Apothecary and Auror

Chapter Four: The New Man

The next morning, after a quick cup of tea in his rooms, Snape made his own way to his lab. The Auror wasn't there yet, so Snape, shivering in the ever-present Azkaban cold, lit the fire and candles, did not forget to lock the door behind him and began exploring.

Before long he had a cauldron and burner set up. He started to poke around in the drawers and cabinets for the components of a SoftSoother potion, with the idea that anybody who had faced a Dementor for any longer time than he had in the second-floor stairwell the day before would need a goodly amount of soothing before he could regain coherence. He had selected a phial of tincture of opium from the controlled substances drawer and was scooping valerian root from a green-tinted jar when he heard the rattling of a key in the lab door's lock.

Snape had whirled around and nearly drawn his wand before it occurred to him that Dementors would most likely not be allowed to carry keys.

The door opened. A man wearing the bright red sash of an Auror walked in.

A man of Snape's age. Of exactly Snape's age of twenty-three years. Tall, with dark hair, sticking out and standing on end, as though he'd been riding in a high wind, with horn-rimmed glasses magnifying hazel eyes, which, fixed on Snape, were already huge with astonishment.

Potter, James, was the name on the Criminal Investigations badge the Auror had pinned to his sash.

Snape felt his stomach tighten and his muscles tense, as if the years had fallen away, as if Potter, with Black at his side and his adoring audience gathered round, had waylaid his favorite victim yet again.

"Snape," Potter said, just as he'd used to say it before he and Black had pulled their wands.

Hatred rose like bile to the back of Snape's throat. He swallowed it back. This wasn't school. Here, Potter was alone. Just like Snape.

"Master Snape," Snape said.

Potter stared at him for a moment.

"Right. And I'm Officer Potter. I'm to partner you this rotation. We conduct our first interrogation this morning, in the infirmary."

It hit Snape then. "You're McMahan's replacement. The new man."

"Spot on," Potter said.

Snape turned to the sound of another key rattling, this time in the door that connected to the infirmary. The door opened to reveal a middle-aged wizard with a barrel chest and silver-streaked black hair.

"Ah. You're both here, then," the wizard said. "I'm Shaftsbury. You're Potter and Snape, I take it?"

Potter ran a hand through his hair. He seemed to be trying to look over Shaftbury's shoulder into the infirmary. "Yes, sir. I'm Potter," he said.

"And I'm Snape," Snape said.

Shaftsbury beckoned. "Come in and I'll show you around before they bring the subject down. And don't forget to lock the lab door."

Snape locked the door and followed Potter in. The infirmary was like the wards he'd been on at St. Mungo's, except that it was darker, far less cluttered and had no patients. Drawing near to one of the beds, Snape saw manacles, one attached to each side of the bed, and a pair of fetters at the foot.

Potter stared at them, too. His face, Snape noticed, was quite gray.

Shaftbury showed them a laundry, storage areas and his tiny office, which looked exactly like Snape's. He showed both of them how to raise and lower the bed and how to lock and unlock the chains.

"You'll let Officer Potter take care of the subjects, though, Master Snape. Your business is to brew and feed them potions. I'm only showing you the beds in case he needs your help."

"Yes, sir," Snape said. Beside him, he heard Potter give a soft, trembling sigh.

Shaftsbury's last stop was the fireplace at the far end of the infirmary, in which a pallid fire burned. "I'd wear your warmest robes to work, if I were you," he said, eyeing the flickering flame. "This is the strongest fire I've ever been able to build in here. As for calls, use this fireplace only in emergencies. It connects straight to the Warden's office." He turned back to them. "Any questions?"

Snape and Potter shook their heads.

"Good. Wait here for the guards to bring you the day's subject. There'll be a half-goblin patrolling the corridors, Potter. Have him call the Warden if you need anything."

Snape heard Potter's hard swallow. Perhaps he recalled, as Snape did at that moment, that half-goblins were useless for controlling Dementors.

"Yes, sir," Potter said.

"You're not staying?" Snape asked Shaftsbury.

