At exactly twelve o clock noon on the fifth of October Severus Snape appeared on the narrow country road with a resounding crack. After nearly a straight week of constant showers scattered across the whole of the British Isles the sky was, at last, a clear and cloudless blue. The sun hung above like a blazing white gold coin, warming the otherwise chilly air to a tolerable degree and hardening the packed ground into the questionable half-way point between dirt and mud. The smells of fallen leaves ozone and rain hung in the air like a thick cloud of perfume and late summer insects still hummed and chirped in the copse of trees surrounding him.

Summoning a pocket watch with a flick of his wand to ensure that, yes, he was in fact exactly on time and banishing it again just as quickly he strode forward up the path as the letter that he'd gotten back in response had instructed.

Ten paces later the expansive grounds of his potential-though it was still highly unlikely that he would do more for this man than provide the prescribed potions, given that that and not Mind Healing in any capacity was actually in his job description-client's manor opened up before him, the rolling perfectly tended emerald carpet leading up to a primly grown garden of sweet smelling flowers in declining bloom that hemmed in the front of the house.

Riddle manor was no less luxurious or beautiful than the ancestral homes of the oldest Pureblood families like the Potters-just the passing though of James and his pinhead friends was enough to make him grimace-Malfoys and Blacks but it had a different feel to it. Severus couldn't quite place what it was-perhaps the lack of veiling wards which charged the air around such manors with Magic, or the absence of the odd and only barely detectable distortions which always seemed to be visible on buildings where interior Enlarging Spells had been used-but it felt different. Perhaps less artificial.

An old, though still surprisingly firm and well dressed, couple were sitting outside at a beautiful cast iron porch table drinking tea from an ancient looking set of china. A servant-not a House Elf but a young woman in a dress and apron, which was quite a strange thing to see at least from his perspective-attended nearby. They looked over at him as he stepped onto the porch, his sweeping black robes no doubt appearing quite out of place against the colorful garden at his back.

"You must be Severus, then." The man said, rising from his seat and stepping forward to shake his hand. His face was angular and his grip surprisingly strong-even on a much younger man it would have come as a shock-and though he knew it was pointless to feel threatened by an unarmed-or even an armed, in all honesty-Muggle Snape couldn't help but find him a little bit intimidating.

"I am." He said, relieved when the man released his crushing grip. "You are?"

"Thomas Riddle."

Barring any circumstances which happened to involve the Marauders Snape liked to consider himself a Professional but he couldn't entirely keep a flash of surprise out of his black eyes. "You're Tom? Forgive me, but I was under the impression that I was to potentially be treating someone younger."

"You will be. I'm Thomas, not Tom. Tom is my son."

Ah. Well, that at least made a bit more sense. "And where, if I may ask, is he? I'm sure that you can understand that I'm a rather busy man; I haven't all day to be here."

"Darling is down at the stables," the woman, Tom's mother he assumed, said as she gently replaced her teacup on its saucer. "He goes down to take care of his horses whenever he's stressed or idle and tends to forget himself. Loses track of time."

"Adele will retrieve him." Thomas sent a firm look at the woman in the apron; she nodded without a word and departed from the porch, heading around the side of the house and down the hill. "You may as well have a seat and a cup of tea while you wait; take Tom's, as he didn't come up to join us today."

"That's highly un-."

"Oh, please, we insist." The woman said; the thin smile on her face could have easily been peeled off of Narcissa Malfoy. Resigned, having nothing better to do while waiting for the man he was actually there to see to arrive on the scene and not wanting to risk that the woman had the Malfoy Lady's temper as well he accepted the empty chair and cup of tea.

"Darling was left a mess by what that witch did to him. We brought in the help of the best professionals we could find but at the time we thought his insistences of magic were a product of his trauma and Psychiatrists simply aren't equipped to deal with Love Potions." She said, stirring another cube of sugar into her tea. "Much of the recovery that he has made is down solely to his own will-for the sake of our grandson, you see; he's really done a marvelous job of being a father so far-but he's still not completely well and the whole experience has left him scared out of his mind of women. That's why we were pointed towards you, Severus. All of the 'Mind Healers' at your Wizarding Hospital were women and they'd only have made him worse but you'll help, won't you?"

Severus pulled his gaze away from his untouched cup but was saved from having to answer by the rhythmic thunder of approaching hooves. Up over the hill and around the corner of the house came a horse with a pelt in such a shade of silvered white that, from behind, it could easily have been mistaken for a unicorn and astride it was a man. A very beautiful man who held onto the animal with only the aid of handfuls of its mane and the grip of shapely thighs.

His hair, though slightly dusty from the stables and askew with the wind, was a well-tended crown of glossy brown curls and the eyes set into his sculpted face, hemmed with dark lashes and cornered with crow's feet, were the same liquid grey as the British sky in the midst of a powerful storm.

