Awful Boy

Author's Notes: Just so you are all aware, I have set up a "tag" on my LiveJournal for "news" updates (such as what chapter I'm writing, any difficulties I'm having) regarding this story. It may be found here: http://cmwinters.livejournal.com/tag/eap . All updates will be posted publicly, so there's no need to "friend" me (and thus be subjected to my other nonsensical drivel) or create an LJ account, although should anyone wish to comment there, I will be happy to chat with you!

I am aware that the political situation regarding the fandom on LJ is very precarious at this point. Therefore, I have created accounts on GreatestJournal, InsaneJournal, DeadJournal and JournalFen, all with the same username (although I am not yet using those for anything other than exchanges and backup). If it becomes necessary to leave LiveJournal altogether, you will still be able to find updates on the story on the other sites.

Please be advised that the story arc for this chapter was already planned out before the publication of Deathly Hallows. As a result, while there may be parts of DH that I incorporate because they conveniently fit with this story, this story is not compliant after HBP.

This is mainly a continuation of the last chapter. Sorry it took so long to get out...between utterly failing at commas the last chapter and my muse moving out on me for this one, it was tough. Fear not, the next chapter is already complete (although after that . . . well, I am actually working on chapter 7, honest!).

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Severus' second day of school was significantly better than the first which gave him some measure of hope. After a normal morning and uneventful breakfast, he had an exhausting trek across the grounds to the greenhouses for his first Herbology class. As if traipsing across what felt like all of northern Scotland weren't enough, being Scotland, it was of course raining, and he got completely drenched. His cotton and wool blend cloak did not provide much protection from the elements, and it was only early September. He resolved to dress in layers from this point forward lest he turn into a human icicle later in the season.

Once he made it to the greenhouse, however, Professor Sprout greeted them at the door, casting drying charms on all the shivering students. She came across as maternal and sympathetic, and Severus took an immediate liking to her. Although he knew the answers to several of her questions, he nonetheless remained silent throughout the class, not yet understanding why his classmates resented it so thoroughly when he earned them points by answering questions correctly.

After lunch, he had a protracted break as his first Astronomy class was that night. Not yet tired, he decided to investigate the school library which he found even more impressive than the Prince family library. Severus was delighted and spent the entire afternoon there, eventually checking out the maximum number of books allowed. He immediately regretted the decision when he had to lug all of them back to the dungeons. If he had been getting on better with his dorm mates, he'd have been able to ask them for help.

After he returned from dinner, he went back to the dungeons for a nap. However, his excitement about his first Astronomy class prevented him from sleeping, and he ultimately chose one of his books to read. His parents had met at a neighborhood gathering to view a meteor shower, and his father had retained a casual interest in stargazing after Eileen died. Tobias had taken Severus out to a local park on occasion to point out some stars and the few planets he could recognise. And for the last several years, he made it a point to take Severus to the park when a meteor shower was anticipated and the weather was cooperating. Nobody in the Prince family except his mother had ever had more than a passing interest in Astronomy, and Severus was looking quite forward to studying the subject from a wizarding perspective. He'd taken his collapsible telescope out many a night, looking for the comet his father had dragged him out of bed one ridiculously early morning to see, but he hadn't been able to find it on his own and was absolutely delighted at the opportunity to ask the professor about it.

He went to bed that night in a much better mood than he had the two nights previous, excited to send a letter to his father the next morning during his break.

He shouldn't have been surprised the next morning when everything became significantly worse. Breakfast was fine, but the first class of the afternoon was Double Transfiguration which, to his dismay, was shared with the Gryffindors. He took a seat in the back of the room and tried to make himself inconspicuous when Potter and Black walked in, but they spied him immediately, eying him hungrily. He sat at an unoccupied table, looking warily at them and vaguely wondering about the amount of damage they could all do with the non-descript matchsticks that were lying on their desks. They sat in class for a few minutes, wondering where their instructor was. Not long after they all sat fidgeting, a tabby cat leapt off the deputy headmistresses desk and turned into the woman herself. She explained the process of transfiguration to them before instructing them to attempt to turn their matchsticks into needles. Severus tried, but no matter what he did, he couldn't get his matchstick to even change colour, much less change shape. He sat back to regard the matchstick in frustration, and suddenly something very sharp hit him in the eye.

Instinctively, his hand shot up to protect himself, and he felt something foreign in the side of his eye. He withdrew something small and cold and metallic, and through teary eyes he regarded what was undoubtedly a needle.

"DETENTION MISTER POTTER, MISTER BLACK!" snapped a furious Professor McGonagall.

"Sorry Professor, I just lost control of the needle!" pleaded an absolutely uncontrite Sirius Black as James Potter sniggered helplessly next to him.

"THIS is a Transfiguration class, Mister Black...levitation is done in Charms class. And five points from each of you! Miss Evans, will you kindly escort Mister Snape to the hospital wing? He needs to have his eye looked at."

"Of course, Professor," Lily said from next to him, quickly gathering up their books and grabbing his arm to guide him down the hall.

Madam Pomfrey excused Severus from classes for the rest of the day, and Lily sat with him until the end of her free period. He hadn't written the letter he'd meant to write to her, so she was still confused about why he was ignoring her and demanded an explanation. Cornered, he explained about his roommates beliefs and Lucius Malfoy's lecture. She frowned at the obvious rampant prejudice, but decided to drop it for now. Lily was reluctant to forgo his friendship based on the prejudices of a few people she didn't like and recommended they just send owls to each other before she left for her next class.

Severus spent the next couple of hours writing: one letter to his father and one to Lily. After a dinner tray was brought to him, he spent the rest of the night with his nose in The Compendium of Common Curses.