"Why, no. My job's to make sure the subjects are healthy enough before the Aurors question them and, if need be, to fix them up after. I don't need to stay during, don't you know."

Before Snape could think of an answer to that, Healer Shaftsbury had escaped.

#

They were alone. Snape looked at Potter. "Now what?"

"Don't you know?"

"No. Why should I?"

Potter looked at him incredulously, then reached into a pocket and pulled out his watch. "You've probably got half an hour. I'd mix up a Defenses-Downdraught, if I were you, and put it on to simmer. Then come back here."

Resentment stirred inside Snape. Potter hadn't lost his penchant for ordering his minions about. And everyone in Potter's sight was Potter's minion. "You've done this before, I suppose?" Snape said.

"No, but I've heard about it from McMahan and the others." Potter eyed him. "Don't know if you've read the staff handbook yet, Snape. But it says in there that everybody in Azkaban is subject to Law Enforcement."

"That means you, Snivellus." Potter didn't have to say that part aloud. Snape could hear it in his tone easily enough, just as easily as he could read the heading on Potter's badge: Department of Magical Law Enforcement. While his own badge read: St. Mungo's Hospital.

Snape pressed his lips together until they hurt. He turned his back on Potter so sharply he could hear the hem of his robe cutting through the air. He went back into his lab and did not forget to lock the door behind him.

#

Snape kept the opium but traded the valerian for the powders of various species of attenuated hallucinogenic mushroom--ingredients that weakened psychic boundaries without inducing visions. He added a base and some inert ingredients to stabilize the potion, lit the burner and set an hourglass with a wave of his wand to time the simmering for fifteen minutes.

He sat down to wait, and the torches faded. The fire in the hearth died to an ember and even the strong blue flame under his cauldron flickered.

I'm trapped, he thought. He lifted a trembling hand to touch the palpable darkness. It was no more than a foot from his eyes when the darkness swallowed it up.

I'm trapped in Azkaban and they'll never let me out.

In the back of Snape's mind, at the edge of his hearing, his father shouted and his mother wept.

Snape stood, clutching the back of his chair for balance, and groped for his wand. Holding the tip inches from his nose, he whispered, "Lumos."

The light at the end of his wand flickered weakly. But it was pure white and it was enough for him to see a couple of feet in front of him, enough to light his way to the infirmary door.

He fumbled for his keys with a shaking hand, unlocked the door and flung it open. Leaning against the casing for support, Snape lifted his wand like a lantern.

Its light fell on a stunning tableau. Snape saw Potter, standing stiff and straight on one side of an infirmary bed. His face was set and he held his wand in his hand, at the end of his outstretched arm. A silvery fluorescence, like lazy white fire, writhed at its tip.

On the other side of the bed stood two hooded Dementors. Between them stood a wizard in prison robes. His head was bowed and a tangled mass of strawberry-blond hair hung in front of his face, so that Snape couldn't see it.

Snape's eyes jumped back to Potter. There was suppressed terror in his eyes as they flicked back and forth between the Dementors and their prisoner, terror in every line of his tensed body. Yet his voice was steady when he spoke.

"If you'll lie down quietly, Ruskin, you won't draw their attention. They won't touch you."

The wizard threw back his head, tossing the curtain of hair from his face.

"I'll touch you, Potter, once he frees us," he hissed. "You're top of my list. Just you wait."

Olaus Ruskin, Snape thought, stunned.

"Nobody's coming to free you, Ruskin," Potter said. He glanced at the Dementors, then at his wand tip. The fire there brightened and stretched a few inches further over the bed. "Now why don't you just lie down?"

"What is going on here?" Snape said. His voice shook. With a whisper of their robes, the Dementors shifted toward him.

"Easy, Snape." Potter didn't take his eyes off the Dementors. "I don't need you exciting them, too."

Of course. Snape silenced the clamor of his feelings. He drew out his wand and stepped forward to stand beside Potter. He stared at the Dementors and summoned the memory of his first taste of freedom from his father.

