Darker

Once more….I don’t own HP and I don’t make any money from fanfics…


2

Lily woke up in unfamiliar surroundings. Her thoughts were a jumble and it took a moment of staring at the stark gray stones of the wall for her to remember what had happened. She was in her professor’s room, for some reason the thought made her blush, she scrambled from the bed. The second realization that dawned on her was that her father was dead. Tears immediately sprang to her eyes. No, she would not lose control again.

Taking a deep breath Lily surveyed the room. A bed, slightly larger than the standard issue for students with a gray blanket over white sheets, a rickety bedside table, bare but for a simple white candle and a quill. A trunk for clothing shoved against the foot of the bed and a shelf of books on the far wall rounded out the furnishings, sparse was the word that immediately came to mind.

The door was open a crack and Lily decided to see whether Snape was in his office. If he was absent she might just nip down to the kitchen for a snack, she was unexpectedly hungry. Apparently a long day of sobbing and being drugged was hungry work. Then she would need a bath, her hair felt like a matted mess.

Snape looked up when Lily crept out of his bedroom; the door creaked in quiet protest as she pushed it further open.

“I had a tray sent down with your dinner,” Snape said by way of greeting, he returned his attention to his paperwork as he spoke. He gestured airily toward the tray of covered food on the side table. Lily took the food and slumped down against the wall.

Roast chicken, greens, and a thick slice of bread, all of it was tepid now, though it had probably been warm when it was delivered. Lily did not bother with her wand to reheat it; hot food would not warm the cold lump in her belly. She managed to choke down a few bites before all appetite deserted her and she set her tray aside.

“P-professor?” Lily murmured hesitantly.

Snape set aside his quill and looked at her expectantly.

“You didn’t like my father much, did you?” she asked. Somehow she knew it to be true. Snape was not quick to respond to what he immediately realized was a loaded question, he was not about to lie to the child, but to say that Harry Potter had been the single most annoying pupil he had ever been burdened with would be a mite insensitive under the circumstances.

“We did not see eye to eye,” Snape tried for diplomacy.

“It’s alright; I know you disliked each other, Father always cringes…cringed, when I speak about you at home,” Lily found that it was harder to talk about him than she had though it would be, “It’s easier, because it seems like everyone else only sees what he did against Riddle, and as an auror. It’s not that I don’t love him,” Lily held her professor’s gaze for a moment there, to impress on him how earnest she was in that sentiment, before dropping her eyes back to her hands in her lap, “I do, it’s just, well sometimes it seems like I’m the only one who realized he was human, like the rest of us, he was wrong sometimes. You know?”

“All too well,” Snape sighed, “Its hard growing up in the shadow of a hero, isn’t it my dear?”

Lily looked up and nodded, “Do you think I’m a bad daughter for it?”

“Scarcely, my dear girl, parents are not infallible it is alright to understand that fact.”


“Are your parents still alive Professor?”

A slight shake of his head, “My parents were not what one would call nurturing. They died during Riddle’s first rise.”

“What was the dark lord like?” Lily asked impulsively.

Snape stared at her, vaguely surprised by the sudden change in topic. Why would the girl care about Riddle? Still, she had asked and he was the best source for accurate information and the least likely to read too much into the interest.

“What would you like to know?” Snape asked; no need to flounder around with superfluous information.

“You know,” Lily gestured, “I mean, we learn about how he was cruel and ruthless. How he was terribly interested in pureblooded wizards, even though he himself was a half blood. But what was he like, as a man, not as a wizard. Its just he is so wrapped up with my family, I just want to understand.”

Snape thought for a moment, pondering the question, remembering the old times, days when he had been so deeply involved in the dark arts. Dark times for him and for the entire wizarding world. But Tom Riddle had been the one person to take him in, Snivellus, two unwanted half-blood children. But Tom had been powerful and he, Severus, had simply withdrawn.

Lily was still watching him, expecting an answer that no one else could give her, “Tom Riddle was powerful, bitter, and insecure. You know that he grew up in an orphanage?” Snape waited for her nod to continue, “H never had a true home until Hogwarts, and even here he made few friends. Tom had never learned how to interact with others his age, so he had a hard time socially.”

“Like Scorpio,” Lily pointed out, “People think he is arrogant, but really he’s afraid what they might think of him, so he acts like he doesn’t need anybody.”

It was not a connection that Snape would have drawn, but it was astonishingly insightful, he nodded to hide his surprise, “Similar to young Malfoy, yes, if for opposite reasons. Sorpio, like many a young pureblood before him has been smothered by over-concerned adults while Riddle had the opposite problem. Regardless the result is the same, insecure children given to bullying.”

“He mightn’t have been so bad if someone had just been friendly to him.”

Snape shook his head, “That is too simple an answer Miss Potter, Tom Riddle is not the only child, even in the wizarding world, to have a hard childhood and great power. He chose his own path.”

“The dark arts,” Lily breathed. Was it his imagination or was there a hint of longing in her words? He must be projecting his own fascination onto her. Yet there was a wistful set to her features that made him wonder.

