One way to make oneself unwelcome in a carriage full of relative strangers was, apparently, to cough and hack convulsively like someone in the end stages of tuberculosis. The random collection of benign-looking seventh-years had initially seemed nonplussed as Severus lined up to join them in their carriage for the trip from the train station up to Hogwarts, but they had shrunk from him as his entire frame became racked with violent coughing just as he stepped through the door.
“Are you all right?” one girl asked, unnecessarily.
“Counter-- spell--“ Severus managed to choke out between spasms, doubled over and simultaneously clasping his chest and covering his mouth as his companions attempted to press themselves against the carriage walls as far from him as possible.
A serious-looking blond boy pulled out his wand and chanted “Finite Incantem!” and the spell lifted, leaving Severus gasping for air.
“Thanks,” he managed to whisper, still breathing hard.
“Sorry-- I just thought you’d had a Chocolate Frog go down the wrong way,” the girl stated. And this was a Ravenclaw? Standards in the Tower seemed to be slipping.
The others in the carriage cast concerned looks at each other. “That was fairly nasty. Any idea who did it?” one finally asked.
“No, but I have four good guesses,” he responded before pulling out a book, illuminating it with his wand, and leaving the others to their conversation. One thing was certain-- he had apparently let himself go soft over the summer. It was still four-on-one, and this year, he would have to separate himself from the pack of notoriously malevolent fellow Slytherins who had inadvertently served as a collective bodyguard. He wasn’t sure what to think of the fact that they had shown no interest in seeking his company yet, on either the train journey or the carriage ride. Business as usual, probably, since his membership in the group had probably always been on sufferance. Regardless, this year he was on his own, and his chances of remaining in one piece long enough to win Lily back seemed increasingly slim.
The train ride had demonstrated to him that Lily still appeared annoyed by Potter’s attentions, and that she had looked better pale than with the pathetic excuse for a suntan for which she had probably suffered all summer. The start of term feast had similarly taught him only two new things: that his need for Lily and his inherent tendency toward solitude could outweigh his desire for inclusion, and that the inevitable new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was almost preposterously young and altogether too cheerful-looking to know anything about the Dark Arts. Slytherin House was going to eat the poor fellow alive.
Leaving the dishes sitting on the table and shaking off a brief sensation of empathy with the house-elves, he waited until his former cohort had left without him and followed the general crowd of Slytherins down to the entrance to their House. The common room was packed as people reunited and caught up after a summer apart. A bevy of first-years plugged the hallway to the dormitories, so Severus found an unoccupied corner of the hearth and sat down to await a chance to unpack.
Evan Rosier walked by, accompanied by several of their classmates, and acknowledged Severus with an upward jerk of the chin and a recitation of his surname. Clearly Avery wasn’t around, or Rosier would not have been in command. Severus nodded back and returned to his book, reflecting that a year earlier, he probably would have been following after them like a faithful dog. In some ways, he still wished he could; it would have looked a lot less pathetic than sitting by the fireplace with only a book for company.
It was a good thing he liked reading. He was obviously going to be doing a lot of it this year.
Dumping an armload of clothes and other necessities from his trunk onto the top of his bed, Severus went to work putting his books and supplies in their places for the year. He had already read most of his mother’s old copy of Advanced Potion Making, a text that hadn’t changed since her days at Hogwarts. He would be needing the jump start to do as well as he had last year since he no longer had Lily to bounce ideas off.
When his OWL results had arrived later in the summer and he had surprised himself by qualifying for NEWT level Transfiguration, which his mother had never taken, he had gone to Diagon Alley, by himself for once, to buy the required texts for McGonagall’s class. In reality, he could have ordered the books by owl; it had just been an excuse for a day away from home, soaking up the atmosphere, buying books he didn’t need with his savings, and even using his remaining knuts to enjoy a cup of rather interesting tea that tasted suspiciously like a contentment potion.
The textbooks he had actually needed. The other books he had merely desired -- The Art of Spellcrafting, Useful Everyday Potions! -- might make a bit of money brewing up some of those -- and Muggle organic chemistry and pharmacology texts that he had picked up used and inexpensive in a book shop at the local university. The Muggle books’ focus on chemical structures, reactions, kinetics and dynamics fascinated him and, not coincidentally, gave him something of an advantage in Potions class. Libatius Borage clearly hadn’t studied this stuff. Severus had already carefully charmed the Muggle texts with the covers resembling Wizarding books and titled in Latin, something certain to deter his roommates from even considering investigating them.
