The Other Side Of The Dark: Chapter Seventeen
'How do you know?' Lupin whispered. He sank on to the edge of Snape's bed, his head in his hands, his back to Moody.
'I tested it. There was blood all over Neville's clothes where Snape had been holding him. I thought it was Neville's, but he wasn't physically injured, so it had to be Snape's. I compared it with what was in the necklace and on the bear.'
'You told us you didn't know whose it was,' Lupin prevaricated in a mumble.
'Didn't want to upset Tonks any further. And it wasn't a complete lie. There is someone else's blood on it, but we never identified all the people who died in that house. We found the remains of three, but it was all such a mess there could well have been more. We did the best we could, but collecting it all up and incinerating it was about as much as we could do.'
The silence lengthened; but Moody settled himself on the edge of his own bed with an amiable sense that he was about to get some questions answered. It was only a matter of time. Moody had waited fourteen years; he was content to wait on Lupin's agonised conscience.
'I didn't believe there was no cure for lycanthropy,' Lupin whispered eventually. 'I hunted the library for everything I could find, desperate for anything. The school were so good to me, but every full moon was hell, and I couldn't stand the thought that my whole life was going to be like this. Everyone thought I was just a swot. I let them; better that than the truth.
'One day I found a book lying on a table near the Restricted Section. One of the NEWTs students must have left it there, very careless. Madame Pince would have had a fit if she'd known. But I don't think she ever found out, because I took it.
'It was a book about vampires. Mainly. Other creatures too, including werewolves. Apparently, I'm not a werewolf in the strictest sense, only half of one. But anyway...'
Lupin took a ragged breath and half turned so he was sideways to Moody, facing Snape. 'I found out by accident that Severus' blood will hurt me; he cut himself by accident in a Potions lesson and it spilled on me. He never noticed the effect, and I volunteered to take him to the hospital wing so I could see Madam Pomfrey myself without letting anyone know what had happened. I never told her how I'd burned my hand.'
Lupin's voice trailed off. Moody said nothing.
He had known, without really understanding until now, how desperate someone with lycanthropy might be. Now he understood why Lupin was standing so resolutely between him and Snape. Lupin might well care for justice and the rest of it - but who would blame him for wanting Snape to live if Snape was his best chance of recovery? And did Lupin really suppose his reasons for protecting Snape to be any more noble than that?
And yet... he must be desperate indeed to imagine any such thing were possible. Lycanthropy changed the victim's physical being at a molecular level - once the two gene patterns were fused, there was no way of separating them. The Wolfsbane potion was miraculous in its way, but it did not touch the underlying nature of the condition. Did Lupin know that? Deep inside, Moody felt a sudden wrench of pity. He waited in silence for Lupin to continue.
Lupin gazed into Snape's battered face with a tormented expression. Moody could read the presence of a long story in those troubled eyes, and the wretched battle over how much to disclose. He decided on another measured push.
'I'm not completely implacable, Remus,' he said quietly. 'Give me a reason to believe he's innocent. Convince me - and I'll heal him and let him go.'
There was another long, brooding silence.
'I remember the first time I ever met Severus,' Lupin said quietly. 'I was waiting for the Hogwarts Express with my parents. We were an hour early.' He gave a small smile at the memory, seizing a momentary refuge in it. His parents had worried and fussed all summer about his place at Hogwarts, relieved that he would not be denied an education, eager for him to have this precious chance at a semblance of normal life. At the time, all he had understood was that the Headmaster had assured them that his disability could be accommodated. Lupin remembered his father's "man-to-man" chat a week before term started, impressing upon him the importance of letting no one discover the truth behind his frequent bouts of "illness". At the age of eleven, the prospect of expulsion from school might seem the worst possible disaster in a boy's life, and Lupin's father had certainly made it sound that way, stressing how disappointed he would be if Lupin lost his place at school due to carelessness. But the worst possible thing that could have happened to Lupin had already happened, and some tone buried in his father's voice hinted at unspeakable consequences should anyone discover that his son was infected with lycanthropy. Lupin had been too afraid to ask what those consequences might be. It would be at least four years before he found out.
'I was scared about going, and trying not to show it because my parents were so pleased I'd been accepted. I didn't want to let them down. We'd been there about twenty minutes, all alone because we were so early, and I was feeling rather bored, nervous and fed up. And then all of a sudden there was this other boy saying hello to me. One minute we were there by ourselves, apart from one or two station staff, then the next there was this boy and his father standing there as if they'd been there all the time.
