Fire

After discovering that rubies were used in the thirteenth century as a blood-strengthener when paired with powdered emerald, Attica felt that maybe she had hit a breakthrough. She scratched a side note on a spare piece of parchment to remind herself to search the study for another book on the subject after she finished perusing the one before her.

She jumped at the sound of a book slamming shut, and she looked up from her notes in surprise. She looked questioningly at Snape, who was stretching his legs out in front of him. A large closed book lay on the desk.

"The extraction should be complete," he announced.

~~~

The lab was a large, open room with two long tables in the middle. A chalkboard hung on the wall in the front of the room by the stairs and shelving occupied the back wall from top to bottom. Notes had once been written on the chalkboard and the words were still barely visible, as if they had only just been erased the day before rather than close to seventeen years prior. The shelves were full of cauldrons, organized by size and material as well as glass cases full of tools, sorted first by category and then by size. A narrow glass cabinet on the side of the room was full of crystal vials as well as stoppers, beakers, bottles, and flasks.

The room was vaguely reminiscent of the Hogwarts Potions classroom. This fact, combined with the memories she had of her grandfather in this place almost overwhelmed Attica with nostalgia. That nostalgia quickly deepened as she watched Snape gathering and organizing the supplies they were going to need. After months of seeing him only in secret meetings with the Dark Lord and hidden in shrouds of darkness, it was refreshing to see him among the cauldrons once again. She suddenly remembered the first time she had seen him like this.

~~~

The dungeon doors slammed shut, and the students in the classroom jumped collectively. A few of the students stifled nervous giggles. It was double Potions for Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw first years. No one there was what could be considered self-assured on their first day of class with the notoriously wicked Professor Snape. The girl sitting beside Attica had light brown hair and glasses. She looked like she was about to burst into tears from the minute she took her seat beside Attica. When the professor entered with his black robes billowing behind him, Attica held her breath. She wondered if he was really as cruel as people said, and she decided that she would heed one of her grandmother's favorite rhymes:

Sit tight,

Just be bright.

Her grandmother had been fond of teaching Attica life lessons through rhymes. They were utterly silly to her now, of course, but she remembered every one. Her grandmother would have been happy to know that Attica had carried these lessons with her all these years. Rhyming was almost a game to them. Her grandfather would join in as well and offered his jingles to them with a twinkle in his eyes. Her grandmother would roll her eyes at his absurdity and her laughter could warm Attica's darkest days.

Attica swallowed thickly and watched the professor as he glanced at a piece of parchment on the podium. He called out the names on the class list and marked down the presence of the students. With each name called, the student responded with a respectful, "Present." Besides the deep register of the professor's voice and the pathetic squeaks of the student responses, the room was totally silent.

"Attica Flamel," boomed the Potions Master. Attica couldn't find her voice. He looked up, clearly annoyed that someone would dare to miss his class, and Attica forced a croaky, "Present!" Snape narrowed his eyes before lowering them back to the list.

When the last name had been called and the last student marked present, he left the podium and began slowly walking down the center aisle. Attica bit her lip as he passed her seat.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," he said softly. "Many of you will not understand the beauty of the effervescing potion, nor the fierce, yet delicate, force of the brews that can entangle itself in the very lifeblood of every person in this room. These potions can bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses." He paused beside Attica's table and continued in a whisper, "I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't all too daft to learn what I have to teach.*"

Silence followed, and Attica did not dare to look up. Sit tight, Be polite, Don't balk, Just be bright, she recited internally.

"Where would you look if I told you to find a bezoar? Hawkins!"

The unfortunate Hufflepuff in question sat in wide-eyed shock, as if answering a simple question about a stone in a goat's stomach was more than could be lawfully expected of him.

"I don't know, sir," Justin Hawkins muttered.

"No? Let's try this again. Sorwitt!" The black-haired Ravenclaw directly in front of Attica sat up straighter in her chair, ready to flout her brilliance. "What is the difference between monkshood and wolf's bane?*"

Ellen Sorwitt's shoulders slumped, and Attica immediately felt a pang of pity for the girl. Snape was asking a particularly tricky question. There was no difference between monkshood and wolf's bane; they were both common names for the same purple-flowered plant. The girl muttered that she did not know. Attica finally looked up at the professor and made the mistake of meeting his gaze.

