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The Man Who Sold the World by Meggory [Reviews - 20]

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sixteen



The Man Who Sold the World
By Meggory

The tops of the trees skewed drunkenly as Hermione tried to drive over and around them, frantically twisting on the steering wheel and pressing on the useless accelerator. She took her eyes off the scenery to glare at Severus, who was muttering angrily and steadily under his breath. His wand, gripped tightly in his right hand, seemed to jiggle of its own accord. His gaze was fixed firmly on the ground below.

He did not turn to look at her as he said, “Stay as close to the tree tops as you can. Any higher and we may trip wards that we don’t know about. Besides, I can’t guarantee the Invisibility Charm. The vehicle is moving too quickly, and it’s not a permanent charm.” A deep furrow lined the blank space between his eyebrows. “The spells I cast are not entirely compatible,” he admitted darkly. “Filius could have done better. Hopefully we make it to Hogwarts before one of them wears off.”

“Hogwarts?” Vasiliy inquired in a surprised voice from the back seat. Hermione glanced in her rearview mirror and saw the Russian man had creases of worry around his eyes and mouth. He looked older than his middle years.

“It’s a logical choice. Hermione needs a wand core if she’s going to be of any use, and the Forbidden Forest will make a good hiding place. I couldn’t imagine any school administration allowing students in there, under the Dark Lord or not,” replied Severus coolly. He seemed to be studiously ignoring Hermione’s angry, frustrated stare.

“What, am I chopped liver?” she demanded. “Of any use? Who is driving the car, Severus?”

“I meant magically,” he explained, exasperated.

“I’ll have you know I knocked out Percy Weasley with wandless magic the day we left London,” Hermione said haughtily. “I’m not utterly useless.”

“Fine, you’re not useless. Closer to the trees, Hermione!” He stabbed his left index finger at the windscreen, where the pointy tops of the spruce trees were beginning to sink beneath the front of the car. Hermione managed to wrangle the car nearer to the ground, cursing breathily. She caught a glimpse of Vasiliy smirking with contained amusement in the mirror. “Just keep on going northeast, and we should arrive in about two and a half hours.”

Sighing with resignation, Hermione flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. Her white knuckles bloomed pink with blood under the skin. It was going to be a long drive. “Vasiliy, who were those Death Eaters?” she asked, hoping conversation would make the trip a bit easier.

“A reconnaissance team, probably. I’ve had one come by the area before, but there were only two men at the time. I invited them in for tea and Obliviated them and sent them on their way. Polite, if ignorant. I suppose I’m lucky there hasn’t been another one for such a long time. I’m a wand maker, not a ward setter. I am not able to create the protective wards like the ones that keep Muggles and Apparating wizards away Hogwarts.” He sighed deeply. “At least we had some warning.” He fell silent then, gazing intently out the window, possibly watching for signs of his house-elf.

Hermione watched Severus out of the corner of her eye for a moment. He was also staring out the window, but his lips moved as if still casting spells and his wand moved jerkily in his hand. She sighed. It was going to be a very long trip.

The car kept on in a northeasterly direction for most of the trip, detouring only thrice to sail wide around a small Muggle village. The terrain became increasingly rugged as they neared Hogwarts; hills became low mountains, thick forests gave way abruptly to long, narrow lakes, and eventually the only break in the trees was the thin clearance for the Hogwarts Express rails. Hermione began to duck closer to the trees when Severus suddenly piped up, “Turn left, now!”

“What?” said Hermione even as her hands moved on the steering wheel.

“Left! We have to avoid triggering the wards on the school grounds,” he replied sharply. “Left, Hermione!”

“I’m trying!” she snapped back. The wheel had made its complete two and a half rotations, but the levitation charms Severus had placed on the vehicle made sudden corrections impossible. Slowly, the car began to veer sideways, but it was too little too late. The front bumper bucked up as if she had driven over a particularly high curb, and the car began to spin like a steel top in the air. Hermione hung onto the steering wheel as if it were a life preserver and made a futile attempt to settle the vehicle by turning right. The slow movements of their flight from Vasiliy’s home were gone; the car hurtled towards the trees at a steep angle while simultaneously rocking back and forth. Severus waved his wand wildly at the ground, and Vasiliy was firmly wedged between the front seat head rests, also casting spells like a champion dueler.

