Disclaimer: Most of the characters and settings of this fic entirely belong to JK Rowling.
Special thanks to C.D. without whom this story (to your bitter regret or complete indifference?) wouldn't exist and to Lara because we had such a great time!(a снегг идет, a снегг идет...)
NB: I've enabled anonymous reviews (I didn't even know they were disabled! It's the story of my life: I don't realise a half of the things that happen to me.)so, now, you don't need to log in to review(which was, of course, the only reason why did not, euh...?)
1. Foolish bravery
There were that girl's eyes boring into him as her father's body was lying on the floor by her and her mother was screaming in the next room. A several minutes' look into that desperate child's eyes was enough to throw off balance his already vacillating confidence into the principles that had been ruling his life for the last two years. He had already understood before that day that he was with the Dark Lord for the wrong reasons but still didn't want to own up to the fact that he was a mere pawn in his game.
Even Bellatrix, with her bloodthirsty fanaticism only managed to make him shudder. He had to admit to the fact that he had started that love-affair simply because he was flattered by the fact that a woman like her could find him desirable. On that night he realised how unbearable it all was: his "colleagues" were just a heap of narrow-minded, arrogant fools, craving for power.
Most of them, unlike Bellatrix, didn't even believe in what Voldemort claimed. He hadn't been sure anymore that he or any Death Eater or even Voldemort himself had the right to decide on who deserved to live and who did not; he hadn't been sure anymore of his desire of Bellatrix. On that night, a certitude smote down on him.
Everything he did after that was meant to smooth the acuteness of reproach of those eyes in his memory. But he knew it wouldn't be enough, he would have to give more, as much as he could: his very life. He had so sentenced himself and decided to devote the rest of his existence to get prepared to it.
Maybe, that child's eyes reminded him of his sister or of his childhood that had died with her or of his own cell-like loneliness that he had been prey to ever since.
"Miss Lebedev", said a metal-cold voice behind her. She started. "Pray, tell me what you have been doing for the last five minutes?" She could feel his sharp look boring into her nape.
"I have been…stirring my regenerative potion…Sir."
"Oh, you were stirring? How perfectly marvellous!" he let out a nasty laugh. "Look inside your cauldron, Miss Lebedev!" He now stood right in front of her. She looked down: her potion had turned greenish and was boiling rather spectacularly, with great yellow bubbles.
"Dear Miss Lebedev, would you be so kind as to read us out loud the last part of the recipe written IN FULL on the blackboard?
"Stir 15 times clockwise and then 15 times anticlockwise, from the centre to the rims…"
"Precisely: 15 times clockwise and then 15 times anticlockwise, from the centre to the rims and not ad libitum in any direction wished, mind, Miss Lebedev! I am not sure you were counting the fifteen times while looking so fixedly somewhere BEYOND (as Professor Trelawney would put it) your potion since, well, you didn't even notice it changed colour at least three times!"
Her heart sank insidiously. She didn't care anymore: he could take from Ravenclaw as many points as his cruel, perverted mind could imagine provided he let her alone right now. But he did not.
"Oh, I suppose, Miss Lebedev," he went on, joining together his long white hands, "that you were thinking of something of CAPITAL importance, much more important, indeed, than the regenerative potion that you were, according to your own expression, "stirring".
"Yes!" she suddenly replied to her own surprise, lifting her head. For a short moment, Snape looked taken aback but, of course, he recovered his sardonic expression immediately.
"Very well! Maybe, you could be so kind as to share with us the fruit of your reflection?(he pointedly insisted on "fruit")
She lowered her head, biting her down lip regretfully. Behind her back, she could hear excited whispers: the students were eager to see how he was going to make mincemeat of her and hoped it was going to be as long and as interesting as possible. The downfall of Sophia Lebedev: this was going to be something!
"Silence!" he growned. "Well, Miss Lebedev," it seemed that he could hardly suppress his triumph, "we're all eager to discover the brilliant reflection your outstanding mind has just given birth to...to the detriment of your potion.
