Dye Urn Alley (August 3)
"Why, you have a very nice place here!" exclaimed Horace approvingly, looking around at all the pale maple and shades of blue-grey. "I must say, it's not quite what I would have expected—very calm and airy. Tell the truth, now, boys, Narcissa picked your furniture, didn't she." He winked to show he was joking.
"No," Severus said resignedly. "Her contribution was to step on my foot every time I started to say 'what about this one.'"
"We let you have veto power, though," Evan reminded him comfortingly. "You used it a lot."
"Well, you suggested a lot of remarkably silly things."
Evan grinned. "Well, you made a lot of remarkably funny faces. Please, Professor, have a seat."
"Very comfortable," Horace approved, patting the chair-arm as he sank down. 'A very nice place' was what you said to the owners, of course. If he'd been describing the flat to anyone else, he might have said 'sparse,' or 'verging on sterile, apart from the books,' and certainly 'sadly lacking in cushions.' The armchair itself was nicely padded, and the rug in front of the fire was comfortably (not to say suggestively) plush, but in the whole room there were only two cushions, one for each end of the sofa, and they were quite, quite plain.
He wasn't surprised that there weren't any portraits on the walls, despite young Rosier's profession: if the student Snape had never quite confirmed for himself how the ones at Hogwarts helped out, he'd at least been wary of them. The paintings that were up here made a chap wonder whether their artist honestly just enjoyed skyscapes or was trying a wee bit too hard to encourage his guests to subconsciously think of him as an airhead.
If he had guests. The place wasn't set up for more than one at a time, unless they had some very fancy spellwork to pull out when entertaining. Oughtn't to put that past them, of course, not a clever lad like Snape, or one like Rosier with the sense to stay on good terms with his family's house elf.
"They wouldn't let me see the prices," Severus complained at him. Horace had a very fine old bottle of brandy riding on a bet with Flitwick that the lad would make it to thirty without letting go one single old resentment.
Which reminded him; he ought to trip along to the Wager Room and see if any of the labels on the prizes he had a stake in had changed to declare a winner recently. It was never too soon to start preparing his little speeches for what Albus called the Faculty Welcome Feast and Sylvanus insisted on calling (more accurately, Horace had to admit, if less gracefully) the Oh Merlin We're About To Be Mobbed Bender.
"We agreed it's my furniture so that had nothing to do with you," Evan reminded him sternly, smiling. "You just get to use it so long as you save me from having to cook."
"On which subject," Severus gave in with moderate grace. He left for the kitchen, grumbling under his breath about exactly what constituted 'agreement.'
Horace wasn't sure whether this (alleged?) agreement of theirs had been a canny piece of social-climbing on Severus's part, or Evan had genuinely had to haul him up kicking and screaming by the collar, or they'd done an extraordinarily deft little waltz together around the Hogwarts-sized chip on Severus's shoulder. He hoped it was the latter, as that would have the best implications for the future of their teamed work, but whichever it was, he was quite proud of them for having resolved such a delicate matter with so little resentment left over that he couldn't tell even while Severus was complaining about it.
"I was delighted to receive your invitation, m'boy," Horace told Evan, "but I must say it was unexpected."
He'd seen the boy several times since he'd graduated, of course—had been one of his first paintings after the perilous self-portrait that was every Guild artist's masterpiece, as a matter of fact. Rosier knew how to play the game; he was quite satisfactory, all things considered, although Horace would have liked to see him be just a touch more sociable with his elders outside of the studio, more interested in current events.
Still, it wasn't as if he were neglecting his connections. Horace could quite understand his declining invitations Snape didn't also get, to keep envy from crawling between them. Not that Snape had ever wanted to attend anything remotely social himself, although his behavior at them had improved remarkably. But it was one thing not to want to go, and quite another to be the one who wasn't invited. Horace hadn't had to waste his time on anything as unsubtle and tedious as personally supervising a detention in decades, with invitations at his disposal to withhold.
