As they walked out of the potions classroom and mounted the stairs leading them out of the dungeons, neither Severus nor Aislinn spoke. An astute observer might have noted with some interest that she had the look of a student once again, and the wary looks she kept shooting at the older professor might have been mistaken for trepidation of the prospect of a stern reprimand. The looks he kept giving her were suitably veiled that one might have thought he was holding his temper in check. There was little reason to believe that either of them had anything more daunting on their minds than some mishap in the dungeons.
Assuming, of course, that anyone had seen them, which no one did. It was one of the Hogsmeade weekends for the older students, and most of the younger students were ensconced in their respective common rooms, playing wizards' chess and trading cards. Most of the staff was finding refuge from the perpetual onslaught of students, locked away in offices and personal quarters, reading or grading papers or just pretending that for the moment at least, there were no students at Hogwarts. Even the ghosts seemed conspicuously absent as Severus led Aislinn to the door, and opened it.
A blast of bitterly cold wind assaulted the two of them as the door opened, and Aislinn stopped suddenly.
"What is it?" Severus asked, pausing on the threshold.
"It's cold, that's what it is," she muttered, folding her arms across her stomach. "Can't we talk in your rooms? Or mine? Or my office? The astronomy tower?" Her voice was taking on a slight note of hysteria, and Severus smiled slightly.
"I'd rather not discuss these things very many places in the castle," he replied softly. "Though perhaps we could persuade Dumbledore to allow us the use of his office…"
Aislinn scowled; that was obviously not an answer she'd wanted to hear, and for a moment Severus could almost hear her turning over the possibility of telling him to forget she'd asked, that she didn't want to know badly enough to face the December wind. She sighed, resigned. "Then at least let me get my cloak," she muttered.
Severus put an arm around her. "We'll only be out in the wind for a moment," he whispered. "It will take you longer to get you cloak than it will to walk to where we're going."
She frowned, and for a dreadful moment, he thought she might actually cry again. There was something about her face that shot pain through his heart, but she visibly steeled herself and nodded, and in a fit of something resembling chivalry, Severus shrugged off his black robe and dropped it around her shoulders. "Come on," he whispered, and they stepped into the wind.
True to his word, it was only a couple of minutes before Severus was leading Aislinn into the Dark Forrest, the trees blocking the worst of the wind so that there was only a chill that hung in the air. He glanced around, and then pointed to a small stone against one of the trees. "A portkey," he explained, pulling her over to it. He knelt, and she did too, then he took her hand and touched the rock and they were tossed into the oblivion that was traveling via portkey. When the world came to a halt again, it was a different world. A brighter world, with a warm sun.
"Where are we?" she asked, looking around, and Severus smiled, crooking his arm and offering her his elbow.
"An island," he replied, "in the Indian Ocean. One that is not inhabited. Too small to be developed," he explained. "And a place that a dear friend of mine introduced me to many years ago, when I needed such a place to gather my thoughts, far away from the world."
Aislinn looked at him, confusion etched plainly on her face.
"Dumbledore," he replied to her unspoken question. "One of the many gifts he has given me over the years. One that has only been surpassed by his trust and the second chance he offered me." He doubted she was too slow to realize what he was doing, suggesting that Dumbledore trusted him and she could do worse than put her faith with the Headmaster. He was willing to use any tactic at his disposal to regain her trust. And what made her suddenly so distrustful? He couldn't help but wonder about that. After all, they had shared… well, suffice to say that she hadn't been unaware of the mark on his arm the night before. She hadn't been unaware of it before she joined him in his rooms, in fact, so why she chose now to be so fearful was beyond him.
He led her to a small bluff, which overlooked the ocean which lapped happily at the shore, and reached to take his robe from her shoulders. He spread the black garment on the ground and settled onto it, patting the ground at his side. "Sit with me?" he invited, and she hesitated, but sat. And sat close enough, he noted, that he could have easily shifted an inch or so and pulled her into his arms. He refrained. "Let's see," he began, taking a deep breath and picking a small, smooth stone from the ground. He turned the pebble over in his hand a few times, looking thoughtfully at the ocean. "Where to begin."
He frowned in concentration, then nodded to himself. "I suppose that coming to Hogwarts is a logical place," he said, sparing a glance at Aislinn. She smiled a little doubtfully, but nodded, and he stifled another sigh, looking away from her again and telling himself not to look at her if it was going to upset him. "I was eleven, obviously, when I came, and if you think I'm socially inept now, you should have seen me then. I'm practically a social butterfly now by comparison. I'd never been around other children, or other people for that matter, save my mother and father. Had no idea how to conduct myself, and spent more time with my nose in a book than anywhere else. I was all but a light fixture in the library that first year.
