Chapter 34
RIVALS
Harry thought of himself and Draco Malfoy. Why had he disliked the other boy the first time they'd met at Madame Malkin's Robes for all Occasions? His future enemy had tried to make his acquaintance, had tried to draw him into his snobbish inner circle. But inexplicable parallels he'd seen between the sophisticated Malfoy and his anything-but-sophisticated cousin Dudley had made him wary. And Malfoy's disparaging remarks about Hagrid had clinched Harry's dislike. Why did he hate Malfoy? Now there were a host of reasons.
"I think we were all, Gryffindors and Slytherins, disposed to be suspicious of each other from the moment the Sorting Hat sent us to our separate tables. And from our first Potions class, we Gryffindors learned that Severus had a wicked tongue. The next year, the rivalry moved to the Quidditch field. Severus became a chaser for the Slytherin team, as your father did for Gryffindor. Sirius was a beater. During the Gryffindor-Slytherin match, when a bludger knocked Severus off his broom, he accused Sirius of trying to kill him with it. Severus never played Quidditch after that year, but he pursued the enmity in other ways."
Harry nodded. "Professor Dumbledore showed me a photograph. Severus and Sirius ended a marathon chess match in a draw."
Remus chuckled. "A memorable three days. Severus was the better player technically—complex stratagems and crafty traps. But he didn't like to leave anything to chance. His compulsion to retain control was his weakness. It kept him from taking risks. Sirius was an innovative, aggressive, even reckless player—charging ahead to take as many prisoners as possible. When Hogwarts decides to hold a chess tournament, the rules require a two-game advantage to account for who has the first move. Game after game, they kept pulling even or ending in a stalemate."
When Remus finished his story, Harry waited for him to launch into another. Instead, his old teacher paused, eyeing his former student speculatively over the rim of his mug.
Harry had seen that look several times over the last few weeks—the keen stare of an adult assessing whether little Harry had matured enough to be privy to certain secrets. He smiled and sipped his mulled cider, feeling more and more relaxed as its warmth percolated through him. Lately, everyone had judged him worthy of their confidences.
At last, Remus cleared his throat. "But what really got them hating each other was a girl—"
Harry nearly choked. Hastily, he set down his mug and covered his mouth to hide his spluttering.
"—named Florence."
"Florence?" Harry mumbled through his fingers. He recalled hearing that name from Bertha Jorkins's mouth in Professor Dumbledore's Pensieve the spring before.
"Yes. A stunning little Italian witch who'd been sorted into Gryffindor the year after us. Florence liked the bad boy type. That's the image Sirius liked to project with his leather jackets and dark glasses. For a while, everyone thought of them as an item. But if Sirius was bad, Severus was badder."
"You're telling me some girl threw Sirius over for Snape?" Harry stared at Remus. "Surely, there was something unnatural involved. Some love potion, some Imperius Spell, something."
Remus burst out laughing. Perturbed, Bête Noire jumped off his lap and strutted back to Neville's bed. "Oh, Harry. Don't imagine that everyone finds big noses unappealing—at least on a man."
"So that's what caused all the hatred? A girl?"
"Well, it was the way Sirius found out about it—courtesy of Bertha Jorkins, a disagreeable, gossiping creature. When she came into supper one evening with her nose the size of a sausage, she told anyone who would listen how it had happened. Severus had cursed her nosiness for spying on him and Florence."
Harry let out a low whistle. That was basically the story he'd heard from the Pensieve—though he never would have guessed that the he involved had been Snape.
"The infraction of PDA wasn't even in the school manual until that incident. The Muggle Studies master, a visiting professor from Salem, Massachusetts, suggested it. Severus ended up with detention for both that and the hex—scrubbing every square inch of the floor in the Great Hall. But it was really Sirius who was brought to his hands and knees. That night in the Gryffindor common room, he took Florence to task for being disloyal to the house. She shot back that the only reason she'd hung around him in the first place was to attract Severus's attention. She shamed Sirius in front of everyone. That really stung."
Harry sucked in his breath sharply. "So that's the real story behind the Whomping Willow incident."
"A big part of it, certainly." Remus returned a crooked smile. "I know Sirius never intended to kill Severus—just scare him into making a fool of himself. But he miscalculated. If James hadn't dragged Severus out of that tunnel . . . ."
