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Mr. and Mrs. Snape, of the last house on Spinner’s End, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t have the energy or time to be involved in such nonsense.

Mr. Snape had been a scarfer at Cokeworth Steel Works until it had closed. He was a tall, lean man with burn-scarred arms and hands, and short dark hair. Mrs. Snape was short and thin and all her clothes seemed to fade to grey no matter what color she was wearing, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time hunched over sewing machines, trying not to be noticed. The Snapes had a young son called Severus and spent little enough of their lacking energy and imagination on him, if any at all.

Mrs. Snape wanted for much, and the greatest of those wants was that no one discover her secret. She didn’t think she could bear if anyone found out about her husband. Mr. Snape was a short-tempered, hard man, but Mrs. Snape thought she could survive a few of her friends knowing that, if they didn’t also learn that he was a Muggle. She shuddered to think what any of those fine, upstanding wizards and witches would say if they learned that her husband had absolutely no magic at all. All of her marriage, she had stayed away from them, for fear of them finding out, though she loathed not to let her son mix with her friends’ children.

In the evening of the dull, grey Tuesday that our story starts, there was nothing to suggest that Mrs. Snape’s fear would come true any time soon; the world of magic she considered mundane and practiced, and the world of machine that her husband thought normal and reassuringly dull seemed like they would never meet in a way she could not prevent or control.

Mrs. Snape hummed, but very softly, as she put together plates of dinner for her husband, her son, and herself, and perhaps it was this humming, or perhaps it was the lack of work to be found in Cokeworth, or perhaps simply the stars had fallen into an unlucky alignment in the shrouded sky above, but soon enough the peaceful home she so wanted had shattered into furious yelling and the crystalline sound of breaking crockery.

And so she was distracted, and young Severus Snape was the only one who noticed the cat that seemed to leap from the darkness of the street beyond their kitchen window and settle itself comfortably onto the window ledge.

The cat was a soft and gentle brown that faded into the foggy dusk beyond the window, but its yellow eyes were keen and focused, and Severus Snape studied it with relief, hunching in his chair as his father and mother shouted beyond him. It was a rare pleasure for him to be able to think about anything beyond his dull, drab home or his dull, drab life when the furious rowing started up.

His father stormed into the living room, shouting still, and his mother followed him, and Severus knew what was going to happen there so keenly that he flinched before it did, hunching his shoulders about his ears. And it seemed that the cat flinched as well, putting its ears back and hissing as the shouting stopped and the loud slap of palm against cheek rang through the house.

Mrs. Snape came back into the room with a red mark across her face, and she didn’t look at her son as she crouched down and stared at the wall for a moment, before starting to gather up the spilled food and pieces of shattered plate. “Go to your room,” she said mildly to the peas she was pushing into a hand towel. “Your father’s in a right mood tonight,” she added to the chicken.

Severus stood up from the table, and checked the window again for the cat. He had thought he might tell his mother about it, but now she knelt so still and silently on the floor, turning such a very mild and gentle grey, that he knew he would not. And when he looked to the window, the cat had gone, disappearing back into the gloom outside.

Being a half-blood, a child with a foot in both the magical and Muggle world, Severus knew about many of the wondrous things a witch and wizard could do. But Mrs. Snape had never told him about Animagus magic, which could turn a determined witch or wizard into an animal at will, and so he thought the cat only a very curious pet one of his neighbors had recently acquired, and said nothing.

But Mrs. Snape, who rarely spoke about magic, and actually did it even less, would have recognized the intent way the cat stalked from their little brick terrace to the one next door, and so on, making its way down the street to the filthy sign that read “Spinner’s End” in dirty grey words, which the cat sat beneath neatly and promptly, curling its tail around its paws.

Across the street was a small and dark alley, smudged grey with years of smoke and dirt, but those keen yellow eyes saw neatly into the shadows, and it was watching intently as a man appeared in the alley so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes narrowed.

Few like this man had ever been seen on Spinner’s End. He was tall and lithe and handsome, with dark eyes and dark skin, and dark hair that curled faintly. He was dressed in a neat and dark suit that made him look exciting, rather than somber. Over his arm was a rich green cloak, which he swung about into the air and onto his shoulders, where it obligingly melted into a long overcoat, and turned in a darkening of color into a green that was nearly black. On a street where the people and their clothes were faded and mended and grey, the man was a lush spot of dark color, and such people in Spinner’s End rarely meant well.

His name was Tom Riddle, and with a snap of his fingers, the street light at the mouth of the alley, which had previous sat unlit and unwelcoming, flared into a warm orange glow to reveal the cat sitting across the street staring at him.

He smiled when he saw it, and murmured to himself, “I should have known.”

Confidently, Riddle strode across the street and studied the street sign, cleaning it off gently with twitch of his fingers, which still hung at his sides. “I don’t know how you read that to begin with,” he told the cat. “I can barely make it out even now.”

The cat started, and stood, and stretched itself into a beautiful woman with the same soft brown hair and keen yellow eyes, and a face lined before its time with the evidence of laughter. She wore a somber black dress, which on her was glamorous, rather than plain, and a long deeply-colored coat like Riddle’s.

“Hello, Accalia,” Riddle said, and offered her his hand.

“How did you know it was me?” Accalia Lupin demanded, but stretched her own hand out and let him shake it. “Only John and Remus have ever seen my Animagus form, and I made them both swear not to tell.”

“Not registered with the Ministry then, I take it?” Riddle asked.

