Chapter 10: Quite Contrary
“So, did you like the Fizzing Whizbees?” Mary asked, looking up from weighing ingredients for the day’s potion on the brass student scale at her desk. “I just took a guess.”
“Those were from you?” Severus questioned in return, probably looking every bit as puzzled as he felt. His guess had been Slughorn, since he seemed the type to treat students in the hospital wing to food, although in retrospect, he realised, Slughorn would have sent crystallised pineapple.
“Well, you know, when your lab partner is in the infirmary,” Mary replied, as if that explained everything. He would hardly have given her a second thought if she had been in the hospital wing, never mind procure and send Fizzing Whizbees, but then again, girls apparently did these things. Now that he thought of it, aside from Lily, he had never visited anyone in the hospital wing. He might have to try that at some point; it was definitely the kind of thing Lily would do. Had done. For him, among others.
It hadn’t even occurred to him that he was Mary’s lab partner, but they had worked together for a few months now, increasingly collegially, and apparently to Mary, this constituted a relationship worthy of something from Honeydukes. For his part, he was not going to complain. She was pleasant: she was no Lily but she was decent at Potions, she was easy to talk to, and most of all, she wasn’t Black, Potter, or Lupin.
“Thanks very much,” he answered. “Good guess.” He didn’t love Fizzing Whizbees, but at least they weren’t Bertie Botts’ Every-Flavoured Beans. She must not have asked Lily, or she would have heard about his weakness for Sherbet Lemons and anything involving dark chocolate.
Since Mary’s good will could undoubtedly make smooth the path to the Holy Grail, and since Mary seemed to do most of the work in the conversations they had during Potions class, Severus decided to start one up for a change as a reward for the gratuitous sweets. “I never knew you were musical,” he commented. She and Lily had walked into class together at the same time that day, which was unusual, singing something that, knowing Lily, probably came from her favorite perky Swedish band. Lily had been singing the melody, with Mary doing the more difficult and less glamorous role of pulling down a tight two-part harmony that, even Severus could recognise, not just anyone could have managed.
“Hmm?” Mary asked. “Oh, that. Not much of an opportunity to make use of it around Hogwarts, I suppose. They do have an old piano in the prefects’ room, though, and Lily lets me in to use it whenever I need to. I never knew you were musical either, now that you mention it.”
“I’m not,” he answered. “I like listening, but I’ve never learned to play anything.”
“You don’t have to have had lessons -- you must be at least a bit musical to figure out that I was actually doing that right,” she assured him.
“So,” he said, diverting the topic slightly to his own personal favourite, “she must be going into fairly impressive ABBA withdrawal by now, since presumably she hasn’t been near a phonograph in months.” There was no need to specify to whom the pronoun referred; Mary tactfully allowed him to talk about Lily without the slightest bit of teasing, and he had gradually grown comfortable with it.
“It happens every autumn,” Mary concurred.
“And spring,” he added.
“Don’t they boot you out of the Dark Wizards Club for even knowing of the existence of ABBA?” she asked jokingly.
“The Dark Wizards Club?” he asked, cocking one eyebrow. “You make it sound like the Gobstones Club, or the Recreational Quidditch League.”
“What do you call them, then?” she asked.
“My roommates,” he responded. She gave a deliberate shudder in reply.
“They do boot you out,” he continued, in a mock serious tone, “but you have to go through the Exit Ritual first.”
“What’s that?” she asked, looking at him with both amusement and skepticism.
“The Exit Ritual is where they tie you up and make you listen to ABBA until your ears bleed,” he replied, already starting to laugh even as he was saying it. “Worse than the Cruciatus Curse.” He tried to stop himself from laughing, but his efforts were failing, and looking at Mary, who was dissolving into giggles, was only making it worse. Slughorn shot them a warning glance.
“So, what do you Dark wizards listen to?” Mary asked softly, regaining her composure. “I’d guess the Rolling Stones-- that whole satanic majesty bit,” she stated.
