His Greatest Wish, by AndromedaMarine
First Lessons
Waking the next morning, Sev for a moment forgot where he was. The sounds of layered snoring reached his ears and with a jolt he remembered he'd been Sorted into Gryffindor with the Marauders and Frank. He fumbled around for his watch, and saw the time to be just after six in the morning. Sev sighed. There was no way he'd get back to sleep now, and besides, he could sit in the common room reading until Lily came down for breakfast. He opened his trunk and managed to quietly gather all the books and parchment he figured he'd need for the day, and then went to shower and dress.
Severus settled into an armchair next to the fire, which the House Elves had already stoked and had roaring, despite it still being summer. Gryffindor Tower was nowhere near as cold as the dungeons and the Slytherin common room, but somehow he had become accustomed to being cold and it felt nice to be warm beside the fire. He reached into his bag and pulled out the first year potions text, flipping to the last pages of the book. Just by glancing at the titles of the potions he had brewed them already in his mind, with revisions and tweaks that would ultimately improve the concoctions. Besides, in twenty years these potions would be considered inferior, and Severus could think of replacements that did better than the ones they were to learn about over the next seven years. Sev snapped the book shut and sighed, wondering how in Merlin's name he would pull off hiding his superior skills from the teachers and Headmaster.
"You all right there? You seem a little tense."
Sev jumped at the new voice; he hadn't heard Frank Longbottom speak in a very long time. "Fr—" he caught himself and covered his slip with a cough. "Nervous, I guess. I'm Severus Snape. What's your name?"
"Frank Longbottom," said Frank Longbottom as he extended a hand in greeting. "Nice to meet you. I saw you snap shut that potions book when I came down. Potions too hard to even look at?" his fellow first year grinned.
Severus let himself laugh and his eyes crinkled. "Too easy."
Frank's eyes widened and he sat in the armchair across from Sev. "Too easy? You must know a lot about it then if we haven't even started and it's too easy. Did your dad teach you?"
He shook his head. "My mum did. I don't suppose you know about the Prince bloodline, do you?"
"My mother told me the whole lot of them have been in Slytherin, like the Blacks and the Malfoys. But what of it? Are you related to them?" Frank's tone was purely curious, and Severus had decided back in the park to dispense with all the secrecy surrounding his family, and be as open as he could with as many people as he could stand.
"My mother is Eileen Prince. She was a great potions student and so was my grandfather...so I guess it was passed on to me as well."
Frank seemed impressed. After a moment, he asked, "Are you surprised you were Sorted into Gryffindor? I mean, with the rest of your family being Slytherin."
Severus was beginning to like Frank in a way he hadn't before. "No," he said honestly. "I know I'm different from the rest of my ancestors. I don't care about the ridiculous things such as blood purity and who's worthy enough to be Voldemort's—" Frank flinched "—Death Eaters. He'll die eventually, and those who serve him will end up in Azkaban or worse."
"How do you know so much about You-Know-Who?"
Severus smiled wanly. "You don't get to be the son of a Prince and expect not to have those kinds of ideals shoved down your throat every day." He shrugged and looked back at the potions book, tracing the front cover with his index finger. "It took a little bit of thinking to put my mind in its right place about things."
Frank opened his mouth to say something else when Lily nearly ran down the stairs of the girls' dormitory, her book bag swinging from her shoulder. She skidded to a halt next to the armchair and was about to speak, but instead looked at him curiously.
"Something wrong?" he asked, a little worried.
"You look different."
It hit him suddenly. "Oh! When I was packing I nicked some of Mum's bottles of hair stuff. I was tired of..." he gestured at his head, "...of this mess."
Lily smiled, laughed, and turned to Frank, extending her hand. "Lily Evans, Sev's best friend." Severus felt his cheeks go pink.
"Frank Longbottom. Would you mind if we all went down to breakfast together? I think I got a bit lost on the way up here and wouldn't do so well if I went down alone. I might end up trying to open a door that's only pretending to be one."
"They can do that?" Lily asked, rounding on Sev.
He nodded his head emphatically. "Some staircases have trick steps, walls will pretend to be doors, and doors will pretend to be walls, stuff like that."
