Chapter Text
Severus sat in the headmaster’s office, with Lily beside him, clutching his hand. He could feel the warmth seeping from her fingers, but it didn’t warm his heart. A week ago he would have been thrilled at the thought of Lily taking his hand, but after recent events he couldn’t allow any happy feelings, or any feelings at all for that matter, to enter his mind.
Occlumency was the only thing that kept him together. Since the immolation, Severus had, against better knowledge, been pushing all his feelings down into that deepest crevice of his mind. Whenever he lowered his occlumency walls, his head filled with thoughts, darker than the charred ground where his home had stood. He was in a place that not even Lily’s bright light could reach. He was aching and mourning Eileen, the last anchor he had had to his heritage. The witch that had built the foundation to the wizard he was today. He was burning with vengeance; he was determined to get justice for her.
It was a week since the attack on his family, and they had just returned from the funeral. Not that there had been any bodies to bury, the Fiendfyre had taken care of the cremation. Before the funeral, Dumbledore had taken him to the empty, charred plot of land, to show him the devastation. All of their house was gone, but remarkably, the neighbors’ houses were still standing, unscathed apart from some soot. Whoever cast the spell must have been skilled at containing it to only their house.
The finality of seeing his parents’ name on a tomb stone in the local church yard had not yet sunk in. Neither the understanding that he was homeless. With a shiver Severus realized there was nothing binding him to the muggle world anymore. Nothing except Lily.
Dumbledore’s soft voice interrupted his brooding.
“…as you are of age, you will not be appointed any official guardian. However, a newly turned seventeen-year-old still needs support in a great many things.”
“I manage perfectly fine on my own, Sir.” Severus knew that wasn’t true.
He had nothing. The first thing Dumbledore had done after delivering the sad news was to ask if he had any living relatives or close family friends. There were none, he had never had any other adults in his life, beside his parents, the school staff and occasionally Lilys parents.
He had no home, and hardly any money.
He needed help, the need had manifested itself quite quickly already when arranging the funeral and taking care of the bureaucracy his parents’ deaths had brought on him. He had been completely ignorant of any of the tedious processes, but Dumbledore had swiftly taken care of everything. Now Severus felt indebted to him. There was no way he was going to accept more charity from anyone.
“I think you will need a mentor, preferably someone who you can stay with over the summer,” contemplated Dumbledore while stroking his beard. “I would be happy to offer you my mentorship, but as the headmaster it would be very improper of me to prioritize any particular student. I will have to think about it.”
Severus didn’t reply, he just scoffed. Maybe he could hide in the shrieking shack over the summer. If he lived that long. His current focus was on killing Voldemort, there was no point in planning beyond an assassination attempt of the strongest wizard in history.
“For now, I must ask you Mr. Snape, that you through your grief try to focus on your task. It is imperative that you do everything in your power to stay in Mr. Malfoys good books and indulge the young Death Eaters we house in the school.”
Dumbledore eyed Lily, “And you Miss Evans, must stay away from him in public, however much it hurts you to not be able to comfort your grieving friend. You are not to compromise our mission.”
Severus returned to his dormitory and sat down on his bed, the eerie light seeping through the lake, a perfect match for his mood. He was currently alone, it was dinner time, but he had no appetite. He folded his travelling cloak and put it in his trunk.
The trunk was surprisingly full; there was the package from the Potters that was taking up a lot of space. He took it out and looked at it. I might just as well open it. He had promised Lupin the clothing, and he was a man of his word, even though selling the items would bring much needed income.
He opened the package. On top of a pile of clothes there was a small note apologizing for not being able to reach his clerk at Gringotts. Clerk shmerk, what else could there be in here? There was a set of really nice robes, knee socks, shirts and a diamond patterned dark green cashmere scarf, all neatly rolled up around a moleskin pouch. He glared at the clothes and put them back in the wrap to peek into the moleskin pouch.
He gasped, and for a second his vision tunneled. The pouch must have been treated with the Extension Charm and the Feather Weight Charm. Inside it was more money than he had ever seen before. He poured the content onto his bed and counted; one hundred galleons! He could probably rent a nice room in Hogsmeade for the summer with that kind of money.
