Chapter Thirty-Six – The Opportune Time

Timing. Few knew just how crucial an element timing could be. It made the difference between profit and loss, power and servitude, life and death. Todianus pondered on this familiar notion, one pudgy hand pressed lightly to his equally plump cheek, lips pursed in calculated thought. Was now the time to move from the position of loss and servitude to something a little less... precarious? The cold night air skimmed over his bald head and slipped down the back of his neck like a corpse's questing fingers, caressing through the runnels of sweat down his back.

The apoth shivered but didn't move from where he stood, still locked in the fermentation process of his decision-making. The issue wasn't whether or not he could move out from under Macnair's heel; it was how long he would survive if he did.

Isseacus Todianus had the capacity to be a patient man and, he liked to think, a logical one. Both traits were needed in an apoth: the disposition to accept that some things took time to mature, that not everything could be rushed. Equally important was the knowledge of when the optimum time arrived to achieve a particular goal. It was all in the timing.

His be-ringed fingers tickled gently at his cheek as he stared at the closed rear door to his apothecary on Knockturn Alley. He'd invested a lot of time in this business. True, it had been a mostly behind-the-scenes role up until fairly recently, but he'd had just as much of a right to its ownership as his brother had. After all, he was the one who had fronted up the money to start the whole venture. He was the one who had spent countless hours researching the competition, searching out the best suppliers, and negotiating the deals that brought them the highest quality ingredients at the most reasonable pricing levels. Timeus had done nothing for the administration of the business. Certainly nothing useful. Isseacus had been forced to shoulder his elder brother aside in order to get the business performing at the sort of levels he had envisioned for it. If Timeus had been allowed to dictate the operation, they would have been barely earning a profit, not even close to enabling Isseacus to recoup what he had invested. Even worse, their reputation would have been insipid, as bland as watered-down soup. It had been a point of frequent friction between the brothers.

"Wasted opportunity!" Isseacus would shrill, his jowls wobbling in outrage. "I wonder, Timeus, why you even bother to run an apothecary if this is the sort of business you bring in through the door!" He shook the ledger in his brother's pale face, the scantily filled pages fluttering accusingly at him.

"I have no affinity with figures," Timeus would sigh tiredly, shrugging his bony shoulders. "You know full well they hold no interest for me."

"No, and at the rate you're selling the wares, it'll hold no interest for the business either!" the fatter sibling snapped nastily, flinging the ledger down on the counter in disgust. "I don't ask you to be the greatest salesman the wizarding world has ever seen, Timeus. I just ask that you try!"

But the argument never seemed to touch Timeus, who would stolidly rebuff his brother's haranguing and continue to plod along, letting the potential riches that business hours could bring remain nothing more than projected figures written in Isseacus' fussy hand.

Isseacus had had no choice but to steal the reins from his brother surreptitiously. He began to deal directly with the suppliers to ensure the quality of the goods did not drop, for when Timeus had borne that responsibility, shrewder heads had realized that the same money could be asked for items of lesser quality. Isseacus soon showed them the error of such thinking. He raised all the prices of the wares in the shop, despite Timeus' protestations that it would force their current clientele to go elsewhere.

"One cannot make a living from selling bargains to prolls," Isseacus would point out acerbically. "Room must be made for those whose purses are more admirably filled."

The last hurdle had been getting his brother out of the shop altogether. Isseacus had watched, lips tight and disapproving as Timeus fumbled and flopped his way through a sale, failing to convince a potential customer that whilst the product they were looking at was a perfectly adequate one, the shop held others of far superior quality for not that much extra in cost. The man had no gift with language, no talent at the gentle art of persuasion, and no feel for the teetering doubt that could easily arise in uncertain quarry. Wasted opportunities.

Then, one day, Timeus had been ill: Fickleboil 'flu, he'd said and asked Isseacus to cover for him.

"It'll be easy," he'd wheezed, mopping his leaking nose with a crumpled hanky and peering at Isseacus through eyes near-closed with the pustulant boils that clamoured for space on his eyelids. "Fridays are always quiet."

Isseacus had exhaled heavily through his nose and bit back an insult that wouldn't have made any difference to the whole situation.

