Preservation: Year 6 - A Year of Twists & Turns
Warning: This chapter, and all subsequent chapters, contain the death of at least one named character per chapter (up to and including "on screen" deaths of major canon characters)
By the time September rolled around, Lily was desperate to see Remus. The more letters she had received from Severus, the more the lack of correspondence from Remus had begun to worry her. Severus had told her that his own letters to the Gryffindor had not been answered either, though he admitted that he had not sent nearly as many as she apparently had. When the two Hufflepuffs met up on Platform Nine-and-three-Quarters, it was with a mingled sense of relief at seeing each other and a determination to hunt down their friend and make him talk to them. But as they looked around the platform, watching other friends reunite and families say their goodbyes, Remus was nowhere to be seen. After long minutes of searching, as the time of departure grew ever nearer, Mr. and Mrs. Evans gently shooed Lily and Severus onto the train. There was nothing to be gained from missing their ride, and no doubt Remus was just running a little late. Severus wished he believed that, but worried that the other boy might not be coming at all. It was only after Severus found a compartment and Lily left to join the other prefects that Remus came sprinting through the platform barrier and made it onto the train just before it began to pull away from the station. Severus saw him out the window and relaxed a little. From the glimpse he'd gotten, Remus looked pale and worn out, but at least he was there.
Remus avoided Lily's many attempts to make eye contact during the prefects' meeting, but she cornered him as soon as the Head Boy and Girl released them, foiling his attempt to slip away. She marched Remus back to Severus's compartment, despite the Gryffindor's protests that he was sure Severus didn't want to see him and that he should probably just go find somewhere else to sit. Lily ignored him. Severus, when they reached the compartment, had quite a lot to say to Remus, starting with "you're being an idiot" and continuing on to "we don't hate you" and "stop ignoring us" before circling back around to "if you don't stop acting like an idiot we really will be mad at you." Lily nodded along in agreement, adding her own occasional comments and hushing Remus any time he tried to break in with an apology for his actions under the Whomping Willow. Finally, he managed to interrupt, almost shouting in an effort to be heard.
"Why don't you get it?! I COULD HAVE KILLED YOU! And you just want to forget it and be friends? What the hell is wrong with you?"
At that Severus lost it, shouting over Remus. "What the hell is wrong with you? When will you get it through your stupid head that IT WASN'T YOU?! Black tried to kill me, not you! Just because your furry alter ego happened to be there doesn't mean it's your fault!"
"Not my fault?! I almost killed you, and you won't even let me apologize —!"
Lily, in the unlikely position of least worked up and not entirely sure how she felt about it, did her best to calm both boys down. "Remus, the only thing you owe an apology for is ignoring us all summer."
"And maybe your lousy taste in friends..." Severus muttered very audibly. Lily shot him a glare that clearly said "not helping!" but Remus was startled into laughter. He sank down onto the seat with a sigh.
"Can't say you're wrong about that. Though I never thought any of them would actually stoop to attempted murder! I really am sorry though, about everything," he looked at Lily before adding with a weak smile "Especially for ignoring you this summer."
The rest of the ride went rather more smoothly after all that, and when the teenagers parted to sit at their respective tables for the Sorting Feast, it was as friends once more. Remus still hadn't entirely absolved himself of blame for the attack, and it would be a while longer before they all stopped having the occasional nightmare about the incident, but they were past the crisis and things were back on track. The same could not be said for Remus's relationships with the Marauders. Even while he had been blaming himself he had known that blame lay with his so-called friends as well. The more he was able to forgive his own part in the almost-tragedy, the angrier he became at them. Remus could not forget what Sirius had done, nor ignore James's attempts to downplay the severity and maliciousness of Sirius's actions. It was as though Sirius could do no wrong in James's eyes, and even attempted murder could be laughed off as a clever prank gone awry, an attitude that Remus could not grasp. That year James and Sirius grew even closer together, as if Remus's departure had shattered the Marauders to leave only Double Trouble behind. Peter continued to hang out with the other two boys, of course, but he was a third wheel to their friendship, and he knew it. When they had been a group of four it had been a more equal partnership, or at least Peter could convince himself that it was. But with only the three remaining it was clearly "James and Sirius," with Peter tagging along behind. His resentment became increasingly stronger, though its poisonous fruit would not fully ripen for a few more years.