He quickly put the money in his trunk and warded it until it almost sparked with magic.
Then he pulled the curtains around his bed and curled into a ball underneath the quilt, not bothering with changing. He laid still for a long time, the burnt patch where their house had stood, and the newly erected Snape stone flashing before his eyes. When sleep finally came, the pillow pressing towards his cheek was moist from silent tears.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Severus slept around the clock, and slipped away to the bathrooms, well before his classmates woke up. He looked into the mirror and was appalled by what he saw. The enchanted mirror didn’t even deign to comment on his appearance, it just sighed.
His hair was greasier than ever, hanging in uneven lumps. A short stubble shaded the skin above his mouth and his chin. His eyes were puffy and the gaze was hollow from occluding. How had he allowed himself to fall asleep with his clothes on? They were all wrinkled up.
He was supposed to look like a junior Death Eater, a pureblood. Not like a hungover muggle. He took an ice-cold shower to properly wake up, used a charm to straighten his clothes, and shaved. He even trimmed his hair using his wand.
The magical mirror approved of his efforts, “That’s better!”
Back in the dorm, he grabbed the Potters’ gift before heading for breakfast. He could just as well give the clothes to Lupin in front of Potter, if only to spite him.
He walked confidently up to the Gryffindor table. Oh, how much easier everything was when he occluded away his feelings! His existence was almost pain-free when no emotions got the better of him.
“Lupin, here is the payment I promised you,” he barked, completely ignoring Lily, and the other marauders, who all were sitting within hearing range.
“Thank you, Severus,” Lupin said with a polite smile, accepting the parcel without fuss.
It didn’t take long for Potter to recognize the gift and to start sputtering about his gracelessness in disposing of it.
For once, it was Potter who lost his temper. Black remained sharp and tried to be what Severus could only assume was meant to be witty.
He smirked at Severus and Lupin. “Remus owns nothing of value. He must have been selling himself!”
There was a giggle spreading from the not-too-subtle eavesdroppers along the table. A quarrel was the most exciting morning show that could be expected in the Great Hall, and most Gryffindors and some nearby sitting Ravenclaws quickly tuned in.
Lupin blanched at the backstabbing from his former friends. Severus felt anger steaming from his ears, but he couldn’t tell if he blushed or not. Even his angry heart rate, pounding in his ears, was dampened to a mild buzz by his occlumency walls.
How low was the idiot willing to sink with his insults? Severus wasn’t baited to escalate the fight.
“One could say so,” he sneered at Sirius, keeping his cool. What did he care what the Gryffindors thought?
In a sense, Sirius was right, Lupin had indeed been selling parts of himself, for potion ingredients. He swirled around and left the Gryffindor table, leaving the blood thirsty audience disappointed.
Severus approached the Slytherin table as indifferently as possible, he had no intention of showing them how deeply upset he still was, after his parents’ deaths. Insofar, his housemates had treated him like air, except for the whispering on the morning after the attack.
Today Avery decided to break the silence.
“Hey Snape, come sit over here!”
He obliged and slid down on the bench next to Tenley.
“Sorry about your parents,” she offered after a short hesitation.
“Why would you be, they were just a muggle and a blood traitor. Now I’m finally free,” Severus replied conversationally, certain that the blood would freeze in his veins for dishonoring his parents.
He quickly strengthened his occlusion shield and drowned whatever he was feeling. With walls erected around his mind, higher than ever before, he continued talking to his housemates feeling absolutely nothing.
“Why do you always sit alone at the other end of the table? I think you ought to know your place now.” Rookwood raised his eyebrows while giving him a snide look. “It would probably be unwise to decline to grace us with your company,” he continued with a smirk.
“As you please,” replied Severus flatly and turned his attention to his breakfast. This was a desirable development; he tried to convince himself. He would get a daily chance to monitor the junior Death Eaters and catch up on any gossip that could affect their plans on bringing down Voldemort.
