Author's Note: Just a general reminder that Severus isn't going to respond to things maturely or heathily-he's got rage issues. He's not perfect. Neither is Lily. Meant to write more but I'm sick of this chapter. Thanks for all the reviews, they help me write. Been a very rough few months, the encouragement helped, and I'd appreciate it if you could keep it coming.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but my words, and a debt to sayruq and deathdaydungeon on Tumblr for their Snape discourse. There's a reference to a funny little comic agalemnon did on Tumblr.
Content Warning: Death Eater discussion of "miscegenation," rape jokes, general fantastic racism and Severus' more personal internalized troubles. Discussion of child abuse, sexual harassment-the Slytherin boys deciding to check if Snape was "hung like a Muggle." Also, I tried my hand briefly at some medieval Latin-that's why it's not grammatically correct, for any of you classicists out there. And I have one truly horrible pluperfect auxiliary-ladden mess of a line of dialogue that I refuse to remove because this is fanfiction and I'm impressed that I went to that instinctively in English.
They Call This Closure?
Chapter 11: Slither In, Slither Out
It hit him like the hangover, sputtering hot vomit over a cold toilet in the Slytherin six years' bathroom, that Lily had told everyone his blood status. Grasping the porcelain edge, he steadied himself, closing his eyes. Potter had been so bloody sympathetic, Mary edging into sympathy-she had told them about his father, he realized dully. He slammed back down on his tailbone: that bitch had told everyone about how fucked up his family was. Not even Dumbledore knew how frothing at the mouth insane his parents were. Bitterly, he spat on the floor, wiped his mouth, and paused. He scourgified the mess and washed his mouth out at the sink. His eyes were bloodshot in the mirror. He looked like his dad, but the nose, the heavy brows, the color of his skin had people giving him second glances when he took the metro and loomed too close to a particularly peachy group of young girls-one of the things he loved about the Wizarding World, he got second looks because he was a dark wizard, not because his grandmother was Middle Eastern. Mary once told him he was like a pantomime villain; how many of them were Gypsy?
He was going to shut her out cold and throw her to the wolf, and when she came to him pregnant and abandoned he would brew the abortifacient and fertility killer himself. Doubtless Lupin was seducing her. Doubtless they would lose themselves in the beauty and rightness of their passion: fucking idiot Gryffindors. Even with Florence, he had the presence of mind to cast a quick spell, and to pull out before.
The door crashed open, and Mulciber stumbled in. "Oh Merlin," he groaned, "I feel like death." Avery lurched after him, still in his robes from the night before.
"I feel like I've been butt-fucked by a muggle," Avery announced, and Mulciber made an unpleasant sound as he closed the shower curtain. They heard the water hiss on, and Mulciber released another orca sound of pleasure. Severus turned on the sink faucet and stuck his head under it. "Oh, no offense, Snape."
"Fuck off, Avery," he said tightly. He had forgotten the specifics of the anti-miscegenation rhetoric the Dark Lord had spread in the '70s-that Muggle penis had a hook like a cat on the end, that Muggle vulva hid molars. He knew Tom Riddle had a sense of humor. He had forgotten it was so Freudian-but the Dark Lord was disgusted by sexual violence and sex in general, and it must have seemed the easiest strategy to dehumanize the other while preventing sexual congress. Being "hung like a Muggle" was not a compliment. Second year the lads had tied him down to check what his looked like. They were fascinated by his foreskin.
He washed quickly and hurried back into the room. Evan was lying prostrate over his covers. "Snape!" he cried. "Tell me you brewed some hair of the dog!"
Severus sighed. "You know those have to be particularly calibrated to the contents of your stomach, the impracticality of developing of particular recipe for each drinker outweighs any benefit to brewing it in advance, drinking is meant to be unpredictable-just drink some soda water and eat some eggs."