"Miss Flamel!" He called suddenly. "I wonder if you could inform your classmate, although I presume you are equally ignorant on the matter of..."

"There is no difference, sir. They are both also referred to as 'aconite'," she said meekly, interrupting Snape's tirade.

"As I thought. Just another..." he scoffed before catching himself. His cold black eyes studied the small blonde child seated before him. "That is correct." He cleared his throat. "And as to the location of a bezoar?"

"One can be found in the stomach of a goat, sir," she replied, gaining a minuscule amount of confidence.

He quickly fired another question: "And why would you want to obtain one?"

"You can use them against poisons, sir," she said politely. Her confidence continued to grow and she gave him a small smile.

"You seem to have at least read the text. Tell me, though, what would I get if I added asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

"Nothing, sir. It wouldn't make a potion. It would just congeal." At this point, her confidence had given her enough courage to meet his gaze, purposefully this time. When she saw that he was glaring at her, she added a quiet "sir" for good measure.

Snape smiled with satisfaction and crossed his arms over his chest. "Aha, and so it seems even a Flamel cannot answer my questions correctly." He paused as he stood imperiously in the quiet classroom. "For your information, Miss Flamel, it makes a sleeping potion so powerful that it is known as the ... why are you shaking your head?" His tone quickly shifted from approval to annoyance, but Attica was still slowly shaking her head.

"Because, with all due respect, sir, it would not make the Draught of the Living Death," she said in a whisper, afraid of his next acerbic comment. But as scared as she was of the imposing man before her, she was equally determined to prove to him that she was not daft.

He looked irritated, and Attica wondered what detention was going to be like. She had not heard good things about detention with Snape. Actually, she had heard nothing good about Snape at all.

"I can assure you that it would, Miss Flamel," his tone was quiet and threatening.

She swallowed as she continued to dig her own proverbial grave. She knew she should just accept what he was telling her and save herself from the violent hiding he was envisioning herself receiving later, but she couldn't stop herself. The triumph in his eyes was taunting her.

"Only if the asphodel was powdered. If the asphodel was grated, the form it most commonly comes in, the potion would not put anyone to sleep, sir," she announced quietly, wondering if her corpse would ride home on the Hogwarts Express.

Professor Snape could only stare at her for a moment before speaking softly. "Five points to Ravenclaw for a ... lucky guess. And do not interrupt me again, Miss Flamel."

