Severus Snape and the Half-Blood Prince (10)
Thanks for letting me know that you liked the mystery element in the last chapter. Let me know when you get any theories. It'll be fun to see whether I tip my hand. I'm guessing right now that you'll find out in--it's going to be a few chapters.
I'm really pleased that I get to share this chapter. It really tickles me because it's just about the worst thing I can think of for Sev to go through at this particular moment. Also, this chapter says just about everything I think about Professor Slughorn.
Slughorn's Solution
After they took Mum away, Severus sat on his chair for a long time, feeling hollow. He bowed his head so that his hair shielded his eyes from the room and concentrated on his finger nails.
Lucius came back, his lips tight and furious. He was followed by Professor Slughorn, who was still looking forlornly at his watch--like the white rabbit in the Alice book Mum used to read. The professor sat down and sighed loudly.
Lucius knelt in front of Severus so that he could see into his downturned face.
"Don't worry, Sevvie," he said. "This is not over. It is not over."
Then he stood up again and said to Professor Slughorn, "Look after Sevvie. I'm going to go talk to my father."
"But, my dear boy," Slughorn bleated, twiddling his thumbs in an agitated manner, "I don't have time to..."
"Just do it," Lucius said. Then he left.
Severus glanced at Professor Slughorn's face. His eyes were slightly buggy and his mouth was hanging open. For a moment they just sat there.
"Really!" Professor Slughorn said at last. "What am I to do? What am I to...? Hmmm." He seemed have had a thought. Then he heaved himself up to his feet and shoved himself into his coat.
"Come along, my boy," he sang out cheerfully. "I know what to do with you."
Severus had no idea what to do with himself, with Mum going to prison, so he followed Professor Slughorn like a mournful duckling as they went to one office--where Professor Slughorn wrangled a former student into getting them a Ministry vehicle, down to the street, and into the backseat of the small, dark car.
Professor Slughorn gave the driver some address. Severus didn't know London, outside of Diagon Alley, so it hardly mattered where it was. He was a bit surprised, though, when the car stopped in front of a middle-class townhouse in what was obviously a Muggle neighborhood.
"Out, out, out," Professor Slughorn said brightly, and tripped up to the front door.
It was opened by one of the Gryffindor girls. Severus remembered vaguely that her name was Lily Evans and that James Potter seemed to be sweet on her. She looked very surprised to see her Potions professor standing on the doorstep, accompanied by a random kid from school. Her gaze flickered back and forth between them, and she nervously twirled a lock of red hair around her index finger.
"Who is it, Lily?" A woman with the exact same shade of hair came up behind her. She put one hand on Lily's shoulder and smiled casually at them, although her eyes looked a little alarmed.
It must be strange for a Muggle, Severus thought, to suddenly see two people like us at your front door on the second day of Christmas vacation. Professor Slughorn could almost pass for a Muggle, but everything about him was oversized and operatic. And then there was himself, pale, thin; even at the best of times he knew he didn't make a good first impression. Right now, with all his thoughts following Mum through iron bars and prison convoys and barges that plowed through choppy waves towards a dark, forbidding prison, he probably looked like a ghoul.
But Professor Slughorn talked his way into the house, which Severus noted was bright with tinsel and colored Christmas decorations. There was a carpet that covered the entire floor and looked as soft as a kneazle's fur. There was a beige sofa in the front room with reddish-brown pillows on it. The walls were painted white. It was as pretty and clean as a furniture display in a department store.
Professor Slughorn pushed Severus towards the front room and told him to sit. He did--on a hard-backed chair in the corner. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He just wanted to get on the train back to Hogwarts--where he could hide in his room. All the other boys had gone home to their families and he'd be alone. No one would see him if he cried.
But until then, he sat and waited. Lily looked at him strangely once or twice. Then she ignored him and started chattering to an older girl, who seemed to be Lily's sister. Lily's sister--after a while he figured out that her name was Petunia--was quite a bit taller and had a thin, horsey face, which Severus found attractive. She spoke very loudly and tossed her head and glanced every once in a while over to Severus as if wonder why he hadn't been taken out with the trash.
