Apothecary and Auror

Chapter Two: The Warden of Azkaban

Snape felt the heat rise in his face. Why should he have expected that his emotional outburst was news to the man who had been Warden of Azkaban for the last twenty years? Of course he knew about the Dementor, and his guards were probably already expelling it from the island.

Snape sat down, straightening his back against the cushion of the armchair across from the Warden's desk.

"The name's Reid," the Warden said, sticking his hand across the desk. "Thom Reid, Warden of Azkaban. As I guess you know, since you came here to report your emergency."

Snape's face grew hotter. "Ah, yes, sir." He harnessed his thoughts, calming them. Then he took Reid's hand. It felt as cool and dry as an abandoned wasp's nest. "I'm Severus Snape. You asked my supervisor at St. Mungo's to send you an Apothecary for potions work on a project you have in hand. She chose me."

"Your letters?" Reid said. "Mr. Tewkes told me you had one from Subminister Crouch as well as Apothecary Morgan. "

Snape shrugged out of his cloak, took the letters of introduction from his robe pocket and handed them to Reid.

Reid didn't open the letters. He glanced at the addresses, then turned each letter seal-side up and tapped it with the tip of his wand.

"I assure you, sir, the seals are genuine." Snape tried to say it as mildly as he could. "Though you need not rely on my word. You can analyze the signatures, too."

Reid smiled faintly. "Oh, I will, now that I've determined the letters are safe to open. No offense meant, don't you know." He opened the letters, perched a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose and began to read. "We live in interesting times, that's all."

After he was done reading, Reid smoothed both letters flat on his blotter and passed his wand over them once.

"Ah," Reid murmured, smiling down at the letters as at old friends. "Very good." He looked up. "Well, Master Snape. You come to me with excellent recommendations. Melusine Morgan cannot speak too highly of you, it seems. And she has Barty Crouch's ear. Fortunately for both of us, for Melusine has never led me wrong yet."

Feeling a bit less disgruntled, Snape nodded.

"Which means I won't have to erase the memory of your meeting with that Dementor in the stairwell."

Snape frowned in confusion. The Warden was smiling, as if he thought he'd just made a good joke.

"It's not your fault a Dementor got inside Azkaban," Snape said. "They're very determined creatures, and perhaps the lure of the prisoners' emotions extends itself even to their lairs on the mainland." He paused. "I won't tell anyone, if you'd rather I didn't. You've no need to tamper with my mind."

"Nor do I want to, Master Snape. We understand each other, then?"

"I hope so," Snape said, though he wasn't sure he understood. "Madame Morgan and Mr. Crouch both said your need for a potioner was urgent."

Reid folded his arms, leaned back in his chair and looked speculatively at Snape over the top of his glasses. "You're fresh," he said. "You weren't a prisoner it had fed on a score of times already. I suppose that's it."

A chill ran down Snape's back. "I beg your pardon?"

"The Dementor. I must apologize for that, Master Snape. It didn't cross Azkaban Sound to attack you. They don't, generally. They hate water. This one sniffed you from the second-floor cellblock and left its post for the stairwell. Where it found you."

"Its post?" Snape said blankly.

Reid sighed. "We're trying to train them as guards. Another one of Barty's initiatives. Not that they're ineffective. Quite the opposite. But it's hard to find people who can--well--focus long enough to make them understand exactly what it is we want. To keep them from haring off after distractions such as yourself. You understand."

"No, I don't understand," Snape said. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"That the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has summoned Dementors to guard the Death Eaters we're holding here at Azkaban.."

"What?"

"That's where you come in. Not to train them, of course," Reid said, as if that were the reason for Snape's horror. "They've sent us Aurors for that, skilled Patronus-conjurors. But I've found I need a Potioner, too."

"Why?"

"Well, Master Snape, it's because there are two kinds of Death Eaters: the kind the Dementors affect too much and the kind they don't affect enough. Applies to all of wizardkind, I suppose, but that's neither here nor there. " He picked up one of the reference letters from his desk. "Melusine Morgan says you formulate the most potent Defenses-Downdraught she's ever assayed. That could help with the tough nuts, since we can't use Veritaserum. I couldn't tell you how many times Barty's gone to the Wizengamot to get an order for its use. Dumbledore's clique always blocks his request. Not your problem, Master Snape. I know. No need to look at me like that."

"I thought my Draught was to be used to relax the prisoner's guard so that he would be an easier subject for interrogation by the Aurors. I did not and do not intend to lay anybody open for predation by a Dementor."

"Well, that's the prisoner's choice, isn't it? Once he's answered our questions, he won't have to drink any more of the Draught. Will he?"

Snape stared at him, unable to reply.

"Of course not," Reid said, in an irritatingly jocular, jollying-along tone. "Those, as I say, are the tough nuts, the ones who are affected too little. Then you have your Death Eaters who are affected too much. They're the sort who'd be all too eager to answer questions, if they only had the presence of mind to do so. I need something to give them that'll calm them, help them collect their wits. Haven't anything of that sort up your sleeve, have you, Master Snape?"

"Are you mad?" Snape asked.

"No." Reid's tone was suddenly as quiet and even as Snape's. "They are. And I need them sane, so they can sit down in front of the Wizengamot long enough to testify coherently. To name names. So the Aurors can catch the rest of their murdering lot and put them right here--" he slapped his hand lightly on the top of his desk "--for the rest of their lives."

"Really? I had no idea." Nor did Snape have any idea how he managed to keep his voice calm as he said it. What did this fellow think he was? And how could Apothecary Morgan have sent Snape here? What did she think he was? "If that's what you want, I'm afraid I can't help you." He started to get up.