Rosier wasn't doing too badly, Horace thought, at balancing his societal obligations with the maintenance of a strong but delicate alliance, all things considered. It was a bit eggs-in-one-basket of him to sink so very much time and energy into one ally, but between his profession and the wealth and backing of his two Houses, Rosier would always be sought after, and being a bit unavailable was really quite good strategy. Especially for anyone who'd been a bit too available, even for as short a period as Evan Rosier had been.
Besides which, Horace was the last to censure anyone for doing whatever it took to bring out real promise and secure its loyalty, and if Evan had seized onto Severus's when Horace had been reluctant to touch it, he could only be proud. And there was promise there, if it could only be polished, and who better than the Blacks to carve out and polish out a jagged piece of mutton jade until its ugly spots were cunning shadows giving shape and depth to something complex and shining? Let the artist give all his eyes to his subject, why not, if the subject would be molded? There was plenty of time for them both to grow up.
And he did, really have, quite a good foundation; his aunt Druella's hand was nearly as clear in him as it was in her own daughters. Even in the two years since the boys had graduated, Horace had seen Rosier several times, been sent treats (once or twice very strange, but tasty when he'd got over squinting at them, and therefore needing no labels to mark them as Severus experiments). He'd even been invited to the occasional drink or meal in Hogsmeade or Diagon, the unveiling of no few paintings and one new broom that Snape had apparently had something to do with, followed by a ticket to join them at the first game it had been used in (provincial, but enthusiastic, most enthusiastic, and very well catered as such things went). And of course he'd been asked to dine at Rosier Hall many times by older generations.
He'd never been here before.
Evan laughed. "Oh— it's mostly from Severus. Only, I sat him down at lunch yesterday and forced him practically at wand-point to do the decent for all the people you gave us a chance to meet at the conference. You know how he gets. If he hates it he wants to just plow through and be done, so he was at it all afternoon. We wanted to thank you for getting him in, but even if he hadn't rebelled at the idea of writing even one more card, his poor hand was all cramped and his handwriting would have been even worse than usual. So I thought I'd better do the inviting."
"'We' wanted to thank me, eh?" asked Horace shrewdly.
Evan crinkled his eyes at him. "No, honestly, he did. I mean, yes, obviously he hated it, but he still appreciated the opportunity. I just hope he doesn't take it too hard when it turns out to have been all for nothing," he added philosophically.
Horace stared. He'd scarcely sat down. Surely the boy wasn't asking for help this early into a visit? "Not for nothing, surely," he protested experimentally.
It wasn't Evan Rosier's reply (a graceful and pretty piece of gratitude for his own new commissions and new friends, followed by a rather difficult to follow but very enthusiastic few minutes about how much fun it was to paint outside in the country, where the animals just looked at you funny and went back to chomping on enormous tufts of grass instead of scampering away. And something about natural light being a challenge to keep up with, which didn't sound like a good thing to Horace, but Evan sounded quite enthusiastic about that as well) that reassured him they hadn't lost their minds, though, but Severus Snape coming back in from the kitchen with a tray. It had the expected tea and sandwiches and scones, but Severus had also brought out a steaming pie-dish, smallish but deep. It was a plenitude that would take time to eat: he wasn't being hurried.
Seeing his eyes on it, Severus explained, "Blackcurrant. The curd for the scones is pineapple, but I thought you must get tired of it."
"I tried to explain the point of an advertised-favorite," Evan sighed, and shrugged, "but."
"If he doesn't like the pie there's enough finger-food to choke a troll," Severus told Evan irritably. "And if you don't like it we can fob it off on Bones or the Fudges. I just thought the man must be half pineapple by now."
"You just thought if you had to smell crystallized fruit you'd gag," Evan corrected him, patting his shoulder and winking at Horace.
Severus's eyes flitted all the way right and left once or twice, putting on a show, although Horace wasn't sure which of them it was meant to amuse. Grudgingly, he admitted, "It is a fact universally acknowledged that the aroma of a baking pie adds to the ambiance of any residence. Provided it isn't allowed to burn."
"And it smells delicious, indeed," Horace ended the floor show. "By all means, m'boy, let's have at it."
