InsaneJournal

Who: Clarissa Gamp and Severus Snape
What: Rissa needs something.
Where: Mulpepper’s Apothecary
When: BACKDATED: Monday, May 13th. After this.
Warnings: Awkwardness.



The shop was dingy, or perhaps merely dark and cramped; either way, Clarissa Gamp’s first step into it made her want to shudder her disapproval. A business, in her opinion, ought to be airy and light and welcoming, the sort of place that made people want to linger long enough to leave with more purchased than had been intended. This was...not that, to say the least.

But then, she hadn’t been fond of the majority of the Hogwarts dungeons for much the same reason, and she’d learned very early not to let it show. And so she did not, in fact, shudder now. No hint of distaste passed through her expression; anyone looking might think that Clarissa found her surroundings as completely natural and nearly as to her taste as she did her father’s own showroom.

Once the door had shut behind her, she glanced around for the...well, the help. Whose name she knew, and had known before she’d asked Rabastan, but appearances were important when one was a halfblood and trying to ensure that everyone forgot it, and lying had never bothered her one whit.

“Hello?” she called sweetly when she didn’t spot the young man she was looking for at first glance (not that one would among the shelves, really.)

There was a noise that might optimistically call itself a grunt of acknowledgment from somewhere in the dim recesses of the shop’s rear. Then again, it might’ve been the foundation settling, or something in one of the myriad of foggy bottles gurgling its own greeting. Anything was possible, at least when that anything in question involved some form of unpleasantness. Frankly, it was easier that way. Severus didn’t want anyone to linger and he didn’t care for the public. This way, he didn’t have to worry about either. Customers scurried in, made their purchases, and left to wash their hands. It simplified things considerably.

Another moment or two and Severus did actually emerge from the gloom. Given that he generally chose to dress in black- for the sake of not showing stains, of course, these things were a matter of practicality and not a fashion statement- the effect was sort of like melting out of shadows. One moment he wasn’t there and the next he was, pale features pinched with the displeasure of having been interrupted. “Yes?” He inquired, curt. One hand fussed with the edges of an apron liberally spotted in something viscous and an off-shade of yellow. “How can I help you?”

Clarissa’s smile was as bright and cheerful as Severus’s was dour and unwelcoming. She’d had years of experience playing sweet and a bit daft, apparently oblivious to open hostility. The glowers of a shopkeeper’s assistant didn’t phase her one bit.

“Just looking for a few things!” she chirped. “It’s awfully cluttered in here, isn’t it?”

Severus glanced around as if in surprise before replying in a flat deadpan, “Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” He wondered at her for a beat, trying to place the face and mannerisms. She was vaguely familiar, but not enough to tie name and face together. Unsurprising. Severus didn’t maintain much of a social circle at all… and certainly not one that involved a bubbly blonde.

He tilted his head. “Was there something I could help you locate?” He hoped the answer was a firm ‘no’ so that he could go on about his work. Bile didn’t just bottle itself.

“That would be so brilliant,” Clarissa enthused, flicking her wand to produce her shopping list and holding it up for Severus to see. She didn’t need half the things on it, but walking in and asking straightaway for Polyjuice seemed like a good way to get flagged by the DMLE if there happened to be any witnesses around. And besides, there was no reason she couldn’t have a bit of fun before getting down to the point. It wasn’t that she enjoyed making the unwilling dance to her tune, but…

Oh, who was she kidding? It absolutely was.

There was a list. Severus would’ve recoiled in disapproval, but by the point he’d registered that the woman was stepping closer, she was already brandishing the blasted thing in his face. He cautiously leaned back- at least from the shoulders up, no mean feat in a space as unforgiving as the aisle they were currently occupying- and reached out to steady the list in question. “Right.”

If it sounded grim, well. He was. He studied it a moment, trying to classify what she might be doing, but honestly the ingredients were not intended for use in one potion… or even two or three, that he could discern at a glance. “We’ll just… start at the top.”

Clarissa wanted to laugh. The poor boy just looked so horrified. She’d have been offended if she wasn’t enjoying it so much; really, there were men in this world who’d have loved the excuse of a nonsense shopping list to spend time in her company. Hell, there were men who had done just that.

“That’s where I like to start!” she chirped, holding back amusement and apparently oblivious to any suggestion in the words. “And end up on the bottom!”

She’d drop the charade and tell the man what she was really after in a minute or two. Really.