“Not on your bloody life,” Lupin reassured him. “But really, Riddle, how did you do it? Stare into my eyes and read my heart as that of a man’s, or other such nonsense?”

“I was expecting Avery,” Riddle admitted slyly, “but I’ve never seen anyone, cat or human, stare at me so intently before except you.” He winked.

A lesser woman might have blushed, but Lupin only laughed, loudly and boisterously, and Riddle noted with some curiosity that it made the greyness of the street seem to lift and retreat a little, as though it couldn’t stand to be around such a happy sound.

“You’re a flirt, you are,” Lupin said, and patted Riddle’s arm. “And I’m not a bit sorry that Avery was busy, though I think I rather will be by the time our appointment is over.” And somberness seemed to fall over her like a coat she shrugged on against the cold.

“You’ve been to see the family,” Riddle said at once and he shifted, seeming to stand taller and sturdier than he had before.

“You ought to have been a Ravenclaw,” Lupin said with raised brows and an innocent widening of her yellow eyes. “You’re smart enough to have been snapped right up by the Eyrie.”

“A Slytherin’s job is more important,” Riddle said at once, with great ease, and he smiled with no bitterness at the teasing. “I’m right where I’m supposed to be, and I doubt we’re not a moment too soon.”

“Well, I’ll agree with you on both counts,” Lupin said, “and now we had best get along.” She straightened and seemed to become sturdier herself. Together, they took out their wands. Together, they went down the street in silence, the sounds on their boots on the ground echoing in the fog around them, and their coats flapping around their ankles.

The last house of Spinner’s End was lit dimly, like the other houses on the street, but it seemed greyer than the rest, and the greyness did not seem content to contain itself to the house. Riddle knocked on the door, and while he waited for a response glanced down at his cloak, the edges of which seemed to be brushed with grey dust. “Lupin,” he said very quietly, and directed her attention with a nod.

Her eyes went wide, and then they narrowed harshly as they jerked up toward the creak of the opening door. The man standing there was no greyer than he should be, and his eyes were hard. “Whatever you lot are selling we don’t bloody want any,” he snapped, the door open no more than necessary for them to hear him.

“Then it’s a good thing we aren’t selling anything,” Lupin said, low and sweet and clever, and put her foot in the doorway to keep the man closing it.

The man raked his eyes over them. “We ain’t borrowed money from nobody either,” he said after a moment.

Lupin smiled at him, rakishly, and lowered her voice, forcing the man to lean in to hear her. “It isn’t about that either, love,” she said. “But it is a bit private. Could we come in a moment, and keep it off the street?”

The man considered. Riddle flicked a glance at him, then down at the edge of his coat, which he shook neatly to make the grey fall back into the dark green. When the man finally opened the door and let them in, Riddle wanted to pay him no more attention than he might have the walls or the door, but instead restrained himself to a mild, “Thank you, sir,” that set the man’s hackles to settle.

But it didn’t matter whether the man was soothed or not, only that they had been let into the house with no magical coercion, because there in the sitting room just beyond the door was Eileen Prince, their former schoolmate, with her hands clenched around a dish towel and her face white as paper except for the high red mark on her cheek.

“No,” she said at once, and with desperation, and Riddle made his muscles go loose and relaxed as he watched her eyes. Another witch or wizard might watch her hands in case she went for her wand, but Riddle knew that one’s eyes could reveal one’s intentions long before a twitch of the fingers, or a flinch toward a pocket in a robe could betray them.

“Mrs. Snape,” he said with ease. “May we set aside pretenses? You know why we’re here.”

“You’re a year early,” she snapped, “and I know my rights. You can’t talk to him or take him or nothing without my say-so, so you might as well bugger right off!” And like a flicker in the light, subtle and quick enough to almost make Riddle question if he had seen it, her eyes shot behind them to Tobias Snape, who had lingered in the entryway.

“What’s this about then?” the man said behind them in a voice that sent chills down Riddle’s spine. It was a voice he had heard often enough before in a thousand other flats and houses, and it threatened violence, implicitly, should the speaker not be soothed and coddled and catered-to. Slowly, Riddle turned so his back was toward the wall, so he could see them both, and held his wand loosely in his hand.

Lupin, across from him, had gone a step further, and offered her back to Mrs. Snape, and had even managed to keep a smile on her face. It was only through the great strength of her acting that she implied she was aligning herself with Tobias, in the subtle ducking of her head, the widening of her eyes, the smile that flirted between sweet and sly. “It’s nothing serious,” she said, and her wand was gone from her hand as she reached out and placed her fingertips delicately on one of Tobias’ crossed arms.

Slowly, Tobias relaxed, leaning back a little, his chest swelling, and the tight cross against his chest came undone. He hooked his fingers into his belt and surveyed them all, but his eyes kept straying back to Lupin, who lidded her own lazily, like an unconcerned tiger.

“It’s about your son,” she said, easily, off-hand. “Only, I think I’d better discuss it with you. We’ve come to recruit for our school, really a rather posh and exclusive place. We only take the best, you know.” She cut a darting glance toward Mrs. Snape, and then back to Tobias, and widened her smile. “I don’t quite think your wife,” and here she lowered her voice and whispered, “would really understand what your lad needs. She’s more like than not to want to coddle him—it’s a mother’s prerogative—but you’re the one who’ll know for sure whether the boy can really hack it.”

She lowered her lids further, looking up at him through her lashes, and put that pale hand out onto his arm again. “Is there somewhere we could talk, just the two of us?”