Being at bottom a sensible lad under the drooping eyelashes and questionably wide selection of scented oils in his studio, Evan refrained from unsettling Horace further while they were eating. It hadn't been long since they'd seen each other, but still, Horace had been to a Hobgoblins concert (the music wasn't at all to his taste, but that was of no account. Good old Cyrano Boardman was a perfectly delightful chap, whatever he was letting his fans call him these days, and didn't loom over a fellow like your athletic types did) and a garden party or two, which had had their notable moments.
There was always the paper and the Ministry to discuss, of course. Barty Crouch had some sort of billywig in his bonnet. No one seemed to know what he was planning, exactly, but he'd made it quite clear that he was taking these disappearances that were becoming more common as a personal insult. Abraxas Malfoy had been asked to comment in an article about them, and had used the opportunity to gloat about his new grandson and stir up fear of Muggles at the same time, in a what sort of world will our children inherit sort of way. Efficient, Horace had to admit, if pompous and rather a sad waste of a chance to be quoted.
Horace also felt obliged to pass along some news along similar lines that he felt was perfectly lovely, himself, but had to be a bit careful in presenting. As delicate as he tried to be, though, poor Severus's face slammed all over stone-like and he got up without ceremony and left the room. "Oh, dear," Horace sighed. "I did hope he'd get over her, now she's married."
"I don't think you get over it when someone you thought was safe to share all your secrets with gives her body and loyalty to someone who used to bounce out of bed every morning sparkling with glee over the new ways to torture you he'd dreamed up overnight," Evan said calmly, sipping his tea. "Worrying, if nothing else."
"Oh, I'm sure you're exaggerating, m'boy," Horace frowned, setting his sandwich triangle down uneasily.
"Not much." Another sip. "That day you sat on our House meeting, in my fifth year, when we decided no one should ever be in public alone and you set up that contest for us to get our reflexes and aim in shape by the end of the year, do you remember?"
"Of course I do. You prefects managed the meeting quite handily, I thought." He winked. "And acting-prefects, of course."
Evan dipped his head in thanks, but he didn't smile even at having Severus included in the compliment. "I know you sometimes didn't think it was wisest to know the details," he said. "Did you know them then?" Without waiting for an answer, he went on, "Sirius and Potter had him half-stripped when I got there. If Goldstein hadn't fetched me when she did, I don't know how far it would have gone." He held Horace's eyes levelly, his own for once more steel than green, set against the cool colors of his flat, his hair standing out like fire. "Severus was completely off his head that whole meeting, Professor. He was having a memory lapse the whole time, no spells involved, not one. Just shock. Do you know what it takes to put Severus in shock? He used to get off the train to school with broken bones. He may have a few sore spots, but he's not a fainting primrose, Professor. I'm not exaggerating much."
"I was saddened to see how much difficulty some of the boys in your year had in finding work," Horace said placidly, since this was clearly not a mere statement of fact, tipping his head very, very slightly.
It had been evident at the time that Rosier and Miss Black had been quite set on handling the matter themselves. If they'd wanted something more from him than keeping ignorant and out of their way, as he thought Rosier was hinting now, they ought to have signaled as much. He wouldn't have dreamed of stepping on the operations of those families without an invitation.
In fact he'd nearly burst his buttons over how little under-the-table assistance they'd needed. Only been a matter of confirming to the occasional paterfamilias that their campaign wasn't grown out of any baseless schoolyard spite or silly rumor, really. "It was something of a surprise to their parents, but I'm afraid there was really very little I could do. One can't manufacture offers out of thin air, you know."
"Speaking of surprises," Evan said, refilling Horace's cup and piling the sugar in just the way he liked it. He didn't give the gesture the air of a reward for noticing, though, or for allowing Evan and Narcissa's revenge to go through unhindered. "There was always something that puzzled me. I was a bit distracted at the time, you understand, but it was something I'd never seen you do before, so it caught my eye."
"What was that, m'boy?"
Evan scratched his head meditatively. "Probably nothing, really, just one of those things a painter-in-training notices and attaches all sorts of notions to." He grinned. "You should have seen some of the sketches I did before they let me at the oils—people from around the school in all sorts of costumes, odd backdrops, just playing around, you know how it is, just spinning fancies. I probably am exaggerating this one. It was just, I was watching the room when Severus was explaining what he thought we ought to do to keep the kids safe, and, Professor, I could've sworn you wanted to eat him like an ice mouse." He grinned again, this one saying, silly, right?
