I would like to reiterate that I have no connexion with Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, or J.K. Rowling. This fanfiction is merely a story predicated upon a characterisation challenge—meant solely for entertainment and not profit.

Chapter 22

Asterothen and Charts

"I am not going to bother with any transfigurations, Luther. I don't really need them."

"You husband has informed me that I am to teach you Defence, Charms, and very basic Transfigurations, Patience, so that is precisely what I intend to do until he informs me otherwise."

"Luther, let's sit down. I think we need to understand each other more clearly."

Luther dropped heavily into the dark wooden chair beside his sister and regarded her with slightly narrowed eyes. The last thing that he wanted to be doing today was wasting his time talking to Patience. Govan had not even been dead 48 hours and yet he was expected to tutor his dim little sister on material that she ought to have learnt in her first few years of Hogwarts? It was absurd, except that it did give him something other than his grief with which to occupy his mind.

"I understand that you would rather learn Charms and some Defence. However, I am not under your orders, Patience, but your husband's."

Luther did not miss his sister's almost pleased expression as she said softly, "But you are, Luther. Severus is only insisting that I learn defence. Although he has told me that I must spend a certain amount of time every week on my studies, he has left it to me to decide which spells I think will most help me."

Luther frowned. Snape had not told him this. He had only said that his wife needed to learn Defence, Charms, and Transfiguration. Why had Snape not been clearer on what he expected? If he were going to have to take orders from his own sister, this was going to be a very uncomfortable situation. He would talk with Snape later that evening. "That is not exactly what he said to me; however, I don't really care, Patience. If you do not want to learn Transfiguration then I see no reason to waste my time. Why don't we start by seeing exactly where you are? Do you still have any texts from school?"

Patience shook her head, "They are probably all in my old room at our parent's house."

Luther shrugged his shoulders and said, "Right. Well, let's try several spells and then I will find some texts later this week that are appropriate to your level."

As he put Patience through an examination of her practical wand work, Luther allowed his mind to wander, considering seriously whether he had made an error in judgement coming to teach his sister. Frankly, his former head of house's offer had come as a complete, but rather welcome surprise. Luther's job with Angus Wilkie had not been a success. Wilkie had wanted Luther to do work for which Wilkie would then take full credit. It was only Luther's intense dislike of his parents, and therefore an unwillingness to be beholden to either of them for his needs, that had kept Luther from quitting work for Wilkie and returning home. Snape's offer had given Luther the necessary excuse to leave a job he had only held for a few months, which would otherwise have looked very bad to future employers, and had the bonus of being something that would enrage his mother.

Luther had never understood his mother's decision to push his sister off onto Snape. The marriage had made no sense socially and, although Luther was now personally benefiting, had displayed no obvious profit for the family at the time. It seemed that their mother had merely taken one of her fits of pique against Severus Snape and had thought that forcing him to marry Patience was a fitting revenge. Perhaps Mother's decision was based on the history between Snape's mother and his own mother and aunt, but this did not make much sense to him either. His little sister was an innocuous, if rather silly, and very beautiful witch, who was likely to do exactly as she was told. Luther failed to see how the acquisition of his sister as a wife would revenge anything on Severus Snape.

As Luther watched his sister attempting to Vanish a puddle of wine that he had poured onto the table, Luther thought how very unhappy Patience had looked yesterday at dinner. Luther was aware that he seldom noticed anything about his sister, but her depressed demeanour was such that no one could have mistaken her feelings about her marriage. Luther did not approve of forced marriages on principle, in fact he went so far as to have actually raised an objection to his father. However, unlike Govan, who had ranted and raved about the unfairness that Patience was getting all that money to herself when he was kept unfairly short of funds, Luther had not expended any energy to stop the marriage. It had been obvious to him that his mother wanted the thing to happen, so it was pointless to waste his time, since Mother always got what she wanted.

