(corrections and other minor revisions to this chapter, September 2013)
Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.
Further Disclaimer: When Mundungus Fletcher thinks '…this city of disreputable politicians, traders (seedy or otherwise), diplomats from dozens of magical nations, and of thieves…' of Timbuktu he is thinking purely of the magical side of that city. The normal side is relatively blameless.
Note: The following chapter is set in an alternate universe during August of 1976, where some characters and events are becoming significantly different from canon, following the manner in which Severus Snape snapped his own wand and quit Hogwarts. Since I originally posted the previous chapter, besides correcting a number of errors and revising some passages for better reading and sense, I have posted a supporting one-shot titled 'In Pursuit of Princes' which concerns the reaction of Lord Voldemort to various developments pertinent to this story. This story is rated 'M'.
Further Note: This chapter (initially posted at the end of July, 2013, to keep a promise) was somewhat rough in places; as of September 2013 it has been revised, with a number of spelling, typing, and editing errors corrected, and some sentences reworked for better turns of phrase. Some of the sections (such as the Peter Pettigrew one) are included in this chapter to counterpoint the insanity that some of the principle characters are facing; they may be having torrid times, but for others life goes on (relatively carefree for now).
Terminology Clarification: There is some reference in the course of this chapter to 'exam remarks'. By this I refer to the process of the original marks awarded to exam candidates being entirely disregarded and the papers gone over and marked again by a different set of officials.
Mr. Garrick Ollivander of Diagon Alley is a wandmaker. Some wandmakers make wands to earn a living, but Garrick Ollivander is one of those who live to make wands – although such is his skill that he is practically never without customers nor money. And although usually he takes a pleasure in crafting wands which might easily find use amongst witches and wizards, sometimes he has special projects: wands he has fashioned purely to push his craft as far as it can go, and not intended for sale because the character required of the witch or wizard that such a wand would 'serve' would be unlikely to ever walk through the door.
Nonetheless, apparently fate or destiny enjoys an occasional good joke, and one does. More than half a century ago one of his earlier experiments in such wand-making – a yew and phoenix feather wand – walked out of the shop in the hands of one Tom Marvolo Riddle, although the holly and phoenix feather 'twin' he made to it at the same time has been lying in a box gathering dust ever since.
Garrick Ollivander's knowledge and craft has advanced considerably since the days he made the wand which became Tom Marvolo Riddle's, and he is currently putting the finishing touches to a wand he is confident will never find a user. Fifteen inches of lightning-blasted oak, culled from the wood of a 'hanging tree', with a core of what the Arab merchant 'Alhazred' who sold it to him some seventeen years ago assured Mr. Ollivander was 'dragon heartstring', although it is unlike any dragon heartstring that Mr. Ollivander had seen or worked with before or since – though it certainly possesses at least all the qualities common to such a substance, and many more beyond. Mr. Ollivander had been hoarding that particular latter purchase up for an occasion such as this, and within the past couple of months, inspiration finally struck.
Mr. Ollivander has never had the opportunity to examine the fabled 'Wand of Destiny', but he has occasionally traded carefully guarded words with Gregorovitch who did once possess it, and this is his intended response to the notion of it, deliberately crafted to be the same length as that of the famed 'Elder Wand'. It is the wand of the head of a great house, fierce, ruthless, tempered by fire – almost 'unstoppable'. It is a wand which belongs in the world of fireside stories, told by twinkly-eyed old men to awestruck children – a world occupied by witches and wizards who have faced terrible trials and cleave now the very bedrock asunder or call lightning from the skies, so great and terrible have they become. It is a wand which will not pick any inexperienced fresh-faced child of ten or eleven who ventures into the shop, looking for a wand, and (other complications aside) any older (experienced) witch or wizard seeking a 'replacement' wand is unlikely to have the fire and fresh-faced enthusiasm necessary to satisfy this wand. Witches and wizards tend to become comfortably complacent as they get older – or at least to such a degree so as to be considered 'unworthy' by this wand.
Which is just as well – for this is a wand which, to be entirely honest, Mr. Ollivander would have thought twice about making if he sincerely believed that an owner would ever show up in his lifetime. For the witch or wizard that such a great and terrible wand was prepared to choose could turn society upside down if partnered with it.
Humming to himself a little ditty his mother taught him, Garrick Ollivander applies the final coat of wax to the wand…
Peter Pettigrew was sure that he was in love.
Normally he wouldn't have dared look a girl in the eyes but there had come a moment, back on the platform at King's Cross at the end of the school-year when, in the midst of pulling her owl off James, his eyes had met those of Cassidy Adams and he had felt an instant connection – more than that he had known that this was the young lady with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life.
He had spent much of the summer thus far frantically trying to track down her address, so that he could owl her, and when he finally obtained it he commenced to bombard her with letters.
Her response had puzzled him at first. She seemed to think that he wasn't so much interested in her as in Lily. That made no sense at all to Peter. James was the one with the crush on Lily, not Peter. He had written back to her assuring her that this was not the case, (although he remembered to be polite about Lily, since she was one of Cassidy's friends) and that she was the only one for him. He had enquired if he could send her flowers or other tokens of his affection, and she had replied that that was rushing things a bit much right now, but that possibly she might allow herself to be taken to Hogsmeade once they were back at school, on the first mutually convenient weekend – although she would invite another friend along to chaperone her.
Peter had replied that that was fine by him, that he would look forward to it, and in the meantime was there anything (even though she was a Ravenclaw) that he could assist her with? He mentioned that he was particularly good at transfiguration, and could give her tips on that if that would be any help?…
It was obvious to Severus Snape, when Lily made her evening call on the Snape household of August the 11th, that Lily had something on her mind. Given that she had been to see his grandfather only that morning, that was hardly surprising. Gnaeus Octavian Prince was a wizard who made impressions on those that he met.
In the privacy of Severus' bedroom, Severus had enquired of her how breakfast had gone, and she'd said with a rather distracted air that she'd been asked a lot of questions, mostly pertaining to Hogwarts. It was clear to Severus that rather more than that had happened, but that right now she didn't want to discuss it.
Instead she wanted to move on to the physical side of these evening visits, and Severus duly obliged.
All through it though, there was something clearly bothering her, and once those (in)formalities had been dealt with she sat up next to him, a faintly guilty look on her face, and drew a deep breath.
"Severus. You may well be seeing increasingly more of me than you expected in the coming months." She made a face. "I spent half an afternoon working on how to try to say this, including one awful phase where I was trying to make a pun or play on words with 'expectant' in it, but I just couldn't get anything which sounded good."
"Lily. You're not making much sense." Severus said, although alarm bells were starting to sound in his head as he looked at her.
"Severus:" she swallowed in what looked a combination of nerves and pale-faced anxious guilt. "I'm pregnant."
He experienced the disconcerting sensation of his brain shutting down.
He was vaguely aware, through the sensation of numbness paralysing most of his thought processes, that his mouth was opening and closing and that air was passing through his vocal cords. Some sort of inane drivel was emerging from his mouth, which might be words. Some sort of unbelievably ridiculous insanely crude remark regarding the general area of her bosom and things he had observed there.
Things which he had observed but assumed to be regular to whatever it was that women normally experienced approximately every twenty eight days.
"Severus. I'm trying to be serious. This is serious."
Too right she was trying to be serious. For a start there was the whole tone of voice that she was using and that she kept on calling him 'Severus', rather than 'Sev'. Part of Severus' brain started functioning again for just long enough to recognise the financial implications of parenthood, then shut back down in shock. More sounds resembling words, but which he had not carefully selected, began to emerge from his mouth…
It was some hours after she had broken the news to Severus of her pregnancy – and considerably later than she had expected – that Lily emerged from the Snape house to make her weary way home.
'Knackered' did not even begin to describe the way that she felt right now.
She'd witnessed the horrifying sight of Severus babbling. Saying the first things which came into his mind.
And unfortunately, she'd witnessed rather more than that of what went on in his mind.
Attempting to snap him out of one phase of babbling she'd looked him firmly in the eyes, and found herself accidentally using legilimency.
After several moments of stunned silence, Severus had made what apparently, according to the books, was a classic beginner's mistake to discovering someone else in your mind, which was to think of all the memories which you least wanted them to see – which in Severus' case had involved frequent humiliations and other rough treatment at the hand of James Potter and his cronies, with a mix of Professor Slughorn not able to do much with his hands tied and of Dumbledore and McGonagall taking Potter's side, like the good little Gryffindors that they were.
Severus had gone to pieces in front of her.
Bloody pride.
She had no idea why he'd taken it from the Gryffindor alliance for as long as he had before snapping and quitting Hogwarts, and she certainly couldn't understand why he hadn't simply invented something lethal, uncurable, and untraceable in the potions lab and sneaked it into the pumpkin juice of four certain Gryffindor pupils one morning. She would have done in his position, instead of trying to fight an ongoing war against four boys in the same year who had the covert blessing of the two highest-ranked teachers in the school – and out of her and Severus, she'd thought that she was supposed to have been the one in Gryffindor.
She could at least now start to grasp just why he'd been poking around in the dark arts during his time at Hogwarts, in a desperate search for anything which might have suited his need to attempt to match the foursome in spell battle 'like a proper wizard'. Conventional magic certainly didn't have a lot to help against odds like that.
If there *was* any upside in this episode, it was that she had been relieved to discover that (so far as she could see) thus far contact of Severus with recruiters of Voldemort (another thing he'd not wanted her to see) and the like had been both minimal and relatively harmless. There had been some overtures, but his association with her, a known muggle-born, had not exactly been secret within Slytherin and had kept them from regarding him as a potential recruit. They'd viewed him more as a possible occasionally useful minor odd-jobs prospect, but nothing more unless he could be persuaded to break with her.
That was by the by though.
She just couldn't believe what the headmaster and his head of Gryffindor House had been allowing to go on at Hogwarts. If they'd been making bad decisions because they were overstretched because they were busy with other stuff (with the war), they should have given something up – preferably the positions of headmaster and deputy headmistress for a start. There were other teachers already at Hogwarts, Lily was pretty certain, who could have done at least as good a job of running the school as them.
Education or not, there was no way in hell that she was going back to Hogwarts right now unless something very major changed in the school's management. Even without taking into account the baby.
