Chapter 2: Mastering the Science

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author.

Thanks go out to VIVAvivacious for the beta of this chapter.

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Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. – Marie Curie.

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St. Mungo's, London: 19th January, 1999

He stared at the ceiling, less than happy about being in the white-washed room.

Snape hated the room, the people, and the very fact that he was still alive. He was supposed to be dead. He had anticipated death. So, why was he still alive and in this godforsaken hospital with people harassing him every hour on the hour? Well, he had a feeling it had something to do with the fact that Miss Hermione "Know-It-All" Granger had seen fit to go back to the Shrieking Shack after Voldemort was dead only to find him still alive...at least, that was what he had been told. Apparently she was the one he had to thank for his continued existence.

Growling under his breath, he turned his neck, causing it to throb slightly, so he could look at the window. The blinds were shut, but the sunlight was already beginning to peek through. What on Earth were the Healers and their underlings doing? It was already half past nine, and his blinds were still closed. Did they think that just because he was injured that he was an invalid who needed to sleep twelve hours a day? He was used to four hours of sleep at any time, and that he was managing to sleep six or seven hours was a miracle. He supposed that had more to do with the potions they were administering to him and the traces of Nagini's venom that was still in his bloodstream.

He heard a knock at the door and sighed heavily. 'If you've any brains, I would stay away if I were you,' Snape growled. His voice was still a little rough from where the snake had torn at his vocal chords.

The door opened just a crack and a young, freckled man poked his head through. 'I am just coming to administer your morning potions, sir,' he stammered. 'Would you like me to open the blinds as well?'

Snape frowned as the man entered the room regardless of his warning. 'Fine, open them, give me my blasted potions, and then get the hell out,' he snapped.

The man hurried to open the blinds before returning to Snape's side and setting out a row of vials. Carefully lifting Snape into a sitting position and propping him against some pillows, he handed Snape the first vial. Snape drank it down, ignoring the foul taste with the ease of someone who was used to them, and continued to drink all the vile concoctions he was handed until he was done. As soon as he had been administered his potions, the nurse retreated from the room quickly without a backwards glance.

Snape relaxed against the pillows he was seated against as soon as the door was closed. Pleased at having some natural light in the room, he reached out a hand towards the drawers on the opposite wall and summoned a book and the pair of glasses that had been left for him. He hated having to wear the silly things, but apparently his perfect vision had been one of the things to suffer when he was injured. If he wanted to read, he would have to do so with the spectacles on.

He finally looked down at the book and saw the title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Who on Earth had thought to leave him that book? Opening the cover, he read the list of names scribbled there. His breath hitched when he read Albus Dumbledore in his former master's usual flourish, and then his brow furrowed when he read the name directly beneath in neat, familiar script: Hermione Granger. He should have known the silly chit would come to visit him.

He'd have the book returned to her after he read it.

Half an hour after beginning, Snape suddenly realised exactly what it was he was reading. He was reading his death sentence, or rather, the reason why Voldemort had tried to kill him. Dumbledore had never said a word to him...not a thing about a wand or a cloak or a ring. He had thought the ring was a just a Horcrux, but it was something far more serious than just that. Perhaps there was more to the ring than just the curses that the Dark Lord had applied to it? Shaking his head, he closed the book. He would not think on something that could not be undone.

A short while later, the door opened again, and his Healer walked in. 'Ah, Professor Snape, good to see you awake,' he said, voice dripping with false sincerity.

'I can't say I feel the same way about you, Healer Turner,' Snape replied rudely, roughly removing his glasses and crossing his arms over his chest.

'Relax, Snape,' Turner said, dropping all false pretences of civility. 'I'm just here to check your vitals. I wouldn't be here, either, if I had any other choice.'

Snape snorted as the younger man performed a few diagnostic spells on him. Healer Turner left his room as swiftly as he came, his silence on leaving more telling than any conversation between them would have been. Confident that he was reasonably healthy despite his neck and blood, Snape relaxed back against the pillows, tilting his head to the side so he could stare out the window.

As he reclined in silence, he thought. The fates were tricky indeed to play him and lead him sweetly towards death, only to deny it to him at the last moment. He had been sent back to impose on the world his presence once more. Sighing, he thought that perhaps he still had an unfulfilled role to assume, something left for him in this life he had to complete before he could finally move onto a new life. He thought it was mighty rich of the person playing with his life threads, to continue to play him after what life had thrown him until that point.