'He looked so excited about going to school, and I had the impression that it was somehow as significant for him as it was for me. Except he couldn't wait to get there.
'Severus' enthusiasm buoyed me up a bit. I didn't see his father leave because my parents were having a last minute fret over whether I'd got everything, but by the time we got on the train, I didn't feel scared or unhappy about going anymore. My parents were delighted I'd managed to make a friend so soon.'
Lupin went silent, staring into space as he gazed into the past. Moody couldn't help a slight frown of impatience, but said nothing. Sometimes the answers one most wanted lay in the stories which sounded least relevant.
'By what seemed incredible good luck, Severus and I ended up, not only in the same house, but in the same dormitory. And there we met the three boys who were to become my best friends. James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew.'
Another pause. Moody waited.
'James and Sirius really hit it off the moment they met, kindred spirits. Intelligent, gifted; nothing ever seemed difficult for either of them. They went round together, exuding self-confidence and cool, and I was happy to trail along in their shadow, because while people were looking at them, they weren't looking at me.
'Severus, on the other hand, didn't like being outshone by anyone. I don't think he'd had much contact with other children before he came to Hogwarts, and he wasn't used to sharing attention with other people. Almost from the first lesson, he was competing with everyone, desperate to be the first to answer any question. He seemed to have already read every book on the set list, as well as every other book that might be relevant, and couldn't wait to share his knowledge with everyone else, especially the people he shared a dormitory with. Whereas James and Sirius never bothered reading anything more than they had to, but mastered everything they attempted almost immediately. And that's where it all went wrong. Severus knew a massive amount, but he couldn't seem to put it into practice, and James and Sirius could. He was jealous of them for their easy success, and they disliked him for being a show-off and a know-all.
'It all came to a head in Transfiguration, about a month into term. Severus had managed to earn himself a detention for refusing to try transfiguring beetles the week before, and James and Sirius were joking behind his back that it was just an excuse because he couldn't do it.'
'Why couldn't he do it?' Moody interrupted, frowning. 'It doesn't make sense...'
Lupin smiled wryly. 'He couldn't pronounce the words properly. I don't know where he actually comes from, but he's not English, or he's only half-English or something. For most of the first year, anything which involved actually saying magic words defeated him completely. If he hadn't been so phenomenally good at Potions and Herbology, I think he'd have failed the year altogether. He must have had elocution lessons or something during the summer holidays, because when we came back for the second year, his English was absolutely perfect.'
'But most of the words we use to perform magic aren't English,' Moody pointed out.
'No, most of them are Latin. But Severus had a strange accent, and he put stresses in odd places in words. He could be really difficult to understand sometimes, especially when he got excited about something, because then he talked faster.'
'Fluent but with the wrong accent,' said Moody thoughtfully. 'As if he'd taught himself out of a book without ever hearing it spoken. But you were telling me what happened in this lesson?'
'Yeah. Well, Severus was refusing to transfigure whatever small creature we were using that day, and Sirius laughed at him, mimicking his accent and making fun of him. Everyone laughed...'
'Including you?'
There was a pause and a sigh.
'So what happened then?' Moody pressed.
'Severus got angry. He'd managed to keep his temper under control before, but the antagonism between him and Sirius had been building for a while, and this was the first time it became obvious the rest of the class... weren't on his side, if you know what I mean.
'Anyway... he lost his temper and screamed at Sirius that nobody had the right to do Transfiguration and that it was all childish rubbish. That Sirius might be good at conjuring but he had no idea what real magic was. Then he waved his hand in the air and shouted a stream of words in a language I've never heard. And then... then...'
Lupin frowned, trying to find words to describe what had happened next.
'The air pressure seemed to change. Suddenly it felt as if we were standing in a much bigger room, or a much emptier one. And it was because... technically we were. Everything in the room, every person, was suddenly just an image on the wall or the floor. There were only three people apart from Severus who weren't affected - me, Professor McGonagall, and James. I don't know why.'
'What do you mean? Images? In what way?'
'As if every piece of furniture and every person in the room had just been painted on to its surfaces. So that if you stood at a certain angle, it was all three dimensional and realistic, but if you moved slightly, you realised it was all just pictures.'
