Chapter 54: Hogsmeade.
'Well, that went smoothly, didn't it?' Lily said, with a sigh of relief.
They had just come down from Magus's office at the top of the North Tower, after telling him they wouldn't be continuing with his lessons anymore.
'If you mean he didn't object, then, yes, it went smoothly.' Severus climbed down the last rungs of the ladder that led to the trapdoor of the Divination classroom, and joined Lily as they went down the spiralling staircase of the North tower.
'But-?' Lily raised a quizzical eyebrow.
'But he treated us to the full blast of his doleful gaze, of course. Don't tell me you didn't notice, for I could see you were trying to avoid his eyes!'
'Well, I hate it when he does that, Sev! It feels as if he's always on the point of telling us we're doomed to a tragic end, but isn't doing so on account of frightening us or something! It makes me feel depressed and makes you irascible, so I'm glad we're rid of him!'
Severus frowned on hearing himself being described as 'irascible,' but he didn't contradict her.
Lily was glad she had coerced him to give up Divination. He hadn't wanted to at first, saying it was still the beginning of October. Severus resisted old Magus's doom and gloom approach better than Lily, on whom the old wizard's morose atmosphere weighed heavily. But she now knew that Severus's background was more depressing than a vague prediction or omen, so he was naturally more immune.
However, she would invariably have to listen to his tirades against Magus after every lesson, so she persuaded her friend that he was wasting time with lessons he did not want to believe in.
'D'you think he believed us when we said we had to drop Divination because of our work load?' she said, after a while. 'I mean, d'you think he was offended when -?'
Severus made an impatient noise. 'Lily, first you pester me to drop that stupid subject, and now you're feeling sorry for old Magus? What d'you care about him for? He was making you miserable! Anyway, now we can master our own destinies…'
'They say he saw his own death omen. It must be pretty hard to live with that!'
'Only because he believes in his own stupid omens! He deserves to be miserable for thinking there is no other truth.'
Lily still looked perturbed, so he tried a different track.
'Besides, work is really piling on. I don't think we'd have time for … you know… anything else, if we continue at this rate.'
She looked at him and nodded slowly. 'I guess you're right. Took me and Mary till midnight to finish McGonagall's essay, and I haven't even started Kettleburn's stuff about how to feed Gryffins. And there's somewhere else I'd like to go now … besides the forest, I mean.'
'Hogsmeade?'
'Yes. Everyone's wild to go. They said the shops there are packed with wonderful stuff! Magical stuff!'
She felt instantly cheered at the prospect of exploring somewhere new, and determinedly pushed Professor Magus out of her mind. Without his oppressive presence in her Hogwarts timetable, she felt she had more to look forward to.
When the day for their first trip to Hogsmeade came, it was a rather blustery Saturday in mid-October. Severus made his way to the great oaken front doors where Lily was eagerly waiting for him. A long line of students had already formed near the doors, and Filch was collecting Permission Forms.
'Aren't you excited?' Lily asked, her eyes shining, and barely resisting the urge to bounce up and down.
Severus raised his eyebrows at Lily's exuberance, but could not suppress a smile. There was a lot of excitement, especially among the waiting third-years, but Lily's high spirits outstripped them all. Severus was as eager as any to visit Hogsmeade, but there was a reason why.
There always had to be a reason for Severus Snape. He did nothing just for the sheer pleasure of it. That was something he was unused to, and against his nature to do. The closest he had ever come to doing something that did not produce a calculated result, or a desired effect, was when Lily had persuaded him to join the Flying club. The euphoric feeling that came with riding a broomstick at high speed was the nearest he could ascribe to what Lily called 'having fun'.
That lasted until he had discovered Potter had been taken on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Then, suddenly, flying held no more 'fun' for him, and he had backed out of the Flying club.
He looked around, trying to spot Potter amongst the crowd of students. He saw Sirius Black first, for Filch was collecting his Permission Form, but sure enough, Potter was right behind him, as were Pettigrew and Remus Lupin. He glared darkly as Filch allowed them through the doors. He hoped they would not run into them in Hogsmeade.
He wanted to visit Scrivenshafts, and there was an old bookshop that Rosier had mentioned, but the main reason he wanted to go was that he hoped to see Madeira again. He hadn't forgotten the old witch and her mysterious connection to his great-grandfather. Neither had he forgotten that she had promised him she'd teach him Legilimency, that strange branch of magic that he found so alluring. From what he understood at the time, she would somehow contact him while he was in Hogsmeade.
They had arrived up to Filch, and Lily eagerly shoved her Permission Form at the caretaker, who took it grudgingly, scowling at her. Severus had his snatched from his hand with an accompanying dark glare. Filch still hadn't forgotten his one-time intrusion into the restricted section of the Library. But then again, Filch always glared at students whatever the circumstances. Both Lily and Severus ignored him as they stepped out into the blustery wind.
