Chapter 11: Ever So Slightly Merry
Apparently every great many years, Hogwarts and the two other premiere wizarding academies in Europe, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, met for a challenge known as the Tri-Wizard Tournament, in which each school entered one student as its champion. Inevitably someone was injured; not infrequently, someone was killed, and the powers-that-be fussed and tutted and determined that the tournament would not occur again for another great many years. And by most -- those who did not obsessively study Wizarding history in order to fit in, that is -- the Tournament would be largely forgotten.
Unfortunately, it had inadvertently left around a remnant: the Christmas Dance.
The Tri-Wizard Tournament had always brought with it an event known as the Yule Ball, a formal dance in which all students fourth year and above had been invited to attend, with the three Tri-Wizard champions leading the dancing, since apparently ability to trip the light fantastic was included in the mysterious selection process. Students at Hogwarts during the time of the previous Yule Ball had been so smitten with the idea of having a dance that they had, like Muggles, created one as an annual institution. There had been some trouble in recent years, though, with persons of questionable backgrounds posing as crew members to the musicians in an attempt to get past the hallowed gates of Hogwarts in order to wreak Dark havoc, and security had become extremely tight. The pulsating beat that Severus heard as he walked from the library back to the Slytherin common room sounded like some ungodly disco anthem, but was actually, it soothed him to know, the death-rattle of the Christmas Dance. There would hardly be one the following year unless the protest petitions succeeded.
He had, naturally, never gone. First of all, the only dance he knew how to do was the waltz. He was good at it, and he knew he was good at it -- like flying on a broomstick, it was something he had really caught onto after a clumsy start -- but the waltz was, in the mid-1970’s, hardly in vogue. Secondly, he objected on principle to the idiocy of the thing. Thirdly, he knew that somewhere back at Spinner’s End there hung an ancient, rusty set of dress-robes that had belonged to the late Claudius Prince, his departed grandfather, and that wearing that musty article of clothing was the best he could hope for on such an occasion. And finally, he had always been able to convince Lily not to go. He still held the distinction of having been invited to the Christmas Dance two years running by the most beautiful girl in the school and having turned her down and talked her into studying with him instead. If that qualified as a distinction.
On this particular occasion, though, he was spending the evening of the Christmas Dance studying by himself, and Lily had almost certainly gone with someone whom Severus was presently hating in absencia without even knowing the boy’s name. With that uplifting thought, he made his way back to the great wooden door of Slytherin house and entered the unusually quiet common room.
Since only students in the fourth year and above could attend, the common room had been taken over by first, second and third year students, sitting in seats normally occupied by their older peers. They looked like they didn’t know what to do with themselves. He could only see one other student even remotely close to his age, the inevitable Morphia Mather, whose Hufflepuff boyfriend, if she were even still dating him, would presumably not have been allowed to attend since he was now a Hogwarts graduate. Severus acknowledged Morphia with a quick jerk of his head as he walked past and settled into his customary seat, from which a snogging third-year pair had fled in terror at his approach. What on earth they were doing kissing at that age was completely beyond him, so he felt no compunctions about driving them out of their comfortable spot, and he settled in with his books.
He had probably been buried in his Arithmancy text for a good half hour when a female voice, clearly directed at him, cut through the giggles and murmurs of the younger students. “So, just curious -- where did you get your name?”
Severus stiffened. Questions about his name were never a good thing, and his expression could not have been pleasant when he raised his eyes from his books to Morphia’s benign countenance. “Why do you ask?” he growled.
Her smile faded and she visibly gulped -- she was probably already beginning to regret starting this conversation. “Just curious,” she repeated, “because Gus and I always liked it. I think, even with all the Latin names around here, that you were the only other one in Hogwarts besides him with the name of a Roman emperor. Of course, they’re both nicknames, really.” She was clearly nervous now, and she was babbling.
“Excuse me?”
“Augustus was a nickname, and so was Severus-- Octavian gave himself the name Augustus for pompous reasons. At least Severus was a decent nickname.”
“Sorry, but how could Severus possibly be a decent nickname? It’s not even a decent real name.” Now he was leaning forward to talk to her, intrigued rather than offended.
She smiled weakly. “It was given because of severity of a good kind -- apparently Septimus Severus had a certain strictness or discipline in personal habits. Which was a good thing, when you consider all those emperors who were so wasteful and decadent. Fiddling while Rome burned and what all.”
Severus nodded. He’d never actually heard a positive spin on his name before. He finally answered her question: “My grandfather’s name was Claudius. Something of a family tradition.”
“Claudius,” she answered dreamily, the name clearly setting all sorts of associations spinning. “Wonderful. Of course.” His abbreviated history had left out some crucial details: the fact that Claudius Prince had been brilliant, overbearing, and very difficult. The fact that the man had favoured his smarter and prettier elder daughter. The fact that his younger daughter had rebelled by marrying a blue-collar Muggle and had lived to regret it, and that the name she had inflicted upon her son had been something of a peace offering.
