Chapter 1
Severus Snape pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to pinpoint exactly where it had all gone wrong.
At twenty-one? When he became a turncoat serving two masters, a pawn in both sides of a doomed game in which victory and defeat were one and the same.
At seventeen, when he put faith in Lucius’ ideas, foolishly believing he was destined for something bigger. He should have taken the apprenticeship at Spillikin’s instead, brewing acne cures and stocking shelves.
At sixteen, when he let curiosity override self-preservation, fell for Black’s trick and became permanently indebted to James bleeding Potter.
At fifteen, when he spoke those words to Lily that he could never take back.
At thirty-eight. Taking an antidote instead of letting it all be over.
He let his arms fall, gin-soaked limbs swinging off the edge of the sofa and colliding with glass bottles on the floor, which toppled like skittles and sent a dark brown stain seeping into the musty carpet. It had gone wrong long before any of that, hadn’t it?
He should have realised the power he had over his father as a child, even without magic. A brick dropped from a window could have done it; it would have looked like an accident. The jagged edge of a broken bottle slashed across his sleeping throat. Bleach in his tea. Setting the house on fire.
But he couldn’t have. They would have blamed his mother.
That was how he had ended up here, unemployed and congealing in this oppressive excuse for a house. Damp crept up the walls and black mould nested in the corners like swarms of insects. The low beams weighed on him deliberately, cracks in the ceiling threatened to open and cave in, to crush his body beneath brick and plaster. Both the house and its occupant were irreparably tainted by neglect.
All bridges had been burnt since he had told Minerva he would rather swallow razor blades than return to teaching, so he had no income, no future and no options, besides a single black envelope watching him from the sideboard.
He ignored it. It had sat there for a week, it could survive another day more.
Severus pressed his hands against his eyes again, forcing out the light. Realistically, mixing the gin with the rum was probably where it had all gone wrong.
He hated people, and he missed them. He missed the days of the Slytherin common room, basking in the atmosphere, a willing audience for idle banter and pseudo-philosophical discussion. He missed the Slug Club, the place he had earned for himself through grit and determination, since his background hadn’t opened any doors for him. He missed easy dinners with Lucius and Narcissa before they had the baby.
Loneliness, he supposed, was the name for this particular ache in his chest, but it was nothing new. He was used to spending his days both surrounded by people and entirely alone, assaulted by the squeals and laughter of ignorant children, used to feeling itchy and restless until he could escape to his private quarters.
He rolled to face the back of the sofa and fell asleep.
＊
It was morning, judging by the sliver of sunlight piercing through the crack in the dusty curtains, when a knocking at the door jerked Severus muddily out of sleep.
A Muggle neighbour, most likely. Maybe the postman, or the milkman. No magical acquaintance would attempt entry through the front door. He rolled off the cushions and clutched at his aching head, feeling his joints creak and complain as he stumbled to the door and flung it open.
It was Miss Granger.
Disguised as an ordinary woman in baggy denim jeans and a hooded jacket, she shifted from foot to foot on the doorstep. Nobody would have guessed she was the brightest witch to walk the halls of Hogwarts in over a century.
She was the sole member of her triumvirate to complete her education; her friends had recklessly skipped off into the Auror corps at the first opportunity. Graduation must have been last month, or thereabouts. How did she get hold of his address? If the damned witch wanted a reference, she could have sent a bloody owl.
Pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, she hunted around inside a battered rucksack hanging over one shoulder, brushing chestnut flyaways back into her mane of inscrutable curls. Severus waited in silence.
An English rose. A thorn in his side.
“I’ve been recruited,” she said, pulling out a black envelope and showing it to him. “Do you think I should take the job?”
A beat passed, during which the symptoms of Severus’ hangover increased considerably. A mouthwash charm wouldn’t have gone amiss.
“I have no opinion,” he said flatly.
The Muggles along the row of terraced houses tended to keep to themselves, but there was the occasional curtain-twitcher. Mrs Cadwallader from number thirty-four passed by with her dalmatian and eyed Snape’s visitor with unsettling intrigue.
“But—”
“Not on the doorstep!” he hissed, and drew Granger inside with a claw-like grip on her shoulder. He had half a mind to slam the door in her face, but if he tried to keep her out, no doubt she’d unpick his wards and walk straight in.
Granger immediately shook him off and backed away further into the hall. He slammed the door and herded her into the sitting room, where she wisely kept her distance.
“No opinion at all?” she asked, clutching at the strap of her bag with both hands and surveying her surroundings. She took in the floor-to-ceiling shelves bowing under the weight of second-hand books, the dusty, unused fireplace and the dilapidated sofa. She wrinkled her pretty nose at the bottles littering the floor, or perhaps at the stench.