"And of couse there were other kids who picked on me. I was, after all, an esay and unwitting target. So many things that I should have learned from my parents, but never did. I might as well have grown up as a Muggle, for all I knew about the wizarding world. And yet I knew about curses and hexes, which turned out to be my saving grace. Or perhaps my downfall, depending on how you look at it." He suddenly threw the stone he'd been holding, and watched as it skipped over the bluff. "When I was a boy, I used to dream about killing my father," he admitted softly. "And I had an entire armory of curses and hexes in my head, just waiting for the opportunity to use them. By the end of that first autumn, though, I had practiced a few of them on my more irritating classmates." Four in particular, but Severus had already decided to leave those four Gryffindors out of this as much as he could. "So, I earned a reputation. Greasy little git," he nodded at her again, a smirk on his face, "same as it is now, except not so little anymore, eh? Well, back then, I was considerably greasier, and much less aware of it. Greasy little git, but not the kind you'd want to say that to his face. Not unless you wanted to be going to Madame Pomfrey with some embarassing complaint.
"Anyway, I was miserable, and failing miserably at Hogwarts. Not at the classes, mind you—I had little else to do but study, so my grades were quite impressive—but at growing into a well-adjusted young man…" he shook his head. "But, then something happened for which I am simultaneously grateful and regretful of. Incidentally, Aislinn, have you ever met Lucius Malfoy?"
Aislinn shook her head. "No," she replied softly. "He is the sort of wizard my parents kept me away from, afraid I'd make a bad impression."
Severus snorted softly. "Well, suffice to say that he is an exceptionally gracious man. In fact, there are many boys at Hogwarts right now who could do worse than pattern their behaviour after him. Do not mistake me," Severus turned towards her suddenly, and his eyes were keenly focused on her. "Lucius is evil incarnate, and smooth as silk even when he's insulting you, and he has done things for which I doubt the devil himself would forgive him. But he has a knowledge of the world, a civililty, that is severly lacking in most. It's one of the true ironies of the world that a man so ruthless and so cruel could be so…" he trailed off, looking for a word. "So admirable. Anyway, you might say he took me under his wing."
Lunchtime, Severus was convinced, was a ploy developed by insensitive louts with a sickened sense of humor. It was when kids who were popular congregated into chattering clusters for the sole purpose of separating themselves from those who were unpopular. Friends gathered around their spaces at the long tables, the seats they always occupied, and woe be his who inadvertantly seated himself in someone else's territory.
At fifteen, Severus felt the stings of isolation more than he ever had. He had always been alone, and had often been lonely, and had long been aware that alone and lonely were not the same thing. He'd grown up isolated from the rest of the world, shut off by merit of his family, which was truly a disgrace to the wiazrding world, however one measured disgrace. If there had been a sense of wonder in young Severus' eyes when he came to Hogwarts as an eleven-year-old child, that wonder had disappeared by now, and he was left only with a painful awareness that he was an outcast. He had no friends. He had no one who even pretended to be his friend. There were a handful of Slytherins who would talk to him now and again, but usually only when they wanted something.
Lunchtime, however, was a time for true friends. Not for those fairweather friends who crawled out of the woodwork when essays were due or when exams loomed before them. Clutching a small stack of books, Severus found an empty place at the Slytherin table, finding that for the third time in a month, one of the groups had expanded to swallow the seat he had been occupying. As the school year progressed, and the years crept by at a slug's pace, it seemed that the groups were consolidating, merging, growing ever larger. Where there had been a dozen groups of three or four friends during their First Year, by now there were only three groups of Fifth-Year Slytherins all together. Three groups, and Severus.
As usual, he spent lunch reading, this time pouring over his notes from herbology, and when the hooting of the arriving owl post drifted through the Great Hall, Severus didn't even look up. After all, he had never once gotten any owl post, so there was no reason to think he would now. Behind him, he could hear the laughter and mounting din of students receiving and opening their mail, and the Slytherin table was no exception. Severus ignored it as best he could, a feat which looked more successful than it was. He might not have batted an eyelash, but he was acutely aware of the crescendo of babble at the table, and the pleased cries of surprise as mail was opened. He flipped over the page he was reading.
