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Chapter Text

In the small hours of the night, a man arrived at a house in Godric’s Hollow, and began to search. The house was half rubble now, empty of life, abandoned. The first corpse made him sneer; the second made him drop to his knees. He reached out, pale fingers barely brushing against red hair, then pulled away. His lips formed words, but he did not speak. 

Long minutes later, he stood, and looked around him. He saw the place where a child was not, and the place where the attacker had been, and a wand that should not have been there.

“Phoenix feather…” he murmured, picking it up and turning it in his fingers. With one last look at the woman’s body, he slipped the wand into his robes and left.

As dawn approached, the man knelt at a crossroads, facing east. He set the phoenix feather wand down before him, pointing to where the sun would rise, then laid his own wand across it. 

He waited, watching the horizon; in the moment that the first rays of sun crossed it, his gaze flicked to the wands, and they burst into flame.

They burned, and burned away, but the fire only grew larger, and the man’s eyes watered from its brightness as it took the shape of a phoenix, but he did not look away.

“Why do you summon me?” the phoenix said with a thousand voices.

The man did not flinch. “To save a life.” The first price had been paid; there was no turning back.

“Life is not my domain.”

“But change is.”

The flames grew brighter, orange shifting to blue, and the man’s face was even paler in the glare.

“What do you ask for?”

“The chance I once had to save her, the knowledge I now have, and the time to act upon it.”

“What will you give?”

Only now did the man’s voice waver, tears shining on his cheeks. “All that I am and will be,” he said. “All that I have, if it will save her life.”

“Then step into the flame.”

Chapter Text

Severus Snape burned until all he was was fire, and then until he was something new, or something old, and he could hear a voice, a familiar voice…

“...understand, my boy, that exposing Mr Lupin for the acts of another would not be just - and expose him we must, if we are to punish Mr Black as you desire.”

The fire burned out, and before him was an infant Fawkes, and Severus knew, all at once, exactly when he was.

“So Black will face no consequences for attempted murder?” he spat, his mouth forming the words he had long remembered. 

The headmaster gave him a sorrowful look over the rim of his glasses. “He did not realise the extent of the danger, Severus, and he is truly remorseful. He deserves a second chance.”

Severus’ lips curled into a sneer, but old reflexes jerked his eyes away, and he knew - the boy he once was, and the man he had become - that to say more was useless. “Yes, Professor,” he said, the words like poison on his tongue, and made his escape.

The years had dulled his memory of Hogwarts’ corridors only slightly, and he slipped through them unnoticed until he reached his hidden laboratory on the second floor. He knew the month, he knew the year, but he didn’t remember his schedule or the day of the week, and before he did anything, he needed to think.

It was the end of January, 1975, and he had almost seven years ahead of him. What was he going to do?

The problem was that Severus had never had control over the events that led to Lily’s death. He had played his part by overhearing and reporting the prophecy; mercifully, he could now undo that. But she was too bright and daring a Muggleborn to avoid the Dark Lord’s notice, and she had married Potter to boot. Even without the prophecy, she made a tempting target. He had no wish to silence her, and no means to affect Voldemort’s power. Dumbledore, perhaps, did, but he had proved himself a useless fool already. Severus would not bend the knee to him again.

He could not ask Lily to help him save her life. He would not ask her. Who else was there that would help him? He had no money, no resources except for his knowledge and skill. He had no allies except for Lily, and persecutors in Gryffindor and Slytherin alike. Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws would see only his House, and avoid him. Teachers would dismiss him. 

Except, perhaps…

“What brings you to my office today, Mr Snape?” Professor Flitwick said cheerfully, filling his teapot with a variant on aguamenti and offering Severus a tin of biscuits. “Still looking into variants on the Levitation Charm?”

Severus sat, his shoulders relaxing slightly. Flitwick was capable of immobilising anyone who attacked through the door behind him, and willing to. He was as safe here as he was anywhere in Hogwarts. “Actually,” he explained, taking one of the offered biscuits, “I was reading about time turners, and I have some questions.”

“I can’t say I’m an expert on them,” Flitwick replied with a smile. “More of an arithmancy topic than a charms one, but of course you can ask! What’s on your mind?”

Severus had carefully considered how to ask this. Time turners were a very domesticated sort of time travel compared to what he had done: safe, controlled, and creating only stable loops. “I understand the use of time turners to give yourself more time in the day,” he said. “But wouldn’t it be frustrating to be unable to change things? Surely people are tempted to go back and undo their decisions.”

Flitwick nodded thoughtfully. “That is, indeed, one of the chief complaints of people who use time turners.” He took out parchment and quill, and began to sketch a map, or rather, a winding path with occasional offshoots. “Let us imagine a person walking through a forest, one not unlike the one on Hogwarts grounds. As they walk, they gain knowledge of their surroundings.” He let go of the quill, but it continued to move, creating a landscape of trees, hills, swamps, and cliffs around the path he had drawn. “At some point, perhaps, they encounter a dangerous creature, and they think - if only I had taken a different route.” The quill marked five x’s, then put itself away. “Tell me, Mr Snape, what would have happened if they had turned away from the path we have drawn?”

“They would not have encountered the dangerous creature,” Severus replied, but in the large blank spaces of the parchment, he could see what Flitwick meant. “But without a more detailed map, we cannot predict what they would have encountered.” He could know a path that would lead to Lily’s death, but he could not know every path that might lead to Lily’s death, and he could not know how to avoid them.

“Exactly!” Flitwick beamed approvingly. “If you had the ability to change something in the past, as soon as you did so, the future from that point would be unknown to you. It would be almost as difficult to make decisions about your choices then as it is to make such decisions now , since you would have one path mapped, but no more than one. Cause and effect are so complex that there is no certain way of predicting how your actions in the past would change the present, and the only way to find out is to live them.”

So either he didn’t change anything for years, so that he could intervene at exactly the right moment, or he would have to accept that his knowledge of the future may be anywhere between slightly and entirely inaccurate. 

Flitwick passed him a cup of strong tea with a sympathetic smile. “Has Professor Slughorn spoken to you about your career choices yet?” 

Severus blinked at the change of topic. “He’s probably going to tell me to go work for an apothecary,” he sneered. Last time, that was exactly what Slughorn had done. The whole interview had taken three minutes, at most.

“An apothecary!” Flitwick exclaimed. “Goodness me, no. Not that there’s anything wrong with working as an apothecary, and I have no doubt you would be excellent, but with your talent for spell creation, you should be studying!”

Severus’ mouth twisted, and he took a sip of his tea. “I don’t think I’ll have the chance if I stay in Britain.” Almost everyone here had been forced to take sides in the war ahead: for the Dark Lord, against him, or his victim. 

“Then leave,” Flitwick said simply. He met Severus’ gaze seriously, setting down his cup. “I am quite serious in suggesting an apprenticeship, Mr Snape. A bright mind like yours should be put to use. You’re planning to take arithmancy next year?”

Severus nodded, silent in the face of this unexpected, unasked-for kindness.

“I’m going to write to some scholars I know who work with spell creation - and potions, it would be a shame if you had to give up one to study the other,” Flitwick told him. “I’ll tell them I’ve got a bright young man who could use a mentor, it’s not uncommon for me to ask for that sort of thing. And we’ll see if we can find a place for you to go after you graduate.”

It was a possibility he had never considered, between the Scylla and Charybdis of the two sides of the war. Was it truly possible for him to just...leave? “...I couldn’t afford it,” he said reluctantly. He couldn’t afford a pair of second-hand boots, let alone moving to another country. 

Flitwick shook his head. “An apprenticeship is paid for in labour, not coin,” he said firmly. “Food and board are covered by the master. The rest can be managed, I think, if need be.”

It didn’t solve the problem of what would happen to Lily. But it was a future he had never seen before. He had two and a half years until he graduated, almost seven until she died...surely he could work the rest out in time? 

Slowly, warily, Severus nodded. “Thank you, Professor. Could we...keep this private?”

“Of course,” Flitwick said, sympathetically. “No one will hear about it from me, you can rely on that.”

And strangely, Severus almost thought he could.

Chapter Text

“Sev!” Lily called out, catching up to him as he started up the stairs. “Sev, what the hell, you haven’t even looked at me in a day and a half!”

He didn’t dare look at her. Surely she would see everything, know everything - or if not everything, she would at least know that he was an imposter. How could he pretend to be the young, foolish boy who had not been estranged from her? Who had not seen her lifeless eyes stare back at him? No, if he looked at her, she would see tears or cold stone, and he didn’t know which was worse.

“Is this a Slytherin thing?” she hissed. “You said you didn’t care what they thought. You said that you were my friend no matter what. You - “

“Alright!” Severus snapped, equally unable to look at her or to be silent. “It’s - I’ll tell you, but not here. Something happened.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Sev, are you alright?” she asked in hushed tones. “Did someone do something?”

He choked on a bitter laugh. As himself, or him-he-had-been, the answer was the same. “Not here,” he repeated. “By the lake, after Runes.” He didn’t take Runes; it would give him time to work out his story.

He definitely wasn’t going to tell her the truth.

It was easier to avoid people, out on the grounds. Less people were there altogether, especially in this weather, but you could also see and hear further. Severus made it to his and Lily’s preferred meeting spot, where the lake met the rocky outcrop the castle was built on, and made a fire to warm himself as he paced.

He needed to avoid the Dark Lord’s service. For Lily, yes, but really because he could not bear enduring it again, knowing in advance how much it would cost him for so few and worthless rewards.

If the Dark Lord wished to recruit him, he did not have the power to avoid it.

Therefore, he must not draw the Dark Lord’s attention as a potentially useful recruit.

He had neither money, family, nor influence. He distinguished himself only by his skill.

Therefore, he must not appear so skilled that it made him interesting.

It would be difficult. He would have to act not only as ignorant as his fifteen-year-old self, but more ignorant. What skill he had already displayed could not be undone, but he would have to hide every new spell, every potions improvement. He would have to pretend spells taught in class were a challenge, instead of long-ago mastered. He would have to do so in a way that seemed natural compared to his previous skill levels, which had faded into memory. And he would have to lose duels he had the skill to win, and suffer the humiliation and pain that resulted. 

He had survived four years in the Dark Lord’s service. He could survive the battlegrounds of Hogwarts for two. 

At last, the hour passed, and Lily arrived, her robes wrapped tightly around her as she hurried through the frozen grounds. “Sorry I’m late,” she called out once she got close. “I stopped by the kitchens to get us some cocoa.” She dropped down on the log next to Severus and tossed her hood back with a dramatic shiver. “Bloody hell, Sev, it’s freezing! We couldn’t have met indoors somewhere? It’s nice and warm in the dungeons.” 

Severus cast a warming charm on her in reply. He needed privacy, if he was going to tell her this.

Lily rolled her eyes, but pulled her thermos out of her bag and handed it to him. "Here," she said. "You look like you need it. You've been sitting out here the whole period, haven't you?"

He transfigured two mugs out of the key chains hanging from the handle, passing one to Lily and putting his wand away before pouring out the still-steaming cocoa for them both. "Most of it, yes," he admitted. "Thanks." He almost burnt his tongue on the first sip, but it helped, sweet and warming. 

"...Well, don't keep me in suspense," Lily urged, when she worked out he wasn't going to say anything else. "What happened? Was it my lot or yours? Or something else? I haven't heard any rumours, not anything."

"You wouldn't have," Severus said bitterly. 'My lot or yours' - yes, that did sum up the problem. "The only people who know are the Marauders, the Headmaster, Madam Pomfrey, and presumably Professor McGonagall by now."

Lily's eyes narrowed dangerously, and her gloved hands tightened around her mug. " No one else?" she checked. "Not even their parents? Not Professor Slughorn? Severus Snape, what the bloody hell did they do now, and why is Dumbledore covering it up?"

Severus took a breath. He hadn't told her last time, too furious at himself for falling into such an obvious trap. "They almost killed me."

" They WHAT?!"

Severus rescued Lily's cocoa just in time as she jumped to her feet, eyes blazing, pacing furiously. "I am going to castrate those pea-brained, snot-nosed wankstains!" She whirled on Severus. "Sev, what did they do? "

It was a good thing he had practice controlling his expressions, or he would have been wearing an embarrassingly large smile. He'd missed her so much. "I noticed them sneaking off at times, and came to believe it was because of illegal activity. I hinted to Black that I knew about it, and he...taunted me. Told me how to access their hiding place, if I dared. And I fell for it, like a fool."

"It's his fault for luring you into a dangerous situation, not yours for being lured," Lily said firmly. "What they were doing...it really could have killed you? They're just... playing around with something that dangerous?"

Severus smiled thinly. "They have invested several months, from what I can guess, in developing the necessary skills to protect themselves from this specific danger. Their lives are not at risk. Only the lives of anyone who comes across their hiding place without having invested equal time in those very specific skills. If I had reached their location as Black presumably intended, I would be, at best , scarred for life. More likely, either crippled or dead."

The blunt summation made Lily go pale, and Severus realised abruptly that this was not the woman who had lived through the reality of war. Lily was only sixteen right now, and not yet familiar with violent death. 

"Lily, I'm fine," he said, softening his voice. "Sit down and have some cocoa, you look like you've seen a boggart. I'm fine. Potter spotted me on my way to their hiding place and got me out. I'm not hurt, they didn't even hex me."

"Didn't even - Sev!" She launched herself at him, flinging her arms around his neck and spilling cocoa everywhere. "Sev, you idiot, you think that makes it better? You could've died!"

His arms wrapped around her automatically, though God knows where the instinct came from. His neck was wet. Lily was...crying? For him. She was crying for him. If he had died, then, she would have cried. She would have mourned him. His hands were clutching her robes. When did they do that? Her shampoo smelled like apples. 

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, not knowing how to say anything else. “I - Lily, I’m sorry. I…” He took in a shuddering breath, trying to get a hold of himself. His voice was thin, yet somehow as heavy as a stone in his throat. 

Lily pulled back, looking worried. “You don’t need to say sorry,” she murmured, brushing a bit of hair out of his face. “ I’m sorry, for making this about me. Are you alright?”

Severus blinked slowly, his extra years weighing on him. “...I’m tired.” As the words fell out of his mouth, he realised how very true they were. “Everything I do is political. If I spend time with you, I’m a muggle-lover to my housemates and a sly interloper to yours. If I spend time with my housemates, my housemates think I’m sucking up to get influence, everyone else thinks I approve of bigotry, and the Marauders think I’m a Death Eater in training. If I spend time with non-Slytherins, the Slytherins think I’m a traitor and the others think it’s a trick. If I don’t spend time with anyone, I’m a creepy loner who can’t be trusted. It’s...” He trailed off, shaking his head. 

Lily took his hands in hers and squeezed them. “Well,” she said firmly, “if everything you do is political, then you may as well do whatever you want. What do you want to do?” Her eyes were still watery and her nose was red, but her jaw was set and determined.

It was such a Gryffindor question - or at least, not a Slytherin one - that Severus hadn’t even considered looking at it in that light. But the answer was the easiest thing in the world. “I want to spend more time with you,” he replied. “Just us, or with your other friends, if they’ll put up with me.”

Lily nodded firmly. “Then that’s what we’ll do.” Her expression morphed into a scowl. “And rest assured, I’ll be doing something about those boys.”

Chapter Text

On Monday, a huge grey owl with piercing gold eyes alighted on the breakfast table in front of Severus and held out her foot impatiently. She was at least twice the size of most of the birds in the hall by height alone, and her wingspan had to be almost five feet. Trying to control his face, Severus untied the letter from her ankle and unfolded the parchment to read: 

“Dear Mr Snape,

Filius tells me you’re a bright young man with a talent for innovative charms work who could use a correspondent, and given his skill with connecting students to mentors, I’m inclined to give it a try.

(Apologies if my English is a little strange - it’s my fifth language, and I’m not as fluent as I could be.)

If you give Jaskat something to eat and tell her ‘opperire’ (emphasis on the third syllable), she’ll wait until you’ve got a reply for me - I doubt the school owls would be particularly happy about crossing the North Sea.”

Glad of the opportunity to stop drawing so much attention, Severus passed the owl a bit of bacon and told her, “Opperire.” Jaskat swallowed the bacon appreciatively and launched herself off the table, headed (presumably) for the Owlery. Severus looked up at the Head Table, and sure enough, Professor Flitwick was smiling at him. Who had the professor told about him?

“Now to introduce myself,” the letter went on, “ and you can decide whether you’d like to exchange letters with me. I am Marte Nilsdatter, one of the masters at Dragehiet in Norway. Unless you read Latin, you probably haven’t read any of my publications, but I work specifically in spell creation and the interactions between charms and potions. My family has been loosely associated with Dragehiet for quite some time, so I did my apprenticeship there as well as joining the community once I had my mastery in charms. We all work across disciplines here, so in addition to questions on charms, spell creation, and potions, I can answer or find someone else to answer questions on arithmancy, geomancy, astronomy, transfiguration, duelling, enchantment, warding, runework, basic alchemy, and certain aspects of magical creatures - including, obviously, dragons. No herbology, though, and we’re all fairly practical around here, so none of the mystic arts. 

I understand you are to do your first level exams this year; what subjects are you studying? Are there areas of interest outside those subjects you would like to discuss? What type of spells have you been working on?

Regards,

Mtr. M. Nilsdatter”

Severus blinked at the letter, mind racing with all the questions it raised. What was Dragehiet? The name was familiar, vaguely, but he couldn’t place it. What connection did it have to dragons? Why were Master Nilsdatter’s publications in Latin if she was in Norway? What effects did charms have on potions? What had Professor Flitwick said that made someone so accomplished interested in writing to him?  

