Chapter Two

A/N: Well, here’s the moment of truth. This is my Snape interpretation. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I’ll stop channeling the marines now and get on with the show. Huge thanks to everyone who reviewed. The current hit count on this fic pretty much blew me away.


Every potion was different. Different mixtures of ingredients. Different preparation methods. Different measurements, different timings, different uses. All different.

All the same.

All based in meticulous preparation and execution. All rooted in logic and order.

When all else failed and the fragile world Severus Snape had managed to scrape together around himself collapsed into miserable ruin, again, he could always count on the infinite variations of his potions to remain infinitely stable.

He always put exactly four drops of phoenix tears into his most powerful healing potion, he always stirred his sleeping potions counter clockwise, and he always used the same knife to cut all of his herbs, always cleaning it thoroughly after each use, and always storing it in the same drawer in the same corner of his office. Always.

In a summer of chaos, Severus had clung to his potion-brewing like a lifeline. When Voldemort had finally managed to clothe his accursed life force in a functional body, he brewed vats of mental morass to bolster his already impressive talents in occclumency. When Dumbledore had started piecing together the Order of the Phoenix again, he had brewed incendiary ink which would ensure that any of the Order’s letters which fell into the wrong hands would burst into flames before they could be read. When Voldemort had called his most loyal followers together and made a show of commending those who had kept to their posts, like Severus himself, and punishing those that had not been so openly loyal during the long years of his ‘absence,’ he had brewed a combination pain killer and muscle relaxant in preparation for the inevitable day that his ‘Lord’ was less pleased and decided to turn the Cruciatus curse his way. When the Order had relocated from Remus’ humble home to the Black family dwelling, he had brewed an entire pharmacopeia of medicines, elixirs, and cure-alls for any number of potential injuries to stock the shelves of their new headquarters.

Another full moon? Brew Remus more wolfsbane potion.

Another report that Sirius has been spotted somewhere in London? Brew him one of your more powerful obscurement potions. Use undead lamprey slime as the base. Insist coldly that the flavor is an unavoidable side effect of the magic.

Another letter from the rapidly reconsolidating Death Eaters? Brew a poison that draws so heavily on various dark magics that Dumbledore breaks into your private chambers in his red pajamas, wand in hand, convinced that the Death Eaters have finally come to finish off his potions master. Label it ‘For: Lucius Malfoy’ and place it prominently on the mantle above your fireplace as an unspoken promise. Look at it at least three times a day.

Perhaps that last one was not the best example.

The point was that Severus found the act of brewing potions to be relaxing, insomuch as someone like himself could ever truly relax. It calmed his mind and soothed his senses. No matter how onerous the potion, or how much the fumes burned his eyes, or how arduous the preparation, he always knew what to expect. They could be gauged, predicted, trusted to behave as they ought, assuming that he kept up his end of the bargain and was similarly consistent in his behaviors. Which, of course, he always was.

When Severus Snape needed a little excitement in his life, he experimented, combining ingredients in new and unexplored ways. Testing the concoctions on the rats that Argus’ cat, Mrs. Norris, provided in droves. Trying to turn alchemical theory into physical fact.

Severus had not performed many of those experiments since Harry Potter had first come to Hogwarts. He had enough excitement in his life without stoking the fire, thank you ever so much. His last attempt had yielded a teleportation tincture that would unerringly return the subject to his or her own home when consumed. He had achieved the desired effect easily enough and had been working through how to limit the side effects, mainly blinding pain and acute memory loss, before the Triwizard Tournament.

Not surprisingly, considering how that had turned out, he hadn’t touched the potion, or his copious notes on it, all summer. Argus had started diverting his supply of rats, or at least those which survived Mrs. Norris’ attentions, to Hagrid’s shack instead, where they were either being fed to the half-giant’s latest monstrosity or living the rat high life. There was really no way of predicting with Hagrid.

On this particular evening, Severus found himself brewing various concoctions of a more official sort. Poppy was restocking her supplies in the infirmary and needed extras of some of her more basic items such as Skele-Gro, a name which had always struck him as particularly insipid, and various pain poultices. There were four cauldrons bubbling away on the heavy lab desk which had long ago taken the place of the previous fixtures in his rooms’ small dining area. Why retain such a flimsy piece of furniture when he could so easily replace it with something practical? It wasn’t as if he regularly entertained guests in his private chambers, and if he was forced to partake in that particular variety of social torture, transfiguring the table into its previous state was a small matter.

