My Fic: Fishes Die Not of Cold, Chapter Two
Fishes Die Not of Cold
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairings: Snape/Potter, Lupin/Potter
Summary: Snape should know better than to form a working hypothesis without proper observation.
Warnings: This story will contain sexual scenes and depictions of gore and animal cruelty, though not at the same time. This is a work in progress.
Chapter Two: In which Snape Gets (Un)Settled
Potter did not, of course, inform him of just what he would be brewing. Azkaban was not the place for any such sensitive discussion. Instead, Potter had tendered his end of the bargain in three basic assurances:
That Snape would be unharmed and well protected, under Potter's direct custody, for the duration of the project (void should he attempt escape or harm against his captor); That he would be supplied with adequate living and working conditions, along with whatever he might need to complete the project; And, finally, that upon completion of the project, Snape would be released - provided, of course, that he never mention this bargain to another soul.
Severus Snape was no fool. He agreed at once to this vaguely worded proposal, not because he lacked misgivings, but because anything, anything, would be better than Azkaban. It did not hurt that it was Potter making the offer. He had not interest in working with, or for, the Boy Hero. The very thought was laughable. He couldn't stand the little brat, and Potter hated him right back. The fact remained that however much he and Potter might loathe each other, Potter was, at his core, a man of principal and integrity. Whatever his feelings about principals in general, Snape was perfectly happy to let them work in his favor. Potter would hold up his end of the deal. Too, Snape could almost certainly count on Potter's scrupulously benign character as an indicator of the level of unpleasantness involved. Potter was not likely to require of him some great heinous act - say, the mass poisoning of children. Not that it would change Snape's mind if he did, but it was a pleasant change from his previous employment.
And so Snape had agreed to brew this mystery potion. Potter had presented his hand through the bars of Snape's cell, and Snape had shook it. Potter's skin was very white and clean against Snape's own, but he had not flinched. The scars of Umbridge's torture still graced the back of his hand, but they were faded and illegible now, blurred by more recent scars.
Snape expected Potter to release his hand at once, perhaps wiping grime away on a handkerchief or, more likely, his trousers. Instead, he felt the familiar squeeze-tug of apparition and found himself abruptly in a tidy little kitchen still, ridiculously, holding Potter's hand.
Snape was the one to jerk his hand away. He spun wildly, blinking against the brightness of electric lighting, taking in the sheer muggleness of his surroundings - the gleaming fixtures, the bleached wood table, the cheap countertops. A large wooden fruit bowl sat between the shining metal sink and the small gas range. There was no refrigerator, but there was a muggle coffee pot, and a toaster.
"I'll leave you to get settled, then?" Potter said. When Snape turned to look at him, he was indeed wiping his hand on his trousers. Snape clenched his own hands into fists. "You'll probably want a wash," he added. He gave an absurd little wave and said, "I'll be back in the morning." Then, there was a crack, and he was gone.
Snape looked around again. There was only one chair at the small dining table. Good. He would not be sharing his lodgings. Just in case, he stood very still for a moment and held his breath. The only sound was the ticking of the wooded clock on the wall. He was, in fact, alone.
He closed his eyes and turned, thinking of Spinner's End. Nothing. Whatever method they were using to prevent apparition, it was as tight as the net over Azkaban (which Potter had brushed aside like a cobweb, but he would ponder that later).
Snape crossed the tiny room to the sink and turned on the faucet. There was a dispenser of liquid detergent on the drainboard. It was shaped like a frog. Snape filled his hand with the stuff, curling his lip at the noxious artificial scent. He scrubbed his hands to the elbow like a surgeon, three times, and cleaned under his long fingernails as best he could.
He let his hands drip clear water onto the cheap tile floor, and selected a yellow apple from the bowl of fruit. He inspected it, rubbed it under the faucet, and took a large, crisp bite. Sweet. He held it in his mouth for some moments, just tasting it, before slowly beginning to chew. He turned off the faucet, set the apple beside the bowl, and still chewing, stepped through the door into the next room.
He'd been expecting a small and tidy muggle sitting room, perhaps with cheap furnishings - something that would match the kitchen. Instead, the door opened onto a library of good size, furnished with a pair of shabby wingback chairs which had once resided in his home on Spinner's End and a great mahogany monstrosity of a desk.
Snape mashed apple pulp against the roof of his mouth and held it there with his tongue. Many of the books appeared to be his own. At the very least, someone had taken pains to put together a duplicate collection to his own. The books were arranged in his customary system of order by usefulness. Zozismos had been placed before Maria the Jewess. Snape transposed the volumes, considered the lack of bitterness or numbness on his tongue, and swallowed.
A small hallway opened off the library, with three other doors leading away. The first opened on a W.C., with a large claw-footed bathtub that made him smile in anticipation, and a mirror, which he avoided. The next room proved to be a bedroom. It was small, and very beige, but the bed was wide and soft.
