Disclaimer: I do NOT own these characters or the world they live in. I make no money from this.

a/n - My immeasurable thanks go to Michelle, the self-proclaimed Lizzie Borden of the Beta-universe.

My considerable thanks go to Shana, who has hopefully settled into New Orleans with style.

Now, without further ado, I present the next piece of the puzzle, which has developed into this epic chapter. I hope you all enjoy.


Volition

Chapter 9

To Snape's near astonishment, the door stayed shut, which meant Hermione was gone. Relieved to be alone, he returned his interest to the potion vials, the ones he so longed to take.

Throughout their discussion, he felt his joints stiffen as his body attended to the dismal task of repairing itself. The predictable ache followed, no longer eased by the first dose of pain medicine. He could block out the resurgence of pain while he was conscious, but only action would put him out of his misery while he slept.

Thanks to the feeble lamplight, he saw that he had blindly taken two mugwort infusions and one willow from the stock shelf in the kitchen. He hoped they would be enough to serve his purpose.

After picking up the half-empty glass of Firewhisky, which he had neglected in Hermione's presence, he removed the stoppers from each vial with his thumb and drained all three into it. He deposited the empty vials on the side table while he drew circles in the air with the bottom of the glass, as a connoisseur might do before tasting. Of course, he merely sought to mix the swill.

Hesitating only long enough to smell the brew, which stank of alcohol and aspirin, Snape took a cautious sip. Though the liquor dulled the taste, the medicinal bitterness shoved to the forefront. There was just no way to make a pain reliever taste anything less than horrible.

With a few hurried gulps and the occasional grimace, he finished the concoction and refreshed the glass with undiluted liquor. He had to get as much sleep as possible, after all.

His freefall to the stage had done little more than add to the list of places on his body that hurt. Although the right side of his frame pained him more than the rest, it did not distract entirely from the soreness in his back or the slightly queasy fatigue that had more than settled in.

He welcomed the weariness as he might his own bed, if it had been vacant. He allowed the sickly dizziness to own him, to make him weak, solely because he knew that no one required anything more of him that evening. It was his turn to convalesce.

His legs had already given in to the exhaustion. If he chose to stand, he knew he would not be able to for long. His head throbbed as well, from Voldemort's second attack. The man had a vicious way of claiming a mind and it always left a mark, however transitory.

Snape could not imagine how the girl would learn enough in such a short time to defend against Voldemort's skills as a Legilimens. For a moment, Snape nearly stumbled down the path of conjecture, prepared to envision Hermione's demise, or more specifically, the erasure of her mind.

Instead, he ignored those pessimistic qualms. He planned to do his best to prepare her. If he were honest, of all the minds of all the students he had ever had the misfortune to teach, hers was the brightest. To have it wiped clean, for absolutely no purpose, was a waste. Furthermore, handing her memories to Voldemort would serve no function. She would become a walking corpse while Snape would be as good as dead.

Although the prospect of death sounded restful, at best, he knew it was but a wistful thought of his persecuted mind. He had a job to do. Furthermore, he had a worthwhile job to do. Revisiting his Professorial role promised a challenge, one he accepted willingly. If he succeeded, the girl would live. Hers would be the only life he had managed to save in over a year.

Snape had planned to speak with Hermione in the morning, after she rested, unhindered by her newest predicament. Apparently, she had not rested at all.

He had known the girl was the culprit as soon as the floorboards rattled beneath the old built-in. Only she might want something from him in the dead of night.

Besides her attempt at an apology, she mentioned no reason for her excursion besides having heard something. The news Snape imparted most certainly sidetracked her.

He had expected her to argue with him concerning the memorial, but she offered no protest. Apparently, she grasped the extent of the danger headed her way.

Delving into the idea of her possession just then seemed pointless. That detail was immaterial, for the time being. He would eventually have to tell her that Voldemort regarded her as little more than a souvenir. Snape would then explain that her possession was purely an illusion existing only in the minds of the mentally unstable.

That group of miscreants included Voldemort, any direct descendant of a Malfoy, the majority of Pure-blood families, a surprising number of Half-bloods, and the occasional wayward Muggle-born. It was a large group of witches and wizards, and Snape took pride in the fact that he disagreed with them all.

The analgesics were working well. The ache had receded from most of his body as the Firewhisky spread its appreciated numbness through his brain, but it had been a poor choice. As he emptied the most recent glass, a veritable flood of well-repressed memories began to surface in his mind. After reloading the glass, he reclined on the sofa, mindful of his injured leg and the dull soreness that persisted there. After another sip, he was well on his way to reminiscing.


The walk up the stairs allowed Hermione the time to realize exactly what was in store for her. Upon reaching the top step, she found it very difficult to enter the bedroom. In fact, she felt suddenly encumbered by some gravity far too powerful to resist. Perhaps her knees had given out. Either way, it was as though someone had pulled the pins from her knees when she slumped onto the top step, the enormity of what Snape had said truly settling in.

Occlumency was complicated. Adding an ever more convoluted variation to the skill was daunting, to say the least. Variable Memory, Snape called it. While researching Occlumency for Harry years before, she had read quite a few essays on the subject, and only one mentioned a more advance technique.

The study of Advanced Occlumency, as the essay labeled it, drove more people mad than not. It commanded superior discipline from its practitioners like no other, apart from Legilimency.

The essay went on to say that memories and thoughts, when tampered with, took on a mind of their own, in a sense. Without vigilant care, a person could lose themselves in between the real and the fabricated worlds.

Hermione had not understood what those details meant when she first read them as the article offered no textbook description of Advanced Occlumency, its effects, or its purposes. Now as she shivered on the landing, surprisingly cold and wholly petrified, she understood far more than she wished. She knew then that Variable Memory and Advanced Occlumency were one and the same.

Variable Memory surely involved a working knowledge of the rudimentary principles of Occlumency, knowledge she certainly did not possess. Basic Occlumency required years of study and hours of practice. A person did not decide one day to master it.