He'd stood in the shop, in nearly the exact same pose he stood in now, his irritation and disappointment increasing with every hour that passed, watching people pass by the door of the shop. He hadn't realised that things had gotten this bad: to not even have customers enter the shop! Such a dire situation needed drastic measures.

"Take the next week off," he'd instructed his brother in a voice as persuasive as it was cunning. "As you say, things are quiet, and it's best you get plenty of rest." He'd handed Timeus a tonic "to ease the symptoms", but in actual fact had been concocted to prolong and intensify the disease's hold whilst simultaneously rendering his brother feverish and insensible.

The following week had been the hardest that Isseacus had ever worked. He stood out the front of the apothecary and flouted his wares shamelessly yet skilfully, wheedled and cajoled passers-by to come and see that the quality of his products could not be matched by anyone else, flattered and pandered to those he caught in his net until they purchased handsomely as if it had all been their idea in the first place.

The end of the trading week saw the ledger fuller than it had ever been, and whilst the takings had not been substantial, it had been an important and noticeable improvement.

In that time, Isseacus clinched several important repeating orders from customers of not insignificant standing and wealth. Sweeteners and preferential treatment aided a word-of-mouth campaign that swelled the apothecary's customer base to more than triple its former size.

"I need you to do something for me," Isseacus had begun in a gentle voice as he sat by his brother's bed. Timeus squinted up at him, his red-rimmed eyes watering with the pain of his headache. "Some of your customers have expressed a reluctance to deal with me, preferring instead to wait until your return before making their purchases." He spread his hands and wrinkled his forehead in concern. "I tried to convince them that I could assist them just as admirably as you, but they are incredibly stubborn. I don't suppose that you could take on the responsibility of handling their requests? Once you have recovered, of course!" he added in faux haste, patting his brother's thin arm in fraternal reassurance.

The truth of the matter was that not only had those of important social standing begun to frequent the store, but those of a less than savoury nature. It was these that Isseacus was attempting to palm off onto his brother, preferring instead to deal with those who could bolster his own reputation amongst the elite circles of wizarding society. The flotsam and reprobates could be Timeus' cross to bear. If he failed to sell them anything, it would be no great loss, and it would occupy him enough to keep him out of Isseacus' metaphorical hair.

So, that was how Isseacus had entangled himself with Macnair, and Timeus was ensnared by Greyback. Two more opposite in society would be hard to find, but both as dangerous as each other, with the Ministry-appointed Executioner's influence as great as the werewolf's insanity. In all honesty, Isseacus had half hoped that Greyback would incapacitate his brother sufficiently to see him permanently retired from the business, but the final result was, whilst mildly surprising in its severity, no less advantageous. Isseacus did experience a brief pang of sorrow at his brother's rather brutal demise but had put it down to being a light bout of indigestion. Life moved on. Opportunities were there to be had and capitalised upon.

The problem was that Isseacus had inherited not only the apothecary in its entirety, but the business's most erratically behaved customer as well. Greyback was a maniac, and a not particularly wealthy maniac at that. At least Macnair, whilst hiding some distinctly alarming psychotic behaviour under the veneer of social acceptability, had wads of cash to spend.

Isseacus had done his best to mollify Greyback whilst remaining rather removed from the smelly beast, preferring to keep any public knowledge of their business exchange to the barest minimum. He favoured lavishing his attention on Macnair who was inclined to order all sorts of expensive paraphernalia through Isseacus for Merlin knows what purposes. Quite frankly, Isseacus didn't care as long as he got paid.

But the two polar opposites had decided to associate with each other, sandwiching Isseacus rather uncomfortably in the middle. Macnair's wallet was too capacious to even contemplate giving up whilst Greyback left no doubt in the apoth's mind as to what happened to those that upset him. This left Isseacus in a rather tricky position, a position that had begun to get more and more precarious as the weeks had passed.

If it had been simply a case of supply for the demand, there would be little to worry over. However, Isseacus found himself being inexorably drawn into whatever convoluted schemes the two men were brewing. Greyback had himself a captured Sniffer that was two inches from death, and he expected Isseacus to find a way to bring her back from the brink. It was like a child expecting a mouse to continue cavorting after the brat had bashed its bones into dust, pitching a tantrum because the vermin wasn't playing by the rules. Macnair, on the other hand, had been purchasing various narcotics in increasing amounts, narcotics that were usually affected on lycanthropes, difficult to find, highly dangerous, and unfailingly addictive. Werewolf-baiting was a favoured pastime of Death Eaters, but Isseacus was at something of a loss as to precisely what Macnair was doing with the narcotics. Quite frankly, he didn't want to know. He didn't care to know. As long as Macnair paid up, Isseacus asked no questions.