"What's the point of you?" Evan moaned, and rolled over. I'm not your pet mudblod, Severus sneered internally. Twenty years ago he had a stock of potions developed for his friends' metabolisms, always overeager to belong. Rage coiled in his stomach and he felt acid climb up his throat. He clenched his fists, gave himself one two three four five and breathe out, fool, Occlude, Occlude. He got dressed. The beard looked awful against his waxen skin. Yellow, yellow, he halfsang to himself, some sort of playground chant, he did not want to remember the rest. He returned to the bathroom and shaved quickly and efficiently, with a charm, like a proper wizard, and the Slytherins boys left for breakfast hushed and greenish and en masse, though he was not quite in step. He followed the unique beat of his hatred and self-disgust.
When Lily slid into the seat next to him right before DADA started, grinning brilliantly, Severus closed his book and got up, and moved to a desk against the wall, next to Latisha Randle, who looked to be doing last week's reading.
She glanced up and rolled her eyes. "You are not getting me involved in your Gryffindor-Slytherin soap opera bullshit. I am pregnant, you are not using me as a human shield."
Severus grunted. "Just until the holidays. Only a few more weeks. Your baby will be perfectly safe."
Instinctively she stroked her belly. Hogwarts was very good at accommodating pregnant students; there weren't enough witches around to risk them harming themselves and their children through a lack of education. Bill Weasley had been born at Hogwarts; so had his mother. Latisha said sarcastically, "What's the magic word?"
"Avada kedavra."
Latisha snorted, and returned to her book. Severus returned to his, a weighty medieval Latin text entitled Anima Caeca pars Nefas Superstitione. So far, he wasn't regretting leaving his dictionary in the dorm. Lily was looking at him, hurt turning into annoyance turning into resentment. He wasn't regretting that either.
Benjy Fenwick pointedly got up and sat next to Lily, sending him an incredulous look. Severus, barely glancing up from his book, caught a fury about Lupin and the plan and "why are they this immature fucking Slytherins." Severus was not immature. He was making a point. It was good they thought him immature, it meant his cover was working, that was what he told himself when indulging in acts of petty cruelty against the Potter brat and his friends, who always seemed to explode at the worst times. One would think they would be more cautious around fire-Severus had been burned, he knew what to do.
Emmeline walked in and distributed their exams. She smiled at him as she passed him his paper. He just scowled. He could feel her annoyance as she did her rounds: immature, immature, immature. When was the last time he taught hungover? 1994, 1995, some time around the Triwizard Tournament, the Granger girl had been squealing at him for some Malfoy-Weasley stupidity. He'd made her cry, hadn't he? Too bad. He scribbled his way through the exam, and was the first to leave. Lily was a close second.
She caught up to him in the hallway. "What the hell is your problem?" she grabbed at his arm. He yanked it back and swept down the halls, leaving her scoffing behind him. He did not break into a dead run, but quickened his step until he reached the dungeons, and then stormed back into the boathouse. He threw his bag to the ground and kicked off his shoes, "Fuck! Fuck!" He felt ill. He leaned against the cool wall and tried to listen to the water lapping on the dock, tried to feel his feet freezing through their socks on the cobblestone, but the anger throbbed through his body. He clenched his hands, unclenched them, breathed. At least he hadn't shoved her away. He had never found a useful way to calm himself down when he got like this, he always had to wait for it to pass. Vitriol rose in his stomach; carefully, he walked to the water's edge. Not vitriol: just the remnant's of last night's booze. What was he thinking? Immature, immature, immature. He swung his legs over the dock and pulled off his socks, tossing them back towards his boots. He should take better care of his things: a flash of a haunt of a taunt from Sirius Black, laughter, gloating eyes, dangling a textbook over his head. "Oh, what have we got here? This is property of the Half-Blood Prince. A prince, you say?" They had taken his spells. At least Lily hadn't told them, she never liked them, and especially not Sectumsempra-for enemies. Perhaps in an alternate world they'd have killed him, and he got stuck haunting the Shrieking Shack for all eternity-or until he got closure. He felt sick.
The door coming off the lake creaked open, Severus pulled out his wand. Lily eyed him dubiously and closed the door softly. "I thought you might be here," she said. "But I checked the Astronomy Tower first, I know you like going there in the day time." Did he? Perhaps twenty years ago.
