Severus ducked his head into the Pensieve. If he didn't re-implant the original memories in his brain after viewing them, at least he would have the memory of having watched them, as though they were someone else's. Probably these weren't strictly the original memories anyway, but Potter's recollection of having viewed Severus's memories. The outlines were slightly more blurred, like a photocopied page. At least they weren't in monochrome. He would be able to see Lily's red hair and green eyes once more, not just the copy of those eyes in her son's face.
He was in Cokeworth Rec. Cokeworth Recreation Ground, officially, but everyone called it the Wreck. There was litter blowing about – though not as much, in 1969, as there was a generation later, Severus had to admit. After all, back then you could still get a bit of money back if you took your beer bottles back to the off-licence, so there was no point in just chucking them.
His younger self was there, crouching behind the snowberry bush with its fat white berries that burst with a satisfying squelch when you stamped on them. As usual, he was wearing whatever clothes he could find: one of Mum's old blouses, Dad's old coat, and a pair of jeans from a jumble-sale that he had outgrown six months ago. Mum was too tired to lengthen them by magic and he didn't know how yet, but he was thinking of trying to alter them the Muggle way, sewing flares of scrap fabric into the seams.
Was the memory actually showing him all this? No, he realised. It would have done if he had implanted his own original memory into his brain, instead of viewing Harry Potter's memory of having watched it. But his knowledge of the rest of his childhood could fill in the details, when Potter probably hadn't registered more than 'Snape as a child hiding behind a bush'.
He savoured the sight of Lily, alive and safe and happy, flying because it was more exciting than swinging, making a daisy open and close its petals, ignoring her sister's scolding. How many magical children, Muggleborn or not, played with magic so freely and happily, and so intentionally, at the age of nine? His own magic had come in years earlier, but only ever as a response to fear or anger, when Dad hit him or Mum, or shouted at them. Some of the pure-blood children had anecdotes of relatives trying to murder them in order to frighten them into demonstrating their magic. But Lily was happy and untroubled, using magic just because it was fun. If only she could stay forever a nine-year-old who had never heard of Hogwarts or anti-Muggleborn prejudice. No, that didn't make sense. Being a witch child in a Muggle family who didn't know what magic was wouldn't make her happy. And so, for the first time, he had managed to pluck up his courage to talk to her, and explain things:
'I know what you are. You're – you're a witch.'
'That's not a very nice thing to say to somebody!'
She stalked off indignantly, and she and her sister – what was her name? Petunia, that was it – why did so many girls have plant names, and why were they so seldom named for the really useful herbs like dittany? – left the playground, Lily turning back to glare at him furiously.
But she had come back, later, on her own, to ask him about being a witch. She had already known, really. And so they had started to be friends, not because they really had much else in common, but because they were the only two magical children in their town. Another scene:
'It is real, isn't it? It's not a joke? Petunia says there isn't a Hogwarts. It is real, isn't it?'
'It's real for us. Not for her. But we'll get the letter, you and me.'
And then he had noticed Petunia spying on them from behind the ash tree, and she'd jeered at his mismatched old clothes, and the branch fell on her shoulder, and Lily snarled at him:
'Did you make that happen? You did! You hurt her!'
And, once again, she stormed off. He hadn't consciously meant the branch to break, not like the way Lily deliberately made flowers move about. It was just what happened when he was angry. It happened so much at home that Dad beat him when any accident happened, even when it hadn't been caused by magic, which just made it happen all the more. But Lily storming off – yet again – hurt more than the beatings did. Dad was just a Muggle and he didn't matter, the same as Petunia. But Lily was a witch, and ought to understand – about magic, and about why Petunia didn't matter.
Now they were waiting for the train to Hogwarts. He'd hoped Lily would rush up to greet him, but she was busy pleading with Petunia:
'I'm sorry, Tuney, I'm sorry! Listen, maybe once I'm there, I'll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!'
'I don't – want – to – go! You think I want to be a – a freak?'
'You didn't think it was such a freak's school when you wrote to the Headmaster and begged him to take you.'
'You shouldn't have read – that was my private – that boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!'
Lily was crying by the time they got on the train.
'I don't want to talk to you. Tuney h-hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore.'
'So what?' Surely half the point of going to Hogwarts was to get away from Muggles like her or Severus's dad.
'So she's my sister!'
