Trading Places Fic: Late Night Reading (G)
Author: _rufus_ For: The Trading Places Challenge, to go with the beautiful drawing of the same name by abstractthought aka Morbid_Lizard Title: Late Night Reading Rating: G Disclaimer: Not mine, clearly. Word count: 512 Warnings: none A/N: With thanks to mnemosyne_1 for the read-through; any remaining mistakes are my own. P.S.: The book Severus is reading is Middlemarch, by George Eliot.
February 13, 2006 Wrackwreath House Plymouth, England
Dear Sirs,
Enclosed please find the (heavily edited) copies of articles reviewed for Poisons Unlimited. The dunderhead who
The door to the study creaked open. Severus paused briefly, but didn't look up.
wrote the piece on the uses of runespoor venom in love potions is at best mentally unstable and at worst criminally stupid. I caught two errors in the ingredients list that could have caused fatalities
Something heavy banged against his shin, and when he pushed himself back from the desk, he found a werewolf with a book in its mouth gazing up at him from under the desk.
"Drop that right now before you ruin the binding," he said.
The wolf made a huffing noise and dropped the thick, heavy volume in Severus' lap. He dried it with a flick of his wand and the wolf made a low noise that could have been a whine or a growl.
"When I finish my letter," Severus murmured, sighing when the animal bumped its head against his knee. "I won't be long."
The wolf made a hmph noise and flopped down on the floor, right on top of Severus' feet. Severus leaned over and scratched behind the furry ears – a small peace offering – then turned back to his letter.
and three mistakes in the brewing instructions that would have lead to the creation of illegal love potions. The second piece, concerning the correct way to distill belladonna, was marginally more acceptable and only contained confusing grammatical errors. The third piece submitted I was unable to read as it was the sole casualty of the unfortunate encounter your owl had with another animal before it reached me. Please remit my fees per standing instructions.
Severus Snape
Severus paused for a moment to look down at the wolf – it seemed to be sleeping, until he noticed the twitching tail – then folded the parchment up neatly and slid it under a nearby paperweight. He set the book on the desk, extracted his feet from beneath the wolf's belly and stood up, wincing a little as his joints cracked. Tail wagging, the wolf heaved itself up and trotted into the sitting room. Severus scooped up the book and followed him through the door.
There were a few moments of confusion and irritated clucking noises while Severus tried to build up the fire and the wolf tried to make him sit down. Eventually, however, the hearth was crackling away and Severus was settled on the floor, his back to the wolf's broad side with the book open in his lap and a candle floating above his head.
"Ladislaw has just told Bulstrode he can keep his money," Severus said, frowning at the page. "Is that where we were?"
The wolf raised his head and made a noise of agreement, then flopped his tail over Severus' leg. Severus petted it a couple of times and began to read aloud, being careful to do different voices for each character. The wolf made a pleased noise, and lay quietly until the moon set.