Chapter 16: Moving Right Along
[In which Snape is uncharacteristically loquacious. Also, there theoretically is a universe where Hermione does not turn herself into a cat-person... but it's not this one.]
Friday, 21 May 1993 Potions Master's Office
Mary found it amazing how quickly everything at Hogwarts went back to normal after the basilisk was killed. She supposed in hindsight that she ought to have expected it – the students had been lulled into a false sense of security between each of the attacks, so it only made sense that they would be quick to accept the widely publicized (but never officially endorsed) account, which held the Weasley twins responsible for killing the creature and restoring the safety of the school.
The Headmaster made an announcement at dinner the day after Mary and the Weasleys were released from the Hospital wing, declaring Hogwarts safe again. Professor Snape had held a House Meeting for Slytherin that same night where he informed them officially that the danger of the so-called Heir of Slytherin had passed. This declaration was received with substantially more credulity than Dumbledore's – Unlike the once and future Headmaster, Professor Snape had never been one to 'pander to their juvenile sensitivities,' so there was no chance that he would give them false assurances. He also advised the House that Mary had been given permission to set snakes on them if they badgered her for more information on the Chamber of Secrets, the Heir of Slytherin, or anything that had happened over Easter break. She was privately warned that if she actually set a snake (even a conjured and therefore non-venomous snake, like the one Draco had produced at the Dueling Club) on any of her housemates, or for that matter, on any other student, she would be in detention until she graduated. The implied threat seemed to work regardless, as not a single Slytherin approached her for her side of the story.
The boys were hailed as heroes for nearly three weeks (despite having lost Gryffindor 200 house points), but after the petrified victims were revived, Justin Finch-Fletchley publicly declared that Ginny Weasley had been responsible for the attacks. Their family's popularity dropped precipitously. Ginny herself was a nervous wreck before Justin's announcement, but strangely enough, seemed to have shored up a bit after it. Hermione, who had ostensibly been spending more time with the young redhead of late, said that she had been worried about whether the petrifications would be reversed successfully, and had known it was only a matter of time until the word got out that she was to blame. It was a relief, in a way, that it had finally happened, and a much greater one that Finch-Fletchley was able to accuse anyone of anything at all. Percy had forgiven her, which was all she cared about.
Three days after the victims were released from the hospital wing, it leaked out that Ginny was possessed, and not actually responsible for anything she had done over the course of the year. Mary suspected the hot-tempered Ron was to blame. Unfortunately, rather than reducing the apparent tensions in Gryffindor tower, this information made the young Lions act as though the girl was contaminated by Evil, and they shunned her more thoroughly than the Hufflepuffs had Mary. It probably would have been worse, but the twins made it clear that anyone who messed with their baby sister would be punished threefold for their transgressions. Either at the twins' behest, or due to the memories of the past year that she now shared with Ginny, Hermione had taken the younger girl under her wing, and dragged her into their little Slytherclaw group. The younger girl was pathetically grateful to have friends, which was somewhat off-putting, but neither Mary nor Lilian had the heart to begrudge her their company.
Mary, for her part, managed to keep her name out of it as much as possible. Everyone knew, of course, that she had disappeared and reappeared with the Weasleys, but she refused to tell any of the curious, inquiring students anything about what had happened in the Chamber. She did, of course, make an official report to Professor McGonagall, the Ministry official who wanted verification that the basilisk was dead, and Headmaster Dumbledore (in a meeting that took place much more appropriately, in the Headmaster's office, rather than what she was quickly coming to think of as her hospital bed). The ministry official had sent her a discrete owl afterward asking whether she wanted to press charges on the Weasleys for kidnapping her. Having had a month to cool off (and with the impression that they must have done something to redeem themselves in the Chamber, even if she couldn't remember what, because she certainly wasn't as angry with them as she expected to be), she politely declined. She wasn't speaking to them, no longer considered them friends, and didn't trust them as far as she could throw them without magic, but she wasn't spiteful enough to take them to court and deal with the increase in her own publicity.
There was a final meeting of the Veritaserum Conspiracy, where the twins and Mary filled Morgana, Perry, and Adrian in on exactly what had happened, or at least what they remembered. The older Slytherins were moderately amused that Dumbledore seemed to be inadvertently covering for them, and were, if not happy, at least not too angry about the punishment Professor Snape had decreed. They did, however, decide that they would rather not be affiliated with the rest of the troublemakers in the future.
"No offence, Potter," Adrian had said with a friendly smirk, "But we don't really do life-or-death."
"Yeah," Perry had added quickly, "It's not that we don't like you, it's just that, well…" He trailed off uncomfortably, throwing a look to his leader for support.
"We don't want to be in detention until we graduate," the girl in question had finished. "This was a special case, since it affected all of Slytherin, and we'll follow through on Lockhart because we stand by our word, and he's a git, but from now on, leave us out of your shenanigans."
Mary had readily agreed, relieved that they weren't going to make her life in Slytherin a living hell, and Hermione had changed the subject with a quick, "I almost forgot! Speaking of Lockhart…" and handed over a vial of something that may or may not have been a modified version of Veritaserum. At this point, Mary thought it best to just not ask. After Professor Snape turned a blind eye to further investigation of their misdeeds over the past year, Hermione had explained to the rest of the younger students the concept of plausible deniability. They had agreed that it would be better if she and the twins never confirmed or denied whether they had been using Veritaserum all term, though Mary was at least 75% certain that they had. She was almost sure that faking the test of the potion would have been more difficult than just making it in the first place. But she held her tongue.
