Chapter Text
“Now, who can list the seven uses of porcupine quills in potionmaking?” Severus asked, picking up a piece of chalk. He turned his back to the class, his hand hovering over the blackboard.
“Anyone?” said Severus after waiting a beat. “Rogers, go."
“Er, I don’t know, sir," replied Andrew Rogers sheepishly.
“Two points from Gryffindor and see me after class. Singh?”
“Chemical cross-linking?” Priya Singh said doubtfully.
“Yes,” said Severus, writing the words down on the blackboard. “And?”
“I…I don’t know, sir,” said Singh. She lowered her head in shame.
Severus dropped the chalk onto the tray at the base of the blackboard with a clatter and spun around, his long black robes flying menacingly. “Did anyone complete this week’s reading?” He glared at the class of sixth years who looked back at him in silent unease. “Well then, since we cannot proceed with brewing the Elixir to Induce Euphoria until you have all read the chapter on Mental Potions, you shall spend the rest of today’s class session reading it silently. Then, during what would have been your free time this evening, you will return here to start the brewing process.”
A few of the most belligerent students groaned before falling silent under Severus’s murderous glower. The class begrudgingly pulled out their Advanced Potion Making textbooks and began to read. Severus strode to the desk at the back of the room and dropped into the chair in exasperation. This? This was how he was putting his vast knowledge, finely-honed skills, and brilliant mind to use? He rested both elbows on the desk and rubbed his temples in slow, deliberate circles.
When the bell that ended classes for the day sounded, Severus rose. “Be here at 7 o’clock sharp and bring all of the necessary materials to make the Elixir to Induce Euphoria,” he barked at their retreating backs. Before leaving the classroom, Severus scrawled a quick note to Lily, letting her know that he would not be in his quarters that evening for their usual before-bed conversation courtesy of floo powder. Then, he visited the owlery to send the note off before heading to the Great Hall for dinner.
Lily would not be happy. She had been against Severus accepting this position, had asked him what the point of their recent marriage was if they were to be apart for nearly nine months out of the year. But Severus had assured her that it was only temporary, just until they got their feet under them and tucked a little nest egg away at Gringotts. At King’s Cross Station one month prior, Lily had clung to him like a shipwreck survivor clings to driftwood, tears streaming down her face. He had held her for a long moment before saying, “Lily, look at me." When her crying did not cease, he had grasped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Stop this nonsense. I’ll be home for Christmas in less than four months. And besides, you’ll be so busy you’ll hardly notice I’m gone.”
A few months before Severus had been hired at Hogwarts, Lily had been accepted into the three-year-long Auror Recruitment Programme or ARP. There, she would attend advanced lectures and seminars on Concealment and Disguise, Stealth and Tracking, Poisons and Antidotes and many other subjects. She would also participate in simulated duels and undergo on-the-job training.
Before boarding the train, he had held Lily’s chin between his thumb and index finger and tipped it up so that she was forced to look at him. “Now kiss me and smile for me so the image I carry to Hogwarts is of my beautiful wife and not of this blubbering mess.” Severus was nothing if not a pragmatist. He would do this because he felt it necessary, and he would not let emotion enter into it whatsoever.
“You prat, of course I’ll notice you're gone. I can't believe I'll be lying in bed alone for the next four months,” she had said, wiping her eyes. "So much for the bloody honeymoon phase." But when the Hogwarts Express had pulled away from the station, she had given him her best, saddest smile as he waved at her through his open compartment window.
It was true that Severus had accepted the job of Potions Master to secure his and Lily’s financial stability. But if he was honest with himself (and he oftentimes was not) he had also done it to punish her. Lily was the person he loved most in all of the world and the only one who truly understood him. The idea of her becoming an auror now - when disappearances tied to Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters were being reported weekly - had filled him with intense, mind-bending fear. So he had made it abundantly clear to her that she did not have his approval to apply to the ARP when she had expressed an interest in it. Yet, she had done so anyway, citing some nonsense about having a duty to her community. Gryffindors really were the worst, he had mused as though watching the scene unfold from a distance. As a rule, fear was not an emotion that Severus entertained in his psyche, and so his reaction to the news of her acceptance in the program had been one of icy, barely-repressed rage. Severus had scarcely spoken to her for days and, during that time, he had submitted his own application for the position left vacant by Horace Slughorn’s recent retirement.
At the professors’ table in the Great Hall, Severus worked on tomorrow’s lesson plans while he ate dinner. He loathed small talk and had learned early that life went more smoothly when he kept to himself, so he generally only spoke with other professors when spoken to and, even then, gave only clipped, obligatory responses. It hadn't been long before they had stopped trying to engage him in conversation at all. He liked it that way.
After dinner, he made his way back to the dungeons and supervised the beginning stages of the brewing of the Elixir to Induce Euphoria potion. It was here, when the air grew moist with pungent vapors and cauldrons full of thick brew hissed and spat that Severus felt most at peace, that his overactive mind finally calmed as his entire focus narrowed to the subtle science and exact art of potionmaking.
It was nearly 10 o’clock when he finally made it back to his personal quarters. He poured himself a brandy and sank into his upholstered, straight-backed chair, gazing into the fire. The day had been so full - the workload of a brand new Hogwarts professor was overwhelming and Severus was barely able to keep ahead of his students in the course materials and lesson plans - that he had not yet had time to read his copy of the Daily Prophet. He picked it up from where it rested on the coffee table and his eyes snagged on the title of an article near the bottom of the front page: “Body of Cordia Jackbook, Auror, Found. Foul Play Suspected.” Severus crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it into the fire before retiring to his four poster bed for yet another long, restless night.