Harry and the Pirates, Chapter 62
Snape's Memories
by Technomad
A couple of days after they had started the spring session, Professor Snape sent word that he wished to see Harry and Dudley in his office. Harry and Dudley looked at each other questioningly.
"I don't know what the old fellow wants, do you?" asked Dudley. He looked rather worried.
"No idea, coz," Harry replied. To his best knowledge, they weren't up to anything that Snape would particularly object to, and their schoolwork was going well. "Nonetheless, duty calls and we must obey, as Balalaika would say. Best to stir our stumps and see what he wants."
When they knocked, Snape called out "Enter!" They entered, to find Snape finishing off an experiment. They knew better than to interrupt or distract him, so they quietly sought chairs and watched while Snape poured the last of a greenish mixture into a vial and turned off his Bunsen burner. Finally, he turned, stripping off his protective gloves and goggles and slipping out of his apron, and took his seat behind his desk.
"I suppose you young gentlemen are wondering why I summoned you," Snape said. Harry and Dudley nodded. They knew that their House Head would tell them what was up, but that he would do so in his own time and his own way. Nagging him to get to the point would get them nowhere, and annoy him unnecessarily. Both boys thought of Snape as a different version of a Roanapur crime boss, and they tended to treat him accordingly…with respect, but with circumspection.
Snape quirked a grin. "You may relax. You are in no trouble." He picked up some papers from his desk. "In fact, I am quite pleased with your schoolwork, and your comportment outside of class. Your employer and I have been in correspondence, and I have had very good reports to make of how you have been adapting to school and learning. Let me say that she is quite pleased to hear this."
Harry and Dudley beamed. They had not known that Snape and Balalaika were exchanging letters, and they were glad to hear that their House Head had good things to say about them. Snape did not pull his punches, and they knew that if he had not been pleased with them, he would have had no problem with informing Balalaika (and Petunia; the boys had no doubt but that Balalaika shared any news about them with her trusted assistant) about them, in detail. And when they returned to Roanapur, they would have had to face Balalaika and explain just what had been going wrong.
Reassured, and pleased to know that their employer would be pleased with them, the boys sat back. Snape reached into a cubbyhole in his desk, coming out with a big, thick leatherbound book. "You are no doubt aware, thanks to Professor Lupin, that I knew Lily Evans for years. We grew up in the same town, albeit in different neighbourhoods. I first noticed her, and Petunia, at a play-park between our neighbourhoods. I could see that she was a witch, and since I knew that I was a wizard…my mother was a witch who'd married a Muggle, and I knew that I was going to Hogwarts…I made myself known."
Harry wondered how that had gone. Snape opened the book, showing them a wizarding photograph of a skinny, black-haired boy in rather ragged Muggle clothes, his face dominated by a large nose and bright black eyes. "That was taken about the time I met Lily Evans. You can see that my family was in difficult circumstances." A shadow passed across their professor's face. "My father was in and out of work…that whole area of England was in a bad way, what with the effects of the slump and the war…and our family budget was tight, particularly since he forbade my mother to use her magic on my clothes or otherwise to affect our circumstances." Snape seemed to be looking far away, into the distance. "Father was proud, and didn't like the thought of depending on his wife when he was 'perfectly able-bodied.'"
Harry felt a twinge of sympathy. He thought of Ron Weasley, also from a poor-but-proud family. Ron had been gobsmacked when he got his new robes for Christmas, and Harry was sure he'd seen tears in his friend's eyes. Ron hated being poor, not least because he had to do without a lot of things that their wealthier classmates routinely flaunted. Harry wondered how a young Professor Snape, during his Hogwarts years, would have taken to the idea of working with PD Enterprises. Ron's grin when he'd landed an account for them and earned himself a commission would easily have lit up the Slytherin common room.
"When I introduced myself, and told Lily that she was a witch, she was intrigued and wanted to know more. Her sister was less impressed." Snape showed them another picture. "This was taken by Lily's mother some days after, when she had invited me home for tea for the first time." The picture showed Lily Evans, slightly younger than she was in the pictures from her Hogwarts years, with her arm around the shoulder of a young Severus Snape. Both of them were smiling at the camera…it was a Muggle snapshot…although Snape looked rather unsure of himself. A little ways away on the other side of her sister, an easily-recognizable Petunia Evans gave the camera a sulky stare.
"I told her about Hogwarts," Snape continued, his expresssion rather abstracted as he looked back into his memories, "and she was very interested in everything I had to say. She had a million questions, about everything from the House system to the coursework. Luckily for me, my mother had been fond of telling stories about her own school years, and I was able to answer a lot of her questions."
"Did you go to Diagon Alley together?" asked Dudley.
Snape nodded. "Professor McGonagall took both of us. My mother was not well and in no shape to go, and her parents and my father couldn't, of course. Paranthetically, I have long believed that Muggle-borns should get more orientation than they generally seem to receive. Being thrown in at the deep end of the magical subculture can be quite a shock for a Muggle-born who thought, until he or she got the letter, that magic didn't exist."
