Part Third: The Hart Subvertant: Prologue Part 1

Prologue: Like a Plant Kept in the Dark

"No one becomes depraved all at once."

–Juvenal, The Satires

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me."

– T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

"You dark one, Arch-mother of all lust,

That I flew, that I cursed so often,

Who despite all has always searched for me,

Finally I throw myself to your bosom!

Take me in you, terrible Mother Night,

Lust for death it is to embrace you,

Secretly out of hot abyss there laughs

Presentiment of salvation, of mercy.

Deep in your black eyes there burns

Your dismal love's glimm so painfully,

Your love's, that wholly recognizes me,

Whose cry of death I wholly understand.

Willing, I follow you through blood and fear,

Feeling how you want me back again,

To name me once again your child,

To burn me in a kiss."

– Hermann Hesse, "Devotion"

One of Severus Snape's earliest memories was of the first time he had ever seen his father strike his mother. He had been perhaps three years old at the time, but Severus had always been one of those people with uncanny recall, who could remember events even from early childhood with vivid clarity and detail.

His mother had been reading the paper at the breakfast table. She read aloud a snippet about how Mr. and Mrs. Abraxas Malfoy had won a prize for their roses. His father then raised his hand and dealt her a heavy blow across the face that sent her thudding to the kitchen floor.

Severus had no way of knowing at that age that his father had learned that morning that he had sustained a great investment loss and had taken his wife's innocent comment as some sort of reproach to his own abilities as a provider. All he knew was that his mother had been hurt and was crying, and that made him cry too. He added his thin, terrified cries to his mother's sobs and his father's shouts. His crying so incensed his father that he picked up the cup of hot tea before him and flung it at the child, who shrieked and covered his face with his arms. Idiot boy! Ill-answering whalp!

The teacup hit the tray of his toddler's high chair and shattered, spraying him with china shards and tea. His mother picked herself up, tears and a livid handprint still on her face, and got the boy out of his chair. She ran from the room with her son as her husband turned his irate attentions to the house-elves, who had long since learned to dread the sound of breaking china at the table. She carried him into the nursery, where she changed his clothes, bathed his face with a cool cloth, and hugged him and soothed his frightened wailing.

Ssssh, Sevy, sssssh, my sweet boy, mustn't disturb Father, she crooned, sniffling. He made himself very small, his thin arms clinging tightly around her neck.

He learned very early to keep himself quiet and to move very cautiously and gingerly around his father, lest he provoke one of his unpredictable rages. The years would often find mother and son huddled together for solace, like refugees in a war zone.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The Orkney Islands, where Severus was born, are an archipelago of about two hundred small islands off the northernmost coast of Caithness, Scotland, where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. Many of the islands are little more than tiny skerries, inhabited only by the native flora and fauna; no one has ever bothered to catalogue all of them. Perhaps twenty of the largest islands are inhabited, though very sparsely by London standards.

Before Eileen Prince Snape's marriage, Snape Hall had been called Prince Hall, named for her venerable family, who had resided here since before even Salazar Slytherin's and Godric Gryffindor's time. It is an imposing, centuries-old citadel located almost on the western tip of the island of Wyre, just south of Rousay. The Prince patriarchs were once very much the lords of central Orkney, who owned most of the local farmland and fishing docks, and rented land and dock space out to tenant farmers and fishermen. The wild isle of Wyre was their home, and the eldritch Wizarding village of Nornsay grew up from the descendants of their tenant families.

The Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown once wrote, "The Orkney imagination is haunted by time," – and some would have contended that the land had been forgotten by time. It is a wild, isolated place, always prey to the vagaries of the sea; to perpetual storms in winter, treacherous currents, and fogs that sometimes cover entire islands and make navigation impossible without magic. The main industries are fishing, shellfish trapping, sheep ranching, flax farming, and landowning, and have been since time immemorial. The latitude is far enough north that the sun sometimes does not set until eleven p.m. or midnight in summer, and on winter days there are sometimes only a few hours of sunlight, or no sun at all.

The long, bitterly cold winter nights drive Orcadians indoors together around fires, to pass the long dark in singing and telling tales; this tradition has given rise to a rich local folklore. A skilled storyteller can still hold a pub full of listeners spellbound with a ghost story or supernatural romance. Some storytellers take as their subject the lives of the Finmen, black-clad sorcerers who lived beneath the sea, or the Selkies, the seal people. Every year, crowds of Selkies still summer on the craggy rock beaches of Wyre, Rousay, and any number of other islands, and now and then they fill the night with haunting, keening songs.

On other nights, one can hear tales of the Fair Folk, like Mansie o' Kierfa and his Faery bride, who bore him three daughters and brought him great prosperity. Not so fortunate was Davie o' Kirkwaa, who cursed his Faery bride as Satan's own because she couldn't get the words of the Our Father right; the reviled wife vanished from him forever, and famine fell upon his house. The Fae once were common in the deep wood, the wild places; they were said to live on green, fertile islands that now and then briefly appeared out of the leaden Orcadian mists, always to fade into obscurity again. As late as 1701, the Reverend John Brand wrote in a description of Orkney: "Evil spirits also called Fairies are frequently seen in several of the isles, dancing and making merry, and sometimes seen in Armour."

The Selkies still come every summer, but there are no Faeries in Orkney now. They started to leave centuries ago, when the Plague came.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Even when Severus was a very small child, everyone remarked on his quiet, serious demeanour, his inquisitiveness, and his startlingly black eyes – he was the sort of child superstitious village women called an old soul, an elderly changeling in the shape of a boy, left behind by the Faeries after they stole the real child away. He didn't mean to scowl so much, but when something interested him, he couldn't help but scrutinise it with all of his attention, his black brows drawing together, his eyes glinting.

And the things he noticed were sometimes startling. Once while Eileen Snape was doing her shopping in Nornsay Village, holding her five-year-old son by the hand, she turned back to him to notice that he was holding an absolutely enormous iridescent beetle very lightly in his other hand. Another child might have accidentally crushed such a creature or been repulsed by it, but Severus was studying it closely, fascinated.

While Mrs. Snape found her son's quirks charming, indicative of healthy curiosity and a precocious intellect, her husband found them annoying in the extreme. Surly, sullen, who are you frowning at! his father would bark at him. These criticisms always surprised Severus – he hadn't meant to be impolite; he had simply been so deep into his thoughts that he was barely aware that anyone else was in the room. He was just thinking.

He had inherited his mother's tall, thin, insubstantial build, her transparent white complexion, her long-fingered, elegant hands, and her almost preternaturally expressive black eyes, combined with his father's bristling black brows and prominent hooked Roman nose. By the time he was six, he had something of his father's permanent scowl as well.

The other families in their social strata usually hired tutors to educate their children – Severus's cousin Lucius had had the best tutors available since he was four years old. The Snapes' budget for their son's education was not quite as vast as the Malfoys', unfortunately, so the task of Severus's primary-school education fell to his mother. Luckily, Eileen Snape had a knack for teaching, and her son was an extremely bright child. Starting when he was five, she would bring him into her cosy little book-lined sitting room, which now also doubled as a schoolroom. There she taught him the English alphabet in a day, the French alphabet the next, and the Latin alphabet the next. Severus would later be surprised to learn that other children considered this sort of thing to be work – to him, their school sessions were the most fascinating sort of play.

