You forgot to take your Potion tonight
Chapter 3: Severus Snape
He hadn't regained consciousness until the full moon was high in the sky, and then he'd known by the pounding headache, the dizziness, and the nausea that it was concussion, not a stunning spell - and Enervate, even if he could cast the spell on himself, wouldn't do any good. The first thing he'd done was to prop himself up on one elbow and heave, and the second thing he'd done was to reach for his wand ... it wasn't in his robes, had he dropped it when he was knocked out? He'd whispered Accio wand - wandless magic was feeble stuff but he could summon a light object like a wand over a short distance, and it had been a huge relief when his wand flew into his hand. He'd felt much better, much stronger, so he'd scrambled to his feet at once, and yes there was a lump on his head that felt as if it was the size of a hen's egg, and a trickle of dried blood on his face.
He'd known exactly where he was - about halfway between the Whomping Willow and the castle, not far from the lake - but he had no memory at all of how he came to be there, although with a concussion that wasn't surprising, confusion and amnesia were common after effects. He'd looked around, and the first thing he'd seen was the Dementors, retreating across the lake. Dementors! The Headmaster would be livid when he found out that the Dementors had invaded Hogwarts again!
The sight of the Dementors had brought on a fresh wave of nausea, Occlumency could keep Dementors at bay but he still didn't like them, having them around stirred up memories that he'd rather forget, so he'd retched up some more thin, bitter bile - and then he'd seen the body lying on the ground. He'd dropped on his knees beside it - sweet Merlin, it was Ronald Weasley, the boy wasn't dead, but he was unconscious ... and it looked as if he had a broken leg, someone had splinted it, with what looked like Ferula.
His first impulse had been to get the boy back to the castle, so he'd conjured a stretcher and levitated Weasley up on to it - though the effort had reminded him that he had the mother of all headaches - and then he'd thought, what the hell happened here tonight - and where are the rest of the Golden Trio? Potter and Granger surely wouldn't be far away - the Ferula could be Granger's work, she might know the spell, she always read ahead of the coursework ... and he was disappointed in Granger, he'd thought that she at least would have been capable of working out that Lupin was a werewolf ...
He'd cursed Potter, why were the damned brat and his idiot friends out of the safety of the castle in the middle of the night, when there was a convicted murderer on the loose? Sometimes he thought the Boy Who Lived had a death wish ... didn't the little bastard know of his mother's sacrifice, or didn't he care? And he, he'd failed Lily once, he hadn't been able to save her - he hadn't been deep enough in the Dark Lord's plans - but he wasn't going to fail her again, he'd strain every nerve, every sinew, to save her child, even if the brat was the living reincarnation of his filthy father. And the boy was the weapon, the weapon against the Dark Lord.
So he'd stood there, his eyes raking the area around him - the moon was full tonight - and in the bright moonlight he'd seen three more bodies, close to the edge of the lake. It looked like a scene of carnage – the remaining members of the Golden Trio, lifeless or unconscious on the ground - and Sirius Black! He'd bound and gagged Black, instantly, in the strongest bonds that he knew how to charm, and then he'd turned to Potter, his heart pounding with fear that the boy was dead.
He'd felt for a pulse - the boy lived, and there was no blood, no hex marks – and he'd run his hand over Potter's forehead, but the brat didn't seem feverish, so what had happened? Then he'd remembered that Potter had fallen from his broom, unconscious, during the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match - had the Dementors affected him?
He'd checked on the girl next, and Granger seemed fine, she had no visible injuries, she appeared to be untouched - and then he'd given Black a vicious kick in the ribs. Normally he was above that kind of Muggle thuggery, but not tonight, not when Black had come within a hair's breadth of killing the Boy Who Lived - but Black hadn't stirred, and it was a mark of just how shitty he was feeling at the time that he honestly couldn't care whether Black was alive or dead, although Black seemed undamaged and the money was on Black still being alive.