Then Professor Slughorn came back from his parent-teacher conference with Lily's mother and father and started to put on his coat. Severus got up to follow him.
"Oh, no need, my boy," Professor Slughorn said. "You're going to stay with these nice people for a bit. I'll be back to pick you up soon."
Before Severus could even open his mouth to protest, the professor was gone. He was left alone with Lily Evans, whom he barely knew and her family, who--to judge from their bright pretty home--had absolutely nothing in common with him. Dumped on them like a trunk to be called for later. Three days before Christmas--the last time in the world they'd want to entertain some strange wizard boy.
Severus sat back down again, too mortified to speak.
"Can I get you anything, er... Severus?" asked Lily's mother. He shook his head. She sighed and went away.
He must have sat there, unmoving, for an hour before anyone spoke to him again. This time it was Lily's father. He looked a bit more like Petunia, with a long face and dirty-blond hair.
"So, Severus, is it?" he said. He sat down on the sofa near him. "Tell me a bit about yourself. Lily says you're in the same year. Do you like your classes?"
Severus swallowed. "Yes, sir." he said. He appreciated Mr. Evans for making an effort to alleviate the awkwardness of the situation. "I like Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts."
"Lily likes Potions, too," Mr. Evans said with obvious relief. "She says it's a lot like cooking. And she says Professor Slughorn is funny."
"Funny?" Severus had always found him overbearing and disgusting.
"Well, funny-looking anyway," he said, with an amused glance at his daughter, who was cutting out snowflakes. She scowled back at him goodnaturedly.
"Slughorn's a big booby," she said. "All you have to do to get a good grade from him is suck up like crazy. Plus he's the Head of Slytherin--" she stopped herself abruptly. "I mean..."
Mr. Evans looked puzzled. "I can't keep those houses straight. Which one are you in, Severus?"
"Slytherin," Severus said drily.
Far from being embarrassed, Mr. Evans laughed. "That's my girl for you," he said. "Give her a chance to put her foot in her mouth and she does it every time. Stop being anti-social, Lily, and come play with your friend."
"He's not my--" she stopped again, then continued in a tone of enforced politeness, preceded by a gigantic sigh, "Snape, would you like to come cut out snowflakes?"
He wasn't really keen, but it was better than sitting in the corner brooding about Mum--since there was absolutely nothing he could do but wait for Lucius to do what he did best and fix everything. So, he went to the table and picked up the spare set of scissors.
They ended up cutting out far too many of them. Lily grumbled that his were far better than hers. She was all right, but she wasn't quite as good as Severus at figuring out the eventual shape from what she was cutting, and sometimes her pieces came out awful--or simply fell apart. Petunia made some. She was unimaginative but precise, so her snowflakes were polished-looking and identical.
Severus pushed himself to make each snowflake unique and interesting. Lily said he must be using magic and therefore cheating and then she pinched him. And it wasn't scary or insulting, but just fun, so he almost allowed himself to smile.
Then Lily's mother came out and told them to clear the table for dinner.
Even the food they ate was colorful, shiny, and interesting. It wasn't the starchy food he was used to from Mum--or the weirdly old-fashioned fare at Hogwarts. The carrots had a little zing to them that Severus commented on.
"That's ginger," Mrs. Evans said. "It's nice to have someone notice."
Mr. Evans looked at her in mock outrage. "I notice," he said. "I told you I loved your carrots on our first date."
At which Lily and Petunia snickered loudly.
Severus helped Lily with the washing up, while Petunia talked on the phone to some boy named Vernon. "Her boyfriend," Lily whispered loudly. Severus couldn't help noticing that it was dark outside and he wondered, with a slowly rising panic, when Professor Slughorn was going to come and get him.
He wasn't the only one wondering, apparently, because when they finished, Lily's parents were sitting nervously in the front room and they straightened up as he came in.
"Um, Severus," Mr. Evans began. "Do you know where Professor Slughorn went to? Or when he's planning to return?"
