Blood Feuds
Between making sure he had enough supplies for his classes and dealing with a bogart lurking in a particularly gloomy bedroom closet and taking stock of his N.E.W.T. students and corresponding with St. Mungo's about their need for a variety of tricky potions, September bled into October with alarming speed. Severus was finally sitting down with the Prophet after an evening of detention supervision when a loud CRACK announced the end of his ten minutes of solitude.
He raised one eyebrow at the house-elf. "Anything the matter, Fizzy?"
"Yes, sir. It's only—" the elf's nose twitched. "Is that Pepper-Up Potion, sir?"
"Good nose." Snape glanced at the potion that was being stirred in the corner. "Have you thought any further about my offer? The medical logs are sorely lacking when it comes to the effects of potions on elves. Except for…well, the unfortunate exceptions."
Fizzy trembled. House-elves, treated, as they were, like a cross between beast and slave, were so often the last of the sentient magical creatures to be written about in medical journals. Even giants, remote and half-wild, had a dedicated field devoted to understanding their culture and habits. House-elves, on the other hand, had been so thoroughly subjugated in Wizarding society that they weren't even of scholarly interest. Their only role in medicine was as often unwilling test subjects. Starved or cursed to the brink of death and then force-fed potions to try to counteract the effects. And the potions were not always successful.
But Fizzy had taken a shining to potions, often appearing at the end of Snape's lessons. After months of his silent tidying he'd finally asked one tremulous but well-formulated question about the O.W.L.-level potion the fifth-years had been brewing. Ever since Snape had been reading everything he could about house-elves in medicine…and elves in general. Goblins had their own schools, and giants spurned society. Centaurs and merpeople formed their own civilizations, and there were the veela, who bred with humans, and leprechauns, who annoyed and exasperated the Irish. But for such innately magical creatures at the house-elves to not even be offered the chance at an education...
Snape's outrage didn't change Fizzy's position, but it had made the elf exceptionally loyal to Slytherin House. Which explained why the creature was here now, wringing his hands in distress. "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not here about potions today, sir."
"I wish you would call me Severus, Fizz."
Fizzy blinked. "It's only, I was just checking the hall outside the Common Room and I saw…I wanted to intervene, but…"
"Is someone in danger?" Snape was on his feet, waving his wand to check his alarm spells. Hogwarts was so full of leftover magic from over the centuries that he was sure he wasn't the first one to try to keep track of his snakes with a roll call spell. Almost everyone accounted for. Three missing, but he knew that Nymeria and Spratt had detention with Binns—Lord knows how they managed that—and were no doubt falling asleep in the West Tower. Otherwise almost all of Slytherin House should be a-bed. Or at least a-Common Room. "Fire? An intruder?"
Fizzy flinched at Snape's tone and he made another mental note to inquire just what had transpired in this intelligent creature's life to land him in this position, indentured to Hogwarts but so very afraid of human temper.
"Best to show you?" Fizzy asked, cracking away again. Damned Apparition ban. Snape had to take the stairs.
He ran the last length of the hall, wand out. Expecting…well, he wasn't sure. But expecting quite a bit more than a sniveling boy curled on the floor.
"What are you crying about?" Snape snarled. Fizzy had been kneeling next to the boy but he cracked away at the sound of Snape's ire.
The trembling figure sat up and even in the dim light of the corridor that blazing red mop of hair was unmissable. "Professor! How did you—I didn't mean for Fizzy to wake you, I just was hoping he knew another way into the Common Room."
"What's wrong with the normal way?" Snape glanced at the wall concealing the entrance to Slytherin House. "Are Weasleys too good to take the stairs?"
Percy shook his head rapidly and as his face caught the torchlight Snape reached forward, grabbing the chin in his hands. Percy tried to pull away but Snape held firm.
He tilted Percy's chin one way. Then the other. "You've been brawling." He glanced down, taking in the rest of the lad. "What happened to your trousers?"
It seemed like the First Year wasn't going to answer him. Lips pressed together and eyes defiant with rage. But then—oh, Snape would never get used to it, used to the little ones who wanted night-lights and hugs and mothers. Who cried when they were hurt.
Snape was sorely tempted to just put Weasley to bed, and damn the consequences of bringing a crying eleven-year-old boy through a nest of vipers. But even he wasn't so cruel. "Come on, then. Let's clean you up."
