Chapter Six

Chapter Six

'It was one thing for her potion to eat her dress, Severus,' Minerva said, shuddering at the thought of what the female staff had witnessed having taken place in any other part of the castle, 'but quite another for it to have eaten the Potions classroom.'

'Did you never have a Potions accident when you were at school, Minerva?' Snape countered, horribly aware that his argument was feeble at best.

'Not of that magnitude,' McGonagall retorted. 'And may I remind you that whilst Miss Lovegood is indeed at school, she is no longer a student?'

'Even I can't remember anything quite so spectacular,' Dumbledore added.

'Don't be ridiculous, you meddling old fool,' Severus snorted. 'When I was at school, Sirius Black blew up greenhouse four. If I recall correctly, which I most certainly do, the hole was almost as deep as the lake, and it took four days to find all of the students, most of whom landed in Wales.'

'That was a Herbology accident, Severus,' Dumbledore replied, as though he were making some point or other.

'Shut up, you,' Severus hissed, refusing to go any further down that path. It was bad enough that he had had to come up here to be reprimanded for something quite outwith his control, albeit something that should have been firmly within that very control, without Dumbledore's interference in matters.

'What on earth gave you the idea that a girl with no training whatsoever could be put in charge of fourth years?' Minerva asked, giving Dumbledore a hard look as she took the business back into her own hands. 'Fourth year Slytherins at that,' she added, rather more pointedly than Snape thought was necessary.

'I would have thought that, as the headmistress of an institute of learning, you would be the first to recognise that everyone has to learn,' Severus replied.

'Not at the cost of the very institute of learning you have mentioned,' Minerva retorted. 'We have only just rebuilt this castle, Severus,' she said, drawing herself up, and quite clearly enjoying her superiority in the matter. 'I shall not permit you to allow it to be reduced to a pile of rubble again.'

'Hardly a pile of rubble,' Severus snapped, wanting to be done with the business now. 'One small wall has been damaged.'

'Her potion ate the very stones, Severus,' Minerva replied. 'Just what was it anyway?'

'Perhaps if you would allow me to investigate matters fully, instead of sitting here reminiscing over the recent past, I would be able to tell you.' Severus began to stand, hoping to edge himself out of the room.

'Not so fast, Severus,' Minerva snapped. 'No more unsupervised teaching, not until I have had a chance to assess Miss Lovegood's abilities.'

'What makes you think it was her fault?' Snape replied, wondering if he should have exited without a parting shot, and mulling over the fact that he would just have to put up with sitting behind his desk whilst Luna taught his classes; it wasn't just as appealing as staying in his rooms, reading and drinking whisky and doing nothing much else at all, but considerably better than actually teaching.

'I am not blaming Miss Lovegood, Severus,' the headmistress replied, giving him a victory smile that Snape didn't much like the look of. 'I'm blaming you.'

*****

'I wonder if I might ask why you saw fit to mix potassium permanganate with bat's blood and...' Severus trailed off, looking down at the hasty scrawl he had made as Luna had evacuated the pupils from the first class after lunch, and Filch and the Magical Reversal Squad swung into somewhat belated action to save what they could of the Potions classroom. 'Why did you add mare's milk?'

'It is a well known aid to the digestion, Severus,' Luna replied. 'In fact I'm thinking of adding it to all of the potions now.'

'No, no, no,' he said, trying to backtrack, and not bothering to point out that only the really foolhardy would see fit to ingest an unguent for spreading on dragon burns. 'Let us return to basics, Miss Lovegood. In Potions we do not mix inorganic matter with organic matter... never... not ever.'

'Mare's milk is organic,' she said.

'Potassium permanganate, however, is not,' Snape replied. 'You are a witch, Miss Lovegood. Might I enquire what such a substance was doing in a potion at all?'

'Oh,' she said. 'Perhaps that's where it all went wrong. I find potions often taste and look horrible, so I added it to turn it from a ghastly milky red to a lovely purple colour,' she added. 'And it worked. I was really pleased about that... my first experiment, and it worked.'

