Porcupine Quills & Potion Spills: The Second Life of Severus Snape

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/36250660.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: F/M, M/M, Multi
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationships: Severus Snape/?, Marauders/Severus Snape, James Potter/Severus
Snape, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, Sirius Black/Severus Snape, Evan
Rosier & Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy & Severus Snape, Lily Evans
Potter & Severus Snape, Final Pairing Undecided - Relationship
Characters: Severus Snape, Eileen Prince, Tobias Snape, Marauders (Harry Potter),
Hogwarts Staff, Hogwarts Students, Death Eater Characters
Additional Tags: Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Young Severus Snape, POV Severus
Snape, Severus Snape-centric, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Character
Bashing, Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Hogwarts First Year, Hogwarts
Forbidden Forest, Potions Accident, Good Severus Snape, Cute Severus
Snape, Oblivious Severus Snape, Severus Snape is Bad at Feelings,
Misunderstandings, Angst and Humor, Animals, House Elves, Slytherins
Being Slytherins, Hogwarts Inter-House Relationships, Bullying
Language: English
Collections: Hp random love, hello yes i can’t stop thinking about these works,
Marauders Redeemed, Snape Snape Severus Snape, HP and marauders
(ALL TBR/CR), Harry Potter, Lilranko Great Stories to Rediscover,
хочу прочитать, Snape time travel
Stats: Published: 2022-01-06 Updated: 2024-03-05 Words: 48,114 Chapters:
43/?
Porcupine Quills & Potion Spills: The Second Life of Severus Snape
by ShenYuan_did_not_transmigrate_for_this

Summary

A time-travel fix-it centered around Severus Snape from before Hogwarts to after.
A potions accident sends a discontent and bitter Severus Snape back in time to his childhood
years before Hogwarts. Seeing an opportunity to alter the future for the better, Severus'
actions bring about more changes than he's even aware of. A lot can happen to a young
wizard in seven years, especially at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

No romantic relationships until the characters are older. The final pairing is currently
undecided. This story will involve both homosexual and heterosexual relationships - don't
like then don't read.

Notes

No romantic relationships until the characters are older, but there will be childhood crushes
and hints toward potential future relationships. The final pairing is currently undecided. This
story will involve unapologetically gay relationships.
No beta, so feel free to point out spelling and grammar errors. Constructive criticism only.
This is my first fanfic on AO3 so please be nice.

This work was inspired by:

pkawaiikawaii's Changing The World (Always Starts with Ourselves)
Komodo_Butterfly's Breaking the Mold
Serena90's Mending mistakes
and other works to be added
 Sent Back in Time
Chapter Summary

A potion accident has unexpected consequences.

As the unsealed glass jar of ground porcupine quills plummeted off the shelf and toward the
bubbling cauldron below, Severus realized he wouldn't be able to catch it in time. The
mixture was the beginnings of a shrinking solution and, at its current stage of incompletion,
was especially volatile. The potions master had only a fraction of a second to duck behind a
table before the cauldron exploded. Its contents flew through the air, a bright shade of blue.
Severus looked down to find himself absolutely covered in it. Then, to his shock and horror,
the viscous liquid started to glow.

Blinded by the white light that suddenly surrounded him, he barely felt the strange, abnormal
twinges that ran through his body like jolts of electricity. His dark eyes blinked open,
squinting to see unexpected surroundings. Truly, the room he had found himself was quite
familiar, but it was not someplace he had ever planned to set foot in again.

Severus currently stood in the small, rundown bedroom of his childhood home in Spinner's
End.

Severus followed the directions ingrained in his memory to the bathroom, which appeared to
have not been cleaned in at least a year. He stood over the yellowing sink and stared at his
reflection in the mirror with wide eyes. He was small, short, and undoubtedly a child. The
diminutive form of his nine-year-old self, suffering from malnutrition and a lack of hygiene,
gazed back at him from the mirror. His black hair hung in greasy strands down to the top of
his narrow shoulders. His skin and teeth were a repulsive shade of yellow that almost
matched the bathroom sink, and his skin was dry and peeling.

His nose was still straight, meaning his drunken father hadn't yet broken it, after which it had
healed crooked. That happened when he was ten years old after he had broken an empty beer
bottle that had been lying on the floor. He also didn't have the scar on his pinky finger from
trying to cut apples. He did, however, have the small leather bracelet his mother had gifted
him on his ninth birthday. Therefore, he could conclude that he was apparently nine. Nine
was a big change from his previous age of thirty-six.

Despite the impossibility of it, the potion had sent him back in time.

At the moment, he had few options. The worst would be to reveal himself as a time-traveller
and be either imprisoned or experimented on in the Department of Mysteries. There was no
way for him to reverse the effects of the potion and return to the future, as he had neither the
knowledge nor the resources to do so.
The only choice he had was to remain in the past. This was not necessarily a bad thing. After
all, in the future, Severus had been running out of time. He lived in fear, constantly looking
over his shoulder for the moment when the Dark Lord realized his treachery and sent his
followers to kill him. Any day could have been his last as the war worsened regardless of the
incompetent Ministry’s denial. The mistakes and bad choices of his past constantly haunted
him, hunting him right at his heels as he fought every day to not mess up or give away his
position as a spy. Through questionable circumstances, he was being given a second chance;
an opportunity to fix his many mistakes. Severus regretted so much as an adult. Every time
his sleeve slid up his wrist to expose the Dark Mark he mourned his decision to join
Voldemort’s ranks as a Death Eater. Seeing Lily and Potter's son had always left a lingering
feeling of guilt for his role in their deaths.

His greatest regret was his life during his school years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry.

His childhood years of schooling at Hogwarts were filled with only awful memories. He was
constantly bullied by the Marauders and the other members of his own house, most of which
were pureblood supremacists and loathed him for his blood. Year after year he was
humiliated by the Marauders' pranks. He was isolated from his peers and had no close
friends. Lily had drifted away over the years, and their relationship was left permanently
strained after he called her a Mudblood. Regulus Black had been one of his closest friends in
Slytherin, but at best they were acquaintances on friendly terms with each other. The same
remained true with Lucius Malfoy and Evan Rosier.

In Wizarding Britain, a witch or wizard's school years at Hogwarts determined their future.
Good grades and connections would allow for good job opportunities. Despite his good
grades and hard work, Severus' position as a social pariah as well as the many negative
rumours and opinions of him—largely false and spread by the Marauders—ruined his future
opportunities. Although he finally managed to become a Potions Master, the youngest in
Britain at that, he was initially denied by the Ministry-affiliated Potions Association and
multiple independent Potions Guilds despite his many accomplishments in the field of
potions. Although they gave him multiple reasons for their rejections, the truth was that the
members’ impressions of him had already been darkened by the stories they heard from their
school-age children.

His Hogwarts years were doomed from the start. The young Severus Snape was a sallow-
skinned, greasy-haired, jaded and unpleasant boy. He was awkward and had no social skills
to speak of. He was clearly poor, and Severus remembered that his physical appearance had
only worsened in the two years before he went to Hogwarts. Although people may claim
otherwise, humans first judge others based on their looks.

Severus would receive his Hogwarts letter in two years, and he could think of no way to
possibly avoid attending. To get where he wanted in life he’d need a magical education, and
he doubted any other magical schools would accept an impoverished, unknown, Muggle-
raised British child. Ending up at Hogwarts was inevitable. At the very least, he could create
new and more pleasant memories of his seven years there, which would hopefully lead to a
better life in adulthood.
In order to be accepted, he would need to change himself. Mainly, he would need to improve
his appearance. The first time around, Severus had refused to do this out of defensive pride
and a deficit understanding of the importance placed on people’s physical aspects. His
unhygienic habits had continued to unfavourably affect him as an adult. Along with his time
spent in the dungeons, his complexion was sickly. The multiple times his nose was broken
made it larger from swelling and hooked and misshapen from not healing correctly.
Hopefully, all that could be avoided.

He rubbed dust off the wand he had stolen from his mother's trunk, admiring its
craftsmanship. Its absence would go unnoticed. Eileen Snape née Prince had long shunned
the existence of magic and the fact that she was a witch. Everything magic that she owned—
including robes, books, and her wand—remained locked away in her old school trunk.

While Severus knew how to cast spells, he knew his magic was not yet accustomed to being
directed through a wand or even being used at all. Like all children, his magical core would
start out small and need to be used in order to grow, somewhat like a muscle. As a child, he
hadn't attempted magic. He had been terrified of being caught by his mother, who would
disapprove, and his father, who hated magic and would certainly beat him for using it.

Tobias Snape had once been a Muggle completely unaware of magic and the fact that Eileen
was a witch. She had kept it a secret until after their wedding. He’d known that she belonged
to a rich, influential family. He had believed that with her inheritance and his job at the mill
that it would not be a struggle to support themselves. However, he found out after they were
married that her parents had opposed her relationship with a Muggle and Eileen had been
disowned by the Prince family. Thus, the responsibility of providing for the family had
weighed solely on him. Eileen Prince was a rich pureblood who had never worked a day in
her life. As Eileen Snape, she’d been expected to take care of the household. Used to relying
on house-elves, she was remarkably useless at doing so. Coming home to a dirty, dilapidated
house in the impoverished suburb of Cokeworth after a long day of hard, manual labour at
the mill only made Tobias more bitter.

Severus Snape's parents avoided each other like the plague and fought constantly when in the
same room. Tobias wasn't hesitant to abuse Eileen emotionally and physically. Their love had
evaporated into thin air starting even before Severus was born. Tobias was not very fond of
anything—except, perhaps, alcohol—but he absolutely despised magic and anything else that
he considered abnormal.

His alcoholism and his habit of coming home from work drunk didn’t truly start until the mill
began dismissing workers and Tobias could no longer rely on stable employment. The man's
abusive tendencies toward his wife weren't equally directed toward his son until Severus was
ten years old. Subsequent to that, he had hit the boy at various moments when angry,
intoxicated, or a mixture of the two. The abuse had progressed to harsh beatings that at times
left Severus with fractured or broken bones. At the age of nine, Tobias Snape was still just a
mediocre—if usually absent—father.
 To Change Oneself
Chapter Summary

Severus makes some small changes and big plans

Chapter Notes

Warning: there will be some character bashing in this chapter. I have very conflicting
feelings about Eileen and the way she went about her marriage to an abusive husband.
While not a large focus, I don't portray her very nicely in this chapter. I've tried to avoid
victim blaming, as that is something I don't support. Please let me know if I am
successful at this or if I should reconsider some of the wording. I'm not very nice to Lily
either (I don't dislike her, I just felt she wasn't the best person as a hormonal teenage
girl), but it will improve in later chapters as she hopefully experiences some character
growth.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Severus had never needed spells for hair maintenance or skincare. His skills in the Dark Arts
and Occlumency were matched by very few, and his name as a potioneer was well known in
specific circles. He had no experience with charms or spells meant to be used on the body
that weren't healing spells and harmful jinxes or curses. However, he would bet ten Galleons
that there would be a book on the subject in his mother's trunk.

He left the bathroom and walked down the hall to his parent's bedroom. He remembered to
avoid the loose floorboard in front of the door at the last second. It was pitch black inside the
room. He didn't have to focus on moving silently, as his father snored loud enough to wake
the dead. His mother rolled over in her sleep, her arm falling off the side of the mattress.
Severus tried to pretend not to see the hand-shaped bruise marring her wrist.

Eileen was capable of taking care of herself. Severus had made the mistake of defending her
and took several beatings for her when he was younger, but the pain he endured for
protecting his mother was meaningless. She never tried to stop his father, never fought back,
never protected herself or her son, never did anything. She could have left the Muggle years
ago. It was her own fault for not abandoning his father due to pride.

As a child, he never resented his mother. However, after she died, Severus uncovered several
secrets. While moving his possessions from his childhood home to the living quarters he
resided in as a Hogwarts professor, he discovered a letter addressed to his mother. The letter
was written on expensive parchment and signed by the patriarch of the Prince family,
Severus’ grandfather. The man offered to reinstate Eileen as a member of the Prince
bloodline on the condition that she divorce Tobias and return to the ancestral family home.
Severus would’ve been welcomed into the Prince family as her son, receiving their pureblood
surname, though he could never be an heir.

Although Severus would have enthusiastically agreed to this, he never got the choice. Eileen
stubbornly declined the offer. She refused to admit that her parents were right about Tobias.
She never replied to the letter, even when the abuse worsened and Tobias began hurting her
son. She readily sentenced them both to the Muggle's anger and cruelty for the sake of her
baseless pride and nonexistent dignity.

He peered into the darkness of the closet, spotting the trunk pushed against the wall at the
very back. It was unlocked, but his thin arms strained to open it. Underneath A History of
Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, he found what he was looking for: The Must-Have Handbook of
Beautifying Charms for Young Witches. Severus sneered at the title, but grabbed the book
anyway and took it with him to the bathroom. Once the door was closed, he propped it up
against the edge of the sink and turned to the first page.

He lifted the borrowed wand and practised the hand movement shown until he was satisfied
with the fluency of the motion, then he tapped into his magical core. To start, he cast a
cleaning charm on his teeth, hair, and body. A moment later he decided to cast it on his
threadbare clothes as well. The first spell in the book, one used to fix teeth, needed only a
simple wand movement and seemed easy enough for his undeveloped core to do. After
practising the incantation, he tested it. His teeth straightened and whitened several shades, but
weren’t exactly white. Teeth were not naturally pure white anyway, though clearly, no one
had ever notified Gilderoy Lockhart of this fact. Satisfied with the work of the spell, Severus
read the next one. The boy stepped out of the bathroom roughly an hour later. With his
improved appearance, he doubted that anyone who saw him would quickly recognize him.

His raven-black hair no longer looked greasy and unwashed. Smooth and straight, it fell to
just above his shoulder blades. He would have to get it cut shorter, as he didn't know how his
father would react to him having such long hair. Along with healthy skin that wasn't
horrifically oily or dry, his appearance seemed much less revolting. If he continued to
maintain and improve his physical traits, then by Hogwarts there'd be a significant difference.
A majority of the problems caused by his negative image could be easily solved.

As a young boy, he faced endless bullying for being poor and unclean. His hostile
temperament when hearing the insults aimed at him only fueled his abusers. However, both
his appearance and reactions to other people’s actions could be changed and controlled.
Severus Snape had been given a second chance, and he would not spend his years at
Hogwarts miserable and constantly looking over his shoulder like he had his entire first life.

Filled with a renewed sense of determination, Severus spent the rest of the afternoon lying in
his bed, planning. Would future events successfully change because of his present actions?
How useful would his current knowledge be?

One thing the de-aged man questioned was his relationship with Lily Evans. Did he want to
continue being friends with Lily? The redheaded girl might have been kind and intelligent,
but she wasn't perfect. More often than not, she had acted selfishly and hypocritically. The
 isolated, lonely young Severus had clung to his first friend like a drowning man to a sinking
raft. He would have done almost anything for her, but she used him over and over again. She
expected his help on every assignment and essay, and for him to rush to her aid whenever she
was unhappy. Furthermore, she never reciprocated these favours.

She cut off their friendship because he associated with the pureblood-supremacists of his
house and dabbled in Dark magic. Yet, she happily went out with Potter when she knew that
the Gryffindor boy made Severus' life hell for years. Lily had only been his friend when it
was convenient for her. It was likely that she only befriended him in the first place because he
was the only other magic-user she knew of in Cokeworth.

Based on the facts, the answer was obvious. Emotionally, it was a lot less simple.

Before Severus’ thoughts could focus on the Sorting and the four houses, he heard his name
being called from the kitchen. His mother had finished cooking dinner. The boy sat down in
one of the four rickety chairs at the wooden table. Tobias Snape sat down a minute later, a
frown on his stubbled face and the stench of whiskey on his breath. A half-eaten loaf of stale
bread was placed on the table, followed by soup. The soup was watery, and the pieces of
chicken and vegetables floating in it were as small as Knuts. Severus had only eaten a few
spoonfuls before an argument broke out between his parents. At least they were too distracted
to pay attention to him.

He finished his soup quickly and escaped from the kitchen, going back to the refuge of his
bedroom. He eased the door shut silently, immediately locking it. The shock of time travel
and the events of the day had left him exhausted. He could resume his planning tomorrow,
but right now he needed to rest.

Chapter End Notes

I've decided to try using British English spelling instead of American English to make
the story more canonical (though I certainly am not doing so with the events), as its
what the characters (British, at school in Scotland) would use. Please feel free to point
out any mistakes.
 A Trip to the Park
Chapter Summary

A look into the daily life of a wizard back in time. Small plot twist ahead, but (honestly)
mostly just build up to later chapters.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Severus slung a tattered canvas messenger bag—the inside enlarged with an Undetectable
Extension Charm—over his shoulder. The dark-eyed child pushed open the back door slowly,
wincing when its rusty hinges whined in protest. He darted across the overgrown lawn of the
dilapidated house to the edge of the road, where untrimmed bushes hid his scrawny form.
Severus took in his surroundings—the broken street lights and the polluted river off in the
distance—and felt a pang of nostalgia. The air of Spinner's End was just as depressing as he
remembered.

Small, ageing houses lined the street. Their ageing grey bricks hinted at the red colour they'd
once been; Their caving roofs and crumbling chimneys had once been sturdy and new.
Smoke rose up from a few of the chimneys. On the close horizon, Severus could see the
pillars of smoke produced by the factories. Spinner's End, while being part of the slums of
Cokeworth, was at least close to a park.

Severus walked down the street in his second-hand shoes. The neighbourhoods around him
got increasingly less poor the farther he walked, and the air pollution from the factories
wasn't quite as noticeable. The yards became better kept, and the stares of the people he
walked past grew more judgmental. Feeling self-conscious, Severus pulled his oversized,
threadbare coat tighter around his small body and gripped the strap of his bag.

Finally, he arrived at the park. The negative feelings inside of him were suddenly at ease.
Ignoring the brightly coloured playground, the raven-haired boy walked closer to the woods.
Just through the trees, he could see the constantly moving surface of the river. It ran cleaner
in this part of the town, though not by much. Sitting among the roots of a large tree, Severus
studied the nearby undergrowth for useful herbs.

A leaf fell from the tree above him. Fluttering in the wind, it slowly descended to tangle itself
in his hair. Then, to Severus' horror, a laugh slipped through his chapped lips. He couldn't
even recall the last time he'd laughed. Could relief, hope, or delayed hysteria have led to such
an out-of-character action? Or could the laughter be attributed to a different, more worrying
cause?
While presently trapped in the body of his nine-year-old self, his mind remained that of a
mature, adult Severus Snape. Or did it? The time-traveller feared that his mentality was
deteriorating to fit the body accommodating it. If this was the case, he could only hope the
process would be slow and integrate his adult mind into that of his younger self without
erasing it completely. At the moment, there was nothing he could do, so he told himself not to
stress over it.

From inside the bag he’d been carrying, Severus procured several little jars he took from one
of the kitchen cupboards. There were a variety of common plants useful for magic-less
potions. His main focus at the moment was finding herbs for making a bruise cream. While
less effective than its magical counterpart, the cream would speed up the healing of any
bruises that Tobias inflicted on him in the future. Severus considered the properties of the
individual herbs and how they reacted to each other until he developed an ideal combination.

Once he completed the cream, there were other things he could create with the mundane
ingredients on hand. Medicinal salves, burn-healing paste, and hydrating cream for his skin
were all possible for him to concoct. Severus could easily brew teas with remedial qualities
or make pleasantly scented soap as well.

When he snuck back into his house, Severus didn't see his mother. He checked upstairs and
found her still asleep in bed. The boy wrinkled his nose in displeasure at her actions. It was
well into the afternoon, and from the state of the kitchen, Eileen hadn't even bothered to get
out of bed that morning to eat breakfast. She was unfit to be a mother, neglecting the young
wizard relying on her care.

Severus went back downstairs and dragged his bag into the kitchen. A pile of unwashed
dishes sat in the sink. The boy grimaced at the disorderly and unclean state of the room,
aware that every other room in the house was just as bad—except for his bedroom, which he
had cleaned. His height stunted because of malnourishment, Severus had to move a chair in
front of the stove and stand on it. At least the wizard knew that with the rich, plentiful food at
Hogwarts he would get a growth spurt. However, nine-year-old Severus remained the same
height he’d been a couple of years prior. Standing at about one hundred and fifteen
centimetres, he had not even reached four feet.

Balancing carefully on top of the wooden chair, the dark-haired boy added a measured
amount of water to a cooking pot. Using makeshift tools, Severus chopped and ground up the
stems and roots of the plants, then added them to the pot. Those ingredients were followed by
seeds that had been crushed under the flat edge of a knife. The stove slowly heated once
turned on, and the mixture turned into a green-tinted paste that he steadily and continuously
stirred.

Severus heard the front door slam open, and the unmistakable thumps of his father's footsteps
neared the kitchen. Severus froze, habitually afraid of the man. He hadn't expected him to be
home so early in the day. Trying to stay calm and not mess up the stirring, he watched Tobias
out of the corner of his eye. Severus assessed the Muggle's mood, concerned that the man
would be drunk and violent. However, his worries were for nought. Tobias walked past him
to the fridge, took out a beer, and then left the room without acknowledging Severus at all.
 The boy didn't have time to ponder it, as the cream was done. He lifted the pot off the stove,
struggling with its weight, and carried it over to the counter. He had left a pint-sized glass jar
waiting there for him to store the cream in. The contents of the pot filled the jar to the brim
once poured inside. Severus twisted the lid on tightly. His arms ached, but he was content
with the product of his hard work. Placing the jar and the containers of ingredients back into
the canvas bag, he carried it upstairs to his room and stashed it beneath the bed. Returning
empty-handed to the kitchen, his attention wandered back to the dirty pot and all the
disgusting dishes gathering in the sink. Severus would have to wash those before cleaning the
mess he individually made.

The task could be finished almost instantly with the use of magic; Severus just needed to
avoid getting caught. He pulled out his mother's wand, which he’d kept on his person since
stealing it. He conjured water with a simple Aguamenti. It filled the sink about halfway. He
followed it with a water-heating charm and a vanishing spell, Evanesco. Once the water was
gone, Severus finished cleaning the dishes with a Scourgify to cleanse what hadn't already
been rinsed off. He put the plates, cups, and various silverware away in the cupboards by
hand.

He spared a look at the kitchen. The wooden floorboards were dirty. A layer of dust lined the
windowsills and almost every other surface. Severus promptly removed the dust and dirt
particles with the Tergeo charm, the wand swishing through the air while he spoke the proper
incantation. With a flick of the wand and a word from his mouth, the gritty floor was scoured
clean by another Scourgify.

The charm brought one of his worst memories to the forefront of his mind. James Potter had
used it for his mouth on multiple occasions. Growing angry, Severus could feel his
fingernails biting into his palms as he clenched his hands into fists. Potter had also cast the
charm on him in retribution for Severus calling Lily Evans a Mudblood. With the memory
lingering, Severus imagined he could still taste the nauseating, soapy bubbles on his tongue.
It made his stomach turn.

Unfortunately, the child's undeveloped magical core was nearly empty at this point. Severus
hated how hard it was for him to cast magic as a child; each spell and charm left him feeling
pathetically weak. Wobbling on his feet, Severus hurriedly sat down in a chair and slipped
Eileen's wand into his left sleeve. The moment his head rested on the table he was out like a
light.

Chapter End Notes

Please leave a kudos or a comment if you like this story. I love reading comments but I
am socially awkward so I probably won't reply :)
 The Causes and Side Effects of Magic
Chapter Summary

World building, backstory, and a look into Tobias Snape. NOT planning on a Tobias
redemption, just making him a slightly less one-dimensional character.

Chapter Notes

Thanks to MagicWafflez for their feedback in the comments. I overlooked the existence
of the wand at the ending of the last chapter. I've gone back and made some minor
changes at the end to fix this. I don't have a beta reader, so I appreciate any feedback on
grammar and plot.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Unaware of the gradually darkening sky outside the window, Severus slept deeply. A
moderately sober Tobias Snape entered the kitchen, took one look, and stood there, stunned.
Had Eileen done this? There wasn't a single room in the house that had looked this clean in
years. Then, he saw Severus. His tiny, nine-year-old son was sleeping at the table, head
cushioned by skinny arms. Tobias brushed the boy's long black hair out of his face with
rough, calloused fingers: a rare act of affection aimed toward his firstborn and only son.
While the man hated the magic of his witch wife and wizard son, that hatred dissipated at the
sight of physical features similar to his own. He felt pain in his chest, his heart unused to such
rare positive emotion.

He no longer felt anything but anger when he saw his wife, constantly questioning why he
had married her. They’d had nothing in common. Eileen Prince was a wealthy, privileged
heiress. Tobias Snape was a dirt-poor Muggle man. Eileen didn't confess to being a witch
until there were rings on their fingers. Tobias had grown up believing witchcraft to be
unnatural and evil, but at first, he was willing to accept it. However, faced with the bigotry
and contempt that magical people had for Muggles, the man's feelings soured and turned
resentful.

He ran a hand through Severus' unexpectedly soft hair. Tobias felt the corner of his mouth
curling into a smile, something not present on his face for so long his facial muscles were no
longer sure how to form the expression of happiness. With an audible sigh, he lifted his son
into his arms and carefully carried him up the creaking staircase. Tobias pushed open the
door of the house's smaller bedroom and found the interior shockingly clean. He gently laid
the boy on the mattress, believing the diminutive body was fragile and much too light—there
was never enough food. Tobias pulled the blankets over Severus' sleeping form and struggled
to recall the last time he tucked his son in at night.

The following morning, a confused Severus woke to find himself in his bed. The realization
that Tobias had brought him upstairs to his room left him astonished. He pressed one hand to
his chest, a wave of an unfamiliar emotion leaving him strangely warm and overjoyed.
Nonetheless, he didn't understand the existence of the compassionate action. In his past life,
this had never happened. How greatly had his trip back in time already affected the timeline?
Sadly, Severus knew this didn't mean his father had somehow changed. Sooner or later, his
father would get roaring drunk at the bar after work and come home to beat his mother.

Severus got off the bed, shivering from chills when his bare feet came in contact with the
cold floor. He padded silently to the bathroom. The boy brushed his teeth, washed his face,
and then paused to study his image in the mirror. Although the poor lighting and grimy
mirror didn’t do him any favours, he definitely noticed an improvement to his appearance. He
pulled out the handbook of beautifying spells and charms that he’d hidden in the cabinet
underneath the sink.

The continuous performance of magic had allowed him to tap into his magic core with less
trouble, and put more power behind spells. Considering that his core was still weak and not
fully formed and that Eileen's wand was not suited to him, this was a miraculous feat.

There were three additional books concealed in his bedroom under a loose floorboard, all
from his mother's trunk. One was an instruction manual on magical housekeeping titled How
to Keep a Clean Home Without a House-Elf. The second was a textbook, A Guide to
Advanced Transfiguration written by Emeric Switch. Severus planned to master
transfiguration this time around, as in his past life it was his worst subject. He refused to be
outdone by James Potter's natural talent for transfiguration, which the Gryffindor hadn’t
hesitated to rub in his face and constantly bragged about. Additionally, as a wizard with
numerous years of magical education, knowledge, and experience under his belt, he refused
to be outdone by any child in any magical field. The third book was one he had never read,
though there had been a copy in the Slytherin Dungeon, Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding
Genealogy.

Severus Snape had initially been ignorant to his lineage in the original timeline. After finding
out his mother was a Prince, Severus loathed that she had left him in the dark. The potions
master spent many months researching and hunting down information. That was when he
discovered ancestral magic: rare abilities passed through the pureblood lines and inherited by
magically powerful witches and wizards. Some examples would be the snake-speaking
ability of Parseltongue or the shape-shifting skill of Metamorphmagi.

A powerful enough magic-user, regardless of lineage, could learn nonverbal casting or

wandless magic. Severus had been able to cast certain spells wandlessly later in his life, and a
lesser amount of spells nonverbally with use of a wand. He had also always been impossibly
skilled at Occlumency. However, that was a learned skill and not caused by his genetic
relation to the Prince family.
 He left the bathroom, twirling the wand absentmindedly between his thin fingers. The house
groaned softly on its foundation, empty except for him. Tobias had gone to work in the early
hours of the morning. Eileen, unexpectedly, had left the house. Severus didn’t know what she
did when not cooking in the kitchen or withdrawn to her and her husband's bedroom,
however, he couldn't find it in himself to care. He was home alone and free to do magic.
Some housekeeping was long overdue.

Exercising his magical core and training his magic at such a young age would allow him to
surpass most of his peers once he reached Hogwarts. Severus suspected that he would be
more magically powerful this time around, which was a good incentive for the deaged time-
traveller. Severus had already been notably powerful in his past life.

Pureblood children had the opportunity to practice and use magic preceding their first year of
schooling. Muggle-borns normally had no idea of the existence of magic until they received
their acceptance letters. The purebloods' cores had developed, while the Muggle-borns'
hadn't. A witch or wizard's magical core grew in size and power with use. Thus, Muggle-
borns were ordinarily less powerful. The size and strength of the magical cores of half-blood
witches and wizards naturally varied, dependent on many key factors. Wizards with a better
grasp of their own magic had a heightened sensitivity for other people's magic and the wild
magic of the earth.

While he may never have access to the ancestral magic of the Ancient and Noble House of
Prince, this, at least, he could work toward.

Chapter End Notes

Severus' thoughts in the chapter don't foreshadow that he will never come in contact
with the Prince Family.

However, at the current point, Severus has no plans to contact them. I don't feel it would
be realistic at this time to do so, since without his future knowledge, child!severus
wouldn't have the knowledge of magic and his ancestry to take the course of action
neccesary to contact his family and get in their good graces. Additionally, it is not a for-
sure thing that he would be accepted back into the family without his mother at this
point or age, as he has not shown the magical prowess or accomplished any
achievements so far which would catch the attention of a supposedly powerful and
possibly pureblood-supremacist family.
 Occlumency and Forgotten Memories
Chapter Summary

The title is major spoilers for the chapter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Chapter Notes

Warnings: Domestic violence & child abuse & HP fanfic cliches

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Severus sprawled lazily in the grass. It was slightly damp, and the soil was cold. It was the
first day of September—and although sunny—the temperature was only around sixteen
degrees Celsius. Muggle primary school would start in early September. Severus was
dreading it. He hated the thought of hours trapped in a classroom with dull, idiotic children.
He had already suffered through it once and knew everything that would be taught to him
there. It would be deathly boring and a complete waste of his time.

He also wasn't prepared to face Lily Evans.

He had seen her at the park, playing on the swings with her Muggle sister, Petunia. Severus
had avoided speaking or interacting with them. This time around, he never witnessed her
perform an act of magic or told her she was a witch.

Severus' friendship with Lily Evans certainly hadn't benefitted him, while Lily had fit in well
at Hogwarts on her own despite being a Muggle-born. James Potter fancied her, while the
red-headed witch continuously ignored him. In fact, Severus was certain that if he and Lily
hadn’t been friends, Potter wouldn't have encouraged Sirius Black's cruelty as much as he
did. Sirius Black, though he might claim otherwise, was not untouched by the infamous
Black insanity. He almost always went too far, and someone usually got hurt. Usually, it was
Potter who reigned him in before his actions crossed a line. Peter Pettigrew was too cowardly
and pathetic to ever stand up to anyone. Remus Lupin never spoke against his friends'
bullying, even when he possessed the authority as a Gryffindor Prefect. Whatever respect
Severus might have initially held for Lupin didn't last long.

