In the town of Benedicts Grove there was an old stone church. This old stone church, which stood in the town of Benedicts Grove just off Main Street across from the bakers, had in recent decades fallen on hard times as the elders of the congregation had slowly died off and the youngers had moved away to the city in search of more money and more excitement. When the congregation had fallen to a mere half dozen good Anglican churchgoers five years previously the bishop had reluctantly decided that the church must be shut down and the congregation merged with the neighboring town. So despite the grumblings, the old stone church had been empty for four years until the bishop was approached by a rather strange minister who claimed to belong to an obscure evangelical movement called the Phoenix Ministries who was interested in renting the old building for his ministries. The bishop not being one to turn down money, a deal was soon reached. So for the past year every Sunday morning a rather odd congregation of outsiders would descend upon Benedicts Grove to receive the gospel according to Albus Dumbledore.
Lily Potter surveyed the group that had descended to the basement after the gathering in which such hymns were sung as "Those Who Aurors Watch and Upon Whom Death Eaters Prey", "Lord, Grant Me the Patience of a Basilisk and the Foresight of a Centaur", and Sirius's favorite "Moony, Have You Got a Bloody Drink For Me". They were certainly not what you would expect of a small congregation in a country town, what with Gideon and Fabian Prewitt demonstrating their new hair dying charm (developed for the purpose of disguise, not to cause delighted laughter in her husband as they changed their hair from green to purple to black to their natural red, James), Alastor Moody displaying his new prosthetic secrecy detecting eye which he had gotten after he had lost his real eye to a nasty cutting curse in a battle with Death Eaters (Sirius had declared it completely mad), and of course Albus Dumbledore being Albus Dumbledore. But for all their oddness she had come to love them all to the point where each new loss hurt, and her only lament was that when they had discovered she was pregnant both James and Dumbledore had pulled her off of active missions. It hurt to feel so useless when she knew that any Sunday the face of someone she knew and loved and trusted would be missing permanently. Just last night James, Sirius, Remus and Peter had secured a Death Eater hideout, during which they had managed to acquire a disturbing number of bruises and scrapes.
Dumbledore strode across the room with a glass of hot cider for her and sat down next to her at the table.
"Ah, Lily, I was wondering if you might be interested in taking on a small mission for me," Albus started. "Now, before you ask, no this will not be placing you in any more danger than you already are, so don't be worried."
"It was not my worries that have led to me being benched, Albus," Lily said. "You know that I will do whatever I can to help."
"Ah, well," Dumbledore sighed. "Yesterday night in our raid we discovered that the Death Eaters had been using their hideout to brew certain potions. In their haste to avoid capture they failed to vanish all of their work, and there is one potion in particular that worries me. It appears to be a modified version of the Poly-juice Potion, but the modifications do not match any known variant. I was wondering if you might conduct some tests; discover just what it is that we are up against."
"I am flattered that you would want me to do this, but surely the Order must have someone more skilled than I who can handle these matters," Lily responded.
"Nonsense, you are by far our best brewer not pulling double shifts at Saint Mungo's," Dumbledore said, and they both looked towards Darren McKinnon who had dark circles under his eyes from being stretched between said double shifts and his after-hours activities for Dumbledore. "Professor Slughorn was always singing your praises in the staff room, you know, thought you quite the prodigy."
Lily blushed in response to this. She had always been embarrassed by the praise the Slughorn had heaped on her, knowing that well she was skilled the true genius in that class was him. The Ex-Potions Partner, The-Boy-Who-I-Am-Never-Going-to-Talk-to-Again-and-You-Bloody-Well-Know-Why-Sev-So-Leave-Me-Alone, The-Ex-Best-Friend. After the incident and their subsequent split in Slughorn's class she could never find the same joy from standing over a bubbling cauldron that she used to, and despite her skill and her "O" on her Newt, she had abandoned the discipline. She felt that she was certain to be too rusty to do what Dumbledore needed, not creative and knowledgeable enough to unravel an experimental concoction. However, this was a way for her to be useful, to feel like she was participating in the Order again.