Severus shook his head. "I don't know, sir. He didn't say anything to me."
Mrs. Evans glanced nervously out the window--as if hoping she'd see Slughorn's rotund figure outlined by the street lamps.
"It's just that--we expected him to be back by now..."
"What are you doing with Sluggy, anyway?" Lily demanded. "Does he use students to carry his bags when he goes on vacation?"
"No..." Severus tried to keep his voice from shaking. "I... he brought me to the Ministry..."
"The Ministry?" Lily squawked. "What were you doing at the Ministry?"
"What's the Ministry?" Petunia asked.
"It's where the people who run wizards are," Lily explained shortly. "But you'd only go there if you were in trouble or something."
"Well--"
"Are you in trouble?" Mrs. Evans asked gently. Her eyes were so concerned that Severus didn't know what to say. He couldn't lie to eyes like that.
"It's my mother," he said, with a shame he could feel creeping, spider-like, over his skin. "She's... she's been taken to Azkaban."
"Azkaban!" Lily shrieked. "They take the Death Eaters to Azkaban!"
"She's not a Death Eater!" he retorted. "She's... she did something else. She made potions for Muggles. She--" his voice was breaking. Damnit! His voice was cracking and shaking and his hands were shaking and if he wasn't careful, there'd be knick-knacks flying around the room in a minute. "She just made potions for people who needed them! She didn't do anything wrong, but they arrested her and they've sent her to Azkaban with the Dementors and it'll kill her. I know it will!"
And oh God, he was sobbing--sobbing in front of this strange family who had been so nice and let him cut snowflakes and fed him and he was making a scene.
Then he felt Mrs. Evans' arms around him, protective and comforting.
"Shhh, Severus," she said. "It's all right. Nothing is wrong, we just wanted to know--we just need to know what's going on so that we can make plans..."
"Nothing is wrong?" Petunia's scandalized voice broke through. "We have some criminal in our house and nothing is wrong?"
"Petunia!" That was Mr. Evans, sharp and preemptory. "That's enough. Come along. Lily, too. We're going for a walk."
In a few minutes, Severus had calmed down. Mrs. Evans smoothed back his hair and wiped his eyes and nose with a napkin.
"Well," she said, finally. "I suppose we'll just have to move Lily in with Petunia tonight, so you can have a place to sleep."
He sniffed. He had no idea why they were being so nice to him. Petunia was right, they should just kick him out the door.
"Tell me about your mother," Mrs. Evans said. "Not about... what you said before. Tell me what she's like."
So, haltingly at first, because he'd never spoken about his parents at all before, he told her about Mum's long hair, and the way she took care of everyone in the neighborhood, and how her voice sounded like music when she laughed. He talked about helping her with the potions and the meticulous way she wrote down what she'd made, and who she'd sold it to, and what, if any, result they reported back.
"She sounds like a scientist," Mrs. Evans mused, her hand still smoothing back his hair. "And it sounds like she was just trying to help people. Sometimes there are laws that..." She trailed off for a moment. "Sometimes there are laws that are good for society, but not good for the people in the society."
Then she took him by the hand and showed him Lily's room, where he'd spend the night. She gave him some pajamas that belonged to Mr. Evans.
"They're big for you," she said. "I know you have ways to make them smaller. If you want to do that, I won't tell on you to the Ministry."
He thought about it, but the idea of getting arrested the day after Mother scared him, so he simply rolled up the cuffs and belted the bottoms with his school tie.
By then, the others were back with a cake that Mr. Evans bought "because one dessert is simply not enough."
Petunia looked annoyed about sharing a room with Lily, but Lily didn't complain. She was nice the whole evening, and she said it was okay when her mother borrowed her owl to send a note to Hogwarts, letting them know where their stray student was.
That night, he lay in Lily's bed and looked at her shelves filled with plastic horses and unicorns and books and records and had one wicked thought. When he got back to school, he could tell James Potter that he'd spent the night in Lily Evans' bed. He imagined the look on Potter's face and snickered quietly.