Becoming the new and improved Severus Snape had meant that he had passed over the enticing Compendium Artis Oscuris without even so much as touching it, even though, with last year’s small but steady income from his cottage industry in Potions, he could have actually afforded the thing. The fact that it was available for purchase at Flourish & Blott’s was puzzling, but there it was year after year, large and heavy and beautiful in its dark leather binding. He had stood before it for a minute or two, thinking, coveting it, looking around the shop to see if anyone was watching him, and his hand had reached out for it, as if the volume itself had put the Imperius curse on him instead of just promising to show how it could be done. At the last second he had pulled his hand away and tucked it in the pocket of his coat, and walked briskly over to a much duller section of the shop, where he found himself closing his eyes and breathing deeply and trying with limited success to clear his mind. It was only a book. But weeks later, hundreds of miles away, he still wanted it.
The books went onto his shelves; the remaining contents of his trunk needed new homes now that he had been resorted into a different part of the room. In one drawer he placed the rolls of parchment, quills, ink, and other such like supplies that his mother insisted be purchased in cheaply bulk every year, and put a slightly modified version of his usual set of spells on the drawer so that his roommates wouldn’t pilfer from it. Not that they lacked money, but they did lack foresight, and morals, ethics, or whatever it was that would prevent someone from permanently borrowing a classmate’s school supplies without asking. And since Severus did lack money, noblesse oblige with school supplies was not an option.
After unloading the books and school supplies, he hung his robes up-- the same ones as last year, with the hem let out by the lady down the street who ran a seamstress business in her parlor. He had grown depressingly little in the previous year, but at least he had outgrown Lily, at last. Then underclothes-- possibly even more dingy than they had been when on display for the entire Hogwarts community a few months before. The concept of washing white articles of clothing separately, to which Lily had introduced him, had not impressed his mum. His socks had seen better days; his shoes, though, were new, since there was no way of avoiding that he had outgrown the old ones.
The few Muggle clothes would remain in the trunk on the off chance that he would actually need them. In the meantime, he cleared out the random collection of oddments and debris in the bottom of the trunk to tidily make room for them, realising that he hadn’t bothered to clean it out when summer had started. Potentially useful parchments containing old notes went into a drawer for possible NEWT study; some loose coins made their way to his pocket. Finally, he felt around under the peeling lining of the trunk to the secret compartment that he had made there, and his hand found something small and familiar.
It was a book, a Muggle paperback this time, the pages already beginning to yellow at the edges. It was an Arthurian legend that Lily had bought him for his eleventh birthday, half a year before they started at Hogwarts. He had never been sure what made her pick it for him, but she had been right, as usual -- once he had started, he had devoured it, and had read it over and over.
Recalling the simplistic numerology of his eleven-year-old self, he opened to page 130, and it was still there: a lock of dark red hair tied with a piece of yarn, a childish token of friendship from what now seemed like a different world. Lily had suggested the idea, apparently (and surprisingly) a trendy one among Muggle children, of sealing their friendship with blood; Severus had already drawn, shed and tasted enough blood at the time that being Lily’s blood-brother held no charm for him. Hence the Victorian throwback instead.
The lock of black hair given in exchange, he was certain, had gone in the bin at the Evans house this summer. Lily was selective in her sentimentality, and Severus knew that he no longer merited it. His attachment to her, on the other hand, stood a fairly good chance of being a permanent feature of his life, since after more than seven years it showed no signs of waning.
The book and his other hidden souvenirs from Lily went into the spell-bound drawer: a few Muggle photographs of the two of them taken by her dad; the annual series of photos from a booth at the local shops, with her trying (successfully) to look goofy and him trying (unsuccessfully) to look impressive; and a large, beautiful shell from her family’s trip to the shore given so that he too could hear the ocean.
There were also an utterly useless oversized pencil with Parisian landmarks on it from a more exotic holiday; a cassette tape which, if it still worked, held a recording of the two of them doing a ridiculous radio show in which they pretended to be various characters and interviewed each other; a handmade woven potholder in Slytherin colours (why? why on earth?); and an old box that had once held the fancy Cadbury’s Roses chocolates but which now contained seven years worth of notes from Lily and even a few notes to her which he had never dared to send. Recent years had brought fewer gifts, and most of them practical or edible, like she didn’t quite know what to give to him anymore.