As he returned to the podium to begin the day's lecture, Attica saw the corner of his lips turn upward. Maybe it wasn't a real smile, but she would find out later that it was as close to one as a student could ever hope to receive from the formidable Severus Snape.

~~~

The room was pleasantly cool, if a little damp. Snape loomed over the small golden cauldron, and Attica stood at his side awaiting instructions. The liquid inside the cauldron was now a pale red rather than the pearly ivory it had been in the beginning.

"Find me a clean silver cauldron and several flasks, Miss Flamel," the professor said. Attica rushed to the shelves behind them and selected a medium-sized cauldron and five immaculate crystal flasks. She muttered a cleaning charm and waved her wand over the flasks just in case.

She watched as the professor pointed his black wand at the liquid and it rose out of the cauldron, floating the few inches to the silver cauldron she had just placed on the bench. She watched in fascination as the red fluid practically danced in the air before Snape lowered it into the cauldron and it landed with a small splash.

"Can I have the vial back now?" She asked the question in an impatient whisper, afraid that the answer would be "no." When he nodded briefly, she exhaled the breath she was holding and wasted no time grabbing the stoppered vial from the now-empty cauldron and shoving it into her pocket. With the vial back in her possession, she began to relax. Her mind experienced a moment of clarity that she hadn't been quite able to reach since she let it drop into the cauldron what seemed like an eternity ago.

Snape tipped the silver cauldron slightly to the side and, understanding his request without his having to speak it, Attica brought a flask to the lip of the cauldron for the swirling red liquid to be poured into. Four more small flasks were filled and stoppered and lined up perfectly on the bench.

"What's next, Snape?"

"Now we will simply attempt to perform a few simple assessments on the liquid to determine the components of the Elixir."

As it turned out, there were several tests to be performed, and none of them were what Attica would call simple.

By the end of the week, she had aided the professor in implementing sixteen tests. From the flasks, the residue was separated into what seemed like hundreds of small test tubes. Some of the tests involved placing a sample of the component in question into a test tube and mixing it with a small drop of the residue and monitoring the reaction. If the red fluid remained stagnant, that component was not used to create the Stone. Conversely, if the mixture began to bubble when the designated charms were cast, they had successfully found another component of the Stone. Other tests required more advanced spell work and the results were varied and difficult for her to read. The professor had no such difficulty, of course.

They had discovered that aconite was not used in the creation, but there were traces of amber and asphodel, both of which had been on Attica's list of possibilities. There was a touch of some other precious stone as well, but it was proving slightly more difficult to determine which one specifically was used. When treated with the sap of the juniper bush, the sample mixture should have turned the color of the gemstone it contained. Much to Attica's dismay, the mixture had failed to turn red like the ruby she suspected had been used or blue like sapphire. Instead, it had turned a convoluted, murky brown.

For the first time, Snape also seemed irritated with their results as he stood over the muddy liquid in the flask. Pragmatic as ever, he set the flask aside with a whispered stasis charm and continued. After shaking off his initial annoyance, he was able to continue completely unperturbed.

The test for ginger root also proved to be negative, while the results for phoenix feather were overwhelmingly positive. Flames shot out of the test tube with ferocity, and Attica had jumped as the heat licked the thin skin on the back of her right hand. She hadn't expected such bounding flames, and Snape had snatched the tube from her fingers just as she was about to spill it.

"Watch it," he hissed.

He set the test tube carefully in the rack on the bench, and he turned to Attica with a wrinkle in his normally smooth brow. He gently took hold of her right hand, which was bright red from the flames and beginning to swell. She winced at the contact. Leading her to the tap on the other side of the room, he turned the handle and cool water began to flow. He placed Attica's hand under the faucet and summoned a jar of murtlap essence from the supply cabinet. Attica sighed as he applied the substance and the pain transformed into a cool tingling sensation.

"Next time, roll up your sleeves. They could have caught on fire and you would have had a lot more pain to deal with. Elementary Potions safety tips. This is difficult enough without the added danger," he admonished brusquely. "Is that better?" he asked, still allowing her small, injured hand to rest in his larger one.

"Yes, thank you," she replied as she removed her hand from his grasp. She dropped her uninjured hand to her pocket and allowed it to skim over the fabric of her jeans, feeling the hard cylindrical shape of the vial underneath. Its presence calmed her from the indignation she had felt at his reproach. She knew the rules of safety concerning potion-making inside and out. He reiterated them in class year after year and her grandfather had drilled them into her before that. She was insulted that he would think she needed to be chided like a child just because she chose not to roll up her sleeves. She thought about voicing her frustration, but she remembered that she still needed him to help her and that arguing would only prolong their results, so she held her tongue and decided to concentrate on the relief she was receiving from the essence on her hand instead.

He looked at her for a long moment and then appeared to decide something. "That is all for today. It is late." He turned and began to clean the instruments that had been used during the session. When she did not move from the floor, he said, "You may go." Her irritation grew. She took another deep breath and removed the vial from her pocket, squeezing it tightly with her uninjured hand.

Then, as if it were only a sudden touch of curiosity, he said, "You seem quite attached to that vial. It was given to you by your grandfather, yes?"

"Yes," she answered offhandedly as she stuffed her wand into her pocket, scanning the room for anything else that needed cleaning. "He gave it to me shortly after we discovered that the Stone needed to be destroyed."

"You never seem to be without it."

"I need it," she said simply as she walked toward the stairs, leaving Snape with a calculating expression on his face.

A/N: *The italicized lines were taken directly from JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 5, "The Potions Master." I make no money from the writing of this story. These characters (with the exception of Attica) belong to JK Rowling. She built this beautiful world, and I find myself supremely lucky to have the honor of visiting it from time to time.