In which Sirius babysits and Severus bakes cookies and neither of these things is strictly true.

Disclaimer: Profitless fanwork

Warnings/genre: references to past abuse, crack-taken-seriously, and enough fluff to choke a s'more.

Post-It Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SEVERUS! Or, er, peaceful? A canny Slytherin aims for the ambitions he can hit, I guess. But, hey, sorry, we love you, man, deal with it. :D

Credit Check: see below

Story notes: This can be read as a stand-alone, in which case all you really need to know that doesn't become clear quickly is that Evan Rosier is Sirius and Narcissa's cousin and Severus's flatmate (and, yes, in the Capital-F meaningful sense, but not everyone in the story knows that). It is, though, enriched for a reader who's familiar with my Subjectiverse and has at least read as far as The Wicket Gate. Originally I would have placed it before Valley of the Shadow on that timeline, but now I'm thinking maybe even during that story, after the Bit Where Sev Freaks. Lily's pregnant with Harry and living at home, anyway. I hope to stop at three chapters. n,n;

The Lion-taming of the Shrew

by nightfall

The Turn of the Screwball

"Just look after him with a minimum of death," Evan wheedled. "I can't reschedule this wedding portrait, but I'll have him off your hands by teatime. Just have to put the last touches on and then I can make sure he doesn't kill himself trying to brew as if all his limbs are the usual size before it wears off. One afternoon, coz."

"Why don't you dump him on Reggie or Prissy-Cissy?" Sirius complained. He was obviously going to capitulate—to get one over on Snape, largely, although the manipulative factor in Evan calling him 'coz' was depressingly eclipsed by how easily and naturally Evan still said it.

His problem here was that Evan had never been interested enough in anything not propped on an easel to be a bastard to anyone, as far as Sirius had ever noticed. Thing was, the supercilious prat was on the Tapestry and proud of it, and also joined at the hip to the Ice Queen and the Slimeball. More, he wasn't just a Slytherin generically but had survived rooming seven years with a sadistic, giggling, mouth-breathing pair of thugs that made Snivellus look like a prince among men. Sirius had to assume, given all this, that Evan put actual and significant effort into not being a bastard.

The other theoretical possibility was that the man really was as vacuous and dim as he looked and all the snakishness had just passed foggily over his head. Except that Evvie had, back in third year, innocently talked Bella into putting on a robin's-egg blue frock and behaving herself very nearly like a (hugely suspicious) angel for an entire extended-family Yule supper until the Minister left. Admittedly the rest of the evening had been highly unpleasant for everyone—and Evan had not only looked like he'd expected that but told Reggie in advance to make himself scarce when Brookstanton went for his cloak. So Sirius somehow didn't think so.

Which meant that now he, Sirius, had two cousins who were paid-up members of the human race and would acknowledge to his face that they were related to him. Even if it was just to cadge a free sitter. Even if it had to be pure last resort.

"I don't like thinking about Bella walking in on Reggie jumping when a half-blood says 'frog,'" Evan replied drolly. "Or, in this case, 'biscuit.' Don't think that'd end well for anyone. I mean to say, Reg at least tries to argue with Severus normally just to show willing, but under the circs he wouldn't just jump, he'd do cartwheels and have Kreacher buy out half of Honeydukes."

"…Yeah, all right," Sirius conceded grudgingly, trying to pretend there weren't any enormous, solemn black eyes burning unblinking holes into his chin. The worst part was that he couldn't tell whether Snape was smug about having Reg wrapped around his disgusting finger or pained about the twerp's susceptibility, and he was sure the little shrike was doing it on purpose. "What about Narcissa, though?"

"Oh, that's right out," Evan waved a dismissive hand. "He'd behave beautifully for Narcissa; the pensieve wouldn't be any fun at all. Now, don't fuss, Siri, you'll get on like a house on fire, just remember it's pronounced A-GUA-MEN-TI. I'll bring us back something for tea and you can both whinge operas at me then. You'll be all right, will you, Severus?"

"I'll be fine," Snape snapped, treble, "unless this lump is unexpectedly clever, but you won't, because I won't be forgiving you for this."

"Oh, Spike," Evan said helplessly, and crouched down next to him. "Now, listen, you already nearly brained yourself summoning a cauldron—"

"Which I won't do again," Snape droned, irritated, while Sirius nearly fell over laughing. Sadly, Snape was only droning at Evan; he was very clearly and deliberately Not Bothering To Be Irritated At Sirius Who Was Only Being Predictable. Which, Sirius had to grudgingly admit, was effectively irritating.