Black might’ve fooled a lot of people. Nonetheless, Severus hadn't been, and never would be,
deceived by him. This time around, he wouldn’t purposefully make himself an enemy of
Potter or Black. Severus would try his hardest to never catch their attention and remain off
their radar for the entirety of his years at Hogwarts.
When outside, the boy secluded himself by the bank of the river, far from the other children
at the playground. He picked herbs and organized his mind with Occlumency, evaluating his
repertoire of spells. Occlumency would preserve his memories, allowing them to be recalled
perfectly and viewed at any time. Another vital use of Occlumency was that it protected the
Occlumens’ mind from outside forces.

In Severus’ mind, he built a tower. Its cylindrical form of polished stone pierced through the
fake clouds of an imaginary sky. Above the clouds, the sun was always setting, brilliant
colours painting the horizon. Below the clouds, it was always night. Stars, planets, and
galaxies that went unseen by the human eye in the real world were all visible, floating in the
dark blue-black waters of the night sky. Inside the tower, a staircase spiraled endlessly
upward and bookcases lined the walls all the way to the top. However, the books weren't
really books, but knowledge and memories from both this version of the timeline and the last.

While rebuilding the fortress of his mind, Severus came across a locked up memory. He
opened the book and was sucked into its shredded pages.

His father was mad about the broken plate. The drunken man shouted at his mother, towering
over her. In the corner by the couch hid Severus, curled in on himself to appear as small a
target as possible. Tears fell from reddened eyes. Blood dripped from a split lip and a bruise
formed on the pale skin around it.

The shards of the plate were spread on the ground a metre away. The greasy-haired boy
wished with all his might that the plate would stop being broken, that his parents would stop
fighting. As a slap echoed through the room, Severus' magic unconsciously followed his will.
The plate pieced itself back together, leaving not even a crack behind. The boy stared with
wide eyes before hesitantly picking it up.

"Daddy." The yelling came to a halt. "The plate's not broken," Severus said in a choked
voice.

He tensed, waiting for another blow to land on his aching body. Instead, the intoxicated man
just grunted and sat back down on the couch. He lifted a glass bottle of beer, but found it
empty. "Eileen! Get me another beer."

Severus watched as his mother hurried to the kitchen, trying to appease his father. When she
went to the kitchen a second time, he trailed after her. "I fixed the plate, Mommy. I did
magic," he whispered to her.

She froze, her eyes taking on a glazed look that provoked fear in the child. "No. No, you
couldn’t have. Your father doesn't like magic."

Her fingers harshly grasped his shoulder, nails digging into his skin. "Mommy?" The boy
cried, holding in sobs as he was led up the stairs and dragged into his parents' bedroom.

His mother went into the closet, reappearing with a smooth stick of wood: her wand. She
pointed it at him, ignoring his frantic pleas. "This is for your own good, Severus. Your father
won't have magic in his house. This is to protect both of us."
 As she began to chant strange words, a pain started above his navel. His mind hazy with
agony, his eyes shuttering closed.

His mother spoke once more, "Obliviate."

Severus jolted out of the memory. He sightlessly stared at the library of his mindscape, in a
state of shock at what he had uncovered. At a snail's pace, his brain processed it. His mother
had bound his magic. She had stolen it away from him against his will, a part of his very self.
Severus didn't understand. In his previous life, when he mastered Occlumency, he never came
across this memory.

Moreover, if his magic was currently bound, how had he used it at all? Possibly, Eileen had
only bound a portion of it so Severus wouldn’t be able to do accidental magic. Or perhaps her
own magic had weakened considerably without use, which caused the bindings to start
wearing off prematurely. His mother’s action, the ultimate betrayal, lingered at the edges of
his mind. How could the woman have done this to him, her own son?

Anger and crushing helplessness afflicted the time-traveller. Each second aware of this
knowledge added to his distress. Using Occlumency, Severus forcibly emptied his mind, then
focused his attention inward. Immersed in his core, he saw the chains wrapped loosely
around it, allowing small portions of magic to slip through. The glowing web of interlocked
strands surrounding his core absolutely reeked of Eileen Snape's magical signature. Her
magic felt so wrong: alien and nauseating. His magic was trapped by the shackles she placed
on him against his will. With all the force he could muster, Severus threw himself into
relentlessly attacking the foreign Dark magic attached to his core. The battle went unseen,
though was no less severe. The bindings were overpowered with suspicious ease, as fragile as
gossamer. His magic burst outward, surging through his veins.

His heart physically ached at the fearful thought of losing it again. Now that he had absolute
control over what was rightfully his, Severus would rather die than surrender it to another.

Chapter End Notes

That scene was so difficult to write!

Also, sorry about the cliche. It actually has more to do with Eileen than Severus, but you
won't really see why until later.
 Theories of Time
Chapter Summary

I know in a fanfic you don't really need to explain whatever reasoning or nonexistent
science was behind whatever you wrote, but I was in the mood to do so. Unfortunately, I
fell into the hole of multiverse theory and temporal magic in the canonical Harry Potter
books and decided to write an entire chapter about it. *sigh*

Chapter Notes

If you don't like wibbly wobbly timey-wimey fanfic not-science then apologies ahead of
time.
I feel like I kept Severus reasonably in character this chapter, so at least one thing
worked out.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Eileen’s bindings on his magic now broken, Severus mentally addressed the second major
issue of the day. While Severus had many awful memories of his childhood that he would
rather forget, he knew with great certainty that the memory he’d found with Occlumency
hadn’t simply slipped his mind. In his future, the events that had taken place in the memory
—breaking the plate, Tobias’ and Eileen’s fight, his use of accidental magic and Eileen’s
sudden mania in response—and the bindings on his magical core simply did not exist. So,
how could these things exist now?

It didn’t seem possible for the events to be caused by his accidental time travel, as the
memory had taken place before adult Severus had woken up in his child body.

Severus wondered if this timeline might not be the same one he’d left in the future. If this
was true, much of his future knowledge could be completely useless. His upper incisors
worried at his bottom lip as stressed panic overtook his train of thought. What events would
be different? Which people would be different? Would he go to Hogwarts to find Tom
Marvolo Riddle as the headmaster and Albus Dumbledore as a Dark Lord?

Feeling himself jumping to conclusions, Severus took a deep breath and tried to view the
situation impartially. After all, there were countless factors that could have impacted the
timeline. While he himself was a considerably large variable, Severus was not actually the
first person to have travelled back in time. Most importantly, he wouldn’t be the last.
While time and temporal magic largely remained a mystery, it had been studied and
experimented with for centuries. Meddling with time was extremely dangerous and could
result in unwanted consequences—such as one killing their past or future self by accident—it
had been attempted and achieved successfully through the use of Time-Turners. However,
time-related magic was well-known to be unstable, and research had shown that a time-
traveller could not safely go back in time for a period longer than five hours. Thus, Time-
Turners were stringently restricted by hundreds of laws.

Severus’ potion accident, which sent his adult mind into the body of his past child self, was
the only incident of its type in his knowledge. In other incidents, the individual had always
travelled to a past point in time in their present bodies. The worst well-known incident of this
type that Severus was aware of was the case of Eloise Mintumble, who in 1899 was sent
centuries into the past to the year 1402 for five days. By the time she was retrieved to her
proper point in time, the timeline had been irreparably disturbed. The incident caused
fluctuations to the hourly time of the following days and over twenty people’s existence had
been erased, unborn. Based on this information, Severus came to another conclusion and
discarded his fears of having been sent to a completely alternate timeline.

The topography of time had yet to be properly studied. Yet, in the case of Eloise Mintumble,
time could be viewed as linear. Additionally, as the Department of Mysteries was able to
retrieve Mintumble after she became stuck in 1402, the future did not cease to exist, only
suffered changes. From this Severus could theorize that not only was time linear, but it was a
continuous linear line with no end point. Whether that line branched off in varied timelines
due to changes caused by time-travel, Severus did not know. The facts he had on hand
showed that, regardless, a change in the past affected the future but not any points in time
before it, and that the future, despite being constantly affected by a chain reaction of changes
happening in the past, never ceased to exist. Thus, his own time travel could not have
affected the timeline before the arrival of his adult sentience, and his previous timeline
continued despite the absence of his presence. Unlike Mintumble, his case of time-travel had
been accidental, not a planned experiment by the Department of Mysteries. Whether or not
his adult body remained in the future in his potions lab or had disappeared altogether, no one
would think that he’d been sent back in time, and no one would be attempting to retrieve him.

Eileen’s binding of his magic, as an event that occurred in this timeline but not in the timeline
he had lived through, must have been a change caused by a prior temporal disturbance.
Because Severus had been unaffected by the change at the point of time in which the potion
accident took place, the origin of the temporal disturbance must have come from a point in
time further into the future. After Severus had been sent back in time , someone else had
managed to travel back in time to a point before the events of the memory took place, thus
indirectly affecting Severus’ childhood life. The term “indirectly” was key to Severus’ line of
thought and permitted him great relief. The lack of direct changes to his original childhood
meant that whoever else had travelled in time either did not know of or did not care about
Severus’ own time-travel.

Accordingly, this meant that the unknown individual meddling with time was not Severus’
problem.
 Severus was not Potter, a foolish boy with a hero complex—just like his father. Severus was
not Dumbledore, a manipulative man with fingers in a lot of pies. No, Severus Snape was a
bitter old dungeon bat who, in his many unhappy years as a schoolteacher, had become
skilled at ignoring and refusing any involvement in the lives and problems of those around
him. If this other time-traveller had nothing to do with him, then Severus would do his best
for it to remain that way.

Chapter End Notes

Eloise Mintumble and the time-travel experiment she was involved in are completely
canon.
Does your brain hurt yet? Mine did after writing this so here's a gift...
Double chapter update!
 Magic, Illness, and School
Chapter Summary

Basically what the title says

Chapter Notes

Enjoy the double update! Neither chapter is very long and this one is mostly light
humor, filler content, and Severus being cute or grumpy. No beta, as always, so please
feel free to point out spelling/grammar errors.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Properly focusing on his magic, Severus intentionally slowed his breathing. As an

experienced wizard capable of wandless magic, he was cognizant of how his magic moved:
dancing along his skin, singing in his brittle bones, naturally filling every cell in his body.
However, it was invisible to the naked eye. A third eye, a sixth sense that previously wasn't
there, could witness it. There existed no words to describe its ethereal beauty. Considerable
time passed as the young wizard stared at it in breathless wonder. A luminescent ball of
power hovered inside him like a radiant star. His physical eyes would have been blinded.

Severus felt complete; whole again after finding something he never knew was dearly
missing.

Tapping into that power was like sticking a metal fork in an electric socket. His
consciousness was pulled back to the tangible world as his magic exploded outward from his
body. Power hovered at his fingertips. Severus felt unstoppable, able to defeat Lord
Voldemort and his corrupt army of Death Eaters all at once.

Regrettably, the undernourished child’s sickly, delicate body was an inadequate vessel for a
power that had grown untouched for many years.

Severus gasped for air, coughing instead of exhaling. There was a tightness in his throat and
an aching discomfort in his chest. His ribs and lungs heaved breathlessly. The boy stood up
from the flattened grass but was overtaken by sudden dizziness. Coughs wracked his
weakened form. His hands clutched at his fraying shirt as dark spots flashed across his sight.
His throat constricted. A mouthful of blood came up with the next cough. Discovering he was
once more able to breathe, his starving lungs took in frantic gulps of air.
Severus wiped his mouth with his sleeve. The fabric was pulled away mottled by crimson.
His head spun and his vision blurred. Next thing he knew, he was falling. Like a light bulb
burning out, everything went black.

Blurry, charcoal-black irises gazed out from under drooping eyelids. The room was dark, the
only light a shining fragment that came through the space between the curtains. Severus tried
to sit up and groaned; every part of his body ached. His eyes itched and watered, and his
throat was experiencing what he assumed would be the result of swallowing a handful of
rocks. He had slept fitfully, disturbed by his restless magic that was still adjusting but did so
by imitating electrocution. The circles beneath his eyes displayed his fatigue.

The creaking of the hinges of his bedroom door awoke him. The tall figure of his father stood
in the open doorway, the glow of the hallway light making it hard for Severus to make out his
face. He sat up, his right hand rubbing his eyes.

“Father?” His voice broke off in a yawn.

Tobias sat at the foot of the bed. Severus shifted nervously, hands clutching the blankets.
What could the Muggle want at this hour of the morning? At least he couldn’t smell the
stench of alcohol, so his father wasn’t drunk.

“I know it’s early. I have to leave for work soon, but I wanted to... check how you were
feeling.”

Severus blinked, not expecting those words to come from the Muggle’s mouth. “I’m fine,
Father. It’s probably just a cold. I’ll be better by tomorrow.”

The black-haired boy hoped he was right and his magic would settle by then. He wasn’t sure
how much more of this he could take. Thankfully, Tobias accepted his answer. Testing
Severus’ temperature by placing the back of his hand on the child’s forehead, the man then
nodded and left the room.

Severus slept almost an entire day. When awake, he shuffled around like an Inferius.
Thankfully, his magical core completely adjusted to being unbound by the following
morning. That morning happened to be the start of his first day of primary school.

The entrance of the Muggle school was littered with children and their parents. Since
accidentally going back in time, he hadn’t interacted with anyone other than Eileen and
Tobias, so it was odd to observe people wearing outdated fashions. For him, it was like an
image out of a history textbook. In the Wizarding world, it wouldn’t be so obvious, as the
change in styles was slower and subtler than in the Muggle world.

Severus masked the sneer that would usually form on his face in the presence of children. He
could not suppress a wince as he walked past a particularly bratty child who wouldn’t stop
screeching to his mother that he “didn’t want to go.”
Considerably prepared, Severus quickly ascended the front steps of the school and slipped
through the propped open doors. Entering his old classroom, he was hit with a rush of déjà
vu. The classroom was exactly the same as the one in his memories. The walls were made of
greying red bricks and the floor of dull tiles largely hidden by a stained carpet. Old, rickety
school tables and chairs filled the centre of the room. They faced an aged blackboard, while
along the other wall were streaky windows.

Less than half the class was already present. The students gave no notice when he came
through the doorway. He gazed around the room at his classmates. They were already
subconsciously separating themselves into certain groups. The girls from more well-off
families showed off their brand new school supplies to each other. Their folders and
notebooks were customarily brightly colored and glitter-covered. Among them, bragging
about a heart-shaped pencil case, sat Lily Evans. The athletic boys, obsessed with sports,
talked about whatever over-glorified game of fetch was in season. A second, smaller group of
boys sat by the windows. Comic books were spread out on the carpet in front of them.

Severus cared neither for sports nor comics. However, if he didn't wish to be ostracised for
the entirety of the school year, he would need to join a group as soon as possible. Preferring
the calmer tones of the second group of boys over the chaos of the first group, he moved in
their direction apprehensively.

He never got close to the windows. A small hand with badly painted fingernails grabbed his
arm, and Severus was rudely dragged toward another group that was gathered in one of the
corners by the chalkboard. The poorer girls were colouring with broken crayons and pencils
provided by the school. The girl who pulled him over to the corner had her hair tied up in
pigtails that made her look juvenile. She practically shoved him into one of the chairs, then
introduced herself as Mary.

“What's your name?” She asked, collecting the orange crayons from several boxes.

“Severus.”

Mary stopped what she was doing and looked at him. “That's a weird name.”

“You're impolite,” he stated.

Childishly, she stuck out her tongue and threw a peach-colored crayon at him. It hit his eye,
an unexpectedly painful and effective weapon. To Severus' utter embarrassment, he could
feel his eyes watering and his bottom lip quivering. The teacher, an uncaring woman in a
sloppy, ill-fitting dress, saw what happened. She hurried over and scolded Mary.

“You should not throw things at others. Such bad behaviour is not allowed in this classroom.”
Severus understood that the woman didn't genuinely care; she was merely trying to make a
good first impression.

The teacher then turned to Severus, who was on the verge of crying. He sniffled pitifully,
wiping his eyes with the long sleeves of his sweater, which he wore to hide the starved
brittleness of his wrists. She ushered him across the room to where the wealthier girls were
now whispering in hushed voices.
 "Would you like to sit over here?" She asked.

Severus quickly shook his head, too focused on not looking at Evans to have any tact. A
majority of his adult life had been wasted attempting to make up for causing Lily’s death.
Severus had already come to realize that the significant childhood friendship Severus had
created in his head didn’t actually exist. He had sacrificed so much for Lily Evans, but this
was his second chance, and Severus' life would not revolve around her in this one.

A bit exasperated, the teacher belatedly permitted him to make his own choice. Yet, when he
proceeded to sit amidst the boys reading comic books, her lips thinned and her mouth
puckered in displeasure. She said nothing, however, so he ignored her. The boys didn't pay
him any mind, so he read one of the comics over a brown-haired boy's shoulder. He found it
mind-numbingly uninteresting and made a mental note to bring one of his own books with
him the next day.

Chapter End Notes

I was almost tempted to do a triple update, but gotta save something for next weekend
Please leave a kudos if you like this work <3
 The Events of Muggle Primary School
Chapter Summary

Mostly fluff and filler, but some plot at the end

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

It seemed his change in appearance had different effects than Severus anticipated. Compared
to Muggle children who usually didn't give a damn about how they looked, Severus was too
clean and well kept. Severus was many things that others his physical age were not: neat,
tidy, mannerly, and well-spoken.

Compared to the damaged, greasy hair caused by the polluted air of Cokeworth, Severus' hair
was considered soft and lustrous. His skin was reasonably, but not abnormally, without flaws.
He surpassed even Lily Evan's brilliant red hair—currently frizzy and untamed, missing the
hair products she’d one day heavily depend on—and emerald eyes.

On the second day of school, Severus became aware of the fact that his classmates and
teacher had mistaken him for a girl with a similar name and appearance. That day of class,
both Severus and the girl were present. Realizing that she had confused the identities of two
of her students, the teacher had apologized. She seemed horrified that she’d mistaken the two,
and caused quite a fuss reassuring Severus that he was a very “handsome boy.” Severus
couldn’t have cared less about the mix-up. Severus knew his child-like appearance to be
somewhat androgynous, but he also knew to look forward to the growth spurt he would have
in his second year.

While at the house in Spinner’s End there was never enough food, the bountiful and
nutritious food of Hogwarts allowed his physically stunted body to play catch-up. Severus
had been unhygenic enough in his last life to avoid being mistaken for the opposite gender.
His current appearance, along with the longer hair, definitely didn’t help. His hair was just so
clean and soft in this timeline that he couldn’t bring himself to chop it off. However, he
questioned if it may be time for a trim. He wondered how he’d ever been able to stand his
hair being so greasy.

Afterward, the day passed by in a blur. The teacher's passion for guiding and educating
students had died long before Severus graced the halls of the school. Severus, mentally an
adult, knew everything she could possibly teach him and spent the majority of his time in
class daydreaming and practing Occlumency.
Since the new term started, Severus’ spent his mornings at school. Once he’d walked back to
the house, he completed his homework in minutes and usually used the rest of the day to
improve his quality of life in various ways. He exercised his magic regularly during any
available free time, often to the point of depleting his core entirely. Extremely tired, he went
straight to bed in the evening. His sleep was dreamless, his mind tired as well.

A majority of the spells and charms he performed for practice were to continue improving his
appearance and that of the house. The house had been cleaned from top to bottom many times
over, excluding his parents bedroom. Severus had even used Scourgify on the exterior after it
was dark and none of the Muggle neighbors would see him. Though the difference wasn't as
largely noticeable on the outside of the house as it was inside, the Snape family's residence
was probably the cleanest and most well-kept house on Spinner's End. Severus hoped no one
found out the amount of effort and time he put into beautifying and cleaning spells, as it was
truly absurd and he would be remarkably embarrassed.

Regularly coming home to a clean home had subdued his father's temper. Tobias drank
considerably less when at the bar after work and came home mostly sober. Increasingly often,
Severus found the man staring at him. His expression would be displaying a strange emotion
before the man quickly masked it.

His mother, however, didn't show any reaction to the changes. He had always known that she
was wasting away, but to not even realize the differences in her own home? Her own son?
Her own husband? Severus wondered sometimes what truly happened to his mother to make
the witch lose herself and neglect her magic so completely.

Thinking about Eileen Snape's unhealthy and shameful condition always left Severus feeling
morose. He avoided crossing paths with her, which was easy as she stayed holed up in her
bedroom except to cook dinner. He strived to elude his father as well, which was a more
difficult task. Severus was at the park a majority of days when not in school. Otherwise, he
studied in his room or soaked in hot baths prepared with medicinal, pleasantly scented herbs
and wildflowers.

His Muggle classmates no longer bullied Severus for being poverty-stricken and unkempt.
Instead, they picked on him because he was the second smallest child in the class, which
made it easy for the larger boys to push and shove him around. The smallest student was a
blonde, freckle-faced girl. Severus was taller than her by less than a whole centimetre.
Severus was uncertain of the reason for this. In the previous timeline, Severus had been of
average height by this age, even if he remained strikingly skinny to the point of being
emaciated. However, it was just another unexplained difference in the timeline which he had
no control over.

While the bullying was not as bad as before, the young wizard hated all of his classmates. He
had to constantly remind himself of his morals to hold back from throwing hexes and curses
at the ignorant little Muggle children. Not, he reminded himself, that wizard children were
any better behaved or less cruel.

He sat apart from the other students during their lunch period with a paper lunch bag, eating a
few measly items that he had packed himself. On the playground, he was alone on the
swingset, the crumpled pages of books he had already read pinched between his deft fingers.
The boy would glare at anyone who dared to approach him.

They would pull his hair, the locks of which had grown past his shoulders down to his
scapulae and were as black as a raven's wings. Severus would find his pencils and markers
stolen, then discover the items in unusual places. After one of his favourite books was taken
he reported it to the teacher, but she didn't care. Although he accepted the chocolate bar she
offered him so he would go away, her shortage of action made him hate her as well.

The book turned up the next day, after much searching. It had been behind the cage of the
class pet: Harry, a guinea pig. The fact that in his last life there had not existed a class pet
gave Severus many headaches. However, he found amusement in the pest's name. He often
sneered at it when he walked by. To the jealousy of many girls in the class, Harry preferred
Severus over anyone else. When taken out of his cage, the guinea pig would squeak, squeal,
and scratch until the unlucky person who was holding him handed the pet over to Severus. To
his vexation, Severus couldn't truly dislike the animal. Grumbling under his breath, he would
gently stroke the guinea pig's soft fur until it quieted. Once calm, Harry would dart up to the
boy's shoulder and hide under his hair. At that point, Severus would place the animal back in
its brightly coloured cage.

Severus walked from the school building to his house on Spinner's End, a trip that took over
fifteen minutes. He entered through the front door. “Mother, I’m home.”

Severus carefully placed his bag on the floor as he toed off his shoes. Chilly air lingered
inside the house. Severus appreciated what little warmth his sweater provided and pulled it
further over his fingers.

"In the kitchen,” called Eileen.

When he walked into the kitchen, he saw Eileen stirring a pot of soup, which was likely
watered-down to save food and money. She let Severus stand on a stool and slice the stale,
hardened bread that would go with the soup. He enjoyed the task with a childish delight. It
seemed his mind and mentality was slowly catching up to his physical age and body, as there
was no way Severus would normally have fun doing such a simple, menial chore. However, it
didn’t go beyond his notice that Eileen kept giving him strange looks.

“Your hair is getting long,” she commented. “It looks nice.”

“I think I’ll need a haircut soon,” Severus told her. He steeled himself for her reply, knowing
that it cost money they couldn’t afford to get his hair cut by a barber. She would probably
offer to cut it herself, which would no doubt result in ragged and uneven hair.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said.

Severus stopped cutting the bread and glanced over, but Eileen’s eyes hadn’t looked up from
the soup pot. Her words seemed extremely out of character, since the first time around she’d
constantly trimmed his hair to a specific length to make it similar to her husband’s usual
haircut. Severus decided to try a different approach.

“The other boys at school make fun of me and pull on it.”

Eileen sighed. “A haircut in town will cost too much money, but I’ll think about it.”

Sensing that the conversation had come to a forceful end, Severus returned his focus to the
bread knife. The atmosphere in the kitchen, warm when he’d gotten home, felt as if it had
become icy. Afraid to crack the metaphorical ice, he sliced the end of the loaf and escaped to
the living room.

The television across from the sofa displayed black and white cartoons. Like many
households at the time, the Snape household didn’t have one of the new, pricier colour
televisions. Severus changed the channel, surfing past soap operas and comedies to a kid’s
show starring cloth hand puppet animals. Severus let his childish joy engulf him.

The front door swung open, hinges whining. “I’m back from work,” a gruff voice called out.

Unable to step himself, Severus ran to greet his father as the man took off his boots. His mind
didn't process any fear or caution as his arms latched around Tobias in a hug. The smells of
the factory where the man worked met his nose, clinging to the fabric of his coat.

Tobias Snape barely managed to breathe, wholly astounded at the unprecedented display of
affection. He was used to his son shying away from him, and he couldn’t think of the last
time he’d been greeted at the door. He looked down at the boy, the aching of his back and
arms from the factory labour seeming to fade away.

“W-welcome back,” Severus stammered. His impulsive bravery began to falter. Inside he
seethed and panicked. Merlin’s beard! What on earth am I doing?!

Eileen stepped out of the kitchen to observe the scene with wariness. She feared how her
husband would react. He startled her by lifting their son on his hip and carrying him to the
dining table, the traces of what could almost be called a smile visible on his lips.

Severus was inwardly in a state of shock, still waiting for powerful blows to rain down upon
him. As the blows failed to fall, Severus grew conflicted. He didn’t believe his father could
change, especially not to this degree. An abuser would never be a good, caring father. And
Severus knew, from going through his childhood memories of this timeline, that Tobias was
already an abuser.

Tobias glanced toward the kitchen, his eyes instantly meeting his wife’s. Eileen startled.
Against her expectations, Tobias’ eyes were clear, lacking the glaze of anger or alcohol she
had grown used to. However, as their gazes met, his eyes darkened once more and his mouth
turned downward. Eileen flinched away, her hands twisting the fabric of her apron as she
retreated back into the kitchen. Soon, the sounds of soup being ladled into bowls could be
heard in the next room.

Tobias sat down heavily at the head of the table and turned to Severus, who sat in the chair to
 his left. “How is school?”

Recovering from shock, Severus took a moment to answer. “It’s fine.”

“Just fine?”

“I already know everything,” he said truthfully.

Severus flinched as his father let out a sudden, guttural laugh and slapped the back of his
chair. “Of course, my boy is smart! I know you’ll be going places when you grow up.”

Thankfully, Eileen’s soup-laden entrance stopped him from having to answer. He considered
his father’s words as he grasped his spoon. His father certainly wasn’t referring to Hogwarts
when he said Severus would be going places, so he might have meant that Severus would be
more successful in life than Tobias himself, who would never be able to move up from his
blue-collar position at the factory. However, this assumption strongly implied that Severus
would have a job in the Muggle world.

Perhaps his father’s words and change of attitude could be attributed to the lack of accidental
magic. The first time around, Severus performed acts of accidental magic as regularly as any
other magical child. However, this time, Severus had the control over his magic that his
future knowledge and maturity provided. Without accidental magic, there were no signs for
Tobias to tell that his son wasn’t a Muggle like himself.

Lost in his thoughts, Severus was surprised by the clanging of his spoon against the bottom
of his bowl. It was now empty of soup. He didn’t even remember eating it. Absent-mindedly,
he allowed habit to dictate his movements and stood up from the table. After washing his
bowl, spoon, and cup in the sink, he set them on a towel to dry and wandered out of the room.

Chapter End Notes

If you see any grammar or spelling mistakes please let me know.

I've seen it mentioned in the comments, so I thought I should address it here:
Severus is becoming more childlike and immature the longer he is in the past as his
younger self. This is purposeful not only because a child's brain wouldn't naturally be
able to handle an adult's brain, but also for the sake of the relationships. In the tags, I
show that the future pairings involve Severus and some of the Marauders. The
Marauders will be their actual ages, starting Hogwarts at age 11 and aging up regularly. I
plan for Severus to de-age mentally until he is simply a smart, mature child by the time
he leaves for Hogwarts. This allows for the pairings to take place without the issue of a
massive age difference (which I am not comfortable writing) as all the characters will
mentally be the age they are supposed to, just with Severus having future knowledge,
skills, and the related wisdom.
 Errands With Eileen
Chapter Summary

Severus goes on a trip into town

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

On a normal Saturday morning, Severus was rudely awoken at an abnormal time by his
mother. Considering he never slept past seven-thirty and Eileen never got out of bed before
eleven, he at first thought he’d dreamt it. He dropped this assumption quickly when someone
knocked on his bedroom door.

“Severus,” Eileen called. “I'm opening your door.”

The door creaked open, but just a little, and she didn't enter the room. Instead, Eileen stood
awkwardly on the threshold, just looking at him, as if struggling to remember how to interact
with the son she often pretended didn’t exist.

“Mother?” Severus questioned. “Do you need something?”

“No, nothing…” Eileen spoke with a quiet voice, sounding nervous. “I was just wondering if
you would like to come with me into town. I need to purchase some winter clothes and a pair
of new boots for your father.”

Severus wondered why she’d invite him along, before bitterly thinking that she just wanted
someone to help carry the shopping bags, since they only owned the one car that Tobias
drove to work. Tobias only had Sundays off from work, though on Saturdays he worked a
shorter work shift, getting home around three o’clock. Why Eileen couldn’t just wait for
Tobias to get back from work and then use the car, he didn’t know.

He told her he’d like to go, and she’d disappeared from the doorway in the blink of an eye.
He quickly dressed in worn jeans and an oversized knit sweater that couldn’t decide if it
wanted to be green, blue, or grey. After pulling on socks, he looked out the window to see the
sun appearing across the horizon. Just how early in the morning was it? The stores probably
weren’t even open yet! Huffing angrily at the loss of valuable sleep, he made his way
downstairs after a short detour to the bathroom.

The clanging of pans came from the kitchen, where Eileen was attempting to make…
pancakes possibly? Severus stared in confusion, eyebrows furrowing at the unprecedented
sight, and came to the conclusion that it would be best to wait elsewhere in the house. He
stepped outside to water the flowerbeds with a hose, though they only currently held weeds
and some struggling peonies. As a potioneer, however, he knew the weeds had more value
than a Muggle would assume. The flowerbed once held a small, dwarf variety of snapdragon,
but he’d transfigured a stone into a pot and now the flowers sat on his window sill. He
regularly watered it and sent magic into the soil to be absorbed by the roots. Despite
previously being on the brink of death, the plant now had four healthy stalks—he’d had to cut
off a few browned, shrivelled ones—and was already blooming in eye-catching peach and
ivory tones.

When he’d gone back inside and sat down at the table, Eileen placed a plate in front of him
and announced they’d be leaving in twenty minutes. A circular chunk of charcoal rested
innocently in the centre of the plate, oozing overly sweet maple-flavoured syrup. Severus
poked it with his fork, causing it to crumble into pieces which he vanished with a whispered
spell when Eileen went to grab cups from the kitchen. He abandoned the plate in the sink,
next to a pan in bad need of washing, and hurried upstairs before his mother could ask any
questions.

He closed the bedroom door behind him, heading over to his pillow. Reaching into the
pillowcase, Severus pulled out a small wad of Muggle money. He didn’t know how soon he’d
have another chance to go into town, so he thought it best to bring it all with him. Of course,
he hid his actual stash of money underneath the floorboards, where Eileen wouldn’t happen
upon it if she ever remembered to do laundry and wash the bedsheets. Once he’d received his
acceptance letter and went to Diagon Alley he could exchange it at Gringotts for Sickles,
Galleons, and Knuts.

Severus spent the next fifteen minutes reading before Eileen called him downstairs. He pulled
his canvas messenger bag over his head so it hung by his hip and then slipped on his shoes.
Eileen grabbed her purse, a tattered, ugly thing, and they finally departed from the house.

