Submitted for the final round of The International Wizarding School Championship.

School: Durmstrang

Year: Exchange Student 2 filling in for Year 2.

Theme: Durmstrang—Fear: Write about a character discovering or facing their worst fear. Some examples are acceptance of oneself, life or death, cowardice, and mistakes.

Special Rule—Durmstrang: None this round.

Main prompt: [Song] I Know A Place by MUNA

Optional prompt: [Object] A broken candelabrum

Wordcount: 1,900

Author's Note: I want to thank my awesome teammates for an amazing year. I am sorry I haven't been more proactive but I have enjoyed myself.

I use the name/term of Lenore to allude to the famous E.A. Poe poem, The Raven, as the principal literary lost love of someone.

I borrowed the idea for the Marriage of Convenience and Covenant Marriage unions from the Harmony fandom by Jayne Castle. Devenmond is the fictional sister city for Cokeworth that I crafted for purposes of the story. Also, Aunt Victoria is an original character. I do not believe it has been stated whether or not Tobias had any siblings in canon, so I crafted Victoria.

This is a Marriage Law!AU. You have been warned.

Dancing Silhouettes

"We do swear," we uttered in unison.

"So it shall be hereafter," came the monotonous voice of the Wizarding registrar as beams of light coiled around my and Hermione's left hands. The ribbon of light flickered out to leave two rings in its wake.

The cold band of silver cut into my finger, drawing a drop of blood, before readjusting itself. Its previous dull silver now smoldered with an azure hue.

Hermione fidgeted with her thin, unadorned band of now emerald-glowing silver that encircled the base of her left ring finger.

My stomach turned. We had been branded.

I tasted bile as all my trepidation and my deeply ingrained dread flooded me anew. I, Severus Snape, was ensnared in a loveless marriage—was this how my parents felt after their vows at the registrar?

"Ahem, yes." The registrar, a rather timid and weary-looking wizard, cleared his throat and pushed up his spectacles back up his narrow nose. I glanced at his nameplate once more, Reginald Sebastian, and wondered again if I had ever taught him during my tenure at Hogwarts.

"Here is your Marriage of Convenience certificate. You are now in a temporary union good for one year. It is renewable annually upon the joint desire of both parties to continue this union and if it does not meet the conditions set forth for Covenant Marriage which is pregnancy or childbirth. You are, of course, not only free but encouraged to advance your provisional union to the more binding one whenever you so desire." Sebastian informed us while two sealed scrolls materialized before us. "Congratulations."

Hermione and I stood and departed the depressingly cheery room; we both ignored the offer of a handshake from the magistrate. He took no offense.

Poor souls… Forced together in a loveless match… too bad both lost their Lenore.

My back stiffened.

I compelled my Legilimency dormant. I did not need it when I and all of Wizarding Britain knew already that this union was a farce.

We caught an empty lift and rode it up to reception in silence.

"Ready?" Hermione Granger—no, Granger-Snape now—asked, cheerily. Too cheerily for someone who had just been magically tied to a Dark Wizard who had escaped the hellish walls of Azkaban by the skin of my teeth.

I raised an eyebrow and motioned to my packed trunk in my left hand. "Obviously."

Her smile quivered but didn't dim.

That's bloody Gryffindors for you; always keeping their chins up as they put on a brave face.

Taking her warm hand in mine, we apparated to Devenmond and to our new life as a married couple.

What utter romantic rot!

I pondered ways of various means of torture, both Muggle and Wizarding, I would inflict upon whatever dunderheaded bureaucratic louse devised this asinine marriage law as I lead the way through the quintessential picturesque English country village. I was not surprised that it hadn't changed in the last thirty years—it was the sister city to Cokeworth after all, a purgatory of industry eternally doomed in smog.

"Oh, there's a bookstore: Literary Limbo," Hermione observed with wistful yearning.

Ah, there is the bookish erudite I knew once years ago when I was her professor. I'm glad that some remnant of that know-it-all witch still lurked in the refined woman beside me.

"Yes. It's Muggle, of course, but it used to have a rather nice selection of non-wizarding titles. Domestic to American and even Australian."

"Let's go tomorrow." Her chocolate-colored eyes sparkled in the noon sunlight. "Care to try the roadhouse a block back for lunch after?"

"That sounds," a smile tugged on my lips, "pleasant."

"Then it's a date."

I felt myself relax. The tension between my shoulders easing considerably. I could feel the distance between us lessen, albeit slightly.

After that, we spent the next hour chatting amiably as we continued towards our new home. However, once we arrived at the modest two-story cottage the relaxed air between us vanished.

I put the key into the lock and turned the doorknob freely.

Of course, the blasted door would be jammed.

I put my shoulder against the stubborn door and shoved forward. It only took two tries before it nosily swung open into the abandoned ramshackled cottage that once belonged to my father's sister, Aunt Victoria.

"Hell's teeth!" I exclaimed upon hearing the sound of some heavy metallic folderol hitting the hard floor with a resounding thunk.

I collected the now broken candelabrum from the floor. Two of its arms were twisted and bent, while a third had been knocked off from the stand in the fall.

"We are all but silhouettes dancing in the dying embers of eternity. Sometimes, if one is blessed with ridiculous good fortune, their shadow meets another and more dark reflections spring forth… and some more profound nonsense," I mumbled acidly at myself as I gathered the broken-off arm of the candelabrum.