* * *

His second week of school went much the same as the first, with various minor changes and the somewhat major addition of his first flying class: yet another thing he discovered he was absolutely abysmal at and at which Potter was, of course, absolutely fantastic. This was exacerbated exponentially by Black casting an horrific jinx on the broom that Severus was supposed to be trying to ride. The broom bucked up right as he was trying to sit upon it, which had the result of it hitting him in an incredibly unfortunate spot. For what felt like the thousandth time since his passing through barrier at platform 9 3/4, his eyes watered, although he managed to remain standing. However, the pain was excruciating, and he was once again escorted to the hospital wing, this time by the flying instructor. After being treated by the clucking school matron, he laid down on his cot and read Jinxes for the Jinxed with fervour. He committed the counter-spell to memory before dinner.

The rest of the school year proceeded in much the same way, with Severus becoming increasingly hostile toward Potter and Black's escalating aggression, until they were close to all-out war in the corridors and classrooms. Severus' only solace was that while he attacked just as often and, truth be told, just as viciously, he was rarely caught by the faculty. As a result, he rarely received detention or lost house points. The same could not be said for his antagonists. He'd hoped that as his expertise in defending himself increased, their interest in him would decrease, but it only seemed to inflame them, Potter most especially.

By the time the school year had drawn to a close, Snape was exhausted and looking quite forward to seeing a friendly face without the constant threat of an unfriendly one around the corner. After the Leaving Feast, he managed to make it back to his dorm unmolested, a fact which genuinely surprised him. He slipped into the dorm unnoticed, heaved his trunk onto his bed, and emptied his wardrobe, haphazardly tossing his clothing onto the bed. With a half-relieved and half-weary sigh, he climbed onto the bed, drew the curtains, and began packing.

The morning dawned still and calm, an illusion which was nearly immediately broken by the horrified screech of Narcissa Black. Andromeda had eloped with her Hufflepuff Muggleborn boyfriend in the middle of the night, and by the time Severus got to breakfast, the entire school was abuzz with the gossip. He noted with no small satisfaction that Sirius Black appeared slightly greenish; he was obviously not keen on returning to the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black with such news on everyone's minds. Lucius Malfoy, now officially no longer a student, had arranged for his belongings to be picked up from the gates by his myriad of house-elves the night before and received special dispensation from the Headmaster to Disapparate the distraught and hysterical Narcissa directly to her parents home as per their urgently owled request. Severus found the distraction made it easy for him to slip into the train unmolested and secured a compartment near the back of the train, allowing a small glimmer of hope to persuade him that he'd been unnoticed.

He was relishing the relative peace and quiet and rocking slightly back and forth with the motion of the train when the door to the compartment slid open. He was on his feet in a defensive stance, his wand thrust forward and a curse forming on his lips before he recognised the visitor. "Oh. It's you," he said, but Lily wasn't able to discern if his tone was relieved or disappointed.

"You could just ask me to leave, you know," she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

"NO! No, please don't!" Severus insisted, the rush of adrenaline making him weary. He collapsed back onto the seat and waved at the one across from him. "Please. Sit down. I thought you were someone else."

The rest of the ride passed pleasantly enough, and as their distance from Hogwarts increased, Severus' tension decreased. Since his mother had first begun to train him in magic, he'd looked forward to attending Hogwarts. Yet his first year had been such an unmitigated disaster that he couldn't help but feel disappointed. He'd never have thought that he'd be looking forward to going to live in the Muggle world over the summer.

But at least he had his friendship with Lily to look forward to, and in the summer months, they'd have unrestricted time to spend with each other, he thought as the train was pulling into the station.

Spirits thus lifted, he levitated Lily's trunk off the rack for her and bade her to go ahead, as she was obviously excited to see her parents. He pulled his own trunk down and stepped off the train . . .

. . . straight into the cross-hairs of Sirius Black and James Potter.

Black apparently had a chip on his shoulder regarding his cousin's defection as he was in a towering temper. He flung a series of such vicious curses at Snape...who was caught entirely off-guard...that even Potter looked askance at him and grabbed his so-called best friend to restrain him. Black yanked himself away and stalked over to Snape, who was lying on the platform, bleeding, bruised, and covered in boils. "Don't you DARE get any ideas about Evans, you slimy bastard!" Black literally spat in his face before storming off in a red-faced huff.

Severus laid there a few moments, willing the world to stop spinning before gingerly hauling himself to his feet. He rose slowly and stood unsteadily, leaning hard on his trunk as he made his way to the barrier. Doing so made it rather difficult to walk. As he crossed through, he saw his father's worried features darken. "Wha' happen'd t'you?"

Severus just shook his head, and Tobias, recognising that the Muggle platform was neither the time or the place, grabbed his son's trunk and wrapped his free arm around him to help him back to the car.

For three hours of the four-hour drive home, Tobias let his son sit in a brooding silence, hoping Severus would explain. The language in the last letter he'd gotten from his son had sounded excited, yet his demeanour was a far cry from that. Although the boy had been reluctant to talk, Tobias needed to know what was wrong.

"Severus, I wan' ya ta tell me wha's happen'd."

"It doesn't matter," Severus replied sullenly after a long pause.

"It matt'rs t'me!" Tobias insisted, tearing his gaze away from the road for just a moment to fix his son with a severe glare.

"I got in a fight," Severus mumbled reluctantly.

"Wi' who?"

"Some boys from school."

"About wha'?" Tobias demanded.

"I don't know," Severus muttered.

"About WHA', lad?"

"I don't know, okay? I stepped off the train, and they attacked me. I don't KNOW!" Severus insisted and turned to look out the window.

Tobias eyed him for a moment before turning his attention back to the road. "It's not t'first time, eh."

"No. It's not."

Tobias sighed and navigated the car around the traffic circle from Market to High Street. The silence in the car deepened to a near suffocating presence as Tobias parked the car. He gave the housekey to Severus and wrangled the trunk out of the boot, then dragged it over the cobbled stones.