Severus did not lower his wand. His eyes narrowed.
"Oh, come off it, Sev. What've I done now?"
Rage struck him so violently he started upright, burning his skin. Lily stepped back. He snarled, "Fuck off, Evans."
Lily bit her lip but did not leave. "One day I'm going to stop chasing after you."
Severus slammed his hand down. "Let. Me. Be."
"What are you angry about?"
Severus snarled, felt himself crackling with anger, and held his breath. Occlusion: he closed his eyes and ripped color from the scene. When he opened them even her eyes were gray. He met them emptily. She was starting to look frightened. "I daresay you should know," he said coldly.
"Did Marlene say anything-"
"You told them. All of them. How many Gryffindors know I'm-poor?" he swallowed.
"Oh, shit." Lily blanched. "I, uh, I didn't think you'd be this mad-"
Severus twisted his legs back up to the dock and shifted onto his feet. He loomed over her. "You told Potter, you told Black, you told McKinnon, you even told Benjy Fenwick. Do they know about my father? You've never even met the man, I wonder what sort of pleasantries you exaggerated." He was smiling now, backing her up against the wall. "And my mother? What did you tell them about her? People in the neighborhood aren't nice. They don't keep their comments to themselves, not like your mother. Anyway, I pass," he said, almost conversationally, "at least in winter. Did you tell them the difficulties of a pureblood witch married to a witch-hater? How the mill's closing?" He had her pressed against the wall. Softly, he said, "And did you explain to them that of course I don't wash my hair, I never learned how, he just has a tin tub in the kitchen, it's all his parents' fault?" Lily's eyes were wide, but she had not gone for her wand. Severus backed off. She took a deep breathe.
"I-"
"Potter apologized to me," Severus sneered. "Told me, if he had known-of course I couldn't be a dark wizard, not a mudblood like me."
"You're not a mudblood," Lily said, "I don't want-"
"I am a mudblood, Lily, to Bellatrix Lestrange and Walburga Black. The only thing worse than a Muggle is muggle spawn. And you told them-you so violated my trust-"
"I didn't know," Lily said quietly, "I didn't meant to-I thought it would make things better, get them off your back-"
Severus exploded, "Do you know how humiliating it is, for everyone to know your parents fucking hate you? That they hate themselves enough, they can't be bothered to teach you anything besides 'yes, sir' and how to hold a knife? That half of Gryffindor House is out there," he flourished his wand arm, green sparks flashed out, Lily jerked a nervous smile, "fucking psychoanalyzing my-personality problems and thinking they-"
"I fucked up, Sev," she said. "I get it."
"Do you really?" He was panting now. "Do you fucking really? Do you think this is a game? We are at war, Lily! You died in the last go-around! Information is power," he stepped closer, "everything they know about they will use, did you think this might put me and my family in danger?"
Lily closed her eyes and pushed back her hair with both hands. Clapping them together, she said, "I'm sorry, Severus, and you're right and I think you're angry enough that this might not be a productive conversation, you're just-"
"Shaking you out of your god-given Gryffindor complacency?"
"You're looking for a fight, and I've already lost this one," Lily agreed. "What do you want me to say? I fucked up. I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry."
Severus deflated abruptly. "Yes." It wasn't okay.
"What do you want me to do, then?" Lily stood up very straight. Severus allowed color to bleed back in, a tinge of green to her eyes, auburn undertones to her hair. She was a riot of color. He looked away.
"Just leave me alone."
She nodded slowly, closing her eyes as if pained, and left the room. Severus sat against the wall and did not cry.
He went through the rest of the week feeling hollow, which was not much of a change from how he normally felt. Lily went back to studying with Mary and Benjy in the library; Severus moved to a separate table with Yatin and Latisha, who was preparing to take time off for the baby. Hogwarts had an in-residency program for young couples; half of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor wouldn't have made it to graduation, if they hadn't implemented it. Severus thought this could all be resolved by a comprehensive sexual education class, taught for a quarter of the year, but when he suggested it at a faculty meeting twelve years ago Pomona informed him, if he were so passionate about it, he ought to teach it. He'd rather adopt Harry Potter than teach a bunch of randy teenagers how to use prophylactics.
