Special Delivery For: curia_regis, pt 2 Title Resurrection of the Body, pt 2 Authorleni_jess Recipientcuria_regis Rating N17 Word Count ~39,000 words Pairing Lucius/Hermione Summary Hermione's memories of being tortured in Malfoy Manor include images Bellatrix created of Lucius hurting her in a different way. Now she finds herself and Snape helping him using sex magic, working from a script neither of them can read, getting closer to him all the time. Being a Gryffindor really stinks, sometimes. Warnings Sex magic, rock 'n' roll, and Slytherin debates on good and evil. Also angst, romance, and maybe even a touch of fluff (avert!). Oh yes, EWE and Snape is alive, too, though the story's faithful to canon otherwise. More seriously, intermittent dubious consent on both sides. Disclaimers Characters and settings are JKRs. The plot and the magic you don't recognise are mine. No profit made. Author notes Thank you, most heartily, to my beta readers S and M, and to ragdoll for being a wonderfully generous and forgiving and patient mod, waiting out my writer's block. Without my beta readers, who found massive amounts of extra work for me to do, this story would not be anything like what I so much wanted it to be; they forced me to make it better. Heaven bless all beta readers, who work hard for no reward!
ritual dates Saturday 7 August 1999; Tuesday 17 August 1999
At first Hermione had thought the ten days' wait in between steps in the Ending Stasis ritual would be irritating. In preparing for the second ritual, to restore Lucius's sense of smell, she discovered that she needed all that time, to get the spells by heart, to rehearse the ritual with Professor Snape, and still to keep contact with Lucius, though she was too tired each night to make their sessions long or complex. She told him, in partial truth, that between her studies at St Mungo's and preparing for her classes at University College in physics and chemistry and biology, she was run off her feet. It was already obvious to her that, thanks to the demands of the rituals, which would continue until late September, she would not be as thoroughly prepared for classes as she would like.
She remained unsure whether Lucius had regained touch, since he volunteered nothing about it, and did not find out immediately after the casting of the second spell that he had regained his sense of smell.
One night she was sad, for herself as well as for Lucius, and lonely, and was having trouble going to sleep. She decided to see if giving herself an orgasm would do something about the last problem, at least. When it was over she became aware that Lucius had been – something between spectator and participant. This might have been profoundly embarrassing, but was no longer possible for her with him; she was too used to his mind impinging on hers.
So when she sensed the feelings he was radiating, which included warm approval as well as pleasure, instead of retreating into a foetal curl of embarrassment she went over to lie beside him instead. She would like to curl up beside someone, and perhaps he would like to feel another warm body too. He had touch back, after all, however long he had made her wait to have that confirmed. She lay beside him, and after a while turned to rest her head on his shoulder, putting her hand on his other shoulder. She felt not only the warmth of his body (and was puzzled yet again how it could be warm without any life processes going on – hibernating animals' bodily temperature dropped noticeably; why had not his?), but also the warmth of his mental pleasure. Yes, he did want closeness and physical contact.
The next time Lucius sensed a similar sadness in her, he projected a fuzzy picture of her lying beside him, cuddled up to him, pleasuring herself. Hermione was a little shocked, not at his forwardness, but at hers, in wishing to do as he suggested. Then she thought, why not, she was his sole contact with humanity, with feeling of any kind. If she was going to give herself an orgasm anyway, it would be much less lonely if she was doing it pressed up against him, receiving his pleasure and approval. She didn't wonder whether the rituals she was going through for him were encouraging her into such intimacy. It took a long time, but not because a climax was difficult to reach. Hermione felt herself swaying ecstatically on the brink, her pleasure prolonged by contact with Lucius, before at last she fell, and fell further, almost at once, into the warm darkness of sleep.
In the morning she woke and lifted herself away from him, and as she did so felt his regret and a sense of losing an exquisitely pleasing complex of aromas. Now she was embarrassed, briefly, by realising that Lucius had been relishing not only the scent of her body, but also the scent of her pleasure. Embarrassment was overtaken by the astonished realisation that she had proof that the spells were working: Lucius had clearly had the sense of smell restored to him as well as touch.
She was excited enough to want to share her pleasure and satisfaction at this recovery, and Lucius was clearly very happy with it too, but he taxed her with being secretive. He pointed out, in a somewhat snarky sequence of images, that she and Snape must have been doing a lot more than reading.
She sent him a quick series of pictures: Snape with their guide books, setting them open on his workbench for reference, and the two of them preparing to enact a ritual, then of herself gesturing with her wand, lips moving, clearly doing magic. Lucius wanted more information, nagging her with a set of very active question marks.
She wished he could see her roll her eyes at him in exasperation, and sent him an image of a book with its pages ruffling quickly, then another book, then another, and images of their special implements. Then she pointedly showed him an old-fashioned clock, with its hands whirring rapidly around the dial, to indicate hours passing, and at last an aggressively coloured "Stop" sign, bouncing in much the same manner as his question marks. He wasn't pleased at being denied information, but he got the message that it was complex, and would take time she didn't have to explain it to him without words.
