Part Third: The Hart Subvertant: Prologue Part 3

Prologue: Like a Plant Kept in the Dark, Part 3:

The self-styled Marauders ended up spending the rest of the school year assisting Mr. Filch in various menial tasks around the school: scrubbing floors, polishing things in trophy cases, and wiping down windows and such. But this was not at all satisfying to Severus – there wasn't much by way of a school year left in which to keep them at such labours, and Potter, Black, and Pettigrew whined and complained so loudly and vociferously to all those who would listen about being so punished that Severus endured any number of other slights and taunts and dirty looks from the other Gryffindors in retaliation. Yes, they had exposed his grotty worn-out knickers to the bloody world, and somehow he ended up being the bastard because the popular boys actually got in trouble for it.

And of course nothing much would happen to them because the Headmaster and Deputy Headmistress were both Gryffindor alums and Potter was on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, so he would only get detention instead of the expulsion that he so richly deserved. There was simply no justice in the world, and no end to other people's self-interest and villainy.

Severus was stalking down a corridor one evening with his hands sunk indignantly into his pockets when he came upon the lone James Potter, polishing Quidditch trophies before an open glass case. Potter was going about this task with a decidedly sulky look, as though he fancied himself some sort of saint in exile.

"Hey, Potter." He indicated one of the trophies on the floor beside the case. "You missed a spot."

"Bugger off, Snape," Potter snapped, then pointedly turned his back on him.

Severus planted himself behind Potter, eyes boring into the back of his head. "I've got news for you, you worthless waste of spit – I exist," he said, in a low, deliberate voice. "I take up space in this world and I breathe the same air you do, and that isn't going to change."

"Oh, Merlin's beard – he's making a speech," Potter laughed, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. "Hath not a Slytherin hands? 'Tickle him, does he not laugh?' Hex him, does he not bleed?" he declaimed.

"No – hex me, and you'll bleed," Severus whispered in his silkiest tones, glancing at the cut on Potter's cheek, which was still unhealed. "How did you like my special hex, Potter? The Healing Potion didn't get rid of it, did it? Did you know that if you combine that hex with a medical Anti-Congealing Charm, they won't heal by the usual means?"

Potter turned sharply toward him, an instant's fear flickering behind his eyes. "You're sick," he declared.

"No, just creative," Severus hissed back.

"Oh, yeah, typical Snape – thinks he's so much smarter than everyone else," Potter sneered, his hand going to his cheek. "And then he takes his big brain and makes up sick-freak special hexes with it."

"And I hope they really hurt, you little fuck," he spat. "And if you ever do that to me again, I'll put your fucking gimpy eyes out, and I'll use an Incendio Curse to cauterise the sockets so no mediwitch can grow them back, too."

"You can't, that's Dark Magic," Potter retorted.

Oh yes, the classic Gryffindor arrogance – the great heroes could torture others and it was just an afternoon's amusement, boys will be boys – but if anyone else got mad and attacked back, he was a Dark Wizard. Fucking hypocrites. "Try me," Severus whispered.

"You think you're so damn tough, but you're nothing but a little punk, Snape – Evans spent hours crying after you called her a filthy Mudblood, you know that?"

That got to him. Severus finally winced internally.

He'd spoken before he thought when he shouted at Lily, and the Mudblood insult, which he had heard from other Slytherins any number of times, was just the first thing that came to mind. He would never have gone out of his way to antagonise Lily, but at that moment he was desperately trying to induce her to just leave, both so she wouldn't be a witness to what was going on, and so his humiliation wouldn't be compounded by the ignominy of having her stand up for him. Lily was a decent sort even for a Gryffindor and he knew it. He'd liked her since first year, but she was a girl. It was one thing to have a popular Slytherin boy like Lucius Malfoy or Evan Rosier stand up for him, but not a little redheaded girl, even one like Lil. Not to mention Potter fancied her like anything and everyone knew it, and the little terrorist was bad enough already without jealousy coming into it. But he wasn't about to show weakness over a girl in front of Potter.

"If you and your hooligan friends hadn't decided to turn me upside down, no one would have called anyone anything, did you ever think of that? You haven't got a fecking leg to stand on with your self-righteous nonsense, Potter. You and that sodding Black are such textbook cases of people who can dish it out, but can't be arsed to take it themselves."

"At least I'm not a Slytherin," Potter snapped back.

"Of course you aren't – because if you were a Slytherin, you wouldn't need to blackmail women to get them to go out with you," Severus hissed. "What are you going to do if she does go out with you and won't put out? Put a puppy on a spit and keep turning until her knees open? What are you going to do if she marries you and spends a little too much money – hit her?" His lips peeled back over his teeth in a rictus of pure savagery.

Potter stepped back, his eyes widening. "You're bloody barking mad," he said flatly. He put the last polished trophy back in the case, and walked away.

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At the Leaving Feast that year, Severus didn't feel much like socialising with anyone. The social currency of being the cleverest lad in your year is tenuous, when one doesn't bother to work at putting tremendous amounts of personal charm behind it, and he thought that the other Slytherins were cutting their eyes away from him, as though his existence was an embarrassment. Slytherins weren't supposed to get pantsed, you see, Slytherins were supposed to lay waste to their enemies and hear the lamentations of their women. Not only had he been embarrassed personally, he had embarrassed his entire House.

It was a very, very long meal, and not even the fact that Slytherin won the House Cup was much of a consolation. It was a tremendous relief when they were dismissed back to their dormitories to finish their packing.

But as he was heading back to the Slytherin dorms, Severus noticed a mild commotion out of the corner of his eye. Potter had gone up to Lily in the crush, appeared to be trying to make some kind of teary apology to her. She was having none of it, looking at him with freezing scorn. Potter's theatrical openheartedness grew more and more half-hearted as she remained unconvinced, until he finally got fed up and said something that made Lily throw up her hands and storm off in the opposite direction.

"Your loss!" Potter shouted after her, then vanished into the crowd.

A second later, Severus was off after Lily down the corridor, calling "Lily, Lily, wait."

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Lily looked up, but then her eyes narrowed when she saw who was calling to her. "Stay away from me, you bastard," she snapped.

"Lily, come on, slow down."

His face was flaming, he hated apologising, he hated being on the defensive, and he hated asking anyone for anything. "Look... I shouldn't have yelled that at you, the other day. It was just that – "

"It was just that you're a mean little prat who doesn't like me, or anyone?" she said coldly.

"Dammit, no – listen to me, all right? It was just that I was embarrassed. I had my robes around my head, remember? I know what you were trying to do, and it wasn't going to help, because those bastards in your House were just going to use it against me later, you know?"

"Well, think about this, Snape," she said, whirling on him and jabbing a forefinger into his chest – "that wasn't the first time I've told those prats to stop picking on you, you know that?"

His face only flamed the worse – it looked as though Lily had been championing him for some time without his knowledge, even outside of Potions class, which only made his cruel insult to her all the worse.

"We'd been friends all year, and friends stand up for friends," Lily snapped.

"Lily – you weren't my lab partner just because I like you. That was because you had the sense to ask me, and because you're clever," he said, shrugging helplessly – which to him was a far more sincere compliment that just some tepid assertion that she was liked. "You don't act like the typical self-important bastard Gryffindor. You're actually tolerable."

"Yeah, I know a lot of the Gryffindors are self-important bastards, especially that Potter. But to some of us, being a Gryffindor isn't about all that Look At Me I'm a Hero shite, but about standing up for what you think is right, every time, even if it's hopeless, even if the people you're talking to are too mean or too thick to get it. Can't you see that?"

Severus thought about that for a moment – and then thought about crawling after his wand, spitting soapsuds.

"No," he said truthfully. "If the situation is hopeless, I'd rather not waste my time, and probably make myself into the next target in the bargain."

"No, you can't understand it, can you. I guess you really are just like all those other Slytherins," she retorted, and this time, there was no facetious note of joking in her voice. That was the unkindest cut of all.

She turned away from him, and before she had gone two steps she put her face into her hand with a ragged breath that sounded like was fighting off tears, which made him feel like the biggest arse in the world. "Lily, come on," he called after her.

"Bugger off, Snape," she shot back over her shoulder, and hurried off down the corridor.

He let her go.

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Severus got his O.W.L. results back that summer.

He took an Outstanding in every O.W.L., and his scores in Arithmancy, Herbology, Defence Against the Dark Arts, and especially Potions were so high that by the time sixth year started, he had already gotten letters from two of the leading potions manufacturing companies in Britain's Wizarding world, inviting him to apply for a trainee position in their organic chemistry division after his seventh year. But what made him feel most triumphant and accomplished was that all of his marks were high enough to enter the Auror training program.

