~Chapter Eight- To the Dungeons~
"We've got Defense Against the Dark Arts tomorrow," Cari said after dinner as they headed back to the dormitory.
"Mmm," Lindsey murmured with distracted disinterest.
"That should be quite interesting, I think," Cari went on.
"It should be indeed," Lisa said.
"And don't forget quidditch!" Pippy added, coming up to walk with them.
The conversation went on much the same until they reached the West Tower and went up beyond the picture of the battered knight. And there they sat for awhile, Cari and Pippy engaged in a very vocal game of Wizard's Chess, Lisa writing a piece of poetry in a notebook, and Lindsey, nibbling her quill, struggling with her Charms homework. The clock above the mantle of the fireplace steadily ticked, first chiming six, then seven, and finally eight.
"You know, students aren't allowed out after nine," Cari said pointedly to Lindsey as Pippy's rook destroyed her bishop. Lindsey looked up at the clock. True, she had been procrastinating going down to the dungeons, however she now knew that if she did not go she would surely dump her Charms book into the crackling fire.
"Alright, I'll be back," she said, getting up and sweeping out the portrait hole.
"Where's she going?" Lisa asked, looking up. Lindsey closed the portrait and heard no more. She paused, then took a deep breath and started on her way.
Things started out well; she was almost to the dungeons and hadn't gotten lost, nor did she run into Filch or Mrs. Norris, never a pleasant experience. She did pass by two of Hogwarts' resident ghosts and nodded a greeting; by the time she began descending the final narrow staircase to the dungeons she wasn't feeling too bad… then she came face to face with Peeves.
* * *
Severus stood behind his desk, peering intently at a bubbling cauldron. He was making an antidote at the request of the Headmaster; it's brewing was highly intricate. A drop of perspiration fell from his left temple as he concentrated on the potion; it had to stay at exactly the right temperature, if he went at all above or below at this crucial stage, before he added the powdered rattle snake fangs, all would be lost.
Suddenly he was wrenched from his concentration as a screech echoed someway down the hall, breaking the perfect silence. He dropped his wand with which he had been controlling the fire beneath his cauldron. Instantly the temperature of the potion became too high and it changed colors and began emitting a strange, misty smoke.
Out in the hallway the screech had turned to raucous high-pitched laughter and furious protestations, then shattering glass.
Snape's lip curled malevolently. He recognized the laughter. Oh, that poltergeist would pay; wait until he spoke with the Bloody Baron…
"Peeves," he raged, sweeping out the door. The ghost was several yards down the hall chucking inkwells at an unfortunate student on the floor, who was chucking them right back. At the sound of his angry bellow both had stopped and turned towards him. Snape began to stride furiously towards them, black robes billowing menacingly, livid with anger.
"The Baron will hear about this, Peeves…" he shouted as he neared them. Peeves seemed startled but finished emptying another inkwell onto the student, who tried fruitlessly to crouch under their robes, then pitched it at them, laughed, and ascended through the ceiling.
Snape glared up through the spot Peeves had disappeared, his black eyes blazing. As if he had just remembered he cast his eyes down to the unlucky student who would now be the receiver of his rage.
"What are you doing down here at this time of night?!" he yelled as the student tried frantically to stand, tangled in their robes. "Do you know what your stupidity has just caused me to do?! Now I-" Snape stopped short as the student finally managed to stand and raised their ink stained face to him.
It was none other than Lindsey Wormtongue.
Her hair was drenched and her face dripping with ink, as was her too-long robe. She looked even more wretched than usual but for the bright shine of nervous anxiety ablaze in her eyes revealed as soon as she looked into his. However her expression remained stoic.
Snape just stared at her a moment, his face twitching strangely. Swiftly however, he regained his icy composure and went on in his usual deathly bitter tone, "Do you have any conception of what you've just caused me to do?" He had gone from an outraged bellow to a dangerous whisper.
Lindsey shook her head slowly, never taking her eyes off his, nor blinking.
"Have you heard of the Mind Clearing Serum?" he asked quietly. This time her eyes twitched ever so slightly and shook her head again.
"No? Well, for your information Miss Wormtongue," he said coldly, "its brewing is one of the more tedious and time-consuming of the myriad of antidotes known to modern wizards. It was this I was making, for Professor Dumbledore himself, and it was nearing its completion, was in its most delicate stage, when-" He gestured widely to the giant ink splats on the walls and broken glass on the floor, leaving his sentence hanging.
Lindsey finally blinked and looked down as a drop entered her eye. Her head hurt.
