Chapter 35: The Threaded Souls
Snape's Tuesday and Wednesday stood completely devoid of classes. A free window that coincided with Lily's exactly. It helped that they both selected exceedingly similar classes going into NEWTs. With homework complete, the Slytherin Head Boy only had his upcoming patrol to worry about, while his Gryffindor counterpart was already beginning to struggle with the workload. But this fact did not stop her from delving deep into her new hobby-art.
Snape watched her all of Tuesday, scribbling text up and down a cluttered looking length of parchment, as close to his own spell crafting as he had ever seen her. He was silent and patient throughout the entire process, understanding how painstaking it could be especially for a person who had no Arithmancy background. It was fortunate Lily's natural magical proclivity was so high, for she had to almost entirely brute-force the process.
Wednesday morning was the day she slated for the practical portion, as apprehensive as Snape had ever seen her.
"Proteus Charm would work… I think," Lily muttered seemingly to herself as she cleared away her work bench. "Maybe combine it with a Human-Presence-Revealing Spell…" An idea of what she was attempting began forming in Snape's mind. He could not help the smile that came unbidden. Something he hadn't known to come so easily, not for years now.
Her eyes lifted from her scroll, eyeing the rough pieces sitting in the bottom of her mortar. She had shattered the focus stone magically to prepare it for grinding, a process Snape had offered to complete for her.
"Thanks, but no thanks. You made the core and the rings, silver and all, so let this enchantment be mine entirely."
Snape watched her get to work, taking the pestle to the small scattering of rocks and brought it down with a crunch upon the brittle substance. It had been hard to crack, but once it shattered the crystalline structure crumbled like chalk.
Lily ran the pestle around, crushing it as if she was mincing Aconite roots. Her motions were practiced, but far more forceful than he would have committed. He had also suggested to charm the pestle to take the task on magically, but Lily insisted that it be done by hand. She reasoned that she had never done the enchantment before, did not know exactly how a spell cast upon it was meant to link with the magical core and she only knew the basics of the steps to take. She did not wish to risk spoiling her spell with hap hazardous ignorance.
That was a reasonable thought, Snape knew very little of the topic either. It did not help that no enchantment experts were staffed amongst the teaching Professors, and frankly he did not feel comfortable bringing something so frivolous to Dumbledore's attention. Snape was meant to have his nose to the grindstone over Basilisk Venom, not play hobby with another branch of difficult magic.
He was beginning to feel guilty about his reluctance however, as Lily became red in the face in her exertions. It had to be properly powdered, she had said, and though that white fine substance sitting at the bottom of her pestle looked close to fitting the criteria, it appeared she was not going to risk stopping short.
Embarrassingly, he actually started comparing his physical capabilities to hers. At this age he was woefully physically below par. Though he was capable of a few feats of strengths most would not expect of him, but he would wear out in exceedingly due time. If she took him up on his offer of physical labour, he doubted he could match her efforts.
It came down largely to his own physical waste, the fact that he had not been able to access appropriate nutrition in the younger years of his life and the obstacle of being returned to that environment annually. He never grew exceptionally very tall, and though he enjoyed a brief period at the end of his teens where he became physically quite fit, he was in no mental state to enjoy it. For that had been his gruelling Death Eater training that took him to his physical peak; the best years of his health spent under the influence of his insanity.
When his senses had finally caught up to him, his world had crumbled. Decades of waste and ill care then followed until he was almost as decrepit as his youth. Though Hogwarts never left him for want, he never found his appetite again.
He glanced down discretely, silently judging his own thin frame. He was far healthier than he had been this time last year, both physically and mentally, having spent most of the holidays outside of that damnable household. But he was still below average in height, weight and build, and likely will persist in this diminutive form as he would never take on a front-line role in war ever again.
Lily never seemed to indicate much of an opinion in this matter, as much as she seemed to forgive his unappealing face. He was certain every time she embraced him she could feel the press of his ribs; every touch revealing the wasted form hidden beneath his rags. She had even laid eyes upon the ruin of his body when she once goaded him into undressing. Yet none of this seemed to dissuade her, not his looks, not his poverty, not his prickly heart. Against all reason, she persisted in her course. She had chosen him and her heart seemed ever straight.
He watched her with his silent smile as she finally ceased her efforts, scraping the powder out gently with a thin spatula.
"Ring, Sev," Lily commanded, as she set out her own. It looked different to the simple band he made for her, shapes and patterns dotted its edge anarchically as if she had spent a deal of time playing with its form.
