As he prepared for their first meeting in the Potions lab, Snape lamented the turn things had taken, in contrast to the hope he had allowed himself to have when extending the offer to Morgan Hunter to take the teaching position here. He had envisioned a calm and orderly, older man, a peer, a colleague he could respect. Instead, Morgan Hunter was a tiny, noisy little bat who rarely held her tongue unless under duress. Sitting too near her at meals was like having Wizard Wireless on; he wondered how she managed to eat at all. Random ideas of every sort spilled out of her constantly. Others on the staff seemed captivated by her stories. He wondered idly if if they had a genuine interest in her stories of the United States and its Magical Schools or if they egged her on solely to irritate him at every meal. Were he a staff member rather than Headmaster, he might take more of his meals in his own rooms or his office. As it was, he felt compelled by his position to attend, if for no other reason than to demonstrate his stamina in doing so.
He dreaded their collaboration in brewing the actual potions, given how distracting her constant monologue would be, in contrast to his usual solitary and silent concentration. Perhaps they would need to schedule alternate times for use of the lab, meeting only to compare results and plan the next round of alterations to the formulae. Despite his misgivings, he continued down the halls of the dungeon to the lab.
Hunter was concerned about their first actual collaboration in the dungeon. She was more accustomed to working alone, with no one to debate her ideas. His inflexibility about the proposals concerned her, as she often made changes on the fly as she did her work, responding to what she saw as she crafted the potions. He would probably want to stick strictly to the plans they charted out and get testy if not downright ugly at changes during the process. Thankfully, they had few interactions, but she had witnessed his style at mealtime announcements and overheard her students talking about which of his students landed themselves in evening detentions. Detentions, for upper year students. Absurd.
She steeled herself to attempt to be as assertive as possible, given her years of experience and success. Her term was only a year, and he would have difficulty in replacing her before then. He needed her teaching capacity. Between the duties of Headmaster, Advanced Potions, Occlumency and Legilimency, she knew his taking back the younger students was not possible without some heretofore unheard of cloning charm. Despite her misgivings, she continued down the halls of the dungeon to the lab.
"Good day, Headmaster," she greeted him as they reached the lab at the same time.
"Good day, Dr. Hunter," he replied, with no warmth. She unsealed her charms on the door and entered, casting her wand to light the torches. Snape followed, covering the blackboard with the charts they agreed upon with a wave of his wand.
Hunter began to assemble the ingredients they needed in order. Snape was pleased that she had said nothing other than brief requests for specific items that were closer to him. "Dittany, please." "Newt skin powder, please." From her own stores, she brought forth cactus spikes, scorpion venom, several glowing crystals, and a series of terra cotta pots in various sizes, each fired with a variety of angular symbols. "Hopi," she muttered as he looked on with interest.
One item as a time, the array was laid out, with slightly different ingredients in some, different vessels for others.
Looking over the chart, Snape said "I'll take the first row," at the same time as Hunter said "How about I take the second row?" They both nodded at one another and set to work.
Two hours passed with no sound but that of opening jars, grinding of powders, bubbling liquids, and the scrape of knives and spatulae on plates. Snape began to lose himself in the work, referring frequently to the board, stirring this one clockwise, that one counterclockwise, and keeping careful tallies on the parchment nearby. Hunter observed that the scorpion venom was somewhat jellied from its travels, so she gave it some additional trituration before adding it, making a note of it in her notebook. The first resulting solution didn't have the characteristic green, greasy swirl and choking stench, so she added two drops more to the next formula in the array, which seemed to improve things. She made additional notes.
Snape stood back as his several formulae bubbled away during the steeping phase and realized that as many as two hours had passed with not a word from his colleague. He carefully glanced in her direction and was mildly surprised to see her going from pot to pot, peering in closely and smelling the contents, a dangerous thing to do with boiling venom. She then made notes, the sound of her quill scratching the only other sound other than bubbling. Any sounds of students, staff, or animals outside rarely reached these depths, which was convenient, as anyone approaching in the halls would have no cover for the sound of their approach, save their own conscientiousness.
At last she looked up, setting down her quill and pulling back the hair that had fallen out of her braid as she worked. She met his eyes and gave a small nod of acknowledgement, but did not get up from her array. Snape, intrigued by the smell, came forward to gaze at her set of experiments.