Lily chattered nineteen to the dozen as they passed under the tall Gates of Hogwart's boundary wall. Severus craned his neck to see the two winged boars at the top of each pillar, their ancient and weather-beaten, tusked heads gazing belligerently down on them from their great height.
'Wonder who put them there? The founders, maybe.' Lily had followed his gaze and was looking back at the winged creatures guarding the gates of Hogwarts.
'Mmm. Probably. In Hogwarts: a History it says they guard the gates with ancient magic. It seems they seal the gates, if there's a threat of invasion. Only the Headmaster can unlock them then. Even Binns said that during the Goblin riots - '
'How d'you manage to listen to Binns? Last lesson I was practically asleep even before Bodrod The Bearded had cut off Ugric the Hunchback's head!'
'I know. I presumed that's why you wanted all my notes on the seventeenth century goblin uprising last Monday!'
Lily made a wry face. 'It's just that this year Gryffindor have History of Magic as last lesson in the afternoon, and it makes worse. Anyway, where shall we go first?'
Severus shrugged.
This suited Lily just fine, and by the time they had walked far enough to see the village of Hogsmeade in the distance, Lily had already planned an itinerary of the shops they should visit, and what they should buy.
Severus walked beside her in silence, a slightly bemused expression on his face. Although he had visited few wizarding places before Hogwarts, yet he had some experience of them. For Lily, however, coming from a muggle home, it was all new.
'…like seeing Diagon Alley for the first time and…' she was telling him, but the wind, having grown stronger, whipped the words out of her mouth.
Ahead of them, small knots of students had already disappeared between the thatched cottages on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Lily wordlessly urged him on, as she held her cloak tightly around her.
White clouds were scudding across the sky as they reached the first houses of Hogsmeade village, but the sun was shining determinedly through, as though unwilling to have their first visit to Hogsmeade ruined by showers of rain.
There was only one main street in the wizarding village, but many narrow side-streets led off it and meandered in varying directions, the houses huddled together as if to protect themselves from the howling north-easterly storms that sometimes blew in from the mountains.
Lily wanted to go to Honeyduke's, the sweetshop, first. The place was crammed with students and full of wonderful sweets. Lily had to examine everything and then dithered for half an hour on whether she would get Chocolate frogs or Jelly slugs.
Severus found the cloyingly sweet and warm smell, pleasant at first, but the sight of so many confections in one place was overwhelming. He didn't want to buy anything, and was glad when Lily finally paid for the sweets and they returned to the bracingly cold, clean air outside.
The Apothecary's was far less crowded, and Severus replenished his store of those ingredients he couldn't obtain in large enough quantities from Slughorn's class. He could see Lily observing him intently as he pocketed his purchased ingredients, some of which they had never even used in class. He thought she might start warning him again about brewing illicit potions, but she said nothing, though he knew she had taken note of all that he had bought.
Scrivenshaft's was quite full of people, especially curious third-years buying colour-changing ink and spell-checking quills, but Lily managed to get some parchment and black ink in a relatively short time, and they were about to push their way out of the crowded shop, when they were hailed by somebody behind them.
'Hello, Lily! Hello, Severus!' Thalia accosted them cheerfully 'Have you been buying parchment, too?' She had Mary MacDonald in tow, for the two were always together now. 'Listen, its murder in here,' she continued. 'D'you want to go to The Three Broomsticks with us? They say the butterbeer there is quite decent, actually.'
'The what? Where?' Lily looked uncomprehending, but Severus knew that she would, of course, want to go.
'It's a really nice drink, Lily,' Mary answered, before Severus could say anything 'You'll see. You'll love it! Alice is already there with Jenny. Jenny never tasted it either.'
'Sounds great!' Lily answered 'How about it, Sev? Sev?'
But Severus had already pushed his way out of the shop. He hated being in crowded places, and the jostling, noisy, students around him gave him an irrational desire to escape or hex them out of his way.
To his chagrin, once Lily and the other students joined him, other excited third-years saw them and came over, so by the time they arrived at the Three Broomsticks, they were a sizeable group.
'My brother's in there,' Bertram Aubrey was saying. 'He'll save us a place.'
Bertram was a Slytherin third-year, but Severus knew his older brother was in Ravenclaw, and a regular visitor to Hogsmeade.
'At this rate, he'll need to save us at least two tables,' Melchior Abbott remarked, looking about him doubtfully. He was accompanied by his elder sister, Hortense, who was showing him the sights.
'Let's go in – there'll be enough space, you'll see,' Hortense replied, as she pushed past her brother and opened the pub door.
They crowded behind her, following her in.
'Coming, Sev? What are you waiting for?'
Lily had paused at the door and was looking back at him.
