Hermione squatted next to Severus and smacked him once or twice more -- not entirely to see if that alone would bring him round again -- and then cast Ennervate upon him.

"Wha-- " he muttered, and then perked up. "Where is he?"

"He ran off down the main corridor, north-east --"

"Where's my wand?"

"Here," she said, and shoved it into his hand.

"Why didn't you kill the son of a bitch instead of --"

"Because you told me not to!" she said, voice loud with indignation, and wasn't the least sorry when Severus winced: she shone her torch at his chest and pushed her goggles up, the better to glare at him. "Bloody hell, Severus -- 'Be ready to shoot, not talk.' 'Don't kill him, we need him.' 'Why didn't you kill him?' I can't read your bloody mind!"

"Point taken," Severus muttered, and rubbed the back of his head.

"And while we're on the subject, why does 'Be ready to shoot, not talk' apply to me and not to you?!" she accused. Severus tried to push himself away from the wall, started to retort, and grimaced instead. "Stay put, he's not a threat --"

"Bloody well is --"

"-- at the moment, as I've got his wand too, damn it."

"Oh. You're certain he went down the corridor, and not into the --"

"Yes, Severus, he took a sharp left, just like the elf. Why the hell did he go off on all fours?"

"You didn't see him clearly, did you?" Severus asked warily.

"Not well, no. Your torch was out by the time he stepped into the room, and he streaked by me so fast I couldn't get a bead on him."

"Debdale's transformed him. Or rather, he's in the midst of transforming, into an elf."

"How bad is it? I've heard stories, of course --"

"Bad," Severus said flatly, and cautiously sat upright. "Petherbridge reckons he's about half-gone, and I'd concur. And they're not stories, it's just highly unusual for anyone to know how to do it -- they excised the ritual from all known grimoires around 1700, due to abuse. Not that that stopped Wilberforce Norris."

"Well it would be an abuse, wouldn't.... Mrs Norris!"

"Exactly. They never did find him, or the grimoire he consulted."

"But why?"

"Because she and Filch were total fools and.... Later," Severus said impatiently, and drew his legs under himself. "We've got to track Petherbridge down, capture him, and get him to record his testimony before he fully turns. With bloody Veritaserum if necessary, though I don't know if it will work, given his condition."

"But isn't there anything you can do?" Hermione asked as she stood, and reached down to help him up. "I heard you say --"

"I lied," he said with a grunt as Hermione hauled him to his feet. "I doubt that Debdale's left his notes lying about -- though we'll have to check before we leave -- and without the ritual and the potion receipt, there's no bloody way we can save Petherbridge in time. The first problem we'll have, after subduing him, is how to get him out of here. You'll have to break the ward that's holding him in."

"Oh, shit."

"Where's.... Gets better and better, doesn't it? Do you understand how dangerous Debdale is, now? ...where's the bloody torch?"

"Got it," Hermione muttered, and retrieved it from where it had rolled: something behind the nearest cell door snuffled and squealed in alarm, and scurried away. "Oh, cripes --"

"What?"

"The rest of the cells...."

"Later, after we track him down."

"But --"

"Later, Hermione," Severus commanded, and took a few experimental steps across the room, wavering slightly. "Without him we have no bloody witness to the experimentation."

"Fine," Hermione sulked. "But if he's limited to the buildings that join up with this corridor, then --"

"Then we still have five or six rather dangerous buildings to track him down in, haven't we?"

"Right," she said, took a step forward, and jumped back when something crunched under her boot....

In the light of her torch, she saw that she'd stepped on Severus' goggles.

"Oh, shit."

"Already broken when they fell off," he said, and motioned impatiently for her to give him his torch. "I heard them go. Don't worry about it."

Bloody well will, I've no idea what they cost....

There was nothing for it, though, but to hand off the torch, watch as Severus cast his Barrier spell at either side of the Rossetti doors to prevent Petherbridge from sneaking past or behind them, and to follow him down the main corridor, into the heart of the decaying eastern wards of Cane Hill.

*****

Shaftesbury-Salter was, theoretically and at first glance, an easy ward to control: unlike Rossetti, it spurred off the main corridor in one direction instead of being bisected. Unfortunately, it was also bloody long and cold: several of the windows had been shattered by vandals, and a chill wind whipped through the ward. She and Severus split and took opposite sides of the ground floor, wands at the ready as they peered into each side room, around blind corners, and negotiated abandoned equipment, beds, and what seemed an immense number of pigeon-carcasses.

They met back up at the end with no evidence that Petherbridge had ducked in. The only thing they found, in fact (besides the pigeon skeletons), were cells with dead elves in them.

"Cripes," Hermione muttered, and mentally told her stomach to behave: it was threatening another revolt from the thought of the starved little bodies in the cells. (Pigeon-bone crunching underfoot didn't help, either.) "Upstairs?"

"Don't think so," Severus said. "The stairwell was on my side, and the whole run's totally gone, landing and all. That's bloody impossible."

"Shall we risk going on, then?"

"Yes. We'll Barrier the entrance," he muttered, and trudged back over the sagging floor toward the corridor. (Hermione was more than a bit concerned for him: between the knock on the head and all the spells he was casting, he was looking very, very tired.)

Turner, when she paused to look at the map, was a much shorter ward, bisected by the main corridor as Rossetti had been: but when they reached its entrances, they found both firmly boarded-up all the way to the ceiling, with yellow caution tape plastered across the plywood.

Severus cursed.

"Well, he doesn't have his wand," Hermione reasoned. "And this is Muggle work, so it's been here a while, probably before they got here. Would Debdale have bothered to ward its perimetre, or just the corridor?"

"Let's hope the corridor. Next?"

"Vincent-Vanbrugh. It's another long one, not to mention the one Rory warned us off."

Severus sighed, shone his torch up at the ceiling -- which was developing a nasty sag, the further along they went -- and headed toward Vincent-Vanbrugh. Blessedly, however, the entrance to that building was also was boarded and taped, though someone had done a bad job of it with scraps of ply that didn't reach the uneven ceiling, and only barely covered the doors proper.

"Right," Severus said grimly after testing that the nailing was sound. "Next?"

"Zachary-Unwin, to the right, very small. It's little more than a Day Room and a few offices."

Severus stumbled off toward it, and she hurried after him.

Zachary-Unwin would be it, apparently: the ceiling of the main corridor had actually fallen in on one side, forcing Severus to stoop. Just past the doorway, moreover, the corridor had caved in completely. Some wit had spray-painted "Abanden hope all yee who entr here Fuck you securaty," on the wall next to the cave-in.

"Let me see the bloody plan," Severus whispered, and cursed when he saw how open and unprotected the entrance was to Zachary-Unwin. "You stay at the main door while I check the rooms on the left. Then enter -- stay to your right -- and we'll advance on the main room."

She nodded, and covered Severus as he darted around the corner of the entrance and paused at the first room; finding that empty, he made for the second room, cleared it, nodded to her to enter, and cast a Barrier at the entrance once she'd stepped in. They cautiously made their way into the huge open room at the very end, sidling around the accumulated muck that blocked their paths.

The problem was, Petherbridge wasn't there. Nor was he on the first floor. Severus indulged in loud and creative cursing as they edged their way down the crumbling staircase back to the ground floor.

"Could he have got out one of the windows in Shaftesbury?" Hermione asked. "I thought you said he --"

"He said so. Unless he's wrong, and the ward doesn't recognise him now," Severus theorised. "He's neither fish nor fowl at the moment. But one would think there's enough of him left to prevent that."

"Then he must have got through some of the boarding, that's all. So must have that stupid elf that he loosed on you -- I haven't seen it, have you?"

"No. But if the boarding is old work, why should Debdale have bothered? Why extend the barrier to wards when he could simply block the corridor? It's a bloody big area to cover as it is."

