The Preponderance of Exotica

Disclaimer: All the good stuff is JKR's. I'm just along for the ride.

Chapter 5 The Preponderance of Exotica

It was a bit intimidating, really.

She imagined her little homegrown lab under his merciless, critical gaze. He would surely approve of the scales, the cauldrons, the ambarine goggles . . . but she cringed to think what he might say about her considerable collection of glassware and electrical devices. She could almost hear it now: some cutting remark about Muggle recidivism, delivered in that dry, sarcastic tone . . . the one that had always been able to send her off to cry in the girls' loo.

Shit. What was I thinking? Why not just stab myself in the eye with a fork?

Well, it was too late to turn back now; he would likely be here any minute.

Besides, you know why you did it. Because it's Snape.

Yes. Severus Snape, the most skilled philtrist of his generation, here in her laboratory. Assisting her, advising her, working with her. There was simply no way she could pass up such an opportunity. If it meant enduring some verbal abuse, surely she could manage that? It had been ten years, after all. She was a grown woman now, and more . . . resilient.

Except that she didn't feel at all resilient at the moment. Or even grown up, for that matter. A certain ease had developed between the two of them the evening before, but it had been helped along by the sunset, and the meal, and by a bottle and a half of very good wine.

Now it was morning, and that sense of equality and camaraderie had proved as evanescent as last night's dreams.

She breathed deeply and busied her hands scrubbing the parviflora roots.

You're colleagues now. Just two colleagues working on a project together. He's not Professor Snape anymore, he's just Snape.

The knock at the door made her jump. "Pase," she said automatically, and then felt foolish, for of course it was him. Drying her hands on a lab towel, she opened the door. "Come in, I mean."

He gave a brief nod. "Miss Granger."

"Snape," she said, and stood aside to let him enter. "Would you like some tea? Or . . . have you had breakfast? Would you like something to eat?" Would you mind if I ducked into the kitchen for a quick shot or two of Firewhisky?

"No, thank you," he said. "I'd just as soon get started, if it's all the same to you."

Well, you never were one for the social niceties, were you?

Still, she realized, working would likely calm her as quickly as anything. "I was just getting the things together."

She handed him the recipe and watched as he scanned down the list of ingredients.

"Cassia bark, gingerroot, cranesbill," he said, and looked up at her. "Antiemetics. Makes one vomit, does it, this invisibility root?"

She made a face and nodded.

He thought for a moment. "If I might make a suggestion?"

"Of course."

"Have you got any Viburnum opulus?"

"I believe so, yes."

"You might try substituting it for the cassia bark. Its aroma isn't as pleasing, but it has a powerful antispasmodic property that would be more effective, in my opinion."

He followed her across to the little storeroom and stood in the doorway while she climbed the ladder and rummaged among the jars and packets.

"Here you go," she said, handing him down a dusty jar labeled Cramp Root.

"Excellent." He consulted the handwritten sheet again. "Have you considered adding something to improve stability?"

She paused in her descent. "Such as?"

"A very small amount of powdered bovine abomasum would do, I should think. And would have the advantage of helping to counteract the gastric upset as well."

"I haven't got cow; how about alpaca stomach lining?"

"That should work."

"Over there." She pointed to a spot on the first shelf. "In the small brown bottle."

He was wearing a plain white shirt with the first button undone. As he bent to retrieve the bottle, his hair swung forward and she could clearly see, from her vantage point on the ladder, the shiny purplish scar that ran down the length of his neck and disappeared beneath the shirt collar. For a fleeting moment she had a mad impulse to lean down and press her mouth to his neck, to see if the two scars fit together like the pieces of some grisly jigsaw puzzle.

He stood up, bottle in hand, and the scar disappeared from view beneath his hair.

In the lab, he began cutting the parviflora root while she gathered the rest of the equipment. His movements were as precise as ever, the translucent slices falling away evenly behind his blade. The only difference, she thought, was in his hands themselves: at school they had always been stained and discolored, especially at the fingertips. Now, although a tracery of scars remained, his hands were as pale as the rest of him.

"You have an interesting assortment of supplies," he said.

"Meaning?"

"Quite a few things I didn't recognize."

"I travel a bit."

"Collecting?"

"And studying, yes."

"Why the preponderance of exotica?"