He rarely had students down to his personal quarters. He knew that Flitwick and some of the other professors conducted detention in their offices, but those professors didn't have piles of cauldrons to scrub every evening. And, anyway, the dungeons were a moody enough spot for a bit of re-thinking. In fact, as Snape pushed open the door to his office, with his quarters just beyond, he realized that no one except for Dumbledore and Fizzy had stepped foot in what amounted to his home here at Hogwarts since he'd moved in a year ago.
What a depressing thought.
"Sit down," Snape ordered. He ladled some of the Pepper-Up into a mug and thrust it into the boy's hands. 'That won't heal you, mind, but it might make you feel better."
"I know Pepper-Up!" Percy sniffed the potion with a little smile. His feet kicked against the chair, not quite reaching the ground. "Mum always makes it with ginger. Says it helps the digestion."
"That's—" Snape felt his lip curling before he even processed the words. But then he stopped. "Actually not a bad idea. It might counter-act some of the fast-acting nausea." Damn, after the fiasco after the Sorting he was loathe to take Molly Weasley's advice on anything, but ginger might be worth looking into.
Percy shrugged, sipping the potion, his sniffles subsiding as color blossomed on his cheeks.
"Now," Snape said. "Why don't you tell me why you need a separate entrance into the Common Room?"
Percy squeezed his eyes shut. "The password never works for me. On account of. You know." His voice dropped to a mumbled whisper. "Me not being a true Slytherin."
Snape raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware there was such a distinction."
Percy's nod was morose. "See, even though the Hat thought I could be in Slytherin the Common Room knows better. If I go in with someone else it's fine, so after lessons I mostly stick with Keeley or Lisa. But then I wanted to get some books from the library and stop by the Charms Club to see my brother Bill, so Keeley obviously couldn't come with me and Lisa wanted to stay with her."
"Why was Ms. Rosier unable to join you in the library?" Snape knew he was supposed to look after his House but he was truly baffled by the emotional batch of First Years. "Is she allergic to books?"
"Oh no! Keeley's aces. She's always trying to get us to study more even though she's top of the class. But her Dad's not too keen on…well. Me. Us. You know. Weasleys." Percy must have seen something thunderous in Snape's expression because he winced and looked down at the ratty knees of his trousers.
Rosier. Of course the Death Eaters thought it was within their rights to take up old blood feuds. When Severus had been in school, somehow both yesterday and a lifetime ago, the factions had worn their allegiances on their arms. He was folded into the Death Eaters before graduation, in much the way the Order had laid claim to the brightest young Gryffindors. Was it any wonder the animosity had spilled down the generations? Honestly, they were lucky there wasn't more blood lost in the hallways.
Snape poured himself a thimble of Pepper-Up. He had a feeling he wouldn't be sleeping tonight. "And so without Ms. Rosier by your side the Common Room refused the password?"
"It's done that since the beginning. Mycah says that Hogwarts is full of old magic, and that Slytherin Common Room knows a…a blood traitor."
Mycah Macnair, the Seventh Year who ruled the House. He'd been named prefect by the previous Head of House and Snape could find no way to revoke that privilege, only able to check the boy's power by allowing yet another Gryffindor Head Boy and naming Luke Doomsday to Fifth Year prefect. Doomsday didn't have the same sway over the House…yet. But there was a feud brewing. Percy just didn't know he'd landed in the middle of the problem.
The lad babbled to fill the silence. "Dad's always been friendly with muggles. We live in a muggle village. And then Mycah spotted me washing my trousers in my dressing gown and he had a right laugh, but my kit's not gray cuz it's dirty. It's only that—" Percy broke off, biting his tongue before he could reveal the whole sad truth.
But of course Snape already knew. He'd been in the Weasley's home. He'd heard the whispers that had dogged the older boys. That there were more children than the family could afford. Bill had combatted the rumors with charm and Charlie with Quidditch prowess, but Percy had been placed, rightly or wrongly, on a collision course with the worst of the rumors.
"I have my own set-up for laundry," Snape said.
Percy blinked at him. "What?"