"Only one way to tell what the bastard managed," Hermione said grumpily, marched through the muck on the floor, and cleared a table in the corner that looked on the verge of collapse. Oddly, the muck was artwork, probably that of the patients judging by the childish techniques and occasionally morbid subjects; then she spread out the full site-map and pulled off her goggles.

"How can you --"

"Not going to be fun," she muttered. "And I've never tried it on the fly without the proper equations, so it mayn't work. Give me a moment -- hold the torch so we can see the map, will you?" she added as she scrabbled about on the floor for something with which to write. (All she could come up with was a crayon, but that would do; it was one of the few things that wasn't covered with the disgusting slime that was busily propagating about Cane Hill.)

She carefully aligned the map to the compass-points -- Rory had provided a compass, so she didn't need to invoke Point Me -- and, after a moment's hard thinking she scrawled the necessary runes on the map, pointed her wand at it, and gingerly reached out her left hand for the mould-infested wall. "And before proceeding, may I just say, ewwwwww," she muttered: Severus, damn him, snorted. (He would. He wasn't the one having to stick his fingers in a decade's worth of primordial, plaster-fed ooze.)

She winced as her fingers touched the wall, shook herself out of her squick, and chanted in proper Arithmantic Latin as she tapped her wand on the appropriate runes, "I command you by the north and south, the east and west, to reveal those things unseen that bind and enclose, that fetter and imprison."

It took a moment, out of practise as she was, for the spell to take: but a ghostly outline of the eastern wards began to flicker on the map, and then, spurred by her growing confidence, took hold and shone a bright blue.

"Very nice," Severus murmured. "Your work, I mean. No gaps in the ward, so where's he gone? We're right on Turner --"

The entire ward didn't want to reveal itself. That wasn't unusual, given the purpose of a ward in the first place, but Hermione had a sense of something murkier, something more malevolent lurking beneath it.

"-- but wrong on Vincent-Vanbrugh -- that's included. Where's the bastard gone? Can you locate him with something?"

She couldn't stop to tell Severus about the problem: if Debdale had been really nasty, he'd included a fail-safe that would redouble the ward's effectiveness each time it was tampered with. (She didn't want to think about what he'd had to do to accomplish that.)

She'd always hated this particular procedure. You never knew how well it would speak to you: it was a bit like Legilimency and Divination combined, with the intent of the Caster interpreted in images -- not always concrete ones, but often abstract visual and aural images that had to be interpreted like bloody Trelawney's prophecies. Sometimes they had meaning for the Arithmancer, and sometimes they made absolutely no sense whatever. She'd felt quite cheated and indignant when Hawking had taught her this: Arithmancy was supposed to be precise, the most scientific of the Magical Arts, but this spell was inexact, inelegant, and prone to errors in interpretation.

But it was also useful, and the quickest way to find out what was going on; working out the proper equations could take an entire bloody hour. There wasn't anything for it but to get it over with now.

"Hermione?" she heard Severus say, quite sharply. "Hermione, what are you --"

She shook her head, pressed her fingers more deeply into the slime, chanted, "Show me the true intent of your maker," and bit back a cry when a shock ran from her fingertips, up her arm, and raced to the back of her skull.

Everything went black before her: she couldn't see Severus or the map.

Her brain was totally focussed on the images taking shape in her mind.

*****

Darkness.

Cold, breath steaming in the air.

A whisper rapidly becoming louder and clearer; the urge to duck as something flutters past her ear, something too large to be a bat --

The moment she thought it, the image formed in her mind, the elements isolated from any location she could recognise.

The pigeon struts along the outer sill of a window, beady eyes curious and acquisitive, beak

peck peck

peck

peck

pecking randomly at the panes until it finds one empty of glass. It wedges itself into the gap, struggles in, and flutters to the floor with a rustle of wings.

The vision blacked out again.

Fluttering -- a thump --

-- and scratching --

-- and more fluttering --

Hermione wrenched her hand away from the wall and groped for the table.

"Hermione, are you all right?"

Good God, he sounds... panicked, she thought through the stabbing pain in her head.

"Just let me... rest for a moment," she muttered, and buried her face in her hands: she'd dropped her wand at some point, and hoped it hadn't fallen in a puddle of muck.

"What have you bloody done?" Severus demanded.

She laughed. She couldn't help it.

She heard Severus curse as he stumbled over something, and then he was at her side of the table: he grabbed her, pulled her upright, and shook her, his fingers digging into her shoulders -- and then he stopped when her knees began to buckle and he had to support her instead.

"What did you see?"

"I'm sorry, I'm terribly sorry, Severus, we should have stopped before to check," she gabbled.

"What? What the bloody hell is -- Merlin's balls, Hermione, what did you do? I was about to pull you off the bloody wall --"

She couldn't see his eyes, but he looked absolutely furious nonetheless, the torch-light picking out only the sharp line of cheekbone, the curved knife's edge of his nose, and the very clear down-turn of thinly-pressed lips.

"I ordered the ward to reveal Debdale's true intent --"

"I know that, I've got actual Latin, unlike most of your idiot classmates' blasted dog-Latin. I didn't know it could be done."

"The spell gives you images of the intent behind the ward. It's not just a barrier to keep Petherbridge in," she admitted miserably. "It's a catch-all. A trap. At least I think it is, if I'm interpreting the bloody images properly. Anything that goes in can't get out, including us."

He froze.

"Are you certain?" he asked.

"Would you like to speculate?" she shot back. "For once they were fairly straightforward. A pigeon getting in through an open window, a pigeon, unable to get back out. That must have been what happened to the poor buggers in Shaftesbury, all those bones.... So he can't have got out whether he's half-elf or not, because nothing can."

Severus cursed again, and his hands tightened on her waist. (She must really have been out of it for a moment: she hadn't even been aware that he'd shifted his hands.)

"I said I was sorry --" she said, and coughed, tasting the tang of copper and the sharp, unpleasant bite of sulphur, an after-effect of testing the ward.

"Shut up for a moment and let me think, would you?" he muttered with a sharp glance -- and then he looked at her more closely, reached for the torch, and shone it at her face.

"Severus --"

"Hold still," he said, dropped the torch to the table, and rooted in his coat-pocket until he dredged up a handkerchief. "You've got the beginnings of a nose-bleed."

She was, and hadn't noticed: when she swiped at her upper lip, the back of her hand was smeared faintly with bright, arterial blood. She fumbled for the hanky, and he impatiently held it up to her face himself. "Does that always happen?"

"No," she said, and managed to take the hanky from him with an unsteady hand. "Then again I haven't done it often, and never on such a nasty piece of work."

"Sit down for a.... Here," he said, and before she'd realised his intent, he'd boosted her up to the tabletop -- which, thankfully, didn't collapse -- and stepped away, looking about the room intently.

"What are you --"

"Nothing," he said; he noticed a battered chair in one corner -- one of those awful institutional ones, all chrome tubing and hard plastic -- ploughed through assorted muck to reach it, and picked it up; and then, rather than bringing it back to her as she'd thought he would, he hefted it in both hands, found its balance and weight to his liking, and heaved it at the nearest window with a grunt and "Merlin's bloody fucking bollocks and beard --"

It was far less effective than he probably hoped: it bounced harmlessly off the window frame with a shower of orange sparks and clattered to the floor. He stood in profile to her, and she could see him breathing heavily from the exertion.

After a moment's shock, she said wryly, "Well, we may not know where he is, but he certainly knows where we are now."

"Fuck Petherbridge," he bellowed. "Better yet, fuck Debdale. Preferably with a very long, very hot poker."

"I should have checked, Severus, and I am sorry --" she said quietly.