Seeing a troubled frown settle on his friend's face, Harry didn't ask any more questions. With a sigh, Remus moved on to lighter tales—memorable Quidditch matches, misplaced spells, midnight revels catered by kitchen elves. An hour later, after a dozen escapades of the Marauders had left Harry with a bittersweet smile, Remus insisted on goodnight.
With a pan of glowing coals from the fireplace, Harry warmed his bed and Neville's bed where Remus was bunking. When he snuggled under his covers, he told himself, Give your worries a rest. None of the stories connected Snape with your mother. With that reassurance, he drifted into a dream of flying.
Wednesday morning, Harry awoke before dawn with a troubled frown. Snape had seduced Florence away from Sirius. What better way to best a rival? Could Snape have tried to lure Lily from James for the same reason? At that thought, Harry went cold all over—despite the blankets and comforter piled on top of him. Surely, his mother had never been attracted to bad boys, unless it had been out of pity. The incriminating vignette from her sketchbook rose in his mind. Just as rapidly, he banished it.
Stealthily, so as not to wake the gently snoring Remus and the big black cat stretched out at his feet, Harry retrieved his Firebolt from his trunk, muffled himself up in scarves and wool cap, and crept downstairs, determined to pour himself into Quidditch practice. Soaring above the towering stands and goal hoops should put his worries in perspective, he thought. Yet every turn he took through the sleeping castle, every alcove he passed, raised anxious speculations: Did Severus and Lily hide behind that curtain? Did they meet secretly in that room? Did they walk this corridor, their fingers just brushing as they passed?
Harry remained lost in gloomy thought until a wail jerked his mind back to the present. Myrtle. Her moaning reminded him that he'd never made it up to her for the night he'd sent her weeping down the toilet. At least a month had passed, yet still she sounded heartbroken. But when the ghost pressed her pearlescent face through her lavatory door, her eyes were tearless and her nose was raised snootily in the air.
"Not by four and never by two—you don't know what it means do you?"
Biting back a groan, Harry forced a tone of interest into his voice. "No. I have to admit, I don't."
"You told me you did. Just to make me go away. 'Scram! Skedaddle, you tiresome thing! Nobody wants you around.'"
Harry took a deep breath. "That's not true. It was just—"
Myrtle sniffed. Then she began to sing:
Not by four and not by two
Just a clue to make you ask
What can Myrtle do for you?
Hint at who's behind the mask.
"I made that one up myself," she added.
"And a very nice rune it is." As the words left Harry's mouth, his stomach clenched. Three fat beetles were crawling across the door, just visible in the glow of Myrtle's face. In fact, they appeared to be scuttling around her incorporeal forehead.
"I bet you'd like to know what that rune means."
Harry gripped his broom, trying not to be ill. "You're right. I would. I really, really would."
"Well!" A rare smile curved Myrtle's colorless lips. "I'm not going to tell you!" With that, she pulled her face back through the door, plunging the corridor into darkness once more.
With a shiver, Harry hurried onward, eager to put as much distance as possible between himself and the creepy-crawly things hanging around Myrtle's haunt.
As frantic as Harry had felt the morning before to unlock the secret of Lily and Severus, today he wanted to block out the whole affair. He skipped breakfast, diving and wheeling on his broom until he was dizzy. He coached some first-year Gryffindors on how to charge and feint on brooms. After lunch, he ran Waldo through his paces. Then he saw Hagrid off on his trip to the Carpathian Mountains to see his Mum at Christmas. Back in his dorm, he finished wrapping gifts. For two hours, he pondered the cryptic words of Cho's Seven Tablets in a Cloudy Satchel. Needing another distraction, he started on the task Hermione was always nagging him to do—organize his old class notes into a handy reference. (After all, we'll be taking our Ordinary Wizarding Levels come springtime.) By five, he'd created six neat piles on Dean Thomas's bed. With close to an hour left until supper, he found himself wandering the castle, searching for something else to occupy his mind.
When Harry saw Dobby ambling toward him, he grinned. Then the sight of his little friend reminded him of the last time he'd seen him and his humble bow before Draco Malfoy. That memory led inexorably to the elf's odd disclosures and the subject Harry had been avoiding since dawn—Severus Snape.
"Hello, Master Harry." Dobby stopped a foot away, gazing up expectantly.