Without any more hesitation, Snape drew out his own band, fashioned from his flecks of silver as per instructions. He had crafted it to the width and thickness of his liking, as plain as a band of silver could be. He loathed the idea of jewellery but could not find it in himself to deny Lily this. If she truly wished to keep him as her husband then it was the very least he could do to allow her to mark him as so.
He set the trinket gently against her smaller and more decorated one. A sight that quickened his heart, a moment become too real.
A thought that Lily must have shared, for she cast a glance up to his eyes, smile playing across her lips as he fingers touched upon the conjoining rings.
"I'll have to break them down," she murmured, as if the sentimentality bore hesitation.
"You'll have to, to add a strengthening metal anyway," Snape replied as he slid a chip of copper across the table. "Exactly seven point five percent of the final total weight, I have calculated it. At the very least our rings will be sterling silver." That smile again, given freely to her, and only her.
With a deep relenting breath, Lily brought her wand against the metal and proceeded to take them out of form, swirling the liquid quickly against the smooth surface of the bench. If she allowed the substance to stop it would solidify instantly against the grain; Snape had learnt that the hard way.
For Lily, this was not an issue she seemed to worry about as she manipulated the substance easily while she turned her attention to the following steps. Her magic came naturally to her, as did multitasking. Perhaps extended practice within the field of Potioneering brought upon that skill, or at the very least sharpened it.
With her empty hand, she brought her fingers above the small pile of powdered stone, twisting her hand in a small circular motion. A chant began low upon her tongue, as magic weaved about her fingers, a soft glow lighting upon the fey powder. The entire time, the molten silver never stopped dancing upon the tip of her wand.
In one swift motion, she brought the silver trailing across the table, flooding over the powdered stone, the heart of the enchantment sent into its swirling form. The copper fleck slipped seemingly unbidden into the mix, seeming to dissolve as it touched the magical material.
With her chant reaching a crescendo, she pulled the mass into even halves, allowing the vortex to slow and form to slowly take. Snape's silver emerged, perfect and whole as if untouched. Lily's ring, however, formed slowly and intricately. Twisting a pattern down one half, merging seamlessly into a plain-halo.
"I've been practicing that, I'm so glad it turned out well," Lily breathed, the moment the last tones of enchantment disappeared from her lips. "I can't disrupt the structure again once the form is set.
Snape reached across the table to pick up his own. It somehow seemed to feel different in his hands, as if heavier, more than can be explained by the addition of a chip of copper or the enchantment placed upon it. She too picked up hers, slipping on eagerly to admire in the lamplight. A silver ring, beautiful in care and crafting, imbued with her heart.
He turned his ring within his fingers, wondering if the weight he felt was more metaphorical than physical. "I wonder… would an etching disrupt your enchantment?" He murmured with some hesitance.
"I see old artefacts dinged up by centuries of weather and wear. I don't see why it would," Lily offered eagerly, her bright green eyes staring expectantly.
The Slytherin frowned thoughtfully, glancing across the plain surface of the halo-side of her ring. Slowly he held his hand out to take hers, holding it steady under the tip of his wand. He traced a slow silent spell across his surface, etching upon it an image he held firmly upon the surface of his mind. He was no artist of the pen, but his mind never lacked for creativity or concentration.
A gasp arose from the fair girl's lips as two does etched upon the plain surface of her ring, facing each other across the expanse of silver. As if across a moon-tinted lake, two silver does once had stood upon the start of their journey down this entwining path.
Lily smiled as she withdrew her hand from his, twisting it under the lamplight to better view the simple etching. "You romantic, you," she accused with a too-delighted grin.
Snape made to put on his own but her hand flew out to stop him. "Aren't you going to etch yours?" She asked with wide pleading eyes.
"You want me to wear that on my ring as well?" Snape asked aghast. It was one thing for decorated formal robes that he barely wore, but for a ring that would bring him the scrutiny of every eye?
But even as he protested, he knew his will could not withstand her disappointment. As her bright green eyes dropped from his, the Slytherin in him knew that was not the way to proceed.
"I am… open to negotiation," he muttered, willing it to not feel so much like surrender.
What did I do wrong?
Lily glared at her ring, as if to blame it for failing to live up to its promises. It sparkled back at her, the light gleaming off its prettily wrought pattern, but not an ounce of magic could be felt between the two rings that theoretically should have become magically connected.
She sighed, setting her chin against her transfigurations homework in dejection. "Why do you think I failed?" she murmured to her oh-so-studious fiancé. Though he had no homework to complete, Sev had followed her to the study hall, bringing with him the patrol scheduling and meeting notes he was no doubt preparing for the next fortnight. They sat at the end of a long table, closes to the corner of the room, and by some magic of Sev's anti-gravitational personality, nobody seemed willing to sit near them.