And then he'd crouched down on his haunches, put his aching head in his hands and tried to puzzle out what had happened. Black must somehow have lured Potter out of the castle, the arrogant upstart brat must have thought that he had a chance of capturing Black single-handed ... and did that parchment he'd confiscated and handed over to Lupin have anything to do with it? Damn that parchment, he should never have given it to Lupin, he should have kept it and shown it to the Headmaster - he'd known in his bones that Lupin was hiding something. And damn Albus for a soft-hearted fool, if only Dumbledore had let him have a free hand, if only Dumbledore had been prepared to look the other way, he would have got the truth out of the werewolf by now. A bout of crucio to soften Lupin up, followed by a dose of Veritaserum - and Legilimency, not the passive kid gloves technique he uses on the students, but the kind of aggressive Legilimency that can leave the subject with a hopelessly scrambled mind ...
Oh, it would have been a pleasure to squeeze the truth out of Lupin, not just because Lupin was a filthy stinking werewolf, but because he was a contemptible weak bastard. And Lupin had been a prefect! The memory had come floating back, Black's voice, I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment, there'll be great grease marks all over it, they won't be able to read a word, while Lupin read a book and pretended that it wasn't happening - and Pettigrew wet himself with excitement.
He'd trembled with rage – and then he'd thought, forget it, Lupin has taken his Potion, and he's up in the castle, curled up under the desk in his office, harmless, a tame wolf ... and thinking about Lupin is just making my head hurt even more ...
So he'd gone back to trying to work out what had happened, OK, Black had lured Potter and his friends out of Hogwarts, and he must have followed them ... and then there'd been a fight, but with no hexes - so perhaps Black didn't have a wand? But how had he been so stupid as to allow Black to get close enough to him to hit him, Muggle-style? And if the Dementors had come, if they'd overpowered Black and the children – why hadn't they taken Black with them?
And if he'd come across Black, why wasn't Black dead - and not just dead, but cut up into little pieces? Because he'd stewed over what he'd do to Black if he ever caught up with him - the Avada Kedavra was too good for Black, it was a quick death and maybe even painless ... no, he'd rip Black to shreds, Sectumsempra, for enemies. He'd imagined the gashes in Black's chest, the gashes in the hated face - and maybe Black would beg for mercy before he died, maybe he'd beg like a dog, on his knees. Oh yes, revenge would be sweet when he caught up with Black, because Black had killed Lily - he'd been the one who'd put Lily in danger, but it was Black who had killed her.
He'd run to the Dark Lord with the news of the prophecy, but when he'd realised what he'd done - when the Dark Lord called them together and told them that it was Lily's child that the prophecy pointed to, Lily's child who must die - he'd gone to Dumbledore. He hadn't known what else to do or where else to go, so he'd gone up to the Headmaster's office and blurted it all out to the only wizard the Dark Lord ever feared, and he'd thought it would be Azkaban, but Dumbledore had other ideas - and somehow he'd become a double agent.
Not that he'd ever been in love with Lily Evans, sure, he'd fancied her, but she was Muggle-born and his position as a half-blood - if they ever found out about his filthy Muggle father - was too precarious for him to get mixed up with a Mudblood. She would never have looked at him, anyway, not when she had James Potter romancing her - handsome, charming, popular James Potter. And Potter was always the perfect gentleman, too much of a Gryffindor goody-goody to put the hard word on Lily up on the Astronomy Tower after curfew - not like his mate Black, who was an animal. No, he'd never been in love with Lily, but they'd become friends, for what that was worth, when Slughorn teamed his two most brilliant students together in their NEWT year.
And she'd invited him to the wedding, Severus Snape and friend, and that had really churned him up, he had no doubt it was genuine because she'd never fuck him around - she wasn't like that, she must have really wanted him to come - but of course he hadn't accepted the invitation. Lucius and Narcissa had been invited, too, because it was a big society wedding - the marriage of the only son of a wealthy pure-blood family to a lovely and talented Muggle-born - not that Lucius was going, either, because he refused, as he put it, to witness a blood-traitor disgracing an old and honourable pure-blood name by mating with a Mudblood.
