Consequentially Yours by Nyruserra

Chapter 13 - The Twilight of an English Mind

13
The Twilight of an English Mind

It took them the better part of an hour to calm him.

“…but you’ve made rather a mess of poor Mycroft’s desk, now haven’t you?” he was saying, with a mournful glance at the partially straightened surface. “How is anyone to ever find anything again in all that?”

Oliver was rather shocked when, instead of taking indignant umbrage at the old wizard’s comments, Hermione shot a sidelong glance at him before giving the old timer a sort of half shrug and an apologetic smile, as if to indicate that it had been his fault that the desk was now in such a violated state. Before he had even had a chance to marshal his indignation, she was going on.

“There are so few who appreciate the importance of a scholar’s organizational system; even when it looks so haphazard to the dis-inclined.”

Mr. Barrows shot her an amused glance. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do, young lady.”

Hermione merely gazed back at him, rather primly, at being called out. “The question is: is it working?”

He laughed. Unlike his nervous sort of quaver, his laugh was deep and rich and made him sound much younger. He threw back his head and roared, slapping Hermione on the shoulder as he did so. She took this with good grace, smiling and even joining in to giggle a little uncertainly. Oliver was worried that Thammasy would do himself serious harm, the way he was carrying on, and was trying to come up with a plan if the auld man should have a serious fit on them.

Oliver’s worries proved unfounded, as he got himself under control very quickly, but his short lived mirth proved to have had one rather large benefit.

He and Hermione were now apparently bosom buddies, and were quickly bonding over some rather technical, scholarly humour that had Oliver completely lost after the first turn. When Hermione rather slyly brought the conversation back around to ‘poor Mycroft’ and his research, Thammassy was much more inclined to treat them as compatriots.

“Well, seeing as how you’ve got such an interest in it – I suppose it wouldn’t hurt—” He was back to being quavering and fussy, it seemed. Looking around with almost comic care, he nodded once, before rocking slightly to get the momentum to pull himself up from where he sat. The noise of his joints as a few of them popped was plainly audible. Hermione stood back with a small wince, and they watched as he shuffled across the small space to the other desk. He pushed the ratty chair out of his way, and knelt before the desk with a grimace and more popping of his bony knees. After squinting at the wood from several angles, he began working his age-stiffened fingers along the front edge of it, worrying the wood relentlessly until he seemed to catch the edge of some invisible seam. A sharp crack indicated that he had jarred something loose, and slowly, he wiggled a shallow drawer from where it had been hidden, invisibly smooth against the rest of the wood facing.

With reverent care he lay the last vestiges of his late colleague’s work, his remaining legacy, on the cleared area of the desk; a battered, dirty notebook, held together with twine to keep loose pages from escaping, looking to Hermione’s eyes like Tom Riddle’s diary after its trip through the girls toilets.

“Why did he hide his documentation, Mr. Barrows? I mean, wasn’t he doing rather innocent research?”

He gave a funny twitch of his lips, not quite a frown, but it wanted to be. His faded blue eyes stared into the distance of the bookshelves for a moment before he shrugged, pushing away the question. “Academic jealously, I suppose. He was a bit of a queer fellow – had a real thing for Cockroach Clusters with his morning tea. Very odd taste, if you ask me.”

And that seemed to be all they were going to get out of him. With a sort of nod of his head, he turned back to them. “Well, things to do; the museum doesn’t stand still for the likes of you. See that you don’t touch anything else, or we’ll never find it again - and watch for toads when you leave.”

Bemused, Oliver and Hermione just stood there, watching his retreating back as Thammassy Barrows tottered out of the room and down the hall. There was a pause, before either of them moved, when Hermione gave herself a shake, as if coming out from under a fog.

“Did he just say toads?”

***

It was Hermione who noticed it first, though Oliver had to acknowledge that he made no move to stop her.

They had finished with the drawer, emptying it of not only the battered notebook, but a tatty quill; a strange sketch that Oliver thought he could possibly make a bat out of, if he were to squint at it sideways and use a pair of scissors; two Sickles; and a half-sucked lemon candy, among other things of equal apparent use.

Hermione had made a few frustrated noises, but softly, as she was still caught up in the thrill of discovery. She had been right, and Oliver had to admit he wouldn’t have stood a chance of getting the auld man’s confidence were he alone. The smell of old paper, which at first had been only faint and hardly detectable, was beginning to cling to his nostrils, becoming so permeating that Oliver was afraid it would be capable of suffocation if they were to remain much longer. He found himself hunching his shoulders, curling slightly as the walls returned to the periphery of his vision. The notebook was lying on the desk, the other items from Pafft’s secret stash spread like fallout all over its surface. Oliver had taken the expedient route in cleaning its surface, and used an arm to sweep the remaining detritus onto the floor.

