(Horror tag added, Author Notes revised, 2nd January, 2015)
Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.
Warning! This story is rated 'M'. This story is tagged as 'Parody' and also as 'Horror'.
Note: This story is alternate universe. It is also a one-shot.
'...They can strengthen, you know, the longer they're kept...'
- Horace Slughorn, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
At the time, for such an impromptu crime, carried out with virtually no planning practically on the spur-of-the-moment as the Hogwarts Express returned its pupils to King's Cross in the summer of 1978, it went remarkably unnoticed.
Later on there would be enquiries of course; enquiries which were almost entirely directed in the wrong direction because, well, the authorities didn't have any reason to suspect those who'd actually been responsible.
The fact that nobody investigating guessed the correct motive for the crime which had really taken place didn't help the official investigation either. Several years later Albus Dumbledore would discreetly investigate too, and draw his own conclusions, but he was distinctly reticent about sharing them with anyone. He had reasons, after all, for keeping schtum.
It was September of 1990, and it had taken Minerva McGonagall, deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the first week of term to work out what was so unnerving about the new intake of first years – it was the eyes of some half dozen or so of them. Well that and the fact that the parents of at least four of the same said pupils were all witches who were single mothers.
They were curiously dark eyes, and it took Minerva another few days to place where she had seen eyes like that before. And then the comparison seemed just utterly ridiculous – so much so, that she dismissed it as pure coincidence for another week or two, before finally, her growing doubts getting the better of her, she asked Albus if she could make use of his pensieve?
He concurred, eyes twinkling, on condition that he accompany her in her review of her memories, and that she explain what had caught her fancy afterwards?
Minerva didn't really like that, but it was a silly fancy, really, and it wasn't as if anyone was likely to be hurt by it.
And when the handful of glances at moments of Minerva's memories of the school years from 1971-1978 were over, and she and the headmaster emerged from the pensieve, the headmaster beamed at her, as if she were a prize-winning schoolgirl who'd done a particularly impressive piece of project-work.
"I was wondering if anyone else would notice, and draw the same conclusions that I had reached a number of years back?" Albus said in that infuriatingly placid manner that he sometimes employed.
"I…" Minerva stopped and snapped her mouth shut. She hadn't even begun to explain what had been bothering her yet, and yet here he was, acting as if he already seemed to know all about it.
"Please, don't mind me. Do go on. I shall pretend that I have no idea what you are about to say." Albus said. "It is possible, after all, that you may be about to speak about something completely different from that which I anticipate."
Minerva glared at him, but went on, anyway:
"A number of pupils we took on this year seem to have the same eyes as Mr. Severus Snape of Slytherin." Minerva said. "Several of them are the children of single-mothers. I was wondering if there might be some family connection that they had to… well, Mr. Snape, I suppose."
"Do you remember what happened to Mr. Snape?" Albus asked.
"I don't, no. There was some sort of fuss about him, which I seem to recall aurors being involved in, but that's all. If it's important, I suppose I could use your pensieve again…"
Albus shook his head.
"That won't be necessary, Minerva, as I retain a particularly good recollection of the pertinent facts for a number of reasons, myself. Severus Snape departed Hogsmeade station, when school broke up for the summer of 1978, on board the Hogwarts Express, but never disembarked at King's Cross when it arrived at the other end. He had very few known friends or associates, and it was several weeks before those who might have missed him did report his disappearance, at which point an official investigation was launched. There was a bit more effort put into it by the authorities than might have been done for most young men of Severus' age, given that he was a talented brewer and had a flair for the invention of spells – and there was some suspicion he might have been abducted or recruited by The Dark Lord. Once the war was over, of course it became apparent that the other side were as mystified by his disappearance as the Ministry had been – and in fact our good friend, Lucius Malfoy," Albus chuckled, "who at the time was not known to be a Death Eater, had been the one who initiated the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's search for Severus. It was actually only once the war was over and it was confirmed that Lucius had been a Death Eater that I became intrigued by the Snape disappearance, and made my own discreet enquiries. I had one advantage which the aurors who had carried out the original investigation did not have, of course – I was familiar with the muggle novel Murder on the Orient Express."
"You think that Mr. Snape was killed?" Minerva drew in a sharp breath. "But why didn't the aurors ever catch anyone, and what would that have to do with this year's pupil intake?"
"The aurors who investigated Mr. Snape's disappearance concluded that an outside agency must have been involved, since everybody on board the Express had alibis, and the only obvious suspects who there was sufficient circumstantial evidence as to possible motive against to justify the use of veritaserum on – James Potter and his friends, who had time and again demonstrated their dislike for Mr. Snape during their time at Hogwarts – under interrogation proved to have had no hand in nor notion of what had befallen Mr. Snape. And the aurors did not conclude that Mr. Snape had been killed; merely that that he had been done so and the body magically disposed of, as being the likeliest case. Since there was no obvious solution at the time, and there was a war on, the case was quietly closed and forgotten about. I am confident that we have ample evidence now that Mr. Snape did not expire during that Express ride in the summer of 1978, although I would not like to speculate on whether he is still alive and well – in fact I am almost certain that he no longer walks amongst the living."