The third door, painted white wood and quite as unassuming as all the others, revealed a laboratory easily twice as large as the rest of the house. Snape's eyes grew large as he paced the perimeter of the room, fingers trailing over inert glass work counters. It was going to take him a full day just to catalog all the equipment - god alone knew what kind of ingredient stores he would have at his disposal.
The room was a Potion Master's dream. Everything one could need was provided, from the Seven Principal Forms of Light, to a series of scales and balances so sensitive that they shifted under his breath. There was muggle equipment, too - centrifuges, a spectrometer, and much more that he could not identify at first glance. Snape sat down on a stool beside one of the vivisection tables and let out a long, slow breath.
Someone wanted this potion very, very badly - whatever 'this potion' turned out to be. Damn Potter for disappearing without giving him any proper information. The potion had to be illegal. There was no other explanation for springing him from Azkaban for a project so obviously well funded. Snape had few illusions. He was good, yes, but not that good. Until he'd seen the lab, he had entertained some idea that he might be something of a budget alternative to a proper brewing team.
He had a new suspicion, too. One which had dawned with near certainty once he had seen the experimental equipment in the lab. The range provided him was far too large for the simple brewing of a known potion, however complex. No, whatever it was he would be making, it had not been invented, yet. Or, perhaps, it had been found once, but lost, like the Philosopher's Stone.
So, he would be brewing something illegal or at least highly controversial, probably unethical, likely starting from absolute zero. He wondered how he'd been picked for the job. Maybe he had been the only accredited Potions Master and Alchemist currently serving a life term in Azkaban (his lack of any friends or family could only be considered a bonus). Maybe Potter, who did have some knowledge of Snape's early forays into the field of experimental curses, had recommended him, somehow. And how had the boy become mixed up in all this? He'd wanted to become an auror, hadn't he? Was Snape now working for the Aurors? Or perhaps the boy had joined the rank of the Unspeakables. Even in Azkaban, where news about the war had been near impossible to come by, Snape had heard about Potter's apparent death and resurrection. With a resume like that, the Department of Mysteries would have been gagging after the boy.
"Fuck it," Snape snarled to the empty room. If there were going to be convulsions, they'd have started by now. He stood and swiftly returned to the kitchen, where the exposed flesh of his abandoned apple was turning a reassuring brown. It was still delicious, as were the six others in the bowl. Snape was on his second banana before it all came back up again.
When his stomach was once again empty, Snape rinsed the sink and splashed water onto his face with shaking hands. The water that dripped back into the sink was dark and gritty. He searched the drawers until he found a pair of kitchen shears, which he used to crop his beard as close to his face as he could manage. He cut his hair, too. It probably looked worse than Potter's, but he was able to run his fingers through it without catching in snarls and mats. There was a box of wooden matches on the stove. The hair gave off an awful smell as it burned.
In one of the cupboards, he found a bowl of thin soup - chicken, with peas and carrots - and a loaf of soft, white bread. Both were warm. He shut the door on them for the moment, and went to take a bath.
After, he found a safety razor and a can of muggle shaving foam in the bath cabinet. It was while he was using these that he suddenly realized he had seen no windows or outside doors in his initial survey of the house. He dropped the razor in the sink and made a full circuit of the house in a kind of blind panic. He'd managed to confirm that the fume hoods in the laboratory worked by banishment rather than outside ventilation before it struck him what an idiot he was being. Of course he was trapped. Snape laughed at himself, wiped the foam from his bare chest, and padded, naked, back to the loo, to shave the other half of his face.
He ate the soup in the kitchen, but left the bread for morning. Once he had confirmed that the wardrobe in the bedroom did, in fact, contain clothing, he burned his prison robes under one of the hoods in the lab. When this was all done, he slipped between the fresh, crisp sheets on his new bed, naked clean and still slightly damp, and heaved a full bodied sigh.
He couldn't sleep, though. His brain refused to quiet. All through the searching and bathing and eating he'd been turning questions over in the back of his mind. Now, in the darkness, they were pushing to the fore. This... operation... was really too well funded for the aurors. The DoM wouldn't balk at his record, but they would have put him in with other researchers in a controlled setting, not left him alone, to his own devices, with a lab entirely his own. He might be working for some faction within either, or some other group within the ministry - some special interest with powerful backing and a deep pocketbook.
Really, this would have been just Malfoy's sort of game. But Potter was no Lucius Malfoy. Unless things had changed quite considerably in his...absence, Snape would not be murdering muggles or sterilizing squibs. What could be so important, so secret, but still something Potter would be personally involved in? If only Potter had left him some sort of clue...
Snape sat up so quickly that he was briefly dizzy. His bare feet made a great slap when they hit the floor. A moment, to let his blood settle, and he was heading for the library.
