"Here's that other volume of Adler you asked for, Professor." Madam Pince, with a deeply disapproving expression, thumped a cracked volume down to join the pile at Snape's elbow. Snape, immersed in blurred blackletter type barely two inches from his prominent nose, had given no sign of even acknowledging the librarian's presence; but the cloud of dust and shredded beetle-wings that rose as the covers hit the table proved impossible to ignore. He emerged suddenly from the pages of "Totem and Taboo", looking furious, then disappeared equally abruptly behind a curtain of lank hair in the throes of an uncontrollable sneeze. Even Madam Pince, despite her librarian's immunity to dusty tomes, caught her breath for a moment and had to blink several times before she could continue.
She poked at the spine with a bony finger. "Muggle binding," she observed darkly, as if this were the worst that could be said of any object, book or not. "Look at the state of it...and not even a hundred years old yet."
"I should be more interested," Snape said coldly, having produced a large greyish handkerchief from one sleeve and used it to mop streaming eyes, "to know where the volume I requested has been for the last--"
He glanced up at the clockface above the centre of the bay opposite, currently displaying a small owl in the act of stooping on a long tuft of grass, frowned, and looked again, more closely.
"...for the last three hours?"
His chair, thrust back hurriedly, caught on the table and almost spilled a large morocco-bound Viennese volume onto the floor. Madam Pince frowned and caught it.
"Your requested volume, Professor, had been mis-shelved some fifty years ago by my esteemed predecessor, under 'Harmonica'. Under the circumstances, I feel that to have located it at all--"
She turned, and huffed indignantly. Not only was Professor Snape, as usual, not listening, this time he was no longer even in the room.
The mixed crowd of fifth-year students milling outside the dungeon, O.W.L.s or no O.W.L.s, had clearly reached the optimistic stage of wondering if their teacher had been waylaid by an unexpected Venus Man-Trap or otherwise prevented from turning up for the lesson at all.
One group of Slytherins, hovering eagerly at the foot of the staircase with occasional backward glances, were all too evidently on the verge of abandoning any intention of attending Potions whatsoever. Their faces fell almost comically when they caught sight of their Head of House sweeping down the stairs.
Snape checked his pace for a moment at the sight of the little group. "Well, well. Anyone might be excused for thinking that young Tench had a compelling reason to wish to avoid today's Potions class...."
Tench, a hulking youth with close-cropped fair hair and hands like hams, was looking acutely uncomfortable. His four friends, eyes fixed on the flagstones at their feet, were attempting to shuffle back towards the main group without being too obvious. It was not a very convincing performance.
But curious Gryffindors were drifting up from the corridor below, clearly agog, and Snape had no intention of giving out the dressing-down his weakest student so richly deserved in their hearing. "I'll see you -- and that disgraceful essay -- after the lesson, Mr Tench," he said softly, with what might have passed for a smile, and glided past the little group of Slytherins without a backward glance.
It was not a good start to the afternoon; and having arrived for the class almost ten minutes late, he then had to waste further time in getting the restive students back under control. Several of the Gryffindors, cocky as ever, were attempting to finish a game of Parrel-Sticks they had started out in the corridor, under cover of unpacking their cauldrons. A selection of items of personal adornment were confiscated from those girls who had been unwise enough to pass them around in the belief that his back was momentarily turned.
And no less than three separate students claimed to have forgotten to replenish the dried cactus-berries in their potions-making kit over the summer, and had to sign for temporary supplies from the Stores. The level of suppressed commotion and discussion accompanying this last episode was such that Snape was left with no doubt at all as to the nefarious intent of the perpetrators; but since his utmost efforts were not enough to detect the nature of the planned dénouement, he was reduced to dishing out pre-emptive detentions with a liberal hand, left, right and centre.
As for his wretched fifth-year Slytherins...the only thing to be said in their favour was that they created no trouble, and even that was hardly to their credit. Even 'high spirits' of the Gryffindor variety would have been preferable to the lumpen faces sprinkled around the dungeon, displaying, as usual, neither interest nor aptitude for their subject. If this class had not already been specifically responsible for endangering Slytherin's performance in the House Championship and he had not been Head of House, he would have been bitterly tempted to strip ten points apiece from the lot of them.
As it was, he was barely in time to strike Adela Scrimshaw's hand away from her cauldron before the girl managed to ruin her entire brew with an elementary first-year mistake. "The secondary infusion should boil clear before the berries are added, Miss Scrimshaw." He controlled himself with an effort. "I'm sure you won't make such an error again...."
On the contrary, however, he told himself grimly, conducting an ominous prowl among two dozen murky-looking cauldrons, if there were no further catastrophes during the course of the lesson he would be extremely surprised. Not to speak of the fact that he was finding it increasingly difficult to ignore his having not, as yet, found time to take any meals since the previous night, a situation which did not go to improve either his concentration or his mood.
