It was snowing that day at Hogwarts. Harry trudged through the snow, listening to it crunch under his Wellington's. He dug his hands into his coat pockets, looking at all his fellow students making angels and throwing snowballs. He envied them in a quiet, resentful sort of way. He couldn't be having fun like that. Nah, he had a job to do. He had people to see.
Nobody turned their heads as Harry walked past. Why would they? He wasn't special. He didn't attract attention. He was plain. The only things which made him at all noticeable, and even then he would never stand out in a crowd, were his fucked-up knees which made him walk funny and a small scar on his forehead. There had been a car accident when he was younger. His mom and dad died. He didn't. Simple as that. Nothing special.
But then it was to Harry's advantage that he didn't stick out. It let him slip by and do whatever he needed to do whenever he needed to do it. Since a young age he'd been nicking things and generally taking part in the seedier side of life. This hadn't changed a bit, even if he was going to some fancy-ass boarding school. Wasn't his fault he was smart, why then should he be expected to change his whole way of life just for the benefit of the faculty? Not bloody likely. Not bloody likely at all.
Harry walked with purpose, in spite of the thing with his knees. He had something he needed which he couldn't get his hands on. He needed a favor, and when you needed a favor at Hogwarts, there were two people you went to: The twins, Ron and Reggie.
The Weasley twins were at the center of all social happenings at Hogwarts, as well as all criminal happenings. You name it, they were either facilitating it's practice or having it run into the school through outside channels. It was because of this reputation that Harry was seeing them. He was in a spot of trouble and needed a particular implement to get him out of it.
Harry found the twins in the place where they usually conducted business, behind the gamekeeper's hut. The gamekeeper hit the bottle very hard, and was usually out for hours, so the twins never worried that someone might see something. That, and the twins kept the gamekeeper in a steady supply of liquor, which helped to ingratiate themselves with him. Even if he were to ever see anything in some odd moment of sobriety, and many suspected he must've, he wouldn't say anything about it.
Reggie was smoking a fag and Ron was beating the shit out of a kid named Vik Krum who hadn't been returning on his debts. Ron was the more violent of the twins. He was easily the most intimidating kid in the school.
Ron's face somehow managed to be both deep-set and puffy and the same time, with a jaw that seemed perpetually slackened and a scar running down one cheek. The mutual facial scarring and the fact that both of them wore glasses was something that helped Harry to get on pleasantly with Ron. Ron saw a bit of himself in Harry. Of course the two were totally platonic, even if Ron did get up to things with other boys sometimes.
Reggie was the better-looking twin. Both used to box, but somehow Reggie was the only one who came out of that period of their lives unscathed. Both had the signature red hair of their family, and the structure of their faces was sort of the same, but the similarities ended there. He was trimmer than his brother, his features were a bit sharper, and he preferred girls and the girls preferred him.
Reggie noticed Harry approaching. "Oy, put the bohunk down, Ron. It's Harry." He pointed.
Ron looked where he was pointing and grunted affirmatively. He stopped punching Vik. "Now the next time I see you, you better have paid up." Ron pushed him aside. "You fuckin' useless greasy twat."
Vik stumbled off, clutching his stomach and bleeding from the nose.
Ron smiled and walked over to Harry with an outstretched hand. "Hallo, Harry! Fuckin Bulgies, eh?" Ron said, rubbing his knuckles.
Harry ignored that remark and shook Ron's hand. "Hallo, Ron."
"Sorry, forgive my rudeness. Keep forgettin' you don't like that kind of talk." Ron itched the side of his nose. "So this a social call or do you need somethin'?"
"I need something."
"Right, well, let's do business in the hut. It's bastard cold out. Old Haggy won't mind, will he? Fuckin useless old drunk. Come on, we can put the kettle on."
Ron poured Harry, Reggie and himself each a cup of tea once it had come to a boil. He sat down at the table with them and shifted a bit in the seat.
"Now then, Harry, what's all this about, eh?"
Harry gulped. "Well, I'm in trouble - or my girl is. If you know what I'm saying."
Ron's face twisted into a look of disgust. "What? Our Ginny?" He stood up out of the chair. "Didn't I fuckin tell you not to touch her before you made an honest woman out of her? You fuckin scrawny bastard. And now you've gone and knocked her up!" He was about ready to throttle Harry.