She and Severus hadn't exactly gotten round to discussing names. Once they'd finally figured out the way to end the legilimency was by Lily dragging her horrified gaze away (Severus had been unable, even with some of his worst memories flitting past her gaze, to eject her) they'd spent a long time huddled up to one another, just shivering.
At one point Lily had made some remark about Severus being 'a bloody brave idiot – probably the bravest I know', but he'd been too much in shock to make any kind of snappy comeback to it.
He seemed rather relieved that Lily was still actually there, and hadn't regarded him as some sort of failure to be dumped as fast as possible.
Lily had no idea (mercifully) what Severus might have been thinking in that long silence, but she had been imagining some exceptionally painful and humiliating things to do to that two-faced, smug, hypocritical twat of a so-called 'headmaster' and his blindly loyal deputy. Professor McGonagall was supposed to have been a Gryffindor back in her own school days, according to popular Hogwarts lore – that seemed totally at odds with the woman who bowed now to the headmaster's every wish in a manner that even most Hufflepuffs whom Lily knew probably would have considered taking loyalty perhaps a bit too far in the unreasoning direction.
Lily arrived back home, had a brief wash, and crawled into bed, absolutely exhausted.
She did not sleep well. The Marauders tormenting Severus, whilst Albus Dumbledore loomed in the background like a badly-dressed evil genie, featured prominently in her dreams.
The morning after Lily's fateful visit to the Snape household, Severus awoke none too sure if he'd mentioned her 'news' of last night to his parents? Truth be told, last night was something of a blur in his memory from the moment that Lily had arrived.
Having faced the Marauders in increasingly frequent and sophisticated ambushes at odds of one-on-four for most of five school years at Hogwarts, Severus Snape had thought that he could handle a crisis situation and comport himself reasonably well in one.
It turned out that the Marauders hadn't ever come even remotely close to pulling-the-rug-out-from-under-him (except in the occasional literal sense) when it came to situations featuring genuine pressure. Discovering your girlfriend (Severus assumed that Lily must count as that) was pregnant, that your grandfather (the scary, mysterious, powerful one) knew about it, and then having said girlfriend invade your mind by means of legilimency laying bare every humiliating moment that you'd ever experienced to her gaze was a crisis and Severus could not exactly say that he had covered himself in glory during said recent crisis. About the only positive thing which he could discern from last night was that Lily hadn't actually walked out on him in disgust at either discovering quite how often he'd been on the losing side against the Marauders, or the way he'd cracked under the pressure that she'd put him under. That must mean that to some extent she must be absolutely genuine in her feelings for him – although that put him under further pressure and a heightened sense of obligation and of duty to her.
One thing was certain: This was about more important things now than simply bringing down Albus Dumbledore or the society over which he presided, and that was scary – that it was possible to discover that there could actually be anything bigger and more important than that.
Lily's week steadily got worse. The morning following her visit to see Severus' grandfather and her accidental legilimency on Severus of the subsequent evening, she girded her loins, figuratively speaking, to break the news at breakfast that she was pregnant to her parents.
A blazing row resulted.
Lily had been intending to tell them who the child's father was, but seeing as how they took the news that she was pregnant in the first place, and the threats they issued to 'lock her in her room', she claimed it was 'some boy she'd met at a disco and got drunk with' on an evening she'd been bunking off doing school study.
To her relief, her parents swallowed this story, causing Lily some relief she'd finally abandoned some of her previous Gryffindor-ish 'scruples'.
Petunia was not so easily deceived.
"It's the Snape boy, Severus, isn't it?" Petunia smirked, approaching Lily in her room ten minutes after the shouting (and breakfast) concluded. "Who's making me an aunt?"
Lily considered for a moment the possibilities and potential drawbacks (including the odds of attracting Ministry attention) of confunding or obliviating her sister.
"And if it were?" Lily opted for negotiation-before-hexing.
"Oh, I expect it doesn't matter much in the bigger scheme of things." Petunia's smirk broadened. "Not who it is, to me, I mean. Mum and dad obviously want to track whomever it is down and murder him, but I'm more interested in how this situation benefits me."
"What are you after, Petunia?" Lily narrowed her eyes.
"Vernon," Petunia mentioned the name of her boyfriend, "is hoping to get a job some day with Grunnings. Severus – and may I add you could do with following his example and turning your back on all that jiggery-pokery and getting a job in the real world – has a position at Bingby & Cratchettall. And Vernon says that it is useful 'in the trade' to know anyone at Bingy & Cratchettall. Even the factory floor tea-boy. If I don't make trouble for you over your boyfriend, maybe some day in the future you'll recommend to him he has a little chat with Vernon."
"That's it? You say nothing, now, on the basis of maybe some future favour for Vernon?" Lily tried not to sound too cynical.
"Not a favour. Just an introduction. I'm sure, as men of business, they'd be able to sort any deals out between themselves." Petunia said. "And I'd be asking a lot more, if I didn't think the example Severus is setting you is quite such a good one."
In other words, Lily thought, Petunia suddenly approved of Severus because he had apparently turned his back on the magical world and got a 'proper job'. Lily wasn't sure if that was the sort of thing she ought to be laughing or crying about. However, for now she did neither.
"I'll think about it." Lily said.
"Don't think about it too long. Mum or dad would expect me to mention it to them fairly soon if I were aware that it weren't a boy you were too drunk at the time to be able to now remember the name of or anything else about." Petunia warned.
When Severus arrived at work on Thursday, Mrs. Blaston of course wanted to know why he looked so dazed, and she proceeded to sit him down in a corner of the kitchens, make a pot of tea, and extract from him the general details. She was sympathetic, once she elicited the detail that Severus had always believed his girlfriend had been 'taking precautions', and she coaxed out of Severus information regarding Lily which she was not already aware of from things which either Severus or his father had mentioned in conversation.
"It sounds like she wanted this." Mrs. Blaston pronounced her own verdict of the situation. "Do you care about her?"
"What, Lily? Yes." Severus responded.
"Then, there's not much point to my saying any more about the subject right now." Mrs. Blaston said. "Now, enough of this lollygagging around – we've got elevenses coming up soon, and not even when one of those awful German planes crashed into the works one night back in nineteen forty, killing half a dozen poor souls and making a dreadful mess besides, has mid-morning tea for this factory ever been late."
And she busied herself so meaningfully that Severus was able to half-rouse himself into something resembling a semblance of normality and to get on with his job.
Albus Dumbledore tried not to be unduly superstitious about dates, but it was now Friday the thirteenth of August and with the conclusion of the exam remarks (finally!), Albus Dumbledore hoped that his summer had finally turned a corner and that things would now become simpler and considerably less complicated. It had proven necessary for every last one of this year's OWL exams for potions, muggle studies, and the history of magic to be remarked in the first place, because discrediting the previous marking team who covered these subjects (so that they'd be fired so that everything they'd looked at would have to be remarked) had, so it transpired, been the only way, short of primary legislation in the Wizenganmot, that Albus could make Severus Snape's potions OWL go away. For unfortunately, Severus Snape having sat his potions OWL some days before the unfortunate scene by the lake, and Horace Slughorn having previously put in a request for a 'rush job' on the top pupils in the year, it had turn out that Severus Snape's potions OWL had been marked already and a provisional result fixed upon before Albus had sent out his 'disqualify from all unmarked exams' directive. Even more unfortunately, Severus having ceased to be a part of Hogwarts, Albus had had no right to demand an individual remark of Severus' potion's OWL so it could then be disqualified, or at least not without Wizengamot legislation – but the point of Albus denying Mr. Snape OWLs was to make him an utter nonentity, which discussion of him in the Wizengamot would be the very antithesis of. Thus Albus had had no way forward except to discredit the potions exam markers (who also happened to cover muggle studies and history of magic) so that everything would have to be remarked that they'd done.
Given the ridiculous ease with which Albus had been able to discredit the necessary markers, it had probably been for the best that they be weeded out anyway. The whole exam marking system was a mess, in need of an overhaul – not that Albus had any need for that to happen right now. He already had far too much to do, with too little time to do it in, to want to see more than the minimum number of exam markers disgraced sufficient to make Mr. Snape's potions OWL go away, but the point was, as it turned out, he'd actually probably done everyone a colossal favour by getting rid of some of the markers.
Albus' brother, Aberforth, had however entered one of his 'I'm not speaking to you, I don't know you at all' phases at some point during the remark process, to Albus' considerable disappointment. The only explanation his brother had offered Albus was a tight-lipped quote of a muggle song popular some years earlier: 'There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…'
Albus wished his brother would be less cryptic some of the time.
And then there had been the whole awkward business of that meeting of the Hogwarts school governors at the end of July.
That had not gone well.
Hope, though Albus had, that the unfortunate incident with Miss Evans might have been forgotten about by then, it had still been fresh in the governor's minds. And whilst they hadn't been overly bothered by the identity of the student involved on the offensive side (to the governors' incredibly prejudiced and bigoted minds a Black hexing a muggle-born was hardly obstupefacting news) they were bothered that apparently Sirius Black hadn't been punished for it.
They had wanted to know why not? And if bribery had been involved, they wanted a cut of the bribes, too.
In vain had Albus tried to reassure them that Mr. Black had indeed been punished by having his wand confiscated except during lessons. Several of the governors had had children attending the school, however, all of whom had reported to their nearest and dearest that Mr. Black hadn't even had his wand temporarily removed – the decoy wand strategy Albus had devised, meant to spare Mr. Black embarrassment (and to avoid him looking defenceless to Slytherins with grudges to settle, still in attendance at the school), had it seemed been all too successful. The school governors had not believed that Albus had punished Mr. Black.
And there had also been the whole mess of the younger Trescothick girl having been suspended, with the Trescothicks having complained to the Blacks, and the Blacks claiming there must have been a good reason for whatever one of their sons (however currently publically in their disfavour) had done, but requesting the governors unsuspend her and issue an apology for what the headmaster had done, to try and put to rest the issue from a Black point of view.
Albus had been obliged to expend a good deal of political (and some financial) capital in the end to make the matter go away in the wake of that meeting, and by then the remark and scandal of the exam markers who had been dismissed was in full cry (which thankfully was not technically a Hogwarts issue) demanding more of Albus' time at the Ministry advising various people on various matters until he almost had wished that he'd let Mr. Snape have that wretched potions OWL.
At least, that was, until he'd discovered what Mr. Snape's mark had been, at which point he'd concluded that it was essential that such a talent not receive any official recognition or acknowledgement at all, if it couldn't be trusted to obey and respect the right people.