With all of the drama of fifth year and its ramifications spilling into the summer and beyond, it was easy to forget that sixth year was an exciting turning point for other reasons. The results of the OWL exams had been sent out towards the end of the break, spreading satisfaction and disappointment alike to the rising sixth years of Hogwarts. The grades themselves would have been enough excitement, considering how much effort had gone into both classes and tests the year before, but they brought with them the additional importance of NEWT class selection. Most of the sixth years already had a pretty good idea of which classes they wanted to continue taking at the NEWT level even before receiving their results, but the scores had the final say. For many, the OWL letters simply provided confirmation of what they already knew, tests they were confident they had passed with flying colors or tests which they already knew they had failed miserably. But there could be surprises, some more pleasant than others. Remus had been very disappointed in his Acceptable for Arithmancy, which would not be enough to let him take the class at a NEWT level. That exam had taken place the afternoon before the full moon and he had already been feeling unwell at the time; he had suspected that his preoccupation would be reflected in his performance, but had hoped for a little higher. In contrast, Severus had been pleasantly surprised to see that he had managed an Outstanding in Care of Magical Creatures, when he had thought that he would get an Exceeds Expectations. He had never liked the class too much, and still intended to drop it for sixth year, but it was nice to see that all the studying had paid off.
By the time the Heads of House went around the Great Hall tables to pass out schedules at the beginning of term, there was little to discuss or approve in most cases. There were still the occasional students trying to get into a class they just weren't quite qualified for, though, or the ones who had to be talked out of taking too many classes or too few. When Professor Sprout reached Lily and Severus, she informed them before they gave their requests that Madam Pomfrey had agreed to host a healing club, so they might want to take that into account when choosing how many classes to take. The Matron had been unable to get permission to add an official Healing elective course, which made Lily grumble a bit, but at least this way they would be able to get some useful skills before graduation. Despite that, both Severus and Lily signed up for six classes. Transfiguration, Potions, Charms, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts were all required for Healing professionally, and neither one was willing to drop Ancient Runes despite Sprout's halfhearted warning that six NEWT classes might be a lot. She didn't really doubt that her Badgers could do it, but she did have an obligation as their Head of House to let them know what they were getting themselves into.
Over at the Gryffindor table, Professor McGonagall signed off on James and Sirius's schedules without any argument. Both boys had chosen to continue with Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Potions. Sirius had only narrowly managed the Exceeds Expectations that Slughorn required for NEWT potions, but both Gryffindors were otherwise perfectly qualified for their courses. Remus continued with both Ancient Runes with the Hufflepuffs and Care of Magical Creatures with Peter, along with Transfiguration, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Remus had little skill in Potions, and less interest in Herbology, and with no real career aspirations to guide his choices he was generally free to take whatever classes he wanted to, for better or worse.
Over the next few days, it became clear why so many sixth and seventh year students limited their NEWTs course load to only four or five classes. The professors seemed to feel that they should immediately pile on the coursework at the beginning to make it clear just how difficult the class was going to be for the next two years. The mountains of homework seemed to say "You thought OWLs year was tough? Well get ready, because NEWTs are even worse." Many of the subjects had only a small number of students left in them at that level, whether because they were too difficult for most students to be allowed to take them, or because the students had so little time for non-essential classes that they were forced to drop anything unrelated to their future careers. Several were taught with all four Houses together for that very reason. After all, there was no point in offering more than one section of Potions or Astronomy if each one would have only a couple of students from each House. For the elective courses, which had always been much more niche and many of which had always had small class sizes, some now contained only a handful of students.
Some classes were still large, though, large enough to warrant multiple sections. Both Transfiguration and Charms were considered generally useful subjects, and most students were taking at least one of them, making it reasonable to keep it divided by House and offer multiple sections. Severus was glad not to share those with the Gryffindors; having to deal with James and Sirius in Potions and Herbology was already an unpleasant enough prospect. At this point he was not so concerned that the boys would do anything drastic, for James seemed to have convinced Sirius that it was better not to make waves right now, but there was still plenty of opportunity for minor tricks. But more importantly to Severus, Lily's tolerance for the Marauders' behavior was at an all-time low at the beginning of that year, and she was ready and willing to put them in their place by force if she deemed it necessary. The fewer classes she had to spend with Sirius Black and James Potter, the more likely that they would all survive the school year alive, with all their limbs intact, and with a detention record not too much longer than they'd had going into the term.