Silence.
"Miss Lebedev, answer my question!" his tone was now more of a threat than of a mockery.
Come on, tell him that you are sorry,that you apologise for your behaviour, that you shouldn't have been inattentive in a class that requires particular concentration.
"I am sorry, Professor, I realise that by being inattentive in a class that requires particular concentration, I unwisely exposed myself and my classmates." His eyebrow slowly went up
"As for my thoughts, I believe I am most legitimately entitled to keep them for myself." The whole thing sounded as if she was pulling his leg. The end was openly impertinent When he spoke up, his voice was dangerously calm. "You are very much mistaken, Miss Lebedev! Everything that happens in this class and, therefore, in your head when you are in this class, concerns me. Thus, the legitimacy you've just alluded to is highly debatable!"
"I can't agree with you, Professor!" As it was, it couldn't be worse. A strange light flashed in his dark cold eyes. He grew impatient.
"Miss Lebedev, do you realise you are being impertinent !"
"I apologise if it looks like Iam for I didn't intend to."It didn't sound really convincing, did it?For a second, he seemed to look perplex but recovered his composure immediately.
"We've lost enough time with your conceited nonsense, Miss Lebedev. I take 10 points from Ravenclaw."
"Go to hell!" thought Sophia in reply.
"…and, as you don't have any regenerative potion to present, would you be so kind as to come back here today at 7o'clock and start it over again? And make sure you are not going to be daydreaming this time. Ingredients are precious, I am not going to let my careless students waste them." He clearly articulated every syllable to make his discourse as hurtful and humiliating as possible.
Right! This was but a logical conclusion to the whole thing, she thought, walking towards the Great Hall when Helen caught up with her, putting her hand on her friend's arm.
"What on Earth happened to you, Sophia? Why did you tell all that stuff? You know he hates being thwarted! That's why he thrashed you! "
"I hate being thwarted too. And I hate him."
Yes, Yes, she loathed him and his cold glare, his sardonic half-smiles and his long (and rather greasy) hair; she felt a sort of weird fascination for his slender white hands and his black robes, always floating around him most ridiculously. She knew, she hated it altogether.
Especially on a day like that!
On the very day, eleven years ago, Mrs and Mr Lebedev, two brilliant and widely-respected civil servants from the Ministry of Magic, both devoted to the struggle against the Dark Forces, left their house to attend a meeting and did not come back, just as did all the people who attended that meeting. Somehow, Death Eaters had found out about it, and none of them had survived.
Sometimes, Sophia wished they would have been killed much earlier, when she was just an unconscious baby, like that famous Harry Potter who would enter Hogwarts next year; maybe, it would have been easier if she wouldn't have remembered them at all. No, a few weeks after they vanished forever, she celebrated (if such a word could be appropriate to such an occasion) her 7th birthday.
Seven-years-age is commonly considered as the age of consciousness and reason, the boundary of early childhood and it was particularly applicable to her case. She had already plenty of tender memories about Mum and Dad that could provide her with some moments of sweet oblivion but, most of the time, made her suffer terribly. She never managed to find out the names of the Death Eaters who murdered her parents but, from that moment on, she always kept on her mind a vivid image of those tall dark beings(were they human beings, really?) who crushed her life once and forever.
Sophia's parents were both Russian. Her father had studied at Hogwarts, entered the Ministry of Magic and ended deputy head of the Department for International Magical Co-operation. As for her mother, she came to Great Britain when she was twenty one, as part of her International Magical Law studies. They got married and Anna stayed in Great Britain.
After they both got killed, Sophia's grand-mother, her father's mother remained her only family. She lived in Russia so that Sophia had to go to live with her until she had turned eleven and had to go to Hogwarts in spite her gran's reluctance. Mrs Lebedev herself, as well as her deceased husband, were Muggles. It had already been a terrible shock for them to discover that, because of a distant grand-aunt that turned out to be a witch and of British origin, their dear Sachenka had to go miles away from them, to a school that seemed filled with mental people.
