Veloxardor

The hour was growing late in the chilly dungeons as Severus Snape finally collapsed into a dark leather armchair that was sat in front of a roiling hearth. He had spent his entire Saturday brewing potions for the medical wing and then grading essays while overseeing detentions that had been assigned by other professors.

Severus hated when they did that and they always did. If they were going to dual out the detention then they needed to inforce it themselves, Severus was tired of doing their work for them. He didn't need the brats scrubbing cauldron bottoms, the house elves would be plenty happy to do it without all the whinging or the inconvenience to Severus’ already cramped schedule. 

He had more potions that he had needed to brew after dinner, and now, a mere hour or two from Sunday, he was finally finished with his work for the week. He had nothing at all that he needed to do tomorrow: no brewing, no detentions, he was done with his grading. One day and then it would start all over, which was really just… exhausting to think about. 

Severus had pulled out a book that he had picked up over the summer. It was alright, nothing groundbreaking but he could stomach it. He was about twenty pages deeper when his concentration was broken by the small serpentine gargoyle who guarded his quarters, coming to inform him that Marcus Flint was at his door with an apparent emergency. 

Severus was admittedly curious as to what ‘emergency’ could bring the young Flint to his quarters this time of night. Slytherin house had six prefects, none of which were Flint, and he couldn’t imagine a problem so significant that all six were out of commission to report to him themselves.

He also couldn’t imagine that the quidditch captain was having a problem with his team that 1) he couldn’t handle just fine  himself, or 2) that couldn’t wait to be adressed during appropriate hours. Unless something had happened at this evening's practice, in which case, practice should have ended over an hour ago and Flint surely would have shown up sooner if there had been such an ‘emergency.’ 

The potions master was curious, though he had no intentions of letting it show. He absently flicked his wand towards the door to his chambers, unlocking and opening the door.

“Enter,”

Severus could hear the boy shuffling through the doorway but chose to keep his eyes trained on the book still clutched in his hand. 

“And what, Mr. Flint, do you consider such an emergency as to disrupt me in my chambers past curfew?”

”Violet Potter has been potioned.”

It took a moment for the blunt response to register for Severus before he felt a thrum of annoyance shoot through him.  His fingers tightened, crinkling the pages in his book ever so slightly. There was a bevy of snide responses on the tip of his tongue. 

Of course it would be Potter. Did he look like the school’s mediwitch? Had Flint really interrupted his reading to tell him that the princess was in the hospital wing again? Why would he care? Why should he? How did Flint know and why did he care? Potioned with what?

He turned towards the boy, scathing response ready, when he saw the bundle of fabric and loose dark curls in Flint's arms. The boy's face was composed into a mask of calmness, though Severus saw a fiery rage in his eyes, just this side of wild. He had seen that look before in the eyes of some of his associates.

Severus held back whatever was about to leave his mouth and rose from his chair, motioning for the boy to place his burden on the couch. He turned his back on them and set to lighting the lantern sconces mounted around the room with his wand before he summoned a medical bag from where he kept it his lab. He wasn’t sure what was actually wrong with the girl but it was better to be safe than let the accursed girl-who-lived die in his private quarters from a supposed potioning. Merlin himself wouldn’t be able to get him out of that Azkaban sentence.  

Severus turned back to look at his two students; one lying unconscious on his couch while the other hovered. Flint hadn’t taken his eyes off the girl since she had left his arms, a slight wrinkle between his brows as he stared down at her. Severus wondered what had happened between the two.  He found his eyes travelling to the prone form of the girl as well. 

Lily's daughter, though Violet didn’t look much like Lily at all, besides the color of their eyes. She didn’t look much like Potter either, if he were being honest. He had been expecting a copy of one of them to have shown up to Hogwarts, and knew he wasn’t the only one.  It had been the copy of someone else who had shown up and Severus hadn’t known how to react to that, he still didn’t. He knew others saw it as well, he had read the shock in both Albus and Minerva's eyes when the girl had first stepped before them.

“What happened and why do you think she’s been potioned?”

Severus would be clinical about this, there was no value in ruminating on things better left untouched. He could tell that the girl was a little more flushed than usual and besides her unconsciousness and her state of… dishevelment, there were no obvious, outward, signs of her condition. It was useless bringing her to him unless potions were actually the problem. If not, Flint would have been better off taking her to Pomfrey straight away.

Flint, usually blunt to the point of bordering on rudeness, began to tell his head of house a story. He told his professor of his trek down to the dungeons after practice, of shadows in hallways that should be empty, of students out of their usual areas. Severus was starting to get annoyed and was about to snap at his student to get to the point, when Flint seemed to do just that. He told the professor about how he had found someone lurking around the corridor leading towards Severus’ part of the dungeons, an area that no one entered without purpose, and how when Flint had tried to find out who it was, they had ran, only revealing that they were wearing a Gryffindor cloak.

Severus was more intrigued than annoyed now and ran back over what Flint had said before. Could it have been one of the Weasley menaces? He could ponder more on it later. Flint continued to explain how he had felt the need to investigate the corridor and the state that he had found Potter in.  

Severus blood ran cold as Flint told him about how the girl had seemed terrified to have been discovered. How she had seemed to calm once she had realized it was Flint. Severus would have probably scoffed at that if Flint hadn’t sounded so confused about it himself. The boy continued to explain what had happened, his ears flushing a surprising shade of pink as he spoke, once again reminding Severus why he hated working with teenagers. 