As he leaned forward to waft the smell, she spoke, rather too sharply, he thought. "Watch your hair, you'll set it on fire!" Rising, he was irritated on the one hand, but then irritated with himself on the other, as he smelled the characteristic scent of singed hair close to his nose. "The terra cotta pots hold a lot of heat, they don't cool as fast as bronze or iron. Here, I have an extra tie." She handed him a black ribbon, which he took and quickly bound back his own hair, now thinking her braid a bit more practical and little less a girlish affect than he had before. Though most witches favored a bun. It was interesting to him that he could actually smell the emanations a little better with his face more free from the black hair that typically framed it. And he could feel the warm radiant heat from the terra cotta pots as he moved from one to the next.
As Snape observed the pots, Hunter observed Snape. He was interesting to look at, not entirely handsome in a typical or obvious way, but not displeasing to the eye. His skin was pale which contrasted with his dark eyes and hair, his nose long and straight, mouth small and tight, most commonly in an expression that ranged from indifference to mild disapproval to anger in turns. Despite this, she could see that his anger was typically expressed as a replacement for disappointment, mostly to students who did not meet his exacting standards, or anyone who stood between him and his goals. Now, with his hair pulled away, she could see more of the planes of his face, the way his forehead sloped and the slight hollows in his cheeks.
"May I see your notebook, please?" he asked, finishing with his observations. Hunter hesitated, knowing that he would see the adjustments she'd made that were different from the ones specified. But how could she refuse? Time for the planned assertiveness.
He looked through the scrawled entries, with side notes and adjustments on nearly every line, and strode down the array. "You've added more of the venom," he began.
"Yes," she started, but he finished for her. "Because it gelled up from the travel time, of course. Venom loses its potency over time, regardless of its container. Good thinking. I would have expected nothing less from the great Dr. Morgan Hunter," he said, almost to himself. Hunter hid her surprise at his acceptance as he continued down the notes.
"May I observe your notes, as well?" she asked, partly because she wanted to see them, and at least partly to keep herself on equal footing. He gestured silently to his own notes as he continued to refer to her notes and the swirling terra cotta pots.
She looked at the notes, written in a fine old-fashioned script. He noted changes in color, behavior, smell, texture, and viscosity, as well as an additional characteristic that he called temperament, among the qualities that he monitored. He had not varied from the chart even an iota, though there seemed to be no reason to do so, from the notes written here. He predicted that the formula with the most vigorous "temperament" would likely be the most potent and useful of this array, though he noted the test to be performed would reveal this.
As the pots and cauldrons continued to bubble, she asked him "What is temperament, Professor Snape? I haven't come across that term before."
He looked up from her notes and she was surprised to see, not impatient irritation, but something a bit hesitant. He paused and looked away for a moment. Perhaps she had read it wrong? Had he been describing temperature and his handwriting been hard to read? Or misspelled? Neither of those possibilities seemed likely, given the clarity of the notes and the careful script. There were no thermometers out on the table.
"It isn't in the textbooks yet. It is a quality I am researching to understand better myself," he said slowly.
She waited for him to go on, thinking about what temperament could mean in a potion.
"Sometimes, when you add an ingredient or stir or boil a potion, it quickly and smoothly takes on the change…" he started, then paused, looking intently at her.
"And sometimes, it seems to resist, suggesting that you add more, stir more, stir more vigorously or boil more rapidly to effect the change, that you have to make it happen somehow," she replied, starting to see where he was going.
His eyes widened slightly, possibly with respect. "Precisely," he said, turning to face her directly now. "Those potions, the ones with the more resistant temperament…."
"They're the ones that really work, that surprise the Potion Maker and the Potion Taker both," she said, smiling broadly. "I have made those before, where everything seems difficult, effortful, but you know if you just keep at it, it will turn out. Like a battle of wills in miniature. But I've never been able to nail down what it was about them that made them so remarkable. It's temperament, you think?" She thought back to several batches of a healing salve that practically popped an injured Mineralist she knew back instantly. The witch was appreciative later, but at the time the healing was as startling and at least as forceful and perhaps as painful as the injury. Then there was the mood-lifting potion that was too good. After the first two wizards needed to be detoxed at the hospital due to addiction, she destroyed the remainder with buffalo dung and hematite. Even the fumes had made her deliriously happy for days. She still felt a longing for that feeling. Even ordinary joy would do at this point. But she reminded herself that joy was unlikely any time soon.