Both of Hermione’s feet were pressing on the brake pedal as if such mundane concepts like mechanics or physics could stop their rapid descent to earth. Branches--evergreen, spruce, fir--slammed into the sides of the car, brushing the windows with a deceptively gentle manner. The wizards’ spells were doing nothing. Hermione did the one thing that her Muggle-bred common sense advised her. Freeing her hands from the death grip on the steering wheel, she grabbed the seat belt and rammed it home into the metal buckle by her thigh. The ground rushed up at her from the windscreen. It was a lovely shade of black.

Someone was slapping her, not gently. A pair of hands, with long slender fingers and a callous, tapped her cheek and probed at her forehead at the same time. The fingers on her forehead hurt far worse than the ones smacking her face. She turned her head to avoid the pain and managed to groan. The fingers leapt away from her skin, and she managed to blink a few times. Above her, trees and Severus Snape towered. He looked slightly concerned. She lifted a hand to her eyes and brushed what felt like dry evergreen needles from her eyebrows. With her vision clear, she tried to push herself up and failed miserably. A grunt escaped her lips as she fell back to the ground as surely as though Severus had shoved a hand to her shoulder. Turning her head sideways made it easier to breathe, and she caught a glimpse of the slightly crumpled steel form of her little blue automobile resting mortally against the bole of a giant tree. The tree had not fared so well either. It tilted dangerously towards the ground. A pang of guilt clutched her heart as she looked away from the car; it was as if her trusty sidekick had finally fallen in battle. A garbled line of words tumbled from her lips.

Severus bent down and frowned. “What was that?” he asked softly.

“Cars shouldn’t fly. Ever. No more flying cars. It didn’t work for Ron and Harry, and it didn’t work for us. Okay?” Taking a deep breath to speak made a great deep ache fill her torso, and she barely stifled a cry of pain. Severus watched her, brows furrowed with what could very well have been worry, and knelt next to her.

“What hurts?” he asked her, his hands hovering at his sides, unsure of what he could do for her.

“Aside from everything?” she groaned back. Her hand wandered to the hem of her shirt and pulled it up. She lifted her head enough to see a wide, blackening bruise running across her stomach and up towards her shoulder. A wince crossed his face before he glanced politely away from her expanse of skin. “Thank the gods for seat belts.”

With a frown, Severus leaned closer to her. “What is your name?” he asked her calmly.

“Er, Hermione,” she replied.

“And what is my name?”

“Hmm.” A sudden blank filled the space in her brain. Had she not known a moment ago? She had woken up, and there was a man there, and she had put a name to a face. She was sure she knew this man, and she knew what his name was--she knew he took his tea sweet--but what was it? “I’m not sure. Does it start with an ‘s?’”

“What day of the week is it?” A note of worry had crept into his voice.

“Er, Wednesday?”

Another man appeared in her field of vision and smiled down at her. “Of course it’s Wednesday. Are you feeling all right, my dear Hermione?”

“I think so, Vasiliy. But I can’t remember his name. It’s on the tip of my tongue.” She pointed to the long-haired, sallow man, whose eyes seemed unnaturally dark. His whole expression was dark, but he shook his head at Vasiliy.

“Don’t help her, Vasya,” he said quietly. “She has a concussion. Not too serious, I think, if she can eventually remember my name. I can’t fix it; I’m no Mediwitch.”

“She will be fine, if with a grand headache. Perhaps we can find the ingredients to make a potion for her. But first, we must find a hiding place.”

Hermione raised her hand out of habit with an answer. Her fingers waved dangerously close to the unknown man’s nose. A tickle in the back of her mind reminded her that he did not like it when she raised her hand with the right answer. “I know! Let’s go to Hagrid’s hut. If it’s still there and abandoned, we can hide out there. I don’t know how far it is from here, though. We are in the Forbidden Forest, right?” she asked Vasiliy, who nodded.

The dark man glanced up at the sky and shaded his eyes with a lean hand. “I would say it’s about tea time. If we are where I think we are, it could take until dusk to reach Hagrid’s. Although,” he looked pointedly at Hermione, “it will be slow going. She probably shouldn’t be moved too much.”

Vasiliy nodded in agreement. “What do you suggest?”

“Mobilicorpus, perhaps.” The two men exchanged thoughtful glances, and Hermione waved her hand under the pale one’s nose.

