A/N. We're back in the present and this is a continuation of Chapter 23 with Hermione throwing the phial of potion, Harry's evidence, towards a hard surface. Harry's reaction here is what the collective reaction was from the reviews of that chapter. As you're reading Hermione's POV, remember that this is about a year after Ron's death. Hopefully she does not confuse you too much about her thoughts - if I were a shrink I would recommend medication.
Chapter 33 - Incasabil
8 February 2007 - Harry's townhouse in Toronto
Plink!
The phial with the purple potion hit and ricocheted off the solid wall just as she expected it would. It was interesting that it even damaged the paintjob. Before the small glass container reached the floor, it went flying straight into Harry's awaiting outstretched hand.
"Have you gone mad?!"
Harry yelled and she met his furious reaction with calm indifference, certain that it would incense him further. She crossed her arms across her chest as he approached knowing she deserved to hear what was to come. He continued.
"Let me make this clear! There is a murderer out there! This is evidence against him! This is the best lead we have! I trusted you with it because you are good at potions and I do need your help! This is not some pawn that you can throw around to satisfy your need to hurt me back for what I did!"
Well, that was clear. Maybe this wasn't the time to interrupt to tell him what a splendid job he had done on that. This was a first; she had never deliberately made him angry before. He took a breath and steadied himself.
"I thought you'd be mature about this, to take this seriously at least. I did not expect you to act like a vindictive, spoiled brat!"
He was red in the face and breathing hard, and he did make her feel a bit guilty for doing what she did; a bit. Yes, it was impulsive, petty and childish. Vindictive brat was certainly close to accurate. It just seemed a fitting release to rid herself of the sudden jealous rage that overcame her. The way he talked with this Andy was just unsettling, especially since the memory of his mouth on hers still scorched. She had not felt this way in a long time, not since Hogwarts. And throwing the phial hard, watching it bounce off the wall was quite therapeutic.
She knew it was important evidence and would not have done what she did unless she was absolutely sure that it would not be damaged. Duh! Really, he should be thankful she did not throw it at him.
"Oh, relax," she dismissed his outburst, "It's unbreakable."
"Thank goodness it is! If it wasn't…wait. You knew it was unbreakable?!"
"I'm not daft to destroy evidence."
"Why didn't you just say it was unbreakable?!"
"I thought the visual demonstration would make the point clear," the lies she came up with sometimes were so lame.
An incomprehensible prehistoric sound came from within Harry.
Yup. Frustrating isn't it?
Hearing it gave her a small measure of satisfaction and made her smirk.
"How did you know?"
"Where did you get it?"
"I asked first."
"What do you think is in it?"
"You've seen it before."
"The man who drank the potion and Disapparated, was he a Squib?"
"Are you going to tell me what you know or do I have to arrest you for obstructing justice?"
Hermione chastised herself for the pleasant thought that came to mind about being arrested by him. Pathetic. Her considerably weakened defenses were getting weaker every second she was alone with him.
"Not here," she said to him, "Can we have lunch somewhere?"
She wasn't really hungry but she wanted to know more about the phial and more importantly, its contents; the more public the place, the better.
"Unfortunately most don't serve lunch this early," he snapped, short tempered. She forgot. She was still on London time. "There's a 24-hour diner a few blocks from here."
"That's fine," she answered, anywhere but here.
"It's a good ten minute walk," he told her, "Unless you want us to Apparate."
He'd have to take her Side-Along. She remembered the last time they did that. It was tempting.
Argh! Stop it!
"Let's walk."
They left his messed up living room, stepped out of his house and sauntered beside each other, snow crunching beneath their feet. It wasn't too cold that morning and there was no need to rush. It would give her time to think and hoped the fresh outdoor air would cool down Harry's understandably irate mood.
She glanced at him briefly when she knew he wasn't looking and noticed the scowl on his face. It was apparent to her that he was livid or trying to sort something out or likely both. He had not slept. He seemed to have lost some weight since she last saw him and he allowed his hair to grow longer that he usually did. She felt the familiar feeling of concern swell within her.