She felt his fingers caress her back obligingly, gently, and oddly willingly in public. "You didn't fail," he murmured, his voice soft against her ear.
She smiled and brought her eyes up, trailing across to the silver ring he wore upon his left hand. A thick and sturdy band of silver, not decorated in any obvious manner, but decorated it was. A compromise he had agreed to, he had etched the same two does on the inner surface of his ring. Their rings were now a matching pair in form at least, if not function.
She sighed again, burying herself beneath her crossed arms. "So, who's taking the extra patrol next week? You or me?" Sev asked, a little too blasé about the fact that his fiancé was an utter failure.
"I'll do it," she muttered into the vellum. "I can at least do that right." Three generations of prefects from all four houses amounted to only six pairs of patrols, usually including the Student Heads. This meant there was always at least one repeat of patrol duties for an unfortunate, and the unwritten tradition dictated the responsibility to be undertaken by the Heads. She was exceedingly thankful that their head boy this year did not come from the prefect pool, meaning only one of them had to endure the repeat each week.
She felt his hand on her back again, making that comforting stroking motion. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You didn't fail. The magic is there."
Lily lifted her eyes up from her self-pity. "But it's not doing what I wanted it to do!" She had hoped to create two rings that were able to find each other, a concession to his desire to know how to find her, as well as her own to honour the love that went into that pulverised alchemical stone. But the rings felt stubbornly light upon her finger, refusing to emit the tug towards its bonded pair.
His dark eyes frowned, as if stopped by a sudden indecision. For a moment Lily feared he was about to be inclined to agree with her lamentations of uselessness, before his wand came to hand and a handkerchief appeared in the other. "You have a smudge," he muttered, holding out the plain white cloth in offering.
"Where?" She asked, a cheek filled smile spreading across her cheeks, expecting him to turn this into an opportunity.
Yet again Sev defied expectations, bringing the cloth harshly against her nose and scrubbed a little too intently to be considered playful. "I get it. You're efficient," Lily groaned, muffled by the offending material.
"Your work is smudged too," he mumbled, withdrawing from her personal space. Lily glanced down to see the smears of semi-dried ink across half a sentence. She rewetted her quill and reapplied a new layer of fresh ink, wishing a little that wizarding technology caught up to their muggle counterpart in this regard.
With a muffled sigh, Lily continued onto the next paragraph. Just two more covering Molak's third Postulate and its relation to overcoming the limitation of rigidity and she'd be done.
"I'm done with the timetable,." Sev sounded in her ear, eliciting another sigh from Lily. Why was he so competent? He made her feel like a slacker.
Glaring she glanced over at his vellum, reading off the names and how he arranged them. "Proud and Limply are both on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. Neither of them could do Thursdays because Hufflepuff practice is on Friday mornings. If ever it changes, they always drop a note. Also I hear that Ravenclaw Erin is a member of Flitwick's Frog Choir so she can't do Fridays. Remus can't do Wednesdays because of Astronomy. Limply too."
"It would have helped to know this beforehand. Sev growled as he drew out a new sheet as if to redo the entire timetable.
"Actually, just let Remus have your shift and you take Proud's, have him move to Wednesday," Lily suggested, surprised a logical mind like Severus hadn't figured it out.
She had thought his scowl was intended for his failure to notice, but as it turned out it was due to reluctance. "Won't work," he muttered.
Lily frowned, waiting for the explanation why, but after ten seconds it became apparent he wasn't forthcoming. "Well? I'm waiting."
A strange sheepishness came across his features. "I…" He hesitated, scowling, causing Lily's eyebrows to jump up to the fringes of her hair.
"You have something on that night?" She asked dryly.
"No," he mumbled, then his words trailed off.
"Come again?"
"I said I don't want to patrol with Bones," he finally relented, eliciting a start of surprise from the Gryffindor girl.
She hadn't meant to sound so jealous when the question passed the threshold of her lips. "Why? What's wrong with her?" More like, was there history?
"There's nothing wrong with her," Sev grumbled. "I just don't want to patrol with a Hufflepuff."
"Excuse me?" Lily raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were over your little House-superiority phase."
He flinched, as if bitten by her words. "I just don't have any patience… for mediocrity."
Now that wasn't fair at all. Amelia Bones was easily the most capable of the next cohort of prefects, easily the top candidate for Head Girl next year. "You'll find Amelia is by no means incapable," Lily stated firmly, determined to dissuade her fiancé of such a rude notion.