A few nights later, after the third spell had been performed, to restore his sense of taste, Hermione consciously undertook an experiment: she got into bed with him, and lying half over him touched herself again, until she climaxed. Then she deliberately put two of her fingers into his mouth, which she opened gently, and brushed them over his tongue. Lucius's awareness of what she was doing had already had the sense of physical closeness, and a deep satisfaction at being able to scent her and the changes in her. When she touched his tongue it was as if a flash of lightning illuminated a room that before had only moonlight falling through the window onto a part of the floor. Involuntarily she withdrew her hand, but at his instant disappointment, at his sense of deprivation, she restored it, and ultimately went to sleep with one finger still in his mouth.
This was the first time she had what she regarded as concrete evidence of the piecemeal restoration of Lucius's senses, but she wondered in some dismay how she was going to tell Severus Snape. Could she really bring herself to tell him that she deliberately pressed her body against a helpless man, masturbated, and then put her still damp fingers in his mouth for him to taste? Eventually she decided that Snape could whistle for that piece of information, though she would have to tell him something. He had been very patient, and she owed him the report of their success.
The fourth spell, for hearing, was due to be performed in a few days; she would see what happened after that, if anything. Lucius had shown no sign of being aware of her voice (unless she was projecting feelings or images at him at the same time). Neither could he hear music played in the flat, or the slight traffic noise from outside, or Crookshanks's purrs, though for some time he had expressed appreciation of the cat's willingness to curl up against his hip in lieu of on his mistress's lap; he did feel those vibrations.
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Hearing
ritual date Friday 27 August 1999
On the morning of the day of the spell for hearing Hermione found she had run out of Floo powder. She cursed herself for trying to fit so much work into too little time that she forgot such a simple need, and Apparated to the boundaries of Hogwarts very early, just after dawn, for their rehearsal. She took a broomstick from the shed where spare brooms were kept for visitors in too much of a hurry to walk up to the school, and rode up to the entrance hall steps, left the broom in the erumpent-foot broomstand, and started walking quickly through halls and passages and down stairs to reach the Defence Master's private potions laboratory, where they performed the rituals. She met few people; but the portraits and the ghosts knew she was authorised to be there.
Today she exchanged a quick nod with Professor Sprout, and a greeting with Nearly Headless Nick, who still disapproved of her going down to the Slytherin dungeons and, as usual, tried first to dissuade her and then to accompany her. She ignored the first and relied on Nick's sense of self-preservation to put an end to the second. The last time he had tried to go down to the dungeons with her the Bloody Baron had chased him off, before he came back to sneer silently at her. Hermione had not enjoyed that, but Snape had promised to speak to him, and though she found the Baron waiting at the head of the steps (whereupon Nick fled), he did no worse than grin sardonically at her.
Today she and Snape spent nearly two hours going over the spell. When they finished it was time for him to go down to the Hall for breakfast at the professors' table, but instead of bidding her a brisk goodbye and sweeping off, bat robes billowing, Snape seemed to be hesitating over something. His expression was unusually curdled, as well.
Finally she asked, "What's the problem?"
"I thought I should ask you to check your sources for the ritual with me, to ensure all goes well. Just for my own peace of mind, if you don't need to be reassured yourself, before tonight, when it will be too late to remedy any errors."
When Hermione just stared at him, he was not a happy man. His explanation was therefore possibly blunter than it might otherwise have been.
He said starkly, "I need to be sure you're getting the sex right. Neither of us, I assume, wants to waste all this effort –"
She practically screamed at him, "What sex?"
Feebly, for him, Snape protested. "You must have known! By your report Lucius not only has his sense of touch back – which could be expected seeing how much care and attention you've been giving him – but also smell and taste."
A horrible interval of mutual discovery of ignorance ensued.
Hermione's source from the Grimmauld Place library, such as it was, had only hinted at additional elements in the ritual to back up the spells, and she had been relying entirely on him to explain whatever was needed.
Snape had held off explaining about the sex until she was too deep in the ritual process to back out, then assumed, when she reported the first three spells had been successful, that she had discovered for herself what was required and was vindictively not telling him she had done so.
Baldly Snape said, "Each spell needs the spell caster to perform a particular sexual act with Lucius before the next spell is undertaken."
Hermione ignored her scarlet cheeks and her mortification and snarled, "So I got touch and smell and taste right without any help; what's next for hearing, that you're in such a sweat?"
"No, the question is, did you get it right for taste? You only have a few hours to fix things if you didn't."
They shouted at each other very briefly, before Hermione demanded stonily, "What's taste, then?"
Snape eyed her warily before he muttered, "Masturbating him – by hand. Then for hearing you have to suck him off."
Considering that that was an element, admittedly minor, in the occasional nightmares of rape which her sleeping mind produced, translating Lucius's acceptance of Bellatrix's tortures into an active participation in them, Hermione took this quite well.
After a frozen pause she demanded, "To climax?"
"Of course, and I imagine for each spell from now on."
Snape looked warier than ever before he said, "I assume you did all that for Mr Weasley sometimes? We were sure you were having sex with him before the end of sixth year, but Dumbledore said to let you alone."
Hermione said savagely, "I love having my private life laid out for everyone to pick over!" She added, "Yes."