Severus had gone to the couch and was sitting down, staring at the filthy carpet in a daze. Although it had been many years since he'd seen it, Tobias recognised that look, and he didn't like it one bit. He knew he had to intervene, sooner rather than later.

"Severus, tell me wha' happen'd."

The boy sighed and crumpled. "It's nothing, Da," he insisted wearily.

"It's SOMETHIN'; yer upset. An' I wan' ta know why."

"They just . . . there's four of them, and they're always picking on me. I got a black eye, loosened two teeth, and I think I broke my nose on the train platform the first day of school. It's been like that since."

"Do ya KNOW 'em?" Tobias demanded after gaping at his son in shock for nearly half a minute.

"I know who they are . . . Potter and Black, they're purebloods; and Lupin is a half-blood and Pettigrew's a Muggleborn," Severus said with a defeated sigh.

"But they're not like . . . yer mam's cousins, or somethin' like tha'?"

"Oh. No," Severus mumbled, curling into a ball on the couch and resting his chin in his hand.

Tobias processed all this for a little bit and continued to question his son. "So wha' started it then?"

Severus' eyes flickered to his father. He sat up straight. "You remember that girl we met at Diagon Alley? At the wand shop?"

Tobias considered for a moment, trying to replay the scene in his head. "Pretty gal? Red hair?"

Severus nodded. "Her name's Lily. She's Muggleborn. Someone insulted her, and I jumped to her defence. That set them off." He sat for a few moments without saying anything. "It went downhill from there."

"I though' you were good at magic?" Tobias asked, genuinely confused.

"I am . . ." Severus agreed.

"Then wha's t'problem?"

"Well they're purebloods, and . . ." Severus began petulantly. Tobias interrupted.

"Are you 'onestly tellin' me they can out-magic ya by virtue of yer ancestry?"

"No, but . . .!" Severus protested before stopping himself. "There's four of them," he ended lamely.

"So they can best ya in a figh' 'cause there's more of 'em?"

"No, but . . ." Severus started again but couldn't really understand what he was trying to say. "It's complicated."

"I can' do magic, Severus; I need ya t'explain it to me."

Severus huffed in annoyance, more at his inability to articulate himself than at his father's demand for information. "It's like . . . if I cast a spell, then there's always someone to block it or trip me up or something."

"How?"

"What?" Severus said, turning confused eyes to his father. "What do you mean, how?"

"How are they blockin' ya?"

"With a shield, or more often a trip jinx or something . . . "

Tobias stared at his son, pondering. "But how do they know when yer gonna cast t'spell?"

"It doesn't matter, they do it anyway, Da!"

Tobias scowled. He could tell there was a communication difficulty but without knowing the material, he couldn't isolate it. In annoyance, he issued an order. "Cast a spell at t'wall."

"What?"

"Cast a spell at t'wall. Or at t'books, or something."

"What spell? Why?"

"Doesn't matter. Just cast one."

Severus frowned in confusion, but obediently made one of the books dance across the bookcase.

"There's yer problem," Tobias said, having seen it. Severus blinked, not following the logic at all. "You say t'spell, and ya move your wand in front of your body for the whole bleedin' world t'see. Yev gotta stop that. Don't tell 'em what yer gonna do to them, and don't let 'em see ya do't."

Severus slouched in defeat. "It doesn't work like that," he muttered.

"Then make it," Tobias insisted as if that settled the matter.

The next morning at breakfast, Tobias made a new request. He wanted Severus to prepare all the meals and set the table with magic. Severus protested that he wasn't supposed to be doing magic outside of school, but Tobias was unrelenting. Severus felt he had no choice but to oblige, so he set the table. He'd just finished levitating the plates from the cupboard to the table when he noticed Tobias staring at him intently. Severus set the plates down carefully, glancing apprehensively at his father, feeling unaccountably like he'd done something horribly wrong.

"How did you do tha'?"

"With magic?" Severus answered hesitantly.

Tobias frowned for a moment. That hadn't been the answer he wanted...they were back to their communication barrier. "Pick up t'dishrag," Tobias instructed, and with a muttered incantation and a swish and flick of his wand, Severus did and looked at his father. "Bring it over here," Tobias said, indicating the space above the table. Severus complied, a questioning look on his face. "Drop it." Severus moved to set the towel down, and Tobias thrust his hand in between the table and the rag. "NO! I didn't tell ya to set it down. I said ta drop it." Severus obliged, by now thoroughly confused. "How did you do tha'?"

"With magic?" Severus repeated, obviously confused. Tobias shook his head in frustration, and Severus chewed his lip. "I don't think I understand the question, sir."

"You said somethin'," he said, pointing over at the counter where the rag had originally lay, "and ya moved your wand. Then you brought it over here, an' when I told you to drop it, you just did. Ya didn't say anything, ya din't move the wand, ya just dropp'd it."

Severus blinked, then looked from his father to the rag and back again.

"Tell me again you can't do it," Tobias declared before tucking into his eggs.

Severus frowned at his father pensively, and the next time he went to Prince Hall, he made it a pointed mission to ask his grandparents about casting spells without speaking.

* * *

The morning of August thirty-first dawned, and Severus awoke earlier than usual. He wasn't particularly excited to get back to school and had had difficulty getting to sleep. Although once asleep, he usually slept soundly, this night he'd tossed and turned. He stared blankly at the wall for a moment, wondering what had woken him, when he was startled by a horrible strangled, gurgling sound.

Horrified, he grabbed his wand and dashed to the darkest corner of his room where he hid, trembling and straining his ears. There it was again...weaker this time...followed by a stifled moan in a voice that sounded frighteningly familiar. Torn, he crept to the door and pried it open carefully, willing the hinges not to squeal.

