Complexity

By ChocolateEclar

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or places, although I do own this story and some elements of the characterizations of Al Potter, his siblings and their cousins, Ben, Abigail, Dittany, and Fabian.

A/N: In which Al is twenty-five again. This takes place about a week after the events of chapter twelve. Please review.

Chapter Fourteen: Fragility

"While its editor-in-chief and its main journalist are out of commission, Blunt will be running under the head of its Political and Controversy Columns and part-time journalist, Lily Gwenog Potter (and yes, her middle name comes from the name of the former captain of the Holyhead Harpies)…"

Snape is almost ashamed to be reading James Potter's newspaper long after that first article he read that Al and James collaborated on. However, it is vaguely addicting finding out about the world today from the point of view of various Ministry workers and Hogwarts students and staff (the interview with Filch on Hogwarts was particularly entertaining). And, he has to admit, Al's articles have always been an amusing take on the world.

Lily, on the other hand, generally fills her column with witty words against the Prophet and the people that take it for fact with the occasional article on the latest in potion discoveries that intrigue him.

While James and Albus are recuperating at the Burrow under Molly Weasley's care (despite Al's insistence that his fiancée Dittany is perfectly capable of taking care of him at their own home) the newspaper has apparently gone to Lily. Naturally then, all of the articles are about such topics as the history of corruption in the Ministry and how Kingsley has helped to change that, magical stress disorders, and the lack of knowledge of basic mathematics, sciences, and muggle studies in wizarding children today.

(Snape knows from Professor Albus Potter's visits to the office that Lily has been dating a Squib by the name of Geoffrey Peace for some time and that had driven her to fight for more laws to help with muggle relationships.)

Snape is reading an article on prejudices still in existence against Muggle-borns and Half-bloods when Al steps from the fireplace. He coughs and brushes some soot from his shoulders before addressing the portraits. "Good day, my friends." There is a general wave of greeting from the paintings on the walls.

"Have you escaped, Potter?" Snape asks with only a glance up at him over the newspaper.

"From the clutches of my gram?" Al responds. "Of course." He has not bothered putting on more than one jumper this time. It is a deep plum color with a gold canine emblazoned on the front. Snape knows, because McGonagall received one in the office on Christmas morning the year before, that every member of the Order received a jumper from Molly Weasley with their Patronus sewn onto the front. He has seen Al's only once and, thus, knew it to be a fox even before seeing the clothing.

Al plops down on the chair in front of the desk and says, "I'm glad to see the office still likes randomly admitting me. I needed to get out of there, so I figured I'd come here like old times."

"But you left James to your grandmother?" Dumbledore asks with a smile.

"James is a bore right now," Al replies. "He just lies in bed and sleeps or he whines about how being without half a finger has ruined his good looks. His wife may be able to stand his pitiful complaining, but I need a break."

The fire flickers and then a face appears above the embers. "Albus Severus, your grandmother is looking for you," Harry sighs.

"I'm twenty-five, Dad," Al points out.

Harry raises an eyebrow and replies, "Well, I would say that's fine normally, but right now I won't get an ounce of work done if your gram keeps owling me to say you're still gone from your bed. I would like to get the paperwork for your little… mission out of the way today."

"Don't you have lackeys for that?"

"I can't force your uncle Ron to do it, as he just tells me to stuff it when I even suggest it," replies Harry, smiling, "and Teddy is terrible at paperwork.. That leaves the rest of the staff, and I didn't tell most of them much on the subject in order to keep this out of the public eye until closer to the trial."

Al smirks and then asks "When's Greyback's trial?"

"January twentieth," Harry answers. "It's going to take ages to gather all of the documents on some sixty, maybe seventy, years of crimes." He grimaces and glances over his shoulder and then back to Al again. "By the way, don't you read your own newspaper? Lily wrote up a whole article on it." Snape read it. His favorite bit had been: "Of course, as Potters are prone to extreme bouts of recklessness and insanity, which the author of this article can say as a fellow Potter, Albus Potter was the one to apprehend Greyback."

"Oh, I didn't proof it," Al admits. "I figured she had it covered. James just glanced at the article titles, shook his head, and said, 'Whatever, Lil.'"

"Please return to the Burrow so I can work, Al."

Al rolls his eyes but stands up obediently. "All right, but first I need to go see Madam Pomfrey about some more salve for James and me."

"I thought James was supposed to make some for both of you," Harry states.

