Catherine left Potions in a daze. The other Gryffindors were long gone and she had no idea where Defense Against the Dark Arts was. She had some idea that Professor Umbridge had moved it from the dungeons up to the 3rd floor where the 'light and air' was better.

Catherine headed up to the 3rd floor, then walked down one hall after another, trying to find an occupied classroom. Finally, she found the right door and tried to slip in quietly. As all the students had their heads down, reading their textbooks, this wasn't possible. The door seemed bang extremely loud. Everyone in the room looked up in surprise.

"Yes?" Umbridge said, looking up from her desk, unsurprised.

Cat hurried up to her desk with note from Snape. "I.. I'm Catherine Snape, I'm supposed to be in this class."

"Indeed?" Umbridge replied, taking the note. "Please excuse Catherine's tardiness to class. She was detained in my classroom for extra work. Severus Snape. Denied. You cannot have your father write you notes to get you out of deserved punishments."

"But, I really was in his class," Catherine protested. "I had to stay behind because I was in trouble.."

"Be that as it may, I see no reason why it would take you this long to get to my class. Perhaps you should monitor your behavior in all your classes to be sure you won't have to stay behind if its going to take this long to get the next class. Perhaps you need more punishments than has already been handed out."

"But...," Catherine interrupted. She couldn't believe she was in trouble for being late. She had a note. He had detained her as her teacher not as her Father just wanting to chat.

"No. None of that. You are already 20 minutes late for this class, you are excused. You should ask your classmates for the assignment as missing class will not excuse you from turning in the required work. Also, you will be serving detention with me to make up for this missing class. As Mr. Potter will be serving detention with me today, I expect to see you here tomorrow evening promptly at six."

"Yes, ma'am," Cat replied, confused. She was shocked, still trying to figure out how she was already in trouble She looked around the room. Most every student had their head down, trying to avoid having Umbridge turn her wrath on them.

"You may go now, Miss Snape." Umbridge said, shooing her out the door.

Catherine stumbled out in the corridor, unsure of what to do next. Her next class wasn't till after lunch and lunch wasn't for another hour and half. Well, she still had to write an extra paper for Papa and she was sure that Umbridge would give her an even longer one the next evening so she went off to the library to research Melatonin.


As Catherine worked on her paper, she couldn't keep what Severus had told her off her mind. He had been a 'real' deatheater and not just a spy and more than that, her mother had been one too. She didn't really know that much about the deatheaters or Voldemort. She was 14 before she realized the Dark Mark on Severus' arm wasn't just a tattoo. The only people she knew with them were Slytherins, so she'd just assumed it was some sort of Slytherin symbol they had tattooed or something. It wasn't until she'd done a report on the Dark Mark appearing at the World Quidditch Cup for Professor Lupin's DAD class, that she'd every really thought that much about it. She closed her books and got up to look for more information. She hadn't really been able to find anything in her school library in New Orleans and her mother wasn't that much help either. She'd only told her that it was a group of people that weren't so nice and wanted to do away with Mudbloods, sometimes going to extremes to accomplish their plans and that it had fallen by the wayside when their leader had been killed. When Catherine had asked what sort of extremes, Maddie had told her to ask Severus and that she really wasn't really involved in it anyway. When Catherine had asked her if she had been a Deatheater as well, Maddie had told her, "No. Not really. Not like he was."

But Severus had told her that Maddie had been a member as well.

Catherine was looking for something about them, or about Voldemort. She wasn't really sure where to look, but she could tell that it wasn't really something she should ask the librarian about. She was just about to give up when she came across the stacks of back issues of the daily prophet, some of them dating back to the seventies.

She decided to start with 1978. That would have been when Severus was an adult by wizarding standards. He couldn't have done much before then. She picked up an issue from January of 78 and started reading.

An hour or so later, Madame Pince told her that the library was closing for lunch. Catherine stood and put away the newspapers. The things she'd been reading had made her slightly ill. She hadn't come across anything about her father or mother, but there stories of muggle baitings. Muggleborn tortures and murders. She had seen Lucius Malfoy's name come up more than once, along with Draco's Aunt Bella and Uncle Rudolph.

All in the name of blood purity. That was the one thing she didn't understand about Severus' involvement. Pop-pop, her grandfather and his father, was a Muggle.

How could Severus be in a group that would have gladly killed Pop-pop, and Gran too, for simply being muggle?