The next morning did not find either Severus or Aislinn at breakfast, though Severus did make his way to his office mid-morning, and seated himself behind his desk for a bit of much-needed marking of papers. His mind was not on the task, though, and his heart was not in it, as he quickly discovered. His heart was waiting anxiously for either a reprieve or an execution, and he could concentrate on nothing else. Irritated with himself for being so distracted, he shoved the parchments aside and stood abruptly, stalking meaningfully to one of the cupboards and peering inside. He needed something to take his mind off Aislinn, and he could think of nothing that would do that so well as brewing a large cauldron of calming potion, which would certainly be useful soon enough as the pressure of NEWTs and OWLs began to weigh down on Seventh and Fifth year students.
He pulled the ingredients from the cupboard, setting them on a wooden tray, muttering to himself as he tried to exercise control over his mind. "You face the Dark Lord without flinching," he grumbled, "you have seen with your own eyes the worst things men and women are capable of. You have participated in the worst things men and women are capable of. You maintain your composure in front of those dunderheaded students every day. You have kept your temper over that Defense Against the Dark Arts position for years. And yet, you cannot put one bloody woman from your mind for an hour."
He had finished removing the ingredients for the potion, and was heading into the classroom to set up on one of the tables where he would have more room to work, and drew a stool so he could sit. He reached for the bowl of willow root and a paring knife, and set to the laborious task of slicing the roots evenly and neatly, his mind at least momentarily occupied with the task. As so often happened when he was working, time slipped away from him and by the time he had finished the slicing of the roots, more than an hour had passed. As he picked through the roots, looking for any he might have missed or sliced too finely or left too coarse, Severus felt a certain satisfaction. Not a competitive satisfaction that he had spent only an hour slicing the entire bowl of roots when his students spent half an hour doing a tenth as many, for he had no reason to compete with his students. He, after all, was the master, the one teaching them. It stood to reason that he was more skilled than they. No, his was the satisfaction a baker must feel upon seeing a dozen perfectly formed cakes in his window. It was the satisfaction of a seamstress who had finished hemming a particularly tedious hem. A mason's approval of a newly-laid wall, and a gardener's appreciation of a blooming rose.
As he placed the roots aside, he was inundated with a pleasant awareness that he had not had to even up any of the roots, but had managed them all properly the first time. That was far from usual, though not unheard of. Potions required a precision that was not needed in other areas of study. In Transfiguration, for example, it was a matter of brute force, a single shot to produce perfection or imperfection. Charms were largely the same, with a great deal of effort and practice required to get them right, but in the end they were either right or wrong, and nothing could change a wrong charm into a right one. Potion-making, however, was a measure of precision and preparation, and, what likely accounted for the reason students so seldom found success with it, there was an almost illimitable opportunity to correct mistakes. Which meant, in Severus' opinion, that there was little excuse for imperfection. Where it could be excused if a student hadn't the ability to Transfigure a butterfly into a teacup (an exercise in uselessness, in the opinion of the potions master), there was no excuse for not cutting willow roots properly. Well, there were several, actually, but none that were acceptable. Carelessness was not a good reason.
Selecting a pair of narrow-ended tongs, Severus bent to the task of separating nettle thorns, sorting and selecting the fifty that were closest in size and shape. It was important that they were evenly sized, more important than that they were all large. Fifty small thorns would make a more predictable and potent potion than twenty-seven large ones and twenty-three small ones. Another subtlty that students seemed to have a difficult time grasping: the size of thorns had little to do with their potency, and yet, every year, he found students who thought selecting four large and one medium thorn was somehow favorable to five small ones.
Having separated the thorns, he picked up a large bottle of clear water, and held it up to the light, his keen eyes examining it carefully for any sign of impurity. It was dew collected under the new moon, and a powerful antidote to the emotional turmoil that begged a calming potion. Patience was required to collect such a large quantity. Patience and persistence. Every night when the moon was dark, Severus set up his condensing bowls to collect the dew, and he doggedly retrieved them well before sunrise so that there would be no risk of tainting by creatures who woke with the sun. Little was more frustrating than to find a robin bathing cheerily in a plate of dark-moon dew.