He thought she was trying to get his attention. He ignored her, occluded her out, and kept working. The Headmaster had developed a timeline of Horcrux creation and deposition, tracing them out as celebrations of particularly important kills and catalysts in the First War. Lucius Malfoy had been promoted to the Inner Circle after his father went to recruit in the Continent, but before Severus' parents had been killed-sometime in 1977, the coming year. Albus guessed that the Dark Lord had given him the diary as a sign of trust, and wondered what he did to obtain it. Severus remembered hints and smirks of some magnanimous favor, from the occasional Hogsmeade dinner during seventh year, but was not so much in the loop to know back then. He resolved to redouble his efforts to win Narcissa and Lucius over. Lucius had always been a friend and an ally, even as they grew older and the war resumed. He and Narcissa were particular friends; Lucius knew his history but did not have Narcissa's analytical mind and ability to handle and respond to disagreement. It would be good to have them back; at this point they liked him, were amused by him, but didn't trust him as an equal. That was a reason, why he always enjoyed them; they had always viewed him as an equal, intellectually at least. Now it was time to regain their equal respect. He was looking forward to Hogsmeade, and his anger towards Lily had nothing to do with it.
Working late over the Pensieve Thursday evening, the Headmaster called for tea. Severus sat very still in his armchair by the fire, eyes closed, trying to resort his memories. It was becoming more and more difficult to disentangle himself from everyday adolescent life and remember where he came from, and frequent trips into the pensieve were disorienting him. His head throbbed. Albus was pacing; they were going over a memory of Tom Riddle applying for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Parallels, parallels: was this why Albus had always been so rude to him? Did he fear another half-blood with father issues going to the bad? Severus rubbed his forehead. He couldn't think coherently.
"He'd been working at Borgin and Burke's," Albus muttered to himself, pacing in front of the fire. "Why the sudden change of heart? No, he had left for the continent, suddenly, even though we all expected him at the Ministry, and truly it would've suited his political purposes better-"
Severus had a brief flash of the Dark Lord, in the first war, snarling about ministry incompetence to an appreciative crowd of lower class muddy-blooded recruits. Tom Riddle always had an anarchist streak; there was no way he would have risked becoming a ministry stooge.
"-but what drove him away from the shop? What made him change his mind?"
Severus opened his eyes gingerly. The fire was still too bright. Carefully, he turned away from it. "He was working in magical antiquities, wasn't he? And your memories of him as a boy, he liked trophies, symbols of the past, of him changing. Perhaps he stole something? Something that reminded him of the diary…"
Albus stopped. "The diary meant to release Slytherin's monster." A slow smile spread across his aged face, brightened his wrinkles. Severus wondered what he looked like when he was his age-36, 16. "My boy-"
"I'm not your boy-" Severus snapped on instinct, then flushed. It sounded more petulant coming from a teenager.
Albus twinkled at him. Severus scowled. The Headmaster went on,"Severus, then, you do your house proud. You have some Burke cousins, don't you? Slytherin twins? Perhaps it's time for you to reconnect with your family, find out if anything of Slytherin lore went missing from the shop in the late Forties..."
Severus groaned. "You ask this of me as if it were easy. The Burke girls are a good two years younger than me, and I caught Rosier warning them off from associating with their 'miscegenated' cousins. We all knew the Dark Lord was Slytherin's heir, through the Gaunt bloodline, Slytherin House has known that since the Fifties-"
"How?" Dumbledore pressed. "How do you, a penniless orphan, convince a house of blood supremacists you are its heir?"
"Parseltongue? Speaking Slytherin's bloodline talent seems a deciding factor. Or there are other Parseltongues running about the United Kingdom that I have not yet tangled with." Severus frowned. "But that would not be enough. Smita Patil is a Parseltongue, though of a different dialect…."
