Fresh orange for saffron. Grey-green for gillyweed. Blue for crushed cornflowers, soft and velvet to the touch.
All pure ingredients, of the very highest quality. Thanks to the suggestions of one of my correspondents, a Miss Sinope, I have been able to acquire a few overseas contracts for instruction. Apparently Potions students from the Americas are eager to learn some of the more 'rustic' brewing methods--although I hastened to assure them, of course, that these methods are far from 'rustic'. (I do believe I managed to reign in my temper when one of the younger students used that word. Quite an accomplishment, even at this age.) It is certainly interesting to attempt a Floo conference, but it sets up quite an effective classroom atmosphere, as long as one does not mind teaching disembodied heads. Floating in one's fireplace. Well.
Advances in technology are not to be expected from Muggles alone. Although I do wish, sometimes, that Wizardkind weren't quite so quick on the uptake. Setting up a Floo conference is no minor task. I spent a significant portion of my morning trying--and I do mean trying--to adjust the wards around my fireplace. My first student, I'm afraid, had to suffer through some rather poor transmission. She did seem to understand the gist of my lecture despite the crackling of the logs, however.
Granger's letter is no longer a matter of debate. I know better than to imagine that out of sight means out of mind, for either myself or for her, but I am not, under any circumstances, going back to the Order. I am not. The... hesitation... I felt before was a ridiculous side-effect of my time with them, as one of them, and was an entirely uncharacteristic indulgence in nostalgia on my part. Or so I should hope.
I've spent the evening with a cup of tea, my newest notes on Alimonia and a meagre dinner courtesy of Borgin's wife, who climbed up the stairs to my room with her usual basket.
Ah. Alimonia.
--I have yet to acquire the b.p., however. My saffron, gillyweed and conflower extract came by owl order, since these were the only ingredients I could afford to order from Diagon, but my requirement for bubotuber pus can only be fulfilled by the local apothecary. Broken-down, filthy, disreputable little place that it is. Rumour has it that Blaney, the corpulent, corrupt little herbologist who runs the place, is close to bankruptcy--well, that's if what Borgin's wife has to say is anything to go by. Which it usually is.
The bastard better not shut down before I get my next supply of pus. We've all been waiting for the Ministry to catch him selling opium to the local whores, but the Ministry, as usual, can't find its own posterior with a map and a True-Seek compass.
I'll head out again, first thing tomorrow--this time for the apothecary, with my pouch of Galleons charmed against the Levitation charms of pickpockets. It will be a cold morning, I think, blackened by smoke and the bitter ash of the establishments here--and if I can survive Madame Borgin's idea of a breakfast, Mister Blaney will have himself a desperate, if nonetheless unpleasant, customer.
My generous order of bubotuber pus might even keep the rodent from ruin. |
Burning parchment gives off a bitter smell. I stare at it: a black, curling flower. Iris chrysographes.
Another owl this morning. Another letter calling me back to action. We need you, Professor. Times are turbulent, Professor. The Order is fragmenting, Professor. Come back. Come back. Come back.
Damn them.
Miss Granger's neat, cursive script was instantly recognisable. She has been owling me almost twice a year since Riddle's arrival--and every time I manage to burn her letters and forget about them, they make a repeat appearance. I wonder why she tries. Why she even bothers.
I pity her, sometimes--left alone to hold together an Order that has been crumbling ever since Potter... turned. It is remarkable how much the loss of a symbolic figurehead cost us--them. Them, damn it.
The streets are quiet today. No flying hexes delivered in drunken voices, no haranguing of merchants--it is a public holiday, after all, celebrating the defeat of Grindelwald.
Ironic. The day that marks the death of one hell-spawn marks the rising of another.
Riddle has reached an agreement with the Wizengamot.
Or rather, Riddle and Potter. How quaint.
It sickens me to think of these things. To find the Daily Prophet soggy and soiled with mud on my doorstep each morning, the tight roll of paper furrowed with the marks of claws. A stray feather clinging to its damp surface.
It sickens me to unroll it, even though I do not wish to know what I will find--I do not wish to know of Riddle's successes, or even of his failures--I want to know nothing, nothing, but my hands unfurl the paper regardless.
I am a fool. A coward, perhaps. Is that what Granger thinks, alone in Black's haunted house, frantically trying to gather the remnants of a broken army? I care not if she hates me for staying away, for keeping my feet dry--and she shall not make me feel responsible, the little witch, she shall not make me feel obligated with her bi-annual owls. I have given enough to the damn Order. Myself. My mind. My Mark. Remus.
... Remus.
