A/N: New chapter! This chapter came out quicker because I'm on vacation right now, but in general I think I will update every Monday.
A quick note about this fic: I have a general outline for what's going to happen, and things are going to be noticeably different than in canon. In regards to past events, this fic is actually only canon through Goblet of Fire. Everything relevant will be revealed as it makes sense in the story.
Chapter 4 — Severus Learns to Inebriate Fairies
Potter entered my office. He did so hesitantly, carefully, as if entering the cage of a ravenous beast. I felt a twinge of irritation, which I quickly squashed down. Now was not the time. The boy in front of me offered an opportunity to examine some truly outstanding magic. I merely had to hold my temper.
And then I remembered Potter's limp, broken body, and any anger I felt disappeared under a wave of ice. I gestured at the chair across from me.
"Sir," Potter said carefully, taking his seat.
We stared at each other across the desk. I was leaning forward, chin propped up on a single fist, while my other hand tapped against my knee, out of sight. Any of my Slytherins would have been offended if I had sat like this in front of them, but I'd never once seen Potter exhibit any of the same manners.
Indeed, Potter was sitting rather casually, his right ankle resting idly on his left knee. He was rubbing his wrist awkwardly, and staring at me.
Which was only fair, I supposed, since I was also staring at him.
The silence in my office stretched on. Potter's face had always been an open book. He wore his emotions proudly, like most Gryffindors. Today, however, he was harder to read. Was that anxiety, in the slight furrow of his brow? Anger in the set of his lips? His eyes were slightly too wide, but was that caused by an emotion or merely an artifact of his intense stare?
Potter's mouth twitched, and I finally broke the silence.
"The Headmaster has recently shown me that he can get into my office at any time, without my knowledge."
Potter blinked in surprise. "Sir?" he asked, polite in his bewilderment.
"Indeed. The Headmaster can never know of our… research," I settled on, for lack of a better term. It was accurate enough, although 'research' made it sound rather more benign than it actually was. "He would be most displeased. Since this office is no longer truly secure, we must find an alternate location for any experiment that needs to be kept private."
The boy gaped at me. "Er, you mean like me trying to kill myself?" he said, more casually than I was comfortable with.
"Perhaps. It is also likely I will need to perform some tests on you, some of which may involve dark magic. We need a location where we will not be disturbed."
"Oh," the boy said. "Uh…"
"That will be your homework for our next meeting. You have access to certain resources that I do not." That blasted map that I hated more than anything. The Weasley twins, who were notorious for knowing secret passages. Not to mention, the house elves loved him.
"Oh, sure, okay. I can do that." Potter seemed suitably determined, so I decided to move on. He looked less nervous now, and was sitting straighter, although he still rubbed his wrist gently.
"By the nature of this arrangement, we will have to progress slowly, with the utmost care. Any rash acts could be disastrous. Meticulous documentation is absolutely critical if we want our results to have any meaning. Do you understand?"
And here it was. Potter looked annoyed. "Yes sir," he said, through gritted teeth. Likely he was taking my words more personally than I meant them, which was unsurprising. Most of the time I was actually looking to insult him.
There was a moment of silence as I examined Potter, and he appeared to be collecting his nerves in order to say something stupid. "I want to try again," he finally said, confirming my theory.
"Do you?" I replied, raising my signature eyebrow. He looked suitably embarrassed, at least.
"Er, yeah. I mean, yes sir." As if saying 'sir' would somehow convince me to let him kill himself. Merlin, I was in over my head. I was suddenly hit by the powerful feeling that I did not want to be a part of this. I didn't want to be sitting here discussing this with Potter. I ached for the days when all I had to worry about was Umbridge, the Dark Lord, whatever Draco Malfoy was up to. I couldn't stand Potter looking at me, asking me to be both his salvation and his damnation.
Yet here I was, sitting in front of him, inviting him into my office. Making plans for the future. I was already too deep in this, and I hadn't even done anything yet. Of course, I had no choice. It had to be me. No one else could do what was needed. No one else would.
Not to mention, the chance to research an unknown magical phenomenon…
Potter was still looking at me expectantly, and I let out a rough sigh.
"Why, Potter?" I asked him wearily. "Why are you so eager?" The idiot just looked at me in confusion.
"Sir?" he asked, bewildered.