He didn’t have time to think about this now. He had arithmancy first thing, and he was still out of practice with the complex equations required. His questions would have to wait.

Lily hated the Hogwarts library catalogue with a passion, and Severus didn’t blame her. She was accustomed to the organisation of muggle libraries, with cards organised alphabetically by subject, then author. The Hogwarts library, as far as they could tell, was organised by a mixture of subject, language, book size, date of acquisition, author, and wherever things were last put. The catalogue was simply a large book listing all the titles they held and their location, without any sort of other organisation. Searching the library for anything you hadn’t encountered before was inevitably slow, uncertain, inconsistent, and frustrating.

Nevertheless, he and Lily convened in the library in their free period after lunch to find out what they could about the writer of the mysterious letter.

“So,” Lily said firmly, parchment and quill in hand, as Severus opened up the catalogue on its heavy wooden stand. “Our keywords are Marte Nilsdatter, Dragehiet, interactions between charms and potions, dragons, Norway...anything else?”

Severus reviewed the letter in his mind. “Interdisciplinary scholarship,” he commented. “And recent works in Latin, perhaps.” 

Lily nodded firmly and uncapped her inkpot. “Let’s see what we can find, then.”

He skimmed the catalogue, page after page, calling out potentially useful titles as he went for Lily to write down. By the end, they had a list of fifty or so, but there were a few that stood out, and that, they decided, was where they would start.

“Whatever Res Dragehietis is, there’s a lot of it,” Severus commented. Each book in the catalogue contained five volumes, apparently, and the most recent one was ‘Res Dragehietis, Vol. 380-385’. 

Lily frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense, since Master Nilsdatter thought we’d have heard of it. How about I pick up the latest one of those and a Latin dictionary, and you can get the one on dragon reserves and European Centres of Magical Learning. ”

Dragon Reserves from Norway to New Zealand did, as it turned out, mention Dragehiet, which technically administered the Norwegian Dragon Reserve in the Saltfjellet mountains - except that when people talked about the dragon reserve, they thought of Dragehiet first, and the Reserve second.

European Centres of Magical Learning had far more detail - an entire chapter on Dragehiet. It was, apparently, a multidisciplinary research and teaching institution that predated Hogwarts, one of the most prestigious such institutions the world.

“Sev, look at this!” Lily exclaimed, pointing at the list of famous masters who had taught at Dragehiet, their time there, and their specialties. “How have we never heard of this place?” At least one in four was recognisable as someone they’d learned or read about, and ‘multidisciplinary’ was understating it. 

‘Dragehiet’s population is generally no more than fifty, although guests are accepted on a seasonal basis,’ Severus read silently. ‘There are between ten and fifteen masters at any time, each with one to four apprentice and journeyman students.’  

Professor Flitwick thought he would be accepted there? An elite, highly selective academy full of extraordinary scholars and inventors from all over Europe?

Lily had moved on to the Res Dragehietis , which they now knew was the semi-annual publication of the scholars at Dragehiet. Sure enough, over the last five volumes, Master Nilsdatter’s name made regular appearances, and Lily was already paging through the Latin dictionary to work out the titles of her publications.

Severus’ mouth was dry, and he stood up abruptly. “I’m just… bathroom,” he muttered, excusing himself. If Lily replied, he didn’t notice.

It took him several drafts to write his reply to Master Nilsdatter’s letter, most of them ruined by inkblots and crossings-out. The parchment was scraped thin and soft from erasing it by the time he was satisfied, but he did manage to bring something to Jaskat by the end of the day. “Take this home, please,” he told her, attaching the folded letter to her leg as securely as he could. 

He held out his arm, and she stepped on, gripping his forearm surprisingly gently, given her size. She was heavy, but he managed to help launch her into the air, the backdraft from her wings ruffling his hair. “Safe flight,” he called out, thinking of the icy winds she would have to navigate between here and the Saltfjellet mountains. Despite her wingspan, she swooped nimbly through the window normally used by much smaller owls, leaving only a few dropped feathers behind.

“Dear Master Nilsdatter,” he had written.

“My sincerest thanks for your letter; I am honoured that Professor Flitwick would recommend me so warmly to a scholar of your calibre. 

I am currently studying the seven Hogwarts compulsory subjects (Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, and History of Magic), as well as Arithmancy and Care of Magical Creatures. Next year, I intend to drop History of Magic, and possibly Astronomy, but otherwise continue my current course of study.

My primary areas of interest have been potions and what is here called ‘Defense Against the Dark Arts’, particularly defense against other wizards. I would be very interested to hear about your work on the interactions of charms and potions, as I am currently unable to read those publications of yours that are in the Hogwarts library. Do you believe it is worthwhile for my future studies for me to study Latin?

Professor Flitwick is aware that I am currently working on variants on levitation charms, specifically on modifications to ‘mobilicorpus’. One of my more successful experiments in the past was in creating a charm that masks the sound within an area with a buzzing noise for anyone who is outside the casting area that attempts to listen.

I hope that Jaskat weathered the journey well; thank you for letting her wait for a reply.

With sincerest respects,

Severus Snape”

Chapter Text

Lily had somehow persuaded her other friends to let him join their table in the study room next to the library on a semi-regular basis. Alice Fawley and Marlene McKinnon from Gryffindor, Julie Taylor from Hufflepuff, and Diane Martin from Ravenclaw now tolerated his presence with polite nods, though Severus was uninclined to test that tolerance when Lily wasn’t there. When he looked into the study room on Thursday after dinner, the group was buzzing.

“ - really duel James Potter in the Gryffindor common room?” Diane was saying as he came in. Severus paused, lingering by the door where he could listen in without interrupting.

“Actually,” Alice said smugly, “ Frank and I duelled Potter and Black. And won.”

Lily leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin. “They didn’t just win, they flattened them ,” she told them. “You know Frank’s been working on his wordless disarming - he’s so bloody fast now.”

“Mmhmm,” Alice agreed, biting her lip, her cheeks flushed. “We didn’t have long to strategise, he just asked me to cover him and wham! Black’s wand was out of his hand before he could cast anything , then he got Potter’s while I silenced them both.” 

“I got there late,” Marlene said, making a face. “Just after Alice cast - I thought Black was going to try to punch Frank in the face! But he just - “ She started laughing. “Bloody hell, he just - looked at them like puppies that pissed on the carpet, you know? And then did a body bind on Black when he moved, and just...waited?”

“God, I can imagine,” Julie put in, her eyes sparkling. “Those two have needed a comeuppance for ages. Did they yield?”

Lily nodded smugly. “They yielded. God, it was good. Literally just disarm and silencing charms, like they weren’t even worth a proper hex. It was gorgeous .”

Diane looked over at Alice and raised her eyebrows. “Was it just as good close up?” she teased.

“Oh, she stole Frank right after for a proper snog,” Marlene put in. “From the look on his face when I next saw him, he was very well appreciated.”

Severus slipped out of the room as the conversation turned to Frank Longbottom’s kissing skills, his mind reeling. This hadn’t happened before, surely? He would have known. He would have heard. So what had changed?

Through careful investigation, Severus eventually managed to piece together the sequence of events. Collecting gossip wasn’t his specialty, but he was a competent eavesdropper, and the duel was big news.

At the end of classes that day, McGonagall had sent Evelyn Smith to get Potter and Black and send them up to the headmaster’s office.

Patrick Thorne swore he’d heard the teachers talking at dinner about Lord Potter visiting.

Theodolphus Burke and Octavia Flint had seen Black pacing back and forth at the bottom of the headmaster’s stairs, scowling. 

Silas Selwyn had shown up to the Hospital Wing because he’d run into Black and Potter on the route between the headmaster’s office and Gryffindor Tower, and Black had hexed him with something he didn’t know how to undo. (The specific hex changed with every telling.)

The card-playing nuns that shared a corridor with the Fat Lady were telling Sir Leopold near the Dark Tower how Potter and Black had stormed into the Gryffindor common room and started yelling at Lily Evans for snitching before the portrait even closed behind them.

But after that, everyone told the same sequence of events: Frank Longbottom had interfered, saying that he had written to Lord Potter, because their behaviour was a disgrace to Gryffindor House. 

Severus managed to corner Lily in the library when she went looking for a book on Eisinga’s planetarium, pulling her into a more deserted section of shelving. “Lily,” he hissed, “what did you do?”

Thankfully, she didn’t try to dodge the question. “It was mostly Alice,” she confessed. “I needed to vent about the toerags after what you told me last week, and when I was complaining about all the things they’ve done over the years - not just to you, in general - she got really angry in that thoughtful, quiet way she does? And then she got out some parchment and asked a bunch of questions, and I think she spent the weekend making a list of as many of their 'pranks' as she could verify. She was fuming when Potter tried to flirt with me on Monday."

Severus frowned. He knew very little of Alice Fawley, except that she was friends with Lily, would marry Frank Longbottom, became an Auror and one of the Order of the Phoenix, and had been pregnant at the same time Lily was. It wasn't much to base a judgement of her character on. "Why intervene now?" he asked. "And why did Longbottom get involved?"

Lily half-shrugged, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear. "Alice and Frank...they're not like the rest of us, they grew up with all the pureblood kids. Potter's dad is Frank's godfather, apparently, which is why he sent the letter. And you know the Marauders never target them unless it's something actually light-hearted and funny."

Severus sneered. "You think Longbottom excused Potter's 'antics' because he didn't see the harm?"

"I think his mental image of Potter is based on what he was like as a kid, and he didn't realise how much Potter had escalated," Lily said, making a face. "I know, it's not good enough, but I think Alice's list was a bit of a wake-up call, and they both seem genuinely angry and ashamed. Frank even said as much, before the fight."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Severus muttered bitterly.

Lily nodded, wrapping him in a quick hug before he could object. "I know, and I don't blame you," she said. "But let Gryffindors police Gryffindors for a bit? Maybe it'll help."

Severus looked at her searchingly for a moment, then, reluctantly, nodded. "We'll see."

He wasn’t about to test the situation; he kept his head down and out of the line of fire. But he did notice that disarming and silencing charms became a lot more common among the Gryffindors over the next few days.

Chapter Text

The next Tuesday, in the midst of everyone’s Valentine’s Day preparations, Jaskat returned. She found Severus unerringly in the way owls always did, and politely did her best not to squash everyone’s breakfast as she landed. Uncomfortably aware of the curious eyes on him, Severus took the letter with thanks and a command to wait as he had last time, and tucked it away out of sight to be read later. 

Dear Mr Snape,

It sounds like you’ve got a full course load, though Hogwarts’ division of subjects has always been a bit eccentric. The idea of a curriculum based on ‘care of’ magical creatures rather than ‘defence against’ or ‘uses of’ seems rather impractical, but then again, you can’t exactly show the high-risk ones to teenagers. I’ve never understood the English category of ‘Dark Arts’ - it seems to be highly subjective, no matter how many treatises are written about it. Do you also study defense against arts which are not dark? A stunning spell is hardly dark magic, but it’s certainly inconvenient when you’re in the middle of something.

Latin is the language of international scholarship, and if you’re ever planning to travel, it’s extremely useful. Plenty of magicians can at least write in it, whether or not they speak any other language except their native one. And of course, the older the text, the more likely it’s written in Latin rather than a vernacular language. So when you’re able to spare the time, learning it is probably worth the effort. I’d recommend learning resources, but I learned it with Danish as my base language, which won’t help you much. 

Are you familiar with Pietrovich’s work on the minimum viable potion? It’s a useful foundation to begin considering the transformation effects during brewing, and that really is a key concept for understanding charmed potions. Van der Mersch’s study on elemental influences is also particularly useful. I assume you’re at least somewhat aware of the role of cauldron and stirring rod materials in potion effects? If you are inclined to experiment with charmed potions yourself (which I don’t recommend until you’ve read more on the topic), I recommend beginning with completed potions, as those are the least volatile, and doing so in a well-ventilated area.

I’m impressed that you’ve already created charms yourself - that’s quite an accomplishment! Do you begin with language or gesture? How do you plan out the spell effects? Have you covered Nicomedes’ formula in your arithmancy classes yet? Your sound-masking charm sounds useful, although fairly noticeable for an anti-eavesdropping effect. Have you experimented with different masking noises? 

Please feel free to keep Jaskat with you for a few days if you need time to answer this. We have enough owls here that I won’t be stuck without her. 

I look forward to hearing from you,

M. Nilsdatter

The letter was an excellent distraction from his classes over the next few days. Despite the challenges of catching up to a somewhat-forgotten fifth-year curriculum, it was immensely tedious to constantly censor so as not to appear worth cultivating. Nevertheless, the tedium was preferable to the alternative, so he kept his commentary to his notes, and when the class got caught up in something he had long since mastered, he occupied his thoughts with the letter from Master Nilsdatter.

Given the demand for owls to deliver cards, sweets, and gifts in general, Severus didn’t even try to get near the Owlery on Wednesday or Thursday. Jaskat was obviously very well trained, because she was still there when Severus finally brought her a reply on Friday evening. He could have taken longer, to do more of the reading Master Nilsdatter suggested, but he didn’t want to keep her owl for so long. He was fairly certain he would have another chance to send her questions, if things continued as it seemed they would. His preliminary thoughts would suffice, this time.

Dear Master Nilsdatter,

How are subjects divided in other places? I agree that ‘Defense against the Dark Arts’ is a very imprecise subject name, and appears to exclude useful topics. In practice, it covers knowledge of and defences against both spells (including stunning spells), and creatures (such as boggarts, grindylows, trolls, etcetera). ‘Care of Magical Creatures’ is concerned with those creatures that are possible to interact with safely, ranging from bowtruckles to hippogriffs. 

Thank you for the advice about studying Latin. I will do my best to fit it into my schedule. I also appreciate the other reading recommendations you gave me. I was familiar with Van der Mersch already, thanks to an essay I wrote on why pewter cauldrons are preferred for new brewers, but I had not read Pietrovich. How do elemental influences connect to charmed potions? Is it because those elemental influences operate on the metaphysical nature of the potion, rather than its physical ingredients, as charms presumably do?

I have found a translated copy of some of Pietrovich’s work in a magical theory compendium, and I’m surprised I haven’t heard him mentioned before. The difference between, say, a bezoar, a cup of tea with honey and lemon, and a ‘potion’ is something I had never considered before, but it bears serious thought. If I understand correctly, Pietrovich’s argument is that the intent of the brewer is the deciding factor, rather than the ingredients or the preparation process, and that the same process, followed by a muggle or squib, would fail to produce a successful potion. Has this been borne out by other scholars?

Regarding spell creation, I begin with language, plotting out spell effects based on an existing spell. Nicomedes’ formula is in the sixth-year curriculum, although it has been mentioned. I haven’t tried out different masking noises, but you’re right that it would make the sound-masking spell more discreet. Do you have any suggestions?

Regards,

S. Snape

He had made a copy of his reply on the back of Master Nilsdatter’s letter, so he would remember what he had said, and on his way back from the Owlery, he tucked it into a hiding place he had found behind a wall hanging on the second floor. It was little more than a niche in the wall, but it was big enough for a stack of letters, and there was no reason for anyone else to look. Here, where he was not under scrutiny, he could afford to use the sort of warding spells he could not in his dormitory, enough to be truly confident the letters would not go missing. An imperfect hiding place, but given his constraints, it would do.

Chapter Text

Severus was fond of Hogsmeade weekends; he was not fond of Hogsmeade itself. With his spending money a bare ten pounds each school year (saved up by his mother out of the grocery money; given to him five pounds at a time at the beginning of term and at the winter holidays), the village held few charms. But with the majority of the student body off the grounds, Hogsmeade Sundays were an oasis of peace and quiet each month, and he looked forward to them as eagerly as anyone else.

This Sunday, however, he was not spending in the castle. He had a task to undertake.

At nine am on a frosty morning, the walk to Hogsmeade required several warming charms, and few other students were in the village when Severus arrived. It was those students that he intended to investigate.

The shops that attracted student interest on Hogsmeade Sundays (Honeydukes, Zonkos, the Three Broomsticks, Scrivenshafts, Spintwitches, Madam Puddifoots, and so on) generally found themselves in need of an additional assistant to manage the crowds - but only for that one day a month. How convenient, then, that the student body also included people who were eager to earn some extra funds by working in a shop - but were only available for one day a month.

In his previous life (as he was increasingly thinking of it), he had begun earning money shortly before his OWLs exam by selling notes, potions tutoring, and later, potions supply. He could not afford to appear so competent, but money opened too many doors for him not to seek it out. Books, clothes, bus fares, potions supplies...he was not going to do without them to avoid notice.

So today he was scouting. Who worked in Hogsmeade that would graduate this year? Who was a sixth year that might decide they needed more time to study? Who might be starting to resent the loss of free time?

In Scrivenshaft’s Quill Shop, he struck gold. Careful monitoring showed that no assistant was present at all. He took a moment to tidy himself up, then put on his most polite, ‘respectable young man’ face, and stepped into the shop.

The owner (the eponymous Mr Scrivenshaft) was sharpening one of the tester quills when he came in, and looked up with a smile. “Good morning, young man!”

“Good morning,” Severus replied politely, wiping his boots on the mat. “It’s lovely and warm in here.” Which it truly was. If he stayed here long, he’d have to take his cloak off, and he was already removing his scarf and gloves so he didn’t overheat. 

“Well, a warm shop keeps customers browsing, doesn’t it?” Mr Scrivenshaft said with a wink, putting down the quill and tucking the penknife away. “What brings you here today? Or are you just having a look around?”

Severus gave a rather blatant admiring look at some of the decorative ink pots, then turned his attention to the paper stock behind the central counter. “I’m saving up for my mum’s birthday, so it’s just some paper today, I’m afraid,” he said. “A sickle's worth of the cheapest you have.”