Now it was getting to the point where dealing with both men was starting to get awkward. Both demanded some form of loyalty from him, which Isseacus found somewhat bizarre since he was an apoth, not a lackey. He sold a product and expected to be paid for it; that was where the extent of effort on his part should end. However, it was becoming apparent that what Isseacus thought was of little interest to either Macnair or Greyback.

The werewolf seemed more than happy to summon Isseacus when the mood took him.

"I need more Blood Replenishing Tonic!"

"Where's that powdered hen's tooth you said you could get?"

"Why is her hair falling out? Fix it!"

"I don't care what I said before! I need double what you've brought me!"

The manner in which he summoned Isseacus was starting to put permanent dents in the apoth's skull. The bastard had no social mores or restraints whatsoever. Isseacus had lost count of the number of people that Greyback had either killed or mutilated in front of him, and he was getting really tired of having to put up with it.

Macnair was becoming awkward in a wholly different manner.

"The last batch of Frenzy Cull wasn't strong enough. I need something of better quality."

"I must know who is procuring dried bisselweed. Do whatever you have to in order to find out."

"Have you ever used the services of a Striker?"

"I hope that your dealings with Greyback do not take precedence over my custom. That would be unfortunate indeed."

No, this was not the sort of arrangement that Isseacus wanted to find himself sucked into. The dilemma was figuring out who was the one whose ire he was willing to withstand.

Isseacus sighed rather dramatically, his hand dropping from his cheek as he stepped towards the locked door. This evening had been a long one. Macnair had gotten into the habit of dragging the apoth to various unspecified locations by Side-Along Apparition, which Isseacus found faintly insulting. Despite what he thought of as a solid business relationship of mutual understanding, Macnair seemed bent on keeping him in the dark whilst still expecting him to have a sufficient enough understanding of the delicate web of situation around him in order to fulfil the Executioner's needs. Virtually shaking him in Greyback's face was one of the more odious little performances Macnair was running.

Isseacus used his wand to dispel the security charms on the door and stepped gratefully into the warmth of the apothecary. Macnair had not allowed him even the time to grab a cloak before wrenching him off to some disgusting werewolf hovel to dose a pregnant lyc-female against early-term abortion. Isseacus wasn't a mediwizard, but Macnair seemed to think him less trouble as a substitute, despite the apoth's frequent protestations that his knowledge in that area was limited and certainly not encompassing the working of miracles. He'd wisely kept that last bit to himself.

He slammed the door against the freezing night air and shivered at the temperature change. A nice hot bath would not only warm him, but relax his muscles as well and get rid of that awful stink that werewolf dens always seemed to exude.

He made a little sound of disgust and crossed the dim storeroom to the stairs that led to the upper level. He'd barely taken three steps before a pinpoint of pain between his shoulder blades stopped him. He automatically rolled his shoulders and arched his back in order to move away from the source of the pain, but it followed him and increased, sending thin threads of neural alarm down his spine and agitating his internals into a tight boiling.

The rumble from behind him warned him to keep stock still. The shadows in the stairwell in front of him shifted and solidified into a human form, the majority of it barely defined in the low light thrown from the oil lamp hanging in its bracket on the storeroom wall.

"Your trading hours are somewhat restrictive to my needs, so I let myself in."

Isseacus flared his nostrils to allow more air to enter his lungs. Even opening his mouth seemed like far too much movement to risk. Tonight was shaping up to be even worse than he had originally thought.

"I believe you have something I want," the man stated quietly, looking down his large nose at the apoth. "The manner in how I get it is up to you."

The pain point in Isseacus' back pressed inwards and down towards his heart, making his knees buckle. The copious amounts of fat on his frame failed to cushion him against the awkward impact with the wooden floor, his kneecaps reverberating and flinching, shaking off their agony like an animal shaking water from its fur. He looked up as the man approached to tower over him.

