Chapter 8: Magical Inabilities

The potion's classroom seemed rather large when it wasn't so full of students. It still held an odd stench of multiple potions. Sage pushed some of the tables out of the way and cleared a space for some practicals his uncle wanted to do with him. He wasn't quite sure what they were, but he was sure it was not going to be a pleasant experience.

It became quite clear to Sage that if he was going to assert himself like his uncle had asked, he would have to be slightly more stealthy than he had been. And that if he didn't learn to stop it from flaring in utterly inappropriate situations, that he would find himself unable to use his mouth for a few days. And he already knew what would happen if he did it to the headmaster again.

It was not simply around Professor Snape that he had to be careful about his attitude and demeanor. But then again, he had not been thinking when he had disrespected the headmaster. He knew that his uncle would never allow that. He was surprised to have gotten off with (fucking horrid) lines.

With Moody, he had a reason to act the way he did. In his mind at the moment, he had a reason to act that way to Dumbledore as well. He found it didn't much matter anyway. Especially when nobody wanted to trust you whether you were behaving well or badly.

When you had nothing of your own and no ambition other than to sit on your bed either reading or listening to angry music, it did not matter if you had weeks worth of menial detention to serve too. Detention was only an hour or two in a day, an hour or two of discomfort in a day that was more or less filled with discomfort anyway.

Sage finished moving things around and leaned against the nearest table, putting his hands in the pockets of his navy blue cargo pants. So, it really didn't matter what he did, so long as he didn't anger his uncle to the point he had when Amanda Macnair's father had visited his uncle over the summer. Every day was, for the most part, just another day of waiting, of watching the seconds tick by in his dreadful life of servitude to everyone but himself.

The door slammed against the wall as it opened and Professor Snape strode in, wand in hand. Sage took his hands out of his pockets, stood up quickly. Severus turned and faced him, his black robes billowing as he moved. He lifted up his wand from his side and then crossed his arms in front of him. Sage cringed inside, but let nothing show on his face. He stared at his uncle as the man glowered at him.

"Put your hands in your pockets," he commanded.

Sage shoved his hands in his pockets quickly, not taking his eyes off his uncle or his uncle's ready wand. Not that Severus really needed it all that much anyway.

"Now then, you will take my wand away from me."

Sage's mouth fell open before he exclaimed, "What?"

Severus stalked forward and stopped half a foot in front of Sage, "If I remember correctly, you just did this yesterday, to a decorated former Auror." His voice was low and quiet, but full of challenge.

"Yes sir, but that was, well…I don't know how I did it, sir. I just did." He almost said 'like poooof!' but he stopped himself just short, foreseeing the slap that would result from that idiotic colloquial statement!

Severus glared at him before he turned around and walked a few feet away, back to his original spot in front of his desk.

"Then I suggest figure it out, NOW, and stop sniveling about it."

"Yes sir," he said dejectedly, also wanting to say he was not sniveling but stopping himself from that as well.

It would be hard enough to do to begin with, but the fact that Severus knew he was going to be trying to do it would make it harder.

Professor Snape held his wand out in front of him in ready position as if he were about to salute for a wizard's duel. Sage's top lip curled slightly as he tried to focus on it. He wasn't even sure how to begin to get it away.

If I can't control even this, how am I supposed to deal with a moving person, let alone moving persons plural…Sage thought, his hands starting to get clammy in his pockets.

Minutes of silence passed as he tried in vain to make anything happen to his uncle's wand. He could feel the older man's glare on his face even though he was not about to look at his eyes.

Finally, Severus swished his wand down and stalked forward, "Clearly disappointing. You can't even make it move, much less come to you."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Sorry? You aren't concentrating, you aren't focusing. You're just staring at it hoping something will happen. That won't work even for a Magi."

"I am focusing, sir."

Severus's other hand grabbed him by the arm and squeezed as he restrained himself from doing what he really wanted to do. He had surely gotten this mouthiness from a year with a bunch of ill-mannered, bratty, complaining Gryffindors!

"If you were focusing, you would have my wand already. It's been a half and hour. You are wasting our time! You could have done this last year."

Sage looked down. "I'm sorry sir, I just can't..."

Severus released his arm and pushed him away roughly, "You CAN do it, but you are not allowing yourself to. You just did do it YESTERDAY!"

"But I don't know HOW I did do it yesterday."

Severus glided forward and slapped him irately, not able to stop himself when the boy raised his voice to him. "No matter how many times I warn you about your cheek, you just don't listen, that, or you don't care. Now get out of my sight before I decide to do something worse. You can start scrubbing the floors, because apparently, that's all you are good for! Certainly not using your magic!"

The potion's master pushed him away and then stalked passed him, hitting him with his shoulder on the way. Sage heard the door to his uncle's office slam shut.

No matter what he did, he just couldn't seem to please the man. The more he did what his uncle wanted, the more his uncle seemed to demand, and the less he seemed able to do. One part of him wished it could go back to the way it had been earlier in the year before. Another part of him just didn't care what happened to him in between, because the end result would still be the same.

