Amortentia Dolorosa

After a trying dinner with his father, Lucky came hurtling down into the potions labs in a rush. Without looking around he began pulling off his immaculate robes, dropping them to the floor where he stood. When he was down to a pair of slacks and a dress shirt, he pulled at the opening of the shirt with a slight hiss as he sent buttons flying across the room with a popping noise.

"Lucius? Lucky, watch the bloody buttons!" Severus looked up in vague irritation, from the cauldron he leaned over. "And do wear clothes. I'm working with some moderately caustic ingredients."

His grim amusement faded very slightly, as he finally noticed Lucius's face. "The Blacks, again? Or something even less pleasant?"

"Sev?" Lucky said, looking up for a moment, startled. "i hadn't realised you'd come back from Ireland yet," he muttered, more to himself than anything.

He strode over to the sink in the corner, away from the active potions. "Is that where you can give me a hand?" he asked, ignoring the question.

"I'm not back from Ireland, I'm just hiding from Clover." Severus shuddered dramatically, and then popped his wrist, tossing slices of frozen ashwinder egg into the cauldron. "I can't take my eyes off this for about another ten minutes. What did you need?"

"Never mind, then," he said, still talking half to himself as he turned on the warm water in the sink. He slipped out of his shirt with another hiss. He had one side of his body facing the sink, and reached over with the other hand to soak a sponge in the warm water, running it across the side still partially hidden from view.

"I meant to talk with you soon anyway," he said. "Have an opportunity for you." He rinsed the sponge in the sink, tinges of red and pink mingling with the water, before running the sponge over his side again.

"You are making extraordinarily unpleasant noises, Lucky. Need I be concerned?" Severus picked up his wand, in his off-hand, still stirring, and gestured at the lamps nearer the sink. "Erigo lux, eighty."

The lights complied, brightening to eighty percent of their potential luminosity.

"I am willing to discuss any opportunities you may have to offer, once you can assure me that they will not be arising due to your untimely demise."

Lucky laughed for a minute. "Nah. I'll be fine. Just have to get this clean, and then fetch the ointment for it," he said. "Nothing I haven't done before," he said, continuing to wash his side. Looking down at his side, he noticed that the thin slashes were now simply oozing blood, rather than the mixture of blood an pus they'd been oozing previously. With a satisfied nod, he set the sink to draining before setting off across the room again.

"I figure I'll wait until I have a shirt on before I try and talk too seriously with you," he said. "I know you abhor nakedness, and if I'd realised you were down here, I might have been a bit more cautious about shedding layers."

He started rummaging through the cabinets where he kept his perfuming oils. "And no, this wasn't the Blacks, Severus. Just dinner with my father," he said flatly. His side now had thin rivulets of blood tracing a path across his skin. "Aha," he said. "I thought I still had some hidden in here," he said, brandishing a bottle of a murky brown substance, and turning to head back to the sink.

"Dinner... with your father?" Severus tipped his head, and his neck popped, loudly. "Looks more like dinner with my father. I will refrain from making offers I know you will refuse. I am certain the Lestranges have already made those offers and likely will again."

A thin smile crept across his face. "Unless, of course, you mean to tell me you were demonstrating a new hex, and neglected to bring sufficient test subjects."

"And you wonder why I told you not to leave the labs and the associated rooms without me?" Lucky asked, one eyebrow arched.

"And, no, the Lestranges haven't," he said. "Because none of them know, or will," he said flatly. "It'd be gone in a week or so anyways, even if I didn't treat it," he said. "Just hurts a lot more that way." Lucky walked over to the sink again, and quickly rinsed off his side, patting it dry before applying the ointment carefully.

He sighed. "I got careless at dinner, and he was in a mood. This was to remind me that just because I'm of age, doesn't give me room to question the rules in his house." He shook his head ruefully. "Could've been worse. Would be, without this," he said, brandishing the vial.

And that was when Severus began to laugh, left hand still stirring the potion, right wrist pressed to his mouth. It was uncontrollable. He leaned to the side so the tears streaming from his eyes wouldn't spoil the potion.

"I don't suppose he threw the toaster? It isn't really an act of war, until someone throws a toaster. Not that I think your father would know a toaster if one bit him on the arse. You've got house elves for that," he wheezed, between gales of laughter. "I don't -- heh -- I don't suppose he threw a house elf?"

Lucky stated laughing, setting down the vial as he reached under the sink for a t-shirt. "Toaster?" he gasped, still laughing. "Merlin, no, Sev. And he'd never throw a house-elf. Not 'proper, gentlemanly behavior' after all," he said, laughing again. "And he hasn't done something like this in nearly a year."

He pulled the t-shirt over his head. "The difference with wizards," he said, watching Sev, "is that, if they are carefull about it, they can do this sort of thing as 'discipline' and no one will ever see the evidence." He sighed. "If I asked properly, he'd even cast the counter in a day or so, and it'd heal right up that way."

"Twice bloodied arse to your 'proper gentlemanly behaviour'. Violence is only gentlemanly if someone loses a head. Or a glove, I suppose, but that's a predecessor to the head." His eyebrow arced up, and he angled his head, contemplatively. "Gentlemen's violence just keeps getting sloppier."

Severus continued to stir the cauldron, changing direction on every third turn. Finally, he looked up. "I think I've been in Ireland too long. Here I am, in your basement, when you come to me with this appalling tale, and I've done nothing but jest about it. I think that wool-skirted, fornicating fiend is rubbing off on me."

There was a long, weighted silence, as Severus considered that last sentence. "I think I need a shower."

Lucky snickered. "Sev, do calm down," he said. "I didn't even realise you were down here," he said. "So it's not like I came to you, and really, it's not all that appalling."

