Chapter Two
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go
Oh oh oh no
And you let her go
Oh oh oh no
Well you let her go
(Passenger, Let her go)
One day I feel it's love, next day it's not enough
Because…
Un, deux, trois,
Comme ci, comme ci, comme ça,
One day I feel so high, next day I want to cry
(French Affair, Comme ci Comme ça)
Dialogue in bold italic is from DH, chapter 33.
October 9th, 1976
Six weeks into the term, and Severus Snape was in the hospital wing yet again!
This time, he arrived in shock, according to Madam Pomfrey who was keeping him there for a few days.
Dumbledore had insisted to spend some time with the boy, against the Matron's wishes, but he was adamant he had to try to understand what happened to take the appropriate measures.
A fat lot of good it did, according to Poppy, who found the teenager tightened in a foetal position after the Headmaster's departure and unable to speak without crying.
Minerva was furious. She did not know what really happened – the Headmaster was a clam about it, but it had to be serious for him to inform his Deputy in clipped accents of his decisions regarding Black and Potter.
Sirius Black was to have evening detentions until the end of year and was barred from Quidditch, Hogsmeade week-ends and all clubs – the very last step before being sent down – while James Potter was commended for his quick thinking in rescuing a fellow student and bringing him to the Infirmary. He awarded enough points to Potter to balance the abysmal loss earned by Black, that had nearly given her a stroke when she noticed the hourglass this morning.
When she asked, "and what about Severus Snape?" he sighed. "It's taken care of. Poppy knows what to do."
Poppy was far from knowing what to do, but when she suggested to send the boy to Healer Constanz in St Mungo's, who was the authority about psychological traumas, Dumbledore was very reluctant.
Minerva found it highly suspicious, since Constanz was a friend of Dumbledore's, and he'd himself arranged for the Healer to treat Molly and herself two years ago.
Poppy found it just as disconcerting but when she proposed to Snape to send him to St Mungo's, he shrugged and refused.
It made Minerva even more determined to find the truth.
It was obvious that Sirius Black had been the ringleader or the main culprit and that, for once, even James Potter did not approve.
Remus Lupin, usually a rather servile follower, had ostensibly distanced himself from Black. He was very angry, if Minerva was any judge. He looked at his friend as if he had been betrayed.
Peter Pettigrew danced between them, unable to choose a side.
Outside the common room, the four Marauders were thoroughly chastened. Even James Potter for all the praise and points he had received, which proved he had a guilty conscience.
Prefect Lily Evans, always the arbiter of Gryffindor morale and morals, had been wild for several days. Minerva had watched the girl several times in hot discussion with an apologetic James Potter and a disgruntled Remus Lupin, while Black and Pettigrew prudently played least in sight.
She had also been seen hurrying to the Infirmary. It seemed she had reconciled with Severus Snape for good, though Poppy heard a few heated words that alarmed her more than anything.
"Saved? Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends' too!"
But try as she might, they were all as mute and evasive as Dumbledore when Minerva tried to get to the bottom of it. Teenage dramas were at all times difficult to follow, so quickly could their moods change and the dynamics of their relationships. Lily Evans was concerned for Severus Snape, but she sided with the Marauders to fool their Head of House as soon as she realised that the Headmaster told her nothing.
Severus Snape himself refused to speak even when she solemnly promised that the culprits would be dealt with. She did not understand why, because it was obvious he was dying for it, but he only told her resentfully, "I've nothing to say."
Once again, omertà reigned in the school.
§§§
After a month of fastidious good behaviour, Sirius Black returned to his constant altercations with Severus Snape. He was impossible to curb for long, and it was infuriating.
Snape was never backward in nastiness to be sure, but he was seldom the one to begin things and it would have taken a much more reasonable person to resist Black's permanent taunting—particularly with James Potter unable to resist long to add fuel to the flames.
Minerva had to intervene in her classroom on a constant basis about stage-whispered insults, stolen or damaged notes and for minor hexes.