So on the night of the wedding, he'd gone out Muggle-baiting with Lucius, an impromptu affair, just the two of them, and then they'd gone drinking ... and there'd been a red-haired girl in the bar, well, she was actually a tart, and the hair was charmed or dyed or both, but after half a dozen firewhiskeys she looked OK, so while James Potter was deflowering his beautiful virgin bride, he'd been catching the clap amongst the garbage bins outside the back door of a sleazy dive in Knockturn Alley. And for once he'd been glad that he was a half-blood, he'd seen a Muggle doctor, and avoided the humiliation of having to whisper into the ear of the witch on the Enquiries Desk at St Mungo's, and the fear that Lily would see him - she worked at St Mungo's - and guess why he was there.
So, no, he hadn't attended Lily's wedding - but Black had, he was the best man, he was the brat's godfather, too, and he'd sold the Potters to the Dark Lord. And that was something he still couldn't understand, he hadn't seen it coming – he'd fingered Lupin as the traitor, as the spy close to the Potters who was feeding information to the Dark Lord ... though it seemed that he'd been half right, because he was convinced that Lupin was helping Black to get into the castle.
Sometimes he thought that the Dark Lord had made the same promise to Black that the Dark Lord had made to him - the Dark Lord had promised him Lily, as a reward for bringing the prophecy, the first few words of it, anyway – had the Dark Lord made the same promise to Black, promised Lily to him as a reward for giving up the child the prophecy pointed to? Because it wouldn't bother the Dark Lord to make the same promise to two of his servants ... and he'd always been suspicious of Black. Sure, Black had pretended that he wasn't interested in Lily, he always had a different girl with him every Hogsmeade weekend, but Lily was gorgeous, it had to be an act - because any wizard who said he didn't want to get into bed with Lily Evans was either lying or queer.
And sometimes he thought it must have been the lure of money, position and power – the same baits that the Dark Lord had used on him – because the eldest son of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, toujours pur had been disinherited in favour of his younger brother Regulus - and at other times he thought that Black must have soaked up the pure-blood supremacist crap with his mother's milk and he'd eventually reverted to type.
But mostly he had no explanation, other than that Black was a crazy, vicious bastard – which Black had proved in their sixth year, because if Black had succeeded in his attempt at murder, his mate Lupin would have been handed over to the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures for execution, and it would have been expulsion for Potter - maybe even a stint in Azkaban ...
And Black had obviously been the Dark Lord's most prized secret weapon, because not even Lucius had known that Black was a Death Eater – no one had known that Black belonged to the Dark Lord, and although Black had been on the run for nearly a year, there was no word of him contacting any one ...
Whatever, he had to stop brooding over Black, because the highest priority was to get the children safely back to the castle and up to the Hospital Wing - so he'd mustered the strength to conjure more stretchers, though the effort had made him giddy with exhaustion. And then he'd heard the howl of the werewolf, and that had been chilling, because what was Lupin doing running wild in the Forbidden Forest when the Wolfsbane Potion should have been keeping him safe, should have been keeping him under control?
For a moment he'd thought that he must have bungled the brewing of the Potion, it was tricky stuff, hell, there were only half a dozen wizards in Europe up to making it, and he could name every one of them - and then he'd thought about sending a message to Dumbledore by his vixen Patronus. But he'd known that he'd need every scrap of energy, every scrap of magical power, if the thing attacked them - and all that he could think of was, thank Merlin they were out in the open, where he'd get a clear shot at the werewolf. If he could just get a decent crack at the brute, he stood a fair chance of being able to drop it – because the Avada Kedavra will kill a werewolf just as well as a Muggle silver bullet.
Luckily Filch had appeared as soon as he'd slammed and warded the oak doors of the Entrance Hall behind them - and he'd sent the caretaker to fetch Dumbledore while he took the children up to the Hospital Wing. The Headmaster had come at once, and he'd told Dumbledore everything he knew – which wasn't much – and then Dumbledore had taken charge, and it had been a huge relief to allow himself to relax, knowing that Black was safely under lock and key.