“Even so,” Snape confirmed, “but Miss Potter, you haven’t touched your dinner, please, eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Nevertheless,” the professor continued, “you have had an emotional day; you must keep up your strength.”

Lily obediently forced herself to chew and swallow a few more mouthfuls. Snape watched her eat miserably for a moment before returning to his paperwork.

“Was he cruel to you professor?” her clear voice shocked him out of his grading.

“Who?”

“The dark lord, was he cruel?”

“He was strict; he did not brook foolishness nor accept failure easily. But he was loyal to his loyal ones and he was fair in what he required.”

Lily smiled, “he sounds a little like you professor.”

Any other wizard would have found such a remark unconscionable. Unlike such others he did not pale or round on her with indignant fury. Instead he leveled an even stare at her and shook his head slightly, “I am nothing like him my dear girl. I have not the tenth part of his ruthless cunning. Riddle was not just dark, he let evil have his soul. Dark magic treads a fine line.”

“You studied it?”

“I have.”

Lily stared at him in awe. She was quite obviously working up to saying something until finally she blurted, “Can you teach me?”

“The dark arts are not to be toyed with Lily,” Snape told her sharply, it almost hurt to let her name pass his lips after so many years. It had been so long since the last time Lily Evans spoke to him. The night of her wedding, he had been unable to stay away from the grand party afterward, and he had confronted her. James Potter, her new husband, had been drunk and had loudly mocked ‘Snivellus’ for not knowing when he’d been bested by a greater wizard. Lily had looked pained by her husband’s behavior, but she had not spoken against him, had only shot an apologetic glance back Severus’s way as she led James onto the dance floor, appeasing him.

But this girl who so often reminded him of his dead love was not Lily Evans. She would have told James off in no uncertain terms. She was loyal to a fault. And she was a child, a child who had just lost her father and now seemed almost entirely unaffected by it.

“I don’t wish to toy, I want to learn. Won’t you teach me professor?”

He shook his head, “not the dark arts. Anything else I would teach you, but not that.”

“My father was furious when I asked him to teach me. He swore that if he ever found me at such a study he would tan my hide, if he did not just disown me first. I told him I wouldn’t go against his wishes whilst under his roof. But he’s dead now, isn’t he? And for all his noble acts he killed himself. He was a coward!”

“Harry Potter was many things, a fool perhaps and rather naïve sometimes, but he was not a coward. You know that.”

“I don’t want to hear how great he was Professor, I’ve heard it all. I want someone to understand what it feels like to lose my father, not some fairy tale hero, or the legendary auror, or even the boy who lived. My dad!” her voice broke, tears trickling from her eyes. Emotions bubbling up out of her.

“My father was a cold man Potter, I think you will find I do not feel the same way about paternal loss as you.”

Lily wiped at her eyes irritably, “That’s just it! He left us. He didn’t care about us at all. He was always more concerned about his work than us anyway; it was like he was afraid to get close to us. I know he was disappointed when I was sorted into Slytherin, he thought it was some flaw in me, he always told us that he didn’t care, that some of the bravest wizards he knew were sorted the same. But I knew he didn’t really believe it. I knew that he was so proud of James and Albie for getting Gryffindor. He just loved it that James was their seeker and team captain.

“He just smiled and said that Quidditch isn’t for everybody when I told him that I had tried for our house team. And he always let the boys bring home their friends to visit, but when I asked to have Selda or Angie during the summer after first year or Scorpio visit us more recently he was furious. We quarreled over it the last time I ever saw him alive. He said that he would not have me bringing a bigoted snake-child into his home.”

Snape listened to her in mute silence, knowing that if she did not give voice to her doubts they would merely fester and burst at a later date, “He loved you Lily, whatever else was the case he did love you.”

Lily shook her head, “No, I don’t care,” she looked up at his beseechingly her face took on a stubborn and her tears had dried up, but then she turned soft and uncertain again, “may I stay here for a while Severus?”

He was taken aback by the use of his first name. It was unprecedented with her. Most of his house students got to a point toward their fifth or sixth year well they felt comfortable with such familiarity, but not fifth years. They were young enough to need the boundaries of authority. Still, he did not call her on it; rarely did he make a breach in decorum to call his younger students by their given names either.

“Please?”

Snape nodded cautiously, it would mean finding alternate lodgings for himself, “I will have Miss Goldstein fetch your nightclothes. You may stay until you are ready to face the rest of the house.”

Lily shot him a grateful look, standing to set her tray back on the sideboard. Then she went and kissed the professor on the cheek, “Thank you,” she told him firmly and then with a failed attempt at nonchalance, “If it’s all the same to you professor, I’d rather not see Angie or anyone else just now?”

“I’ll see to it then, why not nip off to the washroom and get yourself cleaned up?”

“Thank you,” Lily squeezed his shoulders and rushed to the door. She shot back another grateful glance as she slipped out.