Hermione hated this, feeling this, wishing it would end. There was something seriously wrong with her. She had been burned and scalded badly by him before. It was prudent not to have anything to do with him. Yet here she was, unable reign in her emotions and, not one hour alone with him had caved in to his physical advances already. Not only that, she was reacting to him with more groin and loin than brains. She must have the letters S-T-U-P-I-D stamped across her face. That or the other S-word.
And this was precisely why she knew that coming to see him would be a mistake. She was not ready to let go unless he let go first. She didn't think her love for him would survive the Roy Hunt break-up and definitely not Ron's death, but it did. She should be angrier, more resentful, vengeful, for she went out on a limb, gave him her heart and he not only dropped it from the highest tree branch imaginable, he jumped on it a few times and left it for dead.
Fine, she was being melodramatic and her description perhaps bordered on exaggeration. It didn't seem bad now but the night it happened that was how she would have described it. Time had somewhat healed that wound and nursed the battered ego that resulted from it. Yes, she was still embarrassed she would rather not talk about the incident ever again but she had to admit, all things considered, how he broke up with her could have been much worse. The truth hurt but it had to be told and he was pretty good at letting go. She guessed the practice that he had with other women really helped. Of course, he cowardly chose to do it as Roy Hunt.
Then Ron died. The pain of his rejection was nothing compared to how she felt after that Quidditch match. Pain was indeed relative after all.
In the days following Ron's death, Harry wanted to talk about him and about them. She didn't. There was nothing to talk about. And even if there was, she couldn't, because she couldn't be in the same room with him. The torment of guilt about Ron dying was unbearable whenever she saw him and even more so when she heard him speak. She had no choice but to shut him out.
He persisted; she resisted. By then he had changed his tune and said he loved her, maybe out of pity, maybe out of sport. Whatever his reason for his change of heart she wasn't in the mood to play games with him anymore. To her it felt like he was stringing her along knowing fully well that she loved him following her foolish confession, choosing that fact to be the center of her ire. It was easy to focus on how their games had caused Ron to do what he did, choosing to be angry at him for the liar that he was. The alternative, her believing him again, was unthinkable.
It would have been reasonable for her to hate him, for telling Ron about them after she asked him specifically not to, for not keeping his word. The truth was she didn't hate him and, until they talked and argued this morning, she wasn't even angry at him anymore. While she did think that had he not told Ron about them things would be different, she could not in good conscience blame him for Ron's decision. It wasn't his honesty that killed Ron; her lies did. She was the only one who knew everything and was the only one who could have prevented what happened. Had she not broken up with him that night Ron would still be alive today.
Earlier, when he asked her if she wanted him back in her life she could not tell him the truth. There was such a big difference between wanting and being. It would be bad to encourage him. And while she was no longer angry at him for being Roy Hunt, she remembered the bitterness she suffered last year all too well and used the memory to push him back.
If only he would stop explaining himself and let her be, she'd be able to let him go.
The blast of a horn from a passing red street car caught her attention as they turned around a corner onto a busier street and arrived at their destination. Harry stomped his snow covered boots just outside the diner as he opened the door for her and followed her in. Muggle music was playing softly in the background, complimenting the retro decorated interior. It was the Beatles and she raised her brows somewhat involuntarily as she recognized the song.
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah
She noticed that there were quite a few Muggle customers present as they slid into an empty booth across from each other. There was awkward silence.
She said you hurt her so
She almost lost her mind.
But now she said she knows
You're not the hurting kind.
John, Paul, George and Ringo were killing her. More awkward silence and hopefully no blushing.
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
And with a love like that
You know you should be glad.
Harry smiled weakly at her. For Pete's sake! She was about to draw out her wand to discretely disable the music. Thankfully, a heavily made-up middle-aged woman in an apron showed up beside them.
"Good morning, Harry," she greeted him, "Will it be the usual today?"
She wondered what that was for him, as another Beatles song played in the background.
Try to see it my way,
Do I have to keep on talking till I can't go on
"Hi Lucy. No, just coffee is fine."