Albus' eyes were twinkling, Minerva noticed sourly, at some private joke.
"I still don't understand Albus. Are you saying that these children are related to Mr. Snape in some way? And if so, should we be worried?"
"I am quite certain that all these children are related to their mothers – who almost certainly adore and cherish them, which is all that matters in this. As I believe that Alice Longbottom showed us all, when she took a killing curse meant for her son at the end of the last war, there is little more precious nor potent than a mother's love for her child. Now, Minerva: I believe we have occupied more than enough of one another's time for the present, since our resident potions mistress has an appointment scheduled with me, concerning something she has brewing up. And I would thank you not to make a fuss or moot this topic abroad in the staffroom. If it reached the press they would find some way to sensationalise it, and a scandal would help nobody, least of all any children involved – and we are here, are we not, for the children?"
Minerva gave him a scowl which let him know how unhappy she was at being even vaguely complicit by association in whatever half-baked cover-up this was, and departed. She passed Lily Evans, waiting, on the way out. There was another thing that Minerva had disapproved of for years, alongside Albus' habit of never explaining most things – a single mother actually employed by the school, and not a respectably widowed (or even divorced) one, but one who apparently had had a succession of children by a succession of equally anonymous men. And Miss Evans had seemed such a respectable girl at Hogwarts, being head-girl like that, and being romanced by Mr. Potter for a time…
Severus Snape dangled in chains from the wall of his miserable dungeon cell, as he had done for the past Merlin-knew-how-long. Somewhere out there there was still a wider world. Occasionally words drifting around the dungeon when they were here – in between the more usual squeals of excitement or of anticipation – hinted to him of what was forever now out of his grip. Maybe, in the early years, he might have had a faint chance at escape. Now he had none; his captors had only grown in skill and accomplishment whilst he dangled here, or was dragged to 'perform' in the adjacent chamber. Oh, they kept him in rude health, and in a relatively sanitary state – they wanted him alive, functional in most respects, and able to sate their voracious appetites, after all.
He wasn't certain how it had happened, but over however-long-it-had-been and with not much else to do but think, he had assembled a working hypothesis that fit what facts he possessed of how he had come to be in this situation.
In his fifth year, at Christmas, he'd supplied Lily with a box of chocolates, containing a little very mild something-of-his-own-design that he had hoped would encourage her to think about perhaps a date in Hogsmeade with him. He'd assumed, when January came around with little change in Lily's apparent feelings towards him, that she'd either thrown away the chocolates, uneaten, or that the potion had been too mild. And then, two and a half years later, he'd been 'jumped' on board the Express by a gang of witches, led by Lily and Mary MacDonald, their eyes positively burning with lust, his last memory of freedom. He assumed that after that, between them, they must have possessed enough collective brainpower to devise a way to smuggle him off the Express somehow, and to arrange a series of interlocking alibis to stymie any investigation that ever did arise into his disappearance. But anyway, that was a side-issue, and the only rational explanation that he'd ever been able to formulate for what had occurred was that for all that time between Christmas 1975 and summer of 1978, those chocolates must have been lying forgotten at the bottom of Lily's trunk, or in some other nook, strange and unforeseen things happening to that very mild potion he'd devised, until on that last Express ride, Lily had shared those suddenly rediscovered chocolates around with her female friends…
Author Notes: (revised 2nd January, 2015)
The story summary indicates that some readers might find this story horrific/perturbing... This story is rated 'M' (and as of the 2nd January, 2015, has had the 'horror' tag added, too).
When Albus Dumbledore mentions 'Murder on the Orient Express' he is actually referring to the plot of that Agatha Christie story involving a crime committed by multiple people, all with interlocking alibis; multiple persons were involved in the disappearance of Severus Snape, all of whom alibied each other. (In alibiing themselves they may have arranged for false sightings of Severus after the actual moment of abduction, too.)
Albus considers the whole business rather amusing, and certainly doesn't want to see those involved punished for it in any way – after all they removed a potential Death Eater from the war, and they didn't kill him to do so. And besides, he'd have to find himself a new potions teacher if anything happened to Lily.
Living at Hogwarts, as the school potions-mistress, Lily is careful about disguising her children with magic so as not to resemble their father or each other too much. None of the witches involved will admit to the real identity of the father of their children.
Neville Longbottom is the-Boy-Who-Lived in this universe.
It's entirely possible that the witches holding Severus captive have over the years worked out that their desires may not have been entirely natural in origin. If they have, they don't care. In a sense, they're Severus addicts, and they don't want to be 'cured' of their addiction.
As a final note, for now, it seems to me that canon magical society in Harry Potter seems to have a somewhat blasé attitude to love potions; in the novel version of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, after all, Fred and George Weasley are apparently able to perfectly legitimately sell such potions off the display-shelves of their shops, including to fourth year (Hogwarts) school-girls.
My profound apologies to Lazov, who inadvertently inspired this story, with a comment elsewhere.