He could have easily tended to twice that number of potions had he felt like relocating to the classrooms or had the space in his own chambers provided. The cauldrons he was using were rather large. He was, after all, attempting to supply an entire school of careless, accident-prone students with methods for alleviating their typically self-imposed wounds for at least the duration of the semester. He had little hope that this would be the case. Somehow the number of accidents seemed to rise in proportion to the amount of remedy he brewed, and even he had decided against refusing to make any potions at all to test the theory that the traffic through the school’s infirmary would correspondingly drop to zero. Considering the number of times Poppy had patched up his own hide, he owed it to her to not practice his often sadistic concept of humor in such a manner as to cause her grief.

He was leaning over the largest of the four cauldrons, the one that would eventually yield a balm for minor burns, checking its color and viscosity, when a knock on his door interrupted his solitude. The taps sounded unnaturally loud against the backdrop of quietly bubbling potions. With a loud sigh, he picked up the long handled spoon from its stand next to the cauldron, placed it vertically in the thick orange liquid that smelled strongly of menthol, and tapped the end of its handle with his wand. It started to move, clockwise for this recipe, stirring the potion slowly.

On the way to the door, he picked up a white towel with absorbency charms bound into the weave and wiped his hands from fingertips to elbows. When it came away as pristine as it had started, he was satisfied that he wasn’t about to leave potentially caustic reagents on his doorknob from a carelessly unclean hand. He folded the cloth and slipped it into one of the many pockets hidden in the folds of his robes before rolling his sleeves back down to cover the Dark Mark branded there and opening the door of his chambers.

Standing at roughly knee height, with the same cringing expression of obeisance that seemed to characterize its entire race, was a house elf. It bowed awkwardly, considering the large tray in its hands, and said rapidly, “I is bringing Albus Dumbledore’s regards, Severus Snape. He is just returned and sends this.” The tiny creature hefted what looked to be the rather heavy tray over its head and towards the potions master.

Next to the heaping plates of food on the tray was a letter. Severus took the tray in one hand and the note in the other, scanning its contents briefly.

Severus,

I have excellent news from London. Please come to my office at your earliest possible convenience.

Also, Mada expressed concern that you have not yet eaten today. I took the liberty of sending a sampling of tonight’s dinner down with her. The puff pastries are exceptional.

Albus

Come to think of it, Severus could not remember the last time he had eaten anything that resembled a real meal. “You are Mada?” he asked abruptly.

The house elf’s expressive face and long ears perked up. “I is Mada.”

“Please inform Albus that I will be up as soon as the potions for Poppy can be left to steep on their own, and,” to this, he added the slightest of grave nods, “After I have eaten dinner.”

The etiquette felt stiff and forced on his lips, but it simply did not do to antagonize the beings that prepared your food, and even this sliver of consideration sent Mada into expressions of the kind of happy zeal that set Severus’ teeth on edge. In no time at all, the diminutive house elf had scampered down the hallway with a promise to carry his message directly to the headmaster, conveyed in somewhat broken English.

He then retreated back into his chamber, laden tray in hand. Despite his usual flash of ire at Dumbledore’s meddling, he did have to admit that the food smelled quite tempting. He slid it onto the small end table that flanked a black brocade couch that stood facing his currently cold fireplace.

Minutes later, each of the remaining potions were simmering away with spoons of their own to see to the stirring. Severus slid easily onto one end of the couch, a book on rare South American plants and their alchemical uses opened to his last stopping point. He would start removing the concoctions from their heat sources soon, but in the meantime, they did not require his undivided attention.

He absentmindedly picked at the food, and before he knew it, half of the plate, as well as a chapter on creeping vines, had come and gone. It was time to pull the potions off of their burners and leave them to steep.

And Albus had been correct, the pastries had been more than passable.

