A/N: The usual disclaimers apply: I have not created Severus Snape, Alastor Moody, Barty Crouch or, for that matter, the Potterverse – all have sprung from the genius of J. K. Rowling and belong to her, Bloomsbury and Scholastic Books, and Warner Brothers. The ‘Proem’ is Philip Larkin’s; its title is “This Be The Verse�. But neither Larkin nor Rowling can be held responsible for the fictional existence of Stephen Snape and Septimia De Quincey, though they did inspire them.
This fic has been rigorously beta-read by no less than four unselfish souls: Charybdis, Elfie, Lucretia Cassia, and Ada Kensington. Thank you very, very much, ladies!

This story is rated PG-13. If you are under 13 years of age and read it, I doubt you will be struck down by lightning, but chances are that you just won’t enjoy this fic.

The Larkin poem contains vocabulary that some might consider offensive. Feel free to skip it if you must. Its language is not representative of the story’s style; its content is.




MIRROR MIRROR




They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
- PHILIP LARKIN



PROLOGUE: THE BOY AGAIN


Ministry of Magic, London, January 1982


“Would you kindly not sit on my desk? That chair is not there for ornamental purposes,� Stephen said, without any attempt at hiding his irritation. But Alastor Moody stayed where he was and quietly surveyed the room. Stephen had always found him irksome; Moody reminded him of everything he had wanted to be but could not. He had not passed the exams.

“Muggles in your family?� the Auror asked suddenly.

“How, pray, is that relevant to the matter at hand?�

“Just curious,� Moody said. He gestured towards the office with its bare white walls, its simple bookshelves filled with painstakingly ordered and labelled file cases, and the neat desk, empty but for a large sheet of green blotting paper encased in leather and a plain rectangular box with three identical ball points and a fountain pen in it. The Chief Hit Wizard was probably the only Ministry employee not to use quill and ink pot; he found them impractical.

“It struck me when we searched his rooms,� Moody continued. “Very clean for a wizard. Very orderly. Just like yours, in fact.� He eyed the man in the office chair beadily.

“The Snapes have always been in trade,� Stephen replied, distractedly stroking his jaw, his gaze focused on infinity. “Tailors. In close contact with Muggles, buying cloth from them and such – much cheaper than wizard-made textiles, and better quality. There were intermarriages, and I suppose we took over some of the more sensible Muggle habits. We have proved ourselves adaptable.�

“Adaptable. Yes...� Moody seemed to savour the word’s meaning. “And convenient it is, too,� he growled. “A man as tidy as he is would not be so careless as to leave any evidence of his unsavoury activities, so the search of his apartment was entirely without results. It’s only fair to tell you that we have no direct evidence against him. We set our Legilimens on him. Nothing. Cursed him. Still nothing. But my gut tells me – well, you’ll see for yourself. That is, if you feel up to the confrontation.�

“Of course I do,� the Chief Hit Wizard snapped. “I know how to conduct an interrogation, thank you very much.� He glared, and added, with some vehemence, “It is about time you Aurors stop belittling us. I told Crouch-�

“Hold your hippogriffs, Steve – I’m doing you a favour, remember? No need to bite off what’s left of my nose.� Moody put down the thin file he had been holding, slipped off the tabletop and walked towards the door. “We would be grateful if you could get him to name some others. I’m desperate to nail young Malfoy, but that one keeps claiming he was under the Imperius curse. I don’t believe him, but I have no proof. If your young man knows anything, I count on you to squeeze it out of him.�

When no reaction came, the Auror cocked his head.

“Stephen?�

“Hmm.�

“If you don’t feel like it, that’s all right with me. The truth is, we’ve run out of Veritaserum, what with the unexpected sudden increase in our number of … acquisitions … recently. We’re through our other options as far as interrogation techniques go, so it would be a month’s visit to Azkaban for him until the next potion batch is ready. Of course, the Dementors tend to make their charges a bit funny in the head … permanently … which renders later questioning annoyingly complicated. And he’s young. Well, they’re all just dirty criminals to me, but I figured you might take a different view in this particular case. So when he asked for you I thought I’d give you a try, but if you say no, I won’t lose any sleep over it.�

The Chief Hit Wizard’s right hand wandered towards the box that kept the writing utensils; he rearranged them without any visibly different effect. He then crossed his arms and slowly shook his head. He felt tired. “I don’t know what good my involvement will do,� he said, “– none, probably. But if there is by any chance a trace of decency left in him, he might…� He halted and ran his fingers through his short, fair hair, a troubled expression on his face.

“Dammit!� he said suddenly, from the bottom of his heart. Then, “Is this going to affect my position, Alastor?�

“I doubt it. There’ll be some gossip, I suppose; but your record of service doesn’t lie, nor,� he pointed a gnarled finger at the medal pinned on Stephen’s dark blue uniform robes, “does that Order of Merlin.�

Stephen nodded without much enthusiasm, and Moody stalked out of the room, leaving him to his own thoughts.

Alone in his office, the Chief Hit Wizard slowly rubbed his eyes, then his whole face, with both hands. What had gone wrong? Was there something he had neglected to do? Could this catastrophe have been avoided if – … Should he have taken another approach? Sent the boy abroad, perhaps, away from bad influences? Guarded him more closely? Punished him more severely? Or – tried to talk to him?

No, that would have been no use. By the time he had noticed that something was amiss, the child had already been corrupted to the core. It was too late for talking then; they no longer understood each other. He remembered the feeling of utter powerlessness at the realisation that the boy was beyond his control, beyond reason. The worst was that he should have sensed it coming, that he had understood how damning her influence might be – but should he have deprived the boy of his mother?

And to what extent had the choice been his?

It was her doing, all of it. She – she had bewitched his mind and ensnared his senses with her Dark arts. He had behaved unlike himself in all his dealings with her. He was not the kind of man to lose his head over a woman. There must have been magic involved – a treacherous potion slipped into his drink, a subtle spell cast when he had his back turned. Only, and this was unsettling, he could not think of a reason why.



_______________________________________



Next: Reminiscences. Stephen marries a dark lady, and raises objections to the name of Severus.

MIRROR MIRROR



PART I: TOGETHER

They had met when she was in her mid-twenties and he was nearing forty, an unattractive man with a forbidding look on his face, not much of a future in the Squad and not a Knut to his name. His elder sister had inherited the shop and he had quarrelled with her, just as he quarrelled with most, over a matter of personal principle. They were no longer on speaking terms. He was bitter and rather lonely, because he had a habit of being frank that didn’t sit well with most people, as he had little tact in expressing his opinions. His ineptness at social intercourse put people off, even if they felt he had the right ideas. It was the kind of thing that hindered his career, too. He did not know how to flatter and fawn, and even if he did have those skills, it was not in his nature to use such subterfuge in order to reach his aims. He was honest to the core. He believed in what was right. And he wanted to be judged according to his merit, not his money or social station or lack thereof. And so he remained where he was, at the bottom of the Hit Wizard hierarchy, because at the Ministry of Magic only the rich and well-born could get away with ‘unpleasantness’, which was the general term for anything that resembled a critical attitude.

She – she was well-born, and beautiful, if no longer rich. Why she singled him out, he could never understand. He remembered how she looked in 1959, at the Ministry party where he had seen her first, in those dark blue silken robes that set off the whiteness of her skin. He remembered the blue rose in her long black hair, and the dark eyes that had spotted him where he stood awkwardly in a corner with in his hand a drink he didn’t really want. He remembered thinking: No, she’s looking at Rookwood, she must be. But she was looking at him, not impudently, as some flirtatious woman would, but modestly, in a quiet, honest way, or so he thought. His face must have betrayed astonishment, and she smiled and looked away, blushing slightly.

