Down in his study, Snape had arranged all the parts of the Eye across his table and was carefully going over each piece again. He had made himself a potion for his headache and was feeling better. Dismantling a Cursed item was serious business and he would’ve been expected to hand it over to the Ministry experts, but he was confident he could handle it as well as they could.
The blood had him thinking. Too many blood-related incidents to be coincidence had been revolving around Hogwarts. There was the blood he had been processing for Lorelei, the blood in the vials she had taken, the puddle of blood that had followed him around, the harpy blood that had gone missing, the blood needed to open the World’s Door, the ichlings that fed on it, the blood in the center of the Eye, and underneath it all, the lurking presence of vampires.
He was thinking back to the few vampires he knew personally. It had occurred to him to contact them for information and hope the old contacts would still be in affect. There was no way to be sure whose side they were on though. He couldn’t risk news getting back to Lorelei’s vampire.
Brohm, the name was. Not as many syllables as Voldemort, but the way Lorelei cringed at the name was similar. Tom would’ve loved to have been as powerful as the Zephyrs claimed Brohm was. If he hadn’t been so terrified of dying, maybe he would’ve turned to the vampires for immortality.
No, he wouldn’t, Snape told himself. Vampires retain some control over the human they take in, and Tom couldn’t have tolerated submitting to that.
His mind was pulled back to the table by a soft, scuffle sound. He held perfectly still for a moment and heard it again. His first thought was that it was an especially clumsy rat, and his wand lit an ominous green before a tiny white paw appeared over the edge of the table.
It was one of the Mrs. Norris’ kittens. It pulled itself up onto the table and swayed drunkenly. It wasn’t a very good walker yet and its eyes were barely-open slits. Who knew how they managed to get around as far as they did.
The kitten squeaked at him and then focused on a piece of colored glass from the Eye. Its crooked tail frizzed suddenly and it jumped back in alarm, startling Snape too. It tried to hiss at the piece of glass but the sound was more comical than threatening. He almost swept it off the table and out of his way, but reconsidered. It was the offspring of two very capable and savvy familiars. Maybe it was on to something.
It did its best to arch its back, but lost its balance and fell over. Before Snape could reach out to move it, Mrs. Norris was there. She scooped the kitten up by the scruff and gave Snape a blistering glare. She glanced at the glass the kitten had been trying to intimidate and her tail lashed irritably. She hopped to the floor and disappeared up the stairs without a sound.
Snape gave the glass some extra attention and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in it. Just in case, he put the Curse-proof gloves on again and got back to work.
As far as he could tell, the blood was human. There had been a tiny glass bottle, only about twice as big around as the head of a pin, and completely wrapped in the rune-carved wire. It would take much more involved alchemy to figure out a more specific idea of who the blood belonged to, and that would take some time, but he already had the process started.
In the meantime, he concentrated on the runes. Since he couldn’t recognize the spell itself, he was breaking it down into separate components. Most enchantments fit certain templates. They could be broken down and distilled much like a potion could. Once you knew all the ingredients, deciphering the recipe was just a matter of patience.
There was a series of runes that were commonly used in wards, but at seeming random. Mixed in with them were three different keyport symbols, but again, not in any effective order. He sorted through the puzzle of pieces, waiting for the equipment to be ready for the blood.
Hours later, hands sweating inside the gloves, and almost wishing the kitten would come back just to give him something else to look at for a minute, he noticed a connection. The runes in one crook of coiled wire matched the one in the next crook. The spells would only line up when the wire was coiled, which meant the caster had somehow managed to engrave runes on the inside of a tight coil of wire around a glass vial without misspelling anything or damaging the glass.
That was impressive, he had to admit.
A pinging musical note told him that the equipment was ready. He got up, stretching his back from where he had been bent over the table, and let three drops of the blood he had salvaged from the Eye drip into the apparatus. The rest of the equipment sprang to life. The blood was sent through tubes of enchanted glass made by goblins and centrifuges of meteorite copper that had to be magicked for at least three hundred years before they could do their job.