"He did last time," Al explains, "but he has been so drugged on pain-relieving potions that he switched two ingredients on the first attempt and blackened everything in the room with all of the soot that emerged from it. Next will be his eyebrows and then an eye, I bet."

"All right," concedes Harry. "I'll tell the Burrow."

Harry's face vanishes from the fire, as Al leaves.

Al arrives back in the office about twenty minutes later with his arms laden with jars of salve. Snape recognizes the smell as the same mixture of dittany and chickweed that had been spread over Al on the first day, but there is a bit of something else that is not quite a definite smell. Al sets the jars on the chair by the fire and unwraps the gauze from his hand.

"Madam Pomfrey said this was a fresh new batch that came from Neville's garden," Al says. He opens a jar to scoop some of the forest green lotion-like stuff out and onto the wounds on his neck and hands.

Forest green. Dittany and chickweed should combine to make a pale green salve. What would make it darker, Snape wonders?

Al smoothes some of the mixture out over his neck and rubs it into the lines there. Then, he scrapes out a smaller clump and spreads it over the top of his hand. He starts to twist the cap back on the jar when his right hand cramps at an odd angle. He tries to move his fingers, but they jerk and when he touches his right with his left, his left freezes uncomfortably.

"Moonseed," Snape whispers. "The reaction with moonseed makes dittany and chickweed forest green."

Al turns to look at him but his legs lock, and he collapses on the floor. The jar that he had been using drops from his hand and rolls away. Weakly, he claws at the carpet with his bent fingers and manages to loosely grab his fallen wand. He calls forth his Patronus – the silvery fox springs forth much more slowly than normal and tips its head to Al. Al gasps out one message for it: "Help!" Then, his wand drops from his grip as his Patronus dashes out.

Snape is gone from his portrait before he can think of anything else to do. He swoops through the castle paintings – pushing several frilly-dressed ladies at a tea party out of his way on the second floor, and then shoves the grouchy old man out of the portrait in Slughorn's office. "Bring a bezoar and some powdered root of Devil's Claw!" he shouts at the Potions teacher sitting behind the desk.

"What has happened, Severus?" Slughorn exclaims.

"Bring them to the headmistress's office!"

Snape launches himself back through the paintings to the office (this time, the ladies at the tea party smack him with their bags as he swoops by, but he has little time to hex them).

In the office, there is panic. Dilys Derwent is shouting medicinal remedies at Al, who just gasps and shakes his head. "Eye of Newt on the salve might counteract it!" Derwent yells.

"He could not comprehend you even if he was not a dunderhead at Potions," Snape hisses. "The poison is making it difficult to breath. He has little oxygen to his brain."

Al seems to understand that, as he turns his head towards Snape and his eyes go wide. The white of his eyes is turning a green to rival his irises. The effect is, to Snape, disturbing.

In the end, it takes Slughorn three minutes to pull himself up the stairs. He is wheezing and stumbling with the ingredients clutched in his grip, but he takes one look at the prostrate form on the floor, as Al twitches and moans and his skin begins to turn green along with the whites of his eyes, and flips him over to stuff the bezoar down his throat. Al coughs but swallows, as Slughorn pours the powdered Devil's Claw root into a bowl he has conjured and mutters, "Aguamenti!" into it. The bowl fills with water so that the powder makes it chalky white. He then tips up Al's head and pours the concoction into his mouth.

The portraits are deadly silent as they wait for another sign of life from Al. Slowly, his color returns to normal, and only then do his eyes flicker open. "Professor Slughorn!" he gulps, as he tries to sit up and only ends up lying on his back again.

"Good to see you recovering, my boy," Slughorn says somberly.

"Send a letter to the Weasleys and Potters, Horace," Snape points out. "The boy will have to go to St. Mungo's to purge the rest of the moonseed from his system."

"Boy?" coughs Al with a weak smirk. "And what do you mean by purge?"

"It won't be fun," Slughorn offers, as he staggers to his feet in order to grab a sheet of parchment and a quill from McGonagall's desk. He dips it in her green ink bottle and scribbles a quick note. After folding it, he places it in his pocket, while turning back to Al. He carefully moves Al's body with a few spells and then guides him to the fire. They Floo out of the office, and then there is a silence in the office again.

A minute later, McGonagall dives through the office with the fox Patronus trailing behind her gracefully. "Where has Al Potter gone?" she hisses.

"Horace has been kind enough to take the poor boy to St. Mungo's," Dumbledore announces. The Patronus, apparently satisfied then that her work was done, nods and vanishes.

