he will kill me. And though everyone else may celebrate, what use will I have been to the cause dead?”



Hermione sighed resolutely and asked, “So what about the other three?”



“Something of Ravenclaw’s and that vile pet of his will be the hardest two to grab.” Hermione knew what was coming, because she had already considered it before, but it still didn’t keep her from gasping in shock when she asked Snape about the seventh horcrux and he said, “Harry.”



She stood up and moved away from him, surprised by the prickling of tears in her eyes even though she had suspected it before.



“When Voldemort killed…” He paused and continued after a beat, “… killed Lily, he created a Horcrux within Harry.”



She turned to face him with her fingers pressed to her lips, and asked, “Can we destroy the Horcrux without killing Harry?”



“If we do this potion, I suspect that we can. His theoretical documents seem to describe a potion that could be used to separate a Horcrux from the object it inhabits, though I’m sure you are right in assuming it could split two bound souls.” Snape explained.



“But the problem is that the Grindylow Claw and the Thestral Scale have separating properties, but Unicorn Horn and Newborn Hair and the figure eight stir pattern all have attractive properties.”



Snape would have given her 50 points if he was a professor and she was a Slytherin. Instead he said, “Well said, what else is on the list?”



“Four days of slow counter-clockwise stirring, bicorn horn—oh! That’s what the Grindylow Claw and Thestral Scale are for.”



“Yes?”



“Well, fourth year we learned that Grindylow Claw, Thestral Scale, and Vinegar mixed and diluted into a juice can be used to hollow out bicorn horn—”



Snape furrowed his brows and thought back. He had been teaching the subject nearly the same way for 15 years and had never taught his fourth years about the hollowing of bicorn horn, “Wait, bicorn horn hollowing isn’t taught until seventh year.”



“But it is featured in the end of our fourth year text, so you surely expected us to know that already.” She said distractedly scanning the list, and Snape looked at her with a new understanding for the amount of credit she really deserved for her own brilliance. “But anyway, it seems to have more attractive and binding qualities than repulsive and separating effects.”



“Yes, but sometimes two binding effects can have the reverse outcome overall.”



“Really!” She exclaimed.



Snape watched her conjure a quill, ink well, and parchment before reading out the part that he could see and she returned the favour by reading the recipe to him. The rest of the long night was spent discussing the potion.



By the early morning, Hermione had grown comfortable leaning against him and it was no surprise when she fell asleep and slumped against his chest. The part of him that had grown use to being cruel to the young Gryffindor wanted to scare her awake, but the part of him that had been training her, watching her, relying on her, and admiring her resilience for the last three weeks refused to do anything but adjust his body to accommodate her small weight against him.



Looking at the table in front of him where their notes lay strewn across the surface, he admitted to himself that they may be getting into something over their heads, but he felt confident that he could not have found a more competent potions partner to experiment with anywhere else. With that thought and a grim sigh, Severus too slipped off to sleep.

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A/N: I really cannot express how necessary it is to hear from you all, and I’d like to add a special thanks to Lyssander, Catysmom, and Sampdoria for the very encouraging reviews.