A/N: This chapter takes place mid-February of 1977, about ten days after Severus' makeover, as instigated by Stacie Monroe. It fits roughly into Ch IV,49: Realigned in Alteration of The Path Not Tread.

To Boggle the Mind

Sirius watched the gaggle of girls in blue and bronze whisper amongst each other and peek over towards the figure sitting at a table in the library on Wednesday evening, and shook his head with morbid fascination.

The world had gone insane in the last week, apparently.

"Not Ravenclaws too," James moaned quietly, dropping into the chair beside Sirius. "I could understand the Slytherins, but the Eagles too?"

"It gets worse," Peter informed him, taking a seat to James' other side. "I overheard a couple of fourth-years in the Common Room this morning asking Doris Darling about him and whether it was true Lily had been friends with him. I suppose they thought Doris would know, since she and Lily are both Prefects."

Sirius' mouth fell open in shock, while James groaned and buried his head into the circle of his arms on the table.

"What is wrong with people?" Sirius spluttered. "It's Snivellus!"

"Are you lot on about that again?" Remus asked with his eyebrows raised as he walked up to the table where the other three Marauders had set themselves up so that they had the view without being obvious about it. The werewolf boy sat himself to Sirius' right and surreptitiously turned to observe the table in question.

Severus Snape was sitting at that table together with his partner in crime, Zebadiah Thistletwaithe, conducting his weekly business he'd begun doing some time in the fall. As he'd done every day since Monday of last week, the Slytherin was dressed in his fancy new robes, his hair was either freshly washed or tied back into a queue at the nape of his neck, and if Sirius wasn't mistaken, his teeth looked oddly whiter, yet another of the unsettling changes that were at the moment occupying the wagging tongues of the rumour mill.

"He has got to have some hidden agenda with that... that... all that," Sirius hissed at Remus, waving his hand about in Snivellus' vague direction.

Remus sighed the sigh of someone thoroughly sick of the conversation already; Sirius was unmoved.

"If I were to guess, he's started earning himself a tidy coin with his business, and can now actually afford better clothes, and that's as much as there is to it."

"That doesn't explain the hair and the teeth," Peter pointed out.

"I bet next will be the nose," James said with a nod to himself.

"Perish the thought; he wouldn't be Snivellus without the nose," Sirius quipped back.

"Why am I friends with you lot?" Remus moaned softly, covering his face with his palm in clear embarrassment that made Sirius want to smack him upside the head. "I can't believe we're actually having this conversation."

"If you want us to be nice about him, you just had to say, Moony. Here, let me try – maybe one of the Slytherin broads will finally take pity on him now he's actually learned what soap and water are used for, and do him a favour and pop his cherry," Sirius said with a smirk.

"Why is everything always about sex with you, Padfoot?" Remus asked in response.

"Only ever said by those who've never had any."

That earned him a smack upside the head from James; Remus' cheeks, meanwhile, had gone quite red, and he was giving Sirius a somewhat hurt look.

"Anyway, I don't think that'd be much of a problem for him these days," Peter noted, inclining his head towards two seventh-year Badgers who were giving Snape appreciative looks, even as they waited for him to conclude his current business with the Ravenclaw girls seated at his table.

Sirius did a double take.

"Please tell me those two are not actually checking him out?! Because firstly, ew, and secondly, why? I get he's discovered hygiene and that's such a novel concept for him, it's bound to attract attention, but come on! He's still the same old ugly Snivellus! Just look at his face, it's all bony and long and with that beak in the middle of it and those creepy black eyes, he looks like, like... like some sort of grim reaper!"

"He's only ugly by your standards, Siri," Remus pointed out. "Not everyone shares those standards. And for some people, looks aren't all that important in the first place."

"Like whom? Name one."

"Me."

Sirius gave his friend a flat look of disbelief, to which Remus shrugged his shoulders, though there was a suspicious redness to his cheeks.

"Whatever would you do with a pretty face after the first flush of infatuation?" the werewolf boy asked as clarification. "Not to mention that looks fade; if there's nothing except air between the person's ears, much good you'd get in a shared life except vapid preoccupations and lots of yearning for a good conversation."

"I'm still not likely to want to shag someone for their brains, Moony; if I'm going to shag them for something, it'd be for their looks, and that's sort of the prerequisite to any life sharing, way, waaaaay down the road."