They had left the book alone, knowing that a man who was paranoid enough to hide such prosaic research so thoroughly was also more than capable of placing enough jinxes and hexes on it to make anyone who tried to open it very sorry, especially if they didn’t like being a turnip. Oliver would take it back with him, and have one of the Curse Breakers take a look at it, but he could see the way her eyes kept drifting to it, and a couple of times, her hand actually started the journey longingly before she managed to stop herself.

They were still looking, examining every inch of the room with renewed enthusiasm, careful not to acknowledge that there was probably nothing more to find; admitting they were done here meant going back to their room.

Lost in his avoidance, Oliver didn’t notice when the shuffling sounds of Hermione’s search of the shelves slowed and gradually stopped. For a long moment, there was no noise to be heard in the room, beyond the occasional pop from the strange conductors on the experiment table. Oliver pushed another pile of useless papers aside with a sigh, wondering if it was time to admit defeat. He wondered if he could somehow pretend exhaustion, though of course that would mean relegating Hermione to the bedroom for the evening, but perhaps—

Hermione screamed.

Well, actually, it was more of a strangled yell; as though it was far to clichéd and unproductive to scream, but she couldn’t quite help herself from doing it all the same. Oliver was out of his seat before she had finished. It proved to be a wise motion, when she crashed into the chair he'd just vacated as she scrambled away from the shelves with such force that both she and the chair went toppling to the floor in a painful tangle of limbs and splinters. Her left hand was smudged, he noticed, a shiny viscous liquid that even in the half light shone like silver. Oliver’s blood froze.

Where once had been a smooth face of book shelves, ancient dark stained wood of indeterminate origins, except possibly a scrap yard, was askew. The smooth line of the shelves that one would expect of normal furniture was interrupted by a faint shimmer, almost like the wood in a section about two feet wide and five tall had been stretched thin. It wavered like torchlight. Hermione was cursing, struggling to free herself from the wreckage of the chair, and though Oliver reached down, offering her a hand, he still kept a wary eye on it. A faint, coppery taste on his tongue made him realize he’d bitten the inner part of his check.

“I’m fine; of all the stupid—” A quick glance showed that despite some minor scrapes and a lurid purple bruise on one cheek, she seemed alright.

“Wha’ happened?” He tried to sound calm, to force down his unease. He reached down and took her wrist, turning her arm so that her palm was out of her line of sight, and casually wiped the smudge from her skin before she saw it. He let his breath out once he saw the skin underneath was pink and unbroken.

“I was examining the titles of some of these books, and well, I noticed this one.” She stooped to pick up a thin, green covered book from where it had fallen, and held it up for his examination, but it looked just like everything else in this room to him; one step beyond a junk pile.

“I don’t,” he started - but then stopped. She relinquished the book to him without a word; only a sly look for his sudden understanding. There, on the cover of the book, half-hidden in grime, was a strange symbol, like a bisected knot.

Or, if he squinted at it sideways, maybe a bat.

Turning the book over, he could just make out the title, Hidden Mysteries.

“I thought that perhaps, if this Mycroft Pafft person was worried enough to use a secret drawer, then he might have had a larger secret to hide as well.”

“You cast a Revealing Charm?”

She nodded distractedly while still twisting, trying to examine herself for damage. “I figured the bookshelves were the most likely, being almost as overdone as the drawer trick.” She paused to glare at the bookshelf, as if to blame it for her fall. “Obviously Mr. Pafft reads too many bad novels,” she said with disgust.

Oliver wisely chose not to laugh.

“Anyway, I had to be touching the shelf as the thing I wanted to affect, and when I cast the spell, it was like the whole thing just shrugged beneath my hand. You could actually see the wood ripple and distort.”

“Frankly, I think I would ha’ jumped a wee bit too.”

She looked at him sharply, looking for any hint that he was making fun of her, but he kept his face impassive, turning to stare more fully at the stretched patch of wood. After a moment, she turned back to it, too.

This close, he could almost hear a tinny whine emanating from it. The thin sound vibrated uncomfortably against the bones in his ears, almost on the edge of hearing. It was an itchy noise, all prickles and burs, making him want to twitch and scratch the inside of his head. He shook it, trying to get rid of the feeling.

“Seems harmless enough,” Hermione said, but her expression was dubious.