Mr Scrivenshaft nodded, and pulled the stack of paper out of its cubby in the back wall. “I don’t suppose you’re thinking of getting her a quill case?” he joked as he counted out the sheets.

Severus smiled back. “If I could afford it, maybe,” he said. (Absolutely not - even if his mother’s birthday was coming up, he would never get her an expensive, obviously wizarding gift.) “But as it is, it’ll probably be sweets. I don’t suppose you know of any work going around?”

Mr Scrivenshaft looked him over thoughtfully as he rolled the paper up into a scroll and wrapped it in waxed paper, tying the bundle closed with string. “Here you are, lad,” he said. “I don’t suppose you know how to mend a quill nib? The proper way, with a penknife.”

Severus placed his two sickles on the counter and nodded. “I can show you if you like, sir,” he offered. “On one of the testers?”

“Put that in your bag and pick a quill that needs mending while I put this away,” Mr Scrivenshaft said, taking the money and moving to the cash register. “I’ll bring you a knife in a moment.”

Severus knew well enough that picking the quill was its own test. Which of them needed mending? It was the beginning of the day, so they would have seen little use, and Mr Scrivenshaft had obviously been working on them to pass the morning. Careful inspection revealed that one of the crow-feather quills was worn down on the left side of the nib and needed to be trimmed.

By the time he made his choice, Mr Scrivenshaft was watching him, and he proffered the penknife handle first. “Just use the board with the test parchment to cut it on,” he said, and Severus nodded with a quiet ‘thank you’.

He felt as much tension as if he were in an exam room, but ingredient preparation had long since trained his hand and eye for precise knife work, and it took less than a minute to have the nib neat and symmetrical once more.

He offered it to Mr Scrivenshaft, who took the quill and examined it closely. “Not bad,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, lad: my usual boy took the day off to spend with his girlfriend. If you’ll fill in for him, I’ll pay you the same rates - a galleon for the day. Now until five, with half an hour for lunch. Fair?”

“Fair,” Severus agreed. That was five pounds or so in muggle money - essentially six months' funds earned in a day for him, and a fair day's wage for anyone else. “Thank you, sir.”

Scrivenshaft nodded and held out his hand to shake. “What’s your name, lad?”

Severus shook. “Severus Snape, sir,” he said. “Where should I put my things?”

Chapter Text

As Severus turned down the next aisle of shelves, he caught sight of the full moon through the narrow library windows and flinched. 

It was a deeply ingrained aversion by now, though he had worked to counter it. He no longer recoiled from moonlight, and a gibbous moon he could bear, but the sight of the full moon still made him tense with remembered terror. Terror that, he realised, was far closer to him now than it had been the last time he had seen a full moon. 

Six weeks ago.

Six years from now.

Eighty months. 

Almost two and a half thousand days. He would need parchment and quill to calculate it more precisely. 

However you measured it, the time was both indulgently long and terrifyingly brief. Six years, perhaps, to savour Lily's company. A mere half decade, perhaps, until their time ran out.

Or perhaps it would be sooner. Perhaps he would be killed, or she would, far earlier than before. Even if they were, he would not regret his choice.

How could he regret anything which gave him even a few more days like the last four weeks had been? Days of someone to share his correspondence with, to argue about his homework with, to mock Professor Slughorn with. Days of Lily, vibrant and alive and not hating him . No price would have been too high.

And now he had six and a half years to delight in it. Perhaps more. Perhaps less. Perhaps, when he reached that Halloween again, Time would reclaim the future he had offered, and his own time would run out. It hardly mattered. There was so much else to survive, between now and then. And so much else to enjoy. 

 - END PART ONE - 

Chapter Text

It was strange, Severus thought grimly, as Professor Flitwick handed out the question papers and approved anti-cheating quills, that his OWL exams seemed no easier now than the last time he had taken them. Six years had worn away his memory of the questions, and he’d lost the knack of managing his time so he wasn’t caught with answers half-finished.

It had been differently difficult, this time. Memorising the ‘correct’ answers when he had learned more effective solutions. Sharing carefully censored notes with Lily’s Gryffindor friends. Seeing Black get silenced four or five times a week, when one of Lily’s friends heard him say something obnoxious. (Potter only slightly less frequently.) Returning to his dorm each night and casting deliberately mediocre detection charms to check whether any traps had been placed despite his deliberately mediocre wards. Occasionally enduring traps that he had not detected, and presenting himself to the Hospital Wing rather than reveal his ability to treat the results. Biting his tongue on comments in class. Translating his questions into Latin, dictionary and grammar by his elbow, to send them to Master Nilsdatter. 

“You may begin,” Professor Flitwick announced, and Severus turned over the question paper.

DEFENCE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS - ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVEL

Question 1: Describe the casting method, appearance, and effects of one of the following. List three ways to defend against it, and one way to treat its effects…

Two hours later, Severus’ hand was sore and ink-stained, but he could put his quill down with confidence that he had answered well. 

Professor Flitwick summoned their rolls of parchment to the front, then dismissed them - and Severus, keeping a careful eye on the Marauders, collected his bag and left in the direction of the library.

Everyone else was headed outside to enjoy the summer sun on the last day of their exams. The wind coming off the lake would be pleasantly cool, and there were plenty of trees and bushes to offer shade. But Severus remembered all too well what had happened the last time he had lived this day, and he saw no reason to tempt fate. He didn’t need to re-do that confrontation to prove to himself he had changed. The summer sun could wait.

Madam Pince ruled her domain with a stern voice and an iron will. If he was safe from harassment anywhere in the school, it was here, although he had minimal privacy. For now, that didn’t matter, particularly as almost no one else was there. He took a spot at one of the study tables in a corner and emptied out his bag (or most of it).

Over the past month, Severus had been collecting paper and parchment that others had thrown away, before it could be disposed of by the house elves. The richer students were profligate, discarding parchment after two or three uses - Severus never did so unless he had scraped it clean so many times it was translucent. Paper was often crumpled up and tossed away when it was half blank, and last week he had found a stack of empty journals thrown out by a Ravenclaw who had too many of them to use. They were a true prize, and he had plans for them. But first, the messy work.

Each piece of parchment, Severus laid flat on the desk and cleaned with the parchment-scraping charm, setting aside those ones that scraped too thin for mending or trimming. The paper had all been flattened under a weight, and now he removed the ink with a charm he would need to be very careful to never point at a book. “Tergeo maxima,” he murmured, over and over again, siphoning the ink into empty potions vials. It was a horrible mix of quality and consistency, but he kept the colours separate, and he didn’t need high quality to get a benefit out of saving it. 

After the better part of an hour, his paper and parchment were clean, or close enough to it. Most of it, he would save for use next term (parchment didn’t come cheap, after all), but it also gave him supplies for experimentation. Sealing the ink vials carefully, he packed it all back into his satchel and took out his packet of letters from Master Nilsdatter, and the dictionary and grammar he had been borrowing for most of the term. Now for the more challenging part.

Opening one of his precious blank books on the table, he placed the grammar next to it, open to the conjugation tables. “Geminio verbum,” he said, directing the charm to the blank pages, and watched with satisfaction as a copy of the conjugation tables appeared. Yet copying page by page would be tedious for a whole book. He turned to the next page of the grammar and tried again. “Geminio verbum continuo!”

A blue light shone from his wand as he held the spell, watching the pages turn in sync, the blank book filling with text. He managed to maintain the spell for a full fifty pages before the strain grew too much and he had to end it. 

“Damn,” he muttered. There went his plans of copying the dictionary as well. He’d do the rest of the grammar, since he’d started it and it would come in handy, but he’d have to find another dictionary somewhere for the summer. At least there were likely to be second hand ones around, even if they didn’t have technical magical vocabulary. Muggles didn’t speak Latin, but expensive public schools and universities still taught them to read it. He’d work it out.

By the time he finished copying the grammar, he could feel a definite magical strain, so copying Master Nilsdatter’s letters would have to wait until he’d had a bit of a break. He took out a clean sheet of paper and good ink, and wrote,

“Severus Snape Magistrae Nilsdatteri salutem dicit.

“[I have finished my examinations, and I believe I performed well. Thank you for waiting until I was able to reply. I hope the school’s owl arrived safely. Unfortunately, I cannot send or receive owls’ messages during the summer. I hope that you will write to me in September. I will have practiced Latin.]”

That much was as much as he felt like trying to translate, particularly given how stilted his sentences were because of his limited knowledge. In English, he added,

“I have been immensely grateful for your letters this year, for your kindness in writing to me, and for your willingness to share your expertise. You have given me much food for thought, and even should you end our correspondence now, I am sure I will benefit for a long time to come. Thank you once again, and I hope you will give me an opportunity to learn from you further when school resumes.

Yours sincerely,

Severus Snape”

Chapter Text

Eventually, Lily tracked him down. "For god's sake, Sev, we've just finished our exams and you're still in the library? Come on, I'm taking you to get some fresh air."

"I like the library," Severus pointed out, but he did start packing up his things. Lily would get her way sooner or later.

"Variety is the spice of life," she quoted, grabbing his library books to carry them to the front desk. "Come on , Sev, we've got less than a week before we have to go home, let's enjoy it."

One corner of Severus' lips quilted with a hint of a fond smile. "I have to send a letter first," he warned.

Lily beamed at him. "The owlery first, then," she agreed. "To Master Nilsdatter?"

Severus nodded as he stood, hanging his satchel over one shoulder. "I need to tell her not to write me in the summer," he explained. "Can you imagine my father if Jaskat showed up at Spinners End?"

Lily made a face. "You'll be alright this summer, won't you?" she asked quietly, watching him carefully. "If you get really in trouble, you can come to me, and Tuney can go suck an egg. Mum and Dad won't mind."

"I'll be fine," Severus reassured her. "I don't plan on spending my days at home. I'm going to see if I can get a summer job in Diagon Alley." After two additional weekends filling in at Mr Scrivenshaft's, he had a job lined up for next term, but ten days a year at a galleon a day was hardly a steady income.

"How are you going to get there?" Lily asked, pulling her hair over her shoulder and starting to plat it as they walked. "We can't apparate yet, and no-one has a floo in Cokeworth . And it takes hours on the train."

"The Knight Bus is faster," Severus said. But more expensive. It was immensely irritating that he faced a summer of paying for the bus when he was perfectly capable of apparition, but without a license, it would attract attention and trouble. So it was three sickles a day to get there, and three sickles a day to get home, and if he was earning a galleon a day, a third of his pay down the drain. 

Lily sighed. “Do you think I should get a summer job too?”

“No,” Severus said immediately. “Spend time with your family while you can.” Lily’s parents were genuinely nice people, and he was fairly sure they had both passed away before he went back in time. He wasn’t sure exactly when, but it would still be too soon for her to lose them. When his own father died, he wouldn’t miss him.

They were still talking about summer plans when they arrived at the owlery, and Lily rang the bell for a school owl while Severus got the letter out of his bag. And of course, the owl that came down was one of the smallest in the owlery.

“I’m not giving this to you, Pippin,” Severus informed him. “It’s a long-distance trip, overseas. You’d hate it.”

Pippin, barely twenty centimetres tall, chirruped insistently and pecked at the folded paper. 

“ No, Pippin.”

Pippin sidled along the perch to be closer to Lily and cheeped at her instead. She sighed. “We’re going to have to give him a letter, aren’t we?”

Severus rolled his eyes. Everyone knew what Pippin was like. He was the best for in-school messages, always eager to carry them, and his long legs were surprisingly strong. But he just wasn’t built for long-distance trips or heavy packages, and there was no way to convince him of that when he wanted to carry a letter. “I’m not giving him mine.”

Lily laughed, reaching out to scritch Pippin’s head feathers. “I’ll just have to give you a message of my own then, hmm?” Pippin’s head tilted into her scratching, and his big gold eyes nearly closed with pleasure. “Grab me one of the little pouches, Sev?”

There was a covered basket of cloth pouches and ties next to the main letter-sending perch, and Severus picked out a small one while Lily searched her pockets for something she could send. “Oh, here we go,” she said, pulling out a pebble shaped vaguely like a crescent moon. “I picked it up by the lake earlier.” She balanced it on the perch, drew her wand, and carefully transfigured it into lapis lazuli. “There,” she said. “It won’t last, but Diane will like that.”

Severus passed her the pouch, reflecting that the Ravenclaw probably would, and Lily dropped the stone in before tying it to Pippin’s leg. “Take it to Diane Martin, please,” she instructed, and Pippin peeped loudly, then took off.

“He’s such a nuisance,” she said fondly, shaking her head. “Let’s try again. Arcturus!” She rang the bell, more insistently this time.

Arcturus, the largest bird in the owlery, swooped down to perch in front of them, the backdraft from his wings blowing Severus’ hair back. At three times Pippin’s height and almost ten times the weight, Arcturus was nearly as big as Jaskat, and was almost exclusively used for sending heavy packages.

Severus bowed slightly. “I have a letter for Master Marte Nilsdatter, in Norway,” he explained, holding it out. “May I?” Arcturus considered him, then offered one feathered foot, and Severus tied the letter on. “Thank you.”

The eagle owl had just launched himself when Severus heard footsteps behind him, followed by the sneering voice of Evan Rosier: 

“You realise you’re supposed to have your assignations in the Astronomy Tower, Snape?” 

He and Lily turned, himself wearily, Lily angrily.

“Then again, you obviously don’t mind getting covered in filth, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Severus gritted his teeth.

“You take that back!” Lily demanded, going for her wand.

“That won’t help,” Severus muttered, getting his own wand out of his robes.

Rosier scoffed. “Hiding behind your pet mudblood? I don’t know why I’m surprised. You’re pathetic. Purgos Vesicae! ”

Severus dodged left, Lily to the right, the sickly yellow light of the incontinence jinx passing harmlessly between them.

“Vespis oppugno!” Lily snapped, and a stream of wasps emerged from her wand, swarming around Rosier.

“Vespis exumai!” Rosier yelped, knocking back the swarm, then “Evanesco vespis!”

The wasps cleared, but Rosier was clearly worse for wear, and there was a pause as all three of them waited to see if anyone would back down. 

Rosier lost patience first. “Levicorpus!”

Severus stepped between him and Lily a moment too late, and he heard her yelp as he spat out a Conjunctivitus Curse so Rosier at least couldn’t see the effect of his spell. 

“I’m closing my eyes, Lily,” he told her before he turned around. There was no counterspell for the Conjunctivitis Curse, only a potion, and he could hear Rosier swearing behind him. “Molliare.” The stone floor beneath them cushioned, he released Lily, eyes still closed, and winced when he heard her land. “Sorry.”

A spell slammed into the back of his knees - they cracked, twisted , and settled, facing backwards and aching. “You’ll have to do better than spells from last year’s textbook to beat me, Snape,” Rosier spat. 

Lily must have dropped her wand when Rosier got her, and right now it was their saving grace. “Please don’t say anything,” Severus whispered, his face tight with pain. “If he thinks he’s won, he’ll leave.”

She looked furious, but kept her mouth shut as she got to her feet and brushed herself off, offering Severus an arm to lean on. 

“You’ve made your point,” Severus gritted out. (He’d endured worse than this before, but Rosier didn’t know that.) “Are you done?”

Rosier scoffed. “You’re a worthless, traitorous mudsucker, Snape, and someday you’re going to choke on it.” He turned, feeling his way along the wall as he left, and Severus counted to fifty before letting his shoulders slump.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “You shouldn’t have had to hear that.”

“ You shouldn’t have had to hear that,” Lily hissed, scooping up his bag and hanging it over her shoulder. “Are you going to let me carry you to the hospital wing?”

Severus considered his knees and nodded. “Keep me upright?” he asked. He hated being levitated.

Lily rolled her eyes, but nodded. “I can’t believe you just let him get away with that,” she muttered, as his feet lifted off the ground. She was kind enough to walk beside him almost casually as they went, letting him at least pretend that he hadn’t been beaten by a sixteen year old he could have disarmed and disabled in seconds if he’d used his true skill.

“I have to live with him,” Severus pointed out to her. “If he wins, he’s satisfied, and he stops. If I win, I’m a threat, and next time he’ll hit harder.”

Unsurprisingly, Lily didn’t like that reasoning much. “Is that why you were pretending you couldn’t beat him?” she asked. “Do you really think you can’t handle him? You could almost beat Black and Potter.”

“If he can’t beat me with fair play, he’ll do something else, and we share a dorm,” Severus replied with a wry smile. “Thank you for your confidence in me, but I’d rather be overlooked. Are you alright?”

“ I’m fine,” Lily said grumpily. “I hear that shit all the time. You’re the one who got his knees reversed.”

“They’ll be fixed soon enough,” Severus told her. “If you’re fine, I’m fine too.”

Chapter Text

The Hogwarts Express was leaving tomorrow morning, and Severus was packing his trunk. It being mid-morning, he had the dorm to himself - the others usually did their packing in the evening, except for Bulstrode, who simply tossed his things in shortly before departure and trusted the enchantments on his trunk to make them fit and keep them undamaged. Severus’ trunk had only a featherlight charm that he reapplied each year to make it easier to handle on the trip.

After five years (and more in his memory), he had the process refined to high efficiency. First into the trunk was his cauldron, as the bulkiest and most awkwardly-shaped item. Well cleaned and dried, it was lined with his winter cloak, which he then folded and wrapped around his more rigid and fragile school supplies. His brass scales went at the bottom, the weights poured into one of his herbology gloves to keep them together. Then, in another fold of his cloak, his collapsible telescope. His inkpots, cushioned inside his winter gloves, and his potions vials, rolled up into a bundle in his dark grey scarf. (A present from Lily, as were his gloves. Her Christmas present to him was almost always something warm - gloves, a scarf, socks.) His spare quills, folded into a piece of parchment, were placed at the top, and the rest of the cloak draped over the whole thing to cushion it.

