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The Banesberry Tea


“What in Merlin’s name are you brewing over there? Merlin... It smells like a dirty old jumper that should go through the wash!” Sirius announced, glaring over at the next table, where Severus Snape sat, stirring a cauldron with a wooden spoon, reading the Potions textbook very carefully. “Seriously, it smells like dust and dirty laundry…”

Severus breathed deeply of the smell. It was raspberries and vanilla and buttered popcorn to him. He looked at Sirius Black with narrowed eyes, “You’re mad.”

“I mean if you’re trying to mix up some shampoo, you’re going about it all wrong,” muttered Sirius.

Cassandra Vablatsky, who was sitting at the front of the room reading a tea box over, cleared her throat. “I best not be hearing the startings of another fight,” she said, “Isn’t one detention over this horrible incident quite enough?”

Sirius drawled, “Tell you what, take a look in your crystal ball thingy and see if we end up dueling and having to come back agan ‘cos we could always save ourselves the trouble of waiting for it to happen and then just reschedule this if you’d like.” He grinned, “As you’ll see if you check your ball there - I’ll be free Wednesday from dinner ‘til midnight for Astronomy...”

Professor Vablatsky looked up from her tea box, “If only the inner eye could see such mundane things as that, Mr. Black, I could have stopped you from having the incident in the start of it.”

“Bloody pointless inner eye,” muttered Sirius. “What good’s it doing us?”

Professor Vablatsky struggled to open a packet of tea she’d just taken from the box before her. “The inner eye is always watching, Mr. Black, for danger that could potentially be fatal, for prophecies that the gods of the earth’s balance see fit to reveal. The future is murky at best, even for the seer, and the inner-eye must be well trained in order to see even the fleeting glimpses of future events. I have foretold the occurrence of many a major event, my boy, I’ll have you know. The inner-eye simply cannot focus in and out between the important and the mundane.” She finally descended enough in desperation that she used her teeth to rip open the pack of tea leaves and smiled, breathing in the smell of them - an evergreen and mint scent - and she poured them into the bottom of her teacup, reaching for the hot water to pour over.

Sirius sighed and rolled over onto his stomach, sprawling over two cushions at the table. He looked up. Snape was frantically stirring the potion he was making - counter-clockwise, his lips moving as he counted. Sirius thought fleetingly of purposely shouting random numbers out, just to mess up Severus Snape’s count, but he was far too lazy, and so he put his Divination book down across the floor and started working on trying to memorize some of the meanings of dream elements that filled the page.

It didn’t take long for the heat of the tower room to make Sirius start to nod off a bit. He snorted as his chin hit the cushion rather hard, and he yanked his neck up to blink and try to refocus on the book before him. He reached for the page and turned it, just incase Professor Vablatsky had seen so she would think he was still reading.

“Do try and stay awake, Mr. Black,” said Vablatsky without even looking up from her job of stirring lavender honey into her tea cup. She clinked the side of the glass twice with the little spoon and then glanced at Sirius. “Detentions aren’t for napping.”

Severus glanced over, “You ought to try and give doing some real homework a try,” he muttered. “If you’re bored of just laying about like a git, that is… I know it’s a full timer for you and all.”

“At least I’m not a bleedin’ idiot like you,” Sirius answered.

Severus rolled his eyes, “Ouch, you really got me with that one.”

“Boys, really,” said Professor Vablatsky, “I don’t like holding detentions. You two are the first detention I’ve had to hold in nearly a decade.”

“See, now that seems monumental enough for your crystals to tell you about,” Sirius said. “A decade of peace followed by this barmy loon trying to hang me ought to be drama enough for the inner-eye to read.”

Cassandra Vablatsky shook her head, lifting her teacup to her lips, and turning to begin grading essays that the fifth year OWL students had passed in that morning.

“I reckon her inner eye’s blind,” muttered Sirius, turning back to his textbook.

There was something heady and comforting about the odd smells pouring from Severus’s side of the room, even though the smell of dust that lingered within it was so strong that Sirius was on the verge of sneezing from it. He didn’t know what it was that the scent reminded him of, but he knew he’d smelled it somewhere before.

“How much longer have we to go?” he whined, rolling again so that now he was on his back on the cushions, looking up at the high vaulted ceiling. “Bloody miserable this is… I’ve never been so bored in all my life, I swear I’m quite sorry for all the transgressions I’ve committed by now… You check your magic ball and you’ll see I never, ever do them again, if the inner-eye will do that for you…” Sirius looked down at where Professor Vablatsky had been sitting at her desk with her tea and a stack of potions essays.

He couldn’t believe it.

Vablatsky apparently had fallen asleep.