He wasn’t actually avoiding his Slytherin classmates, he rationalized the next day at breakfast, taking the open spot next to Mulciber at the end of the bench in the Great Hall. He just wasn’t seeking them out anymore. There was no reason not to sit next to Mulciber, who didn’t appear to object to his company. Wilkes sat across from them and started piling his plate high with food. They began talking about some apparently hilarious exploit regarding Muggles in the vicinity of someone’s London townhouse, which had obviously occurred over the summer. Severus wished that the laughs and inside jokes didn’t bother him as much as they did, and reminded himself that technically he was attempting to break free of an association with this group, and that therefore it was a bonus if they jettisoned him first.
Unfortunately, their Muggle-baiting did sound rather funny to him. He was never going to win Lily back at this rate, considering that he was actually smirking at the idea of performing surreptitious memory-charms on Muggle Londoners so that they didn’t remember where they had parked their cars. Pranks on Muggles were one step away from pranks on Muggleborns, which were one step away from taking blood status as a significant indicator of one’s worth as a human being. Which already sorely tempted him, and which led nowhere that he wanted to go.
Wilkes finally turned to Severus. “So, Snape,” he began, “What’d’y’ do this summer?”
“Not much. Read some books.”
“Spend some time enjoying the company of your favourite Mudblood?” Wilkes asked, stuffing in another forkful of food before continuing in a revolting and semi-comprehensible fashion, “Where is it that you two live again?”
“I didn’t see her,” Severus answered automatically, immediately ashamed of the impulse of deception that came so easily to him. He just couldn’t get past it. Somehow he still wanted them to believe that he didn’t see her by choice. And somehow he really didn’t want them to know where he came from, although the accent was obvious enough. Why the hell he was still trying to impress people who obviously couldn’t care less about him puzzled him immensely.
“Too bad,” Wilkes replied, surprising Severus, but then went on to add, “being summer and all. About the only good thing to be said about that one is that she’d probably look good in a bikini.” Mulciber snorted and made some obscure and vaguely threatening remark about Mudbloods being useful for some things.
Not for you, Severus thought, sensing a knot of cold fury and averting his eyes from his classmate’s lascivious grin, but at the same time trying to convince himself that he’d be of more use to her, better able to protect her, if his old crowd didn’t know how he had changed.
Tried to change, anyway-- and so far, failed. There was no reason to believe that he would gain anything by defending an abstract idea of Lily from a boy whose ideas of what to do with her almost certainly didn’t involve consent on her part. There was every reason to believe he would suffer for the rest of the year for any kind of angry outburst. He was, in the final analysis, too much of a Slytherin to come charging to her defense with odds like these. Yet he wasn’t sure whether holding his tongue was wisdom, or just cowardice.
“I wouldn’t know,” he answered, shrugging and picking up his things to go to class. “I never went to the swimming baths with her.” Not that she hadn’t tried to persuade him to go on countless occasions-- he just had no intention of her finding out that he had never been taught to swim. All those summers, the two of them had been practically joined at the hip, and he had thrown it all away for this lot. Even her avoidance of him on principle was so very different from their casual dismissal. And she probably did look gorgeous in a bikini. Damn it. Now he was starting the first day of school not only annoyed at himself, but also hot and bothered.
Walking toward Flitwick’s classroom, he realised with something akin to panic that he had no idea where to find Lily, a first for their five years together at school. The preceding years, he had known her class schedule by heart, her haunts in between classes, the exact spots she usually chose to sit in during meals in the Great Hall. Even if -- or, given his propensity for espionage, when -- he managed to piece together her schedule, all the information that in past years he had put to use casually running into her had to now be reapplied for purposes of avoiding her, or at least, staying out of her way and obtaining information on the sly.
The problem was that he couldn’t stand not knowing what she was doing, how she was doing, and most importantly, how Potter was doing in his eternal quest to get her to go out with him. Without being able to talk to Lily, he found Potter -- with his proximity as a Gryffindor and his ability to still speak to her -- to be an even greater threat than he had been before. Their return to Hogwarts greatly improved Severus’s chances of seeing her and maybe even becoming friends with her again, but it also renewed the threat posed by the great Quidditch-playing oaf who also happened to be smart and rich and good-looking and popular.
