Poppy's Cough Elixir
Now.
'Severus was the end of my brief foray into the world of potions making. ' Poppy said.
Remus shifted in his seat, preparing himself for another story. What would it be this time? A story of illness? Neglect? Torture? Betrayal? Poppy continued.
'Oh yes you need good potions skills to be a medi-wizard. You need to be very good. Advanced NEWT level really. I was good but I was no Potions Master.' Poppy shook her head and smiled.
'But I liked to dream about experimenting, about tinkering with my potions. And one year I had a rotten cough; kept me awake at night and I was sick of taking my cough elixir. Foul tasting stuff. I tried peppermint, oranges, cinnamon, anything I could think of to hide the bitter taste. Eventually I discovered that chocolate could change the taste without altering the potency of the elixir. It was a summer cold, so I stocked up on my new chocolate cough elixir for the autumn term.'
Then.
'Stupid boy.' Huffed Poppy under her breath, as she placed a hand against the boy's forehead. 'You're still burning up!'
'Did you even take the potion?' She asked the boy. Receiving no answer she sighed and pushed a potions vial into his hand. 'Drink.' She commanded. 'I'm watching this one going down your throat.' Poppy watched with mounting exasperation as the boy first raised the vial up to the light and stared at it as he gently swirled the contents. Then brought the vial to nose and sniffed delicately.
'You've added chocolate.' He said in a quiet voice. Immediately Poppy found her irritation softened. She looked down at the boy and said softly and carefully. 'Yes I have.' The boy nodded. 'And you let it stew longer........it smells......stronger.' He said quietly.
Still careful she said 'That's quite a nose you've got there.'
At this he looked up, eyes narrowed at the perceived insult against his most prominent facial feature.
Quickly she amended. 'Isn't cough elixir a third year potion?' Poppy asked. No smile but she did get a little shrug.
'I know a future Potions Master when I see one.' She said knowingly. At this he glanced up eyes wide and she pressed home her advantage.
'Drink. Now.' Poppy commanded and watched as he brought the vial to his lips and swallowed it down in two gulps. Satisfied that she'd seen the contents travel down his throat she reached out and took the empty vial back before shoeing him out of the infirmary and down to the Great Hall for lunch.
Two weeks later he's back in the infirmary because he's made himself physically sick with chocolate. Actually ill. Almost dangerously ill. Poppy had almost panicked. He had won the chocolate fare and square in a common room game. Boxes and boxes of chocolate. And the lad had panicked and in a dusty disused classroom, he had shoved chocolate frog, after chocolate frog after chocolate frog into his mouth. Past the point of satisfaction. Past the point of full. Past sick and past pain. A bizarre self-torture game of force-feeding. He was found slumped in a corridor with chocolate smeared hands and face, and a distended stomach. Chocolate coloured vomit was found in the classroom, in puddles down the corridor, and down his robes. Poppy had, at first thought he had been the victim of a vicious prank or perhaps of an experimental new chocolate invention forced on him by an overzealous NEWT potions student. But neiether proved to be the case. Severus just didn't want anyone else to take what was his. It was all his and no one else was going to have it, take it or steal it. And he was right no one else did. He had it all.
With the amount of chocolate he had eaten Poppy had just assumed that it was alone the over indulgence that had caused the vomiting.
Six months later, one lunchtime there was chocolate cake for pudding in the Great Hall. Severus made it ten minutes through Charms before he vomited over the pillow he was trying to levitate.
Severus was allergic to chocolate.
'Imagine never knowing you were allergic to chocolate until you were 12.' Poppy had said to anyone who would listen.
She had been forcing that chocolate cough elixir onto him for weeks. For weeks trying to get rid of that blasted cough he'd had.
And still he'd kept taking the medicine, day after day. And still he had eaten all that chocolate, still he had taken the chocolate cake in the hall.
'He must have known it was the chocolate making him sick. Severus would have worked it out.' Poppy had said, to anyone who would listen
Poppy had to make him promise. She had actually made him say the words out loud that he promised that he would not eat chocolate again.
He didn't break his promise until he had been Potions Professor for 5 years and Harry Potter had started at Hogwarts and there had been chocolate pudding for dessert at the welcome feast alongside treacle tart and all the other mouth-watering treats that the house elves could muster up. She had watched with sick fascination as he stoically placed spoonful after spoonful of pudding into his mouth. Mechanically swallowing each mouthful down. And Poppy didn't say anything or even give him one of her patented looks that she was known and feared for because by that point Severus scared her. But she still sent down a calming draft and stomach settling remedy to his quarters later that night with a note to say she was running low on stocks of both.
She received the empty vials back the following morning, clean and dry with Severus's scrawny scrawl on the back of her note.
'I will not be requiring any more calming drafts or stomach settling remedies from you.'
She could hear the scorn and sneer in his writing. And she didn't know if it was a rejection of her help or a bizarre promise to not eat chocolate again. 'He was an odd child and an even stranger adult.' Poppy had told anyone who would listen.
One day, a few months later, it was close to Christmas; she remembered the snow on the ledge of the window in the infirmary's office. Severus had been delivering fresh potions or perhaps checking stocks levels or looking at the records of his little snakes and he had stopped in front of her desk. Poppy was updating her inventory lists and had looked up at him. He was stood at an odd angle, body facing her but with his shoulders and face tilted away, so she couldn't see his expression.
'The chocolate pudding didn't make me sick.' He said quietly. 'I made myself sick, before it could. I panicked.'
'Oh.' Was all she had said. And then he was gone.
Severus kept his promises. She presumed.
Even in Harry's time. Poppy could never give her chocolate cough elixir to a student. It was one of the few potions that could be sweetened without jeopardising its effects, but only with chocolate. Cough elixir without the chocolate was foul tasting but she couldn't see chocolate as a treat after little Severus Snape. Poppy's chocolate cough elixir lasted less than 10 months.