Reg drew a long puff from his cigarette, then looked at the floor with a deeply sober look on his face. "Harry's not seeing our Ginny anymore, remember?"
Ron backed down. "How do you mean?"
"Sh- she died, remember?" Harry stammered, fearing for his life. "The basilisk ate her."
Ron's face dropped. It all began to flood back to him. That incident in second year with that thing that had been lurking in the plumbing. "Oh yeah." He sat down and wiped his eyes which had begun to get misty. "Sorry, Reg. Sorry, Harry. Damn silly of me to forget that." Ron wasn't right in the head. He hadn't been for some time. Everyone knew. Especially Ron, and Harry could tell that it ate at him. One day he'd totally lose it, and either go apeshit or catatonic.
Reggie was desperate to change the subject. "Yeah, old Harry's seeing that Japanese bird, innee?" He took a sip at his tea. "Wossername. Chee Chung?"
"Uh, Cho Chang, actually," Harry said, "And she's Chinese."
"Same fuckin difference," Ron mumbled. Reggie slapped the back of his head.
"Anyway, what do you need, old son?" Reggie said. "She in trouble and you want somethin to get her out, that it?"
Harry nodded. "Pretty much."
Reggie sighed. "Well, I'm afraid we can't help you there. Don't have anything for that."
Harry got nervous. "Come on, Reg. I mean- fuck, this is a baby we're talking about here. I can't have a fuckin' baby, especially not some half-chinese baby I'm not even totally sure is mine."
Reggie sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, but we don't have anything. Don't get much call for contraceptives, surprisingly."
Harry stood up indignantly from his chair. "Not much call for contraceptives?"
"What's so unbelievable about that?" Ron asked.
"Well Ron, in case you hadn't noticed, the three of us have been living for some years now in the only co-ed boarding school in the whole of the British fucking Empire," Reggie answered. It had often struck him as odd too. But then Hogwarts was oddly prudish as far as Occult schools went, totally removing Tantric Arts from the curriculum.
"Oh, well I know that. I just wanted to know why it evidently hadn't occurred to you, Reg, that people were getting them from someplace else," said Ron.
"Like where?"
"Well, my mate Severus, for one. He's a procurer," said Ron.
Reggie made a disgusted look. "The fuck the didn't tell me bout him? And what the hell's a procurer?"
"He fuckin' procures things, don't he? If you want it, he gives it to ya. And as for why I didn't tell, I thought you didn't like hearing what I did with my evenings."
Reggie rubbed his eyelids. "So he's a brown hatter, then. Great, a competitor I didn't even know we had and on top of that he's a poof. This'll do wonders for me rep, for sure."
Ron frowned. "Awright, quit your filth." He put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Our good friend Harry here's in a jam, need I remind you, so let's give Severus a ring and sort out our grievances later."
Severus Snape wore a yellow windbreaker with the hood pulled over his head as he rode his bicycle down the road to Hogwarts. He'd been a student a while back, but was expelled. As he headed in the direction of a client-in-need which his friend Ron had turned him onto, he hummed a few bars of a song which had been swimming about in his brain for a while:
"If you want it, here it is, come and get it
Mmm-hmm, make your mind up fast
If you want it, anytime, I can give it
But you better hurry, 'cos it may not last..."
He turned his bike through the gate into the castle where he'd made so many memories. He peddled through the courtyard, watching the students build snowmen and pelt each other. A few of them turned their heads as he slowly went past. He did sort of stick out like a sore thumb. Not only was his bright yellow windbreaker a contrast to the black-and-white uniforms of the students, but he had very distinctive features, generally. His hair was cut longer than most boys and his nose was rather pronounced. A few people yelled obscenities at Severus as he passed, but he paid them no mind.
Finally, he broke to a stop outside the old Gamekeeper's hut, which in his second year he had briefly set on fire. He kicked down the kickstand and headed into the hut, carrying with him a small box full of various powders.
He stepped inside, and saw Ron sitting at a table with two other boys. One of them Severus assumed to be the famous Reggie Weasley, Ron's brother. The other was a dark-haired kid with glasses and a scar on his forehead. This must have been the client. He was likely a friend of Ron's. Ron liked people who reminded him of himself.