"Want me to mend it?"

My free fist clenched. Damn the Wizengamot and their ruling to withhold my ability to own a wand for five bloody years! Thank Merlin's ghost that I am somewhat conversant in Wandless magic, or I would surely go mad.

"No, I can manage it." I flicked and waved my hand as I cast the mending charm.

The candelabrum shook but the pieces of the broken arm and the misshapen ones remained unmended.

Damnation!

"It adds character to it. The dents and everything. Let's keep it like this. At least for now." Hermione offered.

My frown deepened.

"If you insist, then it can be." I knew what she had done. Any toddler could see it really. She had offered an olive branch that also doubled as means for me to save face. I took it.

I banished the offending candelabra to the dusty mantle.

"I'm going to clean up the kitchen and fix us some supper." Hermione paused and turned back to me. Her teeth lightly toying with her bottom lip. Some habits were hard to defeat. "I forgot to say but I'm vegetarian… would butternut squash bisque with zucchini bread be alright?"

I thought about it. I had had neither but both sounded appetizing.

"I can run back to town if you want—"

"No need. They are more than fine for tonight."

Hermione offered a bright smile—she was rather pretty; too bad she was paired with the likes of me.

She ventured off into the kitchen, her carpetbag, and wand in hand, while I went about airing out the house.

I stilled when I opened the small room off the sitting room. The room where I had spent several tireless summer holidays practicing my piano beside my stringent aunt.

I opened the lone window and banished the dust to the overgrown gardens before approaching the old piano.

Compared to most of the items housed through the years here, this was still in good shape.

I tentatively caressed the lid of the upright piano before flipping it open to reveal the stained ivory keys beneath. They once shone with a brilliance of their own but time and neglect had dulled and yellowed them.

I laughed.

It was like looking into a mirror.

I flexed my fingers and whispered the elementary charm that brought the rickety tottering old piano bench back. I took a seat.

A ghost of a smile teased my lips as I shoot my cuffs out and cracked my knuckles before resting my fingers on the cold ivory.

"Sit straight. Fingers firm. Feet flat. No wiggling now! You aren't playing with a toy, child."

I smirked as my aunt's stern words from when I was a young boy—no more than six—came unbidden to me.

The dingy room dissolved into the dimly lit yet tidy house of yesteryear around me.

The piles of wrinkled, brittle newspaper and the huddle of covered decrepit furniture against the dirty cracked window were gone.

"Don't dawdle, Severus." Aunt Victoria stood tall and imposingly over Severus. Her brown eyes were hard and cold. "Remember the immortal words of Shakespeare: If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well—"

"It were done quickly," Severus' younger self finished automatically as he began dutifully playing his scales.

"Well said," she huffed and adjusted her glasses as she sat ramrod straight beside her nephew. Her classically trained ear listened for the first misstep of a note from Severus's spindly fingers.

'The boy shows promise but he's too filled with those fanciful notions like magic potions and creatures to really amount to anything… Not to mention that horse-face of his… Doomed to a life of inanity and bachelorhood… More the pity.'

Severus's fingers faltered as he overheard his aunt's thoughts loud and piercingly in his mind. Not for the first time, he wished he didn't have the ability to overhear snippets of other's thoughts.

Victoria tsked and slapped Severus's fingers with her fan. "From the beginning."

Severus closed his eyes as he willed himself not to cry from both the mental and physical sting ringing through him. That would only bring more rebuke from not only Aunt Victoria but his

Pop as well—a Snape did not cry.

No, we are too heartless for tears.

I sneered at the bitter memory of my late aunt. Despite her cruel and stone-hearted words she had been right—well, partly right. Then again, one couldn't fault her for not foreseeing her wizard of a nephew being shackled to and pulled asunder by two grandstanding wizards: a flamboyant utilitarian and a thanatophobic hedonist.

I absently stroked the keys before me as a light, simple melody flowed from my fingertips. The piano strings still rang true despite the decades of disuse.

As I continued to play my movements became more sure and lyrics began to form.

Perhaps lyrics is too strong a word—I am no composer or lyricist.

No, I just allowed my thoughts to amble, and amble they did.

I shouldn't be alive, yet she had returned and saved me in that terrible shack three years ago.

I should be Azkaban baying at the moon like a loon yet I am here playing a tune.

I should be alone yet I am wed—

Please don't be sad… I was greedy to ask for you but… I do love you.

I stilled, the last note still vibrating through the piano. My heart clenched painfully.

No, I could not have heard right. I repressed the frisson of hope that began to unfurl within my soul.

I slowly turned.

I was alone.

I closed my eyes and stood.

I was alone, as it should be. Who would love a horse-faced bat like me? Lily hadn't, and certainly, Hermione The-Brightest-Witch-of-her-age Granger-Snape would never.

Perhaps friendship, genuine friendship, might bloom from this temporary marriage of convenience, and if it did I would cherish it.

I closed the piano and climbed the stairs. Yes, a new friendship would be nice. It would match with this new place and our new lease on life nicely.

I didn't see Hermione holding the candelabrum in the shadows of the kitchen doorway with silent tears raining down her cheeks.

Fini