By the time he learned to read, he had long been wondering what was contained within the books that held his mother so enthralled and was impatient to begin exploring them for himself. Reading itself was quickly mastered, just a stepping stone to a previously unknowable world. He also liked having the undivided attention of his pretty, smiling mother all day, hearing her exclamations of surprise and delight when he quickly and flawlessly managed some academic assignment she had devised. She was proud of his cleverness, and he glowed under her approval.

Once he learned how to read, the riches of his mother's library seemed vast. He read everything he could get his hands on, with an enthusiasm that delighted his mother. Eileen Snape was a passionate bibliophile, who could probably have spent most of her life happily curled up in an armchair or in her garden with a good novel, poetry collection, or volume of history, and she was elated to see the same tendency emerging in her son. The two of them would spend many happy hours ensconced on the sitting room sofa together, quietly turning pages.

Occasionally she read aloud to him, or he read to her. She had a special love for a poet named John Keats, who she told him had tragically died in his twenties, but had left behind the most beautiful poetry ever. Now and then he would pick up Keats's Collected Poems and read aloud to her, stumbling less and less over the complicated verses as he got older, Lamia and La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Ode to a Nightingale – all just to watch her eyes shining and dreaming. "I love those poems even more, after hearing the way you read them," she would say. "You have such a lovely voice."

She never put any restrictions on what he could read, never hid away any volumes for fear they would frighten or disturb him. He had by the time he was eleven spent a month enthralled with Greek mythology, with all its battles and heroes and magical seductresses and infidelities and flesh-ripping maenads. He disliked Zeus intensely, especially over the way he treated the faithful Alcmene; but the protean Dionysus's adventures fascinated him. He wasn't at all impressed with Hercules or Jason, but he liked Perseus, Odysseus, and Theseus tremendously. He thought Cassandra, Ariadne, Orestes, Orpheus and especially Daedalus had all gotten rather raw deals, felt an oblique sympathy for both the abducted Persephone, and for Hades for wanting to steal her away for himself. He even had an unformed, childish sort of crush on Atalanta and later Circe, but thought Helen of Troy to be quite overrated. Medea and Clytemnestra, however, just flat-out scared him.

And then he read that the Vikings and Northmen had been as much an influence in settling Orkney as the Scots themselves and became fascinated with Norse mythology, reading all he could find – Odin, Loki, and the World Tree Yggrasil. His next passion was for the Wizarding world's chronicles of the sacred Merlin, the greatest ward ever born in Britain and the first teacher of magic.

During one of the endless Orcadian winter nights, he found volumes entitled Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fall of the House of Usher, and The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe – which kept him up for any number of nights, first with reading, and then because he couldn't bring himself to put out the lamp. Like so many imaginative children, he was always scaring himself with his own fancies while alone in the endless dark.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The routine of life in Orkney was then and still is very much dictated by the weather, and it can be disorienting to live in a place that is at times dark at noontime and sunset at midnight. During the long winter nights, Orcadians must set alarm clocks to wake up after a full night's sleep, and discipline themselves to keep the fires built up and not to let somnolence and creeping seasonal depression overcome them in the long, freezing darkness.

Every year, when the sun reappeared over the horizon in spring, Eileen would take Severus and the house-elves down to her little rose garden, a three-walled courtyard on the east side of the house sheltered from the cold salt breezes by Snape Hall to the west and the old-growth oak woods to the north and east. As soon as there was a half-day's sun shining, they would dig up the pruned-back rose bushes and trees from their protective winter coats of straw and mulch and let them soak up the sun. Within days, there would be new green buds on the plants, then leaves, and by late spring, the entire courtyard would be a riot of his mother's beloved white roses. The house-elves would wash off the winter's silt and dead leaves from the rustic stone seats in the centre of the garden, and then Eileen would move herself and her son, her books, her little lap desk, her shawl, her tea things, and her son's slate and schoolbooks down to the garden for the summer. Severus liked having his lessons in the garden, even if spent petals did sometimes waft down from the trees into his tea.

The sea was frigid this far north, the water too cold and currents too strong to bathe in, but the seas were always fascinating to watch, and the shores and surrounding woods teemed with animals, insects, and plants of all descriptions. In winter, all was black and leaden; the insects dormant and the animals wintering in warmer climes, with only the sound of the fretful seas all around. Early spring was whirlpool and squall season, oftentimes with waves pounding the rock pinnacles offshore to the west, throwing white spray hundreds of feet in the air.

But the sea calmed somewhat in summer, and with the long days and calmer waters came an influx of migrating marine life. During the sunlit months, when the unpredictable weather permitted, Severus would often take long rambles down to the rocky beach below the cliffs, first with his mother and then, when he got older, by himself. There were pods of whales to watch from the cliffs just beyond the house, pilot whales and dolphins, gulls and kestrels making hell-bent dives into the water after fish, and a tremendous number of grey seals and harbour seals summering all around the islands.

Severus had loved watching the seals on the beach since he was a very small boy. They had sleek, glistening bodies and expressive, inquisitive faces, and the earnest, gallumping way they moved on land was hilarious, especially by contrast to their effortless grace in the water. Some of them were almost tame after years of being fed by humans; when Severus came down to the beach, occasionally with a few leftover kippers to toss to them, they would come right up and watch him, just as frankly curious about him as he was about them.

Then, in late May or early June, the singing would begin on the beach, heralding the arrival of the Selkies.

They looked much like seals, except their bodies were longer and more slender and golden, where the grey seals were silver and the harbour seals brown and cream. Their eyes were opalescent topaz and very, very human in their intelligence and expressiveness. Their flippers were much more finely articulated and attenuated than those of the seals, their movements on land far more graceful.

And nothing could have been more exquisite than their voices. High, angelic, almost sexless in their purity, effortlessly reaching and endlessly sustaining notes that would have made any trained coloratura weep, like a choir of castrati children, or seraphim. Those keening voices would start up on the beach every year like a far-off group of opera singers all singing different arias in a foreign language, filling the air for a few weeks every summer. The sound was beautiful and poignant from far away, and devastating from nearby.

Severus knew by some instinct that their songs had words; he could make out what he thought were regularities in their voices, repeated themes and variations on themes, what sounded like long, endlessly drawn out syllables. Sometimes he thought he was on the verge of understanding what they were singing, in the manner of finally drawing close enough to understand what someone calling to you from a far room is saying. But he never could – their songs went on in the summer nights, ever elusive, like a code that he could never crack. Perhaps when he got older, he told himself, when he went off to school like his parents had, and became a wizard, then he would find some magic that would allow him to know the words to the Selkies' songs.

One Saturday in early June, in the summer he was nine years old, he got up early, splashed his face with water and put on flannel trousers, a linen shirt and thin woollen pullover, and stout boots, then had porridge and tea for breakfast. He went down to the rocky cove just below the house, hiking down the steep trail from the oak wood out back to the sea's edge, then picking his way among the huge, shell-crusted rocks and spraying, unquiet seas. Then, as usual, he stealthily crept up as close to the group of Selkies as he could. The Selkies were as shy and insular as the grey seals were sociable; and if they realised their songs were being overheard by an outsider, they always acted almost embarrassed, for some reason.