Why the fuck are you asking me! Severus wanted to shout. It was a pity that decades of monitoring his language and Occluding his mind had arrested his self-expression; now even rudeness came out stilted. He folded his arms and leant against the doorframe so as to stay upright, and cleared his sleep-rough throat.
“You’re not my student anymore.”
“But I was your student for six years. You must be able to make some judgement as to whether or not I’d be suitable for it. The Unspeakables are so secretive, I haven’t been able to find out what the job entails. Given your history as a spy, and as my professor… I thought you could provide some insight.”
Granger was still standing in the middle of the room; Severus hadn’t offered her a seat. He flicked his wand viciously at a wing-backed chair. It lurched forward and hit the backs of her knees, sending her tumbling into it.
“A naïve interpretation,” he scoffed. “The Unspeakables aren’t spies. They deal in quantimagiphysical mysteries, not state secrets. The position is likely to be office work, so you can forget any lofty dreams of adventure and espionage.”
Granger seemed displeased, but nevertheless inclined to listen. He continued.
“As to whether you would be suitable, it’s hardly within my remit to comment. They offered you a job, therefore you have obviously met the NEWT requirements. I’m not going to flatter your precious ego, Miss Granger.”
Her eyes flashed and she looked away in disgust, muttering. He tried to read her lips and captured something close to blood from a stone.
It often happened with students: they arrived timid with trunks and toads, and left with a handful of NEWTS and an inflated sense of entitlement. But they rarely lived up to expectations. A student who dreamt of becoming the world’s greatest herbologist was guaranteed to end up working shifts behind the bar of the Leaky Cauldron. Or a student with flash dreams of being an Auror would get his girlfriend knocked up a year after graduation. And then get the two of them killed, leaving their infant son orphaned. There was no point reaching for anything.
“I’m not asking whether I’m qualified, Snape,” Granger said firmly, wrestling more flyaways behind her ears and tugging the cuff of her sleeve over her fingers. “I’m asking…”
He bristled at the lack of title, but he couldn’t claim to be owed one. He could no longer take points or dole out punishments. If he hurt a hair on her head Potter would likely come to arrest him. Scratch that, he would probably Avada him without a second thought.
Suddenly Granger shot up from the armchair and flew to the sideboard, picking up the black envelope before he could stop her.
“Oh! They recruited you, too? Have you accepted?”
“None of your business,” he spat, snatching it from her hand. “Get out.”
Granger’s chestnut eyes blazed and Severus reached for his wand instinctively.
“All I want to know is whether I could do some good in this job. Don’t you care about that anymore?”
“You can’t burst into my house— “
She gasped. “You dragged me inside!”
“—first thing in the morning and expect me to—”
“Morning? It’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon!”
“—give you career advice, of all things—“
“For God’s sake, Snape,” she said tightly. There wasn’t a foot difference between them in height, and they were standing close enough for him to count the freckles across her nose. “Are you sure it isn’t your precious ego that needs flattering? Do you want me to say that I bow to your superior knowledge? That I’m beholden to you? You dedicated your life to protecting ours, you saved us countless times, so I don’t know why you still jump at the chance to behave like a complete prick.”
Last night’s alcohol was clouding his brain, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You dare–”
“Yes, I dare! I’m not your student anymore, you said it! I can speak to you however I like, and if I want to call you a foul, miserable, wretched bastard, then it’s perfectly within my remit to do so. Thanks for all your helpful advice, now why don’t I let you get back to rotting away in this hole.”
She was shouting by the end of it, and Severus had opened his mouth to shout right back – but with a crackle of electricity she Apparated directly out of the sitting room and disappeared. It was all the etiquette that could be expected of an ignorant Muggleborn. It left his nerves raw. With shaking hands he summoned a bottle from the floor and smashed it against the fireplace.
She’s a banshee, he thought later that evening, scraping the blackened and burnt remains of his dinner from the bottom of a cast iron pan. What did she expect him to say? Of course she was suitable for the job. For any job, but particularly one within the ministry. She was of superior intelligence, worked harder than any of her peers, and possessed a conveniently flexible attitude to right and wrong. He’d eat his cauldron if she hadn’t received more than a dozen job offers.
A fury, he decided, glaring at his haggard reflection in the bathroom mirror at midnight. How had she found his address? It occurred to him that his Muggle neighbours saw a young girl arrive, but didn’t see her leave. They’ll probably think he killed her and dumped her body in the canal.
A harpy. How dare she speak to him like that? Foul, miserable, wretched.
It was made all the worse by the fact that what she had said was true.
Severus didn’t get to have the last word to her face, but that night he had it a thousand times over inside his own head. He lay awake in bed, unable to sleep, driven half-mad by the ticking clock and the mire his life had become.
At least he wouldn’t be seeing Miss Granger again any time soon.