Severus considered, very briefly, if it might be in poor taste to send the woman outside to wait while he worked. He didn’t care for an audience and her chipper attitude was wearing on his nerves. Honestly, did anyone need to smile so much? And why did everything she said seem to inflect upwards, like she might be readying a cheer of some kind? It was horrible.

Wrinkling his nose- an obvious tell, considering its size- Severus turned and headed back toward the shelves containing powdered and dried herbs. The hand not holding the list reached out and snagged a small basket along the way. “Mugwort,” he began, sounding put-upon. “I presume you wanted the common variety and not one of the more esoteric species in that family.” Her list was woefully non-specific.

“There are varieties?” Clarissa asked, brow furrowing as she frowned- or really, pouted. The expression slid away just as quickly, easily replaced by her habitual smile as she waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve got that’s nicest.”

A woefully nonspecific thing to ask for when it came to Mugwort, of all things, and she knew it.

“Nicest.” The way Severus said it, she might as well have announced she’d take whatever might be prettiest... and then she’d like to dip it in glitter, maybe, while she was at it. Severus almost turned around to give her list back and suggest she try somewhere around the corner, with people who didn’t care specifically about the finer details but would be happy to take her money. Severus was not a particularly good businessman, but he did care about quality and specificity of ingredients.

He snagged two small jars and placed them in the basket. She’d get the common and one of the more useful varietals, then. Better safe than sorry… or nice.

Clarissa didn’t so much as blink at Severus’s tone. She did, however, make a pleased noise as the boy put the jars in her basket. “Thank you! You’re so helpful,” she enthused. “He was definitely right telling me to come here for what I needed- Rabastan, I mean.”

She paused, waiting to see if the pin would drop, whether Severus would realize that they were...acquainted.

Fingers hesitated on the next bottle- an amber-dark jar of baneberries already pulped and juiced- but Severus lifted it and placed it alongside the others in the basket without too much pause. “I’m sure that I appreciate his regard,” Severus said, finally. He glanced to the list again, this time with a… different perspective. Still, nothing leapt out at him as particularly untoward.

He glanced around, brows arching. “Are you collaborating with him on something specific? I don’t believe I have anything on order waiting, but I can take you to the back to check, just to be sure.” There would be privacy, if nothing else.

Clarissa’s smile was sharper now, less like the sweet slightly daft woman she played and more like the Death Eater she was. Still, when she spoke her voice hadn’t changed. “Oh, that would be lovely. I’d hate to disappoint him, not coming back with something he needs.”

“Mm. I wouldn’t recommend it,” Severus agreed, dry as a desert. He adjusted the basket’s weight and tipped it in front of him, avoiding jostling shelves as he led the way to the back of the shop. Behind shelves and more shelves and dusty displays, there was a door ostensibly leading to a store room. It did, though there was also another set of rooms as well- the space Severus used to brew, as clean and sterile as the front of the place was dingy and cramped, and a warded area for rare, black market, or otherwise questionable ingredients to wait for exchange.

Carefully picking her way in Severus’s footsteps, Clarissa kept up an inane and characteristic chatter as she followed him: exclamations about the clutter of the shop interspersed with expressions of gratitude for the young man taking the time.

The flow of words stopped as soon as the door to the private space shut behind them, and she looked over the area with a vaguely impressed expression. “Is there any particular reason why whoever cleans this room doesn’t also clean the front?” she asked after a few moments, amusement writ large in her tone. “Or do you not like having business?”

Severus glanced around, then back to his guest with the faintest hint of a smirk curling his lips. “This part of the business is my business. I’m the resident brewer. What the shelves look like and how they’re stocked is not particularly my concern.” He shrugged, unconcerned. Severus knew which part of his work he cared about, and this was it. Whether or not anyone found the rest of the store homey or appealing didn’t matter in the least. “I’ll pass on your suggestion to Mister Mulpepper, though.”

“Don’t bother,” Clarissa replied, shrugging and bending to peer at a vial without touching. She wasn’t that stupid, even in performance. “I cannot be the first person to have complained, and I do hate to be ignored.”

She straightened again, head cocking to one side as she studied Severus thoughtfully. “How good are you? Honesty, please, Mr. Snape.”

At least she wasn’t touching anything, Severus thought, though he was keeping a close eye just in case. He’d hate for a careless mistake to result in something… messy. Out there, he would let it happen just to shrug helplessly at the lack of order. In here, Severus took a rather more proprietary attitude.