That I should choose to spend my time as I wish, now, and free at last--yes, my freedom is an illusion, but it is better than what they can gift me--I deserve it. I do. I've had enough of them, of their scheming, of their tactics, of their requests for potions that differ only negligibly from the ones Voldemort had once requested of me--I've had enough of them. Now at least, in my old age, they should leave me alone.
Alone.
Damn this restlessness. All I ask for is the quiet bubble of my potions, the silence of my lab--I ask nothing of the world save that it leave me be, but even this simple request goes unheard. It astonishes me that the Muggles ever believed in a God--even the smallest of prayers goes unanswered.
I look across my desk now, at the lump of ash that was Granger's letter--and beyond it, to the pale, grey morning in the open window, a thin promise of drizzle in the cold, moist air.
Perhaps I am a coward, after all. Perhaps I do shirk my responsibility. Perhaps I could play a part in bringing the Order together--but I know I won't. I left that world behind, a long time ago--I no longer wish to play a part in any wars, any futile struggles. There are enough foolhardy idiots to do that--those who are foolish for wanting power, and those who are foolish for submitting to it. I, on the other hand, will stay away--I have fought enough, given enough. I have little tolerance for the machinations of this world. I have little tolerance for the bitterness, the... guilt... that I feel when I am summoned and do not answer.
Dumbledore's dog. So well-trained that, even after all these years, he feels the need to muzzle himself.
Damn them all. Damn Riddle, damn Potter, damn Granger, damn Dumbledore...
I press the heel of my hand into my brow to ease the pulsing headache there. The ink from my quill drips quietly onto my diary, too slow for the beat of my heart.
Let me be, Granger. Let me be. |
Human beings are living things made to argue. The more one tries to preserve tranquility, the more likely it is to break under strain.
The current negotiations between the Wizengamot and Riddle are a case in point. The Wizengamot is under the illusion that it is negotiating--but what it is doing, quite simply, is surrendering. There can be no such thing as 'negotiation' with Tom Riddle, not even this newly resurrected, suave version of him.
I admire the real pacifists, not the pretenders of Riddle's camp. Those who genuinely pursue peace are likely, at the very least, to save lives--I have, however, never been a believer in long-lasting peace. Peace is a literal impossibility for the human race--the need to destroy is intrinsic to all of us, as essential as the blood that heats our veins.
Perhaps that is not so strange. The natural world itself seeks to destroy and recreate--and we, as extensions of it, are doomed to do the same. |
The infernal racket from downstairs is driving me to distraction. Apparently one of Borgin's... creatures... has escaped again--but I find I cannot spare any pity for the unfortunate customer who requested a look at it. I'd cast a silencing ward around my quarters if the peripheral magic wouldn't adversely affect my Alimonia--bubbling away quietly as it is, remarkably purple-tinted for the first time in weeks.
( Read more... ) |
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Dawn.
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Apr. 21st, 2024 @ 05:46 am
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The fireplace is cold. Colder even than the morning outside, I wager. It is mornings like these--when I awaken far too early, irritated by the aches of my aging body--that I wonder how it is I came to be here. In this hovel of a room above Borgin, cloistered like a black-robed nun and just as foul-tempered. Snape. Severus Snape. Once soldier, spy, professor and scientist. In the thick of things. And yet here I am, in my self-imposed exile, so far away from matters of import, from the gory mess that politics always is. It is a pale, milk-sweet relief, at times--to be left alone, finally--to be nobody's puppet.
But it is also lonesome.
It has been more than twenty years since I taught at Hogwarts. Since I even set foot there.
Yet still people in Knockturn recognise me. If I occasionally venture downstairs, down that rickety spiral of mud-slick steps, I am always greeted by a startled stare. There are still old students of mine milling about here, although they are generally the worst--the ones who could not pass their subjects, the ones that had to resort to selling their wares--magical, physical or otherwise--on Knockturn Alley. I descend into the filth of this street like any other outcast, purchasing food and tea from yet another grim-faced vendor; haggling for Potions ingredients from yet another dubious witch. The children still taunt me when they skip past, tongues wagging--ill-mannered brutes as all children are, commenting on my beak-like nose and my grey, oily hair--the greasy vulture of this neighborhood, sharp-tongued and solitary and emerging only to hunt for food.
The adults know better than to taunt me, at least those who know of who I am--a man who has tried to escape history, dissolve in it, become invisible--and yet who still carries the past around like a dark halo, causing those who remember it to flinch away. Snape. Severus Snape. Ex-Death Eater and traitor to both sides. The wizard who finally rejected the control of not one, but two autocrats--Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore--and who tried, at various points before his self-imposed retirement, to assassinate them both.
