Chapter 8: Some Are (Not) As They Seem

Neville was grateful to link arms with Ron as they staggered off the Hogwarts Express together. He was even more heartened to find Hagrid in the crowd, heralded by a lantern bobbing like a buoy above the heads of all the first-years the giant was attempting to corral.

"All right there, Neville?"

Neville grinned weakly, even as Ron turned to him, impressed. "You know him? My brothers have only ever told stories…."

Neville shrugged, bashful. "He helped me and my Gran get my school supplies sorted."

"Sorted…" Ron shivered a little, and it didn't seem to be from the autumnal cold. "Reckon you know where the Sorting Hat will place you? If for some reason I don't get Gryffindor, I don't suppose Ravenclaw would be too bad, but imagine if they put me in Slytherin…"

"Dunno," Neville scuffed at his shoes, and nearly tripped over the uneven terrain as Hagrid guided them to the edges of the Lake bordering the castle. "My parents were both in Gryffindor. My grandmother was in Gryffindor…. Not sure about my Granddad, though. Gran gets sad the few times she's mentioned him…"

"Another legacy, then? I reckon they'll place you fine!" Ron tapped Neville on the shoulder in a friendly-like gesture, and Neville half-grimaced back. He'd never had a real friend, but he imagined, sitting here with Ron, that this was what it was like.

Small rowboats ferried them up to the castle, where inside, the first-years met Minerva McGonagall. Neville wasn't sure at first what to make of the hawkish lady, except that her demeanor reminded him of his Gran. He was sure that McGonagall was a stern, no-nonsense Deputy Headmistress. This assessment gave Neville all the more incentive to focus in on her lecturing of the rules. He squirmed, feeling the slimy shifting in his pocket. If only Trevor would just sit still….!

It would seem that Trevor's desire for freedom outweighed any consideration towards not humiliating his master, for the toad suddenly made a flying leap that cleared the lining of Neville's pocket easily. Neville desperately made a grab for the slimy thing at the same moment Ron did, and the two mates trapped him between their fingers the way an athlete might catch a Quaffle, or a Muggle football. Laughter rippled up from the assembled first-years, and McGonagall was glowering at them, less than pleased.

"All students…. and pets…. are to wait here as I announce you!" McGonagall swept into the Great Hall.

As soon as the doors closed, Neville could feel how the eyes on him and Ron weren't leaving him. Then a rather obnoxious voice piped up:

"It's true then! What they're saying: Neville…. Longbottom has come to Hogwarts."

There was that guffaw that often hung in the space between utterances of his first and last names, followed now by a bunch of heated whispering. The obnoxious voice was finally matched to an owner: a blonde-haired, oily boy who now melted out of the crowd. "And I'm Malfoy…. Draco Malfoy." he introduced himself haughtily.

Neville vaguely recalled how a Muggle action hero would often introduce himself in such a way, but he kept silent. Malfoy's eyes had now shifted to where Ron was attempting to keep a grip on Trevor and also coax him back into his friend's pocket.

"No need to ask who you are: red hair, and a hand-me-down robe? You must be a Weasley!" The disgust dripping from his tone was clear as crystal. "You'll soon find that some wizarding families are better than others…. Longbottom." It was clearly a struggle for the git not to laugh even as he lectured. "You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."

Malfoy unexpectedly held out his hand to shake. Flummoxed, Neville stole half a glance at Ron, and uncertain as he so often was about how to navigate these kind of social situations, took the boy's hand in an absent manner. But his palm was too sweaty and his grip slipped enough that it carried him forward as his balance briefly abandoned him.

Malfoy merely laughed. "Like he's Boy-Who-Lived material! Yeah, the Dark Lord probably fell over laughing, he was so stupid looking…." Much of the crowd shifted like an unsteady wave, squirming and muttering with unease.

Malfoy was only cowed by the return of McGonagall, who now announced and escorted the first years into the Great Hall. They crossed, in lines two abreast, up the center between a pair of tables out of four total. Behind him, Neville could hear Hermione Granger's authoritative voice pointing out the floating buttresses bolstering the ceiling.

Neville's attention was finally diverted to where McGonagall was lifting a frayed hat off a stool, perched just ahead of the staff table, and up a brief flight of steps.

"Now, when I call your name, you will sit on this stool and allow the Sorting Hat to be placed on your head, so you may be assigned to your Houses. Alphabetical order, now!"

A surname of 'L' meant Neville would be close to the middle, which seemed to simultaneously help and hinder his nerves. Name after name was called until the first one he recognized was Hermione under 'G,' who slow-walked to the stool like she was being guided to her own execution. The brainy girl seemed to be talking under her breath, coaching herself out of nerves.

