Author's Note: This is the revised version of chapter 1. If you have just
found this story, I urge you to read! This is one of those "how it all
happened" Snape fics, but hopefully with a few good, original ideas.
Mainly, the idea is to focus on the development of Snape and fellow Death
Eaters Lucius Malfoy, Augustus Rookwood, and Igor Karkaroff. So read on if
you wish to hear about Severus Snape, a certain snake-faced beast-man, an
unpleasant initiation, an encounter with a Ravenous Chair, and the
interactions between four recent graduates of Hogwarts in their roles as
Death Eaters. As if you didn't know, but I apparently have to say this: All
of this stuff, all the ideas, are not mine; they're basically JK Rowling's
and anyone who she's sold the rights to. Ok; now read, and please review.
*********
Snape was a hard man, and probably a bad man, but without a doubt, definitely, a hard man. He was more than just a soft, pink human being encased in protective armor: he was stone. When he was small he had cried when his father snarled at him, but when he had grown into a young man who could think for himself—then he had stared back at that beast of a man with such scaldingly cold hatred that it incised a mark of fear into his father's mind; but it burnt Snape through a little bit each time he used it. After a while, there was little remaining but scar tissue.
He had been a very intelligent boy, with an obvious skill in the brewing of potions, an unnerving talent for the Dark Arts, and a brutally precise wand- arm. He could have accomplished anything, if it were not for that look in his eyes. He could not be made nervous, nor ever ashamed. His teachers whispered in the lounge as they gulped down their Irish coffee that Severus Snape had but two emotions: cold anger and smug satisfaction. But they only talked about Snape when they had exhausted themselves with laughing at the latest high jinks of James Potter and his friends, or when they had run out of Potter achievements to which they could shake their heads and say "he will go far in life." Their only hope for Snape was that he would hurry up and graduate so they could get back to teaching students who'd actually blink their eyes once or twice in the course of a conversation. They would not have changed their minds if they had known that one of Severus' most treasured dreams involved poking out their eyes with his bare fingers.
Young Severus was badly built for physical fighting, which was less troubling in Hogwarts than in an ordinary muggle schoolyard, but which nevertheless had an annoyingly persistent ability to cause trouble for him. Potter was one of his biggest problems. James Potter: the dashing athlete, the daring prankster; the one the girls whispered about and the boys acclaimed. People laughed when Potter corrupted Snape's name to form "Snivellus," or when he, Severus, turned a corner and got hit with a nose- lengthening curse. But they looked at him in disgust when he made Potter cough up his own stomach once in the hallway, before the Potter gang had seen him. And then that girl Lily, with the lovely red hair, had escorted James down to the hospital wing after shooting a nasty look Snape's way.
There'd been nothing for him to do when he got out of Hogwarts. His teachers' recommendations glossed over his skills and made certain to mention his "attitude problems," only Dumbledore excepted. And his attempts at finding someplace to further his dream of being an auror; it was almost a joke! His hopes were dragged through the mud by people who didn't think too highly of his bird-of-prey looks and his disdainful tones. He wanted, more than anything, to be out there in the world testing the untold boundaries of curse magic and even the dark arts. He could imagine himself living alone in the middle of a haunted wood, banishing the dark creatures and uncovering the secrets of the forbidden magics that other wizards were too frightened— too weak of mind— to explore. He could see wise men knocking sheepishly on his door in search of his council and guidance, and he could feel the pleasure of turning away a repentant James Potter and his friends; slamming the door in their desperate faces as they begged for his assistance.
He realized that his dream would never come true on the day he read in the Daily Prophet that James Potter was considered one of the Ministry of Magic's most promising young employees. There were a few lines on his wife, Lily, and praises from former classmates were as ubiquitous as commas. That day, or rather that night, since he had slept the daylight hours away, he didn't even bother to scan the classifieds, as he habitually did on other days. He studied the photo, in which Potter had one arm around a gently smiling Lily while using the unoccupied hand to give Snape the finger. Furiously, Snape whipped out his wand and threw the paper across the room, blasting it with an explosion curse that shook the house. He pocketed his wand and stormed out the front door.
Miserable and therefore angry, Snape stormed into the Leaky Cauldron. It was not a place he often visited, and it was not somewhere he really wished to be. It was simply the destination to which his feet brought him, so he chose a table in the shadows at the back of the room and ordered a strong drink. He didn't even want it. But his tongue had asked for it and his hands had paid for it and now his mouth was drinking it down in breathless gulps.