Hermione gasped to herself, her eyes the size of dinner plates. Her heart chose that moment to lodge in her throat, beating louder and faster than she thought humanly possible.

She did not have the luxury of years, months, or even days to prepare. She had Snape, an indefinite timeline, and the dubious stories Harry had told her of his Occlumency lessons.

How was she supposed to master something in half a day that she had never attempted before? She had been wrong. She was not going to die for the war. She was going to lose her mind for it. She realized then that she would much rather die.

She stopped the thought short, deciding that now was the time to refocus her attention elsewhere.


The memories surfaced effortlessly in Snape's mind, unlike each time he had sought to draw them out before. It was as though his first, simpler thoughts freed the rest, only to become lost in the resultant stampede. Powerless to stop them, he closed his eyes and prepared himself to brave the impending rush of history.

His mother's name--her maiden name--was Eileen Prince. She had descended from a very long, worryingly straight line of Pure-bloods. Her family tree possessed several, short branches to almost every Pure-blood family on Wizarding record.

Eileen's paternal grandmother, born a Goyle--which was not something the family admitted openly unless necessary--married a Prince. Eileen's maternal grandmother, born a Nott, married a Lestrange. Eileen's mother, born a Lestrange, married a Prince. Many of the same names appeared throughout the generations, as well as the occasional Black, Malfoy, and Macnair.

The intermarrying, a maneuver to maintain the purity of Wizarding blood, posed a problem every time a generation reached the age of consent and attempted to wed another Pure-blood. There were only so many to go around.

All the while, the purest of the pure further complicated matters with their reluctant reproduction. Most Pure-blood unions produced one child. There were rare exceptions to this rule, but the Princes were not one of them.

Eileen was an only child and the last direct descendant of the Prince lineage. Her parents spoiled her, sparing none of their collective wealth to entertain or educate her from an early age. Along with their indulgence came one demand. That she find a suitable Slytherin with whom to continue the bloodline while at Hogwarts. Her parents knew the Prince surname would die with them, but the continuation of the bloodline mattered more than the name.

Over the course of Eileen's first few years at school, she worried little about the burden her parents had bestowed upon her. Boarding school allowed her a great deal of distance from her family, a distance she grew to appreciate. The fireplace in the common room seemed the perfect place to stow her parents' letters, especially before she wasted her time reading them.

Her parents simply refused to believe that their daughter was one of the least attractive girls in her house. Though Pure-bloods put on a good show, they were just as critical of each other as they were of everyone else. However, they were often blind to their own shortcomings.

Given that Eileen had inherited her mother's long, pale face and her father's heavy brow, she appeared cross even when she was at ease. A mop of stringy, deep brown hair added to the illusion of ugliness. After many a failed attempt with shampoos, soaps, and charms to alter her appearance, she accepted her fate as a plain, ungainly girl.

She busied herself with clubs and schoolwork, distracted herself from the lack of friendship from her schoolmates and her failure to put forth the proper effort to create any alliances. Potions class took most of her attention, her ability to create and invent allowing her to feel confident if only for one hour or so every day. When she was not adding notations to her Potions textbook, she was practicing her other love, Gobstones.

Solely because of her skill, her fellow members of the team elected Eileen Captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones Team toward the beginning of her fifth year. Around this same time, her parents began sending her a monthly allowance of five Galleons, quite a lot in those days, along with their strangely motivational letters.

Their letters always preached at length about her obligation. They specified boys who she should get to know. Perhaps get to know very well. They told of parents who were thrilled about the prospect of a Pure-blood bride for their scarcely pubescent Pure-blood son.

Eileen found it all dreadfully ridiculous. In her mind, the world did not hinge on her finding a mate, or on perpetuating bloodlines. She was still a child, and wanted to continue as one for a while longer.

Although the transformation took place gradually, agonizingly so, Eileen grew out of her gracelessness to an extent over the course of her school career. Not surprisingly, the stigma of the awkward girl she had been throughout her early years, and the clumsy girl she still was, stuck with her as though she was destined to remain the outsider forever.

When her seventh year was nearly over, Eileen had grown somewhat tall and quite slender. Now that she had grown into her long face, it fit quite well with her thin build. She developed very late, having no need for the undergarments her fellow roommates had been wearing for years until she was nearly seventeen.

Her hair seemed to understand the other changes and, if she washed it everyday, it resembled actual hair instead of its natural appearance as a grubby mop head. Sometimes, she even managed to force her bangs to take on a bit of a curl, hiding the heavy forehead she had learned long ago not to dwell on.

By then, Eileen looked quite normal, which seemed a vast improvement from ugly. Even so, she seemed incapable of attracting a Pure-blood, or any-blood, for that matter. Her Hogwarts days nearly over, she was still without a suitor. In spite of everything, she did not view this as a set back.

Her parents' constant needling about her personal life had become nothing more than a mosquito's relentless buzzing. She could disregard it, shoo it away with a casual wave of her hand as long as she wished, because she had become accustomed to it over the years. As of yet, it was harmless. However, somewhere deep down, Eileen knew it was something that would come back to bite her in the end.

After Headmaster Dippet dismissed her class for the last time from the Great Hall, she returned to the manor, prepared to face the inevitable disappointment of her parents. Even though she earned a NEWT in every subject she had tested for, her parents refused to recognize that as success.

They took her failure to seek out a mate, like a well-trained brood mare, as a personal insult. More times than she cared to count, they told her that she had intentionally disobeyed them, that she had put little to no energy into her appearance, into attracting a boy from one of the more prestigious families. They vowed--more to themselves than to her--that Eileen would be married and out of their house by the end of the summer.

To achieve their objective, Eileen's parents arranged many a social gathering during the first few weeks of that summer. They goaded her toward every available Pure-blood bachelor, both young and old. At first, the unending procession of bachelors proved entertaining.

Eileen found the cavalcade of men oddly amusing as they feigned interest in her. Some looked her up and down as though she were a racing broom they might consider purchasing if she had the right kind of Cushioning Charm. Others deemed her unworthy from the start.

