Dear Ms. Trelawney,

I was delighted to receive your letter. Indeed, I am always glad to correspond with my former students. Your thoughts are quite insightful, and I would be eager to discuss further, perhaps over tea? I have several suggestions for points of interest it may be worth elaborating on and would be happy to support an academic collaboration. To that end, I extend an invitation to meet with me at Hogwarts this Sunday. If you agree, I will notify the gargoyles to expect you and meet you at the gates.

Sincerely yours,

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore,

Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Albus' owl arrived the very next morning after the attack on Diagon Sybill had written him about. Fortunately, he had acted on the information, and the casualties were far fewer than had been the case in Severus' memory. He and Sybill composed a gleeful reply that afternoon, mostly Sybill:

My dear Headmaster Dumbledore,

The conjunction of Mars with the girdle of the Pleiades makes this Sunday an extremely inauspicious date for any kind of new ventures. I myself shall be in great peril of grievous bodily injury from the slightest of accidents, while you risk turning friends to foes with the slightest of mis-speech. If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion for your safety, keep all spontaneous thoughts to yourself that day and respond where questions require answers only in quotations from Beedle the Bard or from Voltaire, in the original French. For my part, I fear I must decline your generous invitation or risk a catastrophe. I may consider a meeting at a more favorable time.

Sincerely,

Sybill Trelawney

PS: "In the fastness of a Stranger lies a fifth part of a most vile treasure." These words came to me in a dream the night before I received your letter. They mean nothing to me, but the Inner Eye moves me to share with you.

Albus' reply was equally prompt, and much terser than his first missive: Would Monday suit? - APWBD

Sybill's answer was initially in the affirmative, but she wrote again Monday morning to cancel the appointment:

Dear Headmaster Dumbledore,

I have spent a night steeped in horrors. I saw a great engine beat against a bridge in a storm. I saw a dark witch arise from the depths of the sea. I saw monsters hunger for the flesh of the young. I saw your right hand withering before the Mark of Grindelwald. I saw myself drowning in the shrieks of spirits and a hell-borne toad... I think you see why I cannot bring myself to keep our meeting today.

Sincerely,

Sybill Trelawney

The letters continued back and forth, Albus attempting to coax her to a meeting - anytime, anywhere, Sybill rejecting each offer for melodramatic and completely made up reasons disguised in the language of Divinations. Each letter was sprinkled with hints of the future Severus had told her about. Finally, they received Albus' thirteenth successive invitation. It was what Sybill had been waiting for:

My Dear Professor Dumbledore,

I was brewing tea when I received your most recent letter, indeed had just set the leaves to steep when the owl flew through the window. I knew the timing was no coincidence but rather a message. And so I read your letter three times while drinking the tea and then set the dregs to drain over the Hogwarts seal. While the leaves drained, I meditated to open my mind and the Inner Eye. When I then lifted the cup to read the leaves, it was extraordinary: a repeating pattern all around the cup of mountains, swords, chains, downward-facing arrows, and anchors. The message could not be more clear: should I journey to Hogwarts, it will result only in danger and unhappiness. It is the wrong choice, and that will not change. Thirteen times have you written me to request an in-person meeting, and thirteen times Fate herself has intervened to prevent it. Do not ask again. We must continue this alliance by post only. Please, in your next letter, ask questions of the Inner Eye, not of myself.

Regretfully,

Sybill Trelawney

PS: I brewed a second pot of tea afterwards, so shaken was I by the grim contents of the first. It was a pleasant herbal mixture to wash out the bitterness of the previous plain black leaves. This time, I was thinking about some of the dreams I had mentioned to you, whose meaning still eludes me. In this cup, I saw apples and pears that appeared rotten even for tea leaves, and a hammer of all things. After some thought, it occurs to me the "vile treasure" I once wrote of may relate to a long, rotten life? I hope the signs will mean more to you.

And that was that.


"Heads up, Sev."