“Excuse me? I am not a piece of baggage, thank you very much. I can walk.” To prove her point, she rolled over onto her stomach and pushed herself out of the layer of forest mulch. She was just about to straighten her knees when she promptly lost her balance and fell over. The man she could not name simply raised an eyebrow at her, and Vasiliy hid a smile behind his hand.

“Perhaps we can come up with a compromise?” Vasiliy suggested innocently.

After much arguing and pouting, Vasiliy Gregorovich led his companions through the depths of the Forbidden Forest under the keen direction of the man Hermione could not name. Hermione watched Vasiliy’s back with small huffs of displeasure as the pale man stumbled slightly on an exposed tree root. She tried not to tighten her grip around his neck like he had asked, but the perch on his back was so precarious that she wanted to save herself from toppling over his head like an unwary rider on a sly horse. The whole situation was undignified, but Severus was not about to allow her to walk on her own while she was still forgetful, so--

“Severus! Your name is Severus Snape,” she exclaimed gleefully. The pair of arms holding her up against his spine slipped down, and she found herself standing firmly on the ground.

He turned to face her with a wry gleam in his eye. “I was beginning to think you were enjoying that,” he said dryly.

“Your shoulder blades are too bony,” she rebutted. He snorted and whirled after Vasiliy, his dark robes billowing around him. Sometimes she wondered how he got the fabric to do that--it was very dramatic. With a sigh, she began to follow him when something brushed up against her arm. She glanced behind her and barely bit off a shriek of surprise. “Oh, dear gods,” she breathed. Her voice was a bit more high pitched than usual.

The Thestral cocked his head at her as if wondering why she was so surprised and stretched out its long skeletal neck towards her. Before she could step aside, it opened its mouth and began to gently lick her forehead. “Erg,” she said, pitching her voice louder so her companions would hear her, “Severus, a little help?”

She tried to shoo the Thestral’s head away from hers with little success. The dark skin beneath her fingers was smooth and dry, more like a snake’s skin than a large lizard’s. The gray tongue was soft and more than a bit wet. “Do you miss Hagrid?” she asked the creature softly. The Thestral snorted and backed up a few steps as Severus approached Hermione’s side. In the shadows of the trees, she could make out an entire herd of Thestrals, all watching her impassively.

The former Potions professor stared sadly at the Thestral but spoke to Hermione. “I must have missed a bit of blood on your hairline. My apologies.” A soft sigh escaped his lips and his voice dropped low. “You must see them very well. Come along.” His hand grasped her elbow, and she found herself holding his arm as they hurried away.

The sun slowly fell towards the earth as the trio wandered purposefully and wearily around the massive tree trunks and over the soft, thick forest floor. Hermione could have sworn that they had only been walking for an hour or so when a orange-gray darkness descended upon the forest. She glanced up to find the sun absent from the narrow expanse of sky that the foliage allowed her to see. Before she could open her mouth to ask Severus if they were nearly at the edge of the forest, he loosened his arm from her grip and pointed straight ahead. “There,” he said.

Unexpectedly, a ramshackle building bearing an uncanny resemblance to Hagrid’s former residence hunkered amid a wild copse of young hazel trees and, oddly, mature oaks. Vines covered the outer walls, in some places caressing the wood and in others seemingly tearing the corners of the planks away from the hut. The forest had embraced Hagrid’s house like it had welcomed him when he was the groundskeeper.

Severus approached the hut carefully, wand out, and slowly climbed the steps to the door. He tapped the doorknob with the tip of his wand, which glowed briefly. The hinges squealed as he pushed the heavy door open. Vasiliy took a step towards the hut. “Severus?”

“Wait, Vasya.” He disappeared into the darkness of the hut. Hermione fidgeted impatiently as she tried to figure out what exactly Severus was doing inside; she could not hear his voice or his footfalls. Her breath came out in a little annoyed huff. Vasiliy turned his head towards her hand gave her a slight smile.

“Patience, dear Hermione. We cannot stay here unprotected.” His gaze wandered up to the quickly darkening sky.

“You’re worried about Vovo,” she stated softly.

“I am not certain how far the anti-Apparition wards that protect Hogwarts extend,” he replied absently. “If they end at the edge of the trees, Vovo may be able to find me. If not. . . .” Vasiliy trailed off, but his gaze settled on the hut, clearly not wanting to talk.