"I know," he muttered to her surprise. "She's a strict perfectionist, a damnable idealist through and through. I don't want to patrol with her because I don't want to hear what she has to say about my history with the darkness of my House."
Lily frowned, a smidge concerned. "Did she say something to you before?"
"No," Sev muttered, adding to the confusion.
"I don't get it, did you just assume that she would?"
Sev appeared to shake himself as his scowl deepened. "Forget I said anything alright? I just don't get on with Hufflepuffs and their damnable ideological friendship is magic mindset," he growled just loud enough to attract dirty looks from Hufflepuffs sitting close by, causing Lily to shoot an apologetic glance towards them.
"Or Gryffindors, or Ravenclaws, or half of Slytherin really," Lily counted off her fingers in a teasing tone. "Get out of your comfort zone, Sev. The world is bigger than just you and I." She reached over to run her fingers through his long thick hair. He closed his eyes to the sensation, not even protesting her public show of affection.
"I wish that it weren't," he rumbled, a longing to his tone. "I wish life was less complicated."
Lily could not help but grin, slipping her fingers from his mane to prod him on the nose. "Should have thought of that before you willingly dated a Gryffindor."
A nervous clearing of the throat brought both Lily and Severus out of their moment. A small Ravenclaw stood at their table, looking suddenly very nervous, doubly so as Sev proceeded to glower at the poor thing. "Umm… Prefect… needed on sixth floor. Trophy room… Filch sent…" He squeaked, unable to finish his message.
Sev sighed as he stood, hand firmly set upon Lily's shoulder. "I'll take care of it. You finish your work." His tone brooked no argument, and she briefly felt the illogical crevasse of an illusionary age-gap. A highly irrational thought, considering they were barely a month apart in age.
He stepped away, his decaying backpack hoisted carefully over his shoulders, somehow sweeping out of the study hall with a confidence not unlike that of a practiced leader. He suited the role well, and he faced his responsibilities, although with complaint, but never shirking. More capable than she ever thought he could be with the responsibilities of authority.
A boy that was living up to everything she had always expected him to, and more. As he disappeared down the corridor, she thought she could still feel him there, like a beacon in her heart. But slowly, she frowned, as she followed his path down the hallway she knew to run adjacent to this room, she wondered whether this was an imagined feeling, or if she could really feel his presence?
With a start, she removed her ring, and suddenly the sensation faded into the ethers. Her pulse quickened as she slid that ring on once more, feeling a presence from somewhere from below, an unknown distance away from her. She could not tell exactly where he was, but she knew she could feel his presence. If she followed it, she knew she could find him.
A smile touched her lips as her fingers played across her silver ring. This wasn't as practical as she had designed it, but she had been warned the core would add its own touch to the spell. Who ever thought Sev's heart would be so sentimental?
"Would you stop fondling that ring? I'm trying to eat and it's creeping me out," Mulciber growled, still in a foul temper after what happened after Transfigurations.
Snape scowled as he withdrew his fingers. "I think we can both agree that you watching me does nothing for either of our appetites."
Snape hadn't taken off his ring since its enchantment, after realising the extent of the powers it lent. For it kept Lily by his side.
Though it had a limited range - he could not sense her if they were parted by more than the distance of four floors - it was enough of a promising start. These types of enchantments only grew stronger with age and the touch of residual magic. Given enough years it could easily encompass the range of the entire school grounds, years after they long left its bounds.
He could feel her presence and knew he could find her, wherever she'd be, if he followed his heart. As poetic as that was literal. He could not bring himself to take off that ring and he drew a lot of snickers because of it, and a lot of questions about why a man who favoured black suddenly took to sparkling jewellery.
That hulking boy glared, taking that jibe a lot more personally than he had been recently. With a dark mutter he sunk back into his meal. Snape too returned to his own plate. Whereas he would usually have been content with oats and fruit in the morning, he had switched it today for steak and eggs. Already he could feel the oils build about his pores and his stomach leaden with the heavy fare, no doubt regret was soon to come over his idiotic flight of fancy.
Lily never said anything, but he could not help but feel too daunted over the looming prospect of having her see him disrobed. It wasn't like this was a matter of immediate address, as the wedding and this imagined scenario was well into their future. It wasn't like he would ever be sculptured, nothing much to look at in that regard, or any regard to be honest. At the very least he didn't want his ribs to show, and this would require a conscious change of diet. He couldn't stick to his thirty eight year old eating habits in his seventeen year old body. The change was not simply the quantity.
