Death Can Suck My D—
November 17th, 1981 @properpureblood-emma
A sick Severus Snape is the world being in existence to be around.
—one might argue that crown should go to Lucius Malfoy, but one would be wrong for a simple reason. Given enough fussing and pampering, even Lucius Malfoy can be soothed into complacent peace. Severus Snape, when laid up with illness, falls to such depths of misanthropy that being left alone is the only cure.
Mercifully, Severus had enough Suck-Up Capital left from his participation in the disastrous Ministry Masquerade to owl in sick with limited repercussions beyond a hard hit to his personal potion stores as he ground through iteration after iteration of attempted cure for this ailment. Far too many hours were spent cursing whoever had fiddled with magic and inadvertently released this seasons version of particularly nasty Wizarding Plague (he’d compare it to the muggle Flu Season, except this was inevitably the result of some well intention ed Healer attempting to come up with a Cure for something or another that got out of hand and had a whole menu of nasty side effects.) as he bent over the toilet and voided the last iteration of his cure.
Eventually, about half way through his personal store of potion supplies, far too many reams of paper, and four days later, he conquered the bug, the magic underlying it so thoroughly picked apart at that he could make a brew that targeted both the symptoms and the cause, even if the source and infection vector remained obscured. Oh well, it was good enough for what he needed; namely, to escape his self-made blanket prison and manage to Floo to the Malfoy Manor without losing his stomach. One antidote and several tranquilizers disguised as guard against reinfection distributed later, and Severus was restored to his usual dour sanguinity. The grateful praise of the much subdued Malfoys was the sort that Severus could bask in, and he lingered long enough to learn that the mysterious illness had reached beyond those rare select that could claim ‘cared for by Malfoys’ into the general populace.
That was all it took to let Severus return to work the next day with a smug certainty of plenty of customers. There were still a few refinements that could be made (not that he’d let Lucius know that, who would no doubt not be able to resolve the internal conflict of wanting the best for his son at the same time as wanting the soonest for his son), but those were steadily bubbling away in cauldrons as Severus manned the shoppe counter, for once almost cheerful. After a period of being laid low and vulnerable, Severus Snape was back on top of his little piece of the world, secure in his knowledge and his plans.