The trip to Diagon Alley had caused them to miss out on their usual morning lessons so they were unsurprised when their Father led them straight into the school room on return to the house, suggesting that they practice using wandless magic to summon their wands towards them but he let them off long before the requisite two hours acknowledging that the trip in itself had been educational. He did however confiscate the twin's new wands before they went reasoning that the urge to try them out would be far too great for them to resist otherwise.
It was a lovely evening again; they had dinner outside on the patio and remained out there playing in the gardens until bedtime but the next day they certainly made up for the lessons they had missed, with Snape insisting upon going through the syllabus for each and every single subject with them. It had been somewhat interesting at first, Harry had never really spent much time thinking about the things he didn't know yet, he usually just took lessons as they came but it was nice to know what he had to look forward to as he struggled through some of the more boring topics. It didn't take long for that interest to start to wane again though with his father droning on and on about things that wouldn't even apply to them until they were chosing subjects for their NEWTS and he started thinking about what it would be like to be a professional quidditch player instead: getting paid good money to soar through the air, never having to even think of doing homework again. He was just imagining himself catching the snitch that would win England the world cup when a sudden bang brought him back to the room. He looked up sheepishly expecting to find his father's strict gaze bearing down on him but instead found the noise had been made by an owl collapsing onto the floor in a flurry of feathers in front of his desk.
It was Errol. Ron must be back from Egypt he thought grinning as he leapt out of his seat to check on the owl.
It was still alive but barely. Severus frowned and summoned Cobb to come see to it properly, then realising that the lesson had already gone on for nearly forty-five minutes longer than he had intended, dismissed them.
To his credit Harry followed the elf, assuring himself of the bird's wellbeing before excitedly tearing open the letter to see what news Ron had for him.
Egypt was apparently brilliant. They had toured all the old tombs and seen all sorts of curious treasures. There was even a pocket sneakoscope folded up inside the parchment, a souvenir for Harry from the trip. It looked like a miniature glass spinning top but would apparently light up around anyone untrustworthy, Ron wasn't sure if it actually worked or not, his brother Bill, the one they had gone to visit, reckoned they were only good for parting tourists of their money but Ron thought it might, and had included anecdotal evidence of it in action. There was also a scarab necklace for Lily and a tiny alabaster sphinx for Evan as Birthday Presents from the whole family. It was probably the inclusion of the three presents that had Errol so exhausted Harry thought guiltily as handed the gifts over to the twins.
The next morning the Weasley's were on the front page of the Daily Prophet. In his eagerness to read the article Harry forgot himself and whipped the paper out of his father's hands before realising what it was he had just done. He had expected his father to explode and quickly apologised, acknowledging that he had acted rather rudely and offered the paper back, but the potions master seemed uncharacteristically unperturbed and even allowed Harry to keep it.
Harry grinned and quickly read through Arthurs Interview as the Weasley's waved excitedly at him from the page. It all sounded so amazing, he was really glad to learn they had had such a great time, especially poor Ginny who still seemed quite troubled by what had happened last year but about a week later the same newspaper brought a chilling silence to the house; a dangerous criminal had escaped from Azkaban.
Harry had suspected something was up the evening before when Fawkes appeared at the dinner table bearing a letter from Dumbledore that had turned his father's face as white as Nearly Headless Nick's. Severus brushed it off, making out that he was just annoyed with the headmaster's impatience for him to finish perfecting the potion he had ordered, but he hovered over them for the rest of the evening, making it clear that something more was amiss.
Originally Harry had been afraid it might be something about him but as he studied the way his father clenched his teeth as his eyes flickered across the page he realised it was this. A shiver went down his spine – Azkaban was supposedly an impenetrable fortress in the middle of the sea. He didn't know how anyone could have escaped, wizard or not, and especially not one as stark raving mad as the feral looking man who had made the headlines. Sirius Black - the name rang a bell, but he couldn't place it. Eventually Harry broke the deafening silence with the question. "Why was Black sent to Azkaban?"
Severus looked up frowning, he really didn't want to discuss this with the children but seeing no way of escaping it, explained that Black had been a follower of the Dark Lord who had been imprisoned shortly after his disappearance for blowing up an entire street in broad daylight; murdering thirteen people, twelve of them defenceless muggles. He didn't mention anything about his involvement in the deaths of Lily and James nor his connection to Harry but he knew it was only a matter of time before Harry would find out that the lunatic was after him and knowing his son he would probably go off looking for him himself. Luckily for him though an offer to forgo their usual morning lessons in favour of helping him in his lab soon made them forget all about Sirius Black.
"Is this the Potion Uncle Albie is looking for?" Lily asked as they were setting up.
He nodded. Dumbledore's letter yesterday hadn't actually mentioned the potion, he would have no need for it until the end of September but as a spy he had learned the closer you kept to the truth the less likely you were to be caught out.
"What's it do?" quizzed Harry.
"It relieves the symptoms of Lycanthropy."