Life for the students outside of the Conspirators and Ginny Weasley, however, reverted to normality startlingly quickly. Slytherin flew their Quidditch match against Ravenclaw in a spring shower (Mary caught the snitch, and they won by fifty points). The second-years returned to their regularly-scheduled DADA lessons (where they were set to copying Lockhart's books by hand as their punishment for skiving off for a month, and continued to learn nothing). Dumbledore managed to get Lucius Malfoy removed from the Board of Governors for threatening the other members in order to get him removed as Headmaster in the first place (Draco was incredibly angry about this turn of events). And of course, the denizens of the Castle settled into studiousness as the end-of-year exams loomed nearer. Within a month, most of the students were acting as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened all year.
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Four and a half weeks after Easter break and the events of the Chamber, Professor Snape asked Mary to stay behind after a Potions lesson. Lilian lingered as well, but was dismissed with a raised eyebrow and a sarcastic, "Is your name Miss Potter? No? I thought not. Be gone with you. Miss Potter, with me."
It was about this time that Mary began to get very nervous. There was only one thing she could think that Professor Snape might want to talk to her about in private, and she had been studiously avoiding thinking about it for weeks.
The professor led the way through what Mary had always thought was a storage cupboard, but was apparently a concealed doorway to a private potions lab. The room on the other side of the false cupboard was surprisingly spacious, with only one piece of furniture: a stone bench which would be, for the tall Potions Master, the proper height for ingredient preparation and brewing. On the bench, there were two cauldrons bubbling over open flames, an empty goblet, and a clean sheet of parchment.
Professor Snape conjured a pair of armchairs before carefully ladling out a portion of one of the potions – blue-green with a smell like fresh-cut grass – and handing it to Mary. Another flick of his wand started a timer.
"Let that cool for five minutes, then drink it as quickly as possible," he said, settling into one of the chairs. "As you have no doubt surmised," he continued quietly, "this is the ancestry revealing potion we discussed. There are several which might have been amenable to our purposes, but this one, Laslow's Recombination Revelation, is the most accurate. It is used in verifying the status of new pureblood families. The subject drinks the second part, waits twenty minutes for the second part to be absorbed into the bloodstream, then adds three drops of their potion-laced blood to the third part. This steeps for three minutes, and is then poured onto a parchment brushed with the first part, which I have already prepared. The third part will then coalesce into the names of every magical ancestor of the subject's blood for the three preceding generations – parents, grand-parents, great-grand-parents, first for the father, then for the mother."
Half an hour? Mary thought she would die of suspense. "How does that work, sir?" she asked anxiously, trying to take her mind off the timer ticking upward: Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
The professor looked as though he was considering not answering, but he seemed to suspect her reason for asking, because he said, "You won't understand, even if I explain it," rather than denying her and killing the conversation outright.
"Could you, um… try anyway, sir?"
He turned flat, dark eyes on her, and allowed the briefest flicker of understanding, and perhaps pity, to play across his features. "The concept of fundamental object identity is a NEWT-level topic in magical theory, applying it to humans and other sapient creatures is even more advanced, and that doesn't even begin to touch on the manipulation of magical energies through the potion to produce the desired effect. But yes, I can try." He considered how to begin for what seemed like a very long time, but was really only half a minute, according to the timer. "It has to do with the fact that your magic is tied to your blood as a symbol of your life force or essence or self. You know about free magic, as a conceptual entity?"
"Is that the birthday ritual magic?" Mary asked.
Apparently it was, because Professor Snape nodded. "The Powers are… aspects of that free magic, shaped by human will and expectation. Drink your potion."
"What?" Mary's eyes snapped to the glowing red numerals, the hovering display showing four minutes and fifty-seven seconds. "Oh!" She tipped the glass back and swallowed the draught so quickly she hardly tasted it. It was probably for the best. Potions never tasted good. This one was slimy, like an uncooked egg, and left a sour flavor in the back of her throat.
The professor reset the timer and continued his explanation. "Magic, free magic, ties us together as a people, wizard-kind. When we are introduced to magic, or celebrate the Old Ways and the Powers, we allow free magic to become familiar with our own magic. According to Kartoffle, whose theories are among the least inconsistent of the modern Western magical philosophers, free magic registers the magic of individuals, their magical signature, which is, of course, an aspect of the fundamental identity or self, leaving a trace or impression of every true witch or wizard."
"What if you've never done a ritual?" Mary asked, thinking of her alternate self.
Professor Snape waved away this concern. "Everyone in the Old Families would have, and almost every pureblood or child of a mixed family is introduced to magic through, as you said, the birthday rituals, on their third, seventh, and thirteenth year. Those leave a stronger impression, it is true. But there is also a trace left by accidental magic, when wild magic, as they say, comes to the aid of children who cannot yet control it and do not understand it. Even muggleborns with no concept of a ritual are known to the magic."
"Oh, okay. But how does that help us figure out my parents' parents?"
"Patience is a virtue of Slytherin House," the professor remarked before continuing. Mary shut up, suitably chastised. "This impression of your magic, the theorists say, is a part of the life-spark, your fundamental identity. Of course, the nature of the soul, animus, life-spark or what have you is still hotly debated, mostly in German, though there is a think-tank working out of Baton Rouge that has come up with some interesting twists on meme theory which might prove profitable to pursue. In any case, I digress. The fundamental identity argument is a useful concept in apparition and human transfiguration, any shape-shifting or dimension travel, really. But it is also the principle that allows us to bind demons and the reason that names have power, and why you ought to be careful about who uses your blood and how. The name of a thing, like the blood and the magic, is an aspect of its fundamental self. Different sides of it, if you will, but all ways of approaching one whole, indivisible definition of a being."
Mary wasn't following this at all, but she nodded anyway.
"I've lost you," the wizard sighed.
"Erm, yes, sir."
He rolled his eyes. "Of course I have." He sighed. "Put it this way, then: Your magic, your blood, and your name all define you. They are all linked, and who you are is evident in all of them. We want to know the names of your blood ancestors, so we draw a connection from your blood to your parents' and grandparents' blood, which is in you, to their unique magical signature, which is registered by free magic, to their names, which are entangled with their blood and magic on the most basic level."
