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Angst

Reminiscing by Amethyst [Reviews - 28]


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Disclaimer: The characters & British settings all belong to JK Rowling, Warner Brothers Studio, Scholastic Publishing, Bloomsbury Publishing, and probably numerous others. I do not own anything, nor am I making anything from this (anyone who wants to sue anyways can gladly sue me for my various debts and student loans, as that is all that I have).

The only thing that may be remotely original is the plot line which was inspired by the Jimmy Buffet song, “He went to Paris” which is owned by Jimmy Buffet, et al. However, this is not a song fic, and the plot line does not rely upon the song.


Reminiscing


The aging wizard sat in a small sidewalk café in the magical quarter of New Orleans drinking tea and reading the day old Daily Prophet. Over the last 15 years or so this had become part of his daily routine, and everyday he grumbled the bloody owls were always a day late with his paper never once stopping to think that it might take them time to cross the Atlantic. His long, lank hair fell well past his shoulder and over the years had turned a cold, steel grey. His eyes, however, were as black and sharp as ever; although any life that might have shown in them had long since gone out.

The other witches and wizards in the quarter were polite to him, although they usually left him alone. There was something about the man that was intimidating to them; perhaps it was the fact that none of them knew his name, to his face they just called him sir, but behind his back it was whatever seemed to fit him at the time and not usually anything nice. Their children were another story, altogether. They were simply frightened of him. His cold demeanour and nondescript black robes that hung on his tall, lank frame and billowed behind him when he was in a hurry only provided fodder for which the older children created rumours about him to scare the younger ones. He did not care, in fact he often found ways to encourage the rumours; and then he would watch with amusement as the younger children would run away from him or hid in the robes of their mothers. It reminded him of happier times.

Then he saw her. “Merlin’s Beard, Hermione?” He gasped while looking at figure across the street. But it couldn’t be her, as she had been dead for nearly 20 years. Not only that, she was a grown woman when she died. The girl he was looking at could not have been more than ten or eleven years old. The resemblance was striking though. He watched the young girl who stood across in front of a shop selling witches robes. She had the same uncontrollable, bushy hair, the same bucktoothed smile, and the same bright, intelligent eyes. All she was lacking was the school uniform and a hand waving eagerly in the air wanting to prove her intelligence.

He thought back to the first time he had seen her. He had been trying to scare and intimidate the boy, but the boy wouldn’t back down. There she sat hand waving madly, waiting to show that she had read the book; that she knew the answers that no one else did. He ignored her then, but now he would give anything to go back to those days and watch her brew potions in class. While he was lost in thought he lost sight of the girl. For a moment he was saddened, but then felt relief. He had moved there to get away from his memories.

“Good morning,” said the bright young voice of the child, who was now standing in front of him.

“Go away,” he growled.

“Ooh, is that the Daily Prophet? We get that sometimes,” she said curiously. “Is there any news of the resistance in there?”

“Why would you care about the resistance in Great Britain?” He snarled at her.

“Because my daddy is over there fighting with them,” she replied without a hint of fear. “And if they are still fighting when I am done with school, I going to go and join them.”

“Why would you want to do such a foolish thing?” He inquired.

“My great grandparents both fought in the Second War against the first dark lord and with the resistance to the new dark lord. So did my grandfather, who died fighting for the resistance,” she said hesitantly. “Now my daddy is fighting, too. It is becoming a kind of family tradition. But my grandmother thinks I am silly for saying things like that.”

“She is correct; that is a very foolish notion. Traditions should bring families together, not rip them apart. Fighting in a war is neither fun nor glamorous. In all likelihood, your father will die with the rest of the resistance. And if you join them, so will you,” he said coldly.

“Not to be disrespectful, sir, but how would you know? All you ever do is sit here drinking your tea and reading the paper while scaring children and being rude to shopkeepers.”

The old wizard did not reply. He looked at the child as though he was about to kill her. When she did not move, but sat there across the table from him waiting for an answer, he rolled up the sleeve on his left arm and showed her the faded remains of a very old mark.

“Is that what I think it is,” her eyes were opened wide but not with fear, with curiosity.

“Yes, you foolish girl,” he barked. “That is the original Dark Mark, put there by Lord Voldemort himself. Now I suggest you leave, before I show you what a dark wizard is capable of.”