The waitress didn't like him; she gave him a whole pitcher of his drink after he began calling her "mudblood" into his third glass. Snape slurped the stuff straight from the pitcher now, becoming more greasy-looking and more pitifully hateful with every sip. The shapes of the people in the room who didn't care simplified into a mess of blobs that didn't care, and he cursed at them in a low voice until he wasn't making sense.
One shape moved his way, and he visciously burbled the word "mudblood" at what he assumed to be the waitress.
"Severus Snape, you look worse than usual," said the figure, which turned out to be a man; someone he knew, thought Snape disconnectedly. Probably someone just as disagreeable as all the others. The man, who was dressed in robes too rich for most wizards, sat at the table while the drunk man stared through him from beneath drooping eyelids and a curtain of dampish black hair. The visitor sniffed with a clear tint of blue-blooded disgust.
"Really, Severus," said the man, and lifted what seemed to be a fancy walking stick. Gingerly he used it to push away the unwashed hair as Snape eyeballed him with unfocused distaste. "If not for your own sake, I dare say that for my health you might deign to bathe a bit more often?"
Snape looked at the man, puzzled, until his foggy mind slowly clicked, matching the blur of features to a name from his days as a student in Hogwarts. "Malfoy?" he asked thickly.
"Hmm, yes." He sniffed again. "You may call me Lucius, of course. We of pure blood must look upon one another as..." he may have wrinkled his nose, but Snape wasn't certain, "the dearest of friends." Snape was almost sure he was smiling; that cool smile Lucius Malfoy used to wear as he sat by the common room fire with the other purebloods. The thin, slinking Severus had never been exactly welcome in that circle—he had not been well liked, even in Slytherin house. But of all the others, Lucius had been... what was the right word? Not kind, exactly. Malfoy had smiled at him with an appraising, thoughtful air as Snape sat in the corner and jinxed his frazzled tabby cat, Orpheus. At times, Malfoy had turned upon the hook-nosed youth those cold eyes and watched in wonderment as Snape fashioned a new hex. And he would say something like, "My, my. The very vision of a Slytherin," or even once, "Such aptitude should not be so wasted." Malfoy had occasionally engaged Severus in callously polite conversation, but that was not important. The thing that mattered was that while his professors turned their eyes away and refused to acknowledge his abilities, Lucius Malfoy had unthinkingly, though perhaps not unintentionally, given him hope. Snape let his thoughts swim alone and faced the white-haired Malfoy with glassy, unfocused eyes, quickly deciding he could use a bit more drink.
"Oh, for the love of God, Severus," said Lucius scornfully when the other man uncoordinatedly tipped his pitcher up over his head using both hands, and still managed to dump the thick contents up his nose rather than into his mouth. "You there," he called to the uneager waitress, watching from the corner of his eye as Severus Snape spluttered and pawed sloppily at his long, dripping beak. The curly-haired witch approached their table with a bewitched order-taking pad in one hand and a distasteful expression over her face. "We'll have a tablespoon of Origi-State Anti-Intoxication powder, if you please. Bacchus brand, of course. And one half-pint of whatever he's got." Lucius smiled and placed upon the dark pinewood of the table enough knuts and galleons to pay for everything that Snape had already consumed, in addition to what he himself had just ordered.
"Too good to touch a common hand," she mumbled daringly, suspecting rightly that this friend of her earlier customer would feel the same way about mixed blood.
"You are not paid, I think, to remark upon the dealings of your master's customers," observed Lucius casually, watching her down his sculpted Roman nose. With lowered brows that only suggested the onset of an awful headache, the waitress silently stalked off to retrieve both the Origi- State powder and the Migraine Melter draught the barkeeper kept beneath the counter for nights like tonight.
She was back within moments, and as she plopped down the tiny satchel of Origi-State powder and slammed down the mug of alcohol, she paused in her step only just long enough to raise her eyebrows at Snape, who was despondently licking the table, presumably to catch anything he had spilled after accidentally emptying the pitcher.
"A pureblood if ever I saw one," she commented to Lucius, giggling and scooting away before he could respond. The Migraine Melter had done her considerable good.
"Here you are, Severus," said Lucius, who dumped all of the Origi-State powder into the new mug and shoved it towards Snape. "Do take a nice, long sip."
