Lab Coats and Wizard Robes

Chapter Two : The Muggle Ingredient.

The following morning, Snape made his way to the library. He headed directly for the Muggle literature section, cursing as always the idiot who had designed the place. He took out his wand and jerkily tapped three books called 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Marco Pierre White's Guide for the Perfect French Dinner', and a colourful book called 'Organic Chemistry'. Instantly, a hole grew between the bookshelves to let him in the Potions Library. It was a library that was only for the use of the teachers, and the occasional bright student who wanted more information than the student's library could provide. That had not happened in the last five years, though. The last student who had requested the use of it had been Hermione Granger.

Snape shuddered at the thought that a Muggleborn had touched the books, but he knew it was no use to voice such opinions to Dumbledore. Sighing, he started to look up the potion he would have to prepare. As soon as he'd found it, he Conjured up a piece of parchment and his quill, and started dictating the instructions.

Halfway through the ingredients, he stopped : what the hell was hydrochloric acid 0.5 mol.L^-1? He was absolutely sure he had never heard of it. With such a strange name, he was sure he would have remembered it. Nevertheless, he started looking it up in his battered copy of 'One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi'. Nothing. 'A Dictionary of Potion Ingredients'. Still nothing. 'Rare Potions and their Still Rarer Effects'. Nothing again. On he went, trying one book after the other, scanning through the strangest potion recipes for a sign of the unknown potion ingredient. For hours he searched for it but the only thing he gained was a mounting frustration, which peaked when he resumed dictating the recipe, once he had been fruitlessly through the whole library:

'Add three drops of the solution of hydrochloric acid.'

All this trouble for three lousy drops of the stuff ?!? Even though he knew perfectly well that those three drops might well be the most important part of the potion, he couldn't help thinking that it was much effort for nothing. Anyway, there was nothing left for it. He would have to ask the author, and as it looked like he was a foreigner, it would probably take a lot of time. Pomfrey would be revoltingly angry about the delay.

Such were his thoughts as he was getting back to the students library. His stomach was telling him he was late for lunch, and the place was deserted. The only one who was left was Binn's ghost, who was drifting dangerously towards him. But Snape was in no mood to endure the tedious History of Magic teacher. In a desperate move to ignore him, he opened a random book and started reading it. It was 'Organic Chemistry', and in the middle of the page was written :

"This reaction will not take place unless an acidic catalyser is added to the reactants (hydrochloric acid or similar)."

At first Snape could not believe his eyes. He reread the sentence several times before he realized what it meant. Then with a shout of triumph, he ran, forgetting his knee, through the highly affronted looking ghost, straight to Madam Pince. She blushed and fluttered as she checked out the book (would the stupid woman never get over her pathetic crush on him?). He took out his watch: it was nearly one o'clock. He decided to drop off the book at his office and to go quickly to lunch.

He arrived at the Dining Hall in a very good mood. Indeed, he couldn't remember having ever felt better in his life. He was actually humming to himself (though quite out of tune), and was smiling contentedly to his shepherd's pie. This earned him a thouroughly mistrusting look from Professor Weasley (though still very young, the Auror had resigned after having been submitted to the Cruciatus Curse for three hours by Lucius Malfoy, the last Death Eater to be caught after the Dark Lord's fall. After months spent at St Mungo's, he had recovered and successfully applied to the Defence Against the Dark Arts job). But for once Snape's hands were not itching to jinx anew the young man's job. He just thought it was slightly stupid to always mistrust him since, after all, Snape had repeatedly saved his best friend's life.

After lunch, he eagerly started reading the Muggle textbook. He soon found out that hydrochloric acid was one of the basic ingredients of Muggle potions. The cryptic "0.5 mol.L^-1" was nothing more than a Muggle way to write down concentration. He cast the book aside. There was still one thing he didn't know: how was he going to get hold of the stuff?