Chapters 171-180

Sorrow Like a Precious Treasure

The private lab in their quarters was brightly lit. The ingredients for the Sempiternal Solution were laid out on a table, ready for the next morning.

A large iron cauldron, a smaller golden one. A stack of well-aged wood: birch, vine, yew. A bowl with hoof shavings. A bundle with dried coltsfoot and mallowsweet. A phial with augurey tears and another with phoenix tears. A big glass bottle with spring water from a holy well. Smaller bottles with pomegranate and apple juice. A jar with turpentine. A gourd with grated beeswax from horse roses. A jar with dried and grated Bundimun secretion, harvested in Westminster Abbey. Flagons with essential oils. Two small Muggle-type syringes.

An empty Pensieve.

Severus stood next to the Pensieve, dressed in his customary frock coat and scowl. ‘The Sempiternal Solution is a Master level Charmed potion of Gallo-Roman origin. It has not been brewed for several hundred years. If it was, indeed, ever successfully prepared.’

‘But Pomet—’ Hermione interrupted without thinking.

‘Pomet was a dunce, Hermione! He was an archivist, a documentalist, a scholar. He was never an alchemist or a Potions Master.’

‘But Flamel—’

Severus scowled. ‘Flamel may have been on to something. But the object of his research was something completely different. Context matters in potions research, Hermione.’

He held up a hand to forestall further arguments, and Hermione bit down on her lip. ‘The brewing process will take three days as the success of the potion depends on various stages of concocting an absolutely homogenous solution, on infusing the solution with several Charms and on allowing the solution sufficient time to settle in between.’

‘If you don’t believe that the Solution can be made viable, then why are you doing this?’

His lips thinned, and his eyes glittered strangely. He would not meet her gaze. She frowned. Why was he brewing such a complex potion if he didn’t believe in its viability? Certainly not to keep her out of his hair or to pacify her. He took his work too seriously. He’d never waste his strength on something irrelevant. Hermione’s heart did an odd little skip.

‘You’re doing it for me, aren’t you?’ she said slowly. All of a sudden her mouth felt dry, and her throat was tight. ‘To give me hope, even if you don’t have any yourself?’

‘Rubbish,’ he snarled, but he still wouldn’t look at her. ‘You’re a Potions Apprentice, and since you concluded your last project…’ He narrowed his eyes and inclined his head a little towards her. ‘…shall we say…adequately, you need a slightly more advanced task. That’s all there is to it.’

oooOooo

‘There is one more thing we have to do today in order to prepare the potion.’ He stepped towards the Pensieve and picked it up. ‘You will need to deposit three memories in this Pensieve,’ he said softly.

She nodded. ‘I know. I’m just not sure which memories. And—they will be lost to me forever, right? That makes choosing them…even more difficult.’

‘Yes, the memories will be lost. However, I shall create copies of your memories, and you can have those back tomorrow.‘

‘Copies of memories? I didn’t think that’s possible.’ Hermione frowned. She’d researched Pensieves and memory spells extensively while Severus had been at St Mungo’s after Voldemort’s defeat.

Severus’ expression wavered between a smirk and a scowl. ‘You are quite right. It wasn’t possible. At least until Potter turned my memories into a project. I don’t know who taught him to be so thorough, because Merlin knows it wasn’t me.’ He grimaced. ‘Now there are copies of my memories on file in the Ministry of Magic.’ He inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring. ‘And I can return…blueprints of your memories to you tomorrow.’

Hermione’s thoughts were a jumble: the veiled compliment for her influence on Harry made her want to smile; the problem of which memories to choose caused her nausea, especially if he…‘Do you—’ She sucked in her lips and had to swallow hard. ‘Do you have to look at them in order to copy them?’

He inclined his head. His eyes were like black glass, betraying no emotion. ‘Yes.’

‘And—do you know—how—how the copies will be different from the original memories?’

‘I have…practiced the procedure, yes. The copies will be…dull. Veiled. Perhaps like black-and-white TV compared to Technicolor. Mono instead of stereo.’

Hermione took a deep breath. That made sense. A lot of sense. Thoughtfully, she sucked in her lower lip once more. Had Harry never talked about this procedure, or had she simply missed it? Of course, they could have it classified as Unspeakable, which seemed likely, so he wouldn’t have been able to mention it. He might share his course materials on Necromancy, but he was surprisingly scrupulous about the vital things.

‘Ah.’

The silence between them lengthened.

‘How do I choose, Severus?’ she asked at last. ‘All my memories of you are precious to me. I assume that the memory has to be important—it may very well be that the strength of the connection depends on that!’

‘And it may also be that you will destroy precious memories for nothing but an exploded cauldron,’ he replied brutally. With a jerky movement he thrust the Pensieve into her hands. ‘You know the procedure. You have an hour to choose and extract your memories.’

oooOooo

She carried the Pensieve to her bedroom. Crookshanks, who’d been sleeping on her bed, greeted her with a reproachful look and only curled up once more, demonstratively turning his back to her.

Hermione sat down on the window seat, cross-legged, the Pensieve ensconced in front of her. Outside, the lake and the surrounding hills had already disappeared in an early, black January dusk.

How am I supposed to choose those memories? she wondered. She had been honest with Severus. Damn it, Severus. Every single memory I have of you is precious to me. Even the bad ones.