Bloody hell.
As always, if he spent too much time ruminating upon the enviable characteristics of his favorite bully, he sank into the depression that came with knowing that he didn’t stand a chance. Especially now that Lily’s one great objection to James -- “treats my best friend like dirt” -- would no longer be an objection, and in fact would probably score points in Potter’s favor. But perhaps the three of them might have at least one class together, which would allow Severus to keep an eye on how the Gryffindor Chaser was doing in his pursuit.
The first such class had turned out to be Potions. Lily was sitting with her friend Mudblood Mary, and the three Marauders in the class hovered around a pair of unoccupied seats, arguing over who would sit together and who would get stuck sitting with Severus. As always, they didn’t even make much of a point of keeping their voices down in the presence of the person they were insulting. He felt the old hatred coursing through him as he bent over his station, organizing his supplies.
Eventually the werewolf appeared to pull the short straw, and sat down in the chair next to Severus’s with an apologetic hello as Slughorn entered the classroom, slightly late. Severus did his best to ignore him. It would probably have made sense to try to cultivate something even approaching a mutual tolerance, since, next to Mudblood Mary, Werewolf Lupin appeared to be Lily’s closest companion, probably born of their connection as prefects. But despite the possible personal advantage, he just couldn’t stomach it.
He would really have to stop thinking of Mary like that, but it was difficult when that was all he ever heard her called. Muggleborn Mary, Lily’s cute, brunette, freckled side-kick, the character foil to the sinister, pallid side-kick that he has once been. Mary seemed to serve as a normal, pretty, sociable piece of evidence that Lily wasn’t completely mental when choosing her friends. She also served as an easy target for anyone with an interest in blood status, since she was a Muggleborn with a notorious temper.
Time to stop caring about the Muggleborn thing, also. Right then, just Mary. Accepting Lupin’s lycanthropic tendencies would do nothing toward regaining Lily’s friendship, however, since she was seemingly unaware of the bleeding obvious. Besides, the spineless git was technically a Marauder, so his nickname stuck.
At least Lupin didn’t seem interested in giving Severus any trouble. Across the aisle and two rows back, on the other hand, Potter and Black were back in top form after a summer off. Black had started the class by asking in his usual sneering fashion, “Been to Madam Pomfrey yet, Snivelly? You sounded like you were catching a cold last night.” He and Potter looked at each other and snickered. Severus pretended not to hear him and made a mental note to come up with an interesting jinx for retribution.
Actually, sitting with Lupin was hardly any better than sitting with Potter or Black, since the two of them insisted on visiting their friend incessantly to make up for his bad luck in seatmates with their charming company.
“So, Severus,” James had begun in a mocking tone while on a social visit to Lupin’s desk. “I hadn’t thought you could possibly get any more scrawny. On a slimming diet?”
“No, just cigarettes and heroin--the usual,” Severus lied with equal measures of sarcasm and boredom, and went quietly back to his work, fairly certain that the great James Potter probably would not attack him with Slughorn six paces away. Based on his quick glimpse of the look on James’s face, either James was trying to figure out whether Severus was lying, or he had no knowledge of Muggle narcotics. James had probably spent his free time in the summer playing Quidditch instead of reading, among other things, a Muggle pharmacology text.
As long as he hadn’t spent it with Lily.
At the end of the class, Severus hurriedly gathered up his things to leave the Potions classroom without running into Lily. Since they no longer sat together, they were paired with classmates who had appeared to have either scraped by on their O.W.L.’s or curried favor with Slughorn to get into Advanced Potions. Severus found that as of day one, he and Lily were both completing their work and leaving the class a good while later than they typically had been before when they had worked together. He might even have been willing to acknowledge to himself that he had dragged things out a bit more to stay near her, out of old habit of protecting her from Slughorn’s unabashed and embarrassing favoritism, and out of sheer longing to be around her, to see whom she was talking to and what she was doing, to overhear her conversations, and to figure out whether she had taken Potter up on any of his repeated propositions yet.
So far, Potter appeared to have been unsuccessful, but waiting for Lily’s resistance to crumble was agonising, and not knowing was even worse. In a weak moment, he wished they would pair up and get it over with so that he could just join the Dark Lord or kill himself or become a monk or whatever other drastic step might leave her with a lifetime of lingering guilt for setting him on such a path. In stronger moments, he remembered that he was no longer that person. Theoretically.