Mrs Lebedev inwardly hoped to be able to avoid sending Sophia to Hogwarts, now that she didn't have any relatives and didn't live any more in Britain but it turned out that long distances were no obstacle for Hogwarts' post-owls and that Sophia's prays and supplications were beyond what her patience could stand. Sophia was, indeed, very enthusiastic about going to Great Britain all the more because she had been living in the wizarding world for seven years and that muggle primary school in Russia was really far from standing comparison.
On the day of Sophia's 7th birthday, her grand-mother gave her an old silver medallion engraved with the image of a swan with spread wings and a slender neck. On the other side, there was an inscription in a language that Sophia, after long researches in heaps of great books about ancient and modern magical languages, managed to identify as an ancient magical Slav language that was used long before the Cyrillic alphabet and that couldn't be deciphered anymore.
She also found a couple of references to swans in the few books about slav magic that she could have access to at Hogwarts. There were several mentions to virgoswans, beings of Light and Love, extremely powerful and wise, but who could only use their powers for the benefit of a person to whom they were linked by a true affection. Originally, virgoswans were more of magical animals that could, occasionally, take human shape but then, more and more of them married wizards or even Muggles and, progressively, became more and more human.
Their powers weren't as extensive or as strong as their ancestors', some of them were just very skilled animagi and, there were, nowadays, exceptionally few "active virgoswans" whose range of powers could be remotely similar to that of the virgoswans that existed twenty centuries before.
But according to Vera Sinitchkina (a Russian journalist and novelist who pretended to be one of those "exceptionally few"), author of a "fictionalized autobiography: The Diary of a Virgoswan", "this has been our paradox and our tragedy for centuries: dedicating ourselves to men, who often turn out to be heartless and greedy brutes, exploiting shamelessly our exceptional abilities is our nature and we can't do otherwise than squandering our precious gift because it is its' very and only purpose and, if carefully treasured for ourselves, it becomes a useless and lifeless deposit.
According to Sophia's grand-mother, Sophia's mother had entrusted her the medallion the last time they went toRussia for holidays before she and her husband were killed, recommending her to give it to her daughter on the day of her 7th birthday in case if she wouldn't be here anymore. She also told that it had been the propriety of her family for years and that only women could hold it but, apparently,didn't mention virgoswans at all.
Sophia doubted about the fact of being an "active virgoswan". First of all,her mother would have certainly told her about it and then, she never revealed abilities characteristic to virgoswans: she was no swan-animagus and, although virgoswans were supposed to be able to foresee the future, she never had particularly brilliant marks with Trelawney and dropped Divination as soon as she could. If her patronus was a swan, it was, she thought, rather a reference to her mother with whom she so strongly associated her swan-medallion.
Among all her parents' belongings that had remained after their death in their London-flat Sophia also was particularly attached to her mother's books that she then kept after she sold the flat when she turned seventeen because, at that moment, both she and her gran needed money. They were Muggle books in Russian and, while her parents were alive, Mr Lebedev always insisted upon storing them in the attic.
The year before they died, Sophia used to overhear them arguing rather violently about them, her father trying to persuade her mother that keeping Muggle-books in such times was very foolish and that it would be much safer to destroy them. Heaven knows, Anna Lebedev rarely disagreed with her husband and never stood in the way of any of his plans but, as far as her books were concerned, she was unshakeable: Mr Lebedev would never touch them.
Sophia loved it when her mother read her out loud one of her books and her favourite was Pushkin's tales and, particularly, the tale about the Swan-princess that executed particularly difficult magical tasks for the lucky Prince Gvidon and, finally, married him. The trunk where the books were stored, contained a whole marvellous world. It turned out that, after all, Muggles were not so different from wizards: muggle novel-characters and muggle poets experienced the same feelings, suffered the same pains, were dominated by the same passions, struggled against the same fears than wizards.
