~Chapter Seventeen- The First Detention of Lindsey Wormtongue~
At twenty to seven Lindsey left the library, wondering where Cari had gotten off to. It wasn't like her to just leave… Well, I'll be seeing her in a short two hours, Lindsey thought mordantly. It's not like she left the school or anything. She shifted the increased bulk of her pile of books to her other arm.
In addition now to her textbooks she had acquired The Dark Wizard's Index of Deadly Potions, 101 Vital Ingredients in Fatal Concoctions, and The Ways of the Dark Wizard: A Psychological Study. She was almost glad Cari hadn't been there; she would certainly not approve of this reading material. It was simply that this sort of thing fascinated her; she didn't know why.
Before she wished it, she had arrived at the stairway to the dungeons. Taking a breath, she started down cautiously and with marked reluctance.
* * *
Severus sat running a quill idly through his fingers, watching the clock tick slowly towards the hour, feet propped up on his desk casually. Five more minutes. The girl had five more minutes to get here, if not… Snape knew he would have to administer more punishment upon her. He really didn't enjoy it despite how often he had since school started. It was just… He hated being so suddenly reminded of himself that it made him angry and he ended up hating her instead.
Bitterly he wondered if he'd ever be able to get control of his own emotions. That was another thing he occasionally missed about the Death-eaters: apathy. Things are easier when you just don't care about others.
Snape looked up suddenly as his brooding thoughts were welcomely interrupted by a sound from the door. Hastily he brought his feet down and tossed his quill to the side.
Lindsey Wormtongue stood there, rather downcast-looking as usual, though he couldn't be entirely sure as her face was obscured by her hair.
"Take a seat," he said roughly, gesturing to the empty desks before him. Lindsey moved silently to sit in one of the front desks.
"Funny, you never sit there during class," he remarked dryly.
She looked up briefly and shrugged, then just sat there, looking up at him with those dark, expressive eyes, grimly expectant. The eyes of a brave man awaiting execution, Snape thought suddenly. Did she really think it would be that bad? Yes, probably.
"As you offered so generously early last Friday morning, if you would recall," Snape said coldly, "you will be helping me restock my shelves with healing potion." He gestured to her to come to the cauldron on his own desk.
"I'll be needing at least two vials worth of the Detoxifying Stomach Elixir, and another three of the Skin Relieving Balsam," he instructed her. She stared up at him blankly.
"Are the recipes in the book?" she asked finally, indicating her potions book.
"Yes, in the healing potions section," he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world (which it was).
Snape watched as she retrieved the book, not sure if he should leave her alone or not. From her performance in class he wasn't too keen on letting her attempt the potions on her own. He decided to just observe for awhile and see if she knew what she was doing without the assistance of her constant companion Cari.
* * *
Lindsey had no idea what she was doing. Boy did she wish Cari was there right then. At least she had found the instructions to the potions in her book, however now was the hard part: finding the ingredients. She hadn't a clue what half of them were. She stared at the page for at least two minutes, then went to the ingredients cabinet, only to stand there for another two.
"Well..?" Snape tried to get her to hurry it along. Lindsey looked at him sidelong, debating whether or not she should fess up to being completely incompetent or not.
"I sort of…um… don't know what this is," she ended up admitting, taking the book to show him the ingredient.
"An Abyssinian shrivelfig?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "That's taught in second year potions," he added derogatively, "What kind of wizarding schools do you have in America?"
"I don't know," Lindsey replied quietly.
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I never went to wizarding school in America," she said grudgingly.
"Well, where did you go then?"
"No, that's the point; I've never been to wizarding school in America- or anywhere."
"You never… How on..?" Snape couldn't think of what to say. How was that possible?
"It's nothing I'm very willing to talk about," she said rather sharply. Snape raised his eyebrows but refrained from saying anything; although he usually didn't like that tone of voice taken with him from a student he let it slide this time.
The two worked on the potions for about half an hour, Snape deciding it was best not to leave Lindsey to her own devices, and the first batch of Skin Relieving Balsam was almost complete.