What indeed? Snape didn't know what came over him, except that he looked at the thrice-mended hand-me-down clothes and the boy who was picked on by his whole class, the blood-traitor, cast out, albeit temporarily, from his own family and set alone upon meaner shores, and he saw, goddamn it all…himself. Washing his trousers in his pants because he didn't have clothes to spare.
But of course a Weasley wouldn't want to be taking charity from a Snape. He tried to think of a way to walk the comment back now that those blue eyes were affixed upon him, wide.
"Do you mean it, sir? Only, everyone in the House thinks your aces. No one sticks up for Slytherin except for you. And if I came down here a few times—maybe everyone would think I was alright."
Snape hadn't felt this stunned since Dumbledore had offered him the job as Potions Master. If he'd been asked, five minutes ago, whether or not he cared if a bunch of snotty children thought he was decent, he'd have laughed in their faces. The Slytherins liked him? Of course he knew that Flitwick and Sprout had their own adoring fanclubs, and McGonagall often advocated too hard for her little lions, but Snape was young, and new, and hadn't found a way to ingratiate himself in the staff. He had the Headmaster's ear, and that was it. But he did speak up for his House, small and battered though it was. The only way to prevent another war was to stop treating the young Slytherins like up-and-coming criminals and start seeing their connections, their ambition, as assets.
"And maybe," Percy continued, quickly, as if he was afraid Snape would revoke his offer, "Since you're, like, the best Slytherin ever, if you think I'm alright then the Common Room should too?"
Snape rolled his eyes. He couldn't change public perception of his House overnight, but this was one problem he could fix. He took the mug from Percy and headed for the door.
Percy ran a little to catch up with him, slipping his small palm into Snape's hand. Fine, then. They'd do this together.
To be fair, the Slytherin Common Room was not in an obvious place. After seven years as a student he knew the way instinctively, but he knew that it was easy for First Years to get lost. The other Houses were guarded by portraits, or doorknobs. Snape wondered if he could convince a portrait to move so close to the dungeons. Even one of the suits of armor would be slightly more protection.
"Are you sure you were in the right spot?" Snape asked.
Percy nodded vigorously. "I thought I'd mess it up so I put a mark on the floor." He pointed at some chalk they were standing on. "And I stood here and said it and nothing happened."
"Let's see you try."
"Murtlap," Percy said, his tone unsure but his voice clear. It was probably the same tone he'd been instructed, from childhood, to use floo powder with.
It was the right password (so far not a single student had spotted that Snape's passwords were in fact all the potion ingredients for Felix Felices. He figured they needed luck wherever they could get it) but the wall didn't budge.
"Murtlap," Snape growled. And the stone parted like the sea.
"It's cuz you're a true Slytherin," Percy muttered. "And I'm not."
To a First Year this might seem like the most logical explanation, but any Death Eater worth his salt would tell you that when something seems out of the ordinary, check your enemies. If they don't know anything about it, check your friends.
Mycah Macnair was sniggering with his mates in a corner.
Snape pushed Weasley towards the First Year girls and stalked over to Macnair. "Alliances can be powerful things, Macnair. What would your father say about you befriending a Weasley?"
"Have you seen him? A blood-traitor dressed in rags!" Macnair didn't keep his voice down and Snape saw Percy duck his head.
Snape lowered his voice. "I'd be careful about who I was calling a traitor, Macnair." It was well-known that Walden Macnair had somehow wriggled away from justice before securing a post as the Ministry's executioner. Still doing someone else's dirty work.
Mycah flushed. "My father says—"
"If your father has said anything other than try to be friends with the Weasley boy than he is a fool. The Weasleys are one of the most powerful pure-blood families in England."
"But his uncles—"
"We can't keep fighting the same war," Snape snapped. "I expect more from my prefects and I expect more from this House. Everyone in Hogwarts expects you all to be nasty brutes." He'd raised his voice, addressing the whole of the Common Room. When he'd been at Hogwarts there'd been a hundred Slytherins. What had happened to this once-powerful House? Infighting. Terror. "Don't give them the satisfaction. Work together. Help each other. And you might even learn something."
Macnair stuck out his chin. "What do you expect me to do? Hold his hand? Give him a hug?"
"You can take the curse off the door, for one thing. Let him come into this House." Snape knelt in front of his Seventh Years. He lowered his voice so Percy couldn't hear and said slyly, conspiratorially. "You've got the chance to turn a lion into the most perfect snake. Don't squander it."