With political and societal tensions growing more strained than ever, an already powerful Dark Lord growing more influential by the day, and open war seemingly about to break out any day, there were few students interested in dropping out of Defense Against the Dark Arts, even before they had any way of knowing whether the newest professor would be any good. As it turned out, Professor Johnson was quite competent, if not as flashy as Professor Arratay had been the year before. He did a more than passable job preparing his students for their exams, managed to keep most of the students' attention most of the time, and was a fair grader, which sometimes was all you could ask for from a Defense professor.
Despite the initial changes in their schedules, which somehow felt like an even bigger upheaval than the start of electives three years before, the students fell into their new routine quickly enough. Remus was not taking the exact same courses as his Hufflepuff friends, but they still had four subjects in common (even though they were in different sections for all but Ancient Runes). The three students continued their habit of meeting in the library to study together, though they had long since expanded beyond simply working on their homework to hanging out even on the rare occasions where there was no work to be done. For Remus and Lily there were still prefect duties to carry out as well, meetings and patrols and making sure the youngest members of the school didn't do anything too outrageously dangerous. The new Head Boy and Girl felt that it was more important than ever to have prefects keeping an eye on things whenever students of different Houses were together without professorial supervision. There had been incidents, still few but growing more frequent. Muggleborn students being hexed by purebloods, or half-bloods who found the words "blood traitor" scrawled across their things when left unattended. Even Professor Johnson's classroom was vandalized once, after the news got around that he was a muggleborn himself, though the culprit was never identified. In the student-on-student attacks, it was rare that there was enough proof of blame for any of the instigators to be punished, and there was apparently little that the professors could do to stop it when they were not personally present. It often felt that there wasn't much the prefects could do even when they were present, but most of them did their best, with a few glaring exceptions mostly among the Slytherins.
A week or two after classes began, Madam Pomfrey's new Healing Club was officially announced, with flyers put up in all the common rooms and an announcement at dinner from the Headmaster. The Matron had been mentally prepared for the possibility that only Severus and Lily would show up, but was pleasantly surprised by the fairly large turnout at the first few meetings. The realization that many of the oldest students had come hoping to learn about battlefield first aid was rather sobering, though not too unexpected given the state of the world. Attendance fell after the first month or so, as students lost interest or found that they didn't have time for additional extracurriculars, but a core group remained. Lily and Severus were among them, of course, and they had dragged along several of their friends from Hufflepuff. It hadn't taken much convincing to get Remus to come; he hadn't expected to be very good at Healing, but was always curious to learn more about any subject, and would rarely say no to spending time with his friends. He turned out to be not as bad as he had feared, as long as he didn't have to actually brew any of the healing potions on his own. Remus's skills, however, were no match for Lily or Severus's. The Hufflepuffs soaked in Madam Pomfrey's lessons and advice, and eagerly looked forward to when they would be able to start official Healer training after graduation. Two more years felt like an eternity, though judging by how quickly the previous five had flown by, no doubt it would feel like a blink of an eye.
The first few months of school sped by in a flurry of work (and occasionally a brief moment of leisure), busy and tiring, but enjoyable all the same. With everything else going on, there was little time to spend on extra research projects, but Severus filled the margins of his textbooks with scribbled notes on healing spells he wanted to develop, and potions he thought could be modified to increase their effectiveness. He and Lily had begun to quietly research lycanthropy, not wanting to tell Remus and get his hopes up, but certain they could eventually find some way to cure his condition, or at least lessen its severity. After all, surely every disease must have a cure, if you only knew where to look and how to find it. It was just a dream, then, and would be no more than that for a long time, but it was a good dream, albeit one born from worry. Remus still had not told the Hufflepuffs about the Marauders' animagus transformations, feeling that it wasn't his secret to share, so he was not able to explain to them the reason why his full moon transformations had suddenly become even worse than they had been in years. Remus wasn't sure whether the other boys would have agreed to transform with him if he had let them, but he had no interest in finding out. Before the first full moon of the school year, he informed James that he didn't want their company and refused to discuss it any further. Lily and Severus, unable to do anything but watch their friend suffer and offer words of sympathy, became more convinced than ever that something must be done, though it would be years before they managed any real breakthroughs.