After assuring himself that the cauldron was immaculately clean and in perfect repair (the smallest crack could have enormous implications, after all) he measured out a precise quantity of the dew, and placed it in a cold cauldron, then set the pewter vessel over a low fire, watching the flames for a moment to reassure himself that they would not grow too hot as he turned back to his preparations.
His nible fingers selected a crystal phial (and he knew that crystal was far more accurate than glass, with fewer impurities, but Dumbledore constantly prevented him from insisting that students use crystal) and he held it up to the light, frowning slightly at a spot near the lip. He replaced the phial and selected another one, and held it up, turning it slowly in his fingers, then nodded, apparently satisfied with it. He filled it with a gleaming golden liquid and then set it aside, and selected a second phial, which he filled with a milky white substance. He glanced into the cauldron, and, noting that tiny bubbles were beginning to drift to the top, added the bowlful of willow roots and stirred it with a glass rod before finishing his measuring. Powdered wormwood, and twenty rose hips, then a large jug of wine, which he uncorked and sniffed at.
When he instructed his Fifth Year students on the making of this potion, he always told them that the wine they used had been infused with an irritant that would have them seeking out the nearest bathroom if they tried to drink it. And every year, the students believed him. And every year he told another batch of Seventh Years who were leaving Hogwarts that if they ever tried to brew a calming potion, they had best use un-contaminated wine, and admitted to them that he had misled them to keep them from drinking it. And somehow, if any of them ever revealed the duplicity, none of his Fifth Year students ever mentioned it.
He peered into the cauldron again, and, finding that the roots were growing limp, he added the phial of oil and the one of milky liquid (which, as it happened, was the juice of a particular plant that Sprout harvested large quantities of to make the milk for him). The infusion made the micture steam and hiss suddenly, and Severus added the rose hips, watching it carefully. There was only a small window of opportunity after the rose hips were added during which the nettle thorns could be introduced for maximum potency, and as soon as the liquid changed from the murky green to a brilliant gold, Severus dropped the thorns in and stirred the lot of it. He strengthened the fire and turned away to begin cleaning up, keeping a sharp eye on the cauldron for signs of a boil. As he deftly wiped away the mess from his cutting of roots (and noted with some exasperation that he had made far less mess with a bowlful than his students made with a cupful) he found his mind drifting back to Aislinn once more. The potion had taken his attention away from her for a while, but like clockwork, now that it did not require his focus, he was unable to keep images of her out of his head.
So entranced he was, in fact, that he almost forgot what he was doing until the prick of one of the unused nettle thorns startled him out of his stupor. "Bloody hell," he hissed, jerking his fingers away from the offending plants. He frowned at his finger; there was a small drop of blood on the end, and the skin was already red and angry looking. I'll have to see if Pomfrey has anything for it, he decided, having no desire for his students to notice that he'd been careless as he'd so often scolded them for being. Resisting the urge to put the burning digit in his mouth (as wormwood, while not quite poisonous, produced certain side effects that were far from pleasant), he forced himself back to his cleaning.
Glancing in the cauldron again, he decided the time was right for the wine, and he emptied the jug into the drum and stirred it once more. The wormwood was the last thing to be added, and he sprinkled it evenly across the surface, not stirring it, and then picked up the tray to head back to his supply room to clean up.
And found himself face to face with Aislinn, and his mouth suddenly went dry. How long have you been standing there? he longed to ask, but was loathe to admit that he'd had no idea she was anywhere around, so instead said softly, "It generally isn't polite to watch someone without making your presense known." He didn't think he'd missed a step when he saw her.
"You looked busy," she replied quietly with a slight shrug. "I didn't want to break your concentration in case what you were doing required your full attention."
He nodded, finding nothing to argue in her logic. "Then perhaps I should ask what you're doing here. Or is it such a slow morning that you had nothing better to do than come observe the preparation of calming potion?"
A hint of amusement flickered across her face, and with her next words, Severus discovered why. "It's afternoon," she replied, "and I didn't see you at lunch, so I thought I would come looking for you."
"And how did you know I was here?"
She shrugged again. "Lucky guess?" she suggested. It was Severus' turn to shrug. "Can I help you with that?"
