The men worked well into the night, not getting any close to their end goal. Once again, the shear amount of ingredients meant that there were hundreds of possible ways of completing a potion. They had also come across the possibility that it was numerous potions combined but, that would leave the problem of how each potion was so specific to the individual. And then, if it was separate potions, how did they affect each person at the same time as there was only one point of ingestion, that they knew about, and that was the 'rain' from the sky in the Great Hall. As they grew sleepier, they dissolved into a Q&A session into how the potion was administered.

"The food?"

"Possible however, how did he know what everyone was going to eat or sit? People could have easily taken the wrong potion, which would lead to it having absolutely no effect on the individual."

"The sky?"

"Maybe could have held one of the potions… however, it couldn't have been multiple potions as they would have mixed and then have a more widespread affect meaning each child would have multiple personalities forced upon them or, it would be ineffective."

"House elves?"

"They are loyal to Hogwarts not the headmaster. Also, the house elf to student ratio isn't quite equal, meaning the effect wouldn't have been simultaneous if it was."

"Could there have been two showers of rain? As the first made everyone fall asleep when the effects took charge, there may have been another shower of rain."

"I do believe that is the most probable however, one of the potions was based on the individual's DNA so, everyone would have had to be dosed individually."

"Maybe one of the potions was similar to the imperious and made you drink what was in the glass in front of you?"

"Again, the house elves are loyal to Hogwarts, not the headmaster."

"That doesn't rule out the possibility of him owning his own elf, as you do."

"True, but for an affect like this to be completed so quickly, he would have to have used at least twenty elves. Would he have that many? Then again, it may not just be house elves… Many of the teachers here can levitate more than one potion at once but, that would mean the potion could be transported magically… There is a lot of risk in that."

"Are we overcomplicating this?"

"Possibly."

"What time is it?"

"4:57am. We should probably stop here. I don't think we are going to get any further tonight…"

"Same time tomorrow."

"Probably. Though you should probably tell Narcissa what is actually happening, instead of whatever lie you told her."

"Lie?"

"The fact that she isn't here, says it all. The future romance of her son, isn't all she is focused on in his life therefore, she would have been aiding us."

"True but, she needs her sleep, she's not been well recently."

"I'll leave it to you, but on your head be it."

He gave his friend a weary glance and went to bed. It had been many years since he had stayed up all night like that. He tried not to do it while he was looking after Harry as he would not be able to look after the boy properly the next day. He tended to suffer idiocy even worse after nearly pulling an all nightery. May Merlin help those whose essays he had to mark tomorrow.

Waking up without Harry was odd. It was quiet, unpleasantly so. He used to savour these silences in his youth. They were his only escape from his horrid home life and housemates. The pureblood mania had not been any better back then, though his position in the Dark Lord's inner circle had quelled most of the barb directed his way. Putting these thoughts aside, he got ready for another unpleasant day.

With his custom black robes on and a patented scowl on his face, he left his rooms, heading towards the Great Hall for another demoralising breakfast with the manipulative coot. He noticed more changes in his co-workers, the slight tweaks to their personalities coming out more in the conversations about the students. Blatant favouritism, coupled with ignorance was dangerous when dealing with shaping the minds of children. He gave the desired mantra for supporting the vile actions of the children in his house and spoke badly of the other houses. He had never seen Dumbledore look happier. Disgusted, he used the first possible excuse to return to his quarters.

The excuse had been Harry. The behaviour of the Gryffindors' had been rowdy to say the least. The competitive nature between the first year Slytherins and Gryffindors was catastrophic. He did not know what the old man thought would come of this. Sighing loudly, he had walked down past the Gryffindor table, retracting points from Harry, even though Draco had been the clear aggravator, and left the hall.

10 points from Gryffindor, Mr Potter.

He hated who he had to be. This inequality was the breeding ground for hate and he was right in the middle. Hated slightly by his house for subjecting himself to Dumbledore and hated by the rest of the school because of Dumbledore's wishes. He hated it all.

He rubbed his forehead in a practised manner, hoping to ease most of the stress he had felt in the past couple of days. Of course, it was with little result. He couldn't wait for this day to end. He needed to go back to his research. They needed to check the relationships they had identified yesterday and try to separate them into groups that could create possible potions. It would take a while and that's why they needed to start as soon as possible!

But he couldn't.

He had to keep up appearances or his task would grow harder, courtesy of the old coot.

Instead of heading to his private rooms, he headed straight to his classroom, knowing that he wouldn't be able to resist picking up where he left of earlier this morning! Huffing, he sat down at his desk.

Even though today was a Saturday, his day seemed to be filled with detentions. Planned? Yes. By him? Definitely not. Who willingly places themselves in a room with dunderheads?

After an excruciating day of dealing with insolent brats, he happily headed back to his room. Ignoring the summons for dinner. If he was going to be forced to act like a moody brat, he'll stay in his solitude like one as well!