Speaking of which, now that things were (finally) slightly less hectic (with the delayed exam results at last going out to students today), he really ought to drop by Severus' home town and make sure that he wasn't up to any mischief. The Snape family home in Spinner's End was, at least in magical terms, a brooding fortress of dark sorcery, the likes of which in peaceful times would have indicated that the Snape family was Clearly Up To No Good At All, but in this troubled era it was, alas, all too often a common sight amongst nervous witches and wizards who had muggle connections – as did Severus' mother. Albus probably could have forced an entry into the Snape home – if he'd had the time and freedom from distractions – but it was hardly necessary to do so to check that young Mr. Snape had got the message as to what his true place was in the world and to see that he was keeping to it.
No, Albus' contacts in the auror office had information that Mr. Snape was working as a tea-boy at a factory nearby to the Snape family home, so all that Albus need do was to drop by the 'works' and ask some casual questions to ensure that this was in fact the case. In the event that the story was true, then clearly Albus would be able to dismiss Mr. Snape from his thoughts and not worry about him further until this seemingly endless war was over.
Fifty-five minutes after he had departed Hogwarts for an early-morning visit to Cokeworth, Albus Dumbledore found himself in the highly uncomfortable situation of having to explain to Magical Law Enforcement just why he had been apprehended by an undercover auror in the act of pointing his wand at an increasingly outraged muggle tea-lady by the name of 'Mrs. Blaston'.
In the wake of his early-morning scouting trip to Spinner's End and subsequent highly embarrassed explanations to Magical Law Enforcement (it took well over an hour for Albus to even halfway convince them that he had been intending simply to shut the woman up and make her forget he'd ever been there, and they'd never explained to him how they'd known there was a wizard intruding on the premises), Albus Dumbledore arrived back at Hogwarts to the news that one of the Wizengamot's perennial troublemakers, Gnaeus Octavian Prince, had called by and was waiting in the headmaster's office to 'catch a word with him'.
Albus entered his office, noting the apparent absence of anyone else other than the Sorting Hat (dozing on the mantel) and Fawkes, looked at the apparently empty upholstered leather chair for guests in front of the desk, and sighed.
"I know you're there, Gnaeus. You may as well make yourself visible."
"Actually, I'm over here, Albus." the head of what was left of the Prince family materialised next to a bookcase. "I was admiring some of the titles you've been collecting. I'd been shopping in Diagon Alley and took the liberty of leaving some of my supplies on that chair." He snapped his fingers, and a couple of bags of books and herbs materialised on the chair, explaining the indentations which Albus had observed. "Disillusionment can be a truly dangerous thing, Albus."
Albus had a sense that Gnaeus was making some joke or dig at him beyond the obvious, but didn't have the time or patience to try and figure it out.
"I presume you have a reason for this visit beyond looking at what I've been reading lately and trying to annoy me with cryptic remarks?" Albus returned, heading round behind the desk to settle himself in his chair for what could be a long and frustrating conversation. The Prince patriarch was annoyingly good at occlumency, and even if looking Albus directly in the eye was sufficiently capable under most circumstances at protecting his thoughts that verbal duelling was the best hope Albus usually had of ever getting anything out of him.
"I gather, Albus, that magical law enforcement recently caught you pointing your wand at a muggle tea-lady?" Gnaeus chose to remain standing, peering at Albus' book collection.
"I'm curious as to how you've already heard a rumour like that, Gnaeus?"
"A number of years ago I procured sufficient shares in a muggle company named 'Bingby and Cratchettall', Albus, to be able to fire any employee in said company. It was a precaution I considered it prudent to take at the time, in case Eileen Snape ever turned nasty – seeing as how her husband worked there."
Albus nodded at this – it made sense that Eileen's former father would know just how vicious and unreasonable anyone named Snape might get. Gnaeus had been the one who'd thrown her out of the Prince family after all, for Merlin's sake…
(Gnaeus' declared interests in the company also suggested to Albus a number of credible reasons for how Magical Law Enforcement had come looking for a wizard on the premises so fast.)
"At any rate," Gnaeus continued, still looking at the books, not Albus, "it occurred to me that this news would not go down well with your traditional supporters, with whom you have been having a rather torrid time of late. Whilst I have no intention of allowing you to try to cover this up – Mrs. Blaston is a blameless muggle, highly useful to the overall functioning of the company, after all – I would be prepared to offer you political support in the Wizengamot for the next few years whilst you rebuild bridges with your more usual supporters, contingent upon an immediate and specific favour or two in return."
"Favours such as?" Albus enquired. He was reasonably certain that Gnaeus was overestimating the weakness of Albus' position, and the man was hardly someone Albus ordinarily wished to associate with, but it was always useful to know what other people said that they wanted, the more effectively to be able to turn the screws later if an opportunity should ever arise.
And now Gnaeus turned to face Albus.
"You resign as headmaster of Hogwarts, the better to be able to focus on your political interests, and recommend me to the Hogwarts board of governors as your favoured choice of successor." Gnaeus said. "I'm getting on in years, Albus, and I've been looking and wondering about what legacy, if any, I might leave the world? I've been overshadowed by figures such as yourself in politics practically forever, and by this point in my life I'm prepared to concede I'm unlikely to ever lead in the Wizengamot or Ministry, but I could quite see myself as headmaster of Hogwarts for a few years."
"You're practically a spring-chicken compared to me, Gnaeus." Albus chuckled. Then he turned serious. "I'm afraid that your offer is quite unacceptable. I see myself much more as a school-teacher than a politician, Gnaeus, and I cannot possibly contemplate putting aside my position here to concentrate on politics. I think I do more good here, at Hogwarts, for society, than I could ever do in the Wizengamot and ICW, even were I to focus more fully on the latter two."
"That's your final word Albus?"
"That's my final word, Gnaeus."
"We're both proud old men Albus – perhaps too old and too proud at times, I sometimes wonder. I thought that that would be your position, but I wanted to put the offer to you. We often disagree on a great many things, but I have some respect for the wizard who defeated Gellert Grindelwald." He came forward and offered his hand across the desk. "Goodbye Albus."
"I'll see you around, no doubt, Gnaeus." Albus declined the hand.
Gnaeus waited a moment, then withdrew his hand, collected his bags and departed.
Albus shook his head and tsked to himself once the other was safely gone.
Gnaeus was a competent enough operator in his own way, but so limited – and seldom with any concern for the bigger picture. Albus needed to be at Hogwarts as well as in the Wizengamot and ICW. Hogwarts was as vital as both the political forums to the ongoing battles to shape the future of wizarding society, and Gnaeus as headmaster would be an inevitable disaster. He'd probably see the school solely in terms of being there to provide an academic educational role, rather than the necessity of it also existing as a tool to ensure that attitudes and ways of thinking beneficial to society were also fostered. Schools during peacetime could afford the luxury of being there principally as forums for book-learning and training, but during wars the twin-duties for schools to both produce citizens who would fight to defend society and to be institutions that would identify for observation future possible dissidents must come to the fore. Wars were dirty businesses – and when one's enemies were prepared to carry out acts of terror and to kill it was, alas, tragically necessary to go to rather extreme lengths at times if one did not wish to prove oneself as evil as one's enemies by matching them in kind. For to slay against their will any truly sentient being (other than the most cruel and wicked of monsters), was the utmost possible act of evil, to Albus' mind. Life was a gift, and even those who did despicable things should not be killed out of hand, but be defanged instead and made to live in cages (if absolutely necessary), so that they would be both harmless and serve as useful object lessons to everyone else. Was that not what…? No. Best not to think of Gellert – not at a time of crisis, when Albus must be strong, certain and ruthless.
Albus reflected briefly again on Gnaeus' opening remarks about disillusionment – it seemed likeliest, in light of the 'offer' he'd made, that Gnaeus believed Albus might be suffering from a severe case of disillusionment amongst his own political supporters. Albus was unconcerned if that was the extent of Gnaeus' analysis. Those who lined up alongside Albus in the Wizengamot were all politicians. They might be occasionally disappointed by things which Albus did, but they certainly didn't have the sort of idealism that could produce disillusionment.
Albus dismissed any niggling doubts over Gnaeus' cryptic opening remarks, on the basis that Gnaeus had likely failed to understand the true picture on this occasion, and firmly turned his mind to the things which he should be doing.
Humming to himself, he pushed aside a pile of paperwork containing reports on the state of Hogwarts' school brooms, and picked up a report on a speech about the thickness of cauldrons in use by professional potion-brewers from the Wizengamot. The speech and notes on how Wizengamot members had voted afterwards would prove particularly enlightening, he felt, on what anti-werewolf legislation might be coming in five or ten years time…
It was Friday night and the end of a week which had taken a somewhat unexpected turn at Tobias Snape's place of work, with an unwelcome intrusion by the magical world. Tobias Snape had mentioned a few things to Eileen when he got back home, to indicate there was something which would 'need discussing', and Severus had indicated it had involved his former headmaster, but it was something which properly should be left until after dinner.
Tobias Snape had felt the first real relief in almost five years, earlier in the summer, when Severus came back from Hogwarts for the last time – having quit the place. Tobias didn't have any problem with women dressing up in funny clothes, riding around on broomsticks, and waving pointed sticks around whilst muttering magic words – stories were full of women like that, and all the more power to them – but they were hardly pursuits that Tobias Snape regarded as terribly manly, or that he considered it fitting that his son pursue; wizards were supposed to do things such as manufacture magic swords or ensure that said swords ended up in the right place (either by leaving them in stones for once and future kings or by personally introducing them by hand into the entrails of various nasty creatures in need of a good and sound killing) or generally give sound political advice to those supposed to rule. In an absolute emergency, a wizard might have to go so far as to put a king and all his knights to sleep to await a future crisis of a realm (although enchanted slumbers were generally much more of a witch thing to Tobias' mind).
It had consequently been with a sense of increasing disappointment over the years that Tobias Snape had thought about his son and only child being away at the Hogwarts place (the school name of which put witchcraft ahead of wizardry, making perfectly clear their priorities to Tobias' mind) – especially since it was apparent by the end of his son's first year there that he was being bullied by a gang of posh kids (though the school authorities couldn't care less about that), and that he was enjoying very little about the place.