Today he was very quiet, and the waters were restless enough to entirely cover the sound of his approach. He found a flat, almost dry rock downwind from them, hidden in the shadow of a much larger rock to its left, and silently climbed up onto it. Yes, there they were, lazing together on a flat shelf sheltered from the waves by one of the large stone pinnacles, sleek and golden and graceful. Then one of them lifted his or her snout toward the sun, throat swelling, and segued effortlessly into a note that would have shattered any wineglass within fifty feet – and one by one, the others joined in. For some measureless amount of time, he just sat and listened to the exquisite mosaic of their voices, his scalp prickling and goosebumps coming out on his arms, as the impossibly extended notes reverberated off the rock walls of the cove, underscored by the pound of the sea.

Then one of them spotted him, sitting silent and unmoving in shadow, on the great rock some dozen paces away, and as one, they dove into the water and vanished.

"Damn."

He got up and clambered down from the rock, disappointed but resigned to this reaction. At nine years old, the world seemed full of secrets that must be kept from him, worlds that he could not enter – be it the community of the Selkies, the house-elves that instantly stopped whispering at his approach, or whatever it was that adults discussed behind firmly closed doors.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The sun was now high in the sky, and Severus made his way up the cliff walk toward the east walk that led down into the village proper. It was Saturday, which meant that the Nornsay Chess Society would be meeting, as they did every weekend at the Narwhal Publick House in town. He wanted to play a few games before going home for lunch and to return a book one of his usual opponents had loaned him, Lasker's Manual of Chess, which had recently been published and was making the rounds.

"Ah, here's the peedie beuy," the chess players greeted him when he arrived – Here comes the young boy, in the local dialect. He gave a self-conscious little wave and hello as he approached the lot of them, sitting outside at many small tables on the Narwhal's porch. They met outdoors when it was fine and the sun was up, and in the lamplit dimness inside the pub when it wasn't.

His favourite opponents were all there that morning – Pete Atkine with his long, curling grey eyebrows, who was always drawing on a long clay pipe; redheaded Will Erlendsson, who was the group grandmaster and who no one ever played to beat, just for instruction; and Margaret Omshad, with white braids past her waist, who was nearly blind and who played almost entirely by memory. Margaret was the only woman in the group and Severus was the only person under thirty, and while that created a certain kinship between them, she was nonetheless still a fierce competitor. Failing eyesight or not, he had only ever played her to a draw, and that was only once.

Margaret beckoned in the direction of his voice when she heard his greeting. "Sit yersel' and have a game, beuy," she called.

The lot of them met regularly on weekends, and drank pints of cider or dark beer (ginger beer, in Severus's case), and they all played ferocious games of chess. Not wizard chess with its aggressive animated pieces, that game of thrill-seeking young boys, but long, contemplative games of competitive chess with inanimate pieces, in which the objective was not to get as many of one's pieces into spectacular confrontations as possible, but to win the game in as few mathematically streamlined moves as possible. These were serious scholars of the game; they studied published theories and treatises of chess, and they could have debated you on the pros and cons of game openings, mid-game and endgame strategies forever.

There were other children his own age living in the village, who he often saw in the streets when he and his mother did their shopping, but he had no friends among them. In his father's opinion, the villagers were all riffraff, and some of them were Mudbloods or even Squibs, and he wasn't going to have his son making friends with his tenants' children and the whalps of common labourers and fishermen. But his father didn't object to his son's interest in chess, or didn't care enough to stop him playing, and Severus enjoyed the intricacies of the game and the company of these wise, thoughtful adults more than he longed to wrestle and throw a ball with the boys his own age anyway. They would often sit in companionable silence together, which he liked, and now and then they would tell him about their work, and their families, and ask him what he was studying. Everyone knew the beuy was a tremendous bookworm and often asked about what he was reading. Now and then they asked after his mother and how she was getting along.

But they never asked about his father. The master of Prince, ahem, Snape Hall was already known all too well to the denizens of Nornsay Village.

Severus joined Margaret at one of the small pub tables, set with a utilitarian chess set of carved wood, she behind the dark oak pieces, and he behind the blond pine. He played his favourite opening, the queen's gambit decline, moving his queen's pawn two spaces out. She countered with the identical move, stopping his queen's pawn's forward progress and initiating the Tarrasch Defence. And from there, the game was on.

He lost to Margaret as usual, but this time he went down fighting, till they both had only their castles and a knight each. She managed to pin down his king and checkmate him at last, but only with an effort. "Hard fought, me beuy, good game," she said, shaking his hand. He moved on to a game with Erlendsson, who as usual had him in checkmate in eight moves, but who took the better part of an hour to instruct him in all the finer points of the Benoni Defence.

Around noontime his stomach rumbled, and the other players began to order ploughman's lunches and kidney pies. Severus had, as usual, no pocket money for such, so he finished his game with Erlendsson, nodded a few silent goodbyes, and headed back up the hill for lunch.

As he made his way toward the back door, he passed the drawing room window – and heard the sound of shouting, of a chair going over. His mother's voice raised in shrill pleading; a man's voice making thunderous accusations. Then, the sound of a hand glancing off flesh, a terrified gasp, and then crying.

Father was home from London.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

His parents' disagreement went on for some time – or rather, his father's long list of his mother's various shortcomings went on for some time. There seemed to be nowhere in the house where Severus could not hear his father's angry voice booming.

"I left you plenty, plenty of money to run this house, and feed yourself and that boy and those good-for-nothing house-elves. And now, I return to bills from a carpenter? What did you think you were doing? Did I tell you to get all the windows in the dining room re-caulked?"

Then she would make some protest, very softly, and he would roar her down again.

"Don't give me any nonsense about water leaking – those floors aren't damaged! There were no leaks when I left! Your extravagance will bring us all to ruin, you worthless baggage! A bloody ape would manage better than you do! I spend all my time trying to provide for you and that coddled sissy you call your son, and this is how I'm repaid?"

Finally, she would say nothing more, but his voice would rage long after hers had given up.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The dining room windows had begun leaking dreadfully in a torrential late spring rainstorm a month after Severus's father had departed for another of his business trips to London; for days his mother had paced back and forth helping the house-elves to sop up the water before finally calling the carpenters. The situation became a choice between spending the money on getting the windows re-sealed, or spending the money to get the windows re-sealed and to get the water-damaged floors replaced, so after a great deal of hand-wringing, she had opted for the repairs to the windows. She had only had the ready money to pay for part of the repairs, so she had stoically accepted her husband's anger at receiving the bill, and waited him out, bending under his onslaught like a rose tree in a hurricane.

There had been a time when Severus was younger, when he had tried to defend his mother from his father's violent outbursts – that attempt had gotten him thrown down the front staircase to a nasty concussion, and left her with a swollen jaw and chipped teeth. She had long since begged him not to interfere, saying it only made matters worse. "Some of it is my fault, darling, truly it is. I know he's got a temper, I shouldn't provoke him. You just let Mother and Father talk. It isn't your problem." Now, thwarted, all he could do was listen and clench his fists with impotent rage.