Even at that settled age he had been borderline emancipated, as much a symptom of his troubles and anguish as his embittered heart had been, and he wished to bring neither into a new life with Lily. She deserved far better. She always did.
He worked his knife around the sliver of fat, parting it from the lean portions of his meat. He set to work disassembling what was left into neat bite-sizes and took a bite with a portion of egg scramble. Every fibre of his mind and body was rebelling at the notion of luncheon food for breakfast. Perhaps he should not have chosen this particular meal to overhaul his diet.
Before he could complete his contemplation of regret, the morning post arrived in the form of a flock of descending owls over the breakfast table. Unusually for Snape, he received one letter this morning, but this time it was expected.
He had written to Lily's father the day before, he sent it by owl before meeting Lily down at his laboratory for her enchantment. A letter informing Mr Evans of what transpired between Snape and the man's daughter, and an apology for not asking permission first. Though that tradition was falling rapidly out of fashion, he expected Mr Evans to be a man to hold firmly to propriety.
Snape accepted the letter from the barn owl's talons, dismissing the bird without obliging its request for some fat rinds off his plate. The birds were fed well enough as it is at this school, an extra treat of processed human food could only be detrimental to their outcome.
More than a little apprehensively, Snape edged the muggle envelope open, struggling slightly against the muggle adhesive and tearing the vessel despite his care. Urquart glanced over from his plate of hashed potatoes and kippers. "You don't usually get letters Snape. Everything alright?"
"None of your business," the awkwardly unsociable boy retorted. There was something to be said about Urquart, he didn't seem to mind Snape's brusqueness. He simply shrugged and returned to his breakfast, content to let Snape deal with his dilemma by himself.
But it did not stop him from flicking back his own little sting. "Just like your girly little ring huh?"
Snape scowled as his associates all grinned at his expense. Even Lester struggled to keep a straight face. Up until now Urquart had been the most accommodating about the matter in that he ignored it in its entirety. But nobody could expect the boy not to jab back when he gets jabbed at.
Wedding rings were not a tradition in the wizarding world so the concept of an engagement ring was a foreign notion to them. Snape did not feel the desire to explain to them what this was, they had no business in his affairs.
He glanced across the hall to find Lily staring at him. At the sight of his smile, her face instantly lit up, in her hands was also grasped a letter. His heart lightened, perhaps it was good tidings.
Without another word, Snape returned to his own, slipping the fragile muggle stationary from its equally fragile envelope. He had never seen the writing style of Lily's father before, and he could not help but note how similar the man's calligraphy was to his daughter's, except he looped his loops far more conservatively and turned his corners in a sharper more efficient manner.
Dear Severus, it read.
Thank you for writing to inform me in so timely a manner. I appreciate you kept my opinions in your thought, and though I am disappointed that I did not get to have a conversation to you about the matter before hand, permission is implied with my blessings to date my daughter. I did not expect you to be doing so without plans for a future.
Snape's heart calmed, his worries ceased. This letter was not a chastisement, and somehow knowing her father stood behind him and Lily made all the difference in the world. He continued reading with a lighter heart, turning his ring absentmindedly as he did so.
Lily had told me you are a changed man. Something I am inclined to agree with, but I suppose that is what growing up is about. I had been so worried for my daughter when she first told me about her plans with you. But you laid them to rest with your behaviour and demeanour over the holidays. You are not the boy you once were, and you are certainly not your father.
Snape paused, turning those words over in his mind. His heart felt simultaneously light and heavy, revulsion at the implications those words dredged up and relieved to be absolved of them.
There are few good and true men in this world and I believe she is lucky to have one of them.
Severus closed his eyes, grateful. The rest of the letter was a more formal demand for details of what the plans for this wedding entailed and a promise to financially assist in the matter should they choose to do so too soon after graduation to accumulate enough savings. Details Snape planned to address in a far less emotional state of mind.
He folded the paper and slipped it carefully back into the envelope, a letter he hoped to preserve. The first true words of approval he had ever received from a man who believed in him for the good that he could potentially do.
The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the temperature was at that beautiful sweet spot that did not need the aid of a cloak, nor did it invoke the touch of sweat. This was a wonderful day to be outside and getting her hands dirty.
Lily approached the green House, staring excitedly at the throng of students waiting for the start of Herbology. Severus was among them, she could feel it, quite literally. Though she could not pinpoint his exact location or distance, the general sense of which direction to head in was all that it could give but that was something. Enough for a first try. Enough to make their rings special.
Their engagement rings.
An engagement her father threw his support behind, despite all rationality of thought. She hadn't told her father her plans, she didn't think he would approve. She had just gotten him used to the idea of his daughter dating Severus Snape, to spring the surprise of an engagement on him did not feel like the best of paths to take.
