Poetic Justice

Many thanks to Nakhash Mekashefah for the beta

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.

--T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

Poetic Justice

He can't even stay in the classroom while she is brewing anymore. When they began this routine seven years ago, he always hovered over her shoulder, observing with a hawkish eye as she sliced, ground, and stirred, ready to correct an error or criticize her methods and all but handling the ingredients himself. But it has been several years since he's last been able to stomach the nauseating, choking fumes that rise from the cauldron, and it no longer seems prudent to risk inhaling too much.

So he watches from the doorway, where it is easier to breathe. She never seems to mind, or to question why, and she rarely so much as glances back at him. Not, of course, that she needs his or anyone's supervision by now. She's done this well over a thousand times already (he's been keeping track), but he's never found it easy to relinquish control over any part of his life, and this is no exception. Never mind that she's more than competent, never mind that even from here the foul smell of the potion burns his lungs and makes him want to retch; if all he can do is watch, then by God, he'll watch. But the knowledge that he himself can't so much as stir the cauldron without contaminating the results is--humiliating. The most accomplished Potions master still living has been reduced to begging a snot-nosed girl to brew his own remedy. The irony of the situation has not escaped him. Somewhere, the gods are laughing.

She looks tired tonight; her skin is pale, and there are deep purple shadows under her eyes. Perhaps the dunderheads have been worse than usual, though he can't imagine that managing a classroom full of number-crunching students compares in the least to supervising the kind of disasters that occur daily in the Potions classes. Perhaps she's merely slept badly. Foolish, if that's the case--out of necessity, she has unlimited access to his storeroom, and he makes a point to keep several doses of Dreamless Sleep in stock at all times.

Despite the fatigue, her hands are as sure and quick as ever, not pausing as she finishes grinding the yarrow and tips the fine powder into the cauldron, then moves to measure out a precise amount of dragon's blood. Under any other circumstances she would be a pleasure to watch; the flickering light casts bronze highlights in her unruly hair and gives a soft, golden glow to the pallid skin of her cheeks and hands. Her purposeful movements have a mathematical grace to them, and he can almost forget the nausea and his stinging throat as he watches the progression of her work.

She's clever, that girl. More than clever, he has to admit. He'd never have given her such a responsibility otherwise. And she's discreet about the whole thing. Someone must have noticed her absence during the countless hours she's spent with him, but he knows she doesn't talk about what she does in the dungeons, not even when faced with the insatiable gossips of the staffroom.

Not that no one knows. So far as he is aware, the students have either ignored or merely never noticed that the greasy git of the dungeons has become ever more reserved since the Dark Lord's fall, that he ventures out of his lair with increasing infrequency and barely speaks a word when he does. His resignation as Head of House was met with a few raised eyebrows among the older students, but he offered no explanations and naturally none of them asked. Minerva, however, required reasons, and she only accepted his wish to spend more time on his research and less on coddling the Slytherin brats with reluctance and a concerned frown. Most of the senior faculty are well aware of the situation and of the girl's role in it, and he is constantly having to wave aside halfhearted inquiries after his health. As he overheard Pomfrey whispering to Vector the other week, he's lost significant weight in the past months, his sallow skin has turned a sickly gray, and streaks of dirty silver run through his hair. It has become pointless to hide the deterioration any longer. Still, he can let them assume it's a normal result of his condition and nothing to be overly concerned about. Never mind that he knows better. Never mind that he knows perfectly well that every dose he drinks of the foul remedy brings him a step closer to a wasting death. He'll keep that to himself.

He supposes, in retrospect, it isn't all that strange that the potion's effects have never been fully researched and that nobody has ever recognized the dangers. In the beginning, so few had access to a competent brewer that the number of case studies was quite small; then the Dark Lord rose to power a second time, and one by one all those who had need of the potion were hunted down and either recruited or killed.

Lupin, the sole exception, figured it out long before he himself did. When he finally put the observations together, he went to Lupin and told him his suspicions: that if he continued to take the potion, he wouldn't have more than a few months to live. Lupin smiled and replied that he already knew; his affairs were in order, and he was prepared. He stared back, disbelieving, and pointed out that in the end the potion was only a precaution. It wasn't completely necessary. Lupin just smiled again.

"It's better than the alternative."

He didn't understand at the time, but now he's beginning to. It is better than the alternative.

Lupin is dead now.

He gives himself perhaps another year, on the outside.

There is a way out, and he finds himself contemplating it as she adjusts the flame under the cauldron. They experimented with the potion in the beginning, substituting ingredients and altering proportions, with an eye to making it more effective--all he needs do is suggest that she use a drachm or two of boiled ragwort instead of the hellebore. On the surface, it makes sense; in theory the ragwort will possess all the hellebore's cardiac depressant properties while minimizing the resulting fatigue. She'll probably be surprised that she's never thought of it herself. But he knows this potion, knows its ins and outs better than anyone else alive, and he knows that if she uses the ragwort he'll be dead within a few hours of ingesting it. And afterward no one will be the wiser. Damned old bastard, must have been losing his touch at the end, but he couldn't have known. It would be that easy. He's worked out nearly a dozen simple ways of quietly killing himself while making it look like a reasonably safe medical experiment. It has subtlety. It's much better than simply downing a vial of poison, which is far too obvious. Better that none of them will know. It's perfect, and the temptation is often difficult to resist.

"It's done." Her voice startles him, and he wonders how long he's been distracted. His eyes are stinging from the smoke, and he winces as he moves through the doorway, holding his breath as best he can and rather hoping she doesn't notice his discomfort.

She does, of course, and he resents it. "Don't bother, I'll bring it out to you." And there is nothing for him to do but retreat back to the hall outside and accept the goblet she's filled with the damned stuff. She watches him with large, expressionless eyes as he raises the goblet to his lips, tips his head back slightly, and swallows. Next time, he thinks, choking as it travels down his throat, next time the ragwort. Or perhaps the time after that.

"You should go." It's hard to form the words around the bitter aftertaste, harder still to manage the insulting tone he wants, so he doesn't bother following it up with a scathing remark.

"I haven't finished cleaning up--"

"There isn't time. Do it tomorrow." Of course, by tomorrow the potion will be a crusted mass in the cauldron, next to impossible to remove, but it's nearly time now and he can't bear to have her nearby when it happens. She nods and walks quietly away, up the stairs toward the rest of the castle. He turns and walks into the next room, which is startlingly empty of any furnishings, and locks the door behind him.

He sinks down onto the cold floor and places the empty, steaming goblet beside him, and he allows himself to think back for a moment to that other lifetime seven years ago, when he would have brewed the potion for someone else and when he wouldn't have known what it felt like to be torn apart from the inside on a regular schedule. Next time, he thinks, the ragwort, and it will be ended at once. But he knows it's a lie. That's not the way it's done. He looks at the goblet beside him, feels the potion sinking into his body, and he feels himself slowly rotting away.

He smiles. This--yes, this is the way the world ends.