Snape didn't speak the Patronus Charm. He focused in silence on his happy memory until a silvery-white Patronus Precursor, just like Potter's, furled out from the end of his wand. The two Precursors together were enough in drive the Dementors back to a shadowy spot several paces behind Ruskin.

Ruskin glanced over his shoulder at the Dementors, then stared in wonder at Snape.

"Snape," he said. "If it isn't Severus Snape."

Snape looked back. It was Olaus Ruskin. Slytherin prefect, Quidditch team captain, handsome and popular, only a few points behind Potter in the school standings and in his O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts. How often had he been able to call a gang of Slytherin boys to his side within minutes, to rescue Snape from Potter and Black, to run the Gryffindor gang off in humiliated defeat?

Not every time, but often enough. The Marauders hadn't won every round, thanks to Ruskin and his friends. No, indeed.

"Ruskin needs the Downdraught, Master Snape." Potter still didn't look at him, but held the other three, Ruskin and the Dementors, in the purview of his eyes and his wand. "Would you get it for me, please?"

Snape glanced at Ruskin, who grinned insolently at him.

"Why?" Snape asked Potter quietly.

Potter's lips tightened. He relaxed them at once. "Because he needs it. Officer McMahan reported to me that he refused to answer any questions."

Ruskin laughed. "Because he wants it," he said, gesturing at Potter and parodying Potter's tone. "Because he's got his lapdog Snivellus to fetch it for him! I see I wasted my time with you, Snape. You love it when Potter treats you like shit. All those times at school, when he hung you up in the air and stripped off your panties, you were loving it! You might have told me, you know. I wouldn't have interfered with your fun."

Through all of Ruskin's taunting, the Dementors never made a move. It couldn't have been because Potter had them so well-controlled. They'd turned on Snape as soon as they'd sniffed Snape's revulsion, and Potter had had his wand on them then.

No. The Dementors didn't react because Ruskin had his true feelings completely under his command. The mocking contempt was an emotional Invisibility Cloak. He'd learned how to fend off the Dementors. Without the Defenses-Downdraught, Potter wouldn't get a single straight answer out of Olaus Ruskin.

"Master Snape?" Potter said. "The Defenses-Downdraught, please?"

"Fetch, Snivelly, there's a good dog!" Ruskin said.

Snape turned his back on both of them, walked into his lab and shut the door on the sound of Ruskin's derisive laughter.

#

Snape stood with his fists clenched, breathing deeply, staring at the covered cauldron of Defenses-Downdraught for a couple of minutes before his emotions were under sufficient control to allow him to relax.

So. He was to cooperate with his tormentor to torment the one who had rescued him from torment.

And if that weren't twisted enough, what about this: Olaus Ruskin, glittering overachiever at Hogwarts under the headmastership of that hero of the Light, Albus Dumbledore, had chosen to become a Death Eater. If Ruskin could see his way clear to that, Snape thought, the Death Eaters couldn't be as black as the Ministry and the Prophet painted them.

Potter's voice, calm, though slightly strained, called to him from the other side of the door: "Master Snape?"

"Coming, Officer." Snape uncovered the cauldron. An aroma like dirt-covered roots plunged in boiling water rose to his nostrils. He poured two ladlefuls of Defenses-Downdraught into a pewter cup, covered the cauldron and carried the cup into the infirmary.

#

"I'll spell you to drink it, if you won't drink it voluntarily," Potter said to Ruskin.

"I'll sue you from here to the hollow hills if you try it. I know my rights," Ruskin answered.

They were both so calm, so steady. The Dementors remained quiet. And Snape patterned his demeanor after Potter's and Ruskin's, in order to keep the Dementors quiet.

Potter went on conversationally. "It's not the Imperius Curse, you know. Doesn't mess with your mind. It's something Chief Moody developed, to operate the muscles of your mouth and gullet." Potter fished a parchment out of his pocket. "Here's a warrant. The Wizengamot would never let us use the Imperius Curse. And Veritaserum gets past them only once in a blue moon. But they're fine with the Defenses-Downdraught or Carmenoris."