"What the bloody hell for?" he said irritably, and glared at her. "The bloody Mortuary was fine. So was the other damned building. We simply didn't think to check for a Dark Arts spell -- that's what it must be, you know, given that you're bleeding --"

"Yes, I know."

"And I ought to have suspected something along those lines. I'm the experienced one in this type of idiocy, not you. I'm not angry with you. It's going to hold us up a bit, that's all."

"If I can break it at all. It's not as simple as the usual ward, or even one against another individual -- and I have no idea how long it will take even if I can. If he used a blood sacrifice, we're really in a jam --"

"You can," he said brusquely, and waved one hand dismissively as if she were being an idiot. "You will, it will just.... But you can't before we find him, or he'll --"

"He'll get out too, yes. Why," she asked cautiously, "are you so certain I can do it?"

"Don't be stupid."

"No, why?"

"Do you have any idea how absolutely insufferably Vector behaved when you apprenticed with whoever it was?" Severus shot back with a glare. "Even McGonagall wanted to hex her senseless. And none of us could tell her to put a bloody cork in it, because we knew the boasting was justified."

Hermione felt as though he'd pole-axed her.

"You'll break the ward, Hermione, I'm just... I'm simply.... You could bloody well give yourself an aneurysm trying, if nosebleed is what comes from simply challenging it. And from now on," he added grimly as he stomped over to her, "never, ever do something like that without warning me beforehand."

"I couldn't, Severus, I didn't know if he'd put a doubling or trebling booster on it, I didn't know if I'd get a second easy chance --"

"Well, has he?" he demanded, boxing her in with his arms and leaning down to her.

"I don't know. I suppose I'll find out when I start to break it."

"Wonderful. And I don't suppose there's any way I can help so you don't over-extend yourself."

"Not unless you want me to go the easy route and use you as a sacrifice, no."

"Very funny. I suppose that's what passes for humour among Arith- ...Are you telling me your mentor taught you how to perform a blood-sacrifice ritual?"

"No, I'm telling you I read a very nasty book that described it in graphic detail. Which is more than I'd ever tell her, because she'd have throttled me and burnt my apprenticeship papers."

"As well she should. Merlin's balls, Hermione, I suppose you were the one who filched Throckmorton's Dark Potions for Dark Wizards from the Restricted Section."

"No, that was Malfoy. Someone, erm, liberated it from under his mattress, and I made certain it got back to the stacks."

"Not before skimming it, I'd wager."

"Might've done."

He snorted and muttered, "I told Pince it hadn't been mis-shelved.... Nevertheless, you are never again to do something this drastic without warning me, understood?"

"Yes. Unless you've been knocked silly by a rampaging elf and can't be consulted."

He didn't care for that caveat at all. "I'm serious."

"I know. But if you're not available, you're going to have to trust my judgement."

He didn't like that, either; but instead of haranguing her, he grabbed for the torch again and said tersely of the nosebleed, "Has it stopped?"

"Think so," she said, and peeled the handkerchief away to check: it wasn't too terribly bad, though she wanted to gag from the taste of blood in her throat. "My hand hurts like hell, but that's to be expected. It feels a bit like getting an electrical shock.... Not that you know what that's like."

Severus took her left hand in his free one, and examined her fingers in the torch-light. "You'd be surprised," he muttered. "Bluett had me dissect some sort of sea-eel for him once -- live -- and the bastard didn't warn me to wear gloves." The pads of her fingers were red and swollen, and she felt the tell-tale ache of impending blisters. "Burn-Healing Paste, later," he added. "Don't have it in the kit tonight, as the dunderheads have been going through it at a tremendous rate."

"All right. What do we do now?" she said.

"Backtrack. He's here somewhere, we simply have to find a way to flush him out," Severus said absently as he took the handkerchief from her and stuffed it back in his coat-pocket. "Are you steady on your feet, do you think?"

"Head still aches, but I don't feel dizzy any longer," she admitted, and managed to keep her composure when he quite gently helped her down from the table; she turned to gather up the site-map to cover her embarrassment.

"He won't have gone far since I Barriered all the entrances," Severus said as he bent to retrieve her wand for her. "We'll disable the bastard, and then we can concentrate on getting out.... Do you still have his wand?"

"Yes," she said, mystified, and pulled it from the inner pocket of her jacket: Severus exchanged it for her own.

"I won't have him manage an unwanded Accio," he said grimly, took the wand from her and balanced it half-over the edge of the table, and pressed all his weight on the ends until it snapped in two with a spurt of sickly, purple sparks. "His testimony will have to be enough without Prior Incantato," he added as he threw the bits of the wand across the room.

*****

The explanation to Petherbridge's disappearance was blindingly obvious once they'd backtracked to Vincent-Vanbrugh -- at least to Hermione.

"Oh, bloody --"

"What?" Severus asked sharply.

"Look. A transom," she said, and pointed above the door: a sizeable window ran the length of Vincent-Vanbrugh's entrance. "Why didn't we think of that when we were here before?"

"Because neither of us can reach it, and if we can't, how could he, wandless? We're still thinking of him as human," Severus said, shining the torch on a scrape in the plaster to the left of the plywood. "He's not any more, not really. The little bastards are quite agile, so he scrambled up and squeezed through. Difficult in his present condition, but obviously not impossible...."

"How can we be sure he didn't just pop in there? What if he pops out?"

"We can't be certain. I rather doubt it, though. McGonagall lectured me once about how long it takes to train them to Scout properly, especially in Apparition, so I suppose it's not something he may have taught himself. He's still dangerous," he reminded her. "If he can move like an elf, we can't be certain he hasn't begun to develop enough elf-magic to do damage."

"Right. Shoot first, talk.... Wait. What are effective on them, short of the Killing Curse?"

"Not bloody much. A single Stun won't do it, it will take several."

"Well, I'm not going in through the transom, then," Hermione grumbled, pointed her wand at the boarding, and began pulling nails, which popped out with petulant rapidity. Severus worked on the other side, and in short order they had the boarding ready to come down.

"Right," Severus said, supporting his side of the ply. "This time, we do the perimeter together. I check each corner and offset room, and you watch the area around and behind us."

"Got it."

"I'm sliding this piece your way so neither of us has to step across unprotected. Wait until I'm next to you to pull yours aside."

She waited until Severus had dragged his bit of plywood over and his shoulder nearly touched hers, and then tugged at her heavy, unwilling bit until, with an awful scrape, it jerked free and the entrance was clear; and then Severus surprised her by nearly plastering her against the corridor wall and bending to whisper in her ear, "For Merlin's sake, if he knocks me out, get out of there. Barricade yourself in one of the other buildings, break the bloody ward, and go to Weasley's -- he can send Shacklebolt to find me."

Or to clean up the mess of what's left was the logical, unspoken alternative.

Hermione had no intention of letting happen, but Severus didn't give her time to debate it: with a squeeze of her elbow he shifted past her and sidled around the gaping, door-less entry to Vincent-Vanbrugh.

*****

There was a damned good reason Rory and his lot hadn't been in Vincent-Vanbrugh for years. The rot was so firmly entrenched in Vanbrugh that the floor had ceased being springy, and Hermione had the uncomfortable feeling that her boots were sinking into the boards. Severus was quite sensibly sticking as close to the wall as possible, halted dead before they'd got two yards into the room, and cast another Barrier at the entrance before he spoke.

"Come closer and shine your torch about the perimeter," he whispered, training his at the far side of the room; and when she nestled up to him and the beam of light from her torch met with his, they slowly swept the room with light.

The fire Rory had told them of had indeed done damage, significant damage. The far end of the ward -- for it was another long one -- was blocked with debris, collapse from the first (and, presumably, second) floors; the walls nearest the collapse were streaked with rivulets of mould, as if it had taken liquid form and been poured down the walls from above. (And it probably had, in one sense, from fire-fighting and subsequent rain through the ruined roof.)

