Spagyric

spuh-JEER-ik | adjective

1: pertaining to or resembling alchemy; alchemic

"So, Master Snape, tell me about your process."

Severus considered the woman on the opposite side of his desk. Dark hair, seemingly fixed up in a hurry. There was a pencil stuck through her high bun. Muggleborn, he supposed. Her attire was thoroughly professional. Button-down shirt. Pencil skirt. Professional, if uncomfortable. Her eyes were light, which was an unusual contrast to her dark hair. Blue with just a glint of silver. He could see the interested spark there.

He leaned forward in his chair, placing his elbows on his desk. His hands clasped in front of him. "The idea came in a dream," he admitted. "Unoriginal, I am sure, but there you have it. Obviously, my subconscious was unable to connect all of the pieces, but with a large amount of trial and error, I managed to succeed."

"What can you tell me about the actual procedure?" she asked, leaning forward as well. The spark in her eye brightened to a gleam. He focused on that rather than the view she was presenting him down her blouse. He wondered if she was aware that she was doing so.

"Miss Wiser," he admonished, allowing one corner of his mouth to twitch upward, "are you asking me to reveal my secrets?"

She met his smile with a wide one of her own. "Perhaps just the one."

One of his eyebrows quirked upward. "Many others have tried and failed. I intend to take my procedure to the grave."

"Oh, come now, surely you don't intend to let that die with you? You've succeeded in turning ordinary rock into gold. Wizards have been trying and failing for thousands of years and yet you alone have managed to succeed. You'll tell no one how you do it?"

He gave the woman an amused smirk. "Really, how are we sure that I'm the only one in history who has managed? Perhaps others have managed the same and have merely let it die with them as well. Let us not forget that Nicolas Flamel created an object with the capacity to do it."

The reporter rolled her eyes. Now that was unprofessional.

"In any case, I am not the only living person who has the knowledge."

She perked up. "No?"

"No," he agreed. "For a brief time during my research, I had an apprentice. She also knows the procedure." He cut off the woman as her mouth opened. "She has been appropriately sworn to secrecy."

"Who was this apprentice?" she asked distractedly, scribbling furiously on her notepad.

It was public record. No point withholding information that she could easily get her hands on in under an hour anyway. "Hermione Granger."

The scratching of the quill paused, then Miss Wiser pushed onward. "She was only briefly your apprentice, you say?"

Severus nodded. "We found it too difficult to work together, and so, after pushing through for several months, she was reassigned to another potions master. One better suited to teach her."

"Why was it difficult to work together?"

He raised a brow again at the woman. "Miss Wiser, while you never had the pleasure of attending one of my classes at Hogwarts, I am quite sure that you have heard tales from coworkers. I am not a pleasant or easy man to get along with, and Hermione Granger is no pushover herself. There was simply too much history between us to promote a healthy working relationship. Now, I do believe that my discovery was the main focus of this interview, was it not?" He did not wish to discuss Hermione Granger with the woman. He hated that he had had to reassign his apprentice. It was equal to failure in his eyes. He had failed as a teacher because of personal feelings. Restraint was not an exercise at which he had ever excelled.

"Of course." She scratched out a few more words on her notepad. "Has your success impacted your life in other ways?" The words were said mildly, but he caught the suggestive cant to her smile.

"In what ways do you mean?" he asked innocently.

Her teeth glistened at him when her smile widened. "Has it affected your sex life, Master Snape? Do you find women more likely to approach you?"

He chuckled and sat back in his chair. "Miss Wiser, nearly every woman in Great Britain under the age of thirty was a student of mine at one point or another."

"That does not answer my question," she said lightly.

"Yes," he admitted with a sigh. "Women do approach me with much more frequency. It would seem that excessive wealth makes one's other failings magically overlookable."

"Do you often take them up on their offers?"

His eyes narrowed. "I do not." This was certainly not a professional line of questioning. The woman was supposed to be a reporter for the Prophet, not some gossip rag magazine.

The reporter set her notepad to the side on the empty chair beside her. "I was never your student, Master Snape."

It seemed that his eyebrow was doing overtime in this interview, as it once again rose, this time in disbelief. "Surely you are not coming on to me during an interview." He frowned. The pencil skirt was clearly a ruse.

"Come now, we have no history. It's a clean slate. Nothing but new memories. It can't be easy to be alone your whole life."

"You have been misinformed, madam. I have a live-in, long-term love interest, and she is strictly off limits, as it is not your business. If you wouldn't mind, I would very much like to get this interview back on track. Sit up straight – it isn't becoming to flash your breasts at interviewees – and please do keep your questions on target. My research."

Jessica Wiser blushed a deep red that flushed all the way down to the tops of her breasts – a fact which Severus tried and failed not to notice. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and hoped that the rest of the interview would be quick.

oOo

Severus apparated into the living room of his home to find his live-in, long-term love interest seated on the couch, a book predictably in her hands. A tome, really. It was a textbook, easily a thousand pages in length, on potions ingredients. Only Hermione Granger could find such a book an interesting read. She would likely retain seventy percent of what she read. He felt a flash of jealousy, but he pushed it aside. It was an old conversation between them.

"How was the interview?" she asked without looking up.

He made a strangled growl in response.

She snorted. "It can't have been that bad." She looked up at the frown across his face.

"The reporter tried to pick me up mid-interview," he said stiffly, moving to drop onto the couch beside her.

She laughed and marked her place in the textbook, setting it on the coffee table. "I can't say that I blame her."

"There is something wrong in your head," he mumbled, picking up one arm to accommodate her as she snuggled into his side.

"Probably," she agreed, "but I hardly see you complaining about it."

He grunted. "Hermione, do you…" He paused, gathering his thoughts. "Do you ever regret transferring to Master Kords?"

He felt more than heard her laugh. "While I do miss having you as my teacher, Severus, it just wasn't working. We had sex all over that lab. We were nothing but distractions to each other." She looked up at him and winked. "She isn't nearly as much fun as you in the lab. All business."

Severus smirked. He would never forget the way that his heart had dropped into his toes when she had asked to be transferred to another master. He had thought that she was leaving him. He had kicked himself, of course, for getting attached. It had started as just sex – angry sex, at that. He'd been yelling at her for something or other and then he'd been kissing her, and she'd been kissing him back and then they were stripping each other. Then he'd been fucking her on a lab bench. There was an awkward moment afterward before he cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders, and they never said a word about it. They never said a word about the next time either. Or the time after. They never said a word about any of their continued activities until the day she requested a reassignment.

After he had written out his letter to Master Kords requesting that she pick up the education of his apprentice, she had kissed him more gently than she ever had before and asked him for a real relationship, which he had hesitantly agreed to, sure that it would turn out to be a horrid mistake. Now, here they were nearly two years later. She would be finishing her apprenticeship next week. There would be a formal ceremony the following Thursday at noon. For dinner Thursday evening, he had planned out a wonderful meal of all of her favorites – roasted duck, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, and for dessert, a strawberry custard that she particularly enjoyed. Afterward, he would be getting down on one knee for the first time in his life that was not at the business end of a wand.

"You turned her down, right?"

"No," he drawled, "I fucked her on the desk where I had you once or twice, with my assistant in the next room." He quirked a brow, looking down at her. He pressed a kiss to her hair. "Of course I said no, Hermione. You are more than enough for me to handle."

"Good," she said shortly. "I would have had to cut off your dick and rip off her boobs and burn them in a pile if you'd done that." She smiled sweetly at him. "Thank you for not making my day so messy."

He smirked. Merlin, he loved that fire in her.