"There are dialects in Parseltongue?"
"So Smita Patil told me."
Dumbledore stroked his beard. "So if the language is not enough to prove the blood, then what is? A trinket, some sort of sign-but he would have had to have had it before he graduated, but before he opened the Chamber." He glanced back at the Pensieve. "And perhaps he left it here-or one of them here-and used that as lodestone for the DA curse…"
Severus sat up suddenly, aching head forgotten. "You don't think he made multiple? More than two?"
Dumbledore regarded him seriously. "My boy, if my guess is correct-and I daresay my guesses are often right-"
"Yes, yes, you're a bloody genius-"
"Thank you, Severus." He smiled brilliantly. Severus groaned again and hid his aching eyes. "But," Albus grew solemn again, "if my guess is correct, we might be dealing with at least three. The diary, the man himself, a trinket of Slytherin's…"
Severus slouched in his chair, scowling. "Why not the mouth organ?" he said bitingly. "If we're thinking of seminal moments…" He smirked. The Dark Lord, entrusting a piece of his soul to a tattered tin harmonica? "Why don't you ask Horace?" he said instead, sitting back up in the chair. He was growing too relaxed, too reactive, the teenager in him was taking over. Albus had never been his father, he had never been his boy-remember the Prank. "They had been close, hadn't they? He would know. He has always kept a good eye on the House, and the mood of the House. As much as he is able."
Albus stared at him. "Oh dear. Why didn't I think of that?"
"Because you are entirely too convinced of your own cleverness." And know absolutely nothing about Slytherin, Slytherin politics, and Slytherin friendship.
Albus cocked an eyebrow. Severus refused to flush. He was not being a hypocrite. Albus continued, "Alas, Professor Slughorn and I have never been on the best of terms, and the '70s were a low point in our working relationship." Severus felt his hackles raise. Of course it would have been a low point, favoring those marauding bullies over Hogwarts' most vulnerable would put a damper on what was once a warm, exciting alchemical partnership-and perhaps more, Slughorn had only winked and let the matter rest, back in those hard days in the early '80s, training to become full professor and housemaster. "You're one of his quiet favorites, Severus. Why don't you ask him if he knows anything about horcruxes?"
"Do you honestly think it would be a good idea for a halfblood son of a pureblood witch and muggle father, just like the Dark Lord, with a difficult family life, just like the Dark Lord, to go ask Horace Slughorn if he knows anything about one of the most degrading forms of dark magic? A halfblood known to be enamoured with dark magic?"
Dumbledore regarded him. "Are you enamoured of dark magic, Severus?"
Severus snarled, "No. Only when it suits me. I have my addictions well managed." He lurched up and regretted it, as his head gave a splitting warning. Scowling, he stalked to the gargoyle. "May I leave now?" He hurried down the staircase, robes abillowing, without waiting for more of an answer than the Headmaster's light laughter.
Severus ran into Yatin Bhagat while returning to the Slytherin common room. Yatin stopped him and led him to their favorite couch by the upperclassman fire, regaling him with a disastrous brewing tale. Apparently he had forgotten the fifth widdershins stir for Forget-Me-Not potion, and made a highly volatile truth-telling potion that went erupting out of the cauldron instead. Luckily, no one got drenched-Yatin was quick with shield charms. Severus asked for a sample, thinking he might as well try to slip it to Slughorn, though it wouldn't have the same compulsive power as Veritaserum. Yatin promised him three test tubes and hastily ran off to retrieve them.
When he finally got back to the room, triumphant in his truth serum, Mulciber and Wilkes were gone, but Avery and Rosier were boredly stacking a tower of Exploding Snap cards on top of Wilkes' precarious stack of herbology notes. Severus raised an eyebrow. "You know he'll be furious if you burn his precious notes," he said as he stepped through the doorway, throwing his bag and outer robe onto his bed. Avery and Rosier glared at him simultaneously, Avery cupping his hands around the tower carefully.
"Careful," he warned. "Or else we'll burn Wilkes' notes."