"Good gods," Severus muttered. "The worst yet...."

"It's the boarding-up, mostly," Hermione said. "Rory told me before you got there that all the boarding-up traps the moisture inside. That's why the wards with open windows are actually in better shape, because of the air-circulation."

"You'd think there'd be plenty, without a roof upstairs."

"Too much water all at once, I should think.... Good Lord."

On their side of the room, and quite inconveniently blocking their path, was the remains of something poking up out of the floorboards; and after a moment's puzzling at it, Hermione said, "It's a piano. And it's nearly gone through the floor!"

"Some of the joists must still be sound, or it would have gone clean through. Wonderful. Won't support a piano any longer -- let's hope it can support us," Severus muttered, flicked his torch back to the path in front of them, and began to edge along the wall once more.

The south-west side of Vanbrugh proved empty of everything; even the usual hospital debris had been cleared, presumably well before the fire (with the exception of the baths and toilets, very near the entry, most of which were filled with a more disgusting mixture of slime and stagnant water than Hermione ever hoped to see for the rest of her life; Polyjuice Potion couldn't begin to compete with the noxious smell). She didn't see the usual signs of ingress -- the graffiti, ripping-apart of furniture, and wanton vandalism that they'd noted in the other buildings.

The stairwells up to Vincent and down to the cellars were just past the loo.

"Oh, cripes. Would he have gone up or down, do you think?"

"Have to check both." Severus took the precaution of casting a Barrier at both of sets of stairs, and he and Hermione ventured deeper into the ward. They had a nasty moment near the piano when Severus stepped too heavily and one foot began to go though the floor with a dull, sodden crunch, but he quickly shifted his weight backward and wrenched it free.

"Bloody -- back the other way," he said grimly, and carefully backed away from the area. "You take the lead for now, and I'll watch. We'll have to check those two rooms later."

It was unnerving, being in the lead: Hermione became acutely aware of sweat forming on her upper lip and the back of her neck, and shivered when it chilled.

She gratefully relinquished the lead as soon as they'd reached their starting-point, and they inched along the other side of the ward; while there were cells in the dormitory area, they were thankfully empty of elves -- but there was plenty of muck and equipment for Petherbridge to hide behind here. Many of the beds and mattresses were still in place, and sprouting various growths; one of the armoires still contained clothing -- patients' clothing, presumably -- and the ward was all the more eerie for it. It was as if the patients and nurses had stepped outside for a walk in the garden, and forgot to come back in for twenty years.

It took nearly a half-hour to make certain the cells were clear and that the debris that blocked the end of the ward, cutting off the East Day Room, was truly impassible, and then to negotiate the rotten floor to the other side of the room to check the two remaining offices.

"Nothing," Severus reported, cautiously backing out of the last room.

"Upstairs, then?"

"Yes, but.... Half a moment -- I don't fancy being attacked from above while trying to negotiate that stair. With any luck he's nearly pissing his trousers by now, so this should startle him," Severus said, testing the hinges of the office door: and then he motioned her back to more stable flooring, and swung the door with all his might into the jamb.

It certainly worked: the door struck its frame, banged, and rebounded off; the hinges tore loose of the rotting wood, and the door fell to the floor with a whump and raised a cloud of mould-infested dust.

"Jesus, Severus --"

"Hush."

They heard a scuttling on the floor above them, headed toward the east end of Vincent Ward.

"Too big to be anything but a very large mammal," Severus noted smugly.

"Fine," Hermione hissed indignantly. "But did you have to --" sneeze "-- stir up all the muck?"

"Stop whinging. At least you have goggles on," Severus shot back, blinking away the grit, and sneezed himself. "Let's go, before he decides to sneak back."

They made an indirect path around the sinking piano back to the stairwell; Severus lowered the Barrier and carefully tested each tread before putting his weight upon it.

"Nasty one. Mind the gap," he whispered over his shoulder at one point, and waited two steps above until Hermione had safely skipped the wonky step; they slowly reached the top and huddled behind the turning of the wall, surveying what was, properly speaking, First Vincent Ward.

It seemed incredible that anything that utterly decayed should still be standing. The plaster had long ago given up the struggle and had begun to fall in chunks from its lath, particularly from the ceiling; the hall not five yards ahead of them was streaked with soot, and the skeletal joists above were well-charred. Broken roof-slate lay splintered further along the hall, and the remains of a chimney-stack had fallen in through the fire-eaten floor above, crushing anything in the office below and spilling out of its door. And it was all overlaid with a thick fuzz: the slime and mould that blanketed much of the place seemed to have progressed to actual moss, at least in the places where the snow from the last, light fall of a few days ago had melted enough to see it.

And down at the end of the corridor they had an unobstructed view of the back wall of Vincent-Vanbrugh, across a void of some twenty or twenty-five feet: the entire fabric of the east side of the first and second floors had either gone up in smoke, or down to Vanbrugh.

"Cripes," Hermione breathed.

"If it can hold him, it can hold us," Severus murmured. "I think."

"More cells on that side, as below?"

"Think so," Hermione muttered, and flipped through the clipboard to the plans. "Yes, it's just like it. He's got to be in one of them -- you can see where the collapse has taken one off at the end.... At least I hope he is. I don't want to see what the second floor's like."

"Right. I'd rather not go down there either, frankly," Severus muttered to her. "Best try the direct approach first. Petherbridge!" he bellowed. "Enough is enough. If you come now, quietly, and give testimony, the Wizengamot may take pity on you and forgo further punishment."

There was a moment of silence in which the only sound was the creaking of the beams above them, and Severus' voice bouncing back off the wall at the end of the ward; and then Petherbridge laughed before he addressed Severus' challenge.

"Like hell they will. How many kinds of fool do you take me for, Snape?" he howled, the sound echoing and garbling his words, making it impossible to pin-point in which cell he was hiding. "You're not working for the bloody Wizengamot. Even if you were, I answer to a higher authority --"

"Debdale?" Severus called out coldly. "The man who's turned your into a creature? Do you really think you owe him any loyalty whatsoever?"

"Oh, it's bigger than that. You've no idea, have you?" Petherbridge shot back.

"He knows about Fudge," Hermione whispered. "Fudge must have come here for the initial trials."

Severus motioned her to be still. "If I'm that far off the mark, Petherbridge, tell me. Better yet, come along with us, record your testimony, and then we can work on reversing the transforma- "

"I told you, it won't work!" Petherbridge cried in a shrill, anguished wail. "It won't. And even if it does --"

"-- Fudge will see that you're killed?" Severus cannily finished for him. "We know Fudge is involved, Petherbridge. We've no intention of taking you to the Ministry. It's the ICW we'll be reporting to."

Petherbridge went silent, and then ventured, "You're not going through the Ministry?"

"No. The matter will bypass the Ministry and Fudge entirely."

"Really." Petherbridge went silent again for a while, peered about the corner of the cell door, and giggled madly. "We always said you were nutters, Snape, but I think that proves it."

Now, look here, Hermione mentally growled, and gripped her wand more tightly. She wanted to hex Petherbridge, quite badly: but there wasn't enough of him in view at which to throw anything remotely satisfying.

"I suspect my companion doesn't share that view," Severus said dryly. "She has the proof to send Fudge and his co-conspirator to Azkaban. Your testimony, while not entirely necessary, would be helpful. And I'm asking you to find the courage to give it."