Sophia found out about Snape's Death Eater-past two years ago. Helen's uncle worked at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the two girls got a summer-job in the record-section. Sophia couldn't miss the occasion of coming, by a pure chance, of course, upon the file dealing with her parents' murder in the middle of heaps of dusty parchments.
According to the file, only one of the murderers had been identified: it was Evan Rosiers and he died even before his guilt was discovered. However, during her researches, she also found a summary of a judgement, concerning Severus Snape and, according to which, hehad beensued for being a Death Eater but finally cleared only thanks to Dumbledore's testimony. The headmaster had declared that Snape had joined their side and even turned spy.
Of course, Sophia understood that Dumbledore wouldn't have done such a thing without being absolutely sure of Snape but she still found it all suspicious. Snape was the only Death Eater or, at least, former-Death Eater she knew, it was a sufficient reason to hate him.
"You know HE used to be a Death Eater and could perfectly be one of those who killed my parents!" Sophia and Helen were now passing through the doors of the Great Hall.
"There is no certain proof of it, replied Helen", sitting herself down at the Ravenclaw table.
"Look, I perfectly agree about him being a ruthless brute ignorant of what the word "fairness" means BUT you can't accuse him of the murder of your parents!"
"Oh, even if he was not the person who actually cast the death-spell on them, it is just the same because he undoubtedly would have done it if You-Know-Who had ordered it to him!"
She grasped her napkin furiously. Why did Helen keep so obstinately trying to steal from her the only consolation she had on such a day: being able to cast on a precise person the resentment that filled her up to the brim?
True, he was just the right person for this purpose. Potions was the only course (maybe, along with Divination) with which she was not at ease: it was only thanks to a particularly hard work that she managed to achieve moderately good results, whereas, with a similar amount of effort, she managed brilliantly for everything else. Her "Outstanding"-OWL at Potion-making still was the greatest surprise in her life.
This, of course, wouldn't have prevented her from dropping Potions but Professor Flitwick strongly advised her to carry on because, if she wanted a good career at the Ministry, it was advisable to have as many NEWTs as possible as the Ministry required "a high level of general knowledge" from its' employees.
Although Sophia wondered how her knowledge of potion-making could be useful at the Departmentfor International Magical Cooperation that she intended to enter, she followed Flitwick's advice, which she started to bitterly regret right after the first school-week of her 6th year: the fact that she couldn't stand the sight of the teacher certainly didn't help her to like the course itself.
She would have loved to be his butt, one of those with whom he was particularly toxic; that would have given her an extra reason to hate him but the infuriating thing was that he seemed totally indifferent to her and always was strictly impartial: a cold "Satisfactory" when it was all right; a pityless remark when there was something to criticize. Today's incident was an exception, certainly because her behaviour on that occasion was an exception as well. But, paradoxically,this didn't please her either.
A short and slender dark-haired boy entered the Great Hall. He spotted Sophia and Helen and sped towards them. His name was Joseph Manson and he played chaser for the Ravenclaw Quidditch-team.
"Oh, Sophia", he cried, "You mustn't worry because of that bloody bastard! Don't you worry because of him for a minute, he doesn't deserve it!"
"Joseph, hush, please!" muttered Helen. All around, people turned their heads towards them.
"You were right to stand up to him! Wow, it was great!"
Sophia smiled back ruefully.
"No! It was not! It was mere nonsense, just to thwart him. And what's the point? I just managed to cop a detention. "
"Well, an occasion for a romantic tête-à-tête," giggled Clarissa Crawford, who overheard the conversation from the other side of the table.
Sophia sighed, looking down to her plate. All her foolish bravery ebbed off: it was certainly going to be horrible!
Author notes: For Russian people, Pushkin is THE poet, the greatest of all times (and I do agree). He was very much inspired by folklore and popular tales that (according to the legend) he was told by his old nanny who was of peasant origins. He mentions her in several of his works and even addresses her in one of his poems.
Vera "Sinitchkina" means"little blue tit"