Snape shoved Iain aside.
It was not especially rough.
But it was absolutely not gentle, either.
His hand landed on Iain's shoulder and pushed hard. Iain staggered back two steps, effectively driven away from the pure-gold cauldron by force.
"I have never seen technique this dreadful! A troll would know more about brewing potions than you do!" Snape did not even look at Iain. He strode straight to the cauldron, his gaze sweeping across the scattered ingredients on the table: powdered unicorn horn, moondew fungus, essence of sneezeweed, dragon blood.
There were many ingredients. An absurd number, in fact. Rich, complete, and carefully prepared. Yet the more the Potions master looked, the tighter his brow drew, until his lips flattened into a line so thin it was nearly invisible.
"I can scarcely imagine what sort of idiot taught a fool like you!" Snape's mouth seemed dipped in cyanide. He cursed while he worked.
His fingers flew through the ingredients, grabbing a handful of moondew fungus and scattering it into the cauldron, adding several drops of sneezeweed essence, then crushing a serpent fang and tossing it in last. The movement was seamless, without the slightest hesitation, as if he could have done it blindfolded.
The liquid in the cauldron churned violently several times, its muddy brown turning to a heavy grey. The foam vanished. A chalky white scum spread across the surface, and the whole thing ended up looking like a pot of porridge left on the stove so long that every trace of nutrition had died inside it.
The fire dimmed. The potion stopped roiling. It only sat there now, sluggish and dull, releasing small lazy bubbles. What had once been dangerously active had been reduced to dead water.
"What are you doing! My life's work! My miracle brew!" Iain rushed back from the wall, spoon in hand, and dipped it into the cauldron.
Snape did not stop him in time. The boy had already brought the spoon to his mouth and tasted it. Instantly, his handsome face flushed bright red.
"Damn it! I was this close to success! My super-soldier serum just got turned into sweet-and-sour soup!" Iain's naming conventions changed by the minute. Whenever he got upset, his super brain rushed in to comfort him, which meant he could never keep his labels straight for long.
Though he recognized the man in front of him as his future Potions professor, a double agent, Voldemort's former most loyal lackey, and the wizarding world's number-one pure-love war god, Hogwarts' greatest hopeless romantic, none of that gave Snape the right to stand in the way of Iain's evolution.
"Just because you bleached your face doesn't mean I don't recognize you, Private Severus." Of course, this was only furious internal screaming. Iain did not dare say it out loud.
"..."
Snape ignored the fuming boy and looked again at the ingredients on the table. The unicorn horn powder was of astonishing purity.
Not the sort of cheap rubbish sold on the market, bulked out with plaster dust. The other ingredients were the same. They were not the common grades one could buy off a shelf, but the sort of premium materials one only found by selecting them personally and getting lucky.
The longer Snape stared, the uglier his expression grew. His lips moved. His voice was low, but each word felt dragged out between clenched teeth.
"You miserable little thief. Where did you steal these ingredients from?" Snape finally snapped and seized Iain by the collar.
Snape was stronger than he looked. When he wanted to, he could lift a child easily. On most days he could have hauled up a fifth- or sixth-year student without trouble.
But today, he had clearly miscalculated. Even with anger adding force to the motion, no matter how hard he pulled, Iain's feet might as well have been rooted into the floor.
The boy did not budge.
"Giant blood?" Snape's brow furrowed even tighter. The thought flashed through his mind at once. The boy's weight was wrong.
Before he could follow that line of thought any further, Iain, enraged at being grabbed, moved from merely annoyed to properly angry. He shoved Snape with both hands.
"Damn it!"
Snape felt as if Hagrid had punched him in the chest. He staggered backward uncontrollably, his back slamming into the wall.
Bang!
The wall gave a dull thud. Dust shook loose and drifted down over Snape's black robes. His spine ached, but it was nothing compared to the pain in his chest. For a moment, it felt as though his ribs had nearly snapped. He could barely breathe.
"What kind of half-breed monster are you?" Snape was genuinely alarmed now.
"What do you mean, steal? Huh? What do you mean, steal?" Iain straightened his rumpled collar, chin lifting. He pointed toward a corner of the sitting room. "You think so little of my family's wealth? Every last ingredient I own came by entirely legitimate means. I had Hogwarts' red-feathered chicken courier buy them for me on the black market!"
The logic was insane, but Iain sounded completely sincere.
Snape, still struggling to breathe, had no time to dissect the absurdity of that statement. He followed the boy's finger and saw a cat bed in the corner.
And perched inside it, looking as though life had utterly defeated him, sat Fawkes. Several eggs of uncertain origin rested beneath him.
Hearing himself mentioned, the phoenix turned away and tucked his head under one wing, refusing to acknowledge anyone.
"A phoenix!!"
Snape's pupils dilated.
"Fawkes..."
The Potions master recognized him at once, and his voice trembled slightly with disbelief. He knew exactly what sort of temperament this bird had.
And now the creature was sitting in a cat bed incubating eggs, wearing the expression of a single father on the edge of collapse.
Snape did not understand why Fawkes was in a child's cottage, but in an instant he understood why items had recently gone missing from his private stores, only for exact-payment gold to appear in the cupboard afterward.
Damn it. No lock or spell, however strong, could keep out a phoenix that could Apparate even inside Hogwarts.
Such a noble gift had actually been used for coercive shopping.
Still reeling, his gaze flicking back and forth between the phoenix and the child, Snape put a hand to his chest, steadied his breathing, and prepared to speak.
Before he could, Iain rushed at the cat bed.
"I knew it! I paid you a generous commission! And still! Still, you thick-browed bird turned out to be a middleman skimming off the top!" He shook Fawkes indignantly. The phoenix's neck bobbed in his grip like a puppet on strings.
"Talk! Were you pocketing the whole cut?"
Fawkes did not answer.
He simply closed his eyes.
After being treated like this daily by two different people, he had clearly learned acceptance.
"Enough!"
Snape had finally caught his breath. His chest no longer hurt quite so sharply. He stepped toward the boy again, face even darker than before.
"I do not care who you are. Brewing a potion of this danger level in a populated area is a clear violation of Ministry regulations. I ought to drag you straight to Azkaban..."
Snape's voice went cold and poisonous, the beginning of a proper intimidation speech.
He never got to finish it.
A sharp, brutally crisp crack sounded at the back of his skull.
"????"
Snape's words cut off instantly. His eyes rolled white for a split second, his pupils shuddered, and then his whole body went limp.
A master potioneer. A dueling expert. And, much like certain legendary warlords, apparently possessed of a fatal weakness in the back.
With Snape collapsed on the floor, his attacker was finally revealed.
Standing behind him was a little skeleton wearing a bright yellow hard hat with a label stuck across the brim reading:
GOLD MINER NO. 1
In its hands, it held an iron shovel.
Clearly, it had been the one to club Snape from behind.