Lab Coats and Wizard Robes

Chapter One : A Potion to Cure Blue Bubbles

It was a wet Friday night. Severus Snape had been correcting students" essays for more than an hour with a disgusted scowl on his face. Now and then, when he found a particularly stupid mistake, you could hear a "tut" in the otherwise silent room. Then, with a kind of grim satisfaction, he would draw a letter "T" on the top of the offending paper with grim satisfaction and proceed to the next piece of parchment.

Suddenly, he heard a cough from the fireplace. He lifted his head only to see Albus Dumbledore's face between the flames:

"Good evening, Severus."

"Headmaster."

"I wondered if you could perhaps spare a moment to come to my office."

Snape was annoyed to be interrupted in his work, but he dutifully rose to his feet and limped to the fireplace. He threw some Floo Powder in it, stepped in and said "Dumbledore's office".

Seconds later he was brushing the ash from his clothes, and was looking at the ancient headmaster. He had a pang, as always, realizing for the thousandth time that he had been lucky in the war against the Dark Lord in comparison with Dumbledore. He had come out of the war with nothing more than a dysfunctioning knee and white hair. His weak knee had been inflicted on him by a very large Muggle who had been scared at the sight of his wand (a relative of Potter's, of course) and who had, then attempted to kick him senseless. His hair had turned white overnight, after a series of horrible events he didn't want to remember.

But Dumbledore was a wreck: the once energetic leader who had inspired so many followers, the one who had defeated the two most evil wizards of the last century was now an ancient, wrinkled, man who had been blinded by the Dark Lord, only one week before his final fall. Dumbledore was now walking slowly and cautiously towards his armchair, leaning on his desk for support.

"Is that you, Severus?"

"Yes, sir."

"Please take a seat. Would you like some tarte Tatin? Molly sent it to me. It's on the table."

"No, thank you, sir."

Albus Dumbledore had always indulged in sweets, but where he had caught this passion for tarte Tatin was a mystery to Snape: sherbet lemons had been bad enough, but what wizard with an ounce of self-respect would want to eat an apple-pie invented by two foolish Muggles who put it accidentally upside-down in the oven? But this was Dumbledore, and he could permit himself such eccentricities without anyone thinking the less of him.

Snape was still eyeing the dessert disapprovingly when Dumbledore spoke again.

"Severus, you know about the fungus problem we've been having lately."

"You mean the students who have been taken to the hospital wing because of yellow and pink striped fungus between their toes?" offered Snape.

"Yes, exactly."

"Nobody has ever died about a bit of fungus. Just send them back to their dormitories and advise them to shower more often."

"Well, apparently, some of them have started blowing blue bubbles through their ears, and Poppy"s starting to get a bit concerned."

Snape snorted.

"I have inquired at both Zonko's and Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes," insisted the headmaster," and they told me it was not a product of theirs. And I'm quite sure they were telling the truth."

Dumbledore might be blind, but Snape knew better than to doubt his skills at Legilimency.

The old man carried on:

"Poppy told me that, as she was scanning the latest copy of the International Journal of Healing Potions, she saw a recipe for something that might help. Unfortunately, she has her hands full lately, as you can imagine, and she was afraid it would be to complex for her, she wondered if you might brew it for her."

"Well, give me the reference, then, and I'll do it as soon as possible."

Dumbledore handed him a folded piece of parchment.

"Here it is. Thank you, Severus."

"Not at all. Good evening, sir."

Without further ado, he left the Headmaster to go back to marking essays. He had better finish them tonight, if he had this Healing Potion to make. He really hated it when the other teachers gave him extra assignments like this. He had the impression that they did it on purpose, to punish him for having been a Death Eater. Maybe they even laughed at him behind his back because he couldn't ride a broom. He knew what Flitwick and McGonagall were like: after all, hadn't they done everything to undermine Dolores Umbridge when she was Headmistress? He felt a bit sick to be compared with that awful woman. Pomfrey might look like a nice lady, but underneath the surface she was just as bad as...

He tried to suppress the thought, but his eyes fell on the suit of armour that had once been bewitched to pursue him amorously. This caused him another pang. He tried to calm down, to tell himself that the culprits were both dead, that nobody would ever try it again for fear of detention, but to no avail. Hogwarts sometimes was like Azkaban for him. Some people said they had a great time at Hogwarts, and he wished he were like them. But he kept remembering how miserable he had been here as a student. After the fall of the Dark Lord, he had seriously considered quitting. But when he had wondered where to go, he had realized that he had nowhere to go: no home, no family, no friends. The only person he had any respect for was Dumbledore. So he had stayed, and had continued to try to teach at least the basics of Potions to generation after generation of pampered little brats, who now had somehow found the way to have pink and yellow striped fungus between their toes and blue bubbles coming out of their ears... He sighed as he sat down at his desk. After staring at the remaining essays for a while, he decided to give them all a "T" (they didn"t deserve any better anyway) and call it a night. He wasn't even aware which students he was grading, and the nasty shock he was about to give to the fifth year Slytherins.