How Severus Snape Learned to Maraud

How Severus Snape Learned to Maraud

I was about to settle into my office for a long night of grading essays when Millicent Bulstrode came barreling around the corner and smashed into me with the full force of a human battering ram. I am not a large man, and as thirteen-year-old girls go, Millicent is rather solidly built. Millicent also has a crush on me, as her Head of House informed me with great relish a few weeks ago. I try not to think too much about this, but it was hard to think of anything else while she was sitting on my chest.

"Professor Lupin," she said breathlessly, "you can't go inside your office - it's too awful - Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle played a joke on you, and it's really mean and I told them and told them not to do it, but they wouldn't listen, and then Malfoy called me a - a hatchet-faced hag, and Goyle said I was no fun any more, and -- " She burst into tears.

"Slow down there," I said. "And let me up off the floor. That's better. Here, take my handkerchief."

She sobbed into the handkerchief for a while, and I thanked her for warning me and said some comforting and hypocritical things about how much character it takes to stand up to your friends.

"Feeling better?" I asked. She nodded. "Right, I believe it's almost curfew, so you'd better be getting off to your common room -- "

"NO!" she hollered, springing to her feet and barricading the office door. "I'M NOT GOING AWAY UNLESS YOU PROMISE NOT TO GO IN THERE! I HAVE TO PROTECT YOU FROM THEM!"

"Millicent," I said as diplomatically as possible, "I appreciate your concern - really - but I can't stay out of my office forever, and I do promise that I have some experience in dealing with practical jokes," (this, of course, was the understatement of a lifetime) "and I shall be very, very careful that the - the whatever-it-is in my office doesn't hurt me. All right?"

She sniffled, nodded, and suddenly blushed furiously and charged down the corridor like a shy rhinoceros.

Fearing the worst, I unlocked my office door with great caution. I stood in the doorway blinking in astonishment at the sight that met my eyes. At first glance, the Slytherins' practical joke didn't appear to be malicious at all, merely surreal. My desk, my bookshelves, my filing cabinet, and just about every empty surface in the room were covered with crystal balls of all sizes.

It took me a minute to remember I was supposed to have a morbid fear of the things.

I tossed a handful of Floo powder into the fireplace and called the pranksters' Head of House into my office. My general policy when dealing with Severus Snape is to be unfailingly sweet, patient, and polite. Not only is this the proper and professional way to behave, it has the additional bonus of driving him up the wall.

Slowly, his eyes widened as he took in the scene. "Well, well," he said at last. "So you finally managed to acquire a set of - "

"Crystal?" I said. "Yes, quite nice, aren't they? 'Fraid I can't keep them, though. They were an unsolicited gift from some of the students in your House. I must point out that breaking into a professor's office is a fairly serious offence under any circumstances, and - frankly - if the office happens to be mine, and they pick the wrong time of the month, it can be a life-threatening one."

"As much as I would prefer to pass this disagreeable task on to somebody else, I happen to be the most reliable Wolfsbane brewer in Europe. Unless you somehow contrive to botch the delicate operation of transporting it from the goblet to your mouth - which would be a spectacular nadir of incompetence even from you - you're perfectly safe." He stood there for a moment experimenting with different methods of sneering (he has quite a large repertoire), and then curiosity finally got the better of him. "Why crystal balls?"

I explained.

"I. DON'T. GET. IT," Severus shouted. "I have made every last student in this school write at least one essay on werewolves. I assign them when I substitute for your class, I assign them for detentions, I've even assigned them in Potions class and not a single one of the dunderheads thought to ask what werewolves had to do with potions. Why aren't any of them catching on?"

"Werewolves," I informed him with a straight face, "have amber eyes, fur under the tongue, and an exceptionally acute sense of smell and hearing, and their human forms are taller, stronger, and more beautiful than ordinary humans, and they are quick-healing and immune to aging and illness, and they have a penchant for trapping Gilderoy Lockhart in telephone booths."

"I don't want to hear about your sexual fantasies, Lupin!"