The seriousness of the new situation seemed to have Professor Snape all keyed-up beyond where he usually was. Sage understood that, and he was angry with himself in a way too. He wanted to be able to do everything his uncle asked, it just never seemed to work out the way he wanted.

He felt like tossing the bucket and brush at the wall as he walked out into the hallway, it was well passed 11pm and nobody would be out to see him scrubbing the floors. He scowled and let the bucket fall to the floor. Brush in hand, he started at one corner and before he knew it he had covered a good portion of the hallway for the time he had spent out there.

For as cold as the dungeons were, he was sweating and had a splitting headache. The sleeves of his hunter green shirt were soaking wet and clinging to his forearms. He felt light headed because of the cleaning fumes coming from the bucket. He pushed back off his hands and sat down on the heels of his shoes, his knees sore and digging into the stone. With his free hand, he brushed his sticky hair out of his face and exhaled deeply. The sheer expanse of the dungeons had never hit him before, but it was sure hitting him now. The floor was massive and he had only hit the tip of the iceberg with cleaning it. With all the silence around him, he felt as if he sat in the middle of the universe surrounded only by blackness.

The fumes from the cleaning solution were making his head spin slightly. It made his stomach juices whirl around a little bit, causing him to take a deep exaggerated breath to calm it.

Suddenly prickles went up his arms and his legs, and he realized that it was too late to call for help - not that he was sure he wanted any from his uncle to begin with. He had completely missed all the signs. The pressure on his temples escalated as the pain completely consumed his body as he flopped lifelessly over onto the ground. His head hit the bucket, tipped it over, and then crashed against the stone floor. He didn't feel that discomfort though, through the agony of the vision, nor did he feel the water spill all over the side of his body.

Severus sat in his office furiously grading third year potions exams. He was giving a disproportional amount of failing grades on this exam, but he really didn't care. His mind was not on third years or on potions, it was on his nephew. Since the end of the prior year, the boy's skill had not been getting better. In fact, it seemed getting markedly worse and replaced by some foreign teenage angst. Sage had no motivation, no focus, and no desire.

What frustrated him even worse was that Sage could do everything that Severus had asked him to do, but he was hiding behind the falsehood that he could not do what he was being asked. Merlin, he had just got Moody's wand the day before without any seeming effort, and he could not even get Severus's wand to twitch that night.

He slammed his quill and then slammed his fist down on his desk. What could he do to help Sage focus, nothing. It made him so angry that he had very little control over Sage's progress. The boy just didn't seem to want to learn, to want to progress.

Not that Sage didn't work, he did that plenty. The boy was very industrious.

It wasn't as if he didn't have the knowledge or intelligence. Sage could talk about magic seamlessly, far more advanced than even most 7th years, but he just could not use it properly.

Somehow the boy had forged a barrier to any practical application of magic. What had really triggered Severus's temper was the boy did not seem to notice or care. He just went about and did everything asked of him, for the most part, and then used the convenient excuse that he was not capable when it came to anything practical. Sage was avoiding using his powers and wasn't even conscious of it. Somehow, Sage unconsciously knew that the one thing Severus could not force him to do was use his powers. Severus knew that he would simply have to find a way around that.

After brooding for what could have been hours, Severus looked at his pocket watch. It was past one in the morning. Slowly, he put the watch back in his pocket, and put his hands down flat on his desk. He would have thought that Sage would have come back by now, asking if he could be dismissed. Severus's lip curled, perhaps the boy had just left instead of asking if he could go. It was a slight possibility that his nephew was still out in the hallway scrubbing away. The faster he did the floor, the faster he could get passed the two weeks of detention he had earned on top of that.

Severus did not want to go outside of his office and look. He wished he didn't care what the hell Sage was doing. Unfortunately, he did care, as Dumbledore seemed to enjoy pointing out to him. Severus rolled his eyes as he did his imitation of the words he thought went through the headmaster's eyes 'See, Severus, you aren't the heartless prat everyone thinks you are. I was right, Severus, you do have emotions. You shouldn't hide them, Severus. You care about him like you cared about Jace.'

He growled out loud and stood up. His chair scrapped against the floor as he did so. Before stalking out the door, he smoothed out his black robes.

The classroom was empty, he kept walking. He did not hear any scrubbing, and he already felt anger brewing up inside him at the possibility that his nephew had just up and left without permission. The smell of cleaning solution filled the air, and he knew, at least, that Sage had done some of what he had been told to do. He turned the corner and stopped short. Lying in a puddle of cleaning solution, thoroughly passed out cold, was Sage.

He felt annoyance rise up inside of him, but it quickly faded. Severus couldn't actually blame Sage for having visions. He knelt down next to Sage's still form and rolled his nephew over onto his back. A gash by his hairline was still bleeding. His clothes were soaked with the contents of the bucket. His pale face was spotted all over with patches of red. He pulled out his wand and whispered a quick drying spell.

Once he had Sage laid out on the bed, he began to put a healing salve on the gash on Sage's forehead where the skin met Sage's hairline. It was all too usual of a routine.

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