Feebly, Snape lifted his head, drew the mug towards him, and slurped up a good-sized gulp of the warm mixture from over the rim. As his mouth drew away from it, he began to sit up considerably straighter, and his eyes changed from frosted glass beads into impenetrable chunks of glacier ice. These eyes now focused and, glaring undirected malice at all the biting world in its entirety, he used one steady, bony hand to sweep his hair away from his face. He might have been a different man from the soppy mess that had moments before been cleaning the grimy table with his tongue.
"Lucius Malfoy," he said, sneering warily. "I didn't see you sit down. What could you be doing here?" Here Snape proved that he could look down his nose as well as Malfoy, or perhaps better, since he had such an impressively scaled snout from which to observe.
Malfoy sniffed again, but allowed a bit of a pleased smile to touch the corners of his shapely mouth. "Dragging you out of your own piss, it should seem. Rather unpleasant business, really. As one might well imagine. Though what I cannot imagine is why I might find you here in the first place, Severus?"
Snape scowled darkly across the table. "I happen to be getting on fine. I was merely enjoying a brief drink at a popular tavern—"
Malfoy snorted delicately. "Enjoying yourself, were you? Well well. Though I might envision such a performance might please the... rabble," he said, his arm indicating everyone else present, "I would never have guessed the fool might delight in his own sordid antics." Lucius' words ran quick and smooth over his tongue, but they found a nerve like sharp little darts in Snape's flesh as he sat back, smiling.
Like a flash Snape had whipped out his wand, a strong nose-bleeding curse prepared to fly. But Malfoy's wand arm was nearly as quick, and Snape could see that it would be foolish to attack now. With burning hatred, he lowered his wand as Malfoy did the same.
"Now, now, Severus. Cursing anyone won't help either of us."
Snape glowered at him and lifted his mug, taking in a big gulp before lowering it again and swallowing sickly. "It's got... a reviving powder in it," he said, hiding the questions he wanted to ask behind a front of indifferent observation. Malfoy laughed, a single slash of well-bred sound amidst the rumbling chuckles of the other patrons.
"Yes, hmm. But I do think I am beginning to regret not having left you in your inebriated and—well—more pleasant state."
"I was never 'inebriated' in my life, Lucius," hissed Snape indignantly. "I've no idea what you mean by this forced meeting, but I assure you that whatever your business, you are not welcome."
"Pity you've no power here to back such implied threats," said Malfoy with intentional nonchalance. "Pity, you've nothing but that wretched disposition and a small skill in the dark sorceries of all things, wouldn't you agree?" he looked at Snape, who glared frighteningly but answered nothing. "Tu, tut. How unfortunate for you, Severus, that there are no openings at the Ministry for a second-rate dark wizard." By now, his voice was very soft, but more mesmerizing than if he had shouted and danced to emphasize his words.
"Second-rate?!" sneered Snape without feeling. He could tell that Malfoy was getting at something.
"Unless, of course," continued Malfoy, ignoring Snape, "you weren't in need of employment at the Ministry, as it were." He smiled without showing any teeth and leaned in slightly, almost whispering.
"What do you mean, Lucius?" asked Snape coldly, staring him down.
"Few can tell," Lucious shrugged, still grinning. "I myself am honor-bound to speak but little, and then only to those who may be trusted. Are you such a one, Master Snape?" He raised his brows inquiringly, but gave an air that he would not care, whatever Snape replied.
"That all depends," Snape said warily, still eyeing Malfoy with some suspicion as well as a measure of hope.
"Then I suppose I must depend upon you, my dear Snape," said Lucius silkily, smiling again. He reached into his breast pocket and removed a piece of parchment. "Read this, Severus," he commanded with aristocratic ease, holding it out for Snape, who took it suspiciously and opened it. "Don't read it aloud. And when you've finished, spell the words away by ordering them to disappear." Now Malfoy's tones were clipped, urgent, and slightly lacking in their usual arrogance. Snape narrowed his eyes at the other man, who continued, oblivious, saying, "when you want them to reappear, simply say 'the Dark Lord is come.' And tomorrow night, if you wish to know more, you will follow those instructions exactly."
"The Dark Lord?" scoffed Snape with a derisive snort of disbelieving laughter.