With the passage of the years Tobias had become increasingly irked that he'd let Eileen talk him into Severus going to the school of witchcraft (and supposedly of wizardry too) in the first place.
Fortunately, that was all over now, Severus having finally developed the sense to realise that the place was no good for him, and to have walked away from it. And if it hadn't been such an unmanly thing to do, Tobias could have hugged his son, when Severus had said that he wanted to work at Bingby & Cratchettall.
Obviously, Severus being only sixteen (and having had nothing much by way of what by Bingby & Cratchettall's metric constituted a good education), that had meant that Severus was on the factory floor tea trolley for now, with Mrs. Blaston, but once he was older and knew more, he might be apprenticed to one of the engineers or clerks or draughtsmen.
And when the Hogwarts place had officially broken up for the summer, Tobias Snape had had the unexpected pleasure of seeing Miss Lily Evans turn up on the doorstep of the Snape household, and it had been as clear as day to Tobias from how she was dressed and fidgeting that evening, when she said she wanted to speak to Severus, what she actually was there for. From the signs the previous summer, and what Severus had written home from Hogwarts (when he had bothered to write at all), Tobias had thought that the friendship between his son and Lily had been just about over, but that July evening it had become apparent that something had happened which had fixed it. And then Lily became a highly regular visit to the Snape household, and Tobias didn't mind that one bit, because they were young, and it was good to see that Severus had a girlfriend, and… well, their relationship and quite clearly what was going on was something a lad Severus' age should be engaged in to Tobias Snape's way of thinking.
Yesterday morning, in something of a daze, Severus had announced at breakfast that Lily had told him that she was pregnant. Tobias had tried to look suitably stern – and would have indeed had some pretty hard things to say about responsibilities, if Severus hadn't apparently already begun thinking and worrying about them – but secretly Tobias had been over the moon.
Lily had not come over yesterday evening. Perhaps she had been concerned over how the news had gone down with the Snapes, or perhaps her own parents had decided to lock her in her room. Tobias hoped that she wanted to keep the baby, and would occasionally bring it over here once it arrived. He couldn't wait to be a grandfather, and it would give Eileen something to do. Eileen wasn't really good at being a housewife, and missed being cut off from the society of 'her kind of people'. He was sure it would be good for Eileen to have Lily around, and especially if they could get together and have 'womens' talk' about the greater mysteries of motherhood.
And then this morning at work… well, there had been an 'incident'… or 'near-incident', and it had happened before Tobias or Severus had even got to the works. It had of course become the main topic of gossip around the factory during the day and it had affected Severus (who presumably knew something more of what it had potentially involved better than anyone else, but couldn't say in public) badly. Severus had been clearly relieved that Mrs. Blaston had come out of it just fine, though he had equally clearly been seriously rattled that the thing had happened in the first place.
For Severus' former headmaster had come snooping at Bingby & Cratchettall, and had been dragged off the premises by a burly uniformed police-officer.
Tobias Snape had never thought much of the Hogwarts headmaster from Severus' accounts, and he thought even less of him now, with Mrs. Blaston having met him and formed her own opinions of him, which she was perfectly free in reporting.
Anyway, dinner was now winding down, and Tobias was just winding up for the discussion of the day's business at work, when the rat-tat-tat of someone at the front-door announced an arrival, and a minute later, Lily Evans was ensconced in the kitchen.
"I, umm, got my exam results through today." she said, flushing slightly. "I thought that Severus might be interested to…" She trailed off, reading the mood around the table. "Has something happened today?"
"Albus Dumbledore turned up at Bingby & Cratchettall early this morning, and pointed his wand at Mrs. Blaston." Severus said.
Eileen drew her breath in sharply, and Lily stared.
"He what?" Lily asked.
"It was before I got there – he seems to have some idea of what time I start, and to have turned up to snoop around before I arrived on the scene, asking questions about me." Severus said. "He happened on Mrs. Blaston and started to question her, but he let slip that he was my former headmaster. Now I've always been very careful about what I say about Hogwarts around Mrs. Blaston, but she seems to have guessed quite a lot from the few things I have said, and even more from the things that I haven't. So she laid into him with her tongue, and when she starts scolding someone like that there's no stopping her. Apparently the headmaster was in the act of pulling his wand out on her when a police-officer who must have been an undercover auror arrived. He apologised to Mrs. Blaston, said that the headmaster had recently had a mental breakdown and escaped from a hospital, and hurriedly removed him from the scene."
"Did she know he was a wizard?" Lily asked.
"I've never said anything to her which breaks the International Statute. She just thinks Hogwarts is a 'posh boarding school'." Severus said. "She apparently asked the headmaster what he was 'going to do with that stick?' and called him a 'senile old hippy' just as the undercover auror turned up." Severus shook his head. "It was a good thing for her that he did turn up. I don't like to think of what the headmaster might have done to her if an auror hadn't shown up on the scene."
"That was strangely lucky." Lily said. "For Mrs. Blaston. That there should happen to be an auror in the area, I mean." she frowned.
"Maybe the headmaster ordered one of his friends to keep an eye on me, and forget he'd done it." Severus said bitterly. "It's just the sort of thing he'd do; he's probably left directions in his will to the effect that even after he's dead and gone, one of his cronies is to periodically check up on me, and make sure that I'm not doing anything he'd disapprove of."
"Anyway, moving on to why I came around here, I thought you'd like to hear my exam results." Lily said. "Since they'll mean more to people here than in my household, and since my parents and I aren't exactly on good terms at the moment..." She flushed briefly, at some memory, and moved hastily on. "I must say, I've done better in some subjects than I thought that I would…"
Tobias and Eileen exchanged glances as Lily babbled on with a slightly-over-the-top air of cheerfulness about her exam scores, trying to dispel (however temporarily) the shadow of Albus Dumbledore.
"Dumbledore?" Eileen mouthed at Tobias, when she was certain neither of the children would be watching. "At your place?"
Tobias Snape nodded, and he didn't doubt she would be writing to her father tonight, although it was always possible that he'd already heard.
Meanwhile, Severus was asking Lily about if she needed his assistance with some potion making (which caused Lily to give him an odd look, but agree), and then the talk inevitably got around to The Baby. Lily, Tobias was pleased to hear, was hell-bent on keeping the child, though she gave the impression her parents weren't so happy about that. She'd apparently spent most of yesterday arguing with them about it. She was amenable to discussion of baby names with the Snapes, although she was certain she wanted 'Lucy' if it was a girl…
The morning after she got her exam results, Lily forced herself to use a public floo to travel to London on what turned out to be one of her 'worse' mornings for nausea, unfortunately, and she was a good ten minutes recovering, to her slight embarrassment, in the Leaky Cauldron. And then (unless she had somehow got the brick wrong) her wand seemed to be playing up too when she went to open the arch through to the Alley around the back, and it took her three attempts to get it open.
After that she spent the morning shopping, calling at various herbalists, apothecaries, and other suppliers, with the long list Severus had dictated to her. He'd picked an odd time to take her up on her offers and finally request her assistance with something, and she could only assume that the prospect of fatherhood had in some way changed something, and he was anxious to pursue some lead which he might not otherwise have done. At any rate, some of the ingredients that she asked after caused raised eyebrows, until she added others from the same part of the list, at which point the puzzled expressions disappeared, and knowing nods became their replacements.
"Possible NEWT potions projects", she explained once or twice.
She also hired an owl to take a message to Professor McGonagall, requesting an urgent meeting with her head of house over her attendance at Hogwarts next term. Severus' mum had an owl, but Lily didn't want to borrow that to send a message to Professor McGonagall, in case the Head of Gryffindor somehow recognised it and started to wonder why Lily was using the Snape owl – or worse still told the headmaster about it. Lily wanted the depth of her involvement with the Snape household kept from the Hogwarts headmaster and his deputy for as long as possible, given just how little it was obvious that the headmaster thought of Severus. She just hoped that Professor Slughorn was keeping up to the promise that he'd given of his discretion over his discovery of their association.
And then, after a little light lunch, she went home.
She took the Knight Bus. It might be stomach-churning at moments, but not to the same intensity as the floo, which she was pretty sure would cause her to lose her lunch altogether.
In retrospect, she should have enquired of Severus' grandfather what the recipe was for that tonic he'd given her at breakfast the other day. Oh well, perhaps Severus' mum would have some idea what it was.
She tried not to fret about her wand too much. She'd had trouble summoning the Knight Bus, too.
Mundungus Fletcher was running through narrow streets and twisting back-ways of Timbuktu, dodging in and out of magical areas and weaving through the muggle parts of the city, as the sun dipped and another deep and mysterious African evening impended.
He was being chased. He had managed to lose all bar one of his pursuers, and he had deliberately not lost that last pursuer, because Mundungus Fletcher would like to know, thank-you very much, just why he was being chased, and that meant he needed someone to interrogate.
His sole remaining pursuer was making the same mistake that countless dozens of others had made already – thinking that because Mundugus Fletcher was a recently arrived foreigner, that he could not possibly fit in here. Heck, Mundungus himself had made that same mistake for the first twenty-four hours or so, before he had discovered that he might as well have been born to take a leading role, strutting his stuff on the stage of this city of disreputable politicians, traders (seedy or otherwise), diplomats from dozens of magical nations… and of thieves.
Mundungus estimated that his sole remaining pursuer was probably just about fatigued enough by now to be relatively easy to subdue, nipped around a corner, unhooked a washing line stretched across the street with a flourish, and moments later had his pursuer sprawling in the dusk, whilst he knelt astride him and tied him up. When a woman emerged from a house, cursing volubly, Mundungus tossed her a handful of gleaming silver shekels in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre, which caused her to fall silent.
"Business, madam." Mundungus explained to her, in the local language, as he hauled his sullen captive to his feet.
She glared at Mundungus, and set about retrieving the discarded laundry, but offered no further complaint.
"Right, sonny Jim." Mundungus beamed at his captive. "You and I are going to go somewhere private to have a conversation, and maybe if you're co-operative, I won't find out if you can successfully wrestle a crocodile a friend of mine owns whilst at a severe handicap of still being thoroughly tied up…"
And as Mundungus headed off through the gathering dusk, hauling his newest 'friend' along behind him, he once again thanked his lucky stars for the distance between himself and wizarding Britain.
The Hogwarts headmaster, spectacularly babbling in sinister fashion, still regularly intruded into Mundungus' dreams – or rather more nightmares.