'Miss Lovegood, it is irrelevant if a potion is aesthetically pleasing, as long as it produces results... turning it purple doesn't count towards the efficacy,' he replied. 'No more experiments, if you please.'

'Even if I reduce the amount?' she asked. 'It wasn't too bad when I did it earlier in the day with the first years with Boil Paste.'

'It ate your dress, Miss Lovegood.'

'Yes, but it ate the boils too. Will I still be allowed to teach?' Luna asked, steering away from the disaster. 'I did so enjoy it.'

'Only if I am in the classroom.'

'Oh, I'm sure I won't mind that. You never know, you might pick up a few tips,' she replied in a way that made Severus quite sure that her remark was totally devoid of irony, and all the more frightening for that. 'But don't go stealing any of my ideas.'

*****

Severus was sitting with his feet up on his desk, sipping at his usual after dinner glass of Glenfiddich, the one that more often than not preceded another three or five or so, until the last one was frequently a pre-breakfast one. He felt rather more pleased than intruded upon when the door was pushed open by someone who deemed knocking to be unnecessary.

'What can I do for you tonight, Miss Lovegood?' he asked, waving her and her blue and gold box into a seat. 'More un-hatched eggs?' he asked, nodding across to where a similar box sat on his workbench, one that to anyone without the most vivid of imaginations was quite clearly empty of all but some pink straw.

'No, of course not,' she replied, handing him a glass of clear tea, as he found that his whisky glass was empty, and yet he knew he had a least two fingers left. 'It's advance copies of tomorrow's "Quibbler". Dad owled them over so everyone on the staff of Hogwarts can have one on a Monday night, and not have to wait until a Tuesday morning.'

'How thoughtful,' Severus replied, pushing the tea aside, and pouring another few fingers of whisky, which he downed in one go in case they too disappeared, failing to notice that they tasted suspiciously like cold tea, until he found Luna watching him carefully. 'Miss Lovegood,' he said, 'I have turned a blind eye to your destroying my classroom, to having blue and gold boxes littering my living quarters, and even to you...not me though... arranging whatever nonsense you wish to for Minerva's upcoming Yule Ball.'

'You're drawing a line at the whisky, aren't you?' she asked. 'I thought you might.'

'I am,' he said, rather enjoying the way her eyes sparkled when she knew she had been bested, as though her next efforts would be better, or worse, as the case was more likely to be. 'Now, what can I do for you tonight?' he repeated.

'Oh, yes,' she replied, as if just remembering why she had called. 'I was wondering if I would be permitted to leave an hour early next Friday, straight after the last class. A week this Friday coming.'

Severus shrugged; there was no good reason why she should have to hang about after classes, yet he found he had to stifle a little twist of disappointment that she might have a life beyond her two and a half day tenure as his apprentice.

'I was going to meet up with some old friends from school,' she added when he failed to reply. 'And I was going to ask if you would watch the Snorkack eggs while I'm away, in case I'm late...' She trailed off, biting her lip in a way that he found quite endearing, and he had to push away the speculation as to what her lip, indeed both of her lips, would taste like.

'Yes, of course, Miss Lovegood, that will be fine,' he said, stifling the urge to tell her that the damned Gryffindors he assumed she meant by "friends" were unworthy of her.

'Thank you,' she said, standing from the table, as Severus tried in vain to think up some sort of reason to prolong her company. She was glancing across the room to where a large empty beaker sat next to a bubbling cauldron. 'If that's Lupin's Wolfsbane, would you like me to hand it in to him on my way upstairs? I pass the staffroom anyway.'

'Indeed,' he said. 'In fact you may drop it into him every night this week, Miss Lovegood. Let us call it your quid for my pro quo.' He sat back, watching her measure the thick gluey mess into the beaker, satisfied that he had arranged for a little of her company after dinner each evening for the next week, and had only had to forfeit the dubious pleasure of the werewolf's in exchange.

'Oh, I almost forgot,' she said, turning in the door as she was leaving, and holding out a magazine. 'Your "Quibbler".'

'And I almost forgot too,' he replied. 'Do not add anything... organic or inorganic ... to that Wolfsbane, Miss Lovegood.'

'Not even mare's milk?' she asked.

