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[ art by sigune, posted here ]
A lone flame flickers, its light casting a glow across the loft, streaking through dust and dirt alike. Severus sits, back to the wall and book in hand. It crinkles beneath his touch, small, slim fingers tracing the curve of a cauldron; thick black lines are painted across the page, the image displayed almost overflowing with a deep and simmering red. He scans the text as quick as he can.
A potion. Poison. Its name listed in big, black letters along the top. The Brew of Berserker. Effect: anger inducing. Rage to the point of delirium. Lethal dosage approx. 670ml. Ingredients: aconite, hellebore, bulbadox essence, moonseed, mint, pearl dust—
“Out of it!”
His mother’s voice, clipped and coarse. Never a gentle woman, Eileen. Well. Not really. Severus snaps the book shut on reflex, the edge of his finger catching between the pages, paper slicing through skin. He hisses, quick and quiet, and brings his hand to his mouth to suck the blood away.
“Tea time,” Eileen says. Her forehead is furrowed, mouth downturned. Severus knows there’ll be a discussion later. “Your father’s home.”
He swallows the instinct to sigh, knows better than to let it escape. The book is tucked back into its place, a chest of his mother’s old things hidden in the backend of the loft: leather bound books with glittering spines and frayed pages, faded parchment scattered across boxes, vials yellowed and dusty and filled with things he can’t name. Her special things, from a time before: an endless source of conflict.
Eileen’s head disappears from the loft’s entrance, and Severus scrambles to his feet, careful to blow the candle out before he dashes out the opening, hands wiping dust and spit on too-small trousers as he follows his mother’s step.
---
He’s right about the later. It comes as a guise of putting him to bed, his mother’s hand firm on his shoulder as she leads him upstairs, away from his father: already half a bottle in, breath smelling of cheap whiskey and voice starting to slur as it teeters the edge of irritable and mad. Severus counts the steps as he takes them, goes over what he’d read before. One, aconite. Two, hellebore. Three, bulbadox essence…
Eileen waits until they’re out of his father’s earshot to speak—does it often, Severus has noticed, caution increasing as the years go by. He’s seen the wand she keeps hidden in the kitchen: thin and long and curved at the handle, carved of light cedar with a core of unicorn hair. He’s read about what witches can do. There’s no need to be cautious, he thinks. Not if she’d just use it.
“How many times do I have to tell you…”
Four, moonseed. Five, mint. He’s circled back to hellebore by the time they reach his room, Eileen’s voice still hissing at him. He makes for the door but the hand on his shoulder stops him. The grip tightens, fingers digging against the fabric of his shirt: his mother’s blouse, old and torn, stained yellow.
“Listen to me, Severus,” she says, her voice cold, hard, warning.
He stops and turns, arms circling his torso: defiant. “I am,” he lies.
“You’re not,” says Eileen. She can see through him in ways his father can’t, Severus thinks. Her blank, black stare more unnerving than his father’s screams. “I don’t like repeating myself, boy. I’ve told you to leave the chest alone, I expect you to listen. Not everything in it is safe.”
A scoff tickles his throat. “Fine,” he tells her, the word forced through his teeth.
He used to argue, claim that there was nothing else to do, that the chest was the only interesting thing in the whole house. He knows better, now. Has learnt.
Forgiveness over permission.
Eileen sighs, an air of resignation about her. “Straight to bed,” she says, watching as he crosses the threshold of his room. “We’ll be planting more thyme tomorrow.”
He pretends to do as he’s told, impatient as he waits, listens, tracks his mother’s step out of the hall and down to the kitchen. It’s only once he knows Eileen is gone that he shuts the door and pulls the book from beneath his pillow.
---
Notes, 1967 (new)
09/11/1967:
Found another of Mam’s books: Veiled Poisons & How to Spot Them. Read about the Brew of Berserker. (Dark red, mint taste – makes drinker angry. Thoughts: Nothing special.)
Got caught (again). Told to stop sneaking to the loft (won’t). Promised we’d plant more herbs tomorrow (uncertain).
Jar of cockroaches: up to fifteen.
———
There’s a fireplace in the living room, shoved on the left-hand wall and flanked by two threadbare armchairs, their golden-cream colour faded along the cushions. It’s only small, enough to heat the room on a good day. Severus sits in front of it now, arm outstretched with his mother’s book beside him: Spells, suitable for ages 10-12 printed across the front. He’s been making his way through the list, his mother teaching him in his father’s absence: A bargaining chip. Be good, she’d say, and we can…
Today he does it alone, the book flipped open to first year spells. Try something practical, he’d been told, and so he’d nicked a few wood shavings from the neighbours’ lot (and not from the coal stocked near the privy out back, lest his father find out) and thrown them amongst the pitiful pile of ash in the fireplace.
Incendio, he reads. The Fire-Making Charm, used to conjure a jet of flames. He’d done it by accident once, years ago, in a fit of anger, the corner of his bedsheets catching alight as he’d whinged and whined, wanting to stay awake. They’d been destroyed in seconds, his mother too slow to act. His father had made him sleep on the floor for a week.
Severus shakes away the memory and focuses on what’s in front of him, on the chipped, splintered cuts of wood and the way they fall over each other, calling to him. Incendio, he thinks, his eyes narrowed to slits. Incendio. Incendio!
Nothing happens. The wood doesn’t catch; his body is void of the usual tingle of magic, the addictive current that seems to thrum through his veins. He tries again, imagines bright, blinding flames, the room flooded with warmth.
“Get away from the fire,” Eileen calls. Severus hears her approaching, knows the soft, careful cadence of her step: so unlike his father’s. “Your dad’ll be home any minute.”
“But I can do it,” Severus says. Murmured, distant, assured. I know I can, he thinks. If I can do it accidentally—
“Bloody in love with that book,” he hears his mother say. She’s watching him, now, he can tell. Can feel it. If he turns, he thinks, she’ll be leaning against the doorframe with a cuppa in her hand. “Don’t make me tell you twice.”
Tell me all you want, he thinks. He’s been trying too long to give up now. Incendio. He touches his hand to the firewood, soft ash clinging to his fingers and staining the skin, palm darkened and fingernails dirty. He mutters the spell under his breath. Incendio. Incendio. The irritation helps, the feeling of inadequacy. It brings his magic out: makes it leak.
You need to learn control, his mother had said, not a week ago, when he’d told her of the red-headed girl from the other side of the river, of how he’d made a branch snap in his anger. Incendio. You should be glad I’m trying, he thinks. Incendio.
A spark erupts, yellow-orange and faint. He utters the spell again, eyes wide in fascination as fire finally catches: each splinter of wood lighting one after the other, the small ball of light growing and growing until the flames erupt, red, orange, yellow twisting and arching and radiating warmth. He turns, looks back to Eileen, his mouth stretched in a grin, a little ball of light expanding in his chest: pride, the addictive ardour of accomplishment. It warms him more than the fire does.
The feeling doesn’t last long. (Never seems to.)
“The book—” warns Eileen, as the front door bangs open. There’s only seconds for Severus to realise what’s going to happen before it does.
He turns back to find embers creeping along the hearth, the edges of his mother’s book catching alight. He feels his father’s step behind him, hears his mother fetch her wand. He scoots away from the fire, the flames growing while whatever happiness he’d felt drains: his pride replaced with cold, panicked dread.
“I—” he starts, but it’s futile. Tobias’ hand closes on his collar, the fabric cutting against his throat. Shut it, it means. Or else.
“What have I bloody told you—”
———
“You wrote all of this?”
Lily is looking at him, her head tilted, mouth twitching, eyes alight with curiosity. She shifts her gaze between him and the book in her lap: His book, the pages dirtied and crinkled and covered in a messy, minuscule scrawl.
He makes a noise in the back of his throat. Isn’t entirely sure what it’s supposed to mean. “Yes,” he says, soft. He’s fiddling with his hands, fingers locked together while his thumbs pick at their opposite purlicue, the skin turned a soft red from irritation.
They’re sitting cross-legged in their usual spot: A small span of overgrown grass, scattered with weeds and the occasional flower, the bushes and surrounding trees separating them from the other children. Lily’s hair falls around her like flames, blending with the gentle magenta of her dress, the material ironed and clean and of good quality—so unlike Severus’ own attire, his torn, stained shirt hidden beneath his overcoat. He focuses on the way Lily’s eyes glitter beneath the sunlight and tells himself she doesn’t notice.
“They’re notes,” he explains. “From things me Mam told me.”
Lily brightens. “About magic?” she says, still with that underlying thrum of excitement, secrecy, the last word whispered. Severus nods and her posture straightens: attentive. Eager. “Will you tell me?”
Severus twitches, as if he’d tried to shrug. “You can just read it,” he offers, but Lily shakes her head.
“I want to hear it from you,” she says. She grins and lies against the grass, closes the notebook and pats the space beside her. “Come on, Sev! You always have the best stories.”
“Not stories,” he says. “It’s—”
“—real,” Lily finishes. Her giggle carries with the wind, soft and airy. “I know, I know. Sorry.”
He sighs and moves to lie down beside her. She hands him his notebook and he takes it, the pads of his fingers running along its fraying spine, the paper rustling beneath his hands. He opens it at random and sees his own spidery scrawl staring back at him: 23/07/1968, The Battle of Emeric & Egbert.
“There was a wizard,” he starts, “in the Middle Ages.” He twists his head against the grass and meets Lily’s gaze. Watches the way she blinks up at him, expectant. Interested. It makes his stomach flutter for reasons he can’t explain. “Emeric the Evil…”
He trails off into stories of short-lived glories and a rather violent downfall. Lily hangs onto his every word, just as he had done with his mother. She insists on story after story, her eyes wide with wonder as they move from Emeric the Evil to the Soap Blizzard of 1378, the Poison Pandemic of the Middle Ages, the simplified crimes of Grindelwald. They spend the afternoon like that, laying side by side and thumbing through pages of Severus’ notes, their excited voices and soft giggles scarcely stopping for a minute.
It’s only once the sun has started to set that the peace is broken, Petunia’s shrieks about dinner cutting through the barrier of bushes. Severus sits up when he hears it, disappointment tightening his chest. He follows the hint of blonde hair that peeks through a cluster of branches and finds Petunia waiting, watching, her arms folded and lips thinned. She’s odd looking, Petunia, thin and angular with a long face, expression twisted to one of disdain. Severus has never liked her.
“Now, Lily!” Petunia calls, impatient.
Lily rolls her eyes but gets to her feet. “I’m coming!” she yells back, sparing Severus a glance. “Can we do spells tomorrow?” she asks: hurried, hopeful, hushed. “Like that one you told me? Pet—Pert—”
“Petrificus Totalus,” Severus says. He nods, flashes a fleeting smile. He watches her stand, blades of grass falling from her dress as she wipes her back. “I’ll bring a different book,” he calls, but she’s already walking away, almost out of sight, one hand lifted in a wave while the other is grasped by her older sister: the two of them a blur of red and beige as they pass through the bushes, toward their waiting dinner.
They’re both well out of sight by the time Severus rolls onto his back, fingers clenching around blades of grass and pulling while he looks up at the setting sun: absentminded, habitual. There is at least another hour, he thinks, until the sun sets completely, the greying sky above still streaked with slashes of pinks, blues, purples. He’ll leave then, he decides; his mother’s unofficial curfew.
After all, he has no dinner waiting.
———
Notes, 1971 (new)
12/05/1971:
Went to Diagon Alley with Lily for school supplies. Shopped separately (Mam refused to ‘babysit Muggles’). She got more than me, but Mam said I can take her chest.
Went to: Gringotts, Arinold’s Apothecary, Flourish and Blotts, Ollivander’s, Nearly-New for the Needy. Tried: Chocolate frogs – they squirm like real ones.
Afterwards: Met with Lily again. Snuck book (Orenda Aquia) and experimented with the tadpoles in the lake. Managed to control their course but 3 died (only one was my fault).
Days til Hogwarts: 112.
———
“Snape, Severus!”
He steps forward. Tries not to let his nervousness show as he takes his seat on the stool, feet kicking at the ground as he waits, impatient. There are people talking, whispering, theorising. It mixes together to a quiet murmur, the only thing discernible a laugh from the Gryffindor table as the Sorting Hat falls over his eyes, darkness enveloping him as the Hat hums, low and deep. Contemplative.
“Fascinating,” it says, quiet. Only for Severus to hear. “Ooh, yes.”
Another laugh from the crowd, that mocking tilt familiar, already: The boys from the train, both sorted the second the Hat had hit their heads. In the hush of the Hall, Severus can hear their voices, the Black boy’s joke that maybe they’ll just send him home.
He grinds his teeth. Hates the panic that grips his chest. Slytherin, he thinks. His hands are balled into fists: tight enough to sting, the sharp edge of a nail digging against the soft flesh of his palm. Slytherin. Even if he has to be in it alone. Sly—
“Slytherin, eh?” the Hat asks. “I suppose, I suppose. You’ve got it in you, no doubt.”
Irritation tingles beneath his skin. “Then put me there,” he says aloud: hissed. This one thing, he thinks. This one thing. The axis on which all his plans are based—
“Not so quickly, now,” the Hat tells him. It’s followed with indiscernible murmuring, Severus’ impatience growing as it takes its time. “Ambition, loyalty… bravery…”
His nails break through the skin. A drop of blood pools on his palm. Drips. The Hall fills with gentle chatter the longer Severus stays put, seconds passing like hours as he waits, cheeks flushed beneath the Hat’s dusty fabric. He’s distantly relieved half his face is shielded from view.
The Sorting Hat continues. “Cleverness, too… ooh yes. Yes, very clever, indeed. You’d do well in Ravenclaw, but... no, no. It’s not the knowledge you want, is it? It’s the power.”
They’re the same thing, Severus thinks. Interchangeable, almost. Knowledge gets you power, and power gets you knowledge; anyone with half a brain could tell you that.
A chuckle: soft, this time, not mocking. For his ears only. “Yes, yes,” the Hat says. “You would think that, wouldn’t you? Son of a Prince. Yes… Alright, then. Off you go, now. Off toward SLYTHERIN.”
Relief hits like a breath of fresh air. The Hat is removed, his fists uncurling. He wipes a bloody palm against his sleeve and stands, his mouth twitching with satisfaction. He spares Lily a glance: quick, fleeting. She’s smiling at him softly, sadly, almost, a light frown to her forehead. It morphs to annoyance as Black says something from behind her, words drowned by the cheers coming from the Slytherin table.
A boy greets him: tall, blond, wealthy. It’s obvious in the air that surrounds him, in the way he holds himself: back straight, chin lifted. There is a crisp collar peeking beneath his school robe, a silver ring on his left hand, a family crest engraved. “Take a seat,” he says, nodding to the space beside him. His voice is clear, posh. The hand that pats Severus’ back heavy and warm.
He tries not to flinch.
---
Notes, 1971 (new)
01/09/1971:
Sorted: Slytherin. Greeted by older boy – Malfoy, he said. 6th year. Prefect. Ate: stew, strawberries. Tried: apple pie.
Cast first curse (Lingustum).
Result:
---
“Snape, was it?” a boy says. He is staring at him from across the table: eyes dark, suspicious. Severus is focused on the cluster of crumbs at the corner of his mouth. Bread, he thinks. A fleck of chicken, perhaps. “I’ve never heard of that before.”
A snort from further up the table: one of the older boys. Dark hair, strong jaw. Mouth curved in a sneer. “That’s ‘cause he’s not pure-blood.”
They’re well into dinner, now, the table piled with more food than Severus has ever seen. He eats it slowly, wants to avoid an upset stomach; he has learnt, from his time at the Evans’, what new food can do. He still refuses to put turkey anywhere near his mouth.
The boy is still staring. Lots of them are. Waiting for his response, no doubt. Wanting to see how he’ll react. If he’s worth their time. Severus opens his mouth to speak, but Malfoy beats him to it.
“The boy just got here, Travers,” he says. His voice is a cold drawl: lazy, like they’re meant to be thankful he’s bothered with them at all. It leaves the distinct impression that his attention is a luxury few receive. “Don’t you think the interrogation can wait?”
Travers bristles, just a bit. Stands his ground. “I suppose every house needs a runt,” he says. Spits. Eyes drag over Severus: the unwashed hair, the old, tattered robe, the fork held clumsily in his hand. His sneer deepens.
The boy across from him snickers, but he’s one of the few. Distantly, Severus notices the cautionary glances sent Malfoy’s way. Would make a note of it, if he weren’t so preoccupied with his indignation. He feels heat rush to his face, feels the familiar itch of irritation, the ugly tingle of magic that comes with it. It prickles beneath his skin: brewing.
His face twists. “What’s that s’posed to mean?” he says, combative. His hand closes on his wand: pine, eleven inches, a core of dragon heartstring. Resilient, Ollivander had said, but only when it wants to be. A curse sits on the tip of his tongue. Multiple curses, each worse than the last. He flicks through a mental rolodex, searches for one he knows he can manage.
Now is not the time to back down, he thinks. First impressions are everything.
Travers looks at him as if he’s daft. “Do they not teach basic English in the slums?” he asks. “Or are you just tha—”
Severus acts before Travers can finish. He lifts his arm and points, Lingustum hissed through his teeth as he stands from his seat. More are watching, now. Most of the table playing witness as a powerful flash of yellow light spurts from the tip of his wand; bright and saturated, it cuts through the air like lightning. It’s followed with a muffled groan, a clatter as Travers’ fork drops to the floor. His hands are hovering near his mouth, his lips swollen, burnt. Tongue turned a bright, blistering red.
Silence follows, broken by Travers’ muffled attempts at speech. His expression flickers, morphs: shock, pain, embarrassment, hatred. It goes unnoticed, Severus focused instead on the rush of power, the magic that burns through him. It makes him dizzy, almost, the strength of it. His mouth curls with a small, satisfied smirk; he’s never cast anything that powerful before.
A hand settles on his back: Malfoy, again. “Sit down,” the older boy says, a quiet command. Severus obeys on instinct, only now noticing the attention they’ve drawn from the rest of the Hall. It dissipates slowly, Malfoy flashing a placating smile toward the Professors’ table. “Are we all proud of ourselves?” he asks through his teeth, smile still in place. It makes him look like a mad-man. “Caused a scene on the first day?”
Severus rolls his wand against his palm. “He should learn to keep his mouth shut, then,” he says, unflinching when Malfoy’s gaze meets his. His eyes are a light grey, clear and cold: similar to freshly frozen ice, Severus thinks, fragile and frosted with a centre of cold water. They glitter strangely when they look him over: assessing.
It takes him a moment to realise Malfoy’s impressed.
His sense of accomplishment doubles, chest warm with it. Travers swears at him, anger obvious even through the unintelligible speech. Severus watches, curious. He almost wants to move closer. Would like to inspect his handiwork, get a proper look at the damage he’s done. His eyes meet Travers’ and he can see the danger there, the threat, the way the other boy wants to reach across the table and throttle him. He mumbles again, demands something about a counter-curse. Severus merely turns his head.
