Slipping a glass vial into his breast pocket and keeping a firm grip on the ancient book, Severus wrapped his arms around Hermione in order to Apparate them both to the grounds of Malfoy Manor. They couldn't Floo directly into the manor study, since they had some business to attend to in the peacock enclosure before heading up to the big house.

After casting Silencing Charms around themselves, Severus and Hermione sneaked up to find Nippy watching over the peacock cages that held Louis le Gros and Marie Bourbon. Hermione knocked out the house-elf with a gentle stunner whilst Severus slipped the potion he had brought along in the water dishes of both birds. The peafowl trundled over, took a few sips, and collapsed in a feathered heap onto the Turkish carpets that Lucius had laid out for their comfort. When Severus examined Nippy's eyes, prying his eyelids open, he also discovered that the house-elf's memory had been selectively wiped out.

One step down.

Now it was time to confront the man of the house.

Before they made it past the Italian garden, Lucius was upon them. He glanced between his friend and the woman beside him before his eyes settled on the book Severus was holding. "Hello, my old friend. I see that you received my gift."

"A rather specific present," Severus replied. He took a step in front of Hermione, a subtle protective gesture whose meaning Lucius would understand. "Would you like to tell me how you turned your prized pet into a zombie? Any information you can give us could help your case."

Lucius eyed Hermione with skepticism, and he spoke with restraint. "I don't know what you're talking about, Severus. Zombies? Me? Unauthorised magic of that kind would surely be against the International Ban on Experimental Breeding, and I am, as you know, fully reformedthese days."

"Really?" Hermione demanded, marching right up to the blond. "Nothing to confess?"

He stood his ground, and to his credit, he didn't flinch a whit. "No."

"You wouldn't want to tell me how you took Louis around to infect the Fwoopergrass birds and those poor creatures at the Muggle zoos?" Hermione asked, standing with one hand on her hip in defiance.

Lucius feigned shock as he replied, raising one hand to his heart. "Why would I want more of these beautiful creatures taken from the world? How would I have done it, with an Auror guarding them all day and all night?"

"The house-elf's memory has been tampered with," Severus volunteered. "And you're the only one here, Lucius."

"When you let Louis infect Muggle peacocks, we had to go to their Prime Minister." Hermione began her line of questioning again. "They're all convinced that it's a bird flu, but Minister Grubbly-Plank wants this to be over with, once and for all. So if I tell you that I'm here on the Minister's orders to snuff out the zombie threat for good, you still won't have anything to confess?"

Lucius took a deep breath before speaking. "No."

"And... If I said that I'd already done it?" she asked, her voice as cold as Severus had ever heard it. Her ruthlessness held a strangely erotic quality.

Lucius ran off to the peacock pens, only to find both birds motionless in their cages. "Louis? Marie? Louis!"

Severus and Hermione followed him.

After opening the gates with a spell and laying his hand under Louis' chin, Lucius turned back to Hermione.

Eyes flashing and breath rapid, he was livid.

"I am sorry, Mister Malfoy," Hermione said flatly. "Your peacock is dead. If only you had come forward earlier with what you knew about the case. As it is, your information came too late, and the Minister gave me no choice."

He pulled his wand on her then, lining it up with her jugular. Thankfully, his anger left his unfocussed, and Severus managed to disarm him before he knew it.

Lucius watched his wand fly out of his hand, landing in Severus's open palm. Then he collapsed to the ground, sobbing. "He didn't have to die! You didn't have to kill him!"

Crouching down beside him, Severus leaned in and stiffly patted his back. After a minute or two passed, Lucius relaxed in hopeless resignation.

Severus asked another question. "What was wrong with Louis? What was really wrong?"

When the man replied, his voice sounded hollow, desiccated like an old corn husk blown across a dead field. He turned to Severus. "It really wasmy fault, but I know now that it wasn't poison. It was never poison. I overfed him and coddled him, and he was sick, and..." His voice trailed off. "The Mediwizard I consulted a few weeks ago told me that he would have been his old self again after a few months of a modified diet."

"You might have fattened up the bird, but extra servings didn't turn him into a zombie, Lucius."

The man looked down at his hands. "I did that, too, Severus. That day with the Aurors, I was out of my mind with worry. I thought Louis was dying then and there, so I took him to the library, believing that there must have been a spell to save his life. There I found that book on charms in Grandfather's collection on animal husbandry."

"Yes?" Severus asked, prompting him to continue.

"It's Haitian. It's Dark Magic, but I assumed that nothing could be terribly dark if it saved the life of an animal, could it? They're innocent, unlike us. I tried the Voodoo charm on Louis, and he instantly perked up and started walking again like he had when he was younger. But…" His voice caught in his throat.

"But it wasn't really Louis anymore?" Severus asked.

Lucius nodded. "I tried to reverse it, but I had no idea how to reverse engineer a spell in that bastardised French. It's impossible. However, if someone could reverse the spell, all the infected peafowl could be restored to health. They would become as they once were."