As soon as he got in, he pored himself a large shot of brandy and heaved a heavy sigh. A third of a day wasted. However, he had been no closer to garnering any sort of relationship, no matter what terms he laid out while inspecting the list. He needed someone to yell/talk the process through with. It would calm him down but also may help him discover something in the process. Smirking, he called out for his most common accomplice.

"Lucius, are you able to come through to help me with the potion?"

"… Sorry, Severus, Lucius isn't here though I'd be more than happy to help you if I can."

"That's alright, Narcissa, I wouldn't want to take you away from anything."

"That's sweet, Severus, truly, but you're not getting away now."

The Floo call ended abruptly with Narcissa withdrawing on the other end. She was being pushy. That was never good. That meant someone was on trouble. He prayed to Merlin that it wasn't him. All the Black sisters were scary in their own rights, but at least you knew what to expect with the other two.

He quickly poured and downed another shot of brandy. Only just managing to hide the glass he had used before his Floo flared back to life.

"I've been receiving the most interesting letters from Draco, as of late."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, he seems to think that it is becoming to sprout of derogatory terms and whine insistently to me about the strangest of things. The obscenest being that Harry is a 'mudblood loving pratsicle'. I would love to know where he got the idea that he should even be writing things that uncouth to anyone, let alone his own mother."

"Well…"

"I don't know what plan you have concocted but, if I get anymore of this nonsense sent home to me, you will be sorry Severus Snape."

"Unfortunately, I cannot promise anything seeing that I don't know what Dumbledore has done…"

"WHAT? The only reason Draco came to this school was because you were there. We had his name down for Durmstrag, even since the terrible propaganda, they call eductation, was fed to us here! What do you mean, you don't know?"

"All I have to go on is what ingredients are in the potion."

"Well what have you been doing with that list?"

"Been sorting it out to try and find different relationships that give the resulting affects that the potion has had on everyone it is fed to. Bt, there are too many."

"What does the potion do?"

"Changes a person into what Dumbledore wants."

"In essence, what would the potion do?"

"It would connect the personality of a person to anothers mind. Similar to the imperious curse. It feeds compulsions and adapt your memories."

"Why can't you use a simple cleanser?"

"I haven't tried. I just assumed that it wouldn't work as I think the potion is blood based."

"Try. Use the cleanser as a basis. Merlin, Severus, use your brain. I cannot believe I have had to suggest you use a cleanser as the basis of your research!"

"Thank you for your help, Narcissa."

"You can thank me by getting me my son back."

"I will."

"Good."

Once she was gone, he sunk down in his chair. In all fairness, he got off extremely lightly there. He could only pray that Lucius had gotten the same treatment. Though for all he knew, the man lay castrated somewhere on a dimly lit sidewalk…

Brushing that thought away from the front of his mind, he focused on the task at hand. In his desperation to get Harry back quickly, he had ignored the overarching need to sort out the purpose of the potion as how could he reconstruct a precise potion without knowing the theory behind it? He refrained from banging his head against the wall as he wrote down his observations. Hopefully, he could identify patterns to know how many potions were consumed on that night.

Different mindsets. The creation of a new one to suppress the old one… The memories weren't removed as that would leave too big a gap in some people's minds and he wouldn't have been able to make the potion that specific dude to the method he applied it to everyone. Of course, the first affect was drowsiness-

Did he dream that night?

The difference between some sleeping potions and others were the effect it had on your subconscious. If he had dreamt that meant it would influence his body into sleep rather than his mind. He quickly searched through his mind, looking for any dreams that he hadn't looked at yet.

There were none.

He hadn't dreamt.

Meaning that one potion had both sent him into a deep sleep and changed his memories… Was this the potion that had the link? It must be seeing that people didn't loose gaps of knowledge, they lost exactly what Dumbledore had wanted.

However… that was around 300 people he would now have linked to his mind. That wasn't possible. The sheer amount of magic that would be keeping even a single bond would affect his core.

It wasn't as if it was new news; Dumbledore was well past his prime and his core was beginning to become more unstable. Therefore, how was it linked to him?

An item? A script? He would need to create a data base to which each person's state would be connected that he could edit. A singular item would not be expansive enough and was susceptible to damage. It must be linked with his mind somehow… his instructions had to be memoris-

His memories.

That clever coot. Dumbledore had simply fed memories into something that held his instructions for each of his new pawns. He had adapted a pensive, after all Dumbledore was an alchemist. His feats with Flamel weren't without backing, or so anyone thought. His knowledge of artefacts could aid him in adapting the pensive to his liking. After all, he didn't know how long Dumbledore was working on this. No one did.

Snape leaned back in his chair, arching his fingers against one another and snorted. A family pensive was known to be passed down and Dumbledore was the eldest. No one could contest his right to it, nor cold they take it from him and his family as he still had his brother around.

The success felt at discovering this means overweighed the fact that he still had no idea how that was even accomplishable. However, it was one step closer and that was all he needed.

Thank Merlin, for Narcissa Malfoy nee Black.