Harry nodded, and so did Dudley. They had noticed that many Muggle-borns tended to make faux pas that often blighted their chances in magical society, purely out of honest ignorance. Many pureblooded families did not make allowances for the fact that Muggle-borns had not been brought up to know the finer points of wizarding etiquette. Harry and Dudley had both been briefed by Professor McGonagall, and had also found a Guide to Manners and Mores in the British Arcane Society in Flourish and Botts' that had been a real lifesaver. There had been a section in that book on goblin manners, which had turned out to be very useful when they had gone to Gringotts'.
"In any case," said Snape, "I have some pictures of Lily Evans during her first few years at Hogwarts. Would you boys like to see them, and hear about her exploits?"
"Would we? Yes, sir!" Harry was eager to see what Snape had, and he knew that Dudley was, too. They both leaned forward as Snape opened his photo album.
"Here we are on the day we went off to Diagon Alley." The picture showed a clearly-recognizable Snape with Lily Evans, their arms around each other's shoulders and both of them smiling for the camera. It was another Muggle photograph, so they didn't move, but Harry could feel the joy they both must have felt to be off on such a grand adventure. He enjoyed Diagon Alley himself, and could easily imagine how excited they would have been to see the wizard High Street for the first time.
"This is us, at Kings Cross Station." Again, Severus and Lily posed with their arms around each other's shoulders, as travelers swirled around them in the background. Since they were on the Muggle side of the barrier, they were both in Muggle clothes, and Harry noticed that Snape was still dressed more shabbily than his friend. He wondered if that was part of his Aunt Petunia's apparent dislike of Snape. Aunt Petunia put a lot of store in looking clean, neat and well-turned-out, and had sometimes sneered at "ragbags" they saw on the streets of Roanapur. Of course, she had done so under her breath, since there was never any telling who was and was not dangerous to offend in their hometown.
"On the train, we were burst in on by Sirius Black, along with his new best friend, James Potter. They promptly alienated both of us with their boorish behavior, and when I drew my wand to defend us…your mother had not had the chance to learn any spells, while my mother had taught me some…they started howling about 'dark magic' and 'the Dark Arts.'" A reminiscent smile ghosted across Snape's face. "They didn't appreciate me giving them boils in a bunch of sensitive spots. That's no more Dark Magic than the Levitation Spell you learned in first-year Charms is, but to them, any spell that inconvenienced them just had to be the Dark Arts."
"We know that mentality," Dudley said, as Harry nodded. He remembered people he'd met, who were perfectly okay with crime as long as they were not affected personally. They would cheerfully sign off on all sorts of things, but if someone dared to so much as steal a few baht* from them, they would carry on as though they were being murdered.
"We had planned to be in the same House, but the Sorting Hat had its own ideas. Lily found herself in Gryffindor, which did not please her at all at first, and I wound up in Slytherin, mostly because Sirius Black and James Potter had both ended up in Gryffindor." Snape made a moue of distaste. "From the second they were all together at the table, Black and Potter were practically drooling over your mother. She, on the other hand, found them distinctly detestable." He showed them another picture, this one of Lily Evans alone, in Hogwarts robes with a gold-and-red sash and tie. She looked distinctly mutinous. Snape smiled. "When she got that expression on her face, wise people stayed away till she had calmed down. While she was very gentle, Lily Evans had a temper and a half, and wasn't shy about displaying it."
"So you stayed friends?" Harry was rather curious, and so was Dudley. Inter-House friendships, while not unknown, were unusual, particularly among the younger students. The combination of a new environment and the different Houses' outlook and values tended to ensure that people stayed with their House mates. Harry himself was a rather special case, but that was due to his fame.
"Oh, yes, we were friends for years," Snape said, his expression suddenly sad. "We were partners in the classes where Slytherins are grouped in with Gryffindors, such as Potions. Your mother, Mr. Potter, was quite the Potions star in her own right, and together, we were a nearly-unbeatable team. Professor Slughorn, our Potions professor, was urging her to study for a Mastery after she left Hogwarts."
"So my Mum was a really good student?" Harry was pleased to hear this. He valued good grades, partly for their own sake and partly because Balalaika and Aunt Petunia were so pleased when he came home with good grades, and finding out that his mother had also been a good student was quite gratifying. "What about my Dad? What was he like?"
A sour expression came over Snape's face, and Harry wondered if he'd put his foot right into it. "James Potter and I…did not get along. Not at all. He was a pureblood from an old, rich family…not unlike Mr. Malfoy in some ways, I have to admit…and I was 'half-blooded,' and very poor. He affected to see me as a full-fledged practitioner of the Dark Arts, and at age eleven, to boot! With the help of his friends, three other Gryffindors in the same year, he did his best to make life miserable for me, and anybody else that didn't happen to come up to their standards. His best friend was Sirius Black, who ended up betraying him and his family to the Dark Lord."