He gave what turned out to be a contemptuous snort. “Unlikely,” he replied. “First of all, they’re mostly Muggles, and secondly, Muggle Without a Cause listens to the Rolling Stones,” he informed her, jerking a thumb back in Black’s direction. “Reason enough not to, as far as I’m concerned.”
Mary looked as though she was going to lose it again, but struggled to remain composed and instead commented, “Muggle Without a Cause? That’s priceless -- I’ll have to make use of that one. You didn’t answer my question, though; what kind of music do you like?”
“What do Dark wizards listen to?” he repeated thoughtfully, deflecting the more personal question, and ad-libbed, “Around-the-clock ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’ All day and all night.”
“Exactly what I’d expect,” Mary said, nodding sagely and then, imitating the hand movements of a conductor as she quietly sang, “Kill the Mudbloods, kill the Mudbloods” to two or three bars of Wagner, while Severus stopped what he was doing, for once completely stunned.
“I’m impressed,” he stated. “You’re actually shockingly twisted.”
“And you’re shockingly normal sometimes,” she replied.
“Don’t let on,” he warned her.
“I won’t. No one would believe me, anyway. They’d all think I’d gone daft.”
“You’re speaking to me cordially on a regular basis, so it’s fairly safe to assume that they already think that,” he informed her. “Don’t turn around right now, but look at Black and Potter the next chance you get.”
“I can’t without actually turning around and staring at them,” she said. “What are they up to now?”
There was too much movement and whispering in the Marauder area for him to ignore it further. It meant something. “They’re looking over here,” he said to Mary softly, never taking his eyes off the potion ingredients he was preparing, so that no one could tell that he was doing anything other than talking about their classwork. “So here comes the part when they walk over and ask you why you’re chatting with me. If you dare to argue with them, they’ll say I’m your boyfriend. There may or may not be a gratuitous reference to my being a greasy-haired Dark Arts bastard. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
Mary snickered and said, “This is Black we’re talking about -- he’ll probably ask whether I’m going to marry you. His repertoire hasn’t changed much since first year.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’d go past the boyfriend suggestion,” Severus answered softly, “That’s repellant enough.”
“I share a common room with him, so I speak from experience. Would you like to bet on it?” she asked playfully, still speaking sotto voce.
“A bag of the Honeydukes product of the winner’s choice the next Hogsmeade weekend?” he asked. After the Fizzing Whizbees, it seemed like a logical forfeit.
“You’re on,” she said, suppressing her smile just in time as her fellow Gryffindor walked over.
Sirius Black approached, his expression and movements a very alchemy of menace and languid grace. "Can't do even the simplest things right, can you, Snape?" he asked, continuing savagely, "What do you do, cut your own hair with a kitchen knife?"
"Switchblade," Severus said, briefly looking up from chopping the root to assess the others' reactions and wondering why the Marauders persisted in asking him questions to which they didn’t know the answers. It just made it too easy. Mary had raised her eyebrows and then ducked her head to hide her amusement. Over in his own seat, James, who must have known enough Muggles to understand the connotations of a switchblade, looked slightly startled and perhaps even impressed. Sirius, though, betrayed his own puzzlement briefly and then, having lost the upper hand, just looked annoyed.
“So, Macdonald,” Black said, turning on Mary. “I think you might just be a little too amused at Snivellus here.”
“No, I’m amused at you. Remind me to define ‘switchblade’ for you some time.”
“Really, it doesn’t seem to take much for Snivelly to make you laugh. You’re entirely too fond of him these days. When’s the wedding?”
He had obviously expected an angry outburst. Instead, Mary started laughing and shook Severus’s hand, extended for the purpose. “I win,” she declared. Sirius, looking utterly baffled, apparently saw Slughorn’s glance lighting upon him and walked back to his own seat, shrugging his shoulders at James.
Mary looked up at the clock and commented, “Oh blast. I don’t know how you and Lily ever got anything done in this class.”