"Absolutely no reason to trust you, no, no reason at all," Petherbridge muttered indistinctly, and shook his head so violently that his shaggy hair fell into his eyes. "Always lorded it over us, you did, always took out your petty little prejudices on us --"

"Damn it, Petherbridge, this matter is larger than some bloody schoolboy grudge against his teacher," Severus said, voice strained and impatient. "The welfare of Wizarding Britain is what we're talking about --"

"Its future, you mean," Petherbridge interjected, and nodded wisely. "Quite right, quite right, undoubtedly. But you see, I think we have very different ideas about what that should be."

"It's the difference between right and wrong, man. Between forcing people to become what you think they should be, and what they want -- surely you can see that, given your position."

Petherbridge withdrew his head from the doorway and stepped back -- the joists creaked at that, and Hermione sucked in a panicked breath: Severus called out a strained, "Petherbridge?"

"Yes, yes, I can see that, in a way," Petherbridge's voice reached them, equally strained. "I think I'll... I'll come out, if you promise not to shoot."

"I don't think I can trust you after that nice trick with the elf."

"No, no, those are the terms. Give your wand to her, if you like -- Tricky of you, she was, I didn't know there was anyone else until she shot at me!"

"All right," Severus said, and calmly handed his wand back to her. "She has my wand, she's behind me, and she won't shoot unless I tell her to. I've only got the torch -- the light -- so you can see the path over to us. We're on equal footing now, Petherbridge."

Petherbridge giggled again. "No, no, we never were. Never will be." Then he slowly shuffled from the cell, both hands held up. "No ropes, now, I can't... ...can't abide the feel of my own body anymore."

Hermione had a good look at him now, as she peered around Severus' arm, and wished she hadn't. The transformation Debdale had wrought on Petherbridge was horrific: nothing remained of the pudding-faced lower-former that she vaguely remembered being Sorted. Petherbridge's body was collapsing in on itself, just as the building around them was collapsing into its footprint; his skin had begun to take on the greenish cast of an elf's; even his eyes, which still remained a vague, human muddy-brown, were bulging from their sockets, as if his face has been permanently frozen in terror.

The joists creaked again, and something shifted in the debris behind him.

"Good man.... Come along, then, and we shan't have to disable you," Severus said softly.

"The problem is, you see," Petherbridge said conversationally, his words still oddly slurred, "that I've had a better offer."

Severus' shoulders stiffened, and then he said, "What the bloody hell do you --"

"If I turn on them now they'll find a way to get me, even if you stop the project. And I really think I'd rather not, anyway. There's this expression, you see -- don't suppose you know it.... Well, you wouldn't, would you?" Petherbridge said, giggled, and stumbled backward a bit. "You a strict Pureblood, no Muggle nonsense at all --"

"Petherbridge, we're -- "

"'Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.' Some trashy Muggle writer, or someone, I don't know. My grandmum was always going on about him. Anyway, the mediocrity decided he'd rather rule in hell."

"-- we're running out of time, and you're making me regret my promise," Severus said. "Every moment you delay is one less moment to work on the antidote. Now, come --"

"You won't stop them, you see. You can't. And I don't want you to. They promised me, you understand. Debdale and Fudge promised me that when it's done, when they write about it, that I'll be in the books alongside them. As a minor footnote, no doubt -- oh, no doubt," Petherbridge said, and grinned, revealing to Hermione the reason for his odd speech: his teeth were having a bad time of the re-arrangement of his body, and had begun to crowd each other out in his jaw. "But it's that or risk worse than this. And if I stick to them, I'll be credited for having a hand in the project that will save our way of life."

"As an accomplice in the greatest violation of personal rights in the history of Wizarding, you mean," Hermione blurted out, unable to restrain her indignation despite her pity for his condition.

"Oooo, so she speaks? I think I recognise that voice, too. Bossy, impatient.... The great Harry Potter's Prefect friend? Well, you should know all about being a minor footnote, unlike him," Petherbridge said, and jerked his head in Severus' direction. "You'll understand. I've decided that a minor footnote is better than none at all. He didn't get even that much in all the write-ups, did he?"

Surprisingly, Severus didn't rise to the bait this time: he simply said, "The satisfaction you'll receive for doing the right things -- whether they're written about or spoken of, or not -- will far outweigh the glory of any mention you'll get from them, Petherbridge. You shall have to take my word for that."

"Says the man who always angled for the Order of Merlin and never got it," Petherbridge gloated -- and then he took a deliberate step backward, toward the gaping hole in the floor of the ward. "'Better to rule in hell...."

"Petherbridge --"

"Stop now," Hermione shouted, shoved Severus' wand into her back pocket (Oh, poor Professor Flitwick would be so disappointed in me!), and ducked under his arm to get off a better shot.

Petherbridge took another step backward: the floor under him groaned and cracked, and then gave way.

For a split second Petherbridge panicked: his arms windmilled in a desperate attempt to regain his balance, and he grabbed at an electrical conduit that ran along the wall next to him.

Hermione had to take her only chance.

"Hominem --"

-- and then Petherbridge found his resolve, smiled, let go of the conduit, spread his arms wide, and allowed himself to fall backward into the void.

" -- Levi- ...Damn it all to hell!"

They heard the crash of Petherbridge hitting the debris on Vanbrugh, and then an ominous, nasty groaning and splitting of joists that could no longer take the shock of a body falling from a height. Down!" Severus shouted, and snatched his wand from her pocket when she did turned; and they bolted down the rotting stairs as fast as possible under the circumstances. But it was too late: halfway down the stairwell they heard the jumble of debris in Vanbrugh give way, and Petherbridge's howl as the whole lot continued its descent into the cellar.

"Stay on this floor," Severus panted behind her as they reached ground level. "I'll go down and try to reach him."

Hermione skidded to a halt at the base of the stairs and managed a panicked, "Be careful," to him before he dropped the Barrier and practically flung himself down the cellar-stairs; and then she picked her way along the more solid side of the ward toward the East Day Room -- or what once had been -- and pulled her jacket up over her mouth and nose to block the dirt and mould-spores that the collapse had raised. The debris had shifted, opening up gaps in the blockage, and she was able to squeeze through: but it was too dangerous to try to shift the lot, as it might well come down on Petherbridge. She managed to get close to the edge of the hole and peered down into it, one arm firmly twined around a ceiling-rafter that was more or less securely wedged into the muck, looking for Petherbridge.

Petherbridge hadn't been lucky enough to fall on a flat surface. Hermione couldn't see exactly what it was he'd fallen on, actually, but his body had given way and the thing, whatever it was, hadn't: a spiky bit of metal pierced his ribcage from back to front, on his right side, and he hung suspended above the rest of the debris that now littered the cellar floor. His limbs twitched, but his eyes were wide and staring skyward, and blood dribbled from his mouth.

"Severus!" she yelled. "It's no use, I think he's --"

She heard Severus say something, badly muffled by distance and the floor between them -- probably "Almost there," -- and then she nearly shrieked when Petherbridge's body convulsed and his eyelids fluttered, and he began keening; an odd whistling accompanied every agonised breath he took.

"Stay still," she ordered him. "We can get you out, but it will take some doing. Hang on until Se-- until Professor Snape gets there --"

Petherbridge forced his head up to meet her eyes, and grimaced. "Don't... ...bother," he said, and gave her a twisted, grotesque grin -- it was horribly reminiscent of poor Neville's, the one time he'd regained consciousness in the Infirmary -- and choked up more blood. "Not... worth the trouble."

"Yes, it bloody well is, Petherbridge --"

She heard a thump down below, and a curse from Severus, followed by a loud, "I'm all right --"

"-- you need to hang on until we can get you to St. Mungo's."

"Dont... ...want anyone to... ...see me like this," he managed. "Bloke's got to... ...have some pride, you know...."

Something stirred in the back of his eyes -- Hermione desperately wished she was a Legilimens, at the moment, to understand precisely what he was thinking -- and then he said craftily, "'Course... ...doesn't matter to you.... You'll use me... ...either way, dead or... ...alive.... Can't have that."

