Chapter Four- Satisfaction
Potions class began as it always did-- with most of the students arriving before Slughorn. As usual, Severus was one of the first, and he sat in his typical spot and began preparing his supplies and ingredients for the day before Lupin could get there and, more to the point, before Lupin’s gentleman callers could ruin Severus’s concentration. Lupin did arrive shortly thereafter, as usual without James or Sirius, since he sometimes appeared to come from a different class in a closer classroom, but surprisingly, he sat down in one of the seats that his two friends usually occupied, right in front of the customary location of Lily and Mary.
Lily came in next, looked surprised and pleased that her fellow sixth-year Gryffindor prefect was sitting right in front of her, and struck up a conversation with him. The two were talking and preparing their stations when Black and Potter arrived.
“Oi, Remus-- out of my seat,” Potter ordered casually, clearly expecting compliance.
“I’m sitting here today,” Lupin answered mildly, sounding slightly worried.
“We sit together, and you sit with Snivelly. It’s some sort of natural law,” Sirius Black countered. “Now go over and keep Snivellus company, and let me sit with James.” Neither he nor Potter appeared particularly concerned.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Lupin responded, sounding a bit more confident this time. “You or James can sit with me for a change.”
Black and Potter exchanged glances.
“Is this about Saturday?” Potter asked. “We said we were sorry, Remus. We even tried to talk to McGonagall for you. Come on.”
“You know it wasn’t on purpose; it was just -- thoughtless. Honestly, we won’t do it again,” Black added. Obviously something interesting had happened; it was unfortunate that Severus had really no way of finding out exactly what that something interesting had been. Whatever it was, it seemed to have triggered one of the rare episodes in which Lupin attempted to grow a backbone. Black continued, “Good friend that you are, couldn’t you please just do us a favor and go sit with him? You two actually seem to tolerate each other.”
“And if you two are MY good friends, you’ll sit with me now and again,” Lupin countered. His voice was a bit tight on that one-- clearly Black had hit a nerve. Severus made a mental note of this interesting fact for possible future use as the less-than-witty repartee continued. One could never have too many weapons against the Marauders, even the relatively benign Lupin.
“Don’t you care at all about our marks in Potions?” Black asked, in what seemed to be a desperate and fairly useless argument.
“Or points being taken from Gryffindor, more like,” Potter added darkly.
“Not particularly. Besides, your marks will probably improve if you sit with Snape-- he’s much better than either of you. Or me.”
“C’mon, Moony.” Potter was pleading now, and using that bloody nickname. “You seemed to be getting along with Snape.”
“Swimmingly,” Lupin replied. As they sounded more and more worried, he sounded more and more casual. “We’ve had no trouble. I’m sitting here on principle -- sorry to spoil the daily love-in, but you two are just going to have to decide.” Potter flushed angrily, and Black’s eyes narrowed.
The whole drama was giving Severus considerable amusement, the only downside being that Mary still hadn’t arrived, leaving an empty seat beside Lily, and eventually even one of these two dunderheads would have to realise that there was a third option. Hopefully it wouldn’t be--
“Right then!” Potter announced jovially. “I’ll sit with Evans instead. Hello, Evans!”
Lily glowered at him. “Do I have a say in this ridiculous argument?” she asked, “because Mary will be expecting to sit with me.”
“Well, not today,” Potter replied merrily, dumping the contents of his pack out onto the chair and making himself at home as Lily looked on in disgust.
“Fine-- I’m not going to lower myself to your level,” she said, and turning away from him, nose in the air, continued getting her station set up for class. Black sat down next to Lupin, not speaking to him and still looking disgruntled. Lupin looked like he was unsure whether he had won or lost.
Notably, at no point did Lily seem to even consider the option of sitting with Severus.
Mary arrived in a hurry a couple of minutes later, when the entire crew was all comfortably, if not amicably, ensconced in their various seats and Severus was returning to his desk with ingredients for the day’s work. None of the combatants had dared move from their seats to collect the components of the day’s potion, since that might mean returning to find that they had been moved, presumably into the reject seat next to Severus. Mary stood in the aisle, looking puzzled. “James,” she said, “You seem to be sitting at my station.”
“Sorry, Mary!” he said in a cheerful tone that sounded not the least bit sorry. “This would be my seat today.” Mary cast a questioning look at Remus, whom she clearly considered to be the only sensible one of the lot. He smiled an anxious, apologetic smile.