Right there at her desk!

He sat up. “Oi, hang on, if she’s taking a nap then why the hell can’t we?”

Severus looked up from his counting - having just finished it anyway - and he withdrew the spoon. He wiped his hands on his robes. In the cauldron, the amortentia was the perfect hue of pearly pink. He stared down at Vablatsky with concern. “Professor?” he called.

“Professor?” echoed Sirius.

The two of them looked at each other for a moment - Sirius Black and Severus Snape - and they realized that possibly something wasn’t quite right. Sirius jumped up from the cushions and Snape followed and they both hurried down to the desk. “Professor, wake up,” Sirius commanded and he reached for Vablatsky’s bushy hair covered head to tap her, expecting her to awaken with a jump of surprise, but nothing happened.

Severus had gone ‘round the desk and shook her shoulder, and when still nothing happened, he pulled her shoulder back quickly so that she was sitting up in her chair, unconcious and he reached for her neck for a pulse. It was there, but light and he looked around the desk for a moment, his eyes landing on the cup of tea. He reached for it and picked it up, sniffing it carefully. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “Go get me a bezoar.”

“What?” Sirius asked, panicking, “What is it? What’s going on? Is she -- is she dead?”

“Not yet. Get me a bloody bezoar -- in my potions kit. Hurry!”

Sirius ran up to the desk Severus had been sitting at and looked at the little box with it’s many nooks and crannies and odd elements. Severus had so much stuff in there that Sirius couldn’t have identified if he was forced to - things that were more than had come with any standard grade three potions kit. He rummaged a moment. “What’s a bezoar look like? You haven’t got even half this bloody stuff labelled in here.”

“It’s the stone on the third caddy in the right middle divider. Hurry, will you?” Severus repled.

Sirius quickly shuffled through to the spot Severus had said and he grabbed the little stone - it looked like a bean - and he ran back down to the table and held it out to Severus Snape. “Here. What’s that going to do?” he asked, desperate. “I’m going to go get Pomfrey - and Dumbledore.”

Snape meanwhile had shoved Cassandra Vablatsky back against the chair, pulled open her mouth, and shoved in the bezoar quite roughly, sticking his fingers into her throat nearly all the way.

“Bloody hell, are you trying to kill her? You monster! Get off her!”

Severus shoved Sirius off him, roughly, holding the bezoar there a moment before withdrawing his fingers from the divination teacher’s throat. Sirius was struggling to pull him off her the whole time. In their haste of fighting, Sirius knocked over the tea cup, spilling the stuff across the essays and bits of it dripped onto the floor with a hissing sound. Sirius looked ‘round to see the essays ruined. “Oops!” he said.

Suddenly, Cassandra Vablatsky gurgled and seemed to choke on the bezoar and awoke with a gasp of breath.

“What’s - what’s happened?” she asked, looking around in confusion, seeing the tea spilled across the desk, soaking it’s way through the essays. Severus stepped back, releasing the pressure he’d put on her neck for the pulse.

“You were poisoned is what happened,” Severus said, and he bent down to pick up the teacup Sirius had knocked over.

“Poisoned?!” exclaimed both Cassandra Vablatsky and Sirius Black at exactly the same moment. “How?” Sirius demanded.

Severus waved the cup at Sirius, “By this, you dolt. It was killing her - until I shoved that bezoar in!”

“That little nugget thing stopped it?!” Sirius snorted.

“A bezoar’s an antidote to most poison,” Severus said, “Slughorn taught us that in first year! But then again you and Potter were being foolish and not paying attention so it’s very possible you didn’t hear it. Luckily, I did or else we wouldn’t have a divination professor anymore!”

Cassandra Vablatsky looked utterly traumatized, she lifted up the box of tea, her hands shaking.

“Where did you get that tea, Professor?” asked Sirius.

“It was a sampler from Madam Puddifoot’s new line,” she said in a trembling voice, “She had new tea specially for reading leaves and I was given a sampler… it came by owl just this morning.”

“Bloody willing to bet that didn’t really come from Madam Puddifoot,” muttered Sirius.

Severus stared at the box, then glanced at Professor Vablatsky for a long moment. Something seemed to dawn on his face - a flicker of understanding passed through his eyes - but it was so very brief that neither Vablatsky nor Sirius noticed it before he’d managed to wipe it away and return to his normal, bland stare. “Obviously it didn’t,” he said in a low tone, “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you, Black?”

“We need Dumbledore,” Vablatsky said suddenly.

“I’ll fetch him,” said Sirius quickly, “I know how to get to his office!” He turned and he bolted up the stairs and out of the room as quick as a flash, leaving Severus behind with the divination teacher.