Next, the books. He brought his old textbooks to school each year, in case they were useful and to keep them out of his father’s hands. Those and the novels he brought with him were stacked in tightly packed layers, his blank parchment pressed between them to keep it flat. Only a few were set aside for more careful packing. His mother’s pouch of gobstones was dropped on top, with about a third of his wizarding money hidden inside in a secret inner pocket. Finally, he folded his clothes (except for tonight’s pyjamas and tomorrow’s outfit) and packed them into the remaining space. His few toiletries and the last of his laundry, he could add in the morning.

Satisfied, he closed his trunk and locked it. The remainder of his possessions were too private, too valuable, or too useful to be packed there; for now, he gathered them up in tomorrow’s robe, shrank the whole bundle, and tucked it into his satchel. He would pack them properly somewhere he had more privacy. But first, he had a letter to read.

It had been dropped into his lap at breakfast by Arcturus, along with an unmistakably book-shaped package, and it had Master Nilsdatter’s seal on the back. He could have opened it then and there, but he’d found himself wanting to savour it. Now, in the quiet of his empty dorm room, he cracked open the seal and unfolded the letter.

“Magistra Marta Nilsdatter Severo Snapei salutem dicit ,” she wrote, though the rest of the letter was in English.

“Congratulations on completing your exams! Intensive examinations are a trial regardless of knowledge and skill level, but I have no doubt you did well. I look forward to hearing your results when our correspondence resumes in September.

The gift sent with this letter has three purposes.

First, to congratulate you on completing both your exams, as mentioned above, and the current stage of your education. The transition between what Hogwarts calls OWL-level and NEWT-level studies is a significant one, as for the first time, students have true control of what they study, and so their classes begin to reflect their true interests and capabilities.

Second, to assist you in practicing your academic Latin over the summer. Your skills have improved considerably, and I have no doubt they will continue to do so, but I find that language practice is always more pleasant when the topic is interesting.

Third, to inspire you towards further studies after your graduation. Flamel’s Works by New Masters is a series I recommend to most apprentices, and all journeymen, as it specifically represents the level of scholarship exercised by those who have newly attained their mastery. Nicholas Flamel has put out an edition every five years or so for the past five hundred, each one accepting only those works written by potions and alchemy masters who reached mastery since one year before publication of the previous edition. 

This specific edition, the most recent, contains works by those who reached mastery between 1967 and 1973, including one of my past apprentices, Master Szarlota Szymańska. Szarlota has made a particular study of the qualities of dragon ‘bile’ in various species, and shares here her recommendations for containing and handling it. (Dragon bile is not true bile, being produced by an organ unique to dragons, and having similarly unique qualities. It is the most volatile substance produced by any species I am aware of, and is almost always destroyed during the butchering process for safety reasons.)

You should know that I would be extremely surprised if you easily understood the articles in this book - even disregarding the language barrier. They are all advanced work, written for those familiar with advanced work and the latest scholarship, and they cover a broad range of topics and specialisations. If you decided to pursue a mastery in potions, you would most likely not be working at this level for at least ten years. I hope that you will find the challenge stimulating rather than frustrating, and I encourage you to take note of any questions you have so that we may discuss them when our correspondence resumes. 

I wish you a pleasant summer, and look forward to receiving your next letter.

Marte Nilsdatter”

The book was bound in dark blue leather, the words Opera Magistrorum Novorum stamped in gold on the spine. When Severus opened it, he could feel the resistance in the binding that marked it as brand new, unread, the creamy paper still crisp and new-smelling. It was probably the most expensive gift he had ever received, yet its cost was only a small part of its value.

The contents page listed twenty-eight chapters, and his familiarity with Latin was just enough to tantalise him as he guessed at their topics. When he leafed through the first chapter, he saw pages thick with text in two dense columns, followed by a long list of other texts the author had presumably been informed by. 

This was more than a book. It was a treasure trove.

Suddenly, protecting his things took on far greater importance, and Severus gathered them up and hurried away to one of the lesser-used potions labs. There were no portraits in the labs to gossip about him, due to the risk of damage from potions vapours, and no-one was in this part of the castle right now. He set up an alarm spell to alert him if someone put a hand on the door, and locked it with a second-year spell. Nothing that would give him away, but enough to give him time to react.

On the floor behind the teacher’s desk, invisible from the door, he laid out his things, the back of his neck prickling at the vulnerability of it. Nevertheless, it was necessary. He had spellwork to do to protect it all.

A stack of books. Paper, quills, ink, and pencils. A few handkerchiefs. A small pile of wizarding and muggle coins, and four pound notes. A pack of cards. His small sewing kit. And lastly, a disposable bic lighter.

The lighter had been his great innovation the summer after third year, though he couldn’t finish modifying it until he'd gotten back to Hogwarts and could do magic again. He had carefully cut off the base of the reservoir, emptied it, cleaned it, and used it to hide his most precious possessions.

Now, he enlarged it to the size of a loaf of bread, and took out each item to look it over. Eight books from Lily, well-worn and well-read birthday presents, a few photos of them tucked inside. He added this year’s gift, The Earthsea Trilogy , to the stack, and carefully put them back inside. 

A rolled up piece of parchment with his family tree, written in his mother's hand. The ink, originally black, had turned dark brown with time, but had faded very little. He looked over the names he had studied so fervently when he was last this age, and dismissed them. The Prince family held no interest for him now. He put the parchment back, and added to it the stack of letters from Master Nilsdatter. His book of copies would suffice for the summer; he wanted the originals better protected. The last one, however, he kept out, placing it with the book it had accompanied.

His final addition to the bic was some emergency money, tied up in a scrap of cloth. Two pound notes and a galleon's worth of sickles left him with precious little funds to spare, but if he ever needed his emergency funds, he'd better have enough to do something with.

Satisfied, he fitted the base of the bic back on, looked it over one last time, and undid his enlarging spell. It shrank to its original size, and with it, so did its contents - yet no spell would be able to reveal any magic on it, because there was none. For all intents and purposes, it was simply a used up muggle lighter.

His secondary planned hiding place was less secure, but could be accessed during the summer when he couldn't use his wand. He cut a slit in the lining of his satchel and placed a minor expansion charm on the space inside - the sort of spell used to keep pockets from bulging. Into that space he placed his book of copied letters and the gift from Master Nilsdatter, before neatly sewing up the slit again.

To hide the remainder of his money - two pounds, sixty three pence, thirteen sickles, and nine knuts - he made a pouch out of a folded handkerchief, and used the same charm to hide that there was anything inside it. Finally, he dropped it in the bottom of his satchel, with the bic, a few scrunched up pieces of paper, and a couple of broken quills for camouflage. The sort of debris that ended up at the bottom of anyone’s bag at the end of term.

On top of it all, he packed his potions and charms textbooks, his copied Latin grammar, blank paper, inkpot, quills, pen-knife, pencils, and pencil sharpener. Useful things he’d prefer to keep with him, and in the case of his textbooks, that he’d prefer to keep out of others’ hands. He looked it all over one last time, checking that nothing seemed out of place, then gathered up his things and set about erasing his presence from the room.

Chapter Text

There were very few, Severus reflected, as he watched the ‘horseless’ carriages line up outside the Great Hall, who would have had the opportunity to experiment with what qualified someone to see thestrals. When he had lived this year the last time, they had been invisible to him. Now, they were not. 

The staff obviously went to some effort to preserve the illusion until loss of innocence broke it. The traces linking each thestral to the carriage behind it were invisible, though Severus knew they must be there. While some of the thestrals were calm, others stamped and bated with impatience, and the staff did not flinch. As empty carriages arrived back from Hogsmeade to collect another load, Professor Kettleburn was waiting to look the thestrals over and give them some water, but he did it discreetly enough that Severus wouldn’t have known what he was doing if he didn’t know to look for it. 

He hadn’t bothered going back to his dormitory after breakfast. He was already packed, and he had no interest in spending extra time with his dorm-mates. If he had to wait for Lily to be ready to go, he’d wait out here, where there was sunshine and staff supervision. 

“Four to a carriage!” Professor Cranshaw was calling out to the students as they emerged into the courtyard. “Once you’ve got a group of four, go to Professor McGonagall! Is anyone having trouble forming a group of four? Stick your hand up and I’ll find you a group!”

As each group reached Professor McGonagall, she confirmed their names and ticked them off in a book, then ushered them into a waiting carriage. A tap of her wand, and their trunks appeared on the luggage rack at the back. A brusque “Off you go”, and the thestral began to pull the carriage towards the Hogsmeade path.

Severus watched the more or less controlled chaos until Lily and her friends started to arrive. Lily spotted him right away and came over with Marlene and Julie. “Hey, Sev,” she called out. “Any sign of Diane? She was supposed to meet us at nine, but Julie went past Ravenclaw Tower on her way to Gryffindor and apparently she got caught up with something last night and had to finish packing.”

“We gave up on Alice,” Marlene added, swapping her bag to her other shoulder. “She was waiting on Frank, and he was waiting on Prewett, and Prewett was talking fireworks with Black.” She rolled her eyes.

Severus smiled slightly and shook his head. “It’s mostly been younger students so far,” he said. “I would have spotted Diane.” Diane had been the tallest in their year by a good six inches until one of the Hufflepuff boys caught up to her this spring, and even then, she was one of the tallest girls in school. 

The wind changed direction, blowing Lily’s hair into her face. “Ugh,” she said, spitting it out of her mouth. “Does anyone have a hair tie? How come this doesn’t happen to you, Sev?”

“Brylcreem,” he replied, amused. He could put up with his hair looking oily if it stayed out of his face, and long hair didn’t look messy when you had a long time without a cut. 

“Oh, just let me braid it, Lils,” Julie said, exasperated, after watching her wrestle with it for a minute. “This is the problem with having thick hair, you can’t fit it in a hair tie.”

Lily scowled, but gave up on doing it herself and turned her back to Julie. “I put so much work into this this morning,” she complained. “With the hot comb and everything!”

“Braids are practical,” Julie said complacently, efficiently gathering Lily’s hair into three thick sections. She wasn’t wearing a braid herself - her hair was kept back from her face with a teal scarf. “There,” she said a few moments later, tying off the braid and dropping it over Lily’s shoulder. “Next time, plan better.”

Lily gasped in mock outrage and spun, lunging for her. Julie danced away, laughing, and hid behind Marlene. “Traitor!” Lily accused her. “I thought Hufflepuffs were supposed to be loyal -”

“Hufflepuffs are supposed to be sensible ,” Julie countered, grinning. Unseen, Severus snuck up behind her and tugged on her hair.

Julie shrieked in surprise, going for her wand as she turned, only to find Severus standing with hands raised in surrender. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

“Mm,” Severus agreed. He glanced at Lily and quirked an eyebrow. “Sufficient revenge?”

“Maybe Severus is the loyal Hufflepuff,” Marlene suggested, her eyes sparkling. “And Julie’s actually a Slytherin who’s infiltrated Hufflepuff to lull us into a sense of securit-”

“Oh good, you’re all still here!” Diane called out, hurrying towards them with a sweater hanging out of her bag and a quill behind her ear, her curly hair all over the place. “I thought I’d be the last one here and have to track you down when I made it to the train.”

“No, that’s Alice,” Marlene reassured her. “Honestly, I think I’m going to have to go find her. If she’s still waiting on Prewett…”

“ One of us should wait for her,” Julie said firmly. “We can’t fit five in a carriage anyway - if Frank’s talking to Tristan, Alice and whoever stays behind can go with them.”

Marlene heaved a put-upon sigh. “Don’t you dare volunteer, Julie, you were ready before any of us,” she said. “I’ll go find them. You lot can be a matched set of House representatives and get us a good compartment at the other end.”

“If we go now, there’s a gap in the queue,” Severus pointed out. Several carriages had left since nine o’clock, emptying out the courtyard a little of the early arrivers. 

The idea met with general approval, and after a bit of a scramble, the four of them - Lily, Julie, Diane, and Severus - were moving smoothly towards Hogsmeade. 

“So,” Lily said cheerfully, “what are you all looking forward to this summer?”

“Going to the cinema!”

“Not having to climb stairs every bloody day.”

“Sleeping in!”

“Making my own tea, with an actual kettle, whenever I want.”

“Wearing trousers without getting funny looks.”

“Having my own room again!”

The girls continued in this way for the entire ten minutes of their trip to the station, listing all their favourite things about the muggle world and being home and school holidays in general. Severus didn’t contribute, but he listened with a slight smile. It never would have occurred to him to list the good things about going home, but it was nice to be reminded that the muggle world had its charms - the muggle world outside Spinners End, anyway.

Soon enough the carriage pulled to a stop, and they heard the odd duet of Hagrid and Professor Flitwick outside, accompanied by the thumps of trunks landing on the ground and the hiss of steam. Finding a compartment was always a nuisance, so Diane went ahead to scout one out while Flitwitck levitated their trunks down from the back of the carriage and sent it on to Hagrid. Eventually, Diane stuck her head out one of the windows, and the group levitated their trunks through the nearest door of the train, down the corridor, and into their compartment. Trunks shoved into the expanded space under the seats, bags tucked up in the luggage rack, and compartment door locked, they began to settle in for the long trip to London.

Four hours later, the train went into the tunnels that would carry it from the edge of London to its centre, and Lily sighed in relief. “I can’t wait to get off this train,” she complained. “It’s a very nice train, but it’s ridiculous that we can’t go home without coming all the way to London first.”

“That’s right, you’re in...Birmingham?” Diane replied, frowning as she tried to remember. “A hundred miles or so north-west, that’s got to be at least an hour to get there from here.”

“An hour and a half to Birmingham on the train,” Severus confirmed.

“And another half an hour in Dad’s car to get to Cokeworth, where we actually live,” Lily added, staring up at the ceiling. “If I have to sit down for another two hours without going for a walk, I think my bum will fall off.”

“You still haven’t got the floo at your place?” Marlene asked, standing up to stretch her arms above her head. “Damn.”

Lily scoffed. “You think I’m telling the Ministry where I live and setting up a channel for arseholes to get into my house just so I can visit wizard places for three months of the year? Bugger that.”

“I wouldn’t get the floo at mine either,” Diane agreed. “Even if it does mean school shopping is a bit of an expedition.”

“If I’m lucky, I’m going to be commuting to Diagon this summer,” Severus muttered. “I’m not looking forward to taking the Knight Bus twice a day.”

Julie winced. “You’d better have a strong stomach,” she warned. “I took the Knight Bus to Alice’s birthday thing last year, it was a nightmare.”

“Oh!” Lily clapped her hands. “Sev! Sev, I have the best idea!”

Diane and Marlene exchanged looks. “Uh-oh,” Marlene murmured.

“Shut up, you,” Lily said, rolling her eyes. “Sev, what if we go to Diagon before we go home? We’ll just get a later train, there’s plenty of them. You can see who’s hiring, maybe get something lined up if you’re lucky.”

It...wasn’t a bad thought. At least he wouldn’t be paying the cost of the bus for a day he wouldn’t earn anything. “We’ll have to warn your parents we’ll be late,” he pointed out. “And what are we going to do with our trunks?”

Lily waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll shrink them before we get off the train and unshrink them when we’re about to leave Diagon. The Trace doesn’t work there, we’ll be fine. And I can find a payphone to call home.”

Severus knew Lily probably wouldn’t be so enthusiastic if she hadn’t been so eager to take a break before getting on another train, but that was fine. If there’d been nothing in it for her, he’d have felt awkward about it all. “...I suppose I’d better retrieve my robe, then,” he conceded.

Chapter Text

The Knight Bus was just as bad as predicted. Three sickles for a jolting, noisy trip of unknown duration - he’d already been on the bus half an hour, and they’d dropped people off and picked them up everywhere from Aberystwyth to Aberdeen, and if there was a logic to where they stopped when, he hadn’t yet grasped it. He had a steady stomach, but when he was finally dropped off outside the Leaky Cauldron, he had to take a minute to get used to being on solid ground again. 

He checked his watch and scowled. Forty-seven minutes to get to London from Cokeworth. It was more than twice as fast as muggle transport, but if he could only damn well apparate, it wouldn’t have taken forty-seven seconds. 

Well. One way or another, he was here, and he was due at his new job at eight. He made his way through the back of the Leaky Cauldron, and took a right turn just past Florian Fortescue’s to get through to Fairings Square. At this time of morning, it was still quiet, but when he emerged onto Pivot Alley, the street was already bustling. The butchers had unshuttered their windows, the smell of fresh bread was floating through the air, and up ahead, Mrs Jemima Stimpson of J. Stimpson’s Fine Fruit and Vegetables was putting out baskets of potatoes, apples, and oranges on the street outside the shop. 

“Oh good!” she said when she caught sight of him. “Bright and early, that’s what I like to see. Here, give me a hand with this and I’ll take you through to the back.”

It didn’t take long to load up the display out the front, and Severus dutifully followed Mrs Stimpson through the front part of the store, behind the counter, into the back storeroom, and through a side door to a small office. 

“Pop your bag down here,” she said briskly. “Now, we’ll just change that robe of yours to a nice mint green and give you an apron, and then we’ve got orders to get ready. We’ve been terribly short-handed since what happened to poor David, and my Matthew’s out doing the early deliveries round the Alley. We don’t get many customers in before nine, usually, but there’s plenty to do.” She looked over his charm job on his robes (underage wizards were allowed to use their wands after their OWLs if they were on the job) and nodded approvingly. “Good, that’s just the right colour. Down you come, then, and let’s get you used to the layout of the place.”