"Oh, hardly to eat him, my dear boy," Horace laughed. "No, no, no, I hope you aren't thinking anything unsavory of me! I was extraordinarily impressed with our Severus, as a matter of fact. He was a bit muddled, as one might expect from a fifth-year even on a good day—that is to say, if he wasn't well no one could blame him, but he didn't look it. I don't mean that sort of muddled. Only that his planning needed a bit of polish. But I hadn't seen him be so open about his priorities before, and I was quite pleased."
Pleased had not been the word, as a matter of fact. By that point, it had been three years or more since Horace had enjoyed his job.
Oh, there were always a few children who liked and excelled at his subject. Ones who weren't obsessive, prematurely pedantic sourpusses with a penchant for giving their teachers Judgment Day eyes, mind: children who were children and gave and took joy. And there was always the gratitude of his alumni, both the sowing and the reaping.
For quite some time, though, that had been about it. His colleagues were all lovely people, of course, taken out of context, lovely people. The more the children set themselves at war with each other, though, the more their guardians seemed determined to blame each other. It had all gotten thoroughly nasty. Poor young Minerva had been entirely out of her depth, Flitwick and Pomona had become quite sanctimonious, and the professors who merely taught had reached heights of shrillness previously associated only with banshees.
None of them but Albus understood, not even a little, why Horace was ever-hesitant to come down on his students too heavy-handedly. Of course, part of it was that the qualities of the Houses couldn't be taught, they were in the children's natures.
That was the whole point. Where the Hat had made a mistake, or given in to aspiration against its better judgment, there was no use in fussing, one simply had to carry on. If a Slytherin didn't have the ambition to make what they could of school, the vision to work out what was needed when the requirements, unlike in life, were all laid out for them clearly, and the cleverness to find a way, there was really only so much Horace would ever be able to do for them.
And if anyone, in any House, couldn't convince him to make an effort for them, when he was living right in the same building with them for seven years, making it very clear to everyone exactly how he expected to be convinced, they were utterly hopeless and any effort he did make would be wasted. They'd simply shrivel in any circle he could introduce them into. You could show them how to flap, but not fly for them.
No, teaching by example was best. It made his students work for their lessons, taught them never to stop paying attention, and those who learned anything learned well. The contrast with his classroom lessons, where most students dutifully memorized what he told them and forgot it immediately after exams, was remarkable.
That was why he was disinclined to haunt his Common Room like Pomona and cheer and scold his brood for every little thing they did. As to why he knew he mustn't jump in to try to turn their tide, that was a younger shame. Even Albus only grasped the corner of it, having made his own Great Mistake.
But Albus's was done with and over. Horace could still hear the whispers of his own echoing through his dungeons, small mirrors of his brightest and most promising young stars parroting a devotion to inflexibility and a fear of change that anyone with a five-minute's introduction to the values of Slytherin House should have understood to be anathema.
A one-minute's introduction. One Sorting. One song. Any one.
And at the same time a furious, whispered debated had started up about whether the Statute of Secrecy was more important than ever or had quite outlived its usefulness. And, if the latter, whether that meant that the world should begin to open gently to the wider one, or do what Grindelwald had failed at and take it over before its weapons got any better and its factories turned the air quite black again.
He hadn't heard a Slytherin take the open-hearted position in twenty years, but just because two disagreed on the matter of secrecy-or-dominance didn't mean they opposed each other on anything else. Everyone seemed to feel that the question was important but not to be resolved hastily, and so far was less important than questions like who on the Prophet was in financial difficulties, and what was it really fair to call Dark magic, and exactly how much muggle a wizard had to have in their ancestry before being considered subhuman.
And, once this had been determined, how could Hogwarts be convinced to keep them out when the authority of the Board of Governors was arguably (as demonstrated by two hundred years of argument) by consent? When the magic of the school that invested the Headmaster was older than the Ministry by centuries and was, in the secret nightmares of no few political hearts, suspected of being not only uninterested in but completely deaf to it?