But despite that, things were going well enough for all three friends, until the beginning of November. Tragedy struck at the end of October, though word did not reach Hogwarts for another day. Even that speed was due only to interference by wizards in the muggle postal service, who flagged the letter addressed to "Hogwarts School, Scotland '' and sent it on by owl. It was Professor Sprout who read the letter and brought Severus back to her office to give him the news and a shoulder to cry on. It was an accident, she told him gently, his mother slipped on the stairs. A neighbor called for help but the muggle healers came too late. The muggle aurors came first, and his father was so overcome with grief that he tried to attack them, and they thought he had a gun. When the healers came there was nothing that they could do for either one of them.
Sprout finished speaking, and Severus simply sat there, trying to understand what she had just said. An accident, she said, but he didn't believe it for a minute. Not a real accident, not a woman just misstepping, slipping on the stairs, falling to her death. It wasn't possible. Not if his father had been close enough to call for help, close enough to try to grab her as she fell, close enough to push her down the stairs. An accident. The kind of accident where a man hadn't really meant to leave his wife black and blue, his son with a red handprint across his face, a woman cowering in the corner trying to shield her child from any more accidents. The kind of accident where a witch couldn't save herself from falling because her wand was hidden in a drawer full of socks. The kind of accident that the police would never really believe, but would write in their report and no one would care. Just an accident.
Professor Sprout was talking, but Severus didn't hear a thing she said. Her words kept swirling through his head. An accident. A gun. But his father didn't own a gun. There had never been a gun in the house. No gun, and no accident. But two bodies, lying on the floor. And one boy left behind, abandoned. Alone.
But then he wasn't alone. A flash of color at the door to Sprout's office, a flaming red streak as Lily ran towards him, her arms around him. She was talking, saying his name. Severus. Sev, I'm so sorry. I'm here. She was crying, tears dripping onto Severus's robes as she held him, but his eyes were dry.
Severus couldn't say, later, how everything got done. Who organized the funeral, two unornamented pine boxes lowered into the ground in a rundown graveyard; who found Severus a faded black suit to wear; who gathered the handful of people who cared enough to watch Tobias and Eileen Snape get buried. Fewer than ten people, even counting the old priest someone had found to mumble his way through a service. Widow Hanley from next door, who had watched Severus run around as a child and helped Eileen cover up her bruises before going out to the store. Two men from the local pub who would probably grieve more for the loss of Tobias's money when they gambled than for the man himself. They still grieved more, perhaps, than the man's own son. Professor Sprout was there, witch's hat and gardening robes replaced by a respectable black dress and peacoat. Lily's parents, returning to the rundown neighborhood they had worked so hard to get away from, not for the dead but for the boy who wasn't yet sure how to mourn. Lily was there too, holding Severus's gloved hand as he stood silently before the open graves. His eyes burned, but there were still no tears to shed.
The tears would come later. After he went to the house. After he saw where the threadbare carpet had been torn up at the bottom of the stairs to get rid of the blood that had soaked into it beyond any muggle ability to remove. After he saw his mother's wand near the top of the stairs, broken in two. After he saw the burn marks on the wall and realized that the gunshot the neighbor had heard was the crack of a misfired spell. There had been no marks on his father, other than from the policeman's bullet; his mother's final, only, attempt to use magic against her husband had missed him completely. It was Sprout who pulled him away, brought him back to where Lily and her parents waited outside; they had thought to offer him privacy but refused to leave him completely alone.
Severus looked back as Lily led him towards her parents' car, parked in front of the house where there had only rarely before been an automobile. He supposed it was his house now, there was no one else to inherit it. His mother had been the last to bear the name of Prince, and he would no doubt be the last of the Snapes. Perhaps it was for the best; neither one was a legacy he was overly proud of, though the magic of his Prince legacy had at least granted him a way to leave Spinner's End and his father. Why should he carry the name of a murderer, a man who had given him nothing but pain and grief his entire life? Better, perhaps, to carry his mother's name. After all, hadn't he always been more of a Prince than a Snape? His mother had often said that to him, back when he was a little boy and she still spoke of magic. That was all he had left now. Her magic running in his veins, and the name of the man who had killed her. A warm hand slipped into his, Lily leaning against him in the backseat of the car. She didn't say anything, but squeezed his hand when he met her eyes. Not alone, her look seemed to say, I'm right here. He returned the squeeze. He didn't think that he had ever loved anyone as much as he loved her at that moment.