“Pardon me, Morphia?” he asked, interrupting whatever reverie the name Claudius had set off.
“Yes?” she replied.
“You would have been in school at the same time as Professor Llewellyn’s wife, wouldn’t you?”
“I was. She was a seventh-year prefect in Slytherin, actually, when I was a first year.”
“Was she…” He stopped, struggling with the wording, and then finally concluded, “Was she the Death Eater type?”
Morphia shook her head emphatically and answered, “Gemma? Oh no, not a bit.”
“Gemma?!” he snorted. He’d been worried about Llewellyn being married to a Death Eater, and all this time her name had been so preposterously Muggle that she had to have had at least one Muggle parent, probably two. If he’d only had the good sense to look up that one small piece of information about Mrs. Llewellyn, he could have answered his own question.
“What’s wrong with her name?” Morphia asked, obviously puzzled.
“Nothing. I just feel like a fool asking whether someone named Gemma was a Death Eater.”
“She definitely wasn’t, but I’m not sure I understand the connection.”
“I don’t think wizards use that name much, if at all. It’s wildly popular with Muggles, though.” His Muggle primary school, to be certain, had been full of them.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Morphia answered, placidly. “She was lovely, anyway. Very good to all the first years. She welcomed us instead of, well, pranking us. She’s very serious, very smart.”
“So, with a Muggle name like Gemma, how did she wind up in Slytherin?” he asked, genuinely interested.
“Good question… ambition, I suppose,” Morphia concluded. “I believe she and Davis spent their entire seven years fighting it out for who would be top student in the class. She did all the fighting, really, from what I can tell. I remember her saying something about how he was smarter, but she worked harder-- they only started going around in seventh year, and of course everyone thought it was very romantic. Well, I did, anyway. She was supposedly very competitive when it came to her marks.”
“And she became a Healer. Of course, she has to be Muggleborn. Who won?”
“I don’t know, but you’re going to have to explain that conclusion to me also,” she answered.
“I’d have to guess that the top career prospect for an ambitious Muggle is to be a doctor. A Healer is our equivalent.”
“Interesting. Is that what ambitious Muggles do? Muggles are fascinating,” she mused.
“How did you wind up in Slytherin, by the way?” he asked.
“I wanted to, to try to fit in with my family. They’ve all been in Slytherin since the dawn of time. It didn’t do any good: all of my friends were in Hufflepuff. They’ve all graduated, like Gus. I told Sirius not to bother.”
“Sirius?” he asked. She mentioned him so casually, as if everyone in the world automatically knew why the quiet, dowdy Slytherin outcast and the half-feared, half-admired prince of Gryffindor had always shared an inexplicable friendship.
“We grew up together,” she explained. “Our parents were friends. Anyway, I told him there was no point in going into Slytherin. He’d never fit into his family anyway -- it certainly didn’t help me fit into mine. I suppose going to Oxford to study classics next year doesn’t improve the situation, since I’ll have to let on to be a Muggle.”
“You’ll make a good Muggle,” he told her. It was actually a compliment.
Looking at him carefully, she seemed to understand that. “Thanks,” she replied with a small smile, and had the good sense not to ask him how he knew.
…………
There was definitely something to be said for sitting around staring at the walls in Hogwarts compared to Severus’s usual Christmas holiday diversion, which was sitting around staring at the walls in his parents’ home on Spinner’s End. The walls at Hogwarts were much more attractive, for one thing, and far less drafty. The food was also incomparably better, and, since Hogwarts had its own house-elves and didn’t require him to serve as one, he didn’t have to bother with preparing it.
Hogwarts, however, did not have Lily.
It did have a rather random collection of students who all, for whatever reason, had chosen not to go home for the holidays. Most of them were too young or from other houses and failed to interest him, but the few from sixth year did get his attention. There were Sam and Siobhan, the Hufflepuff Quidditch couple, who apparently were too tightly joined at the hip to separate themselves long enough to go back to wherever they had gotten their accents from. Philomena Darcy’s presence at the castle made sense -- if he remembered rightly, she had been orphaned by the war: some people had all the luck. Then there were a couple of Ravenclaws who were typically at the library even more than Severus was, if such a thing were possible. But Mary, who sometimes hinted at a rather stormy household waiting for her in Edinburgh, and Morphia, black sheep of a Dark family, had gone home. Everyone seemed to have their own reasons for staying or going.
After the train left, Severus surveyed the disaster his roommates had made of their collective room with their efforts at packing, made their beds, stuffed their belongings into what seemed like the appropriate bureaus, and enjoyed the blessed silence, peace and cleanliness of a room that was, for the next several weeks, his and his alone.