“Are we going to leave him like that?” a girl says. She’s sat on the other side of Malfoy, long, blonde hair falling down her back in gentle waves. It’s a neutral question, her voice flat. Distant. She doesn’t sound as if the idea troubles her.
Malfoy shrugs, an elegant lift of his left shoulder. “I don’t see why not,” he says. He picks a plum from the tray of fruit, taps his fingers across the smooth surface. “It might teach him not to goad his fellow housemates.”
It’s the last he says on the matter, Travers’ continued mumbling ignored as the plum is brought to his mouth. Severus watches as perfect teeth bite into the crimson flesh and tear a chunk away, his gaze trailing further down the Slytherin table, to where the other students are starting to turn back to their meals. Only a few continue to stare, their expressions no longer filled with distaste but fascination. Fear. Pride flickers in Severus’ chest: A single flame in a dark room, bright and blinding.
He smiles.
---
Notes, 1971 (continued)
— Effective.
———
Notes, 1971 (excerpted)
Fiendfyre —
Dark Magic, creates large, hostile flames. Heat capable of mass destruction. Produced in various forms: dragons, birds, serpents, ch—
---
“That’s rather advanced, isn’t it?”
Severus sighs. He does not look up. Doesn’t need to. He recognises the voice, the shadow of Lucius as he stands over him, the Slytherin Commons a bustling backdrop as he sits secluded in the corner, a series of books spread out around him. “Only if you’re an idiot,” he says, scrawling the end of the word chimaeras.
His notebook is open in his lap, Ignis: A Comprehensive List of Fire Spells resting on the floor beside him. His quill scribbles across the page: While the flame itself is cursed, Fiendfyre has a—
“I didn’t learn about that until my third year,” Lucius tells him. A rustle follows, robes shifting against the wall. They brush his shoulder, leg. Lucius sits in the empty spot next to him: close. As if they were friends, Severus thinks. As if it were a common occurrence. As if he was the kind of person people simply came up and sat next to.
“Well then,” —historical use of decoration. “Maybe you’re an idiot.”
He means it to be discouraging, would like to be left alone; he only has one day left with Ignis and wants to get down as much as he can, but Lucius’ reaction is far from what he’d been expecting. The other boy laughs: soft, airy. A chuckle that belongs to someone older than him. Severus spares him a glance. Finds him with one of his notebooks in hand, fingers splayed across the battered back as he reads Severus’ minuscule scrawl. Tries to.
“You should work on your handwriting,” he says, an absentminded murmur. Severus scowls. Watches Lucius flick through a few more pages, the pit of his stomach tied in unfamiliar knots. “Reducto, Fumos, Mucus ad Nauseam… Bat-Bogey Hexes.” Lucius’ eyes meet his. When they do, his mouth curls: a slow, small smirk. Almost predatory. “What else have you been studying?”
“Nothing,” Severus says: a reflex. No one has ever looked at his notes closely before. Has ever wanted to. He quickly decides that he doesn’t like it: His scribblings are for his eyes alone. He reaches out, pulling at the notebook’s spine, and Lucius gives easily. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s definitely not nothing,” Lucius answers. He looks at the notebook in his lap, the other in his satchel. An elegant eyebrow arches. “Quite the little scribe, aren’t you?”
Suspicion coils low in Severus’ stomach. A drop: spreading slowly, surely. “What do you want?” he asks. Because he must want something, Severus thinks. There’s no other reason for him to be here.
Lucius ignores it. “You know,” he says, reaching to snatch Ingis up from the ground, “I have better books than these.” A pause: tense. His voice lowers, neck bent to speak into Severus’ ear. Secretive. “Darker, too.”
Severus swallows. He can feel Lucius’ breath, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on edge. Excitement mixes with suspicion, a gentle adrenaline prickling beneath his skin as curiosity clouds his better judgement. “What kind?”
Lucius’ smirk widens, morphs to a careful smile: small but seemingly genuine. Severus can feel his own mouth twitching to mirror it.
He wonders if this is what befriending a Malfoy feels like.
———
Notes, 1972 (excerpted)
Updated reading list (finished, non-standard)
[1] Curses and Counter-curses - Vindictus Viridian.
[2] The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection - Quentin Trimble.
[3] Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed - Agabriella Gabrielladore.
[4] Magical MedEvil: Poisons, Potions, and Pandemics - Evelyn Ettinger.
[5] A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions - Fiwise Wimar.
[6] The Essential Defence Against the Dark Arts - Arsenius Jigger.
Started: Moste Potente Potions, Sources of Magic vol. VII (both borrowed – Lucius promised I could keep them over summer).
End of year examinations: easy.
———
“Sit still.”
Eileen has a grip of his shoulder, the pads of her fingers digging against the sharp jut of his collarbone, her hold tightening as she tries to keep him in place. There is a large jar of salve sitting to their side: off-white, clumpy, it’s smell sharp and pungent, a strong hint of tea tree smouldering the ginger root. It’s thick when Eileen gathers a handful in her palm, the glass edge cutting against her thin wrist, the jar well past half-empty. She wipes it across the welts on his back and Severus swallows the soft, pained hiss that presses at his teeth. Tries to ignore the dull ache as Eileen moves her hand in small, precise circles: methodical. Practiced.
I’ve already told you, boy—
Severus shuts his eyes. Breathes through his nose. Thinks of sitting on the kitchen counter while his mother had brewed the balm: legs crossed, a box of matches held in hand, spare pieces of paper and a pen ready at his side. Eileen had hidden half the ingredients, had held the ladle to his nose at every interval and told him to guess. He’d got most of them right: dittany (shaved), tea tree extract (thirty drops), ginger root (pulverised), wormwood (sliced). The only thing he’d missed was the dandelion flakes.
“It’s not too bad,” Eileen tells him. Her fingers are thin, cold where they touch him. Her nails bitten to the quick.
Severus snorts. “You mean he was drunk enough to miss.”
He doesn’t have to face his mother to see the pinched expression. To expect the deep inhale, the soft, weary sigh. “Severus,” she starts, but stops. Thinks better of it. Her grip slackens. “Tell me what you learnt at school,” she says instead.
He is reminded of being four, five, six. Of sitting curled on his bed, head cushioned by Eileen’s bony body, her voice a quiet drone as she taught him about his magical heritage, the bruises left by his father’s hand barely healed. She’d started with simple things: foundations, the whens, wheres, whys, read excerpts from an old, battered copy of Magical History and whispered to him about her father Atticus and his family, all the while refusing to answer Severus’ questions about where they were, now. They’d moved on from that, eventually. Followed up with his interests: potions, at first, but then defensive spells, shielding charms, until, finally, he’d found her copy of On the Offence: Basic Curses and clung to it. He used to think the lessons were a reward, something she did as compensation. It’s not until recently that he’s realised how they could’ve easily been an apology.
“Spongify,” he starts. Goes through the list: Incendio, Tarantallegra, Flipendo. “Winga—”
Eileen cuts him off. “I know all of that,” she says. A hand moves up his back, pushes the ends of his hair out of the way. “What did you teach yourself?”
It’s knowing. Expectant. Severus purses his lips to hide the half-smile pulling at his mouth.
“Fiendfyre,” he tells her, the first thing that comes to mind. “Reducto, Confusing Draughts and their antidotes. Polyjuice Potion, too – Slughorn wouldn’t let me take Moste Potente Potions out of the Restricted Section, but Lucius let m—”
Eileen’s hand stills. “Lucius?”
Severus cuts off. He twists to look over his shoulder, gets a glimpse of the surprised look on Eileen’s face. “Yes,” he says, slow. The apprehension that twists her brow is unexpected. “Lucius Malfoy. He’s—”
“I know who he is,” Eileen tells him. She resumes the movement of her hand, thin fingers massaging the last of the salve in. “I didn’t think you’d be friends.”
“Oh,” Severus says, quiet. He shrugs a shoulder and turns back around, looks at the cracked paint on his bedroom wall, the flecks of dark green and grey that stain the white; last year’s water damage had left them with mould. “Lucius lent me some of his books,” he finishes. “They're interesting.”
“I bet they are,” Eileen mutters. It’s barely audible, just loud enough for him to hear. She sighs, her hand falling away while the spare taps his waist. “All done.”
He shifts. Reaches for his shirt. The jar is done up, hidden back on his shelf, tucked neatly between two books his grandmother had gifted him. There are others, hidden on the lower shelves, their contents not potions but ingredients instead: a rat he’d caught two weeks ago, a bit of Boomslang skin he’d nicked from Slughorn’s supplies, lavender shavings from Mrs. Evans’ gardens. Anything he manages to get his hands on.
Eileen moves to the door, hands wiping residue across her pant leg. “I’ll bring some tea up, soon,” she says. “Some toast will do tonight.”
His stomach grumbles at the mention of food, the noise loud and hungry, craving something more than toast. He doesn’t dare mention it. “Alright,” he says, instead.
The jar of salve had been full when he’d left.
———
There are red, angry welts covering his right arm, the skin raised, swollen, scorched: a Stinging Jinx, courtesy of Sirius Black. Severus holds an ice pack to the damage, skin growing steadily numb as he takes slow, deep breaths, eyes fixed on the opposite wall as he sits, waits, listens to the distant sounds of Madam Pomfrey puttering around the Hospital Wing.
“Look at the little freak!” Sirius had spat: disgusted. He’d snatched Severus’ book from his hands and held it high above his head. “The Book of Unforgivables?” he’d read, throwing it to James. “What, want to Imperio your way into Quidditch?”
“Give it back,” Severus had snapped. His face had flushed with anger, hatred. Barely a week back, he’d thought, and already—
He’d been too slow reaching for his wand; the other boys had been quicker, or maybe there’d just been more of them. Either way, one second he’d been standing, the next…
“Just a second, dear,” Madam Pomfrey is saying. “Just a second.”
Severus pays her little mind as she mixes two potions together, tutting under her breath about nasty things and rowdy boys. He’s sat on the edge of a bed, the tip of his shoe scratching the ground as he kicks his feet: absentminded, methodical. He’s lost in thought, the incident playing on a loop in his head. Idiot, he thinks. Stupid. Why didn’t you—
Anger lingers, prickles at the edge of his consciousness. He can feel his face flush with it: pale skin turned a soft pink. Worse, though, is the embarrassment. The humiliation. The way he feels when he thinks of himself sprawled on the hallway floor, four different laughs echoing as pain had seized him. They hadn’t left him alone, not until Lucius had rounded the corner, his tall shadow inspiring both relief and shame in Severus as the older boy had ordered everyone to scatter, the threat veiled but still clear. Lucius had helped him off the floor, but that’d been just as bad, Severus thinks. He isn’t some sort of damsel. He doesn’t need to be saved.
He can do it himself.
He doesn’t realise his fists are curled until he feels the prickle of pain, the sharp ache of his nails cutting into his skin. He focuses on it, his eyes shut and jaw clenched, something ugly swarming his chest as he thinks of Potter, of Black, of their laughs filling the hall, of the way they’d smiled at him: sardonic, scornful, superior, as if they were so much better. He imagines their expressions fading, falling, twisting, morphing, melting. The Draught of Deliquesce, he thinks. He’d read about it over the summer, its recipe tucked away in the last chapter of Most Potente Potions, the ingredients listed beside a small image displaying copper-red goo.
“Pearl dust,” he whispers. He pictures the page in his mind’s eye: crisp parchment, clear text, the gentle scratch of its edges beneath his fingertips, smooth and strong and dissimilar to the cracked spines of his own collection. “Scorpion blood. Frog venom. African sea salt.”
“What’s that, dear?” Pomfrey asks. She’s closer now, her hands replacing the ice pack.
Severus doesn’t hesitate. “African sea salt,” he repeats, louder. He’s not thinking straight. “Lizard’s leg. Ingredients for The Draught of Deliquesce.”
Pomfrey falters. He feels it in the twitch of her hand, the flutter, the tips of her fingers warm against his skin. It reminds him of his mother, only Eileen’s touch was always cold. “Oh,” breathes Madam Pomfrey. Severus looks up, sees the trepidation that lights her eyes. He can hear the next question coming. “Where did you learn that?” she asks.
Stupid question, Severus thinks. “I read it in a book,” is what he says. It’s almost faraway, his voice. Disconnected. He is still thinking of what Potter and Black would look like with their faces melted off, the poison slowly infecting the rest of their bodies, breaking them down. It brings him a sick sort of satisfaction.
“Best to stay away from that,” Pomfrey tells him. She slathers his arm with healing balm, the cool cream bringing instant relief. “Nasty thing – Dark Magic. Too young to…”
He tunes it out, her voice fading as the balm is massaged into his skin. It’s inconsequential, anyway, he thinks, what she has to say. The warnings. The worry over the magic he knows.
It’s not as if he’s actually going to use it.
———
“Malfoy gave you all of these?” Lily asks, her hand outstretched to trace along the stack of books, their spines thick and hard and covered with glittering letters: second hand without looking second hand. They fit in seamlessly with her own collection, her first and second year textbooks displayed proudly on her bedroom bookcase.
Severus nods. “Says he didn’t need them anymore,” he tells her. He doesn’t show her the other things Lucius had given him, the other books he’d left at home, the school robes sitting in his draw, waiting to be sewed. Yours if you want them, Lucius had said: An irresistible offer posed as an invitation, as something Severus could choose. He’d lounged, watching, his trunk open beside Severus’ in the train compartment, everyone else ordered out as Severus picked what he wanted.
“But you hate when people try and help,” Lily reminds him. She’s looking at him over an open copy of Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes, the corner of a page held loosely in her hand. Severus can still hear Lucius’ voice. You’ll like this one, he’d laughed. Font’s almost as bad as your penmanship. “You always say you’re not a cha—”
“I’m not,” Severus says. It’s harsher than he’d meant, his posture rigid, voice cold. His father is in his head, now, the way he looks when Severus comes home with food from Mrs. Evans burnt into his memory: lips thinned, jaw clenched, brown eyes flashing with anger. Yer ain’t no charity case, boy, he’d say, voice loud enough to drown out his mother’s sigh. We don’t need nowt. Severus feels the phantom pain of fingers digging into his upper arm. “Lucius has been lending me books since first year,” he explains. “It’s no different, he just doesn’t need these ones back.”
And why would he, Severus thinks. He’s graduated now, free to consider his options. Or so he’d said. Lily gives him a look, her eyebrows knitted together so pale, freckled skin furrows at her forehead. Severus can read the implications, the doubt. She thinks there’s a catch, he realises. Something I’m not telling her. He swallows around the small spark of irritation. So what if there is a catch, he thinks. He’s an opportunist before he’s anything else; to turn down what Lucius was offering would’ve been idiotic.
Lily drops the book she’s holding and picks up Asiatic Anti-Venoms instead. “They’re kind of dark, aren’t they?” she asks, disapproval creeping into her tone. “Look – Most Potente Potions. That one’s from the Restricted Section.”
Severus fidgets, twitches, shrugs. “They’re not all dark,” he tells her. “See—” He points to Ancient Runes Translation, to An Anthology of Eighteenth Century Charms, but even as he does, he’s thinking of the tomes tucked deep into his trunk, their pages full of dark, dark magic. He knows immediately that he made the right choice in keeping them a secret. “You can’t get mad about Saucy Tricks for Tricky Sorts, either. I saw you looking at it in the library with Lupin.”
Lily’s head snaps toward him. “I’m not mad,” she says, but already, there’s a spark to her voice: a flame being ignited. “I just don’t like Malfoy. He’s—”
“He’s what?” Severus interrupts: harsh, again. Unintentionally so. He can’t help it; he isn’t like Lily, he hasn’t settled. Lucius is perhaps the only other friend he’s made. So what if he’s defensive?
“Nothing,” Lily says, resigned. “Nothing. I—it doesn’t matter, all right? Who cares.”
She turns away from him, then, the silence that settles awkward. Severus watches, staring as her hair falls across her shoulder, the dark red strands pooling against the open book in her lap and shielding her face from view. He feels an apology itching his throat, an uncommon desire to say sorry; he’s never liked upsetting her. He opens his mouth, already stumbling over the words, but she speaks before he can, turning to give him a hesitant glance.
“Will your Mum be at the market on Saturday?” she asks. She’s fiddling with the corner of the page, bending it back and forth without thought: nervous habit, Severus thinks. Knows. It’s been the same for years, now. “I told Dad her ‘home remedies’ were actually potions and now he wants to buy some.”
Severus blinks. It’s not what he’d been expecting. “Yeah,” he says, the word caught in his throat. He coughs, clears it. “She made Cure for Boils,” he tells her, a fragile relief settling in his chest when Lily nods, smiles, the tension dissipating as things slowly return to normal.
“Look at the records Dad bought me…”
———
Notes, 1973 (new)
29/08/1973:
Spent day sewing – was forced to learn. Mam said: Will need to know in case of another growth spurt. Continued reading on electives (Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures). Finished: The Dark Arts Outsmarted.
Mr. Evans says he’ll take me to London on Saturday. Can’t come quick enough – Sick of not doing magic.
———
Notes, 1973 (interrupted)
22/09/1973:
Blood Curses Maledictions.
Incantation: Multiple, varied – often chants in ancient dialect (See: Ancient Runes Translations, ch. XII, Blood Curses, ch. IV).
Not the same as Maledictuses, though a Maledictus can be the result of a blood malediction. Other results include: chronic illness, infertility, dise—
---
“You know, there are rumours a blood malediction runs in my family,” comes a voice: cool, smooth, quiet. It cuts through the murmur of the Common Room, draws Severus’ attention. “My sister’s favourite joke was that it would resurface in me.”
He looks up in time to see Narcissa Black slip into the seat across from him. The way her body moves is easy, agile, elegant; she has the same air of grace Lucius always had, and Severus feels the same twist of envy when faced with it. I want to be like that, he thinks. Refined. Respected. I want it to be easy.
“In retrospect,” Narcissa continues, “Bella probably made the whole thing up. She did love to torture us.”
She smiles, then: a twitch of her mouth, the shadow of a joke only she knows the punchline to. One leg crosses over the other, her back set straight as long, blonde hair is pushed behind her shoulders. A cat follows behind her, its tail batting against Severus’ leg as it moves between their feet: Narcissa’s Maine Coon, it’s fur thick, fluffy, white with hints of silver on its underbelly, at its paws, around its ears. Answers to Calypso, she’d told him once, the cat in question purring gently. Showing off. He looks down to see her settle at her owner’s feet, face tilted toward him: one eye bright blue, the other a soft green.
He remains silent, waiting.
“I used to threaten I’d put one on her if she didn’t shut up,” Narcissa says.
Severus looks from the cat to the owner, to the way Narcissa curls her hands in her lap, nails painted the colour of almond cream, the kind that’s served to them at breakfast. “How did that go?” he asks, because while he’s never met the eldest Black daughter, he’s heard enough, knows enough. Can infer.