"Looks like I'll have to take ten points from Ravenclaw for your lack of common sense and judgment," he said poisonously.
* * *
She couldn't believe her ears. Ten points from Ravenclaw? For something that was entirely Peeves' fault?! She stared angrily up at her professor, trying her best to clear her eyes of ink.
"What, pray tell, were you doing alone in the dungeons at this hour in the first place?" He quirked a suspicious eyebrow, glaring at her accusingly.
"I was to see you for a potion," she answered evenly, though her eyes were alight with indignance at this injustice. "For an allergy."
Snape raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. So she was who Madam Pomfrey had meant when she spoke to him after dinner.
They stood there in silence for a moment, glaring at each other, then Snape turned and swept back into his room without a word. Lindsey hesitated a moment before making up her mind and following him in.
Entering the frosty room she saw Snape glare at a smoking cauldron, then sigh deeply and agitatedly before its contents disappeared at a wave of his wand.
"Wait here," he barked as he walked into the back room. Lindsey did just that, standing awkwardly with her hands behind her back in the middle of the room. She looked down to see that she was dripping ink onto the stone floor, quite a bit of it. Upon hearing the sound of Snape's returning footfalls she looked up.
"Here," he said brusquely, thrusting a vial into her hands, "Take one vial before entering the classroom. That will last you for the rest of this week and next; I'll need to brew some more for after that." He spoke as if he had such better things to do than brew potions for stupid students. Lindsey nodded, then turned to walk out to the hallway. At the doorway she paused.
Turning her head enough to look back at him through her screen of hair she said, "Sorry about your potion Professor" then turned and walked quickly away.
Snape hadn't even noticed the ink on the floor, and now had another thing to take care of. Yet something in her voice made him know that she really was sorry, and that in itself was… different.
Circumstances of this evening all considered he didn't feel as bad-tempered now as he thought he should have been. What he did feel had him even more put out than usual. Scowling deeply, he tried to focus his mind on the work now at hand, trying desperately to ignore the absurd and most maddening sense of loneliness that had befallen him since she left.
* * *
As Lindsey neared the commonroom shortly after she heard the clock striking 9, she saw the portrait of the knight swing open and the head of Cari peek out.
"There you are!" she whispered fiercely, grabbing Lindsey's arm and pulling her in. "Do you know what time it is? What the heck happened to you? How on earth didn't you get caught? I knew I should've gone with you…"
Slamming the door, she finally rounded on her. "Well, what happened? What did he say? Did he give you the potion?"
Lindsey put her hands on her friend's shoulders and said slowly, "Steady. Deep breaths Cari, deep breaths."
They walked to the commonroom and sat in two arm chairs near the fire.
"It was freezing down there!" Lindsey exclaimed, huddling in her robes and scooting closer to the blaze.
"Well?" Cari prompted impatiently.
"He gave me a potion," Lindsey answered infuriatingly simply.
Cari waited for her to continue, but she just said, "I need a sweatshirt or something!" and ran up to the dorms. Cari rolled her eyes angrily but followed.
Upon arrival Lindsey had taken off her school robes and was pulling on a black hooded sweatshirt that looked like she had found it in a dumpster off Times Square (little did Cari know that's exactly where she found it); not only was it about three sizes too big but horribly ripped and stained, despite the Greens' efforts to clean it over the summer. Lindsey refused to part with it even though they couldn't completely wash the smell out.
"So? Are you going to tell me why you're…?" Cari gestured, indicating her utterly ink-stained person.
Lindsey simply walked to the bathroom and Cari huffed in after her. She stood there then as Lindsey washed her face, then hands and arms, tapping her foot impatiently. Lindsey tried her best to suffuse a grin; she loved when she could get her this worked up!
Finally, as she started drying with a towel, she said, "I had a run-in with Peeves."
Cari stopped dead and stared at her with marked skepticism.
"That's all? What about the dungeons? And didn't you see Filch? Well?" she prompted aggravatedly.
At last Lindsey turned to her.
"I went down there, practically got killed by Peeves, got my potion, came back up, and that's that!" she said, all in a rush. "Now I think we should both get to bed."
"You know Lindsey," Cari muttered as they went to get into their respective sleeping abodes, "Sometimes I don't know how I live with you."
Lindsey laughed weakly as she got under the covers and Duffer came to lay on her head.
"Good-night, Cari."
There were several moments of terse silence, in which Cari was refusing to say anything, insisting on staying mad. Then-
"Good-night, Lindsey."