During the first term of his sixth year, his desire to become an Auror warred with his desire to go to work immediately after he left school and begin earning a pay check – the most highly regarded Potions-makers and especially Potions-creators made very handsome salaries, and if he could claim a patent on a potion that became popular, like Sacharissa Tugwood or Glover Hipworth, he could possibly have a good source of income for his lifetime.

He still cherished hopes of becoming an Auror like Professor Bones, but the training was the sticking point. The glamour and importance of Magical Law Enforcement appealed to him, as did the idea of meting out justice on people who deserved it. But the sooner he had a job and made some money, he could then somehow help his mother, who had lain pale and tired on the sofa all summer, and was now complaining of her health in nearly every letter. Perhaps he might be able to rent a little house in London and convince her to move out of Snape Hall, to where she would finally be out from under his father's rages. Then, after she had been long enough away to regain some confidence, she might even go through with her rarely expressed wish to obtain a divorce. Divorces were nearly unheard of in their family's pure-blooded strata, only sought in cases of total abandonment or physical cruelty, but Severus believed absolutely that his father's behaviour warranted such extreme measures.

But that winter, after Severus turned sixteen, something happened to send all of his plans to better his mother's life into cureless ruin. An adversary much more insidious than a financially inept and socially ambitious husband with a terrible temper emerged; an adversary against which he was totally helpless. In early December of 1976, shortly before the Christmas holidays, he received a letter, in Eileen Snape's delicate copperplate handwriting:

Dearest Severus,

I've finally gotten to the Mediwizards about my chest pains.

Oh, my Son, I'm so afraid. I have Cancer.

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It was breast cancer – and the biopsy results said it was malignant.

By the time it was discovered, it had already sent tendrils into her lungs and heart in a manner that made its surgical removal potentially fatal. The Healers at St. Mungo's put her on an intravenous course of medical potions designed to halt its growth, and the treatments left her so weak that she spent the final four months of her life in hospital. Severus took the train to London every weekend to visit, and spent every day of his Christmas holiday sitting beside her bed.

Grandmother Prince would often drop in on the two of them with delicacies like stewed pheasant, fresh-baked madeleines, and fresh berries with clotted cream in the middle of winter, so as to tempt their invalid's failing appetite, and stayed to cheer them up with news from everywhere. Druella Black and sometimes her daughter Narcissa came by on Sunday afternoons, bringing books and sweets. Tamora Malfoy even dropped by once or twice, bringing ostentatious bouquets from her hothouse. But Severus never once ran into his father during visiting hours.

The treatments made Eileen's once luxuriant black hair fall out, and she wore a soft blue velvet bonnet to cover her balding scalp. Severus would sit next to her, kiss her cheek and hold her hand.

"I just wish I wasn't losing my hair," she fretted. "It was my only beauty."

"You still look beautiful," he told her, looking fondly into her sunken black eyes. "You've always been beautiful."

During his visits, he would tell her about school, coax her to eat, and tell her she was going to be all right. He spent hours reading her favourite books to her, high romances like Wuthering Heights and Mysteries of Oranto and Pride and Prejudice and Manfred, and Shakespeare's Sonnets and Keats's Collected Poems, because reading on her own gave her headaches, and her arms were too weak to hold the heavy bound volumes any longer.

"You've always had such a lovely voice," she would whisper gratefully to him. "I'm sorry to be such a bother."

"No, no, I've always liked reading to you," he replied. "Do you remember when I used to read Keats to you when I was little? In the library at home?"

"Yes, of course. You've always been my comfort," she said, her fleshless little hand creeping into his. "My dearest son."

He picked up Keats's Collected Poems – "What would you like to hear?" he asked, holding her hand gently in his.

"Let's have Endymion, please?"

"Of course." He opened the book, and read:

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing... "

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The cancer at least proved to be relatively quick and kind. She died that March, less than four months after the diagnosis, and Severus was given a week's leave from school to arrange her funeral. His father had nothing like the ready money to bury his wife in the family crypt and refused to even meet with his son to talk about the matter. So Severus swallowed his pride and paid another visit to Aunt Druella, who made it clear that she was doing him a very great favour indeed by lending him enough to bury his mother, and deigning to allow him to pay her interest in the double digits for such consideration. Now he would be in a substantial amount of debt the moment he came of age, but it seemed the least he could do for her.

Severus signed the promissory note she drew up with a sense of having signed his life away, but the transparently delicate, waxen form of Eileen Mircalla Prince Snape was buried in austere, dignified style, surrounded by her favourite white roses. By the time of her death, she had wasted to only a hundred pounds.

After leaving his son to comfort his dying wife during her final illness and take on the financial responsibility for her burial, Tobias Snape deigned to appear at her funeral service and reception afterward, and accepted the condolences of their family and friends with decorous, red-eyed stoicism. Severus watched his father being consoled and talking shares and trading with Abraxas Malfoy next to his mother's coffin, and not for the first time, it occurred to him how very much the witless, irresponsible, self-serving old son of a bitch might benefit from the addition of a dose of cyanide into his Scotch and water.

The one saving grace of the day was that Evan Rosier had gotten word of the funeral through his father and had unexpectedly turned up early that morning asking to help out. Between Evan and Grandmother Prince's gracious and supportive presence, it looked as though he might be able to get through his mother's funeral without poisoning his father, or poisoning himself, or just starting to throw random Killing Curses amidst gales of maniacal laughter.

But the last straw came when his father dragged him into the kitchen to tell him they had run out of Scotch at the bar, and what a complete mental defective he was for allowing this to happen. When events were held at Snape Hall, he liked to do them right.

Suddenly, everything was just too much. His father had not even visited his mother in the hospital, had contributed nothing to her funeral expenses or arrangements – and now he had the nerve to criticise him because the bar was not stocked to his liking. Severus clenched his hands at his sides and laughed wildly, then sobbed, and then sixteen years of loathing burst out of him in a tirade – You stupid worthless old fraud, you didn't even care about her, you hit her and insulted her and let her die all alone – fuck YOU! He drew back his closed fist and lurched toward his father, and in another second would have struck him a fearsome blow to the face, but Evan had heard the shouting going on, run into the kitchen and somehow gotten between the two of them, and was pulling him away. Evan was by then a stocky nineteen to Severus's reedy sixteen, and he got between father and son and seized Severus in a bear hug, then dragged him bodily into the corridor.

Severus struggled against Evan, his face crimson, snarling IhatehimIhatehimI'mgoingtokillhim into Evan's lapels. But Evan pinned him against the wall until he relaxed.

"Yeah, mate, I know what you mean, he's hateable," Evan said grimly. "He's really fucking hateable, and he had no cause to criticise you, you're doing the best you can. All of this shouldn't have fallen on your shoulders, it's not fair. But you're burying your Mum today, mate, and she wouldn't have wanted you to get into a fight with your father, would she?"

"No," Severus said, breathing hard. "No, she hated fighting."

"Think of it this way – after today, you're going to go back to school, and you're going to do brilliant on your N.E.W.T.s, and then you'll get a job, and you'll never have to see the old bastard ever again, hear me? Just get through the day, Snaples, just get through the day. I'll be here with you."

His bravado failed him at this kindness, and he crumpled against Evan; became just a sixteen-year-old boy weeping on his best friend's shoulder for the ruin of his mother's life, and Evan held him like a brother, and told him it would be all right.

Severus returned to school the next Monday, looking as though he had aged a year in the time he had been away. He never told any of his classmates at school what had happened.

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After his mother's death, Severus's outlook only grew increasingly bitter and nihilistic during the remainder of his time at school. Without his mother's influence, without a friend like Evan at school with him any longer, his never-admirable temper came to the fore, as did his great talent for insult and sarcasm. The people around him had ceased to be potential friends, or in any way worthy of consideration; they were all co-conspirators at best, and potential targets at worst. He only related to other people as means to further his own wishes, and with his mother's death, there wasn't much he wished for any longer. Everything precious to him was now gone, and everything gentle, kind, or even courteous about him went with her.

He had no further contact with his father following his mother's funeral – as his father had never written him or sent him any Christmas gifts or even a Knut of pocket money in all his time at school, Severus assumed that he was now left to his own devices as far as covering expenses for the remainder of his time at school. He thought about writing to his grandmother and asking for a living expenses allowance, but somehow he hesitated to even ask that of a woman he had seen a grand total of twice in his life. Also, it was entirely possible that she had been told something of the scene in the kitchen during his mother's funeral reception, and didn't want anything to do with him at all.