He had reached the storeroom and his office, and she'd followed him there, and he looked at the tray. "If you like," he replied, and she stepped over to the sink, turning on the water and, he noted with a certain satisfaction, splashing the water around the basin and washing it lightly with her hand before putting a stopper in it. That was a habit he had to drill into his students, and it was marginally gratifying to know that even after seven years she still remembered that much. She added a mild detergent to the water and watched as the suds began to form, then turned her back on the basin, leaning against it while she rolled up her sleeves.
"Did you sleep well?" she asked, a certain awkwardness touching her voice.
He nodded. "Did you?"
She smiled slightly. "Not a wink," she admitted quietly, glancing at the water level in the sink.
"Oh?" he inquired, "and why not?" He emptied the remnants of the willow root into a small container and set it aside; it could be boiled later for a pain killer.
"I was busy thinking," she replied softly, moving a stray tendril of hair from her face and stopping the water. He handed her the bowl the willow root had been in, almost holding his breath and wonderingi f he dared to ask.
"About…?" he prompted after a moment, and she became very interest in scrubbing at the bowl. Severus knew that bowl had been spotless, and there was nothing in the willow root that would have warranted such attention, but he said nothing about her industriousness, turning his attention to returning the unused nettle thorns to their jar.
"You," she replied finally, and for a moment he thought that he was going to have to root more out of her (a game he would not have appreciated.) She continued, though, unprompted. "Me. Life. What happened… what didn't happen…" she shrugged again, and Severus was struck by how graceful a gesture that was.
"Come to any conclusions?"
She laughed softly, almost a snort. "Only that it's a long and winding road without a clear destination and half past three in the morning is awfully late to start down it."
He smiled, handing her the pair of crystal phials, which he noted that she took with both hands, holding them carefully. Good girl, he thought, then shoved the praise from his head. She isn't your student anymore, and if that's how you think of her, then you're more depraved than even you would have thought. He didn't think of her as a student, though. Certainly not now. She was a woman, who happened to have been a student of his at one time, and, he wasn't sure there was anything wrong with being impressed at how much she seemed to remember from his classes. Not, of couse, that he expected anything else from her. "How about," he paused and glanced at the clock and was surprised to see how far past noon it was, "a quarter to one in the afternoon? With company?" He finished replacing the unused ingredients and then walked over to stand beside her, picking up a drying cloth and leaning against the counter while he applied it to the bowl the willow roots had been in.
She smiled weakly at him, and picked up a soft brush to scrub the phial in her hand. "Might be more enjoyable," she conceded, "or it might be more difficult to stay on the right path."
He set the bowl aside and picked up the cup the rose hips had been in. "Then we'll have to make certain we keep each other on task. And not get distracted."
She nodded, rinsing the phial and holding it up to the light. Despite himself, Severus peered at it with her, and bit his tongue as he saw a spot in it. She saw it too, though, and he was pleased to see her returning it to the soapy water. "I'm not exactly sure where to begin," she admitted.
He nodded, picking up the cup the nettle had been in, and drying it, thoughtfully silent for a moment. "Perhaps with last night," he suggested softly. "And how much of what happened was a result of a bottle of Amontillado." She looked at him blankly for a moment. "Sherry," he clarified. "The variety we were drinking last night. A sweet variety, but no so sickeningly so as Oloroso."
She nodded and held the phial up to the light again, and frowned at the spot that was still in it. "You know a great deal about wine, don't you?" she asked, picking up the brush again.
He moved behind her and took the brush from her and held out his hand for the phial. "Allow me," he suggested, and once she'd relinquished it, he jammed the brush into the tube and scrubbed vigorously. "I made a point to learn about wines," he replied, answering her question. "It makes it easier to move in certain circles. A number of my acquaintances, in fact, would likely be unduly offended if I didn't offer them cognac, and doubly so if the cognac was not the best."
She snorted softly. "I can't say I know much of anything about wine," she told him. "I'm really more inclined to whiskey or scotch."
Severus gave the brush a deft twist, and then rinsed the phial, holding it up to examine it. The spot was gone. "That you know little of wine was quite obvious last night," he replied, and she blushed faintly. "Which brings me back to my question: did you, perhaps being unaccustomed to wine, succumb to it and do something you would not have done had you not been drinking?"