McGonagall picks up the open jar on the floor. "Don't touch the salve, Minerva," Snape warns. "You must inform Poppy of the contamination of her stock."

"I assume then that you were the one to send for Slughorn to save Al then," McGonagall says with a tight smile.

"We didn't need a dying Potter making noise in the office," Snape replies.

"Of course," says McGonagall. She sighs wearily and adds, "How did the salve become poisoned?"

"As someone probably did not add moonseed to each and every one of the jars and Slughorn is not an idiot potion-maker," Snape explains, "I suspect the dittany or chickweed plants were sprinkled with moonseed leaf shavings or powdered root."

"I will talk to Neville, but he probably saw nothing," McGonagall mutters. "And he would not poison his godson."

The following day, Al enters the office with a hydration potion band around his wrist. It is one of the inventions that had come out from the Ministry not long after Snape's death. Al obediently holds it up for Snape to inspect and then plops down in the middle of the floor like he used to as a child. (It magically transmits the potion into Al every hour to keep him well hydrated. Snape is fairly sure he knows the student who created it, but he cannot quite remember.)

"Have the minds of the Order and the Ministry deduced how you were poisoned, Albus?" Dumbledore asks. He sits with his hands folded in his lap and eyes Al over the top of his spectacles.

"No," Al replies, grimacing. "However, James told me that if I were any good at Potions that I would've known what the color of the salve meant." He rolls his eyes and continues, "I told him to 'come off it' and he tossed the crisps and gherkins crud he had his wife bring him, when Gram wasn't looking, at my head for almost dying again."

He pauses and whispers, "I think I may have a theory on the poisoning, but it isn't the time to talk about it." He smiles and continues, "So, I apologize for having to do this to you, but I must thank you for saving my life, Professor Snape."

Snape scowls at the young man, who just smirks more. "Sorry," Al says, "I can't help being a bit polite every once in a while. However, I'm about to be rude and say, 'I doubt you did it as some homage to my grandmother's memory.'"

"Sharing a name does not cause a bond between us," Snape notes. "I simply did not wish to see your body writhing on the floor with Slughorn sitting around doing nothing at all."

"You know," Al says conversationally, "that that is a sodding lie. I've been coming to this office for near-on fifteen years. I think you can work up a little caring for me without my bleeding family tree at this point."

"Sorry to interrupt this heartfelt conversation," says a voice from the fireplace, "but there's a pack of Weasleys that want to know why you've run off to the office again. Your grandmother is convinced that you're going to get poisoned once more."

Al turns to his dad's image above the flames and rolls his eyes. "I sent Wiggy on ahead with a message that I'd be at the Burrow by dusk. If not, then they were free to send some Aurors after me because I'd probably almost died again."

"That explains why Molly was so peeved," sighs Harry. "She'll lock you in a room," he adds.

"Fine, fine," groans Al. "I'm knackered anyway. I promised Ditty I'd stop by the Burrow and then head to our place for supper, though, so I won't be under Gram's care for long. I do have a wedding to think about, you know."

"I know as well as you do that Ditty, your mum, and Gram are the ones doing any real planning for that," Harry points out.

"It is better that way," Al admits. "They insist that I'm colorblind."

"The green was a nice pick," Harry says.

"Lily says she's had enough green to last her a lifetime," Al points out. "However, Dittany liked it anyway. She said it would go nicely with my eyes or something."

Harry smiles a tad ruefully. "I suppose it would," he mutters. In a moment, his smile quickly returns to one full of happiness again, and he adds, "I have to go. I'll see you in person on Saturday for some answers the Wizengamot needs for the Greyback trial."

"Sure," Al says, shrugging.

"And don't get into any more battles with potions until then." Harry's face crinkles with a mixture of concern, resignation, and a little bit of amusement.

Al nods and maintains that he will certainly try to stay out of danger. "I suppose," he adds, "that you'll be creating a task force or something to investigate the potion incident."

"I won't be able to," Harry admits. "We're spread thin in this department with Greyback and all the ruckus over the murder of Dolores Umbridge."

"Aren't most people, well, happy about that?" Al says with a frown. "I don't mean I am. Murder's a bit… extreme, but she did torture kids and hated everyone and such."

"Yeah," his father says, "especially people of my generation who had a year of that at Hogwarts. And then not to mention the Muggle-borns she harassed. However, we still have to look into it after the Prophet claimed it could easily be someone within our own department since most of us were 'Dumbledore's Army-type characters.' Whatever that means."