Riddle had watched with growing disgust in his chest—Tobias had fallen for Lupin’s flattery as though it was his expected due—but now he glanced back toward Mrs. Snape. Her eyes were wide, her whole face taut and still as pale as milk. “Shall I stay here?” he asked, to Tobias, not Lupin, and the man narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine!” Lupin said immediately, and fluttered her hand back to rest on her neck, drawing Tobias’ eye. “My colleague, Mr. Riddle—oh, and I never introduced myself, I’m Ms. Lupin—but Mr. Riddle, he’s not the type to bother a bird!”

And then she widened her eyes, and covered her mouth for a second, looking heart-broken. “Oh, I mean- I mean another bloke’s bird, of course. Such a slip of tongue, to think—”

Tobias swung back to Riddle, who only regarded him coolly. “He looks the type. Hire many ponces, your school does?” His laugh was sharp and cruel, and stupid to Riddle’s ears, and he made himself look away as though embarrassed, fingering his wand a little and letting Lupin keep playing her part.

Her eyes were wide and glossy with distress now, and her hands fluttered like birds to touch her throat, her hair, her face. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir,” she whispered. “I never meant to—and he doesn’t work at the school, not really. He’s recruiting only, and really he’s only to chaperone us lasses. The headmaster can trust him with that, you see. Oh, I hope you won’t think any less of us, or let this influence your decision.”

Lupin was like an injured dove like this, the years falling off of her to turn her into a girl again, and Tobias swelled up in response. “If he doesn’t teach there, then I don’t see why I’d give a flying bloody fuck about it,” he said roughly, looking at Lupin’s throat, the rapid swallow as she touched her fingers there again, and then at the gentle swell of her chest and the way the cut of her dress hid any skin.

“We can talk in the kitchen,” he said, and took Lupin’s arm—her eyes flashed to Riddle, dangerous and fierce; she was always nabbing the easy part, the fun part—and she let Tobias escort her away, neither of them looking over at Mrs. Snape again. Riddle waited a moment, the door to the squalid little kitchen swinging shut, before he raised his wand and let a spell fall from the tip, glossing the horrible wallpaper and the rough wooden door. Any sound beyond it was muffled at once, and Riddle hoped with bitter pleasure that Tobias tried to open the door and come in.

They couldn’t risk anything lethal, or overtly damaging; even now the Ministry was breathing down their necks, but Riddle thought with satisfaction that he could knock the bastard out, and if he was wracked with pain while unconscious, no one but him need know.

He thought, briefly, about letting Eileen onto the idea, of offering her some small amount of revenge on the man, and then he looked at her again, standing like a bridge wire, taut to the point of snapping, and knew that no matter what he did, nothing would be enough to coax her into letting them take the boy.

“Right,” Riddle said easily, and slid past her deeper into the sitting room, settling himself onto the divan near the fireplace. He hitched the legs of his trousers, sat, and crossed his legs easily. “We’d best get on with this while Lupin has him distracted. I have no doubt that she’ll have to Stun him eventually and she’ll be quite impatient to get on her way after that.”

He offered Eileen a flat smile, and gestured toward the chair across from him. “Why don’t you have a seat,” he said. “We can pretend that you’ve already screamed and shouted and told me half a dozen times that ‘I can’t,’ and ‘it’s not fair.’ I’m sure you know what my responses to those protests will be, and that you’ll find me unyielding on the matter.”

Slowly, unable to resist the showiness of it, he pulled open the left side of his coat, and removed from the inside pocket the letter. The pale parchment seemed to glow in the light, and the green ink glittered as though still wet. Riddle set it down on the table in front of him, and leaned forward, lacing his fingers about his knee.

“Hogwarts letters come exactly on time,” he told Eileen, and his voice became smoother, more even. “They can’t be stopped, they can’t be avoided, and they certainly can’t be faked. This, I am quite sure you know already.”

Riddle paused, and favored her with a pleasant glance, enjoying himself more and more as her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed and glittered. “Yes,” she managed to grit out eventually, and wound her hands tightly into the dishtowel she still held.

“Very good,” Riddle said, and settled back, keeping his eyes on hers. “I’d give you five points to your year, if you were a student.” He smiled at her again, coldly, and savored her flinch. “Yesterday,” he went on with aplomb, “around midday or so, the Quill picked itself up and addressed a letter, one that we didn’t expect to see for another year. Of course, it’s always a concern when an acceptance letter is issued early, and since becoming Heir of House, I’ve made it a personal point to deliver each and every early letter we address.”

Gently, Riddle leaned forward, perched at the edge of his seat, and rested his fingertips on the letter, holding her eyes. “I’d like to deliver this now,” he said, speaking softly. “Why don’t you run along and retrieve the lucky recipient.”

Eileen bared her yellow teeth viciously. “And if I don’t?” she asked, leaning forward too, her wand in her hand again with only a little shaky fumbling for it.

“Then I will go and retrieve him myself. There’s only so many rooms in your little hut, and I’m sure with your husband distracted I’ll have time to search them all.” Slowly, Riddle stood up, taking back the letter and secreting it away, then fussily readjusting his coat. Eileen had her wand raised when he stood, and if it was simply a fight on the street, he would have been content to wait a little bit, and let her realize in her own time that she was too afraid to curse him. But the house they were in was wretched and depressing, and somewhere secreted away was the boy, waiting unawares, and even now Riddle’s eyes caught the subtly motion of grey leaking down the walls.

