Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author.
Many thanks to AmyLouise for all of her help as my beta for this story.
Addiction, defined as the continued use of a mood-altering substance or behaviour despite adverse consequences.
As the clock ticked, each second a rhythmic sound in the otherwise silent room, Hermione Granger twisted and scrunched a piece of parchment in her hands. She sighed heavily and tossed the paper across the room. It bounced off the wall and, much to her surprise, fell into the bin beside the bookshelf. Nervous still, she brought her hand up to her mouth and began biting her nails. She looked at her hands and frowned at the state of them. She always bit her nails to the quick during exam periods.
Hermione flipped to the next page of her textbook before looking up at the clock. It was already three in the morning. She frowned and rubbed her eyes wearily. It was going to be a long day, and she hadn't even slept yet. Hauling herself out of her chair, she placed a marker in the book and closed it before moving away from her desk and out of the room. Making her way to the bathroom, she opened the medicine cabinet behind the mirror above the sink and immediately reached for a flask filled with clear blue liquid.
She uncapped the bottle and pulled out a measuring glass, pouring out exactly 200ml. Upending the contents into her mouth, she swallowed it and put the flask back into the cupboard after screwing on the lid and sealing it. She rinsed out the measuring glass and replaced that too before closing the cupboard and her eyes and pausing for a moment to let the potion take effect. She felt a hint of sleep pulling at the back of her head and picked up her toothbrush. Once her teeth were clean, she slowly, sleepily made her way to the bedroom and peeled off her clothes.
She fell onto the bed in just her undergarments and fell asleep a few moments later.
When Hermione woke up, sunlight was already filtering through the curtains from the upmost part of the windows. Groaning and feeling like she hadn't slept at all, she rolled over and opened one eye to peer at the clock on the bedside table. It was only eight in the morning—she couldn't believe she had managed to get a whole five hours of sleep. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she had barely eaten more than a couple of pieces of toast and drunk a few cups of tea the day before.
She rolled out of bed and made her way to the kitchen, filling the kettle and setting it on the stove before lighting the flame beneath it. As she waited for the water to boil, she went about the motions of collecting a cup, teapot and leaves for her tea, and bread and jam to make toast for her breakfast yet again. After swallowing down the meagre offerings, she made her way up to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. When she opened the medicine cabinet to grab her brush, she eyed the flask filled with the blue liquid warily.
She couldn't remember the last time she had been able to sleep without it.
Dreamless Sleep. The first time she had ever used the drug, Poppy Pomfrey had administered a super low dosage to her after the final battle so that she could get a few hours of undisturbed sleep. The mediwitch had prescribed the dosage for her for a few weeks following that. Hermione had seen so many horrible things—such terrible atrocities she had been forced to commit so that the side of light would be allowed to prevail.
As time had gone on however, Hermione had found that the low dosage no longer did anything to prevent the horrible nightmares from returning to her every time she closed her eyes. Madam Pomfrey had refused to increase the dosage, and even cautioned her against the prolonged usage of the potion to find respite, so Hermione had resorted to learning how to make the potion on her own. She put together a rough potions lab on her kitchen table consisting of a cauldron, a Muggle Bunsen burner, and a mortar and pestle for grinding and pounding ingredients.
She had been living in the little two-bedroom flat that she had acquired for herself using the funds her Order of Merlin First Class had awarded her, following the war. It was only really big enough for her to live on her own, but that suited her just fine. She didn't want anyone living with her. It was surprising enough that nobody she knew had seemed to catch on to her problem yet as it was. She looked as though she were only hanging on by a thread on the best of days. She was surprised neither Harry nor Ron has said anything to her about it yet. And as she didn't have her parents around anymore, she didn't have them to lecture her about her health…
Sighing, she grabbed her toothbrush and began meticulously brushing. If there was one thing she would never get out of the habit of doing, it was brushing her teeth a minimum of twice a day. After she was finished with that chore, she got dressed for the day and went into the second bedroom she had converted into a study to collect her books. She gave the room a once-over but found that there was very little she could do to improve upon the tidiness.
Confident that she was ready to begin the day, she went through the motions of warding and locking her flat before heading to the fireplace in the living room and tossing some Floo powder into the grate. Green flames sprung to life and Hermione, bag over her shoulder and wand in hand, stepped into the fireplace.
'Oxford College of Magic,' she called out before she spun out of sight.
Severus Snape was an impatient man. He had placed his order for a new pair of ultra-thick dragon hide gloves three weeks prior and had discovered on his visit to the apothecary that morning that said gloves had yet to be shipped. He had left the shop in a complete strop and had stalked through Diagon Alley with an expression that warned people he was not a man to be messed with and made his way to the nearest Apparation point. From there, he Apparated straight to his home on Spinner's End.