He didn't want Pomfrey fussing over him, he was far too wound up for that, so he'd slipped away to his office, where he kept stocks of all the simpler healing potions - his Slytherins knew to see him for treatment for their bumps and scrapes rather than going up to the Hospital Wing, Slytherin dirty laundry was not to be aired for the whole school to see ...
So now he's in his office, mulling it over, his memory would come back, in dribs and drabs, once the Restorative Draught kicked in, but it was like finding a lost object, you have to retrace your steps ... so what had he been doing, what was his last clear memory?
He could remember having dinner, he could remember returning to his office, he could remember checking and adjusting the cauldronful of Wolfsbane Potion, and he could remember brooding over bumping into Walden Macnair in the Entrance Hall that afternoon, he'd nodded politely to Macnair - the man had been the Dark Lord's chief butcher, but somehow he'd had managed to wriggle out of trouble - and he'd known then that Hagrid's Hippogriff was as good as dead.
He'd felt sorry for the poor bloody beast, and for Hagrid, too, because he had nothing against Hagrid, he'd served a couple of detentions with Hagrid as a student, and Hagrid had been decent enough to him, but Hagrid was out of his depth in a teaching position. Dumbledore should have appointed Grubbly-Plank when old Kettleburn retired, she was a hard-faced old dyke, but she knew her stuff ...
Yes, that had been a very unfortunate little incident, and from what he could make out, the accident had been caused by Potter showing off again – he'd actually ridden the creature, got it really stirred up - but Draco had been seriously hurt, and he couldn't overlook that. He'd gone straight to the Hospital Wing as soon as he'd heard what had happened, Pomfrey had done a fair enough job of healing the wound, but there would still be scarring. He'd owled Lucius immediately, and Lucius had, as the Muggles would say, gone ballistic. He'd had Lucius in his office for over an hour, with an Imperturbable Charm on the door, while Narcissa fussed over Draco in the Hospital Wing - not that Lucius had shouted, but it wasn't like him to make threats that he didn't intend to carry out.
He'd thought at the time that the wretched Hippogriff was so much Acromantula fodder on the hoof, and if Lucius was still on the Board of Governors, Hagrid would have been out of both a job and a home - and then Lucius had started going on about Dumbledore's imbecility in appointing a werewolf to the Defence position, because while Lucius might think that Fenrir Greyback had been a useful servant to the Dark Lord, he didn't want that kind of filth anywhere near his only son and heir.
He'd felt a surge of resentment at the thought of Greyback, the Aurors could find the time to hassle him whenever anything happened, they searched his office and his quarters, they checked his wand, Prior Incanto - it happened when Gringotts was broken into, when the trouble started at Hogwarts last year ago, when Black broke out of Azkaban - but they'd done nothing about tracking Greyback down and killing him, the loathsome brute.
Yes, he could remember being in his office ... he'd been waiting for Lupin to come down for his evening goblet of Potion, and he'd been thinking about the Quidditch final, Potter had only caught the Snitch because he had the best broom – one of the new Firebolts, priced at a year's salary for a Hogwarts professor – and it was galling that he'd had to help Filius to strip it down, Filius had been convinced that it carried a Hurling Hex, and he couldn't say no, could he? Not when the safety of the Boy Who Lived was at stake ...
The Quidditch final was a bitter memory, Marcus Flint and the rest of the team had played their hearts out in that match, they'd tried every trick in the book, but it wasn't good enough - the score was eighty to twenty in Gryffindor's favour when Potter caught the Snitch, and the whole school had cheered when the Headmaster handed Oliver Wood the Quidditch Cup. He'd gritted his teeth over that memory – and Lupin was late, the moon would be rising soon, had Lupin forgotten his Potion? And that was another entry in the ledger that he was keeping, though he really couldn't justify a complaint to Dumbledore just because Lupin was late to pick up his potion ...