They walked in tense silence, neither sure how to speak to the other and Severus unwilling to
make small talk. He focused on writing a mental list of things he wanted to buy, which
included pens, notebooks, gardening gloves, and ties for his hair.

Unlike any responsible parent with a child who’d not yet even turned ten, Eileen Snape left
her son outside the first store she went into, telling him to stay out of trouble and be back in
two hours. Quite happy with this arrangement, Severus wasted no time hunting down the
items he needed. He found two sturdy notebooks with fake leather covers at a bookstore.
Looking longingly at all the books he couldn’t yet afford, he quickly left the establishment
and crossed the street. He bought gloves, hair ties, and some of the less feminine hair
accessories available at the family-owned shop on the street corner that sold miscellaneous
items.

Before his second hour of freedom was up, he wandered into a dusty, badly lit second-hand
store. No one stood at the register, so he glanced curiously into the back room of the store,
which had only a curtain for privacy. However, he didn’t see anyone in that room either, so
after browsing the small carvings and jewellery at the counter, he walked deeper into the dark
building. Severus picked up a book from a shelf, sending up a cloud of dust that prompted
him to sneeze. He quickly returned the book to its spot and escaped from the cloud of
disturbed particles. On one of the lower shelves he discovered a small wooden box
containing five silver, black, and gold fountain pens that appeared to be in perfect condition.
Amazingly, the price on the box was barely that of a single fountain pen, let alone five. He
wondered if they were actually broken, and considered leaving them on the shelf, but decided
to ask whoever owned the store first.

An elderly man stood hunched over the counter when Severus walked up to the register.
Setting the wooden box on the counter, Severus politely asked about the price. Despite the
man’s certainty that the pens couldn’t be properly cleaned of the dried up ink and would
therefore never write smoothly, Severus happily purchased them.

When he moved to leave, the man stopped him, pulling a long, thin box from underneath the
counter. He placed it next to the register, where Severus caught sight of the detailed tree
branches carved into the wood grain. The shop owner offered it to him for a shilling, telling
Severus about a strangely-dressed customer who’d recently abandoned it in the store and then
left without buying anything. The man claimed there wasn’t room on the shelves for it yet, so
he’d like to get it off his hands. The story and reasoning were unquestionably suspicious, yet
childish curiosity wouldn’t allow Severus to refuse the offer.

He wished the man a good day, putting the box into his messenger bag—which felt and
looked no different despite the things inside it—and exited the store. The fresh air outside,
although tainted with pollution from the nearby factories, felt pleasant after the stale feeling
inside the shop. His stomach chose that moment to growl loudly with hunger, empty since the
boy had skipped breakfast rather than die from his mother’s inedible cooking.

Luckily, the bakery down the street had just opened, and Severus stood in line with all the
harried office workers and morning people who’d been pulled in by the tantalising aroma of
freshly ground coffee beans. Unable to find an empty table to enjoy his pastry, Severus
reluctantly sat down on a bench outside. The chilly weather left goosebumps on his arms
despite the protection of the sweater. A short gust of wind sent red-yellow leaves twirling in
the air. A woman's hat flew off her head, and Severus watched her chase after it, catching it
several metres away. Humming, he bit into the pastry. Warm apple filling and light, fluffy
dough holding his attention, he idly observed the busy people walking past him.

Bright red hair caught his eye. Glancing over, he saw two young girls walking down the
street with their mother. Quickly looking away, he told himself he didn’t know them. A
nauseatingly familiar voice, one he used to long to hear, complained that her shoes hurt her
feet. A second, more nasally voice made a taunting remark. Severus pretended to be occupied
with something in his bag, stiffening as they passed the bench without a second glance.

Minutes after he’d eaten the last bite of his pastry, Eileen rushed over. She pulled him off the
bench and over to the crosswalk. “I managed to get you in at the barber for a discount. You’ll
be getting a trim.”

Given no time to answer, Severus quietly allowed his mother to drag him into the small
barbershop across the street. The barber, a frowning man with greying hair, sat him down in a
chair and got to work. Severus watched as scissor blades flashed and pieces of hair flew into
the air. Finally, it came to a stop.
 With a final run of a comb through Severus’ neatly trimmed hair, the barber turned to Eileen.
“There, an inch off the bottom.”

“Yes, yes. It’s perfect,” Eileen muttered, digging through her purse for her wallet.

Severus leaned toward the mirror, turning his head this way and that. His hair swished lightly
around his shoulders. The barber noticed his dawdling and shooed him off the chair. “My
next client is here; off you go.”

“Let’s go home, Severus,” Eileen said.

She waited by the door and took his hand when he reached her. The bell above the door of the
shop jangled as they left. Severus shivered from the sudden cold of the outside air. Right
hand still imprisoned by Eileen’s, he reached up with his left to feel the straight, shortened
ends of his hair. Black locks interlaced with his pale, knobby fingers, he allowed a tiny smile
to grace his lips.

Chapter End Notes

I don't live in Britain and am not positive what currency they used in the 1960s and
1970s. I went with shillings, but if that is not the correct currency please let me know.
 A Displeasing Dinner Experience
Chapter Summary

Tobias has news

Chapter Notes

It can be a novel thing, as a child, to see that your parents also have personal lives and
friends/acquaintances...
I don't like how the dialogue turned out in this chapter, but oh well.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

As the long hand on the clock made its way steadily toward the four and the short hand
stubbornly lingered on the three, a car pulled into the driveway. The heavy thud of boots gave
little warning before Tobias burst through the front door, shouting for Eileen. Severus, who’d
been practising Occluding his mind on the couch, lost his concentration and returned to the
waking world with a jolt. He peered over the back of the couch to see the cause of the sudden
ruckus. Against Severus’ expectations, his father was smiling.

His mother soon entered the room, almost tripping in her haste. “What is it? What’s the
matter?”

Tobias carelessly left his boots by the coat rack, an envelope grasped tightly in one hand. He
pulled a cheque out of the envelope and slammed it on the kitchen table. “I got a raise! My
boss came to talk to me today. He had this envelope in his hand, and before he gave it to me
he said, ‘Snape, you're getting promoted’ and then he invited us over for dinner.”

Eileen gasped, “a promotion! And your first pay cheque already?”

Tobias nodded, sinking into the chair. “I got a ten percent raise.”

Considering that Tobias had worked as an underpaid factory worker at the same
manufacturing company for over a decade, both a pay raise and a promotion were long
overdue. Severus hoped the man wouldn’t waste the money on booze. He tuned back into the
conversation as his mother asked about the dinner, and watched as Eileen practically ran up
the stairs to get ready, clearly not wanting to leave a bad impression on her husband’s boss’s
family.
When Severus went upstairs, he noticed she’d locked herself in the bathroom. He rolled his
eyes—it had become a bad habit—and grabbed a book from his room before returning to his
favourite spot on the couch. Tobias had moved to the recliner to watch the news. Severus
glanced at the man nervously from time to time, but Tobias fell asleep after a half hour. A
half hour after that, Eileen finally vacated the bathroom only to lock herself in her bedroom.
Severus went into the bathroom to wash his face and run a brush through his hair. Fortunately
he’d bathed the night before, since he doubted Eileen had left enough hot water for more than
a rushed shower. Though, if necessary, he could always heat the water with magic.

He left the sweater on, only bothering to change into nicer jeans. Bored, he practised his
wandless magic by turning used sheets of paper into origami. His first attempts were
abysmal, the paper simply twitching or crumpling up into a ball. His brain couldn’t focus on
the task, leaving his magic to flail about with unclear intent behind it. Although pleased with
his father’s promotion—which didn’t happen the first time around—he worried that the
dinner would not go well. What place did the Snape family, impoverished and unknown as
they were, have sitting across a table from an upper-middle class family with better jobs and
expensive new clothes?

Severus didn’t have a long time to worry over it, however, as at that moment the door swung
open to reveal his parents. His father, for once, was nicely dressed and recently showered,
and his mother had on a simple dress and skillfully applied makeup. Severus couldn’t recall
ever seeing Eileen with makeup on before.

They got into the car and drove across Cokeworth, to where the houses were large and well-
kept with spacious, decorated lawns surrounded by white picket fences. The car pulled into
the driveway of a house disorientingly similar to every other house on the street, all with
neutral paint colours and identical mailboxes. The neighbourhood appeared quite the opposite
of Spinner's End. Standing on the front steps while his father knocked, Severus felt
uncomfortable, hounded with a lingering sense that he didn’t belong.

The wife of Tobias’ boss invited them in warmly, telling them to just call her Pamela. She led
them to the dining room, where her husband already sat at the head of the table. He stood up
as they entered the room.

“Tobias!” He exclaimed joyfully, “Tobias, how are you? It’s so wonderful to finally meet
your family.”

He turned to Eileen. “And you must be Eileen. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Howard.”

She nodded and offered him a polite smile. “The pleasure’s all ours. You have a lovely
home.”

“Feel free to have a look around,” Pamela offered. “The main dish is still in the oven, so I’ll
get us some drinks.”

Howard looked down at Severus, his agreeable expression shifting to practised surprise.
“Who is this?”
Tobias cleared his throat, answering in his gruff voice, “this is my son, Severus.”

Giving Howard a short glance, Severus offered a quiet greeting. The man continued to talk
about him like he wasn’t there. “I also have a son, Russell. I’m sure the two will get along
splendidly once he comes downstairs.”

Rolling his eyes when the man wasn’t looking, Severus decided to accept the invitation to
explore the house, even if the offer wasn’t technically meant for him. The dining room
connected to a sitting room, which was so neat and tidy Severus questioned if anyone ever
actually used it. A short hallway led to a laundry room across from a bathroom. Returning to
the sitting room, he considered going up the winding staircase to the second floor, but instead
went down a longer hallway to some guest bedrooms and what he considered to be a
pathetically small library.

Finding nothing of interest, he made his way back to the dining room, where everyone except
Howard’s son were sitting in their seats. Severus pulled out the chair beside Eileen. She
asked where he’d been, and he lied to her that he’d gone to the bathroom. Several minutes of
dull, ignored conversation later, Pamela started bringing food out to the table. Although
nothing comparable to a feast at Hogwarts, there were several courses with a wide variety of
dishes.

Howard grew visibly impatient at the absence of his tardy son. “Feel free to start eating,” he
said, “I’m sure he’ll be down in a minute. The boy must’ve gotten sidetracked by
something.”

Pamela excused herself from the table, “I’ll fetch him. Go ahead and eat.”

Helping himself, Severus put a small serving of each dish on his plate. By the time he went
for a second serving of fish, Pamela reappeared with a small, rat-faced boy who she’d clearly
been scolding. She pushed him toward the table with a hand on his back. “Russell, say hello
to our guests. You’ve been very rude.”

He mumbled something before sitting down. Pamela shot him a displeased look and opened
her mouth to scold him some more. Eileen quickly distracted her. “The food is delicious. I
especially like the chicken.”

Severus knew the chicken was dry and overcooked, as tasteless as eating the plate, but he
remained silent. Pamela smiled, accentuating the pinkish-red lipstick on her lips and the
wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Ah, yes. I’ve been marinating it in spices since noon. I
found the recipe in an old cookbook and just had to try it.”

Howard started a work-related conversation with Tobias, discussing a new schedule with
different hours. The conversation ended up being very one-sided, with Tobias, being a man of
few words, mostly nodding or grunting in answer. However, Howard appeared to love
hearing his own voice, so he continued talking cheerfully.

Severus glanced over at the sulking child sitting across from him. Russell looked up and
glared, sticking out his tongue. What a brat, he thought, he’s worse than Potter’s offspring
 and the Weasley combined.

His mood lightened, remembering the failing grade he’d written on Weasley’s homework
assignment just hours before being sent back in time.

Chapter End Notes

I imagine Snape's time-travel potion accident taking place sometime in book 5, Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix so the Battle of Hogwarts never happened,
Voldemort was still alive, and Severus had been teaching and spying like usual.
Please let me know if you see any spelling or grammar errors. I don't have a Beta and
Grammarly is useless without paying now, so its inevitable that there will be some.
Next up: The Ancient and Noble House of Prince makes an appearance!
(Ancient and Noble House? Noble and Ancient? Is that in the right order? I don't
understand these things...)
 The Not-So-Pied Piper
Chapter Summary

The Prince family ancestral magic is revealed, and Severus makes a friend :)

Chapter Notes

The Prince family makes an appearance (though not how some of you in the comments
seem to expect)
Please read the end notes!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Severus stared in masked horror at his mother. “What?”

“I said you should make invitations,” Eileen said patiently. She opened and closed a drawer,
poured her purse out on the table, and then started moving around the pillows on the couch

“Oh where is it?” She muttered unhappily. “Severus, have you seen my house key?”

Severus shook his head. “Invitations for who?”

“Your friends of course. It would be so nice to invite your friends over to your birthday
party.”

He choked, exclaiming, “since when did you plan a party?”

Eileen glanced over at him and frowned. “Why wouldn’t you have a party?”

“It’s always been just us on my birthday,” Severus said, not even bothering to hide the fact
that he thought she was crazy. “This year shouldn’t be any different.”

“You don’t want to have your friends over?”

Severus scowled, unaware that the expression was more of a cute pout than anything
intimidating. “I don’t have friends.”

His mother clearly didn’t know how to respond to that. “Well, then...I guess we’ll just do
what we usually do for your birthday. There are still nine days for you to change your mind.”
With a triumphant sound she pulled the key out from beneath the couch. “I don’t know how it
got down here.”

She rushed over to the door, pulling on a coat and shoving a pair of gloves in her pocket.
“Remember, Severus, don’t open the door for strangers and don’t leave the house.”

Severus stopped writing in his notebook and looked up at her curiously. “Where are you
going?”

“Grocery shopping. I want to try some of the recipes Pamela gave me.” She left and locked
the door behind her.

Severus finished writing down the instructions and ingredients for a Blood-Replenishing
Potion from memory. Reading it twice, he ran a hand through his hair and crossed out one of
the ingredients. He wondered how adding goosegrass would affect it, and if it would be better
to stir in the other direction. He began to write a note in the margin, but the pen ran out of ink
partway through a word. Severus stood up to throw the pen away, and suddenly remembered
the box of fountain pens he bought from the suspicious second-hand store owner. Everything
from his shopping trip was still in the bag, since he’d gone to dinner and forgotten about it.

He closed his notebook and tucked it under his arm to head upstairs. He borrowed his
mother’s wand from its spot at the back of the closet and brought it to his room. The
messenger bag sat in the corner by the dresser. He carefully pulled out its contents, spreading
everything in a circle around him on the floor. After a moment of consideration, he put the
gardening gloves back in the bag and stacked the notebooks on his dresser along with the
items for his hair.

The five fountain pens were exactly how he’d left them, displayed on the satin interior of the
box. He cast a Scourgify charm to clean out the dried ink and then a weak Reparo just in case
the pens were broken after all. He’d have to buy or make some ink in order to refill them, but
he’d do that another day.

Closing the box and locking it with the metal clasp on the front, he left it on his bedside table.
He sat down on the bed with the second box. The size and shape of it reminded him of the
boxes of wands at Ollivanders, but those weren’t made of wood. Severus recalled the seller’s
story about the person who gave him the box, who Severus theorised might have been a
witch or wizard. A Specialis Revelio showed nothing odd about the box itself, but he shot off
a couple other detection charms that told him the object inside the box was absolutely
drenched in magic. He relaxed slightly as a detection charm for Dark magic gave negative
results.

He turned the box over, holding it closer to his eyes to get a better look. Extremely lifelike
animals hid between the branches and trunks of the trees carved on the box. At the bottom of
the centre tree, hidden among its roots, was the stylized letter ‘P.’

Severus froze, eyes caught on that small detail. Bursting into motion, he reached over to pry
up the loose floorboard and reveal the stack of books underneath. Grabbing the book off the
top, Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy, Severus rapidly flipped through its pages
until he reached the family names starting with the 16th letter of the alphabet.

“Parkinson, Peverall, Potter, Prewett,” Severus murmured, eyes flitting back and forth across
the pages. “Prince.”

He held the box next to the page. The stylized ‘P’ on the box matched the ‘P’ on the Prince
Family Coat of Arms. The Coat of Arms, like the trees on the box, was surrounded by
various animals. Severus set the box down with care and returned his focus to the book. He
traced the Coat of Arms with his finger before moving on to the short passage underneath.

The Noble and Ancient House of Prince (Originally Latin Princeps) originated in Europe
around the time of the Roman Empire and emigrated to Breton after the establishment of its
magical population.

The Prince line was once widely known and recognized for their wealth, political power, and
ancestral magic. The Prince magic of animalia attractio, or animal attraction, has weakened
over time. At the height of its power, the Prince's ancestral magic allowed a wizard to
summon animals at will. The most notable of the Prince line, the Second Head of Household,
is said to have summoned a dragon to protect the main Prince estate from invading Muggle
armies before the invention of widespread wards and the Muggle-Repelling Charm.

The House took on a strict policy of isolationism during the 1920s when the Dark Wizard
Grindelwald rose to power. The Prince name was excluded from the Sacred 28 in the 1930s
despite pure blood due to the discontinuation of the male line by a sterility curse. The Prince
patriarch had only daughters prior, and the patrilineal title failed to be passed on. It is widely
believed that the Noble and Ancient House of Prince will end with the passing of the current
generation.

It took several minutes for Severus to process this new information. Was he the last male of
the Prince line? Did he have the potential to access and use the Prince ancestral magic?
Bloody hell! He didn’t recognize any of this historical information! The first time around
he’d never been able to discover the truth of the Prince's ancestral magic. Additionally, in his
first timeline, the Prince family was known to have been wiped out by a variant strain of
Dragon Pox just two years after Voldemort’s first defeat in 1981. With their death, a majority
of the knowledge of the House and its history as well as the entire estate was lost.

Severus remembered he’d felt a bitter kind of victory when he’d heard the news of his
estranged family’s deaths. Multiple times throughout Severus’ life, the House of Prince had
refused to recognize him as a descendent of the Prince line. However, ironically, Severus was
probably the only Potions Master in Britain who could have developed a potion to cure their
specific strain of Dragon Pox before it took their lives.

Mood plummeting, Severus closed the book and returned it to its hiding spot beneath the old
wooden floorboards. Leaning back with a large exhale, his hand brushed against the box. In
his pursuit of knowledge, the box itself had almost slipped his mind. He lifted it up with two
hands, allowing the pale light from the window to reflect across its burnished wood and
outline the animals and the letter engraved upon it. This box and its contents had once
belonged to a member of the Noble and Ancient House of Prince. In fact, the “strangely-
dressed customer” who had given the box to the second-hand store’s owner was very likely a
Prince.

But why? Why would they give it away? Surely a family artefact of a pureblood line would
belong in a vault if not in use, not carelessly given away? Severus had no answers, only more
questions. For now, all he could do was look inside the box.

Unlatching the lid, he opened it slowly to find the last thing he’d expected. A small flute sat
innocently inside the box’s silk lining, its glossy wooden surface covered in intricate designs
of various magical beasts, the images not painted or carved but burned on. A cloud of magic
emanated from the instrument, though it felt more neutral than Dark or Light magic.

He debated whether or not to touch it. After casting several spells on it with no results,
Severus tentatively grasped it and held it up. The sunlight streaming in through the window
gave the wood a warm sheen. He stared at it, waiting for something, anything, to happen. He
brought it up to his mouth, resting the wood against his lower lip, and blew into the opening.
However, he’d never played a flute before, and the first several attempts made no sound
whatsoever.

Right when he’d about given up, the flute produced a wobbly note. Severus winced, feeling
as if he’d been pinched. His magical core twinged. Severus took a moment to close his eyes
and internally view his core, seeing a tiny, opaque thread of magic being pulled from his core
to an outside object. It reminded him startlingly of how magic was drawn out by a wand.
Similar to the wand, the flute must be some sort of conduit. Perhaps, also like a wand, it was
meant to condense and bolster the user’s magic whilst channelling it. However, by looking at
the state of his magical core, Severus was unable to tell how the flute was using the magic it
drew out, only that it was using it.

Thus, he made the probably-not-so-wise decision to blow into the mouthpiece again.

After an hour, he could create a clear, steady sound with the flute and identify different
pitches, though he had no knowledge of the names of the notes. Physically and magically
exhausted, he returned the artefact to its case and put it in the middle drawer of the dresser,
piling several shirts on top of it. He quickly returned Eileen’s wand, avoiding the worse-case
scenario of her finding it missing and suspecting his involvement. If Severus caught her
attention and she discovered what he’d been doing since his return in the past, he didn’t doubt
that she’d try to bind his magic again.

Finding his throat parched and his mouth as dry as a desert, Severus tiredly shuffled
downstairs for a cup of water. He turned on the kitchen faucet, and the pipes rattled
worryingly before water finally poured out. Clicking his tongue, he wandered over to the
window to watch for either Eileen or his father’s car.

He froze in shock. His shaking hands set the glass cup on the windowsill with a clink and he
ran over to the door. Flinging it open, he found his eyes had not deceived him. The branches
of the single dying tree by the driveway groaned with the weight of countless birds. A stray
cat rubbed against his leg with a purr as his mind struggled to process the menagerie of dogs,
 birds, cats, kneazles, and other animals that surrounded the house.

Head spinning, he lowered himself onto the front steps, feeling as if he’d faint any second. A
dog licked his cheek, and Severus blinked. Groaning loudly, he hid his face in his hands.
“What am I supposed to do about this?”

Giving in, he scratched the dog behind its ears and watched its tail swish across the sidewalk.
He sat on the steps for many passing minutes. Thankfully, the animals all disappeared over
the next hour, first the small rodents and reptiles, then the birds, then the cats and dogs, and
lastly, the kneazles.

An hour later, Tobias’ car pulled into the driveway with Eileen in the passenger seat and
groceries in the trunk. Having seen her leaving the store, he’d picked her up on his way home
from work. Severus was still sitting on the front porch distracted by the last animal, a half-
kneazle whose coat of long, soft fur had the colouring of a ragdoll cat. The only signs of her
kneazle heritage were the tufts of fur atop her ears, the mane of thicker fur around her neck,
and the undisguised intelligence in her amber eyes. He looked up when he heard his name,
unprepared to see his parents, and quickly glanced around the yard to make sure all the other
animals had truly left.

“Severus, what’ve you got there?” His mother asked with an amused smile. Her expression
quickly became strained when she covertly glanced at Tobias and saw his unchanging face.

Severus couldn’t help the way he clutched the feline closer to him. There was no way he’d be
able to keep her, no matter how much they’d bonded in the last hour. Despondently he
replied, “nothing.”

They walked past him up the steps. Unexpectedly, after Eileen had gone inside the house,
Tobias stopped in front of the door and turned to him. “You two best not stay out too long.”

Severus looked up at the man with wide, watery eyes. “R-really?”

Although obviously not particularly happy about it, Tobias nodded. His son peered up at him
from behind the giant of a cat, a purely joyful smile on his lips, and Tobias couldn’t make
himself regret the decision.

Chapter End Notes

Please Read!
There will NOT be an update next Saturday! I will be recovering from surgery, so I will
not be posting a new chapter until the Saturday after next.
Also, if you have any good wizard-y names for Severus's new kneazle friend feel free to
post them in the comments, your suggestions will be taken under consideration :)
 Sick and Stormy Days
Chapter Summary

Kneazle name reveal! Also I swear this isn't a sic-fic but it was just so fun to write...

Chapter Notes

I still feel sick and this chapter reflects it, but cute cat shenanigans and family fluff so...

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Lightning flicked outside the window, thunder chasing after it. Severus sighed heavily,
weighed down by the twenty pounds of cat currently crushing his ribcage. He could feel
Valeriana’s purring through the blanket, though not her claws as she kneaded it.

The rain started two days ago, and it hadn’t let up since. Severus currently had no access to
his mother’s wand, so he’d been struggling to avoid boredom. Yesterday, he’d cleaned his
room, brushed Valeriana, practised wandless magic, and did yoga. Today, he’d spent two
hours meditating to avoid social interaction with his family.

Yoga and meditation were new experiences for him. Two weeks ago he’d met a strange
Muggle lady at the park, who’d reminded him quite a bit of the Lovegoods. He’d seen her
there before, usually sitting or stretching on a mat, and had eventually inquired about what
she’d been doing. She hadn’t found it strange for a young boy to be at the park without a
parent, and had been plenty happy to explain the fundamentals of meditation, yoga, and
finding “internal peace and balance.” He’d later tried it himself and discovered its value in
speeding up magical development and strengthening his Occlumency.

However, he’d been unable to find internal peace or balance with the thickening hostility
clogging up the house. The mill was temporarily closed for maintenance and new machinery
installation. With all three people stuck in the house together the tension between his parents
was at an all-time high. Severus hadn’t left his room all morning, unsure of what state he’d
find the rest of the house in, but he knew he’d have to eat and feed Valeriana eventually.

“Come on,” he murmured, lifting her off his chest and propping her front paws over his
shoulder to carry her easier.

On silent feet he descended the steps, the rumble of his father’s snoring almost as loud as the
thunder outside. A sudden gust of wind rattled the window panes, which gave a gloomy view
of Spinner’s End with a dark grey sky and pouring rain. The air inside the house felt
unpleasantly humid, so he’d kept his hair out of his face with a silvery headband covered
with pearlescent glued-on buttons. It had been in a sales basket at the supermarket, and Eileen
had easily caved to buy it to make up for his miniscule number of birthday presents. He set
Valeriana down on the couch as he made his way to the kitchen.

Mentally criticising the contents of the refrigerator, he settled for a bowl of corn flakes.
Depressingly, his ten-year-old body still struggled to lift a half-gallon carton of milk. In order
to not splash any on his pyjamas, he had to pour the milk slowly while leaning the carton
against the rim of the bowl for leverage. He almost tripped over Valeriana when carrying the
bowl to the table.

“I know, I know,” he assured her while shushing her meows. “Yes, I’m aware that you're
hungry.”

He set a small metal bowl on the floor and poured the last of the bag of cat food in. He
frowned, crinkling the empty bag and looking out at the storm. “I’ll have to walk to town to
buy more before dinner.”

She twined through his legs, rubbing fur onto the fabric of his pants. He bent down to stroke
a hand down her back before returning to his own breakfast. The spoon clinked dully against
the bottom of the bowl, corn flakes sinking as they inevitably grew soggy. Between each bite
he stirred the milk and reminisced of stirring potions. The loud grunt of his father waking
pulled him from his nostalgia.

He watched the man stumble like an Inferious through the house, cursing when he stubbed a
toe on the leg of a chair. Well, this is certainly strange, Severus thought. Is he drunk? Or…?
The answer to his still developing questions came in the form of a sneeze. A second sneeze
followed the first, then another sneeze, then Tobias leaned against the wall as if close to
tipping over. Worried, Severus stood up. He currently liked this Tobias better than the
original, and it wouldn’t do for the man to fall ill.

“Father, are you alright?” Not really expecting an answer, Severus grabbed the stool from the
kitchen and stood on his toes so he could reach his father’s forehead. As he’d assumed, the
man’s temperature was much higher than the healthy average of thirty-seven degrees Celsius.
“You’ve got a fever.”

Tobias wondered why the room was spinning. Since when did Severus have a twin? He
wondered, squinting his eyes to see if inanimate objects would stop moving. They weren’t
supposed to move, he didn’t think. He didn’t struggle when Severus pulled him toward the
sitting room, following his son’s instructions to rest on the couch.

Severus covered Tobias with a blanket, which the man immediately pushed onto the floor
with complaints that it was too hot. Severus covered him with the blanket again, telling him
sternly to stay still. He put Valeriana on top of him to weigh down the blanket and work as a
living heater, then went upstairs to find Eileen.

“Mother. Mother, are you awake?”

He knocked on the door until it opened. Eileen slumped over in the doorway, greasy hair
framing her face. Her pasty complexion and the dark circles under her eyes could make a
vampire self-conscious. The room behind her was dark and unclean, the smell of potent
alcohol detectable from the hallway.

“What?” She asked furiously.

“Father is sick,” he said, waiting to see her reaction.

“So what? I’m sure he’s fine.” She turned away and shut the door, yelling for him to go away.

He huffed, deeply disappointed with her but also with himself for hoping she’d show some
human decency.

“Fine,” he stated angrily, “I’ll deal with it myself. It’s not like I’m a child or anything.”

He went to his room to pull out his collection of plants, got washcloths from the bathroom
cupboard, and grabbed a whole stack of extra blankets from the hallway closet. Once in the
kitchen, he set everything on the counter and filled a pot with water in order to heat it on the
stove. A bowl was also filled with water, this time cold to soak the washcloths in. A cold
compress should help with Tobias’ fever and any pain in his head. Leaving the water to boil,
Severus carried the bowl and the blankets to the sitting room.

He noticed Tobias did not fit well on the couch, tall and broad-shouldered as he was.
Arranging the blankets on the carpet in front of the couch, he convinced the man to lay on the
floor instead. With Tobias’ head propped up on a pillow and a wet washcloth on his forehead,
Severus decided the man would be fine until he could heal him.

When the water in the pot boiled, Severus carefully poured a small portion of it into a mug to
make tea. He chose chamomile tea to help his father fall asleep and added honey to soothe his
throat. He added a variety of dried plants, including dried mullein, to the remaining water in
the pot to make a weak Muggle version of a Cough Potion. Increasing the heat and stirring it,
he tried to think of healing charms that might work in this situation, but his repertoire of
medical spells only really covered broken bones and open wounds.

The potion boiled down to a few mouthfuls of usable product, but considering his limited
ingredients and subpar available tools that was more than he could have hoped for. He
strained it into a small cup, then carried both the cup and the mug of tea to where Tobias was
attempting to sit up. Knowing the potion would taste disgusting, he’d give him the tea after to
wash it down.

Severus grew increasingly annoyed as Tobias kept pushing away the cup. He tried to sound
authoritative, but not too out of character for a young child. “Father, you have to take your
medicine to get better.”

After a competitive stare-off between the two Snapes, Tobias finally drank the potion, cursing
at the taste. Severus quickly handed over the tea, which the man sniffed distrustingly before
 gulping it all down in a few sips. After Severus soaked the cold compress in cold water again,
his father fell asleep. Valeriana sprawled out on the carpet next to him, grooming her paws
elegantly.

Severus looked at the nearest clock, realizing he’d already wasted most of the morning. The
storm still raged outside. He’d need to buy cat food, but with Tobias unconscious and Eileen
drunk there was no one to drive the car. A sickening feeling sat heavy in his stomach at the
thought of walking all the way to town in the wind and rain.

He dressed in his warmest clothes, layering his shirts before putting his only waterproof
jacket on overtop. He layered his socks until his feet barely fit in his rain boots. In a moment
of bitter resentment, Severus allowed himself to be petty and empty Eileen’s wallet. He
shoved the money in his coat pocket, which zipped up so the money wouldn’t fall out or get
wet. With his bag, a hat, a scarf, gloves, and armed with an umbrella, he was ready to go.

Steeling himself, he opened the door and stepped outside before he could change his mind. A
forceful gust of wind almost knocked him over, his hands barely gripping the handle of the
umbrella before it blew away. Slowly and steadily—at the pace of a turtle—he travelled
down the street. By the time Severus reached one of the few open stores, it felt like he’d lost
a year of his life just on the way there. The trip back, with him already struggling against
exhaustion, would no doubt be worse.

Straightening his shoulders and keeping his head held high, he shook out the umbrella,
grabbed a cart, and marched to the back of the store where pet supplies were kept. He found
the usual brand Eileen bought and then walked past it to the high-quality cat food marked at
twice the price. If she could splurge on alcoholic drinks, then he could splurge to spoil his cat.
Picking out a bag of dry food and multiple flavours of wet food, he added up the cost in his
head and decided to get Valeriana a collar. She would need one when she accompanied him to
Hogwarts, after all. Buying the collar, pastel green faux leather with a silver bell, along with a
fish-shaped silver name tag he’d later engrave using magic, used up the last of the money.