About to ask Snape just how bad things were going to get, Hermione was diverted by an appalling thought: how did Snape expect her to get a complex physiological reaction from a man whose body was in Stasis?
Since she asked him with explicit Muggle medical terms he just blinked at her, before he understood what she was asking, and reassured her, "You'll find Lucius's body in good working order, I'm sure."
Under his breath he added, "When was it ever not, the bastard?"
That was a sentiment she could sympathise with, though she didn't plan to ask Snape why he should be aware of it, or resent it.
She said despairingly, "Merlin help me, Snape, if his blood isn't circulating how is he going to get an erection? That's created entirely by –"
"The magic will see to that."
"These spells we're doing?"
"You're doing."
Hermione realised belatedly that Snape had taken great care he should not be obliged to have sex with Lucius Malfoy, but before she could berate him too thoroughly he interrupted, almost placating, "Yes, I did, Miss Granger, but I know more now."
Finally he yelled over her angry reproaches, "He has to have sex with a woman!"
In the silence that followed, when both were hoping no one heard them, Snape added, "You know the first ritual showed you were the one who had to do the remaining spells in the sequence. The wizards who created this ritual were very old-fashioned, more like Muggles, I suppose because they lived closer to them. The magic must be done by a woman, for a man. And vice versa. I've learned a lot since we did the first spell. That spell-book is incredibly secretive, and the commentaries are almost worse."
Hermione pulled herself together and said flatly, "I suppose I'd better go home and get it done, then. Is there anything else you haven't told me?"
"Much, but nothing you need to know about before tonight's ritual."
"When that's done, Professor Snape, you are going to tell me all about everything, and produce your sources, and prove you've explained the whole of the ritual." While Hermione was sure he noticed she was using his title again, not just his surname, her tone was cool.
"You read ancient Aramaic, then?"
She snarled, "I can see I need to learn. I'm going to have a word, later, with Professor Flitwick about Language Charms."
"Be careful," Snape said, sounding quite anxious; "they give shocking headaches. You can't afford it till this is done with."
Hermione stormed back to her broomstick, aware that that expression of concern might have been a clumsy apology, but not caring to stay with him long enough to accompany him up four flights of stairs to his Floo. She was irritated enough to march straight through the Bloody Baron. Snape was going to miss breakfast, and she was glad.
Before she reached the Hogwarts boundary, however, a question of definition occurred to her. She swung her broom in a wide circle and returned to the school. It was too late to catch Snape before his first class, so she waited outside the Defence classroom, aware this would be a double class, as all his advanced classes were. She rehearsed in her head all she had done with Ron, fighting her own revulsion at the thought of doing it with Lucius Malfoy. Whatever it was, she had to do it right. She might owe him nothing, though she felt rather differently towards him nowadays, but she had undertaken this task for Draco, and out of a general sense of justice, and seemed now to be doing it for Lucius's own sake. She would follow it to the end, however bitter. She conjured up a chair, took a physics textbook out of her pocket, and settled down to pass the rest of the double period in study.
When the children came out in a relieved or downcast rush (Gryffindors and Slytherins, she noticed, scowling austerely at the latter), she slipped into the classroom and said rapidly, "You need to answer some questions."
"You're still here?"
She hissed very softly, "What exactly does your source mean by 'suck him off'? I bet that's not what it says. I want an exact translation, now, Snape!"
Snape must have noticed she was back to his surname again. He hesitated, then said, "It's a fair question, Miss Granger. I should have been more explicit."
He glanced at the still open door, and used his wand to leave a message on the blackboard for his next class, containing instructions and a very explicit threat.
"This is one of the problems of embarking on sex magic with a fellow magic-user who is not only female but a recent student," he said softly, but not at all apologetically, as he led her swiftly downstairs to his private laboratory. "A reflex propriety has perhaps caused me to be less than communicative."
When Hermione did reach the school gates she had given up all expectation of a normal day. Some of today's classes and duties at St Mungo's were already in the past, and completing the ritual with Lucius was far more important than any reproof for absence. At least her normal devotion to study should protect her from anything worse than a reproof. And some time soon she needed to buy Floo powder.
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Hermione was not concerned about having to bring Lucius to climax using her hands (provided his body cooperated); it was just another mildly distasteful task. She did very much dislike the idea of fellating him, and taking him to climax with her mouth, but tried to tell herself that it should be simple enough, as she would be firmly in control.
On reflection, this could have been a great deal worse: Lucius might have been in charge. It was not as if he would be able to move, or seize hold of her and force her to do as he wished, rather than as she intended. She was not looking forward to finding out from Snape tonight what else she was committed to. While she waited for him that morning her mind had insisted on running through all sorts of permutations and combinations, despite the physics textbook, and she had not liked any of them.
She returned to her flat not long before noon, and curtly instructed Tiko to strip Master Lucius and wash him thoroughly, especially his private parts, and then to disappear and not return to the bedroom until she called him. She took herself into the shower as she heard the snap of Tiko summoning warm water and towels.
By the time she emerged from a lengthy shower she had faced the necessity of telling Lucius what she was going to do. But should she tell him about the ritual of spells and sex, or just let him think she had decided to give him sexual pleasure as well as mental contact and an appreciation of her own pleasure? He would think it peculiar in the extreme.
