An Opus Alchymicum Vol 4: The Dæmon's Crucible

The Zebra Crossing

Light, incessant snow drifted and swirled and curled in the air, driving merrily past the windows of Ice Station Zebra and settling thick on the trees and bushes outside, flecking the anbaric survey equipment that stood dormant in the rear yard with a powdery dusting and making everything look like it was lit with the soft white light of another world.

Hermione watched it all through the large window of the kitchen, as she waited for the kettle to come to the boil. She wondered what sorts of tests the equipment would be used for today, curious as to which bit of atomcraft or atmospheric phenomena was on the agenda for the Scholars on this snowy morning. She sang quietly to herself as she waited for the kettle, humming the catchy chorus line to the current Weird Sisters hit ('Baptise me with a Goblet of Fiyaahhh!') that sat at the top of the charts back home.

That was a curious thought to have, she mused absently, that she should consider the world of Harry and Hogwarts as 'home' now. Of course, she wasn't insensible as to the main reason why, but it was still a little strange to think it all the same. After all, here she was making the day's first cup of tea for herself and her mother, and all she could think was about how nice it would be to be sharing it with her in front of the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room, rather than out here in the desert of snow and ice.

For they had been in the wintry wilderness of the remote research station for over a week now, since Lyra had brought Hermione back through the portal with the Mandrake Restorative Draught safely in her bag. Hermione's parents had been revived in little under an hour, the emotional reunion lasted a little longer, and the explanations took longer still ... and Hermione hadn't even gotten to her apologies yet. That was on her agenda for the morning ... she just needed to decide which one it was best to start with.

So she focused first on making the best cups of tea that she could manage, hoping that they might lubricate her guilty pleas for forgiveness. In fairness, her parents hadn't seemed angry or cross with her, but this subdued, resentful shame that Hermione felt for herself was pressing on her chest, demanding to be satiated. She wouldn't be content until she'd dealt with it.

She took her tea cups and made her way through the research facility. It was surgically pristine here, and extremely bland for the being so, despite the exciting studies that were conducted all around them. Hermione frowned at that, thinking it would be better to celebrate and revel at being at the forefront of such frontier research, rather than being brisk and business-like about everything. But that was just how the Scholars seemed to prefer it, so who was she to tell them otherwise?

Everything here was made of metal; shiny surfaces of stainless steel gleamed in the fierce glow of small anbaric lights, set high in the crooks where the walls met the ceiling, and the entire facility was awash with a sort of low-level humming from the generators and equipment that would drive you mad if you didn't get used to it double-quick. That was if the heavy smell around the place ... a sterile, medical sort of aroma ... didn't get the job done first.

The doors were all motion activated, with little red lights that turned green when they permitted access, and shaped like the cartouches of hieroglyphs found in the ancient African Kingdoms. They slid open with a little hiss of warm air, and made Hermione feel as if she were walking around bowels of a deep-water ship, rather than an advanced scientific facility in the middle of nowhere.

Hermione found her way back through to the Communal Lounge, which was equally as stark and characterless as the rest of the place, despite being the central socialising location of the complex. Hermione simply assumed that the minds of Scholars worked differently to those of regular people, and that they must see indulgent comfort as illogical, as something that distracted from the pure pursuit of academic discovery.