Old Hector Bones had introduced them to each other, at her request; Septimia (the strange name rang a bell, but he could not tell where he had heard it before) was his foster-daughter. He could not for the life of him recall what they talked about that night, nor what was said on the few other occasions at which they met afterwards. He supposed there must have been some form of chaste courtship, some sweet words whispered and some confessions made, because within a month’s time they had pledged vows at a registry office and she called him her husband and he called her his wife. They knew each other very little.

But in those early days he truly understood the meaning of married bliss. Her presence in his life had lightened his mood and given him new confidence. She inspired him; he wanted to give her a home that fit her, with beautiful things inside and blue roses in the garden. He promised she would not regret marrying him; he would make her proud and happy. Side by side, they would work towards a common goal, and one day they would look back and be content.

They had purchased a small suburban house with her dowry, where she coped with the housekeeping as best she could without the help of a house elf, which was one of the many luxuries to which she had been accustomed. This life was new and difficult for her, but she never complained, and made him a warm welcome every evening as he returned from work. She was kind and patient when he was irritable and tired, and held him like a child when his spirits were low. If she had entertained other expectations from life, she never told him so.

He remembered the night their son was born, a January night when the rain had pattered on the roof tiles for hours, with a noise that almost drowned Septimia’s voice. He recalled how she had looked when she finally held the child in her arms. She had been very pale with fatigue, for the birth had been difficult; she was so weary that she had cried. But she had smiled at the sight of their baby boy, and they both felt intensely proud.

There had, however, been one painful moment when they had nearly had an argument about his name. She had come up with what she said was an old name in her family, one that he had thought too ridiculous for words. It smelled of pureblood snobbery.

“You can’t be serious!� he had said. “We cannot do that to the boy. Nobody nowadays calls their children Caligula or Heliogabalus or Vespasianus; the boy will be condemned to ridicule. What’s wrong with John, or William, or Henry, or Thomas, or, for that matter, Stephen?�

She had not pursued the argument, but he could see she was disgruntled; to pacify her, he finally acquiesced in her choice. But he refused to use the outlandish thing himself and always referred to the boy as ‘young Stephen.’

The incident should have raised his suspicions, but it had not. He was too intoxicated with happiness to ask any questions. Dark clouds were slowly gathering over the wizarding world, but he, Septimia and their little boy lived their own sheltered lives in deliberate obliviousness. He had fond memories of walks in autumnal forests, of skating rinks and picnics and of eating ice cream cones on Brighton pier. They had bought a camera one day, a great event that took place when the child was about three or four, and from that day on they had amassed snapshots of each other, those superfluous things that disappear in large cardboard boxes never to be looked at, but the taking of which somehow gives you such pleasure, trying, as you do, to capture fleeting moments of joy and make them last forever. (Their differences, which were definitely there, too, went unrecorded.) The pictures were of astonishing, pastoral innocence: his wife in light cotton robes and a large straw hat; the boy gathering shells on the beach; the three of them under a large parasol; the child sitting on his father’s shoulders, watching fireworks on New Year’s Eve; and all of them laughing, or smiling, or at least looking pleased. He could not bear watching them now, waving at him or just going about in their small rectangular world, still even though moving.

There were days, afterwards, when he wished he had never found out, and others at which he condemned such thoughts as betrayal. If there had been a choice, what would he have done? Was blissful ignorance preferable to the truth? Is anything worth setting one’s principles aside for? It was the one thing he kept telling himself: his own integrity had remained intact.

The story was very stupid, really. The thing would never have come to pass if he hadn’t been so damned unpopular. He had never been one to mince his words, not even when talking to his superiors, and when he noticed misfeasance he pointed it out. The year his boy reached his fifth birthday he had apparently vented his indignation once to many, and his Chief, outraged, had banished him to the Magical Law Enforcement archives, sneering that his fussiness made him excellently suited to classifying the numberless files lying about in the Ministry’s cellars. It was nothing short of a sentence of death, he had muttered to Septimia: if the layers of age-old dust didn’t suffocate him, he was likely to die of starvation; the archives were veritably labyrinthine. But his wife had smiled, kissed his large nose and reminded him of the Four-Point Spell; she said he had no excuse to be late for dinner.

And so he had grudgingly embarked on his Herculean task, determined to gain what little credit he could by actually completing it, and to prove that if he was obnoxious, he was at least courageous and competent in addition, which was more than could be said of some of his superiors. Slowly but surely, he tackled the stacks of parchment and newspaper cuttings in varying states of mouldiness, and brought order in the accumulated chaos caused by the negligence and untidiness characteristic of wizardkind at large, and to which he was a happy exception. It was not pleasant work: the dust made him sneeze and settled under his fingernails, on his robes and in his hair; and even though he got some satisfaction out of devising a cross-referencing cataloguing system for all the material, the job was, on the whole, exceedingly boring, and he did not have the feeling that he was doing anything useful. It was at this point, with his career at a standstill, that he made the discovery that shook up his private life and would eventually leave his home in ruins.

He had, in those dark, gloomy cellars, quite literally stumbled upon the Grindelwald case files. They contained the transcripts of the trials of various witches and wizards who had collaborated with the infamous Dark sorcerer, committing acts of terrorism in his name or otherwise helping him to gain a foothold in Britain. It was painful, being so suddenly confronted with their testimonies. Stephen’s parents had been among their victims; they had died random deaths, haplessly walking past an inn that had been targeted in one last vicious strike. This attack, more than any other, had sent a shockwave through the magical community – it was the summer of 1945, and by that time the Grindelwald supporters had already known their battle was lost. Stephen had followed the trials with a kind of detached interest, because none of it could restore the damage done. All through the proceedings he wondered what on earth could drive people to commit cruelty and violence on such a scale against other humans, especially as he could see no sense in them.

Stephen could understand rebellion. He could understand revenge. He could understand righteous anger. But most of the witches and wizards on trial had displayed none of these sentiments, and their motivations had appeared appallingly vague. It seemed as if they had just been waiting for someone’s, anyone’s, sanction to wreak havoc, and Grindelwald had taken up the gauntlet. He had, in the early forties, set up a nation-wide campaign to legitimate the practice of Dark Arts, which in Britain had been all but forbidden since the Age of Enlightenment. The reason for the ban had been Dark magic’s antisocial philosophy, which had in earlier days regularly disrupted both the peace of the magical community and its already strained relations with the Muggle world. Dark sorcerers, who preferably operated on their own or as members of exclusive, occult brotherhoods, tended to display a disturbing lack of respect for their fellow creatures. It was in the nature of their art that magic should be accomplished by preying upon others, by using them as the means to an end. They were of the opinion that their witchcraft justified the taking of lives; that other people’s laws did not apply to them; and that their superiority entitled them to the exercise of power. They were, in short, a selfish, greedy, and power-hungry lot without any sense of limitation or human decency. Grindelwald had temporarily succeeded in getting a band of them to join his banner, and nothing but terror and chaos had ensued. Stephen had joined the Magical Law Enforcement Squad in order to protect his fellow beings from just those things.

Now he held in his trembling fingers a photograph from a December 1945 issue of the Daily Prophet, captioned, ‘DeQuinceys Tried and Sentenced – Grindelwald Associates Sent to Azkaban’. Clinging to the snow-stained velvety robes of a haughty-looking, remarkably ugly wizard, himself supporting a dark-haired witch in a veil, was a little girl in a fur-lined cape, looking utterly confused and bewildered. She could not have been older than ten, but he recognised her immediately. It was Septimia DeQuincey, whom he had met and married as Septimia Bones.

