The Emerald Terror

Potion Magic

The Emerald Terror

Summary: It wasn't supposed to end like this. The light was supposed to win and everyone should have continued on living peacefully. Too bad the muggles don't believe in happily ever after... nor coexistence it seems. "Goodbye Magic." Time travel fic.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Chapter Six: Potion Magic

--- POV Severus Snape ---

Severus looks around the shop in amazement of all the different potion related items it had on display. Slipping further in his onyx eyes quickly scan the room for another person but see no one else there. Sighing he decides to wait here for a bit in hopes that Potter and Black would finish their shopping and go home. Meanwhile, it couldn't hurt to explore this potions' sanctuary, could it?

He's near a second-row self when the sudden opening of the shop door causes him to dive for cover.

Potter looks slightly nervous as he tries to convince Black that they should go back. After all, this was way too close to Knockturn for his parents to allow and he didn't want them to make the mutt go home if they were caught. Black rolled his eyes at this and stepped into the shop. Unshakable in his knowledge that the muggleborn, he refused to call them anything else since that incident with Lilly last year, who ran this place wouldn't do anything to them. Potter didn't look very consoled by this, he seemed to have heard stories about "Knockturn Alley's Mudblood" from his parents that Black insisted were simply tales to stop kids from wandering past the shop and thus into the "dark" alley.

The teen had heard a few of the stories as well. Of course he didn't really know what to believe about them between Lucius' strict disbelief that a 'mudblood' was capable of all those things and his father's wholehearted belief that the person was the reason Mother had married Tobias instead of himself. Not only that but Lilly was a muggleborn as well and she was probably capable of a lot of the things Lucius said weren't possible due to the shop owner's dirty blood. Merlin he had seen her easily do half the tasks on the blonde's list himself.

"James Potter and Sirius Black? Shouldn't you two be in Diagon Alley?" A voice asks, sounding about as old as Lucius if not even younger. Black and Potter turn sharply towards the source as Severus ducks farther behind the shelf, moving along it so that onyx orbs could see who was speaking without being seen by the two boys.

Lets just say he wasn't anything like the three had expected.

He stood at about average height for his apparent 23 to 25 years, far younger than any child had been lead to believe by the stories (Even if Severus could make out the shimmering of glamours when he tried hard enough, they still should have been brighter than they were if he was actually anywhere near that old), and he wasn't wearing wizarding robes but a pair of muggle jeans with no shirt. His blond hair fell to his waist in a thick braid down his back, a pair of glasses obscuring green eyes that remind the future spy painfully of Lilly from view, bangs covering the left side of his face hiding it as well. His rather femininely built yet unquestionably strong body was covered in scars overlaid with stationary tattoos that were probably muggle, even if most of the images were definitely from the wizarding world. Case in point being a phoenix, wings spread wide in flight, wrapping itself around his upper arm.

"How do you know our names?!" Potter demanded, Black to scared to speak now that he was actually faced with the person he had only moments ago discredited all the stories about.

"I make it my business to know the identities of everyone who steps into my shop Mr. Potter. Now if you would please take your friend with you and go back to where you belong."

"You can't tell us what to do!"

"I do believe that I can Mr. Black. This is, after all, my shop. Or are you going to be like your mother and declare that I have no right to my own property? I assure you that you can take that up with the goblins at Gringotts if you wish. This place is under my name entirely and legally." He seemed bored when he gave that reply. As if it were the same answer to the same accusations made by almost every one of his customers.

"Tha-That's not what I meant!"

"Then what, dear magic, did you mean?"

"We should go, sorry for interrupting you." Potter cuts in before Black can make an even bigger fool of himself than he already has. The two leave quickly, muttering to each other about where their prospective victim had probably run off to. His eyes follow them out for a moment, pained longing flickering in the aged pools that just seemed to know. Seer eyes, Mother always called them, though before now the Half Blood Prince had never seen a pair himself. She'd said that she once went to school with a boy who had seer eyes, but that he had died only a month or two after he came.

"You can come out now Mr. Snape. I didn't think I'd be seeing you for a few more years however." He says, those seer eyes gazing expectantly in the boy's direction. Caught, the teen move away from from his hiding place not really knowing what to do.

"Thank you." The words feel wrong on his tongue, not having said them to anyone in so long that he'd almost forgotten how to.

"For what? This is a Potions shop, I doubt those two understand much past the foolish wand waving part when it comes to our dear magic. It's even more questionable if they understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind and ensnaring the senses." Snape's eyes widen, someone other than his Mother finally understood! Even better, he had been able to put into words what neither one of them could even begin to describe.

"You however, Mr.Snape, are different in that respect. Magic has certainly bestowed upon you a gift, I beg of you to use it well." He talks strange, though I think I've heard the stiff sentence structure somewhere before, and for some reason I don't , truly his own. Parts of it are don't get me wrong, but he sounds like I do when Lady Malfoy decides to acknowledge my presence. Face blank enough to make Lucius want to use it to show his father what a Slytherin should look like (Something about how his father is far too personal with the Dark Lord, I usually tune that rant of his out though. It doesn't help that Lucius apparently has Lady Malfoy on his side of the matter so he goes off into how his father is obviously getting old and should step down as head of the family. Only, then he turns around and berates himself for such a comment since he basically just said he thinks the man should die.), he turns to go back through the curtain revealing an even heavier scarred back with more tattoos. On his right shoulder, the black silhouettes of a wolf, dog, and stag played together in the light of a full moon over what I believe is a Mimbulus Mimbletonia plant growing in a pot on the back of his arm. On the opposite shoulder was a Hungarian Horntail dragon chomping down viciously on a broomstick. Further down a thestral and a unicorn played together in the middle of his back and, due to his braid, I could just make out an owl using the head of a wolf cub as a perch on the back of his neck.

"Have a look around, I'll answer any of your questions when I come back."

"Can I go back there?" I tense as soon as the question leaves my mouth, I wasn't even supposed to be here yet I'm imposing my presence onto him. Has merely one successful escape turned me into a Gryffindor? I hope not! I go to assure him that it wasn't necessary but first to my surprise and then to my anger he laughs at my request.

"Forgive me, dear Magic. It's simply that you are the last person I would suspect to want their presence around one of my cauldrons."

"Why?" The smile that seems to take years off what is visible of his face disappears and those eyes are on me once more. They are sad, regretful even, but unlike other eyes in the past that have reflected the same emotions, I see neither pity nor hope in them.

"No reason, young master."