It was grand for about three hours. At that point, it became too bloody quiet, and he realised he was likely to go mad if he didn’t find a change of venue for his rendezvous with Theophilus Penderwick’s Transfiguration: An Advanced Course. Several hours in the Slytherin common room helped to break up the boredom, but after a while, even that began to wear on him, and he had to go somewhere else -- the library, of course. For the next two days, he ricocheted like a pinball around the castle, moving from his room to the common room to the library to random corners he found here and there, always with a book and always on his own.
Until, one afternoon as he studied the chemical backgrounds of the ingredients in Borage’s substandard version of a potion to induce euphoria, another student interrupted him. “Excuse me-- Severus?” It was Sam Douglas, one of the Ravenpuff crowd and the male half of the Hufflepuff Quidditch duo.
“Yes?” Severus asked.
“How would you like to join us for a pick-up game of Quidditch? We need a Seeker.”
Severus gave him a long stare before answering. “It’s freezing,” he replied.
“I’m not talking about a full-blown Quidditch match,” Sam scoffed. “It’ll be brief. We just need another Seeker, and you’re not half-bad.”
“Therein lies the other problem,” Severus continued. “I’d be out of my league.”
Sam grinned and jerked a thumb in a direction that turned out to be his girlfriend Siobhan’s. “I’m out of my league, mate,” he said lightly. “She’s being recruited by the Harpies. This is just for fun -- it won’t be like a real game. Just something better than sitting around on our arses in this castle.”
Something better than sitting around on his arse in the castle suddenly sounded surprisingly attractive. Severus was starting to feel as though, left to his own devices for a few days more, he would start to meld into the furniture and would have to be extracted by means of a spell.
“I’ll think about it,” he replied, which seemed to satisfy Sam.
“Four o’clock, then,” Sam said. “The Quidditch pitch. If you’re coming, we’ll see you there.”
The icy walk to the Quidditch pitch through a cold, grey December day with spitting rain had him re-thinking his decision, but for some reason Severus kept going, and arrived to find a small, huddled group of other upper-form students from various houses, clad in robes and cloaks and parkas and, in one case, an opera cape, a smoking jacket and a what appeared to be a helmet from the first World War. To his surprise, Severus was greeted with a cheer.
“Another Seeker!” someone cried.
“Don’t expect much,” Severus cautioned.
“We only expect you to be no worse than Fenwick,” a boy responded.
“Bugger off,” said Fenwick cheerily, doffing the tommy helmet and taking a deep bow as his opera cape billowed behind him. He then stood up and looked around and asked, “Right -- what are the rules?”
“Rules,” announced Siobhan Mulalley, who appeared to be, rightfully, in charge. “There will be one Seeker, one Chaser, one Beater, and one Keeper on each team. If Kesselring shows up.”
“I’m here!” a new voice announced, apparently heralding the arrival of Kesselring.
“Good of you to join us,” Siobhan joked. “Back to the rules. Jeremiah,” she said to the new boy, “You and Severus will be our Seekers. Philomena and myself, Chasers,” pointing to their respective sides. Apparently Severus was to be on Siobhan’s team, as Philomena stepped over to join Kesselring.
“Sam and Fulvius, Beaters.” Fulvius Sparks meandered over to join Severus and Siobhan, and Sam stood where he already was near Philomena Darcy and Kesselring.
“What will you do without Sam as your bodyguard?” Philomena asked, almost snidely.
“Either hope that Fulvius is halfway decent, or borrow Benjy’s headgear,” Siobhan cracked. She didn’t seem to be easily ruffled. “And finally,” she stated, “Benjy and Walter, Keepers.”
“I get to defend against you? What did I do to deserve that?” Benjy asked. He appeared to be only half joking.
“You have a bloody World War I helmet, Benjy, and a smoking jacket,” she answered with a grin. “You’ll be awarded points for style.” Benjy seemed satisfied with her answer. Siobhan was every bit as soft-spoken as she appeared to be around the castle, but she had a quiet air of authority about her that explained her position as captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team.
“Same basic Quidditch rules as usual,” she announced. “Except that this is a game among friends, so it should go without saying that there will be no dirty tricks.”
“How about no Dark spells against the opposing Seeker,” Kesselring said, eyeing Severus nervously.
“How about no stereotyping of our token Slytherin,” Siobhan countered calmly.
“Touché,” Kesselring concurred. “Sorry,” he added to Severus.
“Accepted,” Severus said, too bloody cold to think up anything clever or nasty, much and all as Kesselring deserved both.
As if she were reading his mind, Siobhan announced, “And the game ends when one of the Seekers catches the Snitch, or when we’re all too bloody cold to continue.”
“Or when dinner is served,” Sam added.
“Or when dinner is served,” Siobhan agreed. “Any questions? No? Right then, let the game begin.”
…………
Two hours later, Severus sat at a table with the others from the makeshift Quidditch teams, tucking into the typical delicious Hogwarts repast with more of an appetite than he’d had in months. The two previous evenings, he had just sat by himself at the Slytherin table, as he usually did, but with most of the students gone, the divisions between the houses seemed to have dissolved, and people sat wherever they wanted.
