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Madrigal	By : Rotisserie_Cassowary Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 7982 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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The following evening, Hermione and I were exhausted and soaked head-to-toe in sweat, hunched over three scorching-hot cauldrons. These were our 37th, 38th, and 39th attempts at making the first dose of our Triad Potion. We had perfected the second and third doses weeks ago, but they were meant to achieve far simpler goals. The initial poison was impossibly complex, achieving a number of conflicting objectives simultaneously. I had never tried to invent such a seemingly illogical brew in my life. The rational backbone that must exist for a magical concoction to be stable was notably absent from this endeavor. I was fortunate that Hermione had inspired such optimism within me, or otherwise I’d have given it up as a lost cause weeks ago.
We had discovered that the fire needed to be maintained well in-excess of 800 degrees centigrade for the magical and muggle components to combine properly, so the laboratory felt like the surface of the sun. The cooling charms we had cast on our clothing did virtually nothing against the roiling onslaught of misery. Hermione was carefully mopping sweat from my brow so that it wouldn’t fall onto the ridiculously expensive Angel’s Trumpet stamens that I was tediously plucking with forceps from the small pile of flowers on the table. I finally harvested 60 stamens and leaned back with a groan, stretching my neck painfully. Hermione carefully added twenty to each batch, dropping them one-by-one with the forceps. Her lips moved silently as she counted to herself.
I moved on to the next step, pulling the glass jug of Aminocaproic acid out of a cabinet. I never ceased to be amazed at what my black-market contacts could find for me. I had never expected them to have such excellent access to muggle chemicals, but apparently Hermione’s idea of combining the magical and mundane had already occurred to those brilliant wizards in the recreational drug trade. I pulled out a pipette, adding 20 mLs, 30mLs, and 40mLs, to each burnished copper cauldron respectively.
Hermione measured and poured the Wormwood Infusion and sprinkled equal amounts of powdered Root of Asphodel into each batch. I enchanted the stirring rods to take two clockwise rotations. I added the sloth brains that I had carefully diced, holding the cutting board low so as to avoid splashing. I thanked the gods that I had perfected the Draught of Living Death so many years ago. I couldn’t imagine if I had to follow Libatious Borage’s far lengthier, more complicated instructions.
I finished crushing the 39 Sopophorous Beans, setting my silver knife aside after a quick wandless cleansing spell. I waited at attention, graduated cylinders of bean juice in hand, as Hermione added 1 gram, 2 grams, and 3 grams of Pentobarbital to each cauldron. It began bubbling violently, as we knew it would. I immediately dumped in the juice, and the boiling receded to a more manageable rate. We let out simultaneous sighs of relief; we’d had over a dozen utter catastrophes at that stage in the process.
I put 8 drops of Hemlock extract and 20 drops of Nightshade tincture in each cauldron. I had pre-treated the Hemlock and Nightshade with an encapsulation spell. I saw the drops breaking apart inside the mixture, but they remained magically isolated. I knew they would remain perfectly immiscible until the third dose of the potion series released the encapsulation.
She dropped two tablets of Tranexamic acid to each cauldron, watching as they dissolved almost instantly. Meanwhile, I enchanted the stirring rods to perform seven counter-clockwise rotations and one clockwise. I glugged a healthy portion of Syrup of Hellebore into each batch, and the surfaces of the potions went utterly still. I gingerly sprinkled the Valerian Root out of the mortar I’d used to powder it.
I extinguished the fires with my wand, and we stood back at a healthy distance to watch. Two of the concoctions turned a pleasing shade of pale rose pink. The other was a violent fire-engine red. I vanished that one with my wand while Hermione decanted the other attempts. I levitated two of my rat cages across the room, settling them gently on the workbench in front of us.
I took R-3527 out his cage, and he twitched his nose at me curiously. I sucked a small amount of potion into a pipette, which I wedged into the corner of his mouth. I released 2 mLs, and he swallowed them down easily. He immediately went limp in my hand. I felt for his minute pulse, and it fluttered with remarkable infrequency. I administered the other batch to the second rat, and he fell limp in my hand as well.
Nodding approvingly, I pulled my surgical shears out of a drawer, casting a wandless sterilization spell on them. I laid out each rat on a clean towel, and placed each of their right forepaws in a tiny vice. I clipped one toe from each rat’s foot, and they didn’t stir a bit. Not a single drop of blood emerged from the sites of amputation. Hermione clapped her hands excitedly, but otherwise kept quiet so as to not disturb me.
I disinfected and wrapped up their feet with tiny bandages, then placed them back into their nests. I injected each rat’s thigh muscle with the second dose of potion, an adaptation of Wiggenweld Potion which we’d combined with sizable doses of Norepinephrine and Doxapram. Both rats began to stir, and my heart leapt into my throat. The movements of the one which had received the 37th version of the potion ceased within a few minutes. I monitored its vital signs carefully, and my hopes sunk along with its respiration and heart rates. When it expired, I let out a frustrated sigh. But Hermione yanked on my sleeve, pointing silently at the other cage.
The other rat was staggering to his feet, glancing around the cage in a daze. He gradually meandered to the other end of the tank, helping himself to a drink of water and a bite of food. After a few minutes he went to his wheel and began to run. We watched him raptly for an hour as he resumed normal activities. All his vitals were perfect; he responded promptly and alertly to stimuli. I refused to let myself get too hopeful, but this is the farthest we had ever gotten.
As I struggled to maintain a healthy sense of detachment, I picked up R-3528 and looked into his beady little eyes. Hermione handed me the pipette containing the third dose. Breathing deeply, desperately trying to slow my pounding heart, I released a couple drops onto the rodent’s tongue. His eyes began to droop; he let out a tiny little yawn. He fell into a deep slumber, and his breathing gradually slowed until the diagnostic spell I cast came back blank.
I vanished the two limp bodies in silence, trapped in a dense fog of unreality. I couldn’t draw breath; my hands were clammy and shaking. It felt like my eyes were bulging out of my head. I turned and looked at Hermione, who had her hands clapped over her mouth, which was hanging open in astonishment. She let out a high-pitched squeak, then ran forward, grabbing the front of my robes.
“WE DID IT!!!!” she screamed, jumping up and down, yanking on my clothes excitedly. “We actually did it!!”
I shook my head in disbelief, finally drawing in a ragged breath. “I can’t believe it…” I breathed, sinking to my knees in gratitude. Tears of relief flowed down my face as I curled into a fetal position on the cold flagstone floor. Hermione was still jumping up and down, letting out riotous laughs of triumph. She left me to my minor breakdown as she ran into my quarters, whooping and cheering as if she were at a Quidditch match.
She reemerged with a bottle of Prosecco and two flutes she’d looted from my kitchen. She placed them on the coffee table then skipped over to me. She pulled on my arm insistently until I dragged myself to my feet. I collapsed onto the couch as she popped the cork on the bottle of wine.
The sudden noise startled me back into cognizance. I let out a chuckle when she accidently overfilled one glass, spilling all over her hand and the floor when it bubbled over the rim. She joined me in laughing at herself, handing me the dry glass. We toasted silently, our glittering, tear-filled eyes saying everything that needed to be said.
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Madrigal