"Unless you decide you've learned from your mistake and you've worked out a better way now!" Evan was a fair-sized bloke for someone who'd played Seeker for a few years, unlike Prongs, who'd had a reasonable growth spurt but still bore a remarkable resemblance to a runner bean with a black caterpillar perched on top. His hands dwarfed Snape's face as he knelt to stroke down his cheeks, all warm, frowny, softly-exasperated concern.

Then his eyes clicked a little cooler, a steelier and Blacker hue than their usual misty, slightly greenish blue. Which Sirius considered a Confirmation, although he wasn't sure it proved anything James or Dumbledore would think was important. "Now, we agreed Lucius is an unfortunate data-vector," Evan went on in a voice that was just as mild and off-hand and vaguely amused as ever, which was creepy, "and if he is then Dad's worse so Linkin's out. And even if she wouldn't tell Lucius you know Cissa would take more pictures than the Wizengamot has beard-hair, so unless you want me to leave you with your parents…"

"No."

"Well then."

The six-year-old with suspiciously bright eyes, digging his shoe into Moony's mum's rag carpet, was biting his pout as thin as McGonagall's pissiest glare. At nearly twenty-two, Sirius felt, for the first time, a bit guilty about 'Snivellus.'

"What about Andi?" he asked desperately.

"That husband of hers," Evan began disapprovingly. Sirius was about to flare up at him for being one more pureblooded Slytherin bigot, but Evan went on, "has his own little potions lab and not the first clue what Spike is like. Have you met the man, Siri? Nice enough and very solid, just the bloke to have a butterbeer with, but not exactly the fizziest wand in the rack. Not to mention, he's nice."

"You did mention," Snape told him 'helpfully.'

Evan kissed his forehead, smiling like he thought Sniv was funny and not an insufferable little know-it-all pain in the arse, and told Sirius, "Spike'd have him 'trying to brew liquid luck' within the half hour, out of whatever he had in the kitchen, just to see how well the placebo effect would kick in if he could match the right Felix-yellow and sparkles."

Snape brightened.

Sirius told him, "No."

"But your flatmate's a werewolf," Snape pointed out reasonably, in that high voice that gave Sirius the ears-back hair-up jim-jams. As did what he was saying, but Evan didn't so much as blink. Sirius knew for a fact—well, at least, Dumbledore had promised—that Sniv couldn't tell anyone about Moony, so it was just as weird that Evan knew as it was that neither of them seemed bothered. Because Sirius knew for another fact, or he'd thought he did, that Snivvy was positively freaked about it. Something to think about. "And we wouldn't need silver or aconite to get the right yellow, so he wouldn't die."

"You can't just experiment on people," Sirius scolded him, and braced for an anti-werewolf rant. It would make his world sensible again, at least.

"You do," Snape said with a proto-sneer.

Ordinarily at this point Sirius would have said you're not people, but he sort of couldn't when Snape was all titchy and had just looked first like he was about to cry and then gone all excited over pulling what Sirius would have admitted would have been a keen prank for a little guy, if it hadn't been aimed at Moony.

"And I do it for work, right?" Snape asked Evan, a little uncertainly. "You just explain everything and get them to sign they agree first and pay them."

"That's the ticket," Evan agreed, and bundled him up in a tight, lingering hug. "You be good, Spike. But, er, how about not being amazing just for a few hours, all right? See if you can manage."

Snape almost looked, for a second, as if his face was capable of laughing.

"Use the reverse-portkey if you need me. Not for a joke," he shot Sirius a pointed look that meant if Snape was scared into really needing him for someone else's joke, that someone else was going to be in trouble, "but don't think too hard about it if you think you really do. I'll be back in a few hours."

"What does being good mean?"

"Whatever you decide it does, Clever."

Snape grinned, then stuck his chin out and truculently demanded, "You use yours if you need me."

"I surely will," Evan promised, not as if he were humoring the brat. He kissed Snape between the eyes, nodded at Sirius, and apparated away.

"How are you going to pay him?" Sirius asked at once, grabbing the momentum before Snape could go anywhere weird with it. He'd had a little brother once.

Snape glared at him furiously, his face going splotchy. "I don't pay him," he snarled. "He's MY EVAN!"