"Never mind," I said brusquely. I didn't want to hear it, I realized. I could only imagine what drivel would leave his mouth if I pressed him. In the end, did it matter? As long as he didn't try by himself again, as long as he didn't put himself in danger, did it really matter what he was thinking? I'd been so curious, debating his mental state, eavesdropping in the library, and now I found that I simply didn't want to know. (Was that true? I had no idea.)
He was still waiting for an answer, the little snot. "In time," I told him, and it was mostly true. "There are tests we must do first. I plan on taking some samples from you today, which will give us a starting point for our investigation. There are certain potions, most of them medical, that will allow us a better understand of what precisely is happening in your body. Should the potions prove less than illuminating, there is a runic array that provides an analysis of any magic used within it."
It was clear that most of this was going over Potter's head, but he nodded anyway.
"What's wrong with your wrist?" I said suddenly, startling even myself. Potter's hand stilled where he had been rubbing it.
"Er…" Potter hesitated. "It's- It's been sore since, you know, that night."
"Why didn't you go to Madam Pomfrey?" I said, and immediately regretted it. I'm sure lying to her about the origin of the injury would never have occurred to the boy. "Give me your wrist," I continued, without waiting for an answer.
"It's really not that bad," Potter said, and I could not for the life of me figure out why he was arguing.
"Excuse me?" I couldn't see myself, but I liked to think my eyes were glittering dangerously.
"It doesn't really hurt," the nincompoop repeated. "It's just sort of tender. I think you mostly healed it already."
I stared at him, waiting for him to relent and give me his wrist. Instead, he doubled down.
"It'll be better in a few days, anyway," Potter added, somewhat desperately.
"I didn't realize you were a healer," I said dryly.
Potter flushed red, and I wondered if we were soon to resort to old patterns.
"I've just had a lot of experience with stuff like this," said Potter, with a slight eye roll.
"Have you?" Had he? From quidditch, perhaps, but surely Pomfrey would have healed anything in an instant?
"Yeah." Potter didn't elaborate.
"Do you get into a lot of fist fights, perhaps?" My tone wasn't exactly kind, and I wondered why I was pressing when just moments ago I had decided I didn't care what was going on in Potter's life.
"Just-" He looked deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps that was why I was pressing — some strange desire to see how far I could push him before he exploded. Certainly it was a familiar urge for me. "When I was a kid, you know."
That hadn't been quite what I was expecting. "I'm not sure I do," I told him, hoping this strange honesty would continue.
"My- my cousin. He's just- he's- He can be rough some times."
"You were raised by your aunt, Petunia, is that correct?" Petunia had been quite nasty to me when we were children, but Lily had always said she was just being protective. Lily had loved her like no other.
Potter was stunned. "Yeah, that's right. Have you met her?" He looked deeply uncomfortable at the thought.
This was not an area I wanted to delve into, in any way. "Yes," I informed him, drawing the word out. "I have met her."
"She doesn't like me very much," Potter said, and it was clear from his expression that he thought he was understating if anything. Potter's eyes were downcast, looking off to the side. He was rubbing his wrist again, more vigorously than he had been earlier. His face was bright red, and I felt a sudden sense of kinship with him. His current shame was intimately familiar to me, although I had no idea how many of the details were similar. I wasn't sure I even wanted to know. It wasn't my business, and there wasn't anything I could do. Albus had been quite clear that Potter's safety depended on the blood wards.
Black had been furious, of course. At the time, I'd assumed Black was merely angry about being denied the full summer together, but now I wondered if Black had a better idea of Petunia's current character than I had.
The silence was becoming tedious, and for a moment I had the mad idea of asking Potter about Diggory. Instead, I pulled a set of vials from my desk drawer and set it carefully in front of me.
"Hair," I said, handing Potter the first vial. "Nail clippings," and I handed him another.
"What?" Potter said dumbly, but at a look from me he shut up and pulled his wand out. He was clearly about to cast the usual nail trimming charm, when he hesitated. At least he was using part of his brain.
"Is there a charm that doesn't vanish everything?" he asked.
"Give me your hand," I said, and this time he obeyed without questioning. I debated healing his wrist, but if the little cretin wanted to be in pain, I wasn't about to deprive him. It wasn't worth the argument that would no doubt ensue. "Stay very still," I warned him, and he nodded. I took his hand, and carefully spread his fingers. The severing charm was overkill for nail trimming, and I had no doubt that if Potter tried it he would lose a finger. However, with care, the charm could be quite delicate indeed. In fact, it had originally been developed for tailoring.