Little did she know, Severus had already taken the exact opposite route of thought. And what a resounding success that had been.
With a suppressed squeak of delight, Lily set eyes on Severus. Even with the advantage of knowing which direction she would come from he was unprepared for her sudden and very public show of delight and affection.
"Severus!" She exclaimed in delight as she flung her arms around the startled boy, invoking every eye in the vicinity. She knew he hated it when she drew attention to him, and that action drew a lot very quickly. But he was her fiancé, he had to forgive her.
After squeezing him as tightly as she could, Lily made to release him, relenting to his tender sensibilities. Except she suddenly found his arms around her, locking her in a mutual embrace. With a skip of her heart, she held on all the tighter, grinning madly as eyes averted from the mildly too liberal show of affection. She stuck her tongue out at her best friend Marlene's roll of the eyes and Dorcas Meadow's mildly confused smile.
Severus finally withdrew, mildly embarrassed by his own foray into sentiments, but Lily could not help the beaming grin. "How did you convince him?" She breathed, still a titter.
"I told him the truth," Sev returned with a tilt of his brow.
Lily sighed. "That's all it took? Who'd have thought?"
"Oh right!" Dorcas exclaimed suddenly and unexpectedly. "You two are engaged! Congratulations." News always gets around so quickly when Susan got involved.
Severus' muggle-born Slytherin friend suddenly appeared at his elbow. "Oh my goodness, congratulations Snape. Is that what the ring is about?" Sev scowled and twitched his fingers, no doubt still very much self-conscious of wearing it.
Just four feet away, little Peter gave a start, turning his wide round eyes on the pair. "You're engaged?" He asked in a wheezy whine. He had been recovering from a cold since his return from holidays and the effects still lingered.
"Right, forgot to tell you guys," Marlene muttered.
Dorcas approached and took Lily's hand, turning it under her scrutiny. "Is this a muggle tradition?" She asked with genuine curiosity.
"Muggle? I thought it was magical." Lester frowned, throwing Lily into confusion.
"Umm. Engagement rings are muggle," she insisted to her fellow muggle-born. "Where are you from that it's not a thing?"
"Wales. And it's totally a thing there," the Slytherin replied with no less confusion. "Only, where I come from the men aren't supposed to wear one."
"They're not?" Lily blinked. She's always seen her father wear his golden band, even after her mother was laid to rest.
Lester shook his head quite insistently. "No. The man is only supposed to wear it after the wedding. As in after they're married. Only the women are supposed to wear an engagement ring."
"You're joking," Lily gasped aghast. She quickly cast a glance to Severus to confirm he had indeed shrivelled into himself in scowling embarrassment. She was rusty on her muggle heritage, really rusty, and by the looks of it Severus fared no better.
She saw her fingers twitch towards his ring, but then withdraw as if he changed his mind. "It's enchanted," he muttered as if in answer to an unasked question. "I'm wearing it because it's enchanted. Not because of some age-decreed tradition!"
Lily could not help but smile. She searched out his fingers with her own, entwining them with her loving touch. She felt the cold touch of his smooth ring against her skin and wondered if that little touch of electric was magical or imagined.
The Marauders couldn't even stay out of trouble for a week, he had no illusions about how the Nifflers got into the trophy room. They hadn't even managed to get to the end of that said week before they wrought destruction upon the first floor girl's bathroom.
Like father like son, Snape supposed as he scowled at the shattered pieces of porcelain and rivulets of bog water. Mercifully this bathroom was rarely used, if ever, by the female population of the school. The wailing ghost that usually haunted this facility drove most away, and with good reason. Snape couldn't think of many things less appealing than trying to do one's private business to the sound of wailing.
Regardless, there was a general fetid haze about the air, a foul smell all too familiar to that veteran potioneer. The Marauders had been making their own attempt at that blast potion it seemed, with too predictable results. Pettigrew, being the only brewer in that damnable group, managed to get himself hospitalised. That would not be enough to excuse him from detention, Snape would make sure of it.
"Rotten kids," Filch grumbled as he swept his mop around the lake of a floor. "I better not catch you stopping until I can see my face in the shine on that bowl!"
Black muttered darkly as he magically scrubbed the toilet seat with a flick of his wand. "Don't see why you'd want to see that ugly mug."
"What was that?"
"He said it's getting dark," Potter replied hastily as he siphoned at the watery mess. Lupin sighed but said nothing more, setting himself for a long gruelling evening of scouring the walls. There was something exceedingly gratifying about watching the Marauders receive a humbling, and Snape was almost tempted to spend the evening watching them suffer.