What disturbed her the most was that she could now discern a cold hatred in Severus Snape's eyes when they followed Sirius Black instead of the hot-headedness she was used too, and there was an almost fanatical obsession with the Slytherin in Sirius Black. It was as if simply seeing each other had the same effect as waving a red rag at a toro, only Black always charged at once, while Snape seemed to bide his time.
She brought her concern to the next staff meeting only to have it dismissed.
Boys would be boys. It was the usual course of the Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry – "Have you been away for so long that you've forgotten?"
Yes, Sirius Black was hot-headed and stubborn to the point of stupidity at times, but Severus Snape always gave as good as he got, they all assured. In fact, he had been known to use spells much beyond his year, and even unknown ones. Rumour had it they were Dark spells.
She asked loudly why Dumbledore tolerated it then, but the Headmaster just wiped his glasses without looking at her. She could almost hear her father preaching from the pulpit about Pontius Pilate washing his hands, and about moral cowardice.
"He's never been caught red-handed," Dumbledore said at last.
She wondered wryly if he was only speaking about Severus Snape.
Minerva left feeling that her colleagues were a little too comfortable with the situation. They were happy to let his Head of House take the responsibility for speaking to Severus Snape but she knew that Horace Slughorn, for all his joviality, cared little for the well being of his charges. The famous or the rich ones, for sure—and more often than not, the prettiest amongst the girls. The others...
Severus Snape's tutoring was paid by a Charity fellowship and everything he owned screamed "poverty". He had nothing to attract Slughorn's particular brand of benevolence.
Filius Flitwick had told her that the boy didn't even have a proper wand. The one he used had been his mother's when she was herself at school. She would never have guessed, considering how proficient he managed to be with it. Sure, he was not as brilliant as Miss McKinnon or Mr Potter in her classroom but he was still very good. It was rather frightening when you thought about it because it told much about the real magical power of the boy – or about his force of will – for him to be able to use with so much fluidity a wand not really attuned to him.
The other teachers found him unsettling more often than not. Severus Snape was the worst kind of swot, and he never hesitated to grill his professors to understand a point or to expose maliciously any lack of expertise on their part. No wonder none were inclined towards leniency when yet another incident happened in their classroom.
It was a sure recipe for disaster, and now, as Deputy Headmistress, she wondered if it was not too late to make Severus Snape realise it. Oh! There was no question he could pass his NEWTs standing on his head, but how was he going to fit in the world if he could not fit with his contemporaries at school, and if he did not respect social figures of authority?
She asked Dumbledore what they could do about it, but he annihilated her arguments.
Despite his atrocious social skills, the boy had not given her real trouble beyond his being targeted by the Marauders and retaliating quite creatively. He was even one of her best students, one who excelled all the more because he had to prove things. Every teacher in the school said the same. Taunting did not prevent him from studying, so what was the problem?
Hard words break no bones, Dumbledore assured, and forged the will - he was himself proof of it.
Try as she might, Minerva found herself just as incapable to reach Severus Snape as she had been to help Sirius Black. It was not very rewarding to try to help people who just did not want to be helped.
Snape was elusive, distant – irritating with his way of dancing around the subject without ever providing a candid answer. He even dared to act resentful that she and Poppy cared, but she noticed he was forcing himself to eat more properly – though with a sullen scowl permanently stuck on his face, and a defiant stare whenever he noticed her looking.
She told herself she had done all she could.
So, why was she left with the nagging feeling that she had failed?
§§§
January 1977
The Snape boy had lost his mother, the news reaching Hogwarts the very next day after his coming of age.
He had dismissed her condolences with a hasty "thank you", as if he was bored, but once she had noticed and seen through the rather clever glamour, the red rims and heavy bags under his eyes belied his apparent indifference.
She did not hear much about it from her colleagues, except from Slughorn. The Slytherin Head complained ceaselessly about all the red tape he had to file for the Ministry. Mr Snape would not be of age in the muggle world before the following year, but he demanded formal emancipation.
This was how she learned that he was a half-blood.