"Diffindo," I muttered, allowing only the smallest amount of magic to escape me.
The end of Potter's fingernail gently came off and fell to the desk. I examined the result. Hardly manicure worthy, but it would do for the boy. I repeated the gesture, and by the fifth one, the result looked as good as the trimming charm.
Potter was staring at me with wide eyes.
"What?" I said testily.
"How did you do that?" he said, and the amazement shining in his eyes was almost enough to make me smile.
"Years of practice, Potter," I took pleasure in informing him. He didn't seem as disenchanted by the answer as I would expect from a Gryffindor. "Few reach this level of control while still in school, but it is certainly possible. It merely takes patience." That got me the grimace I expected, but it was followed by a small smile.
"It's amazing," the boy said quietly. "If I tried that I'd probably cut my whole hand off."
"Perhaps just a finger," I acknowledged, feeling inordinately pleased with the praise. Being a potions professor, I rarely got a chance to demonstrate my charms skills.
With a silent twirl of my wand, the nail clippings followed my wand into the air, and I led them into the vial, which then sealed itself.
My mother had never used magic at home, fearful of what my father might say. Even after I got to Hogwarts, the only uses of magic I'd seen at first had been the spells we'd learned in class, and whatever else my fellow students decided to practice. Christmas was the first time I'd seen magic used casually, effortlessly. Filius had been decorating the Great Hall, his wand twirling elegantly through the air as decorations flew on an invisible wind without even a word. I'd been amazed, and I'd never quite lost the sense of wonder that such magic — magic without spells, without rules — managed to instill in me.
That was why I returned Potter's smile. The overwhelming force of childhood nostalgia, and nothing else.
Thankfully I quickly pulled myself together. "Hair," I reminded him, and apparently my voice wasn't harsh enough, because Potter's smile didn't even flicker.
He pulled a chunk taught, and carefully pointed his wand away from his head and hand. "Diffindo," he said, and the piece came off, and although the result was a jagged mess, it quickly disappeared into the rest of his hair.
He handed me the vial, and I put it back in the rack next to the one with his nails.
I pulled out a third vial. "Blood," I told him, and the smile dropped off his face. He looked pale, and for a second I was confused by his sudden reaction before I remembered his description of the ritual that resurrected the Dark Lord.
I met Potter's gaze steadily, and for a moment I thought I would need to say something more, before he hesitantly held out his hand again. I held his hand carefully, palm up, and silently made a small cut with my wand. Potter stayed still, not even wincing at the pain. His blood steadily flew into the awaiting vial, with only a small twitch of my wand. The easy atmosphere had disappeared, leaving a quiet tension in the air.
It occurred to me then that if Potter had been raised by magical parents, he would have been much more hesitant about giving me blood. Blood was a powerful ingredient, very high potency, and was at the center of many sinister potions and rituals. Draco Malfoy certainly would have never given me his blood without a fight, and perhaps might have thought twice even if it were his own parents doing the asking.
But Potter had been raised by Muggles, and so here I sat, holding a vial full of his blood acquired with no trouble at all.
"It should go without saying, but do not give anyone else your blood," I said suddenly, overcome by some instinct I didn't recognize. I decided not to think on it too carefully.
"But giving blood to you is okay?" Potter sassed. Then he added a short "Sir." as if that made it any better.
I held up the vial so that I could better examine it in the light. Dark red. Thick. Clearly magical, if one knew how to extend their senses.
"Do you trust me, Potter?" I asked him, and set the vial in front of him. The glass made a small clicking sound on the wood.
He looked at me as if I were mad, gaze flickering back and forth between me and the vial between us. "You said you were going to help me," Potter said stupidly, his expression blank.
"Yes. And I will." I snatched up the vial again with one fluid motion and put it back in the rack. I took the fourth vial, the last empty one, and held it out to Potter. He looked almost scared.
"Spit," I said, and he took the vial with relief.
The vial was rather small, and the last thing I wanted to do was watch Potter try to spit it in, so I pointedly looked away. There were other fluids that might prove useful, but they were rather more extreme, and thus I thought them better saved for a later date. Bile, was one of them. And… sperm. I didn't even want to think about that conversation. Hopefully it would never become necessary.
