The Potions Master.

"I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…"

xxx

It was almost five o'clock in the evening, but you wouldn't know it for the relative darkness swallowing most of the dungeon. A man with a slightly hooked nose and fathomless, cold black eyes was seated in rare tranquillity. He was a pale-skinned man, preferring to spend most of his time alone and in peace, a restful pause from the hectic day he usually wasted on ungrateful children who would never know how to brew a potion right; they would never really get it. He was a younger man than the crease just off-centre in his forehead suggested. Professor Severus Snape was barely forty, if that –no one seemed to ever know his real age, except perhaps a kindly old man who was currently sitting cross-legged on his desk upstairs, unsticking two sherbet lemons.

Three stirs anti-clockwise… and add the bat spleen, sliced exactly so, to give the concoction a little extra kick. And count twenty-eight seconds precisely… A crash interrupted the calm man's repose. He tried to ignore the disturbance and concentrated all his efforts on counting. The young man who had just fallen out of his fireplace had always known better than to attempt conversation. He would just have to wait until this crucial stage was complete.

A man of just twenty-two straightened up quietly and took the familiar clothes brush with the ebony handle off the mantelpiece and began to brush the soot off his robes as quietly as he could. He was a skinny man, very good at quidditch, but in his opinion, and that of the man seated in the small circle of light before him, not very adept at anything else. He replaced the brush and took a seat on a hard, four-legged stool behind one of the workbenches. He laced his long fingers together and thought as he always did upon arrival that this remained the most ridiculous weekly exercise in existence.

"Potter, come here and cut this asphodel root into exactly three pieces while I stir this."

Harry hopped off the stool, relieved that this was one of the rare times he would be allowed to do something. Riveting as it was, watching his former potions master making some strange mixture, really making it, not just cutting and mixing and cooking, but really understanding what was going on with each little piece… it was nice to be included in this strange, hallowed experience once in a while. He approached the bench, where ingredients had been laid out in neat piles –components on one side, utensils on the other, and picked up a scalpel.

"Good evening, professor," he said, politely, not really meaning that it was a good evening. He could think of far better things than standing in a dark room every Friday while his least liked teacher, not actually his teacher any more, probed into the depths of his mind, and then proceeded to taunt him with the outcome.

"Hmm," replied Snape. Harry glanced up at the pale man, whose lips were currently moving silently, counting pieces of dragon liver as he dropped them into the large pewter cauldron before him.

Harry addressed the root. He always took great care in cutting or mixing things for Snape's potions. Adolescence now over, he recognised the honour of being allowed into this cold man's only remaining joy; he was determined not to ruin it. He gauged the lengths carefully, as he had been taught, though he had never really heeded the rules while he was a student. He did not know that out of the corner of his eye Snape had noticed the care he was taking, and was beginning to ask himself why.

Harry presented the roots to Snape, who took them without thanking him, inspecting them carefully before dropping them into the cauldron. A flash of green flame flared for a second before retreating back into the deep bowl. "Very accurately done, Potter," Snape commented, sounding surprised. He picked up a large silver pocket watch that was lying on the bench next to him and checked it. Harry's stomach plummeted –if Snape was clock-watching that usually meant having to sit still and quiet for indefinable periods of time –time that as a young man, Harry could be spending training for the Brinsbourne Beaters, or looking for a proper job, or socialising… in fact, practically anything else would be preferable to sitting in the dark in silence.

Harry trailed a finger along the underside of the bench and tried not to fidget. He had given up feeling that it was unfair, this meeting. He had grown up a lot since they had begun this practice, and others like it. It had been foolish, he now reasoned, that everyone would have assumed that Voldemort would be gone by the end of his time at Hogwarts. Of course, it would have been quite nice, and a lot less hassle, but life rarely worked that way. That was why he was sitting here. Since he had finally bucked his ideas up and taken his Occlumency seriously, they had found that Harry's prophetic dreams could be turned to their advantage, whilst keeping the dark lord off the scent. Which were how these sessions had come about. Harry, who could not always be relied on to remember dreams, as dreams are fickle things, opened his mind to Professor Snape once a week, arriving at Hogwarts every Friday at 5 o'clock. Snape reported his findings to The Order of the Phoenix.

Harry glanced around into the gloom, trying to find something to occupy his attention. Snape gave the watch another glance and leaned back in his chair, neck stretched out, his hands cradling the back of his head. Harry gazed at him. He couldn't have Snape read his mind tonight. He was worried about what he might find. Snape had a rather long, elegant neck. Regal, if that term could be used to describe necks. While his eyes were shut, Harry took the chance of looking at him. He had often thought that maybe he liked looking at Snape a little too much than was natural. Now the cold portrait before him transfixed him. Snape's Adam's apple bobbed slightly as he swallowed. Then he spoke.

"Potter, stop watching me. Go away and empty your mind."

Harry blushed and gave a spluttery cough before doing as he was told. Standing in an empty corner, swathed in darkness, he pretended to empty his head as he watched the potions master, who had opened his eyes and was looking at the watch again before suddenly setting it down and checking the contents of the cauldron. What he saw seemed to please him, because a rare warmth kindled in his eyes and one side of his mouth lifted into a smile that was almost cruel. He took out his wand and summoned an enormous flask. The cauldron rose and began pouring the potion into the glass cylinder. Another charm set the implements to cleaning themselves away. Snape stood up and said, "Come on then, let's get this ordeal over with."