One less thing to carry, he thought sarcastically.

The overworked teenage girl at the checkout counter gave him strange looks while ringing up
his items. Her eyes widened to the size of a House-elf’s as the large bag of dry food
disappeared into his bag without a trace. Five minutes later, he left the store. The temperature
had dropped several degrees, and the long walk back to Spinner’s End was tenfold worse.

By the time he reached the house, everything exactly how he’d left it, Severus had decided to
reteach himself Apparition.

Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to everyone who suggested cat/familiar names! I loved all of them, but
unfortunately Severus only has one cat. So, special thanks to colored0rain for their
suggestion of Valerian (a pink or white flowering plant native to Europe and Asia, also a
potion ingrediant). It led to the name Valeriana, which is the genus of flowering plants
which includes garden valerians. Also, thanks to Thebookie, whose name suggestion
was also one of my favorites and may show up later.
<3
 A Day On Spinner’s End
Chapter Summary

Severus practices magic and reteaches himself some things that no normal 10-year-old
wizard would know. Don't try this at home, kids!

Chapter Notes

This chapter is brought to you by tea and technical difficulties

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Severus was home alone. He’d already taken Eileen’s wand and closed the curtains on the
windows. Two circles, about a metre apart, had been drawn on the floor with a piece of
broken chalk. Gazing around the room, Severus nodded to himself and moved to stand in the
nearest circle. He stood straight and stiff. Wand pointed at the ground, he channelled magic
into it as he rolled his wrist.

A sound, like a balloon slowly losing air, made him pause in his actions. He shook his head.
Recall The Three Ds, he thought with irritation, Destination, Determination and
Deliberation. He exhaled loudly, prompting a confused mrow from Valeriana as she watched
from the sofa.

He tried again with the same outcome. The third time, he had greater success. The world spun
around him, a loud crack! sounding through the room as Severus disapparated from the
circle. He found himself a short distance away from the other chalk circle. He looked around,
discovering that, to his horror, he’d missed splinching himself into the wood of the television
cabinet by mere centimetres.

“Merlin’s beard!” He cursed aloud, heart threatening to pound its way out of his scrawny
chest.

He decided against immediately trying again. Wandering into the kitchen, he takes his time
heating water for tea. At the last minute, he changed his mind. At the back of the far
cupboard a small packet, wrinkled by time and a child’s tiny fingers, had been hidden for
many months. It contained a dark, sweet powder; a rare luxury in the Snape house. Severus
poured the dry mix into the mug of hot water. He added a dash of milk and stirred
counterclockwise with a spoon. At last, he lifted up the mug, inhaling the rich scent of
chocolate.
Sipping with guilty pleasure, Severus returned to the front room and joined Valeriana on the
couch. She stood, collar jangling merrily, and plopped down heavily on his lap. He scratched
her chin and stroked her fur until she purred like an aircraft’s engines. They sat there as the
hands on the clock ticked by. However, Severus couldn’t rest for too long, since Eileen would
return home from the biweekly farmers market by two o’clock.

He stood, stretching, and walked back into the first chalk circle. Concentrating wholly on the
other chalk circle, telling himself he didn’t want to be anywhere else other than in that circle.
The room rang with a loud pop! and Severus found himself standing right in the centre of the
circle. Confidence bolstered by his success, Severus apparated back into the first circle.
Finally feeling the massive drain on his magic, Severus apparated one last time up to his
bedroom. He let himself flop exhaustedly onto the bed.

He heard the soft pitter-patter of paws coming up the stairs and the jingle of Valeriana’s collar
as she hopped up onto the bed. She yowled, visibly unhappy. He reached out to pet her,
murmuring apologies for leaving her downstairs. She batted his hand away angrily. As
punishment, she sprawled over his back, making it difficult to sit up.

“Valeriana!” He whined, voice muffled by his pillow, “you’re suffocating me.”

Downstairs, the front door opened loudly. Amongst the crinkling of paper bags, Eileen called
out, “Severus, I’m back! Can you come down and help me with these bags?”

Severus shooed Valeriana off the bed and climbed out of bed grudgingly. Downstairs, he
found his mother surrounded by a whirlwind of bags. Where had she gotten the money for all
of this? Silently, he picked up a bag and followed after Eileen, carrying it to the kitchen. She
took it from his arms and set it on the counter, pulling out several small packages wrapped in
wax paper and bundles of leafy plants. Severus returned with another bag, from which she
pulled out three corked bottles containing liquids of varying colours and viscosities.

After Severus had carried the last bag to the kitchen, he planned to return to his bedroom for
a nap, but Eileen stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Stay here, Severus. There’s something
I want to show you.”

Warrily, Severus watched and waited as she put away most of her shopping and prepped the
kitchen. Prepping for what, he didn’t know, but it certainly didn’t look like Eileen planned to
cook dinner. A moment later, when Eileen pulled down a small, dented cauldron from the top
shelf of a cupboard, it became very obvious that she planned to show him a potion. Severus
realised he shouldn’t be so surprised. In his first life his mother had taught him several
potions before Hogwarts. Just because this version of Eileen was less mentally stable didn’t
mean she wouldn’t act somewhat similarly to herself in the other timeline.

Disappointingly, after looking over the ingredients on the counter with new eyes, Severus
deduced that she would only be showing him a simple healing potion. The bundle of leafy
stalks with rounded, fuzzy leaves was just Dittany. He quickly hid his frown as Eileen pulled
a stool over to the stove and directed him to stand on top.
 Severus stepped up onto the stool while she turned on the stove, open flame flickering
beneath the metal cauldron. She handed him a cup of water and had him pour it into the
cauldron, stopping him from pouring just a second before he would have done so himself.
“Don’t overfill it past this point. If you do, it may bubble over once we increase the heat of
the fire.”

I know, he thought with frustration. I could teach you this in my sleep!

Clenching his jaw to avoid saying anything that would give him away, Severus obediently
followed her instructions. He shredded the dittany, although he knew it would waste less of
the juice to slice it properly with a knife. He grounded the wormwood when it would be
better to chop it finely. As a result, the potion was not as thick as it should be by the end. At
least Eileen knew to add Bubotuber pus to fix the consistency. The end result was a red
potion, too cloudy to see through, with a thin red smoke rising slowly from the top. In
Severus' opinion, the shade of red should be several shades darker, but for a child who had
supposedly never brewed a potion before it was a reasonable colour variation.

After Eileen poured the potion into a glass bottle with a cork, she began putting away the
normal, non-magical groceries. Severus left the kitchen, wondering where Eileen had bought
the necessary ingredients without going to Diagon Alley and why she had decided to teach
him potion-making out of the blue. Would she do this again?

Severus eyed his mother as she finished organising the last of the groceries. He noticed her
slip the bottle of freshly-brewed healing potion into her pocket. Was she going to use it? Was
she injured? Did she have a fight with Tobias in which he became violent?

Frowning at the gaps in his information, Severus turned away. He could investigate another
time. For now, all he wanted to do was sleep. He’d exhausted himself physically and
magically, and he’d been suppressing yawns for the last half-hour in order to avoid breathing
in the fumes from the potion. He’d deal with adult problems later; at the moment he was just
a child in need of a nap.

Chapter End Notes

I didn't have a lot of time to edit this chapter, so if you see any spelling, grammar, or
other mistakes please let me know!
Next week's chapter will either be largely filler or plot heavy, there is no inbetween.
 The Events of Muggle Secondary School
Chapter Summary

The prodigious child skips right to secondary school, and things happen as they are
prone to do. Also, major foreshadowing for the next chapter.

Chapter Notes

Surprise! It's a filler chapter. Wrote most of this while half asleep last night and only just
re-read it for errors, so beware bad grammar and spelling.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

In the lingering summer heat of September, Severus once again headed off to school. Unlike
the last academic year, this year he would not need to worry about seeing or avoiding Lily
Evans. In fact, he wouldn’t be interacting with any of his previous classmates. Severus had
not hidden his unchildlike intelligence as well as he’d thought. People had noticed, and, after
a series of tests, he’d been moved up two grades.

Normally, Severus would have been in Year 6, and instead he was in Year 8, which should
have been his second year of Muggle Secondary School. Cokeworth was a large enough town
to have separate school buildings for Primary and Secondary School. The Secondary School
was a five minutes walk from the Primary school, thus, five minutes further from Spinner’s
End. Now, Severus had to leave the house earlier in order to be at school by 8:30am.

While at first he’d been worried and still completely unchallenged by the classwork, Severus
had gradually accepted his new title as a child prodigy. At least this way no one would
question him supposedly leaving for a selective school when his Hogwarts letter came, since
an impoverished family like the Snapes sending their son off to an expensive grammar school
or similar institution was laughable.

The older students in Secondary School were not an improvement, just as dull, gross, and
prone to bullying as the younger years. Severus found himself becoming a worse teacher’s
pet than Granger to escape it all. His positive reputation with the teachers and staff of the
school did have its pros, such as access to much higher level books in the library. Severus had
taken up studying chemistry in his free time at school due to its strange similarities and stark
differences to potions.

Severus often ate lunch in the library to avoid the loud chaos of the lunchroom. Today Eileen
had actually packed his lunch for him, for some reason in a maternal mood. Kneeling
between shelves of dust-blanketed books, Severus contently bit into a sandwich and filled his
mind with the chemical elements on the periodic table.

His situation was in no way preferable or perfect, but there were few times in his adulthood
when he’d felt simple satisfaction with life like this.

Severus ran, heart racing and legs pumping. The loud, crashing footfalls of his pursuers were
closing in. He ducked around a parked car and bolted toward the end of the street. Angry
yells rose up behind him.

“He’s getting away!”

It was a Saturday, and Severus had been walking to the park as usual. Hoping to speak with
the strange Muggle woman who had introduced him to yoga and meditation, he’d left early
after breakfast and taken one of the more frequented paths. Unfortunately, a few other boys
from his class had also decided to spend the day outside. The boys were kicking around a
ball, and one of them spotted Severus crossing the street.

As he turned to get his friends’ attention, Severus crossed to the opposite sidewalk and began
to run, prompting outraged shouts and an unwanted chase. Did those dunderheads really
think Severus would just wait politely to get beat up?

In his last life, bullies had been a problem in both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds. As a
child, and over the summers, he had much practice running. At the first sign of trouble, he’d
booked it. Now, he ran, like a fox chased by baying hounds, and cursed out those awful brats
in his mind. One of them called out mockingly, mouth spewing the daft nonsensical words
that children considered derogatory terms.

An open gate catching his eye, Severus changed direction suddenly and cut through a
stranger’s lawn. In the shadows behind the other side of the fence, Severus caught his breath.
Before his pursuers could round the corner of the house and catch sight of him again, Severus
disapparated.

Stepping out from behind a copse of trees at the edge of the park, Severus released a large
sigh. As he raised his head, he made eye-contact with a Muggle on a brightly-colored mat.
She recognized him and waved him over, smile-lines crinkling around her eyes. Severus
suppressed an answering smile.

“Severus!” She exclaimed, unrolling another mat. “So good to see you. I have another branch
of yoga to teach you, if you’re interested.”

He nodded eagerly and sat down on the second mat to start his warm-up stretches. Before
travelling back in time, it had been years since he’d learned something new.
The bell rang, releasing the students from their imprisonment. Severus packed his bookbag
and escaped quickly, entering the turbulent river of students flowing out of the school’s front
doors to the buses. However, the bus routes avoided Spinner’s End and the other bad
neighbourhoods of Cokeworth, plain prejudice against the impoverished families that lived
there and blatant disregard for the students walking miles to get an education.

Severus had once been one of the many greasy-haired, malnourished children from Spinner’s
End and its surrounding streets. He’d been part of that group, invisible except as a subject of
derision, just one scrawny child amongst the others who wore the same few items of clothing
everyday and showed up to school with bruises. Cokeworth had higher rates of poverty,
crime, and homelessness than any town within a hundred mile radius. Everybody knew, but
nobody cared.

Usually, Severus walked to school from home and walked home from school. However, on
this specific day, Tobias would be picking him up from school for a momentous occasion. For
the first time ever, Tobias Snape had days leftover of entitled leave from work. So, for the
first time ever, the Snape family was going on vacation.

Severus found himself surprisingly thrilled for the vacation trip, even though it would just be
a few days in the British Midlands at a small lake-side cottage. The trip would not hold up to
grand expectations; Severus would no doubt be stuck sleeping on a couch, as the cottage only
had one bedroom, and Valeriana would have to stay behind. Regardless, he was full of
anticipation.

Tobias would be swinging by the school to pick Severus up on his way home from work.
Their luggage was packed at the house, and once they and Eileen loaded it up into the
vehicle, they would begin the hour-long drive to the cottage.

As Severus stood with the other students waiting to be picked up by their parents, the Prince
ancestral magic struck with little warning. After using the flute, the newly awakened magical
ability had been a constant presence in the corner of Severus’ consciousness and his active
magical core. At that moment, as a warm breeze ruffled his hair, he felt his magic fluctuate.

Across the road, a man was walking his dog. As Severus tried and failed to get a hold on the
untrained ancestral ability, the unfortunate dog-walker was dragged across the road by the
large canine over to the group of schoolchildren. Ignoring everyone else as if they—and the
scolding from its owner—didn’t exist, the dog walked right up to the wizard. It was a
massive animal, especially compared to the quite small and frail form of the undernourished
child. Next to each other, they were practically the same height, even when it sat down and
waited patiently to be pet.

The man who presumably owned the dog was apologising to the nearby teacher for his pet’s
actions, although their conversation seemed to be devolving into flirtations, and neither were
watching the animal in question. The dog whined pitifully at the raven-haired boy until he
began to scratch behind its ears. Severus found the fur to be coarse, yet soft, and as thick as a
warm blanket. The dog discovered that the small boy knew exactly the right places to scratch,
its long tail wagging profusely.
 Tobias arrived several minutes later, and Severus got into the backseat of the car. The canine
made depressingly mournful noises as it watched Severus leave. Expression falling, Severus
watched as the dog disappeared from view, feeling somewhat guilty for not staying to pet it
longer. In front of him, in the driver’s seat, Tobias began listing the plans for the trip.
Reminded of his earlier excitement, Severus pushed all thoughts of his mishap of accidental
magic out of his mind.

Chapter End Notes

Bet you can't guess what next week's chapter will be about...
 The Cottage by The Lake (pt. 1)
Chapter Summary

Severus goes on a family trip to a lake-side cottage. He tries to enjoy his vacation but
trauma gets in the way. Warnings for depressed thoughts and an allusion to serious,
harmful bullying.

Chapter Notes

This chapter will be split into two parts because it is the last official chapter pre-
Hogwarts. That's right, folks, we are almost to the compulsory Hogwarts Letter chapter!
But, before that, Chapter 15...part 1...

The car ride to the cottage was over an hour of stifling silence interrupted only by Eileen’s
stilted conversation starters and Tobias’ awkward throat clearing. Severus sat tensely in the
back seat, realising what an awful idea it had been to trap all three members of the family in a
small, moving vehicle. With a noiseless sigh, Severus turned to stare out the window,
watching the sights of the British Midlands pass by.

As time passed, the roads became smaller and less maintained until the car was rattling over
gravel. The gravel road curved through the trees until a small house, barely larger than a
shack, came into view. While Tobias unloaded their luggage from the trunk, Severus took a
closer look at it. The walls were wood and cobbled around the base. A small, withering
garden framed the front door. In the background, a rotting wooden dock led out into the
centre of the lake. From where he stood, Severus could hear the rhythm of the waves against
the pebbled beach.

Hearing Tobias call his name, Severus walked around to the back of the car. Tobias handed
him his bag and Eileen’s purse to take inside. Eileen had already gone in to see the interior of
the cottage, leaving the door open behind her. Slinging the strap of his bag over his shoulder,
Severus walked up the creaky steps and peered in nervously.

He had low expectations, but was pleasantly surprised. Once he’d left his bag next to the
stout, dark blue couch on which he would be sleeping, he wandered around the main room.
There were two doors, one leading to a bathroom and the other to the cottage’s single
bedroom. The door was closed; Eileen had already closed herself inside.

What’s the point of even coming on a vacation trip, Severus wondered, if you’re just going to
do the same thing you do at home?

Scrunching up his nose in distaste, he next surveyed the kitchen. Taking up the corner beside
the front entrance, the kitchen contained a sink, a coffee maker, a front-loading toaster, and a
small island at which to sit and eat. Severus grimaced. Clearly, there would be very little
cooking going on and hopefully no family dinners. He imagined with great horror eating a
meal side-by-side with Eileen and Tobias on one of the island’s four stools. He shook his
head, clearing away the absurdity of a man as large as Tobias sitting on one of those rickety
wooden stools.

The lake outside the window catching his attention, Severus slipped out the back door just as
Tobias came in the front door with the last of the luggage. Childishly romping down the
numerous creaky steps that led to the dock, he took in a big breath of air. It tasted of dirt, fish,
and failed family bonding.

Without a doubt, many families had come here for an escape, but few could possibly be as
disfunctional or as baneful as the Snapes. Severus tried not to think of all the awful things
that could happen at a secluded location out in the woods, but it was too late; he’d already
thought about it. Reminding himself that he was, in fact, a wizard and need not fear such
problems, Severus relied on Occlumency and fresh air to clear his head.

Severus decided against trusting the aged, ramshackle dock and instead sat on one of the
large rocks by the shore. The sun shone down on him from above, a cool breeze ruffled his
hair, and birds sang from the treeline. The weather was the definition of perfect. Kicking off
his shoes, he plopped his feet on the ground and dug his toes into the blend of sand and small
stones that lined the beach.

While he’d never been able to afford such leisure before graduating and certainly didn’t have
any time as a professor, vacations were supposedly a great way to relax and decompress. He
had four days to enjoy the trip, and his hopes began to rise. There were no Death Eaters, Dark
Lords, or Dumbledores to worry about at the moment. Severus knew he could be more than a
bitter, grumpy dungeon bat, and, especially as a Master Occlumens, he should be perfectly
capable of relaxing like any common Muggle at the beach. Perhaps, for a period of time, he
could enjoy the lake like any lake-going Muggle would. Wasn’t the weather warm enough for
swimming? Wasn’t the sun reflecting on the water visually appealing?

He glanced out over the water and thought of the Black Lake. However, then he thought of
Black and Potter and all the reasons he stopped going to the lake and couldn’t stand to go
swimming and—

If only it wasn’t so difficult to enjoy a vacation.

 The Cottage by The Lake (pt. 2)
Chapter Summary

The classic father and son fishing experience... plus angst.

Chapter Notes

Sorry for the late chapter!

Also, I lied, because there will be a part 3... oops!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The stench of old fish filled the air. Severus pulled the collar of his shirt over his nose, but the
smell clung to the fabric, too. With his small face scrunched up in disgust, he watched as
Tobias skewered a minnow on a fishing hook.

Severus had used many gross ingredients in potions throughout the years; from viscous
dragon blood to slimy flobberworm mucus, he’d gotten his hands dirty. Yet, there was
something about the bait fish, all piled in the bucket with blank, staring eyes, that made his
stomach churn and his hands.

“Here’s how your float, sinker, and hook with bait should look.” Tobias held out the prepared
fishing hook as an example and frowned when Severus shied away. He grumbled loudly and
shoved the smaller fishing rod into Severus’ hands. “Buck up, boy!”

Severus held the rod awkwardly and shot a dubious glance at the bucket of dead fish. With
gritted teeth, he pinched a minnow between two fingers and stabbed it onto the hook
crookedly. Then he flung the line out into the lake. Despite his frustration-fueled effort, his
line dropped only a couple feet from the dock. He couldn’t help but look back at Tobias, and
he quickly regretted it. The disappointment was clear on his face.

Tobias cast his line out before turning to Severus. It fell several metres out, where the float
bobbed idly in the miniscule waves of the lake. Running a calloused hand through his dark,
greying hair, the man released a sigh of epic proportions. Then, he began to talk.

“My father, your grandfather, used to take me fishing every summer. He taught me as a child
how to properly string a fishing pole, how to use the bait, and how to cast out a line. We
would catch fish and cook ‘em for supper. But… then he stopped taking me fishing… and I
never thought it would be something I would ever do with my own son.”
Severus felt his eyes go wide as he struggled to process the stream of words flowing from
Tobias’ mouth. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Tobias… actually talking about his
childhood and Severus’ paternal grandfather? Severus had never heard anything about this
before, never knew anything about his paternal grandparents or Tobias’ life before he married
Eileen. Now, it appeared that his father would be sharing this information willingly.

Unable to keep his mouth shut, he asked, “why did he stop?”

“Well,” Tobias cleared his throat and squinted out at the water. “He and my mum separated.
He packed up his things and left, and then I never saw him again.”

That had not been the answer Severus expected, but it prompted several thoughts he knew
better than to say out loud. Secretly, he wondered, have you ever thought of divorcing Eileen?

He glanced over at the bank, where the little waves broke against the rocks. Several steps
away from the dock, laying on a towel atop the gravel and sand of the beach, Eileen
sunbathed. She wore a one piece swimsuit with a floral sundress overtop, so starkly different
from her usual dark, modest attire. Severus watched enviously as she relaxed on the beach,
soaking up the sun and the relaxing sounds of the lakeside far away from the stench of fish.

He turned back to Tobias. “Have you always lived in Cokeworth?”

“Of course!” The man laughed bitterly. “No one moves to Cokeworth unless they have no
other options, and few people in Cokeworth will ever be able to leave.”

He became solemn. “Your grandma lived and died in that god-forsaken town, and so will I.”

With the mood tense and heavy, the despondent atmosphere weighing on Severus’ scrawny
shoulders, the pair sat at the edge of the dock. In the silence, Severus remembered when he,
too, had thought he’d be trapped in the grungy industrial town of Cokeworth for his whole
life. Then, he’d received his Hogwarts letter, and he’d had hope. If only he’d known then
where he would end up in life, he would have known better than to feel hopeful.

Suddenly, he felt a tug on his fishing line. He jolted, drawing his father’s attention. “I think
I’ve caught something,” he said unsurely, voice barely above a whisper.

There was another tug, visibly yanking the line taut. Shouting in excitement, Tobias helped
him reel it in. They struggled for several minutes. However, when they successfully reeled in
the fish, it was only the length of Severus’ forearm. The fish was a dull grey and squirming
for its life. Tobias held up the fish with one hand, fingers hooked under its gill plate. With the
other hand, he pat Severus on the back, his innate strength almost pushing the young wizard
off the edge of the dock.

“Your first catch!” He announced gleefully.

As they settled back down on the dock, a new bait fish on Severus’ hook and both lines
bobbing in the water, Tobias cleared his throat pointedly. Nervously, Severus looked up at
 him, eyes meeting. His father’s eyes were lined from years of frowning, but at that moment,
they held pride.

“Son,” Tobias said, the tips of his ears reddening, “I know you won’t be like me; you won’t
live and die in Cokeworth.”

Although sure he was drowning in positive emotion, Severus couldn’t help but think that
Tobias would inevitably be disappointed. Severus might not die in Cokeworth, but chances
were he’d die somewhere worse.

From behind them, Eileen called out that she was heading inside to start dinner. Tobias
grunted in reply. As they sat in silence again, surrounded by the lake and the smell of fish,
there was another tug on the line.

Chapter End Notes

Please let me know if you see any errors in spelling, grammar, formatting, etc.
 The Deficiencies of Dittany
Chapter Summary

Unfortunately, vacation ends on a bad note. Warnings for spousal and child abuse.

Chapter Notes

This was originally supposed to be The Cottage by The Lake (pt. 3), but then the chapter
ended up being almost 1900 words.
I'm sorry for all the sad in this chapter.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Severus woke in the night to screams.

Dark, tired eyes flickered open and stared out at the room. He thought he’d heard something
that jolted him awake. The interior of the cottage was awash in pale light from the moon,
which shone in through the window. Severus hadn’t closed the curtains, declining to disturb
them, as the fabric was stiff with dust and cobwebs.

An angry shout followed by a high-pitched scream and the sound of something crashing to
the ground came from the bedroom. Severus froze, heart dropping and his breath catching in
his chest. He sucked in a breath of air and pushed back the bedsheets. Standing barefoot on
the cold wood floor, he tentatively walked toward the door to intervene. But the sounds sent
chills down his spine, forcing him to remember his original childhood years. Seemingly in
the span of a blink, he found himself no longer in front of the door but underneath the bed
sheets once again, as if the thin bedding would protect him.

He stood again and walked to the door, but as he stood before it he couldn’t move his arm to
reach up and turn the doorknob. Chilled with fear yet burning with self-hatred, Severus ran to
the back door instead, fleeing the house like a coward.

I’m nothing but a coward, he thought scornfully. I’ll never be more than a coward, like that
rat, Pettigrew.

He stumbled to the edge of the lake, rocks digging into the soles of his feet. The outside air
was cold, chilling his skin, but the tears trickling down his face felt too hot. Fog rose eerily
off the lake, cloaking the dock and the treeline. Insects buzzed in a continuous humm around
him. He slapped a mosquito off his arm and hugged his knees to his chest. He wallowed in
his misery as the sun rose.

Almost two hours later, the sun had finally risen. By then, his ears, nose, and digits were cold
and red and his exposed skin was marked with bug bites and scratches from itching. He
slowly made his way back up to the house.

Inside, both Tobias and Eileen were acting as if nothing was wrong. Tobias sat on the couch,
listening to the radio and drinking a beer. Severus saw his father and realised Tobias had been
drinking last night as well, when the man was out on the porch. Eileen was flittering about
nervously in the kitchen, making a simple breakfast of toast and sliced fruit. As she set a
plate of food down in front of Severus, he saw the hand-shaped bruises on her wrist. Her
fingers were shiny from the juices of the cut fruit, but from the elbow up to her sleeve the
skin was specked with dried blood and scratch marks. Gone were the sundresses with short
sleeves or noodle-thin straps; Eileen was dressed the same as she always did in Cokeworth,
with long sleeves and dark clothes that hid everything underneath.

Tobias stood up loudly, the sound prompting the other two people in the room to flinch in
unison. He put on his boots and grabbed a six-pack of beer, then he left out the front door.
Through the window, Severus saw him disappear into the woods in the direction of the
overgrown hiking trail.

When he’d been gone for several minutes, Eileen exhaled audibly and abandoned her food
preparations in the kitchen to retreat to the bedroom. The door closed, and Severus heard the
click of the lock. He bit into his second slice of toast, not hungry but trying to fill some
gaping void. The butter was unmelted and salty like tears.

Salt water, Severus thought, coming to a realization. Saltwater and dittany.

Making Essence of Dittany would likely prompt suspicion, as it was not a potion that
Severus, as a child, should be knowledgeable of. However, it was a simple potion and shared
similarities with the healing potion that Eileen had made with Severus before. Perhaps she
would think it luck after trial and error.

Fortunately Severus, once the youngest Potions Master in Britain, had packed dried dittany in
a jar in his luggage just in case. As if he would go anywhere without it. He put a pan on the
stove and heated water, then mixed in cooking salt. While natural salt water would certainly
work better, he didn’t have any on hand. The salt dissolved in the water, and Severus lowered
the temperature of the stove burner while he fetched the dittany from his pack. He crushed
the leaves in a bowl with a wooden stirring spoon. Once satisfied that the leaves had been
crushed into small enough pieces, he scooped up salt water from the pot with a clean spoon
and counted out fifteen drops.

Several minutes later, he had a bowl of successfully brewed Essence of Dittany. He daubed a
handful of the potion on his arm and rubbed it in. The bug bites and the raised skin from
itching disappeared. The smoke was less green than he would like, but with mediocre tools
and ingredients there was little he could do. His overwhelming feeling of guilt easing ever so
slightly, he knocked on the bedroom door and presented the bowl to Eileen.
She accepted the bowl silently, not replying to his words. However, used to her often strange
behaviour, Severus thought nothing of it. She held it up to the light, eyeing the concoction
with contemplation. As Severus grew restless, she dipped the fingers of her left hand in the
bowl and smeared the potion on her opposite arm. The red, irritated scratches on her forearm
disappeared, but the bruises lingered; Essence of Dittany was meant to treat minor open
wounds, not bruises or other injuries hidden beneath the surface of the skin.

Nonetheless, the scratch marks were gone. Relief and trace amounts of joy filled Severus at
this success. He may have been a coward last night, but he was able to help now. He looked
up at Eileen, hoping the healing of her arm might have improved her mood as well. He froze.
Her face looked thunderous.

“Mother?” Severus spoke nervously. “Is something wrong?”

She glared at the potion and then down at him. “There will be no more of this, do you hear
me? I don’t want to see you making this again.”

Severus was frozen. He stared at her in astonishment and confusion. She didn’t want him to
make potions again? He wanted to ask for clarification, but the words choked and died in his
throat. He watched as she walked over to the kitchen and dumped the bowl in the sink, the
precious healing potion pouring down the drain.

Eileen walked back over to where he stood in shock and addressed him once more. “Do you
understand what you did wrong?”

Severus shook his head mutely. He didn’t understand.

He didn’t expect the slap that sent his head spinning, either. His cheek filled with red-hot pain
and his face was now turned to the side from the force. Out of the corner of his eye, he
looked up at Eileen.

“I don’t know what he sees in you,” she spat hatefully. “I don’t know why he treats you like
he does, when he treats me like this. But listen to my words, boy, and I’ll tell you the truth:
Tobias may treat you well now, but when he finds out what you can do”—she glanced back at
the sink—”what you can make, he’ll beat you just like he beats me.”

She marched past him into the bedroom, slamming the door shut. Severus flinched into
action, grabbing the potion-streaked bowl and running out the front door as a sob burst forth
from his chest. He crashed through the underbrush behind the house, the bowl slippery with
Essence of Dittany in his hands.

The sound of waves lapping against the shore reached his ears, and Severus found himself
once again crying by the lake. Collapsing atop a large rock, he took a deep, sniffling breath.
The remains of the potion smeared on his legs, and he looked down to see how much of the
potion could be salvaged. Only a handful was left at the bottom, and more was escaping
through a new crack in the side of the bowl. Balancing it in his lap, he dipped both hands in
the bowl and rubbed the potion along his arms and legs to ease the irritation of the bumps and
scratches. Lastly, he pressed a potion-covered hand to his face. The pain lessened, but didn’t
 disappear completely. It wasn’t a cut, just an injury to the tissue and blood vessels
underneath. Eileen may have refused magical healing, but Severus wasn’t going to waste a
potion that he’d made.

Catching his breath and allowing his mind to catch up with the events that had just taken
place, Severus struggled to understand what he’d done to prompt this. His thoughts turned
inward, combing through his Occlumency-preserved memories for answers but finding none.
After an unknown period of time, he resituated to sit in a lotus position and began to
meditate.

Once he’d settled into meditation, his magical core began to fluctuate. For several long
breaths, he released his hold on his core and allowed his magic to settle in the air around his
body. Things were awful in the cottage, and things would still be awful back in the house on
Spinner’s End. However, here by the water, things were momentarily alright.

Something landed on his head. Severus opened his eyes, pulled from his meditative state and
wondering if a leaf had gotten stuck in his air. Then, the thing on his head moved. He shot to
his feet, flailing, hoping it wasn’t a large bug. A high-pitched chirping speech stopped him in
his tracks. He turned his head slowly back to the rock and found it now inhabited by several
twiggy, leaf-covered figures. The thing on his head hopped down onto his arm and waved
with a squeak. He waved back weakly.