The hallway was dark, as was his father's room and the stairs, but a suspicious light shone weakly from underneath the kitchen door. The noise came again; to Severus, it sounded as he imagined it would if someone was sitting...no, bouncing...on the chest of an elderly dragon. But dragons weren't allowed, especially not in Muggle areas.

Still somewhat small for his age, Severus carefully tiptoed across the hall to the far side and grasped his wand in his left hand. He carefully placed one foot in front of the other, knowing where all the creaky floorboards were. Hugging the wall as much as he could, he stretched his right arm out to the opposite wall for balance. In this awkward position he was able to creep down the stairs and avoid the noisy steps.

He heard the sound again; it sounded more intense, more desperate, and not just by virtue of his closer proximity. And then again, there came the strangled moan. Someone was in grave trouble, and by the sound of that moan, it was his father.

Severus steeled himself on the far side of the door and ransacked his brain for the most damaging curse he knew. He listened at the door, desperate to discern the noise of whoever was clearly torturing his father, but heard nothing, not even any desperate pleas for mercy from Tobias, and that spurred him on. He pushed the door open, his shaking wand leading the way.

What he saw in the kitchen astonished his adolescent mind. Alone, Tobias Snape hunched over the kitchen sink, his legs shaking and obviously on the verge of giving out, his skin a sickly greyish-blue colour.

"Da?" Severus ventured tentatively, his own voice still clouded with sleep, despite the fact that he was wide awake.

"Sorry," Tobias wheezed. "I normally . . . make it . . . outside . . ." he gasped, his knees buckling. Severus barely managed to thrust the chair underneath him before he collapsed into it, too week to even hold his head up. His head lolled dangerously to the side as he panted shallowly, and Severus had a moment of panic. If his father collapsed onto the floor, Severus wasn't strong enough to raise him again.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothin'. . ." Tobias wheezed.

Severus gawked at him and at the heavily discoloured phlegm Tobias had hacked into the sink, then back at his father. Something was clearly wrong. "Why are you sick?" he asked, beginning to panic.

"Mill fever," Tobias wheezed, seeming to have to gasp twice as long after for every syllable he uttered. "Or woolsorter's. It's always like this in t'morning. I'll be fine," he insisted weakly.

Severus glanced at the clock and did some quick mental calculations. He needed to be on the train by eleven, which meant they had to leave by seven, and it was five-thirty. Confused, he lowered his wand. "I can take the bus," he offered hesitantly, entirely unconvinced that his father was going to be in any condition to drive him to London in the first place, and completely unconvinced the man would survive the trip there and back.

"No," Tobias protested feebly. "I'm fine. I'll be fine," he gasped. "Jus' . . . make some tea."

Severus did, but four hours later found him dragging his trunk onto the cobbled stones in front of number 49 Spinners End and raising his wand hand.

* * *

Severus' first day of the second year of school went much the same as the first with the minor addition of one of the first years asking him if he was "from the Yorkshire Snapes." Severus scowled at him, thinking this was none of the boy's business, but agreed...a response which had all of Slytherin house gazing at him with renewed respect. "Wow," breathed another first-year. "I didn't know any of that line survived!"

"Well, now you know," Severus sneered and stalked off to his dorm.

The rest of the term proceeded much like the previous one, and one day just after the Christmas holidays ended, Severus was leaving Professor Flitwick's office when he heard the voice of James Potter echoing down the hall. He immediately spun about and dashed down the corridor, in no mood to confront the fearsome foursome, but as he was headed away from Potter, he heard Black's voice coming from the new direction. Doubling back again, hoping to make it to a side corridor, Severus backtracked, but as he peered carefully around the corner, he saw Potter and Lupin were too close for him to avoid. Frantic, he turned back the way he came, fearing he'd be in the middle of both Potter and Lupin, and Black and Pettigrew, when the wall next to him dissolved.

He'd been in this corridor countless times and had never seen the door which now appeared. Black's laughter, close enough to sound as if he were about to round the corner, spurred him on, and he darted through the door without a second thought.

The door sealed behind him, and he found himself in a room even larger than the Great Hall with windows near the ceiling bearing witness to the cloudy skies outside. The room was full of teetering and unstable labyrinthine columns of mismatched objects that clearly spanned the gamut of Hogwarts' long history.

"Wow," he breathed and turned around, taking in the spaciousness of the room. "A place to hide! Now all I need is to be able to see when the coast is clear," he muttered to himself, and stared in astonishment as the wall shimmered and seemed to fade, but the veins and imperfections in the wall were still there.

It resembled nothing so much as a ghost of a wall. Quite frankly it reminded him of the fairy tales his mother told him about the perfect Invisibility Cloak.

He blinked.

Lily was going to LOVE this!

He sent her an owl as soon as he left the room.

* * *

The end of his second year dawned, and Severus was none too glad to see it. As he piled all his belongings onto his bed and leaned back against the wall to start stowing them into his trunk, he thought back to a conversation he'd had with Lily only two weeks before, during a study session in the disappearing room.

"How are you getting home?" she'd asked him with no preamble.

Feeling awkward, he'd tilted his head. "From King's Cross?"

"Yeah."

"Last year, my father came to get me," he'd said, realising as he said it that as ill as Tobias was at the beginning of the year, he wasn't likely to be able make the trip again. The whole conversation reminded Severus of the need to owl his father to tell him he'd take the Knight Bus home. He'd also have to ask his grandparents about setting him up a Portkey or some other method of transportation.

"Yeah, but I didn't see him at the beginning of the year," Lily had said, looking at him intently, interrupting his thoughts.

"The foreman wouldn't let him off," Severus had said, looking her square in the eye, the lie rolling as smoothly off his tongue as if he'd practiced it.