Lily looked at Frank again. "He's like an encyclopedia of Hogwarts. I don't know how he knows it all. I'll bet if I asked him he could take us to the Owlery without once getting lost!"
Sev lurched. "The Owlery! I told Mum I'd tell her what House I was Sorted into. Shouldn't you owl your mum as well?" he asked Lily as he dug into his book bag for parchment, a quill, and his ink. He managed to scrawl in spiky black letters:
Mum,
I was Sorted into Gryffindor. I know you won't be pleased but I'm happy about it and I think I'll do just fine here.
Severus
"I haven't got an owl, Sev, have you? I didn't see you bring one onto the train."
He shook his head. "We can use the school owls until we eventually get our own."
Lily wrote out her letter to her parents, and then Severus took both Frank and Lily to the Owlery, leaving the common room just as the soon-to-be-Marauders bounded down the stairs. Sev thought the timing to be perfect.
The three found themselves at the Gryffindor table at half-past seven. Lily had insisted she fill out her letter a little, detailing things like the floating candles and the moving staircases, but especially the walking, talking occupants of the paintings all over the castle. When the letter had reached twelve inches Sev dryly told her to finish or he would take Frank down to the Great Hall and leave her to manage her own way.
Racks of toast, platters of sausages, eggs, biscuits, and every other kind of breakfast food were on the table when they sat. Somehow Sev ended up between Frank and Lily and he managed not to sneer when Potter and Black noisily swung onto the bench across from them.
Sev met James's eyes and was shocked when the tousle-haired boy reached across the table. "James Potter, but you already knew my last name. I thought we should introduce ourselves properly, seeing as we'll be in the same dorm for the next seven years."
Cautiously Sev grasped James's hand and they shook. "Severus Snape." A little of the hostility went out of him when instead of looking at Lily, James directed his attention to the food.
Professor McGonagall swept down the Gryffindor table, handing out the timetables. She loomed over Sev, Lily and the entourage, and briskly handed each schedule to its owner. "Be sure you get to your lessons on time. Tardiness is frowned upon."
Lily seized Sev's timetable and exclaimed, "We have all our classes together! Defense Against the Dark Arts is first this morning."
No one in Slytherin knows that my mother is the Prince blood-traitor, thought Severus happily. They won't try to recruit me or make my life a hell for loving Lily. He would not have to be worried about the double DADA with Slytherin.
"Where is it?" she asked Sev, digging into her breakfast again.
"Third floor," he answered immediately, pointing at the schedule. "It's right on the timetable, since apparently you didn't notice."
She shot him a look of exasperation. "Well, excuse me for being so excited about having all my classes with my best friend."
Severus watched as a pink tinge swept up Lily's neck and to her cheeks. He mumbled something that Lily couldn't quite catch.
"What was that?" she asked pointedly, taking a sip of her pumpkin juice.
"I said I'm happy we have everything together."
Lily smiled down at her plate and finished eating. The Gryffindor first years all made it up to the third floor classroom with three minutes to spare. Sev dragged Lily to a table at the front and they sat together, pulled out their books and drew their wands. Professor Hardgrave swept into the room from the upstairs office, descending the stairs with a flair that reminded Severus of Gilderoy Lockhart. He remembered this man just vaguely, and could only hope that this teacher wasn't the prat Lockhart turned out to be.
"Welcome, first years," the man said in a surprisingly deep and gravelly voice. "I should like to get right to it, then, by asking how many of you have cast a spell before?"
Severus, Sirius, James, and Mary Macdonald all raised their hands, and Sev noticed that none of the Slytherins had participated, but he didn't doubt that many if not all of them had already cast at least one dark spell.
"I wonder," Professor Hardgrave continued, "if any of you four could demonstrate what you know? One spell, at the most." He pointed at Severus and he stood up. "Your name?"
"Severus Snape," he replied, looking a little wary, recalling that he hadn't raised his hand in his past life, and Hardgrave had called on Sirius then.
"Do your worst," Professor Hardgrave said with a little smile, obviously not aware that Sev's worst was the Avada Kedavra curse, but it would be frowned upon if he killed the new DADA teacher the first day of class.
