Chapter Text

The Department of Mysteries

Hermione

The Department of Mysteries never pretended to be welcoming. Its corridors were long, sterile things, all polished stone and humming wards, each door unmarked and impenetrable unless you belonged there. Most of Hermione’s colleagues seemed to thrive in the little social circles of their specialist divisions. She, however, had chosen a post where she worked with almost no one, preferring the quiet that let her focus without interruption. No cheerful knock-ins. No office gossip. No one asking her to “pop out for lunch.”

Hermione Granger was a Fixer—a rare type of Unspeakable whose job was, essentially, everything. When a problem proved too complex, too volatile, or simply too strange for any of the specialist rooms to handle alone, it went to the Fixers. They were the department’s problem-solvers, generalists with razor-sharp minds, parachuted into whatever crisis needed them most. At present, there were only a handful in the entire Ministry.

That morning, her desk was buried in reports from various D.O.M. divisions, and the only tolerable colleague she had was coughing himself half to death across from her.

“You sound like a dying hippogriff,” she said without looking up.

Theo Nott gave a wheezy laugh that turned into another fit of hacking. His dark hair stuck up in sweaty clumps, and his normally lazy grin looked pale around the edges. “That’s because I’ve got the hippogriff flu. Tragic, really. Ministry ought to send me home on hazard pay.”

Hermione flicked her wand, setting a self-inking quill to take over her notes. “Then go. Before you infect half the department.”

“Can’t.” He shoved a folder across the table toward her with exaggerated care. “Because this landed in our lap last night, and apparently the higher-ups think it’s urgent.”

She eyed the folder. It was thick, stamped with a bright red URGENT, and radiated the sort of bureaucratic dread that meant more long nights in the lab.

“What is it?” she asked.

Theo coughed into his sleeve and smirked. “Black-market love potion. Street name: Lust Potion Number Nine. Maybe you’ve read about it in the Prophet—witches and Muggle women losing control at nightclubs, each instance ending in full-blown assaults. Dozens of confirmed cases in the last three months alone. They’re calling it an epidemic.”

Hermione opened the folder. Statements from Healers, blurred photographs of glass phials recovered from raids, notes scrawled in shorthand about victims brought into St Mungo’s. Her stomach tightened as she read.

“All women,” she said quietly.

“Every report,” Theo agreed. “It only works if it’s drunk. Firewhisky spiked at a pub, doctored cocktails, even a Butterbeer shipment to Hogsmeade last week. Women drink it, they go mindless. Insatiable. That’s the ceiling.”

“And no blokes,” she pressed.

Theo gave a careless shrug that looked more like exhaustion. “None reported. Which isn’t to say it couldn’t happen, but… you know how these cases go. Victims are mostly women. Same pattern here.”

Hermione closed the file, her jaw set. “So the Ministry assumes ingestion is the only pathway, because skin contact hasn’t been tested. That’s not the same as proof.”

“Tell that to the Director,” Theo said, leaning back in his chair. “The Love Division—the so-called Love Room—has been working with the best potioneer in Britain for weeks now. He’s just had a breakthrough, and someone needs to go confirm the recipe and collect samples.”

“Why us though? Why not the Love Room Unspeakables?” Hermione’s brow furrowed as she continued to glance through the file.

“The wimps were confident enough corresponding with him by owl, but none of them have the spine to go in person apparently. Which means someone else has to go to Spinner’s End and make sure the bat’s so-called antidote actually works.”

Her head snapped up. “Snape?”

Theo grinned, weak but wicked. “World-famous potioneer, Order of Merlin, and, depending on who you ask, either a hero or the greasy git who made at least two generations of the wizarding world’s school years hell. Apparently, he’s been brewing in seclusion for a decade and producing almost all the major potion breakthroughs in recent memory—new burn salves, a Wolfsbane Stabiliser, even a Blood-Replenishing Draught that St Mungo’s swears by.” He coughed again, winced, and added, “And I was supposed to be the liaison.”

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am, but unfortunately, I’m also contagious. So unless you’d like me to sneeze all over his precious vials, the job’s yours.”

She opened the folder again, skimming the details, willing her pulse to settle. The reports were clear: the potion was spreading faster than the Ministry could contain, and every day without a cure meant more victims.

“Snape won’t want me there,” she said at last.

Theo’s smile turned sly. “Then think of it as calling in a marker. You did save his life at the Battle of Hogwarts, didn’t you? A bezoar and some battlefield spellwork? He owes you.”

Hermione snapped the folder shut. “Well, fuck me then I guess, Nott.”

Theo’s eyes twinkled with his personal brand of mischief. “Oh, darling—if only I had the stamina right now to give it to you the way you deserve.” He coughed again, half a laugh, half a wheeze. “You’ll thank me later, Granger. Think of all the fun you’ll have sparring with him again. Just like old times.”

Hermione ignored him and headed for her office to gather her notes. Old times had nearly broken her more than once. And she had the sinking feeling that walking into Severus Snape’s house might prove no different.