Narcissa’s mouth curls again. “Poorly,” she says, flat. Dry. Severus imagines it’s the kind of answer meant to make someone laugh, and so he smiles.
Ink is blotting on his page, likely seeping through one side and to the other. He puts his quill aside and sits back. “What do you want?” he asks, because he isn’t stupid and knows that blood curses aren’t what she approached him for. That she is merely humouring him the way she’s always done, their acquaintance accidental: a by-product of Lucius’ company. He doesn’t understand why she bothers. Surely, he thinks, she knows she doesn’t need to.
“So blunt, Severus,” Narcissa murmurs, a laugh to it. It reminds him of his first year, of when warmth had first started to creep into her disinterested, dismissive gaze. She’d called him cute, once, he recalls. Endearing. The word caught in the midst of a gentle laugh as she’d turned to find him trailing behind her boyfriend. “You should work on your subtlety.”
“I don’t like wasting time,” he tells her. Thinks maybe he shouldn’t have.
Narcissa hums; it holds little meaning. “A Hogsmeade weekend is approaching,” she says. “I came to ask if your mother signed your permission slip.”
“‘Course,” Severus says. He hadn’t even had to ask. “Why?”
“Of course,” Narcissa corrects: habitual. Like it’s a reflex. Severus thinks of how Sirius speaks in comparison to his relatives and figures it probably is. “Lucius and I have been owling,” she tells him. This time, when she smiles, it’s almost bright; her eyes sparkle, a flash of teeth peeking behind her lips. Severus can’t help but notice the way it softens her features, accentuates her beauty, showcases just how pretty she is. He flushes at the thought, embarrassment flickering when he notices the way Narcissa looks at him: As if she knows. “He said he’ll be visiting and asked me to bring you. I would prefer some alone time –” a slight pause, the insinuation subtle “– and thought you could meet us later on.”
“Yes,” Severus says, quick. He berates himself for appearing eager but still can’t quell the excitement he feels. He wants to see Lucius. Has missed him, despite not wanting to. The older boy is a window to the magical world, to the parts of wizarding society that Hogwarts doesn’t showcase. To the quiet whispers, the murmured speculation, the throwaway comments his mother used to let slip: pure-blood society and its games. His curiosity goes wild at the thought. “Did he say why he wanted to see me?”
Narcissa pauses, contemplates. On if she should be truthful or not, he thinks. “You’ll see,” is what she says, and interest cements itself in Severus. He watches as she gets to her feet, Calypso jumping up to follow. “I’ll see you then,” she tells him, her hand brushing his shoulder.
He turns to watch her go, a soft buzz settling in his bones.
———
There is a room just past the Slytherin dorms: old, dusty, small when compared to the other classrooms. Not quite a closet but not far off, either. It houses a bench, a sink, no windows. Lucius had shown it to him in his second year; A place to brew in secret, he’d said, and then enlisted Severus’ help in concocting a batch of Living Death. A request of my father’s.
Severus spreads out Abraxas Malfoy’s instructions, a small circle of ingredients placed beside his cauldron. They’d come that morning, Lucius’ owl dropping a small parcel in Narcissa’s lap alongside the usual letter. She’d handed it to him beneath the table, the look she’d given him clear: Be discreet, it’d said. There’d been no need to tell him twice.
My father wants you to brew for him, Lucius had announced when they’d met last week. A revised batch of Befuddlement Draught, intended to make the victim reckless without the hostility. For pay, of course, Lucius had told him. He’s interested in you – was impressed with your Draught of Living Death.
It hadn’t taken much convincing, not when Severus could so clearly see the benefits of his acceptance: money, for one, but more than that, recognition. He’s read and reread the sheet of instructions, can cite them by now; he refuses to ruin his chance.
He lays his ingredients out in the order he’ll need them: lovage first, then scurvy grass, sneezewort. Abraxas’ instructions replace African sea salt with red peppers instead, the dosage doubled. What Severus is interested in, though, is the sleeve containing a single petal: Angel’s Trumpet, pale pink, highly poisonous. Plucked recently, Severus reads, glancing at Abraxas’ elegant cursive. It’s the only major addition to the original recipe: he’s meant to add it at the very end and leave it, let it infuse for three hours and fifty-two minutes exactly. Do not leave it in, is underlined twice, the warning clear.
Severus knows mistakes are not an option.
He retrieves his knife, sets his cauldron to simmer, and gets to work.
---
“I thought Befuddlement Draughts were meant to be green,” Narcissa says, her head tilted toward the black liquid bubbling in his cauldron. She’s standing to his left, a step behind, an air of hesitancy about her. Potions was never my best subject, Severus recalls her saying, once. I always preferred Charms. She’d still kept it for her NEWTs, though. He helps her with it sometimes.
(Child prodigy, Slughorn had joked when they’d first met. Then again, later: not so much a joke.)
“They are,” Severus says, now. He’s researched Befuddlement Draughts before. Had spent his tenth birthday skimming his mother’s old potions texts as his father had raged in the next room. Dark green in colour, he recalls reading, writing. Semi-translucent. The potion in front of him barely fits the criteria. “It’s Mr. Malfoy’s alterations,” he explains. “The red peppers darken the colour.”
It’s not all black, though. There’s a thin layer of green coating the top, dark and deep, texture not dissimilar to a milk skin, he thinks, only this one is fixed; it doesn’t mix in, can’t be taken out. He stirs the ladle: slow, steady. Watches the colour shimmer, the intensity of it shifting under the light: iridescent. A side-effect of the Angel’s Trumpet.
Pretty, Severus thinks. And then: Perfect.
“It’s meant to look like this,” he says. Abraxas’ notes had said so, an arrow connecting the final step to the words, Opaque, black, shimmer. He’s sure this is what was meant.
Narcissa hums. Takes another look over his shoulder. Steam coils up from the cauldron, fills his little, makeshift lab. Severus feels her lift a hand to wave away the mist. “Well done,” she says softly. There’s a note of approval in her tone, the warmth of it washing over him; it makes pride press at his ribs.
The feeling is reiterated a week later, when a large eagle owl drops a letter into his lap: parchment thick, smooth, expensive, the Malfoy family crest sealing the envelope. It’s a personal thanks, signed by Abraxas Malfoy, a generous tip enclosed.
You have potential, it says.
Will be in touch.
———
Orders (as of 29/04/1974):
[1] Befuddlement Draught, one batch. Paid: 10 galleons.
[2] Draught of Peace, one batch. Paid: 5 galleons.
[3] Enervation Elixir, two batches. Paid: 20 galleons.
---
Lily’s gaze is familiar. Severus knows the heat of it, the intangible pressure. He feels it on him now, as they sit tucked away in the corner of the library, the books on shelf Runes, Ancient: 5500–5000 BC, Cucuteni–Trypillia, Healing & Medicine digging into his back. He knows her well enough to know that she wants to ask something. Is waiting for it, the peripheral awareness impossible to ignore.
It comes as he’s writing the latest order – [4] Befuddlement Draught, two batches. Payment: 13 galleons.
“What’s that about?” she asks.
Severus pauses, tilts his head to look at her, thin strands of long, greasy hair falling away from his face. Their eyes meet and he can’t help but notice the way bright green softens in the dim light, the way curiosity flickers across Lily’s features even as her body language screams hesitant.
“What,” he says.
“That.” Lily lifts her chin, points it toward his notebook. Her own homework has been abandoned, quill and parchment discarded at her side. “People have been talking,” she starts, careful.
He knows what she really means is, I’ve overheard something. They’ve had this conversation before, suspicions about his interest in the Dark Arts dating back to their first year. He doesn’t understand why it bothers her. Surely, he thinks, they’re not talking about you.
“Have they,” is what he says. It’s too disinterested to be a question. Is the kind of answer that will get under her skin.
Lily sighs, sharp. Irritated. “Yes, they have,” she snaps, louder than the library permits. “There’s rumours.”
It’s said as if it’s something he should be worried about, something he should be ashamed about. Severus struggles not to roll his eyes. There’s always rumours, he thinks. You can’t escape speculation; someone will always talk.
“So?”
“So they’re saying things about you!” Lily says. She’s sitting forward, a fire lighting in her voice even as he sees her try to swallow it. The first hint of disappointment settles in the space between them, and Severus realises that she’d been expecting a different reaction. Had been hoping for it. “About how you—”
Lily breaks off, her lips pursing as if whatever she’d wanted to say is still pressing at her teeth. Severus watches. Waits. He hates this part, the way she will hesitate, sometimes. Beat around the bush. Like she doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.
He’d rather just know what she’s thinking.
“About how I what?” he prompts, and Lily sighs again, not quite meeting his eye.
“Black says—”
The name alone is enough to put him on edge. Severus feels his lip curl, his face harden: the reaction like a reflex. “Since when do you care what Black says?”
“I don’t,” Lily snaps. She gives him a look that means, Let me finish. “In the dorms, they’re—I mean, I’m just saying, Black says the owl that sends you letters, he says it belongs to Malfoy’s dad. He says Malfoy does business with his family, that over the Easter hols he heard his uncle mention you. He says the only reason they’d owl you is—”
“Is what?” Severus pushes, more aggressive than he means it to be. There is something inexplicable swirling in his chest: irritation, yes, but beyond that, excitement, a seemingly out of place burst of pride. He heard his uncle mention you. The line replays over in his head, his mouth fighting the urge to smile. People have been talking, he realises, interested now. Not witless speculation on the time he spends in the library, not snide remarks on his special interests, but whispers of his work, his talent. Possibly even recommendations.
“Is because you’re working for them,” Lily says, all in one breath. “Which Black swears means you’re involved with—with Dark Magic.”
The last part is whispered, Lily’s mouth twisted in a frown as silence falls between them. Severus can see her looking at him, can see the spark of hope in her eyes. She wants me to deny it, he thinks. Wants me to announce that Black is wrong. It would be easy to, he thinks. Would only take a few well-placed half-truths. It isn’t technically Dark Magic: Abraxas’ commissions are questionable, yes, but they aren’t poisons; Severus has no idea what the other man does with them, though it isn’t too hard to guess. I just need the money, he could say. She’d understand that, he thinks. She’s seen how he lives.
But he doesn’t say any of it. He can’t. He hates the insinuation. Hates that she’s obviously willing to believe Black over him, over her supposed best friend. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth: feels far too much like betrayal. “And you believe Black, do you?” he asks, watching carefully as Lily reacts.
She exhales: slow, heavy, her body deflating. Her collar is unbuttoned, the right side folding the wrong way and brushing against her neck. Her tie sits loose, hangs low, the stripes of red and gold so different to the green and silver that make up his own (tied in a perfect knot and sitting at his throat, collar buttoned high, lest Narcissa scold him on presentation again). She’s had a haircut recently, courtesy of Marlene McKinnon: A hack job, Lily had called it, her face split in a grin as she’d showed it off. The uneven ends of her fringe fall across her face now, the once-long locks barely reaching her jaw. Still, no one can say it doesn’t suit her.
Lily reaches to push the hair out of her eyes. “No,” she says, and Severus almost believes her. “It’s just… You’re so secretive sometimes, and they’re always asking me, and it’s just—”
I don’t know, Severus hears her think. Literally hears: as if he’d read her mind. It makes him still, confusion wiping everything else out. It’s followed by a quick succession of something — thoughts, emotions, frustrations. Odd. What you’re doing—don’t want—suspicious—nothing to do with me. “I always have to defend you,” Lily continues, “and I don’t want them to think—I just don’t want you to get into trouble.”
Severus stills. Doesn’t answer. Had barely heard what she’d said over the rush of foreign emotions. He thinks fasts, runs through everything he knows in an attempt to figure out what just happened, but he only draws blanks. What the fuck, he thinks, eyebrows knitting together. What the fuck.
Lily’s expression morphs to something weary, her body leaning away from him again. “Sev?” she says. “Are you—”
He forces himself to snap out of it, to put his focus back on her. “Sorry,” he says, shaking his head to clear it. “I… just ignore it,” he tells her, the first thing to come to mind. “It isn’t anything, alright? I’m not—It’s just for some money.”
He can tell she doesn’t believe him, not really. Not completely. It doesn’t bother him in the moment, though. Not when he’s still reeling from what had happened, not when he can still feel remnants of emotions that aren’t his. They’d been her thoughts, he thinks, knows. There’s no denying it; her mouth hadn’t moved, the sound different to speech.
What the fuck, he thinks again, and calculates how long he needs to wait before he can mumble an excuse and leave their study date early.
---
Notes, 1974 (excerpted)
30/04/1974:
Told Narcissa — seemed shocked. Said, sounds like Legilimency. Went along with it: Did not want to admit ignorance.
---
04/05/1974:
Found in Hogsmeade: Legilimency for Beginners, Stephen Swoden. Second hand, four galleons. Read first chapter — Says Legilimency (incantation: Legilimens) is the practice of immersing oneself in another’s mind.
Time for extracurricular study is limited (end of year examinations approaching). Marked as summer project.
---
27/05/1974
Keeps happening — accidental + experimental.
Overheard: Rosier (distaste for Professor Binns), Lily (distaste for Narcissa’s presence), Wilkes (interest in Dorcas Medows). Attempted to intrude on Potter’s mind once, while in Transfiguration: semi-successful, thoughts not worth repeating.
———
“Swoden says it’s like mind reading,” Severus says. He’s sitting on top of the kitchen counter, knees drawn to his chest as he reads from an open book while his mother prepares the night’s supper. Little additions are scratched in black ink, his minuscule scrawl filling the margins: the need for separate notes void now that he owned the original himself. “See – ‘allows one to overhear the thoughts of another.’”
Eileen doesn’t bother to tear her gaze from the task in front of her. “Swoden hasn’t the sense Circe gave a flobberworm,” she tells him. “I went to school with him and his brother – bloody idiots, the lot.” There is a sharp crunch, the ends of a carrot chopped and discarded. “Mind reading’s a Muggle concept,” she says. “Legilimency is an art.”
Severus snorts. “I thought magic had no place for art,” he says. His voice is a mimic of his mother’s, reminiscent of an age-old argument. He watches her cut carrots into strips, strips into cubes, the little, uneven pile scattered across the counter. He’s reminded of being three, four, five, eyes wide, curious, greedy, the craft of potions explained first in terms of ingredients, method, consequence. “Or have you taken to soul searching in my absence?”
Eileen spares him a glance: sharp, bemused, meant to shut him up. He feels a laugh tickle his throat instead. “I’d be careful, if I were you,” she warns. There is the ugly scrape of a knife on wood: broken, grating, the blade’s edge worn and blunt. Severus watches as she drops vegetables into a simmering pot, the water within erupting in a high-pitched hiss. “What do you want with it, anyway?”
Severus doesn’t offer an immediate answer. He flicks his thumb across the top end corner of his book in an offbeat rhythm, feels the fleeting brush of each individual page against his skin. What doesn’t he want with it, he thinks. He has been reading ever since he returned home, had finished Swoden’s writings in a day and spent the next three searching all of his notes for any mention of Legilimency at all. He’d found what he was looking for in the back of a book Lucius had given him: a mention of powers that Swoden had omitted. Not only can one delve into another’s mind, it’d said, but they can control it, too. Utilise it. No need for wands or incantations, only eye contact and the power of your own magic. Just the concept of it – the idea of having another’s mind at his disposal, of being able to weaponise another person’s thoughts, desires, feelings, fears, memories – it calls to the power-hungry pit of craving that sits like an organ in his chest. Who wouldn’t want it, he thinks. That power, that indestructible control. The knowledge that all you’d need to do for someone to bend to your will is look at them the right way. You would be stupid, he thinks, to ignore a talent like that.
Eileen turns to him when he doesn’t answer, expectant. Their eyes meet: balck on black on black on black. Severus wonders if his newfound talent is hereditary, if there is a reason the full force of his mother’s gaze has always managed to unnerve him in a way no one else’s has. He thinks, maybe, that it might be; there have been times, he recalls, where he’d felt as if she was looking right through him, his mind an open book, free for her to sift through, his lies and true intentions laid bare. He looks away.
“Something happened,” he says, a half-truth. “Last term.”
“What,” Eileen deadpans, turning back to the stew. “You started reading minds?”
It’s said with an air of incredulity, as if she won’t so much as entertain the possibility of truth. Severus smiles, just a little. Shifts so he’s sitting cross-legged instead. “Didn’t mean to,” he says, watching as his mother falters. “Swear it. I just looked into her eyes, and…”
He trails off as his mother’s demeanour changes: scorn replaced with something else, shadows of a careful, assessing curiosity visible beneath the attempt at neutrality. She turns to him, shoulders tight, stirring arm stilled.
“There are natural Legilimens, aren’t there?” Severus continues, pushing for information. For everything she has to offer. “People with a born inclination. I read about it.”
Eileen swallows. He sees the ripple of her throat behind her buttoned blouse, the patch of skin above her collar darkened with a faded bruise, pallid skin scattered with greens, yellows, a lingering hint of an ugly, dark blue. There is a beat of silence, then: “What did you hear?”
---
Severus sees the onion hit the kitchen table before he sees his mother, the little, light brown ball rolling across scratched wood before it settles in the middle, pathetically small with nothing else around it. He blinks.
“Whad’ya need that for?” he asks, a half-mumble, the words bleeding together. He hunches, searching for its significance, but finds nothing.
“Speak properly,” Eileen says, “I taught you how.” Her fingers press to his shoulder: a hard tap, urging him to straighten up. “And stop slouching, you’ll ruin your back.”
He huffs but does as he’s told, adjusts to sit in a manner that’s respectable: back straight, chin lifted, hands folded in his lap. “Why do we need an onion?” he says, making a point to over-enunciate. “You said we were going to practice Legilimency.”
“We are,” Eileen says, pointedly ignoring his cheek. Her hand points past his shoulder, to where the onion sits. “You’ll start by describing that.”
What, is Severus’ first thought. His second is that his mother has finally lost it. “Has Da hit your head recently?” he says. “Wh—”
It’s as far as he gets; Eileen smacks him upside the head, her mouth thinned, downturned, disapproving. Severus tries to hide his wince.
“You’re so eager to learn, you fail to see the steps required to do so,” his mother tells him. “It’s not as simple as mastering Legilimency. It takes time.” There is a soft scrape of wood against the windowsill: the tell-tale sign of Eileen unlocking their spice rack. Her wand, Severus guesses. Hidden behind jars of cinnamon, sage, thyme. He hears it clank against the glass. “You’re better off learning Occlumency first.”
Occlumency, Severus thinks, rolling the word across his tongue. Legilimency’s defence, mentioned in passing in Swoden’s text. Protects your mind from external penetration, he remembers reading, underlining, too much ink clinging to his quill; it’d bled onto the other side. He doesn’t see why he’d need to learn it first.
