Note: This story assumes a "next generation" world in which Severus Snape survives the Wizarding Wars, and is married with children, which happens at the end of my first (and much longer) story. But this story should still make sense without having read that one.

Stella Snape swiftly climbed the stone staircase to the owlery on a sunny February morning. The air was cold and her breath was visible as she turned the corner and stood at the top, panting. She was alone in the room with the noise of the birds, and took a moment to appreciate the relative solitude. She did love owls, even though the smell of them all together was something she only wanted to tolerate in small doses.

"Come here, Spectre," she cooed, making kissing noises to a large tawny owl who soon alighted on her arm.

She was a sharp-eyed girl with long black hair. She had recently added dark green streaks to her hair, which to all appearances was an expression of Slytherin pride, and it was... though if she was honest, it had been partially prompted by too many people mistaking her for her younger sister from behind. Jane was only a second-year, but was already nearly as tall as she was as a fifth-year.

"Stupid robes," she muttered, kicking her hemline out of the way as she bent over to attach her letter to Spectre's leg. It was going to be a long distance, but she knew he could do it. Owls had special ways of traversing distance that even she didn't understand.

She swept out of the owlery while holding her robes up slightly to avoid tripping on them on the way down the wet and possibly icy stairs. She hoped it would only be a few days before she heard back. This was a correspondence that had been ongoing since the Triwizard tournament the previous year, and she was quite eager for the next reply.


It came at breakfast three days later, as she sat with Celina Birkenstock and Paige Mayer. They were the only two who knew of her plans. Spectre dropped the heavy envelope into her lap and flapped away.

"Well that's a rather large envelope, Stella," Paige noted, sleepily. Celina knew at once what it was.

"Your application! Is it here?"

"Yes!" said Stella, excitedly, as she opened it to pull out several large, official-looking forms and letters.

"I don't see what's so exciting," Paige sighed. "If you do this we won't see you for a long time."

"That's right," said Celina, looking glum.

"Oh, I'll visit."

"Sure you will," said Paige, "until you meet a boy and decide to stay there forever."

"Oh please," Stella scoffed, perusing the writing on the forms and turning them over in her hands.

"So what have your parents said about this?" Celina asked.

"Oh... nothing. Yet," said Stella, distractedly.

"You haven't told them?"

"I will. Soon."

"Yeah, you'd better," said Celina.

"Well, I have to," said Stella, holding up a piece of parchment. "Because at least one of them has to sign this before I can apply."


Of course, which parent to ask was the question. Stella swept along to potions class, waving at Everly Smith as she passed, making a fluttery hand motion at Silas Grimes. It had been their little inside joke after an unfortunate incident in herbology class. She turned down a deserted corridor and finally had a moment to think.

Contrary to what many of her friends might have assumed, her father, Severus, was not necessarily the disciplinarian of the Snape family. He certainly gave that impression, but when it came right down to the nitty-gritty details of life, it was usually her mother who made the rules and enforced them.

She tried to pay attention in Professor Pandyrim's class, but kept getting lost in thought as she played out scenario after scenario in her mind. It didn't really matter, of course, because they'd both know soon enough. But by the end of class she had mostly decided that her father was the one to bring it to first.

After classes, she approached his office. As she thought about it, it had been quite a few weeks since she'd last been there. She'd grown up there, of course - at least, in the sitting room beyond, and additional bedrooms that had been added on to accommodate her and her siblings. But she had become accustomed to the dormitories for quite a while now, and usually just visited the infirmary or stayed after class if she needed to talk to one of her parents.

She knocked on the door. She knew he didn't care, but there was always the chance she could be interrupting something.

"Yes?" he said. She walked in.

Her father was bent over his desk, working on a potion. His graying hair fell out of the way as he watched her enter the dim room.

"Oh, hello," he said dryly. "What's going on?"

He always started out in his teacher voice, even though Stella was sure he didn't mean to. But she just kept talking like a daughter instead of a pupil and he always came out of it after a few moments.

"Well, I had something I needed to ask you, if this is a good time," she said, walking over to stand in front of his desk.

"I suppose," he conceded, setting aside a jar filled with murky water and something squirming around in it. Stella cringed inwardly but tried not to show it. Potion-making was not an art she'd ever really developed a love for.