The distressing nonsense hadn't been popping up only at the school, by any means: it had been everywhere, and still was. Young people were always the loudest and most impassioned, though. Walking past a gaggle of them was the easiest way to find out what their parents thought. Only, Horace wanted to know only slightly less than he wanted to be known to know.
That year had been particularly dreadful. It had been unending months of guerrilla war in the student body, with some of his own students proving themselves remarkably unpleasant and their parents refusing to take the hint to take them in hand.
Then Horace's very worst headache, despite all the astonishing clumsiness and regrettable personality issues, had proven himself congenitally incapable of being intimidated, prone to take command quite effectively without a scrap of authority or status, rather good at tutoring (if in a traumatic sort of way), and one of those students in Horace's own subject that a teacher is lucky to see in a generation.
Not that anyone pinned by those gimlet eyes or with one of his dreadful essays to plow through had ever felt lucky to have him in class. Flitwick claimed to have, but Horace was sure he was just being perverse to start a row: the thing was impossible. Horace had infinitely preferred Lily Evans's less blazing but still quite remarkable talent, and not just because it didn't glare at him as if he were getting everything wrong.
But then that headache had been tugged by the arm, looking grey under his skin and thoroughly concussed, into a House meeting with some of the grimmest, angriest undertones Horace had ever had the displeasure of sitting through.
And he'd irritably snapped a house of homicidal purebloods away from the open war they'd been slavering for. Had demanded of them instead that they protect each other, and shame their attackers with excellence.
He'd had help, naturally; any penniless halfblood who'd tried to tell the Slytherin Common Room what to do in his own name would have been eaten for pudding no matter what. As Horace had just remarked to Rosier, the fifth and sixth-year prefects who'd been ostensibly running that meeting had done yeoman work, building a scaffold of authority under Snape's plan and polishing it up. Not to mention excelling at the herculean task of keeping the students who would have made a breakfast of him mollified and under control. Still, it had seemed at the time like the first pinprick of light at the end of a very long tunnel.
Horace had gotten over that, of course, hadn't felt desperate to get out in years. The next year the so-called Fenshaw Plan of walking in threes and polishing their collective public face had proven effective—in terms of safety, at least. Hufflepuff won the Cup that year, and Gryffindor the year after, but Horace still counted it as a win. It also helped that the year with the most difficult students in it had begun their NEWT classes, and the form with the very most difficult students had never been especially interested in getting the lower years in their House caught up in their nonsense. Horace's own House still had its internal problems, but tensions had plummeted in the staff room, and the castle became quite a jolly place to live and work in again.
In that moment, though, at the end of that perfectly horrible year, it had felt like a lifeline dropping into his lap. If he'd been careless with his face for a moment, barely any of the children had even been turned in his direction and the rest, he'd thought, had been thoroughly occupied. "Quite pleased," he repeated.
"Oh, nothing unsavory, Professor," Evan assured him earnestly. "It was only, I'd never seen you with any sort of a snake expression before. I was terribly startled!"
Horace eyed Rosier, chuckling, as he wagged his finger and made some remark about not underestimating one's own Head of House. It was such an artless, ingenuous face, but Rosier had been sitting on that observation for four years, and hadn't brought it out until they were in his own flat with his flatmate out of the room. If Horace had been invited just to be thanked for the conference invitation, he'd eat his boots.
"Professor," Rosier said, looking him dead in the eye, "I would never." He stretched and frowned. "Where has Severus got to? SPIKE?"
"WHAT?" a cross voice yelled back from some other room.
Evan's eyes bugged out slightly in helpless despair, begging Horace more for commiseration than forbearance, and he started massaging his temples. "Spike, tell me you didn't abandon a guest for the cauldron."
"It's Professor Slughorn," the cross voice retorted, as though Horace being Horace was supposed to make everything make sense and magically cease to be unutterably rude.
They waited, but that was it. After a moment, hand now plastered over his eyes, Evan tried, "Was that meant to mean that you're not abandoning him because he's allowed in?"