There was silence while Moody tried to digest the information Lupin was giving him. 'That's not possible,' he said at last. 'It was some sort of illusion; no one has that kind of power; certainly no child.'
The corner of Lupin's mouth lifted into a twisted smile. 'Oh no, it was no illusion. Can you imagine how someone could create an illusion like that on such a scale? I wouldn't know where to begin, and believe me, I searched the whole library for some clue as to what it was Severus had done. For about thirty minutes, everyone and everything in that room did not exist in the world as we know it.'
Moody gazed at the man in the bed with new disbelief. 'So what happened then? Thirty minutes?'
Lupin nodded. 'Professor McGonagall and James looked horrified; I didn't really know what had happened. Severus looked so triumphant; I don't think he realised the potential consequences of what he'd done. I remember I was going to walk over to where he was standing, and McGonagall practically screamed at me not to move. Then Dumbledore came in.
'He didn't look angry or anything; he just looked around with a slight smile on his face and told McGonagall to take me and James to his office and wait for him there. He pointed out a route which took us past her desk and around the edge of the room, and she warned us not to deviate from it by so much as an inch. So we went out, and the door closed behind us, and I don't know exactly what happened then, except that everyone turned up in the Great Hall at lunchtime as if nothing had happened. Nobody seemed to remember anything about it; at least, Sirius and Peter certainly didn't.
'We waited in silence for Dumbledore to come back to his office, and when he did, he said that everything was now alright and made us promise not to tell anyone what had happened. That Severus' father had taken him away for a few days, and that he would never to do anything like it again.
'James looked so shaken by it, and because we'd been forbidden to discuss it with anyone, we could only talk to each other. He said he'd read about a wizard who could do magic like that, and that he had been one of the most evil wizards in history. But he couldn't remember the wizard's name. We hunted the library for clues, but of course anything like that was going to be in the Restricted Section, so we couldn't get at it.
'That was a Friday; we didn't see Severus again until the following Tuesday morning. He was completely different when he came back. Very subdued, didn't want to talk to anyone, kept himself to himself. I don't think James ever broke his word to Dumbledore, but he and Sirius left Severus alone for several weeks after that.'
Lupin subsided, gazing miserably at Snape. Moody sat in silence, considering. 'Interesting,' he said at last, 'but I don't see how this actually proves anything about Snape. It raises a lot more questions than it answers, to be frank.'
Lupin gave an incredulous laugh. 'Don't you see? Severus' life was made hell by James and Sirius. And he not only knew far more curses and hexes than anyone else when he arrived at school, he had the power to carry them out. But he didn't. He wouldn't transfigure a beetle because he thought it was cruel! Don't you see?'
Moody stared at Lupin with an expression of deep puzzlement. 'No,' he said blankly. 'I'm obviously dull-witted; explain it to me.'
Lupin stood up, misery giving way to anger in his face. 'Severus Snape has more magical power than any wizard I have ever met, apart from Dumbledore and You Know Who. And he was treated cruelly by everyone at school. He could have had the worst revenge on any of us, any time he liked. But he didn't. Because he believes it was wrong!'
Moody snorted. 'If he's such a saint, why did he join the Death Eaters?'
Lupin scowled. 'They were the only friends he had. I didn't even know he was a Death Eater until last year! But he didn't stay with them, did he, after he found out what they were really like?'
'And then why doesn't he take on You Know Who? Think of all the lives he could have saved!'
Lupin's eyes blazed. 'Because he doesn't know what he is!'
'And you do?'
Lupin stared at him for a moment, breathing heavily. 'Yes.'
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'How do you know?' Lupin whispered. He sank on to the edge of Snape's bed, his head in his hands, his back to Moody.
'I tested it. There was blood all over Neville's clothes where Snape had been holding him. I thought it was Neville's, but he wasn't physically injured, so it had to be Snape's. I compared it with what was in the necklace and on the bear.'
'You told us you didn't know whose it was,' Lupin prevaricated in a mumble.
'Didn't want to upset Tonks any further. And it wasn't a complete lie. There is someone else's blood on it, but we never identified all the people who died in that house. We found the remains of three, but it was all such a mess there could well have been more. We did the best we could, but collecting it all up and incinerating it was about as much as we could do.'
The silence lengthened; but Moody settled himself on the edge of his own bed with an amiable sense that he was about to get some questions answered. It was only a matter of time. Moody had waited fourteen years; he was content to wait on Lupin's agonised conscience.