Severus lifted his head from the Pensieve. It wasn't easy to find your place in a sequence of memories if you stopped partway through, but he needed time to think. He returned to the cosy kitchen/lab, with the dishes of potions ingredients waiting for him: lavender, wormwood, peppermint oil, crocodile heart, stewed mandrake, syrup of hellebore.
Cheiron cast him a 'Do you want to talk about it?' look, but Severus shook his head, and looked to one side. He needed to process this on his own first. He had wanted to hang onto idealised memories of wonderful Lily and horrible Petunia, but really, the three of them weren't so different, were they? Him spying on Lily, Petunia spying on him and Lily, him and Lily spying on Petunia. They were just three perplexed, unhappy children bickering with each other. He hadn't realised, at age nine, how far 'witch' was an insult among Muggles: that there were good wizards in Muggle fantasy stories, but witches were nearly always evil, and that going up to a girl and saying, 'You're a witch,' was the equivalent of accusing her of being a werewolf.
And he and Petunia had both lost Lily, hadn't they? Just as Petunia had lost Lily to the excitement of magic and going away to Hogwarts, he had lost her to Gryffindor House, to her making new friends and having less and less time for him, and to James Potter (why, why him of all people?). And ultimately, they had both lost her to death.
And then Dumbledore had dumped on Petunia the responsibility of fostering one-year-old Harry, just as he had dumped on Severus the responsibility of teaching Harry once he arrived at Hogwarts. For her, as for him, being landed with a child who looked a lot more like her odious brother-in-law than her dead sister couldn't have helped. Probably Dumbledore hadn't bothered to ask her whether she was willing to take him in – though Severus hadn't been sure whether to believe Minerva McGonagall's story that she and Dumbledore and Hagrid had just left the sleeping child on the doorstep at night with a note to explain the situation. Surely she must have been pulling his leg to see how he would react? Surely even Gryffindors wouldn't be crazy enough to abandon a toddler old enough to wander off and too young (not to mention too spoilt, having been brought up by James Potter) to follow instructions like, 'Stay put!' No, stupid question – those three Gryffindors, at any rate, would definitely be irresponsible enough to do precisely that.
What would have happened if he had managed to pull himself together from sobbing with grief and guilt over Lily's death for long enough to offer to go and bring the child to Petunia and explain things to her in person? Even though they had both despised each other and hadn't had any contact as adults (had she ever even bothered to learn his first name, or was he just 'that Snape boy from Spinner's End' to her?), at least he knew her slightly and – no, she'd just have slammed the door in his face.
He returned to the Pensieve again. He was a teenager now, pleading with Lily, 'I thought we were supposed to be friends? Best friends?' But they weren't, he could see now, looking back. Lily had real friends, girls she could giggle with about boys, and he had – Mulciber and Avery, who had never even revealed their first names to him in the years that they had hung out together. In some boarding-schools, this would not have been unusual, but at Hogwarts it was normal to use your friends' first names (unless they really hated their given names), or at least know what their names were. He hadn't had anyone he was actually close to, but being alone wasn't safe, not with James Potter's gang on the prowl. But Lily hadn't listened to his warnings about them any more than he had listened to her warnings about Mulciber and Avery. It was all very well for her to complain about Mulciber being creepy, but he was nowhere near as big a bully as James Potter, who was so vicious that it was counted as an improvement if he only bullied Severus, rather than randomly bullying everyone all the time, including threatening Lily even while trying to persuade her to date him:
'Leave him alone!'
'I will if you go out with me, Evans. Go on… go out with me and I'll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.' And even, 'Ah, Evans, don't make me hex you.'
Severus could understand why Lily had broken friendship with him. But how could she ever have got married to a creep like James Potter? How could she not see that he was bad news? And – when Potter had dangled him upside-down, with his underpants showing, had Lily been on the verge of laughter? He hadn't been able to see that at the time, with his robe hanging over his face. But Pensieve memories replayed the scene, not just the things you personally had observed.
This scene was speeded up, as if Potter Jr was trying not to watch it. Bored, because he'd seen it before? Or was it that – he didn't want to watch it? That he was ashamed of his father's behaviour? That – maybe he hadn't even wanted to see it the first time round, when he was fifteen, and he had been expecting to find something quite different hidden away in the Pensieve? (What had he been looking for, for Merlin's sake? The answers to the Potions exam questions? The Slytherin Quidditch team's strategy for the next match?) Maybe he hadn't been a duplicate of his father after all, but just a bratty, over-curious teenager sticking his nose into things that didn't concern him? Considering his own experience of being bullied by his cousin's gang (which Severus had seen a lot of, during his fruitless attempts to teach the boy Occlumency), maybe he had even felt – sympathy for Severus?
