Chapter Four: Wormwood and Asphodel
Severus was walking off his tension outside the castle entrance when the pale silver glow of a Patronus approached him. It was misshapen, as if the caster couldn't quite power it, but it was unmistakably a wolf. What was Lupin doing near Hogwarts?
"I've got Harry at the gates. Please come fetch him," the voice of Tonks came from the wolf. Severus' footsteps briefly paused. It was hard to believe anyone could develop feelings for Lupin—the man who never had the nerve to stand up to his friends despite knowing better, but it was not surprising to Severus as most people had no taste.
He didn't waste too much thought on the new object of Tonks' affection, however. It was the notion that Potter had yet again managed to get into mischief the moment he was away from supervision that had him tensing.
Severus knew it was sheer arrogance that drove the boy to ignore the rules over and over again, so convinced of his own abilities with no regard for the consequences of his actions, leaving a trail of mess and destruction in his wake. He thought the loss of his godfather would have tempered the child, but obviously he was wrong.
Striding quickly to the gates, his mood darkened when he saw the blood on the boy's face, who was out of uniform. The only place he could have received the bloody nose was on the Express, which meant he had been fighting with other students, and the fact he wasn't in uniform meant he cared more about picking a fight than observing the basic rules about being a student. Did he think being the Chosen One put him above the other students?
Severus made a cutting remark about Potter's lack of uniform and opened the creaking gates. Tonks made some noise about meaning for someone else to receive her message, her hair an unusual mousy brown in her wandlight, which reminded Severus—
"I was interested to see your new Patronus." He shut the gate with a clang. "I think you were better off with the old one. The new one looks weak," he said, holding back from the old anger the werewolf usually stirred up in him. The Auror could do so much better than a self-defeatist werewolf almost double her age who obviously didn't care for her, had no backbone to stand up to others despite pretending to do what was right, and had repeatedly put the students of Hogwarts at risk with his careless behaviour surrounding his transformations. Severus caught a flash of her anger before he turned away to go.
He could feel Potter projecting his hatred for him from where he stood, and felt almost vindicated that the boy blamed him for Sirius' death. The boy was just like James Potter to loathe him on sight, and blame people around him for the consequences of his own actions. Others around Severus said the boy was "modest, likeable, and reasonably talented" (actually, only Dumbledore said that—most others didn't dare speak to him about the boy), but he could not see any of it.
Severus tried to goad Potter into revealing what he had done to arrive at school late and bloodied, the boy's temper a reliable point of pressure, but he stayed silent.
When they reached the Great Hall, Harry left him as soon as he could, clearly eager to leave his presence, a sentiment which Severus shared completely.
He tuned out most of Dumbledore's speech and the shocked mutterings when it was announced that Horace had returned to teach Potions. A flicker of amusement warmed his chest when Potter protested his post to the Defence position; it was probably not healthy how much he enjoyed goading the boy, but he had little that gave him joy during these dark times. Minerva looked to be the only person who was genuinely pleased for his appointment to the Defence post.
Severus watched the Hall with an air of detachment and a self-satisfied look on his face, even though he felt otherwise. The position he wanted was his, and he could prepare the children for what was coming the way he had wanted to for years, but his victory felt hollow. The only reason he had the position was because the worst was going to come to pass, and they needed him for the worst.
The first morning back to school had always been Hermione's favourite day of the year. She loved the sense of potential the beginning of a new school year carried—the promise of new knowledge, new beginnings with the other students, new beginnings with her teachers, and new books to read. Even the air seemed to hold a different quality in the early days of September, crisp from the morning chill but not yet uncomfortably cold.
It had been good to see Neville the evening before, especially since she had not seen much of him before the summer; despite being closer to Harry and Ron, Neville was still her first friend at Hogwarts, and Hermione never forgot that. It had even been nice to see Parvati and Lavender again. Things had been difficult with the two girls in her first year, but over the years they had grown used to each other as they slept in the same dorm, though Parvati and Lavender were still closer to each other than they were to Hermione.
Ancient Runes was her first class, and—to her secret delight—they were assigned a fifteen-inch essay, two translations, and four readings in various books. She had missed the feeling of having assignments to accomplish, though she had studied plenty of Occlumency and healing magic over the summer, and it was nice to have something to focus on that would take her mind away from the nightmares of being chased by Death Eaters that sometimes haunted her waking hours. She had managed to Occlude most of the memories away, and her dreams of being chased were fewer and fainter, but she would still wake up feeling as if she had been running, and still felt uncomfortable when she felt people walking behind her.
It wasn't until she started one of the readings for Runes that she realised NEWT-level work was going to be much, much more difficult than previous years, which was when anxiety began to bleed into her excitement for the new school year.
She was voicing her anxiety about homework with Harry and Ron in the hallway outside of the Defence classroom when Snape materialised seemingly out of nowhere and told them to go inside.