Petunia took him by surprise whilst he was working out a first draft of another letter to Albus for Sybill to edit and transcribe. The older wizard had finally asked if the "vile treasures of the long, rotten life" could possibly be horcruxes! As such, Severus was focused on his work and not expecting the cloth bundle thrown at his head. It was only quick, war-honed reflexes that allowed him to catch it. He unfolded the bundle curiously to discover a set of high-waisted black slacks with pantlegs that flared towards the bottom, a button-down shirt with colorful, vertical stripes, a black denim jacket, and shiny black shoes with heels thicker than his thumbs.

"What's this? We don't have a gig tonight." Nor were these the clothes he normally wore to their concerts, though the style was similar.

"It's my birthday. We're going dancing."

He snorted. "Right. Happy birthday. Have fun. I'm not coming."

"Of course you are, Severus! It's going to be fantastic!" Sybill exclaimed, bouncing up next to Petunia in a clatter of beads. She was wearing three strings of stone beads around her neck in different shades of green and had two more necklaces in the same style wrapped multiple times around her wrists to create thick bracelets. Plus a couple of gold bangles and dangly earrings. There was the Sybill he remembered shining through. Petunia had at least taken charge of her clothing choices, he saw. The two young women were matching in satinny tops, miniskirts, shear stockings, and heels. The only difference was color. Petunia's outfit was vivid red to match her lipstick. Sybill's was green as her beads.

Nope. Nope, nope, nope. "You forget I'm officially sixteen. I'll cramp your style."

Petunia grinned. "On the contrary. We're going to get drunk, and if you're staying sober, that means you can watch our drinks for us and make sure no creeps put drugs in it."

Sybill nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I've heard dreadful things about men putting a kind of muggle sleeping potion into young women's drinks in order to have their way with them. I don't want any of that. If I'm trying any muggle potions, I want it to be the fun kind."

Severus almost choked. "Excuse me? The fun kind?!"

"Oh, you must know, Severus. Eric told me about them while we were warming up for that last gig. Let's see, there's one called Ecstasy, one called LSD, one called marijuana or simply weed, one called magic mushrooms, fancy that... He also mentioned 'hard stuff' but said that's addictive if you don't know what you're doing."

"No no no no no no no. No. You are not going out to get drunk and experiment with muggle drugs of dubious origin."

Petunia walked over and patted his cheek smugly. "Not if you come along to keep an eye on her."

... "Fine," he growled.


Going dancing for Petunia's birthday proved to be the very break they needed, to Severus' bother. It was in the golden hour: after Petunia becoming tipsy enough for her personality to turn charming instead of abrasive but before the underage curfew that saw Severus barred from the vast majority of dance halls. They ran into Eric who, besides knowing far too much about illicit substances for a nineteen-year-old in Professor Snape's opinion, also knew everyone in the local music industry. The boy grabbed Petunia's hand and dragged her over to meet one Ken Testi, verified music producer. Testi was to be opening a new music club here in Liverpool next month. The opening night performances were already booked, but the schedule for the rest of the year still needed to be filled. And no, it wasn't a problem at all that one of the band members was underage. The club was membership only but had the option of a junior membership, at a discount no less. Severus wouldn't even need a real ID once the group received their membership cards.

And so October first found the unlikely trio, and Eric, with front row seats at the new club, very much enjoying performances by The Runaways and the Sex Pistols.

Severus and Sybill both might have had miniature existential crises while John Lindon stared them down, screaming "No future, no future, no future for you/ No future, no future, no future for me" at the top of his lungs.

Petunia experienced some kind of epiphany during "Cherry Bomb," standing like a statue and staring up at Cherie Curie as if she'd never seen a more wonderful sight.

Eric once again proved extremely helpful in getting their group backstage to meet with the bands, Testi, and the other club co-owner Mr. Eagle. Petunia and Ms. Curie hit things off nicely; she netted them their hoped-for gig by teaching The Runaways lead singer "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." Both bands (over Severus' objections) trooped back onstage belting the chorus with The Superfreaks. Petunia ended up dancing with Cherie, Eric with the lead guitarist Joan Jett, and Severus hid behind Sybill's drums kit bobbing his head in time to the music.