She still didn't think she really understood, but she was glad he was still trying to explain. Trying to comprehend magic far outside of her experience certainly beat sitting in silence and waiting to see if she really was related to the Dark Lord. Six minutes had already passed.
"I've lost you again. Powers, this is why I so dislike teaching."
Mary bit her lip. She hadn't meant to offend him, she just couldn't quite wrap her mind around the idea that magic knew her somehow, and could read her name out of her blood.
"Don't give me that look," the professor said, but there was no venom in his tone. "I should think after two years you are well aware of the fact that I do not care to teach children. It is not as though I go to any pains to hide the fact," he added without a trace of irony.
"Umm, if you don't mind my asking, sir, and, um, if it's not too forward… why do you do it, then? Teach, I mean."
"Impertinent chit." The professor scowled, but it didn't seem to be directed at her. "I am bound to Dumbledore, until the Dark Lord is gone for good, and he insists that I earn my keep. There are perks – the lab, access to ingredients far beyond what would normally be available. But in exchange I must teach all you empty-headed little fools the most basic and trivial aspects of what should be considered a high art year in and year out."
They sat in silence for nearly two minutes before Mary dared to venture another question. "What would you do, if you didn't teach?" For all even the Slytherins admitted that their Head of House was a terrible professor, she couldn't imagine him doing anything else.
"Research," he said succinctly.
"Potions research?"
"Or Defense, or Mind Magic. The former, of course, is a bit taboo in Magical Britain, as it obviously requires an advanced knowledge of the Dark Arts, but the latter is disgracefully understudied as well."
"What is it, mind magic?"
The professor made a sort of hmmm sound. "Technically speaking, mind magic is any magic which takes place in a mindscape, but what people generally think of is a series of highly specialized techniques which are a combination of the art of scrying, and the art of compulsion. Before Dumbledore became the headmaster, the Divination Professor, John McKinnon, offered a NEWT option in the subject. I believe he works for St. Mungo's now, training new Mind Healers. The scrying aspect, of course, is the divination part, and allows one to experience not the future or the past, but the minds of other people. And compulsion, which is considered a Dark Art, is used to… manipulate the mental patterns. Sometimes this involves linking commands to memories, rather like Riddle did, when he convinced you to trust him. More often, however, it is rather like freeform geomancy: shifting of the memories and thought patterns as one manipulates free energy and lei lines in the absence of runic mediators. I suppose it should not come as a surprise that one who is instinctively good at mind magic tends to also be instinctively good at freeform magic.
"McKinnon and Riddle, yes, before you ask, that Riddle, published a treatise on the application of will in the two disciplines back in 1945. They suggest that it is the same application of will, with different focal loci. The problem then becomes why it is so much more difficult to affect the external world via freeform magic, and there the two authors differed in opinion. McKinnon has spent the last forty years exploring the role of Fundamental Identity in mind magic, which he believes may facilitate a certain ease of manipulation within an individual's mind, be it their own or a patient's.
"Riddle, on the other hand, insisted in the treatise that there is a relationship between the localization of one's personal magical field or aura in relation to the body and the ability to employ freeform magic, which leads to a difference in what he referred to as 'leverage' between those using broad contacts between their own magic and the external environment and those using tightly focused 'wandless' magic. 'Wandless' magic, or traditional wand-spells performed without a wand as a focus, requires a much greater degree of power exertion, as well as greater focus and control, than freeform magic, which he argues should be almost instinctively easy, even outside of the mindscape. It is a rather radical perspective, to be sure, as most do not seem to have the so-called instinctive grasp of how to manipulate the environment through broad contact, and now that I know more of the man, I'm not entirely certain that he didn't just publish it to bother Dumbledore, who is a firm proponent of the wandless school.
"Regardless, it has been well established that the freeform approach is the one used by most legilimens in exploring and altering mental environments. If Riddle's comments on 'instinctiveness' are correct, this may explain why so few wizards have a talent for legilimency. They are capable of altering their own mental state to a degree, but not others'. The skills associated with mind magic can be very useful for interrogation and obliviation and the like, but I suspect there are developments yet to be made in Mind Healing, dealing with the mental effects of different curses, therapeutic value of sharing memories and the like, through posterior integration of wandless focal elements into the freeform approach, potentially guided by recent advances in psychological theory.
Professor Snape suddenly seemed to recall that his audience was, in fact, a second-year, and sent Mary a rueful look. "How much of that did you understand?"
Mary, who had more or less just been letting his words wash over her while she tried to figure out when Riddle graduated, and wondering whether she dared ask if Professor Snape would teach her to fend off mind magic like Riddle's compulsions, scrambled to answer. "Mind magic is like divination mixed with compulsion, which is kind of like some forms of wandless magic, especially the one Riddle practiced. Magical theory is a lot more connected than Professors Flitwick and McGonagall make it sound like in class. And Riddle may have published on a radical theory just out of school just to irritate Dumbledore. Did they not get along, then?"
"Before he left school, I believe. And no. Tom Riddle's first month in Slytherin was not unlike your own, though you may be reassured to know that he actually had his snake bite his Malfoy, not just threaten to do so. Dumbledore legilimized him, almost certainly without his permission. From what I've gathered from the Records, their relationship deteriorated from there."
Mary considered the implications of her solution to her situation in Slytherin being so similar to the young Tom Riddle's, and then, deciding that that was an uncomfortable avenue of thought, decided that she did dare to make her request. "Umm…"
"Dark Powers, don't stutter."
Mary bit her lip, then said very quickly, "Could you teach me mind magic? Sir?" she added belatedly.
"What, precisely, would you want to know?"