"I'm not telling you about my sexual fantasies. I'm giving you a sample of the sort of misinformation that is filling your students' heads if they've read Wandering with Werewolves, which was a required text in all seven Defence Against the Dark Arts classes last year. If they're looking out for a quick-healing Greek god with amber eyes and the rest of it, they're certainly not going to connect your essay assignment with me." (It goes without saying that I don't possess any of these attributes except, occasionally, the fur under the tongue, and that only when I'm in the grip of a severe hangover.)

He snorted. "Well, I didn't particularly want to hear about Lockhart's sexual fantasies either, but I have a feeling I've just learned more than I wanted to know. Which students, anyway?"

"Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, and Gregory Goyle."

These three students were generally reputed to be his favorites, and I expected him to leap to their defense, but to my surprise he launched into a long and embittered monologue. "It figures. Exactly what I would have expected from that pampered little aristocratic brat who serves absolutely no purpose except being a walking illustration of the dangers of inbreeding, and his two pet goons who would still be wandering around in mastodon skins if they were left to their own devices. And it's a condition of my employment that I have to pretend I like them. Because the Headmaster has a plan, and for some reason his plans always involve delegating all the most unpleasant tasks in the school to me, regardless of whether they have anything to do with the normal responsibilities of a Potions Master."

"Severus?" I asked after several minutes of this. "Would you like a biscuit?"

"What?"

I took a packet out of my desk, tore it open, and offered it to him. "Chocolate creams. You sounded as if you needed one."

He glared at me. Obviously I had spoiled a perfectly good fit of bile. Silly me. "Lupin, you're an idiot. And that isn't an insult, it's a diagnosis."

I helped myself to a biscuit and decided that it was time to return to the problem at hand. "There are fifty-three crystal balls in this office, all of which, I believe, are the property of Sybill Trelawney and need to be returned to her in time for tomorrow's classes. If you'll give me a hand with them, I might not take any House Points away from Slytherin."

"Might not, or will not?"

I looked around at all the crystal balls and sighed. Returning them would be a delicate operation that would go much faster with an extra wand and two pairs of hands. (My decision had, of course, absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was my age and I was a bit lonely, and certainly nothing to do with the fact that he seemed very lonely and in need of a good maraud. I am not enough of a Pollyanna to try to befriend Severus Snape, of all people.)

"All right," I said. "I solemnly swear that I won't take any House Points from Slytherin if you'll help me. Happy now?"

"Will you stop eating bloody biscuits at me if I say yes?"

"Oh, stop being so paranoid, Severus. I'm not eating biscuits at you. Surely I can eat my own biscuits in my own office if I like?" (Actually, I had been eating biscuits at him, and doing it as annoyingly as possible, and I was pleased that he had noticed.) "But very well, I will stop eating them if you say yes."

"Fine," he snarled. I was already beginning to regret inviting him along. "But why can't this wait until morning?"

"Severus, you've got no sense of adventure. This castle was made for prowling around at night."

He rolled his eyes. "Sometimes I think you have a mental age of about twelve." (Sometimes I wish I did. I miss being twelve.)

"Besides," I pointed out, "we'd have to explain things to Sybill if we waited until morning." He seemed to appreciate this second point. "Right, then. I'll just borrow Argus Filch's cart, and we'll take them up to the North Tower."

He gave me a beady-eyed stare. "Filch isn't going to let you borrow his cart."

"Oh yes, he will," I said confidently. I ran down the hall and knocked on the door of the janitor's cupboard. "Excuse me, could I borrow your cleaning-supply cart for an hour or so?"

He looked up at me and scowled. "Why?" he said.

"Why do I want it, or why should you let me borrow it?"

"Both." (Argus seems to be under the impression that he will be billed at the end of the month for every unnecessary syllable he uses.)

"Why I want it is a personal matter, and as for why you should let me borrow it - Waddiwasi!"

This is a spell that is mostly useful for shooting chewing gum into pranksters' orifices, and I'm proud to say that I'm rather good at it. Argus saw my point at once. I trotted back to the office with the cart, and we loaded it up with crystal balls and wheeled it toward the North Tower.

"Stay, varlets!" shouted the portrait guarding the entrance to the tower. "Know ye the password?"

"I certainly don't," Severus whispered. "Do you?"

"Of course not."

"Then let's give up and go to bed."