"The Superfreaks is a great band name, lot's of character, but what's your stage name, Petunia?" Cherie asked, late in the evening as the bands were packing up their gear at last and Petunia, Sybill, and Severus were still lingering for some reason.

"Oh, er, I don't have one."

Cherie laughed, and Petunia blushed. "Oh, girl. Don't take this wrong, but you need one. I mean, come on, Petunia the Superfreak? Just, no."

Joan nodded agreement. "A lot of rockers either use a stage name or straight up change names like me. Joan Jett sounds way groovier than Joan Larkin, am I right? Sandy, Vicki, and Jackie all use stage names too. Cherie's just lucky her parents gave her an awesome name from the start."

Petunia nodded hesitantly. "I suppose... I've no idea what name to pick, though."

"Easiest is to riff on your real name somehow. Make a long name shorter, or a word it sounds similar to."

Petunia grimaced. "Petunia," was all she said.

The five glamorous rock starlets collectively paused. "I see your point," Cherie conceded. "'Tunes' is the best you could do, and it's kitschy."

"There's Nia," one of the other girls said.

"Not terrible, not memorable. Well, you could always match your bandmates. What's your name, again?" she asked, turning towards Severus. When he answered, all the musicians from both bands stopped to stare.

"Dude, did your parents hate you?" Steve Jones asked.

Severus considered this a moment, before answering, "Yes. Yes they do, now I come to think of it." There were a few startled laughs, but no one decided to delve into that any further.

"Well, what do you wish they had named you, then? Now's the time to rebel!"

Shit. What would an actual '70s teenager think was a cool name?! Severus quickly tried to sort through his memory of several decades of fads, both muggle and wizarding. Logically he might pick the name of a '90s muggleborn student - their parents would have been his age, after all. Kevin? Justin? Dennis? Colin? They were all so...ordinary. Then he realized he was thinking too long and just tried to remember which fantasy novels were published in the 70s. That would be a believable interest. Except every name he could think of was more wizardy than the most traditional Slytherin. Bad strategy. "Richard," he blurted, the name of one of his old Slytherin roommates.

He took in the unimpressed faces around him with a flush of embarrassment. "Elric?" he fell back on the least esoteric fantasy name he had thought of.

There was a low whistle from the background. "You're bad at this, kid. Try to think of something that's not an instant innuendo or just plain weird. Rockstar superfreak, not deviant or barbarian invader."

"What about you? I didn't catch your name either," one of the girls asked, kindly taking the attention off of him.

"Sybill."

Cherie smiled widely. "Now that is great. Two syllables, easy to say, but uncommon and sophisticated as hell. No notes. Sybill of the Superfreaks. Damn. Yeah, Petunia? Severus? Pick names to match The Sybill here."

"Ooh, Petunia, Tunes, if you go Greek, you could be The Muse!" Eric enthused.

"Love it," Cherie confirmed.

"Clio or Thalia could be the name you give reporters," Sybill suggested. "The goddesses of history and comedy, you know. They have the best names of the nine, I always thought."

"What do you do with him, though?" Steve asked, jabbing a thumb at Severus. "Muses and the Sybill were both under Apollo if I remember my fourth form Latin course. That pasty kid ain't Apollo. He ain't seen sunshine his whole life."

Severus sneered, for all it was kind of true. "Technically, my Roman name is already a fair match for her Greek one. I doubt most people in the audience would realize the difference."

"Oy, I literally wrote a song about how much we don't need the current oppressive school system, and I remembered that shit. Though I'll grant I didn't know Severus was Roman."

"Hm. Shall I claim a more well-known ancient ruler? Julius? Augustus? Menalaus? Minos?"

"Only if you want to sound a great, pompous prat, mate," Eric laughed. "At least pick a character you actually like."