I healed the cut on his hand with a wave of my wand, and a thought came to me. "Potter, you said you had a lot of experience with injuries," I said slowly, my mind racing through my different options and rejecting the ones that seemed untenable.
"I guess," Potter said with a shrug. "Why?"
"Have you ever noticed experiencing an abnormal rate of healing?"
"Uh. What's a normal rate of healing?" said Potter, again looking embarrassed.
"Did your doctors ever mention anything? Did they notice anything out of the ordinary?" An increased rate of healing would be an interesting side effect of Potter's supposed immortality, and would go completely unnoticed with Pomfrey's habit of healing all of Potter's injuries instantly.
"I, er, I never saw any doctors." Potter wasn't making eye contact.
"Ah." I almost felt embarrassed that I had asked at all. "In that case, we will start from scratch. Do you object to some minor injuries that you will need to keep hidden? It is important to know if there are any abnormalities in your constitution."
"Uh, sure, that's fine, I guess," Potter seemed uncertain, but eager to be doing something.
"Give me your arm." I rummaged through my desk drawers until I found a small paring knife, which I sterilized with a slight twitch of my wand. The spell was so familiar to me that I could probably do it wandlessly, except that there was no visual indicator that the spell worked, so I was hesitant to trust it.
Potter rolled up the shirt sleeve on his right arm past his elbow, and bared the inside of his forearm. I could see the blue vein running underneath his skin, and I glanced up at him.
"I'm going to make two cuts, one with magic and one without. Then I will make similar cuts on my own arm. We will compare them every time we meet and record the results." I pulled a fresh bundle of parchment from my desk, and jotted down a few quick notes about what we were doing. After a moment's thought, I also pulled a bundle of cloth from my desk, casting the sterilization charm over it.
Finally, I fingered my knife and pulled Potter's arm towards me. I idly wondered where Pettigrew had cut him. There weren't any scars visible on his arm. Carefully, I made an even cut across his forearm with the paring knife. Then I made another cut underneath with my wand. After rolling up my own sleeve, I repeated the process on my arm.
For a moment, I stared at our arms, resting on the desk. Blood seeped from our cuts, painting a rather morbid picture. Maybe this was one of the things I should have waited to do until we had somewhere more private. I could only imagine Albus' reaction were he to walk in at the moment.
I pressed a piece of cloth to Potter's arm to stem the flow. "Hold this," I instructed, and pressed another piece of cloth to my own arm.
Potter absently held the cloth. He appeared to be thinking heavily about something.
A deep silence fell between us.
I liked to think I was in control here. I was older, more experienced. More mature, more wise. Cleverer, almost certainly. Taller. Honestly superior in almost every way. And yet, at any second, Potter could just revert to half-baked suicide attempts and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
The whole thing was ridiculous. Why was Potter so intent on trying to kill himself? The other night, he'd been blathering on about the prophecy and I'd grudgingly accepted it. Misplaced martyrdom was something that came naturally to Gryffindors, so I was unsurprised to see it in Potter. This additional desire to keep trying, however, made no sense. We both suspected that it wouldn't work. So why was Potter so eager to repeat the experiment, before preparations had been made to actually get some data on it? Potter seemed less interested in what we would learn, and more interested in the act itself. I supposed it could be suicidal tendencies, and some deluded hope that my conclusions about Potter's immortality were wrong.
And here I was, obsessing over Potter's state of mind again. Well… in a for a penny…
"How often do you dream of that night in the graveyard?"
Potter's face immediately turned pale, torn from whatever thoughts had been bothering him, and he clutched the cloth so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
"Wh- what?" he stuttered, looking at me as if I'd just murdered a small child in front of him. I actually found the familiarity of the look refreshing.
"I have no doubt you are having nightmares. How often?" Perhaps I could have approached this more tactfully. Potter looked like he was about to faint.
He was silent for a moment, and I wondered if he would simply leave. I suppose the famed Gryffindor courage had to count for something, however, because he actually gave me an answer.
"Every other night," he admitted. "If I'm lucky."
We both fell silent again, as I pondered what to do with this information. It was possible that the boy would find Occlumency helpful. Not to mention, Occlumency lessons would give a useful cover as to why we were spending so much time together. If Potter proved proficient, that would be extremely beneficial for his safety. If he proved useless at it, then I could tell the Dark Lord that I was purposefully sabotaging his lessons. I would have to convince Albus to put me in charge of the lessons, instead of himself, but that likely wouldn't be difficult. He would no doubt think it a character-building opportunity.