When the first shock had subsided, he had rushed to Hector Bones’s office on Level Two and, without a word, smacked the DeQuincey file, picture on top, down on his father-in-law’s desk. Bones had picked up the photo in the quiet manner that comes to some men in their old age, and looked at Stephen over the rim of his reading glasses.

“We wanted to shield her,� he said. “She was so young. Amanda and I did not want her to carry the burden of her parents’ decisions. We gave her our name to protect her against prejudice.�

“Did I not have a right to know?� Stephen had asked, his voice hoarse.

“Would you have married her?�

“No.�

No, he wouldn’t have. He would have distrusted her from the beginning. He knew it was not fair, but he was being honest.

“We thought she deserved a chance.�

Silence.

“Has she not been a good wife to you?� Bones’s soft brown eyes had fixed upon him, steadily but without reproach.

“Yes,� he had answered curtly.

“Then why not let the past be the past?� the old wizard continued. “She had no responsibility in it all. She was a child. Please, judge her by her own actions, not her family’s – she has that right, don’t you think? By withholding her name, we gave both of you the opportunity to make an open-minded choice, and it has been good, has it not?�

Stephen had nodded, if only because there was nothing to deny, but his thoughts were still in turmoil as he retreated to the archives. He could not shake off the unrest that had crept into his mind, and the snake of suspicion had begun to eat away at his heart. It was true that he had nothing to complain about; but what if he had just not been tuned in to specific signals? It was easy to miss a thing you were not particularly looking for.

Now that he knew what she might be hiding, he could be on the alert. He decided not to talk to her about what he had found out, but just to observe her unawares. After all, as Bones had pointed out, he had been happy with her before; maybe his fears were groundless. She might not have inherited her parents’ proclivities. She deserved the benefit of the doubt.

He plodded through the files almost against his will, eager to find out more, yet dreading what he would encounter. And as he read through the descriptions of what had been found at the DeQuincey mansion, or about the Melifluas’ anti-Muggle movement (Septimia’s mother Anastasia had been a Meliflua), or about Septimus DeQuincey’s publications on Dark transfigurations, he wondered if a child could escape its background, or if a propensity to Dark matters was a thing that creeps in your veins and cannot be denied.

He hoped there was such a thing as choice, but he was not sure he really believed in it.


_______________________________________


Next: Old Stephen grows paranoid; Young Stephen grows up.

MIRROR MIRROR


PART II: ADRIFT

Knowledge is a burden.

Stephen watched his wife closely, and suffered. It seemed as if he had developed a kind of second sight – or rather, an ability to look through surfaces. He began to notice things he had never noticed before.

He saw smirks behind the smiles he had once found so alluring. He detected a metallic quality in her laughter, and dissonance in her voice, and he thought he could see serpents stir in the black depths of her eyes. Her touch, too, suddenly seemed false; it made him shiver, he could no longer support it. When he looked at her from the corners of his eyes, she appeared a scavenger bird, a predatory woman with her long, powerful fingers like claws to rip his life apart. She was – she must be – she could be – a cunning sorceress, a shrewd mistress of the wiles of womankind, a very Vivian who had trapped him in her enchanted cave of lies. When he looked at her, it was hard not to feel revulsion and – fear.

The glamour she had cast finally began to wane – or did it? Stephen knew that the human mind is very susceptible to suggestion and easily led astray. He had little imagination, but enough of it to run riot. The Hit Wizard in him said he needed proof. He had a hunch as to where he might find it.

One afternoon, unable to focus on his cataloguing, he had returned home earlier than usual. The house was empty; his wife had gone to fetch their boy from the neighbourhood playground. For a while he had sat at the kitchen table, meditating on whether he had the right to do what he was about to do. The arms of the kitchen clock moved on; she was probably having a chat with the other mothers coming to collect their children. He had hesitated. He had always respected her privacy.

Then, quite suddenly, he had got up and climbed the stairs to the small attic room she used as a study and went to have a look inside (the door was unlocked, as if there was nothing to hide). He had never entered it before; it felt like a disrespectful intrusion but he could not stop himself. The room, as it presented itself to him, was cluttered from top to bottom with innumerable books, scrolls of parchment, ink, quills, diagrams and various magical artefacts. There were three cauldrons, in copper, pewter and silver; a crystal distilling apparatus and a silver Essentometer; Transfigurines in several shapes and sizes; and something that looked more or less like an antique clock with a small golden globe orbiting it. On shelves fixed to the wall stood a number of bottles and jars containing bits and pieces of organic material and liquids of different colours, and near the window was a cage holding white mice. In other circumstances, the unspeakable disarray would have driven him over the edge. Now it was left to the book titles to do so. As he randomly picked up tomes and read the gold-embossed titles on their spines, he realised for the first time that his wife really spent her days practising Dark Arts in his house.

Oh, he had been shamefully betrayed. She was not the woman he had agreed to marry, not in name and not in character. He had never loved Septimia DeQuincey; he had loved someone who had never existed.

What had it been, that led him to wed a woman he scarcely knew? What had he seen that pleased him about her? Whatever it was, it could not have been very deep, for as soon as he had discovered that she dealt in Dark things, his tender feelings vanished into thin air. He lost patience with her, grew increasingly irritable and began to find fault with everything she did. He was especially suspicious of her cooking; he had come across a heavily annotated copy of Ye Niuewe Poifones Almanacke in her study. He knew of wives poisoning their husbands so gradually that it did not look like murder at all; the men became listless and morose and slowly went out like candles. He regularly refused to eat what she served.

She had never been very tidy, and he had learned to live with that; but now that he knew she neglected the cleaning in favour of her Dark hobbies, he found it unacceptable. He scolded her mercilessly and accused her of inadequacy and laziness.

It was true that he had wanted her to stay at home rather than take a job; but now he realised he had unwittingly furnished her with the time, means and occasion to practise reprehensible magic, and thought she should have something to do, a task that kept her away from her study. He told her to go and find paid work.

He had agreed that she would educate their son at home, as was the tradition in her family; but now, worried about her less than exemplary interests, he insisted that the boy go to a Muggle primary school, as had been the custom in his own family. He wanted his son to respect Muggles and understand them, and he had reason to believe his wife would only induce the child with a misplaced feeling of superiority.

Septimia declared herself mystified by what she called his sudden whims. She did not initially fight them, though, probably in the conviction that they would pass, or that she would be able to sway him, as she had done before on countless occasions, he saw now. She accused him of acting gruffly and starting rows for no reason at all. He replied that her being a Dark witch and hiding it from him was a reason if ever there was any, at which she argued that Dark Arts were not Evil Arts. He could not believe she had the brazenness to defend Dark magic to him. If she could not see the corruption inherent in it, she was dangerously immoral and must be corrected. If she meant to try and convert him into accepting this vileness as legitimate, she was even more perverted than he had guessed.

It infuriated him that she kept acting innocent, for some time at least: she would put on a miserable face when receiving one of his scathing remarks, or, which was worse, occasionally dissolve in tears when he shouted at her. She would cringe and hold up her hands, soliciting compassion she did not deserve, making him angrier still, and the boy, seeing her in that hypocritical position of supplication, would start to cry with her because he did not understand. He was a little fool, but he was very young and therefore should be excused; he could not be expected to see what it had taken Stephen so long to realise.

Stephen did not have a heart of stone. It gave him no pleasure to act as he did; he felt no satisfaction to see his wife wail and cower, much less his innocent boy. He fervently wished that things could be different, but knew that they could not. To ignore what had been happening would be cowardly, and he was brave; to condone what was wrong would be unjust, and he was fair. He was raised to do what he had to do, even if it was painful. The world was, after all, perfectible, and he had a responsibility in its making.