"And your friend?"
She wondered who else he brought here.
We can work it out
We can work it out
"I'll have the same, thank you."
He was staring at her, the annoyance no longer there, and it was good that he did not point out that she seemed to have forgotten the reason they left his house.
Think of what I'm saying we can work it out
And get it straight or say good night
The waitress smiled as she poured them cups of coffee and left a menu for them just in case they changed their minds. She fought off the impulse to pick it up and start memorizing it so she wouldn't have to talk with him. She looked up and met his gaze.
We can work it out
We can work it out
His bright green eyes were on her, soft and kind, and she could feel that longing he had for her that was beyond the physical he had shown her so far. She cautioned herself against reading too much into it, having been wrong about it before.
Life is very short and there's no time
For fussing and fighting my friend
"How are you?" he asked, so earnestly it made her chest hurt.
She wanted him to care, she needed him to care and he sounded like he did. She shouldn't but, quite baffling to her, she still trusted him somewhat. Love was so blind and made her so stupid.
Hermione realized that they had not even exchanged civil greetings since she arrived at his doorstep. This was how bad things were between them and it always made her think that if only she never went looking for a last fling, none of this would have happened.
Life was indeed very short and it was a crime to fight and hold on to something that could not be. She bit her lower lip to keep herself from crying, tuning out the music.
"Just fine," she managed to say, "And you?"
"I could be better," he replied. "About this morning…"
"I'm sorry about it, too," she said before he apologized once more and provoked the evil twin inside her to classify the apology into lie, truth, or didn't matter.
"It's really good to see you," he declared.
Fine, that was probably true.
She could not decide how she felt about seeing him. On the one hand she missed him terribly but on the other, being with him reminded her of Ron and how he died.
"It's unbreakable."
Hermione had to steer their conversation abruptly away and that hurt her as much as she sensed it hurt him. Coming to Toronto she thought she could but just now realized she still couldn't talk about them calmly apart from her asking him again to leave her alone. She did not want to hear his side of the story or give him the opening to make that pitch which she would likely find truthful.
Across the table Harry was at a loss as to how to get through the barrier she had created between them. He guessed she was not as happy to see him as he was her. Not that he could find fault in that, but he was frustrated that even after all this time she wasn't giving him a chance to air his side out. And it seemed that she would never give him that opportunity.
For a moment he thought about pressing her for it but decided it better to let it go, afraid he might push her too hard it would drive her back to London.
It's unbreakable.
Harry knew she meant the phial but at the moment, he could say that about her resolve to end his hopes that they could find a way to be together after what happened. He heard the song that was playing and thought it appropriate for what he seemed to be facing with her.
The long and winding road…
"How did you know?"
"It says so on it."
Really? He took it out and examined the green bottle. He could not find any markings on the outside.
"Hold it up sideways at eye level, look inside and turn the phial slowly back and forth," she instructed him.
He did as he was told and true enough, there were black bold letters and numbers printed on the inside of the glass container.
"Incasabil?"
"Unbreakable, in Romanian. That's where it's manufactured. Dragon hide washings give it that property," she explained, "China makes them cheaper but I've found them less um…durable, for lack of a better term."
He set the purple potion down on the table right beside the salt and pepper shakers. Harry never heard of unbreakable phials. As she had always been able to do in the past, Hermione read his mind.
"It's fairly new technology. About a year ago, we were developing a potion that was so volatile and unstable to store we couldn't find a container strong enough to hold the mixture over the period of time needed to do proper testing."
"There is a charm to make things not break," he knew this because Hermione had performed it on the jar a vile reporter spent some time in while in her Animagus bug form.
"That's what researchers have been doing for ages whenever they had this problem. We did that but charms are temporal and wear off unless re-casted," she sipped some of her now seemingly lukewarm black coffee. "There had always been a need for a more resilient phial and it was just a matter of someone wanting one badly enough to actually think about making one permanently so."
"You invented it."