~*~*~*~

Albus Dumbledore’s office was the polar opposite of Severus’ own. Whereas the potion master liked his workspace orderly and neat, with little thought to décor past colors and materials that might best repel or conceal the rare accidental spill, the headmaster’s office was an explosion of colors and strange objects. Everywhere you looked there were shiny trinkets, colorful swaths of fabric, and brightly crafted whatsits.

Severus was aware of the fact that he was quite possibly the only object in the room that was completely devoid of color, which perturbed him not the least. Black was practical. It suited him. Sitting there in front of Albus’ desk, his black robes flowed around him and onto the carpet like a spreading ink stain on the vomitous riot of color. He smiled in bitter irony. That was who he was, that was what he was: a mote of corruption on the otherwise joyous canvas of the room. Better to embrace that fact and wear it as a badge of honor than try to delude himself into thinking otherwise.

“Toffee?” Albus asked, extending a dish of candies across the desk. He was either unaware, or more likely politely ignoring, Severus’ dark thoughts. Everywhere else in the world, from his bedchambers to his classroom to the bottom of the ocean, Severus kept his careful masks and mental shields buttoned up as tight as he could make them, but not here. It was a mark of his esteem for the older wizard sitting across from him that he allowed himself these brief moments of weakness.

Severus sighed. Or Albus was actively attempting to forcibly drag him out of his moody behavior, kicking and screaming if need be. He turned down the toffee, but accepted the sentiment that went with it. They couldn’t afford another one of his protracted bouts of nihilism. The situation was too dire. The Order needed him here, now, and certainly in full form.

“What news from the Council of Watchers?” he finally asked, watching as Albus placed one of the bits of candy into his own mouth before returning the dish to a less cluttered corner of his desk.

“They have agreed to an alliance, with reservations,” he finally answered, having swallowed the sticky sweet. “Their new leader is formidable, but much more reasonable than most of his predecessors, if the histories are to be believed. Remus, Alastor, Arthur, and Kingsley will be working directly with the watchers. In exchange, four of their number will be coming to stay with us. One watcher will be acting as a liaison within the Ministry itself, in contact with Mrs. Vance, of course. Another will be moving into number twelve Grimmauld Place with his slayer. The reports were correct by the way, there are multiple slayers now, not just the one. Our guest will not be their senior most one, mind. She is apparently recovering from a fight with a X’orcan matriarch. Alastor was most impressed with her.” Albus’ face took on the bemused, dreamy quality that indicated that he was revisiting a particularly entertaining memory.

Severus, on the other hand, was less amused, even though the defeat of a X’orcan was nothing to scoff at. “And their final representative?” he asked, mind keying in on the glaring omission in the headmaster’s litany.

“Oh, she will be coming here,” Albus said casually. “Which reminds me, would you be willing to take up teaching another class?”

Severus just glared. “She’s coming here?” he asked in an icy voice.

“Yes.”

“As a professor?”

“Yes.”

“And what, may I ask, will she be teaching?”

“Applied Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

Severus’ glare took on an even more dangerous edge. Losing the position, again, to a Ministry plant was galling, but this? This was not to be borne. “And what will I be teaching?” he virtually growled.

“Applied Defense Against the Dark Arts.” The elder wizard’s words were as sedate and even as ever, but his eyes. You always had to watch the eyes when dealing with Albus Dumbledore. His eyes were hawk sharp. He was waiting to see what the potions master’s reaction would be.

Well, he was just going to have to wait. Severus was too busy trying to wrap his mind around what he had just been told. His mind was whirling too fast for words, viewing and prodding this unexpected turn of events from every angle, looking for layers of context, shades of meaning. The labyrinthine mind of a Slytherin doing what it did best. At long length, he asked the single question that might make all of the pieces fit, “Applied?”

For some reason, that made Albus grin widely, before quickly sobering and diving into an answer. “I believe that we can both guess what the nature of Mrs. Umbridge’s class will be. Having Miss Rosenberg here will give us the opportunity to make sure that our students’ education will be affected in name, but not in truth.”

“And my role?” Severus asked in a tightly controlled tone of voice, torn between curiosity over that unexplained grin and the firm knowledge that he was probably happier not knowing.

“Oh, many. As one of my professors, I thought it best to have someone with experience on hand to smooth over any issues with the different magical styles that might arise, and you have made no secret about your interest in teaching this subject.” Albus’ words were carefully bland in the face of a topic that had, in the past, caused innumerable ugly scenes.

