Author's Note: Thank you to everyone for your patience. I've had a really rough few weeks and haven't had time to write. Hope you enjoy this chapter!
Four shelves were stocked with potions ingredients, and the three cauldrons all had separate spaces on the table. It had only taken three afternoons of cleaning with Sirius and the Weasley children to get the basement useable again. Treasa straightened the bags of scarab beetles and peppermint sprigs in approval. It was by far the best potions laboratory she had seen since – since she had lived with Severus.
She resolutely took down a jar of diced dragon hearts, keeping her focus on the job to hand. She needed Blood-Replenishers and Strengthening Solutions as quickly as possible. She'd managed to set up the Strengthening Solutions on the first afternoon and the matured concoctions were ready to be completed –assuming, of course, that something hadn't fallen into them during the massive cleaning project.
She stirred the two cauldrons, watching the liquid with a critical eye. Yes, it looked ready. The expedition to retrieve Harry Potter was to take place tonight, and there was no telling how much work she would have when they returned. Alastor Moody had insisted on a round dozen to make the journey, darkly hinting that that should be enough to carry the journey most of the way.
The thought was sobering. It was one thing to join the Order and agree to finally fight back against Lord Voldemort – quite another to deal with the aftermath of such fighting. It had been years since she'd last been exposed to Voldemort's sadistic work, and she'd never been given the responsibility of attempting to undo it.
Treasa dumped the jar into the empty third cauldron, starting the flames on low. The hearts had to simmer alone in the pot for an hour before the next ingredient could be added. In the meantime, she had pickled murtlap tentacles to strain and pomegranates to juice. She conjured a vial to hold the murtlap liquid and set the tentacles to squeezing themselves. The pomegranates required more attention.
She had purchased them on her way from St. Mungo's, and had extracted the pips before re-starting the flames under the Strengthening Solutions. Now she just had to juice them. Treasa put the pips into a bag and carefully began to press on them – one at a time, using the pads of her fingers. After a moment, she opened the bag and stuck a finger in to sample the juice. Strong, with only an edge of bitterness. The pomegranate juice on Diagon Alley was diluted with a sweetener to hide the bitterness caused by too much abrasion to the pips during mass-juicing. Doing it herself would take longer, but the end result was much more potent.
Her fingers stilled over the bag. Severus had taught her that.
She resolutely returned to pressing the pips, keeping her touch light and gentle despite the tension that was locking up her shoulders. Unbidden, the memory sprang to the forefront of her mind. It had been perhaps two months after their wedding…
She had never visited the potions laboratory. Since the wedding, she'd kept mostly to the drawing room and the suite she shared with Severus. The man grew more confusing by the day. He was polite enough in his way, made an effort to speak at meal time, and more often than not slept in the dungeons – to keep an eye on his potions, he said. Treasa was growing tired of the stilted conversations and long hours alone. Neither of them had chosen this. The least they could do was try to make it bearable.
The dungeon was an assault on the senses. It was chilly, and at least one of the cauldrons set up was emitting a foul-smelling smoke. She could almost taste the ginger root in the air. The room was arranged with three long tables crosswise in the middle, and dozens of cabinets around the walls. Each table had four cauldrons on it, and from the looks of things, there was something in each cauldron. Severus was hunched over the far end of the middle table, attention completely on whatever he was preparing for the cauldron.
"Severus?"
He didn't answer, but then, she hadn't spoken loudly, and the bubbling, hissing and crackling might have obscured her voice. Treasa set her jaw and headed across the room. She'd come this far, and she wasn't leaving until they had talked or he had thrown her out.
He jumped when her shadow fell across the table. The eyes that met hers were inscrutable, but the grip he had on the knife in his hand told her he was less than pleased with the intrusion.
"Do you need something?"
His voice had trailed off at the end, as if he was debating what to call her. The lack of a title stung that much more. She hesitated, and he returned his attention to the ginger roots in front of him. Treasa lifted her chin and pressed onward.
"Yes, I do."