"Oh," she said, sounding sad. "Well, my parents are coming to get me and I don't live far from you, so I'll ask them if they can bring you, too."

Severus had perked at that. The Knight Bus was to be avoided at all costs and whenever possible, he'd thought to himself, turning slightly greenish at the memory.

"I'll ask," she'd assured him with a beaming smile, "but I'm sure it won't be any trouble."

His reverie was interrupted when Rosier and Avery stumbled in, murmuring to each other.

Severus had grown up in a fairly quiet environment, and as such his hearing was attuned to minor differences. He'd learned the variations of all his classmates voices within a week, and his own dorm mates had long since been committed to memory. Although he hadn't initially made it a point to eavesdrop, he quickly discovered it was a useful means of obtaining information and listened more out of habit than curiosity.

"So, what do you know?" Avery asked.

"Nothin', but you know dad won't let me join HIM yet," Rosier said petulantly. "Says I'm not old enough. Load of tosh if you ask me; they were together at our age, you know!"

"Yeah," Avery muttered. "Mine either. You think they'll let us tag along for anything?"

"I dunno...mine probably won't. Dad said the last time he offed a blood traitor, they were in some horrid Muggle mill town of all things, and that even being there made him sick!" Rosier's voice was muffled, as if he were rummaging through his wardrobe.

"MILL town?" Avery gasped, horrified, as Snape, even more horrified, froze where he sat, not even daring to breathe. "Why would they go there?"

"Cos she was holed up with some Muggle. Dunno what happened to them, though; Rab says they only got the blood-traitor, but . . ." Rosier's trailed off as its owner left the room with Avery in tow.

Severus didn't sleep that night...every time he drifted off he jolted awake to fresh nightmares that he was sharing a room with the children of the very men who had killed his mother. That those same men were continuing to search for him. By the time dawn rolled around, he was exhausted and so jittery he was ready to hex everything in sight.

Not trusting himself to break bread with his dorm-mates, he feigned sleeping in (with his wand clenched tightly in his fist under the covers) and ensured he made his way to the train unseen. He was standoffish and snappy to Lily for the entire train ride. As exhausted and overwrought as he was, the steady rumbling and rhythmic rocking of the train, and later the car, nearly put him to sleep on several occasions, only to have him jerk into a hyper-aware frenzy. By the time the Evans family dropped him off, he was bordering on hysterical, although he was doing a good job of hiding it.

That all changed the moment Tobias opened the door to greet his son.

"You animal!" Severus shrieked, pushing his way past his father and darting toward the stairs. "YOU COWARD!" he said, spinning about. "If you'd have defended her like a proper wizard father would have, she'd still be here!" Severus screamed, dashing up the stairs in a sobbing frenzy.

He didn't come down for two days.

* * *

Lily Evans lay sprawled over a bed in a brightly lit room. Hunched over the third year Defence Against the Dark Arts essay she was trying to write, she scowled at it as if it had offended her. None of the books she had held any information on Dementors, and it was information she required to complete this essay.

It was the first Saturday of the Easter holidays, and as she was at home instead of at Hogwarts she didn't have access to any more books, which were safely ensconced hundreds of miles away in the school library. Frustrated, she went downstairs and put on a jacket. "Mum, I need to talk to Severus about our assignment," she called out.

"All right, dear!" her mother said brightly.

Lily strode confidently to the front door, smiling sweetly in response to the suspicious glare of her older sister. Petunia was perched primly on the sofa, very stiffly holding a copy of The Daily Telegraph, in which Lily knew full well a copy of The Sun was hidden. Ignoring her sister's horrified gasp at her her intended destination, Lily slipped outside and walked briskly down the cobbled street, weaving in and out of the streets with a decided purpose before coming to the end of a street and knocking on the door.

A hook-nosed man clad in dingy undershorts, a greying t-shirt and ragged white socks answered the door with a scowl. "Hullo, Mister Snape, is Severus home?" she asked. He grunted and waved her inside, then shouted "LAD! GET DOWN HERE!" before collapsing into a coughing fit.

Lily looked at Tobias with no small measure of concern as she stepped into a tiny, dingy, dimly lit sitting room, full of what appeared to be second-hand furniture scattered haphazardly on threadbare carpet. Once Tobias caught his breath, he summarily ignored her, reclining in a battered armchair and resting his feet carelessly on a fragile looking table. He paged negligently through a ragged newspaper, breathing shallowly with a rasping wheeze. Lily smiled when she recognised Severus' small, cramped handwriting on the crossword.

In the bedroom above, Severus started at the harsh call, which caused him to miss the fly he'd been aiming at. Instead of hitting the fly, the red jet of light bounced off the wall and rebounded into the mildewed ceiling, knocking a chunk of plaster down. Giving the lazily circling bug a glare, he sighed and rose from the lumpy bed he was lying on and made his way past a hard-backed chair. He slunk down the uneven stairs into the room below. "Yes, sir?" he asked, a cross look on his face.

"Don't take that sullen tone with me, y'ungrateful git. Yev a caller!" he said, gesticulating toward Lily with an angry scowl. "Teenagers," he wheezed under his breath.

Snape leaned his head forward to see around the edge of the staircase, and his expression lightened. "Lily! What a pleasant surprise!" he said, as if she didn't look entirely out of place in his home. Snape walked over to her, muttering an extremely insincere sounding "thank you" to his father on the way.

"Hi, Severus. Were you busy; did I interrupt anything?"

"Nothing that I cannot do later . . . Why? What do you need?"

"I was wondering if you could help me with my assignment."

Severus turned back to the older man in the recliner. "Sir, may I . . . ?" he queried formally.

Tobias only grunted again in response and waved his hand dismissively. He'd never taken his nose out of the paper. Severus shrugged and grabbed his travelling cloak from the hook by the door. He barely caught his father's derisive, "well, leas' he's got t'interest in girls thing straight. . . . " as he pulled the door shut behind them.