"It's not totally unheard of," explained Dumbledore when she asked. "Of course, you can't expect the Slytherins to advertise it, but every few years there's one or two half-bloods sorted in the House."
§§§
Minerva had not much trouble in her classroom with the sixth years these days, and she regretted it – because her usual troublemakers were only subdued by personal tragedies, full of pent up emotions ready to explode, and not really growing up or becoming more mature.
Sirius Black and James Potter kept a low profile since Dumbledore had made good marks and better attitude a condition of his recommendation for the Auror Corps.
Severus Snape was concentrating even more fiercely than before on his studies but it seemed a mean to escape reality and to keep himself busy at all times. He did not seem to hang with Lily Evans any more either.
Was it the cause or the consequence? It soon became apparent that his dorm mates had decided that they had to keep an eye on him to prevent any kind of relapse into mudblood loving. She saw him much too often for her taste with objectionable characters like Avery and Mulciber, but the clever Evan Rosier was shadowing him too.
She wondered if it had anything to do with the presence of Lucius Malfoy during the Hogsmeade week-ends and all the time he spent dicussing in private with Severus Snape at The Three Broomsticks.
§§§
"For the last time, Sev!" she pleaded.
"Lily!" he sighed exasperated, pulling at his long locks. He walked to the nearest window, watching the grounds, the groups of students already leaving for the station and the Easter break. "We've already had this discussion. Go take your train. I stay at Hogwarts. I'll even get paid by Slughorn for doing the Infirmary's brewing for him."
His voice dripped with bitterness as he added, "God knows I need the money and any recommendation he'll give me."
He heard her coming, and felt her hand on his back, but he did not turn.
"My parents like you. They'd be happy to have you home." Lower, she said, "So would I."
"We have to face the truth," he sighed. "You're just putting off the evil day."
"We graduate only next year."
"Next year, it will be too late."
"Too late? We're seventeen. How can it be too late?"
"Yet, I remember clearly one year ago when you told me that I'd chosen my path and you'd chosen yours."
"Don't you dare use my own words against me! You know it's not the same. We're not the same."
He turned to her at last and gripped her arms.
"Nothing is possible between us in the long term," he said. He was beginning to be sick of repeating it. "Do you like to be under constant watch by your House mates? I don't. I'll only be a dead weight round your neck… or you'll be one round mine. We'll end hating each other, as my parents did."
She freed herself and shouted angrily, "We're not your parents!"
Just as angry as she was, he spat,"They loved each other… once."
He began to take angry turns in the room, like a caged tiger. "My father thought Mum walked on water! And she believed she'd make her family bend to her wishes." He shouted at her, "See where it brought them? She's dead and I will always be called a half-breed… The son of a mudblood! Is that what you'd want for our children?!"
Lily looked at him coldly. "Would you call me a mudblood again?"
Unable to look her in the eye, he said, "I can't promise I wouldn't."
As she gasped, he ran to her, pleading, "you know I don't think of you like that." He regretted his weakness immediately, stiffened and stepped back.
In a brittle, hardly controlled voice, she asked, "But under enough provocation, you may?"
"I don't know." He honestly could not be sure he would never be provoked enough to insult her again – he had the worst memory of his life to prove it…
Her face crumpled, but she did not cry. She refused to cry. She walked to the door, but could not leave without hurting him as much as he was hurting her.
"Remember it wasn't me who wanted to part ways. Remember that if you loved me enough-"
"Don't go that way, Lily," he warned in a tightly controlled voice.
He could have said that she clung to him mostly through habit… That he doubted it could guarantee happily ever after – not when he did not really think she loved him. Or rather, he knew she loved him, but she did not like him. She never really accepted him as he was. A Slytherin… Fascinated by the Dark Arts… Loathing Dumbledore, that arch-hypocrite all Gryffindors revered... Uninterested by what most of his contemporaries appreciated: the latest fads, clothes or broom model, trendy places, social life... How could she say she wanted to spend her life with him when she always wanted him to change?