He reached out to serve himself some porridge and was surprised when another hand brushed against his, as if it was reaching for the same spoon.
“Oh, sorry” giggled Tenley, eyes winking at him.
“Ladies first,” mumbled Severus and offered her the spoon.
She took it, just to serve herself a minimal amount of food. Then she flipped her hair, and fluttered with her lashes, before handing the spoon back to him.
Severus was about to ask if she had gotten some debris in her eye, when he realized that he had seen that kind of behavior before. It was similar how he had seen Lily reacting to James’s flirtations before she realized that he was a complete toerag.
His jaws would have dropped unless he already was occluding. Tenley was flirting with him.
Terrifying thestrals, how do you even respond to flirtations?
He really didn’t know how to react to her. He focused on shuffling his porridge around his plate while thinking about a solution. He tentatively took a spoonful, and forced it down, it was like chewing paper mass.
Fuck, this was out of his comfort zone. He could handle subterfuge, spying and lying, that was what he had signed up for. Not a Death Eater girlfriend.
He really didn’t have any choice but to play along. But he couldn’t even form normal friendships, how was he supposed be in a relationship? He cringed at the thought of allowing Tenley to get close to him, hoping that the process of forming a couple was something that normally would take several weeks.
He also worried how Lily would react to him getting closer to his housemates. More than a few of their previous fights had been about him being friendly with the Slytherins. He hoped that Lily could forgive him this time. She too had heard the headmaster’s instructions, which had been clear enough that not even a Gryffindor could misinterpret them.
He rose to go to the library to study. Potion maintenance or not, some might grow suspicious if he completely abandoned his old routines. He turned towards Rookwood and Avery and nodded curtly.
“Thank you for the company,” he huffed and walked away, thoughts trailing between Lily, his housemates and avenging his parents.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Dumbledore apparated to the edge of the Flamel property. It was one week before the elixir would be finished, and he was there to collect the stone. He had with profound unease noticed how his old friend had grown weaker and weaker during the process of making the stone. He almost regretted agreeing to this solution.
But, no, there was no point in mulling over a decision already made, the path was forward, and Nicolas had been aware of the risks.
Dumbledore knocked on the front door and waited for an answer. When there was none, he opened the unlocked door and stepped inside, almost stumbling over the Flamels’ kneazel, which hissed at him and ran out the moment the door creaked open.
“Good evening, is anybody home?” inquired Dumbledore with a loud voice, taking in the eeriness of the empty sitting room. For a moment he almost feared that their plan had been revealed, and something had happened to his old friends, but then he heard Perenelle’s voice calling from upstairs.
“We are in the bedroom, please join us, the stairs are taking a toll on Nicolas’s strength.”
Dumbledore took the stairs in a few strides, somewhat quicker than his old knees were agreeing with. He found the elderly couple in their bedroom, Nicolas bedbound and Perenell sitting with a worried frown by his side.
He did look worse than Dumbledore had imagined. To say that the stairs were difficult for Nicolas was an understatement. Just the strain of sitting upright was probably more than his old friend could manage at the moment.
“He has been really weak since he finished the stone yesterday. I’m glad you are here Albus, maybe you can help him? I am no youth myself either, and in no shape to take care of the house and garden and my husband, all alone,” said Perenell with a slight tremble in her voice.
“I am not dead yet, I will recover, I just need some rest and a few doses of the elixir of life.” Nicolas’s voice was hopelessly weak, and his eyes were closed, but he managed a faint smile upon hearing Dumbledore’s voice.
Dumbledore gave Perenelle a reassuring nod. “I am afraid there is nothing I can do for the magical exhaustion, but I can offer you one of Hogwarts’s house-elfs for household chores, while he recuperates.” He left unsaid, that the elf might have to stay with them for a very long time.
Perenelle didn’t seem any less worried, but she gave him her gratitude; “That would be appreciated.”
“Is the stone finished?” asked Dumbledore, trying to keep the pleasantries short, before his official errand was taken care of. Nicolas looked like death had warmed over, and he was honestly worried that his strength might fail him at any given moment.