Snape supposed that he would just have to let the events unfold.

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Camden, London: 5th June, 2009

Looking out over her classroom, the teacher sighed softly.

Hermione had been sitting and listening to the scratching of quills against parchment and the occasional coughing fit for almost three hours. The College year was drawing to a close, and she was overseeing her class's final exam. Hermione had taken a part-time stint as a Potions lecturer for a couple of classes at the London Institute of Magic. It was three days a week in London, which provided ample income to maintain her house and provide for all of her basic needs, not to mention potion ingredients. Another upside was that it freed up the rest of her time for her life's most important work – her potions.

Unfortunately, with the summer break just around the corner, Hermione would be forced to resume making potions for apothecaries to keep herself from going broke in the three months without classes to teach. It wasn't such a bad life, really. She had everything she needed: a small house of her own with a laboratory in the basement, enough money to get by, and friends who supported her ambition. She had never walked through life wanting wealth, power, or fame. The only thing she desired more than anything else was knowledge and the wisdom to use it well.

She drummed her fingers lightly against her desk as she checked her silver wrist watch. It was only half past three in the afternoon. There was still another half hour until time was up.

Sighing heavily, she stared at the wood grain of her desk, tracing the slight ridges of imperfections with her index finger. Her thoughts travelled to the upcoming Potions symposium that was just a few short days away. She could have used work as an excuse not to attend, if not for the fact that classes for the year finished inconveniently early. She knew the organisers deliberately planned it that way so there were no excuses not to attend ... short of death, which would exempt a person from attendance without causing offense. And because Hermione could never stand it when something like that was held over her head, she attended, but not without some complaint.

It appeared, as far as her potions brewing went, that she had hit a brick wall. It stood between her and her brewing like the Berlin Wall had once segregated the two halves of many a family. Hermione felt like a stranger in her own mind at times like those ... able to see and touch everything, but not quite able to find what it was she was searching for. Her lack of focus was due mostly to the fact she had been around her potions by herself, without asking for a stitch of help, for too long.

Glancing down at her watch again, she noted that it was time to end the exam. 'All right, ladies and gentlemen,' she said with more enthusiasm than she felt. 'It is now time to put your quills down and hand in your papers. Pass all of them to the person on the left end of the row and then all down to the front.'

Her students hurried to comply, packing up their things and leaving without a backward glance.

As soon as the door closed behind the last one, she went to the front and collected the neat stack of papers. She had a long few days ahead of her if she was to get all of her marking done before the symposium. Deciding not to put off the inevitable any longer, she packed up her own desk for the last time until the new school semester and left the classroom. She walked the short way to the Apparation point, and soon where she had been standing, there was an empty space.

Reappearing in the entry hall of her house, she removed her teaching robes and hung them on the coat hooks by the door. She took her work to the sitting room and deposited her students' exams on the coffee table in front of the armchairs. Heading into the kitchen, she put the kettle on to boil and began pulling things out of the freezer for dinner. Settling on the idea of a stir fry, she left some frozen tofu on the bench and made herself a pot of green tea before retreating back to her sitting room. The day had been reasonably warm, so her house was thankfully not as cold as it usually was.

Pulling out a pot of red ink, she picked up the exam on the top of the pile and set to work. Two hours and one third of the way through the first stack of exams later, Hermione set them aside and pottered back to the kitchen to begin preparing her stir fry. As she was chopping the carrots, she thought about how similar it was to cut into root of asphodel, especially when preparing it in the traditional fashion. She had been too preoccupied with exams and marking over the past few days that all her personal research had been set to the side until she had time to try to break through the wall she had reached with her formula.

Flicking some water at her wok, she watched as it sizzled and evaporated before adding a little oil to the pan and tossing in some minced garlic.

She added the chopped tofu and vegetables she had washed and sliced up, stirring them through with seasoning and soy sauce. She fished out a snow pea from the wok and tasted it before tipping her dinner onto her plate, satisfied with the flavour. Taking her food back into the sitting room with her, she sat down on the couch and turned on her television. She flicked through the channels until she found a documentary on seals.

Smiling, she settled in to eat, and when she was finished, she Banished her plate to the kitchen sink and continued with her marking.