She had not wanted to tell him the details of what she and Snape were doing, at least until she saw a strong likelihood of success. Indeed, she doubted that their communication skills could cover it. She could spell it out letter by letter, like a mental ouija board, she supposed, but the simplest method might be to juxtapose the image of Snape in his laboratory with two others: one of her having sexual contact with Lucius, the other of her and Snape together conducting a ritual. And how would Lucius interpret that? Not today, she decided.
So when she joined Lucius on his bed, and sat tucked in beside his narrow hips as always, sitting on the sheet that Tiko had drawn up to his waist, she looked down at him thoughtfully. She sent him a brief image of herself as she had been a few days ago, half-lying over him, touching herself, and his pleasure at receiving her sensations as well as some sensory input. She followed that up with another image, of herself leaning over him, touching him. His immediate response was eagerness, followed by surprise. No suspicion, she was grateful to note. But then even the professionally and rightfully paranoid Lucius Malfoy had had time to get used to the idea that if she wanted to harm or hurt him she could have done so long ago.
Despite what Severus Snape had said about Lucius always being "in working order", Hermione had decided that for herself as much as for him she was going to lead into this slowly. She used her wand to remove the nightshirt Tiko had replaced, and put her hands on him, one at his waist and the other on his chest, gently spreading her fingers wide and slowly exploring the textures of his skin.
As she did so she looked at his body, perhaps seeing it as it was for the first time, and had to admit that he was, indeed, beautiful. She admired the fine, pale skin, the enticingly male breadth of bone and swell of muscle in shoulders and chest and arms, the light floss of pale blond hair between his nipples and running in a narrow line down his breastbone to disappear under the sheet, which appealed to her as being male without being gross. What a pity that those slim, long-fingered hands with their filbert fingernails could not touch her as she was touching him!
And where had that thought come from? It was too verbal to be his. Well. Maybe this would not be so distasteful a task after all. How many women got their hands on Lucius Malfoy to do as they would without penalty? Hermione grinned mischievously. Maybe she would tease him till he was frantic for release. That would serve him right; she would bet heavily it was something he was good at. She would enjoy it; and she suspected he would too. With any luck it would shock him right down to his toes.
She took her time, stroking, pressing, lightly scratching, before she took hold of his hands and moved them up to lie beside his shoulders, cupped open, palm upward, out of her way.
In mercy as much as because she wanted to, she went on to scoop the long fair hair from under his shoulders, finger-combing it out of its loose plaits. She played with it for a little while, using it to stroke his mouth and throat and then his pale browny-pink nipples, before she coiled it out of her way beside his head.
Only then did Hermione move the sheet down to the foot of the bed, to expose the whole of his body. Her eyes skipped hastily past the thick cock that lay flaccid in its nest of silky fleece, though she lingered over the long, strong thighs, and took her time considering knees, calves, and feet, before she thought with mild indignation that even his knees and ankles were elegantly turned. So very unfair! She lifted the leg nearest her with a hand under his knee, to examine more closely the articulation of the bones. She sighed, and stroked his knee, then ran her hand slowly down the top of his calf to the high arch of his foot, finishing by cradling his instep and brushing a thumb over his toes.
Just too beautiful. What a pity he had the mind of a rabid pit viper along with his Veela appetite for sex and his Vampire lack of heart and soul. Though after what had happened in his meeting with the unleashed Dementor she could hardly, she reflected, call him soulless. He quite literally had a soul, and was lucky that weird turn of magic, or inherited Vampire ability, had enabled him to keep it. He also, demonstrably, loved his family, of which only his son remained to him, even if his pureblood ambition and lust for power was almost unchanged by Voldemort's defeat, and were trumped only by that love. Strange man.
However unexpectedly pleasant, playing with his body was not going to get this ritual competed. She moved his thighs apart and knelt between them. She had thought of straddling them, but she might need to do that another day.
She looked down at his genitals and again found her Muggle upbringing and understanding of science handicapping rather than helping her. It was totally weird that the body she had been touching, admiring, caressing, was quite unmoving, unstirred by blood or breath. Weird that she could see the delicate blue tracery of veins, especially on his chest and the exposed tender underside of his forearms, could feel, if she chose, the major arteries at the groin and in the throat, and know that the blood in them had not moved for five months. Yet he was alive and, Snape kept assuring her, able to be fully restored.
Hermione had been concentrating so hard on visual and textural appreciation, that she had been ignoring the sense of Lucius that always rested quietly at the back of her mind. Now she was not so intensely focussed on his body, she had a glimpse of his mind again, and found it suspended between mild pleasure and a rather stronger apprehension. Maybe he had caught her desire to tease him. Not, perhaps, a kind thing to do to a highly sexed man who had been deprived of physical stimulus of almost any kind for five months. A vindictive part of her thought not only, Sauce for the goose, but also, He's lucky I don't want to torture him till his mind whites out, then do it again, and again. The apprehension spiked abruptly; obviously he had caught the feeling behind that, too, if not the words.