He had been peering up and down the cobbled street, hoping to catch a glimpse of the wizened old witch, Madeira. She had said where she'd contact him, but never said when. And now that he was surrounded by half the school population, he thought it highly unlikely that she would come up and speak to him. Why didn't the old hag just send an owl, like everybody else, after all?
At that moment, a cold gust of wind whipped his hair around his face, and he clutched his cloak as it billowed about him. With a frustrated sigh, he followed Lily into the warmth of The Three Broomsticks.
Once inside he understood what Hortense meant. The pub was far larger inside than it appeared on the outside, either because it had been magically extended, or because it had numerous, quirky little low-ceilinged rooms and alcoves extending from the back of the bar.
They found a large table and Severus sat down next to Lily, looking about him with interest, and a vague sense of disquiet.
As a young boy he had been sent, on occasions, to fetch his father back from the muggle pubs he frequented in Castleforth. Such missions had almost always ended in grief, for his father never took kindly to being summoned away from his drinking. Either his mother eventually noticed his bruises, or else she had got a taste of his father's displeasure herself. Eventually, the occasions he was sent to the pub became very rare and only when absolutely necessary. But the smell of stale air and rancid drink of those muggle places, as well as the blank, dead expressions of the dishevelled men perpetually slumped against the bar, had remained impressed on his young mind, so that he recognised even the faint and barely perceptible whiff of it in The Three broomsticks.
A pretty and brightly-dressed young woman was serving a group of seventh-year boys in one corner. She noticed their arrival and made as though to come to their table, but the senior boys were reluctant to let her go, and kept calling her back in overloud voices.
'I'm Madam Rosmerta, the Innkeeper's daughter,' she said, when she finally managed to extricate herself from the seventh-year's table. 'What would you like to order?'
Severus was glad he still had some silver leftover from summer. It was still early in the year, and he still hadn't made that much money from helping others do their schoolwork. He vowed he would have to step up his efforts, for he'd be damned if he let anyone say he didn't have enough money to buy a butterbeer!
The stuff, when it came, was pleasant tasting, and vaguely familiar. Probably his mother might have procured some on occasions.
Lily was in raptures. 'This is really good – it tastes nothing like beer…'
'Beer?' interjected Hortense.
'Muggle beer. My father let me taste it once, and I didn't like it. This, however, is really good.'
Sudden loud, raucous, laughter from behind him made him look around. To his displeasure, he saw Potter, Black, Pettigrew and Remus on a table close by, and they seemed to be entertaining the Barman's daughter with some of their usual tall tales.
' ….he is now the fastest Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.' Black was saying. 'Reflexes faster than lightning - he can catch the quaffle and score before you can say 'Gryffindor wins'!'
Potter pretended to take a bow to imaginary applause.
Severus felt someone kick him under the table. He turned to face Lily, who leaned towards him and said in a low voice:
'Ignore them, Sev. They've been like that ever since Potter was made Chaser and McGonagall told him he's the best the team's ever had. It went to his head a bit!'
'A bit?!' He made a sound of disgust, but forced himself to look away from the table behind him, from whence Madam Rosmerta's tinkling laughter was now mingling with the boys' raucous shouts.
' …It's at the outskirts of the village and its haunted. We should go and see it.' Aubrey was saying.
'Why should I want to see a haunted house? I can see any old ghost I want just by taking a stroll down one of Hogwart's corridors.' Thalia answered, contemptuously.
'But this is different. There are some really evil spirits there! They scream in agony all night, they say!' Melchior interjected, his eyes wide in his freckly face.
His older sister nodded. 'That house was rebuilt recently, before you lot came to Hogwarts. It was always nothing more than a shack before, but they were patching it up and fixing it a couple of years ago. It seems that the works disturbed some pretty evil spirits!'
'Sounds like they're in pain, if they're screaming in agony,' Lily said, sounding concerned.
'And what do you propose, Lily? To go and comfort the ghosts?' Severus told her, raising an eyebrow.
'Well, no, I suppose not. But if they sound distressed, don't you wonder why? I mean, even at Hogwarts, there's this ghost of a young lady, and she looks so sad…'
'That's the Grey Lady, Ravenclaw's ghost, and she doesn't answer questions about her past life, my brother told me,' Bertram Aubrey explained.
'Unlike nearly-headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost. He's always ready to give you a blow-by-blow account of his botched beheading' Mary McDonald interjected, with an expression of distaste. 'Demonstrates it, even…'
'Ghosts exist because they have unfinished business on this earth …' Melchior volunteered.
'Or regrets, maybe,' added Lily, softly.
'Anyway, shall we go and have a look?' Aubrey repeated.
By general consent, they put on their cloaks and walked out of The Three Broomsticks. Outside, the wind tore at their cloaks and hair, and grey clouds loomed over the horizon, threatening rain, but they made their way along the High street towards the edge of the village. Hortense, having been there before, led the way.
'What are you looking for Sev?'