He then found that there were a surprising lot of ways for the cleverest Slytherin in his year to make some extra Galleons for himself, if he was willing to overlook certain ethical considerations. The whole of Slytherin House and even the occasional Ravenclaw were soon after him for private tutoring in Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts as seventh-year N.E.W.T.s approached – and it was a well-kept secret amongst a certain Slytherin inner circle that Snape could be persuaded to write one's Defence Against the Dark Arts or Potions compositions, or to do one's Arithmancy exercises, for a steep fee. Snape didn't mind carrying some of the academic load for half of the lads in his year – at that point, he would have welcomed anything to distract him from his own situation, while at the same time allowing him to pay for new books and quills and boots.

As his sixth year drew to a close, Severus had a new worry weighing upon his mind; as to where exactly he would spend his summer holidays. Somehow he didn't think he would be welcome at Snape Hall any longer, and didn't want to risk humiliation by asking his grandmother to take him in and being refused – she might not want a grandson who had tried to punch his father living in her home. He gave some very serious consideration to trying to get a job and let a room in Hogsmeade, but he was still only sixteen, which made his situation more complicated than if he was a legal adult.

But then, two weeks before term ended, he received one of the most welcome letters he had ever received in his life:

Hey Snaples,

Gee, think perhaps we can tempt you to stay with us this summer instead of going home? Somehow I think your old Daddums won't mind. Lucius and Felina and Mulciber are going to be around a lot as well.

What do you say? My Mum and Dad send their regards.

Cheers,

Evan

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It felt so odd to get off the Hogwarts Express in King's Cross at the end of the year, and not see his mother waiting for him there. She would always have been nervous at the proximity of so many other people, and would be straining forward to catch a glimpse of him in the crowd of disembarking students – but once she caught sight of him, her pale, pretty face always lit up like a Lumos spell had animated it, and she would make haste to welcome him back. The fact that she would never again meet him in King's Cross at the end of the school year made his throat close tightly, and he swallowed hard against it.

But even if it wasn't his mother waiting for him, the sight of six-foot-three Evan, with windblown blond hair and his hands sunk deep in his pockets, was a very welcome one, and the way Evan's face also lit up when he saw his best friend was incredibly heartening.

Evan came forward to greet him with a warm handshake. "Snaples! Put her there, mate! How was sixth year?"

"Not as bad as fifth year, at least," he said, returning the handshake.

"Ready to finish up and get out, then?"

"Am I ever. I tell you, Ev, as soon as N.E.W.T.s are over, I am never going back to that place."

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The Rosiers' estate, located in the country outside of Cambridgeshire, was just as Severus remembered it from the three or four occasions he had visited in the past – spacious, homey, and pleasant, surrounded on all sides with forest and green fields. The manor had been built in the early nineteenth century and thus was brand new by comparison to Snape Hall or Malfeasant – indeed, Severus had once or twice heard Lucius Malfoy sneer that the paint was barely dry on the Rosiers' family crest. Nonetheless, Severus had always liked visiting here. Evan and Mrs. Rosier always gave him a comfortable guest room and treated him like a cousin even though he was no relation; the roof didn't leak, there were no holes in the screens, and meals were always good. During the day Severus and Evan would go for rambles in the woods, or go swimming or fishing in the small lake on the grounds, or just sit around talking or reading or playing chess. Evan's father worked in London and wasn't around much, but Evan's mother often joined them, and seemed glad of their company.

As Evan had mentioned in his letter, Felina Nott was often about, accompanied by her mother, or her cousin, Cassius Mulciber, who had been in Evan's year at school. Before long, Severus had figured out another reason why Evan had wanted a few friends around that summer – to give him the opportunity to court Felina with the proper decorum. It would have been improper for Evan to go for long walks alone with Felina, but to go for long rambles with both Felina and Severus was just a pastoral afternoon's excursion. Severus knew without being told that while Evan wanted to spend the summer with him, he also wanted to steal some alone time with Felina, whom he had fancied for years. So Severus would tactfully make himself scarce for a few hours during walks and picnics, claiming he wanted to look for magical plants in the woods, and he got very adroit at distracting Felina's mother and Mulciber into long, involved conversations as well. He also made sure to tell all of his best stories about what a great bloke Evan had always been in school – seeing as how Evan was the reason why he hadn't had to pitch a tent somewhere that summer, the least he could do was put in a good word for him with the girl he most admired.

And everything seemed to be coming along swimmingly as summer progressed – Evan adored Felina wholeheartedly, and a certain coquettish gleam was seen to shine in Miss Nott's dark eyes when they alighted on Evan. By the end of August, Severus and Mulciber had privately bet a Galleon as to whether the wedding would happen in spring or summer of next year.

But then at the end of August, another guest arrived for his promised week's visit. Evan, Felina, and Severus arrived back into the main hall to find Lucius Malfoy sharing a round of brandy with Mr. and Mrs. Rosier. He greeted the three of them with the most genial smile imaginable; Evan smiled back, Severus looked at him warily, and Felina simpered adoringly.

"Evan, you old dog, how have you been? Felina, you're as lovely as ever. And Severus, old man, haven't seen you in forever, what's going on with you?" Lucius greeted him with a handshake and his usual expansive smile.

"Not much," Severus replied shortly. "N.E.W.T.s coming up next year and all."

"Of course. And I was sorry to hear about your mother," Lucius said, with a very brotherly pat on the arm. "I know you were fond of her."

"Thanks."

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Severus had always been naturally sharp-eyed and observant, and unlike the easygoing Evan, he had a habitual suspicion of everything and everyone around him that kept him restlessly alert at all times. As such, Lucius had not been at the Rosiers' for two days before he knew that while Felina may have been staying there under the pretence of visiting Evan, she was far more interested in Lucius's company than she was in Evan's. She laughed louder at Lucius's jokes than at Evan's, she was always finding small ways to wait on Lucius and court his attentions, and while her arm was continually linked with Evan's, her eyes spent a lot of time rapaciously devouring Lucius Malfoy.

Evan may have been aware of this as well, because suddenly he put a lot more effort into being an entertaining host, in an effort to reclaim Felina's attentions for himself. One afternoon, he took Severus, Lucius, and Felina on a tour of the creepier nooks and corners of the Rosier manor – the secret passageway from the library to one of the upstairs bedrooms; the weird painting of a pale, peaky-looking great-great-uncle who had been a poet and who committed suicide in his twenties, that still whispered haunting verses now and then; the cold spot in the bedroom where his grandfather died of a seizure. Lucius surveyed everything with a jaded air of been-there, done-that, as though amused that Evan found these funny, homey little quirks at all interesting, and worse still, Felina was starting to join him.

"I know – let's go see if the spiders have taken over that cellar with the trapdoor yet," Severus said, by way of helping his friend out. "You should see the spiderwebs they've put up – they're practically constructing spider cathedrals and aqueducts down there."

The others agreed to this plan, so they all headed down a stone corridor to the very bottom foundations of the manor. At the lowest part was a heavy trapdoor, really just a block of stone wrapped in iron brackets, and so heavy that Severus could barely move it himself at that age. It was only accessible by a wooden ladder kept propped against the wall for this purpose.

Once they had the trapdoor open and descended the ladder, they found themselves in a room the size of a small bedchamber, with walls of untreated stone, and inhabited by no one but some really impressive spiders, who ruled over the dank space like Mongol chieftains over the Asian plains, building floor-to-ceiling webs. Evan was mildly claustrophobic and loathed spiders, and thus regarded this chamber with a mixture of fear and fascination.

"Oh, yes, you know what this really is," Lucius said, in a spooky ghost-story sort of voice, after the four of them had poked around for awhile, marvelling at the absolutely huge spiderwebs. "It's an oubliette. And you know what people used to do with these – there's no way to get out of one without outside help, so the old Wizarding lords used to drop people down here when they really wanted to forget about them." Right on cue, Felina gave a wide-eyed, girlish squeal and shiver.

"Actually, I think this was going to be a storeroom or a root cellar, but they never got around to building stairs for it," Evan pointed out.

Then Severus saw Felina and Lucius exchange a look – a very conspiratorial sort of look – and then Felina gave a shudder and made for the ladder out. "It's absolutely revolting in here. I'm leaving."

She climbed up the ladder, followed by Lucius. But just as Severus was reaching for the ladder, it was abruptly jerked up and out of his hand. "Hey!" he yelled. He strained up for the ladder, but Lucius held it just out of his reach.

Lucius laughed down at him and Evan – "Would you like to get back up?"

"Come on, Malfoy, this isn't fecking funny. Drop the ladder," Evan snapped in agitation. He made a jump for the bottom rung, but Lucius again pulled it out of reach at the last second.

"Hah, too bad!" Lucius taunted gaily, to the accompaniment of Felina's shrill, admiring giggles.

