Chapter Two: Potions Apprentice

Aziz was obviously very excited with Severus's choice. "I love potions!" he exclaimed gleefully. The genie then quizzed his master on his potions knowledge, listening carefully and taking notes in a small, translucent notebook that he pulled out of a pocket of his baggy trousers.

"I think it's best to start with basics," Aziz said carefully. "It's not exciting, but you can't really get to the good stuff unless you have a strong foundation. It's helpful that your parents have a potions lab at home—otherwise you'd have to wait until you got back to Hogwarts, and that would be frustrating."

"But I can't just suddenly ask to start helping Mom! They'd think it was weird!"

Aziz smiled wanly. "Look, I know how people think, and I got a good feel for your parents while we were still at your house. What time do you eat dinner?"

"Seven on the dot every day."

"Don't go home until ten."

"Yeah, I've tried that. Do you know what Pops—"

"Trust me. If you learn to do that early on, it will make this whole process easier."

Severus grimaced. "I'll try it this once. You'll see."

"No, you'll see," said Aziz sadly.

~~SS~~

Severus finally slouched through the door of his family home at 10:13 pm and, as he'd predicted, was immediately hit with a blast of hostility. His father yelled; his mother sat in the corner quietly, skewering him with a vicious gaze.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, repeating the words that the invisible Aziz fed him. "My watch stopped, and it stays light so long at this time of year that I didn't notice. What can I do to make it up to you?"

"I'll show you!" shouted his father, but before he could land a blow, his mother got out of her chair.

"Tobias, wait. I have an idea. I could work faster if Severus did the ingredient prep for me tomorrow. Please."

Tobias Snape sighed and lowered his hand. "You're right, lass. It'll hurt him more to lose his free time. I'm sorry, Severus. It's been a bad day."

At least it was a bad day where he didn't drink, thought Severus appreciatively. "I'll do it, Pops. I know you're too tired to help properly when you get home from the mill."

Tobias Snape ran his hand through his scruffy brown hair. "It's been so hard. You know how important this project is to me."

"I know, Pops. I know. I'm old enough to help now. Please let me help."

"It would help if you read my genetics texts too."

Severus grimaced. "You'll help me if I don't understand something?"

Tobias grinned for the first time that Severus could remember. "I'd love to."

~~SS~~

The basement of the Snape home had been a converted potions lab for as long as Severus could remember. The Muggle neighbors thought of his mother as a "housewife," but she was really a potion brewer. Twice a week she shipped batches of Pepper-Up and Contraceptus potions to the apothecary at Godric's Hollow. That provided just enough money to cover the cost of her real job—as a potions researcher.

It was what had brought his parents together. Well, that and Tobias Snape's curiosity. Eileen had told Severus the story many a time.

I was home right after I graduated from Hogwarts, trying to figure out what to do. And one day my father said, "There's that Muggle again. Why is he always hanging around our property?"

Our estate had Muggle-repelling charms, you know. Muggles shouldn't have been able to get close. And he couldn't get in, but he knew right where the border was, and my father said he'd come back every couple of days for weeks.

Well, one day when my father was out I went out to the spot in the woods where the Muggle liked to come and I Disillusioned myself. He came up to the edge, and I saw him frown and run his hands over the edge of the wards.

"I know it's here," he said. "Why can't I get into the Prince estate?"

So I popped out, visible you know, and I asked him what he was doing.

"You're one of them," he said. It wasn't a question. "You're a witch. And a Prince."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't tell him.

"You're not allowed to say, are you?" He asked, and I shook my head.

"My great-great-, well, many greats, grandmother was a Prince," he said. And she had a daughter who was what you call a Squib, and she married a Muggle. We've kept it hushed up, but we still remember that we have magic in our veins."

And then he told me how he was studying genetics and he wanted to find out if there were magic genes that lay inactive in Squibs—to see if he still had magic in him that he couldn't use. It made so much sense, Severus—it would explain Muggleborns and all that—and so we kept talking, and we fell in love, and then we got married. And we've been working on this project ever since…

The project was, of course, a potion that would allow the recessive magic genes in Squibs to be expressed. Tobias was certain that he would be able to use magic if only the correct genes were activated. But nothing had ever worked.

For the first few years of Severus's life—the ones he couldn't remember—his father had been a technician in a genetics lab at the University of Manchester. But Tobias had been caught using an entire expensive vial of DNA polymerase for his own use and had been dismissed as a result. He'd never been able to find a science job again and had been relegated to working in the mill to support his family.

~~SS~~

When Severus entered the basement the following morning, Eileen Snape was busily poring over a book of notes. "I'm starting you on easy stuff, Severus. Cheap stuff, so it doesn't hurt too much if you mess it up. Cut this ginger in quarter-inch slices."

Severus retreated to the corner of the lab and began slicing.

"You need to change your grip on that knife," whispered Aziz. But his instructions didn't make sense to Severus, who shifted his hand around several times without meeting the genie's exacting specifications.

"I wish you could show me," he muttered under his breath.

The genie huffed. "I am, for all intents and purposes, a ghost. The knife would pass right through me."

Severus set the knife upright, blade on the cutting board, and held it in place by pinching the top of the blade. "Just position your hand."

