Case of the Cintimani Stone: A Hammer Mystery

Chapter 20

It was good not being stuck reacting. The Hammer liked being in control - being on the hunt. He thought back to the Tyger, back to being the one who was on the prowl. It was his hand that dared seize the fire. Harry dialed back his approach: keeping his head down in school and class so as to not arouse suspicion. For good measure, he had begun in the common rooms - looking over his own with Lumos Tenebrosus to see if there were any signs of the moonlight glow of unicorn blood. Unsurprisingly, the tower was clean, and from Neville's report the Hufflepuff basement was also free and clear.

Harry had to settle for examining the stairs and hallway leading to the Gryffindor common room. There were plenty of questionable fluids but nothing that resembled the distinct glow of the magic blood or the spittle that was at the scene of the crime. The dungeons were where the trouble was. Given the proximity of the Slytherin commons to the potions class, the Hammer needed to be sure he wasn't under observation when he began. Returning to the potions' hallway after dinner, the place seemed deserted.

"So what happens if we find something?" Neville asked, peering down one side of the hallway as a lookout.

"We'll go to the headmaster, of course. He'll have to listen to us if we have evidence." Hermione said with an air of confidence.

"Yeah, right." Harry murmured as he lit his wand, the blacklight highlighting streaks on the stones in the hallway - their colour was inconclusive. Opening up the door to the potions class felt like a mistake. The glow of his wand lit up the room in a cacophony of colour - the potion reagents glowing the gamut of colours, but all of them different from what he was looking for. The surfaces of the tables were a mess of liquid remains even in spite of the magical cleansing the room was subjected to on a regular basis.

"Did you find anything?" Neville called back to him.

"Nope, give me some time!" The Hammer replied, trying to sort through the different kinds of light he was finding on the ground - by their patterns alone he couldn't make heads or tails of anything. He decided to abandon the search in the student areas and began to look in the area where Snape's desk was, starting in the corner and following the way out toward the shelves of more dangerous ingredients that were kept nearer the back and used by older students. The different glowing hues elicited under the shifted Lumos was a varied mix that seemed to break the rules of normal exposure, but the Hammer figured it was a property of magic.

Coming up to the door to the storeroom in the back, the Hammer still hadn't found anything that resembled the white glow of unicorn blood or the dark aubergine of tainted spittle. He stopped, looking around with the wand held out in front of him, struggling to find anything relevant. Harry still didn't quite want to believe it - it would have been clean and easy to blame Snape. He had motive and he had means and the kind of adult cutthroat ruthlessness that would have made killing a unicorn something that wouldn't have bothered him.

While the Hammer was lost in thought, jumping through his own mental hoops, the door of the storeroom in front of him swung open to reveal a black clad professor with a familiar scowl on his face.

"Having a party, Mason?" Snape spoke with a familiar deadpan. It wasn't lost on Harry that he had changed which name he called him by. The light of Tenebrosus won out against the weak incandescent bulb inside the storeroom, highlighting Snape up his entire front side. There were splotches and stains from the reagents spilt on his robes that illuminated under the light, but yet again still nothing. The whites of the professor's eyes radiated with a piercing intensity under blacklight, his already dark pupils now like the void between stars. The Hammer muttered the counter charm and put his wand away.

"Guess not." Harry said, meeting Snape's stare, "Looks like you're not the one I was looking for."

"Pray tell who or what it was you were looking for in my classroom with your little charm?" He turned the last word into a sneer.