He turned his face to the pile of rotted beams and lathing next to him, and stretched out his arm: it obviously hurt tremendously, for he shrieked, and then he closed his eyes and wordlessly cast a spell.

Most Fire-Spells were gold or red in colour -- at least, those Hermione had perfected; but this was unlike any Hermione had seen, a bright blue that arced from Petherbridge's finger-tips straight to the kindling about him. It sparked a fire that quite unnaturally took to the sodden wood and caught immediately, and with an intensity that scorched the near side of Hermione's face.

"Jesus -- Severus, get out of there!" she yelled, and threw her arm over her face as Petherbridge began to shriek.

"What --" she heard Severus bellow over the sound of the flames.

"Fire, he's started a fire -- get out of there, now!"

Severus didn't answer: she had no way of knowing whether he was being sensible or putting himself in more danger, so she edged back over to the edge of the hole and cast a Dousing Spell at the fire. But the flames behaved perversely, seemingly feeding on the water instead of dampening down; and then a gust of wind funnelled down the carcass of Vincent-Vanbrugh and whipped the flames about, and sent tendrils of fire licking at the far side of the wall -- the side Petherbridge was trapped at. His shrieks grew louder, interspersed with babbling curses and pleas.

"Oh, God -- don't leave me here, don't, I didn't mean to do it -- Help me, oh, God, you bitch, help me, damn you, don't leave me here --"

His clothes caught fire and he lost the power of speech, screaming incoherently instead.

There was nothing Hermione could do but watch. Another Dousing might well cause even more trouble, judging by her first effort.

"Stop it, Petherbridge!" she screamed at him. "You started it, you can stop it, damn you! I don't know what you did!"

But he was past any reasoning at all, incapable of doing anything but writhing in agony on the spike as his flesh began to char and his hair caught: Hermione got a good whiff of burning flesh and backed away, gagging. She stumbled over a pile of brick and nearly slid into the hole, and grabbed for the beam she'd clung to before.

Someone grabbed the back of her jacket and pulled her over the pile, into the relative safety of the corridor.

"On your feet, now," Severus yelled in her ear, over Petherbridge's hoarse screams. "Nothing we can do for him now, it's Elf-fire."

"But --"

"I'm not wasting any more energy on him, damn it, we need to save ourselves. Move."

She clambered to her feet with his help, beginning to cough as smoke -- which had been billowing up the chimney of the bare brick walls of the East Day Room -- began to filter down the corridor as well: and they stumbled down the corridor and across the West Day Room, all worries of the soundness of the floor disregarded. As they passed the stairwell a little body -- the elf that had escaped from Petherbridge -- shot past them, squealing in terror, and beat itself against Severus' Barrier spell at the main corridor before he had a chance to drop it.

"Oh, bloody --"

"It's the only one," he said through his coughing, and dropped the Barrier: the elf shot through and hung a left, headed back toward Rossetti.

"I couldn't put the fire out, I tried --"

"Their magic is completely different to ours, McGonagall says," Severus managed as he dragged her through the entrance. "Nothing you could do."

No, she supposed not. But there was something she could do now.

"Hang on," she said, and planted her feet, hauling backward on his hand. "I need your help."

"Damn it, Hermione, we can't --"

"I'm going to set a back-fire," she yelled at him. "It will buy us a few minutes. I need you to be sure it goes north, not toward Rossetti."

He didn't look happy with the idea -- he looked uncertain under all the soot and dirt on his face, actually, along with immensely enraged -- but he nodded and stepped back, and waited while she cast a thin line of ordinary, controlled fire at the walls and ceiling, and then cast his own spell to send a breeze northward. They held their position until the back-fire had taken hold and was creeping toward the Vanbrugh entrance, and then Severus grabbed for her again and pulled her along after him, back to Rossetti.

*****

"Bloody hell," he cursed when they'd reached the relatively clean air in Rossetti, and collapsed against the wall and indulged in a coughing fit. "Best get cracking on the ward."

"No shit, Severus," she muttered disrespectfully, coughed, and trotted over to one of the laboratory tables. "Find me a bloody pen or pencil, would you?"

She swept the table clear of all the equipment that littered it, ignoring the shattering of the glassware, and spread the site map across it; Severus hunted up a quill and bottle of ink from one of the other tables and delivered them to her.

"What can I do?" he murmured.

"Nothing for the moment, it's all equations at first."

"Call when you need me, then. I'm sorting through the muck for evidence."

He limped off to one of the other tables and began pawing though the detritus, muttering to himself as he threw useless things off the table or stuffed interesting ones into his pockets.

She scribbled out the appropriate runes, and then set to working out the physical equations she needed.

Find the area, in square yards, of the area warded....

(She cheated, using a measuring charm calibrated to the scale of the map, praying that it was accurate: a quick check of the dimensions of Rossetti's Day Room in comparison to the map seemed to prove it was.)

Wards were very odd things, generally. They could be made immensely strong, but they all had one inherent weakness: unlike a fence which could be breached at one point and still stand firm elsewhere, if you could determine the weak point in a ward, attack it, and create a hole, then the whole enclosure would drop. She'd done it before to Hawking's satisfaction, as an exercise; she could very well break into her own flat, no matter how wonderful Mr Harrison, Junior, thought his product.

Determine the strength of the ward in relation to the constants of Universal Magical Resistance and the Third Arithmantic Operation, squared, viz., (A x R)= M^F/ O3².

(Area times Resistance is equal to Magical Force divided by the Third Operation, squared. Not too terribly difficult: any Arithmancy student worth their salt could parrot off the Resistance and Operation formulae in their sleep.)

The question was how strong Debdale had managed to make this ward, whether she could find the weak point in time, and whether she had the wherewithal to breach it without resorting to some very nasty means. In this instance, she would solve for M^F... and then the really difficult part of the process would commence.

"...everything out, but Petherbridge was a fool --"

"What?" she muttered, intent on the equation.

"I said, Debdale cleared everything out, but Petherbridge.... Oh. Never mind, I beg your pardon," Severus said.

"No, say it now, I won't be able to hear you during the next bit," she said, still scribbling away, and coughed: when she glanced up, she noticed a haze of smoke drifting down the corridor from the east.

"Ahhh, Petherbridge made his own notes. Probably intended to sell the process to the other low-producing countries. Erm, is there anything I can...?"

"No."

A squeal from the other side of the ward -- the area with cells -- split the air, and something banged against one of the doors.

"Oh, balls. They've smelt the smoke," Severus muttered.

"Yes, then. Get them out, and keep them on that side until I get this bloody thing down."

"Right," Severus said, and limped across the room to the main corridor.

Another minute's work and Hermione had solved the equation. It looked right, but then they often did: and she couldn't spare the time to check the figures, as the haze was growing more dense out in the corridor. (She could only faintly make out Severus in the other block, opening the doors and dodging the terrified elves.)

One hand on the wall again, wand in the other and trained on the map: she closed her eyes this time and sent a tendril of magic slithering along the warded walls (always an unnerving exercise, because in your mind's eye it was as if you were slipping along on the tendril at high speed, very disorienting and nausea-making), testing the probable weak points -- doors, windows, fire-escapes, chimneys.... Pushing with a force equal, but not yet greater, than the magical force that had created the ward in the first place, seeking any place where it gave or bowed.

And she found it, ironically, at the east end of Vanbrugh, where Petherbridge's fall had weakened the physical fabric of the building. Perhaps Debdale hadn't been careful with the spell placed there, fearing to venture that far in himself; perhaps he'd got careless, assuming Petherbridge wouldn't be stupid enough to trespass that deeply into the rotting building.