Snape put down his quill and rubbed his temples. He has the sneaking suspicion that he would come to regret Lily’s sudden attachment to him. Still, he had agreed to let her stay for the time being so he may as well get the particulars out of the way. With a grimace he levered himself out of his chair and summoned a house elf to take the tray of barely touched dinner and bring a note to Angela Goldstein, one of Potter’s roommates.

Yes, it was going to be a long week, what with the legendary Harry Potter’s funeral and memorial service to look forward to and the legend’s hormonal teenage daughter hanging about. Not that he disliked Lily, quite the contrary she was one of his current favorites, intuitive with the potions, diligent pupil in all of her subjects and a joy to have in his house. She was not precisely outgoing, but she had been able to draw the troubled Scorpio from his shell and she was friendly enough with the girls in her year. No she was just another student, one among many. One who happened to be going through a crisis and had turned to him and away from her family. And Merlin help them all, she chose now to develop an interest in the dark arts.

There was a knock on the office door, Snape gestured and muttered the appropriate spell. The door creaked open. Angie peered in, “you sent for me Professor Snape?”

“Ah, Miss Goldstein, I trust I did not take you away from your studies?” Snape asked, folding his hands contemplatively. Angela always came up with the most interesting excuses for incomplete assignments. Her potions assignments tended to make interesting reading, if not terribly accurate or remotely correct.

“Ah, yes, well, I was just finishing up Professor,” Angela shifted nervously and then held out a folded nightshirt, “Here, this is Lily’s, I heard about her dad, is she alright? Is she going home then?”

“As well as may be expected, and yes,” Snape acknowledged, “That will be all Miss Goldstein, I look forward to reading your assignment Wednesday.”

“Right, I’m on it,” Angela flashed him a smile, tossed her burden onto the sideboard and retreated. She understood a dismissal when she heard one and she clearly had not yet come close to starting the essay that would soon be due.

Lily returned shortly after her friend’s departure. She took her clothing from the table without a word and disappeared into Snape’s bedroom to change. He remained at his desk, struggling to finish with a few more essays before retiring for the evening. The light in the other room went out allowing him to relax slightly, that would mean she was asleep.

Scarcely an hour passed before Snape was torn from his work once more, this time due to screaming. A nightmare, he should have known. He went into the room, sent a ball of light to hover near the ceiling and gently woke his screaming charge.

“You are having a bad dream.”

“Where am I?” Lily asked, slightly panicked, barely coherent.

“My rooms, you insisted on staying.”

“Oh, right,” Lily took a deep breath, “I am sorry Professor; I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

“Nonsense, I said it was fine and I meant it.”

“It feels wrong, to be here and to call you Professor,” Lily darted a glance up at him, “May I call you something else?”

“What did you have in mind?” Snape asked dryly.

“Severus maybe? I’ve heard the older Slytherins call you that.”


Snape nodded, “If you prefer it Miss Potter then I would not be averse to using given names.”

Lily smiled at him then, truly smiled, “Good. I should very much like that, but Severus, I had forgotten to ask earlier, since I am in your bed where will you be sleeping? I really don’t want to be a bother.”

“You are no bother at all Lily, but I should be getting back to my work and you should try to get some proper rest.”

“I don’t suppose I could have another dose of that sleeping draught?”

Snape shook his head grimly, “Natural sleep would be best I’m afraid.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Lily sighed, “I’ll try to be more quiet.”

Rolling over onto her side Lily pulled the covers to her chin and snuggled into the pillow. Snape watched her ruefully and extinguished the light once she was settled. He returned to his work, this time leaving the door wide open so that he might hear her before the dreams got so bad that she started screaming. This time it was only a quarter of an hour before he heard her mumbling.

“No … I didn’t mean it…” fitful feverish rambling, the sort of things he had heard uttered by countless troubled students in the grips of nightmares, “Sorry...don’t go.”

Snape sighed and brought his chair into the other room, so much for getting any sleep tonight, in his office or elsewhere. He set the chair a foot from the bed and hunkered down. It would be a long night, but it was clear that the bad dreams were not going to relent. The best he could do would be to sit at her side and share the experience, take the worst edge off the terror. It was a simple bit of legilimancy to skim across the surface of her dreams.

There was a lot of darkness, more than he would have expected in her. She had come from a good family, even if he, Snape, had never really liked Potter, he could admit that the man had done well by his family. Arguments, rage, inadequacy, abandonment, all were represented and magnified behind Lily’s sleeping eyes. Self-loathing and the fear that maybe she had been part of the reason for the suicide. The blind accusation that her father had failed them warring with the conviction that she should have done something different, that if only she had been a different person this never would have happened.

Doggedly, Snape skimmed off the worst of the doubts taking them into himself, and reinforcing the less dangerous general grief and longing for a lost loved one. Then as a final precaution he fed into her dreams the pride and acceptance that he felt for her. She was a good student, her father would have been proud. It was not your fault. If nothing else stuck with her in the morning he was fairly certain that she would remember that. It was not her fault. He fell asleep in the chair some time after midnight. Lily was slept fitfully through the remaining hours until dawn.