"You stink like werewolf!" came the accusation, a twist of contempt to the mouth that formed the words. "Has no-one ever told you that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas?"

The focal point of agony pushed in until it found a sensitised nerve. A trickle of heat ran down his back and slithered along the back of his thigh.

"Whuh... what do you want?" Isseacus gasped out, his fingers knitting themselves together in a mass of plump, white-knuckled entreaty, looking straight into those black eyes with the courage, the desperation, of one who knew that it was far more deadly to look away.

The man's eyebrows lifted slightly. "The truth. Whether you offer it freely or it has to be cut out of you is of little concern to me."

From behind him, gloved fingers trailed over Isseacus' hairless head almost lovingly, delicate, gentle. The blade found his throat a second later, the point stretching out into a taut line of steel threat.

Isseacus did his best not to swallow convulsively and decided which of the two options was preferable to him.

Parr's fingers dug into the dirt as her midriff twisted and imploded a third time in an attempt to disgorge whatever she had eaten a week ago.

"For God's sake, don't stand there gawking at me!" she pleaded with vocal chords already blistered with the fumes of her violent nausea. She flung one hand in a general and ambiguous direction away from her. "You're making it worse!" Her stomach wrenched itself into a knot, like a tea-towel being wrung dry.

Snape stared at her for a moment before drifting away from where she was slumped, unsure of which was the more important revelation: that the anti-emetic hadn't worked, or that the sight of someone vomiting was failing to cause him to empty his own innards. Even the sound didn't unsettle him, although he did wonder if Parr was being ostentatious.

He gazed at the hulking mass of the school that squatted in the dark, noting which windows were still lit with a vague and drifting attention. He was finding it difficult to focus and wasn't sure why. It wasn't fatigue; this was more like being mildly inebriatedgiddy but not unpleasant, the stage just before inhibition dissolved and embarrassing things occurred.

Parr made a sound behind him like a cow being strangled before choking on whatever wretched material she was expelling. The cacophony of sound was so ludicrous that it caused an altogether unfamiliar wave of laughter to rise up inside him. He clenched his teeth to stop it from escaping.

"Evil bastard!" Parr snapped accusingly between gasps. "I always suspected you got a thrill out of other people's misery." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and got unsteadily to her feet. "You dare laugh and I'll wipe your face in it." She swore under her breath. "So much for your bloody anti-emetic!"

"I think it more likely that the lack of efficacy is due to your colossal contrariness than my lack of skill in concoction," Snape pointed out snidely over his shoulder.

Parr snorted and tottered to his side, one dirt-dusted hand pressed to her forehead. They stood in silence for several minutes; she swaying ever so slightly, eyes screwed shut as her internals finished scrambling themselves, he with head tilted slightly to one side, gazing at some unspecified point on the stone wall of the building in front of them.

"Why did you do it?"

He swivelled his eyes to look sideways at her. "You have a problem with the Imperius?"

Parr's hand dropped from her head to her side. "Yes," she sighed.

"Why?"

She sucked at her lower lip and frowned. "It is..." She paused. "What you did... is an abomination."

He sneered at her in the moonlight. "Spare me your value judgements, Striker. The use of your knife to get results is no less dubious."

Parr made an exasperated sound like a cross between a hiss and a cough. "The two are not even close to being similar! I wonder why I even bother," she added under her breath, sullen and bitter.

"I don't know why you bother either," he sniped back nastily. "That you fail to see the hypocrisy astounds me."

Her body went tight with repressed rage. She dropped his mind as if it burned her, and the floating sensation he had been enjoying fell with it, leaving the predawn air to bite at him unhindered. She took a few unsteady steps away from him and towards the entrance to the building before halting, body as rigid as stone, refusing to face him.

"You'll experience fever. That is normal. Pay no attention to your dreams tonight." Her words were hard and cold; the anger set deep into every sound revealing unplumbed depths that could drown and crush with their pressure.

His question stopped her again.

"Will you tell the Headmaster?"

"No," she replied harshly after some moments.

"Why not?"

"It would serve no purpose to do so. For now." She hunched her shoulders slightly, the panel of black cloth that hung from behind her laid-back cowl to the hem of the overcoat swaying. "As to another time?" She shrugged and slipped away from him, out of the moonlight and into the shadows.