"…TMI, sprog," Sirius told him. "I meant, how are you going to pay Remus to do your experiment?"

"…Oh." The splotches turned face-colored. Snape started patting down his tiny, slate grey frock coat, which wasn't in fashion for either wizards or muggles, and was way too boring to be punk. After a moment he started going, "Need that, need that, need that, need that, that's mine, that's mine, nope, nope, need that, that's for work, need that, that's the library's…"

Since he had no obvious pockets showing and was a Slytherin, Sirius put this at even odds on Terrifying Tailoring vs. Screwing with Sirius.

"Ha!" And even bite-sized with his too-perfect, repressed-Victorian Hogwarts accent all blurred, it was a distinct ha, not a normal-person's ah or hyah or heh of satisfaction or a pretentious aha to try and impress Sirius. Just unadulterated triumph over his own pockets. Weirdo.

"If that's a chew toy," he threatened, not making any effort to intimidate just yet, just as if he were talking to Dora, "I'll bite you."

Snape gave him a flat, narrow-eyed look of loathing that had been in no need of disillusionment but gave Sirius full marks for trying.

"Tough guy, huh?" Sirius asked, and nodded. "Well, if you're that sure you can stand up to mere torture, I'll just have to," he made a horrible face and waggled his fingers, "tickle you!"

Snape stared at him some more, but this time Sirius got the feeling he was amused somewhere in there under all the exasperation. "I had a de-aging accident," he told Sirius with tolerant despair, "not a lobectomy."

"I knew you were putting it on for Evan!"

Snape shrugged. "He's more aesthetically oriented than I am, but if he feels attracted to someone who's like this he'll be uncomfortable about it for days if not weeks. Not worth the risk."

"So you're saying he loves you for your mind," Sirius drawled. He might have expanded on that theme, but Snape got in first.

"I'm saying your cousin's not a pedophile and no one does well with cognitive dissonance and I'm going to bribe Lupin with this." Unfolding his spindly little spider-fingers, Snape held up a chocolate bar for inspection. In its current state, it was about the size of a knut, but when he squinted Sirius could read, 'Honeyduke's Best and Darkest, 100% Cacao, 1lb.'

"Merlin's best lacy Sunday bloomers." He rubbed his eye. "That's your idea of sweets, is it?"

Snape scowled. "It's brewing quality. And high-quality medical grade, for anyone who can choke it down."

"Well, you can't bribe Moony with that," Sirius told him. "He likes milk chocolate."

Snape's mouth took on a he would sort of pursed, judgmental look, but he just said, heading for the hallway, "We'll add milk, then. Where's your kitchen?"

"On the corner."

Snape turned and looked at him. It was part you're kidding and part this is you; you might not be kidding, and part explain yourself this instant only I sort of really don't want to know, and all I have a headache.

"It's called 'our local chippy," Sirius told him cheerfully. "And there's a good Indian takeaway, the raita's amazing, you should try it with your temper, and the lager—"

"I will go through every room in this house," Snape informed him. "Yes, I said house, not flat. Because I will go through your neighbors' flats looking for your kitchen, and look pathetic and lost, and you will have to explain, and if you try to make a waif look bad, Lupin will be going cringing to them for weeks to try to make them regard you as some sort of human being again, even a mentally damaged and emotionally crippled one."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Pull it out, Snape," he advised. "Fine, through here. If you pull a frying pan over onto your head, I'm telling Evvie you bullied me and he'll believe it."

"No, he won't," Snape retorted, "and if he did he'd congratulate me."

"…I think there was a compliment buried in there somewhere."

"I suppose there might be one to be found if you're nauseatingly self-centered and unutterably twisted. Do you have anything remotely resembling the most basic staples without which even the most sock-scented bachelor flat might as well curl up in shame and call itself a campsite?"

"Well, obviously. Loo roll's in the loo and beer's in the cold box."

"I might moan 'I may weep,' at this juncture," Snape told the ceiling, "but Black would hear. How vexing."

He was philosophical about the lack of two separate kinds of mysterious white baking powdery thingies which sounded suspicious as hell to Sirius, but kicked up a fit like a wet hen (a skinny, grey wet hen with a melted beak) when he found out there not only wasn't any flour but never had been. Finding Sirius's walnut butter and Remus's porridge oats seemed to placate him. "Butter?" he demanded suspiciously. "Sugar?"