Mundungus tried not to think too much of the things of which the headmaster had raved, but some of the things he'd said about a phoenix making choices, a wand 'forged of gifts fallen from the heavens', and of blades being sharpened as 'the dark angel ascendant' readied hosts for war were rather difficult to forget.
Yes, wizarding Britain was definitely a good place not to be right now. You could never rely on something with a tendency to burst into flames at odd moments and be totally reborn as a new chick to make sensible decisions in a crisis, to Mundungus' way of thinking…
On Monday Lily received a response from Professor McGonagall to the effect that she was currently insanely overworked, catching up with things which had had to be postponed due to the delay over the exam results, and that Lily would have to wait till Wednesday morning, so Lily duly waited.
It was at eleven thirty on the morning of Wednesday 18th of August – one week after Lily's trip to Bath to see Severus' grandfather, and three quarters of an hour after the deputy headmistress had promised to arrive – that Professor McGonagall turned up.
The head of Gryffindor was somewhat short of temper and of patience, and upon hearing Lily's reason for requesting the meeting, she 'blew up'.
Professor McGonagall ranted for close to twenty minutes in the living room of the Evans household, only pausing to occasionally demand what she considered a pertinent fact and not otherwise pausing to let Lily get a word in edgeways. Professor McGonagall made it quite clear that she considered Lily a highly irresponsible and disobedient little schoolgirl, a disgrace to Gryffindor, and not worthy of the badge of a prefect. Lily was surprised that the professor didn't actually demand Lily turn over her badge on the spot, but it was possible she was too busy riding her moral high-horse to do so.
"You will certainly not be returning to Hogwarts in September, Miss Evans. On that, we are agreed, and I must say that it is the first and only ounce of common-sense that you appear to have shown in this." the professor wound down. "You may write to me again, next week, regarding possibly continuing your education by other arrangements. At present you are such a disappointment to me in terms of how recklessly you have behaved, that I would not trust myself not to transfigure any correspondence from you into a clay pigeon and using it for target-practice. You will certainly not find me a sympathetic ear for pursuing any NEWT level transfiguration studies. Good day to you."
And with that, she swept out, in a high dudgeon.
Professor McGonagall having departed, Lily's mother decided to take the opportunity to have another go, on a by now all too familiar and predictable note, at Lily.
Lily folded he arms and waited it out then said:
"You've said this all before, mum, and I'm still not changing my mind about this." and swept up to her room.
Lily had had enough. An ear-bashing from Professor McGonagall, and then another one from her mum, when she would have appreciated some familial support, was more than she could take.
Petunia found her packing a short while later, cramming as much into her school trunk and a couple of old suitcases as she possibly could.
"What is it, Tuney?" Lily turned to glare at her older sister.
"You're moving out?" Petunia made the obvious deduction, but seemed oddly subdued.
"Yeah, well, all I seem to get from mum and dad these days is 'get rid of it, it will be a waste of your life'. They pretend by 'get rid of' they mean 'give away in however many months time it is', but really they'd just prefer me to take a trip down to a clinic next week. It's not an 'it', it's a 'him' or 'her', the fact I'm a witch means even if I wanted to, giving a child away except as a last resort would be stupidly complicated, and I don't consider bringing up a child to be a 'waste' of my life. And even if it were, it's my life to 'waste', anyway, or at least I thought it was. So yeah, I'm moving out."
Petunia bit her lip.
"They mean well."
"Albus bloody Dumbledore means well, or so he tells everyone!" Lily blew up. "And he means so, bloody, well, he protects a werewolf that's putting other pupils in danger, and he thinks bullies from families he wants to collect are amusing, high-spirited, young men whilst their victims should be punished if they don't roll over and tamely accept whatever's 'coming to them'. Professor McGonagall means well, and her first thought about me this morning, once she learned why I wanted to see her, was avoiding any possibility of scandal from 'tainting' a school already crawling with favouritism thanks to her and the headmaster, and where every other year the latest defence teacher is involved in some new form of disgrace. I have had it with people who mean well, with their opinions that everybody else ought to get in line with their own little plans, whilst it would never occur to them to put themselves out of joint. Oh no, it's everyone else who should inconvenience themselves to make the world a better place, never them."
Petunia had flinched at the biting anger in Lily's tone, and now she spread her hands in a conciliatory gesture.
"Look, you want to move out, and I think it will upset mum and dad more than you think, but it's your choice, fine. I think I can guess where you want to move out to, and if you're intending to go any time soon, you're going to need help moving your things. I'll ring Vernon and get him to bring his car around. We can give you a lift. I remember what you've said about not being supposed to use magic here and I doubt you're going to be able to get all your luggage anywhere soon without a lift, and it may as well be us instead of you wasting money on a taxi."
Lily sagged, the anger draining suddenly away.
"Thanks Tuney." she said. "And I'm sorry for just shouting at you."
"I've shouted at you often enough. It's what sisters are supposed to be there for." Petunia smiled bleakly. She turned to go.
"Tuney – wait." Lily said. "Forget what I said about the Hogwarts headmaster and the werewolf. I think some of that stuff's supposed to be secret. It could get you in trouble if you repeat it and it ever comes to the wrong ears. And thanks – thanks for everything."
August was rapidly going downhill for Albus Dumbledore. Gnaeus had been as good as his word and made sure that Albus couldn't hide the fact he'd pointed his wand at a muggle tea-lady, and somehow that had prompted the emergence of whispers in the Wizengamot comparing Albus to his father, Percival Dumbledore, who had of course been sent to Azkaban for attacking muggles – and it was being said that Albus had inherited his father's hatred of muggles. Worse still, over the weekend at a dinner party between the senior Blacks and the Greengrasses the conversation had apparently centred on how in his own youth Albus had been a friend of Gellert Grindelwald – and had agreed with Gellert wholeheartedly on the position of muggles in the world. Both these charges were difficult for Albus to fight: the complicated situation involving Albus' late sister, Ariana, made it impolitic for him to refute that Percival Dumbledore had had anything against muggles generally, and the fact that the essence of the Grindelwald stories was (regrettably) true made it very hard for Albus to convincingly deny them. All he could do to answer the latter was to plead forgiveness for the follies of youth – after all hadn't he defeated Gellert, standing against him when nobody else could? – and hope that things improved.
At least the dinner party had all-but-confirmed his suspicions of where these attacks against him were emanating from. The Black family, evidently jealous of the influence that Albus had with Sirius (and that Sirius was going to be an auror because of Albus), were trying to destroy Albus out of revenge. Albus would just have to weather this storm, as best he could…
Oh, and Horace Slughorn had given Albus his notice today. He'd said that he'd work the next school year out, and then if necessary see the coming year's fourth and sixth year potions students through to their respective OWL and NEWT exams, but Albus was going to have to find a replacement potions master and head for Slytherin house. This decision seemed rather sudden on Horace's part, and Albus could make no sense of it at all – unless perhaps some of Horace's friends had been casualties of the upheavals and sackings-in-disgrace during the exam remarks and Horace had taken the business unduly personally? At any rate, Horace had exuded an air of mysteriously offended dignity about the whole business, which if it persisted into September could make things unpleasant in the staffroom.
And now Minerva blew into the headmaster's office, a scowl on her face, that said that her day hadn't gone at all well either. Albus vaguely recalled her saying something the other day about one of her Gryffindors having requested a meeting. Now she launched into a lengthy rant about the iniquities of youth and the scandalous behaviour of muggle-borns, and how this was all going to have to be hushed up to avoid Gryffindor house looking bad.
Albus nodded along occasionally, his mind on more important things, until he suddenly caught a couple of phrases and he switched straight into something as close to a state of panic as he'd come in decades.
"Wait a moment, Minerva:" he half-rose to his feet. "Did you just say that Lily Evans will not be coming back to Hogwarts next month?"
"The girl has behaved scandalously. It was all I could do not to throttle her on the spot, for so besmirching the name of Gryffindor, and her being a prefect too." Minerva said with an aggrieved air. "I was quite relieved that she accepted she would not be returning to Hogwarts, and I warned her in no uncertain terms that whatever other teachers might think, she could certainly have no expectations of private tuition from me."
Albus sank back into his chair with a groan and clutched his head in his hands. This was the last straw! He was undone! Whatever reason was given out (and Minerva seemed to want to hush the real one up for some reason), the gossip-mongers would of course spread the lie that Lily was not returning because Sirius Black had attacked her. They would make it look as if Albus was presiding over a regime which tacitly approved the driving out of muggle-borns by pure-bloods, which was not at all the case. Unless…
Albus looked up.
"Did you revoke her position as prefect yet, Minerva?"
"No. I hadn't even started to think about replacements, and I was so angry and disappointed with the way that Miss Evans has behaved that I didn't think to revoke it on the spot."
Albus had pulled a book off the shelf already, and was frantically leafing through it.
"Then we can force her back, Minerva! We can make her attend Hogwarts for at least the start of the next year, or invoke 'dereliction of duties'." He stabbed a finger at a page in triumph! "You will write to her at once, and inform her that she will turn up for the start of term or face severe consequences!"
"Have you gone mad, Albus?" Minerva was looking at him in an odd fashion.
"Mad? No! It's sheer genius! Simple and pure genius! We can force her back, or make out that she's the party at fault in all of this! Either way, the situation will be saved!"
Albus felt a tremendous sense of relief.
"I don't understand." Minerva said.
"It would have been absolutely catastrophic, Minerva, with everything else that's going on, for Lily Evans not to be here for the start of the year!"
And the words tumbled out of Albus' mouth, as he begged, pleaded, and cajoled Minerva, to get her to see the sense in the situation, and how everything would be lost – right down to and including the currently ongoing war itself – if Miss Evans did not arrive for the start of her sixth year at Hogwarts.
At length Minerva departed, a highly confused look on her face, but muttering that she would see what could be done, and write that evening.
Albus sank back into his chair, to collect his thoughts, and that was when Fawkes began to sing.
It was a low, mournful, song, that gnawed and niggled its way into Albus' head like an icy shard of conscience, that made him want to cover his ears, and pound the desk with his head in vain in an attempt to keep it out and to deny what was happening. It was a relentless, nagging, insistent song, that grabbed Albus Dumbledore and refused to let go.
And finally, when it was done, Albus conjured a mirror and found it very difficult to look himself in the eyes.