It took a full four hours to process, and Snape missed dinner to watch the whole procedure very carefully. If Esme’s tampering with the blood potion he had been making had accomplished nothing else, it had reminded him of how very easily alchemy could be ruined by casual passersby. He oversaw the whole transition with a sharp eye out for anything that could possibly go wrong.
Finally, the processed blood dripped out into a mirror made of mermaid silver and evaporated into a cloud that formed the face of the blood’s owner. Wisps of steam rolled into hair around it. It was Lorelei.
Behind him on the table, the piece of red glass the kitten had hated cracked right across with an icy crik noise.
Elsewhere, Sirius stood in the doorway of his cave, watching the wind tear by. He wasn’t worried about being seen. The snow was blowing so hard and thick that Cornelius Fudge himself could walk right by and not see him.
He couldn’t see Hogwarts. Even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to get in now that the wards were up. He hoped it could keep vampires out too. He hoped that if the Morthahg came bursting out, the wizards and witches wouldn‘t be trapped inside with it. He still had the keyport to Dumbledore’s office, but with the luck he had been having, there would probably be a meeting of Ministry officials in there to startle by appearing in the middle of them.
He sighed, and turned away from the door. He went back inside and sat beside Hermione’s magical fire. It was pleasantly warm, but didn’t give much light. He killed an hour, staring into it, fretting over worst case scenarios and planning for a dozen different potential outcomes. The gashes on his back still ached.
There was a rush of displaced air and feathers as a falcon burst into the cave. Sirius lunged to his feet in surprise and shifted to Padfoot out of panicked habit. The bird flopped and fluttered madly for a moment, then landed in a heap. It was gasping harshly and struggling to move.
Sirius stared at it. At first he thought it was moving like it was hurt, but then it occurred to him that it was moving like it didn’t know how to maneuver with the way its body was jointed. James had had that trouble with his deer haunches once upon a time. It was hard enough to manage a whole new world of senses and a neck that was five times longer than usual without finding out your knees bent in opposite directions now. What would wings have been like?
He ran for his bed, turning human on the way, grabbed a blanket from the pile, and hurried over to the bird. It was a peregrine falcon with a rusty brown tinge to its crest and bright eyes. It made a high-pitched 'screee' sound at him and then its body began to bulge. Sirius threw the blanket over it and dropped to his knees.
"The hard part's over!" he said. "Just try to fall out of your skin!" A grin was doing its best to split his face. He was almost giggling encouragement as the blanket billowed and the bird's body was suddenly much larger. The peeping sound became a panting and Esme's face peeked out from under the blanket. She was laughing too, the hysterical kind of laugh of someone well past exhaustion. She was shaking and pale, but grinning. Sirius grabbed her in a tight hug of relief.
"You did it!" he crowed. "I've been worried sick! I couldn't tell how well you were saying the words! Are you all right? You're freezing!" He could feel the chill off her skin through his own clothes. He was pretty sure she was naked. It took some practice to get your clothes to change with you. Nothing like flying through the winter air with no clothes.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she gasped. She burrowed close to him, shaking from cold and exhaustion. He pulled the blanket tighter around her, pulling her into his lap to get her off the cold ground. Her cold hands wound in his clothes and he hugged her close as her teeth chattered.
"Are you followed? How did you get away?" He looked over her head at the cave entrance. The sideways snow might as well have been a white curtain.
"I…” her voice squeaked, still bird-like, and she coughed to clear her throat. “I pretended to be still be asleep when they re-merged me and my reflection." She burst into another breathless giggle. "They were going to bring in my Grandfather to try to talk me into confessing. When they were making sure he wasn't smuggling me any keyports, I cast the spell mentally and was out the window." She wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled into the warmth of his neck. She giggled again suddenly. "It was so much fun! It's a joy to have wings."
"And it saved your life," he added.
"That too!" She pulled back to grin at him. As pale as she was, her eyes were as bright and merry as ever. When she kissed him, her lips were as cold as her hands, but it was hard to mind too much.