I could also give the boy a vial of Dreamless Sleep, but the potion was addictive and frequent use led to long-term memory loss.
I decided, for the moment, to simply kick him out of my office and be done with the whole matter. And so I sent him on his way with a fresh cloth, and instructions to keep the wounds clean and hidden, but to do no more than to bandage them the Muggle way.
The four vials on my desk were quickly relocated to my private lab. I took the fingernail clippings and hair and took careful measurements of their lengths before placing them in a shallow dish. I was curious to see if they would keep growing. I would also need a sample of flesh at some point, but that could be combined nicely with another healing test, and would be better performed at a later date. Also I didn't want to scare Potter off too quickly.
The blood would be very useful. There was a potion called the Healers' Helper, which would test blood for any toxins or foreign substances. It was less helpful in that it wouldn't tell you what they were, as that was left up to the diagnostic powers of the healer. There were charms that would do something similar, but you had to cast a different charm for each substance you were testing for. The charm required a clear image of what you were looking for held in your mind while casting, and while it was technically possible to check for multiple substances at once, it became prohibitively difficult very quickly.
The potion would take me a few days to brew, but would be done before I met with Potter next. I also had time to set up a vitals monitor using the blood. That actually required a small runic array in addition to a potion, but since it was a set up commonly used by healers, the creation was well documented. The monitor would allow me to keep track of Potter no matter the distance, and I could charm it to alert me if something was wrong.
I didn't actually have any uses for the saliva in mind, but it was possible I'd think of something. Perhaps I'd test the acidity. I was unlikely to find anything unusual, but if I did, it would be extremely interesting.
I ended up working on the project longer than I'd meant to, drawing up plans and making preparations, but eventually I found my way to bed.
Where I found that the house elves (and please, god, let it have been the house elves) had delivered a box of chocolates with a note that simply had a large heart drawn on it.
Suffice to say, I slept poorly that night.
Friday evening had the dubious pleasure of being the time of the first Order meeting since the summer. And since I anticipated that it would be unpleasant and uncomfortable, the day seemed to simply race by.
Umbridge gave me sly looks every time she saw me, and I did my utmost best to ignore her. I had sacrificed a lot for the war effort, but this was quite possibly the greatest sacrifice I would ever make. Minerva, of course, was loving it. Every time she saw Umbridge smile at me, she would give me a small smirk, and then raise her eyebrows slightly. I would, of course, respond by slightly narrowing my eyebrows, to which she would then put on an expression of the utmost innocence.
It was a subtle game we played, Minerva and I. Albus had simply taken to nudging me meaningfully in the side. His elbows were very sharp.
In retrospect, it's obvious that sharing the chocolates with them at breakfast before Umbridge arrived had been a bad idea. Still, suffering Umbridge's attentions in secret would most likely have been worse. And would certainly have been worse should said attentions later be discovered. At that point, I would probably need to simply leave Hogwarts altogether, and instead live out my days in a small cabin on the coast of Ireland. I would have three sheep and one goat, and buy eggs from a farmer down the road. And then, one day, Minerva and Albus would track me down and laugh at me until I drowned myself in the ocean.
So perhaps it was for the best, then, that I should suffer this small indignity now, to save myself later suffering.
Regardless, it was done, and the alternate possibilities no longer mattered. If I had been a Divinations professor, then I might have spent more time pondering my alternate paths, but thankfully I was nothing so frivolous.
Over the course of the day, it became increasingly obvious that my lack of sleep had left me a little… well, loopy. I became rather more whimsical than I usually like to be, and it was possible I wouldn't have noticed at all, if it weren't for the fact that Luna Lovegood was in my first afternoon class.
Luna Lovegood was, to put it simply, absolutely brilliant. She, at the age of fourteen, had a better grasp of ingredients and their interactions than many of the N.E.W.T. students I graduated. She could, at a glance, take a list of ingredients and figure out not only the effects of the potion, but also have a very good idea of what the brewing method would look like. She knew that the use of especially potent ingredients would shorten the amount of time required for the reactions, and thus meant that fewer stirs were needed. And more importantly, she could apply this information to actual brewing.