"I, erm… that is…" The professor raised an eyebrow at her inarticulate, half-started request. "The compulsions, sir," she finally said. "You said Riddle put compulsions in my mind, and I really, really don't want that to happen again."
"No."
"No?" Mary had not expected such a flat refusal. "Why not, sir?" she tried to keep her tone from becoming whiny, but she wasn't sure if she succeeded. It just seemed terribly unfair of him to flat out refuse to teach her something that would be so useful to know.
"For one thing," he said wryly, "Your personality is decidedly unsuited to Occlumency. I doubt whether you have any natural talent for the art at all. For another, you are nearly thirteen, and the beginning of puberty is precisely the worst time of life to begin studying the mind arts, as it is the time when your emotions will be least under your control. Thirdly, it is highly unlikely that you will ever meet anyone besides myself and the Dark Lord who are capable of compelling you so subtly that you are unable to recognize and therefore disregard the compulsion regardless of your capability in mind arts. It would be a waste of your time and my own to go to the trouble of teaching you solely for that purpose. Need I go on?"
"No, sir," Mary sighed. She still thought it would be good to know. She definitely wasn't going to tell him that she wanted to know Occlumency so she could get away with things like the Veritaserum Conspiracy more easily.
Silence fell around them again, and Mary looked at the timer: Six minutes to go. She gracelessly attempted to re-start their previous conversation. "So if you were researching mind magic, you'd be a healer of sorts?"
Professor Snape rolled his eyes at her impertinence, but he did answer. "No. I have some skill at healing, and especially cursebreaking as it applies to healing, which is more like Dark Arts than any other legal discipline, but I would prefer to focus on the advancement of techniques, not on the problems of the individual."
Mary considered this for a moment. "And the same for Potions, and DADA?"
"For Potions I would most likely open an apothecary and take commissions for developing new solutions, rather than developing new methods entirely. Dark Arts, well… There are always new curses being developed. Effective countermeasures, or improving the efficiency and efficacy of existing counters, is nearly always a welcome endeavor."
"But not always?"
"There will always be those idiots who see a Dark wizard practicing dark magic without taking the time to think about how or why," the Dark wizard said, making a scorn-filled face at the distant, anonymous fools who would judge him for his past, Truce or no Truce.
Mary smirked at his expression, almost comically filled with venom, and looked at the timer.
Four minutes to go.
Professor Snape must have seen her sideways glance and the sudden preoccupation which followed, because he said quietly, "Do try not to worry. Regardless of what this test reveals, Lily will always be the girl I knew growing up, and you will always be… Mary Elizabeth. It… needn't affect you, unless you let it."
Mary bit her lip. "Why did you want to know, then, if it doesn't really matter?"
"For myself? Curiosity. If it were true, it would go a long way toward explaining Lily's unusual effectiveness against the Dark Lord, and any bit of knowledge might be a boon in finally eradicating his shade. For you? Knowledge is power, and knowing where you came from can only help you, in the long run. It would be far better to know now, rather than to have it sprung on you when the goblins do your inheritance test at seventeen. There are those who would try to use such information against you, if they knew, or suspected. If you know, you may plan for such an eventuality." The man shrugged. "As I said before, it is almost always better to know than to suspect."
Mary nodded grimly as he stood and decanted some of the second potion into the same glass, now clean. It was thick and black as ink.
"Your hand, Miss Potter?"
She rose to join him at the workbench, slowly, as though underwater. He produced a potions-knife from somewhere inside his robes and jabbed her left index finger deeply, before she could think to protest. Blood welled to the surface and dripped into the glass: one drop, then a second, and after a long pause, the third. Professor Snape reset the timer before turning to heal her finger with two spells Mary had never heard of before: Expurgate and confervetur.
After the longest three minutes of Mary's life, and without another word between them, the professor upended the thick potion onto the parchment, and words began to form:
Mary Elizabeth Potter
James Charles Potter
Charlus Georgius Potter
George Henry Potter
Charlotte Marie Gentry
Bellatrix Dorea Black
Draco Cadmus Black
Lorelei Amelia Lestrange
These names were familiar. Charlus Georgius was the Potter who had made their family Light, instead of Neutral, because the then-head of House Black had said something insulting to his wife, Dorea, at some dinner party or another. Charlotte Gentry was the last Gentry – her brother predeceased her with no children, which was how the Potters gained control of the Gentry Seat in the Wizengamot. Draco Black, the fifth or sixth of his name, was far removed from the core of the Black Family Tree, a poor cousin who married surprisingly well. Dorea, his daughter, had the power of her mother's money, and the prestige of the Black name, though according to Professor McGonagall, she had never used it much. Both Dorea and Charlus had despised politics.
As the next name coalesced, Mary willed the potion to stop. If Lily Evans was really muggleborn, the daughter of Mary and Fred Evans, she would be the last name on the list.
Lily Irene Evans
She held her breath, but the magic took no notice. A wave of cold washed over her, and she looked away as more letters formed. She did not need to see it to know what it would say: Tom Riddle. Who else?
She collapsed into her chair, eyes closed, mind blank, save for the thought that no one could ever know.
She had known it was a possibility, of course, but she hadn't truly expected it.
It could have all been coincidence, or Professor Snape reading too much into his old friend's actions, twenty years later.
But it wasn't.
She knew better than to ask whether there could have been some mistake.
She was related to that – that monster. His granddaughter, even if neither of them ever acknowledged it (and if she had her way, they wouldn't).
She could not have said how much time passed before she realized Professor Snape was speaking quietly, almost to himself.
"…makes sense," he was saying, "she died the year after I met Lily – she found her in an old photo album when we were fourteen. There was a certain resemblance, though of course we thought she took after her grandmother, and her mother after her father."
"Who?"