Before he could begin on the first line, however, something fluttered onto the table in front of him, and he looked up, frowning. A majestic eagle owl was standing stately before him, a small envelope in its beak. It hooted softly, and Severus looked around, certain that there must be some mistake. The owl hooted again, though, and Severus reached for the envelope, bracing himself for the owl to suddenly flap away, or for the envelope to explode. It had to be a prank of some sort. He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes seeking out those four miserable Gryffindors, but they weren't paying him the least bit of attention.
As soon as he had the envelope in his hands, the owl hooted again and flapped away. Flipping over the letter, he felt his heart surge slightly. Severus Snape, Slytherin House, it said in a careful and elegant script. Glancing around once more, he slid a finger under the seal—a vibrant emerald green imprinted with an 'M' entwined with a pair of serpents—and broke the waxen stamp. The letter inside was printed on a parchment fine enough that even Severus' untrained eye could recognize it as quality.
Mr. and Mrs. Lucius Malfoy request the pleasure of your company at a dinner celebration of the holiday season at Maple Glen, on Saturday, 18th December at 6 o'clock. The Malfoys extend their invitation to an overnight stay at the manor, followed by breakfast on Sunday, the 19th.
Severus stared blankly at the invitation for a moment, then looked to his right, where he realized another group of Slytherins were holding their invitations as well. All the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Year Slytherins, apparently, had received an invitation, a fact which dampened his pleasure at having received one, but was not enough to completely snuff his elation. Behind the invitation was a smaller envelope, and a card emblazoned with the letters 'RSVP' but was otherwise blank.
Hiding a smile, Severus tucked the invitation into one of his books and went back to his reading, deciding he would work out what to do with the RSVP card later.
Four days after Severus returned his RSVP to the Malfoys, another owl sought him out at lunchtime, and for the second time in a week, Severus Snape had post. He recognized the parchment, and the elegant script on the front of it as belonging to the Malfoys again, and he found his heart thudding uncontrollably as he opened the letter, expecting to find a sneering apology telling him he had been invited to the party by accident. Instead, it was a letter from Lucius himself, inviting him to come to the Malfoy manor nearly a week before the other guests were to arrive. As classes would have already ended for the term by that time, Severus lost no time in penning his reply, that he would be honored to come.
hr
When he was finally standing at the front gates of the imposing mansion that the Malfoys had long called home, Severus found himself wondering if this had really been such a good idea, after all. He had no idea what to do now. Should he knock somehow? Or just open the gate and admit himself? Or should he just stand there until someone took pity on him? As it happened, he didn't have time to contemplate the matter for very long before the third of the three options happened to him, and a gardener appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to open the gate. As Severus walked past, he was acutely aware that the gardener was looking down his extraordinarily crooked nose at the young intruder.
"You must be Master Severus," the gardener growled, putting an emphasis on 'master' that made even a fifteen-year-old boy aware that he was being mocked. "Go on up to the House, they are waiting for you." Severus murmured a word of thanks and set his jaw and his mind, and walked briskly up the shrub-lined path to the house. As he reached the door, it opened, indicating that 'they', indeed, were waiting on him. And 'they' were, obviously, not the Malfoys. He was greeted by another small legion of cold and self-important servents, including a butler who did no more than look at him before grimacing distastefully and clapping his gloved hands. Two House Elves appeared immediately, and the butler issued brief orders.
"Minnie, please inform Master Lucius that his…" there was a pause as the butler looked Severus up and down as though trying to decide how best to describe him. "that his guest has arrived. Gory, take Master Severus upstairs and… attend his needs." The female elf curtsied and bounded off, and the male bowed low to Severus.
"This way, Master Severus," he said, the first servant of the Malfy Manor not to scoff at calling him 'master'. "Gory is showing Master Severus to his rooms."
Severus looked at the small pack of servants who were still looking down their collective noses at him, then followed the House Elf up a flight of broad stairs. Higher and higher they climbed, into the fourth level of the manor, before Gory turned and indicated that Severus should precede him to the corridor on the right. Severus took a few steps in that direction, and tried, unsuccessfully, not to look over his shoulder when he heard the corridor door shut. Gory, however, was still there, and he scuttled back in front of Severus, leading the way to the end of the corridor and a room on the left.
