Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Inside me. ❯ The boy abroad. ( Chapter 7 )

Disclaimer - Harry Potter and associated characters etc belong to Rowling and associates. Still.

 

Author's note - Seven chapters and still going! This is the longest fanfic I've ever written. And this chapter I learned that house-elf dialogue is grammatically painful to reproduce with any accuracy.

 

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Severus woke up warm and unusually comfortable. He wheezed softly, opening his eyes to encounter a pair of saucer-sized milky blue eyeballs. In deference to his physical incapacity he decided to forgo screaming in favour of clutching his overburdened chest and choking wetly in an incoherent manner.

 

`Dobby is sorry Young Master! Dobby brings healing potion for Young Master! Please be drinking potion Young Master, make you better.' The creature snivelled pitifully, bearing the glass vial of liquid deferentially and desperately seeking to avoid Malfoy Senior's wrath.

 

Severus accepted the potion, automatically checking that the liquid was what the house-elf had claimed before he downed it. As the simple decongestant and fever-reducer worked he sighed in relief, tension leaving his frame. `Am I to take it that my presence is required downstairs?' The diminutive creature nodded, urging Severus out of the sinfully comfortable bed and into and equally opulent bathroom. The bathtub was already filled, emitting fragrant steam. With Dobby's help Severus stripped and sank into the perfumed depths, the heat cushioning weary, bruised bones. Tiny hands ran through his hair and Severus twitched, only just staying his hand from a reflexive hex when he realised that it was merely Dobby washing his hair. He sternly controlled himself and overcame his natural paranoia, instead letting the creature do his job while Severus washed himself.

 

`What is this?' He demanded, eying up the small cloth pile with high suspicion.

 

`Great Master Malfoy told Dobby to give you clothes. These clothes are belonging to Young Master Malfoy when he is littler.'

 

It felt strange to wear such finery and thanks to Dobby's ministrations his hair shone healthily. Severus looked at himself in the mirror before going downstairs and barely recognised the elegantly dressed youth staring back. Then he sneered at his reflection, mocking the way he looked like the pampered little toy of the Malfoys'. As the sneer twisted his face Snape felt a lightening within himself, as if recognising that despite the trapping he was still the same person. He drew himself up to his full (not terribly impressive) height and walked down to the dining room with all the dignity he could muster.

 

`So glad you could join us, Severus.' An urbane voice greeted him.

 

`Good evening, sir.' He inclined his head at the head of the Malfoy household, an impossibly elegant platinum-blond aristocrat. Severus went and stood by the vacant chair until Perseus Malfoy sat down. Lucius and his mother followed the man's lead and Severus followed suit, occupying his hands with a glass of water and not speaking. He waited for Perseus to break the ice, tolerating the man's scrutiny, acutely aware that for all his unusual finery he was in fact wearing Lucius' third best cast-offs, sporting impressive bruising and in fact looked more like a charity case in their eyes.

 

`Lucius tells me that he finds himself impressed by your abilities in the field of potion-brewing. I am glad to meet a proper young man with the intelligence and patience to excel in a more subtle and less ostentatious area of magic. I should be interested in observing the limits of your learning thus far during the remainder of the school holiday.'

 

Cool grey eyes met his own inky pits and Severus smiled internally. He was back where he was most comfortable - a simple use and be used transaction. The mental pain of his father's violent rejection earlier that day may have made him rash, but Severus had always been eager to claw his way up to more exalted altitudes, to establish his worth and warn others of what they risked in harming or antagonising him. He matched his elder's tone and syntax, not mocking, but with subtle bravado. `I should be most interested in seeing what challenges you lay before me, sir. I am also informed by Lucius of both your interest in this delicate art. He has also made mention of the family laboratories to me in a most flattering light.'

 

Ah yes, this boy was every inch the true Slytherin. Hours after surviving a beating and exposure that could have killed him and still bearing the marks of injury and illness the brat was already throwing himself deeper into political machinations. Something in that deadly stare even told him that the child was cognizant of the dangers before him, but mindful of the ultimate prize. `I shall have Lucius show you the upper lab tomorrow, I understand you have brewing to do.'

 

It wasn't that Perseus Malfoy was charmed by or enamoured of the boy, but the aggressive tenacity, feral ken and amorality he saw reflected within the young man, combined with a talent his various sources all agreed was prodigious was strangely appealing as well as useful. Perhaps he might be worth the effort of grooming.

 

Once back in the guest room Severus crumpled across the bed, barely conscious and wheezing painfully. Dobby popped into the room, moving with infinite care as he undressed the guest. He'd learned the hard way of the folly of disturbing a Dark wizard in pain. He froze in terror as the sinister black eyes cracked open to glare as him, but mentally sighed in relief as he merely coughed and burrowed deeper into the bed. Severus allowed the diminutive creature to nervously fuss over him, unconcerned about showing weakness to it. The fact the creature called him Young Master implied the house-elf had been charged with his care and thus under the complex magic binding house-elves meant the young serving-elf would not directly betray his confidence.

 

Towards dawn the fever broke and the worst of the illness dispersed, allowing the tired Dobby some relief. He didn't want the Yong Master to die, partially because the Young Master seemed less casually violent towards house-elves than the other Masters and partially because of the way the other Masters would react.

 

Lucius sprawled on the chaise longue he'd had brought into the lab and watched Severus in action with a superior amusement. The youth had two cauldrons bubbling away at once - one containing a fifth year cheering potion, the other a half-brewed potion Perseus had casually pointed out in a book they'd been flipping through at elevenses. Earlier the dance had involved three cauldrons - two containing simple to brew potions that were hard to make due to containing restricted ingredients and the third bubbling away with something Lucius had not recognised.

 

Severus made a noise of disgust and picked up a tuning fork, tapping it against the workbench before he commenced an intricate, melodic chant. This had been the point at which he'd failed on the first attempt. Lucius gathered from the stream of invective that had followed the failure that the chant was supposed to be in Lydian mode, rather than the Mixolydian mode Severus had chanted it in. The disgust Severus had displayed at such an idiotic mistake had been almost comic.

 

Lucius watched in fascination, the potion was comparatively quick to make, but called for split-second timing and an attention to detail that separated bumbling brewers from real masters of the art. He watched the conclusion and the quiet smile of satisfaction that tugged at the corner of his saturnine companions mouth and then went to do something more interesting.

 

Perseus snorted softly, while his son had long since disappeared in search of diversion their guest remained industriously brewing. The roiling surface of the potion was gradually darkening, the boy poised over it. At some unobserved signal he carefully thrust a small branch of oak into the liquid, leaves, bark and all, agitating the simmering fluid. As he watched the dark brown concoction miraculously transformed from the dull, turgid mess he'd observed into a brilliant blue crystalline liquid. He took his son's seat and observed the ungainly wretch's surprising elegance as he stirred, paused, added the final ingredients to the mix in the correct rhythm and then altered his stirring pattern in the prescribed manner.

 

Severus stepped back from the completed potion with a sigh, then stiffened as a touch ghosted across his shoulders. Snape froze like a startled rabbit and Malfoy Senior chuckled softly. `Impressive, young man. The Prince Half-blood can overcome his handicap and take his true place among civilised society it seems.' As tension thrummed through Snape's frame the aristocrat laughed. `My dear boy, I know some of the more aesthetically fixated families have a certain reputation, but I am more than capable of opening my copy of Twipps.'

 

The narrow shoulders squared under manicured hands and Perseus abruptly decided that it would be wise to step back. Internally he was gleeful. Oh, the boy was clever, powerful and burning with ambition and fury, for all his undisciplined ways and unfortunate siring. It was time for another guest.