Severus gave a guilty start. He was still hoping that Madeira would somehow turn up, and had been looking down all the little alley ways and side-streets, where he assumed she would be lurking, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Lily had followed his gaze and was looking down one small side street, trying to see what he had been looking at.
'Nothing,' he lied, and was about to move on, when he saw her eyes widen in fear.
Turning quickly, he was just in time to see two young wizards disappear inside an Inn with a rusty sign over it, creaking in the wind. 'The Hogshead Inn' was written over a crude picture of a severed boar's head leaking blood over a white tablecloth. They were rather far off, but Severus recognised them immediately.
'Those were…! Those were…' Lily stammered.
'Yes, Selwynn, and Rodolphus Lestrange,' Severus confirmed grimly 'The ones that had chased us down Knockturn Alley once. I don't think they've seen us, but perhaps we shouldn't stand here.'
Lily seemed unwilling, or unable, to move on, so he grabbed her elbow and stirred her towards the larger group of students who had drawn ahead.
'What if they see us, Sev? I never thought I'd meet them again! What if they're still after us, because of what we heard that day?!'
'What we heard that day is becoming more of an open secret. They were talking of the Dark Lord, but many whisper his name with approval nowadays. I don't think they'll bother us. Still….'
'In case you've forgotten, they wanted to wipe our memories clean on that occasion! And I don't care if some people approve of him, and what he's doing, - Dumbledore said he's murdered people, and many witches and wizards are becoming scared. Some daren't even mention his name!'
'That's perhaps because they have good reason to be afraid! Perhaps they've got a guilty conscience! Perhaps they aren't as innocent as you like to think they are!' Severus spat.
'What d'you mean? What are they supposed to have done?!' Lily stopped short, turning to look at him indignantly. 'Besides, Alice told me there have been unwarranted attacks even on muggle families! They don't even know of our existence, so how can they deserve to be attacked?!'
'And you, of course, believe all that Alice tells you!' he sneered, stopping too.
'Well, why not? She said it was even on the muggle newspapers….'
'Muggle newspapers?!' he made a sound of disgust. 'If there's something that prints more rubbish than the Daily Prophet, it's got to be the muggle newspapers!'
'Then where do you get your news from, Severus? Rabastan and his gang? That stuck-up Head boy, Malfoy?' she confronted him, green eyes flashing. 'How do you know their information is more reliable than what Alice or Mary have told me? And after all, what, exactly, have they been telling you?!'
Severus glared at her angrily. He was torn between wanting to tell her about the injustices he knew about, the corruption in the Ministry, the false accusations, and the mistaken incarcerations he had been reading about all summer. He wanted to open her eyes to the fact that there were wizards plotting to give muggles the right to enter their world of magic, and have powers of decision; witches and wizards who were fool enough to think that muggles would not want to control their magic powers, once they had that right, once they had some dunderhead wizards working for them. Muggles like his father….
But he couldn't tell her. Rabastan had wanted the meetings and their subject matter to be kept secret, especially this year, when the teachers were on the lookout for them. He had slipped him a note about their proposed first meeting just that morning.
Lily was still looking at him expectantly, and defiantly.
'Never mind.' he said, tightly. 'Never you mind what they say. You wouldn't believe it, anyway!'
'Try me!' Lily challenged.
But Severus noticed there was a note of fear in her voice. Probably she was shocked to hear him openly say he was discussing things Dumbledore had expressly warned them against.
Severus looked at her for a minute through the black strands of hair whipping across his face as she confronted him – determined, but scared… scared of what she would hear.
Lily was not used to hearing about life's crude ways. He remembered how unpleasantly surprised she was, when, as children, he had shown her his recently-discovered Book on Dark Arts. That had been the first and last time he had shown it to her. More recently, in summer, he couldn't forget the look of shocked horror as she saw his bruised face after his father's beating, and worse still, the pity in her voice as she urged him to get help about his home life. No, Lily was not ready to hear about the ugly hidden world within a hidden world.
'Look, Lily, you go ahead and join the others,' he told her numbly 'I – I've forgotten something in the Three Broomsticks. I'll catch up with you later.'
And he turned abruptly round and started to retrace his steps towards the High Street, not bothering to look back.
To his relief, she did not call him back, so he hurried on, for another idea had taken hold of him. If he could not contact Madeira, he would at least try and see what the two young wizards were up to in the Hogshead.
What he had overheard two summers ago made him suspect that one of them, at least, was well known to the Dark Lord. What if they were actually meeting him now, at this very moment, in the Hogshead? Severus felt increasingly curious about this famed wizard – his magical prowess, his vast knowledge of the dark arts, and, if what Malfoy had once implied was correct, his expert skill at Legilimency.
Making sure nobody in the High Street was looking; he slipped into the side street where the Hogshead Inn sign creaked in the distance.