At that, Severus scowled all the more. His desire to try his hand at teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts was a sore topic between the two of them. Severus still contended that he had more experience with the dark arts than anyone else the school might trust to hire, seeing as how he had been a dedicated practitioner for years, and he desperately wanted that expertise to count for something other than a source of grief and shame. Albus always countered by saying that while that may be the case, he knew of no other qualified person who would be able to step into the shoes of the school’s potions master. Add that to the fact that the Ministry would certainly look askance at a former Death Eater training classes of children in his former trade, and the official hiring on one Severus Snape as Hogwart’s official DADA professor started to look like a political nightmare for the school.

Until now, it seemed, but was this the chance Severus had been aiming for ever since becoming Albus’ pet spy, or was this the consolation prize?

Seemingly oblivious to the younger wizard’s line of reasoning once again, Albus continued. “As a member of the Order, you will be in a position to give her information about our situation. The Council knows very little about Voldemort and therefore is not entirely on board with our cause. Between the two of us, Minerva, and Hagrid, I believe that we will be able to easily win her over, and through her the Council. And,” his eyes were very sharp now, “As a spy in Voldemort’s trust, I believed that close proximity to the first magic-using muggle on our staff might prove to be a useful form of leverage.”

Used to the kind of scheming that seemed to be Albus’ bread and butter, this last statement still managed to surprise Severus the most. “You are going to use one of the representatives from our newest ally as bait?” Wizards they might not be, but making an open and very personal enemy of the entire Council of Watchers did not seem like something that would guarantee a long and healthy life.

The hard look never left the headmaster’s eyes, but there was dark humor lurking there now as well. “Oh no, Severus, you miss my point. When you meet the girl, I believe that you will understand. She has a heart of gold, that much is obvious in spite of her impressive mental wards, but from what little I could tell, I think the best possible thing for all of us would be for Voldemort to be foolhardy enough to make a move against her.”

Well that was certainly a twist. “A trap then?”

Albus nodded. “A very dangerous, very tempting trap.”

Severus bowed his head in thought. The Dark Lord would take an inordinate amount of interest in what he would certainly consider a mere muggle teaching at the school. “Is she truly that powerful? I had always been told that the wandless were barely better than squibs.”

“Oh yes, Severus. With the proper motivation, I believe that Miss Rosenberg could quite literally move heaven and earth.”

~*~*~*~

The next week’s faculty meeting turned into a fiasco. While Minerva and Hagrid had both been made aware of the entirety of the situation, as far as the rest of the staff were concerned, they were going to be saddled with not one, but now two unwelcome spies come the start of fall term.

Three, Severus thought with a sneer firmly in place on his angular face. The fact that he was being partnered with the Council’s interloper wasn’t setting many hearts at ease among his co-workers either. Albus had been forced to make some excuse about potions work being one of the more universal magical disciplines, which would limit methodological clashes between the Council’s wandless witch and him, which was of course a farce. They would not be teaching potions, they would be teaching advanced offensive and defensive spells to fifth through seventh year students, a point that no one dared to voice considering the stern finality of Albus’ tone when he set the argument forth.

Not that his statement calmed things completely though.

Sibyll had kicked things off by claiming to have foreseen all of this in a dream the night before. Minerva did not quite manage to suppress her snort of disbelief, which earned muffled titters from Pomona and sent Sibyll into a real snit. It had taken some fancy verbal footwork on Albus’ part to appease the divinations professor enough to let the meeting progress.

After that, Argus had tried his usual litany of complaints, capped as usual with his desire to see Peeves evicted from the school grounds. He was promptly drowned out by Irma, who seemed to be of the opinion that Argus should be spending less time chasing ghosts and more time replacing the dry rotted bookshelves in the back of the restricted section of the library, which were so far gone that the various mending spells already on the wood were starting to fail along with the shelves they were meant to bolster. That had resulted in an amusing verbal row which again required Albus to personally step in to unruffled feathers.

Then things really went downhill.