“Alright,” he says, anyway. “But what’s that got to do with a blo—”
“Describe it,” Eileen repeats, cutting him off. She moves around the kitchen and takes the seat across from him, a flimsy, half-empty pack of cigs pulled from her pocket and sat beside her wand. “Pick it up,” she says, pulling a smoke from the pack and placing it between her lips. “Give it a look.”
Severus hesitates. Feels like an idiot when he finally concedes. The onion is light, falls on the smaller side of average, it’s golden-brown skin flaking in his palm and sticking to it, making a mess: undesirable. He twists it in his hands, the edge of his left thumbnail tracing a crease on its outer layer. There is nothing special about it, he thinks. Nothing remarkable that he can name.
“It’s an onion,” is what he says. “I don’t know what you want me to see. It’s just—”
“Look closer,” Eileen says. She’s watching carefully, the end of her cigarette glowing red, coils of smoke curling up and around, out, carried by the wind that comes through the window: Cokeworth’s summer breeze far from refreshing. “I didn’t raise an idiot,” his mother continues. “Tell me what you see.”
Severus huffs, has always been quick to irate when his intelligence is questioned. He brings the damn thing closer to his face, turning it over in his hands: again and again and again and again. “It’s fresh,” he says, a soft murmur. He peels away the skin and discards it on the table, eyes squinting against the first hint of a stinging sensation. “Solid. Not soft the way rotted ones are.” He whiffs softly, mouth twisting in a grimace. “Pungent,” he adds, as he digs his nail into it, chunks of the first, second, third layers peeled away. “Layers are clear…”
Eileen hums, a note of approval to it. “Exactly,” she says.
Severus looks up, into his mother’s face. “What?”
“The layers,” Eileen explains. “Look at the way they’re formed.” She flicks her cigarette, the ash banished before it can hit the kitchen table. “The key to Occlumency is a protective barrier – you’ve got an Inferius’ chance in Hell of bein’ good at it without one.” She takes another drag, coughing on the exhale: the rough, throat-scraping kind. Severus vaguely recalls Mary from the corner shop telling her she ought to stop with the smokes. He wonders what they’d say if they knew he’d started. “You need to build a base, then work your way up.”
Severus’ gaze drags back to his hands. His thumb pushes further in, fingers pulling the onion open as much as they can. Juice leaks, drips down his hand, his wrist, leaves his skin sticky; he lets it slip from his fingertips, the onion dropping back to the table with a dull thud, its rings of layers exposed. “You couldn’t have just said that?” he says. “I’ve got onion all over my hands.”
His mother smirks. “You usually prefer a hands-on approach,” she reminds him, a damp tea towel thrown his way with a flick of her wand.
Severus snatches it out of mid-air, drags it over his hands. From the corner of his eye, he sees Eileen summon an ashtray, her cigarette stubbed out against its side. It is strange, he thinks, to see his mother perform casual magic. He could almost call it foreign. There are rules, restrictions, regulations: not the Ministry’s, but things his father put in place. He’s always wondered why she adheres to it; it’s not as if Tobias’ fists could fare against a curse. Especially not the right one.
Eileen straightens up. “The first step,” she says, “is letting go of all emotion. Clear your head and prepare yourself.”
“What?” Severus asks.
“Prepare yourself,” Eileen repeats. She only leaves a second for him to do so; the next thing Severus sees is his mother’s wand pointed at his face, her dark eyes meeting his. “Legilimens.”
There is a momentary pressure, a swirling motion, memories playing in flashes, stop-starts, unfocused. He is ten, eleven, twelve. He is lying with his head in Lily’s lap, his chest warm, tight, full of affection; it bleeds into the memory, the edges softened, rounded, Lily’s voice dream-like as it reads from their Transfiguration textbook. He is sitting in a booth at the Three Broomsticks, the sugar-sweet aftertaste of Butterbeer clinging to his lips, his cheeks warm, face flushed, eyes fixed on Narcissa as she recites some tale or another, Lucius’ arm heavy where it rests around his shoulders. He is running from a muggle officer, slipping through backstreets and broken fences, a stolen bag of food held securely to his chest. He is standing in Slughorn’s classroom, pale pink smoke wafting up from his cauldron, balls of parchment hitting his back, the memory’s corners faded black; a shout in the distance, cruel, cut off. Oi, Snivell—
“Get out,” Severus snaps. It’s ground out through his teeth: harsh, heated. He’s blinking rapidly, his breath heavy. His chest heaves with it: in and out and in and out and in. “What was that?”
Eileen, for her part, looks unbothered. “An introduction to Legilimency,” she says. She pauses, head tilted: contemplative. “Why didn’t you tell me you were being bullied?”
Severus stills. It’s as if ice grips his body, runs through his veins, something far too close to panic tightening his chest. Because it’s none of your business, he thinks, wants to say. Because there’s nothing you can do. Because I don’t want to admit defeat. He swallows it down: all of it. “It’s not important,” is what he tells her.
Eileen snorts. “Why don’t I believe you,” she asks, in a tone that makes Severus scowl, panic fading to irritation. He tries to control it.
“Oh, sorry,” he amends. He leans forward in his seat, arms folded against the table, the legs of his chair squeaking, scratching as he shifts: unpleasant. “Did you want to go play hero?” His mouth twitches. “March down to Dumbledore’s office and ask if he could please intervene, please.” He scoffs. “I can handle it myself.”
His mother sighs. “I only meant—”
“Clearing my head,” Severus says, loud enough to drown her out. “That’s what creates a base level of protection?”
It’s an obvious change of subject, all signs of subtly missing; he’s thankful when Eileen lets it slide. She nods to show he’d got it right, and Severus nods himself, eyes shut momentarily as he tries to rid himself of emotion. Clear your head, he thinks, pushing every little thought, feeling, desire down, covering it with what he imagines a protective layer would feel like. He does think of the onion, though he won’t admit it; he tries to replicate it, the way each layer curls around each other, close and compact. It isn’t particularly hard, he thinks. Not really. Not when he is so accustomed to the art. He knows how to conceal his own feelings, would rather repress his emotions than put them on display: a show for onlookers to laugh at. No. He inhales, exhales. Clear your mind.
Severus opens his eyes. “Try again,” he says, prepared this time.
Eileen raises her wand.
———
“Oi!”
The shout is barely discernible amongst the sea of students, the excited chatter. Severus doesn’t bother to turn. His focus is zeroed in on one of the carriages, his step quick, his small, scrawny body slipping through groups of friends in hopes of getting to the Castle quicker. He’s just about to hoist himself into the back of a carriage when he hears it: a loud, piercing whistle, the sound cutting through the crowd.
“Snape!”
He turns. Finds Evan Rosier elbowing his way toward him. The other boy is short of breath, looks as if he’d ran to catch him; there are circles of colour high on his cheeks, pink against his pale skin, his forehead damp with sweat. He pushes a younger boy out of the way, the collar of his robe loose and lowered, clinging to the dip of his shoulders. Severus stills.
“What,” he says, once Rosier is close enough.
The other boy ignores it, stepping past him and hoisting himself into the carriage, his hand bunching around Severus’ sleeve to pull him along. Severus has little choice but to follow, a noise of protest caught in his throat as Rosier motions for what Severus knows to be thestrals to move, not offering the chance for anyone else to join them.
“Merlin,” Rosier breathes, falling against his seat. He sits with his hand curled around his knee, fingers tapping to a beat only he can hear. Severus watches him, uncertain. Assessing. His stance is relaxed, open, friendly. He’d filled out over the summer, if only slightly: his shoulders broader and jaw sharpened, an inch or three added in height. It sparks a whisper of envy that Severus hates. “You’re quick when you want to be.”
Suspicion coils in the pit of Severus’ stomach: cautionary. He knows Rosier, of course. Has slept in the bed beside him for years. But he doesn’t know him well. Their interactions are limited to shallow conversation, to passing comments and the odd occurrence where Severus finds the other boy awake late, tossing and turning with a familiar restlessness. He certainly wouldn’t call him a friend.
“Speed’s an advantage when you’re being followed,” he says, pointedly. He takes care to keep his voice neutral, measured, but the real meaning is clear: What do you want?
Rosier smiles, a fleeting flash of straight, white teeth: presumably fake. It makes his cheeks dimple, deep and handsome. Makes creases form around his eyes; they shine a dark, ocean-blue in the dim light. “Wanted to catch you before you got inside,” he explains, mouth curling to a slight grimace as he continues. “I overheard Potter showing Black a new batch of dungbombs when I got on the train.”
He pauses: too long. Severus doesn’t need to hear more to know where the warning is headed; he can guess who the intended target is. What he doesn’t understand is why Rosier has made an effort to tell him.
“They mentioned something about catching you before the new first years got in.”
The carriage rattles, wobbles, the Castle’s lights drawing closer. Severus exhales through his nose, his nails digging into his thigh through the fabric of his robe: an attempt to calm himself, to stifle the despair-riddled resignation that sits heavy on his chest. He’d much rather deal with something he can control.
“And?” Severus forces out. There are thoughts pressing at his mind’s barriers: intrusive, unwanted. He hates it: the fact that Potter and Black have picked him as their target practice, the fact that he is used to it, that everyone is. It’s expected, he thinks, and still. Still. No one ever tries to—
Clear it, he thinks, remembering his mother’s lessons. Let go of all emotion – leave a blank slate behind. Control it. He takes another deep breath.
Rosier scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip. “Well…” He shrugs, his messy curls bouncing with it. “Thought I’d warn you.”
It’s said as if it should be obvious, like Rosier doesn’t understand what other reason there is to say it, but Severus is not so quick to abandon his suspicions. “Why?” he asks, and Rosier’s eyebrows knit together.
“Would you rather I didn’t?” he says. “I mean. If it were me, I’d want to know.” He shifts, his robe falling further down his back, exposing the crisp, clean lines of his uniform shirt. “Besides, it’s good to have allies, isn’t it? Especially now, you know. With everything.”
There’s something ominous in the last part: a hint to things Severus isn’t privy to. It sparks his curiosity. “I don’t,” he says. “Know.”
Rosier blinks. “Right.” His voice is barely more than a breath. “Right, yeah. Narcissa said you lived—”
Narcissa’s name makes Severus falter. He stares, notes the way Rosier cuts himself off: like he said something he shouldn’t have. Realisation settles like a blanket, obvious now that he has the details. Of course, he thinks, as he watches Rosier swallow the rest of his sentence. “She asked you to keep an eye on me,” he says, not a question. It makes sense; after all, had Lucius not asked the same thing of her when he’d graduated? He knows he had, even if neither of them had never said it outright. It’d been obvious in the way she’d included him, invited him, her arm warm where it linked with his, the two of them walking the strip down to Hogsmeade. It hadn’t bothered him then, and he isn’t sure it bothers him now; not as much as it should, he thinks. He doesn’t need a babysitter, doesn’t like the suggestion that he does, but instead of anger, irritation, there is a sharp, surprising spark of warmth. They must care about me, he thinks. To do that.
The smile Rosier gives him is almost sheepish. “Seems you made friends with the right people,” he tells him. “They can be a bit… possessive.”
Severus glares, eyes like slits. “I don’t need protection.”
Rosier rolls his eyes. “Is everything an insult to you?” he says, voice thick the way it gets when a laugh is caught in his throat. “I never said you did. But four-on-one’s hard to beat, even when you’re talented. Help wouldn’t hurt.” He smiles, again. The sharp, angular lines of his face softened.
“Allies,” Severus repeats, referencing Rosier’s earlier proposition. He can’t help the sarcastic tilt.
Rosier does laugh, now. Short and airy. “Friends, even,” he says. “Merlin knows we’ve shared a dorm long enough.”
Severus hums, but he offers no answer. Forgoes a response in favour of looking out the carriage window, the towers of Hogwarts visible against the black sea of a sky: smooth, endless, broken with the silver-gold glitter of stars. He sits with his robes gathered around him, dark fabric bunched, arms crossed over his chest. You wear that thing like armour, his mother had said, once, as she’d watched him in it. It’s a habit he’s yet to break.
“So,” Rosier says, only slightly awkward. “Got a class you’re looking forward to?”
The conversation falls back to familiar topics, safe topics: classes, professors, magic. Nothing that really means anything. Severus has never liked small talk, but he lets it slide now, offers shallow answers and then listens to Rosier’s, nods when he’s supposed to. By the time they exit the carriage, a tight ball of anxiety has formed in the centre of his chest, his mind alert, body on edge. Expectant.
Rosier stays close as they make their way through the sea of students, toward the Great Hall. Potter and Black do indeed attempt an ambush, though it ends with the two of them falling victim to their own dungbombs, a careful, calculated flick of Rosier’s wand making Potter trip over his own feet and land face-first in the Entrance Hall. He laughs afterwards, turning to wink in Severus’ direction, and Severus doesn’t bother to stifle a smile of his own.
“Shove over,” Rosier says, once they make it to the Slytherin table. He nudges Mulciber aside, nodding toward the gap that opens, and Severus takes the offered seat with only a slight hesitancy.
No one bats an eye. There is no show and dance to the acceptance, no questions as to why he’s suddenly joining them now, after years of sitting with other people. Wilkes nods at him from across the table while Avery gives a short, tight smile, and they all turn to watch as Professor McGonagall ushers the latest batch of first years into the Hall, Rosier leaning toward him to whisper a joke about a kid who looks closer to six than eleven, and that’s that. Easy, casual. Natural.
Allies, Severus thinks, as they Hall settles into the Sorting. Friends.
It doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
———
Notes, 1974 (excerpted)
22/10/1974:
Approached by Prof. Slughorn — expected to be scolded for missing pixie dust (was wrong). Asked to tutor younger years instead. Said: Surely a member of your Club would be more suited, sir.
Was not appreciated; Mulciber laughed.
---
02/12/1974:
Experiments —
[1] Levicorpus.
Target: Jacksons (first yr, volunteered).
Encouraging result: remained mid-air for eleven minutes, thirty-seven seconds. Slight disorientation; thankfully no repeat of Walsh’s response.
[2] Calming Draught.
Brewed on behalf of Avery (anxiety, Rosier said. Seems to worsen when his father owls). Replaced fresh lavender for dried leaves, added a single anti-clockwise stir at the end.
Result: Usual blue replaced by pale violet, opaque. Appears to have green tint in certain lights (most likely a result of added mint - infused). Quick to work, Avery said. Successful.
———
“What are you doing?”
Severus is standing in the dormitory’s doorway, eyes dark, narrowed, distrustful as he looks at Mulciber sitting on the edge of his bed. There are yellowed, crinkled slips of parchment laid across the emerald comforter, the loose pages filled with Severus’ script: his latest attempt at spell creation, the early ideas for a jinx that affixes the tongue of its victim to the roof of their mouth hastily noted down during Transfiguration, Black’s baleful babbling for once providing stimulation. Useful for verbal duelling, he’d written. And shutting people up.
Mulciber jolts at the sound of his voice; he turns toward Severus with a swift jerk of his head, looks torn between admitting guilt and pretending he hadn’t been doing anything wrong. “Uh,” he says, ineloquent. He stands but doesn’t move. Just stares, watches, brown eyes jumping from Severus’ face to his stance, his wand. Weary, Severus thinks. As he should be. “Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to—”
“What are you doing,” Severus says again, colder this time.
They might be friends now, he thinks, but he still doesn’t like his things being touched. Not without permission. Not when he isn’t around to witness it. Not when the things in question are his notes: little scraps of insight into the inner-workings of his mind, filled with half-formed ideas. Things that haven’t been perfected yet. His dorm mates should know better than to touch them, he thinks. He’d already warned them twice.
Mulciber looks behind him, as if assessing how much he got caught with. “Wilkes said you’d be in here,” he tries to explain. “I didn’t mean to—they were out—”
A pathetic excuse, Severus thinks, as his lip curls. He steps past Mulciber, snatching up his notes and shoving them into his bedside drawer, his bag thrown to the bed. “That doesn’t mean you can look at them,” he snaps, ignoring Mulciber’s sigh behind him.
“Yeah, whatever,” he says. He’s relaxing, slowly. The tension dissipating. Severus looks at his shoulders: broad, tense, easing with every breath. His chest rises, falls, rises, falls. “’s not like I’m gonna steal it.”
“You wouldn’t know how,” Severus tells him, both because he’s irritated but also because it’s true. He only just catches Mulciber rolling his eyes.
“Anyway,” the other boy says, pointedly. “Where were you?”
Severus sighs. “In the library,” he admits, ignoring the Should’ve guessed Mulciber lets slip under his breath. He’d been looking into magical explanations for invisibility: Has been, for weeks. Ever since he’d been ambushed in a secluded part of the Castle, Potter and his friends jumping out from seemingly nowhere. It’s been slowly turning him mad.
Mulciber picks up the book that’d slipped from Severus’ bag, flipping it open at random; the page he picks is an introduction to concealment charms, its margins full of scribbles. His mouth twists to a small, knowing smirk. “You get kicked out again?”
Severus snorts, lets go of his initial irritation; it’s not worth holding onto, he thinks. “Got called an abomination,” he confirms, the memory of Madam Pince throwing him out still fresh. “As if the bitch’s shrieking doesn’t break her own rules.” He shakes his head. “What’d you want?”
Mulciber doesn’t bother wasting time, just jumps straight into what he’d approached him for; it’s one of the things Severus likes about him. “That spell you gave me,” he starts. “It had Roberts hanging from his ankles before he could even get out his wand. I finally got my damn Sneakoscope back.” He grins, again: malicious, this time. His eyes glint with it, something dangerous, dark, swimming in deep brown, begging to come out. Severus knows there’s more he wants to add.
“And?”
“And I was wondering if you had anything else up your sleeve,” he says. “Something a little more… vicious.”
Vicious, Severus thinks, an eyebrow arched. He laughs: little more than an exhale. “What makes you think I would?” he asks, playing dumb.
Mulciber looks at him as if to say, Are you serious? “You know what everyone says,” he says, instead: a subtle reference to Severus’ knowledge of the Dark Arts, to the rumours it creates. Pride flickers in Severus’ chest the same way it always does when he’s faced with recognition, the feeling warm, incandescent, more so because of the rarity of the encounter: not often is his interest in the Dark Arts met with anything close to appreciation. “Give me something good,” Mulciber adds, “and I’ll make sure to send a bludger or two at Potter’s head this weekend.”
Severus grins. It’s enough to seal the deal. “What were you looking for?”
———
Notes, 1975 (new)
07/03/1975:
Received detention: McGonagall, Saturday morning, paired with Mulciber, Avery (cleaning cauldrons). Got caught throwing Levicorpus at Black (he started it – suggested my new robe was a gift for bedding Lucius Malfoy. Wasn’t; I saved for it).
Lily displeased. Says I’m ‘cultivating a reputation’. I think she just doesn’t like Mulciber. He says: Who cares what ‘the mudblood’ thinks. (Has been difficult, lately, to keep them away from each other.)
Point of interest: fifth yr Grif. boy’s uncle found dead. Death Eaters, the Prophet said. Naturally, he’s blaming all of Slytherin. (Idiot.)