"Socrates?"

"Double the pompous prattishness, I'm afraid."

"Fine. Daedalus."

"Who?"

"The inventor of the labyrinth," Sybill supplied.

"Only if you want people to mispronounce it 'diddle-us.'"

"Asclepius."

"Who?"

"God of medicine."

"Ass-clapper."

"...No."

Now Severus was getting irritated with the conversation. "Tantalus."

"Tantalize...that's not terrible actually, if it's with a theme. Edgy. Who's he?"

"A mythological Greek king famous for feeding his children to the gods, after which they were so repulsed as to relocate him to the Fields of Punishment, suspended by his ankles for all eternity with, ahem, tantalizing fruit and water just out of reach."

There was another collective pause. It occurred to Severus he had, sort of, just expressed an interest in naming himself after a particularly gruesome murderer. "It was a joke."

"Is there a Greek God of insufferable nerds?" Petunia asked caustically, glaring at both her band mates.

"Athena, I should think," Sybill said.

"Okay, forget the Greek stuff..."

At the end of the night, Severus had cemented a reputation for being painfully awkward in this new timeline, Sybill officially knew the most Greek mythology of anyone Steve Jones had ever met, Petunia had Cherie's home phone number, and Joan slapped Eric on the arse and told the club owners "Speaking of names, you should name the place after this kid! Eric's Club! Do you know how many cringeworthy girl-name-clubs we've played at? It'll be funny..."


The horcrux hunting hit a snag.

It was inevitable, he supposed, but things had trundled along so well for so long, he had hoped the plan would go off without a hitch. From Albus' last letter, the ring was destroyed, thankfully without Albus' aquiring a deadly curse this time. After just a little prompting from Severus via Sybill, Albus would soon be trading the sword of Griffindor for whatever it was Potter had stolen out of Gringotts in the original timeline - thank Merlin the sword had not yet soaked in basilisk venom or else Albus would never have given it up. The Hogwarts house elves were hunting for the one that was in Hogwarts (hopefully. Severus was giving the Potter brat the benefit of the doubt that he had, actually, shown up at the castle for a good reason). The snake didn't exist yet. The diary would logically wait until last, since even Albus would be hard-pressed to break into Malfoy Manor without calling attention to himself. The problem was the locket - neither it nor the potion were in the cave yet, though the inferi were. The hiding place was a work-in-progress that may never now be used if the Dark Lord suspected the location had been compromised.

And so Severus was reduced to relying on actual Divinations, spending hours and hours with Sybill Trelawney on the project for two days. She failed miserably to scry the locket in a crystal ball or find anything useful in tea leaves. They were currently trying Tarot. It was an inexact art. Something was clearly happening with the cards, Severus had to admit. The Emperor reversed cropped up far more frequently than was statistically probable, and that was obviously the Dark Lord. There was Death, both upright and reversed, which Sybill said was "weird" as it portended both change and stagnation as well as more literal meanings. The Tower reversed and Six of Wands were nice, indicating averted disaster and public victory. The Page of Cups was perhaps the most annoying recurrent card for Severus - he didn't like surprises, even happy ones. He liked to be in control. Because he was from the future and should be in control.

In the end, after she told him his aura was putting her off, he decided to leave the task to Sybill. She knew how to obfuscate when she wasn't sure, but she also genuinely knew what she was doing with the cards. Her problems with interpretation came when she lacked context around the question and answer, as demonstrated when Petunia asked her to predict the twists and turns on Coronation Street. Her predictions of Vera Duckworth appearances proved ten for ten despite her having no idea who the "Queen of Cups" was in this context. So Severus told her to make the most sense out of it she could and leave it to Albus to find meaning, just as they had been doing with their manufactured hints previously.

Was it wrong for Severus to feel personally slighted when Albus wrote back an effusive thanks five days later?

Dear Ms. Trelawney,

I hope this letter finds you well. I must thank you yet again. I truly would never have thought to look in such a place without your excellent advice! I did indeed find the item right where you suggested...