"And anyway, that's all well and nice, Moony," Peter piped up, "but it doesn't apply in this case, since these two do seem like they find him attractive. I mean, they're looking rather taken in by him, and I don't remember them having ever even spoken to him once."

"Ha! See, Wormtail agrees with me," Sirius crowed, vindicated.

"Well, my first point still stands; different people find different features attractive. Else you wouldn't have Lord Byron and Heathcliff and Rochester."

"Who're those blokes and why should we know about them?" James asked.

"Yeah, I've never heard of anyone named that, and I happen to know most of the who's who in Britain," Sirius agreed.

"Oh for Merlin's sake," huffed Remus, sliding down in his chair. "Don't you two know any classical literature at all?"

"The last two are characters from famous Victorian Muggle novels," Peter elaborated, "and Lord Byron was a Muggle poet. They all had the reputation of being brooding, temperamental and arrogant, but highly intelligent and dismissive of societal norms."

"Alright, I get why Moony knows about them, but why do you?" Sirius asked Peter.

"I went to a Muggle primary," Peter replied with a shrug. "Plus, my aunt loves the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen. Those are the Muggle writers who created characters like Heathcliff, Rochester and Mr Darcy."

"And it wouldn't hurt you two to visit the fiction section of the library in your free time, either."

"Oh, get off," Sirius snapped back; Remus' constant criticisms this year were more than going on his nerves by now.

"So wait, are you actually comparing Snape to some Victorian male Muggle ideal?" James interrupted, refocusing Sirius on the far more important point that'd somehow slipped him by in his outrage.

"To be fair, he does fit it better than any of us; that's not Moony's fault," Peter said. "I suppose Padfoot might fit it some..."

"No, Sirius is too sociable to be a Byronic hero," Remus shook his head. "And Snape does fit, now that he's cleaned up – he's unsociable, easily provoked into fits of temper, unpleasant to interact with, dark-haired and dark-eyed, but he's also extremely intelligent and likes to flaunt it, he's part of the most influential Slytherin group at school this year while standing apart from the rest of them while still holding their respect, and there's now an air of mystery about him with this transformation. You don't have to like my assessment, but that doesn't make me wrong about it."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you actually respect him all of a sudden," James noted, eyes narrowing suspiciously behind his round spectacles. Remus didn't seem flustered by James' suspicion, though, simply shrugging in answer.

"His Potions O.W.L. scores are the highest in the last hundred and fifty years; he and Lily are like Kneazles and Crups and they're still leaving all of us in the dust with that year-long project; he knows more Dark Magic than probably even Rosier; and we went after him four-on-one and he still got his own over you more often than not for five years. So yes, if we're talking about his magical aptitude and knowledge, I do respect that, because it speaks for itself. But that doesn't mean I hold any warm feelings for him."

"But you still think he's smarter than we are," Sirius translated, aghast.

"He is, though," Peter said, "in book knowledge, at least. You've seen his essays, how cramped he writes so that everything can fit into the assigned length. But he's not better than us in everything – he hasn't got Prongs' aptitude on the broom, and I bet his knowledge of wizarding politics can't compare to yours, Padfoot, and I doubt he'd be able to explain anything to anyone the way that Remus is so good at. Also, he's horrible with people in general, else he'd have plenty more friends than he does."

"He was plenty good enough for Evans."

James made a wounded noise and lowered his head to the table again. "Don't remind me. If this gets Lily to forgive him, I might just kill myself."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Sirius retorted. "If you're going to kill anyone, it'd be him, not yourself."

"I wouldn't put my money on that just yet, Padfoot," Remus said with a shake of his head.

"Which part?" Peter asked. "Lily forgiving him just because he's all prettied up now, or James killing him rather than himself?"

"I meant James managing to kill him, rather than the reverse, but I'd actually not bet on Lily forgiving him, either. She's not one to be taken in with a pretty face, as you two well know. And she hasn't told me much, but from what she did, I can't see her ever taking him back aside from him turning his back on You-Know-Who's crowd."

"Right," Sirius snorted, "and that's about as likely as me being welcomed home with open arms."

"Wait a second – so you think I couldn't take him on, Moony?" James spoke up, giving Remus a wounded look. In response, the werewolf boy shrugged, but kept quiet. "No, tell me honestly. I'm serious, come on."