“Petrificus Totalus,” he said coolly, and watched with some small contentment as Eileen fell backwards onto her chair and slipped onto the floor. Behind the glossy ward he’d spread over the kitchen wall and door came a faint shouting, muffled too much to tell what that vile man was saying. And there, Lupin’s voice raising just as fiercely, and Riddle went up the stairs in silence, content that she had it in hand.

There were three doors on the first floor. One opened to small and fiendishly neat bathroom, the other to the master bedroom, empty but for a decaying wardrobe and a messy bed. Riddle looked for the sake of thoroughness, but he’d known the minute he’d stepped into the hallway which room was Severus Snape’s.

His eyes wanted to pass by the door when he saw it. The hallway was dark, but the door seemed swathed in shadows that resisted even Riddle’s strongest Lumos. He Nox’d it, and blinking away the sparking shadows, stood before the door. Grimly, he noticed the edge of his coat was again fading into a grey again, and he knocked harshly at the door, and gave his coat a fierce shake just a moment before it opened to a thin and pale face.

“I’m fine, Mum—” the face was saying in barely above a whisper, but it jumbled in the boy’s throat as he choked. Riddle, watching with some small hidden concern, saw the impulse to slam the door shut and deny him entry, then the desire to open his mouth and scream for his parents, then as the boy’s lip cured to bare his teeth, the small darting glance he shot behind Riddle, to the door of the master bedroom.

Finally, with his brows lowered fiercely and his mouth pulled askance, the boy demanded, “Can I help you, sir?”

“That depends,” Riddle said, and crouched down to be at the boy’s level. He jerked back a little, and his grip on the door wavered, but Riddle pretended not to notice, and instead removed from his jacket the letter, which he held out with a small smile. “I’ve a piece of mail for Severus Snape,” he said.

And here was where Riddle found the perfect moment every time. Better than solving the puzzle of entering the home, better than confronting those lackluster parents and doling out punishment with a loose hand, better even than returning to the castle victorious with the child at his side.

Severus Snape reached out a small and trembling hand for the letter, and grasped it as a starving man might grasp a single, perfect apple. Riddle watched with growing pleasure as the boy fumbled with, then opened the seal, and slid the single rich piece of parchment out of the envelope. And as he started to read it, his face became softer and his eyes glossed, and Severus dropped the letter and began rubbing furiously at them, his breath hitching as he tried not to cry.

Slowly, Riddle reached down, picked up the letter, and read it out loud. “Dear Mr. Snape,” he said. “We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please address any questions or concerns to your assigned emissary. Be assured that you will be accommodated into the current term no matter the time of start. Yours sincerely, Head of Slytherin House, A. Dumbledore.”

The boy was still trying to get himself under control. Carefully, Riddle folded the letter and put it back into the envelope, then conjured a handkerchief. “I-I’m s-s-sorry, sir,” the boy gasped when Riddle offered it to him, and Riddle sat back on his heels and said mildly, “It’s quite alright. I know it comes as rather a surprise, doesn’t it?”

“I know letters come early sometimes,” Severus said, and sniffled into his handkerchief. His face flushed as he scrubbed at it, and he folded the piece of cloth carefully and then crumbled it tightly in his fist. “I just didn’t know one would come for me.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Riddle said. “If I may come in, we could speak of it further.”

The boy squinted his eyes tightly at Riddle. The hectic flush remained. “Talk about what?” he demanded, and checked the hallway again.

“About your parents, for one,” Riddle said. “About your decision regarding your invitation letter. About why you’re so frightened that your mother or father might come up the stairs.”

Riddle stood, and offered the letter back, and adjusted his cuffs. “May I come in?” he asked again.

The boy’s squinted stare became a fierce glare, and he flushed harder, but he swung the door open and trudged back into his room, letter still clutched tightly in his hand. Riddle followed after him, and left the door open; they wouldn’t be interrupted by anyone except Lupin.

It didn’t take long for Riddle to see why the boy had turned as red as dragon fire. His room was as dull and grungy as the rest of the house, and greyness seemed to leech from the walls and poison everything it touched. There was nowhere to sit except the bed, which Severus took, smiling meanly at Riddle. It wasn’t the first time Riddle had butted heads with a tempestuous child, and he had developed several tricks over the years to overcome the suspicion, the fear, and the hatred. He conjured himself a dark wooden chair opposite, and smiled to himself as the skin around the boy’s eyes loosened and his mouth fell open a little.

Eileen Prince had been a smart and capable witch, quick of wit and fast with her wand. Riddle had little occasion to interact with her in school; she’d been three years under him, and in the years she had come into her own, pulling ahead of the mulling mass of her year, he had been busy become part of Slytherin House. He remembered vaguely Hyssa Sykes pointing her out as a potential graduate to be sorted, but shortly after Eileen had announced her apprenticeship to some clothing shop in the Alley, and nothing had ever come of it.

Earlier she had fumbled unpracticed with her wand. Riddle waved his own wand at the light overhead, making it brighter, and chasing some of the faint grey shadows out of the room, and luxuriated in the knowledge that the boy was seeing some proper magic at last.

But the boy turned out to be sharp like his mother, and the wonder of magic couldn’t turn his attention away from Riddle and why he was there completely. After another quick look toward his open door, he turned back to Riddle and said in a way that might have been a warning and might have been a threat, “My father won’t be happy that you’re here.”

“My colleague is with him as we speak,” Riddle said and lay his wand in a loose grip across his crossed leg. “I’m sure he’s being kept more than occupied. No, we have plenty of time to discuss all your options.”

“Where’s my mother, then?” the boy demanded at once, and hunched his shoulders as Riddle looked at him.