.
Snape thought it would take Weasley weeks to muster up the courage to ask about the offer, but three days later Percy hung back after his potions lesson. "Sir? Do you think I could…? Only, I really do only have one pair of trousers."
"You were sent to school without a change of clothes?" Snape hadn't meant to say that. He'd meant to say yes and not reveal that he cared about this situation at all.
The tips of Percy's ears turned scarlet. "I grew too fast so my other pair went to the twins. Mum promised to owl me some clothes but sometimes it…can take a while."
Snape blinked, appalled. "There aren't really any Weasley twins, are there?"
Percy grinned. "Fred and George! They'll be here in a couple years, and Ron and Ginny right after. Fred and George are terrible, though. They never listen and they always get us into massive trouble. Do you know how wizard babies are always doing magic?"
Snape hadn't been around very many wizard babies and his parents had been disinclined to tell him stories of his own childhood, but he nodded for the boy to continue.
"Well, they always liked to turn invisible. They'd hiccup or laugh and just poof! And so I always said I wish they'd stayed babies so I wouldn't have to deal with both at the same time."
Severus rolled his eyes. "Sounds like Hogwarts is in for an adventure."
Percy nodded. "Ooh! And Ginny used to levitate. She did it last summer, too, and she's almost six! Mum says that means she'll probably be a better at magic than all us boys put together."
He would have stood there all afternoon, Snape was sure, delivering rapid-fire accounts of home. And Severus would have listened to him. How different his life might have been if he'd had a sibling to endure it all with.
(Ah, but the Blacks. Regulus quiet and defiant in the back of the Common Room. The Blacks could have had each other and they got death and worse than death.)
As if he could pick up on Snape's mood Percy's prattle stuttered. "Mum doesn't think I'm good at all."
"At magic?" Snape asked, trying to find the thread again.
"No," Percy murmured. "Just…just good."
He hurried away after that, ducking his head and vowing to be by Snape's quarters after dinner.
.
When Bill Weasley fell into step alongside Snape in the hallway a few weeks later, the young professor tried not to roll his eyes. Things had settled down with Percy since the Common Room incident. The little foursome of First Years were fast friends, and little Elias and his band of misfits seemed to be helping the Doomsday cause against Macnair. There would be a reckoning before the end of the school year, but for now Snape was proud that Slytherin House had earned the least detentions, even adjusted for their small population, of any House in the school.
Of course, they'd also earned the least amount of House points. McGonagall in particular seemed to think it was betraying her old Order-aligned values to give a few points to a Rockwood or a Gaunt. But. Those were all topics for his mid-year meeting with Dumbledore.
"If you want to check in on your brother, Weasley, I would ask him directly."
"Oh! No, sir. I mean, I know Perce is actually doing—not that I wouldn't expect him to—but even being in Slytherin—I mean." Bill blew out a breath. "This isn't about Percy. Did you know I'm in Professor Binns's OWL course?"
"I thought everyone dropped the old ghost as soon as they had a chance." Snape winced as soon as the sentence left his mouth. "Ignore that. It's what was said when I was a student but as a professor—"
"I mean, you're right. It's a small group of us. But I'm doing my research project about the history of Hogwarts houses and the Sorting process…"
"I wonder where that interest comes from."
Bill snorted a laugh, ducking his head. "Yeah. Not that I'm going to question the Sorting Hat, but I wanted to see if there were any trends. I mean, Gryffindor is packed this year. We had to put extra beds in the girl's dorm."
"Beds that came from Slytherin House."
"That's what Fizzy said. The house-elf. You probably don't talk to house-elves but he's always been nice to us prefects trying to get the kids to keep their spaces tidy."
Snape found that this whole semester had him re-evaluating his opinions of the Weasleys. Grudging respect as always a strange emotion.
"Anyway, I have some data from school records that I've been plotting and there seems to be some trends. Can you—would you mind taking a look at it?" Bill pulled off to the side of the hallway. A small window looked out into a courtyard where some students were trying to entice the school cats with bits of lunch. Bill unrolled a piece of parchment on the windowsill. "Let me know if you see anything."
Snape did have afternoon classes and an evening of supervising detention and a paper to finish up about the efficacy of adding ginger to Pepper-Up potions, but it was only one parchment. And, anyway, Snape was newly interested in Sorting practices as well.
