A/N: I'm basically rewriting this, because that's always what happens when I start editing things I wrote years back. So I've taken down all the chapters after this, because otherwise they won't connect and it'll feel weird, as a reader. (But fear not, it shall return - bigger and better than it was before! *faint cackling*)
It has been three months since I graduated Hogwarts. Three long months and yet I feel no better than I did when I walked its draughty stone corridors, and slept in the depths of the Slytherin dungeons. A year ago, if you had asked me, I would have told you with great conviction that once I was away from James Potter and his 'Marauder' friends my life would be vastly more enjoyable. Pleasured and purposeful, the world outside Hogwarts was surely wider than the constriction bred within its walls. I had truly believed that, away from Hogwarts the stigma of Slytherin House would not be nearly so profound. Unfortunately, I have been intimately confronted with the truth that that is not so.
These are dark times, and any person or creature with any kind of connection Slytherin House or the Dark Lord Voldemort no matter how distant is treated with fear and great suspicion. The public does not stop to take any more distinction than the broadest of brush strokes. As a result, no one will hire me – a Half Blood whose only noteworthy points tie him to Slytherin House and a 'friendship' with Lucius Malfoy, who is now one of Voldemort's newest recruits, even if his allegiances are supposedly a secret. All they see is the lingering aura of green and silver, all they hear is an echoing sibilance.
It hardly seems to matter to anyone that I graduated with the highest score in Potions Hogwarts has seen in over a century. Similarly that my mother was the last of the renowned Prince line and as her heir I have access to one of the larger estates in the Wizarding World, one that contains the largest Potions library in all of Europe is also disregarded. All of it has approximately no relation at all to my current fortunes.
No reputable Potions Master will take me on as an apprentice. No brewery will hire me, not even as the lowest assistant. I cannot even be trusted to fetch and carry ingredients, to their eyes my very presence contaminates their labs. The shopkeepers in in Diagon Alley continually attempt to bar me from their businesses, and when they cannot they serve me with utmost reluctance. As such, I am left to work with whatever ingredients and apparatus I can find in the depths of Knockturn, far from the bright entranceway to Diagon and the 'Lighter' parts of Magical London.
The so-called 'Light Wizards' disgust me, in their wilful blindness they are only worsening their positions. All I want to do is to find a nice, quiet lab to live out the rest of my days brewing and inventing. I would quite happily withdraw myself almost entirely from their backwards society, but there are things I must first achieve. And until they are, I am forced to endure.
It matters not that I do not bear the skull and serpent mark of the Dark Lord, I have been branded in the eyes of the Ministry and the Wizarding public – along with every other Slytherin and every magical being that doesn't have a strictly 'Light' alignment. My mother must have been wrong, in her stories from her parent's childhood, when she spoke of a society that cared not for your magical alignment and of a time when wars were fought on a political battlefield, rather than a physical one.
Now, over one hundred and fifty years later, Knockturn Alley is the only place any Dark or Neutrally aligned being can be free from outright suspicion and blatant fear. We have regressed, become unbalanced and twisted through the reign of Grindelwald and into the current stirring of the Dark Lord Voldemort. But Knockturne has retained at least a little of it's origins, which is why I return here - to Asmodeus - every night without fail. I must look pathetic, sitting at the bar night after night, only a tumbler of Firewhiskey to keep me company. I hunch over my drink, hiding behind the curtain of my hair as if it can shield me from the world.
I will say though, the Firewhiskey I prefer is damn good Firewhiskey, the only good thing to come from having Lucius Malfoy as a roommate throughout my Hogwarts years. It gave me a taste and tolerance for strong, good quality Firewhiskey, not Ogden's plebian stock, but that of a smaller brewery called Pyriticus. I do not know how Malfoy managed to find him, but at some point he orchestrated an import contract, and it is now supplied to a few select bars and taverns in the Wizarding Districts of Europe. He took his payment as few bottles of their finest vintage each year we were at Hogwarts.
I lift the glass to my lips, it burns smooth as it slides down my throat, as it always does. It's a rich, complex flavour, and every bottle is different, with just enough of a kick to feel. And it won't leave you coughing, at least, not if you are as accustomed to it as I am. The tumbler gives a solid thunk as I set it down on the bar, only the lightest sheen of alcohol left in the bottom. Three fingers a night, and I've been coming enough that I can be classed a regular. With a galleon and glance flicked to the bartender, I am off, there is no more reason for me to linger in this day.
Perhaps tomorrow will be… better is not something I hope for anymore, but fruitful is something I must at least hold onto the desire for. If I am to survive at all, I must retain at least that - I will not call it fire, I am no Gryffindor. Slytherin's always find a way to survive, clinging to live until they can engineer their uprising.
The stool gives a horrid screeching as I push it back, it always does, and I will always wince. It is a wonder those of sharper senses haven't done something about it before now. With my thoughts consuming my focus I fail to police my usual boundaries of personal space, knocking sharply into a slight figure as I turn.