Lily says: Not the time for me to be ‘associating with certain housemates’. As if I have other options.
———
Notes, 1975 (new)
30/07/1975:
Received warning from Ministry – suspected underage magic, it said. Mum told them it was her. It wasn’t. (Occlumency defences deemed adequate, have since started practicing Legilimency properly.)
Experimented on:
[1] Neighbour’s grandson: successful. Saw memories from childhood (nothing worth noting). Thinks me odd; managed to make him believe nothing strange had happened.
[2] Da: semi-successful. Attempts stopped by Mum. Saw: flashes from the Muggle war, mostly. Nothing of interest.
---
02/08/1975:
Got in another fight with boys from over the Mill. Same group as last time — Queer, they called me. Freak, posh. (If only they knew.)
Injuries retained: split lip, bloody nose, scabbed palms, broken rib (partially Da’s fault, Mum says, from the punishment last week). Managed to get away — bit Alex’s arm so he’d loosen his grip.
Da gave me a switchblade. Says: Stop being a ‘bloody coward and stick up to ‘em.’ Mum seemed to disagree.
---
12/08/1975:
Lily returned from visiting family. Brought me back a set of jars with seashells all over them — said it reminded her of me (something about potion ingredients). Spent afternoon scouring the lake for things to put inside them. Collected: tadpoles, mud and water samples. Managed to capture a frog when Lily wasn’t looking.
Reminded me of when we first met — Friendship is much calmer, now that we’re away from Hogwarts.
———
Ink falls from the tip of a quill, thin, long stripes of black painting already stained hands; the liquid spilling, dripping, curving over bone and seeping into his sleeve. Severus barely notices, preoccupied as he is. He has just seen Remus Lupin pass the pathway toward the Whomping Willow, Madam Pomfrey at his side, her arm around the boy’s shoulders as they make their way through the mid-January sludge. It’s not his first time seeing it; there had been another incident, years earlier, in his first year, when Lupin was not yet an accomplice to Potter and Black’s stupidity. He hadn’t cared, then.
He does now.
Severus sits alone, hidden in the half-shadow of the rapidly darkening sky, streaks of dulled orange and muted yellow scattered across the horizon and casting the courtyard in a low light. The earth beneath him has been spell-dried, the muddied residue of snow banished. He likes the chill of the waning winter, the way he can draw his robe tight and still be comfortably cold, the way he can sit, unbothered, as most of the student body seeks the warmth of the castle.
Key word: Most.
“Still poking ‘round the Willow, eh, Snivelly?”
Black’s voice draws Severus from thought, his presence palpable, his energy known. Severus has taught himself how to identify a threat; he knows the particular slant to Sirius’ step, the scrape of heavy, dragonhide boots on stone, concrete, sodden, wet earth. How nice it must be, he thinks, to renounce your family name and still keep the privilege that comes with it. The wealth.
“What do you want, Black?”
Even as he says it, he knows an answer won’t be given, not a real one. He drops his quill in favour of his wand, eyes scanning: stance, wand, surroundings. It’s only two-on-one, today, Pettigrew their only audience. Severus knows from experience that that means Black is less likely to strike: Prefers a crowd, he’d scrawled, once, in the margins of his fourth year transfiguration text. He’d spent weeks observing Black’s behaviour, making notes on hallway run-ins, classroom demonstrations, targeted, intended attacks. It hadn’t been a surprising find.
“Could ask you the same,” Black says, now. He stands tall, elbow resting on Pettigrew’s shoulder, the smaller boy looking between them with unveiled glee. Expecting something, Severus realises, resentment prickling beneath his skin as dread flickers in the depth of his stomach. He discards his mother’s old copy of fifth year’s Standard Book of Spells and gets to his feet.
“‘Course,” Black continues, “you’re always poking that beak of yours where it doesn’t belong. I’m surprised you haven’t figured this out, yet.” He points toward the Willow for emphasis: a lazy lift of his hand, deep brown flashing as the tip of his wand peeks out from beneath his sleeve. “It’s so simple even Peter got it.”
Black laughs as he says it, the sound loud, mocking, his hand clapping his friend on the back. Pettigrew, the dimwit, joins in, the ugly squeak of a thing quiet compared to Black’s hearty chuckle. Severus wonders, idly, what it is like to be a willing participant in your own humiliation. To perpetuate it.
His hand flexes around his wand. “Absorbed knowledge,” he says, careful. It’s a practiced drawl, the tone still not quite right. “Common amongst those who let others do their thinking for them.”
It’s almost funny, Severus thinks, this. The way it happens so often they’ve grown predictable. Pettigrew’s smile falters but Black’s vanishes completely, mirth dissipating as disgust takes its place. The ensuing barbs are expected: the jab about how he’d be familiar with that, now, wouldn’t he, the mention of his acquaintance with Lucius Malfoy, the insinuation of something extra. No, it’s what comes after that’s surprising. The way Black leaves without a scene, Pettigrew trailing behind. The way he stops, hesitates, half-turned. The way his mouth twitches, curls: a would-be smile if it weren’t so sinister.
“You know,” he says, head thrown back, face tilted toward the greying sky. “If you really want to know…”
---
Notes, 1973 (revisited)
Werewolves ( lycanthropy) —
Infection must occur on full moon: Contamination a result of contact between human blood and werewolf saliva (bites – anywhere on body). To heal: powdered silver, dittany.
Transformation uncontrollable; while human minds are overridden, the wolf’s memory is retained.
Different to normal wolves. See: shorter snout, humanoid eyes, tufted tail, increased aggression. Violent in nature – known to mindlessly hunt any human in their vicinity.
Prone to fatal violence.
---
It gnaws at him, even as he returns to the castle, even as he tries to ignore it: an itch he can’t help but scratch. He knows, even before he makes the decision, that he’s going to do it. Knows in that way everyone knows themselves: the knowledge you have of the worst of you, the distant, peripheral awareness, the thoughts, feelings, desires you bury beneath feigned innocence, scared that someone might see. Severus knows this part of him well. He knows he cannot help himself.
Just prod the knot, Black had said. His eyes had glittered, a strange, unprecedented verve twisting his features. Isn’t that right, Pete?
He stumbles in the half-dark, Lumos foregone to lessen the risk of drawing attention. His path is lit by the moon instead, the orb large, bright, full where it hangs in the sky, soft streams of gentle light illuminating the grounds around the Whomping Willow just enough for Severus to see. He follows Black’s instructions, slipping inside the passageway before the Willow can mobilise. Mud seeps through scuffed shoes, through torn socks, his feet uncomfortably damp as he feels his way through the tunnel, wand lit to ease the way. It feels as if forever passes before he reaches his destination.
The Shrieking Shack is rotted: disordered, dusty, dirty. Severus looks around in the light of his Lumos, glances at boarded windows and broken walls, at sparse, splintered furniture. Strange, he thinks. Strange to be here, strange that this is where the tunnel had led. Strange that he does not see Lupin, does not hear him. Instead, there is an eerie quiet: the wobble of a window in harsh wind, the skitter of a rat, the gentle thump of his step, the accelerated huff of his breath. He steps carefully through the Shack, eyes squinted, scanning. Where did you run off to, he thinks, adrenaline prickling beneath his skin as Lupin remains concealed, but then he hears it: A low, animalistic whine. He stills, ears straining. He catches the end of a rumbling growl, of something scratching at wood. Nails, his mind supplies, and he knows he’s right; he’d spent the winter hols of his second year peeling bark from Wiggentree by hand. Not much else makes that kind of scrape, he thinks, uncertainty flickering in the pit of his stomach when another growl sounds, louder now. A dog, he thinks. Maybe. Most likely. Only dogs don’t shriek, not really. Not like the Shack is known for.
He moves further inside, down the hallway, pale moonlight streaming through shattered glass and cutting through dust, lighting the way. His mind is swirling, pieces of a puzzle linking together as thoughts, half-formed, are discarded before they can finish: Lupin, he thinks. Lupin, ill. Sickly. Monthly. Lupin, only they never called him that, did they? No. No. Moony: a joyful cry across the classroom, Black’s head thrown in a laugh, Potter’s arm around his shoulders. Moony. The truth hidden in plain sight. Stupid, Severus thinks, like a shout in his own head. Stupid, stupid! Why would you listen to Black, he thinks, but his feet are moving as if on their own accord. He needs to see. To prove.
Curiosity killed the cat, his mother used to say, when he was seven, eight, nine, hungry for knowledge and willing to fight for it. He’d scoffed, then. But now…
He moves toward the noise. Adrenaline pumps in his veins, heats his body, covers him with a sheen of sticky sweat. His heart is in his throat. He can feel it, the accelerated thud, thud, thud. It drowns out the world around him, leaves only him and the monster, the thing crying out, its whines increasing as if it knows. As if it can tell.
Fresh meat.
There is a moment where he hesitates. Where he stands, palms clammy, fingers curled, the splintered, rotted handle scratching into the flesh of his hand. Where he listens as noises grow louder, whines and whimpers spilling through cracks, and thinks, Do you really want…
But he does. The wolf’s call is beckoning. He needs to know. Needs to see if this is what Lupin has turned into, if his assumptions are correct, if his suspicion that Potter and his friends are hiding something is justified. Needs the vindication.
Hinges squeak as the door is pushed open, more light streaming through as Severus’ breath catches in his throat. He sees it: A wolf, were. He can tell, a faraway part of his mind ticking off the checklist: short snout, humanoid eyes, tufted tail. Aggressive, his brain screams, a warning sign. Get out. But his feet don’t move. He is standing, staring, transfixed as the wolf shifts, arches. Gets to its feet. The knots of its spine ripple as it stands, its lip curling in interest, exposing pointed, canine teeth. Its steps are hesitant, first, something hungry twisting its features as it moves toward him.
“Snape!”
Potter’s voice: distant, out of breath. Severus turns on reflex, searching. He hears the echo of a swear, hears feet thudding against the ground, a shadow dancing in the dark. Potter skids around the corner, into the hall, the noise catching the wolf’s attention. Severus turns back to Lupin. Finds the wolf staring at them, it’s eyes yellow-gold, glowing. Its paws hit the ground: a predator closing in on its prey.
“Snape!” Potter, again: panting. Panicked, maybe. A little bit. “Come on! He’ll—”
Lupin lunges. Severus’ reflexes are quick, but they’re not quick enough. Curved claws catch his arm, their sharp edges tearing through fabric and flesh alike, the cut bubbling with blood. He is distantly aware of the pain, of Potter’s voice close behind him. A spell sends Lupin flying back into the room, and Severus pulls the door shut, wand lifted. Increbresclusura, he thinks, and then shouts: an attempt to tighten the hold.
They run, then. The both of them. “Hurry up,” Potter spits, reaching to drag him along. His hand closes on Severus’ elbow: grip tight, urgent, likely to leave a bruise. A growl sounds behind them, low and menacing, and suddenly all Severus can think of is third year Defence Against the Dark Arts, when Professor Paketho had stood in front of them all and repeated the words, Will kill if provoked. They repeat in his head, now: A mantra, inspiration to keep running.
They stumble their way to safety, Severus ripping his arm from Potter’s grasp as they fall through the Willow’s opening. “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” he shouts, loud. Too loud. Louder than he’d meant it to be. He can’t help it; he can taste the fear on the back of his tongue. Can feel it: raw and harrowing, burning in his throat, constricting his airflow.
“Look, just—”
—calm down. It’s the obvious end of the sentence; Severus hears it even as Potter breaks off. He splutters, words tangled on his tongue, accent slipping through as he swears, incoherent in the face of the sheer absurdity. He forces himself to quiet, to breathe, long and deep, to get himself under control the way he’s practiced. “Black sent me to a fucking werewolf,” he says, as if he’s still trying to wrap his head around it. Pain is tingling across his left arm now that adrenaline is clearing from his system. It throbs in beat with his heart. “To fucking Lu—”
“Shut it,” Potter hisses. He’s looking around as if searching for something, someone: as if scared they might have been overheard. “Would you just—You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Severus glares. Allows himself to fall back into hatred’s familiar hold, the itching anger a comfort compared to the fear that lingers, its strength unsettling. “And how did you know,” he spits, accusatory. “Been planning it, have you? All four of you?” Did you want to play the hero, he thinks. Or… “It’s not as if you don’t want me dea—”
“No,” Potter says. There is anger creeping its way into his features. Annoyance. Severus feels a spike of satisfaction. “We didn’t—Sirius was just messing around, all right? It was just a prank. I don’t think he—”
Severus laughs, harsh and humourless. Bullshit, he thinks. He knew damn well what he was doing, and so do you. “Come off it,” he snaps. “You’d both jump at the opportunity t—”
“Oi, mate!”
The call comes from the left of them, where the grounds bend and curve into uneven hills. It’s Black’s voice, followed by the rustle of leaves, his head appearing from behind a bush, Professor McGonagall a step behind. Severus turns so quick his neck hurts, his wand in his hand before Black even sees him.
“D’you find Sni—”
Black cuts off as he comes closer. Severus feels his gaze, the way it looks between them for answers to questions he doesn’t ask: did it work, does he know, how much trouble am I in. Severus feels hatred burn like poison in his blood.
“You,” he spits. He can feel the fight bubbling in his chest, the scream pressing at his teeth. “You tried to ki—”
“I—”
“Quiet,” McGonagall says. She steps between them, her face pinched and lips thinned, the tartan edge of her nightgown muddy where it trails along the ground. She looks to Severus, Sirius, James, her eyes lingering on the blood that drips down Severus’ arm, his white shirt turned red. “Oh, dear,” she sighs, barely a breath. There is a suspicious lack of surprise, and Severus realises immediately that she’d known, that everyone must know, that they’ve all been keeping it a secret. McGonagall straightens, serious. “Not a word from any of you,” she says, urging them back toward the Castle. “The Headmaster requires your presence.”
---
McGonagall doesn’t join them in the Headmaster’s office. Instead, she leaves the room as Dumbledore takes his seat, as he starts to speak, elbows perched on the edge of his desk with his hands steeple at his chin, his eyes blue and clear and, for once, not twinkling. He looks at the three of them: at Severus standing with his arms curled across his chest like armour, at Potter hunched in one seat while Black takes the other, his back straight and chin lifted, mouth set. He looks like his brother, Severus thinks, which is to say that he looks like a Black. Which is to say that he looks pure-blood: unflinching in the face of scrutiny, prepared to revisit the family practice of deniability.
Give it a rest, boy, Eileen had said, the previous summer, when she’d caught him in front of the mirror practicing words like dauncy, susurrate, inisitijitty. You weren’t born the type.
Meaning: You’ll never have it.
Meaning: You can’t breed it out.
“Grave mistakes were made tonight,” Dumbledore says, and already, Severus is losing whatever hope he’d had. Mistake is a telling word, he thinks. A mistake is a trivial matter, is what you use when someone didn’t know better. Mistakes are first year slip ups: picking wormwood over wolfsbane, leaning right on a broom when you should’ve lent left. Mistake suggests an accident: A lack of intent.
“I didn’t mean,” Sirius says, damage control. Bitterness bubbles in Severus’ throat; it feels awfully like a laugh. “I never thought he’d actually—”
“You did!” Severus spits. He can’t help himself. Indignation is swirling in his chest like crashing waves, pushing everything up, out. “You knew – you wanted—”
—me dead, he thinks, even as Dumbledore speaks over them. You wanted me dead. The reality of it is striking. You wanted me dead and everyone in the room is aware of it, he thinks. You wanted me dead and the Headmaster has declared it a mistake. I wonder, he thinks. I wonder how things would change: if the tables were turned, if you had succeeded. Would Dumbledore stand over my dead body and call it a mishap, he thinks, an accident most unfortunate? The thought is still swirling, half-formed, when he sees the truth in it. Collateral damage, he realises. What is one dead boy to a deleterious scandal?
And even still. Even still, there is a flicker of surprise, a second of pure, unadulterated disbelief, when Dumbledore looks to him and says: “Twenty points from Slytherin for wandering the grounds at night.”
There is a pause: split-second, dead quiet. His mouth drops open, but only a little, only just. Bewilderment covers him like a haze, Severus forced to listen as Dumbledore seizes the opportunity his stunned silence offers and continues dictating their punishment. Forty points are taken from Black for endangering a fellow student, but the words mean nothing, the quantity a pitiful attempt at reprimand. Severus stares at where Potter’s hand sits curled around Black’s wrist, warning, restraining, as if he knows Sirius wants to argue, and Severus feels that laugh, again, the scream it masks tickling his throat. Let me, he thinks. Circe, Merlin, Salazar, God. Let me get vengeance myself.
“Another ten,” the Headmaster adds, “for betraying a friend.”
Shock is draining, dissipating, leaving irritation in its wake. Of course, he thinks now, of course this is the response. The precedent is set, has been. Why would he expect—
“Sixty points to Gryffindor,” he hears Dumbledore say, as if in a dream, as if he is wading through murky water, “for Mr. Potter’s heroic act.”
Severus stares. Anger boils, it bubbles. It burns in his blood. He can feel it, the switch flicking, fury thrumming through him like adrenaline, spreading from head to toe. He looks at Dumbledore and doesn’t blink, doesn’t move. He sees him speak but doesn’t hear the words, doesn’t care for their meaning. There is only rage, white-hot. It clouds his mind and blocks his ears and heats his skin and makes his chest constrict with an ugly, twisted, hateful kind of righteousness: a dangerous, dark urge making his fingers twitch, itch, the pressure building. His hand slips beneath his sleeve, hidden behind Potter’s chair, his nails digging into his arm hard enough to reopen the wound left by Lupin. He feels the first drop of blood, wet against his fingertips, the effect instantaneous: A flicker of relief, rage waning enough to tune back in.
“I trust, of course, that you will handle the incident with appropriate discretion?”
It’s not so much a question as it is a call for agreement. Dumbledore looks between the three of them and Severus digs his nails deeper, Potter and Black nodding their understanding.
“Then you are free to go,” the Headmaster says.
He knows, even without being told, that the offer does not extend to him. He watches, silent, as Potter and Black get to their feet, Black refusing to look at him as he trails out behind his friend. Faux remorse, Severus thinks. Not that anyone will care.
“Take a seat, Mr. Snape,” he’s told once the footsteps have faded.
He does so hesitantly, the room falling silent. The air sizzles, it crackles: thick and electric. Severus feels his own magic humming beneath his skin: his body tense, tight. On edge.
“I imagine you have questions.”
“They tried to kill me,” Severus responds: not a question. He tries to keep his voice even, to sound calm. It’s only half successful; there is a tremor to the words, his teeth clenched to stop it. “They should be expelled.”
The response is a tight smile, the kind that comes across condescending. “I do not believe Mr. Black’s actions were malicious in nature,” Dumbledore says, and Severus doesn’t bother to conceal his snort.
“Of course you don’t.”