They faced each other in the circle of orange light. Harry's heart was thumping in his chest, and he felt confused, almost ill, and angry with himself. How could he empty his mind when he couldn't stop thinking about the potion's master, and he didn't know why? Snape raised his wand. Harry flinched. 'Not now, I'm not ready…'

"Accio healing draught," said Snape emotionlessly, pointing his wand vaguely over his shoulder. "You're got a split lip, Potter."

"Oh," said Harry, surprised. "It was a bludger. I forgot about it…" His fingers came up to trace the bump, now purple with a white line through it.

"Take three drops of this, it looks ridiculous," said Snape, curtly. "You're lucky you didn't lose any teeth. Infernal game."

'Why do you even care what I look like?' thought Harry, suddenly, as Snape grasped his chin in a vice-like grip and spilt three drops of the burning substance onto the small wound. Harry instinctively tried to twist away, but felt better when he ran his tongue over the sore area and found it healed.

"Oh good, it works," said Snape, sounding uncharacteristically amused as he turned away to send the bottle back to its place. "You made that." Harry stifled a groan. He should've known he was being used for an experiment.

The potions master turned back to him and raised his wand again. Harry took a breath and shuffled miserably. He felt like a boy of fifteen, having his mind searched for the first time by this formidable man, though why he felt so nervous he had no answer for, when he did this all the time. "Legilimens."

Harry felt his mind being invaded, images pushing each other out of the way over and over again as Snape searched his brain for the information he required. He tried hard not to resist; if he did, Snape would surely know something was wrong. Finally the images settled and their connected minds watched a dream image of Harry being surrounded by Dementors, the view spanning out to reveal Sirius. Harry felt Snape drop this one, as it could obviously not be a prophecy, Sirius being dead, and search again. After some humiliating memories of Dudley hitting him over the head with a plastic chair, they settled on a recent dream containing screaming and lots of green light. Harry's scar immediately exploded with pain and he felt his knees hit the stone floor with a disturbing crunch.

Harry felt his mind become his own again. When he opened his eyes he was kneeling up on the floor before the potions master, rubbing his forehead, trying to dull the pain, reminding himself that what he had seen was a dream image. He looked up at the familiar sight of Snape briskly jotting down everything the dream had contained. Harry, prepared for all eventualities, took a chocolate bar out of his robes and ate a piece. He'd never known if it really did have healing properties, but it certainly made him feel better. He got to his feet and gave himself a little shake.

The man who was perhaps as old as forty, but no one would ever know, glanced at his ex-student, and felt the familiar tightening in his chest which made him want to curl up in self-disgust. "Ready?" he said gruffly, flexing his clever white fingers and griping his wand again. Harry took a few breaths, then nodded, standing straight again so that his collarbone could be seen between the folds of his robes, which had the top three buttons undone in a way that made Snape wish for death. "Legilimens."

There was no pre-amble with the imagery, which was strange. An image of the potions master leaning back in a chair, extending that flawless neck played before the subject's own eyes. It flickered as Harry tried desperately to get rid of it. He willed himself to revisit some of his darkest nightmares. There was nothing to compare to the horror of what Snape must be thinking right now. The image disappeared and was replaced with another, then another. Unknown to poor Harry, some kind of explosion was taking place inside the man before him: they were all images of Snape. The images halted and fixated on playing out the potion master's lips, carefully moving, counting stirs…

'Oh my God," thought Harry desperately, not realising he'd said it out loud. He was suddenly jerked back into reality, his eyes snapping open to meet the indefinable expression of someone he definitely couldn't offer an explanation to. Snape looked shocked but alive; his normally translucent face was slightly flushed with the lightest pink –he looked how Harry felt.

Harry stood rooted to the spot, feeling utterly terrified and also more hopeful than ever before in his life. He didn't know that the only thought going through Snape's mind right now was: 'it's not as if he's my student any more…'

The quidditch star, boy-who-lived, blinked. Snape was a lot closer now than he had been just a minute ago, though Harry hadn't been aware of him moving. He swallowed and parted his lips but couldn't think of any reasonable explanation. The potion master's hand shot out to take his chin again. 'This is it,' thought Harry, wildly, 'this is how I'm going to go to meet my maker…" There was a pause. All Harry could hear was his unnaturally loud breathing. It took him a moment to realise that he was hearing Snape's breathing as well.

The grip on his jaw loosened. Those incredible fingers… they trailed their way down his neck, which he arched on instinct. Finally they found their way to that expanse of skin left exposed by the three undone buttons, and working into the left side, caressed the top of his shoulder and chest. Harry gripped the edge of the workbench behind him. He didn't know he had closed his eyes but when he opened them he registered those black eyes first, then the faintly opened mouth, which was coming nearer to his… Harry thought maybe he was going to die, and that it wouldn't be a bad way to go either… the potions master's hair brushed his cheek tantalisingly… now their lips were millimetres apart.

They sprang apart before any commitment could be made, gazes fixed wildly at the door, at which someone had just had the audacity to knock at.

"Severus? Hello? Just thought you might like a spot of tea…" Albus. Snape released the breath he'd been holding and spun back to a relieved-looking Harry.

"You'd better go."

The younger man nodded once and hastily pulled his robes back into place, going hastily to the fireplace and taking a pinch of floo powder. Snape brandished his wand at the grate and it immediately blazed into life.

"Next week," said Harry. He disappeared before Snape could answer. He could still feel the quidditch player under his fingers and composed himself.

When Albus Dumbledore entered a few seconds later, he found the potions master gazing broodingly into the fire, looking strangely alive.

reviews please, thank you xx