"Lucius, give it here," Severus shouted crossly.

But then the trapdoor chunked closed, sealing the two of them in pitch black darkness.

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In reality it was probably forty-five minutes to an hour before Lucius and Felina came back for them, but it felt much, much longer.

It took a few minutes to dawn on Severus and Evan that they were trapped and Lucius and Felina weren't coming back. Then Evan's voice began to sound panicky, and Severus got out his wand and invoked a Lumos spell – only to discover that one of the great spiders from the webs all around them was strolling up Evan's robes. He brushed it off with a shudder and cry of disgust.

Evan then got out his own wand and vented his annoyance on some of the spiderwebs all around them – but then the close air of the oubliette was suffused with the smell of burning dust and sticky, invisible strands, which was even more disgusting. The two of them paced in a tight circle, grumbling and cursing like sailors.

At last, the trapdoor opened, and Lucius and Felina lowered the ladder down to them, chortling and grinning as though they had played a light-hearted joke indeed, but the first thing Evan did upon getting back up was give Lucius an extremely hard thump on the shoulder. "You bastard, you think that's funny? It's pitch dark and full of bugs down there, you sod!"

Lucius just gave another airy laugh – so Evan and Severus exchanged one look, and then they both grabbed Lucius and stuffed him down into the hole, sans ladder, and sat on the trapdoor, sulking. But Lucius had only put up a token struggle, laughing as though he knew they had a right to be annoyed and sportingly didn't begrudge them a spot of revenge, so their vindication was rather spoiled. Felina paced and whined the entire time Lucius was a prisoner, so in the end, they only kept him down there for perhaps ten minutes. Lucius came up remarkably clean and composed, and just laughed when Evan made a production of brushing him off and ever-so-accidentally transferring dirt, ash, and cobwebs from his own clothes onto Lucius in the process.

While Evan seemed to think that Lucius had left them down in the oubliette just for a sadistic practical joke, Severus had his own suspicions as to why his cousin might have wanted the two of them out of his way for awhile – and a long, raking glance at Felina confirmed every one of them. She had a purple bite mark on the side of her neck, the edge of which was just visible above her demure white lace collar, and her thick dark hair was slightly mussed, with tendrils escaping from her prissy braided upsweep. Severus inclined his nose slightly in her direction – and detected just the faintest whiff of Lucius's limewater shaving lotion coming off her clothes.

"You'll want to put a drop of Healing Potion on that thing on your neck," he muttered to her – and she spun around and stared at him, her eyes dilating wide with surprise.

Felina remained on her best behaviour and tiptoed around Severus for the remainder of the summer, but he never said a word to Evan about what he had seen. Evan had fancied Felina like anything for years, and Evan had always treated him like a brother, and he wasn't about to spoil his friend's happiness.

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In no time at all, his summer's respite at Evan's was over, and seventh year started. This time, Severus made the rounds of the bookshops and Madam Malkin's alone, to have the sleeves and hems of his previous year's school robes let down, as he couldn't afford new ones.

School life went on around him in all of its oblivious, boisterous dullness – Quidditch, House Cup competition, N.E.W.T. prep, more career counselling – but very little made it through Severus's detachment. He was there to get the best possible marks on his N.E.W.T.s, and nothing else mattered. Even the conflict with his old enemies Sirius Black and James Potter was now too tiresome to be endured. Potter seemed to have buckled down and started really studying, which was a surprise, but Black was his same old, same old self, and his self-important dramatics were petty and exhausting. Always with the my family doesn't love me, I'm a rebel, a loner, I walk alone against the wind theatrics, which were invariably carried on in the presence of potential romantic conquests. (One thing you could be sure of with Sirius Black, he never had emotional epiphanies when no one else was looking.) To Snape, who would not look for consolation from anyone even after his beloved mother died and his father disowned him, Black's pleas for attention could not have been more obvious or irritating. He was just so common, so tiresome, so publicly undignified – he talked about his family problems like a costermonger crying the price of his cabbages in a market square. Severus knew any number of Orcadian fishwives with more decorum.

But the worst part of it was that Lily Evans seemed so sympathetic to the big crybaby. And she was actually spending time with Potter, as well – no accounting for taste. Severus thought she deserved better, but some women just seemed to find complete slimeballs attractive, and it was just their fate to find some bloke to treat them like monkey shite, it seemed. Ah well, it wasn't his job to save her from herself – and she had cut her eyes warily away from him every time their paths crossed since fifth year.

Perhaps it was this new sort of cold, uncaring dismissal on Severus's part that incensed Black to the boiling point during their seventh year. During the first five years of school, Severus had at least recognised him as a real and immediate threat, reacting with the proper shame and humiliation during incidents like the infamous robes-around-his-head matter fifth year. From sixth year on, as Black went about with his prodigal son's heart bleeding on his sleeve and Snape failed to in any way care about or even notice any of it, the Gryffindor's hatred sharpened to a perverse fever pitch.

By Severus's seventh year, he was to learn that Hell hath no fury like Gryffindor grandstanding denied the audience to which it felt entitled.

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Slytherin House being Slytherin House, when the vile blows and buffets of the world have so incensed a seventeen-year-old boy that he becomes reckless as to what he does to spite the world, he can find a host of similarly alienated aiders and abettors to his discontent no further away than his own common room. Severus had once thought some of the other boys in his year, like Malcolm Bulstrode, Elias Wilkes, Galen Goyle, and Nestor Crabbe, who only seemed to want to do things like jinx the Gryffindor Quidditch team's broomsticks and set small fires in classrooms, were complete wastes of spit, but during his seventh year, he found he had a surprising lot in common with them – besides, of course, the fact that they were all paying him to write their compositions for them. In the halls and during his infrequent trips down to Hogsmeade, he had fallen in with their notorious little clique like a haughty, superior mascot, finding his niche as the undisputed brains of the group.

Wilkes, Bulstrode, Crabbe, and Goyle were all on the Quidditch team (and doing nothing for the stereotype of the lunk-headed athlete with no academic talent, either), and all came from well-heeled families, so Severus earned a substantial amount of his pocket money from the lot of them. One afternoon well into the second term of seventh year, Severus had made a trip down to the Quidditch pitch to transact a bit of illicit business with one of the athletes.

He met a group of the Slytherin players, among them Wilkes, Crabbe, Goyle, and Bulstrode, getting ready to head back up the castle from the field, broomsticks and gym bags in hand. One of them, Elias Wilkes, curtly nodded to Severus to join him off to one side of the stands, where he covertly slipped him a handful of clinking gold.

"Oh come off it, Wilkes – we agreed ten Galleons for your end-of-term essay – don't hand me nine and hope I won't notice. Seeing as how I'm the best academic whore in the business, don't expect me to be an inexpensive one," Severus said archly, holding the scroll just out of Wilkes's reach.

Wilkes smiled sourly. "All right, all right, you drive a hard bargain, Snape," he said. Another Galleon crossed his palm, and Snape handed over the parchment.

"Well well well – what have we here," came a suspicious voice from around the stands. Sirius Black appeared around the corner, followed by Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin. The three of them often came down to the pitch to watch the flying wonderboy Potter practice and cheer him on, in what Severus deemed a disgusting display of rah-rah asskissery. "Snape gives Wilkes a scroll, and receives a handful of Galleons for it – do I smell a bit of Slytherish wrongdoing going on?"

"No, you saw me giving Wilkes copies of my notes for a class he missed, and the repayment of a debt owed from the last Hogsmeade weekend, you suspicious sack of dung," Severus said instantly – he had always been talented at thinking on his feet. "Just doing my part to help one of our players out."

"Really? Why don't I believe your virtuous act, Snape?" He turned toward Lupin – "You're a prefect, Remus – maybe you should go look at that parchment Snape gave Wilkes, there."

"Sirius, it's just a piece of parchment. If I got all worried every time someone handed someone else a piece of paper at this school, I'd have no time to do anything else," Lupin scoffed. "Come on, let's go. I've got homework to do."

But Black wasn't satisfied. "What class did you miss, that you need notes for, Wilkes?" he asked, aggressively approaching the Slytherins. "I don't recall missing you in any classes lately."

"What, we have to account to you for every class we miss and every bit of paper we hand each other?" Severus flared up angrily. He was now growing a bit nervous at Black's persistence – if he got caught writing essays for pay, he would get in a great deal of trouble, and he was proud of his impeccable academic record and wanted very much to keep it impeccable. "Who the hell do you think you are, the Headmaster?"

"You know, Snivvy, me lad, it's late enough in the year that I won't have to polish trophies long if we get another look at your grotty underpants," Black said, his hand going for his wand – and suddenly found himself facing Severus's wand and those of most of the Slytherin Quidditch team.