When Severus asked about the jumper that the girl was wearing, one that he knew belonged to the young Flint, he was informed that the girl was in nothing but her skirt and blouse in the frozen dungeons so the boy had taken in upon himself to make sure that she didn’t freeze to death. Severus had quirked a brow at that. He didn’t think the quidditch captain had it in him to do anything untoward to the Potter girl; even so, all it would take was a quick spell to check.

Snape began running his spells to determine what all had been done to Potter that night. He had to know what potion, if any, was affecting her or he wouldn’t be able to make an antidote. There was still a chance it could have been a spell, in which case they would need to move her to the hospital wing. While Severus was skilled in different fields of magics, at the end of the day he was a potions master. It was safer for a mediwitch to treat anything past poisonings and potionings. 

He had been correct in assuming that the Flint boy hadn’t done anything to her, as that test came back negative. A split second later he found that negative more relieving than he knew possible, as the next results popped up in front of him.

The reckless child had somehow ingested Veloxardor, and there were oh, so many things wrong with that. Oh, Merlin; Severus was too old to deal with this. Thirty-three was surely old enough to retire, right? 

Veloxardor was a type of lust dust that was targeted towards men for their own self consumption. It was meant to get them going quicker, ignite fiery passion, all that. It was used by older wizards who required a little assistance and younger wizards who wanted it to last for a long time. It was meant to be taken before intercourse and not burn out until whatever level of intimacy the recipient desired was completed. Severus grimaced at the thought as he explained what the potion was to the boy. 

He’d never heard of someone being drugged by it before, it wasn’t the type of love or lust potions that most would think to use. He would have to look at the recipe to see if he could create an antidote for it, as he was confident one didn’t already exist. It was a potion that would burn out quick enough, but that wasn’t an option here.

His main concern at the moment was her fever, a side effect from the magical energy in her not being exerted. Severus summoned two vials from his lab. He spelled a cooling draught into Potter’s stomach, in an attempt to counteract the Veloxardor. When he checked again her body was already starting to slowly drop in temperature. He handed the second vial to Flint, explaining that it was a calming draft that the boy should give her if she wakes up, as Severus had to go and see if he could create an antidote.

Severus set an alarm ward around the two before he left. He trusted Flint well enough, but even so, Potter was in a compromised state right now and you can never be too careful. He headed off to his privated lab, where he brewed for the hospital wing, for St. Mungo’s, for the potion’s guild, and for himself. Though he didn’t get much time to do the last one these days.

He had books on all sorts of potions in his lab, organized by difficulty level and type, and all behind multiple layers of protections from both potions and people. Admittedly, love and lust potions weren’t the most extensively researched of potions by Severus Snape. He only had a couple books on the subject, which meant he found the correct one quickly enough. The time consuming bit was trying to figure out which ingredients he could use to counteract the ones used in the lust dust without also reacting badly to other ingredients used. It was a simple enough task for a potions master, though Severus was feeling more pressure than usual this time, for some inexplicable reason. The stress of the week, surely. 

He had just about finished collecting the ingredients that he would require to brew when the alarm of his wand started to go off. Severus hastened his way out of the lab and down the hall towards his sitting area, his black robe billowing silently behind him. As he neared the entrance he could just start to makeout a slight whimpering that had Severus gripping his wand. 

He froze in the doorway, as the teens came into sight. Potter was awake, sitting on the couch, as Marcus Flint crouched down on the floor in front of her. The girl’s fingers were buried in her own hair, clutching with such a ferocity that Severus knew it had to be painful. 

“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. Here… let go. Okay?”

Severus had never heard the quidditch captain sounds so… soft. He stood there, gobsmacked, and watched how the older boy coaxed the small girl to let go with one hand. A hand that instantly found its way to Flint’s sleeve as the boy moved to her other hand, which was soon clasping his own. Severus watched from the shadows as Flint tried to coax the stubborn girl into taking the potion. The boy sat beside her and uncorked the bottle with his teeth before offering it to the girl. She looked weary for all but a second before letting Flint pour it into her mouth. 

He saw as the potion took effect and the girl seemed to melt into the boys side, all but wrapped around the arm that she was still clutching. Severus watched for a moment longer, conflicted, before setting anothing alarm ward to alert him of any more disturbances and disappearing back into his lab.

The next time he emerged was with a completed antidote. Late night was verging on early morning by that time and he wasn’t too surprised to find a couple of sleeping teenagers in his sitting room. Their position, however, had him quirking a brow. Where they had been sitting when he left, both were now laid out on the couch. Potter was laying fully on top of Flint, wrapped around him like some sort of fuzzy, demented, koala. Flint had his own arms wrapped around the girl and his face buried in the bramble of curls.

Severus spelled the antidote into the girl’s stomach. He thought about waking them for a minute, but decided he didn’t care enough to. Potter would have to stay here or go the hospital wing for the rest of the night, which would mean Severus would have to either deal with the girl or Pomfrey or both, and he just couldn’t at this point of the night. If he woke Flint he doubted the boy would leave without the girl, with how protective the boy seemed to be all of a sudden, and he didn’t have another bed for him. Sure, he could transfigure something but whats the point. If they didn’t do anything when she was literally drugged with a lust potion, he reckons they’ll be fine until morning now that she’s had the antidote. 

Severus extinguished most of the sconces around the room, allowing darkness to overtake the chamber. As he headed off to his own bed, Severus tried his hardest to forget about the sleeping teenagers in his front room and the fact that someone had drugged his best friends child this very night. It wasn’t his problem. The girl was a lion, he would let Minerva handle it. He did his part, more than was probably expected of him by most, and now it wasn’t his problem. 

Sunday. It was Sunday.