Bill leaned against the wall, watching the cats as Snape scanned the parchment. Then picked it up to examine it closer. "How did you get these numbers?"
"There's enrollment records in the library. I got Luke—Luke Doomsday, that is—to look into family legacies, and his stuff is also shaping up to be wicked. Did you know the Black family has a tapestry of their whole family tree? And they've blasted away anyone who wasn't a Slytherin! Tonks is technically a Black, she's a seventh-year. Says she hasn't gone to her aunt's house since she was eleven."
Snape rummaged in his bag. "Do you mind if I copy this parchment? And keep me appraised of your findings." He glanced at Bill, who'd puffed up slightly. Most of the time Snape felt barely any older than the students he taught. He forgot that they could see his word as some sort validation.
As he tapped the paper he glanced back at the fifth-year. "Are you sticking with Binns? Finding a calling in History of Magic?"
"Depends on my OWL results. I'd like to stay with Arithmancy, History of Magic, Ancient Runes, Charms, Transfiguration. Maybe pick up Alchemy. Potions, of course." The Weasleys all flushed the same color as their hair. "If you'll have me for the NEWT course."
"Not Muggle Studies?" Snape teased.
Bill opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. "It's. It's hard to raise a family on a Ministry salary." His freckles stood stark when he blushed. "Luke's cousin works abroad at some ancient magical sites. Curse-breaking. I've never been anywhere. And curse-breaking sounds…cool."
The data had transferred. Snape still had an hour before his afternoon class. Maybe there was time to catch Dumbledore in his office. He clapped Bill Weasley on the shoulder. "Curse-breaking takes more research than most people realize. I think you're well on your way."
He left the boy gaping in the hallway and raced up to the eagle-fronted office.
"Double bubble," he ground out. His anger had built on the climb up the staircases. He was practically vibrating by the time the stone shuddered. Spiraled. And spilled him into the headmaster's office.
"Severus," Dumbledore was actually very close to the entrance. Several figures were crammed into a portrait, some sitting precariously on the desk in the painting, some squashed against the frames. If the rest of the Wizarding World knew how much of the knowledge of Hogwarts resided in pictures they'd be appalled. Sometimes, in flickering moments, Snape could understand why Voldemort thought he could topple this whole place. "What's wrong now?"
That pulled Snape up short. "How do you know something's wrong?"
A twinkle in the old man's eye and he gestured for Snape to walk back to the desk with him. "The unfortunate reality of being Headmaster is that you don't get social calls."
"Hmm." Now Snape almost wished he had something sociable to ask the old man, but in front of Dumbledore he was always fifteen again, scraped and bloodied after a run-in with a werewolf. He was twenty, bowing his head below the leader of the Order of the Phoenix, begging him to overthrow his old master for the sake of the one woman who'd ever shown him any kindness. He was twenty-six, moving into Hogwarts with a cardboard box and a tattoo concealed on his upper arm.
"It's all right," Dumbledore settled into his seat, fingers steepling. "As the students say, 'I live for the drama.'"
That made Snape snort. And remember his anger. He unfurled the parchment on the desk. "Apparently Binns is assigning some projects on the history of Hogwarts. Young Bill Weasley decided to look into Sorting practices."
"Understandable. Molly wasn't in her best form when I gave her the news."
"Percy says she's relented. He's going home for Christmas, now. Though I understand he's also been invited to the Doomsday's homestead out on the moors."
"Said like a true Head of House." Dumbledore beamed at him. "I hope you know, Severus, that I observe your lessons. I hear how utterly adored you are by your Slytherins. And I could not be more proud of you."
Snape…didn't know what to do with that information. So he tapped his wand against the parchment. "Well as you see that while the general trend of every other House has stayed steady for centuries, even adjusting for smaller populations in times of war or plague, it's Slytherin House that takes the brunt of the impact by outside forces." He jabbed at the data. "Here, just after the reign of Grindlewald."
Dumbledore's face clouded. His most famous duel, in a famously garrulous man, and he rarely spoke of it. "There were other forces facing England at that time. Grindlewald's cause was supported abroad. He, of course, studied at Durmstrang. Perhaps enrollment for Slytherins shifted?"