"Knock it off, Black," Wilkes snarled back. He would have been failing Potions had it not been for Severus's essays, and he was far too practical of a fellow to see his greatest academic asset damaged. "If you do anything to him, you'll answer to us."

"Sirius, stop it," Lupin said impatiently. "Quit pestering these prats and let's go, I haven't got time for this!"

But Black still wasn't finished. "Awww, how sweet. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a million times – Slytherins look after their own," Black sneered at Wilkes. Thwarted in his quest to get the Slytherins in trouble, he fell back on his old favourite pastime of hurling insults and invective. "And they breed their own too, don't they?"

"I've always thought Slytherin House was full of fine examples of what happens when cousins marry," Pettigrew sniggered, clearly thinking himself very brave and witty indeed. Lupin looked pained and said nothing.

"Your friend Sirius would know more about that than any of us would, Pet-It," Severus snapped back, instantly, lazily aiming his wand point at first Black, then Pettigrew, then Lupin. "I don't know where you get off insulting our families, when everyone knows that your best mate's is so always-pure it's a wonder those pretty eyes aren't on his nipples." He raised his voice and addressed his group of cronies – "I've got a joke for you, lads – what does a Black say to his cousin?"

"Tell us!" the other Slytherins called.

"Oh yes, Mrs. Black, do it again, harder, please... " Severus sighed, in a high, breathless voice, and the others just about fell over themselves laughing.

Sirius Black, however, made no retort, and his face erupted with blushing – none of which escaped Severus's attention. "Oh, by the great Merlin – look at him blush! You do fancy your cousins, don't you," he hissed, his black eyes glinting malevolently. "So which one of them do you want to shag, Bella or Narcissa? Or maybe both at once? You really are your mother's boy, aren't you?"

Severus's derision at the Blacks came just as much out of his creeping anxiety over the illicit essay now tucked barely out of sight in Wilkes's bag, and the promissory note he was going to owe Druella Black for his mother's funeral expenses when he came of age, as his years of hatred for Sirius Black himself. It all added a subtle extra malice to his voice that seemed to thrill and inspire his cluster of co-conspirators.

"Oh, good Lord, that's pathetic," Bulstrode laughed.

"If your family tree hasn't forked since a Tudor was on the throne, your surname is probably Black," sniggered Wilkes. Black glared murderously at Severus – only the proximity of a group of other foes kept him from attacking outright, and Severus knew it.

"Yah, Snape – the way you cosy up to Aunt Druella, she's going to be trying to marry both of them off to you," Black sneered. " 'Whyn't you try to be a young gentleman, like Eileen Snape's son. He was always so good to his poor mother.' " To Snape's great surprise, he realised that the Gryffindor was unmistakeably mimicking his own mother's shrill tones, which he half-remembered from the train station platform.

Snape's gaze deepened with malice as he surveyed the Gryffindor's face – so Black and his mother got on even worse than he suspected, and Aunt Druella had been boasting about her great-nephew to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Black. One or both of them were now apparently throwing his own example into Black's face. Oh, this was brilliant. He could use this.

"Oh, cheer up, old chap," Snape said, in his softest, silkiest tones. "Compared to your mad desire to shag your best friend's girl, a few incestuous impulses aren't too bad, now, are they – ?"

He had been guessing about Black's crush on Lily – but even he was not prepared for the reaction that followed. Black's face turned purple and his teeth clenched – and then he had launched himself on Snape, his fist impacting with the other boy's jaw with a resounding crack. Then everyone had jumped at the two of them, including Pettigrew and Lupin, and it took nearly all of their combined efforts to drag Black off of him.

"You'll get yours, you little shite, Snape," Black snarled, his eyes fairly sparking with hatred. "You'll get yours."

He gave a harsh, barklike laugh, then let Lupin and Pettigrew pull him away across the grass.

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Oh, bloody hell. Oh, how really fecking wonderful.

It was one thing to end up in the Headmaster's office after being pantsed fifth year.

It was quite another thing to end up in the Headmaster's office because one of one's classmates had attempted to kill you seventh year – and the faculty refused to take the incident seriously or fucking do anything about it other than subject the perpetrator to some really savage counselling.

Black's curiosity over the way Severus collected Galleons for scrolls had made him quite uncomfortable in the last half of their seventh year, so much so that Severus had retaliated by launching his own campaign to gather some information on Black's various bits of wrongdoing – and, as usual, Severus managed to unearth far more about Black and his friends than they had ever managed to gather on him. One thing you could be sure of with Slytherins was that they knew how to cover their tracks, and Severus was no different.

But then the so-called Marauders, it had seemed, had gotten even more sloppy than before, and had accidentally leaked a crucial bit of information about some unhanded happening going on in the Shrieking Shack, and Severus had pounced on the chance to implicate them in something, hoping to get them in trouble, or even better, expelled. However, the real circumstances of the situation had gone so far beyond anything Severus could have previously imagined that he was still half in shock about it. Now, as he waited for Dumbledore to join him, he was pouring all of his considerable will into forcing his hands to stop shaking.

The Sorting Hat was again blathering to itself in one corner when he came in. "Ah, Mr. Snape," it said when it saw him. "You've got a right bee in your bonnet today, a right big bee in your bonnet."

"Don't even start with me, you lackwitted piece of antic millinery," Severus said, in a low, warning tone.

"Oh yes, you were going to disintegrate me in my sleep when you were ten years old, how well I remember that. You were one of the most memorable first-years I'd ever Sorted, my boy, truly," the Hat chortled.

Severus might have made good on the threat of disintegration then and there, but the Headmaster chose that moment to make his entrance. He waved Severus into one of the armchairs before his desk and launched into another achingly nice speech – but this time, Severus didn't bother to pretend that he was shrugging off this incident with good grace. It was all he could do to pretend he was listening.

Finally, the Headmaster paused, seemed to be waiting for a response – and this time Severus didn't bother to restrain what he really thought.

"Yes, you keep sawing on about how James Potter saved my life, and how grateful I should be for it," he said, his eyes fixed on Dumbledore's. "Potter saved my life, all hail the good and noble Potter – but somehow you won't admit that Sirius Black tried to kill me. Nor will you admit to your own lapse in judgment in allowing a known werewolf to enter this school."

"No, I do not believe that Sirius Black attempted to kill you," Dumbledore said gently.

"Yet you continually aver that James Potter saved my life, for which I am now indebted to him. Somehow, I simply can't make the leap of logic required to accept that my life was in danger if no one intentionally endangered it. Which is it, Headmaster? Make up your mind, because I'll not let you have it both ways."

"There is no doubt in my mind that you could have been killed because of Mr. Black's actions in sending you into the Shrieking Shack while it held Mr. Lupin in his... changed state, yes," Dumbledore replied. "And there is no doubt in my mind that James acted out of a desire to save your life, my boy. I know he has wronged you in the past, but he has not done so in this instance. I believe James's conscience reasserted itself, and he did what he could to protect you."

"Forgive me if I'm not as impressed by Potter's actions as you seem to be," Severus retorted, unmoved. "Since when is it in any way heroic to refuse to conspire to commit murder? I beg your pardon, but I was under the impression that that's what anyone who wants to live amongst civilised people should do. You don't hex other people for fun, and you don't let your friends send them into a werewolf's holding cell. That's just what a decent person does." His forefinger jabbed into the surface of the Headmaster's desk.

"And I agree with you," Dumbledore said. "I agree absolutely, James showed indescribably poor judgment in going along with Mr. Black's plans for as long as he did. But the fact remains that a life debt is old magic, magic from before even Merlin's time, and you know as well as I do what that means."

"I'll be appropriately grateful to Potter the day you appropriately discipline Sirius Black," Severus said furiously. His arms were folded argumentatively over his thin chest in a manner that would become characteristic in later life, and his black eyes blazed through his dishevelled curtain of black hair. "I think expulsion would be wholly appropriate in this case, for both of them."

"Mr. Snape... I'll level with you." The Headmaster leaned forward and regarded Severus with profound gravity over the tops of his spectacles. "I do not believe that it would do any good whatsoever to expel Sirius Black and send him back to his parents. No, I think the worst thing I could ever do would be to send Sirius back to his parents. There are many differences of opinion within that family, and I believe that Sirius's parents' expectations may result in a worse fate for him than you could possibly imagine. I cannot send him back to them, any more than I can condone his actions in sending you in to confront Remus."

