Orion's Pointer

Snape stood looking at the Wolfsbane Potion on the cooling rack with his arms clamped tightly across his chest. It looked right, but that didn't necessarily mean it was right. Appearances were sometimes deceiving, and he wasn't about to lock off judgement on what was sitting in front of him until it progressed further. He'd gotten into strife before by making snap judgements, and the fall-out from those instances took a long time to fade, if ever. Such experiences made him hesitate before committing himself, but the natural tendency to speak his mind was never fully suppressed, and it usually ended up reasserting itself at some point.

~*~

He'd stalked off to his private quarters after Pomfrey had tried to wrench his head off his neck, slamming the door behind him in a satisfying and rather ear-splitting manner. It wasn't until he took a step away that he realised that he had shut the end of his robe in the door, resulting in him being yanked backwards unceremoniously as if an unseen hand had hold of the fabric. Snape stood still and fumed, a tiny part of his mind grateful that no-one had seen it happen. He took a couple of steps back so that he could open the door and free the material. He left the room in darkness as he leant back against the wood.

Flitwick's gossip about the murder at St Mungo's had deepened into something truly macabre, if what Pomfrey had told him was true. Shredded? That seemed surprisingly brutal--almost something a Death Eater would be inclined to.

What had the victim done to warrant such a gruesome end? Whom had the victim been? He doubted that the Daily Prophet would have such information, but it might be worth keeping an eye on it over the following week in case some other, more veiled clue presented itself. He couldn't shake the gut feeling that the act reeked of Death Eater involvement.

St Mungo's had been required some decades ago to restrict the areas in which visitors and patients could Apparate in and out of. Some patients had differing opinions to their Healers as to when they were well enough to leave the hospital; that had always been a problem.

However, the hospital's administration had to appeal to the Ministry to restrict magical access to the building when outside feuds that had caused injuries started to be brought into the hospital itself. It was amazing the depths of ill-will that some people bore. Such people didn't hesitate to use Apparition in a hit-and-run method to continue the feuds. Other than pre-designated areas, the hospital was blocked against Apparition. That would mean that the attacker would have to have entered through an area that was monitored by a hospital staff member. There'd been no mention of anyone else being harmed or killed in the incident, but if the MLE was involved, they'd more than likely squash any information they didn't want getting out into the public domain. It was actually a little surprising that any word of the murder had been allowed in the paper.

Snape pushed himself away from the door and hissed a spell to light the room. He stopped after a few paces as another possibility occurred to him: the attacker could have been another patient. He mentally scanned a list of Death Eater names. He'd not heard of any of them being injured to the extent that they would require medical attention at the hospital, but he was the first to admit that he wasn't privy to everything that went on amongst the group.

Again, this was assuming that the attacker was a Death Eater--after all, the organisation hardly had a monopoly on violent and vindictive behaviour. He shook his head and dismissed the matter for the time being.

Shrugging his robe off, he was about to fling it aside when a weight in the pocket reminded him of the book that Dumbledore had given him. He dragged it out before sitting heavily in his chair by the cold fireplace. Whatever motivation Dumbledore had in giving him the book, Snape was actually very interested in reading it. It'd make a welcome evening distraction from his headache. He blinked. Well, the headache he seemed to no longer have. Damn Pomfrey and her neck twisting; it had actually worked.

It wasn't until he was several pages into the book that he found the letter. At first he thought that it was just an old envelope that Dumbledore had been using as a bookmark, but when he turned it over, he found his name written on it in an unfamiliar hand. Snape stared at it suspiciously for a few moments. There was no doubt in his mind that Dumbledore had known it was there. In fact, it was more likely that the Headmaster had put it there himself. But why? Why hide it that way and make no mention of it?

With curiosity duly aroused, Snape put the book down and opened the letter. His expression darkened as he read. It was from Fulgor. Snape wondered if it was a coincidence that this letter had been passed to him after Dumbledore's lunchtime appointment with Fulgor the day before. He doubted it.

The letter was full of confidences in Snape's ability to teach Potions that ordinarily would have left him with a private flush of pride, but having it connected to Parr in any way seemed to soil the flattery. It was obvious from the letter that Fulgor seemed to rate the Muggle's abilities positively. Snape had no doubt that should Parr be relegated to a lower level than she was currently assigned, Fulgor would be one of the first to hear of it, most likely from Parr herself.

Very well, then, Snape thought as he folded the letter back into the envelope and threw it into the unlit fireplace. Rather than let her stagnate with the first-years, let's see how she liked drowning at a fifth-year level. If anything, that would give him greater pleasure: watching Parr flounder about, disappointing not only Dumbledore but Fulgor as well... very sweet. It would also absolve himself from possible blame. After all, coming with such high recommendations, how could he not have expected so much from her? The uncoiling of satisfaction in his gut cemented the decision.

~*~

The following afternoon, Parr had turned up for her lesson with the other fourth-years, thus providing a chance for even greater internal entertainment for Snape. Looking like a corpse that had been dragged backwards through a hedge, she had just sat herself down when he spoke without looking up from the notes he had been writing as the class had filed in.

"Miss Parr, this is not your assigned class time. I suggest you find one of your classmates and try to convince them to take pity and run through this morning's lesson with you, for I shan't waste the next lesson backtracking for your benefit. I also expect today's assignment to be completed without delay. Please close the door behind you on the way out."