"Weasley," Severus said, "I take it that this boy here is the client?"
"Um, yes." Harry looked at the strange-looking fellow, perhaps a few years older than himself. He looked familiar. "My girl's in trouble."
Severus made a confused look.
Ron patted Harry on the back and laughed. "Nah, nah, Harry. Old Sev here isn't hip to phrases like that." He turned to Severus, "He's gotten a girl pregnant and needs her not to be."
Severus nodded. He took three canisters of different-colored powder out of the box. He grabbed a bowl from the counter of the hut and started mixing them together with a vial of some steaming fluid.
"What is that stuff?" Harry asked.
"The brown powder is a ground-up Mandrake head, the blue powder is made from the foreskins of Cornish pixies, and the dark powder is called The Black Meat. It's made out of an aquatic centipede from Brazil or somewhere." He stopped mixing. "The liquid is, uh, it's an activating agent. This is the last of my supply. I used the rest to pay off some legal fees."
Ron frowned. "Complete bullshit, those charges were."
Severus nodded. "Exactly what I told them, Ron. Exactly what I told them."
Harry's eyes widened at the realization of who this strange boy was. "So that's where I know you from! That whole thing with Lavender. They expelled you from here didn't they? Even though you were found innocent by the Ministry."
"Ah, the headmaster was looking for an excuse. He hates Jews, the old bastard. The accusations were absurd anyhow. I don't even like girls." He scooped up some of the mixture into a small capsule and corked it, handing it to Harry.
"Slip some of this into your girl's tea," he said, "There'll be some discharge, but she'll probably be fine. The fetus will be processed by her body into nothing more than undifferentiated tissue after a couple of days, which she will pass." Severus started packing up his things. "Make sure you clean her up good and that there's nothing sticking to her or it'll start to grow on her. Then just swab up as much of the tissue as you can into a bag and deliver it to me. That'll be how you pay. There's a market for undifferentiated tissue, you know."
"All right, I don't want to be hearing any more of this," said Reggie. "Harry'll get you your fucking goo, don't worry. Just get out of here you miserable yid poof."
Ron scowled and clenched his jaw. "Don't talk to my friends like that, Reg."
Severus remained expressionless. He pointed squarely at Reggie. "Let your words tread lightly."
Harry watched as Severus walked out of the hut and kicked the stand on his bike back up. As he peddled away he shouted back at them through the snow:
"Things are getting bad everywhere, you know! For everybody! Maybe you aren't feeling it, but it'll reach you boarding-school bastards yet!"
Little did Severus, Harry, Ron, and Reggie realize that they at that moment were being spied upon. Yes, from the safety of his room in the tallest tower of Hogwarts, Tom Riddle, the evilest student at Hogwarts had been listening and looking in on their conversation via his scrying ball. As Severus peddled away, he flicked the 'Off' switch on the ball and it went dark.
"Poor Severus Snape, eh?" Riddle mocked. He turned to his lackeys who were in the room with him. "A fine example of what happens to insubordinates. You undermine my orders, and we can apply memory charms to get people to remember all sorts of things about you. Severus failed to torch those dryads like I asked, and now look at him, slumming it with the worst of the worst."
He strode over to a young werewolf who was sitting in the corner and nursing a pint, "Let's say you were to fail me, Greyback, old boy. It would only take a simple reversal spell to get poor Ms. Brown to remember 'oo really woz the one wot done it,'" He said in a mean-spirited Terry Jones type mockney.
Fenrir Greyback put down his Guinness. "Ah, come on, guv, I would never fail you."
Riddle patted Greyback's shoulder, "Of course you wouldn't, Fido."
Unlike the rest of his crew who were in the standard shirt-and-tie uniform of the school, Riddle wore a black fencing jacket and black jodhpurs which he had pulled up to his stomach. His head was totally hairless apart from a pencil-thin moustache.
"Still, Snape had a point. Things are bad all over." He grabbed Greyback's Guinness and downed it in one. He then made a loud belch and put his hands on his hips. "Call everyone to the Forbidden Forest. It's time things went bad at Hogwarts."