Oliver didn’t say anything, but took a careful step closer, and poked his wand at it.

It slid through the once-solid wood with some small resistance, like pushing through pea soup that had been left to boil too long. Oliver allowed it to slide in half-way, and stopped. Nothing attempted to pull the wand from his grasp, or hindered him from pulling it out a few seconds later. The wavering portal rippled faintly as the wand emerged, completely unmarked.

“We really do want to see what someone would have wanted to hide here so badly,” Hermione admitted worriedly at Oliver’s questioning look.

“I reckon its safe enough. The auld codger dinnae seem the type ta keep monsters in his office.”

“Do be careful.”

Oliver grunted an acknowledgment and reached out, carefully.

It felt more like thin wet mortar than pea soup to his questing fingers, and the chill was enough to make him glad the bookcase wasn’t deeper than its three quarters of a metre. Sensation was diminished to almost nothing in the charged space inside the case, and his hand throbbed bloodlessly. The numbness extended well up past his elbow, almost to the point of contact with the barrier when his fingers grasped something, but his deadened senses could tell him little more than that it was heavy.

“Did you find anything?” He could hear the anxiousness in her voice, caught somewhere on the knife-edge between worry and excitement.

“I’ve go’ something, but it’s wedged in there good.”

“Any idea what it is?”

“Yeh cannae feel anything in there; it’s like wearing six pairs of gloves, all atop of each other.”

“Cold?” she asked, stepping close to examine the shimmering surface curiously, as if she were hoping to see what he had gotten hold of through the stretched transparency.

“A mite chilly, but nae cold enough to freeze you numb. Stand back a bit, so’s I can have a go at chuckin’ it oout.” He looked around for the edge of the portal, and braced his arm against it, flexing his knees for leverage and heaved, hard.

It almost felt like the bookcase was releasing its prize reluctantly, and when it came free of the barrier, the sudden lack of resistance was enough to make Oliver stumble, and what emerged was enough to make him wish Percy’s men had found it themselves. Behind him, Hermione gasped, and the sound cut off abruptly in a way that made Oliver sure she had just bitten her own lip against the reaction. Oliver really wished he could stop finding bodies.

“A bit of a strange thing to find in a man’s bookcase, would ye nae say?”

“His own killer? Yes I would say so.” Hermione’s voice shook, suspiciously bright. At Oliver’s questioning look, she shook her head once against his concern, and instead pointed out, “He’s a Muggle.” Her tone indicated that she thought this should be obvious.

“What makes yeh say that?” Oliver bent to examine the body, being sure to kneel in Hermione’s line of sight as much as possible.

Death rarely made anyone prettier, and after a few days they tended to take a pretty sharp downward turn towards unsettling. Pale, blue-tinged skin was sagging, beginning to lose the elastic quality that made it look alive and not like some waxen simulacrum. His eyes were wide, and the expression on his narrow face was surprised, as though death had somehow managed to sneak up on him, but the irises had hazed over with milky film to look like pale glass marbles. Blood was dried to the side of his head, originating somewhere near the hairline, and Oliver was relieved to see it wasn’t silver, but dried to a dark, almost black colour. The man was dressed from head to toe in close fitting dark clothing, but enough wizards were wearing Muggle clothing these days for that not to be definitive.

“Look at his ear.” Hermione broke in impatiently, as though sensing he remained unconvinced. “No witch or wizard wears a Muggle hearing aid.”

“A hearing device? He was a deaf assassin?” Oliver shifted to point out, “Looks like he stopped something pretty heavy with his skull; that’s probably what killed him.”

“Why not? But I suspect he could hear fine; it was probably modified, to assist him in his line of work, possibly in listening for the tumblers in locks. Who knows?”

She sounded a bit calmer now that she had a puzzle to solve, and she circled to kneel on the other side of the body. Her face was still an ashen grey, but one look at her expression told him it would be useless to protest. Carefully avoiding the bloody contusion on the side of his head, she began methodically turning out his pockets, but Oliver noted she gripped the edge of the material so tightly her knuckles were turning white.

“What I don’t understand, is how in the name of Morgana’s knickers did he manage to get past the anti-Muggle barriers?”

Hermione sat back on her heels suddenly, looking serious. “With this.” In her hand, she held a slick twist of metal. It glistened wetly in the palm of her hand, looking to Oliver like it almost pooled there, liquidly. Hermione was cradling it clumsily, as though trying to hold it without actually allowing it to touch her.

“It’s a talisman; a very Dark talisman and I don’t even want to think about what it’s made of.”