"What have I done, Fawkes?" he murmured to the phoenix. Instead of feeling triumphant, he now felt very beaten and quite thoroughly defeated.
Fawkes cawed something mournful sounding back at him.
Albus was still happy with quite a lot of the decisions that he'd recently made, but somewhere, he had to acknowledge now, he'd crossed the line into insanity in at least how he'd dealt with Miss Evans.
He would have to revoke that last order he'd given to Minerva. Quite why she'd apparently acceded to it, he wasn't sure. Maybe she hadn't ever planned on carrying it out, but had merely made a pretence of agreeing to it whilst she waited for him to calm down. He certainly hoped that that was the case.
And he would have to write to Miss Evans, in case Minerva – Merlin forfend – had carried out his instructions. How much time had passed, anyway, whilst he was lost in the phoenix song whilst Fawkes so very necessarily called him to account?
And then he would have to start planning for the end of his political power. Gnaeus likely had not fully understood the political situation, but he had turned out through accident of circumstance to have been right. Without Miss Evans at Hogwarts, come September, given everything that had happened Albus would be ruined. Oh, he could potentially cling on to something if he was so minded by paying unacceptable prices to wizards of dubious ostensible neutral positions, such as Gnaeus, and even absent such support he would still have a semblance of power – the Ministry would still need him for as long as the war lasted – but his independence to act or to dictate terms would be all but gone. Albus would have to hope that with others leading, this war could still end in a fashion – if not exactly timely – then at least well. His own ability to ensure the greater good would all too soon be gone.
Petunia had reported to Lily that Vernon would be around with the car that evening just after dinner, at which Lily had nodded, and got back to her packing. Lily had never realised quite how much stuff she seemed to have or at least not when it came to trying to fit it into one trunk and two small suitcases. The fact that she couldn't afford to leave anything vaguely magic-related behind of course influenced her choice of packing, and sadly restricted her options for taking other things. Maybe Petunia and Vernon could make other trips to fetch stuff for her, and it wasn't as if she wasn't going to need radically different clothes with the coming months, anyway, given that she was having a baby. The choice of which of her books she ought to take was particularly hard though. Some were much thumbed and well read, whilst others were seldom touched but gifts of relatives (some now dead) she kept for sentimental reasons.
She was in the middle of trying to organise one pile, when there came a persistent tapping of an owl at a window, and she looked up to see a huge tawny eagle owl there.
She hurriedly let it in, and glanced at the note it bore.
To her surprise it turned out to be from Hagrid of all people.
"Heard from Prof. M. you won't be at school next year, and thought you'd need a bird to stay in touch with your friends. This girl's for you, for your very own. HAGRID."
Lily was touched. That was so deeply thoughtful and kind of Hagrid – and would have been so very inconvenient if she had been planning to stay here, given Petunia's dislike of owls. Fortunately, Lily and her new owl would be living elsewhere.
Hagrid hadn't mentioned a name in the note though.
"Do you have a name?" she asked the owl, staring at it thoughtfully.
She was sure it twitched its head as if to say 'no'.
"Right. I'll have to think of one then." Lily said.
Lily had broken the news to her parents after dinner that she was about to move out. They looked shocked, but Lily wasn't sure if that was because they genuinely cared about her, or because of the scandal that it might cause. They'd loved her so long as she'd been their perfect little princess, but once she'd started disagreeing with them, and embarrassing them this past week or so (though it felt much longer than that already), she'd seen another side of them altogether.
She remained tight-lipped about where she intended to go, saying only that 'I've got some savings' and that Vernon and Petunia would be 'giving her a lift to a hotel' she could stay at overnight. She didn't enjoy misleading her parents, but she didn't want them bothering her anymore, and the house of Severus and his family was practically a hotel compared to here. Severus' parents were always highly welcoming of her, and ever since Severus had left Hogwarts and started work they seemed to get on with one another noticeably better, as if Severus' time at Hogwarts had been a source of much of the friction between them.
She was spared another argument of some sort with her parents by the sharp rat-tat-tat at the door of Vernon arriving, precisely when Petunia had said he'd promised he'd arrive. Lily was relieved that Petunia's boyfriend was the sort who was dead punctual.
Winging through the dusk, as Lily moved her luggage and (as yet still unnamed) new owl out to Vernon's car, came another owl, which flapped around Lily's head.
She took the note it held, apparently meant for her, and unfolded it, whilst Petunia explained to Vernon some of what was going on.
"Ruddy inconvenient way to send messages, if you ask me," Vernon said, as the owl which had just delivered the message disappeared into the evening sky.
Lily looked at the note and blanched. Then she crumpled it and dropped it into a pocket.
"Get my things in the car as fast as possible, and let's go." she said.
The Snape house was heavily warded. Right now she wanted to be somewhere protected from further wizardly attention as soon as possible.
Vernon Dursley was discovering that he knew much less about his prospective sister-in-law than he'd thought. There was some sort of secret conspiracy going on, in which she was involved, and the people in it used owls to deliver messages to one another. It seemed a very messy means to him to get messages to one another – how did they make sure the birds didn't eat or lose the messages that they were supposed to be delivering for one thing? – but at least it meant messages could be sent at any time of day or night, he supposed. Well so long as the owls knew where they were going, that was. How did they do that anyhow? Were they remarkably well-trained, or were they part of some sort of secret government project?
Petunia had said she'd explain some further things later.
He pulled up outside a house in Spinner's End which was apparently where Lily wanted to go. It didn't look like anything special from the outside, but Lily – who had been tense ever since that owl dropped down at her – seemed to visibly relax, now she was on the doorstep.
She got out of the car, practically bounced up the steps to the front-door and proceeded to thump on the knocker. Moments later the door opened, and light spilled out onto the street.
The owl which Lily had apparently acquired only that afternoon emerged from the car to go and land on her shoulder. She stood there talking in animated conversation with someone.
"Her boyfriend lives here." Petunia said to Vernon. "He used to be involved in the secret stuff but decided to get out of it and take a job at Bingby & Cratchetall."
"Ah." said Vernon, trying to sound sage. He felt the situation called for more. "Well good for him."
"This arrived by owl, half an hour ago." Lily, trembling slightly, extracted the note from her pocket.
She unfolded it on the table in the Snape kitchen, as Severus, Eileen, and Tobias gathered around. The others squinted at it.
Dear Miss Evans,
I fear that there has been something of a mix-up at Hogwarts this afternoon. If Professor McGonagall has been in contact with you since your meeting of this morning, informing you that you have no choice but to return to Hogwarts come September the first, then please disregard any such communication.
Yours,
Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, Order of Merlin (1st Class).
"Did you hear from Professor McGonagall since whatever you talked to her about this morning?" Eileen asked.
"No, Mrs. Snape." Lily said. "And this morning I told her that I would not be going back to Hogwarts for the next school year, on account of my being 'in the family way'." Lily coloured slightly. "She seemed scandalised about it, but couldn't agree with me enough that Hogwarts would not be a suitable place for me to be."
"Nonetheless, the headmaster seems to think that you might believe that you would be obliged to attend anyway." Eileen said, thoughtfully. "The only likely reason I can think of for that is if he was privy to some decision to that effect, but decided to subsequently countermand it."
It was apparent to Lily in that moment that whatever analytical ability Severus might have in common with his grandfather, had by no means skipped a generation with Eileen.
"I'm not sure I want even private tuition from Hogwarts teachers, if there's something going on that there was a plan to force me back there." Lily said, shivering. "Are there apprenticeships or anything in the wizarding world an underage witch with good OWL results can occupy herself for a few months with, and maybe take up again, later?"
The American wizard that James Potter's father had selected to try and teach James and Sirius the basics of politics had escaped from the room for ten minutes, ostensibly simply 'to visit the bathroom', but most likely for a purpose involving taking several stiff swigs from the silver hip-flask that he wore, too.
"You shouldn't be so rough on him Prongs." Sirius said.
"Oh pooh, he's supposed to be a hardened politician." James said dismissively. "He should be able to take a bit of verbal byplay and one of those muggle inflatable bladders that make rude noises hidden under his chair cushion."
"Your father said that he's an expert on politics, not actually a politician." Sirius pointed out.
"They're the same thing, I thought." James said. He pointed his wand at a little device with a line of balls hanging by strings from parallel bars that his father's expert had brought along 'as a visual metaphor to demonstrate pushes and push-backs of the political arena'. He flicked his wand and started the balls jiggling and bouncing around.
Sirius winced.
"He quite clearly explained in answer to your second, third, and fifth questions that they most definitely are not."
"What does it matter anyway, Padfoot? It's not exactly like we're going to be politicians – or political experts – anyway. Professor Dumbledore's said that we're going to be aurors." James twiddled his wand and upped the tempo and bouncing of the balls.
"It matters, Prongs, because aurors sometimes have to deal with political stuff." Sirius said. "High level criminals sometimes use political connections to try and get away with things. And high level good guys, like Professor Dumbledore, use their own political clout to make the bad guys pay who are careful not to do anything technically illegal."
"Well we can leave it to Professor Dumbledore to handle that stuff then." James flicked his wand one last time, and then watched the device wobble and topple over with a violent clatter of balls and in a tangle of threads.
"And this is the stuff that my family-who-disown-me are good at." Sirius said. "If we pay attention, we can prank them back some day on their own terms, and really embarrass them."
"Why didn't you say that earlier?" James complained. "If this stuff is useful for pranking people – especially your former relatives – then I should be paying attention to it!" He poked the toppled device with his wand. "Do you think I've broken it?"
It was the last Saturday in August, and Severus had managed to borrow one of Bingby & Cratchettall's factory workshops, where engineers normally carried out quality-control tests on random samples of products. He'd said it was to help his girlfriend with a school chemistry experiment, but it was still something he was certain that he wouldn't have been able to get away with without Mrs. Blaston's support and assistance. The woman was a marvel.
On the far side of the workshop, behind a large transparent solid safety screen was a currently slowly cooling small cauldron of liquid. Lily and Severus – the workshop doors closed and 'testing in progress, do not enter' warning notices in place outside – were observing it, at Severus' insistence, from behind another transparent safety screen from the opposite side of the room. Severus hadn't actually explained to Lily what they were trying to do, during their preparation of the current contents of the cauldron.
Suffice it to say that they were the only people in the workshop right now.