“Alternative methods and shortcuts researched in advance,” he confessed. “Give that a counterclockwise stir every seventh turn and it will go much faster. Helps with the reaction.”
She whispered “thank you” as Slughorn came over to stand purposefully near their desks, and Severus and his unlikely ally settled down to work.
……………………………………
Since he liked to think of himself as something of a lone wolf, it bothered Severus that actually having congenial company lifted his mood the way it did, but Potions class had lately tended to put him in a better frame of mind than usual. On this particular day, as he walked up from the dungeons, one of the fifth-year Ravenclaws was standing in the hallway with a parchment scroll and a quill asking people about something. Severus swerved in his path to try to avoid her, but her zeal to bother him apparently exceeded his zeal to be left alone. “Want to sign the petition to keep the Christmas dance?” the girl asked him, stepping out in front of him and disturbing his train of thought. “They’re talking about canceling it because of all the security concerns about bringing in the musicians.”
Severus smirked contemptuously and held up his hand to dismiss her. “No, thanks. But if someone comes up with a petition to permanently abolish the Christmas dance, let me know and I’ll go around bothering people for signatures.”
Her eyes narrowed; she was pretty, but she was probably mean, and some poor fellow would go for the package and live to regret it. “Just because you could never get anyone to go with you, Snivellus,” she hissed angrily.
“How to win friends and influence people,” he said lightly, walking on, hoping she didn’t hex him as he walked away. If she did, though, she had no idea what she was in for.
He proceeded, unhexed, to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, where Professor Llewellyn would be holding his customary office hours.
“Severus!” Davis Llewellyn greeted him jovially as he entered. “Always a pleasure. What can I do for you today?” He gestured toward a seat, and Severus sat down.
“I had done the additional reading you suggested on cases involving the Imperius curse,” Severus replied, “so I’m here to discuss that with you, sir.”
“Of course. Of course,” Llewellyn replied, somewhat absently. “But first, if you don’t mind, I'd like to talk to you about the bit with the Devil's Fire."
Bloody hell.
Severus froze instantly, his mind spinning through so many thoughts that he might as well have not been thinking at all. “What do you mean?” he asked coldly, doing his best to cover his rising panic. What a fool he was -- he hadn't even remotely prepared for this.
“You know what I mean, Severus,” Llewellyn said frankly. “And if you don't mind more extra tutoring, I believe I could teach you some things that would prove useful.”
“No,” Severus managed to choke out, awkwardly getting up out of his seat with his eyes on Llewellyn the whole time and backing away. Then, remembering that this was a professor, he recovered his manners and added, “No thank you, sir. I don't need any help. Good day.” He backed out of the classroom and out into the hall, leaving Llewellyn looking slightly puzzled but as even-keeled as ever, and strode briskly away from the classroom, up the stairs and off to a quieter part of the castle where he could think in peace about what had just happened.
Several hallways away and able to slow down and think more clearly, Severus flattened himself against a wall where he was unlikely to be discovered, and, still breathing hard, more from panic than from exertion, tried to dissect the meaning behind the professor’s words. But first, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you about the bit with the Devil’s Fire. How had he found out? It could have been anyone -- anyone could have done it.
Llewellyn was bluffing. Dumbledore had put him up to it -- to smoke out the offender -- and he was bluffing to see whether Severus would react like a guilty party. And Severus had reacted like… a guilty party. Stupid. Bloody. Idiot.
He was in for it now. He could probably come up with alternatives to returning to his parents’ home if he were expelled -- but of course he wouldn’t be expelled. Students stayed at Hogwarts after worse things than that. But he would be exposed, regardless, and Lily… Lily seemed to lack any of her usual subtlety when it came to issues involving the Dark Arts. The fact that he had used the spell to try to protect people from something worse would probably carry little weight with her. For a brief moment, his anger at her closed-mindedness flared up, but he was too worried for it to last for long.
