Poetry in Fate
The silence was deafening. All around the room people were averting their eyes and trying their damnedest to appear uninterested in the disheveled figure in the doorway. The slouching form marched across the room and slammed the door to the showers behind him.
"I didn't think they would go through with it." A first year murmured in the corner. The spell broken, everyone turned back to what they had been doing before their much maligned classmate made his appearance. What should they care anyway? It wasn't their problem if the other boy couldn't stay clear of trouble.
On the other side of the slammed door long fingers tore at buttons and the tap was turned up as hot as it would go. Threadbare clothing was tossed in a heap and soap normally reserved for removing the worst potion stains from cauldrons was put to use on pale skin. What right did they have? He asked himself again and again. What right did they have to do this to me? How can losing twenty points possibly compensate? It isn't fair! What did I ever do to deserve it? Stupid Potter and his stupid friends always getting away with everything, I'll show them someday, I will!
After a while he wasn't sure if the pink in the water was from the potion they dumped on him or scrubbing too hard and tearing his own skin. It was too hot in the shower to feel anything but the heat and steam, and he wasn't crying. He wasn't crying because the steam was in his face and no one could see.
"I am the Half-Blood Prince." Severus murmured to himself later on in the security of his four-poster bed, smiling at the ingeniousness of the word play. The curtains were drawn tight around the bed as he examined the damage Black had done to his journal. If he hadn't been so silly about saving the cheaply bound book he wouldn't have gotten covered in his own potion, wouldn't have upset Professor Slughorn's cauldron into the fire, wouldn't have been flung out the window by the explosion, wouldn't have…
Severus punched the journal, cracking the battered and singed cover neatly in two. Stupid temper, acting like my father won't make anything better! His own cramped, angular handwriting peaked out from below the ragged bits and Severus set about coaxing the battered thing back together with spell-o-tape and gluing potions. He shouldn't bother, really, but it was important to him. Did it really matter what Black thought of what he had written? Did it matter that no one had come up to offer a conflicting opinion?
Severus looked at what he managed to stick together. The cover looked worse off then before he started on it, but it held together better. No more little bits of charred fabric fell off and the glue he brewed gave it a shiny, lacquered look. He couldn't afford a new one. He didn't want a new one. This was his journal, and that was all there was to it. He took up a quill and dipped it in a special metallic ink he had brewed for Professor Slughorn. Glad I kept some for myself, nothing else will stick to the cover anymore. In his neatest hand, Severus scratched a title onto his journal. Observations of Life, Explorations of Thought, and Ordeals in Darkness: Poetry by The Half-Blood Prince. The silver ink sparkled, making the journal look much better then it ever did.
Years later Professor Severus Snape traced the angular lettering. The Headmaster wanted him to come up with a way to protect the Philosopher's Stone. Immediately falling back on his potions, he had brewed a poison powerful enough to knock over a dragon and a gateway potion. Two identical bottles and a little work on the flavoring made the two potions indistinguishable. Then the old coot told him there had to be a way to get through without knowing the way beforehand.
He hadn't so much as touched his old journal in years, but today the silvery scrollwork he'd inexpertly doodled onto the spine caught his eye and at a loss for ideas he decided re-reading his 'list of things to do to Black in a dark alley after graduation' would be amusing and possibly inspiring. The thrice-damned man had gotten his comeuppance when he was tossed in Azkaban, but Severus could still smirk and dream. It was truly unfortunate he hadn't been the one to find Black before the Aurors; he had so many good ideas in this little journal that he would have loved to legally try out. After reading the still very amusing list Severus started flicking through the other entries. One stood out to him:
'Today Mum sent me a puzzle book and Black grabbed it before I could even get it off the owl. It was incredibly hilarious when he didn't understand what it said, and it looked like Potter's ears were ready to smoke from the effort of figuring out which house had the brown cow and which had the black sheep. Such easy logic problems, Mum really ought to know I'm too old for these books, and they couldn't understand the first thing about them!'
That was it! No matter how powerful they were, most wizards couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. Not even the Headmaster was any good with the complex logic problems that arrived in the mail from Flourish and Blots each month. But I can do them, can't I? Oh, now this is a triumph!
An hour later Professor Severus Snape went into the Headmaster's office with an armful of potion bottles and a poem written on a scrap of paper, confident that even the Headmaster would have trouble with Severus' defenses.