“You see, Mary,” said Black, “We’d rather sit with each other, or Remus, or Lily, than with Snivelly. First come, first served. The early bird gets the worm. Well, you get the worm, actually.” He and James snorted with laughter at this bit of hilarity.
Mary, on the other hand, did not look a bit amused. “Oh for Heaven’s sake, is THAT all?” she asked, and stalked over to the station next to Severus, leaving all three Marauders and Lily staring after her in surprise. Planting her books on the table next to his, she announced tensely, “Hello, Severus-- it appears that we’ll be working together today.”
“Not necessarily -- you could spend the next two hours arguing why you deserve to sit over there,” he replied frostily. As soon as he said it, he was immediately unsure as to why he had even bothered replying to her.
She looked like she wasn’t quite sure what to think of that. After a loaded pause, she finally responded, loudly enough for the others to hear, “Or, unlike my housemates, I could act like I’m not a complete arse.” Before he could reply she snarled, more quietly this time, “And don’t answer that one, Snape -- it’s just too easy.” She pulled out her cauldron and began setting up her station with a bit more crash and bang than necessary.
Severus shrugged and said, “Suit yourself,” shelving the obvious rejoinder as he moved aside a bit to give her some room. In truth, however, Mary had surprised him with, to use her delicate phraseology, how little of an arse she had actually been and how little of a fight she had put up. By now he was so accustomed to being openly treated by his classmates like the vomit-flavored bean in the Bertie Botts’ box of life that tolerance, wariness, or really anything better than utter revulsion was actually becoming somewhat welcome.
Sirius Black still deserved a repayment for the coughing spell, and the fact that, several weeks into school, Severus hadn’t yet served up his revenge was evidence that he was still not quite himself. He had no intention of becoming again the Severus Snape who tagged along with the Voldemort Youth -- which crowd seemed to be doing quite well without him now that they had Nott to treat as second fiddle -- but his quickness with interesting jinxes and hexes was not a trait that he was willing to lose.
That he would have to exercise caution and restraint was obvious, and, given that the target was Black, truly a pity. But the incident with Lily the previous spring had brought him to the attention of the Headmaster himself, Professor Slughorn having seemingly been passed over altogether for the management of anti-Muggleborn bigotry. Dumbledore apparently usually handled those presumed to be heading toward the ranks of the Dark Lord, and Severus’s words had obviously labeled him as part of that coterie.
Given that James Potter appeared, for no good reason other than his usual charm, to be a great favorite of Dumbledore, Severus was surprised in retrospect at how fair the Headmaster had been. The circumstances of Severus’s outburst had apparently not escaped his attention, and although Dumbledore did not say so directly, Severus was not so witless as to miss that Dumbledore knew much of what had preceded his slur against the Gryffindor prefect. The Headmaster had discussed the seriousness of the use of such language and what it imputed about the speaker’s views, and had gone on to suggest to Severus, with his customary tactful eloquence, that Severus might reconsider his choice of companions, a piece of advice that Severus had deliberately chosen to ignore. His mind appeared to have been changed for him over the summer, however, since his current choice of companions included himself and himself alone.
Dumbledore had also recommended that, “while the occasional indulgence of a passionate temper can be, alas, only too enjoyable,” he would endorse control of the mind and emotions as a general principle to give Severus practice for, as he had put it, “a -- might I say -- less visceral response, even under the most trying of circumstances.” Less visceral. All his life Severus had liked to think of himself as responding from the mind, not from the gut like his father, and here was the Headmaster suggesting that he had been angered into some mindless, knee-jerk reaction. At the time Severus had been too angry and too unhappy to give the Headmaster’s suggestions much thought, but subsequent reflection had forced him to conclude that the old man, Gryffindor and James Potter partisan though he was, was probably right.
That Dumbledore seemed to possess an uncommon degree of understanding did nothing to ameliorate the fact that Severus was clearly on the watch list and had to exercise caution in his choice of revenge tactics against Black. He had once been known for creating interesting uses for seemingly benign charms, and for witty jinxes and hexes, as well as dangerous and Dark ones. Witty and interesting, he concluded, should be the goal.