Usually all of this would have at least evoked a smirk from Severus, childish posturing over things as banal as bookshelves would typically stroke his appreciation of human folly in its many forms, but he remained silent and distant throughout the proceedings. For once, this was all terribly, annoyingly unamusing. He could feel the beginning of a headache starting to press against the back of his eyes. Couldn’t these idiots see what they were doing? Didn’t they realize that, feeling helpless to stop the invasion of a building that was so much more than a school to all of them, they were lashing out in the most infantile of ways at whatever target presented itself?

No one was asking the questions that were really on their minds. What was really going on between Albus and the Ministry? Why wasn’t the Board even attempting to protect them from all of this? Who were these two women to come in and disrupt their neat, orderly lives by forcing their political agendas on both teachers and students alike?

Severus could have answered all of those questions and more if he was interested in completely blowing his cover. Which of course, he was not. But still, if he was feeling so inclined, he might have even added a few pointed questions of his own. Perhaps, do we really want one of the wandless, one who if Albus’ initial impression was correct, could very likely disassemble all of them into their component parts without drawing a bead of sweat, planted in our midst? Or maybe, was it worth the trouble it would cause to simply kill this Umbridge woman, and Fudge along with her, upon their arrival in the morning?

Definitely, when in the nine hells is this thrice-cursed farce of a faculty meeting going to end, so that I might retreat to my rooms and procure a potion to take the edge off of this headache?

The muscle in his cheek that acted up whenever he was on the verge of losing his temper was starting to twitch. He took no pleasure in what he was hearing, and he did not trust himself to speak just then, so he decided that he might as well do something constructive. Severus resigned himself to slumping further into his seat and letting his lank hair fall across his eyes, hiding the fact that they were now closed from the others. Raising a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose completed the concealment. Severus kept an ear open for any legitimate issues that might be addressed, but otherwise retreated into a detailed mental rendering of a mandala, holding the complicated image in his mind, maintaining its careful symmetry while turning it, adding to it, sending ripples of tightly concentric movement through the dark, serpentine pattern. No bright curves or colorful whirls for this practitioner. Nevertheless, this was almost as calming to him as making potions.

Running increasingly more complicated concentration techniques was an important foundation in Occlumency. It helped build the kind of mental discipline needed to hold a void of unrelieved nothingness as a shield between the Occlumens’ true thoughts and the attention of a trained Legilimens or natural psychic.

It was also a very useful method for blocking out irritations in his surroundings and getting a hold of his notorious temper.

When the meeting finally adjourned, two hours later, Severus swept back to the relative peace of his chambers and the array of headache remedies stored there. The concentration exercise hadn’t alleviated that particular problem, and in all honesty, manipulating the patterns of the mandala while in no small amount of pain was actually quite good practice, but enough was enough.

Having taken care of that most minor of his current irritations, he retired to his couch and book once again, but found that even the various curses that could be augmented with tropical tree saps could not distract him from what the morning would bring. Starting tomorrow, Hogwarts would be playing host to two women who were both potentially quite dangerous in their own ways.

Umbridge: soon to be the Ministry’s eyes and ears in a place where they were certainly not welcome. A hidebound, delusional thorn in their collective sides who would take any attempt to prepare themselves or their students for the coming war as a move against her superiors. A watchdog, a babysitter, a meddlesome harpy, and most certainly an enemy.

Rosenberg: soon to be the Council of Watcher’s eyes and ears in a place where they were certainly not welcome, save for by the few people who knew her real reason for coming to the school. A wandless, powerful scion of an organization which had once very vocally stood and fought against the status quo in the wizarding world. A lure for the Death Eaters, a reluctant ally, an unknown variable, and irritatingly, the only reason why Severus himself now seemed to have the job he had coveted for so long.

Finally conceding defeat, Severus slid the book back onto one of the shelves that lined every available stretch of wall in his living area and decided to turn in early this night. There was no way that tomorrow would not be trying for all concerned, and he had better be prepared to present the right masks at the right times if he wanted things to run even remotely smoothly.

While preparing the powerful wards that guarded his sleeping mind from infiltration, he amused himself by wondering morbidly exactly who was going to earn the dubious distinction of being the most hated professor in the school this year. It looked like he might be defending his crown against two challenging contenders: a Ministry puppet and a wandless watcher.