"From your snide comments it appears you are not appropriately contrite about the situation you have wrought our poor caretaker," Snape almost purred as his two lead antagonists threw him scathing looks. "I do believe, Mr Filch, that it would be most beneficial to the entire institution if you could educate them in some… appreciation. Perhaps if they're made to do at least some of the work without the aid of magic."
"Wonderful idea, Mr Snape," Filch crowed with delight. Black and Potter could not look more livid, and Snape took immense pleasure at the sight. They needed to be taken down a peg or two, the arrogant brats.
Lupin sighed as he stowed away his wand, reaching for what Snape assumed to be a mop made for walls. "Snape, you realise I have to patrol later?"
"Then you better get scrubbing," Snape sneered, without a hint of mercy.
"This isn't going to be done before then. Not the muggle way." He emphasised his conundrum with a hefty heave of his wall-mop, smearing the fetid remains of the potion across the stonework.
Snape scowled, not appreciating the boy rationally blackmailing him into softening his sentence. "I'll have your patrol replaced, so you have no excuses for leaving this facility before it is… excellent again."
The dark looks Snape received brought a pleasant wave of nostalgia. This was the one part of being a professor he did not hate, and this power came with the privilege of his position. The cretins deserved every morsel of suffering that came their way, especially since they were rarely caught these days, though he didn't think there was any way to punish them enough to reach karmic neutrality. With a satisfied smirk at this all too deserved dose of humbling, Snape strode out, leaving the cursed Marauders to reap what they had bloody well sown.
Though the hearty sunlight streaming through the corridor windows barely made it seem so, it was barely two hours till curfew. Hardly enough time to arrange a trade of patrol time with any other prefect. But that suited Snape fine, he had been looking forward to patrol work. To be given the freedom to roam the halls during the silence of the night. Even the prospect of having to wear that garish green sash and sharing it with company couldn't dampen the prospect. He was in higher spirits than he had been for a long, long time.
Unfortunately, he had not counted on who Lupin's patrol partner was supposed to be.
"Good evening. I am Amelia Bones," the Hufflepuff greeted very professionally with an extended hand. "You are the Head Boy, Severus Snape, I presume?"
"Yes," Snape answered, taking her hand in a single unenthused shake. Compared to most, Bones was positively a shining example of how he wished students behaved. Hard working, quiet and no-nonsense. By all regards he should have gotten along with her splendidly.
However, there was a bad history between them, one that this Bones could not possibly be aware of. Or be faulted for.
"I confess, I had been expecting the Gryffindor prefect, Lupin," She continued in her professional manner. "I had not received word that patrol times had been altered."
"Lupin had found himself… suddenly preoccupied. Nothing beyond this patrol has been altered," Snape replied, trying his best to remain cordial. He could not help the instinctive bite of defensiveness whenever he heard her voice. That voice that brought nothing but fresh accusations that dredged up the vilest moments of his past.
With only a curt nod, Bones took to her patrol route. Though he had spent nearly twenty years running into the prefect patrols during his nightly wanderings, he had never paid anything but a cursory heed to their role. Despite his position being in that of seniority over the Hufflepuff, there was no doubt who was the more experienced of the two in their duties.
There was no hesitation over which route she would take, no discussion or deferral to him. Yet Bones did not appear in any way uncomfortable by the fact she was outranked by a complete amateur.
Snape moved in step with the frigid girl, simply thankful that she wasn't one for small talk. He by no means disliked the woman, he'd even go so far as to say he respected what she stood for. Not many could have made Head of a Ministry Department at the age that she did. But she was an all too prominent reminder of the absolute worst about Snape's self. His past is a weight he no longer wished to carry about his neck.
The ground floor passed in respectable silence and Snape relaxed into the routine. No words were wasted between the two, they were both perfectly comfortable with the silence. Professionals in their own right, despite the age they were supposed to be.
It did amuse him that the dungeon areas were not included in the patrol route. Perhaps it was realised that Slytherins are rarely the transgressors of the curfew. The notion of an uneventful patrol, however, was shattered upon the corridors of the first floor. The trio of Marauders, finally released from their drudgery upon the havoc they wrought, trudged through the hallway.
"Hold it," Bones commanded and surprisingly those usually uncooperative laggards obeyed. She turned her attention on the increasingly sheepish Lupin. "Now what is your excuse?"
