Mrs. Burns peered through her kitchen window and over into her neighbor's backyard. A familiar sight met her eyes: a small, dark-haired boy sat on an old concrete patio. He was crouched over a steaming cauldron, with several books opened next to him.
"It's Eileen's boy," she remarked to her husband, "making 'potions' again, I suppose."
She paused for a moment. "What do you think he puts in those strange concoctions of his, anyway?"
Mr. Burns gave a disinterested grunt. "Twigs, leaves...mud...Boys come up with all kinds of odd things."
Mrs. Burns peered a little closer, and the boy did seem to have several cloth bags set out with many different kinds of dried leaves: it seemed he'd painstakingly separated out specific leaves of the same color and size, and carefully laid them into their own pouches.
"Yes, I suppose so," she sighed. "He is a very strange young man."
Severus Snape was a very strange young man indeed; much stranger, perhaps, than Mrs. Burns would ever understand.
Contrary to Mrs. Burn's belief, Severus was not merely engaging in pretend play with 'potions' made of leaves and mud. Rather, as a young wizard, he was creating truly powerful, magical potions. It rather delighted him to notice Mrs. Burns peering through her window, with no idea what magic brewed right under her very nose.
The book nearest him was a rather battered copy of Libatius Borage's Advanced Potion-Making: he wouldn't need it in school for two years, but his mother had let him have it early once he'd worked his way through Magical Draughts and Potions.
At this moment he was attempting to brew the Draught of Living Death, and it had been coming along rather well, until Severus had needed to add the juice of a Sopophorous bean. The bean he'd cut had yielded very little juice, and this didn't seem quite right. He lifted up the book furthest from him: The First Principles of Potion-Making, by Euphemius Durge. He'd found this one in the Hogwarts school library. It was rather old, but an examination of the binding and checkout history seemed to indicate that nobody else had taken an interest in it for quite some time.
He flipped to the index in search of some information on the Sopophorous bean, and, finding a note, he turned to the relevant page.
"As a general rule," Euphemius Durge wrote, "potions calling for the juice of a single Sopophorous bean will benefit from one teaspoon of this juice. It is common for junior potioneers to extract the juice rather poorly, typically resulting in insufficient juice making its way to the potion. In these cases it may be beneficial to extract juice from further Sopophorous beans, until one teaspoon of juice is obtained. The integrity of the juice is best maintained by using silver instruments (the juice has an affinity for iron, and using iron instruments will therefore result in contamination), however, the bean is not particularly sensitive to the method of extraction. Therefore; cutting, pressing, and straining may all be used to good effect to extract juice from the bean."
As cutting hadn't worked out well for Severus, he decided to try pressing instead. He laid his remaining bean on his old wooden chopping board, and rested the flat side of his silver knife on top of it. He pressed the palm of his hand down on the knife, and the bean let out a satisfying squelch as juice spread out around it. He easily scooped up one teaspoon of juice off the chopping board, and added it to his Draught. The simmering potion let out a satisfying hiss, and Severus peered back down at Advanced Potion-Making for the next steps.
As he did, he heard the sound of a gate screeching open. He quickly looked up, and peered out of a crack made by a picket that had fallen out of the backyard fence. He could just see the rusted old playground beyond, and he sighed as the voices of two boys he didn't know carried over to him. He shook his head and refocused on his work: this was just one of many disappointing false alarms he'd had this summer.
Thankfully, the next steps for this potion were fiddly and required all of Severus's concentration. He was able to forget about his disappointment for a while, until his potion had turned pale pink: it was brewed perfectly. Severus admired his handiwork for a brief moment, but he was interrupted by a commotion in the living room.
He took a vial from inside the pocket of his jeans, and scooped up some of the finished Draught. Stowing it away, he stepped inside just as his father slammed the front door and sunk down into a threadbare sofa.
"Bring me a beer, boy," the man growled, and Severus went to the kitchen to fetch him one.
He opened up a glass beer bottle, and, hiding behind the open refrigerator door, carefully removed the vial of Draught of Living Death from his pocket. He unstoppered the vial, and, very gently, poured one tiny drop of the potion into his father's beer. It made a sizzling noise as it hit the amber-colored liquid, but in a moment it had disappeared completely into the drink.
"Hurry up!" The man shouted, and Severus quickly made his way over to the balding figure, who stared blankly into an old television set. The football game blared loudly, and flickering technicolor illuminated the man's face.
"Here," Severus said, and the man held out his hand without looking at Severus at all.
Severus's father lifted the beer to his lips, and took several large gulps. Immediately, his eyes fell shut, and Severus took the beer from his slackening grip before it could spill all over the carpet.
"Sleeping potion," Severus said nonchalantly to a shabby taupe armchair in the corner of the room.