The professor passed the parchment to Mary. Black letters, now dry, were stark against the pale page:
Mary Elizabeth Potter
James Charles Potter
Charlus Georgius Potter
George Henry Potter
Charlotte Marie Gentry
Bellatrix Dorea Black
Draco Cadmus Black
Lorelei Amelia Lestrange
Lily Irene Evans
Tom Marvolo Riddle
Merope Vela Gaunt
Matilde Evelyn Harrison
"Lily's aunt Matilde. Her mother, I should say."
Mary shook her head. She didn't know the name. Aunt Petunia had never mentioned her.
"She died in '65 or '66. She was a witch, muggleborn, though neither of us knew it. Would that we had – things might have turned out differently – so differently – if only Lily had been known as a half-blood…" he trailed off pensively, then pulled a pen from an internal pocket and began to draw a family tree on the back of the parchment.
Marina and Albert Harrison sat at the top of the page, with Merope and '?' Riddle, Lorelei and Draco Black, and Charlotte and George Potter. Marina and Albert had two daughters, Mary and Matilde. All of Mary's other grandparents were apparently only children. Mary Harrison married Fred Evans, and they had one daughter, Petunia, who married Vernon Dursley. Matilde Harrison had one daughter with Tom Riddle – though they certainly had not been married – and hid her with her sister: Lily Evans, who married James Potter, leading to Mary Elizabeth.
"You've missed one," Mary said quietly, leaving aside the question of how he knew her muggle great-grandparents' names. The professor raised an eyebrow at her. "Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon have a son, Dudley."
Professor Snape added the boy obligingly.
"So my mum and Aunt Petunia were cousins, not sisters. How could they have not known?"
The man sighed, momentarily looking much older than his thirty-something years. "The first thing you must know, and this will likely be a painful truth, is that whatever… relations… Riddle had with Ms. Harrison were likely… not consensual. From what I recall of the Harrisons, from the little Lily told me, they were very religious. They would have raised their daughters, Mary and Matilde both, to value even unborn life. I suspect, and this is only speculation, you understand, that when Ms. Harrison realized she was with child, she would have taken pains to hide the pregnancy, but she would not have wanted to kill any child, even his.
"It is… damnably simple, really, to memory charm muggles. It would have been incredibly easy to make the Evanses believe that Lily was their child. In fact, I suspect Fred Evans named her. The flower names were his family's tradition for girls. They moved to Cokeworth, I believe, the year that Lily was born, probably under a compulsion, in order to hide any discrepancies with the pregnancy from their friends. They were estranged from the Harrisons, Albert and Marina, when Lily and I were young. I only met them once, later, and she hardly ever spoke of them. Matilde died when Lily and I were five or six. I don't think they ever met, and the Evanses didn't go to the funeral. Lily was very disappointed. She wanted to meet the rest of her family, but we never even saw a picture of the Harrisons until the summer after third year.
"Petunia and Lily… they were raised as sisters. For all anyone ever knew, they were. They certainly treated each other as such, up until the Hogwarts letters came. And, I suppose, after as well, though Petunia was horribly envious, and Lily could do nothing to console her. Fred and Mary, they spoiled Petunia as much as they could, trying to make it up to her that Lily had magic and Petunia didn't, but of course that didn't work. They were good people, but they never really understood magic. And of course they didn't like me at all, but Lily insisted on bringing me around, and they were hardly surprised to find out that we would be going to school together."
"You were best friends," Mary said quietly, interrupting his reminiscences.
Professor Snape thought for a moment, then inclined his head. "She was my first and only true friend," he admitted.
Well, that certainly explained why he seemed to know more about Mary's muggle relations than she did. Aunt Petunia had never mentioned the Harrisons, and hardly ever even talked about the Evanses.
"Could you, maybe… that is, would you tell me about her, sometime?"
"Someday, yes. When you're older." He must have caught the irritated look that she tried to hide, because he added, "I would not tell you our story, mine and Lily's, only to have you not understand the nuances of it. Believe me when I say you have not yet seen enough of the world to do so."
"Fine," Mary snapped, crossing her arms petulantly. "But I'll hold you to that. Someday."
The professor smiled, sadly, she thought. "I look forward to it." He hesitated for a long moment. Mary wondered if she ought to bring the subject back around to him. Before she could speak, however, the man continued. "This," he said, gesturing at the parchment, "changes nothing. Lily was… well, I can hardly deny that there were some similarities between her and the Dark Lord. Had I not seen them, I would not have prepared the test. But she was the sister I never had, and that will always mean more to me. If… if things had gone differently between us, if circumstances had been different, I might have been your godfather."
He sat quietly as Mary considered this information, trying to imagine a world where Professor Snape was not an ex-Death Eater, or where Lily was Lily Harrison and not a muggle-born, or perhaps even a world where the Death Eaters had successfully recruited the Potters, as Professor Snape had last year said they had tried. It was surprisingly difficult. She didn't know exactly what a proper godfather was supposed to do, but she rather liked Professor Snape. He had saved her life from Quirrellmort at least twice, and gave her lots of information that the Headmaster had refused to share, and when they were in private he was kind and sometimes even funny. He let her get away with dragon smuggling and she was pretty sure he knew more about the Conspiracy than he let on, but he was turning a blind eye to that too. And he had promised to tell her more about her mother, and had already told her more about her than anyone else, even aside from revealing her true parentage. It was strange to think of Professor Snape as having friends, but she supposed that if things had gone differently, he would have been a friend of her family.
"I think I would have liked that," she said at last.
"If that is the case…" Professor Snape said slowly, "then I believe we may safely say that we have moved beyond the realm of formality, at least in private."
Mary was stunned. Of all the things he might have said, that was the one she was least expecting, or so it seemed, now that he had. But she knew the correct response: "I believe we are in accordance."
"Please, call me Severus."
"Only if I am Elizabeth."