Instead, his mind roamed on to the more sinister part of the professor’s offer: If you don’t mind more extra tutoring, I believe I could teach you some things that would prove useful. What the hell could that mean, and what good could come of it? “You’re obviously interested in the Dark Arts, so allow me to teach you a bit of the real thing. Did I mention that I’m actually in league with the Dark Lord?” It was ridiculous -- it was unimaginable. Llewellyn, after all, had asked him to consider not only the legalities of the practice of the Dark Arts, but also its effects on his own soul. But Llewellyn had been the one keeping a copy of the book around, instead of locked away in the Restricted Section of the library; perhaps the initial tutoring and the concern were just a front to lure him in.
He couldn’t even remotely begin to untangle it. Technically, the exchange taught him little to nothing about Llewellyn's allegiances, but it had taught him that he himself did a poor job of covering his tracks -- and his thoughts, given that his panic must have been bleeding obvious. Llewellyn, on the other hand, whatever his intentions, was calm, cool and impenetrable. Now Severus was both kicking himself and dreading his favourite class. If Llewellyn was actually a Death Eater, then he had to protect himself from him or lose Lily forever. If he was just a mild-mannered professor… then Severus must have looked like a right bloody idiot.
……………………………………
Stewing over the details of the discussion with Llewellyn and avoiding the professor’s glance in class would not do any good. The only logical course was to find out more about the man, which, unfortunately, was not easy to do. One couldn’t exactly walk up to Avery and ask, “Your dad is in league with the Dark Lord, right? So tell me: is Professor Llewellyn a Death Eater?” Aside from the fact that Avery wasn’t actually speaking to him, there was the more significant fact that Avery would never reveal whether the supposition was right, and would laugh him out of Slytherin if he were wrong. This research would have to be performed independently, and he had a fairly good idea of where to begin.
Apparently nobody had ever checked out Who’s Who in Wizarding Britain 1975, even though the book had been in the library’s possession for, if the date inscribed on the inside cover was to be believed, almost a year. After Severus started thumbing through it, though, he couldn’t figure out why.
Yes, it probably sufficed most people to find the illustrious figure for whom they were looking while standing in the stacks at the library, and then put the book back on the shelves. But the book itself was absolutely addictive once he actually started perusing it. Dumbledore merited a thick section of the text, which Severus skipped: everyone knew about Dumbledore. McGonagall had spent several years in graduate study at Cambridge after graduating from Hogwarts, and had been widowed at an early age when her (Muggle?) husband died as an officer in the Second World War -- fascinating. The details were presented in a dry, boring manner, but in reality were full of incredible information just waiting to be plumbed: “Graduated Hogwarts 1944, Cambridge 1947. Married 1944 to Capt. Archibald Wallace, d. 1945 in Muggle offensive in Western Germany. Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts 1956 -- present. Registered Animagus, 1952.” He tried to imagine a Captain Archibald Wallace who would marry a young Minerva McGonagall, and then he tried to imagine a young Minerva McGonagall, and he failed on both counts.
The Malfoys appeared to be to the manner born but not much else -- there were very few members of the clan listed with any kind of accomplishments whatsoever, and most of them involved honorary positions gained by means of money or influence rather than hard work or talent. Severus would have to remember this the next time he felt awed and intimidated by Lucius, who still sent him an annual invitation to the clan’s holiday gala which he had yet to work up the nerve, or attire, to accept.
Davis Archer Llewellyn, 1953 --. Archer? The Archers were an old political family, with at least two Ministers of Magic that Severus could think of in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the kind of fact discovered by an ambitious half-blood first-year eager to know more about the world in which he was trying to promote himself. These days the Archers mostly populated the wizarding intelligentsia, producing some of the more well-respected essayists and professors and such like. Apparently Mrs. Llewellyn the Slytherin had married up, which was a form of ambition in and of itself: Slytherin attracted those types, too, and not just the Death Eater crowd, so this was actually promising.