Augustin Tench was miserably conscious of being, as his indulgent father put it, 'a complete duffer in the brains department'; and the passion for Quidditch propped up with such care by the paternal purse was, he was only too well aware, regarded with an inexplicable ingratitude by his Head of House, of whose biting tongue he had been quite frankly in terror for years. It was therefore some time before it dawned on him that Snape's heart really didn't seem to be in the scathing lecture that the Potions master was reading him.
Admittedly, over the last four years, he'd already been subjected to just about everything uncomplimentary under the sun that could be said about his written work in particular and Potions work in general. But somehow that had never stopped Snape managing to come up with new ways to categorise his incompetence before.
Even Tench, however, couldn't help noticing that Snape kept losing track of his sentences, and glancing back into the depths of the dungeon as if he had something else on his mind.
"Umm, I could come back another time, maybe?" The suggestion was ingenuous. "I mean if you're busy, sir, that is...."
He trailed off, grand stratagem deserting him altogether, as his interrogator's full attention returned to him with a snap, and found himself blurting out: "Only it's House Quidditch practice in half an hour, and--"
"Ah yes." The black surface of Snape's eyes glittered for a moment, as if something had leapt within. "Quidditch. I believe it was a convenient wrist strain which affected your prowess in the practice last week, when you missed three goals in a row? And a cold in the head to which we were invited to ascribe your lamentable performance last summer, equalled only by your studies during the exam term? If the prospect of practising on a Malfoy broom rather than one of your dear father's providing has such an adverse effect on your concentration, Mr Tench, as Head of House it seems to me that Slytherin team might to their advantage do without your services for one afternoon. In fact--" he overrode an appalled protest from Tench-- "improved prospects for your O.W.L.s might not be the only benefit if you were dropped from the team altogether..."
Tench stared up into Snape's widening smile, the unthinkable vision beginning to stretch out before him. After all that investment put into getting his son on the team, Father would be ready to have his guts for garters. Snape couldn't mean -- he wouldn't--
"But the House--"
"I believe the House can more than survive the loss of your services as Chaser for one practice session," Snape said coldly. A gesture indicated the row of empty desks. "And perhaps you would care to spend that time producing a summary of today's work sufficient to demonstrate to me that your Quidditch pretensions are not, after all, interfering with the less well-funded aspects of your schooling?"
Grasping at this straw of hope, Tench nodded eagerly and bolted back to his seat, scrabbling for a clean quill. Maybe if he wrote very quickly--
"The front row." Snape's yellowish fingers beckoned, and Tench, swallowing, shuffled up to the desks immediately beneath the master's eye. He tried to wipe inky fingers, surreptitiously, on his robes, but only managed to smudge his page. Snape, who had taken up his own quill again, sent a line sputtering across under a rapidly-scribbled set of figures and stared at him in a manner that did not bode well for his future sporting prospects.
Gulping, Tench ducked his head, and began to do his level best by the blank parchment in a sprawling, laborious hand. A few feet above him, Snape's pen was scratching steadily across sheet after sheet of notes, phrases and numbers jotted at random across the page or linked with rings and jagged lines. He showed no disposition whatsoever to release his victim in time for the second half of the scheduled team practice.
Miserably, Tench prepared to struggle on.
"Professor Snape?"
The dungeon door, left ajar, creaked open slightly, and a dark head appeared around it, cautiously. "Professor? It's me, Lovell. You told me to come after Hall was over...."
Given that Professor Snape had spent much of the past hour since finally relenting towards the unhappy Tench regretting, with increasing force, his stubborn choice to cut Hall and spend the remaining time to bring his theories to the stage of practical experiment, this was possibly not the most tactful of introductions. Snape's mouth tightened.
"Stop hanging round the doorway, Lovell. Come here -- take this--"
'This' was a long slip of parchment, almost filled with a list in cramped lettering. Lovell took it obediently, and shot him a puzzled look.
"I want everything on that list prepared -- in order -- and laid out." Snape's voice was soft. "From the top. You'll find everything you need in the other room, where we worked yesterday. Is that quite clear?"
The boy nodded, and disappeared, and Snape bent again to his calculations, frowning. It would have to be either speedwell or dragonwort; use both and you'd end up with a powerful euphoric side-effect, doubtless resulting in more and not less suggestibility when administered to the weak-willed. Use dragonwort, and you'd have to try newts'-brain instead of rats', or risk losing the whole thing when the mermaid's-foot fern went in. Use speedwell, and you'd need to raise the temperature for the second stage of boiling, at the risk of degrading the solution -- unless you delayed clarification until the heart's-blood itself was added. And that, of course, had so many other implications as to make it an essentially independent problem on its own....