"If you are expecting barrels of laughs," said Malfoy haughtily, getting up from his chair, "I suggest you remain sniveling at home, my dear Severus." Smiling unnervingly, Malfoy walked to the door of the Leaky Cauldron and exited, leaving Snape alone with his doctored drink, his mysterious bit of scroll, and a head full to the brim with questions.
***********
If you liked that, I urge you to read on. And please review; it's very encouraging, critiques as well as comments. How else can a would-be writer improver herself?
*********
Snape was a hard man, and probably a bad man, but without a doubt, definitely, a hard man. He was more than just a soft, pink human being encased in protective armor: he was stone. When he was small he had cried when his father snarled at him, but when he had grown into a young man who could think for himself—then he had stared back at that beast of a man with such scaldingly cold hatred that it incised a mark of fear into his father's mind; but it burnt Snape through a little bit each time he used it. After a while, there was little remaining but scar tissue.
He had been a very intelligent boy, with an obvious skill in the brewing of potions, an unnerving talent for the Dark Arts, and a brutally precise wand- arm. He could have accomplished anything, if it were not for that look in his eyes. He could not be made nervous, nor ever ashamed. His teachers whispered in the lounge as they gulped down their Irish coffee that Severus Snape had but two emotions: cold anger and smug satisfaction. But they only talked about Snape when they had exhausted themselves with laughing at the latest high jinks of James Potter and his friends, or when they had run out of Potter achievements to which they could shake their heads and say "he will go far in life." Their only hope for Snape was that he would hurry up and graduate so they could get back to teaching students who'd actually blink their eyes once or twice in the course of a conversation. They would not have changed their minds if they had known that one of Severus' most treasured dreams involved poking out their eyes with his bare fingers.
Young Severus was badly built for physical fighting, which was less troubling in Hogwarts than in an ordinary muggle schoolyard, but which nevertheless had an annoyingly persistent ability to cause trouble for him. Potter was one of his biggest problems. James Potter: the dashing athlete, the daring prankster; the one the girls whispered about and the boys acclaimed. People laughed when Potter corrupted Snape's name to form "Snivellus," or when he, Severus, turned a corner and got hit with a nose- lengthening curse. But they looked at him in disgust when he made Potter cough up his own stomach once in the hallway, before the Potter gang had seen him. And then that girl Lily, with the lovely red hair, had escorted James down to the hospital wing after shooting a nasty look Snape's way.
There'd been nothing for him to do when he got out of Hogwarts. His teachers' recommendations glossed over his skills and made certain to mention his "attitude problems," only Dumbledore excepted. And his attempts at finding someplace to further his dream of being an auror; it was almost a joke! His hopes were dragged through the mud by people who didn't think too highly of his bird-of-prey looks and his disdainful tones. He wanted, more than anything, to be out there in the world testing the untold boundaries of curse magic and even the dark arts. He could imagine himself living alone in the middle of a haunted wood, banishing the dark creatures and uncovering the secrets of the forbidden magics that other wizards were too frightened— too weak of mind— to explore. He could see wise men knocking sheepishly on his door in search of his council and guidance, and he could feel the pleasure of turning away a repentant James Potter and his friends; slamming the door in their desperate faces as they begged for his assistance.
He realized that his dream would never come true on the day he read in the Daily Prophet that James Potter was considered one of the Ministry of Magic's most promising young employees. There were a few lines on his wife, Lily, and praises from former classmates were as ubiquitous as commas. That day, or rather that night, since he had slept the daylight hours away, he didn't even bother to scan the classifieds, as he habitually did on other days. He studied the photo, in which Potter had one arm around a gently smiling Lily while using the unoccupied hand to give Snape the finger. Furiously, Snape whipped out his wand and threw the paper across the room, blasting it with an explosion curse that shook the house. He pocketed his wand and stormed out the front door.
Miserable and therefore angry, Snape stormed into the Leaky Cauldron. It was not a place he often visited, and it was not somewhere he really wished to be. It was simply the destination to which his feet brought him, so he chose a table in the shadows at the back of the room and ordered a strong drink. He didn't even want it. But his tongue had asked for it and his hands had paid for it and now his mouth was drinking it down in breathless gulps.
The waitress didn't like him; she gave him a whole pitcher of his drink after he began calling her "mudblood" into his third glass. Snape slurped the stuff straight from the pitcher now, becoming more greasy-looking and more pitifully hateful with every sip. The shapes of the people in the room who didn't care simplified into a mess of blobs that didn't care, and he cursed at them in a low voice until he wasn't making sense.