"Mental, that one – I'm telling you!" Ron muttered to Neville, who didn't reply. This was quickly followed by a groan as the Sorting Hat pronounced 'Gryffindor!' and a pleased Hermione skipped off to the innermost right table.

H, I, J, K… Neville was startled when the first name called for the 'L's turned out to be:

"Neville Longbottom!"

A hush seemed to have fallen over the entire Great Hall. Neville could feel his knees knocking as he mounted the small step or two up to the stool. He had to place a foot on the stool's initial rung to haul himself onto the seat, and then the Sorting Hat's brim was covering his eyes, plunging him into terrifying darkness.

Left only with the silence of his own thoughts, Neville internally prayed: Not Slytherin…. Not Slytherin….

To his ever-increasing terror, the Hat actually heard him. "Not Slytherin, eh? Are you sure? You could be great, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, there's no doubt about that…. No?" it hummed as Neville pleaded harder. "Well, if you're sure, better be…. GRYFFINDOR!"

The last thing Neville sensed was the Hat being pulled off his head, yet everything remained black and silent after that for a moment or more. When he came to, two identical fellows with red hair similar to Ron were slapping his face almost playfully to get him to awaken before carrying him from the stool. Neville had fainted right off it.

His ears were splitting, nearly bleeding, from what sounded like raucous laughter. No, not laughter – cheers. He allowed what he figured might be two of Ron's brothers to guide him, amazed, to the Gryffindor table, where Hermione Granger now fretfully fussed over him, asking him if he was quite all right. He grinned gratefully at her, even as the twins flanking him began to chant, apparently quite seriously, "We got Longbottom! WE GOT LONGBOTTOM!"

From then on, Neville watched the rest of the Sorting with some ease. The Malfoy bloke landed in Slytherin, and near the end, Ron was thrown in with him and Gryffindor at last. The Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, called for silence to make a brief speech, and the Start-of-Term Feast began.

As he dug into his plate, Neville got the sense that someone was watching him from the staff table. His eyes met those of a greasy man in flowing black robes, sporting an oily comb over that his Gran would have derided as worse than his own. Unsettled, Neville turned to Ron's brother Percy and resident Prefect seated at his immediate left.

"Hey, Percy, who is that in the black robes at the staff table?"

"Oh, that's Professor Snape."

"What's he teach?" came a voice from Percy's other side, and its owner soon craned around their officious student mentor. Neville recognized him, for the lad was hard to forget: it was the bespectacled boy who had been Sorted into Gryffindor a few letters after him. Last name started with a 'P': Peter…. No, Potter! Harry Potter was his name. The most Neville could say about him was that Harry at least seemed to feel as out-of-place as he was. It was oddly comforting, to know he wasn't alone.

"What's he teach?" Harry wanted to know.

"Potions," Percy clipped.

Neville followed Harry's gaze back to where Snape was still staring at him. Or was he staring at Harry? He did a double take, trying to track Snape's line of sight. He couldn't tell whether Snape was staring at him or the bespectacled Harry.

And Neville could answer with even less certainty: why?

Severus left the Start-of-Term Feast late, slipping out of the castle and crossing beyond the borders of the grounds so he could Apparate properly. He hoped he wasn't too late that he had missed the changing of the watch; the Healers on the night-owl shift very rarely let visitors in after-hours. Usually, a visitor had to already have been present by the time St. Mungo's formerly closed its wards for the evening.

It was past dark by the time Severus arrived. The door to the Psych ward was locked when he tried it. No matter. Cloaking a Disillusionment Charm about himself, Severus broke in with a simple, "Alohamora!"

He kept the concealment ward about him as he crept from curtained partition to curtained partition. He hardly needed to count anymore to find the one belonging to her; she'd been assigned the same bed for just about a decade….

Stealing past the curtain and into her sick chamber, Severus removed the concealment charms from himself to reveal his presence. The beautiful young woman before him was sitting up in bed, reading a book by the light of a desk lamp. Her auburn curls bounced a little as she jerked, startled by his arrival.

"I'm here, Lillian," Severus tried to put his best friend at ease with a soft smile – that smile that only she ever really saw anymore.

He tried to fight against how his heart still howled at the confused, even blank look with which she now appraised him. "Do I know you?"