"Some friend he was!" snorted Dudley. Harry, privately, agreed. Once again, he secretly hoped that Sirius Black would show his ugly face. He, Harry Potter, had a wand, and a pistol, and could use either or both to make Black bitterly regret his lifestyle choices. He would have liked to know his mother and father.
"If Mum and James Potter didn't get along, why did they get married?" Harry wondered if it had been what he had heard called a "shotgun marriage." But why would his mother have done that with someone she didn't even like?
"Lily and I had been forced apart, more and more, by the strains on magical society at that time. The Dark Lord was rising, and one was either with, or against, him. Unfortunately for me, Slytherin House was dominated, at that time, by partisans of the Dark Lord, and to be openly against him was dangerous. Even having a Muggle-born friend, much less from a House as openly opposed to the Dark Lord as Gryffindor was reputed to be, could be perilous. To my shame, I allowed myself to be led by my Housemates into activities that offended Lily. Things finally came to a head one day, when James Potter, Sirius Black, and two of their worthless friends had cornered me, and were publically humiliating me. Lily tried to come to my aid, but I could see that some of my own Housemates were watching…and in a moment of panic and rage, I lashed out at Lily with a dreadful insult. She never forgave me."
"Sir? Why would you lash out at my Mum? She was trying to help you!" Harry was slightly shocked. He had known Snape for some while, and had never known him to behave otherwise than with grave decorum. Even when angry, his House Head did not lose control, preferring to express his anger with stinging sarcasm.
"You remember, I hope, that even having a Muggle-born friend was a chancy thing in Slytherin House at that time," Snape explained, his voice low. "If I had accepted her help, I'd have been seen as fair game for my House mates for the next two years; this incident occurred just after our OWL exams. Black and Potter had spotted me momentarily alone and off my guard, and took instant advantage." He let out a regretful sigh. "I had to choose between my first real friend, and the people I had to live with. Basically, there were no good choices."
"Okay, I can see why Aunt Lily dropped you. But why would she take up with James Potter? He sounds a right toe-rag," Dudley asked.
"After a very close call involving one of Sirius Black's pranks, a close call that could have had fatal or very bad results, James Potter seemed to have turned over a new leaf. He'd always been enamored of Lily Evans, and she responded to this 'new, improved' James Potter. While I had and have no time for the man, he wasn't bad-looking at all, and he was a very skilled student in many areas. His family's wealth and his own Pureblood status didn't hurt, either. I couldn't compete against him in either of those fields." Snape looked down at his desk. "By the time we finished our NEWT exams and left Hogwarts, they were an established couple, and the stresses of the war against the Dark Lord drove many young people to marry quickly, lest they never have the chance." He gave them a slightly haggard grin. "Professor McGonagall remembers that time well. Every year, right after the Ending Feast, there were a flood of wedding announcements on her desk, and she said that she had never seen so many birth announcements at one time in her life."
"People do grasp at life when death's close by," Harry observed. "In Roanapur, the bars and knocking shops do a roaring business, since the town has such a dangerous reputation."
Snape's eyes snapped fully open in shock. "Mr. Potter! I certainly hope you don't partake of such amusements! And that goes for you, too, Mr. Dursley!"
Harry was amused by Snape's shock. "We were too young to do any such thing when we got our letters, sir," he reassured his House head. "Since then, we've mostly been here, and when we're at home, we're kept much too busy. Balalaika has also made it very clear that we're not to drink alcohol until we're at least eighteen. 'I saw enough child alcoholics in Russia, and do not wish to have them in my employ!' is how she puts it. Neither of us would do anything to disappoint her."
"I know what she means. The neighbourhood I grew up in was very run-down, and since the mills had closed, there was a lot of unemployment, and that led to excess drinking," Snape answered. "One of several reasons Petunia Evans disapproved of me was that my neighbourhood did have a good few children no older than I who were already drinking and smoking. And stealing; a neighbour down the street had a thriving business, 'alf-inching bicycles and reselling them." At the boys' puzzled looks, he explained: "Half-inching is Cockney rhyming slang for pinching. Stealing, if you prefer. Quite a few boys from my area did time in the Borstal system…juvenile detention; again, it's not a term you'd know. And some of them are Her Majesty's guests in the prison system as we speak."
"Thank God, or the Lord Buddha, you were magical, sir! You escaped what could have been a nasty fate!" Dudley and Harry exchanged glances. Their own views of the prison system were heavily colored by their Asian upbringing. To them, prisons were horrible hellholes, where the prisoners were abused and tortured by their guards if they could not pay for better treatment.
"Yes, I did. However, I sometimes think the fate I drew was no better…and that I deserved no better." At their curious expressions, Snape said: "And that's as much as I intend to share on that subject at this time, young gentlemen. You may take the photo album with you, but I will want it back! Now, out!" They both outed, and headed for the Slytherin dorms.