“Wow,” she exclaimed, making no move to leave. “I’ve never seen a real one, just the ones in books. My great grandfather was rumoured to have one, but nobody really knows. My grandmother only knows what grandfather told her before he sent her here to hide, and she doesn’t like to talk about it.” She paused for just a moment thinking, “How? The British Ministry of Magic was supposed to have executed all of the followers of Lord Voldemort.”

“Not all of them,” said the old wizard quietly with a somewhat guilty tone to his voice. There was something about the girl that unnerved him. It wasn’t just her uncanny resemblance to Hermione, there was something else. This girl could have just recited parts of his life.

“You mean some escaped?” She asked, for the first time showing some fear.

“Not some,” he said in the quiet silky tone he used to use to intimidate students. “One. Just one . . . me.”

“How, sir? How were you able to escape when none of the others did?” She always loved a good story, and if she could get him to tell her his, she would bet her broomstick that it would be far better than anything she had read in a book

“I switched sides. The power that Lord Voldemort offered was not power, but enslavement. So, I went to a man that I trusted and confessed, not knowing what to expect.” It felt good to him to have someone to talk to, even if it was just a ten year old girl. Somehow it seemed right to be telling her this.

“What happened after you confessed sir,” she eagerly prodded.

He proceeded to tell her how he became a spy during the first war with against Lord Voldemort and how he gathered information for the resistance. “Only then,” he said. “It was not called the resistance; it was the Order of the Phoenix.” He told her of the dark lord’s first defeat, as she listened intently. He told her what had happened to some of the other Death Eaters, how some of them went to prison, but others escaped. “At that time, no one knew that we were marked so no one asked us at our trials to show our arms,” he said as he told her about his trial after the first war and how he went on to teach at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry after the war.

“You taught at Hogwarts, sir?” She asked enviously.

“Yes, and I was the meanest, nastiest teacher there,” he whispered proudly.

“I want to go to Hogwarts. My grandmother said that with my family history, I would be accepted there; but as long as the dark lord is in control of Britain, neither my mother nor my grandmother would let me go. They say that I would do just as well at the Louisiana School of Magic, but I disagree. They won’t even let me go to Beauxbatons Academy because of the war; I could get in there, too, because that his where my grandmother went to school.” The old wizard just glared at her. She looked down and said, “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Would you like to hear more about Hogwarts,” he asked her gently. She looked up at him and smiled as she nodded her head. He proceeded to tell her all about Hogwarts going into greater detail and with more enthusiasm than he did about the first war. He told her of the history of the school, how the students were sorted into house and of the Sorting Ceremony, and all about the different teachers that were there. He even told her about some of his students, but did not give her any names. He had to stop and compose himself after he told her about the Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. He explained to her that Dumbledore was the man to whom he confessed, and thus was the man who saved him from Azkaban, thereby saving his life.

During his pause she asked him, “Did you have any favourite students when you were teaching?”

“No,” he said plainly. “But I did have to favour the Slytherins, especially any whom I knew had parents that were Death Eaters or supported Voldemort. There was one though, that now looking back, I wished I could have favoured.”

“Why couldn’t you?” She asked earnestly.

“At the time I found her annoying, and even if I didn’t I still couldn’t have,” she looked as if she were about to ask a question, but he merely glared at her and continued. “I couldn’t because she was a muggleborn. If Voldemort had learned that I was even being nice to her, it could have meant my life. Not to mention that as the time she was best friends with the bane of my existence, ‘The Boy Who Lived.’”

“You taught him!” The girl exclaimed and looking terrified for the first time since the old wizard had seen her.

The old wizard nodded his head, and then let it drop slightly. “Not only did I teach, but I also fought with him during the Second War. I saved his life,” he said quietly as if he were ashamed of all of this. “The history books only tell so much about him, usually just what is public record or what some fool was paid for giving an interview. Would you like my tainted opinion?” She nodded again, but this time seemed less sure of herself. The old man proceeded to tell her what he saw and felt about the boy.

“The history books are indeed correct about the boy being abused by his muggle relatives, though it was not widely known until he was out of school. To my knowledge the abuse was mostly mental, although he was beaten sometimes severely. I never heard anything that would suggest or make me believe that they ever molested him. For the most part he was just a boy who ignored the school rules and enjoyed playing the hero, no matter what the cost. On several occasions he nearly killed himself and his friends. He caused one them to turn herself into a cat.