Finally, when her husband grew tired and took himself off to his bedroom to berate the house-elves for their shoddy housekeeping, Severus crept into the drawing room, where Eileen was slumped in an armchair.

"You weren't extravagant," he said, putting his arm around her thin shoulders. "We've lived on soup and grown our own vegetables all summer. You had to get the windows fixed, they were all leaking. The floor was getting wet."

"No, no, I spent too much," his mother said. "I should have gotten a better price on the repairs. I went to an expensive carpenter; he overcharged. But we can't haggle. It's just... we can't." It's beneath us, because we're supposed to be rich, was the unspoken subtext.

"He just didn't give you enough money. It's not your fault the house is old," Severus told her quietly. "He's never here. He doesn't know how things are."

"Oh, don't frown so much, silly," his mother said, hugging him. "He'll calm down. Everything will be all right."

But that night, as he passed her bedroom door, he heard her crying, and knew that nothing was all right.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Tobias Snape did not calm down, as his wife had predicted.

He had come home with the news that they were to have guests, important guests, relatives from Wiltshire; Severus intuited that his father was in business with them somehow. These important guests would be coming in two weeks, and now nothing about the house, his wife, or his son was good enough for Master Tobias. He would without warning go into tirades about how the rugs were shabby, the wainscoting dingy, and the upholstery on the sofas old, as though his wife, son, and house-elves were somehow responsible for the way that material things deteriorated. Eileen's dresses weren't smart enough, and a she-otter would probably preside at his table with more grace. The food was not fit for pigs, and her son was a sullen little half-witted sissy, misbegotten from the first. The house-elves were busy all day and all night, and seemed resigned to repairing a lot of broken china.

Then after two weeks of frantic tidying, scrubbing, mending, and shopping on Eileen's, Severus's, and the house-elves' part (Snape Senior of course being too busy berating and finding fault to help himself) the day finally came when their guests, the Malfoys, would arrive for their fortnight's visit. The whole Snape family had gotten up early that day and put on their best at-home clothes. Severus's mother came into his room as he was standing in front of the mirror working on his shoulder-length black hair, and like usual, she had watched him scowl and tug with the comb for a second, then very gently had taken it from him and combed his hair out for him. His hair was very thick and unruly, and only she could gently coax all the tangles out without yanking.

Mr. and Mrs. Abraxas Malfoy arrived in grand style. With them they brought their almost-fifteen-year-old son, Lucius, who would soon be starting his fifth year at Hogwarts, five house-elves in black pillowcase uniforms, and a mountain of trunks, hampers, and boxes.

Besides his own mother, Severus thought he had never seen anyone as beautiful as Abraxas and Tamora Malfoy and their son Lucius. Each of them would have been impressive alone, but as a group, they were dazzling. Abraxas Malfoy was stunningly blond, with a face and profile like a classical Greek sculpture. His wife Tamora was a pale blonde as well, with a face like a petulant, pink-cheeked china doll, and wore extremely smart travelling robes of maroon velvet. Young Lucius was a blond, grey-eyed Botticelli angel in a black brocade vest and frock coat.

The Snapes and Malfoys took afternoon high tea on the balcony overlooking the cliffs while the house-elves took the trunks upstairs to the guest rooms. Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Snape talked about business, and their wives tried to look raptly interested. Severus didn't mind sitting still for a bit – he always had something to think about, and under no circumstances would he ever have failed to appreciate Earl Grey tea, sandwiches on home-baked bread, and a poached egg on toast. Lucius Malfoy, however, looked bored out of his mind.

After the meal, their fathers went off to the great drawing room to talk, the ladies sat in Eileen's garden, politely playing cards, and the two boys were told to go off and quietly amuse themselves.

"Er... want to go down to the beach?" Severus asked shyly. "There's Selkies, and tidepools." Lucius Malfoy nodded his assent languidly, as though the beach should know how honoured it was to host such a personage as himself.

"What do you do around here?" the blond boy asked after they had walked on the beach for half an hour. Severus had tried to entertain his cousin by pointing out all the animals in the tidepools, sea urchins and starfish and anemones and the occasional seahorse, but hadn't been able to interest him for long. "There's nothing for miles but that fusty little village, and it's dull as tombs."

"There's tons to do," Severus scoffed. "There's books in the library, and there's the beach and the woods. I play chess down in the village. And Mother and I work in the garden."

"You don't have house-elves to do that?" Lucius drawled.

"And there's storytelling at the village library and at the pub," Severus persisted, feeling suddenly as though the worth of all the world he knew was being questioned. "And the Selkies all come to the beaches in the summer, and they sing, all day and night. I haven't figured out what they're singing yet, but it sounds like words, and I'm reading all I can about them. Mother says they don't really shapechange into people like the stories say, but they have their own sort of magic. Mother says they even have their own seal gods."

Lucius sneered. "Mother says this, Mother says that. Don't you ever talk to anyone besides your mother?"

"Well, I live with her," Severus said, quite sensibly. "Who else is there to talk to, the house-elves?"

"Mama's pet," Lucius said, with a derisive laugh. "You're a little Mudblood pouf."

Severus scowled. "Am not."

"You talk funny. Everyone here talks funny. I'm bored." Lucius, he would later learn, could be bored anywhere, in even the most breathtaking and exotic of locales.

Lucius's and later his classmates' derision at his Orcadian accent got far under Severus's skin, and he would from that year on embark upon a determined self-study campaign to completely eliminate his Orcadian burr from his voice. By his seventh year at Hogwarts, his diction was more classically English than Lucius's or any of the Malfoys'; by the time he began addressing his classes, his flawless pronunciation and resonant speaking voice would have done any Cambridge don proud. But for now, he was a nine-year-old boy who felt shabby and provincial next to his smooth, privileged cousin. He fell sullenly silent, tagging along at Lucius's shoulder as the older boy sulked dramatically about the seashore, throwing rocks in pools and clearly fancying himself as much an exile as any prisoner in the Chateau d'If.

"Want to see something?" Lucius called to him after a few minutes. He reached into his coat, and came out with a wand of some polished, very dark wood. "Come here, I'll show you a bit of magic I just learned."

"Can I see your wand?" Severus asked, holding out his hand. He was fascinated by the way his mother did magic with her wand, but was a few years short of being able to own one himself. As such, the infrequent chances he got to try out someone else's wand were extremely interesting to him.

"Ebony with a core of dragon's heartstring, ten and a half inches," Lucius said proudly, holding it up in front of him. "The wood was really rare – it cost a whole handful of Galleons."

After Severus had duly admired his wand, Lucius turned toward one of the rock pools. "Come on, look at this." He reached into the pool and picked up a spiny sea urchin, which he then put on a rock. "See, look – " he pointed his wand at the urchin, and intoned – "Crucio!"

Sea urchins are not very expressive creatures, having no eyes or faces or articulated limbs with which to show anguish when they feel it, but something about the way the urchin trembled and waved its spines spastically in the air looked painful. "What are you doing?" Severus asked sharply.

