Timeskip Para: The Mystery of the Missing Prince
LOCATION: McKinnon Farm, Snape’s Potions Lab DATE: December 11, 1981 @sectumsmpra
Marlene had quite forgotten what she had come in here for. Some question she needed to ask Severus, surely -- there was no other reason to enter the little room that he’d converted into his potions laboratory. But he had not been in there when she arrived, and Marlene hadn’t felt like chasing him all over the estate when she knew he would surely turn up here sooner or later, so she’d settled down to wait.
And, like any properly curious Ravenclaw, had had little trouble finding entertainment to while away the time while she did. Severus seemed to be quite the reader himself -- and quite the notetaker, too. Marlene hadn’t meant to poke her nose into his private notes; she’d simply picked up the nearest volume, flipped it open, and started reading.
His spidery, cramped little writing was hard to puzzle-out, but no harder than aunt Cullodena’s chicken-scratch; Marlene squinted, leaned closer, and read on. She didn’t understand all of it -- probably not even half of it; she was no potioneering master, had always been too much of a daydreamer to prove adept at a subject that required one to pay close attention and keep careful timing -- but that didn’t mean she wasn’t fascinated by the bits she did understand. She’d passed her Potions O.W.L. with an Acceptable, after all, even if it had been as much luck as anything else that had kept her brew from burning...
She was so engrossed, sitting there in the chair by the window, nose inches from Severus’s book, that she didn’t even hear the door open -- but she heard what followed the opening of the door, all right!