It was therefore partly chance and partly design that caused Severus to be the only other student still in the room as Lily was cleaning up and preparing to leave. With no further puttering to be done, he slung his bag over his shoulder and slouched out of the class without looking at her, acutely aware of her exaggerated interest in something in her supplies and her obvious determination not to look up at him. She would be walking down the hall right after him at this rate, so he headed out quickly to put some space between them and save her the necessity of dawdling to avoid him. Just as he turned into the hallway, however, Slughorn called her back.
"Lily, my dear!'' the cheery voice boomed, ''I noticed that you and my other top student no longer sit together in class. Lovers’ quarrel?" Slughorn spoke jokingly but with obvious interest. Severus halted and stood next to the door where he could hear but remain unseen, and stooped for unnecessary fumbling with his shoelace to justify himself in case he was caught.
He could barely hear Lily's reply, but he could tell from the forced lightness of her voice that she was indulging the old man. "--nothing interesting, Professor,'' he could pick up, ''Just a friends' quarrel.''
“What, no sparks between you two, no chemistry?" asked Slughorn again, pursuing the topic with the tone of someone both seeking good gossip and enjoying his own painful metaphors. "You always made a wonderful pair."
Lurking just outside the door, Severus cringed as he awaited Lily's response. He didn't want to hear it, but he couldn't tear himself away. "Maybe when we were younger," she conceded. "But not anymore. We've... grown apart. But I'd rather not discuss it, sir. With all due respect,'' she added hastily, and then concluded in a slightly harder voice, "You'd be better off talking to Severus."
Slughorn obviously knew not to question her further, but Severus could tell from the yes, yes, tut, tut replies that he should be prepared for a good grilling the next time he saw his Head of House.
The shame welled up again as he walked quickly away from the room before Lily emerged, and he knew that he had no idea how to answer when the inevitable question was asked.
I called my best friend a Mudblood.
That was it-- amid all the excuses, all the rationalisations, there was nothing that could justify it-- not his own humiliation, not James Potter's cruelty, not the bad influence of a dorm full of so-called friends who tossed around a word like "Mudblood" as casually as if it were part of the polite vernacular. He had called the only person who had ever loved him something unspeakable, and it was his own stupid fault.
The year was not starting auspiciously. Severus hadn’t expected much; he had steeled himself for flying solo, enduring Lily’s ongoing rejection, and being an easy target for the Marauders. Living it, though, was a different thing altogether. He had already been caught off-guard, apparently by Sirius Black, hadn’t had a chance to retaliate, had ascertained that Lily was still angry at him, and had spent practically every free minute alone, giving himself the impressive appearance of being friendless and pathetic. His old crowd had verified his suspicion that they weren’t that interested in his company unless they needed something from him, which obviously they didn’t yet. There was an interrogation from Slughorn in the offing, courtesy of Lily, and a new teacher for Severus’s favourite class who looked like he would know about as much about Defence Against the Dark Arts as Father Christmas. When Severus entered the Defence classroom, he was in a particularly foul mood.
The new professor was almost preposterously young, Severus concluded upon seeing him close up for the first time-- certainly no older than his mid-twenties. He was tall and lanky, with sandy hair and bright, eager eyes and a rather loose-limbed gait, and while no one would have called him handsome, his face was not unappealing. He wore his academic robes over a tweedy suit that looked like something professors from the Muggle university might have worn. The latter had clearly not escaped the notice of the Slytherins sitting near Severus, who were muttering sarcastic comments about blood status. As the remaining students filed in, the young man stood over his desk, shuffling and resorting some papers with what appeared to be nervous energy. He finally turned to face the class.
“Right!” he declared, clapping his hands together once and almost rubbing them in his enthusiasm. “Welcome to Defence Against the Dark Arts. I’m Davis Llewellyn-- Professor Davis Llewellyn, sorry-- and I’m your professor for this year. And probably not next year. Wonder what will happen to me. Anyway,” he continued, as a buzz went around the classroom, confirming that Severus was not, in fact, hearing things. He had really said that. Bloody hell.
A hand went up somewhere toward the front of the room. “Yes?” Professor Llewellyn asked, not seeming a bit annoyed that he couldn’t get through his introductory speech without being asked questions.