Bowtruckles. Severus concluded that he’d been sitting under their home tree. His magic must
have caught their attention. He kneeled down in front of the rock, allowing his unexpected
occupant to hop down from his limb and join his fellow bowtruckles on the rock. Once the
bowtruckle had done so, Severus bowed and apologised. “I’m sorry for disturbing you and
your home tree.”

The bowtruckles chittered amongst themselves before nodding their leafy heads in agreement
and waving him over. Once he stood before them, they presented him with a twig.
Awkwardly, he picked it up and thanked them, but paused at the sudden tentative pull on his
magic. He gazed at the twig, an unassuming stick approximately thirty centimetres in length,
and realised it had come from the bowtruckle’s home tree. Bowtruckle’s often picked trees
suited for wands as their homes. Thus, this stick was of wand quality, and it was already
showing its magic-conducting capabilities.

Severus thanked the bowtruckles profusely. They shooed him away and jumped one-by-one
off the rock to the trunk of the tree. Left alone once again, Severus grasped the wandwood
with great care and reverence.

Chapter End Notes

Announcement!:
There will NOT be an update next Saturday.
The next chapter will be Chapter Eighteen: The Hogwarts Letter. As a major point in the
story and the transition between pre-Hogwarts years and Hogwarts years, this chapter
will take a while. I am currently very busy with my personal life, and this is not a
chapter I want to rush. So, to recap, no chapter update next Saturday but major chapter
update the Saturday after.
 The Hogwarts Letter
Chapter Summary

The long awaited Hogwarts letter!

Also: angst, fluff, and clothes.

Chapter Notes

This chapter really got off track, and my love for thrifting took over. My apologies.
Keep an eye out for foreshadowing. Hint: I've got plans for Eileen.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Severus Snape's Hogwarts acceptance letter arrived on the ninth day of January on the boy's
eleventh birthday. His name was written on the envelope in green ink, the letters curling in a
neat cursive script. He opened it with great care and pulled out the folded parchment enclosed
inside. The honey-brown owl that delivered the letter watched him from its perch on the
windowsill.

“Dear Mr. Snape,” Severus read aloud. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been
accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all
necessary books and equipment. Term begins on the first of September. We await your owl
by no later than July thirty-first.”

He looked at the second page, which was the accompanying list of required textbooks and
materials for the school year. The time-traveller was unsure how much the list changed in the
years after he graduated from Hogwarts and returned to fill the open teaching position under
the orders of Albus Dumbledore.

He spent only a few short minutes penning his reply. Unfortunately, this was a minute too
long. As Severus signed his name, the front door opened and heavy boots stomped into the
house. Severus hurriedly gave the scrap of paper to the owl. Tobias was home from work, and
he’d seen everything.

“Is that a bloody owl?!”

Tobias snatched the Hogwarts letter off the table and skimmed through it. As his eyes
flickered back and forth across the parchment, his face turned an alarming shade of puce. He
turned to the owl, eyes squinted and teeth bared wildly. The bird abandoned its perch on the
window, flying off with Severus’ response without even a bribe of food. Severus tried to back
out of the room, but Tobias grabbed his arm tightly in one large hand.

“Eileen!” He shouted, “Get down here!”

A door on the second floor of the house could be heard creaking open. Timid footsteps
descended the stairs and approached the kitchen. Eileen appeared in her nightgown, an
unbuttoned sweater over top and clutched in her grasping hands.

“Tobias? Is something wrong?” Eileen didn’t look straight at her husband as she voiced her
query, but was soon forced to face him as Tobias waved the mail before her nose.

“What is this?! Why is Severus getting mail delivered by—by birds of all things?!"

“It-It’s from Hogwarts.” She glanced over at Severus then, finally acknowledging his
presence in the room. Her face expressed internal conflict, but Severus couldn’t start to guess
what went on in her head.

Tobias used his increasingly painful grip on Severus' arm to shove him toward her. He
stormed out of the room, spitting out, “it seems he’s one of your ilk.”

Eileen opened her mouth to speak. “Severus…”

The front door slammed hard enough to rattle the dishes on the table.

The room fell silent. With a heavy heart, Severus picked up the letter from where Tobias had
thrown it and tucked it carefully back inside the envelope. His name on the front of the
envelope seemed to blur before his eyes, tears gathering and threatening to fall. Severus
struggled to take slow, calm breaths, feeling that the air itself had grown heavier.

“Severus,” Eileen said again. Dark circles lingered beneath her dull eyes, and her cheeks
were gaunt.

“My Hogwarts letter is here,” he stated needlessly. He recalled her words and wondered if
she’d gloat.

Instead, she hesitantly wrapped her thin arms around his diminutive shoulders in a hug.
Severus stiffened, skin crawling in disgust and fear. “Oh, Severus, I know you'll be a great
wizard.”

“Will we be able to afford everything, Mother?” Severus asked doubtfully, as if he didn't

already know the answer. He stepped out of the unexpected and unwanted hug and moved
over to the window, closing it as an excuse to leave the range of her arms.

“I don’t…” Eileen tugged on the sleeves of her sweater and sighed, “Come with me.”

She headed upstairs. Despite it being the last thing he wanted to do, Severus followed her.
The witch led him into the large bedroom and over to the closet. Severus stifled an abrupt
rush of fear, recognizing their positions as copies of when she’d sealed his magic and erased
his memory of it. She kneeled on the floor and pulled her school trunk forward from the dark
depths of the closet.

“I haven't practised magic for a really long time,” Eileen revealed after several minutes of
tense silence. She unlatched the trunk but set aside the case that held her wand without
opening it. She formed a pile of her first-year textbooks and compared the titles to the ones
on Severus' list.

“You can use most of my old school books. However, we will need to buy a couple new ones
from your list; I had different books in my year. For the uniform, do they still require a plain
pointed hat, the dragon hide gloves, and the winter cloak?”

“Yes,” Severus confirmed, looking at his mother with a perplexed glance. Could she intend
for Severus to wear her old robes? Eileen promptly confirmed his speculation.

“Will you try them on to see if they fit? There’s no variation in the Hogwarts robes for
witches and wizards. No one would know they were mine if you wore them,” she proposed in
a reluctant voice, as if expecting him to protest. Why would he protest? All his clothes were
castoffs, so why would his school clothes be any different? At least these robes were
expensive, quality fabric from when Eileen was young and still considered a scion of the
Prince family.

Not hearing any rejections, she rummaged through the tangled fabric at the bottom of the
trunk. “I only have some of my clothes from my time as a Hogwarts student, but I still have
the winter cloak that I wore in my third year. I was still quite small back then, so it might fit
you even if it will be slightly too large. You can grow into it.”

Eileen handed over the pile of scavenged clothes. Severus tried them on as she continued
searching through her school trunk. Severus, remaining undeniably small in stature compared
to other children his age, was able to wear all of Eileen's old clothes. A few items would have
to be temporarily shrunken down or altered with tailoring charms until he had a growth spurt.
Severus would wait until he lost his mother's attention to use magic to improve the garments.

A perfectionist of the highest degree, Severus’ hands itched to wave a wand and change the
robes to his tastes. They were a bit too long, and some of the seams were stressed from rough
use, but the material was overall in good condition. Although the robes were unisex, Eileen’s
had been tailored to her form. Thus, they tightened slightly around his waist, but it was an
easy fix with or without magic. Severus could feel his anticipation growing. These clothes
were visibly made of valuable cloth and with fine craftsmanship, befitting of a rich pureblood
witch or wizard. Wearing high quality clothing could help Severus start off his first year at
Hogwarts with a good impression.

His excitement withered slightly as Eileen continued pulling a numerous assortment of

garments out of her trunk for him to try on. It appeared that she’d begun to enjoy herself,
insisting he try on this and that. How did so many clothes even fit in a trunk of that size? And
surely she knew he wouldn’t need this many?
 “Severus, try on this cloak. Oh, what a lovely shade of green.”

“Here, take these ties. You’ll have to practice tying them properly.”

“Put on this sweater vest. What a lovely shade of green it is!”

“Oh! My, a capelet. I remember when those were considered quite fashionable. I’m sure they
still are, with how slowly wizard fashions change.”

Dressed in Eileen’s old clothing, he found himself making comparisons to how the arrival of
his Hogwarts letter had gone the first time around. In the other timeline, Severus had
excitedly run to show his mother the letter, and she had carefully broken the news to Tobias
when Severus was out of the house. He hadn't been offered Eileen’s old school things. Rather,
she had apparated them to Diagon Alley. While shopping at a second-hand store, Eileen had
purchased him three sets of horrible robes.

A difference in clothing had the possibility to change many things.

The animosity between Severus Snape and the Marauders started on the Hogwarts Express.
Their first meeting hadn't gone well, though Severus never thought he warranted the level of
hatred the Marauders felt for him. While in the same compartment, Severus had immediately
noticed the others' expensive robes and spoiled behaviour. Thus, he had become self-
conscious and reacted defensively to their less-than-welcoming attitude. They had taken one
look at him and called him a Dark wizard; to them, this meant evil and hideous. As anyone
could expect, he took offence, insulting them back.

It had been a considerable mistake. Later on, Severus would question why he had not taken a
more strategic, Slytherin approach when dealing with them. Black and Potter had tormented a
lot of people, but apparently, no one fought back as aggressively or passionately as him. It
made them consider him interesting. It also designated him as their favourite target for hexes,
curses, and their so-called pranks. They had enjoyed humiliating him, and his resistance only
made him a more amusing target.

Uninterested in a repeat of his previous life, Severus braced himself for another hour of being
dressed up like a doll in his mother’s old clothes. He let out a long sigh as a black, pointed
hat fell over his eyes. At least this saved money.

Chapter End Notes

Anouncement:
Next week's update will be on Sunday, not Saturday.
Saturday, I will be meeting with a potential beta reader. Exciting! Hopefully it goes well.
If not, you will have to continue to suffer my bad grammar.
Remember to let me know if you see spelling errors, incorrect punctuation, etc. They're
not going to fix themselves! :D
 Severus Snape’s Secondhand School Supplies
Chapter Summary

The chapter title says it all. Basically a continuation of the last chapter plus some wand
lore.

Chapter Notes

Got all my wand lore information from the HP fandom wiki.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Once it appeared that the entirety of the trunk’s contents were on the floor, Eileen closed it
and patted the top, where the Hogwarts’ crest was emblazoned on the lacquered wood. The
aged piece of luggage was, surprisingly, a standard Hogwarts school trunk. Severus thought it
strange, that as a member of a family as wealthy and notable as the Prince family, Eileen
didn’t have a fancier trunk. The only personalization he could see were her initials prior to
her marriage, E.P., inscribed on the left side of the trunk’s exterior just above the handle. It
looked as good as new, though coated with a thick layer of dust, as if she’d barely used it.

Perhaps she hadn’t actually used it until she moved into Spinner’s End with Tobias. Severus
could imagine his mother abandoning the standard issue trunk for a nicer one with the Prince
crest or Coat of Arms when she attended Hogwarts, but later having to use the plain trunk to
store her magical items when she lost favour and left for the Muggle world.

Severus was pulled from his thoughts as Eileen removed her wand from its case. He felt his
body tense unconsciously, but forced himself to stay still as she visibly prepared to cast a
spell. Eileen herself seemed bespelled by the wand, tentatively running the tips of her fingers
along the wood grain. Finally, holding the wand in a firm grip, she gave it a swish.

The wand spat out a few weak sparks, which fizzled out quickly in the air. Eileen stared
down at it sadly. “My wand is no longer very attuned to me, it seems.”

It seemed plenty attuned to you when you tried to Obliviate me, Severus thought bitterly.

Eileen said a few more words, but Severus didn’t hear her, too lost in thought. When he
looked up, she was tapping the wand against the side of the trunk. The letters on the side
changed, squirming in place like snakes until the initials read S.S. instead of E.P.
“It’s your trunk now,” Eileen told him, already folding clothes and placing them neatly inside.
“For you to store your clothes and school supplies for Hogwarts. Everyone will have one for
their luggage; we wouldn’t want you to stand out.”

Severus couldn’t agree more with that sentiment, no matter how strange it was to hear her say
it. While he didn’t know Eileen’s motives, Severus was well aware that standing out at
Hogwarts led to unwanted attention.

Eileen read over the letter again. “You’ll still need the supplies for potions—cauldrons,
ingredients, and the like—as well as books and a telescope. I will have to go to Diagon
Alley.”

Noticing her choice of wording, Severus questioned her promptly. “Will I not be coming with
you?”

“No, Severus, you won’t. I don’t think you’re ready to go to Diagon Alley. I’ll go by myself.”
She avoided eye contact with him as she spoke.

Not ready? What the bloody hell does that mean? Severus raged quietly. Outwardly he asked.
“But what about my wand?”

Eileen hesitated. After a moment, during which Severus hardly dared to breathe, she set her
wand inside its box and slid the box across the floor. His eyes widened in disbelief. She
couldn’t possibly be implying…?!

“You can use my wand, Severus. It’s not uncommon in old, pureblood families to pass down
wands. It’s not necessary to buy a new one right now. Wands are expensive, and I’m sure my
wand will work just fine for you. You can get your own when you’re a bit older.”

There were many objections Severus wanted to make, but he couldn’t get the words out. To
his horror, Eileen decided his lack of response was a cue to continue. She pushed the box
with the wand a bit closer to him. “Go on, give it a wave. It’s an Ollivander wand, ten inches
long, hazelwood with a dragon heartstring core.”

While the length and core were the same as Severus’ wand in his first life, Severus knew this
did not indicate that the wand was a good match for him. Wands with dragon heartstring
cores were particularly stubborn about changing allegiances. Bonding strongly with their first
wielder, dragon heartstring wands would only accept another wielder if won off their original
wielder. These cores were indicative of a quick learner with powerful magic and a tendency
to turn to the Dark Arts.

Severus felt it was a sign from the very start of his introduction to the Wizarding world that
he would become a Dark wizard. However, this time around the wand was not really his, and
he wasn’t sure what that could be a sign of. The hazelwood was much lighter in colour than
the previous dark wood of Severus’ future ebony wand. Wands crafted from hazel were prone
to the influence of their wielder’s mental and emotional states. Severus wondered what it
meant for Eileen’s mind that she struggled to even create sparks when using the hazelwood
wand. Certainly nothing good.
 Not wanting to see how she’d react if he hesitated further, Severus picked up the wand and
waved it aimlessly. There were no sparks, but he hadn’t expected there to be. There’d been
none when he’d first used it, so many months ago, without his mother’s knowledge. There
wouldn’t be any now, because the wand’s allegiance was still tied to Eileen. Overall, it was a
temperamental wand that would not readily accept Severus, not that he desired it to. He could
feel the disharmony between the wand and his own magic and was well aware of how short
the wand fell in comparison to the one he would have if he went to Ollivander’s himself.

Unhappy with Eileen’s decision but unwilling to argue, Severus didn’t protest when she
packed the wand back up and placed it on top of the pile of robes in the trunk. The trunk
closed and latched with an audible finality. On the floor beside it was a short stack of
miscellaneous books on magic. Thankfully, Eileen hadn’t noticed the missing books currently
hidden beneath his bedroom floorboards. Hoping she wouldn’t miss a couple more, Severus
watched with a close eye as she stashed the books on the top shelf of the closet. He’d come
back for them.

Eileen carried the trunk to the doorway of Severus’ bedroom, struggling to lift its
inconsiderable weight. Although it was difficult to watch, he didn’t offer to help.

“Don’t open the trunk or take anything out. And keep it somewhere out of sight until you
leave for Hogwarts; we don’t want your father seeing it.”
Severus nodded, fully planning to disregard her instructions.

Chapter End Notes

As always, please let me know of any spelling or grammar errors. The meeting with the
person who offered to beta did not go well, and was quite disheartening, so you are all
stuck with unrevised writing.
Next chapter should be posted on the regular Saturday schedule.
Please leave a kudos if you like the story, I could use some positive feedback after
yesterday :(
 The Diary
Chapter Summary

Severus makes discoveries by invading Eileen's privacy.

Chapter Notes

Short chapter due to my busy schedule, but I am slowly building toward future plot.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

After announcing her plans to travel to Diagon Alley on Friday, Eileen went downstairs.
Severus waited until he could hear her puttering around on the back porch to begin
rummaging through the trunk. A weak Tergeo cleaned the trunk and its contents of dust. He
stacked the books to the side, casting a few wandless Reparo for crumpled pages and tattered
covers. He neatly refolding the clothes once any frayed fabric and stitching had been mended.

Severus removed any crests he found on the items, aware that any apparent sign of claiming
the Prince name or lineage would have detrimental results. Unless he or Eileen were formally
recognized by the Prince patriarch, Eileen’s father and Severus’ grandfather, he couldn’t
legally claim the Prince name in any way, shape, or form. The crest, one such form, could not
be seen on him when he went to Hogwarts.

Lastly, he took out the wand box and set it aside. Severus could never have predicted that he
wouldn’t have his original wand, the wand that was his and which chose him. Its absence was
a figurative ache. Although Severus was capable of some wandless magic, a wizard without a
wand was an unimaginable concept. Without a wand, a witch or wizard was weakened,
unarmed, and vulnerable.

Too often, Severus had been vulnerable, and he had long suffered for it. He loathed the
feeling, that of vulnerability, with his entire being. He would not—no, he refused—to
experience such vulnerability again. Severus would not be weak or unarmed; in this life he
would be strong and never bow to others.

Brows furrowed and resolve heavy in his chest, he inspected the bottom of the trunk.
Although seemingly a bare-bones school trunk, Severus did not believe that any pureblood
heiress would abstain from customizing their trunk in some way. He felt the interior corners
with his fingertips and prodded it with his magic. Under his scrutiny, the trunk’s secret
revealed itself. He pressed down on the far-right corner until he heard a soft click as
 something gave way. The bottom of the trunk popped out of place, revealing itself to be fake.
Underneath, at the true bottom of the trunk, was a small drawstring bag, a notebook, and a
small ink pot.

The little bag contained a handful of galleons, merely pocket change to a witch or wizard of
wealth. The notebook, however, gave him pause. The leather cover was well-made but
scuffed from constant use. A protection charm had been cast on the notebook, but he opened
it without issue after some hesitation. He opened to a page a third of the way in and skimmed
a few lines, eyes widening in shock.

—the weather was frigid and windy this morning. I went up to the owlery before breakfast to
send the letter, and a gust of wind almost tore the envelope out of my hands. I ran into
Crockett on the way back to the common room, and he hounded me about Quidditch again. I
swear I’ll hex him next time! I’ve no interest in playing on the team, and he is well aware!

I’m quite occupied with the school Gobstones team; the team is doing well this year. I’m sure
the recent leap in improvement can be attributed to myself. Merlin knows Quince can’t play
worth a knut. I invited Riddle to join, as I’m sure he’d be skilled at Gobstones, but he turned
down the offer in a most polite manner. He always is so polite; it is truly a shame that his
blood isn’t pure. The family disapproves of how often I mention him in my letters. Oh, but
how could I not? Tom is so charming. His hair looks very nicely coiffed this morning.

I hope I look alright; Quince made an especially mean remark about my complexion at
yesterday’s meeting, and Black made fun of my eyebrows just last weekend. How cruel! I
can’t wait to see how she’ll react when she finds that I’ve spelled all her textbooks to spew
ink when opened. I hope her new robes will be ruined. Oh, how she’ll scream in horror!—

Severus felt the desire to scream in horror, as well. The notebook was actually a diary!
Eileen’s diary! And his mother had once been a scornful, narcissistic, boy-obsessed young
witch! Severus could barely believe it. Perhaps his eyes would catch on fire from reading the
ludicrous contents of these pages. One detail, a name, stuck out to him as especially horrible:
Tom Riddle.

His mother had known Tom Riddle. She had attended Hogwarts with the future Dark Lord.
And, even worse, she’d found him attractive! Severus would never be able to erase the
comments of “polite” and “charming” and “nicely coiffed hair” from his brain. Never before
had he so strongly wished to be able to Obliviate himself.

Severus struggled to configure what he previously thought he knew with what he’d just read.
Firstly, his mother had been infatuated with a school-age Voldemort. Secondly, and most
importantly, Voldemort was not a pureblood wizard. What other shocking discoveries did
Eileen’s diary hold? How much could Severus learn from this blatant invasion of privacy?

Severus would simply have to read more to find out.

Chapter End Notes

If evil, manipulative little child Voldemort had a diary, why wouldn't young Eileen
Prince?
 Diagon Alley (pt. 1)
Chapter Summary

Severus accompanies Eileen to Diagon Alley (without her knowing). Another look into
Eileen's diary.

Chapter Notes

Short and rushed chapter today, so look out for mistakes and spelling errors. I probably
won't include many more excerpts from Eileen's diary until it is plot relevant, but there
was a lot of buzz about it in the comments, so here is another sneak peak at the mind of
a hormonal teenage witch.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Eileen left the house for Diagon Alley at exactly 10:08 a.m. Severus knew this because he’d
been standing at the top of the stairs, watching, when she’d left. He’d been watching her
closely all morning, aware that she’d be going to the Leaky Cauldron sometime before Tobias
got home from work at half past 5:00 p.m.

He rubbed his eyes, which were red and painful from reading Eileen’s diary until the early
hours of the morning, and repositioned the strap of his bag over his shoulder. Before Eileen
could disappear out of sight of the window, Severus slipped out the back door to follow her.
He followed her for several blocks, keeping his distance to avoid detection.

His feelings toward Eileen had become conflicted since reading the diary. While he’d found
little information of interest in her writings, gaining access to her private childhood thoughts
and musings had not left him unaffected. He’d concluded that she’d been a very dull girl,
focused on little but boys, gossip, and school clubs. Severus had grimaced at discovering
she’d been a proud member of the Slug Club.

—Professor Slughorn invited me to join his illustrious club. He said he admired my ambition,
and that it would take me far in life. There is to be a splendid dinner party hosted by the Slug
Club tomorrow, out-of-hours, for being social and forging connections. Professor Slughorn
said that several well-known potioneers, his past students, in fact, would be in attendance.
I’m sure it will be a grand and productive event. I can’t wait to see the look on Black’s face
when she finds out I was invited and she wasn’t—

—My new dress robes for the upcoming Slug Club Yule party have finally arrived by owl.
 Hopefully my evergreen Yule wreath will be delivered soon, I couldn’t possibly celebrate the
holiday properly without it. And I wouldn’t want Professor Slughorn to think I don’t take his
club events seriously, then he might not show me the trick to making a perfect Felix Felicis
potion—

—I sat next to Tom today during our regularly scheduled Slug Club meeting. I think he wore
a new scarf from the last trip to Hogsmeade. I went to Hogsmeade as well, on Saturday. Nott
asked me on a date at Madam Puddifoot's, but he never showed up! I sat there in the tea shop
all by myself, while everyone else in the establishment was sitting with someone. Oh, how
embarrassing! I hope no one finds out. If that awful boy dares to tell anyone that he stood me
up, I’ll curse him into next week!—

At the time, Severus had simply wanted to escape his mother’s romantic recollections, so
he’d quickly flipped through the next several pages. As he did so, a photograph fell out of the
diary’s pages. The photograph showed Slughorn seated in a large armchair, surrounded by the
student members of the Slug Club. The photo was colourless, only black and white, but
Severus could easily pick out the Slytherin students from the rest. Their calculated smiles and
the snakes pinned on their lapels gave them away. Among them stood his mother. Eileen had
her hand on the back of Slughorn’s chair, and she had a large smile on her face.

As Severus stood at a street corner, watching Eileen wait at the bus stop to go to Charing
Cross Road in London's West End, he struggled to find the smiling face of that girl in
Eileen’s stern, sallow expression. He soon gave up. Instead, he then pondered how to board
the bus without Eileen seeing him.

“Uh, I could hex myself right now!” Severus groaned quietly. He could have just apparated
to the Leaky Cauldron and waited for Eileen there! He rubbed his temples and sighed loud
enough for a passerby to glance over judgingly. Severus turned around to walk the other way,
searching for a hidden place to apparate from. He disappeared with a muffled sound from
behind a large, flowering bush.

Severus reappeared at the end of Charing Cross Road. The sign for the Leaky Cauldron was
just ahead, hanging slightly crooked off the old, dilapidated building. The inside looked no
better, and Severus soon found himself waiting impatiently at a sticky table, slowly sipping a
butterbeer. He glowered at the overly sweet, caramel-colored drink. If only he looked old
enough for the barman and innkeeper to consider giving him a firewhiskey.

Many minutes later, after many witches and wizards had been in and out of the questionable
establishment, Eileen finally walked through the door. Ignoring a cheery greeting from the
ageing man behind the bar, she headed for the back exit. Severus stood up to follow.

Chapter End Notes

Announcement! Please read!
There will be a 7-day delay before I post the next chapter due to a lot of chaos and
upheaval in my personal life. So no update next Saturday, but the Saturday after next
keep an eye out for Chapter 22: Diagon Alley (pt. 2).
 Diagon Alley (pt. 2)
Chapter Summary

Angst and feels... and finally, a wand!

Chapter Notes

Warnings for sad Severus Snape and Eileen being a Karen.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“That will be twenty-one galleons.”

“Twenty-one galleons?!” Eileen exclaimed. The other witches and wizards perusing the
shelves of the dimly-lit shop looked over at the sound of her raised voice. “For subpar potion
ingredients?”

Severus watched, completely aghast, from behind a row of jars as his mother made a scene at
the register of The Apothecary. The clerk, reasonably insulted by her insinuation that the
goods sold by his establishment were anything other than the freshest and finest of
ingredients, raised his voice as well. The transaction devolved into criticisms and name-
calling as the other shoppers watched discreetly. His face hidden by the hood of his dark
cloak, Severus took his leave.

Arguing with the clerks and shopkeepers of Diagon Alley appeared to be a common pastime
of Eileen’s shopping trip. Severus was quite done with it—and becoming hungry to boot—so
he’d find a place to eat before the jars of potion ingredients began to look appetising. He
could catch up with Eileen later. She would have to stop at Flourish and Blotts for the rest of
his required school books; Severus would catch up with her there.

A few minutes later, Severus happily found himself seated at a table with a sandwich. He’d
spent a handful of knuts he hadn’t planned on spending. However, after so long surviving off
of Eileen’s cooking, the sight of fresh sandwiches and tea was too good to pass up. His
stomach soon settled after a bite full of aromatic bread, seasoned meat, and crispy lettuce.
Severus washed it down with a sip of perfectly steeped tea. He’d have to come back here to
eat again.

A pair of loud children ran by to peer into the large front window of Quality Quidditch
Supplies. Severus huffed in annoyance. Noisy brats, he thought, of course they’d disturb my
peaceful lunch. He angrily bit into the eatery’s complimentary pastry as the children’s parents
scolded them.

As if to ruin the calm street setting further, a baby started crying shrilly at a nearby table.
Severus set down his teacup with more force than necessary and whipped around to see a pair
of redheads trying and failing to quiet a red-haired and red-faced baby. Severus’ eyes
widened.

Scouring his memory, Severus concluded that the couple were the recently wedded Arthur
Weasley and Molly Weasley née Prewett. The baby could only be their first son of many,
William “Bill” Weasley. Bill had been the first and least irritating of the Weasley children
Severus had taught at Hogwarts. His appreciation for the attentive student the boy would
become in a decade did not endear the squalling baby to him in the least. Deciding that his
meal had been fully interrupted, Severus finished eating quickly and stood to leave.

With his bag full of affordable school supplies that Severus knew his mother would fail to
buy, he headed to Ollivanders. He saw Eileen at Flourish and Blotts on his way there. The
wand shop appeared empty of other young customers, so Severus walked inside.

Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C., he read in passing.

A bell jingled as he walked in. Ollivander stepped down from his rolling ladder and gazed
down at Severus curiously. “And who might you be, young man?”

“Severus Snape.”

“Hmm,” Ollivander shuffled some boxes around. “Snape? I’m not familiar.”

“I’m here to buy a wand,” Severus answered briskly.

“Of course, of course,” the man mumbled, stacking and unstacking the boxes. Severus stood
there awkwardly, in the dark and dusty room, for at least five minutes as Ollivander ignored
him.

Just give me my ebony and dragon heartstring wand and stop wasting my time, you senile old
man!

Finally, Ollivander handed over a wand. Severus recognized it instantly; he’d wielded it for
years, after all. It was made of ebony wood, sanded smooth and stained as black as his hair.
The core was a dragon heartstring, and it was ten inches long and rigid. The wand was slim,
the length of it smooth except for the handle, which was finely carved with contours and
symbols that held no meaning Severus was aware of.

Ollivander sold him the wand without a word, and Severus left the store, eager to escape into
the fresh air. But Severus could tell something was wrong. The wand didn’t feel right, and it
wasn’t just because of the Trace. Ducking into Knockturn Alley to avoid Eileen on her way
back to the Leaky Cauldron, Severus leaned back against a grimy wall and stared down at the
 wand despairingly.

This was his wand, so how could it be that it didn’t feel like his anymore? When he flicked it,
the sparks that shot into the air were weak and fizzled out quickly. Severus stood and stared.
He was no longer the same wizard he’d been the first time around, and this proved it. The
wand could see the truth of him before even Severus himself. He’d changed too much for his
original wand to still accept him.

A tear dropped onto the glossy wood.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry for any errors, I wrote this in a bit of a rush. I wanted to write a lot more but had
to stop myself for the sake of plot pacing. Just two more chapters until the Hogwarts
express!
 Wandwood
Chapter Summary

Severus solves his wand problem... or does he?

Chapter Notes

Warnings for abusive relationships and for a misogynistic slur spoken in this chapter.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Wiping tears from his face, Severus felt a tug on his shoulder. Something had yanked the
strap of his bag. Severus spun around. A haggish woman in dark robes was fleeing down
Knockturn Alley, the drawstring pouch of wizarding currency from Severus’ bag clenched in
her gnarled hands. A thief!

“Bloody hell!” Severus exclaimed under his breath, taking off after her.

He ran, slipping between suspicious characters in hooded cloaks and navigating past
questionable business deals being made in whispered voices. Armed with only the badly-
matched wand, he forced his magic through it for an Incarcerous. A rope wrapped around the
witch as the wand made a horrible noise, like the screeching squeal of rusted hinges being
forced open. Snatching back his coin pouch, he looked down at the witch and sneered
imperiously.

The signs of some of the wickedest of magic were clear on her twisted features. Along with
her putrid aura, her teeth had become sharp and misshapen, and her pupils had become
yellowed and deformed. The hag squinted and hissed in the sunlight as though it burned. The
dark robe and dark grey underrobes she wore were ragged and filthy. They were tied around
the waist with an equally filthy piece of cloth, off of which hung the hag’s own coin pouch
and a string of what appeared to be human teeth.

Cringing at the teeth, Severus vengefully took the hag’s coin pouch for himself before
walking away. The Aurors wouldn’t bother coming down Knockturn Alley unless the
ministry had ordered a raid, so the hag wouldn’t be arrested for her actions. His Incarcerous
spell would fade once he’d walked far enough away.

Moments later, Severus found himself once again wandering amongst the crowds of shoppers
in Diagon Alley. He sat down on a bench and took stock. He’d almost been robbed, but
instead he had become the robber. Now he had two drawstring bags of wizarding coins, but a
broken wand. The forced spell had shattered the wood, causing the ear-splitting noise Severus
heard earlier. He groaned, rubbing his eyes and leaning back against the wooden seat.

Eileen would be getting off the bus to return to Spinner’s End any minute. He’d have to exit
the Alley to apparate to the house, but then he still wouldn’t have a working wand. The
Leaky Cauldron was further up the Alley, past a large crowd of new and returning Hogwarts
students and their parents. He shoved the money and the broken wand in his bag and stood
with an exhausted sigh.