The others were doing most of the talking, and he wasn’t by any means an integral part of the conversation. It was as he preferred it, but of course, his position on the outside looking in didn’t last long.
“So, I don’t understand you,” Philomena informed him.
“I suggest that you not even try,” Severus replied dryly, and a few of the group snickered -- with him, not at him, which was a pleasant change of pace.
“Well, you’re here with us,” Philomena continued.
“Not every one of us is aspiring to join the Death Eaters,” Severus countered, anticipating the next question.
“No -- but all the Slytherin blokes in our class are. Except perhaps you.”
“Except perhaps me,” he concurred.
“So, why not?”
“To piss them off.”
“And here I was thinking it was because you’re chummy with Evans,” Benjy Fenwick interjected.
“You’re chummy with Evans?” Kesselring asked, nearly choking on whatever he was eating.
“We grew up together,” Severus replied, avoiding the fact that he was, in fact, no longer chummy with Evans. Benjy seemed to have missed the news that this particular friendship was now in the past tense.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Philomena mused, looking at Severus and, inexplicably, Benjy. “I’m not sure which would be worse, being in Slytherin or Gryffindor.”
“Slytherin!” most of the others countered in unison, which was followed, inevitably, by a wave of apologies to Severus. Since his mouth was full, he simply waved away their objections -- although he did think Gryffindor would be worse, and planned to say so as soon as he could.
“Speaking from experience,” he finally said after taking a sip of pumpkin juice, “I think there’s little in it if they don’t like you.”
“Too true,” Sam agreed, speaking up for the first time. “Seems like the blokes from both houses hunt in packs.”
“Sam,” Jeremiah said in mock seriousness, “does not approve of hunting in packs.”
“No, Sam does not,” Sam affirmed in the third person as Siobhan gave him a meaningful look, which Severus wondered at but couldn’t figure out. Sam was easy-going and appeared to have no enemies, and he was burly enough that Severus imagined even Muggle bullies would leave him alone.
“Nor does Sam approve of groups that give themselves nicknames like the Marauders,” Jeremiah continued. He was also a Hufflepuff, if Severus remembered rightly -- the two were probably roommates.
“Sam only approves of pansy nicknames like the Ravenpuffs that serve to make one a source of mockery and lead to one get one’s arse kicked,” Sam explained with humorous pomposity but only somewhat coherently, as he was chomping into a drumstick at the same time.
“Maybe where you come from, Douglas,” Jeremiah challenged him with a grin.
“Watch it,” Siobhan warned, but she was laughing.
“I don’t know why Lupin hangs around with them,” Sam continued. “He’s the only one of the lot who isn’t a pompous git.”
“Sirius is not bad when you get him on his own,” Jeremiah argued.
“None of them are bad when you get them on their own,” Benjy added. “It’s a bit pathetic, really, what happens when you get them together.”
“How do you live with it?” Philomena asked, turning her curiosity on Benjy.
“I don’t,” Benjy shrugged. “I just live in the same room. My friends are the girls, or Gryffindors in other years, or you lot. They basically leave me alone. Speaking of which…” -- and at this point he turned to Severus and asked, “Why do they give you such a rough time?”
“I’ll tell you why,” Sam cut in before Severus could even attempt to come up with an answer. “Because you’re friends with Lily Evans, right? And Potter is more than a bit proprietary about her. Lily and I sit near each other half the time because of alphabetical order, and for a while there, whenever I talked to Lily, Potter would show up about a second later to stake out his territory.”
“But not anymore,” Benjy noted.
“Not anymore,” Sam affirmed.
“Now that you’re a eunuch,” Jeremiah Kesselring added with a smirk.
“Or as good as,” Sam answered with good humour as Siobhan swatted him from across the table.
“So are Potter and Evans going out?” Philomena asked. Severus’s stomach gave a sickening lurch, and he made a mental note to avoid her -- she was too bloody nosy.
“I hope not,” Benjy answered. “She should go out with Lupin, if you ask me.”
“But no one is asking you,” Jeremiah said. He, Severus concluded, was a contrary pain in the arse to get attention.
“Unfortunately,” Benjy concurred. “Besides, I’ll have to abandon Gryffindor altogether if Lily becomes the fifth Marauder. Horace and Jeremy and Hitesh are all going to graduate this year, and with them gone, Lily and Mary will be the only ones left who keep me sane.”
“They’re not doing a very good job,” someone joked, and the conversation took a different, less interesting, direction. Severus’s mind meandered off into plans and daydreams, as it usually did at meals these days, a substitute for conversation.
“Severus. Thanks for playing with us,” Sam’s voice said, interrupting his reverie. “You’re a better Seeker than you think you are -- you have a lot of nerve.”
“You’re welcome. I should say thank you to you, belatedly.”