*****

'I heard they was searching for survivors at one point,' Hagrid said. 'Place were filled with poisonous fumes and rubble.'

'I'd like to know where Snape was at the time,' Dean remarked, wondering if it had been appropriate to do so.

'Over a cauldron, perfecting love potions maybe?' Flitwick offered in a rare moment of frivolity.

'He were called to Minerva,' Hagrid said darkly.

'I'm sure he managed to talk himself out of things. It's a pity about that wall though,' Binns murmured. 'She used to watch me through it.'

'Oh, well,' Dean said brightly, 'from what I heard the hole is big enough for the whole school to watch you through now.'

Lupin sat behind his "Evening Prophet", wondering what Binns had been in the dungeon for in the first place for Luna to watch him through the wall, and then decided it wasn't worth the effort of asking. He hauled himself to his feet, just remembering he should be heading to the very dungeons himself for his Wolfsbane, when the door was flung open.

'Sorry to intrude,' Luna said brightly, 'but I've got a present for everyone.' She walked around the room, handing everyone a copy of the "Quibbler", stopping at last at Lupin. 'Severus said to give you this, Remus,' she said, handing the werewolf a brown paper bag.

'Thanks,' Lupin said, winking at her and holding the door open. 'I'll walk you up to your room.'

'I'm going to pop into the ladies' staffroom first,' Luna replied, 'but you can wait for me.'

Flitwick watched the door close, a frown creasing his forehead, before dropping his head to the magazine in his hand, quite forgetting it was the "Quibbler". 'Oh, Merlin's tits,' he gasped, in a way that was so unlike him that the rest of the male staff members stared at him.

'Oh dear,' Binns remarked. 'One should be very careful of what one says to the press.'

'Blimey,' Dean said, letting out a guffaw of laughter, as Hagrid struggled with the first sentence of the article the rest of them had just read.

*****

'Quite defensive, he was,' Minerva remarked, setting her teacup down. 'Can you imagine if anyone else had done such a thing?'

'I recall he made poor Neville Longbottom late for Herbology once, by making him scrub one tiny stain from a potion he had allowed to overflow,' Pomona remarked, her pipe puffing an angry red that smelled of cranberries. 'As though his mouldy old stone had ever been clean in the first place.'

'Yes, he was always angry for no apparent reason,' Aurora said. 'Quite the most difficult man I have ever encountered.'

'I like angry men,' Septima said. 'There's something incredibly... incredible about anger.'

'Anger is passion,' Sybill agreed. 'I have seen that in his stars, a passionate man requiring a strong and passionate woman.'

'Like yourself, Sybill dear?' Aurora asked dryly, with a sidelong smile at Minerva.

'I'm sure I saw him smile at dinner,' Poppy said. 'I don't think he's terribly angry at all today.'

'Smile? Severus?' Minerva asked. 'Nonsense! He has a delicate stomach. Perhaps the sorbet was too acidic,' she added, sharing a smile of her own with Aurora, and trying to head off the inevitable points scoring of the two witches least likely to curry favour with Snape. She glanced across to the door as it swung open.

'Good evening, ladies,' Luna said, shoving the door shut with her bottom. 'Dad has sent you all a little gift. He's going to do so every week, so that you can all be first to read what's going on,' she said, handing each of the women a copy of the "Quibbler".

*****

Severus poured another glass of the Glenfiddich, lit a cigarette now that he was unlikely to have any more visitors, and hoisted his long legs onto his table. He reached across the table for the copy of "Which Potions" monthly, only to find it was the damned "Quibbler". He was rather comfortable though, and he couldn't be bothered to move. He unfolded it and gazed at the front page, hoping he was drunk, as the whisky seemed to rise in his throat.

"Our campaign to have the Squibs of the world recognised gained substantial weight today by Hogwarts Potions Master and erstwhile war hero-cum-Death Eater, Professor Severus Snape, suggesting that Arabella Figg should indeed be recognised for laying out Lucius Malfoy, by not only an Order of Merlin, but a first class one. Professor Snape also hinted that, except for himself, there hadn't been a member of the once famous Order of the Phoenix capable of landing a decent hex."

*****