"I suspect that temperament may be the key, and I am testing for this property in the array."
Hunter looked at him quizzically. "But that wasn't in your research proposal or our final protocol."
"Sometimes one simply follows the observations that present themselves," he said smugly, knowingly.
She turned back to the cauldrons. "A whole new property. That would be amazing." She rounded back to him. "Come with me for my lecture at Beauxbatons, Severus, I mean Headmaster. That would make such an interesting talk. You would be the first to reveal it, if this array works. Imagine the response. No one has described a new property since, well, since Potion making began to be written down. You'd be the toast of the lecture circuit." She smiled broadly, but was brought back to Earth by his immutable expression.
"That is a kind offer, Dr. Hunter, but we should wait for results, don't you think?"
"Of course, but then…"
"And then we will need to perform more experiments, to confirm the results. One result is insufficient to make a conclusion, and to propose a newly-recognized property will be challenging to put forth. The idea will meet with resistance. The Potions community, as you know, is a generally conservative and skeptical one."
She couldn't debate that point. Only minor improvements had been made in centuries. Even their attempts to merge Old World and New World potion techniques was cutting edge, despite the fact that it should have been done two or three generations before. Perhaps this had been done, but Potion makers were typically highly secretive and territorial. Despite the 20th century embrace of publication and sharing, it was well-known that the most important progress was still kept private by most Potion Makers, the better to further his or her influence and practice in the local community. Formulas, ingredients, the location of fresh components, every aspect was an asset to be carefully guarded. To reveal and share the secrets was to lose the mystique and power that they had.
But he was sharing this with her. Why? Would she have shared such a ground-breaking concept with him, had she discovered something with this much potential? Probably not, she reckoned. She would likely have done those experiments on her own time, with her own supplies, and in a separate notebook. He had started to transfer his set of formulas into bottles and set the stoppers. She allowed hers to cool further as she observed him. He had demonstrated clearly that he was observant and systematic, that he understood the art as well as the science of potion-making. He was ambitious, intelligent, challenging (difficult, really), and he was opening up his Potions secrets to her. Clearly he wanted her respect, meaning that he found her respect valuable and likely not forthcoming from ordinary Potion-making skills alone. He desired her respect enough to share this secret theory.
She felt a rise of, what could it be described as other than joy, at the realization that he wasn't just her colleague but her equal, a true peer. It was unlikely that they would start chatting away casually about Potions this and Potions that, but at least she had someone who might really challenge her thinking. There was a rise of something else, too. Attraction. No, not from his looks, though he was not repulsive by any means, but from his mind and his manner. She found herself breathing a little rapidly as she resolved these thoughts in her mind and tried to refocus on her own Potions, carefully filling the labeled bottles and placing the stoppers. But what a mess that would be, given, well, everything.
Snape stayed focused on bottling his potions, carefully cross-checking the labels with the array before transferring, then placing the bottles in a divided box in the correct order. Once he was sure the work was correct and everything identified, he allowed his mind to wander. The work had gone well, despite his previous misgivings. Hunter had not babbled on like a teenager on Babble Broth, at least until the final discussion. He was pleased that she'd taken the bait, as he knew she would, and read his notes. He had felt the need to be sure she was fully aware of his talents, not simply of putting together a reasonable set of what were really very simple variations on a formula, but of something that took more skill and experience. Her notion of his joining her on the lecture tours was novel, but unlikely anytime soon. But he would publish, and perhaps improve his standing in the wizarding community at large. Although the staff and students of Hogwarts were mostly convinced of his loyalty and service, the same could not be said of the Ministry and many others, and not just the Dark Magic community. While making reputable Potions was a good way to gain standing in a community, publication would do so worldwide, and he began to formulate a broader vision for himself than simply Hogsmeade, or even Britain.
