He'd never touched firewhiskey before that night. He'd always thought of it as evil stuff, made for weaklings who couldn't handle their own emotions, and he liked having his thoughts clear too much to muddle them up with so powerful a drink. And on top of all that, the memory of his father unable to stop gulping glasses of it and then beating his mother in a drunken rage was something that he had never been able to erase from his mind – and it had effectively steered his hand away from any glass containing firewhiskey or anything even remotely related.

But tonight, as he sat in the darkened living room of the house at Spinner's End, he poured himself a glass from the decrepit bottle he'd found in a dusty cabinet and raised it up to study it.

"Oh, I'll propose a toast to the happy couple, all right," Severus Snape whispered hoarsely, before tilting his head back and downing the entire glass in one desperate gulp. At his side, his other hand clenched tight and tore right through the ornate invitation it held, embossed with the flowing script "Mr. and Mrs. James Potter request the pleasure of your attendance…"