It didn't matter. It was enough. Or it would be, if she could summon enough force to breach the weak point.

She focussed all her attention on the weak point, and muttered the equation-laden incantation that directed all her power to that spot, pushing harder and harder against the resistance.... And it pushed back.

*****

She only became aware of herself again when a coughing fit broke the rhythm of her chant, and with a jerk and a thump she was solidly back in Rossetti Ward, bent over the table, unable to breathe properly. The room was filling with smoke: between that and the tearing-up of her eyes, she couldn't see across the room any longer, much less across the corridor to the cell block -- though she could hear the weak squeals of the trapped elves quite clearly.

And the bloody ward was still up. She stopped to cough again, the acrid, stinging smoke clinging to the back of her throat.

"God damn it --"

Someone pulled her off her feet, and she landed hard on her hip and coughed out a another curse. The air was marginally fresher here, though, and she lay with her face to the floorboards, gasping.

"Just breathe for a moment," Severus rasped in her ear, his voice oddly muffled, and he struggled with something with his free hand.

"I can't..."

She had to stop for another coughing fit, and then confessed.

"I can't do it, Severus, not under these.... I couldn't even double-check the --"

"Yes, you can. You've been out for a while, and I looked at your first measurements," he muttered in her ear, his voice going clearer. "They're fine. The advanced stuff's beyond me, but the basis is correct." His hands moved in front of her face, and he tied the handkerchief -- damp, now, though where he'd found water she couldn't guess -- over her mouth and nose. "Take a moment, focus, and try --" he paused to cough. "Try again."

He seemed so absolutely confident in her, not at all like his usual, bullying self in Potions class, or like his super-critical analyses of her investigative technique (or lack thereof).

She was breathing more freely now with the handkerchief masking the worst of the smoke. She leaned back against him, struggled to her feet, groped for the edge of the table, and tried to shut out the cries of the suffocating elves and Severus' hacking coughs.

'You can. You will.' No, she wasn't hallucinating: he'd said that earlier, and been not at all uncertain about it. And if Severus Snape, of all people, was willing to express such confidence in her, who was she to be a cowardly ninny and doubt herself?

She could barely see the map in front of her, and fumbled about for the goggles and put them back on to keep the smoke from her eyes.

And then she started again.

*****

She later couldn't say how long it had taken to breach the ward, but it couldn't have been too terribly long. It was long enough, however, for the fire to jump the break and advance perilously close, for the next time she fell back into awareness, shook herself out of a stupor, and ripped off the now-useless goggles -- her magic had well and truly fried them -- the glow from flames licking along the main corridor were throwing a fierce, bright light that pierced the pall of smoke.

Severus made no sound. Neither did the elves in the cell-block.

She retched and doubled over -- the handkerchief simply wasn't enough protection any longer -- and then pulled herself upright and staggered over toward the other block. She nearly fell over Petherbridge's intended victim: the poor thing had hidden itself in the Day Room and stayed there after they entered, and must have crawled out after Severus had returned to her side of the room. It pressed its wrinkled little face to a crack beneath a window-sill, and didn't even bother to run from Hermione.

Nothing for it, though. She ignored the elf and concentrated on the others instead, after a cautious peek around the doorway.

The fire had just reached the entrance of Salter-Shaftesbury.

Another back-fire wouldn't buy them enough time to matter -- even if she had the energy and breath to waste on it -- so she dropped Severus' Barrier instead, and concentrated on popping out one of the boarded-up windows nearest the four or five elves passed out on the cell-block floor.

She didn't have to do more, as it happened: the conscious elf shot past her across the corridor, jabbered at its compatriots and poked them on the forehead, and shrieked at them when they roused themselves until they each made their groggy way to the open window and hauled themselves out.

Oh, my God, how interesting -- they have a language. And a society, and they're absolutely sentient and capable of altruistic.... Oh, shut it, Hermione, don't waste time, get your arse out. Severus.... Bloody hell, where is he?

As she'd feared, the fire freshened with the gusts of fresh air that now filtered into the corridor: the flames leapt across Salter's entry and took hold on the floor of the corridor, heading straight for Rossetti. She could hear sirens in the distance: bloody Security had done its job for once, and the grounds would be crawling with the fire-fighters in minutes.

She hoped the elves had the sense to hide in the woods. Only Merlin knew what the more sensational Muggle Press would make of them: they'd had a field day for the last fifty years with sightings of the Southwestern American Elf. (Aliens, indeed.)

Hermione stumbled back to her work-corner, coughing all the way, and fumbled about on the floor until she felt something hard and bony. (It was attached to something rather long that terminated in a boot. She'd got hold of his knee, apparently.)

She struck a Lumos, and then wished she hadn't: Severus was slack-jawed, and his eyes had rolled back in their sockets.

She did the only thing she could think of: threw herself on top of his body, wrapped her arms about him, and, incapable of forming a coherent word, simply thought of some place -- any place -- safe, and Apparated them out with a bang.

*****

Wherever she'd Apparated them, it was snowy.

She wasted a precious minute gagging up blood and some truly awful-looking black stuff over Severus' shoulder before she was able to drag herself off him and to suck in pure, excruciatingly cold air; then she was able to worry about him.

Namely, the fact that he wasn't breathing at all.

For one horrid moment she thought she'd have to try CPR (not a thrilling idea, given his usual dental hygiene or that he was likely to hack up much worse stuff than she had -- but she'd do it if she must, for him), but a forceful Ennervate seemed to do just as well: he inhaled, choked, and she had to roll him on his side and pound at his back so he shouldn't suffocate himself. Only when he'd begun to get some air in his lungs, in between upchucks of very nasty-looking stuff indeed, could she be bothered with where she'd landed them...

... a few feet from the Hogwarts gates.

Walking proved problematic. Her knees didn't want to cooperate with either feet or brain; and she couldn't seem to control her shivering, either. (A perfectly serviceable London-winter jacket was useless at Hogwarts.)

She crawled to the edge of the wood, clutched at a fallen tree limb, and dragged it -- and herself -- through the snow and to the gates, and bashed at them as hard as she could manage in between coughing fits.

She wasn't, however, expecting the response she got. Within a minute or two -- after she'd given up on the gates, and dragged herself back to Severus to check on him -- she heard the pop of an Apparition, and glanced up to find Dobby staring at the pair of them.

"Miss Herminey?"

"Go...." She had to clear her throat. "Get Madam Pomfrey, Dobby, quick. Professor Snape is --"

Dobby bounded over, grabbed for her hand and dug his fingers into Severus' shoulder, and, before she knew what the elf intended, he'd Apparated them straight to the Infirmary.

*****

"I don't need that muck, woman!"

"I'm the best judge of that at the moment, I'm afraid," Pomfrey shot back in her best no-nonsense voice, "unless you're trying for a lovely case of pneumonia. I'll warn you now, Severus, that if you don't take this and do become ill, I won't be at all sympathetic."

"You never are, you har-- accccccchem -- harpy." (The insult was rather spoiled by Severus' need to upchuck more of the soot that was clogging his lungs -- not to mention by the basin he was clutching to his chest to catch said upchucks, which were alarmingly frequent.)

"Hermione's taken hers and got it all over with. Why can't you be sensible, as she is?"

"That," he said, jabbing an accusing finger toward Hermione, "is the -- urk -- acccccchem -- least sensible person on the bloody face of the earth."

"Oh, Severus, would you just belt up and take it?" Hermione moaned, and resisted the urge to cover her face with her hands: Pomfrey had slathered the scorched side of her face with Burn-Healing Paste. "Get it out all at once, you'll feel better."

"Mind your own bloody -- aaaacck -- business."

"She'd quit if you only take the damned stuff. It's not that bad, and she'll give you chocolate afterwards --"

"Ah. He's in a temper, therefore he's not at death's door," McGonagall announced from the Infirmary entry.