The two of them cast a wary glance at the sky which was threatening rain and hurried back to Lily's home. They arrived none too soon as it began spitting just as they turned the corner, and the deluge started in earnest just as they cleared the threshold. Lily turned a speculative eye on Severus, who just smirked.

"Good afternoon, Missus Evans, Mister Evans," he said politely. He nodded curtly to Lily's sister and was treated to Petunia burying her face in the paper after glaring at him as if he not only looked bad, but smelled bad.

Lily saw the look too and leaned over to whisper in her friend's ear. "Don't take it personally; she doesn't like wizards at all. She looks at me like that every time I wear wizard clothing, too. . . ."

He shrugged. He wasn't about to take anything personally when it came from anyone ignorant, particularly one so stuck-up and obsessed with her superiority that she was rude to her own family. His own father was uneducated but not rude to Severus' wizarding relatives like Petunia was being to Lily, and Tobias didn't even have the benefit of a good upbringing.

"You are having difficulty with something?" Severus asked, not wishing to overstay his welcome.

"Yes. I'm doing the essay on dark creatures, but I seem to have forgotten to check out a book which explains what exactly a Dementor is."

"Ah," he said. "You have a book; they are listed briefly in Fantastic Beasts. But in any case, they guard the wizarding prison, Azkaban," he said, following her dutifully to her room as he had every time they'd worked together over holidays. "They are somewhat like wraiths," he elaborated softly as they headed up the stairs.

"You mean, like a ring-wraith?" she asked, giggling.

"I beg your pardon?"

"A ring-wraith. You know, a Nazgûl from The Lord of the Rings?"

He shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about, sorry."

"Oh, well," she said, grinning. "It's a Muggle book."

"Ah, I see," he said, holding the door open for her politely. "The Dementors are considered to be the darkest and most dangerous of all magical creatures. They feed off human emotions, and their most deadly weapon is their Kiss, whereby they suck the soul of their victim out of the mouth."

"THAT'S HORRIBLE!" Lily shrieked, flinging herself down on her bed.

"It is."

"How do you. . . What do you . . . Yikes!"

"You can repel them with a Patronus, provided you are capable of casting one, but to kill one is another matter," he said and straddled the desk chair, draping his cloak over the back of it as he leaned to face her. He explained nearly everything he knew about Dementors.

About twenty minutes later, Lily's mother came in bearing a lunch tray with sandwiches and tea. "I made ham, cheese, and cucumber...will one of those do for you, dear? If not, I can make you something else," Mrs. Evans said with a pleasant smile.

Snape blinked at her, for a moment not understanding her. "Ah, yes, that will be just fine. Thank you very much," he said, finally, remembering his manners. He blinked at her as she retreated.

"What was that all about?" he asked Lily, bewildered.

"It's lunchtime, Severus!" Lily laughed. "Here, silly, have a sandwich. Which do you prefer?"

"I have no preference," he said, taking the sandwich nearest him and biting appreciatively into the fresh bread, which was still soft and warm from the oven.

"So, Severus," Lily asked him between bites, "where do the Dementors come from?"

"They are an accident. They are created when someone tries, and fails, to make a Horcrux."

"What's a Horcrux?"

"A Horcrux is an inanimate object, but, well . . . you encase part of your soul in the Horcrux, and it makes you immortal. But they are considered the darkest of all dark magic."

Lily raised her eyebrows, clearly captivated. "Why?"

"Well, you have to kill someone first," he said, thinking. "And after that, it's very complicated. There is a spell, but I don't know it. And there are some who believe that the spell may only be cast by a Parselmouth."

"Slytherin was a Parselmouth, right? It's the language of snakes?"

"Yes. But it's not a language that can be taught or learned; it must be passed down genetically."

Lily snorted scornfully. "Leave it to Slytherin to make a spell to ensure immortality that would eliminate Muggle-borns from the pool of eligibility."

Snape sighed. "Lily, that isn't fair. The original Horcrux itself was an accident; it was not originally dark magic."

Lily frowned. "That doesn't make sense. What do you mean? How is it dark magic now, but it wasn't when Slytherin did it? And anyway, you said you have to kill someone to do it. How is that not dark magic?"

"Slytherin didn't do it, his grandfather Ambrosius did. Ambrosius was conducting a lengthy and complicated experiment, and the experiment itself was interrupted by an invasion of the local Muggles who had been stirred up by the village priest. Unbeknownst to anyone, the priest was actually a Muggle-born wizard, but had some fanatical attitude that his magic was 'holy' and that traditional wizards were 'evil'."

Lily gasped in sympathy. "Sounds typical, though . . ." she said, remembering her History of Magic lessons.

Severus nodded before continuing with his story. "They succeeded in killing Ambrosius' mother-in-law. But apparently when they tried to kill Slytherin's newborn son, the infant's mother...who had not yet delivered the afterbirth...leapt in front of her son. She managed to invoke abaskantos, an ancient maternal protection, and it ensured the Muggles wouldn't be able to harm him."

"You can cast such a spell?!" Lily asked incredulously.

"Me? Of course not!" Snape blinked at her, his expression vacillating between astonished and offended. "I'll admit that I apply myself at non-verbal and wandless magic, but that's not a spell I will ever be able to cast. It's a women's spell, and even you would not be able to cast it unless you have already had a child."

"Really? Why?"

Snape nodded solemnly, and shrugged. "It's a women's spell," he repeated. "And you can only cast it on your own child. The caveat being, of course, that you lose your own life, but . . . in some cases, some people consider that to be acceptable."

Lily pondered that for a minute, then nodded. "So, back to how the Horcrux was an accident?"

