Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World-Chapter 19 - 16: Dobby

Chapter 16

Once Severus had walked Lily home, having adjusted her memory beforehand with the particular care the job required, he got back to work.

He’d started that conversation with one purpose: to understand what she actually was. And the answer left him slightly flat. He’d expected a fox, sharp and self-aware behind the warmth. What he’d found was something considerably simpler: well-meaning, narrowly focused, and too careless to last long in the world she was living in. People like that didn’t usually need any help finding their end. He pushed her out of his thoughts and gave his full attention to the cauldron.

He stared at the dark liquid inside and clicked his tongue in displeasure.

"Exactly as I suspected. The plants look almost right, but the magical saturation here is lower, so the properties are weaker. I’ll have to adjust the formula." He shook his head, took out the second set of ingredients, and began examining them one by one. "Should have anticipated this. Wasted money."

Potion-making was not a foreign country to him. Beyond the knowledge he’d inherited, he had studied alchemy in his old life, the discipline’s equivalent, and had done well enough with it: the full beginner’s programme, the names and properties of over ten thousand plants. Editing a recipe was routine, especially with the original Severus’s expertise sitting in his memory like a second library. The boy had been genuinely gifted, perhaps the most gifted natural in this field Severus had ever encountered.

Six hours later, the cauldron held a thick, dark green mixture with a strong smell of herbs and a clean mint note running through it.

"Three times weaker than it ought to be. But that’s the ceiling with these ingredients." He poured it into a jar, purified it immediately, and moved on to the next batch. He needed ten portions total for the training sequence: one month’s supply, a dose every three days, because the diluted formula needed time to accumulate properly.

Several herbs drifted toward him and dropped into the flame burning in his palm. Water began building in the cauldron at the same time, and a second group of herbs held themselves above it, waiting.

The moment the water showed the first signs of boiling, a light gust of air ground the waiting herbs to powder and let it fall in.

After exactly ten minutes, the herbs above the flame began to split. That was his signal. He drew a drop of Kelpie’s Blood from its vial and, at the same moment, pressed drops of clear oil from a set of dried herbs, letting them flow together. A turquoise glow rose where they met.

The pale green mixture in the cauldron had reached a rolling boil. He moved to the final step and took out the last two ingredients: one herb that was almost black, exhaling a dark, slow miasma, and one that was pale and clean, with the same sharp mint note.

The moment they came close to each other, something happened that looked less like chemistry and more like a small, private war. Both plants radiated like living things, each pressing against the other, neither giving ground.

Then the red droplet, which had been hanging in the air above them, shot down into the pale grass and sank in. Red lines spread through the plant like veins filling with light, and the pale aura turned crimson and began to bear down on the dark one.

Within a minute the dark grass was visibly weakening, its strength draining steadily into the other. Less than ten minutes later almost nothing remained of it, and at that precise moment a clean gust sliced the winner into hundreds of pieces.

"Whoever invented this potion had a genuinely unpleasant mind." The pieces fell into the cauldron under his calm observation, and the mint smell rose sharply. He moved the empty jars to the corner and set out the next identical set of ingredients. Fifteen minutes more, and then he could check in on Bellatrix. A Death Eater meeting, possibly. Or perhaps she was still destroying her room.

He closed his eyes and found the seal in her body, and a slow, satisfied smile appeared on his face that was also, slightly, something else.

She was in the bathroom, washing her hair. Two small cloths drifted through the water around her in idle, practised arcs.

He looked, and didn’t immediately stop looking.

Right, he thought, with the weary self-awareness of someone who knew exactly what was happening to him. Sixteen-year-old hormones. A Archmage’s dignity, thoroughly undermined. He noted the time carefully, so that in future he could be certain to call this up only when she was fully clothed, naturally, and disengaged his attention from the seal.

He finished the tenth and final portion just before midnight and went almost directly to bed. He wasn’t physically exhausted; it was the sustained concentration that had worn him out, the constant careful management of magic over hours. The core needed to rest as much as the mind did.

His next morning began with an intruder.

The moment he registered something teleporting through his barrier, he was already pulling fire to his hand. He stopped himself in time when the shape resolved into a small, bald house-elf beside the bed: ancient-looking, enormous eyes, dressed in rags, clutching a stack of books. Malfoy’s, unmistakably.

"The master instructed me to deliver these to you," the elf said quickly, watching the irritation on Severus’s still-half-asleep face with audible anxiety.

"What time is it?"

"T-ten o’clock!"

"Ten." Severus stared at the ceiling. "Why so early?"

"...The master instructed."

"What’s your name?"

"D-Dobby!" The elf’s ears drooped as if bracing for something.

"Right. Make me a coffee before you go and we’ll call it even." He dropped back onto the pillow, and Dobby vanished instantly.

Less than ten seconds passed before Dobby reappeared, holding a tray with coffee, scrambled eggs, and a small vase with a single rose in it.

"You’re fast," Severus said, tasting the coffee first, then glancing at Dobby with mild surprise. "That’s excellent." He patted Dobby on the head twice, with genuine approval. Dobby flinched each time and then, slowly, looked up at him with an expression of profound bewilderment.

"D-Dobby is happy to serve his master’s friend."

"Good. Leave the tray, you’re free to go." Dobby gave a small, uncertain nod and vanished, leaving Severus alone with the coffee and a thought that was forming itself without his having asked it to.

Now I understand why house-elves are standard practice. Not much to look at, perhaps, but the work gets done quickly and properly, and the loyalty, given who Dobby’s actual master is, says something considerable. Once the money situation improves, I should look into acquiring one from Hogwarts. It would solve a fairly tedious number of problems.

He picked up the first book from the floor. The title, in neat gold letters, read Legilimency for Dummies. He opened it and started reading.

It was past midday before he put down the third book on the subject and actually got out of bed. He’d have kept going, but there was a knock at the window, which had a particular quality of determination about it.

"Today is apparently an open house," he muttered, getting up and letting the owl in. He took the envelope, transfigured the bed into a chair, and settled at the table while the owl occupied his shoulder. "Macmillan. They’ve finished looking at it, then." The first lines of the letter brought a quiet, satisfied smile. It was a request for a meeting, written with studied restraint that didn’t quite conceal the eagerness underneath. The letter covered questions about the artefact itself, how many he had in stock, and asked him to name the earliest possible date for a discussion about price.

The sender was trying very hard to sound measured, but the subtext was plain: they wanted the meeting soon, before anyone else heard about it. Protective artefacts moved quickly in uncertain times.

"Tomorrow would work, but I want to finish going through the Legilimency and Occlumency material today." He tapped his chin, then reached for a sheet of paper, wrote a reply with a meeting time and place, sealed it, and held it out to the owl. "Take it back." The owl departed at once. He sat back down and picked up where he’d left off.

//===================//