Severus wrestled down the despairing sigh as he pulled up a chair by her bedside. It had been the same sort of greeting every night since she had woken up from the brief coma under which the Cruciatus Curse had placed her. Her nurses weren't at all confident Lily would ever regain enough of a short-term memory to place names and faces, hence forcing Severus to reintroduce himself each time to the girl he'd known since he was ten or eleven, the woman he loved. The woman he loved who didn't know he loved her, and didn't even know who he was! From night to night, she greeted him as she would greet a stranger.

"I'm an old friend. My name is Severus Snape. We were children together; went to school together," he introduced himself, as he had every night for the past ten years, the spiel practiced enough so as to be almost rote. He shifted the chair closer to her sickbed, attempting to move past the internal heartache he felt at how this woman he adored would likely never know him. Not as she had. At this point, he would gladly take her knowing, recalling what he had done to hurt her in their youth rather than her not knowing him at all.

Lily smiled trustingly at him and his explanation; it was only mildly heartening to know that she always believed he was who he said he was, in his nightly reminders.

Leaning in so he could better discern the words on the page, Severus transitioned conversationally. "Now: what is it we are reading tonight?"

Lily held up the front cover with a small smile; from the unfamiliarity of the title alone, he had to conclude it was a Muggle text. "I see. Lily, my dear, would you be so kind as to start at the beginning for me?"

She huffed out a breath through her bowed lips, nickering and holding in a laugh, a reaction which would have almost seemed to suggest there was a familiarity about this routine that she would ironically have no memory of one night hence. But Lily dutifully resumed at the first paragraph:

"T-whoah….."

"Two," Severus gently coached her.

"Two house…..holds, both a…..like….eyyy….. in dignit-tay…." Severus let Lily muddle through the pronunciations herself, interjecting a soft correction when and where he felt it was appropriate. As he lost himself in listening to her reclaim her reading skills, he couldn't help but, even as he drank in her lovely face, let his thoughts wander back to the castle.

The castle where two boys who held very strong and yet very different meanings to him were now beginning their magical careers.

Outside of the obvious historical implications, it was hard to feel anything of significance for the Longbottom boy, the one of supposed prophecy. The one whom the Dark Lord had marked as his equal. When Severus had first heard, all those years ago, how Voldemort had selected Frank and Alice's brat for death, he had been relieved, and even all these years later, he wasn't ashamed to say it. What did he care if the lad lived or died, or if he even reached manhood, never mind a magical competence powerful enough to challenge the Dark Lord when he inevitably returned?

The recollection of how Neville's refusal to die had indirectly led to catastrophic collateral damage is where the resentment set in. Even as Severus understood that, had it gone the other way, Lily would undoubtedly have landed herself in far greater danger. She might not even be….

He shook his head to clear it, holding back tears as he strained to resume listening to Lillian read aloud to him. There was no point in entertaining the what-ifs of an alternate history whose time had passed. Nevertheless, his thoughts now were consumed by the other boy, the Boy Who Might Have Been Chosen But Hadn't Been. Harry. Lily's son.

Severus clandestinely watched the love of his life as her full lips moved, mouthing the words on the page. Her voice, though unsure in its vocal translation of the text, was nonetheless as sweet as ever. She truly was so lovely, in spite of all that had befallen her…..

He studied her, wondering….. Did she even know she had a son? Or had that memory, the recall of that knowledge, been lost to history and the fractured awareness of her own mind? Would she ever become aware that he would do anything in his power to keep her boy safe, even if Harry was (mercifully) no longer a target of uncommon destiny?

Despite how her progress had been slow, how she still never seemed able to remember the name of the man who visited her night after night, despite enjoying his company once he reminded her of it, Severus resolved that he would nonetheless try to assist her in recalling whatever she could. He'd help her regain all of it: that she had once been a wife (though for his own sanity as well as hers, he would delay that for the time being). He would help her remember that she was mother to a son, who was growing big and strong, even if he regrettably more resembled his infernal father. To accomplish this, he decided he would devise a way to collect photos of Harry, to bring them by.

This he would do, for the rest of his life if he had to, until the day when she would lay eyes on an image of her son and she would know him instantly and by name. Until the day when her beautiful hazel eyes would fall onto him and she would recognize him instantly. Until she said his name…. and perhaps, one day, he dared to hope, she might even utter it with love.

Severus….

Unconsciously, he brushed back her fiery bangs to tuck a strand behind her ear, realizing too late how it could be construed as intimate. Turning to puzzle him, Lily didn't seem to mind, smiling softly at him before turning her entrancing gaze back into her romance novel.

Content for now in just being with her, despite the frustrating distance yet between them, Severus settled in for a peaceful night with his girl. His Lillian.