“The boy just would not let people who were more qualified help. The frustrating part is some of the teachers, including the Headmaster, let him get away with it. My protestations were largely ignored by the misguided belief that I hated the boy because his father and I did not get along well in school. While that may have been true to an extent when the boy was younger, it mot certainly was not true as he got older. The similarities between him and Voldemort were too numerous, too dangerous to be ignored. In spite of my protestations and warning, I was forced to accept him into a class for which he did not have the test scores to be in, all so he could go onto a career that would bring him closer to dark magic.” He paused for a minute to think clearly both of them were uncomfortable with the current topic. “Would you like to hear more about the girl?” He asked as a way to change the course of the discussion. He would have stopped it out right, but he felt that he needed to finish the story.

“Please, sir, if you don’t mind. What was she like?” The girl answered thankful that he wanted to change the subject but was willing to continue with his story.

He smirked and continued, “At first she was the most annoying student I ever had. It seemed that she was always looking for a way to show off her knowledge. It turned into a battle of wills, she would try hard to impress me as I was the only one who was not fawning over her impressive genius and I would either ignore her or flaunt her tiniest mistakes to the class; I think the later irritated her more than ignoring her. She was not conventionally beautiful. In fact she looked a lot like you with her bushy hair and bucked teeth.” He paused to think to himself, ‘That is the understatement of the century, you old fool.’

“I want to get my teeth fixed, but my mom won’t let me until I am older. She says that she doesn’t want to have to pay for it to be done twice,” the girl frowned and his heart sank. ‘She even pouts like her,’ he thought to himself.

“Anyway,” he said forcing himself back into the story. “She was the most intelligent witch I had ever met. She brewed polyjuice potion in her second year, very nearly perfect, too. She was the one who unintentionally turned herself into a cat to help Potter. She was trying to turn herself into one of the Slytherins, but mistakenly used cat hair instead. She did get her teeth fixed, though, in her fourth year. That incident that led to that is my biggest regret. She got involved in a fight between Potter and another student, whose father was a Death Eater. Both boys started hurling hex, and she was hit with one that made her all ready disproportionately large front teeth grow even larger. Because of who she was and who through the hex, I had to ignore, but I did worse than ignore I said the worst thing I have ever said to a student.” He stopped to wipe his eyes of the tears that were threatening to fall.

“What did you say to her, sir,” she asked indignantly.

“I told her, ‘I see no difference.’”

“Sir, that was awfully mean!” She said defending the girl she had never met. The old wizard nodded his head as he continued to wipe his eyes. Timidly she asked, “Sir, if she was just a student why does that still bother you so much? I mean if she went to school with Potter that all happened at least fifty years ago.”

He looked at the girl with amazement. ‘Merlin, she even thinks like Hermione, that is just the sort of question she would have asked,’ he thought to himself before resuming the story. “She was more than just a student. She didn’t leave after she completed her schooling; she became an apprentice to the Transfiguration professor. I would have taken her as my own apprentice, but the fight against Voldemort was still being fought so I was spying once again. If I had taken her as an apprentice both of us mostly likely would have been killed. It was three years later, when Voldemort was finally defeated for good, that I was able to. . . . After the final battle, both sides suffered heavily losses. I was injured and Dumbledore was killed while trying to protect Potter. She escaped the battle without injury. She helped the school’s medi-witch with the injured; I was one of the few who stayed in the school’s hospital instead of being admitted to St. Mungos. Why she paid more attention me, I have yet to understand. She brought me hope, when I thought all was lost.

“We were married the next June. Our son was born nearly two years later. She insisted on following the muggle tradition of naming the son after the father, I protested but gave in. For the first time in my life things seemed to be going right. The Deputy Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, had been appointed Headmistress in the wake of Dumbledore’s death. The first thing she had done was to ask me if I would like her former post and to be Deputy Headmaster. I greedily accepted, as a Slytherin it would have been against my nature to do otherwise.” He paused as the girl giggled a little. He nearly lost his composure again as he realised that the girl even giggled like his beloved. But he returned to his tale, it was almost as if his life depended upon finishing it, “My wife became the new Transfiguration professor, as well as the head of her former house, Gryffindor.

“I have yet to figure out what exactly happened to Potter. He was never quite the same after he defeated Voldemort. Many assume it was the combination of defeating the man who took so much from him and losing Dumbledore. I believe it is deeper than that. The magic that saved him as a baby was very ancient, it also bordered on being dark magic. Voldemort branded the boy as an equal, with his abilities. There was also a curious similarity – both were orphans, raised in an abusive situation. They shared an unusual link to each others mind. There was something unnatural about it. I tried to warn the other about it; however, Dumbledore was the only one who would listen to me and he was admittedly blind when it came to the boy. Voldemort sent several ancient curses at Potter before he was finally destroyed; one of them I have yet to discover the nature of.