"I'd told you not to go down to the stables today, Tom, or at the very least to wait until the man had left." His father called over the rim of his cup. "He's come all this way to help you, hasn't he? The least you could have done was be here to greet him."

"Yes, well, I hadn't meant to spend three hours down there father." He dismounted with a practiced motion, unbothered by the absence of stirrups, and sent the horse back towards-presumably-the stables with a quiet click. With that done, he quickly mounted the stairs of the porch and approached Snape with his hand out; the memory of nearly having his hand broken still fresh in his mind, he was rather hesitant in accepting the gesture.

Tom's hand was warm and dry, his palm and fingers slightly calloused. It struck him as strange; he was an aristocrat, clearly, and they didn't do their own work.

"Tom Riddle, the one who sent you that letter. Sorry about that."

"Let's make this quick, Mr. Riddle." He simply didn't know what to make of this man. Snape had come expecting a Muggle and the brunet in front of him dressed like precisely that and lived in a Muggle house to boot yet on his finger was, if he wasn't mistaken…

Yes, it was! A Lordship ring; he caught a better look at it as the fae-like man retracted his hand. The massive ruby, adorned with a dragon, glinted in the light of the sun which streamed below the eaves of the porch. The gold of the band was pitted with age and blackened in places as if by charring.

It was clearly very old, and the crest was one he didn't recognize.

What was going on here?

"Mr. Riddle is sitting over there. Please, call me Tom." His voice was a warm tenor, lacking the false varnish of over-politeness that Snape had grown so used to hearing after all his years spent in Slytherin House. "Shall we step inside?"

The interior of Riddle Manor was equally as clean and beautiful as the outside had been. A massive dog which, at first glance, Snape had mistaken for a miniature pony was laying spread out on a rug fast asleep. Another servant popped out of a hidden corridor in much the same was as a House Elf would pop out of thin air to stand in front of them.

"The sitting room is ready for you, Master."

A short nod was all that was spared in the man's direction. Tom gestured for Snape to walk ahead of him. "This way, please."

The walk was short, ending in a large room filled with expensive antique furniture. He chose the seat which appeared least likely to attempt to eat him and sat down.

With all the self-assurety expected of the super-rich Tom collapsed gracefully onto a nearly couch, draping long arms across the back and crossing graceful legs in front of him. "I'd offer you a drink, Severus, but it would seem that you've already had one. Shall we get down to business?"

"Let's." He drawled. "What, precisely, is it that you're hoping to achieve by contacting me?"

"If not being completely healed of my condition, at least to begin taking real strides towards becoming so. But before we get to the matter of me talking you into 'supplying me with unconventional services' shall we discuss the 'market price' of these potions that I need?" Tom tilted his head to one side to better observe him, much like an owl might. Though, perhaps, a bird of paradise would be a more accurate comparison. The column of his throat was tan and smooth, like a statue cast from gold. It bothered him. "When one commissions an artist for a piece of work they pay for the skill, the supplies and the amount of time it takes to complete. And, often times, they provide a tip of some form as well. Compensation for all their trouble. A competitive price; it is a market after all. A good and a service. I take it that this will be a similar circumstance?"

Black eyes regarded the too-pretty man reclined in front of him cautiously. Outwardly he appeared relaxed, calm, yet there was something about him that was as dangerous as a lounging tiger. Perhaps the danger wasn't physical, perhaps it was, but it was there either way and it was almost tangible. It coiled around graceful wrists like bangles woven from thorny vines and danced in mercury eyes like fairy lights. Snape squinted at him, half tempted to fling a Revealing Charm in his direction just to make sure it wasn't Puck himself that sat before him cloaked in the skin of a Muggle man.

His feet weren't cloven but they may as well have been. The brunet's face wasn't the only thing about him which wouldn't have looked out of place amidst the Sylvan host. After so long spent in Snake House he knew how to tell a silver tongue from a leaden one, and this man's dripped with Unseelie nectar.

Riddle. A fitting name for a host of devious reasons.

"You have the idea." The Fae were treacherous and wily creatures, deceptive by their very nature; the best that one could hope for when encountering one was what they had in mind for you ended in humiliation instead of death or worse. But they couldn't lie. A human could. And that fact made men, this man in particular, a thousand times more dangerous than the Fair Folk could ever be. "You would be paying for the ingredients that would be used, the brewing time, the skill required, the quality, and the dosage as well as a premium for having it brewed by a certified Potion's Master."

Long lashes flicked thin shadows across high cheek bones. "Does this potion have a particular name?"