Mrs Stimpson's idea of 'getting him used to the layout of the place' was to hand him a basket and read out orders for him to gather, item by item, while she weighed them, noted down prices, and packed them into cardboard boxes and paper bags. “We’ll have you doing the packing soon enough,” she told him. “So you remember, it’s heaviest at the bottom, softest at the top, and don’t let things rattle around.”

About quarter to nine, Mr Stimpson got back with his handcart, shrinking it down to put it on a shelf in the back storeroom. “Big order from Fortescue’s for tomorrow,” he reported, taking off his cap and wiping his forehead. “He’s trying something with lemon and elderflower, I think - he asked for any elderflower cordial you’ve got made up, up to half a gallon’s worth if you can do it less than two sickles a pint, or a quart if you can do it for five sickles. And then eight pounds of lemons, which I told him we can do for twelve. Oh, and when I popped through Fairings Square, Sadie’s got some lovely bunches of Sweet William - d’you want to get some for your posies?”

Mrs Stimpson narrowed her eyes, drumming her fingers on the counter. “I’ll go have a look,” she said at last. “I’ve been meaning to do the rounds. You start teaching Severus how to use the abacus.”

After the abacus, and the nightmare of calculating costs (“If it’s six knuts an ounce for potatoes, and someone buys a pound and a half, what’s the price in sickles and knuts?”), there was the morning round of deliveries by floo, and then restocking the displays that had been depleted by visiting shoppers, and all in all, by twelve o’clock, Severus was very ready for lunch.

Mr Stimpson heard his stomach growl and smiled at him. “Ah, you’d better be along and get you something to eat, hadn’t you?” he said. “You’re a growing lad, you need a good lunch. You hop along to Stone Soup, in Fairings Square, and get yourself something - and don’t you come back for at least twenty minutes, got that?"

On investigation, Stone Soup turned out to be more of a stall than a shop, easy to find by the queue out the front and the smell on the air. 'A Sickle A Serve', the sign advertised, and Severus saw customers walking away with thick slices of bread as well. It was impressively cheap, really, less than half the cost of a cheap lunch at the Leaky Cauldron, and Severus joined the queue with good grace.

"Ah, a new customer!" the stallholder said, when he got to the front of the queue. "Got a mug on you, lad, or will you be borrowing one for the day?"

"Borrowing," Severus replied, making a note to bring one from home next time. "What's in the soup?"

The man grabbed a thick-walled mug from under the counter and poured two ladlefuls  of soup into it as he spoke. "Oh, a little of this, a little of that," he said with a wink, putting a thick slice of bread on top of the mug as a sort of lid. "That'll be one sickle, lad, and mind you don't walk off with the mug."

Severus thanked him and dropped his coin on the counter, then took his mug and went to sit on the rim of the fountain in the middle of the square. From there, he could watch the shoppers and take in the environment that it seemed would be his, five days a week for the next three months. He noted a second hand bookshop, tucked away in one corner, and the florist Mr Stimpson had mentioned earlier, her stall full of bright pinks, purples, and yellows. There was a little tea shop, with tables spilling out onto the cobblestones, and a pet shop, with children clustered around the front window. As he drank his soup (a mix of the vegetables that Severus now knew were currently cheapest, and bits of meat he suspected were off-cuts, but no less hearty for that), three different groups of people met up at the fountain behind him. All in all, it was exactly the sort of bustling town square that Cokeworth didn’t have. You would almost think there wasn’t a war on.

The afternoon was much the same as the morning: restocking, fetching and carrying, making up orders, and another round of floo deliveries. Even after the shop closed at five, there was work to be done in cleaning up and putting everything away. By five thirty, Severus would freely admit he was exhausted. 

"You've done good work today," Mrs Stimpson said, shooing him into the back to hang up his apron and get his bag. "And there's more where that came from tomorrow, so you'd best get along home for your supper and a good night's rest. Here." She dropped a coin in his hand, a seven-knut piece by the feel of it. “Get yourself along to one of the bakeries and get a treat for the trip home.”

Severus didn’t bother turning his robes black again, though he wasn’t a fan of mint. He’d only need to redo them tomorrow morning. He did, however, brush them off before he bundled them into his satchel, restoring himself to a passably muggle appearance. The apron had done a reasonable job of protecting them, but they weren’t exactly pristine.

As he walked down the Alley, he weighed the coin in his hand and wondered if it was worth saving. Probably. But he was feeling the long day, and he quite possibly had a long trip ahead of him, and the bakery up ahead had the leftovers of the day’s bread and cakes going cheap. In the end, he split the difference - three knuts in his pocket, four spent on a leftover lemon tart. The pastry was a bit tough, but the filling was tart and sweet, and he savoured it as he made his way back to the Leaky Cauldron for his journey home.

Chapter Text

"Well then, lad, let's see it," Tobias Snape said, after dinner on Friday night. "Today was payday, wasn't it? Let's see what you earned working in that wizardy shop of yours."

His face entirely blank, Severus pulled a small pouch out of his pocket and poured it onto the table. Silver and bronze clattered onto the wood: nine stars, six sickles, twelve knuts. It looked meagre, as he had intended. He’d gone to the bank with the five galleons he’d been given, deposited two, got the remaining three changed for silver, and spent three sickles already on the bus trip home. (He’d had to resort to getting a pound changed to sickles and knuts yesterday to cover this morning’s trip.) He would not willingly bring gold into the house that his father knew about, and the easiest way to avoid getting caught in a lie was to put the evidence out of reach.

Tobias sneered at the pile of coins. “What’s this, then? Doesn’t look like much.”

“The silver coins are worth twenty pence and ten,” Severus lied. “The bronze ones are a penny each.”

Tobias’s eyes flicked over the coins as he calculated, and his hand slammed down on the table. “Are you telling me you worked a week for two and a half pounds!”  

Severus’ body cringed back, and he let it. “It’s good work, Dad!” he yelped. 

“If your boss can’t pay you an honest wage, he doesn’t deserve to have you!” Tobias got to his feet, swiping the coins off the table to scatter all over the floor. Severus watched as one of his precious sickles bounced and rolled under the oven, its shine disappearing into the dark. “Any decent, normal shop would pay you five times that at least . Martha down the road needs a shop boy - if you’re that keen to work, you’ll work for her.”

“I won’t quit my job,” Severus insisted, raising his chin. On another issue, he’d evade, he’d deflect, he’d appease. This time, he couldn’t back down.

Tobias advanced, backing him towards the wall. “If you don’t know what you’re worth, boy, I’m going to have to teach you.” His voice was low and dangerous, and he seemed to fill the whole room. “Until you quit that job, you’ll not eat another meal in this house! You think you can feed yourself on that pittance?”

Severus’ fists clenched. “I can try.”

The next morning, Severus left the house a little after dawn. His mother had been waiting when he got up, and had seemed completely unsurprised that he was planning on going to the Alley. They’d barely spoken; she had put a thick slice of bread and butter in his hand, and cast a charm on his face to hide the black eye, and let him go.

He went to the park a few streets over first, to check if Lily had left the letter she’d promised in their usual hiding place. As it turned out, she had, along with a chocolate bar, which he tucked into his bag gratefully. The small kindness was a warm counterbalance to the ache in his cheekbone, and he resolved to buy her something in return - sherbets, maybe. She liked blackberry ones, and they didn’t sell those in Cokeworth.

This early on a Saturday, the Knight Bus was empty except for the driver and conductor, and if you could ignore the rattling windows, almost quiet. The trip probably wouldn’t take long, without any detours to make, but Severus didn’t wait to open the letter.

Dear Sev, Lily wrote.

Petunia. Is. The Worst.

I thought she was bad the last two summers, when she decided she hated magic and would dramatically flounce out of the room whenever I started talking about school. But now she’s decided that magic is ‘uncivilised’ or something, and stays in the room so she can look down her nose at me and make disparaging comments. She’s exactly like all the snobby Slytherin girls, but in the opposite direction, and it’s driving me nuts.

Mum and Dad asked me on her behalf to swap rooms, because mine is a bit bigger and she’s the one who lives here most of the time, and I wouldn’t mind it, but Petunia is so obnoxious about it. And I think she took some of my lip balm while I was away, I definitely left some here and now it’s gone. Ugh. I’m going to end up putting frog spawn in her shoes at this rate.

BUT!

EXCITING NEWS!!!

RUNES WORK!!!!!!!!!!

You know how I ACTUALLY MANAGED a wandless lumos before we started cramming for OWLs? And how Master Nilsdatter wrote about how rune-type magic predates wands in a lot of places?

So I figured it was at least possible to infuse runes wandlessly.

And IT WORKS!!!

(After, like, three whole days of trying this week - I am tired .)

I made it out of salt dough, so it’s not exactly going to last a million years, and it’s just a light rune, but I have proof of concept! 

AND!!! 

No messages from the Ministry.

Wandless magic gets around the Trace. And I can’t do much wandless magic, but I can do a lot of things with runes, so all I have to do is practice infusing and activating them and I can do magic in the holidays!

I wish I had access to the library, I want to look up wardstones. We’ve barely touched them so far, and I want my family to be safe. 

Even my prig of a sister.

How are you doing? Is the job working out? It must be great, seeing the Alley all the time. Is the Knight Bus really as bad as Julie said?

If there’s any messages you want to pass on to the others, just let me know and I’ll send them with mine. We’re all using Muggle post except Alice. It’s a bit slower, but this way we don’t have to worry about people seeing owls in the neighbourhood at weird hours, and frankly, I’d rather not make the place I live quite so easy to spot.

Take care,

Lily

Severus kept rereading the letter until the bus jerked to a stop outside the Leaky, his mind turning over the possibilities. How much could be done with runes? He had never studied them in detail himself, only whatever Lily had shared with him from her classes. But as a way around the Trace...it had as much potential as brewing, and in some ways more, as the materials were easier to get. He would have to see what he could find in some bookshops later.

Unsurprisingly, the Leaky Cauldron was closed, it being five thirty on a Saturday morning, but there was a sign saying to ring the bell, so Severus did that. A few minutes later, a young man came to open the door, wiping his hands off on his apron. “Morning,” he said cheerfully. “Here for the Alley?”

Severus nodded. “I’m sorry to bother you so early.”

The man waved away his concern. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last,” he said, letting him in and closing the door behind him. “That’s what comes of being a thoroughfare.” He looked Severus over with a keen eye. “And of course, now and then we get people through who’ve hit a spot of trouble and need a safe place to sit for a bit, and we wouldn't want to turn them away, would we? There's always someone here to open the door."

It was a kindness, gently offered, and Severus felt some of the tension ease out of his shoulders. "I was planning to come to the Alley to look for weekend work, and I woke early," he explained. "I figured waiting at the Alley for places to open would be more interesting than waiting at home."

The other man grinned at him. "That it is," he agreed, "but how about you pull up a chair and wait in here, out of the wind? It'll be a couple of hours before there's anyone to talk to anywhere else, and in the meantime, I'll have a think and see if I can remember anywhere that's got work going."

Severus blinked. He'd planned to ask if he could use a table for a while, but he hadn't even considered asking for more than that. "...Thank you," he said. "I'm Severus. Snape."

"And I'm Tom," said the other, holding out his hand to shake. "Give me a shout if you need anything."

“I will,” Severus said.

When he left the Leaky Cauldron, he had a spending plan, a shopping list, a half-written letter to Lily, and a page of recommendations from Tom of places to ask for work.

Chapter Text

Near the end of July, Hogwarts letters were sent out, and the population of Diagon Alley boomed. It wasn’t so obvious at the Stimpson’s, but Severus’ weekend job at Faithful Family Pets saw plenty of children pining over the puppies and kittens. Mrs Stimpson told him to pick a day (that wasn’t a Monday) to take an afternoon off for his own shopping, and so, on the first of August, he met Lily in the Leaky Cauldron, and they set out with their shopping lists.

All those extra work hours had done some good - Severus had ten galleons to spend today, and while he planned to make the most of it, he could afford to spend the lot without any qualms. And he planned to, as his reward for six weeks of hard work and careful saving.

Severus looked much the same as he always did, though he’d charmed his robe grey for the day. (After switching between mint green and orange every week, it was starting to get resistant to colour charms, and the underlying black had looked a bit blotchy the last time he’d checked.) Lily, meanwhile, was wearing a blue and white polka-dotted jumpsuit with a huge floppy straw hat, and looked unrepentantly Muggle. She had freckles on her nose. They were very endearing.

“Well,” she said, hands on hips. “Where to first?”

“If you don’t have galleons with you, Gringotts,” Severus pointed out, amused. “But after that...junk shop?”

Lily rolled her eyes, hooking her arm through Severus’ and starting up the crowded street. “ Obviously Gringotts first,” she said. “I meant after that.”

“Of course,” Severus said dryly. “So, the junk shop?”

“The junk shop.”

As always, Quincey’s Junk Shop was a treasure trove. Lily and Severus spent almost an hour there, poking through discarded furniture, trinkets, clothing, and, of course, books. There was a bigger second-hand bookshop to visit later, but they were hardly going to ignore the books here because of that. Leather-bound histories, brightly coloured cookbooks, yellowing novels, a box full of magazines...they happily perused them all, then moved on to other corners of the shop. Lily found a bowl full of ornate (and very ugly) brooches; Severus found a silver-backed hand mirror with a matching brush and comb. Lily found a battered carpet bag with a big enough expansion charm to fit a coat-stand in; Severus found a portable writing desk that folded up until it would fit in a pocket. 

In the end, they both bought things. Severus found a heavy black wool cloak, in the old fashioned style with an extra layer over the shoulders, which was discounted because it had been moth-eaten around the hemline. On something of a whim, he also bought a small puzzle box with elegant inlaid patterns. Lily found a rune-carving knife with a small leather sheath for the blade, and a hideous framed cross-stitch of a cat. 

“Really?” Severus asked her as they left, packing the wrapped and shrunk cloak into his satchel. “I can’t believe you really bought that thing. What are you going to do with it?”

“Don’t you think it looks like Professor McGonagall?” Lily teased him, laughing. “Look, it’s the perfect colour. I can hang it up at home and it can look at me sternly and remind me to do my homework.”

“It looks diseased,” Severus said flatly, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I don’t think Professor McGonagall would be flattered by the comparison.”

Lily stuck out her tongue at him. “ I think it’s endearing ,” she said. “Come on, you said you needed robes too, didn’t you?”

He did. If he remembered rightly, he was due to have a growth spurt this year. His shirts would last it out, but he needed robes and trousers if he didn’t want his ankles showing.

After their visit to the second-hand robe shop (mostly tedious, only slightly enlivened by Lily trying on a series of extremely old-fashioned hats), Lily declared it was time for afternoon tea.

“Let’s get ice cream,” Severus said impulsively. He’d been living on cheese sandwiches, stew, and the occasional apple all summer; he’d gotten through half his shopping for barely three galleons; he could afford an expensive indulgence. 

Fortescue’s was crowded, but they eventually made it to the front of the queue. Lily got blackberry and lemon; Severus decided to try the dark chocolate and blood orange swirl. Lily laughed when she saw it - in dark orange and a brown that was almost black, it was certainly a dramatic-looking ice cream - but Severus didn’t care. It was rich and sweet, and wonderfully cool in the hot afternoon sun. 

While they ate, Lily insisted on Severus showing her around Fairings Square and Pivot Alley, seeing as she’d only been there before when they were job hunting at the beginning of summer. Between the sunshine and the cheerful bustle of shoppers, Fairings Square was at its best, and Lily was clearly charmed. She made a beeline for the pet shop, charmed by the display of young cats, dogs, and a few rabbits.

“Lily,” Severus warned her, “you do not want a pet.”

“But they’re darling!” she replied, kneeling on the cobblestones to get a closer look at a group of ginger kittens. “Look at their little faces!”

Severus rolled his eyes. “Their food smells, their litter smells worse, they shed all over your robes, they scratch, and they’re perfectly happy to yell in your face,” he said dryly. He would admit that a cat’s purr could be...soothing, when they were content. And these kittens had gotten used to him, and he to them, after half a dozen weekends of minding them. But the point stood.

“Do you think I could pet one?” Lily asked, completely ignoring him. “They look so soft.”

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. “ Promise me you aren’t going to buy a cat, and we can go in and pet them,” he said. He knew how this worked. People got attracted by the cuteness, then they handled the animals and fell in love, then they impulsively bought them, and if things went well they came back to buy pet supplies, and if things didn’t go well they came back to return the animal six weeks later, and if things really didn’t go well, they never came back at all. Severus hadn’t seen it happen himself yet, but he believed it.

“I’d have to ask Mum and Dad anyway,” Lily said, standing up and tugging him into the shop. “Come on , Sev!”

Severus eventually got her out of the pet shop and away from the curious glances of his boss, at which point he got waved over by Sadie at the flower stall. “Severus!” she called out. “Posy for your sweetheart?”

“She’s not my-” “I’m not his sweetheart,” Severus and Lily chorused in unison, and Sadie cackled at them.

“Alright, not for a sweetheart, then,” she said with a grin. “Buy a flower for a friend?”

“I can buy my own flowers,” Lily replied, grinning back. She looked over the brightly coloured display and chose a large, hot pink dahlia. “Think I could put that in my hat?”

“I think it’d be a perfect fit,” Sadie told her, plucking the flower from its bucket of water. “It’s a sennut for the flower, but for ten, I’ll stick it to your hat so it stays and charm it so it’s fresh an extra week.”

Lily beamed, taking off her hat and passing it to Severus to hold for Sadie. “That sounds wonderful,” she said. “Hang on.”