"Sugar's in the jar," Sirius said, giving up on life and going into the cold box. The salamander looked at him reproachfully from the firepit at the bottom, but it looked to have plenty of Sloe & Byrnes's special treated bog-oak chips down there. It was probably just miffed about the door being opened.. "You want goat butter or re'em? Moony finished the cow butter yesterday."

"Oh, dear god, what is it with you people and re'em dairy?" Snape railed, whipping around with wide, appalled eyes. "You put that back in there before it stinks up the whole—did you say you have goat butter?"

"Yeeeeesssss," Sirius drawled, looking at him as if he'd actually grown another head and not just pulled an ooh-squirrel. "We pick up a pound or two from Aberforth down the Hog's Head, sometimes."

"Up. We'll use that," the little tyrant dictated confidently, looking very pleased about it.

"…Up."

"Scotland, London, look at a map," Sniv explained with enough patience to make Sirius's palms itch. "Hogsmeade is North of us. Not 'down the Hog's Head,' up. Don't you have any aprons?"

"It's a unit of speech, Snape, fuck. No we don't have any sodding aprons, playing frilly maid not being a usual—"

"I want a cooking apron," Snape told him impatiently. "I don't give a flying buttress for your bedroom wardrobe. And I hope you don't talk to Nymphadora Tonks with that mouth."

Sirius wasn't going to let that lie, but he had to ask, "…A flying what?"

"They're architectural features," Snape explained, bland-faced but with bright, smirky eyes that made Sirius wonder things about the Sorting Hat, gave him just a flash of wondering what Hogwarts could have been like if that fourth bed in their dorm had housed a spine as well as an imagination. "Like fornications." He charmed a tea towel to stick to his front.

Sirius put on a Concerned Face. "The Reasonable Restriction," he began to scold ponderously.

"I was born in 1959 and I've been using my wand nine years," Snape cut him off scornfully, nearly crawling under the sink to look for, Sirius supposed, mixing bowls or something.

"1958," he mentioned on his own behalf, hauling him out of there with a flick of his wand. "Keep out of it under there, Sniv, there's all the cleaning supplies and that. You could breathe something."

Snape was suddenly right in his face, and for a second it didn't matter how much smaller his own face was; those venomous eyes were just the same as always, sparking and furious like screaming power drills. "Do not wand-handle me," he spat, his little fist twisting the collar of Sirius's favorite Zeppelin shirt tight (the one from their States tour, with the phoenix-y red angel. He liked to wear it around Dumbledore, because everyone else in the Order told him he was Flaunting State Secrets but the old coot just laughed and said modern musicians were all trying to out-do Wagner because they knew they couldn't touch Beethoven), cutting off his circulation just a little, that pale, unvarnished, almost bamboo-looking wand of his jabbing Sirius's belly. No one recognized the wood; it wasn't a type Ollivander used. Rumor had it he'd made it himself from something Hagrid had grown under the bed. "Hands. Off."

Fortunately for him, however almost normal-for-them this felt at close range, his nose was so much less sharp, peaky and hawkish than usual—more parrot-like—that Sirius didn't feel quite right about stomping him into a smear on the lino. He put up slightly mocking hands instead, and said, "Whatever you say, tiger."

Snape backed off, after a long, suspicious moment, just as fast as he'd struck, though a real little boy would have set his teeth into that patronizing tone and howled. Sirius held his expression steady for the further several seconds until the wand went back in its holster and Snape scoffed, "Yes, I've always been unutterably impressed by those two months," as if nothing had happened.

Sirius grinned a little to himself, just privately. It wasn't something he could tell anyone, but, well, Peter and even Moony would have been making him pay for something that had pissed them off that much for weeks. Especially, in Moony's case, if he failed to grovel. With Snape, once a clash was over, he had other things to think about. Oh, he'd get you back if (when) he thought justice was called for, but even an implicit apology or promise to stop would completely satisfy him and cut off the prolonged-and-continuous suffering, as long as he didn't think he had to worry about the same thing happening again. Just like James.

But if they were pretending nothing had happened, then that's what they were doing. So Sirius demanded, "What do you care about the Nymphlet?"

"Nothing particularly, myself," said Snape, "but she's the niece or near-cousin of several of my friends." He shrugged, and tried to climb onto the counter to get at the flatware.