“Yes, on the bedside table,” came Nicolas’s answer, his voice barely a whisper.
Dumbledore picked up an object wrapped in cloth and carefully untied the string around it. Inside was a small stone, not without resemblance to sandstone. It was the size of an irregularly shaped marble.
“Remarkable, despite its ordinary appearance, I can feel it tingle with magic! Is it safe to touch it?” exclaimed Dumbledore while adjusting his glasses to get a sharper look at the stone which he held through the wrapping cloth.
“I don’t know. I would not recommend it,” croaked Nicolas.
“I see, I will take your advice and leave my curiosity dissatisfied, in that case.”
“There is another matter I wanted to talk to you about. I guess you heard about Mr. Snape?” Dumbledore inquired.
“No, please spill! We were getting so well along, but about a month ago he grew awfully distant and silent, as if the joy of life itself had abandoned him.” Nicolas cracked one eye open, seeming more alert when talking about Mr. Snape than when talking about the stone.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought he would have told you, I got the impression that he confides in you. His parents were killed in an attack by Voldemort; he is technically a homeless orphan now. He may be of age, but he is lacking in emotional skills and quite a few everyday wizarding ways, due to his upbringing. I would like to place him with a mentor for a couple of years, just to make sure he doesn’t stray away from the light path.” Dumbledore kept his voice light, hoping that his friends would take the bait, that they certainly saw dangling in front of them.
“How could you fail to inform us, Albus!” scolded Perenelle. “Do you know how much effort Nicolas has put into winning young Severus’s trust. How can we help him, if we don’t even know that he is going through an existential crisis!”
“Now, now, it isn’t that bad, is it? He has been doing an excellent job with the brewing and keeping up appearances with his housemates.” Dumbledore twinkled, despite the fact that Nicolas eyelid were dropping over his iris again and he probably didn’t see it.
Perenelle sighed. “The poor boy is occluding, probably way more than is healthy, he really needs to talk to someone, or he will be lying hallucinating in St. Mungos before this is over.”
“I will arrange a meeting with you, if you would be so kind to oversee his mental wellbeing. I regret to say that it will have to be after we have finished with our plan. For now, he needs to focus on his task. It is critical that he can keep his head cool around Mr. Malfoy.” Dumbledore stroke his beard and watched how Nicolas eyes opened to slits.
“You are not going to let him face Voldemort, are you? He is just a child, he agreed to brew, not to be a sacrificial lamb!” said Nicolas, coughing, clearly angry, despite his weak state.
“Who else could I send there? I didn’t know that he would be able to arrange a meeting with Voldemort when we started to plan this. But he is perfect for the task. He knows the elixir, he is a skilled Occlumens and most importantly, he knows Mr. Malfoy.”
“No, Albus! Please say that you are joking, not even you can be prepared to sacrifice a student for the cause of the ‘greater good.’” Pernelle was shaking her head and put quite a bit of venom into the last words.
The disapproval of his elderly friends didn’t surprise Dumbledore. The Flamel’s had been his moral compass during Grindelwald’s war, when Dumbledore was younger and needed help to balance strategy and sacrifice.
He wasn’t sure he could take their advice this time, too much was at stake.
“I am as serious as I have ever been. The boy is smart and has good reflexes. He has a decent chance of making it out alive. My biggest concern is whether I can trust him or not. What if he turns coats at the final moment?”
“My friend, believe me when I say it, he won’t. He wants to protect his friend Miss Evans at all costs.” Nicolas was struggling to speak, and Dumbledore knew he had better leave soon to allow him to rest.
“He has been suspiciously close to the junior Death Eaters of lately,” grimaced Dumbledore.
“Isn’t that exactly what you asked him to be?” asked Perenelle, still fuming with disapproval.
“Yes, I guess it is. I just never thought he would be so good at it that he could fool me. It is difficult to trust him when I can’t get a reading on him,” sighed Dumbledore.
“Just trust him, he is a good kid, he is just under enormous pressure right now. And don’t risk his life.” Nicolas seemed to be drifting off to sleep and slurred the last part.