Lucius chuckled. "Look at it twitch, stupid thing... "

Severus scowled. "Come on, stop it," he said, nudging his cousin's elbow.

Lucius lowered his wand, looking annoyed that his cousin had not properly appreciated the show he had put on. "It's too small, so you can't really see what's going on." He pointed his wand at the urchin again, and intoned "Engorgio!" – blowing the urchin up to the size of a round, spiny pillow. Then he intoned "Crucio!" again and watched the creature's agony, smiling obliquely to himself.

"What are you doing to it?" Severus craned over his cousin's shoulder. "That looks like it really hurts."

"It's supposed to," Lucius chuckled. "The worst pain you can imagine... " It certainly looked like it was the worst pain imaginable; the urchin was writhing in voiceless, eyeless agony.

"This is weird – stop it," Severus said uncomfortably. He jostled his cousin's elbow, moving his wand point away from the urchin, and the creature's spastic shaking stopped.

Lucius looked witheringly at him. "You're no fun," he groused.

"You're the one who's no fun – the only magic you know is how to torture sea urchins," Severus snapped back. "Put it back to its right size, and put it back in the water."

"Fine," Lucius snarled, out of the corner of his mouth. He pointed his wand at the urchin – "Reducio," and it shrank back to its original size. It lay there on the rock, spines waving feebly, seemingly stunned.

Then Lucius threw Severus a challenging look, smirking – "Want to see something brilliant?" he asked.

"All right, what?"

Lucius pointed his wand at the urchin again – "Incendio!" he cried – and a gush of flame spewed from his wand and engulfed it. Severus ran forward, but by the time he got up to it, the urchin was little more than a blasted ball of ooze.

"Uhhhhh," he said, holding his nose. "That's not brilliant, that's just grotty. You're the grottiest wizard I ever saw."

Lucius just laughed and shrugged.

"Yeah, all right. Do your parents know you like to torture things and set them on fire?" Severus asked scornfully.

"You're not going to tell them, are you?" Lucius asked, with a confidential little smile. "Come on, I'll let you use my wand for a little bit."

Severus thought about it, then held out his hand. "All right."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Despite his father's discontented rages before the visit, his meetings with Mr. Malfoy appeared to have gone well, because Abraxas Malfoy invited the Snapes down for a reciprocal fortnight at Malfeasant, his family seat in Wiltshire. He extended this invitation during a sumptuous dinner in the grand ballroom on the last evening the Malfoys spent at Snape Hall. Severus's father ushered their guests into the ballroom with an unconcerned, genial air, as though he had any number of grand ballrooms in his waistcoat pocket that he could whip out for his guests' amusement at any time; meanwhile, his wife, son, and house-elves, who had been up much of the night dusting the chandeliers and using Scourgify spells on the floor and mouldings, were so tired they were pinching themselves under the table to stay politely alert during dinner.

"So what do you say, Eileen? And Master Severus? It's so pleasant to have company," Mr. Malfoy said to his host's family.

"Yes, do come. It's so nice for Lucius to have other children to play with, and the boys seem to get on so well," Mrs. Malfoy said.

"I should love to have a holiday," Eileen said brightly.

"All right," Severus said, shrugging. His father pinched him, hard, under the table, and Severus amended his response to, "YES, thank you very much."

Mrs. Malfoy had no doubt gotten the impression that the boys got on well from the way they talked and went about together. Not only that, but most other children Lucius knew almost invariably came back from spending time with him complaining about how he had teased, bullied, or frightened them, and young Severus never did. To Mrs. Malfoy, this meant that Severus wasn't a mollycoddled sissy like so many other children, just further proof of his good breeding.

That first meeting with Lucius had set a strange precedent – Severus couldn't have said he liked his cousin; in truth, he thought he was pretty bloody horrid, always practicing violent magics and boasting of elaborately sadistic pranks he'd played at school. But nonetheless, Lucius had a weird sort of fascination and glamour about him. The way his cousin confided all sorts of dark and titillating secrets to him, and the way this very rich and poised young heir always seemed to want him around was gratifying. Additionally, Lucius wasn't at all the sort to go carrying tales to the adults when Severus got into mischief; more than likely, Lucius had already done something so much worse that he had no reason to care whatsoever about his cousin's small lapses of character. His parents' blandishments to the contrary, he never had to be on his best behaviour around Lucius – indeed, Lucius liked to egg Severus on in worse and worse exploits; the more Severus misbehaved, the better his cousin seemed to like him. Severus didn't like Lucius at all, but by the end of that first visit, somehow they had become close confidantes and co-conspirators.

Yes, truthfully, by the time the Malfoys said good-bye the next morning, he was a little afraid of his cousin, but he wouldn't have dreamed of trying to find some way out of visiting him. To him, the decision was clear; the Malfoys were offering him and his mother their first chance to visit somewhere other than Orkney, and she desperately wanted to go. No matter how horribly Lucius had tortured and killed the sea urchin, it was an animal, barely more than a plant, really – and she was his mother. There was no comparing the two – disgust and indignation over the one had to be overruled by the other's passionate desire to finally be able to enjoy herself.

And after all, Lucius hadn't done anything to him.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

It seemed that no sooner than the door had closed behind their guests that Tobias Snape had found a new round of complaints to rant about. They were going for a visit in late August – how could his wife and son possibly expect to look respectable in Wiltshire, in those clothes? Their wardrobes might be all right for Orkney, but in Wiltshire, one had to look smart. Why did they look so countrified and uncouth? Did they want to disgrace him? What was his wife spending the money he gave her on? Then there was more shouting, and more furniture going over, more accusations of extravagance and disrespect, and more slaps when she tried to speak in her own defence.

Severus knew that when his mother had a bit of money for herself, she bought books, not dresses and jewels. She was more than happy to spend her days in demure little house gowns and robes, her wealth of thick, shining black hair loose to down past her waist, and barefoot – but she had to have something to read. Now that they were going to Wiltshire, the elder Snape seemed to have visions of a social lioness, a poised, fashionable beauty in opulent gowns and heirloom jewels on his arm, but where she was supposed to get such gowns and jewels was undefined. He only told her she was shabby and dowdy and not fit to be seen, but offered her no solution to this shortcoming, which led to more muffled sobbing behind her sitting room door.

But in the middle of July, a few days after Eileen began appearing at breakfast in long buttoned sleeves in the height of the summer's heat, a stately great horned owl delivered a letter on heavy parchment, sealed with an elaborate black wax seal. The sight of that letter seemed to fill her with fear and apprehension, even before she had so much as opened it.

She broke the seal and read the letter with grave deliberation, then turned to her son. "Severus... on Wednesday morning I want you to get up early, take a bath, and put on your best clothes," she said quietly. "We're going to visit your Grandmother Prince in London."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Severus's mother had told him once or twice that his maternal grandmother, Octavia Prince, was still living, but she and his father had many differences of opinion and were not close. As it was, Severus had never met her. He knew that she was a widow, and was dimly aware that she substantially inconvenienced his father by tending to her own business affairs with what Tobias Snape called "an iron fist," and had forever incurred his father's wrath by refusing his generous offer to manage her finances for her. His father could occasionally be heard to describe Grandmother Prince in even less flattering terms, but he usually remembered not to refer to her as a selfish, tightfisted, suspicious old battle-axe in front of his son.