They waited for Severus to reappear in the doorway in an awkward, stone silence. The owls were beginning to rouse for the night, and Hermione caught a glimpse of a lone bat fluttering through the low hanging branches. Finally, Severus stuck his head out the door. “It is safe,” he said quickly before disappearing into the dark building once more.

With a sigh of relief, Hermione climbed the steps and entered, putting her hand out to her side to ward off Fang out of habit. She brought the hand back to her side reluctantly when she remembered that neither the boarhound nor his master lived here anymore. Despite the dark of the windows outside, the hut glowed with the light of a fire within the hearth. Hermione took her usual chair--now that she was grown, it was only slightly less oversized--and watched Vasiliy bring forth his three trunks, shrunken, out of his pockets. He returned them to their normal size with a wave of his wand, opened the first, and began to dig out his tea service.

Severus glanced at him disparagingly and snapped something caustic-sounding in Russian. Vasiliy laughed and replied, “Wanker.” The word was awkward coming from that accent.

“Where did you learn Russian, Severus?” Hermione asked curiously.

“From books!” Vasiliy interjected, sounding slightly scandalized. “When I met him his accent was terrible. He sounded like he had marbles in his mouth, and a lisp besides.”

“You can learn anything from books,” defended Hermione, her tone taking the haughty tone she had used with Ron and Harry so many times. Severus shot her a mixed look of gratitude and annoyance while Vasiliy continued to make up for his missed afternoon tea. “If you’re making tea, Vasiliy, I will have a cuppa when it’s ready.”

“How do you take it, my dear?”

“Black.” The rattling of the tea things on the dusty wooden table irritated her senses. “I need some fresh air.”

“Don’t go far,” Severus warned her sharply. She responded with a long-suffering roll of her eyes and slipped out the door.

The Forbidden Forest lived up to its name once the sun had fled from the sky. Shadows loomed and shifted, hinting at monsters and revealing nothing. In any other forest, one could be reassured that the only monsters slinking around trees were purely fictional; the Forbidden Forest harboured werewolves and Acromantulas, Fluffy the three-headed dog and a feral, turquoise Ford Anglia. Hermione chuckled; maybe the Anglia would find a friend in the little blue auto. She sat down on the steps, her hands brushing over the light coating of lichen on the rough wood, and stared into the trees. Her gaze lingered on a supple yew, and she squinted when a shadow moved at the base. She told herself she was seeing things before a twig snapped and some dead leaves rustled by the yew tree.

Her heart was going to pound out of her chest. “Hello?” she called softly as she rose, backing up one step towards the hut.

The shadow moved towards her, hesitantly at first, but gaining momentum. Hermione’s hand nearly brushed the door handle when her eyes finally adjusted to the dim light and recognized the shape in front of her. “Fang?” she said incredulously.

The boarhound trundled up the stairs, snuffling and grunting, and began to cover her hands with drool. Kneeling down, she rubbed Hagrid’s beloved dog behind his long, droopy ears and suffered him to lick her chin once. “Oh, Fang, have you been all by yourself in the forest for all this time?” she asked him quietly. “You’re a good dog.”

Another twig snapping brought her head up; her eyes caught a human-sized shadow emerging from the hulking trees. A low, woman’s voice said, “He’s with me.”

Hermione did not have time to push the door open before the voice said, “Stupefy.

As Hermione’s mind went blank, she thought she heard Severus shout, “Expelliarmus.”





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Author’s Notes:
1) As usual for the past while, my sincere apologies for the lengthy wait you have all had to endure while my writing takes a backseat to my boring real life. I prefer the fictional one, trust me, but one cannot live in lies.
2) Hugs and kisses for all my readers and reviewers!
3) Ah, the flying cars. I never thought it was a good idea to make cars fly.
4) When my boyfriend suffered a concussion during a rugby game, he forgot he had two sisters and could not remember what the game of rugby was. He had no idea why he was wearing such strange clothing.
5) It seems odd that Hermione suffered car accident injuries while Severus and Vasiliy were fine--she needs a wand, pronto! But it allowed for Severus piggy-back rides! Yay!







The Man Who Sold the World by Meggory [Reviews - 20]

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