It was immediately obvious Defence classes with Snape were going to be quite different from before, just from the presence of the images of tortured people on the walls, and the curtained windows. Hermione held her breath as she waited for Snape to begin. His speeches from the beginning of the semester were always memorable.
"The Dark Arts," said Snape, "are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible."
She rushed to copy down every word.
"Your defences," said Snape, a little louder, "must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the Arts you seek to undo."
They practised non-verbal jinxes and shield charms, which Hermione mastered quickly while the other students struggled. Her success she attributed to her practice with Occlumency she had done at the Burrow that summer, as it was a form of non-verbal magic.
Things progressed as normal until Snape approached the boys. Hermione tensed as he drew closer. Ron was attempting to jinx Harry but had not yet managed it.
"Pathetic, Weasley," said Snape, after a while. "Here—let me show you—"
Before he could cast, Harry had shouted, "Protego!"
The charm was so strong Snape was knocked back into a desk, and the whole class watched as he righted himself and slowly approached Harry.
"Do you remember me telling you we are practising non-verbal spells, Potter?"
"Yes," said Harry stiffly.
"Yes sir."
"There's no need to call me 'sir', Professor."
Hermione groaned. Why did Harry have to lose control of his tongue so easily in front of Snape? Why did Snape have to antagonise Harry so much?
Harry earned himself detention for the retort and spent the rest of the class sullenly glaring at Snape. Snape, for his part, spent the rest of the class ignoring Harry.
"Miss Granger, a word?" Snape said as the rest of the class made to leave.
Harry and Ron shot Snape dark looks, but Hermione shook her head and shooed them out the door. Professor Snape waited at his desk, hands clasped, until all the other students had left.
"As you may be aware, we have a new Potions professor at the school," he said.
"Yes, sir?" Hermione asked, unsure what Slughorn had to do with anything.
"One of the conditions for Professor Slughorn's return was that he need not do the brewing for the Infirmary. That happy task falls to me. However, as I am dealing with a new curriculum, I find myself short on time, and Professor Dumbledore has suggested I take on an assistant to help me brew."
"I see?" Hermione said, not quite believing Snape was asking her for assistance.
Snape ignored her disbelief. "We will be brewing twice a week at seven, starting tomorrow evening, in the smaller potions lab in the dungeons. It's two doors down from the main Potions classroom. Don't forget to review what you have learned in Basic Healing Charms and Potions." With that, Snape opened the door wandlessly and pointed her out.
Suddenly, it made sense why Snape had asked her to brew—she knew he meant the Occlumency text when he mentioned Basic Healing Charms and Potions, and was relieved Snape had thought of a cover for them to meet.
She had just caught up to Harry and Ron when she heard Ron tell Harry what he did in class was brilliant. Her cheeks warmed in anger—it was unbelievable how disrespectful Ron was being—and she asked Harry why he did it.
"He tried to jinx me, in case you didn't notice!" fumed Harry. "Did you hear him talking about the Dark Arts? He loves them! All that unfixed, indestructible stuff—"
"Well," said Hermione, a tad impatiently, "I thought he sounded a bit like you."
"Like me?" Harry goggled.
"Yes, when you were telling us what it's like to face Voldemort. You said it wasn't just memorising a bunch of spells, you said it was just you and your brains and your guts—well, wasn't that what Snape was saying? That it really comes down to being brave and quick-thinking?" Hermione smiled smugly as she pointed out the similarities between the way Harry and Snape thought.
Harry was struck speechless.
They spent their next free period speculating what Dumbledore would teach Harry in his upcoming meeting the coming Saturday, then she went off to Arithmancy.
She ran into Luna on her way to Arithmancy class and greeted her, but Luna just looked at Hermione and cocked her head.
"You're overdoing it, I think," she said in that dreamy voice of hers, before she skipped off, dirty-blonde hair swaying behind her. Hermione looked after Luna, feeling confused and wrong-footed the way she always did after an encounter with the girl, but was happy to see another friend who had gone to the Department of Mysteries with them back at school safe and well.
NEWT-level Arithmancy also proved much harder than OWL-level Arithmancy, but Hermione enjoyed the difficulty, finding a sense of satisfaction every time she found the answer to a problem, and joy in using logic to solve problems for once. The blind belief in "because it's magic" reasoning was still hard for her to accept about the wizarding world, and she relished the ability to use logic in magic, even if it was in a limited way.
Come time for Potions, Hermione was vibrating with eagerness to see what Slughorn would be like, as her first Potions instructor who was not Snape. The first sign something was different were the cauldrons of completed potions on display. Harry, Ron, Ernie, and Hermione sat at a table closest to a gold-coloured cauldron which had Amortentia of all things in it. She inhaled deeply—it smelled like the freshly mown grass of the Burrow, new parchment that smelled like the perfumed letter paper that Ron had gifted her last Christmas, and a faintly familiar scent she couldn't quite decipher.