It’s not the response Dumbledore was expecting. Severus can tell: sees the minuscule arch of a brow, the way the fingers on Dumbledore’s left hand clench, unclench. The Headmaster gives him an even stare, his eyes holding Severus’ gaze as the silence stretches. Here comes the show and dance, Severus thinks, the thought barely finished before he feels it: the pressure at his mind’s defences, the attempt at intrusion familiar despite Dumbledore’s effort at subtlety. Legilimency, Severus realises, dropping his gaze on reflex. He blanks his mind the way he’s been practicing, layers upon layers of protection put in place as Dumbledore reaches for the bowl of sherbet lemons: casual. Pretending he hadn’t just tried to—
“Under no circumstance are you to reveal the evening’s events,” Dumbledore says. He’s fiddling with the wrapper of a sherbet lemon, the plastic crinkling at his touch: a picture-perfect image of innocence if not for the hard edge to his voice. “It is important you understand the gravity of the situation, Severus. Mr. Lupin’s condition must not be exposed to the student body. I have ensured Hogwarts provides a controlled envir—”
Severus cuts him off. “Controlled?” he spits. It’s as if he’s been reignited, all his previous anger tumbling back. It straightens his posture, brightens his eyes, makes his face twist, his fingers twitch, his wand held securely in hand. No wonder Lucius calls you a bloody coot, he thinks. “You think that was c—”
“—onment,” Dumbledore finishes, speaking as if Severus hadn’t interrupted. “Despite Mr. Black’s misjudgement—”
“Misjudgement?” Severus is on his feet, now, his free hand flat on Dumbledore’s desk. “He damn well knew what he was doing. He knew – he sent me to a—”
“Severus—”
“No!” His voice rises, anger overtaking control. When he speaks next, it’s with a scream clawing at his throat, his body shaking with the effort to keep it contained. “You’d rather take the side of a—a—a half-breed—”
Dumbledore stands, drawing himself to his full height: an attempt at intimidation. “You will not use that word with me, Severus,” he says. His voice is hard, cold, commanding. Where is the pleasant professor now, Severus thinks. The kind, old man. “Do you understand?”
Severus steps back, away. He can taste his own heartbeat, can feel the heavy rise and fall of his chest. He breathes, harsh and heavy, a tremor to it. “I understand,” he says, and he does. He looks at Dumbledore. Holds his gaze. Feels that subtle pressure again: Dumbledore’s attempt to penetrate his mind. “I understand,” he says again. And then, “I’ll be going now.”
He doesn’t wait for permission. Doesn’t wait to be excused. He turns on his heel and walks as quickly as he can without breaking into a run. He wants to get out, needs to. Does not want to look at Dumbledore for another second. All of it, everything that’s been said. It all amounts to the same thing. The same meaning: Keep your mouth shut.
Do you understand? Keep your mouth shut, or else.
The door slams in his wake, Severus uncaring as he waits, impatient, for the staircase to move. Let them have it, then, he thinks. Their secrecy. Their protection. Let them have it. He doesn’t need it.
He can take care of himself.
---
Notes, 1976 (new)
17/01/1976:
Werewolves (revised) —
Weaknesses: silver.
To kill: silver – wound or cut (Icarus’ text instructs to aim for the heart), beheading (discouraged if wolf is unrestrained). Possibly: dismemberment (bleed dry), ingestion of liquid silver (experimental, findings uncertain).
Spell theory lacking; further research required.
------
Notes, 1973 (revisited)
Spell Design: A Guide for Beginners by M.E. Mallaway.
Key focus: intent, action, incantation. Clear visualisation makes for a better chance of success.
---
Notes, 1976 (new)
08/02/1976:
Attempt one —
Intent: Laceration; mild to severe, incl. fatal.
Incantation: Secarius. Lacesasus. Sectumesa. Prac
Incantation: Sectumsempra.
Action: Aim, slash. (Adaptive; varied to fit control/severity.)
Effect:
---
There is an apple in his hand, average weight but rounder than usual, its skin ripe and red and perfect. He rolls it in his palm, slow. Gentle. Trails the nail of his left index finger across its surface and leaves a faint mark in his wake: absentminded, his gaze focused on the sea of parchment laid out in front of him; notes, new and old.
Severus reads them over a third time and lifts his wand, fruit placed back on the desk as he prepares. Intent. He imagines the apple sliced: A series of neat cuts along the curve, pieces completely detached. A clean cut. He pushes his chair back for extra distance, the legs scraping against the stone floor with a shrill shriek. Action. He lifts his arm and aims, waving his wand through the air as if it were a sword. Incantation. His voice is clear, loud when surrounded by silence: a faint thrum of excitement underpinning the single word he speaks.
“Sectumsempra!”
White light sparks from his wand but fizzles before anything happens, bright and stark in the darkened room. Static, Severus thinks, as he eyes the offending object. The apple remains untouched, unblemished. The first hint of annoyance itches beneath his skin.
He tries again.
Intent, action, incantation. Intent, action, incantation. Intent, action, incantation. Intent, action, incantation.
Nothing.
---
Notes, 1976 (continued)
Effect: N/A.
Spell appears futile. Strong start, quick to dissipate. Dissimilar to previous attempts — must check differences in charm/curse/hex creation.
Experimentation not void yet.
---
Notes, 1975 (revisited)
Curse Creation, author retracted. (Book old, deteriorating – pages missing.)
[retracted]
[retracted]
[retracted]
Suggests emotion is a key feature – Cruciatus provided as example. Without real intent it will not come to fruition.
[retracted]
Note: Author appears to be an idiot: several theories disproven. Take with a grain of salt.
———
Desire, Severus thinks, as he eyes the latest apple: green, this time. Old and bruised with brown staining its skin in a way similar to the ink that taints his fingers: streaks of not-quite-black twisting in blotches across the top of his palm, below his knuckles—an incident in Double Potions. He rolls his wand in his palm. Focuses on the way the ridges press against his skin. Emotion, he reads, the word scrawled in his own script, minuscule and cramped where it sits between a series of crossed-out notes. The author really had been an idiot, he recalls, but, well. It was worth a shot.
Intent: laceration, obviously. But more than that: protection. A perceived threat. The memory of a dark room lit only by moonlight, animal eyes glowing gold, a flash of fangs, sharp and white and deadly, a low growl and his own heart in his throat as paws had hit the ground, running.
That’s what it’s about, really: retaliation. He’s only planning ahead.
(Will save himself, next time.)
Emotion, Severus thinks, as phantom fear burns in his throat like bile. He lets it consume him.
“Sectumsempra!”
---
Notes, 1976 (new)
24/02/1976:
Sectumsempra: Attempt XI —
Promising result – apple obliterated (*consider benefits of a counter-curse). Visual too obtrusive: bright white, blinding. Less than ideal.
Thoughts: Need to work on control & presentation.
---
His back is to the wall, stone floor cold beneath his trousers. It seeps through the fabric and into his skin but Severus is too preoccupied to notice. He is staring at the flicker of magic in front of him. White light, translucent. It sparks from the tip of his wand and glitters almost like pixie dust, streaks of it floating through the air as he weaves them together. Creates a single, subtle stream.
It is different from his previous experiments, he thinks. This magic is stronger, volatile. Capable of destruction. A stark contrast to the waves of green energy he’d had to wrangle to bring Levicorpus into existence, the way bursts of gentle blue static had dissolved, faded away to nothing when he’d crafted Langlock. It feels different, too. Radiates with the promise of power. He can feel the thrum of it creeping up his arm, up his throat, through every vein in his body. I created this, he thinks. This is mine, he thinks. Mine.
A product of my own power.
He’s heady with the reality of it.
---
Notes: 1976 (new)
17/03/1976:
Counter curse, Attempt II —
Intent: Heal (knit together, abate blood flow, etc.).
Action: Trace along wound.
Incantation: Medg Vulnera Sanentur. Sano Pere
Result: Semi-successful. Blood slowed enough for wound to scab. Encouraging.
---
Mulciber is the first to catch him. Severus recognises the curiosity in his eyes, the way dark brown glitters: a look so often mirrored in his own. Notebooks are strewn across his bed, a few of them open, his spidery script filling the pages with weeks of research. He watches Mulciber step forward as if to reach, to touch, a bulky arm suspended in mid-air: stilled when Severus glares. Daring.
Mulciber backs away. “New project?” he asks, careful. Curious, still, but resigned, also. Aware of the fact that he won’t get much of an answer.
Has learnt, Severus thinks. Satisfied. “Spell theory,” he says, an intentional deadpan.
A half-truth, of course. Boring enough that Mulciber turns away, disinterested. Good, thinks Severus as he does the same, curtains drawn as he waits, impatient, for the others to go to bed.
He is careful with his experimentation. Doesn’t like to get caught, doesn’t like to explain. Doesn’t want to show a half-finished product. He needs it to be perfect before he lets it be known, and so he sits, cross-legged on his bed, his blanket pooled around him as a series of snores start to fill the room: the other boys drifting off to sleep while he does this.
His left arm is bare, the sleeve of his nightshirt pulled to bunch around his elbow. The fabric is grey, faded, blotchy in a way that suggests it was once white, the material thicker than necessary now that winter’s chill is waning. His skin glows beneath the candlelight: pale, almost sickly, the span of his forearm scattered with a series of small marks, half-crescent cuts scarring the skin with a gentle brown – too light to be a bruise, too dark to be wholly natural. Severus points his wand at one and imagines a small, clean cut in its place.
“Sectumsempra.”
The curse is hissed, his voice low. His wand moves through the air like a knife, breath hitching as white light paints a clear streak and then dissolves, a gash appearing across the curve of his forearm. Bright red bubbles, darkens. Blood pools, drips, splatters his skin. It’s deeper than intended. Hurts more than he’d thought it would.
Still, he doesn’t react. Has a tolerance.
Severus wipes at the blood with tissue and inspects his work. His thumb presses at the skin, pulls. Opens it up. Definitely deeper than expected, he thinks, as blood continues to bubble, drip, curl across the bony jut of his wrist. It splatters his notebook before he can stop it, spreads across the parchment: An exact mirror of the red ink Narcissa had sent him for his last birthday. It dries brown, rust-like. He wipes his arm again and attempts to knit the wound back together: the counter-curse a secondary project. It does a decent enough job. Makes the cut half-heal, scab over. Leaves something he can hide.
[ art by cosmic-nyx, posted here ]
He shifts his wand. Aims further up his arm and repeats the curse, thinks of a slightly deeper wound than before. The action is curved, this time, his wrist twisting the way it would if he were to cut dandelion root for a Calming Draught. A hiss, quick, quiet, escapes through his teeth. The blood takes longer to bubble, this time. Appears in slow, small dots before red swarms. Pours out. Thick and pungent: that metallic stench familiar in its uniqueness. He can almost taste it, close as he is.
He watches for a minute: transfixed. He’s always liked the sight of blood and his own is no exception. It soothes the tight ball of tension in his chest. Lets relief take its place. Like your first breath after being choked, he thinks. He wonders what that says about him.
Again, the result is deeper than he’d intended. Will scar even with his spell. He makes a mental note to bring dittany, next time. Is distantly relieved that he’d thought to brew blood replenishment.
As he prepares for his next attempt, he has a feeling he’s going to need it.
———
Notes, 1976 (new)
15/05/1976:
Hogsmeade weekend: met Lucius + Narcissa. Engaged, they said (not surprising). Narcissa caught sight of arm – expressed concern. Told her: Not what it looks like. Lucius asked: What is it, then?
Showed him. (Non-verbal. Passing bird: clean cut, left wing detached. Lucius seemed impressed. Narcissa, less so.) Additional work on aim required.
*New order (Abraxas): Draught of Delirium, two batches.
———
You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.
Cold, contemptuous. Betrayed. The words replay in Severus’ head, the memory engraved. If he shuts his eyes, he can still picture Lily standing outside the Gryffindor dorms: a formidable figure, her arms crossed and eyes angry. Not even hurt, not even upset, not even surprised. Just cold and calm in a way that’d radiated fury. I should have known better, he could see her thinking. I never should have—
His throat had closed. Clamped. He can practice all the words in the world, he thinks, but it doesn’t mean shit if he can’t use them. If he can’t save the one thing—the thing that meant the most, the thing that kept him sane, the thing that managed to crack through layers and layers of grot: Lily’s friendship pinpricks in the sorrow-rotted walls of his heart, the holes she’d forged large enough for light to break in. Smart isn’t everything, his mother used to warn when he was young, greedy, desperate. He used to hate her for it, used to wonder how she could be so utterly, utterly wrong. Now—
You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.
There is a turntable in the corner of his room, third or fourth hand at best; his mother had swindled it off some bloke at the market and given it to him as a gift for his fifteenth birthday. He reaches out with magic now, Ministry laws be damned, and flicks it on, a bitter, humourless laugh tickling his throat as the first notes fill the room: harsh and familiar. How bloody fitting, thinks Severus, as Robert Plant’s voice trickles out the turntable. He rests his head against the wall and sings along beneath his breath.
Trying to save my soul tonight. It’s nobody’s fault but mine.
---
He receives a letter three weeks into the summer holidays. It comes as he’s sitting on the swings in an empty playground, the park one he and Lily had used to frequent. You need to get out of the house, his mother had snapped, all but shooing him out the door. You can’t sit in and mope forever. He’d wanted to reply that he could, actually, if he bloody well wanted to, but it hadn’t been worth the effort. He’d wandered for hours, chain smoking half a pack of cigarettes before he’d eventually found himself at the park. He doesn’t want to admit that he’d chosen it with the hope that maybe he’d run into her. That maybe, here, in the dreary dimness of their hometown, under the constant, pathetic drizzle of rain, where the banal Muggle streets are void of Hogwarts politics, Lily might just offer the possibility of forgiveness, but there’s no other reason for him to be here. He’s had little luck; the closest he’s got to seeing her all summer is catching Petunia outside the local chippy, the look she’d shot him something foul. Don’t bother, she’d spat when he’d opened his mouth to speak. She wants nothing to do with you. Satisfaction had leaked from her like a cracked radiator: unsurprising. (Awful boy, she used to call him, her lip curled and face pinched, disgusted as she watched him run around with her sister. Don’t know what she sees in—)
Severus shifts his focus to the envelope in his lap: thin, smooth, expensive. Parchment the colour of champagne. Lucius’ owl circles overhead, wings spread wide, no doubt searching for something to eat. It doesn’t stray far, and so Severus knows a response is expected; he pulls a switchblade from his jacket pocket and cuts through the wax seal.
Dear Severus, it starts, and he skips over the formalities in favour of the point. He finds it in the second paragraph, Lucius’ precise cursive propositioning new work. I have an offer for you, it says, and Severus skims through the details: a brewing job, the patron unnamed, housing and ingredients provided. Shall you accept, it says, you will receive adequate compensation of twenty galleons a day, every day you work.
It’s as far as he needs to read. Even without the finer details, he knows he’s going to accept. Knows that whatever it is, it is better than what Cokeworth has to offer. Is his chance at a way out. His father has been talking of part-time work, anyway; ’s high time the boy pulled his weight, he’d say, words thrown across the dinner table. As if he hadn’t been bringing money home for years.
This’ll shut you up, Severus thinks, as he stands from the swing and shoves the letter into his pocket alongside the knife. “Halcyon,” he calls, starting for the street. Lucius’ owl swoops toward him at the call of her name, her gentle hoot barely heard over the rush of the wind.
---
“You’ve gone rotten in the ‘ead if you think I‘m letting a bleedin’ bird in here,” greets Tobias, the neck of a bottle of whiskey pointed to where Halcyon sits perched on Severus’ shoulder. “Where’d it bloody come from?”
“She’s trained,” Severus tells him, ignoring the question.
“I don’t care,” Tobias says, predictable. He takes a swing of his drink, drops of amber liquid clinging to his mouth, dripping down the shadow of his beard. Your father’s hours were cut, his mother had warned when he’d returned home. So… “Get it out.”
“I only need—”
“Don’t argue, boy,” Tobias says, expression enough to make Severus swallow the rest of his sentence, the ugly twist of his father’s features familiar. He recognises the warning. I’m in no mood, it says. If you want to go the night without a beating, you’ll bloody listen.
“Fine,” he says. Almost huffs. He takes Halcyon to the yard, hiding her from the neighbours as best he can. “Stay,” he tells her, a quiet murmur. He brushes his knuckles over her silky-soft feathers as she gives a responding hoot.
A snort sounds behind him; Severus turns to find his father had followed him out. Tobias stands against the back door, the bottle still in hand. He’s hunching slightly, the shirt he wears old, stained, damp around the collar. Obviously drunk. Severus looks for the signs, tries to gauge how far gone he is. Coordination isn’t too bad, he thinks, but his face is flushed, eyes clouded, his speech starting to slur. He’s not proper pissed yet, which is to say that he hasn’t crossed the threshold over to violent. Still. Not someone I want to be around, Severus decides.
Long gone are the days of playing happy family. There had been a time, before, when he was still quite young, where they used to manage: amicability achievable so long as magic wasn’t mentioned. It feels like a lifetime ago, now.
“Where’ve you been?” Tobias asks, accusatory. It sounds far too much like the start of a fight for Severus’ liking.
“Out,” he says, stepping past his father, back toward the kitchen. He looks around the empty lot, plucks an apple from where his mother keeps a bowl. “Where’s Ma?”
“Out,” Tobias mimics. “D’you look for work?”
“No one’s hiring,” Severus lies. He counts the empty bottles by the rubbish, figures there must be four from the past week alone. “When will she be back?”
It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently. Tobias’ face twists, darkens: dangerous. “Why don’t yer tell me,” he says, a bubbling anger underpinning his tone. It sets Severus on edge even though he knows he’s not the intended target. “Her shift ended an hour ago. She should be ‘ere already.”
“It’s probably overtime,” Severus tries, an attempt to placate him. It’s futile, he knows, but at least he can say he gave it a go. “You know what that bistro’s like.” He steps back, toward the staircase. Intends to make a run for it once his father’s distracted.
Tobias scoffs, watching him. The bottle is brought back to his mouth, his voice a slurred mumble. “Fucken useless, the lot,” he says, swallowing a mouthful. Another. “Go on then,” he mocks. “Go write yer letter.”
Severus doesn’t wait to be told twice; he knows better than to ignore a blessing. He slips out of the kitchen, up the stairs, toward his room. Coward, his father throws at his retreating back, and Severus knows it’s said to get a reaction, but he doesn’t give him one. Just forces his mouth shut and ignores it.
It’s not worth it, he thinks, as he shuts his bedroom door behind him. Not when Tobias is like this. He sits the apple down on his desk, rummages through his things for his best parchment, his finest ink: used for special people only. He pulls Lucius’ letter from his pocket and sits to start on a response.
Dear Lucius, he starts. I hope you’ve been well…
---
It’s barely an hour later when the shouting starts.