One shape moved his way, and he visciously burbled the word "mudblood" at what he assumed to be the waitress.
"Severus Snape, you look worse than usual," said the figure, which turned out to be a man; someone he knew, thought Snape disconnectedly. Probably someone just as disagreeable as all the others. The man, who was dressed in robes too rich for most wizards, sat at the table while the drunk man stared through him from beneath drooping eyelids and a curtain of dampish black hair. The visitor sniffed with a clear tint of blue-blooded disgust.
"Really, Severus," said the man, and lifted what seemed to be a fancy walking stick. Gingerly he used it to push away the unwashed hair as Snape eyeballed him with unfocused distaste. "If not for your own sake, I dare say that for my health you might deign to bathe a bit more often?"
Snape looked at the man, puzzled, until his foggy mind slowly clicked, matching the blur of features to a name from his days as a student in Hogwarts. "Malfoy?" he asked thickly.
"Hmm, yes." He sniffed again. "You may call me Lucius, of course. We of pure blood must look upon one another as..." he may have wrinkled his nose, but Snape wasn't certain, "the dearest of friends." Snape was almost sure he was smiling; that cool smile Lucius Malfoy used to wear as he sat by the common room fire with the other purebloods. The thin, slinking Severus had never been exactly welcome in that circle—he had not been well liked, even in Slytherin house. But of all the others, Lucius had been... what was the right word? Not kind, exactly. Malfoy had smiled at him with an appraising, thoughtful air as Snape sat in the corner and jinxed his frazzled tabby cat, Orpheus. At times, Malfoy had turned upon the hook-nosed youth those cold eyes and watched in wonderment as Snape fashioned a new hex. And he would say something like, "My, my. The very vision of a Slytherin," or even once, "Such aptitude should not be so wasted." Malfoy had occasionally engaged Severus in callously polite conversation, but that was not important. The thing that mattered was that while his professors turned their eyes away and refused to acknowledge his abilities, Lucius Malfoy had unthinkingly, though perhaps not unintentionally, given him hope. Snape let his thoughts swim alone and faced the white-haired Malfoy with glassy, unfocused eyes, quickly deciding he could use a bit more drink.
"Oh, for the love of God, Severus," said Lucius scornfully when the other man uncoordinatedly tipped his pitcher up over his head using both hands, and still managed to dump the thick contents up his nose rather than into his mouth. "You there," he called to the uneager waitress, watching from the corner of his eye as Severus Snape spluttered and pawed sloppily at his long, dripping beak. The curly-haired witch approached their table with a bewitched order-taking pad in one hand and a distasteful expression over her face. "We'll have a tablespoon of Origi-State Anti-Intoxication powder, if you please. Bacchus brand, of course. And one half-pint of whatever he's got." Lucius smiled and placed upon the dark pinewood of the table enough knuts and galleons to pay for everything that Snape had already consumed, in addition to what he himself had just ordered.
"Too good to touch a common hand," she mumbled daringly, suspecting rightly that this friend of her earlier customer would feel the same way about mixed blood.
"You are not paid, I think, to remark upon the dealings of your master's customers," observed Lucius casually, watching her down his sculpted Roman nose. With lowered brows that only suggested the onset of an awful headache, the waitress silently stalked off to retrieve both the Origi- State powder and the Migraine Melter draught the barkeeper kept beneath the counter for nights like tonight.
She was back within moments, and as she plopped down the tiny satchel of Origi-State powder and slammed down the mug of alcohol, she paused in her step only just long enough to raise her eyebrows at Snape, who was despondently licking the table, presumably to catch anything he had spilled after accidentally emptying the pitcher.
"A pureblood if ever I saw one," she commented to Lucius, giggling and scooting away before he could respond. The Migraine Melter had done her considerable good.
"Here you are, Severus," said Lucius, who dumped all of the Origi-State powder into the new mug and shoved it towards Snape. "Do take a nice, long sip."
Feebly, Snape lifted his head, drew the mug towards him, and slurped up a good-sized gulp of the warm mixture from over the rim. As his mouth drew away from it, he began to sit up considerably straighter, and his eyes changed from frosted glass beads into impenetrable chunks of glacier ice. These eyes now focused and, glaring undirected malice at all the biting world in its entirety, he used one steady, bony hand to sweep his hair away from his face. He might have been a different man from the soppy mess that had moments before been cleaning the grimy table with his tongue.