She looked at him. He was looking at her, his dark beady eyes that she'd inherited were fixed in attention. It was now or never. She took a deep breath.

"I want to go to Durmstrang next year. As an exchange student. They have a program. And... I want to apply. But... I need a parental signature first." She held up the parchment. That had sounded much choppier than she'd intended. She was more nervous than she realized. She reached out and set the parchments on his desk.

Her father stared at her. His expression did not change.

Finally, he tipped his head just slightly and uttered "Durmstrang."

Stella wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question.

"Yes."

"Why Durmstrang?" His lapse was over. He was back in his teacher voice again.

"Well... it's a really good school. And I have some friends there that I met last year at the tournament and I've been writing to them ever since. I just... I like the way they describe their lessons and I want to try something new."

"Who are these friends?"

"Lucia and Pietr Lindberg."

"Lucia I remember," he said, a bit more slowly. He'd had her in class since she'd stayed for the year with her schoolmates. "But not the other one."

"Pietr is her younger brother. She was here during the tournament but he couldn't come because he's my age. But he visited and I got to know the whole family."

"He's your age. I see."

Stella reddened. "What?" she shot back.

Snape raised his eyebrows calmly. "Nothing. Why?" he said, with a questioning look.

Stella lowered her eyebrows angrily. He was trying to bait her. Of course he was.

She thought he was going to fire back. But he didn't. To her surprise, he just sighed and stood up, pacing around behind his desk. This was what she liked about him. The calm, quiet pondering. Her mother would have just started chattering and exploding in questions by now.

"Durmstrang," he said again, as if trying to remember something. "A former headmaster was a friend of mine. Ever heard the name Igor Karkaroff?"

Stella shrugged. "Nope."

Snape sighed again. Of course she wouldn't have known that name. He sat back down and looked at her across the desk.

"I'm going to need to talk to your mother about this."

"I assumed you'd say that."

He shrugged. "We make these decisions together." Stella almost scoffed. What on earth were "these" decisions? Xavier had certainly never asked about anything like this. He was a model student and loved it at Hogwarts. Not that she didn't. Maybe he was referring to the big huge enormous deal they'd made about Xavier's band, Xavier and the Wiz Kids, playing a show at a pub on Knockturn Alley. It was pretty much the biggest deal her family had ever made about anything, and to her recollection it had been mostly her mother. She almost rolled her eyes just thinking about it. It's not that she was intending to unseat Xavier's request (which was eventually granted), but she really should have realized that this would be an even bigger deal than that.

There was a pause for a moment.

"So I guess that's where we leave it for now," he said, curtly. "We'll have to talk it over tonight."

"Okay," she said, somehow unwilling to just leave it there. "I... I hope she'll understand. I really want to do this. I've been wanting it for months now." Somehow she couldn't think of anything else to say. She excused herself and left.

Stella sighed as she swept down the corridor. Perhaps she had gone about this all wrong. Since her mother was the strict one, she should have taken it to her first. That way she could have made her pleas in person to her, as much as she would have hated it more, rather than wasting them on the one who, she was sure, would need much less convincing in the first place.

And why had she reacted that way when he'd made that remark about Pietr? He may not have intended anything by it. It was true, Pietr was her age, or not much older. And she loved talking to him. And her letters to him always seemed to end up longer than the ones she sent to Lucia. But they were both her friends! Lucia was pretty much the big sister she'd never had. She told herself that she didn't see what gender had to do with it.

Oh well. It had been done. She determined not to think about it, and would just need to hang back and wait to see what they said. She resolved to follow up with her father as soon as she could the next day.


Severus had seen his wife at dinner, but not to really talk to. It wasn't until she had finished with a meeting that she returned to the sitting room adjacent to his office. He was still babysitting his potion experiment, which had taken him longer than he planned to get it going, but he finally reached a point where he was comfortable leaving it for the night, and came into the sitting room too.

Leah was organizing some old record books, a task that she'd volunteered to do for the infirmary after hours, when she had the time. She had many papers spread out over a sofa and was bending over them, her long hair hastily pulled up in a bun.

He sat in the chair next to the sofa she was working on and sighed. Leah looked at him. He never sat there. He looked as if he had something to say.

She looked at him and raised her eyebrows slightly. He sighed again.

"Did Stella talk to you today? Or did she come to me first, hoping I'd convince you about it later?"