But then he'd got really worried, and he'd gone up to the third floor, to the Defence teacher's office, with a gobletful of Potion in his hand, hating Lupin for treating him like a post owl, hating Lupin generally, because Lupin was a spiteful, spineless bastard. He hated the way that Lupin smarmed up to him, calling him by his first name, as if they were friends – and the Boggart incident was an act of unforgivable cowardice. Admittedly, he put the knife into Lupin about the Marauders every chance he got, now that you're back at Hogwarts you must be missing your old friends, Potter and Black and Pettigrew, although the Headmaster had warned him against saying anything in front of James Potter's son, he'd get more than a rap over the knuckles if he let anything slip in the boy's hearing - but it was disgusting how Lupin had used Neville Longbottom to get back at him, not that he'd eased up on Longbottom, the boy needed to be taught a lesson even if Lupin was the one who was really responsible ...
He'd gone into Lupin's office – the werewolf wasn't there – and he'd seen something on Lupin's desk, something that had caused him to bolt out of Lupin's office, down three flights of stairs, out through the Entrance Hall and across the grounds to the Whomping Willow. He'd found an Invisibility Cloak, he'd remembered the rumours that had floated around Hogwarts that James Potter had one, and he'd remembered how to control the tree – how could he forget? - and then he'd dashed down the tunnel. His chest had tightened a little at the memory of the last time he'd been in that tunnel, but he wasn't sixteen any more, he wasn't afraid of a werewolf - transformed or not transformed.
He'd heard voices from behind the bedroom door – the children's voices, Black and Lupin hadn't killed them yet – so he'd slipped into the room, under the Invisibility Cloak, and he'd been utterly puzzled by what he'd seen. Black and Lupin – no surprises, he'd been sure that Lupin was helping his old friend – but the children were acting very strangely, listening to Lupin telling his sob-story, how he'd been bitten as a child ... had they been Confunded? And Black was slumped on the floor while Lupin did the talking, Black looked a complete wreck, as satisfyingly gaunt and grimy in the flesh as in the wanted posters ...
Lupin had started spinning a yarn about the Marauders being unregistered Animagi, saying that they'd accompanied him on moonlight expeditions through the school grounds and Hogsmeade village, and then he'd started talking about Dumbledore, claiming that the Headmaster's trust meant everything to him, he let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job, when I have been shunned all my adult life, unable to find paid work because of what I am. Oh, it was the world's saddest story played on the world's tiniest violin, and it had nearly made him sick to listen to it.
When Lupin started telling Potter and his friends about the amusing little prank that had nearly resulted in murder, when he heard Lupin's lies, Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel, he'd boiled with fury - because it had been a lot worse than that. He'd felt the thing's hot breath, he'd been sprayed by its disgusting slobber, and he'd panicked then, because he'd known that nothing less than the Killing Curse would really stop a werewolf and although he knew a lot of curses, he didn't know the Avada Kedavra. And, afterwards, when he was safe in his dormitory, he'd burned at the humiliation of being rescued by James Potter - it had been Potter who had held the beast off with Reducto until they could scramble out of the tunnel and reactivate the Whomping Willow.
He'd boiled with fury, and there was no need to wait any longer, he had what he needed – Lupin and Black caught red-handed, caught together, plotting another murder in the Shrieking Shack ...
He'd pointed his wand at Lupin's chest, told the werewolf that he'd known that he was helping his old friend Black into the castle, but not even he had dreamed that they'd have the nerve to use the Shrieking Shack as their hideout.
But Lupin had dared to protest his innocence, he'd said, "Severus, you're making a mistake. You haven't heard everything – I can explain – Sirius is not here to kill Harry -"
Black not here to kill Harry Potter! Black, who'd been heard muttering, he's at Hogwarts, he's at Hogwarts, who'd headed straight for the school after he escaped from Azkaban, who'd twice broken into Hogwarts, slashed the Fat Lady's portrait and come within a whisker of murdering Ronald Weasley – it would be laughable, if it wasn't so cruel, because it was going to be a real blow to the Headmaster to know that he'd been betrayed by another one of his precious Gryffindors ...