"That's why you sent me the book? To work on the incantations?" Severus asked. "Why didn't you mention this earlier? I don't know any Creole, but surely someone—"

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your lady friend?" Lucius asked, interrupting him.

Severus frowned at the non sequitur. "You know Miss Granger already."

"I know her as Miss Granger, Auror for the Ministry and consummate pain in my backside," he said. When he turned to Severus, he looked—Could it be?—hurt. As he spoke again, his words were measured and formal. "I was asking my oldest friend to introduce me to the woman he is seeing socially. The woman he has been seeing socially for... is it five months now?"

Well, that was unexpected.

Severus really thought he had been discreet.

Hermione walked up to Severus, slipping her hand into his and giving it a squeeze.

Now that he thought about it, he really hadn't seen much of Lucius since he began courting Hermione. "Lucius," he said, attempting an apologetic tone of voice so he wouldn't actually have to apologise, "this is Hermione Jean Granger, my…"

Fuck.

He still hadn't figured out what to call her. Everything he'd tried so far sounded asinine, and now she was staring up at him with her beautiful eyes, and—

"Partner," she supplied. She looked as uncertain as he felt. "Is that all right, Severus? I know we haven't actually decided what we are, but I feel like you're my partner now."

Severus's heart beat a little faster at her words. He'd never had anyone walking beside him in life, and here was a thoughtful, kind, slightly pushy woman who asked for his advice as often as she bossed him around. She suited him. "Partner," he said, feeling the word roll around in his mouth. "That seems… appropriate."

Breaking the moment, she turned back to Lucius. "Just so you know, Lucius, I could never kill an animal. The birds were given a potion to make them appear dead, but Louis and Marie will be awake within the hour."

Lucius gasped, relieved. And then he did a startling thing. He walked over and extended his hand to her. "Miss Gran—Hermione, please accept my apology for acting out in my, shall we say, distress."

Severus snorted aloud. That was one way of saying that he'd nearly hexed a government official, a crime punishable by community service and a hefty fine.

She merely shook his hand. "I don't recall anything out of the ordinary, Lucius."

The relief that she wasn't going to be arresting him showed on his face. Then another thought came back to him. "Are you really saying that you cured my peafowl?"

"Not yet," she said. "They've merely been drugged with Draught of the Living Dead. When they awake, they'll still be zombies."

His face fell.

"As an Auror," she continued, raising her voice, "I cannot legally condone any work with Dark Magic under my watch."

"And I," Lucius said pointedly, "would never say anything on the record to tie the Malfoy holdings to Dark Magic, since I willingly handed over all questionable material to the Ministry after the fall of the Dark Lord and my time under house arrest."

Hermione looked at Severus and nodded before she spoke again. "If, however, a private consultant hired by the Ministry chooses to spend his stipend on a trip to the Caribbean in order to research the potions-related subject he was paid to research, and if he happens to be able to reverse an old Voodoo spell that turns creatures into zombies while he's there, who am I to judge?"

Fairly pleased by this solution, Severus ran through his mental catalogue of Caribbean plant life. "I wonder if I'll see this private consultant when I travel to Port-au-Prince tomorrow."

"Must you go so soon?" Hermione asked, tucking herself into his side. Her fingers began playing with the buttons on his shirt, and Severus felt the warmth of her touch seeping into his bones.

He kissed the top of her head. "I've been meaning to fetch..."—he racked his brains to come up with something appropriate—"a rare Tomzanonia orchid, which, strangely enough, only grows on the northern coast of Haiti."

In the end, it took two weeks.

Two weeks working with translators, experimenting with spell creation, and learning more about Voodoo than his Western Potions Master had ever taught him. He also stopped over in Saint Lucia for a day of rest and ten minutes of shopping before his Portkey back to London. When he returned to England, he had a rare orchid for himself, a spell to reverse a Haitian curse for Lucius, and a simple gold ring for Hermione.

All the peacocks of England were miraculously restored to health, Louis le Gros was kept on a vegan diet until he returned to an average size, and Hermione said yes.

Dear readers, thank you so much for sticking with me on this slightly peculiar tale. Particular thanks go to my lovely reviewers, the folks who reassure me that people are actually reading this and smiling somewhere in the world. A big shout out to... AdeliaMaggot, Arabella Lee Smith, arizonadaydreamer, corie.f, CRMediaFal, drasticactions, Elle Leigh, Em, fanficti0naddict, Fragilereality, Hanable-13, Hildygirl, irononmaiden, Kailin, KIT10 not K9, Los Grotos, marzipan4, meg527, ndavis77, Onyx Obsidian, owl-eats-waffles, Petite Mule, pgoodrichboggs, poppins8, readrbug21, renaid, SaiyaCat, SeraphinaAngel, sevslave1, .fanfic, Snaperipper, TequilaMockingbirdWrites, the dragon and the rose, The Lazy Princess, turbulenthandholding, and wolfstars!

If you're at all interested in another story, I'm beginning an experiment in short-form writing: a SSHG drabble series about Severus Snape as the new barista at Hermione's local coffee shop. Each day, you'll get 100 words!