“Why wouldn’t she be with your father?”

“Because they’re always arguing,” Severus spat, after a moment, then looked a little scared by his own vehemence. But he pushed on, and Riddle’s smile to himself grew; it was always terribly sad when they were so beaten down, those little children who came to Hogwarts one or two or three years early, that even the Puffs who took them to breast and to hearth struggled to teach them to be brave and snappish and self-assured enough to be disagreeable again.

“My mum don’t want him to know much about magic, and she doesn’t want witches or wizards to meet him either, and she’d spend the whole time fighting you not to say anything and he’d just get more mad. So you can’t talk to them together, and you can’t do it one at a time cause the one you aren’t talking to will just yell or throw things, and it’s quiet down there anyway.”

“A very astute reasoning out of the matter,” Riddle praised, and watched as the boy flushed again. “My colleague is with your father alone, and I’ve left your mother waiting quietly in the sitting room while you and I speak.”

But this only made Severus more agitated, and he sat up furiously and spat out, “If you’ve cursed her—”

“I petrified her,” Riddle said easily. “She’d not hurt, and I’ll release her when we’re done. But she didn’t want you to get your letter, and I doubt she would want you to tell me why we’re here at all, a year before we’re due, and both of those matters are something I refuse to leave without resolving.”

The boy seemed to shrink a little, and his shoulders hunched further as he dropped his eyes to stare at his knees. Finally, he said, sullenly, “She’d have let me have my letter.”

Sometimes, Riddle found, it was the better part of valor to let them hold onto what they could. Maybe Eileen Prince hadn’t changed so much when she had married Snape. “You know her better than I do,” Riddle said smoothly. “But I thought not to take the chance. This isn’t my first early delivery, after all.”

Severus was still suspicious of him, and the squint had come back. Riddle returned it with a neutral look, and asked, “How much has your mother told you about Hogwarts?”

The boy shrugged, and looked away. “Some,” he said. “But she doesn’t talk about it when my dad’s around, and he’s always around now.” His hunch became deeper, as if he hadn’t meant to say it, and Riddle barely managed to stop himself from jumping onto the boy’s hesitance.

Lupin had told him once that this was like fishing—setting a lure and casting a line and slowly waiting for the nervous nibbles to become bites. Riddle had never been fishing, and had refused Lupin’s invitation to take him, but he could appreciate the aptness of the analogy.

“Did she say if she was happy there?” Riddle asked instead.

Severus looked confused for a moment. “No,” he said slowly, “but she sounded like she was, when she was talking about it.”

“I will once again defer to your knowledge,” Riddle said. “If you say she sounded happy, then I believe you. I was also happy there, you see, and I think most children are. And I think you will be too, Severus, because you are not happy here, are you?”

The boy’s stare left Riddle, and instead directed itself towards his knees, and his face crumbled. Mouth trembling, Severus admitted the truth, and it sounded as if it pained him greatly. “No,” he said shortly, but Riddle didn’t press. He kept his hands folded neatly, and waited, and soon enough the rest poured out, like poison from a wound. “I hate it here,” Severus hissed. “They’re always fighting, and everyone hates us because we’re poor, and no one will be my friend, and Dad keeps hitting us, but it’s not our fault he can’t find a job! And it’s ugly, and my mum never does any magic because she wants to be a Muggle, but I don’t, I never do, not if it means living like this, in a world where everything is awful and terrible and painful all the time, forever!”

The last of his words had wound themselves into a shriek, and Riddle noticed with some small alarm how the greyness snuck into the air itself, dripping from the ceiling and making a fog, until he was breathing it in like ash on his tongue.

It was despair made tangible, and Riddle thought he might be driven to suicide if that hung about him all day, trickling into his clothes and leaking into his food, and clogging up his throat with the feeling of constantly being near tears.

He raised his wand, and pointed it at Severus, watching the boy’s eyes go wide through the gloom before he shouted, “Finite Incantatem!”

The air itself seemed to part and then slam closed around the leaking greyness, banishing it neatly, leaving the room and its occupants as they should have been, small and dim and a little worn, but not at a supernatural level. Riddle was pleased to see that the boy was shocked, but unharmed. Severus was looking around himself with wide eyes, studying his own room as if he had never seen it before—the bedspread was a dark brown now instead of a stone-color, the walls held a light green color, and the wallpaper might have been faded, and peeling in the corners, but it was there all the same. The books collected on the single shelf were red and blue and yellow and a deep purple. Even the boy himself seemed to have gained color; his cheeks were flushed and his sallow skin looked more cream than yellow.

“What did you do to my room?” Severus demanded of Riddle when he finished gaping.

“I simply undid what you had done,” Riddle told him. “You’ve been very unhappy here, for your magic to alter everything so severely.”

“I didn’t do anything!” The boy huffed, and he crossed his arms, and glared. “I don’t know any magic yet.”

“You don’t know any spells. Magic is something you have, not something you learn, and the magic you have is quite strong and eager to please you.”

“Well I don’t want everything to be shitty!” Severus snapped, then jerked back with the whites of his eyes showing, waiting for Riddle to react.

But Riddle found he had no intention of punishing the boy for harsh language, or even reacting much to it. He slid his wand back into its wrist holster, and folded his cuffs back neatly, and said, “No, but you thought it was rather shitty, and your magic decided to best please you, it would match the world to your view. That is the unfortunate side effect of untrained magic, and why I think it so important you come to Hogwarts sooner rather than later.”