Septimia, moreover, soon crushed every doubt he might still have entertained. When she realised her false pleas and crocodile tears had no effect on him, she cast her snivelling and submissive mask aside and revealed her true self. She proved hard and cold and ready to argue; she snarled and snapped and spat venom, and was no longer above drawing her wand against him. She excelled at vile curses, proving his suspicions grounded.

Family dinners grew increasingly torturous for the three of them. Whenever the spouses addressed each other, they did so through the boy: ‘Tell your mother I will be coming home late tonight’, ‘Tell your father he should do so more often.’ The best meals were those that passed in complete silence. When their son’s magical power finally became manifest (Septimia had already expressed worries about its taking so long), it was through his exploding their plates at the dinner table during a particularly loud fight, in an attempt to turn his parents’ attention from each other. He was successful for about five minutes, and then they carried on arguing.

Following Stephen’s orders, Septimia had found herself a job. He was not sure he liked the sound of it much: she worked as an assistant librarian in the National Library’s restricted Wizarding Wing. It made him fear his sealing her attic room with the most powerful charm he could muster in order to prevent her from consulting her damnable books had been slightly superfluous. But the good thing was she got to spend less time with their child, which meant her influence was more or less under his control. The boy had moped a bit, initially, but he had eventually accepted the fact his mother would not be at home when he returned from school.

By the time young Stephen had reached the age of seven, they all led more or less separate lives. Mother and father had their own jobs and their own bedrooms (Septimia had magically enlarged the first floor broom cupboard for herself; there was no other option in their modest house), and avoided each other as much as possible. Their son spent his days at school; during the holidays he was mostly home alone, but he quickly learned to take care of himself.

If Stephen’s marriage had become a failure, at least he could take pride in his son. The boy was eager to learn, thorough and attentive, and he excelled at most subjects, one notable exception being gym. His teachers praised his compositions, the ease he displayed in mathematics, and the quality of his memory, which seemed to absorb facts and dates and names like a sponge. On the other hand, they thought it necessary to warn Stephen that the child was little inclined to socialising and seemed unpopular with the majority of its classmates. The complaint was not unfamiliar, and it did not worry him overmuch: Magical children will stand apart from others, and it was a good thing to learn and cope with it. And soon enough there would be Hogwarts, where the boy would be able to come to his own among his peers in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw (the child was decidedly not Hufflepuff material).

Stephen doted on his son, but that did not stop him from being strict. Children were small wild things that had to be cultivated, their little claws trimmed, their jogtrot rigorously trained into an amble. They were like great gardens in which weeds pushed up with vigour, threatening to smother nobler crops, and it was their parents’ responsibility to do the landscaping. You did them a disservice by being lax and indulgent; they would not wax into decent adults when not kept in leading strings. Unfortunately, Stephen had his wife to contend with. Septimia actively set herself to undermining his educational project by waging a war for the boy’s affections. She cooed in the child’s ear whenever his father chided or punished him (though he never did so without a reason), consoling him with soft-spoken words and caresses. Stephen had little talent for pronounced shows of affection, and it angered him to see that the boy was sensitive to them. It was at these times of frustration that he noticed exactly how much his son looked like her, with his pale skin, long black hair and eyes like coal.

Stephen had a habit of making himself perfectly clear. For rules and orders to be effective, they must be unambiguous, so he took care to make them so. It logically followed that his son had no excuse not to obey, and that disobedience led to disciplining. The boy had always accepted this with equanimity. He knew that if he was bad, he would have to make up for it somehow. But his mother’s nefarious influence gradually began to surface: when, on occasion, an order of Stephen’s contradicted one of Septimia’s, the boy said no rule had been breached, and challenged the punishment his father meted out. Stephen had to patiently explain that any command only has the value of the person who pronounces it. The boy had looked at him in bewilderment, saying that he could not obey both his parents at the same time if they expected different things from him. Stephen told him that in their case, Papa’s authority overruled Mama’s, for reasons he would one day understand and for now just had to accept. When it looked as if his son was about to pursue the point, he had lost patience and told the child, rather louder than was necessary, that he was becoming just like his mother and that this was extremely irksome. The boy, shocked at the sudden outburst, was pushed to the verge of tears by this verdict. Before he went to hide under the weeping willow in the small back garden, as he was wont to do when told off, he informed his father in an oddly bitter voice that whenever Mama was angry with him (Stephen was relieved to hear that happened, too), she accused him of being a smaller version of Papa.

It was at that moment that he should have realised how much their quarrels weighed on their son, but he failed to do so. His battle for the child’s soul demanded his full attention. His adversary was redoubtable.


_________________________________________________


Next: Stephen stumbles upon several secrets; ‘young Stephen’ is Sorted; and a strange wizard comes to the rescue.

MIRROR MIRROR

PART III: ESTRANGED

Both Stephen and Septimia had come to consider the Hogwarts Sorting Ceremony as a kind of parentage test. The DeQuincey family had produced generation upon generation of Ravenclaws, without exception; Stephen’s family had mainly brought forth Gryffindors, with here and there a Hufflepuff. Septimia was sure her boy would be in Ravenclaw: he was so clever. Stephen maintained that his son belonged in Gryffindor: he was so plucky. On the first of September 1971, they were, for once, peaceably sitting together at the kitchen table, the window open to let in the eagerly awaited owl carrying a letter from their offspring. When it arrived, a few minutes before eleven, there was a short tussle from which Septimia emerged victorious, having cast an Eyebrow-Growing Hex on her husband that hampered his sight. While he struggled with the excess facial hair, she broke the seal on the envelope and excitedly pulled out the letter. When she remained silent, Stephen assumed he had won. Brushing back his eyebrows, he tugged the letter from her hand and read it. Then all hell broke loose, as each held the other responsible for what had happened. Stephen had to do his wife that credit: Septimia did not like the sound of Slytherin either.

Their first opportunity for questioning their son face to face was the Christmas holidays. The boy would have preferred to stay over at Hogwarts, but his parents were, for a change, unanimous in their insistence that he come home. There, they asked him whether he had realised he could work on the Sorting Hat to place him where he really wanted to be; why he had not demanded that Dumbledore have him re-sorted; whether he could still switch Houses at the beginning of next term; and which he thought preferable, Gryffindor or Ravenclaw?

The child, black eyes large in his thin face, had told them he was very happy where he was and wouldn’t change Houses for anything in the world.

“But your family are Gryffindors,� Stephen had exclaimed, “or Hufflepuffs. That’s fine, too,� he had added somewhat lamely.

“And why not Ravenclaw?� Septimia had contributed. “All of us are Ravenclaws.�

“Exactly,� the boy had answered quietly.

His parents had just stared, and so he explained, in the tone a patient teacher takes with a particularly slow pupil:

“Slytherin is mine. Mine alone. I’m not like you. I’m different.� He had smiled with dignified pride and would not be moved.

Young Stephen was to spend seven years in the House that churned out more Dark wizards than any other, and that was a fact. Even Septimia’s depraved parents had not been in it. It boded no good for the boy, to be written off at age eleven. His mother, of course, was quick to come to terms with the Sorting. By the time the child was to return to school, she seemed to think the pros far outweighed the contras, as well she would. She pointed out that not all Slytherins turned bad, and that there was a good deal to be said for most of the qualities associated with the House. She told the boy that she trusted him to make the best of the opportunities he would be offered and to use his head. At this, mother and son exchanged glances that Stephen could only describe to himself as conspiratorial, and he saw the boy’s hand move towards his chest, where it very briefly touched something he must be wearing under his clothes. Stephen did not like the look of it all.