Severus looked up again, his hair hanging in limp strands across his face. Treasa, resisting the urge to tell him to bathe more often, was struck by the air of defiance cloaking him. It was practically an emotional Impedimenta, shoving her back from the table.
"Yes?" He questioned as her silence lingered.
"I think we need to talk, Severus," she began bravely, keeping her chin high as his eyes narrowed.
His head jerked down to the roots on his cutting board. "I'm busy. Can it wait until dinner?"
"And when dinner comes, what will we talk of? The weather? The vintage of the wine?" She was gaining confidence. "Or perhaps a lengthy discourse on how I spent my day – wandering around the house, reading one of the exactly 12 books in your library that are not potion-making treatises or histories of the Dark Arts, or perhaps 'getting settled in' by reorganizing my robes for the twentieth time."
Severus muttered something into his cutting board.
"What was that?" she demanded.
He lifted his head, and this time there was no denying the spark in his eye. "I said, 'I apologize for the lack of reading material,' but I had little say in the contents of the library."
"Heirloom?"
Severus shook his head. "This house and most of its furnishings was a wedding present from the Malfoys and Lestranges. My own home is a little flat in a Muggle neighborhood and Lucius informed me that it was no place to start a marriage."
His teeth ground together suddenly, and Treasa couldn't help but wonder if it was due to Lucius' posturing or the mention of the word "marriage."
"The house did seem a bit… ostentatious for your taste," she ventured, more gently this time.
He snorted. "The potions laboratory is finer than any I've ever worked in. The rest is of little importance."
He sliced the ginger root longwise with particular vengeance, turning it to complete the quartering process. To her surprise, he then proceeded to quarter each piece before dropping them into the cauldron.
"Meticulous," she muttered, somewhat impressed despite herself.
"The shape of the ginger root makes it difficult to get uniform pieces by quartering alone," Severus said with the impatient tone of a busy adult talking to an inquisitive child. "By cutting them this way, the pieces are more likely to dissolve at the same rate, which creates a much smoother consistency."
He looked up as if daring her to contradict him. "Contrary to the beliefs of most, there are many ways in which published potion recipes can be refined."
"I took my Potions NEWTS with you, I remember how often you 'refined' your potions." Treasa paced over to the next cauldron, leaning over to examine the turquoise liquid. "Professor Slughorn thought you were a genius."
"Horace Slughorn is a dithering fool," Severus rejoined, moving to the same cauldron on his side of the table. He took the ladle and made a slow circuit of the edge, forcing Treasa to lean back. "He knows a good potion when he sees one, but it takes both hands and a ladle to be sure."
"Professor Slughorn is one of the most accomplished Potions Masters in the country."
"Only because I haven't taken the certification exams yet."
Treasa let out an indignant snort. The gall of the man! "Well, it is a comfort to know that your ego is intact, whatever else may be missing from your personality."
Severus merely smirked and turned his back on her to check a cauldron behind him. Treasa rounded the edge of the table, intent on continuing the debate.
"Tell me, Severus, is it terribly trying for you to be so brilliant and yet so… unknown?" she asked, acid heavy in her tone. "Does the lack of daily homage offend you?"
"I have all the recognition I require," Severus said, raising the flames on the cauldron until the potion within began to bubble. "I've been chosen by the Dark Lord himself to be Potions Master for his Death Eaters."
"Oh, indeed," Treasa said bitterly. "If one has the approval of Lord Voldemort, can there be a need for anything else?"
Severus turned to face her, his face completely shuttered. "Indeed."
She flinched slightly with the weight of the word. Apparently Severus had decided it was true for him – if Lord Voldemort was to be believed that the man had chosen devotion to him over his love for a woman. The thought deflated her rising anger.
"Severus," she tried again, reaching toward his elbow. He surreptitiously moved out of reach, so her fingers met only air. "I didn't come down here to pick a fight. Quite the contrary, actually."
Severus made a noise in the back of his throat that was as ambiguous as the expression on his face.