The next two months were a blur. Professor Sprout brought Severus and Lily back to Hogwarts the day after the funeral, letting them spend the night at Lily's parents' house and picking them up in the morning. She had offered to let Severus take more time if he needed it, gently suggesting that it was important to give himself the space to grieve. He told her he would prefer to return to school. There was no point in staying away, nothing to stay for. Lily's mother hugged him before he left, said that he would always have a place with them whenever he wanted to visit. Severus tried to remember the last time his own mother had hugged him like that, and came up blank. It was better at Hogwarts, less complicated. Most of the students didn't know what had happened, other than perhaps a rumor that he had lost a parent, and the professors didn't bring it up. Sprout had quietly made it known to the faculty that it would be more helpful to the boy to leave him be and not remind him of his recent tragedy. So Severus returned to his classes, returned to his essays and spells and potions, focused on his studies. He tried not to dwell on the darkness of the past, and instead look ahead to the future. His friends helped. Remus had not been able to get permission to attend the funeral, but he was as supportive as Lily once Severus returned to school. The two of them together tried to do whatever he needed, be whatever he needed. What Severus wanted most of all was for things to return to normal, and Lily and Remus did their best to make that happen.
Severus managed to go days or even weeks at a time without remembering. After all, it wasn't as though his parents had ever written to him at school, so in Severus's day to day life at Hogwarts there was little difference between his parents ignoring him from their home and lying dead in the ground. There was enough to do, to distract. His days were kept full: piles of work that the professors assigned, evenings with Lily by the common room fire, helping Remus work on the spells they learned at Madam Pomfrey's healing club, or finding an empty classroom to practice the dueling techniques that Professor Arratay had taught the year before. The three of them went to Hogsmeade together, their planned leisurely stroll through the town derailed by a spontaneous snowball fight that had Severus laughing as hard as the other two, even when he somehow got snow down the neck of his robes. Lily insisted on buying both boys hot chocolate at the Three Broomsticks afterwards, claiming that butterbeer was not an appropriate drink for a snowball fight. Severus remembered Mrs. Evans saying something very similar (though her rejected drink was tea) after their own snowball fight the previous Christmas and hid a smile behind his mug.
There were limits, though, moments when he would remember his mother's broken wand or the coffins sinking into the earth, and things wouldn't seem quite so entertaining. There were days when Severus flinched every time a Professor called him "Mr. Snape," and thought again of changing his name. He had looked into it, a little, unsure whether that was something that you could even do if you weren't a lady getting married. Lily's parents, when consulted via letter, said it could be complicated in the muggle world, but Professor Sprout thought that if he waited until he was 17 it could be done without too much trouble at the Ministry of Magic. It was hard to believe sometimes that it was only a few short months until his birthday, though at the same time it felt like an eternity away.
But the end of the term was quickly approaching, and the denizens of Hogwarts once again began to dream of Christmas and a well deserved and much longed for break from school. Lily and her parents had, as usual, invited Severus to their home for the break, but this time he declined. He didn't think he was quite ready to face Mr. and Mrs. Evans and their inevitable well-meaning offers of sympathy and comfort. Severus feared that they might try to tone down their celebrations or constantly tiptoe around him in an attempt to not to make him uncomfortable, which would certainly have the opposite effect. He was not interested in trying to explain to the nice and functional family that he really wasn't all that sad or depressed about his parents' deaths. It had been shocking, of course, unexpected, sudden, and he did miss his mother somewhat if he stopped to think about it for too long, but his father's death hardly counted as a tragedy. The idea of trying to explain any of that to sweet, motherly Mrs. Evans, though, was unthinkable. Besides, Lily had passed on the news that Petunia would be bringing her boyfriend home to meet the family, and that was definitely not a situation that Severus had any interest in dealing with, now or ever. Lily offered to stay with him at school, not wanting to leave Severus to mope in the dreary castle by himself (and perhaps not being too interested in meeting her sister's beau either). Severus knew she would have been disappointed to miss seeing her parents, though, and it didn't take much convincing on his part to talk her into leaving. Lily still worried though, until Remus told them that he was staying at Hogwarts too, thereby solving what Lily saw as a problem and leaving her free to face the mixed joy and annoyance of holidays with her whole family, including the soon-to-be fiance of Petunia. Remus didn't give any explanation for his decision, in a way that made it clear he didn't really want to talk about it, and his friends respected that (Severus immediately, Lily with a bit more prompting from Severus).