“For what?”
“For not letting me get knocked out of the sky God knows how many times during the game last month.”
“You should thank Siobhan; it was her idea. Besides, you don’t let another player get deliberately injured. Wouldn’t be sporting. Actually, now that I think of it, I have a favour to ask in return.” Sam looked amused.
“I doubt you need my help in Quidditch,” Severus replied.
“Not that-- but if you could teach me the spell on Sirius Black’s t-shift from a few months ago,” he asked with a grin. “Now that would be brilliant.”
Severus felt a smile twitching around the corners of his mouth at the memory. “Not to say that I did it,” he replied. “But if I had, this is what I would have done…”
…………
When the other students returned to Hogwarts after the holidays, the castle at first seemed strangely busy, loud and crowded after the peace and emptiness of the previous few weeks. The impromptu collection of students with whom Severus had taken to eating meals and studying over the break mostly went back to their old friends and haunts and habits -- house tables were an inviolable absolute, after all, at least during the regular term.
Severus was back to studying and taking meals in the company of whatever book he happened to be reading, although he had been joined in the library a few times by Siobhan and Sam and even the dreaded Jeremiah and the quirky Benjy. Sam apparently wanted to be an Auror, and when he wasn’t playing Quidditch, he studied incessantly, and Siobhan, who was thinking ahead to a post-Quidditch career of some sort, shared her boyfriend’s study habits. They weren’t what Severus could have considered friends, but they were pleasant and intelligent company. They were, he supposed, collegial.
The rest of the holiday Quidditch crowd now said hello to him in the hallways or in class, and overall, he was succeeding in becoming more and more of an innocuous figure at Hogwarts which, bizarrely even to him, was his goal. He might, he thought, even succeed in regaining Lily’s friendship someday -- if his own roommates didn’t kill him first. For now, at least, they seemed content to ignore him.
When classes resumed, Severus knew that he had unfinished business to take care of -- the problem was finding the right moment and the sufficient amount of nerve. And so at the end of Defence class at the end of the first week, he hung back and waited. There were other students who wanted to talk to Professor Llewellyn about various things -- their grades on the recent essay, their performance on the latest practicum -- but Llewellyn seemed to understand that Severus would prefer his question not to have an audience, and held off on answering him until last. The students who had preceded him filtered out, and Severus finally had the professor to himself.
At this point, Professor McGonagall strode up briskly, apologized to Severus, and took Professor Llewellyn out into the hallway for a discussion of some urgency, leaving Severus to once again rethink what he was actually going to say. Instead of coming up with something cohesive, however, he found himself looking at the photographs on the professor’s desk.
The first photo was readily comprehensible -- the professor and his wife in their wedding robes. Upon examining it, Severus realised that he had indeed seen this photograph on the desk upon previous occasions. In it, Professor Llewellyn was grinning madly, and Mrs. Llewellyn was looking at him in some combination of amusement and adoration that raised in Severus’s mind an image of the kind of life the professor must go home to -- something welcoming, something companionable, something like the life he had once pictured himself having with Lily. It left Severus suddenly feeling very young and unsettled, and very alone. He quickly moved to the other photograph.
This photograph, he was certain, he had not seen before. Like the other one, it was a wizarding photo, but it was one of two teenage boys. Davis Llewellyn, younger, somewhat spotty, and in Hogwarts robes, stood with a very serious expression on his face next to another young man a few inches shorter, equally serious, and also clad in Hogwarts attire. The other boy was as dark as Llewellyn was pale and looked as though he or his family had come from Africa, but beyond this superficial difference, the two friends had the same serious expression and intelligent eyes. The image quickly shifted as Llewellyn and his friend both broke into broad smiles, and it ended with the two of them each throwing the near arm around the other one’s shoulder and laughing in a display of comradeship and affection. Apparently they couldn’t remain serious for long. The sound of the door caught Severus’s attention, and he looked up in time to see Professor Llewellyn re-entering the room and walking briskly up to the front with apologies for his sudden departure.
“That’s Jonathan Abeto,” Professor Llewellyn said softly, answering Severus’s unspoken question. “He was my best friend at Hogwarts, by way of Nigeria. There are several good wizarding academies in Africa, but I’m afraid even after the colonial era there’s still quite a bit of cachet in sending your child off to Britain or France for secondary education, for those with the means to do so. Well, not anymore” he added. “Not with the war. But I graduated just as it was starting -- things were different then.”
“Is he the reason you became interested in African magic, sir?” Severus asked, looking at the picture as the two young men posed seriously and then laughed, over and over again.
“Yes -- yes, he was,” Llewellyn replied. “Well, that and the fact that I fancied his older sister when I was about thirteen. She was four years too old for me and already betrothed at home, but that didn’t stop me from attempting to chat her up.” He grinned at Severus, but then his face grew more serious and thoughtful. Severus didn’t dare ask the obvious question based on the professor’s choice of verb tense, but Llewellyn answered it for him anyway: “He died a few months ago. I doubt I’ll see his like again.”