"Don't be absurd. Passwords are merely the least elegant of many possible ways to get around the castle. There is an art and a science to marauding, and it involves knowing how to sweet-talk the portraits. Allow me to demonstrate." I cleared my throat and explained in my best Arthurian, "Hail, Sir Cadogan, I come hither on a quest! I bring succour to the fair Lady Sybill of the House of Trelawney, for I wish to return some property which the villainous squire Draco of the House of Malfoy hath most basely stolen from her."

The knight nodded gravely, lost his balance, and fell off his pony with a clank. "'Tis a noble quest," he said as he struggled to mount the pony again, "but I know not your name, good sir. Shall I dub you Sir La Cote Mal Tale?"

This is Old French, and loosely translates as "The Knight with the Ugly Coat." He needn't think he could get away with that, even if my clothes had seen better days. "You do know me, Sir Cadogan. Don't you remember? Sir Remus of the House of Lupin."

"Ah! Forgive me, Sir Remus, if I knew thee not, for I have not seen thee since thou wast a young squire thyself. But where is thine erstwhile companion, squire Peter? In the old days, I never saw one of you without the other."

I looked at the floor and mumbled, "Trinity Churchyard, Birmingham."

He bowed his head, narrowly avoided falling off the pony again, and said, "Life passeth as a springtime flower or a cloud in the summer sky, and as the world itself shall pass in the end, for all is transitory. He was a merry squire. Mayhap they had need for laughter in heaven."

Medieval people seem beyond silly most of the time, but somehow they always do know the right things to say about death. "Thank you, Sir Cadogan," I said, and meant it.

Severus cleared his throat impatiently. "Are we going up to the North Tower tonight, or would you like me to Summon a couch so you can continue your therapy session?"

"We're going," I said. "Marauding requires a little patience sometimes. Sir Cadogan, would you please let us into the tower?"

"Aye, noble Sir Remus! 'Tis a pleasure to help thee on thy quest, although I do not like thy companion so well! May I dub him Le Chevalier des Manieres Mauvaises?"

That means The Knight of the Bad Manners. "Yes, Sir Cadogan, you may."

We crawled through the portrait hole and climbed the last flight of steps toward the North Tower. Severus gestured toward the ladder that led to the trap door in the ceiling. "Silver," he said with a note of repressed triumph in his voice. "Now what are you going to do, Mr. I-Like-To-Make-Things-Hard-For-The-Fun-Of-It?"

"Really, Severus, I wouldn't have taken you for a Gilderoy Lockhart groupie," I said, grasping the ladder in both hands and springing up it. "Or are you getting your information about werewolves from that other pillar of respectable scholarship, Hairy Snout, Human Heart?"

Hairy Snout, Human Heart is the long, melodramatic, and ill-spelled memoir of a man who was bitten by a strange beast known as a "wherewolf" and spent the rest of his life battling an illness called "lickanthrowpie," the chief symptom of which, I can only assume, is a tendency to get into too many food fights.

Unfortunately, I suffer from a constitutional inability to say "Hairy Snout, Human Heart" without giggling, which ruined a piece of snarkiness that would otherwise have been worthy of the Potions Master himself. I hate it when that happens.

"Now," I called from the top of the ladder, "if you'll just levitate those crystal balls up to me one by one, I'll put them back in Sybill's classroom, and nobody else will ever have to know a thing about it."

Famous last words, of course. I was replacing the fifty-second crystal ball on one of the tables in the Divination classroom when I was interrupted by Sybill Trelawney in her red flannel pajamas, bunny slippers, and hairnet. "WHO DARES INTRUDE UPON THE SANCTUARY OF A PROPHETESS?" she shrieked. "HANDS UP, PROFANER OF THE SACRED MYSTERIES!"

I obeyed. Her wand was raised and ready, which meant she was a serious menace to life and limb. Sybill isn't precisely a Squib, but she has never been very good at controlling her powers, especially when she gets agitated.

"Oh, er, sorry to wake you, Sybill. I was just returning some of your things. Do put that wand down, will you, and I'll explain -"

Too late. Blue sparks started firing from her wand in random directions. One of them hit the very last crystal ball, which Severus had just sent up the ladder, and turned it into a polar bear - a truly impressive feat of Transfiguration which I'm sure she could never have accomplished on purpose.

