Chapter Twenty – Options Few & Far Between

Snape flicked through the last few pages of the appendices dispiritedly and shoved a forkful of bacon into his mouth. This was the last of eleven books he'd been through since dawn, and he'd still not been able to find anything that mentioned the word 'seevy'. He put his fork down and drained his mug of tea. It seemed he'd have to go farther afield to find information, and he'd have to do it himself...there was no way he was going to use Trint for this.

Snape sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling that roiled slowly with bluestone grey clouds. The day was going to manifest some truly ugly weather. He sighed and went back to his plate, only to find it empty. He blinked in mild surprise, shrugged and refilled it entirely with sausages.

There was a bookshop in Diagon Alley that stocked rare and unusual books...perhaps he should try there, but it would have to be some other time. What with it being Sunday, the shop would undoubtedly be closed. No matter, Snape thought. He was actually looking forward to going to bed for a few hours, since he hadn't slept since Friday night, but first he had to get rid of the empty feeling in his stomach. He'd already eaten two platefuls of food and it hadn't made a dent in his hunger.

Snape looked at his plate in consternation. He'd never been a big eater. When young, it was because his family was so painfully poor that there was rarely enough for even half-sized meals. So Snape had grown up accustomed to the almost permanent sensation of hunger, which had then faded away as his appetite decreased, giving him a lanky, angular body shape that never filled out as he reached adulthood. It didn't bother him. He'd resigned himself long ago to being a lost cause, physically. Years of snide and sarcastic remarks from his peers had cultivated in him the same contempt for his appearance that others had. Even when a student, the literally bottomless kitchens of Hogwarts had never compelled him to eat more than the smallest amount of food. Maybe he was coming down with something. However, most illnesses decreased appetite rather than increased it.

His gaze travelled along the Ravenclaw table until they reached Parr's back. She was seated on her own, as the hour was still on the early side for most students, who tended to stagnate in their beds until gone nine. Parr had limped into the Great Hall not long after Snape had seated himself at the staff table. He'd watched her make her way slowly to her house table, favouring her left leg, face stonily blank. Snape wondered if Lupin and Parr had both gotten into a fight during their search for Jorkins. The Headmaster hadn't mentioned anything to that effect when Snape had finally been allowed to see him. In fact, Dumbledore had avoided speaking about Lupin and Parr at all, but based on Lupin's pale features and wobbly disposition, as well as the scratch on Parr's nose and her limp this morning, some sort of physical altercation had occurred. Surely they hadn't come up against either Pettigrew or Voldemort? If that had been the case, Dumbledore would have said something. Wouldn't he?

Snape looked down the staff table out of the corner of his eye. Dumbledore was talking to Hagrid about something mundane, giving no indications of worry or concern. Snape squinted back at Parr. She was jamming porridge into her craw with all the social grace of a warthog. He hoped she'd stuff too much in and choke on it.

He'd spent most of the morning seething at the way she had treated him outside of the Headmaster's study...like a lackey, someone of inconsequential standing. Snape hated a lot of things, but high up on that list was disrespect, and Parr had given him a sizeable dose of that recently. He should've known that her obedience in class was a sham, no doubt employed to prevent any further detentions. Since she paid him no deference outside of class, Snape had two options open to him that would restore the balance of control in his favour: make her time in his classroom more unpleasant than ever before, or make any interaction with her outside of school time more caustic. Snape's eyes bored into Parr's back. Well, why choose only one option when both together would be more than doubly effective?

"Severus?"

He never let anyone get one over on him, and he wasn't about to allow it now.

"Severus?"

Parr would realise soon enough that if you kicked dirt at a snake, you'd only get bitten. Usually several times.

"Severus!"

His head snapped to the right to face McGonagall. "What?"

"Is everything alright?" she asked, her eyebrows shaped into a symbol of disapproval.

Snape noticed the faces of the other teachers present turned towards him. He refocussed on McGonagall. "Yes. Why?"

McGonagall exhaled heavily through her nose and vanished her lips. "You were shaking the table and stabbing your breakfast rather loudly."

He blinked at her and realised he must have been jiggling his leg against the table without being aware of it. McGonagall's goblet of pumpkin juice had tipped over, spilling its contents half on the table and half on her tartan-covered lap. She was mopping up the worst of it with her napkin, but it was likely she'd have to change her skirt or cast a Cleaning Charm on it.

"Was I? I hadn't noticed," Snape said blankly and relaxed his grip on his fork.

"Are you sure you've got enough sausages on your plate?" McGonagall muttered in an irritated tone. "You're supposed to eat them, not disembowel them."

"It's either the sausages or the students, Minerva," he replied acidly, picked up his book, and left the table.

Karkaroff jumped out at him barely ten feet out of the Great Hall.

"Not now, Igor, I'm not in the mood," Snape hissed at him, one hand clenched on his book in an effort to restrain himself from striking the man with it.

"Severus, it's important that I speak with you," Karkaroff told him in his oily voice, almost trotting along beside Snape.

"Important by whose definition?" Snape bit out, not bothering to slow his pace to benefit Karkaroff.

"I'm serious, Severus," Karkaroff stressed, his voice starting to take on a whiney tone. Snape curled his lip and rolled his eyes. "Something's going on, and whatever it is, I'm being kept in the dark."

"And it never occurred to you that it might be for a good reason?" Snape retorted, not in any way masking his annoyance.

Karkaroff managed to slip in front of Snape, forcing him to stop. "What's that supposed to mean?' he asked sharply, his beady eyes glittering.