"With all due respect, sir, I don't give a toss about Sirius Black's unhappy childhood – my own was hardly an endless round of innocent good times either," Severus snapped back. "Yes, I see your real reasoning. Black is a brave, noble Gryffindor, so therefore his murder attempt is obviously a cry for help. Lupin didn't ask to be bitten by a werewolf, so we all have to help him, even if it means putting innocent people at risk. But I'll bet you a hundred Galleons against a Knut that if Black had been a Slytherin, he'd have been expelled, and would be waiting to be booked for attempted murder right now. Wouldn't he." His eyes glittered with fury, and perhaps even righteous indignation.

"No, he would not," Dumbledore said firmly. "There has never been an expulsion at this school while I've been Headmaster, Mr. Snape, and I'm proud of that record. I firmly believe that expulsion is never the best solution to any problem. I've been a teacher for a very long time, longer than you have been alive, and I can count on my big left toe the number of truly incorrigible students I have met in all that time. I sincerely believe that there is good in Sirius Black, just as I've always believed that there was good in you, and in all of my students. I believe that Sirius Black put you in a situation in which your life was in danger, but I do not believe that he did so with the intention of killing you. Frightening you, yes – but killing you, no."

"Why don't I believe that?" Severus asked coldly. "And while you're at it, why don't you explain to me why I don't believe anything you say anymore?"

The Headmaster took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "My boy... you have always been an exemplary student, and I am well aware that your discipline record here is very good – "

"Spotless," Severus interjected. "My discipline record here is nonexistent."

"Yes, I know. I agree that you have been treated poorly – monumentally poorly – by your two classmates. But at this moment, I would thank you to remember that I am Headmaster of this school, and well over a hundred years your senior, and to ask you to mind the way you address me," Dumbledore said, a warning glint in his blue eyes.

"I do beg your pardon, sir," Severus said frostily. "Yes, I should be happy to mind the way I address you." And with that, he got up, spun around, and headed for the door.

"I didn't dismiss you, Mr. Snape," Dumbledore called after him.

Severus paused for a moment at the doorway. "Again, I beg your pardon, sir, but I do seem to have dismissed you. And I am quite confident that leaving this room without your dismissal will not result in my expulsion from this school. Because to me, it seems as though there isn't anything one can do, to get oneself expelled from this school."

With that, he made his exit, firmly convinced that he had spoken to Albus Dumbledore for the last time.

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N.E.W.T.s were as easy as Severus had expected them to be. He went through the motions almost resentfully, as though disgusted by the material's inability to challenge or even interest him.

But the week after his N.E.W.T.s unexpectedly brought a letter from Abraxas Malfoy, sorrowfully informing him that the night before, Tobias Snape had been in his club for his usual supper and evening drinks. He had ordered a Scotch and soda, and by the time the waiter returned with the glass, the elder Snape was dead in his chair. The hypertension that his father had ignored for so many years had finally asserted itself in a manner that could not be disregarded.

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There was a ceremony and reception for the seventh years leaving Hogwarts every year, but Severus was not able to attend them. It is entirely possible that he would not have attended them even if he had been able, but his father's funeral made it unnecessary to even decide.

He had nothing to do with any funeral arrangements for his father – while he may have been willing to go into debt to the tune of over two thousand Galleons at double-digit interest to finance his mother's funeral, he paid no visits to Aunt Druella on account of Tobias Snape. His father could be cremated at government expense and interred in a pauper's grave for all he cared. As it turned out, however, his grandmother stepped in as next of kin, and took care of the funeral herself. His father was interred next to his wife in the family crypt in Orkney, and Severus deigned to appear in black dress robes to listen to the service, and share a meal with the other mourners at the reception that followed. While he had been heartbroken beyond that which a sixteen-year-old should ever have to suffer when his mother died, he hadn't even brought a handkerchief to his father's funeral.

As all the other mourners were his father's friends and business associates, and seemed content to talk shares and trading and hostile acquisitions around his father's coffin with the requisite cocktails in their hands, Severus found it easy to make himself invisible off in a corner, sipping now and then from a coffee mug full of Scotch sneaked from the bar.

When that mug was almost gone, someone sat down next to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Hello, my boy," his grandmother said. "Where have you been? You never visit."

He looked blearily up at her. "Did you want me to?"

"All your life," Octavia replied, with a hint of reproach in her voice. "All the proof I have of my grandson's existence is a photograph of a newborn baby and a pile of little thank-you notes, did you know that?"

"Sorry," he whispered. "I didn't know."

She leaned forward and sniffed – then raised her own sinister black eyebrow at him. "What are you drinking?"

"Scotch," he admitted, with a careless little shrug – he was in too low of a mood to care what anyone had to say about underage drinking at that moment.

Octavia just smiled understandingly at him. "When all these pompous stuffed shirts have gone, what do you say about sharing a round with your old grandma?" she asked.

He regarded her with a faint, grateful smile. "Yes... that would be all right."

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As a child, Severus had wished that he could spend a holiday with his grandmother instead of at Malfeasant, and at seventeen, he finally did just that.

Octavia still hosted the best teas imaginable, and she was still full of stories about the good old days when Slytherin House was the home of aristocrats and bluebloods and captains of industry, and everyone who was anyone was a Slytherin, or wanted to be one.

Most of him wanted to just stay in his grandmother's guest room indefinitely, to just cast himself on her goodwill and never leave it, but in August, he finally allowed himself to be persuaded to make the trip back to Snape Hall in the company of his grandmother's personal accountant, a goblin named Alfreg Riddleback with a penchant for natty tweed suits. Severus wasn't certain he wanted any help with going through his parents' papers, but his grandmother described Riddleback as sharp as a box of tacks when it came to financial matters, and he hadn't been in any mood to complain.

So he and his grandmother's accountant spent most of the August and September after his father's death going through his parents' financial records. It was a tangled mess for that wizened goblin accounting professional, and was at first barely comprehensible to an angry and bereaved seventeen-year-old. But finally they had the papers and accounts in some semblance of organisation, and Severus knew where he stood in the world.

And where he stood in the world was not heartening.

Eileen Snape's father had left her a tidy inheritance to be paid in monthly instalments – which her husband had been steadily losing in speculative investments ever since their marriage, in the time-honoured tradition of domineering wastrel husbands with ambitions beyond their means. Among his mother's effects were six promissory notes to be paid by Eileen Snape to Druella Black, all dated a few days before he would have started school in 1971 through 1976. Well, the mystery of the annual visits to his great-aunt just before school started was now solved, and it looked as though he would be paying for his old textbooks and outgrown school robes with interest for some time to come.

Severus now owned Snape Hall and the lands around it, and a smattering of rental properties in the village, which brought in a small income – but then he discovered the letters of complaint from the tenants, asking for necessary maintenance to be performed on the properties. He had also inherited the burned-out wreck of a Muggle cotton mill and a neglected brick house in a little Muggle town somewhere called Spinner's End, and two or three lawsuit settlements against people injured in the fire that destroyed the mill, which had occurred due to his father's negligence in maintaining the property. It appeared that once he paid his father's outstanding debts and complied with their tenants' wishes, there would be enough left of his mother's inheritance to allow him to make his own and his mother's payments to Aunt Druella and to support him, but only if he lived very frugally.

Or at least that was what he thought he would do, before his grandmother's accountant made a report of her grandson's liabilities to Octavia Prince – and then, matters began to change, very quickly. Severus received another summons to his grandmother's – and arrived to find her white-faced and furious.

"What is this?" Octavia threw the promissory notes from Druella Black down on the table between them.

"Hogwarts requires that its students procure schoolbooks and uniforms. And my mother required a funeral," Severus said shortly.

"You mean to tell me that your father – my daughter's husband – didn't put one Knut toward educating his only child, and burying his own wife? He let his underage son go into debt – go into this kind of debt – in order to put his own mother in the ground?"

Severus looked at her, and said nothing.

Octavia began pacing back and forth in a fury. "No, she'll not make an indentured servant of my grandson, not while I'm still alive, that old skinflint won't," his grandmother exclaimed, her Scottish burr getting more pronounced as her voice grew more vehement. "That interest rate is extortion, pure and simple – you're not just compensating her for interest lost, oh no, I see what she's doing, and I can't even imagine trying to make a profit off my daughter's funeral. Oh, that crusty old loan shark, that foul old troglodyte – " She went on to add several more unflattering descriptions of Druella Black, some of such highly creative profanity that even her grandson was impressed.

"Don't you worry, my boy," his grandmother said, stuffing the promissory notes into her alligator handbag. "Don't you – bloody – worry."

And then she was gone, with a decisive clack of boot heels on the polished floor.

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There was no more said about debts to Aunt Druella. Just like that, they seemed to have evaporated. But Octavia sat him down, and gently but sternly ordered him to never, never go to Druella Black for anything he needed, ever again. "You're my grandson, and you're all the family I have left now. And I'll not have you taken advantage of by the Druella Blacks of the world, not while I'm around to prevent it."