Taking a deep breath, he drew yet another sheet of parchment across the desk, and began jotting down a fresh set of variables, the demands of his tired, hungry body once again forgotten. Every ten minutes' extra preparation at this stage could save hours of wasted work; but there was only a certain amount of theoretical preparation that could be done. Beyond that, it was going to be a matter of instinct, and judgement, and taking risks. With McGonagall waiting impatiently for results, Snape had every intention of getting it right.
It was almost an hour later when Snape came softly into the other dungeon, and found Magnus Lovell over in the far corner, leaning against the bars of the enclosure and chirruping gently to the each uisge.
"And just what, Mr Lovell, do you think you're doing?" Snape's voice was deadly, and the boy sprang back from the bars, instinctive guilt flushing his face.
"Everything's finished, sir--" the words came out tumbling over each other-- "except the fernseed and the other things that need to steep, I mean." He indicated with a gesture the long rows of substances which had been powdered, crushed, shredded, peeled, infused, stewed and even pickled, then laid out at the front of the room, in exact accordance with Snape's instructions.
"I just wondered if this poor creature had had any water since last night, that was all...."
"It's lack of water that's keeping it in there, you fool!" Gliding across the room like a stooping hawk, Snape caught the young Ravenclaw by the shoulder of his robes and yanked him away from the cage. "Once let an each uisge touch water and you'll never keep it behind bars -- and believe me, Mr Lovell, you don't want that to happen, you really don't."
The boy pulled free, staring at him. "But...you can't keep a creature locked up without water. Even in Azkaban--"
Snape's thin lips curled.
"There's no place for sentimentality in Potions. Had it never occurred to you how dragon heartstrings, or bull's-blood, or gruntle teeth are obtained?" He dropped his voice suddenly, to a low hiss, compelling Lovell's attention.
"Now listen to me: I'm going to spell this out just once for your benefit, as you seem to need the reminder. That creature--" a jerk of his chin, sideways, towards the enclosure-- "is here for one purpose only, to provide fresh blood at a crucial moment. Until that moment arrives, the weaker it is the safer, for both of us, Mr Lovell, and for Hogsmeade and for the rest of the school and for all the country around!"
His voice had risen almost to a scream, and Lovell jerked back, a shocked expression spreading on the young face. Snape bared uneven teeth in a death's-head grin. "I do hope you understand, Lovell, for both our sakes. Because whatever it might try to make you think, that thing over there is not the shaggy little pony your auntie gave you to ride when you were eight years old. That is a vicious, carnivorous predator, older and larger and stronger than you have any idea."
With a sudden movement, he caught the boy by the forearm, holding it up so that the sleeve of his robes fell back, displaying the faint marks of healed scrapes and scratches on the hand and wrist held captive. "And if you've forgotten already what gave you these--" he traced one faint mark down the back of Lovell's wrist with the point of a fingernail-- "then you might want to ask yourself what else an each uisge can do to your mind that you don't understand."
He released the boy, thrusting him in the direction of the workbench.
"You don't pity it, you don't play with it and you don't pet it," Snape said softly, fixing his assistant with an unforgiving stare. "And I suggest you remember that.... Now, get those cauldrons ready."
He kept a close eye on Lovell for a few moments as the boy moved, gaze downcast, to do as he was told. But the young Ravenclaw's head was bent closely over his work, and he showed no signs of glancing back. Satisfied, Snape swung round to take up his own place at the end of the long rows of equipment that had been prepared. He hesitated barely a second, hand outstretched over the jars, before making his selection. A few grains of ambergris were followed by a pinch of scarab powder, staining the clear infusion a deep ochre as it sifted into the flask.
Snape shook the solution slightly, swirling it around the glass, and set the flask aside on the bench, already reaching for the long strands of saffron to his right. The first test of the many, many that would be needed was underway.
It was some twenty minutes later that Snape, glancing again into the enclosure, caught sight of fresh fur and blood upon the glossy black muzzle, and remembered an earlier half-stifled squeak that had doubtless marked some unhappy rodent's demise. Possibly more than one; the each uisge ran a long tongue along its chops, displaying an admirable array of teeth, and yawned in satisfaction.
So much for keeping the creature weak, Snape reflected bitterly. He said nothing, however, to Lovell. The realisation that the hunger pangs that had been so lately knotting his own belly had apparently also vanished was not a pleasant one, under the circumstances; and he was far from convinced that it was merely the sight of that grisly meal that had been responsible.
From the shadows, light gleamed back softly from a liquid eye. The each uisge was watching in silence, as always.