As Harry returned the greeting, he had the disquieting impression that the elf knew he had questions for him. Furtively, he glanced up and down the hall. Then he pulled his friend around a carved screen into an alcove hidden at the side.
"Dobby . . . if I asked you a question about your old master, would you answer it? Not so much about him, but about someone who worked for him?"
"If Dobby can, Dobby will. Anything to help—"
"Yes, er, my question is about Snape—Professor Snape. When he worked for Lucius Malfoy, did he ever drop by the house?"
"Professor Severus!" Dobby beamed. "The proficient, prodigious, profound Professor Severus. He didn't drop by the Malfoys. He lived with the Malfoys—until the time he went to work for, nay—spy on that other one, He-Who—"
"—Must-Not-Be-Named. Yes." Harry coughed, wary of going on. As a house elf, Dobby would have been witness to Snape's secrets—including any surreptitious visitors. "While you served the Malfoys, did the professor ever see any . . . women?"
The elf's face contorted, and he slapped his forehead. "Dobby knew it! He let the secret slip! Too many words at the Yule Ball. Oh, foolish, loose-lipped Dobby!"
The secret. Harry was too busy controlling the lurching in his stomach to stop Dobby from ramming his head against the granite wall, but he grabbed him before he could do it again.
"Mr. Malfoy," the elf muttered, "may he writhe and squirm. Betray him, Dobby doesn't mind. But Mr. Severus, Mistress Narcissa! Forgive Dobby his careless words!"
"Narcissa?" Harry breathed, letting his grip go slack.
Dobby whirled back around, his saucer eyes twice the size they were before. "You didn't know? Not until now? Not until Dobby opened his big yap yet again?"
"So . . . Snape was involved with Narcissa." Before the elf could bite his own fingers, Harry seized him again and held him fast. "When you saw Draco at the Ball you said, 'Too bad Professor Severus wasn't his father.'" He paused, his brain whirring. "Or did you say, 'Too bad Professor Severus wasn't his father'?"
His friend twitched.
Harry's mouth became an O. "No. Don't tell me. There was a time when Snape thought Draco might be his son."
Sensing his friend had lost his fight, Harry let him go. Resolutely, the elf stared up at him. "Dobby can assure you, they did not become involved while Mr. Severus lived with the Malfoys—except, maybe, for their eyes. But when he left to work for that other one, he visited often—to see Mr. Malfoy. To spy on Mr. Malfoy. When Mistress Narcissa divined his secret, she didn't turn him in—she turned to him."
The scene Harry had witnessed from atop the marble dragon reverberated in his mind. How blind he'd been not to perceive the special relationship those two had shared.
"When Master Draco was born, Mistress Narcissa told Mr. Severus the lad was his. She made him godfather—an excuse to visit the baby. They pledged to run away together—as soon as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was pulled down."
Harry frowned. "But Draco is not Snape's son—anyone can see that."
"Now, yes. When he was newborn, who could tell? But finally, Mr. Severus grew doubtful. He tried Identity Potion. Then he knew Mistress Narcissa had been lying to him—for she had the second sight to know her son's father." The elf clasped his hands. "That night, Harry Potter toppled the Dark Lord! The next morning, Mr. Malfoy cried Imperius curse! Mr. Severus told Mistress Narcissa her husband spoke the truth. He would not take her away from him."
Harry recalled Snape's surprise the year before when he'd revealed Lucius Malfoy was back with the Death Eaters. "Why did he believe Mr. Malfoy when he didn't believe Mr. Avery? Guilty conscience?"
"Dobby wondered too. Poor Mistress Narcissa!" His eyes lit up. "But after he—he the gifted, the glorious, the grand Potions master—after he liberated Winky—"
Harry couldn't extricate himself from his little friend's gushing adulation of Snape for another ten minutes.
That evening, Harry skipped supper in the Great Hall. Dobby had given him so much to digest, that instead he begged a sandwich from the kitchen and holed up in Gryffindor. An hour later, Winky's generous ham-and-everything-else creation sat half-eaten as Harry stared out his dormitory window. He had assumed his nemesis too unattractive for romance before the kind-hearted Ariel Daine took pity on him. Now, he knew of two women who had each schemed to call him her own.
Where did his mother fit into the twisted story of Severus Snape's life?
After Book 4 and before Book 5, this all seemed like reasonable backstory. Please review.