To The Honour of the Mother
Chapter Four: Himself Shall Learn A Lesson

Dame Angharad took up the bobbin, twirling it slowly to take up the wool thread that spun from the woman's fingers. "Why do ye spin, ye who are a wizard and the daughter of wizards?"

Brigit smiled. "My mother spun, and her mother before her. It is most soothing, releasing the mind to think of other things, like a meditation."

Angharad felt the fine thread. "And so ye make something lovely withal," she commented. "When your mind is free, what do ye think of?" "I pray to the Mother, and sing songs to her, and I think of - other things as well." Her cheeks flushed rosy.

"Do ye indeed?"

"Aye. I think of what ye told me, of the Potions Master, all twined round with his ill humour, and a waste of the Mother's gifts, so wretched is he. I know what to do for the likes of him."

"Indeed, ye do? What would ye do with him?" Dame Angharad smiled and twirled the bobbin.

"I'd box his ears to teach him a lesson, "said Brigit, her blue eyes snapping. "I'd throw himself upon the bed and pull off his breeches with me teeth, and then I'd give him such a shagging his eyes would stay crossed for a week."

Dame Angharad threw back her head and laughed and laughed. "'T'would do him a world of good," she said. "I think you should plan to do it straightaway. But mind you, before you set him into an eye-crossing stupor, take care he knows how to honour the Mother by pleasing her daughters."

Brigit put a new cloud of unspun fleece on the heddle. "If he doesn't know, I'll teach him," she smiled. *** Professor Snape put a handful of toadstool slices on a tray lined with a sheet of parchment and slid the tray into the desiccator. A small lump of anthracite on the bottom glowed, at his bidding, providing the subtle heat that would dry the fungi to perfection, slowly and evenly.

He looked into a simmering cauldron, regulated the heat thereunder, and moved around to an elaborate distilling apparatus. A retort filled with a yellow liquid bubbled over the small blue flame of a green candle; the vapours moved up and down an arrangement of glass tubing, through several filters and finally dripped, liquid again, clear blue drops into a waiting flask. He loved (although that was too strong a word) the economy and precision of potions preparation, the transmogrification of elements, the creation of substances and the refinement of certain properties in a substance.

Satisfied that all was proceeding as he wished, he sat down at his desk to make his notations in his precise, crabbed handwriting. Thank whatever-it- was that he had had a decent day: no confrontations with obnoxious female druids, no seductive odours to distract him from his work; best of all, no nightmares last night. He had lived through several horrible days in which the ordered, secure world he inhabited had threatened to collapse on his head.

There was a discreet knock on the door. "Enter," he said, not looking up.

"Master, these orders are from Madam Pomfrey, she asked that I bring them straightaway."

Snape looked up. The bringer of hospital orders was one of Madam Pomfrey's nurse aides, a thin, quiet woman he had been aware of but never actively noticed. He took the folder of scrips from her hand. "Wait over there," he ordered, indicating a small settee next to his cold hearth.

The aide sat down and waited quietly, her hands folded in her lap. Only her bright blue eyes moved, watching the drops of liquid dripping from the distillery into the waiting flask. The corners of her mouth curved upward slightly. The man at the desk was an ugly git, indeed, made worse by the nasty bile-green aura surrounding him. Why did the Mother think he was worth the trouble it would surely take to make him into a proper devotee? Brigit sighed silently. The Mother must have something planned for him, and who was she to argue?

Still, he was the least likely son of the Mother she had ever seen. Although, she reminded herself, Angharad thought he had possibilities. I shall have to See what I can see, she thought. With that, Dame Angharad bespoke her, and lo! She Saw the man; naked as the day he was born, standing at the foot of his bed with that hideous nightshift of his in his hands. Hmmm, thought Brigit. What good is all that if he has no generosity of it? 'Tis true that we shall be judged not by how we are loved but by how we love. There is no love in him. Angharad, we will have to start with his spirit.

"You," said the Potions Master, looking up at Brigit. "Take this phial to Madam Pomfrey, for the one with convulsions, and tell her he must have it immediately, and she must not keep him too warm. He will survive. For the rest, tell her I shall have her scrips delivered first thing in the morning." He held out a small phial and an envelope.

Brigit stood up and walked slowly over to the desk. She held out her hand for the phial and paper. The master frowned at her. "Are you a Weasley?" he asked.

"I am not," she answered. "There's many with red hair and freckles that are not Weasleys, Master Snape. I am a McDiarmaidh, of the clan McDiarmaidh, chieftains and wizards since the time before time." Her blue eyes snapped at him, and she pushed a curl of carrot-red hair off her forehead. "Ye might look to your still, Master," she said. "It is going dry, and will spoil the potion."

Snape pushed back his chair and hastened over to his distillery. She was right, he saw: although the retort still bubbled, something had stopped up one of the glass pipes, and the heat was building up. He tapped the stoppered pipe with his wand, and it cleared immediately. He turned to Brigit: "How do you come to know so much, you're only an aide in the hospital?" he demanded.

Brigit smiled, that small, inscrutable smile that has maddened Irishmen for generations. "I know what I know," she answered demurely. Snape's brows beetled; she could sense an explosion coming. "Did ye not know that most druids are healers? We taught the likes of ye about potions, indeed." She lay her slender, oval hand on his forehead before he could move away. "Blessed be," she said, turned, and was gone. Snape leaned on the edge of his laboratory bench. He was breathless with fury. Another one! Damn these women! What did they want of him? His orderly mind reminded him that she had asked nothing.

He sat down heavily in his chair. What, then, do I want of her?