Luther was pleased to see that his sister did not have a heavy wand hand, which would have made defence work very challenging to teach her. Although she was obviously nervous and had underperformed to her ability, her directional wand disportation was sloppy. Luther could only hope that this was because her teachers had been too frustrated with Patience's abysmal memory to spend time correcting wand strokes. Luther decided that before he taught anything else he would need to begin at the ground with wand disportation. If she could get a better handle on this, then her quality of wand stroke would improve dramatically.

Luther waved his wand to Vanish the puddle of now emerald green wine and said, "I think that I have an idea where we need to start, Patience. Do you have a particular interest in any specific spells?"

Patience, who Luther thought looked frustrated and rather angry, said immediately, "Yes. I will write a list of the ones that I really want to learn."

Luther nodded and stood to pick up the stack of books that he had brought down to the sitting room, realising now that they were going to be useless as texts for Patience. Two were actually too simple for her and the third was filled with descriptions that had proved too confusing to follow. He could see that a text with diagrams would be more useful, since even he had been unable to determine merely from the description in Efrida Esteridge's primer text whether the final down stroke on her basic 'Scourgify' should be a half circle with a bounce drop or a flick drop.

"Are you ready to go in to tea, Patience?"

Patience nodded and said, "I had thought Eva would come this afternoon, but perhaps business is too busy at Daedulus."

Luther looked surprised, "Does she work for Daedulus Supplies?"

Patience waited pointedly for Luther to open the door for her and said, "The Rosser family owns Daedulus, Luther. She has taken over the Anti-Jinx Spells and Unbreakable Delivery Charms department, since her great-aunt has got too woolly-minded to manage it now. Of course, since Eva has a special ability with Jinx Charms, it is really the perfect department for her, isn't it?"

Luther tried to remember which one of Patience's friends was Eva, but had no success. "Is this the red-headed one or the one that natters non-stop?"

"Neither, those are Elspeth and Sarah, although Sarah has got better about the talking. Eva is my best friend Luther; she was at our house dozens of times, so you must have seen her. She has dark hair and she's about my height."

Luther vaguely remembered a chubby girl with dark hair and spots, who had once told him off for something careless he had said to Patience. If that were who was coming to tea, perhaps he had better go up to his room and unpack some more of his books.

Yet as Luther had his hand on the handle to open the dining room door, there was a loud knock at the front door. Since the dining room was the last door next to the entry hall, Luther could see Wicket appear almost instantly to open the front door and then hear his sister's pleased cry as she ran towards the young woman who walked past the old house-elf to embrace Patience.

"I am terribly late, aren't I? There was an entire shipment of socks with an anti-folding jinx. Very clever, too it took me almost an hour to find the undercurrent to reverse it. Did you eat already, Patty?"

Luther found that he could not remember releasing the door handle and walking into the entry hall to stand next to his sister. However, without even considering what he was doing, Luther had taken his sister's friend's cloak and was now waiting impatiently to be introduced. He knew logically that this must be Eva Rosser, but it was impossible that he could ever have forgotten meeting this witch.

Patience looked over at her brother, who had been working intently on his private research for the last hour or more. She felt annoyed that Snape had left her with Luther. She had been planning to sit with her husband in his library again, so to be stuck downstairs in the sitting room watching Luther work through some sort of arithmancy computations had not left Patience in a very good mood. She supposed that Snape had thought that Luther would tutor Patience more after dinner, but both brother and sister had mutually agreed that this would serve little purpose that evening.

The only books that she had not yet read from her latest bundle from the library were all by the same author as Albaterra's Heroine, so Patience had pulled a book from the sitting room shelf entitled, The Great Divide: Why Wizard and Muggle Must Live Separately. The book had sounded slightly interesting, but Patience had lost interest after the first chapter.

Perhaps she ought to go upstairs to see him anyway. There was no point in remaining there with Luther. If Snape did not want to see her, then she would return to her own room and work on the dress hem that she had been embroidering with Eva. Deciding that almost anything was better than remaining with her brother, Patience stood from her chair, walked behind Luther's desk, and stopped with the intention of telling him where she was going.