"Mary Elizabeth."
"Severus." Oh, that was strange! And now Professor Snape – Snape – was smirking at her. "What's so funny, sir?"
"You looked like you thought I was going to hex you for daring to speak my name. Rest assured, I do know what an invitation to informality entails, though I will be forced to take points if you refer to me thusly in front of your friends."
"It's not that," she said, face warm. "It's just… It's weird, calling anyone old enough to be my father by his first name! Would you be terribly offended if I didn't use your given name, at least until I get used to the idea?"
The man's features relaxed. "As you like. The offer is open." Mary had the impression he had found it just as strange as she.
"Thank you, sir," she said seriously. "I'm not sure I could deal with that much strangeness along with the whole undead, evil grandfather thing."
This drew an actual laugh from the man – not quite so good as when she asked him why he couldn't have killed Quirrellmort a bit sooner, but a genuine laugh nonetheless. "Very well, then," he said, solemnity falling over his features again. "And regarding the 'undead, evil grandfather thing,' as you so eloquently put it…"
Mary stood and dipped one corner of the parchment into the flames still flickering beneath the nearer cauldron. It caught at once, the names and family tree disintegrating into ash and a wisp of blue smoke. "What undead, evil grandfather?" she asked, smirking at the professor.
Snape, however, did not share her levity. "Don't breathe that smoke!" he snapped, sending a spell at her. It created a bubble around her head, filled with fresh air
"Erm… Oops?" Her voice echoed oddly in her own ears, distorted by the charm.
The professor looked very much like he would like to pinch the bridge of his nose, but his own bubble prevented it. "While I do appreciate your flare for the dramatic, you would do well to avoid burning anything coated in a potion with which you are unfamiliar. Have you learned nothing from having class with Longbottom?"
"Sorry, sir."
"As I was saying, it would be best, I think, if we were not to discuss the relationship between yourself and Riddle with anyone else unless it becomes relevant."
"Agreed."
"Very well. In that case, you had better find your way back to the dormitories before Miss Moon begins to wonder what I've done with you," he said, ushering her out of the hidden room and removing the charm.
"Yes, sir," Mary grinned.
Snape sighed, "Farewell, Mary Elizabeth."
"Thank you, sir," she said, slipping out the door. If she had looked back, she might have seen a look like fondness flit across the Potions Master's face before it was replaced by his usual detached expression, but she was already considering what she would tell Lilian about why Snape had wanted to see her alone after class and why their meeting had taken so long.
Thursday, 3 June 1993 Hospital Wing
Despite her lighthearted show of bravado in burning all evidence of her relationship to the Dark Lord, Mary could not help but brood on it whenever she failed to distract herself over the next two weeks. Lilian had noticed that something was off with her, but she thought it was related to the Chamber experience in general – She knew the brooding had begun after Mary's meeting with Snape, and Mary had told her that the meeting with Snape was a follow-up, to see if any of her memories had managed to return. She didn't actually think such a thing was possible, but she also didn't think Lilian knew for certain either. In any case, the other Slytherin was too concerned with what she termed "The Mystery of What Hermione's Up To and Why She's Sneaking Around and Refusing to Tell Us Anything" to spend too much time worrying about Mary's sudden tendency toward moody silence.
To be fair, "The Mystery of What Hermione's Up To and Why She's Sneaking Around and Refusing to Tell Us Anything" turned out to be a valid concern. It was not unusual for the Slytherins to only see their Ravenclaw friend in classes or at meals for several days in a row, but before April, it was most often because the Slytherins had Quidditch practice. After they had flown their last match of the season, practice had been cut down to three hours on Saturday morning (more as a way to relieve the stress of revising than anything else) and they were free to realize that Hermione was not around. At first, the Slytherins had assumed that she was spending time with her Ravenclaw friends or little Ginny, but after a week, it became clear that she wasn't with them – if she was, she would simply have told them when they asked what she was doing after classes. Instead, she made a habit of saying something vague about revising and then vanished mysteriously halfway through dinner. She wasn't in the library, or, according to Aerin and Luna, up in Ravenclaw tower.
Mary had been quite concerned about her friend's whereabouts until the whole Undead, Evil Grandfather Thing had been confirmed. After that point, however, she found herself more inclined to dismiss whatever Hermione was up to with an attitude of 'she'll tell us when she's ready, and the less I know, the less I have to lie to Emma and Dan about it.' Lilian, conversely, only became more interested the longer Hermione refused to tell them what was going on, to the point of interrogating all of their mutual friends and acquaintances about the issue.
Aerin didn't know anything either, but she was more concerned with passing her first end-of-year Arithmancy exam and helping Luna and Ginny (whose progress over her first year was sporadic, to say the least) with their revising than with ferreting out what new trouble Hermione was making. Mary and Lilian rather suspected that Aerin was taking their looming detentions with Snape a bit harder than the Slytherins. She had been rather irritable with the three second-years lately, and hadn't even spoken to any of the fourth-years, as far as Mary knew.
All the twins would say was that they didn't know anything, and if they did, they still wouldn't say anything, because they were so very proud of their ickle firecracker's ability to stir up trouble, and they were certain that whatever she was up to would be epic to behold. This, Lilian interpreted to mean that they definitely knew what was going on, but that absolutely nothing she could do would convince them to admit it. There was, as the boys insisted, a certain Pranking Code which they must adhere to, and not ruining the joke was one of its key tenets. After that particular encounter, the older Slytherin had begun to complain that the twins and Hermione had spent far too much time together over the past year. Mary couldn't help but agree. First-year Hermione would never have dared to do half the things she had instigated over the past year. Even discounting their kidnapping tendencies, the twins were clearly a bad influence.