Lily had been an integral part of that, though; Lily had been the one who had guided his anger toward creativity. His ideas of vengeance tended toward physical acts against the perpetrator, whereas Lily’s tended toward Charms and Transfiguration. Hers were lighter, more girlish, funnier -- and harder to create Latin incantations for. Why were so many Wizarding incantations derived from a language that possessed a one-word verb for “to run someone through with a sword?” Latin was a language of action, of war. Not that he would have had any objections to running Sirius Black through with a sword, using a one-word verb or otherwise, but to think more like Lily, Severus thought, he might have to tackle Greek. Greek seemed to be better suited to subtlety and cleverness and wit. Unfortunately, this would probably require consultation with Binns.
In the meantime, he spent a daydreamy lunch, solo as usual, in which he tried to plot revenge like Lily would. He started, as always, from areas of weakness or hubris, and came up with several ideas -- interesting variants on Black’s pre-Raphaelite curls, which were obviously a point of pride, and a more generic but definitely clever hex on the private regions which even Black didn’t seem to deserve. In the end, though, he came up with a response based on Black’s characteristic pretensions to Muggle-style rebellion, one that was just too perfect not to be employed as soon as the chance presented itself. For a jinx created without Lily’s clever assistance, it was really not half bad.
He and Lily seemed to have reached a tacit agreement that they would just act like they didn't know each other. This was easy enough for him to do-- there were many people in their class whom he didn't know, although he had no doubt that most of them had formed strong opinions about him. It was undoubtedly harder for Lily, who knew or was known by everyone, to add one more to the list of Death Eaters she tried to avoid. It also seemed against her nature to treat someone she had once liked as if he were a ghost, but a ghost was clearly what he had become to her. And he still had no idea how to undo the damage he had done; staying away from the group she despised had seemed to make no difference.
On the morning of the first Hogsmeade weekend, Sirius Black walked into the Great Hall for breakfast surrounded by his friends, as always, and Severus realised with a glow of pleasure that his moment had come. The other three boys were dressed in nondescript casual attire; Sirius, in typical fashion, wore tattered denim jeans and a T-shirt bearing the motif of a famous Muggle rock band, a favorite affectation of his and one that Severus had been waiting for, convincing himself that revenge was best served cold.
He had practiced on an article of his own clothing, so he knew the trick to be effective, and he had finally gotten good enough to perform it nonverbally. When leaving the Hall, he walked past the Gryffindor table and silently cast the charm with a delaying modification, pondering the fact that it was a pity that he really couldn’t be around to see the results of his hard work. The one risk was that even Black would find it to be funny. But fortunately, Severus had thought of this in advance, and had taken steps to make sure that the humor would be short-lived.
As it so happened, he actually did get to see his masterpiece in action. A couple of hours later, he sat quietly in The Three Broomsticks, reading, drinking butterbeer and bothering no one, when he heard the angry voices of his four favorite classmates as they entered the pub.
“Hey, Snivellus! Did you do this?” Black demanded. Half the populace of the establishment turned around to look, just as the enormous lips on Black’s Rolling Stones T-shirt began speaking, beginning unceremoniously with a string of obscenities.
“No, but I wish I had,” Severus lied smoothly, as the crowd burst into shocked laughter.
Black didn’t respond right away. He was clearly aware that he had the attention of the crowd, and by now he must have figured out that his own speech triggered the charm on the Rolling Stones logo. After a few moments of what must have been quite an inward struggle, however, Black continued, albeit quietly.
“I don’t believe a word of it, Snape -- it seems like exactly the kind of thing you’d do,” Black hissed. The lips on the T-shirt, as Severus had jinxed them to do, spoke every time Black spoke, this time informing Severus in no uncertain terms that he had a fat arse and a face like a goat looking through a hedge. Ah yes, here was the string of comments specifically intended to be insulting to girls, since Severus had assumed that Black would probably be up to his usual tactic of catch and release. The timing could not have been better: while the goat looking through a hedge point was debatable, one thing Severus definitely did not have was a fat arse. The crowd roared, now totally riveted on the spectacle before them.
“And when would I have done it?” Severus asked. “I haven’t seen you all day -- believe it or not, Black, I actually avoid you. Perhaps you’re not as popular in Gryffindor as you’d like to think you are.”
Black replied with something befitting the jinxed lips on the shirt, which, triggered by his speech, followed up by stating that Black would rather be off doing something to Pettigrew which really should not have been mentioned in polite company. There it was, the built-in guarantee that Black would not be amused by the trick: plentiful references to the wearer’s imputed desire to do interesting things to his mates. Pettigrew stood nearby, looking very uncomfortable, and Severus wondered how he himself was going to get through the upcoming declarations of Black’s desire to shower with Potter or fondle Lupin without laughing so hard that he’d make an easy victim for the quartet.