"Alright, I'll try," she responded.
"Excellent," Dumbledore grinned. "I do believe that this basement is the perfect atmosphere and temperature for brewing, so I'll send along the sample and have house-elves set up a workshop here. If there is anything you need, just ask."
So on a gray Monday morning in March Lily Potter could be found in the basement of the old stone church, examining the sample. Conducting the necessary tests to determine if it was toxic, if it could be tested on humans took longer than she expected, finding that standing over a cauldron for hours at a time was not an enjoyable pastime while pregnant. Still at the meeting the following Sunday, she had declared it safe to test, and that was why Arabella Figg and Dorcas Meadowes were now looking like each other.
"And by cross-breeding the common housecat with a kneazle, you get cats that are smart enough to recognize magic but not so chaotic that they make poor pets," Dorcas was explaining to a particularly bored Peter while Arabella was describing how she had held off six Death Eaters to allow a Ministry undersecretary and his three small children escape an ambush. The typical hour was fast winding down, and everyone expected that this absurd sight would soon disappear. They were thus taken by surprised when the two ladies continued looking like each other. At an hour and a half, Arabella disappointedly discovered that when she changed into Dorcas she did not receive the witch's magical talents while lazily waving Dorcas's wand. At an hour and forty-five minutes Dorcas began panicking, fearing that while the potion was not toxic it was not reversible either. Just when she was about to hex Lily for not checking for the possibility of irreversibility at two hours changed the potion started fading.
For the rest of the afternoon the order discussed what it would mean if Voldemort had a Two-Hour-Poly-juice.
"Isn't it kind of useless though," Peter said. "I mean the only difference would be that you only have to drink it half as often."
"Gets you out of the holding cells if someone suspects though," Moody said. "Standard Ministry policy when someone is suspected of being under Poly-juice is to strip 'em and hold 'em an hour and a half, if they took a drink before being detained. Knew that couldn't really be Perkins last week when I caught him stealing all the pens."
"You'll have to talk to Crouch about holding them longer, now," Albus replied.
"He won't like it one bit, when Andromeda was detained last year, she was in a right rage and threatened to take it all the way to the Minister. The complaints are already causing some to call for us to stop the policy altogether. I can't imagine how much hostility we'd find if we started holding people longer," Kingsley Shacklebolt, a young trainee auror who was frequently delegated to do the department's paperwork added.
"It must be done, nevertheless," Albus sighed.
"If I had a two hour poly-juice I wouldn't be trying to infiltrate the ministry. I'd go to the bars and chat up all the patrons, especially the pretty ladies, without getting a glare from the barmaid for bringing in outside drinks."
"You do that even without poly-juice Sirius."
"Moony, why must you always pick on me," Sirius replied.
"Because it's easy," was Remus's rejoinder.
"It is a remarkable breakthrough, though," Elphias Doge said. "The Diagon Alley Players have been looking for a longer lasting poly-juice for ages."
"Why would you want that?" James asked.
"It helps you get lost in a character, so the audience can see the story and not just the actor," Doge said. "And finding a skilled baritone is so much more difficult than poly-juicing a skilled alto into an unskilled baritone. Lily, can you duplicate it?"
"I'm not sure," Lily replied. "But it would probably be a poor use of order resources to find out."
"Lily, you are the smartest woman I know," James said. "I know you can figure out anything a lousy Death Eater cooked up."
"But isn't it still useless for anything but the theater," Peter said.
"Ah, but what lovely things the theater gives us. With a song in your heart and a laugh in your belly you feel you can take on the world."
"Yeah, and Sirius can chat up girls without getting slapped by his exes in bars anymore," Remus said.
"Moony, that was only once," Sirius said. "Besides, I'd go as you, so it's your reputation on the line."
"Hey!"