“I can’t promise that, but I will do my best,” promised Dumbledore.
He looked at his snoozing old friend, “I think I have outstayed my welcome. I will send some nutritional and restorative draughts for Nicolas with the house-elf. Do we agree on Mr. Snape?” The last part was directed at Pernelle.
“Yes, Albus, I think we can agree to it, provided that he still lives when summer arrives.” She gave him a sad smile and turned her attention towards her sleeping husband.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Dumbledore exited the Flamel residence and swirled around to reappear at Hogwarts’ apparition point. He walked slowly, deeply immersed in his intricate plots. Nicolas and Perenelle obviously detested the idea of letting Mr. Snape deliver the elixir to Voldemort, they had grown surprisingly fond of that boy.
In a sense he could understand them, they hadn’t interacted with any youth for decades, and they had no children of their own. It was only natural that they would find the skinny, withdrawn boy endearing. After all, he appeared to be perfectly polite in his interactions with the elderly couple. Not to forget that Nicolas had always appreciated a sharp mind.
He feared Nicolas would perish soon unless he found something to live for.
Dumbledore had long before the last cursed summer begun to see the light slowly fading from his friend’s eyes. But it had sparked to life again when he met young Mr. Snape, only to now be put out by the recent strains of advanced alchemy. If he sacrificed Mr. Snape, it would be the same as to slowly kill his friend. But this was war, and he was a leader, it was his job to do the hard but strategically advantageous choices – wasn’t it?
As a matter of fact, Dumbledore was already sacrificing people. One order member hadn’t returned from an intelligence gathering mission to confirm Malfoy’s plans. A few others had been wounded in a skirmish arranged to distract Voldemort from their main plan.
The gargoyle outside his tower obediently rolled to the side when Dumbledore entered the staircase to his office. He hardly had time to sit down when he heard heavy steps and even heavier panting from the staircase. His potions master must have been waiting for him and was clearly going to pay him a visit.
“Horace, my friend, I hope you are the bearer of good news!” said Dumbledore benevolently while gesturing for the short-winded man to sit down.
The chair Slughorn chose creaked in protest, but it had been spelled to hold up to half-giants so its protest was futile. After a few puffs and huffs the professor found his voice.
“I doubt you will find my news particularly agreeable, but I am here with a suggestion, if you don’t mind me speaking boldly.” Horace put emphasis on the last word, while he rather daringly looked Dumbledore straight in the eye. “We need a change in the plan.”
“Pardon me, my old friend, for being taken a bit aback by this boldness. But, by all means, enlighten me on your thoughts, before I will judge them.” Dumbledore narrowed his eyes, while calmly holding Slughorn’s gaze. Who was he to think that he could demand changes at this point. The trap for Voldemort was almost set and would surely be sprung in due time.
Slughorn cleared his throat and begun to speak. “When agreeing to this extracurricular project of yours, I had not thought of the long-term consequences in much detail. As a teacher I cannot accept that any harm come to students.”
He quickly went on with his explanation, not giving Albus any chance to protest.
“I am an old man who has lived a long life, bathing in the luxury and success of others. Let me stand first in line if the reaper is throwing a party, this might be my last chance for salvation.” He made a theatrical pause, and dabbed the sweat from his forehead.
Slughorn had a shrewd look to him when he continued. “About a month ago I started a brewing project of my own, and that will enable some minor changes in the plan…”
They discussed Slughorn’s suggestion for a long time, Dumbledore arguing against him, while Slughorn persistently standing his grounds. It was not to say that his suggestion didn’t have some advantages, but it would bring new challenges further down the road. It also opened discussions for other, so far unseen options. After a snifter of Cognac and a round of refills the old men finally reached consensus.
“I realize it is late, and you have lessons tomorrow, Horace. I shall not keep you any longer. I think we can agree on the matter.” And so Slughorn took off, leaving the headmaster to contemplate the fates he was holding in his hands. If there was an afterlife, he hoped that it would spare him from any roles with decision making, other than choosing what color robes he would wear for the day.