The Apprenticeship Begins

I hummed to myself as I worked on medicinal potions for Poppy Pomfrey's stores.  
The students would return soon enough, with their usual collection of injuries and 
childhood diseases; we purchased most from normal suppliers, but a few I preferred 
to make myself.

Really, some of them are related more to Muggle science than to any branch of 
wizardry.  There is a reason that I am widely considered the best Potions Master 
in Europe, if not the world: none of the rest have bothered to read Linus Pauling, 
let alone any serious organic chemistry.

Idiots.  I have no fondness for Muggles, but that's no cause for ignoring their 
research.

Someone rapped lightly at the door.  "Come in."

"Professor Snape?"

I looked up.  "Harry Potter.  So you have come, after all."

He edged into the room.  "I signed the contract, didn't I?"

"So you did.  Pass me that basilisk enzyme, behind you."

He handed me the bottle, and I carefully measured out what I needed.

"What's that for?"

"Healing broken bones.  Introduces a certain rigidity which prevents fractures 
from separating--ah."  The potion turned blue, and I whispered a word to the 
heating elements, which went cold immediately. 

"Why can't you just use a bone-healing spell?"

"This is used in conjunction with that, or alone when no one who can perform that 
spell is available."  I studied the potion critically for a moment.  Perfect.  
"Bottle, freeze, and store," I said, and turned to Potter.  "Make yourself useful 
and clean this up.  I've got two salves and a cerate to finish."

He stared, as if entranced, at the bottles filling themselves with the potion, 
freezing themselves, and vanishing in tiny thunderclaps.  "Are the medicine 
bottles enchanted?" he asked.

"Of course not.  It would interfere with the efficacy of the potions."

"So how--"

The boy really could be terribly dense at times. "A spell, Mr. Potter.  You heard 
it, did you not?  'Bottle, freeze, and store.'"

"But you didn't use a wand," Harry said, and I sighed and leaned my hands on the 
table.

"Magic, Potter, is not about wands or incantations.  It is about focus.  The wand 
is a focal point, as is the incantation--you do not, strictly speaking, need 
*either*."

He looked puzzled, and I picked up his hand, turned it over, spat into the palm.  
He made a noise of disgust and tried to jerk away, but I said "Toad!" and the spit 
wriggled in his hand, turned green--and then a confused toad blinked up at us.

"Did you never do magic without meaning to, as a child?  Merely by willing 
something?"

"A few times," he said, his voice shaking, his body shaking, his hand trembling in 
mine.

I let him go.  "Focus," I said, and turned back to the salves.

The toad hopped out of his hand and made for the door.

"We'll go over your curriculum later, Mr. Potter," I said, adding comfrey to my 
mortar.  "For now--clean."

* * *

Potter studied the curriculum I had laid out.  "Do we *have* to do Ancient 
Curses?"

I set my quill down.  "How do you expect to effectively counter the Dark Arts if 
you won't learn about their history?  Often the counter-curses are found in the 
origins."

He sighed.  "Please tell me I don't have to have it from Professor Binns."

"Hardly.  You are no longer a Hogwarts student; you are technically junior staff, 
under my direction. These aren't classes, Mr. Potter; they are courses of study.  
What I have constructed here is an interrelated curriculum intended to give you a 
solid grounding in the Dark Arts."

"Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"No. The Dark Arts. You cannot develop any serious defence without knowing the 
enemy."  I tapped the scroll sharply.  "It isn't set in stone.  We can and will 
adjust it to your needs and desires.  But you *will* get a thorough education.  
I'll stand for nothing less."

He scowled at the scroll and picked up my discarded quill.  "Yeah, OK.  Ancient 
Curses, the Patronus Variants...can we do the Druidic counter-curses?"

"Next year," I said. "You'll need more experience with the Latinate curses they 
were designed for, first, to understand the underlying structures."

He scribbled something.  "If we don't need a wand or incantation, then why do the 
structures matter?"

Good God.  Had the boy learned nothing in his years here?  I'd've thought Minerva, 
at least, would have drilled the rudiments into him.  "I don't care about the 
shape of the words that you use, Potter.  *Magic* doesn't care."  I reached over 
and rapped him on his scar with my knuckle.  "It's the shape of the thought that 
matters.  Some words help to focus that.  The wands help.  But they are hardly the 
be-all and end-all of magic.  Would you use a charm for potions?  Or herbology?"  
I gestured at his scroll. "Get back to it, Mr. Potter." 

He bit his lip and returned to his work in silence.  

I rubbed at the Dark Mark on my left arm; it ached unpleasantly in the cold of my 
dungeons.  "I want to see your notes and suggestions on that proposed curriculum 
by tomorrow, and a list of supplies that your research tells you we'll need."  

"Research?"

"You'll find you can check out anything from the Restricted section of the 
library, now that you are an apprentice here, rather than a student.  Next week, 
we will go to Diagon Alley."

"You're going to Diagon Alley?" He stared as me as if in disbelief.  

"Despite what you think of me, boy, I do, upon occasion, venture outside of this 
school."

"I didn't mean--"

"You most certainly did.  Now, run along.  You've work to do in the library."  I 
waved my hand at him, and he grabbed his things and headed out, leaving me to a 
few moments of peace.

I cut myself a new quill and thought about the influence of the Latinate curse 
structures on curses developed by native speakers of Romance languages.  Really, I 
ought to finish writing that research up and publish it; curse structures are a 
neglected area of study.