When the boy had left on the Hogwarts Express, he interrogated Septimia as he would a crime suspect. She confirmed his worst fears, telling him very calmly that she had been teaching the child Dark magic. He positively howled with rage. What on earth had she been thinking? The child could not even have grasped what he was meddling in. Children have such blurry conceptions of right and wrong, and she had been encouraging the boy in the wrong direction! Small wonder he had ended up in Slytherin. But Septimia had slowly shaken her head in the face of his fury and said that she had been doing their boy a service. “You don’t understand,� she had sighed. “It is in him. He is a natural Dark wizard; he would have experimented no matter what anyone said. I know Dark magic is dangerous – all magic is. I thought the best thing to do would be to tutor him, to give him some guidance in order to prevent accidents. I taught him the rules and told him what to beware of. Those who know how to play with fire don’t even get singed. You will have to trust him, as I do.�

“Trust him playing with fire? I’ll be surprised if you haven’t turned him into a bloody pyromaniac!� Stephen had bellowed. He felt an overpowering urge to slap her serene face. She might as well have stowed explosives in the child’s belt, but she sat there, calmly saying she had done the right thing. Red-hot rage had built up behind his eyes, his large nostrils flared and his muscles tensed at the thought of what had been done to his young son. He could not restrain himself for long; he could find no motivation for doing so. In the end he demeaned himself to, as Septimia wryly formulated it, putting the hit back into Hit Wizard.

That night he had not slept. He had just lain in his bed, his face buried in his pillow, trembling all over his body, unable to ignore the images etched onto his retina. Yes, it had been him; yes, he had done it. He loathed what she had turned him into.

She had made him feel so impotent, confronted as he was with accomplished facts and her sly little smiles and her subterfuge and guile – he had known he was no match for her. He had no influence over her. He could not break her of her despicable habits, though Merlin knew he had tried. He could not subdue her by magic because he was, well, a failed Auror for a reason and she an experienced Dark sorceress. Like an animal driven into a corner, he had struck out. She hadn’t expected it, and he had, for once, got the better of her. He wished he could be proud of it. But she had made him into someone he did not want to be. He hated her for it.

Stephen was not violent by nature. He disapproved of displays of brute force, also in his work for the Squad; he believed that justice should not be used as a bludgeon. He thought he had a decent amount of self-control. Only – there were certain buttons that had better not be pushed, and his wife knew where they were. She knew how to get at him, and she used her knowledge to great effect. He had reached a point at which he could simply take no more and just charged. She drove him mad and then whined when she got bruised.

When Stephen arrived home one spring day and found a strange wizard stowing Septimia’s things in a magically enhanced Rolls Royce, he felt, in view of the state of their recent life together, a great deal of relief mixed with the natural indignation and hurt pride of a cuckolded husband. The other wizard had looked honestly embarrassed on seeing him approach and did not know what pose to strike. Stephen had taken advantage of his insecurity.

“And you are?� he had barked.

“I – ah – Rabastan Lestrange.� The healthy blush on the wizard’s round cheeks had deepened. He was, Stephen noted, a very young man, and he looked singularly out of place in the modest part of town where he now found himself. He had the airs and physique of a benevolent country gentleman and, strangely enough, none of the haughty attitude one would have expected in an old-fashioned pureblood. His features were thick-set, but not unhandsomely so; he had an open face, an abundance of long, black curls and a pair of very clear blue eyes. Stephen suspected that this was a man who could tell no lies.

“We hadn’t – ah – expected you back so soon,� Lestrange said clumsily, the blush now spreading to the roots of his hair. “I mean…�

Stephen had actually felt sorry for him.

“How old are you, Master Lestrange?� he had asked in a severe tone.

“T-twenty-four, sir,� the young man had stammered.

“She could almost be your mother. I can’t imagine your parents approve of this.�

“They don’t.� Lestrange had coughed nervously and thrown a quick glance at the door, clearly hoping fervently for Septimia to come out and rescue him from the sticky situation, but she was still busy in the house. He had turned back to Stephen and said, “I’m really sorry about this, sir. About taking her away, I mean. I had no intention of… I just…�

“That’s all right,� Stephen had said curtly. “You’re welcome to her.� He had meant it.

And so Septimia had been led out of his life by the heir to the Lestrange estate. They had apparently met at the library, where the young man had been doing research into wizard genealogy. Well, birds of a feather will flock together, Stephen had snorted; everyone knew the rumours about Rabastan’s family. He made no objections when his wife pleaded for a divorce, having been assured by his solicitor that he would be given custody over his son; now that Septimia had gone to raise a litter of Dark purebloods (this was a surety, young Lestrange had a duty in life), she could afford to part with her half-blood child, he thought nastily.

With Septimia gone, Stephen had breathed freely again and decided to make a new start. The house and its contents were put up for sale – the divorce proceedings had to be paid for – and Stephen had found himself a small furnished flat in Chinatown, which had the advantage of being close to the Ministry. He would no longer be a commuter and would have more time to spend with his child. When he picked up young Stephen at King’s Cross Station late in June, therefore, he felt inordinately happy and pleased with himself, keenly enjoying the feeling of the boy’s small hand in his own as they walked the streets of London. At the new flat, he had shown him into a neat little bedroom containing his toys and books, purged of unwholesome items. Later, his father had taken him out to buy new clothes and shoes, as the boy had grown out of his old things, and he had also finally had his hair cut short. The boy had not voiced a single objection to any of the proceedings, though he did seem a bit dazed and quieter than usual. Stephen felt confident that, far removed now from his mother’s clutches, the child could yet be saved.

Despite his efforts to make the child at home in his new environment, things had not run as smoothly as he had hoped. For the first few days the boy had kept asking for his precious Mama, and when he had realised she would never be part of this new existence, he had shed some silent tears. His father had told him, in his characteristically blunt way, that his mother was not worth his sorrow: she could not have cared for him much; she had left him behind. This reasoning had stopped his tears, and Stephen had thought that yes, they would manage together.

As if to sanction the turn his life had taken, it was around this time that Stephen’s career finally took off. Hector Bones, with whom Stephen had always been on good terms despite the eventual debacle of his marriage, succeeded in hauling him out of his archives when a mad wizard who styled himself Lord Voldemort began to terrorise Muggles, and the Squad needed all the staff it could get to apprehend him. Bones had argued that Stephen’s efficiency and competence, paired with his understanding of and affiliation with the Muggle mindset, made him an excellent candidate to lead an operation which involved non-wizards; and because the situation was so serious and no-one really wanted the job, Stephen had suddenly found himself promoted. At last he was given a responsible position in the field, and he lived up to it through unfailing dedication and efficiency. But it was not an easy life, and performing his tasks with thoroughness demanded much time and energy.

He could not be there for the boy as much as he would have wanted, and when he was at home he was often abrupt in his manner because worn out. His son, however, took it all with remarkable stoicism. He spent much time outside, picking up a smattering of Chinese and returning with exotic recipes like Szechuan snake with dwarf coconuts, or deep fried durian, which smelt perfectly disgusting and caused the other tenants in the building to complain. Stephen did not mind about the cookery; it was extremely useful and quite tasty. What did worry him was that, when he came home late and passed the boy’s bedroom door, he could sometimes hear him chant incomprehensible things that to his suspicious mind might just be Asian spells, and though he was by no means an expert, he knew enough about Eastern wizardry to feel that there was a lot in it he did not want his son to know.