In fact, the armchair contained a small, mousy woman with lank brown hair. She was rather homely: her hollow cheeks and sallow skin gave her a sickly appearance, and her high cheekbones and delicate chin were quite overshadowed by her large, hooked nose.
Severus cared for his mother, but looking upon her now, he could feel nothing but pity. How could someone so gifted with magic allow themselves to be bullied by a pathetic Muggle man like his father?
"He'll be knocked out for a couple of hours," Severus added, and he headed back outside to clean up his potion supplies.
Just one more week, he thought to himself. One more week, and I'll be back home.
As usual, Severus had settled himself into a lonely compartment at the end of the last carriage. The Hogwarts Express rocked gently beneath him, and the sound of its wheels grinding on the tracks gave a kind of heartbeat to his thoughts.
His compartment door slid open, and as he whipped his head around to ward off the intruding first years, he heard a familiar voice.
"Hey, Sev!"
Lily stood in the doorway, auburn hair floating about her face, green eyes alight with a smile. She could not have been more beautiful.
"Lily! I…"
"Slughorn asked me to tell you, we're meeting in Compartment C in half an hour."
"Oh...right. Thanks."'
Severus couldn't help but feel a little deflated...Lily had clearly not come to visit of her own accord.
"Lily…?"
"What's up?"
"...Never mind. I'll see you soon then, I suppose."
Lily flashed him another of her wonderful smiles as she shut the compartment door behind her, and Severus let out a disappointed sigh.
He thought back, as he often did, of the fateful day that had forked their paths in two. On their very first evening at Hogwarts, he had been sorted into Slytherin, and she into Gryffindor. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made: somebody like her, who radiated the warmth of the sun, didn't belong down in the dungeons with the likes of him. Not that that arrogant swine James Potter deserved to be in the same room with her, either…
He was left alone with these brooding reminiscences for some time, until eventually he pulled himself out of his corner and set off for Compartment C.
He slid open the door, and the cramped compartment was alive with chatter. Severus felt exhausted already, but his spirits brightened when Lily gestured to a bit of empty space next to her.
He squeezed into the sliver of compartment that Lily had indicated, and felt some color rise to his face as her body pressed against his.
"How was your summer?" She asked brightly.
"Fine, I suppose. Hung around outside, mostly..." waiting for you. "How about yours?"
"We all went to the countryside for a holiday," she replied, and Severus noted the spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks; they had become a little darker.
"So that's where you were…"
Lily turned to him, a note of surprise playing on her face.
"I just mean, I didn't see you around at all," Severus said, with a carefully put on air of nonchalance.
"Well, it was really nice," Lily continued. "We stayed in a little log cabin. At one point we misplaced the matches, and we couldn't light the fire! My parents really wanted me to light it by magic…"
"I'm sure Petunia was absolutely delighted," Severus quipped with a sly grin.
"Yes, well…" A little smile played at her lips. "Petunia actually managed to find the matches in the end, so it wasn't necessary."
"Devastating," Severus replied.
They stared at each other for a brief moment, and burst out laughing.
"All right, all right, quiet down now! Quiet down…"
The moment was interrupted by Professor Slughorn's slightly wheezy voice, and the excited chattering ebbed to a halt.
"Thank you all very much for coming along to my little gathering," Slughorn began as he cleared his throat, "you might have noticed we have a new student with us today!"
Severus had been paying all his attention to Lily, but he soon spotted a small, dark-haired boy in the seat almost opposite him.
"I'd like you all to welcome Regulus Black!"
Murmured 'hello's were directed at the small boy, and he straightened a little in his seat.
Severus eyed the boy with suspicion; this was, after all, Sirius Black's younger brother.
"I hope you're not planning to go the way of your older brother, Regulus…," Slughorn said genially, "Your family has a long, rich history with my house!"
"I don't believe I will," Regulus replied; a little too matter-of-factly for a boy of eleven.
"Of course, if you did decide to defect, you'd have some great company in Gryffindor," Slughorn added hastily as he smiled over at Lily.
"I'm proud that my parents were in Slytherin," Regulus replied with a hint of reproach.
"Well, jolly good then, jolly good!"
Slughorn reached over and clapped the boy on the shoulder, and from there he commenced his usual interrogation concerning the Slug Club's various holiday activities.
In time, the sky outside darkened. For the first time in what seemed like hours, Slughorn happened to glance down at the tiny planets circling the face of his wristwatch.
"Goodness, is that the time?" he exclaimed. "I suppose I'll have to let you all go now, you'll need to be getting changed into your robes!"
Severus, who was nearest the door, gave Lily a small smile as he hastily left Compartment C. As Severus had changed into his school robes immediately after boarding the train, one might suppose that he simply did not wish to have any further conversation with Slughorn.