"We don't have mixing bowls," Sirius told him, not so much taking pity as alarmed for the stack of vinyls three inches from his tiny scrabbling boots. Gramophones were much easier to make go with magic than cassette players, which would have been unfortunate if the stuff that you could only get on cassette wasn't largely under the impression you could make up for a lack of genius with screech, skin, and hair. "You can't expect me to believe—"

"You don't have mixing bowls?"

"Because we have no need to mix things."

Snape's mouth dropped open. If Sirius had known that was all it would take to get him to do that, he'd have taken a photo of his cupboard over to Dye-Urn or St. Mungo's ages ago. With a stealth camera. "How do you live?!" he demanded.

"Like normal people," Sirius explained helpfully. "On, you know, take-away and beans and toast and soup and pasta and sarnies and take-away."

Snape sputtered for a second, and then, in the tone of one making an irrefutable point, accused, "Breakfast!"

"It's a thing that exists, I believe," Sirius affected a baffled yawn. "I've heard about it." Snape narrowed his eyes at him. Sirius's rolled. He pointed at the frying pan. "Eggs and bacon," he explained, and pointed at the little saucepan. "Porridge." Toaster. "Toast. Bob's your uncle."

"I don't have an uncle, thank god," Snape quipped absently, staring around the kitchen in a sort of horror. "You're going to die before you're forty without a mark on you. From malnutrition and coronary strangulation. And," he added, more or less to himself, brightening, "it's not my problem."

"Too bloody right it's not," Sirius grumbled. If he'd still been related to her, he'd have resolved to write to his Aunt Callisto and tell her she could stop nagging Evan about getting a wife (which she was certainly doing, since Evvie had not yet produced an heir) because he clearly already had one. Only then Snape might decide to start nagging Sirius, in earnest, just to be a pain. Reminded, "Speaking of which, Andromeda was, like yours truly—"

"Ha."

"Ha, indeed. Thrown out on her ear. Don't try to make me believe the family still cares about her or the Prismfish."

"I don't care what you believe," Snape blinked at him, and held out his hands imperiously. "Mixing bowl."

"I told you, we don't—"

"So make me one or hand me something you don't mind being temporarily transfigured," Snape said impatiently. "And a wooden spoon."

"Any particular kind of wood, Highness?" Sirius drawled, tapping a soup bowl and spoon with his wand. He left the spoon as it was, except for changing it from metal.

Snape accepted them, looking from the spoon to him with an against all odds, I had expected better sort of resigned look.

"I thought you'd better adjust the size," Sirius explained, adding patronizingly, "being all wee as you are."

"That'll make it harder to change them back," Snape warned, but he was already growing the spoon and changing the bowl to be deeper, with steeper sides. It looked like marble, but that might just have been because things turned grey when Snape tried to change them.

"I'll manage," Sirius said dryly. "Assuming Moony doesn't decide he wants to keep them." Remus had occasionally mentioned missing toad in the hole, now Sirius came to think of it.

"Mm. I don't suppose you have a kitchen scale," Snape said hopelessly. "Or cups."

Sirius handed him a mug.

"No." He sighed. "How does Lupin measure out his porridge?" Despite being sorely tempted to tell Snape with his hand or something, Sirius gave in and cooperated. After all, he clearly wasn't going to get anywhere until he did, and there was no one watching.

When they had that taken care of, Snape melted the goat and nut butters. With his hands, the freak, claiming he had better control that way. He graciously allowed Sirius to stir them into the porridge oats while he held his hands above the chocolate in the saucepan and beadily watched it melt.

Sirius tried again. "Nobody in the family's the least interested in Dora," he said, a little stony, "or would believe she's capable of enough moral development that it'd be worth someone watching his language around her."

"Oh, Black, don't be stupid," Snape said wearily, not taking his eyes off the chocolate. "Your mother and her brother aren't your whole family, or representative. And Andromeda's mother's a Rosier. 'Sub rosa' is their family motto. Which they tell everyone is just a dreadful medieval pun, and thereby get away with it. Andromeda's situation just means that certain formalities have to be observed in interacting with or assisting her."

"Like calling her a muddy whore at every opportunity?" Sirius demanded hotly.

Snape turned on him sharply. His eyes were keen, but not angry. "Don't pretend you're not living on a family inheritance," he said quietly. "Don't speak to me as if I know whether my mother hid the money for used schoolbooks from my father, or my grandmother snuck had to sneak her old ones to me under my grandfather's nose. The ones you used to try and destroy ten times a term."

Sirius shut up. He couldn't see how Snape expected him to have known that, though.