On one such occasion – September was drawing near - he had dived into the boy’s room with the intention of catching him red-handed. Young Stephen had been sitting crouched under the bed sheets, reading by the light of a torch, and at his father’s entrance had uttered a small gasp and tried to stash his reading material away.

“Give me that book!� Stephen had barked, tearing at the sheet, and the child had quickly stuffed the offensive item under his pillow and thrown himself down on it.

“It’s nothing, Papa,� he had squeaked. “Really!� But while he said it he looked awfully guilty and flushed scarlet.

“Give. Here!� Stephen had snapped, grabbing the boy hard by his upper left arm; and the boy, ears glowing, had finally reached under the pillow and handed over the book with his eyes averted.

It was a copy of the Tales of 1001 Nights, Uncensored and Unabridged – Volume Five, to be precise. There were six or seven page markers in it, and several passages were highlighted. Young Stephen was never one for superficial reading.

Stephen had stared at the book in his hand for what might well have been a full minute, his son whimpering by his side. Then he had started to laugh, thrown his arms around the boy and hugged him tightly with uncharacteristic warmth of feeling.

“I’m sorry,� he had said, holding the child close. “I’m sorry I was so angry. I thought… I can’t tell you what I thought.�

“You’re not mad at me then?� the boy had piped up, fixing him with anxious black eyes.

“No.� Stephen had shaken his head. “Well, I suppose that I ought to chide you or something, but… Oh son, this is just schoolboy naughtiness. It’s natural. It’s human. It’s all right.� And he had kissed the boy’s pale forehead, his heart at rest.

____________________________________________


Next: ‘Young Stephen’ outsmarts his father, proving he has a right to his own name.


A/N: If you want to know more about Septimia’s point of view and her ‘conspiracy’ with Severus, try my story “A Lesson in Darkness and Light�, also at MuggleNet.

MIRROR MIRROR

PART IV: APART

Suddenly the world was on fire.

They had known something was brewing, something dark and evil, and that the sorcerer stirring the draught and stoking the fire called himself Lord Voldemort. But they had underestimated him, not believing that any one wizard could harness enough power to pose a serious threat to the Ministry, and, through it, to the stability of the entire magical community. Besides, many wizards and witches who had a say in politics were, initially at least, of two minds about the situation. What they saw was a rogue who went after Muggles – a psychopath, yes, but one whose actions had no serious repercussions on the well-being of the wizarding public. It was, they thought, a case for the Hit Wizards, which meant the Ministry did not expect the kind of trouble that required handling by their Auror elite troops.

That was until wizards got killed, and Lord Voldemort turned out to have gathered, in all discretion, a private militia who called themselves Death Eaters. Among their first victims were the old Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and his wife, Hector and Amanda Bones. Their deaths hit Stephen hard; he felt that, after his parents, he had lost his surrogate father and mother to Dark wizards too. He wondered how Septimia had reacted to the news.

It was a bitter irony that Bones’s death propelled Stephen upward. The new Head of Department was Bartemius Crouch, elected because of his stern views on morality and law enforcement, and a man who knew how to value Stephen’s particular qualities. He needed, he said, a brisk and dependable servant of the law who would deal firmly with those criminals; a man who would not be swayed by offers of wealth or promises of glory to defect from the course of justice. He had made him Chief Hit Wizard.

It was Crouch, too, who had brought in the Aurors, because they were better qualified to do any actual fighting, and it looked as if such action would be necessary. Stephen was asked to cooperate with the famous Alastor Moody, a collaboration that urged him to do his utmost if he did not want to be spectacularly outshone – and a Hit Wizard had his pride. So if he had thought that reinforcement would have made his task any easier, he was proved wrong. The Ministry was reduced to a state of permanent crisis, and Stephen found he could not spare the time to lead a life outside of his job. He took to spending nights in his office, and looking back it seemed that he had, during that period, mainly sustained himself with strong coffee.

It was a war, and a bitter one at that. People grew so frightened that they no longer dared to speak Voldemort’s name, as if he were some kind of demon who would appear by your side when you mentioned it. They were nervous. In the papers and on the wireless, the terror was the only topic; there was no time or space for sweetness and light in a society in a constant state of alarm. It was hard to know whom to trust.

Even at Hogwarts the panic did not fail to filter through. But young Stephen did not write anxious letters, as the children of his father’s colleagues did. His notes were short and businesslike, stating his marks and saying all was well. It made Stephen proud. His boy kept a level head and generally seemed fairly happy. He was not surprised that, with Septimia gone, the boy no longer objected to coming home for the holidays. There were no more fights to run from, after all; and perhaps the child was more affected by the events of the war than he let on to and needed the reassurance of home. Stephen had then seen himself as a tower of strength, a rock in the midst of an ocean in turmoil – the rules he set would keep the boy steady. But whenever he made remarks about his son’s docility and common sense to fellow parents, they looked at him pityingly and told him to expect a change any day soon, because his child had become a teenager.

Stephen could not remember much of his own teen years, then about half a century ago. He had hardly noticed them passing; as far as he knew, they had been nothing special – none of the upheaval, anxiety, or hormonal blasts people made such a fuss about had marred his adolescent life. All this special treatment they had recently begun advocating for young adults was so much foolishness for wimps, and it certainly had no bearing on him or his son. The only way to bring up a child was with the firm use of reason, intolerant of nonsense. The boy could test how far his leash would stretch; the point was to make him accept it was there and to keep him from biting through it.

The testing period had eventually announced itself with young Stephen’s sudden refusal to wear his hair short anymore. His father had no idea why that could be; it was probably one of these fashion fads youngsters were so fond of. And though Stephen objected to the impracticality and effeminacy of it all, he had let the boy have his way. After all, if you forced a wizard to have a haircut, he just grew his hair back before you could say ‘neat’, so there was little he could do anyway.

But the boy’s appearance did become a nuisance. Stephen, who was one of these men who were continually flicking imaginary specks of dust from their immaculate clothes, had to watch in distaste as his son’s dress grew ever shabbier, and the detested long hair hung in greasy strands about the boy’s face. The worst of it was that it all seemed so deliberate. The boy couldn’t help having oily skin. He couldn’t help the fact that his nose became more and more pronounced and his features unattractive. But he could wash his hair, and he could do something about his clothes. Ugliness was one thing, but carelessness quite another, and Stephen was the living proof of that. After a few heated arguments, however, he had let the matter rest. There were more serious things a boy could do wrong than cultivating a head of dirty hair.

Looking back, Stephen saw that the change of style had only been a prelude. Next had come the letters from Hogwarts, warning him that his son was displaying maladjusted behaviour. His knowledge of nasty spells was worryingly extensive. He had apparently developed a habit of maliciously hexing fellow students, which was not, in itself, exceptional in an apprentice wizard; more alarming, his teachers thought, was that, whereas other little rascals were shielded by their peers, this boy was continually given away, which pointed to an inability to make and keep friends. When called to account, the boy claimed in his defence that he was being badly bullied, making Stephen wonder about cause and effect. He could not blame the boy for knowing so many curses; they were remnants of Septimia’s infernal teachings. But he had lectured his son rigorously about their use, and it seemed that after that his quarrelsomeness abated to the level of acceptability. Stephen might have had to raise his voice, but his authority was still in effect.

Or was it?

He found out that one of his educational projects, at least, had failed, when he came home one evening to find his fourteen-year-old (who looked like an underfed vulture in those days, with his rounded shoulders and protruding shoulder blades) gloomily leafing through a copy of Witch Weekly. It soon became obvious why the boy was suddenly interested in a ladies’ magazine: it featured an item on Rabastan Lestrange’s young family – the Glamorous Life of the Upper Crust, With Photos.