A ghostly hand appeared over the blade and settled into the correct position.

"Ah, I see," he said and re-adjusted his grip once more. The difference was immediately obvious: his movements flowed more easily and the slices of the second ginger root were considerably more even.

Eventually he brought the cutting board over to Eileen. "I'm sorry, Mum, I was a bit out of practice on the first one."

"It's okay, Sevvie, that's why I started you on ginger. These other ones look great. Will you do three ginseng roots in quarter inch cubes now?

Cutting cubes had always been Severus's nemesis in potions up until now, but with Aziz's patient guidance even his first root was hugely improved over what he'd done during the school year; the second and third roots were cut as well as Eileen would have done.

By the end of the day, Severus had cut dozens of ingredients to Eileen's exacting specifications. Three batches of trial potion were complete, waiting for testing on Tobias Snape.

"You did great, Sevvie," Eileen said, reaching up to pat her son on the top of his head. (She was so small, and he was getting so tall, that it was a bit of a stretch.) "Did you like it?"

"I did, Mum. Maybe I could help again tomorrow?"

Eileen shook her head. "Tomorrow's an apothecary day. Maybe the day after?"

"I can help with the Pepper-Up, Mum. Please? If we finish early, maybe you can make Yorkshire pudding for dinner?" Tobias Snape loved Yorkshire pudding, but Eileen rarely had the time to make it.

"All right, Sevvie. Maybe I'll even let you help with the actual brewing tomorrow."

~~SS~~

Severus found his way into the basement every day that summer. At first, his mum watched him like a hawk, micromanaging his every move. After the first few weeks, though, she was comfortable to leave him stirring the Pepper-Up while she put her feet up or got a cup of tea. (She never allowed him to help brew the trial potions.)

The first time Severus was on his own Aziz popped into view.

"Six rounds clockwise, then one round counter-clockwise, then repeat."

"But the recipe says clockwise!"

"Think about it, Severus. Why do we stir?"

"To thoroughly combine the ingredients."

"Stir clockwise, as you're directed, and watch the potion. What do you see?"

"I see. Everything's moving constantly in the same direction. If I reverse the stir, it would cause more turbulence…"

"And combine the ingredients better. You learn fast. Go on now, give it a try."

Severus did, and the potion turned out perfectly—in fact, better than any of his mother's. She smiled at him and didn't say a word.

By the time Severus was ready to go back to Hogwarts on September first, two things were clear to him: he was greatly improved at potions, and his father would always be a Muggle. No potions, no genetic manipulation, would ever get him to be otherwise.

~~SS~~

Horace Slughorn was ecstatic at the change he saw in his young student. "Oh ho! I see it took a while for your grandfather's talents to manifest in you! Now your mother, Eileen, she wasn't bad herself, but she had nothing on Severus Prince!"

Severus (the younger; he'd been named after his grandfather) sneered at his Potions professor's pronouncement and buried his hooked nose in his textbook. He no longer paid much attention to lecture: Aziz was far more informative than Slughorn was. Indeed, the genie's voice was noticeably agitated every time directions for a potion were posted on the board. "What does he think he's doing? No! You should cube the gurdyroots, not slice them! Slicing doesn't provide enough surface area for them to react with the armadillo bile!"

At this point, Severus was grateful for his invisible friend and even for the fact that the genie was Somewhat Useless. If Aziz had been able to wave his hand and turn Severus into someone who could automatically churn out perfect potions, he would never have learned the basic principles that underlay the brewing of a masterpiece.

Needless to say, Severus Snape got an Outstanding on his Potion O.W.L. that year.

The summer following his fifth was spent helping his mother in the basement; Eileen was ecstatic that her son's talent matched (or exceeded) her own and allowed him to contribute ideas to The Project. But no matter what they did, what they tried, Tobias Snape remained firmly a Muggle. For as long as Severus could remember, his father had drunk heavily on occasion, but it seemed to be getting worse.

The following school year, Severus's sixth, was no different. In N.E.W.T.-level potions, he was given more freedom to explore. He scribbled notes (based on Aziz's guidance) into his mother's old copy of Advanced Potion Making and soon found that he wasn't relying on Aziz much at all.

"You're doing well," said the genie one day near the end of sixth year. "I think you can get along on your own in Potions. What shall we work on next?"

"I'm doing well at all my subjects at school," Severus said thoughtfully. "Maybe I should work on something not taught at school? Dark Arts?"

Aziz shuddered. "You're already pretty good at those," he said. "You could improve, but you know what would be even better? To learn something that almost no one can do. Have you heard of occlumency and legilimency?" Severus shook his head, confused.

"Examining people's thoughts and closing off your own to examination. Check the library. There's a great book on the topic, by Clement Geschlossen. It's not even in the Restricted Section." (Severus had long since learned that while he slept, Aziz puttered around the castle learning all sorts of useful information.) "Start with the background theory," the genie continued, "And then we'll practice. This is the one sort of magic I can still do really well."

Severus grinned. This was going to be fun!

Coming up: Chapter Three: The Second Wish. In which things go from bad to worse, forcing Severus to talk to Lily again.