A few days later in class many of the students were nervous. The bizarre accident in one of the potions classes had many students afraid, not just of Snape, but of potions in general. The absence of Ivan was also causing a stir, although no one dared mention anything in front of Snape.
Rumors were plentiful in regards to Ivan's disappearance. Snape had killed him and turned him into potion ingredients. Snape had made him scrub so many cauldrons he ran away. He had pranked someone he shouldn't have and they'd gotten just revenge... As the first class of the day filed into the potions room there were whispers abound.
The whispers only grew when they noticed something quite odd about the potions instructions on the board.
They were fixing a potion that required human bones, a substance which could rarely be obtained without breaking laws. Hushed voices echoed in the classroom as students nervously questioned each other about the potion. A caveat, a small click of the dungeon's door swinging shut, brought the class to a state of silence as the Potions Master entered the room in a brusque manner.
There was a collective intake of breath as the students got a better look at him. Professor Snape actually had a small smile on his face. That had to be cause for alarm. Snape sat down at his desk and shuffled through some papers before looking at the class, his minute smile had disappeared.
"The instructions are on the board, why haven't you started?"
A young Ravenclaw put up her hand, and Severus stared at it a moment before answering. "Yes Miss Goodhawk?" He responded, his voice reverberating slightly in the dank classroom.
The Ravenclaw shook as if Snape had physically hit her before speaking.
"W-we don't have the b-bones sir, you can't buy t-them in most stores, t-they aren't easy to come by." She squeaked timorously before lowering her head as if trying to disappear under the table.
Snape gazed calmly at her before speaking.
"Are you implying that I would procure this ingredient in a heinous way, Miss Goodhawk? If you are, it is my duty to disabuse this foolish inference… during a detention."
The Ravenclaw stiffened.
"N-no sir." She said quickly, shaking her head.
"Good, I will let it slip, this time. I procured the ingredient from a place that takes medical refuse and supplies deemed unfit for use by Saint Mungo's, and packages them for resale. The ingredient you are lacking is in the cauldron to the right of the board. As the bone is not powdered you will have to crush it yourselves. You may use reducto spells. Begin."
Snape went back to grading papers and the scratching of his quill sounded very loud in the classroom. An aura of fear so thick that it felt hard to breathe settled in the air.
Finally, with a glare from Snape the students headed to the cauldron to retrieve the bones.
A high-pitched scream sounded in the class as the first student looked into the cauldron. Snape stood up quickly and was by the hyperventilating girl in seconds. After seeing that the girl was fine his normal scowl resurfaced one more.
"Why, pray tell, did you break the axiomatic precept of my class room, or were you not cognizant that loud noises are looked upon with the utmost distaste?" The girl on the floor mumbled incoherently and pointed toward the cauldron. Snape leaned over and looked into the cauldron. "Yes, that is a skeleton, now what seems to be the problem? We are not afraid of inanimate remains of a man, are we?" Snape asked the girl in a gossamer voice that barely concealed his contempt.
The girl squeaked and let out a choked sob. Snape looked down his large nose with disgust emblazoned on his face.
"You," Snape pointed at a Slytherin boy, "Mr. Davidson, take your fellow Slytherin to Mrs. Pomfrey." When the boy failed to move, Snape glared and, in fear for his life, Mr. Davidson extricated the shaking girl from the classroom in a rush.
The class looked back at their Professor, who was obviously in a foul mood now.
"Continue with your work, I want no more fractious interruptions, or I will have the perpetrator ingest a potion of my choice."
With that Snape turned on the spot, cloak billowing, and returned to his desk. The students eyed the skeleton warily for a moment longer before taking a bone back to their desks, starting their fires, and beginning their potions.
The class worked quietly and the sound of simmering potions soon filled the classroom. Slowly the tension dissipated slightly creating a soporific atmosphere. It would not last long.
"BOOM!" The sound reverberated off the walls of the classroom, followed quickly by a loud curse. The owner of the resilient cauldron, for it was still intact, cried out in pain as his potion rained down upon him. Moments later a thin stream of blood welled up on his gashed hand. Snape was up in a flash, motioning for the students to move away from the boy before heading over to him.
The boy in question was hiccupping between curses and Snape waved his wand over him to diagnose the situation.
He could hear the lad's heartbeat, it was sluggish when it should have been fast, working hard. The wand told him the boy's vitals. His blood pressure was far too high. That combination only made sense if…
"Shut your scurrilous mouth and listen!" The boy stopped cursing between his hiccuping sobs. "Apparently you have managed to create a new type of blood replenishing potion which works upon contact instead of ingestion, but as you have not lost any blood you will most likely die if the pressure is not relieved. Sit still- and stop crying! You will be fine. I will enact the procedure, there isn't time to get to Pomfrey. Everyone else get back to work!" Snape scourgified the ground of the remaining potion to prevent further accidents, then looked at the cauldron quickly, there was no potion left in there.