With their plans for break settled, the most pressing issue became Professor Slughorn's Christmas party. The past two years it had been a given that Lily and Severus would attend together, while Remus's attendance was contingent upon the invitation of James or Sirius. This year, though, things were different. All three friends had been growing closer than ever, and it had seemed obvious in the fall that Remus would attend with the two Hufflepuffs. After the death of Severus's parents, he wasn't sure he was in the mood to deal with Slughorn and the often overwhelming social chaos of the event and suggested that his friends go to the party without him. He had already begun to pick up on signs that his friends might be interested in getting a little closer to one another (though neither seemed quite ready to admit it), and suspected the suggestion would not meet much resistance. As he'd expected, Lily made some minimal protests about abandoning him, but didn't put up much of a serious fight. She wished it would have been for a more pleasant reason, but she was far from upset by the opportunity of going to the event alone with Remus, and the Gryffindor felt similarly. They both reassured Severus, and anyone else who would listen, multiple times that they were just going as friends. Severus refrained, barely, from quoting Hamlet at them. "The lady doth protest too much," indeed.
But, protestations and potential blossoming romance aside, it was clear afterwards that Lily and Remus had had a wonderful time. Lily confided to Severus that James's face when they walked in together had been rather priceless, though she had been pleasantly surprised by his apparent effort in reigning himself in and not saying anything or making a scene. Perhaps miracles really were possible, and James Potter was finally gaining some maturity. By the end of the evening he had even been spotted dancing with Mary Macdonald from Gryffindor, and Lily dared to hope that his long standing infatuation with her might be finally moving towards its conclusion. Judging by Lily's blushes when she told Severus about her evening, her own romantic feelings for Remus seemed only to be growing, and the Hufflepuff boy made a mental note that it might be a good idea to check whether the Gryffindor was on the same page. He figured there would be plenty of time for that over break; Severus and Remus were the only students signed up to stay at Hogwarts that winter. Professors McGonagall and Sprout gave permission for them to visit each other's common rooms and lifted their curfew for the duration of the break, though it was made clear that they did expect them to sleep in their own dormitories. The boys spent most of their waking hours together that break, quietly reading side-by-side, wandering the castle, or just hanging out. Remus taught Severus how to play chess (the regular kind, the way he had learned as a kid from his muggle grandfather), and they spent hours playing game after game in the Gryffindor common room. It was a few days after Christmas that Severus finally brought up the topic that both boys had been thinking about for the better part of a week, one evening as they sprawled on a rug in front of the Hufflepuff fire, toasting marshmallows begged from the kitchen elves.
"So, I hear you and Lily had a nice time at Slughorn's party? She said she had a lot of fun dancing with you." Severus winced, hoping his lack of subtlety hadn't been as glaring as he suspected it had been. It had never exactly been his strong suit. He pretended to focus on keeping his marshmallow from catching on fire, looking at Remus out of the corner of his eye.
"Yeah, it was really great!" Remus started enthusiastically, then hesitated. He sat upright, seeming suddenly uncertain. "Hey, um, Severus, can I ask you something?"
"Sure, what's up?" Severus turned back towards his friend. "Is this about the party?"
Remus winced. "Kind of? Er, not exactly. I mean, it's about Lily. Do you, uh, do you think she likes me?"
Severus's brow wrinkled in confusion. "Of course she likes you."
"No, I mean, I know she likes me, but do you think she likes me?" Remus blurted it out, a little shocked by his own directness. He could feel his cheeks heating up and hoped desperately that Severus wouldn't notice in the flickering light of the flames.
Understanding dawned on Severus. Finally they were getting somewhere. "Oh! Yeah. Remus, Lily more than likes you."
"And you're...okay with that?" Remus seemed even less confident now. "I, I know you two are really close, and I don't want to step on your toes or anything...but you've had six years to make a move and — and I'm getting the sense you maybe aren't actually interested in her like that?"
"What, dating, and kissing, and all that?" Severus made a face. "Yeah, not so much. She's my best friend. I love her more than anything, but — not the way you do, I think."
"You're sure? So, you maybe wouldn't mind if I asked her out? On, on a real date?" Remus sounded hopeful, but still looked a little worried that Severus might jump up and start hexing him at any moment, or at least throw a marshmallow at his head.