"That was nice of them," Al grumbles. "Blunt posted a rebuttal article."

"I saw. I was surprised Lily didn't write it."

Al shrugs and rubs his tired eyes with his knuckles. "She figured someone of your generation should," he explains. "So Neville wrote it with some help from Luna and Mr. Thomas, as he's Muggle-born and was on the run from the Ministry at the time."

"I wasn't aware that Dean much liked talking about that," Harry sighs.

"I went and visited him," says the younger Potter. "He said he'd only do it because he didn't want your department dragged through the mud."

Harry's face flickers for a moment as the fire rises a little. His smile shows the same sort of sadness that Snape recognizes from most of the Order after the First War. "I'll thank him," he says.

"I'll be back in an hour, Dad," Al mutters.

"Fine," Harry says just as softly. "Half the staff is out investigating Umbridge's home today, so I need to get back to work."

Al nods and the face in the fireplace disappears. He sits back, leaning on his hands, and spreads out his trainer-clad feet. The shoes are a bright neon blue. The color reminds Snape of the last time the second Lily Potter came into the office with her red hair dyed.

"Lily's hair is now purple," Al says, when he notices Snape looking. "I think she decided the blue was too depressing or something, despite it being blinding. My grandmother is still appalled and Uncle Percy said it's a bit un-Weasleylike. I just think it's a bit Teddy-ish. Teddy finds it amusing."

The flames flicker again and another face appears. "Wotcher, Al," Teddy says. Snape grimaces a little at the bright pink hair on the young man's head. It is too much like how his young mother's was, and, despite how annoying he often found Nymphadora Tonks (er, well, Nymphadora Lupin, that is), he had never really considered the possibility of her rushing off to battle not long after the birth of her baby. He hadn't even known of Teddy until becoming a portrait in the office, and then he had felt almost melancholy for a while after he had discovered the truth.

"How's Vic?" Al interrupts the tirade that he undoubtedly knows is about to occur.

"She went to St. Mungo's this morning for a check-up. Otherwise," he says darkly, "I would've stopped ya from making Molly go mad 'gain."

Al smiles a little. "I have lesson plans to fill out," he claims.

"You soddin' liar," Teddy accuses good-naturedly. "You don't have a plan outta paper bag."

"I have an Auror mentality then."

"Oooh," Teddy breathes. "That was good."

The two men bicker for another fifteen minutes. Eventually, Al yawns and admits that he needs to sleep. "Having problems wi' it?" Teddy asks.

Every once in a while, Teddy possesses a thicker, informal pronunciation that Snape would not normally expect from a boy growing up with Andromeda Tonks née Black as his guardian. (Then again, he reminds himself, Nymphadora had come from the same household…)

"A little," Al replies. "I've got it covered though."

"Sure," Teddy remarks skeptically. His eyebrows go up, and Snape notices for the first time that they are purple instead of the pink of his mop of hair. "Well, I'll let ya be. If you're gonna be my tot's godfather, than you'd better take care o' yourself."

"I will say this for the hundredth time," Al says, voicing Snape's own thoughts, "where did you learn your English, mate?" Teddy smirks at him, as Al adds, "I swear you spend too much time imitating characters for those wild stories you're always telling. Your wife can speak two languages properly, what are you teaching this godson or goddaughter of mine?"

"Well, I may need to borrow the Marauder's Map…"

Snape grimaces, as Al chuckles. For the first time in days, his face lights up and he grins at the fire. "Fourth generation mischief makers," he says happily.

"Or third for my kid," Teddy adds.

"True," agrees Al. "Well, as I need to make like Han Solo and sleep, but not in carbonite… Never mind, you're not Ditty and that was a terrible use of pop culture."

"Right you are, genius," Teddy says. "I don't follow any of your lame telescreen references."

"Telescreen is actually what was in 1984 by George Orwell – "

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Big Brother and all," Teddy sighs. "You explained that story to me a billion times. You want to sleep. I got it."

"Thanks. Bye, Teddy."

"I'll see ya tomorrow, Al."

After Al is long gone, Snape realizes that he did not find out who Al thinks tried to poison him.

By the way, Capability will actually be in chorological order with chapters connecting more fluidly and story-like than Complexity's little collection of vignettes.

Thank you, reviewers of the last chapter. Please review this one, everyone. Thanks again!