"No, I'm only a lowly potion maker," she laughed at his conclusion and it felt good that made him smile, "I suggested it to Luna. She's always looking for projects. Her boss at the Department of Mysteries okayed it and she came up with the first prototype of the unbreakable phial after a month. I did help her with testing."
"And the numbers?"
"I'm not sure. I don't normally meticulously examine a phial and I only know they put the Romanian word in to identify it as such and prevent inferior knock offs."
She flipped her phone on and selected a contact. He could hear the ringing.
"Hi Luna, it's me…yes, I'm in Toronto…yes, he's here with me…she says hello and …um…she says to stay away from the lakes…because of the Ontarian mind-numbing geese mites…Harry says hi. Listen, I have a question…the Romanian manufactured unbreakable phials…there are numbers on them…uh-huh…uh-huh…okay…thanks…I'll see you when I get back…bye…yes, I'll stay away from the lakes, too."
"Just as I thought, serial numbers," she answered his questioning look. "Luna says it's unadvertised but the Ministry recently mandated manufacturers to have unique identifiers on each of them to keep track of who they sell them to."
"That's great. That means we can track down the phial buyer. But I'm just wondering. It's a phial; isn't tracking each and every one of them a bit too much?"
"Unsettling as it is that the Ministry is keeping this mandate hush-hush, it's actually a good idea. At this time, the potions that it will be needed for are likely experimental and somewhat dangerous. Or something unknown just like what you have," she motioned to the phial on the table between them. It did make sense, "So where did you get it?"
It was his turn to give her some answers.
"Andy and I were on a stake-out and I followed a known crook, a Squib, who had a box full of phials with most likely the same potion. He appeared to be selling them, but he saw me and made a run for it. The git Disapparated right before my very eyes from inside a moving subway train. He left this phial and an empty one by accident."
"I overheard that the lab tested the empty one and it appeared unused?"
"Yes."
"Interesting, that's the second time I heard that today," Hermione seemed to be talking to herself, thinking more than she was telling him.
"What do you mean?"
"An empty phial was found near Filch and there were no potion residues in it the hospital lab concluded it had to be unused," she replied. "You know about Gringott's?"
He nodded and was sure Hermione was wondering the same thing as he was, a highly probable London-Toronto connection.
"It seems too much of a coincidence, don't you think? Two Squibs in acts of dubious legality and two unused phials."
"True. I'll have them check the St. Mungo one if it's indeed unbreakable," she looked at him and asked, "You think it's magic enabling potion?"
"I know it is," he said confidently.
"You've seen it used?"
She seemed skeptical.
"It's either that or the Squib who's been drinking it and performing magic since last year isn't a real Squib."
"You realize that if you're right, this is a big thing."
"I do know there are quite a number of vindictive Squibs out there who could cause trouble and whoever gets rights to manufacture it will be rich and famous."
Hermione had a worried look on her face. It was the same look he had been encountering at the Ministry whenever he mentioned magic enabling potion.
"You don't believe me."
"It's not that I don't believe you, Harry. It's just the possibility of this being a magic enabling potion is daunting. This thing," she glanced over to the phial as if it was cursed, "If it is what you think it is, will affect not only Squibs. Granted that an uprising of Ministry malcontents and the tide of opportunists would be immediate concerns for law and order, the implications are astounding beyond the obvious political and economic effects."
"I don't understand," he admitted, hoping she would speak simpler English.
Hermione lowered her voice, leaned slightly forward and, with a seriousness that bothered him, explained, "The social ramification of the existence of a magic enabling potion is too complex it's unthinkable. First Squibs, then Muggles. It is the biggest threat to the statute of secrecy and it is for this reason that engaging in research on any enabling magic has been outlawed by the International Confederation of Warlocks for centuries. Can you imagine? There will be no Squibs or Muggles. The world as we know it will change and no one knows for sure if it will be for the better."
"One would think it would be a good thing," Harry opined.
She responded, "There will be those who will agree but there will be those who won't and will try to contain it. Even Squibs will disagree amongst themselves. This will split the wizarding world apart and it won't be as clear who is right or wrong. And like in any ideology, there will be extremists on both ends of the spectrum who will willingly go to war if need be."
