Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or anything one might recognize from the books. I make no money from the posting of this story.
Prologue
A young man sat in the dim, bitterly aromatic stillroom of his master's apothecary. A muted, pastel rainbow of smoke and mist rose from the ten cauldrons around the room, its light and the that of the flames under the cauldrons barely enough for apprentice Severus Snape to avoid dicing his long fingers instead of the rat spleen on the cutting board.
He had six months left to complete his mastery project – or at least enough of it for the Potions Masters' Guild Examination Panel and Master Jigger to understand what he was attempting to create. He just had to do something different, something new. What was his talent worth if he could only push further on work started by others?
He had considered attempting a cure for lycanthropy, but Master Dagworth-Granger had already gone halfway to a cure with his Wolfsbane potion. No, Severus needed a challenge – something not already mostly completed. Not that he didn't intend to cure lycanthropy, if only to shove his success in Dagworth's ruddy, blobby, oh-so-smug face. Some of his current project might even be the answer Dagworth couldn't seem to find in the musty old scrolls his nose was so stuck in. But not now. Not for this test.
He had also wondered about a cure for vampirism. If he succeeded in this project, he might even be as far toward a vampire's cure as Dagworth was to a lycanthrope's – some kind of synthetic blood to control a vampire's urges around humans. And his would be more original, using more magic and scholarship than just potioneering. His sponsor had quite strongly hinted he would be grateful to have such a valuable bargaining tool, most likely to win the vampires' support for his cause. Severus would hold back this measure, just for a little while. What his sponsor didn't know wouldn't hurt him after all, and Severus would still be the honored servant who brought the vampires to Tom's side.
His mastery project, though, needed to be something no one could think of without his name popping up synonymously. A project that would be remembered by potions masters and scholars would remember for all time, something that would encompass all branches of magic, not just alchemy and potions.
This project could, perhaps, even make up for some of the things that had gone so wrong in his life to date.
His project? He, Severus Snape, usually unseen and so far below the popular, lordly, influential families like the Malfoys, Blacks and Potters, would create something the world had never seen, something which would show men how foolish their slavish devotion to women truly brought them.
He, Severus Snape, would make a second Pandora.
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