***

Of course, in the end they’d had to wait until someone from the Ministry was dispatched. It was Oliver’s responsibility to stay with the body until the Auror turned up, but she’d only squared her shoulders, her mouth set in a determined line against his suggestion that she go down the hall, to wait instead in one of the break rooms they’d passed on their way down.

Forty-five minutes later, the Aurors had come and gone, and they had Floo’d back to the inn. Hermione must have opened her mouth during the journey, for she had been dropped onto the hearth rug at Oliver’s feet, spluttering and coughing. She had complained huffily about unreliable fireplaces through streaming eyes once she had been able to breathe again. When Oliver pointed out her probably error, she glared crossly at him.

They had spent the remainder of the evening in rather strained company, though Oliver noticed with some concern that though Hermione had taken to retreating to the bedroom as soon as it was decent to do so each evening, to escape his company, she was still moving about the small sitting room, compulsively driven to action.

She was still rather pale and agitated, and after watching her putter around the small apartment, uselessly straightening and moving things for twenty minutes, Oliver stood and placed himself directly in her path.

When she stopped, she looked at him a trifle crossly, but he held out his arms slightly, inviting. Not crowding, and being very careful to keep his expression neutral, letting her make the decision to come to him; silently offering to turn back the clock; offering intimacy again.

She stared at him, a strange expression on her face, but she slipped into his arms willingly enough after a moment, a soft sigh escaping her.

Her hands were cold, so cold Oliver could feel it right through the fabric of his shirt. He tightened his arms, fractionally, and began tentatively rubbing small circles at the base of her spine, secretly pleased when she didn’t pull away.

She turned slightly to rest her check more comfortably against his chest, but after a moment, she gave a bitter sort of laugh. “You’d think I’d be used to it. That we’d been through enough that I wouldn’t start developing nerves now.”

He didn’t respond, pretty sure she didn’t need him to.

“Spells usually don’t leave the bodies gruesome like that, and well, if they did, you were really too busy with the business of staying alive to take it in,” she reflected, softly. “You saw, but it was like the mind was too caught up in what you had to do to survive to give you any time to think why you should be disturbed by it. Everything else just shut off.”

He was quite for a moment, trying to find the right words to tell her that she was the bravest lass he knew, that he admired her more for her empathy, despite everything.

“Be glad you’re not used ta’it, Mouse. Tha’ was a man’s life; an’ I reckon no one should ever be able t’ jus’ lose sight of tha’, an’ dismiss it sae coolly.”

She twisted to look at him, but didn’t try to pull away. “I think it’s the accent,” she said finally, like she had found the answer to some mystery.

Oliver looked down on her, and enquired warily, “Oh?”

“It makes everything you say sound more reasonable than it probably is.”

He grunted quietly, and tugged her down on the couch with him. She sat without protest, seeming content just cradled against him as she got lost in her own thoughts. He let her, just running a soothing hand down her spine as he read this morning’s discarded Prophet, and listened to the little hitch in her breathing finally start to smooth out and disappear.

He was starting to become aware of her, the feel of her hair against his neck, the scent of cinnamon and her warmth gradually feeling as though it would burn him where she lay, still curled peaceably by his side. Soon, he would have to make some kind of comment about the time – it was nearing two in the morning, and she should get some sleep after all the chaos at the museum – but he was loath to disturb this sudden truce, and turned back to his paper instead.

When, a quarter hour later, she began to shift uncomfortably, it was as if she was somehow divining the direction his thoughts were taking, and scolding him for delaying.

Hermione sat back quite suddenly, and began fidgeting with the hem of her top, not looking at him at all. Oliver’s paper lay forgotten on his crossed knee, and he found himself reaching to rub the back of his neck, fidgeting, the arm that had been holding her just a moment before feeling suddenly useless.

“It will only be harder if we make a big deal out of it, you know,” she said, still looking at the loose thread she was picking at instead of him.

“A big deal…?” Oliver let the question trail off, not sure of where she was going.

She just looked at him, like he was being obtuse. “Sleeping arrangements.” She returned her attention to the hem of her top, but not quickly enough for him to miss her pink cheeks. “I expect you to join me this evening, and I’m certainly not sleeping on that horrible couch.”

Left feeling suddenly adrift, he watched her stand and sweep imperiously from the room. She paused at the doorway, turning, and said simply, “Come to bed, Oliver. I’m tired.”

Oliver felt as though her gaze was burning him, even after the door was safely closed behind her.

Merlin help him.

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