But, he decided, he wouldn't really do that. It would be a poor payment for her family's hospitality to drag her into the middle of his feud with Potter.
I'm really pleased that I get to share this chapter. It really tickles me because it's just about the worst thing I can think of for Sev to go through at this particular moment. Also, this chapter says just about everything I think about Professor Slughorn.
Slughorn's Solution
After they took Mum away, Severus sat on his chair for a long time, feeling hollow. He bowed his head so that his hair shielded his eyes from the room and concentrated on his finger nails.
Lucius came back, his lips tight and furious. He was followed by Professor Slughorn, who was still looking forlornly at his watch--like the white rabbit in the Alice book Mum used to read. The professor sat down and sighed loudly.
Lucius knelt in front of Severus so that he could see into his downturned face.
"Don't worry, Sevvie," he said. "This is not over. It is not over."
Then he stood up again and said to Professor Slughorn, "Look after Sevvie. I'm going to go talk to my father."
"But, my dear boy," Slughorn bleated, twiddling his thumbs in an agitated manner, "I don't have time to..."
"Just do it," Lucius said. Then he left.
Severus glanced at Professor Slughorn's face. His eyes were slightly buggy and his mouth was hanging open. For a moment they just sat there.
"Really!" Professor Slughorn said at last. "What am I to do? What am I to...? Hmmm." He seemed have had a thought. Then he heaved himself up to his feet and shoved himself into his coat.
"Come along, my boy," he sang out cheerfully. "I know what to do with you."
Severus had no idea what to do with himself, with Mum going to prison, so he followed Professor Slughorn like a mournful duckling as they went to one office--where Professor Slughorn wrangled a former student into getting them a Ministry vehicle, down to the street, and into the backseat of the small, dark car.
Professor Slughorn gave the driver some address. Severus didn't know London, outside of Diagon Alley, so it hardly mattered where it was. He was a bit surprised, though, when the car stopped in front of a middle-class townhouse in what was obviously a Muggle neighborhood.
"Out, out, out," Professor Slughorn said brightly, and tripped up to the front door.
It was opened by one of the Gryffindor girls. Severus remembered vaguely that her name was Lily Evans and that James Potter seemed to be sweet on her. She looked very surprised to see her Potions professor standing on the doorstep, accompanied by a random kid from school. Her gaze flickered back and forth between them, and she nervously twirled a lock of red hair around her index finger.
"Who is it, Lily?" A woman with the exact same shade of hair came up behind her. She put one hand on Lily's shoulder and smiled casually at them, although her eyes looked a little alarmed.
It must be strange for a Muggle, Severus thought, to suddenly see two people like us at your front door on the second day of Christmas vacation. Professor Slughorn could almost pass for a Muggle, but everything about him was oversized and operatic. And then there was himself, pale, thin; even at the best of times he knew he didn't make a good first impression. Right now, with all his thoughts following Mum through iron bars and prison convoys and barges that plowed through choppy waves towards a dark, forbidding prison, he probably looked like a ghoul.
But Professor Slughorn talked his way into the house, which Severus noted was bright with tinsel and colored Christmas decorations. There was a carpet that covered the entire floor and looked as soft as a kneazle's fur. There was a beige sofa in the front room with reddish-brown pillows on it. The walls were painted white. It was as pretty and clean as a furniture display in a department store.
Professor Slughorn pushed Severus towards the front room and told him to sit. He did--on a hard-backed chair in the corner. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He just wanted to get on the train back to Hogwarts--where he could hide in his room. All the other boys had gone home to their families and he'd be alone. No one would see him if he cried.
But until then, he sat and waited. Lily looked at him strangely once or twice. Then she ignored him and started chattering to an older girl, who seemed to be Lily's sister. Lily's sister--after a while he figured out that her name was Petunia--was quite a bit taller and had a thin, horsey face, which Severus found attractive. She spoke very loudly and tossed her head and glanced every once in a while over to Severus as if wonder why he hadn't been taken out with the trash.