'I didn't believe there was no cure for lycanthropy,' Lupin whispered eventually. 'I hunted the library for everything I could find, desperate for anything. The school were so good to me, but every full moon was hell, and I couldn't stand the thought that my whole life was going to be like this. Everyone thought I was just a swot. I let them; better that than the truth.
'One day I found a book lying on a table near the Restricted Section. One of the NEWTs students must have left it there, very careless. Madame Pince would have had a fit if she'd known. But I don't think she ever found out, because I took it.
'It was a book about vampires. Mainly. Other creatures too, including werewolves. Apparently, I'm not a werewolf in the strictest sense, only half of one. But anyway...'
Lupin took a ragged breath and half turned so he was sideways to Moody, facing Snape. 'I found out by accident that Severus' blood will hurt me; he cut himself by accident in a Potions lesson and it spilled on me. He never noticed the effect, and I volunteered to take him to the hospital wing so I could see Madam Pomfrey myself without letting anyone know what had happened. I never told her how I'd burned my hand.'
Lupin's voice trailed off. Moody said nothing.
He had known, without really understanding until now, how desperate someone with lycanthropy might be. Now he understood why Lupin was standing so resolutely between him and Snape. Lupin might well care for justice and the rest of it - but who would blame him for wanting Snape to live if Snape was his best chance of recovery? And did Lupin really suppose his reasons for protecting Snape to be any more noble than that?
And yet... he must be desperate indeed to imagine any such thing were possible. Lycanthropy changed the victim's physical being at a molecular level - once the two gene patterns were fused, there was no way of separating them. The Wolfsbane potion was miraculous in its way, but it did not touch the underlying nature of the condition. Did Lupin know that? Deep inside, Moody felt a sudden wrench of pity. He waited in silence for Lupin to continue.
Lupin gazed into Snape's battered face with a tormented expression. Moody could read the presence of a long story in those troubled eyes, and the wretched battle over how much to disclose. He decided on another measured push.
'I'm not completely implacable, Remus,' he said quietly. 'Give me a reason to believe he's innocent. Convince me - and I'll heal him and let him go.'
There was another long, brooding silence.
'I remember the first time I ever met Severus,' Lupin said quietly. 'I was waiting for the Hogwarts Express with my parents. We were an hour early.' He gave a small smile at the memory, seizing a momentary refuge in it. His parents had worried and fussed all summer about his place at Hogwarts, relieved that he would not be denied an education, eager for him to have this precious chance at a semblance of normal life. At the time, all he had understood was that the Headmaster had assured them that his disability could be accommodated. Lupin remembered his father's "man-to-man" chat a week before term started, impressing upon him the importance of letting no one discover the truth behind his frequent bouts of "illness". At the age of eleven, the prospect of expulsion from school might seem the worst possible disaster in a boy's life, and Lupin's father had certainly made it sound that way, stressing how disappointed he would be if Lupin lost his place at school due to carelessness. But the worst possible thing that could have happened to Lupin had already happened, and some tone buried in his father's voice hinted at unspeakable consequences should anyone discover that his son was infected with lycanthropy. Lupin had been too afraid to ask what those consequences might be. It would be at least four years before he found out.
'I was scared about going, and trying not to show it because my parents were so pleased I'd been accepted. I didn't want to let them down. We'd been there about twenty minutes, all alone because we were so early, and I was feeling rather bored, nervous and fed up. And then all of a sudden there was this other boy saying hello to me. One minute we were there by ourselves, apart from one or two station staff, then the next there was this boy and his father standing there as if they'd been there all the time.
'He looked so excited about going to school, and I had the impression that it was somehow as significant for him as it was for me. Except he couldn't wait to get there.
'Severus' enthusiasm buoyed me up a bit. I didn't see his father leave because my parents were having a last minute fret over whether I'd got everything, but by the time we got on the train, I didn't feel scared or unhappy about going anymore. My parents were delighted I'd managed to make a friend so soon.'
Lupin went silent, staring into space as he gazed into the past. Moody couldn't help a slight frown of impatience, but said nothing. Sometimes the answers one most wanted lay in the stories which sounded least relevant.
'By what seemed incredible good luck, Severus and I ended up, not only in the same house, but in the same dormitory. And there we met the three boys who were to become my best friends. James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew.'
Another pause. Moody waited.