In later years, Severus would know that he had been showed to a wing that housed primarily servants, but at that moment, when he entered the room, it was the biggest and most gracious room he had ever seen, and he felt, momentarily, like a king. The bed was bigger than any he'd ever seen, and covered with lush bedding that looked soft and inviting. There was a soft chair, and a bookcase filled with books, and a dressing table with a small array of toiletries on it. A door stood ajar, and beyond that door was a bathroom, where Gory had already begun filling the massive tub with hot water.
"Master Severus is to have his bath now," Gory said, coming back out of the bathroom and taking the tatty old suitcase from Severus' hands. Severus let go of it, a sudden sinking feeling overtaking him. Was it possible that Lucius Malfoy had invited him all the way to the Malfoy Manor just for the pleasure of the old jokes about the greasy Slytherin?
Gory, however, was ushering him into the bathroom, and before he knew it, Severus was in the tub, the elf's long fingers kneading at his scalp and then dunking his head under the water. He had tried to protest that he was perfectly capable of bathing himself, but that suggestion had set the House Elf to wailing something largely incoherent. What part of it Severus could gather between the sobs and the moans was that he had offended the elf by suggesting such a thing, and he had given in rather than endure the carrying on.
Just when Severus thought Gory was finished with him (and he was convinced the little monster was trying to take off his scalp), the House Elf had let out the water and proceded to run a second tubfull, into which Severus found himself resigned stepping. He had no more than settled into the water when there was a knock on the bedroom door, and, before he could answer, the door opened and Lucius Malfoy admitted himself, rather regally, and snapped his fingers. Gory skittered to draw the chair from the bedroom into the bathroom, and Lucius seated himself as though it were perfectly normal for him to be sitting in on a Fifth-Year Slytherin's bath.
"Ah, Severus," he said smoothly. "So glad you were able to come. I trust your year is going well at Hogwarts?"
Later memories would tell Severus that the entire conversation was almost surreal, as Lucius sat regally as a king on his throne and Severus was at the mercy of a none-too-gentle House Elf who poked and prodded and scrubbed and washed without the least regards for his subject's pride. And yet, it seemed almost natural, and the conversation took a turn to his classes, then to his classmates. Lucius laughed delightedly as Severus admitted to a nose-hair growing curse on Sirius Black. He seemed interested in the high marks the student had received in all his classes so far, and listened patiently as Severus described the last book he had read, and encouraged the boy to talk about his skill with potions, which was quickly emerging as legendary at Hogwarts.
By the time Severus' bath had ended, there was almost a sense that he and Lucius were old friends, and the Malfoy heir had discreetly busied himself with a book while Gory urged Severus from the tub and into his best robes, which were still in a state of woefull disrepair. As if by cue, Lucius turned around again when Severus was dressed, apparently having lost interest in the book he'd been perusing, and as his grey eyes swept over Severus, there was a slight frown to his face.
"You and I will be venturing to Diagon Alley tomorrow, I believe," Lucius commented, almost offhand. "But for now…" he looked to the House Elf. "Gory, do go see if you cannot find something more suitable among my old robes. I believe the ones I wore when I was a Fourth-Year might not fit him too poorly."
Severus' face burned at the gesture, but he murmured a work of thanks to the pale-haired aristocrat.
"Not at all, Severus, and tomorrow we will find you some decent ones. It is disgraceful that you haven't better than this," he gestured at the robe Severus was wearing. Somehow, though, the comment did not seem malicious at all. "Now, Severus, as to why you are here… I think you show much promise, but there will be little opportunity for you in the wizarding world if you do not learn a few manners. Now, I don't blame you at all, of couse; your parents should have seen to your education. But, seeing as they did not, I have taken it upon myself to see that you do not end up in the owlery like your father. You have too much potential for that, Severus."
Just then, the door opened again, and Gory returned with a charcoal-colored robe across his arms. Lucius smiled. "Excellent. When Master Severus is dressed, Gory, see him down to the dining room." Gory bowed, and Lucius swept out of the room.
"Lucius and Narcissa and Lucius' mother spent the next week tutoring me," Severus said quietly, blinking as he realized that at some point during his story he had picked up another smooth pebble and was rubbing his thumb over it. "How to walk, how to hold my wine glass, which fork to use, how to dance. True to his word, Lucius took me to Diagon Alley and bought me two new robes, and told me that I would repay him by being a great wizard. I think they were afraid I would embarrass them during the party," Severus confided quietly, and Aislinn smiled a bit. Some of the fear seemed to have left her expression.