"Ah, yes. Ambrosius arrived on the scene as his wife jumped in front of what matches a description of a primitive Killing Curse cast at his child, which sacrificed her own life in the process. In his rage he dispelled them, but the combination of the experiment he was conducting and his own revenge against the invaders created a completely accidental Horcrux. A piece of his soul was lodged in his wife's wand."

"And how did they find this out?" Lily asked.

"Years later, Ambrosius tried to take his own life and disappeared," Severus elaborated, scowling as if the very concept was repulsive to him. "But since he had created this Horcrux, however accidentally, he returned some time later in apparently perfect health. Salazar's father, and later Salazar, spent many years researching the issue with Ambrosius before they were finally able to determine what had happened."

"What did they do?"

"They destroyed the Horcrux, and Ambrosius was able to die in peace and stay dead, which is what he'd wanted to begin with."

"How did he die?"

"Ambrosius?" Severus asked, and when Lily nodded, he continued. "Salazar killed him, using Ambrosius' own wand and the Killing Curse, which Ambrosius had learnt from the Muggle-born priest who had attempted to cast it at his infant son," he said with a shrug.

"Slytherin killed his own grandfather? How horrible!" Lily shrieked in shock.

Snape sighed again. "Ambrosius was a broken man and had been since his wife had died. By all accounts, they were a loving and devoted couple. He had wanted to die when she did, but could not leave his infant son to fend for himself in an unfriendly world. Once his son was grown and able to fend for himself, Ambrosius lost all purpose. Salazar took pity on the old man and did him a favour."

"How do you know all this? I thought your whole family had been sorted into Ravenclaw until you came along?"

"They were. There was a book in my great-grandfather's library. He was Headmaster of Hogwarts, you know, so he had access to materials not commonly in circulation, particularly about the Founders. I'm not entirely sure how that particular story ended up in the collection, however, as it ended after Salazar left Hogwarts."

"So the Dementor, then . . . ?"

Snape flinched. "The Dementor . . . is the by-product of a failed attempt at creating a Horcrux, as I said. Since the sole way to create a Horcrux is to split your soul, which you may only accomplish by killing another, they are thought to be searching for the missing pieces of themselves. This is why they feed on the souls and emotions of others." He paused for a long moment, unsure of how to continue, or indeed if he even should, then continued slowly. "I believe . . . that there has been some reconstructionist history, as any text published within the last five hundred years or so specifically states it must be an act of pre-meditated murder to achieve the splitting of the soul necessary to create a Horcrux. However, this may be proactively discouraging in nature, as there is some evidence to indicate that it is simply the act of killing, even in self-defence, that splits the soul. Few wizards...even so-called 'dark wizards'...are willing to risk damaging their soul for any reason, including immortality. Granted, typically...although not always, and certainly not in Ambrosius Slytherin's case...the act of killing that accomplishes the soul-splitting is an act of murder. And it is in this spirit that the Dementor is created."

Lily gaped at him, face ashen. "Surely not so many people have tried to make themselves immortal that there are enough Dementors to guard Azkaban!" she whispered hoarsely. It wasn't a statement, though; it was a question.

He closed his eyes and, at first, wouldn't meet her eyes. His chin propped in his hand, he ran a long finger over his thin lips. "No," he finally answered softly. "But hate begets hate . . . and they have apparently figured out how to breed."

"URCK!" Lily yelped, hands flailing slightly as if to shake off a spider's web.

"It may only be a certain strain of Dementor that is breeding, though."

"Strain?" Lily yelped. "There are 'strains'?!"

"Depending on how badly the attempt goes, it is possible to end up with the soul entirely outside the body...which may result in the Dementors that started the breeding."

"And the body then has no soul?"

Snape shook his head.

"So. . . the body dies? Right?" Lily sounded desperate when Severus didn't answer her immediately.

Snape shook his head again. "Not always." He took a deep breath and continued softly. "Sometimes, there is the breeding Dementor . . . and an Inferius. Although, that is not the only way to create an Inferius."

"I have the feeling I will regret asking this," Lily opined, swallowing hard. "But what is an Inferius?"

Snape paused for a long, tense moment before continuing slowly. "An Inferius . . . is a corpse that has been reanimated to do a dark wizard's bidding. Typically, when the Inferius is created, it does the bidding of the wizard that animated it. However, in the case of an Inferius that is created by a failed Horcrux attempt, it takes a great deal more to control them since the wizard that created the Inferius in question now has separated body and soul and cannot control either segment. It takes an exceptionally powerful wizard to control one of those at all. They're nearly indestructible. To kill them, they usually have to be burnt, more or less 'alive', although, as they are apparently lacking in any sentience, it is somewhat unlikely that they know the difference. It has been said that witnessing such an event is traumatic, however, because they scream quite convincingly. Salazar Slytherin cremated his grandfather's body to prevent just such an occurrence. And there are some who believe that such an Inferius can only be truly destroyed with Fiendfyre, which is notoriously difficult to control."

"That's disgusting, Severus! Why on earth would you want to KNOW about such things?" she said, her nose wrinkled with distaste.

"You've heard the phrase 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'?" he asked, then continued when she nodded. "One of the things I've learned, Lily, is that if you do not learn about something, then you cannot control it. And if you cannot control something, then someone else can use it to control you. It is, after all, what the Ministry is doing, even as we speak."

* * *

"Ooooh! You should have heard that PRAT Sirius Black!" Lily raged as she stomped into the Room of Requirement in a fury. Severus turned a bemused eye toward her and watched her admiringly. Her fury always stirred up such fascinating passion in her.

"Hm?" he queried gently. For all that Lily was magnificent when angry, Severus didn't like her anger directed at him.

"WELL!" she said, flinging herself down on the sofa, her bag of books falling in a heap beside her. "We had our careers appointments with Professor McGonagall today . . . do the Slytherins do that too?" she said, suddenly broken out of her rant to look with concern at Severus.