He returned to studying the brief entry on Professor Llewellyn himself: Graduated Hogwarts 1971. Author of Research Subjects Protection Act, 1974, awaiting a decision by the Wizengamot at the time of this publication.
Nothing about his history, limited though it was in this volume, seemed particularly Dark. On the contrary, someone who would go to all the trouble of authoring a bill to mandate protections for subjects of scientific research probably had an outsize conscience that would prevent him from even contemplating such things. Severus looked with relief upon this evidence, limited though it was, of Llewellyn’s lack of the Death Eater taint.
Feeling a bit better about the professor’s possible allegiances, Severus found himself intrigued by what the professor had offered. What kind of tutoring could possibly prove useful to the creator, for so Llewellyn believed him to be, of the Devil’s Fire?
……………………
With McGonagall’s research papers coming due, the library was crowded with upper-level students, but as usual, Severus never seemed to have much trouble keeping a table all to himself. For this reason he was surprised when a female voice asked him, “Mind if I sit here?”
He looked up and saw Mary, who was starting to become the only person to show any interest in conversing with him on a regular basis. Although he hated to admit it to himself, he was actually starting to like her, or at least, to recognize what Lily saw in her, which basically amounted to the same thing.
“Not at all. Go right ahead,” he answered, going back to his work and hoping that she wouldn’t distract him with her chatter or tempt him into talking about Lily as she sometimes did in Potions class. She turned out, however, to be an ideal person with whom to share a table; she was quiet, she didn’t take up much space with her things, and she wrote softly, unlike several classmates he could name whose effects on a table could probably be measured on the Richter scale, or at least by their effect on Severus’s penmanship. There was also the added benefit of Mary’s being one of the class’s top students in Transfiguration, a subject in which Severus had to struggle to excel. She might serve as a good resource if necessary.
They co-existed amicably enough for the better part of an hour, until the library door opened and Avery and Wilkes walked in. Severus was aware of them standing in the doorway in a murmured conference, probably looking for a place to sit in the crowded room, and then their looming figures standing over Mary at her end of the table. “Hey, Mudblood,” Avery said quietly and even casually. “Get out of here.”
Mary looked up, eyes narrowed, and asked just as quietly, “What did you say?”
Excuse me, what did you just say?
Oh, he’d been here before. Same room, different players, but always himself like a Greek chorus, to be counted on for commentary and analysis. Hogwarts’ standards must be dropping… a once-proud institution… time to take out the rubbish… nothing -- did I look like I was talking to you?
And he had just sat there all those months ago, an awkward half-smile plastered on his face, one that had promised allegiance to them and apology to Lily, and nothing real to either side.
A minute later, he had been running down the hall away from the library, running after her, but she was walking in long, angry strides away from him. He had probably been slightly taller than she at the time, but being a girl, she had longer legs, and he had to sprint to catch up with her. “Lily! Lily! Slow down!”
She had stopped suddenly, so suddenly that he had been forced to come to a careening halt in order not to run into her, and she had whipped around, livid. “Not now, Severus. I’m so bloody angry at you that I might say things that I’ll regret.” She had moved to start walking again, but he’d grabbed a hold of her arm and wouldn’t let go. Being Lily, she had been too dignified to wrestle loose from him.
“What? What did I do?”
“Nothing. That’s exactly the problem. You couldn’t even tell them to shut up for me, could you? You just sat there smirking at everything they said.”
“Easy for you to say -- you don’t have to live with them. Besides, it didn’t mean anything. They were only joking.”
“They called me rubbish, Sev. How is that nothing? And then you just sat there on your arse--”
“Fine. I’m sorry.”
She jerked her arm loose from his grip, but by this point, she looked more sad than angry. “The problem is, I don’t think you actually are.”
“I said I’m sorry. How many times do I have to say it?”