Severus hears his mother come home from the solace of his room. He’s lying on his bed, his letter sent, the apple he’d stolen from the kitchen resting in one hand while a knife sits in the other. The accusations start before the front door has so much as shut, his father’s voice boosted by the alcohol. It carries up the stairs, through the house. Would carry half-way down the damn street if his mother wasn’t careful.
“All the shite I put up with—”
Severus stabs the apple in his hand, the sharp, silver blade sinking into its juicy flesh, little droplets leaking out around the split and dripping over yellow-red skin, down to his fingertips. He carves out a bite-sized piece and brings the knife to his mouth, lips touching the blade as his teeth sink into the apple, the shouts from downstairs momentarily silenced by the sound of himself eating.
It doesn’t last. He hadn’t thought it would. He is used to screams, used to yelling, used to noise. It used to upset him, when he was young. Used to overwhelm him: the sheer volume a sensory overload. The discomfort had waned over time, a tolerance born from exposure. Familiarity. How sad, he thinks, as a bang resonates up the stairs, to be familiar with this. How pitiful.
“You can’t even—”
His father is past pissed, now, his sentences incoherent. Severus is almost glad; it’s always worse, somehow, when he isn’t completely off his tits. Leaves nothing to blame it on, he thinks. Distantly. Only us. Only me.
“Bleedin’—useless—”
Every word is punctuated with the distinct sound of something hitting a human body; his father’s hand and his mother’s face, Severus thinks. Knows. Can tell by now.
“I couldn’t control—” Eileen tries: futile.
Severus shuts his eyes. She’s always telling him not to talk back, that if he simply sits and takes it his father is likely to get bored, bugger off. You never take your own advice, he thinks, as her voice morphs into a cry: chocked, breathless, pained.
He stabs his apple again, harsher than before, the switchblade’s tip almost catching his hand.
“The boy, too!” shouts Tobias. “Both of yer—”
He does it again and again and again, uncaring as the apple is cut into a ruined, sticky lump. He imagines it’s his father’s throat, blood replacing the juice that drips down his hand: bright-red, metallic, beautiful. He imagines he can use his wand. He knows what he would do; he doesn’t even have to think: Sectumsempra sits like a lullaby on his tongue, the mere thought a rare comfort, the knowledge that it is there, waiting, shall he need it. His and his alone: nurtured at every step.
There is another pained cry, a third, a fourth. Severus thinks of his test subjects: scarred arms and ruined fruit and mangled, bleeding animals. He stabs the apple again.
“Tobias, ple—”
It’s not until he hears his mother gasping for breath that he intervenes. He finds his parents still standing by the front door, Eileen crowded against the wall while his father barely leaves her room to breathe, her smaller body covered by his, her neck grasped by his hand. Eileen’s fingers claw at it, nails scratching over scarred, calloused skin. His father barely budges.
The knife is still in his hand: Not much, but enough. Severus walks toward them in long strides, not really thinking what he’s about to do through until he’s already doing it. The tip of the blade is held to his father’s throat, his voice a low growl, gravelly and guttural: A scream restrained.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he snaps.
It’s enough to turn his father’s attention to him.
---
“You haven’t thought this through,” Eileen says, two days later, as she watches him pack from his bedroom door. She’s still standing half-inside the hall, shoulder pressing against the frame. She seems tired, Severus thinks, when he turns to look. Weary. Worn out. There are bags around her eyes, creases in her face, bruises poking out beneath her collar. Sometimes, he thinks, you can barely tell she ages like a witch.
“What’s there to think about?” he says. He’s holding a shirt in his hands: Eileen’s, one of the ones he used to wear when he was younger, the pink fabric faded, yellowed at the sleeves, the collar, the hem. It sparks memories, the shirt, ones that come back to him now. He’d been wearing it the first time he’d held a wand, he recalls, the memory distant. He vaguely remembers sitting on his mother’s lap, Eileen’s arm curled around him as he’d laughed, silver sparks shooting up into the air. It’s what he used to wear when his mother had started bringing him out into the yard with her, a series of spices laid out. She’d tell him to touch them, taste them, smell them. Learn them with your senses. He’d been two, three years old at the time, bright-eyed and happy to be involved, to be given attention, to have his curiosity sated. It hadn’t taken him long to learn.
He shoves the shirt into his trunk and snaps the lid shut: too loud. Aggressive.
“Logistics,” Eileen answers, and Severus has to think back to what he’d asked. There is a pause, is the careful tread of socked feet on his floorboards: his mother moving further into the room. “Morality.”
Severus snorts. “Since when did you care about morality?”
Eileen merely sighs, the sound heavy with exhaustion. “Do you even know who you’re working for?” she asks. Her eyebrows arch, questioning, the expression one Severus had inherited. “The kind of men Abraxas Malfoy does business with are—”
“No worse than the one you’re married to,” Severus cuts her off. He scrapes his teeth across his bottom lip, hard enough to hurt. “What would you know about it, anyway?” he asks, annoyance creeping into his tone. It’s almost comforting in its familiarity. “You live like a fucking Muggle.”
“I know more than you think,” Eileen tells him. Her voice teeters the edge of cold, signs of irritation flashing behind black eyes; it reminds Severus that he is his mother’s son. “I don’t stay here for your father’s company, Severus. There is a reason I left in the first place.”
Her hand reaches for him, calloused fingers catching his elbow. Look at me, it means, and so he does.
He feels his lip curl: too much pent-up anger. “If you can decide to leave,” he says, “then, why can’t I?”
“You’re young, yet. You don’t fully un—”
“Oh, piss off,” Severus snaps. He rips his arm from her grip and steps back. “What do you want from me?” he asks, seriously. What he means is: Why can’t you understand why I want to leave? “Do you want me to stay here, with him?” He nods toward the ground, to where his father is beneath them: barely conscious on the couch. “Should I roll over like a damn dog and accept his treatment?” he asks, staring Eileen in the eye. His jaw twitches, skin still bruised blue behind the glamour. Resentment swirls in his chest, running through him like a wildfire: everything destroyed in its wake. “Play happy with the neighbours and be his punching bag in secret?”
“Severus—”
“Don’t,” he says, his voice breaking into a shout. It’s almost shaky; he’s got too much adrenaline in his system, he thinks, the climax building for days. “You’re not going to change my mind,” he says, forcing it through his teeth. The words that slip from his mouth are practiced: things he’s thought for a long time, things he’s always wanted to say but never has. “If anything, you’re another reason to leave!”
His mother looks shocked, Severus thinks. Something worse than that. “You’d rather be away from me?” she asks, and Severus shakes his head, frustration clawing at his insides. Don’t make me say it, he thinks. Don’t make me say it. But even as he thinks that, the words are pushing at his teeth. Begging for release.
“I’d rather not turn into you,” he tells her: each syllable another crack in the floodgates. “Look at you! You’re a pure-blood witch who plays doormat for a fucking Mudblood.”
He spits the last word. Watches as emotion flickers across his mother’s face in quick succession: shock, yes, but also anger, bitterness, indignation. It all occurs in a split-second, Eileen vulnerable for a mere moment before her face hardens.
“And what,” she says, not bothering to hide the contempt. “You think I enjoy that?”
“I think you have the power to stop it,” Severus tells her, “and yet you don’t. You never do—not even when he’s half a bottle from killing us.”
His breathing is erratic, heavy. His voice jumps from high to low. His body is twitchy, tense, full of too much emotion; it’s not just anger driving him, there’s pain, too, persistent no matter how hard he tries to stifle it. It’s not just linked to his mother, either. It’s everything. Is years and years and years of it: too much for his body to hold. He feels as if he needs to cut a hole in his chest just to let it all out.
“What’s your answer, then?” Eileen asks. “What would you have me do?”
“You could kill him,” Severus says, serious. It must be the answer his mother had been expecting, he thinks, because he doesn’t see much of a reaction. “It’d be easy,” he continues. “You know how. But instead you just sit here and take it like a fucking cowar—”
He’s barely finished the word before his mother’s hand makes contact with his cheek, the sound of the slap harsh, loud. Pain blossoms, the skin turning bright-red as Eileen grabs his chin, fingernails digging into the flesh of his face as she holds him in place, her lip curled, eyes angry. Severus stands still, shocked for only a second. Then he feels his mouth curl into the shadow of a smile: cruel and unkind. The laugh that scratches his throat is nothing close to humours.
“So now you can defend yourself?” he says, and Eileen’s hand squeezes, nails digging against his skin as if they could cut his cheeks wide open. It only lasts a second before she eases her hold.
“Go then,” she says. Her voice is barely more than a whisper, the words underpinned with what Severus refuses to recognise as despair. Her hand drops, hangs limply at her side. “See how it works out for you.”
For a moment, they stay there, like that, staring at each other. Eileen steps back but doesn’t leave, not immediately. She watches him, the blank slate of her face slowly cracking, signs of disappointment creeping through as the façade breaks like shattered glass. She turns before he can see the worst of it, and distantly, Severus is grateful: Regret is already sinking its claws into his heart.
Control it, he thinks, as the door shuts behind his mother. Control it.
You’re making the right decision.
———
Notes: 1976 (excerpted)
19/07/1976:
Arrived to Malfoy Manor via Portkey yesterday. Was set up immediately: a personal potions hut, fully stocked — like nothing I’ve ever seen before. No ministry restrictions, Abraxas had said. Impossible to determine the Manor’s magic from mine (possibilities: endless).
Brewed:
[1] Draught of Bombardment (2 batches): Causes victim to have recurring nightmares every night. Lasts: four weeks. Leads to dangerous sleep deprivation.
---
21/07/1976:
Started:
[1] Submergence Potion: Causes victim’s lungs to fill with water. Result: death via drowning.
[2] Entrapment Mixture: Causes victim to believe there is something trapped beneath their skin. If enough is consumed, will eventually skin themselves alive.
When asked why they were needed, Abraxas said: Cultivating a collection. ‘Good to have lying around.’ Lucius suggests questions should be kept to a minimum.
---
12/08/1976:
Have been scouring the Manor’s library — was given full rein while off-duty. T.R. list only seems to increase. (Lucius says: You need to learn to have fun. Narcissa: Leave him be. I think she finds it funny; Calypso has taken to jumping in my lap if I dare sit for more than a second.)
Finished: Entrapment Mixture. Perfect brew. Lucius suggests we practice duelling once my Submergence Potion is completed. (Posh prick has a designated training space.)
———
“What is that?” Narcissa asks, reaching past him to pluck a teardrop vial from the bench, it’s insides a dark, iridescent crimson. “It looks like—”
“Blood offered by a demon summoned from Abaddon’s domain,” Severus finishes, taking it from her. “Not exactly something that should be played with.”
He places it back amongst the ingredients littering the workbench, an extensive series of jars lined in a precise order, all ready and waiting for today’s test. He’s to brew the Elixir of Excellence in front of an audience: Cygnus Black screening him for another potential client.
From the corner of his eye, he sees Narcissa’s expression shift. An elegant eyebrow arches, intrigued. Impressed. She glances toward her fiancé and smiles. “Look at him,” she says, almost coos. Cold, soft hands reach for Severus’ face, the pads of her fingers gentle as they brush over his cheekbone, tap against his jaw. “Playing with demons. He’s all grown up.”
Lucius’ laugh is a low, genuine chuckle; it washes through the hut like warm water. Severus scowls at the both of them and steps out of Narcissa’s grasp, if only to stop his face from flushing a bright, embarrassing red. “On your father’s orders,” he reminds her, fiddling with his robe. Speaking of. He glances at the door, the clock, back to Narcissa. “You said he’d be here already.”
“He’s always late,” Lucius tells him, as he looks toward Narcissa. “It’s a familial trait.”
Narcissa raises both her eyebrows and turns to face Lucius. “Careful, darling,” she warns. “Or I might be late to the alter.”
“I’ve a plan for that,” Lucius says. “Your—”
He’s cut off by the sound of wood scraping against stone. They all turn, falling silent, and watch as the hut’s door is pushed open, whatever light-hearted atmosphere they’d had dissolving as two additional figures join them; Abraxas Malfoy steps inside, a man who could only be Cygnus Black following behind. They ignore their respectful children, more focused on where Severus stands, back ram-rod straight, behind the hut’s largest workbench.
“Severus,” Abraxas greets, walking forward to shake his hand.
Severus bows his head: a show of respect. “Mr. Malfoy,” he murmurs. He repeats the motion as Cygnus steps forward, Narcissa smirking at him in his peripheral vision. “Mr. Black,” he says, thinking far too hard about the firmness of his grip when Cygnus extends a hand. “A pleasure.”
He has been taught on how to act. Trained. Narcissa has forced him through extensive lessons on etiquette: what to do, what not to do, what to not even think about doing. Most of it was a load of shite, Severus had thought. Thinks. But if it helps him play the part… Well.
“A half-blood Prince,” Cygnus drawls, once the formalities are over. It’s said in a way that suggests he’s been ruined, somehow: Perfect blood dirtied by his filthy father. “I didn’t think I’d see the day.” His gaze trails over every inch of Severus, assessing the state of his robes, his hair, his hands. “Of course, your mother never kn—”
“Cygnus,” Abraxas says, pointedly. It’s not quite a warning, Severus thinks, but it isn’t too far off, either. “Severus is my guest. You’ll treat him with respect.”
The two men share a look, a slight strain to it. Cygnus concedes, though Severus thinks, maybe, it pains him to do so. He tilts his head toward Abraxas, lifts a hand: A pure-blood act of apology, Severus has come to realise. He meets Lucius’ eye from across the bench. Bit of a kiss-ass, Cygnus, he’d said, not two nights ago, as they’d played wizard’s chess in Lucius’ rooms; Narcissa fast asleep. Whole family, really. They think my marriage with Cissa will restore the Black name. Severus had wondered if it wouldn’t have the opposite effect, if two children being disowned in quick succession wouldn’t sully the upcoming nuptials instead, but he hadn’t dared ask. He didn’t really care.
“Of course,” Cygnus says, now. A thin smile twists his features: obviously fake. Severus offers one of his own. “You said the boy could brew?”
“Yes,” Abraxas confirms, as a heavy hand settles on Severus’ shoulder. “He’s who made your last batch.”
It’s enough to forgive his poor status, apparently. Cygnus turns back toward him, a vague interest flickering in his eyes. “Well then,” he says, inclining his head toward the workbench. “Go on, boy. Prove yourself.”
Severus doesn’t need to be told twice.
———
He’s sitting at the front of Slughorn’s class, head down and teeth clenched. It’s his usual spot, has been ever since Lily had dragged him to the first row in their first year; he hadn’t thought anything of it when he’d sat down today, muscle memory dictating his course through the classroom. But he’d realised his mistake almost instantly: the rest of the sixth year Slytherin boys had gone for the back, while Lily had walked past him without a glance, the seat beside him empty for the first time in years as she partnered with Mary Macdonald instead. It’d been too late to move, he’d thought. Would draw too much attention, would make it obvious. And so he’d stayed put, a pit of dread slowly pooling in his stomach as Slughorn had started the class.
It shouldn’t even matter, he thinks. It’s little more than a seat change, he tries to tell himself, but he knows better. He knows that’s not all it is. Knows it’s—
“Oi, Snivellus!”
Potter. Black, too. Lupin when they can manage it. They take up the row behind Severus, have spent the class talking in stage-whispers, trying to draw his attention. He’s been doing his best to ignore it, the calls, the way they laugh at every unanswered insult. He tries to block it out: easier said than done.
“Ah, c’mon,” Black tries, now. “We’ve got something for you.”
Severus grits his teeth. He looks straight at his text, tries to focus on Slughorn’s voice as he reads from the textbook, his own copy of Advanced Potion Making open at his side: the original contents barely discernible through his own hand-written additions, his script filling every spare space (he’d read it for the first time years ago, the copy a hand-me-down from his mother’s schooldays). He tries to follow along as Slughorn drones on about the known goals of alchemists, but it’s hard when his head isn't in it. There is hate swelling in his chest, white-hot, distracting; it consumes him, beats down his mental barriers with the sheer force of its extremity. He can’t stand the thought that they think they’re winning. You’re not, he thinks, as Black’s laugh carries across to him. Not even close. I just can’t afford to—
“Come on, ya coward,” Black goads. “Turn around.”
It’s followed by something hitting the back of his head. A small ball of parchment, Severus guesses, if he were to go off size, weight, impact. He refuses to turn and check: will not give them the satisfaction. …creation of a ‘panacea,’ a remedy that supposedly would cure all disease… he tries to read, but loses focus when another ball hits, this one flying over his shoulder and landing on his desk. It unravels before he can touch it, the torn, crinkled piece of parchment filled with only a stick-figure drawing.
It’s him, obviously; or at least it’s obvious that it’s meant to be. The figure’s nose is exaggerated, drawn half the size of the head. His legs are made of little, crooked lines while his hair falls lank in uneven, flat curves. He’s hanging mid-air, upside down, half-naked: A portrait of the incident by the lake last semester. They’ve gone to the effort of adding a crowd, little signs of laughter spelled to dance across the page. One belongs to the stick-figure version of Lily, Severus realises; a special touch, he’s sure, no doubt added by Potter.
He feels the acidic burn of bile clawing its way up his throat. Feels his heartbeat quicken as the memories return, growing panic tightening his chest, his breath short. He watches the lines of his legs dangle across the page, his robe fallen to reveal what he knows is meant to be his genitalia. Phantom laughter plays in his ears, the embarrassment heavy, tangible, suffocating. His hand slips beneath his sleeve, long nails cutting against the curve of his wrist, the quick burst of pain not enough to dispel the voice from his head.
Who wants to see me take off Snivelly’s pants?
He does it again, hands hidden beneath his desk, and manages to draw a drop of blood, and then another. It’s not enough—nowhere near—but it creates a crack for relief to trickle in, for Severus to get a grip of himself.
“What do you reckon,” Potter asks. “Accurate, innit? I’m a big fan of the nose, myself.”
Severus watches it play over: once, twice, three times. On the fourth, he reaches out, picks it up, struggles not to crush it in his palm. He holds it up instead, ensures that those behind him have a perfect view as he lets it slip from his fingertips and clicks. There is a shot of flame, fleeting. It burns the drawing to ash in seconds.
“Oi!” says Black, affronted. “Where’s your sense of humour?”
Severus’ suggestion for where Black can go is drowned out as Slughorn tells them all to settle, his attempt at controlling the class nothing short of pathetic.
---
Notes, 1976 (new)
3/09/1976:
Sectumsempra — for ENEMIES.
———
Notes, 1977 (interrupted)
03/01/1977:
Vicious Vengeance: Hexes Most Hateful - Agatha Alvarezspell.
[1] Incantation: Adolebit Pulvis. Purpose: turns victim’s skin to dust. Effect: burn-like sensation.
[2] Incantation: Inansus Oculus. Purpose: causes victim’s eyes to itch; unbearable, victim will attempt to gouge them out.
[3] Incantation: Sancus. Purpose: will boil victim’s blood. Effect: quick, painful death.