I jumped between her and the enraged bear, but she screamed, "THE INNER EYE WARNED ME THAT YOU WERE DANGEROUS! NOBODY FLEES FROM A CRYSTAL-GAZING SESSION UNLESS THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE! DO NOT PRESUME TO TOUCH A TRUE SEER, YOU SCOUNDREL!"

She began slapping me, but I stood my ground. I am nothing if not chivalrous, and besides, I really didn't want to deal with the consequences if she slapped the bear instead of me.

"Sybill, stay calm!" I shouted, reaching for my wand as the polar bear reared up on its hind legs and swiped at us with powerful, razor-sharp claws.

Severus' head appeared at the top of the trap door. He took in the situation at once and zapped the polar bear back to its natural form, which fell on the floor and shattered.

Sybill broke into hysterical sobs and rushed into my colleague's arms. "Oh, thank goodness the Fates prompted you to rescue me, my dear! Ever since I first laid eyes on Professor Lupin - " she glared at me - "I have had the most unaccountable feeling that he would bring the most dire Trouble and Adversity into my life. But because my Inner Eye becomes suspiciously clouded in his presence, I hardly dreamt that he would actually set a polar bear on me ... and destroy my very favorite crystal ball, which I fear is past repair."

"I did not set a polar bear on her!" I protested. "She did that herself."

"And as for the crystal ball, I did that myself," said Severus, attempting to disentangle himself from Sybill's embrace.

"Besides, I don't think there's any permanent damage," I reassured her. "Reparo!" The fragments of broken crystal reassembled themselves, and I picked up the ball and placed it on a shelf. "There you go. Good as new."

"Oh, aren't you a clever boy, my dear," she cooed, leaning into Severus' face. "I can scarcely hope to repay this invaluable service, but I do hope you will grace my Humble Abode for a short space of time and partake of some sherry."

"Invite Lupin," he said curtly. "He was the one who fixed it."

Sybill did not seem pleased to be reminded of this detail, but she poured each of us a small glass of cooking sherry and filled a larger tumbler for herself. "My dear Severus," she purred, "I am delighted that our paths have converged in the Physical World once more. I say the Physical World, for I have often sensed your spiritual presence here in the North Tower. You are gifted with a most distinctive and penetrating aura, my dear, and I perceive that your soul is not an ordinary one. I sense that you have known implacable Sorrow and Torment, yet I am pleased to say that you shall soon experience Consolation of the rarest and most pleasurable variety; I mean, of course, the immeasurable bliss of communion with a Kindred Spirit."

She began to stroke his thigh in a not altogether spiritual fashion. Having just taken a sip of sherry, I made a choking noise.

She turned to me and said in a less velvety voice, "I regret to say that your time with us is running short. I foresee that you are soon to depart from our company forever."

"Yes, it is getting late, isn't it?" I said, yawning. "Think I'll turn in."

"A very wise decision, my dear," announced Sybill. "You have not, alas, been looking well at all, and the Inner Eye informs me that your sole hope of avoiding an untimely demise is to get plenty of rest."

Severus shot me a threatening glower over her head as I made a show of stretching and getting to my feet.

I smirked at him. "Well, good night, Severus. I'm sure you'll have a very consoling evening."

Sybill casually unfastened the top button of her pajamas. "Yes, he will, my dear. Sensitive and sympathetic companionship is a balm that soothes the most tortured of souls."

All the menace had vanished from Severus' face, leaving only an expression of abject supplication which forced me, in the name of common humanity, to relent. I had got him into this, after all, and it seemed only decent to get him out.

I made a quick evaluation of my colleague. Pureblood, but not from a well-known or wealthy family. Intelligent in some ways, yes, but severely lacking in social skills. Athletic, certainly not. Handsome? I am no expert at gauging other men's attractiveness, but I didn't notice too many women hitting on him besides Sybill. Yes, on the whole I thought he was ... normal, really. Which meant one particular avenue out of the North Tower would be open to him.

"Sybill? Could I use your, er, facilities before I go?"

