Severus Snape And The Marauders

Chapter 40

I Must Respect Professor Umbridge and the Ministry of Magic

Severus woke up to find a large barn owl tapping his nose impatiently. He yawned and took the envelope off its leg, wondering what was so imperative it demanded he wake up at—he glanced at the clock—five twenty-seven in the morning. He slit open the envelope and read:

Dear Severus,

Nymphadora's started showing the first signs of magical exhaustion. It's just a light fever, nothing I'd be worried about otherwise—in fact Andromeda's having quite a time keeping her in bed—yet I'd appreciate it if we could meet a bit earlier than scheduled. I'll be in the lab.

—Ted

Severus dressed quickly, left the note on Remus' pillow and started through the corridors and down the stairs into the dungeons. He informed the Jarvey of Ted's favorite brand of toothpaste and climbed through the portrait hole, to find the Potions master already in the midst of another experiment. Severus watched silently for a moment until he understood what Ted was trying, then stepped up to the table beside him and took over the chopping of the daisy roots. Ted added a few more ingredients and the tan-colored broth in the cauldron settled. He pulled out his wand, pointed it at the cauldron and said, "Coargus."

A small golden strand of light emerged from the end of Ted's wand. It dove into the cauldron and swam about a moment, than surfaced and hovered above the potion, twitching itself into numbers: 45.5.

Ted sighed. "Well, half a percent increase is better than none." He turned towards Severus. "I hope you didn't mind the wake-up call, and I hope that you won't mind joining me in the mornings—I've tried working by myself, but honestly, after all these weeks it's like trying to work without my right arm."

Severus smiled at the praise and said simply, "Of course I don't mind."

"Very good. Shall we crack on?"

So the hours before breakfast were spent in a haze of slightly-yellowish smoke, as Severus and Ted experimented with the first potion and tried to make it magically stronger, than the stronger potion to make it stronger, and so forth. They threw around some combinations that were odd, if theoretically plausible—cockroach brains with steamed bicorn liver, and dragon eggshells with powdered moonstone soaked in salamander blood—searching for the best combination of ingredients to create a surge of magic. After Ted discovered that skinned shrivelfig dipped in the juice of horned slugs and very finely powdered unicorn hair gave a good result, they began fiddling with the 'forty-five and a half' potion—experimenting to see how much of these ingredients to add, when to add them, what else needed to be mixed in to counteract the negative interactions of the shrivelfig and other ingredients, and whether the horned slug juice would be completely overwhelmed by the copious amounts of salamander blood they were using.

All in all, they made a good bit of progress but were so late for breakfast that Severus had to sprint through the corridors to reach Ancient Runes on time.

The rest of the week passed in a hectic, tired haze. Severus woke up at five-thirty each morning to join Ted in the laboratory; afterwards he would cram breakfast down his throat and hurry off to class with his friends. The teachers were giving more homework than ever lately, and Severus found himself working during lunch, dinner, and Potions class—keeping one eye on his essay and the other on Sirius' cauldron. He would have worked during breaks, too, but the first Quidditch match was approaching, and he found it paid to be extremely alert when walking through the corridors. Frank had already ended up in the hospital wing with a carrot for a nose, and the Slytherin beaters had supposedly been jinxed together like Siamese twins. The Marauders, Lily and Alice walked in a pack from class to class; fortunately not many Slytherins were willing to chance all six of them at once. Especially after Avery ended up in bed for the week with warty purple skin, his nose firmly affixed to his rear, coughing up roaches and unable to remember the names of his attackers.