Riddle. Lover and tyrant. Dumbledore. Mentor and foe.
Rolling me like a die, the both of them, so that I always showed the right numbers--a die loaded by politics and obligation and fear and love, finally taking itself into its own hands.
I am free now. Free. From this distance their betrayals are greyed by time. Made almost bearable. The Muggle myth of the Bible is particularly apt, I think--I am Adam exiled from the utopias of two gods, except that I was exiled alone. No lover for me, in my old age, no creature made out of my rib, nor any child birthed from my loins. My lover was killed before my freedom--the cause of it, the singular motivating factor--and now, as I turn away from my dusty window to see the faint, dawn-lit silhouette of my bed, it is futile to call his name.
Still, my resolve is weak with lack of sleep.
Remus, my mind says, and no one answers. Remus. |
Yes, I'm still working on Alimonia. My robes stink of bubotuber pus. My hair is singed. My fingers are raw after five hours of being exposed to the damn fire.
I feel like nothing more than a sour-faced Sisyphus, rolling my cauldron up a never-ending hill.
Nevertheless, some progress has been made. The potion seems to stabilise sooner if I add the pus after the armadillo bile; don't ask me why, as it makes little logical sense thus far. If anything, the presence of plant fibre should stabilise the potion earlier. All I know is that statistically, adding the pus afterwards seems to work.
This reminds me of what my own professor used to say: 'Potions is not a science, it is guesswork.'
However, now that I have explored a few Muggle sciences, I have to say that Potions is a science precisely because of the degree of guesswork involved. Until one finds a formula--or a recipe, as it were--nothing makes sense; all one has are points on a potentially plottable graph. The reasoning behind those points--or rather, the equation to connect them--does not become clear until one has gathered sufficient data from which to draw conclusions.
Apparently, five hours of brewing does not yield sufficient data. I will have to singe yet another set of robes tomorrow, as I am too tired to perform any further brewing today. Perhaps I should just collect my sheafs of parchment and go to bed, and read over them until I fall asleep... |
It appears that Riddle is spewing his usual propaganda again. So much for hoping that his physical resurrection might also have resulted in a resurrection of the intellectual kind.
Here is my response to his post:
Cleverly worded and intelligent propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless. You wormed me in once, Riddle; you shall not do so again.
Muggles have shown time and time again that they cannot maintain peace and order when left to their own devices.
Oh? And are we, Wizardkind, any more capable of maintaining peace and order when left to ourselves? Your very existence shatters that illusion.
There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers - we simply must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.
Don't make me laugh. Morally right, Riddle? I've seen the things you do. Your guidance of Muggles. Still, I must admire your cleverness in using that phrase; the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs will fall for it as they generally do, while the Slytherins will recognize it for what it is, a manipulative tactic, and be all the more fond of you for it. Some of us, however, are not so easily swayed; and there is hope yet for the Ravenclaws. And for members of the other Houses who are not too blinded by self-deceit.
You may have been told that such thoughts as I have elucidated here are evil; I say to you now there is no such thing as "good" and "evil". There is only freedom or the absence of freedom. At this moment, Wizardkind is not free. We are burdened, weighed down by the need to hide away in shadows. It is time for that to change.
Ah, a direct contradiction of what you've said before. How can you appeal to 'morality' one minute, and discount its very existence the next? Perhaps you need to be re-trained in rhetoric, Riddle. You're slipping.
You also seem to be spinning an illusion of a non-existent freedom. I know very well what your brand of freedom entails, and I want nothing to do with it. Your misconception is that Muggles and Wizardkind are essentially different; they are not. Psychologically, we are not different from Muggles in any significant way. The only difference between us is that we are armed with magic, and they are not; they are, instead, armed with science. Neither of us is capable of freedom, since we are both human, and human beings have always created their own cages. Neither of us is capable of moral superiority, since humans are not capable of moral consistency.
Your policy of divide and conquer is flawed. You paint a picture of a free world when the very idea is an impossibility; you might, at the very most, talk of a freer world, but any freedom based on the slavery of another human being is not true freedom at all.
It is remarkable that in my old age I should speak up against the very principles you had seduced me into believing when I was a youth; but now, older and wiser as I am, I see through your wiles. You've resurrected yourself many years younger, and together with Potter you look quite the siren. Two intelligent, charming young men. Yes?
Clever campaigning image. But those of us who've learned to see beneath the surface will not fall for it. |
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This journal is only for my Potions notes, reflections on the shenanigans currently rocking Wizarding politics, and general thoughts on the state of this sorry world. If you are here for frivolous reasons, begone. |
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