"Of course, my dear. The Inner Sanctum is just down the corridor to your left. I find it a most congenial place for meditating upon Spiritual Matters, so you may wish to take your time."

Halfway down the corridor, I tapped my wand on a certain knothole in the floor and muttered, "Toujours Poor." The floorboards slid aside, leaving a gaping hole about three feet across.

"Severus, come here and have a look at this," I called, forgetting for a moment that grown men do not normally invite other grown men to join them in the toilet unless they have some sort of prior arrangement to that effect. The fact that Severus actually followed me says a great deal about his level of desperation at that moment. (Or perhaps he genuinely considered me a more attractive relationship prospect than Sybill, but I would prefer not to dwell on that possibility.)

"Quick," I whispered. "Down the rabbit-hole with you."

He stared at me suspiciously.

"Oh, come on, it's perfectly safe. I'll go first." I jumped into the hole, landed on the gently sloping floor of my very favorite secret passage, and offered him a hand down.

He was still standing at the brink of the hole and squinting into the darkness. "Where the hell are you taking me?"

"1972."

"What?" He looked like he thought I'd gone mad, but he jumped obediently as Sybill's footsteps began to patter at the end of the corridor. The floorboards closed over his head.

"Lumos," I said, and we beheld the secret headquarters of the Not-So-Ancient and Most Ignoble Brotherhood of Lupin and Pettigrew in its full glory. The walls were hung with tie-dyed tapestries, peace symbols, more tie-dyed tapestries, strings of beads, and ... sweet Merlin, we must really have been addicted to tie-dyed tapestries. What were we thinking?

There was a sudden burst of sitar music, and Severus froze. "There's someone down here!"

I was a bit spooked myself for a moment, and then I remembered. "No, that's just Psyche Bannerjee."

"Who?"

"You don't remember Psyche Bannerjee and the Psychedelic Banshees?" I pointed my wand in the direction of the music's source, illuminating a poster of swirling greens, oranges, and purples. "We thought they were the greatest band ever."

"Good God. That poster looks like somebody swallowed a paint box and threw up all over it."

"Yes," I had to admit, "it does, rather. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Is that a lava lamp? How come it's the size of a bloody horse?"

"Well, we were trying to figure out how to enchant it to work without electricity, and Peter hit it with an Engorgement Charm by mistake. I suppose I could have shrunk it again, but we decided it was dead cool, having the biggest lava lamp in the world," I explained, feeling incredibly lame.

He looked around the passage coolly, and I waited for the next wisecrack, but to my surprise he said grudgingly, "Well, I suppose I can't complain about your interior decorating skills, because you did help me out of a tight spot. Would you believe, that ... that overgrown female praying mantis asked me if she could wash my hair?"

I'm afraid I completely lost it.

"That wasn't funny, Lupin!"

"It was v-very funny, Severus," I gasped, leaning against the wall of the passage. "Almost as g-good as the part with the p-polar bear."

"Oh, all right. You and the polar bear were funny." He actually managed a smile that wasn't twisted or sneering.

I smiled back. It would, I thought, have been nice if my companion had been capable of twitting himself as well as other people, but at least he was getting there. For half a minute, I almost believed we had a chance of becoming friends.

Severus started at a muffled noise from the far end of the passage, which I took to be the approaching hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the universe promptly returned to its normal state. "I can't believe you were irresponsible enough not to tell anybody about this place," he hissed in my ear. "Sirius Black could be hiding out here."

"He can't," I said triumphantly. "Sirius Black is a strikingly good-looking, charismatic genius from an old aristocratic family, and consequently, this part of the castle is invisible to him."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean Hogwarts is a democratic place, and while the gifts of nature and fortune are distributed unevenly, the castle has certain ... compensations for those of us who are merely ordinary. Access to the place we are in now, the Passage of Plebeianness, is one of those compensations."

He looked decidedly piqued as the implications of what I had just said began to sink in. I tried to resist the impulse to fire a parting shot that would almost certainly put an end to the fragile state of detente that was beginning to exist between us, but the set-up was just too perfect.

"Terribly sorry, Severus," I said sweetly, "but you're mediocre. And that isn't an insult, it's a diagnosis."