Still, Mary and Lilian knew that Hermione was up to something, even if the only hint of what that something might be was that the Weasley twins thought it would be epic, so it was not entirely surprising when Hermione failed to appear for dinner one Thursday at the beginning of June. What was surprising was that Professor Snape, in all his billowing glory, had stopped by the Slytherin table and suggested that Mary and Lilian ought to find the time to visit Miss Granger in the hospital wing before curfew if at all possible. He had drifted away with a self-satisfied smirk before they could ask any questions.
Madam Pomfrey was happy to see Mary in a non-patient capacity, though she tutted over how some students never seemed to make it through a year without visiting her, and couldn't the girls try to take better care of each other, and avoid doing stupid things like, well… that? After a few minutes of quiet chatting, the matron left them to work on her inventory – "Got to get ready for the end-of-term rush, loves. Do keep it down out here." – allowing the girls to finally see their friend.
That, as it turned out, was what appeared to be a partially-transfigured Hermione. She was lying on one of the beds with privacy curtains pulled shut, not under the covers, but curled up on top of them. She had long, pointed orange ears sticking up through her ever-curly hair, and her nails had become distinctly claw-like. Every bit of skin they could see was covered in soft orange fur, and there was a tail curled around her tucked-up feet.
Lilian burst out laughing at once, a reaction which only doubled when the half-cat Ravenclaw opened one bright yellow eye and said, "Oh, not you too!" while trying to hide her fur-covered face behind her equally fur-covered hands.
"Maia? What happened?"
"You've been trying to turn yourself into an animagus! That's what you've been up to! Why didn't you tell us?" Lilian jumped in before Hermione could answer.
She gave up on covering her face in order to give the Slytheirns an exasperated look. "No! I'm not an animagus! That takes far longer than a month to manage. It was Polyjuice Potion! The stupid boys wanted me to be a 'third Weasley twin' for some prank or other, but then they gave me a cat hair! And bloody Snape –" "Professor Snape." "– whatever! He won't tell me how to turn myself back, and Madam Pomfrey says it will take weeks for her to reverse all the effects physically and individually! Stop laughing! You guys are the worst!" She tried to throw herself dramatically back onto the bed, but let out a feline howl when she landed poorly on her own tail. "Damn it!"
"So have you told your parents yet?" Mary asked, still giggling.
"Ugh, no. I mean, I will, but don't you think it would be better if I wait until, well, I don't look like one of those stupid Japanese cartoon characters?"
"No," the Slytherins said firmly, in tandem.
"You'll get much more pity if you do it now," Lilian added, followed by Mary's, "and they'll be even more pissed if you try to hide something from them again. And Flitwick's probably already owled them after the Howler thing."
Hermione groaned.
"He does know, right?" Lilian asked.
"Yes, of course he does. Madam Pomfrey had to tell him. It's not like this was an in-and-out sort of visit."
"Who else knows?"
"Well, you two, obviously, Snape," "Professor Snape." "Professor McGonagall – Pomfrey called her in when the boys dropped me off because she thought it might have been a transfiguration gone wrong, and that's just not her specialty. She didn't call in Snape –" "Professor Snape." "– until Professor McGonagall said it wasn't any transfiguration or curse she knew. And of course he spotted it at once, which is why there's no point keeping quiet about the potion, and of course Fred and George know. Remind me to find a way to get those bloody tossers back for this over the summer."
"I hardly think you'll forget it," Lilian pointed out, sniggering again.
"Why did you agree to be a 'third Weasley twin' in the first place?" Mary asked. She honestly didn't know why Hermione was even associating with the boys anymore.
Hermione sighed. It came out as a disgruntled cat-noise, which was rather amusing to the Slytherins. "Yeah, laugh it up, you jerks. I was having some issues with acquiring two key ingredients and they offered to get them if I would help them out with a prank, a big one for the end of the year, which they insisted could only be pulled off with the use of Polyjuice. It takes a month to brew. I actually started working on it before the whole thing at Easter, but I missed a step while we were worrying about you and Ginny and those two idiots down in the Chamber, so I had to re-start," she said, nodding at Mary. "It was finally done yesterday, so they said we were going to do the prank today, but it turns out the joke was on me! Bastards! They just started cackling and being all, 'Do we need a reason?' and 'Lighten up, firecracker,' and 'at least we found you a girl cat!' At least we found you a girl cat! Honestly! I'm a cat! Being a cat with a penis couldn't possibly be that much worse!"
"What about a cat with half a penis?" Lilian asked. She was almost crying now from laughing so hard, and had had to take a seat on the neighboring bed. "Because you're really only like, half-cat..."
Hermione threw her pillow at Lilian, and otherwise refused to dignify that question with a response.
"And, erm… I don't suppose you'd tell us why you had to make Polyjuice in the first place?"
Hermione hung her head. "I was curious. I wanted to see if I could do it."
Mary smacked herself in the forehead. "Of course. Bloody Ravenclaws! Let's just do it because we can!"
The cat-girl quirked her head to the side. "That's uncanny. Does he, I don't know, train all the Slytherins to do that?"
"What?"
"Talk like himself. Sorry – That's exactly what Snape –" "Professor Snape." "-said. Without smacking himself in the face. Same intonation and everything."
"Nope. You just pick up the sarcasm after a while," Lilian said cheerfully. "So how long are you going to be here?"
"Madam Pomfrey said I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted – until she sorted out the major physical issues, anyway, but she said it would take weeks, and exams are only two weeks away! I can't miss all those revising sessions! The other option is that she fix some of the more cosmetic damages, like the fur and the eyes, and I go back to classes and try to figure out how to un-do this. Snape –" "Professor Snape." "-hinted that there was a simple fix I was just overlooking and refused to just fix it. He was really rude about it too."
The Slytherins exchanged a significant look.
"He likes you," Lilian said, undisguised awe in her tone.
"No, you impressed him," Mary corrected her, struggling to keep envy out of her own voice.
