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The Showdown in the Salon

It had taken a lot more than two cups of coffee and most of the morning before Severus would speak with them. After breakfast they were put in the second parlor. Severus spent the next several hours prowling around the house behind Elaine as she attempted to keep her routine.

At last he went to the captured infiltrators with a very bad grace, Elaine trailing behind him.

"So now what is all this nonsense about needing my help? I suppose you have a reason, not a good reason by any means, but a reason nonetheless—for tracking me all the way to this god-forsaken village and disturbing my retirement." He began, slamming the door open.

Potter jumped, jade eyes wide; but Lupin just looked annoyed at Severus's tactics.

"Well—" Potter started, but Lupin cut him off.

"It would be best not to talk with the girl here."

Severus smiled narrowly, "Ah yes, my innocent victim." He reached out to her and she crossed to him. "Who I keep bound to me through the Dark Arts?" He sneered.

Both men had the grace to look a little taken aback.

"I gave up destroying innocents a long time ago," he said sarcastically, but there was a new tiredness in his tone. "Just tell me why you are here. Both of you."

With one last suspicious look at Elaine, Potter launched into a complicated story about a sinister potion that had been popping up in his work as something called an Auror. There were fifty casualties already, and many more lay in magical comas in St. Mungos Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.

"So—let me see if I've got this exactly right… you need me to deconstruct a potion and provide an antidote?" At their eager nods he scowled blackly. "Something that any Potions Master could do?"

"Not just any Potions Master," Potter protested. "We need someone we can trust!"

Severus stood and stomped over the window, "Now that's amusing Mr. Potter—I seem to recall you having a distinct lack of trust in me for the entirety of the fourteen years you have known me. And you, Lupin, since we met on the Hogwarts Express more years ago than I care to recall, have had not had two respectful or trusting things to say about me together. Not to mention that you have purported that Miss Corbenic is under my thrall."

There was a long awkward pause while the two men, stuck to the settee, stared at Severus's back.

"Tea?" Elaine ventured.

When there was no definitive answer she stood and eased herself out, leaving the door cracked.

"We think it may be rogue Death Eaters—and our Potions Master has been at it for a year with no results," she heard Potter say. "Other options are not considered secure."

Severus snorted, "There are still days I bitterly regret dragging myself out of the Shrieking Shack. Next time—send a bloody postcard."

Elaine grinned as she headed for the kitchen.

Jade, #23