Severus snorted. He walked over to the fire and stretched in his tunic and leggings, warming himself and shaking off the chill of his responsibilities. It was becoming too easy to respond to them, his old friends, the old band of Slytherin brothers. In four years, Rosier would be dead, suicide-by-auror, Wilkes as well, Avery in prison, Mulciber too. Out of the men in his year, he was the only one to survive relatively unscathed. He'd visited them in prison, of course, when he could, when he could stand it, carefully occluded, sneaking in bits of chocolate and news, advice on how to clear one's mind-one of the reasons why the Dark Lord had been convinced he was on his side, all along. Avery had spoken for him, Mulciber too. Evil bastards. He sighed and flopped onto his bed, to his friends' outrage, and closed his curtains. Moodily he rested his head on his pillow. What was he going to do now? How was he going to approach Horace?
His hand shuffled under his pillow and found a folded piece of parchment. His brow furrowed, and carefully he pulled it out. It was sealed closed with green wax, stinking slightly of tea tree oil, marked with a lily. He sat back abruptly on his heels, mind blank. Fear rushed in, then fury, and then the gray suspension of Occlumency. Sharply he bit out, "Reveal your secrets," and the gray plume of a Notice-Me-Not charm sparkled out of the parchment. He sighed and opened the letter.
"Sev-
"Haven't been able to catch you for weeks now, but I know why you're avoiding me. Please don't. I miss you. You're probably wondering how I snuck this letter into your bed, and no, it wasn't through bribing a Slytherin-I have enough sense to know that'll blow up in my face. No, I did something infinitely Gryffindorish, for 'la gloire'. Prepare to admire my kleos. I snuck in. Better yet. I fucked over Potter while doing it. I wish I could see your face right now, I bet you're trying so hard to keep it blank but a smile's there at the corners of your mouth, I'm telling you!"
Indeed, there was a crooked smile tugging gently at the left corner of his mouth, and at an enclosed sketch of him trying not to smile, in pastel and very careful ink, he let it develop into a full grin. He shook his head, combed his fingers through his hair. It wouldn't do, softening.
"Was the drawing accurate? It better be, I spent a full day on that, and you know how hard it is to find time to be alone and work, Mary's been clingy lately and Marlene's just disappeared to the Quidditch pitch. And I like Remus, but lately he's in all my favorite spots in the library, Peter dogging his heels, it's a little irritating. I haven't had space to work.
"Anyway. Let me tell you my glory. I know how you hold a grudge, so I realized after four days of you shunning me that I'd have to come up with something great to get your attention back. You ignored my flaming origami dragon in Defense, and my dancing china kittens in Charms. When I tried to slip a cute little comic from your hell of a past life-what if you, me, and James had a baby together? I bet you it'd have your personality. see enclosed-into your pocket after Transfig yesterday, you positively stormed away from me. Nice billowing, by the way. Would look good in watercolors, if I did watercolors in monochrome. I was pretty annoyed, and pretty upset too. You know you're my closest friend, Sev, and it's been lonely without you. And since you made such a dramatic showing, other people have been picking up on it. Please tell Latisha Randle to stop telling people I got you pregnant and want you to get a back-alley abortion, please. Are there potions for that? For any of that? No one believes her, but Sirius Black thinks it's funny, so Peter won't stop making jokes about it.
"But people includes Potter. I know you think he doesn't count, but occasionally he has flashes of humanity. This was one of them. He swaggered up to me and asked, 'You alright, Evans?' I told him to fuck off and stormed off-less billowing, how do you do it, is it some sort of Hover Charm?-and cooled my heels at the Astronomy Tower. Except Potter followed me. So I shouted at him a bit for blabbing, he reminded me it was my fault to begin with, I cried, he cried because he always cries when other people cry-and they call you, O Emotionless Troglodyte, the snivelling one-I shouted at him some more, and told him I ruined everything and you hated all of us. Which you do. When do you not hate everything?