No one wants to be accused of practicing the Dark Arts. Well.  Perhaps Potter and 
I should co-author the paper; that ought to put a few people's minds at rest.

Or otherwise.  Hah.

* * *

"I've hired a new Defence professor," Albus said, handing me a glass of whisky.

"Oh?"  I was well aware of the rumors that I want the Defence position; I wondered 
who believed them.  I wondered if Albus believed them; I knew Minerva did.  "Which 
one?"  We had interviewed three since the end of the term; none of them were 
particularly compelling choices.

"Arthur Albion."

"Hah!  On your head be it, Albus.  That fool wouldn't know a Dark wizard if 
Voldemort himself stood before him."  Albion had *not* impressed me at his 
interview--he'd been weak on his counter-curses and magical remedies.

"Oh, he's not quite so dense as that, Severus."

"He's better than Lockhart, certainly," I said.  "I would point out, however, that 
your average slug would have been better than Lockhart."

"Yes, well."  He sipped his drink.  "Sometimes I wonder if the job *is* cursed."  
I raised my eyebrows at him, and he smiled.  "If I gave it to you, I fear we might 
lose you, too."

"I don't want it."  I swirled my whisky around in my glass.  "Tell me.  Do you 
think Voldemort is finally gone?"

He shook his head.  "I couldn't say, my boy.  I couldn't say.  I can find no trace 
of him, but that doesn't mean much."

"He's vanished before."

"Yes."  Albus was silent for a while, staring into his glass.  

I held mine up to the light to look at the color.  Whisky is a beautiful liquid, a 
translucent live amber.  I've always been fond of Islays, but Albus favored 
Highland single-malts.  This one didn't have the whisper of magic around it that 
wizard-distilled liquors did, but I didn't mind as I normally would.

I dipped a finger into the whisky and lifted it out, sketched in air with the 
evaporating fluid.  The Dark Mark hung between us, shimmering.

Albus looked at it for a long moment, and then said, "Can you still see it?"

I rolled up my sleeve and held out my arm to him.  The Mark was clearly visible, 
as it always was.  As it had been for over three years.  "I don't know if it will 
fade again," I said, bitterly.  "It did after Potter's parents were killed, but 
this time--"

He touched it lightly, and I winced.  "Does it hurt, Severus?"

"To the bone," I answered, and drained my glass.

He poured me more as I rolled my sleeve back over the Mark.  My arm throbbed.

"I asked a great deal of you, I know.  I may yet ask more."

"You know you have whatever is mine to give."  My life, even, should you ask--but 
I did not say that.  I did not need to say it.

He nodded, and I clutched my glass, hard, to keep my hand from shaking.  I knew 
Voldemort might yet be out there, and the next time he returned, I would be openly 
against him--not a spy within the Death Eaters.  Different risks.  Different 
challenges.  I wondered how I would face them.

With Potter, like as not.  I smirked; the thought was intriguing, to say the 
least.  He and I had fought back-to-back over the past few years, but he was a 
student, half-trained.  What we might be together with him in the fullness of his 
power--

"Potter should've been a Slytherin," I said.

Albus, a Gryffindor himself, frowned at me.  "You think so?"

"I think that if Voldemort lives still, we may have need of those of my House--on 
the side of right."

"Teach him what he needs to know, Severus.  Teach him everything he needs to 
know."

I set my glass down and stood to leave. "I need no instruction to do so, sir." 

His hand on my wrist stopped me.  "Severus.  I have never doubted you.  I will not 
start now."

I looked down at him.  "I know."  The pain of the Mark on my arm lessened 
abruptly.

He let me go, and I went to my rooms to get some sleep.  

Potter was reading in the sitting room, and looked up when I walked in.  "Sir?"

"Mr. Potter."  I sat down across from him and looked at the title of the book he 
was reading.  Hrr.  Interesting.  It was "The Myth of Purity," the treatise on so-
called pureblood wizarding families that I wrote just after Voldemort's 
disappearance seventeen years ago; it made me somewhat unpopular with a number of 
my former classmates.

Mostly the Death Eaters.  I can't say I mourned the loss of their affection.

"What do you think of that?" I asked, and he carefully set it down.

"Well, I don't--I mean.  It's--I suppose I always thought that you liked pureblood 
families."

I leaned back into my chair, feeling relaxed from the whisky.  It was not an 
unpleasant feeling, although it was unusual.  "I care only for talent and 
intelligence.  I have no patience with idiocy."  I narrowed my eyes at him.  "Or 
with children coasting on their parents' legacies."

"But you always treated Draco--"

I cut him off with a wave of my hand, and my arm began to burn and throb again, as 
if the wave had sent blood rushing to it, pressing on it from within.  "Draco 
Malfoy is a gifted boy.  His parents were not part of the equation--not on my end, 
at any rate.  I am certain *he* thought they were."

Potter frowned.  "Do you really--" He stopped, bit his lip, continued.  "Do you 
think that Voldemort is really gone?"

That was not what he had intended to ask, I was certain.  Nevertheless.  "I have 
already had this conversation once tonight," I said.  "I do not know.  No one 
knows." I stood up and looked down at him, a child not yet grown to manhood in 
body, but in mind and will--ah, mind and will.  Untaught as yet, but the potential 
was there, humming beneath his skin, strong with the use he had made of it over 
the past years.  I could almost taste it in the air around him. "We're going to 
Diagon Alley tomorrow, Mr. Potter.  Be ready by 9 A.M."

"Yes, sir.  Good night."

I went to bed, but it was a long time before I slept.