She paused, unsure of how to make her point without giving offense, then forged ahead. "It's my observation that European wizardry is remarkably complacent and insular. Present company excepted, of course."

He turned to look at her and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, so she continued.

"Every potions text I ever saw when I was in school was based on the so-called 'classical' materials," she said. "The stuff that European philtrists and herbalists have been working with for centuries."

He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand. "Granted, with the occasional 'exotic' ingredient from India, or China. Tell me I'm wrong."

He looked amused, but said, "You are not wrong."

She waved a pipette in the direction of the French doors. "There are whole continents out there that we've just been ignoring, for hundreds of years! Have you any idea the number of botanical species in the Amazonian rainforest?"

"None whatsoever."

"I've spent ten years collecting specimens there, and haven't begun to scratch the surface. And I've never even been to Africa...who knows what's there?"

"The Africans do, I should imagine."

"Very clever, Snape. Ha ha. And is anyone asking them?"

"Not that I know of."

"And consider this...did you know that Muggles are discovering whole ecosystems in the depths of the oceans? All manner of flora and fauna that have never seen the sun, that live off the heat from thermal vents in the ocean floor?"

"I did not," he admitted. "And you think such organisms would have magical uses?"

"How could they not? Think about it...we have a whole magical pharmacopoeia developed from plants and animals found on a very small fraction of the world's surface. How likely is it that every possible magical ingredient just happened to lie within easy reach of medieval European wizards?"

"I can think of a far more important question."

"Which is?"

"Am I going to continue to do all the work here whilst you witter on about darkest Africa and the creatures living in Davy Jones's locker?"

"You were the one who asked."

"Indeed. Pass me those scales."

"All I'm saying is, there's a sodding gold mine out there, and European wizards are too snobbish and ethnocentric to explore it."

"You could be right. The scales, please."

By noon they had all the ingredients assembled, weighed, and measured. Feeling a little of her earlier nervousness returning, Hermione set a 2,000 ml Griffin beaker on the stirrer plate and filled it to the halfway mark with distilled water, then added the sliced parviflora and gingerroot.

Snape regarded beaker and plate silently for a moment, and then said, "I don't imagine those came from Paracelsus."

"No."

He consulted the recipe sheet, which was by now somewhat smudged. "'Two hours' humectation with gentle agitation,'" he read. "Do you have an apprentice handy, or shall we take it in turns?"

"Neither," she said, reddening slightly and dropping a stirrer bar gently into the beaker. "It's, um, an electrical device. Very simple, really...the bar has a magnet at the center, and when you turn it on..." she demonstrated "...a corresponding magnet in the plate makes the bar spin."

"And you can vary the speed?"

"Yes, with this knob. You see?"

"Ah, yes. Really quite clever." He turned to look at her. "Is something wrong, Miss Granger?"

"What? Oh, no, I was just...well, I suppose I was worried that you wouldn't approve."

"Why shouldn't I approve?"

"You know, Muggle apparatus and all. We never used anything like this at Hogwarts."

He turned his attention back to the stirrer plate, watching the mixture revolve slowly in the beaker.

"Electrical devices don't work at Hogwarts, Miss Granger. That doesn't mean I'm somehow opposed to them."

She let out a slow breath. Fuck me, that's a relief. "Let's leave it to stir itself, then, and go find some lunch...I'm starving. I have an intense craving for Casa Fernando's seafood-stuffed cabbage."

"Are you sure that's wise? If we're going to be testing this potion this afternoon, something a bit gentler on the stomach might be in order."

She looked at him in surprise. "You didn't think we'd be testing it on ourselves, did you?"

"I did, rather."

"Good god, no. Not for another day or two at least. We have to try it out first on Wilbur."

"And who is Wilbur, might I ask?"

She grinned. "Patience, my young Padawan. All things in their proper season. And right now it is the season for cabbage stuffed with prawns and octopus."

A/N: Philtrist is a word I made up, because I needed a term that meant "professional potions maker." I know that lots of fanfic writers treat "potions master" in this way...the way we use the adjective master in phrases like master carpenter ...but in canon, "potions master" just means "potions teacher." Alchemist didn't quite suit my purporses either, since references to it in canon don't seem to include modern potion-making. So, unable to find a word to suit my purposes, I invented one. Y'all are welcome to use it. You can thank me later.