“The war?” Severus asked.
“No, the war hasn’t reached Africa yet. More like some sort of curse. No one really knows what happened,” Llewellyn said. His eyes were a million miles away. He snapped back to attention and added, “And my wife just found that photograph and framed it for me; she was very fond of him also -- long before she could even put up with me. He was a brilliant wizard and scientist; I’m hoping to carry on his work some day. Anyway, that’s not why you’re here -- how are things in Slytherin?” Llewellyn asked, as if nothing had ever happened the last time they had conversed, as if Severus hadn’t turned down his assistance and backed out of his classroom as though Llewellyn were about to attack him.
Severus didn’t know what possessed him, but he suddenly found himself firing back, “How did your wife like it?” At the very least, it might remind Llewellyn of where Severus was coming from before he played judge and jury and turned him over to Dumbledore for the Devil’s Fire experiment.
“Slytherin?” Llewellyn asked. “As well as one might expect for a Muggleborn prefect. Does that answer your question?”
“It does. May I ask a few more?” He was nervous, he was twitchy, and he was starting to realise that he might sound a bit combative, but he had to do this.
“Fire away.” The professor stood, leaning against his desk, arms folded, an interested expression on his face.
“All right,” Severus replied with considerable hesitation. He took a deep breath, and plunged in. “Clearly you think I had something to do with the use of Devil's Fire. Shouldn’t this mean that I'm in trouble?”
“I know some things have changed since I graduated,” Llewellyn stated calmly, “but to my understanding, incidents that don't occur in or pertain to a particular class are still managed by your Head of House and the headmaster. So no, you're not in trouble. Any other questions?”
“Yes. Why do you think I have something to do with that incident in the first place?”
“Because there are wards on my books, of course, and I know you borrowed the Compendium. One doesn't just leave such texts lying around in this day and age. Next question?”
Of course there were wards on the books-- and the next question would have to be phrased very carefully.
“That particular incident was… characterized by Dark magic. And that was your book. If you think I did it, why am I not in trouble?”
“Because I believe your motive was to warn, not to harm. Obviously I may or may not be correct. If I'm wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.”
“Why, sir? Why do you believe that?” There were people who believed good of him, and when they did, knowing himself all too well, he struggled to understand it.
“Because of the circumstances. Because of your proximity to the suspects. Because I'm enough of a sentimentalist to believe that Miss Evans may not be the only one with regrets over a former friendship. Is that sufficient?”
“Lily?” Severus choked. He could feel an ugly mottled flush creeping up from his neck to his ears and face, and although he looked down, he could still feel Llewellyn’s eyes upon him. When he turned his glance back up, though, the professor's brisk, cheery manner had evaporated.
“I'm sure you recall the incident with Mr. Black a month or two ago,” Llewellyn said softly. “Miss Evans seemed quite upset, and naturally I assumed that this was because her idiot of a professor had taken points from Gryffindor when she had been targeted also.” He stopped and took a breath. “As it turned out, she didn't like being used as a weapon against an old friend.”
Of course. Of course Lily wouldn’t just go around confessing Severus’s sins to their various professors. Still, he had to ask.
“Did she...tell you what happened?”
“I don't need to know what happened. You're reputed to be one of a crowd that you never actually appear to spend time with. And you're no longer friends with Miss Evans although you apparently were before. And she’s Muggleborn, and they’re--” He waved his hand in the air dismissively and shook his head slightly. “I don't need to know the particulars. You did something -- you said something -- has it ever occurred to you to just tell her that you're sorry?”
“It has. It has also occurred to me that she's unlikely to believe me. She didn’t before.”
“Allow me to rephrase that,” Llewellyn went on. “Has it ever occurred to you to just tell her that you're sorry in a descriptive enough manner for a girl? You do realise that you have to embellish. And repeat.” His eyes were still serious, but they had developed something of a twinkle. Apparently Davis Llewellyn had learned a few things as a married man.
“I realise that now. A bit late, though. I'm working on the principle that actions speak louder than words.”
“In that case, if you're planning on continuing with these heroics until such a time, I'm sure it must have occurred to you that you risk getting caught.”
“I believe I already have been. Sir.”
“By your peers, I mean. I don't count,” he replied casually. “I rather approve of renegade Slytherins making life easier on Muggleborns. Remind me to tell you about my wife's friend Andromeda some day.”
“Narcissa's sister?”
"Narcissa actually owns her?" Llewellyn asked incredulously.
“Not really,” Severus admitted. Severus just happened to know probably more than was salutary about the Wizarding aristocracy.
“I thought not,” Llewellyn replied. He pushed away from the desk, took a few steps, and turned around to look at Severus. “Of course you know about the practice of Legilimency.”
“Not much.”