'James and Sirius really hit it off the moment they met, kindred spirits. Intelligent, gifted; nothing ever seemed difficult for either of them. They went round together, exuding self-confidence and cool, and I was happy to trail along in their shadow, because while people were looking at them, they weren't looking at me.
'Severus, on the other hand, didn't like being outshone by anyone. I don't think he'd had much contact with other children before he came to Hogwarts, and he wasn't used to sharing attention with other people. Almost from the first lesson, he was competing with everyone, desperate to be the first to answer any question. He seemed to have already read every book on the set list, as well as every other book that might be relevant, and couldn't wait to share his knowledge with everyone else, especially the people he shared a dormitory with. Whereas James and Sirius never bothered reading anything more than they had to, but mastered everything they attempted almost immediately. And that's where it all went wrong. Severus knew a massive amount, but he couldn't seem to put it into practice, and James and Sirius could. He was jealous of them for their easy success, and they disliked him for being a show-off and a know-all.
'It all came to a head in Transfiguration, about a month into term. Severus had managed to earn himself a detention for refusing to try transfiguring beetles the week before, and James and Sirius were joking behind his back that it was just an excuse because he couldn't do it.'
'Why couldn't he do it?' Moody interrupted, frowning. 'It doesn't make sense...'
Lupin smiled wryly. 'He couldn't pronounce the words properly. I don't know where he actually comes from, but he's not English, or he's only half-English or something. For most of the first year, anything which involved actually saying magic words defeated him completely. If he hadn't been so phenomenally good at Potions and Herbology, I think he'd have failed the year altogether. He must have had elocution lessons or something during the summer holidays, because when we came back for the second year, his English was absolutely perfect.'
'But most of the words we use to perform magic aren't English,' Moody pointed out.
'No, most of them are Latin. But Severus had a strange accent, and he put stresses in odd places in words. He could be really difficult to understand sometimes, especially when he got excited about something, because then he talked faster.'
'Fluent but with the wrong accent,' said Moody thoughtfully. 'As if he'd taught himself out of a book without ever hearing it spoken. But you were telling me what happened in this lesson?'
'Yeah. Well, Severus was refusing to transfigure whatever small creature we were using that day, and Sirius laughed at him, mimicking his accent and making fun of him. Everyone laughed...'
'Including you?'
There was a pause and a sigh.
'So what happened then?' Moody pressed.
'Severus got angry. He'd managed to keep his temper under control before, but the antagonism between him and Sirius had been building for a while, and this was the first time it became obvious the rest of the class... weren't on his side, if you know what I mean.
'Anyway... he lost his temper and screamed at Sirius that nobody had the right to do Transfiguration and that it was all childish rubbish. That Sirius might be good at conjuring but he had no idea what real magic was. Then he waved his hand in the air and shouted a stream of words in a language I've never heard. And then... then...'
Lupin frowned, trying to find words to describe what had happened next.
'The air pressure seemed to change. Suddenly it felt as if we were standing in a much bigger room, or a much emptier one. And it was because... technically we were. Everything in the room, every person, was suddenly just an image on the wall or the floor. There were only three people apart from Severus who weren't affected - me, Professor McGonagall, and James. I don't know why.'
'What do you mean? Images? In what way?'
'As if every piece of furniture and every person in the room had just been painted on to its surfaces. So that if you stood at a certain angle, it was all three dimensional and realistic, but if you moved slightly, you realised it was all just pictures.'
There was silence while Moody tried to digest the information Lupin was giving him. 'That's not possible,' he said at last. 'It was some sort of illusion; no one has that kind of power; certainly no child.'
The corner of Lupin's mouth lifted into a twisted smile. 'Oh no, it was no illusion. Can you imagine how someone could create an illusion like that on such a scale? I wouldn't know where to begin, and believe me, I searched the whole library for some clue as to what it was Severus had done. For about thirty minutes, everyone and everything in that room did not exist in the world as we know it.'
Moody gazed at the man in the bed with new disbelief. 'So what happened then? Thirty minutes?'
Lupin nodded. 'Professor McGonagall and James looked horrified; I didn't really know what had happened. Severus looked so triumphant; I don't think he realised the potential consequences of what he'd done. I remember I was going to walk over to where he was standing, and McGonagall practically screamed at me not to move. Then Dumbledore came in.