Severus had beat Eileen to the house by mere minutes. He hid his bag under the bed and laid
down under the covers. As he closed his eyes, Eileen unlocked the front door. She took off
her shoes and cloak and immediately ascended the staircase. On her way to her bedroom, she
peered into Severus’ room. Finding him asleep, she continued on her way.

Releasing a breath as the door of the other bedroom clicked shut, Severus sat up and quickly
went to shut the door. He waited silently to see if Eileen had heard, but the door down the
hall did not open. Satisfied, Severus then dumped out his bag on the floor. The wand rolled
out, its sorry state seemingly worsening the longer Severus looked at it. The wood had
splintered, breaking in half, and the tip of the wand had fallen off completely. The two main
halves were barely held together by the dragon heartstring. Being from a creature so large,
the heartstring was quite long, stretching almost the entire length of the wand’s ten inches. It
let off sparks and a cloud of multi-coloured gas with a sulfuric smell.

“Reparo,” Severus tried weakly. The wand remained broken. He hadn’t really thought it
would work, but he still felt he had to try.

He moved to put the scraps bag inside the bag, unsure what else to do with the completely
unusable wand. However, there was still something inside the bag, caught on one of the
inside pockets. It was the twig from the bowtruckle home tree. Wandwood.

The stick of unknown wood was unquestionably wand quality. Overall unassuming to the
naked eye, it was around twelve inches long and covered in bark. Peeling some of the bark
off the stick with his fingernail, Severus could see the wood itself was not uniform in colour.
He peeled off more bark, letting it crumble onto the floor, to get a better look at the wood
grain. A majority of the wood was darker than that of Eileen’s hazelwood wand but lighter
than that of Severus’ original ebony wand. However, there were uneven places in the wood
grain where the wood darkened several shades in colour, almost appearing to have a bluish
tinge.

Severus pulled the dragon heartstring free of the first wand’s wreckage with the utmost care.
Thankfully, it looked to be undamaged. He laid the wandwood and the wand core side by
side.

Then, he stopped. Severus was a potioneer, not a wand maker; he knew next to nothing about
wand lore and knew even less about the wand-making process. He could do nothing more
going forth until he learned how to make a wand. This would not be an easy task. No
wandmaker of any real skill would be willing to share the knowledge of their craft, especially
not with a precocious eleven-year-old boy. Books regarding wand-making would be close to
impossible to find for the same reason. And, due to the secretive manner of the craft, wand-
making was taught directly from the master to their apprentice through example and oral
instruction.

Severus could only think of a few places which held even a slight possibility of containing a
book on wandcraft. Two of which he could not travel to. His only option would be to go to
Borgin and Burkes.

“Eileen, there’s no more beer! Didn’t you buy any groceries?” Tobias stomped over to the
table.

Hands shaking as she ladled soup into a bowl, Eileen splashed the hot liquid onto the table
cloth and then clumsily rushed to dry it with a dishcloth. “I was out today. I can get groceries
tomorrow.”

“What do you mean you were out? Out doing what? Spending my money at the department
stores?” He pulled the chair out roughly, causing the legs of the chair to loudly drag across
the floor.

“N-no, Tobias! I was just out; I didn’t spend anything.” She busied herself with the
silverware.

Severus came over to the table quietly, hoping he would go unnoticed. He did not.

“Boy,” Tobias addressed him, “where were you all day?”

“In my room.”

“Laying around all day, were you? While I was working at the mill?” Tobias huffed and ate a
spoonful of soup. “When are you heading off to school?”

“The first day of September,” Eileen answered before Severus could speak.

Tobias kept his attention on Severus, ignoring that Eileen had spoken. “You’ll not be lying
around the house for months. Once school is out, you’ll need to find something to get you out
of the house!”

“He can’t get a job, yet,” Eileen cut in again. “He’s only eleven.”

Angered by her response, Tobias slammed the last beer bottle agains the top of the table and
exclaimed, “you might have been a spoiled slag growing up but I’ll not have my son learning
to be a layabout!”

Eyeing that Severus had finished his soup, Tobias motioned violently up the stairs and said,
“off to bed with you!”
 Worried and confused, Severus hurriedly headed up the stairs without complaint and closed
himself in his room.

Chapter End Notes

Please Read! Sorry for the late update, everyone. Unfortunately, with everything going
on right now (two jobs, trying to take care of a mentally unwell relative, and possibly
losing my apartment) I will be unable to keep up my current posting schedule of every
Saturday. I will be permanently changing my posting schedule to every other Saturday
starting from today, and I will make sure to update the note at the end of the fic by
tomorrow to reflect this change.
 Work
Chapter Summary

Severus gets a job. Also, feels.

Chapter Notes

Warnings for past trauma.

Please read end note for poll!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

After Severus told Tobias he'd gotten a job—

After Severus got a job—

After days of convincing the owner of the local animal shelter to let an eleven-year-old walk
the dogs and clean the cages and kennels for £5 payed under the table—

After a week and a half spent struggling to find employment when he was legally too young
to work—

After all of that, Tobias huffed and said, “good,” before continuing to ignore Severus’
existence. Although tired and exasperated, Severus decided to keep his mouth shut and
consider it a win. He'd now be getting an income, however pitiful an amount, and would be
able to spend time with animals while also having a reason to be out of the house. In addition,
the job itself could not have been more perfect, considering he had the Prince ability of
animalia attractios. The animals loved him, and the owner of the shelter was slowly warming
up to him.

Mr. Jones was a strict man with a soft spot for four-legged animals and precocious, visibly
malnourished children like Severus Snape. Mr. Jones had a son who never visited and who
refused to inherit the shelter when Mr. Jones got older and retired, so Severus found himself
constantly compared to a young man who he had never met. However, the snacks Mr. Jones
always left for him on the front desk were nice and the animal shelter was an ideal work
environment.

Eileen had been unhappy to find out that Severus got a job, but with her inability to go
against Tobias, she'd done little to verbally express her anger. For days she had constantly
frowned and puttered about the house. She hadn't gone on any more trips to Diagon Alley.
The same could not be said for Severus. He'd made several more trips to the Alleys and found
a couple old books on wand-making in Borgin and Burkes and another unreputable shop.

Wandlore for the Curious Witch and Wizard was a slim book that explained the various
different woods and cores used in wands. On Wandcraft was an old collection of hand-written
wand-making instructions and advice compiled in a tattered leather cover. The authors of
both books were unknown, since Wandlore for the Curious Witch and Wizard provided none
and On Wandcraft was the work of several individuals with faded, illegible signatures.

Severus spent his afternoons at the shelter and his evenings reading in his room. Despite his
rapidly increasing knowledge of wands and how to make them, he felt no closer to being able
to craft a wand of his own. However, he still had plenty of time before he left for Hogwarts.
And, until he crafted his own, Severus still had his mother's wand.

“Don’t walk Horatio today,” Mr. Jones instructed sternly. “He’s getting his shots later. The
vet is coming by around 1:30, so he needs to be in his kennel when she arrives.”

“Alright,” Severus said, leashing a small beagle-mix. “I’ll walk Misty instead.”

“Careful,” Mr. Jones warned, pouring kibble into a row of bowls. “Misty pulls.”

“I know.”

Mr. Jones patted his shoulder gruffly. “There’s a sandwich in the fridge if you feel hungry
after your walk.”

“Thanks,” Severus said. The word felt forced, with Severus so unused to stray kindness, but
the man just smiled.

Misty did pull at the leash at the start of the walk, but once Severus relaxed his hold on the
Prince's ancestral magic she trotted patiently by his side. The ability was exceedingly useful,
but Severus tried not to overuse it. The animal’s visible adoration of the child had yet to draw
suspicion, but even Mr. Jones, being an oblivious Muggle, had stated that Severus had a way
with animals.

Across the street from the animal shelter on the way back from the walk, Severus pulled
Misty to a stop. She whined in confusion, but sat down without a fuss. Severus leaned behind
a tree, hopefully out of sight of the family leaving the building.

Petunia stood out front, holding her father’s hand. As Severus watched, Lily came through
the shelter door, a small grey kitten in her arms. Her mother walked out behind her, waving
back inside at Mr. Jones. Red braids blowing in the wind, Lily followed her father down the
sidewalk. Once outside, Mrs. Evans handed Petunia a second kitten, its fur a lighter grey than
the first.

Severus waited until they were further down the sidewalk to cross the street himself. Lily’s
 birthday, January 30th, was only twenty-one days after his. She would have received her
Hogwarts letter, likely accompanied by one of the Hogwarts staff to introduce the Evans
family to magic, just a few days ago. Perhaps the kitten would become her familiar, or would
just accompany her to Hogwarts as a pet.

Severus faintly remembered his first and only familiar, a runty short-eared owl that Eileen
had bought from Eeylops Owl Emporium for half the usual price due to its poor health. It was
the first and only pet Severus had owned in his first life, and it hadn’t lived very long.

Before he’d established himself in Slytherin House, his housemates bullied him just as badly
as the Gryffindors. Although they displayed house unity outside the common room, inside it
was a different matter. In one episode of bullying, after Severus had fought back against one
of his pureblood attackers, the older boy got back at him by having his owl attack Severus’
owl. Severus’ owl, small and weak as it was, hadn’t lasted even a few minutes against the
large, well-bred owl the other Slytherin student owned.

Severus could still picture the boy laughing as the large, intimidating bird perched upon his
arm, its beak stained with blood. Severus had clutched his owl to his chest, crying. He’d
written home about it, but Eileen offered no comfort, and Severus never had another pet. He
used the school owls for the rest of his time as a student and for his years as a professor.

As he walked past cages of felines to return Misty to her kennel, he couldn’t help but picture
Valeriana in the place of his old owl. The image of her body, lying still and bloody, butchered
by some laughing pureblood student’s overpriced pet, lingered in his mind. He swore he
wouldn’t let it happen; he’d keep her safe.

That afternoon, he returned home and immediately went upstairs to find Valeriana asleep on
his bed. She voiced a startled mrrp as Severus woke her from her nap to hug her to his chest.
He struggled with the weight, his arms stick-thin and the cat seemingly growing heavier by
the day, but he persisted until he could lay back against the pillows. Once he settled,
Valeriana curled up on his lap with a contented purr.

Chapter End Notes

Another Sunday update instead of Saturday... whoops!

Important poll! I want your feedback for the next chapter, so here's a question. Please
leave your responses in the comments.
POLL: Should Severus have long or short hair for Hogwarts?
 Fruitcake
Chapter Summary

A fruitcake recipe leads to a violent fight between Eileen and Tobias. Warnings for
spousal abuse and childhood trauma.

Chapter Notes

The results of the poll are in! Long hair won by a landslide, so Severus will have long
hair. Canonically, Severus Snape's hair has always been down to around his neck. By
long, I plan for his hair to be somewhere below the shoulder blades but above hip-
length. This will not be out of place in the Wizarding World, as having long hair is also a
trait of several other wizards, including pure-blood wizards like Lucius Malfoy and
other characters, including Dumbledore himself. How Severus will come to have long
hair will be revealed next chapter.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“The butter is two shillings, dear,” the store clerk said.

“How much for sugar?” Severus asked, dreading the answer.

“One shilling and sixpence for 2 pounds of sugar.” The woman rang it up on the register and
offered him a paper bag for the items. He thanked her and handed over the right amount of
coins.

“Running errands for your mother, are you?” she asked. Sure of his response, she told him he
was being a good son by doing so.

Unwilling to participate in more social interaction than necessary, he offered her a shy smile
and didn’t disagree with her assumption. Severus certainly wasn’t running errands for Eileen.
What would she do with flour, butter, and sugar anyway? No, Severus bought the ingredients
for himself.

Yesterday he’d met with the Muggle lady he’d befriended in the park. After an hour or two of
meditation by the river—a fetid, dirty stream of water which ran through Cokeworth’s factory
district and was too polluted to swim in—she had rolled up her mat and taken a wrapped
bundle out of her purse. It was a little cake, and it was delicious. She’d sent him on his way
with the recipe.
Severus had thought, how hard could it be to bake? Surely it’s a bit like potions, with all the
ingredients and measurements?

He’d been very wrong. That night, his first attempt had come out of the oven a burnt, acrid
brick that held little resemblance to the colourful loaf of fruitcake he’d eaten before. It was
inedible, and unfortunately, he’d used up all the ingredients previously in the kitchen
cupboards in the attempt. Even worse, the smell had summoned Eileen from her lair. She had
not left her bedroom in days, door locked with the lights off, and Tobias had been sleeping on
the couch. Why, Severus did not know, but he knew the stench of alcohol in the house had
never been stronger.

The only upside to the situation was that the smell would disguise Severus’ actions if made a
successful fruitcake and opted to soak it in spirits instead of icing it. Whether the cupboards
held any liquor that was up to Severus’ standards was questionable, so he wouldn’t plan on it,
but he would keep it in mind for future attempts.

The burnt and smoking first attempt brought Eileen thundering the stairs. “What is that
smell?!” Eileen yelled angrily. “You had better not be burning down the house!”

Severus had already opened the windows to let the smell out, letting in the cool evening air.
He watched impassively as she rampaged through the kitchen with an uneven, drunken gait.
As she knocked the last of the flour onto the floor, the front door opened.

Tobias, tired and slumped from work, was quick to rise up in anger. Severus slipped out of
sight as they yelled and watched in horror as the loaf pan, alongside several other cooking
utensils, went flying with a swipe of Eileen’s arm. He managed to covertly summon the pan
before it could clatter loudly against the floor. He tried to drown out the screaming by
repeating the recipe ingredients over and over in his mind—flour, baking powder, cinnamon,
butter, brown sugar, orange juice, dried cranberries, chopped dates, chopped nuts, candied
cherries—but the mantra did little to help.

After the shouting match reached a crescendo, Tobias turned his back on Eileen to go
upstairs. “I’m sick and tired of you, woman! You do nothing all day but drink! I work all day
and come home to this! I’m sick of you, you minger!”

“Don’t you call me names, Tobias! You think I drink too much? You love the bottle more
than you’ve ever loved me! How dare you speak to me, your wife, in such a way!” Eileen’s
hair was long and matted. Her face and clothes were unwashed. She looked wild as she
whirled around the table to scream at her husband.

Tobias’ face hardened. “My wife, are you? You’re a witch, not a wife. I should’ve never
given you a ring; marrying you has made me miserable.”

Eileen lunged at him with a cry. Severus flinched back behind the wall. His eyes shut tight,
he heard the smack of a fist against flesh and a wailing scream. Footsteps started towards him
as Tobias left the kitchen. Severus ducked behind the bannister, hoping the lack of light
would hide him.
 He held his breath as Tobias thundered up the stairs, muttering loudly. “That bitch of a
woman… absolute nutter…”

Nutty as a fruitcake, Severus thought to himself, clutching the baking tin even as it burnt his
fingers. He choked down a pained laugh as another round of clanging came from the kitchen.

“A witch. A witch,” Eileen chanted. “A witch, a witch, a witch.”

Chapter End Notes

Sorry for any money mistakes, I am not familiar with British currency.
 The Cuckoo’s Cry
Chapter Summary

Eileen gives Severus a suspicious potion.

Chapter Notes

Warnings for Eileen's mental health.

Word of advice, don't drink unknown things given to you by people you don't trust.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“A witch, a witch, a witch, a witch…”

The sound of Eileen’s muttering came through the walls. Severus winced at the repetition,
having heard it on and off for the past several days.

Some part of Eileen seemed to have become irreparably broken. Despite her current mental
state, she was still an adult witch, so Severus didn’t dare attempt Legilimency to investigate
into her mind. Severus didn’t know what to do, and Tobias had gone out binge drinking two
nights ago and not returned. He might have spent the nights at the bar with friends, or
perhaps the man was passed out somewhere on the streets of Cokeworth. Hopefully the man
hadn’t gotten himself locked up in jail for any drunken misdemeanours.

“A witch. A witch… I’m a witch!” Hoarse laughter carried up the stairs.

As he closed himself in the bathroom, Severus recalled what he’d read in Wandlore for the
Curious Witch and Wizard:

Wands draw upon a witch or wizard's magic from their magical core, eventually forming a
sort of semi-bond with the core after years of use. Loss of one’s wand is often associated with
loss of one’s magic, especially for adults whose cores have matured and settled. For an adult
witch or wizard after their magical maturity, the abrupt and complete cessation of wand use
can lead to withdrawal symptoms. Loss of magic and worsening health are often seen in
adults who stop using their wands without allowing their cores to acclimate to wandless use
over time.

Witches and wizards who stop using their magic entirely may experience physical ailments,
mental illness, and damage to their magical cores. After abrupt disuse of a wand or magical
core for a long period of time, the semi-bond between core and wand withers, and a witch or
wizard may no longer be able to connect with their old wand.

His recollection was interrupted by Eileen knocking on the door. She didn’t wait for him to
answer, instead letting herself in. A large smile was plastered crookedly across her face,
baring her yellowing, stained teeth. She clasped in her bony fingers a small, rectangular box,
which she set down on the counter next to the sink.

“Mother…?” Severus inquired warily.

“Oh, Severus, I’ve been thinking recently—”

She cut herself off and puttered around the bathroom. Finally, she slowly opened the top of
the box to reveal two neat rows of potion vials. “I—I’ve been thinking, since I took up potion
brewing again, and I’ve made a gift for you.”

“Something for me?” Severus swallowed, feeling dread sit heavy in the back of his throat.
Eileen ran the tip of one finger over the rows of vials, her fingernail jagged and untrimmed.
She stopped on the third vial in the second row. With barely concealed excitement, she pulled
out a glass vial of a murky, virescent potion. Many potions were of similar colour, a few
being poisonous and others relatively harmless. Although unlikely that his mother plotted to
poison him, Severus remained naturally cautious.

The liquid’s cloudiness could be attributed to Bubotuber pus being one of the ingredients,
while its colouring could have occurred from knotgrass or fairy wings. Severus mentally
calculated their effects, finding that at worst he could end up with boils. This thought did
little to settle his nerves. Eileen uncorked the vial and handed it over to him. Severus' nose
wrinkled at the strong odour of ginger root.

“Go on, Severus,” Eileen said, her eyes dark and unreadable. “Drink it.”

Against his better judgement and the voice in his mind screaming at him not to do it, Severus
obeyed. The concoction tasted foul. His scalp itched unpleasantly. A second later his hair
began to grow at an unnatural rate. Severus certainly hadn’t expected this to be the effect of
the potion, and his scared and confused brain struggled to understand his mother's motives.

When his hair nearly touched his lower back, the potion's influence wore off. The woman's
chapped lips curved in a smile, clearly pleased. She ran her fingers through the silken black
locks. Standing tensely, Severus tried to keep his confusion off his face as he looked forward
into the mirror above the sink. Reflected in the glass were two slim, pale figures with long,
pitch-black hair. If Severus hadn’t put care into his appearance, he may have looked like how
Eileen did now. Her skin was sallow and flaking, and her hair hung in limp, greasy locks. In
contrast, Severus' hair was soft and shone under the dim light of the bathroom. The darkness
of his hair caused his skin to look paler. His equally black irises stood out. The increased
length softened his features, making Severus appear overall more effeminate.

Severus fought off his anger, knowing it would be bad to upset Eileen. Had the deranged
woman suddenly decided she wanted a daughter?
 "Boys don’t keep their hair long," he protested bravely, ignoring the fact he had already been
doing so, if not to such an extent.

“It looks so much better now, Severus," she asserted, not pausing in her petting of his black
tresses as she directed his head back toward the mirror. “Look at us. Look at you. You look
just like a witch.”

Chapter End Notes

Sorry for any confusion about this chapter, I was trying to write in a way that somewhat
reflected Eileen's state of mind and Severus' inability to understand it, so its not very
clear.
Since Eileen is not thinking rationally, I'm sort of writing with the idea that she attributes
her awful relationship with Tobias to her status as a witch, and jealously seeing that
Severus' relationship with Tobias is better (though not good) wants to make him more
like her (a witch) so that Tobias will treat them the same way (badly).
 Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder
Chapter Summary

Tobias comes home after several nights out drinking.

Warnings for (badly written) feelings, domestic violence, and period-typical views of
gender norms.

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Tobias arrived at Spinner’s End with a bang. Only the scritch-scratch sound of a key
struggling to find its lock forewarned the large man’s appearance in the doorway. As cool
night air slipped into the house carrying the stench of booze, Tobias stomped his dirty boots
inside and tossed a wad of crumpled money onto the table.

“Eileen!” He bellowed. “Your useless, drunken husband has brought home £50 from playing
poker. What good have you done for this household since I’ve been gone, huh? Drink a bit
more, did you? Or have you convinced the next-door neighbours you’re a madwoman yet?!”

“No, Tobias!” She hissed, descending the stairs rapidly like a starved Azkaban dementor. “I
have not done any of those things. I’ve been spending some quality time with our son.”

“Our son, is he?” Tobias scoffed, tossing his dirty boots beside the entryway and slinging
himself onto the couch. The wooden frame creaked from his weight. “No son of mine is
getting letters from owls and casting spells…”

He turned to face his wife, dark eyes unreadable. “Is he even mine, Eileen? Could you stay
faithful—”

“—Tobias!—”

“—to a Muggle like myself?!”

“Tobias!” Eileen shouted. “Of course he’s yours. I’ve never slept with another man.”

“Well, then! Let’s see him!”

“Severus is asleep,” Eileen excused.

“No, I’m not,” Severus said softly, revealing himself from the shadows at the bottom of the
stairwell.
Hearing the racket from downstairs, he’d crept from the bedroom to witness the fight. He’d
barely avoided the creaky step, unused to having long hair falling in front of his face and
obstructing his vision. Though shocked to witness Tobias’ accusations of his wife’s infidelity,
he’d been more concerned of how the volatile man would take Severus’ new appearance.

And he could see it now, in the slight widening of the man’s eyes and the clenching of his
jaw. Severus could tell the man was not happy with what he saw, though the man soon
verbally expressed it.

“Bloody hell, Eileen, what have you done to the boy?!”

Eileen fiddled nervously with the hem of her loose sleeves. Severus still struggled to
understand her motives and desired to know the answer to Tobias’ question as well. Under
his father’s intimidating gaze he shied away behind his hair, finding it just as suitable of a
curtain against the dangers of the world as his hunched posture and curled hands.

“Well?!” Tobias demanded a second time when Eileen failed to respond. “He’s still a boy,
isn’t he?”

“Of course he is!” Eileen protested. She stood up a bit straighter in her anger. “I… I decided
since you didn’t want your son that I would make Severus more like his mother.”

“Didn’t want him…” Tobias repeated weakly, staring once again at Severus. “Of course I
want my son, he’s… he’s my son.”

Eileen squawked, dark fabric flapping like a startled bird. “Oh, now he’s your son!” She
cried. “You accuse me of being unfaithful, but he’s your son!”

Severus winced at her shrill voice. His mind raced as the argument turned in an unexpected
direction. Eileen wanted him to be more like her, and perhaps, less of Tobias. Did that also
mean that she wished Severus wasn’t Tobias’ son? But, most importantly in Severus' mind,
was the revelation that Tobias wanted him. Severus had been sure with the way the man had
acted on his birthday that his father no longer acknowledged him as his son. To hear the man
actually speak out loud the words—to hear him plainly say that he wanted Severus, and that
Severus was still his son…

The wizards felt suddenly glad for the dark length of hair that hid his face, as his vision
blurred and he felt a damp trail make its way down his cheek. Eileen turned her back on
Tobias and crossed the room to the door. She shoved on her shoes and walked out, slamming
the door purposefully behind her. Having watched her leave, Severus was startled to see that
Tobias was no longer sitting on the sofa when he turned his attention back. Instead, the man
was making his way toward Severus.

Severus found himself frozen as the man, always a towering figure in his past life, kneeled
down before him. A calloused hand pushed Severus' hair out of the way behind his ear. As
their eyes met, Severus inhaled sharply, seeing tear tracks on the man’s ageing face.
Suddenly, without a sound, Tobias crumpled like a broken piece in wizard’s chess.
 “Oh, Severus,” Tobias choked out, pulling the boy into a hug. “I’m sorry, Severus. My son,
can you ever forgive me?”

Close to paralyzed with emotion, Severus remained silent. As the man sobbed, Severus
slowly reached out and returned the embrace. He didn’t know if he could forgive Tobias,
even in this life. However, at that moment, as he struggled with the memories of the man that
Tobias was before but didn’t appear to be now, Severus speechlessly allowed his father to cry
on his shoulder.

Chapter End Notes

As always, please let me know of any errors so that I can fix them when I have time.
Thanks!
 Sweet
Chapter Summary

Severus being a cute grouch.

Chapter Notes

Sorry for the delay! I did eventually get my computer issue fixed, but I permantly lost
several files, mostly photos. Part 2 of Chapter 27 as well as the original Chapter 28 were
lost when I tried to upload/download them. This chapter was supposed to be 29, so I had
to revise some things - hopefully it makes sense despite the missing bits. Please let me
know of any errors or incongruent information so I can eventually get around to fixing
them. Many apologies!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Severus attentively examined his appearance in the cracked mirror. He aspired for everything
to be perfect, or at least as close to perfect as possible, before he left for Hogwarts. It would
be the first time actually encountering any of his peers, though he had seen other children
shopping for their school supplies during his travels to Diagon Alley.

Eileen had gone to Diagon Alley herself after her fight with Tobias. She’d returned in a much
improved mood, and she and Severus had eaten breakfast together. She appeared better than
the previous night, however tired, and had gone to bed after a cup of chamomile tea.
Worryingly, she’d spent most of her time downstairs talking to herself under her breath.

Severus didn’t question it too much, knowing his mother’s sanity was slowly deteriorating
from her unhealthy relationship with Tobias and her internal repression of her magical core.
She seemed to be withering away like the bouquets she used to arrange in vases back when
she cared how the house looked, though Severus knew she was much stronger than any
delicate flower. Severus found himself fearing for her, yet also fearing what she would do the
next time she lost touch with reason.

He could see that fear reflected back at him in the mirror.

Refocusing his attention, he judged his reflection quietly in the cramped but pristine
bathroom of the Snape house. Severus’ looks had vastly improved. His long hair fell down
his back like black silk. His face glowed with a healthy pallor, round cheeks flushed with the
embarrassment of an individual unused to thinking well of himself. His teeth were straight
and a natural shade of white. Having destroyed the more detrimental attributes to his
constitution, Severus had to admit he looked irritatingly adorable.

Severus frowned thoughtfully at the image in the mirror, unsure if this change represented a
success or not. His large, black eyes presented a naive look. It reminded Severus too much of
the dunderheaded first-year Hufflepuffs he used to teach for his liking. His nose hadn’t been
broken, simply left straight without the input of his father's fists. Although quite likely that
his objectionable features would begin to lean toward being masculine instead of
androgynous as he grew older, Severus couldn’t stifle his unhappy expression.

If anything was unquestionable, it was that the boy wouldn’t be shunned for his appearance.
Despite the second-hand clothes, he managed to stay unbearably cute. His cheeks flushed
further, the rosy blush turning darker as he internally criticised himself for becoming a
narcissist; after all, Severus only cared about his looks because other people did. It had even
become a ritual to examine himself every morning.

In his other life, the opinion that he was ugly became deeply engraved in Severus' mind. His
parents only worsened that notion. Tobias often called him ugly when speaking to him in the
former timeline, though it never occurred in the new one. His mother also considered his
looks distasteful and not worth the cost of shampoo, conditioner, or skin care products.
However, her appearance was currently much worse than his.

Later that night, Severus sprawled in bed with his hair spread out around him on the blanket.
He gazed sightlessly at his cracked ceiling. Things had changed beyond his ability to
comprehend. Just minutes before, his father had tucked him into bed with a kiss on his
temple. It was hard to imagine that in another life the man would have beat him to an inch of
his life and he would be lying on the floor in agony. Surely, even his actions could not change
an individual’s nature so much? Was this even the original Tobias… or…?

Severus’ thoughts froze as chills ran down his back. Such complicated thoughts and horrible
ponderings about his parents were not suited to the time before sleep. He took a deep breath
and closed his eyes, arm reaching out to pet Valeriana. Yet, his dark worries followed him
into his dreams, accompanied by flashes of vivid green light.

To keep his mind off of his impending doom, a.k.a his departure to Hogwarts, Severus took
up an unexpected distraction; one that did not turn out well initially. The former Professor
wondered what the people of his past would think of his new hobby. Lost in thought, he ran
his berry-stained fingers through his long black hair, which was currently streaked white with
flour and powdered sugar. The timer sitting on the counter began to buzz, and Severus
stepped up to the oven and peeked inside. With a satisfied hum and a small, close-lipped
smile, he opened the oven door and cautiously pulled out a tray of steaming hot raspberry
scones.

As the scones cooled on the kitchen counter, he stirred a bowl of powdered sugar glaze. Once
Severus drizzled the white glaze artistically on the scones, he took a step back. He was filled
by a sense of accomplishment—a feeling once upon a time only prompted by perfect potions
and pettily upstaging others. This appeared to be his best batch of baked goods so far.
 Severus Snape's newest entertainment was baking. It had taken a few tries to make something
he deemed edible, but the work provided ample satisfaction in the end. Most importantly, he
didn't think of anything but the steps of the recipe while baking, so his mind was unable to
drift off to less welcome topics.

Tobias Snape entered the house with the slam of a door and the scuff of boots. The world-
weary man followed the deliciously sweet scent of scones freshly out of the oven. He ruffled
his son's black tresses and grabbed a scone off the baking tray.

Severus moved in front of the man bravely, still expecting a hard cuff to the head, to stop him
from taking a second one.

“You can't eat them, Father. They're for the bake sale,” he explained, voice soft.

“Bake sale?” Tobias snapped gruffly. “Whatever for?”

“The animal shelter is raising money so it can afford more supplies and put down fewer
animals.”

For years, Cokeworth’s animal shelter had been low on funding, and Severus had been
horrified to hear that the animals they couldn’t afford health treatment for would be put down
instead. Imagining Valeriana in their place, he knew he had to take action. Thus, he’d
voluntarily offered his time and effort to do the baking for the shelter’s upcoming fundraiser.

Tobias huffed but didn't bother to argue. Instead, he stomped out of the room to sprawl in the
large armchair by the couch. Severus could tell the Muggle man avoided going upstairs. The
tension between Tobias and Eileen had only increased over the last couple of weeks. The
strain was a string slowly fraying and just waiting for the wrong moment to snap. Severus
didn't want to be present when that happened again.

With a dramatic sigh, Severus turned to the next page in Enchantment in Baking. He
wondered if the aurors would show up if he sold Muggles cupcakes with colour-changing
frosting.

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter is already halfway written... and it's the long awaited Hogwarts Express
scene! Finally! I thought I would never reach it!
Anyway, to avoid confusion, it is scheduled to be posted on the 29th of the month.
 Severus and The Marauders on The Hogwarts Express
Chapter Summary

The long awaited chapter of Severus' and the Marauders' first meeting!

Chapter Notes

This chapter was supposed to be posted yesterday, but I went camping this weekend and
didn't think to bring my computer with me in order to update this fic. So the post is
today, and I am a lying liar who lies. My apologies and thanks to all my readers, and a
special shout out to YouDoNotNeedToKnow & atemporaneo for their dedication!
Hopefully the wait was worth it :)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“Severus, it’s time to go!” Eileen called up the stairs in her high, rasping voice.

Severus didn't bother to answer, coming down the creaky wooden steps a moment later.
Dragged behind him was his mother's old trunk. He hauled it downstairs with difficulty,
bitterly wondering why his mother wouldn’t spell it to weigh less or just levitate it. It wasn’t
as though Tobias was home. However, Eileen behaved increasingly odd as the day and hour
of his departure to Hogwarts approached.