"Can't you? You'll be sorry, then."

Did Snape sense an attempt at bewitchment, nestled somewhere in that voice? Or was it Reid's taunting tone that set anger on the boil deep in his gut?

Very slowly, Snape sat back down. "Shall I?" he said softly. "That sounds rather like a threat, Warden. Why don't you just show me how you can make me sorry?"

"I was afraid you'd be like this," Reid said. He pulled open a desk drawer and peered inside. "Ah, here it is." He took a parchment from the drawer, unrolled it and began reading aloud.

"'Hogwarts, fifth year, detention and thirty points from your House for casting a Slicing Hex on one Sirius Black, a fellow student. Sixth-year, detention and fifty points off for casting the Mindmasher Curse on James Potter, another student. Hmm, in June. Wanted him to fail his final exams, I guess. Seventh year, you tried to slip a spoonful of Bloodfreezing Potion in Potter's suppertime pumpkin juice--. Strong stuff, that. You knew how to brew it while you were still in school? And this Potter--you don't seem to have got on well with him."

Reid had an odd look on his face as he said the last. He read on.

"Then, your first year at St. Mungo's. You were an intern. Apothecary Morgan happened to walk in on you grinding a powder of Hidden Hellebore."

Snape's breath caught in his throat.

Reid was watching him. "The preparation of the powder was complete. You'd just finished casting the spells of olfactory and gustatory concealment. You'd just earned yourself three years in Azkaban. Or a ten-thousand-galleon fine, since it would have been your first offense. But you didn't have ten thousand galleons, did you, Master Snape?"

His father's last beating had put his mother in the hospital. For of course she'd gone back to him. The moment of freedom that had created Snape's Patronus had been little more than that, a moment. She'd left his father and returned to him several times since then.

Snape had determined to make this the last time. If Mother wanted to return to the bastard--if she was so broken in spirit, so inexplicably mad--let her return to his grave.

Snape knew where the old man lived on his pension, in a run-down apartment he'd taken in London. Where Mother had followed him, like some whipped but ever-loyal pet. Snape had gone there often enough, to see to it his father didn't kill his mother. He could go there one more time, while Mother was out shopping, perhaps, drop a few grains of his specially-tweaked Hidden Hellebore into his father's ale....

He wouldn't have had to stay behind to watch. He'd read Dark Magic since before his admission to Hogwarts. Hidden Hellebore seized its victim with convulsions minutes after ingestion. Snape's formulation would make the convulsions end with a fatal stroke.

Had he really been about to get up, leave his lab, go to his father's apartment and go through with it? Or had he already begun to doubt himself before Madame Morgan stepped into his lab? She'd looked at the gray powder in Snape's mortar and then into Snape's eyes.

She must have seen everything there, for she'd said quietly: "You want to throw that powder down the sink, don't you, Severus?"

He'd obeyed her at once, in silence.

"She had to note it in your record, though, Master Snape," Reid said, as if he'd read Snape's mind. "Madame Morgan's responsible for training Apothecaries, people who will be licensed to dispense medicinal potions to the public. We can't have our Apothecaries poisoners, can we? "

Madame Morgan had never mentioned the incident to Snape again. He hadn't known she'd recorded what she'd seen. Or had she? But if she hadn't, how had Reid found out about it?

"You'd removed the hellebore from the controlled substances cabinet," Reid said. "You'd processed it. You were caught with the processed powder in your possession. All without a Healer's order. You weren't filling a prescription, Master Snape. You're very lucky Madame Morgan didn't turn you in. I guess she thought it was enough that you disposed of the stuff in her presence. Maybe she felt sorry for you.

"But I'm an officer of the law. Strictly speaking, I ought to report you."

Three years in Azkaban. His Master Potioner's and Apothecary's licenses revoked. He'd lose the house and the last of the family's ancestral estate. Father had mortgaged it to pay his gambling debts. Snape had let the house. Even so, he was barely keeping up with the loan payments. His mother would have nowhere to live, nothing to support her in her old age. And Snape would end his life in the same gutter his father was headed for....

"But, as I said before, Master Snape, we live in interesting times. Fact is, we're at war. In wartime, you sometimes have to bend the rules. I'm willing to bend the rules. That's how badly I need a Potioner of your caliber."

"At war?" Snape said weakly. "With whom?"

"With the Death Eaters, of course. And with this fellow who styles himself their leader. This Voldemort."

The Death Eaters again. Before the Ministry had summoned him, Snape had thought they were a political party with conservative leanings and a few lunatic fringe elements. All the best pureblood families sympathized with them. The Blacks, the Malfoys...

"Overenthusiastic," Lucius had said of the hooligans to Snape once. "But their hearts are in the right place."

Reid was unrolling another parchment. "If Madame Morgan can forget your youthful indiscretion and recommend you for licensure, for employment at St. Mungo's--well, who am I to object?" Reid pushed the parchment across his desk. "If you could see your way to contracting to work with us. Just sign at the bottom."

Snape glanced at the contract, saw that "breaking the contract provisions" or "divulging the particulars of said project to anyone not cleared by the Subminister of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement" would render him liable to prosecution and wondered why he bothered to read any of it. He couldn't afford to refuse Warden Reid.

"All right," Snape said wearily. He took the quill Reid offered him and signed the contract.

Reid smiled. "Thank you so much, Master Snape," he said, rolling up the parchment and slipping it into the drawer. Taking a key from the ring at his belt, he locked the drawer. "Why don't I call the on-shift Auror to escort you to your lab? That way, there'll be no repeat of that unfortunate incident in the stairwell."

Snape didn't answer. He rose from his seat and stood by the door with his back turned to Reid, to wait for the Auror to fetch him.