After the war, Snape had made it a point to completely renovate his childhood home so that it was barely recognisable as being the same house. He stayed there during the summer and planned to make them as enjoyable as possible—with nothing left to remind him of his childhood or the years he spent in service as a spy for the Order of the Phoenix amongst Voldemort's ranks. '
Once inside his house, he removed his robes and hung them up inside the closet near the front door. He made his way directly downstairs to the cellar he had transformed into his summer laboratory. With a flick of his wand, the room lit up, and the flame beneath the single cauldron he had set up grew bright. He would often retreat to his lab and absorb himself in his work and research over the holidays when he did not have student work to mark.
He went to the storeroom and collected a few jars and flasks of ingredients that he would be working on that day. He lined them up on the bench and filled the cauldron with the preserved icy water he had collected from the lake at Hogwarts, adjusting the temperature of the flame so that his brew would only simmer slowly. Methodically, he added the ingredients for the base, chopping and pounding where needed: lemongrass, black pepper, green bamboo shoots, and minced ginger. He gave it all a few clockwise stirs before leaving it to stand and combine.
Healing potions had been an interest of his for many years. And after all of the years he had been forced to create potions as instruments of war for Dumbledore and Voldemort both, he was finally free to pursue his interest. Snape's new ambition was to create potions that would eradicate the effects some of his darker potions and deeds had left behind. A small 'plop' alerted him to the status of his potion, and he immediately returned his attention to it. It was bubbling away softly, and had turned a crystal-clear green from the lemongrass and bamboo shoots.
After much more research into foreign medicines, he had begun using a lot more eastern herbs and ingredients recommended in foreign Potions journals.
It was interesting, he thought, just how much people underestimated the eastern continents and, indeed, often forgot that witches and wizards did not live exclusively in European countries. For Snape's own part, he made it a practice to do as much research as possible before beginning each project. In his world, it was not a failure until every possible avenue had been exhausted.
Dumbledore had always encouraged Snape to learn—ever since he had been a bullied and frightened student at Hogwarts.
Snape frowned. Thinking about Albus often left a bitter taste in his mouth. The man had been all but a father to him, and in the end, even the old man had betrayed him and left him with much debt to repay the Headmaster in another life. He had forced Snape to do a great many things in his service of the Order; things that were unsavoury at best. But when he had forced Snape to watch helplessly as the Headmaster allowed Voldemort to kill him in the younger man's stead, he had crossed the line. It was just too frustrating for Snape to think about.
He was recalled from his thoughts by another small 'plop' in the bubbles forming at the top of the potion. He swiftly crushed and minced some ginseng and kaffir lime leaves before adding them to the brew as well, sprinkling them over the top of the potion so that it would dissolve into it slowly. He closed his eyes while he waited and sat on the stool to watch the progress as it unfolded before him.
He opened his eyes, withdrew his wand from its place up his sleeve, and Summoned a thick, leather-bound journal, a quill, and a pot of ink from his study upstairs. He took down his notes on the potion base so far, noting all of his steps in extreme detail: the order of the ingredients, the type of preparation, the temperature of the cauldron, the stirring technique—everything. He set the book aside then. This potion would be his most important to date. With it, he had hopes of curing a whole manner of brain-and memory-related problems.
This included and primarily revolved around the reversal of Frank and Alice Longbottom's vegetative states.
He sighed heavily. It was a challenge he had set for himself to give his life reason— a reason for his continued existence in the Wizarding world. Otherwise, he might have abandoned the magical world and moved somewhere far away where nobody knew who he was, or all of the crimes he had committed throughout his life. The potions he had planned and created were really all that he had left now that Dumbledore and Voldemort were gone, and Lily Potter was all but a shadow of a former love. Lily—now there was a thought he had not had in a very long time. He closed his eyes for a moment to remember why it was that he had held onto the memory of having been in love for so long. Nothing came to him.
He shook his head and stood, collected all of the ingredients together and began to take them back to the storeroom to put them in the correct positions. Once everything in the room was clean, he flicked his wand and the flame beneath the cauldron snuffed out. He placed the cauldron in stasis and took it over to a shelf near the sinks, storing it there until it would be needed for continuation. He went back to the bench and sat to write notes in the journal. He paused for a moment and looked around the room solemnly.
Severus Snape could not be accused of having a hero complex, but he certainly wanted to make amends for his past mistakes.
To be continued.