"What is Lycanthropy?"
"Look it up." said Snape. Harry groaned, he should have known by now that that would have been his father's answer, he thought they were more likely to remember things by reading them for themselves but just once he would have loved to get a simple answer.
He looked around the room, there was a large stack of books over in the corner by the window but assuming his father had already known what Lycanthropy was he mightn't have had to research it and Harry might need to go to the library to find out. "That could take all day," the boy whined, wishing he hadn't asked, "I wanted to help with the actual potion."
Severus turned to look at him, eyebrows raised, "It will take less than ten minutes, and you won't be much help with the potion unless you understand what it is supposed to do, what would you do if this was something for your homework?"
"Ask Hermione of course!" Harry replied with a grin.
His father frowned, "You are going into third year Harry, this is something you should be able to do yourself. Then turning to his other son asked if he could tell Harry how to find information on Lycanthropy without wasting time physically searching through the books."
Evan hesitated for a moment, he didn't want to show Harry up but neither did he want to feign stupidity in front of this father. "If you turn to the back of the book there is probably an index, if you look up the word there it will tell you what pages contain information relating to it.
"I knew that." Harry snapped in frustration. "…but without knowing anything about it I don't know what books to look in."
"Well we know that it has symptoms that someone has developed a potion to relieve so we can probably deduce that it is some kind of incurable magical ailment and start there." Evan inferred. "And if you hadn't already made such a big fuss about it we could have just asked Lily, who clearly already knows" the boy added in a voice only his brother could hear, pointing out the smug grin on their sisters face as their father commended his reasoning.
Harry had to admit Snape had had a point in making him look it up himself though. Before he had always thought Hermione's ability to always be able to find the right book for everything was a talent unique to her. Perhaps something to do with her insatiable appetite for reading and the fact that she had already devoured about half the books Madame Pince had to offer, but either way something he would never be able to replicate no matter how hard he tried. It had never dawned on him that if he had only taken a minute to think about it what it was he was looking for he would have been able to find his own books - something both him and Ron had struggled desperately with when Hermione had been petrified last year.
There was a large well leafed tome on magical ailments in his father lab and it took the boys less than a moment to find what they were looking for: Lycanthropy was the medical term for a werewolf.
"Wow I never knew werewolves were real." Harry exclaimed loudly as he read through the article.
"Very real and very dangerous!" Severus told him solemnly, still setting up his potion supplies, before realising that no matter how inept Lockhart had been as a teacher, he had penned an entire book about werewolves, and while Severus had thought it to be absolute drivel it had been on his sons reading list last year.
"Didn't you even open Weekends with werewolves?" he asked frowning.
"Wandering with Werewolves…" Harry corrected "And I did, I read the whole thing, but you couldn't really believe anything you read in a Lockhart book."
"Smart boy" Severus replied with raised brow and a chuckle. "I would agree that Lockharts personal involvement with the subjects of his books is almost certainly fictionalised, his depictions of them however are not. He would never have gotten them published if they weren't, no matter how luscious his hair."
Harry laughed and finished reading the page about Lycanthropy before eagerly studying the brewing instructions It looked extremely complex and yet according to his father yielded a rather unsophisticated and more worryingly, unstable, potion. It wasn't something he would have willingly supplied to anyone, least of the wolf Dumbledore wanted it for but since his hand had been forced, he would have to find consolation in the fact this this offered him an opportunity to try and refine the formulation. After a week's careful research he had a few ideas he wanted to try out particularly whether the addition of a buffer could improve the general safety and stability of the potion without rendering it ineffective but he was running out of time.
This was where he thought the children's assistance might come in handy. He didn't really want them handling the aconite but if Harry could be trusted to prepare the buffers while the twins helped him measure out, chop and grind the other ingredients it would really speed things along.
The children got really into it and he regretted not including them in his research sooner. Sure they had brewed with him in the past but not like this, not when they could feel like they were actually contributing to something, it made such a difference to their enthusiasm and in fact the four of them had gotten so caught up in their experiments that they had completely lost track of time and would have even missed lunch if Loxie hadn't come looking for them.
After wolfing down the food they returned to the lab for another hour but there wasn't much else to do only wait and see so after setting their work carefully aside he took them outside for a ride.
The new school term started in less than a week and he had expected the children to want a little time to relax before going, but to his surprise they insisted on spending the following morning in the lab with him as well, despite having already completed the required hours for the week. They really were a fantastic help too and together they actually managed to get everything finished and tidied up before Morgana arrived with Brendan and Aurelia for dinner.
Things still weren't going particularly well with them. Brendan had been polite and obedient since their little talk at the start of the month but it was very clear that he would prefer to have nothing to do with his father, he was still only coming to see him under duress and while little Aurelia didn't seem to object to the visits she didn't seem to particularly enjoy them either. She was away in a world of her own most of the time and was such a shy and timid young thing that he wasn't really sure what to make of her.