"I know how these things are done," Snape said, tired again, turning back to his giant lump of unshrunken chocolate. "When there's a divide, the really old families will go for subterfuge over shouting every time. It's how they get to be really old: declining to declare civil war. Unless and until someone won't let them and they find themselves with no way to quietly save face."

"Are you saying it's my fault Andi was cut off?" Sirius demanded, a breath away from punching him, whatever size.

Snape just cut him a really ironic look. "I'd like to, but Andromeda barely has more discretion than you. I don't know her well enough to judge her good sense, but I gather she petitioned to be reinstated once Nymphadora proved magical, which speaks only for her boundless capacity for hopeful self-delusion."

"Yeah, she did," Sirius allowed grudgingly, settling. "Why not? She'd proved her husband didn't throw squibs, so—"

"Changes nothing. Come here and stir this. Gentle, if you can manage it, and constantly; direction doesn't matter. Clean the spoon first."

"I like that, hygiene tips from—"

"I haven't put any sugar in the chocolate yet; would you like to drink it scalding? Changes nothing. She's a class traitor and she defied them publically in a very personal matter. The phobia about athaumatism is window dressing."

"English, Snape."

"Mundanity," Snape snapped, vexed with his stupidity. He'd cleaned and put an impervius on the counter, and formed the sticky oats into a sticky ball. "A lack of magic. Yes, it would have been worse if she'd thrown a squib, but I've never even met my wizarding grandparents. I not only got my letter but graduated, and that family trends Gryffindor. It's window dressing. Magic is genetic, but class is heritable and contagious." Dumping the ball onto the counter and forming it into two lumps, he added, "And everyone in Slytherin knows about my family already, so you can save yourself the trouble."

"What trouble?" Sirius asked. This was slightly disingenuous, okay, but he basically meant it.

Snape sneered at him, which looked even more ridiculous on a face that age now that Sirius was older. He rapped his wand on the mixing bowl, turning it into a long, shallow metal pan and putting half the oats back in. "Switch back, and squash the oats into a layer," he said, tracing the runes of a stasis charm over the other lump.

"You know," Sirius couldn't resist saying, "from a grown-up perspective, that sneer of yours looks even more ridiculous on a—what are, you, six? Than it did when we were both eleven. Which is bloody well saying something."

"Grown-up my eye. And you know perfectly well how old I am, we've just covered that," Snape said cuttingly, his eyes careful on the sugar he was pouring into a glass. It seemed to be turning to liquid once it got into the glass, and he didn't appear to need a measuring cup once liquids were involved. Bloody typical, the little show-off.

"No, but how'd you get like this, anyway?"

Snape twitched his face disgustedly without looking away from the sugar. "Adventures in child-minding."

"Oh, I'm having one, but what I asked—"

"Greengrass had asked me to tutor his niece," Snape sighed his irritation with being interrupted. A flick of his wand separated a splodge of walnut butter from the remains in the crock, and he started stirring that and the sugar-liquid into the melted chocolate. "Her father's not pleased with her potions marks. And then when I got there, Montague—I mean, Mrs. Greengrass said Narcissa had told her I was good with Draco and would I mind awfully looking after Daphne—"

"That'd be their daughter?"

"Right. She's just started teething and Montague hadn't had a moment for herself in weeks. She seemed a bit sleep deprived. I remember what Montague gets like when she's sleep deprived; she and Greengrass were both Slytherin prefects, if you'll recall. I took advantage of the opportunity to put the infant in life-debt."

Sirius snapped a quick look at him, but he had on the this-is-as-close-as-I-get-to-kidding expression. So Sirius just said, "While you were brewing."

"She was sleeping," Snape snapped, "and I had more protective charms than god around that crib, proximity warnings and all that, and Montague agreed it was all right to spell her to stay sleeping while we were brewing."

"Still, a crib in the stillroom—"

"Don't be insane," Snape instructed him witheringly. "She was in her bedroom with a DIVE going."

"I assume this is a different sort of dive from the Hog's Head."

"Distress, Intrusions, Vocals, Excretions. Infant-monitoring charm. Learn one; I believe you'll need it soon."

"Oh. Well, what happened?"

Snape sighed, and pushed the bowl at Sirius. "Here, pour out half the chocolate over the oats. Wait, do you have milk? From an unmagical farm-type mammal which is not a horse or pig? Sheep wouldn't be my preference either, mind, but needs must."