I'd been a teacher for over ten years, and in that time I'd learned that teenagers are incredibly lazy. Almost never will they actually apply any sort of critical thinking to what they do, instead choosing to rely on simply regurgitating what they are told. They seem to think that being able to repeat facts, or brew a potion exactly according to instructions is a sign of great skill. And many of them fail even at that.
Every so often, however, I'll have a student that restores my faith in the human race. A student who is actually able to analyze situations, to apply techniques from one problem to a completely different problem. Who can look at the recipes for Dreamless Sleep and a calming draught, and recognize that since valerian root is added at the beginning, it must need more time to steep, and thus would be useless in a stomach settling potion, since stomach settling potions need to be brewed quickly in order to prevent the brew from becoming too strong.
Luna Lovegood was one such student. This explanation is important, because her brilliance often caused me to allow her certain freedoms in what she did in class. This special treatment hardly endeared her to her classmates, but her experimentation meant she needed to work alone anyway.
On that faithful Friday, where I'd left lunch with a bruised side and the strongest cup of tea I could feasibly make, I had rather less patience for idiot teenagers than I usually did.
I had given them a simple assignment (or so I thought): change the color of a burn paste without changing the effect, using only the ingredients we had in the store cupboard. The last stipulation was required after an enterprising muggle-born a few years ago had used food dye to create the desire effect. Which, while technically correct, had rather circumvented the spirit of the assignment.
The idea was to introduce the students to alterations in a simple and straightforward way. Many of the fourth and fifth year potions were in fact alterations of each other, and learning one potion and ten variants on that same base was much easier than remembering eleven different potions altogether. This would come in handy on their O.W.L.s, where they would be asked to describe the differences between such potions.
That Friday afternoon, however, my class was clearly feeling especially lethargic and unimaginative, for most of them chose to grind up the brightest and most magically benign flower they could find, and try to dye the potion with it.
While this technically worked, if one looked very closely, the mundane colouration had little effect compared to the colouration caused by the interactions between the magical ingredients, and thus the overall effect was generally merely some variety of off-white.
Luna Lovegood, however, took an entirely different approach.
"Miss Lovegood," I said, peering down into her cauldron. "I've never seen a neon pink burn paste before." Fairy dust often produced bright colours, but in a burn paste, which was full of low-potency ingredients, the magical effects would come through and thus alter the effect of the paste. So something would have to be added that the fairy dust could bind to, thus causing it to become benign while still allowing for the color changing property. Perhaps dissolving it in a liquid first?
"Thank you," she said primly, and I supposed I had indeed given her a compliment.
"Fairy dust?" I asked, giving the paste a poke with the stirring rod. The consistency looked good, possibly slightly creamier than usual.
"Yes!" Miss Lovegood said, beaming.
"How did you account for its magical properties?" Fairy dust, when sprinkled in one's hair, would temporarily give hair a shiny and lustrous appearance. After it wore out, however, it would leave the hair tangled and ratty, and always worse off than it was before. For that reason, fairy dust was often used in a certain type of beauty potion. I'd worked at an apothecary during my summers away from Hogwarts, and I'd been somewhat devastated to find that most potions sold were beauty potions.
A few of the other Ravenclaws were watching our interaction with interest, but most students were busy grinding away at their useless flower petals. There was always something wonderful about the Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff classes. None of the students were actively trying to sabotage each other.
"I mixed the fairy dust with moondew water first," she explained, tapping a small vial half-filled with clear liquid. Moondew water (which was actually morning dew collected from the moondew plant, however most people found moondew dew to be an utterly imbecilic name) was actually a clever choice. Fairy dust and moondew water were magically destructive, and would thus cancel out each others' magical effects.
"What made you pick moondew water?" I didn't see any ingredient tables open on her desk (the kind that listed the interactions between ingredients), and I hadn't informed students of the lesson ahead of time.
"Well, back home, we have lots of fairies in our garden, and they love moondew water. It gets them drunk, you see, and then they can't fly any more. They spend the whole time dancing around and riding large bumblebees." I could completely believe that Xenophilius Lovegood kept a garden full of fairies outside his home.
"I didn't know that," I informed her dryly. "Moondew water and fairy dust are both caustic, so how did you balance the acidity of the burn paste so as not to harm the skin?" A tincture of fairy dust and moondew water applied directly to the skin would actually cause a burn. Since burn paste was acidically neutral, adding those ingredients would cause the whole paste to become caustic as well. Something acidic would have to be added to balance everything out.