Ever since the invitation had arrived, Severus could see that his mother was dreading this afternoon tea for some reason. On the morning of the visit itself, she reminded him to wash behind his ears and clean his nails much more brusquely than usual, and when he tried to get the comb through his hair, she had taken the comb away and smoothed his hair in the back less gently than usual. He had no way of knowing, at nine years old, that Eileen had always been a painfully shy young girl, who often saw her worldly, clever mother as everything that she herself was not. He couldn't have known that Octavia had expressed misgivings to Eileen following his father's proposal to her, worried about Eileen's extreme youth and the sincerity of Tobias Snape's affections, but her daughter had come away from this believing her mother really objected to her beloved because he was a Muggle. No one had ever told Severus that his mother had been a sheltered child bride of eighteen, who had rather impetuously married his father while imagining herself to be the heroine of a Romeo and Juliet sort of love affair. He also had no way of knowing that his father had begun their star-cross'd life together by frequently belittling his new wife, and comparing her unfavourably with his mother-in-law's style and self-assurance, so that Octavia's mere existence had become a reproach to her, a reminder that she would forever be judged lacking.

But he was only a boy, and he only knew that his mother was facing something that frightened her. When she took him down to the end of the path to past the secure area around Snape Hall, and gathered him against her side so as to Apparate the two of them together, he could feel her heart beating fast.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Octavia Prince lived in an elegant Mayfair penthouse, Unplottably tucked into the top of a grey stone row house off Hyde Park. Eileen Apparated onto the roof of a Grosvenor Street building, then faced north, and said, "Mrs. Prince's residence is located at 56 Upper Grosvenor Street, Top Floor, Mayfair, London" – and then the top flat simply inflated into existence. They were standing in a very elegant dark-wood foyer lit with an elaborate crystal chandelier. Before them was a carved wooden door with a heavy knocker engraved with an elegant S in script.

A little retinue of matronly house-elves in togas made from lace-edged white flannel pillowcases admitted them to the foyer, where there was a curious brass umbrella stand fashioned in the shape of an octopus – as Severus watched, the octopus yawned, resettled its eight limbs around the umbrellas in a more comfortable position, and went back to sleep. There was a heavily carved bench with a high back studded with coat hooks around a small stained-glass window. Severus blinked – every so often that window was changing its patterns, from tropical orchids, to a plumed pheasant, to a starry, cloudy moonlit sky.

The elves then ushered them into a cosy drawing room, with deep leather armchairs and rows and rows of leather-bound volumes behind glass doors. A tall, imposing lady was waiting for them there, dressed in quietly sumptuous lilac silk robes and several long strands of pearls. She had thick iron-grey hair worn in a braided chignon, an aquiline profile, and fine black brows like Severus's own.

Octavia immediately greeted her rather surprised daughter with a warm hug. "Hello, there, my dearest, it's been forever." Her vibrant alto voice was low and soothing, but made you pay close attention to every word she uttered.

"And this must be my grandson – I haven't seen you since you were a baby," his grandmother said, turning to Severus. Then she bent down and hugged him too and kissed his cheek. Severus was so unused to being spontaneously hugged by a virtual stranger that he froze for a second, startled, and then tentatively hugged back. Grandmother Prince smelled pleasantly of attar of rose sachet and fresh vanilla cake.

"Hello, Mother... it's so good to see you," his mother said in greeting. "Thank you ever so much for thinking of us." His mother's voice, always soft and tremulous, grew even more hesitant in Octavia's presence, but Severus liked his grandmother from the first. Even at nine, he had long since realised that if his father vehemently disliked someone, he would often end up liking that person a great deal, and Octavia Prince was no exception.

"At any rate, like I said in my invitation, I'd just been going through the attic, and I found some of your grandfather's old things from when he was a boy in school, and thought I might pass them on to my young Master Severus," his grandmother told them. "I know the way people dress in London isn't really practical for the weather in Orkney, but perhaps in town you might find occasion to wear them, my lad. And then you'll be starting school in a few years, as well."

She was talking to him in a bright, airy tone, downplaying her own kindness – and he half-sensed that she was being so nice because she very much wanted him to like her. It surprised him tremendously that someone like her would want to be liked by someone like him, so this seemed quite extraordinary. But he also had no way of knowing that while his mother was clearly intimidated by her mother, Octavia's imposing, aristocratic appearance covered a sentimental and often lonely heart, and that she had spent much time since Eileen's marriage wondering why her lovely, intellectual daughter always seemed to wilt in her presence, and why Eileen never wrote and had never before brought her only grandson to visit.

"Thank you, Grandmother," he said politely.

"Come along with me, you two. We'll do some poking about while the elves finish getting our tea ready." She led the way down a corridor done in rosewood and rose and scroll wallpaper, up two staircases to the attic. The attic was a long, narrow wood-panelled room with a triangular roof that smelled of lemon furniture polish and old leather – very much unlike the attic at Snape Hall, which was full of unidentified ancient things under dusty draperies, and the pervasive smell of mildew. Ranged against the sloping walls were many wooden file cabinets, wardrobes, a heavy strongbox safe, a painted Chinese screen, one or two tall cheval looking glasses, and several handsome old leather trunks and bits of ladies' luggage, suitcases and hatboxes and train cases.

Octavia threw open one of those wardrobes, revealing a neat row of black coats. "Here you go, my lad, let's try this then," she said, putting two garments on top of the nearest trunk.

Severus got out of his light cloak and summer-weight tweed waistcoat, made of stout Orcadian wool, and put on the silk foulard waistcoat and black broadcloth Chesterfield coat his grandmother had laid out for him over his unbleached linen shirt. Suddenly, surveying his reflection in one of the looking glasses, he felt different; transformed from the child of a country squire into a young nobleman, like his mother's portrait of the poet Lord Byron. He would always be a tall but slight young man, so while his sleeves were the right length, the coat was a size or two too big in the chest. But he liked the way the fine, cedar-smelling wool swirled and swept about him.

"All from the Wizarding part of Savile Row and the west end of Sartor Alley, my boy, made to last forever, if the moths don't get them. None of the new things at Madam Malkin's are half such good quality. Now all he'll need to be ready for school are some new boots and perhaps a few new casual shirts for weekends. And maybe a House scarf and ties." She turned to Severus's mother with a cosy smile. "You'll really be doing me a favour by taking these things and a few of these old trunks off my hands, so I can make some space in the attic."

"Well, all right, if you need the space in the attic," Eileen said faintly. In truth, the trunks were not that old, and had clearly been very expensive once, but she couldn't resist a kindness offered to her son.

Severus would later go home that day with two large trunks of things, coats and vests and flannel trousers and hand-stitched white shirts with slightly worn French cuffs and battered cuff links. It was all a bit quaint and old-fashioned, but undeniably classic, and as this was quite to Severus's taste, he liked everything tremendously. By the time the three of them sat down for tea, his view of himself had grown to accommodate the more dashing figure he had become. He sat in his comfortable antique armchair with a raffish grace his cousin Lucius would have envied.