Severus lifted his wand and imagined Lockhart in front of him. "Expelliarmus!" he cried, and Hardgrave's wand went spinning into the air. Sev leapt up and caught it before it flew by in a trajectory that would have hit Lily on the forehead.
"Well," Hardgrave said, looking very flustered, "that was impressive for an eleven year old." He snatched back his wand when Sev held it out for him, and gestured for the former potions master to sit again. "As Mr. Snape has demonstrated, the disarming spell is one of the most basic and useful tools in your arsenal." The professor went on like this, telling them to turn to page six in their books, read the first chapter, and summarize it in eight inches. At the end of the lesson Hardgrave noted that actual wandwork would not be practiced until the week after next. At this, Lily glowered.
They left the classroom when the bell rang, and Severus was quite unused to the flock of people that surrounded him and asked about his perfect disarming of the professor. He and Lily managed to extract themselves and continue on to Charms ahead of the pack of Gryffindors.
When lunch arrived they fell into their seats at the Gryffindor table, Severus exhausted from hiding his skill and Lily ready to drop from the load of information she'd absorbed collectively between Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms. Their afternoon class was Potions, and because of this Lily managed to remain excited.
"You already seem to know a lot about Potions," Frank said, sitting beside Severus. "Can you tell us what to expect?"
Sev shrugged, not knowing what to tell them. "I suppose we'll see when we get there. I've heard Professor Slughorn 'collects' students, but I'm not sure what that means, exactly. C'mon, we might be late if we linger here any longer."
Lily glanced up and down the table to see that her best friend was indeed correct. Sev, Frank, and Lily were the last first years still at the Gryffindor table.
When they arrived at the dungeon potions classroom Sev saw that no one had claimed the desk right up front, and when Frank went to sit next to Alice Nelson, Lily gripped Sev's hand and pulled him to the front. They sat and set up their equipment just as Slughorn's belly preceded him through his office door.
"First years!" he boomed merrily, happy to have a new batch of young students to teach his fine art. He rubbed his hands together and proceeded to tell them about all the different types of potions they would be able to make by the end of the year. Judging from the exuberance of his voice and the smile in his eyes, the students seemed to be looking at him with excited expressions. Sev was pulled out of his thoughts when Professor Slughorn said, "Now, then, I'd like you to open your books to page eight and attempt to brew, in the remaining hour, an acceptable potion to cure boils."
Sev flipped open the book but only glanced at the recipe when Slughorn passed his and Lily's desk. The rest he did mostly without thinking—to Lily it seemed like Sev was tossing ingredients in willy-nilly. When the hour and a half was over, Severus's potion was the only potion that earned a smile from Slughorn, although Lily's received top marks as well.
As she stuffed her copy of Magical Drafts and Potions into her book bag, she gave Sev a reverent look. "It's like second nature to you, Sev!" she said excitedly, waiting for him to pack up. "I wish I was as good as you." They made their way out the door and up the staircases. "Maybe we can finish homework before dinner," she said as they exited the dungeon level and started up to the seventh floor.
Classes were over for the day and they had a couple hours to do homework before dinner. Severus realized that he would have absolutely no trouble with homework for the next seven years, because he knew it all already. "Let's go to the library instead," Sev suggested, thinking about avoiding Potter and Black. He hadn't seen much of Remus or Peter, but that would all change within the year.
The other first years were probably relishing the fact that they could skive off homework until the day before it was due, but Severus and Lily both knew better. She, unlike him, had been to a Muggle primary school prior to Hogwarts, and so knew the importance of keeping up in the lessons. Sev had twenty six years of schooling experience and so to him, it was ingrained. Madam Pince swooped down on them as soon as they set foot inside the library entrance, rattling off the list of rules faster than they could hear her.
"We only want to get some homework done," he said loudly, interrupting the uptight librarian. Madam Pince had an indignant look on her face, but this was a woman Severus knew better than he wished to. "Look, I promise we won't deface any books and if you do happen to hear any loud screaming, I promise it will only be because one or both of us are dying." Sev's hyperbole seemed to deflate the hawk-like woman, and she stalked off amongst the shelves, leaving Sev and Lily to set up their work at a table near the back, where they were unlikely to be disturbed.