"I added lemonade!" Miss Lovegood said cheerfully.
"I suppose that would work," I said slowly. I don't think I'd ever seen lemonade used in a potion before. "What made you pick lemonade of all things?" We had a collection of different vinegars in the store room solely for the purpose of balancing acidity in potions.
"At home in the summer, daddy makes his special punch with lemonade, moondew water, and rose petals. It's delicious!" Moondew water was too caustic to drink plain, but mixing it in lemonade would do nicely. Likely it would give the whole thing a vaguely floral flavour as well, which would mix well with the rose petals.
"That sounds excellent," I told her honestly, causing some of the other students to stare at me in fascinated horror. It was possible they thought the resulting concoction would be poisonous.
A quick wave of my wand informed me that her paste was acidically neutral, and thus most likely safe to test. Dragging my wand across my wrist left a small burn, and so I scooped up a finger of Miss Lovegood's hot pink burn paste and spread it gently over my new wound.
The relief was instant, and the burn paste smelled wonderful. Spread out on my wrist, I could see that the paste was also quite glittery, no doubt caused by the fairy dust.
"What made you decide on fairy dust in the first place?" I asked her out of curiosity.
"When I was five, a group of fairies pushed me into a patch of stinging nettles because I set a niffler on them," she said, matter-of-factly, as if all of this was completely normal.
"Why did you set a niffler on them?" I found myself asking.
"They wouldn't stop riding my flying seahorse!" Miss Lovegood said emphatically.
"How rude," I said, and that was the moment I realized I had lost it.
"Poor Bertie had a hurt wing, but they just kept flying him around anyway," Miss Lovegood further explained.
"Indeed," I said, wondering how to best extricate myself from the situation. I found I was extremely reluctant to be rude to the girl, who was staring up at me with wide eyes and her hair messily arranged around a crown of wild flowers.
"Bertie was so upset that he wouldn't even eat his turnips that night!" Miss Lovegood continued.
"Alas," I tried, hoping that the finality in my voice was clear. It wasn't.
"But daddy and I gave him some asparagus instead and he ate that right up."
I decided to just stay silent and wait until she wore herself out.
"Of course, the niffler probably would've gone after the fairies anyway, since they'd stolen his treasures."
Xenophilius had been a sixth year when I started at Hogwarts, and even though he'd been in Ravenclaw and I in Slytherin, it hadn't been long before I'd learned of him. He had a reputation for oddity, for arguing with professors over magical theory, and for throwing the best parties anyone had ever seen. I'd never been invited, of course, but I remember one cold November evening my first year when the sixth-year Slytherins had come back from one such party missing half their clothes and speaking in gibberish. They'd all been dazed, with a faraway look in their eyes. Later on, whenever any of us had asked about that night, they would clam up — with small, secretive smiles on their lips.
It didn't surprise me at all that Miss Lovegood's childhood had been just as interesting. I actually had a subscription to the Quibbler (as did many of us who had gone to school with Xenophilius), although I had no idea what to make of it. Sometimes I got the impression that he was dead serious and just crazy, and then the next I'd wonder if the whole thing was not a giant joke after all. Regardless, he seemed to be doing well for himself. Lucius liked to pretend he didn't exist at all, even though they were cousins, but that was a step up from actively working against him.
Miss Lovegood was looking up at me expectantly, her story clearly finished, so I gave her a serious nod. "Indeed," I repeated, and she seemed satisfied enough with that.
She turned back to her cauldron, and I quickly made my escape, only to remember that the rest of the students were mind-numbingly boring and hadn't produced anything of interest.
I spent the rest of my afternoon classes in something of a funk, with the bright-pink paste still smeared over my wrist.
Being a spy was a dangerous profession. During the first war, I'd been practically a child still, playing at being an adult. Right out of school, and already cast into the middle of a war. I'd only been a spy for about a year and a half when the war suddenly ended, but that year and a half had felt like decades.
I'd never really believed in all the blood purity propaganda that they threw around. Instead, I had been looking for an outlet for the anger and violence that had built up inside of me. Muggles were an easy target, and easy to conflate with the idea of my father and everything he represented. The poverty I grew up in, my mother's face when another letter to her parents was returned unopened. My father's face when he realized I was just as magical as my mother.