The boy stuck his jaw out mulishly, and Riddle thought it best to say it clearly, not subtly. “If you allow your magic to go off again untrained,” he said, “it might hurt your father, which I doubt you’d mind. Or it might also hurt your mother, or worsen your circumstances again. And should it, I think you will find that I would not be so willing to come out and perform another Finite without asking a much steeper price than I am now.”

“There’s always a price,” the boy muttered, sullenly, but he bowed his head and hid behind his fringe as he looked around the room again.

“Yes,” Riddle agreed. “And my price, now, is that you pack your things and come to Hogwarts. After that little display, I’m loathe to leave you here alone again.”

Riddle knew, without a single doubt, that the boy wanted to go. He grasped his bedspread, dug his fingers in to tightly Riddle thought the worn fabric might tear, and squirmed. He waited, but the boy looked up at him for a moment, and shook his head.

The chair Riddle had conjured creaked as his sat forward and considered the boy. “Why not?” he asked.

“He’ll beat her,” Severus said dully, and hid behind his hair again, shrinking into himself tiredly.

“And he doesn’t beat her now?”

“’F I leave, he’ll beat her more,” Severus said at barely above a whisper, like he was imparting a grave and terrible secret.

“Ah,” Riddle sighed, and brushed a curl of hair off his face. “So he’ll let her alone a little if he can beat you instead.” The boy flinched at how coldly he said it, but Riddle was too busy struggling with the urge to go downstairs and simply kill the man in question to notice much or care. “And I suppose he told you that after he beat you for the first time? Likely he thought you’d try and pull a runner if he didn’t.”

Severus flinched like he had been struck, and Riddle sighed again, heavier and gustier. “How long then? Since he decided you were old enough to stand in place of your mother.”

The boy only shrugged, and Riddle nodded, and stood up. He vanished the chair with a quick flick of his wand, and then considering the rickety wooden shelf, sent the books flying to stack neatly at the end of the bed. The boy watched with wide, greedy eyes, silent lest he draw Riddle’s attention.

The shelf tore itself from the wall and went clattering to the worn floorboards, and with a spin of his wrist turned itself into a wooden school chest. It was plain, and undecorated, but Riddle wanted nothing more than to leave the house as soon as possible, and he had no doubt that the boy’s dormitory mates would help him spell it into proper decoration at any time.

“Accio Severus Snape’s belongings,” Riddle said, and directing them with a swift, “Pack!” as they spun toward him through the air. The boy was watching him still with wide eyes as the lid of the truck slammed shut, leaving the shabby room bare.

“I will make you a deal,” Riddle said. “You will come to Hogwarts—to stay—and in exchange, I will ensure that your filthy worthless father never raises a hand to your mother again.”

It might have been the offer of magic, dangling just past his fingertips, or the knowledge his father would leave his mother alone, or even the idea that he would never have to return to the small, dim house ever again unless he chose to, but the boy folded at last.

“You have to swear,” he said, as he shoved his feet into worn shoes. “So I know you’ll really do it.”

Riddle watched with a critical eye as Severus shrugged on his patched coat, and went and knelt before the boy. “Have you heard of wands’ troth before?” he asked the boy as he withdrew his wand.

Severus shook his head, glaring. “I said I haven’t learned any spells yet,” he said, and crossed his arms.

“This is something I doubt they’ll teach you in any class,” Riddle said calmly. “And as your emissary to the school, it’s my job to teach you what you need to know before you get there. And this is a fine thing to know. Wands’ troth is a promise made on your wand, and one that if you forsake, will make your wand turn against you in favor of the sworn-to.”

The boy only looked at him blankly, and Riddle asked, slowly, “Do you understand that?”

“I’m not stupid!” he cried out, and Riddle told him patiently, “I never said you were. But a wizard must never partake in a ritual he doesn’t understand, and I won’t let you do this now if you don’t.”

Severus gnashed his teeth and squinted his eyes shut. “If you break your promise,” he said, very slowly, “your wand has to let me use it. And it might, might not listen to you anymore.”

“Very good,” Riddle said.

Severus opened his eyes and squinted at Riddle. “I haven’t got a wand,” he said.

“You’re already very powerful,” Riddle assured him, and held his wand out between them. “Put your fingers across that; I doubt you’ll need a wand for this to work.”

Severus laid a trembling hand across the fine length of yew wood, and Riddle caught his eye carefully. “Now,” he said, “just as you should never partake in a ritual you don’t understand, you should never take an oath or accept an oath without knowing what’s going to be sworn first.” He offered the boy a smile, and asked, “What should we say?”

But Severus only shrugged his shoulders a little. “I dunno,” he said. “And I don’t really care—I trust you to make it alright.”

“As you should,” Riddle said easily. “I am here solely for your safety and surety. But in the future, listen to every word first, and listen carefully.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Riddle said again, and the boy shuffled his feet and ducked his head further. “Now I, Tom Marvolo Riddle, do so offer my solemn troth that the Muggle Tobias Snape shall never again lay his hand on in anger, or do violence against Madam Eileen Prince Snape, so long as I live.”

Fire came from the wand, in licking tongues of red and orange and bright white-gold, and wrapped the wand and the boy’s trembling hand together under his stunned gaze.

“Now you repeat after me,” Riddle whispered, and Severus nodded frantically.

“I, Severus Snape—”

“I, Severus Snape—”

“—do so offer my solemn troth—”

“—that I will live and study to the best of my ability—”

“—at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—”

“—and never again come to my father’s home—”

“—under any will but my own. I do so swear.”