Then Professor Slughorn came back from his parent-teacher conference with Lily's mother and father and started to put on his coat. Severus got up to follow him.
"Oh, no need, my boy," Professor Slughorn said. "You're going to stay with these nice people for a bit. I'll be back to pick you up soon."
Before Severus could even open his mouth to protest, the professor was gone. He was left alone with Lily Evans, whom he barely knew and her family, who--to judge from their bright pretty home--had absolutely nothing in common with him. Dumped on them like a trunk to be called for later. Three days before Christmas--the last time in the world they'd want to entertain some strange wizard boy.
Severus sat back down again, too mortified to speak.
"Can I get you anything, er... Severus?" asked Lily's mother. He shook his head. She sighed and went away.
He must have sat there, unmoving, for an hour before anyone spoke to him again. This time it was Lily's father. He looked a bit more like Petunia, with a long face and dirty-blond hair.
"So, Severus, is it?" he said. He sat down on the sofa near him. "Tell me a bit about yourself. Lily says you're in the same year. Do you like your classes?"
Severus swallowed. "Yes, sir." he said. He appreciated Mr. Evans for making an effort to alleviate the awkwardness of the situation. "I like Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts."
"Lily likes Potions, too," Mr. Evans said with obvious relief. "She says it's a lot like cooking. And she says Professor Slughorn is funny."
"Funny?" Severus had always found him overbearing and disgusting.
"Well, funny-looking anyway," he said, with an amused glance at his daughter, who was cutting out snowflakes. She scowled back at him goodnaturedly.
"Slughorn's a big booby," she said. "All you have to do to get a good grade from him is suck up like crazy. Plus he's the Head of Slytherin--" she stopped herself abruptly. "I mean..."
Mr. Evans looked puzzled. "I can't keep those houses straight. Which one are you in, Severus?"
"Slytherin," Severus said drily.
Far from being embarrassed, Mr. Evans laughed. "That's my girl for you," he said. "Give her a chance to put her foot in her mouth and she does it every time. Stop being anti-social, Lily, and come play with your friend."
"He's not my--" she stopped again, then continued in a tone of enforced politeness, preceded by a gigantic sigh, "Snape, would you like to come cut out snowflakes?"
He wasn't really keen, but it was better than sitting in the corner brooding about Mum--since there was absolutely nothing he could do but wait for Lucius to do what he did best and fix everything. So, he went to the table and picked up the spare set of scissors.
They ended up cutting out far too many of them. Lily grumbled that his were far better than hers. She was all right, but she wasn't quite as good as Severus at figuring out the eventual shape from what she was cutting, and sometimes her pieces came out awful--or simply fell apart. Petunia made some. She was unimaginative but precise, so her snowflakes were polished-looking and identical.
Severus pushed himself to make each snowflake unique and interesting. Lily said he must be using magic and therefore cheating and then she pinched him. And it wasn't scary or insulting, but just fun, so he almost allowed himself to smile.
Then Lily's mother came out and told them to clear the table for dinner.
Even the food they ate was colorful, shiny, and interesting. It wasn't the starchy food he was used to from Mum--or the weirdly old-fashioned fare at Hogwarts. The carrots had a little zing to them that Severus commented on.
"That's ginger," Mrs. Evans said. "It's nice to have someone notice."
Mr. Evans looked at her in mock outrage. "I notice," he said. "I told you I loved your carrots on our first date."
At which Lily and Petunia snickered loudly.
Severus helped Lily with the washing up, while Petunia talked on the phone to some boy named Vernon. "Her boyfriend," Lily whispered loudly. Severus couldn't help noticing that it was dark outside and he wondered, with a slowly rising panic, when Professor Slughorn was going to come and get him.
He wasn't the only one wondering, apparently, because when they finished, Lily's parents were sitting nervously in the front room and they straightened up as he came in.
"Um, Severus," Mr. Evans began. "Do you know where Professor Slughorn went to? Or when he's planning to return?"
Severus shook his head. "I don't know, sir. He didn't say anything to me."