“It was not long after his friend and I were married that he disappeared from the world. He resigned his post as a ministry auror, and disappeared. My wife at first believed that is was all too much for him, that he just needed to get away from everything. She was always the voice of reason, but she never stood against him until. . . .” He had to stop. Speaking about her was just too painful.
The young girl didn’t know what to say or do next. She never knew her grandfather, and had precious few memories of her father. She knew him mostly from his letters. “My father says in his letters that this war is nothing like the last. He remembers studying the last one in school as well as before he went to fight with the resistance. He says that at least the last dark lord had some reason, some method that he followed to deciding who would live and who would die. This new one, he says is totally random. He says that with the first one it was mostly about blood and such, but that this one doesn’t seem to care about that, they haven’t found what sets him off.”

“There is no method, no reason, no logic to his thinking. When we first formed the resistance against him, it was almost as if he had a split personality. There were times when one could almost reach him just by talking to him, and other times they only thing you could do was turn tail and run. My wife usually had the best luck when he could be reasoned with, but often he would just point out that she had married one of his worst enemies and betrayed him. Even though I was one of the founding members of the resistance she was never really active with it until. . . .”

“Until what sir?” She asked quietly. She could tell he needed time before he finished his story but she felt that she would never have the opportunity to hear something like this again.

“Until he killed our son,” he said mournfully, not bothering to stop the tear running down his face. “He joined the resistance after finishing Hogwarts. He was brilliant; he helped mostly with research, but never backed away from a fight. He married a year after finishing school and not even six months later his wife became pregnant. We don’t know why, but for some reason the news of his baby upset the dark lord and he and his wife became targets. He sent his wife into hiding; no one knows where or how, we never heard from her again. My son was tortured and killed a few months later. Those who witnessed it said that the dark lord offered to spare his life if he would just tell where his wife was.”

“Was there a prophecy, sir, like there was between Potter and Lord Voldemort?” She asked earnestly, not wanting to miss a single detail.

He looked at her with such sad eyes as he answered, “Not that we have ever been able to find; if there was, there is no record of it that the resistance can find and they have sources everywhere. . . . Once our son was gone, my wife gave up on her friend. She said that whatever that thing was in his body, it was not the person she had once known. I believe she was right. After he was gone, she became much more active in the resistance, instead of helping me with my research projects and developing strategies, she started her own. Sometimes she would go through some of my old files that I had thought were a dead end. She would take them and start over again at square one; sometimes she found something that would be helpful sometimes not. She was so intelligent. . . .”

“You really miss her, don’t you, sir?” She asked as he started to break down.

“She has been out of my life for nearly two decades, nearly as long as she was part of it, and I still have not been able to let her go. She gave me a reason to go on when I thought that all who cared about me were gone.” He didn’t even try to hold back the tears.

The young girl had no idea of what to do or say. The man who was the terror of most every kid in the quarter was sitting in front of her crying. The way he was carrying on made her wonder if he had ever cried for his losses before now. She only knew two things: that when she cried like that she liked to be held and that they were in a very public place so hopefully she would be safe if she did what she was thinking about. She summoned all the courage that she had, and before she lost her nerve she stood up, walked over to him, and hugged the most feared man in the quarter. His reaction was to hold her tighter it was almost as if he was holding on to her for life.

When his sobs started to slow, she asked him, “Sir, what happened to your wife?”

“She thought she had discovered a way to save what was her friend. She had developed a potion that worked with a complex spell. She was sure that it would destroy the monster and possibly save what was left of her friend, if there was anything left. . . . She insisted upon doing it herself. She felt that she had the best chance to get close enough to him and administer the potion and work the spell. She was right. She was able to get do it; unfortunately, the either the potion or the spell or both did not work. Her body was returned by one of his minions, another friend from school who turned his back on his family to follow him. When he brought her back she was nearly unrecognisable; the school nurse wouldn’t let me see her until she had repaired enough of the damage so that she could be recognised.

“When I was finished saying my goodbyes, I found the one who had returned her in my office in tears and ravishing my potion stores looking for a poison. I very nearly gave him one.”

“Why didn’t you sir?” She gasped as if not poisoning that person was the most illogical thing she had ever heard of.