He sighed. "As for gentlemanly, this was behind closed doors, and disciplinary. He didn't think anyone would see." He raised an eyebrow again. "And you did offer to help, Sev. And your jokes come from experience, which is different from other people's."

"Shower if you must, but I really do have news for you."

Severus held up one finger and dusted the top of the cauldron with powdered monkshood. He tapped the seconds against the empty air, and then switched off the gas, with a flourish.

"Sorry, just had to finish that out." He walked around the table, and sat on the corner of it. "Tell me your news, already. You've been talking it up since you got here, and you haven't said a word of it, yet."

Lucky laughed. "Well, I had other things to take care of, and then I had to get dressed so as not to disturb your delicate sensibilities."

He took a seat on the edge of a currently empty table. "Brought your interest in the cause to the Dark Lord's attention the other evening," he said. "Now I've got you the opportunity to brew something for him under the supervision of his Potions Master."

"Fascinating. Name it. You know I can do it." It wasn't pride, it was just the truth as he knew it. At age fifteen, Severus Snape had yet to meet a potion he couldn't brew. Some had been troublesome, certainly. Others had taken him hundreds of attempts, to master. But, he hadn't yet found one he couldn't brew.

"And I'm willing to prove my work, any way I must."

Lucky laughed. "It'll probably be a few days before I know what," he said. "And you don't have nearly the trial some people will have to prove yourself. That fool you met in the pub?" he said. "Talked to me twice, had a formal interview with Babs, had his lineage examined by Roddy, was discussed over dinner, and has to prove himself on a mission with several others to even showhe's worth considering."

He smiled at Sev. "You, on the other hand, get to brew the next assignment I have while I do," he said. "And I'll hand them in. By the time you're finished with NEWT's, I'll have you ready to replace me," he said with a smile. "You'll be happy brewing for him, and I'll be happy to set aside brewing to focus more on my research."

"And of course I know you can. I wouldn't have given you my recommendation otherwise. You were enough ahead of your classmates your first year, without the advantages many of them enjoyed, for me to decide to share these labs with you, after all. And you've only improved more and more, since. You're already up to most NEWT standard work, and the rest of it will be a matter of time. You have a passion for the art that I, frankly, lack. I fully expect you to leave me behind in ability, as time goes on."

"I fully expect to leave you in the dust, by this winter." A thin smile quirked the corners of Severus's mouth. "You're better at hexes, anyway -- which reminds me, I've been working on one out of that young lady's book of whatever it was that you lent me. It contained some truly ingenious ideas that can be expanded and expounded upon in fascinating fashions. I'm afraid my first attempts have been rather boring, but I expect I'll turn up something decent before summer's out."

He held out his hand and carelessly flicked his wand. "Accio Erlenmeyer flask."

The flask snapped into his hand, and he began to decant the potion he'd been brewing. "That sotted blighter from the pub is the least of my concerns, really. If he's worth anything, it'll be to stand in front of an incoming hex. I'm sure he'll pal up with Greyback, and it's the last we'll have to hear of him, personally. You and I are of a different order, Lucky, and I may be only half the wizard I ought to be, but I'm twice the wizard that animal is."

"Oh really?" he said, one eyebrow raised. "Somehow, I doubt it'll be quite that soon. It's not like I've given up on potions, after all." He grinned.

"You have, have you?" he asked. "I'll have to consider inviting you to my next showing, when I run the final tests on my latest. I've already gotten certain parties rather interested."

Lucky leaned back against the table cautiously. "Of course we are. And you're far more than you give yourself credit for, at times. As is Roddy, however much crap he might be with a wand."

"I know Roddy's a wizard. It's in his blood, and he can do some things really well. He got a Hogwarts letter. That proves he's got something, but I'll be damned if I know what he's got, other than fashion sense." Severus shrugged. "He's probably hiding it, whatever it is. It's good to be underestimated, I suppose. No one ever expects your responses, that way."

He shook his head. "But keep me out of your showings, Lucky. This first one, I'm keeping for myself. A good wizard needs a signature piece, and I think I can get mine out of this. I don't want it going places without me -- it's a different kind of dangerous. It's something I don't want to see put to unfortunate uses."

His hand went out again. "Accio stopper."

"Besides that, there's a certain wisdom to being underestimated. I'd like to stay that way. Let them think I don't know charms and hexes -- that I'm a real potions-only chap. For all that I favour the good of Wizarding kind, I am still putting my own skin first, in all things. Let's be serious. Assuming we win -- assuming we have the Muggles in our service and under our law, what stops my blood from making me the next target? You know and I know, Lucky. I put my faith in the cause, but I expect it to turn on me, when I've done my part. These things always do."

Lucky chuckled. "I meant to see what I've been up to, Severus. What you volunteer to show others is, in the end, up to you."

Lucky shook his head ruefully. "You may be right. I can hope not, but practicality comes first. Yet another reason I let myself have the image of the puffed up rich prat in public. When they see that, people forget to think of the rest of it. They forget that I can think, and hex, as well if not better than the rest of them."

"You and I, Lucky. We're a whole other order. And I hope we stay that way." Severus looked up, looking Lucius straight in the eyes. It was unusual. Severus had a habit of working while he talked, to avoid looking at people. Looking too closely tended to lead to seeing too much -- especially looking into eyes. "I won't be taking too much public interest in your work. I can't be seen learning that from you. Someone might put the pieces together. But, to hear Roddy talk, that's what the North is for, isn't it?"

Lucky chuckled. "Roddy certainly thinks so. And believe me, what I'm working on won't have a public showing. Unless you mean the stupid charm for file sorting. And even that one will be turned in quietly. Some things I don't care wheither or not my name is connected to, and others, well, let's just say that the sooner I can cast them silently, the happier I'll be."