“Then that’s your next assignment. Specifically, you may want to consider finding out more about its counter-practice, Occlumency. If you plan on continuing to subvert your classmates’ efforts at attacking Muggleborn students in order to demonstrate your sincerity to Miss Evans, it would probably be useful to have your thoughts be somewhat more… impenetrable.” He didn’t say that Severus’s panic the last time they had met had been utterly bleeding obvious, but the subtext was there.
“Where would I learn that?” Severus queried. “Because I would be interested.”
“Professor Dumbledore is a highly accomplished Legilimens and Occlumens,” Llewellyn replied. “He would clearly be the most practiced source of this kind of training around Hogwarts. He does choose to teach a select few. I was one of them, and it’s been a very useful skill to have in my line of work. I could speak to him for you.”
“Couldn’t I just learn from you, then?” Severus asked. Dumbledore was considerably more intimidating than the Defence professor -- and Dumbledore was overly fond of James Potter, Sirius Black, and the like. Severus could not help but feel that whatever it would take to learn this skill at the hands of Albus Dumbledore could only put him at a disadvantage somehow.
Llewellyn looked thoughtful. “I could ask for permission,” he said. “But you do realise that Dumbledore would be a better instructor.”
Severus nodded. “I think I’d rather have you reading my mind.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” Llewellyn corrected him lightly. “But I can understand your hesitation. I still can’t get myself to call Professor Dumbledore by his first name.”
“What do you call him?”
“I don’t,” Llewellyn said with a smile and a shake of his head. “I just walk right up in front of him and address him. Anyway, assuming that I do get permission, when are you available?”
“When am I not available?” Severus asked wryly.
“Monday night, then,” Llewellyn said. “Seven o’clock, this classroom.”
“Seven o’clock Monday,” Severus repeated. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Professor Llewellyn concluded. “Oh, one last thing, for what it’s worth. Whoever used the Devil’s Fire to prevent what could have been quite a disaster was very clever, but as I’ve said before, I would have to advise him or her to be careful about using any further Dark magic for any purposes, however noble. The ends don’t always justify the means.”
“Duly noted,” Severus said. Despite the lightness of his tone, it actually was duly noted. So far Professor Llewellyn had yet to steer him wrong.
…………
In past years, Severus had gone to most of the Quidditch games just to put in an appearance with his crowd, and to cheer on Avery. This year, obviously, had been different. He thought briefly of going to the Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw game taking place on this particular winter Saturday, but then changed his mind and decided to study instead in the quiet -- and, more importantly, the warmth -- of the library. And so it was that, as he made his way through the crowd of students, bundled up for the freezing weather and pushing en masse into the Great Hall for dinner, he had no idea why he sensed an unusual degree of worry and fear along with the customary excitement.
“What happened?” he asked Geoff Oglethorpe, who chanced to be walking by.
“You didn’t see it?” Oglethorpe questioned.
“Studying,” Severus responded.
“Someone poisoned a couple of the Quidditch players -- put something in their flasks. I guess they each just took a drink after the game and then collapsed. They’re in the hospital wing.”
“Who’d they poison?” Severus asked, trying to sound casual but sufficiently concerned, which was harder than it sounded. He had a sick feeling that he already knew who at least one of them was.
“They’re both Muggleborns, of course,” Geoff replied grimly. “Carmichael from Ravenclaw. And Mulalley from Hufflepuff.”
Mulalley from Hufflepuff. Of course. They’d been after her for years -- the Muggleborn who had the nerve to be a better Quidditch player than any pureblood in the school -- and her intervention on his behalf could hardly have helped. “Was Slughorn there? Presumably they’ve tried bezoars?” Severus demanded.
“That’s the thing,” Geoff answered. “They have, but the bezoars don’t seem to be working. Whoever did this came up with one hell of a poison. Apparently Pomfrey said that if she couldn’t get their heart and breathing rates up, she’d have to send them to St. Mungo’s -- they may already be there, for all I know. Whatever it is, it’s really bad. Damn near killed them.”
Severus shook his head and walked off by himself into the dinner hall. What kind of a poison didn’t respond to a bezoar? And how could he find out what Avery and Mulciber had done? It had to be the usual suspects, after all -- no junior student could have come up with such a thing, and the seventh-year Slytherins in NEWT-level Potions were pre-Healer or otherwise scientific types with little interest in the war one way or another. The fact that the victims had both been Muggleborns essentially ruled out practically every other house in the search for the culprits, unfortunately.
The food made its way down the table to Severus, and he scooped out a large spoonful of shepherd’s pie and tried to make himself eat it, but he was too distracted to have much of an appetite. There was no question in his mind of who had poisoned Mulalley and Carmichael, or why. The question was how.
Several minutes later, he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see, to his surprise, Mary Macdonald, her face worried and serious. “May I talk to you?” she asked. He nodded while trying to swallow the rest of his bite of shepherd’s pie so that he could actually respond to her using the English language instead of nods and grunts. “Not here?” she continued.