A mild remorse, and the recollection that those phantom rapes had been Bellatrix's, not his, impelled Hermione to lean over him and finger his nipples gently, then slide her hands up his chest till she could support herself on his shoulders, and lower her mouth to his. Bellatrix had not forced any kisses on her, so this should be untainted pleasure, and perhaps he would like it, even if he did not want it. Her mouth brushed over his, before her lips firmed and clasped his lower lip between them, sucking it in, relishing its astonishing tenderness, then her tongue opened his lips and moved aggressively into his mouth, exploring. She lingered there longer than she had meant; he tasted fresh, like sweet grass and country air on a frosty morning, and there was nothing to obscure the taste of him. It was, however, very odd kissing someone who could neither respond to her nor reject her; slowly she withdrew from his mouth. Later, perhaps.
This time she had carefully maintained the sense of his mind in hers, and felt him gradually relax into receptivity, and even into cautious enjoyment. She wondered how dependent his body was on his mind. Would he need to feel safe with her, to trust her to want only pleasure, before he could respond? While she liked the idea of playing with him, of controlling him, she was not anxious to need to spend a very long time over it in order to demolish his fears.
Perhaps a little reassurance was in order. She slid back again, then bent her head so that she could touch her tongue to the head of his cock, licking it, first with a pointed tip, then with a broader swirl round the whole head, and felt his instant response. It struck her again, forcefully, how strange it was that his response to this stimulus should be entirely mental. Yet… she lifted her head. Ah. Not entirely mental. How satisfactory. It seemed that Snape had been quite right; Stasis was not going to be an impediment.
She reminded herself that she was supposed to be using her hands for this, not her mouth. Stupid of her, perhaps, to have begun with the stronger stimulus. She wrapped one hand firmly round him at the base, though she could not enclose him fully, and used a fingertip of the other to trace very gently over the head of his cock, to tease the slit there, to run around the corona, and then to run firmly up the underside, from base to tip. Ah yes, definitely in working order. Yet the great vein was not pulsing with blood, though the cockhead was flushing, now. That was too weird; she wouldn't think about it.
And at the back of her mind his attention was firmly on what she was doing; thought was suspended in favour of sensation. Odd to be able to tell the difference, but fairly precise images had now been replaced by shifting sheets of flexible colour, like an aurora borealis, and a sense of warmth. She wondered, briefly, if they would retain this method of communication after he was restored to himself, and chided herself for irrelevancy. Concentrate, Hermione.
She withdrew her attention from the surprising pleasure of handling him and getting such positive responses, and concentrated on coaxing him, first to full erection and then to climax. Her own impulse was to be gentler than she knew a man preferred, and she suppressed it in favour of what would please him, leading him on without rush. She lingered over the rising excitement, controlling it for a while, until the pearly drops appeared and he would, if he were anything like Ron, be ready to scream and beg, wanting both to finish this and to prolong it.
She began to pay closer attention to the sense of him in her mind, and was surprised at the chaotic and yet rhythmic washes of bright delicate colours with an under-layer of sheet lightning. Yes, perhaps she had pushed him quite far enough, and it was time to let him have the climax she had been teasing him with for what, she suddenly realised, was a longer time than she had intended.
It was quick, and hard, when it came, and nearly whited out her mind as well as his. She was astounded at the power of it, and went completely still, clasping him, unnerved by the complete lack of response in him except from his cock and the tight balls below it which tightened even further, then slowly relaxed, even as that ceased its frantic movements. Her hands and his belly were spattered with his come, and once more she shook her head in Muggle incomprehension of the workings of magic on physiology, as she stroked the last of it out of him and then released him, and watched him sink back into quiescence.
She stayed beside him till she could feel his mind, also, settle into steadiness and ease, then leaned forward and kissed his mouth. As an afterthought she put her fingers into his mouth as she had done a few days ago, this time to let him taste himself on her, and received very strongly his appreciation and approval of that. Then she detached herself from him physically, while retaining a gentle contact between their minds, and called Tiko to clean him up and make sure he was warm and comfortable, while she had her third shower of the day before getting ready to return to Hogwarts. Snape had better not want a detailed report; she would kill him.
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When she joined him Snape merely asked, "Success?"
"Yes."
His relief was evident as he explained, "Once we'd performed the ritual for taste he received it, but on credit, as it were, until you completed the ritual."
"And if I hadn't done so?"
He grimaced. "The ritual would have been broken. We might have been able to start again. More likely we would have had to carry out the rest of it, and then start again – and I'm sure you'll think once is enough. It's also possible that he would never have been able to retrieve that sense."
Hermione said, mildly enough, "Don't keep me in the dark again. It was utterly reckless of you."
"Yes," he admitted. "But you have to realise, Miss Granger, that I still don't know everything. Don't look so alarmed – the commentaries reveal details of what's required in time."
"Those ancient wizards were sadists. I don't see why that's necessary."
"Maybe to discourage people from performing the ritual except in deeply felt need. And perhaps to ensure that the spell-caster is committed enough to undertake the ritual blindly, without knowing all that is required. Once, you remember, the punishment for unforgivable crime wasn't the Dementor's Kiss, it was condemnation to Stasis. Trying to overturn that was a serious undertaking."