"What? No, he doesn't, and I'm sure I didn't. I turned myself into an anime character, for God's sake!"
"No, listen," Lilian said excitedly. "Are you being punished?"
"Well… no. Professor Flitwick said he considered this," she gestured at her half-transformed state, "more than enough incentive not to do it again."
"And Professor Snape didn't take a hundred points from Ravenclaw, or give you another month's detentions for next term? He's just making you figure out your own mistake and letting you fix it?"
"But he could fix it right away! I'm sure he knows what happened. He was all, 'Miss Granger, I am terribly disappointed. Anyone who can brew a proper Polyjuice potion ought to be able to tell the difference between human and feline hair… alas, native intelligence and book learning never can substitute for a complete lack of common sense.'"
"Wait, wait, wait, he actually said that?"
"You're not just messing with us?"
Both Mary and Lilian were familiar with Hermione's ability to repeat conversations verbatim. It was incredibly irritating when they got into an argument and the Ravenclaw threw their own words from months before back in their faces, and very useful when they missed key instructions in their shared classes, though she flatly refused to repeat Binns' lectures in a more upbeat and animated tone.
"Yes, and then he went on about, oh, let's see… 'For one who prides herself on her logical faculties, you do have a frankly disturbingly Gryffindor tendency to rush into things without thinking. Tell me, Miss Granger – what would you have done if Step Thirty-Seven had gone wrong? It is difficult to perceive the change in vapor-color even within the controlled environment of a proper potions laboratory, and a mistake at such a critical juncture, if uncorrected, would have led to your death within twenty minutes of taking the potion due to conium poisoning – you, I daresay, would not have noticed anything amiss, save for the failure of the potion to have its desired effect, until it was too late to reverse the effects.' He, erm… went on about different potentially fatal Polyjuice blunders for twenty minutes or so. And then he was like, 'That whole business about questioning your peers about the Chamber has your signature all over it. Overly-complex, difficult to execute, with no effective plan of egress and a damning disregard for the rules and the rights of your fellow students…' Then he, ah, went on for another ten minutes or so like that, basically accusing me of being some kind of evil mastermind in the making, and a ridiculously incompetent one at that. Oh, come off it, why are you doing that – that little Slytherin I-know-something-you-don't-know smirk? Knock it off!"
Mary and Lilian turned to each other to find that they were indeed sharing the smirk in question.
"Well," Lilian explained, "It's like this: Professor Snape doesn't give compliments. He doesn't tell you he likes you or that you've done well. If you have a problem, you can talk to him about it, or at least Slytherins can. We know you think he's a shite professor, but he's a great Head of House. Anyway, he'll give you solid advice or help or whatever, but he doesn't actively show favoritism. Well, he's blatantly anti-Gryffindor, but we think that's mostly because he's trying to get the Headmaster to fire him. The point is, you have to really read between the lines to figure out if he actually likes you."
"And he does," Mary continued. "Here, go back to the beginning of what you were quoting and I'll translate the Snape-speak."
Hermione smiled for the first time since the Slytherins had entered the ward. "All right. 'Miss Granger, I am terribly disappointed.'"
"Disappointed means he thinks you could have done better."
"'Anyone who can brew a proper Polyjuice potion ought to be able to tell the difference between human and feline hair…'"
"He knows that you made the Polyjuice correctly and is acknowledging that, which is huge – isn't it like OWL level? But he's also correcting you for being too hasty and assuming that the Weasleys, of all people, were trustworthy."
"'Alas, native intelligence and book learning never can substitute for a complete lack of common sense.'"
"Again, acknowledging that you're smarter than probably the rest of our year combined, and you can clearly follow directions in a book since you managed to make the potion, but you totally, completely failed to take into account variables that the book didn't warn you about."
"Do you Slytherins think about things like this all the time?" The Slytherins in question shrugged and nodded. "All right, keep going. 'For one who prides herself on her logical faculties, you do have a frankly disturbingly Gryffindor tendency to rush into things without thinking.'"
"That's just pure constructive criticism," Lilian took over. "So is the part about you being, what, an ineffective evil genius? He's pointing out your flaws, which means you can fix them. If he didn't like you, he would let you remain ineffective and easier to manipulate or dispose of when necessary."
Mary nodded. "He's very big on working up to your full potential, Professor Snape. So yeah, I'd say that. Oh, and he probably wanted to see if you'd let any more information slip about the Conspiracy. You didn't, did you?"
"No, of course not," the Ravenclaw said, offended.
"Good. I don't think he'd change our punishment now, but it probably gets you a few more brownie points that you didn't."
"I think she's still riding high on the points from telling him that if she were Quirrellmort, she would have stolen the stone first and killed you on the way out."
"Oh, yeah, probably. I'd forgotten about that. I haven't forgotten you said you'd frame me for the attacks, though. I thought you were my friend!" she said, miming a stab to the heart. "Are you sure you're in the right house?"
"Of course I am! And I stand by that as the most logical victim choice at the time," the Ravenclaw argued with a sharp-toothed grin.
"She is in hospital for turning herself into a cat out of sheer curiosity," Lilian pointed out. "Well, half a cat, anyway."
"Hmmm, yeah. I suppose she's too trusting for Slytherin, anyway. Oh, that reminds me! Insulting your Gryffindor tendencies was a very subtle way of saying that you ought to have been a Slytherin, which is, as you know, the highest of compliments."
Hermione raised a skeptical eyebrow at that, but Lilian nodded fervently, just as Madam Pomfrey returned to shoo the Slytherins back to the dungeons before curfew.
As soon as they left the Hospital Wing, Lilian said, "I told you so! Those Weasleys have created a monster!"
"And its name is Catgirl," Mary returned.
They were in very good spirits by the time they returned to their Common Room.