She dug around in her bag for a moment, retrieved her wallet, and pulled out a couple of bronze coins to pay with. Sadie, meanwhile, expertly trimmed the stem, affixed the flower, and charmed it. 

When Lily put her hat back on, she turned to Severus and struck a pose. “What do you think?”

Severus eyed the bright, many-petalled flower. “It’s...colourful,” he conceded. It suited her perfectly, really, but he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to tease her a little.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Just because you like wearing black and grey all the time,” she countered. “Come on, we still need to get quills and ink before we go to the bookshop.”

It went without saying that they wanted to spend as much time at the bookshop as possible.

They left Diagon Alley with light pockets and heavy bags. As well as their textbooks, between them they’d found a dozen other books worth buying. A Latin primer for Lily, who’d decided to try to catch up; a compendium of recipes for vaporous potions for Severus. A survey of wandless magic in ancient Europe. A book of disguise and concealment charms Severus almost overlooked three times, except that his fingers trailing over the spine insisted there was something there. A history of the nineteenth century Dragon Wars. An index, in English, of articles published in Res Dragehietis from 1940-1960. A manual of beginner wards and protective magic. A pamphlet on European magical apprenticeships. An illustrated compendium of Icelandic runework. A rather battered edition of Van der Mersch’s Elemental Influences . A guide to transfiguration and conjuration in combat. And last of all, taking Severus’ expenditures for the day to a round five galleons, an overview of the practical applications of astronomy to arithmancy, runework, herbology, and brewing.

As the Knight Bus rattled and swerved on its erratic path to Cokeworth, Severus’ shoulder knocked against Lily’s, and he smiled. The last time he’d done his school shopping, he’d done it alone, with fees from tutoring other Slytherins for their OWLs prep. It had been less work that way, but it had come with less freedom, too. Seven months since he had come back in time, and his life was undeniably, measurably better. Two more years left, and he would graduate, and be even more free. He only had to wait.

Chapter Text

The Hogwarts Express was leaving tomorrow, and Severus was packing his trunk. He'd done another round of shopping on Friday afternoon, once he'd gotten his last pay packet from the Stimpsons, and yesterday he'd caught the bus to Stourbridge for the things that were cheaper in Muggle shops. Now, he was faced with a dilemma: he owned more things than would fit in his trunk.

His new cloak (now re-hemmed to hide the moth-eaten bits) was bulkier than his old one, but it still fit in his cauldron at least. His scales and potions vials, cushioned in his gloves, he could fit inside, but the puzzle box that now held his ink pots stuck out over the top, and he set that aside to put somewhere else. A thick packet of spare quills wrapped in parchment, he nestled on the top, covering the whole stack with his winter scarf for a bit more protection.

Eyeing the remaining space, he packed his socks in around the feet on his cauldron before starting to stack the books. He couldn't leave any of them behind, but they were both bulky and heavy, and he hadn't had a good opportunity to shrink them. He added his stock of parchment and paper, both reused and fresh, and his box of ink pots, and found that the pile was more than half the height of his cauldron.

Damn it. He should've upgraded his luggage.

He'd had reasons not to, of course. He wanted to maintain his image as the poor, shabby half blood, and suddenly replacing everything he owned with something newer wouldn't do. His shirts were nearly new, and so were his trousers, but he'd deliberately chosen robes that were a little faded and a bit out of style. He had more spare quills than usual, but they were all uncharmed goose feather. He hadn't replaced his pyjama, or his boots. Everything blended in. A new trunk, even second-hand, wouldn't.

Still, in retrospect he could have afforded to at least go into the luggage shop and look around. They had shrinking laundry bags for a galleon, and they wouldn’t have been that conspicuous. Now, he’d have to pack everything tight every time he wanted to close his trunk until he managed to make or buy an expanded bag. 

Well, he couldn’t fix it before tomorrow. He’d have to do the best he could with non-magical solutions. 

He rolled up each piece of clothing as tightly as he could and packed them in - or at least, as many as would fit. His old robes didn’t, nor his old cloak, but he did manage to pack a couple of spare shirts and pairs of trousers. It would do.

There was enough room at the top to squeeze in some toiletries, and his mother’s gobstones pouch, its store of hidden money replenished with three galleons in bronze and silver. He had another twenty galleons in his Gringotts box - a respectable sum - and the rest of his money, he’d carry elsewhere. 

It wasn’t dignified to sit on his trunk to help it close. He did it anyway.

His well-worn satchel (a little too well-worn, actually - he’d had to repair it twice this summer) was easier to pack. The expanded space behind the slit in the lining would be useful, and in addition to the book of copied letters from Master Nilsdatter, his copy of Opera Magistrorum Novorum , and his translation notes, he added his much-scribbled-on potions and charms textbooks and his homework assignments, simply to make more room in the main compartment. When he sewed up the slit again, there was a little bit of a bulge, but not much. He could live with it. 

He split his remaining money - two galleons and a few pounds - between the ‘folded’ handkerchief he’d made before the holidays, and a cheap money-pouch he’d bought early in the summer. It simply wasn’t convenient to carry coins loose in his pocket or his satchel, but that didn’t mean he wanted to keep more than a small amount in a pouch that would be an obvious target for theft. The money-pouch, he kept out, while the handkerchief was dropped at the bottom of his satchel with a few others, his bic lighter, pack of cards, and sewing kit. 

His writing kit was next, with blank paper, ink, two quills, pencils, and pen-knife. He might not need it, but he kept it with him regardless. He had a letter to Master Nilsdatter to finish, in any case - he knew Lily would have questions to add.

He tucked in a couple of small bags of sweets to share on the train, then stuffed his last new robe in on top. And with that, all his worldly goods (or most of them) were packed. 

In the morning, Lily’s parents would pick him up and drive the two of them to Birmingham. They’d spend the trip to London talking about their summers, about Lily’s innovations with runes and Severus’ work on translating advanced potions articles. They’d help each other unload their trunks at King’s Cross, and buy some chips to share before they went through the barrier to Platform 9 ¾. And then they would leave the Muggle world behind for another nine and a half months, and rejoin the complexities and wonders of Hogwarts. By the time he returned, Severus would be legally adult in the wizarding world, able to apparate and do wandwork without fear of Ministry tracing.

He had a good feeling about this year.

-END PART TWO-

Chapter Text

On the seventh of January, 1977, Severus watched from the Astronomy Tower as a trail of carriages flowed onto the grounds to deliver their cargo back from the Christmas holidays. The students spilled out in a noisy mass of black cloaks and colorful wool hats, calling out to each other as they hurried in out of the cold. A week ago, Severus had watched the dawn of a new year from this same spot, wrapped up in wool and warming charms, and every bird call had been audible in the quiet. He couldn't say he preferred it this way, but...he found he didn't mind it either.

In two days he would be eighteen. (Legally, if not subjectively.) Though a lesser milestone than last year's, his birthday was a milestone nevertheless, making him a legal adult in both worlds. Only five months remained until his NEWT exams, and the time couldn't go fast enough. He wanted to get out of this school.

In some ways, the last two years had been among the best of his life. His friendship with Lily was more secure than it had been since they started at Hogwarts; his correspondence with Master Nilsdatter was more intellectually satisfying than his classes had ever been; his financial independence had given him the freedom to buy things he wanted , not just the most affordable approximation of what he needed.

In other ways, those years had been a purgatorial cage. He was constantly stifling his own skill in class; last winter Black and Potter had developed an uncanny ability to track him down in the corridors; among Slytherins he was seen as no better than a muggleborn, and treated accordingly. He was variably subject to the authority of a dozen teachers, few of whom he respected, and two dozen prefects, who he respected even less. His schedule was determined by others, he had very little privacy, and almost no opportunities to leave the grounds.

And yet… He may have been vulnerable to the whims of various harassers, but none of them dabbled in Unforgivables or torture curses, and he had unlimited access to medical care. He may have needed to hide his knowledge, opinions, and skill, but at least he was hiding them from ordinary snooping and not mental attacks. He may have his schedule dictated in most particulars, but at least that schedule did not consist of inflicting pain, fear, and coercion on others. When he left, there would be no brand to mark or trace him. 

And he would leave. He would be able to leave.

Once he did, he had no intention of coming back.

Chapter Text

On Severus’ birthday, Lily met him at the library a few hours after breakfast and gleefully dragged him to a room on the fifth floor that she’d set up with rugs, cushions, and a roaring fire. “ And ,” she said proudly, “Julie volunteered to suggest a pick-up Quidditch match to Lennox, to ‘celebrate our last free weekend’. And of course, Lennox wouldn’t keep a good idea from the other teams, so…”

“So half the school is down at the pitch,” Severus concluded, smirking. “I’ll have to thank her for her intervention.”

“You deserve a quiet day,” Lily said firmly, dropping down onto a pile of cushions. “Everyone contributed, actually. Here.” She opened up a picnic basket next to her and started getting things out. “Alice got us nettle wine, since you hate butterbeer, and Marlene went down to the house elves and got scones and jam and cream, and Diane made cake!”

Severus sat down next to her, surprised and touched by the unexpected offerings. “I’ll have to thank them too,” he murmured. There had been an exchange of Christmas gifts, this year and the last, but he hadn’t anticipated that Lily’s friends would choose to contribute to a birthday meal for him.

Lily smiled at him, popping open a tupperware container to reveal Diane’s cake and putting it on a plate. “I won’t sing, but do you want candles?”

“No need for candles,” Severus told her dryly, conjuring goblets for them both and pouring the nettle wine. “The cake is celebration enough.”

“Just cake it is!” she said cheerfully, cutting them each a generous slice. 

It was chocolate mud cake, rich and delicious. Severus hadn’t realised Diane was this good at baking. They were both quiet for a few minutes while they savoured it.

“So how was your break?” Lily asked eventually. “When we all met up yesterday, you hardly said anything.”

“It was good,” Severus told her. “Quiet. More people stayed than usual, but they were mostly younger. How was yours?”

She grimaced. “Well, Petunia hasn’t given up on the horrible boyfriend.” ‘Horrible’ was a polite word for the deeply unpleasant Vernon Dursley, whom Severus had had the misfortune to encounter on one of his few non-working days that summer. “She simpers over him, it’s awful. And I think she’s using him to shield herself from me - I didn’t spend more than an hour at a time with just her all break.”

Severus shifted closer, pressing his shoulder against hers. “It’s not your fault your sister is appalling,” he said. “Some people just...are.”

Lily sighed, leaning against him. “She wasn’t always,” she said. “We were close when we were little. Maybe if I wasn’t a witch, we’d still be friends.”

“If you weren’t a witch, a lot of things would be different,” Severus pointed out. “Your life would be different.”

“My family would be safe though,” she muttered. “Sev, what if they get targeted? The O’Connors, the Senguptas, the Knights...what if that happens to Mum and Dad and Petunia?” 

As far as Severus remembered, it never had. By the time Lily came to the Dark Lord’s attention in 1980, her parents had passed away and her sister had married. But that was no consolation now, when every month or two saw another semi-random attack on the family of a muggleborn. “You’ve done what you can to protect them,” he said quietly. “There’s nothing to mark out their house, they don’t have a floo connection, you don’t apparate from there. The alarm wards we set up work fine, and I can’t even tell the bomb shelter is there. They’re as well prepared as they can be without leaving the country.” Lily’s interest in warding had only increased, and she was now carrying on her own correspondence on the topic with one of Master Nilsdatter’s colleagues.

Lily hugged herself, looking away. “I hate this fucking war,” she bit out. “ ‘War’. How fucking stupid is it, that we can call it a war when there’s less than a thousand combatants? You could fit everyone doing the fighting into the Great Hall.”

Tentatively, Severus wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “It is stupid,” he agreed. “It isn’t war. It is the faltering retreat of an incompetent government faced with the terrorism of a dishonourable and ruthless radical movement, shored up by the efforts of idealist vigilantes.” Dumbledore may have had the magical strength to resist Voldemort, and the political weight to inspire others, but Severus had yet to see evidence of strategic competence. 

“...yeah,” Lily said quietly. “That’s what it is.” She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry, Sev, I’m ruining your birthday.”

“You aren’t ruining anything,” he murmured, squeezing her shoulder, then letting go. “The war will end, I’m sure of it. It might even end the way we hope it does.” A corner of his mouth quirked as he remembered that awful, awe-filled night, at the end of the future he had had. “And you and I, we can get out.” He reached over to his satchel and pulled out a letter. “Here - Jaskat finally showed up on Wednesday. It turns out December is really busy at Dragehiet.”

Lily wiped her eyes and sat up, taking the letter with a shaky smile. “Oh good,” she said, “I was starting to wonder.” She reached into a pocket of her robes and pulled out a small, squashy package wrapped in silver paper. “Here - you open that while I read.”

Severus carefully peeled the paper away, folding it neatly out of habit, and revealed a pair of dark grey knitted gloves, the thick wool plain and understated except for a line of black embroidery around each cuff. The pattern was geometric, but not familiar, and Severus examined it curiously. “Lily?” he asked, once he’d made his initial guesses.

She put the letter aside and grinned at him. “Do they fit?” she asked.

Severus hadn’t tried them yet, too focused on the decoration. Now he did, however, and found that they were almost perfect. “Very well,” he said with a smile. “Considering I know you didn’t measure my hands for them.”

“No, I measured your herbology gloves,” Lily said impishly. “Since I know those fit. Your other ones are kind of terrible now.”

They were. They were better than nothing, but there was a hole at the base of the right thumb, the ribbing on the cuffs was stretched out, and they were wearing through at the fingertips. “And the embroidery?” he asked.

“Remember how Master Khuyag and I were talking about how runes are just one way to do magic by putting patterns on an object?,” she said, leaning forward. “He’s researching woven ones at the moment, and he told me it’s really common for there to be traditional patterns in textiles - embroidery or knitting or weaving or lace or crochet or knotwork, just ways people make things that their family has always done that way. It’s not really powerful, but things like luck, or good health, or warmth.”

Severus raised his eyebrows. “I have never before been tempted to learn to make lace,” he murmured. “You found instructions for one of these patterns?”

Lily beamed at him, taking his gloved hand to point. “Master Khuyag sent me copies of some illustrations from a book on Dutch fisherman’s knitting,” she explained. “That bit’s warmth, sort of, and that bit’s dry, and that bit’s sort of...steady, or tough, or strength, and the way they repeat in a circle strengthens it, especially if you can use the one thread for the whole way around. And then the border’s a luck pattern.”

Knowing that Lily had done it herself, Snape took the gloves off to examine the embroidery even more closely. “Lily...thank you,” he said softly. The stitches were even and neat, on the front and back of the fabric, and he’d done enough plain sewing to know that wasn’t easy. “I didn’t even know you did embroidery.”

“Well, I hadn’t,” she admitted. “Mum helped me practice a bit, and then I did some of Dad’s socks with the luck bit to get the hang of putting magic into it.”

“...Thank you,” Severus said helplessly, pulling her into a hug. “I’ll treasure them.”

Lily squeezed him tightly around the waist. “If I’m the only one giving you proper birthday presents, they’d better be good ones,” she said fiercely. “Just don’t treasure them too much to actually wear them, okay? I made them for you to use.”

“I will,” Severus promised her. “I’ll make the most of them.”

Chapter Text

The examinations ahead loomed large in the minds of Hogwarts' seventh years, but not large enough to entirely distract them from what would come afterward. Life after graduation was an irritatingly frequent topic of conversation, particularly as people's answers rarely changed. They planned to study, to work, to travel, to play quidditch, to take up family duties. So-and-so had applied for a traineeship at St Mungos; so-and-so was in talks with the Pride of Portree. The Slug Club proved what little worth it had as Slughorn reached out to his contacts to smooth the way for his proteges. And in the Slytherin Common Room, there was one possibility that dominated all conversations.

"...and then I was brought into His presence," Rosier said, for the seventh time since the holidays. He was presiding over a group of awed purebloods, all eager to hear about the Dark Lord's glory. "He sat in council with six others, lords and heirs of noble houses, and they sat as if they were equals, but the Dark Lord's presence outweighed them all."

Severus could picture the scene very well, though his own initiation had followed a different pattern. The purebloods with rank and wealth got a different introduction to the ones who got in on merit.

"My uncle presented me, and the Dark Lord questioned him on my worthiness and my commitment to his cause," Rosier went on. "And then the Dark Lord tested me. Others, he said, would demand I take veritaserum and babble my secrets to all ears. But he would offer me privacy, and allow me to open my mind only to him, if I chose."

Everyone chose the legilimency. Either they were wise enough to see it was no true choice, or foolish enough to take the Dark Lord's words at face value, and be grateful for his kindness. And once the Dark Lord had seen into their minds, he had all the tools he needed to control them. He had spent more than twenty years refining his recruitment strategy, and now it was like a fish trap: they swam in freely, and couldn't swim out.

Rosier went on to describe how Lucius Malfoy had been called to duel him, so he could demonstrate his skills, and how the Dark Lord had called a halt just before Malfoy’s final blow. 

“He asked Malfoy what he thought of me,” Rosier said, “and Malfoy said I had potential, but had a lot to learn. The Dark Lord offered me a place in his third circle, despite my youth - he said he had no doubt I would learn to match my peers.”

Ah yes, Severus thought to himself, the illustrious third circle. It had taken a few years of observation to be sure of the divisions, but he understood them now. The first circle were those close enough to the Dark Lord that he had to persuade them, not command them. They were not active ‘in the field’, only politically. The second circle was made up of any Marked follower who had shown sufficient competence and obedience to be given command of an operation. The third circle was where the pureblood heirs started - anyone politically significant enough that they needed to know the identities of other Death Eaters. The fourth circle held all others who bore the Mark, including those like Severus, recruited on merit, but not yet worth promotion. Anyone else was referred to as the fifth circle, but that hardly counted. To be ‘honoured’ with a place in the third circle was almost inevitable for someone like Rosier, if they didn’t get themselves killed in the first meeting.