She shook her head. “Later, Sev. I told you I didn’t want to talk right now.” And she had walked away. But this time, she had walked away slowly, and this time, he hadn’t followed. He had been so blind, so bloody stupid--
“I asked, what did you say?” This time the lone girl facing down his housemates was Mary, not Lily. It wasn’t really a chance for atonement.
“He called you a Mudblood, Mudblood,” said Wilkes, with his usual rapier-like wit.
It wasn’t a chance for atonement, but maybe it was the next best thing.
Mary stood up, furious, but obviously with no intention of leaving, and without his quill leaving the paper or his eyes leaving the book, Severus heard himself saying in an eminently bored voice, “Leave her alone.”
He was still copying a passage from a text when Avery asked, “Excuse me, Snape, did you say something, or are the voices in your head just talking more loudly than usual today?” This was probably the first full sentence he’d received from Avery since their ersatz duel, and it didn’t bode well. The atmosphere in Slytherin -- and in his dorm room in particular -- had been tense enough since the Quidditch game without this.
Nonetheless, this time Severus raised his eyes from the parchment, annoyed by the interruption and, despite himself, by the bullying. “I said, leave her alone. She was here first, and there’s room for all of you.” Mary seemed to be utterly at a loss for words and was staring at Severus like he had gone mad. He was rather in agreement with her, if this was her opinion, but he seemed more and more likely to curry favor with Lily through this interaction, and he had already hit the point of no return, and therefore might as well keep going. There was no way that his housemates would back down this easily.
Wilkes and Avery looked at each other, and somehow all either one could come up with was the inevitable from Wilkes: “So, Snape, since when did you start defending Mudbloods?”
Severus wasn’t sure whether it was their stupidity, their bullying, their use of his least-favorite term, or just his own anxiety over finishing before the library closed, but at this he finally reacted.
“Bloody hell,” he found himself exclaiming as quietly as one could exclaim anything in a library and standing up to stare them down. “You’re interrupting my work when I’m already behind. There are four empty chairs: you sit here, you sit here, she stays where she is, and all of you shut up and study.” He was careful to make sure that no one would be able to accuse him of taking a stand that he didn’t want to defend: he studiously avoided the Mudblood issue, and even the use of Mary’s given name. Enjoying her company in Potions class and defending her to his roommates on grounds of blood-status were not even remotely in the same league, and he wasn’t certain he was ready to graduate to this level yet. Madam Pince was making her way over to the table, which Avery and Wilkes seemed to take as their cue to leave, glaring at Severus as they departed and slamming the door after them.
He could see Mary visibly relaxing and finally sitting down, and the curious heads that had turned in their direction were turning back around. After about a minute, Mary said, without preamble, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied, again without looking up.
After a pause, Mary continued, “That was good of you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said, and then, finally looking up at her, added, “Actually, really don’t mention it. The sooner they forget this ever happened, the more likely I am to avoid getting hexed half to death.” She smiled at him, and he involuntarily found himself responding with a tight smile for the briefest fraction of a second before returning to his transcription.
The encounter with Wilkes and Avery had ruined Mary’s perfection as a person with whom to share a library table, because now she seemed willing and perhaps even somewhat eager to talk to Severus. After several minutes of immersion in her own studies, she asked, “Severus?”
“Yes?” he asked, trying not to sound irritated.
“She doesn’t talk about it much but -- she still misses you sometimes. Don’t tell her I told you that.”
He nodded curtly and answered, “I don’t think I’ll have a chance to rat out you out any time soon. But thanks.”
Mary resumed her studying, but Severus sat there, quill in hand, books ignored, paper untouched. Now he couldn’t concentrate on his studies worth a damn, but he wasn’t annoyed anymore. Mary could have overturned the table without incurring his wrath by this point, because for the first time in half a year, he had a concrete reason to hope.
Snivellus and the Head Girl by SeverusSempra
Chapter Endnotes: Many thanks, as always, to my two wonderful betas, Fresca (Colores) and Sandy (Snapes Talon), who are still with me after all this time writing this-- and to everyone who writes reviews. :)