And not only had he acquired a new wardrobe in the space of an afternoon, but when they sat down to tea in the parlour, there was piping hot buttered toast done on just one side in a little silver rack, and all kinds of crustless tea sandwiches on a curious silver three-tiered stand, curried tuna and smoked salmon and hothouse cucumber, and a bowl of fresh strawberries and raspberries, and cream scones and vanilla cake, and a pot of Earl Grey with lemon. Yes, tea at Grandmother Prince's was all right. Severus glanced around the sunny parlour, at the carved furniture and leather chairs, at the miniature roses and African violets growing in enamel pots in the windows, and wished that he and his mother were coming for a fortnight here instead.

"Did you go to Hogwarts too, Grandmother?" he asked, tucking into his cream scone.

"I certainly did, my lad, made Head Girl in my seventh year, as well," she said, pouring him another cup of Earl Grey. "Wasn't I the pride of Slytherin House! All the Houses have their strengths, but in my day, everyone who was anyone wanted to be in Slytherin." Then she turned toward Eileen with a bright smile – "Except for those clever Ravenclaws, of course. It used to be said that there was no one for a Slytherin girl but a Ravenclaw boy, and vice versa. Such a natural pairing, you know, brains and ambition, and your father and I were the living proof of it. How he and I used to rib each other over Quidditch scores! I tell you, Eileen, I don't know how many House rivalries end up being carried on over the breakfast table, even now."

"Of course," Eileen replied, with a demure laugh.

Octavia lifted a thin slice of lemon into Severus's teacup with little tongs. "You know, my dear, I've heard through the grapevine that you were going to be visiting at Malfeasant, and while I was organising, I remembered a few odds and ends I have tucked away that might suit you, things I've long outgrown, but that were far too fine to give away. I'd be happy to loan you something for the fortnight, if you would like," she said, very tactfully indeed. "Won't you have a look?"

Eileen looked at her uncertainly, but then said she might. So after tea they went back up to the sunny attic and opened more wardrobes and more trunks, fancy ladies' trunks in the style of a generation previous, the sort of thing a wealthy lady of fashion would have taken on a Continental holiday in the twenties. "Just nip behind that screen and try this one, my dear, this was my favourite party frock when I was about your age," his grandmother said, handing his mother a small painted box, and an armful of sumptuous velvet.

His mother retreated behind the painted screen in the corner, and they heard her opening the box. "Oh my," she gasped. "Mother... this just goes on over my head, right?"

"Yes, dear."

There was some rustling and slithering of fabrics, and a moment later his mother appeared from behind the screen, dressed in a gown of pleated green silk like the robe of a Greek sea goddess, over which was thrown a fluid mantle of black cut velvet almost as lustrous as her long black hair.

Severus's eyes widened. "You look nice, Mother," he said – probably the most gallant compliment in his nine-year-old repertoire.

"Thank you, dear," his mother said gratefully and made her way over to one of the looking glasses. While Eileen was fluent in English, French, and Latin, and knew the poetry and fiction of the previous century with the fervour of a thwarted Classics scholar, she knew little of fashion. As such, she had no way of knowing that the Delphos gown and silk velvet mantle Octavia had brought out were the original creations of a fabled couturier of the early twentieth century named Mariano Fortuny, and that the timelessly elegant Art Nouveau ensemble she now wore would have fetched tens of thousands of Muggle pounds at auction in London.

"Oh, Eileen, you're stunning. Just a picture." Octavia gathered her hands to her breast and sighed.

Eileen smiled faintly. "You know I don't dress up much... this is overwhelming."

"Believe me, my dear, at Malfeasant you'll be glad to have a few nice gowns. Tamora Malfoy is an excellent hostess, but believe me, she'll think that your best dress is none too good to appear at her table."

Now, Octavia said, all Eileen needed were a few jewels. She took the three long strands of cream-white pearls from her own bosom and put them around her daughter's neck.

"There you are – you can wear those every day and they'll look rich with anything. And perhaps a chain, for the evening parties." She opened the strongbox safe and brought out a velvet jewel case. Severus craned over his grandmother's shoulder, curious. Inside the box was a long, diamond-studded chain that would hang nearly to the wearer's waist, made up of large, architectural links of engraved platinum.

"I look rather like a little girl playing dress-up, don't I. You always want to do me up like a peacock." Eileen was looking at herself in the mirror as though at an exotic, frightening stranger.

"Nonsense, my dear, with all that beautiful hair and that complexion and those hands, you'll be a beauty at a hundred. Isn't your mother lovely, Severus?"

He just nodded, looking at his mother with eyes full of boyish admiration. He went to her side, stroked the velvet of her mantle with reverent fingers, and gave her a little, encouraging smile.

"Oh my, such a pair – a princess and her young heir apparent," his grandmother sighed. "If I could, I'd commission Gainsborough himself to make a mother-and-son canvas of the two of you."

Then Octavia offered her daughter the loan of a few more things, robes of taffeta and satin, frocks and coats with labels reading Worth and Molyneux and Vionnet and Balenciaga; and a summer cloak of impossibly supple velvet with delicate silver embroidery on the inside of the hood, which she said was the work of Faery weavers, a rare thing in their world. "Yes, I know it's all just old frippery, but I'd imagine it would all like to go for one last huzzah, don't you think? And you would look so well in all of it, Eileen. Ah, what I'd give to be young and slim again."

Eileen was, in her own passive sort of way, far too proud to accept an outright gift, but with the pressure her husband was exerting upon her before this visit, she couldn't resist accepting such a propitiously timed loan. "Well... if you don't mind, Mother. I promise I won't let anything get dirty or torn... "

"Of course you won't. I wouldn't expect anything less of you."

Severus followed his mother and grandmother around the dressing room as these rich, fetching creations were packed up and stowed into trunks – he had never seen anything like these sort of clothes before. The pleated silk gown his mother was wearing even had its own box where it was rolled up and stored for travel – when they arrived at Malfeasant, it would be ready to shake out and put on, with no pressing necessary. This was part of why Fortuny gowns were once so popular with fashionable ladies who travelled often, his grandmother explained.

He ran curious fingertips over the sleeve of the green gown his mother wore. The fabric was so soft and slippery that it felt almost like liquid under his fingertips, and he liked the way it set off her long-fingered, tapering hand – Severus always thought his mother had the prettiest hands of any lady in the world. But in doing so, he inadvertently uncovered something – the imprint of five fingers bruised into her wrist. The marks were a fresh purple, as richly hued as the silk of her gown. She glanced at him, and saw him staring.

"Severus... why don't you go sit down over there, where we won't be stepping on you," she said, quickly twitching her sleeve back down.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

As it were, with Octavia's generosity, the Snapes arrived for their fortnight at the Malfoys' with a respectable pile of luggage and their two house-elves. The usual bluff brusqueness of his father's manner didn't quite hide his nervousness, and his mother, always a pale woman, was so much paler than usual that she looked as though she might faint. Severus stuck close to his mother's side, quiet and self-contained, his eyes taking in everything.