"The potion that you were prescribed is known as the Lyre Draft, after the instrument of Orpheus. It's a cousin to the Calming Draft and the Draft of Peace and is meant to make it easier for a Mind Healer to execute the necessary changes needed to push a patient's mental wounds towards healing. It's a fairly expensive elixir under the best of circumstances, but especially in the concentration needed to combat the damage left behind by a mind altering substance as powerful as Amortentia." He said. "The price of a month's supply is 103 Galleons, 16 Sickles and 7 Knuts; you'll need approximately a year's supply and bi-monthly treatment sessions."

Well-groomed eyebrows shot up towards dark curls. "Quite high for a 'competitive market price' Though it won't be a problem. I'll send a slip to Gringotts to arrange the necessary monthly payments." Gringotts? So he did have a vault. "Now, shall we hammer out a price which might convince you to take up my case, Severus?"

"You're getting a bit ahead of the matter. We still haven't discussed exactly why it is that I should feel in any way compelled to take so much of my own already occupied time to assist you in such a way Mr. Riddle."

"My apologies; I hadn't meant to 'jump the broomstick'." He sat forward, clasping his hands between his knees; an innocuous motion, but it set the other further on edge. "Shall we speak about my motivations, then?"

From the onset Severus hadn't been particularly keen on the idea of playing doctor with some random Muggle-or, perhaps, not-Muggle-who had been fool enough to get himself dosed with Amortentia of all things, had intended to deny him and had made that clear, had only come for the sake of Professionality. But now it was more than simply not wanting to do it for the purpose of devoting that time instead to other pursuits, such as the struggles inherent with gathering together enough gold to purchase a premises and stock for his own potion shop.

It was fear.

Severus Snape may well have been a master of the Mind Arts, accomplished in Occlumency and Legilimency both, but he didn't want to see what lay behind those calculating eyes. Didn't want to set even one foot into the Pan's labyrinth of Tom Riddle's mind.

For fear that he'd never find his way back out.

Perhaps it was irrational, but instincts were something he tended to heed. Self-preservation was a hallmark of Slytherin House. And tempting the dragon's jaws was never wise.

But he needed a reason more substantial than 'I'm busy' to hide behind, not knowing what the man in front of him-for the moment as placid as a frozen lake in the heart of winter-was capable of it. And the best way for him to find that reason was to let him talk.

"They're simple, really. I've been absent for the first twelve years of my son's life. The twelve years during which, quite possibly, he needed me the most. But now that I am here I want to be the father that Junior not only needs but deserves. And the only way to truly do that is to come as close to a full recovery as I possibly can." He said. "What Merope did to me has left me with severe Gynophobia, making my choices for aid limited. My only real hope of reaching that goal is you, Severus. Please." His eyes were suddenly the color of solid lead, his stare carrying the weight of it. The compulsion bounced harmlessly off his shields but it was still enough of a shot across the bow to make him look away immediately. "Help me."

Irritation flared through him, both on account of the quite likely unintentional attempt at influencing him into agreement and the old feelings of resentment and anger for his own monster of a father which had been freshly stirred up by the brunet's testimony, but there was a silver lining to the situation in that fact. All be it a deathly thin one.

Severus rose abruptly and smoothed out the creases of his robes. "If you believe that 'putting yourself back together' will somehow undo the years that you weren't there I'm afraid you're very wrong. Either way, I'm a very busy man and I haven't the time to play mediator in repairing your relationship with your son."

"You misunderstand, Severus. My relationship with Junior requires no 'repairs' I simply want to make sure that I'm in the best possible place to protect him from meddling by…outside sources." Unbothered by his outburst, or perhaps simply refusing to show it, Tom leaned back in his seat once again and said in an almost inaudible voice "name your price."

All the galleons in the world wouldn't be enough to go anywhere near that rabbit hole, forget seeing how deep it went! "I will not be purchased like some object." He snarled, curling his lip at the man like a cornered dog; of half a mind to draw his wand on the man but knowing it was wholly irrational when the brunet, now looking rather bemused, hadn't moved from the couch.

Tom's shoulders heaved below the spotless oxford he wore as he let out a small sigh. "I hadn't meant it to be taken that way. It was simply an offering of whatever sum you felt of equal value to the time required for my treatment. Either way I respect your decision; should I contact another for the Lyre Draft as well?"

Cutting ties completely with trouble immediately was the smartest course of action but he needed the galleons too much. "No. I will send you the Lyre Draft on a monthly basis for the agreed upon amount. Do not attempt to contact me again, for any reason."

"Very well; I'll attempt to get into contact with any male Mind Healers whom are available for employ outside of Britain. Thank you for your time, Severus. I'll call a servant to-."

"I'll show myself out!" He didn't give the other man the chance to insist otherwise, not wanting to spend even another moment in his company.

Severus Snape had never once in all his years come across anyone like Tom Riddle, and he wasn't in the least bit pleased by the way that knowledge made him feel.