No,Severus thought, I don't want sympathy from an insolent little Gryffindor like him!
'I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!' shouted teenage Severus in the memory.
'Fine,' retorted Lily. 'I won't bother in future. And I'd wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus.'
He had said something truly horrible to her. But – she had said something horrible to him, too. It wasn't that she was a pure, angelic spirit and he needed to be perfected enough to become worthy of her. They were just kids quarrelling. A few years ago when they quarrelled like this, they would have made up and gone on being friends, but now…
' I never meant to call you Mudblood...'
'But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?'
And that had been the end of their friendship. Lily was going to hate him whatever he did. Seemingly, the Death Eaters were the only people who didn't. They might despise him for being a half-blood, but an organisation that was willing to use feral werewolves wasn't going to turn down a wizard who could be a useful spy. So when he had heard the prophecy about the one whom the Dark Lord would mark as his equal, he had taken it to Lord Voldemort, hoping that the information would be valuable enough to trade for protection for Lily Evans – or Lily Potter, as she was by that stage. He hadn't known that the Dark Lord would decide that the prophecy meant that Lily's not-yet-born baby would be his arch-nemesis, and would decide to kill the whole family just to be on the safe side. Dumbledore accused him of 'asking for mercy for the mother in exchange for the son,' as if it had been his plan all along. Severus winced at having this memory back, even in photocopied form. 'You disgust me. You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?'
What was the point of trying to explain that it wasn't like that? Dumbledore was never going to believe that he wasn't a monster, any more than Lily had. Voldemort didn't, either, but at least he saw Severus as a useful monster, like the werewolves, or his snake. But at least by now, Severus had grown out of believing that he could have friends, or trying to be liked. If Dumbledore could be an ally he could work with, someone who would protect Lily in return for Severus agreeing to spy for him, it was a deal worth making.
Except that Dumbledore hadn't protected her, had he? Severus hadn't known at the time – not until sixteen years later, in fact – that Dumbledore had borrowed a powerful magical artefact from the Potter family, which might have protected them, and was still hanging onto it three months later when they were murdered. But the scene replaying now fitted in all too well with what he remembered. Dumbledore was standing coldly over him, making no attempt to comfort him as he sobbed his grief and despair at Lily's death. He had Severus's promise to protect the child. What more did he need?
The images flicked past – Dumbledore not even bothering to glance up from his magazine as Severus grumbled to him about what a pain Harry was to teach, but absent-mindedly telling him, 'Keep an eye on Quirrell, won't you?' So if Dumbledore had noticed that there was something suspicious about Quirinus Quirrell ever since he had returned from his sabbatical, why had he been so laid-back about letting the man go on teaching? Another scene: Dumbledore and Severus discussing Voldemort's return, Dumbledore remarking 'I think we Sort too soon,' as if admitting that Severus wasn't a complete coward meant by definition that he should have been in Gryffindor, and then walking off before Severus could decide whether to reply, 'Yes, the Hat begged me to be in Ravenclaw,' or 'Yes – how on Earth was anyone as twisty as you not Sorted into Slytherin?'
And then came the scene where Dumbledore had returned from some kind of mysterious quest for a cursed ring, and for reasons known only to himself had decided to try it on, and then not contacted Severus to ask him to repair the damage until after the curse had spread into his entire body and it was too late just to amputate his hand. As usual, Dumbledore was being infuriatingly smugly calm about the whole situation, but viewing the memory from a distance, Severus could see that he was struggling not to faint with pain, and making a superhuman effort to keep up his usual casual demeanour:
'Well, really, this makes matters much more straightforward… I refer to the plan Lord Voldemort is revolving around me. His plan to have the poor Malfoy boy murder me. Ultimately, of course, there is only one thing to be done if we are to save him from Lord Voldemort's wrath.'
'Are you intending to let him kill you?'
'Certainly not. You must kill me.'
'If you don't mind dying, why not let Draco do it?'
'That boy's soul is not yet so damaged. I would not have it ripped apart on my account.'
'And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?'
'You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation.'