"Lucius Malfoy," he said, sneering warily. "I didn't see you sit down. What could you be doing here?" Here Snape proved that he could look down his nose as well as Malfoy, or perhaps better, since he had such an impressively scaled snout from which to observe.
Malfoy sniffed again, but allowed a bit of a pleased smile to touch the corners of his shapely mouth. "Dragging you out of your own piss, it should seem. Rather unpleasant business, really. As one might well imagine. Though what I cannot imagine is why I might find you here in the first place, Severus?"
Snape scowled darkly across the table. "I happen to be getting on fine. I was merely enjoying a brief drink at a popular tavern—"
Malfoy snorted delicately. "Enjoying yourself, were you? Well well. Though I might envision such a performance might please the... rabble," he said, his arm indicating everyone else present, "I would never have guessed the fool might delight in his own sordid antics." Lucius' words ran quick and smooth over his tongue, but they found a nerve like sharp little darts in Snape's flesh as he sat back, smiling.
Like a flash Snape had whipped out his wand, a strong nose-bleeding curse prepared to fly. But Malfoy's wand arm was nearly as quick, and Snape could see that it would be foolish to attack now. With burning hatred, he lowered his wand as Malfoy did the same.
"Now, now, Severus. Cursing anyone won't help either of us."
Snape glowered at him and lifted his mug, taking in a big gulp before lowering it again and swallowing sickly. "It's got... a reviving powder in it," he said, hiding the questions he wanted to ask behind a front of indifferent observation. Malfoy laughed, a single slash of well-bred sound amidst the rumbling chuckles of the other patrons.
"Yes, hmm. But I do think I am beginning to regret not having left you in your inebriated and—well—more pleasant state."
"I was never 'inebriated' in my life, Lucius," hissed Snape indignantly. "I've no idea what you mean by this forced meeting, but I assure you that whatever your business, you are not welcome."
"Pity you've no power here to back such implied threats," said Malfoy with intentional nonchalance. "Pity, you've nothing but that wretched disposition and a small skill in the dark sorceries of all things, wouldn't you agree?" he looked at Snape, who glared frighteningly but answered nothing. "Tu, tut. How unfortunate for you, Severus, that there are no openings at the Ministry for a second-rate dark wizard." By now, his voice was very soft, but more mesmerizing than if he had shouted and danced to emphasize his words.
"Second-rate?!" sneered Snape without feeling. He could tell that Malfoy was getting at something.
"Unless, of course," continued Malfoy, ignoring Snape, "you weren't in need of employment at the Ministry, as it were." He smiled without showing any teeth and leaned in slightly, almost whispering.
"What do you mean, Lucius?" asked Snape coldly, staring him down.
"Few can tell," Lucious shrugged, still grinning. "I myself am honor-bound to speak but little, and then only to those who may be trusted. Are you such a one, Master Snape?" He raised his brows inquiringly, but gave an air that he would not care, whatever Snape replied.
"That all depends," Snape said warily, still eyeing Malfoy with some suspicion as well as a measure of hope.
"Then I suppose I must depend upon you, my dear Snape," said Lucius silkily, smiling again. He reached into his breast pocket and removed a piece of parchment. "Read this, Severus," he commanded with aristocratic ease, holding it out for Snape, who took it suspiciously and opened it. "Don't read it aloud. And when you've finished, spell the words away by ordering them to disappear." Now Malfoy's tones were clipped, urgent, and slightly lacking in their usual arrogance. Snape narrowed his eyes at the other man, who continued, oblivious, saying, "when you want them to reappear, simply say 'the Dark Lord is come.' And tomorrow night, if you wish to know more, you will follow those instructions exactly."
"The Dark Lord?" scoffed Snape with a derisive snort of disbelieving laughter.
"If you are expecting barrels of laughs," said Malfoy haughtily, getting up from his chair, "I suggest you remain sniveling at home, my dear Severus." Smiling unnervingly, Malfoy walked to the door of the Leaky Cauldron and exited, leaving Snape alone with his doctored drink, his mysterious bit of scroll, and a head full to the brim with questions.
***********
If you liked that, I urge you to read on. And please review; it's very encouraging, critiques as well as comments. How else can a would-be writer improver herself?