"Gentlemen, if you will please settle down," Dumbledore replied. "It seems to me that even if we cannot find an immediate use for it, it would be useful to know what exactly Voldemort is researching if only to know the style of the alterations. Some famous potioners have gained their reputation by applying similar new techniques across multiple usages; indeed by reading the ingredients you may sometimes tell who made the original formulation. It would not do for us to miss Voldemort's new trick because we failed to look into this. Mrs. Potter, I hope to see you working on this puzzle in the future."
Lily nodded, and resigned herself to spending more time with potions.
For the next two weeks, Lily dedicated herself to reading every registered recipe for poly-juice, reviewing the properties of the ingredients, performing increasingly obscure and probably useless tests on their sample, and screaming to the wind in frustration that nothing would make sense. She tried combining Arsenius Jigger's bicorn horn reduction method with Healer Ambrosia's alternative method of shredding a boomslang skin but only got useless goo. She meticulously sorted the wings of the lacewing flies into piles from the male and female of the species, attempting to try a version with each, both of which did not differ significantly from the standard. She was failing, and she was failing hard. This was the only significant thing she had been asked to do for the Order for months, the only thing that was expected of her while her husband and her friends risked their lives and she wasn't good enough to do it. They needed Darren McKinnon, but he was too busy, and just when she thought he might have some time to spare the McKinnons were attacked and he was with her school roommate Marlene among the dead. They needed Horace Slughorn, who had removed himself from the fight and had tried unsuccessfully three times now to remove himself even from the school where it was his responsibility to watch the house that produced most of the enemy, but when she asked he refused and even Dumbledore could not make him.
She needed Severus Snape, though she knew that she had burned that bridge so thoroughly that there was no getting him back. She was sure that if confronted with this problem he would have figured it out immediately. He might even have known what the potion would do before it needed to be tested.
She sat staring and pondering the various recipes, trying to find some key to unlock this puzzle, something clever that would show what needed to be done from here. She knew that she would be found out, that her status as Slughorn's favorite would be shown to be a fraud, that all of her reputation as brilliant with a cauldron would be exposed as being truly the result of working with him, that all her clever ideas came from his whispering instructions into her ear. If he was here, she wondered what he would say.
Lily, bicorn horn can be quite temperamental if not handled properly, but if mixed with ground slime mold you can temper the effects and strengthen the potency.
The thought passed through her head suddenly, unexpectedly in his voice. She stood up and knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to try to make the potions with his eyes, with her memories and thoughts seeking to mimic his technique. She pulled over a cauldron to start brewing and grabbed her slime mold and bicorn horn.
Once she started, it all seemed so easy. Of course chopping the boomslang skin produces finer pieces than shredding while preserving the juice. And when it came time to add the lacewing flies it was obvious that she should be careful to drop them in one at a time and give it a good stir in between. It might be tedious but it brings out the transformative power of their dust. This potion, this time was more art than paperwork, and she would find herself humming happy songs to herself as she stirred, adding a couple of beetle eyes which she made sure came only from the African Jeweled Beetle, preferable a male adult. And when the brewing was almost over she remembered to add a sprig of mint, it will make the potion more palatable and extend the effects. And then it was done.
As if coming out of a trance, she shook herself. She looked down at the potion and realized it was perfect, exactly like the version they had found. She smiled, and whispered, "Thank you, Sev." This was wonderful, the most she had enjoyed herself brewing in years. It seemed so right that it would be him who would help her figure it out.
And then, suddenly, it seemed so wrong. How could his advice be exactly what was needed? Surely there could not be another person who would know the same things, who would make this the same way, some other person who gave the recipe to the Death Eaters and would brew it for Voldemort. No one else would approach it in quite the same way. She whispered, "Severus, what have you done?", and sat down, starting to cry. Several hours later, when James stopped by to see how she was doing and spotting the perfect potion, she was still crying.
Disclaimer: JKRowlings creation.
Author's Note: Was it too obvious what was going on? Please let me know in your review. Who knows, maybe another plot bunny will escape if you do.