And a second tongue of fire came and wrapped around the wand and hand, this in brilliant blues so bright they ached to look upon.

With great pleasure, Riddle said, “And should either of these oathmakers break their bonds and forsake their troths, let their wands turn against them!” and the a third tongue of fire burned, brighter than the rest, throwing the whole room into white and shining light, and swept away the other two with it as it faded.

Jerking, Severus drew back his hand and studied it with a frown, but there was no burn there, and he placed it into his pocket, carefully. “Magic,” he said solemnly, “is brilliant, and I think I’d rather die than live as a Muggle.”

“Then I shall endeavor to make sure you never shall,” Riddle said, and with the trunk floating behind them, guided the boy down the stairs. He was greatly pleased that the arm he settled around the boy’s shoulders wasn’t shrugged off, even as they came into the sitting room and saw his mother lying stiff as a plank on the grimy floor.

Riddle paused for a single second, debating whether to free her with the boy still in the house or not, but then the wards on the kitchen wall started to shimmer, and fall like silk curtains unhooked from their rods, and Lupin was stepping through.

“Well then!” she said, and seeing Severus, offered a deep bow from the waist. “Young Master Severus,” she said with a wide smile. “At last!”

The boy regarded her with squinted eyes, and pressed himself absentmindedly into Riddle’s side. “Who’re you?” he demanded, and then after a scan across the room, “Where’s my dad?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” Lupin said cheerfully. “I’ve just finished straightening out the matter of your schooling with him,” and she spun her wand about showily.

“Lupin,” Riddle said with some small disapproval, but the boy was stirring.

“He wouldn’t listen to you,” Severus said and squinted his eyes harder. “He thinks women are all—all dumb bints, and he doesn’t listen to any of ‘em.”

“He didn’t want to at first,” Lupin said easily, and put her wand away. “But I was able to persuade him to come around in the end.”

Silence reigned for a moment, and then the boy asked, almost timidly, “Did you hurt him?”

Lupin’s smile became shark-like. “Yes,” she said smoothly and sweetly. “I did.”

The boy contemplated her, and Riddle increased the pressure of the arm around his thin shoulders. But finally, he shrugged, and said, “Good,” in an angry little mutter.

“I quite agree,” Lupin told him, and started buttoning back up her coat. “All packed?” she asked Riddle, who nodded. “We might be on then. I need a cup of tea, and mayhap a shower. That man made me feel dreadfully greasy.”

Riddle snorted, and to everyone’s surprise, Severus laughed just once. Lupin took the opportunity the to grasp the boy’s hand and shake it firmly. “My name’s Mrs. Accalia Lupin,” she told Severus. And after scrutinizing him with a keen eye, “You seem rather well for living here. I’m pleased, personally,” she added to his offended glare. “I prefer the strong ones, though if anyone’s got the right to go wailing about it tends to be the early-getters.”

The boy shifted, and the glare softened, and he didn’t snatch his hand back right away when she let it go.

“Lupin,” Riddle said smoothly, “is one of my finest colleagues. She’ll be paired with me, and you’ll be seeing the two of use often, so you’d best get used to her—exuberance, shall I say?—while you have the chance.”

“Yes, sir,” Severus said and shut his mouth rather than complain when Lupin settled her hands on her hips, and gave the room a look-around.

“We had better wait outside,” Lupin told Severus. “Riddle should have some privacy while he explains things to your mother, and then you can come inside and say goodbye to her.”

Severus raised his glittering eyes to Riddle’s face—a warning, a reminder—and then looked once at the stiff board his mother made, her skirts fanned out around her on the floor. His mouth was a small and pale line, and his hand jerked at his side, as if he stopped himself from reaching out. “I don’t want to say goodbye, thank you,” he said stiffly, and Lupin frowned a little, but didn’t protest.

“Well, come on then,” Lupin said. “I’ve a strong desire for a smoke, and I’ll let you have a drag off it if you don’t mention your father again.”

“Lupin!” Riddle snapped, warningly, and swallowed down an inappropriate laugh.

“What?” she protested. “Look at the lad! Look at the house! It’ll hardly be his first cigarette, you can’t tell me that, and we’ve both had a rough night.”

Slowly, Riddle put a hand over his face. “Go,” he said at last. “Just go, Lupin, and Severus would you please keep an eye on her for me.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said again, but it was hardly as stiff as if had been before, and their footsteps clattered out of the room cheerfully, Lupin’s soft chatter toward the boy disappearing into the background as the front door swung shut.

Riddle waited until they were fully gone, and then tread into the kitchen. It was hardly a bloodbath, if only because Lupin was more subtle than that, and the man was still breathing as he lay slumped and sleeping over the kitchen table.

Riddle kicked at his shoe, but he only let out a rattling snore, so he left him there, and went back into the sitting room to rouse Eileen. She rolled over onto her hands and knees with a gasp when he lifted the spell, and shoved herself upright. Riddle made no move to help her as she struggled to her feet, and he wasn’t surprised at all as she spun around, and sagged against the wall, and raised her wand at him.

“You can’t just take him,” she cried. “There’s laws now, the Ministry made them! I told you before.”

Riddle found his patience had run out somewhere upstairs in the dim little room. “We both know that the Ministry can’t touch Hogwarts.” Riddle told her lazily. “And we both know that we Slytherins won’t be the ones involved if they try. No, your son made his own choice, and if he’s old enough for you not to keep his father from beating him, then he’s old enough to choose whether or not he wants to live in a place where he’ll be beaten at all.”