“Better than anyone else commercially available right now,” he answered without any hesitation, flat gaze meeting hers with only the slightest tic of his brows. Researchers like Belby didn’t count in the equation. You couldn’t pay them to produce a potion anyway. “At least in this country,” he amended, after a beat. There was a contact he was hoarding out of Romania, but he wouldn’t be passing it on. Trade secrets and professional courtesy and all that.

The first statement had Clarissa arching blonde brows, torn between amusement and appreciation of the self-assurance; the second made her relax just a touch as it took the hot air out of the boast.

“Then polyjuice is well within your wheelhouse,” she said, turning away from him to inspect another part of the brewing station. “And I already know that discretion is as well.” This last over her shoulder, almost teasing except for how the subject matter beneath it was deadly serious. Deathly serious, more like.

If the request caught Severus by surprise, he didn’t show it. Her tone did throw him, enough that his jaw twitched and the line of his throat bobbed with a swallow of… not dread, really. Something close, because women using that tone never failed to be anything but trouble. Women in general, he supposed.

Perhaps that was a personal opinion, and one he ought to be keeping to himself.

“When do you need it?” He felt on more solid ground with an actual request; date and price and everything neatly negotiated. Facts. Severus liked those. They were much easier to handle than whatever this was.

“When can you have it done, best brewer in Britain that you are?” Clarissa countered, that teasing tone only growing more pronounced. She could tell he didn’t like it, but Snape seemed like the sort of man who would work to prove himself out of spite, and she didn’t particularly need him as a friend. Not when he wasn’t the sort of man to respond positively to her particular brand of charm, at any rate.

Charm was generally lost on Severus. He had none of his own and cared little for anyone else’s. Brow furrowing at her question, he glanced to the various cauldrons set up across the room, fingers ticking against his apron. “Luckily for you,” he muttered, no longer making eye contact, “I’ve been stewing those lacewing flies for more than two weeks already… and we do have a fresh batch of fluxweed in from the last full moon.” He’d re-test their potency, of course. It would sting his pride for something as inconsequential as harvesting an herb at the wrong hour to throw his potion off entirely.

“Next week,” he supplied, glancing back to her. “Provided you want it potent enough to last around eight hours before needing a re-dose. If you don’t care if it wears off fast, I can have it done in two days.” Quantity and quality were always the questions, he supposed. It depended on her intended use.

A thing which Clarissa had no intention of sharing with Severus Snape, even if Rabastan did like him. The fewer people who knew about her mischief the better, generally, and she liked to be able to select her audience carefully. So she just smiled a pleased, sweet little smile and clapped her hands softly. “Brilliant! I’ll be back in a week.”

She didn’t ask the price; that would have been gauche. Or perhaps more properly, she wanted to watch him bring it up himself. She doubted the boy would squirm over the usually-awkward topic of money given what she’d seen of his attitude, but there was always the chance he’d amuse her.

Severus didn’t mention coin. She’d learn the price when she turned up to retrieve it, and if she didn’t, he’d find another buyer. Properly and carefully made polyjuice went for a fair amount and he’d have no shortage of takers if he advertised in the right avenues. And he would. Severus had learned a great deal of black markets and backroom deals since becoming employed here. He’d say it was probably the most useful thing Mulpepper had offered him, if he didn’t count the workspace here.

“I’ll reserve it under… your name,” he prompted, after a beat. A brow lifted, just the hint of something like a challenge there. He wondered, idly, if she’d suggest putting it on the Lestrange’s ledger.

“Cora McLaggen,” Clarissa replied smoothly, naming a former housemate a year her senior who’d done absolutely nothing of note with the intervening years, and matching Severus raised brow for raised brow. He’d know it wasn’t her name, of course, or he’d guess as much, but given the surroundings she had no doubt that he was well-practiced in accepting false names from backroom clients.

The chances of that being her actual name were slim to none, but it was, at the very least, a real name. Severus had been given some odd ones that were a lot harder to swallow with a bland smile. “Miss McLaggen,” he acknowledged, reaching to make a note in his small, spidery hand.

Business sorted, at least back here, he made a gesture to shoo her back out of his workspace and into the shop proper. If she still wanted any of the items on her list, or in her basket, Severus would grudgingly get back to helping her with more mundane shopping. He was hoping that was all a ruse, of course, but didn’t see wisdom in laying odds either way.

A ruse it certainly was, but that didn’t mean that Clarissa was going to drop it. She had no real fear that she was being watched, but if she had been it would have been suspicious to ignore the rest of the items on her not-inconsiderable list. And so she brandished it as they left the back room and chirped a cheerful “Thank you! And now I need-”