He opted to clean up without much magic, though scrubbing the cauldrons was the exception. He considered saving this task for the next student with detention, but decided against it. Even the remaining residue of scorpion venom might be dangerous, and students were well-known for carelessness, even with clear warnings. The ire of Madam Pomfrey, parents, and the students themselves he could handle, but knowingly exposing students to the paralytic risks of scorpion venom would probably rise to the level of a Ministry visit from some agent the Department of Magical Education. Although Umbrage had been replaced by Paracelsus Winder, he wasn't in the mood for anyone starting to dig around the Potions lab, or Hogwarts in general. 50 years would be a long time to avoid that, but why start now? As he recalled from his school days, Winder was of relatively mild talent, but must have impressed someone at the Ministry to be appointed Minister of Magical Education at a relatively young age. No doubt he'd be interested to prove his worth by uncovering some scandal here and impress his bosses. Perhaps he had higher ambitions to follow in the shoes of Kingsley Shacklebolt.
He turned with the intent of being sure that Hunter placed the remaining venom in the controlled substances locker, but stopped before speaking. She was also cleaning up, using magic, tapping her wand on each piece twice, first to clean it, then to whisk it away to its cabinet or drawer. She had impressed him with her spontaneous changes during the brewing. It took both years of experience as well as confidence to make changes in the middle of a formulation. As his lesser students were well aware (were there any other kind of students?), small variations could easily result in toxic or explosive sludge. But all of hers came out well, sitting gleaming in their containers. He felt mild irritation at himself for underestimating her based on her height and appearance. Brewing potions didn't require brute force (although obtaining certain components sometimes did), but was far more cerebral than that. Perhaps she also had strength, he had no reason to know as of yet. But she certainly had the mind for potions, both from her previous work and what she'd demonstrated today. He found himself looking forward to their next session, as this had considerably more appeal than watching 4th years ruin in 20 creative and innovative ways the simple formula for Pepper-Up Potion.
But there was more to his feelings than simple collegiality, he knew. She was personally attractive, as well. When she had used his given name, he had appreciated hearing it from her. But he was her supervisor and colleague. Not to mention as far from an attractive wizard as one could be, short of Mad-eye Moody. She was clearly out of his Quidditch league, with her glamorous style, long dark hair, cheerful demeanor, and international professional standing. It was best not to dwell in his mind places where nothing further could develop.
"Shall I place the venom in the Controlled Substances locker?" he asked.
"Yes, excellent. Let me be sure the outside of the container is clean first." She tapped it three times with her wand and the small vial gave a shake, another shake, then finally a nod. She wrapped it in a leather bag and tied the cord in a knot before standing back to allow him to take it. He carefully placed it back in its place in the cabinet, fastened the lock, and put two charms on it. One to seal it, the other to reveal the identity of anyone who might try to break the charm or try the lock.
"I presume you filled out the necessary permits with the Office of Poisons, Toxins, and Caustics for a Class 2 Poison upon your arrival?" Snape asked casually, drawing off his dragonhide gloves.
Hunter's blood pressure began to drop. "Of course." The lie felt caustic on her tongue. It hadn't occurred to her that any of her equipment or compounds might need any extra registration beyond the mountain required for the importation of magical substances in general. Until now. She'd been in such a state packing up and traveling, she hadn't checked. So, at this point, she'd exported scorpion venom from the US without paying the taxes, as well as imported to the UK without the required permit. There were probably taxes or fees associated with this, too. The money was no matter, but any further evidence that she was careless or unstable she didn't need.
Being done with the clean-up afforded her a natural-sounding excuse to leave shortly thereafter, on the premise that she wanted to visit the library. She did want to visit the library, she told herself, trying to convince herself that she wasn't telling two lies so closely together.
Snape watched her go, not in the slightest bit convinced. Especially when she turned the wrong way down the corridor and had to double back to get to the library, her usual direct gaze now directed away from him to the floor. After considering a visit to the library himself, he thought the better of it. Weasley would have his shift in the library this evening, and although it gave him mental pleasure to imagine having the young wizard jumping to retrieve the materials he would request, mostly from the Restricted Section ("Undetectable Poisons," "Malevolent Mushrooms for Indoor Cultivation," "Curses, Hexes and Spells for Fun and Profit (for entertainment purposes only)," or "Dark Magic: 101 Projects to Sharpen Your Skills"), he had had enough human interaction for the day. Despite his pledge to not allow his mind to dwell on the unobtainable, he did so anyway as he returned to his rooms in the dungeons, the sound of his boots and the rustle of his robes as his only accompaniment.