Hermione shuddered. "And I thought current wizarding attitudes to crime and punishment were barbaric! That's truly disgusting."
"You think Muggle ways are better?"
"It's better to kill quickly and cleanly, if a criminal has done something unforgivable, though you know that Muggles nowadays usually imprison the body to protect society, while still giving the criminal a chance to reform – they know nothing of stripping away the soul. Nothing excuses condemning a person to live without a soul, but at least they're not conscious of their existence, as a person in Stasis is. Do you know how quickly someone goes mad, if completely deprived of sensory awareness?"
"I imagine it might be quite fast," Snape agreed, "but what makes you think a being stripped of its soul is not conscious of what has happened to it, and of the nature of its existence?"
"I don't want to talk about this any more," Hermione said between her teeth. "I can't afford to start throwing up now."
In a lecturing tone Snape said, "That's how you can tell Vampires are a relatively modern creation."
Hermione stared, and realised that in his weird way he was trying to be kind, distracting her with intellectual curiosity.
"Why?" she asked meekly.
"Because they can protect themselves from the Dementor's Kiss – they can cache their souls safely away from the body. Surely Muggles have legends about this? Even if they passed me by?"
Hermione remembered being taken to see the ballet The Firebird, and rather sympathising with the immortal wizard Koschei, whose soul was hidden somewhere – in an egg? a stone? a tree? – only to be discovered by that wimpy Prince, who needed a bird to help him.
Dutifully she responded, "Yes."
Snape nodded. "Of course. Some asocial Vampires prey on them, after all; they'd seek some defences, some knowledge."
She didn't break it to him that the Muggle concept of Vampires was very different from his. He must have had a very restricted childhood, if he had no idea of what Muggles thought of Vampires.
"I did tell you Lucius is part Vampire – not much, but enough that quite involuntarily he did what his heritage enabled him to do: put his soul somewhere safe.
"Unfortunately –" he continued his lecture, "– he hadn't the training to retrieve it, or to defend himself when the more ancient punishment cut in: he was trapped in Stasis. Potter eventually dragged him back to consciousness – and you're quite right, if no more had been done Lucius would indeed have gone mad. You gave him a link to reality, to sensation, to objectivity –"
Hermione interrupted, "Let's not get into philosophy, Professor Snape. I don't think either of us is equipped to discuss it usefully."
Snape looked remotely regretful, but nodded briskly. It was time to prepare for the ritual, after all.
≈≈≈LMHG≈≈≈
When Hermione had performed the spell for hearing she and her guide were both exhausted, but after a short rest they both rose and began carefully erasing lines and marks and sigils, with due care for appropriate order, dismantling in reverse order to the way they had built. Snape put away the candles, and the ancient vessels that had cost him much trouble to procure, while Hermione carefully stored the remains of the powders and other substances she had burned in the tiny golden cauldron. At last they were done, and Snape applied a major cleansing spell to the whole room to ensure that no residue could affect later ceremonies, or indeed any person who entered the room. The scorch marks remained on the stone floor, though he seemed to think they might go once the ritual series was complete.
Then Snape gathered up the books to lock them away in his most strongly warded bookcase. The large book of raggedly edged parchment sheets bound together – probably in human skin, he had suggested – contained the actual ritual and the spells. The three much smaller and even rattier books of vastly different ages were the commentaries on it. One went into broad detail, and the other two had to be used together as the ritual progressed to obtain the necessary fine detail.
"Wait! You were going to explain everything to me, remember?"
"I can't explain everything," Snape answered sourly, "but I suppose I'll have to demonstrate that, too. Very well, Miss Granger. Over here."
He set the books on a broad, sloping reading table and motioned to her to draw up a stool beside his. Hermione was irresistibly reminded of medieval monks in a scriptorium, working in grossly uncomfortable conditions to preserve the texts of incredibly valuable books. Wizards usually managed to make themselves comfortable, but that did not mean they did not pay in other ways for the preservation of knowledge.
"Now. The Book of Small Changes – a modest lot, they might have been, or deceitful – is the big one, the first written. It contains not only the ritual we need, but many others, some of them, happily, no longer required. I don't recommend you study it even when you do learn ancient Aramaic. It responds unfavourably to mere curiosity."
He opened it to their ritual, and leafed through a dozen or so sheets of parchment, beautifully inscribed in quite unfaded ink in uncomfortably small writing in a script she did not recognise. Snape pointed out the references to the spell they had just performed, then set it aside.
He explained, "It says only, at the end of each spell, 'You will then do as you must, within the next ten days, woman to man or man to woman, as is written.' That bit about 'woman to man or man to woman' was illegible until after we performed the first spell together."
Hermione said something a respectable Muggle would have found excessively vulgar, but which merely caused Snape's eyebrows to flick in puzzlement. That surprised her; she would have thought his father had had a good vocabulary of curses, and shared them freely with wife and child. On the other hand, Snape hadn't been in the Muggle world for nearly thirty years, and the language of anger and contempt changed fast.
"Never mind," she said ruefully, thinking that this was what came of associating with boys rather than girls in both worlds. "Where do you find 'what is written'?"