Deciding he didn’t need to relive his branding with the Mark yet again, Severus closed his book and stood. Unfortunately, he didn’t go unnoticed.

“Jealous, Snape ?” Rosier taunted. “You know a mudblood like you will never rise so high.”

He had, in fact, risen higher. For a brief period in 1981, he had been in the second circle. By then, he had known better than to think it an honour. “I am well aware I will never attain those glories, Rosier,” he said dryly. “Thank you for your concern, but I have moderated my expectations appropriately.”

Rosier’s eyes narrowed, and he rose to his feet. “Coward,” he spat. “If you were a true Slytherin, you would beg for the chance to serve Him.”

Severus bowed his head, but did not look away, all senses on alert. “Sadly, I lack the bravery of a ‘true Slytherin’, as you say,” he replied. “I will have to content myself with getting out of the Dark Lord’s way.”

Rosier rolled his eyes, shifting into a duelling stance. “Yes, we all know about your ‘cousin’ in Canada,” he said. “You’d better hurry when you leave. If I run into you after graduation, I might just slip. Skullus reducto!”

Severus disguised his dodge as an inadvertently successful flinch and cast a mediocre freezing spell. 

It drove Rosier back a step, but moments later Severus was hit in the gut with a vomiting hex that left him hunched over and retching.

As Severus coughed up bile, Rosier sneered and turned away. "Someone get rid of that filth," he drawled.

A none-too-kind hand shoved Severus in the direction of the bathrooms, and he managed to cast a weak finite on himself in time to prevent further mess. It didn't totally fix the retching, but enduring the humiliation for a little longer meant he'd likely get a longer reprieve before the next incident.

Once he was safely shut in a toilet cubicle, he muttered the counter curse and used a quick aguamenti to rinse out his mouth. In twenty minutes or so, he'd go get a Stomach Soother and a ginger biscuit from his stash, but right now, better to perpetuate the illusion he'd been hit hard. He knelt down in front of the toilet, prepared to fake retching if anyone came in, and opened his book once more.

Chapter Text

The one subject that everyone was taking for their NEWTs was Defence - which was a pity, because the teacher was only barely adequate. The one advantage of Professor MacMillan was that he sternly enforced limits on how many students could have their wands out at a time. Everyone took turns to be in the duelling circles, or facing the targets, and the rest took notes from the textbook and worked on theory problems.

Unfortunately, Professor Macmillan’s focus on controlling their spell-casting didn’t prevent other forms of meddling.

“Look at Snivellus, beavering away,” Black commented from behind him, and Severus rolled his eyes. “Worried about getting attacked by a veela? They’d take one look at you and run a mile!”

Potter laughed as if this was actually funny, though Severus noted Black had kept his mouth shut until Lily was in the ring. “Maybe he’s trying to get some seduction tips,” Potter suggested, sauntering up to Severus’ desk. “Let’s see, shall we?”

He snatched Severus’ last page of notes from the left side of the desk, and Severus’ lips twitched. Sure enough, a moment later…

“What the hell is this?”

Severus wiped his quill on his blotting paper and put it down. “I assume you’ve encountered languages other than English before, Potter,” he drawled. He’d been using his class notes to practice Latin vocabulary for almost two years now, and it was to the point where he bothered conjugating the verbs, not just writing down root words. 

Black swung his feet off his desk and came forward, grabbing the paper from Potter’s hand. “That’s Latin!” he exclaimed. “Why the fuck are you writing your notes in Latin? Hiding something, maybe?”

“If you’d ever bothered to study it, you could tell that I’m not,” Severus said coolly. In this class, he kept to translation practice. It was Potions where he added commentary. “Would you like to wait for Lily to come back, so she can translate and confirm it?”

The idiots both glanced nervously at the duelling ring, where Lily was handily defeating her opponent. Potter had stopped asking her out once she hit him in the balls with a spell Longbottom had recommended, but he still seemed eager to impress her.

“Just give them back,” Lupin said wearily. “They’re class notes, it’s nothing sinister.” After Lily and Lupin found themselves the only Gryffindors in NEWT Runes, Lily had brokered a careful ceasefire between Lupin and Severus so all three could sit together, and Severus had gradually come to admit that the boy was tolerable company. Lupin, in turn, attempted to deflect Potter and Black from their more destructive antics, increasingly with Pettigrew’s assistance.

Lily’s duel ended with a bang, and Potter and Black exchanged a quick look before returning Severus’ notes and backing off a little. “Why are you learning Latin?” Potter asked, sticking his hands in his pockets and trying to look nonchalant.

Severus raised one eyebrow. “If you’d spent any time in the library, Potter, you’d have noticed that a third of the books there aren’t in English,” he pointed out. 

Black rolled his eyes. “Come on, James, let’s go get some practice in,” he said, disgusted. “This is a waste of our time.”

“Yeah,” James said, perking up. “Gonna join us in the ring, Snivellus?”

“Thank you for the invitation,” Severus said dryly. “I think I’ll stick with the textbook.”

Chapter Text

Time passed, begrudgingly. 

As exams drew nearer, teachers piled on the work, and fitting in study around their homework left less and less time for other activities. While there were times they relaxed - Hogsmeade weekends, social evenings, and so on - for the most part, they didn’t have a chance to sit idle. The increasing pressure had tensions running high - Lily’s date with Julian Ogden wouldn’t have been nearly so disastrous otherwise - and Easter break saw an explosion of activity as everyone took advantage of the last true pause before the final stretch.

For Severus and Lily, it brought another milestone: Master Nilsdatter and Master Khuyag were coming to Hogsmeade.

The letter suggesting the visit had arrived three weeks before: a joint letter, for once, addressed to both of them. The message had been brief, saying only: 

Marte Nilsdatter, Master Brewer and Spellmaker at Dragehiet, and Khuyag, Rune and Ward Master at Dragehiet, send greetings to their faithful correspondents, Lily Evans and Severus Snape.

We have each enjoyed mentoring you over the past months and years, and with your graduation approaching, we would like to speak with you in person about your options for further study.

We understand that Hogwarts generally has a holiday period over the weekend of Easter, and that there is a town nearby that students are allowed to visit. We propose to meet you there on the Saturday directly after Good Friday.

If you are willing to accept this invitation, please reply with the specific time and location at which you would be able to meet us, or an alternate day if that Saturday is unsuitable.

Magistra Marte Nilsdatter

Magister Khuyag

They had, of course, sent a reply immediately. And now they were here, waiting in Rosa Lee’s Tea Room, one of the few shops in Hogsmeade that almost never had students visiting - the place was both too expensive and too fussy compared to the more down-to-earth and affordable Three Broomsticks and Madam Puddifoots. Their table in the tea-room section was already set with a jug of elderflower cordial and a plate of tea sandwiches, but neither of them touched a bite. Instead, they nervously watched the passageway from the main shop, and waited.

At half-past ten, two strangers walked in, and Severus realised that his concerns about recognising the masters from Dragehiet had been entirely unnecessary.

The first to come in was a short, slightly built woman with pale blond hair cut very short, wearing sky blue robes decorated with yellow embroidery. 

Behind her was an Asian man with a round face, red cheeks, and smile lines at the corners of his eyes, a little taller and much more sturdily-built, his oddly cut coat bright red and edged with black and white patterned trim.

They both could have been anywhere between a mature forty and a well-preserved seventy, though Severus was inclined to guess at the older end of that span. Master Nilsdatter's gaze flicked over the room, taking it all in at a glance, while Master Khuyag had the lightly-balanced stance of a man who could respond instantly to dangerous surprises.

Lily stood up, smiling at them, and Severus hastily pushed his chair back and stood as well. Disconcertingly, he was actually taller than either of them.

"Master Nilsdatter, Master Khuyag?" Lily guessed, holding out her hand. "I'm Lily Evans."

Master Nilsdatter shook her hand, then turned to Severus. "And you must be Mr Snape," she guessed. Her hand was calloused from knife, quill, and wand, and Severus found he liked her immediately. 

"I am," he agreed. "It is an honour to meet you."

"It is our pleasure," Master Khuyag said firmly, shaking Severus' hand, then taking a seat. "Let's sit comfortably, shall we? We have much to talk of."

Severus sat, then glanced around them. "Would you be willing for us to put up privacy spells?" he asked carefully. "As you know, the situation in Britain is…tense, and I would rather not make myself interesting."

Master Khuyag nodded seriously. "That is sensible," he said. "Fortunately, I came prepared." 

He reached inside his coat and pulled out a felted wool pouch, opening it to reveal an extraordinary sculpture. A sphere within a sphere within a sphere, each one moving freely, that looked to have been carved from a single piece of pale jade. Each layer was finely engraved with symbols Severus did not have the expertise to interpret, and intriguingly, braided white cord was attached to various anchor points on the two inner spheres, threaded neatly through the holes in the outer layer to leave their ends trailing on the table.

Master Khuyag took a small wooden stand out of the pouch as well, placed it in the middle of the table and the sphere on top of it, then used the cords to adjust the positions of the inner spheres to his satisfaction.on before tying pairs of them into decorative knots. Finally, he placed a hand on top of the sphere and muttered a few words, and the whole thing began to glow with a soft, pearly light.

“There,” he said. “We are uninteresting and unmemorable to humans and animals, using physical or magical senses. Not quite unnoticeable, but not worth noticing.”

“That’s amazing!” Lily exclaimed, leaning in to look at the sphere more closely. “Did you make that yourself? Was that wandless magic, or an activation phrase? Does it have a set radius?”

Master Khuyag smiled approvingly. “I did make it. It was an activation phrase. The radius, and the effects, are adjustable depending on the position of the spheres and knotting of the cords.”

“How did you set up a bounded area ward without marking the boundary?” Severus asked curiously. It was much easier to do that with wandwork than a written spell, as wandwork tended to adapt to the intention of the caster, while written spells needed to have more precise parameters.

“The anchor object already has permeable layers around the core,” Master Khuyag pointed out. “The structure of the ward functions as an additional layer, using Wei Xiulan’s principles of representation.”

“Is that similar to Eutropius’ constructed microcosmos?” Lily replied eagerly, and  Severus was fairly sure they would have kept going like that for an hour if Master Nilsdatter hadn’t cleared her throat with an indulgent look.

“Perhaps you could continue this line of thought later?” she suggested. “We do have other things to discuss today.”

Lily flushed and nodded, but Master Khuyag simply laughed. “Thank you for keeping us on task, Marte,” he said warmly. “Otherwise I will be carried away, talking about my own cleverness, when I am trying to seem a virtuous man to my potential student.”

Severus looked up sharply, and Master Nilsdatter caught his eye with a smile. “I won’t drag it out,” she said. “We would like to offer you both apprenticeships.”

Severus was clenching his fists so tight his fingernails were biting into his palms, but he barely felt it. An apprenticeship offer. Two years of writing, working, waiting, hoping, and now, an apprenticeship offer. A way out.

It didn’t feel real. He didn’t feel real. Some part of him was aware that Master Nilsdatter was still talking, but in his relief, he barely heard her.

“...don’t expect you to decide immediately. Our hope is to provide you with the information you need to make that decision; the offer will be open for the next three months, if necessary.”

A warm hand wrapped around his - Lily’s. She was talking. He struggled to drag his attention back to the conversation.

“...that much about what apprenticeship really means . How does it work? What sort of expectations are there for each of us?”

“Let’s have something to drink while we talk, hmm?” Master Khuyag suggested, his warm voice cutting through the fog in Severus’ mind. “This is…?”

“Elderflower cordial,” Lily said. 

Severus’ glass was filled and put in front of him, and he mechanically took a sip. The sweetness made him blink, and he found he was able to come back to himself enough to track the conversation.

“The way it is done in Europe, an apprenticeship is a formal agreement between a student and their teacher,” Master Khuyag explained. “The practice is centuries old, but it has developed over time. There is a lot of - freedom? opportunity? - a lot of scope for negotiation, in the details. I have brought an example, a copy of the contract I have with my current apprentice.”

“Is he, uh, ‘graduating’?” Lily asked. “Or will you teach both of us?”

“Andrei will need…” Master Khuyag trailed off thoughtfully. “Two years, I think. Perhaps less, but not less than one. The length of an apprenticeship is determined by the readiness of a student to move on, you see. It may be two years, it may be seven. In studying with me, you would be working in a complex field you have only a basic understanding of. Brewing is easier.”

Master Nilsdatter shook her head. “ Everyone says that other fields are easier,” she said dryly. “Though it’s true that, if Mr Snape chose to study pure brewing with me, he would likely complete an apprenticeship sooner than you would with Khuyag, Miss Evans.” She smiled approvingly at him, and Severus tentatively smiled back. 

“I would like to learn whatever you are able to teach me,” he said quietly. 

The group spent well over an hour discussing how apprenticeships could work, until long after their plate of tea sandwiches had been reduced to mere crumbs. The master swore to teach the apprentice until they reached the skill necessary to practice independently and professionally in their field; they provided food, board, and materials for learning; and they were responsible (within reason) for the safety and wellbeing of the apprentice. They also provided a small wage for the apprentice, generally twenty galleons per month. The apprentice, in exchange, swore to keep their master’s secrets, especially in regards to their work; they assisted with their master’s projects and with other tasks in their household; and they were obedient (within reason) to their master’s instructions. As residents of Dragehiet, they would also be subject to the rules of the community, and if it was found over their first winter that there was an unresolvable personality clash with any of the established permanent residents, they might be asked to leave. In that case, their master would be responsible for finding them an alternate teacher elsewhere so that they could continue their apprenticeship. The contract could be ended by mutual agreement, or if either of the parties broke the terms of the contract and the disagreement could not be amended.

The legal details were somewhat tedious, but their meaning was reassuring - more than that, it was exciting . The future was becoming more and more real, and when the group parted (the Dragehiet masters with assurances contracts would be forthcoming; Severus and Lily with promises of intent to sign said contracts), Lily wrapped Severus up in a tight hug.

“Thank god,” she breathed. “You’ll be safe , Sev.”

Severus blinked. “ You’ll be safe,” he pointed out.

She shook her head, still holding him tight. “I would’ve found a way, I have options,” she insisted. “ You … It’s harder for you. But you’ll be safe now, and you’ll get to be brilliant, and not hide anymore, and...oh Sev, this is wonderful.”

Severus simply hadn’t considered that while he was planning and worrying for Lily’s welfare, she might be doing the same for his. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, it is.”

Chapter Text

It happened on their last Hogsmeade weekend. Diane was the one to point out it was only one in a long series of ‘lasts’ they would soon experience - last of each of their classes, last study session in the library, last exam, last night in the dormitories, last meal at the school.

“It might not be the first last,” Ed Prewett said contemplatively. He’d tagged along with Frank Longbottom, who regularly took advantage of the chance to see Alice, and now he was lying on the grass with his hands under his head, gazing up at the occasional clouds. “At some point, you’ll have your last detention, but you won’t know which one it is until the very last day. Maybe you’ve already had it.”

“If you’re going to be pedantic about it, we’ve already had our last Christmas break,” Lily pointed out, sipping from a bottle of pink lemonade. They’d claimed a spot on the low stone wall around the edge of the Hogsmeade green, which was well-populated with students enjoying the spring sunshine. Julie and Marlene were hanging out with other groups today, but Prewett and Longbottom made up their usual numbers.

“Why stop there?” Severus drawled. “We’ve had our last summer break too, our last Sorting Feast, our last history and astronomy classes…”

“In that case, our lasts go all the way back to our firsts!” Diane suggested, laughing. “Our last sixth year, fifth year, fourth year, third year, second year, and first year. On our very first day, we had our last first glimpse of the castle.”

Alice shook her head fondly. “You can tell who’s been practicing riddling for seven years,” she said. 

There was a smash - glass shattering, things breaking - from over in the direction of Zonko’s, and across the green, he saw Professor Cranshaw reluctantly wrap up her lunch and get up to investigate. At least Zonko’s was relatively prepared for the damage overenthusiastic menaces could get up to. It was part of their business model, after all.

Distantly, he heard the distinctive tones of Aberforth Dumbledore in a rage, and hid a smirk. The students didn’t really go into the Hog’s Head, except on dares, but they certainly learned to respect its proprietor.

The third noise was different.

Screaming. 

Children screaming.

Severus was on his feet before he consciously recognised the sound, wand in hand, and Longbottom was only an instant behind him. Idiot Gryffindor, he was running in the direction of the screaming in moments, Alice racing after him. 

Lily would have followed, but Severus managed to catch her by the sleeve. “We need to get the students to shelter,” he said quickly, even as part of his mind started to imagine what might be happening at the Hog’s Head. “They won’t listen to me.”

She looked between him and the street, then gave in. There was an established protocol for attacks on the village, but it hadn’t happened in a few years, and children were never good at following instructions. “Diane, Ed, help us get everyone rounded up?”

“I’ll go up the village and start sending people back this way,” Prewett agreed. The screaming hadn’t died down, and if it was Death Eaters, who knew how many of them there were. “Diane?”

“Of course I’m coming,” she said, pulling her hair out of her face and tying it into a ponytail. “Go!”

The streets were thick with panicking students, some running away, some frozen with fear, some struggling upstream to get involved in whatever was happening. While Lily tried to impose order, Severus went door to door, warning the occupants of each shop to stay inside until the all-clear, and telling Lily how many more students she could usher in. Wherever they could, Lily recruited other sixth and seventh years to reassure, comfort, and defend the younger students, and when they found Gryffindors too foolhardy to take shelter, she persuaded them to stand guard instead of running for the fight.