“She’s had another baby,� the boy had said dejectedly. “It’s a girl, this time: Lavinia. Radamanthus is two now. They look so perfect.�

Stephen had picked up the magazine. There she was, Mrs Lestrange, holding a bouncing baby, and Mr Lestrange with a toddler in his arms and a hound at his feet. They looked disgustingly happy; even the dog seemed to be smiling.

“Good riddance,� Stephen had muttered, snorting at the children’s names; the reaction had earned him a withering look from his son.

“She was mine,� the boy had said, “mine. But you chased her away and she became someone else’s mother.�

“She left you behind,� he had replied stiffly. “She didn’t care for you!�

“Only because you wouldn’t let her,� the boy had spat, and he had walked out of the room, leaving Stephen to glare at the pictures of Septimia’s beautiful new family.

“Believe what you want!� he had shouted after his son. “But you’re deluding yourself!�

They had not spoken for two days afterwards. It seemed that, no matter how hard he had tried, he could not erase the boy’s mother from his life. Neither, it would turn out, could he remove the seed she had planted in her child’s brain.

Besides a doubtful taste in books (Stephen kept coming across titles like the Decameron and Satyricon in the apartment; the only thing you could say in their favour was that they were classics), the boy developed an unhealthily rebellious attitude, which Stephen perceived as being directed solely towards the balance of his blood pressure. He had nearly choked on his buttered toast when, on a summer morning, young Stephen – he must have been around sixteen then – while scanning the Daily Prophet headlines had remarked:

“You know, maybe we should all back You Know Who and overthrow the Ministry. We could smash everything and start anew.� He had said it very calmly, pensively sipping his coffee.

“What?� Stephen had stared at him. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying?�

“I always do.� The boy had smoothed out the newspaper and shown him a photo of a heap of rubble that had once been a government building. “You see the kind of thing he is capable of. I’ve never heard you say anything else than that the Ministry is too slow, too bureaucratic and too corrupt to be really efficient. All the power lies with a few old fogeys who are only interested in filling their own pockets. They make a mess of it but they can’t be removed. That’s what you said, right?�

“I never…�

“You did.� The boy had frowned. “You said they kept you down because you weren’t rich enough and wouldn’t be bribed to boot.�

“Well yes, but-� The boy’s arguments were definitely going the wrong way, but he found it difficult to formulate his own.

“The only remedy against an old-fashioned power bastion is radical action. – That would be Mikhail Bakunin,� he had added. “He was a Muggle, but that doesn’t matter. He had admirable logic.� He had been so cool about it; it was frightening. “Flatten the whole rotten business and build it up again from scratch, that’s the only way. And here is a wizard who has the guts and the means to do it. This is our chance to finally establish a meritocracy. It’ll be brains that count then.� Stephen remembered thinking the gleam in his son’s eyes was one of subdued fanaticism.

“Nothing positive can come of terrorism,� he had ground out. “Change has to happen gradually from within, and not by violence. You’ll understand one day.�

The boy had narrowed his eyes and looked him straight in the face.

“Oh,� he had said contemptuously, “now that you’ve been promoted, everything is fine, isn’t it? Better not bite the hand that feeds you, eh? You’ve become part of the system and now you eat your words.�

“Listen here, son,� Stephen had said warningly, “whatever the situation, there’s nothing good to expect from a Dark wizard. I know that; you are young and foolish, you’ll learn.�

His tone had made it clear that this was final, and the boy had not pursued his point. In fact, he had never brought the subject up again. The lesson, it appeared, had been well absorbed; but Stephen had not realised exactly which lesson until Amelia Bones came by his office to tell him she had spotted his son in Knockturn Alley, carrying a package from Borgin and Burke’s. It was the last day of August 1977; the boy was about to enter his last year at Hogwarts.

Stephen disliked Amelia; she had the same disposition as his sister (the one that had provided the reason for their falling out, in fact) and, which made it worse, she paraded it. She wore men’s robes and an eyeglass, for Merlin’s sake. At least Christina looked decent. But however he felt about Amelia, the news about his son had to be taken seriously. Stephen had started a private investigation.

After sending his son off to King’s Cross’ platform 9 ¾, he had put on a hooded black cloak and made his way to Knockturn Alley. He had strode into Borgin and Burke’s and demanded to see the customer’s ledger. Mr Borgin had rudely refused to show it to him because his customers relied on his discretion; but Stephen could be very persuasive when he wanted to, and Borgin had been forced to copy the entries headed S. Snape (Jr.), 16b Lisle St. down on a piece of parchment. At the sight of Stephen’s Hit Wizard badge, he had also provided other addresses he knew the boy to frequent – bookshops, pharmacies, meeting-places.

By the time his enquiries were as complete as he could get them, Stephen held an impressive list of books, items and ingredients of which the boy had managed to conceal every trace in their flat and the value of which, to his amazement, amounted to a considerable sum. The boy’s odd jobs during the holidays could not have earned sufficiently much, yet all had been duly paid for.

He had gone to his son’s empty bedroom and furiously looked around. The clothes the boy had left behind were hanging in the wardrobe, carefully ironed and very clean, but threadbare and some of them several sizes too short. The linen was no longer white but grey with wear. The books that occupied the shelves taking up one wall of the room consisted, on the one hand, of schoolbooks the boy had outgrown, and on the other of handsomely bound copies of the more questionable literary classics, some of which Stephen had already encountered on various occasions. The room exuded a blandness, an inconspicuousness that felt unreal in its perfection.

Standing there, he had suddenly understood how he had been fooled; all the pieces fell into place.

The boy’s clothes were old and shabby because he had spent the money he received for new ones on Dark things. Of course he was eager to come home during the holidays, when the best place to buy Dark materials was in London’s Knockturn Alley. And if he had not contradicted Stephen’s directions, it had been the better to subvert them in secret. As to the books – oh, that was a clever inversion of an old schoolboy trick! Stephen pulled out a tome of The Complete Works of Marquis de Sade, tapped it with his wand and spoke a countercharm, to find himself holding a volume entitled Dark Arts: A Road Less Travelled. In his days at Hogwarts, he had known fellow students to bewitch lewd books so that they looked like textbooks to anyone else; it went to show how devious the boy’s mind was that he should have done the opposite and masked one vice as another.

Septimia’s words had echoed in his mind: It is in him. He is a natural Dark wizard. Septimia had bad blood; there was no question about that, and she had infected the boy with it. But surely the child was as much his as he was hers, and he had hoped, he had desperately wanted to believe, that his own blood might have a mitigating effect. It was his side of the boy he had trusted in, that which he had sought to cultivate. But it appeared that he had fought a battle that had already been lost.

Frantic with rage, he had torn the books from their shelves, dragged them to the living room by means of the bedroom carpet, crammed them into the stove and burnt them.

When the boy came home for Christmas he was of age. On discovering what had happened to his precious books, he had started a flaming row, called Stephen a fascist and generally looked quite insane. They had shouted, fought, and hexed each other with bitter tenacity. Eventually Stephen had thrown the raging boy out on the street. It had felt like casting out a devil.

It was the first time Stephen had ever given up.


______________________________________________


Next: The finale, in which Stephen confronts his son and is forced to make a painful decision.

MIRROR MIRROR

EPILOGUE : THE BOY AGAIN

Ministry of Magic, London, January 1982

The curse was followed by a stifled groan, and then the Auror spoke.