Severus felt that he might also be behaving oddly, unsure how to handle the increased
violence of the household as his parents fought more and more often. Late at night, when he
knew both his parents were asleep, Severus cried. Guilt weighed on his consciousness no
matter how often he told himself it wasn't his fault. Eileen could leave whenever she wanted,
yet she stayed while Severus despaired at not yet having the means to leave and live alone
himself. Internally he knew standing up to his father would do nothing except redirect the
man's violence. Regardless, he couldn’t help but hate his inaction…

He shook his head to dismiss the negative thoughts; black, neatly brushed hair grazed his
arms. He was using the Floo Network to get to Platform 9¾ at King's Cross Station. He
needed to be focused, or else he risked misspeaking his destination. Eileen refused to leave
the house, so he would be travelling to the station alone. He suspected that the woman didn’t
want any other witch or wizard to see her in her present deplorable state.

Although annoyed, he was resigned to allowing his mother to fuss over him. She forced him
into the baggy cloak she kept on one of the hooks by the door and stuck her wand in the
interior pocket. Her eyes looked into his with a serious expression. Untrusting, Severus made
sure his Occlumency shields were protecting his mind.

“Severus,” she said sternly, “I expect you to work hard in class and not be idle with your
studies.”

He bit his lower lip nervously. Eileen had not even wished him goodbye when he left for
Hogwarts in his first life. “I shall do my best.”

To Severus' shock, his mother smiled. The pureblood witch ran a hand with untrimmed,
uneven nails through his hair affectionately. She tossed a pinch of Floo Powder into the
fireplace. The dying flames shot upward, a bright, dramatic green reminiscent of the killing
curse. His messenger bag slung across his shoulder, Severus stepped into the Floo with his
packed trunk and a caged Valeriana in tow. When the boy stepped out of the fireplace on
Platform 9¾, he had an imprecise idea of what awaited him on the other side.

The massive form of a scarlet steam locomotive idled patiently on the tracks. The platform
was full of witches and wizards, completely swarming with activity. Steam from the
Hogwarts express filled the air, along with the hooting of owls and people's voices. Severus
moved towards the train, slipping between parents hugging their children and avoiding
stepping on a loose toad. His heart beat wildly in excitement and trepidation. Students
blocked his way inside the train, but finally he discovered a vacant compartment. He slid the
door shut behind him and took in a much-needed breath of air.

He floated his trunk onto the rack above the seats wandlessly. On shaky legs, he sank down
onto the closest seat and pulled his bag into his lap. After taking a minute to rest, he cast a
wandless Reparo on it, restoring it from its used, battered condition. He glanced down at the
slight lump in his robes where Eileen’s hazelwood and dragon heartstring wand waited to be
used. He’d yet to finish his research on wandlore and wand-making, and thus his suited core
and wandwood had been left at the bottom of his trunk, secreted away inside the hidden
compartment. Eileen’s wand would have to do for his first year. Besides, it wasn’t unusual for
a pureblooded first-year Hogwarts student to be stuck using an heirloom wand before their
parents finally accepted the fact that their family could not live vicariously through their
young heirs, and that their children were, in fact, their own people.

Hearing Valeriana’s displeased meows, he let her out of the cramped cage and set her on his
lap. She settled down with a pleased mrow. He imagined he could feel the warm fuzziness of
her contentment at the back of his mind. Though Severus lived in denial of many things, he
was aware enough to recognize that his beloved cat was becoming his magical familiar, and
that the process was likely accelerated by her half-kneazle heritage. He felt his nerves settle
as he ran his hand through her soft fur.

Opening his bag, he took out a thick book: One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by
Phyllida Spore. An interesting read to the potioneer, it would help pass the time. After all, the
train ride was several hours long.

At precisely 11:00, a piercing whistle announced the train’s exit from the station. Startling at
the sound, Valeriana jumped off his lap and climbed into the overhead storage rack. With
billowing smoke and the hiss of pistons, the train inched forward. It rapidly sped up, the
waving family members standing on the platform growing smaller outside the window.

Immersed in his reading, Severus didn't notice the compartment door open. He didn't even
realise anyone had entered his compartment until someone coughed to get his attention.
Severus blinked, pulling his eyes from the book's pages and raising his head. There, in front
of him, were his worst nightmare: the Marauders. Sirius Black, James Potter, and Remus
Lupin had apparently become bored with the game of cards they were playing. Severus
frowned, a number of his plans immediately unravelling in his mind. He closed his book and
returned it to his bag slowly, wary of making sudden movements.

“Hey, Dark wizard!" Potter taunted. "Too scared to even show your face?”

The cloak! Severus realised. Why did I keep wearing the black cloak? I must look like a
second-rate Death Eater, he criticised himself.

He turned his condemnation outward, recalling all the times the Marauders had made him
dislike himself. Too many times, and he couldn’t do this again! Hatred burned in his stomach
and, to his horror, tears stung his eyes. Severus had worked so hard to change the Marauders’
first impression of him, and he’d avoided ever meeting them before in this timeline, yet they
already treated him like this! Insulted, Severus tried to contain his anger. However, his
childhood immaturity chose this time to rear its head. He shot to feet, causing the fabric of
his cloak to shift and the hood to slide off. Potter fell silent and stared at the shorter boy with
widening brown eyes.

“I am not a Dark wizard!” Severus denied, hands clenched into fists. “And I’ll definitely be a
better wizard than you!”

Feeling the others' eyes on him, he swallowed. The cold brooch that pinned the cloak closed
was heavy against the base of his throat. Under their scrutiny, his cheeks heated with a faint
blush, making the water trying to escape his eyes burn hotter. He seemed to have surprised
them, though the emotions on their faces were undecipherable.

Severus didn’t wait for the axe to fall. He stormed out of the train car, summoning his trunk
behind him. He heard Remus’ voice start to call out, then become one of three startled yelps
as an unhappy Valeriana made her presence known. Severus hurried away from the ruckus of
feline yowling and human yelling, confident that Valeriana would show those poor excuses
for Gryffindor lions who the superior cat was.

He waited in another empty car at the back of the train, and let out a sigh of relief as the
jingling of the bell on her collar announced Valeriana’s appearance in the doorway. She
walked proudly over to him and took her throne upon his lap. Severus scratched her chin,
praising her for her victory. He loathed his cowardice when faced with his childhood bullies,
but Valeriana was strong where he was weak, and she didn’t mind comforting him as he cried
into the fabric of his cloak.

Damn cloak! He cursed. Those bloody Marauders! Why can't they just leave me be?
 He wanted to blame the cloak for his failed first impressions. However, many witches and
wizards wore cloaks while travelling, and he passed by many students wearing cloaks of
various colours while rushing through the train station. But, if the issue wasn’t the cloak…
was the issue… him?

With a sniffle, Severus threw a locking charm at the door, wishing he’d done so sooner.
Maybe then he could have avoided this. All his planning and effort for nothing! Everything
should have been perfect, so Severus didn't understand the boys’ words and actions. This
time around, he didn't appear dirty or poor. Even the cloak had been clean and the brooch
Eileen had pinned it with was one of her better ornaments.

Perhaps for James Potter and Sirius Black, who were rich purebloods, his poverty and
Muggle upraising were still glaringly obvious. Severus didn’t understand, and it seemed he
never would. It appeared that there was no fixing this; there was no fixing Severus Snape.
The dark-haired boy sat, hugging his cat miserably, wondering why he had ever naively
thought his Hogwarts years could go well.

Chapter End Notes

As always, please let me know of any errors and I will do my best to fix them as soon as
possible.
 Onward to the Castle
Chapter Summary

The train arrives at Hogsmeade.

Chapter Notes

Short chapter this time, but Severus has finally made it to Hogwarts.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Approximately halfway through the train ride to Hogwarts, Severus changed into his school
robes. With a dark look, he carefully folded the cloak and placed it in his trunk. He spent the
remainder of the trip recollecting the first-year curriculum and bribing Valeriana with treats
so that she would willingly return to her cage without a fuss. He reassured her several times
that he would let her back out as soon as he could enter the dormitory of the house he got
sorted into.

The train arrived in Hogsmeade station late into the afternoon. The sky had long become dark
outside the window, the silhouettes of trees rushing past. As the train pulled into Hogsmeade,
the steam from the train and the light pollution from the streetlamps fogged up the sky,
blocking out the stars which Severus knew could be seen clearly from Hogwarts. The train
slowed to a crawl and finally stopped.

As the noise of children exiting the train began to resonate from the other side of the
compartment’s door, Severus gathered his things. He slung his messenger bag over his
shoulder, but he had to leave his trunk and Valeriana in her cage behind for the house elves to
unload. Of course, he didn’t leave either without several locking charms; luggage and pets
would be taken to the school separately from the students, but Severus wouldn’t bet on
people’s possessions never being tampered with during that time. With his luck, his trunk
would end up on the other side of the castle.

Taking a deep breath, Severus opened the door and entered the stream of students as they
walked down the train’s corridor. They rushed around him, forcing him to dodge a bony
elbow or two and much careless shoving. Stumbling down the steps on legs numb from
sitting for too long, the wizard joined the crowd of first-years awaiting instruction on the dark
platform. Severus immediately missed his cloak. The air had chilled after the sun set, and the
night’s breeze tugged the warmth from the cloth of his uniform.
 Off in the distance and growing steadily closer was a lamp shining in the dark. The flickering
flame trapped in its metal cage was held in the hand of a familiar man. Hagrid was several
years younger than when Severus had last seen him, yet he looked so unchanged. His facial
hair was certainly still just as bushy, and his coat and boots were as unclean as ever. Severus
had to turn away, nostalgia threatening to choke him and bring tears to his eyes.

“Firs’-years!” The half-giant bellowed. “Firs’-years! Firs’-years over this way!”

Severus allowed himself to fall behind in the group, knowing he wouldn’t lose track of
Hagrid, who stood many heads taller than even the seventh-year students. Around him, the
children gazed at their surroundings in awe, shuffling and jostling to peer around each other
with wide eyes and gaping mouths.

“Firs’-years, mind yer step! C’mon, follow me. You’ll get yer firs’ sighting of Hogwarts in
just a second,” Hagrid called over his shoulder, “jus’ stunning it is…”

As the castle came into sight, the students seemed to collectively gasp. Severus grudgingly
acknowledged that the castle still had its charm, even after the countless years Severus had
spent in its halls. The ground underfoot changed to rocks and pebbles, and Hagrid called out,
“No more than four to a boat!”

Beyond the fleet of little boats sitting in a row on the shore, the lake blocked their way to the
castle entrance. In the dark of night the water appeared dark and foreboding. The only fear
Severus had, however, was that he’d be stuck in a cramped, tippy excuse for a boat with a
group of dunderheads.

Chapter End Notes

Next up is the sorting!

Unfortunately, my next update will probably be delayed. I am going on a trip around the
Thanksgiving holiday to visit my grandparents, and I probably won't have access to
WiFi until I get back (because my grandparents are technologically disconnected).
Anyways, happy holidays to everyone for whatever they celebrate :)
 Boats and Benign Intervention (Feat. The Giant Squid)
Chapter Summary

Here's a chapter prompted by the comments. What will happen to Snape in the boat?
Read and find out!

Chapter Notes

Please read end note

See the end of the chapter for more notes

If only he could have just apparated to the castle. But, unfortunately, eleven-year-olds were
not supposed to know how or be able to apparate and disapparate. Additionally, now that
Severus was on the grounds of Hogwarts, any underage Apparition he performed would be
tracked by the Ministry via the Trace.

So inconvenient, Severus grumbled mentally.

The boat rocked worryingly as Severus climbed aboard. The ageing, creaky wood produced
no confidence in his mind. This felt like a bad idea. He turned around to take a seat, saw a
flash of red, and then he knew this was, in fact, an awful idea. Two children were already
seated on the other end of the boat. His black eyes met green.

“Hello,” a meek voice said, cutting into his thoughts and drawing his eyes away to a
repulsive pair of huge buck teeth. The teeth belonged to an equally unpleasant boy, who was
looking increasingly queasy as the boat continued to rock on the surface of the water. “I’m
Peter Pettigrew.”

“I’m Bertram Aubrey,” said a dark-haired boy seated diagonally from Pettigrew.

“Nice to meet you both,” a high-pitched voice responded. “I’m Lily Evans.”

Green eyes turned back to him. Severus flinched. “You’re Severus, right? From Cokeworth
Primary?”

He’d spent so long this time around trying to avoid encountering her and Petunia, yet here he
was, trapped in a boat with her. Even worse, the boat was now magically moving away from
shore, so it was too late for him to get out and find another one. Severus took a deep breath
and allowed his gaze to take her all in. Her familiar bright red hair and green eyes were
almost too much to bear. Yet, at the same time, he found something wrong with this picture.
Her hair fell a few centimetres past her shoulders, but not in the soft waves he remembered
her having at this age. Red strands were tangled and knotted, sticking out in frizzy tufts. Her
bright emerald eyes hid an unknown darkness. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap,
knuckles turning white from her grip and the cold. As Severus stared into the face of a
nervous little girl, who appeared to be nothing more and nothing less, he found himself
startlingly underwhelmed.

What happened to the perfect, beautiful witch he spent years infatuated with? Where was the
strong, intelligent woman whose death he’d spent his life atoning for? This wasn’t the Lily
Evans he remembered.

“Yes, Evans,” he greeted in a polite but distant way. “I didn’t know you were a witch.” An
outright lie, but she wouldn’t know that.

“Yes,” she said, shuffling her feet nervously. “I got a letter over the summer. It was quite
shocking. I-I didn’t expect to see you here, though. Are you a Muggle-born too?”

“My mother’s a witch, so I’m considered a half-blood,” he stated awkwardly.

“How’s your mother doing? I heard she was ill.”

Severus didn’t know how to respond, nor did he want to linger on the topic. “She’s fine.”

Evans opened her mouth to speak again, but then closed it as she peered around him in
confusion. Severus stared at her, baffled at what she could be looking at in the pitch-black
darkness.

“Do… Do you know those boys?” She suddenly asked.

What boys? Severus wondered, glancing back.

In the boat trailing behind their own sat Black, Potter, and Lupin. Sitting, however, was a
relative term, as all three boys seemed to be sitting as little as possible. Black was halfway to
his feet, waving his arms in the air like the attention-seeking brat he was. Potter was pointing
rudely, and Lupin appeared to be shouting something, but his voice was carried away by the
chilly wind.

Severus cursed under his breath. Even now they harass me! Must they make me miserable
every minute of every day of my time here at Hogwarts? Why me?!

“No,” Severus hurriedly told Evans. “I don’t know them. I’ve never seen them before.”

A large splash could be heard as Potter’s attempt to stand on the small water vessel caused
the boat to tip and throw the boys into the lake. Evans gasped and Pettigrew mumbled in
what could have been concern.
 “Do you think they’re alright?” Aubrey asked.

“They’re fine,” Severus said with no inflection in his voice. “The Giant Squid can deal with
them.”

Tentacles began to rise up out of the surface of the lake. The boys all screamed as they were
fished out of the water. Severus felt slightly better as he heard the sounds of their terror.

Chapter End Notes

Sorry for the late update. Unfortunately, the next update will be even further delayed.
I, and many other members of my family got sick over thanksgiving (thanks
conservative grandparents who refuse to get vaccinated! Especially you Uncle ****,
who knew you had Covid and decided to come anyway). So, I and at least four other
people now have Covid. I am writing this with a fever, so please excuse any errors.
Anyways, there will be a delay in posting chapters until I am feeling better.
 Four Houses and One Sorting Hat
Chapter Summary

The long awaited Sorting!

Chapter Notes

Hello! I am finally back from hiatus...

Thank you for waiting. You have all been so patient and kind with your comments. I
greatly appreciate your support.
I am planning on updating every other week again, starting this week, and I'll see how
that goes.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

"Snape, Severus." McGonagall's stern voice rang through the Great Hall.

Severus walked fearfully to the stool. Finding it unreasonably tall, the small boy had to climb
onto it with little grace. As the crowd of students watched, Professor McGonagall set the hat
on his head. It slipped down to cover his eyes, obscuring his vision of the Great Hall.

"A time-traveller. How interesting…" An unseen voice spoke with genuine enthusiasm,
causing Severus to scowl.

"Your mind is truly impressive," the hat said. "I have met many students with various degrees
of experience in Occlumency, but none as naturally skilled or advanced as yourself.
Although, you do have prior experience and knowledge of it, don’t you. Ah, but with such a
love for knowledge you’d do well in Ravenclaw. However, with ambition, cunning, and such
self-preservation as you have, you truly belong in—"

"—SLYTHERIN!" The hat announced, its voice abruptly gone from his mind.

Severus opened his eyes, seeing the Great Hall once more. Hundreds of candles floated above
the tables of the four houses. The enchanted ceiling gave him a breathtaking view of the night
sky.

Professor McGonagall lifted the hat from his head with a deep frown on her face. Severus
paid her no mind, slid carefully off the stool, and walked over to the Slytherin table. The
students sitting there applauded, even if none showed the slightest hint of excitement for his
 sorting into their house. Severus found a vacant spot at the end of the table and sat down.

Severus was a Slytherin. While he might have some of the traits held in high esteem by the
other houses, Slythering fit him best in both this life and the last. Hopefully, this time around
he would have a better experience in his Hogwarts house. The boy was—to his own surprise
—hopeful. Differing from before, he understood pureblood customs and culture. He looked
down the long table crowded with older students. A number of their expressions made it clear
that they recognized his surname wasn’t of pureblood origin.

The Sorting finished and, after a few nonsense words from Dumbledore, the tables were
suddenly laden with food. The tables groaned under the weight of so many dishes. The aroma
rising from the spread of food was mouthwatering, absolutely deserving of being called a
feast. As dinner progressed, Severus continuously felt people's stares burning into him.
However, no one initiated conversation, so the boy kept to himself and ate his meal in
silence. Why did it seem that he was receiving so much attention in this life? He wasn’t even
the only child with a Muggle surname to have been sorted into Slytherin this year…

The rice balanced on his silver fork disappeared, along with the fork itself and all the plates.
When the desserts appeared, Severus felt another pair of eyes staring at him. This time he had
the courage to look up, and Severus immediately recognized the blond-haired boy with blue
eyes watching him. He was seated at his right, on the opposite side of the table. The boy
smiled charmingly at him. Despite having known him in the future, as a Death Eater
kneeling, disgraced, at Voldemort's feet, Severus couldn't stop the blush that developed on his
cheeks.

"Hello," the wizard addressed him.

Severus could only nod a response in his flustered state. If he had currently been chewing
food, he would have choked. At that moment, Dumbledore rose from his throne-like chair
and gave a speech. Severus didn't bother to listen, focused on consuming a slice of pie.

As everyone finished their dessert, Headmaster Dumbledore got to his feet again and started
to give a much more rational speech about the upcoming deadlines and announcements. After
a horrific singing of the school song, Dumbledore wished those present a good night.
Students and staff resumed talking or began to exit the Great Hall. A Prefect began leading
the way to the Slytherin dormitories. Severus had several years' memories of traversing the
levels of Hogwarts' dungeons. Despite this, he almost walked in the direction of the living
quarters he had as a professor, stopped himself, and then succeeded in getting lost in the
labyrinth of staircases and dimly lit corridors. The boy sighed in disbelief.

"Hello there, little snake."

Chapter End Notes

While I considered putting Severus in a different house, I felt that his main motivations
and character traits were still so fitting to Slytherin that I couldn't truly imagine him
anywhere else. Plus, I have lots of ideas for how his second time experiencing his
Hogwarts years as a Slytherin will go!
 A Snake Meets A Serpent
Chapter Summary

An encounter between Slytherins!

Chapter Notes

It has been asked several times what Severus is doing about his wand. It was mentioned
back in Chapter Twenty-Nine that he would be using Eileen’s wand for his first year. I
did not feel it was realistic for Severus to become a master of wandlore in just a few
months, so this is research that is going to take him a while and his wandcraft won't be
successful until his magical core is a bit bigger.
If anything else needs to be clarified, just let me know.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

"Hello there, little snake."

Startled, Severus peered up from behind a curtain of black tresses. The blond-haired boy was
at the end of the hall and advancing toward him. Little snake? Was he serious? Mildly
insulted, Severus glared at the older wizard. Evidently, Severus wasn't as intimidating in his
younger years, because the boy just smirked at him.

“What are you doing here?” The blond asked knowingly. “Lost?”

Unable to come up with a reasonable excuse on the spot, Severus looked down at his shoes
and allowed his hair to cover his face. For seven years, Severus had roamed Hogwarts’ halls
as a student, and for almost two decades he’d stalked the passageways as one of the school’s
most feared and hated professor. Yet here he was, lost. How pathetic!

An unwelcome hand touched his cheek, pulling him away from his self-loathing. The hand,
attached to an annoying, smug-faced Slytherin, slowly pushed a lock of his hair behind his
ear. Severus gazed up with flaming cheeks and fiery scowl. Who did this boy think he was?!
Dark eyes glared with more disgust than one would ever expect of a child of eleven years. As
if sensing the increasing chance of losing his fingers, the taller student stepped back out of
reach, though his smirk stretched ever wider. Well, Severus recalled, he always was a
psychopath, even before Voldemort got to him.

“Follow me. I'll get you to the Slytherin dorms before the rest of the first-years.” Quite
belatedly, the boy introduced himself as Evan Rosier. The information was trivial. The time-
traveller had already identified him at first sight, though his appearance left little to be
recognized by the time traveller.

Severus scoffed a bit internally. Puberty will really hit him hard, he thought scathingly. The
loss of his light blond hair had been one of the less visible changes over the years, darkening
over the years into a deep brown colour that even hours out in the sun would be unable to
lighten—if the boy ever went outside, that is. The most notable differences was the lack of
pasty pale skin and dark circles under his eyes. And the Dark Mark missing from his forearm,
of course.

He stepped closer to Severus, daring to place his hand on the younger wizard's back. Severus
bristled angrily but ended up tolerating the behaviour, desperate to retire to the shared privacy
of his new dorm room. The pair walked down the halls mutely until the boy spoke.

“Snape isn't a pureblood name.” It was vocalised as a statement in an indifferent tone.

Severus knew the boy’s true feelings were anything but indifferent.

“I'm not a pureblood. I'm a half-blood,” Severus replied, dismissively.

“A half-blood Slytherin.” Rosier looked amused. His arm wrapped around Severus' upper
back. “I always wanted a pet, and you are cute enough for me.”

Severus felt his insides boil with rage. “Get away from me!” He hissed, yanking himself out
of the blond's hold and marching in the opposite direction.

Rosier's blue eyes widened at Severus' reaction. “Hey! Come on, I was only joking.” He
easily caught up to him, his legs capable of longer strides. Severus walked faster. “I'm sorry.
Seriously, it was a joke.”

“I don't care. Don't say senseless things,” Severus retorted sharply. He halted, scowling at the
boy who seemed slightly cowed. Unfortunately, the dark-eyed boy still had no idea where he
was or the direction of the Slytherin dormitories.

“I am not cute, and I am not a pet. If you call me such things again, you will regret it,”
Severus threatened. “My name is Severus Snape. You shall refer to me as such.”

Severus knew it was crucial that he set boundaries now. An older Slything student taking a
“pet,” or a student in a younger year or of supposedly less pure blood, under their wing was
an uncommon, but not unseen, practice in Slytherin House. Severus had once been in this
position himself, under the purview of Avery and Mulciber. He would do most of their school
assignments for them in return for a few sickles in order to afford new parchment and quills.
He’d often be put into precarious positions, forced to lie on their behalf to avoid the
Pureblood heirs getting into trouble with professors. It was not a situation that Severus
planned on allowing to happen again, and he would make sure Rosier knew not to bother
him.

Rosier quickly apologised, and Severus grudgingly acknowledged it with a huff. The older
 boy smirked, charming and malicious, looking far too much like the powerful, insane wizard
Severus knew he’d grow up to be. Even while angry at the other boy, blood rushed to his
cheeks at the familiar sight of it. “If you are done, I would like to reach the dorm before the
sun rises.”

Upon hearing the boy's tone, Rosier snickered mirthfully. The older student led the way
through the castle with a confident nonchalance, as if he personally owned Hogwarts. While
they walked, Severus received a hasty summary from Rosier concerning the information the
Slytherin Prefect was telling the first year students.

“Our emblem is the serpent, an animal that symbolises ambition, intelligence, and cunning.
The two house colours are green and silver. The location of the entrance to the common room
is one of the school's best-kept secrets. The door is concealed, almost indistinguishable from
the other walls of the dungeons. The password changes every week. Currently, the password
is Basilisk. Don’t forget, or you’ll be locked out.”

Chapter End Notes

The blond boy here is Even Rosier! Some depictions of him have darker hair, but the
first one I saw had blond hair, so my headcanon is that he's just one of those people
whose hair changes over time as he ages (like myself! I used to have really dark hair but
now it's almost dirty blonde!).
Its been difficult figuring out who attended Hogwarts during and around the same time
as Snape, but the Wiki has been a real lifesaver.
 (Re)Meeting Lucius Malfoy
Chapter Summary

Lucius Malfoy makes an appearance, summoned by the repitition of his name in the
comment section.

Chapter Notes

Wow, Lucius was hard to write; I hope I did him justice. The conversation is a bit stilted,
but these boys are awkward, so oh well...

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The Slytherin common room was awash with a green-tinted glow. Partially underneath the
Great Lake, several bare stretches of stone wall were replaced by charmed glass windows.
The windows viewed the depths of the lake, revealing strands of plants and the dark outlines
of fish shifting in the murky water outside. Moving portraits of Salazar Slytherin and woven
tapestries of snakes adorned the walls. Tables of dark, polished wood and plush sofas
furnished the large room. Multiple fireplaces provided warmth in the otherwise chilly
dungeons. The room was not quite welcoming, despite its veneer of comfort.

The Prefects had dismissed the first-years and most had wandered off to find their rooms.
Rosier followed behind them, apparently having grown bored for the moment with leading
around a first-year. Severus lingered in the common room, overcome by nostalgia. The Giant
Squid swam, lazy and docile, past the window.

"You’d best be off to bed. It would not do for you to shame your house tomorrow by being
late for breakfast," an older voice interrupted his thoughts.

Severus flinched, not having heard anyone approach. He looked up to see a recognizable
wizard with platinum blond hair and icy azure eyes. Lucius Malfoy was a tall and handsome
youth, but a cold aura encompassed him, adding to his imposing and aloof character.

"Good evening," Severus greeted politely. He managed to avoid stuttering as scrutinising

eyes pinned him in place. "I was just on my way to track down my dorm room. However, the
squid captured my attention."

More than anything at that moment, Severus hoped to leave a good impression on Lucius. He
had been one of Severus’ closest friends. Despite being the pureblood Malfoy heir, he
disregarded Severus' lower status and cutting demeanour. The wizard had guarded him
against older students and remained a resourceful ally after Hogwarts. They protected each
other during their years as Death Eaters under the Dark Lord's control. Lucius named Severus
the godfather of his son, Draco, who Severus had taught and protected to his best ability.

However, in the past, establishing rapport had taken too long. In the preceding timeline,
Severus had discovered too late that his grandparents had been interested in meeting him. He
had learned of it years later, when Lucius had deemed it right to tell him. Lucius Malfoy had
been instructed to keep tabs on him and report back to the Prince family. Learning that their
descendant was a surly, cynical, and unsightly child, their interest faded. Severus hoped he
would now make a better impression. He wondered whether this time around his
grandparents would deem it right to contact him. But did he actually want them to?

The blond cleared his throat, jolting the diminutive boy from his reverie. Severus couldn't
recall just what instigated their friendship, feeling the differences between them more starkly
than ever. The tall pureblood stood proudly in his expensive robes and looked down his nose
at the visibly poor first-year student. Their circumstances were vastly different. The boys
themselves were complete opposites.

“You appear to be tired. Off to bed with you,” Malfoy persuaded.

His long, thin fingers wrapped around Severus’ bony arm like a vice. The Prefect frowned,
noticing that his fingers touched together when completely encircling the younger boy's
upper arm. The first-year was far too skinny. Loosening his grip, Malfoy gently pushed
Severus in the direction of the corridor that led to the boy's dorms. The black-haired boy
stumbled slightly, finally realising his exhaustion. He stifled a yawn.

“I am Lucius Malfoy, heir to the Noble and Ancient House of Malfoy. I am a Slytherin
Prefect, as well. As a new student here at Hogwarts, you can come to me for help.”

“Thank you. My name is Severus Snape.” The physically older wizard's pale blue eyes
blinked once in surprise at the name. Severus had wondered how soon his grandparents
would tell Lucius to keep an eye on him, but it appeared he’d been expected from the start.

“A pleasure to meet you, Snape,” Lucius said. He appeared more or less honest, to Severus'
frustration. The blond man always had been so difficult to read.

“Please,” the other wizard responded, “call me Severus. Have a good night.”

"Sleep well," the Prefect told him, “tomorrow will be a busy day.”

The small, black-haired boy nodded. “I will. Thank you.”

In the Slytherin dormitories, rooms were shared with three people to a room in first, second,
and third year. Then, in fourth, fifth, and sixth year it was two per room. Seventh years got
their own dorm rooms, and there were also suites allocated to the Prefects.

Severus went to the room that was his in the original timeline. The room was spacious and
 luxurious, befitting of the pureblood members of Slytherin. The furniture and the sleeping
forms of his dormmates were illuminated in the green light of the lake. The shadowy shapes
of small fish flickered on the other side of the charmed windows. With walls of plain stone
bricks and a floor of the same, the room should have seemed quite depressing. However, the
mahogany bedside tables and large canopy beds with dark green curtains did not allow for
this. Along with the soft rugs underfoot and the student's trunks, the room felt pleasant.

Severus' trunk, which used to be his mother's trunk during her school years, was already at
the foot of a bed. The bed was on the left side of the room, furthest from the door and closest
to the window. He would have a great view of the lake if he left the bed curtains open.
Currently, the opaque green fabric was bound to each of the bedposts with perfectly tied
black bows. He approached the bed, tentatively caressing the green covers; they were very
soft. The high quality of the carved bed frame was obvious, the wooden shapes of serpents
slithering across it in patterns. The canopy bed was quite large, almost an unreasonable size
for one child. In Severus' case, there was a comical amount of room left on the mattress by
his diminutive form. He could lie with his arms and legs sprawled out like those of a starfish,
and there would still be a whole nother half of the bed.

Severus pulled his mother’s wand, currently his wand, out of its holster on his arm. He gently
tapped the tip of the wand against the headboard. Severus felt as a tendril of magic reached
out to meet his own, heralding the appearance of his initials on the headboard. Three letters
were now carved into the wood: an S, a T, and another S intertwined together in elegant
cursive. He spelled one side of the curtains shut, keeping his view of the lake, and opened his
trunk to find clothes comfortable enough to sleep in.

Chapter End Notes

There might be a two-week delay for the next update. I have to move most of my
computer files to a flash drive before I do more creative writing because I am running
out of memory space on my computer, but I don't know when I will be able to get
around to it. Anouncement and apologies in advance! Anyways, here is over 1,100
words to hopefully tide you over for a little while.
 Breakfast in the Great Hall
Chapter Summary

Severus meets people... and makes friends? Maybe?

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The Prefects knocked on the door early in the morning, leaving enough time for the first-year
students to dress for breakfast. The morning routine in the boy’s dormitory was quite
awkward, as neither Severus nor his dormmates were used to sharing a bathroom. His two
roommates were Augustus Rookwood and Rabastan Lestrange. Rabastan's older brother,
Rodolphus, had graduated two years prior to his sibling attending Hogwarts. Bellatrix Black
—Bellatrix Lestrange—had graduated the same year as Rodolphus, and the two were
arranged to be married.