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Greenwich, Ipswich: 5th June, 2009

Snape frowned at the potion in front of him before picking up the cauldron by the handle and carrying it back over to the row of sinks in his shed laboratory.

Growling under his breath, he tipped the potion into the sink and placed the cauldron into the bottom, filling it with hot water to soak off the sticky residue. It was his fourth failed attempt that week, and no matter how many times he tweaked the formula, it was never quite right; sometimes it even went horrifically wrong. But that was the nature of potions.

They were unstable, and they depended a lot on precision. He sighed, leaning against the bench and closing his eyes for a moment, before pushing away and walking to collect a new cauldron.

He selected a glass cauldron of the exact same size as the one in the sink and filled it halfway with water. Setting the flame beneath it to begin heating the contents, he went to the ingredients cupboard and began pulling out the ones for his base: fluxweed, Shrivelfig juice, valerian, moondew, and wormwood essence.

He crushed five Shrivelfigs with the side of his knife, drawing the blade along them in a few spots to open them up more so the juices could flow from them with more ease. The valerian, he used three inches of the root and minced it as finely as he could manage before adding it to the lightly bubbling mix. Stirring it ten times counter-clockwise, he continued adding the other ingredients accordingly until he was stirring a base of cloudy white liquid. He turned the heat down so the potion only simmered slightly, small bubbles appearing on the surface.

He left it in that state and went to collect another lot of potions for the Infirmary that he had on stasis since the night before. His base would need another day to mature enough to begin the next steps. Noting the time in his workbook, he closed it and left to work on his Blood Replenishing potion. Apparently the last Quidditch match of the season was occurring in two days, and Poppy Pomfrey feared the worst. The professors always got nervous when the last match was Slytherin versus Gryffindor.

He removed the stasis charm and turned on the flame beneath it, immediately setting it to a low heat to warm it again. There were only a few more steps left until it was completed and he could decant the doses. He added salamander blood to the potion, stirring clockwise continuously before adding the final ingredient, honeywater. He turned up the heat, stirring with a silver rod all the while, until the potion began to boil. Allowing it to boil for three minutes exactly, he reduced the heat in stages before extinguishing the flame.

Removing the stirring rod, he reached for a silver spoon and extracted some of the potion, dipping a long finger in to test the consistency and then wafting the scent to his nose to smell. It was the perfect colour, consistency, and smell, and he was sure it would taste sweet like the honeywater he added at the end. Unlike a lot of other Potions masters, he believed in making adjustments to potions in order to make them easier to stomach. Well, the sort of potions people had to take when the injury or illness was not self-inflicted. He would never improve the taste of a hangover cure.

Ten minutes later, it had cooled enough to decant, and he had filled enough vials with the Blood Replenishing potion to store in two small crates.

He left his base simmering on the bench and cast a charm on the room to prevent anything from falling into it. Sure his potion would not be tainted while he was away, he took the two crates of potion to the house with him and wrote a missive to Poppy Pomfrey to attach to it. He sent them via the Floo network to the Hogwarts Infirmary before leaving his study and heading to the kitchen.

He whipped up two ham, lettuce, and mustard seed sandwiches, then took them with him to the sitting room and summoned one of his books to read. He ate all his food and continued to read for an hour before he fell asleep, drowsy from a morning of constant brewing.

He woke up with a start a few hours later and saw that it was already five in the evening. Removing his glasses from the end of his nose and blinking rapidly, he launched himself from the chair and walked out the room and through the back door, heading towards his shed to check that there were no changes to his potion base. When he found it unchanged, he locked the shed for the night and returned to his house, heading straight up to his study to write up a to-do list. He had a great deal to complete before the symposium.

On entering, he heard a soft hoot and saw his hawk owl perched on his stand. Snape smiled slightly and went over to his familiar, allowing him to nip at his fingers.

'Hello, Hephaestus,' he greeted quietly. 'I suppose you've come to be fed then?'

Another hoot indicated that he was, indeed, looking for some food. Snape went to his desk and opened a drawer, pulling out some of the owl food he kept there and putting it on a plate. He held out an arm and Hephaestus flew across the room to settle onto it. Snape let his owl step from his arm and onto the desk to eat.

'There you go, bird,' he said gruffly.

He settled into his chair and pulled out a sheet of parchment and some black ink, dipping the end of his quill into the pot and beginning his list.

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To be continued.