“Look, now you’ve got yourself a nosebleed. In your case that’s likely to be lethal. It doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t have to hurt you. If you’d just cooperate… Come on, Severus, be a good boy…�

“Severe-us, please, not Sever-us, Mr Longbottom. It is Latin. I thought Aurors were supposed to be educated. And I prefer Professor Snape, if you wouldn’t mind. Ten hours of enforced cohabitation in this room do not, in my opinion, justify any assumption that we should be on first name terms.�

The door was ajar, so Stephen heard his son before he saw him. His voice was low and betrayed exhaustion, even if the tone was familiarly venomous. It struck Stephen that the enunciation was precise and the accent polished.

When he came in he saw the boy – well, he was a young man now, but Stephen found it impossible to think of him in other terms than ‘boy’ – looking slightly battered, yet sitting more or less composedly at a table, arms crossed in front of his chest and the folds of his cloak curling around the legs of his chair. On closer looking, he noticed bruising to one side of the boy’s face, and some traces of clotted blood. The expression, however, was one of grim determination.

It was almost five years ago that Stephen had stood at the window, watching his son walk out of Lisle Street to he did not know where. It seemed longer. The boy had changed. His lankiness had given way to a kind of cool dignity and self-possession, and despite being obviously worn out he held his shoulders straight. His black robes and cloak, vaguely reminding Stephen of a monk’s habit, were prim and well-cut. But his hair was still long and greasy, clashing strangely with the general neat austerity of his appearance; and his clean-shaven face with the black eyes and large hooknose was a cruel caricature of Septimia and Stephen combined.

His son looked up at him when he entered the room, and Stephen was struck by the expression in his eyes – or rather, by the lack of it. Young Stephen’s eyes were like burns in a carpet, like dark pits, like unlit hallways leading nowhere. They had contemplated horrors, and their brilliance had been replaced with the kind of emptiness that comes from too much experience at too early an age.

There was no question that he was guilty. Stephen was not sure if he should feel pity. Whatever had happened, the boy had brought it upon himself, and he, his father, had certainly done everything within his power to keep him out of harm’s way. He did not really know why he had come, but he was here now.

“You asked to see me,� he said.

“Yes. Do send him away.� The boy kept his arms crossed but pointed a long finger at the Auror seated opposite.

“Please leave us alone, Frank,� Stephen said, and the Auror nodded and left. “And you, say what you have to say. But if you count on finding compassion in me that you have not found elsewhere, you are sadly mistaken.�

“I had no such expectations.� The boy stared hard at the table in front of him, avoiding his father’s eyes. “Believe me,� he said softly, “if I had seen any other option I would not have asked for you. I find you self-righteous and short-sighted, but you are the only Ministry official I would dare to trust.�

“Why, thank you,� Stephen snapped. “Now get on with it.�

His son did not speak immediately. His gaze was fixed on the pentangle-shaped medal pinned to his father’s uniform robes, the legend of which read, Order of Merlin, Third Class.

“A Third? Can’t be too difficult to do better, then,� he whispered tauntingly.

“We’ll see about that,� Stephen barked, incensed. “I told you to get on, boy. I haven’t got all day.�

“Very well, very well,� the boy replied, undisturbed. “You see, my situation is a little bit … complicated. I tried to explain to your Auror associates that I could not speak freely until I had conferred with Professor Dumbledore, but they refused to call him in.�

“I am sure they have their reasons,� Stephen grunted.

“Of course they have.� The boy curled his lip. “They want to ship me off to Azkaban as quickly as possible.�

“If you are a Death Eater I can’t blame them.�

His son ignored the comment and said, “It is important that Professor Dumbledore knows I am here. Do send him a message.�

“How does Dumbledore come into this?� Stephen asked somewhat suspiciously. It would not be the first time his son tricked him, and he was determined not to let him get away with anything now.

“He is my employer,� the boy said. “In more ways than one.�

“You mean …�

“Yes.�

Stephen looked at him askance. “And you told the Aurors this?�

“Not in so many words, but I mentioned Dumbledore. Then Moody started to ask me questions about birds…�

“Birds.� Stephen stared uncomprehendingly.

“Yes. Professor Dumbledore’s pet phoenix, among others.�

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me there.�

“That is what I said, too. At that they concluded I must be trying to save my skin, and Longbottom got his wand out.� He sighed. “It had been some kind of code, obviously, but I did not understand.�

The boy paused for a moment and rubbed his eyes with his left thumb and index finger. Then he said, “Professor Dumbledore will vouch for me, and you are my only chance at alerting him.�

“And why would I do so?� Stephen asked levelly. “I have understood from this that you are indeed a Death Eater. Is that correct?�

“Yes.�

“But you spied for Dumbledore.�

“Yes.�

“Let me get this straight, then: did he ask you to join the Death Eaters so that you could inform him of their activities?�

His son looked him in the eye and said, very quietly but unapologetically, “No.�

Stephen nodded slowly. “I see. Now remind me why I should help you escape justice.�

“I am not trying to escape justice,� the boy said calmly. “I am trying to obtain a trial. And if you need a reason, I feel bound to point out that it is because of traitors like me that in this corridor Aurors are torturing Death Eaters instead of it being the other way around. Only insiders could obtain the kind of information that could bring the Dark Lord down.� He smirked. “Of course it must be frustrating for you to realise that I accomplished more good through deviance than you ever could through decency.�

“You insolent brat!� Stephen spat. He collected the file from the table and stood up, ready to go. “If you think I’ll save your arse when your attitude -�

“Hear me out,� the boy cut in, “… Father.� Stephen thought the pause made it sound like an insult. Maybe it was. “I did not tell the Aurors about the spying because for all I knew there might be Death Eaters among them – or at least people affiliated with the Dark Lord; there are more than you would think. And the Dark Lord is not dead, contrary to what the Ministry likes to believe. It is not over yet. He might return. And when he does, Professor Dumbledore will need me. You are the only man here about whose allegiances I have no doubt. You will not blow my cover. Now please warn the Headmaster.�

Stephen said nothing. He clung to the file, walked out of the interview room without another glance at his son and slammed the door behind him. In the corridor, he leaned back against a wall and gazed at the ceiling.

Alastor Moody came walking to where he stood. “The Dementors, then?� he growled.

Stephen sighed. “Not just yet,� he said. He felt very tired and slightly nauseated, too.

He vacillated between fierce loathing and bland reason. He hated and despised the boy for choosing to dedicate his talents to working evil, for casting a slur on his family, for deliberately causing his father pain. And he grudgingly recognised that there had been an effort to make things right, to restore the balance, to correct the mistakes he had made. But it was too late, was it not? He had known full well what he was doing. Or had he not? Stephen had warned him, in any case. But then the boy had wanted to be – different, and he was young, after all, and unwise. He had reconsidered, and he had gone to his old Headmaster. Not to his father, who would have sent him away a second time, but to a complete stranger. And Dumbledore had trusted him, where he, Stephen, would not have. He hated the boy’s defiance, his provocative manner, his tone. He hated how he reminded him of himself, how he was like a distorted mirror that showed Stephen all his own qualities and shortcomings warped into something vicious and detestable.

But he saw himself as a just man, and knew he would not be able to respect himself if he allowed the boy to be knocked out with truth potions and sentenced to living death in Azkaban just because he was Stephen’s most glaring failure and therefore best obliterated. The boy deserved punishment for his wrongdoings, but recognition for what he did right. And afterwards – they would both have to live with themselves.

Stephen had always tried to do the right thing. It stung him that his son should count on precisely that, to be sure, but then again …

The Chief Hit Wizard went to his office, took one of his three identical ball points, and scribbled an urgent message to Albus Dumbledore.


FINIS




A/N: If you want to know more about Severus’ defection from Lord Voldemort and his deal with Professor Dumbledore, you can read his strange job interview in my story The Return of the Prodigal Son, coming soon at Mugglenet.