Many of the younger men had their pick of the prettiest or wealthiest available witches. Eileen was not pretty, nor was she a member of one the most affluent families. She was mediocre, in every sense of the word, by Pure-blood standards.

The men who did show an interest in her were usually the oldest of the lot. They were not rich men who could have bought a bride if necessary. They were also not terribly handsome.

One such man strode up to Eileen during a garden party at the Malfoy estate, took her hand, and told her that she would do if none of the other girls would have him. Eileen explained to him that she was not a sandwich, that she was not about to tolerate his referring to her as leftovers, and quietly charmed the seam on the rear of his trousers to rip the next time he chose to take a seat.

The man's eventual embarrassment, or baring of his arse, could not elevate Eileen's already dwindling self-esteem. She felt cheapened every time she dressed herself up to do her parents' bidding and prance about for the men they presented to her.

Eventually, she could no longer cheer herself up before, during, or after the numerous parties she lumbered through in search of a suitable match. Luckily, she still held the power of veto, which meant she could say yes or no to anyone. Since she was not interested in her parents' designs for her, she consistently said no.

Eileen wanted to continue her studies and ultimately contribute something meaningful to Wizarding society, besides a flock of Slytherin's finest. The longer she participated in the charade, the more confined she felt.

There were many times, shut up in the palatial room she called her own, when she wondered if the next step would be to cage her up so the men could view her in her natural habitat, then signal their approval with a thumbs up or thumbs down. She did not feel like a princess in a glass case, but like an insect trapped behind a windowpane, trying desperately to break free, but too stupid to figure out exactly how.

In mid-August, her parents confirmed her worst fears, although there was not an actual cage involved. As though all hope had been lost, they began to discuss arranged marriages. Their decision threw Eileen from her complacent denial into all out desolation. Her parents were prepared to coerce her into a marriage, any suitable marriage, perhaps with a distant relative, or with a not-so-distant relative. The idea sickened her.

She desperately wanted something else, something simpler. She wanted to make her own decisions, think her own thoughts. She could not do so with parents who always spoke for her, or at her. Of course, she never spoke for herself, either.

Eileen stopped attending the parties while her parents sought out a deal with the highest bidder. Her parents had yet to mention a dowry, but she was sure one was likely to exchange hands.

Unable to accept the current state of affairs, when the word marriage became synonymous in her mind with the word prison, Eileen began to sneak away to the small Muggle towns that dotted the countryside near the Prince's manor. She craved a setting where people would not look down on her, where they would not judge her. She like the anonymity these hamlets provided. No one knew her, not even by association. Therefore, they all but ignored her, which she much preferred to the company of her own family.

Two weeks into the month of August, she happened upon the meandering stream that wound its way along the edge of a cobbled road called Spinner's End. The stream was the quietest place she had ever visited. The trees seemed to cease their swaying while she listened to the soft voice of the water and reveled in the tranquility that came in the absence of all things magical. From then on, that was where she went to escape.

Even though the stream presented her first safe haven since Hogwarts, it also allowed her a peaceful place to think. Confronted with the thought of an arranged marriage, she almost wished she had accepted the hand of one of the previous men, even one of the loathsome ones. At least then, she would have had a say in the matter.

Some nights, she managed to forget the troubles assailing her and relish the utter silence that surrounded her. Other nights, she wrapped herself in her cloak and wept hopeless, desperate tears, praying that something, anything would deliver her from the constraints of her family legacy. On the last day of August, Eileen received a reply, of sorts.

She was spending another evening in her tranquil hideaway, tightly wrapped in her cloak, watching the current turn the reflected moonlight into threads of silver. She heard what she thought was an animal seeking refuge in the brush before she toppled over onto the ground.

Lying atop her was a very surprised, and now very amused, man. His laugh, so lighthearted and cheerful, eased her initial fright and replaced it with a tentative smile.

While they lay sprawled on the grass, Eileen apologized profusely for tripping him. The man apologized for intruding upon her evening. He explained that he sometimes ambled along the stream instead of staying to the main road, which led to his house.

Thoroughly embarrassed, still lying in a tangle on the grass, Eileen invited the stranger to sit with her. The question escaped her lips before she could check it. Her loneliness burst forth and screamed for company. The scream, merely a timid question, sounded much louder and brasher to her ears.

She denied that her offer had anything to do with his windswept, black hair, or his eyes that amazed her when she first looked into them, eyes that were like still water reflecting the moonless, starless, blackest sky.

To her disbelief, the man smiled and politely accepted her invitation. After righting themselves, they exchanged another round of apologies. The man held out his hand and introduced himself as Tobias Snape. Eileen hurried to take his hand and introduced herself, disclosing only her first name.

A hazy silence followed, the kind laden with the uncertainties of what should happen next. Eileen had very little experience with polite conversation that was not, in some way, about magic. She wished then that she knew more facts about the Muggle world, but Tobias soon opened the conversation.

At first, he spoke of nothing in particular. The peach-colored wildflowers proved a successful topic, as did the hollow tree across the stream. They spent quite some time debating how many owls had taken up roost in it. They never could decide upon a number.

He told stories of his work in detail, which may well have been in a foreign language, because she understood none of them. She discovered quickly that friendly conversation was just as foreign to her as the Muggle world, so she smiled and nodded often.

When not staring at her knees, Eileen tried to look at her new friend. Unfortunately, every time she did, she felt the heat from a thousand suns on her cheeks. Then she giggled. She suddenly hated the way she sounded when she laughed. She thought it sounded childish, and for some reason, she did not want him to perceive her as childish.

Much to Eileen's relief, he seemed unexpectedly reticent as well. When he was not wearing a half-smile that made him look slightly drunk, he was studying the ground and fidgeting with the overgrown weeds.

When a lull in the conversation struck, Eileen asked after his family. Tobias beamed at her for a second, then commenced with beheading the weeds while he spoke candidly about his parents.

His father had passed away many years before, so he remembered little of the man. His mother had lived only long enough to see him enter secondary school. The only possession they left him was their modest house on Spinner's End. He had been on his way there when he nearly broke his neck by stumbling over her.

They wiled away the rest of that evening, and part of the next morning, chatting about nothing in particular. She said nothing of being a witch, and Tobias asked nothing about her vague answers to his questions.

When the sky to the east turned pale pink, Eileen jumped to her feet, fearfully aware of the time. She apologized, adding that she had to get home before her parents found her gone. Tobias seemed to understand. Knowing she would perhaps never see him again, and saddened by the notion, she waved him goodbye. Before he could climb to his feet, she thanked him and ran into the shadows of the trees where she Disapparated.

The following evening, Eileen returned to her most favorite place, burdened with the same worries that kept her from sleeping a wink. Why had the man stayed with her? He could have left at any time, laughed at her like so many before. Those thoughts still churned in her head when she stepped out from the trees and found Tobias, lying on his back in the grass.

She stopped dead where she stood. The man with the spectacular eyes, long legs and, as she noticed then, a rather large nose was either napping or waiting for her. A bird announced its presence behind her, causing Tobias' head to snap up from the ground. His eyes fell upon her and her dumbfounded expression when his half-smile appeared. Then he asked if she would join him on the grass and, of course, she did.

Every evening Eileen visited the stream and every evening Tobias awaited her there. She began to wonder if she was imagining him, if her harassed mind had invented the thoughtful man who was genuinely interested in her company. Not one to spoil her own hallucination, she continued to meet him every night and chat about things she knew nothing about just to be with him.

Eileen felt silly, because the more time she spent with Tobias, the more nervous she became. She was dreadfully aware of his hands as they demolished the weeds between them, mindful of how close they were to her leg.

Sometimes she could look at him when he laughed at some comment she made and laugh with him, like when she let a remark about a house-elf slip. Other times, when he met her gaze, she suffered those thousand suns on her cheeks again and knew something akin to embarrassment. She was unsure exactly what it meant when her stomach twinged as though she had just swallowed a live grasshopper. Nevertheless, the more it happened, the more she enjoyed their nightly meetings at the stream.

Tobias never questioned her reluctance to socialize during the day or to venture beyond the banks of the stream. Her parents knew too many people in the adjacent communities, both Muggle and otherwise. She could not permit anyone to see her away from home, most of all with Tobias. Certainly not when summer had come and gone and her parents had not found a Pure-blood that they approved of to marry her.

Eileen found it easier to overlook her troubles at home now that she had Tobias to think about while she passed the time between their encounters locked in her room. She daydreamed that he liked her, that he could love her, but she soon stopped wondering about such things.

It was the first day of October when Tobias showed up with a treacle tart for the two to share. A few days later, he brought an entire feast of luncheon meats and bread, fruit, and a lovely, though sour, bottle of wine. She had never been on a date, let alone had a boyfriend, so she remained blissfully ignorant of Tobias' intentions until after they had finished the wine. Tobias leaned in during one of her tipsy laughs and kissed her.

Thankfully, she never went into detail when recounting this part of the story, but she did express how beautiful Tobias made her feel just by liking her, even if she knew better.

Eileen and Tobias continued dating, if one would call it that, only at night and only along the stream. Tobias claimed to have nothing better to do than sit with her, talk with her, be with her. He told her stories of his friends, of their many tribulations with the girls they courted. He told her how different she was from any girl he had ever known. She almost winced at that because she knew just how different she was.

Toward the end of October, Tobias asked to meet her family. She was hesitant, mindful of her family's plans for her and the consequences she faced if she deviated from them in any way.

She stalled him. She deferred in every possible way, without resorting to lies. To her annoyance, Tobias was not a man to take someday as an answer. When she could delay no longer, when the guilt of keeping the secret from him hurt more than the knowledge itself, she told him the entire outlandish and wholly implausible story of the Magical world. Initially, Tobias suggested that, perhaps, she was mad with fever.

Eileen laughed away his disbelief and the hand he had testing her forehead. She had her wand with her and, with the burden of the secret lifted, she proceeded to turn her hair every imaginable color. She summoned stones and sticks from across the stream. She levitated a moldering log, and then Tobias himself, to prove that she was not a lunatic. He took surprisingly little convincing.

After that, she felt secure enough to tell Tobias of her family, of every detail surrounding her responsibility as a Pure-blood. Tobias seemed angry, the only anger she had ever seen in him, when he told her that he would not stand aside while she married another.

Rising swiftly to his feet, Tobias asked her to run away with him, to live with him. To Eileen, the proposition was outlandish, apart from impossible. Her parents would use every available magical resource. They would find her and Tobias, and they would not take mercy on him as they would her, their only child. She knew that much.

Tobias persisted, visibly frustrated. He implored her to listen, to believe that she was not property that her parents could buy and sell. He said that she would have him to protect her, that he would marry her, if she would have him. Then he bravely offered his hand to help her up from the ground and lead her away from the only life that she had ever known.

Shocked by his proposal, Eileen could not answer. She went over the countless scenarios of what might happen to them both. There was no way to explain to him the danger of his request. From the stubborn look on his face, she wondered if the threat of death would even faze him.

Eileen did not possess the will to deny Tobias, not when he offered her salvation so honestly and honorably, asking for no more than her trust. She took his hand and never bothered to look back. She placed all her trust in a man that she hardly knew. She did not know yet if she loved him, but she believed that he would care for her. She could not say the same for any Pure-blood she had ever known.

After that night, Eileen never willingly returned to her family. She returned with Tobias to his house, a rundown two-story at the end of Spinner's End. A few weeks later, in an unofficial ceremony solemnized by the local minister, Eileen and Tobias married in secret from both the Magical and Muggle worlds.

She assumed life as a Muggle and began to make a home for them in the house they now shared. Tobias provided their main source of income working at the Mill. Wanting to contribute in some way to the household, Eileen used her knowledge of plants and their magical properties to make various brews for the locals.

Most often, Tobias delivered the potions for her. When he was unable, she risked casting a glamour to disguise her looks so she could make the deliveries herself. From the very first day she left her family, she used her wand only for the simplest of magic. Otherwise, she endangered Tobias and herself. She knew the Ministry of Magic could trace such things and she was not willing to take the risk.

Eileen's fear, which closely resembled paranoia at first, faded slowly as she relaxed into her new life. It was a clumsy transition at first. They learned more than they probably wanted to know about each other in such close quarters. They came to know each other as enemies when disagreements sprang up, and as husband and wife in between. However, it was more than she ever dreamed.

As his wife, she had opinions and rules of her own. She had her own life, her own home, and eventually a love for Tobias that was more magical than any silly incantation. He cared for her, just as she was, and she would not change that for the world.

By their first anniversary, Eileen was very content, as well as very pregnant. An entire year had passed without so much as a hint that her parents were searching for her, but that warning came soon enough. Even with the advantage of magic, it took them an entire year to find her. When they did, they were not pleased about her choice of lifestyle.

Tobias was at work when Eileen heard the knock on the door. Thinking it was another of the town's folk bringing by another bundle of baby clothes, she answered it.

Her father stood on the other side, his expression as cold and disapproving as she remembered. He took one look at her swollen belly and grimaced. Thunderstruck, Eileen stood in the doorway, employing the door itself to support her weakened knees. She knew he would not kill her. She was carrying a child, the child her mother and father had sought since Eileen herself was born. She was not so sure that he would spare Tobias should he unexpectedly return home.

Shaking off a bit of her shock, Eileen invited her father inside. He winced as though she had asked him something disgusting. Instead, he thrust a copy of the Daily Prophet at her. She took it and scanned the pages, concerned that someone she had known had died. Those worries were dispelled when, wide-eyed with disbelief, she found a tiny marriage announcement on the very last page.

She looked to her father for an explanation. He remained as impassive as ever. He said that she had made her decision and, solely because she had obviously consummated the union, they would not contest it. All they asked was that they publish another announcement when the child was born so that the rest of the Wizarding community would know how filthy and deceitful their only daughter had been.

Eileen did not bother to explain to him that she did not care what the Pure-blood community thought of her, her husband, or her child, not in the same way her mother and father did anyhow. She merely nodded, thanked him, and told him that she would.

Without so much as a wave, her father turned to leave. Eileen blurted out that she would let them know when the baby was born. Without looking back, he told her not to bother, that they would read it in the paper along with all her other mistakes.

Eileen never discussed the encounter with Tobias. She preferred that he continue to believe that they had evaded discovery. Eileen preferred to believe that as well, but her less than pleasant exchange with her father had robbed her of the luxury.

Barely a week into the New Year, the baby boy arrived. He was so tiny, helpless, and absolutely gorgeous that she fell in love with him and his father all over again.

They named the child Severus, after Tobias' grandfather. Eileen sent the owl with the announcement off to the Prophet, while Tobias was at work, roughly a week later. As the owl disappeared in the distance, she had the overwhelming sense that something would go terribly wrong very soon.

Deciding she was paranoid, Eileen returned to her new son, cooing softly in his bassinet. No matter what happened, She and Tobias planned to provide him a peaceful, happy beginning in their markedly Muggle home. She did not care to know anything more than that.


Hermione was no longer tired, not in the slightest. She was sick with panic. She wanted a cigarette. That was what people did. They smoked and paced. She felt the need to smoke and pace. It was not as though her lungs mattered now, not if she was going to lose her mind, in every literal sense.

She pulled back her sleeve and lit her wand. It was barely half past three in the morning. She knew that she needed sleep, but the drive to do so was now sufficiently gone.

Waiting became her only option. Snape surely needed his rest. The fact that he had fallen asleep during the middle part of the day suggested that he had suffered a rough night, no doubt because of her. The couch probably was not a very comfortable place to sleep, but it was probably where he was since he had relinquished his own bed.

Since Snape had launched so quickly into the dilemma, she forgot to ask about his evening. He probably would have admonished her for asking. He would have said that it was none of her business, and he would have been right.

He was not injured. Of course, the fact that he did not have blood on his face meant nothing. The Cruciatus Curse left no obvious, physical wounds.

Another check of her watch proved that half an hour had passed. She would give him two hours. Hermione briefly considered a shower and a change of clothes.

Although a hot shower sounded tempting, the thought of disrobing and exposing her already frigid skin to the almost glacial air made her shiver even more. Instead, she chose to stick with the clothes she had been wearing all day. If she could feel the chill through her robe and the substantial sweater beneath, then nothing was going to warm her up.

Vaguely rubbing her hands together to stimulate circulation, she glanced at her watch again. Still two hours to go. Six o'clock was not terribly early, but it was still quite early. That would leave…well…she did not know how long.

Snape had not mentioned what time they were to leave, just that it would be before dinner. She hoped that dinner meant the last meal of the day. She had heard people refer to a late lunch as dinner. She prayed he meant the evening meal.


Snape could hardly remember the happiness of his early childhood. Now, that blissful time burned brilliantly before his mind's eye. He had been a little boy who knew nothing of worry and knew even less of magic. Having only a glimpse of that life made him hate the events that followed all the more.

Five years passed before Eileen's past caught up with her. Severus was playing in the living room when the front door crashed open and a man in a very long coat stepped, uninvited, into the house.

Severus stood frozen, not in fear, but in the absence of it. He had no reason to be afraid, but he had every reason to be curious about the towering man wrapped in layers of clothing.

When Eileen saw her father standing over her child, she did what any mother would. She ran forward to protect her son. Before his mother reached him, confused by the horror on her face, Severus felt the smack of the man's hand just before he went tumbling to the floor.

Severus caught himself on the seat of a chair, and cowered near the floor, while the man began to scream at his mother. Severus understood none of what the man said, but he saw his mother begin to cry. As soon as she did, the man slapped her across the face. Severus launched himself at the man, in a feeble attempt to protect her, but his tiny fists were little use against the very tall man in the long robes.

Severus followed their argument into the kitchen, flailing his arms in vain the entire way. The man carelessly swung an arm and sent Severus straight to the floor. He could only look on, now mesmerized by fear, as the man backed his mother against the wall.

To his relief, Severus heard his father yell from in the sitting room. The tall man sent a horrifying ball of light toward the doorway. Severus' father fell quiet.

The tall man then seized Severus' arm and dragged him out of the kitchen. Along the way, he saw his father lying on the floor in the sitting room, wearing the lifeless mask that Severus would later associate with Avada Kedavra.

Severus kicked, screamed, and cried the confused tears that only a little boy could muster as the tall man dragged him from the house. Once outside, he watched in shock as three cloaked figures entered the house and pulled his mother out, as well. She fought against them to no more avail than he had.

The man plucked Severus from the ground like a rag doll, and in a matter of seconds, both were flying through the air. Severus was scared into submission as the force of the air both pushed and pulled them along.

He remembered closing his eyes, which felt like they might jump from their sockets. He did not understand what was happening to him. Most of all, he wanted to go home.

When the frightening journey ended, when the wind stopped, Severus opened his eyes for no other reason than to search for his mother. What he saw was a parlor adorned with furniture that he was unable to comprehend at the time.

Garish wall hangings, end tables adorned with gold leaf, a gleaming, golden oak floor. He had never seen such opulence in his life. The room vaguely reminded him of the church his parents had taken him to, where everything always seemed freshly polished and scrubbed within an inch of its life. A few people milled about the room, looking upon him with prying eyes.

The man set Severus gingerly to the floor. He hurried to seek the shelter of his mother and escape those curious eyes. Through all the commotion, he heard his mother's voice calling to him. He wove frantically between the legs of the people who seemed intent on keeping him from her.

When Severus broke through the crowd, Eileen pulled free of her captors and stopped yelling. He did not stop running until he reached her. She lifted him into her arms where he hid his face in her hair, hid from the people that were beginning to surround them.

Shortly thereafter, the man and his cloaked companions ushered Severus and his mother into another stately, excessively sanitary room. The door shut, leaving them alone together.

Severus spent that night in his mother's arms, too nervous to sleep, while she told him, over and over again, that everything would be all right. That, as far as Snape could tell, was the only lie that she ever spoke to him.


Hermione gave up checking her watch for the second time that evening, or morning, and let the good side of her head thud against the wall. How could Snape have told her that kind of thing and then sent her off to bed? Was he mental? She hated to think what his bedtime stories sounded like. However, he also said that she needed to rest. That was easy enough for him to say.

She not only had dinner at the Riddle house to fear, but the upcoming lessons with Snape, as well. What kinds of things would Variable Memory entail? Would she experience the nightmares that plagued Harry when he had tried to learn Occlumency all those years before? Was Snape planning to torment her as he had tormented Harry? Again, having scared herself silly, Hermione changed her own subject.

Sleep still sounded like a foreign thing. She had not thought to ask Snape for another potion, but she was not keen on trying another after the ordeal associated with the last. She had no choice but to wait.

It was now a quarter past four, according to her umpteenth glance at her watch. At least time had not stopped completely.


The next morning, the towering man returned to look in on Severus and his mother, this time accompanied by a matronly woman who kept referring to herself as Grandmother. They insisted that Severus come out and meet all of the people who had come to the house just to see him.

He was too small to protest. His mother raised no argument from the bed where she lay, nearly motionless, as she had been all morning. Snape later attributed her catatonia to some sort of curse on his grandfather's part. Nevertheless, that was the day Snape entered the Wizarding world.

Too young to know better, the world instantly fascinated him. Again, what should have frightened, instead, truly enthralled him. The magical world was a glorious one, and it offered his first chance to distract himself.

His grandparents' first gift to him was a wand. It was old, perhaps passed down through several generations, and within ten minutes, Snape had showered ever piece of furniture in the room with green and white sparks. Soon after, his grandparents tossed him out of the house and into the back garden to prevent any more furniture from going up in flames.

The more he played with his newfound toy, the more he could look past the trauma he had suffered. He could imagine his life before magic or his life after magic as some kind of dream, or nightmare. He was simply too young to know any different.

After Snape's first few months at the manor, his grandfather instigated the first of his countless training sessions. The old man was determined to have Snape prepared to enter Hogwarts. His grandfather said that he would not have a Blood Traitor for a daughter and an incompetent, Half-blood grandson. If Snape had to be a Half-blood, then he was going to be a proficient one.

Defensive hexes, offensive curses, shield charms--Snape's grandfather spared no complexity level when it came to 'catching the boy up', as he called it. Endless, tedious hours were devoted to those lessons every single day. One spell could take hours, or all day, but Snape had to perform the spell or the curse until he got it right. Only then did the old man allow Snape to leave the room. He missed many a meal in the process.

If Snape took too long with a particular assignment, his grandfather sometimes mumbled insults under his breath that Snape often misunderstood when he was younger. It took years for him to learn that Mudblood was an insult, as was Half-breed, and Bastard.

Eventually, Snape began studying alone in the massive library where he discovered that the spells his grandfather taught centered on the practice of Dark Magic. Although Snape questioned why this was, he never did so aloud.

It was through these studies that he learned an assortment of practical magic, as well. While his grandfather taught Snape to fight dirty, he taught himself to be self-sufficient. Rudimentary spells. These came in handy, especially when he did not feel like leaving his room, the one his grandparents had prepared for him, away from the influence of his mother.

Against his grandparent's wishes, Snape visited his mother's room daily. She ignored his attempts to speak with her about his grandparents. Instead, she might comment about his worsening posture or the state of his hair if he had let it go too long between washings. That would forever be the extent of her motherly nagging, absent remarks made while vying to change the subject.

She always refused any attempt he made to coax her out. He asked her to walk with him, to come see something random in the house that he wanted to show her for no other reason than to get her out of that room, but she emphatically refused.

She took her meals in her room, and asked Snape to bring her nothing. She had created a strange relationship with the house-elves, who she never spoke with directly. She would make a verbal request for something, almost in prayer. Then, whatever she had requested, the house-elves provided. She made similar prayers to ask that the house-elves stop attempting to clean. She preferred to tidy up herself, bustling about the room as though she had a household to run.

She was so disengaged psychologically that she appeared happy for a number of years. During the several years before Snape left for school, he wondered if her courage was for his sake, or if she had simply gone mad. Considering that she allowed her parents, whom she had fled, to raise her only child, he always assumed the latter.

He was around ten years of age when she stopped bothering with much of anything. She took up a chair next to the one window in her room that looked out on the back garden and stayed there most of every day.

Snape continued his visits although she rarely spoke, to him or the house-elves. Her eyes focused somewhere on the other side of the glass, she muttered to herself on occasion. Utterly helpless, Snape watched her age before her time in the year before he went off to school. She stopped asking for everything, including food. It was as though she had given up what little control her parents permitted her to have.

Unable to stand idly by, Snape attempted to reawaken her. He had one fuzzy recollection of her working in a garden, so he brought her flowers in the temperate months, and conjured them other times. He hoped that seeing them would comfort her or inspire her, remind her that she was not alone.

On a sunny afternoon in July, the summer before he went off to school, he Vanished the glass from the window to allow that unhindered sunshine to touch her skin. She recoiled from it as though it were poisonous. She screamed, shrieked unintelligible things at him, for the first time in his life. That turned out to be his last attempt to save her.

Everyday when Snape arrived, she looked terribly sad, until a few weeks before the beginning of term at Hogwarts. Snape presented her with his acceptance letter, although he did not expect her to read it. He expected her to gaze out her window and listen to him--or not, he was never sure--while he went on and on about his new books and his brand new wand he had just gotten from Ollivander's the day before.

To his absolute astonishment, she took the letter from his outstretched hand, appeared to read it, and even seemed to don a smile for a flash of a second. Then, without letting go of the letter, she began to speak the first coherent words that had come from her mouth in years. Paralyzed by shock and unqualified curiosity, Snape sat at her side for hours just listening.

Her voice unnaturally listless, she chronicled her life for him. Whenever she recounted the events of meeting his father, he could see a trace of the woman she had been, the woman he could barely recall. He took solace in the fact that some remnant of her survived behind her vacant eyes.

Snape felt as though he had heard those stories every single day of his life by the end of those weeks, but he sat through each rendition. He was unsure if she realized she repeated herself, but he did not have the heart to tell her.

She never embellished the stories. She always told them in a detached fashion that allowed Snape to form his own conclusions regarding his father and the family that had murdered him, even if she never used the word murder.

Twice, she experienced a mere instant of lucidity. It was during those moments that she impressed upon him to act in whatever fashion necessary, while in his grandparents' presence, to do whatever he had to do in order to finish school. She emphasized that neither his grandparents, nor anyone else, could mold him into anything but the man he chose to be. Volition, she called it. He had free will and no one, Magical or otherwise, had the power take that away from him.

That was easy for her to say while holed up in that room, the last one she would ever see. Snape, on the other hand, had to face the outside world alone.

Throughout what Snape thought of as the Wizarding years of his childhood, his grandparents kept him sequestered from other children. He was supposed to concentrate on his training. Consequently, he knew no one when he entered school. Although, his grandparents certainly bragged about the training itself.

They told anyone willing to listen that Snape had taken it upon himself to delve into the Dark Arts. That he turned out to be a natural. That perhaps he would amount to something besides a worthless Half-blood, because he was a Half-blood Prince, after all.

Mere weeks into his first year, the word of his prowess with the Dark Arts spread through the school like a plague. This alienated him almost instantly from all the students except those in his own house, Slytherin.

Snape willed the Sorting Hat to put him there, wishing to both appease and please his grandfather. He lived to regret that decision. He was scrawny, and possessed no social skills to speak of. He was not an ideal Slytherin, neither by blood nor charisma.

Isolated yet again, he bricked himself in out of habit. Aside from his schoolwork, he carried on friendless and purposeless for a few months, until the self-entitled Marauders tapped him to be the newest target of their collective torment.

Their senselessness kept him alert and distracted enough to overlook his own social weaknesses. He survived year after year, slur after hex after insult and injury. They humiliated him. They tried to outsmart him. They nearly killed him with a werewolf. Lupin, the Martyr, Snape thought drearily. He wondered now if he should have let them.

Nevertheless, he trudged diligently through all seven years until the day he had been waiting for had nearly arrived. However, a few weeks before the conclusion of his seventh year, Snape received the letter from his grandfather. It brought congratulations on his completion of school along with the news of his mother death. She had passed away in the night.

Snape was certain that his grandparents aided the process, or that she took her own life. He stared at the words for a long time, unable to digest them. He had no one with which to share his misery, to express his sorrow. His grandparents would never speak of her again. There was no funeral. It was as if she had never existed.

With no one to remind him of it, Snape successfully ignored the news while at school. He pretended it had not happened. He managed the last few weeks of school without once losing his rigorous hold on his emotions.

When Headmaster Dumbledore dismissed the seventh year class from the Great Hall for the last time, Snape had accomplished the one thing that his mother asked of him. Now, he had nothing to tie him to those people he had been forced to call grandparents for so many years.

As soon as Snape arrived at the Prince's manor, his grandfather offered him a large sum of gold as a reward for his achievement. Though it sickened Snape to do so, he took the money, if only to enable a life separate from theirs.

No sooner than he took possession of the sac of Galleons, Snape called a meeting with his grandfather. After a few well-worded threats on the old man's life, and a few well-placed curses sent at the wall behind the old man's head, Snape walked away from the house a free man.