"Would you just add the boomslang skin? I've got to get more ginger root from the back," Snape said, walking to the back store room. He thought she could handle at least that one step on her own without messing up.
He was wrong.
Swiftly his black eyes scanned the dusty shelves, searching for the ginger root he knew they contained. Just as he reached for the jar he suddenly heard the sound of an explosion from the other room, then Lindsey cursing loudly. Abandoning the ginger root he ran back out to the classroom.
"What did you do?!" he yelled in sputtering disbelief.
Lindsey was standing behind the cauldron, her hair blown back and face covered with ashes and smoke from the explosion, eyes wide and unnaturally white in her blackened face. Smoke was billowing from the cauldron and the ceiling above was blackened as well.
"What did you do?" he asked again, now more quiet and dangerous, though still with a certain degree of incredulity.
"I don't know!" Lindsey cried defensively, her voice strangely high-pitched, obviously petrified. "It just… exploded, I don't know! All I did was put in the…th- the thingy, and then it exploded right in my face!"
"Healing potions do not just explode, Miss Wormtongue," he spat. "What exactly did you put in?"
Lindsey help up a large jar and Snape groaned.
"Aconite!" He clapped a hand to his head. "I ask you to put in boomslang skin and you add aconite!" he roared in exasperation.
"Aconite?" Lindsey simply repeated, studying the jar in her hand. "Oh…"
Snape truly wanted to bang his head against the desk at that moment. And he had another week of this. Her detention was turning out to be more of a punishment for him than it was for her. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, mastering himself. He opened his eyes and almost laughed.
She was looking at him with the most apologetic look on her face, made more pathetic by her comically disheveled appearance. He was suddenly reminded of her cat, the whole reason for her being here now, essentially- what was its name? Duffer, that's it.
Snape, instead of laughing, took out his wand and waved it with agitation, muttering a spell. Instantly the room was back in array, the smoke gone, ceiling clean, and cauldron empty. Lindsey was rubbing her face with the outrageously long sleeves of her robe, mostly succeeding in smudging the grime, but clearing some of it. She made a couple futile attempts at fixing her hair, but really only made it more unruly. Eventually she just gave up with a sigh and looked at Snape.
"Finished?" he asked cruelly. Glancing at the clock he said, "It's almost eight o' clock now, we may have time to finish the stomach elixir if we move quickly and don't mess up." He weighed heavily on the last three words, looking at her pointedly.
Lindsey scowled, angry and embarrassed at screwing up so badly. She would redeem herself though, she vowed inwardly. And to some degree, she did, as Snape only had to stop her a few times before making more mistakes, and they got the two bottles of Detoxifying Stomach Elixir completed before the clock chimed nine, the end of her first detention.
"Where have you been?" Cari asked Lindsey as she entered the commonroom behind the painting. It was well after nine. Lindsey shrugged, about to say something when Cari plunged on excitedly.
"You'll never guess where I've been!"
"Well, then I suppose you'll have to tell me," Lindsey said, leaning against the back of an armchair.
"Draco asked me to do homework with him!" She waited for a response. "Isn't that great?!"
Lindsey raised her eyebrows. "Wow…"
"Yeah I know!"
"So you had a full-on snogging session in the library, did you?"
"W- No! You weirdo… He first asked me if I was pureblood or not, and you too, then we started on the Transfiguration homework. While doing that we talked about how stupid Divination is, and how annoying that Hermione Granger can be, that sort of thing."
"Ah, discussing your mutual detest of the world," Lindsey said, coming to sit on the chair she had been leaning on, finally coming into the light of the fire.
"Well, yeah, pretty much. Then- what on earth happened to you?!"
Lindsey looked down sheepishly. "I, uh…" She cleared her throat with embarrassment. "I kind of screwed up a potion," she reluctantly admitted.
"What, did it explode or something? Ge- It did?! Lindsey…" Cari shook her head.
"Yes, well, anyway… Better get to sleep; school tomorrow," Lindsey embarrassedly, clearing her throat and getting up.
"Ah, good point," Cari agreed. Since returning to the commonroom not long before on a euphoric high, sleep had not crossed her mind. Now however, she anticipated having some very sweet dreams.