There was a silence for a moment, and Aislinn picked up the other phial. "I don't know," she replied finally, and he took a deep breath as he set to drying the first phial, the drying cloth draped over his wand so he could reach inside it.
"Thank you for being honest," he said softly. "So let us try another tactic. Would you do it again?" She jerked her head to look at him, her eyes indignantly wide, and he held up a hand. "I am not proposing anything, merely asking. Of curiosity. Think of it as a question from a well-meaning friend. Right now, sober—" he suddenly peered at her, "you are sober, aren't you?" at her nod, he nodded and continued, "then right now, sober, if you were in a similar situation, how do you think you would respond?"
She rinsed the second phial and held it up, and, satisfied with it, handed it to him. He couldn't help but examine it too, but found nothing to criticize. "Honestly?" she asked, and he nodded, almost fearing her answer, though somewhat more detached than he had thought himself capable of. "Sober, I wouldn't have been in that situation to begin with. I don't know what possessed me to…" she stopped abruptly.
"To…?" he prompted.
"To even bring it up."
He nodded, and set the second phial aside, then pointed at the board he'd been cutting the roots on. She picked it up and plunged it into the water, sloughing vigorously at it. "So you regret what we shared?" he asked.
"I didn't say that," she replied softly, slowing her scrubbing.
"Would you say that?"
She was quiet again.
"We'll come back to that later," he said quietly, deciding he wasn't sure he wanted to take that path just yet either. "So, I suppose we're back where we started."
Aislinn passed the cutting board to him and picked up the knife. "I don't regret it yet," she whispered, and he frowned at her, confused, "but I might before this conversation is over."
He snorted softly and took the knife from her. "Leave the jug," he told her, and she nodded. "I need to check on the potion." She followed him from the office and he approached the cauldron, peering inside and making a mental note of the progress before stirring it briskly and putting the rod aside again. Aislinn backed against one of the tables, then swung herself into a seated position on it.
"I value your friendship, Severus," she said quietly, and he looked at her, frowning slightly at her choice of seating, but saying nothing as he settled onto his stool again. "And I don't want to lose that friendship. And if that ends up being the cost of my recklessness last night…" she shook her head firmly, "then yes, I will regret it."
He touched her hand softly. "That isn't the cost, Aislinn. I hope you know that." She looked doubtful. "It isn't," he insisted. "Why are you so afraid it is?"
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and took a sudden interest in her fingernails. Severus watched her quietly as she examined her hands, and after a bit, she sighed. "It has been in the past," she whispered.
A frown flickered across his face. "What do you mean?" Her own frown deepened, and she seemed to sag a little on the table. Severus took her hand in his and squeezed it softly. "You can tell me," he urged. "I hope you know that."
She squeezed his hand back. "I know," she replied, no note of hesitation in her voice. "I just…" she sighed and pulled her hand away from him, and turned, sliding off the table on the other side, her back to him and the table between them. Not by accident, he was sure. "I can't say I'm particularly proud of that tendency," she confessed, "and I'm not so sure that it's going to leave you with an overly optimistic impression of me."
Severus stood and leaned across the table, touching her elbow. "I have been accused of many things," he told her, a sardonic smile touching his face, "but never of excessive optimism."
That brought a smile from her, which had been his intended result, and she turned to face him again. "I have a bad habit of fancying myself in love," she whispered quietly. "I suppose it's because I've never felt that anyone did love me, so…" she shrugged. "I make friends, and then I read more into them than they ever intended to exist. And then I open my big mouth and go telling them about it. And it invariably ends in a… how did you put it last night? A tumble in bed, and then that's the end of it. A few words here and there, though no more than a nod to propriety, and then we drift apart. So I tell myself it won't happen again, and the next time I fall even harder, and harder still the next time…" She shoved a hand through her hair and grimaced as it caught in her bun, as though she'd forgotten she'd pulled it up. "So I guess I decided a long time ago that I'd stop letting men hurt me. I'd take what I wanted and…" her face was reddening, and Severus watched her carefully, trying to read what she wasn't saying. "And make ridiculous agreements. 'This is only with an understanding that there are no strings attached,'" she bit the words off, and Severus flinched. "And I've lost four dear friends like that," she whispered bitterly. "I don't think they ever truly believed it."
