This fic exists because I wrote another fic for a friend. Which is a different story altogether. In any case I made Severus utterly miserable, so one morning on the way to work it occurred to me that I ought to try making Severus happy for a change.
Set first year, in early January. An epilogue to the First Year Triptych, though it's not necessary to have read it – just understand that in my timeline Severus and Remus were both outcasts in their respective houses from the beginning and nearly (but never) became friends. After which Remus got together with James & Co., whom we all know spent their time making Severus miserable.
This is what happened afterwards.
(… on the matter of Severus' age? I'm bad at math and Singaporean, and the western school calendar confuses me. I originally wrote that he was ten. Now he's eleven. There.)
Finished 15 February 2005Midwinter
It'd taken a couple of years for Severus to realise that he hated Christmas.
Christmas in aristocratic Wizarding England meant an all-out display of who had the finest wine, the best family silver, who could offer the most expensive yet elegant presents – not merely the most money to throw around, but the most money to be thrown around tastefully. The Snape family fortune had been declining since before Severus was born but had started to run dry only recently; they were still well-off but no longer rich.
Severus had been watching his parents start saving for Christmas around September since he was about six: pretending that they were still part of the circuit, refusing to believe that the family could no longer compete. It was humiliating, accomplished less than nothing, and still had to be done because the Snapes still had pure Wizarding blood, all of it aristocratic.
(Severus heard the whispering, though, wondering how a pureblood family could have produced such a startlingly ugly child, and did his best to ignore it.)
He'd only begun to understand what was going on at the age of eight. Since then he'd hated Christmas with a passion.
Staying over in Hogwarts would have been unthinkable, Severus knew. It would have suggested that the Snapes could not even afford to have their son return for the holidays, and diminish the family standing still further. Even so, he'd missed Hogwarts – the lake and the library, places where he could find some peace and quiet.
He'd even missed Black and Potter, because he could at least hex them back without accusations of unrefined behaviour. Not that this had ever stopped him, but detentions were still preferable to facing his parents' wrath when they got back home.
Even so, now that he was back it seemed impossible that he'd forgotten about the gossip in the common room and over meals, the constant competition – Oy, Snape, what did you get for Christmas? – and the isolation. Slytherin was a house of aristocrats and and outcasts. Severus was both, and hence accepted by neither.
Pathetic.
Severus looked at the essay he'd been trying to write for the last ten minutes, and realised that he wasn't even making grammatical sense. He crumpled the parchment up, staring out of the tall library windows. It wasn't particularly interesting. Midwinter meant heavy snow: miserable weather.
Severus frowned, and tried to figure out what to do about Lucius Malfoy.
Malfoy: the very oldest and richest of Wizarding England. Lucius Malfoy was family, of course. The pureblood families were all related by marriage. But Malfoy was different: tall, blond and charming, as perfect an aristocrat as Sirius Black. An example, to be compared to. Severus had known of him before he'd ever stepped into Hogwarts. Malfoy was a distant untouchable presence at family gatherings and dinners, standing on one side watching Severus get into fights with the other children, too old to be involved and too well-bred to interfere.
Severus hated him for simply existing. It wasn't even anything personal.
Except Lucius Malfoy had recently taken to demonstrating the odd gesture of something almost resembling friendship – asking if he might want to borrow a particular book the library didn't stock (he did, but said no), giving him a faint smile if Severus came into the common room while he was there (which wasn't returned) and, finally and intolerably, asking how Christmas had been.
And Severus had snarled, hit him with a Jelly-Legs Curse, and stalked off.
There was no apparent reason why Malfoy, sixteen and clearly lacking neither friends nor worshippers, should pay any attention to him. Severus could tell that his housemates thought he was crazy to make an enemy of Malfoy, and part of him agreed. Malfoy could help him finally fit in with the rest of Slytherin; he should be – was – flattered that Malfoy saw value in him.
The rest of Severus – the part that actually thought – knew that there were reasons why Lucius Malfoy should pay attention to him. Malfoy was graduating soon, was too much the perfect aristocrat to resist becoming a Death Eater, and what he could see of Severus made him an ideal ally: young, impressionable, with too many enemies and in desperate need of a friend – and remarkably formidable for an eleven-year-old. Malfoy saw value in him because there was indeed value, worth manipulating.
I'm not as impressionable as you think.
And even if all his analysis was wrong, if Lucius Malfoy was merely being kind – I don't need that, either. Anger gave him certainty. Scowling, Severus unrolled a fresh piece of parchment and began his essay for the second time.
.
Severus felt hands on his shoulders the moment he stepped into the common room. And then his cheek was slammed against the table, pain flashing purple spots across his vision.
Somebody was twisting his left arm up his back. "You think you're pretty good, don't you? Giving seniors cheek and all."
His hand was jerked an inch higher. Now was the time to panic; Slytherins did not normally hit where it would show, this was uncharted territory. Severus heard himself cry out, softly, pain mixed with sudden fear.
Then there was a pause, silence, and suddenly no one was holding him down. Severus waited until he could feel his fingers again, and then slowly pushed himself upright. There was no one there. He let himself slide bonelessly to the floor, felt his heel knock against someone's foot and turned hurriedly, backing until he was under the table.
Whoever was there bent down on one knee to peer at him, and Severus found himself staring into Lucius Malfoy's expressionless face.
He called them off. Blood rushed into his cheeks. "You staged that."
Malfoy reached over, grasped Severus' shoulders, and pulled him out from under the table, almost absently. "I did not."
Severus shook himself free and stood shakily, supporting his weight on the edge of the table with his right hand. His left was still cramping badly. "I don't believe you."