"Of course," he replied mildly, wondering what got her into such a towering mood.

"WELL!" she declared again, as if she simply hadn't interrupted her own stride. "TODAY, Sirius Black decides he wants to be a teacher! Do you have any idea why, Severus?" she demanded, turning wild eyes on him so abruptly that tendrils of her flaming hair whipped about and slapped her in the face, which she appeared completely ignorant of.

"I cannot imagine. He doesn't seem to apply himself to his studies all that diligently . . ."

"'Be brilliant, wouldn't it, Prongs? Could get all the girls to show me a little favour in exchange for good grades, if you know what I mean. Only the pretty ones though'," she mimicked in a sing-song voice. "GOD! I HATE him so much" she practically shrieked in outrage through gritted teeth, her face having gone as red as her hair.

"If you are looking for someone to extol the virtues of Sirius Black, I am afraid you have come to the wrong place," Severus said with a wry smirk. "What did Professor McGonagall say?"

"Oh! Professor McGonagall didn't hear him, of course; she'd already closed the door to her office. Merlin only knows how I made it through my own appointment."

"So what did you decide on?" he asked, genuinely curious and also wanting to change the subject. He didn't like Potter OR Black and had no desire to discuss or even think about them if not absolutely necessary. He had quite enough of them when he couldn't get away from them.

"I'm not sure. Maybe curse-breaking!" she said with an excited gleam in her eyes. "Or . . . I dunno, there's always St Mungo's and the Ministry," she said, sounding not at all enamoured of the idea. Then, after a pause, she looked at him earnestly and asked, "You know what I'd really like information on?" He shook his head. "The Unspeakables."

He chuckled. "Well, that's not going to happen, but my mother's cousin Broderick is an Unspeakable. If you'd like, I can introduce you, over summer," he said, taking a sip of water from the glass at his elbow. "He probably won't be able to tell you anything about what he does, but you might get an idea of whether the field is right for you or not."

"Oh, Sev! That'd be great! Would you really?"

He shrugged. "Of course. There's a Portkey at my house that'll take us to my grandparents' house, and we can talk to him there. Or, you know, we could take the Knight Bus . . ." he trailed off, pondering. "I'll owl him."

She gifted him with a brilliant smile. "Thanks!"

He gave her a shy smile back. "Not a problem. Anytime."

---

Author's Notes:

There is a Snape castle in Thirsk, Yorkshire, not terribly far from Huddersfield. http://www.ecastles.co.uk/snape.html and http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/slhg/page2.phtml . For the purposes of this story, the first-year student that asks Snape about his origins is of the opinion that Snape castle was built and/or owned by a pureblood wizard family with the same name, but the family is thought to have died out. Severus isn't really related, but he IS from Yorkshire, so . . .

Comet Bennet was a naked-eye (bright as the full moon!) dual-tail comet visible in the early morning in late 1969 and early 1970. I have Severus' first year being 1970 at Hogwarts, and the comet was no longer visible with the naked eye in May, but I imagine it could still be seen with a telescope. http://www.drsky.com/img/bennet.jpg (Thanks to GaryF for giving me the comet info!)

A couple of you have asked about Tobias' health. He's ill, and his illness is progressing. And the reason he doesn't know *what* he has is because he's actually got a mixture of two different ailments. Byssinosis, aka "Brown Lung" or "Mill Fever", is a respiratory illness caused by exposure to cotton dust at a cotton mill. However, as I understand it, Yorkshire is almost exclusively wool mills, and you don't get byssinosis at a wool mill. You get Anthrax, aka "Woolsorters" disease. The thing is, anthrax has an entirely different connotation in the US than it does in the UK. So . . . what we (*) decided was, Tobias was born and raised in Huddersfield and went to work in a cotton mill in Manchester, and then when that industry collapsed he moved back to Huddersfield to work in the wool mill there.

(*) - by "we", I mean Whitehound recommended it and I realised she's a bloody genius and ran with it. *ahem*

If you'd like to educate yourself for some strange reason on millworker diseases, here are two links from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byssinosis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax

Rosier and Avery don't know the name of the witch their fathers killed because their fathers never mentioned it to them. Not exactly the type of thing you'd tell a four or five year old, you know. And by this point the fathers have probably forgotten, owing mainly to having no particular reason to commit it to memory.

Some of you may have seen parts of this chapter in one-shots I had up in various places; this was always going to be part of this story. I made some edits to it but the part about Petunia overhearing Severus talk about Dementors is a theory I had nearly two years ago.

As for the story of Ambrosius Slytherin, yes, that story is coming eventually, although I will likely do a great deal more to this story first. It's all planned out though. And I've a co-writer for that one. :)

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," copyright Arthur C. Clarke, 1961.

As always, thanks to my fabulous beta team, Ellie, Kay, Jean and Marnae, for making this chapter into something that doesn't have to drive the mods batty with errors, non-compliancy, nonsense, bad plotting, bad Britspeak, and a complete lack of comma comprehension.

Apologies to the JRR Tolkein estate for the kidnapping of the Nazgûl. I gave them back unharmed, honest!

And to all my valued readers, I apologise most profusely for the delay. The third week of July I was entirely too hyped up about the Order of the Phoenix movie, and then I was hyped up about Deathly Hallows, which I was horribly disappointed with on many levels. I was in a severe state of depression for a month after that (over the book) before I could write again. Then one of my betas had a family emergency to deal with, and another had a lot of "real life issues" crop up. In fact, I haven't heard from one of my betas in almost a month, so I decided to submit without her. :(

And believe me, you don't want to see this unbeta'd!

Thanks for RobisonRocket for the final touch-up and many, many thanks to my reviewers.