"Obviously."
"The only reason that's even comprehensible is you told me you let him help with your potion at work, you oyster," Evan muttered, and sighed. He scrubbed down his face far enough to look sadly at Horace over his fingers. "In fact you're being honored, you realize. As a stillroom non-menace. I quite see it's abysmal, but there you are."
You ought to be on the stage, my lad, thought Horace. He pried himself up out of the armchair with a groan, rhetorically asking, "Well, what sort of ingrate would snub such an exclusive privilege?"
"Second door on the left," Evan apologized. Horace patted him on the shoulder on the way.
If the sitting room had been a surprise, the stillroom was very nearly a homecoming. Horace could see his own training everywhere, all the more sharply for Snape's total apparent disinterest in style or comfort, let alone adornment. Tools were on wall-racks, not jumbled in drawers or jars or convenient take-away containers, grouped by type, then material, then size. Snape had opted for a sensible (but no longer desperate) economy everywhere, with the possible exception of his ingredients and the definite exception of his cauldrons. Nothing ornate or silly there, but here was one student (possibly the one) who had believed Horace about the cauldron being the one tool whose imperfections both affected the quality of the potions and could (or at least should) not be amended by anyone but a smith who specialized in them.
Horace dearly hoped Severus had asked his friends for loans to pay for them, or paid in installments, or something of that nature, rather than starved and worked himself blue through months of midnight with inferior equipment to pay for them, or not starved but taken time from his NEWT studies. He doubted it.
The ingredients were in tins and in jars and vials of dark glass, to protect them from light, and even the glass door of their cabinet was blue, not clear. The cabinet was quite cool to the touch, too, when Horace wandered over. It was a tragedy how many young brewers frittered away the potency of their ingredients by using clear glass and neglecting their chilling charms. Stasis charms were just as good, of course, if not better, but it was hardly surprising that anyone, even Snape, who'd been known to snatch his classmates' dangerously-bubbling cauldrons off the flames with bare hands (generally while shrieking at them like a baritone beansidhe and thereby running the risk of everyone else ruining their own potions out of sheer startlement), should go the cooling route in August.
The workbench wasn't half the disaster the one in the Wolfbane Project's lab had been, and what Snape was doing today looked more like brewing a potion than dancing a jig. He was currently detaching squid hooks from their suckers, but he seemed to have been brewing for a while before the pause for hospitality. There were a few vials already filled on a table by the window, on a rack in front of some occupied single-rat lab terrariums. While there was a stillroom book on a stand, it was closed. A handwritten recipe on a piece of parchment had been stuck to the front of it, without a heading, in a rather larger hand than Horace had ever persuaded Snape to favor him with.
"Tidy," Horace approved.
Severus glanced up at him, flushing a bit as the praise affected him, clearly against his will. He cut the next hook out a bit more emphatically than was probably necessary, and then looked up again with what Horace liked to call his What Was That Bloody Hat Thinking face, the one that drilled right through you and promised no detours for even the most basic civilities. "Evan told you our grant's going to be cut."
"Now, now, nil desperandum, m'boy," Horace advised, pulling up a stool. He would have liked to make it a bit more comfortable, but it wasn't his workroom.
"He got a credible tip from a reliable source yesterday afternoon," Severus said flatly. "Nothing solid, but the sort of intangible you don't bet against."
"You convinced quite a number of eminent potioneers at that conference that your cause was at least worth a letter, Severus," Horace told him. "The grant review board will have been getting no end of lobbying from the potions guilds, and I understand the werewolves have been speaking up on their own behalf."
"Well, that was stupid of them," Severus sighed, and stabbed morosely at his tentacle.
"They've been very civil," protested Horace.
"It doesn't matter what they do or how they do it, there are people on that board who hate them, guts and breath. They shouldn't have rubbed those people's noses in the fact that they're not abstracts but physically share this world and have agency they can use when they decide to."
Horace couldn't help smiling. For a lad who was so hopeless himself, Severus did have a knack for laying a tangle out clearly. "Come now, I know for a fact that dear Narcissa is on your side in this. You wouldn't bet against her, would you?"