"In this," he touched the fattest of the three small books. "Medraut's Commentary. Unfortunately, most of the pages are blank. When we started, only the first few pages, which relate strictly to the sense of touch, had writing on them."
She demanded instantly, "When did you learn what I have to do for hearing?"
He nodded, acknowledging her point. "Yesterday."
"Only two days' notice. I hope we don't at any point need more rare ingredients!"
"Indeed," he agreed.
"The newest book is this one," Snape picked up the smallest book, "and it summarises in a very general way the ritual, the spells, the materials, and the, er, supplementary activities. Very general," he emphasised. "It's the only one I have been able to read the whole of from the beginning; it's the one I found first, which led me to the others. We had one of the Commentaries here, incidentally, Medraut's, which isn't much older. The other two books I retrieved from the Malfoy Manor library. They were among the books the Aurors didn't find – not surprising, given their importance. Lucky for Lucius; it might have taken much longer to locate them, otherwise."
"Are there other copies?"
"There are, or there were. Some have been confiscated by various authorities, Muggle as well as wizarding, over the last three thousand years since the Book was written, and generally destroyed. This may not in itself be Dark magic, but it's most likely to be needed for Dark magicians.
"The overview – it's just called Ending Stasis, after the ritual – seems to have been written by someone who successfully performed the ritual for her husband. It originated in Byzantium over fifteen hundred years ago, and is in classical Greek, which was of course no longer anything like the spoken or the written language. You read that, don't you?"
She nodded.
"Study it, then, later, and sympathise – with me, trying to see what it meant, and with the writer, who struggled desperately to be more explicit and was prevented by the very spells she had just completed. That made her very, very angry."
Snape looked at her thoughtfully. "You might consider, when all this is over, trying to write a further commentary. It sounds as if you don't approve of either Stasis or the Kiss as a punishment. Perhaps if there are two of us writing it we may be able to evade more of the restrictions."
"We can discuss that another time, if it seems to be a good idea, which I seriously doubt," Hermione said flatly, disapprovingly, but she flicked a finger towards The Book of Small Changes.
Snape's eyes widened.
"Oh, very well." He managed to sound disappointed. "Without Irene Argyra's book I think it would be impossible, nowadays, to perform the ritual; you need all three books, the prime source and the two Commentaries, Daryavoush's and Medraut's. Anyone trying to work only from the spells laid out in The Book of Small Changes would find disastrous failure. Perhaps that's why so much guidance as Irene gives was permitted. Now. I can read all the spells for the rituals in the Book, and they seem coherent. I can't translate them into English – that is, I am not permitted to. That's why I could only summarise the intent for you and you had to learn them by heart, without writing them down."
Hermione sounded impressed when she breathed, "That is a very paranoid spell-book."
"Yes. Medraut's Commentary has a lot of irrelevancies through it – most of the text is irrelevant. I suspect it may be a commentary on several other rituals as well, but Merlin knows what they are. In fact it's quite easy to see which bits relate to Ending Stasis: you can understand them. The rest is so much gibberish."
"Let me see the details for hearing, then," Hermione demanded.
Snape opened the book carefully and laid it before her, smiling sourly.
Hermione could recognise Anglo-Saxon and early medieval Welsh, but could read neither, and the Latin was both late and semi-illiterate.
"Dear me, and I called The Book of Small Changes paranoid," she observed mildly. "You are quite sure you made sense of this?"
"I translated the earlier requirements successfully – though it certainly wasn't the work of an hour; I was up all night with touch, even though it's extremely simple once you understand it. I can translate much faster, now. And yes, you do need all three languages. There are a few bits in ancient runes, too, just not, as it happens, in this section. I suspect Medraut was allowed to give as much information as he did because he made it so hard to decipher."
"So if The Book of Small Changes holds the actual spells, and Irene's book describes the ritual, however generally, and Medraut gives the details of both the rituals and the sex magic, what do you need Daryavoush for?"
Snape sighed. "Medraut is actually a translation of some parts of Daryavoush which can no longer be read. By anyone. Not just because his text was written in an ancient Persian script based on cuneiform, which Muggles know only from inscriptions on stone and clay. Medraut himself had enormous trouble, he claims, and he was an extremely powerful Dark wizard. He said the materials faded into illegibility as he read them. But, in order to get the relevant section of Medraut to show itself, you have to read what you can of Daryavoush first. Without that earlier commentary, the pages of Medraut would remain blank forever."
Hermione said dispassionately, "Lucius Malfoy is a far luckier man than he deserves, that you are willing to undertake such difficult work for him."
Snape shrugged. "The research is fascinating. I'm fond of Draco; he would be distressed if I didn't do what I could for Lucius. Lucius and I were friends, of a sort, once. A long time ago. Perhaps we may be again, being able to be honest in Voldemort's absence."
He added, "You owe Lucius nothing."
Hermione too shrugged. "Draco is a friend, now. I'd like him to have a father. After all, maybe six months in absolute solitary will improve Lucius's character. Certainly at present he is both polite and patient. I must say that you make me feel I would very much like to be able to undertake research like this myself, one day. It is fascinating. And," she finished sombrely, "we have just had proved to us that the oldest knowledge may sometimes be needed, and therefore should not be lost."