He realised that he was having to angle his chin up to look at the taller boy, and stepped backwards. Malfoy shrugged, and then smiled. "Do you have to suspect everything, Severus?"
"Yes."
"All right." Malfoy turned to walk off.
Severus stared after him. Then, suddenly, he shouted, "I'm not as stupid as you think I am!"
Malfoy turned, still smiling. "Yes – and no." Severus pulled out his wand, but the other boy merely blinked. "What now?"
"What did that mean?"
"Life would be easier, Severus, if only you would stop thinking so much. That's all."
And then he was gone.
It's not like that at all.
After a moment Severus realised that his hand was trembling, his grip loosening on his wand. He lowered it slowly, and then pushed his hands into his pockets.
What did he mean? Nothing. It's not like that. At all. No.
.
The Potions dungeon looked different in the evening. Severus sat back and glared at his supplies, arrayed on the worktable.
It was a kind of betrayal, all the neatly-labelled cans suddenly not containing what they were supposed to. Ground beetle's wings had been switched for powdered toadskin – Severus knew this because his cauldron had lost a layer of lining.
Potter and Black. As always.
He would have to test everything that might have been mixed up. It would take roughly two hours.
And Lupin, now. That, too, was a kind of betrayal. It'd become a habit to compare experiences with the Gryffindor – an unspoken competition for who could hold out longer. But Lupin was out of the equation now.
Severus' hands moved with absent precision. Porcupine quills made a blue solution when ground and mixed with belladonna; sea urchin spines caused grey smoke. It was easy.
Easy to admit to envy, in these moments – working by candlelight because the sky darkened early under snowclouds, on senseless things that should not have been necessary. Easy to admit that he was afraid to go back to the Slytherin common room, that even this was better.
Competitions; it was always a competition – Christmas was a competition, pedigree was a competition. He'd even made suffering into a competition. It was foolish, and Severus didn't know what else he could do. He'd needed that company, to have someone else in the same situation as his own. Except Lupin had quit.
Lupin had stopped thinking so much, which was why he was no longer an acquaintance but a real enemy. Did he want to be like Lupin?
Severus looked up at the ventlike windows near the ceiling of the dungeons: midwinter.
In less than a week – it'll be my birthday. Birthdays in Slytherin were grand affairs – a great flurry of owls in the morning with presents and sometimes cake. Severus would have none of that; the family was still recovering after Christmas.
He pressed his knuckles into the grainy stone of the worktop until his skin stung. There were things that he could not afford to want.
Severus thought of Lucius Malfoy and how he'd bent to look at him under the table, the unreadable features that could have meant anything. It might even have been concern.
It was after hours by the time he was finished. Severus glared at the polished outer surface of the cauldron for a few seconds, observing that no amount of distortion managed to hide the huge purple bruise across one cheekbone, then packed his things and walked back to the Slytherin common room.
.
The next few days passed without any major incident. Severus decided that this was a gift in itself, and ignored the strange heaviness in his lungs, almost but not quite a physical ache.
On the evening of Severus' birthday Lucius Malfoy walked placidly into the first-years' dormitory, set down a plate of chocolate cake on Severus' nightstand, and walked out again. Severus stared at the thing.
Part of him wanted to accept it. Another part of him wanted to throw it away.
Severus picked up the satchel containing his Potions things, went to the boys' bathroom with it and the cake, and set up a rig to test the stuff for poison.
It would show up clear, he knew. And then he was supposed to cry, and be bought over by a single slice of chocolate cake on his birthday. It was such a foolish, transparent gesture that he didn't know why Malfoy was doing it.
I should save myself some trouble, and just throw it away. Half an hour later, he'd managed to prove what he'd already known: no poison. Severus sighed, very softly, sat down on the cold tiles and stared at the remaining half-slice of cake.
It's so stupid. It'll never work. There were tears on his face, flowing freely now. Severus pulled his knees to his chest. How could I lose – to this, of all methods. It's not even a single slice of cake, it's just half a slice. And – The terrible tightening in his throat was something between a laugh and a sob.
Everything about this was wrong.
And, somewhere, something had finally come to rest.
End The second is that one day, while I was planning this fic, I asked myself what this was about. The answer: it's about Severus and his vulnerability. That for all his planning and pride and intelligence, in the end it takes hardly anything at all to win him over. It's a fic about Severus being eleven and very lonely, and how he ended up with Lucius Malfoy and Slytherin. The next question: this is supposed to make him And the answer to that is, um, yes. … I can't write him eating that cake. I just can't. The setup for Severus' background has been stewing at the back of my mind since… forever, I think. We know that his family's kind of messed up, because Order of the Phoenix says so. We also know that Lucius and Severus are friends. (I haven't yet figured out the dynamics of this particular relationship, which is why I've decided to leave Lucius alone for now.) As far as anyone can tell with the Black family tree, wizarding aristocracy sticks together, so I'm sure they knew each other even outside of school. I'm also fairly certain Severus is wizarding aristocracy, because Malfoy arrogance couldn't possibly have tolerated anything less. Severus makes a very unlikely aristocrat. Admittedly the only proper bloodstocks we know of are Black and Malfoy, but still. Lucius, Bellatrix, Regulus, Sirius, Narcissa. For an aristocrat Severus is a bit lacking in the looks and charm department, and he does not have the manner of a man with pots of money. I don't think he had much fun during the annual Christmas family bash. The Marauders are actually supposed to be around seven years younger than Lucius. I think. But my Marauders are also roughly two years older than Rowling'. So I've settled on Lucius being six years older than Severus. Whatever.
The first thing I want to say is that it's almost too obvious a sympathetic background trick to have Severus born in midwinter. Rowling's idea. Ninth January.