Mrs. Evans glanced nervously out the window--as if hoping she'd see Slughorn's rotund figure outlined by the street lamps.
"It's just that--we expected him to be back by now..."
"What are you doing with Sluggy, anyway?" Lily demanded. "Does he use students to carry his bags when he goes on vacation?"
"No..." Severus tried to keep his voice from shaking. "I... he brought me to the Ministry..."
"The Ministry?" Lily squawked. "What were you doing at the Ministry?"
"What's the Ministry?" Petunia asked.
"It's where the people who run wizards are," Lily explained shortly. "But you'd only go there if you were in trouble or something."
"Well--"
"Are you in trouble?" Mrs. Evans asked gently. Her eyes were so concerned that Severus didn't know what to say. He couldn't lie to eyes like that.
"It's my mother," he said, with a shame he could feel creeping, spider-like, over his skin. "She's... she's been taken to Azkaban."
"Azkaban!" Lily shrieked. "They take the Death Eaters to Azkaban!"
"She's not a Death Eater!" he retorted. "She's... she did something else. She made potions for Muggles. She--" his voice was breaking. Damnit! His voice was cracking and shaking and his hands were shaking and if he wasn't careful, there'd be knick-knacks flying around the room in a minute. "She just made potions for people who needed them! She didn't do anything wrong, but they arrested her and they've sent her to Azkaban with the Dementors and it'll kill her. I know it will!"
And oh God, he was sobbing--sobbing in front of this strange family who had been so nice and let him cut snowflakes and fed him and he was making a scene.
Then he felt Mrs. Evans' arms around him, protective and comforting.
"Shhh, Severus," she said. "It's all right. Nothing is wrong, we just wanted to know--we just need to know what's going on so that we can make plans..."
"Nothing is wrong?" Petunia's scandalized voice broke through. "We have some criminal in our house and nothing is wrong?"
"Petunia!" That was Mr. Evans, sharp and preemptory. "That's enough. Come along. Lily, too. We're going for a walk."
In a few minutes, Severus had calmed down. Mrs. Evans smoothed back his hair and wiped his eyes and nose with a napkin.
"Well," she said, finally. "I suppose we'll just have to move Lily in with Petunia tonight, so you can have a place to sleep."
He sniffed. He had no idea why they were being so nice to him. Petunia was right, they should just kick him out the door.
"Tell me about your mother," Mrs. Evans said. "Not about... what you said before. Tell me what she's like."
So, haltingly at first, because he'd never spoken about his parents at all before, he told her about Mum's long hair, and the way she took care of everyone in the neighborhood, and how her voice sounded like music when she laughed. He talked about helping her with the potions and the meticulous way she wrote down what she'd made, and who she'd sold it to, and what, if any, result they reported back.
"She sounds like a scientist," Mrs. Evans mused, her hand still smoothing back his hair. "And it sounds like she was just trying to help people. Sometimes there are laws that..." She trailed off for a moment. "Sometimes there are laws that are good for society, but not good for the people in the society."
Then she took him by the hand and showed him Lily's room, where he'd spend the night. She gave him some pajamas that belonged to Mr. Evans.
"They're big for you," she said. "I know you have ways to make them smaller. If you want to do that, I won't tell on you to the Ministry."
He thought about it, but the idea of getting arrested the day after Mother scared him, so he simply rolled up the cuffs and belted the bottoms with his school tie.
By then, the others were back with a cake that Mr. Evans bought "because one dessert is simply not enough."
Petunia looked annoyed about sharing a room with Lily, but Lily didn't complain. She was nice the whole evening, and she said it was okay when her mother borrowed her owl to send a note to Hogwarts, letting them know where their stray student was.
That night, he lay in Lily's bed and looked at her shelves filled with plastic horses and unicorns and books and records and had one wicked thought. When he got back to school, he could tell James Potter that he'd spent the night in Lily Evans' bed. He imagined the look on Potter's face and snickered quietly.
But, he decided, he wouldn't really do that. It would be a poor payment for her family's hospitality to drag her into the middle of his feud with Potter.