"But you see, Potter feels guilty. And through my puffy eyes and tear-stained lashes, I saw his guilty face and realized I could use this. You said he tried to apologize to you? Well, now he's trying to make it up to you. Atonement. We brainstormed ways of getting you to talk to me. Fake-dating was not an option. He doesn't like me anymore, by the way, not like that. McGonagall snapped him out of it, and he says he was doing it to fuck with you. Nice guy. But, anyway, we were thinking, and I said you'd flip your shit if I tried to force something public, and trying to corner you alone would probably just get me hexed on instinct and Defense class proved that you're much better on the uptake than I am. Might be those twenty extra years of experience, no? So I realized I needed to get a note to you, in some sort of impressive fashion. We dismissed owls as too obvious, and obviously trying to slip it to you during class or in the halls wasn't working. Bribing classmates would have been too tricky-I won't deal with Avery or Mulciber, Rosier pretends I don't exist, and Wilkes tried to transfigure my hair into minnows last month? And one does not just approach the monolithic Slytherin bloc of girls. And I know you hate Barty Crouch. And Regulus would just try to use it as a way to screw Sirius. And Latisha enjoys my pain-seriously, why does she hate me? And Benjy makes you twitch.
"But then I remembered that you've been studying with Yatin Bhagat lately. So I skipped down to the dungeons, Potter in tow as a hex-shield, and walked into the upperclassmen experimental laboratory just as Yatin fucked up and forget the fifth widdershins stir in Forget-Me-Not potion. And you know what that makes! So, bam, quasi-Veritaserum to the face for Potter-he makes a great human shield. Did you know he's a stag animagus, that Lupin has a crush on me, that he thinks he's gay or just a little bisexual, that he's in love with Sirius Black, and that he owns an Invisibility Cloak? Old family heirloom. He also blabbed our mission to Yatin, who in between apologizing and scolding us for walking into a lab without knocking, decided to collaborate. He said he wouldn't give you a note, he doesn't like conflict and personal issues, but that he'd let me in and out the Slytherin dorms, as long as I was quick about it.
"So, Invisibility Cloak, Veritaserum, myself and Potter humiliated, and breaking and entering-here's the note. I have a secret place to show you, and things to say to you. Or we don't have to talk about it at all. But I found something that I want to share with you. Please meet me at the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy-you know, the one of him teaching trolls ballet-on the seventh floor, Friday afternoon, 2 o'clock would be great. Everyone else will be at the Quidditch game, it should be easy enough to slip away. Walk across it three times thinking 'I just need a place to hide away'.
"Please come, Sev. I miss you. Let's not let this ruin everything. I hope the sketch didn't piss you off, and I made you laugh.
"Lots of love,
"Lily"
He stared down at the sketch. The child Lily imagined looked nothing like Harry Potter, for all it greatly resembled James. The boy had not inherited his father's broad shoulders, for one thing, for all he had his arrogance and disregard of the rules. He carefully folded the letter, art and all, and slid it back under his pillow. He eased onto his back and stared up at the green velvet canopy of his four-poster bed. He must have just missed her.
He shot right back up-a family heirloom, he knew the Potter brat got into far more trouble than he could catch him at, when he heard that heavy breathing with the fake Moody, that must have been him, Moody's mad eye could see through invisibility cloaks! Then he paused-James Potter was in love with Sirius Black? A shame, then, that Sirius Black only loved himself-but that meant Wilkes was right about them. He had won five galleons off of him, the other time around, betting that James would end up blackmailing Lily Evans into dating him. They had never found out the blackmail but assumed that it was the reason why she suddenly started dating him, April of 1978, after almost seven years of publicly declaring her hatred. Well, at least the alternate universe meant he didn't have to pay up, which was good, because he wasn't sure he could spare five galleons. Being a teaching assistant for Slughorn didn't pay that much. He closed his eyes: Slughorn, Lily, the truth serum-he could see how he could finagle the Horcrux information from him, and by Monday night. He let his face fall into a smirk: take that, Dumbledore, Gryffindor superiority. A Slytherin always knew to use their tools.