“Fine,” he said, leaving his dinner but taking his textbook. He followed her to the hallway outside the Great Hall and into a secluded corner, aware of some curious stares following them.
“You didn’t do it, did you?” Mary demanded. She looked almost anguished at the idea.
“Poison them? Of course not. Why would I?”
“I don’t know. I just know that there are very few people at Hogwarts who are that good with Potions, and you’re one of them.”
Any number of sarcastic and dismissive answers came to mind, but before he could even speak, he realised that if Mary thought he was capable of doing such a thing, then Lily thought so also. He had to defuse this, and he had to do it quickly.
“I didn’t do it,” he affirmed tensely. “I don’t even know Carmichael, and after that game last year I owe Siobhan… whatever one owes someone who has spared one a great deal of pain and humiliation. Not this.”
“That’s why I was wondering. I didn’t want to say it, but--”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you had to show your crowd--”
“They’re not ‘my crowd,’ ” he snapped, cutting her off. “And I don’t have to show them anything.” He couldn’t seem to win here -- the fact that he was beholden to Siobhan seemed to make him that much more of a suspect.
“Understood,” Mary responded with surprising meekness. “You didn’t do it. I’m sorry I asked. It’s just that, well, you actually know which part of the poppy does what instead of just following Borage like a recipe book, Severus. How many people can do that? And I came up with the stupid idea that you might have something to prove to make your own life a bit less difficult. And I’m sorry.”
“I’m flattered, but you’ll have to look elsewhere for your assassin,” he replied bitterly. “I try to stay beneath their notice, not curry favour with them by committing attempted murder. A more sensible strategy would be to stop talking to you.”
“All right then: why do you talk to me?” she queried, chin up, arms crossed. The meekness and apology were gone suddenly, and both her voice and her posture held a challenge.
Blast. It was exactly the kind of thing a girl would ask, and he had set himself up for it. And there was no acceptable answer to that one, except for turning the question on its head -- which, now that he thought about it, might be another way of asking Mary something that he had been poised to spring on her for months. “Why do you talk to me?” he asked, continuing, “I’m surprised that Lily allows it.” The world seemed to slow to a halt while he waited for what she would tell him about where he stood with Lily all these months later.
“Nobody allows me to do anything,” Mary answered, bristling. “Lily's not my keeper.”
"I'm not interested in having an argument with you about free will," he replied, irritated. "I just wanted to ask why someone who won't speak to me doesn't mind if her best friend does."
Before Mary could answer, James Potter's familiar voice interrupted them. “Well, if it isn't everyone’s favourite Potions swotters,” he commented snidely, “bickering like an old married couple.”
“Bugger off,” Severus barked at him, at the same time that Mary snarled, “Go pee up a rope.”
“Just telling it like I see it,” James answered smoothly, passing through the doorway into the Great Hall.
Severus turned back to Mary. “Go pee up a rope?” he asked, all disagreement temporarily forgotten.
Mary looked thoughtful. “Probably from my mother,” she mused, “because my father would use a stronger verb. But yes, nice insult. Paints a wonderful mental picture.”
“It's certainly colourful. You didn't answer my question, though: I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong. Or what I'm doing right. We were friends for many years,” he concluded, by way of trying to subtly suggest that he had no other type of interest in Lily.
“You were an eejit and you lost your best friend, Severus,” Mary said wearily. “You don’t have to excuse yourself for missing her. I’m not going to tell on you, but even if I did, it’s not like she doesn’t already know.” For once, he had no good answer.
She looked as though she were thinking hard, and finally said, “She doesn't expect me to just sit there next to you and not say a word, and besides, she thinks you're only being decent to me to get her to talk to you. And she's probably right, but still, not that I particularly care -- better than talking to myself in Potions, right?”
She did particularly care, and like most Gryffindors, she was a very poor liar. In return, he gave a non-commital twitch and stated, “She would have been right at first.”
There was a long silence.
“So,” she said, a bit awkwardly. “Friends?” She extended her hand for a shake.
“Friends,” he concurred, and although he was -- unlike Mary -- a good liar, as he shook her hand the strange thought dawned on him that he actually sort of meant it.
They stood there for an uncomfortable few seconds until he said goodbye and started walking back into the Hall ahead of her, but suddenly he remembered. It was another, equally uncomfortable conversation between himself and Mary, months before, in Potions class, back when they had barely been talking to each other. The stem, not the stamen … much more potent part of the plant … draught of Death, not draught of Living Death…
Carmichael and Mulalley hadn’t been poisoned at all.
Snivellus and the Head Girl by SeverusSempra
Chapter Notes: Christmas holidays at Hogwarts
Chapter Endnotes: Sandy and Fresca are still my betas after all this time-- as always, I am so grateful to both of them. :) And thanks to everyone for the reviews and for continuing to read this despite my rather intermittent updates. :)