Just like I didn't,
he thought, taking a moment to stir the potion again. As he set the rod aside once more, he moved away from it so he wouldn't be tempted to continue stirring it. "I see," he replied quietly."That was what you wanted to hear, wasn't it? That it was a one-shot offer, and now we return to normalcy. That's easier to accept than any other answer, isn't it?" She looked away, and leaned against the table. "I'm very good at telling people what they want to hear," she offered. "Or sometimes what I think they need to hear."
"And what about you?" he asked, walking towards her. "What do you want to hear me say?"
She smiled ruefully at him. "I can honestly say that I don't know. That was most of what kept me up all night." She straightened again and looked as though she might back away again, but she did not. She did, however, turn to face away from him. "Part of me wants you to tell me to get the hell away from you and leave you alone." She glanced over her shoulder at him, and gave him a level look, "to remove the temptation," she clarified, and he was almost glad she'd explained further. "Part of me wants you to come and sweep me off my feet with some more of that wine and a dozen roses." She frowned slightly and shook her head. "Don't do that, incidentally." He made a mental note to ask more about that later. "Part of me wants to pretend nothing ever happened, and for you to pretend nothing ever happened and for us to go on blissfully pretending that nothing has changed… except I don't think that would be so blissful." She folded her arms and looked up at the ceiling. "Part of me wishes you'd just tell me to shut up, and then kiss me so I can't possibly say another word and keep kissing me until I forget what I was saying anyway." She smiled apologetically in his direction, and he returned the smile, momentarily considering just that. "But the biggest part of me doesn't know what to think, or to want."
Severus took a step towards her and reached for her hand, pulling her closer. "Aislinn," he whispered, and she looked at him. He reached to pull her into his arms, an awkward movement on his part, but a sincere one. "I'm not going to tell you to get the hell away from me," he whispered into her hair above her ear, "because that would fall firmly into the category of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face." She made a noise that he hoped was laughter, because if it wasn't it was a sniffle, and he wasn't at all sure he would know what to do with a crying woman. Holding her was foreign enough. "And I'm not going to come crawling with roses, and I think we've had enough wine-soaked conversations for the time being, at least." She trembled slightly, and he felt a bubble of panic rising in his throat. "And tempting though it might be to kiss you so you can't say another word, I'm not going to do that either. I think that we need to be having this conversation, whether either of us wants to or not, for the sake of our sanity." He absently stroked her hair. "Pretending it never happened," he paused, and thought he felt her holding her breath. "It's probably the most realistic scenario," he admitted, "but I can't say I'm particularly enamored of the idea. Are you?"
He pulled away from her and tilted her chin up, so he could peer into her eyes. They were glistening, to his horror, behind a sheen of unshed tears. "No," she agreed, "I don't want to pretend it didn't happen."
He swallowed hard and pulled her close again, finding looking into her eyes a bit too difficult. "Good," he whispered. "Then how about this: we remain friends," she hugged him tightly suddenly, and he thought he felt her relax a bit in his arms, "and we don't worry too much about anything else. We'll see what happens in the next few days. Weeks. Years. Whatever," she was leaning against him now, and he was relaxing a bit too, stroking her hair. "And whatever you decide to do with it, I think I'll hold onto the memory of last night. Just in case I ever need a patronus." Laugh, he begged her silently, for the love of Merlin, laugh. She shook softly, and he thought she was laughing, and pulled away from her again. She was laughing, but to his horror and confusion, she was also crying.
"No," he whispered, brushing his hand against her cheeks, "don't cry."
She closed her eyes and leaned into him again. "I want to cry," she whispered softly, and he grimaced. She buried her head against his shoulder, and he patted her hair awkwardly, not knowing what to do. "Just hold me," she whisered, reaching one hand to his neck. He tightened his embrace, and for the first time in his life, he felt that maybe he was a comfort to someone.
Sorry I didn't update yesterday! I had to decide what was going to happen next, and while I was thinking that over, I added a short fic entitled 'Slytherin!'. So go read and review that one as well!
regarding having a lot of time: no, not really, Lady J. I have a full time job that requires a LOT of attention from me. As it happens, though, where most people spend time watching TV or such, I write. I find it cathartic. And I type fast and the story just sings in my head.