Chapter Three
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairings: Snape/Potter, Lupin/Potter
Summary: Snape should know better than to form a working hypothesis without proper observation.
Warnings: This story will contain sexual scenes and depictions of gore and animal cruelty, though not at the same time. This is a work in progress.
Chapter Two: In which Snape Gets (Un)Settled
Potter did not, of course, inform him of just what he would be brewing. Azkaban was not the place for any such sensitive discussion. Instead, Potter had tendered his end of the bargain in three basic assurances:
That Snape would be unharmed and well protected, under Potter's direct custody, for the duration of the project (void should he attempt escape or harm against his captor); That he would be supplied with adequate living and working conditions, along with whatever he might need to complete the project; And, finally, that upon completion of the project, Snape would be released - provided, of course, that he never mention this bargain to another soul.
Severus Snape was no fool. He agreed at once to this vaguely worded proposal, not because he lacked misgivings, but because anything, anything, would be better than Azkaban. It did not hurt that it was Potter making the offer. He had not interest in working with, or for, the Boy Hero. The very thought was laughable. He couldn't stand the little brat, and Potter hated him right back. The fact remained that however much he and Potter might loathe each other, Potter was, at his core, a man of principal and integrity. Whatever his feelings about principals in general, Snape was perfectly happy to let them work in his favor. Potter would hold up his end of the deal. Too, Snape could almost certainly count on Potter's scrupulously benign character as an indicator of the level of unpleasantness involved. Potter was not likely to require of him some great heinous act - say, the mass poisoning of children. Not that it would change Snape's mind if he did, but it was a pleasant change from his previous employment.
And so Snape had agreed to brew this mystery potion. Potter had presented his hand through the bars of Snape's cell, and Snape had shook it. Potter's skin was very white and clean against Snape's own, but he had not flinched. The scars of Umbridge's torture still graced the back of his hand, but they were faded and illegible now, blurred by more recent scars.
Snape expected Potter to release his hand at once, perhaps wiping grime away on a handkerchief or, more likely, his trousers. Instead, he felt the familiar squeeze-tug of apparition and found himself abruptly in a tidy little kitchen still, ridiculously, holding Potter's hand.
Snape was the one to jerk his hand away. He spun wildly, blinking against the brightness of electric lighting, taking in the sheer muggleness of his surroundings - the gleaming fixtures, the bleached wood table, the cheap countertops. A large wooden fruit bowl sat between the shining metal sink and the small gas range. There was no refrigerator, but there was a muggle coffee pot, and a toaster.
"I'll leave you to get settled, then?" Potter said. When Snape turned to look at him, he was indeed wiping his hand on his trousers. Snape clenched his own hands into fists. "You'll probably want a wash," he added. He gave an absurd little wave and said, "I'll be back in the morning." Then, there was a crack, and he was gone.
Snape looked around again. There was only one chair at the small dining table. Good. He would not be sharing his lodgings. Just in case, he stood very still for a moment and held his breath. The only sound was the ticking of the wooded clock on the wall. He was, in fact, alone.
He closed his eyes and turned, thinking of Spinner's End. Nothing. Whatever method they were using to prevent apparition, it was as tight as the net over Azkaban (which Potter had brushed aside like a cobweb, but he would ponder that later).
Snape crossed the tiny room to the sink and turned on the faucet. There was a dispenser of liquid detergent on the drainboard. It was shaped like a frog. Snape filled his hand with the stuff, curling his lip at the noxious artificial scent. He scrubbed his hands to the elbow like a surgeon, three times, and cleaned under his long fingernails as best he could.
He let his hands drip clear water onto the cheap tile floor, and selected a yellow apple from the bowl of fruit. He inspected it, rubbed it under the faucet, and took a large, crisp bite. Sweet. He held it in his mouth for some moments, just tasting it, before slowly beginning to chew. He turned off the faucet, set the apple beside the bowl, and still chewing, stepped through the door into the next room.
He'd been expecting a small and tidy muggle sitting room, perhaps with cheap furnishings - something that would match the kitchen. Instead, the door opened onto a library of good size, furnished with a pair of shabby wingback chairs which had once resided in his home on Spinner's End and a great mahogany monstrosity of a desk.
Snape mashed apple pulp against the roof of his mouth and held it there with his tongue. Many of the books appeared to be his own. At the very least, someone had taken pains to put together a duplicate collection to his own. The books were arranged in his customary system of order by usefulness. Zozismos had been placed before Maria the Jewess. Snape transposed the volumes, considered the lack of bitterness or numbness on his tongue, and swallowed.
A small hallway opened off the library, with three other doors leading away. The first opened on a W.C., with a large claw-footed bathtub that made him smile in anticipation, and a mirror, which he avoided. The next room proved to be a bedroom. It was small, and very beige, but the bed was wide and soft.