"I know that marrying me was no more your idea of bliss than marrying you was for me. I've no doubt you see me as a nuisance at best – but we're going to be living here together for a very long time, and there's no reason why we shouldn't make the best of it, you know."
"Have you any reason to complain of your treatment?" Severus asked tightly, stepping around her to go to the next table. He stopped at the corner and turned to look at her. "Have I ever harmed or threatened you in any way?"
"No, of course not," Treasa said immediately, shocked at the question.
"Have you wanted for any necessities – food, clothing, shelter?"
"No."
He nodded and turned on his heel. "Then I see no reason why things should change." He stopped at the closest cauldron and sniffed suspiciously at the smoke before adding some powdered asphodel to the brew.
Treasa stood where he had walked away from her, stunned at the completely dismissive way he rejected her offer. So, she was doomed to this polite disdain for years to come. The disappointment was absolute and chilling. She peered into the cauldron in front of her, willing the tears back into the corners of her eyes. The greenish-yellow liquid was clearly a Strengthening Solution in its final stages. She glanced at the ingredients grouped around the cauldron. Something was missing.
She cleared her throat hesitantly. "Severus, I think this is almost ready for the pomegranate juice – and I don't see any laid out. Should I fetch some from the cabinet for you?"
Severus turned around and bent over the cauldron. When he raised his eyes, a touch of the ice seemed to have melted. "Thank you. I would hate to lose three days of work."
She smiled in response, and he immediately reverted to his usual brusque manner.
"The pomegranates on the third shelf of the first cupboard."
Treasa hastened to the cabinet, searching for the tall thin bottles of pomegranate juice she knew so well. Instead, a pile of whole pomegranates took up the majority of the shelf.
"The potion requires juice, not the whole fruit," Treasa protested, turning from the cabinet with a pomegranate in hand. "Or is this another one of your 'refinements'?"
"In a manner of speaking," Severus said distractedly, conjuring a bag with a sealing top. "Bring two, please."
She brought the fruit and watched as he quickly and efficiently opened them and removed the pips. As he put them into the bag, she got up the nerve to speak.
"You do know that they sell pomegranate juice in Diagon Alley, don't you?"
He laid the bag down, spreading the pips out so that none of them were touching before looking up with an irritated scowl.
Treasa raised her hands in defeat. "It would save you so much time to buy it already juiced."
"And it would produce inferior potions," Severus rejoined, pressing on the pips with a gentleness that seemed oddly incongruous with the man's typical behavior.
Treasa cocked her head and waited. Sure enough, after several moments of silence, Severus looked up to explain, though his fingers were still carefully mashing the seeds.
"The suppliers on Diagon Alley mass-juice their pomegranates in a giant press that bruises the fruit as it juices. The result is a bottle of incredibly bitter juice. To counteract that, most of the shopkeepers add a sweetener to the juice, further diluting its potency."
He held out the bag, now half-full with juice. "Taste it. You'll be able to tell the difference with just a drop."
Intrigued, she dipped her finger in. The juice was full-bodied and sweet, with only an edge of bitterness. Treasa raised her eyebrows and met Severus' triumphant gaze.
"I'm convinced."
Severus snorted and took the bag to the cauldron to pour it in. "As it should be."
He looked up again, and for a moment, something other than cynicism and bitterness softened the hard edges of his eyes. Treasa held the gaze, trying to read it. There was something indescribably lonely about his expression, a feeling she understood all too well.
"Severus," she began, stepping closer.
He backed away as if she had him at wandpoint, face suddenly completely closed again. He turned and grabbed a ladle, stirring the nearest cauldron with a stiff arm. "If you'd like to purchase some new books, you're welcome to use the Floo to get anywhere. I have protection charms on the network so we will have no unexpected callers, but I can set up a password for you, if you like."
She set her jaw and headed for the stairs. "Don't trouble yourself."
The dragon hearts were bubbling nicely and the pomegranate juice had long since been dispersed to its cauldrons, along with the murtlap essence. Treasa took down the bottle of fluxweed nectar and began measuring the drams she would need for her Blood-Replenisher. She had more important things to do than relive the past.