On the plus side, there were now students actually sobbing with laughter, and Severus was rather pleased that he had responded to Black with wit rather than violence, even though he knew he was probably really in for it at some point in the not too distant future.
“Just you wait, Snape,” Black murmured savagely, turning and exiting as the lips on the shirt began to talk longingly of undressing Lupin. The other three Marauders headed after him somewhat sheepishly, followed by the laughter of the denizens of the Three Broomsticks.
“Hie, Snape -- any idea who did that to Black? Was it really you?” The low and incongruously mellow voice belonged to a big Hufflepuff from Severus’s year, one of the Quidditch players, who had walked over to Severus’s table.
“Black certainly seems to think I did,” Severus responded obliquely, finally remembering Sam Douglas’s name.
Douglas took that in, and then, with a wide grin, proffered a thick hand for a shake, which Severus accepted. “Well, if that was you, it was brilliant, and you have my admiration.”
“If I ever find out who did it, I’ll make sure he knows of your appreciation,” Severus said. The jinx had appeared more clever than it actually was: it had a continuously recycling program of comments and insults which would, Severus was sure, seem less impressive if someone heard them for the second time. The key to its success, he realised, was that Black would never stay in the same place long enough for anyone but his dearest friends to hear the shirt’s commentary more than once.
“Tell him to teach me how to do it while you’re at it,” Douglas replied. “Might be useful for the occasional well-chosen Quidditch jersey.” He returned to the table with his friends and girlfriend, an oddball collection of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who, notable for their refusal to remain House-bound in their friendships, had been nicknamed the Ravenpuffs by some of their classmates. Siobhan Mulalley, Douglas’s longtime girlfriend, was still dabbing her eyes and attempting to regain her composure.
Returning to his reading, Severus concluded that whatever the Marauders came up with for punishment, it had definitely been worth it. Sirius Black wouldn’t live this down for a long time.
At the same time, although Severus hated James Potter and his little group, he envied the easy friendship they had, which was unlike anything he had ever known. His only real friend was -- had been -- Lily, but that friendship had been so complicated, largely because he was a boy and she was a girl and no matter how they pretended it didn’t matter, it did matter: it was everything. One boyfriend for her, one girlfriend for him -- who was he kidding? One boyfriend for her, and the whole thing would have fallen apart like a house of cards. What boyfriend would have let her continue hanging around with him the way she had? Not to mention what Severus’s own jealousy could have wrought if given the opportunity.
The Marauders, on the other hand, would probably always be together, and obnoxious though they were, he occasionally wished he had something like that. His companions of the last few years, he knew, were nothing like the Marauders -- unlike the Four Bloody Musketeers of Gryffindor, his Slytherin friends had been all for none and every man for himself. But he envied the Marauders, and even the Ravenpuffs who, unlike himself and Lily, seemed to get past the House issues without their friendship falling apart. In any case, although he didn’t seem to be cut out for such a thing, that didn’t keep him from wanting it. The easy companionship, the belonging to a larger entity, the sense that someone else was always there to defend you -- in the abstract, anyway, it definitely had its appeal.
Something that had lost its appeal, however, was being part of the Avery and Mulciber group. Unlike Lily, whom he seemed to miss more in inverse proportion to the amount of time he spent with her, their company had become less attractive from a distance. Perhaps he had taken offense that they were not more interested in keeping him around; maybe he just enjoyed the independence more than he had thought he would. Or maybe it was just self-justification, since he knew it was something of a joke to think of himself as independent. In the previous few years, he had constantly been torn between two masters, trying to keep fitting in with the Slytherin crowd but at the same time, trying to remain friends with Lily. The only difference this year was that he had finally chosen to be ruled by one rather than both. She just didn’t know it yet.
Snivellus and the Head Girl by SeverusSempra
Chapter Notes: Snape vs. the Marauders, the sequel: Severus Strikes Back :)
Chapter Endnotes: This is actually the first half of a chapter that was well within the word limit but seemed to be too long vertically to be submitted all in one piece, so I apologize if it doesn't have the world's most satisfactory ending.
As always, thank you to my fabulous and helpful betas, Sandy (Snape's Talon) and Fresca (Colores). Anything you recognize is JKR's. And reviews are always more than welcome. :)