"No, you're not," Peter said. "You're James."

Sirius rolled his eyes; lowest form of humour, that, and Wormtail never could resist reaching for it. James pushed Peter lightly away in response, earning himself a snigger from the pudgy boy, but he barely glanced away from Remus, who sighed and gave into the bespectacled boy's plea.

"Fine, yes. I think that one-on-one, he'd hand you your arse."

"Moony!"

"Remus!"

"Oi, traitor!"

"Well, I'm sorry," Remus cried out, raising his hands up in defence, "but realistically speaking, if you didn't have the element of surprise and the rest of us to back you up, you'd be in deep shite, given that he probably knows how to cast the Unforgivables, not to mention all the other Dark Magic none of us except maybe Padfoot have even heard of, and he hates your guts enough to not have much qualms about actually using those against you."

"I could cast an Unforgivable on him."

"No, you couldn't. And that's a good thing, because Dark Magic corrupts the soul. The fact that he can cast it isn't something to be proud of; the fact that you can't is."

"He's got a point there," Sirius replied, more candidly than he'd initially planned. Patting his best friend's shoulder, he sent a dark look at the Slytherin's table, where that gaggle of Eagles were not crowding and obscuring Sirius' sight of Snape. "Take it from someone who's been in close proximity to Dark Magic for most of his life; we want to stay as far from those spells as possible."

"But how does that help me beat Snape in this hypothetical duel then? And if I can't even beat him, how am I supposed to fight in the war against a bunch of sneaky, ruthless, evil bastards who have no qualms about using Dark Magic themselves?"

That left all of them somewhat stumped, even Remus, because the answer was one none of them had, and the question was this looming dark cloud above their heads now that they were looking into the future. Not many things were certain, Sirius knew that better than anyone, but this war felt more and more inevitable with each passing day, and sooner than any of them would like, they'd need to have the answer to that particular question.

"That's what the Auror Training is for," Remus said in the end, more to fill the silence than anything.

"Yeah. But you and Wormtail aren't going down that road, are you?"

"Not me," Peter volunteered.

"No, I wouldn't be accepted even if I wanted to join; I'm registered, and the Ministry might not check Hogwarts enrolment, but they'd be sure to check the applicants to their armed forces division," Remus answered.

"Well, that's been a downer!" Sirius exclaimed with forced cheer. "How about we go back to boggling over the school's collective madness as regards Snivellus instead of pondering existential questions like these?"

"How about we agree that de gustibus non est disputandum, and move on?"

"What does that mean?" Peter asked.

"Now who doesn't know their classics?" Sirius sniped, leaning back in his chair so as to poke Peter in the shoulder behind James' back.

"What, and you know?" Remus asked, giving Sirius a disbelieving look.

"Unlike you philistines, I was actually taught Latin as a kid," Sirius replied, lifting his nose up in the air self-pompously so as to make the others snigger.

"It means there's no accounting for taste," James explained to Peter. "Which is true as things go, I suppose, but I can't say I get it in this particular case."

"Once again, Evans sure seemed to like him an awful lot before you put his foot in his mouth last summer," Sirius couldn't help replying, if only because his fervent need for James to give up Miss Perfect Prefect Lily Sodding Evans already insisted that he point out her every flaw to his best friend. He only felt a bit guilty when James' shoulders sank down at the reminder.

"Well, she doesn't like him now, so she can be forgiven," the bespectacled boy decided whimsically. "After all, we all make mistakes from time to time."

"Yes, and me being friends with you lot seems to be turning into one of those the longer this conversation keeps going, so could we please change the topic and, I don't know, focus on our homework, perhaps?"

"Killjoy," Sirius muttered with a roll of his eyes, even as James said: "Fine," in resigned exasperation and Peter nodded his head in assent.

Privately, though, Sirius was going to just keep right on being boggled over Snape, and if this whole thing did result in Snape actually getting himself a girlfriend, perhaps then, Remus would stop being all prim and proper and start being his old self enough to participate in a good gossip session, especially when it came to their number one nemesis, James' embargo on going after Snape notwithstanding.

Sirius could be patient; he had a feeling this whole... thing... with Snape's appearance hadn't reached its climax quite yet.