Now, all that was left was the onerous task of returning to Snape Hall and going through all of his parents' effects. The task loomed so large, and the attempts he made at it often became so painful, that Severus made an admittedly half-hearted job of it. After he opened a locked drawer to discover a bundle of letters from a woman who had apparently been his father's mistress for some time back in the sixties, apparently beginning while his mother was pregnant with him – Severus burned his father's personal papers unread.

He discovered his mother's will while clearing out her desk that summer – All assets and belongings of mine to my dear and beloved Son, Severus Marcus Antonius Snape, to dispose of as he sees fit – and then, a bundle of old letters, all written on yellowed parchment bearing the crest of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Inside was his Hogwarts letter, all of his marks reports, every single letter he had ever written to her while he was in school arranged according to date, and his O.W.L. report letter. But at the bottom of the bundle was another letter, dated July 1st, 1951, telling Miss Eileen Prince that she had a place at Hogwarts – a pile of her report cards, all with marks as exemplary as her son's – and then, there was another letter dated July 5th, 1959, from Headmaster Albus Dumbledore himself, extending an offer of employment to Miss Prince, to teach Muggle literature and art appreciation in the Muggle Studies department at Hogwarts. Beneath that was a similar epistle dated a month later, also from Dumbledore, conveying his regrets that she had turned down the position, and sending his congratulations on her recently announced engagement to Mr. Snape.

Once these labours were done – or rather, once he had laboured as much as he could stand, then closed the doors on the rest – he went upstairs to his old childhood bedroom and spent most of that week sleeping or reading in bed. There were still holes in the screens, but now not even the occasional fly could disturb him. He mulled over vague ambitions of getting a job, getting a bachelor flat near that place of work, going into the village, getting out of bed; but it all seemed so far out of his reach now. Making any kind of effort seemed impossible.

Weeks later, he was still at Snape Hall. His applications to the Auror's academy remained uncompleted on his desk, gathering dust, as did the job offer letters that arrived just after his N.E.W.T. results came back, and the frequent letters from his grandmother. No impetus could reach through his conviction that nothing now could come to any good.

He woke up one afternoon to the sound of someone pounding on the bedroom door; beyond it, he could hear the little, keening voice of Towrie, one of the house-elves. "Master Severus? Master Severus, sir? You has a visitor, sir, Mr. Rosier is come to see you – "

And then the door was flung wide, and someone's big footfalls came into his bedroom, peered down at his pillow.

"Snaples? Severus?" Evan bent over his bed. "Hey, you all right, there, mate?"

"No." He sat up, pressed his hand despondently to his forehead.

The bed creaked as his friend sat down next to him. "Hey, come on, man. What's wrong?"

"Bloody hell, Evan... everything's wrong," he said, raking his greasy, uncombed hair off his face. "School's over and my mother died and there's never enough money and I don't know what to fucking do with myself."

"I know, I know. We've all got to lose our parents sometime, but it shouldn't've happened like that to you, one right after the other."

"You should have let me hit him," Severus said grimly, after a moment. "I would have liked to be able to remember just one good crack at him."

"Yeah, you're right, kid. I should've let you. Just once." Evan looked ruefully at him – and finally, miraculously, they both laughed.

"All right, then, you don't know what to do with yourself? Then I'll tell you what to do," Evan said, giving him a good-natured swat on the arm. "Get your arse out of bed and have a shower and brush your teeth, because I tell you, mate, your breath smells like the bottom of a birdcage."

"Thanks. You're looking disgustingly good yourself, Lothario."

"There's the sarcastic bastard we all know and love." Evan grinned at him. "And after you've washed off this odoriferous patina of gothic melodrama, you're going to come down to the village with me and let me buy you some supper and a pint. And this might cheer you up – I'm getting married. Felina finally said she'd marry me. You'll be my best man, won't you?"

"Well, sure I will."

"You know what – once you've properly cleaned, de-loused, and fumigated yourself, why don't you throw some things in a bag and come down to our place for a visit, help me out with some of this wedding fol-de-rol. All by yourself up here, no wonder you get depressed. A lot of the old crowd from school's been about, come on. There's lots going on, and I don't want you to be by yourself right now."

"Yeah... I could do that."

Evan gathered him in for a rough, boyish, comforting hug, gently thumping his back. "'S all right, mate. You'll be all right."

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As before at his mother's funeral, the company of Severus's grandmother and best friend did much to bring him out of his melancholy funk. It was endlessly comforting to know that he had Octavia and Evan on his side, people who he could trust to stalwartly look after his best interests.

Severus and Evan visited each other often in the time following his father's death. The combination of gruff, brotherly commiseration and helping prepare for Evan's wedding to Felina Nott proved to be wonderfully distracting from his own unhappiness and uncertainty. Felina seemed to have mended her ways following her engagement (or was perhaps licking her wounds following the announcement of Lucius Malfoy's engagement to Narcissa Black), and had begun to stick demurely close to Evan's side at all times.

Severus spent that Christmas at the Rosier estate near Cambridgeshire, helping Evan with host duties for the events that went on over the holidays. At a New Year's bash thrown at a little club in town, a crowd of latecomers arrived amidst much merriment, faces Severus well remembered from his school days – Mulciber, Flint, Wilkes, Rodolphus Lestrange, Regulus Black, and of course the redoubtable Lucius Malfoy, who had just been appointed to the plummy Ministry job of assistant to Theophilius Solon, a powerful senior magistrate. Lucius swept in and became the life of the party instantly, leading them all in a toast to Evan and his lovely bride-to-be.

Then Lucius noticed Severus having a solitary whiskey at the bar, and came over to join him. "Snape, old man. I've been meaning to talk to you. How have you been holding up?"

"All right," he replied laconically.

"Sorry to hear about your father," Lucius said, very kindly patting his arm.

"Thanks."

"So, coz, what are you doing in May, after the wedding?" Lucius took a seat beside him with the most genial smile imaginable.

"Going home, sending off some job letters," he said, shrugging. "Yourself?" Lucius had only asked him as a prelude to boasting about some plans of his own, but he didn't feel too much like refusing to play his cousin's usual self-aggrandising games at that moment.

"Well, Father's sending me off on this extended holiday. There's this family tradition of putting in a year's service to one of the Faery kings, and now it's my turn," Lucius said with a shrug. "Anyway, Narcissa's not at all happy about it. She and her family were supposed to spend the summer at Malfeasant with us, you know, Druella and Menzentius and Bellatrix, but now I've got to go off and humour Father's Faery friends. Ought to be a complete drag, they say the Faeries are so backward it's practically medieval. I'd so much rather stay here, but he insists. Plus, you know, there were those letters Rodolphus wrote... you know. He shouldn't even be up here, he wasn't supposed to leave London before the arraignment, but when we heard Evan was having a party we all just had to come."

Severus nodded silently, his eyes full of understanding. Lucius smiled. "So... what are you drinking? Can I get us a round?"

"Scotch. I like Oban." Offering a bribe first – so Lucius wanted something.

"Yes, sir," Lucius said. He raised a hand and got the bartender's attention – "Your finest Oban for my cousin, please. And I'll take a brandy." Offering a handsome bribe – Lucius wanted something difficult, and wanted it badly.

Their drinks arrived, and Lucius put on his most jovial smile. "I was wondering – can you come stay at Malfeasant for the summer? Make sure Narcissa has an escort to dinner, someone to carry her parcels and the like? I'd ask her brother, but Menz is just a complete hooligan, if she asked him to get her sunshade he'd probably break it just for grins, you know how he is. Plus... " the snake oil poured into that smooth drawl – "Narcissa wanted me to keep an eye on Bella for her. You know, just to keep her out of trouble."

"Bella's in trouble?" Severus asked, with a thoughtful sip of whiskey.

"Confidentially... all right, you didn't hear this from me, Narcissa would have my head on a platter, but... well, Bella took up with Emmitt Parkinson a few years after she left school, and she's simply wild for him, for some reason. I don't know why, the Parkinsons are sort of newcomers, especially in our part of Wiltshire, but the man is supposed to be richer than Croesus, so there you go."

Severus knew Parkinson faintly; he was one of Lucius's father's friends, who always seemed to be involved in very intense business discussions with Lucius's father and the older men, smoking cigars and drinking brandy. Like many of the men in that circle, he had spent his twenties amusing himself with "fast" women, and now in his early thirties, had begun the de rigueur search for a wife and mother for his children. The Parkinsons were, as Lucius had said, a newer arrival to their circle, but Emmitt was known to be an astute businessman who observed the expected pure-blooded social model so rigidly that he was often held up as an example for others. His personal fortune, which despite the dearth of generations in which to be amassed, was rumoured to be approaching the Malfoy-Nott-Rookwood-Fudge-Potter-Swain-Tugwood-Hipworth-Ollivander level, and his unmarried status made him a catch as far as husband material went. Severus hadn't previously heard about Parkinson's romance with Bellatrix Black, but he wasn't surprised by the news.