He kept his silence, because it would only fuel her need to argue.
Lily, like her sister, was often intransigent. She could hold stubbornly on narrow-minded ideas. She was somehow convinced he owed her, that he had to love her forever because she had given him her virginity.
Loving her was not a problem, but certainly not for so trite a reason, and he did not know how to explain that even love had to get some reward to survive.
"You're brilliant, Lily, and just as ambitious as I am... But in this world, if you're not from the right family, you know making a career goes with marrying well. Set your eyes on someone else."
She snorted. "You sound like a character out of Jane Austen or Dickens!" She spat in disgust, "And to think that last summer you were speaking of founding a Communist Party in Wizarding Britain!"
"But the Wizarding world is still very much like Dickens!" he shouted. "And last summer, my mother was alive!"
It silenced the both of them for a full minute, but not longer, glaring at each other as they were.
Coldly, he insisted, "I only want the best for both of us."
She looked at him as if she was discovering him for the first time. "And that's why you suggest me to sell myself to the highest bidder?"
"Come, Lily! Not so long ago, you were the one telling me that you couldn't blame Petunia for running after rich boys and you laughed when she said it's easier to fall in love with a rich man than with a poor one."
A suspicion gripped her. "Hanging out for a rich wife yourself, are you? Or maybe a wealthy widow?"
He rolled his eyes. "You're ridiculous."
"Not as much as you are. Is it what you hope, hanging around with Lucius Malfoy all the time? That he'll find you a good job, a good marriage? I think he's the one looking for a good crawler."
"You're always belittling the only real friend that I have."
"You're not from his world and he can't understand anything about ours. I'm sure he's the one who's stuffed your head with all that rubbish."
He flushed, because it was true Lucius had sown the seeds of doubt in his mind, but only because he was older and more mature. "How little you know about him… And about me."
"You don't even see how much you've changed since you've become friends, as you say, with Malfoy. You're even worse than when you were following Avery and Mulciber in fifth year." She patted her left forearm meaningfully. "Maybe you're ready to accept another kind of proposal?"
If he would ever be tempted to hit her, it was right now. How typical. For all her so-called moral standing, she never hesitated to throw in his face that he would forever be suspected of venality and of Death Eater sympathy, simply because he was a Slytherin.
Avery and Mulciber were quite sadistic idiots but they were his room mates. Who was he supposed to share time with? The werewolf?
Barely restraining himself from asking who was dishonest and prejudiced here, he ground out, "It's not in my immediate planning."
She shook her head."I don't think we've much to say to each other after that."
He never answered.
§§§
It had been too long since they last met in the forgotten little court.
He had been surprised when she gave him the old sign but he'd answered in kind. He missed her. How he missed her – even if it was irrational to still pine for her.
"James asked me out and I said yes."
She was proud of the way she had thrown her little bomb, oh! so casually – but she could not help narrowing her eyes as she was willing him to react. It was the last Hogsmeade week-end, and she wanted to go with him. Say something, Sev. Say something. DO something.
He did, but not what she expected.
He walked to the door and only looked back long enough to say, "Good for you. He's rich and popular, and quite easy to manage I imagine. It's all for the best, then."
Of all the times he had to choose to be so infuriatingly proud and inflexible, it had to be now!
She heard her pride – her stubborn pride – speak for her. "You're right, Sev. It's for the best."
He did not look back, even when she added, "You know, James is nothing like I expected."
But he froze. For one brief second.
He said, in a rather thick voice but still without turning back, "I wish you joy and luck."
And he was gone.
Note: The Marauders's timeline is not well documented. I make Sirius leave his family during the summer holidays before sixth year and choose to place the nearly deadly prank in the Shrieking Shack not long after. We are only told in the books that Sirius is "about sixteen" at the time he leaves home. It seems quite strange that he would not be more precise about the timing, since it is the kind of event one does not forget. I choose to interpret it as meaning that he is not yet seventeen and therefore still legally a minor... a situation that will enable him and his friends to plead for indulgence and deny responsability.