"It's not like that's my choice, it's up to Lily. But if anyone asks, I'd sure as hell vote for you over Potter!" Severus grinned.
"Gee, thanks for that ringing endorsement. How can I possibly handle your excitement?" Though his tone was wry, Remus was smiling now too, and it was clear that a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. His tone became more serious when he spoke again. "Hey Sev?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. I know I don't need your permission, but you're Lily's best friend, and I'd never want to change that. You two will always be best friends...but I hope maybe you and I can be best friends someday too." Remus's voice went up a bit at the end, turning it into almost a question.
Severus snorted. "You're an idiot sometimes, Remus, you know that? Of course we're best friends." It was only as he spoke that Severus realized that at some point in the last few months, it had become true.
All too soon the solitude that the boys had been enjoying throughout break was disrupted by the return of their fellow students. No longer did they have the run of the castle, the ability to wander into each other's common rooms at virtually any hour of the day and never have to encounter another student. The halls were once again full of students rushing between classes and getting underfoot, the common rooms packed and lively. But Lily was back as well, with plenty of amusing stories to tell about Christmas with her family and the introduction of Vernon Dursley, so the return to normalcy wasn't all bad. A few days after the start of term, the sixth years were excited to find a notice posted with information about apparition lessons, available for anyone turning seventeen before the end of the summer. For Severus, though, that excitement turned to worry when he saw the twelve galleon fee required for the class. For a boy who had been making due for years with his mother's old school books whenever possible, wearing second hand robes and only having money to spend on nonessentials if he earned it himself, it seemed like an enormous sum of money to have to suddenly come up with. He agonized over the issue for days, snapping at Lily and Remus whenever either of them tried to bring it up, before it finally occurred to him to go to Professor Sprout and ask for advice. His Head of House confirmed what Severus had begun to hope, that while the price was set by the Ministry and couldn't be eliminated entirely, Hogwarts did have a fund available to help pay for apparition lessons which he was welcome to take advantage of.
By the time Severus's seventeenth birthday rolled around a few days later, he had mostly gotten over his annoyance and embarrassment at having to ask for help, and had returned to the excitement of his friends at being able to finally learn to apparate. Despite all the magic that they had lived with over the last handful of years and learned to use, the novelty hadn't entirely worn off, and there was something about learning to teleport that prompted childish glee in Lily and Severus. Remus, who had grown up around more magic than the other two and had even done side-along apparition with his parents once or twice, was not quite as tickled by the concept but was still more than excited to learn himself. All three were a little disheartened by their first lesson, in which none of them managed the slightest bit of movement (and neither did anyone else), but improved by leaps and bounds over the months that followed. By the time of the testing date in the middle of April, they would all manage to pass on their first try, along with Sirius and James. Peter Pettigrew, as always lagging slightly behind his friends, would have to retake the test twice before finally passing.
In February, not long after Lily turned seventeen (leaving Remus the only underage member of their group for a little more than a month), Lily and Remus officially declared themselves to be dating. They had been skirting around the issue since at least Christmas, while Severus watched with mixed amusement and bewilderment as they continued to pretend that they weren't interested in going out. Things came to a head with the February Hogsmeade trip, which despite not actually being on Valentine's Day was close enough to cause quite a few Hogwarts couples to get together or break up at the prospect. James Potter and Mary Macdonald, who had to all appearances been going out since Christmas, were among those who broke up in a panic at the prospect of going to Hogsmeade together and making things seem too serious. Remus and Lily, on the other hand, were pushed to the conclusion that they should just go together and accept that they were now "officially" a couple, since they weren't fooling anyone with their "we're just friends" act. After all, as Severus pointed out before quickly ducking behind a chair to avoid Lily's halfhearted jinx, snogging while you were supposed to be on prefect rounds wasn't exactly the best way to convince the school rumor mill that you weren't a couple. He chose to opt out of that Hogsmeade trip, preferring to stay at the castle and read rather than third wheel his friends on their first real date, though both Lily and Remus had tried to convince him to come hang out with them for at least part of the day. All three friends were more than a little wary of how the budding romance might change their dynamics, though they needn't have worried too much. There would be changes, of course, as in all evolving relationships, some subtle and barely noticeable and others more obvious as time went on, but the core would always remain the same: three people bound together by love and friendship, bonds that are not easily broken or abandoned.