There was something about the potions Slughorn had chosen that pricked at her mind—something about Amortentia, Felix Felicis, and Draught of Living Death. This feeling increased when she looked at the ingredients list for Draught of Living Death. While Slughorn's introduction was theatrical and inspired interest in the potions themselves, it lacked the elegance of Snape's beginning of the year speeches.
She flushed with pride when Harry had told Slughorn she was "best in the year" when she earned twenty points for Gryffindor, which caused Draco Malfoy to grimace as if he had been sucking a lemon.
The genial atmosphere of Slughorn's Potions class was a pleasant change of pace, and she was even getting used to working out of a textbook instead of Snape's chalkboard instructions when she noticed Harry wasn't following the textbook directions. The class stopped being enjoyable when her potion didn't turn out as well as it usually did, and it was an unpleasant surprise at the end when Harry won the Felix Felicis. How could that have happened? She was the best in the year.
It frustrated her when she found out Harry had cheated by using different instructions from a book and thought little of passing someone else's work as his own. He needed the Felix Felicis more than she could, but she hoped he would eventually come to his senses and turn the book in. It wasn't fair to the rest of the class Harry had different—better, she grudgingly admitted—instructions to the rest of them. She'd huffed when Ron made the point that Harry had taken a risk in using the different instructions and therefore earned it—that completely missed the point!
Hermione had nearly forgotten about her prickling feeling at the beginning of Potions class when she returned to her dorm that night. On a hunch, she dug through the old notes she kept on hand to lend to younger students and found the notes from her first ever class of potions. Crookshanks let out a disgruntled mrrow as she gently shoved him out of the way to make space on her bed for the many sheaves of yellowing parchment.
"Ah-ha!" she muttered, as she unrolled the first scroll. She had copied down Snape's words near-verbatim in her early years. Her faded first-year handwriting hit her with a pang of nostalgia.
"As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses...I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
Questions:
1. What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?
2. Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?
3. What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?
Answers:
1. Draught of Living Death
2. Stomach of a goat, cures most poisons
3. They are the same plant
Hermione wondered if Snape had been working off Slughorn's curriculum, or if it was a coincidence their sixth-year introductory class lined up with Snape's speech. "Bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses" could refer to Amortentia, "bottle fame, brew glory" could refer to Felix Felicis, and "stopper death" could refer to the Draught of Living Death, which aside from putting a sleeper into a deep sleep could put a dying body into stasis for a time.
It was more interesting looking at the plants listed; ever since she had copied down Floriography and Potions Making she had been analysing potions ingredients to see if she could see the connection between the meanings of the plants and the subsequent potions.
Hermione frowned thoughtfully. Snape only mentioned asphodel and wormwood in his question about Draught of Living Death—but she knew there were more crucial ingredients involved. It was extremely unlike him to omit ingredients when referring to a potion.
Asphodel meant "my regrets follow you to the grave", and wormwood stood for "absence" or "bitter sorrow". The actual Draught of Living Death also contained Sopophorous beans, which meant "sleep deeply". Together the plants could be read to mean "sleep deeply in absence of regrets that follow you to the grave", which made sense for the Draught of Living Death, but with just asphodel and wormwood…it meant "my bitter regrets follow you to the grave". Though wolfsbane and monkshood were the same plant, they had separate meanings—wolfsbane for "misanthropy" and monkshood for "chivalrous".
Hermione looked down at her notes, reminded of her Floriography text. Was Snape sending a message? Was he telling them he hated people but was chivalrous, and bitterly regretted someone's death? Hermione thought it was a bit far-fetched—why would Snape communicate in code to a class of first-year potions students who would certainly not understand it? But the messages made a strange sort of sense that convinced her he was speaking in code, whatever his reasons were. She briefly contemplated asking him if he meant to do so before she decided she enjoyed the semi-civil way he spoke to her in private too much to risk his ire at asking such a personal question.
In her entire time in his classes, she had never heard him share personal information. Flitwick enjoyed talking about his nieces and nephews, Sprout liked to talk about her adventures in eating various edible but difficult to grow plants, and McGonagall even shared stories of her Transfiguration mishaps as a young lass, but Snape might as well have reached the planet fully formed as a Potions Master.
She could also see it clearly in her mind, Snape looking at her incredulously. "Miss Granger, why the ever-loving-hell do you remember my exact words from your first class of Potions six years ago?"
Of course, the real Snape would say something much more elegant and cutting to express this sentiment; even in her imagination, she knew she didn't have the man's way with words.
AN: Hi everyone! I've strained my hands, wrists, and arms recently, so I can only upload half of what chapter 4 was, as this was what I had edited so far; my apologies for the shorter chapter. I may also miss my update next Saturday.
Thank you all so much for the feedback I've received so far; it's been amazing seeing what everyone thinks! I'm sad I couldn't respond to the reviews this past week, but I am resting and doing physio so I hope I will be able to write and interact with everyone soon. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks!