Severus Snape sat at his desk in his dorm room and wrote out the ingredients list of the week's potions assignments in alphabetical order. His hand was neat and tiny and tight and there wasn't a wobble to be found. Antimony. Bat Blood. Cinnamon.
You'd never know he was restraining himself with the kind of ruthless self-control that only growing up with an alcoholic who liked to hit could instill.
"If you tell anyone," Headmaster Dumbledore had said, "You'll be expelled. This was just a prank gone wrong and it's more important to protect the privacy of a student with a debilitating condition, one that people are prejudiced against, than for you to get any kind of revenge."
"Revenge?" Severus had said, sitting in the man's office. He'd still been shaking at that point. "A prank? Black tried to kill me." He'd heard his voice go up into near hysterics and had struggled to get it back down. "He would have, to, if he hadn't been stopped."
"A prank," Dumbledore had said. "I assume you want to stay here at Hogwarts."
"You'd expel me?" Severus had had to repeat the threat. Even Dumbledore, he thought, even this man who blatantly favored the Gryffindors and their golden, trouble-making bullies, wouldn't threaten to expel the victim of a would-be murder and protect the perpetrator.
"Yes," Dumbledore had said. "It is imperative that young Mr. Lupin's condition remain private."
"So expel Black," he'd said. "He tried to kill me." The last sentence was almost forlorn. Severus knew no one was going to defend him. No one ever had except, briefly, Lily. Lily, who he saw more and more with the gang who'd decided he was their favorite victim. Smart. Poor. Socially ill-at-ease. He was an easy target, especially since there were four of them to his one.
"No, I think not," Dumbledore had said, "Not for a prank. Though, you can be confident he will get some detentions to serve."
"May I go?" Severus had asked.
Now he sat in his room, quill moving steadily over his parchment. The poor boy. The easy target. The half-blood in a House filled with confident aristocrats. Nowhere to go. No one to trust.
Now that the Mauraders, as they liked to style themselves, knew they could get away with attempted murder what would they do to him next.
Fluxweed. Leech. Peacock feathers.
Peacock feathers.
He glanced up at the door as he had a thought.
Maybe it was time to talk to Lucius Malfoy, tell him he was interested in Malfoy's little club after all. If he couldn't trust Dumbledore to protect him from classmates bent on murder maybe it was time to look elsewhere.