"Yeah, I think we brought home some goat milk with the butter." Sirius tried not to laugh at his paranoia, since he knew how well that would go (if not in which direction). He didn't know what Snape's problem with re'em dairy was. Cow milk was boring.

"Less than half, then. Just cover them lightly."

"Right. So?"

"So Melitta—that's the niece—wanted to do the sleeping charm herself. Likes to take care of Daphne, I gather. Only, she's only a third year."

"Ah. Kid woke up and the monitoring charm went off?"

"And apparently Greengrass is under the impression that when I'm brewing the entire world goes away, so it was set to go off quite loudly. Melitta shrieked and caught a frog, as they say, with her ladle, and I got a faceful of potion, too much for my splash-guard to filter. Fortunately, she hadn't put in the knotgrass yet, so I can just wait it out, won't even have to brew an antidote. But dear god do they owe me for this one."

"I think they owe me for this one," Sirius remarked. Snape smirked, but there was nothing terribly unpleasant about it. "Why did you have her brewing de-aging potion?"

Snape made a face. "The usual. They've got a vain great-uncle who wants some. They don't like him enough to commission me to do it right, and he's too cheap to buy it on or off Commercial Street himself when he can get someone to supervise child labor for him."

"Talking of vain," Sirius laughed.

"Black," Snape drawled, "Pettigrew could brew a de-aging draught better than a third-year. I don't say you could, but…"

"I will snap you with this tea-towel," Sirius threatened amiably.

This was apparently blasphemy, because Snape looked less threatened than offended. "Not in the kitchen," he huffed. "Now, we can wait for that layer of chocolate to dry, or—"

Sirius took out his wand.

"Or you could be an impatient Gryff who'd rather do everything fast than well," Snape finished resignedly. "Fine. Pass me the goat milk and make another layer of oats on top of the chocolate."

He was watching Snape stir the milk into the chocolate when the Floo flared. "Oi, Padfoot," James bawled jovially.

Snape disapparated so fast he didn't even spin on his heel or put the milk down. He clearly took the time to let go of it, though. The jug shattered against the lip of the saucepan with a crash-and-clatter far louder than his spell, leaving milk and shards of brown porcelain all over the counter and disappearing into the hot, thick chocolate. Because he was an arse.

"Oh, sod," Sirius cursed. Then he wheeled around, and shouted, "Prongs, I need your wife!"

Next: Trelawney needs to get her Inner Eye checked if she can't tell the difference between a Grim and a sheepdog.

Credit: This fic is betaed (beta-ed?), britpicked, and cheerled by psyche-girl. I am not entirely sure how this happened or why she seems as excited about it as I am, but while I'm not sure yet what a beta will do for/to the pace of my posting (also, this month's going to be a monster work-wise), so far this trial balloon's encouraging me about the quality. Although getting back comments that unpack what I was vaguely thinking by underlining the paradoxical paradigm of the paladin with acidic accuracy ["James will always, always put Doing the Right Thing above his personal inclinations, no matter how strong. (The problem, of course, is that when James is not bound by his absolutist moral code, he can do what he wants, and mostly what he wants to do is be a giant dick.)"] that make me fall over snorgling repeatedly is not, admittedly, great for my deadlines. Psyche-girl writes her own fics, which are on AO3 if they aren't here. Go.

Notes: Actually Severus is biologically around eight in this fic. Sirius (who didn't know what hunger was before the '80s) forgot what a titchy little kid he was. Severus is quite pleased to let him get on with that. (smirk)

I don't think goat milk on it's own is anything much to write home about (sorry, Ms. Spyri, just was not that impressed), but eat it with chocolate and they both become amazing, it's like beef and red wine.

Legendary accounts of the mythological-type of salamander are somewhat confused on the subject of whether they're fire or ice creatures. I account for this by making them cold-producing pyrophages. Wizarding cold boxes are serious business, although many people who didn't grow up with elves (like Severus) prefer to just slap a stasis charm on the cupboards every few days.

Re the summary—in Valley, Narcissa has a thing where being a Black witch is a job, career, and lifestyle, at least in her head, and she will think of Severus that way. And tell him so. To his face. He's stopped arguing, for the health of his poor shins.

I used to know a Melitta (not well; much-older sibling of a friend), though the name didn't look real to me when I saw it again. She changed it the second she hit eighteen, so she probably wasn't a witch. Mind, she didn't actually change it to anything less unusual...