The Dark Lord understood this like no one else. Lucius thought I hated Muggles because my father had been a Muggle. Regulus thought I followed the Dark Lord because I'd been swept up in the glamour of it. Bellatrix thought I'd joined because of my love for the dark arts. None of them were correct.
The Dark Lord, however… He had understood the pain, the rage, the desire to lash out at anyone and everything that you could. He taught me to channel that pain, to take the anger and make it productive (or, in a way he thought was productive). I'd been brilliant at potions, which I'd assumed was his reason for recruiting me, but in hindsight it became clear that he thought us something of kindred spirits.
Countless nights were spent, discussing potions theory and my plans for the future (the Dark Lord is the one who encouraged me to pursue a Mastery, something I had been unsure I was capable of). Although he spouted the usual pureblood propaganda, and although our targets were always Muggles, Muggle-borns, or "blood traitors", I began to suspect that the Dark Lord didn't believe in blood purity at all. He had many fanatical, brilliant pure-bloods under his thumb, and yet he spent the most time with me, the half-blood. He rarely sent me out on his acts of terrorism, instead keeping me at home brewing potions. The pure-bloods he seemed to almost regard as… expendable.
The longer I knew him, however, the more unhinged he seemed to become. He became even crueler, even more violent — his cold, calculated cruelty became something fierce, something that burned hot and uncontrollable. The Dark Lord had been brilliant, an absolute genius, charismatic and handsome. What he became was still intelligent, of course. Still clever and sharp, but… almost muted, in a way. His brilliance no longer shone through. Like silver that had become tarnished.
Since his resurrection, this difference has only become more pronounced. He no longer looks human at all, and whereas before he ruled through a combination of charisma and fearful respect, now he rules only through terror. He curses his followers, torturing them for his own amusement. In certain ways, he treats his followers worse than his victims.
I have always wondered if perhaps the Dark Lord's real targets weren't muggle-borns at all, but in fact the pure-bloods he recruited. Seeing the Dark Lord now, I believe my suspicions were correct, before the Dark Lord lost his mind. Now I suspect he struggles to differentiate between friend and foe, and merely hates everyone equally, and tolerates those who are useful to him.
Despite everything, however, he seems to maintain something of a soft spot (as much as the Dark Lord is capable of having a soft spot) for me. The thought sickened me, but even Albus agreed that it was likely true.
The Dark Lord took me in readily after he was brought back, despite my place by Albus' side. He raided my mind, seeing only what I let him, and perhaps only what he wanted to see. He made me suffer, for my failings, but less than many others.
He seems to genuinely like me. This, of course, has put me in a rather complicated situation with the other death eaters. Having our Lord's favour makes me popular. They want to talk to me, be near me, so that some of that magic might rub off on them. Others (like Bellatrix Lestrange), despise me all the more. Regardless, it's put me in an excellent position for spying. The death eaters who hate me expect me to act against them, and are unsurprised and thus not suspicious when I do. Others are always willing to trade information for some of my time, and have proven to be valuable resources.
It's early enough still that the Dark Lord has no idea there is a spy in our midst. He is suspicious, as always, but has yet to start recruiting in earnest, or moving openly in any way. Thus there are very few plans for the Order to thwart (which would then imply the presence of a spy), aside from the basic long term goals which could have been guessed anyway. I use this freedom to gather information on my fellow death eaters, to start planting false trails of other spies. I will not be discovered without a fight.
All this makes me very valuable to the Order. My position in the Order is as complicated as my position in the death eaters, if not more complicated. Albus of course trusts me implicitly, and he receives all of the information I have. He then decides what gets passed down to the rest of the Order and what doesn't. Minerva also trusts me, being my friend, and is willing to defend me when necessary.
The rest of the Order, however… The older ones, the ones who fought in the first war, they tolerate me. Some even respect me. They understand the necessity of getting your hands dirty, and they are willing to do anything to prevent a repeat of the horrors that they experienced before. Lupin, as much as I detest him, is one of them.
Black is one of the other type. Those who take me at face value, and assume that because I wear black and scowl at people I must be evil. They're the ones who haven't had much experience in the real world, and think that we will win the war not because we are better prepared or had better tactics, but because we have the moral high ground and thus cannot lose.
They're the ones who make Order meetings tedious and frustrating beyond belief, who on some level don't understand why we haven't already won.
And this is what I knew awaited me as I walked through the door of Grimmauld Place on Friday evening.