Her hand trembled more, but Riddle refused to give it any consideration. He looked at her eyes instead, and there was resignation there beside the fury, and he knew she wouldn’t try to curse him or stop him from taking the boy. In her mind, Severus Snape was already gone out of her reach. She might have even thought it a relief.

Riddle left her to trail after him silently as he stepped back into the kitchen, and woke Tobias, who he froze in place before he could do more than lift his head off the table top. Eileen had started shrieking something incomprehensible when she saw him, and she only got louder when Riddle raised his wand, but she didn’t move from where she stooped, grasping the doorway, as Riddle fired off two more spells.

The first spell was one of Riddle’s own making, and it flared a brilliant scarlet in the air, and spun to form a glowing parmula shield above Snape’s body. Slowly, it pushed into him and disappeared, making the man glow briefly.

The second spell was a swift and simply Obliviate. Riddle unfroze the man, and stood over him, taking in the glazed, crossed eyes, and said in a bored tone, “Social Services had come and taken your son. No doubt one of the neighbors saw you beating him and decided to intervene. It’s the only good thing to come of having him here—you and your wife are better off without him and you will refuse to pursue the matter any further.”

Tobias Snape nodded dazedly, and Riddle sent him back to sleep again with a contemptuous flick of his wand.

Eileen had fallen silent, and she only stared with a hand to her chest as Riddle told her, “I’ve cast a spell of my own making on him, though I’ve done it as no favor to you. If he tried to strike you again, or shout, or whatever idiot Muggles do to injure their wives, he’ll find you’ve simply disappeared until he loses interest in you, or decides to act civilly again.” Riddle smirked at her gaping. “You could stand right in front of him, and he won’t see you there. It’s not a spell that will fade with time, either, and I doubt after nine or more years of neglecting your magic you could manage to remove it from him.

When she still gave no response, he simply swept past her and went to the front door, where her creaking voice finally stalled his hand on the knob.

“You’ve no right,” she spat. “Not to interfere in my life, not to spell my husband, and not to take my bloody son!”

It all got rather tiring in the end, Riddle found, as like a mass of records, they all repeated themselves. “I’ve many rights, all of which I’ve fought very hard to earn,” he told her without bothering to turn around. “Keeping my promises to vulnerable children, including and especially your son, is one of them. I think you’ll find the ministry won’t argue with that and have any success either.”

And then before she could say anything else, or fire a weak curse at his back, he stepped through the door and left the last house on Spinner’s End for the first and final time.

Lupin was waiting leaning against the brick alley Riddle had first apparated into, with Severus tucked up next to her out of the wind. They were both smoking, which Riddle found he couldn’t ignore, and he plucked the cigarette from Severus’s mouth, and crushed it under his boot-heel.

“Don’t let the sett mother see you doing that,” he cautioned, and tried to ignore Lupin’s bright laugh. “Shall we go, as you seemed so eager to do before?” Riddle asked her coldly, but she only laughed again.

“Might as well,” she said, and shrunk the boy’s trunk and pocketed it obligingly. “Isobel Macdougal said she’d keep some supper on the hob for us, and then I’d best be getting home.”

When Severus shot her an alarmed look, she ruffled his hair with no attention paid to how he tried to duck away. “Don’t give me that big-eyed look,” she told him. “I’ll show you my house on the walk from Hogsmeade. It’s hardly five minutes away, and no doubt you’ll be haunting about my doorsill soon enough trying to bum cigarettes off me and asking a thousand questions.”

“Have you Apparated before?” Riddle cut in, before the boy could start protesting that he would rather never see Lupin again like his face said he so clearly wanted to.

Severus shook his head, but took Riddle’s arm when he held it out. “Hold that tightly,” Riddle said, and Severus went white-knuckled. “Apparating is very unpleasant, and you might need to throw up afterwards,” Riddle said. “But it’s faster than other ways of travel, and the Ministry can’t regulate it like they do Portkeys. Ready, Lupin?”

At her nod, they disappeared with a crack and reappeared through the fog of wizard-space at the edge of Hogsmeade Village.

“You’ve heard of Hogsmeade before?” Riddle asked, steadying the boy as he swayed, green-faced.

“Yes,” Severus grit out, and managed to still look around with interest despite the hand he clamped over his mouth. At eight at night there were still shops brightly lit, and a cheerful crowd clustered outside the door at The Three Brooksticks, spilling across the street. But when Riddle looked down, and saw the boy’s eyes as big as Galleons in his face, and all of him shining, he knew at once that he wasn’t looking at the shops, or the people, or the steep-roofed little houses.

Instead, he looked below them, where the valley opened up broadly, and became more level land. There, the dew-bright fields with their small, cheerful cottages, and there, the glossy planes of the still lake, and there, shining in the distance below them, great and beautiful and strange in the best of ways, the castle lit the night around it like a lantern, every window blazing.

Even now, Riddle wasn’t immune to the view, and his head gave a wrench identical to the one it had given decades ago as Dumbledore had grasped his shoulder, and turned him to see. This was Dumbledore’s first gift to him after Riddle had been hunted to Wool’s Orphanage, and brought back safely from its wretched depths.

Now, he took this moment, the crystalline cold of the air, and the boy’s thin shoulder under his hand, and the bright and wonderful sparkle of his eyes as he looked at the castle that Riddle knew he would come to love. The castle that no child could ever not come to love.

“Hogwarts,” the boy breathed, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Home,” Tom Riddle offered contentedly, and stood and let Severus Snape look his fill.