"But why should it matter? Shouldn't the damned Hat try to Sort evenly? It does for every other House! This year Gryffindor has fifteen First-Years, but Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw each have thirteen. I have four! It happened after Grindlewald—"
"And it eventually normalized."
"Slytherin never reached parity with the other Houses. Look! Twenty years after Grindlewald it's still at half-strength." Snape flattened his hands against the parchment. "I think you need to ask the Hat. As Headmaster of this school, as someone who is supposed to look out for the welfare of all of its inhabitants. You need to ask the Hat if it's trying to squash the future of Slytherin House."
"And tell the Hat good luck!" A voice yelled from a portrait. "And good riddance!"
"Now, Viari," Dumbledore murmured. "There was a reason you and the Founders made Hogwarts with four houses."
"And where did it get us?" the first Headmaster of Hogwarts was a stout man whose wand was sheathed on his hip like a sword. "Salazar breaking off the first chance he got. Hiding that monster of his inside of Hogwarts itself. I was in favor of getting rid of Slytherin House then. Nine centuries later and you've got the same problems."
Snape couldn't believe he was about to argue with a portrait but he was using data from a fifteen-year-old. This was just his life today. "But you did readmit Slytherins."
Viari swelled, his voice a strangled shout: "Because even back then the House was made of the most powerful families in England! How do you shut them all away? But look here: how many Hufflepuffs joined What's-His-Name in this latest reign of terror? How many Gryffindors opposed him and were struck down?"
Snape glowered. "You can't judge a whole population by its worst offenders. My students have done nothing wrong."
"Except they are raised among their kind!" This from a wild-haired headmistress. "At home their parents are Death Eaters. At Hogwarts they are sequestered underground with other progeny of Death Eaters."
"There are no Slytherins enrolled in Muggle Studies," a willowy woman whispered. "None in Muggle Art or Music."
Snape had to force himself to not roll his eyes. "Slytherins are, by definition, ambitious. Do ambitious people really spend their time studying Muggles?"
"Dissolve the house!" Viari, the First Headmaster, waved his sword-wand over his head. "Don't banish the students, but incorporate them into the general population. Let their brains be put to use in Ravenclaw. The strivers can go to Gryffindor. Let Hufflepuff teach them kindness."
Snape felt harangued. He'd expected pushback on the data itself, not a shouting match with portraits over the viability of the future of Slytherin itself. "They can learn kindness from each other."
"Modeled by whom?" Viari sneered. "You? With that mark upon your arm you proclaim to be a pillar of kindness? How many did you torture to rise in the ranks of darkness? How many did you kill?"
"Viari!" Dumbledore snapped, but it was too late. Snape felt trapped. A seen.
He'd been a young boy with ambition. Slytherin was absolutely the place for him. But he hadn't formed a cohort. He improved his potions and plotted revenge against Potter and when he saw a chance to get even in life he took it.
Sometimes he asked himself…if the prophesy had been about anyone else. If it meant only James Potter dying. If it meant only a newborn baby dying. Would he have stopped it? Would he have burst into the house himself, dueled Potter like they were sixteen but with killing curses at his fingertips?
"Viari's words are harsh," the wild-haired Headmistress said in the silence. "But we've spoken of this before, Dumbledore. My biggest regret as Headmistress is allowing House loyalty to fester like a wound. If we are truly thinking of the well-being of all of our students, wouldn't a diversity of opinions be a welcome asset?"
Dumbledore sighed. "I cannot agree with you. There is something to be said for competition."
"Quidditch is a competition! Education should be a shared endeavor."
"And there is a quietude one can find among the like-minded." Dumbledore's gaze upon Snape was piercing. "Tell me, Severus. Did you enjoy being a Slytherin?"
That pulled Snape up short. Did he enjoy being a Slytherin? He'd attended Hogwarts during the reign of an evil wizard. Half the students he'd graduated with were dead or imprisoned. He'd enjoyed having an immediate loyalty to a cause, but he hadn't chosen that cause. The Sorting Hat had chosen it for him.
And he'd gained power. His ambition had led him to a high place among the Death Eaters. But here he was, twenty-seven, and there were no old Hogwarts buddies he could call upon, no friends to go on holiday with. No important women in his life.
"It's the only life I could imagine," Snape said.
Dumbledore nodded. "Yes. That's what I was afraid of."