Ruskin snatched the parchment from Potter's hand, unrolled it and read. When he lifted his eyes, they were blazing with anger. The Dementors rustled softly in their corner. Snape whipped out his wand, and the Dementors quieted again when they sensed the wispy Patronus Precursor wavering at its tip.

"Why don't you just drink it, Olaus?" Snape asked.

Ruskin turned a disconcertingly direct gaze on Snape. "Because that would be a kind of treachery, wouldn't it? And I would rather die than betray my friends, my cause or my Lord. There are things worth dying for when you must, Severus. When people like Potter will no longer allow you to live for them. Maybe someday you'll see that."

Snape looked away. His glance stopped on Potter.

Potter's face was so white he looked as though he might faint. His jaw twitched. After a few moments, he managed to still it. Then he pointed his wand at Ruskin and said:

"Carmenoris."

#

After ninety minutes and three doses of the Defenses-Downdraught, Ruskin still hadn't talked.

But his defenses were certainly down. The Dementors had drifted from their corner and were hovering close enough for Snape to hear their rustlings and smell their rotten exhalations.

It was Snape's job, when he wasn't dosing Ruskin, to hold them off while Potter questioned the prisoner. He sweated with the effort of keeping his Patronus Precursor alight at the end of his outstretched wand, of maintaining a perimeter around Ruskin and Potter.

After Ruskin had swallowed his third dose, Potter took the Carmenoris off him. The infirmary bed was in a half-upright position. Ruskin lay chained to the bed, shuddering. In the flickering, unstable torchlight, his face shone with sweat.

The Dementors stretched themselves as far as they could over Snape's perimeter, reaching for Ruskin with their scab-encrusted hands. Ruskin turned his face away.

"Get them away from me," he moaned. "Please."

"They're your guard," Potter said. "You know I can't send them off."

For a moment, Snape heard nothing but Ruskin's ragged breathing. Then Potter said:

"Just tell me where the next Death Eater meeting will be, and who will attend. That's all I want to know."

Ruskin's breathing rasped on for about thirty seconds.

Potter went on in a queer, flat monotone. "We know your lot have done murders on mixed-blood families. Rosemary Greaves's husband and her three-year-old daughter. That was your last hit."

"Blood traitor," Ruskin whispered harshly. "She deserved it."

"Is that what you plan at your meetings? Whose innocent relations, whose children you'll kill next? Does Voldemort attend, to give you your orders?"

"How dare you speak the Lord's name! One day he will burn your soul out of you, Potter, I swear it!"

The Dementors stretched further and gave soft sighs of longing and anticipation, the only sound Snape had ever heard them make.

"No," Snape told them, but his voice quavered a bit. Potter snapped around and drew his wand.

"No," Snape and Potter said in unison.

Behind them, Ruskin laughed maniacally. "If the Dementors don't drink your soul first, Potter! If they don't drink both your souls first!"

Ruskin's laughter held some sort of mad courage, for the Dementors, drifting back into their corner, seemed to have forgotten him.

"He needs more potion," Potter said. "Snape, go get--"

"No!" Snape said. Ruskin laughed on.

"What do you mean, no? His defenses are back up--"

Snape rounded on him. "You fool! I've already overdosed him: he's had six drams in less than two hours. I could crush his psychic defenses for days if I give him another dose. He'll go mad!"

Potter stared at Snape, his eyes sunken and dark in his sickeningly pale face. He was the one who looked mad.

"Mad?" Ruskin shrilled. "You're worried about me going mad, Severus? But isn't that what Barty Crouch wants?"

"Oh," Potter said softly to Snape. "Right. Well, then. I guess we're done for the day." He pointed his wand to the Dementors. "You two, return to your posts." They drifted out the door, and the half-goblin guard came in. "Magwitch," Potter said to the half-goblin. "Call Healer Shaftsbury to attend to the prisoner."

Snape escaped into the lab then and locked the door behind him. As he was cleaning up, he considered throwing the remains of the Defenses-Downdraught down the sink. But it was good for another week, and the ingredients were expensive. Instead, he stoppered it in an airtight jar and put it on the shelf he'd reserved for his finished potions.