Apothecary and Auror

Chapter Three: Reflections

It was McMahan who met Snape at Reid's door. The Auror's face was pale, with a thin sheen of sweat on the brow. His normally friendly blue eyes were expressionless. Snape murmured a greeting. McMahan's only reply was a stiff nod.

He did seem to relax a bit, however, by the time they reached the lab--at least to the point of adding to his facial expression a cynical twist of the mouth when he and Snape stepped inside.

"Here it is," he said with a wave of his hand.

Like the Warden's office, the lab was lit even during the day with torches to ward off the smoky darkness that crept in through every narrow window, every crack and crevice of the ancient fortress. Every now and then the torches flickered and dimmed, as if they flagged in their constant fight against the gloom.

Even by that uncertain light, Snape was pleased enough by what he saw: well-scrubbed, granite-topped work tables, shelves of materia medica neatly preserved in glass jars, another shelf of locked drawers meticulously labeled with the names of herbs and prepared powders, a back wall lined with clean cauldrons and retorts in excellent condition, a cabinet filled with dragonskin gloves and aprons in various sizes. Beside the closet of protective gear, a door opened into a tiny, tidy, candle-lit office.

"Hope you're happy with it," McMahan said, the cynical smile still curving his lips. "We've had bags and boxes of new supplies shipped in to this lab, ever since Barty Crouch started taking an interest in Azkaban. You should have everything you need for your work on the Ministry's new project."

"Very good," Snape said, looking at him curiously.

McMahan gave another one of his flippant waves, this time toward a closed door in the back wall, next to the shelves of cauldrons and retorts. "The infirmary's that way. But I wouldn't go in there, if I were you, without the infirmarian's invitation." McMahan's cool, indifferent look focused into a hard stare. "And, if I were you, I wouldn't go in without an Auror to accompany me."

"That may make my work difficult," Snape said. "At St. Mungo's, I spent half my time on the wards."

McMahan laughed shortly. "This isn't St. Mungo's. Haven't you worked that out yet?"

Snape felt his jaw tighten. McMahan was beginning to irritate him. "Then perhaps you and I could both go to the infirmarian and ask him or her to give me a tour of the ward."

"Him, Master Snape. But not today. I'm off-shift." McMahan's expression softened. "Look, it's late. Why don't you just let me show you to your rooms? You can settle yourself in, then have supper. Either in the staff refectory or in your own room."

"Fine," Snape said, stifling an impatient shrug.

They walked through dusky, torchlit corridors and up a flight of stairs to the east wing of the fortress. McMahan stopped in front of a polished oak door and handed Snape a ring of keys.

"Keys to your room here, your lab, your office and to the desks, drawers and cabinets in all three. Never leave a room to which you have the keys without locking everything inside it and the door which leads into it. Do you understand?"

"Certainly."

"Good. I'd make it an early night, if I were you, sir. Healer Shaftsbury will expect to see you in the infirmary at seven o'clock sharp."

With an Auror, Snape supposed. "Where shall I meet you, then?" he asked McMahan. "In the lab?"

A smile of relief, like a ray of the rising sun, broke across McMahan's face. "Oh, you won't be meeting me, thank the Light. I'm off Azkaban rotation for the next two months at least. The new man starts tomorrow. That's the poor devil who'll take you into the infirmary. I'll leave a note for him before I step on to the launch this evening."

#

Snape chose to have his supper sent to his rooms. He sat sunk in an armchair, staring into the fire, long after he'd washed down his mutton chop and potatoes with a pint of ale.

His chair wasn't six feet from the hearth. He was no longer hungry. He was wrapped to his chin in woollen robes. And still he was cold. There was something dark and damp in this place, that crept into the marrow of your bones, no matter what you did to fend it off.

How did the prisoners, with no fires, no soft chairs and much poorer food than Snape had just enjoyed--how on earth did they stand it?

And then, for the Death Eaters, to add Dementors to that harsh mix.... Dementors were Dark creatures, for Merlin's sake. Wasn't the Ministry of Magic supposed to be fighting against the Dark?

Snape had thought Lucius Malfoy a bit overwrought at times, when he'd warmed to the subject of the Death Eaters. They spoke often now, ever since the summer before, when Lucius had renewed what Snape had always thought had been a lukewarm schoolboy acquaintance--understandably weak, because of the five years' difference in their ages--and had seemed to be trying to strengthen it into friendship.

Snape had responded. It had seemed as natural to accept Malfoy's patronage then as it had been to accept the protection of the Prefect, Head Boy and Slytherin Quidditch Captain during his first and second years at Hogwarts. He'd attended Lucius's wedding to Narcissa Black and gone down several times since then to Wiltshire, to spend the weekend at the family's estate.

"For hunting, parties and politics," Lucius had said with a smile, when he'd extended his first invitation to Snape. "Not necessarily in that order."