Severus looked at her in confusion. Why would Lord Voldemort want the divinations teacher at Hogwarts dead? He wondered. For the attack was of course Voldemort’s doing. He put the teacup down on the desk and studied her a moment as she put the box down, still shaking. Then, realizing that Dumbledore was on the way, he didn’t want the headmaster seeing his illegally brewed amortentia, so he quickly hastened up to his desk, spooned out the shimmering pink liquid into five small vials and waved his wand to disappear the rest. He shoved the vials into his pocket and looked up at Vablatsky, who was staring numbly at the desk and shaking her head.

“But who would wish to kill me?” she whispered, muttering to herself.

Severus took a deep breath, entering into her mind and poking about for a few minutes. Mostly it was a panicked mess at the moment, thoughts flying here and there, memories, worries about family members - Severus got a good glimpse of Cassandra’s neice, a wild-haired girl that he recognized as a seventh year girl he’d seen around the school named Sybil. He filtered through all that stuff until he found a murkier set of thoughts, buried further down beneath the surface thinking she was doing and he found a vague memory of the prophecy she had told to Dumbledore just a week prior.

The Hunter’s time comes soon
The boy will leave his safety and
venture where he ought not to be
The Omega shall overthrow the Alpha
at the Hunter’s command
Beta will rise
And Omega will fight to the death.
The Hunter’s time comes soon!



Severus grabbed a parchment from his stack and quickly scribbled the words down.

The classroom door burst open and in came Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey and Professor Veigler, all followed by Sirius Black, and the three adults hurried to the front of the room, surrounding Professor Vablatsky hurriedly, Pomfrey pulling out a bottle of potion that she quickly commanded Professor Vablatsky to drink. Dumbledore assessed her for a moment, then turned to the boys, “What happened here?” he asked.

“Well we were all talking and then she drank her tea and she just sort of -- passed out,” Sirius replied.

Veigler was inspecting the spills on the parchment and the rug where the tea had run.

“It’s got banesberry in it,” Severus announced. “I smelt it before Black knocked it over.”

“Banesberry?” Dumbledore looked surprised.

“It’s a North American berry, also called Doll’s Eye, it’s poisonous but it tastes sweet. It doesn’t take much - it acts as a sedative on the cardiac muscles,” Severus answered. “I read about it in a glossary Slughorn’s got. It has a distinct odor.”

Dumbledore looked impressed, as did Professor Veigler, who was now holding the box in his hand and turning it over in his good arm. The other was still in the sling. “She’s very lucky that you are so good at potions, Mr. Snape,” Veigler said.

“Very impressive that you thought of a bezoar, as well,” Dumbledore added, nodding, “Very good. Mr. Slughorn will be most proud, of course.”

Wanting to be impressive, too, Sirius announced, “She said the box came by owl this morning and claimed to be from Madam Puddifoot’s! Said it was a free sample of tea leaves made for reading.”

“Clearly not truly Puddifoot’s,” Veigler murmured.

Dumbledore nodded his agreement.

Madam Pomfrey stepped around the two men carefully, leading Professor Vablatsky gently by her arm. “We’re going down to the hospital wing for recouperation,” she announced. “Mr. Snape, please go and fetch that glossary with the description of the baneberry so that I may know which antidotes will best cure our divination teacher.”

“Yes, of course,” Severus answered.

They all watched as Pomfrey led her away out the door. Dumbledore took a deep breath, looking back at Professor Veigler, whose hand shook as he ran his fingers over the smooth surface of the tea cup with concern in his eyes. They seemed to hold an entire conversation with a series of glances and Veigler nodded and put the cup down. Dumbledore turned to Severus and Sirius, “Run along. You’ve more than made up for whatever mischief you committed to serve this detention to begin with. Severus, don’t forget to bring Poppy that book.”

“Yes, Headmaster,” Severus answered. He hastened to grab his potions kit and his cauldron from the desk.

They stepped out of the classroom, leaving Dumbledore and Veigler to look over the scene and they walked, side-by-side, in silence through the corridor toward the stairs. Neither said anything to the other for several long moments. Sirius finally looked over at Snape and said, grudgingly, “Good call with the bezoar.”

Severus nodded, “Maybe you’ll pay more attention in Slughorn’s class now instead of just mucking about with Potter,” he snapped. Quickly, he turned and hurried down the stairs, reaching to brace the pocket that held the vials of amortentia, not wanting them to clink together and shatter before he’d had a chance to use them for their intended purpose, turning over the prophecy he’d uncovered in Vablatsky’s mind, trying to work it out.

He just hoped that the Dark Lord wouldn’t consider his burst of heroism as an act against his will...