Turning his attention back to the source of the, now much quieter, sobbing he flicked his wand over the boy.
The nearest bottle filled half way up with potion infused blood and the boy stopped sobbing in pain. He flicked his wand again and the bottle filled up the rest of the way.
The hiccups remained however.
He waved his wand one more time and cast another diagnostic charm. Blood pressure was normal. Snape could hear his heart, it was quite fast now, but slowing down, it matched what the diagnostic charm said.
"Get up and go to Pomfrey, she'll want to check you over." Snape pushed the boy out the door and put the bottle on his shelf after making a note to send a sample to Poppy so she could notify Saint Mungo's about the new potion, it could prove useful.
The class continued in a vapid way, but a tenseness lay underneath it as the children were even more careful about their actions. They had no interest in going through what their classmate had and even less interest in being the one to cause a second commotion in Snape's class that day. They were far too nervous to talk or think about anything other than working. So quiet loomed, much like their Professor did.
As soon as the last students handed in their skele-gro potions and left, Severus stood up. He immediately took the potion from earlier off the shelf and separated it into two bottles, putting one on the shelf and taking one with him. He flooed to the extremely straitlaced nurse and announced his presence by knocking on her private quarters. She immediately emerged, a notebook in her hand.
"Poppy, the inscrutably nescient student I sent up is well I assume?" Snape asked, and Pomfrey nodded. "Good. Here is the potion that did the damage, or rather the blood of the boy after the potion entered his veins. The rest of the potion was on the floor and thus contaminated. I believe Saint Mungo's will want to examine this. A patient unable to ingest a potion would benefit from this discovery immensely. If they accept it I may change my mind about castigating the student."
Poppy looked at Severus a little overwhelmed by all the information the erudite wizard had just thrown at her, but she nodded as she took the bottle from him and promptly returned to her room. Severus did the same and flooed to his private quarters; he had half an hour before his next class and planned to look at his sample of the boy's blood more closely.
Severus was about to hold the bottle to the light when he doubled over in pain.
It was not that he wasn't used to pain, just that random pain was quite startling, and he was rather relaxed in his own chambers as opposed to in public.
Quickly composing himself he walked over to a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of purple liquid and downed the contents. He waited for a moment and, deeming everything under control, began to walk back to the sample he had miraculously not broken. Halfway there found the man doubled over in pain again. Snape waited for it to pass and then went over to the fireplace and threw floo powder into it, his practiced face showing no signs of concern despite his mind going a mile a minute. This was something he'd have to inform Dumbledore of immediately, no matter what. This was extremely inopportune and dangerous on many fronts.
"Headmasters Office!" Snape exclaimed, his voice only showing the slightest hint of stress as he waited for the fire to turn green.
The headmaster's head appeared in the fire and smiled.
Snape nodded, thankful he was available.
"Ah, Severus, I was hoping to talk to you today. I didn't get a chance to ask at breakfast, but did you enjoy your dinner from a few nights ago?"
"Very, but that's not why I called Headmaster, I-"
"Yes, but more importantly how do you wish to continue?"
"You may do whatever you want to explain the boys…disappearance," Snape snapped, "but I really must talk about something else!"
Dumbledore frowned and motioned for Severus to continue, the spy rarely raised his voice without purpose.
"The hunger pangs, they've started."
Dumbledore's frown deepened. "This is nothing new my boy why-"
"My potion did not alleviate the symptoms!" Impatience lay over the concern and fear in the Potions Master's voice, and it did not go unnoticed by the headmaster.
The wizened old man's eyes widened in alarm at the words and tone of voice in which they were said. "That is indeed grave news my boy," he said pensively, already looking for solutions, "we cannot have you around students if the hunger continues."
"You don't think I know that!" Snape hissed. "I've never had pangs after drinking the potions before! I concocted the potion over the summer months before my first year teaching here! It is a personalized specialized nutritional potion mixed with a drop of blood and it has sustained me for years! But I cannot very well leave without reason, it would be suspicious."
"I think the powers you now control require more than the potion can give." Inferred Dumbledore knowingly and Snape blanched.
"And what am I supposed to do about this?" asked Snape venomously. The headmaster's eyes twinkled.