He looked down at her and saw the confusion in her face. He led her back to her own chair, and then returned to his. Then he continued, “When I was a young boy, I had very few friends. My father was abusive to both my mother and I, and when I started school I was heralded as the outsider, picked on by those who were more popular. When I was a young man, I made the mistake of following a wizard who turned me into a murderer for his own benefit. When I saw the younger man, in my office ready to die for what he had done, I remembered who I had been and what Dumbledore did for me. Giving him his chance to live with what he had done, to try and atone for it was my opportunity to return the favour, the curse. I was somewhat surprised that the young man had followed his friend into such darkness. Weasley had come from a very loving background; the only thing that he and his family were lacking was money.

“Although, I must admit that as I listened to him describe what had been done to my Hermione, it took every ounce of strength that I had not to kill him myself. When he was telling me every shred of horror that she had endured, he was crying and grovelling that he did not want to live anymore. . . .There was a great deal of time that passed between the end of his yarn and my response to it. Finally, I told him what Dumbledore had told me ages ago, that in order to redeem himself he would have to return to his ‘master’ and gather information for the resistance. When I left a few years later, the information that he brought had helped us to save many lives.”

The young girl was just as captivated as she was at the beginning of the tale. There were so many questions that she still had but wasn’t sure she should ask: What had happened to his wife after she tried to save her friend? Why did the other Weasley follow Potter in the first place? What made him believe that Weasley was being sincere and not playing his own history against him?

She would have loved to get answers to those questions; unfortunately the decision did not lie with either one of them. As he paused once more to compose himself and she began to reason which answer would be best received the old man; a shrill voice rang out from across the street, “O-PHE-LI-A.”

“Uh-oh,” she muttered quietly.

“What’s the matter?” He asked her softly.

“That’s my mom. She won’t be happy that I am over here bothering you. She thinks that everyone ought to just leave you alone, because she is not convinced that you are harmless as my grandmother says you are.”

“You are not bothering me, but if your mother wants you, you best go,” he said gentle firmness that only a parent could use. The girl stood up to leave, but it was too late, her mother had already crossed the street into the café.

“Ophelia Snape,” scolded the girl’s mother. “How many times have I told you not to talk to strangers, and to leave people alone and not be pestering them with your silly questions?”

The old man shot a quick look at the young girl in front of him, then he stood up to address her mother, “Madam, you are very lucky. Your child is quite remarkable, she sat and listened intently as this old man told her a story that he has never told anyone before, she has been a tremendous help to my head and my heart.” He turned to Ophelia, “Thank you so much for being a good listener. Now it is time that I do something I should have done long ago, goodbye.” With that he swirled around and walked swiftly down the street, his robes billowing behind him.

Ophelia spent most of her spare time watching the café; waiting for the old wizard to return and hopefully continue his story. He never did. The day after the summer solstice papers were heralding the downfall of the new dark lord. However, none the papers gave any details about his defeat, other than that it happened the previous evening. To make up for the lack of information, the papers focused on Potter’s rise to greatness and his fall to evil. Ophelia read the newspapers intently, hoping to see some mention of her father. His name was never mentioned; however, she did find a brief reference to one Severus Snape in an article about Potter’s defeat.

It was just a few weeks later, in early July, that she received the most interesting letter of her life:

Hogwarts School
of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Headmaster: Severus Snape
(Order of Merlin, First Class)

Dear Miss Snape,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted
at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please
find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no
later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Nymphadora Tonks
Deputy Headmistress

She did not, however, find the enclosed list of books and equipment. Instead she found a picture of a girl in the school uniform who looked exactly like her and another note addressed to her:

Dear Ophelia,

Once again I find that I must thank you for our talk. It
has helped me straighten out my priorities, again. The
picture that I enclosed is one taken of your great grandmother
during her first year at Hogwarts. As you can see, I
greatly understated your resemblance to her.
If you are looking for your list of supplies, you will
not find it. I have taken the liberty of purchasing
everything that you will need, except for you uniform.
For that, I have sent the requirements to your grandmother
so that she or your mother will be able to take care of that for
you.
I have small surprise lined up for you once you get here.
Should you have need of transportation to London, or to the
train which departs precisely at 11 o’clock from Kings Cross
Station, please let me know promptly. I look forward to
sharing many more stories with you about your great grandmother
and your grandfather.

Your loving great grand father,

Severus Snape


Reminiscing by Amethyst [Reviews - 28]


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