Snape had been on the dueling team at Hogwarts and had his Potioner's hunting license, so he was a decent shot with wand. But he was no match for Lucius. To hunt with his host embarrassed him more than anything else. And, since he loathed making small talk and couldn't dance, he hated the parties even more than the hunting.

That left the politics.

Ever since leaving school, he had avoided political discussion. His surname was Snape, not Malfoy or Black. Strongly-held and strongly-expressed political opinions were a luxury he couldn't afford. He had his way to make in the world. Along the way, he'd learned to keep his political views, with most of his other opinions, under mental lock and key.

Not that he hadn't always shared Lucius's views. As a Slytherin schoolboy in good standing, Snape had hated the Muggle-borns just as much as the rest of them did. With the contamination of their blood and the degradation of their culture, the Mudbloods would succeed at what hundreds of years of Inquisitorial persecution had failed to accomplish: the destruction of the wizarding world. He still despised them, but, with age and conscious suppression--as a Ministry employee at St. Mungo's, he rubbed elbows with Muggle-borns every day--the feeling had grown less intense. In the first place, nothing consumed him as much as did his fascination with the arcane art of Potioning and his desire to get ahead in his chosen career. Not least, because success would bring him the respect he had always longed for.

In the second place, Lily Evans, his own personal Muggle-born tormentor, was now Healer Potter of the emergency department at St. Mungo's. Though she was now married to James Potter of the Mudblood-loving Potter clan, the one man Snape hated most in all the world, she was forced to treat Apothecary Snape as politely as Apothecary Snape was forced to treat her.

Life wasn't school. Nor yet was it one's childhood home. Snape had left both behind, by immersing himself in his work, in the steady rise of his prestige at St. Mungo's, in the financial independence contained in that bag of galleons the hospital bursar handed him every week. He'd proven it by being able to work alongside Healer Potter in the toughest conditions, in spite of her careless beauty, in spite of her, a Mudblood, putting on the airs of a pureblood witch. In spite of James Potter occasionally stopping in at the emergency room at the end of the shift, to put a proprietary hand on Lily's arm and lead her off, without so much as a glance in Snape's direction.

Such were the ways of the world. And, in his new friendship with Lucius Malfoy, Snape had begun to feel that he had a much more philosophical attitude toward the world than Malfoy did.

"They're much more our sort, you see," Lucius said of the Death Eaters. "That's what rankles Alastor Moody and his cohorts in Law Enforcement. Dumbledore's coterie, you know. Fudge and Crouch only think they command Moody and his Special Unit. Moody's allegiance is to Dumbledore. Look how Moody keeps feeding Crouch's paranoia about the Death Eaters. That's just what Dumbledore wants." Lucius laughed softly. "If only Crouch knew!"

"Knew what?" Snape asked politely, though his mind was already wandering.

"Ah, nothing." Lucius's tone was light, but his eyes glittered with a strange, zealous delight. "Only let Barty Crouch keep it up. He'll find out soon enough! Now I hear he's ordered Moody to break up any Death Eater meeting at which Lord Voldemort gives a speech."

Lord Voldemort, the head of the Death Eater party. It had to be an assumed name, sounded like something the leader of a street gang would call himself.

"It's because Lord Voldemort says aloud what the rest of us think in our hearts. That we should stop pouring half the Ministry's budget into maintaining a bureaucracy that does nothing but feed the Muggles' self-deception. That we should declare ourselves. That we should assert our right to exist in the world we both share. Enough of these Muggle Protection Acts, that people like Dumbledore and Harold Potter keep introducing into the Wizengamot. Let the Muggles learn to protect themselves, as their ancestors did."

Snape smiled cynically. "You mean, through another Inquisition?"

"Oh, no," Lucius said. "The Lord would never let the poor Muggles do that to themselves again. After all, most of the victims of the Inquisition were Muggles. No, I'm talking about before the Inquisition. The Muggles had rulers who knew how to get along with us then. The pharaohs and their magicians. The Celtic chieftains and their Druid priests. The American Indians and their medicine men."

"Oh, that," Snape said. "Yes, in those days the Muggles got along with us. Because they feared us."

"Exactly, Severus." Lucius's smile broadened, showing a row of even, white teeth. "Exactly."

#

Did the rest of the Death Eaters think as Lucius did? Snape wondered, staring into the dancing flames. And had the Ministry caught on? Was that the reason for the crackdown on the Death Eaters, the summoning of the Dementors and the hiring (and blackmailing) of a Potioner who could weaken the Death Eaters into betraying their comrades to the Wizengamot?

Snape rose, yawned and stretched. He went in to the bedroom, hung his robes up to air and pulled on his nightshirt. He was exhausted. Nevertheless, the questions bouncing around in his head and the lingering horror of the Dementor clutching at his heart aroused a fear in him that he'd get no rest that night.

But he was wrong. Perhaps the Dementor had taken more out of him than Snape realized, for he sank into sleep like a stone into water as soon as his head hit the pillow.