"They hosted me at Easter that year, and over the summer, and when my OWL marks came in, they celebrated my achievements. They taught me to speak properly, schooled me in the arts and inducted me to the political world. Much of who I am, much of what you see, was shaped by the Malfoys. And they never missed the chance to tell me how my father had failed me.
"They saw something in me, they claimed, and I suppose it was true. They saw a hatred that they could mold and focus, hone to a fine edge. Over the Christmas holidays of my Sixth Year, Lucius introduced me to the Dark Lord, and my fate was sealed. He gave me the means to kill my father, and he saw to it that I had the opportunity, and I would not have denied it if I could have." This last was said with a certain soft finality. One that suggested that given the chance to live his life over again, that was one decision Severus might not have changed. "I was accepted as a Death Eater before I went back to Hogwarts," he whispered softly. "And as a task to prove my loyalty, I was set to kill my mother as well." Severus was staring blankly at the water, not really seeing it. His eyes were focused on the woman he had freed from his father only to point his wand at her chest and mutter, 'Avada Kedavra'. That, however, was a curse that one had to mean for it to work, and he had not meant it. As punishment for his weakness, he had been forced to watch as two other Death Eaters aimed the Cruciatus Curse at his mother, and tortured her until she begged for death.
He felt a hand on his arm, and he turned hollow eyes to Aislinn. "They used you," she whispered, squeezing his arm. "They manipulated you. And you know as well as I do that a sixteen-year-old boy cannot be held responsible for…"
Severus placed his hand on hers and squeezed back. "Yes," he whispered, "a sixteen-year-old boy can be held responsible for the choices he makes. Even if he was too stupid to realize he was making them."
They were silent for a moment, but Severus thought that some of their intimacy had returned, though that might have been wishful thinking on his part fueled by Aislinn's hand on his arm. After a moment, he took a deep breath and started again. "I was a loyal Death Eater," he cringed over those words, "for nearly five years. Then, the plots began against the Potters and Longbottoms, and, while I can honestly say I couldn't have cared less what happened to James Potter, Lily had always been…" Severus shrugged. "She was nice. If I'd known then what I know now, I might have asked her for a dance," he mused, "but when we were in school, all that I could see was that she was a Mudblood." He smiled apologetically at Aislinn, who nodded. "The Longbottoms… I had no quarrel with them, and what was more, they were Purebloods. But, perhaps the most discouraging was that Sirius Black, whom I detested as much as Potter, was not being targeted. I suppose I had a long think over that. Potter was not a Pureblood, and he had married a Muggle, so of couse they were targets. The Longbottoms, though Purebloods, were targets because they were fighting against the Dark Lord. But Black… he was a Pureblood, and he was fighting along side the others against us, and he was not a target. And the more I thought about it, and the others we had killed, the more it seemed we were fulfilling personal vendettas. And one thought led to another and…" he shrugged once more. "A lot of people speculate that my returning to Dumbledore was an emotional decision," he said softly, "but I have to admit that it was not. It was the most rational thing I have ever done. I had that moment of clarity, when I realized that I was playing into their hands, and I was hurting other people while I did it. And that was inexcusable."
He drew his knees up, and draped his arms over them, still staring into the sea. "So I went to Dumbledore. I knew that my fate was Azkaban, but…" he shrugged. "I suppose I do have something akin to decency in me. If it hadn't been the Longbottoms," he whispered. "I had no quarrel with them. Anyhow, Dumbledore took my information. He kept me at Hogwarts, and waited for a month, and some of the things I'd told him began to pan out. So he asked me to be a spy for them." Severus was skipping over a lot of details, but he was being, in essence, honest with Aislinn. And he doubted she was taking his words for the whole truth anyway. "And after the Dark Lord seemed to be dead, he cleared my name and gave me a position at Hogwarts."
Severus turned to look at Aislinn again, and he looked beseechingly into her eyes. "Dumbledore gave me a second chance when I had so squandered my first," he whispered. "He placed his trust and faith in me, and I would never do anything to endanger that. Ever."
Aislinn nodded slowly, and for a moment, Severus couldn't tell if she believed him or not. Or if she was appalled with him now, or… She touched his hand, and he turned his palm up, grasping hers. "Thank you," she whispered, moving closer to him and sliding her arms around him.
As he pulled her into his arms, he breated a sigh of relief, inhaling the scent of her hair and relaxing in the firm embrace of her arms. And for the second night in a row, this time without the intoxicating help of sherry, Severus and Aislinn found themselves seeking release with one another.