He then undertook the challenge of finding the house on Spinner's End. This task turned out to be much easier than he anticipated. The bank had taken over the house many years before. The house had been vacant for over a decade, without anyone to tend to it or the accumulated filth.

The bank thought very highly of the unkempt structure. It took most of the gold Snape had exchanged to buy the old place, but he was glad to hand over the money. In a sense, his grandparents had returned part of what they had stolen from him years before.

Aside from the study, Snape changed nothing about the house, not even the dust. Buried beneath the dust was his childhood--the one lived by that other boy in another life. Now, the house would be his home.

Before spending his first night in his old home, Snape went down to the stream that his mother had spoken of at length. The stream had become nothing more than a trickle. The city workers had diverted much of its flow to power the mill. A thin line of water wound its feeble way at the very bottom of the steep streambed. It seemed so poetic to him at the time. He had felt like that water, restricted and distant, most of his life.

There on the bank, wondering involuntarily if he was near the same place his parents had met years before, Snape spoke his final words of farewell to his mother and a few words to the father he had barely known. He promised them that he would make his choices wisely. That he would never allow the beliefs of others to bend his will. That he would work hard to make them proud.

Once settled into his old home, Snape enrolled in a Muggle university in London and began life as an anonymous student. There were no stigmas there attached to his name or reputation. There were no magical lines drawn between class and purity of blood.

Snape made friends at university, not many, but friends, nonetheless. Now that he controlled his direction, his life flowed along quite nicely, and quietly.

He was midway through his second semester when Albus Dumbledore showed up at Snape's house with the proposition. The old man had a favor to ask. A favor that he believed only Snape could deliver.

Voldemort had stepped up his recruitment efforts. He was building an army such that the Wizarding World had never seen. Albus had formed a plan to undermine Voldemort's efforts.

The plan required finding a man willing to infiltrate the Death Eaters and, with luck, become a trusted member. This plan would take years to execute. Albus explained that no one could know of this man's affiliation. The man would work as both spy and saboteur for the Order of the Phoenix. Even those within the Order would not be privy of the situation for their own safety and the safety of the spy.

It was imperative the man who accepted the task maintain his cover under any and all circumstances, which included facing death, if necessary. Furthermore, if asked, Albus would lie to anyone in order to maintain the deception.

That autumn day, swept with an obligation to protect perfect strangers from the same fate suffered by his parents, Snape accepted the assignment with all the bravado of a man who had no inkling of what he was getting into. Not quite eighteen years old, he believed in the invincibility of youth, as well as all the other misperceptions housed by his naïve, underdeveloped brain. He had no way to know then just how much his decision would shape the next half of his life.

He never returned to university. He had neither the time nor the inclination. He understood that he would have to focus on the war for several years, and then he would return to his house and his studies. That was the plan, until the Prophecy.

Though the Prophecy nearly killed him, as well as Frank and Alice Longbottom, it had killed James and Lily Potter.

Those events sealed Snape's prolonged obligation to the war. Trapped by the illusion of evil he had fashioned around himself, a belief that had become too widespread to deny, Snape took Albus' word that Voldemort would return.

He accepted Albus' offer of Master of Potions and Head of Slytherin House, both positions left vacant by Professor Slughorn. The arrangement allowed Snape to maintain the role he had entangled himself in so thoroughly, to continue his dubious double life. Although, the phrase double life implied a life beyond his work, so he never believed it applied to him.

Almost twenty years later, bruised and exhausted on an ugly sofa, an impossible amount of work lying ahead of him, Snape honestly wondered how he survived it all. Lies and deception were all in a day's work for him, as was placating a rampant lunatic and bolstering a wise, though single-minded, old man.

When Snape was nearly asleep, his glass only half-empty after slogging through a lifetime of long-ignored memories, he remembered exactly why he had always loathed Firewhisky.


Hermione considered lying down again, if only to stare at the ceiling, but she could not bring herself to rise from the floor. She felt cemented to it. That was until a new notion took hold.

Snape was likely asleep. She could go sit in the armchair in his study and wait for the clock to reach a decent hour. It was so dark in there, and quiet. However, she knew that she would be breaking an unspoken rule if she did.

Then again, he would never have to know. She only had to make it through the sitting room and the kitchen. She, Harry and Ron had managed much worse while at school without incident.

Rising slowly to her feet, she stealthily descended the stairs. As though purposefully heralding her presence, each tread creaked underfoot.

Once she reached the door, she started to push it open and grimaced as every inch the door moved resonated through the stairwell. She was positive someone would wake up.

She waited on the landing, waited for either Harry or Snape to catch her. When silence reigned yet again, she carefully edged out and slid the door shut.

Again, it made much more noise than she thought possible, scraping across the floor like it wanted to tattle on her. She held her breath until the case slid into place and the absolute silence returned in full.

The sitting room was darker than before. The oil lamp had burned down, casting only enough light to see the top of Snape's head against the armrest.

It occurred to her then that he could be lying there, unable to sleep just as she was. Before he caught her sneaking about the house, she preferred to make certain either way.

After a series of vigilantly placed footsteps, she arrived at the sofa. Snape was indeed asleep. His ink-black hair lay across his face making him look sallow under the yellow lamplight. His right hand lay atop his chest, clutching a half-full glass that was tipping precariously to one side.

She did not want him to wake up soaked in what looked like Firewhisky. She also did not want the oil lamp to set fire to the house, which seemed only a gust of wind away from becoming kindling. Against her better judgment, she decided to take care of both concerns.

After plucking the glass from his grip with her left hand, she pulled her wand from her pocket with the right in order to extinguish the lamp. She had just raised her wand when Snape grabbed hold of her left wrist. In a moment of panic, she tried to jerk away. Instead of pulling free, she merely splashed the Firewhisky down the front of her robe and dropped her wand.

When she tried to lean forward to pick it up, she moved just enough to feel the tip of Snape's wand against her thigh.

Summarily caught, and about to have her leg hexed off, Hermione uttered the first word that reached her lips.

"Professor!"