Potter sighed, "We just got off detention. Detention that Snape here had set. Cut us some slack. We can't help it that it took us past curfew." Black threw a dirty glare at Snape, as if blaming him, almost rightfully. Except-
"True that I had you committed to an… appropriately measured discipline, and can confirm you would not have likely been finished before curfew." His lips curled in a sneer. "Yet why has Filch not walked you to your dorms?"
Potter shrugged. "Must have slipped his mind."
"You twit," Black added with a venomous hiss.
Snape scowled at those belligerent boys as Lupin appeared to shrink inward with a sigh. "Filch knows best of all how strictly we impose curfew. Surely he would have at least given you a hall pass. Shall we wait for his testimony? He tends to be drawn to the sound of student voices."
"You know full well that we'd be out after dark. Having a lark with your newfound powers are you Snivellus?" The hound of a boy bayed.
"You are correct, I do know where you'd be," Snape replied, his lips curling with distaste. "The girl's bathroom on this floor, which is from exactly opposite hallway than the one you came from. Do you take me for a fool?"
"We took the long way around!" Black hissed, continuing to be contrary, inviting no mercy from the Head Boy who honestly would not have willingly shown them any.
Lupin suddenly waded unexpectedly into the fore, placing himself between Snape and the aggressing Black. "Alright, we're lying. We didn't come straight from detention. We snuck away from Filch and made a detour to the hospital wing. We finished our detention task I swear."
"Peter's in there for the night. We just wanted to make sure he's alright. He gets night terrors." Potter laid it on thick.
"We're headed back to the tower as we speak," Lupin insisted. Snape remained unmoved.
"Touching," The Head Boy sneered. "If you truly cared about your friend, perhaps not hospitalise him to begin with."
Snape's patrol partner suddenly stepped forward, turning attention with her presence alone. "Mr Snape is correct, we cannot have you breaking the rules simply because it's convenient for you." Lupin shrivelled inwards, appearing to suppress a groan. "However, I cannot fault the reason why you did it."
Snape's head whipped around, incredulity upon his face. "Their reason? How can their reason be enough to excuse their flouting of the law?" Snape's reason had never been enough, and no amount of 'reason' could shield him from this woman's lawful pursuit.
The Hufflepuff witch turned an appraising eye on Snape, seeming unmoved by his outburst. "They had not set out to break curfew as I understand it, in that part of the rules they had no choice. As to whether they should have returned immediately, I believe they are still morally on the fore." She gave a conceding nod to Lupin's small smile of thanks. "Friends need to be there for friends after all."
Snape stared, confusion mingling with outrage. This woman had never shown her an ounce of mercy in the intervening years of his past life. She cared not one whit that Dumbledore vouched for his sincerity, nor the distance he placed between himself from the man he once was. Yet with a handful of insincere words, the Marauders could twist her arrow-straight heart into forgiving their transgressions.
Yet again exceptionalism rears its head. Forever lingering proof life was stacked against him, while it bent over backwards for the likes of James bloody Potter.
"You will go straight to your dorms. No more detours. I will not tolerate your presence another time tonight," Bones told them firmly.
With a silent nod, the trio of trouble makers slipped around the prefects and headed up the Grand Stairwell. Snape was livid as he watched those cretins escape justice, disbelieving how lightly Amelia Bones had let them off. Amelia Bones, who pursued him relentlessly for every transgression rightful or imagined.
"I misjudged you, Amelia Bones. Here I took you for a fair-handed administrator of the law," Snape hissed through his clenched teeth.
The Hufflepuff glanced upon him with unaffected eyes. "What is fair is not always what is law, Mr Snape."
"How very convenient to be able to warp it at your discretion," Snape spat. That once-relentless pursuer of righteous justice, turned out to be simply another prejudiced against him.
With a calm tip of her head she conceded. "My decision was made on the grounds of empathy. I cannot claim to be correct in every judgement." She turned her steely eyes upon her Slytherin counterpart. "That is why you had the right to veto me at any point. You are Head Boy, Mr Snape. I would have deferred to your judgement. That is the luxury of not standing on the top. Kindness can be afforded."
And with that she turned her heels upon her Slytherin counterpart, setting off without another wasted word upon the circuit of the first floor. Snape stared after her retreating figure for a moment more before lowering his eyes and following suit.
A/N: The people in Snape's old life seem to give him grief no matter which side of the dark/light divide they sit on.
A thank you to my Beta readers Sattwa100 and MrsNanna for your work on this chapter.
And a thank you to all my readers for my first 1000 reviews!
Next Update: Saturday 16th June 2018 AEDT.
Chapter 36: A Most Insufferable Affair
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe and do not seek to profit in any way, shape or form from this fan work.