There was a sudden sizzling noise, and without warning the contents of the cauldron burst abruptly into weird, multi-hued, flames.
"Is it supposed to do that?" Lily asked him. "It's certainly pretty, but I take it we wouldn't be here now if it were just some new liquid firework you'd discovered?"
Severus paged through his coded notes, and glanced across at the cauldron, frowned, and glanced back down again.
"I think it is." he said, at last. He should have felt elated. Instead he felt a faint sense of dread.
"And?" Lily raised an eyebrow.
"And?" Severus responded.
She put her hands on her hips.
"Are you going to explain what it is now, or at least what you think it ought to be?"
In the background the flames were still burning merrily away. Given the quantity they'd brewed, Severus guessed it could go on for half an hour or so – although, truth be told, he wasn't quite sure how long it would burn for, given that practically nobody in living memory except maybe Nicolas Flamel had ever successfully seen it and survived to take notes. Of course most witches and wizards who tried to brew it made a classic mistake, Severus was sure, of brewing it in a magical environment – which Bingby & Cratchettall's workshop was most certainly not.
"Philosopher's fire." Severus said, to answer Lily's question. Lily gave him a look which said that that wasn't enough of an explanation, and so he went on. "After the siege of Syracuse in the third century BC the Roman and Greek witches and wizards of the time agreed to 'lose' the recipe. Since that time, there are no confirmed reports of the formula and brewing method being available anywhere, although from some of the historical accounts by apprentices of the last Greek and Roman witches and wizards known to have made it, reports of Nicolas Flamel's activities during the Renaissance, and with a lot of hard work – including some highly risky guesses – I've reassembled the process for making it, I think. Ordinarily, exposed to air, it will after a short time catch fire, burn for a while, and then go out. The sting comes if you try to extinguish it by magic. Almost any magical means used to attempt to extinguish it cause it to instead spread and multiply – for which reason it's also known as 'The Burning Hydra'. It's said that if a fierce enough blaze gets going, it can even ignite the magical wards supposed to defend a property. Ancient Syracuse… well it was supposedly once a town of magical wonders… before the siege. Nobody thought… realised… well, when the ashes cooled in what had once been the magical quarter, and one of the biggest cover-up operations of ancient times carried out on the muggle witnesses, the witches and wizards involved were so affected by what they'd seen that they agreed it didn't matter who started it, but just that it should never happen again. And that was it for well over a thousand years, until Nicolas Flamel used something which seemed suspiciously like it in defence of a French town he was living in at the time."
"And so what? You were planning to maybe use it on Hogwarts or on James Potter's ancestral home?" Lily frowned.
"Yes and no." Severus said. "Simple destruction of property by me wouldn't make any real difference to anything – and there are much simpler ways than Philosopher's Fire to burn a house down. It is and always has been primarily a weapon of war: something used against an enemy in a crisis where they have little time to reason out what's going on and where the most effective means available to any witch or wizard to deal with it – simply running away – will cost them a battle. What I had planned was that if I couldn't get hold of muggle arms easily enough, I could offer it as a weapon to the goblins to try to persuade them to raise a goblin rebellion…"
And now everything slipped out – Severus was too tired to keep this back from Lily any longer. How every previous goblin rebellion in Britain had foundered in the face of witches and wizards presenting a united front, but with magical society split by the current conflict, in theory there was an opportunity there for the goblins to step in, and gain a decisive victory. In theory, that was, since it was likely to take quite something to persuade the goblins to get involved, as neither Ministry nor Death Eaters were likely to provoke the goblins right now…
"It's an absolutely crazy idea, Sev!" Lily exclaimed. "It's pretty good up to the point where you hand everything over to Lord Voldemort and his flunkies, but at that point it just gets silly – not least in that if it does work, that you're just letting him reap any rewards from all your hard work. And that's a pretty big 'if', mind you – I'd be surprised if the goblins trusted him that much."
"Lily:" Severus knew his expression must be fairly pained. "I'm reasonably certain, even if everything else lined up, that the goblins still wouldn't take up arms unless they could see an actual organization of witches and wizards standing by them. Given their current comfortable position in which they can watch witches and wizards kill one another for free, and the history of previous rebellions, they're going to want to see witches and wizards on the same side as themselves. And Lord Voldemort has the only anti-Ministry organization around right now likely to be able to provide sufficient wands in support to convince the goblins."
"Then start your own organization." Lily said. "You're clever enough."
Severus had considered that option, unfortunately, at length, and long become inured to the bitter truth:
"Lily: I'm not exactly much of a 'people person'. It pains me to admit it, but I don't have the sort of networking or social skills necessary to lead an organization."
She hesitated, considering, and Severus hoped and dreaded that however much she cared about him, on a personal level, she surely would have to concede that that had some justification to it.
She drew a deep breath.
"Maybe not at the moment." she said, and then, just when he'd thought she couldn't turn his world any more upside down than she had already, she did it again: "But I am. I could pull together and front an organization to help the goblins with their 'armed protest'. Half my friends would go along with something like that just because they've been bored almost to death by Professor Binns droning on about goblin rebellions so often that they'd do almost anything to see him have to update his material. And a lot of the others would go along with it just to end unjust oppression of downtrodden other races by witches and wizards with wands. Why stop with just goblins for that matter? Wouldn't it be possible to get maybe the centaurs along, too?…"
The bell on the door of Garrick Ollivander's shop tinkles, and he looks up to see a young woman in maybe her mid-teens walk in. Redhead. Green eyes of a rather particular shade. She seems familiar, and after a few moments, based on the colour of the eyes, Mr. Ollivander makes a guess as to her identity:
"Lily Evans, wand ten and a quarter inches willow, swishy. Good for charms?"
Her face is slightly awed for a moment.
"It's true what they say about you then!"
"I usually don't mistake a previous customer." He doesn't mention the moment of uncertainty he had in her case. "Wand still serving you well?"
"Err, no, sir. I don't understand. I brought it in for you to take a look at it, to tell me if there's something wrong with it?"
She has the wand out now, and Mr. Ollivander senses at once there is something amiss.
"Show me please. Try a levitation charm if you would? On this."
He places an empty box on the counter.
"What about the Ministry? I'm not yet of age, sir."
Her wariness now is at odds with the bright, enthusiastic girl Mr. Ollivander recalls of half a decade earlier.
"I am authorised by the Ministry to oversee the use of wands by underage witches and wizards, Miss Evans, in pursuit of my trade." he reassures her.
And Miss Evans lifts her wand and tries to levitate the box.
It is of no surprise to Mr. Ollivander, from what he has already surmised, that it takes her half a dozen attempts to get it to rise in the air. The wand and she are fighting one another most of the time.
"It started playing up a week or two ago and it's been getting steadily worse since."
"If you would, Miss Evans, I would like to inspect the wand?"
She hands it over, and Mr. Ollivander turns it over rapidly in his hands, assessing it, then with a rapid twirl wordlessly levitates the box himself, zooms it round the room, and 'lands' it again. The wand serves him, exactly as almost any wand he has ever made would do so for its maker.
The wand itself seems perfectly functional still.
"If you would hold the wand please, in front of me?" Mr. Ollivander requests, offering it back to her. "I need to examine it in your grasp."
She does so, and at once Mr. Ollivander's suspicions are confirmed.
"Have you had any sudden and dramatic recent changes in your life circumstances, Miss Evans?" Mr. Ollivander asks, letting go of her hand and wand.
She hesitates – for longer than most would – and admits, colouring slightly, "I'm pregnant. Is that it? Nothing I've read about being a pregnant witch suggested it would cause my wand to play up."
Ordinarily it wouldn't. What Mr. Ollivander is sensing is a severe case of antipathy between wand and owner – something caused by so rapid a change in character and direction that the wand does not adapt fast enough to keep up, and essentially rejects the owner as someone who has become a complete stranger to it. Sometimes the owner can by brute force of personality make the wand serve him or her again, as if they had taken it by conquest in battle. Sometimes the wand adapts – eventually. And sometimes that's simply it.
"It's very rare." Mr. Ollivander hedges his answer. "It happens with the very occasional pregnancy." Or rather with the circumstances surrounding one. "You could wait to see if this passes, but to be frank with you, Miss Evans, you likely need a new wand. And unless I have something in the shop which takes a fancy to you, it will likely need to be something personally made for you."
Her face crinkles with worry.
"But when I bought this one," her knuckles whiten as she tightens her grasp on the willow wand which is failing her, "you didn't need to make that especially for me? And I'm sure that none of my friends needed special commissions."
"Children, Miss Evans, are – relatively speaking – magical blank-slates and so much more compatible with new wands. As a witch or wizard grows older, and becomes more developed in their studies and interests, the range of wands that would work well with them becomes much more limited. You can carry on trying to use your current wand, and your difficulties might – eventually – resolve themselves with time, but my professional opinion, as a master wand crafter, is that you would do better to acquire a new wand." Her face falls and Mr. Ollivander guesses at the cause of her concern – with a child on the way, and still being underage as a witch her financial circumstances may be rather tight. "Whether there is something in the shop or I have to make something especially for you, I will endeavour to keep the price reasonable and within your means." he promises. Later, he will wonder just why in Merlin's name he went and said that?
She looks relieved.
He turns and gathers a pile of boxes off the shelf and again something happens, unexpected, though it is not immediately apparent. Later, that is the basis on which Mr. Ollivander begins to suspect that he has been a messenger of fate.
He starts to open boxes and extract wands, which Miss Evans experimentally waves around, with varying results. She hands them back with various comments, and he puts them away, or on one side for later possible consideration.
"This one feels good." she says, and Mr. Ollivander looks up to see, somehow, that he has in error jumbled a box with that wand into the mix, and it is the very same wand it contained that Miss Evans is now waving through the air, happily trailing sparks from it.
"Lightning-blasted oak and dragon heartstring, fifteen inches." he automatically says. He hopes that Miss Evans is too busy waving it around to notice his expression. It feels as if his guts are being clawed out. This is IMPOSSIBLE. He can't stop the rest of the description of it from coming out of his mouth, although he does manage to lower his voice to a whisper in the hope she doesn't hear. "The wand of the head of a great house, fierce, ruthless, tempered by fire – almost 'unstoppable'. A wand of fireside tales."
"How much?" she looks at him, her expression inquisitive. At least she doesn't seem to have heard the last.