Stuff that in your ear, he thought nastily, almost hoping she'd make the mistake of opening her mouth and saying something. However, that particular want was left unfulfilled as Parr exited silently. Not having looked up to see her leave, he couldn't tell whether her silence was due to illness, embarrassment or anger.

Unsurprisingly, Longbottom's face was the epitome of distress, and that only increased to desperation as Snape tore ten strips off him during the lesson as the idiot boy managed the flub almost every aspect of the practical.

The class nearly fought each other to get out of the dungeon as soon as the lesson had finished in the barely concealed terror that he'd turn his vituperation on to someone else now that Longbottom had been reduced to an emotional wreck. It had brightened Snape's day to no end.

Dinner had produced no overheard insights from that diminutive bastion of gossip, Flitwick. Snape spent most of the meal stabbing his fork into his sausages and glaring at the Gryffindor table, purely out of habit. He realised that this was probably a bad idea and likely to put him in a foul mood, so he put his fork down with a sigh of regret and left the Great Hall.

Now, staring at the Wolfsbane Potion, he wondered where Parr had learned to make it. It had been one of the deliberately difficult ones he had thrown into her detention list. Like the Toxin Drain, it wasn't taught at high school level, although the method could be found in some of the dustier books in the library. It was the sort of potion that was difficult to brew if taken straight from a book, as was the case with most potions that were not in the school's curriculum. Getting students to follow instructions precisely was hard enough without throwing in idiosyncratic techniques, intuition and a trained sense of timing. His mouth compressed into a thin line. It seemed an odd thing for Fulgor to have taught her. There were plenty of other, more generalised and more useful potions to teach someone.

Snape hated smartarses, he hated favouritism, and he hated Muggles. That all three descriptors were combined in Parr made her a concentrated focus for his hatred. He'd suffered at the hands of all three and therefore relentlessly smashed down everyone with the traits of the first and the taint of the second to the same level of mediocrity that most deserved to be at.

Potter had been the most challenging in that category in recent times, and it had become a quite bitter obsession for Snape to rip away the façade that most couldn't, or wouldn't, see past to the truth: that Potter was, at best, an average and plodding student with no imaginative flair, no drive outside of Quidditch, with an unabashed arrogance that was surely a genetic inheritance from his father, and the total incapacity to realise that the only reason he was still alive was due to the actions of others and not through his own abilities. Merlin's balls, how Snape hated him! The intensity of the emotion made his stomach roil and his fists clench painfully.

He sniffed and almost kicked the rack in peevishness. He could only guess at how long Parr had been standing there.

"Get on with it," he snapped, turning away without deigning to look at her. He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose, trying to dispel the almost cloying scent of purple coneflower. "If that stuff hasn't worked for you up until now, then it's unlikely to be any more efficacious if you triple the dose."

Snape sat down behind his desk and scowled at Parr. Curiously, she was holding a steel bucket in her left hand; he hoped that it wasn't there for her to vomit into. She stared at the cooling rack for a few moments as if trying to fathom why he'd been standing in front of it when she had entered the classroom. If she discerned a reason, she gave no sign of it as she moved to one of the student tables and commenced her third day of detention, setting the bucket on the floor next to her.

It was the first time that day that Snape had gotten a good look at her, and it wasn't promising. If she'd looked wretched the evening before, twenty-four hours had not improved her state. The shadows under her eyes had not only deepened in colour but spread as well, encroaching upon the greenish pallor that sat high in her cheeks. Her shoulders slumped, and even her hair looked dulled.

This was obviously one very ill person, and he actually forgot his rancour long enough to wonder why on earth she wasn't in the infirmary. Snape tilted his head to one side and watched her for the entire detention in the sort of morbid fascination that grips bystanders at the scene of an accident.

He'd expected her to ask him if she still needed to complete her detention, considering he'd put her in a higher year level without prior warning, but she remained silent. He wondered whether it was due to stubbornness, martyrdom, or whether the thought had not actually occurred to her. It was possible that she was sharp enough to realise why he had put her into fifth-year level. If that were the case, then it was unlikely she was going to give him the chance to crow over her dropping the ball in the subject.

Despite her obvious illness, Parr managed to complete five more potions, including the Strengthening Draught that she had sat near the Wolfsbane Potion two days ago. Her movements had been slow and deliberate, face pinched in intense concentration. Each piece of equipment that she had used was carefully cleaned by hand using water that had been contained within the steel bucket, dried and put away.

She had actually begun to noticeably sweat towards the end, so much so that when she had drifted over to place samples of her evening's efforts on his desk, the hair around her face clung to her skin and the edge of her collar was darkened patchily. Snape watched her hand shake ever so slightly as she put down the last flask with exaggerated care. She fixed her gaze at some unspecified point on the table as she backed away and waited. A small trickle of sweat slid down from her hairline and along the contour of her temple. She either didn't notice or ignored it, remaining stock still, mouth downturned so that the lines at the corners deepened into brackets of distress.

"Go."

Parr turned slowly, picked up her bucket and left without a word, shoulders rounded forward, one hitched slightly higher than the other, leaving Snape wondering if that was the last he was going to see of her. The louder, nastier part of him wished it were so.