The third door, painted white wood and quite as unassuming as all the others, revealed a laboratory easily twice as large as the rest of the house. Snape's eyes grew large as he paced the perimeter of the room, fingers trailing over inert glass work counters. It was going to take him a full day just to catalog all the equipment - god alone knew what kind of ingredient stores he would have at his disposal.
The room was a Potion Master's dream. Everything one could need was provided, from the Seven Principal Forms of Light, to a series of scales and balances so sensitive that they shifted under his breath. There was muggle equipment, too - centrifuges, a spectrometer, and much more that he could not identify at first glance. Snape sat down on a stool beside one of the vivisection tables and let out a long, slow breath.
Someone wanted this potion very, very badly - whatever 'this potion' turned out to be. Damn Potter for disappearing without giving him any proper information. The potion had to be illegal. There was no other explanation for springing him from Azkaban for a project so obviously well funded. Snape had few illusions. He was good, yes, but not that good. Until he'd seen the lab, he had entertained some idea that he might be something of a budget alternative to a proper brewing team.
He had a new suspicion, too. One which had dawned with near certainty once he had seen the experimental equipment in the lab. The range provided him was far too large for the simple brewing of a known potion, however complex. No, whatever it was he would be making, it had not been invented, yet. Or, perhaps, it had been found once, but lost, like the Philosopher's Stone.
So, he would be brewing something illegal or at least highly controversial, probably unethical, likely starting from absolute zero. He wondered how he'd been picked for the job. Maybe he had been the only accredited Potions Master and Alchemist currently serving a life term in Azkaban (his lack of any friends or family could only be considered a bonus). Maybe Potter, who did have some knowledge of Snape's early forays into the field of experimental curses, had recommended him, somehow. And how had the boy become mixed up in all this? He'd wanted to become an auror, hadn't he? Was Snape now working for the Aurors? Or perhaps the boy had joined the rank of the Unspeakables. Even in Azkaban, where news about the war had been near impossible to come by, Snape had heard about Potter's apparent death and resurrection. With a resume like that, the Department of Mysteries would have been gagging after the boy.
"Fuck it," Snape snarled to the empty room. If there were going to be convulsions, they'd have started by now. He stood and swiftly returned to the kitchen, where the exposed flesh of his abandoned apple was turning a reassuring brown. It was still delicious, as were the six others in the bowl. Snape was on his second banana before it all came back up again.
When his stomach was once again empty, Snape rinsed the sink and splashed water onto his face with shaking hands. The water that dripped back into the sink was dark and gritty. He searched the drawers until he found a pair of kitchen shears, which he used to crop his beard as close to his face as he could manage. He cut his hair, too. It probably looked worse than Potter's, but he was able to run his fingers through it without catching in snarls and mats. There was a box of wooden matches on the stove. The hair gave off an awful smell as it burned.
In one of the cupboards, he found a bowl of thin soup - chicken, with peas and carrots - and a loaf of soft, white bread. Both were warm. He shut the door on them for the moment, and went to take a bath.
After, he found a safety razor and a can of muggle shaving foam in the bath cabinet. It was while he was using these that he suddenly realized he had seen no windows or outside doors in his initial survey of the house. He dropped the razor in the sink and made a full circuit of the house in a kind of blind panic. He'd managed to confirm that the fume hoods in the laboratory worked by banishment rather than outside ventilation before it struck him what an idiot he was being. Of course he was trapped. Snape laughed at himself, wiped the foam from his bare chest, and padded, naked, back to the loo, to shave the other half of his face.
He ate the soup in the kitchen, but left the bread for morning. Once he had confirmed that the wardrobe in the bedroom did, in fact, contain clothing, he burned his prison robes under one of the hoods in the lab. When this was all done, he slipped between the fresh, crisp sheets on his new bed, naked clean and still slightly damp, and heaved a full bodied sigh.
He couldn't sleep, though. His brain refused to quiet. All through the searching and bathing and eating he'd been turning questions over in the back of his mind. Now, in the darkness, they were pushing to the fore. This... operation... was really too well funded for the aurors. The DoM wouldn't balk at his record, but they would have put him in with other researchers in a controlled setting, not left him alone, to his own devices, with a lab entirely his own. He might be working for some faction within either, or some other group within the ministry - some special interest with powerful backing and a deep pocketbook.
Really, this would have been just Malfoy's sort of game. But Potter was no Lucius Malfoy. Unless things had changed quite considerably in his...absence, Snape would not be murdering muggles or sterilizing squibs. What could be so important, so secret, but still something Potter would be personally involved in? If only Potter had left him some sort of clue...
Snape sat up so quickly that he was briefly dizzy. His bare feet made a great slap when they hit the floor. A moment, to let his blood settle, and he was heading for the library.
Chapter Three