author: Lucinda

rated y-14

contains no pairings.

all recognizable characters and locations from the Harry Potter series are the creation of JK Rowling - who I am Not.

notes: sequel to 'Do-Over Life' fragment.

...

Severus Snape could feel his cheeks starting to hurt as he sat in the coach, smiling as Lily Evans rambled on about how excited she was about going to a school to learn real magic. He'd never been much for smiling, not even in his youth, which while not happy had been a good deal better than some of his later years. But now...

Now he had a chance to do things over. To do them better. He had the chance to actually try what people had said for centuries - 'if I could go back to then with what I know now...' He was back at 'then' with the knowledge of seven miserable years at Hogwarts and another miserable twenty years after graduating. Why wouldn't he be smiling?

Forget every caution books had ever mentioned about not disrupting the time-lines, he wanted to shatter them! Past-future or was that future-past... whatever the appropriate tense for the years that he remembered that his body suggested had not taken place yet might be, he wanted to utterly change them. To the point where it would be impossible to yank things back to how it had gone before.

Some of it would be simple - he would argue with that ancient hat and try to get sorted into Ravenclaw. Despite the fact that many of his prime targets were in Slytherin, he didn't want to be stuck in there with them again. There would be other ways to strike at them, with blows both blatant and subtle. Other things would be more difficult - who knew if he could break the careless, unthinking pranks that had made Potter and Black the bane of his schooling? To him, they had been cruel bullies, as well as to several other Slytherins. The Gryffindors had seen them as irresponsible pranksters. If he could convince more people to judge by actions and words rather than the color of a House tie… Ahh, who was he deluding? That was as likely as the Chudley Cannons winning the British Cup.

He'd loathed them the first time through school, and loathed them as an adult. As tempting as it was to try to arrange a fatal accident for them both - surely he knew a few ways that could get past their knowledge and the defenses of Hogwarts? He would settle for neutralizing them and save the more permanent methods for the future Death Eaters. Them and Caon Alderwood, who had not taken the Mark to the best of Snape's knowledge, but instead had a thoroughly nasty set of hobbies. During school, it had run to hurting the younger students, with rape joining in somewhere along the line - certainly by the time Snape had reached his third year, but he wasn't certain just when. By the time the man was twenty, he'd moved to muggles, and taken to killing them after he'd played. By thirty, he'd started eating the bodies. Now that he thought about it, Caon Alderwood had a resemblance to Fenrir Greyback... But Greyback must have been older. Enough so that Greyback had been the werewolf to infect Lupin...

Regardless, Caon Alderwood had to die. He had a list of others that needed to die or wind up permanently crippled. And as much as he disliked Potter and Black on a personal level, they were an irritation and a problem to him, not the same sort of evil as Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Big problems before annoyances...

While Lily had left the cabin to search for the loo, someone else slipped inside. Someone taller, with pale hair and Hogwarts robes.

Severus looked up, blinking in surprise at just how young Lucius Malfoy looked. He couldn't have been much more than... a third year. "Eehhh?"

There had been sneering insults that sounded vaguely familiar. Slights against his obvious poverty, against his looks, against his obviously inferior family...

Yes, he thought this had happened the first time. And Lucius had tried to steal his lunch, not because the Slytherin was hungry, but because it would upset the little poor half-blood. The slightly dry peanut-butter sandwich had been destroyed the first time around... And something that he hadn't learned until years later and a fragment of an American folk-story floated up into his mind.

Severus tried to look thin, and hungry, and pathetic. "Please don't take that sandwich! It's all I have to eat until I get to school, and I don't have any money for the snack-trolley. I'll starve..."

Lucius seized the sandwich, holding it above his head and sneering at the boy that reached after it, "Pathetic poor little mongrel!"

Severus tried to look pitiful, his mind filled with images of briar-patches, absurd drawings of rabbits, and a chance discovery. "But you don't look like you need to take my lunch."

Lucius ripped the cellophane wrapping from the sandwich, letting it drop onto the face of the dark haired boy. "Of course not, you little urchin. But mongrels like you aren't welcome in the magical world."

As Malfoy crammed a mouthful of sandwich into his mouth, Severus dragged the cellophane from his face with as much of a distraught child's expression as he could manage. Obviously his meager acting skills were sufficient to fool Malfoy... though showing him exactly what he wanted to see undoubtedly made that deception easier.

Malfoy swallowed a lump of the sandwich, then sneered, "You pathetic mongrel, you can't even find decent food!"

"But that's my lunch..." he whimpered, thinking to himself that it shouldn't take much longer now. So long as it wasn't a reaction that had developed later… Think of briar-patches and rabbits.

Malfoy's face started to go red, and he made a soft coughing noise. One hand raise to clutch at his throat, and he dropped the sandwich to the ground.

Severus raised his wand and cast his own silencing spell on the door, reinforcing the one that Malfoy must have cast to prevent any prefects from learning of his habit of bullying the unsorted firsties. He let the pitiful, frightened facade drop and watched as Malfoy kept clutching at his throat, his eyes watering as he made strange whistling gasps.

As Malfoy dropped to his knees, face turning bluish, Severus cast a 'notice-me-not' charm at the door. It wouldn't do for Lily to walk back before this was finished. Returning his gaze to Lucius Malfoy, who was still making little pitiful wheezes, Severus permitted himself to smirk. "Stealing lunches from little children... how proud your ancestors must be of you now, Lucius Malfoy. I wonder what they'll have to say to you for such behavior? You'll find out very soon."

Malfoy had reacted poorly to a rare potion, about eight years later, at a point in time when Severus had felt it beneficial to keep Malfoy alive. It had taken him weeks to figure out just what had caused that reaction. It turned out that Lucius Malfoy was highly allergic to the peanut plant - and there were almost a dozen potions that used it. Including one that aided in male potency and encouraged fertility.

It didn't take much longer before Malfoy stopped wheezing. The blue-purple color faded from his face. His eyes still bulged open, his hands had been tearing at his throat. "Quick, but not entirely painless. I suppose that would be the throat swelling shut and preventing him from breathing..."

There was only one course of action for it now. Double check that Malfoy had no pulse and wasn't breathing - check. Then rifle through his pockets.

A chocolate frog, two licorice wands, and a broken sugar quill. A grey velvet pouch that jingled. A shrunken book that looked to have been bound in some sort of dark leather. A second wand stuffed down the side of his boot - that could be useful.

He disillusioned the corpse and floated it up and onto the luggage rack across from where he'd been sitting. He'd leave him there, with Malfoy's official wand, and the body would be found... much later. Perhaps over the weekend. And as he knew full well just how incompetent wizards could be when it came to investigating, they would declare it to be some untraceable poison or foul dark spell. They would assume either a sixth or seventh year, if not an adult rival of the family or professional assassin.

Nobody would suspect an unsorted eleven year old. Nobody would suspect that it had been a fatal allergic reaction to a common muggle food.

"You see? One person can make a difference, if they have the right knowledge and tools. If they dare." he smirked, thinking 'take that, meddling Headmaster. So much for your protests that one person could do nothing, that a boy would be helpless.'

"I can make a difference." Severus Snape grinned, though there was nothing of humor in the expression. He was already thinking about his next difference.

end Do-Over life part 2.