'He didn't look angry or anything; he just looked around with a slight smile on his face and told McGonagall to take me and James to his office and wait for him there. He pointed out a route which took us past her desk and around the edge of the room, and she warned us not to deviate from it by so much as an inch. So we went out, and the door closed behind us, and I don't know exactly what happened then, except that everyone turned up in the Great Hall at lunchtime as if nothing had happened. Nobody seemed to remember anything about it; at least, Sirius and Peter certainly didn't.
'We waited in silence for Dumbledore to come back to his office, and when he did, he said that everything was now alright and made us promise not to tell anyone what had happened. That Severus' father had taken him away for a few days, and that he would never to do anything like it again.
'James looked so shaken by it, and because we'd been forbidden to discuss it with anyone, we could only talk to each other. He said he'd read about a wizard who could do magic like that, and that he had been one of the most evil wizards in history. But he couldn't remember the wizard's name. We hunted the library for clues, but of course anything like that was going to be in the Restricted Section, so we couldn't get at it.
'That was a Friday; we didn't see Severus again until the following Tuesday morning. He was completely different when he came back. Very subdued, didn't want to talk to anyone, kept himself to himself. I don't think James ever broke his word to Dumbledore, but he and Sirius left Severus alone for several weeks after that.'
Lupin subsided, gazing miserably at Snape. Moody sat in silence, considering. 'Interesting,' he said at last, 'but I don't see how this actually proves anything about Snape. It raises a lot more questions than it answers, to be frank.'
Lupin gave an incredulous laugh. 'Don't you see? Severus' life was made hell by James and Sirius. And he not only knew far more curses and hexes than anyone else when he arrived at school, he had the power to carry them out. But he didn't. He wouldn't transfigure a beetle because he thought it was cruel! Don't you see?'
Moody stared at Lupin with an expression of deep puzzlement. 'No,' he said blankly. 'I'm obviously dull-witted; explain it to me.'
Lupin stood up, misery giving way to anger in his face. 'Severus Snape has more magical power than any wizard I have ever met, apart from Dumbledore and You Know Who. And he was treated cruelly by everyone at school. He could have had the worst revenge on any of us, any time he liked. But he didn't. Because he believes it was wrong!'
Moody snorted. 'If he's such a saint, why did he join the Death Eaters?'
Lupin scowled. 'They were the only friends he had. I didn't even know he was a Death Eater until last year! But he didn't stay with them, did he, after he found out what they were really like?'
'And then why doesn't he take on You Know Who? Think of all the lives he could have saved!'
Lupin's eyes blazed. 'Because he doesn't know what he is!'
'And you do?'
Lupin stared at him for a moment, breathing heavily. 'Yes.'
Yay! Thank you all hooooooooooooooooooooooooogely for the reviews! Yes Yes Yes you're all asking the right questions! Fantastic! How I dearly love you all! hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs
On a more restrained note: it might be a while (a fortnight or three weeks rather than a week) before the next update - May's a busy month. Do hope you enjoy this chapter - bit longer than the previous ones.
BekaJWP: Glad you liked the library with
the missing books! Just wish I could have wrung a bit more out of the
dreamscape, as I've said to Clio below...
Clio: Thank you
immensely! It's really good to know the mysteries coming out the way I
wanted them - this is the effect I was hoping for. You will get to find
out what happened in the Longbottoms' house - though I can't say when.
Have to say, this whole fic has turned out a lot longer than I planned,
and the dreamscape, which I was very fond of, hasn't worked out the way
I wanted it to, although it's served its purpose well - I'll probably
try the device out in another fic later on though.
LinZE: You know,
I just feel guilty every time I think about MM! She was never meant to
be out of the story as long as this! So glad you do like the rest of
the story though - and you may be pleased to know MM will be back in
the next chapter. Her bit is already written - but I've reached a
fiddly bit and I haven't got as much time as I'd like to give it, just
now.
leaserpent: I just glow when I get reviews like this! My greedy ego is willing you a large box of chocolates!
crockywock: Sorry! It's quite difficult to be original - and I think
the idea that Snape invented or contributed heavily to the invention of
Wolfsbane, and Snape losing his arm with the Dark Mark, are two very
popular themes on Fanfiction.net! Glad you liked the way it's used - I
must have a look at your fics sometime :)
And very best wishes to Merlyn, Kateri1, Lilith11, frogfoot26, excessivelyperky, chickens, Barbara Kennedy, Ezmerelda, dalamis, fanfiction fanatic, knitekatz and anyone else who might be reading :)