Severus was the first in his dorm to finish getting ready. He packed up all of his books into
his messenger bag, making use of both expansion and feather-light charms. Noticing that the
other boys weren’t even dressed yet, Severus didn't bother to wait for them before walking
out to the common room. He spotted Lucius Malfoy's long, golden locks and went over to
wish him a good morning. He got a peculiar look in return, as well as a murmured greeting.

It was a novel experience to walk into the Great Hall for the first time as a Slytherin and yet
vaguely remember already doing so, although there were many differences this time around.
This time, Severus wore a uniform of good quality, had a clean appearance, and knew how to
act in order to not make unnecessary enemies.

“Severus, over here!” Evan Rosier waved him over, motioning to an unoccupied seat next to
him.

Severus' face reddened when he realised several Slytherins had peered over to see whom the
boy was yelling to. A couple of older students watched him speculatively, and he thought
Lucius Malfoy glanced over at him as well. Severus debated for a second, recalling the
physically older boy’s behaviour, before he tentatively walked over to the table and sat down
in the empty seat. Rosier appeared smug for a second before quickly schooling his face into
an expression of haughty disinterest toward his surroundings.

As Severus reached for a plate, the half-blood glanced up at the Gryffindor table. Sirius
Black, James Potter, and Remus Lupin were sitting together. It seemed they had already
formed a strong group but had not yet befriended their roommate, Peter Pettigrew. Pettigrew,
still a rat-faced child, sat alone at the end of the red and gold table.
 “Good morning, Rosier,” Severus greeted amiably.

“Aww, Severus, call me Evan.”

Severus froze with his hand holding the serving spoon for the yogurt. Debating how to
respond, he finally answered with only a slight delay: “I would not be so bold as to refer you
to so familiarly.”

The pureblood wizard scowled slightly, then grabbed the plate Severus held and scooped a
generous amount of eggs on it before he returned it. "You should eat more; you're tiny."
Severus was now the one scowling. Rosier smiled back, apparently pleased despite Severus’
decline of his overtures. The older boy didn't think Severus could look any less intimidating.
Snatching a slice of toast off a nearby platter, Severus buttered it and took a bite. “I eat fine.”

That was a blatant lie. Truthfully, Severus had grown used to going hungry, as there was
never a lot of food in the Snape house. Eileen only usually bothered to cook dinner—and in
his first life barely that—which was always made with the least ingredients possible and, if it
was soup or stew, diluted with extra water. Unsurprisingly, Severus' body was quite
malnourished and small for his age.

Rosier thankfully changed the subject. “Allow me to introduce you to one of my friends,” he
said, motioning across the table. “This is Corban Yaxley.”

The serious boy sitting opposite from them nodded politely to Severus. His neatly trimmed
blond hair bobbed along with the movement. He appeared tall and lanky despite sitting down,
but his posture was that of a pureblood. Corban Yaxley was a fifth-year student, while Evan
Rosier was a third-year. Why either cared to sit with Severus, who was only a first-year, the
black-haired boy didn't know.

Moments later, Slughorn passed out the timetables. Rosier looked over at Severus’ timetable
and said that having Transfiguration with the Gryffindors as his first class was very unlucky.
In fact, most of his classes seemed to be with the Gryffindors. Yaxley voiced his agreement,
explaining the house rivalries to Severus though the wizard paid him little mind. The time-
traveller was already aware, of course, of the tensions between Slytherin and Gryffindor.
Severus discussed it with Yaxley anyway, not wanting to be rude. Rosier mistook his
expression for worry and gave him a reassuring grin.

“I bet you'll do well enough to show up those idiotic Gryffindors. The first week or so is
mostly just theory, but if you ask valid questions, Professor McGonagall will award you
points. I'm sure you will be one of the best in the class,” he added.

The honest sentiment of support and trust gave Severus a rush of warmth. The wizard's pale
cheeks became a fetching shade of pink, “Ah, yes, of course.”

Chapter End Notes

Sorry for the delay posting new chapters. Unfortunatetly, it will be a while before I will
have the time to write and post the next chapters. It could take anywhere from two
weeks to a month, since I am reworking my outline and am very busy with life right
now. I apologize ahead of time, and I promise that when I do update again it will be a
double update as a thank you for your patience :)
 Gryffindor Nuisances
Chapter Notes

You may have noticed the title of this work has been changed :)
Thanks for this improvement goes to E_S_Fisher
Thank you for reading!

Severus finished his breakfast about ten minutes later, consuming as much of the food on his
plate as he could. He slipped an apple into his bag to eat for a snack later, though he already
knew the location of the kitchens. He said a brief goodbye to Yaxley and Rosier as he
excused himself from the table. They largely ignored him, too busy arguing over professional
Quidditch teams to do more than wave at his departing figure. Severus exited the Great Hall
hurriedly. Unfortunately, with his eyes focused down at his schedule he failed to see a person
in the hallway in front of him and proceeded to bump into one of the other students. Severus
was both shorter and a lesser weight than the other person; the collision resulted in him
falling back onto his bum. A muffled yelp escaped his throat. Severus looked up through a
curtain of glossy black hair. There was not one person hovering over him, but two. Black and
Potter stood watching, amusement visible in their eyes and suppressed smiles on their faces.

Severus scowled, ears burning red, as he remembered many similar but much less pleasant
memories. To his surprise—he reminded himself that these versions of the duo were different
from the ones he knew—Potter held out a hand. He considered reaching out to take it,
however, he recalled the young Marauders’ behaviour toward him on the train. Instead, he
planted both his hands on the ground and pushed himself to his feet. Despite Severus’ refusal
to take his hand, Potter offered him a lop-sided grin. Cheeks flushed pink with blood, Severus
occupied himself with straightening out his robes and brushing off imaginary dust. Seeing a
piece of parchment on the floor by his feet, he bent down to get it. Black moved quicker,
snatching up the timetable and reading its contents before Severus processed what he was
doing.

“Transfiguration with us, huh?” Sirius commented. His conspiratorial grin worried Severus
greatly. “We can walk to class together.”

Let’s not, Severus replied internally. Mentally he chanted, Go away, go away, go away.

“Excuse me.” Severus spoke up, feigning unfamiliarity. “But who are you?”

“Forgive me, I haven't even introduced myself,” Sirius said energetically. “I am Sirius Black,
the Heir of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.”

He gestured to Potter, “this is James Potter, Heir to the Most Ancient and Most Noble House
of Potter.”

The dark-haired wizard eyed them warily in response to their full titles. “My name is Severus
Snape.”

Heir to nothing of the House of Nothing, he thought bitterly.

“I’m sorry for running into you. I wasn’t looking where I was going,” Potter apologised,
taking the blame.

“It’s my fault, really,” Black added. “I was telling him I’d put frog spawn in his bed if he took
my hairbrush again. Why don’t I carry your bag to make it up to you?”

Without waiting for a response, Black grabbed Severus’ bookbag and slung it over his
shoulder. Potter began to lead the way to the Transfiguration classroom.

“There is no need for you to carry my bag, Black,” Severus protested. He tried to sound stern
as he trailed through the corridor after the pureblood wizard.

Black shrugged his shoulders and replied with a smirk over his shoulder, “Call me Sirius.
And there is no need for you to carry it when I am more than willing to, Severus.”

Severus gawked at the familiarity. The audacity! He reached for the bag, unwilling to let this
farce continue, but the other black-haired boy kept it out of his reach with ease.
Unfortunately, childhood malnutrition did not aid in increasing height, and the Black Heir
was almost as tall as the Potter Heir, who himself was unreasonably tall and would only get
taller with age. Luckily, Severus knew he would sprout like a weed in a few years, and one
day he and Black would see eye-to-eye, though Potter would continue to tower over him
infuriatingly. Severus glanced over at Potter for even the slightest change of aid. However,
the Potter heir just offered a guileless smile, seeing no problem in the situation at all. Sending
him a glare, Severus continued his weakening attempts to retrieve the bag back from Black
before simply wallowing in self-pity.

“Just accept that we aren’t going to let you carry your bag,” Potter said. The boy placed a
hand on the small of his back, leading Severus in the direction of the Transfiguration
classroom. The wizard realised his bookbag was not the true hostage in this situation—he
was! What on earth did these Gryffindors want from him?

With Severus busy over-thinking, the trio soon arrived at the door of their first class. He was
slightly surprised the two boys knew where the classroom was. But then, was it really
surprising that the two troublemakers would have explored the castle when they should have
been in their dorm rooms? What had they been up to? The time-traveller narrowed his dark
eyes at Black, as threatening as a kneazle kitten, and opened his mouth to protest yet again.
However, he was interrupted.

“Severus? Severus Snape?”

A loud voice called from further down the quickly emptying hallway. Severus turned around,
forgetting all about his planned argument against Sirius’ audacity. The witch approached him
quickly, her hair billowing out behind her, the orange-red locks clashing with the scarlet-red
of her Gryffindor uniform.

“Evans,” he greeted.

“This is quite exciting, isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I can barely believe it! It was
such a shock when I got my Hogwarts’ letter, and now I’m about to learn real magic!”

She looked at him expectantly, but Severus didn’t know how to respond nor did he want to
linger on the topic. Thankfully Black and Potter, who’d stood nearby listening in on the
conversation, suddenly appeared by his side. Black placed a hand on his shoulder while
Potter smiled charmingly at Evans. Her face immediately flushed as red as her hair when she
looked at him.

Childhood romance sure starts early, huh, Severus thought to himself. An uncomfortable,
sinking feeling in his stomach made itself known.

“Why don’t you introduce us to the lovely lady, Severus?” Black suggested, smirking. “How
do you two know each other?”

“Um, sure,” Severus stuttered, strongly wishing to leave. “This is Lily Evans. She lives in the
same town as me.”

“Cokeworth,” Evans supplied.

“Cokeworth?” James asked curiously.

“An old industrial town,” Severus explained evasively. “It’s certainly not a place people go
on vacation, to say the least.”

“It's not that bad,” Evans insisted, only to reiterate her statement when Severus shot her a
questioning look. “Well, it's pleasant enough where I live, anyway.”

“Oh, I see,” Black said quietly, looking at Severus in a different way. Disgust? Pity?

“What?” The black-haired wizard questioned bitterly, eyebrows expressing his annoyance.

Black didn’t enlighten him, however, brushing off his inquiry with a shrug. “Nothing.
Anyways, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Evans. I’m Sirius Black. James and I are in the same
house as you.”

“H-hello,” the witch greeted with a shy smile. Her eyes kept looking over at Potter. Clearly,
she already had a crush, and if Severus’ previous life was anything to go by the feelings were
definitely returned by the messy-haired Gryffindor boy

“It seems the class is about to start,” Potter announced, watching a crowd of people stream
into a nearby classroom.
 Matches to Needles
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

As a group of Slytherins walked past, Severus stole his bag back from Black and headed
toward the doorway.

“Will you sit with me, Severus?” Evans quickly inquired as she trailed after him and the other
two boys.

The question surprised Severus. Why would Evans want to be around him? He understood
that he was the only wizard she knew from outside Hogwarts, but even in Muggle school
they hadn’t interacted much, especially since he had never called her a witch after watching
her display magic on the playground swings. She already knew Pettigrew and Aubrey from
the boat trip across the lake, and in his last life she hadn’t spoken to him for weeks after they
were sorted into separate houses. Why did she want to sit with him now? He had the
suspicion that Evans just wanted to be around Potter, who seemed unfortunately inclined to
linger near Severus, but Severus had no intention of spending more time in his presence than
necessary.

“My apologies, but I planned to sit with my housemates. Maybe another time.” He said. He
suppressed a grimace, wishing he had stopped himself from making the offer. It was best to
avoid Evans if he didn’t want a repeat of last time.

The witch appeared crestfallen at the answer, but perked back up quickly. She mumbled a
goodbye to Potter and sat next to a girl almost identical to Alice Longbottom—not almost
identical, she is Alice Longbottom. Severus gazed around the room, overwhelmed by all the
young faces of people he once knew as adults. The two Hogwarts houses present in the room
visibly divided the classroom in half, one side wearing red and gold while the other wore
green and silver. Faster than Potter or Black could follow, Severus gracefully slipped through
groups of chatting first-year students and went over to the empty seat by Rabastan Lestrange.

“May I sit here?” He asked hesitantly, not sure what he would do if the boy turned him down.

The youngest Lestrange brother looked up from a book at the sound of Severus’ voice. He
stared at the raven-haired boy a moment before nodding in assent and giving him a small
smile. Severus set down his bag and returned his housemate’s smile. This day was going well
so far, and he hoped it would remain that way.

Everyone rushed to their seats as Minerva—Professor McGonagall, he’d have to remember

to refer to her as a figure of authority now—entered the classroom. With her greying hair
pulled back into a severe bun and her robes immaculate, she looked every bit the part of a
stern teacher. Unlike everyone else in the room, she looked like she had barely changed since
Severus had last seen her. Merlin! He could swear she was wearing the same robes when he’d
last met her for tea before his potions mishap.
“Quiet, please,” she instructed, pointing her wand at a piece of chalk which then began
writing on the chalkboard behind her. “Welcome to your first year of Transfiguration. First
and foremost, we shall go over the rules of this classroom. Transfiguration is some of the
most complex and dangerous magic you will learn in your years attending Hogwarts. Anyone
caught messing around in my class will be forced to leave and will not be welcomed back.
For the sake of safety, keep your wands pointed away from your classmates. I will not
tolerate any injuries in this class. You have been warned.”

Severus unpacked the required materials and set his bag on the floor by his feet. The chalk
wrote another set of words on the board as Professor McGonagall continued talking. “Today
you will work on transfiguring a match into a sewing needle. First practise the flick and
swish motion of your wand without saying the incantation. Then, you may begin.”

A match appeared in front of each student. Severus took out his wand, his face unknowingly
changing to a pleased look as the magic of the wand caressed his own encouragingly. Though
unable to rely on the support of his mother when it came to his magical education, at least her
wand seemed to support him. He flicked and swished it in the direction of the match.
However, he put no magic behind the movement, simply refreshing his memory and muscle
memory. Feeling assured, he then did the movement a second time with intent. He forgot to
say the incantation, having mastered most spells wordlessly during his time as a Professor,
but luckily his mistake went unnoticed. Nonetheless, the match transformed from wood into a
shiny silver needle on the first try.

Noticing the quick success when she walked past, Professor McGonagall praised his work
and gave Slytherin five points. Once she’d moved on to another student, leaving behind a
pleased Severus, he transfigured the needle back into a match. Rabastan huffed angrily next
to him. The shorter boy looked over to see Rabastan glaring at his match and waving his
wand around in frustration.

“Would you like some assistance?” Severus asked tentatively, not having anything better to
do until the class ended.

“Sure,” Rabastan grumbled. For a second, Severus hesitated on how to show the first-year
student what to do. He was so used to teaching the stirring of cauldrons and the necessary
knifework for preparing potion ingredients that he was stumped on how to show wandwork.
Severus noticed Rabastan’s frown at his hesitency. However, the boy’s frustration dissipated
as Severus finally intertwined their hands and showed him the correct motion clearly, guiding
the movement of his hand. Rabastan tried again by himself, transfiguring the match on the
third try.

“I did it!” The boy exclaimed excitedly. “Thank you for helping, you’d make a good teacher,”
Rabastan complimented.

Severus fought hard not to scoff at his words, knowing he was one of the school’s most hated
professors during his many years of teaching at Hogwarts. “I don’t know about that, but
you’re welcome anyway. I’m Severus Snape, by the way. I don’t think I got the chance to
introduce myself this morning.”
 “I’m Rabastan Lestrange. We’ll be sharing a room all year in the Slytherin dorms, so you can
call me Rabastan.” He stuck his hand out and Severus shook it firmly.

“Then you may call me Severus.”

Chapter End Notes

Here's the two chapters as promised. They are not edited, so please let me know if you
see any errors.
Here is the rest of the Summer Update Schedule:
Sunday, June 4th - Chapters 36 & 37
Sunday, June 25th - Chapter 38
Saturday, July 15th - Chapter 39
Sunday, August 13th - Chapters 40 & 41
Late August - to be determined
 Severus Vs. Social Interaction (pt. 1)
Chapter Summary

What the title says...

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Like stray dogs given scraps of food, Black and Potter followed Severus around to all of the
classes Gryffindor and Slytherin shared. In Charms, they sat in the seats on both sides of him,
matching smirks on their faces as dread sat heavy in Severus’ stomach.

“Today we will go over the basics of Charms before we start any wand waving.” Professor
Flitwick’s words, spoken from atop a stack of thick textbooks, were met with a chorus of
groans and disappointed murmurs.

“Now, now,” he added, “It’s important to go over all the rules for your safety and success, as
well as that of other students. The sooner we get this done and over with, the sooner we move
on to more enjoyable activities. I hope you all take note of—”

Severus’ attention was pulled away from the Professor by a poke from the idiot sitting on his
left. He turned to glare at Potter, but the taller boy just smiled at his friend’s cute
disgruntlement.

“What is it?” Severus hissed.

“Are you excited for Herbology?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, you were reading a book on magical plants when we met on the train, so I assumed
you liked Botany. Even if you don’t like it, Herbology is our next class.”

Dark eyes blinked, and Severus sat silently for a moment. Potter raised an eyebrow. “I do find
interest in the topic,” he finally answered, “I’m just surprised you remembered my choice of
reading material.”

Potter shrugged and grinned handsomely, pushing his glasses further up his nose as they
slipped down. “I’m looking forward to flying lessons. I’m great on a broom,” he boasted.
“Next year, I’ll be on the Gryffindor Quidditch team for sure.”

“Oh please,” Black cut in, “I’m definitely a better flyer than you.”
“We’ll see about that,” Potter declared.

He balled up a sheet of parchment and threw it at Black. Severus ignored the two as any
maturity they possessed devolved into childish behavior. He sat in his seat elegantly and took
diligent notes as the two Gryffindors threw papers and quills at each other and lost their
house ten points. Professor Flitwick kept them after class to scold them. Severus didn’t wait
up, instead heading outside.

They caught up with him halfway to the greenhouses as he walked with Rabastan. Potter
stopped beside him, but Black’s momentum caused the two to collide. The two fell to the
ground, Potter’s glasses falling off his face. The two quickly stood and brushed their robes
off to cling to what little dignity they had left.

Crunch. Potter froze at the noise of glass breaking underfoot and looked down at his broken
glasses. He lifted his foot and picked up the glasses, mouth curving downwards in a frown.

“Bloody hell,” he cursed.

“You don't have any glass in your foot, do you?” Severus asked, wincing slightly at the
thought.

“No, but my glasses are buggered,” Potter huffed. “What do I do now?”

Removing his wand from his pocket and barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Severus
stepped towards him. “You can do magic, can’t you? It’s an easy enough fix.”

Carefully, as to not cut himself on the broken glass of the lenses, Severus took the glasses and
pointed his wand at it. With a short gesture and a quietly spoken Oculus Reparo, the pieces of
glass moved into their proper place in the round metal frames. Once the cracks wholly
disappeared, Severus returned the mended eyewear to Potter for his inspection. The messy-
haired Gryffinor gazed at the good-as-new glasses in awe before putting them onto his face
and blinking as his vision returned.

“Wow,” Potter exclaimed quietly.

This time, Severus didn’t bother to stop himself from rolling his eyes at the boy’s dimwitted
actions. “You’re welcome,” he drawled sarcastically. “No need to thank me or any such polite
nonsense.”

“Thank you,” Potter stumbled over himself to say.

“That was an awesome spell!” Black declared loudly.

Severus couldn’t help but laugh as they walked toward the greenhouses, the two Gryffindors
praising him overdramatically while Rabastan chimed in every once and a while. By the time
they reached the Herbology class they had drawn quite a bit of attention. Professor Sprout,
covered in multiple layers of dirt, walked out of the first greenhouse with a small clay pot of
 dittany.

“Hello, students!” She cheerily set down the pot on a wooden stool and brushed off her
hands. “Let’s put on our gloves and get started! These plants aren’t going to repot themselves,
you know.”

Severus had splurged on dragonhide gloves—and all the potion ingredients he could afford—
when Eileen had taken him to Diagon Alley, since she had left him alone inside Slug and
Jigger’s Apothecary while she bought a cage for Valeriana at The Magical Menagerie. Potter,
however, had forgotten to bring any gloves and spent the entire class moaning and whining.
Severus had to physically restrain himself from casting a Silencio on the Gryffindor to give
his ears a break. However, he didn’t want to get in trouble on his first day of classes just
because of a Silencing Charm.

At the end of the class, despite the gloves, smudges of dirt marred Severus’ robe. Thinking
nothing of it, he shot off a quick cleaning spell. It caught the eye of the Ravenclaw girl
standing a meter away from him, who quickly inquired how he’d gotten rid of the dirt. She
appeared next to him out of nowhere, bluntly asking, “How’d you do that?”

“I used the Scouring Charm,” he explained. “The incantation for it is Scourgify.”

Before he could make his escape, he found himself surrounded by a quarter of the class, a
single figure with green on his robes surrounded by blue. He sighed regretfully, knowing he’d
be repeating himself for the next five minutes.

At least he got ten house points from Professor Sprout for his efforts, though he was almost
late to History of Magic.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter is not edited, so please let me know if you notice any errors
 Severus Vs. Social Interaction (pt. 2)
Chapter Notes

Sorry for not posting this yesterday! I did a silly and forgot to plug in my computer the
night before yesterday so the battery died, and I had to wait for it to charge and turn on
so I could post. Here is chapter 1/2 and 2/2 will be uploaded in the next ten to fifteen
minutes after HTML configuration.

The fourth class on his timetable was Potions, which Severus was initially excited to attend.
However, Severus left the Potions Classroom with smoke practically shooting out of his ears.
He’d never liked Horace Slughorn, especially when he had to work alongside him as
professors, but he’d forgotten what a condescending, disgusting, suck-up the overweight man
could be. Glaring at the Slug Club invitation in his hands, he viciously crumpled it up and
shoved it to the bottom of his bag. His current problem was his own fault really. No first-year
student could make a perfect Forgetfulness Potion on the first try, but the comfortable
familiarity had distracted Severus from hiding the extent of his knowledge and experience.
And now, Slughorn had put his mind to collecting Severus for his stupid club, which the
time-travelling wizard would rather die than be a part of.

The first time around, Lily Evans had received a Slug Club invitation a year before Severus
impressed Slughorn enough to receive one of his own. Severus had made the mistake of
going to one of Slughorn’s parties as Lily Evans’ plus one. The night had ended in
humiliation, and when he’d gotten his own invitation the year after he’d have turned it down
if Lucius hadn’t convinced him otherwise. While the parties were a good opportunity to make
connections with successful and well-known witches and wizards, the experience was not
worth it overall. The social interactions involved far too much bootlicking and one-upping for
Severus’ liking. Recalling Eileen’s diary entries and the photograph held within, clearly his
mother did not share his negative opinion of the Slug Club.

Severus checked his schedule, pleasantly surprised to see he had a free period. He turned
down the next corridor, deciding to find Valeriana so they could sit outside by the lake. As if
telepathic, the large feline sat waiting patiently for him by the entrance to the dorms, drawing
the attention of several older Slytherins. She perked up when she saw him, prancing over
with her head and tail held high, the little bell jingling on her collar. Severus knelt down to
greet her with petting and picked her up like one would hold a small child. With a kiss to the
forehead, he carried her up the staircases and down the halls to the front entrance. Thankfully,
there didn’t appear to be many other people by the lake, mostly older students studying or
playing Exploding Snap.

Finding a good spot at the base of a tree several metres away from any other people, Severus
sat down on a small blanket. Valeriana sprawled out in the sun, taking up almost half the
blanket. He pulled out Eileen’s diary and read an entry.

—The weather looked so nice today, so I went down by the lake in my new dress robes.
Honestly, I was hoping to run into Tom Riddle. I haven’t seen him in a while since he’s been
associating with the Blacks, and Druella Black is such a shrew that I don’t dare to spend time
in her presence. I just do not know what Rosier sees in her. Though,considering Rosier and
his, well, everything maybe they are meant for each other. Yes, they are both so awful they
must be meant for each other just like how I must be meant to be with Tom. He just hasn’t
realised it yet. When I went down to the lake I saw him sitting on the rocks. He looked oh so
handsome in the light of the setting sun! But he didn’t even get to see me in my new dress
because it suddenly started to rain! It was awful! The sun was shining all morning and then it
began to rain without any prior warning. My hair was ruined, and I couldn’t stand for him to
see me less than perfectly put together. I’ll have to keep working on that potion to maintain
perfect hair. I bet it will make all the other witches jealous and catch Professor Slughorn’s
attention—

Nope, that was enough of that. Severus closed the diary and shoved it back into his bag,
regretting reading such hormonal blathering. He took a deep breath and looked out at the lake
to clear his thoughts. Severus crossed his legs, fixed his posture, and closed his eyes to
meditate.

Of course, the peace didn’t last. Next time, Severus would stay in his dormitory and put up a
privacy ward. Why couldn’t children in this school respect people’s privacy?

A skinny girl with wispy reddish-brown hair and a lumpy hand-knitted scarf in an eye-
watering array of colours stood right in front of him, her hands on her hips. “You’re sitting in
my spot.”

Severus wordlessly raised an eyebrow while Valeriana rolled over lazily. “So what?”

“Leave,” she ordered.

“Why?”

She choked. “Why? Because I am the descendent of the great Cassandra Trelawney! Find a
different spot to sit, or else I’ll tell you all about your horrible future!”

“Ah,” he hummed calmly, suddenly recognizing her. Sybill Trelawney had been a Ravenclaw
in the year ahead of him, but he’d never spoken to her before they both became professors at
Hogwarts. Even as a child, she’d been a bit barmy. “I’m afraid I won't be moving. You will
have to find somewhere else to sit.”

Her face became worryingly red, an unhealthy amount of blood rushing to her face as she
screamed in frustration and stomped her foot like a toddler having a tantrum. Rudely, she
pointed her finger at him and spoke through gritted teeth. “You—You’ll die a long, painful
death. I foresee it!”
“How unfortunate,” he said emotionlessly, before pretending she didn’t exist. She gave up
and stomped away.
 Do Brits Really Talk About the Weather?
Chapter Summary

Sort of a filler chapter, but Severus makes a friend :)

Chapter Notes

Please excuse my overuse of em dashes. I know it's too many, but I promise I took some
out!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Despite their earlier bragging, Potter and Black didn’t get the chance to show off their skills
on a broom, since Madam Hooch—young and sprightly in her early thirties, her hair not yet
greying—had kept a strict eye on them during flying lessons. The same could not be said for
the first-year Slytherins, who seemed to manage to cause trouble every second Hooch’s back
was turned. Severus stood to the side with a well-mannered Rabastan and watched in horror.
If he were still a professor, Severus would have already taken several points away for the
Slytherin students’ behaviour.

“I’ll be the best flyer in our year!” Mulciber claimed, turning upside down on his broom in an
apparent wish to crack his head open.

“We’ll see about that,” Parkinson replied. “I’m going to try out for the Quidditch team when
I'm old enough.”

The two kicked off the ground competitively, with Rookwood quick to follow them into the
air. At first they hovered just a few feet off the ground, and for a moment it seemed they
might rethink their actions and land. However, they did not. While Madam Hooch was
distracted explaining how brooms could fly to a confused Muggle-born who’d gotten bonked
in the nose with his broomstick, Rookwood had somehow managed to fly off across the field.
She turned around just in time to see him smack into a stone wall. Severus winced at the thud
of the impact and the following screech of Hooch’s voice as she went off on the misbehaving
boy. Rabastan started up a dull conversation about the weather, and Severus happily followed
along as he pretended not to see or hear the commotion.

“It’s a nice day out, isn’t it?” Rabastan asked in a thin voice.

“—never in all my years teaching flying at Hogwarts!

“Yes, it is. There aren’t very many clouds today,” Severus noted.

“—of all the irresponsible things to do on a broom!

“The sky is so very blue. Even better than yesterday, I think."

“—could’ve broken a bone!”

“I hope the weather will be nice tomorrow.”

Lunch, thankfully, was uneventful. Severus enjoyed a hearty soup and a warm sausage roll.
He slipped bits of meat to Valeriana, who lounged atop his feet under the table. Rabastan
stuck by his side throughout the meal and did not comment on the presence of an animal at
the midday meal. They ate in comfortable silence, broken only by the crunching of crisps and
the obnoxious laughter of the Gryffindor table across the room.

On their way through the halls, the young wizards witnessed as Nott tripped over a cat on his
way to his next class. Catching his balance, the Slytherin boy cursed verbally at the feline. To
Rabastan’s shock and Severus’ expectation, the dark grey tabby transformed into Professor
McGonagall.

“Professor McGonagall, I—”

“You should watch where you’re walking, young man. I do not want to hear a repeat of such
foul language again these hallways!”

“There’s a pleasant breeze outside today,” Severus said to Rabastan.

“I think I could use some fresh air,” he replied.

Later on, in the library, the two Slytherins pretended not to know Rookwood as they sat and
studied quietly at their table. Looking up from his parchment, Severus watched as the
unfortunate boy dropped a stack of Quidditch books right in view of a young Irma Pince. The
older student, who was studying diligently, was out of her seat in a flash to tower over the
young Slytherin angrily.

“I better not catch you mistreating these books in front of me again. Do you know how old
these written works are?! I—”

“It looks quite nice out,” Rabastan hurried to say.

“Yes, look how still the lake is outside the window.”

The boys turned around to face the window as the Pince continued to tear into Rookwood.

“—rip, tear, disfigure, or in any other manner disrespect these books—”

 “Maybe we should take our materials outside and study by the lake,” Rabastan suggested.

“—why I ought to do the same to you!”

“That sounds like a great idea. In fact, it might rain tomorrow, so we should definitely go
right now,” Severus said, overhearing Pince’s threats of bodily harm.

The two first-year boys packed up their quills and ink and quickly fled the library with their
books carefully in hand. As they hauled their supplies down the nearest staircase, Severus
mentally concluded that he’d need to find a nice, quiet space to study if he wanted to get
anything done this year. Also, he concluded, perhaps Rabastan wasn’t a bad companion to
spend time with.

Chapter End Notes

Next up: Marauders, Lupin, and it's time to talk about werewolves
 Update Schedule

Hello!
I received a couple confused comments asking why only one chapter was posted yesterday
when the update schedule said there would be two. Yes, two chapters were posted yesterday,
Chapter 39 and Chapter 40. However, since Chapter 39 took the place of the old update
schedule that was already posted as the 39th chapter in this work, readers subscribed to
updates may not have received an email notification about it since it was technically already
posted before yesterday's update and was just edited with the chapter text.
For future updates: at least one more chapter will be posted this month, but after that I do not
know yet.
 Anouncement of Hiatus

Hello everyone!
As you may have noticed, I have been a bit MIA recently. I apologize for not posting or
providing an update sooner. I am writing to anounce an official hiatus. I will not be able to
write for awhile. I fell off of a horse and ended up with a broken finger, two fingers with a
bad contusion, and a fractured wrist. As you can imagine, it is very difficult to write while
wearing a cast and also painful. So, unfortunately, I will have to take a break from this fanfic
until I can feasibly type. (Typing with one hand is very slow). My apologies for the delay in
updating you all on the radio silence. Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great
holiday season!
 New Update Schedule

Hello everybody!
Thank you for all your patience and support for my hiatus as I healed from injury. I am happy
to say that I am writing again with two working hands! While on hiatus, I did some text-to-
speech writing unrelated to this story, and I am currently working on a gamer AU Harry
Potter fanfic. I am considering posting it here on AO3, so let me know if you are interested.
That is not to say I won't still be updating this fic. After not updating for so long, I have lost a
bit of my inspiration, but I will be slowly updating, starting near the end of March. Thanks
again for waiting and all your kind comments!
Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!