“Any relation to--?” the boy started.
“Father’s second cousin,” Llewellyn replied, cutting him off, and then continued apologetically, “My wife is a Healer at St. Mungo’s, and when she was in training, she got asked that all the time. Eventually I had to look it up.” An excited buzz went around the room a second time: Davis Llewellyn was distantly related to… someone famous! Not only that, but just think: a professor at Hogwarts who was actually married! Severus hated to admit it, but he actually shared in the eager interest that his apparently gossipy classmates had in this particular topic. Professorship at Hogwarts had always seemed to come with a vow of celibacy written into the contract.
Apparently not completely oblivious to the stir he was creating with even the most minimal mention of a private life, Professor Llewellyn continued, quickly changing the subject, “So, right-- on to more important things: my qualifications to teach you Defence Against the Dark Arts.” Apparently Llewellyn had not been informed that the only requirements to teach Defence appeared to be a pulse and a passing familiarity with the English language-- and as Professor Becker had demonstrated two years before, even the latter was seemingly optional.
When Severus tuned back in, Llewellyn was stating, “… most of my work has been in Dark objects, Dark potions and their antidotes, or potions to counteract conditions brought on by, or related to, Dark magic. Most recently, I’ve been studying more locally, but a few years back I spent some time in Eastern Europe on vampire-related potions. Before that, I was in western Africa researching their potion to counteract involuntary animal transformation, in hopes that this might lead us to come up with a potion to prevent or at least ameliorate the monthly lunar transformation of our werewolf population.” A promise was a promise, and Severus had made one to Dumbledore and therefore didn’t turn around to look, but the twitch of movement in his peripheral vision at that comment was almost certainly Lupin snapping to attention.
“In certain parts of Africa,” Llewellyn continued, probably encouraged by the obvious interest in the class, “they have a potion of that nature, but it’s one to lessen the effects of the transformation of the Bouda werehyenas, wereleopards and so on-- for those for whom it’s cursed and involuntary, anyway. Which you’ve probably never heard of -- I certainly hadn’t when I was at Hogwarts. Fascinating stuff, African magic. Positively ancient, and very different from ours, but there are all these similarities if you dig deep enough.” He looked like he could talk all day about his research.
Clearly Severus wasn’t the only one who had come to that conclusion, because Avery raised his hand and asked with exquisite sincerity, “Sir, could you tell us about African magic?” Severus turned around and half-snarled at him; attempting to distract Binns or Flitwick was one thing, but why get the professor to go off on a tangent in a class that was interesting in and of itself?
“Well, perhaps I could, a bit,” Llewellyn conceded. “The first thing that’s so interesting is the connection between the magical world and the Muggle world is so much closer than in our society. The International Statute of Secrecy isn’t as international as we’d like to think here in Britain. To start, there’s the social position of the Witchdoctor…” His eyes glowed eagerly, and Severus could hear Avery and Mulciber murmuring in amused satisfaction behind him.
About ten rather intriguing minutes later, Llewellyn was expounding on the role of human remains in African Dark magic when he seemed to realise that he had gone off on a tangent and reigned himself in, switching back to what appeared to be their regularly scheduled programming. By the end of the class, however, Severus was much more impressed than he had thought he would be.
The new professor could clearly be distracted to go off on a detour at the drop of a hat, and he gave the impression of being something like a Golden Retriever of the Dark Arts, energetic and enthusiastic and cheerful, which was a rather odd combination to get one’s brain around. The likelihood that he would get his more talkative students to shut up long enough for their classmates to learn anything was also looking rather slim.
On the other hand, he presented them with a well-organised syllabus that seemed to contain both theory and practice, something that only one of their five previous professors had managed to coordinate. Furthermore, he had ideas about interdisciplinary work with Potions, which would serve the noble dual purpose of combining Severus’s two favourite classes and scaring the living daylights out of Slughorn, who was not only lazy about making changes to his curriculum, but also, for a Slytherin, surprisingly terrified of anything pertaining to the Dark Arts.
Socially, this year was shaping up to be a dead loss, but academically, sixth year was actually starting to look rather promising.
Snivellus and the Head Girl by SeverusSempra
Chapter Notes: Sixth year begins.
Chapter Endnotes: Thank you to both of my helpful and encouraging betas, Fresca (Colores) and Sandy (Snape's Talon). :) Reviews always welcome.