However, as she leant forward to tap Luther's shoulder, Patience noticed that he had several astrocartographic charts in front of him and that one of them had an error. "You do know that's wrong, don't you?"

Luther looked up at his sister and then glanced where she was pointing. "What do you mean?"

"That. Mercury won't be in that alignment until February 2009 and at that time Linear would be passing over here, so this chart is completely wrong."

Patience saw a look of amusement and derision creeping across her brother's face and felt a surge of anger. This was one thing about which she was never wrong. It was perfectly obvious that whoever had done this chart had incorrectly used an asterothen with arithmancical projections. "Look Luther, hand me your quill, I'll show you."

Patience pushed his arm out of the way, extended several lines, and added two large loops to the inner portion of the chart before tapping her wand at the incorrectly drawn Mercury and then redrawing it several centimetres to the left. After a few more minor changes, Patience handed Luther's quill back to him and said, "You didn't make that chart yourself, did you?"

Luther grunted, "No, of course not."

"Good. I did not think that you would be this careless."

Patience saw her brother's temper growing as he said sharply, "What do you think you are doing, Patience? You have mucked up my chart, so now I am going to have to get another. Do you honestly believe that you are able to make a better chart than a RAS member?"

Patience stepped back from the table and said bitingly, "Well, Luther, why don't you make the calculations yourself and find out? You are the clever one in the family, aren't you? There is an asterothen in that small cupboard there."

Patience stomped from the room and walked hastily to the stairs.

She really could not stand Luther. However, now that she was actually going upstairs to see her husband, she wondered why she had wanted to do so. He was not likely to be friendly or talk to her about anything interesting. In fact, she realised that if she went in there this late in the evening, she was very likely to need another dose of laxorica in the morning.

At this thought, Patience stopped still in the middle of the corridor near his library door. In fact, she did not think that she really wanted to see him after all. Patience bent down to collect Biter from the floor, so that she could quietly walk back down the stairs without attracting her husband's notice. However, at that moment Biter caught sight of another Pecoin under the stairs to the attics and dashed off to investigate.

Patience did not like the idea of getting closer to the Pecoin, so she remained where she was—nervously calling out in a half-whisper, "Biter. Biter, come here you naughty little beast."

The door to her husband's library opened and Snape walked out into the corridor with a forbidding scowl plastered on his face. "What are you doing?"

Patience pointed at Biter, who was cowering against the wall with a scratch on his muzzle from the long, curling claws on the little Pecoin's feet. Snape waved his wand and said calmly, "Serpensortia."

Patience jumped back, as a large brown snake coiled itself to strike at the Pecoin.

Snape fixed his glittering eyes on Patience as he asked, "What were you doing up here? Did you need something?"

Patience, who could not seem to look away from the horrible sight of the snake devouring the squealing Pecoin, replied in a small whimper, "No."

Snape paused for another moment, looking at his wife oddly, and then bent to snatch up the scared Crup to hand back to his wife. "Here is your animal. You need to learn better control of him, Patience. He is already spoilt." Snape waved his wand at the snake, which now had a grotesquely fat bulge in its middle, so that it disappeared from view.

"Y-yes, I will try harder."

"Are you coming in or are you going to stand in the corridor gawping?"

Patience shivered and replied, "I-I need to go to my room." However, as Patience spoke these words, she thought that she saw a look of hurt in her husband's eyes. Feeling a sudden wave of pity, she thought that if he did feel something for her that it must be very hard knowing that she disliked him and would never love him. Therefore, Patience made a decision and amended her statement. "I need to change. I will come back."

She could see that she had surprised him, since he did not respond immediately. Instead, he froze with his hand on the doorway and then nodded his head once before saying, "Leave the animal with Rem. Pecoin claws are venomous, so the wound will need cleaning."