"It's the usual," Pomfrey informed McGonagall with a long-suffering look, phial of medicine in hand. "Acting as though I'm trying to poison him."

"Take it, Severus," McGonagall ordered.

"I don't need the damned --"

"I shall pinch your nose closed if you don't take it this instant, young man."

Severus let loose with a shocking string of oaths and nasty names: Hermione was certain she heard "cow," "bint" -- and, most awfully, "cunt," although as that last came in the midst of one of his choking fits, she couldn't be absolutely sure -- directed at females in general and McGonagall in particular.

"Now," McGonagall said calmly, totally unperturbed.

Severus glared, snatched the phial from Pomfrey, downed the admittedly noxious potion, and promptly gagged and hawked up more gunk.

"There we go," Pomfrey crooned. "He'll be fine, now." (Severus managed to hold in the goo long enough to glare at her.)

"Very good," McGonagall said to him, and muttered to Hermione -- who was still in shock at the language he'd used to the Headmistress, for pity's sake, epithets he hadn't dared use with Hermione herself -- "Don't look so horrified, he'll apologise later. He always does."

"Doesn't to me," Hermione muttered back, all too clearly remembering Severus' New Year's Eve performance.

"You haven't given him seven years' worth of detentions yet. Be patient and creative, and you'll have him behaving properly toward you. Or at least bothering to say he's sorry, even if it's long after the fact."

Hermione seriously doubted whether she was patient or creative enough to accomplish that.

*****

"What a royal bloody cock-up," Severus muttered, and took another swig of head-ache potion. He was huddled in his wing-chair, and seemed, to Hermione, oddly fragile.

"Don't remind me," Hermione shot back. "How am I going to explain losing the equipment to -- Oh, cripes, Rory!"

"He's undoubtedly fine," Severus said. " 'S been in bed for hours by now."

"I'm sure he is. It's my bloody bank-account that's going to hurt."

"Ahhhh. You finally admit the disadvantage of that ridiculous Muggle gadgetry?"

"It was useful. Until we stomped on it."

"You stomped on it."

"Fine, whatever you say, He-Who-Attracts-Stampeding-Elves.... Oh, hell, I'm going to have to go home straightaway -- he'll be ringing the flat to see if we're all right."

"Stay here," Severus said: he seemed oblivious to the insult, intent on rubbing at his smoke-reddened eyes. "Get a few hours' sleep, and then pop down."

"But he'll --"

"You need to sleep. After a bath -- your face is still bloody. I'll wake you at six."

"But --"

"Hermione...." He checked himself, took a breath, and began again. "Hermione, you look like... ...pardon me, but you look like utter shit. You need to sleep, or you'll keel over tomorrow. Please, trust me on this."

"All right," she muttered, dragged herself off the sofa, and staggered on her way toward the bedchamber.

"And don't forget to apply more Burn-Healing Paste," he called after her. "There's a pot of it in the medicine --"

She closed the bedchamber door before he could finish and collapsed against it.

The little clock on the bedchamber mantelpiece chimed the half-hour, and Hermione turned her face toward it, head lolling in utter exhaustion.

In the end, though, crying over spilt milk wasn't in Hermione's nature -- with one or two notable exceptions, the most notable of which was sprawled out in a wing-chair in the sitting-room: so she dragged herself into the bath, ran a tub full of water, scrubbed all the blood, soot, and assorted muck from her body and hair, and then -- not having left any clothing in Severus' rooms -- she had to resort to stealing a nightshirt from his dresser.

She'd just cracked the door to tell him the bath was available when she realised he was otherwise engaged.

" -- Dobby tells Pinky that Miss Herminey and Professor Sir are hurt --"

"That's not important at the moment, Pinky," Severus said.

Hermione glued herself to the sliver of the open door. She could see Pinky standing on the hearth-rug, twisting her hands together, earnest, ugly little face screwed up with concern: of Severus, she could only see his boots and a long length of leg splayed out toward the fire, trousers rather the worse for wear.

"Can you leave the Gounds?" Severus continued.

"Oh, we isn't supposed to, Professor Sir --"

"I didn't ask if you were supposed to, I asked if you could."

"Yes, Professor Sir, but we gets in a great deal of trouble."

"Don't worry about that, I shall tell Headmistress I asked you to."

There was a rustle of papers, a flash of white in the corner of Hermione's vision, and she saw Pinky stand on tip-toe and peer at what Severus held.

"This is a... it's like the Infirmary, but much larger, with many buildings. It's south of London. Do you know where that is?"

"London is the big town -- Dobby is going to to London a long time ago, he is telling Pinky so.... But Pinky isn't knowing where it is. Can Professor Sir show Pinky?"

Severus sighed; the site-map -- for that's what it must be -- crumpled in his lap, and Hermione saw him raise a filthy hand and point to one of the bookshelves. "Fetch the atlas, there -- No, no, the green-bound book nearest the mantel," he said more sharply as Pinky bounded off in the wrong direction. "Yes, that one. Bring it here."

Pinky dragged the book from the shelf, clasped it very carefully to her chest, brought it back to him, and gently placed it on his knee.

"London is south," Severus said softly -- trying to be patient, Hermione could tell -- as he paged through the front of the book, and then turned it so Pinky could see: Pinky's ears perked up and forward, and she watched earnestly as he pointed out the features. "Edinburgh is closest to Hogwarts, and that's here. London --"

Pinky's eyes followed Severus' finger all the way down the map of the island.

"-- is here. The heart of it is north of the big river that meets the sea, but where you'd go is south of that." He turned a few pages, and then pointed again. "That is just about where I'm sending you. The place -- Cane Hill is what it's called -- is very large."

"Why is Professor Sir sending Pinky there?"

"Because there may be wild elves trapped in the buildings there. Miss Hermione and I freed some of them, but there may be more we couldn't find."

Pinky squealed, and clapped her hands over her mouth when Severus cautioned her with an upraised hand.

"You must be very careful because the buildings aren't safe. The elves may be warded in cells, and you mustn't step inside with them, or you might be trapped.... You're excellent at breaking wards, blast you, so work at them from the outside." (Pinky preened a bit at that.) "And you should wait until after dark tonight because there's been a fire, and Muggles will be all over the place until it's out."

"Oh, thank you, Professor Sir, oh, yes, Pinky is being very careful, Pinky is asking Dobby to be going with her --"

"Very well, very well --"

"-- so Dobby and Pinky is being safe together --"

"Yes, yes, that's fine, blast it, now just.... Here, take the map to Dobby and show him.... You're dismissed."

"Yes, Professor Sir," Pinky babbled, and dropped an awkward little curtsey. "Pinky is thanking Professor Sir so much!" She managed to pop out of the room before Severus chucked the atlas at her, but only after he produced an audible snarl.

Hermione crept across the bedchamber, slipped under the covers, and conclusively bolloxed all hope of actually getting sleep by thinking.

She felt unaccountably ashamed of her own award. Not that she'd got the Order of Merlin, no, not even Third Class: all she'd rated was a special citation. But that was more than Severus Snape, former Death Eater and Chief Intelligence-gatherer for the Order of the Phoenix, had got. And he'd certainly deserved recognition, no matter how nasty and self-centred. No doubt about it: he could be personally vicious to the point of taking advantage of her naivete -- and of enjoying it -- but he had a curious habit of doing the right thing in the long run, even if his methods weren't always above reproach.

She hadn't figured him out by the time she fell asleep; but it didn't take a great deal of deduction the next morning to pinpoint who'd put more Burn-Healing Paste on her face as she slept, since she'd forgot to do it after her bath.

*****

Chapter 19 Footnotes.

Link to Chapter 20