"At any rate," Lucius continued, "Narcissa told me that Bella had decided it was time for him to propose to her sometime around Christmas, but when she let Emmitt know this was expected, he promptly showed her the door. I could have told her he would never marry her, he's the sort who'd never marry any woman who wasn't a virgin, and everyone knows that Bella's had more lovers than Genghis Khan had wives. She'd probably have a masculine harem if she was let, bless her." He laughed knowingly into his brandy glass.

"So," Lucius continued, "Emmitt's mother and sisters have prevailed upon him to go to all of the Wiltshire cotillions with them this season, and everyone knows it's because he's looking for some sweet, innocent young thing to despoil – ahem, to marry. Bella's frantic to keep him herself, so much that Narcissa's actually a bit worried that she'll make a spectacle of herself, and none of the Blacks have ever had any influence over her whatsoever. Before all this Tithe page nonsense, I'd promised Narcissa that I would keep an eye on Bella for her and make sure she didn't do anything unseemly, but I can hardly do that from the Faerielands," Lucius said, with a jovial, hopeless, shrug.

"Of course," Severus muttered.

"What do you say, then, old man? Think you could spend the summer at Malfeasant and play host a bit while I'm gone? You know, keep my fiancée entertained and her sister out of trouble? If you can, I'll make certain that a nice something shows up in your Gringotts vault, for expenses. And why don't you make a trip down to our tailors' in Sartor Alley, for some new things, dress robes and the like, you'll need them this summer. We've an account there, and I'm not worried, I know you're not the profligate sort. I'll tell them to expect you."

"I don't know. When would I have to show up?" Severus asked.

"I'm leaving in February, and the Blacks are showing up in early June. Just get there as soon as you can after the wedding – I'll have the house-elves get a room ready and a key made for you. Come on, cousin, it'll be fun. My parents miss you." Lucius leaned forward with a grateful, brotherly smile – "And you know there's no one other than you who I would really trust with Narcissa."

Yes, there was no one else Lucius would trust with Narcissa, because he knew that Narcissa liked him, but found him about as physically attractive as maggoty bread. Plus, Cousin Severus could be trusted to watch over Narcissa's continuing virtue with a zeal born out of what Lucius thought was his own thwarted adoration for her. Lucius's narcissism was so fecking predictable. But he could use some money, and it would be nice to have some new dress robes in time for the wedding.

"Well, I suppose I could do it," Severus said. "Do you need my Gringotts vault number?"

"Wonderful." Lucius smirked conspiratorially across the table at him. "I knew you'd never let me down, old man."

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The day of Evan's May wedding dawned rosy and glorious.

All was in order – the garden at the Rosier manor was set up with flower-bedecked, white draped tables set with fine china, crystal, and silver, the champagne was chilling, and an army of house-elves was putting the finishing touches on a sumptuous wedding feast. The guests were assembling in the village chapel for the ceremony, done up in their best spring dress robes, white tie on the men, hats and gloves and heirloom pearls on the ladies.

Severus met Evan in the anteroom at the front of the chapel, resplendent in the new robes the Malfoys' bespoke tailor had made up for him. While he often thought the practice of buying all one's clothes made to measure was the height of unnecessary self-indulgence, he had to admit they looked awfully smart, the smartest robes he had ever owned, and it was nice to have something to wear that actually fit him properly for a change.

"Hey, mate. Yes, definitely picked myself a prime best man – when you put on black dress robes, you make everyone else look frumpy, Snaples. I'm glad you're here, really am." Evan greeted him with a brilliant smile and a warm handshake. "By the Merlin, I can't believe this, it seems like yesterday we were kids at school."

The music started out in the chapel, and the two of them headed for the door. "This is the best day ever – I get to marry my girl with my best friend standing beside me. Just let me do the same for you sometime, eh?"

"Pah – there's no girl in this world good enough for me, you know that."

Evan beamed with smiles throughout the ceremony, looking happier than Severus had ever seen him. It did his heart good to see that someone in this big corrupt world was happy with his lot in life. Too bad the bride was such a materialistic and untrustworthy little shrew, but at least with Lucius in the Faerielands, she wouldn't be sneaking off with him at the reception.

In all, the wedding went off without a hitch – the groom was raptly happy and passionately in love, the bride deigned to look momentarily pleased and contented, and the best man bemusedly thought: I just hope the fucking you're getting is worth the fucking you're getting, my friend.

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Then Evan and Felina were pronounced husband and wife, and Evan escorted his bride down the aisle to the cheers and applause of all the guests. The guests filed out of the chapel on their way out to the Rosiers' for the wedding feast and cotillion to follow.

Severus was to be Narcissa Black's escort for the reception, so after the wedding, he headed into the chapel foyer to find her –

and there, he re-encountered Bellatrix Black.

Tall, sloe-eyed, curvaceous, queenly... Bellatrix Black. She was still rouging her lips deep red, and now she was wearing dark red velvet robes to match.

In contrast to the tight updos or intricately braided coiffures of the other women, Bella's long straight dark hair was unfettered, blowing in the wind from the chapel door. Same cream-white skin and delicately chiselled features, with deep-set dark eyes still capable of swallowing one completely. Severus knew the blonde, porcelain-pretty Narcissa Black was often considered to be the lovelier of the two sisters, but even at ten years old, Severus had found Narcissa haughty and sexless by comparison to the gypsyish sensuality of Bella.

Now, at eighteen, he still couldn't stop stealing glances at her, even as he offered Lucius's fiancée his arm to escort her to the wedding supper.

"Why, my little Severus Snape, how you've grown," Bellatrix said, when he appeared at Narcissa's elbow. Her dark eyes raked appraisingly over him from head to toes, and then she smiled, as though she approved of what she saw. And somehow she put an inflection into those words that left his cock half erect just hearing it.

"Hello, Miss Black," he said.

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Severus was not fond of parties in general and disliked the prosaic and unimaginative traditionalism of wedding receptions in particular – had it not been Evan's wedding, nothing in the world could have persuaded him to dance a waltz with the maid of honour or even stand up for the garter toss. (It had also been irksome to have to deliver the best man's toast to the new couple, knowing full well that Evan had been Felina's second choice of husband, but he pulled it off by truthfully praising Evan's virtues as a friend, and expressing his hopes that the years would find their happiness together increasing.) Then, after his duties were done, he withdrew to a vantage point at the side of the festivities with a drink, as per his usual custom.

This wedding, however, proved to have something more interesting to look at than he had ever imagined – because by the Merlin's hoary testicles, Bellatrix Black had grown into a bona fide stunner.

He had found her incredibly pretty when he was a boy at school, when he had been eleven to her seventeen, but six years had passed since his last glimpse of her, and now she seemed a creature of impossible beauty. Bella had to be somewhere in her twenties now, gotten a bit taller and a good bit shapelier since she left school, and the fluid cut and deep neckline of the sleeveless scarlet robes she wore showed that slender yet voluptuous figure off to perfection. She also wore long black satin opera gloves that set off her pale shoulders and slim arms, and had a ruby pendant tied around her neck on a black ribbon so that the ruby nestled in that tender hollow of her throat most fetchingly.

Bella had taken a seat near him after the champagne toast, sipping from her fluted glass. As she took her seat, she gathered up her long skirts to reveal even longer legs in sheer black stockings, and dainty feet in cunning little kitten-heeled black slippers... and then she crossed one oval knee over the other, revealing just a second's flash of embroidered lace stocking top before rearranging her skirts...

And then Severus suddenly noticed that he had gotten hard enough to make his teeth hurt, and had to shift position in his chair and resettle his robes so as to maintain his composure – and then he looked up and noticed Bellatrix looking right at him.

Then, he felt all colour drain from his face as he realised that she had caught him staring at her, seen his dull-eyed fascination, probably seen him crossing his legs and readjusting his robes against the sudden hardness between his thighs. Then his whole body was aflame with incredible embarrassment.

But to his complete surprise, her look held nothing of the brittle outrage he expected... no, she was gazing shamelessly into his eyes, with the tiniest, wickedest little smile on her face, as if to say, Yes, I know what you want, my dear, I'm on to you. And rather than angry... she seemed pleased. Watching him with her pink tongue hovering between her pearly teeth, those knowing, unshockable brown eyes alight with avidity.

He got up, nodded curtly to her – then turned and fled.