She sighed. "We've wasted enough time; it must be near midnight. Show me what Irene and Medraut – and Daryavoush, if needed – have to say about hearing. Then I'd like to look at Irene to see what I can work out about the later rituals."
"Why not come back tomorrow, for that?" he suggested, pushing Irene's book towards her with careful fingers.
At the end of another hour, with an enhanced appreciation for Snape's language skills and the secretiveness of the wizards who had originated the ritual, Hermione knew what she had to look forward to some time in the next ten days. It could have been worse. She was not, apparently, required to somehow enable Lucius's Stasis-bound body to fuck her mouth and throat.
The next day it occurred to her to ask Snape in what ways the ritual differed if it was being performed for a woman. Snape said rather primly that there had been as yet no need to differentiate, and Hermione had to admit he was right.
Just think, she had a good thirty days to wait to find out every last horrid detail, and in every case at least two days to work herself up to doing whatever would be required next. Or, perhaps, to melt into a puddle of revulsion and terror. She had not intended to get into the habit of offering Lucius sex of any kind except as required by the ritual, though it was clear he would enjoy it, but there might be something to be said, after all, for getting accustomed to his body. Merlin knew what she would need to do with it, before the ritual was complete.
≈≈≈LMHG≈≈≈
On Hermione's first night at home after Lucius had his hearing back she found her comfortable evening, sitting with Crookshanks on her knee and studying her textbooks while listening to fifties music, rudely interrupted. She had decided recently that liking rock and roll meant she needed to go back to its earliest days, and the gospel and country music that intermingled their influences in its development. She had found plenty of CDs of that music being remaindered in Muggle record shops, though the quality of the reproduction varied enormously.
One of the first things she had done after she moved into her own flat was to ensure that her CD player from her parents' home would work, despite all the interference from magic; that had turned into an interesting research project in itself. She refrained, once she had it working, from approaching the music as if she was going to write a paper on it; random play ensured that she never knew what would come up next and made her pay closer attention.
She had just settled into enjoying Blue Suede Shoes when a burst of static in her mind drew her attention to Lucius's reactions. He could hear the music perfectly well from the bedroom, and it was distressingly plain that he hated Elvis. He hadn't been too fond of the previous tracks, either, but had at least found Slim Whitman's high tenor singing Whispering Hope marginally tolerable as a musical curiosity. Hermione muttered disgustedly and used the remote to lower the volume before she went into the bedroom to argue with him. She could have communicated with Lucius perfectly well from her worn armchair, but it seemed more polite to join him when she was in the flat with him.
Before the argument finished Hermione had been exposed to Malfoy arrogance full blast: Lucius was determined not to listen to any more of that stuff – his imagery was both creative and untranslatable – and intent on having his taste in music catered to.
Hermione had not been frightened; she had shouted at him, first indignantly, then angrily, before she calmed herself and offered to trade. Working with Snape had toughened her considerably, she thought with satisfaction, reviewing this later. The offer brought all Lucius's Slytherin instincts to the fore; he too calmed down.
They ended with an agreement that probably satisfied Hermione more than Lucius, but she was trading from strength: she had possession of the remote. She would teach Tiko to use the CD player so that during the day Lucius could hear the kind of music he liked – she explained carefully to both of them that magic must not be used on it, and added pointedly if she did find it affected by magic she would know who to blame. In the evenings she would go right on playing fifties rock and country music, but at a lower volume. If Lucius found it too irritating he could listen to the wizarding wireless network, which she would magically confine to the bedroom.
Lucius was very rude about the music played on that network, and wanted to know why she could not do the same with her disgusting Muggle music, but she said flatly that while he was confined to bed she needed to be able to move about the flat. She was not going to put a Cone of Silence around her chair and be deprived of the music whenever she got up to do something, and since her Muggle earphones were not wireless she was not going to use those either.
He presented her with an image of a large green and silver snake not only hissing threats, but snapping and snarling, which made her laugh, before she promised to play Mozart or Haydn in the later part of the evening. Lucius seemed to enjoy almost anything written before about 1840, which led her to make a scathing attack on prejudice, which moved him not a whit. He held out for classical music in the mornings too, and Hermione agreed with false reluctance; she was not keen on raucous music first thing, but to say so to Lucius Malfoy was simply to hand him a weapon.
Lucius tried to ban Elvis, but she insisted he was going to have to get used to the "stuff", and Elvis Presley was a lot easier listening than some of the music she had every intention of playing. To make her point she played him Jerry Lee Lewis playing and singing Good Golly Miss Molly, which appeared to shock Lucius rigid, not just for the sheer noise levels, and then Charlie Daniels' The Devil Went Down to Georgia. Merely out of the kindness of her heart, she then agreed not to listen to Jerry Lee Lewis without raising a Cone of Silence.
After that Hermione's flat was filled with music all day and all evening, and once Lucius identified a station on the wizarding wireless which broadcast pleasant late night music he started listening to that inside a Cone of Silence while Hermione slept. When she came home unexpectedly early one afternoon she smiled to recognise Slim Whitman singing It's a Small World, of all things, and then to discover that the CD was not on random play. Perhaps the stubborn Lucius was sampling her despised music behind her back.