Other ties, though, are more easily severed, and much more deserving of such dissolution. Since his parents' funeral, Severus had grown ever more disinclined to keep his father's last name, and his seventeenth birthday in January had removed his largest obstacle to getting it changed. As spring break approached, little more than a week after Severus, Remus, and Lily passed their apparition tests, the Hufflepuff boy approached Professor Sprout with a more concrete plan, and a request. Severus had little desire to go back to his parents' empty house for the holiday, but instead wanted permission to leave school for a single day to visit the Ministry of Magic. He was of age, and his Head of House had little reason to object, nor any real desire to do so, and helped arrange for a round-trip portkey for him to use. Sprout was hardly surprised when Lily approached with a request to go with him, and gave her permission as well, though with an admonition not to make a big deal about it so all the other seventeen year olds wouldn't start asking to leave randomly as well. It wasn't against the rules, exactly, not when it was already an official holiday, but the professors didn't want to set too much of a precedent. Remus gave Severus his best wishes, but didn't accompany the two Hufflepuffs to London. The full moon was fast approaching, and he didn't feel up to a lengthy day potentially filled with bureaucratic nonsense. So it was just Severus and Lily who walked down to Hogsmeade on the bright April day, took a portkey to London with Professor Sprout, and made their way to the Ministry of Magic. It was the first time either of them had been there, but Professor Sprout helped direct them, and it proved to be not too difficult to navigate to the registry office once inside the Ministry. It was only after they entered the office, leaving Sprout outside, and walked up to a clerk's desk that they encountered the first minor hitch in Severus's plan.
The young witch behind the desk looked up as they approached, smiling at what she apparently assumed to be a couple of newlyweds, and spoke directly to Lily, ignoring Severus entirely.
"Congratulations, dear! Here to get your name changed after the wedding? It's always so lovely to see a wizard coming along with his bride instead of leaving her to deal with the paperwork on her own, you've clearly picked yourself a good one!" She beamed at both of them, now, already reaching for the forms.
For a moment Lily and Severus just stared at her in confusion, then looked at each other and burst out laughing. Lily regained her composure first, managing to answer the increasingly bewildered clerk with a stumbling explanation that they weren't married at all, and that anyway Severus was the one changing his name. They had to try several more times to convince the woman, who seemed quite willing to accept that a newlywed wizard was changing his last name, but didn't believe that no one was getting married, least of all the young people in front of her. After a few minutes of this, another clerk, one who seemed to possess more of both seniority and common sense, rescued them, sending the younger witch for a break while she took over.
"I do apologize for Amelia, I'm afraid she can be rather excitable. Now, what is the current name so I can locate your record?" The older witch settled herself behind the desk, quill and wand in easy reach.
"Snape. Severus Snape." It felt odd, realizing that this might be the last time he ever introduced himself that way. Lily, still standing next to him, squeezed his hand, seeming almost to have heard his thoughts.
The clerk muttered to herself a bit, summoning a stack of files from somewhere and leafing through until she found the right one.
"Severus Snape, son of pureblood witch Eileen Snape née Prince and muggle Tobias Snape?"
Severus tensed slightly, not sure what to make of the woman mentioning his parents' magical blood statuses, though he answered in the affirmative, it was him. Her tone had been neutral enough, businesslike, just reading off what was in the file in front of her, but it still made him a little uneasy to realize that things like that were apparently part of the Ministry's records.
"Very good. Now, understanding that certain family names cannot be claimed without proof of relation and approval from the family in question, what's the new name you've chosen?"
Again, there was that slight perceived emphasis, a reminder that a wizard couldn't simply take any last name they wanted, not if it might offend a no-doubt rich and powerful family. But there would be no one to challenge Severus here; the last Princes had been dead for years, and now even Eileen was gone, leaving no one behind to deny Severus his final revenge on his father. It would be Tobias Snape's name that died that day, denying him the legacy of his son's future.
He answered firmly, all hesitation gone. "My name is Severus Prince."
Author's Notes: As always, shout out to Rory for beta reading, and to everyone reading and following along with this story! Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought of this chapter. Did events happen the way you were expecting? Things will continue to escalate next chapter as our characters embark on their final year at Hogwarts and prepare for the future as a wizarding war looms.