"No," Leah replied, shaking her head. "I don't think I saw her today, actually. What does she want?"

"She wants to go to Durmstrang next year as an exchange student."

He had anticipated her response. Leah's eyebrows raised a lot more and she turned to face him.

"What? Really? Durmstrang? Why on earth would she... it's that boy, isn't it? I saw her talking with Lucia's brother several times. Oh dear. Well, I mean, he seemed like a nice young man but I know nothing about the parents at all."

"Well," muttered Snape, "you're quicker on the uptake than I am. So apparently I didn't even know there was a boy. I just learned about him this evening." He briefly related their conversation.

"So what do you know of Lucia?" asked Leah. "She came on a few errands with me and Stella, and I thought she seemed very pleasant. More of a mature, calming influence on Stella, not silly and giddy like some of the other girls. Was she a good student?"

"Yes, yes... she seemed very... serious. Definitely took the subject matter seriously. I almost wonder if that concerns me more."

Leah sighed. "Oh here we are, running to judgments on every front."

"Well, we have to," Snape said. "It's just... she has no idea," he burst out, suddenly talking much faster than he usually did and pacing across the room. "None of them do. This generation is so insulated from the true darkness that we all lived with and fought against daily - the darkness that came so close to overwhelming our world, twice! They don't know anything about it. It's just something they read about in the history books and hear stories from their parents about, and lectures about from me and their boring History of Magic professor, but it's not real to them. They think they're impervious to it."

"Well," Leah said, slowly and thoughtfully, "you're right. They don't know it. And I have to wonder whether that may be what's driving our daughter. Maybe she sees in Durmstrang students a more integrated approach, and perhaps it gives her a longing to be better informed about what she's studying."

"What can she get there that she can't get here?" Snape almost shouted.

Leah paused for a moment, looking into his eyes, by now effortlessly practicing years spent learning to get to the bottom of his occasional outbursts. He met her gaze but then sighed, and the intensity in his face gradually lessened.

She spoke very quietly but firmly. "Severus. Does it feel like your daughter is insulting your teaching by requesting the opportunity to learn somewhere else? Is that what has you upset?"

Snape sighed again and sat down in his chair. "I don't know," he said, wearily. Leah had a knack for asking uncomfortable questions like that. "She has certainly had a different experience here than the other students," he acknowledged.

Growing up at Hogwarts was a privilege afforded to very few, but with parents who both worked at the school, their four children had no choice but to become "Hogwarts brats," making friends with the ghosts, following Hagrid around to get glimpses of magical creatures, and coming to know Minerva McGonagall as their "aunt."

Of course, Snape and Leah had done what they could to give their children something of a "going away" experience when they finally turned eleven. They still packed them up and dropped them off at the train station so they could get the experience of riding the Hogwarts Express for the first time like everybody else. Xavier had done it every year and looked forward to it. Stella had stopped after three. She decided it was silly to take a train somewhere when she lived there anyway.

"I suppose," he conceded. "I like to think I've given her every opportunity that she needs. I've tried to present the Dark Arts both theoretically and practically. But I don't use the same approach as Durmstrang and I have my reasons for that."

"And you shouldn't feel like you have to defend your reasons either," said Leah, quickly. "You know what you're doing, and I don't think this in itself was at all intended to be a criticism from Stella. She's just... she's almost sixteen. She's already a young lady. I knew we couldn't hold her here forever," Leah said, in a resigned tone.

"And she challenges me, too," Snape admitted. "She's always coming up with new problems to solve, new ways of looking at things, new hypothetical questions to ask. Her brain works very much like mine does, and it's a little unnerving sometimes."

"So what do you think we should do?" Leah asked.

Snape began thinking more practically. "I think that if she does this, one of us should visit her at least once a week, or require her to visit here. Travel can be arranged. She must come home for all major holidays."

Leah nodded in agreement.

"We should make sure she understands the importance of returning to Hogwarts for her last year."

"Yes."

"And..." Snape's voice trailed off. He appeared deep in thought.

"What is it?" Leah asked.

"I think I need to show her something. It won't be easy, but it has to be done. I want her to get it. To understand just what the Dark Arts can do to people."

"Oh? How are you going to do that?"

"I'm going to ask Minerva if I can borrow the Pensieve."