[4] Incantation: Ver—
---
“You’re not reading that book again, surely.”
Severus looks up. Lucius is standing in the doorway, his hair tied low at the nape of his neck, wisps of white-blonde falling to frame his face. He’s dressed in robes Severus has never seen before: midnight blue mixed with pale shades, the fabric wrapping high around his neck and falling to the floor, the hems stitched with what Severus is certain is real silver. He wonders what the occasion is.
“It’s interesting,” he offers, and Lucius’ laugh trails across the room.
“Forgive me for tearing you away, then,” he says. His chin lifts, as if pointing to some business happening on the other end of the Manor. “My father’s calling for you downstairs. He believes there’s someone you should meet.”
The words alone are enough to entice Severus’ curiosity, but the way Lucius says it… There’s something about it, he thinks. This person, they’re special – worth putting on a show for. He looks at what Lucius is wearing and then glances down at himself: brewing robes, old, worn, remnants of the day’s work clinging to the wool. His sleeves are rolled, wrists bandaged. “Uh,” he starts.
“Left wardrobe, right-hand side,” Lucius offers. “Try to be quick.”
Severus gets to his feet.
---
“What’s his name?”
They’re walking through a dimly lit hallway, rows and rows of pale blonde portraits watching as they pass. Severus pays them no mind, tires to. He finds it uncomfortable, being looked at by so many. Does not like the dead stares, the quiet murmurs, the way they seem to follow you wherever you go; he half expects Abraxas only keeps them this way to unnerve his guests.
“You’ll refer to him only as, ‘My Lord,’” Lucius says.
Severus falters, stopping mid-step. He almost trips over the hem of his borrowed robe (black, heavy wool, with embroidery up his sleeves and what looks like a million buttons down his middle, the fit just a tad too big). He thinks, for a second, that he’s misheard. That Lucius couldn’t possibly mean—but he does. It’s obvious he does.
“You’re joking,” he says, anyway.
Lucius shakes his head. “I’m really not.”
“You mean—”
“Indeed,” Lucius says. His lips twitch to a smirk: infuriating. “He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Which, of course, Severus thinks, means get moving. He starts walking again, his pace quickened. “A heads up would’ve been nice,” he hisses. Nerves are creeping up along his spine; they settle in his stomach, his throat, leave him with a sharp, prickling ring in his ears. He knows who My Lord is, of course. He’s spent enough time around the right sort of people. Has seen the Mark on Lucius’ arm.
“I did,” Lucius says, as they come to a halt in front of an arched door. “Just then.” He doesn’t flinch at Severus’ scowl. In fact, Severus thinks, he seems to find it amusing.
“Ponce,” he calls him. Keeps it under his breath.
It’s the last he gets to say before a soft voice calls for him to enter.
---
The Dark Lord does not look like Severus had thought he would. His skin is unusually pale, almost wax-like. It stretches over bone as if it were a mask; his face is sharp, angular, his red-tinted gaze piercing. He could have been handsome, Severus thinks. Probably had been, at one stage. Before.
“This is the boy?” the Dark Lord asks, glancing to where Abraxas lounges by the fire. He holds a tumbler of whiskey in his hand, the red, yellow, gold flames bouncing off clear, expensive crystal. When he nods, the Dark Lord turns his gaze back to Severus. Rather than the contempt Severus has started to expect, there is intrigue in the Dark Lord’s eyes. Interest. Opportunity. They swirl in hues of red.
Their eyes meet, and Severus feels the familiar prickle of Legilimency: so light it’d be hard to tell if you weren’t accustomed to it. He has the sense to let him in; the Dark Lord’s intrusion is slippery, slimy, subtle, the pressure nothing like his mother’s hard push, and different, still, to Dumbledore’s attempts. It’s sleek, he thinks. Practiced. Perfected. He tries to conceal his nerves, the jittery excitement, the careful caution. Tries only to show awe, interest, everything that glows warm. It seems to work, he thinks, maybe. At the very least, the Dark Lord smiles: slow. Pleased
“My boy,” he says, beckoning a finger. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
It’s a sentiment he has heard a lot, recently, since associating with Lucius’ circle. It never fails to spark a sense of accomplishment. They know me, he always thinks. They know me, they know me, they know me. And always through his work. Always through something worth being known for. He bows his head, a soft, murmured agreement sent the Dark Lord’s way.
The Dark Lord points a hand to the seat beside him: An obvious invitation. “Sit,” he says.
Severus does not think to disobey.
---
It is confirmed, later, that the Dark Lord had been his unnamed patron.
I have been most impressed with you, he says, and Severus is too blindsided by his own pride to really realise what it means, what his potions must’ve been used for. He feels that flicker of accomplishment again, its warmth addicting. It had only been less than a year ago, he recalls, that Slughorn had called him into his office to discuss his career goals. No one will want you, the professor had said, if you don’t have more to offer. Severus had only taken the first part to heart, the words no one will want you written over and over and over in one of his old notebooks. The page had been filled with it, not a scrap of white spare. He barely remembers doing it; hadn’t, even then. He just remembers coming to, the page torn, ruined, weakened with too much ink. It’d covered his hands, too, his sleeves, had been mixed with his own blood. He’d stabbed himself with his quill—had had to, to snap himself out of the trance he’d been in.
Look at me now, Severus thinks, as Lucius passes him a drink. The Dark Lord speaks of additional orders, of additional lessons, perhaps, after his coming birthday. Severus agrees to all of it. Would agree to any of it. What he’s offering… only a fool would turn it down, he thinks, and Severus knows he is no such fool.
Look at me now.
---
Notes: 1977 (new)
15/07/1977:
Returned home (temporary: will be undertaking apprenticeship with Master Hennigar as of 22/05). Mum initially surprised to hear of M. Hennigar’s offer; less so once I wouldn't admit ‘how I got it.’ Expects me to admit I was wrong, I think — is not going to happen. (Because I wasn’t.)
Will be leaving early, if Tobias’ attitude keeps up.
---
01/08/1977:
Attended Lucius and Narcissa’s wedding (fine, beautiful, boring).
Met: Bellatrix Lestrange. Was called twitchy, filthy, seedy, greasy, slimy, in approx. 30 seconds. Requested to know how ‘half-blooded vermin’ made it to the table. Everything that’s been said about her: Suddenly makes sense.
DL was in attendance. Suggested his ‘dear Bella’ take out her anger in more productive methods. Set to train (duel) together while L+N are away on honeymoon. How I’d like to shut her up.
---
02/08/1977:
Update: I won — Stupefy + Levicorpus combination, as she tried to Apparate. (Someone should tell B.L. her Occlumency is not as good as she thinks it is).
Will return to M. Hennigar’s shop on 4/08. Am expecting calls for a rematch before then. (Sore loser. Runs in the family.)
———
Lily Evans is on a date with James Potter.
Lily Evans. Is on a date. With James. Potter.
It’s the only thing that’s gone through Severus’ head in the last five minutes. It’s as if his mind is rejecting the information; he has the evidence in front of him, his table at the Three Broomsticks offering a perfect view of their booth, of the way they sit together, of the way Potter’s hand is resting on Lily’s thigh beneath the table. He can hear them laughing, talking. Can see them sharing the plate of food sat in front of them. And still. Still. He doesn’t quite believe it.
I’m a changed man, Potter had announced, on the first day of term, as he stood atop a table in the Great Hall. There’d been a gleaming, red-gold badge on his collar, his impromptu speech met with cheers from the Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff tables, Slytherin remaining silent. He’d gone on about honour, bravery, chivalry, the last part thrown out with a pointed wink sent Lily’s way. Severus hadn’t stuck around to listen to the rest of it, though he can imagine what was said: the drivel enough to put both Dumbledore and the Sorting Hat to shame. It was all a load of shit, he’d thought. Still thinks. It’d barely lasted a fucking week; by the time day six as Head Boy had rolled around, Potter had caught him in the corridor just off the Charms classroom, a Knockback Jinx shot his way for fun. He’d watched, laughing, as Severus had collided with the wall, barely managing to stop himself from toppling through the window. Changed man, he’d found himself thinking, as pain had blossomed. Familiar, fiery fury following as Potter had the audacity to take a point from Gryffindor for bad aim.
He’d thought, maybe, that everyone else would see through the façade as well.
Evidently, he’d been wrong.
“You might want to stop staring at Potter and the Mudblood,” says a cool, clear voice into his ear. “Or they’re going to notice.”
Severus whips around, scowling. He finds Narcissa standing behind him, a long, cream-coloured travelling cloak hanging from her shoulders. Her face is flushed from the winter chill, pale skin tinted pink along her cheeks, nose, ears. She looks out of place, Severus thinks. The lightness of her hair and clothes stark against the sea of muted robes. He watches as she slips her wand from her sleeve and banishes the pile of torn receipts sitting beside his untouched drink; he hadn’t even known he’d made the mess.
“I wasn’t staring,” Severus tries. He hates the way Narcissa smiles at him, the expression too close to pity. He rolls his eyes. “Here,” he says, reaching beneath his robe to grab the potion she’d ordered from his pocket. It’s a fertility elixir: pale pink, transparent. Difficult to make and too delicate to owl. He all but shoves it at her. “You can go, now.”
He’s half-expecting to be reprimanded, to be told that’s no way to treat a lady, that he really ought to work on his grace. He’s definitely not expecting for Narcissa to smile.
“Do you want to go out and smoke?” she asks, tilting her head toward the exit.
He’s standing before she’s even finished the sentence.
———
Notes: 1978 (new)
30/05/1978:
Received letter from DL. Said: Would like to see me, after graduation. Described me as a ‘useful asset.’ Mulciber seems to think he means Initiation; Rosier, too. They have been in similar talks, apparently.
Lucius had said, on our last encounter, that DL had his eye on ‘certain recruits.’ So, perhaps.
Either way: Will be meeting on 13/06 (address to be provided). Impatient — want to be done with this place: One more ‘motivational’ speech from Dumbledore and I might just kill him myself.
———
When the day comes, the Dark Lord’s instructions lead to an abandoned building. It’s small, secluded: An old cottage, overgrown, its brick exterior overrun by moss. It could have been a home, once, Severus thinks, before the walls turned rotted, the garden overtaking whatever the family had left behind. It might’ve even been nice.
The Dark Lord is waiting for him inside. He sits on an old, battered armchair that might as well be a throne, his figure half-cast in shadows, the only light in the house belonging to criss-crossed beams of sun that break through broken, boarded windows. Even in the dark, Severus can notice changes to his appearance; it seems to alter every time they meet, the Dark Lord turning steadily less-than-human. His looks paler today, Severus thinks: like the washed white of a snake’s underbelly, smooth yet scaly.
“My boy,” the Dark Lord greets, beckoning.
Severus takes his expected position and kneels at the Dark Lord’s feet.
It is an initiation, he realises, later, through the Dark Lord talk of a united front. It is strange, Severus thinks, to listen to him give a speech that seems better suited for the halls of Hogwarts, though he supposes Dumbledore’s focus would not be on the importance concord has in the pursuit of power. “It takes more than one man to forge change,” the Dark Lord says, a quiet murmur. “It requires companions… allies. I have been collecting like-minded people for some time, Severus; those who seek a different wold come to me, and those with the abilities to achieve it…” He trails off. “You have proved most useful, Severus, despite your unfortunate circumstances.”
Severus accepts it with his head bowed and wonders what’s most unfortunate about him: his blood, perhaps. His class. Himself. It’s hard to say.
“When I invite someone into my circle,” the Dark Lord continues, “I prefer it to be intimate.” The force of his gaze falls to where Severus is kneeling, and Severus feels a shiver of anticipation run along his spine. “A personal touch,” the Dark Lord tells him, humour warming his tone, “can go a long way.” He shifts, standing. Severus watches the ends of his robe rustle against rotten floorboards. “I hope you enjoy what I’ve prepared for you today, my boy.”
The words make curiosity simmer low in his stomach, familiar and exciting. Severus nods his head. “I’m certain I will, My Lord.”
The Dark Lord hums: quiet. He beckons for Severus to stand and leads him from the entry and through the house, to a door three rooms down. Magic seals its sides, almost tangible with the way it radiates like static. Severus watches, intrigued, as defensive wards are peeled away, the door’s hinges squeaking as the wood is pushed open, soft, small streaks of light slipping through the cracks to illuminate the inside. In the half-dark, he can only just make out the body in the corner; an adult man, he thinks. Forty to fifty, taller than average. He’s curled in a ball like an injured animal.
“Are you ready, Severus,” the Dark Lord says: Not a question, but a call for agreement.
Severus inclines his head. “Yes, My Lord.”
Sparks shoots from the Dark Lord’s wand, blinding in their brightness. A quiet crackle follows, the light overhead coming to life and casting the room in a gentle dusting. Severus blinks as his eyes adjust, face pointed to the ground, the room’s floorboards the same rotted wood he’d been kneeling on before. It’s not until he looks up that he recognises who, exactly, the Dark Lord has been keeping here.
Severus stills. Shock shoots through his veins like ice-cold water. His breath catches in his throat.
There, lying in the corner, is his father. He’s bound, unconscious, has obviously been tortured; his face is bruised, bloody, the floor around him stained and sullied with things Severus chooses not to think about. He comes to life with a flick of the Dark Lord’s wand, his first response a low, pained groan, his body twitching, trembling, his eyes blinking as he comes to his senses. When he catches sight of Severus, he thrashes, groans morphing into muffled screams, his mouth gagged. It cuts through Severus’ shock, the reality of the sight in front of him settling in as the Dark Lord allows him time to simply stand and stare.
Tobias continues to scream, though it doesn’t achieve anything. Severus is reminded of the very first time he’d cast a curse on someone: Lingustum, he recalls. Bright yellow, thrown out across the Slytherin table, in view of the Great Hall. His father is struggling for speech the same way Travers had: desperate, furious, full of warning. Both of them lost in a false sense of authority. The resemblance is uncanny.
“I prepared him with the upmost care,” the Dark Lord tells him, his laugh chiling. “Would you like to finish the job?”
Severus blinks, gaze turned toward the Dark Lord. His father’s muffled voice fills the silence, and Severus works to ignore it as he considers the Dark Lord’s offer. It isn’t as simple as it seems, he knows. He isn’t just asking if I want to kill my father, he thinks. He’s asking if I want this. All of this: this life, his Mark. This gift he’s given me.
Tobias thrashes: futile. Severus lets slip a shaky exhale.
“Would you like to finish the job, Severus?” the Dark Lord repeats. He steps closer, into Severus’ personal space; a hand settles on his shoulder, the ghost of a paternal act. “To rid yourself of what sullies your name?” The Dark Lord looks toward the body on the floor, his arm extended, the wave of his hand a slow, elegant arch. “He,” he says softly, pointing at Tobias, “is nothing.” His voice is in Severus’ ear, his breath hot where it ghosts over his neck, sending goosebumps across the flesh. “But you,” the Dark Lord continues, a hand placed on Severus’ chest, directly over his heart: the beat erratic. “You could be great.”
You could be great, Severus thinks, as he turns back to his struggling father.
Key word: Could.
The answer is easy.
“I accept what you have offered me, My Lord,” Severus whispers. His voice shakes with it: not fear, but anticipation, adrenaline. Excitement, even. His wand is in his hand, ready. His fingers clench, unclench. Clench again. The Dark Lord steps back, a silent command for Severus to step forward. Go on, then, it says. Show me you mean it.
Tobias’ struggle doubles: the effort pitiful. All it gets him is a displaced gag. “Coward,” his father spits, hoarse and hollow. He’s out of breath. “Can’t even do it like a ma—”
Langlock, Severus thinks, as he flicks his wrist. His father’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, forcing him back to silence: Forcing him back in his place. Severus steps forward, closer, crouches. His father’s eyes are bloodshot and filled with hate.
“Not fun when the roles are reversed, is it,” Severus murmurs. He feels his lip curl, something between a smile and a sneer; he trembles lightly with adrenaline, the knowledge of what he has to do sending jitters to his joints. I’m the one with power now, he thinks. Not you. Never you, again.
In all his fantasies, killing his father had been the right thing to do, his actions fuelled by indignation, or righteousness, or fear; if not for him, then for his mother. It boiled down to a single choice: Me, or him—and the answer was always easy.
It’s easy now, too.
He gets to his feet, ignoring the way Tobias tries to stop him. His father doesn’t beg; he should know, Severus thinks, that it wouldn’t get him anywhere. (His own attempts never had.) Instead, he struggles like sheer force of will might break magic’s hold. Severus watches, a bitter, humourless laugh scratching at his throat.
He trails his gaze over Tobias’ tortured body and thinks there must be expectations, a usual way this is done: perhaps a Killing Curse, perhaps prolonged torture. Neither are what he wants to do.
No. There is only one spell that is worthy of causing his father’s death.
Tobias shouts again, the scream falling on deaf ears. Severus thinks of every time his father had made him feel this way: trapped, abused, worthless. He thinks of every injury Tobias has ever left him with; every bruise, cut, welt, broken bone. He thinks of his mother: A powerful witch broken. He thinks of every night filled with screaming, crying, with choked gasps and pained groans. He thinks of every night he spent awake as a child, trembling with the gut-wrenching fear that his mother would be dead when he woke up next.
He thinks of what he could have been, without the man in front of him. Of what he can be—will be—the accomplishment his alone, forged by his hands, his power, his worth. It all swells in his chest: A driving force.
He raises his wand and thinks, Sectumsempra.
White flashes in a clear, bright line. His father jolts on impact, his useless mumbling fading to pained, harrowing cries as he twitches, trembles, the spell tearing him open. Large gashes appear across his chest, his face, his thighs. Blood flows from the wounds like a burst pipe: slowly, at first, drops of it trickling out before it starts to run, all at once. Severus watches, mesmerised, as his father bleeds dry. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t move. He stands, motionless, in awe of the beauty of his creation. Of its power. It washes through him in waves: Intoxicating.
It feels like only seconds pass before Tobias slumps, still.
Dead.
---
“Congratulations, Severus,” says the Dark Lord, after.
Severus hears it in a haze. His head is unclear, reeling: coherency lost to the unintelligible mess of emotion swirling in his chest. He focuses on the pain that comes from the fresh brand on his left arm; there is comfort in its stinging familiarity, a grounding force. Fingers touch his jaw, their tips smooth, cold, almost uncomfortably so. They tilt his chin upwards.
“Thank you, My Lord,” Severus says, on reflex. It’s barely above a whisper, but it doesn’t matter. Black bores into red as Severus stares into his Master’s eyes, all barriers removed. The rush of emotion is overwhelming, the way it bleeds into his brain, thoughts trickling out bit by bit. He has no control over it; the Dark Lord gives only what he wants, and takes the same, his touch forcing Severus to accept it. He does so with open gratitude—though he may not find the expected respect, his Master’s thoughts run warm with acceptance. Recognition.
Approval.
It’s more than what Severus expects from anyone else.