"That is one of my finer pieces of work, you have there, Miss Evans." he says. And the wandmaker opens his mouth to name a price likely to be well beyond her – anything to get her to put it down, so he can pass another wand which might suit her off on her, or even turn out a regular, custom-made one for her, and his casually given promise of minutes earlier rises up to choke him.
"Seven galleons." is what comes out of his mouth. The same price as what he charged Tom Marvolo Riddle for his yew and phoenix feather wand, when Garrick Ollivander was considerably greener in his craft, and the world less scarred by horrors.
She frowns and he is certain that she mentally compares the price to what she paid for the willow wand, and then her expression clears and she nods.
"Okay, I'll take it."
And the seven golden coins pass across the counter, the dragons on the 'face' sides seemingly mocking him, and desperately wishing that this were but a nightmare from which he will soon awaken, Garrick Ollivander wraps the wand and hands it over to Miss Evans.
And then it is gone, departed from his shop with its new owner, and for the first time in years Mr. Garrick Ollivander feels weak at the knees and almost collapses onto a stool, needing suddenly to be seated.
Merlin. The wand – the wand he was confident would never find an owner has just done exactly that – and what scares him more than the wand is the kind of witch or wizard that it would choose to wield it.
Whatever has happened to Miss Evans, no wonder the old willow wand had become so reluctant to serve her, if she has become such that that one is willing – and indeed eager from the sparks – to do so.
All that Garrick Ollivander can hope is that Miss Evans, whatever she intends, only does the best for society, because things might get very bleak if she does the worst.
Author Notes: (updated, 20th September 2013)
This is the last chapter, properly speaking, of this story. This story commenced with Severus Snape snapping his wand, and this chapter concludes with Lily Evans acquiring a new wand, and in between these two 'bookend events' various things have happened to Severus and Lily and to the dynamic between them. Logically, to my mind, this is the appropriate place to conclude this story, although there is the odd epilogue or so to follow, skipping ahead to look at some of the ongoing repercussions and aftermaths of events.
This chapter, as those who have been following the story for any time will have noticed, has been somewhat long in the coming, owing to long periods of lack of clue as to how to precisely proceed, interspersed with rewrites and rewrites of rewrites. (The scene between Gnaeus and Albus was the most rewritten scene to make the final cut, with at least three separate major rewrites, changing various aspects and emphasis of the wizards in their approaches to one another.) My thanks for the continued patience of most of those who have been waiting since 'On the Brink' was originally posted, with not much to report in this Alternate Universe in between, save for 'In Pursuit of Princes'.
I'm doubtful over whether 'obstupefacting' is a real English word, but it feels to me as if it ought to be. I have vague recollections of some character or other in a school Latin text saying 'obstupefactus sum', to express that he really and truly was utterly astonished and surprised. Anyway, it's used in this chapter in a negative context, to indicate that the Hogwarts governors found a complete lack of astonishment in the news of a Black hexing a muggle-born...
On with the notes in proper:
As one early reviewer has noticed, 'Alhazred' (the merchant who sold Ollivander the 'dragon heartstring') is the same as the name, in H.P. Lovecraft's works, of the author of The Necronomicon. In another Lovecraft reference, the tapestry Lily sees on Gnaeus' wall in the previous chapter, when she goes to breakfast, is of Nodens, battling some mythos related horror or other...
Lily herself reaches a final crucial tipping-point in her development when she accidentally performs legilimency on Severus, and sees first-hand his memories of the repeated humiliations served up to him at Hogwarts over almost five school years. Those push her over the edge into radicalisation, where she actively, consciously, wants to bring the headmaster down, almost irrespective of cost. This is the moment where she becomes a Lily who can several weeks later enquire without flinching if Severus plans to use Philosopher's Fire to burn down James Potter's ancestral home or Hogwarts itself? This is the moment where she becomes a Lily whom her willow wand starts to no longer 'recognise' and whom the wand that Ollivander has recently finished will be quite happy to work with.
It's possible that Lily's parents might not have taken the news of her pregnancy quite so badly if Lily had admitted that the father of her unborn child was Severus Snape (as opposed to someone she claimed she had a fling with, having got drunk at a disco), but in supplying a made-up father Lily was operating on the basis of their initial reaction to the news that she was even pregnant in the first place. She assumed that if she told them it was Severus that they'd do their best to stop her from ever going out to see him ever again, which she certainly didn't want to have to deal with.
Albus Dumbledore, with the increasing pressure he has been under (some of it self-imposed), has in this chapter taken catastrophic leave of his senses. And since he's too proud to delegate (or he doesn't trust others to do things right) this results in his personally taking increasingly wild decisions as events spiral more and more out of his control. (The message his brother sends him refers to a song, wherein the protagonist swallows increasingly improbable animals to try to deal with the consequences of the last animal she swallowed, which seems to me a fair metaphor for Albus' situation.) If only Albus would stop, before things become completely unmanageable... but of course he doesn't even pause to analyse what he's actually doing (or at least not until Fawkes finally 'calls' him on it, by which point it's too late).
Horace Slughorn gives his notice, once the exam results finally come out and he figures out that Albus messed around with the exam boards solely to get Severus Snape's potions result thrown out. Horace had been rather hopeful that Severus (who he feels had been unduly roughly treated) would get at least one OWL, thanks to the priority marking instructions Horace had passed on regarding the year's top pupils, and Albus' actions raise too many questions over the behaviour of the Hogwarts headmaster for Horace Slughorn to want to put up with said behaviour any more for longer than he has to. If it hadn't been unfair on the pupils, Horace would have been strongly tempted to walk out without bothering to work out a proper period of notice...
Gnaeus Octavian Prince basically drops by Albus' office because Albus has trespassed on 'his' territory, poking his nose around a business that Gnaeus owns and being so rude as to point his wand at a muggle whom Gnaeus employs. Gnaeus would have preferred Albus not to be aware that Gnaeus owns a majority share in Bingby & Cratchettall at all, but since Albus has shoved his nose in, Gnaeus considers it preferable that Albus be informed of his stake if that gets Albus to stop pestering the employees. And since he's there, Gnaeus messes around with Albus for his own amusement, including for the potential satisfaction of being able to say, later on, 'I told you so' on a couple of counts. Well, that and he does have a smidgin of respect for the man's duelling abilities, and intellect, but if only he'd focus on one or two priority issues instead of trying to do too much and ending up not doing anything of worth (to Gnaeus' mind) at all well. But given Albus' track-record, for recent years, Gnaeus considers that he's doing wizarding society a favour, really, if he gives events behind the scenes the odd helpful nudge here and there, so that at least the impending fall, when it happens, will be mercifully quick...
Gnaeus, when he makes his comment about disillusionment is actually referring to Lily Evans. Gnaeus doesn't know that she's already reached the final fatal tipping point, a couple of evenings prior to his trip to see Albus, but he's sufficiently certain of her direction of travel to be sure that at some point in the future, Albus Dumbledore may come to seriously regret his interactions involving Lily Evans. A very special kind of anger, contempt, and loathing can arise from the sense of betrayal of a once-devotee...
The toy/'illustrative device' with balls hanging in a row from parallel bars, which James Potter is messing with, in the scene in which he and Sirius feature is a 'Newton's Cradle'. The 'inflatable bladder' James ambushed the unsuspecting political expert with is a 'whoopee cushion'.
To the best of my knowledge, Philosopher's Fire is not a part of canon. (Nor does canon mention any magical participation in the historic siege of Syracuse of the third century BC.) The Greek and Roman witches and wizards of the era involved on the magical side of the siege of Syracuse 'covered up' from muggles the devastation the employment of Philosopher's Fire had caused to the magical quarters of the city, since – although the siege took place well before the Statute of Secrecy era – they were afraid of the potential repercussions against them if word got around that they had caused such destruction as took place.
For the record, the Flamels and Severus Snape are the only 'western' practitioners of magic I envision as capable (in this universe) of independently brewing Philosopher's fire, as of August 1976, although Lily has obviously seen it done and may have a quarter of an idea of what to do. The Flamels and Severus Snape are certainly the only ones with any idea of how to stop it, other than by (non-magically) applying large quantities of water and hoping, or just waiting for it to burn itself out.
Lily's getting a new wand (and the nature of the particular wand which she gets) is to some extent an artistic liberty on my part, intended to counterpoint the start of the story where Severus (the other side of the Severus/Lily partnership) snaps his wand and sets everything in this story in motion. And yet, writing this chapter, it did seem halfway credible to me that in some cases, where a dramatic turn around of character is occurring, a wand might become alienated from its witch/wizard owner. As of July, 2013, I have no idea how much Tom Marvolo Riddle paid for his wand in canon, but it seemed appropriate to me that it should have been the same amount that canon Harry Potter pays for the 'brother wand'.
I have no information from canon, as of July 2013, as to what designs may appear on wizarding world coinage. Galleons featuring dragons on at least one side seemed to me appropriate.
At least one correspondent, between my posting this chapter, and the addition of these notes, has commented feeling it's unfair that Lily gets a powerful wand (and is implied to one day become a head of a great house), and Severus gets 'nothing'. Yes, Lily has a wand which is in Mr. Ollivander's opinion potentially rather problematic, but Severus has had the imagination and intellect to re-engineer a secret lost for thousands of years. Severus has reasoned out the groundwork for a goblin rebellion (even if he doesn't have the leadership qualities to be able to take charge himself). And Severus has Lily, who complements some of his own weaknesses, with her strengths, and is so much more to him, too...
As a reminder, the 'supplemental pieces' for this story are:
* Reign of the Marauders (the end of Lily's fifth year at Hogwarts)
* Man for the Job (a brief piece, in which Mundungus Fletcher has a job interview)
* In Pursuit of Princes (in which Lord Voldemort wants Lucius Malfoy to try and find out for him if Gnaeus Octavian Prince is up to anything that Lord Voldemort ought to know about)
That was the last chapter, proper, of this story, and (revisions excepting) it's all over now, bar the odd epilogue.
Thank-you for reading.
Additional comment (September, 2013):
The shopping list of ingredients Severus sends Lily off to Diagon Alley to get has on it a number of key ingredients he is missing required for his Philosopher's Fire project, and a good many more that he doesn't need, to hide what he is after. If anyone is covertly monitoring Lily, he doesn't want what she's doing to seem unduly suspicious to such watchers, or to give away what is specifically on the recipe for what he actually wants to try to brew.
