Manacled by Senlinyu

Chapter 47: Flashback 22

December 2002

The house at Spinner's End was crammed with bubbling potions.

Hermione turned around the room slowly and paused in surprise as she noticed a cauldron shimmering in the corner. She stepped over and watched the spiraling steam rising from the surface. She sniffed it surreptitiously—spicy, earthy scent of oakmoss, smoky undertones of cedar and parchment—no. She sniffed again. Papyrus.

It felt like receiving a diagnosis she'd expected but still hoped to be wrong about. Her stomach dropped sharply. She stepped abruptly away and glanced at the other surrounding cauldrons. There was a aching sensation inside her chest that she tried to ignore.

"This is quite a variety of love potions you're brewing," she said, looking over to where Severus was stooped over a simmering cauldron.

"A new project for the Dark Lord. He's suddenly developed an interest in trying to weaponise it," Severus said, sneering down at the murky, lumescent liquid he was working over.

Hermione felt her blood run cold. "Is that a possibility?"

Severus shrugged with a faint smile. "I am both skeptical and unmotivated, so most likely not. I believe it was more of a passing notion than anything he has a sincere interest in. I'm drawing up a comprehensive report to present in case he asks about it. And I'm doing it in my home rather than in the lab to ensure no one offers any groundbreaking ideas."

Hermione surveyed the room. There were ten varieties of love potion and a few aphrodisiacs she recognised, as well as an additional fifteen that appeared experimental.

"What would constitute as a weaponised love potion?"

"Something of exceptional power that doesn't require redosage. I believe he imagines himself using it for interrogations."

"That's—obscene," Hermione finally said.

"Indeed. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, he has other matters he regards as more urgent for Sussex to focus on."

Hermione stood, watching Severus crush ashwinder eggs for several minutes in silence.

"Draco says that Sussex is trying to develop a way to prevent further rescues."

There was a pause before Severus turned and looked at her thoughtfully.

"I didn't realise he was aware of that."

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "An excellent spy. Isn't that what you said?"

"So it would seem," Severus muttered, turning back to his mortar and pestle. "Do you know why he's spying yet?

Hermione's eyes dropped to her shoes. "No," she admitted. "He says things that seem true, but I can't make out the motive behind them."

There was a pause, filled with the hiss of simmering liquid and grinding stone.

"Are you aware he's climbing rank?" Severus said, turning to his cauldron and pouring the powdered ashwinder shells into the liquid in a gradual figure eight across the surface.

Hermione was quiet for several seconds. "I hadn't heard that."

"I mentioned it to Kingsley a few weeks ago. Climbing higher. Consolidating power. I don't pretend to know all you do together during your weekly—meetings... but I sometimes wonder if you even remember that when he's not with you, he spends his time killing people."

Hermione's breath caught in her throat while Severus continued in an unsettlingly conversational tone. "I've rarely seen anyone who used Dark Magic as unsparingly as he has recently. The Dark Lord is thrilled by the exceptional tool he has crafted for himself. Those who make the mistake of getting in Draco's way have a habit of dying from suspiciously ingenious uses of 'Resistance' spells. A few weeks ago, one of the marked Death Eaters, Gibbon, was found with his limbs flayed and dismembered. I helped analyse the corpse; there was an exceptional web of Dark Magic used to force Gibbon to stay alive for nearly a day before he finally died."