"Go see Hagrid, after your current supply of blood has run out of course. I understand that you may have wanted to save it, mainly drink your potion, but that seems to no longer be an option." Before Snape could respond to the idea in a negative way the fire had gone out and the sly old man had gone.
"I will not go to that man; Albus does not know how much I have in my supply and therefore cannot tell when I have run out… I refuse to go to that man. " Snape turned and went to prepare for his next class, ignoring another pang of hunger. It came quite a bit sooner than expected, and felt a bit more… insistent than usual, but he could ignore it and the red fog that would surely creep up if he didn't eat. Setting out new vials for bottling the finished potions he began to ponder what the students' reaction would be to the announcement that Ivan was missing. Snape smirked evilly to himself as he wrote the instructions for the NEWT level potion on the board. He continued to smirk as he graded papers, and for minutes after his class had filed in. He looked up at the noticeable silence and sighed.
"Why haven't you started the potion?" He whispered in annoyance at his 7th years.
"We don't have any of those ingredients sir, and half of them are illegal…" Snape looked up at the board and sighed.
"Illegal to sell, not to own, not to use, and not to procure… but you are correct for once Mr. Larkit, you do not have the necessary ingredients, and neither do I. It says so on the top of the board and if one could read they would know that. Your job is to make a potion with the same properties and purpose with the present ingredients. This is a test to see if you understand what ingredients do what and why, and see if you dunderheads can figure out why the potion on the board is the one commonly used as opposed to whatever you fail to come up with. Get to work." Snape sneered at his student's dismayed looks and went back to grading papers. His students looked through their books to find the ingredients, and the potion's attributes and purposes, and there were only more groans. Soon bubbling and soft simmering filled the classroom. Snape smiled internally. Only three students in six years had managed to actually complete this assignment, it was nigh impossible without a natural gift for potions or intense study. It was nigh impossible in general to make a potion that did the Exact same thing as another.
This was meant to teach the idiots that there was still much they didn't understand, despite knowing how to make basic potions correctly. The theory behind potions escaped most, just as the theory behind most magic escaped many students. It was also a very nice excuse to take points and hand out detentions for dismal performances.
Snape got up and stalked around the class, nodding occasionally and sneering at some more dismal potions. He stopped over a cauldron containing a pitch black liquid and a boy reading a very thin paper book with pictures of a man in a red cape.
"What, may I ask, is this?" Snape whispered venomously, as the boy looked up.
"It's Superman sir, issue 1005." Said the boy as he handed over the comic book to the outstretched hand of his professor.
Snape looked at it dubiously before stuffing it into a pocket of his robes. "Minus 2 points from Hufflepuff Mr. Jilhain, for wasting time that should be used on your potion, which I must say, is dismal." Snape made to walk away but the boy raised his hand. "Yes, Mr. Jilhain?" Snape asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"I was waiting for you sir, the potion's on stasis, I wanted to make sure you were here when I added the final ingredient as I'm not quite sure if it will work as it is rather unconventional. Uhm… as in it could… explode?" The boy said with more than a little concern in his voice.
Snape nodded for the boy to continue, slightly impressed with his forethought and his wand at the ready. The boy took a deep breath and brought the potion out of stasis and it began to boil wildly. The boy pointed his wand at himself and muttered "lacrimere". Mr. Jilhain's eyes watered and he blinked three times making three tears fall into the cauldron. A quick 'finite incantatem' and the tears stopped. Snape watched as the potion turned a soft tan, then the exact light yellow described on the board. Snape raised a brow.
"Test it." He stated and laid a white feather and snake skin on the table. The boy swallowed and ladled four drops of potion onto the feather and waited with bated breath. Moments later the feather exploded into a pink bird, which hopped around the table and cooed, along with many of the girls in the classroom. Snape quieted them with a glare. The bird was not of the same type the feather came from, but it was still a bird. It was, after all, nearly impossible to make a potion with the exact same effects, the bird was an obvious facsimile instead of flesh and blood like the other potion would have caused.
He nodded to Jilhain who ladled two drops of potion onto the snake skin. The skin smoked and hissed, and left a green snake behind, hissing itself. The snake launched itself at the bird and bit it around the neck. The bird squawked out and exploded, leaving a baffled snake to hiss in anger before it was banished by the Potions Master.
"Why did the snake skin require less potion?" asked Snape noncommittally.
The boy stuttered a moment before answering.
"There was more material to work with and less to create, uh recreate by magic." Snape looked at the now shaking boy before turning away.
"Ten points to Hufflepuff and you may stay after class to obtain your…comic book." Snape said with disdain as he strode back to his desk with a flare of his robes.
The dumbstruck boy tried very hard not to smile.