All the while, Severus' mind was racing. An attack on Hogsmeade, just before final exams. A fear tactic, a recruitment incentive. A threat. The children wouldn't be a target, they'd be collateral damage. Better a parent afraid than one steeled by grief. The Hog's Head, unpopular, dirty, full of 'riff-raff'. A target Slytherins could agree on. Dumbledore's brother, in the school's shadow. A display of power. He would send wizards, not creatures, showing the glamour of being a Death Eater. At least one would be young. Was it Malfoy? One of the Lestranges? Was this Rosier's test?

In the distance, the rippling crack of multiple apparitions. The smell of smoke. The Dark Mark bloomed in the sky in poisonous green light. Another crack. 

Lily ran, and Severus followed.

The street outside the Hog’s Head was filled with the chaos of a battle’s aftermath, but at least it was the aftermath. An auror was talking to Aberforth Dumbledore, and another one was hovering on a broom, trying to halt the blazing fire that had somehow taken hold of the Hog’s Head’s thatched roof. Shattered glass and barrels strewn across the cobblestones suggested the accelerant that had been used to persuade it to light. Professor Cranshaw was shepherding children out of Zonko’s, in case the fire managed to spread that far, and someone had obviously flooed the castle, because Professor Flitwick was helping with the fire, Professor McGonagall was corralling the students who’d tried to help, and Madam Pomfrey was currently kneeling on the ground next to…

“Frank!” Lily cried out.

Severus’ lips pursed as he identified the curse. Longbottom was leaning against a wall, his robe stained by the bloody streaks pouring from his eyes like tears. It was a painful curse, but less damaging than it looked, as long as the victim didn’t get taken out while they were unable to see, and as long as they got treatment before the blood loss became an issue. Madam Pomfrey seemed to have already come to that conclusion; she handed Longbottom a vial of Blood-Replenishment Potion and moved on to evaluate her next patient. If she didn’t know the countercurse, it made sense to wait until after everyone else had been triaged.

Longbottom attempted a smile and waved in their direction. “Hey Lily,” he said. “I’m fine, I promise.”

“You’re bleeding from your eyes! ”

“Madam Pomfrey says it should be reversible,” he reassured her. “Could’ve been worse.”

Alice stalked over, scowling, with a mass of bandages in one hand. “It could’ve been better, too, if you’d learn to bloody duck, ” she scolded him. “Aguamenti!” A stream of water from her wand soaked the bandages, and she started mopping up his face. 

“Better me than you,” Longbottom said, reaching up to touch her hand on his cheek.

“Better neither of us, you idiot.” She took his hand briefly and kissed his knuckles. “If you get hurt protecting me, I just have to stand guard until I can get you out of there. That’s awful tactics.”

There was something surreal about standing here, neither villain nor victim, as the battle-readiness leached from his nerves. He hadn’t even raised his wand. Distantly, he registered that he was being watched, evaluated, and he slipped through the chaos to disappear down a side-street - still in ear-shot, but out of sight.

This attack must have happened last time. There was simply no reason why it would have changed. So how had he forgotten it?

He sank to the ground, back against a wall, forehead resting on his knees, and tried to breathe through the shakes.

That could have been Lily, blinded by bloody tears. It could have been her, pale and wounded. She could have been…

How could he not have remembered?

His previous seventh year, he’d spent as much time in the Slytherin common room as he could. By then, he’d been scouted as a promising recruit for the Dark Lord, and that status offered him protection he didn’t have elsewhere in the school. He never visited Hogsmeade; he’d been fully preoccupied by preparing for his NEWTs, to prove himself a suitable investment. An event of this magnitude...it simply hadn’t been an event of any magnitude in his sphere of attention.

He should have remembered.

He heard footsteps on the cobbles, and looked up to see Diane, leaning against the wall on the other side of the alleyway. He didn’t have it in him to be polite.

“What.”

She shrugged, sitting down opposite him. “You picked a good spot, that’s all,” she said. “It’s quiet.”

He glared, but couldn’t bring himself to verbally object to her attempt to keep him company.

“They’re taking everyone who’s still hurt back to the school,” she commented, turning her wand in her hands. “There’s only a few of them. One of the aurors knew the countercurse for the one that got Frank, so he’s fine.” She shook her head. “He’s ridiculous sometimes - the minute he could actually see Alice again, the idiot proposed.”

Severus couldn’t help himself. “He proposed?” 

“I know ,” Diane said, rolling her eyes. "There he is, covered in blood, no ring, a month left to graduation, and he proposes on impulse.”

Severus’ lips twitched. “Gryffindors are known for their impulsivity,” he said dryly, beginning to find his mental footing once more.

Diane grinned at him. “That’s why they need us around,” she agreed. “He’s lucky Alice thought it was romantic -  he had to make her a temporary engagement ring out of a pebble.”

“Of course,” he murmured. “The height of romance.” Alice would probably keep the pebble for years, once it reverted. She liked little souvenirs like that - train tickets, chocolate frog cards, seals from old letters. A pebble that had been turned into an emergency engagement ring was exactly her sort of treasure.

“You did the right thing, you know,” she said quietly. “Staying back to manage the crowds. You made more of a difference than Frank.”

He snorted. “I’m not insecure about avoiding the front lines. I’m a cowardly Slytherin, remember?”

“Right,” Diane replied, her gaze steady. “Of course you are.” She pushed herself and held out a hand. “Want to escort this cowardly Ravenclaw back to the castle, then? Alice is caught up with Frank, Lily’s been co-opted by McGonagall, and Ed’s helping the Aurors. There’s no point us staying here.”

Severus watched her for a long moment. “Alright,” he said at last, and took her hand.

Chapter Text

The seventh-years had their exams last. It was a kindness, to give them extra study time, and a practical choice, to give the teachers time to mark the exam papers of other year groups. They’d had an entire two and a half weeks with no classes at all to prepare (once again, for practical reasons), and now the exams were upon them.

Some exams required quills, some wands, and some other tools. But there were two things that Severus carried into every one: his annotated copy of the exam timetable, and a letter.

Hogwarts N.E.W.T. Exam Timetable

Wednesday 8/6

8:30 AM - 10:30 AM: Herbology (Theory)

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM: Defence Against the Dark Arts (Theory)

2:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Potions (Theory)

Thursday 9/6

8:30 AM - 10:30 AM: Charms (Theory)

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM: Astronomy (Theory)

2:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Transfiguration (Theory)

Friday 10/6

8:30 AM - 10:30 AM: Care of Magical Creatures (Theory)

11:00 AM - 5:00 PM: Potions (Practical)* - 3-4pm

10:00 PM - 11:00 PM: Astronomy (Practical)

Monday 13/6

8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Charms (Practical)* - 11:20-11:40am

8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Transfiguration (Practical)* - 4:00-4:20pm

Tuesday 14/6

8:30 AM - 11:30 AM: Ancient Runes (Combined theory and practical)

2:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Arithmancy (Combined theory and practical)

Wednesday 15/6

8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Defence Against the Dark Arts (Practical)*

8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Care of Magical Creatures (Practical)* - 3:00-3:30pm

Thursday 16/6

8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Defence Against the Dark Arts (Practical)* - 10:30-11:00am

8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Herbology (Practical)* - 3:30-4:00pm

Friday 17/6

8:30 AM - 10:30 AM: History of Magic

8:30 AM - 10:30 AM: Muggle Studies (Theory)

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM: Divination (Theory)

2:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Divination (Practical)*

2:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Muggle Studies (Practical)*

To Severus Snape, her erudite and diligent correspondent, Marte Nilsdatter sends greetings and good wishes.

Almost all arrivals to Dragehiet are by floo, as the mountain is steep and the location remote. Khuyag and I will happily meet you in one of the main Norwegian cities to escort you - perhaps in the last week of this month, or early July?

International floo will easily get you to Trondheim, Oslo, or Bergen. I believe there’s a ferry to Bergen from northern England as well, if you still want to travel the Muggle way. Once you have arranged your journey, please send a letter with the date and location we should meet you.

You asked what you should bring with you, and I am afraid my answer will be very boring: clothes, warm clothes, and enough of them.

I cannot overstate the importance of dressing warmly at Dragehiet. If I must, I will take you shopping myself before winter, because I will not have my apprentice freezing to death. Inside the mountain, it is consistently cool. The outside of the mountain is below freezing for months at a time. 

In addition to whatever shirts and trousers you choose, you will need woolen underwear, thick woolen socks, sturdy boots, a woolen jumper, a good warm robe for indoors, and a heavy coat for outdoor work. A hooded cloak can be a comfort, but like your coat, it should not be too long. Ankle-length cloaks just soak up the snow. You will also need a woolen hat and scarf, and gloves - I recommend one pair thin enough that you can do some tasks while wearing them, and then a thicker pair with fleece or fur lining. You will want warm sleeping clothes, of course, and I advise you bring slippers and a dressing gown, as the bathrooms are communal and some distance down a corridor from our rooms.

You will also need to supply sheets and towels, although there are pillows and plenty of blankets here. I have included a photo of your room, which you are welcome to decorate as you please. 

I will supply all necessary equipment, materials, and books for your studies, apart from stationery for your note taking. No doubt you will have your own books to bring, but you are not required to bring any. Do keep in mind, however, that there will be many hours indoors in the winter when you are not expected to be studying or working, and you may want leisure activities for that time.

At the end of this very practical letter, I will add a personal note: I wish you all the best for your upcoming exams, and I will be thinking of you in the next two weeks. I have no doubt that you have the capability to excel in all your subjects, and I am certain your marks will reflect the performance you believe is most politic in your circumstances.

Good luck,

Marte Nilsdatter

Chapter Text

Last time he’d lived this day, Severus had quietly apparated away without even boarding the train. This time, he was gloating over his friends’ hangovers as they waited for the train to leave the station.

“Anyone for a game of Exploding Snap?” he suggested, smirking. “Marlene, you have a deck somewhere, right?”

Marlene scowled in his general direction. “Fuck off, Snape,” she groused. “I know you’ve got a book somewhere, don’t be a bastard.”

“Should I raise the blinds so there’s enough light for me to read?” he teased. There had been at least five very alcoholic parties last night as various seventh-years celebrated their last hurrah. Lily was pale between her freckles, Diane’s curls were a tangled mess, and Alice’s eyes were dark-ringed and bloodshot, and Julie’s shirt was buttoned up wrong. 

When the train whistle prompted a chorus of winces, Severus took pity on them all. He opened up his satchel and retrieved a padded bag of potions vials. “Here,” he said. His hangover cure was, if he said so himself, extremely effective. He passed one dose out to each of them. “Drink that, then have some water.”

“You couldn’t have given us those earlier?” Marlene grumbled, tossing it back and making a face at the bitter taste.

“I don’t even care,” Julie said, fumbling for her wand and conjuring a somewhat deformed pillow. “I was up until three am at least , once this headache goes away I’m taking a nap.”

“Ooh, good idea,” Diane said, casting a softening charm on the floor of the compartment and taking her outer robe off to use as a blanket. “Anyone else joining me?”

Marlene cracked her eyes open, then shook her head. “I’ll curl up here, like Julie,” she said. 

Lily and Alice took up the offer, though, and Severus considerately conjured some extra pillows and swung his legs up onto the bench seat so he didn’t accidentally kick any of them. “I’ll wake you all when the trolley lady comes around,” he murmured.

“Thanks, Severus,” Alice mumbled, and pulled Diane’s robe over her head.

A couple of hours later, the others were much revived, and conversation turned to the summer ahead. NEWT results usually came out sometime in July, so some of them would be marking time until then, when they could really start applying for things. Alice was an exception.

“Oh, it’s absolutely favouritism,” she said wryly. “My father’s not that important, but a promising young lady from a good family, who was in the paper for the Hogsmeade attack, of course I get an early offer from the Ministry. Potter and Black did too.”

“From a pureblood family,” Julie corrected her with a scowl. “Some days I just want to throw the whole thing away and move to Australia.”

“You could,” Severus pointed out mildly. “I’m leaving.”

“Ah yes, to ‘Canada’,” Diane said, crossing her long legs. “How long do you think people will buy that?”

Severus shrugged. “They only need to buy it long enough to forget me,” he said. “I’ve shown myself to be an uncreative bookworm of moderate magical power, my results will be high but not extraordinary, I have no particular family, connections, or wealth. As long as no one brings me to public attention, I’ll be entirely forgotten in a year or two.”

Marlene snorted. “Ah yes, ‘uncreative’, exactly the word I’d pick,” she said. “Someday I’d love to see what you can actually do.”

He smirked at her. “I’m not planning on coming back, but maybe Lily will be able to send word.”

“ You’d better send word,” Julie said firmly. “I don’t care if it’s just postscripts on Lily’s letters, I want to hear from you. It’ll liven up my days in the centaur office, or wherever the hell I end up.”

Diane rolled her eyes. “You won’t get stuck in the centaur office ,” she scoffed. “Anyway, if you’re worried about being bored, you should apply to St Mungo’s with me.”

“And spend five more years studying before I can make an impact?” Julie replied. “You know secretaries see everything. I can help people from there. If I’m lucky, I’ll end up in transport, or the DMLE, where the records really matter.”

Of all of them, Severus supposed he shouldn’t be surprised it was Julie who’d decided to be a spy. They all planned to help in the war - Alice and Marlene by fighting, Diane by healing, Lily by studying protection magic. There were students who planned to simply keep their heads down, but such students, of course, weren’t the kind of people Lily chose as her friends. 

Abruptly, he realised he wanted to help her. He’d spent two years spying on the Dark Lord, and now almost three years pretending to be a forgettable teenager instead of a dangerous adult. “I’ll write to you,” he promised. “I can teach you my cunning Slytherin ways.”

Julie smiled at the joke, but her eyes were serious as she nodded at him. “Good.”

“What I want to know,” Lily said, distracting the group from the interplay, “is how long Alice will manage to make Frank wait before I have to come back for a wedding.”

“Lily!” Alice exclaimed, blushing furiously. “I told you, we’re waiting at least a year!”

Lily raised her eyebrows. “ Sure you are,” she drawled.

As the train approached the end of its journey, their approaching separation seemed to come into relief. Alice would see Marlene often, and probably have plenty of chances to catch up with Julie; Lily and Severus, of course, were going to the same place. But for all they were each looking forward to the opportunities to come, they would miss each other’s companionship. Even Severus.

“I made you all something,” he admitted, reaching into his bag for a set of carefully wrapped vials. “Open them when you get home, not here.”

“Of course,” Alice said quietly, taking hers and tucking it away. “And we won’t tell anyone where we got them. A potion?”

He hummed agreement. “Something a little more broadly useful than a hangover cure.” It was Felix Felicis, three days’ worth for each of them. “It should keep for years, if you don’t need it any time soon.”

Julie was the first to hug him in thanks, and the others all followed suit - Lily last of all. 

“Don’t look so bewildered,” she whispered in his ear. “Friends hug sometimes.”

“They don’t usually hug me,” he muttered back before letting her go.

Apparently he wasn’t the only one who’d thought of presents. Alice gave them all copies of a photo of their group hanging out by the lake - Severus thought it might have been Longbottom behind the camera, some time the previous year. Julie and Marlene had collaborated on making portable pockets - drawstring bags with an expanded interior and an attached tab with a buttonhole so they could attach it to whatever clothing was most convenient. Lily got them all bezoars, which prompted general laughter (the rant about Slughorn’s antidote class had been repeated several times), but Severus saw that everyone put the bezoars in their pockets, not their bags. 

Diane’s presents got the most admiration, though: she had made them macrame bracelets with black string and small polished stones - malachite for Lily, tiger eye for Julie, turquoise for Marlene, carnelian for Alice, and obsidian for Severus. “I didn’t charm them or anything, but they should be good anchors for spells like that, or even runes,” she explained. “I’ve got some moonstone bits for mine, but I didn’t get around to finishing it yet.”

“They’re lovely,” Alice proclaimed, tying hers on. “Where did you get the stones? Potions stores?”

“I didn’t filch them,” Diane objected, helping Julie get hers around her right wrist. “I bought them at the Hogsmeade apothecary.”

“You chose well,” Severus said. Even the polished stones sold for potions supplies were variable in shape, size, and quality; Diane must have spent some time looking for stones that were more or less flat and symmetrical.

She grinned at him, and then they felt the train begin to slow, and it was a scramble to pack all their things away before they arrived at Kings Cross. They had to undo all their spells on the compartment door as well, and some of them had to pack away wizarding clothes, and with one thing and another, they were nowhere near the first to get off the train. 

There was another round of hugs and goodbyes, and then Severus and Lily found a clear spot on the platform to apparate from, shrunken trunks in their pockets.

Cokeworth was a breath of fresh air - well, smoggy air, but figuratively fresh. It was substantially quieter, for one thing. Their apparition spot was about halfway between Lily and Severus’ homes, but both of them were reluctant to split up. 

“...you should come over tomorrow,” Lily said. “So we can plan. We’ve got passports, but we’ve got to sort out tickets, and shopping, and - and everything else.”

“Tomorrow,” Severus agreed, relieved. He pulled her into a tight hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can get ready for Dragehiet.”

She hugged him back for a long, long moment. “Tomorrow.”

His way home was a long-memorised route, but it felt different today. New. For two and a half years, he had been biding his time, and now he was free. He had made so many changes that his future was unknown, as Professor Flitwick had once warned him. He had no surety that he would survive the next four years, or that he would survive what came at the end of it, when he caught up to himself. He had no surety that Lily would.

But they had a chance.