"That I need to explain myself to you is a perfect indication of your inadequacy at being involved in anything of monument, Igor," Snape told him through clenched teeth. He took a slow step forward, forcing Karkaroff to back away. "Don't go thinking that I've forgotten about how your tongue flapped like a hummingbird's wings to the Wizengamot." He took another step forward, and again Karkaroff shrank back from him, his eyes flicking nervously from side to side. "You couldn't get my name out fast enough to try and save your own worthless hide from rotting in Azkaban." Karkaroff's shoulders connected with the stone wall of the turn in the corridor. The man flinched as Snape closed the gap between them until the buttons of his coat were nearly touching Karkaroff's chest. "So you'll understand if your fretting is a matter of supreme indifference to me." Karkaroff started to open and close his mouth like a carp drowning on land. "If your arm hurts, deal with it. I have far more interesting and worthwhile things to attend to than being your nursemaid."

Karkaroff managed to find his voice again. "Don't try and obfuscate me, Severus. I'm not that stupid. You know perfectly well that's not what I'm talking about."

Snape narrowed his eyes at him and sneered. "Igor, half the time, you don't even know what you're talking about, so spare me the self-righteous indignation."

"If Brachoveitch and Macnair think they can keep me out of the loop, they're sorely mistaken," Karkaroff blustered, but the paleness of his face and the quivering of his weak, bearded chin gave lie to his attitude.

Snape cocked his head to one side and gave Karkaroff a nasty smile. "Then go ahead and stick your head into that loop, Igor. Just be careful it doesn't tighten around your throat." With that, he turned and walked away, leaving Karkaroff still pressed against the wall as if he had been nailed there.

The small glass bottle captured and contained the poor light, giving it a glow that ordinarily it wouldn't have. There were no impurities in the liquid at all. In fact, it was so clear that it was as if there was nothing in the bottle. He almost wished that there wasn't; then he wouldn't be going through this agonising vacillation.

The truth was that he didn't like taking drugs. Sycorax's toenails, he didn't even like drinking...it usually had embarrassing consequences that he could do without.

Snape put the bottle back on the table for the fourth time. He'd seen enough examples of what happened when a person became reliant on drugs or alcohol in order to get through life. Lupin was a prime example of a person who drank too much. Three times out of five in coming into contact with the werewolf, Snape could guarantee that Lupin would be drunk...if not almost paralytic, then at the very least mildly inebriated. The man chose to deal with his problems by drowning them in alcohol, which Snape found not only stupid but pathetic as well. Such people deserved to be scorned.

However, it was the people who were drug addicts that elicited the strongest revulsion in him. Snape was never able to forget the time that Slughorn took his sixth-year Potions class to St Mungo's to see the victims of such addiction. It illustrated the frightening reality of the consequences of drug reliance. Snape had wondered if Slughorn knew that a number of sixth-year students were already beginning to sink themselves into that world. It was hard to believe that he couldn't be...after all, Slytherins were usually the worst for delving into the Potions supply cupboard for ingredients for some recreational experiment. Slughorn would have to be blind and obtuse not to notice the occasional dazed expression and dilated pupils on some of his house's students. If the slack-jawed, drooling shells of humanity that were dumped at St Mungo's were not enough of a deterrent to substance abuse, then little else would be.

The students filed through the ward, allegedly called the Rubbish Bin by the mediwitches and mediwizards who worked there, in utter silence. There was something disturbing, almost embarrassing in seeing what people had voluntarily done to themselves: an obscene abuse of mind and body, the detritus that was left behind incapable of an autonomous existence.

That little field trip had been a distressing necessity for any student seeking to pursue a medical career. The temptations only grew once commencing higher education in that field, and the obstacles correspondingly fewer until it was hard to find a reason not to make drug taking a part of everyday life.

Slughorn had one of the mediwitches run through the case history of at least five of the ward's permanent inhabitants. There were unmistakable similarities in all of them. The thing that Snape found the most shocking was that at least two of his classmates continued with their foolish dalliances, despite having come face to face with people who had started down the slippery slope at roughly the same age as they. He had trouble finding any pity for them, even after one caused herself irrevocable damage to her intestines after Hell Riding...a popular practice at the time amongst the more reckless students that involved ingesting a potent blend of hellebore, digitalis and rat-ear clover. The rumour was that Boswell had been found on the Slytherin common room floor, bleeding profusely from both ends and tearing at the stone with her fingers like an animal. She never returned to Hogwarts, and the fallout from that episode took months to subside. In a perceptive move, the Headmaster decreed that the blood stain on the stone floor of the common room be left there as a reminder should others make the mistake of thinking they could sniff through the drug cabinet with impunity. Every single student in Slytherin was made aware of what that blood stain meant, and there were few who had any doubt in their mind as to what Snape would do to them if he found any Slytherin even thinking of taking something they weren't legitimately prescribed. The last cynic was delivered an epiphany that had most of the first years in tears once rumour had gotten out.

Snape sighed. The undeniable fact was that his body had gotten used to the painkiller he'd been taking. Taking something stronger would only temporarily fix the problem. No, this was not how he wanted to deal with it.

Snape put the index finger of his left hand on the bottle's stopper and delivered a sharp flick with the fingers of his other hand, catapulting the bottle across the table and into the cold fireplace. It shattered with a sharp, high tinkle. A small shadow started to pad across the floor towards it.

"Leave it, Folter."

The house-elf stopped and turned her large eyes back towards him. "Sir?"

"That's where it belongs."

Folter looked back at the fireplace briefly, brushing a wisp of her hair behind her pointed ear, as if to buy herself some thinking time. There was an almost imperceptible sigh before she replied. "Yes, sir."

Snape stood up and turned away. "Don't let me sleep past two." He didn't wait for her answer before he closed the door to his bedroom.

That morning was when the nightmares began.