A Looping of the Scales - Chapter 1 to 20 - Harry Potter FanFic.net

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http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5061224/1/A_Looping_of_the_Scales
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Chapter 1 to 20

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Prologue

It was the weekend, and restored Potions master, Severus Snape, carefully lowered the flame below the bubbling cauldron in his lab. Free of dunderheaded students and marking dismally put together essays and homework assignments, the weekends were his time to play. Only what he was doing was very serious business.

Having survived the attempt on his life by Voldemort, thanks to a bit of preparation involving a Bezoar, a timely Episkey charm and Phoenix Tears, and being vindicated by the testimony of Harry Potter and several Order members Dumbledore wisely put in the know, he had returned to his position of Potions master at Hogwarts. He switched his Defense Against the Dark Arts position with his replacement, Horace Slughorn, who was only too happy to get out of the dank, drafty dungeons.

Snape studied the acid green liquid in the cauldron carefully. He was working on adapting Shrinking Solution to act as a youthening agent for humans. Ideally, it would take years off a person's life, provided it didn't stop his breathing processes while doing so. Shrinking Solution in its usual form made things shrink in size and reversed the aging process as well.

Snape had always believed it to be an underutilized potion that could be used to far greater effect if rendered safe for human consumption with a stabilizer to make the effects permanent. It would be the equivalent of drinking from the fabled Fountain of Youth.

He'd make a fortune if he were successful and could leave Hogwarts School of Mischief and Misery as soon as possible. This was something he dearly wanted. The memories here were just too painful. He'd been through too much.

True, his memories would follow him wherever he went. He'd never be completely free of the demons that plagued him. The death of Lily Potter. The death of innocents at the revels. How he was the vehicle of Tom Riddle's rise to power by providing him with the powerful elixir that maintained him all those dark years. And the look in Dumbledore's eyes just before he killed him.

These things bled from the walls, oozed up from the stone flooring, sung in the castle's constant settlings, and crept up on him when he slept. He couldn't escape who he was or what he lived through. He couldn't stop the pain even though Voldemort was gone. Those dark thoughts were constant companions, just as his scarred body served as a reminder of past tortures every time he disrobed. But leaving Hogwarts might be the first step on a road to some fragile peace. But, he needed money to leave and start anew, and he didn't have much of that.

Yet.

He watched the bubbling slow as the cauldron cooled. He had used all the proper ingredients: evenly chopped daisy roots, skinned shrivelfig, sliced caterpillar, one rat spleen and a dash of leech juice.

For a stabilizer, he experimented with a variety of herbs, extracts and other mediums before he found that using spider web made the youthening effects permanent in the lab animals he experimented with. However, after aging the creatures, he found that a second application was fatal.

The most important ingredients, the ones he believed would make the potion safe for human consumption, were a Bezoar stone, steeped in the solution and Phoenix Tears. He found that heat didn't affect the healing properties of the tears, and the Bezoar was a natural cure for most poisonings.

Still it would have to be tested, and the only one who could do it, was him. He was just waiting to add the Phoenix Tears, just before the bubbling ceased altogether.