"But a thing like this cannot be bottled up forever."
"I agree and that's why you need to be sure. If this potion that you have here is indeed the Squib Holy Grail, the outcomes will depend on who will have control of its use, if it can even be controlled."
No wonder he had been meeting considerable resistance about its existence since last year.
"How do you recommend we proceed?"
"We?"
He thought this would be obvious to her.
"You know potions and there is so much more at stake in this than some Squib who wants to make money. I could really use your help, unless you don't want to help me."
"It's not a question of want, Harry. This is a Toronto MLE case, I'm a Briton and not even a Ministry official. There are enough Toronto potion experts they will not allow my involvement in this," she said to him and she had a good point.
"Leave that to me," he didn't know how yet but he was determined to find a way. "But I'm asking you now. What should we do first?"
She sighed, buckling down, deciding she would indeed help, "First, we have to prove what this potion does. If we were to do it properly we really should figure out what's in it first, make sure it's safe for human use and know how to use it. Beyond that, even I don't know if we should try and reproduce it, if it's reproducible."
"What will we need aside from a willing Squib guinea pig?" he asked her.
"A well equipped lab, one that can handle a level five potion. Considering an unbreakable phial is needed to contain it, Merlin only knows how unstable this potion is once we uncork and expose it to the elements."
Hearing the potential intricacy of the whole thing he was more relieved that she was around and willing to help.
"The one at the Toronto Ministry is a Level 5 lab."
"And Harry, it would be a good idea to keep the number of people who know about this to a minimum."
He understood that there would be parties that would resist such an investigation from happening. The cover up of the post Valentines Day incident at the Ghoul last year was a reminder of the dangers they were up against.
"That may be a problem. The entire Toronto MLE knows," he said and told her about the morning briefing.
"Then I hope you know who to trust."
A heightened sense of urgency and gravity fell upon them both. For a moment it was just like before, when they were trying to figure out what and where the remaining Horcruxes were and how to destroy them. For a moment he forgot that the primary reason he wanted her to stay was to woo her back. For a moment.
He watched her take another sip of her coffee and wondered if she wanted to eat something before going to the Ministry. As she put her cup back on the saucer, he said to her.
"The food at the Ministry is not as good. If you're hungry..."
Kaboom!
An explosion! The tremendous force of the unforeseen blast shattered the glass windows facing the street and rocked the booth they were in, as a sudden blackness swallowed them! Instant Peruvian darkness powder. It was deja vu.
Screaming and shrieking filled the enclosed space as the cold from the outside and smoke from the discharge enveloped the Muggle customers inside, some of whom were scurrying in the dark, falling on each other, and running into furniture. There was the unmistakable popping sound of Apparitionists in the vicinity, how many he wasn't certain.
"Stay where you are!" he shouted over to Hermione as he drew his wand out and climbed over the table to get to her, intending to Disapparate her out of the diner as soon as he made contact and confirmed it was her.
But before he could reach the other side of their booth, a pair of very large hands grabbed him by the arms and flung him hard across the room, too fast for him to jinx the asshole, that all he could do as he flew in the air was brace himself for impact.
Crunch!
"Umpff! Ugh! " he grunted in succession.
Just his luck. Firewall then hard concrete floor.
"I have the potion! I have the potion!" a man with a squeaky voice called out excitedly.
"Everybody out!" a bossy tone, a woman's, commanded.
One, two, three cracks...
If he wasn't so worried about Hermione he might have swore more. It was so stupid to leave the bloody phial on the table. It was still pitch black. He got up as quickly as he physically could, wand still in hand with a faint light that was unable to penetrate further than its tip. Not knowing which direction their booth was, he yelled out her name amidst continued panicked shrills.
"Hermione! Hermione!"
Crack! There was a fourth Dissaparition.
"Hermione!"
She wasn't answering. If something bad happened to her...
"Herm..."
A hand surprisingly grabbed his arm tightly and before he could do or say anything else, his entire body spun in place and he Dissaparated.