"Two more for Azkaban tonight," he'd said. "I shall be interested to see Dumbledore takes this ... he was quite convinced that you were harmless, you know, Lupin, a tame werewolf ..."
And then Lupin had laughed at him, said something about a schoolboy grudge ... so he'd bound him, with cords that should be strong enough to hold even a transformed werewolf, and then he'd turned to Black.
Black had snarled at him, but he'd pointed his wand straight between Black's eyes, and it had been gratifying to see Black stop dead, because he would have done it if Black had given him a reason. And he'd wanted to do it, he'd been longing to do it – but he'd kept a grip on himself. He'd remembered what it said in his Ministry file, in the confession that Dumbledore had insisted on, "I enjoy killing. I don't do it any more. I know it is wrong." - and he'd known that he mustn't lose control, the Headmaster wouldn't like it.
Granger had started blithering at him, and Confunded or not, he wasn't taking any nonsense from Miss Muggle-born desperate-to-prove-that-I'm-a-witch Granger, so he'd told her to hold her tongue ...
And then Black had said that he'd come quietly, as long as Weasley brought his rat up to the castle – and he'd noticed that Weasley was holding a mangy-looking rat, it was wriggling and struggling in the boy's hands - but there was no need to go all the way up to the castle, was there? Not when the Dementors were authorised to administer the Kiss ... and they might have a little kiss for the werewolf, too.
But Potter had blocked the doorway, said that Lupin had been giving him private lessons, and asked why Lupin hadn't tried to kill him? Bloody hell, how would he know that? Who can fathom the mind of a werewolf? Though even a werewolf must have more sense than to try to kill the Boy Who Lived under the very nose of Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard in the world ...
And then Potter had shouted at him, and he'd started shouting, too. Like father, like son – the resemblance between the two of them was uncanny – and he'd lost his temper, he'd been ready to hex the brat, nothing serious, just a body bind, when three voices had shouted Expelliarmus - the force of the spell had slammed him against the wall, and everything had gone black.
He thinks, completely disgusted with himself, the brats hexed me! Hell and damnation, he'd let three children disarm him, and one of them a mere slip of a girl! He'd known the children were Confunded, but it still hadn't occurred to him that they could be a danger ... even so, it was an unforgivable lapse, the kind of thing that would have got him killed in the old days. Never mind, when Potter comes to his senses, when the boy realises how narrowly he avoided the same fate as his father, Potter will be kissing his hand ...
And then he thinks, the Minister for Magic will be here soon, Black will get what's coming to him, and Macnair will back at Hogwarts tomorrow with another job to do, another dangerous beast to execute - excellent!
He, Severus Snape, ex-Death Eater and a "person of interest" to the Auror Corps might even get a bit of recognition, that would be nice - and surely the Headmaster won't refuse him the Defence position now that he's saved the Boy Who Lived from a convicted murderer and a werewolf? And Minerva is getting on a bit - perhaps she'll take early retirement and then he'll be Deputy Headmaster, he's Albus' right-hand man, why shouldn't he get the title and the pay that goes with the responsibility?
He snorts a little to himself, because he knows that it's all castles in the air, he's feeling a bit euphoric now that the headache and the nausea are gone, but if he's going to daydream, why not make a proper job of it? With two positions to fill – Potions and Transfiguration – Dumbledore must surely hire at least one attractive witch, a female he can at least fantasise about, because he never, ever lets himself think about girls like pretty Cho Chang – because that wouldn't be harmless, that could take him somewhere dangerous, somewhere that he doesn't want to go.
But as he saunters up to the Entrance Hall to wait for Cornelius Fudge, for some reason he thinks of Sybill Trelawney, all the other staff think she's a tipsy old fraud, kept on at Hogwarts by Dumbledore out of pity, but he knows better – and Trelawney is always banging on about those unfortunates born under the baleful influence of Saturn, and how does she know that his birthday is in January, anyway?