Severus put the knife down and looked at him. It was a judicious look, but not one of those Your Heart Is Heavy Against The Feather On My Scales stares he'd used to pin Horace with in class. "She's not the only Interest who seems to have taken an interest against whom I wouldn't bet. And one of the reasons I wouldn't bet against her," he said slowly, "is that she knows when to cut her losses. She can recognize a battle that should be surrendered to a war that must not be lost."
A moment of silence, and he added, "So do I," and slid Horace the bronze mortar and pestle across the table. Horace's brows furrowed, but that seemed to be all he was getting. He shrugged, looked at the recipe, and started crushing the startling ruby-red liplike buds of Psychotria elata.
They worked in a silence that was almost comfortable for nearly half an hour, while Horace tore the visit apart in his head over and over, trying to work out what in Ninian's lake was going on. It was a very pretty little puzzle, he had to hand it to them.
The only thing he could think of was that Severus might be hoping for a hand-up towards some new job. The problem there, of course, was that Horace had just given him one. Severus had made dozens of new connections and impressed half the potioneers in Europe with his wit and talent. Even if he'd also impressed about two-thirds of those less favorably with fair warning of what he'd be like to work with, that still left a good handful who hadn't been put off by his manner. More than enough to give him a place to start without bringing Horace into it again, at any rate.
When Severus had put out his fire and siphoned a stream of a potion the purple-green of seaweed into a vial, Horace said, "I'm not familiar with that one, m'boy. What was it?"
Severus gave him a look that was almost as tired as it was bland. "Oh, just one of any number of little gems that any number of people are absolutely positive I'm desperately interested in and know I have unusually easy access to. I've a few more over here, worked them up just since yesterday. Quick and easy, no trouble at all, though I may say without modesty that not everyone would think so. But here, have a look, you'll be really interested." His deep voice was about as gloomy as the bottom of a midnight swamp, and for all that his face looked weary as he took out the eyedropper, his eyes on Horace were as sharp and speaking as Horace had ever seen them.
The first potion, one drop, went into the first rat's water. One thirst spell and two long minutes of agonized writhing later, the terrarium was empty except for a furry rat-skin.
The second potion, one drop, was released onto the second terrarium's floor, and the top was put on very quickly. The drop dissipated almost as quickly, and… Horace could recognize death by choking when he saw it, even in a rat.
The potion Horace had helped with, one drop, was placed on the third rat's back. It bubbled straight through, although it took a few seconds. Severus didn't let the rat scream and try to drag its paralyzed back end around for long before a second drop between its ears felled it.
It took three drops of the fourth potion in its water to shrivel the fourth rat into a shrunken mummy the size of a matchstick, but that wasn't much comfort.
The rats were all dead, but Horace could still hear the squealing.
Skeletal fingers steered him gently by the elbow back into the sitting room, back into the armchair. Rosier had gone. Horace heard a warming spell murmured, and dragged his eyes up to Severus's face. It wasn't as shocked as he felt, more bleakly resolute than sick, but it was just as grey.
Severus poured a cup of tea, spooned three sugars into it. He took a sip and passed the cup to Horace before pouring an unsweetened one for himself. They drank in silence, until Horace put his cup down and opened his mouth.
The poisoner's expression was a silencing. He put his cup down, too, and leaned forward, all long bones dressed in tomb shades, his colorless holes of eyes catching Horace's up as if nothing in the dust of time had ever been of more moment. He took a breath, and swallowed, and set his pale and hollow jaw.
"Please," Severus enjoined Horace quietly. "Resign."
He held the gaze steady for just a moment longer, while Horace searched as hard as he could for any threat or menace in those steely, steady, urgent eyes, but stood without waiting for an answer. Giving Horace a stiff, formal half-bow, he turned on his heel and disappeared down the hall, into a room further back in the flat. It wasn't the stillroom.
Horace considered the merits of having another cup of tea. He considered eating the last slice of pie. Then he pushed himself up out of the very comfortable armchair and, at a casual and dignified and perfectly unremarkable stroll, bolted out of the flat, down the stairs, and out into the sunshine.