Malfeasant was very big and very impressive to him. While not quite as large as Snape Hall, the Malfoy family citadel was lavishly furnished and very well maintained – there were no ruined bits of this castle, no holes worn in its stone walls from a thousand years of rain. The elaborate diamond-paned windows looked to him like the windows of a cathedral, and the huge oil paintings in the grand front corridor and everywhere in the grand hall made it seem like a museum. Severus looked curiously around at everything until his father pinched him and told him to stop goggling like a codfish.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy received them in a giant front hall with lots of impressive-looking grown-ups Severus didn't know. The men were standing around talking in very important voices, and the wives were sitting around talking in little, demure voices. Lucius was there too, in very new black robes and a silk foulard waistcoat, talking to a very blonde and prissy girl of about his own age.

After greeting their hosts, Eileen went up to a tiny, prematurely white-haired woman in sumptuous black silk mourning robes, who was sitting in a large armchair with the air of a queen surveying her subjects. She bent down to kiss this lady's cheek and press her hand in greeting, then motioned for her son to join them.

"This is your Aunt Druella Black, dear," his mother said, with an anxious little smile. "Auntie, this is my son, Severus."

"How do you do," Aunt Druella said, and languidly deigned to return his shy handshake. She turned back to Eileen and nodded in the direction of Lucius and the prim blonde girl – "Abraxas's boy just won't leave my Narcissa alone." Severus couldn't tell whether she disapproved of his cousin's attention to her daughter, or not.

"Yes, he seems very fond of her," Eileen said mildly.

"So much that she can't get a word in edgewise," the lady muttered. She turned toward Severus with an approving smile – "Not like your boy here at all, is he. He seems an obedient young one, one who knows his place."

"Yes, he's a very good boy," Eileen said warmly, her arm tightening around her son's shoulders. "Run along now, darling, let Mother talk to your auntie," she said, smiling at him and tenderly tucking a wayward strand of black hair behind his ear. He smiled back at her.

Then his mother took the seat beside Aunt Druella, and his father joined the men, talking in his own important tones, and Severus was left to his own devices. He found a big, high-backed armchair off to one side and climbed into it. The house-elves immediately brought him a cup of tea, and he sipped it quietly, looking around at everyone and everything as the conversations went on all around him. After spending most of his nine years trying not to draw his father's direly critical eye in his direction, Severus had by then cultivated an instinctive knack for being invisible to others, for letting them talk around him as though he wasn't there. The grown-ups around him certainly acted as though the silent, serious young boy wasn't there; they walked around him talking about business and politics quite freely. Had Severus been old enough to make sense of what was being discussed, he might have picked up on some very important information indeed, about a certain hostile acquisition of the Cleansweep Broomstick company being planned, but he was too young as yet to understand.

He surveyed the room around him and the assembled company. The grand entrance hall at Malfeasant was beautiful and impressive, but Severus decided he didn't like it quite as much as Grandmother Prince's London penthouse – unlike her massive, overstuffed oak armchairs, the furniture here seemed to have been chosen to look impressive, rather than be comfortable to sit in. The leather-bound books here were all one size and all had the same monogrammed binding, and looked as though they had been ordered in a decorative set from the publisher's, unlike Grandmother Prince's varying sizes and shapes that looked as though they had been collected one by one during trips to bookshops in Diagon Alley and Charing Cross. There was a massive curio cabinet that held crystal vases of varying sizes and shapes – none of which had flowers in them. His mother looked nervous and her eyes kept going to the bookshelf – Severus could tell she would rather be browsing through the books than talking to people. And Lucius really fancied that blonde girl. Severus thought his cousin looked even more puffed-up and full of himself, so obvious was it that Lucius wanted to show off for her.

Dinner was a very formal occasion that night, at a long table lined with those same impressive-looking grown-ups in even more impressive clothes. Severus thought his mother was the prettiest lady there by far, in the green frock and velvet mantle she had gotten at Grandmother Prince's; with her slim figure and pale, fresh, translucent skin, she made all the other ladies with their corseted waists and rouged cheeks look stiff and overdone. Again, he and his mother stuck very close to each other's sides for moral support; it would have been hard to say which of the two was more demure and quiet. Severus was glad to have roast goose on his plate, which he had never tasted before, and even more glad to be seated out of his father's pinching distance.

Severus's upbringing under the iron eye of Tobias, who believed that children should be seen and not heard at table, and who was liable to throw china when provoked, made for a silent, watchful, infinitely deferential manner in the company of adults. As he, his cousin Lucius, and that pretty blonde girl were the only young people present, his impeccable deportment could not help but starkly contrast with the sometimes petulance of his cousin, now still trying to show off for the pretty girl across the table from him.

"Eileen, where on Earth did you manage to find an original Delphos robe?" Tamora Malfoy asked during the entree, sounding impressed. "I've never seen one outside of a museum."

"Oh... it's been in the family for a long time," Eileen murmured, and Tamora nodded approvingly. While new clothes from the best bespoke Wizarding shops in London would have been ideal, finely made old things were still respectable, given this group's reverence for history and assets that lasted a long time. His grandmother's couture hand-me-downs were looking to have been a considerate gesture indeed – there were those who would have said that Lucius Malfoy with his Fauntleroy blond hair and silk waistcoats looked dandyish next to the lean, black-and-white austerity of his young cousin.

"So, my young Master Snape, your father tells me you've been studying Latin," one of the gentlemen said. "Ave, quomodo tibi est?"

Severus answered immediately – returning the man's greeting, and inquiring after his health in turn – "Mihi bene est, et tibi?"

The man paused a moment, then replied in kind – "Mihi optime est."

Oh, good, this fellow seemed a kindred spirit – Severus was perfectly content to sit there and speak Latin for awhile, like he sometimes did with his mother at home. He asked the man if he ate goose often at home, though it took him a moment to remember the word for "goose" – anser, not anas, that was duck. "Nonne bona cena? Numquam anserem assatum cenavi, cenavistine tu?"

This classical conversation went on for a few minutes, until the fellow's attention began to drift, and he put Severus off with a distracted, "Yes, a clever lad indeed," and then began talking to someone else.

It seemed to Severus that he had been too forward and the fellow had lost interest in their chat – it never occurred to him that his questions had exceeded the other fellow's somewhat rudimentary mastery of that ancient tongue. At any rate, he fell silent again, and remained silent for the rest of the meal.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

That self-protecting silence became Severus's characteristic behaviour as their fortnight's visit continued. Most other children would have become bored and begun acting sulky, but Severus was just glad to have a nice room with no holes in the screens and no flies landing on him as he tried to sleep, a comfortable bed, good meals, and lots of things to look at and think about. His father had fewer opportunities to pinch him or clout him, or seize him by the ear or collar, or throw things at him here, and he was grateful for that, too. Boredom was a small price to pay for increased safety, and he endured it willingly.

In all, he was exceedingly quiet and demure, he imposed on no one, he was impressed by everything and grateful for everything – in short, Severus made a very good impression indeed, when people remembered to think of him; and his Aunt Tamora and Aunt Druella especially were holding him up as an example of a well-brought-up son by the end of the visit.

But as they praised his behaviour, no one seemed to notice that Severus had barely spoken a word to anyone since he arrived. This was curious indeed to him – it seemed that the less he talked, the better his father and his parents' friends liked him.