Where?! She didn't even write a place name in her letter! Whatever. One step closer.

"Sybill, why don't you try to get a read on the location of that horcrux in Hogwarts? That's the last one before Albus can confront the Dark Lord at Malfoy Manor."

"Nope!" Petunia interrupted the magicals. "Testi came through. There's going to be a representative from Apple at our next gig! You know what that means."

"Practice?" Sybill said, snatching up her drumsticks and twirling them.

"Practice! I'm getting the hang of guitar-bowing to mimic a synthesizer sound, but it's not ready for performance yet... If this pays as well as the last one, we could just get a synthesizer."

"Oh, no, Petunia, I love your creative acoustic techniques!"

Severus grumbled but got up to fetch his base. He couldn't use the Virtuoso charm on himself for another few months until he turned seventeen. So until then, yes, he needed to practice.


"Ladies and gentlemen! Raise the roof for our next band: it's a home-grown trio who I'm betting will be national headliners this time next year! We have The Philosopher on bass, The Sybill on drums, and The Muse as lead vocals and guitarist! Introducing, The Superfreaks!"

Severus hit his riff as soon as Testi finished talking. Sybill joined in counterpoint, curly hair flying around her with each beat. Petunia smirked into her mic. When she opened her mouth, it was more of a chant than proper singing:

"I want to break free! I want to break free!
I want to break free from your lies;
You're so self-satisfied, I don't need you -
I've got to break free.
God knows, God knows I want to break free..."

The effect was not of course the same, for Petunia Evans to replace Freddie Mercury. She had increased in confidence when she sang and sounded more like a rocker than a church girl now, but her feminine tones sans signature Mercury flourishes made the song less forceful than the original, more haunting. Severus was the only one who would ever know the difference in this timeline. He felt a slight twinge of guilt at the thought. This was theft on a massive scale, after all. It was only a twinge, though. Queen could aways cover The Superfreaks, and future Severus would find it ironic and hilarious.

Future-past Severus? Future-past-future? Stupid time travel.

Testi ushered a giddy Petunia as band leader to meet with the Apple producer as soon as they wrapped.

Severus spent the rest of the evening trying to keep any drug-dealing fans away from Sybill. And then away from both Sybill and Petunia, celebrating the victory of an offer for an album contract. He couldn't keep Eric away, unhappily, and the wretched teen must have slipped Sybill something. She was spouting pseudo-profound bullshit all the way back to the flat. He searched her handbag and confiscated an assortment of mysterious pills of various sizes and colors.

"Honestly, you have no idea what's in this shit or what it might do!" he snapped at her. Quite uselessly since she was already under the influence of something-or-other.

"Sure I do. Eric explained it all. The purple ones cause visions, which is of course very interesting for my profession..."

"Hallucinations," he interrupted, "not prophetic visions."

"For muggles." She shrugged. "And the other one sounds like a muggle version of Essence of Euphoria."

"If you want Essence of Euphoria, go buy it off the apothecary in Nocturne Alley. At least then I could tell you it was pure from looking at it! I repeat, you don't know what's in these! They could be laced with anything."

"You know how to judge Essence of Euphoria?"

"Potions Master. For seventeen years."

"Oh, so you could probably brew it then, too." Sybill blinked at him with her hugely magnified, hugely dilated eyes. Petunia grinned.

"No. No no no no no no no no..."

Author's note: I don't endorse partaking in any of the listed substances of dubious origin outside of the supervision of a licensed medical professional. But it was the '70s, so of course it was a thing, and Snape must play babysitter. Eric's Club is a genuine club in Liverpool founded in 1976, where both those bands did play opening night, based on what's available in Wikipedia. I don't know enough about the bands in question to know if the dialogue was realistic to the very real people.

"I Want to Break Free" released in 1984.

Thanks for the reviews! Probably one-two more chapters of this silliness, but I've no idea when.